This is chapter seven of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." The previous chapter can be found here The novel begins here.
Shitonya turned to my captors and said,
“That’ll be all boys. I’ll be sure to let Mr. Maudlin know what a fine job you’ve been doing keeping the premises secured.”
Gorilla number one then released me from my shackles, he and his partner turned and walked away without another word, and I found myself facing my liberator on the threshold. Too bad I hadn’t stopped to pick up flowers on the way in.
“So, should I let you in? You do seem like a bit of a risk to the operation.”
“Why Shitonya, after all these years I’m shocked to hear you think of me as anything but harmless.”
“Well, you have been known to do an honest day’s work from time to time, and your colleagues are not exactly happy about the precedent that sets.”
“Flattery will get you no where, toots, let me in. I’ve got pointless tasks to complete.”
“Sweetie, you better not call me ‘toots’ or I’ll have the sensitivity police on your ass, and a few other places, too.”
“Promises, promises. It’s tempting but I think I’ll have to pass.”
With that, she turned on her heel and headed down toward her desk a few steps from the door, leaving the coast clear for me to steal into my place of employ.
Before turning into my own office, I stopped in front her desk.
“So where’s Arthur? I’ve got a meeting with him in five minutes.”
A half shriek half rasp sound rose from behind me. It was Mauldin love interest number one, Altoona.
“Oh, he called about a half an hour ago. Said he won’t be in until after lunch, and that you should start the meeting without him.”
“I’m supposed to start a meeting that’s supposed to be just me and him without him? How’s that gonna work? You know I can’t keep to an agenda.”
“Don’t ask me, babe. Figuring things out is not in my job description. You’re on your own with that one.”
I was about to throw some out some questions about why everyone above and below me in the chain of command was either missing or killed in action. Something told me not to trust Altoona and Carboña with those kinds of thoughts, though. I turned into my office, threw my jacket in the general vicinity of a coat rack and sat down behind my desk. Shitonya was the one to talk to about this. She was the only one in the office who did a lick of work, and the only one so far as I could tell, rebuffed the boss’s advances. She hardly ever gossiped, either, but her rumors were always on the money.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to make an executive decision. Meeting cancelled. Shitonya, can you come into my office for a minute please. I gotta do the asphalt orders myself this morning, and I need some help.”
“What are you talking about? You can do those things in your …”
“Shut up and close the door” I hissed at her.
“Ever since they started that new system over at Amici, I can’t keep the orders straight. I don’t know how Pats did it,” I said, perhaps only slightly exaggerating my usually befuddled tone for the benefit of the other two secretaries, who had perfect hearing, except for the sounds of their own phones ringing.
“Oh, you mean the new order forms. Here, I think there in this cabinet behind the door,” said Shitonya, clearly picking up on my ruse as she shut the door behind her.
“What are you talking about? There’s no new system. And what the hell happened downstairs?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You managed to get in the door, how come I couldn’t?”
“The stupid ID things didn’t work, so I just walked in. The guards never stop me. When I got up here, the ID thing didn’t work on this door either, so I used the key I never gave back when they installed that thing.”
“What about the others? How did they get in?”
“Carboña and Altoona were already in when I got here. I didn’t ask them how. This happens a lot, and I think they have keys, too.”
“Yeah, I know, but nobody stopped you downstairs, and nobody ever stopped me before. I don’ know, but with everything I’ve been through, I’m getting a weird feeling about this.”
“What? You think it’s weird that somebody in our office gets murdered, and the security gets a little tighter? If you ask me, that’s a pretty good thing.”
Maybe I was being a little paranoid, or getting a little carried away in my new role as a homicide investigator, but it seemed to me that that wasn’t quite what was going on, and I said as much to Shitonya.
“Security’s getting tighter? So how come everybody gets in like usual except the one guy who talked to the cops, witnesses, and maybe the killer?”
“White, what the hell are you talking about?”
“What I’m talking about is this. Crazy Joe was in the apartment with Pats, alone. Maybe Pats was dead already, and maybe he wasn’t. He says he didn’t kill him, but he sure isn’t acting that way. He’s disappeared off the map. I’m the last guy that talked to him, and I’m the only one with any connection to Pats except his wife that had any connection to him. And that’s not all.”
With that, I started to tell her about Hunny, leaving out the underwear details. After all, who knew where the line between appropriate and appropriate lay. At first I also left out the details of her family tree.
“So lemme see if I got this straight. There’s this incredibly hot chick who used to be some broke dumpy married guy’s girlfriend and now she’s shacking up with you. And she’s trying to get you to solve a murder she’s afraid to talk to the cops about because she trusts you, a slightly less dumpy, slightly less married, equally broke guy?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“And you’re going along with it cause you’re a knight in shining fuckin’ armor right?”
