New York City Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  He feared telling Azis the worst. This abomination had given him the most intense pleasure of his life, while the shame crushed him. How could he ever speak with a decent Muslim woman again? Azis’s dispensation meant nothing. He was tainted, dirty, and the shame of it would never leave him.

  “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Beryl said.

  He turned his face toward hers and hoped his anguish didn’t show. “Not compared to you.”

  “Flatterer.”

  “Truthteller.”

  “You are free next Sunday, right? There’s no reason to miss my mother’s party. You’ll enjoy it, it’s a fundraiser for the Jewish orphans of Kazakhstan. That’s your part of the world.”

  Ramzi didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. “Oh yes, Pakistani Muslims and Kazakh Jews, we are almost brothers. And clearly we all look the same to the Jews of Scarsdale, New York.” He had bolted upright, his muscles tense and his neck throbbing.

  “Oh Ramzi, this is America, that sort of thing doesn’t matter. Besides, the only religion I’ve seen you practice is the same one I do—lapsed. Lapsed Jew, lapsed Muslim, what’s the difference?”

  Ramzi had no retort. In truth, he could not be bothered to find one.

  “She wants to raise money to bring the orphans here for six months to get the medical help they need and to learn English, math, and Hebrew so they might get a better start in Israel. My mother’s getting on. She thought maybe you could teach them. We both could. Maybe we could move in with her and look after her and teach the Kazakh children. You speak Aramaic.”

  “How do you know I speak Aramaic?”

  “You told me, remember? The first day at school when you were lost and I told you some of our students were from central Asia.”

  He’d forgotten. What other lapses was he guilty of? It was all too much for him. Great levivot and off tapuzim to die for was one thing, but no amount of knish was sufficient to entice him to embrace the Jews, except for Beryl, of course. Then Ramzi had the merest glimmer of a thought.

  “All right already,” he said, taking pride in his mastery of New York speak, “I’ll come to the party. But only if you let me take your picture.”

  Beryl laughed good-naturedly.

  “Stand here,” he said, positioning her so that his shots would take in the undercarriage of the bridge.

  While she fussed and clucked over her hair, he took a dozen photos, from all angles. Beryl wasn’t in half of them.

  * * *

  As Ramzi walked home on Liberty Avenue that same evening, he spied standing in a doorway the same man he’d recognized so many weeks ago at the paan sellers. As their eyes met, the man left the cover of the storefront and slowly approached, his right hand inside his overcoat even though it was much too warm to be dressed that way.

  The man was called Mohammed, Ramzi recalled in a flash. He had been foolish and naïve to think he could avoid Azis. He would not get away that easily. The best he could hope for was that Mohammed had come to question his absence from the mosque. Mohammed’s expression gave Ramzi little reason to hope for the best. If he made a run for it now, he would die. He would never see Beryl again. Then he admitted the truth to himself: He had abandoned jihad. He was a changed man, an infidel, a fornicator. He wanted to live.

  “There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah,” Ramzi said in greeting.

  “The true believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are the sincere,” Mohammed said, closing the distance between them.

  Ramzi knew the quote from the Qur’an, and the guilt it produced in him squeezed his chest like a vice. At first he thought to reply: Allah, most gracious, most merciful, but that implied a certain culpability, and so instead he said, “Allah is all-knowing, all-aware.”

  He approached Mohammed, careful to keep his movements steady and nonthreatening.

  Mohammed’s face flashed uncertainty, and taking advantage of this brief moment, Ramzi added, “I have taken a woman.” His tone meant to convey that this explained everything.

  “A Jew,” Mohammed said, his mouth pulled tight with contempt.

  “A whore,” Ramzi agreed, although it pained him to speak the words. “A controlling She-Devil to whom I must account for my every movement. And yet, Azis knows the value of the hussy and encouraged me to take her.”

  “No man cowers before a woman. What have you become?” Mohammed’s small eyes narrowed to slits and his glare felt like a laser beam slicing into Ramzi. He moved toward Ramzi.

  “I serve Allah through jihad. That is who I am,” Ramzi said, standing very still. He hung his head as if the shame of his dalliance with Beryl was tangible weight.

  “You are a favorite with Azis. I have seen him have a man killed for less than what you have done. I would be happy to oblige my imam should he change his mind. You are expected at the mosque tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Fail to come and I will be given my chance.” He took two more steps toward Ramzi, meeting him head on, then sidestepped and walked past.

