The Darkest Hearts

by Nelson George

  Only after these deaths did Pilgrim realize how out of control it had all become. While this carnage brought sorrow to Pilgrim, to Kurtz it meant opportunity. During the nineties, he began shifting from a moderate, business-oriented Republican to an increasingly conservative position, heightened by demographic surveys that predicated a browner America in the twenty-first century. Looking at Kurtz’s companies from the outside, you’d never have known this. His alcohol, beverage, and clothing ventures made plentiful use of African American pop culture.

  But in meetings like the one quoted earlier in this chapter, Kurtz developed a nefarious vision of how the raw parts of this culture could further his overall political agenda. His investments in private prisons and charter schools coalesced under one big idea: limiting minority social advancement would solidify white control of America, despite unfavorable demographics. Where Pilgrim wanted to harvest hip hop as a fresh field for political engagement, Kurtz used it as a tool to manipulate both creators and consumers, guiding them toward thinking and modes of behavior that supported the goals of white supremacy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  FLASHING LIGHTS

  D sat on a bench in Washington Square Park watching a guitar player perform the Beatles’ “Blackbird” with more intention than success. It had been a long while since D had chilled in this park, the site of many conversations, kisses, herb purchases, and late-night pissing bouts against trees. In keeping with the general upgrades around New York, the once-dormant fountain was spouting lovely plumes of water into the Greenwich Village sky as NYU students, marijuana sellers, dog walkers, homeless men, and lovers strolled, stumbled, wandered, and held hands as New Yorkers had in this park for decades.

  He saw Conrad walking toward him under the Washington Square Arch, looking quite relaxed for a man who had been handling explosive (written) material earlier. Perhaps that was why the agent’s gait seemed soft and easy. He’d shared his big secret. It was D’s time to be uptight. “Why did you give me those chapters?”

  “You follow the news, Mr. Hunter? What’s been going on at the FBI?”

  “To me it’s all a jumble. But if I’m not mistaken, it looks like the FBI is standing up to Trump.”

  “Some elements are in that camp.” Conrad spoke very deliberately. If D had been slightly patronizing in describing the music world, Conrad took a more educational tone in giving D insight into the inner workings of the Bureau. “Many good people just think the law is more important than one man. When it comes to instances of black militancy, however, ppeople believe the agency is well served by being aggressive in domestic counterintelligence. As you should know, but perhaps don’t, the Justice Department has a mandate to undermine what they define as black extremist groups.”

  D wanted to jump all over Conrad. He’d seen enough documentaries on the Black Panthers to know that the FBI’s record of investigating/subverting black activist organizations was dark and nasty. But he needed information, so he tried not to sound accusatory when he asked, “We talking Black Lives Matter, right?”

  “That is absolutely one group that is being scrutinized,” Conrad said without a shred of embarrassment. “So the subversion described in Robinson’s manuscript isn’t new, but it’s not quite old either. What Robinson outlines is a connection between business and government to use culture as a tool of population control, something I’ve seen before. It is my belief that government should not be employed as an extension of a corporation. Others may not share that view, but I believe it is an essential tenet of our democracy.”

  “You should tell #45 that.”

  Conrad smiled tightly. “Obviously, I’m not someone with a lot of influence.”

  D said, “But Mayer and Jackson were out of the Bureau when they got into the hip hop business.”

  “I think the book makes a strong enough case for the ongoing relationship between Jackson, Mayer, and the Bureau that it will make a big splash, and that splash is why I shared it with you.”

  So there it is, D thought. This isn’t about implicating me. It’s about using me to release this info. Using me as a tool.

  “No one at the Bureau knows about the manuscript, Mr. Hunter,” Conrad assured him. “There’s no paper trail there.”

  “So your investigation has been off the books?”

  “That is correct.”

  “So you’ve been scaring the fuck out of me on a personal mission? You saying I’m in no legal jeopardy?”

