Hard Luck And Trouble

by Gammy L. Singer

  Clot approached, his hands wrapped around a junior cannon pointed at the cops. Zeke trailed and pulled something from the bag he carried. A gun, too? Surprise, he threw dust in the air and scattered some on the ground in front of the cops. Then he waved his hand around and started jabbering that geechie West Indian shit.

  I muttered between my teeth, “Zeke and his damned voodoo.” I cut my eyes at Seltzer and back at Zeke. This was unreal. Zeke was a cuckoo bird of the first order.

  The tall cop went ballistic. “What the fuck is this shit? Where is Harry?” And he looked me up and down.

  “Who is Harry?” I asked.

  “Don’t get cute on me,” the cop said. He was agitated. Maybe Zeke’s business had spooked him. “You got the money?”

  A forgotten childhood ditty surfaced. “I got the money. I got the time. Let’s get together and drink some wine.” Stress made me say it.

  The cops looked at me as if I were crazy. One of them looked me up and down and asked, “What’s with the raggedy pants?”

  I didn’t bat an eye. “A disguise.”

  “You aren’t who I expected,” he said.

  I said, “No shit, Snowflake, that makes two of us. Ain’t dealing with no cops.”

  The two looked at each other. The tall one said, “We aren’t cops.”

  Seltzer busted out laughing; I followed suit. Clot and Zeke joined in. Pretty soon we were all pretty much hysterical. A Kodak moment. Even in the dark, the two cops’ cheeks glowed bright red.

  The short one cut us off. “Not NYPD, okay? You do business with us, there’s more where this came from. Much as you can handle, and on a regular basis. What do you say?”

  That’s when it hit me. Of course. The bad haircuts. They had to be DEA with recycled dope. Wouldn’t it be funny if the dope was Harry’s?

  Well, well, well ... DEA pretzel turds, bent and twisted. I had another sudden thought that made me dizzy. Was this where my tax dollars went? Wasn’t someone in an office somewhere supposed to keep track of this dope? I was indignant.

  “No,” I said loudly and walked away. The tall one fired. Clot reacted and let go a round and three people hit the deck. I didn’t know if they had been shot or not.

  Tall One screamed, “What do you mean no? Who do you think you are? You’re taking this smack with you, you dumb shit.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?” said Clot, the question dotting his eyes. Then he trained his gun on me too. Great.

  “No,” I repeated. I couldn’t help it. I was mad.

  The tall one snatched the dope out of his partner’s hand and came for me, and I’m not proud of this, he wound up and smacked me—wham—right in the kisser. I was thrown off balance and fell on my butt. Smacked with smack. Then he lunged for the briefcase and tried to take it away from me. Seltzer leaped on his back. Tall One’s partner and Clot charged and jumped in, and the brawl began.

  A caravan of trucks rumbled overhead—and we rumbled below. Zeke disappeared. I think he went and sat in the car.

  After only five minutes of fighting I was pooped. The cut opened above my eye again, and blood dotted my shirt—my good shirt. Clot lay knocked out on the ground. Short One held a gun to Seltzer’s ear. Sucking in air and breathing hard, Tall One said, “It doesn’t have to be this difficult, understand? Two weeks from today. Same time, same place. Ten kilos delivered. Play ball, and we’ll all be rich.”

  Me, I didn’t like the way they played. I wasn’t having fun. Tall One picked up the briefcase, shoved the dope at me, and him and his partner split.

  I looked at Clot’s motionless body. What kind of bodyguard was he? I left him knocked out, on the ground. Let Zeke and his voodoo take care of him.

  Seltzer said, “If I’da had my knife, I’da cut him.”

  I dusted the dirt and garbage off my pants and said, “If-Ida was a good horse, Selz, but she ran too late.” I reluctantly picked up the bag of heroin. I added, “It’s a good thing you didn’t have your knife.”

  When we got back to the street where Brother-Man had parked his taxi, it had disappeared. He probably split about the same time the gunshots exploded. Who could blame him? Seltzer and me walked the distance back to my place. Me, with one million dollars’ worth of heroin slung over my shoulder.

  Chapter 34

  I slept for twelve hours. When my eyes popped open, it was midafternoon of the next day. The first thing I saw was the duffel bag of heroin—it eyed me accusingly from the corner of the room. I pulled the sheet back over my head and pretended the bag wasn’t there.

