Still, its very Southernness rankled D. Every place in the US had a legacy of racism. His beloved Brooklyn was no exception. Yet there was something about being in the place where white folks had happily enslaved Africans that, on some subconscious level, made him uneasy. Moreover, the economic and social restrictions that were instituted after the Civil War still shackled black folks, something that was clear when you traveled into Georgia away from Atlanta’s cocoon. For him, that heavy legacy was not obscured by the way Southern whites would say Yes sir or No ma’am to black folks they encountered. Times had changed, but there was so much blood in the soil.
From a pure business point of view, it made sense to get a place in Atlanta and put down some roots. Aside from the Lil Daye relationship, there were myriad investment and real estate opportunities, especially if he brought his NY/LA income with him. Coastal cash went far in Atlanta. The city was definitely a hottie, but so far, D’s courtship hadn’t gotten past hand-holding. The fact that his favorite living father figure called Atlanta home was a major plus. Even when the old man went on one of his riffs in the hotel dining room, D couldn’t hide his affection.
“It used to be easier to be a man. The rules of engagement were clearer. You made a living, provided for your loved ones, and learned to handle trouble. You drank on the weekends. Gambled either money or limbs for recreation. Women wanted you to make them feel safe, especially if they grew up in the ghetto, and they wanted you to be forceful with them. It helped to be cool. It was good to be able to tell jokes or know a good one when you heard it. You didn’t go spouting off about your feelings. You kept your own counsel. You didn’t rat on friends—unless they went too damn far. You didn’t cry in front of people. You did what had to be done ’cause it was your place to do it and no one would do it for you. Your home was your castle. You prayed to God.
“You sang the blues. You shined your shoes till they glowed like brass. You took pride in your work—no matter how bullshit the pay. You kept your word. Your word was everything so you didn’t give it easily. You loved your country as much as it loved you. You loved your people as long as they loved themselves. You pissed standing up. You fucked any old way that it worked out. When the good Lord came to take you home, you thanked Him for paying attention. End of goddamn story.”
D thought about debating Fly Ty, shooting holes in the assumptions, evasions, and outright lies embedded in his old friend’s monologue. But that would have just wasted their precious time together.
The retired New York City detective was now as skinny and brown as an old roadside telephone pole. His eyes were milky and yellow, his brows the rusty gray of poured concrete, his cheekbones sharp as elbows under a basket. His mustache was thin like the heels on a woman’s high-priced shoe. He wore a brown pinstripe suit, loafers, a beige tie with a stickpin, and a straw hat. Every now and then, Fly Ty Williams unleashed a deep cough that made the table rattle, which they both acknowledged wordlessly but didn’t comment on. No point now.
Back in the crack-saturated Brownsville of the midnineties, Fly Ty Williams had been a surrogate father to forlorn young D, especially after D’s real father departed for parts unknown. So it was always good to see Fly Ty, even if his steady physical deterioration was like a knife to D’s gut. Fly Ty was dying. Prostate cancer was doing its nasty work. Chemo was an option but Fly Ty’s thought was, For what?
“I’m already bald and skinny,” Fly Ty said. “Lose any more weight and I’ma just disappear.”
“We can’t have you disappearing, Fly Ty,” D said. “Not until you give me the name of your tailor.”
“Shit, I’m keeping that fool in business. Every time I lose a few pounds I got to get everything tightened. I can’t have my clothes hang off my ass like one of these ’Bama-ass bangers down here.”
“I thought you liked being in style,” D teased.
“Style? Yeah. Twentieth-century style is fine with me,” Fly Ty said. “Can’t fuck with what passes for cool these days. People can’t coordinate worth a shit. It’s like they think clothes are a flashing light. I need my shades on just to walk through the mall without going blind.”
Fly Ty spent most afternoons walking up and down Lenox Square. His concession to missing New York was to watch the shoppers and look through windows, occasionally posting up in the food court to Google big-legged Southern ladies and imagine what pickup lines he would have used a couple of decades earlier.
