Authors: Stephen Solomita
“Well, you understand that when Morris tried to convert, he had to send his tenants a written proposal, right? That’s called a red herring. In that proposal, he had to establish the value of each unit. The average price of a unit in one of Morris Katz’s buildings, to an outsider, is just over one hundred thousand dollars. Multiply the number of units times one hundred thousand and what do you get?”
“Twenty-four million,” Blanks replied without hesitation. “You’re talkin’ about a nine-million-dollar profit.”
“No.” Najowski grinned like a little boy. The bait was taken. All that remained was the formal setting of the hook. “Not nine million. The co-op assumes the mortgage, so the profit, minus legal fees and cosmetic repairs, is closer to twenty-one million dollars. But that’s for
empty
units. That’s if the Koreans and the Jews and Pakis already living here are encouraged to find other housing. I admit I can’t do it. I got no way to get those assholes off my property. But
you
got a way. I’ll bet you got a lot of ways.”
Marek paused again, his grin widening. “Listen, Martin. This neighborhood might look like paradise, but Morris’ buildings are only three blocks from an alley that runs off Broadway. There’s a fuck-flick moviehouse there and a topless bar and, late at night, drugs and whores. If that scum took a notion to move the few blocks to our real estate, who could blame us? If it moved into our vacant apartments, how could we, as helpless landlords, blocked from
real
ownership of our property by ass-kissing politicians, be held accountable? And if these scum were to concentrate in a single building and conditions became so bad that we were able to
empty
that building, you, Martin Blanks, could be out of the dope business in two years. Am I right, or what?”
“And all I gotta do is trust you with a million bucks?” There was a challenge in Martin Blanks’ words, but not in his voice. The figures were too astounding.
“Trust is not part of our arrangement,” Najowski announced. “The units’ll be operated by a management company for five percent of the gross rents. The properties will be owned by a corporation registered in New York. That corporation will be wholly owned by a corporation registered in the state of Delaware, where the disclosure laws are very weak. The Delaware corporation will be owned by a third corporation registered in the Bahama Islands, where the bankers make the Swiss look like gossip columnists. Each of us will own half the stock in that final corporation. Now, maybe the CIA could find us. Or the FBI. But there ain’t much chance the FBI or the CIA is gonna give two shits about some asshole tenants from Jackson Heights.
“Plus, Martin, you should consider that I can empty fifteen percent of the building just by checkin’ leases. The Pakistanis and the Indians never do anything straight. One tenant moves out, a cousin moves in. Like they never heard of paperwork. And a lot of them are illegals. They’ll fly the minute they see an eviction notice.
“The Koreans are better about the paperwork, but they won’t fight. They’ll be off as soon as there’s a threat of drugs or violence. That’s ’cause they’re afraid their kids’ll turn out to be Americans.
“Now, if we don’t rerent the empty apartments, they’ll attract squatters. Junkies. Whores. Alkies. The Jews and the Christians’ll fight; they think the rent laws can protect ’em. When they find out the truth, they’ll leave. Or we’ll buy out the few we can’t convince. The only real question is whether
you
can overcome their addiction to low rent.”
Martin Blanks grinned from ear to ear. “That’s the least of the problems, pal. I can make the cocksuckers wish they’d moved to fuckin’ hell instead of Jackson Heights.” He paused, then ran his fingers lightly over the Jaguar’s leather seats. “I meant what I said before, though. If you rip me off, I kill you, if it means I gotta die myself.”
Najowski echoed Blanks’ smile. Despite his guest’s reputation, Najowski felt no fear at all. “Martin, listen with both ears. If you want to stop being a criminal, you should learn to protect yourself with lawyers instead of threats. Look around, then buy yourself an attorney who accepts cash payments. Maybe the one who recommended you in the first place. Now, where could I drop you?”
Marek took his time driving back into Manhattan. Instead of running the BQE south and coming in through the Midtown Tunnel, he drove northeast, to the Grand Central Parkway and the Triboro Bridge. At 116th Street, he exited the Parkway and cut across Spanish Harlem, to Fifth Avenue, then turned south. Once past Mt. Sinai Hospital, with Central Park on the west side of the Avenue, the squalid tenements miraculously gave way to the most expensive real estate in Manhattan.
