a ripoff a scam a tired slogan rolled out after a cataclysmic event, a whole train of thought. Mink walked slowly around, far to near, never too close, as if he could feel the invisible velvet rope. Could see every bit of her except for those bits Rubens covered with raiment and gossamer shit. She radiated words. Mink was looking at a painting. He was getting words. She was more than a painting. She was a whole narrative.
“Where did you find her?” Mink whispered.
Alex, against the wall, slid down to squat. Swishing on that bottle, liquid splashing.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Mink didn’t think this was any time to joke. He shot Alex a look and saw those vague blurry eyes staring at her with as much question as answer.
“I woke up, and she was there. I thought maybe she was one of yours. A runaway from the Mink refugee camp. You sure she’s not one of yours?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Mink said, because back then, when parties were rampant and white women would come up from downtown, they really didn’t want to brave that subway and streets too much at that hour of the morning, so Mink would put them up, no problem. And for some reason many ended up waking in Alex’s bed.
“One moment she’s not there. The next, there she is. Does that ever happen to you?”
“Not lately, no.”
Mink came close enough to touch. (No touch.) To almost breathe in her breath sleep. (No breath.) He changed his view, not sure if it was him moving or her, revolving.
“The feeling that your life is like slides,” Alex said. “Someone slips in a new one while I pass out. I wake up someplace else.”
She moved. A flutter of eyelashes. The swirling universe of freckles on her back.
“Look, if you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me. You don’t have to make up some bullshit story on my account.”
“It’s no bullshit.” A vague smile. Alex was pleased that Mink was annoyed, churning, involved. Could read how Mink was waiting, a word, any word, explanation, hope. “She’s a dancer,” Alex said.
Mink flexed his fingers like a strangler. She was a war. She was combat footage. She was a fucking death camp, ashes raining down from chimneys. Alex passed the bottle.
“She’s a model,” he said.
Mink swallowed the hot sting. He was seeing colors splashing canvas. He could smell the paint: a whole series. A sense of wonder at what he was seeing, what his mind was doing with the information.
“She’s an actress,” Alex said. Like pitching pennies in a fountain and making wishes.
Mink was about to make a crack when he saw the way Alex was still looking at her.
“She’s white as a ghost,” he whispered.
Mink waited. He could feel the splashes of paint slowly forming her on canvas, locking her in forever. He felt terror at the thought of her waking, of her walking away, of anything changing in that room, ever. He wanted the moment only for himself. (In his memoirs he would banish Alex to the outer peripheries.) He was thinking about what generally happened to the women in Alex’s life, the women he had seen him with, either on the street at the party or in his bed: They disappeared, each making way for the next flavor. No telling how Belinda managed to stay so long. She succumbed to the disappearing virus. In this empty room everything vanished, even the furniture. He bit his lip.
“One moment she’s there,” Alex said, eyes burning, “and the next, she’s gone.”
He stared at her. Mink’s pulse throbbed like techno.
Alex said, “This is around the time I wake the girl up and say, Hey, it’s time you go home. I got stuff to do today, right?”
Alex sounded toneless. Mink waited. There was no way Alex could miss what was happening to him, was there? Mink suddenly hated him. He couldn’t say anything. He wanted Alex to look at him, to maybe see it on his face. But Alex would not take his eyes off her. What was happening to him, the way he just sank against the wall?
“We should let her sleep,” Alex said.
6.
the tall thin vodka bottle on the kitchen table.
there is no hanging with robert when he gets like that. cross-eyed with drink and horny as all hell behind that cheap smelly cigar. the big patrón in his white suit lusting after the slaves, thinking he’s going to get laid even if somebody gotta get paid. that was why his fascination with alex the pussy magnet. that was why this sloppy friendship built on a pyramid of wasted weekends, this amistad built on booze and pussy. it was probably why he hired alex to work at the shoe store. alex for three years now slipping shoes on girlfeet while robert raked in the cash—the store was owned by his parents anyway, just a present for the unpopular fat kid who needed something to do. he didn’t even need to come in every day anymore after his deal with the big department store that grew around and swallowed it. had alex to run it, alex to be there every day, drawing in the ladies with his indefinable something, something robert drove him crazy asking about.
