The other men picked him up and laid him on the same bed he’d made love to Kira on little more than twenty-four hours earlier. Though the room had been cleaned since then, D could still smell that sexy woman—her perfume, her sweat, her breath. Like life itself, the scents were tart and sharp, sexy and sugary, and together just bittersweet.
They delayed the flight home two days so that Night could sing “Amazing Grace” at Kira’s funeral. It was a very traditional Presbyterian service at a small chapel in Dalston. Her family was as respectable and prim as Kira had been cocky and fly. Her chubby mom and rail-thin dad didn’t look like the parents of such a butterfly, though bits of Kira’s loveliness shone through their very sad eyes.
Much of the church was filled with vampires from Kira’s nightlife world, who’d risen from their daylight graves to see her buried in a permanent one. The casket was closed. Her luminous features had been crushed when her car flipped over an M1 divider about thirty minutes outside of Birmingham. The investigation was still underway but the alcohol level in her blood had been far too high. A gorgeous portrait of her dressed in a tidy school uniform stood near the coffin. D felt her eyes on him and winked back.
* * *
On the long, quiet flight home D contemplated how life creeped by and no matter how high you got, you died and they died, and you had to be good with it. That was it. Nothing else.
Someone tapped him on his shoulder. “You awake?” It was Night, looking boyishly excited.
“Kinda. You seem happy.”
“Come with me to the restroom.”
“Mile-high club, my dude? I’m flattered.”
“Just come on, nigga.”
The two men huddled by the business-class restroom as a very pretty flight attendant came out, smiled demurely at them, and walked away.
Night stuck his head inside the stall, hummed sweetly, and said, “Good echo right here.”
“Yeah, it sounds like a project staircase.”
“So I was thinking about Kira. It ain’t a love song but, I dunno, this is what came out.” Night began singing very quietly.
They burned my wings
They tore at my soul
I gasped a last breath
And I fell way down
But my will is strong
My faith is in this song
Watch me fly
Baby, I’m a phoenix . . .
I cannot stop
Baby, I’m a phoenix
Wind at my back
Baby, I’m a phoenix . . .
Rise with me, lovers
Rise with me, brothers
These chains will fall away
We’ll be triumphant today
Hey, I’m a phoenix
Baby, I’m a phoenix . . .
I’ve been stung
I’ve been hung
Been left for dead and spit upon
I’ve bowed my head in shame
I’ve cried like a baby in the rain
But I would not stop
My belief in me too strong
Baby, I’m a phoenix
I can still play my love
Baby, I’m a phoenix . . .
“Damn,” D said, “sounds very Sam Cooke. Curtis Mayfield too.”
“Glad you like it. Not a hit single but I’m feeling it. And I’m so happy you been here with me. It just really helped me stay centered and shit.”
“And shit. There’s always something.”
“Yeah . . . So we got this US tour coming up,” Night said nervously. “My first time around the country in a long time. I’d really like you out there with me. It’ll just be clubs.”
“I dunno. Pilgrim and me got some bad history.”
“I heard, but that’s got nothing to do with you and me. Besides, you need me too, one-letter-name man.”
D laughed. “You probably right.”
“Are you gonna sing again?” It was the flight attendant, standing there with her arms folded over her red blazer and white blouse. D couldn’t tell if she was mixed or Middle Eastern or what, but whatever her nationality, she was cute and knew it.
“Did I bother any of the folks sleeping?”
“I’m sure you did,” she said, “but I want to hear more. My name is Bibi, by the way.”
The two men introduced themselves and then D, a vet of such musician-meets-fan encounters, excused himself. From his seat he saw the two disappear into the toilet stall, and a moment later he heard Night’s voice, crooning so sweet, and then laughter. D closed his eyes and embraced sleep.
TIGHTROPE
Stabs of anxiety ran through D, like a knife in and out of his gut. He’d sleep thirty or forty minutes, then roll back into consciousness. 2:49 a.m. 3:14 a.m. 4:09 a.m. There was no rest in this slumber. It felt like he’d been lifting boulders; his shoulders and neck ached. It felt like the flu, but was more likely dread.
D was waiting for a knockout punch. Instead he just found himself being pummeled. A fleet little man with hands of stone was pounding his kidneys, ribs, stomach to putty. At 4:45 a.m. D gave up and sat on the side of his bed like James Brown in a cold sweat. If he’d screamed it would have been as passionately piercing anything from the Godfather himself.
D walked over to his window. He was back in Brooklyn. It had been two days since he’d landed at JFK, but his body was still on UK time. His view was nothing special—an alley and an ancient air shaft. But a breeze came in. He could hear a couple fucking or fighting or both somewhere upstairs, which strangely calmed him down. D pulled out his iPod, his Beats by Dre headphones, and sat on his sofa and went to his neosoul song list, playing Maxwell and Badu and D’Angelo and Jill Scott and Night as the sky slowly lightened and his mind drifted.
* * *
London had been a respite, sexy and grim by turns, and it was still very much on D’s mind as he ambled along in the early-evening darkness along Eastern Parkway. After stopping in front of the Botanic Garden, he was about to count off ten paces when he felt eyes on him. Not the causal gaze of a dog walker or of a passing driver, but the intense eyes of someone for whom D’s body was, at that moment, the center of the universe.
