The Darkest Hearts

by Nelson George

  It was fear. Real fear. This is a goddamn setup, he thought. They know I’m linked to D. They know I may wanna kill him. (In fact, Ice had been thinking about this a lot.)

  NYPD might have lost track of him and buried Mayer as a cold case, but the feds had the resources to find him. His tracks weren’t that well covered and his crew was certainly susceptible to indictment. D had gone Hollywood. He may have been from the Ville; his brothers may have died here, true. But now he had a lot to lose. Lil Daye’s face was on billboards all over the hood. D’s bag was big now. Big enough to do whatever he had to do to protect it.

  Whoever made this offer thought the fee would make Ice’s decision easy. Problem was, whoever “they” were, they knew way too much about Ice and his history. They knew his contacts.

  They might even know where I live, Ice thought. D isn’t just in danger from me. I’m in danger too even if I do kill him, and definitely if I don’t.

  So Ice told Pablo, “Tell them it’s good as done. When the money comes in, you keep it and then get the fuck out of Brooklyn.”

  “What?”

  “Grab your kids, your woman, and all the shit you can carry, and make a move. Go to PR or something. These people will either turn us in or kill us themselves.”

  Pablo couldn’t believe what Ice was saying. He was in a park but he looked around frantically like the walls were closing in on him. “Fuck, how you know that?”

  “’Cause that’s what I’d do.” Ice stood up and walked away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  YOU KNOW I’M NO GOOD

  D was in an Uber from LAX to his Miracle Mile apartment when his smartphone buzzed. He’d flown in on the overnight and slept surprisingly well, but when he saw who was calling, he felt irritated, as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Damn, this motherfucker is tracking my moves. “Good morning,” he said to Amos Pilgrim.

  “You didn’t call me.” The old man was unhappy.

  “Had a lot on my mind,” D deflected.

  “Do tell.”

  “Well, it wasn’t anything he said or asked. It’s what I read. He had a copy of Dwayne Robinson’s book.”

  “The Plot book?”

  “Yeah,” D said, “Conrad had a copy.”

  Pilgrim grunted into the phone. “Sounds like we should meet up.”

  “Yup. Your usual spot? How’s nine a.m.?”

  “Make it ten.”

  “Okay.”

  When D arrived at the Four Seasons, Pilgrim was talking to a young black waiter with a woolly natural. Pilgrim was saying, “This man here is who you should be talking to. D manages Lil Daye and a bunch of other rappers.”

  “Hello, sir,” the waiter said in a respectful tone with a hint of the Virginia/North Carolina. “I’m an MC. My stage name is Tayris Smooth. I have a show coming up. I know who Mr. Pilgrim is and I wanted to offer him a ticket to my show, but I’d be honored if you or someone from your staff could come.” The MC had a relaxed confidence that D vibed with. He gave Tayris Ray Ray’s Instagram handle and said to DM him the details.

  “No matter how big you get, you gotta keep your eyes on the future,” Pilgrim said after the waiter/MC had walked off. “So I assume I’m in the book?”

  D sat down. “You know you are. But what I didn’t know was that Samuel Kurtz was deeply involved in your bullshit as well.”

  “If Dwayne Robinson was as good a reporter as you think, he’d know Kurtz ended up driving that thing. Not me.”

  D was about to respond when an older man’s voice cut in: “Am I late?” Edgecombe Lenox was an old-school record man who D thought of as almost godlike among the R&B cats in New York before hip hop washed that world away.

  “Of course,” Pilgrim said. “Sit your ass down.”

  Edge, as he was known, slowly eased his nearly eighty-year-old bones into the booth next to Pilgrim. He was dressed like an old bluesman in a dark-brown suit, beige shirt, brown tie, and matching fedora. His long boney fingers held more rings than was practical. He had a gray mustache as long as his mouth (which was saying something) and a big nose upon which brown-tinted shades rested snugly. Why was he here?

  “There’s a thing that happens when I sit down that messes with me like I can’t even begin to describe,” Edge began. “It really fuckin’ hurts. I have to catch my breath.”

