TAN TAN DEO
Marvin Rose
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Copyright 2009 Marvin Rose
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From whispers overheard is a universe changed
Nobuo Hideyoshi
TAN TAN DEO
Part I
FRUIT THIS RIPE
1
Two days after he died, Royal Dobbin showed up for work.
Sitting at the piano, Big Otis Franklin said, “Welcome back. You straight?”
“I’m straight,” Dobbin said. His balance was uncertain on the tiny bandstand.
The saxophone player whispered, “Where you been, man? The boss is flippin’. We had to do the matinees without a drummer. Bijou wouldn’t even go on for the last show.”
”Bijou,” Dobbin shook his head and grimaced. He never meant for things to be tough on Bijou. He liked to make Bijou laugh, a laugh like dimes falling on a glass table.
Dobbin made his way to the drum kit and took his place behind it. It was a place of familiarity and comfort.
Lido Goody, oiling his trumpet valves, said, “You shouldn’t of split like that. You got some laughs. You didn’t do so bad.”
“You’re Broadway,” the sax player said.
“Off Broadway. Always been off Broaway,” Dobbin said. “I died. Standup was a mistake, I’m a drummer.”
Lido Goody’s face was uncertain. The you-can-count-on-me look broke into a broad grin, “Don’t sweat it, you were funnier than some of the acts we play. You sure shut down that heckler, man. ‘I need you like I need a head in my hole’. That was a killer.”
Otis Franklin said, “You did fine. It was the midnight show, the joint was empty—one loud cokehead and three comps at the bar. You’ll get where you’re goin’. Everybody likes a cat who takes the long way home. Don’t worry about it. Go out for a walk, get some air. Be back for the six o’clock.”
#
Royal Dobbin was on the lookout for depression, but sometimes it came at him from unexpected directions. Like now. He was suffering memories of the wife he had dumped. Couldn’t keep her panties on. His career had tanked. The social anxiety disorder that choked him was peaking. And then there was the little audience that had witnessed his open mike flop. That was merely the most recent, a big thing if all you’ve got in your bag is paradiddles. And Bijou, what about Bijou? Bijou was indifferent to him. Bijou was openly contemptuous of him. And, for Jesus’s sake, Bijou was a guy!
Dobbin was overfamiliar with rejection, doubly damaging because of his crippling shyness. He didn’t mind intimacy as long as he didn’t have to be there. He tried to think upbeat thoughts. Did I tell you, the white man’s soul music is Country-Western? Try to get a laugh with that one.
The spring day was sunless and breezy as he sat on a bus stop bench in center city Philadelphia. A large concrete urn stood next to the bench, cigarette litter stifling the sparse, sprouty grass that looked like grampa’s ear hair. Although late afternoon traffic tumbled past, snarling and smoking, Dobbin endured it because this bench was close to his place of employment and was perfect for the short breaks the band was granted between shows. Six shows daily at a club for gay men.
The revue was called Chicks With Dicks, and Dobbin was the drummer in a six piece band that accompanied the performers.
Because his career had fallen so far, and because he considered that his work embraced all of his ambitions and goals, he viewed his life as fruitless and barren. Dobbin had read up on depression and believed he suffered six of the nine symptoms that were required.
Now he watched dully as a cellphone commercial crew prepped for its center city shoot. The soft tire mash of a braking vehicle roused him, and he was startled to see a finely detailed black limousine stop several feet from the curb, directly adjacent to his bus stop bench. A rear door burst open and a man hurtled out, staggering and stumbling for balance. Dobbin saw blood on his face. Then he heard another sound, an engine whining up to the ceiling of its power. Suddenly, explosively, a motorcycle blew past him and struck the stumbling man, somersaulting him to the curbline. The cycle lost its traction, skidded into the limousine’s fender where it righted itself. Dumb, motionless, Dobbin watched as the driver, a huge man in a varsity jacket, hunched down, and stitching skillfully, vanished into traffic. The limo pulled away smoothly and was soon lost in the huddled rush of cars and buses.
Dobbin ran to the fallen man before loiterers and passers-by got their understanding of the sudden violence. He knelt, fumbling with the man’s collar as agony twitched the bloodied face. The lips formed words. Dobbin bent to hear. More words. Dobbin tilted his head, lowered his ear to the man’s mouth.
A breathless beat cop broke through the growing crowd and stooped beside Dobbin. His baton clacked on the sidewalk. “Move away,” he huffed. He checked for a pulse, lifted a bloody eyelid. “I called for an ambulance,” he mumbled. Then, to Dobbin, ”Did you see what happened? What’d he say to you?”
Over the shocked, muttering flow of people, they could hear the Verizon man ask, “Can you hear me now?”
#
When you peak at fourteen, the rest of your life is anticlimax.
The detective studied this strange, musing witness. “Mr. Dubbins, can I have your attention, please. The on-duty patrolman states in his notes on the scene that the dying man spoke to you. Please, whatever he said, there could be some connection to his assailant.” He unrolled the top of a Burger King bag on his desk.
“My name is Dobbin, like the horse,” Dobbin advised. He was interested in this modern police facility and fixed his attention on its humming personality. A spidery layout of downtown Philadelphia covered an entire wall. Colored pushpins jeweled some areas, congesting and reminding him of orange seeds headed for the kitchen sink drain.
“Like the horse?” the detective said, smiling. He reached into the bag and pulled out a burger. “Hope you don’t mind. Missed lunch today. I got another one, you hungry?”
“No, thanks. Don’t like burgers. I’m a hot dog man.”
“Hot dogs, really? You ever hear what goes into those things?”
“Not Hebrew National. One pound beef and two pounds garlic,” Dobbin said.
The detective spoke around a mouthful of dough and gristle. “Jew food. Never touch it myself.”
“Why am I here?” Dobbin was feeling stress, which he knew was an element of depression. “I already told you what I saw, same as I told the cop that was there. It was too noisy with the traffic and the crowd. I don’t know what that poor guy said. Look, if I don’t get back for the six o’clock show, I could lose my job.”
