The Importance of Being Dangerous

by David Dante Troutt

  Conrad’s Chicken & Waffle was located on West 145th Street. Raul loved their birds almost as much as he loved a chocolate bar. Waffles were a new thing he was trying out, and he bathed his in syrup. The breasts were so succulent he decided to have three. The waffles were so good, he asked the waitress for another round. Strawberry soda was the drink of the day. Together with the fist-sized corn biscuits, he had eaten so much and was bulging so bad that by two-thirty he had to move his Glock to the back of his waist. Home cooking has blinded many men. Being high on indica weed helps too. Raul sat in a lone booth near the back, fat on sweetness and protein, watching the door with a little less focus than usual. It was a small ecstasy he decided right then to start doing daily. He didn’t even want to get up, but nature called.

  “Papi, where’s your bathroom?” he asked a middle-aged man with gray hair and a chef’s white shirt.

  “Just to the rear,” the man replied in Spanish.

  Raul lumbered to the back and practically fell into the little room.

  As soon as the bathroom door closed shut, a SWAT-like commotion converged on the street outside. While Raul rested his Glock on the sink and lowered his baggy pants, six unmarked cars dove to a halt outside Conrad’s. Pedestrians fell into form, checking the cops’ eyes, seeing guns drawn, and scurrying to a safe place from which to watch. There was no bullhorn; folks knew what six cars meant. A paddy wagon screeched to a stop just down the street and men in black fatigues and helmets flew out of the doors and went racing front to back through adjacent stores with automatic rifles ready. While frenzied moms lifted paralyzed children out of the way, Raul enjoyed what a body does best. He sat with his arm on his knee and his hand on his chin and studied cracks in the linoleum floor. He finished just in time to hear what sounded like a chair fall over. Then his ears pricked up. He wasn’t full anymore and grabbed his gun.

  Raul let the door swing open on its own. The bustling restaurant suddenly had gone silent. The man with the white shirt was just trying to shuffle past him when Raul reached out and yanked him in by the collar. His eyes said everything.

  “How many?” Raul asked in Spanish.

  The man tried to unlock his jaw. “Don’t,” he stammered in Spanish. “Too many.”

  Before either man could say another word, a single gunshot rang past them and through the narrow hallway. Raul jerked away from the man, and the man darted through a door on the other side marked “Employees Only.” Raul crouched. What the fuck? he thought. How you just be shooting in a fucking New York City restaurant like that?

  “Raul!” came the loudspeaker at last. “Throw your weapon on the floor and show us your hands!”

  Too mean to be scared, all Raul could think of was, New York’s Fucking Finest. He waited for the first sound of them rushing him. He knew they would. His knees creaked in his crouch. He craned his short neck to peep down the hallway. At the end of it was a door, probably an exit. That’s the way he would go, he decided, but he’d probably have to take a motherfucker out first to clear his way. And hope if he got hit they’d miss center mass. He started to count: one, two—then he heard the quick footsteps approaching and bolted out of the bathroom. The first shot missed him and he got off three or four devastating rounds of fiery light. Raul was almost to the back door when he felt the back of his thigh go numb. With one hand firing behind him, he pushed the exit open with the other. The door swung out to reveal a weed-ravaged garbage area and two rifles opening fire on him. The bullets shredded his chest and neck while others tore up his behind. His body could not fall at first, jerked back and forth by lead into a lifeless spasm. And though he was done, somebody’s good measure blew his shoulder off. Raul’s body finally dropped one way and his head another. In the quiet, his pooling blood seemed to smoke.

  THEY EACH CAME TO THE FULL COUNT in different ways and in different looks than they had in a while, if ever. Sidarra parked her Mercedes right in front and bounced out of the driver’s door in a short royal blue sundress, black heels, and her hair in a dark blue scarf. She walked straight through the bar scene to the back. Griff took three different cabs, a bus, and another cab, eventually walking carefully through the back door wearing thick black nerd glasses, ill-fitting pants, and a crooked-collared shirt with a pharmacist’s pens lined up in the breast pocket. Yakoob parked his Escalade in the alley after circling the neighborhood five or six times and wore platform shoes, a nylon floral shirt, and polyester bell-bottoms. Before he walked through the back door, he put on a wig. The first thing they did was ask Koob why he looked like a clown. He told them he had a gig, the guy who went on after him was dressed in the wig, and the rest was pure pimp. No one said much more. Then Griff’s music came on. The disk began, appropriately enough, with B.B. King’s live version of “The Thrill Is Gone.”

