Brooklyn Noir

Crown Heist by Adam Mansbach

Crown Heights

Tap tap BOOM. Birds ain’t even got their warble on, and my shit’s shaking off the hinges. I didn’t even bother with the peephole. It had to be Abraham Lazarus, the Jewish Rasta, playing that dub bassline on my door.

BOOM I swung it open and Laz barged in like he was expecting to find the answer to life itself inside. A gust of Egyptian Musk oil and Nature’s Blessing dread-balm hit me two seconds after he flew by: Laz stayed haloed in that shit like it was some kind of armor. He did a U-turn around my couch, ran his palm across his forehead, wiped the sweat onto his jeans, and came back to the hall.

“I just got fuckin’ robbed, bro.”

Funny how a dude can cruise the road from neighbor to acquaintance to homeboy without ever coming to a full stop at any of the intersections. Me and Laz, our relationship was like one of those late-night cab rides where the driver hits his rhythm and the green lights stretch forever. He came upstairs and introduced himself the day I moved into his building two years ago: got to know who you live with when you’re moving four, five pounds of Jamaican brown a week. He sized me up, decided I was cool, and told me his door was always open. I didn’t really have too much going on then — just a half-time shit job in an office mailroom and a baby daughter Uptown who I never got to see — so before long I was coming by on the regular to smoke. If Laz wasn’t already puffing one of those big-ass Bob Marley cone spliffs when I walked in, my entrance was always reason enough for him to sweep his locks over his shoulder, hunch down over his coffee table, and commence to building one.

I used to call his crib Little Kingston. All the old dreads from the block would be up in there every afternoon: watching soccer games on cable, chanting down Babylon, talkin’ ’bout how horse fat an’ cow dead, whatever the fuck those bobo yardie motherfuckers do. I never said much to any of them, just passed the dutchie on the left hand side. Jafakin-ass Lazarus got much love from the bredren, but a domestically grown, unaffiliated nigga like me stayed on the outskirts. Whatever. Later for all that I-n-I bullshit anyway.

I flipped the top lock quick. “What happened?”

“Motherfucker walked straight into my crib, bro, ski-masked up. Put a fuckin’ Glock 9 to my head while I was lying in bed. Ran me for all my herb.” His hand shook as he lifted a thumb-and-finger pistol to his temple. Fear or rage; I couldn’t tell.

“How many?” I asked. “Who?” In Laz’s business, you don’t get jacked by strangers. Strictly friends and well-wishers.

“Just one, and he knew where my shit was.”

“Even the secret shit?”

“Not the secret shit. I still got that. But the other ten are gone — I just re-upped yesterday. Son of a bitch filled a trashbag, duct-taped me up, and bounced.”

“Didn’t do a very good job with the tape, did he?”

Laz shook his head. “He was too petro. That was the scariest part, T. He was shitting his pants more than I was. And that’s when you get shot: when a cat doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”

“You want a drink?” I didn’t know what else to say.

“You got a joint?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Hold on.” I went to the bedroom and grabbed my sack. Laz was sitting on the edge of the couch when I got back, flipping an orange pack of Zig-Zags through his knuckles.

“This might be kinda beside the point right now,” I said carefully, falling into the chair across from him, “but it’s probably time to dead all that cosmic-karmic open-door no-gun shit, huh?”

The bottom line was that Lazarus was practically asking to be robbed. He never locked his door, and the only weapon in his crib was the chef’s knife he used to chop up ganja for his customers. He had some kind of who-Jah-bless-let-no-man-curse theory about the whole thing, like somehow the diffusion of his positive vibrations into the universe would prevent anyone from schiesting him. That and the fact that all the small-timers who copped off him knew that Laz was tight with the old Jamaicans who really ran the neighborhood. Plus, Laz was convinced that he looked crazy ill strutting around his apartment with that big blade gleaming in his hand: a wild-minded, six-two, skin-and-bones whiteboy with a spliff dangling from his mouth and hair ropes trailing down his back. Half Lee “Scratch” Perry, half Frank White.

It was an equation that left plenty out — the growling stomachs of damn near every young thug in the area, for starters. A year ago, all Laz’s customers were dime-bag-and-bike-peddling yardmen, and everything was peace. Then the hip hop kids found out about him. I told Laz he shouldn’t even fuck with them. I know these niggas like I know myself, I said. They’re outa control. They trying to be who Jay-Z says he is on records, dude. You don’t need that in your life.

He shrugged me off. They’re babies. I man nah fear no likkle pickney. Any time Laz started speaking yard, I just left his ass alone. But he should have listened. You could practically see these kids narrowing their eyes at my man every time he turned his back. It had gotten to the point where I’d started locking the door myself whenever I came over.

“It was Jumpshot,” Laz said, as a calligraph of smoke twirled up from the three-paper cone he’d rolled. “It had to be.”

I leaned forward. “Why Jumpshot?” So-called because he liked to tell folks he was only in the game because genetics had failed to provide him with NBA height. Or WNBA height, for that matter.

“Two reasons.” Laz offered me the weed. I shook my head. He blew a white pillow at the ceiling. “Three, actually. One, he sells the most. He’s got the most ambition. Two, that shit last month, when he complained and I sonned him.”

“Hold up, hold up. You did what? You ain’ tell me this.”

Laz cocked his head at me. “Yes I did, bro. Didn’t I? He came by at night, picked up a QP. I was mad tired, plus mad zooted, and I gave him a shitty shake-bag by mistake. So the next morning he shows up with two of his boys, dudes I don’t even know, bitching. Little Ja Rule-lookin’ cocksucker. I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ Sat him down, gave him a new bag, took the one he didn’t want, and threw it on the table. Then I brought out the chalice, like, ‘Now we’re gonna see if y’all can really smoke.’ Part challenge, part apology, you know. My bag and his bag, bowl for bowl. And you know I can smoke, bro.”

He had told me this story. It was funny at the time, hearing how Laz had smoked Jump and his boys into oblivion, burned up half Jump’s new herb sack before the kid even got out of the room. The way Laz told it, Jumpshot’s crew had passed out, but Jump himself refused to go down; he’d sat there all glassy-eyed, slumped back, barely able to bring the chalice-pipe to his lips, while Laz talked at him for hours like he was the dude’s uncle or something — regaled him with old smuggling stories from the island days, gave him advice on females, told him how to eat right, all types of shit. After a while, Laz said, he’d put this one song on repeat for hours, just to see if Jump would notice. “Herbman Trafficking” by Welton Irie, Laz’s theme music: Some a use heroin, some a snort up cocaine/but all I want for Christmas dat a two ganja plane/as one take off the other one land/we load the crop of sensimilla one by one/they tell me that it value is a quarter million/me sell it in the sun and a me sell it in the rain/ca’ when me get the money me go buy gold chain/me eat caviar and me a drink champagne…

“So what’s the third reason?” I asked.

“I recognized that motherfucker’s kicks. He got the new Jordans last week.” Lazarus stood up. “I gotta send a message. Right?”

I threw up my hands. “I’d say so. Yeah. I mean, you gotta do something.”

“Come see Cornelius with me.”

“Man, Cornelius doesn’t know me.”

“You’re in there all the time.”

“So? I’m just another dude who likes his vegi-fish and cornbread. Whatchu want me there for, anyway?”

