the implements is suggestive of habit, orderly procedure, and thoughtful intention.
Standing overly close to the tub causes one's eyes to water and soon thereafter one suffers from a raspy cough and light-headedness. The chemical stench is bad enough to prevent anyone from wanting to plunge a rubber-gloved hand into the odorous murk in the tub, but if one did, and stirred around a bit, one would find not only that it was hot, because of the exothermal chemical processes at work, but also two dozen metal grommets, such as are typically found on men's work boots, a pair of mushy Vibram soles, a number of tooth fillings, a piece of a jawbone, some slippery, degraded pieces of skin, perhaps one with a lightning bolt tattooed to it, a handful of vertebrae, their most acute tips and wings blunted by the action of the chemicals, a set of large scapulae, male from the size of them, and a complete pelvis, also originally belonging to a large male, already so eroded by the chemicals in just a few hours as to appear to have been lying on a beach for a decade. Within only a few days, all the bones and the skin will be gone, leaving just the rubber shoe soles, the metal fillings, and perhaps some indistinct sandy granular matter. This residue, it may be assumed, will be wiped up with a paper towel and discarded in the local McDonald's in a McDonald's bag retained for this purpose. Meanwhile, the water will continue to trickle into the tub and drain for hours to come, slowly washing away all traces of the tub's contents. Then three gallons of bleach will be poured into the water and this, too, will be allowed to drain away.
If the building and lot used by Victorious Sewerage represent the most tangible assets of the Marine Park Athletic amp; Social Club of Brooklyn, New York, then the most valuable intangible asset owned by the club would unquestionably be the baseball diamond, flanked along the third base line by aluminum bleachers. Intangible because of the goodwill and great times to be found here. Each summer Victor Rigetti watches his team, Vic's Marine Park Angels, compete on this field. It's a motley team, filled with misfits, delinquents, fatties, and goofballs, but most summers they win two-thirds of their games and usually feature a pitcher stolen or bought from one of the elite teams. The fathers of the boys are often owners of local businesses and otherwise known to each other, and thus it is impossible to eavesdrop on the conversations there unless you are sitting on the bleachers themselves.
Victor Rigetti knows everyone who sits on his bleachers, however, and if a parent of a player on the other team somehow mistakenly assumes that the bleachers are for anyone who wishes to use them and thus finds his way onto them, then he is assaulted with cold stares and silence until the point is made and taken. Victor is a big, handsome man with a full head of black hair, thick as a brush, wide in the shoulders and chest. At work he generally wears a Carhartt jacket, dark blue work pants, and Timberland boots he replaces three times a year. Clean, always clean. Fingernails, hair, clothes, teeth, watch, car, house, everything. Doesn't touch the shit anymore, no sir. He's done his time. That's for the drivers and their helpers. He runs the business. It goes up and down, generally down, but he's branching out, wants to buy the gas station at the intersection of Flatbush and Avenue J, just has to figure out how to scare the Turkish owner into selling to him. Guy does a hell of a business without even trying. The attached convenience store is a gold mine, too. People load up on junk food while they gas up. Kids cry for candy. Vic has stood there and watched the dollars fly. Gas prices are going to keep going up, especially because of the Chinese. Building cars like mad over there. You own a gas station in Brooklyn, you have it made. And an American gas station should belong to an American, not a fucking Turk. Lot of these outsiders stealing the bread and butter from guys like him in Brooklyn. People whose families have put in generations of work and then these other dark people from other countries come in and swoop down on the decent businesses. Not good in his book, and his book gets updated every day. Never forgets. You go to the park, it's like visiting fucking South America. The Mexicans, well, okay, they're good for your basic labor, grunt construction work. Though he's noticed they're getting into the stone trades. The American blacks are mostly finished in Brooklyn, pushed out by the foreigners, as far as he can see. Well, not him. He's hardworking and has a plan. Presents well, he knows. Stands tall, answers questions, knows things. Knows people, lotta different kinds of people. Knows what he's got to do and, if necessary, he does it and doesn't complain. Is he law-abiding? Whose laws we talking about? Men generally fear him. Women aren't sure how they feel. They find the basic package attractive-the size, the strong face, the full head of hair-but there's something about him they pick up on, makes them hesitate. Maybe back away. He's never married. Never wanted to, never needed to. He always has a piece of beaver on the line, usually a younger woman, one of the fuckomatics, he calls them, doesn't know much yet, thinks it's exciting to be with an older guy. Endless supply of the fuckomatics in the bars of Brooklyn. Italian, Irish, Polish, Puerto Rican, whatever. Often have a bad relationship with their fathers, easier to bag if they do.
