New York City Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  "Damn, sun . . . that shit . . . took a lot," Mease said, finally lowering his arm after pressing the button to increase the blower speed.

  "Oh, you fucked up, B. You only turned the heat up, it's that deep?" Sy snickered.

  To Mease, it had been ten minutes . . . in real life, a twenty-second motion, the longest twenty seconds of his life.

  "I told you, sun!!! I got the Billy Joel, cuzzin!"

  Mease couldn't front on Sy for this one. He didn't even want Sy to pass it back to him. As far as their peoples were concerned, his younger brother was his twin. Only a year younger, Sy stuck to Mease like glue; thus, their street names: Symease Twins. They were sneaky, moving with a stealth unlike any other two-man crime team. Where you saw Sy, you always saw Mease.

  Sy held the eL below the window and turned toward Mease as two people walked past the blood-maroon Land Cruiser that Mease had bought with straight cash. Out the corner of his eye, Sy saw this dude's coat: a bubble leather bomber, the identical color as the Land Cruiser.

  They didn't even have to go in The Tunnel anymore. After all, why pay forty dollars–plus when you could do laps around the block with liquor and weed in the car and have your own party? Since it was Sunday night, Hot97 broadcasted Funk Flex live from The Tunnel. And everybody knew the system in Mease's car—it was legendary in his hood, you could hear it clear all up and down Vanderbilt Avenue. And that made it harder to understand how these two moved in absolute silence.

  But The Tunnel wasn't their modus operandi tonight. This was a business trip—and they sat and smoked, waiting for Quentin to return so they could take flight back to Shaolin.

  "You know you're a dickhead?!? Who's gon' believe that you, of all people, got Billy Joel's weed connect? Better yet, who the fuck's gon' believe Billy Joel even smokes weed?" Mease's words slid off his tongue like molasses. He couldn't even begin to conceal his highness.

  "Nah, sun, fuck that . . . If these fools don't believe me, fuck'em—I just won't sell them shit! Dudes on these streets'll have to respect my pedigree after this one!" Sy took another pull, but coughed his lungs up. After he found oxygen again, he said, "That's my word! Kids that don't believe me don't need to be fuckin' with me anyway, strictly because they not acknowledging how gangsta I am with this shit, yo, word up."

  Mease shook his head. He tried real hard to make it fast, but everything was slow. Mease dreaded the moment when Sy would pass the eL . . . and that was when Sy extended his arm, pinching it in his fingers. Mease turned his whole body away, toward the driver's-side window. Even blinking his eyes to focus became hard as all hell.

  "BA-uuuh-Bah-Bah-Battle anybody, I don't care you TELL!" Funkmaster Flex blared through the Land Cruiser system. They sat there listening to Flex scratching double copies of "Rock the Bells." Mease finally focused in the mirror to observe a redheaded woman on the phone. As quickly as she noticed Mease through the mirror, she turned and scurried off. Mease didn't even really see this woman . . . but she most certainly saw him and Sy.

  Mease was too stuck in perpetual tortoise trots—his mind felt like it had just stopped moving. He looked back over at Sy, a task that felt like a short moment in forever.

  Sy started laughing. "Damn, sun, it got you like that? I told you."

  Mease couldn't even argue.

  As Sy opened the ashtray and outted the eL, he said, "Besides, look at the dude—mufucka's just like us, yo! You ever listen to that 'Uptown Girl' joint he made? You ever see the video? That mufucka's a broke-ass mechanic tryin' to get wit the high-siddity rich bitch . . . Man, that nigguh just like us, and we smokes weed!"

  Mease started giggling, and knew once he started he'd be laughing entirely too hard for the next ten minutes. They were each other's other side. Mease was always so serious, he needed to laugh. And his comedic younger twin was known for splitting stomachs, stitches, and tear ducts with his sharp tongue.

  "Homie bleeds just like us, and I'm sure he choke just like us on this shit too!!! That's what I'ma do: put this shit out on the streets and tell nigguhs I got that Uptown Girl . . . better yet, I got that BJ!"

  Mease was trying with all he had to stop laughing. As he finally caught his breath, he said to his brother, "You really think people gon' buy yo shit? They gon' think you got that blowjob, stupid mufucka!"

  Sy screwfaced his brother. Mease always shot down his get-rich-quick schemes. Mease always felt Sy should let him do the thinking . . . all little bro had to do was follow. But Sy wouldn't let Mease's reality-based pessimism take the glimmer out of his eye, which he felt was clearly on the prize.

