Valeine Alley

“Do you think a cop gives a fuck about a pimp?
- Drexel (True Romance) - 

The second floor of a so-many storied building, above a travel agency, beneath the shadow of the IRT 7 line – in a neighborhood where fluent English is met with shifty eyes. Down the block you’ll be greeted by a diminutive fellow mumbling, what seems like, gibberish, but is in fact instructions. You would be paying careful attention to this if we didn’t have other plans.  Proceed, and half way down the block you’ll be hit with the same gibberish by some guy standing in a door way.  He’ll look you over and, assuming you do not alarm his experienced eye, direct you up a flight of stairs.  Don’t be rattled by the jarring sound of cellular white-noise coming from their coat pockets; they are announcing your arrival.  Indulge this self-conscious feeling. For once in your life, you know what rock stars and dignitaries feel like when they arrive somewhere. 

At the top of the stairs, you’ll be greeted one last time.  If you seem at all suspect, it is at this point, within the confines of this narrow hall, that you will be searched.  But don’t worry about this; they know me well enough to expect nothing more than a very selective customer, who has decided to bring a friend.  You don’t mind if I call you that, friend – do you? You’ll hear the cellular static one last time.  Regardless of your patronage, the sum total of the men who will be in the room he’s guarding must be communicated to the guy standing by the ground floor entrance.  He in turn, via the walkie-talkie feature of certain cell-phones, communicates this to the first character that, initially, got your attention.  He relays this headcount to the fourth and final guy stationed at the opposite end of the block.  The one you didn’t notice.  Most people don’t.

Once every checkpoint has been cleared, you’ll enter a waiting room.  Be polite and greet the house mom.  In her prime, you’d be coming to see her.  Just look beyond the heavily plastered make-up, crows-feet, and generous endowments fighting a losing war with gravity, painstakingly crammed into spandex.  Old habits die hard; they’ll have to pry her compact out of her cold, dead, gaudily manicured hands.  Be nice to her.  She will be the one arranging everything, or so she thinks.

The décor leaves much to be said….and done, for that matter – Papaya green walls, red tinted light bulbs (appropriately enough); fibrous carpeting with swirling lines spreading out from concentric circles; plush pleather couches that threaten to swallow you should you recline yourself fully.  It is all an attempt at poshness gone horribly wrong.

The waiting room is packed; it is the typical Friday night turn-out.  It is the haunt of New York’s male sub-citizens, an ever-inviting, reliable source of distraction and satisfaction.  There are altogether nine men waiting – three along the width of and six running along the length of the room, which means there are six guys in the back.  Each one is carrying at least $ 300 cash; maybe two of them are legal, gauging from their attitude and dress; and even fewer can speak anything beyond the most basic English. 

At this point, you’ll become conscious of the 9mm semiautomatic insecurely tucked in your inside coat pocket.  You’ll squirm in your seat, trying to find the best way to obscure the outline of the piece with the folds of your jacket. It’ll become hard to believe that the berretta, with its full magazine, weighs just a little over two and a half pounds, since every time it brushes against your chest, it feels like an anvil is slamming into you.

Man up.

There are six rooms straight ahead that branch off from one main hallway.

The doors are never locked; this is precautionary. In case some john decides to take liberties that weren’t part of the package, the girls don’t want a closed door to prevent help from getting to them.

You needn’t worry about any neighbors seeing you through the windows; considering the nature of the business, all the windows are tightly shut and the shades are always down.

Before you enter the hallway, to the right, there is a kitchen. Any auxiliary men or weapons will be in this part of the apartment.

You entered the kitchen from the west.  On the south, there is a hall leading to the bathroom. Utility closets line the entire way.

The establishment cannot call the cops, and not even the drunkest of johns will think to go running to them and admit that he got robbed at a brothel.  It’ll take him at least 45 minutes to concoct a reasonable scenario to present to the cops, and then to his family.  And as long as nobody dies as a result of this, the cops will spend most of the night laughing at everybody involved, pimp, john, and puta alike.  As long as you prevent anybody on the inside from alerting the three guys outside through their cell phones, there’ll be no need for blood shed.

Once everybody – johns, prostitutes, house mom, auxiliary men – have been relieved of their property – money, watches, credit cards, jewelry, guns, fillings – they are taken to the farthest room on the floor and cuffed to the iron bed posts with industrial-strength plastic ribbons.  All except the one at the top of the stairs, he will have to be pistol-whipped in order to make your escape: He has to tell the other three downstairs how many guys are leaving and that everything is okay.  Make sure nothing resembling a code word is uttered through his bloodied lip, or they will be waiting for you downstairs with guns drawn.
Are You Ready?

Chino
-MKN-