“’Cause I’ma go see Jumpshot after that. And I’d like some company, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying, Laz, but I’m not tryna just run up on a armed motherfucker. What, you just gonna knock on his door? Say you’re the Girl Scouts? Why would he even be home?”

“If he’s not home, he’s not home. If he is, I’ll play it like I’m coming for help, like, ‘You’re the man on the street, find out who jacked me, I’ll make it worth your while.’”

Laz looked sharper, more angular, than I’d ever seen him. Like he was coming into focus. “I guess if he wanted to shoot you, he woulda done it half an hour ago,” I said.

“Exactly. Now he’s gotta play business-as-usual. Besides, I’m known to be unarmed. Now you understand why: so when I do pick up a strap, it’s some real out-of-character shit.”

“I don’t wanna be involved in no craziness, Laz.” I said it mostly just to get it on the record. Once you put in a certain number of hours with a cat like Lazarus, you become affiliated. Obligated. It starts off easy-going: You come over, you chill, you smoke. Ay T, you hungry? I’m ’bout to order up some food. Put away your money, dog. I got you. Then it becomes, Yo T, I gotta go out for a hot second. Do me a solid and mind the store, bro Or, Man, I’m mad tired. Can you bring Jamal this package for me? I’ll break you off. Good lookin’ out, T.

I stood up and walked out of the room.

“Fuck you going?” Laz called after me. I could tell from his tone that he was standing with his arms spread wide, like Isaac Hayes as Black Moses.

I came back and shook my duffel bag at him. “Unless you wanna carry those ten bricks back home in your drawers.”

“Good call.”

We drove to the spot, and I waited in the car while Laz talked to Cornelius. Most innocent-looking store in Crown Heights: Healthy Living Vegetarian Café and Juice Bar. X-amount of fake-bodega herb-gates with, like, one dusty-ass can of soda in the window, but Healthy Living was a high-post operation. They sold major weight, and only to maybe two or three cats, total. You had to come highly recommended, had to be Jamaican or be Abraham Lazarus.

The funny thing was that Cornelius could cook his ass off. You’d never know his spare ribs were made of gluten — that’s my word. Tastier than a motherfucker, and I ain’t even vegetarian. All Cornelius’s daughters worked in there, too, and every one of them was fine as hell. Different mothers, different shades of lovely. I stopped flirting after Lazarus told me where he copped his shit. Started noticing all the scars Cornelius had on his neck and forearms, too. He was from Trenchtown, Laz said. Marley’s neighborhood. You didn’t get out of there without a fight.

The metal gate was still down when we got there, but Cornelius was inside sweeping up. He raised it just enough to let Laz limbo underneath. I watched them exchange a few words: watched the face of the barrel-chested, teak-skinned man in the white chef’s apron darken as the pale, lanky dread bent to whisper in his ear. Then Cornelius laid his broom against a chair and beckoned Laz into the back room.

It wasn’t even a minute later when Laz ducked back outside and jumped into the ride. He didn’t say anything, just fisted the wheel and swung the car around. His face was blank, like an actor getting into character inside his head. I’d always thought his eyes were blue, but now they looked gray, the color of sidewalk cement.

“So what he say?” I figured he’d probably ignore the question, but I had to ask.

“He said, ‘Abraham, there are those that hang and those who do the cutting.’ And he gave me what I asked for.” Laz opened the left side of his jacket and I saw the handle of a pistol. Looked like a .38. Used to have one of those myself.

“I was hoping Cornelius would tell you he’d take care of it,” I said.

Laz shook his head about a millimeter. “Not how it works, T.” He made a right onto Jumpshot’s block, found a space, and backed in — cut the wheel too early and fucked it up and had to start over. “Bumbaclot,” he mumbled. There was another car-length of space behind him, but Laz missed on the second try, too. I guess his mind was elsewhere. He nailed it on the third, flicked the key, and turned to me. Surprising how still it suddenly felt in there, with the engine off. How close.

“It’s cool if you want to wait in the car, T.” Laz said it staring straight ahead.

I ground my teeth together, felt my jaw flare. Mostly just so Laz would feel the weight of the favor. “I’m good.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Let’s do this.”

It was a pretty street. Row houses on either side, and an elementary school with a playground in the middle of the block. I used to live on a school block back Uptown. It’d be crazy loud every day from about noon to 3 — different classes going to recess, fifty or sixty juiced-up kids zooming all over the place. Basketball, tag, double-dutch. Couldn’t be too mad at it, though. It was nice noise.

A thought occurred to me and I turned to Laz, who was trudging along with his hands pocketed and his head buried in his shoulders like a bloodshot, dreadlocked James Dean. “It’s too early for a tournament, right?”

That was Jumpshot’s other hustle. Dude had eight or ten TVs set up in his two-room basement crib, each one equipped with a PlayStation. For five or ten bills, shorties from the neighborhood could sign up and play NBALive or Madden Football or whatever, winner take all. Even the older kids, the young thug set, would be up in Jump’s crib, balling and smoking and betting. Jumpshot handled all the bookie action, in addition to selling the players beer and weed — at a mark-up, no less, like the place was a bar or some shit. It was kind of brilliant, really.

“Way too early,” said Laz.

We stopped in front of Jumpshot’s door. “Play it cool,” I reminded him.

“We’ll see,” said Laz, and a little bit of that Brooklyn-Jew accent, that soft, self-assured intonation, surfaced for a second. It occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. Maybe he didn’t own a gun because he didn’t trust himself with one. I don’t know if the thought made me feel better or worse.

“He’s got a loose ceiling tile in the bathroom,” said Laz. “Right above the toilet.” And he pressed the buzzer, hard, for about three seconds.

Static crackled from the intercom and then a grainy voice demanded, Who dat? A bad connection to ten feet away.

Laz bent to the speaker, hands on his knees, and over-pronounced his words: “Jumpshot, it’s Abraham. I’ve got to talk to you. It’s very important.”

A pause, two heatbeats long, and then, “A’ight, man, hold on.”

I tried to catch Laz’s eye, wanting to read his thoughts from his face. But his stare was frozen on the door. This much I was sure of: The longer Jumpshot took to open up, the worse for him.

But Jump’s face appeared in the crack between door and jamb a second later, bisected by the chain-lock. He flicked his eyes at both of us, then closed the door, slid off the chain, and opened up. He was rocking black basketball shorts, a white wife-beater, and some dirty-ass sweatsocks. If he hadn’t been asleep, he sure looked it.

“Fuck time is it?” He rubbed a palm up and down the right side of his face as he followed us inside.

“Early.” Next to Jumpshot, Laz looked like a gaunt, ancient giant. “But I been up for hours.”

“Yeah?” Jump said, sitting heavily on his unmade bed and bending to pull a pair of sneakers from underneath the frame. “Why’s that?”

Lazarus reached into his jacket and pulled out the .38, held it at waist height so that the barrel was pointing right at Jumpshot’s grill. “I think you know the answer to that,” he said calmly.

Jump looked up and froze. Just froze. Didn’t move, didn’t say shit. I gathered he’d never stared into that little black hole before.

Lazarus smiled. “Where’s my shit, Jumpshot?” he asked conversationally. I gulped it back fast, but for a sec I thought I might puke. It wasn’t the piece, or the fact that Jump suddenly looked like the seventeen-year-old kid he was. It wasn’t even the weird fucking sensation of another dude’s life passing before my eyes the way Jump’s did just then. What turned my stomach was that Lazarus looked more content than I had ever seen him. Like he would do this shit every day if he could.

