by Nina Siegal
I looked out the window over the top of the roaring A/C. Across Broadway my good neighbors, the people of New York, were walking with bags of bagels from H&H, picking up their gravlax and Gouda at Zabar’s, stopping at the corner kiosk to browse half-price books. There was something comforting about the diurnal life of the Upper West Side, like one of those old-time ten-cent dioramas; slip a coin into the slot and a whole miniature circus lights up and winds into action.
I got dressed in a breezy blouse and jeans and put in a call to Cabeza, telling him I wanted to see the Bigs Cru about Wallace. He said he’d facilitate, and about five minutes later he phoned back. “You’re set,” he said, telling me where to find them. “They’ll be expecting you.”
Downstairs, I bought myself another cup of coffee at Zabar’s takeout. I didn’t need that one either. It just tasted good. I stopped in at H&H to smell the hot bagels, dropping a quarter in the palm of the panhandler outside the door. Maybe I wasn’t any richer than yesterday, but I felt like I could spare a few coins for my fellow man. I walked downtown to Seventy-ninth Street to catch the 1/9 subway. The train came in a few minutes, and I hopped on, singing a little tune, “Con los pobres soy, noble soy.”
The first thing I saw as I descended the stairway from the elevated stop at 207th Street was Stain. Not the man, but the mug. He loomed large in black and white on the sidewall at Diaz Pizzeria, chin to brow, ear to ear. It was the face I’d seen now in so many photos, outlined in Magic Marker, blown up five hundred–fold. He was smiling just the same way as he had in Cabeza’s flick, that huge grin like a kindling fire burning up through his face. But this was an older Stain than the one with the peach fuzz; this was a man in his early forties, with age in his eyes, wrinkles fanning out to his temples. It hit me then, powerful and sad, that this would be the closest I’d get to a present-day likeness. The background was already painted blue, and around his head was a giant gold halo, just like in a portrait of a medieval saint.
Bigs Cru was there, too: Clu standing on a scaffold, painting, Wicked Rick, below him on the pavement, and Rx sitting on the sidewalk, his back against the wall. Clu was in the center of Wallace’s eye. He was holding Stain’s portrait in a frame and painting the outlines of the pupil in black. Then he traded cans, switching to brown to make the lighter circles of the iris; the pavement underneath him was littered with used cans and a couple of milk crates were already full of empties.
Wicked Rick was near the curb, his back to me, looking at something on a piece of white paper. At the curb, a couple of teenagers sat on a tarp, hunkered over an artist’s black book. “He’s got mad skills,” one of them was saying. “Look at that arrow, yo.” The other one answered, “It’s too purrrrty. I like it loose.”
“Reporter lady,” said Rx, from the pavement, where he was rolling a cigarette, or possibly a blunt, his long thin legs sprawled out across the macadam. He was glaring up at me, like a cat that never got petted as a kitten and now should never be petted at all.
Clu turned around and gave me the once-over. “You’re the one who came up for the memorial, right?”
“I am,” I said, hoping they’d have forgotten my disappearing act.
Clu nodded ever so slightly, then turned back to the wall as Wicked Rick walked over and took my hand. “We heard you might be on your way,” he said, giving me a big, honest shake. “Welcome.” He was wearing a FUBU Athletics tank top, showing off two shoulder tattoos—a Raphael-style cherub on one and a Tasmanian devil wielding a spray can on the other.
Rx made an audible noise of disapproval, like a tsk, and it was drowned out by the louder and longer hiss of Clu’s spray can. Wicked Rick flinched his shoulders ever so slightly as if to shrug off Rx’s tsk. The dust of Clu’s spray paint drifted near us like a cloud; it smelled like rubbing alcohol and burned plastic.
“I hope I’m not coming at a bad time,” I said. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about some graffiti writers you might know.”
Rx perked up again, straightening against the wall. He threw some of the empties into the milk crates, making a loud clank. “You going to print their names and addresses in the paper? How about mug shots? You want those too?” Rx said.
“Yo, chill,” Wicked Rick said to Rx. They obviously weren’t in agreement about whether they should talk to me, and I knew exactly who was making which case.
