Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (16 page)

“Isn’t there any risk? I mean, it’s got to be illegal, right?”

“Yes and no. The situation you’re describing, if the kid’s a minor, yeah, that’s illegal, but lookswise he’s probably right on the cusp, so who’s gonna check? Basically, as long as there’re no penetration shots, you’re in the clear.”

“The business is that scattered.”

“Sure. It’s done all over the city. Like I say, I wouldn’t have any idea where to tell you to start. I’m not in that business.”

“Somebody’s got to distribute the stuff, though.”

Gerry shifted in his seat. “In the man-boy arena? All the homo stuff, and the different varieties of it, everything comes out of this little warehouse around 2nd on K. This guy owns a storefront porno operation. I think it’s called the Hot Plate.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bernard Tobias. Bernie.”

“Think he’ll talk to me?”

“Not
just
to you, no. Bernie, he’s a weird bird. Well, maybe not so weird if you’re an amateur psychiatrist. He’s a little guy who always needs to be the big magilla. I’ve met him a few times; he’s always bragging about how he only does business with ‘executive officers,’ never meets with anybody’s assistant, like we’re talking about Wharton graduates in the skin trade here. I think if you go in with a couple of guys, wear ties, do the dog and pony show, you’ll be all right.”

“Thanks, Gerry. Appreciate the help.”

“Hey, Nick—how’d you end up in this, anyway? I ran into one of my old bartenders from the Crawlspace a few months ago—”

“Joe Martinson.”

“Joe, right. He told me what you were doing. The way I remember you, you were this music-crazy guy used to stand in the corner watching the bands, a beer in each hand. Fact, I used to call you ‘Nick Two-Beers,’ remember?”

“You said it was my Indian name. ’Course, I remember when you insisted everyone call you Gerry Louis, Jr. Things happen to people—you never know where they’re going to end up.”

“You got that right. That guy in that band Big Black, Durango’s his name, remember? He’s a corporate lawyer now. I saw his picture in a magazine, little bald guy in a hot-shit suit like every guy you see walking out of Arnold and Porter. So yeah, you never know.” Gerry got out of his chair. “Speaking of Jerry Lewis, I’m doing a retrospective next month, kicking it off with
The Nutty Professor
. I can get you a pass.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s an American classic!”

“So are you, Ger.” I shook his hand. “Listen, thanks again, man. Thanks a million.”

I USED GERRY’S DIRECTORY
before I left, then found a pay phone out on 9th and called Bernie Tobias. I identified myself as Ron
Roget—an appropriately lizardly name I had just seen in the directory—and bullshitted him about my production company out of Philadelphia, which I said did the “man/boy discipline thing” better than anyone “on the East Coast.” He said he couldn’t meet with me that week, but when I told him that “my associates” and I would be in D.C. tomorrow, and only for one day, he agreed. As Gerry had predicted, the “associates” tag hit Bernie’s hot button. We agreed on a time the next day.

I made it to the Spot after the lunch rush had subsided. Mai was behind the bar, bent into the soak sink with a glass load, and Phil Saylor stood at the register counting checks. Anna was by the service bar, arranging her tip change in dollar stacks on the green netting. I spoke to Mai briefly, thanked her for what we had arranged over the phone the day before.

“Hey, Phil,” I said, speaking to his back. “I’m taking some time off. Mai and I set it up. That okay by you?”

“I need the shifts, Phil,” Mai interjected.

“She told me already,” Phil said without raising his head. He didn’t add anything, so I went down to the service end of the bar and rubbed the top of Anna Wang’s head.

“Hey, Nick.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Got a cigarette?”

“Sure.”

I gave her one, lit it for her. She leaned her back against the wall, dragged sharply on the smoke, exhaled just as sharply. “Some woman called you,” she said. “Said your uncle wants to see you.”

“Costa,” I said. “The woman would be his nurse.”

“He sick?”

“Cancer,” I said. Anna looked at the cigarette in her hand, thought about it, took another drag.

“That’s rough.”

I nodded. “How’d your date go with LaDuke?”

