Shaniqua, the ten-year-old daughter of an ex-junkie named Harold, is watching It’s a Wonderful Life on the TV. Jimmy Stewart, computer colorized against a snowdrift, unshaven and weeping. Fuck it. Fuck it. That’s not Jimmy Stewart, that’s him cursing. They’re going to throw him out of the damn program. Why does he keep fucking up?
Jimmy Stewart is imagining what the world would be like if he’d never been born. All the love and joy that would’ve been missed. John G. drums his fingers on the armrests. Maybe he doesn’t belong back in the world. Index, pinky, ring finger, middle. Maybe if he could’ve seen his way to leaving the world a little earlier his daughter would still be alive. Thumb, forefinger, middle finger, pinky. The nervous tattoo. Louder and louder until it sounds like rain on the roof.
“I can’t hear the movie,” Harold’s daughter says, turning to look at him, her pigtails swinging.
“Okay. Okay. Okay-okay-okay-okay.”
He gets up, goes back to his room, and sits on the windowsill. Snowflakes are falling on the street outside, but they’re slower and lighter than the ones on TV. With a sudden updraft they start to fly back up toward the darkening sky. Snowing in reverse. Those flakes must be high.
How’s your memory?
Across the street, he can see a group of boys in hooded sweatshirts standing under the yellow-and-red canopy of a Yemenite bodega, like a bunch of urban monks. Maybe not sellers, but steerers for sure. They can tell him where he can see Scottie.
He gets his thin denim jacket off the back of a chair and puts it on. Then he takes it off. Then he puts it on again. Then he takes it off.
Then he balls it up and throws it across the room.
He can’t decide.
If he gets high, he knows what will happen. He’ll be what he’s always been. A failure. The lowest of the low. Maybe he’ll even hit the street again and start living like a dog. It’s not a happy alternative, but at least it’s a life he knows.
If he doesn’t get high, what does he have to look forward to? Hard work. Uncertainty. In two days, he’ll be called to the witness stand and asked to account for all his sins and misdeeds. And then he’ll walk out onto the street and find that red Dodge van waiting for him. His bowels gurgle and the walls turn puke yellow.
“Yo, J.G., my man, what’s going on in there?” He hears Ted Shakur knocking on his door. “How’d the interview go?”
“Just lemme be, will ya? Lemme be already.”
He picks up the jacket and puts it on again. Motherfucker. Somewhere out there is a vial that understands his problems, that can ease his pain and cure his craving.
“Hey, c’mon, G., open up.” Ted raps on the door again. “I wanna know what happened. Is something wrong?”
“Lemme be! Lemme be!” John punches the cinder-block wall.
The pain throbs from the knuckles all the way up to his jawbone. Tears well up in his eyes, and cursing shitfuckpissmother-fuckercocksucker, he tears off the jacket and throws it across the room again, inside out. Then he runs over to pick it up.
This is not a play he wants to be in. He wants relief. He wants to hear the blood rushing in his veins and the big beat of his heart. He wants to get high as badly as he wanted his mother to buy him an ice cream cone one summer day driving up Sunrise Highway. It wasn’t the coldness in his mouth that he craved; it was the warm feeling inside, knowing she’d given him something.
He wants that feeling again, even though part of him knows it’s gone forever. No teenaged crack dealer in a hooded sweatshirt is going to give it back to him, that’s for sure.
“Seriously, G., I hope you’re not thinking of getting high,” Ted says through the door. “We’ve come too far for that.”
“TED-just-let-me-be.”
The sound of his own voice bounces off the hard walls. It sounds familiar but different, that staccato exhausted tone. It takes him a moment to place it. It’s the way his mother would talk to him when she’d locked herself in the bathroom.
He starts stomping around in a furious circle, his mind roiling with bad intentions. Is he going to get high or isn’t he? He stops and looks over at the cross on the wall, as if an answer is forthcoming. But nothing. He flings himself down on the sill next to the window.
