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Vaquero de Alta California
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It's just after 12 p.m., Saturday, July 7, 1984, the tail-end of a week of unrelenting heat and pitiless bad news in New York City, some of which may hold more personal portent for some of you than for others, but none of it exactly making you feel like singing "Kumbaya" while holding hands in a circle around a blazing trashcan. The past week's headlines from The Daily Bugle are only the tip of the iceberg.
Since putting your partnership with Cloak on hiatus, you've found a temporary living situation in the form of a spare bedroom at the Murray Hill apartment of Lydia Zandofsky, an elderly Russian-Jewish widow who looks askance at your odd comings and goings but says nothing except the occasional comment that you're too skinny and urging you to eat more of her homemade matzo ball soup. Mrs. Zandofsky's only source of income is her tailor shop on 8th Avenue in the Garment District, and it shows in the way she refuses to turn on the AC even on the hottest day yet of a scorching summer that's burning up all the heat records.
Suddenly you hear Mrs. Zandofsky shatter her teacup and saucer on the kitchen tiles as she cries, "Oy! My shop! I feel ferdrayt!"
Then you realize Mrs. Zandofsky's radio is on in the background and you catch the last bit of a news bulletin: "...riot involving more than four hundred individuals is raging along 8th Avenue in the Garment District. Several deaths have already been reported. The National Guard is presently forming a cordon around the affected area. Stay tuned to this station for further news bulletins."
Suddenly you hear Mrs. Zandofsky shatter her teacup and saucer on the kitchen tiles as she cries, "Oy! My shop! I feel ferdrayt!"
Then you realize Mrs. Zandofsky's radio is on in the background and you catch the last bit of a news bulletin: "...riot involving more than four hundred individuals is raging along 8th Avenue in the Garment District. Several deaths have already been reported. The National Guard is presently forming a cordon around the affected area. Stay tuned to this station for further news bulletins."
With Elektra Natchios, Karen Page, Natasha Romanova, and Heather Glenn all - one way or another - out of the picture, your posh Upper East Side brownstone almost unbearably quiet and empty. Fortunately, since your former law partner Foggy Nelson was elected New York County District Attorney, you've had no time to think about it as you have more work than you can handle at the free storefront legal clinic you run in Hell's Kitchen, assisted only by an overeager first-year law student volunteer from Chinatown named Nancy Chow. One of your most pressing current crusades is fighting the eviction of Lydia Zandofsky, an elderly Russian-Jewish widow, from her two-bedroom rent-controlled Murray Hill apartment.
You're even busier than usual because Nancy, usually early, has not yet turned up at the legal clinic today, and you feel a twinge of avuncular concern. You're roused from your ponderings by an abrupt radio announcement: "We interrupt this program for the following news bulletin: A riot involving more than four hundred individuals is raging along 8th Avenue in the Garment District. Several deaths have already been reported. The National Guard is presently forming a cordon around the affected area. Stay tuned to this station for further news bulletins."
Your first realization is that your client Mrs. Zandofsky's only source of income is her tailor shop on 8th Avenue in the Garment District and if she loses that, even preventing her eviction will be tantamount to defeat.
You're even busier than usual because Nancy, usually early, has not yet turned up at the legal clinic today, and you feel a twinge of avuncular concern. You're roused from your ponderings by an abrupt radio announcement: "We interrupt this program for the following news bulletin: A riot involving more than four hundred individuals is raging along 8th Avenue in the Garment District. Several deaths have already been reported. The National Guard is presently forming a cordon around the affected area. Stay tuned to this station for further news bulletins."
Your first realization is that your client Mrs. Zandofsky's only source of income is her tailor shop on 8th Avenue in the Garment District and if she loses that, even preventing her eviction will be tantamount to defeat.
In your Jake Lockley identity, you owe a favor to your fellow cabbie Ismail Hussein for an unintentional tip that led to Moon Knight's successful bust of a human trafficking ring last summer. So when you received an urgent call from Ismail asking you to cover his shift, you felt you couldn't say no even if it did impose upon your plans as Steven Grant to take Marlene Alraune to lunch today.
After you drop off a couple of tourist schmucks outside a peep show near Times Square, the cab's radio cuts suddenly from Ismail's favorite adult contemporary station to: "We interrupt this program for the following news bulletin: A riot involving more than four hundred individuals is raging along 8th Avenue in the Garment District. Several deaths have already been reported. The National Guard is presently forming a cordon around the affected area. Stay tuned to this station for further news bulletins."
After you drop off a couple of tourist schmucks outside a peep show near Times Square, the cab's radio cuts suddenly from Ismail's favorite adult contemporary station to: "We interrupt this program for the following news bulletin: A riot involving more than four hundred individuals is raging along 8th Avenue in the Garment District. Several deaths have already been reported. The National Guard is presently forming a cordon around the affected area. Stay tuned to this station for further news bulletins."
Having been up all night following a Spider-Tracer all over Manhattan, only to reach a dead end when you found it jammed into the front grille of a Yellow Cab parked in Morningside Heights, you're rudely awakened by the ringing telephone in your West Village apartment only to hear the bark of your on-again, off-again employer and favorite newspaper publisher, J. Jonah Jameson, alerting you to some kind of ongoing mass riot at 8th Avenue in the Garment District and demanding you get on the scene to obtain exclusive photos for The Daily Bugle, and not to show your face at the office until you have a roll of newsworthy film to hand over. So much for your pleasant dream about Candi, Randi, and Bambi, your neighbors across the hall: your rent was due the first of the month and you're going to come up short if you don't earn some fast cash - in fact you're surprised Mrs. Muggins hasn't been pounding on your door demanding her money for the past six days.