‘Lush Life’

‘Lush Life’


By RICHARD PRICE
Published: March 16, 2008
The Quality of Life Task Force: four sweatshirts in a bogus taxi set up on the corner of Clinton Street alongside the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp to profile the incoming salmon run; their mantra: Dope, guns, overtime; their motto: Everyone's got something to lose.

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'Lush Life,' by Richard Price: Neighborhood Watch (March 16, 2008)

"Is dead tonight."

The four car-stops so far this evening have been washouts: three municipals — a postal inspector, a transit clerk, and a garbageman, all city employees off-limits — and one guy who did have a six-inch blade under his seat, but no spring-release.

A station wagon coming off the bridge pulls abreast of them at the Delancey Street light, the driver a tall, gray, long-nosed man sporting a tweed jacket and Cuffney cap.

"The Quiet Man," Geohagan murmurs.

"That'll do, pig," Scharf adds.

Lugo, Daley, Geohagan, Scharf; Bayside, New Dorp, Freeport, Pelham Bay, all in their thirties, which, at this late hour, made them some of the oldest white men on the Lower East Side.

Forty minutes without a nibble ...

Restless, they finally pull out to honeycomb the narrow streets for an hour of endless tight right turns: falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner. Schoolyard, crêperie, realtor, corner. Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner. Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner. Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner. Boulangerie, bar, hat boutique, corner. Iglesia, gelateria, matzo shop, corner. Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner. Bar, school, bar, school, People's Park, corner. Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Lady Di mural, corner. Bling shop, barbershop, car service, corner. And then finally, on a sooty stretch of Eldridge, something with potential: a weary-faced Fujianese in a thin Members Only windbreaker, cigarette hanging, plastic bags dangling from crooked fingers like full waterbuckets, trudging up the dark, narrow street followed by a limping black kid half a block behind.

"What do you think?" Lugo taking a poll via the rearview. "Hunting for his Chinaman?"

"That's who I'd do," Scharf says.

"Guy looks beat. Probably just finished up his week."

"That'd be a nice score too. Payday Friday, pulled your eighty-four hours, walking home with what, four? Four fifty?"

"Could be his whole roll on him if he doesn't use banks."

"C'mon, kid" — the taxi lagging behind its prey, all three parties in a half-block stagger — "it doesn't get better than this."

"Actually, Benny Yee in Community Outreach? He says the Fooks finally know not to do that anymore, keep it all on them."

"Yeah, OK, they don't do that anymore."

"Should we tell the kid? He probably hasn't even heard of Benny Yee."

"I don't want to come between a young man and his dreams," Lugo says.

"There he goes, there he goes ..."

"Forget it, he just made us," Daley says as the kid abruptly loses his limp and turns east, back towards the projects, or the subways, or, like them, to simply take five, then get back in the game.


Right turn after right turn after right, so many that when they finally pull someone over, and they will, it'll take a minute to get their legs under them, to stop leaning into their steps; so many right turns that at three in the morning, six beers deep at Grouchie's, everybody silently, angrily watching the one lucky bastard getting a lap ride in a banquette by the bathrooms, they'll be canting to the right at the bar, then, later in bed, twitching to the right in their dreams.

At the corner of Houston and Chrystie, a cherry-red Denali pulls up alongside them, three overdressed women in the backseat, the driver alone up front and wearing sunglasses.

The passenger-side window glides down. "Officers, where the Howard Johnson hotel at around here ..."

"Straight ahead three blocks on the far corner," Lugo offers.

"Thank you."

"What's with the midnight shades?" Daley asks from the shotgun seat, leaning forward past Lugo to make eye contact.

"I got photosensitivity," the guy answers, tapping his frames.

The window glides back up and he shoots east on Houston.

"Did he call us officers?"

"It's that stupid flattop of yours."

"It's that [expletive] tractor hat of yours."

"I gots photosensitivity ..."

A moment later they're rolling past the Howard Johnson's themselves, watching as the guy from the Denali makes like a coachman, holding the door for all the ladies filing out from the backseat.

"Huggy Bear," Lugo mumbles.

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