Yesterday's News

Fearey, Gail Fearey. Lives in her folks’ house up on Grantland.” Gotbaum rested his chins in his hands, drumming fingers on his cheeks. “I’m telling you, pal, Charlie, he would have fucked the crack of dawn, he could get up that early.”
    “This Coyne used to work for you, right?”
    “Kinda. I try to help the unfortunate by offering them jobs.”
    “What kind of jobs did Coyne do for you?”
    “Simple shit. Drive things around for me. Deliver here and there.”
    “He was busted in a raid next town over, right?”
    “Charlie got caught in some kind of net the cops had out that night. I don’t know the details.”
    “I understood he got caught with some movies the Supreme Court says we’re not supposed to have.” Gotbaum said, “The Supreme Court. Let me tell you something. I got a lawyer up to Boston , he’s a fuckin wiz. He can split hairs a barber couldn’t comb. But he tells me, I don’t show no kid stuff and no snuff stuff, even fake snuff stuff, and I check ID’s, and I can do whatever the fuck I want. Personally, I think it’s fuckin crazy. I mean, you know these shows, some of them on TV, they have the little boxes or something for the dummies?”
    “You mean close captioning?”
    “Yeah, like that. They’ve got these things so the dummies can find out what the normal people are saying, right? Well, they oughta have little boxes for the guy in the street when the liberals come on the air. They oughta have this little window with a guy telling them that the libbie doing the regular talking is fulla bullshit, because he is. What the hell kind of difference is there between my fuck films and the kiddie stuff, huh? You think fucking or sucking is any different because somebody hits so many years on this earth? The libbies are the ones let me keep open, but they’re so fulla shit, I can’t stand them!”
    Teevens said, “Easy, boss. Take it easy.”
    “You’re right there, Duckie. I shouldn’t get so worked up. What else you wanna know?”
    “Coyne told Rust that you were paying off some cops to let you stay in business here.”
    “Paying off. Paying off, huh? You have a blindfold on when you come up here?”
    “No.”
    “Duckie, he keep his eyes closed coming through the lobby and up here?”
    “Wide open, boss.”
    Gotbaum said, “I’m making maybe, maybe, my costs here plus 3 percent. You know why?”
    “Why?”
    “The fuckin Vee-Cee-Are. Videocassette recorder. Used to be, you wanted to see my kinda shit, you have to come to the theaters here. Aw, you’d come maybe with a ski mask on, nobody could recognize you on the way in. I had a Linda Lovelace double feature on once, you’da thought the fuckin terrorists’ union was having a convention on my ticket line. A guy wanted privacy, though, he’d have to have a whole fuckin projection system to see films at home. How you gonna hide that from the wife, huh? Or set it up when she’s out, she comes in the front door, what do you say, ‘Hey, honey, I was just watching the pictures of little Susie’s birthday party. What’re you doing home so early anyways?’ ”
    Gotbaum really started to fire up. “Now, with the VCR things, any yutz wants to can watch anything. He hears the old lady pulling in the driveway, the cassette’s out and back behind the workbench in the basement before she turns the key in the fuckin front door.”
    “Boss,” said Duckie, caution in his voice.
    I said to Gotbaum, “So what’s your point?”
    “My point is, I don’t gotta pay off the cops because what I show is legal. And I don’t got the money to pay off the cops because I’m barely making a living here with the poor old fucks ain’t got the brains or the cash or the house to have a VCR in. Without me, you’d have the poor guys out trying to get laid instead of getting off in here. It’s like that football coach used to say.”
    “What?”
    “That football coach. He used to say there are three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad. Well, same thing with sex. There are three things can happen: one, you can come; two, she can get pregnant; three, you can get the syph or AIDS or something. And two of them are bad. So, I provide like a public service here. Keep all that from happening to the guys.”
    “So you don’t see the cops killing Coyne at all?”
    “The cops, the cops,” said Gotbaum. “I’ll tell you what I see. I see some guy hearing that maybe Charlie is dropping a dime here and