“I don’t like to flatter myself, but you could look at it that way.”
“I’m not buying it. You’re an idiot who can’t take his eyes off a nice pair of tits, and is so desperate to get laid that he’d jump in to bed with a killer.”
With that, I looked up at her face (not that I’d noticed her tits), and started to contradict her.
“Look, maybe you’ve got a half a point about the tits (not that I noticed), but she’s not the killer, I didn’t jump into bed with her, and I’m not desperate. Just very particular, not that it’s any business of yours.”
“More to the story? Like what? She’s a member of the free frickin’ French resistance and you own a piano bar you ain’t telling me about?”
“What?”
“Casablanca was on the tube last night. It’s the best I could do.”
“Right actor, wrong movie. This is looking a little more like the Maltese Falcon. But trust me, this girl is in trouble, and if I don’t help her I could be to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t want to know anything more about her than that. I just need you to help me with one thing.”
“I’m not helping you with anything until you tell me the whole deal. Who is this girl?”
“Come on, you’re the only one who can help me with this, and it’s too dangerous for you ot know anything else.”
“Nothing doing. Spill it.”
I realized at that point that there was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t crack this case by myself, and if I was going to be taking on a partner, I couldn’t keep holding out.
“Her name is Hunny Pugliacci, and she’s afraid to go the cops, because she thinks her father might be involved.”
Shitonya let out a long whistle, then said:
“Vinny the Pooh’s daughter? Man you are in deep shit. If you’re stupid enough to get this involved, you’re definitely to dumb to get out of it by yourself. What do you want me to do?”
“Find Crazy Joe, and get him to come into the office, but don’t let him find out that it’s me who wants him.”
“You got it. But this is going to cost you.”
“She says she can pay. I’ll give you, uh, a quarter of what she gives me.”
“Fifty-fifty partner, and I got one more condition.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Help me get rid of those to hos outside. Deal”
Under the circumstances, I didn’t see that I had much choice.
“Deal, partner.”
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
This is something I wrote for my 25th Anniversary High School Reunion a couple of years ago. It summed up where I was at the time (with the impending birth of my son). Had I had a blog then, this would have been posted there. I just happened upon it while looking for something else and figured, what the hey ...
Just for a little context, nowadays, Stuyvesant has a reputation for being ultra competitive and uptight, and populated exlcusively by Asian-American genius overachievers. In my day, in keeping with the generally apocalyptic character of New York, it was a much funkier place. There was a distinct lawless, anarchic character to the place, shaped by the forces of waning hippiedom and rising punk in a decaying city. The principal at the time was a guy named Gaspar R. Fabricante, who was a complete cypher so far as any of us could tell. He had no relationship of any kind with any students or teachers. Periodically, he could be observed at the top of the main stairs of the school greeting the student body in the style of a tin-pot dictator, with slicked back hair and a forced smile. He would occasionally circulate some sort of communication or make an announcement over the PA system reminding us that we attended a hallowed institution. I'm sure announcements of similar character are still made in the present day Stuyvesant, and from what I gather would probably be taken more or less seriously at face value.
Such was not the case back then. To most of my friends, even though many of us were relatively high achieving, Ivy-bound, etc., the ideas that we constituted some sort of elite, and that the decrepit teachers and facilities that attempted to contain us actually deserved their reputation were patently absurd. I don't quite know why the memory stuck with me, because I had zero contact with the him, and gave him virtually no thought during my high schoole years, but GRF actually did pronounce "You are the new elite" at our graduation, just at the moment that a friend of mine in the front row sent up a puff of smoke from a bong hit ...
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
By John Albin, Stuyvesant, class of 1980
It was a cloudless June day in 1980. Though the sky was clear, the air hung heavy with anticipation, the anxious perspiration of imminent adulthood, and a hint of burning vegetation (which due to impending life circumstances -- to be described later -- I shall not identify). I sat in Avery Fisher Hall with 800 of my closest friends listening to the most inspirational orator since William Jennings Bryan predict my future. I'm speaking, of course, of the great Gaspar R. Fabricante and his vision of me as a member of the new elite, a Stuyvesantian bound for glory.
Sad, to say, Gaspar, I haven't quite lived up to that billing. Stuyvesant (and the 1970s) taught me many things, not least a capacity for, suspicion of pomaded authority, along with a mastery of wry detachment and indolence, to say nothing of the nail delay and the collected works of McKinley Morganfield and Chester Burnett. However, Stuyvesant didn’t teach me how to find my way in the world. That is something I’ve had to learn on my own, and is still a work in progress.
