Atlanta Noir

by Tayari Jones

  Corey stood up and made the call: two men shot. He gave the address from his GPS. He was still talking when the next plane flew over, this one on approach, wheels down, sinking more than descending, the steel belly right above Finney’s face. And that’s when it came back to him: Terceira in the Azores. That’s where he had planned to go. For years, the postcard had sat on his grandmother’s mantel, sent by her brother who’d visited when he was in the air force. The sun-bleached photo captured a volcanic cone sloping down to a green valley and blue ocean. On the back of the card, his uncle mentioned surfing and seeing a bullfight in the street. It had always felt so far away as to be untouchable, far from hospital rooms and prisons and phones that rang with bad news.

  And now he was at peace with the fact that he would never go there, that his grandmother never made it either, that his uncle died of lung cancer at Grady Hospital, gasping for breath with an oxygen mask over his face, still scribbling requests for a cigarette on scraps of paper. Terceira didn’t save him or anyone else. But it made Finney feel better in that moment. It granted the lumbering metal above his head a quiet music, as if someone was touching the strings of a tiny, delicate instrument. The noise and power didn’t rattle him. It felt like an embrace, a welcome home.

  The Prisoner

  by Brandon Massey

  Grant Park

  On his morning jog through the neighborhood—his first as a free man after eleven years behind bars—Payne saw a Lexus SUV with a broken side window, glass shards littering the pavement like spilled beads.

  He slowed for a beat, and in one measured glance he had absorbed all of the details. Smash-and-grab, the news called them these days. A crew of teenage boys surely responsible. The Lexus, a Georgia Tech sticker on the bumper, was parked in the driveway of a restored Craftsman bungalow, soft light glowing through the windows at the predawn hour. The no doubt clueless residents were going to be unpleasantly surprised when they came out to go to work. They would feel safe no longer, if they ever had, and why should they? The boys who’d done this were going to strike again. They always did.

  Big hands tightening into fists, Payne resumed his pace.

  Out of the joint for less than a week, and already he’d been present at the scene of a crime. Would that qualify as recidivism? Did he need to notify his parole officer?

  He cracked a smile as the cold October air skirled down Cherokee Avenue, chilling his skin through his sweatshirt and tearing leaves from old elms that towered over equally old homes, Victorians and Craftsmans in various stages of repair. Streetlamps still glowed, and Zoo Atlanta lay to the east, shuttered and dark, but it required little for Payne to imagine all those animals locked in cages, living out the balance of their lives in captivity. He’d been one of them not long ago.

  He saw a jogger heading in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. A young blond woman clad in a neon-green jacket and black leggings. She glanced his way but only smiled blandly, unconcerned at the sight of a tall, muscular, bald-headed black man running in her neighborhood. She might have even waved.

  Damn, it felt good to be in the outside world again.

  He attacked the last leg of his run with renewed vigor. At Sydney Street, he hung a left. He didn’t slow until he neared his brother’s home.

  * * *

  The Queen Anne Victorian stood at the intersection of Oakland Avenue and Sydney. The house was enormous, but it had seen better days. It was over a hundred years old, and might have continued to deteriorate had his baby brother and his boyfriend not purchased it two years ago and embarked on their restoration project.

  It had become Payne’s project too. One of the conditions of his stay: he had to earn his keep, and that meant putting his skilled hands to use in a productive endeavor.

  His brother Joseph was in the kitchen. The remodeled kitchen was all stainless steel appliances and granite surfaces, with copper pots dangling from a row of hooks. Sitting on a barstool at the island, Joseph sipped coffee and read news on an iPad. He was still in his sleepwear of Morehouse T-shirt and lounge pants.

  “Morning,” Joseph grumbled. Unlike Payne, he’d never been an early riser. Payne had spent much of their youth dragging Joseph out of bed to ensure he got to school on time.

  “Morning, bro. Someone busted out a car window around the corner.”

  “Really?” Joseph looked up, brows furrowed. “Again?”

  “It’s happened before?” Payne bit into an apple.

  “A month ago. Then it happened again, maybe two weeks after that.”