“Aw forget it, man, I’m done talking.” Ted sighs in exasperation. “If you gonna stay clean, do it ‘cause you want to.”
His footsteps fade down the hall.
John just sits there for a minute, looking over at the clock by his bed. Three and a half hours until curfew. He rubs some fog off the window and peers out, trying to see if those boys in the hooded sweatshirts are still outside the bodega. But all he sees is snow. Relentless snow, coming down in thick blurry clots. It covers everything in a white blanket. The streets, the sidewalks, the cars, the tenements, the vacant lots, the boarded-up storefronts, the garbage and decay, the exhaustion and poverty of the neighborhood. It’s all just snow and stillness now. He could be looking out at the Upper East Side or Pearl Street in Patchogue. Winter has rendered it all the same.
How’s your memory?
He tries to remember the last time he took Shar sledding in Van Cortlandt Park. It was a December morning and he used a red milk crate to send her rocketing down, but none of the other details will come. He can’t hear her laugh or see her expression. The size of her hands, the hat she wore, the red snow boots—it’s all lost to him. Her memory is getting buried by the snow.
All of a sudden, he’s not even sure she said, “I love you, Daddy,” just before she died in his arms. Maybe he just imagined it.
He’s beginning to forget her, losing her for a second time, and he finds himself weeping.
There’s another knock at his door and then footsteps leading away. Down the hall, somebody is listening to WCBS-FM, the oldies station. Ray Charles’s voice echoes from somewhere far away. “I can’t stop loving you. I’ve made up my mind. To live in memories of the lonesome time.”
But time won’t stand still and the snow keeps falling. John G. puts on his jacket and heads out the door again.
78
Johnny Gates is in the wind.”
It’s quarter past nine. The words jump through the phone wire, into Jake’s ear and press down on his heart.
“What are you talking about?” he asks Susan.
“He walked out of his program tonight.”
In the background, Nine Inch Nails is jackhammering and yowling in Alex’s room, like a band chained to a radiator in hell.
“Does anybody know where he went?”
Dana turns up her palms and mouths, “What’s going on?” from across the bedroom.
“He just bolted,” Susan says as static wells up on the phone line. “Apparently there was some kind of problem with a job interview...”
“Great.”
Just when he thinks he’s adjusted to anxiety as a constant condition, Jake feels several internal organs shrinking.
“What?” Dana pantomimes urgently.
“If I were you, I’d get Rolando and saddle my horse so you could go looking for him,” says Susan. “The judge wants to see this guy the day after tomorrow.”
“Couldn’t we get the hearing postponed?”
“Henry’s getting pretty fed up with this thing. He’s got reporters calling his chambers all hours of the day and Albany looking over his shoulder. He wants it off his calendar ASAP.”
Jake looks down at his arms and sees he actually has goose bumps though the temperature in the room can be no less than seventy-two.
“Susan, level with me,” he says. “If we don’t find this guy, what kind of case do we have?”
Another wave of static comes through the phone line, as if Susan just walked past a refrigerator.
“Let me put it this way,” she says. “I wouldn’t buy any tickets for next season’s opera.”
79
For more than an hour Jake and Rolando drive around the snowy streets of Bed-Stuy with a coil of tension heating up inside Jake. His whole
future depends on keeping a dedicated crackhead from getting high over the day and a half. It’s over, he tells himself. Your whole life is over.
They finally find John G. at quarter to midnight, standing behind a Dumpster on Marcy Avenue, flaring a lighter at a green-stemmed pipe.
“How’s the shit?” says Rolando, getting out of his white Lexus first.
“It’s just Italian baby laxative givin’ me wicked cramps.” John G. drops the pipe and tries to look innocent. “You guys cops?”
“Friends,” says Jake.
Gates looks at him hard and grimaces in recognition.
“The fuck do you want?”
“I was a little concerned about you.”
“Yeah, right. You’re concerned. Get outta my face. Last time I saw you, you were with a couple of guys carrying baseball bats. That’s how concerned you are.”
