Sonny took me to visit my first fence — in a crowded, cluttered Chinatown candy store, where, like something out of a wholly unbelievable film, the aged Oriental owner pulled aside a tatty blanket — no more — hanging in a doorway at the back, ushering us into a vast, skylighted warehouse space filled with televisions, typewriters, stereos, furniture — all, presumably, hot.
Sonny enjoyed cops-and-robbers pictures, and we saw a number of them up on Forty-second Street in those two weeks. When he talked about them with his friends, I always got the impression he was discussing them not as entertainments, but as serious plans for possible crimes — that aspect of it, among others, was creepy.
Once we ended up drinking beer and yakking with two or three of his cronies on some stoop on Tenth Street, across from the old market building (smaller cousin of those long since closed down over on Washington Street), at five in the morning. One, sitting with his knees wide on the step above me, was a tall, swarthy guy with curly brown hair, about twenty-four, named Eddy, who I first thought was Hispanic, but who said there wasn’t no Spanish blood in him. He was Irish and Greek and something else. From something he’d mentioned (as Sonny went to the curb to take a leak, a taxi pulled up across the street; the driver, getting out, glanced across as us, and Sonny bellowed, “What the fuck you starin’ at! You wanna suck my dick?” as his urine arched into the gutter), I realized that this was Harry’s Eddy!
From what dawn devilment I don’t know, I mentioned the name of the correctional home Harry’d said he’d been in, from that other morning’s recitation.
Eddy frowned down at me, picked up his beer, then moved to the step below. “I didn’t tell you about that, did I?”
“Sure, you did,” I said. “The last time we were drinking together. Or maybe two times before.”
“What do you mean?” Eddy said. “I never met you before!”
“Aw, come on,” I said. “I’ve known you for four, five years, now. Most of the time we were drinking. But you mean to tell me you don’t remember telling me all about how you got drunk and stole this thing of lemons from in front of a grocery store and brought it up to some guy’s house —?”
“Yeah! That was Harry! I told you about that …?”
Over the next half hour, talking of this and that incident, I managed to convince Eddy we were old friends. By the end of it, he was explaining to Sonny, “Naw, man. Chip and me go back a long ways! We’ve been gettin’ drunk with each other for years.” By this point he’d even put together a vague memory of where he must have met me.
“What you know him for?” Sonny said when we were walking back to East Fifth. “Eddy’s a fuckin’ asshole!”
But it had gotten too complicated to explain.
For the next ten years, though, every time I ran into Eddy — making his way across Eighth Street, waiting for a bus on Fourteenth — from Eddy himself, now, I’d get the next installment of the narrative Harry had begun, as Eddy moved on to a legitimate job, a marriage, and even — for a couple of years — flying lessons, about which he was hugely enthusiastic; then divorce, and drink, and drugs once more, till our infrequent meetings ceased.
Once I took Sonny with me up to the Ace Offices — to see the Jack Gaughan cover for The Jewels of Aptor. When we reached the door, I noticed Sonny, who would back-talk at policemen and yell at truckers in the street, had grown subdued and nervous. Finally, he said, “Your boss is in there, huh?”
“My editor,” I said.
“But that’s the same thing as the boss, for a writer, ain’t it? That’s what you told me.”
Picturing Don somewhere beyond the receptionist, behind a manuscript-covered desk, I said, “That’s right.”
Hulking Sonny took a breath, then shook his head. “I can’t go in there!”
“Why not?”
“’Cause it’s your boss! Suppose he does somethin’ to me?”
“What in the world is he going to do to you?” I asked, surprised. “He’s just going to show us a painting.”
“No, but I mean — if he’s angry or somethin’!”
“He’s never even met you!” I said. “What’s he going to be angry with you about? He’s my boss, not yours. And I told him on the phone I was bringing a friend — ”
“Well, suppose he’s angry at you about somethin’. You just spoke to him an hour ago. You don’t know what he’s gonna be like when you get in there. And if I’m there, or he’s changed his mind or something he could do anything!”
This went on, baffingly, another five minutes. Finally I said it was all right if he waited out here in the hall for me — he wouldn’t even come into the reception area — and left nervous Sonny, to enter the citadel of power alone.
The receptionist smiled and told me just to go on into the back. Don greeted me, asked what had happened to my friend (“At the last minute,” I said, “he couldn’t make it”), took me into the art director’s office, and showed me the painting. It was dark blue, with a pair of vampire creatures staring up at some floating globes, in each of which a skull glimmered eerily: the jewels …
Back outside in the hall, Sonny asked: “Was everything okay? He wasn’t angry at you or nothin’, was he?”
“No,” I said. “He wasn’t angry. Everything’s fine.”
“That’s good.” Sonny sighed. “But let’s get out of here, okay? Before somethin’ happens …?”
We went back downtown.
But to this murderer, geriatric rapist, occasional mugger, and overweight cat burglar, the concept of the boss — the ultimate authority sitting up in his office — was a notion beyond terror, even if, I supposed, that office had been empty!
A few days later, when I decided it was time for Sonny to go, with great goodwill he moved in with one of his elderly girlfriends who had gotten an apartment about three blocks away; we’d grin and greet each other, when I passed him sitting on the stoop. Sometimes we’d even have a beer or two, on and off through the rest of the year.
19.6. A day or two after Sonny left, I’d planned to knock off writing in the late afternoon, but a sudden downpour that turned into a torrential summer rain kept me transcribing from my notebook on the typewriter far longer than I’d intended, so that when, finally, I lay down for an early evening nap, I felt the satisfaction of having put in a much better day’s work than I’d hoped.
I woke, late, hot, alert, slid out of bed, and turned on the light. What time, I wondered, could it be? I didn’t feel at all like going back to sleep, so I dressed in my jeans, sneakers, rolled up my shirtsleeves, and went outside. The street was cooler than the apartment. Slurred here and there with dark water, already mostly dry, the sidewalk was empty. It was probably after eleven, if not midnight. I crossed to go down the alley and head over through the Village, making for the waterfront.
By Christopher Street, I realized it was even later than I’d thought. Clocks glimpsed through the dark windows of this liquor store and that dry cleaner had confirmed it was after three.