Jump opened his mouth, made a noise like nhh, and shook his head. I was beginning to feel sorry for him. I’d expected more of the dude. Some stupid Tony Montana bravado, at least: Fuck you, Lazarus. You gonna hafta kill me, nigga.

“T.”

“Yeah, man.”

“Go take a look around, huh? I’ma have a little chat with my man here.”

“Sure.” I headed for the bathroom.

“What are you looking at him for?” I heard behind me. That rabbi voice again. “Look at me. That’s better. Now listen carefully, Jumpshot. You listening? Okay. Here’s the deal. You give me everything back, right now, no bullshit, and you get a pass. You get to pack your shit up and roll out of Dodge.” There was a pause, and I could almost see Laz shrugging. “Who knows, maybe a broken leg for good measure. To remind you that stealing is wrong.”

Finally, Jumpshot found his voice. It was raspy, clogged, but it cut through the stale air like a dart. “I didn’t steal nothing.” Like if he spoke deliberately enough there was no way Lazarus could not believe him. “I… have… no… idea… what you’re talking about.”

I walked back into the room right on cue, and threw two bricks onto the bed. Jump started like I’d tossed a snake at him. “That was all I could find,” I said. Jumpshot’s face was a death mask now, so twisted that any lingering trace of sympathy I might have had for him straight vanished.

“Oh, and this.” I handed Laz the gun. Jump raised up so fast I thought he might salute.

“I never seen that shit before in my life!” The veins in his neck strained; I could see the blood pumping.

“What, that?” Lazarus pointed at the bricks and raised his eyebrows. “That’s weed, Jumpshot. Collie. Ishen. Ganja. Sensi. Goat shit. People smoke it. Gets them high. Or did you mean this?” Lazarus held up the Glock, and as soon as Jumpshot looked at it, bam: Lazarus swung the gun at him and hit Jump square in the face, the orbit of the eye. Knocked him back onto the bed, bloody. Jump let out a clipped yelp and grabbed his face, and Lazarus leaned over him, gun in the air, ready to pistol-whip the kid again.

“At least this shit is loaded,” Laz said, eyes flashing. “At least you robbed me with a loaded gun, Jump. Next time, change your fuckin’ shoes.” Bam Lazarus slammed the gun down again — hit Jump on the hand shielding his face. Probably shattered a finger, at least. Jump screamed and twitched, curled like a millipede, this way and that. Nowhere to go, really.

Lazarus straightened, a gun in each hand, and swiped a forearm across his brow. “Ten minus two leaves eight,” he said. “So where’s the rest, Jump?”

“Fuck you.” Jump said it loud and strong, as if the words came from deep inside him.

“No, Jump,” Lazarus said. “Fuck you.” He turned and pulled the biggest television off its stand, whirled and heaved it toward Jumpshot. Missed. Thing must have been heavy; Lazarus barely threw it two feet. It landed upright. The screen didn’t even break.

Lazarus glanced over at me, a little embarrassed. “Fuck this,” he said. “Sit up, nigger. I’m through fucking with you. Sit up!”

Jumpshot did as he was told. Blood was smeared across his face, clotting over one eye. “Laz—”

“Shut up. Believe me, Jumpshot, I could fuck around and torture you for hours. Trust me, I know how. I even brought my knife. But I don’t have time for all that. So I’m going to wait five seconds, and if you don’t tell me where the rest of my shit is, I’m going to shoot you in the fucking chest, you understand? Go.”

“I don’t fucking know, man. You gotta believe me, Abraham, I swear to God I never seen that shit be—”

“Four.”

“Please, man, I swear on my mother’s—”

Lazarus snatched a pillow off the floor and fired through it. Didn’t muffle shit. Whole building probably heard the sound. Jump fell back flat. Lazarus wiped off the Glock and tossed it on the bed. Crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at Jumphot. The blood was spreading beneath him, saturating the blankets. “What could this fool have done with eight pounds of weed in two hours?”

“Maybe we should talk about it someplace else,” I suggested.

“Mmm,” said Lazarus. “That’s probably a good idea.” But we stood rooted to our spots, like we were observing a moment of silence. I watched Laz’s eyes bounce from spot to spot and knew he was wondering if there was anything in the apartment worth taking. Watching him was easier than watching Jumpshot.

“All right.” The moment ended and Laz spun on his heel. We stepped outside. After the dimness of the apartment, the block seemed almost unbearably bright.

We drove back to the crib and ordered breakfast from the Dominican place. Laz had steak and eggs. “Aren’t you supposed to be a vegetarian?” I asked.

“Usually,” he said with his mouth full, swiping a piece of toast through his yolk. He shook his head. “Eight fuckin’ pounds.”

“Only thing I can come up with is that he took it straight to one of the herb gates on Bedford,” I said. “On some pump-and-dump shit.”

Lazarus nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. Anybody else would ask questions.” He slid his knife and fork together neatly, as if a waiter was going to come and clear our plates. “I’ll never see that weight again, basically.”

“At least it was paid for, right?”

“Half up front, half on the re-up. That’s how Cornelius does business.” He steepled his hands and tapped his fingertips against his chin. “I’m gonna have to leave town, T. Take what I’ve got left, go down south, and bubble it.” He lowered his head, toyed with a lock. “I swore I’d never do the Greyhound thing again. But it’s still the safest way to travel.”

“How long you talking about?” I asked.

Laz shrugged. “A month or so. I’ll go see my bredren in North Kack, bubble what I need to bubble, let shit blow over. You can mind the shop, right? Keep the business up and running so the Rastas don’t start looking for a new connect?”

“If Cornelius will fuck with me, I can.”

“He will. I’ll set that up before I go.”

“When you gonna bounce?”

Lazarus reached over and grabbed the duffel with the bricks in it. He walked over to his closet and dumped an armload of clothes inside, then bent down and pulled a floor-board loose. Inside the hollow was a roll of dough and one more brick. He tossed those in, too. I neglected to mention that it was my bag he was packing.

“I’m ready now,” he said.

Laz took a shower, made a few phone calls. I went up to my crib and did the same, then came back down and rolled us one last spliff. We smoked in silence. Always the best way. When it was over Laz stubbed the roach, pushed off palms-to-knees, and stood. “Everything is set,” he said, and tossed me his car keys. “You might as well get used to driving it.”

We were quiet all the way to Times Square. I kept waiting for Laz to start peppering me with instructions, but he just leaned back in the passenger seat, rubbing his eyes. Occasionally, he’d sing a little snippet of a Marley song to himself: Don’t let them fool ya/or even try to school ya. Maybe it was stuck in his head and he just had to let it out, or maybe the song made him feel better. He had a good voice, actually.

I parked the car, walked him up to the ticketing desk, and then down to the terminal. The bus was already boarding. I offered Laz my hand; he clasped it, then pulled me into a shoulder-bang embrace. “Hey, listen,” he said. “That shit with Jumpshot. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call him a nigger. I was heated. You know I didn’t mean anything by it, right?”

“I know,” I said.

He leaned in for another soulshake. “Hold it down for me, bro.”

“No doubt,” I said.

“I’ll see you in a month. And I’ll call before then.”

