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Johnny In Action Against the Tonton Macoutes
Move This Woman With Your Cursor And Left Click
Children's Games - Pieter Brueghel
Johnny Truffles speaking. Giovanni Garibaldi Tartufo.
52ND ST. -- BIRDLAND STREET
This is where people talk tough, and if you don't like this idea then you can take your problem to the United Nations. You got that?
Smoking is allowed. There's smoke in here. Take a seat and light up a cigarette. Order a drink. Put a five in the jukebox and play some of the great ones -- 30's Billie Holiday, early Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, Sonny Boy Williamson, rock 'n' roll through the decades, selected hip-hop, reggae, blues, big band, jazz, or one of the contempo jailbait girls. Maybe some doo-wop such as Little Anthony and the Imperials, "Just Two Kinds of People (In The World)." Then come back, sit down, and talk tough.
That's the way it works in here, no matter what's going on. If you don't like the way it works then file your chump complaint at some crook's office down at City Hall. I'm not the kind of host who says do whatever you want to do. You think I'm some hotshot? Take it or leave it. I run this place. I am Film Noir Johnny himself and I am bad to the bone.
I am also the most dapper Johnson in here. I'm Suave City and I look civilized on the surface. In fact, I look like I could drive my Viper straight from here to St. Patrick's and worship the Lord -- but under the Borsalino and beneath this Italo-cut chalk-stripe suit you can only imagine.
I am Film Noir Johnny, and when I shoot pool I run the table and look good doing it. I am slick with the stick. I got the moves, I got the geometry, I got the rhythm of the game, and my backspin shots are a wonder to behold in their magical precision.
Liquid-green sunglasses. The women squirm and squeal with delight, their eyes shining as they press their thighs against mine and flirt shamelessly. When I personally flag a taxi for them, they turn in their seats and look back at me until they're out of sight. I stay on the curb and give them what they want. I don't step back inside until they've completely disappeared.
See that tomato over by the door, the one with trouble written all over her, the one with the nylon-seams going straight up the center of her calves and disappearing under the hem of her black dress? That's Wanda. She's my hostess. I met her one day on a train, where she was passing the time turned around in her seat and looking across the aisle at a blonde.
She's got a sap husband who runs her bath water and carries out the trash, but she's mine in secret. Where it counts. I should probably feel some guilt about this, but I don't. I'm not married to anybody.
Like I said, I run this lounge, and I move around -- at my own pace. I even enjoy some of the people who come in here. Sometimes I have a drink with them, sometimes I'm doing business, and sometimes I'm at the bar, where if somebody inspires me, I will talk tough.
And another thing -- if a heart gets broken, it's somebody else's. That's the rule. I won't take a broken heart, and I especially won't take one from Inez Mulholland.
Some people who come in here have broken hearts. They're easy to spot, women or men. They either have finely tuned bad attitudes that are impressive, or they're down in the deep blues, knocked out and barely reachable. Some add new bad habits and all of them play Johnny Hartman with John Coltrane. "My One And Only Love" gets the most air time, followed by "Lush Life" and then "They Say It's Wonderful." Sometimes they play all three, back to back, over and over again, and sometimes I have to step in and stop it. I cut them off. "No more Johnny Hartman. I'm the Johnny in this place, and I say you're cut off."
I've had to knock out a few people in here. Last month I had to knock out Mr. Coolshades, who strolled in one night with his Fine-Arts girlfriend.
He's a photographer, a black-leather-jacket Nikon-camera art-dude presence -- and Black Jacket was a legend of coolness in his own mind until I took care of business. When I finished with him, he was a cautionary tale seeing birds. One punch.
But I've never started a fight in my life. I don't ask for trouble. I'm the opposite of a hothead. I only do it when somebody makes me. Like that orangutan who tried to press on Wanda two nights ago.
This great ape was seven feet tall and looked like he'd just dropped down from a tree, driven by his natural desire to lick and squeeze. But he came swinging into the wrong club.
I nodded to Jefferson, my first-string bartender and bouncer, he strolled over and said a few quiet words to this chump, but the fool wouldn't hit the street, wouldn't take the walk, wouldn't get lost.
