Last Night

by Karen Ellis

  He could go home now, but he isn’t ready to face the quiet.

  He could go to the diner and have something before getting on the train, but he doesn’t want to eat alone.

  Then he thinks of the perfect solution. He takes out his phone and opens a new message to Elsa, his friend and once colleague (before David ever met her).

  I’m in the neighborhood. Breakfast?

  11

  Last Night

  At the corner of Verona and Richards Streets they come to an entrance to the projects. A cream-on-maroon sign—WELCOME to Red Hook Houses / Property of New York City Housing Authority—stands in front of a mazelike collection of six-story brick structures pocked with small rectangular windows.

  A thullump in Crisp’s chest makes him pause a moment. This is where his father grew up. His mother mentioned it only once but Crisp never forgot: “Mo never could get past the Red Hook Houses in his head.” At the time, he pictured a block filled with red houses shaped like hooks, as if that’s even possible, but later understood that when a black person grew up in “the houses” it always meant the projects.

  For all the baggage of half his lineage, Crisp has never actually been inside a housing project, not the low-income kind, anyway. He’s driven past them, walked beside them, observed them from a distance, read about them in the newspaper, watched stories about their dangers. But it has always been so clearly off-limits to step onto the grounds of a project, possibly even suicidal, that he never actually considered doing it. The internalized self-loathing racism inherent in that assumption hits him suddenly and hard.

  Glynnie has never stepped foot anywhere near a housing project, and as far as she can tell it isn’t so bad. The brick buildings aren’t pretty, but they’re solid. There’s grass, sort of. A playground, outdated, but still. Her blood pumps and she picks up her pace as she follows JJ into what feels like a forbidden zone.

  “Bye, Crisp,” she calls behind her, trying not to pay too much attention to that look on his face. “Talk soon, okay?”

  “Wait—which building are you going to?” Crisp calls after them.

  “I don’t know the number,” JJ answers. “I’ll know it on sight.”

  From Crisp’s vantage point at the nexus of these two streets, the complex appears so vast that it’s impossible to count the buildings or even the number of blocks involved. And those narrow asphalt paths that seem to intersect and yet lead nowhere. He trails them into the nest of buildings where most of the path lights are out, creating an avid darkness.

  He thinks of his mother, how much she loves him, how hard she’s worked to raise him, and he feels horrible for his vanishing act today. He pulls out his phone and thumbs her a quick text so at least she’ll know he’s alive: I love you. With friends. When he doesn’t hear the send swish he wonders if, along with the more obvious deficits, housing projects are also bereft of adequate signal and add it to the list and stop thinking.

  Crisp follows, silenced phrases popping inside his mind: Bad idea, turn around. And yet his body keeps moving forward. Get the building number, then go. The buildings are identical, paths webbing through decimated lawns, rusted benches, no one sitting on them, or at least that’s what Crisp thinks and then suddenly he hears a voice, a pair of voices, and his pulse jumps.

  Two men materialize on a deeply shadowed bench.

  No, not two men. Three.

  He pauses behind JJ at a fork in the path as the boy decides between Building 8 on the left and Building 7 on the right. Almost there.

  One of the men speaks: “Yo, kid, what you doin’ out so late?”

  “That you, Dante?” JJ asks the man who spoke, the largest of the three.

  “Yeah, man. Whazzup?”

  “I got you a cus—”

  “Shut the fuck up. I know what you got, I ain’t blind. Who are they? White chick my ass.” A thicket of gold chains and filigreed pendants glimmer around his neck. In the dark, it looks to Crisp as though there’s something sitting on his head.

  Glynnie’s stomach flip-flops. The man’s tone, his words, the way he and his friends are hunkered into the darkness, sends a flourish of delicious warning through her. She lifts her chin: she has every right to be here even if she’s white and rich.

  “I’m—” she begins, but JJ cuts her off.

  “They cash be good,” JJ says. “You in or ain’t?”

  Crisp notices JJ’s full slide into the Ebonics he only dipped into before, and feels reassured by the boy’s intuitive understanding of the power of language as a survival tactic. He fleetingly wonders if, along with prep for the specialized high-school test, he might be able to start him in the basics of Latin.

