This is the fifth chapter of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." The previous chapter can be found here. The novel begins here.
Leaving my office building, I headed toward the 7th Avenue IRT and my journey home. The IRT is a group of subway lines. So is the BMT. So is the IND. A lot of people don’t know this. At some point in the last decade or so, all traces of the New York I knew as a child disappeared. The whores were chased out of Times Square by a giant mouse. The junkies were chased out of Union Square by farmers. Homeless people were scooped up into unmarked white vans and deported to San Diego. New York accents were banned from Manhattan.
My Grandfather grew up in Manhattan and spent his whole life there. He spoke with the kind of accent you hear in old movies. Part Leo Gorcey, part Humphrey Bogart, with hints of the pale of settlement polyglot he grew up speaking. He used tell us kids bedtime stories about the charms of old New York. In his day, it was the Jews against the Irish – pitched battles in the Gashouse district against the gang led by his arch-nemesis Hugo Mahoney. The way Grandpa said the name, it sounded like “Oogie Maharney,” and in his stories, Grandpa always came out on top, hitting Oogie in the face with a rotten tomato, or chasing him into the shins of the beat cop.
I always knew grandpa wasn’t really gangster, or an angel with a dirty face, just a regular guy, retired from a regular job, who wore a fedora and a coat and tie when ever he went out. When he died, his final raspberry to the religious upbringing he walked away from when he enrolled in the Jewish Harvard was his instructions to be cremated. It’s a good thing we followed those instructions, too, because if there had been a body, some yuppie anthropologist who thinks an egg cream is supposed to have eggs and cream in it would have stuffed him and stuck him in a diorama in the Museum of Natural History next to the cavemen and the saber tooth tiger. Grandpa hated cats.
But I digress. One of the stranger things to have happened is that one day, in the middle of the night, somebody went and changed the names of all the trains. All vestiges of the three separate subway companies were erased. F’s were turned into V’s. V’s were turned into Q’s. The double-L lost an L. And nobody told the lifers. On the rare occasions when one of us could find another, we’d swap stories about flashers on the BMT or ax murderers on the IND. Meanwhile, flocks of newly arrived actors, lawyers, and media slaves stop and ask for directions to the red line, and we try to figure out why all these people think they’re in Boston.
But I digress. I took the subway back to my palatial civil servant’s villa, better known as a crumbling apartment, in a crumbling building, in a neighborhood that used to be overrun with hookers after the factories shut down at night. Now it’s the latest clone of Soho, but it’s still crumbling. Pushing and shoving my way through the phalanxes of smokers standing outside the 14 bars that have opened on my block in the last three months, I made my way to my building, inside and upstairs to my apartment.
As I started to turn my key in the lock, the door jerked open, and I tumbled forward into my foyer. I looked up from the floor to see standing in from of me the girl I saw loitering on Arthur Avenue.
Ordinarily, I gawk as well as the next guy, but when I saw her earlier, I was too preoccupied to give her the attention, she obviously sought. I could see now that she deserved, it too. From the brief glance I shot her way on Arthur Avenue, I had guessed she was jailbait because of the way she dressed – the only women on the streets who look like hookers these days are twelve year old kids. I have as active a fantasy life as the next guy too, but I have certain rules. Like never undress a minor with your eyes. Maybe the government can’t intercept what your eyes download to your brain, yet, but I’m not taking any chances.
Now seeing her up close, I could see that see wasn’t as young as I had thought. She was in her twenties, and dressed for, if not action, at least attracting the stares of civil servants who don’t get out too much. Beneath the spiked blond hair of dubious provenance, heavy mascara, multiple ear and nose rings, exposed skin, and tattoos was a certified natural beauty. Big green eyes, full lips, and porcelain skin, and cheekbones like a movie star. I picked myself off the floor, and lifted my jaw back into place before putting it into service.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my apartment?”
“I’m a friend of Tony’s. A close friend. I need to talk to you. Your door was open.”
Two things told me she was lying. One, there was no way a vision like this was close friends with the likes of Tony Paternostro. He was a middle-aged, blue collar guy out of the Bronx, with a wife and kids, and a dead-end job. He hid from his battleax of a wife in neighborhood bars and social clubs with a one-eyed sociopath. She was a walking wet dream. Guys with looks, money, and connections for anything she could possibly want would be parading behind her, tripping on their tongues and signing over their condos in Florida to her. Lord knows who she hung out with, but it had to be someone with more obvious charms than a guy who spends his life around sticky black stuff and rocks.
Two, I’m a fourth generation latchkey-kid, native New Yorker. No silver spoon for me – I was born with a Medeco, a Schlage, and a Segal in my mouth. I’ve triple locked my door every day since second grade. In crumbling neighborhoods like mine, even ones where the cheapest apartments now go for three grand a month, that’s what you do. It keeps out the smokers. All that time I thought it also kept out girls with bodies that blatantly defy the laws of physics and who make no effort to conceal the color of their underwear. I guess I never got the memo that telling me they were allowed in after all. Maybe they only give those memos to the market rate tenants, like heat and hot water.
This was no time to discuss the finer points of the housing market though, and as much as I might have liked to let myself think with the wrong head, the events of the day wouldn’t let me. Besides, red lace thongs don’t do all that much for me. Not that I’d noticed. I’m not all that interested in looking at the outline of a nipple ring through a tight, nearly see-through blouse, either. Not that I’d noticed. I was trying to get to the bottom of why a barely clothed bottom threatening to escape from a tight leather skirt was in my apartment. Not that I’d noticed.
“Try again. I don’t know who you are, or how you got here. So how about you clear that all up for me, before I call my new best friend Detective Rendell.”
With that, I heaved my government-issue cellphone off my belt, fished Rendell’s card out of a pocket and started poking at the keypad.
“Please. Don’t do that. I can’t talk to the cops about this. You gotta help me.”
“I gotta help you? I don’t know anything about you, and I don’t think I want to, especially if you don’t want to talk to the cops about the murder of your ‘close’ friend.”
“I can’t talk to the cops. If they find out, I don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
“Who, the cops?”
“No the people who killed Tony”
“You know who killed him?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Regretting the words the minute they left my mouth, I asked anyway.
“All right, why don’t you tell me what’s going on, then tell me how you know Tony. Let’s start with your name.”
“Honey … ”
“You can call me honey once we get to know each other a little better, but for now why don’t you just tell me your name.”
“I told you – it’s honey. H u n n-y.”
“Yeah, and who’s your brother, Christopher Robin?”
“Ha ha. My daddy wanted to name me that, and he’s the kind of guy that gets to do what he wants.
“Yeah? Who’s your daddy?”
“His name is Vincent Pugliacci.”
The room reverberated with the sound of my jaw hitting the floor again. For the second time in a day, the name of one of the most notorious innocent-until-proven-guilty men in New York turned up in connection with a dead guy who used to work for me. On top of that, he appeared to have an appreciation for whimsical classics of children’s literature. Menace and whimsy can be a fearsome combination.
“So let me see if I got this straight. You’re Vinnie the Pooh’s daughter, and I’m guessing he loves his Hunny?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Cute, huh?”
“I guess so, but none of that explains what you were doing outside the scene of Tony Paternostro’s murder, and why you expect me to be able to help you.”
“Like I told you Tony and I … well, he was my boyfriend.”
“I’m having a little trouble picturing that”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Why does everybody say that”
“Well, he was … uh quite a bit older than you.”
“So?”
“Well, you’re a very pretty girl …”
“And Tony was a very handsome man.”
What can I say? Love is blind. Either that or “pear-shaped, pock-marked, and pale” is the new Brad Pitt.
“Let’s just skip that for now. Why don’t you tell me why you think I can help you?”
“Tony always said he trusted you. He said you’re the only boss who ever did anything for him.”
“Sure, at work I took care of him, but that’s just because he did his job OK, at least compared to whoever else was available. I’m still not seeing what you want from me.”
“Tony said that if anything ever happened to him, stay away from his wife, and stay away from crazy Joe. I got nobody I can trust so that’s why I’m coming to you.”
“Listen, all I can tell you is that if you think you know what happened to him, and you need someone to protect you, you’d do a lot better looking a little closer to home.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Start with your father. I heard he knows something about protecting people.”
“And a lot of other things too. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I can’t go to him because I think he might be connected to what happened to Tony.”
“What do you mean? You think your father killed your boyfriend? And you want me to do something about it?”
“I don’t know if my father did it. All I know is that someone close to him was involved. If this person was, and the cops come after him, he’ll know it was ‘cause of me.”
“Don’t worry about it. The cops can protect the person id-ing a suspect. They did it all the time on Barney Miller.”
“Who’s Barney Miller, and what’d the cops do on him?”
“Uh, forget it. Anyway, how would this guy know you told the cops about him?”
“Because I saw him running out of the building, and he saw me.”
“Look, I can see that you’ve got a problem, but I still think you should go to the cops. If you really think you can’t, then you’re better off going to your father and telling him what you saw. What would he do to his own daughter?”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t go to him. If he was involved, that means my own father killed the man I love. If that’s true, I don’t ever want to see him again, and I don’t want him knowing the reason why.”
“OK, but what do you want me to do for you?”
“I want you to find out if my father did it, so I’ll know whether I can ever see my father again.”
“Who do you think I am, Archie freakin’ Goodwin? I’m sorry Hunny, but I think you’ve got the wrong guy. All I do is push paper.”
“That’s not what Tony said about you. He said you knew stuff about my father’s business and the people that work for him. That you knew how to dig things up. He also said he could trust you.”
“Look, I know enough to know that I don’t want to dig any deeper. I also know that I already have a job, one I can’t afford to lose by interfering with a murder investigation.”
“You don’t have to worry about your job. I can pay you. A lot. And if you find out that my father is innocent, he’ll take care of you.”
“Are you crazy? What if he’s not innocent? Then he’ll really take care of me.”
“Now who’s being crazy? Look, Tony’s dead. You might be next. The only way you can protect yourself is finding out who did it.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The inappropriate boyfriend of a mobster’s daughter winds up dead, and his boss has to worry about being next in line for a bullet? What, your father thinks I fixed the two of you up?”
“What do you mean ‘inappropriate’? He was a very nice man. And who would be appropriate? Some zip in a black shirt and white tie? Besides, this has got nothing to do with what was between me and Tony.”
“You’re saying your father was happy about you being in love with a married man who made next to no money and came home from work every day smelling like asphalt?”
“My father has never liked any of my boyfriends, but he’s never killed any of them.”
“First time for everything.”
“He didn’t know about me and Tony. Nobody did, so that can’t be why he killed him, if he did. If he did, it had to be about business. You and Tony’s business.”
“Then forget about you telling the cops. I’m telling them myself. Now. I’d rather take my chances with them.”
I hoisted the phone up again and tried to heave open its giant clamshell. She was too quick though. She grabbed it from my hands and heaved it through the open door. I heard a splash, and knew I’d be filling out forms in the morning.
“Nice shot.”
“I played shooting guard at Our Lady of Padua”
“You know that’s not the only phone in the world. You’re not gonna stop me from calling the cops.”
“Maybe, but for now, that was the last one in this apartment. The nuns taught shop, too. I know all about wiring.”
It looked like she had won the first round. If I was going to call the cops, it might not be for a while. There’s probably a code in the city procedures manual for how to replace drowned telecommunications equipment. I didn’t know it, but Carboña probably had it. Besides, they’d probably fine me for polluting the sewers. There’s probably a way to get the phone company to show up and fix your wires, too, but no one I know has ever cracked that code. I was gonna need to get to out of my apartment by myself to get to the cops. If she played hoops and took shop high in school, who knows what other skills the nuns imparted to her. Besides, I was taught never to hit a girl. The only people I was supposed to hit were Irish street urchins, and I didn’t have any rotten tomatoes handy. They were all in the fridge.
“All right. It looks like I’ve got no choice but to listen to you a bit more. But this doesn’t mean I’m gonna help you.”
For the first time since I fell into my apartment, somebody cracked a smile.
“Well at least that’s a start.”
I had to smile a little myself. Hunny seemed to have a way of getting what she wanted out of people. Not that I was ready to start moonlighting yet. I’d need to fill out a form to get approval to do that.
“All right, so what’s the story here? Why do you think this had something to do with Tony’s job?”
“I told you. If it’s not because he was my boyfriend, what else could it be?”
“For starters, it could be his wife.”
“No way. She needed him alive, and married. She wanted half his pension – Tony always told me she couldn’t collect if they got divorced or he died”
“Yeah I heard about that. I was there when the cops broke the news to her. The minute Rendell start asking her about her how things were between her and Tony, she broke out that story about the pension. Acted all pissed off about his dying before he filled out some paperwork that would have benefited her.”
“See?”
“Yeah, but it was all a little too neat – she was too ready to tell us she had no reason to kill him. Didn’t show the slightest hint of real emotion when she got the news. She was just pissed off that she didn’t get his money.”
“That’s what I’m saying. She didn’t care about him at all. All she cared about was what she could get out of him.”
“Maybe so, but I’m telling you, she didn’t seem surprised or affected by the news at all. After a minute, she acted like she was upset, but it was the fakest thing I ever saw. Almost like she knew he was dead. She’s got an angle in this, I bet.”
“No way. Tony says there was no way she could get his money unless he retired, and they were still married. That’s why we couldn’t get married – she wouldn’t let him go.”
After the m-bomb, I was tempted to say something, held my tongue. I still had electronic devices I cared about in my apartment, and more than one fixture with running water. Besides, it was getting late. I needed to get her out of my apartment. Civil servants need their beauty rest.
“Look, there are a lot of complexities to the pension system. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about guys thinking they had it all figured out, only to find someone’s hand in their pockets the minute they retired. Something else could’ve been going on, too.”
“Like what?”
“Like crazy Joe. That guy’s a walking disaster area, and Tony’s been hanging around with him for twenty years. Who knows what kind of shit he might’ve brought around? So why go get a good night’s sleep, think all this over, and then see whether maybe you might do better with the cops than with me.”
“I got no place to go. I can’t go back to the apartment – the cops have got it all sealed up. And can’t go back to my father’s place right now.”
“Don’t you have any friends, someone you can crash with?”
“No one I can trust. Look, just let me stay here‘till you get this figured out. It won’t take long. I promise, I’ll be no trouble at all.”
Before I could say no, she turned her back to me, pulled her shirt off and started walking toward my bathroom. I was disappointed to see that she wasn’t wearing a bra that matched her thong. Wasn’t wearing a bra at all, actually, but I guess I already knew that.
I tried to sputter a weak objection, but couldn’t get the words out before she beat me to the draw.
“I’m just gonna take a shower. I don’t mind sleeping on your couch, but I didn’t bring a change of clothes or anything to sleep in,” she said as the door closed.
“Why don’t you give me one of your shirts, and maybe a pair of your boxers? Just slip ‘em through the door and throw ‘em on the floor. And no peeking.”
With that, I heard the water in the shower roar to life. I resigned myself to having a new roommate and set about making her feel at home. I set up the pull-out couch in the living room for her and fished out some deluxe civil servant boxer shorts and a shirt I had long since given up on from a pile at the bottom of my closet. I then followed her distribution instructions to the letter, though do to the reflective properties certain glass surfaces, perhaps not the spirit.
The rest of the evening’s ablutions passed without further incident, and with teeth brushed and face scrubbed I retreated to my bedroom for a much needed rest.
Next chapter
Friday, February 16, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
How to Vote for President
With the recent spate of announcements of presidential candidacies, it occurs to me that there would be great value in developing a systematic approach to candidate selection. With my background in the efficiencies of municipal procurement, who better than I to produce and disseminate such a system.
Behold the hand-dandy calcu-vote system:
1. Identify your most important core value
2. Rate each candidate according to degree of pandering to that value on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 = "I do not speak French"; 5 = "is your tongue supposed to go there?"
3. Identify 2 policy proposals from each candidate that conflate (your) self-interest and improbable predictions of macro-economic effects and rate each on a scale of 0 to 5 (0= "you want to raise my taxes and to fix social security?"; 5="cheap Chinese TV's and jobs at home? sounds good to me!")
4. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 to 5 for combined naturalness and salt-and-pepper-ness of hair. (0=Donald Trump; 5=George Clooney)
5. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 t0 5 for absence of melanin (0=Jack Johnson; 5 = George Will)
6. Sample each candidate's stump speech for 1 minute and add 1 point for each occurence of "Freedom" ,"America" ,"Hope", "Values" and "Future" up to a maximum of 10. For any occurences above 10, deduct 2 points per occurence
7. For each candidate, count the number of X and Y chromosomes. Assign 2 points for each X chromosome and 5 for each Y (up to a maximum of 5)
8. Add up the scores for steps 1-7 and vote for the candidate with the highest total.
9. If there is a tie, vote for Ross Perot.
10. If Ross Perot is not on the ballot select a fringe party candidate at random (make sure to bring a coin or die into the voting booth).
Behold the hand-dandy calcu-vote system:
1. Identify your most important core value
2. Rate each candidate according to degree of pandering to that value on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 = "I do not speak French"; 5 = "is your tongue supposed to go there?"
3. Identify 2 policy proposals from each candidate that conflate (your) self-interest and improbable predictions of macro-economic effects and rate each on a scale of 0 to 5 (0= "you want to raise my taxes and to fix social security?"; 5="cheap Chinese TV's and jobs at home? sounds good to me!")
4. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 to 5 for combined naturalness and salt-and-pepper-ness of hair. (0=Donald Trump; 5=George Clooney)
5. Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 t0 5 for absence of melanin (0=Jack Johnson; 5 = George Will)
6. Sample each candidate's stump speech for 1 minute and add 1 point for each occurence of "Freedom" ,"America" ,"Hope", "Values" and "Future" up to a maximum of 10. For any occurences above 10, deduct 2 points per occurence
7. For each candidate, count the number of X and Y chromosomes. Assign 2 points for each X chromosome and 5 for each Y (up to a maximum of 5)
8. Add up the scores for steps 1-7 and vote for the candidate with the highest total.
9. If there is a tie, vote for Ross Perot.
10. If Ross Perot is not on the ballot select a fringe party candidate at random (make sure to bring a coin or die into the voting booth).
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Of Course You Realize, This Means War
According to a recent article in the New York Times, U.S. "intelligence" officials in Iraq (there's an oxymoron for you) believe that Iran is supplying insurgents in Iraq with munitions, including the most effective form of roadside bomb. The article alludes to the evidence U.S. officials claim to have unearthed, but makes no attempt to assess the validity of these claims. The article also mentions that Iranian officials flatly deny the charges.
This is an extraordinary story. Given the way the Times via Judith Miller got burned by the WMD claims leading up to the invasion, it's astonishing that that the Times would report these claims as straight news. I would think that most Times readers (and I would hope editors) would immediately sense their "here we go again radar" booting up. Yet the article alludes only very indirectly to the possibility that this is part of a P.R. campaign to start another war -- by quoting U.S. officials' denials that that's what it is. Beyond that, there's is no counterpoint and minimal political context to the story. There's also nothing on the opinion pages yet. One would think that the minute a story like this hits, the opinion writers would be raising "fool me once ... " warnings, but this isn't happening so far.
Ironically, the idea that support for Iraqi insurgents is coming from Iran is entirely plausible. Iran was a refuge for Shiites throughout the Saddam era. From what I understand, the border areas between Iran and Iraq are somewhat analagous to the "tribal" areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Allegencies are religious and tribal far more than they are national. Consequently, it's entirely logical that Shiite militants are getting arms from within Iran (even if not from the Iranian government). Yet the intelligence and military "communities" under Bush are so discredited that even if they present something that on its face seems reasonable, it's almost impossible for any thinking person to take it seriously.
Or so I would hope. For now, there is only speculation. If Joe "I am the Lorax" Lieberman starts talking about the the threat to U.S. troops posed by Irani armorers, though, we'll know for sure the fix is in.
This is an extraordinary story. Given the way the Times via Judith Miller got burned by the WMD claims leading up to the invasion, it's astonishing that that the Times would report these claims as straight news. I would think that most Times readers (and I would hope editors) would immediately sense their "here we go again radar" booting up. Yet the article alludes only very indirectly to the possibility that this is part of a P.R. campaign to start another war -- by quoting U.S. officials' denials that that's what it is. Beyond that, there's is no counterpoint and minimal political context to the story. There's also nothing on the opinion pages yet. One would think that the minute a story like this hits, the opinion writers would be raising "fool me once ... " warnings, but this isn't happening so far.
Ironically, the idea that support for Iraqi insurgents is coming from Iran is entirely plausible. Iran was a refuge for Shiites throughout the Saddam era. From what I understand, the border areas between Iran and Iraq are somewhat analagous to the "tribal" areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Allegencies are religious and tribal far more than they are national. Consequently, it's entirely logical that Shiite militants are getting arms from within Iran (even if not from the Iranian government). Yet the intelligence and military "communities" under Bush are so discredited that even if they present something that on its face seems reasonable, it's almost impossible for any thinking person to take it seriously.
Or so I would hope. For now, there is only speculation. If Joe "I am the Lorax" Lieberman starts talking about the the threat to U.S. troops posed by Irani armorers, though, we'll know for sure the fix is in.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
You say tomato ...
Electric guitar is a funny instrument. Compared to other instruments common in jazz and other improvised music, it's pretty hard to play a lot of notes, particularly at fast tempos. Those who do manage to achieve "speed" comparable to what pretty much any entry-level saxophonist or pianist can do are few and far between. Those can do this, and not sound like they're working really hard are among the the very best in the business. Those who can make speed sound easy and make unusual, insteresting music ... well ... that's genius.
Now, there's a "right" way, to play fast -- picking all the notes according to a system, keeping things even and tight. Using hammer-ons, and other guitarry quirks only for effect and expression. The ultimate example of this kind of tightness is probably Pat Martino. Outside of the world of jazz guitarists, he's relatively unknown. Among guitarists, though, he's a god, the true musician's musician, the platonic form of the way you're supposed to do it. But the chops aren't the most interesting thing about him -- his phrasing, his harmonic pallet, and an amazing dynamic range (both literal, and, for lack of a better expression, spiritual), are really what make him a killer. There's also the astonishing fact that he lost most of his mental capacity, including everything he knew about the guitar, following a near-fatal brain aneurysm, then systematically re-built himself intellectually and artistically, but that's a story for another day.
There's also a "wrong" way -- picking only a fraction of the notes, and hammering on, pulling off, or sliding into the rest, while paying no attention to your up and down strokes. That's what I do, an unabashed, lazy technique-cheater. It's the only way I can make the notes on up tempo tunes, and it sounds like it. It's also what John Scofield does, but he's a genius. For him, it's a style, a choice. When he plays, no matter how fast the tempo, and no matter how many notes he's playing, he always sounds like he's going slow, just lazing his way around the fretboard. I don't know any stories about his brain exploding, though I did once see him lose his chewing gum in the middle of a solo.
All of the foregoing is just an excuse for posting a video I scared up on YouTube -- a jam featuring Pat Martino and John Scofield, each tearing it up the way only he can. I'm not sure how it sounds to ears a bit less attuned to jazz guitar, but to me, it's as if they were playing different instruments, on different planets, yet, amazingly, perfectly complementing each other. Joey D. ain't half bad either ;-).
Enjoy ...
Now, there's a "right" way, to play fast -- picking all the notes according to a system, keeping things even and tight. Using hammer-ons, and other guitarry quirks only for effect and expression. The ultimate example of this kind of tightness is probably Pat Martino. Outside of the world of jazz guitarists, he's relatively unknown. Among guitarists, though, he's a god, the true musician's musician, the platonic form of the way you're supposed to do it. But the chops aren't the most interesting thing about him -- his phrasing, his harmonic pallet, and an amazing dynamic range (both literal, and, for lack of a better expression, spiritual), are really what make him a killer. There's also the astonishing fact that he lost most of his mental capacity, including everything he knew about the guitar, following a near-fatal brain aneurysm, then systematically re-built himself intellectually and artistically, but that's a story for another day.
There's also a "wrong" way -- picking only a fraction of the notes, and hammering on, pulling off, or sliding into the rest, while paying no attention to your up and down strokes. That's what I do, an unabashed, lazy technique-cheater. It's the only way I can make the notes on up tempo tunes, and it sounds like it. It's also what John Scofield does, but he's a genius. For him, it's a style, a choice. When he plays, no matter how fast the tempo, and no matter how many notes he's playing, he always sounds like he's going slow, just lazing his way around the fretboard. I don't know any stories about his brain exploding, though I did once see him lose his chewing gum in the middle of a solo.
All of the foregoing is just an excuse for posting a video I scared up on YouTube -- a jam featuring Pat Martino and John Scofield, each tearing it up the way only he can. I'm not sure how it sounds to ears a bit less attuned to jazz guitar, but to me, it's as if they were playing different instruments, on different planets, yet, amazingly, perfectly complementing each other. Joey D. ain't half bad either ;-).
Enjoy ...
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Chapter 4 – Back to the office
This is the fourth chapter of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." The previous chapter can be found here.
Apparently, the Bronx homicide division’s headquarters were nowhere near lower Manhattan, and Rendell wasn’t offering to go out of his way. A short while later, he pulled up to the curb next to a subway station.
“Out you go. I’m done with you for now, but don’t leave town,” he said.
Shocked at the circumstances I found myself in, and frustrated with being dragged around town and bullied all day, my natural peace-making and problem-solving instincts rose to the surface:
“Wow, so cops really say ‘don’t leave town?’, or have you just been watching a lot of Kojak on cable?”
“A wise guy eh?”
I guess that answered that question.
“No just trying to win you over with my charming sense of humor, but I can see it’s not working. If you need me, you know where to find me.”
With that, I descended. A short while later, I found myself on the train, with plenty to think about on the long ride downtown.
I guy who worked for me, whom I was friendly with, but not too close, was dead. Really dead. Usually, when a City worker dies, no one notices for a while. Lack of movement and strong odors don’t mean much in a typical civil service office, but this time there no was getting around it. Pats was dead -- he didn’t just smell funny.
A no account scam artist sleaze bag and known associate of the deceased finds the body, and decides to tell me about it instead of the cops. I should be honored by his faith in me, I suppose, but confidant to the bums wasn’t exactly my first career choice.
The widow of the dearly departed can’t keep her stories straight. Either she worshipped the ground he walked on, or she couldn’t wait to bury him. Either she didn’t know a thing about her husband’s extra-curricular activities, or she knew exactly what he was up to, and wanted to make sure she got her cut.
As for the dearly departed, he was turning into a complicated guy. It seems he was stashing girlfriends in an apartment owned by a guy with an animal for a middle name. Never a good sign.
And here I was, a bureaucrat, not bloated yet, but getting there. Rip Van Civil Servant waking up in the middle of a mystery. Except, as we say in the business, it’s not my department. Mysteries are for cops. Not for guys who drift through a career or two, wind up in a job they couldn’t imagine themselves doing in a thousand years, and stay there until it’s too late to leave. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great job for a guy who thrives on paperwork and tedium, but I flunked torpor in college. I may not be an artist, or a poet, or a rock star, but I’m not this guy behind this desk. And I’m definitely not a homicide detective. With a long ride ahead of me and psychopathic fellow passengers to stare down, I tried to put thoughts like that out of my mind. Soon enough, I found myself behind the desk behind which I’m not the guy.
For a change, the phone rang.
Before I could utter an officially approved greeting, I found myself being warmly addressed for the second time that day
“Where the fuck you been? I’ve been trying to get you all day.”
I quickly filled Big Al in on the details, and for the first time in 10 years, I heard his voice drop below a bellow.
“Holy shit. Pats is dead? Shot? Why would anybody kill him?
Not having gained any insight into that question myself, there wasn’t much to say, so I said it.
“I don’t know. His wife didn’t seem upset -- more like she was pissed off. She said something about a death gamble or something, but I couldn’t really follow it.”
“You still didn’t read that pension booklet? How many times I gotta tell you. Read the fuckin’ book and pick a fuckin’ plan. Don’t you know that’s your money?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ‘huh’ me. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“I know, I know, but I still don’t know what I’m gonna do. I might quit in six months and putting all that money into the pension would be like throwing it away.”
“Who do you think you’re kidding. You’re a lifer like me. You gotta take care of these things.”
“Yeah, yeah, but what does that have to with Pats?”
“Listen you dope, she said death gambit. She was talking about the death benefit in Pats’ pension.”
“Yeah that must have been it. But I can never figure that stuff out.”
“Big shot executive. Got numbers comin’ out his ass, but can’t even read his own pension plan. Jesus H. Christ. Do I gotta teach you everything?”
With that big Al launched into a detailed explanation of civil service pension options. Apparently, when you sign up, you have a choice. Either you take your full pension when you retire, and if you die before your wife dies, tough luck for wifey – she gets nothing. But, if you agree to take a reduced pension, if your wife outlives you, she can keep collecting. It’s called a death gambit because you have to bet on who dies first. It also, as I understand it, involves filling out forms.
“Sounds sort of like a blueprint for spouse-a-cide, if you ask me,” I said after he finished.
“Yeah, well I love me wife and I don’t worry about it.”
“Maybe Pats’ wasn’t so sure about his wife.”
“Yeah, but if he didn’t set it up for her to get the pension, she wants him alive, or she’ll never get a dime.”
“I guess that knocks her out of suspicion, but I’m telling you, there was something really funny about the way she reacted – almost like she knew he was dead already.”
“Look at you. Sam Fuckin’ Spade. Leave it the cops, and get your ass down to the pension office.
“Yeah sure. As soon as I can. Hey, what were you calling me about anyway?”
“Asphalt you dirtbag, waddya think? What am I gonna do tomorrow? Who’s gonna place the orders?”
“Oh shit. That was the last thing on my mind. I’ll take care of it.”
After I hung up with big Al, I made the requisite phone calls and made sure that streets would flow black for another day.
I decided it was time to turn to my in-box and see what the bureaucrats on high had for me today before settling into some real work avoidance.
“Memorandum:
To: All Department Employees
From: Commissioner Davis
Subject: Objections to Materials
It has come to my attention that some employees have been displaying appropriate materials of an unobjectionable nature at their work stations such as pictures. As you know, exposure to appropriate materials constitutes a serious violation of the employee code of conduct and may result in serious consequences.”
I tacked the memo up on my bulletin board, next a collection of similar missives, and made a note to surf the web for some appropriate porn to hang on my wall. I hate to be out of compliance with policy. Then I continued to work my way through the pile. After a while, I reached the bottom and decided to move onto my next activity – reporting back to my superiors about the day’s developments. By that time, it was a few minutes after five, and I noticed that everyone else had cleared out of the office. Oh well, too late for that. Time to clock out.
Actually, sign out. A person of my exalted status didn’t actually have to punch a time clock, but I did have to write in the time I came and left, and account for any time taken off, or extra time worked by filling in a code on the card. There’s a code for everything – sick-leave with a doctor’s excuse, sick leave without a doctor’s note, sick leave for when you’re just malingering, scheduled vacation, taking a day off when your not scheduled to take off, coming to work when you’re scheduled to take a day off. The City’s got it all covered. It all goes into a computer. Nothing ever comes out of the computer, but that’s okay. We know it’s in there.
I couldn’t find “overtime spent watching a corpse and interrogating a widow,” though. I bet the cops have that one in their time code book. I wrote in the closest thing I could find and headed for the door.
Before I could get there, the phone rang. Surprised by such a late call, I was barely able to squeeze out an official greeting.
“Jon White speaking, how may I help you?”
“May I speak to Jon White please?”
“This is he.”
“Mr. White?”
“Yes?”
“Oh thank goodness I caught you. I’ve been leaving messages for you all day.”
“Funny, I checked my voice mail, and there weren’t any messages. Who is calling?”
“Oh, well I never use voice mail. I prefer to write messages down.”
“I didn’t see any notes in my inbox.
“Oh no, I have them right here.”
“That would explain why I didn’t get back to you.”
“I beg you pardon?”
“Well, you didn’t leave the messages anywhere where I could see them, so I couldn’t respond to them.”
“Oh that’s all right, I have you on the phone now.”
“Let’s try this again. Who am I speaking to?”
“There’s no reason for you to use that tone with me!”
“Tone? I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of any tone. Can you tell me who you are and what this call is about?”
“This is Miss Davis from payroll.”
Ah, now were getting somewhere. A fellow civil servant. Time to turn on the esprit de corps.
“Yes, Miss Davis? How can I help you?”
“Please send the cards I mentioned in my messages.”