Martin Blanks was suitably impressed with the opulence surrounding them—the doormen and the long canopies extending to the curb, the glittering chandeliers in ballroom-sized lobbies, the beautifully dressed couples hurrying into their homes. For a short time, right after his parole, Martin Blanks had held, at the insistence of his parole officer, the exalted position of assistant janitor in a similar building on York Avenue. He had no more love for these people (or desire to live among them) than he’d had for his father on the day he pulled the trigger, but the years upstate had made him cautious. They could bite, these people, despite the fragile bodies and the bullshit facade. If he crossed them, his parole officer would certainly send him back to prison, so he tiptoed when in their exalted presence and, now that his parole was complete, ignored them altogether.
Still, watching the canopies pass, the doormen bowing and scraping, he had to concede the rich several truths: there were no cops coming to put them in jail. No rivals longing to put a bullet between their eyes. Or employees tempted to head south with a year’s profits. They didn’t hold their economic lives together with guns and shanks and tiny vials of rock cocaine; they were safe in a way he had never known.
When the white Jaguar pulled to the curb on 47th, between Ninth and Tenth, the whores and dealers were out in force. Despite the cool weather, knots of people dotted the tenement stoops, buying and selling. Hell’s Kitchen had been Irish first, then Italian, then Puerto Rican. Now adventurous New York professionals, drawn by its proximity to midtown, were renovating individual tenements, but welfare hotels and decrepit slum buildings still dominated the neighborhood, furnishing the dealers with a ready clientele. Later, after midnight, the wolf packs, black and Latino kids from the outer boroughs, would roam the same streets, looking for prey, but, for now, the transactions were peaceful, if noisy.
This was Martin Blanks’ territory and, though he hadn’t been involved in the retail end of the business for several years, he was a role model for the street people, and a dozen voices greeted him as he stepped from the white Jaguar. The whores, the dealers, the neighborhood thugs…
Martin listened for a moment, then turned to Marek Najowski and said, “First thing is I’m gonna talk to that lawyer you mentioned. Then I’ll be in touch.”
C
ONNIE APPASTELLO, SEVENTEEN YEARS
old, waited impatiently in the first-floor hallway of the Jackson Arms for Yolande Montgomery to finish. Occasionally pressing her head to the door of apartment 1F she could hear Yolande’s caressing voice and the tricks steady grunts. It
sounded
like he was nearly done, so it probably wouldn’t take that long. Still, Connie cursed Solly Rags, her pimp, for setting up two whores in a studio apartment. Unless one or the other turned a car trick, the situation was impossible. It could take a half hour to get these old shitheads hot enough to part with fifty bucks. How could you tell ’em they had to wait in a hallway ’cause the bed was full? And even if she was smart enough (which she definitely was) to maneuver the trick and make enough money to satisfy the rapacious Solly Rags (by freezing her ass off, mostly) she still had to stand around and be stared at, like some mutilated freak, by these asshole tenants (who probably never laid eyes on a working girl before) while Yolande did her thing in the apartment.
Finally (it seemed like forever), the door opened and a short, heavy man, buttoning his coat, hurried past her down the hallway. Connie pushed inside without waiting for the door to close. Yolande was lying in the bed, nude, her ample black body at ease. “What’s happenin’, baby?” she asked. “You still hurtin’?”
Connie ignored the question. She went right to the bureau against the far wall, to the glistening mirror with its heap of white powder. Quickly, expertly, she pushed a small pile to the center, chopped it with a razor blade then snorted it up, one line into each nostril. As the drug came on, she silently wished for a vial of crack, for that quick, overwhelming rush of ecstasy, but crack was forbidden, at least for the time being. They were opening up new territory, Solly explained, and they needed to keep their heads reasonably straight.
“Fuck that prick,” Connie said. She admired her cheerleader reflection in the mirror for a few minutes, trying to gauge the coke’s quality by the quality of her blue eyes, her full mouth. Then she found a pimple on her cheekbone, a tiny, red area that looked like it might develop into something really nasty. She consoled herself by cutting another line, chopping briefly, and snorting it up.
“You better take it easy with that blow, baby,” Yolande called. “Ain’t no more comin’. Solly say he won’t be back.”
Instead of answering, Connie stripped off her clothing: pink feathery jacket, electric blue micro-mini, five-inch spike heels, bright red push-up bra and matching panties, black, acrylic leg warmers. Nude, she climbed into the bed and cuddled up against Yolande, casually throwing a slender leg across the older woman’s body. Tricks find such moments incredibly erotic, but Connie (for the moment) just wanted to cuddle.