  The man stands and so do the other two, and together they ease out of the shadow—two black and one white. The first man, Dante, looms over the others. He says, “Let’s take this inside to my office.”

  At the word office, the underlings—at least that’s what Crisp thinks they are—titter, amused. The white one tilts his Nets cap. The other one, in a heavy leather jacket, grins with lips so taut they almost disappear into his broad face.

  Crisp holds back as Dante and his friends veer left at the fork toward Building 8. And then he whispers to JJ, “Guess I’ll go now. I’ll get back in touch with you tomorrow.”

  “You said what?” The large man, Dante, addresses Crisp directly.

  “Um, I’m heading out. That’s all.”

  “No you ain’t.”

  “Yo, Dante,” JJ interjects. “She the buyer, not him.”

  “Shut the fuck up. Like I said, we don’t talk in the open. Gimme your phones—you’ll get ’em back on the way out.”

  Crisp rejoins the group, a seed of helplessness blossoming in the soil of his best intentions.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Glynnie mutters. Wondering, only now, if it actually isn’t.

  Dante’s grin is a ribbon of gold in the moonlight. He nods at Leather Jacket, who holds out his hand.

  Onto the weathered palm Glynnie places her iPhone, sparkly in a transparent rubber case. JJ adds his LG flip, and Crisp his black Samsung Galaxy. Nets Cap pulls some kind of silver pouch out of his pocket and Leather Jacket dumps the phones inside. The bag is made out of a signal-blocking material, Crisp realizes with a twist of panic. These men are ready for this—whatever this is.

  The first thing that strikes Glynnie when they enter the lobby is a circus smell—hay, popcorn, hot dogs—and it steadies her shaky confidence enough to keep her moving forward. Mustard-tiled walls and cracked linoleum floors. Free-hanging lightbulbs. An elevator that doesn’t work. The rank airlessness of the internal stairwell as they follow Dante up four flights. The second thing she notices is Dante’s crisply ironed jeans, pristine black-and-white sneakers with long studded tongues, and white windbreaker decorated with black diamonds and crowns. His hair, she sees in the stairwell’s harsh lighting, has been straightened, curled, and set in a kind of bouffant. Sitting on top of the hair, almost planted in it, is a red make america great again cap. With every step as he mounts the stairs, silver fendi tags designed to look like license plates flash on the back of his sneakers.

  As Crisp walks up the stairs between Glynnie and JJ, his mind thrashes, struggles to get hold of the moment, the here and now, the distortions of assumption and challenges of perception. He urges himself not to worry so much. Reminds himself that he’s overthinking as he always does. Just chill, get through this, go home. The heavy steps of the gun dealer’s two cohorts bringing up the rear offer a constant reminder that if he bolts, they’ll only stop him.

  All the bulbs in the fourth-floor hallway are out, so Dante uses the torch on his phone—a black Galaxy, same as his, Crisp notices—to light the way. Then, at the door marked 4F, he pulls out a large key ring and turns seven bolts.

  Building 8, apartment 4F, Crisp memorizes.

  Dante flicks on an overhead to light the room, a square with two windows covered with dark green bedsheets, a half-collapsed corduro
y couch in the corner, a freestanding stove and padlocked refrigerator near the door, and in the center a card table with four folding chairs. A copy of Vogue lies open on the table: a fall fashion preview of men in penny loafers, knee socks, and tartan kilts. On the left wall are two closed doors.

  Dante pulls out one of the chairs and sits with his legs spread wide. He puts his phone down on the table beside the magazine. Leather Jacket drops the lumpy silver bag on top.

  Dante asks Glynnie, “What you looking for?”

  She glances at JJ, wondering when he plans to step in and negotiate, but he looks terrified, frozen, almost, and she realizes that she’s on her own. She clears her throat and tells Dante, “A gun.”

  “A gun,” he mocks. “Girl, that’s like going into a restaurant and ordering food.” He laughs, those golden teeth again. “Kid,” to JJ, “you wanna help her out?”

  “Something like what I got,” the boy’s voice stuck on soprano, not cracking at all.

