kristen barry vs. the man

my first essay that i wrote for my fiction writing class. give it a read and tell me what you think!

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It was difficult to ignore the steady stream of crimson that crept down the wall, igniting the checkerboard pattern with a familiar shade of red. It was the wall directly behind Big Joe’s round sweaty face, hidden completely from his line of sight. It told me all I needed to know. I looked him straight in the eye and told him that I should leave; you know, places to go, people to see, hoping that he wouldn’t ask any questions. Newly formed beads of sweat swelled on my brow, so much so I was sure they were reflecting the saturated wall in full hue. I could see the thoughts running through his head as if they had been plastered on his brow and were glowing like a neon sign in the dark of that dimly lit room. If what I’d suspected was true, I’d be as good as dead.

***

I remembered it as if it were yesterday, the sale of alcohol had ceased in the year 1919 and with it dawned a New York that reeked of crime (so much so that you could almost smell it over the pungent odors of urine and fish). It was around this time I first came into contact with Big Joe. I owned a tailoring shop on 43rd street, where we’d sew a little more than buttons onto your jacket. For those in the know, suit repairs came with a bottle of gin ($14), dresses a bottle of whiskey ($9), and jackets a bottle of rum ($11). Customers would walk in, hand us their item, and ask for the “43rd street special”. We would take the clothing into the backroom and sew the goods into the clothes, often creating pockets, so it fit tight like glove. Our operation was virtually undetectable. Customers would pick up their clothing during normal business hours and return to their homes in time to catch the nightly broadcast. Big Joe kept the booze flowing and the living easy.

I met Big Joe through his cousin, Little Steve (there were two Steve’s, Big Steve and Little Steve, they both were larger than your average Steve, but in order to remember which Steve was which, we called the smaller of the two Little Steve). Little Steve grew up on my block on 23rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues. We used to play stickball together and throw rocks into the river when we were kids, but I’d kept in touch with him over the years. A few months after the Prohibition began in 1919, he came to me with a business offer.

“Hear me out, hear me out. You know that joint you got going on over on 43rd street?” he said excitedly, “what do you say we make a living and then some?”

“How you wanna do that?” I said, seriously questioning his ability to craft something beyond a horrible idea. After the candy cigarette craze began in 1915 Little Steve thought it would be a good idea to make candy hats. The idea was that you could wear em and eat em. Other than the fact that the hats came in stomach-churning shades of greens and pinks, the only problem was that somehow they always managed to disintegrate, leaving you with a sticky coat of melted sugar all through your hair. Needless to say, the idea never caught on.  Little Steve was never known for his smarts.

“Well ya know, you fix garments, what if you could get into the business of fixin’ other things… say broken hearts, lonely souls, we could satisfy a very particular kind of craving, if you know what I mean…”

“You want to open up some kinda therapy office in my seamshop?”

“No, no, ALCOHOL, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. My cousin Big Joe has the hookups. We could use the tailor shop as a means of getting people the products that they’re really looking for.”

I liked the idea. I’d always been an honest guy, never getting my hands dirty, always following rules; I was a god-fearing man in many ways just like my father. At the ripe young age of 33, and with no kids, no wife, and a stable business handed down to me by my father when he passed, I could afford to take some risks here and there, I thought. And with the economy like it was, business was going down the drain. I needed something to get people into the shop. It was an easy dollar, and besides, who would expect a tailor shop to stitch together a plan like this?

We planned to meet Big Joe at his office over in the meatpacking district. Me and Little Steve arrived at 8PM sharp to a deserted alley way lined with stray cats and garbage. The smell was so pungent and foul I was convinced something was slowly decaying in my very presence, and by the looks of this place and it’s proximity to Big Joe’s headquarters, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the head of William Desmond Taylor himself rotting away slowly in the debris.

We approached a door marked “No Entry” and knocked exactly 8 and a half times. A tall scrawny man emerged who led us up a set of stairs in complete darkness to a dimly lit room that one could barely call an office. The room was filled with the most peculiar contraptions: swords, chains, brass knuckles, guns, knives, and a series of questionable items for which I couldn’t even begin to imagine their functional purpose. In the dead center of the room was a golden harpoon on a pedestal. Big Joe told us that he killed a whale once, and that it was his favorite piece in the whole collection.

“A humpback.” He said proudly, “Weighed about 80,000 pounds. One shot and she went down like a $5 hooker.”

“That easy?” I said.

“It ain’t too hard if you got the right equipment.” He said, shining the weapon with a rag.

I didn’t ask any more questions. In that room, lit by the golden streetlights that shone sparingly, the weapons reflected something that drew me to them. They seemed to catch the light in such a way that I could understand why Big Joe was enamored with them. They glistened with lustful shades of gold in a room that framed their contrast well. And though it was evident he had a thing for obscure torture devices, the origin of his interest in what he called his “dangerous toys” was unclear.

Big Joe was always quick and to the point when talking dollars and cents. He got down to the bottom line quicker than you could process the all the low-pitched words pouring out of his mouth.

