Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue Page 6

  After the strudel was wrapped and paid for, Nathan turned around. She was there waiting, her hip cocked in a casual pose, her lips moist and soft. Did it show? Did it show?

  "Hello, Karoline, nice to see you."

  "Hello, Nathan." She gave him that slight touch of lip on the cheek, just close enough to fill his head with her buttery perfume and then retreat. "You could call me," she whispered.

  Nathan smiled politely and walked out with his apple strudel and daughter. When they got home, Sarah ran to Sonia and said, "Mommy, Mommy, guess what? I had three olives, an alphachoke, and somebody's head."

  Some co-conspirator, that Sarah. He should remember that. Still, he was home, it was Shabbas, and whatever he was dreading had not happened. Unless it had, and he couldn't see it. Calamity sometimes wears disguises.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Meshugaloo Himself

  SWEET-FACED RUBEN had given the block an all-clear wave because the linen-suited Joey Parma had turned east, away from their block toward the Casita Meshugaloo, a vacant lot on which a Puerto Rican country house had been built. The house had been covered with enough red and turquoise paint to conceal the questionable carpentry and in places skilled carpentry with questionable materials. A railing across the front porch was made out of dismantled wooden chairs. On top of this little one-story building dwarfed by six-floor tenements on three sides flew the red, white, and blue flag of Puerto Rico and the blue-and-white flag of Israel.

  The remaining lot space was used to grow tomatoes, beans, and corn. They had even planted two banana bushes. It was an uncertain agricultural society, New Yorkers trying to grow food with the memories of their parents. Aside from five brilliant amber sunflowers, the crops were not doing well. But it was still early summer. Already, prospering weeds had grown into high bushes that gave the lot the illusion of lushness, much the way thick tropical vegetation had hidden the poverty in their parents' island. New York in the summertime is tropical, too, and any patch of soil left alone will turn uselessly bushy and green. It must have been a jungle each summer before Europeans started building here.

  But in Manhattan, buildings had their own natural law the way plants do in other places. Vacant lots where tenements had been removed by real estate speculators stood like gaps from missing teedi, waiting for the right time to build. The right time would be soon. In the meantime, the holes had been overgrown by gardens, parks, casitas. In Manhattan's natural law, space does not go unused. The squatters who had moved into Harry's buildings followed this natural law, too. Real estate abhors a vacuum even more than does nature.

  Most of the time, Chow Mein Vega, the Meshugaloo himself could be found seated inside the casita at a round table made from a huge spool that had once held cable.

  Chow Mein Vega had invented the word "meshugaloo," perhaps the only word of a language called "Spiddish" that was a cross of Nuyo-rican Spanish and Lower East Side Yiddish and thus a purely New York idiom. For the contribution of the word "meshugaloo," Chow Mein Vega was the only gentile to have had his name in the sidewalk of Saul Grossman's Deli on Second Avenue, where the greats of Yiddish theater were meticulously inscribed in concrete. The Forward interviewed him on the occasion of his name being installed and asked him what "meshugaloo" meant.

  "It's a cross between meshugenah and boogaloo. If you think about it, it is a meshugenah boogaloo."

  "But what does that mean?"

  "Meshugenah, you know, means meshugenah."

  "Yes."

  "You know, crazy And boogaloo ... boogaloo means everything. It is a fusion. A rhythm-and-blues beat with a Latin twist. It is very elusive, you know. A cha-cha-cha has that three-beat, and a salsa—let's face it, you have to have form for salsa and mambo. But with boogaloo you can do anything. Wave your arms. You can wiggle your hips. You are in tempo. Boogaloo means everything and yet it means nothing. Es gor-nisht pero todo. You know what I'm saying. That's its appeal. It's very heavy-duty. Boogaloo—ahhh! Forget it!"

  This answer was then translated into Yiddish for the Yiddish-language edition. Chow Mein Vega spoke Spanish and English the same way, offering rhythms, not clarity. Nor was his name really Chow Mein Vega. It was Carlos Rodriguez. According to his promoter, Howard Gold, another Spiddish speaker, "The name Carlos Rodriguez would be excellent for baseball, but for boogaloo eso no dice bupkiss." It says nothing.