“But I didn’t get the me … Oh never mind. Miss Davis, I seem to have misplaced your messages. Could you please tell me what cards you need me to send you.
“We’re missing the timecards for two of your employees. Could you send them in please.”
“Which ones are you missing?”
“The ones which weren’t handed in last week.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. Which employees are you missing cards for?”
“Honestly Mr. White, the least you could do is look at your messages. Time cards for Anthony Paternostro and Joseph Pazzolini were not turned in last week.”
“Uh, Anthony Paternostro is dead.”
“That’s all right, just submit his card. Make sure all the right codes are written in – and make sure he signs it.”
“I don’t think that would be possible in his current condition.”
“Why? Is he absent? There’s a code for that.”
“He is dead.”
“Oh. Well just put the code for that and write and have him sign it. Then send it in as soon as you can or he won’t be paid.”
“I think that’s the least of his problems. How about if I sign it for him? Also can you tell me what code to use.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t expect me to do your job for you. I’m sure you have a code book in your office.”
With that, she hung up. I decided to put off the late, questionably not-too-lamented Anthony Paternostro’s final payroll reckoning for another day, and headed out the door.
Next chapter
Apparently, the Bronx homicide division’s headquarters were nowhere near lower Manhattan, and Rendell wasn’t offering to go out of his way. A short while later, he pulled up to the curb next to a subway station.
“Out you go. I’m done with you for now, but don’t leave town,” he said.
Shocked at the circumstances I found myself in, and frustrated with being dragged around town and bullied all day, my natural peace-making and problem-solving instincts rose to the surface:
“Wow, so cops really say ‘don’t leave town?’, or have you just been watching a lot of Kojak on cable?”
“A wise guy eh?”
I guess that answered that question.
“No just trying to win you over with my charming sense of humor, but I can see it’s not working. If you need me, you know where to find me.”
With that, I descended. A short while later, I found myself on the train, with plenty to think about on the long ride downtown.
I guy who worked for me, whom I was friendly with, but not too close, was dead. Really dead. Usually, when a City worker dies, no one notices for a while. Lack of movement and strong odors don’t mean much in a typical civil service office, but this time there no was getting around it. Pats was dead -- he didn’t just smell funny.
A no account scam artist sleaze bag and known associate of the deceased finds the body, and decides to tell me about it instead of the cops. I should be honored by his faith in me, I suppose, but confidant to the bums wasn’t exactly my first career choice.
The widow of the dearly departed can’t keep her stories straight. Either she worshipped the ground he walked on, or she couldn’t wait to bury him. Either she didn’t know a thing about her husband’s extra-curricular activities, or she knew exactly what he was up to, and wanted to make sure she got her cut.
As for the dearly departed, he was turning into a complicated guy. It seems he was stashing girlfriends in an apartment owned by a guy with an animal for a middle name. Never a good sign.
And here I was, a bureaucrat, not bloated yet, but getting there. Rip Van Civil Servant waking up in the middle of a mystery. Except, as we say in the business, it’s not my department. Mysteries are for cops. Not for guys who drift through a career or two, wind up in a job they couldn’t imagine themselves doing in a thousand years, and stay there until it’s too late to leave. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great job for a guy who thrives on paperwork and tedium, but I flunked torpor in college. I may not be an artist, or a poet, or a rock star, but I’m not this guy behind this desk. And I’m definitely not a homicide detective. With a long ride ahead of me and psychopathic fellow passengers to stare down, I tried to put thoughts like that out of my mind. Soon enough, I found myself behind the desk behind which I’m not the guy.
For a change, the phone rang.
Before I could utter an officially approved greeting, I found myself being warmly addressed for the second time that day
“Where the fuck you been? I’ve been trying to get you all day.”
I quickly filled Big Al in on the details, and for the first time in 10 years, I heard his voice drop below a bellow.
“Holy shit. Pats is dead? Shot? Why would anybody kill him?
Not having gained any insight into that question myself, there wasn’t much to say, so I said it.
“I don’t know. His wife didn’t seem upset -- more like she was pissed off. She said something about a death gamble or something, but I couldn’t really follow it.”
“You still didn’t read that pension booklet? How many times I gotta tell you. Read the fuckin’ book and pick a fuckin’ plan. Don’t you know that’s your money?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ‘huh’ me. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“I know, I know, but I still don’t know what I’m gonna do. I might quit in six months and putting all that money into the pension would be like throwing it away.”
“Who do you think you’re kidding. You’re a lifer like me. You gotta take care of these things.”
“Yeah, yeah, but what does that have to with Pats?”
“Listen you dope, she said death gambit. She was talking about the death benefit in Pats’ pension.”
“Yeah that must have been it. But I can never figure that stuff out.”
“Big shot executive. Got numbers comin’ out his ass, but can’t even read his own pension plan. Jesus H. Christ. Do I gotta teach you everything?”
With that big Al launched into a detailed explanation of civil service pension options. Apparently, when you sign up, you have a choice. Either you take your full pension when you retire, and if you die before your wife dies, tough luck for wifey – she gets nothing. But, if you agree to take a reduced pension, if your wife outlives you, she can keep collecting. It’s called a death gambit because you have to bet on who dies first. It also, as I understand it, involves filling out forms.
“Sounds sort of like a blueprint for spouse-a-cide, if you ask me,” I said after he finished.
“Yeah, well I love me wife and I don’t worry about it.”
“Maybe Pats’ wasn’t so sure about his wife.”
“Yeah, but if he didn’t set it up for her to get the pension, she wants him alive, or she’ll never get a dime.”
“I guess that knocks her out of suspicion, but I’m telling you, there was something really funny about the way she reacted – almost like she knew he was dead already.”
“Look at you. Sam Fuckin’ Spade. Leave it the cops, and get your ass down to the pension office.
“Yeah sure. As soon as I can. Hey, what were you calling me about anyway?”
“Asphalt you dirtbag, waddya think? What am I gonna do tomorrow? Who’s gonna place the orders?”
“Oh shit. That was the last thing on my mind. I’ll take care of it.”
After I hung up with big Al, I made the requisite phone calls and made sure that streets would flow black for another day.
I decided it was time to turn to my in-box and see what the bureaucrats on high had for me today before settling into some real work avoidance.
“Memorandum:
To: All Department Employees
From: Commissioner Davis
Subject: Objections to Materials
It has come to my attention that some employees have been displaying appropriate materials of an unobjectionable nature at their work stations such as pictures. As you know, exposure to appropriate materials constitutes a serious violation of the employee code of conduct and may result in serious consequences.”
I tacked the memo up on my bulletin board, next a collection of similar missives, and made a note to surf the web for some appropriate porn to hang on my wall. I hate to be out of compliance with policy. Then I continued to work my way through the pile. After a while, I reached the bottom and decided to move onto my next activity – reporting back to my superiors about the day’s developments. By that time, it was a few minutes after five, and I noticed that everyone else had cleared out of the office. Oh well, too late for that. Time to clock out.
Actually, sign out. A person of my exalted status didn’t actually have to punch a time clock, but I did have to write in the time I came and left, and account for any time taken off, or extra time worked by filling in a code on the card. There’s a code for everything – sick-leave with a doctor’s excuse, sick leave without a doctor’s note, sick leave for when you’re just malingering, scheduled vacation, taking a day off when your not scheduled to take off, coming to work when you’re scheduled to take a day off. The City’s got it all covered. It all goes into a computer. Nothing ever comes out of the computer, but that’s okay. We know it’s in there.
I couldn’t find “overtime spent watching a corpse and interrogating a widow,” though. I bet the cops have that one in their time code book. I wrote in the closest thing I could find and headed for the door.
Before I could get there, the phone rang. Surprised by such a late call, I was barely able to squeeze out an official greeting.
“Jon White speaking, how may I help you?”
“May I speak to Jon White please?”
“This is he.”
“Mr. White?”
“Yes?”
“Oh thank goodness I caught you. I’ve been leaving messages for you all day.”
“Funny, I checked my voice mail, and there weren’t any messages. Who is calling?”
“Oh, well I never use voice mail. I prefer to write messages down.”
“I didn’t see any notes in my inbox.
“Oh no, I have them right here.”
“That would explain why I didn’t get back to you.”
“I beg you pardon?”
“Well, you didn’t leave the messages anywhere where I could see them, so I couldn’t respond to them.”
“Oh that’s all right, I have you on the phone now.”
“Let’s try this again. Who am I speaking to?”
“There’s no reason for you to use that tone with me!”
“Tone? I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of any tone. Can you tell me who you are and what this call is about?”
“This is Miss Davis from payroll.”
Ah, now were getting somewhere. A fellow civil servant. Time to turn on the esprit de corps.
“Yes, Miss Davis? How can I help you?”
“Please send the cards I mentioned in my messages.”
“But I didn’t get the me … Oh never mind. Miss Davis, I seem to have misplaced your messages. Could you please tell me what cards you need me to send you.
“We’re missing the timecards for two of your employees. Could you send them in please.”
“Which ones are you missing?”
“The ones which weren’t handed in last week.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. Which employees are you missing cards for?”
“Honestly Mr. White, the least you could do is look at your messages. Time cards for Anthony Paternostro and Joseph Pazzolini were not turned in last week.”
“Uh, Anthony Paternostro is dead.”
“That’s all right, just submit his card. Make sure all the right codes are written in – and make sure he signs it.”
“I don’t think that would be possible in his current condition.”
“Why? Is he absent? There’s a code for that.”
“He is dead.”
“Oh. Well just put the code for that and write and have him sign it. Then send it in as soon as you can or he won’t be paid.”
“I think that’s the least of his problems. How about if I sign it for him? Also can you tell me what code to use.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t expect me to do your job for you. I’m sure you have a code book in your office.”
With that, she hung up. I decided to put off the late, questionably not-too-lamented Anthony Paternostro’s final payroll reckoning for another day, and headed out the door.
Next chapter
Friday, January 26, 2007
Live or ...
Discussion of music tends to focus on recordings. This makes sense, of course, since the majority of music we experience is through recordings. For pop music fans, this is often enough, maybe even better than focusing on live performance since live pop music can be a very frustrating experience. Nevertheless, the musical moments that have meant the most to me have mostly been live.
A case in point: in a previous blog entry, I mentioned that I think Pheobe Snow is one of the all time great R&B vocalists. I would guess that to the extent that anyone is even aware of Snow it's through her one hit from the mid '70s, a pleasant song called "Poetry Man" that most people probably file mentally somewhere in the neighborhood of Carole King or Carly Simon. Not a bad neighborhood, but you wouldn't take out a mortgage to move there.
So why do I think she's one of the greatest singers since Aretha Franklin? Because I heard her live once. In the early '90's, Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan fame) put together a sort of musical repertory company called the New York Rock and Soul Review that performed regularly around town. The NYRSR was basically a bunch of studio cats and semi-luminaries jamming together on R&B songs. At one of the shows that I saw, the theme was soul music from New York. During a medley of Berns and Ragovy songs, the band started playing the intro to the Janis Joplin hit "Piece of My Heart." Fagen announced a special guest vocalist, Phoebe Snow.
Phoebe approached the stage through the audience, parting the crowd like Moses and the Red Sea. She picked up the mic, and proceeded to deliver the greatest vocal performance I have ever heard in any genre in my entire life. Terms like virtuoso, colloratura, soul diva, voice of god don't even begin to do justice to what this was like. The expressiveness, emotional intensity, range, dynamics, power and musicality were literally awe inspiring. As the song built to the chorus, she leapt up and down octaves and made you feel like she really was having a piece of her heart ripped from her. As the song ended, the audience exploded. We screamed for more, but I think we were all secretly glad there was no encore. There was no way this could be topped, and if it were, I don't think we would have survived the experience. If Janis had ever heard Phoebe sing this song, she never would have dared sing it herself.
The NYRSR put out a live album which has two Phoebe cuts: a duet of "Knock on Wood" with Michael McDonald, and a solo version of "At Last". "Knock on Wood" is pretty good, but the song itself doesn't invite the kind of majestic performance that "Piece of My Heart" does. "At Last" comes closer, giving a sense of what Phoebe can offer. I've scoured the web for bootlegs or you-tubes of her doing "Piece of My Heart" to no avail. The only thing live performance I could scour up was this:
Perhaps it's best that this is all I could find. I'm not as young and vigorous as I used to be, and I'm not sure I can spare any pieces of my heart.
A case in point: in a previous blog entry, I mentioned that I think Pheobe Snow is one of the all time great R&B vocalists. I would guess that to the extent that anyone is even aware of Snow it's through her one hit from the mid '70s, a pleasant song called "Poetry Man" that most people probably file mentally somewhere in the neighborhood of Carole King or Carly Simon. Not a bad neighborhood, but you wouldn't take out a mortgage to move there.
So why do I think she's one of the greatest singers since Aretha Franklin? Because I heard her live once. In the early '90's, Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan fame) put together a sort of musical repertory company called the New York Rock and Soul Review that performed regularly around town. The NYRSR was basically a bunch of studio cats and semi-luminaries jamming together on R&B songs. At one of the shows that I saw, the theme was soul music from New York. During a medley of Berns and Ragovy songs, the band started playing the intro to the Janis Joplin hit "Piece of My Heart." Fagen announced a special guest vocalist, Phoebe Snow.
Phoebe approached the stage through the audience, parting the crowd like Moses and the Red Sea. She picked up the mic, and proceeded to deliver the greatest vocal performance I have ever heard in any genre in my entire life. Terms like virtuoso, colloratura, soul diva, voice of god don't even begin to do justice to what this was like. The expressiveness, emotional intensity, range, dynamics, power and musicality were literally awe inspiring. As the song built to the chorus, she leapt up and down octaves and made you feel like she really was having a piece of her heart ripped from her. As the song ended, the audience exploded. We screamed for more, but I think we were all secretly glad there was no encore. There was no way this could be topped, and if it were, I don't think we would have survived the experience. If Janis had ever heard Phoebe sing this song, she never would have dared sing it herself.
The NYRSR put out a live album which has two Phoebe cuts: a duet of "Knock on Wood" with Michael McDonald, and a solo version of "At Last". "Knock on Wood" is pretty good, but the song itself doesn't invite the kind of majestic performance that "Piece of My Heart" does. "At Last" comes closer, giving a sense of what Phoebe can offer. I've scoured the web for bootlegs or you-tubes of her doing "Piece of My Heart" to no avail. The only thing live performance I could scour up was this:
Perhaps it's best that this is all I could find. I'm not as young and vigorous as I used to be, and I'm not sure I can spare any pieces of my heart.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Every story tells a picture
There are certain songwriters who are artists pretty much beyond categorization or imitation. They merge music and lyric to create something so beautiful, intriguing, compelling (or some other inadequate adjective), that all you can do is listen. The most obvious examples for me are the Beatles, Stevie Wonder (though not in a long time), some of the great figures in the American musical theater tradition like Cole Porter, Rogers & Hartenstein, or A.C. Jobim & J. Gilberto.
What all of these have in common for me is that I have almost no desire to analyze their greatest work -- I just want to hear it, or play it, without feeling any strong pull to imitate it or figure out what makes it tick (except to the extent that I need to in order to blow over it if it's a "jazz" tune). I'm thinking of a song like "Fixin' a Hole" or "Golden Lady" or "Night and Day" or "Wave". Generally, I'm a pretty curious "say-how-does-this-thing-work" kind of guy, but with music like this, I'm pretty much content to let it send chills up my spine.
There's another category of songs/writers that achieve their own sort of excellence that I look at a bit differently. These tell a little story or vignette with, I don't know, closure? Character arc? A kind of Occam's razor of song elegance? Nothing missing, nothing excessive, singable, fun to play, with a hook to boot. These are the ones that intrigue me the most as a player and wannabe songwriter.
A case in point: "Dixie Chicken" by Lowell George/Little Feat. The song tells the classic story -- boy meets girl, girl gives boy cute pet name, boy loses girl, boy meets a crowd of guys in a bar who had their hearts broken by the same girl. It's got everything I love about a "story" song. Simple song form, with a great chorus and guitar hook. Mixture of humor, pathos, and self mocking in the words. A plot. Perfectly drawn scenes with clear who/what/when/where (though why is left up to interpretation). It's an utterly perfect song. At the same time, it's also so clearly structured and formulaic, that it's not too hard to do a half OK imitation. Lowell wrote a bunch of others that achieve similar perfection -- "Willin'" "Fat Man in a Bathtub" "I've Been the One" "Two Trains Runnin'" ...
