The Accidental Hunter

by Nelson George

  Zena didn’t mention her ex-husband much unless prompted, but those boys dominated her life in ways that Willis was still coming to terms with. Willis had his own crosses to bear—an estranged daughter and an ill-tempered former wife—so he didn’t feel comfortable passing judgment. They were both adults with long histories that couldn’t be forgotten or ignored. The best you could do was commit to making more history, to living life as if there were new feelings to experience. You had to believe life hadn’t been used up yet. After all, Willis figured, neither of them had reached sixty-five, so they still had plenty of time.

  “Yeah, she was just the sweetest thing,” Willis said as Zena beamed and D forced a smile at the story he told. “I’d been going into that FedEx for years, but I’d never had anyone like your mother take my package before.”

  “Sounds romantic,” D said flatly.

  “Well, Zena made it so for me. Playing Marvin Gaye in the FedEx office. Shit, I was stuffing interoffice envelopes in FedEx packages just to have a reason to stop by.”

  Zena chuckled. “I knew you didn’t have all those packages to ship.”

  “Shit! I was stopping people outside and giving them five dollars to let me drop off their packages for them.”

  Now the happy middle-aged couple laughed together and traded goo-goo eyes, acting as if romance was wasted on the young. Only someone who’d lived a bit could enjoy it this much. Sitting and watching, D had to admit he hadn’t seen his mother look so happy since, well, maybe ever. So what if Willis Watson struck him as a corny, Bama-ass Negro in a green suit and matching Gators. D had either forgotten or ignored what he did for a living. Something for some data-processing concern located in downtown Brooklyn near his mother’s FedEx office.

  Willis Watson wasn’t as dashing or as important to the world as Fly Ty. Nor was he handsome or smart. But he carried no baggage—at least no Hunter-family baggage—and he seemed to be crazy about Zena, and that’s all that mattered. So D sat and forced a smile, despite the jealous palpitations of his heart. At a Federal Express office on Court Street, right across from the courthouses and the seat of municipal power in da BK, Zena Hunter had found a mate, something that had eluded her son, who traveled in the most glamorous, celebrated circles of the juicy Big Apple. She had moved on. He had not. So when D offered his toast to the happy couple there was a hollowness to his voice, the echo of the vast empty space below his left nipple.

  * * *

  Detective Tyrone Williams lived in the Midwood section of Brooklyn in a two-story building with an extremely clean stoop, an American flag draped out of a second-story window, and a well-manicured little garden where he sat on warm summer nights and smoked Cohibas purchased from a Cubano he knew in Union City, New Jersey. Tonight, however, Williams had been drawn away from his bachelor pad to Flatbush and DeKalb, just a few blocks from the Manhattan Bridge, to Junior’s Restaurant, a local landmark since the fifties.

  The menu was caught between cheese blintzes and barbecued spareribs. This once-Jewish diner was now a multicultural center full of ethnic groups Junior’s founders had never even heard of. Fortunately for the business’s survival there was one unifying thread—cheesecake. Whether the customers were off-duty transit-authority workers, corpulent couples, or bejeweled bad boys, it was this dessert that kept the cash registers ringing at Junior’s.

  In an orange booth in the restaurant’s main room Williams was poking his fork into a huge hunk of strawberry cheesecake as D sat updating him on the latest developments surrounding Night and Ivy Greenwich, as well as the worrisome shadowing of Bridgette Haze. “This song stuff is interesting,” Williams said meditatively. “What I’ll do is pull the file on Adrian Dukes’s death and see if anything pops up. You didn’t wanna be a cop, Dervin, but I see you have a fine future ahead of you as a snitch.”

  D, who was having a chocolate shake, pushed his straw around in the thick brown liquid while ignoring Williams’s crack. “Okay,” he said, “now what are you gonna do for me, Fly Ty?”

  Williams reached inside his jacket and pulled out a folded white piece of paper. It was the flyer for an event that Saturday in Brooklyn. “I was gonna send a man over to check it out, but I’m gonna give you this lead instead. It’ll make you look good with that Ivy cat, and if you turn up something, you write me up a full report and put my name on it.”