  "Nah, dude, it's the BJ . . . it's that Bomb Joint from Billy Joel's connect. They gon' feel me on this one. Just taste that shit, it's crazy . . . I'ma have the hood fucked up like the guy on the couch in Half Baked, sun! Watch me . . . I may even sell this shit as doobies on some real old-school shit. They ain't gittin' no chronic like this in the whole tri-state fam."

  "Yeah," Mease jeered, "there's one thing you do got right about this shit . . ."

  Unable to moderate himself, Mease reached into the ashtray, lit the eL, and took another pull, inhaling then pressing chronic steam out his spout just before he choked. Pounding with a closed fist, hoping to thump the cough outta his chest cavity, he pulled in enough air to say, "This some good-ass shit! Nigguhs in the hood ain't smoking nuffin' like this. Shiiiiit, you could call it the flying chocolate-dookie-smellin' bombazy and mufuckas gon' buy it. And if they don't come back, they fools!"

  Mease put the eL back in the ashtray; he couldn't take anymore of the pure bubonic goodness. He looked at Sy and shook his head. For the first time, Mease really felt his brother was onto something. He reached over and gave Sy a pound. "I can't even front—this might just work."

  Sy's eyes immediately brightened. "I told you, sun, what I tell you?!" Sy couldn't contain his happiness. He'd reached his long-awaited goal—his older brother's approval on his street-corner operations. Normally, Sy stayed getting shut down by Mease. His schemes were always missing something. But this time, Sy got it right.

  Mease looked at him and said, "Tomorrow we'll get up, I'll use some of this paper Quent's gittin' right now, and we'll cop a couple pounds of that shit. I can't believe I'm financing the fuckin' Billy Joel."

  Sy started bouncing up and down in his seat.

  Mease immediately sobered up. "A'ight, sun, chill—yo, chill!!! I just got the leather detailed, yo, be easy on that shit!"

  As Sy calmed down, Mease began to settle back into his seat, remembering why they were parked there in the first place.

  "Where's Quentin?" he asked, as he glanced past the rearview mirror. "Damn, dude's coat is ill, that shit matches my car."

  Mease sank into his seat, not really paying attention to the motions of the coat . . . and the three other dudes with the wearer of the coat. As he closed his eyes and opened them again, he leaned over and his vision lazily landed on the driver's-side mirror. When he focused, he realized the wording was indeed true . . . Caution: Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.

  Now Mease could not only see the blood-maroon leather bubble, he could also make out the mask and the all-too-familiar hand motions. Neither Sy nor Mease were unidentifiable, and this was part of the problem. And Sy didn't realize this. He'd meant to tell his brother about the robbery he did earlier in the day, on his way to cop the Billy Joel sample. Sy's blooper session was a joke, but every joke contains an ounce of truth. Normally they always filled each other in on the solo dirt they did. Yet Sy was so high, he'd forgotten about this particular ounce he owed Mease.

  But dude who walked past the car had confirmation that the dude sitting next to the dude was starring as the dude who had robbed him earlier in the day, who now played the role of the dude playin' Big Willie, suckin' down ganja smoke. He thought it was luck. Sy thought it was Billy Joel. Mease thought it could never happen, but now it was.

  "Oh shit, sun—move, git down!!!"

  Mease wasn't quick enough to put the car i
n reverse and navigate out the parking spot this time. Bullets riddled the car. Mease and Sy yelled to each other between the cannons blasting at them. Innocent bystanders ran for cover. Mease and Sy balled up in the foot panels as they heard shots whizzing around them.

  Pingpingpingpingpingping . . .

  Everything was slow motion like empty shells hitting the concrete in The Matrix. Mease couldn't see Sy, but heard him screaming. Sy couldn't see Mease, but even the voice of his older brother didn't slow the sparks where metal ripped through metal, where hollow points pointed at their target. Who was it? And how had this happened? Normally, a shootout this close to The Tunnel made squad car sirens light up and wail.

  Four and a half clips worth of slugs later, all that could be heard were screams, blaring car alarms, and the footsteps of people fleeing in every direction. As quick as it started, as long as it lasted, it came to a screeching halt.

  Mease slowly lifted his head, and banged it on the steering wheel. It all happened so fast, neither he nor Sy had a chance to reach into the glove box and handle their own business with the Desert Eagles. They weren't usually that slow.

