Story Week Part 1 - Johnny Goes to a Club
The car drove up to the curb on West 145th Street off Lenox Avenue and Johnny Washington opened the door and stepped out into a puddle. He pulled his coat over his hat and trotted through the slanting rain to the awning over the front door of El Morocco. A white suited gentlemen put his arm out to block him. "It's OK," another said, "the boss is expecting him." Johnny reached into his pocket, took out sixty cents for the doorman, and went inside the club.
Johnny looked around at the large crowd and then wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. He did not want anyone to mistake the dripping rain for sweat and think he was afraid. Lionel Hampton and his jazz band were playing on stage. Johnny pushed his way through the crowd. "You're late," Joey Sarrow said, walking towards him, holding his elbow and taking him towards the front of the room. "You were supposed to be here an hour ago. He coulda left, you know. What are you thinking?"
Joey led Johnny to a small round table off to one side but not far from the stage. Johnny approached, first taking note of the exit door just a few paces away. He placed his coat on the back of his chair and took off his hat. “Mr. Manfredi, my apologies,” Johnny said bowing slightly to the big fat man sitting there.
"Johnny, Johnny boy, where have you been? Have a seat. Right there. Moe, you know Johnny?” Vincenzo Manfredi, or “The Needle” as he was known, motioned to Johnny, and the others at the table stood up, reluctantly, and shook Johnny’s hand. Johnny sat down and placed his hat on his lap, a small pistol still taped inside of it. He always carried it, just for good measure.
“You always ask me if I know Johnny," said Moe Schneider, the snappy dressed owner of El Morocco, the best and most popular club in Harlem. "Sure, I know Johnny. How ya doin’ Johnny, good to see you. You’re looking good tonight, Johnny."
Vincenzo motioned for a cigarette girl to come over. An attractive slim blonde walked towards the table. “No, not that one, send over the redhead,” he snapped, and Moe waved her away. In a moment a tall red head approached. “That’s more like, it. How are ya Peaches,” Vincenzo said, slapping her behind as she giggled and bent over to let him take a cigar. He offered one to Johnny who politely declined. “Don’t be gone too long, you come back to see me soon,“ he said to Peaches, slapping her gently again, and she winked at him and walked away.
“I hate when you do that," complained Lola Sunday. Lola, a short but pretty girl sitting next to Vincenzo, liked to think she was a burlesque star, and Vincenzo's girlfriend, when in fact she was really neither though some days he liked to have her around. She leaned over and started to rub Vincenzo's bald head. "Why don't give Lola a widdle spanking sometime," she said coyly.
“And I hate when you do that,” he said to Lola, pushing her hand away. "Why don"t you go play with your friends over there," he said, pointing towards a table of women in the back. "We have business to discuss." She abruptly pushed her chair back, stood up, thew her napkin on the table and walked away in a pout. Vincenzo took a few puffs of his cigar, and then leaned forward towards Johnny. “So Johnny. Good to see you."
"We were talking about Truman before you got here, Johnny," Moe Schneider said. "What do you think? You think he is going to win in ’48?”
“I don’t think much about those sorts of thing,” Johnny answered, looking not at Moe but at Vincenzo.
“You should,” Vincenzo said. “He has been good to your people. Look at all you folks here, they should all love him. Me, I think he is just a two bit local ward politician who got lucky. But he has guts. And I like a man who's got guts. Got to give him credit for that.”
Johnny put his hand under his hat. He moved slowly. I can't do this, he thought to himself. Eddie Lucas, also at the table and Vincenzo’s bodyguard kept his eye on Johnny. “What does he know about politics anyway,” snapped Eddie.
“Shut your mouth,” Vincenzo said to Eddie. “I like Johnny. I like to know what he thinks. Don’t I Johnny?”
There was a pause, the air filled with smoke and the loud sound of horns from the band.
“Johnny,” Vincenzo said, looking serious. “I’m sorry about your brother. I liked Earl. It wasn’t personal. It’s business. You know that. We couldn’t control him. You couldn’t control him. So he had to go. I’m sorry. Just the way it had to be. You have to let it go."
Eddie Lucas grinned, and started to snicker. Johnny wanted to rip his face off. He felt the small cold pistol in his hand. He should shoot Vincenzo Manfredi, the Needle, because he had to; but he wanted to kill Lucas, because he hated him.
“You see those guys over there, Johnny?” Vincenzo said, motioning behind him. “That’s Captain Meadowlark and his boys. They are watching us, those bastards. All the time now. I couldn’t have someone like Earl out there. Its dangerous Johnny, not like the old days. Gotta be smart. Earl wasn’t smart. Not like you.'