  New York Latinos did not remember the Chicago act Tom and Jer-rio, which recorded the first boogaloo in 1965. Its most enduring innovation was the line "Sock it to me," which became a mantra, repeated for all occasions in the late sixties. In Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia, boogaloo was black music. But in New York, Puerto Ricans fused it with salsa and made "the Latin boogaloo." Latin boogaloo was invented not by Carlos Rodriguez, but by friends of his with whom he had grown up playing baseball in East Harlem, such as Joe Cuba, whose real name, Gilberto Calderón, had also been changed because it was deemed to have said nothing. They had all made money playing together at Jewish clubs in the Catskills in the 1950s. Back in New York in the sixties, playing to Latin and black crowds, with new names invented by Jewish promoters, they had accidentally developed a Latin boogaloo without knowing what the word meant. No one could even remember how it came about.

  Many of these Nuyorican boogalooistas carried with them the memories of Jewish clubs in the mountains, though their Jewish fans did not remember them because they now had new names. At first, Carlos did not want to be called Chow Mein. But after his biggest hit, "The Yiddish Boogaloo," people all over the world knew him as Chow Mein Vega and the name to him became synonymous with money and success. "It's funny," he said. "You become somebody and that's it. Es far-tik. It's done." After "The Yiddish Boogaloo," he knew that he would always be Chow Mein Vega, even though he suspected that he was trapped in a half-truth.

  Most boogalooistas had a defining boogaloo, such as Ricardo Ray's "Danzon Boogaloo" or Pete Rodriguez's "Pete's Boogaloo." It was New York music. The idea for "The Yiddish Boogaloo" came from the neighborhood. Joe Cuba's 1967 "Bang Bang" described the cultural tension between blacks and Latinos in Harlem, between cornbread and lechón. But "The Yiddish Boogaloo" was about a different neighborhood:

  Eh! Yiddisha hugaloo

  Meshugaloo—ahhh!

  Meshugabo — ahh!

  Second Avenue—ahhhh!

  Go to the deli,

  And you will find,

  Corned beef, pasteles,

  And pastrami on rye.

  And for dessert—moiongo pie! And as you leave

  They'll give you

  A kishka good-bye.

  Thousands of people would raise their arms and shout in a slow crescendo, "Meshugaloo—ahhhh!" It became a spontaneous cry whenever Chow Mein Vega and his six-piece band appeared on a stage—in New York; San Juan; Sao Paulo; Paris; Juneau, Alaska; Tel Aviv; Tokyo— "Meshugaloo—ahhhh!"

  For a moment, it transformed the neighborhood. It was the late sixties, and the yippies had moved in, buying their smoke on Tenth Street. Yiddish theaters on Second Avenue were being turned into rock concert halls. But after Chow Mein Vega's "Yiddish Boogaloo," hundreds came downtown to eat at Saul Grossman's Deli. He even added pasteles to the menu. Chow Mein's mother came down to show his cooks—most of whom were uptown blacks—how to make her pasteles, while Rabbi Chaim Litvakfrom the little synagogue on Sixth Street observed, making certain that these pasteles were in accordance with the book of Deuteronomy, certifiably kosher pasteles. Rabbi Litvak worked with Mrs. Rodriguez on a recipe with ground beef instead of pork, mixed with a hamless tomato sofrito, which is a sautéed sauce base. Problems came with the masa, the grated green banana dough, on the outside. Mrs. Rodriguez almost gave up when Rabbi Litvak told her she could not add cream to the masa because the filling had meat. She had always regarded the cream as the hidden touch that made her pasteles special and had even hesitated to reveal her secret. She did not care that her snobbish neighbor from the island always claimed that the cream was "a completely Nuyorican
thing." There is a great difference of opinion on whether Nuyorican is a pejorative adjective. It depended on the speaker. Sal First could make "Spanish" sound pejorative.

  With great reluctance, Mrs. Rodriguez backed off from her Nuyorican cream recipe. Still, it took considerable research to find a supplier who was able to assure that their banana leaves, the outer wrapper of pasteles, were acceptable to rabbinic standards.

  Saul liked the pasteles and tried to get the team of Rodriguez and Litvak working on a mofongo pie, Saul not realizing that mofongo was never served in a pie. But Mrs. Rodriguez was not difficult. She accepted the idea of putting mofongo in a piecrust. But what to her was not negotiable was mashing the green bananas in pork fat. Everyone knows that it is pork fat that makes mofongo good. They tried numerous alternative fats, but they could never find one that both Mrs. Rodriguez and Rabbi Litvak could approve. Rabbi Litvak thought mashed plantains in garlic and soy oil—"a good pareve oil," he argued—was a great dish. "You could even boil them like dumplings and put them in soup," he suggested. Plátano knadlech.

