Rage Is Back (9781101606179)

by Mansbach, Adam

  Or maybe it would be nothing like that. It occurred to me that I should be wondering what I was feeling, not what they were. The answer was, a little hollow. At first, I attributed it to simple letdown, postpartum depression. Then I found myself thinking about The Great Gatsby, eighth grade, fall semester, and that scene where Gatsby (I think) says to whatshisname, the narrator (I think), something like, “You know who that was? That was the man who fixed the World Series.” They meet the guy in a bar—old F-Dot, not exactly a regular contributor to the B’nai B’rith, describes him as vile and hook-nosed—and then a few minutes later, it’s like the Wizard of Oz in reverse: this nothing-looking old fart sitting there eating his sandwich or whatever is revealed to be a criminal mastermind who once knocked the entire country on its ass. My memory of the book is pretty much limited to this one astonishing moment in which the world distorts, fills up with mystery.

  It came to mind now, I realized, because it was precisely what I craved: to be pointed at, whispered about. I only wanted to be the man behind the scenes, the invisible mastermind, if everybody knew it. It was so silly and selfish, it made me want to slap myself in the back of the head.

  I did the next best thing and sidled up to Cloud. He was leaning against a support beam, smoking a cigarette like he didn’t give one single solitary fuck about any law, rule or regulation on the books.

  An Uptown 2 was docking. We turned to stare at it.

  “Thing of beauty, eh youngblood?”

  “I feel like getting a bullhorn and telling everybody it was me. I mean, us.”

  He brought the cigarette to his mouth, index finger hooked around the top, and nodded as he took a pull. “Yeah, I remember that feeling.”

  I waited.

  “Vexer,” he said, nodding at a panel piece. “Or somebody biting him. Nobody else does Es like that, with the arrows all coming back in on themselves. You see?”

  The doors closed, reopened, closed again. As if the train were clapping its hands.

  “You were saying, you remember that feeling . . . ?”

  “Yeah, man. You gotta think about it like this: only fly niggas appreciate fly shit. And they gonna find out on their own. For everybody else, fame is the opposite of fame.”

  “I’m not following.”

  He flicked his cigarette onto the tracks, and cocked his head enough to look at me. “The way you think about fame, like an accomplishment? Some shit to pursue? That’s how you should think about not being famous.”

  I mulled that over, while Cloud smoked another one. My mother joined the Ambassador on the bench. I took it we were in no rush to get Uptown.

  “Cloud?”

  “Something else on your mind, youngblood?”

  I wanted to ask him about T. Whether everything had gone down as he’d claimed, whether he’d left anything out. Whether it was all intricately concocted bullshit, and he’d just walked into the apartment and lit the man up. I couldn’t, of course.

  “What happened with you and my mother at Fashion Moda?”

  He squinted at me. “Say what?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Naw, why, she said something happened?”

  “Forget it.”

  “What she say, that I bogarted the opening, and it’s my fault nobody else sold their little bullshit canvases?”

  “I seriously have no idea.”

  Cloud shook his head. “Fuckin’ Wren, boy.”

  My phone rang. I took it from my pocket, looked at the screen. It was the Uptown Girl.

  “Yo.”

  “Are you there? I can’t see you!”

  “Am I where?”

  “With your father, on TV!”

  “What? Where?”

  “He’s giving a press conference. Turn to New York One.”

  “Hold on, hold on, I gotta get to a TV. What’s he saying?”

  “What is it?” Cloud demanded.

  “Billy’s on TV,” I told him, and took off toward the stairs. “Kirsten, you still there?”

  “You’re breaking up. Where are you?”

  I jackknifed my way through the flow of downward traffic, dashed toward the turnstiles. “Kirsten? Can you hear me? What’s he saying?”

  “It just started. He’s standing next to that gay guy we had lunch with that one time.”

  “Nick? Nick Fizz?”

  Static dissected her response. People were lined up behind the turnstiles, waiting to swipe and pass. It’s a stupid fucking system, if you think about it, making the entrance and the exit the same.

  “Coming through! Emergency!” I shouted, and ran toward one of the turnstiles, figuring I’d back down whoever stood opposite. It was an old lady, clutching her Metrocard in a bony hand. She paid no attention, backed me down, brushed past muttering aspersions. I tried again, got shoulder-banged by a beefy businessman. Broke through on the third try, reached the street, and spun around looking for an electronics store. There were a half dozen within blocks, but none in sight. I picked a direction and lit out, doing that stressed-out top-speed too-cool-to-run New Yorker walk.

  “Kirsten? What’s happening?”

  “He’s about to read a statement.”

  “Can you turn it up for me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She cranked the dial. Billy was reading the message he’d recorded for the trains.

  “Why is he doing this?” the Uptown Girl asked. “What about the cops?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell us anything.” I saw a store across the street, JP Discount Electronics, and cut toward it, dodging through four lanes of crawling traffic.

  An Indian guy in a cheap suit greeted me at the front door. “Hello, my friend. What can I do for you?”

  “Just looking.” The TVs were in the back. I found the channel just as Billy was reaching the end of the statement. The reporters seemed to know it—maybe they’d already gotten ahold of the tape. I could hear them outside the frame, shouting for his attention.