Another one is Smokey Robinson -- "Tracks of My Tears" "Second that Emotion" "Ain't that Peculiar" "My Girl". He's maybe a bit closer to the Beatles in terms of ineffibility, but at the same time, he's got these kind of recurring characters and themes -- the weeping clown or lovesick soul, the cliche/stock phrase turned into a hook -- that give your friendly neighborhood plagiarist, er, aspiring songwriter a lot to work with.
A few of other writers inhabit this story telling world for me -- Merle Haggard, John Hiatt, Becker and Fagen, Jack Bruce, Mark Knopfler. But all in all, it's a pretty exclusive club, as perfection ought to be.
What all of these have in common for me is that I have almost no desire to analyze their greatest work -- I just want to hear it, or play it, without feeling any strong pull to imitate it or figure out what makes it tick (except to the extent that I need to in order to blow over it if it's a "jazz" tune). I'm thinking of a song like "Fixin' a Hole" or "Golden Lady" or "Night and Day" or "Wave". Generally, I'm a pretty curious "say-how-does-this-thing-work" kind of guy, but with music like this, I'm pretty much content to let it send chills up my spine.
There's another category of songs/writers that achieve their own sort of excellence that I look at a bit differently. These tell a little story or vignette with, I don't know, closure? Character arc? A kind of Occam's razor of song elegance? Nothing missing, nothing excessive, singable, fun to play, with a hook to boot. These are the ones that intrigue me the most as a player and wannabe songwriter.
A case in point: "Dixie Chicken" by Lowell George/Little Feat. The song tells the classic story -- boy meets girl, girl gives boy cute pet name, boy loses girl, boy meets a crowd of guys in a bar who had their hearts broken by the same girl. It's got everything I love about a "story" song. Simple song form, with a great chorus and guitar hook. Mixture of humor, pathos, and self mocking in the words. A plot. Perfectly drawn scenes with clear who/what/when/where (though why is left up to interpretation). It's an utterly perfect song. At the same time, it's also so clearly structured and formulaic, that it's not too hard to do a half OK imitation. Lowell wrote a bunch of others that achieve similar perfection -- "Willin'" "Fat Man in a Bathtub" "I've Been the One" "Two Trains Runnin'" ...
Another one is Smokey Robinson -- "Tracks of My Tears" "Second that Emotion" "Ain't that Peculiar" "My Girl". He's maybe a bit closer to the Beatles in terms of ineffibility, but at the same time, he's got these kind of recurring characters and themes -- the weeping clown or lovesick soul, the cliche/stock phrase turned into a hook -- that give your friendly neighborhood plagiarist, er, aspiring songwriter a lot to work with.
A few of other writers inhabit this story telling world for me -- Merle Haggard, John Hiatt, Becker and Fagen, Jack Bruce, Mark Knopfler. But all in all, it's a pretty exclusive club, as perfection ought to be.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Bear or Lion?
Over the last I don't know how many years my buddy Mike and I have have had a semi-regular Sunday night music session. If one of us has a composition in some state of recordability, we work on that. Otherwise, we just play tunes, usually jazz standards. One Sunday a couple of years ago, it was a standards night, and I hopped into a cab with my archtop.
The driver, a Sikh in full beard and turban, immediately asked me about the guitar -- what kind was it? did I have a gig? what kind of music do I play? Happy to have a little interaction, I answered his questions. Then I asked him if he played, and he said he didn't but was very interested in guitar. Then he asked me one more question: who is the best guitarist, Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix? A Sikh from India, driving a cab in New York City in 2004 raising the great 70's high school guitar nerd debate. Only in New York.
I answered that it's not a competition; both had a lot to offer. The guy wouldn't accept it. He felt that one must be better than the other, but he hadn't been able to figure it out for himself. He was relying on me, as a clear expert in the field, to resolve this question for him. I tried putting it different ways -- it's a matter of taste; they both had their ups and downs; Jimi was a more innovative technician, but EC opened peoples ears up in other ways. Jimi was a more adventurous artist, but EC had a few masterpieces that hold up well in any comparison ...
He still wouldn't buy it. One had to be better than the other. I have to admit it, I don't completely buy it either. But that's because of my own inner OCD. I'm a bit obsessed with comparisons in general, and have debates like this running through my head all the time. I'm also the sort of person who can see at least two sides to almost any question, so I never resolve anything.
My father had more than a bit of this streak in him. He would often replay the great debates of his youth, or compare stars from different eras. Patton vs. Rommel? DiMaggio vs. Williams? Ruth vs. Gherig? Ali vs. Marciano? Tilden vs. Laver? Bear vs Lion?
Dad, what do mean? Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions?
No, an actual bear vs. an actual lion.
A bear vs a lion.
Yup.
What kind of bear grizzly? Black? Panda?
C'mon. Be serious a panda's not a real bear. Black bears eat fruit. I'm talkin' Grizzly.
I say a lion - runs faster; king of the beasts; won't settle for berries or fish. Goes for the throat every time.
I say a bear -- much bigger and stronger can kill a deer with one swipe of the paw.
Yeah, but lions work as a team. They use strategy and superior numbers to knock out bigger prey. You ever hear of a pride of bears stalking a bison?
C'mon, a bear gets up on his hind legs, one, two, five, doesn't matter how many lions, they're all gonna turn tail and run.
And hide in the brush until the bear lets his guard down, then kick some ursine butt ...
After a few more rounds, of this, we'd face the disappointing truth. The bout would never happen. Bears live in Yellowstone. Lions live on the Serengetti. Anyway, they'd stay out of each others' way. A fight wouldn't be worth the trouble -- baby antelope are much easier targets. They'd probably go out for a beer and trade top predator tips.
Say, I like the way you attack the flank first and then leap at the jugular. Nice technique
Thanks. Pretty cool the way you snatch that Salmon out of mid-air -- you're pretty quick for a big guy. Play some ball in college?
That's kind of the way it worked out with Jimi and Eric, I suspect. Try telling that to a Sikh, though.
The driver, a Sikh in full beard and turban, immediately asked me about the guitar -- what kind was it? did I have a gig? what kind of music do I play? Happy to have a little interaction, I answered his questions. Then I asked him if he played, and he said he didn't but was very interested in guitar. Then he asked me one more question: who is the best guitarist, Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix? A Sikh from India, driving a cab in New York City in 2004 raising the great 70's high school guitar nerd debate. Only in New York.
I answered that it's not a competition; both had a lot to offer. The guy wouldn't accept it. He felt that one must be better than the other, but he hadn't been able to figure it out for himself. He was relying on me, as a clear expert in the field, to resolve this question for him. I tried putting it different ways -- it's a matter of taste; they both had their ups and downs; Jimi was a more innovative technician, but EC opened peoples ears up in other ways. Jimi was a more adventurous artist, but EC had a few masterpieces that hold up well in any comparison ...
He still wouldn't buy it. One had to be better than the other. I have to admit it, I don't completely buy it either. But that's because of my own inner OCD. I'm a bit obsessed with comparisons in general, and have debates like this running through my head all the time. I'm also the sort of person who can see at least two sides to almost any question, so I never resolve anything.
My father had more than a bit of this streak in him. He would often replay the great debates of his youth, or compare stars from different eras. Patton vs. Rommel? DiMaggio vs. Williams? Ruth vs. Gherig? Ali vs. Marciano? Tilden vs. Laver? Bear vs Lion?
Dad, what do mean? Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions?
No, an actual bear vs. an actual lion.
A bear vs a lion.
Yup.
What kind of bear grizzly? Black? Panda?
C'mon. Be serious a panda's not a real bear. Black bears eat fruit. I'm talkin' Grizzly.
I say a lion - runs faster; king of the beasts; won't settle for berries or fish. Goes for the throat every time.
I say a bear -- much bigger and stronger can kill a deer with one swipe of the paw.
Yeah, but lions work as a team. They use strategy and superior numbers to knock out bigger prey. You ever hear of a pride of bears stalking a bison?
C'mon, a bear gets up on his hind legs, one, two, five, doesn't matter how many lions, they're all gonna turn tail and run.
And hide in the brush until the bear lets his guard down, then kick some ursine butt ...
After a few more rounds, of this, we'd face the disappointing truth. The bout would never happen. Bears live in Yellowstone. Lions live on the Serengetti. Anyway, they'd stay out of each others' way. A fight wouldn't be worth the trouble -- baby antelope are much easier targets. They'd probably go out for a beer and trade top predator tips.
Say, I like the way you attack the flank first and then leap at the jugular. Nice technique
Thanks. Pretty cool the way you snatch that Salmon out of mid-air -- you're pretty quick for a big guy. Play some ball in college?
That's kind of the way it worked out with Jimi and Eric, I suspect. Try telling that to a Sikh, though.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Can a Blue Man Sing the Whites?
Somewhere in childhood, I decided I wanted to learn how to play flamenco music. So when my parents decided it was time to have culture forced down my throat by an embittered hack ... I mean start music lessons, I picked guitar as my instrument. My first lessons came at an embarassingly earnest day camp the summer I turned eight, where we sat around in a circle learning the "cowboy chords" to "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" and "Tom Dooley".
I was spending that summer with my grandparents, so they assumed the role of practice cops. Each night, they sat me down with a wind-up oven timer and made me strum D, A, G, and C chords until the buzzed at the fifteen minute mark. Failing to see the connection between the length of time it took to cook brisket in a pressure cooker, a race horse named "Stewball," and learning flamenco, I failed to be inspired. Somewhere toward the end of the summer, the headstock of my guitar got snapped off in a doorway (imagine that!). It went unmourned. The lessons ended.
Over the years, I had more abortive attempts at learning music, each of which ended in frustration at being taught what the teacher knew, not what I wanted to learn. I did actually pick up a little bit of flamenco (the little bit one teacher knew), and sort of learned to read music. But the passion was gone. Along the way, a random adult passing through my parents social circle saw my guitar and showed me how to play a blues shuffle, which got filed away in deep storage. By about age 12, I'd completely had it with lessons and pretty much gave up the guitar.
Fast forward a few years to sophomore year of high school, and I became friends with a kid whose hippie older brother had disappeared into a cult, leaving behind a no-name acoustic guitar, a pre-CBS Fender Jazzmaster and an Ampeg Gemini amplifier. Discovery of these instruments coincided with discovery of certain combustible alkyloid plant matter, as well as the twelve-bar soundtrack often associated with said plant matter. Upon hearing Cream's "Crossroads" and the Doors' "Backdoor Man", I plugged in the Jazzmaster, and somehow that fragment of the blues shown to me in childhood defrosted itself. All of a sudden I kind of knew how to play music I liked on the guitar.
The credits on rock albums led me to names like Morganfield, Burnett, Dixon, Reed, King, King, and King, and, of course Johnson. It turned out that a whole bunch of other kids in my school were making the same journey with harmonicas, and I soon found myself as the only Brownie McGee in a sea Sonny Terry wannabes, all looking to cut class, drink Night Train, and jam. I also ran into names like Clapton, Butterfield, Bloomfield, Kalb, and Kooper. Eventually it struck me that some of these guys were black and some of them were white. I also discovered that there's this whole vein of weirdness on the subject, fueled by white liberal guilt and black militant anger.
Looked at one way, there is something to the debate. The blues was born out of the black experience in the south and the migration to northern cities. Country and early urban blues is full of references to sharecropping life, hoodoo, and the joys and miseries of life in the delta. It seems utterly absurd for a middle class northern white kid to sing about mojos and john the conqueror roots. It's also true that the great innovators of blues, R&B, and jazz by and large never got the coin or the credit due them, while their often tamer white imitators walked away with millions. To continue that heritage of expropriation seems a bit suspect
On the other hand, blues is not so much the music of black people as it is the music of black individuals. It's not as if everyone with dark skin south of the Mason-Dixon line can do what Muddy Waters did. Not only that, but all the really great blues artists sound completely different from each other. This is made abundantly clear to me pretty much every time I walk into a blues club. White or black, bad blues artists sound like unconvincing imitations of someone else. Good ones sound like themselves, with maybe some echoes of others, but an essence that stands alone.
Moving over to my third hand, it's not as if there are a whole lot black Americans whose experiences give them insights into life in the court of Frederick the Great or in 19th Century Milan. Yet you rarely hear it said that a black person can't play "white" music, or that Kathleen Battle is stealing Verdi's birthright.
All of these arguments melt away for me in the face of the music itself though. There are a handful of blues artists who have touched me and made me want to play the music. At first it was about technique -- the precision of Clapton, the pyrotechnics of Hendrix, the intricacies of the great finger pickers. Eventually, raw emotion, personality, and individuality are what kept me hooked. It was no longer "how does he do that?" Instead it was "how do I translate what I'm feeling into a sound the way he does?" In light of that question, I can name a few white guys who deserve to be listened to on their own terms as much as any of their contemporaries. I wouldn't say this is because they sound authentic or "black." It's because they sound like themselves, and they communicate who they are. Here's a few. Some are obvious, some a little obscure, but all worth a spin:
Mike Bloomfield (anything from his Takoma Records days will knock your socks off)
Paul Butterfield
Bob Margolin
Bonnie Raitt
The Blues Project
A fella named Eric (but you gotta go way back)
Delbert McClinton
Larry Carlton (go see him live; forget his studio work)
Jimmy Vaughan (always like him more than his little brother)
Pheobe Snow (live, the greatest female R&B singer since Aretha, IMHO.)
Ari Eisenger
Duane A. (especially with EC)
Peter-Green-Era Fleetwood Mac
Carlos Montoya
Manitas De Plata
Now if I can only finally figure out the rest of Malaguena ...
I was spending that summer with my grandparents, so they assumed the role of practice cops. Each night, they sat me down with a wind-up oven timer and made me strum D, A, G, and C chords until the buzzed at the fifteen minute mark. Failing to see the connection between the length of time it took to cook brisket in a pressure cooker, a race horse named "Stewball," and learning flamenco, I failed to be inspired. Somewhere toward the end of the summer, the headstock of my guitar got snapped off in a doorway (imagine that!). It went unmourned. The lessons ended.
Over the years, I had more abortive attempts at learning music, each of which ended in frustration at being taught what the teacher knew, not what I wanted to learn. I did actually pick up a little bit of flamenco (the little bit one teacher knew), and sort of learned to read music. But the passion was gone. Along the way, a random adult passing through my parents social circle saw my guitar and showed me how to play a blues shuffle, which got filed away in deep storage. By about age 12, I'd completely had it with lessons and pretty much gave up the guitar.
Fast forward a few years to sophomore year of high school, and I became friends with a kid whose hippie older brother had disappeared into a cult, leaving behind a no-name acoustic guitar, a pre-CBS Fender Jazzmaster and an Ampeg Gemini amplifier. Discovery of these instruments coincided with discovery of certain combustible alkyloid plant matter, as well as the twelve-bar soundtrack often associated with said plant matter. Upon hearing Cream's "Crossroads" and the Doors' "Backdoor Man", I plugged in the Jazzmaster, and somehow that fragment of the blues shown to me in childhood defrosted itself. All of a sudden I kind of knew how to play music I liked on the guitar.
The credits on rock albums led me to names like Morganfield, Burnett, Dixon, Reed, King, King, and King, and, of course Johnson. It turned out that a whole bunch of other kids in my school were making the same journey with harmonicas, and I soon found myself as the only Brownie McGee in a sea Sonny Terry wannabes, all looking to cut class, drink Night Train, and jam. I also ran into names like Clapton, Butterfield, Bloomfield, Kalb, and Kooper. Eventually it struck me that some of these guys were black and some of them were white. I also discovered that there's this whole vein of weirdness on the subject, fueled by white liberal guilt and black militant anger.
Looked at one way, there is something to the debate. The blues was born out of the black experience in the south and the migration to northern cities. Country and early urban blues is full of references to sharecropping life, hoodoo, and the joys and miseries of life in the delta. It seems utterly absurd for a middle class northern white kid to sing about mojos and john the conqueror roots. It's also true that the great innovators of blues, R&B, and jazz by and large never got the coin or the credit due them, while their often tamer white imitators walked away with millions. To continue that heritage of expropriation seems a bit suspect
On the other hand, blues is not so much the music of black people as it is the music of black individuals. It's not as if everyone with dark skin south of the Mason-Dixon line can do what Muddy Waters did. Not only that, but all the really great blues artists sound completely different from each other. This is made abundantly clear to me pretty much every time I walk into a blues club. White or black, bad blues artists sound like unconvincing imitations of someone else. Good ones sound like themselves, with maybe some echoes of others, but an essence that stands alone.
