New York City Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  The carousel started going round.

  “This is so fun!” she said.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  When the ride stopped, Diane got up from the booth. Katie and I were sitting on the bench. Diane pointed the camera at us. And then Katie kissed me, hard, on the lips. I felt her tongue tickling my teeth, and I opened my mouth gratefully. My eyes were closed. Through the lids, I could see the flash going off. She kept kissing me. It felt wonderful! Another picture. And then it was over.

  “Hey,” she said, “you’re a great kisser!”

  “Thank you.”

  She got up. Diane was scrolling through the pictures. Katie went over to look.

  “Holy shit!” she said. “Did I really do that?”

  “You did!” Diane replied.

  “We’re gonna win this one!” said Katie.

  They walked away, giggling.

  “Wait!” I called out. “You’ve still got one more song!”

  “Next time, handsome,” said Diane. She whispered something in Katie’s ear. Katie laughed like crazy. They turned around and looked at me and laughed even harder. I laughed back. I wanted them to know I understood.

  I got home around midnight. My wife was still awake. She was always awake.

  “What are you smiling about?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  * * *

  Sometime in the last ten years, Coney got hot. The people attending the Mermaid Parade started getting younger. Lines got longer at the freak show. Riding the Cyclone became cool again. I saw a headline, “Not Your Father’s Coney Island,” in that Time Out rag. I raised my prices by a dollar. Summers became extremely active. Then they opened the ballpark, and things really went nuts.

  The new kids seem desperate to me. For fun, or for something. I spent the sixties behind a desk at the Water Department. My kid brother took me to a Springsteen show in 1975. It was okay, but I never really had a taste for rock-n-roll. Not like I want to deny other people their good time. Life just doesn’t seem like a party to me, and it never has. Except with those girls.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the girls and their scavenger hunt. First, I’d never had a kiss like that. Second, the whole idea of a scavenger hunt as an adult activity baffled me. I thought it was something for a child’s birthday party. Just a dumb activity for dumb times, I supposed, like goldfish-swallowing, pole-sitting, or telephone-booth-stuffing. Maybe they’re trying to forget that there’s a war on. Or maybe they don’t know.

  Still, I couldn’t wait for them to come back.

  They showed up late on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. There were still a few people riding the carousel, because it was a holiday. Katie winked at me. Diane waved. I smiled. They leaned against the entrance, smoking.

  It took about half an hour for me to get everyone else out of there.

  “Hello, ladies,” I said, approaching them. “Good to see you.”

  “Good to be seen,” Diane said.

  “Another scavenger hunt?”

  “Yeah,” said Katie. “High-stakes. Winner gets ten grand.”

  “No kidding?” I said. “How can I help.”

  Diane looked around.

  “Pull down the gate,” she said.

  “We don’t close for a little while.”

  She sidled against me, and I felt something stick into my ribs. Her eyes glared.

  “You’re closed,” she said.

  I pulled down the gate.

  “Shut off the lights,” Katie demanded.

  “What?”

  “Shut down everything.”

  “Aren’t you going to ride?” I asked.

  Diane pulled the gun out of my ribs and waved it in front of my face.

  “Do it!” she said.

  I turned the lights off and shut the power down. The grate was closed. Diane nudged me into the booth. She pointed the .38 at my head. Katie stood behind her, with the camera. “Open the cashbox,” Diane said. She then took a picture. The flash went off. “But …”

  “Open the fucking cashbox!”

  I did, and took out the money: $275.

  “Throw it on the floor,” Katie said.

  I hesitated. Diane pressed the gun hard into my ear. I threw the money. Katie took a picture. Then she bent over and started picking the money up. There was enough light coming in from the boardwalk that she could find most of the bills. I looked at her face, back-lit by neon, and she didn’t seem so beautiful anymore.

  “Now get on the floor yourself,” Katie said. “On your back.”

  I did what she asked. Diane bent over me. She put the gun in my mouth.

  “Try anything, and I pull the trigger.”

  Katie took another picture.

  With her spare hand, Diane undid my belt buckle, and the button and zipper of my jeans. She seemed to hover for a second.

