Estoban looks warily at Julio who is now dancing like a maniac and nearly falls in the mud. It is a heavy, but very short, rainstorm and in a while the sun breaks through the clouds. The band gets the plastic protection sleeves off of their guitars and boxes, and start to play again. Julio is ecstatic.
“Fucking amazing,” he yells at me. “Fucking asshole,” he yells, when I point out another homeless man who is sneakily stealing our cans from the bag. In a split second, the dancing maniac has turned into an aggressive street kid protecting his turf. He grabs the can thief by his shirt and curses at him with terrible words. The can man, a short, stocky Mexican in a dirty leather coat, trembles with fear when Julio takes back his stolen cans, and a lot of extra ones from the Mexican as well.
“And now get the fuck outta here,” he screams at the Mexican who walks away with drooping shoulders. When Julio counts the extra cans, he has a contented expression on his face. He has nearly doubled his harvest. “What was that idiot thinking? Last week they also stole a bag off me when I didn’t watch it for a moment. Won’t happen again.”
We are back in the tunnel. The cans have been redeemed, we got more beer and pizza, and Julio also got a bag of weed. We smoke a reefer with Hugo and Poncho and discuss the looming eviction. A few Amtrak officers had shown up in the tunnel, shouting with a bullhorn that it was time for everybody to move. Nobody has heard anything from the Coalition. They had come to the tunnel a few weeks earlier and promised to follow up, but they never returned. Little Havana is worried. They feel deserted by everybody.
In the next week, the Coalition finally turns up. They are slowly winning the trust and confidence of Little Havana. Margaret and I have put aside our mutual antipathy and try to help the Coalition a bit by convincing the tunnel people that this time the eviction is for real. If they don’t want to wind up on the street, they should look into the alternative housing program offered to them.
20. THE ADVENTURES OF FRANKIE, PART 3: KATHY AND JOE COMPLAIN ABOUT FRANKIE
“Me and Joe, we don’t talk no more,” Frankie says curtly. Why, he does not want to explain. After a day canning with him, we walk back through the park. Kathy and Joe are sitting on a bench, enjoying the nice weather, and wave affably back when I greet them. After doing a small photo assignment for Kathy, portraits of all her cats, we are now friends. Frankie looks at the ground, ignoring them, while he drags his rattling shopping cart behind him. After I help Frankie get his cart into the tunnel, I walk back to the park to join Kathy and Joe. “It is all because of Frankie,” Kathy tells me indignantly. “He’ll get us all kicked out.” Joe is silent, but nods in agreement. Only now, in the broad daylight, do I see that his arms are covered with huge scars.
“He invites minors in the tunnel, they drink and party all through the night. At this moment, there are already three kids staying over.” Kathy sighs. “Where will it end?”
Indeed it has become rather crowded at Frankie’s. When I picked him up this morning to go canning, I stumbled over the sleeping bodies of three kids who were lying on mattresses strewn all over the floor. Frankie told me that one had run away from home, and that the other two had been kicked out by their parents.
“Yeah,” Joe says. “That’s why we haven’t cut the lock yet at the parking garage. It would be crowded with mothers getting their kids out of the tunnel.”
“That’s right,” Kathy says. “The mothers pay Frankie so their kids can stay there. On top of that, the kids also pay Frankie for food and shelter.” It doesn’t sound logical, but Kathy affirms it with a self-assured nod. “He only works Fridays,” Kathy gossips. “Even me and Joe can’t afford that.”
Kathy tells me the Coalition came by. Mary Brosnahan told them they will get alternative housing. Margaret and Mary also reassured Kathy that she will be able to keep all her cats. “They only help people who behave well,” Kathy says in her hoarse voice. “Me and Joe. And Ozzy. But not Frankie. He’s a pyromaniac and a sex addict.”
Frankie is a pyromaniac because he once burnt down the shack of an abusive Mexican. Now he has started to burn the garbage around his place. Sometimes Joe and Kathy’s bunker is covered in thick smoke. And Frankie is a sex maniac because he makes a lot of noise when making love to his ex-girlfriend. Her name is Maria, and she is a very fat Puerto Rican girl. She still lives with her parents, but moved in with Frankie because she thinks it’s cozy down there. “Sex with my ex,” Frankie had chuckled. “She loves to get laid. When we fuck, the bunkers shake.”
21. SEARCHING FOR MOLE PEOPLE
“Chief Exterminator MTA” is printed on P.C. Taylor’s business card. He’s boss of the department for the elimination of rats and cockroaches in New York’s huge subway system, the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He is also responsible for cleaning and maintenance. A total of 714 miles of tracks and 6,000 trains, P.C. Taylor tells me enthusiastically.
“I know you journalists love numbers. Here you got a few more,” he says and hands me a paper with some mind-boggling numbers: 10,675 signals; 469 stations; 87 miles of platforms. And all over that huge system, smoking is strictly prohibited. Every passenger is bombarded by big posters that scream with bold capitals: don’t even think of smoking. P.C.’s office, hidden deep down inside the gigantic subway station at Times Square, is the only exception to this rule.
At his ease, he leans backwards, packs his pipe and tells me about his work. “We put down bowls with rat poison, mixed with peanut butter so the rats don’t taste it. The tunnel people are eating it. I wrote the producer of the poison to see if it could be dangerous. Thank God not. An adult has to eat at least a pound of it.”
I wound up at P.C. Taylor’s because I wanted to see the homeless situation in the other tunnels. The French journalist Sabine had told me last autumn that Bernard’s tunnel was the Fifth Avenue of tunnels compared to what she had seen in the subway. She had been there a few times, with P.C., and also with the Transit Police. After budget cuts, however, there are no more Transit Police and NYPD’s public information staff is seriously reduced. No more guided underground tours with police protection for journalists.
I don’t feel like going down by myself to search the subway tunnels with only a small flashlight. It is crazy dangerous because of the trains and the third rail that can kill instantly with its six hundred volts, but more so because of the people down there, the so-called mole people who are considerably less sophisticated than the ones in our Amtrak tunnel. “Whatever you do,” Bernard had warned me stringently, “never, I say never, go down in the subway tunnels on your own.” In this case, I listen to the stubborn Bernard, and I have put my cards on P.C. to take me to the mole people. Although my quest does not yield many of them, I meet the most interesting authorities and aid workers.