St. Louis Noir

by Scott Phillips

  Nehemiah had learned about meth from a cousin who lived in Independence, Missouri. It was there that Nehemiah got the meth recipe and found a few reliable cooks. Having sewn up business in southeastern Missouri and paid off the Bootheel cops he needed to, he knew that to increase the profits you had to move into the cities. Heroin and crack ruled St. Louis; Nehemiah knew this. What he also knew was that once people learned about meth, it would become their drug of choice with its lasting and cheaper highs.

  Distribution was a problem. In white neighborhoods in St. Charles County, deep South City, Madison County, and the white neighborhoods left in North County where drug usage was high, it was okay for rednecks to set up shop. White people from the affluent western suburbs and the more middle-class southern suburbs tended to drive in to buy drugs. In the black neighborhoods in North City, North County, South City, East St. Louis, and parts of Madison County, it was not realistic to have a group of white boys selling drugs. They would stick out like sore thumbs. Plus, they didn’t know anybody and drug dealing is a “relationship business,” as Nehemiah had been taught.

  That’s where Nehemiah’s childhood friend Bubba came into play. Bubba had spent eight years in Missouri prisons for a string of armed robberies. First at the “Gladiator School” in Booneville and then at Bonne Terre. There Bubba met quite a few black drug dealers and gang members from St. Louis. He put them in contact with Nehemiah, and they were now cutting into the heroin and crack markets with their new product in the black neighborhoods of St. Louis in a major way.

  Bubba and the boys drank and told stories of their families and growing up as Lynyrd Skynyrd played in the background. Billy rolled a fat joint of Missouri-grown weed and they passed it around. Headlights flickered through the front window and Bubba got up to look to see who it was. All four men were armed at all times. Walking to the door Bubba waived off his friends.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, smiling to the young black man named Rello walking toward his front door, his maroon ’77 Cutlass Supreme parked in the driveway. Rello ran a few meth houses in the College Hill neighborhood of North St. Louis. He also acted as a middleman between Bubba and some dealers in the O’Fallon Park, Hyde Park, and Penrose Park neighborhoods.

  “Merry Christmas, my dude,” answered the short, thin Rello, wearing a black leather coat, True Religion jeans, new Jordans, and a black-and-white STL cap. His smile exposed two gold incisors. He handed Bubba five shoe boxes, which Bubba knew were stuffed with money.

  “Looks like you’re having a real lovely Christmas. How are the kids?” Bubba asked.

  “Blessed man can’t complain. We had our Christmas thing at my house, then we went to my mama’s house, and now I’m going to stop by my other BM’s house and see my other kids,” Rello replied.

  “What’s a BM?” Bubba asked, prompting laughter from Rello.

  “Baby mama, dawg.”

  “I see. Well, if you don’t have anything planned for your kids to do, I have something in mind,” Bubba said.

  “Oh yeah, like what?”

  “Come inside. Have a seat,” replied Bubba.

  Twenty minutes later, as Rello was leaving, Bubba walked to the next-door neighbor’s house. The old white lady had given him a fruitcake for Christmas, and to return the favor he was bringing a plate of homemade cookies his wife had sent up. The lady lived alone. Her husband, a union pipe fitter, had died of a heart attack a few years back and her kids and grandkids, in typical white North County fashion, had all moved out to St. Charles County. Today the driveway was full as her relatives were visiting. Bubba knocked on the door and saw an unfamiliar face.

  “Hello,” said a fortysomething man with a comb-over, a seventies-era Christmas sweater, and a potbelly. Bubba thought he might be a son-in-law as he didn’t have the family look.

  “Hi, I’m the neighbor. I’m here to bring some Christmas cookies to Mrs. Shields,” Bubba said.

  “Oh, of course. Come right in.”

  Bubba walked into a house full of kids playing, torn Christmas paper scattered around, and laughter. Mrs. Shields came walking up to him smiling.

  “Merry Christmas, Bubba. You didn’t drive down to see your family?” Mrs. Shields asked.