“Do that.”

“All right, bro. One love.”

“Be safe,” I said.

“No doubt.”

“Peace.”

“Peace.” He glanced over his shoulder, hefted the duffel bag, and disappeared up the steps.

I walked to the far side of the terminal and checked my watch. Laz’s bus was due to depart at 1:15. It was 1:13 when the two DTs I’d tipped off cut the line, flashed their badges at the driver, and boarded. I didn’t wait to see them haul Laz off, just got on the escalator, made my way back to the car, and rolled back to Brooklyn. Climbed the stairs to my apartment, triple-locked the door, and rolled myself another joint. Slipped on my brand new Jordans, stacked my eight bricks into a pyramid, and just stared out the window, taking in my new domain. So long, Lazarus, I thought. I never liked your fake ass anyway. Just another punk whiteboy beneath it all. Damn near shit yourself when I put that nine to your dome. Probably serve your whole sentence and never figure out what happened. Probably call me every week from the joint, talking about, “What’s going on, bro?” Probably expect cats to remember who you are when you get out.

Hunter/trapper by Arthur Nersesian

Brooklyn Heights

This enticed me for solely one reason: This would be the notice I’d post were I hunting for me. Circular logic to most, but to me this entry was bait for a sting. Still, I figured, I have the willpower to finger the flames with-out getting burned. To CATCHMEFUCAN, I wrote back, I’d love to try to be more than a pen pal — GOTCHU.

Well, GOTCHU, you can always try. Just be prepared to join the graveyard of so many others that failed, cause you won’t succeed.

Thus we started our little cat-and-mouse relationship. I figured maybe I’d get some pud-pulling tidbits. Cinch the ropes around my wrists, pour hot wax on my breasts, clamp me if I’m naughty, smack me if I’m nice… Blah blah blah, the usual stuff you’d expect from an S&M shatroom. But with her it was different.

She’d have none of that. Whenever I mentioned that I’d love to give her a tweak, she’d write something dismissive like, That’s not necessary.

It was as though some ponytailed Dorothy from Kansas had accidentally ventured into this Oz of Bondage and Domination. I could see why she didn’t get much action. No one else would have put up with her.

Do you realize that you advertized in an S&M chat room? I finally asked after weeks without so much as a slap or tickle in the endless exchanges.

Course I do, you randy lad.

And yet whenever I make any advances along that line, you seem surprised.

I have to get to know you better before I can fully reveal that side of myself to you.

This is the Internet! We’re never going to meet.

I pass a million people every day. You’re my only lovebug. A meeting of minds is far more intimate than a meeting of bodies.

So how long do you have to know someone for before we can get intimate?

The longer you can wait, the better it’ll be, she replied with all the smugness of a red-hot poker cauterizing my wounded heart.

Her e-mail exchanges always took something out of me. Afterwards, I’d have to nurse myself back to my indestructible self developing the innermost buds of fantasies that one day would blossom. On that fateful day when I finally had her, I could act out all my dreams. But even my dreams were hindered, until I found out what her dreams were. Without her realizing it, I had to learn what scared her more than anything else, to extract the sweetest nectar of her fear.

Occasionally I’d test her borders, nothing gross or icky, just little things, like Why’d you divorce? or, What are your measurements? Wondering if she was actually still married, or if she was in a wheelchair.

She’d invariably turn the questions into sarcastic come-backs.

I divorced cause I knew I’d meet you, or, You see me every night on cable, I’m Anna Nicole Smith.

So soon, in order to keep it earnest, our e-missives became little more than a line or so. One long banal conversation that lasted for weeks and then months. Whenever I turned on my computer, she was always right there. Like warm little homemade muffins just waiting for me, but they always had a little needle inside, some funny little dig. Slowly, like a voice in my head or a low-level addiction, I came to thoughtlessly expect it. I learned to eat around what used to get caught in my throat. At the end of a long, empty day, a day of resisting the urge to follow a thousand lonely ladies home and bring them to my ecstatic world, I knew I could read CATCHME’s little comments du jour. It became something to look forward to. I couldn’t go to sleep without an exchange.

One night about three months into our little chat, she must’ve had a little too much too drink, because she let out a slip: It’s three in the morning and I just made a big boo boo.

What kind of a boo boo?

A naughty one.

How naughty?

Very very naughty.

Naughty girls need to be disciplined, I pushed.

But who will take time to do that?

Just type in where you are, lost little girl, and I’ll come get you. When I hit send, I knew I shouldn’t have. I knew I was pushing too hard.

She didn’t write me back for a month after that — punishment by deprivation — and I thought I had lost her until one day I got a new message: Boy, it was a beautiful day today, wasn’t it?

I wanted to write back that she could eat my stinking shit and if I ever saw her I’d strangle her with her own intestines as I fucked her death wounds. Instead I wrote, Sure was With sudden regularity, the e-mails resumed. Though they took on a bit more depth, they still remained along the surface. She’d talk about her little garden, and soon she mentioned other potted plants of domesticity: the old oak trees on her block; the aggravating honks of trucks that double-parked in front of the supermarket around the corner, causing constant traffic bottlenecks. She mentioned that every morning while watering her rooftop plants, she could see the Williamsburg Savings Bank clock from the back of the building and the Jehovah’s Witness digital clock toward the front, and the two-minute discrepancy between them. She talked about how she liked going on strolls near the waterfront over the cobblestoned streets in her neighborhood.

I get dehydrated quickly when I go on walks, I replied, and hoping that she’d slip up and tell me the area she lived, I asked, You don’t get out much either do you?

I’m not agoraphobic, but I am a bit of a homebody.

One day, when I casually mentioned that I had a birthday coming up, she wrote back, Let’s do something for your birthday.

Like what?

A visual date, she proposed. At 6 p.m. tonight, I’m going to be on my rooftop holding a wine glass, toasting the western tower of the Bridge. You do the same.

Which bridge?

The Brooklyn.

It’s a date, I replied.

That afternoon I dropped a hundred dollars on a high-powered pair of field glasses. Because she said the western tower I thought that perhaps she was in one of the new high-rises around the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. I arrived a half an hour early and when I walked across the bridge toward the western tower, I spotted a middle-aged woman also holding binoculars. She was in her forties, small, dehydrated, in drab clothes. Nothing to look at, easy to kill. All I could think was, she had the same idea as me. When I approached to make small talk, she suddenly lifted her spy glasses and yelled, “Holy shit!”

When I turned to see what she was looking at, I saw a gentle cascade of grayish feathers.

“What happened?”

“The falcon just grabbed a pigeon.”

“What falcon?” I asked.

“A peregrine falcon nest up there with a fledgling.” She was pointing to a small stone doorway high above the second pillar. By her general demeanor, I knew this Audubon member wasn’t her

I still had fifteen minutes before her toast. I spent the time scanning both sides of the river for any glint of a wine glass. After an hour, feeling empty and pissed, I headed back to Brooklyn and walked to the F train stop at York.

A teenage girl was waiting all alone at the farthest end of the platform. I seriously considered dragging her a few extra feet into the darkness of the tunnel. But before I took a step, I realized the token clerk got a good look at me. If she screamed, there would only be one escape route. I was actually relieved when someone else finally showed up.

Upon arriving home, an e-mail was waiting for me: Happy birthday to you.

I wrote back that I was in agony for her.

