Caroline’s bisexual girlfriends at the Sahara bar warily touched Sean’s spiked hair and then enticingly fingered his studded leather jacket. He arrogantly acted the role of the rebel and the butch dyke bouncers were enraged by their clientele's traitorous heterosexual groping and asked Caroline and her date to leave the premises.
The next club was Les Mouches, where the gay boys drooled over Sean as the Second Coming of Marlon Brando. The music was too loud to speak, so he taunted them with sneers and a leather jacket draped over his shoulder. The queens were dying to get him into the back room. Poppers fueled the dance fever, cocaine lent the illusion of fame, and Quaaludes transported the dancers to a pagan morality. Sean resisted the drugs and reserved his body for Caroline’s libertinism.
After hours at Cisco’s Disco on 15th Street Sean had stripped off her shirt and banged a tambourine over his head. Men writhed with Babylonian excess next to the Giant Cisco Can. Men danced with Babylonian excess. Anything went in the crowded club. Caroline and he had sex in the bathroom. Men peered over the stall’s walls, urging to fuck her like a mercenary and Caroline demonstrated her versatility with a natural scorn directed at the voyeurs. It had been their night to shine amongst the stars and now the winter dawn was withering the velvet blue from a purgatorial sky and the World Trade Towers cast a lengthy shadow on the two bodies lying atop a man-made sand dune on the riverside landfill.
A rumble of powerful engines stirred Sean from his slumber on a pile of cardboard boxes. Her fur coat shielded their body from the cold. A powerful rumble of engines coursed along the Hudson and Sean nudged the blonde heiress.
”We better leave.” They were the only people in sight.
”What for?” She embraced him with a feline whimper.
"Anyone in those buildings across the street might mistake us for murder victims.” Thousands of windows overlooked the landfill.
“And they’d be dead wrong.” Caroline closed the fur coat to provide them a warm cocoon.
“The police might arrest us for trespassing.”
"The police are asleep this time of the morning, besides I was waiting for the slack tide. Look.” She nodded to the river.
A great ocean liner was steaming down the Hudson, flanked by two tugboats.
"One day all this will be covered by apartment buildings and you won't see this sight, unless you’re living in a luxury duplex. Have you ever been on a ocean liner?”
“No, but my Irish grandmother took my older brother and me on a ferry from Boston to Nantasket. A squall had struck halfway there and my grandmother had held us all the way to the Hull pier.” Any reference to their class difference between his Nana and her family was wasted on Caroline.
“I might know someone on board.” She stood up without her fur coat seemingly immune to the chilled wind. "This Englishman I met a couple of nights ago. He said that he worked on the Queen Elizabeth II. I was supposed to have met him last night, but I blew him off for you.”
”Lucky me.” Sean draped the fur coat over her shoulders. “You have any idea where it's going?"
The gust of icy wind blew her coat apart, exposing her breasts to anyone aboard the famed liner.
"First, it's a 'she' an it and secondly, she's bound for Southampton in England."
Her disdain of his ignorance was a product of her upbringing
“I forgot.” Sean hated her for a second, for she was right about the ship’s being women. His father’s side of the family had sailed the world out of Maine throughout the 1800s, but none of his generation had anything to do with the sea. ”Ships being feminine is strange when you think that seamen consider women on board a ship bad luck.”
”We’re only bad luck in love.” Normally Caroline would have stormed away from Sean without a backward glance, but this entanglement was in service of her brother and she softened her tone to say, “My mother and father’s parents had arranged their marriage. My grandfather gave them a cruise through the Mediterranean as one of their wedding presents. My father claims that they had never been happy on that ship, because they didn’t have to be who they were. They divorced right after our fifth birthday and my mother married a richer man once the divorce was finalized. We never see her. She lives in Rome and as children Charles and I pretended she drowned at sea.”
“What was Charles like before his accident?” Sean brushed the sand from his clothes, oblivious to her contempt of the middle-classes trying to pry into the lives of their betters.
“Charles was different and not only physically.” Her peers understood the purpose of the unsaid, but she decided to humor Sean. “He was smart, carefree, and expected to shine on every occasion. Funny, I’ve forgotten his negative attributes.”
“Everyone has a few.” Even rich people.
“I suppose he was full of himself, but then he had every right to be back then.” The fall had humbled him beyond need and Caroline breathed a sigh of regret that she hadn’t been able to stop him from climbing that roof. “We all have a high opinion of ourselves as teenagers.”
”Not everybody.” Tammi had been trampled in high school, but he had been lucky to have won a scholarship to a private Catholic school. His parents had been so proud. “I was brought up to be the best I could possibly be and the same was expected from the rest of my brothers and sisters. There are six of us.”
”Almost a tribe.” She envisioned them around a camp fire.
”More a clan.” His mother was devoted to their Irish heritage.
“How boring.” This wasn’t a criticism on Sean's upbringing, for Caroline was rarely entertained by the life chosen by her birth.