  How did Billy look? I believe the expression is “preternaturally calm,” and it’s usually applied to psychopaths and athletes. The shot was tight on his head and shoulders, making it impossible to tell where he was. If he hadn’t been squinting, I might not have known he was outside. Fizz was behind him, hands folded behind his back, his stance that of a bodyguard or a manager.

  Billy looked up, into the cameras. From the way one shoulder rose, he appeared to be shoving the paper into his back pocket. A flurry of shrill questions filled the pause. Billy ran his eyes back and forth over the throng—trying to find one he felt like answering, maybe. It made him look as if he were reading a teleprompter. Even in the sunlight, you could see the flashbulbs going off. I guess in news photography school, they teach you to catch your subject with his mouth closed. Then he opened it, and the reporters fell silent.

  “I figured maybe people needed to see my face. So they could look into my eyes, and believe me.”

  There was no clamor this time. They waited. My palms started to sweat, and the thought of vomiting crossed my mind.

  “You look like him,” the Uptown Girl said in my ear.

  I’d forgotten we were still on the phone. Remember how when you’re thirteen or fourteen, just falling in love for the first time and too young to go out on a school night, you spend hours and hours on the phone with your girlfriend every evening? The two of you might watch a whole movie together on the phone, talking and not talking, might even fall asleep listening to one another breathe.

  “I guess I do, a little,” I mumbled back.

  The reporters stopped waiting. One did, anyway, and the others, caught flatfooted, didn’t try to compete.

  “Billy, you’ve been a wanted man for sixteen years. You were convicted on multiple charges of felony vandalism,
and fined two million dollars. Where have you—”

  “Graffiti was the only voice I had then,” my father said, “and it’s the only voice I have now. I tried to tell people the truth about Bracken—that he’s a murderer, that he killed my friend. Nobody listened. So I’m trying again.”

  “This is crazy,” said the Uptown Girl. “He’s got to get out of there.”

  “He will,” I croaked, suddenly understanding. “He’s leaving. He’s doing it again.”

  It was his eyes that told me. There was something heavy and defeated in them, something incongruous with the victory all around. He looked like a man who was bowing out. A man preparing to live with his decisions, and live with them alone.

  “Not like this,” I whispered, a hot sadness welling in me. “Please. We need more time.”

  He took another question.

  “All due respect, Mr. Vance, you expect us to believe you did this by yourself? With no help?”

  Billy blinked a couple of times. “I’m a master painter. One of the best in the world.”

  The media exploded into chaos, and for a moment Billy stood still, staring into their lenses.

  “I’m not going to tell you my secrets, but look: I’ve been gone for many years, and in that time I’ve studied with some of the wisest men in the world, and learned how to do things most Westerners would think are impossible. The whole time, I was preparing for this. To come back and do this. So don’t be too quick to think you know what’s possible. You’ll see what I mean when the cops get here.”

  “Oh my God,” said the Uptown Girl. “Dondi, what’s he talking about? He sounds crazy. Is that the point? Is he going to plead insanity?”

  Before the reporters could recover, my father resumed.

  “That reminds me, has anybody heard from Bracken? A statement? Anything? Not like the candidate to be so quiet, is it?”

  The briefest flicker of a smile crossed his face, and I felt myself tear up.

  “Will you turn yourself in, Billy?”

  “Where did you go when you left New York?”

  “Can you elaborate on what you studied, and with whom?”

  But Billy was looking past the cameras now, tracking something farther away.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “Go. Go.”

  The cameramen were no dummies. They turned to capture whatever was distracting Billy. Four police cars, regular city rollers, skidded to a halt at the curb. The doors flew open, and out poured the uniforms.

  I recognized the block.

  Hardy-har, we live in a flying elephant.

  “He’s gone,” I told the Uptown Girl. “He’s gone, or he’s dead.”

  The cameras swung back toward Billy.

  “I’m sorry, Dondi,” he said. “I wish—”

  His eyes darted to the street, and Billy turned and ran. Threw open the front door, sprinted through the lobby. Fizz was right behind him.

  Thank God for a free and independent press, hellbent on getting the scoop. The reporters chased Billy. The cameramen chased the reporters. The cops had to fight their way through all of them.

  The New York One team led the pack. Their cameraman got a shot of Billy and Fizz slipping into the stairwell, plus some nice audio: the distinct click of the door closing, and then a sound that probably mystified the majority of those watching at home, the Uptown Girl included.

  “He’s welding it shut,” I told her.

  “What’s the point of that? He’s got nowhere to go! He’s trapped! They’ll search every apartment!”

  I was too anxious to respond. There are no fresh metaphors left in the English language to describe an overtaxed tickbox, or any of the physical sensations endemic to extreme duress, but you can probably imagine the state your boy was in. If motherfuckers had to feel that way all the time, human life expectancy would be like ten, fifteen minutes.

  The cops got there thirty seconds later, charged through the newspeople and started throwing their shoulders at the door. I figured Billy could climb a flight every ten seconds—the first few, at least. That put him on the fourth floor by the time they turned their attention to the elevator. It would have been half that, but these guys were determined to take the door. They looked like idiots: seven or eight boys in blue hulking around, trying to appear useful, while two young bucks, the first to arrive, slammed themselves against the ungiving metal again and again.

