an untouchable, at least as far as Nassau County’s food service industry was concerned. The events at Hempstead had turned me into a local celebrity. And while many free drinks flowed my way, the job offers did not. Only my old boss at Carvel, where I worked my senior year in high school, took mercy on me when I agreed to work for minimum wage. Which wasn’t going to rent me living quarters that didn’t have the name “Projects” attached to it.
I quit Carvel the night I returned from my orientation with Rico. In a couple of weeks, I’ll have enough saved up to find a place of my own. Maybe even in the city, like I’d boasted to Marvin.
But I need a story to tell my parents. Too risky to lie about a restaurant job — the city’s close enough for a surprise visit. I decide to tell them I’ve found steady work as an office temp. Which means smiling a lot while my mother, bursting with joy at her newfound ability to use “my son” and “office” in the same sentence, drags me to the mall and forces a whole new wardrobe upon me. And she wakes up early Monday morning to make me breakfast, meaning I damn well have to wear it. I’m pretty sure I will be the only weed dealer in the tristate area rocking business-casual.
By the time I get to the city for my first day flying solo, the pager’s already buzzing. “Pick-Up’s at the Fifty- Ninth Street Station, near the newsstand.
Meet-Up is at the Engineers’ Gate, Ninetieth and Fifth Avenue. Young lady. Look for Lycra.”
I think I’m going to like this job.
The problem, when I get to the gate, is an embarrassment of riches. Every third or fourth person is a woman under thirty wearing Lycra, Upper East Side runners toning their glutes on the loop around the Central Park Reservoir. My eyes finally settle on the one who isn’t running.
She’s a few years older than me, maybe twentysix or twenty-seven. Fair skin, short blonde hair, and breasts that, while not huge, still demand attention. Expensive running shoes. Maybe a young lawyer. A kept wife. The schoolteacher-daughter of some captain of industry.
In any case, my first customer.
“Are you him?” she asks.
“I hope so,” I reply, making a mental note to thank my mother for getting me out of the house in something other than jeans and a T-shirt.
“You don’t look like a drug dealer.”
“Who said I was a drug dealer?” Never admit you’re a dealer, Rico had warned me. You let them establish intent to sell, and you might as well be handing them the keys to your cell.
She sighs. “No, no, yes, no, yes.”
“What’s that?”
“The answers to the questions you’re about to ask me.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Yes,” she says, bouncing impatiently on her toes. “Have you?”
“Can you tell it’s my first day on the job?”
“Congratulations. Can we get this over with? I’m expected home.”
She pulls the money out of her shoe. I hand her the bag. She slides it into the back of her pants and jogs away. So much for meeting new friends on the job.
MY NEXT MEETING IS ON Wall Street, a straight shot down-town on the 2. Joseph slithers past me on the train between Chambers and Fulton, slipping a bag into my jacket. I emerge from the station into a light rain with ten minutes to spare. Taking shelter in a doorway, I watch the thousand-dollar suits, water beading and rolling off their gelled hair as they yammer into portable telephones. I root for lightning.
Ten minutes past the appointed meeting time, I notice a kid my age who could have been me. A much douchier version of me. His hair is slicked back like the rest of the Yuppies, but his suit gives him away: It’s an off- the-rack version of the standard uniform. He tries to make eye contact with me, so I give him a half-nod.
“Hey,” he says. “You looking for Danny?”
“That depends,” I ask. “Are you Danny?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Because then I’d know that I wasn’t looking for you,” I say. “Guy I’m meeting’s supposed to be wearing Armani.”
“Take it easy, Dockers,” he says, insulting the pants my mother bought for me. Now I really don’t like this guy. “Danny’s in his office. He told me to come find you.”
I angle myself toward the subway, ready to runanother one of Rico’s suggestions. “The proxy is like a red alert,” he told me, surprising me with his use of the word “proxy.” “Nobody is so lazy that he ain’t gonna pick up his own shit, you know what I mean?” On the other hand, the police, in Rico’s experience, were more than capable of “these kinds of subterfuges.”
I tell him that I don’t know any Dannys.
“Danny Carr,” he insists. “He said there’s a Benjamin in it for you if you come up to his office.”
Oddly enough, the offer of extra money is actually a positive sign that this isn’t a setup. Another Ricoism: The police can’t make a case against someone they bribe into committing a crime. “Why would I want to come up to his office?”
He holds out his palms and shrugs. “Working for Danny means doing what he asks you to do when he asks you to do it. Or as Danny says, why is not a component of my job.”
“My heart bleeds for you. But I don’t work for Danny.”
“Neither will I if you don’t follow me back up there. Come on. A hundred bucks for, like, ten extra minutes of work.”
I look for any other suspicious signs. Like I’d know. “Are you a cop?” I ask per the standard script.
“Fuck no.” He smiles nervously. “Why would you think I’m a cop?”
My spirit of caution finally gives way to the greedy desire to more than double my daily pay. I follow the kid across the street into an office building. We walk past a front desk, nodding at the security guard, and ride an empty elevator to the twenty-third floor.
As soon as the doors close, he extends a hand.
“Rick Cleary.”
“Okay.” I ignore his hand.
“So are you, like, Danny’s drug dealer?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know, I know. Just the question about me being a cop.” I scan the elevator for potential hidden cameras, pretending not to hear him. “You don’t want to talk about it, that’s chill.”
We reach the twenty-third floor, where a reception desk welcomes us to DC Investments.
The desk is empty, as are most of the cubicles Rick leads me past on the way to the corner office.
Inside, a guy in the right suit but with Art Garfunkel hair barks what sounds like Japanese into a speakerphone. Danny Carr, I presume. Noticing me, he gestures toward the couch. Noticing Rick, he waves angrily toward the exit. Rick backs out like a geisha, closing the door behind him.
As I settle into the black leather, Danny reaches into a cabinet behind him, pulling out an unfamiliar appliance that reminds me of a birdhouse I built in tenth-grade wood shop. This birdhouse is wired for electricity, I note when he jams the plug into the wall, causing a light in the box to glow neon green.
Without breaking from his conversation in Japanese, Danny returns to the cabinet for a twofoot length of surgical tubing and a small metal disk about the size of a can of Skoal.
“Where’s Carlos?” he says, finishing his call.
Carlos was my predecessor, the kid I’d seen smashing his Motorola in the stairwell. “I’m the new Carlos,” I say.
“New Carlos.” He chuckles. “Like New Coke.
Let’s hope you last a little longer. You don’t look like a drug dealer.”
“It’s funny. Everyone keeps telling me that.”