“So D,” he said, “I can tell by your disposition and body language that shit is deep. Let’s get to it.”
D related what he’d been told by Ice without saying where the info came from. To admit Ice and he were in contact would be revealing more than D was prepared to, knowing Fly Ty would be upset by his connection to the notorious hit man.
Fly Ty listened quietly and then said, “Agent Conrad, huh? I believe I know him. If he’s the same guy, we worked together on a case involving human trafficking and kidnapping in the basement of a housing project. Baby pimps paid off the janitor for access to some rooms by the boiler. Those folks had the place decked out with red lights, multiple beds, and dividers like those Korean spas. Some girls did it for money, but once they got locked in that basement they were rarely allowed to leave.
“The cousin of one of the girls heard she was down there and got word to me. I got the feds involved because word was they were moving these girls across state lines to Jersey and even Connecticut. We busted in and they had four girls down there. All four underage. These baby pimps were trading girls with a network of other folks around the city and the region. Dark-web stuff. Some of their ‘partners’ had Asian and Caribbean girls. You could order to your taste.
“You’d be surprised at how many of these girls ended up in Williamsburg. Those bearded motherfuckers over there had no problem messing with black and brown poontang.”
“Poontang? You are seventy, aren’t you?”
“I may be old but I don’t have no FBI agents calling around about me.”
“Point taken. So what about this Conrad? Do you feel you know him well enough to give him a call?” D asked.
“No, I don’t. But maybe someone else I worked with can. Need to find the right guy to call him with the right excuse. It’s interesting about this guy—is he doing this as part of a real FBI investigation into Eric Mayer’s death or was he just a close friend? It’s a missing-person case that just became a homicide. But they must know this cat was corrupt, and digging into it would expose corruption at the Bureau . . . Okay, now that we know you are in danger of being connected to a dead rogue FBI agent, how’s your personal life?”
“Well, that’s a crazy shift in topic.”
“I don’t have any kids and you don’t have any kids. That means I don’t have any chance of having a grandson or granddaughter, and I ain’t happy about it.”
“Fly Ty, you know my situation,” D said.
“People with the virus been having kids left and right,” Fly Ty said. “In fact, with all the pills and treatments out there, there’s only a very small chance a child would be born with it. So that ain’t an excuse.”
“You’ve been surfing the web.”
“What else I got to do?” Fly Ty said sourly. “Listen, you need to wash your feet, change your socks, and toss your old sneakers.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m saying you gotta start all over like you have never walked before. You can laugh all you want but this is a time to link up with a woman and procreate. I read what’s going on.”
“You have a woman?”
“Course I do,” Fly Ty said. “It’s nature’s way. I keep company with one of the ladies at the retirement village. Caroline is from Memphis. Nice Southern gal. I ain’t twenty and she ain’t twenty. I ain’t saying nothing goes on, but I am good without all the drama. But you need a good woman ’cause it’s like athlete’s foot out here: you walk around naked too long and you bound to catch something.”
D just nodde
d. When you right, you right.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FORMATION
Back at the hotel, Serene ran the bath for Anika Selam and gave the slender young women one of the hotel’s comfy white bathrobes. There were bruises on her wrists and ankles and a couple on her back. Anika shook when Serene touched her, as if she expected to be slapped. Serene gently guided Anika into the big tub’s soapy water. For a moment, Serene thought the young woman might drown since she seemed so uncertain of herself. When she ducked her head under the water, Serene pulled her right back up, which made Anika giggle. She just wanted to blow bubbles. Suddenly, they were sharing a laugh. Despite all Serene had imagined her going through, the young woman’s smile was dazzling white. Serene went into the bedroom and called Mildred Barnes, who was not happy about Serene’s decision-making.
“That’s not why I sent you over there,” Barnes scolded from across the Atlantic. She usually had a very neutral Midwestern accent, but there was spice in her voice tonight, which amused Serene. “We need you to help shut down networks, not save one girl at a time. That’s for NGOs.”
