Bosstown

by Adam Abramowitz

  “What? Who? No. Nobody beat me up. I was in a fender bender.”

  “Was your face on the fender?”

  “Was yours?”

  “Actually, yeah. That’s why I’m here.”

  Valentine closes the one eye he has control of, managing somehow to sit still, which must take a great deal of concentration, considering the amount of cocaine coursing through his system. It’s hard to get an accurate read of his face beneath the cuts and swelling, but my guess is he’s pretty much what you’d expect a young rock-and-roll impresario to look like: four days’ worth of just-so stubble, hair cut long and jagged, tan and healthy skin, at least where he hasn’t been pounded, suggesting a jaunt to the Caribbean or a long Vineyard weekend. He’s lean but not scrawny, which I attribute to practice on the yoga mat leaning in the corner, handsome in the way that confidence carries the day: Levi’s, dark gray Converse T-shirt under a thin and supple midnight leather jacket.

  Valentine sinks into his Buddha act, hands resting palms down on his desk, his shoulders losing their high-clavicle tension. I’m not sure if he’s meditating, but whatever state he’s managed to adopt seems to do him good.

  “What can I do for you, Zesty?” His one good eye clicks open, his brown pupil focusing on me.

  “Where’s Britta?”

  Even Valentine’s ballooning lip doesn’t prevent a smile from lifting the corners of his mouth. “Zesty, you’re a piece of work. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “Sure, only not so nicely.”

  “A piece of fucking work. I don’t know what you think is going on, but let me give you some advice: Stay away from it. You don’t know the people you’re dealing with here. You seem like a smart guy, I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  “Do you know where Gus is?”

  “I’m not a babysitter. How the fuck should I know?”

  “You’re invested in him, aren’t you?”

  “Now you’re pissing me off, Zesty.”

  “What about Britta?”

  Valentine starts to look queasy, his one good eye swimming. “What about her?”

  “She’s the one who forked over the money yesterday, and today she’s gone.”

  “What money?” Valentine looks at me hard a moment, the light in his good eye flickering before extinguishing altogether. “You were never here yesterday. Deal with it.”

  “Fuck you. I already know where the money was heading and who it was going to.”

  “So why’re you here, then?”

  “I want the rest of it.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  Maybe, but I press on anyway. “Whose money did I lose?”

  Valentine just sits there, an almost imperceptible movement of his head starting up. He hunches forward, his hands moving automatically toward the cocaine, his platinum Amex scraping the vinyl, electrifying the hairs at the back of my neck.

  Slowly, Valentine lowers himself, mumbling something I can’t make out, another thick white worm disappearing up the conical bill.

  “Say that again.” I take a step toward him.

  “You’re a dead man.” Valentine obliges me, his neck stretched out on the back of the chair like an offering for the chopping block, the postnasal drip from the cocaine thickening his voice, his tongue flicking over front teeth that probably feel like they’re no longer there.

  “Yeah? Fuck you, Ray. You’re a day late and a Buick short. Dead man cycling was yesterday, and I’m still here. And today I had my coffee before coming to this joke palace. So fuck you and your bullshit record company. Shove it up your ass.”

  But my anger’s wasted on him. He’s not listening, his one good eye dialed back to black, as devoid of emotion as the perforated ceiling panel above him.

  “I guess this isn’t a good time to ask for free tickets,” I say to Darcy, who is stewing at the reception desk, her angry eyes checking the points of the black knives attached to the tips of her fingers. Between Darcy, Britta, and a coked-up Valentine, this place is turning out to be downright dangerous.

  “Go fuck yourself,” she says flatly.

  “That’s funny. Yesterday a doctor told me basically I should be able to do just that. Something about an extra vertebra. Darcy,” I say, “think of the possibilities.”

  “Good for you, Zesty. Why are you wasting your time here, then?”

  Zesty. By name. “You know me, Darcy?”

  Darcy loses interest in her nails. “I’ve seen you around.”

  “Hear anything good?”

  “Wasn’t asking.”

  “When does Blizzard’s album come out?”

