*
The Buster and the Treatment were gathered outside the dark, decrepit Harlem warehouse, smoking cigarettes and talking fights. Beneath their long woolen coats were a small arsenal of pistols and Tommy guns. Fedora hats cast long shadows over their faces and tight leather gloves covered their hands. They were standing on the street corner for no discernible reason and were the kind of group the average person would cross the street to avoid.
Longworry and Hope arrived last, pulling in behind the line of Fords. Bodies straightened and the idle conversation dissipated. It was game time.
Longworry entered the circle with a Browning rifle inside his coat and a cigarette pinched between his teeth. ‘Davenas, why exactly are we here?’
‘Followed our man here, Captain. About an hour ago.’
‘He still in there?’
‘Nah, left after around ten minutes ago, carrying a cargo bag.’
‘With weapons inside?’
‘Could have been. I got the feeling it wasn’t his weekly laundry.’
‘Anyone else in there?’
‘Someone opened the door for him. Didn’t get a look at him but he cast a pretty big shadow.’
Longworry stared at the warehouse a protracted moment. Metal door, barred windows running across two floors, it was an imposing target for a raid.
‘Let’s add to the pot, boys.’
Longworry went to the boot and extracted a heavy black canvas bag. He opened it and went to each member of the squad like he was taking donations and bundles of money were promptly tossed in by all.
‘As an honorary member, you are eligible for the pot,’ Longworry said to Hope as he zipped the bag closed again. ‘Before every raid we add to it. It’s the proceeds of our gambling. We all have our specialties. Stevens does the horses. Randi the dogs. Linde craps. Davenas the fights. Me, anything and everything, including cards. These raids are the one gamble we all have in common and we keep the pot to help out the family of whoever buys it in the line of duty. It hasn’t been claimed for a long time, but you seem to be doing your best to change all that.’ He tossed the bag back into the boot.
‘Stevens, you’ve got five minutes to take position at the back entrance. Then we’re going in.’
‘Sure, Captain.’ Stevens hurried away as though he were more interested in being there in one.
Hope meanwhile pulled out his black silk handkerchief and tied it over his mouth. It drew the attention of the remaining squad.
‘Your friend coming with us?’ murmured Linde with a distinct sourness.
Longworry replied perfunctorily, ‘If you’re a chef with a guest in your kitchen you let him taste a dish off the spoon. That’s how it is here.’ He slammed shut the boot. ‘He gets hit, he gets the pot. Just the same as anyone else. But I tell you, I’ll be more interested in preserving his life than any of you sorry no hopers. Now shut up so we can go get this done.’ He winked at Hope. ‘So, here’s your chance at getting your money back - the hard way.’
‘Very kind of you,’ replied Hope through the fastened handkerchief.
The five minutes nominated by Longworry was seeming more and more like an arbitrary number, for everyone was too wired to wait.
‘Ok, let’s go,’ said Longworry, realising he would not be able to hold them off any longer.
Linde, jemmy in hand, led the way through a sagging rusted gate onto the property. Oiled stained cracked concrete lay between them and the corrugated iron walls and doors of the warehouse. It was an approach that left the party dangerously exposed to gunfire from any of the innumerable windows and gaps in the hull of the two level structure; nothing to do but keep advancing. And when a dog began to threaten with wild agitated growls, its snout poking through a gap in the near wall, Randi rushed alongside Linde, untying the cord from a bag of powder: inside was a secret mix, acquired from his days of Alabama farming, that would send the most fearsome of dogs scampering with its tail between its legs.
Behind the frontrunners were two Tommy guns in the hands of their colleagues and the Colt .45 and Smith and Wesson revolver purchased earlier that day in the hands of a very satisfied customer.
