Onion Street

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Privacy was about all the boardwalk had to offer when the temperatures dipped below freezing and the winds off the Atlantic scoured your exposed skin with grains of sand from the long miles of empty ocean beaches. In spite of the frigid air and biting winds, the throttle on my senses was full out. Tripping was a little bit like this, and that’s what people who had never dropped acid didn’t get. It doesn’t so much fuck with your mind as it removes all your filters. Suddenly, it’s like all the instruments in the orchestra are playing all at once, loudly, and as fast as they can. So it was as I walked down from the handball courts toward the midway. The clank and squeals of the elevated subway echoed through the brick canyons, and the sea’s low roar was constant and undramatic. It was almost as if the ocean understood drama wasn’t worth its while with no one on the beach to be impressed. The salt air carried with it the unpleasant grace notes of the raw sewage from the plant around the bend beyond Sea Gate. The arthritic wood beams and sea-ravaged metal bones of the dormant rides moaned about their sad decay, about having to bear the sneering, taunting wind that whistled through their old bones.

By the time I got to the bench in front of the Parachute Jump, I sympathized with the rides. Even my young bones were stiff with cold. My collection of bruises didn’t help. I checked my Bulova and saw that I was a few minutes early. I was always early. In my family, if you were five minutes early, you were ten minutes late. The Pragers were never tastefully late to a party. The phrase had no meaning for us. Don’t misunderstand; our promptness wasn’t so much out of good manners as gnawing insecurity. Aaron, Miriam, and I were raised with a sense of dread, living in the fear of missing something. What that something was, I couldn’t say. I think my parents felt cheated by their lives somehow. That if they had only been more vigilant, had slept with one eye open, had just gotten to where they were going a few seconds earlier, they would have escaped the trap life had set for them.

I turned and looked up at the looming superstructure of the Parachute Jump, Coney Island’s central icon and, from now on, its quintessential symbol of impotence. For although it was scheduled to open again in the spring, the rumor was it would be its last season. At least they wouldn’t be tearing the damn thing down with the rest of Steeplechase Park. No, this was Brooklyn. We liked our scars. We wore our failures with pride. We lived in a world of what used to be, and what would be no more. Too bad they had bulldozed Ebbets Field. They should have packed it up brick by brick and rebuilt it in Coney Island at the foot of the Jump. Two follies, side by side: a parachute jump with no parachutes, a baseball stadium with no team. Greek tragedy? Nah, a freak show. We always did like our freak shows in Coney Island.

“Hey, you Moe? You Moe?” a raspy whisper cut through the wind.

I tilted my head back to earth and saw him standing there. To call him thin would have been high understatement. He was positively skeletal. If he hadn’t been as tall as I was, he might’ve been able to shop in the boys’ department at John’s Bargain Store. Maybe it was the lighting, but his skin had a yellow quality to it. When I noticed his beak-like nose running and caught a glimpse of the lit cigarette he held between his fidgety fingers, I decided the sickly shade of his skin wasn’t a trick of the light. If it was possible, this guy was even more fidgety than Lids. He moved so much he would have made a hummingbird cross-eyed. But unlike Lids, this guy needed a drink or a joint, not shock therapy. His gesticulations aside, it didn’t take a genius to see he was nervous about being here and that he’d rather be somewhere else, anywhere else. Still, Lids had gotten him to show up.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m Moe. And you are …?”

“Sick, man. I’m sick.”

I was slow on the uptake. “I’m sorry to hear it, but I was asking for your name.”

“You bein’ funny, man, or just stupid?”

“Watch your mouth or you’ll be getting a lot sicker a lot quicker.”

He made a series of rapid snorts that passed for laughter. “That’s funny. It rhymes.”

“Thanks, Shakespeare, but I’m not trying to be funny.”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that — ”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. You’re sick. Now what’s your name?”

“Man, forget my name. Just let’s get this over with. I need to get well. And I can’t get fixed up until I talk to you. So what’d’ya wanna talk about?”

“1055 Coney Island Avenue,” I said.

“What about it?”

“Why’d you send me there? What was I supposed to find there?”

“Hey, man, look, I heard you wanted to know where your old lady was on a certain night between certain hours. Well, that’s where she was.” He wiped his nose on his ratty coat. He’d done that so many times, both sleeves had crusty, damp streaks. “Can I go now, huh? I answered your question.”

“Soon, Shakespeare, soon. How do you know that’s where Mindy was?”

“Because I know, man.”

“Wrong answer.” I turned to walk away.

“C’mon, man. Where you goin’?”

“To tell your connection you gave me gotz and that you’re full of shit.”

“C’mon, man, don’t do that. Don’t be that way.” He dropped to his knees. “Don’t make me beg you.”

“Begging’s not the issue. Answers are.” The guy was a wreck and I guess I ached for him a little. It would have been hard not to, but aching for him wouldn’t get me the information I needed.