  “A crew of local boys learning their trade.” Payne chewed slowly, savoring the taste of fresh fruit. He hadn’t enjoyed fresh fruit in many years. “Soon, they’ll graduate to assault.”

  “I hope not.” Joseph winced. “Where was the car parked?”

  Payne gave him a thumbnail description of the residence, and recited the address, make and model of the vehicle, and the license plate number.

  “Give me a break.” Cal entered the kitchen. “You remember all those details? What are you, like an idiot savant?”

  “I notice things.” Payne shrugged.

  Cal sneered. He was dressed for the season in a crisp orange dress shirt and black slacks. Hustling past Payne in a swirl of cologne, he immediately started organizing items on the counter. He had a serious case of OCD when it came to keeping the house clean.

  Cal was an attorney. He owned a tax law firm downtown. Ever since an overzealous prosecutor had worked overtime to send him to prison, Payne hadn’t trusted lawyers of any stripe.

  “My brother has an eidetic memory,” Joseph said. “Always has.”

  “Doubtful.” Cal made a sour expression. “Regardless, I’m not shocked to hear about yet another vehicle break-in. We’ve got a criminal element preying on this neighborhood.”

  “All you fine, upwardly mobile folks moving back into the city?” Payne shook his head. “They’re crimes of opportunity. Kids have too much time on their hands and not enough guidance.”

  “I ought to call the mayor.” Cal poured orange juice into a tumbler, and used the juice to chase down a set of multicolored pills. He shivered from head to toe, as if suddenly rejuvenated by the ingestion of whatever substances he had taken. “Yes, yes. I’ll tell you exactly what we need, my little jailbird friend. We need a more visible police presence to deter these people.”

  “Kids need their daddies around,” Payne said.

  “My daddy wasn’t there for me emotionally and I didn’t turn out to be a thug, so please spare me the simplistic pop psychology.” Cal checked his watch. “Damn it all to hell, I’m going to be late. Joey, are you riding in with me, sweetie?”

  “Yeah, let me get dressed right quick.” Joseph left the kitchen.

  As soon as Joseph was out of earshot, Cal gave Payne a narrow-eyed glare. Payne was five inches taller than Cal and had him by probably forty pounds of muscle, but Cal had the confidence that came from inherited wealth and privilege.

  “The only reason I’m allowing you to stay here is because your brother vouched for you,” Cal said in a low voice. “Don’t screw it up, or I’ll be on the phone with your parole officer in thirty seconds flat.”

  “Right,” Payne said.

  “I expect you’ll make some progress on the veranda today.” Cal grinned, displaying perfect white teeth, but it was a smile without warmth. “Chop chop, bro.”

  * * *

  Later that morning, Payne was outside applying a fresh coat of paint to the pine veranda railing when he noticed the kid at the Craftsman bungalow across the street. Brown-skinned, he was maybe sixteen, tall and lanky, dipped in Under Armour gear from crown to sole. He lounged on a swinging bench on the front porch while diddling on a cell phone as large as his head, a basketball wedged between his feet.

  Earlier, Payne had watched a well-heeled white couple in their forties leave the house and drive away in their respective electric vehicles. The kid had come out sometime later, yawning and shuffling abo
ut in his five-hundred-dollar apparel as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Adopted, Payne thought. Spoiled too. Why isn’t he at school?

  The kid appeared to notice him now too. Payne caught him sneaking looks at him as he ran the paintbrush across the railing.

  After Payne finished with the veranda, he set aside the brush and wiped his hands clean on a rag. He grabbed his canteen of ice water and walked across the street, stopping at the flagstone stairway that led to the Craftsman’s porch.

  The kid barely glanced at him. “Yeah?”

  “What’s up, young buck? I’m Payne. I’m your new neighbor.”

  “All right, then.” The kid focused back on his phone.

  Payne sipped his ice water. “You got a name?”

  “Malcolm.” Still, the kid didn’t make eye contact.

  “That’s a good name. I’ve read The Autography of Malcolm X at least ten times. All I did in the joint was read, exercise, and work my trade.”