  For the first little while, it just felt right to play pool, to talk pool, and to be billiard artists again as they had been that first night together. Nobody got high. Sidarra brought their drinks in along with bottles so she would not be seen at the bar again. Of course she and Griff wanted to know exactly what Yakoob had said to the police, but they let him unwind to himself.

  “I’m okay,” Koob told them before looking up. “Really,” he added, finally looking into both their eyes. “They expected a dumb nigga, and that’s what I gave ’em. They want Raul.”

  Griff and Sid remained quiet, editing questions in their heads until none were left. Koob had suffered enough interrogation for them all. Instead, they just enjoyed each other’s company, complimenting each other’s good shots and all-righting the missed ones.

  “Fellas, I made deputy today,” Sidarra finally said. They looked at her and smiled. It was clear they didn’t understand. “Deputy to the new chancellor. She’s a sister, you know. Maybe the mentor I never had. Dr. Grace Blackwell. She might be the first person in many years who actually read the things I used to write about the schools.”

  “Hey!” the men chimed. They raised their glasses. They hugged her each the same. They all wanted to say more, as if today were a different day and tomorrow completely unknown, but whatever it was, it wasn’t that. So they just smiled about it and went on playing pool. Sidarra’s news did not fit the mood and would have to wait.

  A few minutes later, Q walked in through the maroon curtains. In the glint of low light, he looked like a man of steel. His presence was suddenly more welcome than ever before. They each could have used a superhero at the moment. Q greeted them all, kissed Sidarra on the cheek, and motioned to Griff with his index finger to come close. It looked at first like a phone call was waiting, but Q immediately leaned into Griff’s ear and whispered a few words. Griff whispered back while Sid and Koob stopped playing. Q said something else, then turned to the other two and said, “I’m sorry, y’all.” Then his big frame shook through the curtains and disappeared.

  They waited for Griff to speak. He put his hands on his hips, searched the carpet, and took a few wandering steps toward the Amistad. Still they waited. “Raul’s gone, folks. Had a shoot-out with the cops this afternoon, and he’s dead.”

  Each of them stepped zombie-like toward the table, and one after the other rested their hands against the siderails. They studied the loose balls with blank faces. All hands were calm but Yakoob’s, whose fingers began to squeeze the hard felt cushion and whose nails dug in with an anger he couldn’t find words for. Griff stated the last of what he knew in a deadpan way, while Yakoob listened without letting go.

  Sidarra wanted to say a prayer, but she was long lost for those words. Raquel would have known better, but Raquel had better never know. “I’m sorry for his mother,” was all she could think to say. “He leaves for one journey, she starts on another.”

  “He loved you, girl, you know that, right?” Koob said, turning to her.

  She nodded and whispered yes, then turned back to the balls on the table. The huge stuffed purple teddy bear still sat in Raul’s favorite corner, a dumb, inanimate smile forever on his mug, a bag or two
of weed and a handful of candy bars in suspended spill from an opening in its side. For the moment, Griff said nothing and showed nothing.

  Fighting a tear, Yakoob said, “He went out like his dad did. The guy just wanted to be a man.”

  “The guy was also ’bout to man us all the fuck upstate for life, Koob,” Griff said without flinching. He gestured across the table. “C’mon. Lose the bear. For real, Koob. Don’t save a thing.”

