Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

  “You’re gonna make me self-conscious.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  She gurgled a laugh. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  I sipped my wine. “It’s a compliment.”

  “One never knows with you.” She opened the menu. “What kind of fish are you having today?” After she said it she looked at me and winked. “On second thought, don’t answer that.” Then she laughed out loud.

  “So how’d your meeting go?”

  “The people I met with today have so much money I wanted to hide in one of their pockets so I could pilfer some loose change. I was almost beside myself listening to them talk about takeovers and IPOs like they were discussing sex.”

  “Maybe to them it is. Are they gonna invest in the play?”

  “I don’t know. I got the sense that they’re not as excited about the project as Pryce is. I think that’s why he set up the meeting, so these people could meet me. I think he was hoping I could seduce them with my enthusiasm.”

  “I can’t see how they could resist your charm.”

  “You’re assuming that there were mostly men in the meeting.”

  I chuckled. “Not really. You could seduce a woman as easily as a man.”

  Anais muttered, “Can we talk about something else? Talking about seducing a woman doesn’t whet my appetite.”

  “What’s your gut say? Is the play gonna come off?”

  “Pryce Merkins is wealthy enough in his own right to produce the play. I don’t know if he wants to take the risk himself. He would if . . .”

  “If what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Evasiveness is not the biggest club in your armory, my sweet.”

  She sipped from her wine. “He wanted me to have dinner with him tonight. It’s the way he keeps bringing up our past relationship. It’s creepy.”

  “Has he tried to touch you?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You telling me the truth?”

  “Blades, don’t get that tone.”

  “What tone?”

  “That tone. You know what I mean. That ‘Do-I-have-to-go-fuck-this-guy-up?’ tone.”

  “Well, do I?”

  “Listen to yourself, Blades.”

  “I can’t hear myself when I’m angry.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you anything.”

  “Tell him if he ever touches you I’m a come break his fucking fingers.”

  “Blades, this guy owns a chain of pharmacies. He went to school with the mayor. He contributes to hundreds of charities in the city. He’s on the board of three hospitals and several large corporations. He volunteers in the AIDS ward at St. Vincent’s every Thursday night. He has campaigned with the governor. With that pedigree you don’t want to breathe too hard on this guy, lest he accuses you of trying to give him a cold.”

  “No, I want to break his fucking fingers. He can get a cold in the hospital.”

  “You can’t threaten people like him, Blades. He isn’t some whacked-out drug dealer you can intimidate. Jesus, sometimes I wonder who’s crazier. You or your brother.”

  “Now why you wanna be saying shit like that?”

  “I’m sorry. But you make me so angry sometimes. Remember when I came back from L.A.? Remember what you told me? You told me that the NYPD was out of your system. I’m beginning to wonder, Blades. Was it the system? Was it the NYPD or is it your nature?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That violence may just be your nature. In your blood.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “I don’t know what to believe. You can’t seem to be able to let go of that tough-talking crap. That kinda talk may scare rats but a man like Pryce Merkins would swat you like a fly.”

  “I think you should forget about this play.”

  “Why?”

  “You just told me why.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “This guy wants to fuck you.”

  “And I want to do this play.”

  “So what do we have here? Fuck and play?”

  “Very funny. You know what, Blades? You’re crazy.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m crazy.”

  “Blades, I deal with idiots like Pryce Merkins all the time. Every day. Creeps like him are a dollar a dozen in this business. I think I’ve done pretty damn well without your intervention up to this point. What do you expect me to do? Wear a sign: Property of Blades Overstreet, Tough-Talking Ex-Cop.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “You should be too. You’re acting like a jerk.”

  “If he touches you I’m still gonna break his freaking fingers.”

  “I’m not gonna talk about this anymore.”

  We dropped into a zone of silence until the waiter returned to take our order. Anais ordered scrod. I asked for grilled tuna. Rare. In my raw mood it would’ve been impossible to appreciate anything cooked.

  SEVENTEEN

  p igeons lay dead on the tracks of the Q train. From the platform of the Cortelyou station you can see the soot-gray hi-rise apartment buildings above ground with antennas and satellite dishes jutting from all angles. I rose from the pared gut of New York and looked around. The corner of Cortelyou and Sixteenth.

  Down the lethargic street I walked, a sense of anxiety deepening with every step. A man stood in the middle of the road pointing binoculars toward the scarred sky. Cars slowed down and incredulous drivers honked, but ignoring their irritation, the man kept his binoculars scoped heavenward.

  I smiled at his recklessness, not really understanding why I found it amusing. Perhaps I’d already assumed that he was a madman, thus associating his actions with an inability to understand the consequences, which made them childlike and therefore humorous. I don’t know. I was really more concerned with the state I would find Noah in when I reached the address he’d given me over the phone.

  After lunch Anais went on home. I drove to a recording studio in Queens where a Barbadian soca artist named Archie Miller was laying down some tracks. I wanted to talk to him about appearing at the club. Noah left a message on my cell while I was inside the studio. I called the number he left. He was with Dr. Christine Palmer, Ronan’s ex-wife.