Moving over to my third hand, it's not as if there are a whole lot black Americans whose experiences give them insights into life in the court of Frederick the Great or in 19th Century Milan. Yet you rarely hear it said that a black person can't play "white" music, or that Kathleen Battle is stealing Verdi's birthright.
All of these arguments melt away for me in the face of the music itself though. There are a handful of blues artists who have touched me and made me want to play the music. At first it was about technique -- the precision of Clapton, the pyrotechnics of Hendrix, the intricacies of the great finger pickers. Eventually, raw emotion, personality, and individuality are what kept me hooked. It was no longer "how does he do that?" Instead it was "how do I translate what I'm feeling into a sound the way he does?" In light of that question, I can name a few white guys who deserve to be listened to on their own terms as much as any of their contemporaries. I wouldn't say this is because they sound authentic or "black." It's because they sound like themselves, and they communicate who they are. Here's a few. Some are obvious, some a little obscure, but all worth a spin:
Mike Bloomfield (anything from his Takoma Records days will knock your socks off)
Paul Butterfield
Bob Margolin
Bonnie Raitt
The Blues Project
A fella named Eric (but you gotta go way back)
Delbert McClinton
Larry Carlton (go see him live; forget his studio work)
Jimmy Vaughan (always like him more than his little brother)
Pheobe Snow (live, the greatest female R&B singer since Aretha, IMHO.)
Ari Eisenger
Duane A. (especially with EC)
Peter-Green-Era Fleetwood Mac
Carlos Montoya
Manitas De Plata
Now if I can only finally figure out the rest of Malaguena ...
Monday, January 01, 2007
Chapter 3 – Interview with the Widow
This is the third chapter of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." The previous chapter can be found here.
About fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a garden apartment complex in Westchester's least quaint municipality. We found the intercom, made our presence known, and after another demonstration of police aerobics, found ourselves standing in front of a third-floor apartment. Rendell rang the bell, and a few moments later the door was opened by woman who, if hair height contributed to vertical leap, could have been a playground legend.
"Hello Louise, I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Jon White, your husband's supervisor a work."
"Oh, yeah, I remember you Jon. What are you doing here?"
"This, uh, gentleman here is Detective Rendell from the NYPD, and I'm afraid we have some bad news for you."
"Oh shit. What did that idiot do this time? Is he in jail again? I hope he doesn't expect me to bail him out."
"Uh, I'm afraid it's not what you think -- he's dead."
"No way. He's just hiding out with that slut girlfriend of his in the Bronx."
"No, really, he's dead. I just identified the body."
"Was he on the job?"
"Uh, I don't …"
At this point Detective Rendell cut me off and said, “Mrs. Paternostro, the investigation has just begun and we don't really know what happened yet. But right now it does not look like he was at work.”
The widow P looked pensive for a moment than showed signs of her bereavement.
“Shit. I can’t believe that bastard croaked before I could nail the gambit down.”
Before either of us could ask her what she meant, she started grieving some more.
“That rat bastard screwed me again. I ain’t gettin a freakin’ dime. I could kill him,” she blurted out. As soon as she did, she appeared to realize that she may have set the wrong tone, buried her face in her hands and started boo-hooing somewhat over-ostentatiously.
As someone who stumbled into a civil service career, never quite believing my misfortune at having done so, I tended to overlook some of the intricacies of my compensation. The rules of government compensation are almost as tricky as the tax code. Some people work the system better than others and manage to retire wealthy when they’re 50 years old. Others toil in bureaucratic misery into their dotage and spend their golden years fighting with the cat for the last spoonful of friskies. It sounded like she might have been talking about some piece of fine print in the pension plan that I still haven’t read. Or not. I never really got it, but the widow clearly did, and was convinced she had gotten the short end of the stick.
As everybody knows, the greatest civil-service scam artists of all are cops. If anybody knows these things, Ed Rendell would. It would be interesting to see how the display we had just witnessed would play with him.
“Uh, Mrs. Paternostro,” he began. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss. If you don’t mind, though, I need to ask you a few questions.”
Either he’s a good poker player, or his cat better hide the friskies.
She brought the sobs under control and peeked out from under her two-inch fingernails.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll try, but first, tell me what happened”
“We’re not quite sure yet. A co-worker informed Mr. White here that he found your husband, apparently deceased. Mr. White then reported this to the police. We just came from the scene. We’re still investigating, but it appears he was shot to death.”
“Oh my gawd!” she gasped. “Shot? Who would do a thing like that?”
“Well, we were hoping you could give us some information about him that might help us figure that out,” Rendell responded.
“I don’t know what I could tell you. My husband was just a city worker. I can’t imagine anybody would want to kill him.”
“Well, Mrs. Paternostro, very often when a person is killed, the crime is committed by someone who knew him,” Rendell said in a reasonable facsimile of an understanding and sympathy.
“Let’s start by talking about how things were at home.”
The widow P. tensed visibly at the question.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I had something to do with this?” She shot back.
“Oh I’m sorry Mrs. Rendell, I didn’t mean to suggest anything like that,” Rendell countered with an unctuousness I never would have thought he could summon.
“I’m just trying to get a picture of what your husband was like, what sorts of things he did, who he hung around with. That sort of thing.”
“Oh I see. That’s okay then.” She appeared satisfied for the moment that she wasn’t under suspicion.
“Your husband was found in an apartment in the Bronx, Mrs. Paternostro. Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?”
“Well, he’s from the Bronx, and his mother lived there, on Arthur Avenue. She died a couple of years ago. It was a rent controlled apartment, and my husband hung onto it. He was sub-letting it out.”
“Your husband was found in an apartment on Arthur Avenue, at this address,” Rendell said, showing here the address of the crime scene he’d written down in his notebook.
“Yeah, that’s the address. He must have been there checking on the tenants or something.”
“That’s a possibility we’ll have to check into. Do you know the names of the people he was sub-letting the apartment to Mrs. Paternostro?” Rendell asked.
“No, I don’t. He just told me he was renting the place to some Albanians, but he never told me their names,” She replied.
“Do you know if he had a lease with them? Maybe there’s a copy here somewhere?”
“Oh, I’m sure there wasn’t anything like that. Like I said, it was a rent-controlled apartment, and he wasn’t supposed to be doing that. He always used to complain about the landlord trying to evict him, and stuff like that. Oh my gawd! You don’t think the landlord killed him to get the apartment do you?”
“That’s definitely one of the leads we’ll by looking into Mrs. Paternostro. Do you know the landlord’s name, by chance?” Rendell asked.
“You know,” she said, starting to look very interested in the way things were turning, “I think I do. My husband used to take care of his mother’s affairs and such, and I’m sure we have that information around here. Let me go check.”
With that, she got up from here chair and walked out of the room. She returned a few moments later with a business card, which she handed to Rendell.
“I think this might be it,” she said as she handed Rendell the card. I managed to get a look at it as Rendell examined it. In plain type, with no logo or graphics it read “A Bronx Realty Company. Vincent Pugliacci, building manager.”
Rendell showed no signs of recognition, but as someone who had to sign off on contracts, I had seen the name Vincent Pugliacci many times, and it sure got my attention. Vincent “Vinnie the Pooh” Pugliacci was the president of Hundred Acre Asphalt and was known to have an interest in at least a dozen companies in the construction, demolition, trucking, trash-hauling, recycling, and landfill businesses. He was reputed to be the mastermind behind the biggest bid-rigging conspiracy in New York since the days of Boss Tweed.
His name surfaced in tabloid articles about the trials of other people, but he always managed to keep himself un-indicted. Several generations of Feds and local DA’s in jurisdictions all over the northeast had tried to take him on, but had never even gotten him into a courtroom. Maybe the evidence got shot down in the crossfire between dueling prosecutors. Maybe some grand jurors had misplaced sympathy for woodland creatures. From where I sat, all I knew was that every time he submitted a low bid things got complicated.
Or simple, depending on how you look at it. New York City spends billions of dollars a year on construction projects and all kinds of supplies and services. Over the years, the city has been victimized by every imaginable racketeering, bid rigging, feather bedding, kickback, and corruption scam. In response, elaborate systems for keeping contracts away from the bad guys have developed.
Nowadays, whoever bids on a contract has to fill out a two hundred page form listing the intimate details of his personal, professional, financial and legal life. On big dollar contracts, or contracts in industries with nefarious reputations, the forms are pored over by an army of investigators, auditors, and lawyers. Every name associated with the business and all of its affiliates are run by every organized crime task force in the country. If a contractor has even the faintest whiff of a problem, he gets knocked out and the next lowest bidder is selected. If investigators think he’s a bad guy, but they can’t prove it they’ll use any pretext – a late income tax return, unpaid speeding tickets, a summons for abusing a tree – to deny a contract.
Vinnie the Pooh had been run through that ringer dozens of times, and every time, the lawyers said there was no hard evidence that Pooh was connected, but things sure smelled funny in his waste disposal business. Something was rotten in Jersey, and they didn’t like the idea of giving him a contract. There was one catch, though. Every time he was low bidder, he was also the only bidder. For some no doubt completely innocent reason, no one ever bid against Vinnie the Pooh. With nothing, er, concrete to hold against him, and no, one else to give the contracts to, Vinnie the Pooh was the biggest supplier of construction materials to the city. He also had a reputation for being a big supplier the to the NYPD’s homicide division.
I found it hard to believe that a homicide cop never heard of a guy like Pugliacci, but I couldn’t tell what Rendell thought about this. He wrote something in his memo book and handed the card back to Mrs. P., and, still giving away nothing, proceeded with his questions.
“Mrs. Paternostro, your husband was found by a man named Joe Pazzolini. Can you tell me anything about him?”
“Oh yeah. Crazy Joe. Creepy little guy. He worked with my husband on his city job, and they hung around together sometimes.”
“When was the last time you saw the two of them together, Mrs. Paternostro?”
“I really have no idea. I wouldn’t let that man in my house.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, he was a real low class type of guy. The last time he was here, he took his eye out and started playing with it. Scared the shit out of my daughter.”
“Excuse me?” sputtered Rendell.
“He’s got one a them glass eyes. I ain’t got nothing against cripples and such, but there’s no excuse for something like that. In front of my children no less. Plus, he’s always gettin’ into trouble, and makin’ trouble for other people.”
“What kind of trouble?” asked the detective.
“My husband had to bail him out of jail a couple of times. And one time he and my husband were out all night together. When my husband got home in the morning, he stunk of booze, and he looked like he had been in a fight. After that, I told him that was it. I didn’t want to seem him again.”
“It seems that Mr. Pazzolini still knew something about your husband’s activities, though…maybe more than you do,” suggested Rendell.
“What do you mean by that?” asked the widow, looking like she was tensing up a bit again.
“Well, he knew where to look for him, and he found him. I understand that when co-workers of your husband asked you about him, you said you hadn’t seen him in three days. Let me ask you again Mrs. Paternostro, how are things at home?”
“Well I’m sure they’re mistaken. Me and my husband was married a long time, and we planned to stay that way,” said Mrs. P, not altogether convincingly.
“Was you husband still living here, Mrs. Paternostro?”
The widow P. tensed visibly and blurted out “Who told you he wasn’t? Of course he was. Why would you ask something like that?”
“No particular reason, Mrs. Paternostro. I’m just trying to fill in some of your husband’s background and immediate situation,” answered Rendell.
“Was he a member of any, you know, fraternal organizations? Social clubs? Did he moonlight at anything?”
“Uh, not to my knowledge,” She answered cautiously.
“Can you think of anyone, friends, neighborhoods, relatives, co-workers, he might have had disagreements with?”
“No. No one at all. My husband was an angel. He got along with everybody,” she said, a little too firmly.
Rendell muttered something that sounded like “everyone but you” under his breath while jotting something down in his notebook.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” said the grieving, and now aggrieved, widow, nearly shouting.
“Oh, I said ‘we’re done with you’, Mrs. Paternostro,” answered the detective innocently.
With that he turned to me and said “You, you’re coming with me.”
He then turned back to Mrs. The widow P.
“I’m sorry again for you loss Mrs. Paternostro. I have no more questions for you for now, but I may need to get in touch with you again shortly. Please make sure you don’t leave town for the next few days, In case there are any developments.”
“Leave town? Why would I do a thing like that? Where would I go?”
“Oh it’s just a figure of speech, Mrs. Paternostro. I’m sure you weren’t thinking of going anywhere.”
With that, it seemed the interview was over, and we exited the apartment.
Next Chapter
About fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a garden apartment complex in Westchester's least quaint municipality. We found the intercom, made our presence known, and after another demonstration of police aerobics, found ourselves standing in front of a third-floor apartment. Rendell rang the bell, and a few moments later the door was opened by woman who, if hair height contributed to vertical leap, could have been a playground legend.
"Hello Louise, I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Jon White, your husband's supervisor a work."
"Oh, yeah, I remember you Jon. What are you doing here?"
"This, uh, gentleman here is Detective Rendell from the NYPD, and I'm afraid we have some bad news for you."
"Oh shit. What did that idiot do this time? Is he in jail again? I hope he doesn't expect me to bail him out."
"Uh, I'm afraid it's not what you think -- he's dead."
"No way. He's just hiding out with that slut girlfriend of his in the Bronx."
"No, really, he's dead. I just identified the body."
"Was he on the job?"
"Uh, I don't …"
At this point Detective Rendell cut me off and said, “Mrs. Paternostro, the investigation has just begun and we don't really know what happened yet. But right now it does not look like he was at work.”
The widow P looked pensive for a moment than showed signs of her bereavement.
“Shit. I can’t believe that bastard croaked before I could nail the gambit down.”
Before either of us could ask her what she meant, she started grieving some more.
“That rat bastard screwed me again. I ain’t gettin a freakin’ dime. I could kill him,” she blurted out. As soon as she did, she appeared to realize that she may have set the wrong tone, buried her face in her hands and started boo-hooing somewhat over-ostentatiously.
As someone who stumbled into a civil service career, never quite believing my misfortune at having done so, I tended to overlook some of the intricacies of my compensation. The rules of government compensation are almost as tricky as the tax code. Some people work the system better than others and manage to retire wealthy when they’re 50 years old. Others toil in bureaucratic misery into their dotage and spend their golden years fighting with the cat for the last spoonful of friskies. It sounded like she might have been talking about some piece of fine print in the pension plan that I still haven’t read. Or not. I never really got it, but the widow clearly did, and was convinced she had gotten the short end of the stick.
As everybody knows, the greatest civil-service scam artists of all are cops. If anybody knows these things, Ed Rendell would. It would be interesting to see how the display we had just witnessed would play with him.
“Uh, Mrs. Paternostro,” he began. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss. If you don’t mind, though, I need to ask you a few questions.”
Either he’s a good poker player, or his cat better hide the friskies.
She brought the sobs under control and peeked out from under her two-inch fingernails.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll try, but first, tell me what happened”
“We’re not quite sure yet. A co-worker informed Mr. White here that he found your husband, apparently deceased. Mr. White then reported this to the police. We just came from the scene. We’re still investigating, but it appears he was shot to death.”
“Oh my gawd!” she gasped. “Shot? Who would do a thing like that?”
“Well, we were hoping you could give us some information about him that might help us figure that out,” Rendell responded.
“I don’t know what I could tell you. My husband was just a city worker. I can’t imagine anybody would want to kill him.”
“Well, Mrs. Paternostro, very often when a person is killed, the crime is committed by someone who knew him,” Rendell said in a reasonable facsimile of an understanding and sympathy.
“Let’s start by talking about how things were at home.”
The widow P. tensed visibly at the question.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I had something to do with this?” She shot back.
“Oh I’m sorry Mrs. Rendell, I didn’t mean to suggest anything like that,” Rendell countered with an unctuousness I never would have thought he could summon.
“I’m just trying to get a picture of what your husband was like, what sorts of things he did, who he hung around with. That sort of thing.”
“Oh I see. That’s okay then.” She appeared satisfied for the moment that she wasn’t under suspicion.
