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MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART EIGHT/Part Two

Published on February 22, 2010 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

I GET AN EDGE
PART TWO
MY “INVISIBLE ANGEL.”

 

It’s 1961. I’m 18 and I’ve peaked. Playing on the freshman basketball team I try everything to increase my vertical leap. Deep knee bends, stairway sprints, hops and skips, leg presses–nothing works. I still can’t get more than three fingers over the rim from a standing jump.

We fool around in bio lab, flicking the organs of a dissected fetal pig at the girls, who squeal obligingly. This enrages the professor. “Laugh while you can, boys,” he says, “because after the age of seventeen the male goes into rapid sexual decline. In her early thirties when the female has reached the height of her estral excitability you will be unable to satisfy her. You will be like the impotent chimps banished into the jungle by the younger males.” I bluster out of class, but am secretly haunted by the vision of females poised on their haunches while I scuttle, hunched, hairy and flaccid into Prospect Park, pursued by screeching studs.

And there is now a new frustration in my life: I cannot get better at chess. After a few months of rapid improvement I’ve hit the wall. Every night I challenge the players one or two levels above me and am humiliated.

Chess players browbeat and insult their opponents. It’s part of the game and anything goes. “You’re not even mediocre,” a bald DA named Jack shouts at me, slamming down the winning move.

An intern named Serge who comes up from Beekman Hospital in surgical blues screams in mock pain: “You are torturing me with your ignorance.” And traps my Queen.

Joe the Russian sticks a stubby yellowed finger in my face. “Don’t you see the train speeding down on you, patzer? You have no hope…”

I can think of nothing but chess. I buy more books, study more games. Each of my opponents has a favorite opening and defense. I spend hours preparing all possible responses. But still I lose.

In those pre steroid days I try caffeine and nicotine. A beatnik bongo player sells me a benzedrine inhaler for a dollar. He breaks it open and rolls the drug-soaked paper into a ball. “Eat it, man, you’ll rule the world.”

I sit at the table, a subway roaring in my brain. The drug fractures my focus. I hear every conversation around me. I look into the faces in the crowd and sense their contempt. Going home at dawn I replay the games I lost and cringe at the blunders I made. I’m so crazed I go four stations past my stop.

I am losing eight to ten dollars a night. With a net of $72 a week after taxes I’ll have to hit my secret stash. I’ve been saving that money to make my escape to Paris and literary eminence. I should stop now. Give up…But I can’t.

One night I am playing Ronald, a fat, smelly teenager who eats gooey baloney sandwiches, belches root beer and grabs the pieces with mayo-slicked fingers. Ronald is an Asberger’s hustler; I see him playing scrabble with the NYU kids at Washington Square fountain and Go with the old Asian guys from the restaurants. In a hurry to take my two dollars he plays the Queens Gambit, an opening which confounds weaker players. He moves quickly, egging me on. “C’mon, don’t prolong the misery…” After the opening moves he attacks my center. I panic. I’ve seen this variation in Alekhine vs. Capobianco, but I can’t remember the response. I decide to retreat. As I touch my Knight someone sneezes. A lanky guy with greasy shoulder length hair is standing behind Ronald. He’s a serious player. I’ve seen him at the big tables, leaning back to blow smoke rings while his opponent agonizes over a move. I’ve passed him looking away with a distracted air as an astonishing blonde in a cashmere coat clutches his sleeve, whispering urgently. He covers his mouth and shakes his head slightly.

Is it a signal? I touch another piece. He purses his lips and blinks , which I take for a “no.” There are a few more possible moves. I touch the pieces until he lowers his head, which I read as “yes.” I make the move.

Ronald jerks and scowls. I’ve stymied his plan. People mutter in admiration, a new sound to me. He makes a move. I touch a piece. My benefactor brushes his hair away from his face, which I take for a “what else?” I make the move and initiate a furious exchange which results in an even position.

Ronald does a quick calculation. It will take him another half hour to beat me,if he can, and that will cost him money. He wants to trap the other fish before they wander away.

“Okay, you got lucky,” he says. “It’s a draw…”

“That’ll be two dollars,” I say.

“It’s a push,” he says.

“A push is no gain, but a draw is a half point,” I say. The spectators, happy to take Ronald down a peg, back me up. “C’mon, a draw wins…” “Pay the man…”

There’s nothing a hustler hates more than to lose money. Ronald digs into his pocket and comes out with a crumpled dollar bill, which he throws at me. “Here’s a buck. That’s all you get.” And sneers up at the crowd of eager losers. “Next fish…”

I step away from the table. The guy turns away, which I take for a “don’t talk to me.”

At dawn he is sitting on a rail as I leave the park. He’s skinny. Blue veins run up his wrists to his shoulders. Sniffly with a big nose and bulging bloodshot eyes. He points to the book I’m carrying. “Myth of Sisyphus,” he says. “Is that for reading or impressing girls?”

“A little of both, “I say.

“How come you wear black?”

“I work at a funeral parlor in Brooklyn.”

“Only the dead know Brooklyn,” he says.

I have a feeling he’s testing me.

“Thomas Wolfe,” I say.

“I hate a hustler who can’t play,” he says. “Ronald picks on weak players. Next time we’ll clean him out.”

“Next time?”

He turns quickly down the block. “Let’s go, I don’t want anyone to see us.” As we walk he explains: “Look, you’re a B player. You’ll never get better…”

“Why not?”

“Chess is a prodigy’s game,” he says. “By the time I was five I was beating grown ups. Were you? From twenty to death there are no big jumps in skill. You just try to conserve…”

“If I’m just a B player why do you want me?” I ask.

“A B is better than 90% of the population.” He offers me a Gauloise, a noisome French cigarette that Belmondo smoked in Breathless. ” Nobody here will play me anymore so I’ll play through you. You’re good enough to win an occasional game without causing suspicion. I can get action on you in the crowd. We’ll split fifty fifty…”

“How do you know I’ll win?” I ask.

“Signals,” he says. “It’s a simple system. You can learn it in ten minutes…”

“You mean cheating?”

“What are you, a naive moralist?” he says.” Every competitive athlete, game player, politician is looking for an edge…”

“Within the rules,” I say.

“Nobody obeys the rules willingly. That’s why there are referees. Part of the skill in winning is hiding your edge.”

“I want to beat these guys on my ability,” I say.

“You’re not good enough,” he says. “At least you can get the money and the prestige…”

He senses me faltering. “Look, what if God sent an invisible angel that only you could see to stand over your shoulder and give you the moves? That would be okay wouldn’t it?”

It’s like a forced move in chess. There’s only one answer.

