The Great California Game

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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AMERICA’S not perfect, mind. Disillusion’s the bus station, West 42nd Street.

Sheer size is agoraphobia’s ally. I’d learnt the word panhandler from Zole the day before. The world centre of hustling, panhandling, drug pushing, aggressive dereliction, is surely here. I’d never seen so many buses in my life, commuter roarers and long-distance racers all the colours of the rainbow. It seems they’re all private companies. Passengers too are all shades and sizes. Tip: don’t go for a pee —bottle it until you reach home.

A whole hour it took me, finding the times and places of the California runs, for my escape. The drifters with their aggressive sales pitches frightened me to death. One shabby bloke wide as a barn stopped me in the open crowd by simply shoving a flat hand on my chest.

“Hey. Whachoo want, man?” he threatened.

“Er…” I tried to edge away among some passengers.

“You gotta want somethin’, man.” He dragged at me.

“I’ve no money,” I said feebly.

“Sheet.” He let go so I fell, got up and scarpered to palpitating safety among a horde of people queueing for hamburgers.

The trick is to stay ungrabbable, which means beyond arm’s reach of passers-by. This means deep in a queue of ordinary folk, or ensconced in a nosh bar where the proprietor is protection for as long as you’re buying. Remember that. Solitude prevails in any loo, except here it’s a mangler’s mart, with blokes of all ages soliciting, injecting, selling syringes, even fighting over vulnerable travellers with knives. Police are on hand, sometimes. But bloodstained tiles do nothing for confidence.

Japanese tourists are useful, going in clusters like they do. I found them a practical aid, and hopped from group to camera-loaded group like a child crossing a turbulent stream on stepping stones.

And got taken forcefully just when I’d discovered the bus numbers, price, and worked out a policy to avoid the perils of passengerhood. Perhaps midday departure to San Francisco would be the best? Being trapped on a charabanc with a load of streetwise hustlers scared me. Or maybe these weapon-toting clutchers never actually went on the buses at all? “This way, man.”

Three blokes grabbed me. I tried squawking for help, struggling, shouting for police, anything. I was yanked down some stairs, God knows where. Two prostitutes were having a wrangle on a landing while a bemused city dresser looked on. Four or five blokes were trading money for screws of paper, slick as light. The staircases were concrete. I got bruised against the handrails in the rush downward. A couple were fornicating in a doorway, the woman against the wall, nonchalantly smoking, gazing into space. The tunnels and staircases reverberated to the echoes of shouts, quite casual, distant thunder of traffic, people talking, cars starting up. My mind reeled backwards. Incongruity’s supposed to be the essence of humour, not chaos. Down here all rules vanished. We reached some level which stank of urine. My three captors were talking quite offhandedly among themselves, as if they weren’t hauling a struggling captive along dank concrete terraces. We seemed to be near an umpteen-tiered car park. The sweet smell of excess mingled aromatically with petrol’s thick scent. A man whooped as if in some echo chamber. I glimpsed some geezers around a trestle table under a naked bulb. “After you wit’ heem,” a bird called laconically, squeezing past going the other way and tutting in annoyance when they shoved her aside.

“Hey, Lovejoy ma man!”

We’d stopped in a concrete bunker of some style, the door not hanging off and a score of television monitors on the go round the walls.

I was plonked in front of a desk—desk, if you please, in this warren. Numerous people sat about, several birds. They were talking, watching the consoles, professionals of a sort. I tried to get breath, but got giddier the more I inhaled. The fumes were literally intoxicating, sending my mind on a strange unplanned trip. A control room?

“What you doin’ here, Lovejoy?” He pronounced it love-jo-a. “Why’ncha come ta me, man?”

A little unused air happened into my lungs and I found voice. “For chrissakes, Busman!” I yelled. “What the hell you do that for? You scared the hell out of me, you stupid burke!”

The place stunned into silence. Busman rotated his chair, smiling hugely at his people.

“Ain’t he somethin’?” he demanded. “He ain’t crazy, jess sorta weird. Squat it, Lovejoy.”

