Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

  I walked over and closed the door.

  “You should get dressed,” I said.

  She looked at me for a second, her expression turning stony, as if she thought I was admonishing her. “I’ll be back,” she whispered, with an exaggerated twist of her mouth. As nonverbal a “fuck you” as I’ve ever seen.

  Before I’d moved out I’d sold most of the furniture; the only pieces remaining in the living room were a bruised coffee table with burns from joints left unattended and an old recliner. I plopped myself into the recliner, staring out the tall windows at the drifting clouds. I looked around the room. It looked larger now with all the furniture gone.

  River returned shortly, dressed in velvet slacks and a purple sweater. The pants fitted snug against her hips, and the power hidden in her legs was quite evident. She carried two white mugs of coffee in her hand. One of them she handed to me. I caught a whiff of dried sex-sweat on her body. She moved to lean against the wall by the window overlooking the street. Resting her cup on the window ledge she began to twist her dreadlocks into two braids.

  I slurped coffee inhaling steam and spicy chestnut. “The FBI came asking about your boyfriend last night.”

  The information seemed to roll off her back like oil off marble. She turned to me, still twisting her hair, her eyes lazy and fretful. “A diplomat murdered in the city . . . that can’t be good publicity for the city. For the country.”

  “Let’s just cut the bullshit, okay!”

  “Are you shouting at me?”

  “What’s going on with you and Negus?”

  “I told you. He came by last night. We got into a little something.”

  “He’s my partner . . .”

  She smiled, her eyes cagey. “Fucking your partner is illegal now?”

  “I’m just trying to protect my business.”

  “What? Fucking Negus is gonna hurt your business? We’re not talking Fortune Five Hundred here, Blades. This kind of thing happens all the time in clubs. I didn’t know you were such an uptight dude. Back off. Stop acting like you’re my man.”

  “I hired you to manage our club, only to find out you’re also a hired gun. That’s enough to make anyone uptight.”

  Her almond-shaped eyes widened. “Why’re you letting me stay here?”

  I sipped coffee and said nothing.

  Her eyes raked my face for an answer. “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” she said.

  “Oh, really? When did you have this epiphany? After you got the keys to my apartment, I suspect.”

  “That is so classless.”

  “You’re an enigma. I don’t like enigmas.”

  She grunted. “We’re even there. You’re pretty much an enigma yourself. And an angry one at that.”

  “What do I have to be angry about? I’m happily married. I’ve got a beautiful daughter.”

  “What about your father? Aren’t you still angry about him for leaving you when you were a boy?”

  “My father and I . . .” I hesitated. “Who told you about that? Negus?”

  “Your father and you, what? Have made up? Some people don’t get a second chance.”

  I got up from the chair. She moved toward me. We stood a few feet from each other and for a second I felt a strange adversarial tension between us, as if we’d been in some kind of struggle before today. Long before today. Something left over from a previous battle.

  She reached out and took the mug from my hand. “Listen, Blades, I know I come off a little stubborn sometimes.”

  “Evasive is more what I’m thinking.”

  “If you knew me you’d understand why.”

  “School me.”

  “Not now.”

  “In the meantime what do I do with you? You’ve put us in a bind at the club. The police are looking for you. The FBI is asking about your boyfriend and you refuse to tell me what’s really going on. I feel like I’ve got somebody else’s shit all over my shoes and I don’t like the smell.”

  Her tone turned angry, defiant. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I’ll be out of here by this evening.”

  I didn’t wait for her to change her mind. I turned away and without looking back walked to the door, opened it, and went out.

  THIRTEEN

  m y meeting with Negus did not take long. We discussed security for the upcoming show with Papa Smooth, a dance-hall artist, and Toxic, the soca band from Antigua. Toxic was wildly popular with teenagers, and we anticipated a large number trying to sneak into the club. And since our manager was now in hiding, I would have to handle the day-to-day operations of the club for the time being.

  Negus’s other gigs as a radio DJ on a Caribbean radio station and fledgling promoter brought him in contact with many top reggae, hip-hop, R&B, and soca artists. This was the main reason I wanted him as partner. While I loved music, and while many of the soca and reggae artists came to my music store, I knew very little about the business of booking artists, contracts, dealing with managers and that sort of thing.

  I met Negus when he came to the music store asking to use my store as a community ticket outlet for a reggae show he was promoting on Randall’s Island. He seemed to be a confident fellow, not pushy but sure of himself, with a big booming laugh. Perhaps his self-confidence came from being a radio personality. My guess was that it grew out of his size. He was a big man, bigger than me, going about six-three, fit-looking with a clean-shaven head and dull, poker-faced eyes.

  He’d been born in England to a Bajan father and Jamaican mother who were both med students at the time. They returned to the Caribbean when Negus was five, moving around doing research in various islands, first Barbados, then Jamaica, then Trinidad, ferrying Negus from island to island, from school to school, preparing him for his radio moniker: Negus “Caribbean Man” Andrews.