—yes, but what do you think it is about you, he asked too many times last night, waving the cigar like he was doing an interview, and that was the thing: remembering last night. for all intents and purposes, he did. there was no blackout last night. he was almost sure of it.
the rain came down in sheets. her hot tongue zipped across his lips. she showed him the ring in her belly button. green stones on silver.
—that’s because I’m irish, she said slurry, she slurred blurry. scotch-flavor kisses. sitting up against him in the backseat of the cab. had to kiss her to get her to shut up. laughing spinning merry-go-round city. lights through the back window of a cab flashing. round glowy pinpricks through half-closed eyes. the feel of her through the dress was bony but strong insistence to the way she clutched him in mid-kiss. they were both riding in a cab going uptown. uptown to where? he was skunk drunk and she was drunk skunk so they exchanged numbers—no reason this couldn’t happen when they were sober—some story like that. the cab pulled up to the curb, across from her building. “the rain came down in sheets.” he got out of the cab like he would walk her to the canopied stoop, but they fell drunken laughing through slip-slide rain. and her name was
monica
thought he was sweet for NOT fucking her. promised to call him but he knew like she knew. that she would wake in the morning, angry for a lost night, grateful she hadn’t given anything away. his number scribbled on a matchbook. the reminder of an almost-cost. how she would rip it. toss it into the trash can like it would give her strength.
the cabbie was a mustache dominican guy who was scared of airplanes.
—I just don’t get what holds them up there, he said. someday they just gonna fall.
alex gave him a big tip for riding him up to the south bronx.
he came alone last night.
the truth came splashing, as luminescent as a jesus painting sold on astor place with little blinking lights in them to make them glow. monk had three of them. a jesus by the waterfall, a jesus in the valley with some lambs, and another jesus with disciples all lit up glimmering above his flat-screen TV. monk was usually the person he went to on sundays for clarity and commiseration. monk was a writer and so good with plot development and with filling in those blank spaces. alex thought about him again now as he sat in the kitchen, alone with the tall thin vodka bottle. the sound of her breathing filled the entire apartment. what could monk possibly tell him about this?
monica
a name scribbled on a piece of paper folded small, which he found in his leather pants. a name, a phone number. proof of reality, but in a way, still not an answer. all he knew from past blackouts was that coming out of one felt different than just waking after a big drunk. there was a black curtain feel, images with no connection flashing feverish. there was even a taste, of lead or something metallic. now he tried to distinguish between petty distinctions, red lights green lights and still no sense of what really happened because deep down still, there lurked a massive distrust of his mind, his memory, and any pat narrative. and so he had to admit that even
if he came home alone or had the memory of riding back in the cab, anything still could have happened between the time he left monica under the canopy and the time he crawled under the sheets. (she was half under the sheets, clutching pillow tight. he thought he heard her whimper, saw her hands flex the way a dreaming dog gets twitchy paws from a running dream. running toward, running from.) it could have happend that he met her, but maybe only if he wanted to believe it. the flash of images came quite suddenly, clustered like after-thoughts: he was still negotiating a trip to the bronx with the cabbie when she got into the cab
it was the kind of confusion that sent him to the hall closet to fetch the wooden box. crafted in india, from a woman named sandra. she must have seen his restless nature at a glance and accepted she would not last but still gave him many things to remember her by, including a book on santería and this box to clear away clouds. sometimes bad spirits will come, she said. there were trinkets. rooster claw. holy water. a picture of santa barbara and a few cigars. bad spirits come to confuse, she said, and when they come, it’s good to blow cigar smoke to diffuse and dispel. and for protection, he should ask for changó.
as he lit the cigar and slowly walked through the silent apartment, a new feeling in him. the open window presented him with an obvious answer. if she had been puerto rican and not a white blond woman, he might have even believed it.
she slept still. the curve of her back was to him. he puffed.
