Gagliano,Anthony - Straits of Fortune.wps

by Unknown

  about to be broke. I took the tray of food, sat at a small table fastened to the wall, and ate while watching the entrance with all the intensity of the fugitive I had become. A skinny black kid with his pants hanging half off his ass went by me. I read the front of his T-shirt as he approached and the back as he was going away. The front of the shirt said kill all the white people. The back said but buy my cd first. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but I started laughing. In fact, I laughed a little bit too much, so much so that I started to worry about myself, as though I were both lunatic and at- tending physician. It was worth the worry, though, because by the time I'd stopped chuckling in my little corner, it had come to me who it was I needed to call for help. There are people you call when you're in trouble and people you call when the trouble involves the police. The Sheik would have come or sent someone in five minutes, but he was on his way to the Bahamas on his private jet. I might have called Johnny Bingo, a Seminole Indian with his own helicopter, but I hadn't seen or heard from him in two years, besides which I didn't have his private number on permanent file in my brain. That left the Space Man. It was his T-shirt the teenager in the food court had been wearing. I wasted money calling his house, but then the numbers to his cell phone rolled up in front of my eyes. I knew I had them right, except that the sequence of the last two digits wouldn't stay still in my head. It was either 46 or 64, and both looked equally right and equally wrong, so I spun the wheel and dialed the first pair. The phone rang ten times, and I was an inch away from hanging up when a voice out of an oaken barrel answered. "Yo," the voice said. It was not a query but a statement. "I need to speak with the Space Man." "For what?" "Business." 125

  "Are you white?" "Yes. Hank, is that you?" "It might be." "Hank, Space, come on, man, would you cut the crap for a second? It's me, Jack. I need your help." "Unless your last name is Daniels, I don't know you." "Come on, man," I said. "It's me, Jack, Jack Vaughn. You know, trainer to the stars." There was a pause. "Jack, man! What's up? I thought you was one of my damned fool accountants bothering me about some credit-card shit. I should have known it was you, bro. Not too many white dudes got this number, you hear what I'm saying?" He was referring to the fact that he had two cell-phone numbers, one for black people and one for white people, the latter being mainly business acquaintances. In the electronic age, apartheid has many forms, and his was easier to under- stand than most. Somehow I had become part of that small, elite group of white people entrusted with the black number. I'd been made to understand that it was an honor being be- stowed on me, and I had taken it as such, especially since the only other Caucasians who had it were a couple of strippers, both of whom were a lot better-looking than I was. "I need a lift," I told him. "I'm in a bit of trouble. Maybe you can come and get me." "Car broke down?" "I wouldn't call you for that." "Your shit was in the paper today. They say you're import- ing niggers from Cuba. I guess the personal training didn't work out too good. It was a nice picture of you, though." "It's more complicated than that. You remember Vivian?" "The Chinese chick?" "Vietnamese. Yeah. It involves her. You see what I'm saying?" 126

  "I should have guessed that. She was a bitch and a half from the get-go. Shit. Where you at, homeboy? I'm coming like John Wayne and shit to get your monkey ass." I told him where I was. He mumbled something to some- one else. I thought I heard the sound of traffic in the back- ground muffled by static. "Back of the parking lot. Twenty minutes," he said. "Doors that go out by Cozzoli's Pizza. Don't make me wait, motherfucker." Twenty-five minutes later, the car was outside. It was a stretch limousine as white as Moby-Dick and nearly as long, with tinted windows as dark as a pirate's eye patch. I would have preferred something a bit more inconspicuous--maybe an anonymous black sedan capable of dissolving in traffic, but here was the limo coming toward me. The driver coasted over a speed bump doing twenty, and even from thirty yards away I could hear the tremolo of the bass throbbing through the speakers like thunder inside a drum. I stepped through the sliding glass doors and walked briskly toward my ride. The limousine eased to a stop just as I reached it. The door opened, and a sweet white plume of marijuana smoke rushed out to meet me like a genie lifting out of a magic lamp. A few shoppers stopped and stared as I got in. It must have looked to them as though a derelict had suddenly had a change in luck. I ducked into the darkened interior and out of range of their glances and shut the door behind me, sealing myself into the noisy confines of an alien world that was part nightclub, part traveling bong. Besides the driver, whom I couldn't see, there were three men in the car, not counting me. All three were black, all three wore Ray-Bans, and I could tell at first glance that none of them were particularly glad to see me. I could also see that my appearance worried them. They studied me with the unabashed intensity of anthropologists who have found 127