“Okay, I guess.”

I reached out and Anna passed me the cigarette. I took a puff, handed it back. “Just okay?”

“It was fun.” Her eyes smiled. “He took me to the Jefferson Memorial last night. We sat on the steps, split a bottle of wine. Or rather, I drank most of it. No guy’s ever tried anything so obvious with me. I know it’s a corny move, but I got the feeling he didn’t think it was, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s strictly from L-Seven, but genuine.”

“Exactly. Most of the guys I meet still in their twenties, they’re so ironic, so cynical, you know, I just get tired of it sometimes. Jack’s cute, and he’s funny, and all those good things, but he’s also really square. In some weird way, that’s refreshing.”

“So why was the night ‘just okay’?”

“It always comes down to the big finish, doesn’t it?” Anna butted the smoke in an ashtray, looked up. “Well, at the end of the night, I wanted to kiss him, you know? And I’m pretty sure he wanted to kiss me, too. So I took the initiative.” Anna grinned. “I gave it to him pretty good, I think. But he was shaking, Nick. I mean, shaking real deep. It’s like, I don’t know, he was scared to death. And then he just pulled away, and it was like something just seemed to go out of him.”

“Maybe it’s been awhile for him.”

“I guess.”

“You gonna see him again?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. The guy’s carrying something serious around on his back. I’m not sure if I need that right now.”

I touched her arm. “Listen, I’ve got to go.”

“Take it easy,” she said.

I poked my head into the kitchen, hooked Darnell up as the driver for my appointment the next day. Then I phoned LaDuke from the bar, got him in on it, too. On the way out the door, Phil Saylor grabbed my arm.

“What’s your hurry?” he said.

“I’m off to the ball game with a friend of mine. Got to pick him up where he works.”

“Don’t stay away too long, hear? Mai, she’s okay, but after she works a few days straight, she starts jumping all into the customers’ shit.”

“I thought you were mad at me, Phil.”

“You made a mistake. You’re allowed one or two.”

I moved to shake his hand, but he turned away. The two of us were square again, I guess.

WHEN I WALKED INTO
Goode’s White Goods in Beltsville, the first thing I saw was Johnny McGinnes, bent into an open refrigerator, blowing pot smoke into the box. During working hours, McGinnes’s pants pocket always contained a film canister and a one-hit pipe, which he lit at regular intervals right on the sales floor. After the exhale, he would tap the ashes out against his open palm and drop the pipe back into his pocket in one quick movement. I had worked with him for many years, and to my knowledge, no one, customer or management type, had ever caught him in the act of getting high.

McGinnes saw my entrance, pulled a six of Colt 45 tall boys from the fridge, held them up, winked, and put them back inside. He shut the door and goose-stepped down the aisle back to his customer, a middle-aged woman looking at a dishwasher. As usual, McGinnes was done up synthetic-crisp: navy blue slacks, poly/cotton oxford, and a plain red tie with a knot as pretty as a fist. His thinning black hair slashed down across his high forehead, with only his silver sideburns betraying his age. McGinnes managed to throw me a mental patient’s grin as he spoke to the woman; even across the showroom, I could see that he was half-cooked.

Goode’s White Goods, one of the few major appliance independents left in the D.C. area since brand-name retailing came to Sears, had managed to carve out a niche for itself as a full-service operation.
White goods
was the industry term for big-ticket appliances, and the company’s owner, Nolan Goode—it
was inevitable that McGinnes would dub him “No Damn Good”—mistakenly overcalculated the public’s comprehension of the wordplay in the store’s name. Confusion notwithstanding, Goode’s White Goods had managed to survive. And after McGinnes had joined the team, it had actually begun to thrive.