“We need to know what the victim said to you,” the detective pressed on. He tapped his notepad with a ballpoint pen. “You haven’t given us anything on the motorcycle yet. What about the motorcycle? What about the motorcycle driver? The other witnesses said a motorcycle struck the victim.” The detective was heavy and soft, much like Dobbin, dressed neatly in an old Panama leisure suit with matching necktie, an outfit of the sort that Dobbin had dropped in salvage several years before. His full head of hair was pomaded back behind the ears where the ends blossomed into bristly puffballs. You could load them with soap and wash your neck with them. Dobbin thought of the rainbowed bins of flower-headed bath scrubbers at WalMart.
“Yes, there was a motorcycle. The motorcycle ran him down, hit the fender of the limo. Maybe you could look for a black limo with a ding on the driver’s side.”
“My name is Oviedo,” said the detective, finishing off his burger. “Thanks for the suggestion. We need your cooperation, Mr. Dobbin. I don’t want you to lose your job, but you see this notebook—I have a blank page here. Here’s my card, I want to see you after work. Think about it, dig in, try to remember. We need details. Give me something to write on this blank page. When you come back, just ask for me. I’m on late shift tonight.” He smoothed his little mustache which was augmented with eyebrow pencil, and reached for his second burger.
#
Two days earlier, Dobbin had spoken to Bijou backstage. “If your name is Steve, what’s with Bijou?” he asked, sounding more whiny than he liked. It had taken two weeks for him to approach the luminously costumed dancer, a person whose beauty all but blinded him. Out front, a substitute drummer whacked his cymbals intensely as the band played for an opening act.
“Hello-o—“ Bijou rolled his eyes, batting lashes thick with mascara, “news flash, this is a chicks with dicks show. The audience doesn’t want to see a beautiful dancing girl named Steve.”
“Well, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” Dobbin said, “and I’ve been in this business more than thirty years. I can’t believe you’re not a woman.”
Flattered, the tall dancer smiled, “But I am a woman. I’m a woman in my heart and soul.”
Dobbin sighed and swallowed. “Sure, but what are you in your panties?”
Bijou raised his eyebrows and dropped his smile.
“I like your routine,” Dobbin went on, “but I favor flamenco. You do flamenco?”
“Flamenco?” Bijou said, his lip curling. “Oh yeah, you mean the one where you look over your shoulder and applaud your ass.” He nodded toward the stage. “There’s the bows. You’re on. And listen, put out that torch you’re carrying. You’re a sarcastic sonofabitch, and what would I want with an old fat guy anyway? You think you have a chance with someone like me, you must need a forklift to carry your balls.”
Then Royal Dobbin, carrying the ridicule onstage with him, went out and began his routine.
“Two morons went bear hunting. They came to a sign in the road that said Bear Left. So they went home.”
One laugh from the bar.
“These guys were so dumb they thought Paraphernalia was a South American country.”
Nothing. Dobbin tried another course.
“What d’you think about hormones? Did you hear they’re developing a treatment to begin menopause at fifteen? Why not give women an extra 30 years of happy castrating?” Despite encouraging mumbles from the men in the little band, Dobbin died.
#
For each statement below, rate yourself on this scale: “Very uncharacteristic or untrue”—1 point; “Uncharacteristic”—2 points; “Neutral”—3 points; “Characteristic”—4 points; “Very characteristic or true”—5 points.
I get tense when a woman asks me for sex.
It’s difficult for me to ask other people for sexual information.
I’m often uncomfortable at sex parties and other social functions.
When I’m in group sex, I have trouble thinking of the right things to say.
It takes me a long time to overcome my shyness with new sex partners.
It’s hard for me to control erections when I’m meeting new people.
I’m nervous when I’m speaking to nude women.
I have doubts about my sexual apparatus.
I am compulsively orgasmic when I’m alone.
I’m inhibited when naked.
I find it hard to talk to women who are wearing black leather.
I am more shy with sexual opposites.
SCORE: 45 points, very shy; 31 to 45, somewhat shy; below 31, probably not shy, although you may feel shy in some situations. Most shy people score 35 or over.
Still puzzled about the meaning of sexual opposites, Dobbin wiped the ballpoint on a tissue, folded his therapist’s Shy Quiz and slid it carefully into his shirt pocket.
2
Royal Dobbin sometimes announced that he was of mixed parentage, “One man, one woman.” And looked around to see if he got a laugh.
Both sets of grandparents had come from Russian peasant stock, accounting, he said, for his love of potatoes. Even further back, the paternal line had been distinguished by an Imperial execution. Great-great Uncle Yasha, neglecting to salute the carriage of Czar Nicholas I—who suppressed thinking and writing—was shot ceremonially as an example to the public.
In 1910, both grandfathers had been nickel-a-shave barbers as immigrants and had gone on to prosperity as junk dealers with retail outlets throughout Philadelphia. There they had developed an interest in early American china and pewterware, housing a refined and growing collection in the two neighborhood households. The only male child of their combined family—Digby, Royal’s father—often spoke pridefully at the corner tavern of this specialty. A brigade of inept burglars soon made ragged assaults on the treasure, in vain.
Digby Dobbin, son of a junkman and a junkman himself—sucked into the trade because of his inertia and lack of ambition-made a vow to spare his own son the toil and grime of this vocation.
“Make your career out of something that’ll be no material use to anyone in the world,” Digby counseled. “Be a musician.”
Royal grew up shyly, happy among noisy relatives, family pets, summers on golden New Jersey beaches and school teachers who all seemed to expect more of him than he brought to the classroom. He studied his father, and decided that a man without ambition is a man without envy. It was a quality he admired—one, he thought, well suited to a shy person. So he chose music, an art practiced and developed alone. And Royal Dobbin, happily, had an aptitude for it, winning the citywide Philadelphia Rudimental Drumming contest at age fourteen. But the public nature of competition was harmful to him, requiring a daily screwing-up of courage. Why should he do something that drained so much from him and made his stomach rumble? He began to understand that no great ambition or personal exposure would be involved if he worked as a member of a group. He would go into orchestral playing.