Agony?

I know this sounds odd, but I think I’ve fallen in love with you.

That’s funny. Tell me another.

I’m serious. I can’t get you out of my head. I’m always thinking about you. Can’t we just put all the bullshit aside and meet somewhere like two adults? We’ll just have coffee and if you like what you see, we can go on a proper date.

To be quite honest, I’m nothing special to look at. Right now, you claim to be in love with me and we didn’t even meet. I’ve gone on dates with guys who’ve used me in the most degrading ways and then decided never to call me again. Frankly, I don’t even like sex. (I only like what it symbolizes.)

Me neither! We don’t have to have a sexual relationship. I can love you as a friend.

We can be friends on the Internet.

In order to assuage my obsession, and allay my fears of rejection, I need to meet you face to face.

And by meeting you, I stand to lose everything, she replied, as though we were corresponding in some goddamned nineteenth-century epistolary novel like two star-crossed lovers.

I promise, even if you’re old, fat and limbless, if you got bad skin or an overbite, if you smell awful or can’t dress, or your eyes are too close together, or your ears stick out, whatever irregularity or infirmity you got, I will forever maintain our friendship.

I’m sorry but no.

Are you a man? Is that it, because if that is the case, even that I will not mind, but I need to see you.

Please try to understand — I just can’t.

I feel that this is cruel and manipulative on your part and I resent it.

I’ve only adhered to the stated rules of our friendship.

You led me to believe that this relationship would eventually lead somewhere.

And so it has. I feel I know you, and here we are arguing with all the intimacy of old lovers.

Are you married? Or in a relationship?

Not that it matters, but no. Please try to understand that anonymity is for both our sakes.

That is so fucking patronizing! And I resent this mock legal formality as if you have some bullshit authority!

You’re right, I’m sorry, but frankly you’re scaring me.

I don’t mean to, but if I can’t find some resolution to this, you’ll leave me with no recourse other than to cease this relationship as it presently exists.

When did you become such a needy person! The thing I always found most attractive about you was that you always sounded so firm and strong. I took you to be a lone wolf but here you are a braying little lamb.

I didn’t respond.

Perhaps we can work something else out.

I didn’t respond.

Perhaps I can speak to you on the phone. Would that be acceptable? You can give me your number and I’ll call you at some specified time.

I didn’t respond.

What exactly is it you hope to gain from our meeting? If anything, I believe it will kill the love — a word I don’t use lightly — that does exist.

I didn’t respond.

Do you want me to be more vulnerable, is that it?

Though I wanted to respond, I didn’t. I really was half hoping she’d just go away — for her own sake.

Suppose I send you a nude photo of myself — deleting my face of course — my nudity will be fully vulnerable for you to see. If you respond to this, I will e-mail the photo. I will also trust that you won’t simply laugh at my less than perfect body and then never return my messages. This is my last and best offer, and let me assure you that even if we were to meet (which we won’t) you’d never get such a candid view of me. If you don’t reply to this final offer, I will be compelled to bid you farewell and give up this e-mail address.

I finally responded: I am inclined to accept this offer, but I suppose I must do so with a word of caution. In matters of the heart, there are no lies, nor is there right and wrong. Despite all the cliches to the contrary, the heart is a shark. It consumes what it must, and turns its back on what it cannot use. This photo might very well do the trick, and satiate the hunger of obsession, but there is a chance that I will still find myself pining for you. If so, then I’m truly sorry.

Spare me the bad Tennessee Williams prose. If I am going to stand naked before a mirror, and snap a goddamn polaroid of myself, then scan it into my computer and e-mail it to you — some whiny clown whose name I don’t even know — I damn well insist that I get some assurances for it. Specifically promise me that you will continue our correspondence without any more bullshit. Otherwise, goodbye forever.

It wasn’t exactly like I had a lot to lose. Still, in an effort to drive a hard bargain, to get the very most I could, I said, All right, but let me begin by saying, I can spot a phony picture right off. If you do take a self-portrait, I expect it to be well lit, well focused, and in color. In addition to your body, I will require your hair — not just pubic, but head hair. And if you dye your hair or put on a wig, and I sense that too, the deal is off. I understand you don’t want to show your face, fine. But a woman’s hair is very important to me, it allows me to grasp some sense of her character and identity.

Although I’m beginning to fear that I seriously miscalculated you, she replied, an offer made is an offer kept. I suppose I can reveal my hair, but first I plan to wash and brush it, so if you find that “phony” say so now. Let me also specify that the photo will not be some raunchy piece of pornography. I will stand nude, in a lit room at a distance of several feet, and snap the photo using my polaroid camera, but I’m not some hussy, so if that is what you’re expecting, say so now as I do not want to degrade myself any more than I have to. If you send me a follow-up e-mail saying you were expecting to see “pink” or some crap like that — just forget it, buster. It’ll be a straight-forward shot, minus my face.

I replied: I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t pose in some pornographic fashion, and you should know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t expect such a tawdry thing. Though you probably don’t believe me, this is not for erotic purposes.

Three days passed without a word. Then on the night of the fourth day, checking my e-mail account, I saw it: her e-mail with an attachment had arrived. The re: said, Why not take all of me.

When I hit the attachment, I slowly watched a naked form loading onto my screen. As she was revealed, I could barely catch my breath. I didn’t remember seeing anyone quite as erotic. The entire time I knew it was her, simply because she really was quite ordinary. Her brushed-out shag of red hair, then an oval whited-out face, strong shoulders, a firm, lean torso. Beautiful breasts, a flat unscarred abdomen. Below that was an untrimmed tangle of reddish brown pubic hair, so rich I could smell her. All unscrolling into a typical, intelligent, early-middle-aged woman, who clearly watched her diet and occasionally exercised.

The one detail that particularly caught my eye was just above her ankle. It was a small green sea horse.

The correspondence had quickly devolved into a game of stud poker. After seeing the photo, I had this instinct to fold. The little voice in my head said, this is as much as you can ever hope to hurt her. So, if only to do that, it made sense not to reply.

Therefore I made no response. Of course, she grew indignant sending her own unrequited e-mails. But I never opened them and I only read the re: line Where are you? and, Am I that Ugly? and, I thought you were a man of your word. Finally, after the second week, I got a re: from her that read, I forgive you, I only hope this the worst thing you ever did.

When I opened the message, it said, If vanishing after seeing me nude is the worst thing you’ve ever done, I’m glad I could sacrifice myself for you — if only to give you a taste of the darkness.

No, I’ve done a lot worse, I replied.

Thank god, and I was beginning to think you a boy scout.

That’s funny coming from such a girl scout.

Oh, I do a million little, awful things every day.

Like what?

Like ignoring the elderly lady who sits outside my building and greets me every morning. Or yelling at mothers whose children scream too loud in the playground across the street. Or just contributing to the mediocrity of the routine world by filling up space, taking resources and only leaving a trail of excrement behind.

None of those are even illegal.

Perhaps, but how many awful legal acts equate to one small illegal thing? For that matter, are certain illegal acts really even that awful?

Murder is illegal, but is it always awful? Do most people even earn their right to exist? I think the worst things in life are actually quite legal.

That’s true in theory. In a world of six billion people in which most contribute nothing, I’d rather live among fewer people of a high quality. However, I am not a murderer.

What does that mean? To be a murderer, you simply commit murder.

