is yours. I sell here, you sell there. He picks himself up a slab of ribs, Jimmy, and the dumb fuck chokes on it. Face turns blue. One of the spades gives him the Heimlich hold. I don’t know where the fuck he learned it. I thought they were too dumb. Anyway this big spade, Milk Shake I think his name is, he puts his arm around Jimmy’s chest, and when he starts to heave, he feels the wire Jimmy’s wearing under his shirt. He’s looking at fifteen in Jackson, Jimmy, a narcotics beef, so he’s working undercover for some federal strike force, he wants to get into witness protection. The spades let him choke. An accident. Nothing on the fucking tape, it turns out except Jimmy dying.”
I was struck once again by the element of theatricality in Maury Ahearne’s performance, the sense that the 9-mm Beretta in his shoulder holster and the handcuffs hanging from the back of his heavy leather belt were the ultimate social equalizers that made him more than my match. There was about him a tendency to show off, a willingness, perhaps even a need, to push. I was only a tourist in Maury Ahearne’s world, a visitor with a limited visa, while he was in harm’s way, as contemptuous of my civilian airs and screen credits and brush with the world of fame and money as Al and Leo had been in New York.
“You talk to the Jewboy?”
I had to remember to tell that to Marty Magnin. “He said to say hello, give you his best.”
“Don’t smart-mouth me. You’re deadweight, you know that? I’m supposed to carry you around. Fuck you.” His voice began to rise, his face turned a choleric red, and I suspected that were I a felon I would at any second be on the receiving end of those soft manicured hands. “You could get me killed. For a handshake and a couple of cees stuffed in my pocket like I’m some kind of fucking headwaiter.”
With that Maury Ahearne picked up my tape recorder and threw it out the car window. I looked back and saw it bouncing on the street, three hundred dollars’ worth of Sony rechargeable, and in the gathering dusk I could see a pack of black children suddenly appear and begin fighting over it, as if they were predators feeding at a carcass too small to provide for all of them. Then Maury Ahearne stopped the Nova, reached over and opened the door on my side, and said, “Out.”
I got out. He drove off. The children abandoned the fight over the tape recorder and surrounded me, demanding money, not really children on closer look, but fifteen-year-olds in hightops and turned-around baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts, hardened by schoolyard basketball and petty street crime, as big if not bigger than I. I gave them everything I had. It did not seem the place to argue, nor to hope that Maury Ahearne was just circling the block and, like the cavalry, would soon return. In retrospect it seemed that there was a kind of justice in this humiliation, the revenge of Shaamel Boudreau from beyond the grave. But of course that idea derived from my propensity for seeing all sides of every question, my ability to dispense benefit of the doubt as if it was a sacrament. They had my money and had rejected my digital Casio watch as cheap honky shit. Then they simply melted into the early evening, leaving only the echoes of their slurs on my color and my manhood and my wristwear. On the skyline I saw a skyscraper and headed for it, the point on a one-man patrol.
Which was how I happened to be having dinner alone thatnight on the seventy-third floor of the Renaissance Plaza. With a panoramic view of downtown Detroit. Where the bills from my wallet were helping prime the ghetto economy. Not quite listening to the tube, remote in hand, changing channels as often as I blinked my eyes. Click.
Gilligan’s Island
. Gilligan would have kept his money and given them the watch. Click.
M*A*S*H
. Alan Alda would have reasoned with them. Had them get in touch with their feelings. Turned them into caring feminists. I hate fucking Alan
I was struck once again by the element of theatricality in Maury Ahearne’s performance, the sense that the 9-mm Beretta in his shoulder holster and the handcuffs hanging from the back of his heavy leather belt were the ultimate social equalizers that made him more than my match. There was about him a tendency to show off, a willingness, perhaps even a need, to push. I was only a tourist in Maury Ahearne’s world, a visitor with a limited visa, while he was in harm’s way, as contemptuous of my civilian airs and screen credits and brush with the world of fame and money as Al and Leo had been in New York.
“You talk to the Jewboy?”
I had to remember to tell that to Marty Magnin. “He said to say hello, give you his best.”
“Don’t smart-mouth me. You’re deadweight, you know that? I’m supposed to carry you around. Fuck you.” His voice began to rise, his face turned a choleric red, and I suspected that were I a felon I would at any second be on the receiving end of those soft manicured hands. “You could get me killed. For a handshake and a couple of cees stuffed in my pocket like I’m some kind of fucking headwaiter.”
With that Maury Ahearne picked up my tape recorder and threw it out the car window. I looked back and saw it bouncing on the street, three hundred dollars’ worth of Sony rechargeable, and in the gathering dusk I could see a pack of black children suddenly appear and begin fighting over it, as if they were predators feeding at a carcass too small to provide for all of them. Then Maury Ahearne stopped the Nova, reached over and opened the door on my side, and said, “Out.”
I got out. He drove off. The children abandoned the fight over the tape recorder and surrounded me, demanding money, not really children on closer look, but fifteen-year-olds in hightops and turned-around baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts, hardened by schoolyard basketball and petty street crime, as big if not bigger than I. I gave them everything I had. It did not seem the place to argue, nor to hope that Maury Ahearne was just circling the block and, like the cavalry, would soon return. In retrospect it seemed that there was a kind of justice in this humiliation, the revenge of Shaamel Boudreau from beyond the grave. But of course that idea derived from my propensity for seeing all sides of every question, my ability to dispense benefit of the doubt as if it was a sacrament. They had my money and had rejected my digital Casio watch as cheap honky shit. Then they simply melted into the early evening, leaving only the echoes of their slurs on my color and my manhood and my wristwear. On the skyline I saw a skyscraper and headed for it, the point on a one-man patrol.
Which was how I happened to be having dinner alone thatnight on the seventy-third floor of the Renaissance Plaza. With a panoramic view of downtown Detroit. Where the bills from my wallet were helping prime the ghetto economy. Not quite listening to the tube, remote in hand, changing channels as often as I blinked my eyes. Click.
Gilligan’s Island
. Gilligan would have kept his money and given them the watch. Click.
M*A*S*H
. Alan Alda would have reasoned with them. Had them get in touch with their feelings. Turned them into caring feminists. I hate fucking Alan
Similar Books
