A M E R I C A N C R U D E

by Eileen Sheehan

CHAPTER ONE

Getting kidnapped by men who do it for a living means they know how to silence you, how to prevent you from fighting back, and how to get you from a public sidewalk into their awaiting van in mere seconds.

I’d seen the black-bag-over-the-head thing done in movies. But what I never realized prior to the night of my own abduction is just how well the black bag works to keep you from screaming. Using the element of surprise, the bag takes your breath away. And then your voice box can’t function when your cloth-covered head gets snapped back a full ninety degrees as if you were a human Pez dispenser. After maybe ten seconds (if you have retained your wits and gotten a handle on what’s happening) you might be able to muster your breath and scream through the bag. But you’re already face-down in van at that point, and it’s already speeding away. The black bag also has a dampening effect on your instinct to swing your arms or legs at your assailants since you can’t see what to swing at. The kind of men who use black bags are professionals after all, trained to know that the human fight-or-flight reflex is almost 100% wired into the vision centers. So shutting down your vision prevents that very specialized cocktail of an adrenaline dump from ever happening, making it all the easier for them to force your arms behind you and loop the flat plastic cords on your wrists. Of course, an entirely different adrenaline dump happens instead --one of fear and helplessness, one that sets your heart pounding so hard you can hear it as you lie on the carpeted floor of the fast-moving vehicle. While the cruel grip of many unseen hands, knees and shoes keeps you pinned to that floor, you feel your throbbing shoulders moan from being torqued back far enough to where they might dislocate. I learned first hand that night that the black bag robs you of any inclination to fight, and instead makes you cower in quiet submission, leaving you to pant quick shallow breaths into its smothering darkness.

*** *** *** ***

MK called me at home late on a Thursday night. Her goal that evening was pure antagonism.

“American Crude” / Eileen Sheehan / First 25 pp / No CT Writers Workshop / June 2011

She started out with the false accusation that I’d endangered Jason. “He told me he saw a rat in your rear courtyard,” she said.

I might’ve laughed at her for being so petty, but held back when I noticed the extra care she took with her words --too perfect, too well spoken. And that’s when I figured out she was “performing” for an eavesdropper --someone she’d arranged to listen in, either on conference call or standing right next to her. Exactly who she’d involve at nine PM had me worried. Maybe her sister, maybe her lawyer, God forbid it was our nine-year-old son.

“This is the City,” I kept my tone flat. “There are rats.”

“Well then, Peter, maybe you should get a proper apartment in an elevator building with a doorman.” She never called me “Peter” except to be condescending.

“Tell ya’ what, Mary Kelly, I’ll inform my landlord that our son saw ONE rat out back, okay?” And I never called her “Mary Kelly” except to return the favor.

As I intended, my reply triggered a lengthy pent up rage from her. While I at first reveled at her error of losing her temper, my victory fizzled when I realized she wasn’t exhibiting the haphazard frenzy she typically thrashed around in during one of her tirades. Instead she voiced her grievances with a calm and glaring orderliness, indicating pre-phone call planning. And in my silence, as I endured her well-rehearsed attack, I became all the more certain her real intention was to renegotiate my custody of Jason.

Most of her ire that night took careful aim at my apartment, which I admit was old --a one bedroom mom-and-pop over an antiques shop near Locust Street. But it was clean and the neighborhood respectable. My lawyer said the judge was satisfied with the place so MK had no legal grounds to protest. Regardless, she knew where all my buttons lay, and pushed them that evening for reasons I knew went beyond her standard need of self satisfaction.

Her laundry list was so orderly it made me suspect she was reading from a sheet of paper: How dare I use a work vehicle to pick up Jason. How dare I not bring him to Mass on my Sundays with him. How dare I not have cable or internet for him. How dare I not have air conditioning. How dare I hang

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my Desert Storm souvenirs on my walls where he could see them. How dare I be a lousy cook. I at last demanded she tell me who was in the room with her, and added: “I sure do hope it’s not Jason.” She didn’t answer.

As my last resort I tried a “safe word” on her, a forgotten leftover from our bygone days of hot sex and real trust, a remnant of our now dead “marriage language.” She ignored it and continued her screed. So I gave up. I just stood there in my kitchen getting verbally flailed, fixing my eyes on the wall-mounted phone base where a tiny red light blinked from that day’s unretrieved messages (mostly my creditors).

I finally started jotting down my alleged “crimes.” And all the while I imagined what she probably looked like at the other end of the line: standing in her own kitchen (which I renovated myself for her five years earlier), her phone-holding hand buried deep in her long blonde mane. I also envisioned her free hand jerking left and right as it brandished its lethal index finger of condemnation.

When she finished and hung up, I surprised myself when I slammed my own receiver into the cradle with a punch-like force. The blow made a spurt of white plaster grit cascade from behind the phone base and past the dangling spiral phone cord until it sprinkled loudly on the floor at my feet. Shocked at my outburst I froze myself in place, still clutching the warm plastic phone, staring hard at the blinking red light. I took slow deep breaths to prevent a hallway stomping tantrum. After at last achieving a calm, I released the phone and glanced over to the fridge where I’d scotch taped a recent photo of Jason. He mugged smartly for the camera that day, wearing my smile and his mother’s blue eyes. It hung beside a crayon picture he’d drawn while sitting at my kitchen table five days earlier. That drawing depicted the two of us holding hands in the company of an elephant, a giraffe and a monkey at the Philadelphia Zoo.

I sighed and turned back to my list of her rants, determined to call my lawyer first thing in the morning.

Later in the living room I readied for bed by yanking open the futon. Stubborn traces of my anger made themselves evident in the force of that yank. As I undressed, a warm September breeze wafted through the curtains at me.

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I lay on the mattress and obsessively replayed MK’s words in my mind, dreading the possibility Jason overheard everything. After ten minutes of enduring the torment of that endless audio loop I got up and took a sleeping pill.

