American Gangster

18. Praise Praise Praise

Huey Lucas’s driver, Jimmy Zee, had been given a rare reprieve by his cousin Frank, after Huey vouched for him, and after that Jimmy had really tried to straighten up and fly right.

And what happened to screw it all up, in Jimmy’s view, wasn’t his fault at all. It was that damn Darlynn. A man should never get involved with a goddamn junkie. A goddamn junkie will use up a man’s dope her own self.

The TV was on, Kung Fu interrupted ’cause them damn hippies was protesting in Washington again or some shit, and Jimmy could not care the fuck less, all he wanted was his goddamn dope, and Darlynn wouldn’t give it to him.

“Where is it, I said!” He was following her past the TV into the kitchen. They were both walking around with their shoes off.

“Fuck you,” she said, waving her hands like she was praising Jesus. “I ain’t tellin’ you.”

The kitchen table had all kinds of dope paraphernalia spread out on it, like a junkie’s banquet except for there being no junk.

He got up in her face. “Where is my fuckin’ dope, woman? You and your girlfriends take it again? You and your girlfriends take it again, I’m gon’ fuckin’ kill your skanky ass!”

Darlynn got a kitchen drawer open and found a big old knife and slashed it in his general direction, so he went off after his gun, and when she saw the.38 in his hand, she started to scream and ran for the door and went out down the stairs, still waving the knife.

Jimmy did what any reasonable man would do in that situation, which was chase her junkie ass out into the street, yelling questions at her, which she declined to answer.

But she could run faster than him, and the cement was cold on his damn feet, so he planted himself and raised his gun and popped a cap in her ass.

Right in her ass: she went down on the pavement, clutching her left butt cheek, moaning.

Moaning was the order of the evening in Richie Roberts’s apartment, too, though nothing between him and his current girl friend had led to running out into the street or knives or gunplay.

Richie was in bed with his lawyer, Sheila, her briefs filed who knew where, and he must have been distracted by the weight of work, because she was under him, urging him on: “Come on, Richie, fuck me like a cop!”

As opposed to a lawyer, which he was himself now, technically at least. Because he was still cop enough to answer the ringing phone on the nightstand even while Sheila was still pumping under him, moaning, “Yes, Richie, yes...”

This of course turned into “No, Richie, no!” when he reached for the receiver, still inside her, doing his walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time best when Spearman’s less than seductive voice whispered in his ear: “Richie, sorry to bother you, man, but the Newark fuzz just picked up one of our celebrities.”

“Celebrities?” Richie asked, still at it.

Sheila was saying, “No... no... no...” But her protests had nothing to do with the phone conversation Richie was managing, and in fact weren’t protests at all.

Spearman said, “A face climbed right down off our Wall of Shame, Rich — Huey Lucas’s driver, Jimmy Zee.”

“What kinda bust?”

“Attempted murder.”

“... Call our friends over there. Get him shaken loose into our custody.”

“Can we do that?”

“Get Toback on it, if we can’t. I’ll meet you over at the church in half an hour...”

Which was all he needed to complete his attorney’s case, and get his clothes and gun and go.

The narcotics squad HQ may have been in an old church, but the basement was closer to hell than heaven, a dank, dark dungeon where Jimmy Zee had been sat down in a hard wooden chair. A naked bulb above threw Jimmy’s angular features into stark relief, as Richie paced in front of their captive, whose handcuffed hands were in his lap.

Spearman, Abruzzo and Jones were on the periphery, outside the pool of light, shapes that lurked and watched. Jimmy was obviously unsettled, even scared, and that was fine with Richie.

Frank Lucas’s cousin was in a bad place, and this church basement wasn’t it: Jimmy was coming down off a high that hadn’t been high enough to make him forget he’d recently attempted his girlfriend’s murder.

“Things aren’t as bad as they seem, Jimmy,” Richie assured him.

“They ain’t?”

“Attempted homicide, that’s Grand Jury. Now a Grand Jury, a bunch of average citizens like yourself, Jimmy? They might come in very favorably.”

“They might?”

“They might. Attempted manslaughter, maybe. Self-defense even.”

Jimmy was looking all around. “What the fuck is this place? Why’d they take me out of lockup?”

