BY ANDREW SPISAK
Copyright is held by the author.
I HURRIED down Division Street and made it to the corner of Broad by five to eight. Frankie would pull up in five minutes. He was never late, and he wouldn’t wait. If I missed him, I would have to take the bus. That meant working all day with Bellows, a smudge of a man who usually arrived late and hungover.
I caught a glint of sunlight off the chrome bumper of Frankie’s red El Dorado as he approached. His car was not a tacky candy apple red but a rich maroon. Although he smoked, Frankie never lit up in the Caddy, lest an ash fall and damage the black leather seats. Our boots stayed at work to keep the caked mud from soiling the mats. He leaned toward the open passenger window. “Get in, kid. Lots to do today,” he said.
Frankie, on the back end of his forties, wasn’t married, at least not while I knew him. He spent much of his time outside of work helping his younger sister raise her ten-year-old son, whose father was killed in Vietnam during the Tet offensive.
Frankie waited for a decent break in the traffic before easing the Caddy into the flow. “McManus caught me on my way out yesterday. He wants us to clean up a mess near Kozminski’s place. Somebody dumped a bunch of crap in front of his house,” he said.
Stan Kozminski was a county commissioner. Our department head, Gene McManus, made sure any request from a commissioner went to the top of our schedule.
My summer job with the county highway department was a patronage reward. As part of his union duties, my father had canvassed for a commissioner in the previous election. Most of the people in county government, from the department heads to the janitors, got their jobs through political connections. I was home after my first year of college and needed the money to cover expenses for the next semester.
We signed in at the office and got into Frankie’s assigned county truck to make our rounds. “Before we take care of Kozminski, I have to stop at Chick’s,” Frankie said.
In addition to his job with the county, Frankie was a bookie. Before the state got into the lottery business and tried to make gambling legitimate, guys like Frankie took bets for the numbers racket. Construction and factory workers picked a three-digit number and left their wagers with Chick when they stopped at his cafe for breakfast. If their number “hit,” a dollar bet would pay off six hundred. But since the chance of winning was one in a thousand, Frankie could drive a Caddy while his customers rattled around in Chevys and Fords.
We circled the block once in search of parking before a delivery van pulled out a few doors past the cafe. Frankie backed the truck into the space. We sat on two stools at the end of the counter. Chick stood a few spots away from us yakking with another customer. When he saw us, he poured a coffee and set it in front of Frankie. “Here you go, Frankie.” He tapped the counter in front of me. “Hey, Eddie. What are you having?”
“Just coffee,” I said.
“Did you get your rolls in?” Frankie asked Chick.
“Fresh from the Italian bakery; they’re still warm.”
“I’ll have a torpedo with butter,” Frankie said. “And bring the kid a pastry.”
“You want cherry or cheese?” Chick asked.
“Cheese sounds good,” I said.
Chick brought the food and placed a folded brown paper sandwich bag next to Frankie’s plate. The sack contained the bets the workers dropped off before beginning their shifts. Frankie reached into his back pocket for an envelope and slid it toward Chick. “I’ll come back later with the rest before the guys get off their shifts,” Frankie said. Chick nodded, plucked the envelope from the counter, and retreated behind the swinging doors to the kitchen.
I didn’t ask Frankie any questions about his business. Given the odds, he would have no problem covering payouts for most of his customers, who risked no more than a buck or two. But a large winning bet could cause him problems. Frankie showed little concern during the ride to Kozminski’s place as he nattered about the previous night’s Yankees game and the current state of the country.
Although Stan Kozminski was first elected commissioner from the city’s Polish ward, he had long since relocated to one of the leafy townships on the northern edge of the county. Broken sections of drywall, busted-up toilets and sinks, and rusted window air conditioners were strewn on either side of his driveway. Frankie parked the truck on the gravel shoulder, past the debris. “Fuck. I thought this was gonna be bags of garbage someone tossed,” he said.