  After sitting in traffic on Flatbush for half an hour I heard on the radio about a demonstration along Church Avenue to protest the killing of a young man who was shot in his car, allegedly by undercover cops investigating a stolen car report. Any major disturbance along Church Avenue was bound to clog the rest of East Flatbush. I wasn’t feeling patient. I took the Volvo home and parked it. The Q train would be quicker and painless.

  I reached Argyle Road, a narrow street with huge oak trees on both sides, whose empty branches merged high above the street. As I approached the large Victorian house halfway down the block two men came out and got into a brown Impala. Something about them screamed detectives. They drove away from me, down the tranquil line of houses.

  I walked up the fractured stone steps to the front porch. After ringing the bell, I turned around to survey the block. All the homes looked much the same. Two-story Victorian houses, some over a hundred years old, with lots of windows and gables and good-looking lawns. Used to be a neighborhood of mostly white middle-class professionals not so long ago. Many African-Americans owned homes here now as well as Caribbean immigrants and lately a growing Muslim presence from countries like Pakistan.

  The door opened behind me and I turned around. Noah stood in jeans and black sweater, his large eyes bulging as if about to leap out of his head. He looked up and down the street then ushered me into the bright living room; light flowing generously through two windows in the front and two huge windows facing west. Dr. Palmer lay on a chaise lounge, her eyes closed. She wasn’t sleeping. I could tell by the way she was breathing: quick and shallow. She wore a long black dress that covered her ankles.

  “Do you want a drink?” Noah said to me.

  “A glass of water.”
/>
  Noah looked at me questioningly. “You sure?”

  “Without ice.”

  “Chris?” Noah said to the woman.

  Eyes opened in the plum-dark face. “No thank you.”

  Noah left and I sat down in an insanely comfortable wood-framed leather armchair near a window. The room was spacious, edited down to essentials. A large beige leather-edged carpet covered the floor. The sofa was cream and so were the drapes. The beigeness of the room had a calming effect on me. A low mahogany-colored table in the middle of the room was covered with miniature African artifacts, with an arrangement of small stones off to one side. There were two large mirrors mounted on walls. On a tall drum-shaped table sat two huge African ceremonial masks. A mouse-colored cat curled up on the sofa.

  “This is a beautiful house,” I said to Chris.

  This time she did not answer. Like a bad dream on two legs, she rose ghostlike from the chaise lounge, the black dress billowing around her. Her apple-shaped face was drawn hard and her faded eyes were as washed out as the moon at dawn.

  “Tell Noah I’ve gone upstairs.” With that she swept down the dark passageway and disappeared.

  Noah returned and handed me a glass of water. Instead of sitting he leaned against the far wall next to a glass cabinet containing photographs, trophies, and African trinkets on shelves. In his hand was a short glass, which I would have bet did not contain Sprite.

  “Dr. Palmer went upstairs,” I said.

  “She looks terrible, doesn’t she?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “You don’t miss anything, Blades, so don’t bullshit me.”

  “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

  “Chris and I went to look at caskets today.”

  “I thought they were divorced.”

  He nodded. “Just because they were divorced doesn’t mean they stopped being friends. She wanted to pay for his funeral.”

  “That’s very civil of her.”

  “He shouldn’t have divorced her. I told him so. She’s a very special woman.”

  “Why’d they get divorced?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was bullshit. You don’t divorce a woman who loves you as much as Chris loved him. I don’t think she ever stopped loving him.”

  “Why’d you wanna see me?”

  “You saw the two men who just left?”

  I nodded and took a mouthful of water. “Detectives?”

  “Yeah. Somebody tried to kill me today.”

  I leaned forward and put the glass on the end table to my right.

  Noah paced, then sat down a few feet away. “This morning I met Chris at the funeral home to pick a casket. Donna had wanted to come but she couldn’t even fasten her own bra without getting the shakes. I called her sister and had to wait for her to come over. And that made me late.

  “It didn’t take long to choose a casket. I’d already checked some magazines. Before we could settle on the price Chris broke down. I took her outside to get some fresh air.

  “I lit a cigarette. After a few hits I tossed the shit. Tasted like dirt in my mouth. I was about to go back inside when I heard what sounded like a backfire. I spun around. I see this black car slowing down. I saw a silver flash and my instinct took over.

  “I grabbed Chris and dragged her to the ground. Pop-pop-pop-pop. Like firecrackers, man. Muthafuckers didn’t stop, though. Just kept driving. I pulled Chris up and we ran inside.”

  WE SAT FOR some time in silence after Noah had stopped talking. The house was silent. A silence louder than thunder. Not a fly buzzed. Not even the cat blinked. I looked at Noah. His eyes were wide and keen. I began having flashbacks of Ronan lying in a dark pool of blood. Hearing his mother’s scream. To rid my mind of such lesions I looked outside through the high glass window. An intense struggle was going on between the wind and the raw limbs of slumbering oaks. I got up and walked to the window. The empty branches snapped like an animal trainer’s whip. A man leaned against the lamppost taking a leak. Two Mormon youths, toting Bibles and backpacks, stopped to proselytize. The man menaced them with his dick flapping and they scrammed.

