Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

  The bartender returned and plopped the drinks down before us with such carelessness that Toni’s martini splashed out onto the bar.

  Toni jumped up. “Hey! What’s up with that? If you don’t wanna serve us, just say so. We can spend our money somewhere else. Otherwise you treat us like we’re your lovers.”

  “Yeah? Or what?”

  “I’ll be so far down your craw your stomach will think I’m dinner.”

  “You and what other Halloween leftovers?”

  With an agility that belied his bulk, Toni vaulted the bar, slamming his body into the bartender, sending the fella parachuting into the rack of bottles before he knew what hit him. Toni grabbed his head and cracked it into the wooden bar top. I saw the man’s eye whirl around like a loosened Slinky, then close. Toni released him and he drooped to the floor.

  Before anyone else could react Toni leapt back over the bar, grabbed his coat from the back of the bar stool, and with a flick of his wrist knocked the martini across the bar. He started for the door.

  I was right behind.

  At the door a short rotund man stepped in front of Toni as if he were a power forward taking a charge. Toni didn’t wait for the man to say anything. A chrome-plated automatic pistol appeared in Toni’s hand with the precision of a David Copperfield trick.

  “I don’t think you want to fuck with me, Shorty,” Toni said.

  The man hesitated, then quickly stepped aside. Toni pushed the door and cool air slammed into us as we tumbled onto the sidewalk. We walked about a block down Park Avenue at a brisk pace before I grabbed his lapel.

  “Why the hell did you do that?” I demanded.

  “I hate when people spill my drink,” he said coolly. “That was the second time he did it too.”

  “My car’s on the next block. I’m going home.”

  “I told you we should’ve met in the gay bar.”

  “You know that guy had a point. You are dressed like it’s Halloween.”

  “This is the way I dress. So fuck off. You want me to dress like the pope.”

  “That’s no better than this,” I said. “That’s a Halloween costume too.”

  Toni laughed and lifted a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket.

  “You have a permit for that thing?” I said.

  “I’m a businessman, Blades. I need to be able to protect myself.”

  The street was alive, people going by in clumps, some in animated conversation, others bunched in silence cowering against the cold. We reached my car parked opposite a closed pizza parlor. A couple of kids leaned against the corrugated gate smoking a joint.

  I stopped next to the car. “Did Spencer order the hit on Ronan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I got into my car, started it, and leaned out the window. “You better keep that gun in your pants, Toni.”

  Toni lit a cigarette. “That’s the same advice my boyfriend gives me every morning I leave the house. I didn’t know you felt that way about me, Blades.”

  I drove off laughing. In the rearview mirror I saw Toni fixing his shirt.

  FOURTEEN

  i dreamed I was a child folded into a box like a dress. And blood was oozing from my eyes and my ears. It wasn’t the first time I’d had that dream. When I went to visit my father in Miami several years ago that dream had plagued my nights there, occurring as frequently as a morning erection. It had troubled me no end back then because one time I woke up from the dream and found myself bleeding from a cut on my face. What terrified me was that I didn’t know how it got there. My fingernails weren’t long and it was unlikely that I had cut myself in my sleep. It was difficult to get back to sleep after that, and for the duration of my time in Miami I had trouble sleeping.

  I left the house before Anais and Chesney woke to go to the gym in Flatbush. It had just opened when I got there at six. After changing into black cotton shorts and tee I did the circuit before spending another half hour with free weights, working on chest and arms. Then I went upstairs and ran five miles on the treadmill. I ran hard, away from the dream. Sweat streamed off me, and when I was done I felt used up, but my mind was relaxed.

  I left the gym shortly after eight, rewarding myself with spinach and codfish patties for breakfast from Allan’s Bakery on Nostrand.

  Leaving the bakery I decided to profile Baron Spencer’s office on Empire Boulevard across from the Roller Rink. I didn’t expect him to be there, but since I was in the neighborhood, what the heck.

  Cruising along the weather-warped asphalt of Empire Boulevard I passed the yellow flat building housing Baron Spencer’s community outreach office with its mural of Malcolm X on the front wall. I made a U-turn, pulling in behind a black Explorer with tinted windows. I got out, chewing on a codfish patty, and walked toward the truck, an icy wind licking my face.

