Death trick

18

Trucky's, just after midnight, was jumping-more like a Friday than a Wednesday night. I could never figure out how these people got up in the morning to go to work. Maybe they didn't; maybe they'd discovered a way to sleep for a living or were independently wealthy. Though few looked as if they'd managed either. I saw several faces of people who'd been at the Rat's Nest earlier.

Mike Truckman was at the door, just barely upright. As we came in, he pumped my hand and said, "Don, I wanna 'pologize about the other day, really I do. I'm under one hell of a lot of pressure, and sometimes I fly off the handle when I shouldn't. You won't hold it against me, right, buddy? Let's get together one day real soon. We'll chew this thing over and straighten it out. Real soon, you hear?"

I said, "How about if we talk right now?"

"Whazzat? Beg pardon?" Freddie James's "Hollywood" was banging out of the speakers at the far end of the bar. I saw Timmy move toward the dance floor with Calvin Markham. I leaned closer to Truckman and shouted, "How about right now, tonight?"

Ignoring this, he leaned into my ear and said, "The Rat's Nest was hit again tonight, j'hear that?"

I told him I'd been there when it happened.

"You were? Jesus, you weren't hassled or anything, were you? I'd hate for you to-get hassled."

"It was humiliating. I didn't like it. They arrested Nord-strum, and we called his lawyer. He's probably out there by now. Could we go back to your office for ten minutes?"

He looked at me bleakly from out of the caves of his eyes. "Oh God, what'd they get Nordstrum for, underage or some shit like that?"

I said, "He tried to bribe the Bergenfield police chief-according to the chief. I doubt whether that'll hold up. Unless it's true and the cop was wired. In Bergenfield the cops are probably lucky to get flashlights in their budget, though these days you never know."

"I gotta go," Truckman said. "I got this new kid mixing drinks. Listen, buddy, we'll talk soon, right? Be cool, now." He ducked under the bar and went over to a young man in a yellow T-shirt with a bottle of chartreuse liquid in his hand.

I watched them for a minute-Truckman glanced back at me once-and then I bought my draught and moved toward the dance floor. I ran into Phil and Mark in the mob around the dancers and asked if either would like to dance. Mark said he would. We did. Then Mark danced with Timmy, I danced with Phil, and Calvin Markham danced with a tall black man with sorrowful eyes who was wearing a red T-shirt with white letters that said Rabbi.

When Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" came on, we switched again and I ended up with Timmy, and by the end of it some of the younger dancers were yelping and shouting and shaking their fists. These were gay men together, and it was Wednesday night.

Half an hour later we were standing by the bar when Timmy, seeing something over my shoulder, said, "Uh-oh."

I said, "What'd you say?"

He shouted it, over the music: "I said, Uh-oh. Uh-oh." I turned. Harold Snyder was pummeling her way through the crowd toward us. She had on a low-cut dress the same shade of red as her martinis, big red hoop earrings, and a Veronica Lake wig. She was grinning and leading someone by the hand.

"Donnie! Donnie-you incredible hulk, you! I don't know what it was about last night, but you changed my entire life! You brought me good fortune, you fabulous Pisces!"

Timmy, Mark, Phil, Calvin, and the rabbi stared at Harold wide-eyed. Then they all looked at me.

I said, "Oh."

"Donnie, I want you to meet Ramundo. He's in show business in Poughkeepsie, and he's starting a dinner theater, and he wants to star me in the dramatic stage version he's writing of Barry Manilow's 'Copacabana.' Now, is that a part for me, or is that a part for me!"

We all exclaimed enthusiastically, and there were introductions all around. Ramundo, fiftyish, grandly mustachioed, and beaming in his powder blue velvet dinner jacket and ruffled orange shirt, kissed each of us on the lips and said, "Hoy."

More pleasantries were exchanged over Harold's unexpected entrance into what she now referred to as "the industry," and then Ramundo excused himself to "sloid over to the p-yowder room and frishen up."

"Where does Ramundo come from?" Timmy said. "Patagonia? Santa Lucia? Tibet?"

"Oh, I wouldn't know that," Harold said, adjusting her Veronica Lake wig and looking at us with one eye. "Greene County, I think. Or San Francisco maybe-Ramundo is so-o-o cosmopolitan. I met him at the tubs."

I said, "The tubs?"

"This morning, Donnie. I always slip in around ten, then hang around for the noontime action. I'd just taped up my sign-I always hang a sign on my cubicle: Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life-when Ramundo walked by and exposed himself. I pointed at his teensy-weensy, darling little hard-on and said, 'Ooo, it's Mister Bill! How are yew, Mister Bill?' and Ramundo looked at me and said, 'Don't talk anymore like dat-like a smutty lady. I am going to make you a star!' Well, naturally I thought that was just a line, but then after sex we talked, and he meant it.

Even after he came. Can you believe it? Can you believe what's happening to this tired old cleaning lady?"

A day in the life. I said, "Will you be moving to Poughkeep-sie then, Harold?"