“What a night,” Connie said. “You wouldn’t believe the fucking night I had.” She laid her arm against Yolande’s, noting the contrast between Yolande’s dark, oily skin and her own baby-powder complexion. Six months into the life, Connie admired Yolande tremendously. Yolande had been on the street for years. Had actually been in jail, on Rikers Island, six different times and done a two-year bit in Bedford Hills for nearly killing a pimp. Yolande made sure Solly Rags didn’t beat Connie more than absolutely necessary and that he put a gram on that mirror every night. It was one thing when the two girls worked the Lower East Side. There was every kind of dope on the street and they could always hold a few dollars back from their tips. Now Solly had them somewhere out in Queens and they had to rely on him to keep them high.
“Ya know, Yolande,” Connie said, “that Solly can be a real prick.”
“Did he beat you bad, baby?” Yolande, who’d begged two Seconals from a trick, was floating somewhere between the bed and the ceiling.
“Uh-uh. He just slapped me around a little. It didn’t hurt much, but I wish he wouldn’t do it right in the fuckin’ car with Tony watchin’. It was really embarrassin’. Then he put me out on the street.” She paused, giving Yolande an opportunity to join her in her indignation. “Ya believe that? I begged him, ‘Solly, at least lemme work the bar,’ but he goes, ‘Yolande got the apartment, so you gotta find a car trick worth fifty bucks.’ He said he don’t care if I stay on the street all night. I gotta come back with another fifty bucks or I know what’s gonna happen to me.”
Connie pushed herself even closer to Yolande. The cocaine was more potent than she’d originally thought. Thank God. Maybe they’d do each other, she and Yolande, after all. She pressed her nipples against Yolande’s back, running the tips of her fingers across the tightly curled hair at the top of Yolande’s thighs, then took a deep breath and continued her narration of the night’s events.
“So I’m walkin’ up and down by the movie, but it’s so cold no one’s even goin’ to the skin flicks. The streets are goddamn
empty
.
Finally
this little Jap car pulls up. Guy about forty, looks like a trick’s sposed ta look—a little fat, a little bald, a wedding ring, a cheap suit and tie. He asks me how much and I say, ‘Fifty,’ cause that’s what I gotta get fa Solly and I don’t care what the trick wants me to do.
Well, he don’t hassle about the money, so I get in the car and it’s so warm I don’t never wanna get back out, but the trick says he don’t wanna do it in the car. A Toyota ain’t big enough.
“I swear I tried everything. I stripped down outta my jacket. I put my legs on the dashboard and let my skirt ride up. He saw everything I got but he stuck to his guns. No car trick. We gotta do it on a bed or he’s goin’ down ta Queens Plaza and pick up one of them faggots work by the bridge. I mean
why
did Solly pick this asshole neighborhood without even a fuckin’ motel that lets whores in?”
Suddenly, without any transition, Connie stopped talking and both women got out of bed and walked over to the mirror, cutting up four thin lines and sorting them out. Connie went first, pressing her buttocks back against Yolande’s thighs (the way she knew Yolande liked) as she leaned forward to do her lines. Yolande, who preferred women to men (for companionship or for sex), responded with a casual swipe at Connie’s butt.
A few seconds later, huddled together in the warm bed, Connie, without prompting, continued her story. “Well, fuck it, I
couldn’t
let the trick get away. I mean it’s like a Tuesday night and there’s no traffic out there whatsoever, so I told him, ‘Okay,’ and we drove back here, but just like I figured, you got the pink cover on the doorknob and there ain’t no way I can get to the bed. Meanwhile, the trick is hard and ready, hands up under my skirt, kissin’ me all up by my neck and down my chest.
“ ‘Let’s do it here, baby,’ I said.
“I could see that fifty flyin’ off ta Queens Plaza like it had goddamn wings, but the idea of doin’ it in a hallway turned the freak on. He said, ‘You really wanna do it right here? You don’t care if people see us?’
“ ‘No, honey, I ain’t worried about it.’ I squeezed him through his pants and his dick jumped so fast I thought he was gonna come on the spot. He went in his pockets and turned over the cash and I got on my knees. I figured I could maybe work him fast enough so’s he’d get off without no one seein’ us, but just when he’s about ta come, I feel him stiffen up and I see this old lady outta the corner of my eye. She standin’ there watchin’ us and she looks like she’s about to croak or somethin’.