Ummmmm..... holy shit.
Look, I joke around a lot in this space, right? I'm frequently
known to toss out, in a casual fashion, my expectation that Balki will someday
kill me or be directly responsible for my early death. I do sincerely believe
it, but most of the time I'm being a little glib about the chances of it
happening during one of our garden variety adventures. Until today. This week
Balki very nearly got us both killed.
We'll start in simpler times. I was at home, cleaning up after
another one of Balki's messes. I had discovered that the Turnip, while
listening to my records, was unsurprisingly careless with other people's
property and had returned them all to the wrong sleeves. I've pointed out that
Balki can't really read plenty of times, but come on. You take a record out of
the sleeve. You put it on the player. You put it back in the sleeve. I know
that turntable technology is akin to rocket science where he's from on Moron
Island; but they have pictures of the artists on the sleeves for God's sake,
there's no excuse, be a decent human being for once in your life Balki.
So my patience level for Balki's bullshit was already set at two
minutes to midnight when he came breezing in on top of the world, claiming
something wonderful had happened to him on the way home.
I braced myself. These "wonderful" things that happen to
him on the unforgiving streets of Chicago never end well for me, and rarely end
well for Balki, either. It turns out that he had stopped at the newsstand for a
comic book, and the guy at the newsstand offered him a job.
This is weird behavior. Was the newsstand guy just so desperate
for staff that he was asking anyone who came by the store? Or had they had some
conversation during which Balki intimated that he's basically a tireless, empty
shell, hardened by farm work and willing to do almost anything for a handful of
spare change or magic beans? How did this job offer come about? I can't imagine
Balki asked for a job; he already has one, at the Ritz, and he barely bothers
to show up for it.
Anyway he took the job and I was vaguely encouraging because hey,
less Balki around the apartment! Adding to the shiftiness of this whole thing,
he'd already earned his "first day's pay" - he's paid daily? - and he
had used it to buy me a potato powered clock (so, garbage).
I told him he shouldn't be blowing money on me like that, but he
bragged about being loaded now and said someone named Vince gave him fifty
bucks. It turns out there was more nuance to Balki's job "at the
newsstand" than he originally let on; Vince, apparently, sits in a limo
OUTSIDE the newsstand with a couple of hoes and throws money at Balki for
running mysterious packages across town and shit. So Balki is a drug mule
now.
The whole "random job offer" thing suddenly made
complete sense. You can smell "rube" on Balki from Sputnik. I wasn't
remotely surprised - this was always the tragic end that Balki's epic American
poem was going to take him toward. But needless to say I was a little worried
about the mobbed up element Balki might start bringing around the house before
his inevitable murder, so I tried to explain to him what he'd gotten himself
into.
*Sidebar - "trying to explain to Balki what he'd gotten
himself into" is like doing three sit-ups. You can do it every single day,
but all it's going to do is give you discomfort and it won't have any practical
effect on anything.
So I told him Vince is obviously a criminal who's using Balki to
move contraband. I scolded him for never looking before he leaps, which is
why he gets in these messes and I have to bail him out. He got all offended,
but agreed to let me come with him for his next big drug run anyway.
Read that last paragraph again. Did you guys notice the stakes have gone way the hell up out here
all of a sudden?
So we went to the drop; and by then old Bal-kapone had
either completely forgotten everything I'd told him or just decided to be
a reliable hired goon, because when I dragged him into the Ritz and
told him we had to open the package he got all worked up about how Vince had
told him not to, and he had to deliver it on time.
We started to struggle over the package. I had Balki pinned down
in an expert Larry Appleton choke hold as Twinkacetti walked past us and
declared that he was on his way to lunch.
I can only deduce from that behavior that he thought we were there
to work a shift while we were actually out being bag men for the mob; which
means we probably really were supposed to be on the clock, since there was no
one else in the store. Who cares. If we're salaried employees at the Ritz, then
we're the real criminals.
So we ripped the package open and stacks of cash poured out. I
told Balki that Vince was running numbers and had dragged Balki into an illegal
gambling ring. Balki got all freaked out that he wouldn't be allowed to be a
citizen if he got arrested (rooting for you here to do your job, INS). As we
tried to seal the package back up and figure out what to do, two women came
into the store and I told Balki we had to help the customers, so I guess we had
been - once again - off doing our own shit when there was no one else to run
the store, and this time probably implicating Twinkie in the whole mess by
bringing the dirty cash back to his business. Twinkacetti, what a jerk, right?
Well it turns out the "customers" were actually cops.
They'd been tailing us doing our run all afternoon. We were off to jail, a
feeling that I suspect I'll grow a certain callus toward over the next several
years.
Jennifer and Mary Anne bailed us out of jail eventually, so I
guess they're back in the picture. I was trying to put a good face on it all
and Balki IMMEDIATELY sold me out to Jennifer that I'd fainted under
interrogation (it was hot under those lights, all right?) even though he'd
dragged me into this mess. As if the criminal conspiracy wasn't enough, now
he's screwing with my game for no reason!
