“Tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Payoffs, threats, deals being made to look the other way. You got no idea.” He took a breath. “I want to state, for the record, here and now, that I have never taken a bribe. Not one penny. Nothing. No free tickets to baseball or hockey games, no free dinners, nothing. But I’m not going to let my family get hurt. No job is worth that. I don’t care if they put me in jail. I’m not going to let something happen to my family. I got two kids, Mr. Walker. My daughter is five, and my son is thirteen. I’m not going to let anyone hurt them, but I can’t go on like this, either.”
“Okay, just calm down. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Are you taping this? Is there a tape recorder in this car?” He looked around the interior. “Fuck, reporters at the Metropolitan must do okay. What’s a car like this cost? These are even more than Beemers, aren’t they?”
“It’s not my car,” I said. “And no, you’re not being taped. But if you’re about to tell me something important, I’d like to take some notes. Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah, sure, take some notes. That’s okay.”
I reached into the back for the overnight bag. I’d tossed a reporter’s notebook in the top before leaving. I grabbed it, folded back the cover, and pulled a fine-point from my jacket pocket.
“Shoot,” I said.
“Not all, but there’s a bunch of businesses in the city, restaurants, a lot of these people that run them, they’re pretty well connected. Some of them, they’ve moved here in recent years from Europe, the old Soviet Union and other places, they don’t leave all their old ways behind. They don’t have a lot of time for rules and regulations, they don’t much like inspectors coming in, telling them what to do, insisting they spend money on proper equipment, pest extermination, stuff like that. Their way of dealing with this is, you give somebody some money, they go away.”
“So that’s what they’re doing? Buying people off?”
“Some. It’s cheaper to put a couple hundred bucks into somebody’s pocket than spend a thousand upgrading your kitchen. Or get him a hooker for the night. Or put a case of liquor in his trunk.”
“And what about those who won’t take a payoff?”
“They say things to you like ‘We know where you live. We know where your wife shops for groceries. We know the route your kids walk to go to school. Fuck with us,’ they say, ‘and we’ll fuck with you.’”
“What about Mrs. Gorkin?” I asked.
“That woman,” he said, “she scares the shit out of me. Her and those two girls of hers. They’re like robots or something. They’re not what you’d call very feminine, you know? About as sexy as cement trucks. She sends them out to do something and they do it, no questions asked.”
“Did she threaten you?”
“First time I go into her place, I tell her I see mouse droppings, she’s going to have to do something about that, the bathroom’s a mess, the grill isn’t properly cleaned. I find at least a dozen health violations. I could probably have shut the place down. I’m wondering, why didn’t my boss do something about this place? He used to have the same territory as me, then he gets made a supervisor, I inherit the territory.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Frank. Frank Ellinger.”
“Okay.” I was scribbling madly.
“So I’ve got a list for Mrs. Gorkin. Tell her she’s got to do these things. She’s ‘No, we no do dat.’ I say, ‘What?’ She says, talk to my boss, he’ll explain things to me. But first, she says, her girls will explain it to me first. And the two of them grab hold of me. This is, like, midafternoon, there are no customers. Mrs. Gorkin goes and closes the door, puts up a Closed sign, comes back, and the one of her girls, Ludmilla or Gavrilla—who knows, you can’t tell them apart—she’s got her hand around my mouth, holding one hand behind my back, and her sister, she holds my hand over the deep fryer.”
I stopped writing.
“The oil, I can feel the heat from it, and my hand’s still a good six inches away. And then she starts moving my hand closer. She gets hold of my index finger, wraps her hand—her hand’s the size of a fucking catcher’s mitt—around the rest of my fist.” He demonstrated, holding his right hand so only one finger protruded. “And she moves my finger toward the hot oil, like she’s going to dip it in.”
“God,” I said.
“And she’s saying, ‘In the oil, Ma?’ Like, she’s taking directions every step of the way. And Momma says, ‘Maybe just the tip.’ This bitch, she takes the very tip of my finger and touches it to the oil, and pulls away.” He paused. “My fucking finger sizzled.”