  I leaned forward to peer inside the truck. The windows of the Explorer were so dark I could only see my reflection.

  Two men were standing outside on the sidewalk.

  One leaning against the front of the Explorer sipping from a white Styrofoam cup looked to be in his forties. Wide as the truck, with a face that looked like it’d been pile driven into the ground by Hulk Hogan, he eyed me with casual disinterest through dark square glasses. Taller and somewhat older, perhaps fifty, but nothing much to look at himself, with a nose that was too flat, a mouth too wide, and eyes too small, the other man stood leaning on the Explorer’s front door stuffing his face with a glazed donut, a Styrofoam cup in his other hand. His ears moved up and down like a dog on alert; I didn’t know humans could do that and I chuckled out loud. Hearing my chuckle he turned and stared at me.

  “What you laughing at, homo?” the tall man grunted.

  “Homo? What is that? A variation of Homes? Is that the way brothers are greeting each other nowadays?” I teased.

  They reached over the hood and pounded.

  “A homo is a faggot,” the broad one said. “What kind of brother you are if you don’t know that? Brother from another planet.”

  I chuckled as I chewed carelessly. “I’m just fucking with you idiots.”

  The tall one spat out his donut and took a fighting stance. “You better be bringing some funk with that kinda talk.”

  I decided not to answer. Stuffing the last piece of my patty into my mouth I wheeled toward the ground floor entrance of the office. The linebacker moved quickly to cut me off.

  “Where you think you’re going?” he said, backpedaling.

  I stared into the dark glasses covering his eyes. “That office right behind you.”

  I heard Styrofoam hitting concrete with a half-filled thud behind me.

  “What’s your business there?” the tall man said.

  “My business is my business. Why you so goddamn nosy? Is your name Oprah?” I said.

  “Mr. Spencer doesn’t see anyone without an appointment,” the broad one in front of me said.

  I took a step back and to the side, squaring up so that I had both of them in my sight. I was still in the crossfire of their spittle but at least now I could see it coming.

  “He’ll see me.”

  “You don’t look like the president of the United States. Even then you’d still need an appointment,” the broad one said.

  “Then give him a message for me. I heard he had a beef with Ronan Peltier. I’m sure you ho’s know who that is. The man who took away his seat. If I find out he tried to blow up that beef by taking Ronan out, tell him I’ll do my very best to make sure he spends the rest of his life playing hide-the-soap with other convicts.”

  The broad man’s eyes locked on to mine with a nuclear stare, his mouth twisting into a frightening snarl. I took a step forward so he could see my eyes, see that I was not about to be intimidated by his ugly grille.

  The right passenger door of the truck opened and a slim man stepped out wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a long black coat. His shoulders were hunched slightly, as if he was bearing up some incredible weight. He looked t
o be in his fifties, but he could’ve been older. Head cleanly shaved, as was his face, his dark skin was without blemish and looked soft, like the skin of someone who had regular facials and visited spas for relaxation.

  “Do I know you?” he said, addressing me.

  “Do you wanna know me?”

  “What’s with the tough-guy act? You a cop?” His voice plopped like heavy stones hitting the bottom of a well.

  “Did you have Ronan Peltier killed?”

  His laugh was measured, controlled, as if it was some luxury imported from Iraq. “You a comedian, I see. Since you’re providing the morning’s entertainment, the least you could do is tell me your name.”

  “Blades Overstreet. Ronan Peltier was a friend of mine.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I bet you’re not sorry he’s dead.”

  Baron Spencer began to limp away toward the entrance of his office; it was the only part of his deportment that showed signs of weakness. “I let the dead speak about the dead, my friend.”

  I said, “Did you have him killed because he took your seat or because he was boning your girlfriend?”

  The broad man took two steps toward me. Spencer barked at him and he stopped like a trained puppy.

  Spencer smiled, but his face was tight. “See you around, joker.”

  The taller of the two clowns unlocked the door to the building and the three of them disappeared inside.

