Haiku (11 page)

Several minutes passed.

“Got it,” Lamont said, as if he had just solved a complex problem.

The electronic clock in the window of a stately bank told us we still had over two hours to acquire money for food before meeting Michael and Ranger. But since our meeting was to be in an area near the Hudson River, across from what is known as the Meatpacking District, we had a considerable distance to travel as well.

We always use that same place for pre-arranged meetings if they are to occur in daylight. At night, it is clogged with prostitutes of all genders. Cars drive through slowly, like suburban housewives pushing their carts through the aisles of a
supermarket. But both predators and prey react to sunlight like vampires, so we are able to sit and have a meal together with very little chance of being disturbed.

“No time for fishing, Ho,” Lamont said. “Got to score a double-sawbuck at least.”

“No ‘magic,’” I warned him.

“Fantastic! Tragic! Statistic! Sadistic!” Target erupted.

A part of my mind pondered—not for the first time—whether Target’s extensive vocabulary was a sign that his clanging had a specific sequence. Was what we regarded as the reaction of a damaged mind to certain stimuli actually an attempt to communicate?

Such thoughts came to me because, once, many years ago, I had visited a zoo. The place was said to be the epitome of humane, caring captivity. One of my students, an ardent conservationist, had enthusiastically informed me that the animals were being saved from certain extinction.

I saw a polar bear, housed in a large enclosure, complete with ice formations and a swimming pool. He was a magnificent beast, white fur gleaming as if freshly groomed. He was obsessively walking in tight little circles.

On some Arctic tundra, he might well be in danger of a long-distance rifle wielded by a cowardly trophy-taker. Here, he was safe.

I could feel his warrior’s heart dying within him.

The gorillas were not caged. They were in a large outdoor pit, surrounded by walls they could not scale, and further separated from the spectators by a metal fence. I watched, listening to mothers tell their children the animals were playing.
A large male detached himself from the others, and stood facing us. Our eyes met. His said: “I am your brother. Why have you done this to me?”

I never returned to the zoo.

I did not doubt my understanding of those messages. But Target’s messages had always eluded me. Perhaps my desire to believe he was attempting to communicate created what was never there.

“No magic,” Lamont promised. “Just a little justice. You got no problem with justice, right, Ho?”

“I have many problems with what people
call
justice.”

“Righteous,” he assured me.

Lamont tracked through the city as if following a memorized map. We came upon a small throng, surrounding someone we could not see, but whose voice projected perfectly.

“The queen! The queen! Find the beautiful queen!” the voice invited. The accent was Mediterranean, as full of promise as those who stand outside sex establishments whispering to all those who pass that what lies inside is paradise.

Following Lamont’s lead, I obtained a side view of a youngish man standing before an upturned wooden milk crate topped by a long strip of heavy cardboard. Before him he placed three playing cards, each folded in half lengthwise. He picked up the cards slowly, one at a time, and showed them to the crowd. The two of spades, the ace of clubs, and the queen of hearts.

The man gently placed the cards face-down, paused, and then began to manipulate them rapidly, switching their positions over and over.

Finished, he again asked the crowd: “Where is the queen? The beautiful queen?”

A man stepped forward and placed a ten-dollar bill over one of the cards. He turned over the card; it was the ace of clubs.

“The beautiful queen, she is hiding from you, sir,” the man behind the milk carton said.

Two other people tried, unsuccessfully, before a black man in a red T-shirt with the white logo of some club on its back muscled his way through and placed a bill over the card in the middle.

“Ah! The beautiful queen reveals herself to the handsome man,” the man behind the milk carton exclaimed in surprise, holding up the queen of hearts for all to see. He reached in his shirt pocket and handed several bills to the black man.

“That’s the shill,” Lamont whispered.

“I do not—”

“Just
watch
, Ho. You see what the card man’s doing?”

“Yes,” I said. “He holds the cards with his thumb so the throwing motion he makes does not dislodge the card he picked up just before.”

“Like in slow motion?”

“I do not—”

“Slow motion for
you
, bro. Keep watching.”