  Yakoob, in clown wig and pimp clothes, walked listlessly over to the stuffed animal. He lifted it into his arms with no sense of humor and dragged his feet toward the back door. Sidarra opened it for him and he disappeared into the alley. Alone between the buildings, Koob didn’t know just what to do. He looked around for someplace to stash the bear. He looked at a small Dumpster, thought not, and squeezed the purple thing to him. He considered a group of trash cans at the far end of the alley, again squeezed the bear indecisively, and turned toward where his truck was parked. He carried the bear a few steps toward the Escalade, then stopped and turned. He turned again, then stopped and reached into the hole for the candy bars and the marijuana. He saved a bag of smoke as a souvenir and threw the rest into a nearby can. More decisively, he grabbed the bear, walked to his trunk, and opened the door. There were better places to toss such a noticeable thing, he figured. Resolved, Koob closed the door and started back along the side of the truck for the back door. Before he could get there, his head felt light. He reached out and put his hand on the brick to keep himself from falling. Suddenly he saw in his mind an image of his friend shot to pieces by police, and Koob’s legs buckled at the knees. His back slid down the brick wall until he sat with his elbows on his knees. There by the back door Koob wept.

  “Griff,” Sidarra said sternly.

  He had already taken a step toward her from behind. “Sidarra, this is a good thing in its way.”

  “That may be,” she said, preventing an unexpected kiss. “But, c’mon, man, this has gone entirely too damned far.”

  Yakoob walked back inside at that moment. His expression had lightened a little, though his voice remained grave. “Are we cool now?” he said. “Do I need to hire a lawyer?” Before Griff could answer, Koob drained a very large shot of Tanqueray.

  “Yeah, you need to hire a lawyer,” Griff said. “We’re not that cool.”

  “Fellas, wait up a minute,” Sidarra tried to interrupt. “Please. Come sit down with me.” They followed her over to one of the semicircular velvet couches, set down their glasses, and for perhaps the first time, sat down to talk there. “I love y’all. I love y’all. But somehow things got taken a little too literally, may I say that? Now, this has all gone too damned far, like—Griff had a term for it—some thug multiplier—”

  “The thug is dead,” Griff dryly declared.

  “Oh c’mon. We enabled him. We couldn’t stop wanting too much, am I right?”

  They each loved her too in their own way, but they couldn’t bring themselves to admit that just yet. To both of them, Sidarra, in her royal blue, sounded ready to resign herself to a fate just a little better than Raul’s. Despite his tears, Yakoob was ready to beat it.

  “Nah, baby,” he said, swigging his drink dry. “You can’t want too much when you start with nothin’. My lady Marilyn,” he began, pulling a Kool out of his pimp pocket, “she’s never been so happy or laughed so much. You don’t know what that means to me. She’s my heart, y’all. Do you know, you know how we met? We used to be working a night shift at a KFC in East New York. Ever been to East New York? Every other motherfucker in East New York is dead, but they learn how to keep walking out there. We were there, her, me, and another guy, Ernesto, may he rest in peace. We used to be there till midnight from Tuesday to Saturday nights, scrubbing grease off grills, wearing them stupid hats, hoping the next thug on line was too drunk to shoot straight. That’s how we fell in love. Hopin’ we’d live to get the fuck outta there. You don’t want to die with one of those hats on.”

  “What happened to Ernesto?” Griff asked.

  “He split. Bounced. Said it was too dangerous. Became a manager of a White Castle on Atlantic Avenue. One night they held him up, took ’em all down to the basement, locked ’em in the freezer. That’s where the brother died. Froze to death. Mexican guy. Left three little kids behind. I ain’t goin’ out like that.” Koob squeezed off a long puff. “We smarter than you think, Sid. We gonna be all right. I’m telling you. They got who they wanted today, and I’m damned sorry they did. But we gonna be all right. Right?”

  It sounded a little like he needed her to agree with him. Sidarra smiled knowingly and put her hand on Koob’s soft cheek. “I hope you’re right, baby. I know you’re smart.”

  They sat there a moment in silence. Griff let out a long sigh and said, “We’re probably looking at something, blood. I doubt we go down for the Eagleton joint, but they have a way of finding something. I know a lawyer you can talk to, a buddy of mine. He’s good. He’s in Brooklyn too. If it comes to that, he knows how to plead you down.”

  Yakoob looked stunned and laughed out loud. “I’m not goin’ any damn place, Griff, so you need to man the fuck up. I’ll be right here, next to you. Shiiiit.” He looked at Sidarra and pointed at Griff. “Straight ahead, people. Just stay straight.”

