On The Job, a short story...

On The Job
By
James Strauss

Forty-Second Street combines thousands of semi-repaired potholes to run it’s multi-lane misery past the Hyatt Hotel. Some call it the Grand Hyatt, but they’ve never stayed there. Traveling veteran’s call it the TAS, for ‘That’s A Shame,” which is the expression one hears cross the front desk when guests complain about having no hot water. The hotel’s water pipes run through the subway tunnels built directly underneath the structure. For some reason, unknown to any city employee or private plumbing contractor, the hot water to the hotel is almost never hot, nor delivered at any acceptable pressure level.
The subway station, and the TAS attached above it were on Hobson’s beat.
He’d been a New York City cop for eleven years. It had taken him almost that long to get a street beat instead of motor patrol. Mostly he spent his time inside, drinking coffee, rousting street people, or writing the numerous petty theft reports for the gallery owners who suffered continuous losses from shoplifters. Hobson never caught shoplifters. He’d had a variety of young partners over the past two years of running his beat, however, and it had taken some time to teach them that there really wasn’t much shoplifting to police. The reports written were for insurance claims. The shop owners made a bit of extra profit by juicing their insurance companies by making up claims.
Hobson liked partners. He had somebody to talk to when he had a partner. Metro was a comfortably safe job but it was boring as hell. The people who flowed through the hotel and underground station moved all the time. Fast. They did not stop to converse or pass social time. On top of that, all of the employees of the hotel worked like beaten dogs. They had no time to stand or sit around and be interesting. They were respectful, but not social.
Hobson’s only regular acquaintance was a small time crook and shoeshine expert named Kevon. The man had a whacked out expressive personality and almost never stopped talking, unless it was to listen to one of Hobson’s numerous stories about when he’d been a parking enforcement officer. Kevon, pronounced ‘Kee-von,’ loved the ridiculous excuses people sometimes tried to get out of a parking ticket, only one of which had ever worked. A beautiful woman had lifted her blouse to show Hobson her breasts once. That had worked. Hobson still saw the breasts sometimes when he lay in bed smoking his last cigarette of the day.
Kevon shined Hobson’s shoes for free. He gave him his best ‘before and after’ shine. A digital photo of scuffed boots before the job, and then another when the boots shined bright enough to see things in. Hobson had never found out what Kevon did with the photos, as his procedure was always the same; take the shots, show them once, and never produce them again. Kevon claimed he was maintaining a vast collection for his ‘constituency.’
Kevon ran cigarettes as a sideline, gambled to the point of complete poverty, and occasionally showed up drunk as a lord. People loved him, no matter what his vices, and Hobson did too. But he loved Kevon’s boy, Tyson, even more. The kid had just turned ten the week before. Hobson had found him one of those solar system projectors he’d found at the Anthropologie store in mid-town. He hadn’t considered the gift much, but had almost been brought to tears when Kevon informed him that the boy could no longer go to sleep unless the projector was on. The boy was going to be on the job one day, Hobson just knew, and he’d be sergeant material, unlike Hobson himself.
Ty could shine shoes better than his dad, but he didn’t work the shoeshine booth on 42nd Street very often. He never ran it alone. Although 42nd wasn’t dangerous, as far as New York City streets went, it did have it’s crazies, drug-addled peddlers and mean-spirited vagrants hanging about, especially into the evening hours. Although Ty’s crack smoking Mom had moved out years before, Kevon had proven to be a devoted and dependable father. Hobson counted the man’s treatment of his son as a wonderful asset to their friendship.
Whenever Ty was there, Hobson found some excuse to be nearby. He was convinced that only two beings on the planet really loved him. His cat, Tigger, and the boy, Tyson. Children and cats could be trusted to let you now what they really felt, or so Hobson fervently believed. He had never married because no woman he’d dated and asked had ever said yes. Secretly, he believed that the women he’d put the question to had exercised impeccable good judgment. Hobson was not very intelligent, far less than good looking, and had only one thing going for him. That was his tenuous relationship with the New York Police Department.
His own sergeant had confided in him one day, informing Hobson that his beat would protect him until retirement. No self-respecting cop on the force would take the job, no matter what the department threatened.
