Chapter 25.
Needles of rain raked the New York skyline. The city sheltered me like a familiar, old, grubby overcoat. It felt like weeks since I’d been here. Familiarity was infused with the occasional cab running a red light or cop car racing to the scene of a crime. Even the manic grey citizens were a welcome repose, after my last few days of Technicolor, Mexican madness.
The construction site across from my building had expanded from a humble quartet, to a full orchestra of jack hammers, scaffolders, cement trucks and a company of Russian, Latvian and Ukrainian’s, shouting commands through the ranks like a violent Acapella opera, in some middle earth sounding language. It didn’t feel great to be back home, it didn’t even feel good – it was a feeling of empty relief, but I never thought I’d miss the intimacy of the New Yor-chaos.
My apartment stank of arrested time. The answering machine blinked for attention – to fourteen messages. I dropped my bag and undressed leaving a trail of clothes to the bathroom. I resorted to cutting the tape off my chest and stomach with a steak knife after a painful attempt to pry it off with a shoe horn. Clumps of hair surrendered to the unicorn and fairy tape. I showered with the mass of rubber pellets hanging painfully from my stomach. Strips of sticky tape dangled like used fly paper from my body. I slowly peeled off the last of the cartoon mouse themed tape, avoiding as much skin loss as possible – I was free. Shedding my new appendage felt more like an amputation than a removal. My chest and stomach looked like I’d been blow torched and badly waxed by a blind chimp. I piled the twenty packages into a fruit bowl. My next step was maximizing the product volume. Lenny’s mantra recoiled, “You could step all over this, like that dude in Riverdance, and it’ll still be the duck’s nuts.”
A kilo of nutritious baby powder and bam, you’ve got twins – it felt easy. Time was not a luxury, as I figured the police would be rummaging around, once Betty’s body was recovered to the U.S. I didn’t want a coke lab in my kitchen if they came around for questioning. I made a list – I actually copied a list from the internet, detailing the basics of cutting cocaine. Sieve, face mask, goggles, spatula’s, thin chopping blades, weighing scales, Ziploc bags and of course the all important cutting agent – in my case baby powder. Z-Mart would have it all, just like their commercial said it would. The answering machine still begged for my attention. The first five calls were unusually calm and professional messages from Johnny Truffle, inquiring about a gig at Jack Walshe’s Club, followed by another half dozen venomous rants accusing me of being a bad manager and lying to him about the gig. He signed off his last message with, “Harry you are a fucking shit manager. You’re fired. Here’s me firing you for the last time, you fucking lying scum fucking, fuck. You just don’t know real talent when you see it, you useless fuck. You don’t deserve the steam off my piss, you fucking turd. Fucking, old cunt.”
The mechanical rattle at the end of the message told me he was in one of his drug addled moments and had trouble saddling the phone receiver. Johnny’s rant transported my answering machine two inches across the top of my refrigerator, nudging my sugar bowl to the brink. I did feel guilty. I did want The Stuck Pigs, to support Iggy Pop at Jack Walshe’s club but it wasn’t likely to happen – not now anyway. Besides I did have much bigger things on my mind than worrying about my hundredth sacking, by Johnny Truffle and his merry band of meth-heads.
The next three messages were from Ted. His relief flipped to deep concern by the third message. His tone ramped up with each message.
“Harry tried to text you. No reply. Call me when you get this dude. Ok. Ok?”
Ted was the only person I knew or the only person who cared about me enough that would warrant me, wanting to allay his fears of my well being. He was the only person on my call list.
“Ted it’s Harry.”
“Who?”
“Harry. Harry”
“Oh shit Harry, what happened? I tried calling and texting you.”
“Long story will tell you about it later over a beer.”
“By the way I didn’t refill the breadbox on your refrigerator. I’ve got it though so don’t worry amigo.”
“Ok, just said I’d call and tell you I’m back.”
“Are you ok?” Ted asked in a very concerned tone.
“Not really but there are things that need doing. Loose ends. But I’m still breathing.”
“That’s good to hear, Harry. By the way I’ve gotta talk to you about this guy, this young tech nerd, you know one of those guys who knows how to upload to YouTube and Facebook? Well this kid caught my pants pissing show and wants to meet about a potential project. Some college thing. He’s like a sociology major. When the meet goes down, I want you to be there to, you know, make sure it’s all on the up and up.”
“Sure Ted, let me know.”
I slunk into my pre-molded shape in the couch. The ceiling creatures hadn’t made much progress, in my absence. Maybe they were taking a break when I was out. The jack-hammering stopped and the final roars of authority hailed from the Baltic boss.
Silence, was soon replaced with emptiness. Betty’s touches surrounded me – her neat filing, her post-it’s written with a sharpie and pasted in positions, thumb-printed to my specific paths and movements so I didn’t forget. Every part of my environment had been marked by her.
I carefully rolled Betty’s jewelry into a silk scarf she had left on the back of a chair in my kitchen. I hid her family heirlooms in a place above a light fixture, that required a tall ladder and fearless desperation. It felt like a burial ritual but it was the one piece of evidence that would bag me and tag me, in prison duds for twenty years. I had no idea what I would ever do with them but I wanted to keep them. Maybe one day I would send them anonymously to her son. I didn’t know much anymore, and the unexpected, was giving me a bigger shit kicking than your garden variety cranked up bouncer doles out on a Friday night at the local mosh-pit.
