Last Night

by Karen Ellis

  “Where is she?” Dante’s voice is tight, eyes narrowed to slits.

  “It was dark all the way down, boss.” Rodrigo’s neck seems to retreat protectively into his thick torso, waiting for something worse than words. “And she’s fast.”

  “What kind of fool can’t catch a skinny white girl?” Dante snaps each of the seven locks. “We got to get the fuck outta here.”

  “What about Jerome?” Rodrigo asks.

  “Well he can’t walk by hisself, can he?”

  “I’ll get him ready, boss.”

  “Work fast, asshole.”

  Rodrigo retreats to the bathroom. Dante hangs back, runs his hands through his hair to fluff out the flattened side, considers Crisp in a way that sends a cold chill through the teenager.

  “Please,” Crisp begs. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

  Dante smirks, looking at him. “Princeton—guess you’re that smart. Guess you think you don’t got to pay a price.” Dante pulls a gun from the back waistband of his boxers. He studies Crisp from head to toe.

  “I’m no different from you,” Crisp tries. “I just got lucky. My father, he grew up right here in the Houses.”

  A light in Dante’s eyes and the gun hand relaxes to his side. “Tell me you ain’t Mo Crespo’s kid. Crisp—I figured it was just some messed up name.” The thug’s demeanor shifts into something avuncular, an old-timer you bump into on the corner. “How’s old Yo Po doing these days?”

  “Yo Po?”

  “S’what we used to call him.”

  Crisp’s mind races. Did his father hang out with the neighborhood thugs? Was he, is he, one of them?

  Don’t think about that now.

  Hoping to play this for survival, Crisp says, “I never knew him,” appealing to a different Dante buried under the bling and hair product. “He left when I was a baby.”

  “No shit?” Dante leans in like the town gossip, so close Crisp picks up the sour of half-digested booze. “I saw that motherfucker just last week. Drives up in my Uber; couldn’t believe my eyes. Fucking Mo Crespo, not as young as he used to be, but who the hell is after twenty-plus years? Only the name says my driver supposed to be someone else, not Mo. But I know, I know I’m looking at Yo Po’s face.”

  “What was the name?” The question bubbles up before Crisp can stop it. “Never mind. I really don’t give a shit.” Why should he care about a father who would name you something like Titus Crespo and then not hang around to help you learn to live with it?

  Ignoring the disclaimer, Dante says, “Can’t think of it. Some crazy-ass name sound like some Wall Street dude. So I get in the backseat and I start to think and I say to him, I say, ‘Yo, Po!’ He eyes me in the rearview. I mean, he sees me. But he don’t say nothing. He just drives, pulls into the street cool and easy. So I bide my time. I wait until he stops at a red. Then I ease on up closer, you know, like this.” Dante angles forward, folded arms clasped at the elbows hovering in midair (the gun resting on one elbow), and Crisp pictures him leaning into the front seat with those mean eyes and that golden smile and that hat.

  Despite himself, Crisp begins to smell the pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror containing his father’s eyes. He’s in the car with them now, paying attention to every move his errant father makes, listening closely while Dante colors in the outline man Crisp has spent years trying to erase from his imagination.

  “And I say, ‘Yo, Po, whazzup, brother? You didn’t forget ol’ Dante, did you?’ And Mo Crespo, he gives me that smile, the one that used to get him the girls.”

  The car now fills with phantom women, none of them Crisp’s mother. Philandering asshole. Narcissistic jerk.

  “Oh yeah, he had him a few.” Dante nods. “He thought he was the man. Then one day he just up and falls off the map.”

  Mo Crespo falling backward off a map—Crisp sees it, the women evaporating and the car plunging off the urban grid as a young Mo Crespo materializes in Brighton Beach, where he spends nearly two years falling in love with Katya Spielman and getting married and having a baby and disappearing, but apparently not back into his old life. Traitor. Deadbeat dad.

  “Finally, he says, ‘Yo, Dante, what you been up to?’ And I tell him, ‘Same old, only better.’ And before I know it I ask him, ‘What you making hauling this rig ’round the streets?’ ’Cause I know it can’t be much. He tells me, ‘Enough to pay my rent.’ And I tell him, ‘You can do better, my man, and I mean starting today. I got me a crew doing real business now. I’ll bring you in. What do you say?’” Dante leans back and opens his arms to punctuate the grandiosity of his gesture toward his long-lost compatriot.