With the yapping dog, there was even more urgency in the advance, for the warehouse was surely being alerted to the presence of the intruders. Light was penetrating the wide cracks in the door and Linde wedged the jemmy into one, sucked in a great lungful of air and in a ferocious explosion of energy ripped the door off its dead bolt, wide enough in the initial assault for the dog to get its snapping jaws through the gap, its incisors resembling a sharks. It was a russet-brown American pit bull terrier baying viciously and Randi hurriedly emptied his grey powder onto it. There followed an instantaneous yelping retreat. Randi smirked triumphantly at Linde only to be hit with the caustic reply: ‘The gap is big enough for a mad dog’s chops but not a man, so give me a bloody hand, will you?’ The two men went to the jemmy and dragged the door open to a margin that would accommodate both man and gun.
There was a surge of restless men from behind. The first few steps into the warehouse were particularly perilous: a large, exposed space, an arrival hardly unannounced, and illicit weapons stockpiled to the rafters - the Buster and the Treatment were aware that the great pot in Longworry’s boot could very likely end up being split six ways. They kept low and diverged away from the entrance, their guns poised to turn the warehouse into a war zone with the slightest provocation; no such invitation, however, was forthcoming and in the eerily silent moments that followed, the squad pole-hugged and crawled their way through the vast interior, edging amongst the rows of shelves and crates, a desperado’s gunshot an ever present threat. It took a tense, twenty minute sweep of the warehouse to dispel that fear. It was then Longworry straightened up from his low squat to declare frustratedly, ‘Fuck, even the dog has fled.’
‘There are more side doors than a colander,’ said Linde, moving in to join his position.
Longworry turned on his flashlight and surveyed the scene in colour, turning a wide circle, paying particular attention to the rows of wooden crates, many of which were open, their contents lying upon beds of straw. ‘There are plenty of guns in all these boxes,’ he voiced, clearly impressed. ‘And so much marijuana and cocaine you can smell it through the plastic. Knives, knuckle dusters and machine parts to do who the hell knows what. A fine collection. But why would they abandon playthings like these without a fight? We didn’t even identify ourselves as the law.’
‘Born-again pacifists, perhaps, Captain.’
‘You might be right at that.’ Longworry lowered his Tommy gun by his side and waited for the remainder of the squad to assemble around him. He studied their faces and it was not hard to see they were still as wired as he. Maybe it was the risks they had taken. Maybe it was the abundance of weaponry now in their possession. Probably it was both in equal measure.
‘Alright,’ his voice just as calm and collected as he wanted it to be and with a slight trace or remonstration, ‘we’ve made a nice little score here but no arrests and no gunplay, and that might leave some of you gnashing your teeth at night while trying to sleep, which believe me your horizontal squeezes won’t find attractive, so everyone will get tickets. It will be something cultural and uplifting.’ His eyes hardened into a glowering stare, which he made sure everyone had an equal share of. ‘Double passes for everyone. This work we do pulls us away from the people we love. So, we gotta’ work at bringing ourselves back to them like it’s part of the job. And besides, because the pot went miraculously unclaimed tonight, I’ll feel free to dip into it to cover expenses - so you might as well get your money’s worth.’
He searched about for the merest hint of a protest, causing his charges to cling tightly onto their poker faces. He eventually nodded his head, satisfied. ‘Alright, lads, get the inventory started while I call the raid in. If you find anything useful to our own needs, put it to one side. And that doesn’t mean cocaine or the like.’ He marched away,
screaming, ‘But I would take anything that can open a fucking door before the whole neighbourhood knows we’re here. Who knows, then, we might even manage one stinking, measly arrest?’
The huddle did not immediately disperse after Longworry departed the warehouse. The men were looking at each other disconsolately and Davenas said with a sigh, ‘Call it what he wants, there’s only one word for those tickets: punishment.’ He turned to Hope. ‘He’s pulled this stunt before. Last time I lost three hours of my life to the Manhattan Abstinence Society Choir.’ He winced with the memory, before at last snickering. ‘It achieved the desired effect, I must say. The next raid we went on we were literally flinging ourselves through windows to get in.’
‘On this occasion though,’ said Randi, ‘I’ll gladly take the tickets and enjoy the show. Even though we crawled around the floor for twenty minutes without shooting anyone, I gotta' say I’m relieved ‘cause so many guns as this could only be coming from a big hole in the military and we wouldn’t want to be making enemies there with anything less than a tank.’ He smirked wryly. ‘Better to let this Zeal off with a warning.’