“Darlynn had a knife,” Richie said, still pacing the small patch of concrete in the pool of light. “You were trying to protect yourself. Fact she was shot in the ass, well, that’s mitigated by circumstances.”

“It is?”

“The knife. You know, this could turn out okay for you, Jimmy.”

“It could?”

“Depends on how I decide to deal with you... You see where this is going, Jimmy? Get the picture yet?”

Jimmy didn’t — he was too busy trying to make out the shapes that were Spearman and his guys. “You guys Homicide or what?”

Richie stood in front of the seated suspect. “So let’s say you do beat it, somehow. What do you think your cousin Frank’ll think of that? He knows you had to sit down and have somebody like me tell you something like this.”

Jimmy blinked repeatedly. “... What?”

“You beat attempted murder, and walk?” Richie laughed, once. “Is Frank stupid? He’ll think you talked. He’ll know you talked.”

Jimmy thought that through. “You mean you’d... help me to hurt me? To make me look bad?”

Richie shrugged. “Maybe I’d just be really trying to help. Is it my fault if your cousin Frank thinks you rolled over?”

Jimmy slumped in the chair. He began to shake his head as he stared past Richie into the darkness and the shadowy figures.

“You fucked up, Jimmy,” Richie said. “Still, you got one thing going for you — nobody knows.”

Jimmy looked up at Richie. “What?”

“Nobody knows — I got the arrest report folded up in my back pocket. So even Frank doesn’t know — yet. Of course, if I send you and this arrest report back over to the Newark PD, Frank could read about your bust in the papers tomorrow, and the whole chain of events I outlined would begin.”

Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. “Or?”

Richie gestured with open palms. “Or you just walk out of here — no bail, no trial. Just walk out now. Insufficient evidence — your girl already says she doesn’t know who shot her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Richie began to pace the little area again. “Of course, I could always find a witness that saw you shoot her, if I tried. And any time I change my mind about letting you walk, I know who I’ll pull in for questioning first; I even know what he’ll look like — just like you, Jimmy. Just like you.”

“That’s cold.”

“And it won’t be discreet, like your visit here tonight. Be real public, Jimmy.” Richie smiled and leaned in, putting a hand on the suspect’s shoulder. “And Jimmy? If I decide I don’t like the quality of your work? This case’ll get reopened.”

“Quality of what work?” Jimmy asked.

Richie smiled. “Like some coffee, Jimmy? Let’s go upstairs and talk in more comfortable surroundings...”

Jimmy hadn’t left the old church till dawn, slipping out the back way into the chilly morning air. That cop, Roberts, when he raised his voice, it had echoed down in that basement; and his threats, his promises, went on echoing in Jimmy’s mind.

Over the coming days, Jimmy did something he never dreamed he’d do: he wore a wire.

He wore a wire, and he’d learned to live with twenty-four-hour fear. Driving for Huey, Jimmy would spend half his time looking in the rearview mirror at what seemed to him to be the evident cop tail, wondering how fuckin’ obvious those pigs could be.

But Huey never spotted the tail, and even Frank, when he was in the backseat with his brother, didn’t notice.

On this day in late November, in the meat-packing district, Jimmy was unaware that Richie Roberts, following him, was checking his own rearview mirror, keeping tabs on a small procession of cars behind him — the full narcotics squad. Talk on Jimmy’s wire about “picking up the big delivery” had sent them into action, for what could be their first major drug bust.

Soon the detectives’ cars were parked behind a warehouse near another warehouse whose loading dock was where Jimmy had parked Huey’s car. Through binoculars, Richie could see Frank and Huey getting out, chatting casually; then some black guys in bloody white smocks exited the warehouse and approached Frank — words and gestures, but Richie couldn’t make anything of it.

Richie snapped pictures as Frank Lucas returned to his brother’s car, opened the trunk and removed a briefcase. Using the telephoto, Richie saw — and recorded — the moment when Frank clicked open the briefcase and revealed stacks of cash. Frank took out a number of banded packets of green and carried them over to the men in bloody smocks.

Then Frank strolled to a nearby semi-truck, and — damn! — seemed to have spotted Richie, or anyway was looking right in his direction, and, hell, waving!