  A chill runs through Crisp as he waits for the answer. He doesn’t have to ask; he knows Dante will tell him.

  “He says, ‘Thanks, man, but I’m good. I got me another gig. Can’t fit any more hours into the day.’ ‘What other gig you got, bro? ’Cause my eyes are telling me it ain’t paying you squat.’ ‘I make stuff,’ he says. ‘Driving, it’s a day job keeps me fed.’ Day job my fuckin’ ass: loser job. And he’s turning down a real opportunity to make him some real scratch with me. I ask him, ‘What stuff you make?,’ but Po, he don’t answer, just keeps driving.”

  Crisp takes that in: his father drives an Uber. His father makes stuff. His father has the sense to distance himself from Dante. Mo Crespo starts to take shape as someone with discipline, someone with outside interests, someone who’s a maker, and this confuses Crisp. The anger doesn’t work if his father isn’t unfaithful to every habit of his son’s life and mind.

  “So me, I’m sitting there.” Dante scratches his head to illustrate himself sitting in the back of the car, trying to make sense of what he’s hearing. “And I say to myself, I say, This fucking guy thinks he’s better than me. Huh. He thinks he’s better than all of us.” Dante’s gaze settles heavily on Crisp. “Chip off the old block. Now that I think of it, last time I saw Po before the other day was right after he got hisself a white girlfriend too.”

  “If you mean Glynnie, she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Yup. That’s just about what he said back then. He never was one of us, just like you ain’t. You nothing but a suckass little prince, Princeton. Too good for us. Oh yeah, you a Crespo through and through. ‘Let me go. I won’t tell anyone.’ Well fuck you—like father like son. I always wondered if Po was the one snitched that first time I got sent upstate.”

  The hairs on the back of Crisp’s neck prick up, hearing that.

  Why, then, did Dante offer him work?

  And why did his father respond to Dante’s ride request? With their history. Especially if he once informed on this goon.

  A crash from the bathroom and Dante flinches as if suddenly remembering the body in the tub, Glynnie on the loose, how she won’t fear him or cops or Big Man the way JJ does. He orders Crisp, “In the bedroom, big-ass suitcase in the closet—get it.” Then heads to the bathroom to speed things up.

  Dante’s bedroom is a drab, undecorated square except for a floor-to-ceiling gilt-framed mirror propped against the wall beside a row of extravagant sneakers. Inside the closet a giant black suitcase takes up half the space, crowding out the hanging clothes. Crisp briefly wonders why Dante has such a huge suitcase before realizing that it would be useful for hauling bulk firearms. He pulls it out, shuts the closet door, and starts to wheel it across the room when he spots the dealer’s Galaxy on the nightstand and, beside it, the silver bag.

  Crisp opens the bag and takes out his Galaxy. Then, unable to resist, he puts his phone down and picks up Dante’s and taps it awake, itchy with the knowledge that his father’s alias is likely to still be on the Uber app: name, phone number, license plate—windows into the cipher whose absence has defined Crisp’s life.

  Dante shouts, “Yo Po, what the fuck taking you so long?”

  Crisp impulsively jams the phone down the front of his jeans, then immediately regrets it as an idiot move. Another crash from the bathroom, this o
ne worse. Voices shout. Footsteps pound. Leaving his own phone on the table, he grabs the suitcase and hurries out of the bedroom.

  Dante meets him at the bathroom door and grabs the suitcase handle.

  Jerome’s body is half in and half out of the tub, all four of his limbs turned in wrong directions. A sharp smell hits Crisp and he gags.

  Dante turns, blood streaked across his forehead, and orders, “Stay where I can see you.”

  Crisp positions himself beside the bathroom door, back turned, but what he hears is almost as bad as seeing it.

  “If we want to bag him,” Rodrigo tells Dante, “we gotta cut him up first.”

  “Too messy,” Dante decides. “Wait, I got an idea. See if you can get his arm behind his back, farther, all the way.”

  A loud crack tells Crisp that Rodrigo has broken Jerome’s arm. His stomach bucks again.