  Darcy’s thrown off by the question, takes a moment to recover her attitude. “It’s been delayed. What’s it to you?”

  “Delayed why?” I know enough about the music business to know that you strike while the iron’s hot, Gus’s second-place Rumble finish and accompanying step-up in airplay qualifying on a local level.

  “It’s not a decision I get to make,” she says, literally tongue in cheek.

  “But the album’s finished?”

  “And mixed. They even brought in Nichols as a producer. You know who that is?”

  “No, I’m not that cool.”

  “Way to state the obvious.” Darcy makes a face to screw home the point. “He’s worked with Dropkick Murphys and a bunch of other bands. I know he didn’t come cheap.”

  “Whose end did that come out of?”

  “You mean who paid for him? Gizzard split the fee with Ray.”

  “That how it usually works?”

  “There is no usually. You cut the best deal you can or take your chances somewhere else.”

  But the sharks are everywhere in show business. At the poker table, at least they’re sitting in front of you where you can keep an eye on them. The more time I spend around the music business, the more it resembles a bloody chum bucket. It’s no wonder my father got out.

  “So half the producer’s fee came from Gizzard’s advance. How much was that?”

  “Low six figures. It sounds like a lot, but after the producer, studio time, equipment, and then split it four ways with the band, it’s not that much.”

  Not enough for Gus to quit biking or trying to pick up extra drug money on top of that. But why sit on the record if it’s already cut and the money already spent? And more important, Darcy’s right: What’s it to me?

  Random thought: “Who has access to the safe in Valentine’s office?”

  Darcy looks at me quizzically, like she’s about to tell me to go fuck myself again, but instead says, “Far as I know, it’s just me, Britta, and Ray. Hey, Zesty, you okay? You don’t look so good all of a sudden.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  By the time I’m downstairs, Charlie’s resumed his post with vigor, his left pant leg cuffed to just below his knee, revealing a shock-white calf zippered with at least a dozen heavy pink scars running horizontally across the skin, likely a residual gift of the shrapnel that had taken his right leg off at the thigh. There’s a light sheen of sweat on Charlie’s upper lip, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth, and his popcorn curls are glistening like they’ve been buttered.

  “That’s a new look.”

  “This close, Zesty. I was this close to not coming back.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Only ’cause I told you I’d watch your bike. Man, people around here drive like shit. I almost got doored coming around Berkeley, which would’ve been a laugh. Live through Iraq, die under the wheel of a VW.”

  “Semper fi,” I say. “Welcome to my world.”

  Charlie takes a last hit off his cigarette, flicks it to the curb. “So how’d it go up there?”

  “It’s complicated. Hey, at the risk of sounding racist, you happen to notice a couple cagey-looking black guys come in today, go up to Black Hole?”

  “Define cagey.” Charlie requires more than skin color, which tells me something about him.

  “They would’ve been driving
a black Pathfinder. One guy really big…” I think back to Albert’s description of Cedrick. “Bear with me here: made of big black bricks? Can I sound any more like a peckerwood?”

  “Not really. But I know who you’re talking about. I probably wouldn’t have noticed except they got a parking space right out front, which is like winning the lottery around here. Pathfinder. Two guys. You described one of them pretty accurate.”

  “What about the other?”

  “Taller. Thin. Definitely a baller.”

  “Now who’s a racist?” I say, grinning.

  “Fuck you. He was athletic, what I’m saying. Had that walk. They were here about an hour ago.”

  Which explains the fresh beating on Valentine’s face. How long does it take to beat up a guy? Depends on the guy, I suppose, and whether there’s any snappy dialogue before the smackdown. Either way, I’m a step slow on everybody, in to the river on every pot, drawing toward inside straights and slim-odds flushes. In other words, nowhere. And now my aches and pains returning, too long off my bike, the bandwidth of my skull hooking yet another single from out there on the airwaves.

  The band is Madness. The song: “Our House.” Which reminds me, I’m about to get evicted.

