Garbage Page 4

  “Metaphor.”

  “Something to do with English in high school.”

  I give him the potatoes and burnt sandwich, flip over the other one and call George Ecomolos and ask him to drop by, it’s very important, “Don’t ask me why I didn’t think of this sooner. “He comes in that night and I say “I got a terrific problem,” and tell him about it and he says “So what you want from me to do?”

  “You know about it then?”

  “Course I do, so?”

  “So fight it, like me. Tell the police Stovin’s is trying to run you around too. That way they won’t think I’m insane and you can keep your business.”

  “On that I need a brandy. When’ll you get the good import stuff from my country?”

  “No call for it except you. Do what I ask though and I’ll buy a case and give you it from me.”

  “Say, that a bribe now from you? I wouldn’t’ve think that.”

  “No, just my gratitude.”

  “Go make it a dozen dozen cases but how I drink without a throat?”

  “They wouldn’t touch you.”

  “Stupo: they will.”

  “But you know people.”

  “They know bigger people. Bigger than bigger people. People bigger than biggest and more. Make mine look like scopic insects under glass to squash on thousand a time. Besides, I got fair deal you can say with Stovin’s. Yes, but you have no tapedeck or fancy small recorder things under there or somewhere like in your shirt, do you, to catch my voice? Because you do and then don’t tell me and erase all that went on before and now shut it off, you and me friends no more.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Say, I worry. I don’t then I’m one who insane.”

  “I’ve nothing to take down what you say except my head.”

  “Then clean erase that after we through too. No tell cops or anyone what I say about any things between me and them that I say now to you. Promise.”

  “Okay.”

  “Say ‘I promise.’”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  He puts out his hand and we shake.

  “So this is the deal. It goes that I get all the storeowners who fight Stovin’s about their garbage and win without my helping a finger to them, and they get to collect the rest.”

  “You’ll end up with no one but me, if they even leave me a bar here for you to collect from.”

  “So I lose with one fight, but at least here I have slight chance of staying in business a lot more days. For you see, they could just have said ‘Take a walk, baby, we run your garbage show now,’ and me, no madman with my life, would have to have had obey. But my second cousin. I skip his name but he not someone that big in Stovin’s or with their backers—of which group he belong he very sly about even to me. But he arrange as favor that they give me that other verbal deal out: to let me stay collecting garbage till they take away all my business in this neighborhood or almost, instead of just my closing my doors and going away when they say.”

  “So you’ll be out entirely, because you once said you only collected around here.”

  “True. I do. It’s a pact. Keep your trap shut, but we private carters carve the city into pieces. One gets West Side, other another side, and me I get here downtown. But Stovin’s, they want my piece, they succeed without puffing and maybe later even get half this whole city, when before about twenty of us cut it up. But it’s not so bad. I got savings stacked away and ideas for new businesses for me not concerned with any of them, or so far. And this is what happens a lot in garbage elsewhere. It happens too in lots other businesses here and there—chocolate bars, for one. You laugh, but check with candystores if not true. And news magazines distributing is another and some newspapers too, the weekly ones. And funeral parlors. That one and soon private carting my cousin say is the most. You think you want to open funeral parlor in city when and where you like just because you great undertaker and got degree from school to undertake? Laugh. All controlled. A few people, maybe same ones in garbage, say what you do or don’t with funeral parlors and who even gets city licenses for them, and also orange juice. Everything liquid in citrus fruit.”

  “Who is this Stovin?”

  “The man?”

  “So I know who I’m up against.”

  “Exactly, not for sure, but hear big man with body too, plus tough son. So you’re up against strong tall wall, two walls, no doors through them also, but don’t you believe all that I hear: maybe they’re both small and only their noise is like walls.”

  “And the backers? I’m not naive, but what’s it: an organized crime group of sorts?”

  “Everything I hear is they’re powerful people though maybe Stovin himself most powerful backer of them all and also this time in same business he back powerfully: garbage. He’s not always in it: before he sold cigarettes to grocery stores. But I think I’m lucky they not kick or try to me out sooner, that’s also the truth. They see this as upcoming neighborhood, more stores than before when For Rent signs were, so more garbage to pick up and what have you. So they move in, of course. Later I sell them my trucks, though not at the fairest price. But truth is, Shaney pal, you have to let them pick up your garbage sometime soon, for I be out by then and they won’t let any new carter come around nor would any carter will.”

  “One of the reasons I didn’t—”

  “Say, because of our old business together, years on years, I know,” and he grabs and holds my hands. “But told you—I be fine. Savings, wife who understands, and I tell you the truth now too, I’m sick of garbage after so long. She sick of it too, telling people what I do, even with all the money I once make, so stop concerning yourself for me and see them and agree to the first offer they say to take your garbage from now on.”

  “All they want is two thousand and now probably more.”

  “Pay it. Then they come around nice-like for your garbage, and that’s the price you pay for not calling me before besides being so nice and for first saying to them no.”

  “I don’t have two thousand to spare.”

  “Have it, find it, spare it, please.”

  “That much? No way. They either have to collect my garbage for the fifteen to twenty-five extra dollars a month or run me out. I can’t get a loan, not that I’d try, so I have no choice.”

