Cracker Bling

by Stephen Solomita

  Hootie has to give the Celtics credit. After the Knicks score six straight points to tie the game, they make an adjustment. Their center drops into the paint as soon as one of the Knicks cuts to the basket. This leaves the Celtics’ shooting guard, who’s maybe six-one, to guard Bubba. Talk about no fuckin’ contest. Bubba sinks a fifteen-foot jumper, then another on the next possession, then a third.

  The crowd goes crazy, the noise jackhammer loud. Somehow, they all appear to be rooting for Bubba, some even chanting his name: Bub-BA, Bub-BA. And Bubba, he’s got the game face on and he’s taking whatever they give him, passing, shooting or going to the basket. The Celtics manage to stay in the game only because their shooters get hot, especially their two-guard, who knocks down a series of jumpers coming off the pick. But these are not NBA superstars. They cool off six minutes into the quarter and the Knicks pull away to win by eight.

  As his teammates head for the locker room and the crowd files out, Bubba sits alone on the bench, a towel draped over his head. Accompanied by his bodyguards, Montague guides his motorized wheelchair across the court to join him. Montague’s too far away for Hootie to hear the words he speaks, but they must be encouraging because Montague pats Bubba’s shoulder before passing over a small roll of bills. The bills disappear into Bubba’s massive right hand as Montague drifts away. Now Bubba is entirely alone, bent forward, his elbows on his knees, hands to his face. The towel masks his expression and he looks, to Hootie, like a defeated man.

  Hootie makes his way to the bench and sits down alongside Bubba. He wants to offer some observation, but he can’t find the words and it’s Bubba who speaks first.

  ‘You wanna hear a story?’ he asks.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You know how, in the institution, one of the first things you look to do is enroll in a program?’

  ‘Hell, yes. When you come up for parole, the board looks for proof that you’ve been rehabilitating yourself. I enrolled in a carpentry class first chance I got.’

  Bubba begins to unwind the elastic bandages that encase his knees. ‘There aren’t all that many programs in Clinton. Clinton’s more about punishment. So when they shipped me there a few weeks after I was sentenced, the only open program was called Anger Management. Lemme tell ya, Hootie, I was resistant. For the first few weeks, I barely listened. But then it finally hit me. I’m talkin’ about everything I threw away. And for what? To avenge my honor? When I thought about what the jerk actually said, the exact words and my insane response … it was like I kept getting smaller and smaller, the incredible shrinking basketball star.’

  Hootie nods agreement. Bubba’s competitors, on both the Knicks and the Celtics, were excellent school-yard basketball players. They handled the ball well and they could shoot. But they were several notches below Bubba. And if that’s true, given that Bubba’s closing in on thirty years old, how good was he ten years ago?

  ‘Never again,’ Bubba says. ‘I practiced every exercise the group leader gave me. I learned to read the signs before I lost my cool, to stop the process. Believe me when I tell you that the Clinton Correctional Facility is a place where you can easily go ballistic. You get provoked all the time. Staying cool became like a passion, like when I was a kid shooting baskets after dark. At the end of every workout, I took a shot from mid-court. If I missed, I tried again, and again, and again, until I finally made one. No matter how long it took, no matter how tired I was.’

  Hootie nods to himself, imagining Bubba throwing up shot after shot, fetching the ball, setting up again. ‘So, did it work? I’m talkin’ about the anger thing?’

  ‘Yeah, it did. I still get mad sometimes, but only in private. If you see me pissed-off in a public situation, you can bet that I’m acting. Now, whatta ya say we go out and party?’

  Hootie watches Bubba cross the court on his way to the locker room. Hootie’s thinking about a dead drug dealer on Hamilton Place and a dead rat on a subway platform. Thinking there was no anger, thinking the dealer was step number three in a ten-steps-to-success program. As for the rat, Hootie doesn’t have a clue.

  The party is held in an enormous loft in what used to be the garment district. There’s nothing fancy about the club. A floor has been removed to create a high ceiling and there’s a glass-topped bar along the wall furthest from the main entrance. The rest of the space is reserved for a dance floor constantly swept by spotlights mounted on the ceiling. The floor is packed when the security guards at the front unhook the velvet rope to admit Hootie, Bubba and Amelia.

