The next day, I accompany Tony to get estimates for printing his T-shirts. Tony knows I lent Bernard money to invest in his canning business, and now I cannot refuse to help Tony set up his T-shirt business. Coincidentally, the unkempt moviemaker gave me the idea. A week ago, I was sitting on a park bench working on my field notes, when suddenly the moviemaker joined me. He asked me to tell Bernard to stop by to watch the footage. And I did not have to sleep in the tunnel, he added, I could also stay over at his place. This time, some green snot was hanging from his nose. I politely turned down his dubious offer.
Then he started to talk about the progress of his documentary on the street scavengers of Manhattan. A while ago, he had met an artist who, while waiting for his breakthrough, was dealing in old junk he found on the streets. The artist had mentioned designs that had to be printed on fabric. Together, they had looked up some addresses from printers in the Yellow Pages. Unfortunately, it never worked out.
It took me awhile before I realized the artist could only have been Tony. Indeed, Tony confirms that his financial cooperation with the cineaste did not yield any results. That is why he is so glad I am taking his plans seriously. His parole officer is also pleased to see Tony staying on the right side of law and working hard to become a decent citizen. When the T-shirts are ready, his parole officer has promised to buy at least a dozen to hand out at the Parole Board offices.
One printer already gave an estimate for a lithograph of his designs: one hundred dollars for a design in two colors, thirty for each additional color. Now we just have to find cheap T-shirts in the garment district around 28th Street. Tony knows a lot of Korean wholesale retailers where he always buys his umbrellas—when rainstorms are hitting the city—or party hats and horns for New Years Eve. He usually manages to make a threefold profit on these items.
On our way downtown, we cash in the cans from last night. The final profit of playing the King of Cans for one night is two dollars. I don’t ask for the money I lent him because then he would have made a loss. But Tony is not disappointed. He still has his starting capital, and tomorrow is another day.
His shopping cart is even more merrily decorated with flags and teddy bears, and when we walk through Times Square he waves at the tourists who try to take pictures of him from open decked buses. “Yes, honey, you can snap my picture,” he yells at a Japanese girl who shyly points her camcorder at him. Tony is in the best of moods today and nobody can spoil it.
We stop at a newsstand to buy the latest edition of Fortune magazine. The manager of Sloane’s has told Tony he has a big photo inside. Bill Gates is on the cover, but we can’t find Tony’s photo. Maybe it was last week’s issue, he says resigned. When I later ask the manager from Sloane’s about it, he bursts out laughing and admits he fooled us.
Sitting on the sidewalk, we drink a cup of coffee and Tony complains about Bernard. Just as Bernard refuses to believe Tony has stopped gambling, Tony doubts Bernard’s solemn declaration that he has slowed down his crack use.
“Two weeks ago, Bernard got his first welfare check. Two hundred bucks. And what do you think: next morning he is bumming a cigarette off me. Blew all his money in one night.” Tony shakes his head. He uses nearly the same words as Bernard does when he is gossiping about Tony’s gambling habits. “But on the other hand,” Tony says wisely, “the Bible says ‘whoever is without sin, let him throw the first stone.’”
Tony finishes his coffee and we go on. A small boy being pushed in a wheelchair by his parents stares fascinated at Tony’s decorated shopping cart. Tony looks back with compassion, and he gives the boy one of his teddy bears.
He dreams on about his T-shirt business. “You need only one spark to light the fire,” he says burning with optimism. Once he’s become a fortunate business man, he’s going to buy a huge estate for neglected orphans. With big playgrounds, swimming pools and a petting zoo.
Tony already knows an advisor to help him purchase his property. Once he found the wallet of a realtor on the street. No cash inside, just thirty credit cards. “More than Donald Trump will ever have,” Tony assures me. Tony brought back the wallet to the rightful owner. He got a hundred-dollar reward, and the assurance he could always count on the services of the broker when needed.
Once he’s filthy rich, Tony will be driven around in a limo through the streets of Manhattan. But he will never forget where he came from. “Stop there at that garbage can, driver,” Tony imagines. “I see an empty can.”
Once in the garment district, we visit a few wholesalers. Soon Tony realizes he is taken more seriously when he parks his shopping cart around the corner, and not in front of the store. But it is sad. One store only sells T-shirts that have already been printed, others only have a few dozen plain shirts in stock.
“We’re talking thousands!” he yells at the seller and indignantly leaves the store. At the end of the day, even after visiting a lot of stores, we have not found a good bargain. The cheapest we can get, once we’ve included the printing process, will come out seven dollars a shirt. No way will Tony be able to compete with the stores who sell their tasteless T-shirts for three bucks apiece to tourists.
30. ADVANCED CANNING II: PIER JOHN
Pier John operates his two-for-one business on 94th Street close to the park, right in front of the cheap hotel where he lives. Every summer evening, at 11 PM on the dot when the supermarkets close, he starts working. When I arrive just after eleven, he has already set up shop: one big shopping cart, on every corner an empty bag, just as Bernard had explained. Next to it are a few empty cases for bottles. There are two chairs behind the cart: Pier John sits on one of them, reading his newspaper and sipping coffee at his ease. The other one is for Bernard who will arrive any moment.
Pier John is a heavy-set man, and with his beard and glasses he looks a bit like a black Santa Claus. He is also a careful, discreet man who has a lot of experience with street people and is bound to never do or say impulsive things. He is even more discreet about his actual earnings. “That will only give the IRS bad ideas,” he told the New York Times once, when they devoted an article to him in 1989.
Pier John tells me about Chris Jeffers, a fellow two-for-oner who let himself be portrayed as a successful business man in the Times. The former homeless man even posed in suit and tie in between bags of empty cans for CNN and NBC’s 60 Minutes. “These cans were, by the way, not his own, but from WeCan,” Pier John says with a grin. Jeffers bragged he made at least seventy thousand dollars a year. In no time the IRS was knocking on his door.
Jeffers went broke. Where he is now, nobody knows. “He became some kind of phantom,” Pier John says. “Some say he is a broker on Wall Street, others say he is just hanging out there, begging with a paper cup.”
Jeffers started out wrong right from the beginning, Pier John says. He had rented a little van, but always parked it in a rather inconsiderate way at the park. He never cleaned up his mess. He allowed his clients to hang around, resulting in drug and alcohol abuse and a lot of noisy quarrels. People in the hood started to complain. Also, he managed to invoke the wrath of the cops. Each day he got parking fines. When the innocent van owner wanted to renew his expired driving license, he had to pay fifteen thousand dollars in fines first. Jeffers got wind that the owner wanted to kill him. Jeffers just left the van on a street corner and went underground. Local criminals stole all four wheels from the vehicle.