Again, he gets that triumphant look in his eyes. “But I can’t tell you,” he whispers secretively.
Tony rummages through his fanny pack and pulls out a business card from the office manager of the Chase Manhattan Bank. “Look, this is their headquarters at Fifth Avenue. They kept me waiting for goddamn fifteen minutes before giving me the card.”
“You know,” he goes on, “they come at the bank with a big truck to load and unload the money. You don’t need no goddamn nine millimeter. Just a hand grenade.” Tony gets up and gives a demonstration. I don’t understand if he is showing his invention against bank robberies, or if he is showing me how to disarm a punk with a gun. He walks a circle in the coffee place, and sneaks up stealthily towards me. Then he pulls out his fist and holds it near my cheek.
“You keep the grenade at his face and you say: ‘You wanna shoot me? I blow away yer face!’” The whole coffee shop is now looking at us. “I tell you, when they enter the bank with a big case and a bomb and they say ‘Fill up the case, or we blow up the bank!’ Yes, I know how to stop that! I am the tomato plant. I have creations like ripe tomatoes!”
Tony sits back down at the table and goes on in a secretive voice. “You know, tomatoes are very expensive in New York. It is not a vegetable but a fruit. A tomato plant grows in the earth and needs water… And… and… uh…” Tony is getting lost in his analogy of a tomato plant and realizes it is time to go.
Outside, we say goodbye. “You saw that man with that big notebook behind us?” Tony asks. “That was a writer. I saw he was eavesdropping on us. I bet he will approach me sooner or later to write about me.”
9. BIG-ASS BEAMS
On a Saturday night, I hop on my bike and ride the twenty blocks southwards through the tunnel to Frankie and Ment’s. I’ve started to like the two, and I bring a six-pack of Coors, their favorite brand. Coors is a politically incorrect beer because the owner is said to have close ties to the KKK. Frankie and Ment don’t mind. I had a friend in New York who didn’t know, and once threw a party where he bought a few dozen six-packs of Coors. All his liberal friends left in disgust.
“Doggies, doggies, keep quiet,” I try to calm their barking dogs. They go more berserk, until the outside light goes on. Ment jumps outside and screams at the dogs till they stop.
Inside, Frankie and Buddy sit on the couch. They all have a serious hangover. Yesterday it was Frankie’s birthday, his twenty-sixth, and the old crew came to visit. It became a wild night in “the club house,” as they call their place. The whole night, they drank, smoked pot, and sprayed the walls with graffiti. The High Times centerfold is now filled with Ment’s tags and taped to the speakers of their sound system. Frankie shows me their new electric heater, found on the streets. The other one was kicked to pieces during a wild party moment. They also have a new coffeemaker. This one is a computer-controlled machine, Frankie proudly explains, so you can program the number of cups and the temperature. A lady from the neighborhood who was moving out gave it to him.
Ment and Buddy have both moved in, and the space is getting small. That’s why Frankie has decided to make an extra room. Maybe even another story. One of the walls will be broken down and they’re going to make a “small-ass hallway” that can double as cloakroom and guest room. Double boarded, insulated of course, and possibly even with a drainage system.
Tonight they’re going to get material from a building construction site at the South End. Ment did some exploration at the viaduct under construction and discovered a lot of big beams and twenty-seven sheets of plywood, each several square meters wide. More than enough material for Frankie’s planned extension.
Ment opens the beers and plays a cassette of the hardcore rap group Onyx, his favorite band. It is the newest trend in rap, a crossover between heavy metal, punk, and hip hop.
With spastic movements, Ment mimes the words. Frankie, in the meantime, talks like a connoisseur about the evolution of rap music. The rock riffs that later became so predominant in Run DMC were already present in old school rappers like the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash. To prove his point, Frankie plays a song from the Sugar Hill Gang with heavy guitar riffs. Frankie doesn’t like the notorious West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur, just accused of rape. “He’s full of shit. He raps against violence against women, but he is just as bad.”
The loud music brings back sweet memories for Frankie. For his fourteenth birthday, his father gave him a red Ford Mustang with the condition he wouldn’t drive it until he was sixteen. Of course, Frankie couldn’t have cared less.
“Blasting on the highway, no driver’s license, no insurance, no fucking nothing!” Frankie reminisces. “This bad-ass sucker would go one sixty…” Frankie means miles an hour, not kilometers. He had installed a state-of-the-art sound system in his Mustang. “I tell you, a power blaster, a PA-system and on the back seat big stage speakers with, check this out, four big-ass woofers!”
After this wave of enthusiasm, he grows silent and stares at the floor. Maybe he thinks about his parents. Frankie had told me last visit more about them: His father was in the military. Most of the time, the family lived in and around bases. That’s why Frankie has this military manner. His parents died in a car accident when he was sixteen. The spoilt brat suddenly became an orphan.
Frankie pulls himself together. “In fact, that’s what I regret the most. That I don’t have a car anymore.” He finishes his racist beer and gets dressed for the night job.
It has to be a stealthy operation, so Frankie and Ment put on dark sweatshirts. With hoods up their white, bald heads are covered and invisible in the darkness. They check my clothes and approve, only my white scarf needs to be tugged under my dark coat.
Buddy’s filthy, gray-brownish outfit is acceptable.
Outside, Ment and Frankie unlock two carts, releasing them from heavy chains. These are small but heavy carts, of the kind used on construction sites to transport cement and bricks. We have to push and pull them over the bumpy tunnel ground, over holes, stones, and railroad ties. They make an awful rattling noise that echoes through the whole tunnel. After some time, we see an orange glow in the distance, the South End.
Stumbling, we work our way slowly through the darkness, towards the light. Ment tells us about one time he discovered a huge pile of wood at the South End. It was too big and heavy to drag by hand in the tunnel. He stole a truck from the building site, and entered the tunnel driving over the path next to the tracks. He had gone all the way to Bernard’s, honked his horn, said hello to a shocked Bernard, and then turned around. At Frankie’s, he had unloaded the wood and honestly returned the truck.
After half an hour, we are only halfway there. We come to a dead end track with a bigger car on it, a contraption with small metal wheels that roll exactly on the tracks. We leave the two small carts and take the big car. On the front there is a big handle to push or pull it. The ingenious construction is the work of Joe and Kathy. To prevent the car from sliding off the tracks, they have even placed small beams on the side to keep the wheels in position.
Frankie and Ment pull the car and it slides smoothly over the tracks. With their hoods on their heads, they look like malicious smurfs. Buddy is lagging behind. It is obvious he doesn’t like the trip, and would have preferred to stay home drinking beer and watching TV.
The moon and the park’s orange streetlights illuminate the wood of the pillars at the tunnel entrance. Beams of light penetrate the darkness and throw spooky shadows on the walls.