Hard Luck And Trouble

by Gammy L. Singer

  A light snapped on inside Youngblood’s apartment. The tallest boy knelt outside in front of the window. From underneath the security bars, a tray appeared. All three threw something into the tray and the contraption snapped shut and recoiled like a turtle. A minute later it reappeared, and the tallest boy dove for its contents and waved his catch in the air. Even at this distance I could tell they were plastic bags. The other two boys scrambled for the bags like dogs after a bone.

  Motherfuck. Light shot through my head. A drug dealer selling out of my house. My house. Dizzy with rage, I thudded out of my door in my stocking feet and charged like a madman across the street, gun held high. Two of the punks ran like hell when they saw me. The small one wasn’t as swift. He stumbled to his feet and froze, trapped. Frightened eyes peered from under his cap and focused on the gun pointed at his head. I stuffed the gun in my waistband, grabbed the little fucker by the collar, and shook him until his teeth rattled.

  “No, don’t, don’t, Mr. Brown. Please.”

  What the—A girl? I knocked the cap off her head. Jesus. It was Patty, knees knocking, in front of me. Words wouldn’t come, I was thunderstruck. She dived for her cap, seeking safety between the cracks of cement.

  Suddenly, Youngblood shot out of the basement door with a gun aimed at me. I whirled and smacked the gun out of his hand and put all my weight behind a bone-crunching left hook. Youngblood toppled in a heap on the ground next to Patty. She scrambled backward like a crab. I retrieved Youngblood’s gun and placed my foot on his neck.

  I yelled at Patty to get her butt home. She hesitated, and I let out a roar and she bolted, across the street and swiftly up the brownstone’s stairs. The door slammed behind her as I ground my heel deeper into Youngblood’s neck and he screamed in pain.

  Because my pain was just as deep I screamed back just as loud, “Didn’t I tell you to keep your nose clean around here? Didn’t I?”

  He squealed like a pig, “Yes, ye-e-s.”

  “And you didn’t, did you?” A shot to the ribs with my foot lifted his skinny ass off the ground.

  “No-o,” Youngblood blubbered.

  “Well, that means you broke the terms of your lease, asshole. Before the sun sets, you better have your drug-dealing butt out of this apartment and off this block. I never want to see your slimy face around here again.”

  I hauled him to his feet, propped him against the wall, and said, “You understand me?”

  His head flopped on his scrawny neck, but he managed to squeak out a yes, and I let him drop like a sack of potatoes.

  When he hit the ground I heard applause, and turned to see my neighbors gathered on stoops and in the street. Some were dressed, ready to go to work, others stood in underwear and bathrobes. They called out my name, raised their fists, and cheered, and applauded some more.

  I can’t tell you what that did to me. A ripple of shame shot through me. I couldn’t look them in the eyes.

  Embarrassed, I stepped over Youngblood’s body, quickly crossed the street, and disappeared into my house.

  My body shook and I couldn’t control it. Emotion overcame me and I faced the desk and braced my body against it. This was as low as I had ever come. The accusing eyes in the photographs stared up at me. I was a hypocrite and a fool. I swung my gaze around at the suitcase full of money and groaned.

  A knock on the door made me straighten. Wilbur swished into the room in a flowing red silk kimono. I swiped one hand across my eyes and lifted my head.

  “What do you want, Wilbur?”

  He took a moment to take me in and began tentatively, “I heard what happened. This is all my fault. I was the one told Patty to go out and have some fun.”

  “You didn’t mean for her to do drugs, did you? And be out all hours of the morning with a two-year-old baby at home?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. Believe me, I didn’t know she was doing that. She was having a tough time, you know? I thought by watching Josie for her I would give her a little break. It’s all my fault. I didn’t think she would do what she did.”

  Wilbur was as upset as I was. I shook my head. “It’s not your fault, Wilbur. Patty knew what she was doing.”

  “Yes, it is, Mr. B. See, the awful thing is, I knew she was hanging with that scuzz across the street, and I thought, well, he sure ain’t my taste, but at least she had somebody to hang with, him being the same age and all. Honest, Mr. B., I didn’t know the dog was dealing drugs.”

  I said, “I hope to God she ain’t hooked. Turn into another one of these zombies that roam the streets.”