Hobson bought an egg and sausage filled croissant for his breakfast from Hidey-Ho, the street vendor on Lexington. He got his coffee from the underground joint called Brio. They didn’t give him his coffee “on the arm” however; instead they allowed him to tip a dollar for each cup. They were stealing Brio coffee at three bucks, and making Hobson pay one dollar to them in cash. He’d bought into the system for a year before he’d figured out their illegal trickery. By then it was too late.
Hobson went up toward 42nd Street.
He had no partner. His latest partner, Wilson, had had the Swine flu, then pneumonia, then migraines. No one had replaced the man in three months. His sergeant told him to ‘endeavor to persevere,’ like from the movie ‘Josie Wales.’ Hobson rented the movie but hadn’t been able to figure out the reference.
When he got to the street he looked for Kevon, who should have been at his usual place, standing in front of a bank of three raised shoe-shine chairs. Tyson’s smaller bent over body stood there in his place. He was working on one man’s shoes, while another filled the far chair.
“Morning Ty,” Hobson murmured, between bites of his thick croissant. He was worried, not seeing Kevon, Ty being there, and it being a school day, but he didn’t show anything.
“Good morning, sir,” the extremely well mannered young man answered, while he kept working polish into his customer’s shoes.
Hobson waited for several minutes, until it became clear that the youngster was not going to say anything else.
“Where’s Kevon?” he finally asked.
“In the precinct, “ Ty answered.
Hobson’s coffee cup stopped in mid-air. ‘In the precinct’ meant that Kevon was locked up. Saying nothing further, and in spite of the fact that he didn’t want to leave the boy alone working the shoe shine stand, Hobson walked back to his cop kiosk just inside the 42nd Street underground entrance. He called his dispatcher. Hobson was Metro, not City, so it would take some time to find out what had happened to Kevon. He put the word out, and then returned to the street.
The boy worked like a maniac, shining shoes, handing out the free newspapers Kevon distributed as a sideline and giving people directions. Long ago Hobson had stopped giving directions. If asked he just said he wasn’t from that part of the city. A police officer in uniform, standing at an underground entrance, could spend all of his time giving directions. He didn’t consider such contact befitting his status as a crime fighting police officer.
The call came in at mid-afternoon. Kevon was inside on Federal hold. The ATF had filed a complaint. Kevin’s bootleg cigarette operation had been uncovered.
His bail was ten thousand, when meant a thousand cash and a promise for the rest, if Kevon didn’t show up for court.
Hobson considered, sipping from his cold coffee cup. Cops didn’t bail Skells out of jail. Cops put Skells in jail. A Skell being a crook. But Kevon was one of his people. He worked Hobson’s beat. He was his only friend, and father to Tyson. Hobson concluded that Devon, although damaged and scarred, was not a Skell. And the ATF guys were Feds. Feds were lowlife creeps who lived and worked by their own arcane rules, almost all of which were stupid or wrong. Every Metro cop knew that. If you worked with Feds, you told them nothing and expected less,
Hobson used his cell to call downtown. Within ten minutes he made contact with a member of his old academy class. The thousand had to be paid soon, as Kevon would be transferred the following day to Riker’s, the only place Federal holds were kept. He hung up, went to the street to see how Ty was doing, and then crossed to Chase, where his money was. He had just over a thousand in his account.
Hobson didn’t call for a patrol car. He took a taxi to the jail. He didn’t want to explain what he was doing or let anybody know that he was temporarily abandoning his post. Everything went smoothly at the jail, until he found out that Kevon would not be released until the following morning. The Federal Court had to clear the bail, not City. There was nothing to be done. Hobson’s mind was so centered on the problem of Tyson being alone that he didn’t see his own sergeant.
He ran right into the big man’s jutting stomach.
“What the hell are you doing here, Hobson?” the man yelled. “And who’s standing it at your post?”
Hobson bounced back from the huge man, his mind frozen. He stood panting.
“Well,” the sergeant hissed down at him, bending slightly forward.
“Wilson’s covering,” Hobson got out weakly, “and I’m just visiting a friend.”
“Bullshit, you little maggot,” the sergeant stated, his voice more moderated, but filled with a tone of distasteful resignation. “You just paid the bail on some Skell. You think I’m an uninformed idiot? And Wilson’s back from sick leave? I didn’t know that.” He looked closely at Hobson’s shiny shoes then not so shiny uniform. “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, but I don’t like it. Get outta here.”