*** *** *** ***

I can’t say how far they took me. I only know we briefly used the highway. When the van eventually stopped, the unseen hands, knees and shoes all released. Two men seized me by both elbows and dragged me from the vehicle out into a blistering cold wind. They forced me to walk along a gravel lot. Through the bag I heard a tug boat sound its horn somewhere nearby. And when the fierce wind pierced the black cloth, I detected the aroma of salt water in the air.

I wore a suit that day --quite rare for me. So my new, not-broken-in-yet dress shoes scuffed clumsily over the tiny, scattering stones as the men marched me onward. Over the suit I wore an equally new, full-length rain coat. While my layers of clothing leant some protection from the arctic blast, they also compounded the constriction of my arms.

They hurried me into an unheated building with a concrete floor that echoed with our steps. I tried to count the footfalls and it sounded like at least four men --including my “escorts”-- accompanied me. Then we entered a room.

Once in the room they threw me forward, releasing their grip, hurling me against a wall that felt like brick. With my hands still tied behind my back I lost my balance and teetered sideways, hitting another wall (it turns out I was in a corner) which kept me from hitting the floor.

I stood hyperventilating in that frigid corner of the brick room, my back to whoever my captors were. There I waited.

*** *** *** ***

The next morning I strolled through my kitchen, sipping the day’s first cup of coffee. I also tried to forget a string of dark, stress-induced and tranquilizer-warped dreams from the night before. I instead focused on composing in my head how to tell my lawyer about MK’s phone call.

While mulling over that, I glanced at my utility meter which hung fixed to the wall by the phone. I clicked through the

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dozens of charts and graphs available on the meter’s display screen, seeking one chart in particular. I bypassed the gas bill (which I’d just paid), bypassed the water bill (not due for another week), and went straight for the electric bill. When I found it, what I read there spawned a sick fear in my gut. Even though I’d used less electricity that month than any prior month since my lease began in November, the dollar figure I’d owe in just three more days was double what I had in my bank account. I suddenly recalled a TV news story that aired back in May about a rate-hike coming in September. But I’d been so caught up in the divorce all summer that I never assimilated that advance warning. And if this was the impact on my apartment’s electric bill, then surely the bill at my shop would prove three times as much.

In defeat I tipped my head against the wall by the phone, oblivious to the mug cooling in my grip. I imagined the power getting shut off the following week just as Jason and I walked in the door with his suitcase Friday afternoon. The string of nightmares I’d suffered the night before began creeping back --nightmares about losing my son.

My head still to the wall, a tepid nausea awakening in my gut, I realized that for the very first time I faced true insolvency. I hadn’t paid my lawyer August’s installment and yet here I was getting ready to rack up more billable hours with him. I then felt the surprising urge to pray. It surprised me since I hadn’t prayed --really prayed as if I fucking meant it-- in decades. Yet that path of desperation started to appeal for the first time since grade school … until I recalled the starry-eyed words of my ever cheerful secretary Stephanie. “Our ancestors watch over us from the Heavens,” she beamed to me one day from behind her deathly white face makeup. I remember grinning at her, asking in half-seriousness if she was Native American (if so that would’ve made her the first goth-chick tribal member I’d ever met or heard of). “No,” she said, smiling with black lipstick. “I just think it’s a cool concept,” she shrugged and went back to her work, just as cheerful as ever.

My temple against the plaster, I mused on her words in dark sorrow. That’s when the phone rang, inches from my ear.

Startled by the ringer’s loudness, I jerked my head back from the wall to glare hard at the squawking machine. I noticed with a twinge of guilt the same red light blinking with the same unretrieved messages. I sighed, knowing if I

5

didn’t answer then yet one more message would get stacked up behind the others. But rarely inclined to face the world before seven-thirty, I turned away from it and escaped into the self-absorbed comfort of working through my coffee.

Then it finally hit me that the caller ID merely read “CELL PHONE, PA.” A cell phone wasn’t likely to be a creditor. With a second glance I noticed the exchange was from right there in the City. Fearful of an emergency involving Jason, I put down my mug, braced myself and answered: “Hello?”

“Yes, good morning. Is this Peter Walczak?”

Neither bill collectors nor emergency room liaisons say “good morning,” so chances were good the call would prove harmless. Whoever she was she had a sweet voice. Not only do I admire a nice telephone voice, I appreciated her flawless pronunciation of my name: “vall-chuck.” Few people on the western side of the Atlantic knew to render that Polish “w” as a “v.” So since immigrating to the USA, my forebears took up the American “w,” introducing themselves as “wall-chuck.” As for the rest of my name, most people bastardized it as “wall-ck-zack” or “wall-shack.” But Mystery Lady here nailed it beautifully: vall-chuck. She had so charmed me that I nearly dropped my guard against the lingering possibility I was about to get dunned.

“Uh, yes it is,” was all I would let myself say.

“Hello, Mr. Walczak,” Mystery Lady continued in her kind and tender treatment of my name. “I, um …” and here she grew timid. “… I hope this isn’t … too early in the … morning?” She ended with the insecure upward inflection of a question. Her sudden anxiety over the inappropriateness of the hour struck me --she’d only just realized her error! Due to her mildly British accent, I formed the (weak) theory that she hailed from a Euro or Indian call center with calls re-routed through a Philly transfer station. And yet then (in my theory), only after I’d answered did she notice too late that she’d called my time zone prematurely. As I pondered this I remembered my lawyer once telling me collection agencies and telemarketers can’t call private homes at “inappropriate hours.” So I said to her, “That depends on what this call’s all about.” Her answer confirmed she definitely wasn’t calling from overseas.

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“Well, I was hoping to secure your professional services.” The hesitation disappeared so now her speech exhibited a certain brand of refinement that only comes from years of boarding school --in short she sounded rich. My hunch became even more plausible when she added: “And since it’s going to be a rather unorthodox contract, I feel obligated to pay you considerably more than your usual rate.”

