Caught Stealing (2004) (3 page)

Paul's Bar closes at 4:00 A. M. On a Thursday it's usually all regulars by 2:00 A. M. So when I'm working, that's when I start my serious drinking. Last Thursday there were about ten regulars hanging out in the place and I was starting to get my head on when the big guys came in. They plop down at the far end of the bar and I wander over. These guys are genuinely big; even sitting on the stools, they loom a little. But big means nothing, I'm more curious about the way they're dressed. Both guys are wearing Nike tracksuits: one in black, one in white. They are sporting several gold chains each, which go well with the gold-rimmed Armani sunglasses they both have propped up on their shaved heads. These guys are not our usual crowd. I take them for Poles or Ukrainians left over from the old neighborhood before the East Village went Latino and then arty and now yuppie. They order an Amstel Light and a cosmopolitan. Each. They have Russianic accents. And this is still far from the weirdest pair we've ever had in the place, so I fix the drinks and take the cash and they say thank you.

As I walk back down the bar to get my own drink and resume my game of movie trivia on the MegaTouch, I hear cursing behind me. I turn and the guy in the white tracksuit is holding his cosmo like the glass is full of vomit.

-This is shit.

He turns the glass upside down and spills it on the bar. The guy in black tastes his and promptly spits it back up, also on the bar.

-This is also shit. I cannot drink this.

To prove his point, he takes another sip and spits it on the bar, then he stands and walks to the trash and drops the drink, glass and all, into the can.

I don't like to fight. I have fought very little in my life, but what I have noticed is that even when you win, you get hurt. I work out four days a week and take boxing and self-defense on the weekends. I have steel-toed boots and a Buck knife. I have an ax handle behind the bar. None of this will help, because I don't want to fight and these guys clearly do. I smile. I walk down the bar to the two tracksuits, a smile plastered on my semidrunk face, radiating joy and love. I am Martin Luther King. I am Gandhi. I will ask these gentlemen if they would prefer another drink or their money back. I will carefully wipe their spit off the bar and all will be at peace, because I don't want to fight. They sit at the end of the bar, Amstels untouched, the one upturned cosmo glass before them and, as I approach, they both slip their sunglasses over their eyes like they've been blinded by my smile. And that is when I notice the small, girlish and simply beautiful hands they both have. I am not afraid. These men are lovers, not fighters. These men are concert pianists with graceful digits made for music, not pugilism.

I reach the end of the bar and open my smiling mouth to offer them a round on the house as compensation for their disappointment. They grab me, drag me over the bar, and beat the crap out of me. Then they leave.

I've been beat up before and had it hurt a lot worse. I don't even look that bad. But I do close the bar early and spend the next several hours drinking and holding an ice pack to my ribs while Tim, a couple other regulars and I tell fight stories: the high and low moments of beating and getting beat. We have chalked up the tracksuits as psychos and, hey, what more can you say? A few hours later the blood shows up in my piss.

I give Bud's blanket a gentle tug and I can feel that it's caught on something. I reach in and feel around, expecting to find a flange of molded plastic or some other deformity in the case itself. There is a flat object taped to the bottom of the box and the corner of the blanket is caught under a bit of the tape. What I took for tearing blanket was tearing tape. I untangle the blanket and, in the process, I detach the object. It is a tiny manila envelope that feels like it contains a key. I look at the envelope. The key feels odd, a bit bulky in some way. This is not mine. This is not my business. This is the spare key to Russ's apartment or his safe deposit box or something. It is not for me and I suddenly feel nosy. I untangle the tape and reattach the key as best I can, trying to get it exactly right. I also put the blanket back in. If the blanket is clean, Russ might figure I saw the envelope and it could make him uptight. This is what I'm thinking. Then I think about having a drink and this reminds me about the laundry. I pick up the sack, say good-bye to Bud and leave. I never put two and two together and, after all, why should I?