—changó, changó, he whispered.
7.
It started with a day in the office.
The captain was a gray hair who wore his epaulettes with a dismal gravity. Displeased with the ill wind that blew his way after my dance with Internal Affairs, we generally didn’t talk much. It was all business with us, cordial and distant. I knew he tried to keep contact to a minimum, suffering those moments when we had to cross paths with the solemn dignity of a weary priest. So it was the other day when he came over to tell me there was a special agent coming to see me. It was no special briefing—he knew nothing about it, he said, only that the guy wanted my help and that he was coming all the way from Washington. I wondered if it had anything to do with Internal Affairs, but the captain shrugged off my questions with a terse request. “Just try not to give the department a shiner on this one.” This was no tongue in cheek. This was his parting shot, his way of letting me know he didn’t plan to be around for any of it. It put a rumble to my stomach that made me resent my visitor from Washington before I’d even laid eyes on him.
I wasn’t so much “office” once. Once I was so much more street. Contact hard ground tenement brick. Puerto Rican face molding fit to shape. Tenement hard or candyass soft, all shrink to fit. All devil with no bite but a lot of culo. First it was to prove I was smart enough. Then it was to prove I was tough. I thought I wanted power to help people. That was why I became a cop. Contact with the streets in a new way. And not so much “office,” like now.
It was nothing like now.
I was the cop spick ducking shells in 1991 when the South Bronx was more like Kosovo. I collected bullet holes while they fresh-scooped teenage bodies off the sidewalks. Spick kids getting ripped by high-caliber shells when I was flush with first love. The new missionary returning to his people. I was the young priest in that old Kojak episode. At the bedside handing the kid a Richard Wright. Twenty years on the force. Gold shield. And so much more street.
I knew streets. I knew them like people and the faces they make. Every nook every route. Every backyard pooch barking at a cat. I came from there. I was connected, born and bred South Bronx bonafide. I knew those people in my files and the places they lived. Each one had a story better than Broadway. I saw openings, I saw closings. Better than Cagney Edward G. and Bogey. Bad endings and funny names. Droopy, Cesar, Gooch. Like I was battling cartoon characters. Snort, Debit, Spider. The men of my Puerto Rican time. The schemers the achievers the heads of state. The diplomats the soldiers the army generals. A whole generation, how nobody noticed. Came and went. The wind blowing ash free tumbling over ashtray rim. I didn’t only see them climb to power and props. I always stepped onstage to bring the house down. To follow that simple Hollywood formula: There’s bad guys and there’s good guys. It was my personal arm wrestle, my eyeball to eyeball.
I did my job. I busted them. I busted them running, I busted them under the bed, hiding. I chased them over rooftops. I waited. Patient, parked down the block. They knew I was there. Building a file, getting to know habits, manners, style, face. I waited like an old lover throwing pebbles at a back window. I didn’t need some impatient trigger fuck to come start piling up bodies in the name of the law. I did it by the book for twenty years, and it was working. Crime was down drug dealing wasn’t so visible and the streets started to glow with people again, just hanging and gathering over there by the stoop … when this Dirty Harry motherfucker starts shooting people in the back.
Dirty Harry is a classic cop movie from 1971 directed by Don Siegel. It stars Clint Eastwood as a cop who takes the law into his own hands after a serial killer gets sprung on a technicality. The resulting murder spree inspired four sequels and made the vigilante cop a mainstay of Americana.
Two summers ago, drug dealers started getting popped. During arrests and mop-ups. Falling from rooftops, stairs. Cracked skulls after falling. Shot while trying to escape.
“He pulled a gun.”
“He was resisting arrest.”
