The Vulture (2 page)

Spade

June 28, 1968 / 5:00 P.M.

‘Name: Edward Percy Shannon; age: eighteen. Nickname: Spade. Born on October 6, 1949, in Cambridge, Maryland. Mother and father died last year in auto accident. May 19, 1967. Lives with cousin named Calvin Shannon. High-school grad, George Washington High School in Manhattan. Swimming team. Fourth in class at Osaka-Kyoto School of Defense and received green belt, ninth degree. Has broken toe, left foot. Broken rib, left side. Shall I go on?’

‘I know it all,’ I said.

‘Ha! That’s good! You know, of course, what all of that was about. That was a little demonstration as to how thorough I am. That’s exactly how thorough I demand my men to be.’ He paused long enough to offer me a cigarette from a gold case. I accepted. ‘Drugs is a very serious topic around here . . . I see that you have no previous police record. That’s another essential. An ex-convict is a constantly hounded man. I need nothing that can tie me to illegal activities.’

He looked up from the paper he had been reading about my life.

‘Have a seat,’ he suggested.

I sat down and watched him go over the typed papers from his filing cabinet. This was the first moment of quiet in the room. There had been the initial darkness when I entered, during the showing of a home movie. Then there was a brief conversation between my host and my friend Smoky. A minute later the projector was switched off, and the lights switched on, revealing the den, a working office for
the man who controlled a major part of the drug traffic in the city.

‘Tell me. You smoke reefers?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I . . .’

‘Snort?’

‘No.’

‘Skin pop?’

‘No.’

‘Good,’ he said, adding that information to the sheet. ‘I don’t mind my men getting their kicks. In fact, I sponsor a thing or two now and then, but a man who takes drugs regularly is unpredictable . . . You know any junkies?’

‘A few.’

‘What do you think of them?’

‘I don’t know jus’ what you mean.’

‘They’re animals!’ he said. ‘All of them. I know that you’re probably fed up with that term, as much as a man’s exposed to it nowadays, but I’m damned if it’s not adequate. The men and women you’ll be dealing with are desperate sometimes.’

I could tell that he was really gone now. His hands were waving in the air, and his eyes took on the deep concentration of a man who’s really enjoying his own rap. I wasn’t really interested in what he was saying as much as the way he said it.

Frank Zinari was his name. From all indications, he was one of the top men in the drug game in the Bronx and Manhattan. Of course, I knew that there might easily be a hundred or more top men, but this guy really lived the part. Smoky, an old high-school friend of mine, who had dropped out in his junior year, had seen me one night and through the conversation asked me how I would like to make some easy money. I said I’d like it fine. He told me that his boss, a man named Zinari, was looking for a man; and now I sat in a fabulous crib drinking Johnny Black from a swing-out mahogany bar and sitting on clouds that some furniture maker had captured and shaped like chairs.

‘. . . the women will offer you sex, and the men will try to cheat you or rob you or maybe even kill you . . . Now, I’ve been having trouble with Sullivan charges.’ I frowned, not understanding. ‘I mean that some of my men have been bothered about carrying concealed weapons. That’s why I was particularly interested when Smoky brought your name up. You know a type of self-defense, and there’s no telling when you might be called on to use it. If at all possible, avoid this type of confrontation, but if not, do your best to teach the motherless bastards a lesson.’

He was grinning a bit. Proud of his colloquialism, I guess. I looked past him through the glass doors that led to the indoor swimming pool and recreation room. The man himself, Zinari, sat before me with bulging cheeks, struggling with the wrapper of an expensive cigar.

‘So what do you say, Spade?’ he asked without looking up.

‘Sure,’ I replied.

‘Good,’ he said, removing the cigar from rubbery lips. ‘Now, I want to make sure that you and Smoky are together on everything.’ He paused and beckoned Smoky from his vigil by the door. ‘Each night except Sunday and Thursday you will meet these people at these places.’ He handed me a sheet with fifteen names on it. ‘They are all in the same area, but they don’t know each other, so don’t try to make any adjustments that might be easier for you. I have it the way it should be. You and Smoky get together on a meeting place where you will turn over to him what you collect from the pushers. Now, the people you work with know better than to be late, but the schedule allows for you to wait twelve minutes. After that, move on to the next spot. Clear?’

‘Sure.’

