The Accidental Hunter

by Nelson George

  “Hello, Dervin.” Willis Watson stood up from a pew to address his future son-in-law. He looked to be half D’s height and yet was not a small man. He was barrel-chested with wide shoulders and a head well matched with his round, full lips. Willis was a lifter, a trait he shared with D, though attempts to bond through that activity had proved fruitless. D had no interest in the man, a fact he barely disguised. “Where’s my mother?”

  “She went to the restroom.” Willis extended his hand. D shook it perfunctorily, as if he’d just been offered a bad business deal. “I hear you’re a celebrity nowadays, D.”

  “Really.” This was not a conversation he wanted to have with Willis Watson.

  “Yeah, people on my job are telling me you’re the new Chris Judd.”

  “Chris Judd?” The reference bewildered D for a moment and then it sank in and made his stomach do a backflip. “Oh yeah. J. Lo’s second husband. Listen, Willis, you can’t believe everything you read, except the Bible. Everything else is a scam.”

  From behind him he heard his mother call his name. She came striding up toward the pulpit with purpose. “D,” she said, “it’s about time you got here.”

  He apologized, kissed her lips, and awaited his orders. Zena Hunter’s reappearance made things happen. The reverend showed up; the organist sat on his bench; Willis Watson and his friends assumed their positions. Zena took her son by the hand and led him to the back of the church. As they walked, D asked, “How are you, Ma?”

  “How am I? Well, my youngest boy is consorting in public with some little white girl and I have to hear about it all day at work. I understand that some fool on the radio in the morning called it ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”

  D sighed. He was tired of saying there was nothing going on, tired of trying to ignore or make a joke about it. Whatever his mother wanted to say, she’d say anyway. As if he could stop her.

  “You remember what I used to say?”

  “Which thing, Ma?”

  “About white girls.”

  “You said a lot of things, Ma.”

  “Well, the one you should have remembered is that it was fine to bring them home. I’d be nice to them, serve them dinner, and make polite conversation.”

  “Oh,” he said, trying to cut her off. “Yeah, I remember now.”

  “Clearly you don’t,” she shot back. “’Cause the last part was that I’d walk them to the door and you could take them back to wherever they lived—”

  “But don’t expect to be let back in your house.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t worry, Ma. I’m not bringing her to your home.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” she said. “I just wanna know if she’s coming to my wedding.”

  “No way. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried. I just wanted to know where to seat her at the reception, knowing she’d have an entourage and all.”

  “Oh, sorry to disappoint you. You want me to bring a white woman to your wedding?”

  “It’s all right if she comes. You know, she might even sing a song or two.”

  “Okay, Ma. I’ll look into it.”

  The reverend was waving for them to come down. Zena took her son by the arm and guided him toward the altar.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “To da break of dawn, uggh! To the dawn!” The sound of hard-partying young male and female voices blasted from huge speakers on the most famous street in Harlem. Twenty dancers garbed as thugs, dykes, strippers, cops, and S&M practitioners moved in freaky unison to the beat. Huge lights illuminated 125th Street as Bridgette Haze sprinted out of the world-famous Apollo Theater, clutching first place in the amateur-night contest, and jumped into a waiting gypsy cab. The police-car-turned-taxi was crimson and was driven by DJ Power, who, in the video, was playing the singer’s whacky guide to a wild night in underground New York. The car sped off toward St. Nicholas Avenue, right past two 35-millimeter cameras. As it flew by, Bee Cole yelled, “Cut!” then turned to her DP and said, “Check the gates.” The gates on both cameras were checked. Notified that they were clear of hair and dirt, Bee announced, “Let’s print that and move on.”

  The music evaporated from the night and was replaced by the chatter of walkie-talkies, the murmur of mingling production minions, and the clamor of fans lined up behind barricades across St. Nicholas. The first assistant director, a stern young black woman named Jua, spoke briefly with her boss and then loudly declared, “We’re wrapping location. Company move.” The other ADs and the sundry production assistants and department heads began picking up, boxing up, and moving out objects and people.