  something strange in the mists of Borneo. The music ham- mered at my brain like a team of trolls armed with rubber mallets, but it didn't matter, since no one was doing any talking. I sat on the long seat across from the three men and shot them a smile that bought me nothing in return. So I tucked it away behind my teeth like a wad of gum and sat there watching them, wondering if they were debating the thought of kicking me out. The man in the middle was Space Man, Hank Watts. He had gained back all the weight he'd lost while I was train- ing him, right before his second CD went double platinum, but this wasn't the time to bring it up. He wore a red shirt, red pants, and red shoes, and on his head sat a small, round, red hat. Around his neck he wore a gold chain I could have melted down for retirement income, and in his right hand he held a joint that looked like an albino cigar. Hank, a.k.a. the Space Man, took a long toke. His cheeks puffed out like a trumpet player's, and then he blew the smoke from the side of his mouth. "Chronic," he said, smiling like a connoisseur. "A hun- dred dollars a quarter Z, but this shit is choice." The other two men in the limo were hard cases. They had theirs acts down pat. One wore a black nylon stocking cap tied behind his forehead. He looked as though he weighed two-seventy, was thick-boned and massive. He wore a black sleeveless leather vest with nothing but muscle-plated skin underneath. He was wearing a silver crucifix, which made me feel a lot better, as I prefer to travel, whenever I can, with Christians. The other man was tall and lean and wore white silk pa- jamas and a pair of black sandals. His hair was done up in cornrows that looked like carefully plowed fields as seen from a plane over the farmlands of Kansas. He had delicate- looking hands with long, slender fingers. And on one of those 128

  fingers sat a large gold ring with the raised image of a white skull that no doubt would make a highly memorable imprint on someone's forehead should it come to that. Hank played his own fingers along the buttons built in to the armrest beside him, and the music went off abruptly. He reached into a pocket, brought out a silver cigarette case, and placed the joint he had just stubbed out carefully inside. All his movements were studied and precise. He clicked opened the attach�ase on the floor in front of him and took out a small stenographer's notebook and a gold Cross pen. "You're a smart motherfucker," he said to me. "I want your opinion about something." "All right," I said. "And by the way, thanks for the ride." "I been writin' this song for my new album, but I'm havin' some trouble with the title, if you know what I'm sayin'?" "Sure." "So I'm thinking," he said seriously. "Should it be, `Your Ass Is My Destiny' or `Your Ass Is My Destination'?" I thought to myself, Is this my life? I looked out through the tinted glass and up at the tinted sky and thought the tinted matter over. The Space Man took his art seriously, and a halfhearted reply would be taken as an insult. "Well," I said. "If you ask me, I'd go with `Your Ass Is My Destiny.'" The Space Man looked interested. "Why's that?" he asked. "I'm not sure, but, you know, `destination'--it sounds like a one-shot deal, like a road trip or something. `Destiny,' I don't know, I think it sounds a little more spiritual. You know what I mean?" Hank nodded approvingly. "You're fucked up, Jack, but I like you. My moms said the same thing." He put the pad back into the case. 129

  "Darin, Reginald," he s
aid in his deep, rich voice, "this strange-looking white man here is a friend of mine. He used to be my trainer. Name's Jack. Jack is back. Hey, man, I think I'm going to write a song about you." I bumped fists with all of them, and some of the tension seeped out of the compartment, but I could tell that I still made them uneasy, and the reason for that had nothing to do with white or black. It had to do with trouble. I was breath- ing it. In the mellow atmosphere of the limousine, I was the one discordant element, a human thunderhead on an other- wise sunny day. It wasn't that they didn't like me; it was just that they would all feel a lot better once I left. I didn't blame them. There were no angels in that car, and Hank had done time for assault up in Larchmont, New York, but his story was not the one you might expect. His father had been a neurosurgeon and his mother a professor of lin- guistics at NYU. He had an older sister who was a lawyer and an older brother who painted pictures no one under- stood. But Hank had been wild and not much interested in upper-middle-class life. He had gravitated toward the streets not out of want or despair but because he was simply bored with comfort. I knew all of this because I had arrested him for selling crack on a bombed-out corner in the South Bronx back when I was a rookie cop and he was a sixteen-year-old kid crying in the backseat. I had looked into the rearview mirror and seen him weeping. I asked him where he lived and drove him home. You can imagine how surprised I was when I saw his house. The place could have been on the cover of Town & Country. I had even met his parents. They were fine-looking people from another world, who couldn't un- derstand their son. That had been ten years ago. Now he was famous and worth $50 million. Then there were the recording studio and 130