Snowflakes melt as they touch Jake’s face. “I thought my wife talked to you and we were straight about this,” he says. “I was trying to stop them.”
“All right, so we’re straight. What do you want, a medal?”
“No, I just want you to be in court the day after tomorrow.”
John G. makes a hissing sound and cold smoke streams out of his mouth. He looks over at a cigarette billboard ad across the street: a happy black couple under a waterfall.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been having some second thoughts about that.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I don’t know. Just a lot of heavy shit, man. I’m dealing with a lot of heavy shit. Maybe I’ll be there. Maybe I won’t.”
“You better be there.” Rolando stares him down.
“Oh yeah?”
Gates balls up his right fist and then realizes hitting Rolando would be like hitting a Coke machine.
“Is it because you’ve been getting high again?” asks Jake.
John G. turns on him, hands on hips, hair caked with snow. “Hey, buddy, let me tell you something. Drugs are the only thing I got. I am a drug addict. That’s all I’ve ever been and that’s all I’ll ever be. Even if I’m not putting a needle in my arm or pipe in my mouth right this second, the thought is still in my mind.” He taps the side of his head. “And if I decide I’m gonna get high to deal with the pressures in my life, there’s not a fuckin’ thing you can do about it.”
The coldness of the street gets into Jake’s bones. He feels fingers closing around his throat. This is how it’s going to end. On a street like the one he grew up on. Done in by another man like his father who can’t control his own impulses. Maybe he never really escaped from Brooklyn and this whole life he’s had has been an illusion.
“Please, don’t do this,” he says, giving it one last try. “If you don’t testify for me, I’m going to go to prison and lose everything.”
“Hey, don’t lay all that on me. It’s not my responsibility.”
“It is your responsibility!”
“Well, I CAN’T FUCKING HANDLE IT, ALL RIGHT!” John G.’s shout is muffled by the falling wall of snow.
Jake and Rolando look at each other, unsure how to calm him down.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gates mutters in a quieter voice. “I can’t take all this pressure. I swear I can’t. I was watching that movie before, It’s a Wonderful Life, you know? They oughta do it again and call it It’s a Shitty Life. ”
“I’m going to lose my son,” Jake says.
“Who cares? I lost my daughter.”
“I know,” says Jake, weighing his words carefully. “So you know how scared I am.”
For a moment, he feels like an old B-52 pilot who’s just opened the bay doors and dropped the bomb. He has no idea if he’s hit the target.
“Okay-okay-okay,” says Gates, rubbing his raw bare hands together. “So now I heard the big speech.”
“What do you want me to do, beg?”
“Nah, begging should be against the law.” John G. stoops his shoulders and walks away. “Maybe I’ll see you in court, Counselor. Maybe I won’t.”
80
Philip and his Uncle Carmine are sitting in a corner of the bar called Alpha on Mulberry Street, watching Isabel Perrara wipe down the counter.
“I still can’t believe that with a wife and two children at home you make love with that woman.” Carmine takes off his glasses and starts to clean them with a handkerchief.
“It’s complicated,” says Philip.
He’s not about to explain it to his uncle.
“I’d rather put my dick in a garbage disposal,” says Carmine.
Frank Sinatra sings “All or Nothing at All” on the stereo. Carmine’s choice. Philip taps his foot agreeably, but inside his mouth he’s gritting his teeth.
“So this preliminary hearing is tomorrow, huh?” says Carmine, who’s wearing a suit and tie today. “What’s going to happen?”
“Ah, this bum I was telling you about is supposed to testify for the defense.”
“And you’re not worrying about it?”
Philip sees Carmine glaring at him sternly. Asterisks of flesh have formed at the corners of his eyes.
“Number one, I don’t think he’s going to show up,” Philip says quickly. “And number two, if he does, he may have some problems with his memory. I had a little talk with him, you know. I reminded him how things are when you’re a drug addict and a head case.”
Carmine puts his glasses back on. “But what if he does testify? Is that going to put you behind the eight ball?”
