Rivers of Gold (7 page)

—Where's the package?

—The usual place,
yaar
.

I hunch down in the backseat, cursing under my breath, trying to get my fingers under the GPS panel without having to put my knees on the floor of the cab. In '08, when GPS systems in taxicabs became mandatory, a lot of drivers started bitching about the heat coming through the driver's seat from the monitor built into the partition showing ads and offering touch-screen maps and news feeds for tourists. Since by law the fleet's supposed to be all-hybrid, lots of owners have been buying hybrids with offset monitors retrofitted in existing partitions to save money. A few observant souls like Arun noticed that this adjustment permitted a small, unnoticeable, and fucking-hard-to-reach space inside the partition manifold. A space just about big enough for a standard-size Blu-ray case. Or a similar-size case holding two concentric rings of pharmaceutical-grade Ecstasy tablets in perfect birth-control-pill formation. Two hundred doses at two hundred bucks each is a Fast Forty, which is what should be brought back to Reza. You do that, you get paid. You don't, well, I don't want to even think about it. It's a smart system with powerful incentives coming and going.

This system is what brought Arun to work for Reza, and me to work with Arun. Reza likes things to work well, and people in his organization generally do.

Eyad's death is an aberration. I don't know who's behind it. If it was just some random thing, maybe some Arab blood feud, Reza will let it slide. If there's a crew jacking cabs in the network, though, they'd better get the hell out of town, fast. Reza doesn't like interference, and he's got people who can straighten things like this out, fast.

Come to think of it …

Nah. Just nerves.

For the long ride home I pull out my iPhone and wireless stereo headset and thumb up a playlist file titled UNDER THE COVERS. In tribute to Eyad's memory, I select all my covers for the Cure's “Killing an Arab,” the first one by Rickets, their version of Dinosaur Jr.'s cover of the Cure's “Just Like Heaven,” off the Tad Kubler Burn Unit fundraiser:

I can turn

And walk away

Or I can fire the gun

Staring at the sky

Staring at the sun

Whichever I choose

It amounts to the same

Absolutely nothing

Too bland, everyone said so. I thumb up last year's Smallpox cover of the Rickets version, muscled up with more feedback and distortion:

I feel the steel butt jump

Smooth in my hand

Staring at the sea

Staring at the sand

Staring at myself

Reflected in the eyes

Of the dead man on the beach

The dead man on the beach

Not enough. I thumb up the best from the Craig Finn Liver Transplant Foundation compilation. Blood Clot's interpretation of the Smallpox version of the Rickets cover destroys them all. For sheer sonic monstrosity, nothing beats Blood Clot (electric kettle drums, three bass guitars, and oboe):

I'm alive

I'm dead

I'm the stranger

Killing an Arab.

Staring out at the South Bronx heading for Queens is like looking at old photos of the city back in the day. Because of course nothing ever changes here. Gentrification is supposed to be the great engine of change in NYC, but the fact is that there are whole swaths of the city that remain untouched by progress (I should know, I'm from one). Every time the economy goes up people in the outer boroughs count on their neighborhood being the next TriBeCa (rolled eyes, complaints of rising rents and Starbucks infestations). Then, when the economy tanks, people wonder why they're still living in squalor. It all comes down to money, and the money's in Manhattan. Period. Full stop. You don't think it's out here, amid the abandoned factories, crumbling tenements, and festering projects, do you? No no no. Out here, it's
FLATS FIXED
signs and roadside fruit vendors and carjackers. Out here, it's Going Nowhere Slow.

I'm making myself jumpy as hell, and I'd kill for a Davidoff. I've heard all the stories, of course. Reza, the Russian mob's Manhattan Man. Reza the one-man criminal empire. Money-laundering Reza. Mack Daddy Reza. Reza, King of the Speaks.