That work began just two months after Gaspar’s valedictory, when I set forth on the road to elitehood. The first stop (after a series of track fires and diversions to some of New York’s more apocalyptic settings) was a collection of ivory (well, copper-roofed, but that ain’t the metaphor) towers, in a community the great 20th century philosopher Carlin once called “White Harlem”. I, a simple youth from a small village in lower Manhattan, soon found myself trafficking (never proven) among an assortment of humanity from an assortment of lands, some unknown even to the cartographer Steinberg.
While at this fine institution, I continued honing my skills as an authentic interpreter of African American music, subsidizing my studies with weekend gigs and dreaming of seeing my name in lights at the Regal (or at least Dan Lynch). Eventually, I made it as far as a certain Delphic temple on 125th Street (as an authentic Ivory Coast pop musician), but I realized that, even though the world always made life comfortable for artists, it might nevertheless be a good idea to pick up a trade. With this in mind, I settled in for a long hard slog in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Marx, figuring that if the blues didn’t pan out, the job market was always bullish for philosopher kings.
This plan, of course played out to perfection. First, the obligatory sojourn in a Paris garret, followed by three years of editing elementary school textbooks. By 1988 I found my self in civil service, studying garbage accumulation on New York City’s roadsides. The mythical cave wasn’t available, but shadows cast on underpasses served nearly as well. I could sense elitehood around the next bend.
Slowly I accumulated knowledge and responsibility, making sure to avoid remuneration with each step up the ranks. After all, philosopher kings are in it for justice, truth, and discovering the forms, and I certainly discovered the forms. Personal, intellectual, artistic, and romantic growth followed the same glorious arc as career and finances for many years.
Through it all, my fecklessness rarely caused me much more than an occasional sleepless night. I had friends and flings, music, recreation, and navel gazing to divert me. I also had the friendship and indulgence of my parents. But In 1991, tragedy struck, literally. My father, who had always been my closest friend and confidant, suffered a massive stroke at the age of 56, which rendered him severely physically, intellectually, and psychiatrically disabled.
He had been an athlete, polymath, and epicurean, a larger than life figure to most who knew him. Now, he was left a cripple who could speak, and cry out in despair, but could no longer think, create, or enjoy life. The impact on our family was enormous, physically and spiritually. Between the strain of caring for a demanding invalid, and the daily realization that what had once been was no longer, we all barely treaded water for years.
Gradually, we found ways to cope. I formed bands, wrote music, and performed sporadically through the mid and late ‘90s. In 1999, I began what have become annual visits to Europe. Most years this has included tours of some of Switzerland’s spotlessly seamy juke joints (where standards are low and, pay is high) with fellow Stuyvesantian Tom Lyons (‘81).
In 2000 I met the love of my life, Ivana Jovic, and my European vacations started including trips to her native Serbia. She has dragged me kicking and screaming toward maturity. I’ve done my part too, making sure to bring her down to my level whenever possible. With many miles still to go, significant milestones have been passed. We began living together in 2002. We were recently married, and now are expecting our first child. I’ve even started doing the kinds of career and life planning that most of my classmates probably got to at least a decade ago.
All of this is a bit daunting for a somewhat past it former new elite. It’s the kind of stuff that I’m sure Gaspar figured out by the time he was 20. But it’s also exciting and inspiring. There have been struggles and disappointments. But there has also been joy, and plenty of good old affirmation of the quotidian. And, when I’ve opened my eyes and paid attention, one commencement exercise after another. As Molly Bloom once said (or was it Marv Albert?), “YES!”
Just for a little context, nowadays, Stuyvesant has a reputation for being ultra competitive and uptight, and populated exlcusively by Asian-American genius overachievers. In my day, in keeping with the generally apocalyptic character of New York, it was a much funkier place. There was a distinct lawless, anarchic character to the place, shaped by the forces of waning hippiedom and rising punk in a decaying city. The principal at the time was a guy named Gaspar R. Fabricante, who was a complete cypher so far as any of us could tell. He had no relationship of any kind with any students or teachers. Periodically, he could be observed at the top of the main stairs of the school greeting the student body in the style of a tin-pot dictator, with slicked back hair and a forced smile. He would occasionally circulate some sort of communication or make an announcement over the PA system reminding us that we attended a hallowed institution. I'm sure announcements of similar character are still made in the present day Stuyvesant, and from what I gather would probably be taken more or less seriously at face value.
Such was not the case back then. To most of my friends, even though many of us were relatively high achieving, Ivy-bound, etc., the ideas that we constituted some sort of elite, and that the decrepit teachers and facilities that attempted to contain us actually deserved their reputation were patently absurd. I don't quite know why the memory stuck with me, because I had zero contact with the him, and gave him virtually no thought during my high schoole years, but GRF actually did pronounce "You are the new elite" at our graduation, just at the moment that a friend of mine in the front row sent up a puff of smoke from a bong hit ...