  D had to smile. “Good looking out, Detective.”

  “What, no Fly Ty? Damn, are you softening toward me or is that just fear your mother will actually marry a man who wears Versus suits? I mean, come on, that’s Versace’s ghetto line. Shit. What is she thinking?”

  D just sat back, nodding sympathetically as Fly Ty vented, while he began to formulate a plan of action.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Far from the spires of Manhattan, closer to Jamaica Bay than the Hudson and a fifteen-minute ride from where Night had been carjacked, a cornucopia of Hondas, Yamahas, Suzukis, and the odd Harley-Davidson poured exhaust fumes and mechanized noise into the Brooklyn sky. Affiliates of the Brooklyn Kings, the Rough Ryders, the Latin Kings, and sundry other black and Latino motorcycle clubs filled a long, flat straightaway next to the huge housing complex named Starrett City.

  The urban road warriors of New York City and surrounding areas were gathered to trade stories, show off custom modifications, and set up some Fast and the Furious–style down-low showdowns for later. There were Jeeps with their rear doors open to dispense barbecue and beer; there were card-table-based vendors hawking T-shirts, key rings, and flyers for transmission shops and subscriptions to Black Gold and other sepia-flavored men’s magazines; there were two scantily clad, round-hipped women selling copies of their calendar featuring them draped over various pieces of gleaming chrome. And from everywhere—bikes, Jeeps, and boom boxes—hard-core beats rocked the boulevard.

  D drove onto the street as conspicuously as possible, gunning the Yamaha’s engine, blasting DMX’s “Get at Me Dog,” and wearing a bright red biker ensemble sure to attract or inflame every Blood in the vicinity. He’d had the motor checked, but whatever scratches and dents he’d made smashing into it with the Escalade a few nights ago were left intact. Someone would recognize the bike or D or both, and whoever they were, he welcomed their attention.

  D parked at the far end of the dead-end street right next to a Jeep selling mixtapes out of the back. To his right and behind him was grass- and swampland that would lead an adventurous walker in the direction of the Belt Parkway. To his left was a hilly, grassy area and then the closest of Starrett City’s twenty-plus-story buildings. He could see people watching out their windows at the gathered bikers. Some had cameras, others binoculars. D imagined that one or two of them were New York City cops looking, just as he was, for a connection to Night’s kidnapping. That Fly Ty had said no one else was coming was no reason to believe him.

  D got off the bike and stretched his legs, straightened his back. Unlike the cruisers he’d had some experience with in the past, rides where you sat back as if the bike were a motorized easy chair, these superfast Japanese racers forced you to sit with your butt high and shoulders hunched over. Aerodynamically it was a speed racer’s dream—nothing took a corner like these machines—but for a big man, the ride was deeply uncomfortable.

  D went down on one knee to check his tires, though he was really checking to see who was checking him. About halfway up the block was a crew called the Harlem Warriors. They were about twenty deep, and in their number was a new member named Ray Ray, sitting on a secondhand Honda that D had leased from the garage mechanic who’d repaired the Yamaha he was riding. As instructed, Ray Ray didn’t attempt to contact D. He was supposed to be just another homeboy biker on a whack-ass ride trying for his bit of road-running glory, and that’s what he looked like. The kid was struggling not to glance at D, but this undercover shit, well, it wasn’t easy. The Harlem Warriors weren’t much of an outfit—they had only been around about five years and were composed primarily of young men who purchased th
eir rides after watching too many DMX videos.

  A few of them were hustlers—a little herb selling, cell phone scams, low-level pimps with underage hookers up at Hunts Point in the Bronx. Most were scramblers, kids like Ray Ray, who didn’t have much but sought a time to shine. Ray Ray was working hard at his Harlem Warrior role, so his back was turned when two old heads rolled down to where D sat on his bike, smoking one of Fly Ty’s Cohibas.

  Both men were right around thirty, heavyset, and very working class. They didn’t strike him as gangsters, though they both had the same make of Yamaha that D sat on. “Beautiful day to ride, isn’t it?” he said to break the ice.