I tried to speak to both of them, in an even tone, at the same time. “I’ve just discovered some information about Wallace’s paintings that you might all find interesting.”
It was as if Rx didn’t hear. “You ran out of that memorial pretty fast. You could’ve just told us you were from that paper and why you were really there.”
Rick shook his head in annoyance and turned to face Rx. “Let it be, now. We already went over this.”
“You did,” Rx said back. “Nobody made up my mind.”
Wicked Rick crossed his arms. “We have to keep trying,” he said to Rx, gently. “We can’t just say no, when someone wants to help. Cabeza might be right. You don’t know. The police haven’t done nothing. They came up here asking us about the Young Lords. They think it was some kind of gang beef.”
“Listen,” I said, trying to clear my throat. “I made a mistake there, at the memorial. I may have made a mistake on the story—”
“May have?” said Rx.
Clu’s spray can hiss-hisssssssssed.
“I did,” I said, with the most assured voice I could find. “Definitely, I did. And this is my opportunity to try to make it right. I should’ve been honest at the memorial too. But I was scared. You see, I have to convince my editors to do another story, and I need to get enough information together to justify—”
“To justify? Are you shitting me?” Rx stood up. I took a step back, unsure of where this was going. “Oh, I’m not going to hurt you, reporter lady, you’ve got plenty more trouble in store for you—believe it. But if these dumb asses are willing to trust you with anything other than Wite-Out, they making a big mistake, far as I can see.” He looked from Rick to Clu, hoping to convince them yet. Clu shrugged ever so slightly and Rick looked blankly at Rx. “Ah-ight. I want no part.” Rx picked up his jacket off the ground and threw it over his shoulder. He shook his head slowly as he walked past me. He sized me up one more time and still didn’t like what he saw. Then he was off. The two teenagers with the black book got up and followed him.
Clu picked up a new can of Rust-Oleum and turned back to the wall, rattling it up without saying anything. Clink, clink, clink clink—the marble inside the bottle sounded like ringing for alms. He pressed the paint cap and his spray can hiss-hissed.
“Some people are very angry about what happened with your paper,” Rick said after a while. “I know how he feels, and he’s my blood, so I’ve got his back, but we just disagree. Your friend, Cabeza, makes a good point. Some more press on this, I think, could help set the record straight.”
Clu just hissed on above us, creating small clouds of aerosol dust that drifted past us one after another. He placed a white asterisk at the center of Stain’s pupil, and a white cloud drifted. He put a line of pink at the edge of Stain’s lips, and a pink cloud drifted. I sensed I was getting covered in it; the smell was dense, acidic. I raised my hand to cover my nose and realized it was shaking, so I tried to put it into my pocket, which didn’t exist.
“Here’s the outline, in case you’re interested,” said Rick, handing me what he was holding: a computer printout of the image for the wall as it would look when all the colors were added. Next to Stain’s face was the outline of a spray can, which looked as if it had been stepped on and crushed. It spewed letters from its tiny white cap: R.I.P. On the other side of the wall were gray tombstones that elongated into three subway trains spreading out into the distance, over a hill and into a city skyline. Wicked Rick said, “We’ll try and give you what you need.”
“I appreciate it. I do.” I took out my notepad, mostly to have something to do with my hands. “You know h
is old dealer, Darla Deitrick?” I started. Rick nodded. “It turns out she had a lot of graffiti in her warehouse, by some writers who were Stain’s contemporaries. Writers I think you’d know. There was a fire at this warehouse and the paintings were lost. It’s possible she sold them and maybe the fire happened afterward. I’d like to follow up with these writers. I’d also like to understand what kinds of beefs or gang wars or anything else might have been a contributing factor to Stain’s death.”
Clu’s hissing stopped and he dropped his can onto the pavement with a heavy clunk. He and Rick looked at each other. Rick went to retrieve the can, which was rolling to the curb. “You sure you know what you’re getting into?” Clu said. Since he was a man of few words, I didn’t take these words lightly. “You sure you’re not in over your head? I don’t mean any disrespect, but it won’t be tea and crumpets.”
