Staten Island Noir

by Patricia Smith

  Eventually, though, it got to be time to plan another job.

  Paul had this idea, thinking about it only in that no-words way so The Guys wouldn’t catch on. The little museum on Lighthouse Avenue, the Tibetan Museum, it had a lot of art in it, small statues, some made of gold or silver, some even with jewels on them. He told The Guys about them, how easy they’d be to fence and how much he could get for them, as long as he took them into Manhattan. He knew The Guys would like that, they liked that trip, which sometimes Paul made for skag if his dealer was in jail or something. He told them about the skylight into the square room and the alarm that even if it went off—and he didn’t think the skylight was wired up, but even if it was—no one lived there and the precinct was at least five minutes away. Paul could stuff half a dozen, maybe even more, of those strange statues into his backpack and be out the door and sliding down the overgrown hill out back before the cop car ever pulled up in front. The police would walk around for a while with their flashlights, anyway. They’d try the doors in the wall, and by the time someone came to let them in, Paul would be home stashing the statues under the bed and breaking out his works.

  The best part of the plan was the part he wasn’t thinking in words. No one lived at the museum. No one would stop him. There’d be no one for him to hurt.

  Long ago some people used to live there. Long, long ago the lady who built the museum lived next door, and the gardens were connected and she’d have come running. But there was a wall there now and the people who lived in her house didn’t even like the museum all that much. He wasn’t worried about them. And in the hillside below there were two little caves, for monks and nuns to meditate in. When Paul was a kid and used to come here, sometimes there’d be one of them in a cave for a few days, just sitting and thinking with their eyes closed. They used to leave their doors open and Paul would tiptoe over and hide behind the bushes and peek at them. Once, one of the nuns opened her eyes and saw him and he thought she’d be mad but she just smiled at him, nodded like she was saying hi, like she knew him already, and closed her eyes again. The nuns didn’t look like the ones he was used to. He’d never seen real monks, only in Robin Hood comics, but they didn’t look like this either. These monks and nuns had shaved heads—all of them, the nuns too—and gray robes and big brown beads, like rosary beads but not. He liked the way they seemed so calm and peaceful, though. That’s why he liked to watch them. Even when he was a kid, even before The Guys came, he’d never been calm and peaceful like that.

  But that was a long time ago. No one had used those caves for ten years, maybe more. The museum stopped having monks and nuns come and no one was ever there when the place was closed, and thinking without words Paul knew this was a good idea.

  Even though he also knew he didn’t have a good idea for next time.

  He wasn’t worrying about that now, as he finished his run and swung onto a bus for St. George. He couldn’t. He needed to go get himself together. He’d have loved to get high but there was no way he could shoot up now and still be able to do this job when it got dark. So he went back to his basement apartment, pushed some pizza boxes and takeout cartons out of the way to find his black shirt and pants. He took a shower, even though the clothes were filthy, and then lay down, rolled himself in his blanket, and slept. He hoped The Guys would give him a break; sometimes they liked to scream and yell and wake him just as he was falling asleep. He was braced for it but they didn’t and he slipped away.

  When he woke up it was just after sunset. Excellent. He took his black backpack and stuffed his ski mask and his gloves into it, plus a rope, and a hammer and a pry bar for the skylight. He stuck in a light-blue sweatshirt too, for afterward when they’d be looking for a guy all in black. If anyone saw him to describe him to the cops. But no one would see him; that was the beauty of this plan.

  At the bodega he bought two coffees, lots of cream and sugar, and threw them both back before he got to the bus stop. Now he was buzzed; good. He took the bus up to the corner past the museum and walked down. It was dark, with yellow squares of light glowing in people’s windows, the kind of people who had normal lives and no aliens in their heads. Except for one dogwalker, no one was out. The dogwalker had gone around the corner by the time Paul got to the fence. He climbed it easily, trying to avoid the flags. He didn’t know much about them but they were called prayer flags so he thought it was probably bad to step on them. He slid a little on the wet leaves on the north side of the building but he was completely hidden there from both the street and the next house. Because the building was buried in the hillside he was only maybe ten feet below the roof, and the rope tossed around a vent pipe took care of that. (“Lucky you’re a broken-down skinny-ass runt or that pipe would’ve busted,” Stoom pointed out. Paul didn’t answer.) The skylight, like he figured, was some kind of plastic, and the panels were even easier to pry loose than he’d hoped. He lifted a panel out, laid it aside, and waited. Right about that too: no alarm. He grabbed onto the edge, slipped over, and he was in.

  He dropped lightly into the center of the square stone room, almost the same spot on the floor he used to sit on when he was a kid and came in just to stare. The lady who sold the tickets thought it was neat that a little kid kept coming around, and didn’t make him pay anything. Sometimes if he’d boosted some candy bars he’d bring her one, and she always took it with a big smile and a thank you.

  He slipped the headlamp on and turned slowly, watching the beam play over the room. The place hadn’t changed much, maybe not at all. On the side built into the hill a couple of stone ledges stepped back. Most of the statues sat on them, lined up in rows. A bunch more were in cases against the other three walls. Two of the cases stood one on either side of the door out to the balcony. The space smelled cool and damp, like it was one of those caves where the nuns and monks used to stay. It was still and silent, but not the heavy silence of the shrink’s drugs or the skag. Those made him feel like everything was still there, he was just shutting it out. This, it was a quiet like everything had stopped to rest.