  Sidarra giggled a little. She wanted to believe him. He was nearly convincing. Griff’s heavy silence and distant gaze were the only things standing in her way. “You don’t think we should—?” she began. “No, let me say it like this. Everything Raul ever saw was cash, right?”

  “I think so,” Griff said. “Yup.”

  “Okay,” she continued. “Then, at this point, what else do we need to do, Koob? You know the files. You know the ins and outs I could never understand. If you were a man of excessive caution, if you had just one more thing you might do to cover your tracks, what would you do now?”

  Yakoob was busy rolling a joint of Raul’s weed. He had drained yet another full glass of gin. Even so, he pretended to scratch his chin in deep thought. “You know what I would do?” he asked. They looked at him with great suspense. “I would probably dance my motherfuckin’ ass off!” He laughed loudly and bent down to feel it. “Man, I wish my woman was here. How ’bout some disco, Griff? This blues shit is giving me some.”

  Griff pulled his body off the narrow sofa, pulled some CDs from a shelf, and tossed one to Q through the curtain. The three waited like teenagers for something to happen. Yakoob lit the joint, took a long toke, and coughed out a huge puff of smoke. Then there was silence. Sidarra looked at the joint Yakoob was offering her and reluctantly decided to take it. Soon, fading in was the familiar sound of the Trammps from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack singing “Disco Inferno.”

  Yakoob got up and grabbed Sidarra off her seat. He started bucking and jiving to the heavy beat and pretending to hustle. She smiled at him and reluctantly began to move her feet a little. He got a little freaky, spinning and whooping. Koob grabbed his cue stick and used it as a pretend microphone. He lip-synched the words until Sidarra and eventually Griff started to get into it with him. Once they joined him, Yakoob got wild, throwing the wig across the Amistad and juking like it was 1976. There was no denying the beat and nothing for any of them to do but get funky with it. Yakoob had already begun to break a sweat when the chorus came. He grabbed the stick to his mouth like a mike and screamed, “I heard somebody say: Burn baby burn!”

  Again and again, they each twirled and kicked and shook it like they had back in high school. The longer it grooved, the more serious they danced, until the chorus came back each time, and together they looked at each other with big drunken eyes and sang: “I heard somebody say!”

  29

  RAQUEL WAS TRYING OUT A NEW ATTITUDE at day camp, Aunt Chickie was in her garden debugging the last tiger lilies of the season, and Sidarra had let her hair back down over her cheekbones. The Saks Fifth Avenue lobby was full of European tourists caring little and buying a lot.

  “Good heav
ens, what the hell happened to you, girlfriend?” Darrius asked her as she leaned over his makeup counter with a friendly expression and tired eyes.

  “I got promoted, but it’s a long story I don’t have time to tell,” Sidarra answered. “When’s your break time?”

  “Whenever I say so.”

  “Then I’d like you to take a little walk with me, baby.”

  The cloudy Wednesday began to sprinkle a light rain as Sidarra and Darrius strolled out the side door toward Rockefeller Center. Darrius had one of those golf umbrellas that take up most of the sidewalk, and they walked under it together, parting incredulous crowds with impunity. The plaza across the street was regaled in its annual summer flower festival, and the wet fragrance slowed their steps.

  “Let me get to it, Darrius. The following question has no bearing on my love for you, okay?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you a trustworthy friend?”

  “My dear, I am a proud Catholic. You see I work next to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I’m practically a vicar.” He smiled sheepishly. “Practically.”

  “That’s more than enough,” she said. “Darrius, how would you like to live in Harlem?”

  Darrius stopped and looked quizzically at her. “Sidarra, don’t feel sorry for me just because I’m the token black faggot in Chelsea. Membership in that neighborhood has its privileges, you know.” She laughed with him. “Justin, on the other hand, would love it. What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about my place. Well, it’s not mine. It’s legally my aunt’s. I’m thinking of going on a sabbatical for a while. It’s not for sure yet, but if I do, I’d need somebody I can trust living there. Underneath the main apartment you saw is a rental unit. It would mean being a landlord too.”