Part #2
Kicking around with taxi and car service driving, I bumped into my old acquaintance Norman once again…He seemed happy to see me, he’d opened a nightclub somewhere around the Broadway/Roosevelt Ave. area of Jackson Heights (Colombian Drug Cartel Territory) and was anxious to show it to me…
I’ve forgotten the name of the place after all these years. It was a typical 80’s type, local Disco club; not huge…but a nice size, and you could tell that Norman had sunk a stack of cash into it. The place had a rather large, ornate bar, with mirror backed shelves full of high end whiskeys, rums, vodka and gin of every description.
There was an elaborate DJ section, outfitted with a host of complex sound equipment, wired to humongous speakers positioned all around the joint…Of course there was that huge, obligatory mosaic, mirrored Disco ball, hanging over the center of the dance floor. Thickly padded and tufted seating booths lined the walls as well.
Norman seemed to get a kick out of my reaction when he fired up an LP at probably the highest wattage possible, then flipped a few switches for the flashing strobe and laser lights to kick in, causing me to reach the brink of a nearly, photosensitive induced, epileptic seizure…Damn; it was like ‘Saturday Night Fever’ on steroids…
We hung around together that afternoon at his club, while his workers began to arrive and set up for evenings opening. Norman occasionally got, or made calls throughout our little get together; it wasn’t hard to tell that it was all about business…He’d lower his voice to a near whisper, while walking to the opposite end of the bar, with his head down and phone stuck to his ear.
There was a back room…as always in joints like this…separated by a dark curtain; a kind of small, private lounge area adjacent to a door marked ‘Private’ (Norman’s little office space) After gesturing to a couple of his newly arrived ‘boys’ with some instructions, Norman invited me to follow him into the office.
Once inside, he pulled a small bag out from a desk drawer. Dumping it out in front of me on the desk, he said, “help yourself”…There were a few dozen little packages of folded, silver foil now scattered before me. I smiled, but politely declined.
“You don’t snort?” He asked.
“No" I told him…"I tried it once, and liked it too much. A little voice warned me to stay away from the stuff after that.”
Norman indicated that I had passed the ‘test’ according to a big smile on his face, and nodding of the head.
“I don’t fuck with the stuff either…it’s all business to me.” He said, happily slumping back into his chair.
We sat a few seemingly long moments in silence after that; I could sense there was something else coming…nothing bad…a question, or a confession of sorts… When he opened up, Norman asked me if I’d be interested in being his ‘bodyguard’…Since I was between gigs and feeling out the waters, he thought his offer could be mutually beneficial.
Norman told me that “business was booming” on his end, but that meant his ‘back’ was becoming more and more vulnerable…He had his ‘boys’ but not a close confidant he could trust, who wasn’t “fucked up in the head”
He went on to tell me, he needed someone who could look after his wife and two kids in case something ‘did’ happen to him; someone to check on them…make sure they were safe.
How do you turn a guy down who seems to trust you so much? I cared more about watching his family, than I did about him…Something told me to consider the offer; maybe it was just the money…I don’t know…Maybe it was because his wife was pretty, and I’d known her long before I ever met Norman…?
We parted that afternoon with my word “I’d consider it”, and get back with him. I left the club with one of his ‘STAFF’ shirts in hand, and something he stuffed into my shirt pocket…It looked like a few Franklin's…It was.
Part #3 Coming...Soon
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