He led me out the back of the shack into the yard and I followed. He spoke as we passed the automotive detritus that had been towed from Chester County’s streets, rows and rows and rows of it.
“The deputy sheriff, he was there already when we showed up,” said Pete. “Six in the morning. The morning’s the best, before anyone gets a mind to drive off. It was quite a house, like some castle. And a lawn that stretched forever, six football fields or something, all fenced in. There was three cars in the driveway, but not what we was looking for. And nothing in the garage, either. Happy as hell to show us the garage, so I knew before we looked it wasn’t going to be there. The deputy wanted to leave but there was all that lawn, right. Fenced in, that was the ticket. ‘You got horses?’ I asked. Sure they did, Mr. Carl. A place like that. Then when I convinced the deputy to check out the stable, they went a little batty.”
“Was there an old man there?” I asked. “Round, sallow face, long hair, slightly wrecked looking?”
“Oh yeah, he was there, mumbling something, shouting. You’d think they’d cut his nails for him, wouldn’t you? But I didn’t take no mind of him, I’d seen it before. You know this type of work is not the most pleasant. People don’t like to see you taking away their cars. Take their washing machines, their VCRs, their wives even, fine. But not their cars. We won’t do it without the sheriff there and the sheriff won’t do it unless he’s armed. But then again we don’t get too many houses like that one. So we go to the stable, right. There are horses there, sure, hay and barrels of oats. Smells like leather and horse shit, you know. Little strips of yellow hanging down covered with flies. We walk through it slowly. Nothing, right. I look up in the rafters, you never know, right? Nothing.”
He took me inside a large low building in the center of the yard, with a ceiling of corrugated tin. He led me to something big, something long, covered with tan canvas.
“And then, hiding out there in the last stall, Mr. Carl, this is what we found.”
He grabbed hold of the side of the canvas and whisked it off. Underneath was a majestic looking thing, a long, two-seater convertible, with a golden hood and blue wheel wells front and rear. Four shining exhaust pipes snaked out of either side of the engine. There was a high, majestic grill and a spare tire hooked above the trunk and the delicate front bumper was shaped like a woman’s kiss.
“I knew we was getting a Duesenberg, Mr. Carl, but frankly I expected a wreck of some sort, not a 1936 SJ Speedster in decent condition. This baby’s got a twin overhead cam, eight cylinders, a centrifugal supercharger, tubular steel connecting rods.” He stopped speaking for a moment, staring at it in awe. “This is more than a classic, Mr. Carl. This is a work of art. This is a legend. Designed by Mr. Gordon Buehrig himself. When it first came out, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable both ordered a special model. A man who cared would give a lot for this car.”
“About how much, exactly?” I asked.
“In mint condition, at a car show, properly advertised, between two and three hundred thousand. This model hasn’t been kept up lately, it’s got some rust, the leather seats are cracked, the engine’s leaking off a little oil, needs a valve job. But it would be well worth it to spend some time and money and fix up this baby until it shines and then sell it at a show.”
“How much would we get if we auctioned it off right now?”
“These things are tough to say, Mr. Carl. It would be a distressed price. It would depend on who shows up. Probably something like forty or fifty. But that would be a shame, Mr. Carl.”
I was still getting twenty-five percent of everything I collected from Winston Osbourne. Twenty-five percent of the fifty would be twelve five. It was amazing how once money started flowing it didn’t stop. Twelve five.
“Sell it, Pete,” I said, turning around and leaving the building.
He followed after me. “But Mr. Carl, that would be a shame. I’d be honored to work on it for you. In six months, Mr. Carl, it would be mint. I promise it. But to just up and sell it like this would be a damn shame.”
I was sure it would be just that. But you see, I wasn’t a car fancier. It was just steel and leather and rubber and glass to me. And all in all, I’d prefer the twelve five sooner than anything else later. “Sell it,” I said, still walking away. Take that, you little blue-blood snot. “Sell it as soon as you can.”
23
NINTH STREET, NORTH OF WASHINGTON, is the heart of South Philadelphia’s Italian Market. On weekends the street becomes a cacophonous melange of vegetable stands and fishmongers and fine meats laid out in glorious pink rows inside the white refrigerated displays. Cannoli so rich it takes a full half-hour to eat them, hoagies thick with spiced ham and provolone, drenched in fine wine vinegar and covered with hot peppers. Fresh squid soaking in their ink, prosciutto sliced so thin you can read the paper through it, okra and bok choy and radicchio, strawberries ripened to burst like flowers in your mouth. “Please, lady, please, I pick the best for you, I promise, the best in the world, the sweetest, like sugar for you, just do as I say and don’t shake the melons.” It’s a sweet old-fashioned street when the market is open, and from all over the city they come to buy the freshest seafood, the finest veal, the ripest produce. Families have owned their stalls on Ninth Street for generations, Giordano’s produce, Cappuccio’s meats, Anastasi’s freshest seafood. The Italian Market is a brilliant Philadelphia tradition, a feast for the senses and the perfect place to shop for that lavish dinner party. Just so long as you don’t shake the melons.
This happened to a friend of mine. True story. He was in the market one Saturday morning with his parents. A family outing. They were at LiCalzi’s produce store buying tomatoes. My friend’s mother is one of those women who shake the melons and press their thumbs deep into the eggplant and take a bite of radish before buying the bunch. If there is a best lemon in the rack, a best ear of corn, a best box of strawberries, she will find it.
“Hey lady,” said the vegetable clerk, a tall fat man cloned from tall fat LiCalzi stock. “The sign says don’t touch the tomatoes. They’re all good. You want a good tomato, I’ll give you a good tomato. Here, take this one.”
“I’ll find my own, thank you,” she said.
“Hey lady, do what I tell you and stop squeezing the fucking tomatoes.”
“Don’t talk to my wife like that,” said my friend’s father.
“I’ll talk to her any way I want,” said the clerk, giving him a shove.
My friend shoved him back.
“What’s the problem here?” said another, older LiCalzi.
“The lady is squeezing the tomatoes.”
“Don’t squeeze the fucking tomatoes,” said the second clerk.
“Fuck you,” said my friend.
And that was it.
The first clerk dived over the stall, scattering tomatoes like large, squishy marbles across the street, and loosed a right cross that broke my friend’s jaw. When my friend’s father tried to pull the first clerk off his son, the second clerk grabbed him in a headlock and started pounding his face with uppercuts, one after another, like a wrestler on Saturday morning TV, shattering his nose. In the melee my friend’s mother was slugged in the eye with the second clerk’s elbow, cracking the socket. By the time the ambulance carrying my friend and his parents had left, the cops had dispersed the crowd, the stall had been righted, the tomatoes replaced, a new bin set up for tomatoes, slightly damaged, at a bargain rate, and the fat tall LiCalzi clerks were calmly weighing celery stalks for the new wave of customers. My friend and his parents now do all their shopping at the Super Fresh.