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The grin left his mouth and he began to look wary. I was the one who got straight A’s, the only one in this pack of D’s and C minuses.
“Ten bucks, Paulie. You can read, can’t you? Go look it up. A British blue cheese. And if you lose, you also gotta buy a pound of the shit, and eat it with a pair of chopsticks.”
That did him in. He waved me off.
“So what. You know cheese. But you don‘t know shit about tools. Thought yer ol’ man was a engineer.”
“Yeah, well, what you think you’re talkin about here is a Stilson, a Stilson Wrench. Adjustable, with teeth and a long handle. A plumber’s tool, fool. What you want one of those things for?”
He tried to look like a poker player holding a pocket pair.
“Get me one and I’ll show ya.”
I thought about that for a second. I knew where I could get one, but the sure bet had bit the dust and here was another chance to do business.
“Cost ya a buck an hour.”
“Don’t need an hour.”
“Buck an hour or any fraction there-fuckin-of. Final offer.”
Paulie laughed.
“Some altuh boy, wid a mout like dat …” but he dug into his pocket and came up with a coin that looked like it had been dipped in chocolate and dusted with tobacco bits. “Heah’s fifty cent. The rest when you delivuh.”
Paulie had achieved heroic status when he organized the now famous watermelon raid earlier in the summer. A boxcar had been left for several hours on the spur track behind number five park and Paulie had picked the padlock, releasing hundreds of tubby fruits into the city. Kids from as far away as Railroad Avenue were toting melons on their shoulders, or sitting in small groups, slicing them up with kitchen knives, their faces and hands drenched with sticky juice. It was a hard act to follow, but whatever plan he’d hatched for the Stilson, it was designed to maintain his legendary, outlaw image. And as supplier of the necessary technology, I would earn a small slice of his notoriety pie. But I needed help with this enterprise, and I knew who I could count on. Anthony Morga was the smallest but scrappiest member of our tribe at Holy Rosary School, and I could get him on board for a tithe of the buck I’d make from the rental. He was a wary kid, always kind of skittish about promissory contracts, and as we made our way down the unpaved alley that ran like a neglected country