  Hell, I pretended I wasn’t there, and tried to fantasize myself on an island in the Bahamas somewhere. But I wasn’t getting good reception on that picture. My muscles ached too much. Wild imaginings crowded my brain.

  Sounds of the living flowed around me like a never-ending river. Doors banged, telephones rang, and Miss Winnie tripped back and forth above me, the floor creaking under her bulk.

  Seltzer’s last shot before he left was, “What’re you gonna do now, boss?”

  Did I know?

  I groaned and pushed myself out of the bed. Wandering into the living room, I found a note from Seltzer on the coffee table with my car keys on top. It read Kar fist. Took me a minute, but I translated that to mean that he had rescued Stepchild and fixed the carburetor. Good old Selz.

  I jumped in the shower and stood for twenty minutes, my head and hands pressed against the cold tiles in front of me, the water rushing down my neck. Images clattered through my head like stills on a slide projector. I pictured my mother, the way I had when I was young, which was nowhere close to reality—a beautiful white angel goddess who watched over me. Me, with a black daddy and a black mama, and still, in my mind she was white. Well, hell, weren’t all angels white? Was she watching now?

  The image of her in her wedding photo flashed in my mind. And then Montcrieff’s face cascaded through, his face angry and threatening, and the picture became a moving one. His fists smashed into my mother’s face and body. She broke away. He grabbed her by the hair and knocked her to the floor. Her body lay silent and still.

  And then the thought of her body, hanging half out of a basement wall, made me press my fingers to my eyes, to force the image away, but her body kept dropping to the floor in an unending loop of repeated action—and Montcrieff struggled to plaster it into the wall.

  I beat my hands against the tile to stop the pictures, then grabbed a bar of soap and fiercely lathered my body. Hand sudsing my joint, I forced my eyes open and confronted the present. That voodoo shit, did Zeke have any brain cells left? What in the hell was he doing there last night? Did Harry know? Of course he did.

  What was I going to do? I hadn’t been born stupid—but I had done some stupid shit in the last couple of days. Like I was under some spell. Spell. I jerked my head up, and hit the damn shower head. Electric pain zapped my body. The bar of soap shot out of my hand. Motherfuck. I bent down to retrieve the soap, and my right foot slid on the soap scud at the bottom of the tub. I grabbed at the shower curtain, and the whole damn thing tumbled down.

  Ain’t that the shits? To end it all by cracking my skull on the edge of a tub. A piss-poor way to exit this world. I held on to the sides of the tub and balanced like a surfer riding the waves. After a few seconds I let go, and that’s when the idea formed about what I should do. To hell with Harry. He wasn’t going to use me to pollute Harlem. First, I’d return the smack to the cops.

  I climbed out of the tub, slapped a bandaid on the cut over my eye, and decorated the nicks and scrapes on the rest of my body with mercurochrome. Those mutts at the impound lot—did they have rabies? I hoped not, but I’d have to take my chances.

  Life, ain’t it all about chance? Okay, my turn to roll the dice. Dressing, I whistled a few bars of the old Negro spiritual “Nobody Knows de Trouble I’ve Seen,” and that cheered me some.

  An hour later I climbed the stairs to Bundt’s office at the Twenty-eighth Precinct and laid the duffel ba
g across his desk.

  Chapter 35

  Bundt took one look, went ballistic, and hustled me and the heroin out into the hallway. Grabbing me by the collar, he pushed his face close to mine. “What the hell, Brown? What are you doing? Are you crazy? Where’d you get this?”

  “I, uh, found it.”

  “In a pig’s eye.”

  “What difference does it make? I’m turning it in. You should be happy.”

  “Bringing me a load of shit? DEA stamped? You think that makes me happy?” His voice rose to a shout, and his ears turned a bright pink.

  “Brown, I ain’t happy. Do I look happy? I ain’t taking this.”

  His partner, Caporelli, chose that moment to nosy into the hall, and he called from the doorway, “What’s going on, Bundt? Need some help?”

  Bundt released his grip on me. “Naw, it’s all right, Cap, I can handle it.” He thumped me on the shoulder and flicked an imaginary piece of lint off my chest. “Grief has made Mr. Brown here a little crazy, but he’s better now, aren’t you, Mr. Brown?”

