At least the tenements were gradually disappearing. In their place, tiny, inexpensive two-story homes with waist-high fences, narrow driveways, and compact lawns were appearing. By no means palatial, these houses nonetheless gave people a sense of ownership and pride. There was even more recreation than before. Over on Powell, where a barbershop and an Arab-run grocery store had once anchored a block of crumbling gray buildings, there was now a baseball diamond and real grass. The people who resided in the Ville were still the working poor, but there was a fresh sense of possibility in this part of New York so very far from “the city.”
Despite the new life in Brownsville, D still carried the burden of the old one. For him, pain walked on these streets like the Devil in the blues song. Instead of air, D breathed in the panicky scent of evil. He walked down Livonia Avenue, his personal crossroads, where the elevated IRT subway put a ceiling on the sky and he’d barely survived his childhood.
While D strode Livonia with a fake bop, his eyes greeted every corner with barely suppressed anxiety. Brownsville wasn’t his world anymore, but then D had never owned the place. In fact, the Ville owed him a debt it would never repay.
Unconsciously, he headed straight toward the center stage of his nightmares—the corner of Livonia and Stone (now Mother Gaston Boulevard), where the Samuel J. Tilden projects began and his youth ended. Up in 315 Livonia, apartment 6C, with its beautiful view of the parking lot, where the trains passed by like clockwork, was where the Hunter family used to live. His father. His mother. His brothers and D.
He stood on the nondescript corner of that poor and obscure community and listened as the elevated IRT train rolled over, toward Manhattan. He stood there and started crying. He didn’t wipe the tears at first. They just rolled down his wide, brown cheeks and fell onto his black shirt and leather jacket. Then a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle came blazing down the street. A young black man in a garish, multicolored top and pants rolled by, the roar of his engine replacing the sound of the train in D’s ears. He wiped his tears with his sleeve, gathered himself, and lumbered down toward Rockaway Avenue and the subway station. Pain was useful, he’d learned. But only if you could turn it into something, only if you could help someone. Time to do that, D told himself. Time to give someone the illusion of safety.
Chapter Seven
Pastis was a fancy French bistro in what used to be known as the Meatpacking District, below 14th Street and west of Ninth Avenue. There were still a few remaining rack-’em-and-pack-’em enterprises located there, but now they vied with clubs (Lotus), designers (Alexander McQueen), and art galleries for the area’s soul. Pastis was just far enough away from the subway and street traffic of the city that celebrities and semicelebrities stopped by all the time to see one another and munch on the well-prepared cuisine. Plus, the kitchen stayed open late.
Around 11 p.m., D entered and walked past the long, boisterous bar and the crowded tables packed tight on the white-and-black-tiled floor over to the host stand under the archway leading to the main dining room. Eden, a tall, raspy-voiced bottle-blonde with a punky cut and squinty eyes, gave D the once-over. Then he kissed both her cheeks and told her who he was meeting.
“Oh, she’s here,” Eden said with a frown, “but come with me anyway.” She guided him down the far aisle, past the restroom and Monica Lewinsky, who was laughing loudly at a female pal’s story, to a large corner table. Ivy sat next to Bridgette Haze, who was smaller than D had imagined and, in her own sharp-featured way, more beautiful too. That didn’t mean she looked special, though. She could have been any of the million or so adorable little girls who are guided by ambitious, needy parents into talent shows, beauty pageants, and hours of tap and vocal lessons. From the time she popped out of the womb with her big blues and precocious laugh, on through the day she performed her mother’s favorite song, “You Light Up My Life,” at the first-grade talent show, little Bridgette had brought all these expectations on herself. At some point, around age seven, she’d accepted her status as (family) star and worked to live up to the role in which biology had cast her. Bridgette Haze was barely twenty-one but was already a veteran at the fame game. She was no different from the millions who wanted the keys to the kingdom—the only thing that set her apart was that she had, against all odds, unlocked the door.
