A Negro and an Ofay (The Tales of Elliot Caprice Book 1)

by Danny Gardner

  “Nope,” Jay said. “Been so long, I figure I can go a while longer.”

  Punks inside dolled up and offered suck jobs for barter. Jay had politely demurred. A Latin queen named Rene had grown fine little breasts on smuggled estrogen treatments, and fixed up real nice. Rene liked to say it was all the same under the sheets in the dark, but Jay never found out.

  “I’ve done some pickups from the county jail. Most of them want to find a girl or stop for a drink right away. A drink I can handle, but you get sick in my car, I’m driving straight to the police. Tired of cleaning filth out the back. So you feel queasy, you tell me so I can pull over.”

  Jay’s last drink had been Irish whiskey, with the girl who’d saved him from doing time a virgin. Memories of her had been enough to fend off temptation from both the punks and the throat-clenching stink of jailhouse hooch, which was usually orange juice fermented in a toilet tank.

  “I’m good,” Jay said. “I’m thinking Rutt’s Hut. You know it?”

  Herschel laughed in three short chops. “Twenty-five years in jail, man wants a hot dog. Only in Jersey.”

  “They better be as good as I remember,” Jay said. “The food at Rahway tastes like wet toilet paper.”

  Herschel nosed the cab down a side street and hugged the Passaic River until he got past the traffic snarl, then popped back on the highway.

  “Take the Nutley exit,” Jay said.

  “Next one’s closer.”

  “I wanna see something.”

  “Okay.”

  Nutley had a new bridge and a lot more clutter, but the heart remained. Graffiti marked the overpass off the highway. Rust stains on the concrete like honey brown hair flowing down a woman’s back. Houses with neat little yards huddled in a phalanx on the border.

  As they cruised River Road, Jay frowned at the hole in the sky where the steel rocket of the International Avionics tower had once stood. The defense contractor’s sprawling campus was gone, with townhouse condos posed in their place. Most people worked there, or across town at Roach Pharmaceuticals, makers of the tranquilizer made famous as “Mother’s Little Helper” by the Stones. One side built tools for the Cold War, and the other cranked out the pills required to live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.

  They swerved past Kingsland Park’s waterfall, where police had emptied their guns into a Newark carjacker when Jay was in sixth grade. The shootout stood as a warning to interlopers, an invisible moat that made the denizens feel safe in their homes. Nutley had been a good place to grow up, rich or poor. Parks to roam, ponds and streams to fish in, a pizzeria in every neighborhood. The town had been a little too proud, a little unfriendly to outsiders, but Jay felt a twinge inside at no longer being welcome there.

  “Thought I recognized the name,” Herschel said. “You’re the guy who…you’re him.”

  “That I am,” Jay said. “You’re pretty sharp, Hersch. I don’t remember you from school.”

  “I’m from Belleville,” Herschel said. “But we all heard about it.”

  Everybody had. Jay’s rep preceded him to Annandale reformatory and followed him into Rahway.

  Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

  “C’mon, Hersch. I ain’t gonna kill you with a hot dog.”

  “Sorry, man.” Herschel laughed and held up an open palm. “Looks like you’d do just fine with your bare hands.”

  “I only use my hands under the hood,” Jay said, and slapped Herschel’s palm. “You pull over, maybe I can hunt down your vacuum leak. This heap whistles like it’s got a chest wound.”

  “You’re all right, Jay,” Herschel laughed again in three short chops. “You’re all right.”

  The soot-stained brick of Rutt’s Hut squatted on a ledge overlooking the highway. Construction workers rubbed elbows with suit-and-ties in its yellowed tile interior, lining up for the lunch counter. The low scent of fry oil filled the air.

  Greeks in stained aprons tortured hot dogs in the deep fryer until the skins burst and split up the middle, calling out orders in clipped jargon.

  Six rippers. One Frenchy, traveling. One Coke, one Marvis, cap.

  Jay slathered the dogs with spicy mustard and nuclear yellow relish. They ate in the parking lot, staring out at the slick brown ribbon of the Passaic River painted alongside the highway. Seagulls cried, begging for scraps.