“Your husband was found in an apartment in the Bronx, Mrs. Paternostro. Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?”
“Well, he’s from the Bronx, and his mother lived there, on Arthur Avenue. She died a couple of years ago. It was a rent controlled apartment, and my husband hung onto it. He was sub-letting it out.”
“Your husband was found in an apartment on Arthur Avenue, at this address,” Rendell said, showing here the address of the crime scene he’d written down in his notebook.
“Yeah, that’s the address. He must have been there checking on the tenants or something.”
“That’s a possibility we’ll have to check into. Do you know the names of the people he was sub-letting the apartment to Mrs. Paternostro?” Rendell asked.
“No, I don’t. He just told me he was renting the place to some Albanians, but he never told me their names,” She replied.
“Do you know if he had a lease with them? Maybe there’s a copy here somewhere?”
“Oh, I’m sure there wasn’t anything like that. Like I said, it was a rent-controlled apartment, and he wasn’t supposed to be doing that. He always used to complain about the landlord trying to evict him, and stuff like that. Oh my gawd! You don’t think the landlord killed him to get the apartment do you?”
“That’s definitely one of the leads we’ll by looking into Mrs. Paternostro. Do you know the landlord’s name, by chance?” Rendell asked.
“You know,” she said, starting to look very interested in the way things were turning, “I think I do. My husband used to take care of his mother’s affairs and such, and I’m sure we have that information around here. Let me go check.”
With that, she got up from here chair and walked out of the room. She returned a few moments later with a business card, which she handed to Rendell.
“I think this might be it,” she said as she handed Rendell the card. I managed to get a look at it as Rendell examined it. In plain type, with no logo or graphics it read “A Bronx Realty Company. Vincent Pugliacci, building manager.”
Rendell showed no signs of recognition, but as someone who had to sign off on contracts, I had seen the name Vincent Pugliacci many times, and it sure got my attention. Vincent “Vinnie the Pooh” Pugliacci was the president of Hundred Acre Asphalt and was known to have an interest in at least a dozen companies in the construction, demolition, trucking, trash-hauling, recycling, and landfill businesses. He was reputed to be the mastermind behind the biggest bid-rigging conspiracy in New York since the days of Boss Tweed.
His name surfaced in tabloid articles about the trials of other people, but he always managed to keep himself un-indicted. Several generations of Feds and local DA’s in jurisdictions all over the northeast had tried to take him on, but had never even gotten him into a courtroom. Maybe the evidence got shot down in the crossfire between dueling prosecutors. Maybe some grand jurors had misplaced sympathy for woodland creatures. From where I sat, all I knew was that every time he submitted a low bid things got complicated.
Or simple, depending on how you look at it. New York City spends billions of dollars a year on construction projects and all kinds of supplies and services. Over the years, the city has been victimized by every imaginable racketeering, bid rigging, feather bedding, kickback, and corruption scam. In response, elaborate systems for keeping contracts away from the bad guys have developed.
Nowadays, whoever bids on a contract has to fill out a two hundred page form listing the intimate details of his personal, professional, financial and legal life. On big dollar contracts, or contracts in industries with nefarious reputations, the forms are pored over by an army of investigators, auditors, and lawyers. Every name associated with the business and all of its affiliates are run by every organized crime task force in the country. If a contractor has even the faintest whiff of a problem, he gets knocked out and the next lowest bidder is selected. If investigators think he’s a bad guy, but they can’t prove it they’ll use any pretext – a late income tax return, unpaid speeding tickets, a summons for abusing a tree – to deny a contract.
Vinnie the Pooh had been run through that ringer dozens of times, and every time, the lawyers said there was no hard evidence that Pooh was connected, but things sure smelled funny in his waste disposal business. Something was rotten in Jersey, and they didn’t like the idea of giving him a contract. There was one catch, though. Every time he was low bidder, he was also the only bidder. For some no doubt completely innocent reason, no one ever bid against Vinnie the Pooh. With nothing, er, concrete to hold against him, and no, one else to give the contracts to, Vinnie the Pooh was the biggest supplier of construction materials to the city. He also had a reputation for being a big supplier the to the NYPD’s homicide division.
I found it hard to believe that a homicide cop never heard of a guy like Pugliacci, but I couldn’t tell what Rendell thought about this. He wrote something in his memo book and handed the card back to Mrs. P., and, still giving away nothing, proceeded with his questions.
“Mrs. Paternostro, your husband was found by a man named Joe Pazzolini. Can you tell me anything about him?”
“Oh yeah. Crazy Joe. Creepy little guy. He worked with my husband on his city job, and they hung around together sometimes.”
“When was the last time you saw the two of them together, Mrs. Paternostro?”
“I really have no idea. I wouldn’t let that man in my house.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, he was a real low class type of guy. The last time he was here, he took his eye out and started playing with it. Scared the shit out of my daughter.”
“Excuse me?” sputtered Rendell.
“He’s got one a them glass eyes. I ain’t got nothing against cripples and such, but there’s no excuse for something like that. In front of my children no less. Plus, he’s always gettin’ into trouble, and makin’ trouble for other people.”
“What kind of trouble?” asked the detective.
“My husband had to bail him out of jail a couple of times. And one time he and my husband were out all night together. When my husband got home in the morning, he stunk of booze, and he looked like he had been in a fight. After that, I told him that was it. I didn’t want to seem him again.”
“It seems that Mr. Pazzolini still knew something about your husband’s activities, though…maybe more than you do,” suggested Rendell.
“What do you mean by that?” asked the widow, looking like she was tensing up a bit again.
“Well, he knew where to look for him, and he found him. I understand that when co-workers of your husband asked you about him, you said you hadn’t seen him in three days. Let me ask you again Mrs. Paternostro, how are things at home?”
“Well I’m sure they’re mistaken. Me and my husband was married a long time, and we planned to stay that way,” said Mrs. P, not altogether convincingly.
“Was you husband still living here, Mrs. Paternostro?”
The widow P. tensed visibly and blurted out “Who told you he wasn’t? Of course he was. Why would you ask something like that?”
“No particular reason, Mrs. Paternostro. I’m just trying to fill in some of your husband’s background and immediate situation,” answered Rendell.
“Was he a member of any, you know, fraternal organizations? Social clubs? Did he moonlight at anything?”
“Uh, not to my knowledge,” She answered cautiously.
“Can you think of anyone, friends, neighborhoods, relatives, co-workers, he might have had disagreements with?”
“No. No one at all. My husband was an angel. He got along with everybody,” she said, a little too firmly.
Rendell muttered something that sounded like “everyone but you” under his breath while jotting something down in his notebook.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” said the grieving, and now aggrieved, widow, nearly shouting.
“Oh, I said ‘we’re done with you’, Mrs. Paternostro,” answered the detective innocently.
With that he turned to me and said “You, you’re coming with me.”
He then turned back to Mrs. The widow P.
“I’m sorry again for you loss Mrs. Paternostro. I have no more questions for you for now, but I may need to get in touch with you again shortly. Please make sure you don’t leave town for the next few days, In case there are any developments.”
“Leave town? Why would I do a thing like that? Where would I go?”
“Oh it’s just a figure of speech, Mrs. Paternostro. I’m sure you weren’t thinking of going anywhere.”
With that, it seemed the interview was over, and we exited the apartment.
Next Chapter
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
So Long, farewell, auf wiedersehen , goodbye
One of the many great things about the Shrub Presidency has been his choices in high level officials. They're all so darn multi-talented, likeable and entertaining. Dick "Richie" Cheney doesn't just vice-preside, curse out senators, and hide in a burrow like a woodchuck, he shoots people in the face! Condi isn't just an airhead -- she's an airhead with a PhD, and she plays the piano! And how 'bout that Albert Gonzalez? Civil rights? Who needs 'em with old Al hangin' 'round. But the one I love the most, of course, is the one who's leaving. You know who I'm talking about. I'm talking about Rummy. 'Sfeld himself, the Ruminator, Don the mon Rumsfeld. The courtesy. The respect for other people's opinions. The willingness to spend other people's lives on pet theories and settling scores from the Ford administration. Could you really ask for anything more in a public servant? Well ask and ye shall receive. Turns out he's a denizen of the blogosphere, too. Why just take a looky-see over here (post number 8) and here (post number 3 and more)!
I was really afraid that we'd lose him to "spending more time with his family" once he left office, but I'm so glad he's decided to join us out here in cyberspace!
I was really afraid that we'd lose him to "spending more time with his family" once he left office, but I'm so glad he's decided to join us out here in cyberspace!
Monday, November 27, 2006
I'm an animal
I subscribe to Salon.com -- an on-line magazine that features a combination of political coverage and "lifestyle" pieces. The political stuff is mostly fairly obvious liberal-democratic anti-Bush vitriol. Neither the writing nor the analysis is spectacular, but it's one of the few left-ish outposts that occasionally achieves some mainstream penetration. Plus, every one of its columns is in a blog format, and something I'm pretty fascinated with lately. As a hardnosed, cynical, dispassionate realist, who lacks a single atom of touchy feely senstivity, I try to convince myself that that's the reason I maintain a paid subscription.
Who am I kidding? Half the time I go straight for the fluff. Nearly every day, there's something about the "mommy wars"; or a singularly loopy letter and response [with dozens or hundreds of reader comments] in this guy's column; or some other "culture war" item that only the narrowest of demographics can follow. In order to get past the jump on all of this, and have the opportnity to pull out my what's left of my hair and mumble "what the fuck are these guys talking about", I have to pay to get past the jump. I'm hooked, so that's what I do.
A while back, there was an article that was really no more than a solicitation for commentary on the question of "why have kids?" [I don't have a link right now, but if I can dig it up, I'll post it.]. Every writer offered a treacly cliche on one of four basic themes:
1. I never knew unconditional love until my little sunshine was born
2. he makes me laugh
3. he completes me
4. after [mother, dad, the cat] died, there was a hole in my heart that stayed empty until she was born
A chorus of dyspeptic malthusians attacked each blurb the same way: Your "reason" is no more than selfishness and vanity. You want kids because of what they they can do for you, meanwhile you're filling the planet with more hungry fuel eating, greenhouse gas spewing ADHD Republicans in training. If you can't give a better reason than that, the planet is doomed. Neuter thyself. This preceding is paraphrase, not parody.
As a non-parent at the time it was a classic no-horse-in-this-race WTF are they talking about hair puller for me. I expected to move on, freeing the synapses for the next internal rant. For some reason, that didn't happen, though, and the question "can procreation be altruistic?" kept creeping towards the frontal lobes. Subsequent to the appearance of that article, I joined the ranks of the unconditional-loving-laughing-completed-heart-hole-filled, and the question has become a bit less hypothetical.
I'm almost embarrassed to acknowledge the truth about the warm and fuzzy benefits of childhood. My son does make me laugh, he does fill a void left by the the mental and physical deterioration (though not death) of a parent, he does give me a sense of completeness, and the unconditional love thing is really not half bad.
So what's in it for him? I guess the main thing is existence, which if he didn't exist wouldn't be much of a problem, so I guess that doesn't really count. And how about the rest of you? Well, for now, he has provided his share of stimulus to the baby industrial complex (thanks Grandma). He has also done a pretty good job of contributing to the college funds of the offspring of quite a few medical professionals, but I can't take credit for thinking of any of that before letting loose my little homunculi
So I guess there probably isn't any selflessness in the act. But it occurs to me, so what? No one asks you to justify breathing, eating, or mitosis beyond the benefits to self. It's what you do. So what if I happened throw in a little meiosis. I'm an animal, eukaryotic no less. What do you want from me? I got urges, drives, selfish genes, and all that. Besides, have you seen my kid? I swear he's the best looking, smartest, funniest kid on the planet. Plus, he's gonna take care of the whole global warming, inequality, poverty and disease thing. When he gets a little older. Right now, he's busy filling in holes.
Who am I kidding? Half the time I go straight for the fluff. Nearly every day, there's something about the "mommy wars"; or a singularly loopy letter and response [with dozens or hundreds of reader comments] in this guy's column; or some other "culture war" item that only the narrowest of demographics can follow. In order to get past the jump on all of this, and have the opportnity to pull out my what's left of my hair and mumble "what the fuck are these guys talking about", I have to pay to get past the jump. I'm hooked, so that's what I do.
A while back, there was an article that was really no more than a solicitation for commentary on the question of "why have kids?" [I don't have a link right now, but if I can dig it up, I'll post it.]. Every writer offered a treacly cliche on one of four basic themes:
1. I never knew unconditional love until my little sunshine was born
2. he makes me laugh
3. he completes me
4. after [mother, dad, the cat] died, there was a hole in my heart that stayed empty until she was born
A chorus of dyspeptic malthusians attacked each blurb the same way: Your "reason" is no more than selfishness and vanity. You want kids because of what they they can do for you, meanwhile you're filling the planet with more hungry fuel eating, greenhouse gas spewing ADHD Republicans in training. If you can't give a better reason than that, the planet is doomed. Neuter thyself. This preceding is paraphrase, not parody.
As a non-parent at the time it was a classic no-horse-in-this-race WTF are they talking about hair puller for me. I expected to move on, freeing the synapses for the next internal rant. For some reason, that didn't happen, though, and the question "can procreation be altruistic?" kept creeping towards the frontal lobes. Subsequent to the appearance of that article, I joined the ranks of the unconditional-loving-laughing-completed-heart-hole-filled, and the question has become a bit less hypothetical.
I'm almost embarrassed to acknowledge the truth about the warm and fuzzy benefits of childhood. My son does make me laugh, he does fill a void left by the the mental and physical deterioration (though not death) of a parent, he does give me a sense of completeness, and the unconditional love thing is really not half bad.
So what's in it for him? I guess the main thing is existence, which if he didn't exist wouldn't be much of a problem, so I guess that doesn't really count. And how about the rest of you? Well, for now, he has provided his share of stimulus to the baby industrial complex (thanks Grandma). He has also done a pretty good job of contributing to the college funds of the offspring of quite a few medical professionals, but I can't take credit for thinking of any of that before letting loose my little homunculi
So I guess there probably isn't any selflessness in the act. But it occurs to me, so what? No one asks you to justify breathing, eating, or mitosis beyond the benefits to self. It's what you do. So what if I happened throw in a little meiosis. I'm an animal, eukaryotic no less. What do you want from me? I got urges, drives, selfish genes, and all that. Besides, have you seen my kid? I swear he's the best looking, smartest, funniest kid on the planet. Plus, he's gonna take care of the whole global warming, inequality, poverty and disease thing. When he gets a little older. Right now, he's busy filling in holes.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Chapter 2 -- Scene of the Crime
This is the second chapter of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." Chapter 1 can be found here
Arthur Avenue is the main drag of what used to be the Bronx's Little Italy. It still has the remnants of Italian-American quaintness – a kind of Potemkin village of restaurants, bakeries, and pork stores -- but, like all the other Little Italies around New York, the Italians are gone. The generations that came of age in the '50's, '60's and 70's shed more and more of their forebears' immigrant ways, and moved out to the 'burbs. All that's left are widowed grandmothers in rent-controlled apartments, surrounded by a wave of Albanians who have taken over the restaurants and changed their names from Gonxhe to Guido. When the grown kids come back to visit grandma, they complain about how the neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners, but to the news crews doing their annual “welcome home to Arthur Avenue” stories, Albanians are close enough.
As I exited the subway and turned onto Arthur Avenue, I could see a half dozen police cars parked up the street. As I walked toward the address Crazy Joe had given me, I could see the two EMT's standing on the sidewalk, next to an empty gurney. The smaller of the two looked like he weighed about 350 pounds, and was smoking a cigarette. The other was staring intently at a half-dressed, gleamingly pierced teenager sitting on the stoop of the neighboring building. I couldn't tell whether his heavy breathing was caused by the girl, or his girth, but in either case, he clearly was in no condition to speak. I approached the smoker, introduced myself, and asked what was going on. Given the level of lifesaving activity going on around me, I needn't have bothered.
"Dead guy. Fourth floor. No fuckin' elevator. We ain't bringin' him down."
Who says New Yorkers aren't helpful?
I headed toward the entrance to the building, where I was stopped by one of New York's finest. After we exchanged versions of courtesy professionalism and respect, he motioned me toward a plain clothes officer standing inside the vestibule.
"Excuse me," I offered. "I understand there's a body upstairs. I think I may be able to identify it."