  “Awright, that’ll work,” Dante says. “Now do the other arm and both legs so we can truss him up like a Sunday chicken, and hurry it the fuck up.”

  Another crack. Another surge of bile. Another swallow.

  16

  Friday

  Glynnie sits in the backseat of the unmarked car, holding the small purse she grabbed from home. The redheaded cop drives and the other one, the man, sits beside her in the passenger seat. Glynnie stares numbly out the window as the neighborhoods evolve from nice to less nice to not nice at all to worn to broken to in the process of being rediscovered to the high-low mixed-use industrial residential mash-up that is Red Hook.

  Driving along Van Brunt Street, it all comes flooding in. Last night. One bad decision after another. She flinches at a visceral memory of the gun going off, the vibration burning through her hand to her arm to her brain, the weird lapse in time before she realized what she’d done.

  She has no memory of deciding to pull the trigger, or of pulling the trigger, but obviously she pulled it.

  She pulled it.

  Jerome’s bleeding forehead.

  And the hungry look in his eyes when he hit the floor, like he still might come after her.

  She knows she should tell that part of last night to the detectives—that she killed someone—but how can she? Until they talk to Crisp, there won’t be any witnesses to the fact that she did it in self-defense. And what if they don’t get there in time? What if Crisp…? She slams shut her eyes, refusing any thought that real harm will come to him. When she opens them, the car is in front of the housing authority sign, which in daylight she can see is shabby and horrible, the sign announcing WELCOME to Red Hook Houses.

  “Glynnie, you okay?” the man cop asks her. Detective Cole. Lex.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking.”

  He twists around, elbow crooked over the back of his seat. “Don’t do that.” He has a nice smile, even with the space between his front teeth. His kindness in noticing that she’s freaking out, trying to help her calm down, only makes her feel worse for lying about why they were really here last night. And about JJ, leaving him out of the story so she can keep her promise.

  The lady detective, Saki Finley, pulls the car up to the curb. They wait for a couple of minutes, until half a dozen squad cars arrive. Every resident in the vicinity, young and old, scatters at the first sight of cops.

  Lex tells Glynnie, “The three of us are going into the complex, along with some backup, and you’ll lead the way to Dante’s building. Okay?”

  She nods.

  “And then,” he adds, “Saki is going to take you home.”

  “But how will you know which apartment is his?”

  “Once we have the building we’ll go to the fourth floor and we’ll find it. Do you remember if it’s to the right or left of the stairwell once you come out?”

  “Right.” She scoots across the seat to exit the car on the curb side.

  A dozen officers in blue uniforms gather around them, their belts strung with billy clubs, holstered guns, walkie-talkies, keys, handcuffs, flashlights.

  Glynnie lifts her chin and walks into the hive of buildings. The detectives and officers follow. A handful of small kids playing together stop upon sight of the white girl and her multiracial band of cops, and the hatred in their young eyes is razor-sharp. The benched grandmothers in attendance purse their lips and narrow their eyes. A pregnant girl who looks twelve but hopefully isn’t stares as they all walk by, and Glynnie hears the unmistakable hiss “Snitch.” She almost turns to the girl to ask for an account of what exactly she knows about this, but she doesn’t, just keeps walking, because whatever the pregnant kid knows, it’s enough to understand the essential situation. Anyone could.

  Glynnie doesn’t belong here.

  Last night…Last night…She has never been a bigger fool.

  The web of paths swallows them.

  She stops walking—she can’t do it.

  She can’t.

  But she has to.

  She starts walking again.

  They come to a place where the path forks, one building one way, another the other way. To the left, where last night there was shadow, she sees a paint-chipped dark green bench with one slat missing and another slat broken in place.

  “That’s it.” She points to Building 8.

  Saki asks, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Go to the fourth floor. Turn right. It’s partway down the hall on the left—the door with seven locks.”

  “Good work,” Lex tells her, and she feels a swell of pride. No one has said that to her since elementary school. He adds, “Thanks.”

  “Tell Crisp I brought you here, okay? I want him to know it was me.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Impulsively, she says, “Let me come in with you. I can find the apartment faster than you can.”

  “No,” Lex says. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Please.” She needs Crisp to see her. To acknowledge that she tried to reverse her fuckup. That she cares.

