To Funk and Die in LA

by Nelson George

  "So," Al said, "this all worked out?"

  "Yeah. It could be better, though," D replied.

  "Speak."

  D turned away from the stage and said, "We should get a bigger piece of this hologram deal. I mean, without us they'd have the technology but wouldn't have a clue how to stage it. Feel me?"

  "But we are getting a piece through Amos," Al said.

  "What if we said, Fuck Amos Pilgrim, and did a deal direct with R'Kaydia and Facebook? Or just went right to the Facebook guy ourselves?"

  Al thought it over. "We'd have to have our own company, and you'd have to commit to being a full-time manager."

  "And you'd have to stop talking about retiring."

  As Dr. Funk floated back into the sky and Night waved goodbye to the hologram to Silicon Valley cheers, D and Al smiled and shook hands.

  "When do we make our move?" Al wondered.

  "Very, very soon," D said smoothly.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  AUNT SHERYL SHAKES HER HEAD

  Walli was tending to hamburgers on the grill. He had on a brand-new blue-and-gold Los Angeles Rams #29 Eric Dickerson jersey that D had purchased for him, and wore Bose headphones attached to the iPhone dangling out of his back pocket. As he flipped burgers, Walli rhymed along to Kendrick Lamar's "King Kunta." He was reciting the words but he was thinking of Angelique, a cute brown-skinned girl with Nicki Minaj curves and straight A's in English he'd met in Lancaster. They were conversing on Snapchat and, happily, he didn't have to hide her presence in his life.

  So he wasn't paying attention as D explained the fate of Big Danny's killers to Aunt Sheryl. She nodded when D said the triggerman Espinoza was dead, apparently at Red Dawg's instigation (if not his hands). Young Joon Jung, who had recommended him, was in federal custody and facing thirty years in prison and liquidation of all his assets. But Lawrence Pak was somewhere in South Korea, not in police custody, not facing any obvious penalties, and very much alive.

  "So," Aunt Sheryl said, "because you fucked this Korean chick and you like her mama, you gave this man who arranged for your grandfather's death a pass? Is that what I'm hearing?"

  "Hear me out, okay? I believe that Granddaddy and that woman had a serious relationship. Whether or not they were lovers, I know they were close—close enough that her husband and son resented him even as they took his money. As I've learned, Granddaddy had a lot of different relationships and they had all kinds of levels—some of them helpful to people and some of them destructive. Lawrence never intended for this to happen. What he did was vindictive. It was spiteful. But I don't believe it was murder. The fact is, he doesn't speak Korean well. He's never spent any time there. It's like he's in exile. Plus, do you have any confidence, given the facts and evidence we have, that the criminal justice system would do anything to him at this point?"

  "So you're the judge and jury, huh?"

  "This was the best result I could manage. I'm a damn bodyguard. Maybe I'm a manager. For whatever reason I end up in these weird investigations. I'm just making it up as I go along. I don't know what justice really is in America. I'm just trying to do what I can, how I can."

  "You could give the police the ledger." Sheryl lit up a Newport and waited for D's response.

  "I burned it," he said after a pause. "It's the record of a lot of deeds, a few of them dirty. Let the past stay in the past."

  "I don't feel good about this, D." She shook her head and glanced over at Walli, who was still rhyming and flipping the burgers. "I think you should go."

  "What?"

  "You should go." Her anger was rising. "I can't eat with you right now. I need some time, D. Please leave."

  On his way out, D placed an envelope in his aunt's lap. It was her share of the money released by Big Danny's executor for aiding Dr. Funk. They were supposed to be celebrating that money, most of which was being set aside for Walli's college. But Aunt Sheryl didn't want to share any food with her nephew on this hot Lancaster afternoon.

  Walli noticed D heading inside. "D," he called out, "they're almost done."

  "He has to go," his mother responded. "Some music business stuff back in LA. But bring me my burger. I'm hungry."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE ACE HOTEL

  On Sunday afternoons, the Ace Hotel's rooftop bar was usually the home base for young white folks sporting hipster beards or print dresses and gold Birkenstocks. And that demo was still in attendance, but there were also middle-aged Chicano men in Locs, with carefully manicured mustaches and black straw stingy brims, their women with severe black eyeliner, beehive hairdos, and generous waistlines. Couples danced to DJ Ruben's mix of R&B 45s from the 1960s, an intoxicating blend that had Al Brown impressed.