As the crowd began to thin, Lamont shoved me forward, pressing a bill into my hand. I looked down, and saw it was five dollars. I held it up.

“You want to play, Pops?” the man behind the milk carton asked.

“Please.”

“Very easy. You see the beautiful queen?” he asked, holding it up in front of me.

“Yes.”

“All right, now. You just watch me move her around, okay? When I stop, you put your money over her. You find her, you double your money, understand?”

“Yes,” I said, again.

The man’s hands flashed. As they moved, I instantly understood what Lamont had meant by slow motion.

I placed the bill over the queen.

The man gave me a cold, appraising look. Then he turned over the card.

“Pops is a winner!” he said, loudly.

I held out my hand for the money I was expecting.

“Hey, come on, Pops. You don’t want to walk off a winning streak; that’s bad karma, Charlie Chan. Double or nothing?”

“Very well,” I said.

Again, he switched the cards, moving slightly more quickly, although no less transparently.

As he pocketed the bill Lamont had given me, I tapped the end card. It was the queen.

The card dealer took a step back. The black man in the red T-shirt started to walk toward me. I saw Lamont step into his path. Soft words were exchanged.

The card dealer watched as the black man nodded to him.

“Looks like this is not my day,” the card man said. “Pops here got too much juju going. Turned my beautiful queen into a whore.” He then handed me several bills. He did not return my bow.

“Why is this fifty dollars?” I asked Lamont, as I handed him my winnings. “It should only be twenty, is that not correct?”

“I told the monte man’s partner it’d cost them half a C-note for us to get in the wind. They’ll get that back in ten minutes, especially now that you pumped up all the suckers for them.”

I looked back and heard the crowd demanding that the game continue.

“What if he had refused?” I asked.

“Then you would have stayed right there until he was tapped out, Ho. The shill got the message—we were selling them a license to fleece the sheep. He flashed his partner, we get paid to walk away—everybody wins.”

“Everybody? They will cheat—”

“Look, Ho, any fool knows that three-card monte is all about the hands. Ain’t nobody
making
those suckers play, is there?”

“No,” I acknowledged.

“Beef in oyster sauce with snow-pea pods!” Lamont crowed, leading the way toward a take-out place we all knew well.

Target was clearly excited … and strangely silent.

As is our custom, Lamont and I arrived moments before the appointed time. Sometimes the area is not safe for such as Michael or Brewster, and we must guard against any incident that could endanger others. Our motives are pure. Lamont and I are not claiming territory; we are merely ensuring that it represents no danger to our brothers.

It might even be said that we are protecting others
from
our own. Years ago, before we established this procedure, Lamont and I had been so engaged in one of his schemes that we had arrived slightly late. By then, some men on motorcycles were frightening Michael and Target. They were not actually committing an assault, but their posture was menacing, and Target’s shouting seemed to be spurring them on. Every time they waved the heavy chains they carried, the fear of their prey encouraged them, and they moved in closer.

“Come on, Ho!” Lamont shouted. “Those motherfuckers are gonna—”

His exhortation was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Ranger from behind what seemed to be an abandoned vehicle. The rearmost of the cyclists suddenly went to the ground. His riderless mount went forward a few feet before falling, drawing the attention of the others. Ranger let out an unearthly shriek and charged, brandishing a hooked scythe over his head.

The cyclists retreated just as Lamont and I arrived. We quickly herded Michael and Target away from the area.
Ranger came with us, walking backward so as to keep his adversaries in sight. That precaution was quite unnecessary—as soon as the unseated rider had regained his mount, they all fled, leaving only the resonation of their engines behind.

We stood together, watching.

Not watching the motorcyclists retreating; watching Ranger slowly return to a calmer stage of psychosis.

“How many did I get?” he asked Lamont, minutes later.

“I counted four,” Lamont replied without hesitation.

Ranger looked across at the now-empty swath of asphalt. “Got to give it to ’em, man. Lot of outfits would’ve left the bodies, dead or alive. Must’ve been some of their top-class guys.”