  As Mease eased his way up the seat, he checked himself to make sure he wasn't hit.

  "Fuck was that shit? Yo, Sy . . . yo, sun . . ."

  Mease quickly got up to see his only brother slumped in his seat. Blood oozed from Sy's body, which was peppered with gunshots.

  "Yo, Sy . . . no . . . NOOOOOOOOO!"

  Mease slapped his brother's face, trying to wake him up.

  "C'mon, Sy, stay with me, stay with me, yo!!!"

  With what little life he had left in him, Sy coughed up blood, then slowly whispered to his brother, "My fault . . . I meant to tell you . . . on the way to git the Billy Joel, I robbed thi—"

  "Yo, Sy . . . Sy!"

  Mease cupped his brother's face as Sy's life slid through his fingers. Mease had always been his brother's keeper. What would he keep now? He kissed his brother's forehead.

  Mease stepped out of the truck and gave himself a thorough looking over. Not a drop of blood, no trace of gunshot residue. The cold didn't even bother him. He was in a daze, high off his brother's death, and sober to the Billy Joel. Now he looked at the bullet holes that splattered the back door of the truck. Still dazed from what happened, Mease saw the blue and white lights approaching as he walked over to the other side of the truck.

  The blood-maroon Land Cruiser was bullet-riddled on the passenger side too, just like Sy. But Mease was not even scratched.

  "How the fuck?"

  Mease was in awe. And for a split second, what locked his brain wasn't the fact that his brother was slain, but that he was still standing there in one piece.

  "MEEEEEEEEEEASE!"

  Quentin, with gat in hand, screamed at his man from the opposite corner. He tucked the weapon between his jeans and hipbone, and ran over. "What the fuck is this, sun?"

  Mease stood in utter shock. "Yo . . . I really don't know—"

  "C'mon, sun, we gotta motivate! Them boys is on the way!" Quentin could see Mease wasn't moving, and the people who had fled the street were starting to return. He leaned through the shot-out window to grab Mease's coat, then went to the side of the truck to pull Mease away from the scene of the crime.

  "My broth—"

  "We gotta fly, Mease. If they catch us here, we finished! We gon' find out who did this, but right now, we gotta motivate!" Quent pulled a shell-shocked Mease away from the horrific sight while trying to force him into his coat.

  In a moment of clarity, Mease broke away, leaned back into the truck, reached into the ashtray, and took the only memento left from his brother. They quickly skated around the block, into the entirely too long Tunnel line, then blended into the night on their way to the subway.

  * * *

  "License and registration."

  Damn, Mease thought, heeding the words of Officer Lillmann. How the hell did the parking lot turn into a checkpoint? He was fine until he'd turned off Jersey Street to park, where he saw the usual routine—barricades with one of the po-lice looking and the other one pointing. Of course, Mease got pointed before he could straighten the nose of the Lexus and keep it moving. He'd made it all the way here—now he saw Quentin walking past. Mease knew not to drive the solo car alone. But he was gonna be hard today . . . hardheaded. And they told him not to sniff nothing, but he was coooool, he could make it. And he almost had. But then he remembered that factoid—most fatal car accidents happen within a one-mile radius of the driver's home.

  Here he was, skeed out his mind, about to be hemmed up by po-lice in the dirty car with three gats: one four-pound, one nine, and one Tec. All that and the half-kilo of coke . . . with his boss witnessing this spectacle.

  Mease tried to slyly wipe the white powder away from his nostrils while po-lice checked his vitals. "Damn, I was just tryin' to git to my fuckin' son," he said in the empty car. Clearly the coke was getting to him—so much, in fact, he didn't even notice Lillmann back at his window.

  "Well, all your info is fine, but here's a ticket . . . Put that in the visor so ya don't lose it."

  "What's this for, I wasn't doin nuffin'!?"

  "Nothin' except for ridin' with a passenger that looks like a half-ounce of that Pet Shop 'dro from uptown."

  Mease looked to his right. Sure enough, he was so worried about the coke, he'd forgotten all about the bright-green bag of Mary Jane he'd copped for the crew to burn down during their cook-up session.

  This was why Quent specifically told Mease not to get high.

  "Don't worry, me and my old lady'll—how do you fools say it?—burn it down, right? Yeah, me and the old lady will burn it down in your honor! As for you, get outta the car slow. I been waitin' for this moment! And don't worry—I'll have a cruiser pick up Sy so you ain't too lonely. How 'bout those apples?"