  “Leaving in a few minutes. Here are some cookies my wife made. Was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  “Hope I can. What is it?” Mrs. Shields said.

  “I don’t have any wrapping paper and all of the stores are closed. Do you have any I can use?”

  “Why, Lord, yes, of course I do. I got all kinds of paper you can wrap up presents for them little darlings with. Just let me go get some. Of course you’re going to need scissors and tape too,” Mrs. Shields said, before getting Bubba the needed items.

  IV

  “Do you think we should have followed the Cutlass?” Danny asked, looking from the car parked a few houses down.

  “I thought about it. I don’t know, man, Big Man told us to watch the people in the house. Some redneck named Bubba,” Faheem answered.

  “Right, but you don’t think that was money or drugs in those shoe boxes?”

  “For sure it was. They weren’t doing Christmas delivery for Foot Locker.”

  “So, drugs or money?” Danny asked.

  “Definitely money. The drugs are coming from the white boys. That’s whose bringing meth into St. Louis. The black guys, those cats are out on these corners selling the product. Definitely he was bringing back money.”

  “So, that’s the money going to this Nehemiah, right?” Danny said.

  “Yeah. Allah knows best: that’s how I see it. Regardless, we gotta get those boxes.”

  Faheem kept an eye on the house and Danny read an article in an old New Yorker magazine as KWMU, the local NPR station, played inside the vehicle. A bombing in Iraq, more killing in Syria, civil war breaking out in the newly created state of South Sudan. That was overseas. On the St. Louis Post-Dispatch app on his phone, Faheem read about an Amber Alert for a kidnapped six-year-old boy and a number of local killings. “Ya Allah, ya ar-Rahman,” Faheem said aloud.

  “Look. They’re leaving,” Danny said.

  “And they got a bunch of Christmas presents with them. In the Christmas spirit I guess.”

  “A bunch of presents. You think they left them boxes at the house?”

  “Not at all. Those boxes are wrapped up as Christmas presents. Looks like we gonna be robbin’ Santa.”

  “Yeah, but not here. The sun is still up and there are a lot of people around,” Danny said.

  “Right. We’ll follow them and catch them at an isolated spot. Jack their asses of the money and whatever they got. I say a bumper-jack.”

  “You bump them with the car. I get out like I’m looking for damage, and when they get out I draw on them.”

  “Exactly. And if they start trippin’, you light they ass up, inshallah.” Faheem followed the man through the St. Anthony section of Florissant before they turned right onto Washington, passing Pirrone’s Pizza on their left. Washington turned into Elizabeth after crossing over 270. The quiet street was lined with beautiful midcentury homes with large front porches and big front- and backyards. Had the homes not been in North County you could have got at least $500,000 for them; being where they were, you would be lucky to sell one for $200,000.

  Faheem and Danny followed Bubba and his boys as they turned right on Chambers in the city of Ferguson and took that until it turned into Airport Road and the city of Berkeley. Passing a stretch of small frame houses and ghetto businesses, they turned left on Jefferson next to a liquor store. A couple of blocks up, near the intersection of Jefferson and 5th, near a stretch of new houses built after a tornado and before the Kinloch city limit, Bubba parked his car.

  Faheem thought it an odd place for white boys to be hanging out. Then he noticed the old-school Cutlass they had seen earlier parked in front of the house. Bubba and his three friends got out with presents. The same black guy from earlier came out of the house with two kids. T
he kids took two boxes each and got into the Cutlass. Bubba and the black guy exchanged a few words and then both got in their cars. Bubba took the lead.

  V

  Bubba was being extra cautious. There had been too many robberies lately and the large amount of money, a hundred grand in each box, made him kind of nervous. One box the boys took for themselves and split four ways, the other four boxes went to Nehemiah. That was too much money to lose in a street robbery. Even though he hadn’t been robbed, Bubba knew all about the different vigilante crews operating in St. Louis. If the day ever arrived when they came for him, Bubba would be ready. His aim was straight and he shot to kill, done it before and would do it again if he had to. Christmas presented an ideal opportunity to move the money and the kids were a great addition.

