PROLOGUEThe stench of my own vomit fills my nose. Breath comes in short, shallow gasps. Why doesn’t blabbermouth just shut the hell up and get this over with?
“You said you’ve never been deep-sea fishing, Austin, so I’m guessing you don’t know dick about giant bluefin. But when you were a kid, jigging off that pier in California, did you ever hook up with a two or three-pound bonito?”
A muddy green Atlantic Ocean surrounds us, the expanse of gentle swells empty but for the fifty-two-foot Hatteras under our feet and a dozen chum-sucking seagulls screaming overhead.
“Remember how hard those bonito fought, the way they bent the rod near double?” Mr. Blabbermouth says. “Well, imagine one of those bonito’s big cousins, one that weighs...oh, say five or six-hundred pounds. I’m talking brute force, Austin. Hooking up with a giant bluefin is like playing tug-of-war with a Harley-Davidson.”
Endless waves of dirty wet jade slap against the drifting hull. Clouds shaped like tombstones regularly block the morning sun.
“Those shoulder straps okay?” Mr. Blabbermouth says. “Not too tight, I hope.”
Bastard. I am bridled by what is known as a stand-up fishing belt and harness. Tough leather straps encircle my waist and chest as well as my shoulders. Belts, buckles, and locking brass clips anchor me inside the harness, to the pole, even to the rod-mounted Penn 130 International reel.
“You’re in luck,” he says. “A school’s headed this way.”
Think I’m out for an afternoon of fun? Sport fishing with a buddy? What if I mention nobody but nobody fishes for giant bluefin in a stand-up harness? If you have balls, big balls, you let them strap you into a fighting chair bolted to the deck, hope Big Tuna doesn’t rip that out.
Mr. Blabbermouth saying, “Here they come.”
Did I mention my wrists are bound together with duct tape?
Mr. Blabbermouth leans close to push the chrome drag lever on the Penn 130. “This will be the second time I’ve seen this happen,” he says. “Like you, a friend of mine had this drag on full when a giant bluefin hit. One second the guy’s beside me on deck, the next he’s flying over the transom, a splash in the water. You know, we never found a sign of him.”
I should have seen this coming. That’s why I can’t stand to mention Mr. Blabbermouth’s real name. It’s too damn embarrassing. Of the several wackos who tried killing me this month, only blabbermouth here applied both planning, logic, and persistence. Used allies. Oh, man, I definitely should have seen this coming.
Something heavy bumps the half-pound metal lure to which I am fatally attached. The line draws taut, digging deeper into the green rolling swells. Eternity tugs on my shoulder straps.
“Looks like a hook-up,” Mr. Blabbermouth says.
And I thought life was shitty two weeks ago.
ONE
Two Weeks Earlier...
The big thing about living in a truck-mounted camper, you bump your head a lot. So when Luis’s chef Cruz wakes me up with repeated loud knocks, I crack my skull against the tin headliner for the third time in two days. Maybe I need a crash helmet.
“You cannot do the sleep in our parking lot, Austin.”
I rub my sore head and peek through the camper’s wallet-size plastic rear window. Either it’s still dark outside or my brain is beginning to swell.
“I say this a hundred times,” Cruz shouts. “You do not listen. So now I say this...if you use our parking spaces for the bedroom again, I will rat you to the federales.”
Cruz has an edge on him this morning. Central New Jersey being so much colder than his former home near Vera Cruz, Mexico, I suspect it’s the fall weather. Most cool days he doesn’t even bother coming outside, let alone threaten police action. Wait until it snows.
I open the back door and give him the famous, full-boat Carr grin. “Speaking of rats, amigo, can I shower in the employee dressing room?”
Cruz’s eyes shine like black lacquered furniture. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t help liking me. It’s the famous Carr smile. Plus, it helps that every dollar my ex-wife doesn’t garnish is spent at Luis’s restaurant eating Cruz’s delightfully gut-burning Mexican cuisine.
“Use by non-employees is non-allowed,” he says. “And you force me to declare that one bueno stock tip does not make me your bitch forever, Austin. Perhaps if you provided another sure thing. A stock with listed options so I can leverage my asses.”
Wow. Despite the obvious language problems, Cruz is wasting no time learning the secrets of American capitalism. Maybe I should make a pitch for his account.