We told them that after spending a couple of hours working on
Balki, the police realized he actually was stupid enough to not realize what
he'd gotten involved in; so they cut us loose and arrested Vince, who is now
being tried under RICO for gambling among a bunch of other OC activities. They
begged us to testify at his arraignment and we were like "sure, no chance
that will backfire!"
Then Jennifer heard the name "Vince Lucas" and said
something really cryptic: "you know, I think that's the same jerk that was
bothering Mary Anne and me."
That's a pretty bold declaration that neither Balki nor I asked
any follow-up questions about. Two beautiful twenty-something women we're maybe
dating have been getting "bothered" by a reputed mob boss, and we
weren't even curious what that means? What circles do Jennifer and Mary Anne
run in? Neither of us even batted an eye at it! In retrospect I probably should
have prodded for details there, but I was too busy bragging about how brave
Balki and I were for taking the stand.
*Relationship update: Mary Anne still looks at Balki like she's
about to tear his clothes off and devour him at any second. She kissed him on the
cheek. Jennifer continues to seem physically repulsed by me. But you know what
they say about breaking through a rock, friends. It just takes pressure and
time.
I put my deep sexy voice on, and Jennifer made a frantic run for
it. Mary Anne followed her reluctantly. Take that, Balki. For once I'm the one
putting the ice on.
So a knock came at the door about two seconds after they left, and
it was Vince. I slammed the door in his face and he kicked it down.
Question: he's been "bothering" Mary Anne and Jennifer
for a while, apparently. They just passed each other outside our door; I mean,
it was literally seconds between when they left and he arrived. Did anything
happen there? There's no way he missed them. WHAT IS THE BACKSTORY WITH VINCE,
JENNIFER AND MARY ANNE? Anyway as you might expect, Vince made it very
clear that if we testified against him he was going to murder us. Confident
that he'd done his job, he left for the evening.
We showed up to court the next morning, I don't know, planning to
just go ahead and testify anyway. The prosecutor told us that seven of the
other witnesses "suddenly got amnesia" and the eighth was missing.
All of a sudden I remembered the credible death threat we'd been issued 12
hours earlier and got scared again, but Balki, as is his custom, continued to
just kind of grin and wander around the courthouse, fearing nothing because
he's never suffered consequences for any of his actions.
Jennifer and Mary Anne showed up to root us on, and they were
dressed suspiciously nice for sitting in a courtroom all day. Every single
element of their behavior around this Vince situation is really suspect. I
pulled Balki aside and told him we can't testify, and he gave me a guilt trip
but I overrode it and told the prosecutor we were out. The prosecutor told the
judge he didn't have any witnesses, and the judge just sort of casually started
to toss off the case without much thought before Balki interrupted him and said
he'd testify.
I tried to talk him down, but he wouldn't have it. And then he
told me what this was really about: Vince had tricked him, and Balki's
"honor" was at stake.
Balki testifying wasn't about cleaning up the streets and putting
a violent criminal in jail at all; it was just another selfish personal thing
about his "honor" because he was too dumb to recognize that he was
getting sucked into running numbers, which I think Vince might have even told
him he was doing in the first place. What honor is that, exactly, Balki?
He's a physically abusive, self-centered, childish asshole who doesn't show up
for work with one employer and testifies against the other. Where's the
honor in putting your cousin's life at risk just to make a point against the
mobster who paid you - frankly, pretty well - for running a stack of cash
across town? I kind of feel bad for Vince.
Balki. What a dick.
So Balki tells his story. Then the defense attorney IMMEDIATELY
tries to tap into the constant undercurrent of xenophobia that is America's
dirty secret by pointing out that Balki is an immigrant. He then accused him of
coming to America just to get rich, and asked Balki if his name is Russian,
then called him a lazy immigrant who didn't want to work for a living so he
took to a life of crime because it's easier. (Not for nothing: Balki WAS
running numbers while he was supposed to be at work). He tried to pin the whole
criminal enterprise on Balki. I'd heard enough of that shit - no one accuses
Balki of being smart enough to run an enterprise on my watch - and kept
objecting until the judge threatened to lock me up.
The Judge, meanwhile, kind of got on board with the prosecutor's
argument that someone else had to corroborate Balki's story or else it doesn't
count and Vince can just walk. It was becoming very clear where this was
headed. It would be up to good old Cousin Larry - like always - to get Balki
out of a jam and risk my life doing it.
I stood up and gave an eloquent soliloquy to the courtroom,
telling everyone how brave Balki was and that I'd back up everything he said. I
took the stand, did my thing, badda boom, badda bing. Vince was headed to jail.
We went home, and had a big heart to heart about how badass I am.
I felt the power of my courage surge through my body as I cracked open a cold
one. The phone rang. It was the airline that I'd booked two tickets to Buenos
Aires through under the name Jose Vasquez, in case things hadn't gone our way
in the courtroom.
So yeah, that's fraud; but in my defense, what isn't when you
really think about it, right? I canceled the tickets, since we'd successfully
put the mob boss in jail and had absolutely nothing to be afraid of anymore.
I hope, in his big criminal enterprise, Vince doesn't have any
other employees who might seek revenge on his behalf.
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