So I came over, looked up into this hominid's flat eyes, and gave him a perfectly centered knee shot followed by a cannonball uppercut as he bent over in pain. He got the one-two. The whole thing took maybe three seconds and it was lights out in the jungle. Jefferson hauled him out onto 52nd Street and he hasn't been back since.
But how about someone who did return.
One night about a week after I dropped Mr. Hip, his Fine-Arts girlfriend came back. By herself. I pretended not to recognize her, but she worked her way to my side in less than ten minutes. Up close, I could see that she has some je ne sais quois.
"I just want to talk," she said after telling me her name was Roxanne. She asked me why I'd popped Richard . . . that's Mr. Hip's name -- Richard. Not Ricardo or Ree-shard or Dick, but Richard.
"Your Richard asked for it," I told her, "and if you don't behave I might have to smack you."
She was holding out a long cigarette for me to light. "Just don't do it above the waist," she told me. "I wouldn't want anyone to know."
Now sometimes I like a woman with such an attitude. She's sitting in La-La waiting for her Ya-Ya. Sometimes it's red pasta or no pasta. But I'll tell you more about her in a few minutes.
See that dutto over at the corner of the bar, the one in the wrinkled linen jacket, the one telling Jefferson that his mama's so dumb it takes her three hours to watch 60 Minutes? That's Detective Rousseau of the NYPD. He's been hanging out in here for a year, and so far I haven't had any trouble with him.
I shouldn't do this, but I will confess that I like him, even if he is the heat, even if he is the law. I call him Smoke.
The first time he rolled in here it was summer, there was a heat wave going on, and I had the air-conditioning cranked. A copper-colored woman was dancing to some primitive music.
He looked around for a moment, took his Panama hat off, revealing some sweaty blond hair, and then headed straight for the jukebox saying "Cool me down, Jones" to no one in particular.
He played the funk classic, "Word Up," and he sort of danced around while it was on. After that it was Bossa Nova, Stan Getz summertime music. I remember things like this. Then he ordered a double shot of Wild Turkey and banged it down.
"Is that how you cool down?" I said.
"What's it to you, Slick?" he said, looking straight at me while ordering another one and reaching for the icewater. The eyes, the way they move around.
"Come and get me, copper," I said. He smiled the Rousseau smile and told me I'd better look both ways, or something like that. His next three drinks were on the house, and this is my house we're talking about.
A FEW DAYS AFTER THAT
So I'm at the bar talking to Jefferson and Rousseau. It's a Tuesday and there's not much going on. We're having a good time. I've just started to cut into a nicely marbled Delmonico, black and blue, Pittsburgh rare, the fat still crackling. Annie Lennox is singing "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" on the jukebox.
In walks Mr. Coolshades. He's got this dramatic spring in his step. Ten seconds later, three of his supporting characters appear with Roxanne. One is a goofy-looking gangly dickhead, one is a buff, shredded, and ripped gym dude, and the other one looks solid and he's shifty in the eyes.
Mr. Coolshades walks straight toward me and stops about four feet away.
"I'm calling you down, Johnny," he says.
He's wearing a pair of 80's MC Hammer balloon pants. I start laughing and ask him if he's a Turk or what. "You look like you came up out of some bottle." Jefferson and Rousseau are laughing too. But Mr. Hip is dead serious. He wants to fight.
Roxanne has broken away from them and taken a table by the dance floor. She's ordered a bottle of champagne. The three back-ups are standing around , pretending to look over some selections.
Mr. Hip says it again, "I'm calling you down, Johnny."
I look at him and say, "I got your calldown right here," and I give it to him. "Call this down."
Jefferson and Rousseau are still laughing. I think I hear one of the back-ups laughing.
Mr. Coolshades, a man of imagination, looks at me and says, "Yeah, and I got your cufflinks and captoes right here. Captoe this." And he gives it to me.
"Do these captoes bother you?" I ask him. "If so, you might not want to do anything that will end up with you sucking this captoe." I point at him with my Italian calfskin shoe. It's shining and beautiful.
This is all too wonderful. I'm starting to get in the mood. It takes a while to get in character; you need a little warm-up. The energies of my combative Perugian ancestors and of the great Umbrian adventurer, Braccio Fortebraccio himself, are stirring within me. The supercoiled DNA of Braccio Fortebraccio di Montone has begun to loosen and glow.
