The Lost Treasures of R&B

by Nelson George

  D heard most of Detective Gerald Rivera’s soliloquy, but parts of it were lost amid the punches being thrown and the reggaeton blasting in the room. He was tied to a chair with no blindfold, with a boxing mouth guard stuffed into his mouth and held in place by a bandanna tied around his head. His nose (at least the part of it that still worked) sniffed out mildew, gas, and industrial-strength cleaning fluid. This basement felt like the one in Canarsie where he’d watched Ice torture Eric Mayer. He could have stopped that, but Mayer had killed Amina, a women he cared for, so he’d walked away.

  Perhaps this ass-whipping was biblical retribution for that moral lapse. This basement wasn’t in Canarsie though. It was in that same building off Livonia where Rivera sold guns to those kids. They were only a block or two from Betsy Head Park. Off in the distance D could hear Night’s silky voice despite the painful ringing in his ears.

  D was surprised at how articulate Rivera was even as the cop hit him—one, two, three times, left, right, left—in the stomach, left ear, right cheek. He’d expected broken English or dull cop speak. Instead, Rivera was as introspective as he was vengeful. I guess he couldn’t have set up all those brothers if he’d been a stereotype, D thought.

  But when Rivera picked up a baseball bat, D shuddered.

  “Mr. D,” the detective said, spittle flying into D’s face. “I was the cleanup hitter on the Bayamón Angels this season. I led the East New York league with a .550 batting average. True, it was softball. The ball don’t move that fast but it does move. Your big black head? That’s just like a soft-tossed pitch.” Rivera cocked the bat high, like Ichiro Suzuki in his prime. “The pitch is coming.”

  Then, from upstairs, came the sounds of a chair falling, a man groaning, and heavy feet. Rivera lowered his bat and listened.

  “Teddy?” he called out. “Teddy, what’s going on?” No reply. Rivera listened some more. “Teddy?” Again silence. The cop moved quickly then, setting the bat on the floor and pulling out a gun from behind his back. Through blurry eyes, D watched Rivera move cautiously toward the stairs, peering up toward the door.

  D had noticed a back door to the basement. He had seen the small, dirty windows on either side of the room, though he knew they weren’t wide enough for him to squeeze through.

  “Teddy, if you hear me, say something!” From under his shirt Rivera pulled out his NYPD badge and kissed the shield like a cross. He slid a small-caliber gun from a holster on his right ankle and aimed at the top of the stairs. Now, guns in both hands, he took a deep breath and charged up, taking the steps two at a time. He banged through the door and D could hear his heavy feet moving quickly through the house.

  D’s eyes danced as his ears strained. He heard a new sound from behind him; the atmosphere in the room changed. Fresh air seemed to materialize from behind him with Night’s voice somewhere in the distance. Then someone hit the basement floor. His body shook and the chair rattled when a dirty hand covered his mouth. Though his nose was likely broken, D could detect the aroma of menthol cigarettes and manure. A voice whispered, “Ssssssshuush.” Rivera’s heavy feet could be heard coming back toward the basement door and the hand left his face.

  The fresh air disappeared. The window closed? D wasn’t sure. He heard soft steps. Stealthy quick. Out of the corner of his right eye D saw movement as his apparent benefactor positioned himself under the staircase. D turned his head but his chair was too far forward for him to see anything but shadows.

  The detective came down the stairs walking backward, his eyes (and guns) aimed at the doorway. Two gloved hands reached between the wood planks and yanked Rivera by his feet, sending him backward, sailing five feet down toward the basement floor. He unleashed a barrage of gunfire as he fell, shooting at the doorway, the staircase, the ceiling.

  Rivera bounced off the floor, his grunt loud and pained. Then a single gunshot went Blam! and hit Rivera square in the forehead. The air was now heavy with gun smoke. A spent shell had landed against D’s right arm and he jumped in the chair more in surprise than pain. He had not peed his pants since childhood but he felt a small bit of urine escape into his underwear.

