Stuffed

by Brian M. Wiprud

  Cowardice is more ally than enemy, and bravery is prodded at the sharp end of dilemma’s horns. The only reason I didn’t run screaming from the van was the snorting bull of pride standing behind me. To back out would wave a red flag in his face.

  The plan was for me to meet Smiler & Co. at the corner of Peck Slip and Front Street, a pretty lonely spot at that hour of the morning. I had a duffel bag packed with $50,000 in small bills. I’d contacted Chuck. “Garf, you dog sucker!” Between his mutterings, I told him I could move some exotic pelts if Smiler could arrange such a thing. It didn’t take long for him to set up a meeting with Smiler, who said I should come prepared to buy as his inventory had a high turnover and he couldn’t hold anything for me. I wondered if they didn’t just intend to get me in a desolate spot and then deploy thugs to rip me off. Actually, I sort of hoped that they would, in which case I’d calmly hand over the money and walk.

  Well, I did all the way up until Pete’s parting words. He smiled, patting me on the shoulder. “Relax. Here. It looks like a cell phone, but it’s a GPS tracker. Don’t lose it or we’ll lose you. But it’ll go smooth as silk, and we’ll be right with you all the way.” As he climbed into the van, he added as an afterthought: “And be careful with your money.”

  “My money?” There was something in the way he said it, the spark in his eye.

  He tried not to smile as the van started to pull away. “We didn’t think you’d mind if we borrowed some.”

  Son of a bitch.

  It was a night in April, which is anything but springlike. The sky was overcast, it was chilly and it was misting, but I hadn’t bothered with a raincoat. I was nervous, and hot, and didn’t want to sweat excessively for fear of looking nervous. Besides, I remember a movie in which somebody wearing a wire starts to sweat, the electronics short-circuit, he starts to freak from being singed, is discovered, and . . . and I seem to remember it ended badly for this fellow. Or what about that movie where the guy with the wire goes to a Japanese restaurant with his underworld cronies and is asked to take his boots off? The boots with the tape recorders in them? Or the one in which there’s a guy with a wire posing as a driver at a mob funeral, where the squeal of feedback on his mike gives him away?

  My reverie was such that I didn’t hear the town car roll silently up behind me.

  Compadre was in back, and from the open door he motioned for me to join him. I tossed in the bag first, and paused. He could easily have zoomed off with the money—I still hoped he would—but instead looked impatient. Not the brightest penny in the gumball machine.

  I clambered in, carefully, like I was crawling into a cave that might have a bear in it. No angry bruins—just Compadre. We drove around in circles for a while, and when we finally disembarked, I recognized our locale: the 125th Street meat district, all the way on the West Side in Harlem. It was an industrial area of meat-packing establishments, dicey-looking parking lots, and warehouses, tucked under an elevated section of Riverside Drive. At that hour, on a Sunday, the place was pretty much deserted. You could go there for a late-night stroll—if you were naive.

  But it made sense for a chop shop to be tucked into the meat district. The Dumpsters full of the operation’s residue—bones and carcassess—would blend in among the Dumpsters of fragmented livestock. And at a meat wholesaler, they’d have plentiful and spacious refrigeration at their disposal for all those dead animals.

  I was in my usual sport coat, running shoes, chinos, and white shirt. The sport coat I kept unbuttoned, hoping the 007 camera in my belt buckle would make sure Pete Durban knew where I was. In case the batteries on my “cell phone” failed or my particular satellite had a fender bender with a meteor. But it was dark. I thought about saying something about where we were, for the mike in my lapel, but thought that might tip my mitt.

  No, Mr. Carson, I expect you to die.

  I kept mum as Compadre led the way past drums of foul suet and bones for rendering. In my top-ten least favorite aromas, before vomit and after burning hair, is that of meat districts with their lard-infused sidewalks that make dandy rat licks. Bean curd and carrot juice at the Chipper Sprout briefly seemed a palpable alternative to the Neanderthal Platter at the Steak N’ Swill.

  I was led upstairs into a den. I say a den because it wasn’t an apartment, and it wasn’t exactly an office, though there was a sprawling desk where some work—possibly accounting—was performed. But there was also a large sectional sofa, a wall of mirrors, one of those patent-leather bars from the seventies, and copious track lighting. It was supposed to be classy but looked worn and tacky like a strip club. Part den, part den of iniquity.

