Queens Noir

by Robert Knightly

  He had been content with his wife. In truth, sex wasn't something he'd given much thought to before coming to live in Queens. Americans seemed obsessed with it, as if it were the most important thing in the world. It was true that he enjoyed sex. When he and Fatima did it, he felt close and safe. No one in Pakistan ever talked about love. That was something for the blasphemers of Bollywood to churn out in their endless stream of movies. Seeing Fatima was often accompanied by a feeling of warmth and longing, and if he'd ever given it any thought, he'd have been happy to call that love.

  Beryl turned to him and smiled. He knew she looked forward to these outings. She'd lost fifteen pounds from the exercise and claimed to be fitter than she'd been in years. Even in winter, Ramzi had led her along the water's edge, although one day in early March he'd had to abandon his plans because the path was slick with ice. Instead, he'd taken her on a luxury water cruise. He felt a twinge of guilt when he remembered Beryl that night-giggling like a schoolgirl, posing for his pictures. She couldn't have guessed that the true subject of those photos were the bridges and buildings and port facilities in the background. He'd taken enough photos to fill a 256MB memory card. Their expeditions became more frequent as the weather warmed up. They'd explored the whole length of the Long Island waterfront from the Brooklyn Bridge to today's outing at the Throgs Neck Bridge.

  "What's that?" Ramzi asked, pointing to a chicken-wire enclosure about the size of a residential building block.

  The park was crowded with people, some lone walkers, some in groups, and some on bicycles. The slope down to the water was dotted with sunbathers who had dragged fold-up chairs to the park and sprawled in their swimsuits. Two women in leotards power-walked, while another couple glided by on rollerblades. Inside the enclosure he'd pointed at, the grass had been worn to dirt. It was mobbed with people and dogs, and the stench of animal excrement, fur, dog breath, and urine wafted from it.

  "It's a dog run."

  "A what?"

  "A dog run. In New York City you have to keep your dog leashed most of the time. Inside that, you can let it run free."

  "Really?" Ramzi was appalled: In his country, dogs were rabid curs. Here they were more pampered than children.

  They made their way down the gentle, sloping lawn toward the path, and met up with it under the bridge's pylons. The tide was low and the air had a decidedly fishy tinge to it.

  "Look at this bridge," he said. "What a magnificent achievement. Look at the pylons, they're solid. And the cables could hold it up on their own."

  "I suppose I should be grateful we're not discussing piston engines," Beryl said.

  Ramzi turned his attention from the bridge to his companion. He glared at her. "You know how much I admire these bridges, not just the engineering either, they are magnificent." He slid his arm around her. They passed under the bridge and beside some soccer fields where elementary and middle school children battled it out. The shouts from the parents fought with the noise of the traffic on the bridge overhead.

  Ramzi's mission loomed before him, and the thought of it filled him with dread. The longer he stayed here, the harder it was to maintain his rage. Jihad had saved him from shiftlessness and had given him direction. Of course, he despised Beryl, but until he started to date her he hadn't realized how much he missed a woman's touch. Then, despite himself, Beryl had begun to mean something to him. In time, he began to know the infidel, and had developed a liking for many of them.

  Beryl's hand crept around his waist and she kissed his cheek as they strolled along. At the same time, he was fully cognizant that a war was being fought and he had chosen a side. Beryl was a weapon the Great Satan had abandoned in the field. He had merely picked it up where it lay and was putting it to good use.

  They rounded a bend. "Let's look for a place to eat," Beryl said. There was a hilly section where man-made mounds of earth had long since become part of the landscape; grass and trees grew on them.

  "Let's eat up there on the plateau," he suggested. "That way you can watch the view and I can watch the soccer." Ramzi laid out the blanket and Beryl spread the food on it. She'd made sandwiches, brought sodas, and packed grapes into Ziploc bags. She'd gotten used to Ramzi not drinking alcohol, and had given it up herself. For dessert, she'd bought a pie at The Stork in College Point.

  After they ate, Ramzi lay his head on her lap and stared at the sky. Several trees were just coming into blossom and filled the air with a heady but pleasant scent. Immediately, an image of Beryl on her knees before him, her mouth clamped firmly around his penis, came to mind. He remembered the fear he felt when she did it the first time. Ramzi had never hit a woman, but looking down on Beryl's soft, shiny hair, her head bobbing at his crotch, he wanted to knock her across the room and scream, Have you no pride, woman? No fear of God?

