Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

“That neither.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “You know what I want. I want you to go to the police. Tell them everything you know. And then we’re gonna book a vacation.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Indeed, I am. Very.”

  “Anais, someone took a shot at Noah yesterday. His son’s been murdered. I can’t skip on this, Anais. Please understand.”

  “Blades, I put up with this when you were a cop because I didn’t have any choice. But don’t think it was easy. Don’t think that every freaking night you left to go out there with your big gun and big ego that I didn’t wonder, Was there somebody out there with a bigger gun? A bigger ego? Some shitface who could only get his dick hard by eating yours? Some nights I cried when you left. You could’ve been anything, Blades, but you chose to hunt criminals. Your mother is a college professor, for chrissakes. You had access to college. Your sister is a lawyer. But you wanted to go chase after lowlifes. I tried to understand because I thought I knew why. But you’ve left the NYPD and I wonder if this isn’t worse. What drives you, Blades?”

  I absorbed her raving because I knew it was cathartic for her. Every now and then we all need to take a laxative. Cleansing was good for the body and the soul. Not to mention the mind. Anais had been traumatized by the last fifteen minutes. Venting I could take. Oftentimes it was the unspoken words, fermenting like bad wine in the brain, that could be vinegar to a relationship.

  We had recently wriggled out of a bad stage in our marriage. A stage where I indulged in some behavior I’ve been ashamed to own up to. The fights would bring on silences that would last for weeks. And in those silences I would imagine the worst. That Anais was having an affair. Or that she was planning to divorce me secretly. Or that she would disappear one night while I was sleeping and I would never see her again. So that when she left me and went to live in Los Angeles I nearly lost my mind. I drank every day. Too much of it. There was nothing cathartic about that. And the first night she lay in my arms after her return I was a vine climbing toward the sun.

  Her stony words washed over me like a tide. I didn’t say anything else until we reached home.

  WE WERE not in the house five minutes before the phone rang. Anais picked up and said hello in a passive voice. Then she handed off the phone to me, her eyes moist and tentative, her faced masked in a strange gloominess. I was standing right next to her.

  “Hello?”

  “Today could’ve been your wife’s last on this earth.”

  It took me a moment to realize where I’d heard the voice. “Listen to me, asshole! If I see you anywhere near my house or my family I will kill you.”

  He laughed and his voice sounded as if it was coming from hell. Then I heard the click of emptiness as he hung up.

  I didn’t want to look at Anais, but I knew she was staring at me.

  “That him?”

  I nodded.

  “What are you going to do?” Her voice quivered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m scared, Blades.”

  I turned and gathered her in my arms. Her face released the mask of fear and she leveled her eyes upward, floating them over my face, searching for reassurance. I had none to give.

  I ran my fingers through her damp hair. “I think you should carry a weapon.”

  She pulled away from me. “What’re you talking about, Blades?” Her voice rose and then crumbled as the weight of my suggestion settled on her.

  I saw the resin of doubt cloud her eyes.

  “You mean a gun?” she said, shaking her head. “No, Blades. I don’t wanna carry a gun. I haven’t fired a gun since you taught me how to shoot.”

  “For your protection. It’ll make me feel better when you’re out without me.”

  “Why don’t we just go away until this guy is caught by the police?”

  “What about your play?”

  “They can find somebody else.”

  “We can’t just run, Anais.”

  “You mean you refuse to run.”

  “Okay, I can’t run. I don’t know how to do that.”

  After a pause, Anais walked away to sit on the bottom of the stairs, her head tilted, leaning on the rail.

  “Will you do it for me? I have a twenty-five caliber in the basement. It’s small. Will fit easily in your handbag.”

  “Whatever you say, Blades.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  n ew York is a city of insomniacs. But if it is a city that never sleeps, it is also a city that doesn’t allow you to sleep, an overstimulated city where rapid-fire newscasts compete with ads, the Internet, restaurants, clubs, cafes, all-night parties, all-night delis, all-night noise. Garish commercial endorsements pock every inch of the city. Our brains are on information overload.