  Bee got out of her director’s chair, took two steps from the bank of monitors she’d spent much of the last three hours in front of, and yawned as she stretched her lean body with feline indulgence. A muscular male PA walked over to her with a bottle of Evian water. She took the bottle from him and sipped slowly as she eyed her buff young employee. “I need a back rub,” she announced.

  “Sure,” he replied, and reached out to rub her shoulders.

  “Oh, that’s good. Strong hands,” she said. “Let’s move this to my trailer.”

  Down the block from the video village, fans screamed at Bridgette Haze as she was escorted out of the taxi by D, wearing his trademark scowl like a suit of armor.

  “Yo! Yo, shorty! Whas up with you?!” a pudgy, light-skinned teen in a red Phat Farm hoodie shouted. “I know you like it big and brown!”

  Bridgette ignored the jibe, though the crowd around the young man howled in response. D’s ears burned and he glared at the teen, who was unintimidated. His look said, I wish you would, and D had to grudgingly appreciate the teen’s badass nature.

  It had been a long, exacting, but very smooth two New York nights. The previous evening they’d ventured into a Bronx strip club and dallied around Manhattan, including an S&M club and Times Square. The production had spent most of this night in Harlem, shooting in and around the refurbished Apollo. After breaking down this location they were off for the money shot on the Brooklyn Bridge. Security-wise it had been a cake gig. No sign of motorcycles. No threat of kidnapping. No kids in Teen Shit T-shirts. It was eerie, actually, how uneventful the shoot had been. D wasn’t complaining, but he didn’t trust this ease. Not one bit.

  He opened the door to Bridgette Haze’s trailer. Inside, a shouting match was under way. Rodney Hampton stood in the middle of the luxurious trailer looking down at a smug Ivy Greenwich. Sitting near Ivy, looking mortified, was Jen.

  “Well, someone contacted my wife,” Rodney was saying when Bridgette entered from her private room. The publicist struggled to pull himself together. “Hey, Bridgette, so good to see you.” He came over and hugged the singer, but his efforts at affection were hindered by the rage that still filled his body. D stood behind Bridgette. Thinking he’d get some questions answered, D just folded his arms and leaned back against the door.

  “Rodney,” Bridgette asked, “why are you so angry?”

  “Well,” he said, “I believe your manager is trying to ruin my marriage.”

  “And,” Ivy said, “as I was telling Rodney, I don’t know who sent those pictures to his wife, but it wasn’t me. I have no beef with Rodney, but these things happen.”

  “Infidelity?” Bridgette wondered out loud. Then her gaze shifted from Rodney to her sister, who sat looking at the floor. Jen didn’t say anything to her. Didn’t have to. “Okay, I don’t think this is the time to figure this out. I have a video to finish.”

  “I’m sorry, Bridgette,” Rodney said, “but we have to deal with this now. I can no longer work for a man of so little integrity and neither should you.”

  “This is not the time for this, Rodney.”

  “No, this is the time. You need to make a decision about your future. Your sister has told me you want to make a change. Isn’t that right, Jen?”

  Jen stood up. “My sister makes her own decisions, Rodney—just like you make your own. She’ll chang
e managers if and when she feels like it. Just like you’ll change wives when and if you feel like it. Everyone does what’s best for them. Isn’t that right?”

  “Jen . . .” Rodney spoke softly, his voice as tender as it had been accusing just moments before. “Jen, I am so sorry.”

  “Yes, Rodney, that’s the problem. You’re sorry.” Jen then walked past Rodney, her sister, and D, and right out of the trailer. Bridgette watched her sister go and then stepped over to Rodney and slapped his face. He took it and didn’t respond. Emulating her sister, Bridgette walked past Rodney and the sitting Ivy and went back into the trailer’s private room, slamming the partition shut.

  Someone had sent Rodney’s wife several incriminating photos, and both Ivy and Jen were worthy candidates. But what concerned D was who had taken the photographs. If someone from his company had been moonlighting in the blackmail business, well, that was a serious problem. D cleared his throat and said, “I get the gist of what went down here. Actually, it’s really none of my business and I’d be happy to leave, except that I need to know if any of my people are involved.”