  I muttered, “What’s the matter? Can’t trust your partner?”

  “No,” Bundt squeezed out, “he’s more tight-assed than me. He might arrest you—ever think of that?”

  “For doing my civic duty?” I asked.

  Bundt hit the roof. On the float down he said, “How about for possession, Brown? What the fuck do you got up there for brains?” He emphasized his point by thumping me on my forehead with his meaty index finger. Unnecessary; I got it.

  Bundt scooped up the bag that lay on the floor between us and slammed it into my gut. With the wind knocked out of me, it was hard to protest, but I tried. I got out one “But—” before Bundt interrupted.

  “Look, numb-nuts, I’m doing you a favor. Pay attention. I don’t care what you do with that heroin, but you get rid of it—pronto. I ain’t touching it. I’m not getting mixed up with the feds and tanking my career for you. Homicide, that’s what I’m paid to do, and that’s what I do. When you find another dead body, call me.”

  On the street and around the corner I could take him. It’d be no contest. Here was another story, some inhibiting factors, like about two hundred cops to one of me. Caporelli stood watching, smoking a cigarette.

  “You find my mother’s killer?” I said. His eyes turned evil and his head swung around almost like the child’s in The Exorcist—a movie I had seen recently. Bundt moved away and left me standing in the hallway, holding the bag.

  Nothing left to do, so I walked out of the precinct, like Santa Claus at Christmastime, with the bag over my shoulder, past a dozen cops and detectives coming in and going out of the building. No one even bothered to look my way, except for two men with fucked-up haircuts that I passed at the foot of the stairs, one short, one tall.

  Awww, no. What were the odds? I trekked fast, fast, fast, and hustled to the precinct’s front door and sped like a bullet to my car. I snatched open Stepchild’s door and threw the heroin into the back seat. Tires squealing, I got the fuck out of there.

  I peeled around the corner and knew the chase was on. Through my rearview I recognized the blue sedan from the other night, saw it weaving in and out of traffic and steadily gaining on me. A sanitation truck switched lanes and hugged Stepchild’s tail, good, and a rattletrap station wagon blocked the other lane. The sedan tried to shimmy past the wagon, but the old geezer driving it wouldn’t give an inch. Way to go, Pops.

  The sedan dropped back behind the truck and leaned on its horn. In a heartbeat, I made a decision. I gripped the wheel, streaked across two lanes of traffic, narrowly missed the station wagon, and shot down a one-way street, ignoring the blare of horns that accompanied this move.

  “Stepchild, don’t fail me now.” The car fishtailed, but I floored it and roared down the street as the Red Sea parted and cars moved out of my way. At the next intersection I jumped the light, and at Eighth Avenue I swung a left and bumped and bounced down the median strip until I could merge into traffic. A guy driving a Dodge next to me looked over, hesitated, and I zipped in front of him. He flipped me the bird, but that was the least of my worries.

  I’d lost them. At least I hoped I had. I gulped air to calm my racked nerves and, mistake, inhaled the sour stench of my own body—the smell of fear. I was bathed head to toe in sweat. My shirt clung to me. I was shitting bricks and hoped to God they hadn’t made the number on my license plate. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I talked myself down until I could at last breathe normally.

  It wasn’t a good idea to return to the crib. No, I knew that. I looked over my shoulder at the duffel bag on the back seat. Had to get rid of it, no two ways about it. To throw it out the window was impractical. It’d start a riot—hell in Harlem for sure.

  I drove aimlessly for the next half hour; then since it was close to noon, I parked, motor humming, and waited next to the front entrance of Columbia Hospital for Catherine to walk out.

  I hadn’t talked to her in days. Not since the night of Endless Love. She’d probably be surprised, pissed, and speechless, in that order, after I told her what was going on. She clammed up when she was angry. Okay, better give her the Disney version of the last few days.

  She came out of the building, recognized the car, and hips rolling, glided toward me with that wonderful walk of hers. Some woman that was. I decided to be straight with her about the heroin before she stepped into the car. There went the Disney version.

  I told her all of it. She looked at me as if she couldn’t quite believe me. Who could blame her? She shook her head and directed me to drive to her apartment—lips pressed tight all the way. It was lunchtime, she said, and she had to fix her mother’s lunch.