‘Oh, one more thing. You will see me only when I send for you. Our only contact will be Smoky. He will pay you each week on Friday. Naturally, he’ll see you every night and relay
any messages that we have for each other.’ He stood and offered me his hand. I shook it.

‘What about bread?’ I asked.

‘Two hundred per week.’

Zinari turned toward the projector and started rewinding his film. I took that to mean that our business was finished. I followed Smoky through the den door, still watching Zinari out of the corner of my eye. I hoped that he would not disappear and I wake up thinking of the money I might have had.

‘yeah man! zinari iz aw ri’; no trubble at all. less you try in mess wit’ hiz dus’. you know, dat cat iz allatime uptight ‘cauz a purty boy muthuhfuckuh think he kin git away stealin’ from the man. try if’n you wanna, but if he ketch you, yo’ ass iz grass.’

‘Two hundred a week,’ I said, thinking out loud.

Smoky and I were cruising down the West Side Highway, caught in a mild stream of rush-hour New York traffic. The real crush was opposite us, where motorists were sardined together trying to escape uptown to the suburbs and to Jersey by way of the George Washington Bridge. Smoky handled the big black Cadillac easily, weaving in and out of traffic like a puppet master with the huge car as a mechanical extension of himself. His eyes, hidden behind thick sunglasses, and his hunched posture as he sort of drooped over the steering wheel, displayed his relaxation. He muttered again. His language was a combination of street slang and high-school intellect that he seemed to whistle through a LeRoi Jones beard. Having been a friend of his for so long, I had learned to interpret it.

‘yeah, man,’ he said, ‘thass a good pil a dus’ you makin’. i’ss s’pose t’keep you from gittin’ greedy . . . look, fergit that animal shit! jus’ deal wit’ de muthuhfuckuhs when you have to, an’ don’ git involved, ya see? all whi’ people think nigguhs iz animals anyway, he didn’ say dat shit jus’ ‘cauz these iz takin’ a l’il hoss . . . anyway, you meetin’ a lotta fine street foxes an’
dey gon’ promise you a l’il dis if dey kin git a l’il dat, primarily dey gon’ be after dat green stuff you be carryin’. all you needa do iz lean wrong one time an’ nex’ thing you know, you all fucked up.’

‘Where are we gonna meet?’ I asked Smoky.

‘what time you say you gon’ be through?’

‘’Bout twelve.’

‘i be near harvey’s on 129th street.’

‘Good. I’ll meet you there.’

Smoky swung the big Caddy down the narrow runway that the city calls the 19th Street exit from the highway. He let me off on 17th Street and Eighth Avenue, pointed back uptown. I waved as he swung back into the six-o’clock Friday horde.

As you approach 17th Street on Eighth Avenue you pass the pizza shop, the staple company that went out of business, other abandoned storefronts, a grimy brownstone, and a corner group who stand in the same spot every evening whistling at the secretaries who wouldn’t spit on them. It was quite a change from Zinari’s Riverdale paradise. It meant I was almost home.

Midway between Eighth and Ninth avenues on 17th Street there is a park on the south side. There are blue park benches to the left and right of the entrance and a small courtyard with blue picnic tables. To the far right as you enter there is a blacktopped basketball court where teenaged Puerto Ricans run, soaked in perspiration, and call each other various varieties of bastards. In late June, just after the New York schools call it a year, the park is as crowded and lively as a small Mardi Gras.

The sun was setting when Smoky let me out in front of the park. The men of the neighborhood sat and played dominoes and twenty-card poker.

I took a seat on top of one of the picnic tables and watched the basketball game in progress.

‘Hi, Spade,’ someone called from behind me. I turned, to see
the approaching figure of John Lee, smiling and clad in khakis and a T-shirt.

‘Whuss happnin’?’ I asked.

‘I need to talk t’you for a second, man.’

‘Do it.’

‘You int’rested in some good Red?’ he asked.

‘Can a fish dig water?’

‘I got some,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Come on stronger.’

‘Panamanian Red.’

‘You dealin’?’

‘Yeah. You down?’

‘You got trey bags?’ I asked.

‘Treys
an’
nickels.’

‘Whuss a trey countin’ for?’

‘Ten or ‘leven joints.’

I thought about that for a minute. Panamanian Red is one of the more rare variations of marijuana. Also generally much more expensive. Along with Colombian Gold, Acapulco, and the powerful Black smoke from Vietnam, it is very hard to come by in the city. At least, an amount large enough to start dealing.

