Our caravan drove along Third Avenue to Atlantic, turned left past the shit-brown Ex-Lax factory, and the first bloom of yuppie antique shops elbowing the Sahadi Brothers and other venerable Arab trading companies— they perfumed the air with nutmeg, turmeric and cardamom—out of the neighborhood. Past the bleak 10-story Brooklyn House of Detention and onto Cadman Plaza and the Brooklyn Bridge. I sat folded like a ventriloquist dummy in the back seat while McIntosh went giddily on and on about banging cocktail waitresses—I knew one of them—his rapt audience hanging on to every word.
I had no idea where we were going or what doing but was not willing play Starbuck to this Ahab. We bumped off the FDR near the Willis Avenue Bridge—the crumbled Bronx as alien as Hanoi to me—and into a shabby truck rental operation. McIntosh got out, stretched and pulled a wad of bills from his pants pocket. The three cars behind us nosed into parking spots. A deal for four “straight jobs” (medium-sized trucks) had been arranged; no paper changed hands, no one asked to see my driver’s license. We divided into pairs, driver and helper.
“You, ride with me,” a slight, sallow-faced driver (think John Cazale) ordered, tapping me on the shoulder.
I figured I’d be doing most of the heavy lifting. I was walking to his truck when another guy, rugged-looking (think James Caan)—and about my size, said, “He’s with me.” The first driver backed off, shooting me a dirty look. I opened the passenger door, its hinges shrieked, and climbed aboard. I tossed my book on the seat. I forget the driver’s name and he never asked mine. (James Caan, whose father was supposedly a bookie in Queens, often showed up on Carroll Street. When a Colombo family capo—whose name I still hesitate to mention—built a Venetian-style townhouse for his mother next to my parents’ house, Caan gifted him with an enormous brass lion’s head knocker, which, I suspect, is still there.)
Twenty minutes later, we were rumbling behind McIntosh’s big sedan, bumping up, down and across Bruckner Boulevard, the Grand Concourse, Morris Avenue, lost. It was 11:00 A.M. on a day that threatened to go on forever. Many pay phone calls later, we pulled up at our destination, a manufacturer of metal office furniture. I relaxed. I could muscle desks and chairs. Through the truck’s grimy windshield, I noticed a crowd of Puerto Rican men and women milling in front of the factory. To me, New York City was an overlay of races and ethnicities, most of them alien.
It was a picket line.
My father was a laborer, a member of the International Longshoremen’s Association; a diehard union guy who'd spent 35 years in the rat-infested holds of ships so I could attend college.
McIntosh got out. The union pickets with their sad cardboard placards looked at him nervously. Ignoring them, he swaggered up to a white guy wearing a shirt and tie, one of the factory owners. A discussion ensued. The terms of the deal were changing.The white guy, clearly nervous, handed a roll of bills to McIntosh, who counted it and stuffed the money into his pocket. He nodded, and the retractable steel gates of the shipping dock shrieked to life.
Doffing his yachting cap, McIntosh strolled up to my driver’s door.
“Fuck these Jews!” he said.
I reached for the door handle.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked my driver.
“You don’t do nothing. They do it!”
One by one, the forklifts came out and loaded our trucks.
I could not bear to look at the men on the picket line.
(to be continued)
I had no idea where we were going or what doing but was not willing play Starbuck to this Ahab. We bumped off the FDR near the Willis Avenue Bridge—the crumbled Bronx as alien as Hanoi to me—and into a shabby truck rental operation. McIntosh got out, stretched and pulled a wad of bills from his pants pocket. The three cars behind us nosed into parking spots. A deal for four “straight jobs” (medium-sized trucks) had been arranged; no paper changed hands, no one asked to see my driver’s license. We divided into pairs, driver and helper.
“You, ride with me,” a slight, sallow-faced driver (think John Cazale) ordered, tapping me on the shoulder.
I figured I’d be doing most of the heavy lifting. I was walking to his truck when another guy, rugged-looking (think James Caan)—and about my size, said, “He’s with me.” The first driver backed off, shooting me a dirty look. I opened the passenger door, its hinges shrieked, and climbed aboard. I tossed my book on the seat. I forget the driver’s name and he never asked mine. (James Caan, whose father was supposedly a bookie in Queens, often showed up on Carroll Street. When a Colombo family capo—whose name I still hesitate to mention—built a Venetian-style townhouse for his mother next to my parents’ house, Caan gifted him with an enormous brass lion’s head knocker, which, I suspect, is still there.)
Twenty minutes later, we were rumbling behind McIntosh’s big sedan, bumping up, down and across Bruckner Boulevard, the Grand Concourse, Morris Avenue, lost. It was 11:00 A.M. on a day that threatened to go on forever. Many pay phone calls later, we pulled up at our destination, a manufacturer of metal office furniture. I relaxed. I could muscle desks and chairs. Through the truck’s grimy windshield, I noticed a crowd of Puerto Rican men and women milling in front of the factory. To me, New York City was an overlay of races and ethnicities, most of them alien.
It was a picket line.
My father was a laborer, a member of the International Longshoremen’s Association; a diehard union guy who'd spent 35 years in the rat-infested holds of ships so I could attend college.
McIntosh got out. The union pickets with their sad cardboard placards looked at him nervously. Ignoring them, he swaggered up to a white guy wearing a shirt and tie, one of the factory owners. A discussion ensued. The terms of the deal were changing.The white guy, clearly nervous, handed a roll of bills to McIntosh, who counted it and stuffed the money into his pocket. He nodded, and the retractable steel gates of the shipping dock shrieked to life.
Doffing his yachting cap, McIntosh strolled up to my driver’s door.
“Fuck these Jews!” he said.
I reached for the door handle.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked my driver.
“You don’t do nothing. They do it!”
One by one, the forklifts came out and loaded our trucks.
I could not bear to look at the men on the picket line.
(to be continued)
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