A chair rolled under me. I fell into it, sucking where my knuckles had scraped along the walls.

“Silly sod.” I was really narked, mostly from having been terrified.

He boomed a laugh from forty fathoms. I swear the ground vibrated. “Lovejoy’s the bad who got me shucked, people. Believe it.”

They resumed talking, glancing between their consoles and me. The screens showed the concourses, departure points, ticket agencies, the nosh concessions. Even the stairwells were there, hustlers and activities in all their glory.

“Is this where you work, Busman?”

His amusement thundered out. He shook, his desk throbbed, his teams fell about. Typical. I was getting narked and said so. I’d thought I was being polite.

“Love-jo-a,” he said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “You is weird, an’ thassa fact. I don’t work here, man. I works.”

More rolling in the aisles from all and sundry. I sat, nodding with a feeble show of interest. Whatever turns this lot on, I thought, then let me get out of here and I’ll go by train, canal, hire a yak. Anywhere’d do.

“I controls, Lovejoy. You know control?”

Who pays them to watch the concourse so fervently, I wondered idly. I didn’t really care. If I asked the question they’d only roar and shake their heads. Even the birds were eyeing me, tittering.

“Lovejoy.” Busman came in to land, leaning forward. God, he was big. He’d make ten of me and have leftovers. “You sprung me. Why?”

I brightened. A sentence I could recognize, at last. Berto Gordino must have got him out.

“It wasn’t me, Busman. I just asked a lawyer to try.”

He closed his eyes, shook his head, roused as if coming round from an anaesthetic.

“You don’t work fo’ no Bethune, Lovejoy.” It was an accusation. I swallowed, nodded.

“I lied, Busman. I was scared. I’m only a bar help at Manfredi’s. I did extra waiting for some society folk. It was Mrs. Aquilina in the car. Her lawyer —”

“I got it, Lovejoy.” He beckoned a confrere, sounding mystified. ”See what I mean, Trazz? Anybody else’d claim serious. Lovejoy just says it like is.”

“It was my idea, though,” I put in quickly, not wanting to be left out of any free praise.

Trazz was a tiny man of skeletal thinness, warped by some deformity so he stood at an angle from his waist up. He had a cigarette between his lips, eyes crinkled against ascending smoke

“He’s not so dumb,” Trazz said. It was a hoarse whisper so slight you had to strain to listen. “Not like today’s mob. See the screen, Busman? They’ve hacked the delivery. Makes two times, Busman. We godda move.”

“They stupid they have, Trazz.” Busman rolled his chair across the floor, staring intently from screen to screen as buses disgorged passengers and bags. “Who’s the shipper?”

“They’s Sarpi’s. Got hisself Miamis, Haitians, Jamaican.” Trazz crinkled, went tsss-tsss. I watched a second, scored it as wry laughter. “He knowed best, Busman, tsss-tsss.”

“Hit his smurfs, Trazz. How many he got?”

“Today? Sixty-eight, not counting Mexican.”

People all about laughed at this sally. I tried to grin along but my face had gone tight. Hit?

“Forty too much?”

Trazz went tsss-tsss some more, said, “Forty twenny-eight short, Busman.” More hearty laughs. A jocular company.

Trazz swayed away, pivoting on his right hip. Quiet and speed together, for all his deformity.

“See, Lovejoy? N’York’s way.” Busman rose from his chair, darkening the known world, nodded me along with him. We walked the screen-studded walls. “We see the goods come, charge a percennage. Only small, nuthin’ spectacular.”

“What’s a smurf, Busman?” I had to look upwards almost at right angles.

Folk nearby chuckled. A girl snorted in disbelief, hurriedly composed herself when Busman idly looked round.

“Smurf is a mule, Lovejoy. Carries the bag, see? Drugs, money fo’ washing in these clean white streets of ours, guns, anythin’ the man wants, see? Six cents on the dollar.”

“Who’s this man, then?”

