Jacko (10 page)

Every morning a saxophonist who would have been hired by one of the better hotels in any other city than this one used to play for three hours on the corner by the Bottom Line, the famed cabaret where the young queued two blocks on Friday nights for the right performer. Under the violet flags of NYU, an Ecuadorian band played high Andean music full of images of big-hatted, coca-leaf-chewing mountain folk and of llamas and condors.

And I watched Jacko acting the goat in Bergenfield.

Jacko is therefore in the street of unwalled mansions. He walks up a pathway through the snow, past a freshly delivered copy of the Jersey edition of the
New York Times
wrapped in blue plastic. It is an encouragement to Jacko since it promises occupancy, and he knocks on the broad, double-leafed door panelled in an Italianate manner, looking somehow reinforced like the door of a bank.

When there is no reply, Jacko tells us he suspects someone is hiding within.

—As is of course their right, he assures us, making a face which implies otherwise. And then in vengeance, or perhaps because his producer Dannie is urging him to, he tells the cameraman, who is in this case his friend Clayton, to put the muzzle of the camera up against the glass side panelling of the door. Hence we see, through Clayton's lens and the further lens of armour glass, someone's dream of opulence: a floor of creamy marble, a broad swathe of stair arising with gilt banisters and a lit chandelier fit for a casino.

—Let the people enter, roars Jacko, rapping on the window of this Jersey version of Versailles.

—Okay, Clayton, says Jacko, no sport this side of the road.

Clayton's camera swings and takes in the rest of the street. There is a glimpse of Dannie skittering away from the frame.

—Identical place across the road, roars Jacko. We'll give that one a burl next.

And then he returns us to the studio, where snide Maloney, the anchorman, says he was sure all viewers wished Jacko better luck on the far side.

When at last, after a lot of video persiflage, we were returned to Jacko, he was positioned by a door identical to the one he'd tried across the street. This time we got a sense from his face that his knock was almost immediately about to be answered.

—Somebody coming, somebody coming, he told us with his great oafish grimace.

The door was opened by a young man, barefooted, dark-haired, a little overweight, but wearing a track suit as if he intended to do something about his obesity.

—Mornin', he told Jacko, a thorough greeting.

Jacko went into his spiel. He was Jacko Emptor, boy from the bush, somehow associated with a microwave dish truck and a camera crew, wanting a little succour and warmth at a New Jersey hearth.

The young man could hardly wait for Jacko to be finished. He yelled, Come in! I know you.

He had a jerky joviality which may have derived from something he had ingested with his morning coffee.

So now Jacko was transmitting from the morning's second floor of cream marble, beneath a chandelier identical to the one across the road. Many a small town would not have eaten as much electricity as that one crystal beast.

—Goll-ee, said Jacko to camera. I've known cattle stations smaller than this place.

He asked the young man the normal questions. Was he married? Were there a wife and children somewhere in the wings of this suburban palazzo?

—No-oo, said the young man stringing out the negative! My father's given me another year of freedom before I have to find a good wife.

—So you live here alone? Jacko boomed.

—Not always alone, the young man boasted rolling his eyes for the sake of remembered lusts.

—What do you fill this place with? asked Jacko. You've got sheep, angoras, llamas?

The young man thought Jacko was a hoot. Jacko said, winking at the camera, This place is big enough to be a drug rehabilitation centre.

So that confirmed my innocent view that the boy was sniffing something. Seriously, Jacko asked, what did the young man do in this great house all on his own?

—Ah! said the boy. I have friends over. My life's full.

As a demonstration of this, he indicated a table on which three telephones stood. Now he led Jacko and Clayton up the stairs, followed – I imagined – by Dannie and by cable handlers, and quickly the party were across a landing, wide as Lafayette Street, past a table with more telephones, and into the bathroom. Onyx, marble and glass. On shelves and in cupboards the young man swept open, hundreds of bottles of men's cologne and aftershave lotion were revealed. Some were of blue and green transparent glass; some of white opaque; some like amphoras; some like shards of ice; some like fists and some like phalluses.