  Saki is reaching an arm behind Glynnie as if to steer her back the way they came when another impulse takes hold, an unlatching of her voice. She screams, “Crisp! Crisp! I came back for you!”

  Saki’s hand claps over Glynnie’s mouth while two of the larger male officers practically lift her off her feet, and together the trio whisks her away. After a brief struggle she gives in and uses her feet not to kick but to walk in the direction they’re taking her. When they realize that she’s no longer fighting them, they ease up.

  At the car, the officers shove her into the backseat. Saki gets in the front and revs the engine, but before driving away she turns around to face Glynnie with those weird blue eyes of hers.

  “What was that back there?” the detective asks. “I thought we were all on the same page.”

  “We are.”

  “So why did you want to tip off the whole place that something was about to go down?”

  “You don’t think they already figured that out?”

  “I asked you why.”

  “I didn’t want that.”

  “Then why did you do it?” Saki waits for an answer, which is just as well since Glynnie doesn’t have a good one; she has never been able to explain her recklessness even to herself in calmer moments. “Who was the other boy last night? The younger one, at the bank.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Aware of the lump in her throat, Glynnie avoids swallowing it down; she assumes the detective knows how to read a person for lies. How do they even know about JJ? She promised she’d protect him. She promised.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Can I go home now, please? It’s kind of been a long night.”

  “I’m not going to stop asking.” The detective jerks the car into the street and navigates them in the direction of Boerum Hill.

  Sitting in the backseat, Glynnie twists her purse strap around and around her fingers and wonders how long she can keep this up.

  She killed someone last night.

  They know about JJ and they won’t stop asking.

&
nbsp; They pull up in front of her house. Her parents are in there, waiting for her—undoubtedly with more questions. Later, her little brother will be home from school and he’ll hear all about her “adventure.” Her fuckup. Her latest self-created crisis. And the gap between the good Dreyfus kid and the bad Dreyfus kid will grow even wider.

  17

  Last Night

  Crisp turns at the sound of a zipper: in the bathroom, Dante presses down on the top of the suitcase while Rodrigo, dripping sweat, forces the zipper all the way closed.

  “All righty now,” Dante says, emerging from the bathroom. “Let’s get this show on the road.” He looks at Crisp and gestures toward the suitcase. “How about Princeton does a little bit of work?”

  Crisp takes the extension handle, tilts the heavy case onto its pair of rear wheels, and drags it toward the apartment door. It has to weigh over two hundred pounds, maybe two fifty, with Jerome crammed inside. He tries not to think of that, tries not to think at all.

  Dante detours into his bedroom and emerges moments later with his hair neatened, his hat in place, and Crisp’s Galaxy, which the dealer clearly thinks is his own, in one hand and the gun in the other. He drops the phone into his jacket pocket and shoves the gun into the back waistband of his pants. He tells Crisp, “You go first, and no funny moves. We got our eyes on you.”

  Rodrigo flips the seven locks.

  The door sways open, its squeal obscured by the pounding in Crisp’s ears.

  What if, he begins to think, then forces himself to stop.

  Don’t think. He pulls the suitcase.

  Four flights feel like forty as he struggles to hang on to the handle while Rodrigo holds the bottom of the suitcase and they slide it down the crest of each step, trying not to let it jam on a stair. Dante follows, doling out advice about using the weight to “build up speed but not too much.” Crisp ignores him and wills himself not to drop his end of the heavy case.

  Keep going, get outside, find a way to escape.

  Only when they step into the rising sunlight do other people start to appear. A nurse in a lavender pantsuit decorated with repetitions of Dora the Explorer and her monkey. A middle-aged man in a shiny ill-fitting suit and Payless business shoes. A younger man walking bowlegged and pretending his sagging pants aren’t making his morning commute almost impossible. A harried mother carrying a baby, and her teenage daughter, who is clearly less than thrilled to be pushing a double stroller containing a pair of toddlers. Crisp and the girl flash looks of mutual irritation as they pass each other, she pushing a load, he pulling one. What does she think: That he’s on his way to school with a giant case of books accompanied by his two dads? He feels profoundly misunderstood, unseen—forgotten—and doesn’t respond. The way people avoid looking at Dante and Rodrigo as they strut along confirms his sense from earlier in the hall that no one would help him escape. They might even help his captors get him back.