Just a Hat? - by Kwame Phillips-Solomon

It had started normally enough. Derrick was working the front ticket booth at the theater as usual. Of course it wasn’t by choice, but ever since the fat kid who had worked the booth before him claimed to be claustrophobic, Derrick was stuck working the booth every shift. Luis had told him it was a matter of seniority. Every new kid gets stuck with the ‘coffin’ because it was by far the worst job available. The ventilation system had been broken since as far back as anyone could remember, that along with the huge hole that was cut in the glass front to pass the money through, ensured that the booth never got any cooler than about 5 degrees less that the outside temperature. It wasn’t all bad though, Derrick had quickly realized that even the managers steered clear of the “coffin”. He could sit in there with his Discman, provided he had his official Clearview Cinema’s Employee cap pulled low enough on his head to block his earphones, and that the music was low enough so that customers wouldn’t have to bang on the glass when he spaced out. He managed to do a lot of that, spacing out that is. He’d sit there and fall into a day dream about some girl he’d seen, or if it was just after payday he’d usually have a fat chunk of weed in a nicely hidden pocket half-way down the left leg of his jeans, along with some papers and a book of matches. He’d dream about smoking that.

This particular day had just happened to be after payday too, and he was sitting there drifting off when his eye caught them, the guy and the white girl, and he snapped back into reality. It wasn’t the girl that caught his attention, although she looked out of place in her own right. She was white, and he didn’t mean New York City white. He meant American-suburbia-blonde-hair-blue-eyes-white, the kind of chick you would see standing front of the MTV studios in their little Catholic school girl uniforms screaming their lungs out when ever N’SYNC or one of those ‘boy bands’ showed up. She was stuffed into a light blue halter dress that was barely managing to contain her ample assets. She fidgeted and adjusted her dress nervously every few seconds. The guy managed to look even weirder. He was shorter than she was, probably even if she hadn’t been in heels. He was decked out head to toe in jewelry, all silver and diamonds, diamond earring studs, rings, bracelets, a large heavy watch that caused him to lean to his right to counterbalance it and a long thick silver link chain that ended in a crucifix the size of a large man’s hand. Derrick couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like Jesus’s thorn crown, and the spikes protruding from his hands and feet were made of diamonds. The thought made him snicker, and the guy, who couldn’t have heard him from that far away, turned and looked at him.

That’s when he noticed the hat. The guy had a black baseball cap. He was so dark, from this distance it was hard to tell where the hat ended and his head began. It sat on his head, just sat there with the wide flat brim resting on the top of the silver frames of his glasses. It looked more like it was riding him than he was wearing it. It was plain all around except for the front, where a pair of silver eyes were embroidered. The eyes were set in a sort of permanent scowl, the ‘whites’ were black, the irises silver, the pupils dilated into a kind of crazed stare. The guy turned his head slightly to talk to the girl and the eyes moved. They rolled slowly and smoothly to keep fixated on Derrick, staring at him and then through him, into his mind all the way to the back of his head. They took a measure of him, learned what he was about and scowled at him some more. The guy turned and looked at him again, grabbed the girl by the arm like a cop escorting a perp and sauntered over to the booth. Real smooth like. The crowd seemed to sense his approach and simultaneously adjusted course like a school of sardines evading a shark. He stopped and leaned on the glass of the booth and raised two fingers. They both had rings on them. He adjusted his watch arm, unconsciously it seemed, so that diamonds on the face reflected the booth light into Derricks’ eyes.

“Two” he said. “Ten O’clock show.”

Derrick punched up the tickets without looking at the machine, his eyes wandering between the hat, the girl and the gaudy fake Rolex.

“Nineteen dollars,” Derrick said.

The guy squeezed the girls arm slightly and she produced a twenty dollar bill from her little blue clutch and passed it to the guy, who stuck it through the space in the booth at Derrick. Derrick reached for it and the guy smiled, a large wolfish grin. His teeth had an unnatural sheen to them. He leaned in a little closer.

“Hey, I’m not from around here.” he explained slowly. “Any idea where a man could get a little smoke. Some real good shit, y’know what I’m saying?”

Derrick considered this for a moment. It never failed, some how potheads always found other potheads. He glanced up at the hat. The eyes twinkled in silent approval. The girl fidgeted. Derrick wondered, absentmindedly, if his arm could reach through the window hole, far enough to grab the hat off his head. He raised his arm as if to try, but instead dipped into his hidden pocket and pulled out the match book. On the back of it were the name and particulars of a coffee shop, ‘The Lone Gunman’ that was famous with certain sorts who called the city home, but not for its coffee. He passed the match book through and palmed the twenty in one easy movement. A useful skill they didn’t teach in school.

