Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Love and Death in Brooklyn

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by Glenville Lovell

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0509-9

  A BERKLEY BOOK®

  Berkley Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: July, 2005

  ONE

  t hat Sunday in church I cried thankful tears of happiness for the eight-year-old daughter I didn’t know I had until nine months ago. But that Sunday in church I cried most of all for my friend Noah Plantier.

  One week earlier eight of us had gathered at Bulawaya, a South African restaurant in Brooklyn, to celebrate Noah’s sixtieth birthday. His wife, Donna, had brewed a cocktail of surprises for her husband of thirty-eight years, beginning with hiring a limo to take seven of us to the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts for a performance of the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique, a company she and Noah had seen in its homeland while on their African junket ten years ago.

  Stuffed into the limo along with Noah, his wife, and myself were four other friends, all members of Noah’s Fellowship of Harlem Playwrights Workshop. At Noah’s urging I’d joined the workshop a few months after resigning from the NYPD, full of resentment and anger. He thought it’d be a good place to channel my hostility.

  I do not really expect to become a writer. In fact, despite Noah’s encouragement and insistence that everybody has a story to tell, I’m confident that I’ll probably never finish a play. But back then I had a lot of time on my hands and a wife urging me back to therapy to get a handle on my anger. I hate baring my soul to strangers and hated therapy the first time around. Never again. The workshop became my excuse to get her off my back. Good move, because I enjoyed the workshop enough to stick with it, even taking a few college courses with Noah, a theater professor at City College. I actually started a few plays. All about missing fathers. Surprise. And my wife hasn’t bothered me about therapy lately, so something must be working.

  The performance of the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique was electrifying. I was incredibly moved by the dramatic In Mozambique, the Sun Has Risen, done with traditional dances, choral and instrumental music, accompanied by poetry and storytelling. I’d never seen anything like it before. It stoked my imagination as well as my spirit enough to have me humming some of the songs in the lobby at intermission, where I joked to Noah that perhaps it was time for me to make my pilgrimage to Africa.

  After the show we loaded into the burgundy Mercedes limo and cruised up Flatbush Avenue, jabbering like teenagers at the top of our voices, cutting one another off in our eagerness to express our views about the show, making more noise than elephants in a stampede. We’d all been dazzled to the point where we would’ve followed the company to the next city just to see them perform again.

  Donna had made reservations at the restaurant, located on the ground floor of a brownstone in Fort Greene. We were welcomed at the entrance by a tall man, handsomely dressed in traditional African clothing that shimmered under the pale light. Two large rectangular tables had already been set side by side for our party. The interior was warm and cozy and the mutedly lit white walls were exquisitely decorated with African art. Exotic-looking cooking pots and pans dangled haphazardly from the center of the ceiling, and a collection of colored glass jars and conch shells decked the various ledges. Juju music echoed from ceiling-hung speakers and before long we all were humming, smiling, and tapping our feet like schoolchildren. Spiced aromas swept through the room from the kitchen to our right, a hint of things to come.

  Sweet music. Fine food. Great art. All present in this small establishment. Could there be three more fitting symbols of man’s genius?

  Still glowing from the high-voltage dance performance, our spirits surged to new highs when Donna unearthed a thirty-year-old bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé she’d been hiding in her bag. I joked to her that the bottle of wine must’ve cost as much as their new Harlem brownstone.

  That’s when Noah’s son, Ronan, walked in. Noah’s eyes ripened with surprise; you could’ve plucked them out of his head and he wouldn’t have noticed them gone.

  Something had happened to cause a rift between them; Noah would not discuss it with me, and for a long time, he and Ronan had not spoken to each other. Ronan was now something of a celebrity in the black community. A year ago he’d been elected to the city council and his first bill sponsored was one calling for reparations from the government for the atrocities of slavery. As expected this bill caused much furor in the media, and it did not go unnoticed in black America. Soon Ronan was all over the tube, on talk shows, on local news shows; he was quoted in newspapers, he was sought after to speak at local black churches. I knew Noah followed Ronan’s achievements and nothing would’ve pleased him more than to be on speaking terms with his son again.

  For a few moments he just stared at Ronan as if witnessing the second coming of Christ; then he looked at Donna, whose eyes were flushed with glee. She was clearly enjoying Noah’s shock. Slowly Noah rose from his chair and walked over to his son, whose bony frame was sheathed in an expensive-looking brown wool suit.