  “What a lovely little trip down Memory Lane,” Larry said acidly. “Can we get to work now?”

  Paul swung the backpack off, opened it, and stepped up to the shelves, leaning over each statue. He wanted them all, wanted to take them and put them in his basement room just to stare around at them, but that wasn’t why he was here and no matter how many he took that wasn’t what would happen to them. He reached out. This one, it was gold. He held it, let the headlamp glint off it. Then into the pack. That one was beautiful but it was iron. Leave it. The two there, with jewels and coral, into the pack. The silver one. That little candlestick, it too. That was all the best from the ledges. Now for the cases on the walls. Paul turned his head, sweeping the light around.

  There she was.

  Just like the first time, the girl in the kitchen, Paul almost pissed himself. A nun, in gray robes, big brown beads around her neck. She smiled softly and Paul’s mouth fell open. It was the same nun, the one from the cave, smiling the same smile.

  “You—you—you’re still here?” he managed to stammer.

  “I’ve always been here,” she replied. Her eyes twinkled, and she stood with her hands folded in front of her. When she smiled she looked like the lady he used to give candy bars to. He’d never noticed that before, that they looked alike. “Paul,” she said, “you know you can’t take those.”

  His voice had rung oddly off the stone walls. Hers didn’t disturb the sense that everything was resting.

  “How do you know my name?” This time he whispered so he wouldn’t get the same echo.

  “You came here when you were a little boy.”

  He nodded. “I used to watch you sitting there. Meditating.”

  “I know. I thought perhaps you’d join me sometime.”

  “I—”

  Larry interrupted him, barking, “Paul! Get back to work.”

  He said, “Just give me—”

  “No!”


  That was Roman. The kick was from him too. Paul’s head almost cracked. The pain was blinding, and he barely heard the nun calmly say, “Roman, stop that.”

  The kicking stopped instantly. Paul stared at the nun. “You can hear them?”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to do what they say, you know.”

  Paul swallowed. “Yes, I do.”

  “Yes, he does,” Larry said.

  “Yes! He does!” Roman yelled.

  “No,” said the nun.

  “I can’t get them to leave.” Paul was suddenly ashamed of how forlorn he sounded. Like a real loser. He heard Larry snicker.

  “Even so,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure how to answer her, but he didn’t get the chance. “Paul?” That was Stoom, sounding dark. When Stoom got mad it was really, really bad. “Do what you came for, and do it now. Remember, Paul: no swag, no skag.” It was one of those times Paul could hear Stoom’s sneer.

  Paul looked at the nun, and then slowly around the room. The headlamp picked out fierce faces, jeweled eyes. “There’s lots of places I could hit,” he said to The Guys. “Doesn’t have to be here. This was a dumb idea. You know, like my ideas always are. How about I just—”

  “No,” said Stoom.

  “No,” said Larry.

  And Roman started kicking him, chanting, “No swag, no skag! No swag, no skag!” Then they were all three chanting and kicking, chanting and kicking.

  Paul staggered forward, toward a statue of a person sitting cross-legged like the nun did. Pearls and coral studded its flowing gold robes. He reached for it but the nun moved smoothly in front of it. She said nothing, just smiled.

  “No,” Paul heard himself croak. “Please. You have to let me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Paul!” Stoom snapped. “You moron loser. Push her out of the way.”

  “No. I’ll get a different one.”

  “I want THAT one!” Roman whined.

  Paul swung his head around. The headlamp picked out a glittering statue with lots of arms, over in a case by the door. He turned his back on the nun and lurched toward it. By the time he got there she was standing in front of it, hands folded, smiling. He hadn’t seen her move.

  “Paul,” she said, “this life has been hard for you. I don’t know why; I think, though, that the next turn of the wheel will be far better.”

  He didn’t know what she was talking about. Wheel, what wheel? All three of The Guys were kicking him now, Roman the hardest, trying to pop his right eye out. “Please,” he said. “Get out of the way.”

  She said nothing, just smiled the ticket lady’s smile and stood there.

  Paul took two steps over to the next cabinet.

  There she was.

  “Please!” he shouted at her. “Stop it!” His head pounded, the pain so searing he thought he might throw up. He could barely see but he knew she was still standing between him and the statues. “Please!”

  “Hit her.” That was Larry. Paul barely heard him through the pain. He tried to pretend he didn’t hear him at all but Larry laughed. “Hit her. With a statue.”

  Paul’s hands trembled as he reached into the backpack, took out the gold statue. “Please,” he whispered to the nun–ticket lady. “Please move.”

  She just stood and smiled.

  Paul lifted the statue way high. As he brought it down on her shaved head he realized he was screaming.

  He felt the impact on her skull, felt it all the way up to his shoulders, his back. The nun crumpled to the floor without a sound. Blood flowed from the smashed-in place, started to pool under her face. Paul dropped the statue; it fell with a splash into the puddle of blood. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”

  “Oh my God is right!” Larry roared a grand, triumphant laugh. “You killed her!”