  A sizable poker table was centered in one half of the room by a large array of grimy factory windows, the kind that open bottom out. Two shady-looking guys stood at the table, one in a yellow sweater, one in a vest. Ten rolled skins were stacked on the table before them. I looked around for Smiler. He wasn’t there.

  Compadre swept his hand over the rolled skins like a caterer displaying his finest canapés. I snapped a bubble and wondered if I’d deafened the technician at the other end of my microphone. Hoped I had, him all snug in that police van, me here rocking on my heels, facing down the buzz saw.

  I pulled the string on one skin after the other, unrolling them and draping them one by one over a spare chair. When I was done, there were six leopard skins of varying quality, a cheetah, two smallish, mediocre tigers, and a huge, drop-dead-gorgeous Siberian tiger. Just skins, no heads or paws. They’d been cut quite carefully, with good tools, cleaned and brushed, but were untanned and without any felt backing. As is, they were suitable for wall mounting, but could still be tanned for clothing. Although I don’t know where you could wear a Siberian tiger jacket without raising more than just eyebrows—such as hackles. And they were one hundred percent genuine. You can tell fakes quite easily, because cat fur has a distinctive stacked or layered pattern when you bend a pelt and flex it. But a good pelt is lush and plush, and these two tigers looked like ill-fed captives. Some of the leopards had scars from rough treatment in transport.

  Were I unscrupulous, I could get between five to seven thou each for the better leopard skins, less for the cheetah and small so-so tigers, and God knows what for the Siberian tiger. Take that figure, chop off fifty percent for my profit margin, and you had about forty thousand, ten less than what I had in the attaché case.

  What I should have done at that point was just follow my instructions, buy the skins, and be on my way—let the troops come crashing in after I left. But the smattering of rare skins, probably a mere crumb from the whole pie, made my gum go soft—there was more, and I wanted to see it. I was working at my profession now, authenticating and appraising. So the dealer inside me elbowed his way past the panicky guy wearing a wire. Okay, so my kneecaps were trembling and I was chomping my bubblegum like my jaw was stamping out license plates—other than that I fancied myself a paradigm of CCC: cool, calm, and collected. I wanted to get an eyeful of the good stuff, like the Siberian. This was just the way shrewd dealers like Smiler worked. Try to unload some crap at top dollar, hope to wow me with the Siberian, and in a package deal get a prime markup on the so-so stuff. It couldn’t hurt to ask, just to look, could it?

  “This is interesting merchandise.” I gestured to the unrolled skins. “What else have you got? I mean, I can move some of it, but some of it is just plain shit. My clients pay top dollar and demand the good stuff. I bring cash and am hoping to give you all of it. For quality merchandise.”

  The sweater, the vest, and Compadre exchanged glances like there was an unexplained bad smell, then a few staccato words of Chinese followed. Compadre turned and stepped out of the room. To call his boss, no doubt. If nothing else, maybe Smiler would show up and insure that he didn’t slip through the net.

  Sure enough, Compadre reappeared, his eyes tight with annoyance. He shook his head.

  I looked at the skins, and when I turned back, the three of them were standing in a row, arms fo
lded, the Pep Boys via Seoul. But I don’t think they wanted to rotate my tires. Rather, make up my mind. But I have a stubborn, single-minded, and determined streak that serves me well in the day-to-day of doing business. And this approximated the day-to-day, so it came naturally, if unfortunately.

  “I wanna speak with your boss.” My voice broke slightly, and when I cleared my throat I almost spit out my gum. “If there’s more, I don’t see why I should only have this to choose from.”

  Compadre dialed his cell phone, exchanging glances with Sweater and Vest again, like he’d been the one who cut the cheese.

  That reminded me of my own “cell phone,” and I gave a pat to my jacket pocket to make sure it was still there.

  Mistake.

  Sweater and Vest had guns in their hands fast as cobras nab a rat. My hands went up very slowly, not so much as a surrender as a gesture of non-intent. My kneecaps froze. It had happened so suddenly that I had trouble getting my breath.

