Buffalo jump

CHAPTER 44

As we followed the truck north on the New York State Thruway, I could see a jetty built out into the Buffalo River below us. There was a paved path along its spine where people were walking, jogging and cycling. They looked like they were walking on water. On the south side of the channel, overlooking the river, were grand mansions built in a Spanish colonial style.

“Look at these places,” I said.

“Trust me,” Ryan said. “You’re seeing the best part first.”

The truck turned onto the Scajaquada Expressway, as did we, and exited soon after the first toll booth onto Elmwood Avenue, past the rolling green spaces of the Olmsted parklands. A few turns later, we found ourselves on Lincoln Parkway, a wide boulevard with houses that wouldn’t have been out of place in Forest Hill: Tudors, colonials, Georgians, all on spacious lots with well-maintained gardens.

The truck was slowing down.

Ryan had been keeping half a block back. At the first flash of the truck’s brake lights, he pulled over immediately. Frank got out and walked down a driveway beside one of the larger colonial houses. Claudio pulled away from the curb and began backing down the drive, Frank guiding him. I noticed the truck didn’t beep when in reverse. They’d probably disconnected the fuse that controlled it, a smart move given that the truck was generally put to nefarious use.

“Closer,” I said.

We cruised slowly toward the house. The truck was backed up to a brick garage at the end of the driveway. A tall grey-haired man in his fifties was offloading cartons by hand. Claudio and Frank stayed on the sidelines as usual. There was no forklift or hand truck in sight.

“It’s going to take that guy forever to unload if he has to do it himself,” I said. “Let’s park down the street.”

Ryan drove to the end of the block, made a U-turn, and parked on the other side of the boulevard so we could watch the house. He turned off the engine and lowered the windows. He lit a cigarette and hung his arm out the window so the smoke wouldn’t blow my way. The car felt quiet after the constant hum of the engine and the road.

“I wonder if there’s a coffee shop in walking distance,” I said. “I need a bathroom and a coffee, in that order.”

His answer was, “What the fuck!”

The truck was coming back out the driveway.

“He couldn’t have unloaded it all,” I said.

“There’s more than one drop-off,” Ryan said. “Stay or follow?”

“Follow,” I said. “The house isn’t going anywhere.”

Traffic was heavy as we tailed the truck south and west. Five o’clock on a hot afternoon, people were busting out of work, desperate to make it home to the yard, the porch, the air-conditioned den, anywhere they could peel off their work clothes and crack open something cold. American flags hung everywhere, limp in the heat. Some were probably out specifically for the Fourth of July, but many homes had permanent flagpoles fixed to their fronts, a lot more than you’d see in Canada. Some houses sported yellow ribbons and signs saying they were proud to be American. Lawn signs and bumper stickers, some in the form of furled ribbons, proclaimed support for soldiers in Iraq; some for the war itself. One car ahead of us, a big old Impala, had four bumper stickers: Proud to be a Vietnam Vet. Support Veterans of the Vietnam War. Support our Troops in Iraq. Insured by Smith amp; Wesson.

No, Geller, you are not in Toronto anymore, where most bumper stickers proclaim support for ecological and social causes and lawn signs warn government against privatizing health care and cutting school budgets.

“You want to see the real Buffalo? Check that out,” Ryan said, pointing to a billboard that showed a smiling man in a blue uniform steam-cleaning a carpet. “Crime Scene Incorporated,” the tagline read. “Cleaning and Restoring Buffalo Homes Since 1984.”

“Ever seen one of those at home?” he asked.

“Never.”

“I should apply for a franchise,” he said. “I could present a hell of a business case, don’t you think? I got experience, contacts and I’m motivated as hell to launch a new career.”

The truck rumbled around a traffic circle and veered west onto Lafayette. The farther west we drove, the smaller the houses were. There were no public monuments, green spaces or architectural gems in this part of town. No colonials on generous lots. Just frame houses with stained siding and cars looking worse for the wear of Buffalo winters. Yards showed more brown grass than green, and were piled with old appliances, broken bicycles, discarded lumber and mud-spattered toys. Sidewalks were breaking where weeds pushed up from the ground. Windows were boarded up. Men sat against a fence outside a dirty bodega, drinking from big cans of malt liquor. At least half the businesses on the street had newspaper taped over the windows. Graffiti covered the sides of most buildings.

“Osama bin Laden lives,” someone had written in white paint on a red-brick wall.

“Upstairs,” someone had added in black.

A few minutes later, the truck pulled into the parking lot of a three-storey warehouse surrounded by a fence topped with rusting razor wire. Most of the windows at the rear were broken despite being shielded by metal grilles. We parked on a side street where we could see the back of the warehouse through the fence. Behind the building were tall cottonwood trees. Fluffy white clumps drifted down like large snowflakes only to be snagged by barbed wire or trapped by wind currents against the fence. Frank and Claudio perfected their idle routine while two hired hands unloaded the cases: first the loose ones, which they wheeled inside on a dolly, then the skids, which they removed using the same kind of forklift we’d seen at Silver’s.

When the truck was empty, Claudio closed the back door and locked it, and all of them went inside. Half an hour later they were still there.

“If all they left at the house was a dozen or so cases, where do you think the rest is going?” Ryan asked.

“Once they’re over the border, they can go anywhere: Rochester, Syracuse, Detroit, Cleveland.”

Hundreds of thousands of vials, millions of pills, bound for hungry markets where aging boomers wanted-needed-to remain virile and healthy; where their parents were trying to cope with the onslaught of symptoms that storm the body in its eighth and ninth decades; where people of all ages with rare illnesses needed medications in amounts too small for the pharmaceutical industry to profit by unless the drugs were sold at exorbitant prices, which, of course, is what the industry did.

“Let’s go back to the house,” I said. “Try our luck on whoever is there.”

“Are we down to banking on luck now?” he asked.