Helluva Guy

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been a little disappointed with the Bishop Desmond Tutu of late. Actually, for a good long while, if I’m being honest. Since, like, 1989. He was supposed to multiply the $125 bucks I put into the Blessed Kerchief, and that did not work out for me at all. It’s been 28 years, and I’m starting to think he might never make good on it. Do you have any idea what the vig is on that tidy little sum—even figuring conservatively, 4% compounded annually—after nearly three decades?

So on a Friday in November of 1989, I came out of the B-of-A on Atlantic Ave. in Bixby Knolls after cashing my week’s paycheck and I encountered a man in need of help. I was living on $125 a week, so I was kind of in need of help myself, but I’m a helluva guy, so I stopped to see what I could do for the dude anyway. He was a short, wiry black guy, speaking with what sounded like a Somali accent, and was believably dressed like my 18 year-old self thought a perplexed immigrant would be. He said his name was Bantu, and he needed directions to a place that didn’t exist.

The address was so obviously, ridiculously fake that I still remember it today: 123 Pea Green Street. If only I’d walked away right then. Alas. But the only place I had to go was to my shit job at Long Beach Seed & Pet, where I’d only be cleaning fish-tanks and selling helpless rats and mice to become snake food anyway, so I lingered a moment too long with Bantu. If you knew what kind of wackadoos were running the fine establishment where I was working my very first tax-paying job, you’d understand. It was the kind of clip-joint where you followed the office manager to the company's bank each week to cash your check the second she made the deposit. Otherwise it was 50/50 the thing was gonna bounce. At best.

So I had $125 bucks to my name and a quarter tank of gas in my hooptie, and exactly that much was right with the world. But work was only eight blocks away and I was always one bad day away from quitting anyway, so giving Bantu a little more of the Samaritan treatment seemed like the thing to do. He sketched out a story of being in the US on account of his uncle’s death in the traumatic San Francisco earthquake just a few weeks previous, to settle his affairs and receive an inheritance. As evidence, he produced a roll of 100’s as thick as my wrist from his suitably threadbare jacket pocket. Seeing the roll, I immediately did a double-take and had a surreptitious look around us. We were in the parking lot behind the bank, and while Bixby Knolls wasn’t Compton, it wasn’t exactly Rodeo Drive either. He was flashing somewhere around ten grand, apparently to anyone that would stop and talk with him. Good thing he found me, or he could have been in real trouble. I believe I’ve mentioned that I’m a helluva guy.

I cautioned him to put his bankroll away, once again giving our surroundings a conspiratorial scan. He told me that he’d paid a guy at the train station, in advance, for a night’s lodging in Long Beach before he got back on the boat for home. The address scrawled on the doggerel of paper from his pocket was purportedly where he was to stay that night, billed as a hostel for visiting immigrants. I felt sorry for the rube, and tried to break the news of his naiveté to him easy. He insisted that the nice train station man would never swindle him! After all, what kind of country was America? After working for the hustlers at Long Beach Seed & Pet for three months, I was beginning to wonder that same thing myself.

I reiterated my certainty that no such street as Pea Green existed in Long Beach, and that the address number 1-2-3 was pretty suspect in any event. As it dawned on him that he’d been the victim of a simple grift like a prize chump, he began to eye me with suspicion too. He wanted to see a map, one with a list of all the street names in town before he would conclude that you couldn’t get to Pea Green St. from here.

I immediately thought of the town map on the wall of the Circle K, just kitty-corner from where we were on Atlantic and Wardlow. So we hopped into Lurch, my inexplicably Smurf-blue Travelall, and headed over to have a look at the map. The thing was eight feet on a side and plastered with a giant aerial view of the city, from Hermosa to Disneyland, and from Compton to the sea. The Map was a landmark in its own right, and Circle K probably added 20% to their monthly sales just for having it on the premises. In the absence of Google Maps—or the Angelinos version of it back in the day, The Thomas Guide—any tourist in the area would be directed to the Map to find their way. Hell, even the local losers gathered under it on a Saturday night to wile the hours away at the gas-n-sip.

I took Bantu over to the Map and we scanned the legend to find that Pea Green St. was indeed not a thing. I asked him if there was somewhere else I could drop him, but he’d already turned and gotten the attention of someone coming out of the Circle K.

He called out to the man in a loud voice, “You! You are a black man, you will not lie to me!”

So the guy ambled over with his supertanker of soda and Bantu repeated his story. The stranger responded exactly as I had, with the same surreptitious glance at our surroundings, admonishing Bantu to put his flash-cash away before someone took an unhealthy interest in it, and us. He introduced himself as Carl and took me aside with concern written all over him to suggest that the rube was probably going to get himself killed if someone didn’t help him out. To which I agreed and proceeded to assure Carl of my bona fides as a helluva guy in all earnestness.

After a few minutes of discussion, Carl and I worked out a plan to retrieve Bantu’s luggage from the train station locker where he’d stashed it and find him a place to stay for the night. Carl was in his thirties, soft-spoken, and addressed me like we were both men of the world, whom fate had selected to protect a traveling soul from the dangers of our city, which we both knew all too well. He saw a trio of youths walking our way, and suggested that we might do well to hop back into Lurch and lock the doors to finish our conversation, before anyone got any ideas after seeing naïve Bantu’s carelessly displayed nest-egg.

Carl asked Bantu if he’d flashed the cash around at the station as carelessly as he had in front of us. Bantu said that he had, now lowering his head in embarrassment at his lack of urbane cynicism and sophistication. Not a man of the world like old Carl and me, obviously. Sitting in the back seat, Carl leaned over the bench and told me in a grave tone that he was concerned about taking Bantu back to the station with all that cash on him. He thought someone might remember such an obvious chump and come after the scratch. Bantu agreed that he was concerned as well, especially after having lost $100 to the first swindler he met there. But what could be done?