  Thinking about that possibility made us both quiet. Then Wilbur said, “Mr. B.?”

  “What, Wilbur?”

  “You ain’t going to kick Patty out, are you? She don’t have no place to go. She just made a mistake, a stupid mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  I didn’t respond. I was too weary to say anything. Too tired and too disgusted.

  “Mr. B.?”

  I sighed. “I’ll talk to her in a couple of days. Go on, Wilbur.”

  “Oh, you bet, Mr. B. I’m going to ream her ass out. What she did was stupid. I’ll see to it she stays as far away from drug dealers as she can possibly get.”

  Guilt made me choke and dip my head. “Don’t promise the impossible, Wilbur.”

  “You get some rest, Mr. B.”

  “Right. Later, Wilbur.”

  “Tah, Mr. B.” A swish and Wilbur was gone.

  Now I had to face myself.

  Chapter 28

  Stewing in my own juices, and undecided on what action to take, I started in my chair when I heard scratching at the door. Silently I stood, crept to the door, slung it open, and caught Zeke, red-handed, with one of his voodoo bags. I snagged him by the collar and pulled him into the room.

  “For protection, for protection ...” he stuttered. Zeke looked like a cornered rat.

  “What the devil are you doing, and what were you doing last night?”

  “I told you, protection. Obvious you have need of it.”

  A peculiar smell emanated from Zeke’s clothes—a cloying, sickly odor. I sniffed the air and asked, “What’s that smell?”

  Zeke’s face darkened and he brushed his hands together and replied, “Coffee.”

  Well, it didn’t smell like coffee to me, but I let it pass. “Take a seat, Zeke, we need to talk and clear the air.”

  Trapped, Zeke sat down on the rickety folding chair. I didn’t tell him to take that seat—he was just determined to be uncomfortable. I handed him a steaming cup of coffee—coffee that smelled like coffee, I might add—and he accepted it.

  Diplomacy oozed from my pores, and I took a breath and said, “You and me have gotten off on the wrong foot, Zeke, and I’d like to mend that rift.” No response.

  “Okay then, have it your way, but we can at least be civil. We’re grown men, and this stuff is childish.” I leaned forward in my seat. “My mother’s body was buried in a basement wall nearly thirty-eight years ago. You and my father were best friends. I know that.” I showed him the “friends to the end” photo. “See, I got pictures.” Zeke stared at it. “What the hell happened, Zeke?”

  Zeke’s scowl deepened. He didn’t respond right away and bought time by slurping his coffee, which got on my nerves, and then he got up and walked to the window and looked out.

  After a time he spoke. “I come to this country a young man, forty-five years ago. Life was hard then. In Trinidad I worked in the cane field, had a steel band. But no, not enough—not enough for me.”

  Shades of Harry. Zeke’s history was not unique. In the twenties and thirties Harlem attracted blacks from inside and outside this country like a magnet. Zeke paused and I urged him on. “So?”

  “Find a better life here, I thought. More money, live like king. Traded the beaches, turquoise sea, white sands ... for Harlem. In Trinidad a man could pluck he dinner from the ocean, he dessert from tree—a paradise. You ain’t know what that’s like.”

  Zeke s
ounded homesick. The rhythms alternated in his speech—now an American inflection, now West Indian, as he slipped from culture to culture with subconscious ease. I nodded. “I can imagine, Zeke. I can imagine.”

  “Montcrieff came from the South. Alabama. Same time. We meet. Two young men in strange place, big dreams ... become brothers, you know, help each other out, share everything. Then—what happen? We grow apart, want different things. He go right. Me, I find the Left Path.” He turned back to me. “Understand?”

  I thought I understood. I murmured, “Sure, the left path ... But your agreement with Montcrieff—tell me, what ‘services’ did you render in lieu of paying rent?”

  Anger choked Zeke’s throat, his eyes darkened, and he turned to face me. “Montcrieff and me buy houses, same time almost. Black people don’t own houses in Harlem—but we do. Kings then. Then poof, go up in smoke—hard times. I lose mine. Montcrieff work the railroads, a steady job, bought up mortgage, promised to hold it for me, until I could pay him back.”