“I guess so.”

“Well he sent me” he says. “I am your invisible angel.”

NEXT: I STEAL SOME GLORY

 

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART EIGHT/Part One

Published on February 10, 2010 in archives. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I GET AN “EDGE”
PART ONE

It’s 1961 and Brooklyn is a living, breathing Antiques Road Show. We’re sitting on trillions and don’t know it. Everything in my parents’ house–from the fiesta ware, the Heywood Wakefield furniture, oriental figurines, candy dishes, Nelson clocks, Danish lamps, silver serving spoons from the “old country”–will be a classic collectible in the future. My tipsy uncle careens around our cluttered living room. “Better not break anything, Sammy…” my mother warns. “Why don’t you get rid of this junk?” he yells back.

The streets are lined with cars that in thirty years will be bid up to a half a million by Saudi sheiks. Now they’re just “lemons” with lousy brakes that won’t start in cold weather.

I give an elderly neighbor $350 for his 1957 Chevy Bel Air, I hate its mint green color so I pay Earl Sheib $39.95 to paint it black. I hate driving its “three on the shaft,” and burn out the clutch. I park it with the doors and windows open on a dark street alongside Prospect Park, notorious haunt of thieves and muggers. In a year, a vandal– or anonymous ill-wisher– will flip a lit cigarette through the back window and turn the car into a fireball.

Today, a ’57 Bel Air is worth between $55,000 and 100,000.00

My grandfather leaves me a battered leather box full of silver dollar and half dollar pieces that he had been collecting since 1928. I use them to buy gas and cigarettes when I’m short of cash. In a year I’m down to one silver dollar, which I save for good luck.

Estimated value: $100K.

I have been an obsessive game player since childhood. At the age of eight I was flipping baseball cards with my friends. Closest to the wall won. “Topping” or landing on top of another card won two cards. A “leaner,” or leaning a card against the wall brought in three. Between flipping and trading I amassed a complete set of Topps cards. Plus I had the lineups of the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees and New York Giants right down to the coaches. I would lay them on my bed and replay the games for hours.

At the age of ten I took up marbles. We dug holes in the dirt called “pots.” You had to roll into the pot first and then roll out to hit and win the opponent’s marble. I wore bald spots into the knees of my corduroy pants, but won over two hundred “pee wees, immies and puries” –classic marbles which have avid collectors all over the world.

In 1963 when I move in with a woman eight years older than me my mother goes on a ritual rampage to erase my presence. She boils my sheets, gives my clothes, books and records away and chucks everything else she finds in my room, including a shoebox full of the Topps baseball cards, a bowling bag where I keep hundreds of marbles and my collection of 150 Classic Comics, which had been gathering dust under my bed.

Estimated value 75 to 100 grand.

My new obsession is chess. It entered me like a virus at the same time I got my draft card and realized I would have to stay in college forever to avoid the military. My every waking thought is devoted to openings and variations. I dream games in which the perfect move appears to me and the onlookers applaud. I study books on strategy, memorize the famous games and read about the great eccentric champions–Alekhine, Capobianco, Bobby Fisher, the Brooklyn wunderkind .The sight of a checker board tile floor sends me into a trance in which I stare at the squares visualizing moves.

My life is now about marking time until I can play chess. In the morning I doze through my classes at Brooklyn College. In the afternoon I move bodies and direct mourners at the Riverside Memorial Chapel. At ten in the evening my day begins. Still in my undertaker’s black suit I drive across the Brooklyn Bridge to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. I pull into the first open spot, knowing I will return to find one or two parking tickets, flapping like trapped pigeons on my windshield. Under the street lamps in the southwestern part of the park, a crowd has gathered to watch the chess players. From early spring to late fall, the games are on, 24-7. There are about thirty stone tables, the boards etched into their tops, each manned by a “strong” player. By tacit consent the best ones have the tables closest to the street lights. The weaker players, derisively known as “patzers,” are consigned to tables in semi darkness on the outskirts.

The dominant players act with more privileged disdain than any movie star or billionaire I will ever meet. There is Duval, an elderly Haitian in dark suit, streetlight gleaming off his smooth brown pate, who sets up ornate ivory pieces and a chess clock and dispatches all comers at a dollar a twenty minute game. “Fish!” he cries, slapping down the pieces. “You lose!” Next to him is Jimmy, hunched and intense with prematurely gray Toscanini hair. Five dollars for unlimited time, but when the loser makes a bad move he mutters “blunder,” and forces him to resign. There is Joe “the Russian.” Bald with a drooping gray mustache, he puffs furiously on Parliament cigarettes as he bullies his opponents. “Stupid move, patzer .Don’t insult my intelligence…” And Fritz, a massive black dude with a full beard, who analyzes every move. “You think I’m gonna do this so you can do that, but I’m gonna do this and you can’t do nothin’ about it…”

Every other game has an element of the miraculous. You can throw up a buzzer beater that bounces off the rim and drops in. Hit a ball off the handle that just clears the infield to score the winning run. You can make a crazy shot and sink the nine ball. Or draw a Royal Flush and beat a lock poker player. But chess is unforgiving. There are no lucky moves. The better player wins every time. The hustlers in the park know this so they can afford to be arrogant. When a player sits down and says “I’ve been watching you. I know your weaknesses,” they can roar back “I have no weaknesses!” And trounce him in twenty moves.

I am determined to get better. For months I neglect my school work, stop seeing my friends and don’t open letters from Selective Service, probably scheduling my Army physical. I immerse myself in chess, studying during the day and playing all night. A girl I know comes and sits next to me, joining the girlfriends of some of the other players in what is at that point an all-male obsession. One night I realize she hasn’t been around for awhile. But I don’t care. I’ve made a breakthrough. Suddenly, I can see four, sometimes five moves ahead. I am beating players who used to beat me. It all amounts to a few dollars a night, enough for four gallons of gas (24 cents a gallon) and a hot roast beef sandwich at the Cube Steak Diner on Sixth Ave with a little profit left over. But the prestige is enormous. I still haven’t traveled the light years to the main tables, but I’ve moved up to one that had enough spill to illuminate half the board. I am greeted as I walk into the park. I see the weaker players talking about me.

 

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART SEVEN

Published on January 25, 2010 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE
PART SIX
THE SECRET OF THE CRYPTIC MATCHBOOK

 

Chapels are filling. Mourners are milling. Rabbis are chafing. Patience is waning. Thoughts turn to the lox and bagels, the chopped liver and pickled herring–the rugelach and Russian coffee cake that await the bereaved at the end of this long day. But the caskets stay in the service elevator. The lockstep march of funerals has abruptly halted. Every employee of Riverside Memorial Chapels is jammed in the back room watching my interrogation.