  “Whoa, hey . . .” I croaked, stroking the air like I was petting a freaked-out kitty. Nice kitty.

  Compadre was talking Chinese into the phone as he came over and reached into my pocket, snatching the phone and showing it to Sweater and Vest, who deflated. The guns went below the table. He tossed the “cell phone” on the table.

  Moments later, footfalls scuffed on the stairs and Smiler entered the room, a frown on his beak like that of a baby magpie. A bodyguard was with him, a rotund man with a jowly, irritable face and tiny feet in delicate-looking loafers. Why is it a lot of fat men have tiny feet? They need big ones, yet they get the small ones. His looked like a ballerina’s.

  “We have showed you merchandise. Do you want it or not?”

  I couldn’t back down now but tried to soft-pedal as much as possible, so I babbled.

  “Look, I just asked if these ten were the whole bunch. Y’know? If there’s more you’re not showing me, I just want to know why I can’t choose from the whole lot. Y’know? I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s . . .”

  Smiler squinted at me, and I didn’t like it.

  “I don’t know you.” He shook his head. “I don’t like you. That is why. You buy from this, later you see more. That’s how it works.”

  I held my hands up, giving in. “Okay, okay. So . . .” I gestured to the table. “How about I take the Siberian, these two leopards, and, um, this tiger . . .”

  “Seventy.”

  “Whoa, these aren’t for me, this is resale. Y’know? I mean, I’ve gotta have my profit margin.” The kneecaps were pumping like pistons.

  He stepped up to my duffel bag, put it on the table, and snapped his fingers at Ballet Boy.

  The bodyguard wrenched open my duffel bag. After rifling through the stacks of bills, he turned from the untidy jumble and grumbled something to Smiler.

  “You have fifty. I give you all ten. Final offer. Get more money, come back for more. That’s it.”

  That was an outright affront to my alter ego, and I had to forcibly shove the dealer inside me into the backseat. My kneecaps were revving. I took the steering wheel and said, “Okay, but promise me you’ll let me at some of the really good stuff next time.” I’d already pushed my luck. High time to pop the clutch, smoke my slicks, and make tracks.

  His answer was a smirk, which displeased dealer Garth a great deal. He was making a chump out of me and he was enjoying it.

  But he took to studying me a moment, and I wondered what he could possibly want now. In a more conciliatory tone, he ventured: “You see much merchandise, yes?”

  I shrugged an acknowledgment.

  With a grunt of satisfaction, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and handed me a well-worn sheet of paper. It was folded, and when I opened it I found a one-sided photocopy of what appeared to be a page from an old manuscript. The characters had little circles that I recognized from the signs throughout the Korean district in the East 30s.

  In the midst of the text was an illustration. Of what I wasn’t sure. A rather long and anemic gallbladder? But it was shown twisted, slightly corkscrewed, one end somewhat pointy.

  “You see this?” he commanded. “Find and bring to me. I pay top dollar.”

  “Sure.” I handed it back and gave him a cavalier pat on the shoulder. Though he might just bite my fingers, so my hand ran and hid in my pocket. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  He tilted his head at Ballet Boy, who zipped my duffel bag closed, turned, and thundered down the stairs with it. Smiler followed without looking back. I was left with the Pep Boys, who grinned with satisfaction, just like on the matchbooks.

  I sighed, turned toward the table, and started rolling and tying my skins. I glanced up at my Manny, Moe, and Jack and hoped they didn’t plan any fast ones. Maybe they were hoping the same thing about me.

  That’s when I heard a shout down on the street. Then a bang, followed by a long string of pops that sounded like gunfire. Automatic gunfire.

  Before I knew what happened, Vest had me by the back of the collar, those knees of mine buckling as I tumbled to the floor. I looked up and saw a pistol in my face. The other two were on the floor too, shouting in Chinese to each other.

  Then one of them said in English, “It’s the Fu-King tong!” Fu-King? Or . . .

  As gunfire continued down on the street, Sweater crawled behind the bar and came back out with a small crate. Oranges, at a time like this? He flung the top off and started tossing smooth, black, apple-sized spheres from the box to Compadre.

  Not oranges. Pineapples. Pete never said anything about friggin’ grenades!