  “It is,” the rider on the left replied. He was a light-brown man with freckles and an American-flag bandanna on his head. “My name is Petey and this is Z-Rock.” The other man, browner, smaller, and wearing a sky-blue metal helmet and matching jacket, just grunted a greeting. No one offered a hand.

  “We thought it was interesting that we all had exactly the same make of motorcycle,” Petey said.

  “Yeah,” D agreed, “where’d you get yours?”

  “We were wondering the same thing about you,” Petey answered. “We got ours out in Hempstead. In fact, we bought it with a pal of ours. All on the same day.”

  “Sort of the Black Musketeers, huh?” D cracked. Petey smiled but Z-Rock didn’t. “Something bothering you, sir?”

  “Yeah, pardner,” Z-Rock said in an unfriendly tone. “Our man had his bike jacked two weeks ago by some kids in Queens. It looks like the bike you’re riding.”

  “Right down to the license plate,” Petey added.

  “So what’s your game?” Z-Rock asked. “No real rider would knowingly bring a hot bike around here unless he was looking to sell it, looking for a fight, or just a fool. Which are you, pardner?”

  “First of all, there are other options. Lots of them, actually. But the one that’s relevant right now is that I might have taken the bike off the original thief and, pending some verification of ownership, I’d return it in exchange for money or something of equal value, such as information.”

  Both men seemed bewildered by this response. “If I get you right,” Petey said, “you’re admitting that this is Derek Johnson’s bike and—”

  “And that’s enough proof for me.” D got off the bike with the keys in his hand and passed them to Z-Rock. “You can give the bike back to your friend, but now you owe me.”

  “We don’t have any reward money,” Petey said, still trying to figure out what was going on.

  “But you were with Derek Johnson that day he got knocked off his bike on Jamaica Avenue and you got a look at those who robbed him. However, you wouldn’t give the police your names, so you weren’t that useful.”

  “You a cop?” Z-Rock asked, his confusion deepening.

  “Hell no. I’m better than a cop. I’m not about the law. I’m about justice. You let me know if any one of the men who ripped off your friend’s bike shows up here, then the debt is paid. You don’t have to testify in court or watch a police lineup or any of that. Just give me a heads-up and I’ll take care of the justice.”

  Z-Rock laughed. “What, nigga? You some damn vigilante? You Charles Bronson or some shit?”

  D wasn’t fazed by the sarcasm. Not one bit. He leaned over toward Z-Rock. “I’m who you want me to be. Now, do we have a deal?”

  Not long after this conversation a posse pulled onto the street in three disciplined rows, four across. The first row came in doing handstands on their seats, looking more like circus monkeys than men. The second row had their front wheels in the air and rolled in, totally in control, on their back wheels. The third row was surprisingly conventional—they just sat on their bikes with their arms folded, like old-school MCs, looking calculatedly bored with their beautiful balance. One rider put a leather-gloved hand to his mouth as if he were yawning.

  Though he was a couple hundred feet away and his view was somewhat obscured by the two lines of bikes in front of the yawning rider, D recognized him as the young man who’d been clocking him at clubs and haunting his dreams. And though there were no women in any of the three lines, D was sure these were members of the posse from Union Square. The bikes were all different; so were their clothes and helmets. But it was them.

  His phone rang. “Yeah, is this them?” he asked evenly. He could hear the roar of the bikes loudly in his ear, since Petey was standing up the street abreast of the incoming riders.

  “The guy in the back and a couple of those other guys look like the ones who jacked Derek,” Petey reported.

  “Hey, I’m not asking you to testify, so you don’t have to dance for me. Does your man Z-Rock agree?”

  “Yeah. He says that’s them too.”

  “Cool. You have the keys. I’m gonna leave the bike down here. Pick it up at your leisure.”

  “So,” Petey asked anxiously, “what’s your plan?”

