Queens Noir

by Robert Knightly

  The customer makes a choice, pays for it, gets her receipt and change, and heads out the door. The pharmacist's hands are trembling slightly as he opens a drawer and pulls out a file folder full of invoices and crumpled sheets of pink and yellow paper. He goes through them one by one, wetting his fingers for each sheet, trying to get a grip or else maybe buy the time to come up with a plausible story. Another customer comes in, but I don't take my eyes off the pharmacist for an instant. Finally, he produces a coffee-stained job application form.

  I grab it and smooth it out on the counter. Antonio Jose de Sucre. Someone's got a sense of humor, because that name belongs to the heroic general on Ecuador's five-sucre note. Other warning signs that a legitimate employer should have spotted include out-of-state references with no phone numbers and a list of previous jobs with companies that went out of business years ago. But the price was right, I guess.

  There's an address that's got to be a fake, and I wouldn't put too much faith in the phone number either. "This number any good?"

  He's having trouble concentrating.

  I repeat, "Did you ever call him at this number?"

  "I guess I might have. I don't remember."

  "Don't you remember anything? Because you're not getting rid of me until you give me something. You know that, don't you?"

  The woman gets in line behind me with a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of baby shampoo. I think the shampoo is one of the fakes. He says, "Let me take care of this customer first." Buying more time, the bastard. When the woman's gone, he says, "I just remembered-some of the cartons the medicine came in might still be in the storage room."

  Sounds almost too good to be true. I'll follow this guy, but I'm not going to turn my back on him. I open my jacket so I can get to my .38 revolver quickly as we go down the back stairs to the storage room. Then we toss the place until we find a couple of boxes with the Syndose logo on them. The shipping labels have been torn in half. Another red flag. Who gets a delivery and tears the shipping label in half? Not the whole thing, just the return address.

  "Tell me something. Did this guy have a tattoo of the Ecuadorian or Colombian flag on his left bicep?"

  "I don't know."

  "How could you not know?"

  "It was Christmas and we couldn't afford to keep the heat up high, so we were all wearing long-sleeved shirts and sweaters."

  "It seems like you can remember things if you try."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to send this guy to a place where he can't choose his neighbors."

  "I mean about me."

  "That depends. Maybe we can swing a deal if you cooperate."

  "I'm cooperating."

  "Yeah? Well, I know another word for it."

  The phone number's no longer in service, but a quick search turns up the previous owner's name, Julio Cesar Gallegos, which just might lead somewhere. A lot of career criminals in my culture favor such grandiose names, as if they stand to inherit the power of the name by sympathetic magic. The biggest one, of course, being Jesus. I mean, there are a lot of Muslims named Mohammed, but nobody names their kid Allah.

  The name, it turns out, doesn't connect to an address in any of the usual places-motor vehicle and property records, bankruptcy court, government benefits-and I'm starting to get a feeling about this guy. Seems like he only used the name once to get the phone. Nobody makes themselves that invisible unless they're working hard at it, and the kind of swagger he showed on the job doesn't sound like a timid illegal trying to stay off the radar. I don't give the street gang theory much credence. The pandillas are into curbside extortion, jacking cars, and drug dealing. They might have a piece of the street action on this, but staking out a one-month undercover in a local pharmacy seems a little beyond their scope. No disrespect.

  But I figure if he is my guy, he's got to have had a brush with the law at some point, even if it's just a speeding ticket. I do a county-by-county search of the tri-state area and come up with nothing. I finally catch a break and match his name with an accident report that gives a recent address on Queens Boulevard, a wide thoroughfare that more than seventy people have died trying to cross in the last ten years, giving it the catchy nickname of the Boulevard of Death.

  I call with a pretext about an insurance payment from the accident, and a woman named Gloria confirms Gallegos's existence by telling me that he's not in right now. But people will tell you anything if they think it'll lead to money, and she practically offers to FedEx me a sample of his DNA. She says he's watching the game in a bar a couple of blocks from the stadium. She doesn't know the exact address, but it's under the elevated tracks, which means from what she's told me that it's on Roosevelt Avenue east of 108th Street. I know the place.