  Sing along, everybody.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Mario Spagnola’s Harrison Avenue outer office is all exposed brick, iron beams, and oiled cherry Mission furniture. Sepia-toned photographs and linear architectural drawings hang on the walls, my address among them—Thayer Street, Albany, Harrison Avenue. I’ve been in Spagnola’s office before, making a general nuisance of myself when things in the loft need attention, ruining the retro-industrial vibe for the assorted bankers, architects, and lawyers waiting patiently for an audience with Spagnola in the flesh.

  “Karla.” I greet the dragon at the gate, a well-maintained brunette with an air of easy confidence and consistent disdain for my now-and-again presence for no reason that comes to mind other than it might be an integral part of her job description. “Working late, I see. You look awesome. You color your hair? It’s shining.”

  “Zesty.” Karla sizes me up, doesn’t find any upgrades worth noting. “What took you so long?”

  “I’m expected?”

  “You received your eviction notice?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, there you have it.” She tosses me a razor smile.

  “He in?”

  “He is.” We exchange gunslinger stares.

  “Aren’t you supposed to offer me coffee or something while I wait?”

  “There’s a coffee shop downstairs. They’re about to close, but I’m sure they’ll sell you the dregs. You’re probably used to them by now.”

  “Hey, that’s not what you say to everybody else.”

  Just as I’m settled into one of the club chairs, Karla announces, “You can go in now.”

  “So soon? Aren’t you supposed to keep me waiting awhile?”

  “Actually, I am. Only I don’t think I can stomach the sight of you anymore. Have you checked a mirror lately? You look like somebody chewed you up and spit you out.”

  “Wow, Karla, you’ve got it bad for me.”

  “Sure, that’s what it is.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll let him know how rude you were to me.”

  “You do that, Zesty. I’m due for a raise.”

  Spagnola’s probably somewhere in his early fifties but works hard to keep the years from piling up. He’s tan, bulky through the chest, his hair peppered with silver, cut short and close-cropped around the ears. Two months ago, he attended a tenants meeting in running shorts and sweat-drenched T-shirt and spent the entire time contorting himself in a variety of stretches, the show a wordless put-down of the tenants assembled, a clear message that their concerns and grievances weren’t even worthy of a feigned formality.

  Spagnola’s dressed pretty much the same today, tank top, shorts, probably just come up from the Gold’s Gym in the basement.

  “Been lifting?” I start friendly, tapping my biceps.

  “Ten thousand,” Spagnola says.

  “That sounds like a bit of an exaggeration. I bench about one-forty, but I tell everyone one-sixty because it sounds believable, right?”

  “Dollars.” Spagnola’s eyes register an idiot in his presence. “Ten thousand dollars.”

  “Wow, you’re that rich you lift money? How many reps you do with it?”

  My landlord rubs his face hard with his hands, and we’re just getting started.

  “To leave, Zesty. Ten thousand dollars to vacate your little rat’s nest.”

  “Really? How soon can you get the money?”

  “I’ll cut you a check right now. We have a deal?”

  “That’s ten thousand each?” I say.

  “Each what?”

  “I’ve got two roommates.”

  “Oh, right. The drunk and the zombie. No, I don’t think so. You’re the only name on the lease. Going once—”

  “Ten grand? You know what Starbucks charges for a pound of coffee? I’ll be destitute in a month.”

  “Then make it twenty. Split it any way you want or keep it all for yourself, I don’t care.” Spagnola opens a desk drawer, tosses a checkbook onto the blotter. “You telling me you can’t use twenty thousand dollars?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “And to show you no hard feelings, I’ll forgive the two months’ back rent you owe. We have a deal?”

  Twenty thousand dollars. I chew on that number for a moment. Twenty large gets me a new place to live, pays my overdue bills, puts a dent in what I owe Darryl. You’ve got yourself a deal, my brain says.

  “No.” My mouth decides to speak on its own. No? What just happened?

  “Then I withdraw my offer,” Spagnola says sharply. “You are going to move, Zesty. I’m not making this offer again. You’re practically the last ones left, and that eviction notice is going to stick, I guarantee it. Your days are numbered. You hear me?” Heated now. “Numbered!”

