THE RICOCHET STORY

121. THE RICOCHET STORY (Eddie Zupan, 1968)

On that day the sun rose up behind white cottony clouds and I saw an Irish guy with bullets flying all around - in every direction cops were firing and hiding behind cars - and this Irish guy was short stubby mean and dodging everything and I thought - amidst the flying bullets - 'a real Rick O'Shea this fellow' - and that was the same day I ran into Eddie Zupan a little further downtown - he was a total chain-smoking son of a bitch from Somewhere Falls Somewhere (a place I could never remember) and to me he was just like a Julian of Norwich a crazed saint of the Heavens from the world of a runaway Pascal all sorry and seedy and I always did like the guy and I said "Eddie man what the hell's going on with all the shooting and cop cars and stuff - who's getting the rap for what?" and because I knew he too probably had to hide or was in trouble I waited to see what he'd say and he looked over at me with a cigarette dangling from his lips and the coat collar turned up around his neck and said "listen you didn't even see me and don't know a thing the shit's about to hit the fan and the entire phalanx of bullshit's coming down on us - so forget you saw me OK?" and just like that I realized he was in trouble too and I said "what's up though who did what who got caught?" and he said "the money was bad and they caught the lousy quality at the first place we tried and the stupid fuck was trying to buy a car with cash - a fucking car ! can you believe it?" and I knew what he meant because until then all I'd ever heard from him and his type (including way back up to Tony Main) was that the bad bills they tried to spread were only good if spread sparingly - a ten here a ten there whatever - but now someone had wrecked the whole show by trying to buy something big in one shot with a bunch of bad bills and it was like a reverse bank robbery or something so the cops must have been called and came right down and now the whole rat's nest was infested with flames and bullets too and I decided just to keep on going and the less I stayed around the better it was for me and anyway he didn't want me there - and I never found out right off what happened from that but it was a while before I saw Eddie Zupan again and when I did he was pretty mum and all he said was that 'Rick O'Shea' - that guy I'd seen - was in the clink and clamming up and he'd been given a good beating besides and now the heat was off at least for a while and they were staying real quiet and careful about the money but it was with stuff like that you could never be too careful because once they got your scent there'd be treasury agents everywhere snooping around and watching everything and following up on suspicions and the rest and the best thing was for that guy in prison to just die or get snuffed because the 'less he's alive the less he can talk' - which is the way they put it - so I was never too sorry for any of them and besides they'd never thrown any real dough my way either so tough on them whatever happened and Eddie Zupan no matter he stayed my friend and we talked and I hung around but he was working too at some electronic warehouse mess of a place along Canal Street where he could look responsible and do regular stuff and sort of blend in yet still keep his contacts too - as anyone could 'visit' him in the store and pretend to be doing business - they sold wires and relays and lights and brackets and transformers and all that sort of electronic stuff that never made too much sense to me anyway but it was right along Canal on a big corner and it got lots of people in everyday - cheap prices cut rates and the rest - and at that time there were many early-on electronic hobbyists making prototypes of things - scanners radios computers and all that - so there was always a ready audience and I wouldn't bet it too far from Eddie either to have given out plenty of bad tens or fives or whatever for change too and these people would never know the difference - which was another great reason for working there however he managed it - but we never really talked about that stuff anyway and the most I knew about him was he lived alone somewhere down by West Street or somewhere and his contacts were many but his contacts were few (if you know what I mean) which is how these guys liked to keep things and I always figured him a con-man criminal type anyway but that was OK because he was fun too and the little numbers racket down along there that was going on had him right in the middle of it too and they'd send bums out and old-time losers from the Bowery to carry chits for them and take bets or whatever and I never did know how much of the money bet was really delivered back as winnings but I figured it wasn't much and most of the nearby bars and taverns and barber shops and such they all had people in on it and took bets on numbers and sports and horse races and most anything and kept little record books and the like and there was always someone on the phone about something but nothing bad ever came by and I guess nobody ever had to pay up for anything or get caught either and if it ever was trouble it just some bum or hobo who wound up taking the heat and nobody ever listened to them if they started to talk - not even the cops - because they were just already known as drunks and dazed dumb over-the-hill guys always in trouble over something and never telling it straight : and then I noticed it was the 'Tetrahedon Brass Ensemble' or something like that playing tunes out on the sidewalk in front of Barney Liven's Green Frog Ale House which was a place frequented lots by stockbrokers and those types after market hours and they always threw money in the hats on the sidewalk and all that and the band there was struggling through some sidewalk tunes and most of the people passing just went by - never even looking up - and that made me feel a little bad for the guys but people were always too busy even to notice and they were on their way to or from and going for trains and appointments and stuff or office-to-office and door-to-door with nary a word spoken between and that awesome silence that goes with the tracking of thought and purpose seemed almost breathless in its holy presence but I saw it all as through water and I watched with teary eyes as those same people - over and over - came and went and came and went again and I thought - 'you want to run out and paint like Paul Gaugin ? a way can be found to do that - something like the shedding of skin on a fading horizon which constantly stays ahead and away from you and the closer you think you are getting to it the more it fades and that horizon's one rub is that it's therefore 'always out there' no matter how hard you try to reach it and that quest for it stays steadily ahead of you no matter what but if the end of the world was 'the end of the world' by dimensionality's definition you'd then fall off BUT that is not what happens that is NOT the way it occurs at all and the speeding bullet of experience re-writes the code as quickly as we are running it : time speeds past endings and beginnings alike and there's NOTHING necessary to its form or substance except something more like empty music in some empty wind and God is an empty chair while concept by concept by concept we slink along - investigating the cracks and the absences and the voids while filling them with myth and legend after first finding literally over and over that there's nothing of substance upon which any of it stands and Mythmaking is our flying carpet and it's the basis of all faith too' and I really wanted to say all that to the people passing by but I couldn't and didn't and I knew no one would listen anyway.