  the clothing line. We met for the second time at a party at the Sheik's place over on Star Island. He recognized me right away and hired me to train him. He was established by then and married with two shorties, as they say, and was at that stage of things when a man is just starting to feel secure with his good luck. Now he was looking at me as though I were the reincarnation of all the trouble he'd ever had. I didn't feel good about bringing it back to him. "The cops are after you, bro," Hank said. "Tell me why, and don't leave nothing out. My trouble days are over, and I don't need you sitting in my car looking like the goddamned Fugitive and shit unless you got a good reason to be here." I told it. The boat, the bodies, Williams, the Colonel and the money, and of course the part about Vivian. That would be the part they would understand best. They listened, and when I was done, Hank said, "We need to have ourselves a drink, don't you think?" He opened a small cabinet that was deeper than it looked and brought out an ice bucket, four glasses, and a bottle of Chivas Regal. Hank and Darin opened a pair of Heinekens. The silence came back, but it wasn't vacant. There was a lot of thinking in it. They were weighing my story like a trio of diamond merchants examining a hoard of strange gems on a black velvet cloth. "What do you think?" I asked. "I think you fucked up," Reginald said. He was the one in white, the one with the skull on his ring. "You should have stayed at Krome," Hank said. "Jail never suited me, but you would have been out in a few days. Now they'll be out looking for your ass." "You wouldn't like sitting in jail if some guy was out look- ing for your woman, would you?" Darin, the one with the muscles and the leather vest, cracked his knuckles and leaned forward. I hadn't noticed 131

  before, but three of his front teeth were gold-capped. "Any- thing else you forgot to tell us, Jack-off?" "Chill out, Darin," Hank said. "I told you homeboy here helped me out some. I don't forget shit like that." Then he looked at me, lifting up his shades. "You want a beer?" Hank asked. I said I did, and he handed me a Heineken. If there was anything that tasted better right then, the Good Lord had kept it for himself. "Where you need to be at?" Hank asked. "How about Alaska?" I said. "Try again." "Coconut Grove. Take me to Miller Drive. It's near the Texaco station." "What's there?" "A friend of mine." "Man or woman?" Darin asked. "Woman." "Sheet," Reginald said. All three laughed. "I hope it's not that Chinese bitch," the Space Man offered. "Vietnamese. No. It's someone else. My lawyer." "She going to help you?" "I hope so." "What do you think the shit is, dude?" Darin said. "You get rid of the boat, then the old guy sends his boy out to kill you. Must be a reason for that, something you don't know about." "Unless they just don't want to pay you the other fifty grand," Reginald said. "I don't think it's that," I said. "You got a plan?" Hank asked. "I wouldn't call it a plan." "Well, you better find one." 132

  "She played you, man," Darin said. "Any fool can see that." Hank, the Space Man, shook his head. "Listen to the man, Jack. You used to be all laid back and shit. You had your shit together. Now look at you. You're running loose, fucking with illegal aliens. You're dressed like a big, ugly-ass, home- less, beer-drinking John Travolta motherfucker, and to top it all off, the cops are looking for you. Damned, nigger, it's too bad your sorry ass can't sing. With a story like that, you could have been a great rapper." "Who told you I couldn't sing?" I said. We all laughed. Darin leaned forward and extended his hand. I took it. "You are one crazy white man," he said with a lot of feel- ing. "I hope you don't get killed." "Thank you," I said. We were on U.S. 1 headed north. The usual franchises flashed by us in a blur of neon script. Another ten minutes of light traffic and we'd be in the Grove. "One more thing," I said. "What you need? Money? How much? You know I got it." Hank leaned forward and picked up his little black handbag from the floor. "That and something else." "Such as?" "I don't think I can get back to my apartment just yet. So I need to borrow a gun." The three men exchanged glances. "The white boy is high," Darin said. "What makes you think I got a gun?" Space asked indig- nantly, his voice rising toward a steep falsetto. "You think all black people have guns? Is that what you're saying? That's the kind of thinking that keeps the black man down." "Look," I said, "I didn't say you had a gun. All I meant 133