“Boring?” He didn’t accept any insults about his family.
“Everyone having to be alike, but isn't punk about changing who you were.”
”It is,” Sean answered, although everyone on the scene tended to dress in leather or black.
“And do you feel any different from before?”
”Not really.” Sean simply had more options than in Boston.
”It’s not easy to change.” She hated lying and cursed Charles for having to play this charade.
“I wish it was, but I’m trapped by who I am same as everyone else.”
“Middle class to the bone and I can’t be anything else.” Everything he said was a struggle, for in truth he would rather be with Tammi and his hole in his heart reminded him of his other failed romances from Cheri’s desertion to not being invited to the birthday party of sweet girl with pigtails. Her name had faded in the fog of time and Sean zippered his coat. “So now what?”
“You go your way and I go mine.” Most of the men and boys whimpered their ejaculation after three to five minutes. Sean had recovered faster than a marathon runner and Caroline needed to starve him of any advantage by refusing to acknowledge her desire for more.
"And that’s that?" Sean had gigged with the Hung at a high-school graduation party on Jerusalem Road. The expansive house had overlooked the Atlantic. The girls flirted with him, as if the band was the next Beatles, but after the last set, the father had seen them off the property as he would any hired help. Sean started to walk away from the dune only to have Caroline pull him back.
"Not so fast, sport. I enjoyed myself last night. You were fun.”
“I wasn’t trying to be fun.” Middle-class and poor males in America had fantasized meeting an upper-class girl, but Sean had never imagined that Caroline’s sophistication would be coupled with adult-film insatiability.
“That lack of effort is what I like about you. You’re a natural and so am I. There’s not many like us and believe me I looked for us.” She hooked her arm around his waist. “And you make it more fun and I might even give you a Christmas present."
“Why?” Sean hadn’t written a wish list after not getting a puppy for Christmas in 1962.
“For bad behavior.”
"Such as?" He wasn't giving her offer any serious thought.
Born to wealth Caroline was an expert at manipulating any man with no real material possessions.
"How about a motorcycle? A Triumph same as the one Brando’s in THE WILD ONES?"
"A Bonneville." Sean had crashed his last dirt bike after a high-speed chase eight years ago. He had snapped his left wrist and spent the weekend in the Provincetown jail. His uncle had told the judge that his nephew had run only after preventing townies from Truro beating a hairdresser. It was almost true.
“I admire a man who knows his desires.” Caroline ran from the dune, her boots kicking up spurts of sand.
The heiress’ recklessness endangered any reunion with Tammi, yet Sean chased her to the landfill’s unlatched gate and they waited for a break in the rushhour traffic on the West Side Highway.
“We'll never be able to cross." Sean panted and Caroline smiled wickedly.
"You care to bet?" She undid her fur coat to reveal her semi-nakedness.
The heads of the nearest drivers jerked to the right. Brakes shrieked and metal thunked on metal. They darted through the stalled traffic to the other side of the highway, where Sean tried to button her fur coat. “You're mad.”
"Can’t a girl have fun? Caroline flagged a taxi and sat inside, closing the door slightly to prevent his joining her in the back seat. "I'll meet you after rehearsal tonight."
The blonde millionairess blew him a kiss through the window and the taxi sped uptown.
On the other side of the highway several commuters were examining damaged fenders.
They were white-collar working stiffs and Caroline had enjoyed ruining their day. She undoubtedly regarded him as entertainment and ruthfully that’s all he had been last night.
Checking his pocket he discovered he had spent over $200. Money went fast with Caroline. He recalled the $310 deposited under the name of Allan Vaughan. It was early and the uptown traffic was light and probably even less in the West Village.If he pushed the taxi driver, five banks were not impossible and Sean hailed a yellow cab heading north.
”Where to?”
"Go to the bank on Houston and Varrick. I want you to wait for me. I'll be right out and we’ll drive to four more banks. Each stop will earn you an extra $10, okay?"
"You're the boss.” The driver flipped on the meter and the taxi sped away from the World Trade Towers.
At the first bank Sean punched in the pin code. He had picked 1099 for each bogus account from his address of his first apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. A minute later he pocketed $300 and returned to the cab, instructing the driver, "6th and 3rd. Right side."
After repeating the process there, they sped a block over to Christopher Street. Twenty minutes had elapsed sicne hitting the first bank and he had $900 cash in his pocket.
"8th and 14th." He gave the driver another $10.
The transaction on Hudson exhausted five minutes, leaving a little under thirty minutes to go to reach a fifth bank. This was his lucky day.
"You robbing banks, mister?" The driver looked in his rearview mirror with pregnant suspicion.
"No, I'm closing my accounts." Sean rationalized that the banks had foreclosed on houses and farms, bankrupted families, and hadn't given him a job after his graduation from college. They were in league with the military-industrial complex bankrupting New York. He dropped $10 into the front seat with a Maoist fervor. Stealing from the rich and sharing with the poor to support an affair with an heiress was the true worker state.