  The setting sun paints the store windows with an orange glow that transforms them into heavenly palaces for about a minute and a half. Dueling sound systems thump out bachatas from storefronts and apartment windows, while men in sweatstained T-shirts hang out on the steps, laughing and enjoying the end of another work day with bottles of cerveza Pilsener, a taste of the old country. The hardware store owner is changing the numbers beneath Ray Ray's dark Dominican features to include the results of today's game, showing that he's just extended his hitting streak to twenty-three games, while the 7 train shakes the sidewalks as it thunders on toward Flushing.

  The big blue-and-orange Mets banner tells me I'm in the right place, and only one of the guys hunched over the bar matches the description I extracted from the fast-talking pharmacist. There's a spot next to him, opposite the big color TV. I slide onto the empty stool as the Mets take on their archrivals, the Atlanta Braves. Glavine's on the mound, facing his old teammates. Top of the third, one out, no one on. Both teams scoreless.

  The bartender comes over and asks me what I'll have.

  "I'm fine, thanks."

  "You gotta have something if you're gonna sit here."

  "Oh, I've got to pay rent, huh? Okay, I'll have a seltzer with a twist."

  He doesn't try to hide his annoyance with me for ordering something so girly-girly and cheap, and unlikely to result in a big tip. I keep a close watch to make sure that's all he's giving me, and leave a few extra bills on the bar.

  The batter pops up to center field, and Beltran gets under it with plenty of time.

  `Asi se hace!" says my neighbor.

  "Vamos Carlosito!" I chime in.

  He looks at me. I toast him with my seltzer. He returns the salute with his beer.

  "Do I know you?" he asks.

  "You've probably seen me around. I think I've seen you around too. How's it going?"

  "Me? Just trying to get through the day."

  "It's good to set realistic goals."

  Diaz comes up for Atlanta. He takes a few practice swings, then gets into his stance. Glavine throws low and inside. Ball one.

  "So, a que to dedicas?"

  He says, "Oh, this and that. Y to?"

  "I've got my own business."

  "Uh-huh. Doing what?"

  "I'm a private contractor."

  Glavine shakes his head. Lo Duca spreads three fingers and taps them against his right thigh, pinky extended. Glavine takes his time, then fans the guy with a devastating curveball.

  "Yeah!" My guy pumps his fist in the air, and his T-shirt sleeve slides halfway down his bicep. I gently slide it the rest of the way. No tattoo.

  He looks at me. "You like that?" He can't resist making a muscle for me. "Want to see more?"

  "That depends. Is your name really Julio Cesar Gallegos?"

  His face darkens. "Hey, what is this?"

  "Well, it started out as a counterfeiting case, but I think it's turning into a homicide investigation, although a good lawyer would probably get the charges reduced to seconddegree manslaughter."

  He goes hard on me and swallows the stale beer at the bottom of his glass, then says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "And I always know I'm getting close when t
he guys I'm interviewing start thinking about what they're going to say in court. Uh, your honor, my client's remark, `I'll blow his fucking head off,' was taken out of context," I say, mimicking a typical mob lawyer, then wave it all away like bad smell. "Give me a break."

  "You got nothing on me."

  "I also know I'm getting close when they start talking in cliches."

  "This is entrapment."

  "I'm not the law, dude. I told you, I'm a private contractor."

  I give him a brief rundown of my activities for the past few hours, solidly connecting him to a shipment of counterfeit medicine at the pharmacy on 104th Street and implying an equally strong connection to the death of Edison Narvaez, with suspicion of possible intent, unless he comes clean with me.

  "Now, what do you know about the stuff that killed that boy?"

  "It's always the one you least suspect, right?" he says, trying to make it into a joke.

  "That would mean Brigitte Bardot did it. She's pretty low on my list of suspects. No, I'm looking for a guy with a tattoo of the Ecuadorian or Colombian flag on his left arm." I let him catch a glimpse of the .38 under my jacket. Diaz connects and sends the ball sailing over Delgado's glove, but Chavez gets to it quickly and holds Diaz at first. While the place erupts with cheers, Gallegos looks at his shoes and says the words very quietly, "It's the Ecuadorian flag."