  “Doctors,” Pilgrim said. “They have this person called a doctor. You heard of them? D-O-C-T-O-R. You can spell, right?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you,” Pilgrim said. “If you won’t see a doctor, then don’t complain about pain. Pain is an announcement to your brain that the engine needs a tune-up. Even I have that figured out.”

  Edge replied, “I know what’s wrong with me. I don’t need no doctor running up a bill, messing with my co-pay, and having me take all kinds of pills. I know how they do. Oxy this and Oxy that. Have you meowing like a motherfucking cat.”

  “Rhymes,” Pilgrim chuckled. “You got rhymes now? How about a rhyme about how you’re too cheap to see a doctor. Put a couplet on that, man.”

  “I’m not too cheap,” Edge countered. “I’m just too smart. If I don’t move that part of my body a certain way, I’m good. I get where I’m going and see who I gotta see with no pills, doctor bills, or medical forms. Sometimes I have some discomfort, but otherwise I’m a free motherfucker. I’m not tied down to prescriptions and a bunch of pills that keep me doped up like a Nebraska redneck.”

  “Alvin Briggs.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Alvin Briggs,” Pilgrim repeated. “You know the name.”

  “What’s he got to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “Pneumonia. Died of pneumonia last winter. Hadn’t been heard from in a week. Hadn’t turned up at his job. Kicked down his door and found him on his sofa. Online racing forms on his laptop. Alvin was only a little younger than us. Dead as day-old beer.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with me. Don’t compare me to that fat motherfucker. When he let himself go, he was destined to die early. Fat as he got, Alvin probably wanted to go. Saw him one night at a restaurant eating fried chicken, having two screwdrivers, and a slice of cherry pie at eleven p.m., and then went to go gambling. Don’t compare me to that fool.”

  They’d been talking as if D weren’t at the table. Now Edge motioned with his hand and said, “Anyway, is this young motherfucker trying to blackmail you?”

  Pilgrim said, “I’m not sure if he even knows what he wants.”

  “Whoa,” D said, “I’m not trying extort money from anyone.”

  “No, nigga,” Edge said, “I got your number. You think you saving black music, right?”

  “I’m just trying to save myself and understand what Amos was doing with Kurtz.”

  “How you gonna separate yourself from us?”

  “What do you mean us?”

  Edge said, “You think this fool here made these moves by himself? We were all concerned about hip hop. We were hopeful and afraid of it too. We saw it was gonna take over. We’d lived through bebop and rock and roll and soul and funk and damn disco. We knew shit changes. We just thought we could make change on our terms.”

  D was shocked. “You were in on hiring Mayer and Jackson?”

  “Me. Amos. A bunch of people whose names you know. It wasn’t just this man here. It was a community of black people trying to do our best for black people.”

  “Then why involve Kurtz?”

  “That was my fault,” Pilgrim said.

  “Dwayne Robinson wrote that you partnered with him and then he took it over.”

  “Something like that.”

  D said, “You let a white man hijack your plot. I mean, it was a wack idea anyway and then you let a racist take it over.”

  “Remember when you punched me at my house?” Pilgrim said. “You broke my jaw, D. But I deserved it. I know all the deaths that happened were my fault. I know that.”

  “So what is this?” D said. “A pity party? I’m supposed to f
orget that Dwayne died uncovering your stupid plan and give you some kind of pass ’cause you’re old black men?”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Edge replied, “you’re in business with Kurtz right now.”

  “That’s not gonna stop me from doing the right thing.”

  “Lil Daye wants you to put out Robinson’s book?” Pilgrim asked.

  “That’s between me and him.”

  “Fair enough,” Edge said. “Amos, you got a car waiting for me?”

  “It should be right out front.”

  “Good meeting you again, D. I’ve been hearing a lot about you. Keep what we told you in mind and you’ll do what’s best.” Edge wobbled out of the restaurant without a cane, trying his best to walk upright despite his many ailments.

  D watched him until he disappeared. “Where’s he live?”