#
Frank Sinatra walked in from the wings and took a position on a middle tier in the center of the huge orchestra. He turned to face the downstage wall so that when the curtain opened and the spotlight discovered him, his back would be to the audience. There would be gasps of recognition when he turned to face the adoring throng as his conductor led the orchestra into an overture. This night, in the dim pre-show quiet, he raised his head, surprised and a little startled, to stare directly into the eyes of Royal Dobbin who stood only three feet away on the tier above the grandest star in American show business. Shaken, Dobbin smiled feebly. He felt his mouth twitch. He nodded.
Frank Sinatra seemed to lean toward him. Was the icon going to speak? Words directed to and meant only for him?
Sinatra put a hand to his forehead and grimaced. “I got a fuckin’ headache,” he told Dobbin. Then the overture began.
#
Detective Oviedo said, “Are you a responsible person, Mr. Dobbin? You’re a day late. A responsible person comes to appointments on time. I asked you to come in after work last night.”
Irritated by the rebuke, but afraid to show it, Dobbin said, “I don’t mind if you call me Roy. And I don’t really think we had an appointment. You said I should come here after work. You didn’t say right after work. Here I am. This is the morning after work.”
Dobbin was not a missionary. He was spreading no gospel, yet dispute seemed to seek him out. He knew that the best thing in the world was to be let alone. Next to that, the best thing was to control the events in his daily toil, and in that way be able to predict what was coming next.
“A woman was here asking for you,” said detective Oviedo.
Dobbin tilted an eyebrow, hardly believing. “What woman?” Then a moment of realization, “Oh, wait—a really tall woman, all made up, fake eyelashes?” How would Bijou know about this detective business? How would anyone at the club?
“No, more like average height, not a beauty contest winner, but va va voom!” He bounced imaginary breasts. “Listen, forget her for a minute please. You know, you haven’t shown any interest in the identity of the dead man, Mr. Dobbin. He died in your arms, didn’t he? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Did you read this morning’s paper?”
Alarm began to seep through Dobbin’s skin, and goose bumps shivered at the nape of his neck and down his arms. His chance presence at the afternoon’s tragedy was beginning to register as more than a distraction from his stagnating life.
“No, I didn’t see the paper, and I don’t want it to mean anything to me. If I know his name, I’ll have to think about him. And I don’t know exactly when he died—he could’ve died after the police officer got there. He could’ve died after you people brought me here the first time. He could’ve talked to the police officer. He could’ve talked to the medics—“
“—on the way to the morgue? Not likely, Mr. Dobbin. He died with your ear to his mouth. It’s here in the officer’s report.”
Detective Oviedo rattled some pages in his hand, and his tone grew edgy.
The lift that Dobbin had begun to feel as he gathered steam now subsided. “I didn’t hear anything. No disrespect, but it won’t matter how often you repeat the question, the answer’s the same. I don’t know what he said. Maybe you could tell me more about the woman who asked for me. How would anyone know about me? Why would anyone think to come to a police station to look for me?”
“So, Roy, you’re choosing not to cooperate?”
“I told you, there was too much noise out there. He was choking, whispering.“
“Whispering? You whisper when you’re telling secrets, don’t you?”
Dobbin’s reflexes were on standby. “I didn’t mean whisper. He was trying to say something, but he was choking, coughing or something. I couldn’t hear what he said—nobody could.”
“You know who Warren Ehrlich is, right?”
“Warren Ehrlich? Everybody knows who Warren Ehrlich is.”
“So you’ve heard the name?” the detective asked.
“I just told you I know who he is. Of course I’ve heard his name.” Dobbin wondered about the detective’s oblique questioning.
“He’s the big-shot attorney everybody knows about—the very big-shot attorney—or used to be. He’s the dead man,” the detective said, watching for Dobbin’s reaction. “It was all in this morning’s paper. He was a deal maker, a big deal maker. People say he was connected to power all over the world, so it’s reasonable to think he made an enemy or two, wouldn’t you say, and that’s why it’s important for us to know what he said to you.”
#
“In assertiveness training, one should practice conversation openers—icebreakers, if you will,” said Dr. Marion Penwipe.
Dobbin thought a minute, then brightened and said, “I hear the Pope has shingles.”
“That is your icebreaker? You hear the Pope has shingles?” No, no—that is placing the authorship outside your own management. It’s something a shy person does. Instead, you might say, ‘It’s a pity that the Pope isn’t well.’ That way, you tap into your own pah. It is possible to develop great pah, internally and externally, while growing and being whole within, in order to compensate for crippling public shyness,” said the therapist.
Dobbin knew that pah meant power, one of the few remaining syllables the former Brit had not mastered in American diction. He ignored it and said, “I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It said, ‘Appreciate Me You Bastard.’ Is that sort of what you mean?”
The therapist was a cheerful man. He had a perfectly melon-shaped head with thinning hair, lightened in color and combed carefully across each side from a part in the middle. He wore seersucker four days a week, and on the fifth, a flannel shirt in red plaid and denims rolled at the cuff. It was Casual Day. Dobbin thought he looked like Howdy Doody.
He had seen Dr. Penwipe’s ad in the back of a magazine:
OVERCOME SHYNESS…GUARANTEED
Now Dr. Penwipe laughed and said, “Not quite, Roy. The bumper sticker— ”
“I mean, the driver is safe inside his car,” Dobbin interrupted, “yet he has the power to tell the world to fuck off, right? Maybe he couldn’t say that if he came out in the open, in public, but he does say it on the bumper sticker—Appreciate Me You Bastard--because he doesn’t have to look anyone in the eye.” Dobbin wanted to be appreciated and had trouble looking people in the eye. He rubbed his face, “I’m all screwed up, Doc. I wonder all the time about what I’m made of.”
“I can answer that one for you,” Dr. Penwipe said. “We’re all made of the same thing, every rock, bird and tree. Every person on earth since the beginning of time. Especially the beginning of time. Stardust. You’re made of stardust.”
Dobbin folded his arms and pulled into himself.