I light a cigarette and say, "Make your move, Mr. Hip."
As he's coming at me, with his hands open as if to grab me in some way, I slap him across the face with the hot steak and the hot steel plate. This slows him down for a second, long enough for me to get up out of my seat, dance to the left, plant, and connect with a bone-crushing right hook.
He's staggered, but he recovers and comes at me again. The same way. This time I dance to the right, and while I'm doing the float-bounce past him, I pop him with a powerful left jab, precision-directed to smash into the chin of his square jaw.
He won't learn anything from experience. I can't believe my eyes, but he tries it again. It's a dance and pop fest for me. The most you can say about Mr. Coolshades is that he can take a punch.
Soon, after he's taken too many unanswered pop-pop-pops, his three pals come striding over fast. The pumpkin-chest has great posture, the gangly one seems to be tripping over himself, and the one with the shifty-eyes comes in low, like an advancing badger or a wolverine. Rousseau pushes Mr. Hip and me aside and takes the first one down with a choke hold. Jefferson comes over the bar so fast he trips and hits the floor after bouncing off a stool. But he's up quick, after taking a boot in the ribs. He goes wild. He's a hurricane of rage. He's transformed.
In short, here's what happened: Mr. Hip sucked the captoe. The fight got good, though. It was give and take on both sides, three on four, but at the end Black Jacket and his three chump warriors were out the door.
I walked outside after it was all over, and saw their backs, half a block down the street. They were leaning against each other and making their slow, painful getaway. Mainly, a car caught my eye out there on the blue street. It spoke to me.
Wanda watched the show from behind the bar, resting my snub-nosed Model 66 on her thigh. Roxanne sipped champagne by the dance floor with her legs crossed. I took about two grand's worth of damage to my club, but I got insurance for just this sort of thing.
Jefferson and Rousseau came alive.
A WEEK LATER
So, it's another night. Good crowd. Wanda hasn't stopped moving for the last hour, Jefferson is pouring and shaking, and Rousseau is talking to one of my waitresses about some Macaque monkey show he saw on The Discovery Channel and about this friend or acquaintance he calls The Last Neanderthal.
A couple of years ago this hopped-up jazz drummer and I were driving that lost highway in my other car, a Jaguar sedan deluxe, all the way across America. It was August. We had Honeygirl in in the back seat, and she has majorette legs.
She had suntanned legs of carnal glory that summer, and every day she was wearing short shorts with cuffs. Her hair was cut like Josephine Baker and she could dance.
Honeygirl likes fresh air, and she wanted all the windows down and the moonroof back -- all the time. The hopped-up jazz drummer wanted air conditioning, but I was on Honeygirl's side, so the windows stayed down and the moonroof stayed back.
One night we were shooting across Kansas when a big storm blew up. Honeygirl was smiling and rolling a corona-corona. For this job she wanted the windows up.
TEN MINUTES LATER
I can't go on with this story now. I just came back from a table where this woman with rich, full lips and comic-book breasts told me she was the love of Detective Rousseau's life.
I'm going to read my brother's clipping one more time and have a drink before I tell him she's here. I'm going to string this out. It looks to me like this woman is for real. I'm convinced -- and I'm no pushover.
MAN RESISTS PIT BULL ATTACK WITH HATCHET. Vincenzo Truffles of 10th St., Hoboken, was trimming a backyard tree Sunday afternoon when he was attacked by a neighbor's pit bull. The dog lunged at Mr. Truffles repeatedly and began tearing at his left arm, but the man killed the animal by striking it repeatedly with his hatchet. The life and death struggle took more than four minutes to end. "Without the hatchet, I would have lost," Mr. Truffles said.
I look at Detective Rousseau over there. He's slowly tapping three fingers against the side of his knee and looking at the jukebox. He's in a reverie. Dinah Washington is singing "Do Nothing 'Til You Hear From Me."
I'm looking forward to this. My prediction is that he'll know exactly who it is. I've sensed he's had something going on at a distance. He's never said anything about it, but I have a feel for these things and I'm never wrong.