"Yes, I've informed Mike that I'm resigning as his underpaid barf mop as of tonight. We're motoring down from the city after brunch tomorrow in Ramundo's mother's Chevette. I'll-" She looked at me. "-I'll miss you, baby."

Phil, Mark, Calvin, and the rabbi examined the walls. Timmy sipped his beer.

I said, "Well, it might not have worked anyway, Harold- us. Our life-styles are somewhat different." Though not all that different, I realized with a pang of something-or-other.

"That's the truth, Donnie, sad to say. I was thinking that very thought after you left last night.

You're so-intellectual. Like your friends here. I'm more-of the earth. A people person."

Timmy said, "In this crowd an intellectual is someone who's seen All About Eve at least three times."

"Oh, really?" Harold said, looking surprised. "Well, I can relate to that." Then she gave me a troubled look. "Are you going somewhere tonight, Donnie? After closing?"

I said I was, but to forget about all that for now. I leaned down and kissed her and said, "Good luck, Harold. I wish you- continued good luck."

"And happy trails to you too, Roy." She gazed at me, and just for an instant I again saw in her eyes Harold the yoo-hoo boy of Sneeds Pond, New York, trapped in a room with a Bible, a football, and a photo of John Wayne. She saw me see it, and she hugged me tightly.

When Harold pulled away, Ramundo had returned, and the show-biz couple went off to the dance floor to wow the country guys in from western Massachusetts, and to step on the other dancers' ankles, with a rhumba.

Mark, Phil, Calvin, and the rabbi left at one-thirty. Timmy had arranged to have the morning off from work, and we danced and hung around and ate popcorn until three-thirty, when we went out and drove my car across Western Avenue and parked in an abandoned Gasland station. I shut off the engine and we waited. The night was black and icy, and I ran the engine every ten minutes or so to warm us up.

"Any idea where we're going?" Timmy said.

"I think so. I hate to think it, but I think so. Is the camera ready?"

"Don't tell me then. Yeah, I'm set."

Just after four the last customers straggled out of Trucky's, across the road from where we waited. We could see the fluorescent lights go on inside.

At four-twenty Mike Truckman came out in a black peacoat and knit cap and lowered himself into his dark green Volvo. He pulled out of the parking lot and turned right onto Western, away from Albany. We followed.

We stayed a hundred yards behind the Volvo, which, with a drunk at the wheel, was moving slowly down the far right lane, sometimes edging onto the shoulder and then back onto the road again. There were few cars out at that hour-an airport limo, a bakery delivery truck, a couple of others-and we had no trouble staying with the weaving Volvo's taillights.

After a mile we passed the darkened Rat's Nest. Truckman drove on, keeping well within the forty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. We passed chain motels and donut shops and fast-food joints. I accelerated slightly, so that by the time Truckman pulled off the road, we were just fifty yards behind him. I could see clearly that he'd turned into the parking lot of the Bergenfield police station.

I drove on by and pulled in on the far side of a "flavored dairy product" stand that was shut down for the season. We got out and walked through the weeds and debris behind the icecream stand.

The Leica was strung around Timmy's neck, and I went first, feeling my way through the rubbish and dead vegetation. We passed the rear of a wholesale tire outlet and came within view of the police station, a small box of a building with gray corrugated plastic sides, a flat roof, and a pretty white sign in a "colonial" motif that said Police Headquarters- Bergenfield, N.Y.

We crouched behind a pile of tires. Sixty feet away, in a pool of light outside the police station's rear door, Mike Truckman was standing alongside his Volvo gesturing animatedly and shaking his head at the two men who stood facing him. From my encounter with them six hours earlier, I recognized the Bergenfield chief of police and the clown in the windbreaker who had frisked me and spoken rudely. Timmy eased out from behind the tires, adjusted his telephoto lens and light setting, and repeatedly snapped the shutter of the camera.

I whispered, "How's the light?"

"Good enough," Timmy said.

Still shaking his head, Truckman slid something from his jacket pocket and handed it to the chief, who held the thing in one hand and flipped through it with the other. Timmy got that, too.

The chief counted out several bills and handed them to the guy in the windbreaker.

Truckman was saying something else, and now the chief was shaking his head. After a moment the police chief opened up his coat, and Truckman frisked him. The cop buttoned up his coat.

The plainclothesman was next. Then Truckman nodded. Okay. No wire.

Truckman climbed back into his car and started the engine. We crouched low behind the tires as his headlights arced above us. He passed us and turned. I raised my head and saw the Volvo move back down Western toward Albany.

A second car engine came to life, and we saw the chief's unmarked Ford pull onto the highway and head west, away from the city. After a moment the third car, a silver-gray Trans-Am with black stripes, roared onto the avenue and sped off.

We walked back to the Rabbit under the cold stars and drove into town.

Timmy said, "I may throw up."

I said, "I can relate to that."

"Okay," he said, "but what's Eddie-Frank Zimka got to do with it? Or Blount? Or Kleckner?"

I said, "I'm not sure yet. Maybe I'll know tomorrow, in Denver."