  “Yo, you alive?” The gritty familiar voice came from the top of the staircase.

  From under the stairs a young, equally familiar voice said, “Yeah.”

  The older voice said, “Not you, fool.”

  “Oh yeah. D looks alive. Got his mouth stuffed up.”

  A pair of young hands suddenly worked at untying his bonds, while a man started coming down the stairs.

  His mouth unstuffed, D’s first words were “Why are you here?”

  Ray Ray simply looked at him and continued working on his bonds.

  “Because,” Ice said as he stood over Rivera’s prone body, “I needed him.” He peered down at the cop, a glare of undisguised mirth spreading across his face.

  On wobbly legs D walked over to where Ice stood. “You just made this boy an accessory to murder. That was not the agreement, Ice.”

  “I needed someone I could trust and right now he was the closest thing I could find,” Ice replied softly. “This was a two-man job.”

  “I wanted to help,” Ray Ray said to D’s back.

  D turned, grabbing the young man by the T-shirt. “You should not be here. In fact, you are not here and you never were. You understand me, you silly motherfucker?”

  Ray Ray pulled out of D’s grasp. “I saved your life, nigga.”

  “No,” D said, “you ruined yours.”

  “You a dramatic motherfucker, aren’t you, D?” Ice said as he rifled through Rivera’s pockets. Satisfied there wasn’t much of value there, he took the small gun out of Rivera’s dead hand and replaced it with the Beretta he had just used. “Cover your ears, you two,” he directed, and then squeezed two shots up the staircase toward the door. “That’ll give those CSI guys plenty to play with. Okay, Ray Ray, you go back out that window. D, you head out the back door. Let’s meet at the McDonald’s in twenty minutes.”

  “I looked fucked up,” D said.

  “You are fucked up,” Ice agreed, “but around here you’ll fit right in.”

  * * *

  D was back in that same McDonald’s where he’d been meeting with Ride. Once Brownsville got gentrified, he figured, he’d do these sit-downs at a Starbucks. After finding an open table near the back window, D used napkins to stop the blood leaking from his nose and the ice from a Coke to nurse his various bruises. He had to get to a hospital, but before he made up the lies he’d need to pull that off, he needed some info.

  Ray Ray came in and sat across from him. D was no longer angry, just disappointed.

  “My moms got the bail money from Ice,” Ray Ray related. “He told me what was up. That you were gonna get snatched up and that he was gonna follow you, but he needed another pair of eyes. I owed Rivera some payback for putting me back in the system. Plus, you have always looked out for me, D. He was gonna murk you.”

  D stared at him and shook his head. The kid’s ghetto logic was sound, except that now he had a body on him and, though Ray Ray didn’t know it yet, the weight of that dead cop’s soul would hang on him for the rest of his days.

  After ordering a Quarter Pounder, large fries, and a Coke, Ice joined D and Ray Ray. He smiled and said, “It all went according to plan.”

  Ice’s angry son had, once D agreed to help him, shown him how to reach his father. It had taken a couple of days. It was all quite strange: the son who betrayed Ice and then Rivera had facilitated this bloody day. D had learned long ago that the values of the street were where logic went to die. Perhaps that whole story about Ice and Rivera was just a setup.

  Ultimately it didn’t matter: Ice, with Ray Ray’s help, had followed Rivera’s car, figuring they’d take D someplace to inflict a little ultraviolence before dumping his body. Now it was Rivera’s body that would have to be dealt with.

  “What did you do with the other cop?” D asked.

  “He’s in a car trunk a couple blocks awa
y. He’s alive. Gonna have him left on the Grand Concourse with a bagful of guns and two bricks of cocaine. A solid citizen will phone in a report about the suspicious car. In a couple of days the NYPD will finally get around to checking it out. Not sure what his story will be to Internal Affairs, but it will be some crazy shit.”

  “What about Rivera?” Ray Ray asked.

  “Who?”

  “Oh,” said Ray Ray.

  “Yeah,” said Ice.