  “Killed her! Killed her!” shrieked Roman.

  “You know what happens now, don’t you?” Larry said. “You go to jail. Prison, you loser, you go to prison where there’s no smack and we go too! Oh, will that be fun!”

  “No.” Paul could barely get the word out. “I didn’t. She’s not dead.”

  “Really?” said Stoom. “Can you wake her up?”

  Paul kneeled slowly, put out his hand, shook the nun gently. She still had that little smile, the ticket lady’s smile, but she didn’t respond at all.

  “Look at all that blood,” Stoom said. “You’re stupid if you think anyone could be still alive with all their blood on the floor like that. You’re stupid anyway, but she’s dead and you killed her.”

  “Prison!” Roman bellowed. “Killed her! Prison!”

  “No.” Paul stood slowly, shaking his head. “No.”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” Larry said. “Oh, yes.”

  Paul took one more look at the nun, then staggered toward the exit door. An alarm shrieked as he pushed it open. He ran across the terrace, slipping on the autumn leaves. When he got to the railing he stared down; the headlamp shone on branches and bushes growing out of the wall beneath him but couldn’t reach all the way to the street below.

  He grabbed the rail, ready to vault over.

  “No,” said Stoom in that very hard voice. “No, you’re staying.”

  Paul felt his grip tighten on the rail, like The Guys were controlling his fingers. He heard a siren wail. That would be the cops, because of the door alarm. If he was still here when they came, he’d go to prison for sure.

  “That’s right,” Larry said with satisfaction. “Prison for sure.”

  Paul took a slow, deep breath. “No,” he whispered. “She told me I don’t have to do what you say.”

  The Guys yelled, they bellowed and kicked, but Paul loosened his fingers one by one. He climbed over the railing, stood for a minute on the edge of the wall. Then he dove. His last thought was the hope that The Guys wouldn’t have time to clear out of his head before he smashed it to bits on the pavement.

  The impact, the thud of a body landing forty feet below, didn’t penetrate very far into the square stone room. It barely disturbed the resting stillness, didn’t echo at all past the golden Buddha in the middle of the floor. The statue lay on its side on a smooth dry stone tile, beside a backpack full of other statues. Except for the statue and the backpack, and the single panel removed from the skylight, nothing was out of place. The calm silence in the room continued, and would continue once the statues had been replaced in their proper spots by the museum’s new director.

  She would be pleased that something had scared off the thief, though greatly saddened that he’d fallen to his death over the railing at the terrace. As advised by the police, she’d add an alarm to the skylight. She had much to do, as she was all the staff the museum had. She guided visitors, and also sold the tickets, the ticket lady having retired years ago. She didn’t mind the work. She was hoping, even, to soon reopen the meditation caves, to perhaps make the museum not just a serene spot, but a useful one, as it once had been: a beacon for poor souls with troubled minds.

  About the Contributors

  ___________________

  Ted Anthony, a longtime journalist, has reported from more than twenty countries and forty-seven US states. He has been a foreign correspondent in China and covered the aftermath of 9/11 in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the early months of the war in Iraq. He is the author of the cultural history Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song.

  Todd Craig is a product of Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York. He is a writer, educator, and deejay. Straddling fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Craig's texts paint vivid depictions of the urban lifestyle he experienced in his community. He currently teaches English at the College of Staten Island while completing his doctorate in English at St. John's University.

  Ashley Dawson is a professor of English at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and at the College of Staten Island. He is the author of Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postco
lonial Britain and The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature, and coeditor of three essay collections, including Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Global Justice and Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus.

  Bruce DeSilva is the author of the hard-boiled Mulligan crime novels Cliff Walk and Rogue Island, with a third, Providence Rag, on the way. His fiction has won Edgar and Macavity awards and has been a finalist for the Anthony and Shamus awards. He worked as a journalist for forty years, most recently as a senior editor for the Associated Press. He reviews books for the Associated Press and is a master's thesis advisor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

  Louisa Ermelino is the reviews director at Publishers Weekly. She has worked at People, Time, and Instyle, and written three novels: Joey Dee Gets Wise, The Black Madonna, and The Sisters Mallone. Her family summered in Staten Island and it is the home of her husband's family and "the site of a large part of our courtship."

  Eddie Joyce was born and raised on Staten Island. He is working on his first novel. Before he started writing, he was a criminal defense attorney in Manhattan for ten years. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three daughters.

  Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of two story collections, Married Life and History on a Personal Note, and six novels: On Mermaid Avenue, A Disturbance in One Place, Pure Poetry, Hester Among the Ruins, An Almost Perfect Moment, and The Scenic Route. She is a professor and currently serving as chair at Columbia University's MFA program. She taught at Staten Island's Wagner College twenty years ago.

  Michael Largo has published three novels and four books of nonfiction. He won the Bram Stoker Award for Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die. He was born on Staten Island and grew up a few blocks away from where Willie Sutton once lived. He attended the College of Staten Island and, among other things, once owned the St. Marks Bar & Grill in Manhattan.