That rang all the bells of my happy-meter. Elated at having an eager client with money to burn, I overlooked the odd fact of her calling my home number and asked what the contract involved. She said, “I’d rather not discuss that on the phone, but I also want to know if you’re willing to accept cash,” which meant it’d be an under-the-table job. My happy-meter instantly shut down and my caution lights started blinking. Had this woman called at any other time than right after MK’s late night phone confrontation I’d have deemed it a blessing. But in my new paranoia over MK’s shenanigans, I feared this woman might’ve been hired by my ex-wife’s lawyer to get me caught doing something illegal.

I kept one hopeful eye on this being legitimate. So to head off any illicit discussions, I gave the delicate speech on professional ethics and not losing my license. That speech sometimes offended people, especially rich ones. After all who was I, a mere “common laborer” (actually, I’m a “craftsperson”), to tell anyone with buckets of money I had more scruples than they? Surprisingly she took no offense. And with overt promises that nothing was illegal she gently persisted. She never got pushy, just tried to entice me by offering the cash up front and tossing in a contingency bonus at the back end. When I asked how much cash she had in mind, she gave me her answer. I froze in uncertainty. She had just quoted a dollar figure so outlandishly high there was no way this could be real. But still -- that kind of money would’ve gotten me on my feet again with loads left over afterward. Caught between paranoia and finances, this conversation was proving to be a real head-fucker.

“Mr. Walczak? Are you there?” she asked, making me realize I was taking way too long to second guess everything.

I summoned an inner calm. The coffee started kicking in, boosting my alertness. And then I pondered the bizarreness of her calling my home and not my shop. “May I ask,” I began slowly, “where you got my home phone number from?”

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She paused. At first I thought I’d tripped her up, assuming her hesitation meant she was scrambling to think up a lie. But her pause turned out to be awkward embarrassment.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she sounded downright mortified. “Are you saying I called your private residence just now?”

“Well ... yeah.”

“I truly apologize!” She fell into a nervous laughter (but lacking any silly giddiness). “I had your name and number on a scrap of paper and assumed--” She interrupted herself and regrouped, squashing her nervous laugh, shifting to a heartfelt conviction. “I had no intention of disturbing you at home. I confess I wondered when you answered why you merely said ‘hello’ and didn’t recite some sort of canned business greeting and--” Again she regrouped. “I only called this early because I wanted your business’ voicemail, not a live person and--” Yet one last regroup. “You’re probably still in the middle of your breakfast!”

“Uh, well,” I laughed, taken in by her candor as I relaxed my suspicions, “I actually haven’t had breakfast yet.”

She instantly seized upon that fact. So as a token of good will she offered to buy me breakfast if I’d hurry over to Hal’s Diner by eight o’clock. Even though I still meant to turn down her contract, Hal’s had an awesome breakfast.

When we ended the phone call, I gently eased the receiver into the wall-mounted phone base then paused, holding it, lingering over the warmth emanating from it. I recalled the description she gave of herself: “I’ll be wearing a brown velvet hat with a flower on one side.” I now indulged in the thought of touching soft brown velvet. But I shook off that thought and began my leaving-the-apartment rituals.

I raced around, closing windows, tidying up, and noticed an extra spring in my step. But then I realized: She never gave her name. That struck me as … odd. I stopped pondering that when I saw the time: seven-forty. I had to go!

I snatched my jacket, keys, and cell phone (strangely, I don’t miss cell phones) then opened my apartment door which sat perched atop the straight staircase leading down to my front door. My hand still on the knob I paused on the top

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step and looked back inside. Recalling MK’s vicious phone call, I defiantly thought to myself: It’s not THAT bad!

I kept it immaculate (two years in the Army will do that to you). And it had a nice rear view to a garden tended by an old man across the way. Sure, it was small --smaller than the townhouse I relinquished to MK-- but it was pleasant and … “homey.” I even wangled a break in the rent in exchange for taking care of the furnace.

Lingering in the door I turned to the mirror. Blue jeans and a green corduroy shirt --not very authoritative, but the leather jacket looked cool. This is a business breakfast with a prospective client, I thought, so I have to look good. I also took solace from Friday being a shower day for me, so I smelled good at that moment. As an added bonus I’d also just shampooed, allowing me to go hatless that morning. (I always deemed my hair one of my better assets, but only when it was clean.) I adjusted my collar then headed down the stairs, locking the door behind me.

CHAPTER TWO

“Sit down!” a man’s voice ordered. So I leaned sideways against one wall, using it to brace myself as I slid down to the floor. During my descent, the rough surface of the bricks snagged against the fibers of my raincoat’s sleeve.

Seated on the icy concrete floor, both hands behind me and one screaming shoulder propped against the harsh wall, I continued to wait. My breathing started to slow and my heart rate leveled off. I now merely trembled. The black cloth of the bag started growing damp from my respiration and sweat. In that frigid room, the trapped humidity in the bag chilled my head. I could no longer tell how much of my trembling came from unceasing fear or relentless cold. I recalled my combat lifesaver training from my Army days and considered the possibility I might go into mild shock from the combined extremes of trauma and temperature. I further considered whether going into shock might be a godsend.

*** *** *** ***

After I made it downstairs and onto the sidewalk, the danger of even just meeting with Mystery Lady started weighing heavily. I can’t risk my license! I stomped along, dreading getting caught up in something shady. Losing my license

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would mean I’d lose my business, file bankruptcy, lose the apartment. Then I’d lose Jason due to my inability either to support him at MK’s house or provide a decent place for visits with me. And even if found innocent of any wrongdoing, and if my license and business remained intact, the scandal of my undergoing such a licensing review would never get by the scrutiny of Family Court. I resolved just to eat and say good-bye to this woman forever, regardless of whatever she had in mind.

What exactly does she have in mind?

“Just tank work, Mr. Walczak,” she’d vaguely said. Despite her claims to the contrary, I doubted it was legal. But as I rounded the corner onto Locust Street, the image of the blinking red light on my phone began to gnaw at me. And the looming threat of the power getting cut off intensified my anxiety. So I started to rationalize accepting her contract “just this once” as long as it stayed in code requirements.