He laughed so much he almost fell down, literally sagging helplessly. I had to try and prop the bloody nerk up. Nobody came to help, even though I cried out when my spine buckled, because they were all rolling in the aisles too. I got him to a chair at a screen showing the panel of long-distance arrivals and lent him my hankie so he could snort and wipe his eyes. What the hell had I said?

“The man’s who-evuh, Lovejoy,” he said. “Poh-lice hack businesses, right? Then they the man, see? Canada goods hack mebbe four cents on the dollar by transport’s bossman. Broker man’s boys spread rumours some bank’s foreclosin’ so he makes a little zill, he’s the man, see? Who-evuh.”

“Not just one person?”

“You catchin’ own, man!”

He strolled up deeper into the room. It was extensive. At the inner end a row of American pool tables. Trazz was there, allocating jobs to a small crowd of men, all sizes and shapes. We went through a doorway, along a corridor and into a comfortable living room. A woman about Trazz’s size came up smiling, got introduced.

“How d’you do, Lorrie?” I greeted. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Busman loved that. “We gotta gentleman here, no mistake. He sprunged me last week, that big society mouthpiece. Give him a drink.”

We rested in deep leather armchairs. I was given some hooch that made my eyes water. Lorrie was thrilled, seeing my gasp as evidence of sensitivity.

Busman enjoyed himself telling her how I’d got myself almost dissected by the maelstrom in the concourse. I worked out that we were somewhere deep below West 42nd Street, the bus station heaving and churning away way above our heads. I didn’t like the sensation. I looked round. No antiques, which was a disappointment.

“Is this all a part of…?”

“Sure is,” Busman said. ”They don’t call for the rent, is all.” He laughed. Lorrie laughed.

“Do they know this goes on?”

“Sure do, Lovejoy.” He explained to Lorrie, “He don’t know frum nuthin’ Lorrie. Like a chile, so say everythin’ two times but start over part way in, see? Tell him it. I gotta check Trazz not too vicious this time.” He went into an inner room which had more screens projecting from its walls.

She was fascinated, started to explain, repeating it slower as if I was gormless.

“You really don’t understand,” she marvelled. “I think it’s kinda sweet, y’know? Like…” She dug for a word. “Like innocent, y’know?”

Narked, I said I was following all right. She said hey sure, and went on telling me how Busman’s world worked. Cash defaulters had to be punished. Sarpi’s drug carriers arriving from the south today would be attacked, their merchandise seized. It was an illegal Customs and Excise.

“Why don’t the police stop it?” I said at one point, which called for more repetition, slower still, Lorrie painstakingly mouthing the words as if I’d gone deaf.

“Police got their own hack, see? Smurfers take care of them, like airlines, like property developers, building trades. Like merger capital, see? Like bullion mark-ups that happen of a sudden for no reason. Like movies that bomb, like million-dollar shows go turkey, a politician gets himself elected —”

“Elected?” I’d heard Yanks had universal suffrage.

“Sure. One’s elected, the others not paid enough, see?”

“The man?” I guessed shrewdly.

She was delighted. “You got it, Lovejoy! It’s always the man, see?”

I said, “Lorrie, I can’t thank you enough for your kindness and patience. I’m grateful.”

“Think nothing of it, Lovejoy,” she said shyly. ”It’s our pleasure.”

We talked of homes for a while, me saying about my cottage in England and trying hard to remember the price of groceries and all that so she could be outraged at differences higher or lower. Busman returned, downing a couple of whiskies more and saying that Trazz was putting too savage and that he’d have to go. He was proud that Lorrie had finally explained the way life worked. “She bright,” he said. I concurred. She was ten times brighter than me.

“Honey, Lovejoy in that shitty Benidormo,” she complained elegantly. “You not do something?”

“Thank you, love, but I’d rather stay there for a couple more nights, if that’s all right. I do appreciate your generosity.”

“You wants, you asks,” Busman rumbled benevolently. We went and I got an usher from Trazz to the upper world of life and pleasant New York skies. It was still a dream, but now tinged with dark-rimmed clouds.