Hobson nearly ran back to the street. He grabbed the first cab that came along. The exchange with his sergeant had been frightening. The man had not known that Wilson was still sick. That Hobson had left his post without approval or replacement was a potentially terminal act. But at least his sergeant had known about the bail, and had not seemed to care. That was a plus.
The boy was working when Hobson made it back to 42nd. Hobson breathed a sigh of relief. There were not patrons waiting for a shine, and snow had begun to fall, cutting passing sidewalk traffic to almost nothing.
“You’re Dad won’t be home until tomorrow morning,” Hobson mentioned, softly, looking out at the passing cars and trucks.
“Okay,” the boy answered, his tone uncertain.
“I live in Brooklyn. We can take the subway there when my shift is done.
We’ll have prime burgers and watch television, then come back tomorrow.” Hobson stopped talking, not knowing what the young boy might say.
“Will I get to meet Tigger?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” Hobson replied, with a big smile. “C’mon with me and we’ll get my stuff from the kiosk. You can have a hot chocolate from Brio while we wait the clock out.” Together, they covered and zippered up the outside shoeshine chairs.
Hobson didn’t notice his sergeant until they were almost to the kiosk.
“Oh Jesus,” he whispered, but it was too late, the sergeant had seen them
approaching.
“Get rid of the kid,” the big man said, his voice ominous in tone.
Hobson fumbled for some change at the bottom of his pocket.
“Here, get the hot chocolate,” he said, shakily to Tyson. The kid grabbed the money and ran toward the coffee shop with a grin.
“So what have we here, Hobson,” the sergeant said, leaning forward, propping one elbow up on the flat surface of the kiosk desk. Hobson didn’t know what to say. He moved to stand at his station on the inside of the round counter area.
“Wilson isn’t back form sick leave. You abandoned your post. You bailed out some low-life Skell shoeshine guy for a grand. You couldn’t get him away from the Feds today so you’ve taken up with his ten year old kid until he gets back.” The sergeant stopped talking. He stared intently into Hobson’s eyes for the first time Hobson could remember.
“Have I got any of that wrong?” He said, when Hobson didn’t talk.
“No sir,” Hobson finally said, his heart sinking to the bottom of his well-shined boots.
The sergeant shifted from one leg to the other, and then turned his head to look up and down the underground corridors.
“You took care of the people today Charlie. You went right at the Feds, and you lied to me in doing it. And you’re not done. You’ve got the kid. You represented today. I underestimated you. For the first time since you’ve worked for me I’m impressed. You’re part of what not many people understand about the New York Police Department. You’re on the job.”
The big man straightened himself, and then turned and walked out to 42nd Street without another word or look. Hobson stood in shock behind the counter.
“He called me Charlie,” he whispered to himself. Nobody on the force had ever called him anything but Hobson.
The boy came back, whipped cream covering his mouth. They went home to Hobson’s cramped apartment in Brooklyn. Tigger was overjoyed to have a new admiring friend added to her extensive collection. When they got into Hobson’s lone double bed, the boy was uncomfortable, until Hobson switched on his own illuminated solar system. They stared up to watch the planets and moons slowly revolve around the sun until the three of them fell into deep sleep.

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copyright 2010

The Morning Calm, a short story...

The Morning Calm
By
James Strauss

Acid-laced coffee. Tawdry imitation 60’s décor. Indian music drifting down from worn out ceiling speakers. The Route Sixty-Six diner, ironically located on 56th Street. New York.
Wayne stared out through the long expanse of windows fronting the busy street. In spite of a punishing wind and beating rain, people flowed back and forth by the window in amazing numbers. He was the restaurant’s sole customer. ‘Late lunch,’ his new acquaintance had suggested, hours earlier.
The opening of an alley directly across the street attracted his eye.
The alley was unusual, from what Wayne had seen so far in New York, in that it extended only half way through the block, and ended in a brick wall. Also, it appeared clean, well lit, devoid of the usual collection of crumpled trash cans. A small white sign with black lettering was placed high up near where the walls met the sidewalk. It read simply, ‘Korea.’ Just beneath were letters hand-done in red paint; ‘Alley of the Morning Calm.’ Tiny Christmas Tree lights ran row upon row up and down along the bricks, twinkling brightly in the rain. A single business had been built into the wall at the end of the alley. A blue awning stretched across it’s top. In a window next to the door a malfunctioning neon sign occasionally blinked “Izumi Maru,” right above a crossed knife and fork.