John sat down next to me on the table. The sight of the Spanish boys running, naked to the waist, with handkerchiefs tied around their sparkling hair and sweat marks staining their crotches, was enough to give me hallucinations of a great waterfall of beer.

‘Ten joints?’ I asked, to be sure I had heard right.

‘Well, the way you roll ‘um, prob’ly six. Goddamn Pall Malls.’

‘Lemme have a trey bag, then,’ I said, sliding him three bills. ‘I got to check up on Red an’ find out what happened, so I can roll six joints for three dollars.’

John had on a pair of knee-length athletic socks under his
khaki trousers. He slid down the rubber band that held the socks up and found a small manila envelope in the folds of the sock. The envelope was half full, folded over and glued to the opposite side, forming a neat square. He handed it to me and smiled a bit.

‘Thass some good shit,’ he said.

‘I don’ need no goddamn commercial. I already bought the shit.’

John was a pretty nice guy, on the whole. He had worked at the food market on 28th Street all through high school and was the man responsible for many highs when the neighborhood was low on green. He was a dark, baked-bean-colored guy with a round, close haircut and a pimply face. He was heavy and slow, not much athletically, but his bulky frame indicated a physical strength.

‘How long you been dealin’?’ I asked him.

‘Jus’ a coupla days,’ he said.

‘Red all you got?’

‘Naw. I got some straight smoke too. It’s Cuban.’

‘I bet it’s sweet as hell,’ I commented. ‘All that Cuban smoke been comin’ over in them sugar barrels.’

John, I noticed, was lost in thought. I had gotten interested in the action on the basketball court. Two of the Puerto Ricans had gotten into a heated argument that resulted in one of the guys banging his nose into the other guy’s balled-up hand. I lit a smoke.

‘You comin’ t’night?’ Lee asked me.

‘Yeah. I’ll be there, but I donno if I’d cut them niggers loose in my crib on a Friday night. School jus’ gettin’ out, too. You know they gon’ wanna be high.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ John said.

‘Yo’ folks still gone?’ I asked.

‘Another week. Ha! I bet my ol’ man wishes ta hell he wuz havin’ hiz vacation in town. Aunt Agnes, thass my mother’s
sister, she’s a cold pain in the ass. I couldn’ go see her every year. Ha! ‘Bout once every ten years’d do me fine.’

I tapped the envelope on my nose.

‘Ten joints regular?’ I asked.

‘Gar-An-Teed!’ Lee declared.

John moved on toward the 16th Street side of the park. I saw Game and Nissy, two of the neighborhood characters, having a heated discussion about something. They were just outside the perimeter of a circle of crapshooters. Game was probably laying odds on Lew Alcindor scoring a hundred in one game or something. John got into the conversation, whatever it was. His wide ass was almost laughable from where I sat. I couldn’t help but dig him, however, because his attitude was always: ‘Spade!’ – and I dug that. I suppose he was really afraid of me, but a lot of people on the block steer clear of a man they’re scared of. John was one of the few who had decided it would be better to get in tight.

The basketball game was picked up again. There was a replacement for the guy with the bent beak. He sat on the sidelines with tears in his eyes and a wet T-shirt across his nose.

There was a different type of noise filling the park now. The cry of various numbers from the crapshooters as they risked their hard-earned pussy-bait on a flick of the wrist. There were shrieks as mothers decided it was time for dinner, and the traffic of small children turned toward the exit and the apartment buildings as the thought of another meal of rice and beans beckoned.

The small girls still wandered here and there with jump ropes and hula hoops, but now the night people were coming. There were the winos and phony subway blind men who had escaped the crush and the Man with enough bread to appease their Jones for one more day. The calls for Angela and Maria became more insistent as the sun slid toward the other side of the world. The victims of the street were not particular if other
younger ones were fascinated by their activities and decided to give it a try. They were not crusaders for or against anything. If someone thought that they were cool because they were high all the time or trying to be, let’s go and get high. Otherwise, what the hell? They had decided long ago that the game of life really was not worth playing, because the inventor of the game kept most of the rules a secret. Mothers’ shrieks subsided, and those who had not responded were being yanked by the hair away from the park to safety; away from the grown animals in the playground zoo. Mother always knows best.