D turned around slowly, moving past the Brooklyn Museum toward Franklin Avenue and its hipster enclave. Lots of bars, restaurants, and brightly lit gourmet grocery stores now lined the area north of Eastern Parkway, creating a mini-Williamsburg.
D strolled down Franklin and then turned into Franklin Park. He headed through the corridor into a long, high-ceilinged bar. He ordered a Bud Lite and sat in the patio, positioning himself so he could see both the entrance to the corridor and the establishment’s back door.
The crowd was twentyish and dotted with bearded men, tattooed women, and had a general air of frivolity. Franklin Park was definitely a New Brooklyn spot but D wasn’t feeling judgmental. Though born and raised in the borough, D had spent so much time away that he didn’t feel entitled to look down on its new residents. In a way, D was an intruder too. At least he’d been feeling that way since his “homecoming.” So he sat amongst his fellow newbies, wondering if maybe it was just new-to-Brooklyn paranoia that had him sitting there anxiously.
Before long he noticed a young black man at the bar in a flat-brimmed baseball cap with the word ASYA written in block letters. His pants were narrow and hung slightly off his ass. His high-top sneakers were a garish mix of black, yellow, aqua, and white. D recognized him as one of the guys outside the ARoc office, but he’d been the one who laid back and calmed the commotion.
This kid wasn’t a thug but he definitely knew a few. D decided to wait and see who else showed up. He was finishing his second beer and munching on pretzels when, from the narrow corridor, in came Asya Roc, strutting like he was in total control even while looking completely out of place. His homeboy nodded in D’s direction and the rap star bopped over. D was at a loss, trying to take in the many layers of clothing draped upon the skinny young man’s body. Highlights included gold Nikes with wings, a flat-brimmed cap with
his name written across in Gothic letters, and a T-shirt featuring Pam Grier in bodacious Foxy Brown mode. There was a vest in the mix, a couple of chains, and tats popping off sections of exposed flesh.
“You have more ink than when I last saw you,” D said.
“Yeah,” Asya responded warily, “they got mad talent over in Europe. Got all these new tats on my arm right here.” He pulled up a sleeve to reveal his shoulder, where an image of Ron O’Neal as Super Fly in a wide-brimmed hat, a long coat, mutton-chop sideburns, and the whole blaxploitation nine. “I’ma bring that era back. Wait until you see my next video. Long coats. Sideburns. Electra 225s.”
“Nice,” D said and nodded, acting impressed as Asya took a seat across from him. “So, I had a run-in with some dudes who claimed to represent you.”
“They my peeps, no doubt. Hope they didn’t rough you up too much.”
“It didn’t get to that. Your friend over there helped chill things out.”
“Yo, Ree is my boy from way back. He keeps his head on straight.”
“So do I.”
“I see that. I didn’t get what you were doing that night. I got worried. Thought maybe you were gonna try to blackmail me.”
“That’s not how I roll.”
“Like I said, I see. No one seems to really know about the delivery who doesn’t need to know about you. I respect that.”
“So,” D asked, “what are you gonna tell the police?”
“Niggas tried to rob me. You dragged me out. I bounced. Had a plane to catch. That’s all.”
“And the delivery?”
“If anyone saw shit, it was you carrying a bag that you left with. Feel me?”
“So we’re good?”
“All that official shit will be good. But I paid for a delivery and I’m willing to pay more to get it back.”
“You can dead that idea,” D said. “The items are gone. I wanted you to know that. Face-to-face. They’re gone. Won’t be coming back.”
Asya sat back in his chair and stared at D, anger and disbelief communicated with a smirk. He glanced over to his pal who, as if tugged by an invisible cord, got pulled into his orbit.
“Is there a problem, A?” Ree asked upon arrival.
For a hip hop hanger-on, this young man’s delivery was surprisingly refined and calm. Not what D had expected. Asya explained the situation to Ree, who listened silently and then said, “Move over.”
The star shifted docilely to make space.
“We haven’t been formally introduced.” The kid reached his hand across the table. “D, my name is Ree. I’m A’s partner. Most people don’t know me cause I play the background. Now, I need to know something—have you really tossed the guns away or are you holding them until you figure out when you gonna blackmail us?”
“Neither,” D answered. “As I told Asya, I’m not gonna blackmail you. But I haven’t tossed them in the river yet either.”
“You just closed your office,” Ree said. “Your business is falling apart. Why should we believe you won’t come at us for some dough?”
“Why do you want those guns? There are a lot of them out there.”
“We paid for them. We want them,” Ree said.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay,” D said, “are you close to Ice?”
“We know of him.”
“Well, speak to him or one of his people and they’ll let you know I’m legit.”
Then Asya asked, “You know a nigga named Ray Ray from Tilden?”
“Yeah. He works for me sometimes.”
“Okay,” Ree said, “I know him. He’s been trying to get in the rap game with us. He has some decent beats.” Then he got up, took out his phone, and walked away from the table, leaving in his wake an awkward silence.
D broke it by saying, “I heard you turned out Birmingham.”
