Muller, Marcia - [McCone 05] Leave a Message for Willie [v1.0] (htm) (4 page)

"I tell you, it's not easy sometimes. But I still love my
customers, every one of them, whether they're at the garage sale or
the flea market. I move a lot of stuff through the markets, now that
I've got three runners. I go around, check on each of them, then go
to the Saltflats and get myself a little fresh air and sunshine, make
some deals.

"Now, this market we're going to first in San Jose, it's more
commercial than the Saltflats. You'll see. They got an office that's
open all week, a lot of permanent vendors, food concessions. And they
play it straight with the law; you got to be careful that anything
you sell there has a legitimate-looking pedigree. Real careful,
because you don't want a run-in with management or the San Jose
cops…"

The drive passed quickly and soon we were parking in a rutted lot
across the street from the market. As Willie had said, it was more
substantial than the Saltflats, with permanent booths and bins for
the regular vendors to store their merchandise in. Most of the
sellers were just setting out their goods, and many waved and called
to Willie as he strode by with me in tow. We passed hot dog stands
and popcorn wagons and
tacquerias
before we came to the
displays of cheap clothing, garish ceramics, and tacky furniture.

Willie led me through the maze to a stall near its center, saying,
"The guy that's snooping around won't be here because they're
not letting the customers in yet, but I wanted you to get an idea of
the setup. Here we are." He motioned at a beefy, balding man in
his mid-forties who was stringing
piñatas
on an overhead wire. "And that there's my San Jose runner, Roger
Beck."

The man glanced over his shoulder. His face was round and puffy,
and on his thick forearms were tattoos of anchors. "Be right
with you, Willie." He clipped a brightly colored papier-mâché
donkey to the wire, which sagged under the added weight.

"Lots of Mexs come here," Willie said, "so we stock
the kind of crap they like."

Roger Beck let the wire sag and came toward us, wiping his hands
on his khaki pants. "How you doing, Willie?"

"Not bad, for a Sunday. Rog, this is Sharon McCone, newest
member of the team. She's going around with me today, learning the
ropes. Then I'm going to turn her loose on the Berkeley Flea Market.
Anything you can fill her in on will help."

Beck's eyes, pinpoints in his fleshy face, turned slowly to me.
"You hired a woman?"

"Why not? I'll take on anybody who can handle the job."

"Yeah, but can she? It's a rough business, especially for a
broad. And that Berkeley market's weird."

"This lady can take care of herself." There was a cold
edge to Willie's voice that seemed out of proportion to Beck's sexist
but fundamentally harmless remark. I glanced uneasily at him.

To me, Willie said, "Rog's what you call your basic male
chauvinist. Doesn't like women much, especially since his old lady
took off with an insurance salesman and the family silverware."

Roger Beck's face flushed and he turned back to the
piñatas
,
jerking angrily on the wire.

"Since then," Willie went on, "he drives a bakery
truck during the week and moonlights for me on Saturdays and Sundays.
It's not much, but it helps pay the bills the old lady left. And he
fits right in here, with all the other rednecks."

I frowned.

"You see, Sharon, this is real redneck territory. Guns on the
racks of the pickups. Shit-kicking music. Law and order, beer and
pretzels, touch-my-woman-and-I'll kick-your-ass. You're in for a real
treat."

There was silence as Beck pulled the wire taut. Then he turned and
said with tightly controlled anger, "There anything you want me
to get out of the truck?"

"Yeah. Half a dozen suede jackets. A carton of sweaters—
bright colors, the Mexs'll love them. Some socket sets. Receipts are
all in the glove compartment; take them in case you need them."

Willie handed him his key ring and the beefy man left the stall,
his big fists balled at his sides.

"You were rough on him," I said.

"Yeah, I guess I was." He was looking thoughtfully after
Beck.

"Do you usually ride him like that?"

He turned abruptly, motioning for me to follow him. "Look,
don't worry about it. Nothing I say really bothers Rog. Doesn't
bother him at all."

But it did, and Willie knew it. I suspected the fence wasn't
exactly a cheerleader for women's rights, so it couldn't have been
Beck's remark that set him off. And he didn't strike me as a
gratuitously cruel man. There had to be more going on between him and
Beck than he was willing to discuss. The unpleasant scene kept
puzzling me as Willie led me around, introducing me to other vendors
and explaining the workings of the market.