He wiped his nose with his sleeve again. “Okay, okay, all right. Answers.”

“I’m waiting,” I said, acting like a hard guy.

“Mindy, that’s your old lady, right?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s a part of, like, this group.”

A little bell went off in my head and I remembered what Susan Kasten had said the night before. “The Committee,” I said, “is that the group?”

Shakespeare’s bloodshot eyes got wide. He didn’t answer, but nodded yes over and over again.

“Is Susan Kasten a member of the Committee?”

“Yeah, man, yeah. Can I go now?”

“You ask me that again and I’m gonna kick your ass. You understand me? And get up off your knees, for chrissakes.”

He stood, but immediately doubled over in pain. “Sorry, man. Sorry. It’s just that I gotta get well. I gotta.”

“Okay. So, Mindy and Susan are part of this Committee. Who else?”

“I can’t, man. I can’t.”

“Just a few more questions and then you can go.”

“You’ll tell Lids I did the right thing? You’ll tell him?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“You promise, man? You wouldn’t fuck with me like that.”

“I promise, Shakespeare.”

“God bless you.” He was back on his knees, grabbing at my hands.

I pushed him away and he toppled over like a rootless tree. “Get up. Get the fuck up, already.”

As he struggled to get up, I thought I heard something: the creaking of a boardwalk plank, shuffling feet in the sand. But when I looked around, Coney Island was just as dark and deserted as it had been a few seconds before. Shakespeare got as far as his knees. When I saw that was probably as far as he was going to get, I started up again.

“Black guy with pink blotches all over his face and hands,” I said.

“Abdul?”

I played along. “Yeah, Abdul. Tell me about him.”

“What about him?”

“Anything.”

“He calls himself Abdul Salaam. Means soldier of peace.” He laughed that snorting, machine gun laugh. “But his real name is Ricky Barnett. He comes from some little town in the Midwest somewheres, Effingberg or Effingham, some shit like that.”

“Great. Now that we got his bio out of the way, tell me what he — ” I stopped, because whatever it was I’d heard before, I heard again. “Get up, Shakespeare. Get up!” I yanked him to his feet by the shoulders of his coat. He was as light as a bag of leaves. “Get the fuck outta here. Run! Run!”

It was no good and it was too late anyway. Instead of running, Shakespeare just kind of melted. He collapsed into a ball of himself, throwing one arm over his head and the other around his ribs. I spun to look behind me, but before I had fully turned I was tackled from behind. Two sets of strong hands held me down. A gag was shoved in my mouth, and a bag or pillowcase was slipped over my head. Tape was rolled around the bag to hold it closed around my neck, but not so tightly I couldn’t breathe. My hands were taped behind my back, my ankles taped together, and I was dragged across the boardwalk — the toes of my Converse sneakers made a dull sound as they caught in the spaces between each plank — down the steps, and onto the sand. I was shoved face first onto the sand and then … nothing. I heard the soft shushing of feet walking away from me and then their pounding on the boardwalk stairs. Was I scared? Yeah, I was pretty fucking scared, but for some reason not as much as I should have been. I sensed that whatever this was about, it wasn’t about me.

Then I heard Shakespeare doing what he did best: begging. “Please, man, don’t hurt me. I’m hurtin’ so bad already, man.”

There was no response. I winced, expecting Shakespeare to take a beating. I knew this was no mugging. For one thing, the guys who dealt with me had left my watch on my wrist and my wallet in my pocket. For another, muggers in Brooklyn didn’t make like the Mission: Impossible team just to rob two schmucks on the boardwalk. Besides, one look at the two of us would have told even the most amateur thieves that we weren’t worth the effort. No, this wasn’t about robbery. As I waited for the beating to begin, I imagined the snap of Shakespeare’s bones, his screams. None came. What I heard instead was this:

“Thank you, man. Thank you. God bless you.”

A few seconds later I heard something being dragged, tha-dump, tha-dump, tha-dump, across the boardwalk. Feet scurried. Then there was just the sound of the subway, the waves, the whining of the wind through the rides to keep me company. When I was sure I was alone, I began moving my wrists in opposite directions. At first the tape gave only a tiny bit, and my arms wearied pretty quickly. Still, in about a half hour I had worked the tape loose enough so that I could free my right hand. I was totally free of everything else in short order. Shakespeare was free, too: free of the cold, free of hurt, free of pain, free of this world. I found him seated on the bench where we’d met, a belt strapped tightly around his left bicep, and a needle sticking out of his left forearm. There were so many needle marks stretching along the underside of his forearm that it looked like a subway map. At rest, without his constant movement, he looked much more in tune with death than life. I suppose that would have been okay with me if dying had been his choice and not someone else’s. It might also have helped me a little if I didn’t feel like I was as much to blame for his death as the needle sticking out of his arm.