  “I can’t do this,” she said.

  “What?” Katie replied.

  “I’m not going to suck this guy’s cock.”

  Oh, please do, I thought.

  “Well, I’m not going to do it, either,” Katie said.

  They both stared at me. I stared back. Maybe one of them would change her mind.

  “Get up and open the gate,” Diane said.

  I sighed and did what they said. Diane caressed my cheek.

  “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Keep the money.”

  “Good boy,” said Katie.

  “But don’t come back,” I added.

  “Don’t worry,” Katie said, “you’ll never see us again.”

  And they were gone.

  I stopped for a couple of drinks on the way home. On the television hanging over the bar was a news report. Some yuppie kids had been arrested trying to stick someone up in front of the TKTS booth in Times Square, and a similar incident had occurred at the Bronx Zoo. They said they’d been on a scavenger hunt. The Scavenger Hunt Robberies, the news called them.

  By morning, the Post would have reports of a half-dozen. Mine wasn’t among them. It never would be.

  I got home around 3 a.m.

  “Who do you think you are?” said my wife.

  “No one,” I answered.

  Just the creepy guy who runs the carousel.

  THE CODE

  BY NORMAN KELLEY

  Prospect Heights

  Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

  —Donald Rumsfeld

  Code had always survived by the philosophy that he lived by; he recognized no other man’s law but his own: Take whatever is needed and fuck all the rest. He was the real thing: a bona fide nigga-man who lived and survived the streets. Unlike an array of fake niggaz who recorded stories about the ’hood, he was the real deal. He had the scars to prove it, the wages of sin, and he made sure that bitchez paid special attention to them when they worshipped his battle-scared body. No bitch ever left his threatening grip without kissing his keloid medals of the street, wounds received from rival niggaz and Five-Os.

  Upon arriving upstate he had shanked two motherfuckahs Day One who looked at him as if he were sweet meat. He wasn’t gonna play that faggot shit. He got their minds right—as well as the whole cellblock. He had no time for that shit. His time was short and he wasn’t going to be cornered into taking sides in simple-minded prison gangs. A tag quickly went down that Code wasn’t somebody you wanted to fuck with. He sat alone and was given respect. OGs nodded and went their way; the younger ones just kept moving.

  Code did his time: He worked in the prison shops, did his daily 300 push-ups, and worked on his rhymes. He was planning to make his own luck when he returned to the city and produce his masterstroke: The Code It would be the story of one bold, bad, crazy nigga’s life in the ’hood, back in Brooklyn, back in Prospect Heights. It would have everything that urban contemporary airplay craved: phat beats, flowing delivery, and the chronicle of a real nigga’s life, not back in t
he day but here in the moment, meaning a nigga telling it like it is—gun-play, lurid depiction of urban scenes, and plenty of fucking. He was going to go even further and have the screams of snuffed-out bitchez mixed in. Of course, no one would know if the cries were true or not (except him), but he would let others know that when he spoke of contemporary urban reality, he was beyond keepin’ it real. He was making it a fuckin’ reality. He had no time for fake niggaz frontin’ a reality he already knew about.

  When Code’s lurid tales of murderous mayhem coursed their way through the underground, neighborhoods that had been relatively quiet spiked in crime. It took awhile for the police to figure out what was going on in certain neighborhoods, but they eventually found a correlation between Code’s underground tapes and an increase in robbery, spousal abuse, and urban cowboy antics. He “Ain’t Fuckin’ Around,” as he relayed in one song:

  There was nobody or

  No one to hold me down

  I’ve kicked every motherfuckah

  Even my mama around

  Niggaz knows me as a man about town

  Ain’t no motherfuckah who doesn’t know that

  I ain’t fuckin’ around

  Or:

  Yeah, baby, let me do it to you

  I knew you’d love it since you’re just cooze

  I’ve never met a bitch that wouldn’t do the do

  It’s my God-given right to smack you & be cruel

  You know you like

  You know you like that

  You know you like it

  And if you don’t you’re still gonna be smacked

  “You Know You Like It” was accompanied by the dickhardening, ass-smacking sound of a woman screaming, “Yeah, fuck me!” That caught the ear of Dr. Rhyme, one of hip hop’s most influential producers, the genius behind Da Sick Niggaz Convention Rhyme put his trackers out to find that “crazy motherfuckah with the sick-ass lyrics and slick production.”