“We did it big, yo. I had no idea it was gonna be like that. The women up there were crazy. You hit that with Night, right?”
“Yeah. He loved it too. Did you meet a woman named Kira?”
“Oh hell yeah, I did. Her crew were all dimes. She rolled with us back to London and I don’t think we slept that night.”
“She’s dead.”
“What?”
“Just last week, in a car accident riding between London and Birmingham.”
The little boy who resided behind the gear and inside the rap star popped out. “Oh damn, that’s crazy. That’s so crazy.” And then he fell silent, staring into space, eyes empty.
Asya was still off in his own London memories when Ree sat back down and said to his partner, “Remember that story about the brothers who got killed over on Mother Gaston? Well, this is the one who lived.”
“Yo,” Asya said, “you the one they tell stories about? Three dead brothers, right?”
D nodded calmly but inside was upset that Ray Ray had told Ree his sad history. He was also surprised at how fascinated these two young men were with it.
“My uncle told me about your family. Lots of people know that story. They all got murked on Rockaway Avenue.”
“It was on the corner of Livonia and Stone, or what they call Mother Gaston now,” D said.
Asya sat back and gazed at D with new eyes. “You that nigga. You the survivor. I’m gonna write a song called ‘The Survivor’ based on your story. If I’d known all this we wouldn’t have had no kind of misunderstanding. Right, Ree?”
“D, you are a real B-Ville homey,” Ree said slowly. “So I don’t feel like I got to worry about you.”
“You don’t,” D assured him.
“But there were people who had plans for those guns. It’s got nothing to do with us now cause we don’t have them and we are no longer involved. But we can’t call them off either.”
“Does this involve a Detective Rivera?”
Ree smiled. “Yo, you don’t snitch, right? Same thing over here.”
“There’s such a thing as dry snitching,” D said.
Ree and Asya exchanged a look and then turned back toward D. “He’s a force out there,” Ree said, and considered his next words carefully. “There’s this real estate company that’s moving into Brownsville called AKBK. Detective Rivera is doing some private security for them. I hear they have big plans for the Ville. You should check them out.”
“This is connected to the delivery?”
“Like he said, you should look into that, yo,” Asya chimed in. “You and your pal Ice.”
“So we were being set up. No—Ice was being set up?”
“D,” Ree said, “that’s as dry as I can be. We good on that now, okay? So could you tell Asya a bit about what happened to your brothers? If you help us there may be a ways we could give you a piece of the song. What you say, Asya?”
“That could happen,” the MC replied.
So, in the spirit of making potential enemies into collaborators, clients into comrades, D shared the bloody tale of his family while calculating the connection between Rivera, Ice, and AKBK Realty.
ASK OF YOU
“I have a lead for you.”
D was coming up Flatbush from the Barclays Center where he’d just purchased a couple of Brooklyn Nets caps—one white, one black—and the windbreaker he was already wearing which fit real nice. His good mood was broken by the older man’s tired voice.
“That’s nice,” D said as he entered Woodland and eyeballed a lovely dark-brown woman with woolly natural hair. He gave her a big smile as she handed him a menu. “I was wondering if our employer was just donating to his favorite African American charity or really wanted us to find this vinyl.”
“Archer is generous,” Edge said through the BlackBerry, “but not that generous. He’d like some results.”
“Good. What’s the lead?”
“You heard of this tech businesswoman Faith Newman?”
“Don’t know her.” D sat down at a table by a window facing out onto Sixth Avenue and watched the slender hostess strid
e back to her station.
“I’m seventy-one,” Edge said, “and I know who she is.”
“I don’t watch reality shows.”
“I do. But that’s not why you should know her. She’s one of them Internet billionaire types. You know who Mark Cuban is?”
“The guy who owns the Mavs.”
“Faith Newman is Mark Cuban with a pussy.”
“That’s a highly unappetizing visual, my friend.”
“I agree, but I see you finally get it. She made a grip by selling a company that helped retailers do inventory better. At least that’s what I read in Forbes magazine.”
“This woman is a record collector?”
“More than that,” Edge said. “She’s a wannabe vocalist. Apparently she’s working on an LP. Sees herself as a sophisticated soul singer. Has idolized Diana Ross, Donna Summer, and various divas since she was a kid.”
“She sounds like a gay man. Anyway, you’re saying she got herself a rare Diana Ross record because she loves La Ross? Okay. This lead . . . is it based on any real information?”
“How would I know?” Edge said. “Motherfucker is paying us to ask some questions. So let’s ask some questions.”
“Hey, is there some kind of deadline on this search?”
“You got something else to do?”
“Lots,” D replied.
“Anything paying like this?”
“No.”
“When you find a better gig let me know, cause I’d like another one too.”
“How’s your health, Edge?”
“I’m okay, except I could use new hips, a revamped heart, and about 50 percent less sugar in my blood. Thanks for asking.”
“Once we find this record, or once he gets tired of us looking, what are your plans?”
“I got no plans.” The old man sounded amused by the thought. “My previous plan was to eat unhealthy, drink a lot, and find a willing woman too young for me.”
The Lost Treasures of R&B Page 11