Dr. Penwipe adjusted the machine-made Windsor knot on his tie and closed his notepad. “You’re not here today to talk about bumper stickers, are you, Roy? I sense that you don’t really want to discuss bumper stickers. Or the origins of mankind. Or, I think, perhaps you’re not here even to continue our program to resolve your social anxiety disorder. I saw this morning’s paper, Roy. You’re here to talk about that, aren’t you?” There was a note of summation in Marion Penwipe’s voice, as if he wanted to collect the toys from a resistant child.
“Tell you the truth, Doctor, I haven’t seen today’s paper yet, but you’re not the first to mention it.”
“There is a lead article that says Mr. Warren Ehrlich, Esquire, is dead. And at his side was Mr. Royal Dobbin, local night club musician, who attempted to assist him in his final moments—”
“My name? They used my name?” Dobbin shouted. “How’d they get my name?” His eyes took a wild roll. Then he frowned, “The detective. It was the detective.” He rummaged in a pocket, fished out a card, “Detective Carl Oviedo.”
“At one time, Mr. Ehrlich was a patient of mine, Roy. He was a genial and neighborly person—especially for a man of such pah and influence,” Dr. Penwipe said, ignoring Dobbin’s agitation. “Did he say anything in his extremity? Words at such a time are often extraordinarily revealing.”
“The police gave my name to the papers,” Dobbin said in a mystified tone. “Are they allowed to do that?”
“Among others, Mr. Ehrlich was allied with Mr. Basil Liriano. You know who he is, don’t you, Roy? Basil Liriano? He constructs ball parks and arenas and shopping centers. He also constructs office towers—grand office towers—for the service side of the economy,” said Dr. Penwipe in a dreamy tone. “We once discussed plans for a new mental health complex.”
“I’ll lose my job, I know it,” Dobbin said. “And I’ve got a bad feeling about this, anyway. Mr. Ehrlich was beat up bloody before the motorcycle hit him—nobody knows that, not even the police. And he was thrown out of that limo. He didn’t step out and get hit by the motorcycle, he was thrown out, already bloody. Then the cycle hit him.”
“My word,” said Dr. Penwipe, catching the bite of Dobbin’s new information. “What does this mean? And why haven’t you told this to the authorities?”
“Because it puts a turn on the story, doesn’t it?” Dobbin said in an excited tremor. “It means we’re not talking about an accident anymore, right? It means I’m stuck in the middle of a what—a murder, maybe, and not a simple hit-and-run. You think I was depressed before? Warren Ehrlich must have a hundred big deals going all over the world, and Basil Liriano, Basil Liriano is connected to, ah, to organized you-know-what.”
“Crime?” Dr. Penwipe suggested brightly.
“Crime, yes, crime,” said Dobbin. He took a deep breath, shook his head. “You know, show business is make-believe, my life is make-believe, but this is real. I’ve lived my whole career in imaginary circumstances, but this is real.” Feeling somehow outside himself, stiffened by a creeping fear, he left the office without setting up his next appointment. He was conscious of walking like Frankenstein’s monster, as if he had no knees.
3
“Is your name Roy Dobbin?” A young woman, moving in too close to Dobbin, stopped him as he left the doctor’s office. She wore an old-fashioned duster over a yellow blouse and violet skirt,
“No autographs,” he said, preoccupied. Uneasy with strangers, Dobbin preferred to avoid people who had not been introduced by someone already on his list. He tried to step around her, but she was nimble and countered his move. Intimidated by aggressive women. He stood still.
“Is your name Roy Dobbin?” she pressed him.
“No,” he said. “Will you—would you mind stepping aside, please?”
“If you’re not Roy Dobbin, I apologize. But I think you are Roy Dobbin. I spoke to detective Oviedo at the police station last night and he told me you would be back there to see him. I waited till after midnight, but you never showed up. What kind of creep are you that you don’t keep appointments? So I got there at 8 this morning and saw you go in to talk to him, then I followed you here to this medical building. You’re seeing a shrink? I’ve been trying to catch up to you since I heard your name on the TV news yesterday. I’m Jesse Ehrlich. Warren Ehrlich was my father.”
Another shiver ran up Dobbin’s spine. The woman had an organized frame of mind and was showing anger and annoyance, not the expected emotions in fallout from her father’s violent death. What’s her game? he puzzled. She was disheveled, dressed out of season, and waved her arms in sweeping emphasis to the points she made. She could lose a few pounds, he thought, though she was full-breasted and firm-hipped. Her nose was too large for her face and he wondered if it would fit better when she closed her mouth.
“My father was a cheap shit,” she said, “one of those use-it-twice Kleenex people. We hadn’t spoken in ten years. He was into deals with people all over the world, and I’m pretty sure he was point man for some underground political groups. I couldn’t stand his politics—he was pro-zoo. That’s why I quit having anything to do with him. What’s your stand on zoos? Don’t you think they should be outlawed and all the animals returned to the wild?”
“Excuse me,” Dobbin interrupted, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have social anxiety disorder and I’m on my way home to walk my dog.” He shifted from foot to foot as if to relieve bladder pressure.
“You don’t have a dog,” said Jesse Ehrlich. “I know all about you. You have a sixty second resume. Your resume could fit on a postcard. You’re divorced. You live alone in a Fitzwater Street walkup. You drive a ten year old Plymouth. What would a dog want with you?”
Dobbin sighed. “Where did you see my resume?”
“On the web, of course. I brought up the membership list of your musician’s local. They have your bio in there. It’s pathetic. Two lines, under Losers. It’s a wonder to me why anyone would bother to kill you. Who’d miss you?”
“Kill me?”
“Are you deaf too?”
“I’m a musician, why would anyone want to kill me?” Dobbin whined.
“Well, for one thing, it would raise the national IQ,” she said. “Another is, my father told you something before he died. There are people all over the country who have a stake in what he said—you have no idea. Some of them will want to kill you to keep you from telling, and others will want to kill you if you tell. You are up shit creek. You have to come with me.”
“I’m going home, and then I’m going to work,” Dobbin said.
Jesse Ehrlich frowned. “Do you speak English? You can’t go home—”
“I don’t believe any of this. I’m going home.” Dobbin stepped around her and walked away.
If you’re still alive at 1 o’clock, don’t bother going in for the matinee performance. They’ve already hired another drummer,” she called after him.