  Word went out on the street, and Code’s hands went into his pocket when two unfamiliar niggaz unexpectedly approached him at his local hang spot, Club Prospect on Franklin Street.

  “Who the FUCK sent you?” he screamed at one, who was down on his knees, mouth bleeding from the pistol whipping he had just received from Code. Code was nervous; rumors were circulating that two of the other chart-topping rappers, Wuz Dat and Killadelic, had ceased their war and were thinking about jacking his ass up: The new nigga on the block was a threat. And Code could always smell another nigga’s evil ways blocks ahead.

  The club went silent: The doors were locked and all the customers witnessed the legendary Bad One in action. Only a few were disgusted by Code’s criminal-mindedness. Most of the patrons, young men and women from the neighborhood, had become inured to the random display of violence, which was increasingly the soundtrack to their reality. Watching Code was like watching a power fantasy in actual play. He was a brother in control and knew how to handle another nigga. Even the club’s exotic dancers stopped moving and watched Code at work. Finally, one of the men was given permission to reach into his jacket pocket and retrieve a card with Dr. Rhyme’s telephone number.

  With his 9mm’s barrel jacked up against the roof of one of the nigga’s mouths, his foot on the neck of the other emissary from Rhyme & Crime Records, dialing his cellphone with his thumb, Code found that the doctor was in New York. The doctor wanted to know if he was ready to be a serious music playa. If so, would he join him for dinner in Manhattan?

  Used to Mickey D’s or curry goat with dirty rice and beans, Code and his thuggish trio of bodyguards rolled into an Upper East Side restaurant on 61st Street. Their presence caused some consternation (it was mainly the display of do-rags, sports jerseys, oversized trousers, and untied shoes) until Dr. Rhyme approached the maitre d’ and interceded. A gray velvet jacket was placed on Code, and his boys were told to park their rumpled asses at a bar that kept him in their eyesight.

  “I’m sorry about that misunderstanding with yo’ niggaz,” said Code as he sat down, referring to Rhyme’s messengers.

  Dr. Rhyme was gracious; as a former Cali gang-banger, he understood the dictates of security; it was the code of the streets. Obviously, his agents hadn’t approached Code with respect, and respect was important. He would dispose of them accordingly.

  Code was nodding to all that Rhyme said, but kept his eyes on the most magnificent-looking one-eyed bitch he had ever laid his own bloodshot eyes on. She was dark, and Code, like most niggaz, tended to go for the current J. Lo model of Boricua negritude. But T-Sound was fine, despite the one eye, and she displayed her finery with even more subtlety when she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. Code assumed that she sucked Rhyme’s dick; that’s what bitchez were good for. That, and giving a nigga a son. Rhyme recognized the trajectory of Code’s male gaze.

  “She’s one of my producers,” said Rhyme. “T-Sound discovered your tape and listened to it. Girl got ears.”

  “And one eye,” Code retorted. Not bad for a one-eyed bitch—and with a wicked ass to boot, thought Code. If she didn’t return, he’d have to start licking the chair she sat in.

  She was Tanya Sonido, from el barrio, and Code was trying to calculate how he could get her away from his new contact, the man who was going to produce his way outta the ghetto. He may have to kill him to snatch her. He had done it before—but before business?

  “Will she be my producer?” asked Code.

  Rhyme looked at him. “You don’t mind a woman producing your sound?” This was unheard of, and Rhyme recognized that this was one nigga who didn’t give a fuck what other niggaz said or thought.

  “Shit, she could suck my dick while doing it.”

  Rhyme nodded: “Yeah, she’s a bad motherfuckah …”

  “You Negroes talking about me?” asked a suave voice.

