by Yari Stern
Satisfied that the majority of the students were present, she asked, “What famous person said, ‘Men have become the tools of their tools?’”
“The question was met with silence.
“No one?” the professor asked.
The students looked around. All eyes settled on Yari.
Yari looked around but saw no escape. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer. It was just that he was trying to concentrate on more mundane things, like figuring out a way to not get killed in the next twenty-four hours.
“Mr. Stern?”
“Thoreau.”
“Correct! But a rather sardonic assessment of progress, do you not think?”
“Not as harsh as C.P. Snow.”
“Who said…?”
“’Technology brings great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.’”
“Yet without technology we would still be living in caves and rubbing two sticks together to make a fire.”
“Get involved with a machine and sooner or later you are reduced to a factor.”
“Generalizations are poor arbiters of the truth,” the professor insisted.
“How about comparisons?” Yari suggested.
“Go on,” the professor assented.
“Georges Pompidou said there are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.”
“Yet technology has freed man from the daily tasks of the mundane to thinking and creating benefits for tomorrow,” the professor insisted.
“Northrop Frye said, ‘The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.’”
“Books that cannot be read except in the proper light and protection from the elements.”
“Albert Einstein said, ‘It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.’”
“Because of technology, Einstein was freed to wander through the Princeton campus, thinking of nothing but his theorems engaging in philosophical discussions with Diarac and meeting with the great minds of his day.”
“As did Paul of Tasus, Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, --.”
“You made your point, Mr. Stern.
“L. Ron Hubbard said, ‘One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.’”
“Novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex,’” the professor countered.
“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards,’” Yari rebutted.
“Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable,” the professor argued.
“Don DeLillo said, ‘Technology creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand, and threatens universal extinction on the other.’”
The bell rang. The scores were added up. Yari had won the battle but was losing the war.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Havertown, Pa
That must be it. Yari nodded his head toward the ranch home in the Philadelphia suburb of Havertown. 2434 Timber Lane. Why the hell would people who can afford to live in a home like this have to borrow money from Sylvan?
Yari walked up to the door of what he perceived as an easy collection. People with social position didn’t want trouble. He rang the door and waited.
“May I help you?” A well-dressed, middle-aged man answered the door. He looked surprised to see anyone after eight p.m.
“I need to speak to George Bentson.” Yari read the unfamiliar name off the sheet Sylvan had given him.
“That’s my son. Hold on, I’ll get him.” The father went over to the steps leading upstairs and called out, “George, there’s a young man here to see you.” Mr. Bentson smiled and went back into the den with his paper and pipe.
Yari viewed the pictures lining the foyer, all of photo finishes at the harness track, as he waited for the son to come down stairs.
“I’m Geor--” The bespectacled teenager stopped short as Yari turned to face him.
“Ace?” Yari addressed the young man by the only name he had ever known.
“How did you find out where I lived?” George was shocked and embarrassed.
“I didn’t know it was you. The name on the list was George Bentson, not Ace.”
“What list?” George’s complexion turned ghostly.
“The one I got from Sylvan Skol--”
“Let’s go outside.” George took Yari’s arm and quickly walked him into the front yard. “I’m going out, Dad,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”
“What business are you doing with Sylvan and Jack?” Yari asked after they stopped in the middle of the manicured lawn. “You’ve got a good job with the Inquirer, handicapping all the East-coast races.”
“In order to pick ‘em, I’ve got to go every night. When I’m there it’s too tempting not to bet. I got in deep with the bookies. They were threatening to rip off my arm and beat me to death with it.”
“So you figured it was easier to deal with Jack and Sylvan than some neighborhood loan sharks?” Yari zipped up his jacket as the chill of what his friend was involved in rolled up his spine.
“I was stalling for time. I’ve always come out on top before. I never went this long without a big score.”
“Well, what’s your plan now?” Yari threw the same sarcasm at George that Sylvan had thrown at him. “If I don’t come back with the dough or a piece of you, they’ll take it out of me. You’re a friend, but I’m not going down because of you. Maybe we ought to flip a coin to decide which of us should kill the other. Then at least one of us won’t be tortured by Jack.”
George’s eyes darted around the neighborhood, then settled on Yari. “Your business is cars. You gotta buy my Torino.” He was sweating profusely despite standing out on a crisp winter night clad only in a 76’ers T-shirt. “That’ll keep them off me for a little while.”
“You don’t get it, Ace. If I don’t bring back all the money, they’ll send someone else, somebody a thousand times tougher than me.”
“Tell me what to do,” George pleaded.
“We’ve got to figure out something else,” Yari weighed. “Don’t go to the track for a few days; Jack hangs out there. Don’t make any more bets, that’s what got you into this hole to begin with. Go to work and then go home. Don’t stop at the bars in Upper Darby or downtown. Sylvan’s got eyes everywhere. And don’t go to sleep without garlic around your neck; they’ll suck the blood right out of your veins just for the vig.”