Suddenly inspiration hit Bantu! I could hold onto his money for him, just while they went to the station to retrieve his luggage! Then he and Carl would return, where I would be waiting to give Bantu back his ten-grand inheritance. I was incredulous that he would trust a stranger like me, but he went on to praise my virtue and character for all that I’d done for him so far and the investment of my valuable time. He even went so far as to ask if I knew the Lord Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior. I assured him that I did, and that he could trust me without reservation. 

So he produced a camouflage-patterned kerchief from his coat pocket and took his wad of cash and put it in, then started to tie it off for safe-keeping. Then he gave me the side-eye one more time, appraising me as though suddenly suspicious of my Good Samaritan act. I was quick to reassure him of my honesty with every ounce of earnestness I could muster, which was considerable back then.

“I want to believe,” he said. “But your country makes that hard.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that,” I said, properly ashamed of America.

“Would you put your money with mine? So that whatever happens to my money, also happens to yours?”

Eager to prove myself a Good Person, I agreed and pulled the thin stack of crisp 20’s out of my wallet. I folded them and put them atop his dense roll of cash. He finished tying it off, then took my hands and told me with great solemnity that the kerchief had been blessed by the Bishop Desmond Tutu himself, and that it would return multiplied blessings to me upon its safe return. I offered to give Bantu my driver’s license as collateral in exchange for his trust, but he assured me that his prayer over the money and the Bishop’s blessing were more than enough to assuage all fears. After all, it had lead a saint like me to Bantu to help him find his way safely home.

“Hey man, those same guys are coming this way,” said Carl from the back seat. I turned to look and saw a trio of suddenly menacing youths coming out of the Circle K with their sodas and cigarettes. “I think we should get going.”

“Ok,” I said, turning back to Bantu just as he pressed the blessed wad into my hands, making heartfelt eye-contact with me to impress the gravity of the sacred relationship of trust we were now in. He said a prayer, and I took the Bishop’s bundle with great sincerity and drove them to the train-station.

Carl asked if I could wait for them, but by then I barely had time to make it to work. He said it was no problem, that they’d take the bus back to the Circle K, and when my lunch hour rolled around and I could just meet them at the Map. Bantu agreed and said a blessing over me, then they went into the station and I headed to the pet store.

After being at work for a while, I couldn’t hold in the experience anymore, so I told my most trusted ally, Mark. He was a tall, gangly ginger, and a bit of a nerdy doofus, but so completely without guile that I knew there would be no risk in relating the tale. Plus, he would then see what a helluva guy I was, so thoroughly virtuous as to return every dime of the several thousand dollar booty I could easily have stolen from the hapless foreigner. Rather than being impressed, he thought it was a weird story and that maybe I shouldn’t go back to the Circle K, because something was definitely afoot. I assured him everything would be fine. I mean, he might know everything there was to know about the proper pH-level for the keeping of an Angel fish, but he was hardly the man of the world I was. Still, he insisted on going with me when the lunch hour came.

We’d been sitting in the parking lot of the Circle K, waiting patiently for ten minutes before it dawned on me. With a sinking feeling, I foraged under the bench seat, reaching up into the hole where the broken seat spring was, and came out with the camouflaged wad, wrapped tightly against the villainy of our grimy little town. When I’d untied the Gordian Knot atop the Bishop’s Blessed Kerchief and saw the carefully cut sheaf of newspaper strips where Bantu’s inheritance and all the money I had in the world should have been, everything dropped into place instantly.

The whole scheme, from start to finish—with all its pieces, players, and moving parts—was downloaded into my brain, en masse: A hapless foreigner, an obviously fake address requiring a map to verify, and a famous town landmark conveniently just across the street. The altruistic passerby, Carl (of course that would be his name, just banal enough) exactly as empathetic and honest as me, and oh-so-solicitous—the three of us an island of virtue amidst the chicanery all around us. One second of distraction from Carl about the approach of menacing street youths as the counterfeit switch was made.

I’ve since learned that this particular grift is called the “Pigeon Drop.” Minimum wage was $4.25 back then, so even splitting it down the middle, Bantu and Carl had done pretty well to make $125 in just 15 minutes. That's nice work if you can get it. I’ve met a couple of other suckers over the years that fell for it, who all seemed amazed that I knew how their story ended. Everyone thinks they’re the only one. I never asked any them if they actually went to the rendezvous to return the money. Either because I didn't want to know what evil lurked in the hearts of men, or because I didn't want them to know what a goody-goody chump I'd been. To this day, I don't know which.

Mark and I drove back to what I’d previously believed to be the lowest place in all of Long Beach, my ears hot and face burning in shame and embarrassment at my own naiveté. I alternated between cussing my idiocy and smug self-righteousness, and indicting the whole world for taking advantage of a helluva guy like me. Mark didn’t say much on the ride, but when we got back to the store he offered me a $20 to see me through till next Friday. I was too proud to take it, because at minimum wage it represented more than half a day’s work for him. Still, I was penniless and hungry, so somehow I found the humility to accept one of the soft-tacos he offered me from his lunch. He's a helluva guy, if you ask me.

It turns out that Bantu is a Swahili word, simply meaning “person.” And while, in retrospect, it’s actually oddly comforting to know that I was at least swindled by someone with a bit of wit, that doesn’t exactly solve my problem. I mean, even figuring a conservative 4% compounded annually over 28 years, somebody still owes me $286. And I could really use that scratch right about now, 'cuz I've got a limited-time, exclusive opportunity to buy some Bitcoin from a Nigerian Prince for pennies on the dollar.