  The music is strictly techno, which Hootie’s never liked, and predictably loud, and nobody seems to be dancing with anybody else. Hootie’s content to remain on the sidelines. He plucks a grilled shrimp from a platter of hors d’oeuvres carried by a female waiter sporting a tuxedo jacket over a white T-shirt. Wrapped in bacon, the shrimp is delicious and he washes it down with a glass of red wine snared from a second, identically dressed waiter. Still, he can’t relax. The party is being thrown by an upscale fashion magazine and there are costumes galore, from tattered lace to emerald boas. Everybody hip, everybody cool, everybody safe. Uptown, any visit to a club entails a certain amount of risk. You brush the wrong dude’s shoulder and a second later you’re throwin’ punches. And that’s only if he doesn’t have a weapon. But not here. Here, when you step on some punk’s shoes, you say, ‘Excuse me.’

  Hootie’s thoughts remain critical. He tells himself it’s all too cold, as mechanical as the techno music pouring from enormous speakers on either side of the room. The dancers have no steps, no moves – they bounce up and down, stiff as wind-up toys. All he can think about is leaving.

  But then Amelia sidles up to where he stands, tucked back in the shadows. She offers him a tab of ecstasy and he doesn’t hesitate. He flips the tab into his mouth and chases it with a flute of champagne. Thirty minutes later, he’s on the floor, bouncing up and down like the rest of the assholes. He has no choice; the energy coursing through his flesh is uncontainable. And the music’s finally making sense, all the whoops and whistles, the beat so steady it could only have been created by a machine.

  At some point, Hootie finds himself dancing with an Asian girl wearing a ruffled blouse and a pair of white shorts brief enough to reveal an inch of buttock on either side. They begin five feet apart, two strangers making random eye contact, then move together, the space between them slowly dissolving until they rub against each other’s bodies and Hootie’s as hard as he’s ever been in his life. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do about it, not unless she has an apartment somewhere, but then she takes his hand and leads him down a long corridor to a small room at the back of the club. The room smells of sex and the narrow bed is none too clean, neither of which bothers Hootie all that much. The girl’s hands are on his belt before the door closes. A moment later, she’s unzipping his fly and sliding his pants and underwear to the floor. He rises to the tips of his toes when her mouth closes around his cock, then finally tumbles back on to the bed. Thinking, Damn you, Bubba. Damn you, damn you, damn you.

  Afterwards, just before the girl leaves, she tells him that he has a really nice body.

  EIGHT

  Detective Chigorin begins his day in the bathroom, where he relieves himself and brushes his teeth before reaching into the medicine cabinet for a bottle of Prevacid. The fire in his belly doesn’t burn as hot at it once did. There’s no devil poking his gut with a molten pitchfork, merely a smoldering reminder that a major life question still to be answered is whether his stomach will give out before his liver. The doc who treated the Russian’s original complaint, a Haitian named David Pierre, wanted to shove a tube down his throat and into his stomach. Chigorin agreed initially, but then cancelled at the last minute. The Prevacid was working fine. As for the rest of it, he didn’t want to know, and still doesn’t.

  After a quick shower, Chigorin dons a freshly dry-cleaned suit, a short-sleeved white shirt and a new green tie he discovers in the back of his closet. Before heading out to h
is car, he jams his laundry, including a pair of dirty suits, into a red laundry bag. It’s only a few blocks to College Point Boulevard and the Lucky Fortune Laundromat where he deposits the red bag.

  Chigorin performs these simple tasks in a fog. He’s not exactly hung-over. There’s no headache and he doesn’t feel nauseated. He just needs a drink to attain the degree of alertness most people call normal, a drink he’s chosen to obtain at Anselm’s Bar and Grill, only two doors away from the laundry. That drink, a shot of citrus-flavored vodka poured from a bottle stored in Anselm’s freezer, is sitting on the bar when the Russian comes through the door.