In contrast to the noise common on an electronics’ floor, No Damn Good’s appliance shop seemed quiet as a museum, orderly rows of silent, shiny, inanimate porcelain aligned beneath wall-to-wall banners. In the center aisle, a young man used an unwieldy buffer to wax the floor, solemnly repeating the phrase “Slippery, slippery,” though there were no customers anywhere near him. A man I pegged as the manager—prematurely bald, prematurely overweight—stood behind the counter, hiking his pants up sharply, as if that was the most aggressive act he would attempt all day. On the other side of the counter stood a young, square-jawed guy, smiling broadly, arranging point-of-purchase promotional materials. He had the too-handsome, dim-bulb look of a factory rep,
Triumph of the Will
in a navy blue suit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little guy shoot out of the stockroom and head in my direction, his hand extended all the way out, his hip-on-the-cheap clothing drooping everywhere on his skinny frame.

“And how are we doin’ today?” he said as he reached me, his hand still out.

I shook it and said, “Waiting on McGinnes.”

“Anything I can do for you while you’re waiting?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, if you have any questions about a major appliance—”

“The name is Donny,” I said.

Donny smiled a little strangely and I smiled back. He scratched his ratty ’fro and walked back down the aisle, slinking behind the counter. I checked McGinnes: He had removed the dishwasher’s wash tower—it looked exactly like a vibrator—and was making little jabbing movements with it behind the customer’s back, pitching the merits of the machine to her all
the while. This was for my benefit, I supposed, or maybe he was just bored. Then a young couple came through the door with buy signs practically tattooed on their foreheads—any salesman worth his salt can tell—and McGinnes excused himself to greet them.

Donny yelled across the sales floor, “Hey, Johnny, you got a call on line one. Guy wants to give you an order,” and he pointed to a wall-mounted phone where a yellow light blinked clear as a beacon. McGinnes hesitated, went to take the call. Donny racewalked toward his new customers. Even before I saw McGinnes pick up the phone and make a bitter face, I knew what Donny Boy had done: gotten a dial tone and put it on hold, then used the phony bait to draw McGinnes away from the live ones coming through the door. Johnny should have known; in fact, it was one of the very first tricks he had played on me years ago.

McGinnes closed his deal, though, and Donny did not. Afterward, when I had been introduced to the boys and stood with them around the counter, there seemed to be no residual animosity coming off Johnny. Just another way to grab an up, the memory to be filed away by McGinnes under “payback,” to be retrieved the next time a
yom
came walking through the door.

“So, Tim,” a very serious Donny said to the factory rep. “You read about Maytag in the paper today?”

“No,” Tim said, breathing through his mouth. “What about Maytag?”

“Kelvinator!” Donny said. “Get it? Kelvin… he ate ’er!” Donny cackled, slapped his own knee.

“Ha, ha, ha.” Tim’s laughter and the brittle smile that went with it failed to mask his contempt.

“ ’Course,” Donny continued, “that ain’t nothin’, compared with what the general did.”

“What general?” Tim said, and I saw it coming.

“General Electric!” Donny said. “He was Tappan Amana, dig? Put his Hotpoint right on her Coldspot. Know what I’m sayin’?”

Tim began to turn red. McGinnes walked up to the group, a brown paper bag in his hand. He looked at me and smiled.

“You ready, Jim?” he said.

“I’m ready.”

“Hold on a second,” the manager said.

“What?” McGinnes said.

“I got a belch a few minutes ago,” the manager said. “That’s what. Customer called, said you stepped him off an advertised single-speed washer to what you claimed was a two speed—an LA three-five-nine-five.”

“So?”

“An LA three-five-nine-five is a single-speed washer, too, McGinnes. You told him it had two speeds!”

“It does have two speeds,” McGinnes said. “On… and off.”

“Off’s not a speed, McGinnes!” the manager yelled, but Johnny had already pulled me away, and the two of us were headed for the front door.

McGinnes drew a malt liquor out of the bag and popped the top. He handed the open one to me, found one for himself.

“Off is not a speed!…” The manager’s voice trailed off as we pushed through the store’s double glass doors.

Out in the lot, McGinnes tensed up his face. “All these complaints. I’m gonna get a sick stomach.”

“Had a lot lately?”

McGinnes nodded. “This guy called this morning, all bent out of shape. Says when I sold him his refrigerator, I guaranteed him it was a nice box. And the thing’s had three service calls in the last month.”