I’m downplaying the incident, but they’ll have none of it.

“Did she scratch your wrist with her nail?” Aiello/Shmattner asks.

“Maybe accidentally,” I say. “She didn’t want to fall on the ramp…”

DeSousa/Strauss grabs my hand. “Did she gently rub your palm with her fingertip, like this? That’s the universal fuck me signal.”

I hesitate…

“He don’t remember,” says Cesario, the mobbed up chauffeur, full of contempt. “You were scared, weren’t you kid?”

“Did she ask your name first or did you tell her?” someone asks.

“She asked me first, I think,” I say.

“You think?”

Albino pushes his way in, flushed and indignant. “You didn’t do what I tolya, didja?”

“I made conversation,” I say.

“Didja look in her eye and imagine her takin’ her clothes off like I tolya? Didja imagine her pullin’ that dress over head…?” He shakes his head, mourning my lost opportunity. “While you were makin’ small talk didja imagine that soft white skin, those boobs swayin’ to and fro. ‘Cause that’s part of it. You hafta send a signal. I told you that…” He addresses the crowd. “I tole him to do that…” He waves an accusing finger. “Didja leave an opening where you had a good excuse to call her? You didn’t, didja?”

My voice cracks. “It all happened so fast..”.

“Was she lookin’ at your crotch when she talked to you?” DeSousa/Strauss asks.

“I couldn’t see her eyes, she was wearing dark glasses.”

“When she bumped you in the elevator, did she rub against your pants ?” someone asks.

“I’m not sure. You know how that elevator kinda jerks when its starts…”

“Like you’re gonna be jerkin’ for the rest of your life,” Cesario says and turns on Sconzo. “See, that’s what you get for sendin’ a boy on a man’s job.”

“He won the lottery,” Sconzo says. “Besides, what makes you think she’d fall for you? She’s already had one guinea in her life–Joe Dimaggio– and kicked him out.”

I have been shunted to a corner of the back office, dismissed as the the least reliable witness to my own encounter.

Arguments break out all over the room.

First the coat:

“Dyed mink,” Albino says.

“Dyed mink is what a Jew dentist buys his wife when he’s caught cheatin’,” Rizzo says. “This is Marilyn Monroe. They give her the coat just to wear it around. It’s a ten thousand dollar sable.”

Every moment of the experience is deconstructed.

“She likes the kid,” Albino says. “I seen her lean over the balcony and take her coat off to show him her ass.”

“She was waving to the old man,” I correct timidly from exile.

“This is Marilyn fuckin’ Monroe,” Albino cries out on agony. “You think she don’t know what she’s doin’ with her ass?”

Rizzo snaps his fingers as he remembers. “Yeah! She took her coat off when she got into the car. And shook it right in his face…” He shoves me. “She likes you, whaddya arguin’?”

They grab the matchbook out of my hand.

“She dropped this for him,” Albino says.

“It fell out of her pocket,” I say.

“She dropped it on on purpose, you little putz!”

They examine it like archaeologists with a puzzling find.

“Danny’s Hideaway,” Cesario says. “That’s Dimaggio’s favorite hangout.”

“Maybe they’re gettin’ back together.”

Cesario offers more inside information. “Danny’s is a protected joint. Frank Costello said they didn’t hafta have the union…”

“Betcha she’s bangin’ Costello,” Rizzo says. “These movie stars love the tough guys. Bugsy Siegel banged Lana Turner…”

“Longie Zwillman banged Jean Harlow,” says Cesario.

“Look at this!” Rizzo says. And turns to me with a smile. “You’re in, you lucky bastard.”

It’s a phone number behind a row of unused matches. An “M” has been hastily scrawled over a number that is smudged and hard to read.

This is 1961 and all phone numbers start with letters which give an idea of the part of the city where the phone is located. This number begins with MU…

Rizzo snaps his finger again. “Murray Hill. Midtown, East Side. She lives there, right by the river…My brother-in-law dropped her off in his cab…”

Cesario grabs the matchbook. “The numbers are blurry. Like she wrote it at the bar and it dropped in a puddle or somethin’…”

Rizzo grabs it back. “If it fell in a bar puddle how come the matches are dry? She wrote it in a hurry with a ballpoint pen is what happened.” He squints hard at the number. “Can’t make out the last two digits…” He hands the book back to me. “You gotta dial every combination…You’ll get it.”

“Call her,” someone urges. It swells to a chorus.

“Call her!”

“Can’t do it cold.” Albino says. “Too obvious. It’ll put her off.”

Voices are raised in protest. “But she wants him to call,” Rizzo says.

Albino, raises a silencing hand. “I know how this is done, alright?” He’s a dwarf with a comb over and a hairy wart on his beak, but everyone accepts his authority. “You don’t wanna spook her by bein’ too anxious. You gotta have an excuse…” He leans back, eyes closed… “Go into the lost and found. Pick up somethin’ she mighta dropped like a glove. You call her. This is Heywood, from Riverside, Miss Monroe. Did you by any chance leave a glove?”

His voice gets breathy. “I think I did, she says. Then you say I can bring it over if you wish…She says, sure, why don’t you come by tomorrow afternoon?”

He’s lost in a reverie.

“Matinees are the best times,” he says. “Don’t worry about bein’ a superman. She’ll do everything…Then one day you say I need a suit for my cousin’s wedding. She slips you the cash…” He opens his eyes with a beatific smile…”You’re set…”

Rizzo pinches my cheek. “Look at the fatchim on this kid. Cheer up, you’re set.”

They were romantics with an unshakable faith in male power. But I was a timorous boy, convinced nothing momentous could ever happen to me. I never called.

When they asked I said a man kept answering.

“Some wise guy got there first, and he’s keepin’ her out of circulation,” Albino said.

I carried the matchbook around with me for a few years. I would take it out and say: “Marilyn Monroe gave this to me.”

 

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART SEVEN

Published on January 13, 2010 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE
PART FIVE
I TAKE MARILYN TO THE SECRET PLACE

She’s Marilyn Monroe. But she has to go.

We have twenty funerals today. The Miller mourners have departed, leaving wisps of smoke, gum wrappers and crushed dixie cups. Now the reposing room has to be turned over. Porters are poised in the doorway with dustpans, vacuum cleaners and air fresheners. Behind them Shmattner/Aiello and Plotzstein/Celiberti have wheeled out another casket containing another freshly embalmed, cosmetized and dressed decedent. In the lobby a new bereaved family is waiting to enter the room and receive visitors.

I take a baby step toward Marilyn.