  D shifted in his seat, because he was uneasy and because his body was hurting in a dozen different places. Ice pushed a bottle of pills across the table. “Vicodin. Use them for two days. Then I’ll take you to a clinic where you won’t have to file any paperwork. You’ll be in pain but it’s the way to go. I’ve done it before.”

  D took the bottle, opened it quickly, popped two pills in his mouth, and washed them down with Coke. He stuffed four more in his pocket and pushed the bottle back over to Ice. “This is enough. Wouldn’t like it to become a habit.”

  “Okay,” Ice said, then reached back into his pocket, pulling out D’s cell phone, wallet, and keys. “They had them upstairs. You got mad text messages.”

  Night, Al, and Faith were raving about the show and wondering where he was. They wanted to celebrate. He needed to lie down.

  DIDN’T CHA KNOW

  Amos Pilgrim said, “You look like shit.”

  It was three days after the concert and his torture/rescue from the bloody basement. D was sitting on a sofa in a room on the fourtieth floor of the Trump Soho with a spectacular view of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to his right. Pilgrim was facing him.

  “I hear, and now I see, that you had a problem after Night’s show in Brooklyn.”

  “It’s handled,” D said. He tried to look as poker-faced as he could with a broken nose.

  “You handle things, no disputing that. You need help with the medical bills?”

  “I have insurance.”

  “This isn’t an offer of charity, D. You have been so helpful in helping get Night back on track. I think that young man is the missing link—not just in R&B, but in black culture. Having him back onstage and making music gives me hope for the future.”

  “I will be fine.”

  “You still hold me responsible for Dwayne and Amina’s deaths?”

  “Your stupidity started that whole mess that killed Dwayne.” There was an awkward pause in the conversation.

  “Okay,” Amos finally said, “I accept that.”

  “What choice do you have but to accept the truth?”

  “Can I show you something?” Pilgrim disappeared into a bedroom. A woman’s voice could be heard and then some laughter. He emerged with a leather case an attorney might use for legal briefs.

  “You gonna sue me?”

  “No. Make you some money.”

  The businessman sat down, unzipped the case, and removed three 45rpm records bearing the Motown logo. “I hear you’ve been looking for one of these.”

  D peered at the ancient vinyl and then picked up one of the records. A wry smile crossed his face. “Why three?”

  “I got a copy as a gift from someone at Motown many years ago. Then someone else hipped me to how valuable it had become in the collector’s market. You know how I feel about black history. We haven’t agreed on a lot, but when I heard about you searching for it I grabbed the remaining two.”

  “That’s all that’s left?”

  “That’s all the copies I could find,” Pilgrim said. “I been around this music business some fifty-odd years. I know a lot of people and this was all I could locate. So, you gonna make that British cracker happy?”

  “Should I?”

  “You took his money, D. You wouldn’t wanna be a renigger.” The two shared a laugh, which made D uncomfortable but he couldn’t help it. “Here’s what I suggest—if I may?”

  “Go on,” said D.

  “I’m gonna keep mine. You give one to that cracker. You keep one for yourself.”

  “What would I do with it? Collecting isn’t my thing.”

  “You are not a historian but you know the importance of legacy as much as the next man. You deserve a piece of it.”

  “This doesn’t change anything that happened between us,” D said.

  “One day I hope you’ll feel different. Until then, take these.” Pilgrim slid two of the 45s back in the leather case and passed it to D. He offered his hand, which the big man looked at and then, reluctantly, shook.

  SMILING FACES SOMETIMES

  D was coming out of Prospect Park happily drenched in sweat after jogging a few miles in his Nets basketball shorts and a black T-shirt with the word Night written in script across the chest when he spotted Detective Robinson leaving the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch with a book under his arm. The detective was dressed casually in khaki pants and a sporty sky-blue short-sleeved shirt. He moved with the loose walk of a man way off duty.

  For a moment D wondered if he should call out to the cop. He hadn’t heard from them in a month. Let sleeping dogs lie. Just then Robinson turned, saw D, and smiled tightly.

  “You a big reader, detective?”