“Yeah,” said Eddie, “ he was just a dumb n –“
“Am I going to tell you again to shut your mouth?” Vincenzo snapped at Eddie again. Vincenzo told Johnny he was going to Miami the next day. He told Johnny that he should come, he could use his help there. Little did he know that Johnny was holding a ticket in his pocket to fly to Las Vegas. There Johnny would have the protection he would need.
Now a pretty camera girl in a short little skirt was passing and, as she does at every table asked if she could take a picture. Vincenzo, normally dismissive, agreed. “Why not,” he said. Vincenzo put down his cigar, leaned towards Johnny, and smiled, and then, the pretty camera down counted 1, 2, 3, and just as the camera clicked and the blinding flash went off, a loud single shot rang out, there were screams, and when he opened his eyes, with the band still playing, Johnny, taken totallly by surprise, saw Vincenzo slumped over onto the table with blood pouring from the back of his large head. In a split second Johnny put his small, still cold pistol in his pocket, Meadowlark starting shouting orders at his men, Moe Schneider grabbed the camera from the camera girl who hardly knew what even happened, and Joey Sarrow ran up to Johnny and pulled him away towards the exit door and outside into the pouring rain.
Inside El Morocco, through all the pandimonium, the Needle's heart was still beating.
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The eye patch made it hard to see his iPhone under the table. Someone was droning on and on about “what comes around goes around,” and he could not help but snicker as he heard the comment, for he had been thinking just a minute before, “one good story deserves another”. Johnny had for the better part of 2 years been playing leapfrog in the blogosphere when he happened upon this networking group who fancied themselves a creative fair, and they were running a story blog. What perfect fodder for Johnny and his group of ne’er-do-well pirates to seize their ship and take the wheel. The lunch was not his cup of grog; it was far easier to be someone else in the electronic fodder of the Internet than to talk about himself to real people at lunch.
Someone was speaking to him as he refocused his one eye from his iPhone to the speaker…what did he do?…he chuckled: “I’m in IT,” and he could not resist “a good lead for me is anyone who has a blog.”
He had what he needed, time to go. “I am sorry,” he said, “I have another meeting,” and he stepped out. It was a good thing that he was leaving, he thought. The white-haired leader of the group had been upset that Johnny, a righty, had taken the corner seat.
As he walked out of the Friars club, Johnny knew the clock was ticking. His buccaneers had only so much time to be assembled and raise the sails. The eye patch itched as he walked; he needed to be at Starbucks to take advantage of their wireless, to call all hands to deck and to sail away.
The computer hummed. The hot Venti cup of dark latte steamed like a fog rolling in from shore…Johnny reached out into the ether of the electronic universe and contacted his avatar….
Captain Meadowlark stood proud on the deck of his ship with an eye patch and a sneer. The voice in his head was crisp and clear. He was to head to the .COM and bring his modern group of pirates to bear on, of all things, a group of business professionals who were stretching their creative muscles. He would need a strong crew for this one and people he could trust. He looked across the deck and saw his first mate Joey Sarrow was ready, as was his firewall cracker Moe Schneider, but his brother Earl was hunched over the deck bucket - too much of the electronic frontier for Earl last night, it seemed. The rest of his crew was a carefully selected bunch - the cream of the crop from around the world. They all had creative streaks and were the best at what they did. The newest was his “Diversion,” a beautiful redhead who went by the moniker “Peaches”. The voice in his head told him that the group they were going to shanghai had a thing for redheads, and he knew she would come in handy on this mission. The sails unfurled a gridded array, catching the electronic light that moved the ship through the ocean of information.
The first few seconds had been smooth sailing: They would reach the shores of Gotham in an hour or so and lay siege to this creative suite of blogs. As he scanned the horizon of data, another ship appeared and was moving in quickly. It was Captain Vincenzo Manfredi’s ship. Manfredi, who was better known as the “Needle,” liked to move onto everyone else’s turf, and lately the netherworld had been hiring him to intercept the pirates, his former friends. As the Needle closed in, Captain Meadowlark could see the Needle’s seductive companion Lola at his side and his first mate Eddie Lucas at the bow of the ship. The sharp tip of his left arm (his hand had been lost in a Phishing incident- a polished awl sat where his hand should have been, which gave him the name the “Needle”,) pointed straight at Meadowlark.
It would be quick, all hands on deck, turn into the sun and fire as they drew broadside. But before Meadowlark could give the order, he noticed 2 things: the white flag being raised and the gleaming lamppost at the center of the ship where their mast and sail should have been.
Despite his better nature, Meadowlark let them draw broadside and run a plank across. The Needle and Lola stepped onto his deck. He did not like networking with privateers. Vincenzo spoke first: “Meadowlark, you have a traitor on board,” but before Meadowlark could respond, the shot rang out and a body dropped to the deck, blood pooling across the gleaming planks…..
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