wasn't big enough when you were in high school.'
'So you start dealing. To make ends meet.'
'It's not permanent,' Scotty said. 'Things will turn around. There are peaks and valleys in every time cycle.
In a year or so I'll have the job of my choice, back in a sweet-ass apartment. Living the dream.'
'You tell that to all the people you're poisoning?'
'Screw yourself, Mr. High-and-Mighty. I'm doing what I need to do to survive. I owe fifty grand on my tuition, and even if I do get another job, who knows how long that'll last. You're a reporter, right? You ever think about all those people you feed bull to day in and day out?
All those magazines telling women how they can doll themselves up, get sliced open just to be prettier? So maybe they can look like whatever anorexic slut you shove on your cover? Don't tell me about poison, man.
You think I'm any worse than you are, you're deluding yourself.'
'I don't need to defend myself. I know what I do, and
I know what you do. If you can even compare the two, you're the delusional one, Scotty.'
A waiter came over. He took a notepad from his pocket, licked his thumb and turned to a fresh page.
'Can I get ya?'
'Pastrami and rye,' Scotty said. 'With Swiss and mustard. And a cream soda.'
'Chocolate milk shake,' I said. 'And a side of fries.'
The waiter nodded, walked off. I turned back to
Scotty.
'When did you start?' I asked.
He sighed, for a moment saying nothing. He was steeling himself up to talk. ''Bout a year ago,' he said.
'I went to my buddy Kyle's house one night a week after I got laid off. It was a few of us. Kyle's girlfriend, some chick I'd been seeing for a month who dumped me a few days later when she realized I couldn't afford tables at the China Club anymore.'
'Wow, that's a sob story if I ever heard one. Let me call up Larry King for you.'
'Dude, you're missing the point. Do you have any idea what it's like, how utterly fucking hopeless you feel, to live your whole life working for something only to know it can end-' he snapped his fingers '-just like that?'
Scotty sat there, leaning across the table like a life coach trying to convince me of the path to righteous ness. Though Scotty and I had almost nothing in common-not our clothes, not our upbringing, not our vocation-something about what he said hit home for me. With my industry seemingly scaling back by the day, not to mention the far too often times my life was endangered by that chosen vocation, I knew how tenuous things could be.
'Your friend Kyle,' I said. 'Go on.'
'We stayed up late, drank a lot. I think our girls were starting to get pissed off, feeling like we were paying each other more attention than we were them. And they were probably right. At some point I start jonesing for a toke. I used in college a bit. I asked Kyle if he knew where we could get some good stuff, and he kind of looked at me and laughed.'
Our food came, and Scotty tore into it before mine had even been set down. The pastrami and rye disap peared in several ravenous bites, washed down with a chug of cream soda. When he finished, Scotty smiled and said, 'Best sandwich in the world.'
My chocolate milk shake looked a little silly in com parison, but I took a long sip and felt like a kid again.
He wiped his mouth, placed the napkin gently on the table and continued. 'Kyle just got up, went into his bedroom and came back with what looked like an eighth of great bud. At first I didn't ask questions, I was just looking forward to the feeling. When we were good and baked-and man, that stuff baked us quick -I asked him where he'd got it. Know what he told me?'
'What?'
'He said, 'leftovers.' I didn't know what the hell that meant, so I asked him. He said times were tough, and he'd been dealing a bit on the side. His mom just got diagnosed with cervical cancer and she didn't have health insurance. So he was dealing to help her out with the bills. Kyle's dad died about ten years ago, drank away every penny they had, even gambled some that they didn't. So I asked him who set him up with that, and he said he'd met a guy who was kind of like the head recruiter. Kind of like Ben Affleck in Boiler Room, the grand pooh-bah of the game. The guy you want to talk to if you want in.'
'So Kyle set you up with this guy.'
'Yeah. Kyle said he was at some party where a guy named Vinnie came and sold the host some coke. Kyle was curious about making some extra coin, so he pulled
Vinnie aside. Vinnie gave him a phone number, and that's all she wrote.'
'And how did you get involved?' I asked.
Scotty chugged more of his cream soda, a frothy mustache trail on his upper lip. He saw me staring, and wiped it away. 'After a few weeks, I noticed Kyle was coming home later and later, and then I saw him with this sweet watch, a Movado. Brand-new, bought from the store. He said he was pulling down two, three grand a week easy. And that was just the beginning. So I asked if Kyle would introduce me to his man, this recruiter guy. Kyle tells me this guy is the one who makes all the decisions, the guy who's in charge of everything. Kyle sets up a meeting, I go in and talk with this guy for an hour, maybe two, and a week later I'm on the street.'
'But not really 'on the street.''
'Nah. Anyone who thinks dealers in NYC sit on street corners waiting for crackheads to come up to them is watching too much HBO. This is a business, run and worked by businessmen. There's no room for street hustling or stupidity.'
'Any women?' I asked.
'Not that I ever saw.'
'Guess it's not all that different from finance after all.'
'No,' Scotty said with a laugh. 'Guess not.'
'So you say this whole thing is run like a business, streamlined and thorough. So let me ask you this…how did I find you?'
Scotty shifted in his seat. 'I don't know.'
'This recruiter you're talking about. The head honcho. You say you met with him.'
'Just once,' Scotty said. 'After I had my…interview
I guess you could call it, I was always dealing with mid dlemen after that. Guys lower on the food chain.'
'Are they the ones who give you the re-ups at the office in midtown?'
Scotty's eyes shot up, and for the first time a sense of fear crept into them. 'Who told you that?'
I said nothing. Just stared at him. He needed to know he wasn't dealing with an amateur, and that if I'd come this far there was surely a lot more to dig up.
'Yeah. The Depot, we called it. The main guy was never there, it's kind of like as soon as we met him, he disappeared into thin air and stopped existing. We had his phone number just in case, but if anyone called it without a good reason, we knew they might not come in to work the next day.'
'Did you ever hear anyone mention someone or something called the Fury?' Scotty looked at me, confused.
'No, not that I can think of.' He seemed truthful.
'So Mayor McCheese. The Big Kahuna. The Big
Boss. The recruiter. Who was he?'
'Just some guy,' Scotty said. 'We never really learned anything about him.'
'I mean what was his name?'
Scotty had to think for a minute, then he said.
'Gaines. Yeah, that was the dude's name. Stephen
Gaines.'
26