  They jumped on I-70 and drove it east into the city and then took the 55/44 exit toward downtown and got off at Grand. A local children’s hospital was holding an event for sick kids where the public was encouraged to donate presents. Bubba had some gifts to bring, the biggest being for himself.

  * * *

  “Man, what are these fools doing?” Faheem asked.

  “I don’t know, but whatever it is, we can’t roll up on them with the kids inside,” Danny answered.

  “I know. That would be straight-up scandalous. We’d end up on the front page of the Evening Whirl for sure,” Faheem said, referring to the local black-owned crime and entertainment newspaper.

  “Somehow they got the kids involved.” Danny shook his head, thinking of his own children. He sent his wife a text asking her how they were doing and thumbed through Facebook and Twitter as Faheem drove.

  “A hospital? Why are they going to a hospital?” Faheem asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t money in there. Why would they bring money to a hospital?”

  Faheem parked the Crown Vic on Park, about a block east from where Bubba and Rello had stopped. From there they followed them on foot, leaving their guns in the car.

  “If they’re going into the hospital, there’s no way we can get the guns inside,” Faheem said.

  “Well, there’s probably a way. We would just need some time to figure it out,” Danny replied.

  “Look, we just gotta pretend like we’re there to visit patients and try to get as close to them as possible, inshallah,” Faheem said.

  As the two of them followed Bubba and his boys along with Rello and his kids, they noticed a large crowd outside with a lot of children. Christmas carols were being sung and there was a guy onstage dressed as Santa, handing out gifts. The crowd was mostly mothers with kids, with the occasional dad mixed in, along with a few grandparents. Some of the kids appeared to be alone while others were accompanied by hospital staff. Bubba, Rello, and the rest settled into the crowd holding their nicely wrapped gifts as the kids went to play with the other children who were now being thrown treats by elves.

  Looking to the sky, Faheem realized it was time for the maghrib prayer. He excused himself to go to the bathroom and make ablution and then pray.

  Walking up to the security desk smiling, Faheem asked where the restroom was and was guided to one in the lobby. Once in the bathroom Faheem made wudu, washing his face, arms, hands, and feet, and then outside he found a barren piece of concrete behind the crowd and pulled out his portable black prayer rug. In front of the rug he placed his car keys and gloves to both weigh it down and act as a sutra (a separation from his area of prayer and other people).

  * * *

  Bubba, Rello, and the boys were observing the kids, making jokes, and lamenting the fact you could no longer smoke at such gatherings. Out of the corner of his eye, Bubba noticed a black man with a big beard and a Muslim-style cap praying in prostration. This was not something Bubba had ever been exposed to growing up in the Bootheel, but he’d seen plenty of it in prison.

  “Rello, you know that guy over there?” Bubba asked.

  “The Muslim?”

  “Yeah.” Bubba kept a close eye on the man.

  “Naw, I don’t know him . . . Hold up now. He do look kinda familiar. You know what? That look like that Muslim who robbed one of our meth houses on North 20th and Obear,” Rello said, trying to get a better look.

  “The one on the north side over by the water tower?” Bubba asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Someone with that same description hit up a house on East John right around the corner from the other house. The question is, what’s he doing here?”

  “That’s a good question. I think I’d like to know the answer to that,” Bubba said.

  The five men began walking toward Faheem, who by that time had finished praying and was rolling up his rug and fitting it into his back pocket. A hand touched his shoulder and Faheem turned around.

  “Brother, I wish I would have seen you praying; we could have prayed together,” a smiling, clean-shaven man of South Asian descent said in accented English.

  “Alhamdulilah akh, I wish so too. Next time, inshallah. My name is Faheem akh,” he said, reaching out his hand.

  “Here they call me Dr. Khan. You can just call me Brother Abdul-Basit,” the doctor said.

  “Inshallah I will see you again. Maybe at the masjid. Assalamu alaikum,” Faheem said, smiling as the doctor returned his greetings. When he turned around he was no longer smiling. Bubba, his three friends, and Rello were all staring at him.

