16 – Back in town
Money had always been the key to Dan's life,
starting with his impoverish shoe-making father in Brooklyn who'd scrimped and
saved to get Dan through Hofstra saying: You gotta succeed, boy. You can't get
trapped in this place like me. The unspoken agreement being Dan would care for
the man later, coddling him in his old age, while other merchants from his
generation begged on the street like bums, too weak to keep up the work
schedule to pay the rising rents.
This here's my boy! the old man bragged,
brandishing Dan before them like a piece of gold. The boy would make up for
killing his wife during child birth or costing so much in worry over early life
in the streets. With Punk and gangster, the most often descriptions.
Yet no blow seemed so hard on the old man as
when Dan brought Susie home. You want to marry her? the old man had howled,
hating everything about her from her blond hair to her untrustworthy smile. A
gold digger, he called her. Only much later did Dan agree.
Only
after the coughing started and the doctor's reports said Dan needed dry air.
And the uptown life vanished to one of dessert and divorce. The alimony based
on Dan's former income evaporated his savings, killing the old man-- who
neighbors said wandered through the neighborhood for weeks like a bum, with
even his shoes like bits of crumbling leather he refused to remove or repair.
The police found the body frozen under the Brooklyn Heights side of the
Manhattan bridge, clutching a faded photograph of Dan's mother.
Dan shivered and shifted gears as the light
changed to green, the vague pattern of streets flowing back into his head,
shopping malls and retirement villages dotting either side of the road, part of
the stretched-out nature of the town which reminded him of L.A.
"There's a cop behind us," Lance
announced, lying flat on the bed with his nose to the rear window.
"Of course, there is," Dan mumbled.
"Get out your ID."
Lance slipped forward. Sarah stared back into
the crumbled mirror on the passenger side.
"You
mean they're going to stop us?" she asked.
"Yes," Dan said, watching the car
pulling closer. "They don't like hippies in this town."
Yet it was more than just hippies, they hated
strangers of any kind or color. They endured the Indians because they'd grown
used to them under foot and knew where in the pecking order red skins belonged.
The cop car made its move, pulling up in the
left lane, one of its two officers motioning them to the shoulder. Stones
kicked up under the van as it stopped, and the cop car doors slammed as its
officers exited. Two sandy-skinned males came along either side of the van,
pushing
up their Texas-Ranger hats in a slow imitation of a cowboy drama.
"So, it is you," the cop on Dan's
side said, his face part of that miserable time when Dan was last here.
"Billy said it was. But I didn't believe him. What would old cool Dan be
doing back in our town, especially riding a junk like this. But there you are,
boy, big as life."
"Don't give me a hard time, Sweeny,"
Dan said. "We're just passing through back to L.A."
The cop leaned against the door. A slow grin
spread across his sun-beaten face. "I seem to recall a bulletin on you,
Newhaul," the cop said. "Something about alimony."
"Damn it, Sweeny!" Dan moaned.
"Nobody's asking for trouble here."
He wondered how far he could get if he chose
to run. But the other cop showed up on the passenger side.
"What happened over here?" he asked.
"You been in an accident?"
"Side-swiped while I was parked,"
Dan said.
"By a goddamn tractor from the look of
it."
"Must have been," Dan agreed. Look
straight. Don't act scared. "Happened in Denver."
"Run it anyway," Sweeny said,
grinning at Dan. "Wouldn't want you to pull anything over on us, would we
Newhaul?"
"How long's this going to take,
Sweeny?" Dan asked with a groan.
"It depends, Danny-boy,” Sweeny said.
“On
what?”
"On whether or not you're carrying any
drugs in there. Why don't you and your friends step out of there while we have
a look."
Dan sighed and motioned the others out. Sweeny
circled around and admired Sarah as she climbed out.
"Your taste in women has improved,"
the cop said.
"She's his," Dan said, lighting up a
cigarette. His hands shook.
Half
out of anger.
Sarah smiled as the other cop came back from
the police car looking rather puzzled.
"What is it?" Sweeny asked.
"No warrant," the other cop said.
"But there's an APB"
Sweeny looked sharply at Dan. "Just
passing through, eh?"
"There's something else," the other
cop said, motioning Sweeny away from Dan. The two exchanged words, growing
animate and loud.
"What is it?" whispered Lance.
"Damned if I know," Dan said, though
he heard Sweeny say New Mexico once. But nothing about his ex-wife, though he
could already envision the trip back east in handcuffs and his wife's hard
stare across a court room.
He felt stupid. They all should have been more
careful, rather than merely worrying about Mike. Somehow, they could have found
Gil without the parade through town.
"All right, Newhaul," Sweeny said,
his voice losing its edge. "Get out of here."
Dan looked up startled. "What?"
"Didn't you hear me, Goddamn it! I said
get! Or do you want to spend the day in a jail cell?"
The cop didn't look happy, a nasty touch to
his glare which translated into anger and danger.
"Come on," Dan said to the others.
"Let's not argue with the man."
Yet once started again, he saw the cop still
standing on the side of the road, staring helplessly after them, his thoughts
loud enough to kill.
Dan gunned the gas.
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