“Why later?”
“Because I hope to figure out what the hell we’re supposed to be doing by then.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I CAME UP with something, but like the rest of my ideas about being a detective, it was half-baked and spur of the moment. You make do with what you have, I guess. As scheduled, Preacher Simmons met me out in front of Nathan’s at nine. I always liked playing ball on an empty stomach. Preacher had different ideas on the subject. He had four hot dogs, two large fries, and two enormous lemonades before I dropped him off at the courts. They didn’t call him “the Creature” for nothing.
“I guess sitting on your ass all day in that security office makes for hungry work.”
“Man, you know me going on seven years, Moe. For me, breathing makes for hungry work.”
Argue that.
When I picked him up at the entrance to the courts about an hour and a half later, Preacher had toweled off and changed into some fresh clothing. Even after a full day’s work, the drive in from Queens, and ninety minutes of ball, his eyes were on fire. He’d once told me that the only place he ever felt truly alive was on the court. That was never going to change. He was forty-three now and I wondered where the fire would go when his hips and knees started to break down. You can’t carry as much weight as he did and pound your legs on concrete and asphalt courts for as long as he had without paying a big price.
There was a burning in me, too, but mine was envy. At least Preacher had a place in the world where he felt alive. All I had now were French Cabernets and California Chardonnays. A stupid piece of carbon paper—did they even have carbon paper anymore?—had taken that place away from me forever. Being a cop, putting on that blue
uniform every day, knowing every inch of the pavement I patrolled, that was being alive. The rest of it was sleepwalking.
“So?” I said, trying not to let my envy show.
He thought my scouting report on the Nugget kid was right on. “For such a big head, he don’t seem to have nothing in it. You can’t tell that boy nothing.”
Preacher said he’d caught a lucky break, that another old-timer had recognized him from his Boys High years. Reggie Philbis was his name and they’d played against one another back in the day—Reggie for Thomas Jefferson. Currently, Reggie worked as a drug treatment counselor for the city, having come upon his education the hard way. Knowing Reggie paid off in two ways: it helped open up lines of communication with the guys waiting winners, and it got Nugget’s grudging attention.
“Anybody have anything to say about Malik?”
“You mean Melvin? Shit, yeah, but none of it kindly. He was like the neighborhood joke, you know what I’m saying?”
“Every neighborhood’s got ’em, guys that fancy themselves something they’re never gonna be. Guys that think they’re cool, but can’t get outta their own way with a tour guide.”
“That’s the boy.”
“But what did they say about him?”
“Strictly small-time, you know, a loser—”
“A loser that could afford half a key of coke.”
“You didn’t let me finish, Moe. My man Reggie say Melvin not only got a new name, but he got hisself some new friends in recent years.”
“New friends?”
“Wiseguy types.”
“Wiseguy
types
, not wiseguys?” I asked.
“Well, shit, ain’t like old Melvin been introducing his new white brothers around, if you know what I’m saying. The boys at the court seem to think they was sorta like Melvin in their own way.”
“Wannabes.”
“Sounds about right.”
“And Nugget?”
“Boy’s got some severe offensive game, but on D he moves his feet like a statue.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Some. He ain’t ready to hear me.”
“He’ll learn the hard way.”
“Nah, man, some go the hard way, but they don’t never learn a thing.”
It was getting close to midnight. Preacher wanted to treat for a nightcap, but I took a rain check and dropped the man back at his car. He asked me what was wrong. I lied and told him nothing. He left it at that. Preacher was good that way—he knew when to push and when not to push.
I HAD IN mind to pay a visit on Malik Jabbar’s girlfriend, Kalisha. Given Mable Broadbent’s less than glowing commentary on her late son’s taste in women, I didn’t figure on asking her to make formal introductions. So I just sat in my car across from Rancho Broadbent and waited, hoping Kalisha would appear. I hadn’t a clue as to what Kalisha might look like, but somehow I just felt I would know her.
