Mephistopheles was an interesting character. A demon, but not the devil himself. Mephistopheles introduces himself to Doctor Faust as the spirit that negates,
I am part of the part that once was everything,
Part of the darkness which gives birth to light,
That haughty light which envies mother night
Her ancient rank and place and would be king—
Yet it does not succeed
The captain walked by and saw Gritz pushed back in his chair, looking comfortable with the book, Gritz’s tie loosened, the top buttons on his shirt open. Captain Rose gave Gritz a look. Asked him: “What are you doing?”
“Research.”
Captain Rose poked the book with a finger, got a look at the title. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Gritz was going with this. Where Gritz thought he was going with this.
“That’s not even your case, Bill,” Rose shook his head, like he was sad. He asked Gritz how things were progressing on the porn murders, on the body they’d fished out of the river. Gritz told him the truth, they weren’t.
The captain gave Gritz another look before he walked away, the look saying it all. What happened to you man? They used to call him True Gritz, not so much anymore.
Gritz typed a few words into a search engine on his computer, his hands heavy and clunky on the keyboard. He typed with the index fingers of each hand. Couldn’t understand these younger guys, the way their fingers flew over the keyboard. Their “skill set” different than his own. He found an article on the etymology of Mephistopheles and started skimming it.
The reason they called him True Gritz:
When he was twenty five years old, seven months on the job, they used to joke about his name, make jokes about breakfast foods—grits, obviously—donuts and coffee. Police Officer William Gritzowski was patrolling midtown Manhattan. 42nd Street around Times Square was an eyesore back then: the porn theaters and live sex shows; purse snatchers and other assorted lowlifes; the whores openly plying their trade, their pimps decked out like Goldie in The Mack.
Gritz’s beat included the jewelry shops up around West 47th between 5th and 6th Avenues.
He was passing a small store when he glanced up and saw a robbery in progress, three men with their heads covered inside the store, the three toting shotguns. Gritz went through the door—the crooks had left it open behind themselves—with his revolver drawn.
The fireworks commenced the moment they saw him.
Gritz wounded one, killed the other two.
The wounded one took a hostage: pressed the muzzle of his sawed-off to the head of a young blonde worked there. The blonde crying hysterically. Gritz stared the man down over the barrel of his Colt official police .38, the revolver with the four-inch barrel, not sure how many he had left in the cylinder. Never letting on to the crook that he might be tapped out.
A true Dirty Harry moment.
Do you feel lucky punk?
Gritz never actually saying it, said something else to the piece of shit. The man lowered the shot gun and surrendered. Gritz’s .38 maybe not as intimidating as Eastwood’s .44 Magnum, but good enough.
Ever since then, he’d earned a nickname. And he never heard anything about grits again.
The reason they called him True Gritz.
Twenty five years later he sat at his desk with his book and his thoughts. Gritz knew good police work meant getting out of the department and walking the streets, keeping an ear to the ground, having people you could talk to out on the street. He looked up at the clock on the wall.
The Long Island Expressway took him east to the Southern State Parkway. The going was slow, people commuting home to the suburbs from work. Gritz listened to Q-104.3 the whole way, annoyed he’d missed Scott Muni’s show at noon. He got off in Riverdale and drove over to the house he’d been to before, parking his Ford further down the street.
He sat in the car and thought about things he missed from his early days on the force. That four-inch .38 for instance. Gritz had “upgraded” to a Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chief’s Special when he’d made detective, a snub-nosed .38. Everyone else these days was carrying some kind of semi-automatic. This Crown Vic was nice, but Gritz found himself missing the light blue Chevy Caprice he used to roll around in. Another thing he hadn’t known about in the early days was the extent of the politics, the bullshit.
Gritz took a slug from his flask, put it back in his blazer pocket. He got out of his Ford and went up to the house, rang the bell.
A little boy answered.
“Hi there. Is your mother around?”
“Who is it, Carter?” The kid’s mom came to the door, tired-looking but pretty. “What do you want?” She put herself between Gritz and her kid.
Gritz flashed his shield, told her who he was.