"Yeah? Who the hell are you?"
Good thing they have that slogan on the side of the cop cars.
I introduced myself and explained that I was the one who called 911.
The CPR front gave way slightly to more commonplace gruffness.
"I'm Detective Mike Rendell. Come with me."
We ducked under the yellow tape sealing the building's inner door and headed up the stairs. In addition to being a role model for all police recruits looking to improve their relations with the community, it turns out Detective Rendell was also a paragon of physical conditioning. The three flights took a while.
When we reached our destination, Rendell motioned me through another blue phalanx into a dark, sparsely furnished railroad flat. We walked through the kitchen, straight into the next room, where there was a bed, a folding chair, a lamp, and a dead body. At least I thought it was dead. I've never seen an actual in situ corpse before, but the large pool of red liquid, classically rendered chalk outline surrounding a motionless form, and hovering lab guys probably weren’t part of a school production of "Columbo."
Rendell grabbed my arm and steered me closer.
"Okay, take a close look at this guy's face. You recognize him?"
I swallowed the lump in my throat, took a deep breath, and answered.
"Yeah. His name is Tony Paternostro. He works for me."
"What do you mean 'works for you'? Do a lot of guys that work for you get shot in the chest?"
"I work for the City, and believe it or not, this is the first time. Tony took care of ordering asphalt for street repair crews."
"Asphalt, huh? Lotta wiseguys in that business, aren't there? Your boy Tony -- he got any interesting friends? Anybody you can think of might do something like this?"
"C'mon, he's a city worker. You know us. We don't work hard enough to make enemies."
"Looks like his work ethic might have picked up a bit."
"I don't know what to tell you. We fill potholes. There are arguments, even a few fistfights, like in any blue collar job, but Tony hasn't been in the street in years. He was kind of a glorified clerk. Took care of getting trucks filled with asphalt. Talked on the phone pretty much all day."
"What about this guy that called you about this?"
"Crazy Joe? He worked for Tony, and they were kind of running buddies."
"So what's his real name? Why's he called 'Crazy Joe'?"
"Joe Pazzolini. He's missing a few marbles. Always gets into trouble on the job -- says obnoxious things to people, fucks things up, basically, a guy you have to stick in a corner."
"So how come he still works for you guys?"
"So far as I know, he's never done anything criminal enough to get fired. He's gotten some reprimands, and lost some days of pay, but he always manages to come out of hearings with a job. "
"I'm gonna want to talk to him. You know where to find him?"
"Actually, I'm not sure. He just got suspended from work, so he's not on the job. I don't know where he lives, but the personnel people at work have his address. I can try to track it down for you."
"You should do that. What else can you tell me about the dearly departed here? Married? Family? Friends?"
"Not too much. He's married. Lives … I mean lived in Yonkers. Crazy Joe told me on the phone that he kept this place on the side for meeting girlfriends. Tony and I never discussed love lives, though, so I can't confirm any of that."
With that, Rendell said to me "don't go anywhere. We're not done." Then he stepped out of the apartment.
He returned few minutes later, and said to me "We're going to see the wife. I want you to come with me and break the news."
"Listen," I said. "I really need to tell some people back at work about this, first."
"All right, but make it quick."
With that, I whipped out my government issue, economy sized, low-bid cell phone and called my boss.
“First Assistant Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maudlin’s office.”
It was, one of my boss’s secretaries, but I couldn’t say which. Arthur Maudlin had three of them, Alice, Carboña, and Shitonya. Despite being from different parts of the City and completely different backgrounds they had nearly identical voices that produced an effect somewhere between chalk on a blackboard an icepick in the forehead.
In addition to this gift (who could ask for anything more in a woman answering the phone), each was similarly endowed in secretarial and administrative skills. They couldn’t type, use a computer or file, had no idea how to transfer a call, and couldn’t even make a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, they were all three rumored to be sleeping with Maudlin. They never identified themselves when picking up the phone, expecting you to guess. Like concubines in a pillow book, they hated each other. If you guessed wrong, woe betide you.
Unable to bring myself to say two of the names out loud in the company of a stranger, I dove in and hoped for the best.
“Uh, hi Alice, Jon White. Is the boss in?”
I got it right on the first try. Maybe my luck was starting to turn after the morning’s fireworks.
“Yeah, Jon, he is. He’s been lookin’ fa you, awl mawnin, too,” she scraped.
“All right, put me through, then.”
Using her own version of the phone system, she dropped the receiver on the desktop, shrieked, “Artha! Pick up White on loin faw!”
After a few more rattles, and machine-tool-like vocalizations, the great man himself picked up the phone.
“Jon, where have you been all morning? I expected those reports to be on my desk at 11. I have a meeting with you know who this afternoon, and I can’t go in unprepared”
As usual, since he had no idea who or what he was talking about, neither did I. I fell back on my usual ploy. Knowing he never read email himself (relying on his crack secretarial staff to print it out for him and leave it in the inbox he never checked)
“Arthur, didn’t you read my email? I had to go out in the field this morning. But don’t worry, if you look on the computer calendar, you’ll see that the meeting has been postponed until next month. I’ll have all the data for you in plenty of time for that.”
“Oh I see. I must’ve missed that one, I read so many, I sometimes lose track. Thanks for staying on top of it.”
Worked like a charm.
“By the way, what were you doing out in the field?”
Not knowing of anyway to finesse this, I decided to go straight for the truth.
“Arthur, I don’t know if you heard yet, but Tony Pats died this morning.”
“Who?”
“Tony Paternostro”
“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that name. Was he a relative of yours?”
“Uh, no, he was one of our employees – in charge of ordering asphalt for the repair crews.”
Continuing with the hands-on managerial touch, he asked, “Why would one of our employees do that”
“Do you mean why would he be ordering asphalt, or why would he die?”
“Both, I suppose.”
I had always tried to set aside the rumors that Arthur Maudlin only held onto his job because his daughter babysat for the Mayor’s children, but it seemed that my inner cynic could no longer be ignored.
“Arthur, I know you’re very busy, and I can understand how you might not be on top of some of these details. Our division handles the asphalt contracts. I do the administrative end of things. Tony handles … handled the field operation for me.
“Of course, of course. I knew that. But what were you doing in the field? I needed you for that meeting.”
“Well, because he was dead, Tony was unable to handle things in the field this morning, so I stepped in.”
“I keep telling you, you really shouldn’t micromanage like that. You have to let your employees do their jobs. If this keeps up, it’ll affect your performance evaluation.”
“But Arthur, Tony wasn’t at work, and his job had to be covered.”
“Well, he should have been at work. It’s your responsibility to hold him accountable for his attendance.”
“Arthur, I do try to keep a tight rein on absences, but as you may be aware, death is considered a legitimate excuse.”
“It is? I suppose that makes sense. All right then so come back to the office now, I need those reports.”
I tried my best to fill him on the rest of the details, including my being dragooned into a police investigation. Ordinarily, the only time Arthur paid any attention to the non-estrogen-producing aspects of his surroundings was when his boss scrutinized him. I figured a murder in his branch of the organization chart might turn into an occasion for that, and might have expected Arthur to focus. But he was as disengaged as ever, his mind probably absorbed in the intricacies of scheduling three nooners in one lunch break. I told him I’d be in after lunch.
“All right then, I have meetings all afternoon outside the office. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll go over the reports then.”
“Sure thing boss, see you first thing in the morning,” knowing full well neither of us would be in the office any time soon.
As I heaved the two halves of my phone shut, Rendell grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward an unmarked police car.
“Taxpayer dollars at work, eh White? Let’s go pay a visit to Mrs Dearly Departed. Now get me that address and get in the car.”
Next chapter
Arthur Avenue is the main drag of what used to be the Bronx's Little Italy. It still has the remnants of Italian-American quaintness – a kind of Potemkin village of restaurants, bakeries, and pork stores -- but, like all the other Little Italies around New York, the Italians are gone. The generations that came of age in the '50's, '60's and 70's shed more and more of their forebears' immigrant ways, and moved out to the 'burbs. All that's left are widowed grandmothers in rent-controlled apartments, surrounded by a wave of Albanians who have taken over the restaurants and changed their names from Gonxhe to Guido. When the grown kids come back to visit grandma, they complain about how the neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners, but to the news crews doing their annual “welcome home to Arthur Avenue” stories, Albanians are close enough.
As I exited the subway and turned onto Arthur Avenue, I could see a half dozen police cars parked up the street. As I walked toward the address Crazy Joe had given me, I could see the two EMT's standing on the sidewalk, next to an empty gurney. The smaller of the two looked like he weighed about 350 pounds, and was smoking a cigarette. The other was staring intently at a half-dressed, gleamingly pierced teenager sitting on the stoop of the neighboring building. I couldn't tell whether his heavy breathing was caused by the girl, or his girth, but in either case, he clearly was in no condition to speak. I approached the smoker, introduced myself, and asked what was going on. Given the level of lifesaving activity going on around me, I needn't have bothered.
"Dead guy. Fourth floor. No fuckin' elevator. We ain't bringin' him down."
Who says New Yorkers aren't helpful?
I headed toward the entrance to the building, where I was stopped by one of New York's finest. After we exchanged versions of courtesy professionalism and respect, he motioned me toward a plain clothes officer standing inside the vestibule.
"Excuse me," I offered. "I understand there's a body upstairs. I think I may be able to identify it."
"Yeah? Who the hell are you?"
Good thing they have that slogan on the side of the cop cars.
I introduced myself and explained that I was the one who called 911.
The CPR front gave way slightly to more commonplace gruffness.
"I'm Detective Mike Rendell. Come with me."
We ducked under the yellow tape sealing the building's inner door and headed up the stairs. In addition to being a role model for all police recruits looking to improve their relations with the community, it turns out Detective Rendell was also a paragon of physical conditioning. The three flights took a while.
When we reached our destination, Rendell motioned me through another blue phalanx into a dark, sparsely furnished railroad flat. We walked through the kitchen, straight into the next room, where there was a bed, a folding chair, a lamp, and a dead body. At least I thought it was dead. I've never seen an actual in situ corpse before, but the large pool of red liquid, classically rendered chalk outline surrounding a motionless form, and hovering lab guys probably weren’t part of a school production of "Columbo."
Rendell grabbed my arm and steered me closer.
"Okay, take a close look at this guy's face. You recognize him?"
I swallowed the lump in my throat, took a deep breath, and answered.
"Yeah. His name is Tony Paternostro. He works for me."
"What do you mean 'works for you'? Do a lot of guys that work for you get shot in the chest?"
"I work for the City, and believe it or not, this is the first time. Tony took care of ordering asphalt for street repair crews."
"Asphalt, huh? Lotta wiseguys in that business, aren't there? Your boy Tony -- he got any interesting friends? Anybody you can think of might do something like this?"
"C'mon, he's a city worker. You know us. We don't work hard enough to make enemies."
"Looks like his work ethic might have picked up a bit."
"I don't know what to tell you. We fill potholes. There are arguments, even a few fistfights, like in any blue collar job, but Tony hasn't been in the street in years. He was kind of a glorified clerk. Took care of getting trucks filled with asphalt. Talked on the phone pretty much all day."
"What about this guy that called you about this?"
"Crazy Joe? He worked for Tony, and they were kind of running buddies."
"So what's his real name? Why's he called 'Crazy Joe'?"
"Joe Pazzolini. He's missing a few marbles. Always gets into trouble on the job -- says obnoxious things to people, fucks things up, basically, a guy you have to stick in a corner."
"So how come he still works for you guys?"
"So far as I know, he's never done anything criminal enough to get fired. He's gotten some reprimands, and lost some days of pay, but he always manages to come out of hearings with a job. "
"I'm gonna want to talk to him. You know where to find him?"
"Actually, I'm not sure. He just got suspended from work, so he's not on the job. I don't know where he lives, but the personnel people at work have his address. I can try to track it down for you."
"You should do that. What else can you tell me about the dearly departed here? Married? Family? Friends?"
"Not too much. He's married. Lives … I mean lived in Yonkers. Crazy Joe told me on the phone that he kept this place on the side for meeting girlfriends. Tony and I never discussed love lives, though, so I can't confirm any of that."
With that, Rendell said to me "don't go anywhere. We're not done." Then he stepped out of the apartment.
He returned few minutes later, and said to me "We're going to see the wife. I want you to come with me and break the news."
"Listen," I said. "I really need to tell some people back at work about this, first."
"All right, but make it quick."
With that, I whipped out my government issue, economy sized, low-bid cell phone and called my boss.
“First Assistant Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maudlin’s office.”
It was, one of my boss’s secretaries, but I couldn’t say which. Arthur Maudlin had three of them, Alice, Carboña, and Shitonya. Despite being from different parts of the City and completely different backgrounds they had nearly identical voices that produced an effect somewhere between chalk on a blackboard an icepick in the forehead.
In addition to this gift (who could ask for anything more in a woman answering the phone), each was similarly endowed in secretarial and administrative skills. They couldn’t type, use a computer or file, had no idea how to transfer a call, and couldn’t even make a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, they were all three rumored to be sleeping with Maudlin. They never identified themselves when picking up the phone, expecting you to guess. Like concubines in a pillow book, they hated each other. If you guessed wrong, woe betide you.
Unable to bring myself to say two of the names out loud in the company of a stranger, I dove in and hoped for the best.
“Uh, hi Alice, Jon White. Is the boss in?”
I got it right on the first try. Maybe my luck was starting to turn after the morning’s fireworks.
“Yeah, Jon, he is. He’s been lookin’ fa you, awl mawnin, too,” she scraped.
“All right, put me through, then.”
Using her own version of the phone system, she dropped the receiver on the desktop, shrieked, “Artha! Pick up White on loin faw!”
After a few more rattles, and machine-tool-like vocalizations, the great man himself picked up the phone.
“Jon, where have you been all morning? I expected those reports to be on my desk at 11. I have a meeting with you know who this afternoon, and I can’t go in unprepared”
As usual, since he had no idea who or what he was talking about, neither did I. I fell back on my usual ploy. Knowing he never read email himself (relying on his crack secretarial staff to print it out for him and leave it in the inbox he never checked)
“Arthur, didn’t you read my email? I had to go out in the field this morning. But don’t worry, if you look on the computer calendar, you’ll see that the meeting has been postponed until next month. I’ll have all the data for you in plenty of time for that.”
“Oh I see. I must’ve missed that one, I read so many, I sometimes lose track. Thanks for staying on top of it.”
Worked like a charm.
“By the way, what were you doing out in the field?”
Not knowing of anyway to finesse this, I decided to go straight for the truth.
“Arthur, I don’t know if you heard yet, but Tony Pats died this morning.”
“Who?”
“Tony Paternostro”
“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that name. Was he a relative of yours?”
“Uh, no, he was one of our employees – in charge of ordering asphalt for the repair crews.”
Continuing with the hands-on managerial touch, he asked, “Why would one of our employees do that”
“Do you mean why would he be ordering asphalt, or why would he die?”
“Both, I suppose.”
I had always tried to set aside the rumors that Arthur Maudlin only held onto his job because his daughter babysat for the Mayor’s children, but it seemed that my inner cynic could no longer be ignored.
“Arthur, I know you’re very busy, and I can understand how you might not be on top of some of these details. Our division handles the asphalt contracts. I do the administrative end of things. Tony handles … handled the field operation for me.
“Of course, of course. I knew that. But what were you doing in the field? I needed you for that meeting.”
“Well, because he was dead, Tony was unable to handle things in the field this morning, so I stepped in.”
“I keep telling you, you really shouldn’t micromanage like that. You have to let your employees do their jobs. If this keeps up, it’ll affect your performance evaluation.”
“But Arthur, Tony wasn’t at work, and his job had to be covered.”
“Well, he should have been at work. It’s your responsibility to hold him accountable for his attendance.”
“Arthur, I do try to keep a tight rein on absences, but as you may be aware, death is considered a legitimate excuse.”
“It is? I suppose that makes sense. All right then so come back to the office now, I need those reports.”
I tried my best to fill him on the rest of the details, including my being dragooned into a police investigation. Ordinarily, the only time Arthur paid any attention to the non-estrogen-producing aspects of his surroundings was when his boss scrutinized him. I figured a murder in his branch of the organization chart might turn into an occasion for that, and might have expected Arthur to focus. But he was as disengaged as ever, his mind probably absorbed in the intricacies of scheduling three nooners in one lunch break. I told him I’d be in after lunch.