  When they did think to find an alternate means of pursuit, it took the po-pos another minute to realize that the elevator was stalled on the second floor—Fizz and Billy must have taken care of that before they called the press. If there’s anything that looks dumber on TV than a bunch of New York’s finest outsmarted by a door, it’s those same ten guys jabbing at a button again and again, as if they think the problem is that they haven’t pushed it hard enough. I could almost see the commissioner throwing shit around his office as he watched this.

  “Five minutes,” I muttered. “Five minutes, that’s all he needs.” It had been three and change. The Uptown Girl didn’t ask what I meant. I think she was too busy willing Billy to make it, even if she couldn’t imagine how.

  “Crowbar!” shouted the cop in charge. An eighteen-second dash to the patrol car and back. Ten more for one of the disgraced young bucks to redeem himself and pry open the door.

  “Richards, second floor—unstick that elevator! Ufland, third floor, search every apartment! Donnelly, four, Wilson, five, Cabrera, six. The rest of you, take the elevator to fifteen, and work your way down! He’s here somewhere!”

  Four minutes. I decided to revise my estimate. Four was plenty. My father was gone.

  As for that sentence he never finished, it hasn’t kept me up as many nights as you might think. There are only a few basic directions it could have taken: I wish I was different, I wish you were different, I wish things were. I agree with all of them.

  You never know it’s too late until it’s too late. That’s what makes it too late, I guess.

  16

  he end. Basically.

  By that evening, a chemical death bath had washed the burners from the trains. You could almost hear them screaming as they melted into Day-Glo puddles.

  But trains are easier to buff than reputations. Losing a guy in an apartment building on live television when you’ve got half the police force camped out in the lobby is hard to explain. Especially when he’s just confessed to the splashiest and slickest crime in city history. That’s not me bragging; that’s a quote from The New York Times. Okay, a paraphrase.

  The story went global. Interstellar, probably. I’ve got no interest in cataloguing the particulars of the coverage. Fame wasn’t why we did it, and besides, there are plenty of other places you can go to read about that.

  I will tell you about Bracken, though.

  Credit where credit is due: he played it smart. I suspect one of those high-priced public relations firms that specialize in crisis management was calling the shots, but I’m just guessing. If that is the case, though, they earned their fee without working up much of a sweat. On Tuesday morning, Bracken released a statement to the press. Then he walked straight off the map, disappeared as utterly as Billy.

  I’m not talking unavailable for comment, or disgraced and reclusive. I’m talking Abominable Snowman, Serengeti Yeti, some cryptozoological shit. The crowd of reporters outside his apartment dwindled every day, with the holdouts from the retard networks abandoning their vigils on Friday. Maybe he sent somebody for his personal effects, or maybe he left everything behind.

  His statement was the tersest, most inscrutable document in the history of printed matter. It didn’t address Billy’s accusations, neither accepted nor dodged the blame for Amuse-A-Thon 2005, offered nary a clue as to his whereabouts for the previous twenty-four hours. He suspended his campaign and resigned from his job, effectiv
e immediately, “in light of recent events.” That was all. Didn’t even bother to endorse a candidate.

  Naturally, the disappearance of both hero and villain only gave the story legs. Funny how everybody wants closure, and nobody realizes they already got it.

  Karen and I unplugged the phone, and put on a show of acting normal—for ourselves and each other and whoever else was watching. Fizz had a PR guy issue a statement on our behalf, a Brackenesque two-liner saying that we were estranged from Billy and hadn’t even known he was back in New York, much less what he’d been plotting or where he was now, and we asked the media to respect our privacy and our total lack of connection to recent events. What a fantastic phrase, recent events. It adds so much, yet says so little.

  We spent Tuesday waiting for the NYPD to show up and search the apartment, but it never happened. They were in spectacular disarray, seemed like, between the Bracken press release and the Billy fiasco, and if they raided us and came up empty, it would have been an embarrassment trifecta. Which is exactly what would have happened, because we’d dumped all the maps and notepads and shit on Sunday night, even moved Karen’s old blackbooks and photo albums to her homegirl’s place. They would’ve sulked back out with nothing but a twenty-year-old jean jacket covered in tags. And we would have made damn sure the press was there to see it all.

  On Wednesday, Karen went to work, and I went to Theo Polhemus’s funeral. It was at a chapel in Harlem, and the service was in French. Turns out the dude was Haitian. I played the back, paid my respects from a distance. The casket was closed, and probably empty, considering how much time had passed since his death. I’d been to a couple of funerals for young people before—a girl I went to elementary school with died of cancer, awful thing, and a guy I’d played on summer league ball teams with caught a stray bullet last year, which is no fun either. Worst thing in the world, burying a kid. You can’t say the person lived a full life, or it was his time to go, or any of that. All the rules of decorum are suspended: people wail. But T’s was not the funeral of a young person. It was the funeral of a gangster. His mom, his sister, everybody was blank-faced, like the only surprise was that he’d lived this long.