  Sweater crawled over to the light switch and the room went dark. Vest’s grip tightened on my collar. Compadre’s silhouette appeared in front of the grimy industrial windows, and he cranked one open, peering down at the street.

  I couldn’t understand how Pete could have let this happen. What went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong—when Pete asked me a favor, I said yes.

  Suddenly the window exploded, shards of glass gushing into the room as machine-gun fire strafed the entire front of the second floor.

  I saw Compadre’s silhouette stagger backward from the volley of bullets. I felt something moist mist onto my face, and it wasn’t sweat. I smelled my hand, and my feet went cold. It was the tinny smell of blood. But I knew it couldn’t have been mine—or could it? I shuddered violently and thought I was going to black out.

  Vest scuttled away from me in the darkness. There was a thud as Compadre’s body flumped onto the floor.

  Then I heard a sharper thud.

  I smelled an acrid smoke, heard something clunk against the chair leg next to me.

  My eyes zoomed in on a faint red glow by the chair. My hearing, amplified, detected a faint sizzle.

  A live grenade? All I did was sell some gallbladders! They’re legal!

  My instinct was to jump and fly away from there like a grouse, but lacking feathers and wings, I kicked like a mule instead. I shot my feet out frantically and heard the grenade skedaddle to the far side of the room. I was on my knees when it went off, a bang like a truck backfiring, followed by the sound of splintered wood and shrapnel ricocheting off the walls and skittering around the floor.

  Bursting out of the room in full flight, I was confronted by hands and wide eyes in the stairwell: It was Smiler’s fat bodyguard, sweat running down his face. I grabbed him by the lapels to throw him out of my way, but that was like trying to fling aside a hippo. He threw his arms out to the side, waving them in a desperate attempt to keep his balance on that top step. Our eyes were locked in panic as we teetered, a couple of ballerinas in a wind tunnel.

  “Oop!” he grunted, wet jowls trembling.

  One of his tiny feet waved in the air desperately, a dancer’s balançoire.

  “Oop!” Ballet Boy’s arms waved, a veritable grand port de bras.

  “Oop!” Adiós, Swan Lake—we both knew we were going down those stairs.

  He toppled hard, and through his prodigious belly I felt the re
verberation of his spine cracking. My grip on his lapels almost gave way, but the shelf of his stomach helped hold me in place. My feet thunked along as I sledded down the stairs on all that erstwhile Balanchine blubber.

  I closed my eyes reflexively, but when I opened them again, we’d stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  Panting with desperation, I looked up from where my face was buried in Ballet Boy’s navel. Before me was the flickering green fluorescent light of a short hallway and an open door filled with the orange glow of streetlight at its end. It was the way I’d come in.

  Ballet Boy’s weapon was suddenly wobbling in my shaking hands. It was a slick-looking automatic. Was it empty? Was the safety on? Was it cocked and ready to fire? I can tell a lynx from a bobcat at a glance, but I know almost nothing of guns.

  I rolled off my chubby toboggan, got to my feet, and hid around the corner from the hallway, my chest heaving.

  To my left was the dark recess of the rest of the meat-processing plant; Lord knew what gun-slinging monsters were lurking in the cave. To my right was the open door; at least I knew the terrain outside. I can run damn fast when I have to and could envision myself making some serious tracks down the street.

  But I waited, frantically hoping to see flashing lights, some cops, some sign of safety beyond. Hadn’t this racket, this O.K. Corral under Riverside Drive, alarmed somebody enough to dial 911? Of course, from the time the shooting started, to the exploding couch, to my little ride on the Tubby Express, this brouhaha had probably lasted all of sixty seconds. To me it seemed like sixty minutes.

  I squeezed back into my niche, a bat in the shadows. My breath seemed like the roar of a jet, and I tried desperately to slow it down as my heart pounded, my head throbbed, my ears sizzled.

  Someone had said it was the Fu-King tong. A rival Chinese gang? Where was the cavalry? What was keeping them? Of course, it seemed like I’d been hiding in my cubby for another hour instead of a drum roll.

  My heart stopped, I swear it did; one step, then another, scuffed in the hallway. I needed all the oxygen I could get but had stopped breathing. If a gnat had burped, I would have heard it. The footsteps drew closer.