  ‘I seen ya park the car, lad.’ A few years older than the Russian, Anselm Deenihan, Jr. was shipped out to the University of Dublin after graduating from Holy Cross High School in Bayside. Anselm dwelt in the land of his ancestors for two years – happy years, or so he claims – before returning upon the sudden death of his father. After the wake and the funeral, Deenihan abruptly abandoned his studies, opting instead to run the family bar. He didn’t have much choice, given the mother and three younger siblings to be fed and clothed. But if Anselm Deenihan never got an education in the old country, he did retain a memento of his time in Ireland, an Irish lilt that he’s hung on to for thirty years.

  ‘No explanation necessary.’ Chigorin downs the shot and smiles. Already, things are looking up.

  Anselm leans over the bar and half-whispers, ‘Herself was here looking for ya.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Damn.’

  Herself is Maureen McDonald, who waitresses at a diner on Astoria Boulevard. She and the Russian are something of an item, and the Russian’s sorry he missed her because he’s been horny all week. His first instinct is to call her and he takes out his phone. But then he checks himself. Maureen’s the decider in their relationship, always has been. Plus, apart from the sex, he’s pretty sure that she doesn’t like him.

  Now that he has the phone out, Chigorin decides to make a couple of business calls. He gestures to Anselm for a refill. ‘You got anything to eat?’

  ‘Salami. You want a sandwich?’

  Anselm’s is a workingman’s bar tucked into the obscure neighborhood of College Point. Once home to better-off white workers, College Point is slowly gentrifying, a fact Deenihan predictably bemoans. Al’s been plowing the same ground for so many years that he resents the very concept of change. If he could, he’d take the word out of the dictionary. Just as he’d take the word ‘grill’ off the sign outside if it wasn’t attached to the word ‘bar’. There’s no grill in his bar and there never will be. Potato chips, pretzels, peanuts? Fine. Other than that, unless you’re a very old customer like Chigorin, you have to bring your food with you and eat it off the bar.

  Chigorin shudders, salami not being his first choice for what amounts to breakfast. But Dr. Pierre was insistent the last time Chigorin saw him. Don’t drink on an empty stomach.

  ‘Salami’s good.’

  Deenihan lays eight slices of Genoa salami on a slice of rye bread. He slathers the meat with hot mustard, adds a second slice of bread and passes the sandwich to Chigorin on a paper plate. The Russian supposes that he should be grateful. Most afternoons, he has to settle for bologna or liverwurst.

  Chigorin takes a bite, chases it with his second drink of the day, then dials Nick Soriani’s cellphone number. ‘Nick, it’s the Russian. Did I wake you?’

  Soriani groans. ‘Don’t you check your messages? I called three hours ago.’

  Though Chigorin hasn’t checked his messages – too often they’re from superior officers – he isn’t apologetic. In fact, when Soriani hangs up, he finds himself miffed. He saved Nick’s ass more than once back when they were partners.

  ‘Some guys have no gratitude,’ he informs Anselm, who’s ferrying a pitcher of beer to a pair of construction workers seated at a table near the front of the bar. The Russian looks down at his sandwich. He’s gearing himself up to take another bite when the door opens to admit Harry Gurstein bearing a pizza. Gurstein is a retired high school teacher with a thirst to match Chigorin’s own.

  The Russian pushes his sandwich to one side as he retrieves his three phone messages. The first two are from Yolanda. Sonia wants to go to a soccer camp in August; please send money. The third was left by Soriani. The Hamilton Place victim has been positively identified. His name is Ramon ‘Flaco’ Almeda, not Manuel Torres, and he has a long rap sheet that includes possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. His last known address is on West 162 Street, a mile from where he died.

  ‘Pizza?’

  The Russian looks up at Harry Gurstein. Harry’s got his usual on the bar in front of him – a shot of Jack Daniel’s, neat, and a bottle of Budweiser. He’s a tall, skinny man with the permanently reddened cheeks of a professional drinker.

  ‘Yeah, gimme a minute.’

  Hoping he’s on a roll, Chigorin dials up the police lab in Long Island City. He gets through to Ballistics after a bit of a struggle with the phone menu, only to find that a comparison between the shells casings found at the murder scene and the one found in the subway station has yet to be made. Chigorin’s first instinct is to threaten, but he knows that a display of temper will only work against his aim.

  ‘C’mon,’ he wheedles, ‘gimme a break here. This is a homicide investigation. There’s a murderer walkin’ the streets.’