  “Then start running, I think, but I pray maybe you’re right and you win after all.”

  “Shaney,” a customer says coming in, “you won’t believe it, I just got laid off, so you’ll have to start me a new IOU tab with a double shot of rye.”

  “Now I got to go,” George says, “and say goodbye last time in our lives for a while perhaps, for I don’t want Stovin’s people see me here and think I advising you to oppose. Thanks for the bad brandy,” and he drinks up, kisses my hands, pats my customer’s back and goes.

  I phone Stovin’s and say “Jenny, don’t hang up, this is Shaney Fleet again. I’m sorry for the unease I might’ve caused you the other day with my being rude, but could you please tell your boss or Turner or Pete if they’re there—”

  “I already told you.”

  “Then just Mr. Stovin or son or the accountant who might know of me or any salesman that I’m ready to give in, this isn’t a trick, and I’d like your company to start carting for me.”

  “For whatever it’s worth, Mr. Fleet, I’ll pass it on.”

  “You’re a doll.”

  Next day while I’m tapping a keg in the basement cooler right under the bar a customer shouts out “Shaney, a paper just flew through the mail chute—want me to pick it up?”

  I run for the stairs, then down the two steps I got up, as the rod in the keg could explode the way I left it halfway in and the beer ready to spout, and finish tapping it and run upstairs and around the bar to the outside. Policeman on the beat, police car cruising the street, a group of kids tossing around iceballs and making noise as they walk home from the nearby parochial school, overhead pretty close a seaplane, faraway the barking at the sa
me time of fierce dogs, around me snowflakes. I pick up the envelope and read the note inside. “Our answer,” it says in letters painstakingly penciled and filled in from an alphabet stencil, “is same place last chance $2500 now go to bank dont for a moment phone or delay.”

  I take one of my pickled eggs, mix lots of garlic cloves from the jar with it, chop them up and under the counter stick them in the note envelope and spit a goodsized wad into it and tell the two customers “I’ll be right back, get another beer free if you want but don’t let a soul in even if they knock.” I stick a little billy in my back pocket just in case and go outside, lock the door and go to the bank and write on the back of a withdrawal slip “2500 death germs I hope you get from my spit, you bastards, and may the garlic not be enough to ward them off, don’t ask me what good or symbol to you is my putrid egg,” and put that in the envelope on top of about twenty blank withdrawal slips and seal it up, get on line and when it’s my turn I go to the teller and put the envelope on the counter between us and just as he grabs and brings it down to him I say “Excuse me, I forgot something, just a second,” and rifle through my coat pockets. “Damn, I must’ve left it in the bar—can I have that back?” He gives me the envelope and I leave the bank and go to the phonebooth on Second and Prescott another block away and wait for a young woman in the booth to finish arguing with her father about how it’s none of his damn business where she was last night and earlier today—“Do I ever ask you where you are or what you do? No, so shut up or I won’t come home,” and slams down the receiver and scoops up her change. I look at her, maybe coldly because I’m suddenly sorry for her dad, and she stares at me as she leaves the booth and says “What do you want?” and I shake my head and step out of her way and go inside, turn around, see that she’s gone and nobody else seems to be looking at me, feel under the shelf, find the tape which is so sticky that my fingers have difficulty getting off it, and fasten the envelope to it and leave the booth and go around the corner and head back to the bar. But I stop, a block away, say “Hell, came this far, let me see who they are,” and hail a cab and have him drive me to the opposite side of the busy oneway avenue about thirty feet up from the booth, and doublepark.

  Couple of seconds later a man goes into the booth, seems to jiggle the coin return button same time he sticks a finger in the return slot and pockets what he gets and moves on.

  “Cabs don’t make money standing,” the driver says.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make it pay.”

  “How?”

  “A good tip.”

  “How much?”

  “Listen, standing is also part of the cab-driving job and I said I’ll make it pay.”

  “But how much?”

  “Five bucks. Nothing happens a few minutes more, I’ll walk.”

  Three minutes later, meter still running, cabby never stopping his grumbling, my stomach nervous from the excitement of what I’ve done with that envelope on the tape and this wait and what I might find and head clotted not with the idea of stomping the guy or guys but to grab whoever they are just to see who so I know them if I already don’t and maybe to ask lots of whys, a man goes into the booth, gets the envelope, opens it and looks inside, drops it to the floor and leaves. Few feet away he snaps his fingers, goes back, picks up the envelope, opens it almost prissily this time, takes out a withdrawal slip by one of its corner tips, rubs it on the sidewalk back and forth and puts it in his wallet and throws the envelope into a trash can near the booth but misses and it lands on the street and the slips fall out and are picked up by the wind and sail in circles around the can and a couple up in the air and away.

  “He’s who you’re waiting for?” the cabby says.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s to be trouble between you of any kind, pay up and get out now. I don’t want to spend the rest of my day filling out police forms on what might turn out to be a lucrative snowstorm for my cab.”