  But it was none of these things that kept me from falling asleep. Before coming to bed I’d spent the better part of the evening drinking with Milo, who, despite the drinking and hard living he’d done in his youth, still looked much younger than his sixty-two years. At my urging he’d stopped dyeing the gray out of his hair. Now, bespectacled with close-cropped wavy gray hair, he looked as distinguished as a politician but was decidedly more honorable and honest.

  More for laughter than anything else we recycled our lives over a liter of Old Oak rum. We ran the gamut from our glories to our trials and tribulations, disagreeing on each other’s major failings, but agreeing that the reasons why we never seemed to find happiness despite all our efforts were not in ourselves but in the stars.

  Milo downed glasses of Old Oak like he was swallowing aspirin. And I tried to match him knowing I would fail. Anais passed by, noticed what we were doing, and went up to bed with a smug look of disdain on her face. Yeah, I knew what she was thinking: Blades was getting out of control again. Common sense told me I should’ve stopped drinking when she shoved her head into the den to say goodnight. But I wasn’t particularly impressed with what common sense had to say at that point. I wanted to hide in the cloak of drunkenness for one night.

  Milo’s brilliant drunken idea was that I should go searching for Lizard-Face. Why wait for him to come to me? To keep fucking with my family? Somewhere in the underbelly of New York he must’ve left a trail of slime. If he came from out of town, then he would need help from other reptiles on two legs wandering around this fine city. More trails of shit and slime to follow. Scum like Lizard-Face left distinct smells. And I had the nose for scum.

  By the time I got to bed I was drunk enough to be rolled down a hill in a barrel. Anais had already conked out. She snores a little when she sleeps on her back. I listened to her soft snoring. I tried to go to sleep but Milo’s words kept jerking at the tiny portion of my brain still functioning. And when I thought I was deep in the pit of sleep I was merely locked in an alcohol-generated hallucination.

  I heard myself screaming for Anais to get down. Rapidly behind that came Ronan’s blank eyes screaming death. And then the soul-rattling howl of his mother. That was enough. I jumped up shaking, my mouth parched, ears ringing as if I’d been sitting under the speakers at a Stones concert. I got up, got dressed in black, accessorizing with my black Glock in a shoulder holster under my jacket. Then I called Toni Monday. Anais hadn’t stirred.

  AS I WAITED at the Rogers Avenue lights after midnight, the March wind swept around me in swirls of paper. I could taste the bitterness of my drunkenness; my tongue a thimble of fire in my mouth. In the hi-rise to my right, light beamed from windows like flares in a hurricane.

  Life hung on such a thin string, what is money or beauty or glory by comparison? Six years ago I was a highly decorated undercover narco who almost died when a member of my own squad shot me by accident. Nine months ago I became a father for the first time, though I’d been a father for eight years and didn’t know it. Now that’s something to ponder, isn’t it? Especially on a night like tonight when I wasn’t sure if I was gonna kill or be killed. Again common sense tried to speak to me. Hey, you’re lucky to be
alive. You’ve got a beautiful wife and a lovely daughter. Go home and get some sleep.

  But I wasn’t smart enough to listen and I wasn’t sleepy anymore.

  A while back I’d promised my brother I was done with killing. But here I was, once again, feeling the tyrannical surge of power I used to feel when I strapped on my Glock and stepped out into the lights of New York City like Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek on Broadway.

  The more I thought about my life, the years I spent as a cop, the more I hated the person it’d made me. And I honestly thought I could change. I wanted to change. Who was I? Was it inevitable that I would always be running from the past? Like an alcoholic who always returned to the bottle, would I always resort to violence whenever I felt threatened?

  TONI MONDAY was waiting for me outside Junior’s restaurant. He’d agreed to meet me here after I threatened to put his business on the police wire.