#
“The zoo once had a 400 pound gorilla named Massa,” Dobbin said. He looked around Jesse Ehrlich’s Parkway apartment, checking out the paintings and sculptures. There was a Henry Moore bronze with the signature hole in the torso.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “This way, you might live till tomorrow. The first thing I did when I got the information from your union office was call your lounge looking for you. Some man named Otis told me they got another drummer for your job.”
Although this news hurt him, Dobbin swallowed it . “The way I figure it, Massa was in the zoo for thirty years. He lived in Philadelphia longer than I did. He wasn’t a wild animal, he was a Philadelphian. He used to shit in his hand and throw it at the spectators.”
“Sounds like a Philadelphian,” Jesse Ehrlich said.
“What I mean is, you can’t close the zoos and put the animals back in the wild, because animals in zoos all over the world are citizens of their cities and countries, just like Massa.”
“You are a head case,” she said. “Give me your car keys.”
4
Otis Antwan Franklin was called OAF, after his initials. He was six-four, growing old, and at 300 pounds, suffered the joint pains and breathing problems of such horse-sized men. A piano prodigy in his early days, boosted by a proud mama, he had fallen into elementary school gangs, narcotics and minor pimping. In junior high, he gave up pimping in favor of pirate recordings and bootlegging, was busted in high school for mailing pornhouse locations to faculty addresses, all under sponsorship of the girls’ cheerleading squad, and served an 18 month suspension from Atlantic City Local 708 AFM—the black musicians’ union—for publicly defaming the memory and reputation of Duke Ellington.
Through it all, Oaf continued to flourish as a jazz pianist, and, as years passed, became a first-call player in the lounges and clubs of Philadelphia and South Jersey. Now, a kind of respected elder, he blathered on a variety of subjects, building a whole story out of some smartmouth crack he’d heard somewhere. Occasionally he would quote a fictitious authority to support his many opinions.
Oaf was fond of Roy Dobbin and worried about what seemed to be a new kind of heat coming down on his friend. He had awakened in the morning with a troubled mind, but glad that Chicks With Dicks was going well and the club was making money. It meant continued employment, a rare and welcome gift for a freelance musician, especially a widowed man raising two grandchildren. But he had seen the morning’s paper, and Dobbin was on his mind as he walked the children to school on the morning after Warren Ehrlich’s death. The children, abandoned to him by his crackhead son and his slut girlfriend, spurred all that was good in his life.
The six year old boy was named Fargo, and his sister, Alpharetta, was two years older. Oaf’s foggy-minded son had decided to use placenames for his children as memory aids against the loss of brain cells.
Oaf remembered Dobbin in his prime. He had been a flashy drummer without much substance. Oaf valued his premium reading skills and tireless chops—both of great importance to a showroom drummer, but for jazz, something more was required. Faultless attention to Time—rhythm, the tourists called it—and an instinct for the music, a feel for the piece, a nameless something that combined flexibility and resilience, never losing touch with its beating heart. Oaf believed that Dobbin was an admirable mechanic without a musical soul.
As little Fargo skipped ahead, Alpharetta squeezed her grandfather’s hand. “What’s on your mind, Poppy? You’re draggin’ your feet today. We got to pick it up or we’ll be late for school.”
“Sorry, Babes,” the big man said. He grinned at his granddaughter, loving her looks, the smashing brightness of the clothes she chose for herself and her expectation that every day would be full of happy things. “I been thinkin’ about the job.”
“Saw you lookin’ at the paper before. It’s Uncle Roy, isn’t it? Not the job,” the girl said, raising an eyebrow doubtfully.
Oaf put on his philosopher’s face. “Pork Lo Mein say little sister must look after little brother for he like to run in traffic.” He was sometimes trumped by his grand- daughter’s directness.
“Oh, Poppy,” Alpharetta said. “Pork Lo Mein, that’s a new one.” She hurried to catch up to Fargo who was bug-quick.
Oaf returned to thinking about Dobbin, the lonely singleness of his friend. Why did he have to be sitting at the bus stop on that particular day at that particular moment? There must be a force in the universe that can’t be changed, no matter what. Like the force that holds the universe together. Like machinery set in motion that must follow that motion till the product drops into the bin. Like, Dobbin is unlucky, or Dobbin is a loser, or Dobbin’s fate takes him closer and closer to calamity, no matter what. Can’t be changed. Can’t be shifted.
#
Once, before his divorce, Dobbin had spoken to Oaf about his wife, a woman Oaf had known almost as long as he’d known Dobbin himself.
“Listen, about Dolly, she’s a good person, I know that. She put up with my shit for 13 years—I think it’s 13. But, you know, someplace near the beginning of your marriage, you lay down a few bricks—the first bricks—and they’ll become the wall that grows between you. Then, as the years pass, the wall gets wider and higher and she’s on one side and you’re on the other, but you make an agreement to leave one brick out, an opening you both can talk through about the house, or the bills, or the children. And it works, so you do it that way without thinking about it. Then one day you find a new brick in that opening, and even that last little place is shut off.” Dobbin shook his head as his voice softened, caught in his throat. “Funny thing is, I still feel something for her, but I can’t get over the wall. She’s way out there in another world now—way out there. I can’t live there. I couldn’t live there. She had to go outside the marriage for things she couldn’t find in me.”
Oaf saw tears in Dobbin’s eyes.
#
Grampa had to hug his grandchildren a block away from the school so they wouldn’t be seen by classmates doing such an uncool thing. He watched as Alpharetta held Fargo’s hand crossing the street. The corner guard waved to him and laughed. Oaf knew it was a skit she saw performed many times each day, and he wondered at the kinship she must have developed with neighborhood parents.
A soft tire squeal made him turn. He saw Dobbin’s old Plymouth cruising toward him and he grinned, feeling relief and expectation. There was so much he had to know. But as the car drew up to him at the curb, he saw that the driver was a woman. She motioned for him to open the passenger’s side door.
“You’re hard to miss, big man,” she said, leaning toward the open door. “My name is Jesse Ehrlich. Please get in, we need to talk.”