Rick returned with the empty can and dropped it in one of the milk crates, saying, “Listen, I know you’re trying to do your best, but there are some basic things you need to understand. It’s not like the old days on the trains when the most graff writers would get was a fine or community ser vice. These days, writers who get caught get jail time. Writing is now a felony offense. Most writers working today, out on the street, don’t want anyone to know their names, even if they could get something out of it.”
Clu rattled up another can, this one hard and fast, clink clink clink clink. Rick took my arm and led me to the curb. “You need to understand,” he said again, “graffiti writers aren’t gang members or violent criminals or anything most people think. Maybe a handful, okay? But for most of us, being a writer means being recognized as a solo. An independent somebody with no Crips or Bloods on your back. You see? You write so you don’t get mixed up in all that. Number two: my crew, the three of us, we all go way back to the beginning of this thing—twenty-five years in the game and I never heard of no graffiti artist getting killed over a beef. Not ever. I’m not saying there hasn’t been friction or there haven’t been baseball bats thrown one way or another…but killed? Knocked off a bridge after midnight? Floating in the East River? That’s some sad shit right there. Ain’t none of us ever been so petty to go that far over a buff.”
“There’s something I need to tell you and it might be a little shocking,” I said. “And it seems to me like it might indicate that what you’re saying isn’t always true. When they found Wallace’s body, there was purple spray paint in his mouth.”
Rick reeled a little. “No shit?” He thought it over. “How’d you hear that?”
I didn’t want to tell him I’d gotten it from Cabeza. I wanted him to think I had sources all over. “I can’t say. Doesn’t that sound to you like it might be linked to graffiti? Is there anyone who would want to see Stain dead?”
He didn’t seem impressed. “No. What it sounds like to me? Somebody’s trying to set somebody up. Cover up somehow. I don’t know. Now you got me all mixed up. You say Darla Deitrick still owned work by other graffiti artists? Malcolm was looking for those. He told me they were missing too.”
“Yes, that’s what I heard.”
Rick walked down the curb away from me and covered his forehead with his hand. Clu was still hissing paint onto the wall behind us. Stain’s face was starting to have more definition, more contoured edges, deeper shadows in his cheeks. I looked at the computer printout Rick had given me. All the cars were covered in graffiti scrawls. One gravestone read, “Malcolm Wallace, 1957–1999,” and two others read, “Writing is a crime; the crime is insubordination.” Dead center of the wall, underneath Wallace’s mug, was his name, big letters, written in the signature style I’d seen in Cabeza’s movie.
“You want to know who would want to see Stain dead?” Rick came back. “Maybe half the cops in the Bronx precincts. Maybe about a third of the force in other boroughs, and a whole lot of moms and pops too, because Malcolm liked to agitate. He liked the fact that graffiti would trip up the cops, would make them get angry—dumb angry. He believed in counterculture in the original sense. His art schools weren’t about painting pretty landscapes. He wasn’t training kids to do what we do—to paint on legal walls, with the permission of the storeowner, out here in broad daylight. He was trying to create an army of bad asses who would get out there and terrorize the powers that be, in the old style. Not with violence, but by putting their marks on the city in a way the city couldn’t handle. Remind folks that everything isn’t all so perfect. He said, ‘Wherever people are neglected and ignored, that’s a place where writing lives. That’s what graff is about.’ That was Malcolm.”
I could see he was agitated. He chose a can of red Rust-Oleum from the duffle bag and, shaking it, clink clink clink clink, went to the wall. Then he started spraying the S of Stain’s name onto the wall, a giant bold letter, letting the emotion out through his arm. He shook the can out again, faster, clink clink, and then hissed new paint, the red hitting the wall, one layer over another as the wet paint dripped and the dust of the aerosol filled the air like a million microscopic gnats. My nose filled with its acrid perfume until I sneezed.