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
By John Albin, Stuyvesant, class of 1980
It was a cloudless June day in 1980. Though the sky was clear, the air hung heavy with anticipation, the anxious perspiration of imminent adulthood, and a hint of burning vegetation (which due to impending life circumstances -- to be described later -- I shall not identify). I sat in Avery Fisher Hall with 800 of my closest friends listening to the most inspirational orator since William Jennings Bryan predict my future. I'm speaking, of course, of the great Gaspar R. Fabricante and his vision of me as a member of the new elite, a Stuyvesantian bound for glory.
Sad, to say, Gaspar, I haven't quite lived up to that billing. Stuyvesant (and the 1970s) taught me many things, not least a capacity for, suspicion of pomaded authority, along with a mastery of wry detachment and indolence, to say nothing of the nail delay and the collected works of McKinley Morganfield and Chester Burnett. However, Stuyvesant didn’t teach me how to find my way in the world. That is something I’ve had to learn on my own, and is still a work in progress.
That work began just two months after Gaspar’s valedictory, when I set forth on the road to elitehood. The first stop (after a series of track fires and diversions to some of New York’s more apocalyptic settings) was a collection of ivory (well, copper-roofed, but that ain’t the metaphor) towers, in a community the great 20th century philosopher Carlin once called “White Harlem”. I, a simple youth from a small village in lower Manhattan, soon found myself trafficking (never proven) among an assortment of humanity from an assortment of lands, some unknown even to the cartographer Steinberg.
While at this fine institution, I continued honing my skills as an authentic interpreter of African American music, subsidizing my studies with weekend gigs and dreaming of seeing my name in lights at the Regal (or at least Dan Lynch). Eventually, I made it as far as a certain Delphic temple on 125th Street (as an authentic Ivory Coast pop musician), but I realized that, even though the world always made life comfortable for artists, it might nevertheless be a good idea to pick up a trade. With this in mind, I settled in for a long hard slog in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Marx, figuring that if the blues didn’t pan out, the job market was always bullish for philosopher kings.
This plan, of course played out to perfection. First, the obligatory sojourn in a Paris garret, followed by three years of editing elementary school textbooks. By 1988 I found my self in civil service, studying garbage accumulation on New York City’s roadsides. The mythical cave wasn’t available, but shadows cast on underpasses served nearly as well. I could sense elitehood around the next bend.
Slowly I accumulated knowledge and responsibility, making sure to avoid remuneration with each step up the ranks. After all, philosopher kings are in it for justice, truth, and discovering the forms, and I certainly discovered the forms. Personal, intellectual, artistic, and romantic growth followed the same glorious arc as career and finances for many years.
Through it all, my fecklessness rarely caused me much more than an occasional sleepless night. I had friends and flings, music, recreation, and navel gazing to divert me. I also had the friendship and indulgence of my parents. But In 1991, tragedy struck, literally. My father, who had always been my closest friend and confidant, suffered a massive stroke at the age of 56, which rendered him severely physically, intellectually, and psychiatrically disabled.
He had been an athlete, polymath, and epicurean, a larger than life figure to most who knew him. Now, he was left a cripple who could speak, and cry out in despair, but could no longer think, create, or enjoy life. The impact on our family was enormous, physically and spiritually. Between the strain of caring for a demanding invalid, and the daily realization that what had once been was no longer, we all barely treaded water for years.
Gradually, we found ways to cope. I formed bands, wrote music, and performed sporadically through the mid and late ‘90s. In 1999, I began what have become annual visits to Europe. Most years this has included tours of some of Switzerland’s spotlessly seamy juke joints (where standards are low and, pay is high) with fellow Stuyvesantian Tom Lyons (‘81).
In 2000 I met the love of my life, Ivana Jovic, and my European vacations started including trips to her native Serbia. She has dragged me kicking and screaming toward maturity. I’ve done my part too, making sure to bring her down to my level whenever possible. With many miles still to go, significant milestones have been passed. We began living together in 2002. We were recently married, and now are expecting our first child. I’ve even started doing the kinds of career and life planning that most of my classmates probably got to at least a decade ago.
All of this is a bit daunting for a somewhat past it former new elite. It’s the kind of stuff that I’m sure Gaspar figured out by the time he was 20. But it’s also exciting and inspiring. There have been struggles and disappointments. But there has also been joy, and plenty of good old affirmation of the quotidian. And, when I’ve opened my eyes and paid attention, one commencement exercise after another. As Molly Bloom once said (or was it Marv Albert?), “YES!”
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