  I shook my head. “Still don’t understand, Zeke. What was it that you did for him?”

  Zeke smiled an awful smile. “I gave him something, something valuable, something he wanted. Is too bad he couldn’t hang on to it. In case of his death, agreement says property comes back to me.”

  I sat up straight in my seat. “That’s what Part Two of the agreement means? That the property would revert to you on his death?”

  Zeke didn’t say anything, but the muscles on his thin frame rippled, his anger evident. I laughed. “So that’s why you’re upset with me? I own something that you think belongs to you? Obviously, Montcrieff changed his mind.”

  I strode over to the closet, lifted a strongbox from off the shelf, and opened it with a skeleton key I took from my desk drawer. I pulled out Montcrieff’s will and handed it to him, and showed Zeke the date printed at the top of the document.

  “The will was revised several times over the years, but this trust document”—and I showed him that—“along with the will listed me as beneficiary ever since I was ... let’s see, seven years old. It cancels out the agreement with you. Sorry, Zeke, Montcrieff never intended to leave that property to you.”

  Zeke slammed his cup down on top of Montcrieff’s bureau so hard the coffee sloshed over. “Montcrieff a lying viper.”

  “Can’t argue with that. But tell you what, Zeke. I’ll honor the agreement, the rent-free part, because Montcrieff obviously did.” And then I looked at Zeke closely and asked the $64,000 question. “You think Montcrieff was viper enough to kill my mother?”

  Zeke’s eyes brightened and did that weird thing they did, and he spat out, “Yes, oh yes—your father killed your mother. With he bare hands, he murdered she. This is fact. And you, his progeny, are cursed because of it.”

  Not much to say after that. We stared at each other. The expression on Zeke’s face sent a shiver through me—the hairs on the back of my neck lifted.

  He left the room, an icy chill blew in, and left me numb from head to foot.

  Chapter 29

  Bam-bam-bam. Showing no mercy, someone pounded hard against the office door and rattled its hinges. What the hell? I glanced at the clock. Eleven-thirty. “Stop that noise and come in,” I shouted, and Seltzer burst through with a jet stream up his ass.

  “What’s the matter with you, banging on the door like that, you little cockroach? What do you want?” I said.

  “World done gone plumb out of its mind? Took my dog Susie to the vet, that’s how come I’m just now getting here. What’s this I hear about Patty?”

  “You never saw Youngblood’s contraption in the window?”

  “What contraption?”

  “Exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Guess I can throw the same question at you. How come you ain’t seen it? You the one with young eyes. And by the way, you look like pure shit.”

  I felt like it too, and Seltzer picked up on that. But it didn’t stop the barrage of questions.

  “And what’s going on with these for-sale signs all over the place? I ripped the dang things up. You ain’t serious, is you? Huh, upset about your mama, I reckon. But look here, Montcrieff ain’t leave you these houses for you to be selling ’em.”

  That did it. I exploded out of my chair, and it skidded backward and toppled over. “I don’t give a shit about Montcrieff. I ain’t never given a shit about him. And he never gave a shit about me. Montcrieff left me these houses to ease his fucking conscience, that’s all. It wasn’t about me. It never was about me.” I was calling the cows home and I didn’t care who heard me.

  Seltzer had stepped into the eye of a hurricane and he didn’t have a clue. He backed away from the heat.

  “What you saying, Amos?”

  Angrily, I shuffled papers around on my desk. I waited until the thumping in my chest subsided before I answered.

  “It’s payback, don’t you see? Payback for taking my mother from me thirty-eight years ago. My own father killed my mother. Ain’t that a legacy? Living under his roof makes my skin crawl.” I tossed Montcrieff’s photos, like Frisbees, in the wastebasket.

  Seltzer watched and said softly, “Montcrieff done a lot of devilment in his time, he wasn’t no perfect man, but I can’t never think he’d do something like that, Amos, and I knowed him a long time.”

  Then he transferred the cap he held in his hand into a back pocket and picked through the wastebasket to retrieve the pictures. I told him it was good to be loyal, but to let it go.

  “Naw, naw ... ain’t loyalty that be making me move my lips to speak for him. He ain’t done what you say. Why you think he ain’t never married again?”

