Garbage (2 page)

“Fifteen dollars more a month is better with one less pickup day?”

“That you don't tell him.”

“Suppose he says what was the deal so he can maybe meet it?”

“You say you already made up your mind.”

“But I know Eco personally. George Ecomolos. He comes in for beers every now and then. I know his garbage guys. They've been with him for ten to twenty years and I give them free shots and a sandwich every now and then. They're nice guys—Eco himself a nice guy too. No, I can't do it.”

“Don't worry. Once you stop paying Eco to cart for you, he won't come in to drink again.”

“I said I can't, that's it. You want trouble, well all right, you're talking to the guy who can give it. Big deal. Bust a window of mine out or throw a bomb in whatever it's made of—explosives, fire—but you'll wind up in more trouble than me. Believe me, much more.”

“Don't be silly—we can't be. Now is it no or yes? Just sign your fate with a single word, Shaney. Yes or the other?”

“No, damn you. I said no.”

“Okay, pal. See you.”

“Bye bye, Shaney,” Turner says.

They get up to go.

“Wait,” I say when they're almost out the door.

“Okay for a quick change of mind,” Pete says. “As I said, we're very busy.”

“No, forget it. I almost changed it but I can't. I'll take my chances. I'm also calling the police.”

“You're getting so silly it's ridiculous.”

“Remember, these people are my witnesses. They saw you in here.”

“Saw what?” the young man at the bar says.

“You going to involve these nice kids, Shaney? Besides, they seem too young to even be drinking. You could lose your license.”

“I'm nineteen,” the young man says “and she's legal age too.”

“No, you're right,” I say to Pete “I'm leaving them out of it. I'll do it all on my own. My father had a bar before me, did you know that?”

“Not interested,” Pete says.

“Hey bartender,” one of the men at the back table yells “bring us another pitcher of beer.”

“And my grandfather on my mother's side before him and some great-uncles too. They were all tough and I'm tough, tough as you guys, that you better believe. Maybe tougher because it's for so long inherited.”

“I'm sure of it, Shaney. I'm shivering in my jeans. And get your old man and hundred-year-old uncles to stand up with you.” They leave.

“What was that all about?” the young woman says.

“Something. But if you don't mind I'd like you both to go now, last round on the house, but come in again when I'm not so shaken up.”

They leave. I get the back table a pitcher of beer and fresh glasses and call the police.

Two detectives come later that night. One says “We'll keep someone out front tonight if you want. We'd also like to hook up a recorder under the bar with a foot pedal on it, just in case they come in again, so we can get them on tape. Unless they threaten you when you've witnesses or you get it recorded, it's impossible to prove who's telling the truth. Customers in back know anything?”

“They heard us arguing maybe, but didn't know what it was or were too stewed to. And I don't want recorders, just police protection. But I swear to you, those same two come in again when you're not around, then no questions or anything I'm going to hit them over the head with my club.”

“Don't hit anyone. Let us do the hitting for you if it has to come to that.”

“I want them to know I mean business.”

“So they'll know, so what—you want to get yourself killed? Maybe they won't come back. Sometimes it's all words and no deed with them and they don't even work for who they say they do but just want the money on the spot, in cash. We'll check in with Stovin's tomorrow early. For now what do you say to kicking those clowns out and closing up for some rest?”

“I'm closing regular time only—nothing's making me do otherwise. I don't want those punks thinking they scared me even a half hour out of my place.”

I close at three, clean the bar, refill the stock and put the garbage out on the street and have my double shot of scotch and beer chaser and lock up the place. A police car's parked across the street. I go over to it and the man inside says he's been assigned to the post for the night. I walk home. My phone's ringing when I unlock the door.

“Shaney my love,” Pete says “what's been keeping you? Boy, was that stupid of you calling in the law. Stupid, stupid—what could you have been thinking of? Anyway, they can't stay there forever—even cops got to make pee. When they finally give up the watch as unproductive we might dynamite the joint with you in it or not—we haven't as yet quite decided. You still don't want us to work for you though, right?”

“Right.”

“Last time I can be talking to you like this. No more polite social teas and cutesy-pie chats from me, so also don't bother with taps and tapes. Now once more—make up our minds. We haul a hell of a great barrel of trash.”

“No thanks.”

“Oh well. Maybe you'll be a good lesson for some other possible dope,” and he hangs up.

I call the police and tell them I want a tap on my home and business phones. Next day I awake the same time I do every morning and get set for work. I'll be in at nine-thirty and open by ten and work to the end. I do that seven days a week. Been doing it for eighteen years straight, not one day off for vacation or being sick even when I had a hundred and three fever. I got this bar from my father. He got it from his father-in-law, though it was a different bar then, same name, in another part of town. It never made enough to support more than one family and it could probably just barely do that now. My father when I worked for him often warned me “Never give in to extortion ever. Do it once, they'll be on you always. They'll next want you to buy your liquor from them, then the mixers, then the records to rent for your machine. Then everything, even the bar coasters and lightbulbs. Before you know it they'll own a good piece of the place and you'll be working for them. Say no sir from the start. They'll threaten but the chances are they won't come through. And keep in contact with the police on this, though do what you can on your own without hurting yourself, since less the police have to do with the bar the better. If the police want a little palming for extra protecting and investigating, don't give them anything but food and booze or soon they'll be robbing you blind too. They still insist and you need them, go higher up till you get results. That'll all happen a few times in your barowning life and if you ride it out, you've won. You give in just once, you're sunk. You might as well stand on the other side of your bar and drink your business away, since that's what'll happen to it: straight down the drain.”

