Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [55]
Hank played his own fingers along the buttons built in to the armrest beside him, and the music went off abruptly. He reached into a pocket, brought out a silver cigarette case, and placed the joint he had just stubbed out carefully inside. All his movements were studied and precise. He clicked opened the attaché case on the floor in front of him and took out a small stenographer’s notebook and a gold Cross pen.
“You’re a smart motherfucker,” he said to me. “I want your opinion about something.”
“All right,” I said. “And by the way, thanks for the ride.”
“I been writin’ this song for my new album, but I’m havin’ some trouble with the title, if you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Sure.”
“So I’m thinking,” he said seriously. “Should it be, ‘Your Ass Is My Destiny’ or ‘Your Ass Is My Destination’?”
I thought to myself, Is this my life?
I looked out through the tinted glass and up at the tinted sky and thought the tinted matter over. The Space Man took his art seriously, and a halfhearted reply would be taken as an insult.
“Well,” I said. “If you ask me, I’d go with ‘Your Ass Is My Destiny.’”
The Space Man looked interested. “Why’s that?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, but, you know, ‘destination’—it sounds like a one-shot deal, like a road trip or something. ‘Destiny,’ I don’t know, I think it sounds a little more spiritual. You know what I mean?”
Hank nodded approvingly. “You’re fucked up, Jack, but I like you. My moms said the same thing.” He put the pad back into the case.
“Darin, Reginald,” he said in his deep, rich voice, “this strange-looking white man here is a friend of mine. He used to be my trainer. Name’s Jack. Jack is back. Hey, man, I think I’m going to write a song about you.”
I bumped fists with all of them, and some of the tension seeped out of the compartment, but I could tell that I still made them uneasy, and the reason for that had nothing to do with white or black. It had to do with trouble. I was breathing it. In the mellow atmosphere of the limousine, I was the one discordant element, a human thunderhead on an otherwise sunny day. It wasn’t that they didn’t like me; it was just that they would all feel a lot better once I left.
I didn’t blame them. There were no angels in that car, and Hank had done time for assault up in Larchmont, New York, but his story was not the one you might expect. His father had been a neurosurgeon and his mother a professor of linguistics at NYU. He had an older sister who was a lawyer and an older brother who painted pictures no one understood. But Hank had been wild and not much interested in upper-middle-class life. He had gravitated toward the streets not out of want or despair but because he was simply bored with comfort.
I knew all of this because I had arrested him for selling crack on a bombed-out corner in the South Bronx back when I was a rookie cop and he was a sixteen-year-old kid crying in the backseat. I had looked into the rearview mirror and seen him weeping. I asked him where he lived and drove him home. You can imagine how surprised I was when I saw his house. The place could have been on the cover of Town & Country. I had even met his parents. They were fine-looking people from another world, who couldn’t understand their son.
That had been ten years ago. Now he was famous and worth $50 million. Then there were the recording studio and the clothing line. We met for the second time at a party at the Sheik’s place over on Star Island. He recognized me right away and hired me to train him. He was established by then and married with two shorties, as they say, and was at that stage of things when a man is just starting to feel secure with his good luck. Now he was looking at me as though I were the reincarnation of all the trouble he’d ever had. I didn’t feel good about bringing it back to him.
“The cops are after you, bro,