The Darkest Hearts
Page 20
Ice didn’t seem to find this very convincing. “Okay, but will ‘legal’ really protect you? These motherfuckers have money and power. I’m not the only man in these United States who does what I do.”
“Gimme a window to do things my way. If I need you, I’ll reach out. If something happens to me, well, you’d be on your own.”
“Okay,” Ice said, then smiled. “I will fall back. But only on one condition: I would love to pursue an acting career.”
“Ice, c’mon.”
“I know,” he said almost innocently. “My face can’t appear on-screen. But I got stories to tell. Lots of stories. Whether it’s a documentary or episodic TV. Half the shit on Netflix is about crime. Manage me, D, as a storyteller. That way I can pursue my dream and watch your back.”
“You are buggin’, Ice,” D responded with a laugh. “You are really buggin’. But you know what? It makes sense. I have a young writer—a kid from Brownsville—who I can connect you with.”
“So,” Ice said, reaching a hand across the table, “we got a deal?”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
BACK TO THE FUTURE (PART I)
After the unexpected meeting with Ice, D walked back to his place at the Palazzo West. He went out on his balcony overlooking 3rd Street. In his hands was Dwayne Robinson’s manuscript, a Cohiba cigar, and a lighter. He fired up his cigar and looked over at the Grove outdoor mall across the street.
If he burned the manuscript, D could break a cycle. He would finally be released from the past that the manuscript represented, freeing himself to fully live a swanky LA life. These pages were a link to his years as a bodyguard; this old stuff from a dead man’s book. No one would miss it. Strike a match and all that history becomes ash. Not to be forgotten was the possibility that the distribution of this manuscript could lead the NYPD to reopen the cold Mayer case and lead them to go reinterview Jackson/Jones in jail.
A gust of wind hit D’s cigar. The burning dulled. The smoke faded. He tried to relight it, but the wind kept blowing. So he just kept the cigar stuck in his mouth and gently chewed on the moist tobacco. Fires do go out, D thought, but not usually by themselves. They have to be extinguished. A fire can leap and jump and scorch everything in sight. That’s why there are fire departments. Someone has to quell the flames. Someone has to face the heat.
Many ignorant people voted for Trump. Many complacent people didn’t for Hillary. Contemporary American history could be boiled down to very simple sentences. The night Trump was elected, D knew what was going to happen. He had spent too many nights watching bullies at nightclubs: sensing weakness, they pounced.
D couldn’t let his self-interest cloud his judgment, even if that was the twenty-first-century American way. The contemporary mantra seemed be: Focus on yourself, ignore the homeless and poor, escape into the digital world. It was the mind-set that underlined Kurtz’s ethos. It had to be addressed—even if the reply came years after the fact. Kurtz and Pilgrim needed their pasts revealed. The comfortable rich needed to feel the cold palpitation when they realized, despite having money, that they were not safe. Insecurity was everywhere in America. The Kurtzes and Amos Pilgrims of the world needed to feel uncomfortable. D stamped out his cigar and went back inside.
Back at his computer, he typed out a list of names and e-mail addresses of folks and websites who wouldn’t be afraid: Chuck D, KRS-One, RZA, Spike Lee, Russell Simmons, John Legend, Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo, Immortal Technique, Questlove, Black Thought, Meek Mill, Kendrick Lamar, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Okayplayer, Afropunk, Reverend Al Sharpton, Elliott Wilson, The Root, theGrio, Anderson .Paak, the Source.
He went through Google, made a list of MCs who’d been arrested or convicted during the period Mayer and Jackson had been moles in the hip hop industry. He made a list of community organizations and foundations that addressed mass incarceration and police shootings. He didn’t think many in the mainstream media would touch this initially, but he was going to make sure Rachel Maddow, Politico, and the Daily Beast got an early look. D spent the rest of the evening preparing an introduction to the chapter and a bio of Dwayne Robinson for those unfamiliar with him.