  was that maybe you might have a gun. There's no reason to get psychotic about it. Besides, take a good look at me. Do I look like somebody trying to keep anybody down? Plus, dude, you've got a plane. Work with me here, man. Work with me." All three of them chuckled. The Space Man elbowed Reg- inald in the ribs. "Give the nigger your gun, Reggie." Reggie frowned and shifted his weight sideways. "What I got to be giving him my gun for? I just bought it!" Space shook his head at me as though to say, See what I have to deal with here? Then he turned to Darin. "I know you're holding. Don't be giving me that Shirley Temple look, now." The man in white silk looked like a small child reluctant to share his favorite toy. Sitting there, I suddenly had a grow- ing sense of unreality, as though I'd just found out that the whole mad scene was a dream from which it was impossible to wake up. "Goddamn!" Space said. "What the fuck am I paying you people for?" With that he reached under his seat and drew out the biggest nickel-plated .45 I'd ever seen and tossed it to me. I caught it, but Space must have seen my expression. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Jesus, Hank," I said, "don't you have anything smaller? I could kill a goddamn buffalo with this thing." I turned the gun over and balanced it in my hand. It felt as though it weighed ten pounds. "What the fuck does this look like to you, man, Gun World or something?" Hank demanded angrily. "Do I have any- thing smaller? Are you out your goddamn mind? You better get real, man. The shit you're in ain't funny." He shook his head in amazement. "Do I have anything smaller? Shit!" "All right, all right," I said. "Forget I mentioned it. Do me a favor, okay? Pull over into that lot, behind the burger 134

  place," I told him. "I've got to stick this goddamn thing down my pants." We pulled over next to an ice machine, and I opened the door and stepped out into the dissipated heat of midevening. A stray breeze died, and with it the promise of a cooler night. After the refrigerated air of the limousine, the outside air closed around me like a choke hold. I stuffed the gun down my pants and covered it with my shirt. Space rolled down his window and handed me something. It was a CD, brand new and still wrapped in plastic. "What's this?" I asked. "My new CD," he said proudly. "What's it called?" I wondered if I was actually having this conversation. "They're Going to Extradite My Love. Mayb
e I'm crazy," Hank said wistfully. "But I think this shit is my magnum opus." I glanced at the back of the CD. The names of a few of the songs caught my eye: "Let Me Be Your Pimp" was one of them. There was also a ballad: "Where Have All the White People Gone?" "I hope you're not getting too mainstream," I said. "Bro," he said solemnly, "once you been to the outer limits, you got to come back in. Know what I'm sayin'?" "Better than you think." "Hold on," Hank said. He leaned down and picked up a small leather case and unzipped it. It was stuffed with bills. "How much you need?" "Can you spare a hundred?" Hank looked at me over the rims of his shades and shook his head in mock disbelief. Then with two fingers he simply plucked out a half-inch slice of assorted bills and, without counting them, handed them to me through the window. I thanked him. 135

  He flashed me the peace sign and smiled. "When you're done with the cops and shit, give me a call. You got my number. Now, chill. And remember, I ain't seen you." I gave a wave to Reginald and Darin, and the tinted window slid upward like a dark curtain going in reverse. In a moment they were all three gone into the traffic. To tell you the truth, I was kind of sorry to see them go. I walked away from the well-lit gas station and went east on Hibiscus Street toward the apartment building where Susan had moved after dumping Cortez. It was a quiet street with high hedges drowsing over narrow sidewalks like a row of sleepy sentries. The weight of the gun hidden under my pants made me feel more nervous than secure, and I was sorry that I had asked for it, since it confirmed in me the feeling that I had not come out of the sea the same man. I was into something else now, and the world around me seemed far too placid and self-satisfied, while in me every nerve seemed to vibrate with the dangerous possibilities alive in each moment. Where the hedges ended, a wrought-iron fence began. It surrounded the condominium where Susan lived. The build- ing was six stories high, set well back from the street, and looked like a green-plated icebox with row upon row of win- dows far too small to leap from if the mood should strike you. I walked around the fence's perimeter till I spotted her black Honda in its berth in the parking lot. I went back to the gate and rang the buzzer. Her voice asked who it was, and when I told her, there was a very long and important silence that hung like a divide be- tween us. Then the door buzzed, and I went through the gate and across a short path flanked by clumps of small purple flowers up to the glass door, where another buzzer on a timer went off just as I reached it. The lobby was far too bright, and the mirrors lining its walls were far too revealing. If a 136