  No, Mrs. Rodriguez shook her head insistently, raising her arm and waving her outstretched fingers. "This mofongo tastes of nada. Na-da!"

  Rabbi Litvak, a connoisseur of didactic hand movements, admired the gesture. A stubborn man, he profited from the entire encounter. Though Saul Grossman could not find an acceptable mofongo for mofongo pie, Litvak started using mashed green bananas, garlic, and soy oil as a snack along with the herring for Friday night kiddushes. Litvak's mofongo was also perfect for the rabbi's Sunday morning breakfasts, which by tradition emphasized fats and carbohydrates. Every Sunday morning, a handful of aging followers sat with the rabbi and debated on Jewish writings and the events of the day while being served Scotch, bourbon, noodle kugel, Yankel Fink's knishes—arguably the densest material ever made by man—and the rabbi's kosher mofongo. Sometimes Eli Rab-binowitz would come, and then he would contribute blintzes laid out in disposable aluminum pans that got misshapened as Litvak's followers hungrily grabbed for them because Rabbinowitz never brought enough, and the polite and the slow would be left with mofongo. Thank God for the noodle kugel. Thank God for the bourbon.

  With the shooting of Rabbinowitz, there would be no more blintzes for the rabbi's breakfast. From a gastronomic point of view, they would have preferred that Yankel Fink had been shot.

  When Joey Parma arrived at the casita, his linen wilted in mid-morning heat, he admired the neat rows of struggling crops, pastel flowering peas, drooping tomato vines with small, misshapen yellow fruit, and lush weed patches. Chow Mein was standing in front of a four-foot fruitless banana plant, stroking a broad, limp leaf. He had gained almost one hundred pounds since the boogaloo days, and with his often incomprehensible pronouncements and his rounding size, he was becoming more suggestive of Buddha than boogaloo. The banana bush looked very small next to him.

  "Joey, did you ever see a banana grow?"

  "I'm Italian."

  "Me either. I'm Puerto Rican. I should be able to grow bananas. I wonder how they do it," Chow Mein said, thoughtfully stroking his gnarled and stumpy ponytail, which was not doing much better than the bananas.

  "Well, I'm Italian and I cannot make a good espresso. Not like they make in Italy. Some say it's the water. But there are Italian restaurants here that do it. What are you going to do with the bananas? Did you see the article in the Times? Enrico Petruchi uses them with sea bass and endive."

  Chow Mein was silent for a minute. He was not going to give this white guy the satisfaction of showing that he didn't know who Enrique Petuque was. "I just want to see them grow. A casita should have bananas," he finally said.

  "Were you here last night?"

  "The Hamptons are so crowded this time of year."

  Joey showed no sign of appreciating the joke.

  "Is it true you couldn't find his head?"

  "We got his head. We even got the angle of the firing, so we know the height of the killer."

  "Unless he shoots from a weird angle," said Chow Mein, knowing that the cops had already decided that whatever height they came up with was the height of Latino people. He stood up, as though daring Joey to make a note of his height, and said, "You know we shouldn't talk here. Cops in a casita is a very bad gestalt, tu sabe'."

  "Let's go eat something."

  Chow Mein knew he would say that. He tried to cooperate with the police because he, too, had loved drugs in the sixties but hated them in the eighties. He had lost too many friends. Also he liked to eat with Joey Parma, because if you ate with Joey, it was always "on the house."

  "You know," said Chow Mein, "I'd like to go to Rabbinowitz's. I loved his blintzes. With the sour cream." He snapped his fingers.

  "Well, closed today."

  "It was the last good blintzes in the neighborhood. What are we going to do?"

  "There's a new little French place."

  "If I can't have blintzes," said Chow Mein, gently dusting some kind of white powder off Joey Parma's linen jacket, "let's go cuchifrito."