The mound of flesh coloured balls peered at me over the edge of the fruit bowl, like a mutant creature, taunting me, with unfinished business. I yanked an old oil heater from the wall – it hadn’t lived up to it’s namesake, since the 1973 oil crisis. This was my hiding hole when I’d had enough money to warrant hiding – it hadn’t been used for many years. A wooden panel crumbled away from the wall. Cobwebs hung heavily with rusty flakes from the old pipes. I buried the packages of cocaine behind the heater and slid it back to it’s comfort zone, raking up the decayed debris with a six month old copy of ‘Sports Illustrated’.
I called Maximilian Benjamin Bernstein aka ‘Gadget’ aka ‘Go-Go Gadget’. His number was written in nail varnish in the X-Files of my little black book. I hadn’t spoken to Gadget for over a year.
“Hey Max, Harry Bracco here.”
“Who?”
“Harry Bracco. You know the talent agent?”
There was a long pause, followed by Gadget commanding orders to some one in his club.
“Who?”
“Harry Bracco.”
“Well get the cocksucker to fucking take it out then,” he bellowed.
There was another long pause, followed by muffled rants from Gadget to someone.
“Oh Harry, Harry Bracco, how are you Buddy? Shit sorry couldn’t hear you properly there. I’ve got a fucking mutiny on my hands here today. Sorry, what can I do you for?”
“Well I might have something that interests you.’
“What girls? Harry I’m up to my tits in girls.”
“No, not girls. Something in the Colombian region.”
There was another long pause, followed by a tutting.
“Ah Harry, Harry, Harry. What have you got yourself into old boy? Moving up in the game are we? Careful who you play with Harry,” Gadget, said snidely.
“We’ve all gotta eat right?”
“Ok Harry, bring me a taste tomorrow. Three o’ clock.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
This entire nightmare, slowly felt like it was coming to a close. I really had no clue what I was doing. Maybe the fun loving Maximilian B. Bernstein, would turn into a gun toting, knife wielding greedy psycho, with the prospect of getting his mitts on two kilos of cocaine and I’d end up the cherry on a garbage barge, on the East River, headed for Philly. Fear was an extravagance that had expired and duty was now my only course – nothing at this stage would stop me, shy a bullet to the head or a heart attack. I had never felt as driven or determined about anything in my life before. If Gadget didn’t work out I could still unload it in smaller quantities but I wanted a one shot deal. In the Federal Drug Law bible, getting busted with an ounce is almost as naughty as getting done with two keys. Either way, I’d be carrying a sharpened toothbrush to the showers for the next decade.
One more task hung over me and I could punch out for the day – fortunately any large supermarket will contain the necessary items for cutting a kilo of cocaine. Z-Mart had it all – scattered unintentionally between multiple aisles. It felt like an obstacle course for cocaine dealers. If you can acquire all these objects in ten minutes without looking like you’ve been declared number one on the FBI’s top ten list, then you have your license to chop ‘em out. I passed with flying colours. I was too tired to feel nervous. I had a basket filled with one pair of rubber gloves, one painters facemask, one two-foot by two-foot glass tray, one digital weighing scales, one box extra strong Ziploc bags, two extra large spatulas, one sifting sieve and one large tin of powdered baby formula, for one-to-two year olds. To the suspicious mind I was a cocaine dealer acquiring the necessaries to clone some product but to the heavily pregnant woman next to me buying six cartons of cookies and cream ice-cream, I must have appeared to be a sleep deprived father of a young child – the painters facemask and rubber glovers, might have implied a sleepless child with really bad gut problems or the Ebola virus. She frowned when she saw the painters mask.
“How old is yours?” she asked.
“One, going on two,” I said, trying to remember what was written on the side of the tin. She looked surprised noticing my apparent age, which looked like it had accelerated over the past week but politely followed on.
“Ah the terrible two’s. Good luck with those. Mine were terrors.”
“Yeah it’s hard work. But worth every minute of their precious time,” I said.
She smiled and waddled away wielding her plastic sack of cravings. A robotic cashier swiped my goods with the dexterity of a pneumatic ninja – his eyes transfixed on the pregnant woman’s butt.
“Let me get two packs of Lucky Strikes,” I said.
He dealt me a heart attack warning and a threat of emphysema. I checked the labels.
“Sorry, but do you have any other health warnings?” I asked.
The check-out kid paused, holding a digital weighing scales in his hands.
“Huh? You’re kidding right? You want different health warnings on your cigarette pack.”
“No, I’m not kidding. No lung cancer, or heart disease.”
He dropped the digital scales.
“Ok, whatever.”
He rummaged through a carton and dug out, a reduced libido warning and one that damages the unborn child.
“You ok with these?” he said holding up the damage to the unborn child warning.
“Yeah they’re good. The kid’s out already.”
He pulled out another pack and held it like the winning lottery ticket and mocked a smile.
“You sure you don’t want this one? It fucks everyone else up,” he said sarcastically.
“Unless you’ve got one that mutes smart asses, I’ll go with what I’ve got.”
He lazily packed my laboratory into plastic bags. My lab and a cheap pizza from ‘Righteous Pizza’, on the way home would put my current financial status at a dead heat with your run of the mill dumpster bandit. I called Ted from the back of a taxi.
“Ted, it’s Harry.”
“Hey Harry. How are you feeling? Any better?”
“Yeah, I’ll survive. Can you come over tomorrow with my half ? I’ll be at home all day. I’m busted out broke. I’ve got to meet Gadget tomorrow, early evening.”
“Yeah sure, no problem. I’ll swing by sometime tomorrow afternoon. Careful of that dodgy fucker. He’d steal the eye out of your head and come back for the brow. Fucker still owes me money after six years. Fucking club owners.”
“Ok, great see tomorrow.”