It was getting late and I was beginning to worry that Mable had exaggerated about the hours Kalisha kept. Another few minutes and I’d have to head back home or risk passing out in my car. When I looked up from my watch, a streetlight flickered and I noticed Mable Broadbent’s backlit silhouette in the front window of her flat. She, too, was waiting. I wondered if this was how she dealt with her grief, keeping tabs on a woman she despised, a woman who had somehow replaced her in her lost son’s life. It’s hard getting inside other people’s emotions, but grief is, I think, the hardest to slip into. Grief is a dark place, the darkest place.
The stoop light popped on, the front door swinging open. A woman came out onto the concrete landing and closed the door behind her. She hesitated at the top of the short stairs, turning to her left to stare directly at Mable Broadbent. Mable did not move. It was a test of wills. After an endless ten seconds, the woman on the stoop shouted, “Fuck you, bitch.” By any standard, Mable had won that round. The woman I took to be Kalisha made a left and moved toward Surf Avenue. I got out of my car. As I did so, I looked to where Mable had sat in her front window. She was gone.
I stood in the shadows across the street from Kalisha. She checked her watch and paced as if she were waiting for someone to pick her up.
The smell of the ocean and sewerage was strong in the air. Calling Coney Island the ass end of Brooklyn was both a figurative and literal expression because around the bend of Sea Gate toward Bay Ridge, sewerage was dumped out into the Atlantic. When I was a kid, swimming with my buddies at Coney, Brighton, and Manhattan beaches, I never gave it much thought. I did now. I walked across the street.
“Kalisha?”
“Whatchu want?” she barked, her pride still hurting from losing her stare-down with Mable Broadbent.
She had a svelte, angular body. Up close, she was a pretty woman with almost yellow-brown skin and green eyes, but she exuded a kind of hardness that argued against her looks. She wore an expensive, grassy perfume, and way too much of it, so much that it dominated the scent of the sea and sewerage. Kalisha’s clothes cost some bucks, but cheapened her somehow. She stared at me as if I were a lone roach caught out in the light. I realized I had crossed the street fully prepared to dislike her, and nothing about her was changing my mind.
“You want some company, baby, you a long way from Mermaid and Stillwell. Twenty bucks’ll get you all the black pussy you can handle down there.” My silence made her uncomfortable, and she reached a hand into her bag. “I ain’t in that life no more.”
I showed her my old badge, bluffing to the max.
“That supposed to get y’all a discount?”
“No, just your attention.”
“Now you got it, whatchu want with it?”
“To talk about Malik.”
“He dead.”
“No shit. That’s why I wanna talk.”
“Fuck y’all.”
“Sorry,” I said, “not interested. Now it looks to me like you’re waiting on somebody. I bet he won’t be thrilled if he has to come collect you over at the 60th Precinct. You think?”
“Whatchu wanna know ’bout Malik?”
“Where’d he get the money for half a key of coke?”
The belligerence in her face was replaced by blankness. The question scared her and she didn’t like being scared. She liked showing it even less.
“I don’t know whatchu talkin’ ’bout. Malik didn’t—”
“Bullshit, Kalisha. Malik was a loser, a guy that didn’t have two nickels to rub together his whole life. Then he scores a fine-looking woman like you and he’s dealing weight. Something changed. Maybe he got some new friends, some white boys, maybe. You wanna talk to me about that?”
“Fuck y’all. Ain’t met a cop had a dick bigga than my pinky.” She demonstrated, waving a ringed little finger my way. It was false bravado. She’d grown shrill and any sense of composure was gone from her voice.
“That may be, but it doesn’t answer the question. Listen, Kalisha, you don’t talk to me now, okay. But there’s gonna be some detectives coming around on a regular basis starting tomorrow. So even if you aren’t talking, maybe Malik’s buddies will think you are. You know, maybe I should just wait here with you till your ride shows up. Maybe I should chat with him. What do you think?”
“Oh, fuck, man! Why you gotta fuck with a girl’s life like that?”
“It doesn’t have to be this way if you just talk to me.”
“Ask your damned questions, man.”
“Malik ever talk about a cop named McDonald?”
“E-I-E-I-O. He the guy owns that farm, right?” She smiled, and for just a second, I saw there were still remnants of a little girl inside the hard woman in front of me.
