Pipe Dream
Contents
For my wife, LaVeta, who stepped into my world and made it beautiful. And for my brother, Brian. I love you.
Strivers Row
During the 1920s and 1930s, around the time of the Harlem Renaissance, more than a quarter of a million African-Americans settled in Harlem, creating what was described at the time as “a cosmopolitan Negro capital which exert[ed] an influence over Negroes everywhere.”
Nowhere was this more evident than on West 138th and 139th Streets between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards, two blocks that came to be known as Strivers Row. These blocks attracted many of Harlem’s African-American doctors, lawyers, and entertainers, among them Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, and W. C. Handy, who were themselves striving to achieve America’s middle-class dream.
With its mission of publishing quality African-American literature, Strivers Row emulates those “strivers,” capturing that same spirit of hope, creativity, and promise.
Acknowledgments
First, I must thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without whom none of this would be possible. My deepest gratitude to my inspiration, my lover, my wife, LaVeta, who believed in my work and edited the later drafts so wonderfully. Thanks to my parents, Solomon and Carolyn Jones, and my grandmother Lula Richards, for never giving up on me. Thanks to my aunt Juanita Bryant, who came out to the corner to pray for me. Thanks to my daughter, Adrianne, just for being. I love you. My undying gratitude to Susan Jacobs, who walked into a shelter and gave me a second chance at life. Thanks to Ben Jacobs for his wise counsel on the publishing industry. Thanks to Barnett Wright and Arlene Morgan, my mentors. Thanks to Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati, whose recommendation opened doors. Thanks to Kristi Zea and Dick Dilsheimer, who shared their wisdom and contacts so unselfishly. Thanks to Manie Barron, who believed in this work. Thanks to the
Philadelphia Weekly
for publishing the first excerpt. Thanks to Victoria Sanders and Angela Cheng, my agents. Thanks to Melody Guy, my editor. Thanks to Avis Davenport, who read the very first draft. Thanks to the streets that taught me the hard truths contained in these pages. And thanks to you, my readers. You are the mirror that reflects the essence of each story I tell.
Prologue
Black sat handcuffed to a table in the prison’s visiting room, waiting for his court-appointed lawyer to come for his final visit before the trial. The visits were a formality, really. They both knew it. The lawyer was always polite about it, though. Black had to respect that.
But that didn’t change the reality. The man who was tethered to the table was poor and he was black. Which meant that he would probably be found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in the shooting of city councilman Johnny Podres. Statistics dictated it.
Still, they had to go through with the routine. The lawyer would come in and ask about what happened that night. Black would refuse to talk. The lawyer would assure him that he knew he was innocent. Black would remain silent. This would go on for an hour or so, and then the lawyer would leave.
That was the normal routine. Today, it was going to be different. Black had finally seen enough and read enough to piece together exactly what happened and why, thanks to the yearlong media coverage of the Podres murder. The only missing piece was his own. And he was just about ready to fit it into the puzzle.
The buzzer rang, the lock on the door clicked, and the guard escorted the lawyer into the room.
“Hello, Samuel,” the lawyer said.
Black didn’t respond. It was strange to hear someone use his given name. For as long as he could remember, people had always called him Black, because his skin was like a layer of liquid chocolate. The name fit. At least it used to. But here, behind the walls that had been his home for the last year, nothing fit. Not his name, not his past, not even the truth. Which was why he’d refused to speak before. Something inside him had told him that the truth wouldn’t matter.
“You know we go to trial in two days,” the lawyer said, breaking into his thoughts. “And I’ve got to tell you, I won’t be able to provide an effective defense without your cooperation. Now, I can step down and let the court find you another lawyer. Or I can stay on and do the best I can with whatever you give me. It’s up to you.”
“I’m ready to talk,” Black said, interrupting the lawyer’s standard speech.
The lawyer cocked his head to one side. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m ready to tell you what happened.”
The lawyer fumbled around in his briefcase, took out a tape recorder, and placed it on the table, then took out a notepad and pencil. “Okay,” he said, visibly flustered. “I guess the first question I should ask you is this: Did you kill Johnny Podres?”