  “Listen,” Conrad said, trying to inject some warmth into the conversation, “I had to see who you were. I knew you were close friends with Robinson, but when you cried over the manuscript, I knew you cared enough to do what should be done.”

  “And that is?”

  “Someone needs to fulfill the destiny of this man’s research. I can’t do that. I don’t really know how.”

  “Plus,” D said, “your fingerprints on this would end your FBI career.”

  “Sir,” Conrad responded with a shrug, “my career at the Bureau is over. I am perceived as close to Comey by the administration and I’m going to be a sacrificial lamb to calm the savage beast. Comey is radioactive to many in the government, which makes me toxic. I’m taking early retirement. So, Mr. Hunter, I am almost out the door.”

  “Hell of a goodbye present to the FBI.”

  “That’s not what this is about.” For the first time since they’d met, Conrad actually seemed a bit passionate. “This is a way for you to honor your mentor’s work. I know you want to do that. Make sure he didn’t die in vain.”

  D gazed at corny-ass Conrad and realized this guy was kind of playing him, trying to convince D to do something dangerous, something that could get him killed. “So you wanna use me to get revenge on someone, huh?”

  “I’m helping you shed light on a dark corner of American history. Now, if you don’t want to do that because you are afraid, that’s understandable.”

  D tossed that back, saying, “You know your name could still come up. I’m not a journalist. I have no obligation, no oath that tells me to protect my sources.”

  “I don’t think you collaborating with an FBI agent would help your cause, Mr. Hunter,” Conrad replied smugly. “In fact, I would suggest the narrative is that you found this lost manuscript among Robinson’s old papers. Of course you felt obligated to use it to help shine a light on the forces trying to destroy hip hop. The former FBI agents are dead. Kurtz is very much alive. You could damage his business deeply and perhaps bring attention to his connection to the president’s men. I think that would be a worthwhile endeavor, Mr. Hunter. Don’t you?”

  Conrad reached into his pocket, handed D a thumb drive, then stood up and walked away.

  Dwayne Robinson’s manuscript could be the Pentagon Papers of hip hop, D thought. But would the New York Times or the Washington Post care about this? He needed a strategy, one that got the word out but somehow protected him from blowback.

  When D got back to the hotel, the first thing he did was make copies of the key pages in the hotel’s business office. Then he went up to the hotel’s rooftop, pulled out a Cuban cigar, and lit it as he peered out at the New York skyline. This view would have been impossible just five years before. Few buildings in Brooklyn had been built this high for most of the borough’s history. Where D now stood would have been the air high above a hot dog stand or a vendor hawking incense and house music tapes. The past was on the ground, the present in the sky.

  Maybe it would be best not to take Conrad’s bait. Mayer was dead. Jackson/Jones was in jail. Dwayne Robinson was dead. So were Tupac, Biggie, and a lot of other people who fit into the manuscript’s narrative. They had all died before hip hop won, had all been buried or cremated years before the phrase “hip hop billionaire” wasn’t just a brag on vinyl. Would posting the contents of the thumb drive mean anything today?

  D worried that the past would consume him like a fire in a housing project, racing up and down elevator shafts, using the incinerator garbage as fuel before
torching every man, woman, and child. His fire had been the murder of his three brothers back when hoods were still called ghettos and black people weren’t African Americans. The shootings of Matty, Rashid, and Jah had basically shaped his whole life. The murders had broken his mother, driven his father into exile, and conspired to transform D into a low-key vigilante. There was a gaping hole in D Hunter that he’d tried filling by saving people ’cause he’d been too young to save his brothers.

  And what had that past done for him? Had he ever been his own person, or was his life just a reaction to the past, not a creation of his free will? Somewhere in the distance, as D now looked east from the roof deck, were the Tilden housing projects where he’d been raised and his brothers gunned down. If we remain trapped by the past, what kind of future can we make? Aren’t we doomed to reflect past tragedies, seeing everything though a prism that limits new possibilities? D needed to think about what to do, and not just react.