“I was not gonna leave her out in the street,” Serene said firmly. “She figured out a way to get out of that van. She wasn’t helpless—she just needed assistance. She wants to go home. We should make that happen.”
Well aware that once Serene had made a decision, it was damn near impossible to change her mind, Barnes said, “All right. Okay. Let me make some calls.”
Serene stuck her head back in the bathroom and watched Anika pour shampoo on her head and slowly begin washing her hair. Stretched out in the large tub, her brown skin surrounded by white bubbles, it was the first time Anika hadn’t been extremely stressed out since she’d been kidnapped by the traffickers in Rome. She breathed deeply, looking up at the ceiling, and realized that this was the life she’d imagined for herself. That was before the reality of Europe had handcuffed her body and brutalized her soul. Serene saw tears come down Anika’s face and just closed the door, knowing she had no words to soothe her.
Fifteen minutes later, Barnes called. “In about ninety minutes a woman will ring you. Make sure the girl is ready. Here’s the thing: I had to loan you out.”
“Loan me out?”
“These people and I have collaborated before. They have different goals than we—or I—have. But I think you’ll get along.”
“I promised Arthur I’d be back home in two days.”
“I understand that,” Barnes said. “But it was your decision to pick up that girl, so this is on you.”
“Okay,” Serene said. “What do they want me to do?”
“In exchange for them arranging to get this girl back to Africa, you will have to pick up an object for them.”
“Something stolen?”
“Stolen, yes,” Barnes admitted. “But not what you think.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Fine,” Barnes said. “If you trust the UK authorities to do the right thing by this girl, then I can call it off.”
Barnes knew she’d spoken the magic words. Serene’s cynicism about government kicked in and she agreed to the plan.
Serene dug out a T-shirt that kind of fit Anika and some jeans that, after they cut an extra hole in her belt, looped around the young woman’s slender hips. Serene wanted to burn her dress but figured it might contain her captor’s DNA, so she slid it into a hotel laundry bag. They were watching season one of Empire on Serene’s laptop when the hotel phone rang. “We’re downstairs. Please join us.” The woman’s accent was strange and musical.
They were met in the lobby by a tiny light-brown woman with a thick blackbird cage of hair, large shining eyes, and a worried smile. She said her name was Helen, but Serene didn’t believe that for second. There was a black Benz outside to transport Anika.
“Where are you taking her?”
Helen said, “To somewhere she’ll blend in until we can arrange transport for her. Better if I don’t tell you more.”
Behind the wheel of the Benz was a dark-chocolate, round-faced woman named Soa. Anika didn’t want to get in the car until Soa spoke a few words of Hausa to her. Anika nodded her head in recognition, then turned and gave Serene a big hug. Serene could feel the young woman’s bones against her body. She watched Soa steer the car into the London night.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Helen said.
“I don’t really drink,” Serene said, “but I know we have to talk.”
Helen gave an impish smile. “You Americans are so healthy. No worries. I’ll drink for both of us.”
The two found an empty sofa at the nearby Soho House, where Helen ordered a chardonnay and Serene had chamomile tea with honey. Serene had a million questions but started with her accent.
“I’m Ethiopian on my mother’s side and German on my father’s,” Helen explained, clearly used to answering this question. “So you are hearing English spoken with hints of German and Amharic. Plus, I speak Spanish too, so that’s in the mix.”
“And how do you know Mildred Barnes?”
“I don’t. But my friend William does. He called me from Paris. He runs our little operation. We don’t do what you do, which is really great by the way, but we have another mission. You deal with current evil. We try to correct the evils of colonialism—in our own way.”
“Okay,” Serene said, “sounds good. But what is it you do?”
“Well, we aren’t the Avengers or anything,” Helen said slyly. “But when we do feel like superheroes, we joke that we’re the Liberators.”
“The Liberators? Okay, I may have that glass of wine.”