  He leaned against a lamppost sucking on a cigarette. I was happy he’d left his flamboyant wardrobe at home. There was only so much of that I could take. And tonight it would’ve been tough. Not that he was dressed shabbily. The beige full-length sheepskin coat would’ve lightened most people’s pocket. But Toni could afford it. He noticed me stumbling up to him and mouthed something in the wind. I was too far away to hear but I imagined he was cursing me. He took one last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt away, pulled at the lapels of his coat and came erect.

  “Man, I’m beginning to get real fucking tired of your act, Blades.”

  “Sorry, Toni. I had to do this.”

  “Do you know who you pulled me away from?”

  “I don’t even want to know.”

  “You’re a whack job, Blades. You’re the fucking devil. You know what you need, kid? You need a transfusion. You got devil blood in you.”

  “You wanna go inside out of the cold or you just like to see your breath flying in the wind?”

  “What’s wrong with you, Blades?”

  “I’m cold.”

  I walked away, pausing at the entrance to Junior’s. When I glanced back Toni was hurrying through the whistling wind behind me.

  There were only a few patrons inside, mostly youngsters gouging on the desserts for which Junior’s was famous. It was a large place, made up of cozy red booths. I sat at a booth near the window and Toni slid into the vinyl seat across from me. I took off my jacket and watched Toni peel off his expensive coat and drape it over the back of the seat, revealing a brown turtleneck sweater.

  He stared at me as if trying to excavate an idea from the cave of my mind, his eyes shiny as polished brass. He’d dyed his hair again. This time it was the color of a golden sunset.

  We both ordered coffee; Toni also ordered cheesecake.

  “I need something sweet so don’t say a goddamn word, Blades.”

  “I’m dumb.”

  “After what you pulled me away from, I need to indulge, baby.”

  “Indulge all you want. While you’re in there see if you can come up with a name for me.”

  “A name?”

  “Any mechanics from outta town looking for a woman who works for me?”

  “Why’re you always coming to me with your problems?”

  “I’m not in the mood for your whining.”

  “I might’ve heard something.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Something about stolen cheese.”

  “Whose loot?”

  “They aren’t from outta town, I can tell you that.”

  “Who’re they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you know they’re not from outta town?”

  “Don’t ask me how I know shit. That’s not your problem. They’re not from outta town. They’re from right here.”

  “Brooklyn?”

  “Russians. You didn’t hear shit from me, understand? I ain’t got no beef with them.”

  “Where would I find these pinheads?”

  He jerked up with a laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Serious or not. Where?”

  “You ain’t gonna go looking for these guys, are you?”

  “Nobody threatens my family.”

  “Wake the fuck up, Blades. You ain’t got that stupid piece of brass to protect you no more. A new set of rules are in effect, kid. Your family is fair game like anybody else.”

  “You oughta know better, Toni.”

  “Don’t fuck around with these bozos, Blades.”

  “What would you do if somebody came to your house and threatened your family?”

  “If I did have a family anybody crazy enough to do that wouldn’t care about dying.”

  “You’d get rid of them before they harmed your family, right?”

  “Let’s get something straight, Blades. I don’t get rid of anybody. I’m a businessman. But I’m all for good business practices. And that means taking care of problems before they escalate.”

  “Then that’s what I’m doing. Taking care of a problem before it escalates. Where can I find these people?”

  “I have to do business with these guys from time to time, Blades. I can’t give you names.”

  “Come on, Toni. This is my family.”

  “Talk to Polly.”

  “Who’s Polly?”

  “He runs a bar on Coney Island Avenue. Near Kings Highway. The Humbert.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Big guy with a beat-up face. Used to be a boxer in the Russian army. Long scar like a river under his left eye. Whatever you do, don’t mention my name.”

  The waiter returned with our order. Toni munched on his cheesecake. I drank my coffee in silence contemplating how I was going to walk into a bar called the Humbert on Coney Island Avenue and ask for a guy named Polly.

  “WHO WANTS to know?”