Wayne smiled to himself, his face remaining expressionless. Korea, translated roughly from the language, did mean ‘ land of the morning calm,’ and Izumi Maru, in Japanese, was close to ‘fountain of life.’ There was a warm serenity to the entire scene, only slightly diminished by pounding rain. He drank some of the bad coffee. A young make-believe American kid tried to offer a warm up. The boy’s coloration and accent indicated Filipino heritage.
“Nothing more yet,” Wayne told him.
The server began to walk away.
“By the way,” Wayne inquired, stopping him. “What’s down that alley, across the street?”
The kid’s gaze followed Wayne’s.
“Jappo restaurant. Run by Korean. Koreans hate Jappo’s. Serve poison fish. Jappo’s eat, get crazy, but always come back.”
“Puffer fish,” Wayne said, not looking at the server’s departing back, instead his eyes fastened on the uncommon street scene before him. Puffer fish were filled with a neurotoxin that was among the most poisonous in the world. The flesh of the fish was prepared at restaurants all over Korea, however. In Seoul, the places were required by law to post a sign indicating the number of people who’d died from consuming the poison during the year before. The most popular restaurants were those that posted the largest numbers. Wayne had never eaten the delicacy, but he’d known many Korean’s who had. When prepared properly by a master chef, the Puffer meal gave it’s gourmet consumer a ‘high’ much more intense than cocaine, and one that lasted far longer. Most of the world outlawed such restaurants, including the United States.
Wayne wondered whether the kid was right. It seemed unlikely that some rogue Japanese restaurant was serving the illegal meals in the middle of a place as heavily policed as New York City.
“Korean Yakusa,” the kid said from behind him. Wayne lowered his right shoulder, then leaned back, twisting his head to face the boy. He didn’t like people approaching him from behind. The Filipino server walked past, however, to stand facing the broad expanse of clear glass. The rain was abating with the wind, but everything outside remained shiny and cleaner looking. A group of young men had appeared from nowhere, taking up residence half-way down the abbreviated alley, crouching, bending over and motioning to one another with weird hand signs.
“Fake phony cowards, they are…fake cowards they are…” hissed his server, like he was repeating a line from a twisted Dr. Seuss story.
“Yakusa is the name used for Japanese mafia, not Korean gangs,” Wayne corrected him.
A homeless man passed the alley opening. He wore a tattered and torn version of Wayne’s own outfit. Irish tweed coat with worn blue jeans. Wayne noted the similarity, and then shifted uncomfortably.
There was no retirement plan for hit men. No Social Security. No Medicare. It was a lonely business, without any social support network, and it didn’t pay anything near what people had come to believe it paid from movies and television.
Wayne had a few dollars invested and a solid chunk in his checking account, but every once and awhile he worried about what might happen in his later years.
The street person pushed a shopping cart piled high with unidentifiable junk, the outside of his cart festooned with plastic bags tied all around it, like old tires circling the hull of a harbor tug. The man and cart moved very slowly past the opening of the alley mouth.
The boys from the alley moved, like a single rippling stand of willows. One moment they were crouched down in the alley, the next they were surrounding the old man and his cart, as if blown there by a great gust of invisible wind,
One boy pitched things from the vagrant’s basket onto the sidewalk and street, while another opened a folding ‘sling-blade’ style of knife and cut slits up and down all the bags tied to the cart. Trash spilled into piles, some of it blowing about in the remains of wet stormy winds.
At first the homeless man attempted to defend his belongings, but soon gave that up as the pack descended fully upon him. He ran, but only made it a step or two before being brought down by a blow to the back of his legs. Once down, the boys began an obviously ritualized ballet of martial arts movements. Dancing and twisting, they delivered kick after kick into different parts of the agonized man’s anatomy. The gang’s enjoyment was palpable, even from well across the street and through a pane of thick glass.
The gang ended their onslaught as they had begun it, running lightly, like interlacing lemmings, to recollect back at their lair, half way down the alley. The vagrant’s body twitched, while his arm’s and legs fought for control. He got up shakily, then tried to assemble something from the piles of junk surrounding him. He lacked the strength to refill the basket completely. Finally, grasping the cart by it’s bar handle, he glanced once into the alley, before staggering away down the street.
“Assholes,” the Filipino server said aloud.
“What about nine one one?” Wayne inquired, quietly.
“None of my business,” the boy responded, instantly, spinning about, and then walking away toward the kitchen in back.