  “Florida. I knew we were gonna meet when you got back, so I flew him in. He wanted to have his say. Now I wanna talk about your life. You know who’s president, right? Kurtz and Trump are tight. He was with Trump when he went on that infamous trip to Russia where the president didn’t get peed on. Well, you know how Kurtz gets down. You think those guys were celibate in the country that refined human trafficking? So what I suggest is you have someone sweep your office for bugs. Hire a hacker to look at all your computers and your phones. You may wanna reveal that info, but Kurtz is connected to Trump. Trump knows hip hop is powerful and he fears it. He fears it for the reasons all these white men do—it reaches young white people like nobody’s business. Maybe he and Kurtz were both in on it. It ain’t the worst fight to be in, but you definitely could get bloody. Try not to bring down too many old black men. Anyway, my next meeting is here.”

  It was Belinda Bowman, the attorney D had met with Pilgrim before. This time she was polite but a little distant, like charming D was no longer essential. Her demeanor suggested serious business was to be discussed.

  D was dazed as he waited outside the Four Seasons for his Uber. When he was a bodyguard, the decisions he’d made had been simple. That woman is okay. That guy over there is a nuisance. That character in the corner is a threat. Keep your eye on him. He’d enjoyed protecting people. It gave purpose to his life. Who deserved protection now?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MASK OFF

  D had just finished a Zoom videoconference call with a Billboard reporter doing a profile of D Management when an e-mail appeared in his inbox. There was another call happening in ten minutes to connect Night with the black activist group Color of Change about performing at their next benefit. But the title of the e-mail, KURTZ TALK, and the sender, ME@hiphopcointelpro.org, demanded attention. The message read, This could be the missing piece of the puzzle or one more reason not to sleep well at night. Probably both.

  Hiphopcointelpro had been the name of a blog run by Truegod, a conspiracy theorist living in a tenement in yet-to-be-gentrified Harlem. Through Truegod, a deeply paranoid and excitable man, D had learned much about the Sawyer memorandum, a marketing plan that had served as a partial blueprint for the plot against hip hop. If D had doubted the plot or questioned Truegod’s sanity, he got his answer when the blogger was murdered within minutes of their meeting. So who was using the blog’s name now and what was in this video file?

  The video was static camera video of the presentation Samuel Kurtz had made in Boca Raton, Florida. It was the same talk Dwayne Robinson described in his manuscript. D had somehow found Kurtz’s words. Here now were the accompanying images: a young, tanned businessman in a green Izod shirt and beige slacks in a conference room standing before a whiteboard with the names of various alcohol brands and hip hop figures scrawled in black, blue, and green. D was going to miss his planned phone call.

  D had read the chapter in Dwayne Robinson’s book, but watching Kurtz lay out his strategy made D feel like throwing up. This video verified Robinson’s findings. Had he seen this and taken notes or had he transcribed it himself? The manuscript never mentioned a video. Someone had held onto this video for years and had decided to pass it on to D and not post it on the Internet.

  Guess it sat in some GOP archive, D thought. Had Truegod been a disloyal Republican? It had to have come from someone who knew I was in business with Kurtz. It was sent to force my hand. Could have come from Conrad. Could have come from Amos. Use me to mess with Kurtz. Or was it a test by Amos to see what kind of man I really am? If he ignored this and didn’t tell Lil Daye, then he was a businessman who could be trusted. The tape was a provocation.

  D had been wrestling with what to do with the info in Dwayne Robinson’s book since he got back to LA. He’d doubted that Lil Daye would read the chapter. He couldn’t get the MC to read film scripts with multimillion-dollar offers attached, so there was little chance of getting him to focus on a semischolarly book that called his financial benefactor a racist. D doubted Mama Daye would check it out and Ant was out of the question. D could have tried to talk them through it, but the devil was in the details and he worried that Lil Daye’s camp would dismiss it as a dead man’s crazy talk.

  But a video? Lil Daye would watch this. D was sure that even five minutes of it would impact the MC. Then, together, they could figure out their next move.