“A lot of people didn’t like Stain’s philosophy,” Rick continued. “But I respected the man. I think what he said was right and the more I think about it now that he’s gone the more I think he was dead on. Our communities have been ignored too long. This so-called boom that’s happening, we don’t see it. How come our subways don’t get renovated? How come our parks are still full of dealers? That’s not true in Manhattan; down there, it’s all squeaky,” he made the sound of a window cleaner. “Is that right? Do you think that’s the way it should be?”
Wicked Rick’s can hissed and hissed, joining the sound of Clu’s hissing above, like two instruments in duet. He continued on with the T, making long strokes up and down, then side to side. The red paint dripped where it went on thickest, as if the wall were sweating blood.
“You want to try it?” he said.
“What?”
“You want to write a letter of Stain’s name?”
I took a step back. “Oh, no, I can’t draw a line. I’d…I’d mess it up.”
He handed me the can. “You can do it,” he said. “It’s not tough. You just need to keep your hand steady. You can do that, right?”
“Sure, I can, but I…”
Clu looked down from the scaffolding to watch, slightly bemused.
“Shake it,” said Rick. I did, just as fast as he had before. Clink clink clink clink. The can was cold and heavier than I’d anticipated. I felt the marble somewhere in the bottle knocking back and forth. “Aim the mouth at the wall and stay within the lines. Ever paint your bicycle? Just keep a steady hand.”
I positioned the can over the outlined A and pressed down on the paint cap. I heard the satisfying hiss and the tip of my index finger went cold and wet and even a little numb. I did as Rick said and kept within the lines. I finished the letter and stepped back from the wall. I hadn’t made a perfect letter A, but it wasn’t a disaster. I gave the paint can back to Rick and he cleaned up the edges.
“You ever seen someone paint a memorial wall before?” Rick asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“We’ve done them all over the city. We get all kinds of commissions for them, mostly when a body dies young, someone gets shot, gets AIDS. We make a wall and it stays there so people can come by and pay their respects. It’s like an epitaph of this person’s life. It’s for the community.”
I was reminded of what Cabeza had said about all the graffiti writers he’d known, how few of them were still alive, how many were in jail or dead. Clu and Wicked Rick were in their forties and still alive, and working, maybe some of the last survivors of the early years of subway art. They’d done it by painting legal murals on sanctioned walls with commissions from corporations. I glanced around, wondering if there were snipers on the elevated subway platform, if any of the passing low-riders could be drive-bys. Did these guys have targets on their backs?
> Rick continued painting the I and the N, using up a can of paint and tossing it to the base of the wall with the other empties. Then he picked up a can of pink paint, accenting the edges of the letters. And after that, he used a can of white, miraculously making the letters pop out into three-dimensional space. I saw now that the T was painted as a crucifix.
“This right here,” he said, pointing to the words Graffiti is a crime; the crime is insubordination. “It was one of Stain’s slogans. He didn’t want his students to be co-opted by galleries like he’d been. He wanted them to keep graff on the streets, to use it as a tool. ‘A tactic to overthrow the ruling class,’ he said. He wanted that to be his legacy, but he saw what was coming down those tracks at him. He knew about that fire, the one you’re talking about. He told me he thought someone would try to pin it on him.”
Rick stopped and looked up at Clu for confirmation of something. Clu was like his silent conscience. “At the time, when he was talking about it, I didn’t take it serious. Malcolm talked a lot of shit sometimes and some of it was just jaw flapping. I’ll tell you what; now I wish I’d taken it more serious.”
Rick picked up Krylon Slate Gray and started painting the width of the tombstone subway train. It sounded like a lot of people didn’t listen when Wallace talked. How come? Boy who cried wolf? Or maybe he saw too many wolves. “He thought he was in danger?”
Rick backed away from the wall, assessing the work he’d done on the tombstones. “You know what’s messed up?” he said. “He asked us to do his wall. We’d been out of touch for a while because he was pissed we’d taken a commission from Glenfiddich; he always gave us grief about liquor ads. But last week, we were down on 138th Street working on the wall and he came by to watch. I thought he was joking around, maybe to show all was forgiven, and he was like ‘Yo, when I die, I want you to do my wall.’”