On the other side of Bridgette was a woman with brunette hair who looked like Bridgette, but slightly older, rounder, and sadder, despite the smile she aimed D’s way. Next to her was Bee Cole, looking poised and paid and ready for anything. Squeezed next to her was Bridgette’s publicist, a lanky, attractive black man in his mid-thirties named Rodney Hampton. He had sun-kissed skin, short hair, and wore an expensive beige shirt. At the corner nearest D, sizing him up with an unappreciative eye, was a burly white man with badly dyed blond hair, piled with mousse for that spiky white-boy style, Oakley shades, and an awful brown leather biker jacket, which D assumed was supposed to make him look tough.
“A cute guy can’t get to be a hot guy,” Bridgette was saying to Bee, “but a hot guy can fall back down to be a cute guy.”
“Yes,” Bee replied, “a hot guy can be cute if he’s too boring or stupid. But an interesting guy can become hot if he’s got some conversation and style.”
“I agree,” the singer said, then she turned and looked at D and then at Ivy, saying with her eyes, Who’s this?
“Bridgette,” Ivy said, “this is the man I spoke to you about. D Hunter.”
“Sounds like a video-game character,” she observed with a giggle. The woman sitting next to Bridgette smiled indulgently at her joke and continued surveying D from head to toe.
“No, I’m a real guy,” he responded, “though I do play video games.” D actually hated PlayStation and its ilk but figured Bridgette probably didn’t, so a little lie seemed in order. Ivy introduced D to the table. The woman with the appraising eye was Jen, or Jennifer Haze, four years older than her star sister and attractive, whereas little sis was beautiful—same features but everything was just a little too far apart or a little too close together, just centimeters away from being fine. She owned a travel agency back in Virginia Beach that existed primarily off tidbits from her sister’s table.
D knew Bee, of course. In fact, he needed to have a serious talk with her at some point about the incident at Emily’s Tea Party. At the corner was Hubert Humpries, Bridgette’s longtime flunky-bodyguard-valet. Just over thirty, beefy, and decidedly country, Hubert was close to Bridgette’s father, a football coach in Virginia, and had been designated the parents’ spy, who kept them up on her moves and mood. D didn’t know much of this when he sat down, but by midnight he’d either been told all the backstory or deduced it from the conversation.
“Tell us about yourself, D,” Jen said, as plates of strawberry shortcake were delivered to the table.
“What would you like to know?” he replied, volleying her question back and glancing at Bridgette, knowing instinctively that big sister was speaking for little sis. Star etiquette dictated that a surrogate would ask all the potentially embarrassing little questions the star wanted answered.
“I’ve briefed everyone on your professional background, D,” Ivy interjected. “I think Jen just wants to get a better sense of your personal background.”
“That’s right, D, let’s get personal.” It was Bee doing her Bee thing.
“Sure,” he said, and rather pat, gave the table his standard bio: born an only child in da BK to a working-class family of small means on the nicest block in the ghetto; attended St. John’s University, majoring in criminal justice but, due to his father’s death, left school early and started gigging as a bouncer at various clubs, which eventually led to his opening D Security.
The ladies seemed impressed or, at least, comfortable with D’s neat little fairy tale, until Hubert, who’d been listening quietly, asked, “So when did you get out of the joint?”
“Excuse me?”
“When’d you get out da joint?” Hubert said in a faux-b
lack accent. “Guys like you work the door at clubs ’cause you’re big, got a record, and can’t get a job doing anything else. Well, you better come clean, because we can’t have any ex-cons hanging around. I don’t care what her manager thinks about having some New York dawg watch her back up here. You probably got some dead homies—”
“Excuse me?”
“What, bro, you can’t hear? I said dead—”
Yeah, it had been a rough day, but this was a job interview. So there was no reason for D to react violently to Hubert’s silly speculation. Without thinking but with incredible physical calculation, D leaned over and pinned the country boy’s arms to the table and leaned his face close to his accuser. “For the record,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “I have never been in jail, dog, but I do know people who have. Some of them are friends of mine. And I have some dead homies too. None of it is at all funny to me. If I was you, I wouldn’t joke about it.” D pushed Hubert back into his seat and turned toward Ivy and Bridgette. “I should go now.”
Everybody just stared at him, even Hubert, who was stunned by the swiftness and soft ferocity of D’s action.
