Free Tuff by Paul Beatty Page A

own—Oprah Winfrey and—I forget the other bitch’s name. Bitch invented the hot comb or some shit.”
    It was through Moneybags’s curbside lessons in big business that Fariq had learned to decipher the stock pages, when to lowball a buyer, and if he were dumb enough to pay taxes, how to leap through the gaping loopholes. All Winston knew about the supposed oracle of commerce was that he didn’t dress as sharply as he had in the past. Moneybags made his early fortune selling milk-crate seating for a dollar a pop to overflow crowds during the legendary basketball tournaments held at Rucker and West Fourth Street parks each summer. Despite Fariq’s claims that Moneybags possessed infinite economic knowledge, Winston had never seen him offer any jewels of his wisdom other than the semiprecious baubles he’d snatched off the necks of groggy subway riders. Only once had he heard Moneybags engage in a coherent conversation. Two years ago, upon leaving a retrospective of Italian comedy at Lincoln Center, Winston spotted Moneybags’s showroom, a one-man open-air bazaar on the corner of Broadway and Sixty-sixth Street. Dealing in vacuum-wrapped electronics, Moneybags hopscotched over his smorgasbord of off-brand home phones, answering machines, and cassette decks to barter with the tourists. Winston was about to nod a covert hello when a potbellied black man pointed at a video camera box sealed in seamless cellophane. “How much?” the man asked, picking up the medium-sized carton, examining each side as if the sharpness of the corners conveyed something of the product therein. Moneybags smirked, answering the buyer sotto voce, “Crazy?”
    “Naw, man, how much for the camcorder?”
    “This merchandise ain’t for the brothers,” Moneybags said, grabbing the box from the man’s hands and placing it behind his back as if he were a suitor hiding a bouquet of roses, searching for an excuse to renege on an ugly blind date. The man backed off, a glint of understanding spreading across his face. “Your kindness is appreciated, brother.” Walking downtown, the portly man took one last look at Moneybags haggling with thebargain hunters. He guessed the tourists would be returning to Munich, Osaka, and Rome, arms laden with gifts: transistorless radios and red clay bricks wrapped in newsprint.
    Government attempts to revitalize minority small business through free trade agreements and tax breaks had failed Moneybags. He was no longer a one-man electronics warehouse. The effects of trickle-down economics had reduced him to peddling ghetto bric-a-brac: stolen cheese, browning meats, and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. It wasn’t uncommon for East Harlem residents to see Moneybags zigzagging across Lexington Avenue hawking a small bottle of red cough suppressant: “I got that Robitussin, baby. Got that Robitussin. Cough syrup. Cough syrup.”
    Today it was flimsy wooden picture frames. Moneybags placed a heavy mahogany frame around his neck. He was preparing to leave. As he squared his shoulders toward Fariq, the sun silhouetted Moneybags’s dark profile against the partly cloudy sky. For a moment, the sickly sheen on his face and the graying mustache made him look like an oil portrait in the boardroom of a multinational corporation come to life. Moneybags excused himself. “I need to be going. Apparently none of you boys has any crack rock. But if I hear anything happening where you all might make some loot, I’ll let you know.” The proud CEO of nothing walked away from the stoop, steering a metal pushcart, one wobbly rear wheel alternately turning and sticking.
    “I admire that motherfucker,” said Fariq. He shouted at the slouched back of the wiry tradesman, “Moneybags, stay up, God.”
    “Why do you admire him?” Armello asked.
    “Nigger could be out here selling drugs, doing something negative like the rest of us, but he’s down with the downtrodden, bottle hustling, redeeming aluminum cans and souls at the