We set about tossing the mess into the truck. Kozminski soon plodded down the driveway from his sprawling ranch house. He wore a buzzcut on a head that looked chiseled from a block of granite. Baggy workout pants and a wrinkled white polo concealed a body gone to seed.
“Hey, Frankie. I’m glad to see McManus sent the best,” he said
“Stan, who in the hell did this?” Frankie asked.
“Some new developer. He demolished those old apartments in the Heights and wants to build some pricey condos. He’s pissed because his zoning variance hasn’t been approved. He thought he’d send me a message. I’ll be sending him a message soon.”
“Yeah, it’s a hell of a mess,” Frankie said.
“Who’s your helper, Frankie?” Kozminski asked as he nodded in my direction.
“Eddie Novak, Mike’s kid. He’s going to your old school.”
“Rutgers, huh? What are you studying, Eddie?” Kozminski asked.
“Electrical engineering.”
“Oh, a smart one. Good for you. I went there to play football.” Kozminski raised his hand in a half-wave. “Then I wound up here.”
Frankie peeled off his gloves and took a couple of steps toward Kozminski. “Stan, I need to talk to your brother. Is he in today?”
Stan’s brother, Janus “Jan” Kozminski owned a car dealership, which according to my father fronted Jan’s actual business of running the gambling operation in the county.
Kozminski squinted and ground his left foot into the gravel. “Yeah, I think so. But you’d better catch him before three,” he said.
Frankie nodded and turned to me. “OK, let’s get the rest of this crap loaded.”
We pitched several wall studs and the last of the drywall into the truck and drove to the landfill. As we backed the truck close to the pit to dump our haul, a guy wearing greasy overalls and a sleeveless tee came out of a maintenance shed. He carried a pitchfork and began jabbing at one of the rear tires. “Move it out! Move it out!” he yelled.
Frankie leaned out the driver’s window. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.
“Your load’s too big. You gotta take it to the south county landfill.”
“That’s a forty-five-minute drive.”
“We reached our limit. Pit’s closed.”
Frankie eased the truck away from the pit. “Well, this kills the day. The boss wanted us to replace some signs on 206; that can wait. Listen, after we dump this load I’ll drop you off at the office. I have to talk to Kozminski’s brother before he takes off.”
Frankie, along with the other bookies working for Jan, kicked up a percentage of his take to him. Because Jan also served as lender of last resort, Frankie’s urgency in seeing him meant he needed cash to cover the winnings for one of his customers at Chick’s.
Frankie dropped me off in the department parking lot and took off to see Jan. Most of the crews were still out in the field. I needed to avoid McManus, who would ask a lot of questions about Frankie’s whereabouts. He seldom left his air-conditioned office, so I walked to the garage to hang out until the four-thirty sign-out. Jerry and Lou were sitting on a workbench in the corner. Jerry held a Lucky Strike in one hand and a magazine previewing the college football season in the other. He played linebacker at Bucknell and was due to leave at the end of the week to begin training, which, judging by the cigarettes, was not too demanding. Lou and I still had two weeks before we had to return to our classes at Rutgers.
Lou took a sip from a can of Coke. “You get dumped off too?” he asked.
“Yeah, Frankie had to see someone,” I said. “What about you?”
“Bellows wasn’t feeling too good,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked.
Jerry and Lou looked at one another and laughed. “We rode out to route 130 to clear brush from the median. Bellows hands us machetes and tells us to have at it. He’s standing by the truck drinking from his thermos. After a while, he walks across the highway to a bar,” Lou said.
“Bellows smokes cigars when we ride around. He left one sitting on the dashboard. Lou and I find a clump of poison ivy. I go to the truck and rub some leaves on the cigar,” Jerry said.
“After an hour, Bellows drags his ass out of the bar, and we get in the truck to head to our next job. He’s smoking the cigar, and before long he’s rubbing his lips, darting his tongue in and out like a snake,” Lou said.