  When Ramzi was sure Mohammed had gone, he headed up the stairs to his apartment. As he put keys to the lock, he caught the end of a message being recorded on his answering machine. “I know you’re probably tired but I’ve got to run a bunch of chairs and plates and flatware over to my mother’s. You wouldn’t help, would you? I could really use you.”

  Ramzi dashed into the apartment and grabbed the phone. Life was mysterious, and he, merely a fallen leaf tossed and blown on the wind. “Beryl, my love, of course I will. And why don’t we visit awhile?”

  * * *

  Had it really been six months since his meeting with Mohammed? The first class of Kazakh orphans were about to graduate. As they fed the pet rabbits and turtles kept at the school behind the Chabad, he realized he’d grown quite fond of them, and was sad to think they’d soon be leaving for Israel. What a pleasure to teach children so hungry to learn.

  He glanced up as Beryl entered the classroom. She leaned against the blackboard beside him and smiled at the children. He wanted to slide his arm around her but knew he couldn’t do that in front of the orphans. He stroked his beard. He’d been surprised by how quickly it had grown in. He’d dyed all of his hair silver, making him look at least fifteen years older than he was. This may be America, but he still equated age with wisdom, and was happy to think of himself as growing wise.

  “Almost done?” Beryl asked.

  He nodded.

  “Good. Mom’s cooking up a storm. She loves you . . . almost as much as I do.”

  Ramzi’s world had shrunk in the relocation. He felt safe here, and he kept to the neighborhood. He walked each day from Beryl’s mother’s house, which was now his home, to the Chabad and back, occasionally stopping at the local deli to pick something up for the evening meal. Except perhaps for the paan, he didn’t miss his old life at all. Beryl was due to move in with him when school ended in June, and he looked forward to that.

  It was Hanukkah and the menorah would be lit tonight. As with many converts, the rituals of Judaism seemed to have more meaning for him than for those who’d practiced from birth. Most of all, he was looking forward to Gloria’s (he had begun calling Beryl’s mom by her first name) famous levivot and applesauce.

  The last few orphans left the room and he took Beryl’s hand as they strolled home to Gloria’s, the chill air turning Beryl’s nose bright red.

  THE INVESTIGATION

  BY BELINDA FARLEY

  Jamaica

  So Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn’t have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens—when the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight had sprung to their feet in a fervor—I, who had so often scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on open palms reverberated. Shoute
d hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I praying?

  I should’ve been taking notes.

  Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the police scanner: a “1010” announcing a possible death at Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters—all four of whom were white— for no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway, housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they’d shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn’t been a complete waste.

  I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn brownstone that had been in my family for three generations. I’d been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class, or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a catch within my circle; I’d escorted no less than three females to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I’d have had enough of my journalism career and would join an uncle on Wall Street.

  The call came in while I was alone in the office. Later— when things had run their course—I thought of a photograph that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.

  The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course, it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb, and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely. Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo—or story, for that matter—ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in J-school.

  There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when I arrived. I didn’t feel too confident as I rapped on the door of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed to get a byline under my belt.

  “Yes?” The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.

  “Evening, uh, morning, sir,” I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn’t too late. “I’m a reporter for the—”

  “Who is it, Gershorn?” A thick, squat woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days appeared at the man’s side. With her elaborate coif, and skin the color of a gingersnap, she could’ve been an aged starlet. In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.

  The man bristled. “We were expecting someone, but not you,” he said. “What is your business here, young man?”

  Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought and hardship that had ever befallen the man was noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing nearly two heads above her.

  “I’m Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item.” I extended my hand. “I’m responding to a call that came over our police scanner regarding a possible death . . . ?”

  The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand. I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.

  “Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police came?”

  The man contemplated my question before opening the door to me. “A crime, young man, not an incident. Come in.”

  I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Claudette,” he called to the woman. “Tea. Tea for our guest.”

  In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.

  On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light was switched on.

  The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the room to memory, to be described later in my story.

  “Do you take sugar?” the woman asked haltingly.

  I shook my head.

  The man sat down beside me, and the woman took a seat across the room at a dining room set of heroic proportion. It spoke of some other time—a time in which there were castles and feudal systems—with elaborate inlaid carvings, mounted on claw feet. An unframed oil painting of a Caribbean landscape hung above it.