Actually there are common traits that go into the composition of many homicidal minds. For starters, psychologists found that babies who aren’t held and shown affection during a crucial period of their infancy lose a basic human empathy that flowers into compassion and understanding.

How do they test for compassion among infants?

They found that babies who were held and hugged and kissed and loved will cry when other babies are crying, demonstrating empathy (not to be confused with sympathy), while infants that were not loved remain silent while other babies wept.

I didn’t remember other babies crying when I was growing up, but if they did, I probably just found it annoying. I wrote back, asking about other ingredients that go into the murderous cookie dough.

They found an inordinate amount of killers suffered from some kind of head trauma.

I did remember hitting my head as a kid, but I also remembered other kids of my age group suffering from head injuries. In my old neighborhood, kids fell out of trees, off bicycles, down stairs all the time.

What else? I persisted.

Many violent personalities were victims of violence themselves during their childhood.

You sound like you’ve read your stuff, I fired back, pissed at her simplistic, Martha Stewart recipe for how to shake and bake a murderer.

Only because I live in constant fear of crime. Is that so wrong? Don’t you have any fears?

Sure.

What are they?

It was the perfect opportunity, so I wrote back: I’ll tell you mine, but only if you tell me yours.

Fine, you first.

Attempting to be truly macabre, I wrote: Having my penis slowly dissected with my own scalpel. What about you?

Being cut off. Just floating in a bottomless pit of blackness, still alive, with only your own worthless existence to contemplate. That’s the most harrowing thing I can think of. Apparently she had given the question some thought.

That engendered my newest fantasy. When I finally found her that’s what I’d do. After blinding and paralyzing her, I’d submerge her in a sensory-deprivation tank with water matching her skin temperature so that she’d feel nothing. Then I’d slip a tube down her throat for oxygen, and an IV drip in her arm for nutrients. I’d just leave her alive for a month or two until she slowly starved to death.

Some weeks later, two events occurred within days of each other. The first was a simple warning from my e-mail server, stating that I was running out of space for my account. Always a pack rat, reluctant to delete anything, I was forced to download all the e-mails she had sent to me. Upon doing this, I reread all her little messages — they had all the tedium of a drawing-room romance. Aside from that, though, I became aware for the first time exactly how many little geographic references she had made over the weeks and months.

While walking home the next day, I noticed that the decennial census had just commenced. Young folks with shoulder bags that read U.S. Census were tramping around my neighborhood. Immediately, it struck me that this would be an ideal cover for someone who wanted to inconspicuously canvas an area. I let out an accidental squeal as I realized that an excellent opportunity existed for me to find her.

I had planned to simply join up and work for the census, but the very next afternoon I stopped at a local Burger King. That’s when I saw a group of them. Four census enumerators were going over their forms with what looked to be a supervisor. I bought a burger and coffee, and taking off my jacket, I headed to a small table at one end where they were sitting. Slowly sipping my coffee and eating my burger, I waited.

When one census enumerator was up getting food and another was in the bathroom, only two remained at the table. I approached discreetly and draped my jacket over the nearst U.S. Census bag, which was sitting on the floor. Then, pulling it under my arm, I dashed out.

Now it was a question of which neighborhood. All the clues were there. It was simply a matter of triangulating the various details she had mentioned in her e-mails. I extracted and isolated every single geographical reference into a list. The three most significant details were that she lived a few blocks from the river, and that there was a view of both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. In Dumbo you couldn’t make out the statue. From Cobble Hill you couldn’t see the Bridge. Only Brooklyn Heights allowed views of both — it was just that easy. In fact, those two simple variables only allowed about a three-block stretch of real estate. She had to either be on Montague Terrace, Pierrepont Place, or Columbia Terrace. Montague Terrace had a play-ground across the street that she had mentioned. Behind the Breukelen, a door-manned apartment building, was a row of three small brownstones. She had to be in one of them. Two of the brownstones were single-family occupancies. The last one had apartments.

I came early the next day, ready to wait her out. Try to see if I could spot a curly-red-haired middle-aged woman with a dark green sea horse tattoo on her ankle. Red is a minority hair color, so the fact that I had insisted she show it was further proof of my superior intellect.

Her sea horse would be the confirming mark, yet she would have to be wearing a dress or shorts in order to spot the tattoo. As this was unlikely, I realized I might have to subtly interrogate any possible suspects. After four hours, a half-dozen women had come and gone from the buildings, but no big red.

Finally, around 4, before everyone came home from work — and the risk of her sharp screams could get me caught — I pulled on the census bag, put on a hat, a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, and decided to knock on a few doors.

In the first brownstone was an old lady that loved to talk. In the second building was a shy kid whose parents weren’t home. Each of them was a perfectly useful victim, and though I couldn’t help but think that the police would eventually interview these two, I was hopeful that the disguise might work. After all, most people aren’t very observant.

When I finally came to the old outdoor intercom of the last building, I felt my heart beat in my ears, and I knew she was here. Ringing the first-floor and then the second-floor apartments, I got no response. Upon pressing the loose top-floor button, I wondered if the buzzer was even connected to anything.

“Who is it?” a woman’s timid voice peeped out.

“Census.”

A buzz sounded and the downstairs door popped open, allowing access to a musty, dark stairwell. There were no bikes, shopping carts, or baby carriages in the hallway. If there were other tenants in the building, I saw no immediate signs of them. By the time I got up the stairs to her door, it was slightly ajar. I opened it and called out, “Hello, U.S. Government, anyone home?”

“Hi there,” a middle-aged woman muttered.

“Hi, we didn’t get your census form,” I began, looking her up and down. Her hair was a brownish red bundle, so she could’ve been the one, but it wasn’t decisive. She was wearing loose shapeless pants, so it wasn’t evident if she had the tattoo on her calf. As I took a form out of my bag and started slowly going through the questions, she spotted the fact that the sides of my shirt were wet with perspiration — the result of hours in the sun waiting for her. I kept wiping off my forehead to keep the sweat from dripping on the form.

“Would you like a Coke?” she graciously asked, taking a can from her fridge.

“No thanks,” I replied. “Are you married, single, divorced?”

She opened a water faucet and just let it run until it was cold. The slight spray of cool water splattering on my hot neck finally compelled me to say, “Actually, a cup of water would be perfect.”

She grabbed a glass from a high shelf, filled and put it down before me. While I pressed it to my forehead, she said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll fill this out myself.”

As she marked in the various boxes, I sipped the water and surveyed the room. Floral wallpaper, evenly spaced reproductions, various pictures and knickknacks — all the trappings of middle class housekeeping. I was desperately trying to ascertain whether her spouse or lover was in the other room. If she had a dog or cat, I would’ve seen it by then. But was a kid or parent sleeping in the back? All was quiet as she checked through the income boxes and then onto the questions of ethnicity.

“All done,” she replied a moment later, folding the form in half and handing it back to me.

“Can I get another glass of water?” I asked. When I offered her my empty, holding it up to the light, I could see traces of some powder sliding down along the sides. She drugged me! “Holy shit!”

She bolted into the bedroom. I jumped to my feet and raced behind. Inside was a queen-size bed with four metal posts — perfect.

“What the fuck did you slip me?”

“Nothing! I swear!”

With my right hand I yanked her wrist up tightly behind her back, painfully. With my left hand, I reached around front, ripping open her shirt so that her breast tumbled out.