“Uh…The service is about to begin…”

She has been standing under light in the casket alcove like an actress on stage. She blinks and stares at me in utter disbelief.

“Excuse me…?”

In a life to come I will realize how presumptuous I must have seemed. Nobody tells Marilyn Monroe what to do. She is famously late and everyone waits. Directors, movie stars, studio heads, columnists–she even showed up late to sing “Happy Birthday ” to JFK.

“The service is in the main chapel,” I say. Another non-sequitur, but Marilyn understands.

“Look…I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Is there a private room or something?”

There is a small two-seat opera box overlooking the chapel. No one ever sits there. It’s used as a make out spot with the girls picked up in the bowling alley across the street.

“We have a special reserved balcony area for private viewing,” I say. “Mr. Shmattner, would you tell Mr. Squires I’m taking Miss Monroe to the special balcony,” I say.

The room is on the other side of the building, which means another trip down the service elevator through the basement. We pass the tohora room where the watcher stands over the shrouded body chanting in fervent prayer.

“Does he do this all day long?” Marilyn asks.

“He’s supposed to,” I say.

In the embalming room Krieger/Carraciola and Strauss/De Sousa are eating huge hero sandwiches, tomato sauce dripping. Behind them two cadavers raised up on the tables, seem to be staring covetously at their lunch.

A small elevator takes us to a dark vestibule on the second floor. There’s the distinct odor of stale beer and drugstore perfume. I open the door. Heads turn in the chapel below; it’s amazing how Marilyn broadcasts her presence. Everybody looks up at her, but Arthur, who stares straight ahead. I open a folding chair. Marilyn slips her coat over her shoulders. The rabbi waits until she is settled before he begins.

“I’ll be outside,” I whisper.

She doesn’t seem to hear me.

In the vestibule, Albino’s cigarette is glowing.

“She likes you,” he whispers. “See how she put her hand on your wrist? Didja make small talk like I told you?”

“I told her I was working my way through college…”

“Keep it up. Give her an opening to make a date…”

“But what can I say?”

“Tell her you wanna be an actor and can she recommend a class,” he says. “She’ll say the Actors Studio where she goes and maybe she can put in a word. Get your foot in the door. Make your breaks…Don’t be a schmuck all your life.”

The rabbi is a pro, no long eulogies. Soon, I hear the announcement: “The funeral cortege will be leaving from the back parking lot.” Marilyn is leaning over the balcony, waving to Mr. Miller. He beckons. She shakes her head and blows him a kiss. In a moment the chapel is empty. The casket is moved behind a curtain to a covered driveway where it will be loaded into the hearse. Another casket is wheeled in from behind another curtain. Flower pieces are arrayed. Shmattner/Aiello steps back to make sure the arrangement is perfect. The chapel door is opened and a new group of mourners ushered in.

“It’s like a funeral factory in here,” Marilyn says.

Is she giving me an opening?

“Twenty funerals,” is all I can reply..

She shrugs back into her coat. Does she want me to help? What if I try and she brushes me off like she did to Albino?

“Can you take me back to my car?” she asks.

“Certainly…”

We go back down in the elevator. She bumps against me? Is she making a move? Could be the air. People get woozy in funeral parlors. We get a lot of fainters.

In the basement the porters are washing an old Packard hearse. Marilyn steps gingerly through the soapy puddles and takes my wrist between her thumb and forefinger, grazing me with her nail. A little electric chill shoots through me. Did she do it on purpose? I don’t know, but she just made it onto my fantasy team.

The cortege rides alongside of us as we walk to her car. Every face in every window is turned to Marilyn. She puts on her dark glasses and speeds up, her heels clacking on the sidewalk. The chauffeur jumps out to open the door.

Some guys ride by in an Impala convertible. “We love you Marilyn,” they shout. She waves, absently in their general direction. Then turns to me.

“You’ve been very patient with me, Mr…What’s your name, anyway?”

“Heywood,” I say.

“Heywood,” she says. “Is that your mother’s maiden name or something?”

“My father named me after a famous newspaper writer, Heywood Broun,” I say.

“Well, what do they call you for short?”

I can’t believe I’ve hit a bonanza of small talk over my name.

“Woody,” I say. “I get made fun of a lot. You know Woody the Woodpecker or Hey-is-for horses…Heystacks Calhoun–he’s a wrestler. Stuff like that…”

“You poor baby,” she says. “Well, at least, no one will ever forget your name…”

The chauffeur has been holding the door during this exchange. Big guy with a booze dark face, he’d just love to step between us and give me a shove. “Is this guy botherin’ you, Miss Monroe? Take a walk, pal…” Instead, we’re having a pleasant conversation. And now he gapes as she reaches up and strokes my face. “Goodbye Heywood…”

Her fingers are warm and moist. “Goodbye, ” I say.

She shrugs out of the coat and throws it in the back seat. Her butt bobbles as she climbs into the car. In another life I’ll become an expert at spotting panty lines, but for now I’m convinced she is naked under that dress.

Something has dropped out of her coat pocket. A matchbook. I retrieve it as the car pulls away. I can call out to her, stop the car and return it. Instead, I put it in my pocket and saunter back to the chapel where everybody is clustered at the door eager to hear my story.

NEXT: THE MYSTERY OF THE CRYPTIC MATCHBOOK

 

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART SEVEN

Published on December 31, 2009 in archives. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE

PART FOUR

I GIVE MARILYN THE GRAND TOUR

 

I have a guilty secret: I’m not attracted to Marilyn Monroe. I’m a serial self-abuser when it comes to her earthy imitators–Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield. I can sit through seven cartoons, a newsreel and a Randolph Scott western just to get a second look at Jane Russell in The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown. After I see Janet Leigh in Psycho, I lock myself in my room for days, only coming out for meals. I’ve spent so much time in the shower with Yvonne De Carlo I’m getting webbed fingers. But Marilyn just isn’t on my Fantasy team. She has an aloof, distracted look like she’s getting messages from another dimension. I can’t fit her into any imaginary scenarios and it bothers me. I fear for my masculinity.

Marilyn is standing so close I can smell her perfume. It’s a warm April day, but she is wearing an ankle length fur coat, opened slightly onto a black dress. Her breasts seem to quiver with the slightest movement. I’ve never known a woman, from 11 to 90, to go braless so I am transfixed. No jewelry, nail polish, make up or lipstick. Her skin isn’t blushing ivory as it is in Technicolor, but pasty with a tiny pimple here and there. Her eyes are invisible behind the dark glasses and her white blonde hair disappears in the sunlight.

“Miss Monroe?” I ask.

