“Where to?” she asked, bewildered in the change of plans.
“There’s a poker game I need to sit in on.”
“Promise you won’t stay late?”
“That’s the easiest promise I can make.”
She swung the car over to the synagogue’s entrance. I kissed her quickly before heading downstairs to the game. Jack Reichstein, Cantor Cohen, and the gabbai, whose name I didn’t remember, were deep into a competitive round. A pile of chips was stacked in front of Cohen, who seemed to relish his good fortune.
Everyone turned when I shut the door behind me.
“Looking for a fourth?” I said.
Reichstein grinned. “For you? Anything.”
In this case, politics wasn’t more predictable because any thought of stacking the deck was shot at every turn. And I wanted something predictable.
I sat in and let everyone else win.
Didn’t Do Nothing
by Steve Hockensmith
Every day, Scottie Crocker walked past Jayzee’s corner on his way to the store for a Coke. And every day, one of Jayzee’s guys would waddle after him, imitating him, babbling, maybe even drooling. Scottie had learned to ignore them.
But then one day, Jayzee himself actually spoke to Scottie, and Jayzee you couldn’t ignore.
“Hey, Crackhead!” Jayzee said. “Come here!”
All the young people in the neighborhood called Scottie “Crackhead.” Some of the older people too. When it first started, Scottie tried to argue.
“I ain’t no crackhead!”
He always got the same answer.
“No, you just act like one!” And laughter.
So Scottie stopped fighting it, and when Jayzee said, “Hey, Crackhead! Come here!” Scottie walked over and said, “What?”
“You know Goldfinger, right?”
“You... you mean Michael Gra... Graham? D-down on Eighty-first St... Street?”
It was hard for Scottie to get words out when he was nervous — and Jayzee made him nervous. Jayzee was a few years younger than Scottie, probably no older than eighteen or nineteen, but he had a confidence, a fierce fearlessness, that Scottie knew he’d never have no matter how long he lived.
“Yeah, yeah, him,” Jayzee said.
“I... I know him. I went to school wi-wi... with his sister.”
Jayzee’s guys snickered.
“Didn’t know you ever went to school, Crackhead,” one of them said.
“Sure he did,” another cackled. “Crackhead went to retard school.”
“Oh, yeah,” the first one said. “Used to see him ridin’ the short bus.”
“I ain’t no retard!”
Scottie knew immediately that he’d made a mistake. That was his problem. People would lay traps for him, the same traps over and over, but he never recognized them until it was too late.
The guys’ eyes lit up, and it was just a matter of who would say it first.
No, you just act like one.
Jayzee spoke first. But he didn’t say it.
“Hey, hey, ease off,” he told his guys. He snaked an arm around Scottie’s neck. “Crackhead’s my man — ain’t you, Crackhead?”
“Sure,” Scottie said, because his mistake had reminded him to be cautious.
“Good. Cuz I need you to do somethin’ for me. And if you do it right, I’ll give you twenty dollars.”
The guys whistled and whooped.
“Twenty dollars, Crackhead!” one of them said, punching Scottie’s arm. “That’s a lot of money!”
“Wh-what I gotta do?”
Jayzee smiled. “Nothin’. Just go over to Goldfinger’s corner — Eighty-first and Langley — and take a walk around.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “Then push this button — this one right here. See it? REDIAL? Can you read that?”
“Sure.”
“What I tell you?” Jayzee said to his guys. “My man here ain’t no retard.” When he turned back to Scottie, his smile had grown even bigger. “When you push that button, the phone’ll call me. And when I pick up, you just tell me who’s over there with Goldfinger and what they doin’ and what side of the street they on. But don’t let Goldfinger see you, understand?”
“Sure.”
“Good. That’s it. That’s all you gotta do. Can you do it?”
“Yeah, I... I guess.”
“All right! That’s my man!” Jayzee slapped Scottie on the back. “I give you the money when you get back.”
“Okay.”
“All right, then.”
Scottie stood there a moment, confused by this break in his daily routine of watching TV and going to the store for Cokes and heading home for more TV.
“Well, go, Crackhead,” Jayzee said, still smiling.
“Ri... right now?”
“Yeah, right now. Go on.”
Jayzee’s guys laughed as Scottie walked away. Certain people were always laughing when Scottie was around. He didn’t know why. He didn’t think he was funny.
It took Scottie fifteen minutes to walk to Eighty-first Street. In that time, he left his neighborhood and entered another. There were no border checkpoints, no men in uniform asking for passports, but most men Scottie’s age would have been unwelcome foreigners there. They would have seen the warnings — graffiti, glares, posture, gestures — and they would have left. Quickly.
But Scottie was different. He didn’t see the danger signs, and because he didn’t see them, they had no power. And because they had no power, they had no reason for being. The slouch of his shoulders, the perpetual bend in his knees, the trudging rhythm of his gait, his breathy mumbling and unfocused eyes — it charged him like a magnet. He didn’t attract attention here. He repelled it. He wasn’t a threat, so he could be ignored.
Michael Graham — “Goldfinger” — ignored him too.
“I saw Mi-Michael with his little br... brother Ronnie and another guy,” Scottie told Jayzee over the phone. He was in an alley a half block from Goldfinger’s corner. “A man pulled up in a car and th-they talked and then he drove a... away.”
“Which side of the street they on?”
Scottie thought hard. “The closer side.”
“Closer to our neighborhood? You mean the north side?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“And it was just the three of ’em?”
“Yeah.”
“Who went up to talk to the guy in the car?”
“Michael.”
“You sure about that? Goldfinger walked up to the car?”
“Yeah. I’m sh... sure.”
“By himself?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn,” Jayzee said. He didn’t sound angry, though. He sounded surprised and pleased. He even laughed. “You my man, Crackhead. I see you later.”
Scottie stuffed the phone into his pocket and headed home. When he got back to his own street, Jayzee was still on his corner. But only one of his guys was with him — a skinny kid called “Freak.” Jayzee’s other guys were gone.
Jayzee held out his hand.
“Phone,” he said.
Scottie dug the cell phone out and handed it over.
Jayzee didn’t look at the phone as it slid into his palm. His eyes stayed locked on Scottie, piercing him, pinning him in place.
Scottie couldn’t hold the gaze. He looked down at his shoes.
When he looked back up, Jayzee was smiling.
“You did good, Crackhead,” Jayzee said. He turned to Freak. “Give the man his money.”
Freak guffawed.
“What are you laughin’ at?” Jayzee snapped. “I said give my man Crackhead twenty dollars.”
The laughter choked to a stop, and Freak slowly pulled a wad of money from his jacket and counted out twenty ones and gave them to Scottie.