  There was, however, one move he felt compelled to make now.

  Around midnight he made the call. She was shocked and excited when D gave her the overview and said he’d be over with the manuscript in the morning. He hadn’t been over to the Robinson’s house in Jersey since the wake several years earlier. He’d seen Dwayne’s widow quite a few times since then, but always in Manhattan at a dinner or event where Dwayne was being remembered. D had attended many Sunday dinners and Saturday barbecues there in previous years, but after Dwayne’s murder, the house felt haunted to him.

  But this was different. He was bringing Dwayne’s ghost with him.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Danielle’s tears to flow. Just looking at the 350-page manuscript on her coffee table made her cry. The dedication, To my enduring love, Dede, made her sob. It wasn’t until later, after her tears had dried and tea had been served, that Danielle said, “So, this is why my husband was killed?”

  D explained, as best he could, the impact that the publication of The Plot Against Hip Hop would have had then, and could still have now.

  “Are you in danger?” she asked.

  “Not necessarily from the FBI, but from people who are afraid of the unknown. Who knows what will come out once people start digging? The book isn’t definitive proof of anything, but it’s like a hole in a dike. Once water starts seeping out, people may drown. Someone might see killing me as a life preserver.”

  “I’m afraid for you, D. These are crazy times.”

  “I know. I’m not sure yet how to put this out, or even if it makes sense to do that. But whatever decision I make, I’ll let you know.”

  Now it was D’s turn to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  TEARS DRY ON THEIR OWN

  D hadn’t been to the Brownsville funeral home in nearly twenty years. Back in the nineties, that Brooklyn institution had been a depressingly regular destination, after crack madness had turned the streets of Brownsville (and all of America’s Brownsvilles) into shooting galleries. Greed, addiction, and unemployment created a trilogy of terror that made ghetto undertakers rich.

  So much death. It was the legacy that drove D to favor a black wardrobe (though no longer every day). Today, D was back at his old hood’s busiest funeral home because of the another nineties scourge—the AIDS epidemic. D wasn’t sure how he’d gotten HIV, but he suspected it came from LaWanda Jackson who’d also been messing with a fool named Lee Lee, who had been messing with the white girl, a.k.a. heroin. Lee Lee had likely been sharing needles with infected addicts. D figured he’d been at the far end of the daisy chain, one that was still hard to track since LaWanda had been a carrier who hadn’t shown any symptoms.

  That was until, all these years later, LaWanda had suddenly died of pneumonia. She had always been in denial of her role in D’s infection. As far as D could piece together from mutual friends and relatives, when her temperature fluctuated and her bowels loosened, LaWanda locked into a conviction that she wasn’t HIV positive. To admit her condition would have made her complicit in infecting D (and perhaps others).

  Her health had fallen apart fast in the last four months, but D had only been contacted when his old lover was near death. It was just a strange coincidence that D was in Brooklyn the night of her wake. He’d delayed his flight back to LA to attend and had a car waiting outside the funeral home to whisk him to JFK. He had no bitterness toward her. They had gotten together in the days when sex, no matter how good, could lead to death, and they’d walked that tightrope together.

  As D moved up the viewing room’s center aisle, he felt a heavy presence. In a funeral home, it’s hard to be spooked by death since death there is like water to a fish—one doesn’t exist without the other. However, the usual funeral home death essence was spiced today with a restlessness unavailable to the dead.

  D gazed down at LaWanda, who still looked lovely, and then turned around, where his eyes met Ice, who sat just a few feet away. There was no steel, amusement, or swagger in this killer’s eyes. This wasn’t the other night’s Ice. D sat down next to his acquaintance and coconspirator.

  “We go back,” Ice said in response to D’s question about his presence. “You’re from the Ville. I’m from the Ville. LaWanda was from the Ville. You know how that goes.”

  “Did you go out with her?”

  “Why do you care?” Ice snarled.

  “She gave me HIV.”

  The hit man’s body stiffened. D was amused at Ice’s shock.