  “You know, you’re not the first person to tell me that today.”

  Spagnola’s not interested. “Have you looked around this neighborhood lately, Zesty? The construction? You see anyone who looks like you, has a job like yours? Bike messenger. How long you think that’s going to last? Either your body’s going to go”—he taps above his own eye, signifying my stitches—“or technology’s going to beat the street to it. How much money do you have in the bank, Zesty?”

  “What’s a bank?” I say.

  “Joke all you want, you’re moving out. Even if I have to have the building condemned around you, you’re gone. People like you are meant to be pushed around.”

  Oh boy.

  “People like me?”

  “You a reader, Zesty?”

  “I like the comics in The New Yorker,” I say. “Sometimes I even understand them.”

  “How about de Tocqueville? No, I don’t suppose you have. But that’s okay. I’ll give you a little synopsis. See, de Tocqueville wrote a lot about the nature of democracy and ownership, but he also had this premise that people choose their livelihoods based not on what their interests are but what they internally, maybe even subconsciously, think their standing in life is—basically, where they fall on the food chain. You following me here?”

  “There going to be a quiz on this later?”

  Spagnola nods, but it’s more of a response to an internal question of his own than to mine.

  “It’s why you see so many people follow in their parents’ footsteps: second- and third-generation cops, schoolteachers, athletes. It’s not all genetics; more like an instinct, an internal measure of status. So really, if you take a good look at it, it makes perfect sense you make a living on a bicycle—mobile, transient, easily displaced.”

  “And all this time I thought it was ‘you are what you eat.’”

  “No disrespect, Zesty, and I apologize in advance if I’m wrong, but back in the day, didn’t your father run card games
all over the city?”

  “What about it?”

  “You don’t see the connection? From one place to another? From bar to club, empty theaters? You, from office to office, here to there. No? That too much of a stretch for you? How about this? My father used to play in some of those card games. How’s that for a connection?”

  “Solid,” I say. “He win or lose?”

  “My father was a degenerate. Ponies, sports, you name it, he bet it. You couldn’t depend on him for shit. My father was a loser.”

  “And look at you,” I say, not enjoying the way this conversation’s veered personal and into the past, feeling like forward movement is all I can afford right now. “Doesn’t quite fall in line with your de Tocqueville theory, does it?”

  Spagnola, like every proselytizer I’ve ever encountered, shakes off the point.

  “I know what you people say about me, Zesty. All you tragic hipsters and that maniac fucking neighbor of yours, John Whatsis, with the three kids and the wife pregnant again, living in an industrial loft cranking out religious icons. He…” Spagnola loses his words, color rising through his neck. “Outside my church. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Waiting for me, in front of the priest and everybody, slandering me, shouting how I’m a slumlord, claiming I’m all mobbed up, the fucking religious fanatic, because I’m Italian, I’m a patsy for the Mob. You think I’m in the Mob, Zesty?” Spagnola sticks out his chin, waiting for it. White dots of spittle have formed at the corners of his mouth.

  “Honestly? I think you’re a one-man Mob all by yourself,” I say.

  “You’re damn fucking right I am. I’m a goddamn wrecking ball! But if you want to see the real Mob in action, go to city hall. You want graft and protection, licenses, permits, zoning changes? See how far you get with that bunch empty-handed. I’ll show you the fucking Mob. You can’t stand in the way of progress, Zesty.”

  “Progress? You call this progress? Luxury lofts and three-hundred-dollar-a-pop hair salons? You think pushing aside anybody that doesn’t have a million dollars to spend on a roof over their heads is progress?”

  “I made this neighborhood safer—”

  “No, see, that’s where you’re wrong,” I say, the timbre of my voice surprising me as it echoes off the vaulted beam ceilings and gloss bricked walls. “I did that. Me and the drunk and the zombie and everybody who moved here and built up this forgotten shithole when nobody wanted it. When you neglected it. Without us, you don’t have your condos, your restaurants. You don’t have shit.”