  I nod. "Why are you telling me this?"

  "Because I knew one of these days someone like you would be walking through that door." He looks around. "No cops, all right?"

  "Aw, shucks. And I just called them."

  "What the fuck did you do that for?"

  "Yo, buddy. Your language," says the guy two stools over.

  "Yeah, it's English. What the fuck's your problem?"

  "Settle down, guys," says the bartender.

  I tell Gallegos, "You've got about three minutes, unless you give me some sugar, comprendes?" I'm making that up, but screw it-it's working. The next batter hits a hard one up the middle and Reyes stops it cold to end the inning. That's Jose Reyes, hometown: Villa Gonzalez in the D.R.

  Gallegos says, "We could have worked something out."

  "Before all this, maybe. Not with the Narvaez kid dying from tainted meds, or whatever the hell you guys sold him. Tell me where to find him."

  "I can't do that."

  "Do you hear sirens?" That's kind of a trick question, because you always hear sirens in this part of Queens. "Look, if you point me to someone else further up the ladder, I'll leave you out of it."

  "I've been wanting to get out of the life," he says. "'Cause me and Gloria are gonna get married, and we're planning to have babies."

  "You can plan to have babies? That's news to me."

  "I want immunity."

  "Then tell me something that'll take the focus off you, hermano."

  "For real?"

  "For real."

  The lights are on at Shea as twilight turns to darkness, and we can hear the fans cheering in the distance as a ring of cops closes in on a clandestine warehouse near the boat basin off Willets Point Boulevard. The police find what they're after: a conveyor belt, pill counters, stacks of empty bottles and jars, state-of-the-art printing equipment, boxes of fake labels, crates of ready-made knock-offs from Pakistan, Vietnam, Malaysiatalk about the effects of globalization-drums of raw chemicals from Colombia and China for mixing up everything from cough medicine to horse steroids, as well as invoices, account books, and a list of contact names, including delivery boys.

  Ray Ray's name is right in the middle of the list.

  They're willing to let me talk to him first, but Ray Ray's out celebrating his twenty-three-game hitting streak, and by the time he comes home from his viernes loco a couple hours later, the cops have gotten a warrant, stormed right past me, torn up his room, and are tramping down his front steps with their arms full of cases of counterfeit steroids. And I have a sick feeling that the lab is going to find significant traces of the active ingredient in Edison Narvaez's blood samples.

  "What the-" he starts to say, but he knows what's going on.

  I tell him, "I was on my way over to talk to you, but I guess it's too late for that now."

  They read him his rights under the harsh lights of Shea while the fans cheer somebody's throw-beating play. The cheers that he'll never hear. And I can just imagine Felipe when he finds out tomorrow. When they all find out: "Dime que no es cierto, Fit."

  Which translates roughly as, "Say it ain't so."

  OUT OF BODY

  BY GLENVILLE LOVELL

  South Jamaica

  histo remembered it like it was yesterday. The first time he saw a dead body. It was in the embalming room of his father's funeral home. He was almost twelve years old, already bored with school and given to playing hooky, cruising around in stolen cars with his new friends from a Bloods gang that controlled the Baisley Projects.

  That day the police had stopped them in a stolen green Caddy on Archer Avenue and had taken the older boys off to jail. He later found out the only reason he'd escaped a trip to the lockup was because one officer had known his old man. Turned out the tough-love cop wasn't doing him any favor by not taking him to jail.

  The cop drove him home and he almost bluffed his way out of trouble. But the guy refused to release him without first speaking to his parents. The house was empty that afternoon. His mother had died earlier in the year, and soon afterward, his eighteen-year-old sister ran off with the pastor who conducted his mother's funeral.