“I’ve told you—” she meant the police “—everything I know. Get inside, baby,” she stepped outside the door, closing it but not all the way. “If you haven’t come to tell me you know who killed my husband—” Gritz saw the way she looked down the street, looked to where her husband had died “—then I don’t have anything more to say to you.”
“I was just wondering maybe I could ask you a few more questions?”
“I have nothing to say, officer.” Detective, but Gritz didn’t correct her.
She was stepping back into her house, Gritz saying “About a friend of your husband’s, man named Frank,” Gritz seeing the recognition in her eyes at the same time she closed the door on him. He stood there a few moments more, thinking maybe she’d relent, come out and talk to him.
She didn’t.
He left one of his cards in the mailbox next to the door and got back in his Crown Vic. He hit the flask again and thought about it as he did so. This is how her husband had died. Sitting in his car like Gritz was. Somebody’d come up on the driver’s side in the street and blown out the window with a shotgun, taking the husband’s head with it. Gritz took another swallow and stowed the flask.
Even though he was going against traffic, it took him the better part of an hour to drive over to Queens. All the goddamn construction on the L.I.E.
The staff at the Oasis Smoke Shop eyed him suspiciously as he entered, the only customers this time of day a bunch of old men sitting around playing narde, sipping juice, and hitting the hooka.
“May I help you?” The man who approached him was five feet tall and about that wide, gold in his mouth and a tasseled fez on his head.
Gritz went through his routine with the badge again, asked if the proprietor was around.
“He is not. Perhaps I can assist you detective?”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine, know he used to come by here sometimes. Named Frank, sometimes called himself Gossage.” They’d called him Goose sometimes because someone mistook Gossage for Gossitch and Frank’s nom de guerre for the Yankee legend.
“I have no knowledge of such a person.” The short, rotund guy played it cool, didn’t blink an eye. Like he’d no idea who Gritz was speaking about. But Gritz could tell he did, just like the woman. Guy kept talking, like he was trying to be helpful. Gritz recognized the ruse.
“Thing is,” Gritz dug around in his jacket, found his card. “This isn’t official business.” Handed the man his card. “I’m worried about my friend is all. Haven’t heard from him in awhile.”
“If I hear of such a man, I will call the number on this card, yes?”
“Yes. And your name is?”
“Fakhri. Would you care for a pomegranite juice, detective?”
Gritz told the man no, thanks, said he appreciated it, left.
He sat down in his Ford across the street. Gritz took a swallow from his flask, warming up. Come on, Frank. Tapped the flask against his steering wheel.
Where are you Frank?
10.
8:30 P.M.
DeAndre Watkins lived on the ninth floor of Tower Three in the Moses Houses. He lived there with his older brother, Terrence, and their momm
a. Their momma, who referred to the projects they lived in as the development, like it was someplace fancy or somethin’. Whatever you called it, DeAndre knew he lived where the poor people lived. His momma working multiple jobs, still getting vouchers each month towards food and the rent.
Seated on his bed with his back against the wall, DeAndre could lean over and look out his window to the quad below, a square of ground and grass between the Moses Houses’ towers. The quad was alive now, more people than earlier. Small groups of men standing around talking. Liming what his Caribbean momma would call it. Steerers directing geekers and fiends to the spot; some apartments established rock houses, others temporary. DeAndre had never been inside one of those places, but he’d heard what went on. Base crazies on their hands and knees on carpet patrol, looking for crumbs. Females trading sexual favors for rock.
DeAndre watched a fiend stumble across the grass on a crack attack, guy looking like a zombie. If Old Toke was down there somewhere, DeAndre couldn’t see him from up here. Most of the lights down below were shattered, vandalized by groups of kids with nothing better to do, casting most of the quad in gloom.
DeAndre’s room was well lit, a naked hundred and twenty watt bulb burning from the ceiling. DeAndre’s room: a bed, dresser, closet with no door. The room not tidy but not overly messy either, his momma vacuuming it at least once a week when the woman home. A row of books on top of his dresser, held in place by a stack of books on either side.