"Smoke," I finally say to him. "Drift back from your daydream. I got some breaking news for you. I'm the delivery boy."
He turns around and asks what it is. "What's the news?"
And then I lay it on him: "The love of your life is in here. She's around the corner. At a table in the back. Drinking Cosmos." I'm expecting to see a sign of something. Instead, he lights another cigarette and says, "I know. I heard her voice when she came in. I saw her walk back. It's Lee."
"So what are you going to do about this Lee?" I ask.
"I'm deciding . . . right now." He shows me an odd-looking face in a magazine he's reading. It's a reconstructed head of Kennewick Man, who may be a pre-Asian immigrant to North America, one with European features, here well before the American Indians. They didn't survive, but they were here.
"What are the possibilities here?" I ask.
"Get lost, get loaded, take her out on the dance floor, or send her something. Maybe some combination."
"So what's it gonna be, Detective? Time's up."
He tells me he's gonna send her a note. So I walk behind the bar, find a tablet, and slide it to him. I throw him a pen. "Do you want me to compose it?" I ask.
"Don't need no Cyrano," he says, turning back toward the jukebox. "I do my own work."
I ask him why he doesn't just drift over there. "Why a note? That's got no style."
"Johnny," he says, "I got your style right here. Style this." And he gives it to me.
LATER THAT NIGHT
I'm lying here on my couch in the dark, with a pack of Camel Wides on the coffee table. I look at the building across the street, and inside one office a man is ignoring his secretary's ass. You can tell by looking at him that her culo bellissimo had nothing to do with why he hired her.
3:00 IN THE MORNING
Somebody must still be downstairs -- I hear a slow song, faintly. It seems very far away, this music.
I'm thinking that this being Johnny is work.
A FEW HOURS LATER
They're pounding on my door. The neon clock says 7:05. I must have drifted off. It's the heat. They're out there pounding and identifying themselves and threatening to break the door down. They're bellowing. They got no style.
They're saying they're BATF, not NYPD, but even so I'm wondering if Rousseau knew about this bust, and if he did why he didn't tip me off.
I've got to get through the window and out on the fire escape and down to the Viper with the illegal Quebec plates, which is parked in the alley for a moment just like this. I'm going on the lam. I got to rocket up to my hideout in the Adirondacks and hole up until I get the right people paid off.
So I'm off. Up the Henry Hudson and outta town. And if some screamin' cop car pulls in behind me, I'll whip out my fully automatic Colt carbine and lay down some withering fire with one hand while I grip the wheel and steer with the other. I'm wearing my shooter's glasses with the yellow lenses so I can make out all fine distinctions. I'm a cheetah.
And if anybody's got a problem with this idea, you can blow your engine trying to keep up.
Not only is this hand-crafted coupe good-looking, it performs. Six-speed V-10. I do 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds. 465 ft./lbs. of torque at 3600 rpm . I'll shoot up to 130 mph an hour and leave those state troopers wondering if I was a black mirage. And then there are these scoops and these stainless steel side exhausts. Drop dead, Dickhead.
So far, no trouble. It's turned into a nice morning -- sunny, warm, sweet. Dolce day. Just got 16 ounces of fresh coffee at a mart and I'm cruising at 70, just like all the other good citizens of America. I blend right in.
I can't say I'm worried about the lounge. Jefferson and Wanda know what to do. We went through something similar, but less dramatic, once before.
Whoever did this to me is gonna pay.
JULY 3
I just finished washing the car in the shade. I'm still here in the mountains where it's cool at night and every day is sweet, no matter what the weather. Yesterday I met a woman in the boathouse and she is now making poached eggs in the pine-paneled kitchen. Things are lazy and slow here. It's not 52nd Street -- the lake and my boat, the sounds and smells in the air, the yellow light and the green supreme.
I've greased everybody who had to be greased, so the business has been done. All the officers and officials have their cash in the pocket, so I can leave anytime I please. And it will be soon, because I found out who did it.
I still don't know how he learned what he learned, or who told him at least one of my secrets, or what he looks like, but I have his name and I know where to find him. It's Floyd Z, and he can be found uptown, way uptown. Everybody up there knows Floyd Z.
Listen, Floyd Z, I might leave tonight, and I travel fast.