I moved into the East Village about ten years ago, when I first came to New York. There was a little grocery downstairs from me where you could walk up to the counter and buy crack or dope or coke. It's a nail salon now and there's a sushi restaurant across the street. There are still plenty of junkies and burned-out storefronts and a handful of hookers, but the wild wild west feel the place had when I got here is gone. Condos, boutiques, and bistros are popping up like fungus. But murders, muggings, and rapes are way down, so when people bitch about gentrification I usually tell them to fuck off. I like sushi fine and the Japanese girls in the salon hold my UPS packages when I'm not home. And, hey, the place still has color.

I come out of my building with my buzz on and stand for a moment at the curb and enjoy the fall sun. Jason is sprawled at my feet. Jason is a wino who has lived on this block from before I ever got here. He's a real old-fashioned wet-brain drunk. He is also the barometer of my own drinking habits and this moment is a good one for me to see Jason sprawled on the sidewalk at midday, utterly unconscious, with a shortdog of T-Bird still in his hand. I step over him and head for the laundry.

The truth is, I'm pushing it a little bit here. The doctor who yanked my kidney told me to take it real easy, going up and down the stairs with garbage and doing my laundry is probably not what he had in mind. I think he had more the lounging-around-on-the-couch kind of easy in mind. But I need the action, so I separate my darks and lights and add my detergent and bleach and softener and pump quarters into the machines at the Korean laundry. The place is pretty much empty, so I sprawl across two seats, pick up a Daily News someone has abandoned and check some scores.

This is what is left of the season:

The Giants will close a series against the Rockies today, then have three games on the road against the Dodgers.

The Mets will finish off the Marlins and play three home games against the Braves.

I will not cry when the Giants lose. I just don't have it in me anymore.

I move my clothes to the dryer and flip through the rest of the paper.

The dryer stops drying and I get my clothes. Everything is piping hot and I'm tempted to change jeans right there just to get that toasty feeling on a chilly day. I settle for slipping on a warm sweatshirt. I fold everything and pack it all back into my bag. I haven't thought about a beer in about an hour or at least no more than once or twice. Mission accomplished, I balance the laundry bag on my shoulder and go home.

Outside my front door I shift the bag from my right shoulder to my left to dig for my keys. This is a mistake. I no longer have a left kidney. What I do have is a big hole held closed by a bunch of staples. When I stretch my left arm up to hold the bag on my shoulder, my staples also stretch. Or rather the flesh stretches and my staples stay right where they are. I gasp and squeak a little at the pain and drop the bag, spin around and do a little pain dance. Then I get my shit together along with my keys and put the bag back on my right shoulder.

As I do this, as the bag is settling onto my shoulder, I register something in the window of the pizza place next door. There is a counter that runs along the front window of the place and people sit there to eat their pizza and you can't see their faces and they can't see out unless they hunch a little because the front window is plastered with Italian movie posters down to about a foot above the counter. The owner of this place is a huge movie fan. I know this because I get all my pizza there and we talk movies sometimes. He's a nice guy and I always tell him he should take those posters down so people can see out and in through that nice big front window. But right now I love those posters. I love those posters because of what I just barely glimpsed on the counter: four beautiful, small hands, dressed to the wrists in Nike tracksuits-two in black and two in white. I feel certain that the pizza those hands are clutching is being shoved into the mouths of two huge Russianic thugs with a fondness for light beer and foofy pink cocktails.

I drop my keys. I drop my keys in such a way that anyone sitting at the counter of the pizza place will be able to see me if I bend to pick them up. This is so fucked up. Careful to keep the laundry bag positioned in front of my head, I squat, bending at the knees, and pick up the keys. I have not moved the bag from my right shoulder since I caught my glimpse. I do not know what the hands are doing. Nor do I know for certain that they are the hands I think they are. But I am freaked out. I hurry to get the door open and drop the keys again. Fuck this. I squat again and this time I shift the bag just enough so I can peek up into the window of the pizza shop and see who exactly is at the counter and get this over with. It's them. They don't see me. I stand, work the key in the lock and am inside very quickly.

Weird shit happens in New York. I have run into people on the street here who I knew once in elementary school back in California. It is not impossible that these boys live around here and just happen to like Muzzarel's Pizza. But I'm scared anyway because this is so fucked up. I am walking up the two flights to my floor and I am repeating a mantra to myself:

-This is so fucked up. This is so fucked up. This is so fucked up.