—Jacko, the young man casually and loudly boasted, I don't believe that any of your viewers has a bigger collection than mine.

So that was the nature of Jacko's show: some men wanted from it to trace their lost daughters; others wanted their aftershave sovereignty confirmed.

Jacko himself was genuinely stimulated by such a collection. He picked up this and that bottle and exclaimed over its shape and inhaled its fumes.

—You don't realize, he told the boy. The quantity of design talent that's gone into making these things.

—Really excellent! said the young enthusiast at his elbow.

—I mean, what is it? Jacko asked. A little bit of rubbing alcohol, a little astringent spirit, ladies and gentlemen. And yet these bottles give it special significance. Aftershave is the rhinoceros-tusk powder of the modern world. And again, folks, like our and other shows, the triumph of design over substance!

Jacko's great virtue was that he meant these enthusiasms. The western world was still full of wonders to him, since he had been sheltered from it in childhood. Stammer Jack and his head stockman had nineteenth century habits and would never have used such fripperies as aftershave. As I would discover, Stammer Jack did not even use such authentic mid-twentieth century amenities as antibiotics.

So this boy's massive array of astringent nonsense enlivened and astounded Jacko. Other media people would have had to pretend to be enlivened and astounded.

—My god, said Jacko. All this marble, all this glass, all this aftershave … and how old are you?

—Twenty-two, confessed the boy. He spread his arms. I'm here, girls!

—A house like this! said Jacko. At twenty-two!

—My father built me this, said the boy, his eyes insanely coruscating. My father built a pigeon pair either side of the street.

Jacko confessed that he and Clayton had just been trying to break into the identical house across the street.

—That's it! the boy said. My father and mom live there.

Jacko stamped his big foot.

—No! This is the kiddies' wing? No! Can I join your family?

—Big brother, said the young man, embracing Jacko.

—I'm going to ask the main question, said Jacko. But first I want to see your most exotic shave lotions, young man.

The boy was quick to oblige. He showed a bottle of South Korean lotion in the shape of a ginseng root. A Chinese version: a Chou En Lai-like rebel, fist raised, the sickle-shaped lid fitting into the fist. An Italian bottle in the shape of a forearm, a Colombian bottle in the shape of a bird.

—This isn't the only stuff you've got here from Colombia, is it? said Jacko, winking at the camera. I thought I heard someone out-of-shot, perhaps Dannie, cough sharply. A warning.

—Now big question! All this marble and shaving lotion doesn't come cheap eh? What does this wonderful father of yours – I love the feller already – what does he do for a crust?

Regular viewers of Jacko knew by now that
for a crust
meant
for a living
. Reverse bloody imperialism, mate, Jacko would tell you proudly. Bringing the tongue of Burren Waters to the unwashed.

—He works in sanitation in New York. He's a servant of the public.

—Geez, does he own his own truck yet?

The young man rolled his eyes.

—He's got friends who own plenty of trucks.

More questioning, and the boy, blinking in the manic afterglow of whatever he had taken into his body, admitted that he too was an employee of the Department of Sanitation, but the family were honoured to number among their closest friends, Sanitation Commissioner Giacomelli, a maligned but very Christian man.

—D'you mean, asked Jacko, turning arch in a way he did not do in the homes of humbler folks, these places are built on garbage?

Viewing all this, diminished by half-processed booze and aching for a trigger of easy sentences and crystalline insight, I was not aware that lovely, darting little Dannie and Ed Durkin in the studio began crying commands into the little mikes in both Clayton's and Jacko's earholes. Jacko and the crew were to apologize and leave at once. Dannie was mouthing the advice she was hearing from the studio. Giacomelli was under a grand jury investigation. This kid's name was probably Pilsano, and his father Rudy Pilsano was a target of the FBI, etc., etc., and was known as the King of Trash. Two witnesses the FBI and the NYPD had marshalled against Giacomelli were believed to have disappeared into the maw of an industrial strength incinerator. Dead at the time, of course. Nonetheless it was enough to give Dannie a panic attack over the future security of Jacko's huge combustible body.