“What did you slip me!”

“Nothing, I swear! It must have been soap from the dish-washer.”

I shoved her face forward and yanked up the right leg of her pants. There it was — the dark green sea horse.

Suddenly I felt myself growing weak.

“You drugged me, you bitch!” I grabbed some ties dangling from her doorknob and had to work quickly, securing her before I passed out. Then when I came to, I could finish the job.

“I can’t believe I found you,” I said, circling the silk tie around her right wrist firmly, pulling it tightly around the post, knotting it again and again.

“Please leave me alone!” she begged as I began with the second wrist. Tying the knot, twisting, cinching, retying, until all she could do was wiggle.

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

“No!” she groaned. “Who?”

“It’s me! I reached right up the ass of the Internet and pulled you out,” I explained, as I secured her right ankle to the right post of the bed. I felt her head shaking violently. She was weeping as I collapsed on top of her. “You must have known I was coming for you,” I added, feeling so little keeping me conscious. “You had something ready for me. Didn’t you?”

That’s when I saw that she wasn’t crying at all, she was giggling, but I had her arms and one leg tied tight. I hit her hard across the face. My lids and limbs were so heavy, and her free leg was kicking — I couldn’t lasso it to the post. Sluggishly, I raced up and fit the tie into her laughing mouth. I tied it again and again. She’ll be ready for me when I…

Smacks across my face, whack upon whack, till I start blinking. I’m handcuffed and she’s looking down on me.

“Men are such half-wits,” she says.

“What are you talking…?” I’m barely able to speak.

“What’s your handle?”

“My what…?”

She smacks me some more. As I awaken, I see I am in a stone room, probably her cellar. I’m spread out on the frame of an old metal army cot without a mattress. My wrists and ankles are cuffed to the four corners. In the bright light, crusted splotches of blood are visible on the floor. She keeps hitting me hard across the face.

“What the fuck!” I yell out.

She empties the contents of my wallet on my chest. She is holding my knife. I can see that she has clipped a square of my pants away so that my genitals are exposed.

“Listen carefully, because I don’t want to lose my temper. I’ve been e-mailing with five of you little piggies. I got the first one immediately, and the second one three months ago, so that leaves three. What name do you use when you e-mail me?”

“I’m GOTCHU.” I can barely open my mouth.

“Oh, you’re the idiot that I sent the faceless photo to,” she explained. “The others all insisted on seeing my face.”

“But… but I caught you,” I say groggily.

“You caught me?” she asks. “I sent enough geographical references for a retard to figure out where I live, and it took you what, six months? The other guy figured it out in six weeks.”

“Witnesses saw me come into your house!”

“Who’s going to find you missing?” she asks. “You don’t work for the census. You don’t live around here.”

“What are you going to do?” I’m slurring, barely able to keep my eyes open. “Are you going to kill me?”

“On the contrary, I’m going to do everything I can to keep you alive as long as possible,” she says. “Oh, but don’t worry, your scalpel is going to get used, after all.”

New Lots Avenue by Nelson George

Brownsville

On a recent late-fall Saturday afternoon Cynthia Green was walking down New Lots Avenue in East New York with her seven-year-old daughter Essence and an armful of groceries from the local bodega. The slender, pale-skinned young woman was thinking of how to convince her mother to babysit Essence that night so she could go out, when a black sedan pulled up beside her. The black man inside called out, “Act like you don’t know me!” Being that this was the kind of car only a cop would be seen in and she wasn’t carrying anything more criminal than two forties, she decided to stop.

When she looked at the driver, Cynthia said, “What you doin’ around here?”

Cousin Johnny replied, “Workin’.” He was a thick-shouldered, brown-skinned man with the makings of a soon-to-be-large natural do. He was wearing a green road Donavan McNabb jersey. There was small Sony video camera on the seat next to him.

“Workin’ in this car?”

“Nice, huh?”

Cynthia knew cousin Johnny as a cop. And he still was, only more so.

“Now I’m with DEA.”

“Since when?”

“Since the last two years. You don’t keep up with your relatives, do you? Anyway, how’s my favorite cousin doing?”

They exchanged family updates — what this and that cousin or aunt was doing. Then Cynthia said, “You better be chill around here.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied, “all I’m doing is taking pictures right now. You know the Puerto Rican dude who lives over there? They call him Victorious?”

“The Victorious that lives over there?” She pointed toward a brown two-story row house. Johnny nodded affirmatively. “Yeah,” she added, “I know him well.”

“Well,” her cousin said, holding up the video camera, “this is for him.”

Victorious was a highly entrepreneurial member of the Five Percent religion. Had a job in the cafeteria of a municipal office building downtown, sold jewelry that his wife made, and, according to cousin Johnny, was extremely close to some Latino brothers from Colombia about to make a major move into East New York and Brownsville. Victorious had gone to junior high school with Cynthia, had hung out with her on the block many nights and shared his dope cheeba over the years. He was a homie.

“So,” she asked, “he’s in deep trouble?”

“No more than any of the other people I take pictures of. I’m all over the five boroughs. It pays good.” Johnny was from a rock-solid middle class family in St. Albans, Queens. Both his parents had worked for the city, and he’d gone to John Jay, majoring, of course, in criminal justice. Now he lived in Jersey in a cozy little suburban home just like his white colleagues. Except that Johnny was black, which made him perfect for the kind of work he was doing now — spying on other people of color working in the underground economy.

As Johnny sat, camera in lap, he teased little Essence, who welcomed the friendly male attention. Cynthia, who was feeling all sorts of conflicting feelings, said, “I know it’s good money and benefits, but niggas is buck out here.” Johnny seemed unconcerned. He’d made his decision about the kind of life he was living a long time ago. There was nothing Cynthia could say that her aunt Lucille hadn’t said many times before. Johnny just picked up his video camera, flipped the switch, and took a nice shot of Cynthia and Essence.

“Tell your mother I send my love,” he said, as his cousin walked away and Essence waved at him.

That evening, when Johnny’s car was gone (perhaps replaced by another, but who could tell?), Cynthia stopped by Victorious’s place. His parents lived downstairs and Victorious and his wife upstairs. Cynthia wondered if they could take a walk together. He was a lanky, slightly handsome yellow-skinned man with a goatee and a baldy. There was the tip of a tattoo visible on his neck just above the turned-up lapels of his beige Rocawear jacket.

She could see his breath in the cold and how the patterns of his breathing changed as she spoke. It surprised him that she had a DEA agent for a cousin, but nothing else she said did. Victorious told her the DEA had busted his apartment just the month before, confiscating “a lot of money,” but didn’t find any drugs. His wife had been there alone when it happened and the DEA had given her a receipt on the way out. She hadn’t been sleeping too well since that visit. In fact, he finally admitted to Cynthia, she’d moved back to her mother’s house in Bushwick just last week. Victorious told Cynthia what he told his wife — the money had come from the city job and from selling her jewelry, the drug stuff was just some mess. Cynthia didn’t speak on it: That part wasn’t her business. But he was a long-time friend. That’s why they were standing under the bare branches of a tree on New Lots Avenue on this night in thirty-degree weather.

“Just be chill,” Cynthia told him finally. “Maybe you better try and get your money back, you know, and start a video store or a laundry. People always have to get their clothes washed.”