“No questions. I just want you to turn on the tape recorder. You have more than one tape, right?”
“Yes, but I—”
“Good. Just turn on the tape recorder. You got any smokes?”
The lawyer turned on the tape recorder, handed his client a cigarette, and lit it for him. Black drew hard, squinting as the smoke rushed into his lungs.
“Where do you want to start?” the lawyer said, lighting a cigarette of his own.
“I guess there’s only one place to start—at Broad and Erie.”
Chapter 1
T
he priest pulled up outside the church, put his car in park, and walked inside, glancing backward to see that he had locked the doors, as was his practice. Black and Leroy knew his habits, like they knew everyone else’s habits, because they watched. And watching paid off when it came to breaking into cars.
Of course, watching paid off with houses, too. But they tried to stay out of houses, because you could get caught in a house with nowhere to run. And there’s nothing quite like being distracted from the task of rummaging through someone’s bedroom drawers by the sensation of cold steel pressed against the back of your neck.
Cars aren’t quite that risky. People walk away from their cars and leave all kinds of things inside. Once, they watched a man walk into one of the clubs on Broad and Erie with two women—right after he’d opened his trunk and put their fur coats inside. Another time they watched someone leave a case of CDs sitting on the front seat of his car as he went inside the barbecue place to order half a slab of pork ribs. They even profited from auto accidents. Like the time a woman crashed her car into a pole in front of the chicken place and left it there with a brand-new JVC system inside—complete with equalizer, subwoofers, CD changer, and amplifier.
Unattended cars often meant money. But on Sunday nights, when everything was half speed, there weren’t any unattended cars with anything inside, which meant that there was only the flat-tire thing. And Black knew that Leroy was intent on doing the flat-tire thing that night.
“I gotta get p-paid,” Leroy said, talking quickly and with a slight stutter as he looked over his shoulder.
“You just did him two days ago,” Black said, knowing that Leroy wasn’t one to listen to reason. “Just wait for somebody else.”
“Man, I’m not waitin’ for nobody else.”
Black smiled, knowing that Leroy seldom waited for anything, especially when he wanted to get high.
And that night, like every other night, Leroy wanted to get high. Black knew that Leroy wouldn’t do anything else until he had hustled up enough money to get a hit. He also knew that after the first hit, they would both be off to the races.
Leroy had just smoked two treys—three-dollar caps—so it was just a matter of time before he slashed the priest’s tire. Black knew this because he knew Leroy. He even knew how Leroy would go about it.
First, Leroy would take about thirty seconds to convince himself that slashing the priest’s tire would work, even if he knew in his heart that it wouldn’t. Second, he would poke a hole in the tire and wait for the priest to come out of the church. Then he would walk by, see the priest struggling with the flat, and offer to help him change it. If everything went right, the priest would pay him and Leroy would run up to Pop Squaly’s and buy five caps. If Black stayed close by, Leroy would probably give him one.
“He ain’t gon’ know,” Leroy said. “How he gon’ know?”
He said this more to convince himself than to convince Black. He probably knew that Black thought he was stupid to do the same thing to the same person less than a week after the last time he did it. Black started to tell him as much, but thought better of it.
“All right,” Black said evenly. “I’ll be over there.”
He walked across Broad Street and watched as Leroy poked the hole in the priest’s tire. All Black could do was laugh, because he knew it wouldn’t work. But Black didn’t have anything else to do, so he stood over by the barbecue place, waiting, like Leroy, for the priest to come out of the church.
He didn’t have to wait for long.
The priest came out and looked at his tire, then Leroy came out from behind Lee’s Chicken and walked by like he was just passing through. Black couldn’t help smiling because, even from across the street, he could tell that Leroy was trying to look like a straight-up Good Samaritan.
His smile broadened as he watched Leroy walk up to the priest, follow his gaze to the flat tire, and throw his hands up in the air as if to say, “Not again!” Like he was really sympathizing with him.
The priest didn’t react so dramatically. In fact, Black could tell that the priest saw right through Leroy’s little game. But Leroy couldn’t see that. He probably thought the priest was just disappointed that he’d gotten another flat tire so quickly. And the priest let him go right on thinking that.