“By the time we’re back here, his lips were swollen like a puffer fish,” Jerry said.
“He said it must have been from the spicy crabs he ate at the bar,” Lou said.
Jerry took a drag from the Lucky. “Yeah, spicy crabs!”
Our laughter caught the attention of Tommy Dutch as he walked past the garage. Guys liked to ride with Tommy, who was gliding into retirement and was not inclined to any above-and-beyond effort.
“There you are,” he said as he pointed to Jerry and Lou. “Boss wants to talk to you about Bellows.”
Jerry crushed out his cigarette and tucked the magazine behind some paint cans on the shelf. Lou gulped the rest of his Coke. They shot each other an “aw hell” look and left with Tommy to the office.
***
Frankie arrived on the dot the next morning. “Don’t crush the snacks!” he said, as I opened the door to get into the El Dorado. Throughout the summer Frankie had not allowed a crumb of food in his car. I eased into the passenger seat and placed my feet on either side of a bag of bagels and a cardboard box filled with donuts.
“Stopped at the bakery on the way. Thought I’d bring something in for the guys. Did you watch the game last night? Reggie crushed one in the ninth to win it,” he said.
“No, I was out with Beth,” I said.
“Ah, your girlfriend?”
“Nah, we just hang out sometimes. Her cousin was performing in Theater in the Park.”
Beth was pre-med at Cornell. We had graduated high school together and were each other’s get-out-of-boredom cards. When our friends were busy, we’d find a way to kill a summer night.
Frankie’s banter and generosity suggested he had succeeded in getting a bailout from Jan. He could cover the winning number at Chick’s and stave off trouble, which always lurked in Frankie’s world.
Frankie and I arrived in the break room as Tommy Dutch and his crew were getting coffees before they headed out. Frankie set the donuts and bagels on the metal folding table.
“Frankie, did you get a promotion I didn’t hear about?” Tommy asked.
“Nah, I’m picking up the slack for all of you cheap bastards around here,” Frankie said.
McManus walked in and told us to go to Windsor to fix a mistiming traffic light. I grabbed a poppyseed bagel, and we headed out.
***
On my next to last day of work, I waited for Frankie at the usual pick-up spot. No Frankie at eight. No Frankie at five past. I took the R5 bus, which barring an accident or a bum traffic light we should have fixed, would get me to work by the eight-thirty start.
McManus, waiting to pounce on the tardy, stood next to the attendance sheet. I signed in at eight-thirty exactly. “Has Frankie gotten in?” I asked.
“He called in sick. You’re riding with Bellows today,” he said.
Beth had given me some cookies from the bakery where she worked that summer. I dropped them off in the break room before heading to the parking lot. Bellows stood by the open door of his truck. He chewed on an unlit cigar, presumably a non-toxic one.
“Let’s go, professor. We have some chopping to do,” he said.
I walked to the passenger side and squeezed in next to Lou, who had already closed his eyes on the way to nodding off. We drove out of the city, past the suburbs, to the potato farms on Robbinsville Road. After a couple of hours of clearing brush, Bellows waved us back to the truck. He drove to the city and pulled into an alley behind Jake’s Bar and Grill. Jake, in his seventies, was closing the place and had a pinball he wanted to get rid of.
Bellows pounded on the back door. Jake turned the lock and stepped into the alley. Short and stooped, he wore a white apron and held a keg tap in his left hand. Forty years of bar business were etched into his face. “Bellows. Hell, I thought it was the Pabst guy,” he said.
“Yeah, I came by for the pinball. My crew’s here to help load it,” Bellows said.
Jake jerked his thumb toward the entrance. “Through here, gentlemen.”
A crack in the glass formed a jagged hypotenuse in the right corner of the pinball. Years of cigarette burns pockmarked the cheap laminate trim. It would likely fit in well at Bellows’ place. Bellows lifted the back of the machine and kicked a dolly underneath it. Lou and I picked the front legs off the floor, and we guided it out the door.
