11,572. RUDIMENTS, pt. 609

RUDIMENTS, pt. 609
('moneybags go home')
I probably never got the distinction
right between 'law' and 'order.'
 Yes, they both existed, maybe at a
cross-purpose with each other, but
nonetheless there they were, together,
at the same time. I always felt that
the same people (cops and criminals)
were attracted to either one, and
kept, really, little distinction in their
mind between them. Cops. Criminals.
Law. Order. All the same crap, and
the people were exactly the same.
In 1967, the best advice I ever got
came from a criminal.
-
“Hold it up, pal, stop right there."

That  was all I heard and all I

really had to – the guy was a 

sailor of some sort a stevedore 

maybe or a deck-hand all cocked 

up and rippled with muscle and 

bravado – and what he had just

just then mistakenly assumed was 

that I was someone he should be

chasing down for taking something

from the deck of  the ship – which 

of course I had but could never 

tell him or let on about – so I 

turned and simply said back,

as quickly as I kept moving, ‘It’s 

for Ed Trenery and he wanted 

it brought down to him right

away– you’ll have to take it up 

with him,' which was some form 

of the truth in the fact that, yes,

there really was an Ed Trenery 

down on the wharf but he was

in no way concerned with

me, nor what was in my hands.

It apparently worked as an 

excuse or at least forestalled 

any further pursuit, at that 

instant, of me and of the two

large brown envelopes in my

hands – and which were stuffed 

with cash and had been sought

immediately by three men a

strange black car out along

West Street who – I’d noticed -

were still awaiting my arrival,

and, that arrival being made,

(at least long enough for  me to

get away) I dove into the opened

door and the car simply, and with

great ease, I might add, sped 

away into the early dusk of any

Tuesday evening, and if  I was

pursued I had been pursued 

fruitlessly I’d guessed - since no 

one seemed to be following 

and the apparent ease of the 

‘heist’ –  if that was what it was – 

in and of itself, was alarming 

for me : I’d been promised a  

clean 75 bucks to do what was 

needed – which I’d just done -

and that amount of money-as-pay 

had just been handed over to 

me. “Nice going how you went 

about that, kid – took nerves and 

balls too to just walk up there,

and you did it with both –  Good. 

Now beat it and stay close, 

so’s we can catch up to you

again when needed, awright?” - 

I nodded my assent and scrambled 

out of the black Cadillac stretch,

somewhere I noticed just north 

of the US Postal building on Eighth 

Avenue, and everything else – 

me and them included of course – 

just merged with traffic  -  me 

on foot in a half-rush and 

them in their black car tooling 

along pretty much like all the 

rest except longer and headed 

towards uptown and not across 
town and it felt good to have 
succeeded first time like that 
and I knew I’d see them again 
soon – once the taste of this 
gets in your mouth you just 
generally want more – but for 
the moment what interested 
me was in going over all of 
what had occurred, in my head : 
the envelopes had seemed to have 
had hundreds no thousands of 
dollars in them and the bills were 
all aligned and crisp and banded 
– so it wasn’t just some day’s 
receipts kind of thing or anything 
like that – they seemed perfect and 
clean and new and counted and 
separated – all that stuff just like
a bank does –so I figured they were
either bank-stuff already stolen or
new bills just – shall we say – 'mass
produced’ and I don’t mean a church
collection – I mean real solid-gold 
class A counterfeit money like ‘if it 
fits under the counter we take it!’ 
kind of dough : however what it
was doing on board that little cargo 
ship and why these malfeasant 
knuckleheads too had an interest 
in it was beyond me AND why 
it was pretty much just left there 
untended and allowed to disappear 
as it did still rankled me but I had 
done what was asked and gotten 
already my 75 bucks plus the good 
notion that I could work well and 
could do more for them sometime 
soon – I almost looked 
forward to the day. 

-

It was only later much later after 
I’d done this sort of thing 3 or 4
 times that I found out what was
was really happening – and because 
of finding that out I stopped doing it 
(at probably a greater risk to my own
life and limb) : the guy's name was, I
was told anyway, Antonio Dapienza 
and he was from somewhere 
around Sullivan Street. I forget 
but what came down was that one 
day we were somehow just talking 
and he was asking me a lot of
questions about my interests and 
what I wanted to do and what 
I was doing all this stuff for – 
all of that sort of talk – and I
began telling him about my interests 
in art and writing and learning
and literature and all of that, and
of course it was like telling him I 
was interested in translating the 
Septuagint back into a new form
of Greek; and he just stopped dead
in his tracks and ceased talking to 
stare me down and say – “get the 
fuck out kid and get the fuck out 
now ! this shit’s gonna ruin you 
for life – you’ll never live it down 
and sooner or later you’re gonna'
take a fall – y’unerstandin me?” – 
I had at that moment no clue 
as to what he was alluding so 
he explained it all for me pretty 
much as follows: ‘everybody ‘cept 
you is in on this heist – this is 
counterfeit money in a constant 
stream coming in from somewhere 
and everyone knows about it – 
the guy who leaves it laying around 
the guy who never chases you 
down though he sees you taking 
it the twerps in the car who 
drive you away and pay you their 
measly hundred bucks or whatever 
it is – the people on the boat the 
whole bunch of them they 
KNOW this is all going on – HUGE 
amounts of counterfeit money 
being brought in and distributed – 
tens of thousands shit hundreds of 
thousands eventually of money – 
and the only one right now in real 
jeopardy is YOU you dumb 
son-of-a-bitch – you’re a nobody 
and you’re the ONLY one they all 
know enough to finger if they’re 
poked – you’re the stooge the fall 
guy the whatever and if they DIDN’T 
want you to take those envelopes 
believe me they’d have shot 
you dead the first night and 
right now each and every time 
you’re brought back in your 
getting closer to big big trouble 
and screw all your dreams of 
painting or writing or whatever 
the fuck you’re talking about  -  
now take this money and get 
as far the hell away from me 
NOW as you can – I do NOT 
wish  to see your sorry ass ‘
around here again!”
-

All in all the weaving of the 
web was something akin to 
maintaining the fiction of always 
having fun or being exciting  -  
like Life Magazine covering yet 
another Edie Sedgewick sighting – 
it was all bullshit and story for 
effect and the idea was simply to 
promote promote something keep 
the ship afloat and moving forward 
allow each person to remain busy 
and distracted enough so as to 
not ever have the moment needed 
to view the real situation  -  the
great fiction that was hip reality
happening now the scene where
it’s at and all that crap and beneath 
it all was a New York coyness a  
criminal vacancy something which 
was slowly creeping into the fabric 
of the society and which would 
(and has) eventually destroy(ed) 
it, like a shadow of Jack Ruby 
moving forward with a gun taking 
that slow time needed to fall 
between the cracks of time  -  
all of that was still vivid in 
everyone’s mind and the country 
had snapped as craziness became 
the order of the day but an ordered 
craziness one still with lines and 
procedures for it was all put forth 
as something without challenge or 
danger and in that manner it was 
better able to seep seep slowly into 
the same fabric of time through 
which Ruby and his ilk had crawled 
and everywhere one looked there was
something a'foot  -  nascent industry 
of couture and clothing and 
faux-music and styling and 
posture and ‘journalism’ too.