  "Shit," he said while downing his second margarita, "that guy is spinning stuff I've never even heard. I know most of these artists but not all these records. That last track was ‘Hello Stranger' by Barbara Lewis. I met this nurse at a bar on 1-2-5 Street one night. Name of Louise. That was our song."

  "Listen to this man," Night agreed. "He's flashing way back. We better get some Viagra, cause he's about to jump on one of these chicas right now."

  "Why not?" Al said

  "Oh shit, D," Night said. "This music is getting Al open."

  "Hey," D said, "it's a lovely day. The music is good. The drinks are good. And the food is gonna be good too. After we leave here, let's hit this dumpling spot I heard about in Glendale called Din Tai Fung."

  "So," Night said, "sounds like you're getting used to being in LA, Mr. Brooklyn?"

  "You gotta find your spots out here," D replied. "They don't come to you. I actually wouldn't know about this scene without Red Dawg. Let's toast him." They all raised their glasses and clinked. "He gets out in a couple of weeks. Be good to see him."

  "That's surprising," Al said.

  "We all do what we know how to do," D said.

  Night checked his phone and his eyes went wide.

  "She must be hot," Al teased. "D, he just met this singer from New York named Eva. Great voice. Great body."

  This was news to D. That girl got around. At some point he'd pull Night's coat about her.

  "It isn't about her," Night said. "We need to pay the check and go downstairs."

  "What's up?" D asked.

  "A surprise."

  Night and Al went down first as D handled the check and then gave DJ Ruben a hug. When he got outside he didn't see his friends, but there was an ugly old SUV double-parked out front. The passenger-side door opened and Dr. Funk stuck his head out. "You coming with us? Your friends are in the back." D hopped inside and the vehicle pulled away.

  "How are you?"

  "It's been a hell of a couple of months, young man," Dr. Funk said. "That Serene took me up to the Bay. She put me in front of Kelly Lee's mother. It was rough—a lot of crying and a lot of honesty. She had painful memories and I did too. It was stuff I hadn't expressed to anyone, including myself. A lot went on between us. I don't even have the words. I have been calling people who I hurt, people I damaged when I was living like I was the only person who mattered."

  "Did Serene make you do all this?"

  "When that Serene strongly suggests something, it's wise to pay attention . . . So where were you guys heading?"

  "Out to a restaurant in Glendale."

  "Let's go. We got a lot to catch up about."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  LAST DANCE IN K-TOWN

  Former A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad was mixing P-Funk's "(Not Just) Knee Deep" into the Dr. Funk track "Hard and Fast" in the DJ booth in the Line Hotel's vast lobby. He glanced down at D and smiled. He didn't usually play requests, but made an exception for his old New York homey. Ali played there Thursday nights, drawing the kind of rainbow crowd that made club-crawling around Koreatown fun. D had just eaten alone at the Pot and now, with a ginger ale in hand, stood by the DJ booth like he used to when he did club security.

  But his li
fe was different now. He was managing Night full-time and had become the go-to person for folks looking to license, sample, or purchase anything to do with Dr. Funk. He was even in the market for a place in LA, cause he figured he'd be out here a lot.

  D was standing there with his eyes closed, just vibing to the music, when someone touched his arm.

  "Perfect timing," he said. "I need a place on the LA side of the hill."

  Michelle shook her head and smiled. "You'll need a new broker, D."

  "Why? You've done a good job for my family."

  "I guess. But in retrospect, I owed your family," she said softly.

  "No you didn't, Michelle. What happened wasn't your fault and had nothing to do with you."

  "If I hadn't met you, it would have all been different. But now—" She stopped herself, then took a deep breath. "You know my brother is gone."

  He knew but decided to act innocent. "I saw the store was closed up."

  "We're gonna lease it to a Honduran family. Lawrence ended up in Korea. My mother told him not to come back. She's brokenhearted about everything."

  "No happy endings for anyone, I guess."

  They both fell silent for a minute. Finally, she said, "I'm here with someone."

  "You and the Chaos, plus-one, huh?"

  "Something like that. Look, I'll e-mail you some real estate recommendations. But that's all." Michelle reached up, pulled D close, and kissed him deeply. "Okay," she said when she let him go, then disappeared into the crowd.