  “You think I remember exactly what I sold you?” Dante snaps. “You think you my only customer?”

  JJ clears his throat. “Ruger twenty-two.”

  “She too pretty for a deuce-deuce.” Nets Cap’s eyes roam Glynnie from head to toe and back again in an edgy, threatening appraisal, and she realizes with a spike of fear that she’s getting eyeballed in a brand-new way.

  She looks at him now, really looks at him for the first time in full light, and sees the deep creases across his forehead, the lines around his mouth that have nothing to do with smiling, the choker of crude dollar signs blue-tattooed above his collarbone, the crevice beneath his Adam’s apple that looks like someone tried to kill him by pressing down a thumb. He’s got a silver ring on every finger of both hands, even his thumbs, heavily carved symbols and skulls with the Gothic flare of the gargoyles on top of the Manhattan building where she used to see a psychiatrist until she told her parents to go to hell. He licks his lips. She wills herself not to frown or scream or tell him off. She can handle these assholes; she can and she will.

  “That sounds good to me,” Glynnie tells Dante, a waver in her voice. She steadies herself. “I’ll take one. How much?”

  “Nah.” Dante gets up and goes to the kitchen area. He keys open the padlock on the refrigerator and swings wide the door onto an unlit interior with no shelves. He pulls out a long case. Leather Jacket moves the magazine and phones to a chair to make room on the table.

  Dante opens the case to reveal an alarming, Crisp thinks, ridiculous, outrageous, disturbing collection of semiautomatic rifles and handguns—a massive collection including military-grade weaponry that anyone could waltz right up and buy. Anyone. Glynnie. Right now. With cash from her pocket.

  Reaching in among the firearms, Dante selects an elaborately carved nickel pistol with a pearl grip. He says to Glynnie, “What you want is this one, ’cause it pretty, like a toy. This a Baby Browning twenty-five, been sitting here just waiting specially for you.”

  It isn’t what Glynnie pictured—something more utilitarian and modern, like JJ’s, was how she imagined herself warding off that bear—but seeing this now makes her reassess.

  She asks, “Does it work?”

  “‘Does it work?’” Dante repeats. He lifts his chin at Leather Jacket, who opens the fridge and from a produce drawer filled with ammunition selects what he wants. Dante takes the gun, cracks open the barrel, slots in the cartridge, and passes it to her. “It work just like it supposed to. So, you buying?”

  The Baby Browning smooth and elegant in her hand, she asks, “How much?”

  “Eighteen Cs.”

  “I don’t have anywhere near that much on me.”

  “Well, what you got?”

  “Three,” she says. “Cs.”

  Glancing at Nets Cap, Dante mutters, “What you think, Jerome? Not too many customers just right for this baby.”

  Jerome removes his hat and tilts his head. Grizzly hair going thin at the crown. The skin under his chin sagging enough to show some age. “I can think of a way she can work off the rest.”

  Every nerve in Glynnie’s body lights up.

  The hairs prickle on the back of Crisp’s neck.

  Dante tells Jerome, “Happy early birthday, my man.”

  “No,” Crisp says. “She doesn’t have enough money to buy it. I think it’s time for us to go.” He grabs Glynnie’s sweaty hand. “JJ, come on.”

  Dante steps forward to loom over Crisp, hiding his teeth in a frown. Meanwhile, Jerome eases his way toward Glynnie. He reaches out a hand and touches her, actually touches her, and the entirety of her skin goes cold all at once and seems to shrink. She tries to shake off the hand, causing Dante to laugh and Jerome to slip a finger under the collar of her shirt.

  She tells him “No.” But he doesn’t stop.

  “Dante—” JJ begins.

  “Get outta here, kid,” Dante snaps. “This ain’t for you.”

  “Please.”

  “I said get. And keep your mouth shut—you snitch, you dead.”

  “Go on,” Crisp urges the boy, appealing silently with his eyes: Building 8, apartment 4F. Tell someone.

  Leather Jacket opens all seven locks. JJ rushes out. One by one, the bolts slide back into place.