“All right then, I have meetings all afternoon outside the office. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll go over the reports then.”
“Sure thing boss, see you first thing in the morning,” knowing full well neither of us would be in the office any time soon.
As I heaved the two halves of my phone shut, Rendell grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward an unmarked police car.
“Taxpayer dollars at work, eh White? Let’s go pay a visit to Mrs Dearly Departed. Now get me that address and get in the car.”
Next chapter
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Chapter 1 – Typical morning, plus a dead guy
My day as a bureaucrat started as it often does -- the telephone rang. I picked it up and gave the official greeting
"Street Department, White speaking". Immediately, a voice began asking me how to get from North Carolina to Connecticut. Or perhaps it asked me why the hell traffic was backed up on the Belt. Or perhaps it told me that a streetlight in the Bronx was broken. Or perhaps there is a pothole the size of the sea of tranquility on Staten Island. Or perhaps it would ask me, or berate me about any one of dozens of subjects that have nothing to do with what I do for a living. I'm one of the lucky people whose name, bureaucratically obscurantist job title, and telephone number is published in various listings of government offices. Said number is also one digit away from the telephone numbers of a broad array of services. Many of those numbers are manned by recordings that inexplicably refer callers to my telephone number. Apparently dyslexia is a problem in government. I've tried to straighten this out with the listing and telecommunications bureaucrats, but the numbers at which they are listed allow me to do no more than request a permit to clean my sewer connection. I don't know exactly what a sewer connection is, though cleaning it sounds like a good idea
But I digress. The real story is that the telephone rang again. To my surprise, it wasn't the same person I just spoke to coming round the circle of bureaucrats.
"Street Department, White"
"Big fuckin' deal. Why the fuck didn't you order any asphalt for the Bronx Crew? I got trucks lined up around the block, 30 guys on site, and that sonofabitchbastard plant manager told me to go fuck myself."
"Good morning to you too, Al. Always a pleasure to hear your voice. What happened? Did you talk to Pats?"
Big Al wasn’t my boss, or anybody else’s, but he ran the show. There are more than a quarter of a million city workers in this town. Maybe eight of them know what they’re doing. Big Al is one of them. His experience and track record command attention. That and an unparalleled ability to use the word “fuck” as any part of speech.
"I talked to him Friday afternoon. Told him we needed 1000 tons from Amici Asphalt. He said he'd take care of it. Trucks show up this morning, and the whole place is shut down. Gates locked, and everything. All the other plants are closed, and I can't get any fuckin' asphalt in the Bronx. Pats ain't answering his phone, his cell, his beeper, or his radio. No one knows where the fuck he is."
"Did anyone try him at home?"
"Yeah. His wife said she hasn't been home in three days, and doesn't care if she never sees him again."
"That's weird. Let me make some calls. Get you some material. Track down Pats."
An hour later, the supply problem was solved, but the Pats mystery had deepened. Tony Paternostro, better known as Pats, was in charge of lining up our daily supply of asphalt, the hot, sticky, black gold that is the lifeblood of the road repair world. It's a somewhat difficult task. We, being the bureaucratic civil service misfits we are, never how much we need. And they (the suppliers who sell us the stuff), always have a higher paying customer they'd rather sell it to, as well as customer service policies based on the code of omerta. All in all, the task of balancing supply and demand calls for a combination of toughness and tact that few in our little world possess. Pats isn't necessarily endowed with a surfeit of either, but he gets by. More importantly, he always shows up for work, and always answers one of the half dozen communications devices strapped to his waist, night or day. Call it dedication. Call it loyalty. Call it overtime at time and half.
Failing to reach Pats myself, I made a few calls. No one had seen him or heard a word. He might have gone to A.C. over the weekend and gotten back late. He might have been at his girlfriend's, or his other girlfriend's, no one was sure though. Only one thing to do. Send Crazy Joe to check around.
Crazy Joe, one-eyed, unreliable, dishonest, stupid, and drunk, Pats's on-again-off-again sidekick and cross to bear, had keys to Tony's office, apartment, and car, and knew his habits and haunts. Crazy Joe had many fewer communications devices strapped to his waist than Pats, but for once, I knew exactly where to find him -- at a disciplinary hearing. Crazy Joe has done (or, rather, failed to do) a great many things in his career. Having fomented disasters as a laborer, dispatcher, messenger, gas station attendant, and clerk, his most recent assignment had been to sit by himself in a shed next to a fax machine and wait for a list of figures to come through. He was then supposed to wait for a technician to stop by, to whom he would hand the fax. This apparently had proven to be quite a challenge.
On the first day of his new assignment, Crazy Joe sat in the shed, the fax machine faxed, and the technician, a fellow of Middle Eastern extraction whose name was pronounced by yelling "Batman" while simultaneously coughing and harrumphing, stopped by at the appointed hour.
"I am Bat(coughharrumph)man. I have come for de fux."
"Dafuck you say?"
"Defux. Please gif me de fux"
"Dafuck you say?"
"De fux! I must have de fux!"
Crazy Joe then popped out his glass eye, threw it at Batman, yelled, "Get dafuckouttahere you Indian rat bastard," (according the complaint filed by Batman in triplicate. Batman retreated from the shed and immediately filed said harassment complaint with the department's equal employment opportunity office, on the grounds that he resented being referred to as Indian.
But I digress.
On the morning of Pats's unexplained absence, I knew where to find Crazy Joe. Emerging from the hearing room, his glass eye back in place, and his natural eye glassy from drink, Crazy Joe muttered curses and epithets at his inquisitors under his breath. I stepped out of my office and called to him.
"Joe. Come here. I need a word with you."
"Hiya Jon. Howya doin?"
"Fine Joe. How'd the hearing go?"
"Colored bitch suspended me for tree days widout pay."
"Yeah, well, just be thankful she didn't fire you."
"I didn't do nuttin'. Dafuck dese people fuckin' wit me faw?"
"Joe. You can't say racial stuff to people in offices. Doesn't matter what you say on the street, cause those guys'll kick your ass anyway. But don't talk about nationality in the office."
"Waddyou talkin' about? Dat guy wasn't colored. He was Indian."
"He's Iranian, Joe, and he didn't like you calling him Indian."
"Who gives a fuck? Indian, whatever. I ain't no racist. I got a colored guy livin' next door to me."
"Look at this way, Joe: You ever call a Napolitan' guy Sicilian by mistake?"
"Yeah ..."
"Well what happened?"
"He hit me in the head with a brick."
"Think of this hearing as a brick. If you don't know a guy, don't mention any countries. Trust me on this one."
"All right, all right. Is dat all you wanna talk to me about?"
"No, I need to ask you about Pats. You seen him in the last couple of days?"
"No. Me an him had a fight. I ain't talk to him in like a week. Why?"
"Nobody knows where he is. He's not answering any of his phones or his beeper, and he didn't show up for work today."
"Ah, he's probably hidin' from his girlfriend. She foun' out about the udda one. Treatened to tell his wife."
"What you mean 'hiding out'? Where is he?"
"Uh, he's got dis otha apartment up by Arthur Avenue where he hangs out sometimes."
"Yeah? I never heard about that one before. Anyway, I need you to go see if he's around. Tell him to give me a call."
"I don't tink he really wants to see me. See we, wuz out at dis afta hours jernt, an' ..."
"I don't want to hear about it. Just find him and tell him to call me, or the next time that Lady won't miss you with the brick, if you know what I mean."
"Awright, awrigtht. I'm goin'."
The rest of the morning was relatively quiet. Between sewer connection cleanings, I finished off some paperwork, divvied up one person's worth of work between three clerks collectively capable of substantially less than that, and declared myself worthy of lunch and a little fresh smog. When I got back, the phone was ringing."
It was crazy Joe.
"Uh, Johnny... I dunno howta tell you 'dis, but it looks like Pats is dead."
"What?!"
"I'm at his place now, an' he ain't movin', an' he ain't breadin'."
"Did you call 911?"
"Uh, no. Ya 'tink I should?"
"Joe. Call 911."
"See we had 'dis fight see, an' he looked OK when I left him, but now...I 'tink I should get outta heah."
"Joe. Give me the address.
"Uh, he don' want too many people knowin' 'bout dis place."
"Joe, if he's dead, he won't care, and if he's alive, I don't think he'd mind."
"Uh, okay, but don't tell nobody about me findin' him, awright?"
"Yeah, sure Joe, just give me the address."
As soon as we hung up, I called 911, reported the situation, then headed out the door.
Next Chapter
"Street Department, White speaking". Immediately, a voice began asking me how to get from North Carolina to Connecticut. Or perhaps it asked me why the hell traffic was backed up on the Belt. Or perhaps it told me that a streetlight in the Bronx was broken. Or perhaps there is a pothole the size of the sea of tranquility on Staten Island. Or perhaps it would ask me, or berate me about any one of dozens of subjects that have nothing to do with what I do for a living. I'm one of the lucky people whose name, bureaucratically obscurantist job title, and telephone number is published in various listings of government offices. Said number is also one digit away from the telephone numbers of a broad array of services. Many of those numbers are manned by recordings that inexplicably refer callers to my telephone number. Apparently dyslexia is a problem in government. I've tried to straighten this out with the listing and telecommunications bureaucrats, but the numbers at which they are listed allow me to do no more than request a permit to clean my sewer connection. I don't know exactly what a sewer connection is, though cleaning it sounds like a good idea
But I digress. The real story is that the telephone rang again. To my surprise, it wasn't the same person I just spoke to coming round the circle of bureaucrats.
"Street Department, White"
"Big fuckin' deal. Why the fuck didn't you order any asphalt for the Bronx Crew? I got trucks lined up around the block, 30 guys on site, and that sonofabitchbastard plant manager told me to go fuck myself."
"Good morning to you too, Al. Always a pleasure to hear your voice. What happened? Did you talk to Pats?"
Big Al wasn’t my boss, or anybody else’s, but he ran the show. There are more than a quarter of a million city workers in this town. Maybe eight of them know what they’re doing. Big Al is one of them. His experience and track record command attention. That and an unparalleled ability to use the word “fuck” as any part of speech.
"I talked to him Friday afternoon. Told him we needed 1000 tons from Amici Asphalt. He said he'd take care of it. Trucks show up this morning, and the whole place is shut down. Gates locked, and everything. All the other plants are closed, and I can't get any fuckin' asphalt in the Bronx. Pats ain't answering his phone, his cell, his beeper, or his radio. No one knows where the fuck he is."
"Did anyone try him at home?"
"Yeah. His wife said she hasn't been home in three days, and doesn't care if she never sees him again."
"That's weird. Let me make some calls. Get you some material. Track down Pats."
An hour later, the supply problem was solved, but the Pats mystery had deepened. Tony Paternostro, better known as Pats, was in charge of lining up our daily supply of asphalt, the hot, sticky, black gold that is the lifeblood of the road repair world. It's a somewhat difficult task. We, being the bureaucratic civil service misfits we are, never how much we need. And they (the suppliers who sell us the stuff), always have a higher paying customer they'd rather sell it to, as well as customer service policies based on the code of omerta. All in all, the task of balancing supply and demand calls for a combination of toughness and tact that few in our little world possess. Pats isn't necessarily endowed with a surfeit of either, but he gets by. More importantly, he always shows up for work, and always answers one of the half dozen communications devices strapped to his waist, night or day. Call it dedication. Call it loyalty. Call it overtime at time and half.
Failing to reach Pats myself, I made a few calls. No one had seen him or heard a word. He might have gone to A.C. over the weekend and gotten back late. He might have been at his girlfriend's, or his other girlfriend's, no one was sure though. Only one thing to do. Send Crazy Joe to check around.
Crazy Joe, one-eyed, unreliable, dishonest, stupid, and drunk, Pats's on-again-off-again sidekick and cross to bear, had keys to Tony's office, apartment, and car, and knew his habits and haunts. Crazy Joe had many fewer communications devices strapped to his waist than Pats, but for once, I knew exactly where to find him -- at a disciplinary hearing. Crazy Joe has done (or, rather, failed to do) a great many things in his career. Having fomented disasters as a laborer, dispatcher, messenger, gas station attendant, and clerk, his most recent assignment had been to sit by himself in a shed next to a fax machine and wait for a list of figures to come through. He was then supposed to wait for a technician to stop by, to whom he would hand the fax. This apparently had proven to be quite a challenge.
On the first day of his new assignment, Crazy Joe sat in the shed, the fax machine faxed, and the technician, a fellow of Middle Eastern extraction whose name was pronounced by yelling "Batman" while simultaneously coughing and harrumphing, stopped by at the appointed hour.
"I am Bat(coughharrumph)man. I have come for de fux."
"Dafuck you say?"
"Defux. Please gif me de fux"
"Dafuck you say?"
"De fux! I must have de fux!"
Crazy Joe then popped out his glass eye, threw it at Batman, yelled, "Get dafuckouttahere you Indian rat bastard," (according the complaint filed by Batman in triplicate. Batman retreated from the shed and immediately filed said harassment complaint with the department's equal employment opportunity office, on the grounds that he resented being referred to as Indian.
But I digress.
On the morning of Pats's unexplained absence, I knew where to find Crazy Joe. Emerging from the hearing room, his glass eye back in place, and his natural eye glassy from drink, Crazy Joe muttered curses and epithets at his inquisitors under his breath. I stepped out of my office and called to him.
"Joe. Come here. I need a word with you."
"Hiya Jon. Howya doin?"
"Fine Joe. How'd the hearing go?"
"Colored bitch suspended me for tree days widout pay."
"Yeah, well, just be thankful she didn't fire you."
"I didn't do nuttin'. Dafuck dese people fuckin' wit me faw?"
"Joe. You can't say racial stuff to people in offices. Doesn't matter what you say on the street, cause those guys'll kick your ass anyway. But don't talk about nationality in the office."
"Waddyou talkin' about? Dat guy wasn't colored. He was Indian."
"He's Iranian, Joe, and he didn't like you calling him Indian."
"Who gives a fuck? Indian, whatever. I ain't no racist. I got a colored guy livin' next door to me."
"Look at this way, Joe: You ever call a Napolitan' guy Sicilian by mistake?"
"Yeah ..."
"Well what happened?"
"He hit me in the head with a brick."
"Think of this hearing as a brick. If you don't know a guy, don't mention any countries. Trust me on this one."
"All right, all right. Is dat all you wanna talk to me about?"
"No, I need to ask you about Pats. You seen him in the last couple of days?"
"No. Me an him had a fight. I ain't talk to him in like a week. Why?"
"Nobody knows where he is. He's not answering any of his phones or his beeper, and he didn't show up for work today."
"Ah, he's probably hidin' from his girlfriend. She foun' out about the udda one. Treatened to tell his wife."
"What you mean 'hiding out'? Where is he?"
"Uh, he's got dis otha apartment up by Arthur Avenue where he hangs out sometimes."
"Yeah? I never heard about that one before. Anyway, I need you to go see if he's around. Tell him to give me a call."
"I don't tink he really wants to see me. See we, wuz out at dis afta hours jernt, an' ..."
"I don't want to hear about it. Just find him and tell him to call me, or the next time that Lady won't miss you with the brick, if you know what I mean."
"Awright, awrigtht. I'm goin'."
The rest of the morning was relatively quiet. Between sewer connection cleanings, I finished off some paperwork, divvied up one person's worth of work between three clerks collectively capable of substantially less than that, and declared myself worthy of lunch and a little fresh smog. When I got back, the phone was ringing."
It was crazy Joe.
"Uh, Johnny... I dunno howta tell you 'dis, but it looks like Pats is dead."
"What?!"
"I'm at his place now, an' he ain't movin', an' he ain't breadin'."
"Did you call 911?"
"Uh, no. Ya 'tink I should?"
"Joe. Call 911."
"See we had 'dis fight see, an' he looked OK when I left him, but now...I 'tink I should get outta heah."
"Joe. Give me the address.
"Uh, he don' want too many people knowin' 'bout dis place."
"Joe, if he's dead, he won't care, and if he's alive, I don't think he'd mind."
"Uh, okay, but don't tell nobody about me findin' him, awright?"
"Yeah, sure Joe, just give me the address."
As soon as we hung up, I called 911, reported the situation, then headed out the door.
Next Chapter
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