  D walked out to the patio bordering Wilshire Boulevard. A chef was grilling pieces of chicken and pork and bouncing to Ali Shaheed's selections. To his right, a Mexican kid with spiky hair and wearing a J Dilla as Schroeder T-shirt was kicking game to a black girl with a blond Mohawk in a purple-and-white blouse. D's head turned when he heard the honking of car horns.

  Out in the middle of Wilshire was a shirtless, fit, gray-bearded but bald middle-aged black man in ill-fitting jeans and messed-up Nikes, who was challenging cars to run him over. He was defiant in his craziness, tossing insults and middle fingers at automobiles that, with one angry pedal press, could kill him dead.

  His exact age was hard to determine. Black might not crack, but it can definitely break. It was only a matter of time before someone called the LAPD, leaving this poor black man's uncertain fate in even greater peril.

  The homeless man turned toward D and their eyes locked. Though dirty and dizzy, he looked familiar. This was a face from the past, a face buried beneath memories and tears, hugs and fears. It was the face of all his dead brothers and his absent father and his slain grandfather and all the dead black men of this decade and this century, and all who had fallen for centuries before.

  Was the man beyond help? Would walking out into Wilshire Boulevard and snatching this man bring him back to the world, or would D just be opening the door to another unsolvable tragedy? D stepped off the patio, considered the passing cars, and then headed out into Wilshire Boulevard toward a present intimately haunted by the past.

  E-Book Extras

  Excerpt from The Lost Treasures of R&B

  the latest installment in the D Hunter Series

  More by Nelson George

  Excerpt from The Lost Treasures of R&B

  ___________________

  I’VE GOT DREAMS TO REMEMBER

  D Hunter had been having sad, traumatic, musical, sometimes unspeakable, oft times prophetic dreams since he was eight. All three of his brothers had been murdered in Brownsville by then, so there was no doubt that this trauma had twisted up homeboy’s subconscious.

  But did these dreams really contain prophecies? He never understood them while they were happening. Not until well after the fact was their truth revealed. He certainly didn’t think he deserved foresight and he sure as hell didn’t want it, since it felt more an affliction than a comfort. D’s dream on his last night living in Manhattan had gone like this:

  A soul singer, resplendent in a shark fin–silver suit with three buttons open on his white shirt, was onstage at some Chitlin’ Circuit palace that could have been Harlem’s Apollo, Chicago’s Regal, Philly’s Uptown, or DC’s Howard back when a Negro’s big-city life was trapped within a few square miles per metropolis.

  But the soul singer wasn’t singing. From his open mouth came the percussive sounds of bass, drums, and even keyboards, as if Doug E. Fresh had been teleported back to the ’60s. Break beats—“Funky Drummer,” “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat,” “Tramp,” songs recorded before D was born and reanimated by DJs and B-boys—exploded in a barrage of rhythm.

  D sat alone, orchestra center, row E, seat twenty-four, his eyes locked with the shark skin–suited beat boxer as the lights went down and the singer became a living black-light poster with his teeth, cuff links, and pocket square radiating a blue neon glow.

  Three female background singers appeared floating behind the singer, cooing some nonsense doo-wop sounds like street-corner kids from the ’50s. Yet they were garbed in matching red Adidas sweat suits, classic white-shell toes, and the kind of red Kangols that LL used to rock. Doo-wop and hip hop, the neon blue lights, and the beats assaulted D and sent him scurrying out his seat, up the aisle, and into the lobby’s blinding white light.

  And then D woke up.

  100 YARD DASH

  Here’s how it worked. A white van swung down Rockaway Avenue about seven p.m. every couple of months and scooped up a group of women waiting in the shadow of the elevated BMT subway station at Livonia Avenue. They were mostly stocky, as Brownsville women tended to be, and held their gear in shopping bags. They wore old Baby Phat sweat suits (with the long cat logo) or newer House of Deréon or Apple Bottoms jeans purchased on Pitkin Avenue, Brownsville’s main shopping drag. One or two had little kids with them. A few were missing front teeth. The vets spoke to each other—recounting old fights and showing off their newest scars. A newbie or two stood off to the side eyeing the competition, wondering which of these women they’d be punching in a few hours.