  There was a mysterious twinkle to Ronan’s earth-black eyes that alerted you that he knew something the rest of the world didn’t; that behind the mask of his gentle smile and his smooth brown face with its strong jaw, behind the flash of light escaping the gap in his front teeth and the slight rocking of his hips when he walked, like the sway of a calypso song betraying his Caribbean roots (his mother was born in Guyana), that behind all that was a mind that had visited the ancients, dueled with monsters and seduced princesses, a mind that was as strong as the slaves who
made it across the Middle Passage, a mind that understood how civilization jumped off the blackness of his skin.

  And based on his credentials there would be no reason to doubt that. Having earned a master’s degree from Harvard by age twenty-two, he went on to graduate with an M.B.A. in finance and marketing from Princeton, later making a fortune on Wall Street before jumping to politics.

  After exchanging hugs, father and son moved to the bar where they conversed for some time, heads bowed together like monks in prayer. We couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but in a short while there were enough smiles and laughter and hugs exchanged between them to cure all the hatred and misunderstanding in the Middle East. Finally, they joined the table, sitting next to each other at Donna’s right.

  If you ever go to Bulawaya I would recommend the blackened salmon flavored with onions, tomatoes, and fresh greens. Along with that we also ordered curried shrimp, couscous, barbecued chicken, plantains, and brown rice, which came on large silver platters.

  As we ate Ronan explained how he defeated Baron Spencer for the seat in the 41st District. Running on a platform that he promised would make black neighborhoods strong again, Ronan used his experience in market research to target communities that had historically produced poor turnout in elections, and spent money and time conducting town meetings using PowerPoint slides to illustrate how he would turn their neighborhoods around. Their increased turnout proved decisive in helping him unseat the one-term Democrat.

  Throughout the meal Noah beamed as if he’d been handed the winning ticket in the lottery. His fleshy round eyes flushed with pride and he kept running his hands over his son’s head as if Ronan was ten years old and about to go into his first basketball game at the local Y.

  Having pulled off the impossible by getting Ronan to attend his father’s birthday dinner party, Donna sat back with a broad smile watching things unfold, her peanut-brown face plump with satisfaction. I’d known Donna for almost as long as I knew Noah. I knew her when her hair was tar black; it was now threaded with an abundance of silver strands, which she vowed never to conceal. I knew her when she was model-thin; she now had more meat on her bones than a buffalo. But she was no less beautiful and her smile was still bright enough to warm a dozen winter days.

  I leaned over to Donna. “I’ve never seen Noah so pleased.”

  “Not in the last ten years,” she replied.

  “What did you say to get Ronan to come?”

  “That’s between Ronan and me.”

  “Mother’s secret, huh?” I said.

  She laughed and swept her right hand to partially cover mine. “I’ve spent twenty years running my own business. I didn’t have time to doubt myself. If I did I would still be a nurse’s aide. They’re both stubborn men. Heck, Ronan is Noah, twenty-five years younger. I knew what I had to do to get them together and I did it.”

  We had finished our meal and the waiter had begun to clear away the dirty utensils from our table. Noah looked over to me and winked. He was eager to see the dessert menu. You see, Noah had a sweet tooth.

  Pop! Pop! Pop-pop-pop!

  I knew the sound of gunfire like I knew my face. Without looking around to see who was shooting or where the hell it was coming from, I dove for the floor dragging Donna with me. She tumbled on top of me, her black eyes spiked with fear, opened as wide as a subway tunnel. The room had erupted in shrieks and shrill voices, the ricochet of plates breaking and the frightening sound of scampering feet.

  I flipped over onto my stomach, one hand clamped firmly on Donna’s head to keep it down, my eyes raking the room for the shooter. A figure in a long black coat was fleeing through the door. Everyone else was on the floor. I assessed the room quickly. Broken plates, cutlery, broken glass, and twisted bodies were everywhere. Tables had been overturned as if flung about in a storm.

  Everyone from our table was pasted stomach down on the floor or cowering cocoonlike behind chairs or tables.

  Except Ronan. He was still sitting in his chair, his legs just a few feet from my face. Yellow flecks of couscous had spilled on the shiny surface of his pants. There were specks of brown sauce on his tan shoes. I grabbed his trousers and yanked. He did not move. I yanked again, as hard as I could. Then I felt something dripping down on my fingers. I looked at them. It was blood and bits of brain. First I froze; then I jumped to my knees. Blood oozed from the back of Ronan’s head where a large-caliber bullet had exited, leaving a hole you could put a fist through.

  TWO

  b etween Noah and myself, we had over twenty years of law enforcement experience, most of it spent patrolling New York’s tough streets, and yet at this most crucial time that training had not been enough to protect our loved ones. Neither of us had sensed the danger. Neither of us saw the shooter.