A decorative metronome counting off beats.
tic tic tic tic
Only a few of his books’ spines broken, tomes he’d found or been given him in that condition, books he’d bought for half a dollar from the library. DeAndre had few possessions he could call his own, but he took care of his things.
His bed rumpled, unmade since last night, the sheets pushed down near the foot of the mattress. The sheets decorated with crossed baseball bats, punctuated with baseballs. DeAndre not a huge fan of the game, the sheets hand-me-downs from his brother.
Not that DeAndre didn’t like sports. He did. He’d enjoyed PE class at school before they’d done away with it, make more time to study for the State tests every spring. Need a man on a team, he’d play, but DeAndre’s neighborhood wasn’t the type where you were going to have a touch football game. The pick-up basketball games down at the hoops were another way for the rock boys to pass their time. Not like there was a Little League to join. There were rec rooms in the buildings, but most of the time they were closed. Was a boy’s and girl’s club over across the way, but it meant walking there, every foot of the way hostile territory, predators like Yuri looking for dollars and trouble.
No, DeAndre’s “thing” was reading, losing himself in the books.
He sat back against his wall, turning his attention to the paperback in his hands. His decorative metronome did its thing—tic tic tic—its pendulum swinging back and forth. DeAndre much preferred the world of his books to the world outside his window. He was a hundred pages into his latest find and engrossed. The author—some dude named Jablonsky—DeAndre had never heard of before, had him hooked.
This barbarian slave, Tamarak of the Yurek-Ungaar, sent to man the wall at Kar Dap-Salam, the wall standing between the civilized Five Lands and the foreboding Northland tundra. The other men stationed at the wall with Tams were volunteers and indentured servants. The harvest these last few years in the Five Lands suffering something terrible as the warlock Mazalon worked his black magic, driving farmers to soldiering in order to feed their families.
The barbarian stood out because of his size and fighting prowess. Jablonsky had established that in the first chapter when the bandits had confronted Tamarak at the lake, Tams stopping to get a drink, water his horse. Fools gonna try and jump him. Nah-uh. Tams the only man standing when it was all over.
No one was going to mess with Tams on that wall either. His reputation preceded him. Sure they were talking junk behind his back, plotting on him even, but wasn’t that just like some fools? DeAndre imagined a bad ass like Tams would make short work of mugs like Luke, Marquis, and that peanut head Yuri.
Tams all brolic like The Rock. No one gonna step to someone built like that, someone could fight like that. No one on this side of the wall, at least. North of that wall though, where Mazalon’s orcs and trolls were gathering…well, DeAndre thought he saw where this story was going.
For all their differences—DeAndre a black kid in the projects, Tams a fantasy character; DeAndre kind of small and frail for his age, Tams a beast of a man; DeAndre some kid nobody but his momma and his friends ever heard of, Tams the main character in this kick ass book no doubt millions of people were reading or would be reading—DeAndre identified with the barbarian.
Tams was alone. He had no one. Even among the Yurek-Ungaar, his tribe, before they sold him into slavery, Tams had been a man alone. Now here he was with a bunch of punks talking trash behind his back, an army of monsters massing for the attack. Sure there were others who were supposed to stand by him in whatever battle was coming, but Tams was very much on his own on that wall.
Tams all alone at Kar Dap-Salam and keeping it real. Thinking on his girl, T’lina, back in his village. T’lina arranged to marry Darburry, the punk responsible for Tams predicament to begin with. Tams thinking on his girl the way DeAndre thought about Amy, this girl from school. DeAndre couldn’t wait for class, sit there and look at Amy without anyone seeing him looking at her, kind of the same way Tams stood on that wall thinking on T’lina.
Not that DeAndre knew what to say to Amy.
Not that Amy even knew DeAndre existed.
Tams was staring into the cold Northlands on top of the wall when Juan in his living room shouted oh shit son and broke the spell. Juan, his brother’s friend; Tamarak, DeAndre’s friend. And Tamarak didn’t even exist. DeAndre had dubbed the barbarian Tams; not something Jablonsky called his character.
“Oh shit son!” Juan called out again, amused by something they were watching.