  In her apartment, I gave her mother, Mrs. Walters, a quick greeting. The dope was tucked under my arm and I headed straight for the bathroom and locked the door. I found a razor in the cabinet over the sink, punctured the bags one by one, and dumped and flushed heroin for the next twenty minutes.

  From outside the bathroom door I heard a knocking, and the very small Mrs. Walters inquired in a big foghorn voice, with West Indian directness, “My God, Catherine, what him doin’ in dere, eh? You give he an enema?”

  What else could I do? I grunted loud and long to reinforce her theory of things.

  She padded away from the door and complained loudly, “God, him gone stink up the place to high heaven. Catherine, get the spray. What kind boyfriend you got?”

  Catherine’s response wasn’t nice. She hollered back, loud enough so I could hear her, “The kind who’s full of shit, Mama.”

  Okay, I stopped the grunts and instead serenaded both of them with a few bars of my old standby, “Nobody Knows de Trouble I’ve Seen”—which, in the present circumstances, was an honest expression of grief. I hesitated over the tags, then cut them off the bags and stuffed them into my pants pocket.

  When I finally emerged from the bathroom I wandered through the large apartment and found Catherine in the kitchen, serving her mother lunch. Mrs. Walters glared at me over her soup, and said to Catherine, “Child, don’t you be giving that boy nuttin’ to eat.”

  What could I say? I smiled at Mrs. Walters.

  “Hmph,” she snorted. She wasn’t impressed, dismissed me with a sour look, and returned to her bowl of soup. And that was that. Instant dislike. She hated me—I knew it.

  I sighed. Another hill to climb. As I watched her eat, it occurred to me to ask a question that bubbled through my brain, “Do you happen to know Zeke Johnson, one of my tenants?”

  She twitched her nose, and I saw a glimmer of something. “Zeke, him come from same island as me. Yes, works for me brother.”

  “Really?” I said, as if this were new information. “Doing what?”

  I noticed Catherine, over her mother’s shoulder, making furious signals at me behind her mother’s back.

  “Me brother buys and sells property. Makes plenty, plenty money. Zeke brings him good luck.”

  “Your brother sells pro
perty?”

  “Um ... yes, in real estate business.”

  I stared at her and at Catherine.

  Catherine crossed her arms and amen-ed what her mother told me. “That’s right, like Mama says, Uncle Harry’s in real estate.”

  Did Catherine’s mama live in dreamland? Was it possible that Harry’s own sister didn’t know how Harry made his living? I looked into Catherine’s eyes and they affirmed what I suspected: her mother hadn’t a clue. Unbelievable.

  “Right, right, Mrs. Walters. Uh, about Zeke ...”

  Mrs. Walters ate soup while Catherine explained, “Zeke and my family are both from Trinidad.” I nodded, and then she pointed across the room to what looked to be a small altar. Above it was a picture of the Virgin Mary and other assorted saints. “Courtesy of Zeke.”

  “What do you mean?” I was confused.

  Catherine sighed. “As long as I can remember, Zeke has been a practicing bokor. A priest of sorts—of black magick—and a disciple of the Left Path. Many people, including Uncle Harry, and now my mother, believe in it.”

  I groaned inwardly. Zeke had told me about the Left Path and I hadn’t known what he was talking about.

  Mrs. Walters sucked her teeth at Catherine and cautioned, “Child, don’t be bad-mouthing voodoo. A curse will rain down on you.”

  Catherine rolled her eyes and ignored her mother. She crossed to the altar and picked up a small sack embellished with sequins and feathers, similar to the one that sat on my desk—along with a multicolored glass necklace.

  “Gris-gris,” Catherine said. “This is supposed to protect my mother and destroy her enemies. This is the job Zeke does for Harry.” She looked meaningfully at me. “Destroys his enemies.”

  I coughed. “I’m here to tell you Harry don’t need no help,” I said. It wasn’t a secret the way Harry had made his bones. When he first got to New York, he took on two of the burliest heavy-duty gangsters around. About money they owed Harry. They wouldn’t pay up and laughed at him. Harry laughed back and shot them stone dead right outside Biggie Small’s club and walked away. Everybody tiptoed around Harry after that. They were still tipping, twenty years later. Me included. Harry was one crazy motherfucker.