"Now head over to 5th and 14th." There were two banks at that location.
"I don't know about this." Most people were naturally honest, but shared the same weakness in a bad economy.
“Here’s $20 and you get another $20 at the last bank.”
The driver stepped on the gas and stopped on the corner.
He gave the driver another $20 at that adddress and he ran from one corner bank to another in a matter of minutes, increasing his take to $1500. The revolution was victoriously driving the forces of repression from the gates of utopia. The masses deserved to share this plunder and he almost shouted the secret of the ATMs to the commuters entering the subway. Ten minutes remained on the clock and he handed the driver a final $20.
"Last stop Union Square."
Jumping from the taxi, he climbed the stairs of a faux-Grecian temple to capitalism. An old lady was jamming a card into the ATM slot. She wore threadbare tennis shoes and a shabby raincoat. Sensing his impatience, the ancient crone turned apologetically to Sean, "Sonny, the bank took my money."
"Let me see." Sean read from the screen that the old woman’s account was without funds. "Seems the machine is broken."
He slipped in his card.
Thirty seconds later the machine dealt three hundred dollars Vegas-style in crisp twenties. Sean believed in Robin Hood and stuck the money in the old lady’s pocket. "It’s working now.”
"Yes, but I only had sixty dollars in the account." She stared at the money, as if it might be sucked back into the machine, then stuck the cash into her purse.
"Think of it as an early Christmas present from Nottingham Forest, ma’am." Sean ran down the steps and disappeared into crowds entering the Union Square subway station.
"Bless you." Tears dotted her eyes. She would have been happy with a twenty for her performance and stuck her card into the slot, trawling for pity from the next ATM user.
Brakes screeched on the street and two police cars disgorged four cops. A young policeman scrambled up the steps to aim his .38 at the old woman.
"Freeze, lady."
"I was just trying to get money." She acted innocent as adeptly as any con in the city.
"Kelly, holster your gun." Sgt. Weinstein shouted, for even a blind man could see this shattered old lady hadn't hit six banks this morning.
While the banks hadn't rectified the problem, the computers registered any extra withdrawals with the number 1099. The banker authorities had relayed this morning’s hits on the ATMs to his radio car and Sgt. Weinstein had trailed the thief through the Village.
The detective had arrived too late at Union Square, but the old lady must have seen him and Sgt. Weinstein asked, “Mother, have you seen anyone use this ATM recently?"
"A young man helped me with my bank card.” She stuck the fake card to her purse, thanking God the police were after her benefactor instead of her. “And gave me some money?”
”How much?”
”$100.” Something about the heavyset detective forced her to tell the truth, but not all of it.
"Can you remember anything else about this ‘nice young man’?" Sgt. Weinstein asked, smelling the faint scent of cat food. The city should be more worried about her impoverished situation, instead of a thief, whose crime spree hadn’t netted a fraction of the banks’ earning on the float from laundering drug money.
"Sort of a caveman with spiky short hair." She hated betraying the young man, but had six cats to feed.
"You remember the color of his eyes?" Sgt. Weinstein loosened his tie.
"Blue." The old lady tightened her thin coat for protection from a chilled wind rifling around the derelict S. Klein building.
"How tall?" Sgt. Weinstein started to construct a suspect from his mental list of thousand of criminals.
"A little shorter than you and thinner too."
"Clothes?" Sgt Weinstein saw a young man with blue eyes, white, spiky hair, a brutal face, but he didn’t figure him to be a career criminal, because the ATM thief had risked arrest to help this old woman.
"A motorcycle leather jacket, but he was no hoodlum."
"I'm sure his mother is proud of his consideration." In New York City only he cops, hustlers, bikers, and punks wore leather jackets. Johnny Darlino fit into two of the groups.
"This young man, he bad?" The old lady faked a shiver, hoping to avoid a visit to the 9th precinct where another policeman might recognize her from a previous arrest.
"No worst than anyone else in this city" According to the book he should have confiscated the $100 and stuck the old lady in a room with an Identikit artist, until she positively IDed the ATM robber, instead he yelled for a squad car to give her a ride home, then waved for the other squad car to resume its patrol and walked across Park Avenue South to the opposite sidewalk where several Seconal addicts were suspended in a mime’s mid-fall.
He searched the park with an expert’s eyes and then stuck his hands in his coat pockets.
The thief had escaped, but today had been close. Questioning Johnny Darling was a logic next step, except the young hustler was an expert at playing dumb.
Tomorrow he would stake out three more banks and issue the officers descriptions of Johnny and the old lady’s Good Samaritan. Bank robbery was a felony and if Johnny Darling was involved, then the guitarist would have to bargain his freedom with the DA and his snitching on his flock of sinners from the Strip would be a baby-step in cleaning up Times Square as a dangerous destination for so many innocent men and women living in this era of errors.
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