  I SPENT the next few hours at the club making phone calls. First order of business was catching up on my other commercial venture, the music store. Milo wanted to fire the cashier because he thought she was stealing. I told him to do what he had to do. Then I told him to hire his mother, at least we knew we could trust her. Milo wasn’t amused at all by this since his mother lived in Trinidad and had no intention of leaving.

  I had a beer while going over the publicity package Negus had assembled on Papa Smooth. Already Negus’s connections had been paying dividends. A blurb had appeared in the Daily News just yesterday and Carib News had a full article planned for the weekend.

  I’d seen Papa Smooth once at a show Negus promoted in Prospect Park. I wasn’t all that impressed with his act, but the women seemed to love his curious blend of dance-hall lyrics and stone-love crooning. It was his popularity with the ladies I was hoping to capitalize on.

  Negus had more ambitious plans for Smooth. Looking to start his own record-producing company, Negus hoped to sign Papa Smooth to a contract.

  My mother called to tell me that my brother, Jason, was on his way to New York to see me, but she wouldn’t explain why. I hated when my mother got mysterious about Jason. It usually meant that something was up. And right now the last thing I needed was a Jason emergency.

  Jason was older than me by three years. My eldest sibling, Melanie, was a lawyer in California. Melanie and Jason were children from Mom’s first marriage to a white man. My father, a black man, married my white mother in the sixties, the decade of radicalism and experimentation in America. And I suspect that at the time they both thought they were being hip when they decided to get hitched. Perhaps they were. Perhaps in time unions such as theirs might be judged as catalysts for real racial harmony in America. But theirs proved a bad marriage for everybody; none more so than Melanie, who blamed everything that’s ever happened to her and Jason, from her first zit to not having a date for the prom to Jason’s depression and drug abuse, on my parents’ marriage. Or more correctly, on my father.

  I used to idolize my brother. But after he was expelled from UNC, where he played one year on a baseball scholarship, he came back to New York and almost died from a heroin overdose. One day I caught him scoring coke off a dealer on Fourth Avenue; I decided there and then I wouldn’t rest until I’d gotten rid of every drug dealer in the world. I was fifteen. And like most teenagers, idiotically idealistic. Years later I would join the NYPD, becoming an undercover narco. When I resigned from the Department after five years of buy and busts, I had made not even the slightest dent on the drug problem in New York.

  Never quite able to hold a steady job, Jason has spent the better part of his life in and out of drug rehab. Were it not for his family—my mother, sister, and me—he would be homeless, though for the past six months he’d been sticking to his meds and keeping appointments with his therapist.

  I left the office an hour later and made it home before Jason arrived. Anais and Chesney had not yet returned from their excursion to the Botanical Gardens.

  I fixed myself a cheese and turkey sandwich and flicked on the television in the family room downstairs. On the walls were photos of Chesney falling on the ice in Prospect Park the first day she put skates on and pictures of Anais taken when she was still a dancer performing with a company in Germany.

  I’d just plunked myself down in front of the television when the bell rang. I walked to the front door chewing my food. Normally I’d get the party outside to identify themselves before opening the door, but thinking it was Jason I twisted the brass knob and swung the heavy oak door open.

  The thickset man standing before me had the kind of eyes that could curdle a thought as if it were sour milk. They opened no wider than slots in a coin machine, as if he’d mastered a way to prevent people from identifying the color. His hair was silvery blond with a too earnest sheen, the gloss of hairspray. The jutted clay-colored forehead looked like it’d been abandoned by the rest of his body, and he had dark pig-snout lips. I’d bet my house he’d never get a call to model for Calvin Klein.

  “Can I help you?” I muttered.

  “Blades Overstreet?”

  “And you are?”

  “You don’t need to know who I am.”

  “Then get the fuck off my property.”

  “I want the girl. Her boyfriend was in possession of some property that was ours when he was killed. She’s got it. We want it back.”

  “Get the hell off my property, you ugly fuck!”

  “Even the ugly have a place in this world, Mr. Overstreet.”

  “Not here you don’t.”

  His face expanded into a half smile, his eyes squeezed even tighter. “Consider your family, Mr. Overstreet.”