  “I don’t like getting shot at, Blades,” Noah said behind me.

  I didn’t turn around. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What if Ronan was an accident?”

  “What if it was you they were after?” I returned to my seat. “You got enemies out there, Noah?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Not me.”

  His chuckle never left his throat. “As much heads you busted open.”

  “Did you get a good look at the shooter?”

  “With what? The eyes in my ass? I was flat on the ground, kid.”

  “Okay, big man. No need to spit in my eyes.”

  “Sorry. I feel like I’ve been walking through a dark valley and someone above me keeps cracking my head with a hammer.”

  “It’s that juice you’re drinking.”

  “It’s either this or sobbing like a woman.”

  “Try sobbing once in a while. It’s easier on your liver.”

  “My father drank all his life and smoked two packs a day. Know how he died? Got hit by a bus. At seventy-five. He had a gourd for a liver.”

  “Bad genes skip a generation. Maybe good ones do too. Any brass collected at the scene?”

  “Forties.”

  “Ronan was cut down with forty-fives.”

  “So? Professionals carry an assortment of cookies.”

  “But the good ones stick to a brand they like. Were there any witnesses to this drive-by?”

  “Two old women were walking by when it happened.”

  “Did they see the shooter?”

  “The cops couldn’t get anything sensible outta them. Too damn scared to organize their brains. One of them had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.”

  “So we got zippo?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Who wants you dead, Noah?”

  “My wife. But she’s grieving so hard she can’t even take a shit by herself. Can’t be her.”

  “Somebody you sent away for a long time, perhaps. Might be now getting out of jail.”

  “How you expect me to remember shit like that?”

  “Who knew you would be at that funeral home?”

  “Nobody I don’t trust.”

  “Could they’ve been after Chris?”

  “Chris? Who’d want to kill her?”

  “How did Ronan make his millions?”

  “How do smart people make money, Blades?”

  “Stealing. Were she and Ronan involved in any business dealings together?”

  “I wouldn’t know that.”

  “I’d like to speak to her.”

  He took a slop of his drink and looked at me. “What if my boy took a bullet for me, Blades?” His voice cracked and broke like the cry of a wounded animal.

  “Has Riley turned up anything new?”

  “You kidding me? He and the rest of the boys in blue are too busy pissing on the new contract they were forced to sign by the mayor.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Last night. Wanted to know if Ronan ever mentioned being threatened by Baron Spencer. He might get lucky and solve this case but I doubt it.”

  “I’m sure he’s doing the best he can.”

  “Blades, this guy lives on Long Island. When he’s sitting on the Expressway in traffic do you think he’s thinking about finding my son’s killer or how he is going to get back to his suburban home in one piece?”

  “Sometimes I wonder how you got that Ph.D.”

  “By saying whatever the fuck I want.” He put his glass on the table. “What kinda heat you packing, kid?”

  I reached under my leather jacket and pulled out the Glock, ejecting the magazine and racking the slide to empty the chamber before handing it to Noah.

  He took it from my fingers and hefted it. “I haven’t carried a gun in twenty-five years, Blades. I don
’t even own one anymore. Kept my service weapon for all of two years. I’m thinking I should get some gear. What do you think?”

  I paused, studying his eyes. “It might not be a bad idea.”

  He handed the gun back to me. “I’ll go bring Chris down.”

  I loaded the Glock and checked to make sure the safety was on before stuffing it back inside my waist.

  Noah came down the stairs a few minutes later with Chris in tow. I hated having to question her under the circumstances. The way she looked I wasn’t sure how coherent she would be. She settled in the chaise lounge and leaned back, dabbing sweat from her brow with a napkin.

  “Dr. Palmer, Noah told me what happened this afternoon outside the funeral home. How’re you feeling?”

  She kept dabbing her brow. “You can call me Chris.”

  “Do you feel like answering a few questions?” I said.

  “I already told the police everything I know.” Her voice was squeaky and lifeless, like the computerized voice on an answering machine.

  “Bear with us,” Noah said. “Blades is a friend. I trust him.”

  “You don’t trust the police?”

  “Not like I trust Blades,” Noah said.

  She sighed helplessly.

  “Did you notice anyone following you when you left home?” I said.

  She lifted her head to look at me. “No. Not that I was looking, really.”

  “Any threats made against you?”

  “No.”

  “I know you and Ronan were divorced, but Noah said you two were still good friends.”

  “He was my best friend.”

  “How often did you talk with him?”

  “Almost every day.”

  “Did he mention feeling that his life was in danger?”

  “No.”

  “Did he mention anyone stalking him?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “I think that’s something you’d remember, don’t you?”

  She turned slowly and stared at me. “He never mentioned it to me.”

  “Were you and Ronan involved in any businesses together?”

  “No. The only business I have is the clinic.”

  I looked at Noah.

  “Chris runs a clinic on Coney Island,” Noah said.

  “How’s business?” I said to Chris.