  “I’m leaving. No use for a man around here without a bike.” D clicked off his phone, got off the Yamaha, and walked to his right. He didn’t look back, he just moved quickly across the grassy hill toward the Starrett City building, getting out of sight as swiftly as possible. He’d hoped to run in to one of Derek Johnson’s friends today, and things had gone better than he’d anticipated. Petey and Z-Rock had dropped Johnson off at Jamaica Hospital but hadn’t stayed around to give the cops a description or corroborate his story. Apparently both men had priors for minor drug possession and wanted nothing to do with Five-O. Still, they had just ID’d the thieves for D, and that’s all he needed. He hadn’t expected it to come off so easily. If his two friends hadn’t tried to step to D, hoping to assuage their lingering guilt, D might have had to sit and inhale exhaust fumes all day.

  Once D saw the showboating bikers he knew his presence was suddenly a liability. As soon as he was hidden behind the corner of the apartment building, D called Ray Ray.

  “Yo, dog,” his coconspirator assured him, “I got you. I know you must wanna know about the crew that just rolled in. That’s all everybody’s talking about.”

  “Well, what’s the word?”

  “They known as STP, the Speed Tribe Posse. They not from any particular hood. Their members are from all over the area and are recruited by this girl called Sunrise, who only goes after certain riders based on their skills.”

  “Is she there now? I didn’t see a woman with them.”

  “Nah, she not here today.”

  D peeped around the edge of the building and saw that everybody was still jocking STP, who’d parked and were now surrounded by other bikers checking out their rides. Ray Ray was standing a few feet away from the crowd watching everything. D smiled and asked, “Who was the guy in the back yawning?”

  “They call him I-Rod. Apparently he’s got some connect for them to get the freshest rides. Some say he’s a fence; some say he has a slave selling them legit. I do know this: people are a little afraid of STP. Sounds like niggas who step to them tend to get fucked up. Not wet up but just having accidents on the road and shit like that.”

  “You sure you’re not making this up? That’s a lot of info to pick up in such a short time.”

  Ray Ray turned to look in the direction of the building. “C’mon, dog, I’m doing my job. Besides, soon as these niggas rolled up, that’s all people be talkin’ about. Everybody told me to keep my distance.”

  “So, you know what I want you to do?”

  “Get up in there, right?”

  D laughed. “Yeah, yo, do that. Call me tonight.”

  D took one more look out at the road covered by brown-skinned bikers, wondering how this particular insular little world, far removed from showbiz, intersected with that of Night and Ivy and Bridgette Haze. Why target Ivy’s acts? None of it seemed random. D had already checked with Fly Ty about whether there had been other motorcycle-based abductions around town, but nothing similar had occurred. Motorcycles were regularly used in criminal transactions to transport this or that. There were no
records, however, of the kind of massive swarm of bikes used in the Night case. This just raised more questions; if, for argument’s sake, STP was involved as drug couriers or moving stolen goods, why the dangerous escalation?

  From where he stood, D could see Ray Ray moving through the crowd around the STP members, admiring bikes and talking trash. A little quiver of guilt ran through his body. He’d definitely put Ray Ray in harm’s way, but then, what was new about that? A poor, big, beefy black boy in New York City was in harm’s way from the first time his mama let him out of the house. D turned and walked away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Outside Emily’s Tea Party, things had changed some. The crowd was still waiting to get in, though perhaps not as anxiously as before. The crowd was still good-looking, but not quite as hip as it used to be. D Security was still handling the door, but neither Jeff Fuchs nor Mercedez nor any of his other original staff members were visible.

  When D walked up to the velvet rope, a burly white man in his mid-twenties with a twenty-first-century blond crew cut and a headset stared at him. “Can I help you?” he asked D. Clearly he had no interest in letting D in.

  “No, I can help you.”

  Not impressed by D’s answer, the young bouncer said, “And how’s that, bro?”

  “I can make sure you get paid tonight and the night after that and so on. My name is D Hunter, and no one may have told you, but you work for me.” He opened his leather jacket and flashed the D button on his black jacket lapel—one that was similar to, but bigger than, the one the young bouncer was wearing. The young man blinked, knowing the name meant something, yet not ready to give in.