‘You’re right,’ said Linde. ‘I wouldn’t call it in at all. Or at the very least I would make it anonymous.’ He glanced at Hope. ‘He might listen to you if you put it to him. Your suits won’t look as fetching if you’re having to wear a bulletproof jacket underneath.’
‘Forget it,’ affirmed Stevens. ‘Longworry had enough of being anonymous during his years marooned at HQ. Now he’s going to shout his name from the rooftops. Trying to stop him would be just another way to get a slap. Best we just get the hell out of here.’
Randi looked around the warehouse floor. ‘First, I want to see which crate is going to be my date for the evening. One full of guns and drugs and hopefully one that looks very nice in a dress.’
Stevens slapped Hope on the shoulder. ‘If you don’t mind we would like a private moment here. In other words, a moment without witnesses. Don’t take it hard. You kept nice and low during the raid, but not the kind of low that would see you become one of us.’
‘You could go see if there’s another dog that needs feeding,’ added Linde tartly.
‘I get it,’ said Hope, turning for the door. ‘And you’re right for wanting to get out of here in a hurry. But if you hadn’t noticed, I’m the only one wearing a mask.’
13. ‘It’s not a tragedy unless you stay to the end.’
The New York Temperance League had chosen one of the rougher patches of Brooklyn to stage its production of Macbeth. The play was into its final act, the trees of Birnam Wood moving across the stage in the form of flimsy paper machete. The actors were working hard to make it real.
The Buster and the Treatment did not think it was real but they were comfortable. Their intermission beverage had been vodka fixed with just enough orange juice to turn it orange. They were occupying the back row of the small theatre. They had arrived late, for although they had once shot a felon on its steps, they had trouble finding it. They were wearing their cleanest suits and their dates’ elegant dresses.
Longworry was sitting in the middle of his squad and was regularly looking to his sides to ensure nothing more physical was occurring than the way he was holding hands with his good wife Carol. Hope and his date, Stacey Gurner, however, were hidden behind the large Randi and friend at the end: it was Stacey who took advantage of it first, pressing her head against Hope’s shoulder and nibbling at his neck. Hope felt it like a stab of electricity – the kind of shock that fried away anything that might have been going around in his head prior to it. He had assumed such emotions to be long extinct victims of experience and so to find them reawakened in the midst of a temperance society morality tale would be worth a standing ovation.
Stacey took his rapid heartbeat as an invitation to snuggle ever further against him. As good as it felt, Hope knew the thrill running through his body was a kind of alarm bell to the fact that, like it or not, events were taking a sharp turn. He was not sure exactly what he was wanting from her, but he knew when he asked her out on the pretext of simply requiring a friendly companion for the night, all he was really doing was lifting a lid off a box.
She took his fingers and ran them along her upper lip as though tracing out an invisible mustache and then kissed each finger individually.
‘The funny thing is,’ she whispered, ‘I have to leave.’
Hope, felt more deflated than he would have liked. ‘You sure? It’s not a tragedy unless you stay to the end.’
‘That’s alright. I know how it ends already.’ She rested his hand down on the armrest and left her seat.
Hope followed close behind and once they were out in the foyer he said, ‘Will you allow me to drive you home?’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’m happy taking a cab. I’m working early tomorrow, so my sister will be waiting up for me. She’s a worrier that one. A real worrier.’
‘I see.’
‘You could escort me to the taxi if you like.’
They did not have far to walk, three cabs sitting in the darkness of the street and upon Stacey’s call the first screeched across the street, all but mounting her toes. Stacey kissed Hope’s cheek and got into the back seat.
She wound down the window and said, ‘Goodbye, Mr Hope.’ She turned to the driver and said loudly, ’99 Avenue C. You know it?’
The taxi promptly accelerated away. Hope stood a moment longer and nodded to himself. She had given the address of his office.