  * * *

  Mease woke up in a cold sweat, drenched and so scared that he'd pissed on himself. Mease wasn't scared of po-lice, but had a pinch of fear when it came to Lillmann, because D2 had the power to take his freedom. He'd done it before to other dudes in Stapleton, Park Hill, Richmond Terrace, and every other hood on the Rock. But since Mease had nothing to care for anymore and no one to keep, he figured he'd body a cop before going to jail.

  "Shit . . ." was all he could say when he realized he'd just awakened from a nightmare. He rolled over toward the window, saw that daybreak wasn't yet approaching. He could hear American Splendor on the TV, the part when Harvey is diagnosed with cancer and tells his wife, "I can't do it . . . I'm too scared and not strong enough to fight it."

  Mease responded: "I feel you, homie."

  Shit. Mease was pissed because he pissed, but couldn't really flip. Instead, he collected the soiled sheets and made moves from the Richmond Terrace apartment he'd acquired from an old customer just before crack got her evicted. Richmond Terrace was ideal—the hilly concrete terrain enclosed a murky urban underbrush perfect for the movements Mease needed to make. He hopped in the whip with the saturated laundry bag and skated from the Terrace over to CNB Laundromat—the twenty-four-hour spot—at three thirty a.m.

  Mease watched the sudsy clothes and sheets spin through the glass window while reflecting on his dream. Every day was hard since he lost Sy, no doubt about it. And somewhere along the way, he'd lost it all . . . and not by bad decisions, but simply by choice. Without Sy around to balance him out, Mease quickly fell—from crime boss controlling the majority of illegal operations in Killer Hill to low-level crime flunky. He now commuted from Richmond Terrace to finish jobs for Quentin, who had been one of his workers and at one point had owed Mease money. He couldn't care less, though. Without Sy, he did the bare minimum to survive. No more smart maneuvering, no more planning and calculating. Mease would go in, kill you, drop the gun at the crime scene with his prints, and dare you to detain him.

  Now, six years after Sy had been shot, Detective Schmidt was frantically searching for Mease, always just a step behind. But Mease's whol
e existence resembled the motion of the soiled fabrics in the washer. He watched as his pissy shit got clean.

  * * *

  Then Schmidt's worst nightmare materialized. The Troy Davis rally was pretty tame—Shallah Raekwon made sure the word throughout Park Hill was "PEACEFUL," even toward po-lice. Two years before the miscarriage of justice that led to Troy Davis's 2007 execution date, Rae had approached the man known as The Abbott of the Wu-Tang Clan. He coerced RZA to couple some of that Quentin Tarantino Pulp Fiction Hollywood clout with his hip-hop pull to fund the rally supporting the wrongly accused black man. But no one could've anticipated this move.

  While Schmidt tried to secure the crime scene in the area between Hubert H. Humphrey School and Targee Street, things began to spiral out of control. He asked, "What's the victim's name?"

  "Quentin Montgomery," Lillmann snickered. "That asshole finally got his just desserts!"

  Schmidt's face turned sheet-white. He looked at Quentin's body—no open casket for him. "Forty-five-caliber hollow tip wounds? You can't be serious!" Schmidt knew the work of this hollow-tip Desert Eagle executioner.

  "I need you to put out a BOLO on—"

  "On who, Schmiddy? Every nigger in the projects? We really gonna waste that much manpower on these savages?"

  "Cut the shit, Lillmann!" Schmidt screamed, but it was entirely too late. In the lull between the chants of "Free Troy Davis!" someone turned the tide. The onlookers, overseeing the po-lice's treatment of Quentin's body, were already disgusted with Lillmann's foolishness. All it took was one "FUCK the PO-LICE!!!"

  "Nah, FUCK D2, yo!"

  "Yay-yea-yeah!!!"

  Before he knew it, Schmidt was witnessing a riot unfold. The rustling amongst the people focused, becoming unified.

  "Yeah, FUCK D2!"

  * * *

  Mease got off the bus on Tompkins Avenue clenching an aluminum briefcase. He began walking toward the hood. He kept an indiscreet hooptie in the parking lot; after losing his Land Cruiser, he had no desire for upscale luxury. "From point A to B" was Mease's vehicle motto now. He heard the project's heartbeat quicken as he walked through Stapleton Playground into the hood, and soon saw there was an outside event. A theater company was putting on an interactive play entitled Bamboozled for the kids in the projects.