The divorce settlement back in June cleaned me out. Giving up my half of our (devalued) house gutted my financial profile. Then I had ten months of back-child support to pay all in one shot, followed by regular monthly child support from then on. And all of that happened during a period when I mysteriously began losing customers in droves. When July started getting rough the first act of damage control I resorted to was selling my personal car --almost giving it away (my real goal was shedding the monthly costs of gas, parking, and insurance premiums). Next I ditched my cable and internet, then hocked my electronics. And then I broke a cardinal rule of business: I dipped into the company account … deeply. That lack of operating capital proved a near-fatal mistake. Not only did the price of diesel for my two work vehicles exceed fifteen dollars a gallon that summer, but my compressor broke down so I couldn’t do air conditioning repairs or service all during July. That’s when I found out too late why so many customers had left me: since Easter MK’s family had been spreading bad word of mouth on my business, ruining my reputation and whittling away at my customer base. My lawyer said with no proof of the slander we could take no action, and trying to litigate her on an unprovable accusation would look bad in Family Court. The final blow to my finances happened when a contract I’d lined up for August to do the pipe grid on a new townhouse fell through because the builder went bankrupt. So for the first time ever I got behind on my shop’s mortgage payments. In

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desperation I cashed in an IRA to keep the lights on and pay my secretary, figuring if I could hold out until heating season I’d pull through. In September most businesses and landlords do pre-winter maintenance on their furnaces, so a handful of those might’ve put me in the black again by the start of autumn. But another damned nationwide banking collapse had been unfolding since April, rippling yet more destruction through the US economy, prompting my few remaining heating clients to chance the winter without me. While perhaps some of the lost heating business was due to my devious in-laws, I couldn’t blame it all on MK’s family because when it came to optional services like that, most people were just flat-out broke! My only hope now was for the random heating system here and there to break down, warranting emergency repair. But between an unusually warm September, and the City not requiring landlords to provide heat until the First of October, such breakdowns wouldn’t happen for ten more days. Meanwhile my bank was nearing the end of its patience. So perhaps Mystery Lady would be my salvation.

As I walked down Locust Street, I pulled out my phone and called the office to leave a voice message. “Hey Stephanie, it’s Pete. Gonna be late --got a business meeting. I’ll be in b’fore ten. No calls, ‘less it’s an emergency. See ya’.” I collapsed my phone while glancing at my quickly strolling reflection in a dark and empty shop window: the jacket definitely made the outfit. I fished out my sunglasses and donned them. Very cool, very business-like. At least on the surface I’d look like I had it all together.

I passed other pedestrians, my nostrils assailed by their group blendings of perfumes and colognes which only partway masked a wide array of body odors. I sometimes caught scent of a person who seemed genuinely clean. In rare instances I inhaled a human smell which rivaled that of a dead animal. Yet these weren’t homeless people, just regular folks trying to get by in the face of the City’s latest water restrictions. While some people’s body chemistries allowed them to squeak through a full 48 hours without bathing, others clearly could not. But they had to go without. We all did. I usually managed to hit the 40-hour mark before getting flat out offensive, so my luke warm shower from an hour earlier lent a needed air of confidence to my stride.

As I continued my brisk walk, I focused hard on my more than 20-year habit of walking very straight and very tall,

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walking “with a purpose.” I took another glance at my reflection in the next smeary set of deserted shop windows. Observing my momentum, I recalled the command given me many years earlier: “Walk like you have a purpose in life, soldier!” Very straight and very tall. With a purpose.

Satisfied with my gait, I again asked myself, Is this job going to be illegal?

Rich people get away with doing lots of illegal things with their private houses (or try to). They dig their cellars down deeper than local ordinances allow so their fully finished basements can have twelve-foot ceilings instead of nine-foot. They build separate apartments for their nannies over their garages --complete with full baths and kitchens-- even if the neighborhood is only zoned for single-family dwellings. And they sneak across the boundaries of adjacent and federally protected wildlife preserves to chop down dozens or even hundreds of trees to enhance the picturesque views of lakes and mountains. And in order to get away with such forbidden dream-house renovations, they hire guys like me under the table. No permits. No inspectors. Just cash and no questions asked. But if a guy like me ever got caught doing a job like that, it’d mean massive fines, a revoked license, the shuttering of my business, and I’d never see my son again. While being snagged in a patently illegal job would certainly cost me my license, a legitimate contract merely done off the books would get me in trouble with no one other than the IRS. So maybe I could risk it “just this once.” I walked along, half hoping, half dreading, and fully musing on that woman’s beautiful voice.

Distracted by these thoughts, I didn’t notice I was passing Frazetti’s Pawn Shop where I’d hocked my electronics. Mr. Frazetti spotted me, waved, and ran outside. I bristled.

“Hey, Pete!” he called. “Ready to sell me that last coin?”

I stopped on the sidewalk and laughed as I turned to him with a forced smile. He grinned back through long, yellow, jumbled teeth, his salt-and-pepper beard stubble many days overgrown. He always wore the same grungy Phillies cap to hide greasy hair I suspect he cleaned maybe twice a month.

For most Americans, after our cultural standard of showers seven days a week universally downgraded to just three days a week, there quickly came a revival of the decades dormant

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custom of wearing hats in public to cover bad hair. Hat sales soared, and America witnessed a marked change to professional uniforms. Female nurses and waitresses returned to wearing hair nets and pinned on caps. Most service jobs brought back some variation on a baseball cap. Sales of body cleansers slumped while sales of cologne and perfume tripled. Meanwhile, Mr. Frazetti’s lack of hygiene was downright epic judging by the strength of his stench. He didn’t even try to cover it with cologne. I surmised early on in my dealings with him that he wasn’t simply being frugal in his failure to bathe, just flat out lazy.

“Sorry, Mr. Frazetti,” I shook my head, holding my nose from the inside, “not for 900 bucks. Like I said: only 500 o’ those coins were ever struck. They’re valuable.”

“Oh, come on, Pete!” he chided. “Those kinda’ coins, they’re not worth one penny more‘n their weight in gold. Only way to get the value out of ‘em is to melt ‘em down.”