  Through D’s window, smog created a gray veil over Los Angeles. Another day, another hundred thousand lungs damaged. Time to make that call.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  COULD’VE BEEN

  I watched that shit,” Lil Daye said. Via the FaceTime image, he looked to be in his bedroom in Atlanta wearing a red do-rag. “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “The man who is paying you and me a ton of money is down with the destruction of black people,” D said.

  “What I got from the video was that he was trying to make money. I got that. But for him to fuck black people up, we’d have to help him.”

  “We are helping him. He’s funneling his money to build private prisons and support white supremacist groups He’s doing his best to fuck black people over, and to some degree we are now part of that.”

  Lil Daye wasn’t going to be guilt-tripped. “You’re the one who made the introduction. You should have checked this shit out. Now you want me to do something to fuck up this money and my wife’s money too? That’s some sad-ass managing.”

  D had known this wasn’t going to be easy. He fell back on the talking points he’d prepared. “I’m thinking we can get some of the money we’re making funneled to different progressive groups. Really beef up your charity and inoculate—”

  “Inoculate?”

  D explained: “Protect your brand by aligning you with groups that help black folks and minorities, so if and when this comes out, we can plead innocence.”

  “How many people know about this tape, D?” Lil Daye’s gears were finally moving.

  “Not many. Apparently, it just surfaced.”

  “Then you need to pay all those people off. You need to get that shit shut down.”

  “That’s on Kurtz, don’t you think?”

  Lil Daye frowned. “I gotta talk this whole thing over with my wife.”

  “Don’t tell Ant,” D said. “Promise me that until you make a decision you’ll keep him out of it. I feel like he’s too in awe of Kurtz. We need to have a clear head about all this.”

  “Ant started as a pimp,” Lil Daye said. This was the first time that info had been passed onto D. It confirmed what he already knew, but it was good to hear Lil Daye admit it. “We all know that. But he wouldn’t sell black people out. You don’t know him like I do.”

  “Okay. I trust you to do the right thing. But we need a strategy and we need it soon.”

  The MC’s image disappeared off D’s computer screen. D realized that might have been his last conversation with Lil Daye.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  RIVER

  It all started with a phone call. The producer of the proposed Accidental Hunter series called to say his company was not renewing its option on D’s life rights. D
hadn’t been emotionally involved in the project, but when the call ended he still felt a sting. He’d hoped Ray Ray could get a spot on the writing team. Oh well.

  Then the offer to send a producer to Paris (maybe Night) to work with a French pop star went away. Apparently, Pharrell was taking the gig. Fair enough. But what followed was a week in which two clients fired D Management and a video game negotiation where D Management clients would have provided music and voice-over work fell apart. D Management’s social media accounts were then hacked by posts for erectile dysfunction and MAGA caps.

  The biggest blow came when Ant rang from Atlanta.

  “I’m calling to tell you that Lil Daye and Mama Daye are firing you. He thanks you for doing an okay job. Now he’s moving on.”

  “Ant, is this because of the video I sent him?”

  “It’s because he decided to move on, bruh. You can think it’s about anything you want. It don’t matter to him and it really don’t mean shit to me. Just don’t be talking about us and we won’t be talking about you. We can end like gentlemen or it can get dirty. That’s on you. Our attorney will contact you shortly.”

  “Is Lil Daye gonna call me?”

  “Maybe. But that won’t change shit.”

  “So,” D said, his anger rising, “I take it that Lil Daye is gonna maintain his relationship with Kurtz despite what that man believes in?”

  “Lil Daye is gonna do what’s best for him and his people.”

  “You mean for you, don’t you? You’re pimping Lil Daye like those girls in Atlanta.”

  “I’m through talking to you. You should mind your business, bruh. If I was you, I’d stay focused on that. What we do and how we do it has nothin’ to do with you anymore.”

  The call was followed by the Billboard article, which D thought would be a puff piece, but turned out to be a sour article about D Management losing big-name clients, rumors of financial misdealing, and old-fashioned incompetence. At first, none of these setbacks seemed connected, but they quickly began to feel orchestrated. When Mama Daye tweeted, You gotta watch who you let in your circle cos everybody ain’t ready, with #DManagement, and it got reposted on the pages of many upcoming MCs and singers, D knew something was up.