  “I have my favorites,” Robinson said, and then sheepishly displayed a copy of Chester Himes’s The Real Cool Killers.

  “What’s that about? Serial killers?”

  “No, it’s a novel. The writer was a brother who lived in Paris and wrote these books about crime in Harlem. Man had a great imagination. They make me laugh.”

  “No Kindle?”

  “Nowadays,” Robinson said, “we spend so much time looking at screens on my job that I really enjoy having paper in my hand. Hey, what happened to your face?”

  D still had a lump on the right side of his forehead courtesy of Rivera. “A security issue while I was working for Night. You should see the other guy.”

  “We haven’t found Ice yet.” The social aspect of the conversation had just ended.

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up. He’s a Brooklyn boy. Where’s he gonna go?” D forced a laugh that Robinson didn’t share.

  “Yeah,” the detective said, “he’ll turn up. We’ll find him in some cellar in East New York. His world is small. He’d be lost on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. You’ve probably noticed you haven’t heard from us lately.”

  “I’m not annoyed that I ran into you, detective,” D said as friendly as he could. “But your partner—I don’t think he likes me.”

  “With all due respect, he read up on you and your family. The way they died. He just thinks you got a dirty gene. Some families do. We see it all the time. I don’t always agree, but you never know. You aren’t wrong until you’re wrong.” There was a silence now. D wasn’t sure how to respond or if he even should.

  “Struggle makes people do things, detective.” With that, D started to walk away.

  “That was a good thing you did,” Robinson said to D’s back. “The Night concert was good for Brownsville.”

  Smiling widely D said, “Thank you. People out there deserve all the positive stuff people around here take for granted.”

  “I agree. And hopefully we won’t have to meet in an official capacity again.”

  “Hell yeah,” D said.

  The two shook hands and D crossed Eastern Parkway, feeling the detective’s eyes on his back.

  FISTFUL OF TEARS

  D got off the 3 train at Rockaway Avenue, as he had thousands of times as a child, and walked across Livonia Avenue past the Tilden projects where he and his family had lived and perished in a New York City of legend and fear. He walked past 305, where his first girlfriend, a plump girl with big bangs named Brenda, had lived on the twelfth floor. He went by the parking lot where his brother Rashid had mastered the art of the stolen car and then the front “lawn,” a patch of greenish dirt where he and his three brothers had played tackle football.

  Behind 315 there was a community center where, back in the day, they’d held dance competitions, kids played board games, and Con E
dison gave out free tickets to the deepest part of the old Yankee Stadium bleachers. D hadn’t been inside the community center in years.

  He wasn’t sure how he’d feel when he got to the next corner. Repulsion, anger, sorrow, and regret were among the feelings that could have rippled through his consciousness causing him to drop to his knees in painful prayer as if this ghetto intersection was an altar to the sacrifices made in Hunter blood.

  But when D finally placed his toes on the hard concrete slabs that constituted the northwest corner of Livonia and Mother Gaston, he felt nothing. He was as numb as if a dentist had administered novocaine to his whole black-clad body.

  Then, creeping through that nothingness, came disappointment. After all this time, D couldn’t believe that walking here hadn’t evoked any passion in him, not even a moist eye. The tears had all drained out long ago, he guessed, in thousands of dreams and nightmares.

  It wasn’t the corner where his brothers died that mattered. His memories were the real site of his pain. This was just a corner under the elevated IRT line, no different than the other three corners here on Livonia and Mother Gaston where, it was quite likely, somebody else’s brother or sister or father or mother had been gunned down, slashed, beaten, or gutted in the hard, sad decades since Brownsville had first been developed.

  After so many troubled years, D had finally accepted that grief wasn’t a location but a state of mind.

  Interrupting these thoughts, Ray Ray called his name and walked up. “Why you wanna meet out here, yo?”

  “This corner used to be important to me,” D said, and then took the leather case from under his arm and had handed it to the young man. Ray Ray unzipped the case and pulled out the 45 single, looking strangely at this ancient technology.