He was referring to the last of my seven challenge coins. I’d already sold him the other six, but the seventh represented the final holdout in my desperate quest for cash. I shrugged and gave him my reply with the same sloppy urban grammar I’d employed my entire life: “If’a can’t get a decent price, wanna’ give it t’ my son one day.”

“I offered a decent price! But you think sentimental value translates to real value. But that’s not how it works with coins, ‘specially when you’re talkin’ ‘bout ones that weren’t real currency. Don’t matter that there’s just 500 of ‘em. Only way the value of the sentiment can exceed the value of the gold’s if somebody famous was in your Army unit with you, like maybe somebody who became a rock star or somethin’. Did you have any congressmen or movie stars or Nobel Laureates in your squad with you in the Gulf War?”

Challenge coins enjoyed a long tradition in the United States armed forces. They were always custom designed to include not only a unit’s name but even its personality. So my team, the Desert Rat Squad, had a great big grinning rat emblazoned on ours. The CO’s task of handing them out to team members was the military equivalent of gold stars from the teacher. They were not an officially endorsed aspect of American military procedure, but were unofficially encouraged as an excellent morale booster and an aid to team bonding. Beyond that they were ultimately a very expensive

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novelty --so expensive only individuals with lots of disposable cash could make them possible. Commissioned on a private basis with a stateside mint by more affluent members of a given squad, one minting of just a few hundred coins could easily cost thousands of dollars. The price only went up from there if their composition included real gold. Challenge coins didn’t have to be made with gold but they did need to have a little class. Most coins from other units were merely plated with silver. But Captain Warren, a man who always had a mild whiff of money about him, coughed up enough to allow the three different sets of coins that represented the three units under his Desert Shield command to each be made of 10 karat solid white gold. He was an awesome CO. And my teammates and I once speculated in full seriousness whether he might become president one day.

After Jason was born, MK --in her personal revulsion of war-- forbade me to tell our son about my Army days, my former captain, and the seven tales behind each coin. But telling him one day was deeply important to me. And that was the official reason I gave Mr. Frazetti for my holding onto that last coin. The unofficial reason was I didn’t want to get stuck having to buy another war vet a drink.

“Nah,” I smiled, shaking my head and breathing through my mouth. “No congressmen. No movie stars. Just a buncha’ Army goons and one very cool commanding officer.”

“Then my offer stands,” he said. “Nine-hundred dollars. You better take it now while the price of gold is still high.”

If not for Mystery Lady’s phone call, I might’ve instantly pulled out my wallet, handed him the coin, and used the nine-hundred to pay the utility bill that very morning. But maybe Mystery Lady could help me avoid yet one more painful and permanent sacrifice in the long string of sacrifices I’d made during the prior 12 months of MK’s wrath.

“I’ll let ya’ know,” I laughed, then continued walking. If in the end I had to decline “the Mystery Lady deal,” I took comfort in knowing I could come right back to Mr. Frazetti in mere minutes and rescue my electric bill.

*** *** *** ***

I sat shivering on the floor with that damned bag still on my head. A long time passed. I heard the ongoing activity of

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someone fiddling with their cell phone. I also heard the occasional snicker. Once I even heard a whisper of “Look at this,” which was answered with an affirming chuckle from a second man in the room. The cell phone fiddling continued.

The icy hard floor started making my legs and my ass numb. The pain in my shoulders downgraded to a dull ache as the very sensation of my even having any arms at all faded to actual doubt. Then I started wondering about the time. It was Monday night so I was due at the shop tomorrow. How long before anyone missed me? How long before anyone called the police in search of me? Had anyone on the street or in a window seen the men snatch me away? If so, would they report it? And who the fuck were these assholes? Was I even the correct target of their black-bag specialty services? The suit! I thought. I never wear a suit! And I was walking in neighborhood I’d never been in before. It was too dark to see clearly. It was someone else they wanted. Had to be.

*** *** *** ***

I arrived outside Hal’s right at eight and peered through the glass. Amid the mob of patrons I saw a variety of hats on both men and women. Hatless folks (like me) were a clear minority. But then I spied the backside of a dark brown hat that was soft and floppy looking. A small swirl of coral-colored velvet shaped into a flower graced one side. Its wearer sat alone in a booth, clicking a Blackberry. I hovered, waiting for her to turn so I could view her face. As I waited I carefully slid my sunglasses off making sure never to avert my eyes from the hat and its wearer.

At last the waitress came to pour a glass of water, and the velvet hat pivoted to greet the water-pourer. I only caught Mystery Lady’s profile and only for a few moments, but that one glimpse was all I needed. She was far more than merely pretty --she was real. A slow smile of awe came to my face.

So many women from the ranks of American wealth in that era had disfigured themselves with a soulless enslavement to nip and tuck lies. That rampant epidemic of self-mutilation included bottled blonde hair, cantaloupe-sized breast implants, and liposuctioned states of skeletal emaciation. Deluded shadows of former womanhood, warped and ruined.

But not Mystery Lady.

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Her dark hair shined, and although very short it still boasted a thick vibrance, just begging for a set of kind fingers to slide up the delicate nape of her neck into those generous handfuls of soft humanity. Her skin had a rich olive tone. And as I watched her talk to the waitress, the quiet grace of her gestures and head noddings evoked the same classiness so evident in her voice earlier. In those few moments I even witnessed her stand up briefly to remove a brown velvet jacket that matched the hat. And instead of a pair of silicon cantaloupes beneath her dark knit turtleneck, she sported a refreshing set of … reality.

A sweet, humming euphoria rose in my chest. And as long as I didn’t disengage the trance-like fixation of my eyes from the hat-wearer, my bliss would remain intact. I lingered in my gaze, nursing my buzz, deciding how to enter, imagining my triumphal and god-like arrival at her table would prompt a rapturous smile of ecstasy from her. But then I saw her reach forth her left hand to rest it on the now-filled water glass. That’s when I caught the unmistakable glisten of a diamond ring.

I paused.

My aspirations of godhood quickly deflated, and the humming euphoria gave way to a slow melancholy like the final wisps of an abandoned cigarette right as it burns itself out.