“Yeah,” D said absently, “I should go.” Embarrassed by his anger and how easily a jealous man’s words could sting, D knew he’d blown this gig, for both himself and his employees. Just as he had that night at Emily’s Tea Party, he’d shown a very short fuse. He wondered if it was some new reaction to his HIV medication. Were the meds altering his behavior? Perhaps he needed to change his dosage. He was rising out of his seat when Bridgette grabbed his right arm.
“I need to go to the restroom,” she said. “D, why don’t you make sure I get there safe.”
He really wanted to leave, but the small white hand wouldn’t let go of his wrist. Even as Ivy slid out of his seat and Bridgette moved into the aisle, she maintained contact with D, locking him in place as securely as if he were in handcuffs. D turned and led the singer up the aisle, past a gawking Lewinsky, and into the restaurant’s coed restroom. In the main area was a long white sink and, on either side, doors to Hers and His toilets. Instead of going through the Hers door, the singer moved over to the sink and began washing her hands.
“You’re quite a dramatic man, D Hunter.” D quickly apologized for his unprofessional behavior. “Hubert must have struck some kind of chord, huh? But that’s not your fault. If my parents didn’t insist, believe me, Hubert wouldn’t be here. I’m told he’s my father’s second cousin but I just think he was inbred with a jackass.” She began drying her hands. “So you didn’t do a thing Hubert didn’t deserve.”
Two khaki-pants-and-blue-shirt types came in, loud and boisterous. They spotted Bridgette and were about to open their mouths when D stepped in front of her and gave them his well-practiced, highly intimidating glare of death. Reluctantly they walked through the His door with no comment.
“Hubert doesn’t have that effect.”
“It’s just a trick,” D replied. “I’m a regular David Blaine with my eyeballs.”
“David Blaine kicked it to me one night in LA,” she recalled, “but he’s gone out with too many singers already, and card tricks don’t impress me.” She moved closer to D. “Ivy wasn’t sure you’d want this job. Who would, you know. Spoiled pop diva seeks summer rental of New York bodyguard. I could have hired ex-Mossad or off-duty cops, but I don’t like guns around me, or ugly men. I want to enjoy New York City. I want to taste all that flavor everyone talks about on their records. I want to make better music than I’ve ever made before. That’s all. Just come hang with us tonight and see if you’re comfortable.”
“To be honest,” D said, “it’s really about you being comfortable. It’s just a job for me. Either I can do it or not. My comfort is not an issue.”
“Very pragmatic, D. Okay. But you should know my sister thinks you’re cute and she has very good taste.”
It felt to D as if every eye in Pastis was on them as they exited the restroom. Who was this big black man with America’s sweetheart and what were they doing in the restroom? Even their table companions were curious and/or stressed that some communication had gone down that they weren’t privy to. Hubert stayed quiet, glowering at D when he had the heart to look over. Bee was awaiting a reply from Night, on her two-way, to her request: Tell me everything about D Hunter. Jen Haze drank from a glass of merlot and observed D with interest, occasionally whispering things to her sister. Only Ivy seemed sanguine about D’s presence, as if everything were fitting his design.
D looked out of the dining room toward the bar. He smiled at Eden and then saw a stylish brown-skinned black woman in a white-and-green dress, wearing an iced-out cross around her neck, looking his way. She locked her brown eyes with D’s, not flirtatiously but with a willful intensity that suggested familiarity and contempt. Then she turned away. Was that the pistol-packing lady on the bike? It felt like it, but there was no other evidence. Just a hard look from a brown lady.
As Bridgette, Ivy, and the others prepared to leave Pastis, D’s eyes searched the tables for some indication of trouble. European art types talked about Damian Hirst’s latest installation; a moody man shared vino with a dark, thick woman; sundry swells in finery enjoyed hearty late-night meals. Of course, they were all cracking occasional glances over at Bridgette Haze’s table, in search of that observational tidbit that would fill out phone calls next week. D didn’t detect any threat in the dining room. And the presence of that intense woman didn’t, by itself, constitute danger. She could have been just scouting the terrain—maybe she was scheming on Lewinsky.