  Azis had given Ramzi absolution when he first warned him this would happen. They had prayed together. In the end, Ramzi grew too ashamed to face Azis. Perhaps God would forgive him. After all, he had submitted to serve Allah. But Beryl would go to Hell.

  He feared telling Azis the worst. This abomination had given him the most intense pleasure of his life, while the shame crushed him. How could he ever speak with a decent Muslim woman again? Azis's dispensation meant nothing. He was tainted, dirty, and the shame of it would never leave him.

  "It's so beautiful, isn't it?" Beryl said.

  He turned his face toward hers and hoped his anguish didn't show. "Not compared to you."

  "Flatterer."

  "Truthteller."

  "You are free next Sunday, right? There's no reason to miss my mother's party. You'll enjoy it, it's a fundraiser for the Jewish orphans of Kazakhstan. That's your part of the world."

  Ramzi didn't bother to hide his annoyance. "Oh yes, Pakistani Muslims and Kazakh Jews, we are almost brothers. And clearly we all look the same to the Jews of Scarsdale, New York." He had bolted upright, his muscles tense and his neck throbbing.

  "Oh Ramzi, this is America, that sort of thing doesn't matter. Besides, the only religion I've seen you practice is the same one I do-lapsed. Lapsed Jew, lapsed Muslim, what's the difference?"

  Ramzi had no retort. In truth, he could not be bothered to find one.

  "She wants to raise money to bring the orphans here for six months to get the medical help they need and to learn English, math, and Hebrew so they might get a better start in Israel. My mother's getting on. She thought maybe you could teach them. We both could. Maybe we could move in with her and look after her and teach the Kazakh children. You speak Aramaic."

  "How do you know I speak Aramaic?"

  "You told me, remember? The first day at school when you were lost and I told you some of our students were from central Asia."

  He'd forgotten. What other lapses was he guilty of? It was all too much for him. Great levivot and off tapuzim to die for was one thing, but no amount of knish was sufficient to entice him to embrace the Jews, except for Beryl, of course. Then Ramzi had the merest glimmer of a thought.

  "All right already," he said, taking pride in his mastery of New York speak, "I'll come to the party. But only if you let me take your picture."

  Beryl laughed good-naturedly.

  "Stand here," he said, positioning her so that his shots would take in the undercarriage of the bridge.

  While she fussed and clucked over her hair, he took a dozen photos, from all angles. Beryl wasn't in half of them.

  As Ramzi walked home on Liberty Avenue that same evening, he spied standing in a doorway the same man he'd recognized so many weeks ago at the pawn sellers. As their eyes met, the man left the cover of the storefront and slowly approached, his right hand inside his overcoat even though it was much too warm to be dressed that way.

  The man was called Mohammed, Ramzi recalled in a flash. He had been foolish and naive to think he could avoid Azis. He would not get away that easily. The best he could hope for was that Mohammed had come to question his absence from the mosque. Mohammed's expression gave Ram
zi little reason to hope for the best. If he made a run for it now, he would die. He would never see Beryl again. Then he admitted the truth to himself: He had abandoned jihad. He was a changed man, an infidel, a fornicator. He wanted to live.

  "There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah," Ramzi said in greeting.

  "The true believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are the sincere," Mohammed said, closing the distance between them.

  Ramzi knew the quote from the Qur'an, and the guilt it produced in him squeezed his chest like a vice. At first he thought to reply: Allah, most gracious, most merciful, but that implied a certain culpability, and so instead he said, "Allah is all-knowing, all-aware."

  He approached Mohammed, careful to keep his movements steady and nonthreatening.

  Mohammed's face flashed uncertainty, and taking advantage of this brief moment, Ramzi added, "I have taken a woman." His tone meant to convey that this explained everything.

  "A Jew," Mohammed said, his mouth pulled tight with contempt.

  "A whore," Ramzi agreed, although it pained him to speak the words. "A controlling She-Devil to whom I must account for my every movement. And yet, Azis knows the value of the hussy and encouraged me to take her."

  "No man cowers before a woman. What have you become?" Mohammed's small eyes narrowed to slits and his glare felt like a laser beam slicing into Ramzi. He moved toward Ramzi.