  As they walked around the corner to the cuchifrito, Chow Mein nodded thoughtfully while Joey explained what he had just learned: how to use talcum powder to remove a grease stain. They stood at a counter and ate fried bananas and beans and fat slices of pork roasted with garlic and coriander seeds, served with a pepper sauce that immediately produced intense pain. When Joey was able to speak again, he looked at Chow Mein through the tears in his own eyes, shook his head, and said, "Good, huh?" And Chow Mein laughed.

  "It's the endorms," Joey opined.

  "No, it's Consuela. She makes it like that. It's murder. Forget it."

  "But we like it because of the endorms. It causes pain and makes your brain send out endorms to kill the pain."

  "Why is that good?"

  "Makes you feel good."

  Chow Mein pulled on his ponytail. "Couldn't you just stub your toe or hit your thumb with a hammer or something?"

  "Wouldn't be the same. So, were you up late last night?"

  Chow Mein shrugged. "You know, the Meshugaloo never sleeps."

  Joey did know. Chow Mein Vega did not sleep at night. He spent his nights at the casita, his Buddha-like body by the cable spool table, working on an autobiography in which he had not yet reached the age of fifteen. While Chow Mein Vega sat at this makeshift table, in his fake farmhouse, with his fake name, pondering the myths and minutiae of his life, he often heard a lot. But he heard nothing the night Eli Rab-binowitz was killed.

  Consuela had given huge quantities to please Officer Parma, but she knew the pepper sauce would assure that most of the food went to the Meshugaloo. If she had to give a free meal, she would rather give it to Chow Mein. The Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood knew that the Meshugaloo was not getting many concert bookings anymore and, ignoring the compelling visual evidence, worried that he was not getting enough to eat.

  Finally, Joey's endorms getting the best of him, he went to the washroom to put cold water on paper towels and wipe his face, his reddened eyes—he even tried to soothe his burning lips and tongue by patting them with the cool wet paper.

  "Chucho," Consuela called out to Chow Mein in a low, conspiratorial voice, using the name only a few in the neighborhood knew him by.

  "Si, amor," Chow Mein said with his show business smile.

  "Chucho, we haveprobletnas for the fiesta." She was talking about the Avenue D street fair, which was far enough east to be purely for the Puerto Ricans and was in two weeks.

  "Por qué, what's wrong?"

  The problem was that they had no one to play "El Dominicano." Every year Jimmy Colon, who ran the food market on Avenue C, took on El Dominicano in a wrestling match. Jimmy had blond curly hair, blue eyes, and a friendly manner. El Dominicano was large and dark and wore a cape that was the checkered Dominican flag. Always, the good-humored Jimmy Colon appeared to be no match for the ferocious Dominican, El Dominicano. But in the end, El Dominicano found himself pinned to the blue canvas by the fri
endly and agile Puerto Rican. The problem was that the large and dark El Dominicano, whose name was Joaquin Morel, had perhaps gone too far in playing his national stereotype and was now on what was known on Avenue D as "an island vacation." El Dominicano had sold a little vial of crack cocaine, small and easy to palm with its little red cap with the rose on it, to a fleshy, falsely blond, dark-skinned woman. Not only the hair color was false: She was an undercover agent, and when it was time for the summer street fair, El Dominicano was locked up on Rikers Island prison—an island vacation.

  So the neighborhood needed someone else to play El Dominicano. Chow Mein Vega immediately suggested Ruben, the son of his former conga player.

  "Ruben is Puerto Rican," argued Consuela.

  Chow Mein did not want to point this out with Joey Parma about to come out of the washroom with reconstituted endorms, but Ruben had been spending a lot of time around certain Dominicans, and with what he had been doing, a lot of people in the neighborhood were starting to think he was Dominican. Chow Mein was worried about him and looking for ways to get him involved in the casita. But all he said was, "Ruben has dark skin."

  "That boy has such a sweet face. Nobody will believe he is a Dominican," said Consuela. "People will root for him instead of Jimmy."

  "He is a big boy, very heavy-duty body. He will look like he can kill Jimmy. He can grow a beard and we can take him to Cristofina for some tattoos and other stuff and ..."

  Joey came out, his face looking patted and pale. "I've got to go," he said. "Gracias, Consuela."

  "Por nada." Consuela smiled sweetly as Joey went off to Sal First in his continuing investigation of the death of Eli Rabbinowitz. Consuela began wrapping up the leftover food for Chow Mein, adding to the pernil two choice pieces of cuerito, crisped fatty pork skin—the best part.