  “Come on, D. Stop that innocent shit. You are capable of a lot of things, but lying well isn’t one of them,” Rodney said as he snatched a manila envelope off a countertop. It had the D Security logo stamped on it. D could feel photographs inside, but he didn’t look at them.

  “Anyone could have used our stationery,” D said. “It doesn’t prove a thing. How long ago was this sent?”

  Rodney ignored D’s question and peered down at the sofa-bound Ivy, who, despite all the hubbub, hadn’t moved an inch and looked quite comfortable. “I guess you win, Ivy,” Rodney said.

  “Oh,” the man replied calmly, “was there some kind of competition going on?”

  “Apparently not. You’ll have my resignation in the morning and an invoice for my overdue payments.”

  “Whatever you wish, Rodney. Have a nice flight back to Cali.”

  Rodney moved toward the door, pausing at D to mutter, “Don’t trust that motherfucker,” and headed out into the Harlem night. Now it was just Ivy and D in the trailer’s main room. D pulled over a chair from the dining area and shifted it to face the manager.

  “How was Queens?” Ivy asked.

  “Like always. Little houses. Fake thugs. A little too far away from everything.”

  “You find out anything interesting?”

  “Ivy, I just saw you break up a business deal and possibly a marriage, and you did so by apparently employing someone on my D Security team. So don’t act like you don’t know who I talked to or what they said. Let’s skip that dance. What we need to get at is why you’re letting a young man—a young man who just might be your son—terrorize your business.”

  Ivy looked toward Bridgette’s closed door and in a whisper replied, “Let’s have this conversation outside.”

  The crew was speedily breaking down the lights, the dancers were being corralled into charter buses, and the police were urging the remaining fans to move on. Amid this hectic activity, Ivy found a streetlamp to lean against. “Okay, it’s like this. Dukes’s widow hates me. She blames me for her husband’s suicide. Her boy was raised with all that anger and it boiled over this year. He’s young. He’s got no direction. He’s got no father. Hating me seems to have given some focus to his life. I’ve been hoping it would go away. That I could reason with her and him and keep his ass out of jail. But then he got hooked up with that crazy motorcycle woman and things have gotten out of hand. That’s it.”

  D said, “This is bullshit, Irv Greenfield. I know what Roderick looks like. That is your son. Period. You were fucking the wife while Dukes was on the road. He found out. I guess he was tenderhearted, so instead of killing you he bailed out on life. Green lights all the way to the motherfucking ground. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Ivy kept a self-satisfied look on his face but his eyelids shook like a dog being washed. It was an amazing sight. Ivy had total control of his lips and his cheeks due to years of deal making. He could make them project whatever, whenever. But his eyelids and the wrinkled area around them were determined to reflect the truth on this particular night.

  Ivy sighed. His eyes watered. That last bit of slickness, that remaining level of control, disappeared, and now his whole face was in harmony with the truth. “I met Rowena first. At the Lenox Lounge, not far from here. She walked in wearing an orange dress and a bright red wig and I lost my heart to her. She wasn’t really into white men. Thought I was looking for a mistress.” He laughed sourly at the thought. “Anyway, she loved music so I invited her to gigs I was promoting. She met Adrian at one of them. That was a couple of years before ‘Green Lights.’ He was a fine singer but a bit of a mama’s boy. Didn’t know shit about women. I guess that’s what attracted Rowena to him. They got married and I was the best man. All the while I was still in love with her.”

  In his earpiece D heard Jeff Fuchs announce they were moving Bridgette and Jen to Brooklyn. D motioned for Ivy to pause and told Jeff he’d meet him down there. Ivy started walking east on 125th Street and D soon caught up to him.

  “So,” Ivy began again, “I rolled with it. They were doing all right. Then ‘Green Lights’ hit and Adrian got brand new. He went from choirboy to cock hound and was banging everything that moved. Rowena didn’t have to know this. As his manager it was my job to keep shit like that undercover.”

  “But, as we know, certain secrets are very useful.”