Then, of course, there is Violet, and that's a whole other story, and even he doesn't understand it.
As president of the Marine Park Athletic amp; Social Club, Vic controls access to the baseball field, controls who plays there from March to October. Which, actually, is a lot of people, teams from all over the place. The field is thus a setting of utterly plausible conversations. One can meet there and have conversations that have meaning or don't. One can have such conversations while appearing to root for the baseball team, and these important conversations can be woven through half a dozen conversations of no import, as well as general commentary on the progress of the game, the quality of the umpiring, the reflexes of the infielders, and so on. It was, in fact, such a conversation a few weeks back in which Victor had listened to Jimmie 'Ears' Molissano make him a proposition. Ears wasn't going to say who had first approached him. There was a problem, and it needed a solution. Although the problem couldn't be discussed, except in the most general of terms, the solution merited conversation, and Ears said that he was hoping that Victor and one of his best men, someone like Richie, would be willing to follow a certain car with certain employees of a certain company and send them a message. He would tell him exactly how to find the car in midtown and where it went next to the beach just off the Belt Parkway almost every night, especially if the weather was good. It was not a difficult job, Ears said, and certain people would be grateful.
'I appreciate this gratitude,' Vic had said, 'but what I really need is some friends who can help me with getting a gas station.'
'This is the kind of thing that my friends can help you with.'
'Somebody needs to talk to that Turkish guy on Flatbush.'
'People can talk to him,' said Ears. 'People can influence him.'
'A vague promise doesn't help me much. You know I been wanting that station for going on five years now. Place has got four gas bays. He can handle sixteen cars at a time. People gas up there right before they go to Jersey, the shore, whatever. I don't understand how these guys right off the boat end up with a gold mine like that. Pisses me off. Makes me crazy.'
'I understand.'
'No, no, Ears, you don't understand. You don't understand how the Turkish guy does it and you don't understand my frustration. You have the lumber yard your father left you. Life is easy. Me, I'm not asking for much. Couple of your best guys talk to him and he agrees to sell. He sells, I buy.'
'Maybe we take a piece of that.'
'The sewage business only takes me so far, you understand? I'm ready to diversify.'
'I want to get back to this other thing. If it's done right, I think we're talking twenty K,' Ears had said, sitting on the bleachers. 'If it's done right.'
'Twenty thousand is shoeshine money. How much are you getting paid?'
'Hey, Vic, come on.'
'Tell me.'
'The job's worth thirty-five, I'm taking less than half off the top.'
'Twenty-five.'
'Shit.'
'Twenty-five and I'll take you to a club in the city, pay for a few dances, how's that? Plus you explain to the Turk how it's gotta be.'
Ears said nothing, shook his hand. 'You'll pay Richie yourself?'
Victor nodded. 'All right, tell me more.'
'Easy stuff,' Ears had said. 'You follow a car out of midtown, near Rockefeller Center. It'll be a little Toyota with Georgia plates. It will have a couple of employees in it from a paper-shredding company.'
'I should get into that business,' Victor interrupted.
'It's trickier than it looks,' answered Ears. 'The shredding trucks are expensive and need a lot of maintenance. Anyway, you follow this car. It's going to Brooklyn. Lot of times it goes to the beach. Same lot every time. Same spot in the lot. Most nights. Very late, no one else around. Workers there party a little, smoke a joint, something like that. Then you show up.'