  That revelation got the boy’s attention. He stared at Payne with something approaching genuine interest. “Word?” he said.

  Payne nodded. “Eleven years at Hancock State Prison. Got paroled last week.”

  “Damn,” Malcolm said. “What were you in for?”

  “Could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” Payne smiled, but the kid’s eyes grew large, as if he believed Payne actually might make good on his threat.

  “I mean, if it’s private or whatever, you ain’t gotta tell me,” Malcolm said. “I know how it is.”

  “How old are you? It’s Tuesday morning and it’s not a holiday. Young buck like you, I figure you should be in school.”

  “School? Yeah, right.” Malcolm chuckled and stretched. He had an impressive wingspan, was probably a terror on the basketball court. “Ain’t got time for no school, man. They ain’t got nothing to teach me that I ain’t already learned in the streets.”

  “Your folks agree with that?”

  “Nah, but whatever. I got big plans.” Malcolm grinned. “Hey, you live with those gay dudes, right?”

  “I live with my baby brother and his partner.”

  “Oh, okay. I guess you saw a lot of that in prison, huh?”

  “I saw a lot of things in the joint. Know what I saw when I was out running this morning?”

  Malcolm shrugged.

  “Someone busted out the window of a Lexus truck parked around the corner on Cherokee, right across the street from the park.”

  “So?” Malcolm muttered, but cast his gaze downward to his phone.

  Payne took another sip of his water. A grumbling engine approached, hip-hop music booming like thunderclaps from the speakers. Payne turned to see a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows and gleaming chrome rims glide up in front of the house.

  The driver’s-side window lowered. A pimple-faced kid struggling to cultivate a goatee was behind the wheel. He glared at Payne, an expression that would have been comical had it not been so intense, but Payne merely watched him. There was another teenager in the truck too, talking on a cell phone.

  “Time to put in that work, homie.” Malcolm rose from the bench. He tucked the basketball underneath his arm and ambled down the steps. He was as tall as Payne, and Payne was six three, but the kid was skinny as a drink of water, as Payne’s nana liked to say.

  “You shoot rock?” Payne asked. “One of these days, I’ll have to drag you up and down the court.”

  “Keep dreaming, old head,” Malcolm said. “We’ll do that soon, though.”

  He climbed into the backseat of the Escalade, and the kids rumbled away down the road.

  * * *

  Payne headed to a FedEx store on Memorial Drive, across the street from Oakland Cemetery. He rode his bicycle there; a used road bike that Joseph had given him. Payne had nearly wiped out the first time he’d climbed on it. There were no bicycles in prison and he was badly out of practice.

  Navigating the dense traffic around the neighborhood was a challenge too. Cars moved so fast, much faster than he remembered, and no one seemed to be paying attention to the road—most of the people he spotted behind the wheel were looking at their cell phones. He wondered if they were using self-driving cars already; otherwise their inattention to where they were going made no sense. Twice, he narrowly avoided getting struck by a distracted driver.

  At the print shop, he had three hundred copies of his flyer printed: Payne-Free Handyman Services. Joseph, a part-time graphic artist, had designed the flyer and offered to make copies too, but Payne had insisted on doing it on his own. A man could accept only so much charity before he lost all his initiative.

  A pretty, chocolate-skinned sister with a button nose, copper-brown eyes, and braids showed him how to operate the copy machine. Her nametag read, Lisa. Their fingers touched briefly on the machine’s touch-screen display, which literally gave Payne a delicious shiver down his back.

  Damn, if this woman only knew how long it’s been since I touched a female . . .

  “What kind of stuff can you fix?” she asked him, studying one of his flyers.

  “Just about anything.” He added: “Officially, I’m HVAC certified, but I can repair and install all kinds of things.”

  “Hmm, can I keep one of these? I might need to call you to check out my washing machine. It’s been acting up.”

  The way she looked at him, her gaze locked on his, made him wonder if she had him in mind to fix more than her washing machine. But he was too out of practice with the mating dance to be sure.