“Mine either,” Wayne whispered, but the kid was gone. Averting his eyes from the hypnotic scene, he checked his wallet. He put a twenty on the tabletop.
His ‘late lunch’ was not coming. He’d guessed that when they’d made the date. Wayne was used to it. He had no friends. People found his company vaguely disconcerting in some fashion no one had ever taken the trouble to explain. He’d never expected the guy to show up, but he’d gone through the motions anyway.
Outside the Route 66 he stood for a moment next to the entrance. The rain was gone. A low afternoon sun was trying to penetrate between the buildings further down the street. Wayne stared at the alley mouth, breathed in deeply several times, and then walked to the corner for a cab.
Sitting on the side of his bed at the Waldorf, he looked at himself in a mirror perched above the clothing drawers next to an overly-large plasma T.V. He inventoried the image staring back at him. He was sixty but looked forty-five. He was ‘born-again’ hard, mentally and physically. He was still quick as a striking snake and agile as a Lynx. But, deep inside his blue eyes there was a haunted lonely glint
he was not surprised to note.
The young Catholic priest had effected him deeply. Wayne was a Catholic but had fallen away in his youth. He’d gone back into a church, just to talk to somebody, the week before. It had not gone well. Unbelievably, the priest had refused him absolution for his sins. Wayne had not thought that possible. The priest had come out of the confessional to tell him, in a hushed whisper, that Wayne would have to find some other redemption from God for the things he’d done. He’d said that it was simply not within his power to forgive, or offer further advice.
“Well God, what do you have to say?” Wayne asked the mirror, “or do I have to do this on my hands and knees?” Nothing happened. God remained his usual silent self.
The television was filled with idiotic sports games and awful news, so he turned it off and paced. Finally, he decided to take a walk. Three blocks from the Waldorf, on Lexington, he ran into it. The rain was gone but a brisk wind remained. The wind drove an empty shopping cart right into Wayne’s path as he walked. He pushed the thing away with an irritated shove, and then walked on. After only a few steps he stopped dead in his tracks. What was an empty shopping cart doing on the sidewalk of a busy downtown street? Wayne looked back. The shopping cart waited, unmoving in the center of the concrete walkway.
Pushing the cart before him, Wayne made his way back to the Waldorf. The cart felt right, as if it was rolling on well lubricated ball bearings. He left it jammed against the side of the hotels’ granite entrance. A doorman looked over at him, then at the cart, but said nothing. Wayne went up to his room.
An hour later he returned, exiting through the same door. The cart was right where he’d left it, as he’d known it would be. Wayne threw an armload of used towels, a trash bucket and some extra rolls of toilet into the basket. He pushed the cart toward 56th Street. He knew he didn’t really look his part. He was not properly filthy or seedy enough in his disguise, but was counting on the dying light of early evening to cover a multitude of sins. Nobody paid any attention to him at all, as he made his way the mile and a half, or so.
The yellow lit opening to the alley was even more welcoming than before, when he rounded the last corner. It beckoned warmly. The thronging masses of a busy metropolis had withdrawn with the fading light. Wayne checked his shoulder holster. The factory-suppressed Ruger, in twenty-two short for less sound, was there and ready, loaded with nine rounds, one in the chamber. The weapon was designed for close, nearly silent, work. It was all but useless beyond ten feet.
Wayne’s hand swept down to brush past the forty-five taped to his right ankle.
As opposed to the Ruger, it was terribly loud, devastatingly destructive, and good for much more than ten feet, as any proper backup should be. He was ready.
The shopping cart moved before him, almost of it’s own accord. Wayne bent forward, beginning to drag one leg behind, as if he was crippled or injured. His main concern was not based on either his appearance or his preparations. It was in attendance. Was the deadly flock of predatory animals going to be waiting when he rounded the corner and entered the alley, or was he merely to arrive there, abandon the cart, and enjoy the first Puffer meal of his life?
He felt their attention before he was even under their full gaze. Slowly and deliberately, he turned the cart to direct it down the alley while, at the same time, bowing his head further down so the smile he could not suppress wouldn’t alert them, His right hand sought out the warm comforting butt of the Ruger. He unsnapped the hoster release with his thumb.
Wayne heard the gang’s near silent approach and thought of the priest. How correct that agent of God had been to deny him absolution. God Himself was so much more generous in His allowance for Wayne's redemption.