  “Don’t do this,” Crisp tries to reason. “This is a mistake. You don’t have to. Just let us go before anything happens. Let’s be smart about this—”

  “Smart? Rodrigo, you hear that? This little dude telling us ‘Be smart.’”

  Rodrigo chuckles, sloughs off his leather jacket, hangs it on the back of a chair, and cracks his knuckles, getting ready.

  Jerome slides his hand farther into Glynnie’s shirt.

  Crisp recalls the self-defense class his mother enrolled him in when he was ten. Thinking stops in a rush of adrenaline. He pinches together the tips of his thumb and forefinger to make a sharp weapon, intending to peck Jerome’s right eye first. He inches closer.

  Dante pulls out a chair and sits down with a rifle resting on his knee, ready to watch the show. Jerome pressing his body against Glynnie now. Glynnie struggling, saying, “Hey! Stop it.” Rodrigo approaching as if to help, but not to help her.

  “You fucking white bitches all the same.” Jerome’s tongue comes out of his mouth and snakes in the direction of Glynnie’s ear.

  “You’re white,” she reminds him, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate.

  She feels the wet of his tongue in her ear and then his whisper, “I ain’t nowhere white as you.” She closes her eyes, tries to pretend this isn’t happening.

  Closer now, Crisp raises his pinched fingertips and calculates his best shot at Jerome’s eye. To his side, he notices Rodrigo starting toward him, raising a hand to block him.

  A gun goes off, and the thunderous crack freezes them all.

  And Crisp can’t think.

  And Glynnie can’t breathe.

  And time—it just stops.

  12

  Friday

  Lex is waiting outside a café on Smith Street, near Elsa’s apartment, when she strides up with her striped canvas workbag slung over her shoulder. Wiry, hair tucked behind her ears, she wears her trademark long pants and long sleeves even in summer, hiding her damaged skin.

  “You look great,” he tells her.

  She answers, “You know I don’t like bullshit.”

  “I sure do.”

  He opens his arms and she walks right into his hug, a gesture of acceptance that pleases him. She’s softened a bit since her father died last August. Lex will never forget the night, earlier that summer just after their case ended, when he drove her upstate to see her father in the hospital. It was the kind of case, and the kind of night, that leaves you raw, empty. By the end of it, he learned that she didn’t consider herself worthy of friendship, and he learned why. Now, hugging her hello, he realizes that she’s actually hugging him back. Not much, just a little, but he feels it.

  “It was so nice to see your message this morning,” she tells him,
standing back, looking at him.

  “Spent half the night tracking down a missing kid. Naturally, I thought of you.” He grins.

  “You said you were in the neighborhood.”

  “Damn, you’re a good investigator!”

  She laughs. “How old’s the kid?”

  “Nineteen. He turned out not to be missing, though—he texted his mother a couple hours ago.”

  “Well,” she says, “nineteen isn’t a kid in my book. Not officially. Brain development, well, that’s a whole other thing.”

  He’ll never forget that either: the significance of the demarcation line of a child’s eighteenth birthday. And he won’t forget last summer, looking for a girl about to hit that legal milestone and the time it took for him to decide whether to treat her as a child or an adult until Elsa joined the case and cleared that up. Her work on the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team had taught her to be vigilant with details, and technically, at two days shy of her eighteenth birthday, Ruby was still a child at the time of her abduction.

  Lex pulls out a chair for her at one of the café’s outdoor tables. She ignores his gallant gesture and sits opposite. He takes the seat he meant for her and, while scooting himself closer to the table, his calf muscles seize, and he winces.

  “You okay?”

  “Got a nasty cramp out on the water yesterday; still hasn’t worked itself out.”

  “Swimming?”

  “Didn’t you know I surf?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Took it up after college. I love it.”

  “Sounds like you’re enjoying life in the Rockaways.”

  “It was a good move. The Six-O, that was a good move too.” Not saying what started the bouncing from squad to squad, how a stint in Vice with easy access to serious drugs, the kind he wanted when he wanted them, sent him running. To Forest Hills, where he met Elsa. To downtown Brooklyn, until he realized that the property clerk located there also stored confiscated drugs and it proved too close for comfort. To Coney Island, where he is now. “Trying to get Adam on board, but no luck.”