D had no idea if anyone would believe this. The Internet was undefeated. It could be labeled propaganda. If a real news agency wanted to follow up on it, how could they? He would release the Kurtz video too. That would help. That video, however, was just part of a larger movie.
He’d given Amos Pilgrim a cleaned-up version of the manuscript that absolved him of all agency in the plot against hip hop. But D was going to release the version Ray Ray hadn’t doctored, the original that Dwayne Robinson had written raw on his white Apple laptop. Pilgrim was a big boy. Let him stand up and answer all the questions. In other words—fuck him. D pressed send and Robinson’s book went out to be read by thousands a decade after it had been written. I owe you that, my friend, D thought. Congrats on its publication.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
BACK TO THE FUTURE (PART II)
D stood stage right almost holding his breath as Night finished the last verse of “White Men in Suits.” The crowd at this homeless benefit concert mixed liberal Westsiders, Eastside hipsters, and music fans from all over town. When the crowd’s cheers and claps filled the Echoplex, D unclenched his butt cheeks and hugged Night as he came offstage.
He looked over his shoulder at Maggie and the other volunteers thanking Night for performing. D’s mind was onto the next act. Tayris’s DJ was already onstage, spinning the instrumental to a spacey trap track. Tayris walked over next to D. The young performer’s hair was in red-tipped twists, and his red, white, and black jacket hung loose on his shoulders, over his tat-covered torso. D instructed, “Make this your crowd.” Tayris nodded and hit her stage.
Tayris Smooth, the waiter from the Four Seasons, had transitioned from a polite server to a swaggering, jumping, “nigga”-spouting, twenty-first-century rapper. To D’s ears, the chorus was a bit choppy, with words popping out of incomprehensible sentences. Bag was a recurring word, which was easy to translate—bag equals money, money equals cars and women and status. It was a most American sentiment, one the president would have concurred with. Tayris and the balding president shared a value system: Cash rules everything around me. Though separated by age, looks, and race, the kid rapper and #45 had a very basic vision of success. The big difference between the Tayris and the #45 was that Tayris was honest about his desires.
Trump, who’d been bankrupt and had sold his soul to Arab oil and Russian dictators, knew that survival was predicated on false honesty and outright lies, ones he told the world and ones he told himself. Trump’s boastful declarations were as ridiculous as those of any kid rocking a mic. Boasts were his shield and, crazy as they were, he knew his audacity won him converts. For a people addicted to the sound and fury of reality TV, social media trolling was the greatest form of entertainment.
At one point Tayris started a “Fuck Trump!” chant, which was picked up enthusiastically by the crowd. Ten minutes later, when he was tossing one-dollar bills into the crowd, there was a frenzy to scoop them up, as if the attendees had turned into strippers. Fuck Trump. Grab money. Trap music. All parts of the American way.
D glanced over at Maggie, who was a little taken aback by Tayris, but her boyfriend, the handsome white man D had seen with her at the yoga studio, was loving it.
After his set, Tayris came over and asked, “So you saw what I do. You down to manage me now?”
“I love your energy and you have stage presence,” D said, “but I’m not sure I understand your music enough to guide you.”
“I got that. But you understand how to make money. That’s what I need to know.”
Against his better judgment, D heard himself reply, “Yes. I know how to do that.”
☬
Excerpt from The Plot Against Hip Hop by Dwayne Robinson (2011):
Hip hop once felt like a movement, and any movement is defined by its enemies and its ideas. Back in the day, hip hop’s e
nemies were legion: major record labels that didn’t believe, R&B and jazz musicians who argued that it dumbed down the culture, booking agents who turned their noses up, venues that didn’t want “those people” in their building. Radio stations that made Chuck D question their blackness. Upper- and middle-class blacks who saw it as a threat to their advancement. Black women who hated its use of “bitch.” White gatekeepers intimidated by its cultural power, and rockers who saw their dominance over teen rebellion snatched away. Politicians and reverends for whom it was vehicle to raise their status and donations.