Jacko therefore had Durkin yelling omens in one ear, and Clayton and Dannie making throat-cutting signals with their free hands. The sniff of danger, however, inflamed Jacko's boyishness glands.

—Oops, they want us out of here. We've violated the advertising regulations of the Sutherland Vixen network, which has an ordinance against the advertising of ginseng shaving lotion. Sorry, my young man.

And Jacko reached out and shook young Pilsano's hand.

—It's been a bracing experience.

—Okay, okay, said the boy Pilsano, holding his hands out in front of his shoulders. Listen, I'm doing a big acquisitions trip to Asia at the end of the summer …

In his addled brain he might have thought – at least he gave me this impression – his collection did not measure up to the world of wonders Jacko Emptor was accustomed to. I could not see Dannie's mute cries of terror or hear Durkin issuing his orders from the studio, but I understood, despite my inexact knowledge of the politics of the Rome of the modern world, that something was endangered, that some line of peril had been crossed. Clayton's camera was racing downstairs and out the door, where it dared turn once more to show that Jacko was the last to leave the marble hallway. His hand on the bewildered young Pilsano's shoulder, he helped him close the door.

—Listen, my boy, Jacko roared through the aperture, if we're breathing, we'll be back. You reckon you can look after the breathing part eh?

Within the house, the young man's phones could be heard raging. As Jacko would later say, you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that it was the kid's father and half of New York's racketeers who were enraged.

As it was not quite time yet for the cross back to the studio, Dannie and Clayton were now making
continue-talking
gestures to Jacko. Walking down the garden path of young Pilsano, Jacko intoned:

—When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull,

It well might make the boldest hold their breath,

The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full

Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.

But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,

And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,

And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,

While the others stood and watched in very fear.

According to Jacko, when they all went back to the microwave truck and the limo and packed up for the morning, young Dannie came up to him, fragrant with barely assuaged fear, kissed him full on the lips, began to weep, and said, Jacko, I love you!

And later in the morning, when Jacko got back to Thomas Street, he met a First Precinct cop emerging from Coghlan's Fenian bar.

—Hey, Jacko! Caught your show this morning. The boys are making book on which day you're gonna be hit!

Jacko confessed to me that he stopped then and took the man by the shoulder. They were of approximately equal height and so Jacko could stare into the cop's eyes.

—Are you fellers serious? I've got a young wife.

—As evidence, the cop explained, what you got this morning is kind of graphic in regard to opulence. I can imagine prosecutors getting mileage from it. And I'll tell you what for free. That jerk-off shaving lotion kid is definitely for detox and drug rehab now. The Mob will lock him away in there and he won't get out till he's cleaner than Mother Teresa.

Jacko was worried enough to go over to Coghlan's and drink with the First Precinct boys, just so that any ambushers would know that he was a friend of detectives.

—Well look, a cop told him. You've got an interesting statement about assets there, in your interview with the kid. The houses belonged to his father, so he said. I wouldn't mind guessing the records
don't
disclose that. So we've got that on tape now. And then the thing about being very close friends with Giacomelli. You've been a helluva inconvenience to the Pilsanos, Jacko. But they're not stupid enough to take on the media.

—Is that what I am? asked Jacko.

Jacko even called my wife and asked her could Lucy share our second bedroom with our visiting journalist daughter? But divine Lucy heard of the plan and baulked, laughing at Jacko and bringing her clenched hand down emphatically upon his muscular forearm.

—The one you should be worried about, she said, is
Dann-ie
!

She put emphasis on both syllables and uttered the name with a New York breathiness, part Italian, part Ashkenazi Jewish.

Dannie was so enamoured of Jacko that she did not hide it even on the mornings Lucy went out in the limo with Jacko to meet the microwave-dish truck. Or maybe it was partly Dannie's strategy not to hide it, since New York girls were tough that way, scarily forthright.