Bellows lowered the truck’s tailgate and propped a ramp against it. We edged the pinball up the ramp, but the tailgate began to sag under the weight. Afraid of damaging the county truck, Bellows let go. Lou and I released our grips, and the machine careened down the ramp into a stack of boxes. The top carton toppled to the concrete and burst a seam. Several cans of beer rolled onto the alley.
Jake came running out of the bar. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Bellows threw up his hands. “Sorry, Jake. The tailgate started to give. I’ll come back with my brother. He has a hydraulic lift on his truck.”
Jake pulled a bar towel from his apron and slapped it against the pinball. “Well, get it the hell out of the alley. And clean up this mess,” he said as he pointed to the toppled box and scattered cans.
I grabbed one of the front legs and Lou gripped the other. Bellows lifted from the back, and we pushed the pinball against the back wall of the bar. Bellows retrieved a tarp from the bar’s store room and covered the machine. “OK, let’s get the hell out here,” he said. He snatched a couple of the dented cans of beer and tossed them into the back of the truck. “Those are damaged goods.”
***
The following day, my last as a county employee, I took an early bus rather than chance Frankie standing me up again. When I arrived at work, I scanned the parking lot for the El Dorado. As I walked to the office, an unfamiliar car, a shabby brown Chevy, drove through the gate. Frankie parked the vehicle in the back row. I waited for him as he made his way across the lot.
“Where’s the Caddy?” I asked.
Frankie avoided eye contact and shifted from one leg to the other. He pulled a pair of work gloves from his back pocket. “Let’s see what McManus has for us,” he said.
McManus sent us to replace a guardrail that a pickup had crashed into. Frankie unhooked a set of keys from the pegboard and tossed them to me. “You can drive today. It’s your last day, right?”
I caught the keys and nodded. Frankie had driven throughout the summer. He was not one to dole out compliments, but I took it as a gesture for my effort on the job.
I turned on the radio to break the silence as we drove to our assignment, but in short order, Frankie reached for the knob and turned off the music. He drew in a breath and sagged in his seat.
“This guy, not much older than you, he just got married. He takes some of the money from the wedding envelopes and bets his wife’s birthday, April 18, four-one-eight. If she found out, she’d kill him. But the son-of-a-bitch hits. I’m down over almost twenty grand. I still owe Jan for covering that guy from Chick’s.”
“So the Caddy’s sitting on his lot,” I said.
“Where do you think he gets his inventory?”
We drove past the husk of a factory that used to make steel cables. A tall chain link fence surrounded it. Rust had eaten holes in the shipping bay doors. Frankie rapped his knuckles against the passenger window.
“I’m lucky in a way. When I was in the army, we weren’t fighting anyone. My father worked for Jan, sold cars and did other things for him, I suppose. He never talked about it. He got me this job. Jan took care of it with his brother. Before long you’re a fly in the web—stuck there with the spiders keeping an eye on you.”
Frankie took a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and tapped it on the dashboard. “When are you heading back to school?” he asked.
“Next Tuesday. My dad and I are driving there with my stuff,” I said.
“What are you studying again?”
“Engineering, electrical engineering.”
“That’s good. Are you gonna marry Beth when you graduate?”
“Nah, it’s not like that with her,” I said.
“Well, whatever you do, stay clear of this place. There’s nothing for you here.” Frankie struck a match and lit his cigarette. “There’s nothing here for anyone.”
He opened the window a crack and the smoke streamed out of the truck. Frankie stayed quiet for the rest of the ride. He’d said everything he wanted me to hear.
***
Andy Spisak was born in New Jersey and earned degrees at Boston University and the Fletcher School at Tufts University. After working for several years in public policy and economics, he has begun a new career in writing. His short stories have been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine, October Hill Magazine, Scarlett Leaf Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, and El Portal Literary Journal. He and his family live in Virginia.