The next flea market Willie took me to was on Alameda Island, a
stone's throw from Oakland. It was on the grounds of a drive-in
theater near the Naval Air Station, and didn't seem nearly as
commercial as the San Jose operation. Even the vendors were more
low-key as they lounged in the sun, watching the first customers
straggle by. I caught snatches of conversation as Willie led me
toward his stall near the drive-in's snack bar.

"… so I told him if he wants me to take this literary crap
that nobody buys, at least he could give me a price break on the good
stuff—coffee-table books, you know? But a lot of good that does
me…"

"…big dealers, they're all alike. Don't give the little guy
nothing…"

"… like I told my daughter, I come for the sun. You can go
crazy in a dingy windowless store six days a week…"

"…some party and, believe me, I could use a few aspirin
right now…"

"…a sale's a sale…"

"… looking for antiques?" The words were addressed to
me this time. The old man stood amidst a motley collection of rickety
tables, hideous lamps, and tattered mattresses. I stopped, staring at
the fattest, ugliest overstuffed chair I'd ever seen.

"Plenty of genuine antiques here."

I started to move on.

"Mainly me," the man added.

I smiled at the joke and hurried to catch up with Willie.

He was waiting impatiently in front of a stand that sold jeans and
T-shirts. When I came up, he took a firm hold on my arm and propelled
me down the aisle. "That's my stand up ahead, with the barber
pole in front. Nobody watching it; I guess he hasn't started in on my
runners yet."

I glanced around; he seemed to be right.

The wares in this stall were different from those at San Jose, I
noted. There was no clothing or
piñatas
,
but instead a few antiques, some serviceable-looking furniture,
housewares, and a great many children's toys. When I commented on it,
Willie said, "You stock to fit the clientele. Here you get a lot
of young families who shop seriously. They want top value for their
dollar."

The words reminded me of an earnest young marketing executive I'd
once known, and briefly I wondered to what heights Willie might have
risen if he'd entered business school instead of becoming a fence.

A rail-thin man in a T-shirt that showed the outlines of his ribs
was unloading a tricycle from the battered van parked at the back of
the space. He set it down, paused to take a swig from a beer can that
rested on the van's bumper, then trundled the trike over to a group
of strollers. His movements were slow, almost trancelike. When he
turned, I saw that he was in his middle thirties—and that some
of those years must have been hard ones indeed. The most recent
evidence of it was a black eye and raw abrasions on his face.

"Hey, Willie." He raised a hand.

"Morning, Sam. What the hell happened to you?"

The man ambled over to us, his thumbs hooked in the loops of his
belt, looking sheepish. "It's nothing."

"Doesn't look like nothing to me. You seen a doctor?"

"Look, I'm okay."

"Yeah." Willie's tone was flat, disbelieving.

The man went back to his van, finished off the beer, and
immediately pulled another from the paper sack.

"Bad night?" Willie asked.

"Carolyn left. Again."

"And?"

"She said she was going to stay with some friend on the
Peninsula. So I went looking for her. Ended up in a bar in Hayward—"

"Hayward's not on the Peninsula, Sam."

"Shit, you think I don't know that? I was blind drunk, man.
Anyway, I got in a fight, these two guys jumped me, and next thing
I'm coming to in the parking lot." He shook his head and swigged
beer.

"Yeah. Sam, this is Sharon. She's going to handle the
Berkeley market for me. Sharon, Sam Thomas."

Sam looked at me with faint surprise, as if he hadn't been fully
aware of my presence. "Hi, Sharon." To Willie, he said,
"Glad you finally found somebody who'd go there."

Willie glanced at me, amused. "None of my runners want to
work the Berkeley Flea Market. Too ethnic for them. Too many weirdos
and liberals. You know Berkeley."

Sam took out another beer. "Well, it
is
weird.
They've even got a chiropractor operating there, for Christ's sake.
And the food—you ever had a tofu burger?"

"Speaking of food…" I began.