I'm saying you don't have it, Floyd Z. You're deluded and you have the two mythical flaws of character -- first pride, then dumb. Many have fallen before you, throughout history, so you'll be in some famous company. I'm giving your consolation to you in advance. Think of this as a gift.
I might start with your right ear. We're going to the jungle, Floyd Z, and you're gonna discover what's out at night.
It will be at night and I'll come at you straight on. That's all I'm giving you, Floyd Z. That's all you get.
A WEEK AFTER THAT
I'm here at the bar with Jefferson and we're talking about western saddles, English saddles, and horses, Percherons. He's telling me that Percherons are the true warhorses of legend.
I've been back three days now, and things look good . . . well, things look good on the surface. Jefferson and Wanda did the job in my absence. They took care of business. But I got my sensors out, I got all my radar turned on, I'm doing infrared screening, I got my mojo workin', and there's something alien at work, something new, an all-new force in the air.
Somebody around here fed info to Floyd Z, who in turn fed it to the feds. Info about what's in my office, what goes on there, and maybe some info about Mr. Fat down on South Street.
My eyes and ears throughout the city are seeing if they can dig up the full story.
If all they got on me is banned bottled goods, then I have a manageable problem, but maybe they know more.
I been getting strange, unidentifiable messages on my answering machine. Sometimes this means romance, but sometimes it means something else.
Rousseau, they say, is off somewhere with Lee. They were in here every night for awhile, drinking champagne and dancing. Jefferson thinks they drove up to Saratoga Springs for the waters, and for the horses, and checked into the Adelphi -- the last of the great Victorian hotels.
Black Jacket, after two encounters with me, has become invisible. Nobody's seen Roxanne for weeks, but one afternoon I had a vision. And Wanda . . . she's cool and distant. I can't get her to open up. After the first night back, when she was pleased to see me, she slipped down into some thick ice and I haven't been able to break it. She's down in the frozen harbor of secrets. She's saying nice things about her husband and she's calling me "Boss."
Here's the plan -- I'm going after him. It might take a day, it might take a week, but when it's over, Floyd Z will be underwater. The cat will be in the bag, and the bag will be in the river.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON
We stepped outside and had some reefer in the alley. As we were returning, things had a different look.
HARLEM, THREE DAYS LATER
So this turned out to be the easiest manhunt I ever went on. It's Thursday night, about 12:30, and the tip I got from the city cop I paid off turned out to be high quality.
I'm way uptown here at The Lenox Lounge, slipped in among the three-deep crowd at the bar. I got my hat down low over my eyes and I'm wearing jeans. I got the yellow sunglasses on. Bahama Slim and the Jetstream Orchestra are on stage, and Slim himself does big dancing when he sings.
Over there, at that table in the faraway corner to my left, separated from me by four or five waves of people, is Roxanne. I see her in profile, and she's with this huge, brown, bone-ugly thug in a sharkskin suit and black and white spectators, Floyd Z.
I can't say that I'm surprised to see her there. I am surprised by his appearance, though. I can't take my eyes off him. He's leaning back in his chair and waving his long fingers back and forth as he talks. His eight rings are all sparkling -- red, blue, green, and clear -- as he plays the air like a high piano.
Roxanne appears to be ignoring him or thinking about something else, but who knows? Rousseau says her short-term plan can change at each one-minute mark. My guess is that Floyd Z is the excitement du moment or this moment's balm for the sting. Same thing.
A new plan just took shape. I'll give Mr. Hip a call and tell him he might want to come over here. Ha.
When he shows shows up, say in half an hour, he'll hear some fast and perfect lies from Roxanne; after that, he'll call Floyd Z outside, firm in his belief that Floyd Z did something other than give Roxanne what she wanted. And then I'll have to be in the gathering crowd, watching it happen.
I'm gonna watch, and, when Z leaves, I'm gonna follow. I'm gonna see how he operates. I'm in no hurry anymore. I got him. I'll do it when I know all I need to know, and when the moment is right. Floyd Z is mine.
FORTY MINUTES LATER
Mr. Hip just came through the door. By himself. He's looking around. He's looking for his girlfriend, Roxanne.
Sometimes Johnny slips in here to pick up mail.