She gives me the “Duh” smile.

“I’d like to see the the Miller family?” she says.

“I will direct you,” I say with my best funereal politesse.

“Do we have to go through there?” She gestures toward the milling lobby. News of her arrival must have spread through the ether. People are peering through the glass doors. A traffic jam is forming on Coney Island Avenue. A mounted cop rides out of the park at full gallop. ” I don’t want to draw attention,” she says. “Is there another way?”

“We can take the back elevator,” I say.

I lead her around the corner. My colleagues are standing at the office window, waving and shaking their heads. In the parking lot the chauffeurs step out of their limos, putting on their caps. Sconzo runs out the back door, buttoning his coat.

“Mr. Gould,” he calls

“Excuse me, it’s my boss,” I say and leave her on the ramp leading to the basement.

“Are you fuckin’ crazy?” Sconzo whispers.

“She didn’t want to draw attention so I’m taking her through the back elevators,” I say.

“You’re gonna walk her right by the embalming room for Chrissake,” he says with a panicky look. “Alright, alright, I’ll call down and tell them to close the door…” He shoves me. “Go, go…”

It’s been fifteen seconds and already Marilyn has drawn a crowd. A column of horseback riders from the Prospect Park Riding Academy next door rides by. There is a chorus of “whoas!” The horses stop and plop. Bowlers pour out of the Park Circle Lanes across the street, some still holding their balls.

“Hope I’m not causing any bother,” she says.

“Of course not,” I say.

She teeters on her heels and grabs my wrist as we walk down the steep ramp. The sunlight stops at the garage overhang. It is suddenly very dark and shivery. I walk her past the hearses down a narrow hallway. Marshall, the porter emerges from the supply closet lighting a cigarette. He gapes, match in midair.

“Hi,” Marilyn says.

At the end of the hallway is the harsh light of the embalming room. Two bodies are on the white porcelain embalming tables. Marilyn stops for a moment. A dark figure–probably Marshall– whooshes by and closes the door, but we can still hear the tinny radio playing rock and roll.

“Is that the morgue?” Marilyn asks.

“The embalming room,” I say.

She walks on ahead of me.

“Then, what’s this?”

I realize with a jolt that we haven’t closed the door of the tohorah room where Orthodox Jews prepare their dead for burial.

“That’s for the very religious people,” I say. “They have a special ceremony…”

Marilyn is staring into a small bare room where a shrouded body lies under a bare bulb on a long wooden table. It is a female–we can see the sparse white hair against the bony skull. An elderly woman is bustling around the body with a sponge.

“What’s she doing?” Marilyn asks.

“Purifying the body,” i say. “You see the religious people don’t believe in embalming. They wash the body in vinegar and eggs and bury the person within twenty-four hours.”

A bent old man with a white beard comes out of a dark corner, mumbling. Marilyn gasps and reaches for me. “Who’s that?”

“That’s the shomer,” I say. “The religious people believe the deceased should never be left alone. This man watches the body and prays over it…”

“He scared me to death,” she says.

The service elevator is full of casket dollies. I push them out and escort Marilyn in. The door creaks slowly shut. The cables squeal and the elevator labors.

“You know a lot about this,” Marilyn says.

“I’m working my way through college,” I say. It’s a senseless response, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Oh,” she says.

The door creaks open on the second floor. I lead her down a crowded hallway. Mourners from other funerals are jostling for a look.

As we approach the Miller family room Marilyn steps behind me. Nobody ever wants to enter a reposing room. No one knows how to condole. I suddenly feel protective.

“Excuse us please,” I say.

The crowd around the door parts. An old man staggers up from a sofa near the casket.

“Marilyn.”

“Papa.”

He falls into her arms.

“They’re very close,” a woman whispers. “He’s the father she never had…”

The visitors step back as she leads him to the couch.

“Watch, see, if she even says a word to Arthur,” a woman says. “From what I hear it’s not amicable.”

Mr. Miller reaches under Marilyn’s coat to embrace her.

“That’s right Izzie, get a good handful,” someone says.

It’s a bent, squinty old man with Maalox crust around his lips.

“Shut up Ben…”

This from a stout old lady with swollen ankles in a black dress with a lace collar.

“Wonder who I can get when you go,” the old man says.

“I’m warning you, Ben…”

The old man prods me in the ribs with thick working man fingers. “Hey kid, you booking this? Can you get me Mitzi Gaynor for her funeral?”

Albino, the semi-dwarf with a beak nose and patent leather hair, steps into the room and clears his throat, dramatically.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, will you all please take your seats in the chapel now for the Miller services. Only the immediate family need remain.”

The visitors file out, leaving Marilyn, the old man and a young women who I guess is the daughter. The tall guy standing by the window must be the son, the famous playwright, Arthur Miller.

Albino gives me the let-me-show-you-how-it’s done wink. He tries to take Marilyn by the arm.

“If you’ll come with me, Miss Monroe…”

But she pulls away from him…”Wait…” And goes to the tall man by the window. He stares down at her as if he doesn’t understand what she’s saying. She turns away and looks around like she’s lost.

“Come Marilyn, sit with me,” the old man says.

“No, no, Papa, I’ll see you later,” she says.

Reluctantly, Albino, leads the family out of the room.

Now it’s just the two of us. Protocol dictates that the last visitor be out of the room before the casket is moved.

“Do you wish to be seated?” I ask Marilyn.

“No, no, wait,” she says.

Aiello and Celiberti appear in the doorway.

“Mr. Shmatzner, Mr. Plotzstein,” I call. “You can come in…”

They enter…”Excuse us…”

As they are wheeling the casket out, Marilyn turns to me.

“Stay with me, please…”

NEXT: I TAKE MARILYN TO THE SECRET PLACE

 

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART SEVEN

Published on December 23, 2009 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I STEAL A MATCHBOOK FROM MARILYN MONROE
PART THREE
I BUY A TOE TAG FOR MARILYN

Hollywood has names for them. The “double-takers” –the ones who look familiar so you look again and still can’t remember their names. The “isn’t that,” or “wasn’t he in” celebrities. I’ll learn those categories in a life to come. Now it’s 1961 in the Riverside Memorial Chapel across from Prospect Park, and we get plenty of double-takers. Comedians, supporting actors, politicians–a slight thrill of recognition and they melt into the crowd.

But everybody in the world knows Marilyn. Every man has fantasized a lurid encounter with her. Every woman has wondered what it must be like to have every man in the room lusting after you. Gay men, too, I suppose, but they are still in very deep cover.

How much seed has been spilled over Marilyn’s calendar? How often has she substituted for a humdrum partner?