“Ask for Ed, tell him D sent you.” He said it a practiced tone of utter boredom, as if he helped people buy drugs every day. Another useful skill they don’t teach in school.

The guy nodded. The eyes twinkled as if to say “We’ll meet again”. The girl frowned and fidgeted some more and then all three turned and walked away. Derrick smiled at the wiggle of her retreating blue clad butt, slipped the palmed twenty into his pocket, turned his Discman back on and started spacing out.

The Lone Gunman was a sort of marketplace for people with special tastes. It was joked that you could get almost any kind of drug there, as long as it was organic. No one knows if it had started out as a ‘weed spot’ and due to the paranoia of its customers evolved into a conspiracy theory themed coffee bar, or vise versa, but that’s what it was. The Gunman’s owners had chosen to decorate the place with declassified satellite photos. So all along the walls were hung black and white photos of various sizes taken from a few miles up. They were all labeled with a time, place and the name of the spy satellite that took them. There was a thick smell of coffee that hung about the place purposely manufactured to cover the other smells that might attract “clients” of the law enforcement community. Ed was a regular customer and supplier, legendary for the quality of his product. It was said that he was the only reason the place had people in it at any given time. It was rumored that Ed had a garden underground in the city somewhere, but few people had ever seen it. Ed kept a low profile mostly. He was that kind of guy, he had a gaunt frame topped off with thick black framed glasses, managed to look disheveled and grimy no matter what time of day it was, and favored worn jeans and t-shirts with stupid little phrases like Mathematics is the language of Nature printed across the front.

It would be a few weeks before Derrick turned up at the Gunman. Ed had found out that Derrick had a gift for making DirectTV boxes show things their owners had not paid for. He had approached him a few weeks earlier with a DirectTV box wrapped inside a brown paper bag, and shoved it into his hands.

“Make it show HBO, and I’ll give you $50,” he said. “Get me Showtime and Cinemax and I’ve give you $100 and a little something extra for your troubles.”

Derrick spotted him coming out of Gunman just as he was about to go in. He had his usual street bum look about him, and black T-shirt that read ‘God is Dead - Nietzsche’ and below it ‘Nietzsche is Dead -God’ across the front. Derrick understood the reference, but didn’t think it was that funny. Ed nodded at a passerby and then spotted Derrick and strolled over.

“So how’d it go?” he said.

Derrick produced the modified box, that now had a black plastic case haphazardly glued to its side like a tumor.

“Well I had to replace the H-card with an emulator, and loop it back to the descrambler...,” Derrick began.

Ed raised his hand and cut him off.

“Just tell me,” he said. “Do I get HBO or not.”

Derrick smiled. “Oh you get a lot more than that.”

Ed looked happy. It was hard to tell though, all his expressions seemed to be based on variations of the same lop-sided smirk. He reached into his back pocket to retrieve something and that’s when Derrick noticed the car. He didn’t know much about cars but it looked expensive. Black with silver detailing, it reminded him of something. He realized what a moment later when it stopped, the door opened and a dark head covered in a hat appeared. The guy scanned the half empty street outside the Gunman, stopping long enough to register each face and nodding where appropriate. Ed noticed Derrick staring over his shoulder and stopped, his hand still buried in his pocket, and turned slowly.

“I see your friend is back,” he said.

“My friend?”

“Yeah, he said you sent him.” Ed sounded a little suspicious.

“I sent him, he’s not my friend though.”

The guy spotted Ed and started walking over. Derrick could see the passenger door of the car open and the girl step out. She was wearing a leather skirt and a red blouse, and still looked like she was on her way to somewhere important and somehow took a wrong turn . She had styled her hair so that her blonde bangs hung over her right eye. Derrick thought he could see a dark area on her right cheek, but he was probably just imagining it, no way was his eyesight that good. He watched as the guy grinned broadly and started talking to Ed who had moved a few feet away, and then he turned back to the girl. Yes, he had definitely seen a bruise. The guy talked to Ed in a low tone, the smile never leaving his face. Ed fidgeted and waved his hands when he spoke. He seemed to be complaining about something. The guy looked unfazed. He just kept smiling. Derrick looked at the hat. It took it a while to notice he was there and then the eyes turned and fixated upon him. He could hear it whispering something and he stepped closer to hear what it had to say. The guy finished his conversation and looked up to see Derrick starting at him. He grinned in a warning kind of way, turned and strolled back to his car. Ed pushed his glasses up on his head and mumbled something.