  Jay took a bite and moaned. The snap and crunch of the fried skin, the soft yeast roll and the sweet relish outshined his faded memories.

  “Good as you remember?” Herschel said.

  “Better.” Jay looked over the edge at the cars and trucks roaring toward Newark.

  “Lot’s changed since you went in,” Herschel said through a mouthful. “It’s a whole different world now.”

  “That suits me just fine,” Jay said. “I didn’t like the other one all that much.”

  “How old were you?” Herschel asked, and picked at the paper boat of fries.

  “Fifteen,” Jay said.

  “You even know how to drive?”

  “Nope.”

  “They don’t teach that in there, do they.”

  “Just how to steal.” Jay watched a high school kid with spiked blond hair rumble out the lot in a red Camaro.

  “I don’t mean what you did was right,” Herschel said, and chewed his lip a moment. “But I just wanna say, I kinda understood what you did. In middle school there was this boy named Joseph, he had it in for me. Made life hell.”

  “Some folks just need killing.”

  Herschel’s eyebrows came together, then he laughed. He watched Jay like he would a strange dog.

  “Well it’s true.”

  “Yeah, but most of us just think about it. Guess twenty-five years didn’t change your mind.”

  “Oh I learned my lesson,” Jay said, around a bite of ripper. “Doesn’t change the fact that the world’d be better off with some people underground. Paid my debt, but I’m glad the evil sumbitch is dead.” He started on his next hot dog. The first hit his belly like a lead sinker.

  Herschel cocked his head and chopped one nervous laugh. “You’re something else. Making me think twice about completing this fare.”

  “That boy got what was coming to him for what he done,” he said, and tossed a piece of hot dog roll to the gulls. One snapped it up and flew away. “You only know what you heard.”

  Herschel parted his lips to ask, and Jay cut off the question with a steely glare.

  Joey Bello had always grinned like he’d gotten away with something, and he usually had. Flat little squirrel eyes, and fingers lumpy with burned-off warts, quick with a flick to the ear or a pinch and twist of tender belly meat. If playground torment had been the extent of Joey Bello’s transgressions, Jay might have tolerated him to walk the earth. With what Joey had done, the world was considerably better off for his absence.

  Jay looked out at the Passaic. The carpenter’s hatchet Papa Andre had given him on his tenth birthday was somewhere in the muck. The police had never recovered it.

  Herschel gave a playful smile. “So was it worth it?”

  “I was a dumb kid,” Jay said. “Thought I could take it. My friends’ folks, one was a cop, another was rich. They said they’d grease the wheels, but they let me swing in the wind.”

  “You gonna do anything about it?” Herschel said.

  “A good friend of mine once told me the best revenge is living well,” Jay said. “Reckon I’ll try to do that.” He tossed the burnt dregs of the fries to the gulls and watched them squabble and fight until they tore the last one apart.

  “Good luck. Ain’t easy, these days.”

  Four rippers gone, Jay popped the hood and fumbled around until he found the loose vacuum hose. Herschel gave him a rubber band from the glove box, and Jay wrapped it around until it stayed put. The whistling stopped.

  “It won’t lug down so much now,” Jay said. “But this thing needs more work than I can do in a parking lot.”

  “Ain’t mine,” Herschel sai
d. “We rotate, and today I got the shitbox.”

  Jay brushed his hands off on his jeans. “Let’s motor,” he said. “If I’m gonna live well, I might as well get started. Friend’s got an auto shop, somewhere in Belleville, in the valley.”

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview from the third book in the Penns River series by Dana King, Resurrection Mall…

  1.

  A lot colder at midnight than when Greg Twardzik pulled into the Allegheny Casino lot at a quarter to eight. Greg shoved his hands into his coat pockets and hoped his gloves were in the car. The breeze drilled a small hole dead center of his forehead, the hairs in his nose freezing together. It smelled cold, like when he re-stocked the ice cream freezer at Giant Eagle.