And now she’s coming to a funeral. She’ll walk through that door and one of us will be there to escort her.

Thirty guys are jammed into the tiny back office, each hoping to be the lucky one.

Sconzo, the day manager, originally appointed himself to the job. But he has been shouted down by the mob.

“Okay, we’ll make it democratic,” he says.

He takes out a handful of toe tags, the name tags, tied to the toes of the deceased to identify them.

“Everybody pays a five dollar entry fee and gets a tag,” he says.

There is a roar of protest, but Sconzo doesn’t waver.

“If you guys give me a hard time I’ll pull rank and you can all take a walk,” he says. “You buy a ticket for the Irish Sweepstakes, don’t ya? Well, this is the Marilyn Monroe Sweepstakes…”

“Yeah, but five bucks,” whines Aiello, a young apprentice.

“You give three bucks to that fat old hooer on Pitkin Avenue,” Sconzo says. “You won’t pony up a fin for Marilyn Monroe?”

Out come the fives.

“No owsies,” Sconzo decrees.

“But I only have three bucks on me,” says Rizzo, the grave robber.

“So go borrow a deuce from your wife,” says Sconzo.

The limo drivers in their dark coats and gray striped pants take a flyer. Earl, the handyman in his greasy work clothes, promises to rush home and put on a suit if he wins. The black porters, Marshall, Bill and Walter, right off the tobacco fields of South Carolina, watch from the doorway. Sconzo waves to them.

“You guys in?”

“Who you kiddin’?” Marshall says.” You just gonna palm our tags.”

“If you win, you win,” Sconzo says.

The porters caucus, still mistrustful, and decide to buy one ticket with all three names on it.

“If we win, we’ll pick the guy,” Marshall says.

We write our names on the tags. Sconzo puts them in a trash can and starts to draw.

“No, no,” says Rizzo, also a card cheat and a thief. “You could crimp your own tag that way.”

“Mix ‘em up,” we say.

Sconzo empties another can and pours the tags from one into the other, mixing before and after each pour. After the fourth pour he looks up.

“Okay?”

“Okay draw…”

“Draw already…”

He reaches into the can and comes out with a tag. “And the winner is…Gould…”

“GOULD???”

A chorus of groans, a shaking of disgusted heads.

“The kid?”

“Marone, what a waste.”

I am pushed, reviled.

“He wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

A shove from Albino, a semi-dwarf with a banana nose, who fancies himself a great lover.

“Tell the truth, kid. Didja ever get laid?”

I take a beat too long to answer.

“Sure I did…”

Albino reaches up and clocks me with the heel of his hand. “Fatchim! I’m not talkin’ about a handjob under the stairs.” His face screws up and he blinks back a tear. “I’m talkin’ about makin’ love to a real woman.” And turns away in despair. “This is a tragedy. A fuckin’ tragedy…”

Cesario, a hearse driver, shoves a handful of bills at me. “Cut the crap. Thirty bucks for your tag.”

The room gets quiet. Ceasario is rumored to have mob connections.

Still, I waver. I am stung by the sneers at my manhood, my inexperience. I know that if I surrender the ticket I will be seen as a coward.

Then, Sconzo comes to my rescue.

“He won it fair and square,” he says.

Cesario turns to him. “And I’m makin’ him a fair offer,” he says.

“No propositions,” Sconzo says. He checks his watch. “Funeral’s at one. They said she’d be here at twelve-forty five. Better get out there to meet her.”

Cesario is humbled, his power broken. He pockets his money and walks out. In a second the mood has changed. Everybody is grooming me for my big moment.

“Button your jacket…”

“Stand straight and look her in the eye.”

“If you get a chance to shake her hand, see if you can put her finger on her pulse. That gives broads chills…”

Albino takes me aside with an urgent look. “When you talk to her, keep a normal face, you know what I mean, but try to imagine her takin’ her clothes off. You know like pullin’ the skirt to unhook the stockings. Unbuttonin’ the blouse…Just keep thinkin’ it, y’see and that’ll give her the idea…” He breathes a blast of expresso and Lucky Strikes in my face. “Okay?”

“Okay…”

Mourners mill in the lobby. Nobody knows that Marilyn Monroe is coming today.

It’s a warm April day. The chapel is on a traffic circle that feeds to the park, the Parade Grounds baseball fields and Coney Island Avenue.

A charcoal Lincoln Continental Convertible, top down, comes around the circle. In the front seat, a chauffeur with a gray cap. In the back seat, a blonde wearing dark glasses. The Continental pulls up to the curb.

I’m frozen.

I hear Albino’s anguished whisper. “Shmuck! Go grab the door for her.”

Too late. The chauffeur opens the door, and offers a helping hand.

Marilyn Monroe steps out and looks around.

 

NEXT: MARILYN GETS THE GRAND TOUR

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART SIX

Published on November 12, 2009 in archives. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

STEALING FROM THE DEAD

It’s 1961 and the CIA has decided to ruin my life. It wasn’t enough that they created Islamic fundamentalism to overthrow the Government of Iran, provoked, funded and then ignored insurrections in Eastern Europe, slipped LSD to unsuspecting dissidents, destroyed democracy in Guatemala to save United Fruit, masterminded a disastrous invasion of Cuba to prevent it from falling into the Soviet orbit half a planet away, etc. Now the alcoholic Yalies who run the agency have managed to convince new president John F. Kennedy that military intervention in Vietnam is an absolute necessity. Fighting International Communism is just an excuse. They really want to get me in their clutches.

I’m 18, a simple creature, one phylum above a paramecium. My moods travel between hunger, lust and dazed perplexity. During the day I snooze undisturbed in the overheated classrooms of Brooklyn College. At 5:30 I report to the Riverside Memorial Chapel across from Prospect Park. From 6 to 9 I direct visitors to reposing rooms. From 9 to midnight I load a Chevy panel truck with bodies collected from homes and hospitals and bound for the basement embalming room. Sometimes I am accompanied by Marshall, the night porter, a wiry black dude from the tobacco fields of South Carolina. Fastidious as an ancient Hebrew, Marshall refuses to touch a cadaver. He watches, arms folded, as I mummy-wrap two sheets around the deceased before gingerly helping me transfer it to a body bag.

My other partner is Rizzo, a limo driver working doubles to pay his shylock. By his own proud admission Rizzo is a gambler, adulterer and “cat boigler.” He is shaped like an eggplant, his hairline begins a wisp above his eyebrows, his oft-broken nose zig-zags across his face and he smacks his thick lips with glee when recounting a sexual conquest.