  “You can call me whenever you want,” he said. “I work a lot, but I’ll make the time.”

  She smiled, so he must have said the right thing.

  * * *

  Payne ditched the bike at home to walk the neighborhood by foot and distribute the flyers. Just about everyone’s mailbox was affixed to the front of their house, so he settled for slipping his flyers underneath the windshield wipers of parked cars. He had walked perhaps one block when an Atlanta Police Department cruiser pulled up beside him.

  Tension coiled like an angry snake in his gut. He was prepared for this, but the predictability of it all . . . well, some things never changed.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the police officer said through the lowered window. “You live around here?”

  Stopping midstride, Payne pressed his lips together. Be cool. “Yes, officer.” Payne crisply offered his address.

  “What’re you passing out there? Advertisements?”

  “I run a business. I provide handyman services. Would you like a flyer?”

  The cop grunted. “Are you licensed?”

  “I’m HVAC certified, sir.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass. You got a license to be distributing business advertisements?”

  “I didn’t realize a license was necessary to advertise a local business.”

  “I don’t like your attitude.” The cop then barked into his walkie-talkie, got out of the car. He swaggered to the sidewalk. He was nearly as big as Payne, and he had the badge and the gun.

  Payne had fought a corrections officer once, a notorious sadist determined to break Payne’s even-tempered demeanor. It was the last time the officer had attempted to assault a prisoner.

  As the cop advanced, Payne braced himself for anything.

  “Hey, Tommy, this gentleman, he’s okay,” someone said.

  A stoop-shouldered, white-haired guy approached, trailed by an English bulldog on a red leash. The man wore a checkered shirt, baggy jeans held up by suspenders, and dusty work boots. A set of bifocals dangled from a loop around his neck.

  The cop halted. “You know this guy, Judge Mackey?”

  Payne blinked at the older man. Judge?

  “He lives on Sydney,” the old man said. “I see him outside working all the time. He’s okay.”

  “Fine.” The cop nodded stiffly, withdrew to his cruiser. “Have a nice day, gentlemen.”

  As the officer headed off, Payne released a deep breath. “Thanks
for that.” He offered his hand to the older man. “I’m Payne.”

  “Name’s Dave Mackey.” The man’s grip was dry and firm—he had some of the biggest hands Payne had ever seen, like shovel blades. He slipped on his bifocals, and his blue-eyed gaze sharpened. “Tommy’s a good kid, but he can be a little too eager.”

  The bulldog waddled up to Payne and sniffed his paint-splattered boots. He grunted, as if offering his approval.

  “Quincy says you’re okay too.” Dave grinned. “Listen, can you help me with something? Won’t take but a few minutes. I could use a fella with a strong back.”

  * * *

  Dave lived with his dog and his wife of fifty-three years in a stately Victorian on Cherokee Avenue, directly across the street from Grant Park, on a steeply sloped plot of land. With its perch atop the hill and picturesque view of the park, the residence dominated part of the historic district’s most prized real estate.

  A red Ford F-150 pickup was parked in the driveway; about a dozen bags of pine bark mulch were stacked in the truck’s flatbed.

  Payne noticed that a wooden carport stood at the head of the driveway too. A vehicle was parked underneath, completely concealed by an olive-green cover. Whatever was there, Payne figured it was valuable.

  “Listen—usually, I’d do this myself,” Dave lowered the truck’s gate, “but my arthritis is acting like a mean bastard today.”

  Payne unloaded the mulch and placed the bags at spots throughout the front and side yard, as Dave instructed. Dave thanked him and said he could stop there, but Payne requested his shovel.

  “My nana used to say, if you’re gonna leave a job unfinished, you might as well shouldn’t have started it,” Payne said.

  He split open each bag with the shovel and carefully spread the mulch in the designated areas around the elm trees, porch, and shrubbery. It took nearly an hour to complete the job, but to Payne, the time passed quickly. One of his favorite activities during his incarceration was to pull the plum shifts on the road detail crew, breathing fresh air and savoring the sunshine on his face and feeling, if only for a short while, like a free man.