“Jesse Ehrlich? Jesse Ehrlich? I know that name—Ehrlich. What’re you doin’ with Roy Dobbin’s car?” Oaf scowled, standing firm.
“Roy Dobbin may be about to get himself killed. I’m trying to help him,” the woman said. “Please get in.”
With some adept angling, Oaf squeezed into the front seat. He was still doubtful. They rode awhile in silence, then Oaf said, “So, how long you know Roy? We been workin’ together, I guess 20 years, and I never heard your name or saw you till just now. And you’re drivin’ his car.”
“Don’t know him at all, just met him less than two hours ago,” said Jesse Ehrlich. “You’re his friend. I don’t have to tell you what he’s like. What d’you do with a dishrag? He’s so cool, he’s limp. He has information—I think he may not even know he has it—like lots of people, many people want to know. Like me, even. I want to know.”
“What information?” Oaf asked, keeping an eye on the woman’s expressive face.
“Why should I tell you that? You want the story, you do the work. You think I’m going to give away something it took me two days of digging to get? Like how did I find you this morning? Same way I found Roy Dobbin. Your musician’s union website. I got your address, followed you with your kids, and here we are. You want to know Roy Dobbin details? Do the work.”
Oaf nodded. “When you’re right, you’re right,” he softened his tone, smiling. He knew that most people are eased by a retiring amiability, and this young woman was on the edge. How to stop her snapping dog? “You said your name is Ehrlich. I know the name. Fill me in.”
Jesse Ehrlich took a deep breath, settled down. “Warren Ehrlich, the lawyer. My father—he’s the one who was killed yesterday on Market Street, right near your club. Roy Dobbin was there—didn’t you see the paper this morning?”
“I saw it. Your father, that’s a shame,” Oaf said with conviction.
“Some might think so,” she said. “The police are interested in Dobbin. They’ve questioned him already.”
“The paper said he was a witness, so that’s routine, don’t you think?” Oaf asked.
“You know, you’re pretty laid back about this. Like him. He’s a good friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“He’s a good friend,” the big man nodded, “and being laid back, that’s not a disease. Emotion, that’s a disease.” He decided to try a quotation. “General George Patton once said, ‘Show me a man whose emotions control him, and I will show you a battlefield dog.’”
Jesse Ehrlich pulled evenly to the curb and turned off the ignition. “George Patton—he was a cartoon character, right? But I doubt he ever said that.”
“Point is, laid back is anti-emotional. Laid back lets you keep—” Oaf was suddenly aware of the neighborhood. “Is this Roy’s street? Is Roy here—did you take me to see Roy?” Then, peering out of the window, “Wait a minute, wait a minute—this is Lido Goody’s place.”
“Uh-huh, and there he is, I think,” Jesse said. “Is he that little squirty guy in the long coat? Talking on the cell phone? Your trumpet player, right?” She honked the horn to get the little man’s attention. “I called him and told him we’d pick him up. Open the back door for him—it only opens from the inside.”
5
When he was twelve years old, Basil Liriano chopped off half the right foot of Benito Mazzini, the bully of Aragosa.
The little town of Aragosa in Sicily is situated 60 kilometers inland from the southern coast of the island, midway between Marsala and Caltagirone. Its residents—farmers, tradesmen and shopkeepers, make and enforce their own laws. The stingy earth and sparse rainfall—not a drop is felt during the hot summer season—encourages short tempers and violent actions. When Benito Mazzini stole the Liriano family goat and left a hognose snake in Basil’s bed, the loss of half his foot was regarded as just punishment.
After nightfall on the day of the goat theft, Basil, hefting his father’s tree axe, had pounded on the door of Benito Mazzini’s house. When Mazzini opened the door and stepped forward to see who was hiding in the shadows, Basil Liriano swung the axe with all his strength, slicing cleanly through shoe and foot. He retrieved the family goat and confronted the sobbing bully who was twice his age and four times his size. “You are a cockroach. Next time I will kill you.”
As time passed, Benito Mazzini sometimes declared, “Bygones must be bygones. I owe my fame and social position to Basil Liriano.” For Mazzini, when the cry went up, “Benito Mazzini has a foot-and-a-half,” was soon the center of attraction for scores of Sicilian maidens who were hungry for such a man. As a gesture of gratitude, Mazzini sent a marble sculpture of the Madonna to Liriano, inscribed with respectful comments. It was a foot and a half tall.
Liriano’s reputation for ruthlessness grew, amplified by his irreverence for tradition and defiance of authority. He made his own rules. One day he entered the town square in which stood a crumbling water trough built by the ancient Romans for the horses of their Praetorians during the first Punic war.
“I piss on you, Caesar!” he shouted to a few chickens, though he meant to be shouting to History, and directed his stream onto Aragosa’s only relic of the mighty Holy Roman Empire.
#
Basil Liriano clipped the closed end of a cigar, sniffed the fresh cut and touched a flame to the other end. He straightened his lounging robe around his narrow shoulders, smoothing the gleaming white brocade up under his velvet collar and ran a pinch down the sharp crease in the striped Armani slacks. His black wiry hair was pomaded thickly, and his bone-button eyes, so dark they seemed to swallow light, looked around at the pricey furnishings and accessories of his center city penthouse, thought of his yacht and private jet, of his Atlantic City casino, of his summer compound on the cape, of the entire Art Deco hotel on South Beach that he had recently acquired.
“Who needs money,” he said aloud.
All of this pumped him with pride, a fullness of heart, to think that the son of a poor immigrant family had come so far, had gained his recognition and stature while killing far fewer enemies than originally thought necessary. America, he mused, only in America. In the old country, where business alternatives were scarce, enemies fought fiercely to protect their holdings, so it was necessary to kill them all. In America, there was so much opportunity in so many lines of business, that you only had to kill a few before the others ran away and did something else.