  The two turned around and found T-Sound standing behind them. She returned to her seat and flashed the whitest pair of teeth that Code ever saw on a black woman. It was also her almond-shaped eye and wide, sensuous smile. She was an older woman, maybe about thirty. She probably knew how to really fuck a man. Not like these amateur bitchez who watched skeezer videos and acted like they could hump. This bitch could probably fuck as well as a dude; that is, putting her back into it as if she had a dick. Men knew how to fuck; bitchez just got laid.

  Dinner proceeded with Rhyme and T-Sound finding their prospective new talent something to eat on the exotic menu. After coffee and cognac, they—Code, along with his boys—went to Rhyme’s nearby hotel room and discussed his vision for his project, The Code

  While fixing drinks at the room’s wet bar, Rhyme saw the effect that T-Sound’s bod was having on Code. It was her pulchritudinous figure and that black eye patch. There was something mysterious, remotely kinky, about a fine-looking woman wearing an eye-patch that got some men’s third leg thumping in their pants. There was heat between them, the bitch and the nigga. Rhyme watched them as they sat down and talked about his lyrics, life, and production ideas; who he listened to and what he wanted to incorporate. It would be a chronicle of gunz, bitchez, and bodacious niggatude. Code was surprised that T-Sound had produced many of the CDs that he liked and had been deejaying in clubs. Code mentioned that he enjoyed listening to women screaming and hollering, and told her that he watched a lot of porn.

  “So do I,” she said, “but I like to watch men getting their asses busted.”

  Code smoothed the waves on his head. “Shit, the only people who do that are faggots.”

  “Yep, and they be the only ones getting it up the ass, baby. I especially enjoy she-males busting a nigga’s ass.”

  “Whut?” He looked at Rhyme and then back at her.

  “Have you tried it?” asked T-Sound, an inquisitive arch rising over her good eye.

  “Fuck no,” laughed Code, slightly put off that a bitch he was getting hard for would ask a 100-percent black man like himself that kind of question. “I’m the fucker; not the fucked!”

  “Too ba
d.” She looked him over as if she were imagining herself doing something very nasty to him.

  “If you were a dude, I’d have killed you for …”

  Tanya tossed her head back. A mane of rich black hair swept through the air as she sat invitingly across from him. Her legs were parted slightly, as if she was offering a taste of herself.

  “Well, come on, nigguh,” she challenged. “You want to slay me like you do those niggaz back in Brooklyn? Or you wanna fuck this Boricua bitch? This black bitch? This disease-free bitch? I got something for you.”

  She rocked her head as if she was good to go, kicking it to him in Spanish. “Yo, popi …”

  Rhyme watched him. Tanya was taunting him before a room full of men, his niggaz. This would have been different if it were just him and the boys, but Tanya was playing with fire. A few seconds went by and Code gave her a hard nigga stare, an icy glance that he had perfected when deciding another man’s fate.

  Rhyme understood what was going on and walked over with a drink and handed it to Code, who took it down in one swallow and said to his boys, Bebop and Cisco, “Let’s roll. I’ll have my lawyer contact you about a contract. Bitch, I’ll see your fine ass in the studio.” He grabbed a fist full of crotch before he went out the door, then added, “You better not bend over while we’re there, or you’ll get this!”

  With that, they left.

  “Damn, that nigga was fine,” moaned Tanya as she grabbed her own crotch, taking a drink from Rhyme. “I wanted to fuck his ass there on the spot!”

  “Shit, that boy would have shot you, Tanya.”

  Tanya reached down and pulled up a Glock pistol from between the cushions of the couch. “Or he would have died trying. How much do you think we can get for him?”

  “Well … if we do this CD, he’ll be a premium,” surmised Rhyme.

  * * *

  A few months later, a contract signed and time spent in the studio, Tanya walked into Club Prospect on Franklin Street and sat down beside Code, who was sticking dollar bills in a dancer’s G-string with his teeth. He could feel himself thickening even when she sat an inch or so away. Lately he had been having dreams about her … pulling her clothes off, inching his way down to her crotch, getting her hot and nasty for his coup de grâce. But now she wanted to talk about some business, music business.