Responding to a question from D, Ivy said, “We have an Escalade outside being driven by Tony from TZL.” Tony was the owner and top driver of a celebrity limo company. Like D, Tony was another black man with a dream. He’d started his service highly undercapitalized four years earlier, his only asset being his credibility after five years of chauffeuring for others. Now he had a slew of big clients, including a contract with Ivy’s company. Perhaps, if he’d been driving Night from JFK, the kidnapping might never have happened. In a crunch, Tony would keep a cool head. That would be a major plus if they had to dodge bikers on Broadway.
“Let Hubert go first,” D said to Ivy, “and I’ll take the rear.”
Ivy was pleased by the authority in D’s voice. His outburst at Hubert had been disturbing, but Ivy had been around enough artists over the years to know the quality of performance wasn’t predicated on mental stability. Besides, Ivy knew that the same dark, emotional brew that made D dangerous also made him easier to control—should the need arise.
Outside the restaurant, a few paparazzi had gathered, as had a few hard-core autograph hounds with photos of Bridgette Haze. Stars like Bridgette rarely traveled unnoticed, which was why it was so difficult to keep them safe. It was one of the reasons D had been slow to move into this area of the business. It was hard to make quick, silent moves with them, which made them as vulnerable as a child walking to school. Fortunately, as D surveyed the streets, he sensed no danger. Hubert stood next to her as she signed autographs while moving toward their waiting car, the sign of a celebrity practiced in the art of career and security maintenance.
D was watching Bridgette enter the Escalade when he heard the rumble of a motorcycle. The sound came from the right of Pastis. He and Ivy briefly locked eyes, and then D, like a ballet dancer, turned to his right and moved sideways to peer down the block. A single old-school Harley-Davidson rolled up the block with a middle-aged white male in a shining black helmet in command. D stared at him with a shark’s dead eyes and then entered the Escalade.
After exchanging greetings with D, Tony said, “Nice hog, huh?”
D agreed. “There’s something comforting about that kind of bike.”
The driver then turned to Ivy. “Where to now?”
“Take us to DJ Power.”
* * *
An hour later Bridgette Haze was living a dream come true. She’d been nominated for a Grammy. She’d headlined arenas all acros
s America. She’d bedded a couple of the hotties of the WB. But right now, in a Times Square studio (in the lobby of which Tupac had been shot all those years ago), Bridgette was feeling like Mary J. Blige. She was singing over a beat created by Power, whose gritty tracks had made him the truest hard-core producer since Premiere (or, even better, Swizz Beats).
She had headphones on in the vocal booth. From where she stood Bridgette could view her entourage. There were many of the usual faces: her manager, a scheming ancient-school man with crazy hair who was two seconds from being fired if he couldn’t get her label behind this new direction; her sister, who sometimes felt like a much-needed security blanket and too often felt like a shadow lost in Bridgette’s shade. The new faces were way more intriguing. Power, of course, was a gift from God. All those endless Swedish nights, cutting poppy tracks in Stockholm, had been profitable, though none of that music banged like Timbaland or the Neptunes. She’d enjoyed two CDs worth of this, but now Bridgette’s inner R&B diva was calling, and that bitch had to be satisfied.
Speaking of satisfaction, she gazed over at D Hunter, who sat in the back reading a paperback by some obscure writer named Chester Himes. While she’d loved R&B, Bridgette had been raised in Virginia Beach, thinking one day she’d scoop up Brad Pitt (fuck that Friends bitch!). But there was something comforting—and intimidating—about Mr. Hunter. She’d loved that he got up in Hubert’s grill—he was a pain who still acted as if Bridgette were fifteen. She could see that D was a brooder, as if he were carrying some dark secret, which thrilled the lingering adolescent romantic in her. Most men she encountered talked too much, either about themselves (to impress her) or her (to kiss her ass). He didn’t seem anxious to talk at all—a quality Bridgette had come to value in men. Let some other girls seek out men who could express their thoughts. Give her a guy who’d protect her and listen to her and regularly rock her world. Jen had nudged her under the table about D already—which could be good or bad. Jen was way more complicated than she was. You never quite knew where she would come from regarding men. A talk was in order.
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