Next morning around eleven two detectives come in, dressed like truckers, and tell me the Stovin company denied ever even hearing of my bar. “They say they got all the garbage they can handle now and which the city will allow them to dump and they've nobody working for them named Turner or Pete. They let us look through their recent financial and employment records, which they didn't have to, and they seem to be as honest a private carter as one could be without allowing us a look at their original books. If you don't mind we'll pretend to be your customers on and off for a week, though to make it look realer you'll have to put out for our food and an occasional rye and beer.”

“Fine with me.”

“Department will reimburse you for everything we eat.”

“Even better, as it'll at least guarantee me a couple of steady customers all week.”

Two teams of policemen hang around on eight-hour shifts apiece, mostly playing cards and studying for college exams or watching the back TV. I get no attempted anything or threatening phone call. At the end of the week one of the policemen says “We'll only observe the bar from the outside now. Nothing much, as it doesn't look like anything will happen: a passing car or cop on the beat. We'll keep the tap in, not to listen but to record your calls.”

“What should I do if they march in here again?”

“Phone us if you can, though God knows what I'd do if I were you. Probably, for just the fifteen bucks more a month, I would've let them have my garbage, even if I only half believed they'd hit on me or my place. Now that you came to us, if what you say is on the level, they wouldn't do your garbage for ten times the amount and maybe got scared away. We'll see. Fortunately, you don't have a wife and kids. You did, they'd have threatened them to you and I bet you would've given in the first day.”

“My dad never did and I don't think I would've also, but then how am I to know?”

“Your father's times, those were different. People mostly murdered each other in their sleep, not out on the street. Today everyone's got his homemade bomb and seven types of rifles and handguns. Maybe you should get one yourself. You'd be entitled to, I'd think, what with all those threats.”

Next morning I go to police headquarters. Person in charge of gun licensing says “You've got to produce a definite witness who saw or heard your life or business being threatened or you to prove at least twice this year where your bar got robbed. Because without someone taking the chance under oath of standing up for you and then going to jail himself if it turns out he lied, half the city would be carrying concealed revolvers and shooting off their testicles and toes.”

I probably could find someone to lie for me for a dozen free drinks, but then I'd be into another person for something else. Besides, I'm an old club man—I know how to swing one and knock out a troublemaker with one quick blow without breaking his skull. If a man came in with a gun and I also had one, I'd probably reach for it and blow out the window instead of his brains and then he'd pop me away for sure. I also don't think I could live with myself if I killed anyone—I just want to help whoever's threatening me to forever get lost.

Business is the same as usual the next week: not so good. Police check in with me every night personally and once a day by phone.

“How's it going?”

“Nothing's happened if that's what you mean.”

“Don't complain.”

“I'm not,” but by this time they've usually already hung up.

Once when a policeman says “How's it going?” I say “Suppose some punk had a gun to my neck right now and told me to say nothing's happening, how would you know?”

“Does one?”

“If anyone did, you think he'd let me tell you?”

“Honestly now—no games. If anyone does have a gun on you, he doesn't have to know who you're actually talking to or your joking style, so say very naturally to me ‘I'm only fooling, Luke—I'll take five kegs of bock and three normal ale, but this time make it cheap.'”

“Nobody does.”

“Then why frighten me like that? Stay loose.”

One night, week after I went for the gun license, a customer I never saw before comes in, has a mug of beer and two hard-boiled eggs, says goodnight and leaves. On the bar napkin is a message written on it under his half-dollar tip: “Shaney, dear. Your place is getting effaced tonight. Bet you couldn't wait. Sorry, sweet. Love, Pete.”

I call the police. They come with sirens on and in droves, order me to close for the night, shut all the lights and we sit in an unmarked van across the street waiting for anyone suspicious to stop in front of the bar with something that could have inside it a firebomb or can of gasoline. Nobody stops for anything except the bakery driver, who at daybreak leaves against my door his daily bag of breadloafs and rolls.

Hour later one of the three policemen in the van says “Nothing's getting effaced today and I'm starving, so what do you guys say?” and we go into the bar for coffee and eggs I'll make and some of those rolls. A few minutes later the phone rings.

“So there you are,” my landlady at home says. “I've been calling and calling and getting more worried every second and already was accepting the fate you were so charred you didn't leave a single trace.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your apartment early this morning. The fire, where all your rooms except the toilet were almost altogether destroyed. Thank heavens we saved the rest of the building and our lives because your nextdoor neighbors had the foresight to put in smoke alarms. The fire marshal's right beside me and he—”

“Let me speak to him,” I hear a man say.

“He wants to know if you left something cooking on your stove or can remember a cigarette in your ashtray or lit match.”

“Mr. Fleet?” a man says on the phone.

“Listen,” I say to him. “I left for work almost twenty-four hours ago. You think it would've taken that long or whatever hours it was to start a fire if I ever had the dumbness to leave anything cooking there? Well I don't have the dumbness for that and gave up smoking a dozen years ago and throwing away lit matches without watching where they dropped about twenty years before that and nobody but me and my landlady who has the keys and a plumber or two has been in my apartment for five years. That fire was deliberately done by some company that's trying to steamroll me to doing something I don't want to do and if you want to talk to anyone about it, come over here and speak to the police.”

“You stay there—someone will watch your apartment—and I'll be right over.”

“Goddammit I'm mad,” I yell, slamming down the phone. I throw the eggs on, scoop out the shells from the yolks because I threw them on so fast and then slice the rolls so quick I sliver my hands twice and my blood sizzles on the grill. “I'm mad, those bastards,” and I throw the spatula against the wall and punch my palm till it hurts.

“You want us to take over the stove?” one of the policemen says.