  The office was upstairs where the restaurant I had planned as an extension of the downstairs club was under construction. Negus was jittery throughout our meeting, but I didn’t give a fuck. As banal as it may sound, business was business. Getting involved with River was a bad idea. I didn’t tell him this, but I’m sure he got the message from my cool manner throughout the meeting.

  We’d finished our business and I got ready to leave. He leaned against the desk sipping a beer that he’d had throughout the half-hour meeting. I could feel his eyes on me as I packed away the tape recorder into a desk drawer. We recorded our meeting on tape so there’d be no confusion in the future over who said what. You get the idea. I don’t like bullshit, especially when it came to business.

  “It’s no big deal, you know,” he said.

  I closed the drawer and locked it. “What’re you talking about?”

  “River and me.”

  “Then why you bringing it up?”

  “Because you’re sore for some reason. I don’t know why.”

  “If you don’t know why, then drop it.”

  “I ain’t married. Neither is she. What’s the big deal?”

  “Look, Negus, it’s none of my business.”

  “Then why’re you sore?”

  “Business is business, Negus.”

  “Business is business? I know business is business. What else could it be? She called me up, Blades. What was I supposed to say, ‘Sorry, business is business’? You can’t tell me you don’t think she’s fine. You can’t tell me that if you weren’t married you wouldn’t want to tap that ass. It’s no big deal, man.”

  “Were you thinking that when we hired her?”

  “I’m a man, Blades. I think about pussy a lot.”

  “Lots of women come through this club, Negus. And I have to admit most of them come because of you. They hear you on the radio and they want to meet you. Fresh eager pussy every weekend. Why you wanna mess with somebody who works for us? Who’s managing our club?”

  “If I didn’t know better I’d say you’re jealous.”

  “Do what you want, cuz.”

  I
tucked my bag under my arm, grabbed my coat and hat off the rack, and left. Outside the sky had turned over and its bright bluish side was now showing, wafer-thin clouds sailing along quietly.

  AFTER DINNER Chesney went next door to play with her friend Mila, with whom she attended school in Boerum Hill. Mila’s sister Jovan was the student I employed to baby-sit Chesney on occasion. The girls’ father was an ophthalmologist from Guyana who’d escaped an attempted kidnapping in his country five years ago. He had vowed never to go back there.

  I called Noah but got his machine and decided not to leave a message. It was around seven o’clock. Sitting on the sofa in the living room with my legs stretched on puffed pillows, I booted the television with the remote and started flipping through channels. It was cool in the room.

  Anais came downstairs wearing wine-colored sweat-pants and a white turtleneck cotton sweater. She sat next to me and picked up a magazine from a pile on the floor. She flipped pages, then threw the magazine back onto the pile and sighed hard, which made me turn to face her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing. I’m just . . . When is Ronan’s funeral?”

  “I just called Noah but he’s not home or not picking up. There’s a pastor in Brooklyn he’s talking to about the service.”

  I looked at my wife and thought how beautiful her pupils were, so dark they were almost transparent. The first time I met her I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It was a rainy summer day in Central Park. I’d just crossed the finish line at the Citibank AIDS 5K and was hunched over trying to catch my breath when I sensed someone standing over me. I looked up and there she was, handing me a bottle of Gatorade. She was a volunteer with the race sponsors. I took the yellow bottle from her hand and looked into her eyes and smiled. She asked me how I felt; I said fine. She could’ve turned away, on to the next spent participant near her, but she smiled back at me, water dripping from her black Citibank parka, her dark pupils shiny as a cat’s, and waited until she saw that my quickened gasps for air had subsided.

  Before the day was over we’d exchanged phone numbers, and I wasted no time calling her the next day. She accepted an invitation to the movies and later took me to a billiards room in the Village where we played until the sun came up.

  She got up from the sofa and walked halfway across the room before stopping; she turned, lips pursed. “There’s something I have to tell you about last night, Blades.”

  I adjusted my position on the sofa so I could look at her directly. “What is it?”

  She returned to sit beside me on the sofa. “Do you remember Pryce Merkins?”

  “Not really. Who is he?”

  “A businessman. He also produces plays. He’s put some money in a few Broadway shows. I’d gone out with him a couple of times before I met you. I told you how he got me my first agent.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, I had dinner with him last night.”

  “Really.”

  “I should’ve told you last night but I wasn’t sure if you’d be jealous.”

  “Should I be?”

  “No. It’s just that he offered me a part in a play he’s producing.”

  “That’s nice.”

  She bit into her lower lip, holding the flesh between her teeth for a second as she stared out the empty window. “He also asked me to go to bed with him.”

  “A lot of men want to go to bed with you.”

  “Should I accept his offer?”

  “To go to bed?”

  “No, I mean the play.”

  “Do you like the script?”

  “Yes, it’s a revival. Good solid characters. Starts off-Broadway, but could go further.”

  “You’ve never asked me to make career choices for you before. Why now?”

  “Pryce Merkins is a very persistent man.”

  “You want me to have a word with him?”

  “No, that wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.” She stood up.

  “Negus is sleeping with River Paris.”

  “Why doesn’t that shock me? There’s something about that woman. I knew she was after one of you. I thought it was you. Perhaps she decided to settle on Negus because she couldn’t have you.”