But Rizzo is frustrated. “Didja ever wonder why there’s no money on a stiff?” he asks me one night. “You go into a bedroom and there’s no loose change on the night table. Look in a dead lady’s purse. Nothin! A guy in a nice suit drops dead on the subway and his wallet’s empty? That’s not normal. Remember last year when the TWA plane crashed into the United over Staten Island? 100 bodies laying on the streets in Park Slope and not a dime on any one of ‘em. Everybody’s goes out with a little walkin’ around money in their pocket, don’t they? How comes stiffs are always clean?”

I confess I never thought of it.

“That guy who keeled over on the subway,” Rizzo says.” The passengers go through his pockets. Then the cops come and give him a toss. The ambulance guys have a look. And the vultures in the morgue pick the bones. By the time we show up there’s nothin’ left…”

Rizzo shakes his head at the perfidy of humankind. “You think they’d leave a coupla dollars for the sweepers…”

Rizzo brings little things to my attention. The indentation on a right ring finger where a heavy ring had undoubtedly lain for years before it was brutally yanked off. The faded circle on a left wrist where a watch had been. A broochless dress. “Didja ever see one of these old broads without a little pin or somethin’?”

He is especially incensed by Shultz, the morgue attendant at Jewish Chronic Diseases. Shultz is a scowling hunchback, who won’t trade pleasantries and never helps take bodies off the slabs. “He looks like Rumplefuckin’stiltskin, don’t he?” Rizzo says. “Betcha he’s got a nice taste stashed away. Somebody’s gonna hit his house one of these nights while he’s workin, mark my words.”

One night Shultz pulls open a drawer on a big, middle-aged man. Mound of fish white belly, crinkly gray hair on his chest. I’ve been told that people who die suddenly have their last living expression on their faces and this guy looks like he was really happy.

“Prick always puts the fat guys on the top row,” Rizzo says as we horse the body out of the drawer.

On the way out Schultz hands us a shopping bag with the man’s effects. In the truck, Rizzo looks at the crumpled suit, shoes, stained underwear with disgust. The jacket is empty, the trouser pockets have been turned inside out.

“No respect for the dead. They’d take the pennies off his eyes, but they’ll leave the shorts where the poor bastard crapped himself.”

He rips out the soles of the man’s shoes…”Nuttin!” Shakes one sock out. Then the other…

“Hey look at this…”

A ticket has fallen out of the sock.

“It’s from Belmont,” Rizzo says. “The guy played the daily double for Chrissake…”

“Maybe that’s why his pockets were empty,” I say. “He lost all his money.”

Rizzo snorts at my ignorance. “A guy don’t hide a losing ticket in his sock.” But then his eyes narrow and he puts the ticket in his pocket. “Ah, you’re probably right.”

An hour later I’ve smoked a reefer and am enjoying a meatball hero in the embalming room when Rizzo sneaks in. “Can I talk to ya for a second and drags me out to the garage. “Okay, you little prick, ” he says. “I’m tellin’ you because I don’t want you to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time…That was a winning ticket. The guy hit the double–Handsome Teddy and Sayonara Baby.”

“How much did it pay?” I ask.

He shoves me with the heel of his hand. “What are you, a big fuckin’ handicapper all of a sudden? It paid thirty-eight hundred, but you ain’t a full partner because I found it and you thought it was a loser. I’ll give you a hundred bucks to keep your mouth shut. And…” He gets a shrewd look. “Another hundred plus gas money if you go to the track and cash it in.”

As always my timidity trumps my greed. “I don’t wanna get in trouble…”

He pokes me again. “No trouble. I’m just busy tomorrow…Alright, you little chickenshit, if you don’t wanna make an extra C-note that’s your lookout…”

The meatballs soon combine with the marijuana aperitif and I repair to the one of the reposing rooms to sleep away the rest of my shift. But I am shaken awake. Two shadowy forms are standing over me. My mind screams. Cops!

“Did you remove the body of Sherman Flinker from Jewish Chronic?”

“I don’t remember the name…”

“What did you do with the ticket you found?”

I yawn and cover my fear with pretend drowsiness. “I didn’t find…”

“Your partner says you found a winning ticket from Belmont,” a cop says.

I calm down. Rizzo would never give me up because he knows I would implicate him. The cops have overplayed.

“I didn’t find nothin’,” I says.

“Mr. Flinker’s wife says he called her from the track all excited ’cause he hit the double,” a cop says. “But she couldn’t find the ticket in his effects…”

Years of lying to parents, teachers and lately to girls have taught me to stick to my story.

“I didn’t find nothin’,” I say.

A cop grabs me by the shirt with a hard hand “Sit up…” He shines the lamp in my face. “You better not try to cash that ticket you little wiseass!”

Next night Rizzo sits in the truck bemoaning his bad luck. “I had to catch a pussy whipped husband,” he says. “He’s probably one of these guys who calls his wife after he takes a shit…”

I feel I have to defend the deceased. “Hitting the double is a big deal after all,” I say.

“So you buy yourself somethin’ nice,” Rizzo says. “You spend the money on a broad. You never tell your wife nothin’ she don’t have to know.”

He stares at the ticket. “We can’t cash it at the track. No bookie’ll take it for us…We got six months before it expires…”

“Why don’t you just send it to the widow,” I say. “It belongs to her…”

Rizzo is outraged. “Why? Because she married the bastard? She didn’t pick the horses. What do you wanna bet she was humpin’ the plumber while he was thinkin’ about buyin’ her a fuckin’ fur coat to celebrate…” He shakes his head doggedly. “I got just as much right to it as she does. I found it, didn’t I?” He gets that shrewd look again. “I could go over there. Offer to split it with her. Didja see her at the services? Nice-lookin’ woman, takes care of herself…” But then he comes out of his reverie. “Who am I kiddin’? She’d want it all for herself, greedy hooer.” He repeats in despair: “Who am I kiddin’?”

Rizzo never cashed the ticket.

It probably fell out of his sock when they were taking him to the morgue.

MY CAREER AS A PETTY THIEF/PART FIVE

Published on October 23, 2009 in archives. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I MEET THE FIXER

It’s 1960. The US is beginning its longest period of economic expansion in history. But as business booms disillusion gnaws at the national psyche.

The Russians shoot down the U2, an American spy plane. President Eisenhower disavows its mission, then backs off and becomes the first American president to admit he has lied.

There are bloody uprisings in the Asian and African colonies of our wartime allies France and Britain. We had thought of them as bulwarks of democracy and freedom, but now realize they are oppressive imperial powers.

Four black students sit in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They are arrested. Protesters all over the South are beaten, jailed, attacked by police dogs. Six years after Brown vs. Board of Ed. one quarter of our country is still a police state.