“What was that about?” Derrick asked.

“Damn fool, He seems to think I can just make the stuff appear by waving my arms,” Ed declared.

Derrick barely heard him. He stared as the guy walked over to the girl, said something to her and then they got into the car and drove off. He had a feeling he would see them again.

“I want that hat,” Derrick said.

“What?... oh the hat, freaky isn’t it?” He rubbed his eyes. “Like staring into the sun. Ever stare into the sun, kid? When I was a little kid my mother told me never stare into the sun, so I did. Crazy isn’t it?” Ed laughed and adjusted his glasses.

Derrick ignored him. “What do you think she’s doing with him?” Derrick said, “Not really in his league is she?”

Ed shoved a bunch of folded bills at him and reached for the DirectTV box Derrick still held. “I don’t know, maybe she likes slumming it. Look, I gotta go, got some harvesting to do.”

Derrick took the bills and handed him the box. “I think he beats her,” he said.

Ed stopped the box in his hand and looked at Derrick. “Stay out of it man. Don’t meddle in the affairs of drug dealers, they are subtle and quick to anger.”

Derrick scoffed. He probably saw that on a T-shirt somewhere.

“Keep your head down,” Ed said, and turned and walked away.

Derrick managed to see them quite frequently over the next few weeks. Always around the Gunman, usually talking to Ed. He always knew when they were coming. People seemed to sense their approach and clear out. Sometimes Derrick thought he could hear the hat talking to him again. It probably knew a lot, that hat, it had a wise look about it. He had to get it but, he didn’t know how yet. Patience is a virtue. He had heard that somewhere, and besides all the plans he had come up with to get the hat ultimately involved snatching it and running. So he waited for something to happen and eventually something did.

It was a hot summer day, one of those where the air hangs thick, and moving and breathing is like wading through soup. Its on days like this that crazy stuff always happens. Derrick was hanging outside the Gunman, trying hard not to move too much. The AC inside was broken, a brownout had killed it. He had come down with a smoke in mind, but no one seemed to know where Ed was. There were other dealers around of course, but he was wary of buying stuff from people he didn’t really know. The Gunman crowd was pretty strange anyway, they’d sit in the bar and argue over details in the satellite photos pasted on the walls, or come up with increasingly crazier theories on the Kennedy assassination. Like anyone really gave a shit anymore, it’s been forty years, let it go. He wiped the sweat from his eyebrows and glanced to the left just in time to see Ed step out from an alley across the street. He had a package wrapped in brown paper under his arm, and he ducked behind a dumpster and scanned the street nervously. Derrick smirked. If he didn’t know better he’d swear Ed was hiding from someone. Ed seemed to decide that the street was all clear and stepped out from behind the dumpster and started to cross the street. The car must have been just around the corner, or parked hidden behind another car. Wherever it had been, it was there now, black with silver detailing, it jumped down the street at him and slid to a halt inches away from Ed’s legs with a deafening screech. Ed froze like a deer in headlights and dropped the package on the ground.

The door opened even before the car had stopped, and the guy emerged. He was grinning broadly. His brilliant white teeth seemed to cast an aura of light around his head. He did not look happy. The guy started talking to Ed in a low tone. Ed glanced about nervously, looking for an escape route. This was going to get ugly. Derrick’s hand crept along the wall and found the corner. He pulled himself behind it, out of sight with his back to the wall and his head far enough out to still see what was going on. He noticed the white car then, moving up the road, rolling slowly. Tinted windows, the front license plate splashed with mud in an obviously deliberate way. The guy couldn’t see it of course, his back was to it, and Ed was too busy being terrified to notice. He considered shouting a warning, and began to turn his body to shout when the guy turned in his direction. He didn’t seem to see him. He scanned over the alleyway without stopping and turned back. The hat did however, the eyes stopped on him, twinkled in recognition and seemed to tell him to wait.