I sighed. Then I summoned all my professionalism, and with a cool casualness I entered the stuffy diner. Bracing myself against this new mix of colognes and perfumes now magnified by the added heat, I headed for her table projecting a believable air of being detached and aloof.

When I reached her tableside she tilted her head sidelong at me in quiet neutrality. With one curious eyebrow arched, she awaited my self-introduction. Her eyes were chestnut.

“Brown velvet hat with a flower on the side?” I asked.

And then she smiled. While not the rapturous smile of adoration I’d hoped for, its glow boosted my ego.

“Mr. Walczak! Thank you for coming. Please join me.”

In response to the uncomfortable temperature I slipped off my jacket. Then I sat as she packed away the Blackberry.

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I’ll confess to two acts of stealth-machismo I incorporated into my jacket-shedding. First, I cranked both shoulders back extra hard (keeping them back all through breakfast). And second, I stole another glimpse at her twinkling wedding band. Like the rest of her, it too was real. And at close range I could tell it was an exquisite piece of workmanship with serious money behind it.

The waitress came with menus, and Mystery Lady requested a glass of water be brought for me as well. I protested at the expense, but Mystery Lady raised her hand and reminded me: “Please,” she said, “this is my treat.” So I conceded.

However, the waitress said, “Ma’am, we just ran out of our last jug of bottled water. So all we have left now it tap. Tap is free, but only if you want it.”

Mystery Lady’s eyes flickered at her for a moment in quiet alarm. I did my best to hold back any evidence of my understandable disgust at the idea of drinking tap water.

“Here, take mine!” Mystery Lady suddenly said, thrusting her glass of pristinely clean water across the table at me.

“No, no!” I said, thrusting it right back again. “Tap is fine! I insist.” (Playing the “I insist” card is the polite, rich-people equivalent of “My way or the highway.” So I was now speaking her language.)

Mystery Lady paused at my “forcefulness,” then reluctantly gave in. She nodded at the waitress who set down a clear empty glass for me and filled it from her pitcher. As the water and ice cubes tumbled forth, I caught the pungent aroma of too much chlorine --all too typical of City tap water. Ignoring the smell, I nodded my gratitude and returned my attentions to the menu. The waitress left.

While unfolding my menu, I pushed aside the drinking glass where the swirling cubes slowed their gyrations within the cloudy water. Then I stole a glance over the menu at my hostess and potential client. I pondered her age --maybe late twenties, and that made me feel old. Yet with one of those accursed face lifts she might’ve been in her forties. But the lack of overdone perfection to her face made me hopeful she had never gone under the knife and merely took very good care of herself. So I finally pegged Mystery Lady as somewhere in her thirties. Then I wondered about “Mr.

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Mystery.” Was he also in his thirties? Or was he a decrepit old codger far past an acceptable age for someone like her? Did she love him? Or did she marry him for his money? As for the gentle mahogany curls peeking out from under her hat, I could tell she was freshly bathed and shampooed that very morning. She didn’t wear the hat to cover bad hair, she wore it to be fashionable!

When it came time to order, I tightened up the slipshod jargon of my urban upbringing known as “Philly-speak” and actually sounded half-civilized for a change. After the waitress took our order and left with the menus, I said to Mystery Lady with a modest laugh: “I’m embarrassed to say this but I think I forgot your name.”

She replied with an air of deliberate mystery befitting of my secret nickname for her: “You can call me … Mrs. Jones.”

I cracked a wry grin while giving her a knowing glance --that wasn’t her real name! And she knew that I knew, so she grinned back with a shrug. Part of me hoped to catch a tiny hint of flirtation in her grin. But I saw nothing like flirtiness, only a veiled nervousness.

I eventually lifted my water glass and readied to take my first sip. I stifled all betrayals of revulsion as the now-settled water revealed foreign particles floating visibly in the yellow-tinged liquid. The kind of faucet attachment that could have provided Hal’s with acceptable drinking water for its customers wasn’t at all expensive. However, the disposable filters were the real bitch to have to pay for. Hal’s probably had a faucet attachment sitting in their kitchen at that very moment. But that attachment also probably had either a fully spent filter cartridge in it, or no cartridge at all. Hal’s wasn’t stingy. It’s just that almost no one could get their hands on the filters anymore.

“So, Mrs. Jones,” I said, bracing against the bleach-water fumes rising from my glass while I focused on my grammar, “can I ask what kind of tank work you’re in the market for?” I set my lips to the glass, and with a smile I forced in a reluctant swig of the yellowed swimming pool water. Thus I fulfilled my obligation to being a gracious guest, and saw no need to take any further putrid sips for the rest of the meal. A “personal-sized” bottle of spring water would have been preferable, but those were a thing of the past. I looked for the next opportunity to order a coffee.

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“As far as the contract,” she began cautiously, “can we hold off talking business ‘til after we’ve eaten?”

I found her request appealing since it’d be easier for me to eat first and turn her down later. Free breakfast with a pretty lady -- what more could a man ask for?

So we talked small talk: the weather, traffic, even sports. We avoided the triple taboo of sex, politics, and religion. We also avoided any talk of our private lives including spouses. I let slip one fleeting mention of my son, causing her to light up. I responded to her inner spark by smiling back far more broadly than I intended. When I asked if she had children, she mustered a stilted smile. “No,” she shook her head. I changed the subject back to the weather again.

The food arrived and it was great. And her impeccable table manners awed me to the point of distraction. I’d already second guessed her to be made of money. But witnessing her dining conduct made me suspect she was old money. Possibly even “a Main Liner,” which (in Philly-speak) meant she likely hailed from the long narrow strip about fifteen miles in length, laid out in a fairly straight path called “The Main Line.” That platinum ribbon of real estate was the heart of high society in the Philadelphia suburbs, deriving its name from the coveted commuter train that ran through a string of desperately expensive Victorian era streetcar villages on its way into the City. While Philly’s public transit system certainly had other trains, that particular line was forever dubbed the most important line, the “main” line. If not for the presence of that train, none of the houses in those villages would have been worth half what they typically fetched in the market since the closer a house sat to the train, the higher its value. The layout of the Main Line was dictated by that train, its personality was defined by the train, and the poshy residents of the area were so protective of it that they could always be counted on to fight hard to prevent their train from ever being compromised. If Mystery Lady didn’t live there surely she ran with the people who did. If so that made her someone who had absolutely everything and needed absolutely nothing. Yet still she needed my services -- badly enough to offer the inconceivable fee of fifty thousand dollars for them.