  "I serve Allah through jihad. That is who I am," Ramzi said, standing very still. He hung his head as if the shame of his dalliance with Beryl was tangible weight.

  "You are a favorite with Azis. I have seen him have a man killed for less than what you have done. I would be happy to oblige my imam should he change his mind. You are expected at the mosque tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Fail to come and I will be given my chance." He took two more steps toward Ramzi, meeting him head on, then sidestepped and walked past.

  When Ramzi was sure Mohammed had gone, he headed up the stairs to his apartment. As he put keys to the lock, he caught the end of a message being recorded on his answering machine. "I know you're probably tired but I've got to run a bunch of chairs and plates and flatware over to my mother's. You wouldn't help, would you? I could really use you."

  Ramzi dashed into the apartment and grabbed the phone. Life was mysterious, and he, merely a fallen leaf tossed and blown on the wind. "Beryl, my love, of course I will. And why don't we visit awhile?"

  Had it really been six months since his meeting with Mohammed? The first class of Kazakh orphans were about to graduate. As they fed the pet rabbits and turtles kept at the school behind the Chabad, he realized he'd grown quite fond of them, and was sad to think they'd soon be leaving for Israel. What a pleasure to teach children so hungry to learn.

  He glanced up as Beryl entered the classroom. She leaned against the blackboard beside him and smiled at the children. He wanted to slide his arm around her but knew he couldn't do that in front of the orphans. He stroked his beard. He'd been surprised by how quickly it had grown in. He'd dyed all of his hair silver, making him look at least fifteen years older than he was. This may be America, but he still equated age with wisdom, and was happy to think of himself as growing wise.

  "Almost done?" Beryl asked.

  He nodded.

  "Good. Mom's cooking up a storm. She loves you ... almost as much as I do."

  Ramzi's world had shrunk in the relocation. He felt safe here, and he kept to the neighborhood. He walked each day from Beryl's mother's house, which was now his home, to the Chabad and back, occasionally stopping at the local deli to pick something up for the evening meal. Except perhaps for the paan, he didn't miss his old life at all. Beryl was due to move in with him when school ended in June, and he looked forward to that.

  It was Hanukkah and the menorah would be lit tonight. As with many converts, the rituals of Judaism seemed to have more meaning for him than for those who'd practiced from birth. Most of all, he was looking forward to Gloria's (he had begun calling Beryl's mom by her first name) famous levivot and applesauce.

  The last few orphans left the room and he took Beryl's hand as they strolled home to Gloria's, the chill air turning Beryl's nose bright red.

  THE INVESTIGATION

  BY BELINDA FARLEY

  Jamaica

  o Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn't have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens-when the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight had sprung to their feet in a fervor-I, who had so often scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on open palms reverberated. Shouted hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I praying?

  I should've been taking notes.

  Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the police scanner: a "1010" announcing a possible death at Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters-all four of whom were whitefor no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway, housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they'd shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn't been a complete waste.

  I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn brownstone that had been in my family for three generations. I'd been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class, or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a catch within my circle; I'd escorted no less than three females to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I'd have had enough of my journalism career and would join an uncle on Wall Street.

  The call came in while I was alone in the office. Laterwhen things had run their course-I thought of a photograph that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.

  The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course, it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb, and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely. Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo-or story, for that matter-ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in Jschool.

  There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when I arrived. I didn't feel too confident as I rapped on the door of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed to get a byline under my belt.

  "Yes?" The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.

  "Evening, uh, morning, sir," I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn't too late. "I'm a reporter for the-"

  "Who is it, Gershorn?" A thick, squat woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days appeared at the man's side. With her elaborate coif, and skin the color of a gingersnap, she could've been an aged starlet. In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.

  The man bristled. "We were expecting someone, but not you," he said. "What is your business here, young man?"

  Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought
and hardship that had ever befallen the man was noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing nearly two heads above her.

  "I'm Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I'm a reporter for the Weekly Item." I extended my hand. "I'm responding to a call that came over our police scanner regarding a possible death ... ?"

  The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand. I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.

  "Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police came?"

  The man contemplated my question before opening the door to me. "A crime, young man, not an incident. Come in."

  I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped his hands behind his back.

  "Claudette," he called to the woman. "Tea. Tea for our guest."

  In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.

  On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light was switched on.

  The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the room to memory, to be described later in my story.