  Tonight Greg’s monthly run to the Allegheny. A true grind joint: slots and a bar, shitty restaurant. The unofficial slogan: Give us your money and get the fuck out. Greg saved his spare change each month the way geezers saved stale bread, except Greg fed the slots instead of pigeons. “Spare change” had an expansive definition in Greg’s mind. Stop at Sooki’s for a beer; beer cost two and a quarter; pay with a five. Tip Frankie a quarter, the other two-fifty is spare change. Next beer, another five. Take the kids to McDonald’s on his weekend with them, pay for twelve bucks worth of food with a twenty: eight bucks spare change. Saved up ninety-two seventy-five in January, rounded to a hundred.

  He’d come out the wrong door. Again. All the exits looked alike to Greg from inside. He’d get turned around looking for a promising slot, lose track of where he came in by the second scotch. He at least remembered parking his Pontiac looking straight across Leechburg Road at Wendy’s. Came out on the Rabbit’s Foot side, by the big fences with ivy or kudzu or whatever growing on them, a barrier between the casino and the residential neighborhood butting up against it. He should have taken the Horseshoe exit. Now he had to walk halfway around the building to get there.

  The night started well. Hit for about fifty bucks half an hour in. The plan had been to put the fifty in his pocket and play until the hundred he came with was gone; go home with the winnings. A loser’s mentality so early in the night. A jackpot that fast, there had to be more. There were two. Eight bucks within half an hour—big night brewing—then sixteen at eleven o’clock, about the time he started to wonder how much he had left. Hit the cash machine on his way to get the third drink and took out fifty—no, a hundred; still had twenty in his pocket. So he came with one hundred dollars, won seventy-four he should have stashed away. Lost the original hundred plus eighty from the ATM to go down one-eighty, not counting the seventy-four of house money he’d blown, which shouldn’t count, it not being his money. At least he had a good time.

  He found the aisle facing Wendy’s, started walking. His car should be on the right, about three-quarters of the way back. Halfway there he still didn’t see it. Probably blocked by the Ford Expedition he’d had to squeeze past, left wheels dead on the line. It wasn’t.

  Must be the wrong row, but how many of those big goddamn Expeditions could there be in this part of the lot? Greg turned his back on the Ford to face perpendicular to the line running from the casino to Wendy’s, capture his bearings. Pointed at Wendy’s and blinked his eyes. He’d nibbled the fourth drink, hearing rumors the local cops were cracking down on drunk driving. Coffee not a bad idea, once he found the car. He turned with great care and pointed at the Horseshoe entrance. It occurred to him the Expedition he’d parked next to might have left, and he was looking at a different one. He’d been careful to line himself up on Wendy’s and the casino entrance, could be off a little after five drinks.

  Tried a row to his left, then a row to his right. Freezing his ass off, he recalled something else he’d heard standing at the bar waiting for the sixth drink, one for the road. Paid attention to the barmaid who told him to be careful about the DUIs—paying attention to her tits more than what she said—a guy to his right bitching about cars stolen out of the casino lot. Greg almost asked, thought why would the guy still come if he thought cars were being stolen?

  Focused now, expanding his search with each circuit. Trying the aisle he thought, then one on either side, then two on either side until he realized the guy at the bar wasn’t some jagov blowing smoke. Cars were being stolen out of the Allegheny Casino lot, and Greg’s was one of them.

  2.

  Ben Dougherty pushed back from the kitchen table. “Enough. Mom, that was great.”

  Ellen Dougherty smiled. “There’s plenty to take home. I’ll pack you a bum bag when I clean up in here.”

  Some things never changed. Doc—only his family called him Ben, or Benny—in his late thirties, still came home for Sunday dinner. Sat in the same place as when he’d lived there. Ellen sat closest to the sink and stove, ready to spring into action if anyone looked like they might be thinking about wanting anything. Tom sat across from her, turned his head one-eighty to see the television in the living room, like he’d done for almost forty years.

  “Bum bags” an echo of Ellen’s mother, who never let her grandchildren go home without a poke containing at least a couple of apples and a Hershey bar. A phrase coined during the Depression, when she’d given bum bags to people worse off than her. At least she did until her husband lost his job at Scaife’s and it became all they could do to keep from asking other families for handouts.