  I give him fifteen dollars and tell him to keep it all if he just drops me a little ways behind the man on the man’s side of the street and that there’ll even be more if the man jumps in a car and we have to follow him by cab. Meter reads $2.85 and he puts the flag up and says “Cop comes, tell him you were just stepping out and then leave.” We cross the avenue and follow the man for a minute. He walks fast, wiping his hands with a handkerchief, and when I decide no one’s with him and he’s not going to a car I say “Now,” and the cabby says “Now what?” and I say “Where’d you go to school? Stop right here!” and he does and I get out and walk after the man. The man hears the cab accelerate and stares after it as it passes and twists around and sees me and walks faster. I recognize him I think but don’t know for sure. I walk faster after him thinking where have I seen him if I have? In the bar? Somewhere on the street near it or maybe in my hotel or my old neighborhood or the diner I go to every morning now for muffins and coffee? He starts running and I run after him. Zigzags between some cars when the redlight’s against him and I have to do that too, and it’s snowing harder and I could easily lose him in the falling snow. I’m lean and he’s pretty heavy though we’re both about the same age it seems but his coat’s long and bulky while mine’s short and light. He also has tall heels on his boots and I have my special bartender shoes with the rubber ripple soles that almost throw me forward. He runs into a lady when I’ve just about caught up with him and her umbrella flies, paper bag she was carrying goes elsewhere and a few rolls roll out, woman landing in two men’s arms just before she would have hit the ground faceways. The man spins around from the crash, arms wind-milling to stop him from slipping, sees me right next to him and throws his hands up in front of his face, but I’m so mad at who I see he is that I come down on his head with my fist and then the other fist to his ear while he can’t keep his feet from sliding from under him and he falls down and when he’s on his back on the ground but his head rising I get my knee on him and slap him twice in the cheeks and then take him by his coat shoulders and slam his head on the pavement a couple of times though I only meant to shake him in the air.

  His lids close, body goes limp. I say “Get up, you mother,” but he doesn’t move. “Come on, don’t bluff me, I’m not going to hit you anymore, so get up.”

  An old man’s screaming, back and hands pressed against a building wall, then walks off. Woman’s cursing while she picks up her rolls, blows the snow off them and puts them in her pocketbook. I raise one of the man’s lids and only see what looks like a dead eyeball. I put my hand under his coat; he’s beating. The two men who caught the woman stand over me and look like they want to grab and throw me to the ground but by their weak faces I know won’t and I say “Don’t, listen, this man, he set fire to my apartment three weeks ago or else helped because he left a note saying something of mine was going up, and it was for nothing I did. Nothing. I own a bar. Mitchell’s Grill four blocks back. They’re hoods he belongs to and trying to ruin me.”

  “We don’t know about hitting a man like that though,” one of the two men says.

  “But I lost everything in that fire. You name it. My parrot who I loved and lost her with all my personal belongings too. Someone call the police while I keep guard over this guy.”

  “All right,” the man says. “Someone should probably phone them.”

  “You do it. From that booth over there.”

  “I’m not getting in like that, since how do I know you’re the truth?”

  “It’s the truth, the truth.”

  “That’s what you say, though the man you dumped might be in the right.”

  “Would I ask you to get the police for me if he was?”

  “You might be just saying that to later get up and run away once one of us goes to call. At least with two of us here you might not try.”

  “You,” I say to the other man. “Don’t listen to him. Please call.”

  “What this gentleman says about your maybe being wrong could be right. I’m staying. Send someone else.”

  “Som
eone, please, call the police,” I say to the small crowd, snow falling on us, starting to stick. “This man’s a crook, was trying to extort money from me or was definitely in on it some way. I’m the owner of Mitchell’s Bar and Grill—Shaney Fleet, the police in this precinct know me—the Fifteenth. Ask them, phone them now.”

  The woman the man crashed into is gone. Her umbrella flew into the street and a bus smashed into it and now cars are running over it. Other people left the crowd when I spoke and a few new ones joined, asking everyone else but me what I was speaking about and why’s the man on the ground and was that screaming before coming from here, though no one offers to call the police nor gives any sign he’s going to.

  “Then let’s carry him to the phonebooth so I can call the police,’’ I say to the two men. “That way you can stay with us and he’s getting pneumonia down there.”

  “And if his skull or arm’s broken or spine and he gets five times worse because we carried him and maybe dies, he’ll sue for hospital bills and damages or his survivors will and who’ll lose? You and we will if you have anything to, I know I do, so let’s leave him here.”

  I lift the man off the ground.

  “I said to leave him!”

  “And I say to get the hell out of my way if you’re not going to help,” and get the man in a fireman’s carry and carry him to the booth a half-block away. The two men walk alongside and several other people follow us. The man’s still unconscious it seems. His arms hang. He’s breathing. Blood’s running out of his head down my front. I kick away some snow, set him down, sit him up, pull him inside the booth till his back’s braced against a wall, button him up to his neck, lay my coat over his legs and boots, with my handkerchief dab the gash in his head and wipe the snow off his nose and hair, as his hat seems to have gotten lost somewhere from the time I first saw and then caught him. I pat his pockets and thighs and chest thinking maybe he has a gun. There is none but is a folded-up switchblade. I put it in my pocket.