  The woman on the other end of the line doesn’t laugh, not exactly. But she’s clearly amused. ‘What’re you sayin’ here, Detective? That you’re ready to make an arrest if the casings match?’

  A good point, which the Russian has to admit. What he’s got is a giant white man who’s yet to be identified.

  ‘You wouldn’t consider tellin’ me how long before you make the comparison?’

  ‘I have good news and bad news, Detective. The good news is that we prioritize homicide and rape cases. The bad news is that there was a spike in homicides over the weekend, so we’re backed up. Try me tomorrow afternoon.’

  His errands run, at least for the present, Chigorin settles down to his breakfast, pizza topped with peppers and onions. He’s on his second slice when herself walks into the bar. Two inches taller than the Russian, Maureen McDonald was a great beauty in her youth. But that was fifteen years and thirty-five pounds ago. Now her forehead and cheekbones have pushed forward to dominate her pug nose and thin mouth, and her blue eyes are angry and resentful. Nevertheless, as far as the Russian’s concerned, Maureen’s a pure winner simply because their occasional afternoons are utterly without pretense. Maureen refers to what they do as screwing or fucking. The phrase ‘making love’ has never passed her lips.

  ‘You want a drink?’ Chigorin asks.

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t have time. I’m covering for one of the girls and I gotta be at work in a couple of hours.’

  Tight timeline be damned, Chigorin makes a stop at a liquor store on the way to Maureen’s apartment. Maureen’s sitting next to him, her skirt midway between her knees and her crotch. She’s staring directly at him, projecting that I’m-gonna-fuck-your-brains-out look she gets when she’s really horny. The Russian can’t take his eyes off her legs and he bangs his head climbing out of the car.

  ‘Do you want me to kiss that and make it better?’ Maureen asks.

  The Russian stands there for a minute, staring down at her knees. ‘Actually,’ he tells her. ‘I’d heal faster if you raised your skirt another few inches.’

  Blurred by haze and smog, the sun is still high enough to clear the apartment buildings on West 162nd Street when Chigorin parks his car at seven o’clock in the evening. He reaches beneath the seat for the vodka bottle and takes a quick swig. The Russian’s come in search of Flaco Almeda’s family, and his first priority is to inform them of Flaco’s death. But he’s not unmindful of the fact that one of them might have pulled the trigger. Giant white man or not.

  The building Chigorin approaches, between Broadway and Amsterdam Aven
ue, is typical of West Harlem’s apartment houses. Marble half-columns flank the door in front and there’s a frieze between the third and fourth floors that runs across the brick. This is proof positive that the structure was originally built for reasonably upscale renters, back a hundred years ago when Harlem was a Jewish neighborhood. But there’s evidence of neglect everywhere, from the scaffolding over the sidewalk, to the broken intercom, to the broken locks on a front gate and at the front door, to the broken elevator.

  The lobby smells of cooking, of garlic and cilantro and steaming rice, as do the stairs Chigorin climbs to the third floor. He’s heading for apartment 3G and he doesn’t have to guess where it is. An open door to his left reveals a crowded apartment and there are people, men, women and children, milling about in the hallway. A birthday party? The Russian doesn’t think so. He thinks the grapevine beat him to the punch and he’s arrived just in time for the wake, body or no body.

  Everyone looks at him as Chigorin approaches the door. That he’s a cop – and an annoyed cop at that – is more than obvious. How is he supposed to conduct interviews under these conditions? He takes out his badge and attaches it to the lapel of his jacket. It’s hot as hell and his torso is slick with sweat. For sure, he won’t be able to wear this suit again tomorrow.

  Chigorin passes through the front door and into a crowded living room. He pauses just long enough to spy a woman sitting on a camelback couch. Flanked by two older women, she’s perched in the center of the couch, one buttock on either cushion, accepting condolences. Chigorin addresses her in broken Spanish. He introduces himself and offers his own condolences before asking if she’s related to Ramon Almeda. To his relief, she responds in English.

  ‘I am his mother.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, senora.’ He pauses long enough to evaluate his situation. There are more than a dozen people in the room and they’re all watching him. What’s more, it’s obvious that a few are in the life. Just as it’s obvious that he’ll have to come back tomorrow. And that’s what he tells her.