But this is the first time I've actually heard of a death—a violent death—connected with Reza's network. Even if it was only Eyad (there probably won't even be a police investigation, nobody cares about cabdrivers), it's still nerve-racking when terminal violence comes to someone you
know
. And why Eyad? It couldn't have been Reza, that doesn't make any sense. Even if Eyad skimmed a whole Fast Forty, Reza could probably make that back in less than a week. Why go to the trouble? It must've been something else, but who or what that is, I have no idea.

Jackson Heights in June smells like cardamom and diesel exhaust. Arun drops me exactly where I told him, doesn't even come to a full stop, just keeps rolling, on familiar ground now, off for some relaxing smoke and sex (probably both courtesy of Reza).

I'm home.

Trudging wearily past all the
DO NOT BRING ROTI IN STORE
! signs, I head down the old familiar stand of brown brick apartment houses stacked like so much cardboard. No architectural flair, no small green patch of vitality, just lumps of brick and mortar, anthills for the masses.

Trudging up the stairs of my mother's building to apartment 3A, I remember the need to signal confirmation. I send Prince William a photo of a baseball squarely in the pocket of a catcher's mitt. Subtext: Package Received. Then I unlock my mother's door.

Can one describe a smell as empty? There's been no life here for years, only a sense of slow entropy that makes the flue on my arms crawl and inexpressible sensations fight one another in my stomach. My mother's house is always neat and tidy, nothing out of place. Look closer, though, and you'll see the dust built up behind easily accessible areas, discoloration of the wallpaper high up near the air vents, cobwebs round the radiator pipes. My mother sits, as she always does, in the same kitchen chair she dragged over to the window overlooking the street on the day my father died. She's added to it over the years, made a little station for herself, a small table, a pad with a pencil, her needles and yarn. But her main activity is staring at the street, the Sentinel of Thirty-seventh Avenue, as though expecting my father's truck to come rumbling up under the window, him jumping off the back rail by the levers, just in time for dinner. I don't think my mother's cooked a meal since I left for college.

—I'm home, Ma, I say to the ghost in the chair.

She turns her head slowly, not so much moving her head as altering her horizon. The movement is mechanical, devoid of organic fluidity. She stares without seeing, slowly raising one hand toward me in a way that makes my throat constrict. I know I'm supposed to give her a hug and a kiss, and I will like the dutiful son that I am, but honestly, it's all just too sad. My mother is hunched, wizened, existing somehow in a mental fog. As I approach her to do my filial duty I am hit by that awful medicinal stench of decay, not like The Scent of the homeless but the vinegary stink of medically slowed putrefaction.
Age
.

—How are you, Ma? I say, taking her hand and kissing her on the forehead.

My mother hasn't herself yet received the sort of news that took my father from us, the succession of reports beginning with the three most terrible words in the English language (
We found something
) that confirmed the spots on his lungs and the disagreeable numbers of his blood chemistry. My mother keeps alive by the usual alchemy of takeout food, the occasional supplement from caring neighbors around holidays, and the ever-increasing pool of medicines foisted upon the elderly. But none of these really matters. The portion of my mother that gave her spark, fire, and glowing ember, that all died with my father. The remainder of my mother, who sees only the ghost of my father when she isn't looking at the glowing box that tells her what the world is, is suffering from
time
. And there's only one cure. I hate myself for saying that, for even thinking it, but it's true. Dad, you fuck, why'd you have to die? Forget about me, don't you see what you did to
her
?

—My sweet boy, she says, holding one of my hands in both of hers, white shadows in veined vellum. Over her right shoulder I see The Photo, the one of my dad, healthy and smiling in his DSNY greens and fat orange garbage gloves, beaming out at a world preparing to consume him, reclaim and recycle him in the great landfill of Mother Earth. I want to get out of here.

—Are you eating well, Renny? You look so thin, my mother says.

—Just fine, Ma, never better. Big new job, another cover shoot.
Roundup
magazine.

Here it comes.

—Oh, Renny, that's wonderful. Your father would be so proud.

I know he would. Garbageman's boy makes good. Bigshot fashion photographer, one of the youngest ever to make it like this. My own apartment in Manhattan. Beautiful women in the city on my arm and my cock, money in the bank and more off the books from Reza, surviving and thriving in a city with twenty percent real unemployment. Yes, Ma, I think Dad
should
be proud.