  “What else can I get you?” Ellen still cleared the table like the waitress she’d been. Tom pulled a half-empty dish of cucumbers and sour cream closer to his plate. He’d miscalculated and not finished before Ellen started cleaning. The rest of his meal would be a competition.

  “I haven’t even started digesting what I just ate, Mom. I have no idea what I want next. A nap, maybe.”

  “I heard Dickie Laverty had his house broke into this week.” Tom stabbed the last two slices of cucumber, pushed the dish into Ellen’s sphere of influence. Wrapped a finger along the edge of his dinner plate, where scraps of roast beef and mashed potatoes remained.

  “His shed,” Doc said. “Took his lawn mower, snow blower, leaf blower, chain saw. All the outdoor power tools.” Doc knew, being a Penns River police detective.

  “Anything you can do about it?”

  “We took the report. Poked around.” Tom looked up from his plate, piece of roast hanging from his fork. Doc said, “What would you like us to do? Someone takes his stuff out of town and sells it? Hell, someone sells it in town. Even if he recognizes it, can he prove it’s his?”

  “He knows what his riding mower looks like. He just bought it last spring.”

  “Did he write down the serial number? He can’t take us up to some guy’s house, point to a mower and say, ‘that’s mine,’ and expect us to take it back and haul the other guy off to jail.”

  Tom chewed, unsatisfied. “You can do something. People shouldn’t have to worry about having their things taken like that.”

  “I’m open to suggestions. I’m one of the guys who has to tell these people there’s nothing we can do for them except write an insurance report. Town this size, half the people who’ve been robbed know a cop. We still can’t help them. Doesn’t mean we like it.”

  Ellen scraped and rinsed. Doc snatched a stray piece of Syrian bread from a plate destined for sterilization. Tom chewed and drank ice tea, said, “Seems to me there’s a hell of a lot more of it than there used to be.”

  “I don’t know if there’s a hell of a lot more.” Doc munched the bread without anything on it. “Be honest. You only care because Dickie lives practically across the street.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot more around here,” Tom said. “This used to be a quiet neighborhood. I can’t remember the last time we had a break-in. Now we’ve had three in the past few months. I don’t mean to pick on you. Someone has to do something, and you’re the police.”

  “Three in three months after none in—what?—five years? That’s only three in the past five years,” Doc said.

  “I’m making a point,” Tom said. �
�Don’t cover it up with statistics.”

  “You’re right,” Doc said. “I shouldn’t’ve done that. Still, three in three months? What you call a neighborhood runs down past the ball fields and up over the hill where the dairy farm used to be. That covers a lot of territory. They get that many in three weeks down the Flats. Twice that downtown.”

  “Yeah, but—I don’t know—this has never been that kind of neighborhood.”

  “And it probably still isn’t. Three in three months might be the law of averages catching up. Might be five more years till the next one.”

  “You think so?”

  “No. Not unless we catch the guy.”

  “So what’s the answer?” Tom said. “I got a lot of stuff in my shed. Most of it’s old, which means I can’t replace it with what insurance will pay.”

  “You really worried?”

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  The answer required diplomacy. “I can’t say you should. Can’t say you shouldn’t, either.” Tom’s valuable equipment stored either in the garage attached to the house or in a shed thirty feet away. A motion-sensitive light on the house illuminated the shed’s entrance. Neighbors knew Tom kept a .22 carbine handy to shoot coons and other varmints rifling his trash can. On the other hand, Doc did not want to face his father if he said not to worry and anything happened. “If you want, I know a guy can fix you up with a little siren, car alarm sort of thing. We can wire it into the shed door for you.”

  “No one should have to do all that.” Ellen lingered on the periphery of all conversations, commented when she felt the need. “People aren’t safe anymore.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Doc said. “Property crime is up. Things get stolen. It’s not like people aren’t safe in their homes.

  “We don’t know that,” Tom said. “Not with people’s houses getting broken into.”

  “You know,” Doc said. “I just told you. I’m kind of an authority on crime in Penns River. All the break-ins have either been outbuildings, or when no one’s home.”