  “You know, fella, you look just like someone I been hearing about,” Bubba said with a mean look on his face.

  “Yeah, you look like the Muslim they say robbed a couple of our houses up by the water tower,” Rello said.

  “So what. Y’all come to bring me presents or something?” Faheem responded, staring them down.

  “Kevin, Billy, show him the presents we have for him,” Bubba instructed. The two men opened their leather coats and flashed their guns. Faheem had gone into the hospital unarmed; that mistake could cost him his life.

  “Frank, take the keys. Take him to the van and tie him up. You ever been down to the Bootheel, boy? Don’t think folks down there ever seen a Muslim. You should be a real treat for the locals. Maybe we’ll cage you up like an animal and make you do your little prayer like a circus trick,” Bubba chuckled.

  “You coming with us?” Frank asked.

  “No, you guys drive him back home. Take him to that abandoned farmhouse outside of Malden. We’re not cooking there anymore. It’ll be a good place to hold him until Nehemiah gets the chance to meet him. Tell me, boy, what crew are you with?” Bubba said.

  “RCR,” Faheem answered, looking him dead in his eye as a smile lit up his face.

  VI

  Danny had been waiting for Faheem to complete his prayers so he could say his Maariv, a customary Jewish prayer after sunset. When he saw the five men walking toward Faheem, he knew that somehow they must have recognized him. Danny texted the Big Man their location and a *911 code. The numbers weren’t in their favor. Definitely not when they were unarmed.

  Then Danny saw the group split. Three men, no doubt armed, leading Faheem away, and Bubba and the black man staying behind with the gift packages. For Danny the decision was easy. Money can be replaced—you can’t miss what you never had—but Faheem was his friend. A good guy, a married man with kids, and a brother in the RCR. Danny would do anything to save his friend just as he’d fought to save his buddies in the IDF.

  Growing up in a wealthy home in West County, Danny had never been in a street fight as a kid, and he hadn’t been raised by tough men. He arrived to Israel a complete stranger to violence. Then came the weapons and combat training, and then came the real action. Hill to hill, street to street, house to house, room to room, gun battles. That, Danny was trained for and good at. While he had been trained in hand-to-hand combat as well, he had only had two real fights in his life. Once getting his ass kicked by a Palestinian cabbie in Jerusalem and another time managing to beat up a guy during an RCR takedown. Still, he’d studied the Israeli fighting art of Krav Maga and did prett
y well in training. All three of the guys leading Faheem away looked to be out-of-shape rednecks. Danny would pray for the blessing of God and proceed.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Bubba and Rello had other plans.

  “Rello, get the kids and take me to your car,” Bubba said as he began walking back toward the street.

  “Come on, y’all. Come on, hear? Think I’m playin’ if you want to!” Rello shouted out at the kids who began reluctantly running toward them.

  “Had a feeling this was going to happen. Could just feel it in my blood. The hospital would draw them out. They probably thought we were going inside and left their guns in the car,” Bubba said.

  “So what now? Want me to drive you back to Florissant? It’s no problem, I gotta take the kids back up to North County anyway,” Rello said.

  “No, take me to Union Station. The 20th Street side where all the cabs are always sitting.”

  “Why you wanna take a cab to Florissant? That’s crazy. I’m offering you a free ride,” Rello shot back.

  “I ain’t gonna go to Florissant. Going home. Down to the Bootheel.”

  “In a cab?” Rello asked with a puzzled look on his face.

  “Yep. In a cab,” Bubba flatly answered.

  * * *

  Danny followed the group and made a sober assessment. Even though the three white guys escorting Faheem didn’t look like the most fierce of men, they had him outnumbered and they would get to the car before he could reach the Crown Vic and retrieve his weapon. Besides, he didn’t even have the keys to the car so he would have to break in, taking up more time. Then Danny saw an opportunity. A hospital-issued wheelchair sat empty on the sidewalk—not an uncommon sight near a hospital. Patients roll away from the entrance to smoke a cigarette waiting on their rides and then just leave them there.