Willie looked at his watch. "Yeah, it's almost lunchtime. The
fried chicken at the snack bar's not bad." He took out his
wallet, extracted a twenty, and handed it to Sam. "Get us some,
will you? And feed yourself, too."

"I'm not hungry." But he took the bill and shambled off,
still clutching the beer.

"Does he always drink that much?" I asked.

"Yes." Willie was surveying the space with a critical
eye. He went over and pushed the strollers closer to the van, then
lugged a kitchen table out and piled some cookware on it. "Sam
can never get it through his head how I want things arranged."

"So why do you put up with him? He's obviously an alcoholic.
Was it his wife who walked out last night?"

"His lady. But she'll be back, probably be there when he gets
home tonight. Sam can get violent—it happens that way with some
Vietnam vets—but it doesn't last long. When something sets him
off, Carolyn leaves. But she's always come back—so far."
In spite of his optimistic words, his eyes were troubled.

"She must love him, then. And you must like him pretty well,
too."

"Let me tell you about Sam. Like I said, he's a Vietnam vet.
Former Special Forces type. Went over there gung-ho. He wasn't like
me—just an ordinary grunt who was too dumb to try to get out of
it. Or like our friend, Zahn, who was ROTC and went because he
thought it was right, then came back to grow his hair and carry a
protest sign. Sam really
believed
in that war.

"So he went over there and, like Zahn and me, he saw some
pretty unspeakable things. Probably did some of them, too. But he
didn't come home and forget like I did. Or try to change things like
Zahn. He came home and remembered— too damn well. The booze
kind of takes the edge off of it."

"And that's why you put up with him."

"I may be dumb about a lot of things, but I'm not too stupid
to know that a lot of the cripples left over from 'Nam aren't in
wheelchairs."

When Sam came back from the snack bar, he had a fresh sixpack and
baskets of fried chicken for Willie and me. We sat in the van and
talked—about the flea markets, about the Oakland A's and their
chances this season, about where you could buy the cheapest gas. I
don't know how Willie did it, but by the time we left, he'd convinced
Sam to see a doctor about his face, at Willie's expense, of course.
Sam should think of it as health insurance, he said. After all,
didn't nearly everybody else in the world have Blue Cross these days?

That afternoon we drove across the Richmond Bridge to the Marin
City Flea Market. On a vacant lot beside the freeway, it was even
more low-key than Alameda. The stalls spread out haphazardly in all
directions, and the wares they offered were more exotic than mundane.
Willie and I checked for suspicious strangers, but again everything
seemed normal.

Willie's Marin runner, Monty Adair, presented a marked contrast to
his laid-back surroundings. Adair was angular and intense. His dark
brown hair was cut military-style; his bright eyes snapped; his small
nose and chin were sharply pointed. When he spoke, it was in short,
clipped sentences.

"Nice to have you aboard, Sharon. Willie, there's a guy who
wants to see you. He's in the third space, back aisle. Wants to know
if you'll take a TV in trade for a car stereo. I said I'd send you
by."

Willie nodded and left me in Adair's seemingly capable hands.

"So you're going to handle the Berkeley market?"

"Yes."

"It's different from Marin." He motioned at the crowd of
people, mainly dressed in jeans and T-shirts, that drifted by.
"Berkeley's eccentric. Marin's basically conservative."

I raised my eyebrows as a woman who appeared to have wrapped
herself in a madras bedspread came up and began to root through a box
full of books.

"Oh, some of them dress strangely. Marin County has a
reputation for being in the forefront of social change. They feel
they have to live up to it. But underneath they're conservative as
they come. They care a lot about money. Houses. Cars."

A second woman came up. "You've got a rocker over there
marked fifteen dollars. I'll give you ten."

"Sorry. Prices as marked."

The woman frowned and walked off.

"She'll be back," Adair said. "She can afford the
fifteen. Those were designer jeans she had on." He turned to me.
"That's one thing you have to remember, Sharon. You don't owe
these people a thing. They're all out to screw you. Take my advice
and screw them first."

The woman was circling the rocker, her eyes narrowed.

"This is a tough business," Adair went on. "Everybody
wants something for nothing. I turn a good profit here by keeping
prices firm. There's money in this county, and I get my share of it."