After Leroy went through his little act, the priest gestured toward the tire and told him to go ahead and change it. But the priest’s face was flushed with anger. He was trying to act like he was grateful that Leroy had come along, though he probably was just trying to figure out what to do next. While Leroy examined the tire, waiting for the priest to get his tire iron out of his trunk, Black eased back into the shadow of a trash-filled doorway and watched through the darkness as Leroy’s master plan unraveled.
The priest told Leroy to wait, then went back inside the church. To Black’s amazement, Leroy waited.
If the priest had done that to Black, he would have known, no matter how much he wanted another cap, that the man was going back inside the church to call the police, because Black got paranoid when he took a hit. Leroy wasn’t like that, though. He took a hit and thought he was John Gotti. He would do things in broad daylight and get away with them because, in his mind, he was invincible. Sometimes Black thought he was, too. This wasn’t one of those times. This was one of those times Black wanted to grab Leroy by the neck and make him stop. But by the time he made up his mind to go across the street and do that, it was too late.
Just as the priest came out and made his way down the church steps, the cops rolled up on Leroy. When Black saw them, he crept back farther into the trash-strewn hallway, because he and Leroy had done so much dirt together that Black was used to getting arrested every time Leroy was.
As Black watched, the two white cops and the white priest gathered around Leroy, gesturing toward the tire. Images of Rodney King popped into Black’s mind. And then the images vanished. After all, five or six cops on a dark road beating a big man like Rodney was a far cry from two cops and a priest beating a piper near Broad and Erie, one of the busiest intersections in North Philly. It just wasn’t going to happen. The cops beating a piper in a squad car or at the station was a different thing altogether. But from what Black could see, Leroy wasn’t going to make it to the squad car, let alone the station.
While the priest stood by with his arms folded, Leroy made placating gestures as if to say: I was just walking by and I wanted to help.
The cops were looking at him like: Yeah, right, nigger. You could almost hear them saying it. In a few minutes, though, they got tired of listening to him and told him to walk. His mouth, which had been going a hundred miles a minute, abruptly stopped moving. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked briskly across the street. When the cops got into their car—thankful, no doubt, that they wouldn’t have to do any paperwork, since the priest wasn’t pressing any charges—Black came out of the doorway and met Leroy in front of the barbecue place.
“Told you it wouldn’t work, didn’t I?” Black said, grinning. “What’d they say?”
“Th-they was like, ‘Why did you slit this g-guy’s tires?’ ” he said, stuttering as he always did whenever he got nervous or high. “I told them he didn’t see me do it, and I was just trying to help the man out.”
“Looked like you was beggin’ for your life to me.”
“Shut up, Black.”
Black grinned even more broadly. “What you gettin’ ready to do now?” he said.
“I’m goin’ in the house. What about you?”
“You know that hole in the floor of this abandoned house over here—the one that goes to the vent with all the electric wires for the club they fixin’ up?”
Leroy nodded.
“I’m goin’ up in there,” Black said, locking eyes with Leroy.
Leroy looked back at him questioningly, because they both knew what that meant. They had considered breaking into the club once before, but they didn’t want to fry in the vent. Black knew Leroy was thinking of the wires and had already concluded that the vent was a waste of time.
“You down?” Black said, knowing the answer as well as Leroy before he even spoke it.
“Naw, man, I almost got popped one time already. I’m gon’ run it on in.”
Translation: “I have something else in mind and you’re not included. There is no way in hell you’re going to be able to get through all that wiring to get into that club. If there were a remote possibility of your succeeding, I would go with you. As it stands, there is not. Good luck.”
Leroy couldn’t have known that he was dead wrong. And Black figured it wasn’t his job to tell him. So Black turned toward the dark doorway he’d just exited, climbed over the wrought-iron fence that was held closed by a flimsy chain and lock, and walked toward the stairway that led up to the hole in the floor and the wiring to the club.
Black was either going to get paid or get fried. Not that it mattered. He was so strung out he figured he might as well be dead anyway. If he’d known what was going on in the house, though, he might have gone with Leroy. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have.