“Sure things are hard to come by, compadre. But something’s coming soon. Maybe next week.”
He grunts. “You have been suggesting such events since Easter. And now summer is gone. For official.”
I notice the plastic lid on the cup of coffee he carries has an unbroken seal. “Is that coffee for me?” I ask.
“No way ho-zay.”
Ha. Cruz never learns. He has no defense against the famous Carr charm. Over the next five minutes, repeated smiles and a lengthy account of my daughter Beth’s all-star performance at last night’s swim meet rescue Cruz from the Dark Side. He especially likes the story of how I snuck into the beach club wearing only my Speedos.
I take my time drinking his coffee. When every drop is savored, I shower in the employee dressing room, put on a clean shirt and tie, and comb my hair with Hollywood gel.
My new Monday through Friday transformation routine now complete--homeless bum to ace salesman--I point my camper toward Branchtown.
Through my ‘93 Chevy pickup’s bug-stained windshield, I watch the odd-shaped line of store-fronts pass, architecture from fifteen different decades, every building mean and dirty despite last night’s rain.
As they have across centuries, Branchtown’s sidewalks bustle with generations of immigrants and the displaced. First the African-Americans, then the Irish and Italians and Germans, now Latinos and Chinese. A mini third world, chasing the American Dream along Central New Jersey’s Atlantic coastline.
I think of a story my ex-wife Susan’s grandmother told me about prohibition, how two rival smuggling gangs dueled one winter night on the Navasquan River, their ice boats circling and firing shots at each other until dawn. The gun battle kept half of Branchtown awake all night, yet no one called the cops, not even when daylight revealed three dead bodies on the ice.
“Faccia rozzo,” Susan’s Italian grandmother said when I first moved here from California and she told me the ice boat story. “Branch-a-town is a hard face, Austin. You be the hard face, too.”
My name’s Austin Carr. I’m a stockbroker. The slick expensive business cards in my wallet say I’m a Senior Financial Consultant for Shore Securities, Inc., Members of the American Association of Securities Dealers, but I’m really just a salesman and I work for myself. Straight commission. If I don’t sell, I don’t eat.
“Another margarita, Luis.”
A lot of people in my line of work call themselves investment counselors. They wear two-thousand-dollar Italian suits, carry alligator attache’ cases, think and talk about themselves as professionals like doctors and lawyers. In truth, we’re closer akin to used car dealers, only more dangerous because losing your life savings is a tad worse than getting stuck with a leaky transmission.
It’s hard to sport illusions about yourself or your profession when you live in a camper. And I’ve always treated my clients with honesty, to the point of aggravating every sales manager I’ve ever had. Even so, keeping my self respect, I have not been thinking about this job in a favorable light. In fact, in the years since the market crashed, ruining my sales numbers, my finances, and more recently, any chance of being with my two children, Ryan and Beth, I’ve been wracking my brain, trying desperately to figure another way to earn a living.
“Another double?” Luis asks.
“Por favor.”
Although no solution to my dilemma has yet presented itself, I’ve discovered it helps to ruminate in a positive setting: Luis’s Mexican Grill on Broad Street in Branchtown. The decor reminds me of home, Los Angeles, and Luis has an authentico Mexican chef, Cruz. Best of all, Luis works the bar himself every day.
“You are not going to work today?” Luis says.
“Careful, Luis. Your query borders on insult. In fact, I have already been to work, only to discover that my monster client delayed our scheduled discourse until this afternoon. I merely returned here to spend some quality time with you and Cruz.”
“I recommend this be your final cocktail,” Luis says.
Dealing with numbers all the time is an ache in the ass, definitely, but my biggest problem with being a stockbroker is having to spend all day on the money machine, dialing for dollars, calling busy people at the wrong time, apologizing because the back office screwed up a check, downplaying the risks of an investment to exaggerate the benefits, dancing investors from one asset to another so I can take part of their principal as commission. To be good at stockbrokering, you have to be slightly larcenous.
I lick the wet salt from the rim of my still empty margarita glass. Of course I never worried about little things like that while I was netting eight to ten-thousand dollars a month. It’s only been since my income dropped by more than half, and mainly since I lost physical contact with my children, Ryan and Beth, that I search for the social significance of securities sales.