“No, Kalisha, Larry McDonald bought the farm. He didn’t own it.” Took her a second to process that. “Oh, he dead too. Well, Malik didn’t never talk about no cops, not by name, anyway.”
“Okay, how about Dexter Mayweather, Malik ever mention him?”
“You crazy? D Rex been dead almost as long as I been alive. Malik was just a boy when that man was killed. How he gonna know anything about that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one of Malik’s new friends mentioned something. Just a question.”
Something flashed across her face—unease, maybe. If I had blinked, I would have missed it.
“Whatchu talking ’bout, Malik’s new friends? He didn’t have no friends but me. And why’s all the questions you ask ’bout dead men? Dontchu know nobody but dead men?”
“I know lots of people, Kalisha, but I’m most interested in Malik’s friends.”
“Look, I told y’all, I don’t know nothing ’bout friends.”
“Then where’d he get the money for the coke?”
She checked her watch again. “Look, my john—I mean my new man gonna be here any second. Won’t look good, me standing here talking with you. Can’t we talk another time?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow.”
“When I say tomorrow, it’s not a question. I’ll meet you at this corner at two.”
“Okay, then, just get outta here now.”
I did as she asked, retreating into the shadows across the street. I turned to look back at the hard girl. Yet, as hard as she was, Kalisha just seemed a sad, bitter woman from the darkness in which I now stood. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old and life had already beaten all the good out of her. I couldn’t help but wonder what another twenty-five years would do to her. What small percentage of her soul would remain? I needn’t have worried.
I heard the rumble of a loud engine coming down Surf Avenue. Even before its brakes squealed and the car pulled over, I knew something was wrong. But what? I couldn’t seem to think fast enough. My head was foggy, my mouth dry, my heart racing.
What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?
It rang in my head like church bells. Kalisha took a step toward the passenger door and stopped. Her face went from falsely happy to blank to genuinely panicked.
The car!
I recognized the car. It was the same Camaro that had tried to make me its new hood ornament.
“Look—”
Before I got the second syllable out of my mouth or taken a full step, the barrel of a shotgun stuck through the open window of the passenger door. There were two flashes and roars. Kalisha’s head fairly exploded and her lifeless torso sat down, one rubber leg under her, the other kicked out toward Sea Gate. The Camaro gunned its engine and fishtailed, smoking its back tires as it went.
I was swimming in quicksand as I came back across the street. The acrid cloud of burned rubber swallowed up the twin puffs of gun smoke like finger food, and its stink overwhelmed the cordite, the sea, the stench of human waste. Strangely, I could still smell grace notes of Kalisha’s grassy perfume, although the neck and ears on which she’d
dabbed it had been chewed to shit by the close-range barrage of pellets. I looked down at what was left of her and didn’t need to touch her to know it wouldn’t take twenty-five more years to find out what she’d become. All she was fifteen seconds ago was all she was ever going to be.
I ran to my car and took off. No lights had come on since the shooting. No new faces had appeared in second floor windows, at least none I could see. They were there all right. When the cops showed, no one would have heard or seen a thing. When I was on the job, I used to think the lack of cooperation was just pure hatred of the cops. Not anymore. Some of it was hatred and resentment, sure, but mostly it was resignation. This is how life worked. This is how it was in the Soul Patch. What was another dead nigger? What was another murdered prostitute to the cops?
As I tore down the street, I once again found myself thinking of Israel Roth and Auschwitz. “You can get used to anything,” he’d say. “The very essence of humanity is adaptability. Some people think it’s what makes us great. Me, I think it’s a curse. There are things we shouldn’t be able to live with.”
I also thought of Mable Broadbent. What would she do with her grief now that Kalisha was dead?
I found the Camaro down by Coney Island Creek. As I turned the corner it was already in flames. And when I saw the long, wet rag sticking out of where the gas cap should have been, I knew it was only a matter of seconds until the whole thing blew apart. It didn’t disappoint. For decades, the city used to have free firework displays along the boardwalk on summer Tuesday evenings. Those displays were fun, but nothing compared to an exploding Chevrolet. I split before New York’s Bravest and Finest appeared.