  I threw the sandwich in his face and slammed the door. I ran upstairs to get my gun. I figured he’d be gone by the time I returned, but the fucker had more balls than an elephant. He was still standing there, his expression as calm as if he’d come begging sugar, his face frozen in that half-dead smile.

  I pointed the Glock at his face. “I’ll give you five seconds to get off my property.”

  He wheeled and, like a rhino with hemorrhoids, walked not too jauntily into the street. A black SUV drove up and stopped. A door opened and Lizard-Face got in. I watched it drive off and then I realized I was trembling.

  FIFTEEN

  i could taste anger in my mouth. Bitter. Acrid. The taste of fear. My tongue was a piece of wet leather. Something about the iciness of that man’s voice and the ease with which he walked right up to my house and threatened me and my family with the reptilian look of death in his eyes had scared me to my core.

  I did not have long to dwell on my anger. Before I could close the door Jason’s blue Honda Civic swung into the driveway. There was a woman in the car with him. He drove up to the very edge of the garage and stopped.

  A balmy wind had sprung up, jangling the needles of the pine tree in the otherwise empty garden. Jason stepped out first in baggy blue jeans and puffy blue and white Giants jacket, a black L.A. Dodgers baseball cap on his head. He leaned against the car waiting for the woman to get out, smiling in a wayward, off-kilter fashion, his lips not really parted but stretched across his teeth as if he was trying to veil a flaw in his dental work, which was not the case, because unlike Melanie and myself, Jason had perfect teeth. Never had a cavity in his life.

  Delicately, the woman got out of the car, first one foot as if to make sure the ground under her would not give, then the other, the way a diva would step out of a limousine in a
movie. When I saw the rest of her I realized the gingerly manner in which she got out was not a fashion induced by delusions of grandeur, it was necessitated by her size.

  She wore the long yam-colored sheepskin coat with aplomb, the color melding with the soft honey dye of her processed hair, which fell to the nape of her neck. After a few seconds looking around, as if surveying new property, with a lacquered smile on the globe of her face, she leaned over and gave my brother a bold open-mouth kiss. He giggled like a schoolboy.

  They walked toward me holding hands. Jason was a big man, but she made him look positively Lilliputian. Her gait was unsteady, as if she was dizzy or suffered from vertigo, legs spread apart, a gladiator walking from the arena after a fierce battle.

  Their nonchalant funeral pace ratcheted up my impatience. That visit from Lizard-Face had let loose worms of dread waggling in my head. I didn’t know who the hell he was, but he knew me, knew where I lived, and had threatened my family. Had I still been a cop I might not have thought twice about shooting him. A man like that would’ve been packing weight. It would’ve been easy to set up as a clean shoot.

  Jason and his woman friend finally made it up to the front door. The gleam in his eyes dazzled so much I wanted to run into the house for my dark glasses. The woman was smiling, a smug skein of satisfaction like the flameout at the end of a Macy’s fireworks display. Her eyes were glazed and watery and I knew right away she was an addict.

  Damn it! What was Jason up to now?

  Across the street a shaggy dog leisurely combed the sidewalk as its owner strolled amiably along, a dark leash hanging from her fingers. A police cruiser slowed down as it got to the woman, the driver said something, the woman laughed, and the cruiser picked up speed and disappeared. Blue-tinged twilight reached its talons across the front of the house, scraping the red wall to reveal blue undertone. Wind whistled like a crooning love-struck bird.

  I hugged Jason and we held each other for what seemed like a long time. Anyone who knew our family would tell you that the river of our history has never been sprinkled with sacred water. But what family’s history was? Even when you try to lock skeletons away in closets, somehow light seeps through awakening those freckled bones and the avalanche of misery taints the river even more. My family was as fucked up as families got. The struggle to get Jason off drugs and leading a productive life had been going on for all of my adult life. All of his, come to think of it. We’d shipped him off to as many rehab centers as there were stars in a New York sky. Getting him to stay with his therapy, or keeping track of whether he took his medication, has been a full-time job for Mom. Though he was older I often found myself thinking of him as my little brother.