“Thanks, Yari. You saved my ass.” George reached out a tentative hand.
Yari took it half-heartedly. “Nothing’s saved, Ace. We’re all hanging by a thread, and it’s going to take a lot more than me to pull us out.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Ridge Ave. Phila. Pa.
Yari walked into Stern’s Specialty Shop, red-veined eyes darting from side to side. People looking to kill him, or put him in jail for a hundred years, made sleep a fleeting memory.
Sam was already there, stuffing rubbish into a cardboard box and neatly tying it up.
“What are you doing?” Yari asked.
“Getting the garbage ready,” Sam said as he made a fancy bow out of the twine he was using to wrap the parcel. “If I put a package out at the curb that looks like there might be something valuable inside, it’ll disappear in minutes. By the time the goniffs finds out it’s only trash, it’s on someone else’s property.”
“That’s pretty slick.”
“It’s bullshit!” Sam finished wrapping, pulling on the twine like he was trying to choke the package to death. “Just like your little enterprises.” He set the box to the side, and looked up at his son for the first time. “I do it because the trash men are all thieves. They won’t take anything unless you pay them cash.”
Pushing aside his father�
��s concerns, Yari said, “Dad, I don’t know what to do.” His voice was frail, more fatalistic than before. “So many people are depending on me.”
“You’re only nineteen years old, just a child. Who’s depending on you?”
“Peter, George, and lots more.”
“I don’t know them. Should I?”
“They’re just good people who got themselves involved with Sylvan and Jack, and have no way out except for me.”
“You can’t set yourself up as savior. Sometimes people make mistakes and the only way out is for them to go through the process.”
“But with those guys you pay the ultimate price. I was thinking that maybe you could--”
“I’d rather talk about the call I just got from a highway patrolman I know. Care to fill me in on the details?”
“I was just helping Ed move a few things,” Yari responded, back again on the defensive. “It was his deal, not mine,” he said, while thinking what a pathetic individual he had evolved into, lying to his father’s face.
“The trooper seemed to think you knew exactly what was going on.” Sam jammed the scissors under the counter. “I’ve known hundreds of guys who tried the same things you have and none of them ever made it out.” Sam brushed off Yari’s attempt to interrupt. “I thought being a good example would be enough.”
“Everybody’s dirty,” Yari insisted.
“Not as dirty as Sylvan Skolnick and Jack Trotter.”
“All business is larceny; it’s only a matter of degrees. You sell merchandise that’s one step away from being trash.”
“I buy what these people can afford,” Sam retorted.
“Yeah, well I buy first class goods and sell them for bargain basement prices. You see, it’s semantics. Everyone tries to rationalize their actions. But it doesn’t make them any more right.”
“There’s a big difference,” Sam said as he moved around the store brushing his hand gently over old, familiar counters. “I’m working with people to improve things. You’re using people to benefit only yourself.”
“Anything I do to get out of this place is justified.” For Yari, the excuses came harder and slower.
“And what makes this neighborhood so horrible or so much different than any other?” Sam asked caustically.
“Have you looked around lately? It’s like an atomic bomb went off out there.”
“But that’s not how it has to be,” Sam replied, his countenance reflecting a different era. “Family businesses used to line both sides of the street. There was Tommy the Butcher, Goldberg’s Grocery, and Perry’s Variety Store. Back then, everyone, shop-keepers and shoppers alike, knew each other’s name.” Sam continued his trek around the store, doting over the stock like a mother tending her children.
“People rarely moved then, not like now,” he lamented, “every five years, searching for something better that usually results in the opposite.” Sam stopped, set up a short ladder, and placed a box of women’s robes on the counter. As his father stepped up, Yari instinctively handed him the items one by one.
“Things will never be like that again. Big corporations and government are taking over,” Yari said. “Pretty soon the little guys will all be pushed out.”
“If things aren’t perfect, then work to change them. If everyone chose your way out, we’d all be living behind iron fences.”
“Look outside. I’m not the only one who’s given up on this place. Trash sits uncollected for weeks at a time around here. No one even seems to mind anymore. State congressmen are scared to death to even campaign in this neighborhood.”
“Then fix it. Right the wrongs, like Cervantes and the others you’ve read about all your life.”
“But I’m barely surviving. I can’t worry about helping anyone else.”
“The sum of a person’s life is what he leaves behind for others, not what he accumulates for himself.”
Yari picked up the boxes his father had prepared, walked out into a bitter cold and placed the cartons in a tempting position. He inhaled a few deep breaths of thick, visible air before going back in.