There it is again, Carmine’s paranoia. The thing is, he has reason to be paranoid. He is surrounded by enemies.
“Well if he puts me behind the eight ball, I’ll deal with it. It’s my problem.”
“Just remember: your problems aren’t my problems,” says Carmine.
“I understand.”
“So don’t think about rolling over on your padrone.”
Philip’s face closes up. “Why you keep bringing that up, C? You going patz on me?”
“You’re spending an awful lot of time with that girl prosecutor for the one case about the lawyer.”
“It’s a big case, C. They don’t lock up a Jew every day.”
“Sure they’re not fitting you for a wire?”
The song ends. Isabel is looking at the two of them from behind the counter, some twenty feet away. Her face is half in shadow.
“What do you got under your shirt?” says Carmine.
“Chest hair. What do you think?”
“Stand up a second.”
“Come on, C. Don’t do this to me.”
Philip looks over at Isabel, expecting sympathy. She remains in the shadow with glowing liquor bottles behind her.
“Why don’t you take that shirt off?” says Carmine.
That hair tonic smell again. Philip’s belly hurts. It feels like he has fingers inside his intestines.
“Come on, C. You’re not serious.”
“I’m serious as cancer. Take it off. What’re you waiting for?”
Philip’s hands are shaking and his throat feels dry. Slowly he begins to unbutton the black Charivari shirt he’s wearing. His gut hangs over his belt just a little.
“All right?”
“Take the whole thing off,” says Carmine.
Reluctantly Philip takes his arms out of the sleeves and drapes the shirt over the back of the chair. He feels both Carmine and Isabel studying him. The humiliation makes him shiver. Somehow somebody is going to pay for this.
It’s a good thing he hasn’t started wearing the tape recorder just yet.
“All right, put it back on, I’ve seen enough,” says Carmine without apologizing. “Good luck with your case tomorrow.”
81
Good day, Mr. Gates,” says Susan Hoffman.
“Good day.”
Well, at least he showed up, thinks Jake. Up until quarter to eleven this morning, even that wasn’t a sure thing. It’s a Wade hearing to insure that the witnesses have made proper identifications. But just before Rolando d
ragged John G. in by the elbow, Judge Frankenthaler was pacing around behind the bench like some huffy old pigeon on a dirty windowsill, threatening to bar the witness and cite Susan for contempt.
“Could you tell the court your full name?” she says.
“John David Gates.” He tugs on the lapel of a gray thrift-shop jacket that’s a size too big for him.
“And how were you previously employed, Mr. Gates?”
“I was a train operator for the New York City Transit Authority for seven years.”
That’s good. Jake taps out a nervous Morse code on his yellow legal pad. Establish that he was once a solid citizen. A taxpayer. When a jury is brought in at the trial, they need to see that Gates was once the type of person they entrusted their lives to as they rode the subway every morning.
“Could you briefly describe your service record while working for the Transit Authority?” Susan crosses from the podium on the left side of the courtroom to the defense table on the right. She leans over Jake’s shoulder to pick up a file and her jacket brushes his right ear, giving him a small static shock.
With some effort, Gates raises his eyes toward the ceiling.
“I was employee of the month three or four times,” he says in a voice made slow and flat by Haldol. “I had the fewest number of customer complaints for three of the years I was on my line. And for most of the time I was employed, I had an almost perfect attendance record.”
When he finishes, Jake notices there is a crack in the ceiling where Gates has been looking. Francis X. O’Connell and Joan Fusco are scribbling notes to each other at the prosecution’s table. Something that John G. is saying is setting off bells for them. They seem excited, pumped, hyped, ready for action. Jake feels vaguely ill.
“Did there come a time, Mr. Gates, when you stopped working for the Transit Authority?” Susan has returned to the podium.
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us why that was?” She stands stock-still with her right knee slightly bent and her high-heel pointed toe down, like a dancer about to waltz across the ballroom.
“I was experiencing a severe depression because of the death of my daughter.”
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