What exactly does she have in mind?

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I again eyed her wedding band.

Where is “Mr. Mystery” in all of this? Is she hiring me behind his back? Or is he privy to her hiring me and merely looking the other way? Or is he in on it all and going to be very much a part of it? What is … “it”?

Beyond my suspecting the contract had to be illegal, my other unspoken question was: Will it also be immoral? Her failure to hide the ring suggested I likely wouldn’t be subjected to the sexual dalliance of a desperate housewife.

As we chatted I asked for the second time that day (with a little more diplomacy) where she got my home phone number. I was unlisted so it might’ve come from a mutual friend or a prior customer. Not too many people knew my home number and I’d had it for less than a year, so the source of the reference might help me learn her true identity. She merely smiled and said: “I prefer not to be a name-dropper.” Total stonewall. So I smiled right back and let it go.

When the plates were cleared and only the coffee remained, she finally got to the business part of the conversation:

“I have an oil tank in the basement,” she said. “It’s leaking. I need it fixed.”

That’s it? A leaky tank? She wants to get all cloak-and-dagger over a damned oil tank?

Minor repair work required no permits or inspections. So fixing a leak under the table would be in no way illegal as far as my state licensing went. But why all the secrecy? Had the tank been installed by another under-the-table contractor, making it an unregistered or even out-of-code tank? Was the leak contaminating the ground water, but she and her husband wanted to avoid reporting it to the local environmental board? If either possibility turned out to be the case, there was no way I’d touch this job since those fines started in the four-digit range, and then a mandatory licensing review would follow.

“Forgive me but …” and then I dropped down to a whisper, “I don’t understand why a tank repair is worth fifty thousand, cash up front, with a back-end bonus.”

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“It’s a bit more complex than that,” she whispered in return. “I hope to secure not just your services. I’m also seeking your … discretion. It’s all about privacy. So the location of my house can never be disclosed by you, nor details about anything in the house.”

I paused in mild intrigue.

“Is your husband a politician or a celebrity?” I asked. “Is that what this is about? He’s famous?”

“No. It’s just that the privacy of that household must remain utterly uncompromised.”

I knew there had to be more than she was letting on. Nobody paid fifty-grand for mere “privacy.”

“Mrs. Jones, what exactly constitutes ‘privacy’?”

“No matter what you see in my house, no matter how bizarre, you cannot ask questions, you cannot divulge to anyone the location of the house, you cannot tell anyone what you saw there, nor that you’d even been there in the first place.”

My happy-meter was nowhere to be found now. In its place my run-like-hell claxon blared full blast. Did her basement perhaps serve as the meeting place for some weird religious cult? A kinky swingers club? A drug ring? A human traffic hub? Fifty grand or not, my license and my son were worth far more than her “privacy.” I quickly mapped out in my mind the six block walk between Hal’s and Mr. Frazetti’s. Then I defaulted to a blank stare as I struggled over how to thank her for breakfast and excuse myself to leave in one minute or less. In my haste I tossed aside my grammar filter and started dropping my consonants again.

“Ya’ know, I gotta’ confess,” I noticed I was involuntarily shaking my head, “only reason I came today is Hal’s Diner’s got th’ best breakfast in town an’ so --”

-- But my cell phone rang. In awkwardness I glanced and saw it was the office number, which meant it was an emergency.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Mystery Lady, “it’s my secretary. I gotta’ take it. But I’ll be quick.” I popped the phone open and turned sideways to answer. “Hello? Steph?”

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“Pete,” Stephanie’s voice was anxious, and I could even hear her committing the rare faux pas of letting her tongue ring click nervously against her teeth. “That guy from the bank called again. He said he couldn’t get you another extension this time. So he said if you don’t pay the entire balance by the end of the day, he’s going to foreclose.”

I sat there frozen, numbly holding the phone to my head while a wave of trauma shuddered through my whole body. And then I imagined the courts taking my son away.

I turned to Mystery Lady and asked: “How soon can you get me the cash?”

CHAPTER THREE

At last someone new entered the room. The newcomer sat down at a table that I hadn’t even known was there. I heard him set something on the table. I heard the chime of a computer booting up. I heard a computer keyboard getting typed on by a very fast typist. The typing lasted a long time.

During all that typing, I heard a loud Click! And suddenly a powerful spotlight pierced the front of the bag, just slightly from the right. The beam was so bright I squinted and turned sideways to my left away from it. The light remained steady, its relentless glare fixed on me. I could feel actual heat coming from it through the black cloth.

*** *** *** ***

I left Hal’s with an expensive, silvery metal security briefcase in hand, swinging it at my side like a lunch box. While she amazed me by being foolish enough to have the cash on her, I sure as hell didn’t complain. Meanwhile, part of me feared some street punk might snatch the case from my grasp. So as a deterrent I cranked up my “very straight and very tall” to full tilt. Walk like you have a purpose in life, soldier! Those words still echoed through my head more than two decades after their utterance.

I went to my primary business bank over on Vine Street --the bank where I had my company’s checking account. I told the teller I needed to make a large cash deposit. When she asked how much, I hesitated. Is it really fifty-thousand? I hadn’t actually counted. But in faith I declared exactly that. The teller’s eyes at first widened, then narrowed in dark

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revulsion. (She must’ve thought I was a drug dealer or a pimp.) She asked me to wait while she got her supervisor.