“Dad, I wish I--”
“I wish too, that someone could tell me how to be a good father and a good cop at the same time,” Sam expressed with a weakened expression. “But maybe we can still--”
“Hi, Sam,” a conservatively dressed, short-cropped black man said as he entered the store.
“Charlie, what’s up?” Sam responded familiarly.
“I just got a call on the radio that a gang fight is brewing in the field next to Southern High School,” Charlie explained. “The brass wants us both there right away.”
“Just give me a minute to change, Charlie. I’ll be right down.” Sam loosened his bow tie as he headed for the second floor.
“You must be Sam’s youngest, Yari,” Charlie said with a growing smile. “He’s told me a lot about you. He’s very proud of you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of deserving that.” He quickly changed the subject asking, “How long have you and Dad worked together?”
“Eight years in Juvenile. Then, when your dad started the Human Relations Division, he asked me to join him. That was five years ago.” Charlie looked at Yari to discern his level of interest. “You know you’ve got a very special dad.”
“I know.”
“Maybe even more than you think. When I first broke into the department in 1954, I was assigned to work with your dad. Sam offered to take me to lunch, but I said no. He insisted, and we went to the cafeteria at Woolworth. That was the first time in my life I ever ate a meal with a white man.”
“I can’t believe there was that much discrimination even then.”
“There was and still is. But it’s a lot less now because of men like your dad. It’s mostly what individuals do, not what government dictates, that makes a difference. And Sam is out there everyday making a real difference.”
“Okay, Charlie, ready to go,” Sam called as he exited from the stairwell and into the store.
“Nice meeting you, Yari. Hope we see each other soon,” Charlie called out as he and Sam hustled out of the store.
“Me too,” Yari said. I just hope it’s not on official business.
* * *
It took some time for Yari to gather himself together to make the phone call he dreaded. He thought about what he was going to say, torn between using compassion or threats.
“You helped Bruce set me up for the cops?” Yari said, as he spoke to Annie on the phone. “Why?”
“With Bruce, I’m the boss; with you I’m just a gofer. And because you screwed me. I couldn’t sell the coke you left with me.”
“But it was almost pure!”
“People laughed at me. They said it was junk, not nearly as good as the other batch.”
“The last shipment was Sudacaine, the stuff dentists use to anesthetize the gums of their patients.”
“That’s what they want! All they talked about was how it numbed their jaws.”
“So it’s my fault your friends are by-products of a failed Pavlovian experiment?”
“You told me you knew it all…lots of times!” Annie screamed into the telephone.
“They’re getting high off the thought, not the reality.” He took a deep breath and began again. “What about our plans?”
“The plan was for us to break free. Remember what you told me in the park? That you were going to get us out of this sewer clog? Now I know you meant you, not we. You were just using me.”
“When did you feel that? When I gave you the only thing of value I had left, then had to hide from people who were trying to kill me or put me in jail because I wouldn’t leave you behind?”
“You screwed everyone else. It was just a matter of time until you got around to me. I wasn’t just going to sit and wait my turn.”
“So this is how you repay me?”
“You stood in my way. Now I’ve got your connections, enough money to begin, and something
even you don’t have…big tits.”
“I treated you like gold,” Yari insisted, but there was little fight left in him. “Why would you turn on me?”
“I rationalized it, just like you do when you’re rolling over on all the suckers out there. Besides, you’re losing your edge. Everyone is getting over on you.”
“So now you’ll carry the flag?”
“Who better than me?”
“It’s not pretty out there, Annie.”
“If I was looking for pretty, I’d look in the mirror. But you should be proud of me. I’m a lot like you, just a better version.”
“What are you going to do with that dough?”
“I want control over my own life, and only money brings that.”
“I hope it works better for you than it has for me.”
“I’ve got to go now. My Mom’s calling.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Good-bye, Yari. This is boring.”
* * *
When Carl came in, Yari left the store and drove to his rental home, hoping that Bruce had finished moving the rest of his things out after the confrontation over Annie. Yari had, with Bruce’s reluctant help, picked up the remaining cars before the police found them. He was safe until the next time Annie gave Bruce a pair of her underwear to smell.
* * *
Yari parked his T-Bird in the drive-way and walked up the steps of his rental house, only to find a note tacked to the door by a stiletto. It said, “Meet us at Murray’s.”
Murray’s Delicatessen
“No money? Not even some vig?” Sylvan questioned Yari as they sat squeezed together in a small booth at Murray’s Delicatessen on Montgomery Avenue. He snapped his fingers for a waitress who brought over a lox platter and set it down in front of Yari. Just as he lifted his fork and made a move toward the plate, Sylvan reached across and began picking at it, pushing aside thick slices of Bermuda onion to get to the nova.
Yari laughed to himself; the man could never give without leaving his mark – like a dog pissing on a bush. His fat, sweaty hand on the food was a constant reminder of who wielded ultimate power.