  At the sound of the first shot we both dove for cover and by the time we’d retrieved our experience and training from under the table the stealthy shooter had dissolved into New York’s abyss, leaving behind a young man with one eye and part of his brain scrambled on the restaurant wall.

  It all happened so fast. Not one person in the restaurant or anyone on the street got a good look at the shooter. Some swore he was over six feet. Others claimed he wasn’t very tall, but slender. Some were certain he wore a red hooded sweatshirt. Others saw a black mask. The only thing anybody could agree on was that none of them got a glimpse of his face.

  Donna had fainted and was being attended by EMS, who wanted to take her to the hospital. Torn between going to the hospital with his wife and keeping vigil over his dead son’s body until the coroner arrived, Noah stood staring at me, his shirt embroidered with Ronan’s blood, his face sagged, eyes vague as fog, his mouth opening and closing like a thirsty fish beached on the sand.

  “You gotta go with Donna,” I whispered. “I’ll stay here.”

  He nodded silently, fingering his thinning gray hair, but did not move. I pushed him into the ambulance, which drove off with a wail of sirens and whirring lights.

  I returned to the restaurant where detectives were still questioning witnesses—those who weren’t too scared to speak or hadn’t skipped away into the darkness the first chance they got. In this neighborhood gang-related killings were common, and to some of the witnesses who knew the terrain, this killing would fit that profile.

  The police had arrived quickly; the restaurant sat on the doorstep of the 88th. The lead investigator, Detective Riley, was a moose of a man, standing about six-four with a square head and nose and forehead scaled so sharp you could downhill slalom off his face. He questioned me in a carefully measured voice, as if he was reading from a teleprompter, recording everything on a miniature electronic recorder.

  When he was finished he put the device in the pocket of his brown wool coat and ran his fingers through his white-streaked hair. “We’re gonna find the fucker who did this.”

  Then he gave me his card.

  Accepting the card, I looked at him, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  I LIFTED the black cloth covering Ronan’s body. Blood and mucus had congealed in the eye socket, which had been blown out by the slug; the other eye was frozen open.

  The thing that got to you about a dead person were the eyes. You can’t begin to understand death until you gaze on the empty eyes of death. That look was something that permeated your soul. You can never forget it.

  This was not the first time I’d looked at a dead body. Each time I witnessed a death I’d felt dirtied by the experience, especially if I was the one who’d done the killing. But even in the aftermath of a killing when my sleep rumbled with bad dreams, I knew that the sedative of time would one day restore my good humor. This one would be different. As I stared at Ronan’s body quietly growing rigid under the pink light reflecting off the near wall, which made garish purple shadows on his cold face, I felt as if someone had pinned me to a tree by the roots of my hair. I would not quickly or easily recover from this experience. And I knew the healing would only begi
n when I found Ronan’s killer.

  THREE HOURS LATER, after the meat wagon rolled off with Ronan’s body, I called Brooklyn Hospital and was told that Noah and Donna had left there an hour earlier. No one was answering the phone at their home and I left a message for him to call me. I thought of driving over there but I didn’t have my car. I asked for and got a ride home with a cop from the 88th.

  It was a short ride to my house on Maple Street and the only conversation that passed between us was the kind of small talk that fell between cracks of your consciousness as you waited for the world to get up to speed with your corrosive pain.

  I kept thinking of Donna. Never would I forget the look of shock and horror on her face when she got to her knees on the floor and saw blood gushing from the back of her son’s head. She let out one long sustained scream that cut through me like broken glass. Then her voice died completely as she clutched at Ronan’s body repeatedly, as if her fingers had lost their sensitivity or as if she was touching fire. Then his body fell out of the chair into her arms.

  It had taken Noah and me fifteen minutes to pry Ronan’s head from her fingers.

  Standing in the street opposite my house I watched the detective’s Impala drive off. My body was sore, as if someone had slit my veins and let all of my body fluids drain away. Even the ripple and pulse of the New York night could not reenergize me. Cars filled with shadows buzzed past. But everything seemed to have shrunk away. I stepped out of the street and walked as if blindfolded to my door.

  A YEAR AGO I settled a civil-rights-violations suit with the NYPD for $2.5 million. Some of that money was used to buy this house on Maple Street from a disgraced congresswoman. That settlement also allowed me to invest in Voodoo, a nightclub in downtown Brooklyn featuring reggae and soca acts from the Caribbean, with an Englishborn radio personality who also dabbled in concert promotion. My other business, a music store on Nostrand Avenue, which I owned with a former calypsonian from Trinidad, was still holding its own, though it was growing increasingly difficult to compete with pirates who were not afraid to set up their street bazaars on the sidewalk outside the store to hawk their stolen CDs and DVDs.