But then Richie realized Lucas was merely waving to the semi driver to pull out.

And in half an hour, on a Harlem street corner, Richie Roberts was watching — not bothering to snap any pictures — as Frank Lucas stood in the back of the semi and handed out hundreds of freshly butchered turkeys — continuing Bumpy Johnson’s tradition.

The next day, Thanksgiving, Richie spent alone in his tiny apartment, eating a cold sliced turkey sandwich at his kitchen table and half-watching the Macy’s parade playing on the little portable TV.

But Richie wasn’t taking in the big balloons or the happy crowd or Santa Claus on his fucking float. Richie was picturing, in his mind but as clear as if he were there, the Norman Rockwell painting come to life that would be Frank Lucas’s Thanksgiving dinner at his fifty-thousand-dollar suburban home, his family around him, lovely wife, brothers, cousins, other womenfolk, including his momma. The man of the house probably wearing a nice white apron for carving the turkey.

And what had made the feast possible? Richie could picture that, too: addicts spending their holiday shooting up and nodding out in alleys and dingy hovels. Thanksgiving with all the trimmings, all the fixings: needles, spoons, veins, filth...

In another suburb, Detective Trupo of the Special Investigations Unit, with his wife and kids, had enjoyed a Thanksgiving as idyllic as the Lucas family’s. And just like the homeless in Harlem, Trupo received a free turkey from Frank Lucas, though it arrived late, well after the cop and his loved ones had partaken of their holiday feast.

The pumpkin pie with whipped cream was already a memory, and a football game was in full sway on the tube, when the bell summoned Trupo to the front door. There, on his welcome mat, he found a live turkey, squawking its ass off, flapping its wings.

The detective was still trying to process that when his precious Shelby Mustang, parked out front, seemed to speak to him: he glanced up at where the whoosh had emanated, and saw flames engulfing the interior of the car; soon the windows had blown apart and flames were licking.

He stood and stared, bathing in the seasonal reflection of orange-and-blue flames. Then the vehicle, as if this were July Fourth and not Thanksgiving, exploded like a big fat firecracker.

Even the turkey seemed impressed.

Jimmy Zee had seen, firsthand, the lavish Lucas family Thanksgiving. Right now he was in the bathroom, his shirt off, changing batteries on the little tape recorder stuck to his chest.

Most of the brothers and cousins, Frank included, were out in the backyard sitting on patio chairs, watching nephew Stevie, the baseball whiz, knock pop flies for the younger kids to catch.

Jimmy took a chair not too far from Frank. The afternoon was just starting to turn into dusk, and the crispness of the day had become almost cold. The big German shepherd, in the run by its fancy doghouse, was lounging after too much leftover turkey, sleepily watching the ball as it went back and forth between older boy and younger ones.

Frank called out to Stevie: “Come over here!”

Stevie, in a short-sleeve shirt and Sunday slacks, came over, tossing the ball up and down in his palm.

“Stevie, heard you didn’t show up the other day.”

Funny, Jimmy thought, how much disapproval Frank could put into his voice without half-trying.

The lithe, athletic kid said, “Yeah. I missed it. Sorry.”

Frank’s eyes flashed. “You’re too busy to meet with Billy Martin himself? After I set it up?”

Stevie was shifting foot to foot, not exactly afraid of Frank but in any case not wanting to make him mad.

Finally the teenager said, “I don’t wanna play pro ball, I decided.”

Frank leaned forward in the metal chair. “What are you talkin’ about? It’s your dream since you was their age...” He gestured to the younger kids. “... Look. Maybe I can set it up again...”

Stevie sighed. Shifted foot to foot.

“What?” Frank asked, impatient.

“It’s not what I want, Uncle Frank. I wanna do what you do — I wanna be you some day.”

Jimmy was surprised by Frank’s stricken expression, on hearing that; didn’t remember ever seeing his cousin look more unhappy.

Huey came from inside the house and ambled over to Frank. Jimmy sat forward: he could tell from Huey’s gait, his manner, that they’d be going somewhere soon, and Jimmy was the driver...

“Bro,” Huey, leaning in, said to Frank. “We got a problem.”

Jimmy could only hope that problem wasn’t him.