I was next greeted by a smiling branch manager. He employed regal gestures to usher me behind the counter to a back room. In there we found the same teller preparing an electronic cash-counting machine. In polite tones he asked that next time I try to give at least 24 hours notice. I handed him the metal case, and he surprised me by handing me a “personal-sized” bottle of spring water --something I hadn’t seen anywhere in well over a year, and it was even chilled. Feeling like I’d just been given a Cuban cigar, I offered my stunned gratitude. In return he used more regal gestures to direct me to a nearby chair where I could sit and watch. From my chair I saw him wordlessly open the case and survey the banded bundles of fifties and hundreds. He then told the teller to begin, thus he supervised the teller’s chore of popping paper bands and feeding the notes into the chattering machine. Hiding my nervousness, I savored my delicious chlorine-free water as the contraption whipped through the cash, its small screen displaying the growing tally. After five minutes the bills had all shuffled through, proving a perfect fifty-thousand. I clutched the bottle and quietly sighed in relief.

He filled out a deposit slip and asked me to sign it. He exited the room with it then returned moments later with a deposit voucher and a beaming smile.

I left that bank and went next door to my other business bank where my shop’s mortgage sat in arrears. My lending agent called the first bank to confirm the deposit, then agreed to take a company check for the balance of the loan.

“It WILL clear, right?” he asked from behind his desk as I sat opposite him. “‘Cuz if you bounce a check this large--”

“--It’ll clear,” I assured him.

He turned back to his screen, clicking his mouse. But then he stopped clicking, leaned over, and whispered: “Pete, I really hope you didn’t go to a loan shark.”

I said nothing.

CHAPTER FOUR

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The frantic keyboarding continued. I heard two men (the cell phone fiddlers?) come toward me. The tall shadows of their approaching forms obscured the bright light which still pierced the bag. My heart rate shot back up again.

They yanked me to my feet and wrestled me into a very heavy wooden captain’s chair, making sure to slide the chair’s wooden back up between my spine and my still-bound hands. With both my elbows hooked around the sides of the chair’s back, they pulled my hands downward behind the chair, stretching my arms so far toward the floor that I actually yelped in pain. Once they’d maxed out the distance my arms could be extended, they secured my hands to the bottom rungs of the chair with more plastic binders. And finally both my ankles got strapped to each front chair leg. The dull ache in my shoulders now became shooting pains radiating down my arms and up my neck. After they finished this perverse feat of engineering, I heard them step behind me. They paused. I held my breath. At last they snatched the black bag right up off my head. I clamped my eyes shut against the powerful light.

*** *** *** ***

I arrived at the shop yard by ten thirty. Once home to a used car dealership, I’d bought the old cracked blacktop lot eight years earlier, keeping its rusty nine-foot chain link fence. After knocking down the dealership’s rotting one-room shack, I hauled in two second-hand work trailers and propped them up on cinderblocks. One served as an office, the other acted as an equipment storage shed.

I entered the now-open gate, walking along the crumbling driveway that sat flanked on both sides by neatly stacked bundles of pipe that my son referred to as "metal Lincoln Logs." Just a few paces beyond the gate I paused to survey it all. It was a “neat” work yard (I kept it organized) but still gritty looking from the dark stain of urban pollution and the sad truth of plumbing being such an unromantic craft of pipes and machines. I looked around in awe --not to admire its neatness, nor to lament its ugliness. No. On that day I looked around in a surreal moment of self-actualization, basking in the euphoria of knowing that as of that very morning I had finally paid it off.

I entered my office, strangely comforted by the fake wood paneling which I’d always deemed so tacky prior to that

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life-changing breakfast at Hal’s. Stephanie looked up from her desk in terror. Today she wore her inhumanly jet black hair pulled back extra tight behind her multi-pierced ears (usually signaling a non-shower day for her). With more of her nervous tongue-ring clicking she asked in a timid whimper if I wanted her to clean out her desk. I laughed and held up the fresh loan amortization. Her face twisted in amazement and I even saw her eyebrow ring pivot sideways. After a series of reactions from her --ecstatic jumping, joyful tears, heartfelt hugs-- we both spent the rest of the morning at the delectable task of calling creditors to square up my many delinquent business debts.

By lunch time I told Stephanie she could take the rest of the day off. Since it was Friday she gladly jumped at that.

After she left I called my lawyer to discuss MK’s hostile phone call. But his secretary said he was on vacation until Monday. I asked her to have him call immediately upon his return. Then I sat down and composed an e-mail to him, itemizing everything I recalled from MK’s rant.

I later headed to the back of the trailer, to a room originally meant as a bedroom by the trailer manufacturer. Beyond that "bedroom" lay a full bathroom.

I'd initially employed that rear bedroom as a spare storage area for more delicate stock items like faucets and valves (leaving a foot path through the inventory to allow anyone who needed it access to the trailer's only toilet). After a while Stephanie claimed a spot on the floor for her office supplies. The room served us both quite well.

But then during the previous autumn, after MK demanded the divorce, I briefly had to live in that room for the first few months of our separation, just until I could move into the apartment by Locust Street. Even though the pathetic ordeal of my temporary lodging there came to a blessed end as long ago as Halloween, I still had some of my hastily bought second-hand furniture there, shoved behind plumbing parts and boxes of printer paper. The bathroom still functioned as a mere lavatory, but back in March I covertly disconnected the shower as a deterrent to Stephanie. I’d figured out that she used her key one weekend in February (Valentine’s Day) and "entertained" someone on my old bed. She was slick about it, covering her tracks well. I never would’ve known except that she and her “guest” both

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generously used the shower. And since January was when the newest round of Philadelphia water restrictions commenced, the two love birds caused a huge over-usage penalty on that month’s water bill. I guess my queen-size mattress (stashed upright behind a shelving unit) made the temptation irresistible for Stephanie, especially since she had nosey roommates. While I never confronted her about it, I figured if she knew the all-important shower no longer worked she might think twice about using my shop as a crash pad again.

As I entered the bedroom/storeroom on that sunny Friday in September of 2015, just three months before the Big Crash, the rear closet off to the side of the bathroom door was my real goal. In there I kept my work clothes.

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