“They never saw you coming, bro,” Lamont crooned softly.

Michael took off his overcoat and wrapped it around Ranger’s shoulders—we knew Ranger would start shaking very soon, as if afflicted with ague.

Target built a fire. He can conjure flame from anywhere, but Lamont has never been able to get him to do so on request, despite pointing out the financial opportunities such “magic” would open for us.

We huddled together until Ranger’s body expelled the poison that had invaded his mind.

Only then did we share our food.

This time, we had our feast all spread out by the time the others arrived.

As is our custom, we dined in polite silence. Although I
generally preferred the lotus position, I occasionally varied this, for fear it would come to be viewed by the others as “correct,” knowing such would result in imitation.

Ranger invariably squatted, balancing his food in his lap, using his knife as a utensil. He had somehow replaced the edged weapon he had contributed toward our radio. This surprised no one.

None of the others were remotely predictable as to their dining posture. Target could use chopsticks one-handed even while pacing in circles around our perimeter, but he was always mindful never to move behind Ranger.

That afternoon, when our meal was finished, we carefully wrapped all that remained and distributed it equally. As always, Brewster refused his share, and so did Target.

Michael ceremoniously distributed the little packages of moist cloths he always carried. He was fastidious about his hands, keeping his nails trimmed and clean at all times. He had once attempted to explain to me that a man’s hands are the first thing a “prospect” examines. As he was explaining the importance of this, we both seemed involuntarily drawn to look at my own hands. And I then understood that what has meaning in one world has none in another. To a stockbroker, my hands would display a life unworthy of their trust; to a martial artist, they would display a life of combat knowledge.

Once the rituals of our meal had been completed, I told our clan what Lamont and I had observed earlier.

“That building on the other side of the alley, it had fire escapes?” Michael asked. “Air-conditioning boxes in some of the windows, but not all of them?”

“Yes,” I agreed, impressed at the accuracy of his guesses.

“They’re warehousing it,” Michael pronounced, knowingly. “The owner wants to take it co-op, but he can’t get enough of the tenants to give up a rent-stabilized lease, especially with how things are now. So he’s just letting the place go to hell. No maintenance, no painting, no fixing things when they break.”

“He is attempting to create intolerable living conditions?” I asked.

“No,” Michael dismissed my naïve speculation. “You couldn’t
make
a place bad enough to get anyone to walk away from a sweet lease, not in this city. He’s just cutting down on expenses. Playing a waiting game. Most of the tenants are probably pretty old. When one dies off, the owner doesn’t even try to rent their unit; he starts ‘rehabbing’ it. Time’s on his side. Between paying off some tenants to move, and others’ relocating to a cemetery plot, the balance has got to tip. Soon as he gets enough people to sign on, he sells the whole thing to a co-op management outfit and walks away rich.”

“This helps us how, exactly?” Lamont asked him.

“Maybe it does, a little,” Michael replied, refusing Lamont’s standing offer to take umbrage. “We’ve got to empty Brewster’s library at night, so we don’t want people on the other side of the alley hitting nine-one-one when they see something suspicious going on. A building like the one you described, who’s going to be watching? Most of the units aren’t even occupied, and the ones that are, they’ll have their A/C going, blocking up the windows. Plus, when you’ve got a landlord who
wants
them all moving out, no way he’s putting money into security cameras out back, either.”

“Didn’t see any,” Lamont said, providing our band with
the multiple perspectives of how he and Michael would assess
any
building. “And with those fire escapes running all the way down the back, they probably got burglar bars on their other windows, too.”

“No sentries?” Ranger asked, one foot in each of the two worlds he constantly moves between.

“None,” I assured him.

“It’s just a moving job,” Michael said confidently. “And I got just the van we need.”

“Where did you find—?”

“I don’t mean I
got
one, Ho. I mean I found the kind we need. Like I said, the library would have everything. What we need is a Dodge Sprinter 3500, okay? That thing’s got over three hundred cubic feet in the back. And it could carry all Brewster’s library like it was a load of feathers.”