  Across the street was the Apollo, where staff members were putting padlocks on the famous doors and beginning to pull down the metal gates. Ivy ignored D’s comment and continued: “Adrian had played the Howard in DC and was supposed to be on his way home. But he made an unscheduled stop at a Howard University dorm. After he left, one of the schoolgirls called Rowena. How she got the number I don’t know. I mean I really don’t.”

  D said, “Anyway.”

  “I got back to New York first and I caught her fall. We only had sex once. That’s all.”

  D’s fist clenched and the blood rushed to his head, but if the man wanted to testify, he shouldn’t be interrupted by a kidney punch.

  “If that call hadn’t gotten through from DC, I’m sure they would have stayed together. But that breach of trust was never repaired. Adrian got deeply depressed. We couldn’t get him into the studio to record his follow-up when he was still hot. He moved into the Theresa Hotel.”

  Ivy looked up and D’s eyes followed. Above them loomed the large white building that had once been Harlem’s most famous hotel, where the greats of black culture and even Fidel Castro had slept. Somewhere on the street before them Adrian Dukes’s body had landed a few decades ago.

  “So you never claimed Roderick as your son?”

  “After I saw the baby it was clear what was what. But Rowena wouldn’t do it. In light of Adrian’s death I’m sure she was afraid of what people would say. She placed her guilt for cheating on me. All that boy has ever known is that I was a thieving Jew trying to steal his father’s legacy. Was that right, D?”

  D didn’t care and wouldn’t offer an opinion. He just wanted to know. “So this Areea woman pushed him from anger to action?”

  “I guess,” Ivy said. “Are you gonna turn him in to the police?”

  “Well, I’m working for you, Ivy, or have you forgotten?”

  “But I know how close you are with that cop Williams.”

  “Ivy,” D said, exasperated with the man’s attitude, “I don’t understand why I’m even involved in this mess. Why did you hire me?”

  “To protect Bridgette Haze and spin your wheels investigating while I figured out my next move. I had no idea that Rodney and Jen would get together and lead you to all this information. I mean, I wasn’t trying to fuck with you. I was just buying time with Night and his girlfriend until I could get a handle on the situation.”

  “So when do you tell my friend you knew all along who’d endangered his life and that of his woman?”

  “I
didn’t know the whole time, D. Believe me. It wasn’t until he talked about ‘Green Lights’ being played for him that I knew.”

  “Okay, that’s your story and it is your business. But Night is my friend. If you willfully let him stay in harm’s way, and I find out, you’re gonna have a problem.” D glared for effect but Ivy’s bout of truth-telling had passed. His regular mask of glib deception had returned. “I have two more questions for you, Ivy.”

  “If I know the answers, you will too.”

  “Which one of my people took the pictures of Rodney and Jen?”

  “That wonderful Latina woman of yours.”

  “Did you step to her or did she come to you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  D picked Ivy up and tossed him against the window of a fried-chicken joint. The old man crumpled onto the sidewalk and held his head. The same hacking cough that had hit Ivy at Emily’s Tea Party ripped into his body again. It was a dry, nasty sound, as if all the juice had been squeezed out of Ivy’s body. He reached into his pocket for pills and D slapped his hand, sending the pills to the ground. Then he moved his face close to Ivy’s. “Now for my next question: are Roderick and Areea still trying to snatch Bridgette, or did my hanging around Queens make them nervous?”

  Ivy reached down to retrieve the pills, but D grabbed him by the jacket and pushed him roughly back against the wall. “I asked you a question, motherfucker.”

  The fear that gripped Ivy calmed his coughing a bit, and he stammered, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m sure you spooked Roderick—the boy’s unstable. But that woman doesn’t seem easily intimidated.”

  D nodded—that sounded right—and then picked Ivy up from the ground like a garbage bag. A few remaining PAs had seen D in action and were now half picking up debris and half waiting to see what would happen next. D just stared, wondering if it was really worth it to vent on Ivy’s aging body. As he stood there contemplating more violence, Ivy, who’d been roughed up more than a few times in his life, pulled it together. When he asked, “Do you wanna ride down with me?” D almost laughed. This man, D had to admit, was a survivor.