“Oh, it’s just a nickname,” Helen said, smiling. “I don’t have a cape in my bag or anything. Now I have tell you, very respectfully, that we’d like help collecting the three medallions of Ethiopia.”
“Damn, that sounds like some Indiana Jones stuff.”
“Except we aren’t just some white men rummaging around Africa in khakis,” Helen said. “We are Africans rediscovering ourselves.”
“Okay,” Serene said, “this is all very deep and a little hard to digest. But I know how crazy what I’m doing is, so I’m in no position to judge anybody. Please, tell me what you want me to do.”
“Have you ever been to Berlin?”
☬
Excerpt from The Plot Against Hip Hop by Dwayne Robinson (2011):
* * *
The dance between creativity and commerce for black artists in America is always fraught since the very gifts that liberate the soul are easily commodified into simple formulas that diminish the spirit, transforming deep passion into disposable product. Hip hop has manifested in so many creators embracing a limited, essentialist menu of stories and emotions that narrowed the MC and their audience’s humanity. To be a thug or a gangsta bitch or a backpack MC was to be a mythological persona crafted to be easily understood and marketed, fitting into expectations of black life in a nation for whom stereotypes are reality.
Why think about the complexity of any individual life when through the right clothes, slang, and graphics you can telegraph your message—no need to think. Just enjoy your synthetic black experience and kick back with a cold brew or a blunt. The black Supermen of hip hop are just as phony as Rambo or Luke Skywalker, but those folks are acknowledged to be “actors,” while MCs (often as essential parts of their promotional efforts) cling to authenticity when, in fact, they are “acting” their asses off. It can be a lucrative ploy but it literally sells them (and their audiences) short.
In that respect, self-taught iconoclasts like KRS-One, Scarface, and Kanye West have invariably seemed more credible to me as artists than always–“on message” performers like 50 Cent or Snoop, who work specific versions of themselves like Halloween masks. To be human is to err and make situational decisions not driven by a focused philosophy, but the swinging pendulum of life. Consistency is for salesmen, brand managers, and politicians. The hip hop artist who can resist one-note messaging risks his or her commercia
l power but, in exchange, can represent the multiplicity of true black identity in all its messy beauty. Sadly, few heed that call.
CHAPTER NINE
DNA.
D was on the treadmill at the Sunset Boulevard Equinox watching CNN on one of the big screens hanging from the ceiling. Another black man shot by the police. But the headline of the day was Trump firing FBI director James Comey. More blood on the ground. More lawlessness in DC. Bright LA sun came in from the big windows. Women in formfitting multicolored workout leotards sashayed by with Kim Kardashian eyebrows. Men, a healthy percentage of them gay, lifted weights, monitored each other’s reps, and talked of parties past and future. D was in the middle of this well-appointed workout facility, one of the few black male clients. A couple of buff brothers were trainers, helping their white clients achieve maximum Southern California perfection. D’s body was on the treadmill but his mind was several million miles away.
Trayvon Martin in Florida. Eric Garner in New York City. Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Laquan McDonald in Chicago. Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Walter Scott in South Carolina. Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. Philando Castile in Minnesota.
Those were just the twenty-first-century names that popped into his head, but you could go back to Emmett Till in 1955 and then go back to the boys, men, girls, and women who’d been lynched, whose broken, charred, and disfigured bodies hung like tortured black leaves on Southern trees. All those white folks gathered, as if for a picnic or a town fair, to enjoy state-sanctioned murder. It was a legacy of authorized death that began with overseers in slavery days and that had never really stopped. It had just transformed with the times, part of our national language, like baseball and guns.
Though all black people were subject to this violence, there seemed to be a special role in this serialized drama for the destruction of black men, especially from adolescence to midforties. It wasn’t a surprise that black gangs had always proliferated. The protections for black male life were so suspect that any form of community, no matter how self-destructive, was attractive in a world where your every affirmative gesture made you suspect.
The Darkest Hearts Page 4