  In the van Deuce Chainz, the promoter of the Brooklyn B-Girl Fight Club, laid it down for first timers. Winner got three hundred dollars. Losers got fifty. Three rounds of two minutes each. Taped hands but no gloves. Mouth guards. Headgear. No biting. No spitting (unless accidental). No fighting in the van home afterward or you get kicked to the curb.

  Once filled with these distaff warriors, the van rolled through a corridor of public housing, past the Tilden, Van Dyke, and Brownsville projects, scattered crumbling tenements from the twentieth century, some tracts of new local church–developed private homes, and then made a right into an industrial park of nondescript two- and three-story factories and warehouses.

  The fights moved around to one of three locations in this industrial park up toward Atlantic Avenue. Except for the trainers, the audience was invitation only. Hustlers, thugs, gamblers, pimps, and other choice customers filled the room. Tims, low-slung jeans, colorful underwear, and red bandannas, both in back pockets and around necks, were in abundance. Guns were checked at the door, though Deuce Chainz’s security guards wore visible holsters to let niggas know. This, after all, was the Brooklyn B-Girl Fight Club, a place as combustible as a ghetto gas oven.

  Usually deserted at night save the occasional truck, on this evening the street in front of the industrial building teemed with jeeps and pedestrians, a miniparade of folks from Brownsville, East New York, and as far uptown as the Bronx’s Grand Concourse. It was a bimonthly ritual in the heart of the hood that had given the world Eddie “Mustafa” Gregory, Riddick Bowe, and “Iron” Mike Tyson. Brownsville was many things, and one of them was a place where bloody knuckles reigned supreme.

  Those standing outside trying to talk their way in were not surprised to see a black Denali jeep parked in front. For any ghetto celebrity, the Brooklyn B-Girl Fight Club was a requisite stop. Some thought the vehicle belonged to fight fan 50 Cent or maybe BK’s de facto mayor Jay-Z. Instead, the hottest young MC in the city, Asya Roc, popped out of t
he jeep, china-white do-rag offset by his almond, girlish eyes and a mouthful of fronts as amber as a harvest moon.

  By his side, in an oversized black tee, black jeans, and sneakers, and a woolly natural hairstyle, was D Hunter: bodyguard, student of musical history, owner of a failing security company, HIV positive, and Brownsville native son.

  D never enjoyed coming to these fights (watching out-of-shape women bash for cash didn’t move him), but quite a few Brooklyn MCs did, such as tonight’s client. D was to go with him here and then accompany him to John F. Kennedy International Airport and put him on a flight to Europe. Asya Roc was a new breed of New York rap star who rhymed like he was from ATL or Texas. Atlanta, Memphis, and Miami ran hip hop in the twenty-first century’s second decade, and if you wanted to be on the radio, even in New York, you had better put some twang in your delivery, cuz. Asya was from Canarsie, but on record he sounded like a Southern boy cruising in a candy-colored Caddy.

  The bout underway featured Bloody Knuckles versus BAD, a.k.a. Bad Azz Beeyatch. Bloody Knuckles was a big gal with short dyed-blond hair and a couple of twisty tattoos on her fleshy, light-brown arms. She had no technique but swung fast and often and would definitely hurt you when she landed solid. BAD was taller but slighter, with Michael Jordan–like dark-chocolate skin, actual muscle tone, and she had some training. Her jab was very crisp and quickly she was bloodying her knuckles on Bloody Knuckles’s nose. Jab. Jab. Jab.

  Asya stood next to Junot, a Dominican fool with more diamonds in his mouth than on his glittering chain. The two were rooting for different girls just for the hell of it. Neither was invested in the fighters—as athletes, women, or even human beings.

  From behind D a voice said, “You got a good heart, dude.”

  D turned to his right and there stood Ice, big bald head, thin salt-and-pepper line of a hair around his jawline, and drooping eyes. His burly shoulders, product of many jailhouse bench-press reps, were the size of newborn babies. The last time D had seen Ice was in the basement of a house in Canarsie a couple of years back. Also in that basement, tied to a chair, had been a rogue FBI agent (and wannabe hip hop mogul) named Eric Mayer, a nasty manipulator who’d engineered the killing of a woman dear to D along with two decades of other foul behavior. D had nodded his consent and hadn’t looked back. The rogue agent hadn’t been heard from and these two hadn’t spoken since.