  “The Bel-Air Mountains, yes,” the man nodded approvingly as I studied the painting. “That was once the view from my own window. See there?” He rose to his feet and approached the image, pointing. “Those mules, those pigs foraging in the garbage pits? Those palms, those coconuts? Is all Haiti. Is my home.”

  He turned to face me, scrutinizing me.

  “I am Mr. Stuckey,” he said finally. “And this is Mrs. Stuckey.”

  I nodded and waited for him to continue. He did not.

  “You say your son was murdered,” I ventured.

  Mr. Stuckey nodded, satisfied with my inquiry. “In that room, there.” He pointed down a darkened hallway.

  Now it was my turn to give him the eye. What’s going on here?

  Noting my skepticism, the man rose to his feet. “Follow me.”

  Midway down the hall, he paused and flicked on a light switch. A door stood open adjacent to it, though the other doors on either side of the room were closed. Warily, I peered into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom or, rather, the room of an adolescent boy. It was painted a dense, cornflower blue, and decorated with outdated pop culture posters. A large, weathered Table of Periodic Elements hung on one wall, attached with brittle and yellowed tape.

  “That once was mine,” Mr. Stuckey noted proudly, indicating the poster. “When I was a boy, it hung in the classroom of my secondary school, the Petion National Lycée.” His back stiffened with pride at the mention of the name. “It was given to me by the headmaster, a gift. I was to be a great scientist, then.” He paused. “As was Edwin too.”

  The room was small. Shoved under a window that opened onto brick was an unmade twin bed, and not two steps from it stood a modest desk, bowed by a stack of books whose titles were turned away from me. A boom box also sat perched atop the desk, and there—How had I not seen that!—rested an overturned chair and a noose hanging limply from a light fixture above it.

  “Jesus!” I stepped backward and clutched the doorframe in reflex.

  “Yes,” Mr. Stuckey nodded solemnly. “My son was murdered right here. He was twenty-two years old.”

  “Same age as me,” I whispered.

  Mr. Stuckey turned off the light and we returned to the front of the house in silence. I took my seat back on the couch. My tea had grown cold.

  “You will help us?” Mrs. Stuckey piped up.

  “What time did the police arrive tonight?” I asked, pen poised to record the details in my notepad.

  “The police,” she clucked dismissively with a wave of her hand.

  “The police do not come here anymore,” Mr. Stuckey added.

  Anymore? “Were you home then, when the intruder broke in?”

  “The intruder was already here,” Mr. Stuckey corrected.

  “So there are suspects?”


  “Oh,” he nodded enthusiastically, “there are suspects.”

  ‘”Nice,” I added, in spite of myself. “If you could give me a list of the names you gave to the police . . .”

  “The last time the police were here, they took no names. No. Nothing from us,” Mrs. Stuckey fumed.

  The last time? “The last time this evening, the last time . . . ?”

  “The last time one month ago,” Mr. Stuckey said stoically.

  “A month ago?” I closed my notepad. “Sir, listen. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, or what it is you want me to—” I fell silent as I shifted my position on the sofa, making sure that I had all of my belongings. The Stuckeys looked at me helplessly, and I was beginning to feel spooked.

  At that, a girl stepped into the room from the hallway.

  “I’ll talk to him, Papa,” she said. “I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” The girl was brazen. She stood with her hand on one hip, and she blinked her eyelashes once she was done taking me in. She wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that was knotted tightly in the center of her back. Her speech was not the patois of her West Indian parents, who only nodded as she signaled me with a beckoning finger to the door.

  Once we stepped off the porch, she immediately lit a cigarette. “I heard everything,” she said, exhaling.

  “I’m a reporter for the—”

  “I said everything.” She rolled her eyes. “Walk with me.”

  The girl pirouetted gracefully as a ballerina and took off down the block. She was short, like her mother, barely over five feet, and though I was nearly six feet, I had to jog to keep up with her.

  “So, you from around here?” I asked, falling back on my usual opening line. Dumb! Some reporter I was, but I didn’t know where to begin with this girl. I was ecstatic just to be walking with her. In an instant, my street cred had risen to the umpteenth degree, and the few brothers hanging out seemed to be getting a kick out of watching a dude like me, in my skippies and Polo, pursuing a sister like her, whose mane of naturally red ringlets blew behind her like a superhero’s cape.