  “Guilt.” I moved to pick up the chair where it had fallen.

  “Why you think he fooled around with whores and the like?”

  “Guilt. And because he was a pervert. And whores weren’t the only women he fooled with. Did you know he had an affair with Miss Ellie?”

  Seltzer’s head dropped into his chest. Jesus. Everybody around here knew more than me about my parents. He said, “Didn’t mean nothing. Ain’t no one could replace your mama. He loved her, I’d bet my life on it.”

  “Necks been broke in the name of love. My mother’s was. I don’t have to remind you where she was found.”

  “Didn’t have to be Montcrieff. Coulda been anybody. Coulda been your aunt Reba, wouldn’t put it past her. I ain’t never liked the woman.”

  I glanced at him, a question in my eyes.

  “Your mother and Reba battled like crazy before your mother disappeared. Didn’t know what that was about, not my business, but I knew they had a feud.”

  I didn’t reply right away, but wheels began to turn. What Miss Ellie had said ... “You think the fight was over Montcrieff?”

  Seltzer just looked at me. “All I can say is, it don’t sound like Montcrieff. He tried to do right by people—tried to do right by you. Had to swallow his pride to do what he did.”

  I glared at Seltzer. “Enough about Montcrieff.” I cut the discussion and said, “Selz, I need help.”

  I began with once upon a time, but cut quickly to the chase. Seltzer immediately got interested, removed the briefcase off the seat, and sat. When I finished telling about the whole episode with Harry, Seltzer couldn’t contain himself. He took his cap from his back pocket and whammed me upside my head. It shocked the shit out of me. I snatched it away from him, but not before he had whopped me a couple more times.

  “Enough,” I said. “I admit I did something foolish. Now what?”

  “You return that money to Harry Algonquin Bridges as fast as you can, that’s what.”

  “Not that simple. The buy is tonight. Harry is in New Jersey, and Stepchild ain’t running.”

  Thank God Seltzer was a man of action. We were on our way to New Jersey in Seltzer’s machine. It was so raggedy that air blew up from a rotted-out hole in the floor. I saw the street whizz by between my two feet.

  Seltzer and I made it halfway across th
e George Washington Bridge before it came to me, I had no idea in hell where Harry lived. When I told Seltzer he made a U-turn on the bridge and I lost a little water. I finally convinced him that going against traffic on a bridge was not a good idea and he made another U-ee, tires screeching, and we continued on to Englewood, home of Harry Algonquin Bridges.

  Chapter 30

  When we got to Englewood, I told Selz to head for the hills. Harry was probably there, or so my powers of deduction led me to believe. The rich always live in the hills or next to water. The really rich live in hills surrounded by water—on their own fucking island. It’s about seclusion. Harry was rich so he had to be living in the hills, never mind that he was a drug king-pin or the wrong color.

  Money was the great equalizer, so who the hell cared if Harry lived there? Not his neighbors. Being rich and secluded guaranteed that the neighbors didn’t know beans about Harry. I should pass out leaflets.

  To call Catherine and ask where Harry lived wasn’t an option. Harry’s inner circle would know, but that’s why they were inner—they wouldn’t tell an outer like me. No, better to cruise the hills and track Harry down by his cars. Look for that flashy gold Cadillac of his with the vanity tags, or the black limo in which he had meetings, or the red jaguar with the leopard seats, or his incognito car, which everyone in Harlem knew about—the blue Pinto. Harry used to sit in that Pinto, parked on Lenox Avenue and keep an eye on the drug buys. Minding the store, that’s what he was doing.

  Me, I assumed Harry couldn’t park all those cars in one garage, right? They’d be out where I could see them, on the street or in the driveway. Wrong. How was I supposed to know that Englewood folks had four-car garages and lived behind gated walls?

  And the number of houses with rich people in them, you wouldn’t believe. The Englewood hills were overrun with them—as Seltzer and me soon found out. Huh, I’d bet my watch some of those upstanding citizens were as big a crook as Harry.

  We cruised the streets for over an hour, looking. In mansion territory, the homes had electronic gates and high walls in front. Seclusion. It made the task of spotting Harry’s cars difficult, to say the least. After Seltzer called me a fool for the tenth time, I told him to shut the fuck up.