  “Tell him I got a message for a friend of his.”

  The bartender looked at me with feral eyes, his face a mask of shadowy wrinkles. There was a welt the size of a golf ball above his right eye, as if he’d walked into an iron pillar, or someone had struck him with a baseball bat.

  He leaned across the bar, putting his face dangerously close to me. “I think you should take your nigger ass outta here.” His breath reeked of decayed meat.

  The Humbert was a lively little place. It wasn’t really a bar, but a restaurant which had a tiny bar off to one side near the entrance. Everything in it looked fake. The black tubular chairs with plastic seats, the shiny drapes which gave it a funeral parlor ambiance, the piped-in ukulele music, the plastic tablecloths; the stringy blond hair, pinched mouth, and tartar-sauce-colored eyes of the bartender who thought my inquiry into the whereabouts of Polly funny enough to insult me.

  I felt myself twitching as anger percolated through me, mixing with alcohol to make me feel like swooning. He didn’t know how close he was to having his head split open. I twitched; I wormed about; I wiggled my eyes, everything to control my anger. He stared at me, his eyes narrowing. He must’ve been wondering if I was about to have a stroke.

  “So he isn’t here?” I said, getting my anger under control.

  “What did I just say?”

  “You don’t want to be saying things like that to me, babe.”

  “Who the hell you calling ‘babe’?”

  I reached out and tapped his face. “It’s nothing. Just an expression we niggers use among each other.”

  His jaws caved in slightly and his eyes turned coppery. I knew what he was about to do.

  With dodgy speed, I slipped my Glock from inside my shoulder strap. “Don’t even think about it.”

  His mouth opened wide and he stood rigid.

  I kept my eyes on him until I made it to the door.

  CONEY ISLAND AVENUE stretched from Prospect Park to the Belt. It was a busy thoroughfare, a conduit to the highway that fed into Long Island, making it a favorite route of truckers. At night, however, traffic was usually light. Such was the case tonight.

  I stood outsi
de the Humbert trying to remember where I’d parked my car. Not such a smart thing to do considering what had just transpired inside. But I was being reckless. And for no good reason other than I was too drunk to think straight.

  I paid little attention to the black Mercedes sedan that pulled up in front of me. The door of the Humbert opened and I turned around to see who was coming out. Two men, both tall and linebacker broad, exited wearing black full-length leather coats and nasty scowls on their faces.

  One without a hat and stiff blond hair who seemed to have trouble breathing, whipped out a large shiny pistol from his coat. “Get in the car!”

  I considered trying to reach my gun but thought better of it when he pointed the large bore at my head. Another man got out of the Mercedes and came up behind me. I didn’t know which way to turn. A thick arm circumferenced my throat, snapping my head back. Someone kicked me in my groin. Unbelievable pain snaked down my legs and upward through my stomach, mushrooming through my chest and arms. My body went limp as a withered leaf.

  Together they stuffed me into the backseat of the car, which sped south on Coney Island Avenue. It took a few blocks before my body began to recycle the blood that had shot from my lower body like scared rats from a cat. My balls still felt like they were resting on a hot grill, but at least I could feel my legs again. I could again feel the rhythm of my breathing. Jesus! I’d rather die than feel that kind of pain again.

  Two men in the backseat with me. Two in the front. The four of them were jabbering in a foreign language.

  The man in the front passenger seat turned around. He had a flattened face except for a sharp hawk nose. His eyes swam in a reservoir of pink humorless void. His nose trickled a thick colorless liquid and a hearing device curled behind his fleshy ears. A long thin gash snaked under his eye.

  “Who sent you?” His voice croaked like arthritic bones.

  “Who sent me?” I couldn’t hear my own voice.

  “Do I hear an echo?”

  The four of them laughed. I struggled to find a steady rhythm to breathe on.

  “Why you looking for Polly?” the snotty-nosed man said.

  “I was told he could help me find a man.”

  “What man?”