Sitting silently, out of the light, three of his most trusted men watched him. Gomez, Acuna and Benevides—the only names they were known by—sensed that a new job would soon be ordered. Liriano had grown to prefer Mexicans for the really hard work in his several businesses. Although the businesses were varied, the particular hard work was not. Mexicans would kidnap, kill, set fire to and maim more readily and with fewer artistic problems than his former Italian apprentices. The Italians had come to expect too much. America had spoiled them. They wanted credit for ingenuity, for fresh techniques. They wanted applause and recognition for work they were expected to do, were paid to do. He had tried blacks, but they tended to celebrate with end-zone victory dances after a kill and this attracted unwanted attention. The Mexicans were hungrier, poorer and fiercer. For now, until they got fat and lazy in America, the Mexicans were secure in their jobs.
#
Basil Liriano pulled a curtain aside and looked out of his penthouse window at the boulevard parkway that stretched all the way to Philadelphia’s City Hall. The vast, clumsy marble pile covered four and a half acres at William Penn Square, a former hanging center. Started in 1871 and requiring 30 years to complete, it featured a tower 548 feet high which supported William Penn’s statue standing tall atop the dome. Liriano had selected these rooms from among others available because he had been told that the sightline from his suite made the large scroll William Penn held in his hand look like a fully erected dingus.
But now there was business to be done.
“The ambulance chaser wasn’t no good to us when we had him. Maybe he’ll be good to us now he’s gone. We need the word. They stopped all business until they get the word. There’s a man I want you to bring to me,” he said. “You got to go find him first. The paper don’t say where he’s at. Name’s Dobbin. Dah-bin. All it says is he’s a musician— mu-si-shun —get it?” Liriano played some air guitar to charade his point.
“Ah—aha,” said Acuna, grinning and nodding, “mariachi, tadee, tadum.”
“Salsa,” Benevides said, “chick-chicka-boo, chick-chicka-bah.” His feet on the floor scissored in unison like windshield wipers.
Gomez, deeply intelligent, and the only one of the three who could read and understand spoken English, said, “Si.”
6
“I sold your car,” Jesse Ehrlich declared before Dobbin could ask for his keys.
He blubbered some muddled objections, too stunned for anger.
“Here’s the money. It’s 400 dollars—the best I could do. And here, put this card in your pocket. It’s my cell phone number.”
Dobbin took the cash dumbly, shoved the money and card into a pocket. “How can I get around?”
“Take a bus, or a cab. You’re ahead of the game. Your car was a flare, it identified you. Now you’re free of it, and 400 dollars to the good.”
“But—but my car, it’s my car.”
“Stop whining, for God’s sake,” Jesse said. “If you painted it yellow and candystriped it, you couldn’t draw a straighter line to your house. Now you’ve got some breathing room.”
Dobbin had to admit the sense of it. He sighed and said, “I can go to Atlantic City, I still know a lot of people there.”
“You think?” said Jesse Ehrlich with icy sarcasm. “Like nobody else will figure that out? You have to stay away from people you know. Especially women.”
“Women? I don’t know any women. Not to be friends with anyway. Why would I want to hang with women?”
Jesse rolled her eyes, settled into an overstuffed recliner and smoothed her hair. “Think of Hershey bars with sex organs.” She yawned.
Ignoring the suggestion, Dobbin said, “I need you to tell me why I’m in trouble.”
“It’s your fatal mistake,” she said. “Everybody makes fatal mistakes. Like, not fatal because you die from it, but fatal because it kills the part of your life you’re in. Mostly it’s not a big thing, but some small thing you give no thought to. Like you don’t return a phone call, or you walk into a room at the wrong second, or you say the wrong thing to someone. Or somebody whispers a secret to you. You wind up paying for it, any one of those small things, you wind up paying for it.” She yawned again. “Sorry, I’m wiped out. I need a nap.”
“And my mistake was trying to help your father, is that it?” Dobbin pressed on.
Jesse said, “Partly, maybe, but I think it was really just being there when he said his last words, and I’m hearing a little crybaby in your voice.”
Dobbin let the rebuke pass. His brow tightened, “Just being there.”
“Just being there,” she said. “And in your case, well, you could die from it.”
Dobbin was weary. He needed a shower and a sleep. “I didn’t hear his last words. Maybe he was trying to tell me who beat him up.”
Jesse Ehrlich straightened up fast. “Beat him up? You never said anything about somebody beat him up.”
“His face was bloody before he ever hit the ground. Before the motorcycle hit him,” Dobbin felt some reward from her alarm.
“That wasn’t in the papers. Are you sure? You’re not giving me a stiff one, are you? I’m the one saving your skin here. Who else knows about this—the cops?” Dobbin shook his head, “Only my shrink.”
Jesse sank back into the chair. Her voice had a tremor when she said, “It’s Liriano. It’s got to be Basil Liriano.”
Seeing her fearful concern was unsettling to Dobbin. Her face, usually tight as a fist, had given him confidence, a depend-on-me face. Her vigor had stood in for his own. Now her anger was gone, the spit gone from her hiss. Her armor pierced, her face had taken on a new look. That much, Dobbin liked. The softer look—on TV they called it vulnerable—appealed to him. Not a bad face, he thought.
Her large nose seemed to spread its prominence, easing back into her cheeks. Also, he noticed the abundant curves of her body as she sat, her skirt hiked above the knees and now free of the long silk coat she had worn when they met. He felt a stirring in his dusty appetite.
“Never mind,” she said, yawning, correctly deciphering the spot of drool in the corners of his mouth. Her yawn squealed as it hit the down side. “You want to put a little bit of heaven between my legs, right?”
Dobbin liked that idea as he caught the yawn from her. He thought briefly that he could use the leverage of her high-handed disposal of his car. Instead, he said, “You’ve gone out of your way to help me, to keep me safe. What’s your payoff?”
“How old are you, Roy Dobbin?” she asked, sighing, then covered another yawn with her palm.
“Forty-eight.”
“I’m twenty-four.”
Dobbin said, “Twenty-four. I guess that means I’m twice everything you are.”
“Uh-huh. Or it could mean it takes both halves of you to match one of me.”
There was muscle in her. Dobbin liked that. He said, “Did you ever tell me what you do for a living?”
“Paralegal. Down deep in the belly of my father’s firm. I like it there.”
“When you’re twenty-four, that’s the place to start,” Dobbin said. “Twenty-four is a good place to start anything.”
