Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

the extra from the shotglass when I slammed it down; or, if it was a highball, artfully rearrange the ice, shaking the glass like a maraca. Made it look like I was just like one of the boozehounds, long as you seemed drunk as they were they were happy; and (most usefully when it came to Jim) by acting in such fashion the boys riding the wagon would think you’d never remember anything you heard once you sobered up. I had the poor bastards coming and going. On the last night I enjoyed their company (enjoyed, well; if you’ve ever been cornered by a Trot symp at cocktail hour you know there are more exact words) we went to the White Horse and I carried over the first round. First, though, I sprinkled their vodka with a little C9-Algernon4 (which, among much else, gives you Korsakov’s Syndrome for the duration of the seventeen-hour trip). After I was done with ’em not a one was capable of any action, overt, covert or subvert, on Amity Street for the duration of the emergency. The first week or so Jim and I got together it was hard for us to talk about anything other than records – put two obsessive shellackers in a room and they won’t stop yakking till they pass out from lack of oxygen – and it was clear to me Jim was no dilettante. We spent one entire evening going over nothing but the Broadway 5000 series and whether or not the Reverend J. M. Gates and Congregation had recorded a version of »Death Will Be Your Santa Claus« for the label (I thought he had, but Jim demonstrated to me he hadn’t; the number I thought matched the non-existent master was actually 5025; B 6927-1 and 6929-1, »I Know I Got Religion« backed with »The Funeral Train A-Coming.« Excuse my tangent; you may not dig the essentiality of knowing this for sure, but believe me, both of us did). Even so, the time finally came to talk about something other than discs, and so one evening as he ordered his third seltzer I bit the bullet.
    »When did you buy the store, anyway?« I asked. »I hadn’t been in there for a dog’s age till a few months ago.«
    »A year,« Jim said. »Took ages to get George to sell.«
    Former owner Crazy George, that is, one of New York’s more accomplished psychopaths. Always looked like he slept in the Indian cave in Central Park, hadn’t had a bath since 1931, would as soon spit at you as look at you, but the man did know his platters. Knew ’em too well to ever find bargains in the bins, but I could have lived with that. Real problem was he was the kind of storeowner wouldn’t sell you anything if he didn’t think you were worthy. You may have been worthy, once, but things always change. Don’t have to tell you that eventually no one was worthy – but then it probably saved him time, counting out at night, if he didn’t make any sales during the day.
    »He needed the money?« A chunky-shouldered shrug. »How’d you get him to sell, then?«
    »The family handled it.«
    Surprising to hear him say the word family himself; several times before that I’d use it in passing or we’d overhear it on the radio, or coming out of one of the barflies as the woozer beefed about the home life, and Jim’d go all pasty and woolly-eyed as if the very notion of what plays together stays together made his stomach try to hop out of his mouth. »Never figured George’d give it up. Must have been pretty persuasive.«
    »They can be,« he said. »Mom took care of the money. Two of my brothers handled the actual deal.«
    Hm, yes, that made me suspect George was probably spending his golden years in an oil drum at the bottom of the East River. »Your dad help out too?«
    »He’s dead.« Jim smiled; not a chance he meant to, but he did. He shot me one of those grins where you know the grinner knows he shouldn’t be happy but can’t help himself. It gave me the willies now whenever I saw him flash the choppers, knowing his bloodline; every time this brother’s teeth hit the high beams it was impossible not to see his four siblings.
    »I’m sorry.«
    »Heart attack,« he said, adjusting his stonepuss. »Quick, at least.«
    True enough, hearts tend to seize up fast when bullets plough through them. That was the last time Old Black Joe made the newsreels, back in 1954. He was just about bald by then but the hair he had left he treated first-class. Whenever he’d come to New York he’d see the same barber, regular as clockwork. The shop was a Fancy Dan off the lobby of the Ritz Carlton, over on Madison in the forties.