Hungry, DeAndre put the book down on his bed, opened his door, and stepped out into the living room.
DeAndre’s momma at work, as usual, Terrence and his friends had commandeered the living room. The stench of weed heavy in the room, the windows open to air the place out. Terry on one end of the couch, his boy Caprice on the other. Big Ronald seated on the floor against the sofa, eating out of a Chinese food container. Fred over by the stereo and its speakers, standing in place. Juan lying on his back on the carpet, smoking a bone. Probably getting ash all over the floor.
Luke on his momma’s chair, had his legs up hanging off the side like he shouldn’t. What was Luke doing here anyway?
“S’up little man?” Luke greeting him like they were friends, like he wasn’t witness to Yuri’s assailing DeAndre a couple days back.
“What you doin’ in there, shorty?” Ronald stuffing Lo Mein into his fat head. “Rubbin’ one out?” The Lo Mein supposed to be DeAndre’s lunch. Who’d Ronald think he was comin’ in peoples’ houses, eating they food? Sitting there now, eating last night’s Chinese, laughing at his own attempt at a joke. Now DeAndre was gonna have to settle for grilled cheese or some garbage, whatever was left.
“Yeah, what you doin’ in there, Dre?” Juan was half-black, half something else, one of the islands but not the one DeAndre’s mom was from.
“Readin’.”
“Reading. Damn. Be careful with that little man.” Juan took a hit off the bone, held it. “White man’s books,” exhaling, “poison your mind.” Juan giggling, amused by something he’d said or thought.
“Yo niggas, be quiet,” Caprice nodded to the television, “this is the best part.”
The young guy behind the counter on the screen was asking Larry Fishburne if he could help him, Fishburne saying, “Can you help me? Yeah, you can start by giving me fifteen pieces of chicken motherfucker.”
DeAndre knew the movie well. The King of New York. One of his and Terry’s favorites.
“I
got yo chicken fo’ ya, Jimmy.” Terry dropped one of Wesley Snipes’ lines from later in the film.
“This movie is whack, yo.” Ronald paused with his fork to say. “Let’s watch Scarface.” DeAndre glanced over at him. Fatso couldn’t even use no chop sticks.
“You whack, Ron,” Caprise told him. “Be quiet.”
DeAndre looked in the cupboard. Not much there he’d want to eat except maybe a box of mac and cheese. Thing was, he was in no mood for mac and cheese.
“And don’t be droolin’ on it man,” Fishburne warned the counter man. “And I betta not get any of that cat. I want chicken!”
“’member five-oh pulled up on us that time, Torell? Jacked us up.”
“Word,” said DeAndre’s older brother. Their momma named his brother Terrence when he was born. DeAndre and his moms calling Terrence Terry for short. DeAndre sometimes calling him Terr. DeAndre had no idea where Terrence had come up with Torell from, neither brother knowing anyone by that name. The thirteen-year-old had to give it up to Terry for that though.
Torell sounded hard. It’d been Juan started calling Terry Toro. Toro because of Torell. Toro like a bull. Which Terry liked, because bulls were tough.
“Where was you niggas at?” Luke with his legs up there in their momma’s chair. “Ain’t no police come into Moses unless someone dies or somethin’.” Luke another one whose real name was something else. In his case, Luther. Liked to be called Luke, like that rap guy did the same thing.
DeAndre had found what was left of a loaf of bread—Ronald hadn’t gotten that yet—and the cheese out of the refrigerator. He melted a little margarine in a pan on the stove.
Terry told new people he was meeting his name was Torell. He also told people he was from Jamaica because everybody knew Jamaica and Kingston whereas no one ever heard of St. Vincent and Kingstown. Kings-town, not Kingston. DeAndre would never call his brother on it, not in front of his friends at least. Most of the time the fabrication didn’t bother him, DeAndre comfortable with fiction and down with the beef patties and jerk chicken. Sometimes though, when Terry started in with his shottas and bombaclots, he lost DeAndre and his little brother would roll his eyes in his head because Terr was frontin’, even if his fool friends couldn’t tell.
I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) Page 6