Drowsy, she whispered, “Would you believe me if I told you I’m twenty-four and still a virgin?”
“I’d believe you’re twenty-four,” he said. But Jesse Ehrlich had fallen asleep.
#
A bowlegged man marries a knock-kneed woman. When they stand next to each other, they spell OX.” Dobbin waited a few seconds. “Come on, wake up. You’re the only audience I ever had who fell asleep before my gags.”
Jesse stirred. “I—I am awake. God, how long was I out?” She yawned and stretched.
“Hour and a half, two hours.”
“You didn’t go out, you didn’t make any calls, did you?” She pushed herself out of the chair, alarmed and ready to jump and took three long strides to a window, checking out the parkway below.
“No, I snored in, same as you.”
“I think we have to get out of here,” she said, backing away from the window.
“What’s up? This is a nice place to crash. You have good taste.”
“It’s not my place, it’s my father’s,” Jesse said impatiently. “He keeps it for his matinees.”
“Dictation away from the noisy office.”
“There are three tough-looking guys down there leaning on a car at the curb. I think I’ve seen one of them before. He’s a Latino. Might be nothing—might be something.” Dropping the thought, nervous for action, she scooped a sweater and the silk duster from an elegant Provincial chair and grabbed Dobbin’s arm. “My car’s out back. Time to hit the road, Jack.”
7
Champ O’Malley squeegeed the tile and then the glass door, stepped out of the shower and toweled off. His fighter’s body glowed pink and tight. “A lot of fuckin’ good it does me,” he told his mirror, an adhesive backed low-end piece of shit he had picked up at the ShitMart SuperStore. Promoters had told him to work hard, stay in shape, pick up sub jobs here and there for fighters who duck out of a bout, and if he does well, maybe fall into a contract deal. The trouble is, fighters only duck out of bouts in which they know they’ve been overmatched—be a tomato can for some young prospect—and O’Malley takes the sub job, steps in, becomes the tomato can and gets his ass kicked. He had a hard-on for the boss of everything, Basil Liriano, who was also a dabbler in fight promotion. A lot of good that hard-on was doing him. Liriano should have brought him along slow and easy, let him be the hot prospect, let him fight tomato cans. He was only twenty-eight, a physical poster boy with his best days ahead of him. Still, a couple of days ago, Gomez, Liriano’s number one boy, had told him about a deal, another kind of job, might be a bit on the tender side of legal, Amigo, but there’d be plenty of support. He had given O’Malley an envelope and told him the boss’s word was in there. “You are the insurance, Amigo. Open it after I leave, and in the meantime, don’t kill nobody.”
#
O’Malley slipped into a grey turtleneck and black Farah slacks sharply creased and a perfect fit, black socks and black Payless shoes in gleaming vinyl. Taller than six feet, seven pounds over 200, he was in the new limbo fighting class—cruiserweight—although he weighed the same as heavyweight champs Joe Louis and Muhammed Ali in their prime and fifteen pounds more than Rocky Marciano in his. His features were still regular, without scar tissue in his brows or cartilage damage to his ears and nose. He smiled at his mirror image. He always looked nice for his job as bouncer at the Club Sarabande, Basil Liriano’s club, where the feature show was Chicks With Dicks. He tore open the envelope his boss had given to him. There was one word printed on a square of note paper. It was DOBBIN, and a big X had been drawn through it. #
The last time they spoke, before Warren Ehrlich’s death, Bijou was sitting at the makeup mirror applying lip rouge with a brush when Dobbin barged into the dressing rooms.
“Hi Cutie,” the performer said through a stretched mouth.
Dobbin grinned warily. Cutie had never been listed in their directory. “Hey Bijou, how’s it hangin’? You seen my stick bag?”
The truth was, Bijou adored Dobbin’s coloring. “I would die for your skin, you lucky fool. God gave you a skin like that and you go out and sit in smoke and booze all night.”
“God gave you a ding-dong. Look what you’re doin’ with that.”
“Naugh-ty, naugh-ty,” Bijou wagged a finger, following Dobbin’s movements in the makeup mirror, envying the drummer’s golden complexion. “You look like—”struggling for a word, “champagne.”
Admiration from a cross dresser had its limits. Dobbin’s comfort level was threatened quickly. “I am what I am and do what I do. You should get real with yourself.”
Bijou turned from the mirror and faced him. “I am real. My curse is I don’t have a sweet patootie.”
“Sweet patootie.”
“A pussy, foolish boy.”
“You’re about as real as those tits you have on,” Dobbin said.
The dancer gasped theatrically. “I’m going to memorize your face and throw away my head.”
#
Steve Sift was a Philadelphian born and raised. In a section of the city called Fishtown, he got socialized by the expectations of people who knew thorns better than roses. But Steve was a rose, slender, delicately colored, lacking the spikey angles and bristles of little boys his age. He liked to parade in his sister’s clothes and was punished for his difference.
His schoolmates called him Twinkle. Playground bullies ragged him, cuffed him, stole his lunches, tore up his books. He was fast on his feet and well coordinated, able to escape serious damage, outrunning even the school’s best dodgeballers. Adults clucked, teachers talked about him in the lounge, jocks gave him advice—put your hand up a little girl’s dress, check out your big sister in the shower.
He got good grades, began to study dancing while his in-denial parents tried to set him up with neighborhood girls and distant cousins. His dancing led to an interest in martial arts as he grew tall, developing the wiry grace and self-possession of a young man who knew himself.
In his senior year in high school, now an all-city sprinter on the track team and candidate for class valedictorian, he was mocked in gym class by a boy who had tormented him for years.
Hey Twinkle, wanna suck my dick?
In a moment of blinding moves that ended with a kick to the Adam’s apple, Steve Sift put the bully on the floor, gasping for his life.
Though it had taken many years, no one called him Twinkle again.
He grew passionate about dancing and enrolled in ballet classes, attracting attention with his seriousness and intelligence. In the company of his new friends, he discovered the satisfaction of cross-dressing and the art of female impersonation. He began to get calls from a focus group leader who said her company could use the special skills of a young man like him. The cross-dressing would be of particular help.