And, as always, instead of venting what's boiling in my head, I say:

—Yes, Ma. Do you have everything you need? Any problems in the neighborhood?

—No, no, everything's fine, dear. I have everything I need right here. In fact, it's more than I need.

Here it comes again.

—Here, take this.

—Ma, come on.

—Now, Renny, you listen to your mother. Take this and put it away. Your father wanted for you to have it, and you will. Don't argue with me. Take this and put it in the bank. Save it for—for tomorrow.

—Yes, Ma. Thanks, Ma.

And, like always, I take it. Resistance is futile, this little ritual seems to make her feel just a little bit better. When my father found out he was sick, he set up an annuity for my mother, secured by his pension and what life insurance he could get through the department. Since he died so quickly, Ma wasn't saddled with impossible medical bills. School didn't cost her much, and the church helped out here and there. Dad had made sure Ma would be able to stay in the apartment as long as she lived, and she never spent anything on herself, just kept at me to keep my grades up so maybe someday I'd be able to go to a good school and get a good job. The minute NYU said yes, I was gone.

It's not like I use it for myself anyway. Anything my mother gives me—plus a lot more from me—goes to settle her bills and fill in any gaps, like now when so many pension funds are on the ropes. She's pretty much taken care of as the widow of a city worker back when pensions were guaranteed and there was money at the ready. This sort of thing has been up in the air since the crash, especially with both the city and the state broke, and no more federal money coming in for city agencies. I'm not alone in this—there are probably thousands of people in this kind of jam these days.

I doubt too many of them have come up with my particular ways to make ends meet, though.

As for my
legal
job, well, Mom has every issue featuring my work, and that's good enough for her. They're all kept neatly in my old room, which I usually stop into after taking Mom's money and pretending to use the bathroom while I actually check on message traffic from Reza's network. Ma keeps everything exactly the way it was. My old trundle bed; my old desk, with that ancient ink color photo printer. A bulletin board, a few posters from bands I shot that are long since gone. And my first cover, framed, with the early taxiscape technique that first turned heads.

And my one remaining photograph of X, the one I took of her in the pagoda at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. There's nothing stylized or put on about the shot—she's just looking at me through the lens, very matter-of-factly, a warm look, but (I see it now) just the hint of reservation. I took this picture three years ago, just before the bottom fell out of the world.

Don't ask why
, she said when she told me she was leaving. Less than a year after the crash, she was gone.

I keep this photo here at my mother's, where it's safe. I destroyed all the others.

I've shown Ma my apartment, of course. I come out and check on her on a regular basis—say, once a month, or when I feel some sudden irrational need to visit Queens, like now. I still can't believe Eyad's dead.

After extricating myself from the family homestead, I flag down the first hack I see. It's a big roomy Toyota Shorthorn—you'd call it a Sienna. One thing about Queens: There's no shortage of fucking cabdrivers.

Afternoons are for Acceleration. The recovery from the previous night's excesses, the anticipation of more come evening—this is my Prep Time.

First, break up the shipment. I never carry the whole load, because if you get nailed, it's better to be below the minimum for a distribution charge. I keep several extra disk cases for transport on hand at all times. I check in with Reza via a coded message and await his response. This will be the location of my pickup driver, in whose cab I'll stash the Specials. This driver hangs around the speak I'm working, to be summoned by me when I've made contact with a client and secured payment. I send a text message to the driver (easier to code and therefore harder to trace than an actual call), who arrives with a presorted amount of product ready to go to the customer, and they go for a short ride. The client gets his purchase, the driver makes a few bucks, and I'm nowhere near the switch. A clean deal for me, and even cleaner for Reza. The only one at risk is the cabbie, and no one thinks about the cabbies. Since Reza started operating, we've never lost a shipment or a cabbie to the TLC or NYPD. It's a sound system for these unsound times.