“He turned in a hostile, aggressive manner,” because yeah, some cops get tired of process. Of filling out forms in triplicate. Of taking time off from real life to testify in court, only to watch the guy stroll out the revolving doors. It starts small like that, almost by accident. The pushing, shoving. The first-time kick or handful of hair. It starts to flow out of hand. How the other buddies cover for you. For each other. A special club. The precinct rippled every time someone got gunned down during a street stop. The rush to files: Was it one of ours? (Correction: They were all MINE, four names crossed off, plus two who only looked like drug dealers. My alleys and streets invaded by a “special task force” doing sweeps as if to clean up my mess.) There were some late-night debates about it, hand-wringing wrenchers about where did loyalty lie and duty and other big words, but nobody wanted to deal with it. It was a problem for some other precinct, maybe some other cop. But these people that were getting popped were from my files, and I was from here.
So I went out on the streets. Treated it no different than if I was hunting down a psycho. I asked questions of people that the other cops didn’t bother to ask. The streets talked back full blast. I used to think it had something to do with me being from here, but this was one of the biggest lies I ever believed. It was not the biggest of all, but hard to choose. I believed all of them.
I started a file on Dirty Harry. I packed that shit full and spent a drunken night with Lieutenant Jack, arguing. He said I should forget about it, wasn’t worth throwing a career away. I respect him for having said it. I still don’t hold it against him on days when I can’t join in on their reindeer games. I walked that file over to Internal Affairs. They were not too happy I did that, or that the story got leaked to the New York Post. (DIRTY HARRY COMES TO THE SOUTH BRONX!) The New York Times started buzzing the commissioner’s office. Resignations. The investigation took a year and a half, involved three precincts and led to five major acquittals. There were no riots. The people of the South Bronx went back to sleep as the story slid off the headlines without a squeak. Dirty Harry and his squad remained heroes to some in that Clint Eastwood/Oliver North kind of way, though reassigned—while “doing a Sanchez” became synonymous with squealing singing songs betraying buddies RAT FINKING. It was like throwing twenty years down the toilet. That first year right after everything was the hardest. There was talk that I was taking the death threats seriously. The captain said he had hoped to transfer me but found that no other precinct would have me. So he said I get to stay, suggested putting in for all that vacation time, as a f
avor to myself and the department. Prevent entanglements. “Scenes.” In any case, he didn’t plan on being around by the time I came back. “Let some new captain deal with it,” he said, and from then on developed the ability to not speak to me at all, even when talking.
“So much for moving up the corporate ladder,” Lieutenant Jack said. “Looks like I’m stuck with you.”
Lieutenant Jack had a face like an orange, round and studded with pores. A real bear-hug Irish bastard who loved working the South Bronx. It was the early ’90s when we started working together. His files as much as my files. Wasn’t a murder scene crackhouse stoop shooting we didn’t do together. Crack was the fast lane, the scam that scammed the town. Teenagers formed posses and shot each other to shit. A whole generation scraped off the sidewalk. Southern Boulevard Cypress 138th Street, all bullet-rattled window panes. Baggy-pant shootout boys lingered to watch the body wagons come. The staff at Ortiz Funeral Home got sick of seeing me turn up there, too many funeral parlors where posse members congregated to say adios to their foxhole buddies. I chased some, I jailed some. I scared some out, I scared some away. Back then, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t as fast as what was killing them.
“You gotta let that stuff go.”
Yeah, well, that’s what Lieutenant Jack says. I can’t forget. All those kids getting killed. You would think it was some kind of civil war. Kids armed and taking charge. And then the pace slowed. Was like the kids got bored. Spotted the truth behind the hype. The big dealers found their young audience dwindling. Like politicians record producers teachers Ricky Martín—they hadn’t delivered. Dealers were no longer zipping by in big cars, popping caps across crowded streets. They learned to sit quietly. To keep a low profile. To share booty and bargain with rivals. Overnight, the face of the South Bronx changed. Empty lots got paved to fill up with rows of three-family houses, hedgerow lawn and suburb. The criminals moved indoors, got subtle.
South by South Bronx Page 4