  The cop took him down to his father's funeral parlor over there on Guy Brewer Boulevard about a mile away from where they lived on 178th Place, a quiet leafy neighborhood of oneand two-family homes dense with Caribbean immigrants like his father who'd settled there in 1960.

  Phisto had never visited the funeral home until that day. He knew what his father did for a living. He knew that his father buried people. And made a pretty good living from it, evidenced by the latest appliances and new furniture they had in their one-family brick house, but it was never talked about in his company.

  While the officer explained to his father why Phisto had arrived there in the back of a patrol car, his father showed no emotion, merely nodding and shaking his head. Moments after the blue-and-white drove off, his father exploded, displaying a temper that Phisto had heard his mother talk about but had never seen before.

  His father took him down into the basement and ordered him to strip. Defiant, Phisto grabbed his crotch, aping the badboy posturing he'd picked up on the street. With this bluff, he tried to walk away. His father grabbed him in a chokehold and slammed him to the ground. Phisto was surprised by his father's strength. The slightly built man from the island of St. Kitts, though no more than a few inches taller than his son, was well-muscled with surprising power in his upper body from cutting sugar cane and working construction in his youth. With a piece of electrical cord, he tied his scrawny son to a chair next to the dead body he was preparing for burial and proceeded to rip Phisto's clothes from his body until he was naked in the cold room.

  Then the mortician went back to his work. The smell of embalming fluid soon filled Phisto's lungs. The prickly odor knifed through his toughness and singed his palate until he puked all over himself. His father paid no attention to him at all. Singing cheerfully and going about his business, stepping over Phisto sitting there in his own vomit, admiring how craftily he'd restored the young woman's face, mutilated by a jealous boyfriend after he'd killed her.

  With nothing left in his stomach, Phisto leaned against the table leg. He was weak and bleeding where the wire chafed his wrist. Slime dripped from the corners of his mouth. From where he sat he could see the blood and fluid draining from the woman's body, flowing down into the waste receptacle.

  He glanced at the corpse's face and felt a strange relief, a sort of bonding with something outside of himself. Quietly, as if he'd somehow acquired the facility to remove his spirit from his body, he stared at the pathetic little boy with s
pittle drooling from his mouth, trembling at his father's feet. He saw himself, the pathetic little boy, rise up and walk over to his father and put his arm around the man's shoulder and whisper, Thank you.

  Then he headed out of the room, pausing at the door for one final glance at the sniffling kid sitting in vomit.

  Phisto stored that dead woman's face in his mind, embracing that stillness characterized by death as a part of himself. By the time his father released him two hours later, the smell of vomit and the sickly odor of embalming fluid had disappeared from his senses. He wasn't even aware of the cold anymore. He could've sat there for another two hours as comfortably as if he were lounging poolside at the Four Seasons in Miami.

  Years later, he came to realize that in those two hours he sat in that frigid room while his father worked on that body, he'd formulated the virtue that would rule his life: Feel no pain or remorse.

  In 1984, he quit school at sixteen and started selling weed. In three months he had moved onto powder, making as much as $8,000 off an ounce. He struck a deal with some Colombians and by the end of the year was flipping $100,000 a week with rock houses in South Jamaica. In two years, he controlled the large housing projects which dominated the two sections of the southside. But he knew that this game wasn't going to last, so he started taking business classes in sales and real estate. By the time the crack craze was over, he'd amassed a fortune and an army, and while maintaining his stranglehold on the drug trade, exporting to as far away as Texas, he had diversified his holdings into real estate in Atlanta, Miami, and the Caribbean.

  People saw him as a drug lord. A gang leader. A killer. A psychopath. He laughed whenever he read those kinds of descriptions in the news. America worshipped psychopaths and other miscreants in the name of business. Just pick up Business Week or the Wall Street Journal or any major business magazine and you found profiles of men who ran businesses, who on the surface appeared to be legal, but with a little digging were discovered to be looting the companies, stealing employee pensions, and knowingly selling products that killed people. The newspapers and magazines lauded those muthafuckers as visionaries, but condemned people of a similar personality profile like himself, who did business on the margins of society. Ain't that some shit.