“You gotta give up half a cap, and you gotta use one match,” Pookie told the suited-down Puerto Rican she had lured into the house. “I don’t want you burnin’ up my screens.”
They were sitting in the living room of the abandoned house on Park Avenue where everyone went to smoke. On the news, it would have been called a crack house. To them, it was just “the house.” So when Leroy said to Black that he was on his way to the house, Black knew that he was going there. Leroy probably thought he could catch somebody in there smoking and maybe get a hit. Apparently, some other people had gotten that idea before he did.
The Puerto Rican was going to be the source of everyone’s high that night. He must have had it like that. He was wearing wingtip shoes, an Armani suit, a tailored shirt, and a silk tie. But there was something more to him—an air of authority. He looked to be about fifty, graying at the temples, with the hard lines around his eyes that come with a high-pressure career. Along with the executive air, though, there was a sort of somber defeat. Everyone there could see it. They could smell it. They knew that if this man had not felt defeated, there was no way in hell he would be in a crack house on Park Avenue. He just didn’t belong there, and everyone knew it.
The Puerto Rican looked around the room to see if anyone had heard the girl hollering at him. Then he looked at his watch and saw that it was 11:42
P.M.
Satisfied that the other people in the room were occupied with the caps he had handed out five minutes before, he turned his attention back to the girl.
“Okay,” he said. “One match.”
He reached for the straight shooter, a small hollow glass cylinder filled on one end with a rolled-up piece of a copper scouring pad. But she looked at him and pulled it back.
“Don’t be reachin’ over here,” she said, her voice rising. “Where’s the cap?”
He didn’t even notice that the price had gone from a half a cap to a whole cap. And he didn’t care. He just gave it to her. And everyone in the house looked at him as if they were measuring him up, waiting for him to take another hit.
Guys like him came through the house every once in a while. New Jacks, trying to get a blow job for a cap. Guys who had never smoked crack before. If a trick could convince them to take a hit, and they liked it, these guys would spend every last dime and give up the title to their car just to keep smoking. Most of the time, they would never even get the blow job, because by the time most men smoke four or five caps, they can’t get it up anyway. But it feels like they might be able to, because crack stimulates the same part of the brain that sex does. Tricks, being the astute medical experts that they are, know this, and use this knowledge to their advantage. That’s why they call them tricks. The trick is, the man spends all of his money for something they never give, and they end up telling him what to do, smoking up most of the dope, and maybe setting him up in the process.
“Can I get the straight?” Johnny Podres said, loosening his tie and glancing around the room at the hardened gray faces that seemed to lurk in every corner.
“Just wait a minute,” Pookie said.
“Okay,” he said. “Calm down.”
Podres was beginning to think it hadn’t been such a good idea to come to this place. The girl was making him look like a fool. But he needed another hit like the first one, when he’d put two caps in the straight and lit it with two matches, pulling the smoke slowly into his lungs and holding it there for what seemed like an eternity. Just one more like that and he could leave.
Pookie struck two matches and held them so close to the end of the glass tube that it cracked. “See what you made me do?” she said.
She gave him the straight shooter. He tried to put two caps in, but Pookie stopped him.
“What you doin’, man?” she said.
“I’m trying to get a hit,” he said, feeling like the room was closing in on him.
“You put one cap up in there and you hit it one time, with one match, then you pass it,” she said, as Butter got up slowly from the couch on the other side of the dim room and crept toward the mantelpiece.
Butter was what you might call the houseman. At least he was this week. The truth was, the house didn’t belong to anybody. It was an abandoned house that people came to to smoke crack. But every once in a while, somebody would clean the place up, maybe bring in some extra candles, and call himself the houseman. Everybody who came in to smoke had to pay the houseman either one dollar or a hit. This week, Butter was the houseman. And Podres was the victim.
“What you coming over here for, man?” Podres said. “I gave you your hit.”
“I’m just making sure we got enough light up in here,” Butter said as he put another candle on the mantelpiece. “You know I gotta look out for the house. Everything’s cool, though. Go ’head and smoke.”
Butter smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellowed teeth stuffed haphazardly between sunken cheeks.