“I’m Big Joe,” he said in a scratchy voice, “you must be Charlie. You own a seamshop on 43rd street. My father owned a seamshop for 63 years till the day he died.”

“Yeah, I’m lookin’ to make some moves though, looking a little bit beyond the clothing repair industry, maybe getting into some business that Little Steve here was talkin’ about…”

“$360 dollars to start. You get 10 cases. You sell them in a week you come back for more. If you don’t, don’t bother coming back. You got it?”

“Alright, Big Joe, you gotta deal”

And that’s how it started. Simple as that.

Over the course of the next few years I got to know more intimately what Big Joe was all about. He was not someone you’d ever want trouble with. If the 348 pounds of loosely woven muscle and fat wasn’t intimidating enough, perhaps his cold empty eyes would tell you that there was nothing that would stop Big Joe from doing anything he wanted. They say that he killed his own grandmother because her lasagna, as Little Steve put it, “wasn’t lasagna-ey enough”. Threw his fork right through her poor little heart. And just like that she was gone.

It was a few years after Prohibition sunk its teeth into New York’s fleshy culture of inebriation when the cops began to crack down hard on the laws. Not all cops believed that alcohol was the devil’s drink (some found their way to the tailor shop every night), but during that time things got real tough for those trying to make a living the way we did.

The cops had been trying to infiltrate the business of major suppliers so they could cut things off from the source. Since everyone knew that Big Joe had the most weight in town (in more ways than one), business was slow and he began to feel the heat sooner than expected.

“What do you mean gone?” he barked into the phone. “WELL FIND THEM… or its your fucking head, Harry.”

I had been in the middle of picking up a shipment when he got some bad news.

“Here’s the cash from last week, I’m just gonna take six crates this time. Shit just ain’t movin like it used to.” I said, as I walked past him.

Big Joe didn’t say anything, he just looked at me, full of fury and stifled rage, as I carried the last of the boxes down the stairs.

I found out a few days later that the cops had raided one of his warehouses deep in Brooklyn that night and took down a lot of his main guys. He’d lost about 100,000 dollars worth of goods in the whole ordeal. A couple days later I was called to give him my earnings for the week. He was broke, shit broke, or so I thought.

***

From where I was standing I could see the freshly coated wallpaper intensify and seep onto the beige carpet. He hadn’t replied to what I said. I slowly inched backwards in the direction of the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, Charlie?”

“I got some things I need to take care of tonight, so if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll get going.”

“You ain’t going nowhere. This ain’t no game, Charlie. Where were you last week?”

“I was minding my own business like always. Running the seamshop ain’t easy work.”

“Ever take a trip to the 83^rd precinct, Charlie, over in Brooklyn? I ain’t fuckin around.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin about. If this is about that warehouse raid in Brookyn, I ain’t got nothing to do with that business. I’d never pull a stunt like that. If there’s one thing I learned, it’s don’t mess with Big Joe.” I said helplessly. “Plus, what do I got to gain out of something like that?”

“This ain’t about one rat, it’s about all the rats.” He grunted.

“I don’t tell nobody nothing unless I got a good reason.”

“You ain’t tryin to tell me you don’t think I know about your conspirin.”

“What the hell are you talkin about?”

“Ain’t nobody gonna try to get Big Joe out of the picture and get away with it.” There was a manic sense of paranoia that consumed him. “And ain’t nobody gonna try to steal my collection.”

He looked lustfully around the weapon-filled room. “You thought yous all were gonna turn Big Joe in and run off with the goods?”

Suddenly it all fell into place. There wasn’t anything coincidental about his collection. Since Big Joe could never keep an account with any legitimate bank, he’d created his own way to store his money over the years, somewhere he could be sure it was easily accessible, somewhere he could keep a close watch, and somewhere no one would ever expect it. I could no longer praise those muted yellow streetlights for the way those weapons shone golden in that dark room.

A noise was heard from upstairs, causing Big Joe to turn his immense sweaty body towards the newly painted wall. If he killed all his guys there would be no evidence, no mouths to expel his dark secrets, and no one to steal the contents of his prized collection. From the looks of the wall he’d already gotten one.

His eyes, animated with devilish charm, glared in my direction explaining his intentions as clear as ever. I took several more steps backwards and he lunged at me with full force catching me by the neck. We both fell to the ground, where I expected to die by Big Joe’s oversized hands. I could feel a thick warmth pool around my legs and the strength of his hands taper. I pulled away, with blood dripping down my leg to find the golden tip of the harpoon emerging out of the back of Big Joe’s enormous frame. His body was still as he poured his contents onto the floor. He had lunged directly into the harpoon, striking him straight through the place where one would expect to find a heart. His body floundered for a moment, and then lay still. Empty and alone the lamplight leaked in through the windows creating a silhouette of what used to be Big Joe. The shadow of his bulky, rounded frame created a sharp contrast with the bloodstained wall. This must be what it feels like to kill a whale, I thought.