  “I hope he hasn’t bitten off more than he could chew.”

  “Negus is a big boy.”

  “She’s a tough customer.”

  “More rough than tough, I’d say. Bordering on uncouth.”

  “What has she ever done to you?”

  “I just don’t like the way she looks at you. I’m going upstairs to read.”

  The phone rang once and Anais picked up the cordless from the side table next to her and greeted whoever it was in her warmest voice.

  “It’s for you,” she said, and handed me the phone.

  “Hello.”

  Toni shouted at me from the other end, “Blades, I got some information for you.”

  “Why’re you shouting?”

  “I’m in a bar. Meet me at Longfellow’s in half an hour.”

  “Why can’t you tell me over the phone?”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Blades? You know I don’t talk business over the phone.”

  “What’s Longfellow’s and where is it?”

  “A bar.”

  “What kind of bar?”

  “A gay bar on Seventh Avenue.”

  “I’m not meeting you in a gay bar.”

  He giggled. “Sorry. Forgot you’re not out yet.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding. Hold on to your jock. There’s a bar for weirdoes like you on Twenty-sixth and Park. It’s called Crow Bar. Half hour.”

  “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  I walked up to Anais standing at the foot of the stairs. “Honey, I gotta go out. Chesney should be home by eight. If she isn’t call over there.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “To meet Toni Monday.”

  “Does it have anything to do with Ronan?”

  “Not now, babe.”

  I kissed her on the lips and went upstairs to dress.

  CROW BAR was a funky joint. Tight spaces filled with lithe bodies, all young, all good-looking, all yuppies. But the music. Pow! Retro as a ’60s Caddy. When I walked in, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” was funking up the joint. Who said yuppies didn’t have taste.

  Sipping his drink slowly, Toni Monday sat at the farthest end of the bar, in a deep alcove all by himself. He was not dressed as flamboyantly as I’ve known him to dress; still, a 300-pound man in pink pants and a skintight blue sequined shirt was as inconspicuous as a giraffe on Park Avenue. I wondered if that was why no one sat next to him.

  I braved the predictable stares and slid onto the stool next to him. He turned to look at me and smiled knowingly, but it wasn’t his usual flirtatious smile. There was a cool edge to his eyes, which were perfectly made up for any photographer who might’ve happened by to catch him in costume.

  “Martini?” I asked, knowing that to be Toni’s favorite drink.

  He nodded, then turned his head around to follow the trajectory of a young man heading out the door. “How’re you, Blades?” he said, after the man had exited.

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Lousy. My boyfriend is driving me crazy.”

  “I didn’t leave my hottie wife to come listen to you complain about your boyfriend, Toni.”

  “Can I get a little sympathy from you, Blades? Why you gotta be so tough all the time?”

  “Truth is, Toni, I’m not nearly as tough as you.”

  He laughed. “Anybody hearing you would think I’m Gotti or something.”

  “You said you had some information for me.”

  The bartender sauntered over and stood staring at me. His face was spread flat as a waffle and sour white like curdled milk; his thin lips curled in
solently up at the edges. But it was his eyes. The stare he gave me. As if he thought it beneath him to have to ask me what I wanted to drink.

  “You drinking, pal, or you here to soak up the sunshine?” he said with a smirk.

  I didn’t like the tone right off the mark and I continued to ignore him. I knew if I opened my mouth I would say something nasty.

  “I’ll have another martini,” Toni said. “What you drinking, Blades?”

  “Bourbon with ice.”

  “Who do you think you are?” the bartender scoffed.

  I gathered he was talking to me, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of a conversation.

  “Go do your job, G-man,” Toni said.

  The bartender waited another second, I suspected to see if I would speak to him, before turning away and back to the rows of bottles on the shelf.

  “What’s it about you, Blades?” Toni said.

  “Come again?”

  “What’s it about you that gets people so riled up?”

  “Must be the company I keep.”

  “Are you referring to me?”

  “I’m not here to look cute, Toni. Nor to get eyefucked by some jerk in an Islanders jersey.”

  Toni finished off the martini he was nursing and pushed the glass to one side. He massaged his right ear, lingering on the gold hoop hanging from the lobe. “Talk is that your politician friend had bad karma. Your boy pissed a lot of people off, starting with that former Black Panther he defeated in the election. He called the man a jailbird. And a woman beater. In public. But that was only the start of his shit. Word is he had a spy in the man’s camp. Because of her your boy got the state attorney’s office to investigate the ex-Panther’s finances. Claimed he was taking kickbacks from contractors bidding on city contracts. Nothing came of it, but the bad press fucked up his campaign. To top it off she was fucking the ex-Panther and your boy at the same time. You got all that?”

  “Lemme see if I follow you. Ronan had a woman spying on Baron Spencer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And this woman was fucking both Ronan and Spencer?”

  “You got it.”

  “Who’s the woman?”

  “I didn’t get a name. Spencer threatened to dump your boy in a dumpster if he ever caught him alone. You know how those ex-Panthers are. Underneath their new millennium suits they’re still sixties thugs.”