The car was alongside them before either noticed it. The guy’s smile faded abruptly as it stopped beside him. Derrick never saw the gun come out the window. But he heard the shots, three, one after the next, point blank. The first bullet hit the guy in the face leaving a cloud of pink mist in its wake. The force caused the hat to vault off of his head tumble over and land on the sidewalk. He was probably already dead when the other two bullets slammed into his chest on his way to the ground. His body hit the asphalt with a wet smack. Ed’s instincts of self preservation seemed to override his fear and he hit the ground with such force, for a moment Derrick thought he had been shot too. A muffled shriek erupted from the black car and then everything went eerily silent for a moment. Someone from the car fired another shot and Derrick pulled back into the alley and dropped low. A car leapt off with screech and a roar of engines and Derrick gasped for air. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. He looked out from the alley in time to see the passenger’s door of the black car open. The girl stepped out dragging a metal briefcase behind her. She looked over at the body once, turned and started running awkwardly in her platform heels. Derrick considered what to do for a moment. He didn’t want to be around when the cops showed up. The dealers in the Gunman had probably already left. He saw Ed move his legs slightly, look out from under his arms which were covering his head, see the body and scramble backwards. Derrick spotted the hat laying on the pavement, the eyes leering at the body near it and he decided to go for it. Crouching low he ran out from the alleyway into the street over where the body lay. Ed looked over at him.

“Holy shit, did you see that? They just...holy shit...” Ed stared down at body and the red pools forming around it in fascination. Derrick could see a neat finger sized hole under the guy’s left cheek where the bullet had entered. There was a lot less blood than he expected. There was blood under the back of his head though, a thick black pool.

“I didn’t see nuthin Ed,” Derrick said. “And neither did you.”

Ed nodded in understanding and grabbed for the brown paper package he had dropped, carefully avoiding the body, the car and Derrick. He grabbed it and retreated back into the alley he had come out from. Derrick watched him disappear and then stepped over the body, carefully avoiding the pools of blood and picked up the hat. He felt a slight charge as he touched it, the eyes shone and sparkled. The hat was clean, it wasn’t even dusty. The thing was probably indestructible. He jammed the hat down on his head and felt a surge of energy. He barely noticed the heat anymore. He felt like he could run all the way back to his apartment. He took one last glance back at the body, heard the whine of approaching sirens and started running.

Derrick found a new energy with the hat. That night he managed to clear the pile of butchered electronics and computer parts piled in the corner of his bedroom and built a new satellite receiver from scratch. At 4 am he decided he needed a case to enclose it and decided to modify the case of a VCR he gutted. He was half-way through cutting slots in it with a handsaw at 9 am, having stayed up all night and feeling better than he had ever felt in his life when the doorbell rang. He decided to ignore it, but whoever it was seemed to know he was there. They started ringing the bell twice about every fifteen seconds. After about two minutes he’d had enough. He tossed the saw aside and got up to check out the peephole. It was her. Dressed in a long leather coat that must have been extremely hot in that kind of weather, she stood outside his door looking about nervously and punching the doorbell every few seconds. He pulled the hat off his head, tossed it aside and opened the door a crack.

“What do you want?” he mumbled.

“You have something that belongs to me,” she answered. She had an unlit cigarette clutched between her fingers.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She looked skeptical. “Yes, you do.” she glanced around.” Let me in, I really don’t think you want a cop to see me standing here.”

Derrick considered this for a moment and decided she was probably right. He opened the door wide enough for her to come through and then bolted it behind her. She stood and looked around at the clutter of electronic parts.

“Nice place you got here,” she said, motioning with her cigarette hand.

“You want a light for that?” Derrick tried to distract her for a moment. The hat was sitting in plain view on the floor next to his TV. She looked down at the cigarette stuck between her fingers in slight amusement.

“No, I don’t smoke.” she said. She turned around to face him.

“Alright, what do you want for it?” she asked.

“Like I said before, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She laughed softly and walked over to the TV. Derrick glanced down and saw a long flathead screwdriver laying on the floor. He stared at her lower back. Abdominal aorta, he thought. It was somewhere around there, one quick stab and she’d be done. There’d be a lot of blood though, he’d have to roll her in the carpet and throw everything out. He reached as if to grab the screwdriver and hesitated. She bent and picked up the hat, reached inside the front brim and pulled out a piece of paper.

“What’s that?”

“Briefcase combination” she said. “Bastard had a memory like a sieve.”

She looked up and saw the flare of rage in Derrick’s eyes.

“You can take it, but it’s useless if you don’t know where the case is.” She stepped back from him and stumbled on something. “But I want my cut, I set him up with most of his clientele. The money’s rightfully mine, but we can split it.”

“I don’t want your money” Derrick said. He stuck his hand out and motioned slightly. She looked confused, and then it dawned on her.

“Of course you don’t,” she smiled. “You want the hat. What is it with you men and this hat? It’s just a hat.”

She tossed it at him and walked to the front door, unbolted it and left. Derrick caught the hat with one hand and looked at it. The eyes twinkled and sparkled.

“She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about does she?” He jammed the hat back on his head. “You may be a lot of things, but you’re not just a hat.”

Back to the Top or Story Of The Month