John F. Kennedy, a dashing young war hero with a hot wife, runs for President, promising change and a New Frontier. He is tied with Vice President Nixon until late returns from Cook County, Illinois make him victorious by one tenth of a percent. “The boys in Chicago fixed it,” says Mr. Leo, who runs numbers in Tony’s candy store on Eleventh Avenue in Brooklyn. “Just like Luciano fixed New York for FDR in ’32.”

My father has given me a job at the Riverside Memorial Chapel on Park Circle across from Prospect Park. He has worked himself up from monument salesman to manager, but is mortified at being in the funeral business. When people ask him what he does he says: “I play third base for the Cubs…” Or: “I’m the wine steward in the Woman’s House of Detention.”

I need a special Chauffeur’s license to drive the hearses, panel trucks and flower cars. But I’m 17 and you have to be 18 to get a Chauffeur’s license. Plus you have to pass another written exam and road test.

“Albino will fix it,” my father says.

Albino is a limo driver with connections way above his station. He is short and dark with a sharp, chin and beak of a nose. His eyes rove restlessly and his head jerks like a hungry bird’s.

On the way to the DMV I hear the story of his life. He talks in staccato bursts… “Youngest of eight. My father only had enough gas left in the tank to make a dwarf…He was a big guy,too…Everybody in the family shot up… Even in my sisters…I’m shorter than my mother for Chrissake…”

We drive over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. “We’ll go to Worth Street,” he says. ” I don’t trust those mamelukes in Brooklyn…”

He spent five and a half years in the Army during World War II. “They didn’t let me out until every Jap was dead.” He asks me if I’ve gotten my draft card. “Tell me when they call you for your physical,” he says. “I got a doctor who’ll make you 4F.”

There are lines out the door at the DMV. Only one window for the Chauffeur’s License applicants and there are at least a hundred guys ahead of me.

Albino pulls me away. “Wiseguys don’t stand on line…”

He gives me the form. “Fill this out.”

A few minutes later he is back. “Let’s get your picture took…”

The photographer is a little guy in a plaid bow-tie, eyes bulging behind horn rimmed glasses.

“Anybody ever tellya ya look like Tony Curtis?” he asks.

“No…”

“They will now…Stand straight and look serious…”

Albino takes me aside. “Got ten bucks?”

I don’t carry that much cash.

“Never mind, I’ll front it…”

My license shows up in the mail five days later.

I pay Albino back the ten. Years later I find out he told my father it cost 20 and got that plus a ten spot for his time.

I’m taking morning classes at Brooklyn College. Between the boiling radiators and the boring professors I go into a coma every morning. My Western Civ instructor, Professor Hoffman asks the class to talk quietly. “We don’t want to wake Mr. Gould.”

At two o’clock I run to my ’57 Bel Air, my home away from home. I change into a black suit in the back seat and head to the chapel. My job is to stand in the lobby and direct people to the reposing rooms. After visiting hours Albino and I load up a Chevy 31 Panel truck with mourner’s benches for religious Jews.

“Here’s a little trick, kid,” Albino says as we go to the first house. The order is for five benches, but he takes three.

A haggard old man, nose running, eyes red-rimmed complains: “We ordered five. We have to have five benches for the immediate family.”

Albino pats his arm. “Let me see what I can do.” He brings the two extra benches into house and comes back with a five dollar bill and a gleeful smile.

“Works every time.”

No one can be buried without a valid death certificate, issued either by the attending physician or the Medical Examiner. The Board of Health is very strict about correct cause of death and has been known to disallow a death certificate, causing a delay in burial. Also, religious Jews and Catholics object to autopsies, causing more costly complications.

But Albino has “fixed” Katz, a clerk on the night shift. He gives me careful instructions.

“Wait ’til there’s nobody in the room. Go to the cage and tell him you’re Albino’s friend from Riverside. Slip the certificate under the bars with two bucks under it.”

I do exactly as ordered. Katz, his face shadowed by a green visor, stamps the certificate without even looking at it and slides it back.

It occurs to me that we might be helping somebody get away with murder.

Albino agrees. “We might be at that.”

And puts in an expense chit for five dollars.

My Bel Air is what they call a “big six.” It can fly. The Brooklyn B ridge at 2am is a great proving ground.

But one night I get a speeding ticket. Next day I’m telling everybody how this motorcycle cop came out of nowhere. Later Albino sidles up.

“You wanna beat a ticket?”

He gives me a copy of the NYPD house organ, Spring 3100, a magazine distributed only to cops. “Put a copy of this on your windshield, and write Albino on the front page,” he says. “Keep your license in a little plastic envelope with a tensky folded up behind it. The cop’ll see the magazine. You slip him the license…” He snaps his finger. “Bingo, you’re outta there.” Then, in all seriousness, he warns: “it probably won’t work if you run an old lady over, or somethin’.”

That Friday night I go to a loft party in Greenwich Village. Four hours later I have ten very stoned beatniks in my Bel Air. Arms and legs sticking out of the windows, people giggling and struggling for breath under the pile. We decide to see the sun rise at Coney Island. A cop car follows me across the bridge and pulls me over. It’s a sergeant with a chest full of commendations. He looks at the squirming mass in the car.

“You tryin’ to break a college record or somethin’?”

As I open the door three people fall out at his feet.

“I’m gonna get writer’s cramp with you, pal,” he says.

He makes me walk a straight line. Close my eyes and touch my nose.

“If you were drunk at least you’d have an excuse,” he says. “You’re just a moron.”

He takes the magazine off the windshield. Takes my loaded license back to his car.

I wink at my friends. “Watch this…”

Ten minutes later he comes back with a fistful of tickets and hands them to me one by one.

“Overloading a car…Changing lines without signaling…Driving over the lane markers…One red light infraction…Broken tail light…Going 45 in a 35 mile zone. Normally, I would overlook that, but I’m throwin’ the book at you, asshole.”

He follows me as I drive everybody to the Borough Hall subway station and watches as they get out to take the subway back to Manhattan.

Then, he hands me my license with the ten still in it.

“You were lucky tonight, kid,” he says. “Next time I’ll be pullin’ your body out of a burning car.”

Next day I tell Albino the story. “At least there’s one honest cop in the world,” I say.

Albino doesn’t accept that explanation. He shakes his head in puzzlement. Then, he brightens.

“You said it was a sergeant, right?”

“Yeah…”

“That’s it, ” he says triumphantly, his vision of a corrupt universe confirmed. “Dopey me.” He smacks himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. “I forgot to tellya. Sergeants you gotta pay double, ’cause they kick back to the captain…”