And that's why I don't really register the sounds coming from the hall just outside my apartment until I'm a few steps away.

The knocking I hear coming from my hall might just be the exterminator, or a friend, or Federal Express with the bag I lost at JFK three years ago. But the presence of the Russian goombahs downstairs makes me think otherwise. My feet are carrying me into view of whoever is there, and my sense of self-preservation makes an executive decision. I shift the laundry from my right shoulder to my left so that it will hide my head from anyone at my door. I ignore the pain this causes and step onto the landing. I do not stop. I turn and take the next flight up without ever looking at my door. All knocking and conversation has ceased and the only sounds are my steps and breathing and the ridiculous pounding of my heart. As I mount the stairs to the next floor and climb one, two, three, four, five steps, the noise behind me begins again. When I reach the top floor of the building, I stop. There are now three floors between me and whoever is down there.

My side is screaming. But what really sucks, is that for the first time in days my feet hurt.

The building I live in is no palace, but when I first moved in it was in really sorry fucking shape. A few years back, when the real estate boom finally reached Alphabet City, my landlord decided to spruce up a bit so he could jack up the rents on new tenants. For the purpose of making these improvements, he hired a group of retards who I'm sure were quite affordable. The way it worked out, this crew of mongoloids went through the building destroying all that came within their grasp, while Carlos, the building super, followed them around and redid all they had undone. I needed a few bucks and Carlos needed an extra pair of hands, so I helped him with some things, including tarring and papering the roof. This is how I came to have roof access in the building when no other tenants do.

I'm standing in the hall on the top floor and I can hear the guys outside my door as clear as day. That is, I can hear that they have stopped knocking on my door and now there is only some shuffling and whispering. And then I hear what sounds like a door opening and more shuffling and a door closing and total silence. And I think, I really do, that those fuckers are in my apartment. What I want to do is, I want to call the cops. In this situation, there is no reason not to call the cops. People break into your apartment, people who seem to be associated with people who beat you bloody a few nights ago break into your apartment, and there is just no good reason not to call the cops.

No reason except for the huge bag of grass sitting on my coffee table and all the paraphernalia it's hanging out with.

The door to the roof has a combination lock. I know the combination. I climb the half flight of steps to the roof door, work the lock and step outside. I finally put down the laundry bag because it's really fucking killing me. I have to leave the door just a bit ajar, otherwise it will latch and if I open it, I'll trigger the fire bar and set off the alarm for the whole building. I did this once when I was working up here with Carlos. He spewed out every curse word he knows in English and Spanish and a few in Tagalog that he'd gotten from his Filipino wife. Afterwards, I bought him a beer or three and he forgave me, but it was a pain in the ass. Fire trucks, tenants in the street, traffic jammed up and all because I needed to go inside to use the john.

So I leave the door a little ajar.

I have no plan. I can still call the cops, but I figure the pot is a good enough reason to take a wait-and-see approach, at least for the moment. Especially since I have no clue what these guys are doing. I do not have nice things. There is some cash in my place and a couple standard appliances, but other than that, the weed is probably the most valuable thing I own right now. So I'm on the roof and I have no plan.

I walk to the front of the building and, when I get close to the edge, I go down on my hands and knees and peek over. Good call. Black tracksuit and white tracksuit have moved across the street. They are standing in front of the tattoo parlor there and doing the "look how damn inconspicuous we are" thing. One is talking on a cell phone and the other is drinking a bottle of Yoo-hoo through a straw. They are both avoiding looking at my building. I have entered new territory. These guys are looking for me. I feel confident that they have my place staked out and are looking for me, acting as lookouts for the guys in my apartment. This has never happened to me before and I'm at a bit of a loss for the next move. And that is when I realize that it's time to cut the crap because this is potentially a very dangerous situation and I should just call the damn cops. I creep back from the edge of the building, stand up and head for the door, which the nice fall breeze has apparently blown shut.