This was a grand coalition of opposition arrayed to stop this abomination from degrading our nation. And, of course, they failed. Despite Moral Majority disrespect, music industry disregard, and black adult disdain, hip hop could not be stopped. Black kids and white kids, Asian and Latinos, and all the folks in between found solace, inspiration, vision, voice, identity, home, and even God in its beats, rhymes, dances, slang, clothes, sneakers, and technology, reinventing themselves and hip hop year upon year.
Hip hop was powerful propaganda for the innovation, spirit, and mastery of black American culture, as its emphasis on adaptability and improvisation conquered the globe. It was a profound, unexpected victory that was spawned under presidents Ford and Carter, went national under Reagan, and blossomed under both Bushes and Clinton. But was the victory the real deal, or was it a fugazi? Was it a real social and economic movement, or just a sepia-toned brand of merciless capitalism? To be continued.
THE END
NELSON GEORGE is an author, filmmaker, and lifelong resident of Brooklyn. His books include the first four novels in his D Hunter mystery series: The Accidental Hunter, The Plot Against Hip Hop, The Lost Treasures of R&B, and To Funk and Die in LA. Among his many nonfiction works are The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Hip Hop America, and The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture & Style. As a filmmaker he has directed the documentaries Brooklyn Boheme, Finding the Funk, and A Ballerina’s Tale. He was also a writer/producer on the Netflix series The Get Down.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
Published by Akashic Books
©2020 by Nelson George
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-822-5
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-809-6
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-824-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019943605
First printing
Akashic Books
Twitter: @AkashicBooks
Facebook: AkashicBooks
E-mail: info@akashicbooks.com
Website: www.akashicbooks.com
About Akashic Books
___________________
Thank you for purchasing this Akashic Books e-book.
Sign up to our email list to receive special offers, access to free e-book excerpts, and vendor-wide digital sales information. Follow this link to join our list, or browse online to www.akashicbooks.com. Free e-book excerpts are available for multiple platforms at www.akashicbooks.com/subject/digits-ebooks/
___________________
Akashic Books is an award-winning independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers. Akashic Books hosts additional imprints, including Black Sheep for Young Readers, the Akashic Noir Series, the Akashic Drug Chronicles Series, Infamous Books, Kaylie Jones Books (curated by Kaylie Jones), Gracie Belle (curated by Ann Hood), the Edge of Sports (curated by David Zirin), Punk Planet Books, Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Open Lens, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.
Our books are available from our website and at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere.
"As many in publishing struggle to find ways to improve on an increasingly outdated business model, independents such as Akashic—which are more nimble and less risk-averse than major publishing houses—are innovators to watch." —Los Angeles Times
"It's heartening that even as the dinosaurs of publishing are lurching toward extinction, nimble independent publishers like Akashic are producing high-quality, innovative content." —Portland Mercury
"Akashic fits in that very slight category of publishers, growing slimmer every day, whose colophon is a recommendation on its own." —Toronto Star
"Akashic is one of the most impressive of the newer small presses, in part because of editing and production values that rival and perhaps surpass the big houses. We're grateful to them . . ." —Denver Post
"Akashic serves as a prime example of the diversity that marks the small press movement." —Mystery Scene
"What's great about Akashic is its sense of adventure and its smart eclecticism . . . Anything carrying the logo comes with the guarantee that it's worth checking out." —Hartford Courant
"An excellent small press." —In These Times
"[Akashic] fully conveys the charms and possibilities of small press publishing . . . placing a priority on the quality of the books, rather than the possible marketing opportunities they offer."—Poets & Writers
"Akashic is the brainchild of the charismatic Johnny Temple, the bassist of the rock group Girls Against Boys. Temple set up Akashic to give attention to literary works that are ignored, as well as to prove that publishers don't have to exploit their writers." —IUniverse.com
E-mail: info@akashicbooks.com
Website: www.akashicbooks.com