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Not for sure, but I believe it’s true.”

  Ice took this in. He sat quiet. He looked at the coffin. He asked, “You knew Lee Lee?”

  “No,” D said, “but I know of him.”

  “He did some things for me, before H took him out.”

  “So you know why I think what I think.”

  Ice acknowledged the truth of this observation, then moved on. LaWanda was dead. Lee Lee too. He and D had life to deal with. “I didn’t come here to talk to you, but now that you’re here, we do need to talk. Let’s go outside and not disrespect LaWanda with our bullshit.”

  * * *

  Outside of the funeral home, a black Escalade awaited D.

  “So,” Ice said, “you were headed to LA without talking to me?”

  “There was nothing to say.”

  Ice chuckled. After glancing around to see if anyone was listening, he leaned toward D as he had poor Fade. “You know, I just got an idea: if I put a bullet in you, it would put us both out of our misery. I could leave you right here on the sidewalk and save the staff a long trip west.”

  “You got a cold sense of humor,” D said, though both men knew this was not a joke.

  “But you got the monster, huh? I guess that’s why you always try to act so fearless. I think I finally understand your ass, D. But putting that aside, did the FBI man ask about me?”

  “No,” D said. “Not a sentence. Truth is, he’s not really after Mayer’s killer. Mayer was a rogue agent doing bad things and using FBI resources. The agency doesn’t want that out.”

  “So why’s he in Brooklyn diggin’ then?”

  “I think that’s window dressing. He is pushing me to do something. I may wanna do it, but I’m gonna think through all the ramifications. But it doesn’t involve you.”

  Ice was not convinced. “Think. You got a white man—an FBI agent—with an agenda, and you think it’ll work for you? You sound real stupid right now.”

  “Just be patient,” D said. “You’ve been lying low. Stay that way. I remember our visit the other night. I’m in no hurry to eat any pickles.”

  “You know I respect you, D,” Ice said with actual warmth. “Even more now. That’s real—no bullshit. But this shit makes me nervous.”

  An opening. A bit of shared humanity. D said, “You’re back in Brooklyn coming out of a wake for a woman we both had feelings for. I know you don’t feel comfortable.”

  “Motherfucker, you got jokes, huh?”

  “So whatc
ha gonna do?”

  “I dunno, man,” Ice said. “You a loose end. This Conrad is a loose end.” He paused. “Maybe I’ll see you soon. I know those HIV pills are expensive.”

  Ice went back inside the funeral home and D got into his ride. Both knew they had a lot of thinking to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  SAY HELLO

  Pablo was sitting on a bench next to the baseball field at Brownsville’s Betsy Head Park when Ice walked up. Ice had been standing by the elevated train pillars that ran up and down Livonia Avenue. This had once been Ice’s turf. Just a block away were the Marcus Garvey projects where he and his crew once held sway. Ice tried not to give into nostalgia but he smiled when the number 3 roared overhead. Those steel train wheels were like a lullaby. It was too quiet in Atlanta. It was too quiet everywhere but here.

  Ice had watched Pablo sip coconut water for thirty minutes before deciding it was safe to go over.

  Pablo was round, light brown, had been down with Ice for years, and had done some gangsta shit back in the day. Now he was just Ice’s eyes and ears, a collector of old debts and new information.

  Ice sat down. “Your message said a call came in. How’d they know to call you?”

  “He didn’t say,” Pablo answered. Then he added, “I mean he didn’t answer when I asked. It had been awhile since I’d gotten a call. I told him you were dead.”

  “But they didn’t care, huh? Kick it.”

  “They told me the number. A big bag. Three times your old regular fee.” Pablo paused, looking nervous. “Thing is, you know the target.”

  “Oh.” Ice knew a lot of people, so this didn’t phase him.

  Pablo pulled out his phone and handed it over. When Ice saw D Hunter’s picture on the screen, he felt a chill. It wasn’t anticipation of the hunt. Not this time.