“Good looking out,” he said, and then gave her a hug. She could feel his body shaking slightly, though his face was impassive. After Cynthia left, Victorious stood in the doorway of the two-story building, his head turning left and right as he peered into cars parked along the street and listened to the roar from the elevated IRT train a few blocks away. He’d lived on New Lots Avenue his whole life and almost every day thought about when he’d be ready to move.

The next afternoon, when Johnny rolled by the house, video camera on the seat, he noticed that the curtains on Victorious’s windows were gone. It wouldn’t be until the day after that he discovered Victorious had moved.

Scavenger hunt by Neal Pollack

Coney Island

The nighttime air at Coney smells like corn dogs and fried clams and a little bit like garbage. It’s a good smell, once you get used to it, and a good place. There are lights and activity and you never know who’s going to walk past. For an old man who’s kind of curious, but also kind of not interested in talking to anyone, it’s perfect. I can watch the people and still concentrate on my world, a swirl of wooden horses and songs from the thirties that no one remembers anymore. I oil the poles when they get squeaky, track real horses in the Post, and count the quarters at the end of the shift. There’s not much conversation. I’m basically an ugly bastard with a thick accent, and I don’t want to scare anyone. Why should I play to type? I wasn’t born to be the creepy guy who runs the carousel.

In the summers I keep the ride open late. You never know when a bunch of teenagers from Montclair might show up. The Puerto Rican families stay out until midnight on the weekends. More and more, too, I get the kids — I call them kids, but they’re in their twenties — out on a date, trying to impress each other on the bumper cars and Whack-A-Mole. Big night for them, I guess, to look at the freaks, or to pretend like they’re freaks themselves. When they make it over to me, which they almost always do, I slow the carousel down so they can enjoy each other. The young have certain needs. I was young once, too, and once there was romance in my life.

Sometimes special circumstances arise. It was after 11 p.m. I yawned into the newspaper; no one had been by for a ride in at least forty-five minutes. I decided it was time to shut down.

Two girls came along the boardwalk. They weren’t beautiful in the way that you see on TV, or naturally beautiful, either, but they had style. In fact, they had a style that I hadn’t really seen before, hair done a certain way, t-shirts of a certain design, their skirts real short, cut at a certain angle. They had a look about them that just seemed, well, contemporary. I’m not a contemporary guy, but I could still tell.

They stopped in front of me. I felt my breath sting my chest, which happens when I get excited. One of them said, “Please don’t tell me you’re closed.”

I gulped. Sixty-four years old, and still a sucker. “Just about to,” I said.

“Shit!” she said. “You’ve got to let us ride.”

“What?”

“We really need to ride the carousel.”

She reached into her purse and took out a twenty.

“For both of us,” she said.

“It doesn’t cost that much.” Then — don’t ask me why — I said, “You two ride for free.”

The other girl, prettier than the first, touched my arm. I felt a jolt travel down my spine and into my brain. I’ve always been stupid around women.

“Aren’t you sweet?” she said.

“We’re gonna ride for three songs,” said her friend.

“Okay,” I replied.

I was going to lose a little money. I didn’t care. It had been a profitable summer. So I started up the carousel.

The first few notes of the organ coming to life scare me. It sounds like someone being resurrected from the dead, against his will. Didn’t seem to bother the girls, though. One of them got on top of a tall black horse in the front. The other took a digital camera out of her purse. While the first girl rode and waved, the other one took pictures. When the song ended, they switched places quickly.

While the second song was still playing, the girl who was taking pictures walked to my booth.

“I’m gonna get on the carousel with my friend,” she said. “Will you take our picture together?”

“Okay.”

“We’re on a scavenger hunt,” she said. “We need proof of being in different places and doing different things.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It’s very fun. You should come with us next time.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “I have to…”

“I was kidding,” she said. “Oh.”

She got on the carousel for the third song. They sat together on a bench. I stood in front of the ride, camera ready.

“Take our picture!” called out one of them. I couldn’t tell which. The carousel had started moving and they were blurry. The first time around, I got them with their arms in the air, shouting. But it was a little out of focus.

“Again!” one of them said.

When they came around the next time, the photo took nice and clear. The girls were kissing. Not on the cheek, either. Really kissing. And they kept kissing until the ride was over. I’d never seen girls do that before.

“You get the pictures?” the first one asked.

“Oh yes.”

“You got us kissing, right?”

“Yes.”

She put the camera in her purse. The other girl patted my hand. I blushed.

“See you next time,” she said.

No one was going to Coney a dozen years ago. It was really at its low point. So when I bought the carousel, I didn’t expect to make any money. I’d retired from my city job with some savings. When you start at twenty-two, you can stop work pretty early. My wife and I didn’t have any kids, and we didn’t enjoy each other, either. She doesn’t like traveling, and I don’t like going out to dinner. I needed something to do. One day, I was walking down the boardwalk, trying to remember what it’d been like as a kid. There was a For Sale sign.

I talked to the Russian who was taking care of the ride. He obviously didn’t give a shit. The paint on the horses was chipping off, the poles were rusted, and the room was decorated with a faded mural dating, at the latest, to 1965, but probably further back than that. It was dingy and depressing.

“Who wants to ride a fake horse, anyway?” the Russian said.

He was asking a little more than I had available, but what the hell? I went to the bank and pulled some financing together. A guy I knew from the city was able to grease the walk-through inspection. After I closed the deal, I went home for dinner.

“Where’ve you been?” asked my wife.

“I just bought the Coney Island carousel,” I said.

She looked at me hard. I’ve never been able to figure out why she hates me so much.

“So?” she said. “You think you’re special?”

I’d definitely made the right choice.

The heating system was old but still pretty efficient. I spent the winter — which was miserable, with winds like knives — chipping away the rust. I bought some industrial cleaner and gave the whole place a scrub, which took about ten days. Then I hired some mural painters, real cheap, students from Parsons. They did up the horses beautifully. I wasn’t as happy with their work on the mural, but it was fresh paint, so it didn’t really matter. I hammered together a comfortable little booth to sit in. Someone came out and worked on the organ. Before I knew it, April had arrived.

I went up to Martha’s Vineyard for a few days, and didn’t take my wife. Told her I was going to visit mother in the home. The carousel operator on the island couldn’t have been nicer. I was a quick study. The day after tax day, 1992, I opened the ride.

The girls came back two weeks after their first visit. It was around the same time of night. They looked even cuter than before, if that was possible.

“Remember us?” asked one of them.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m Katie, and this is Diane.”

I took Katie’s hand. “Hello,” I said.

“Can we ride the carousel tonight?” said Diane.

“Of course!”

She handed me a twenty.

They got on together this time. But they didn’t ask me to take a picture. They just rode around. Katie pulled out a little flask, and they sipped from it. I didn’t usually allow drinking on the ride, but it was late and no one was going to get in trouble.

They got off when the song ended.

“You want to ride with us?” Diane asked.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to operate…”

“I can do it!” she said. “For one song! You can show me how.”

For some reason, I said okay. It didn’t take a genius, after all. She picked it up pretty quickly. Did a practice spin. Then Katie and I got on. We sat together on a bench.

The carousel started going round.

“This is so fun!” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

When the ride stopped, Diane got up from the booth. Katie and I were sitting on the bench. Diane pointed the camera at us. And then Katie kissed me, hard, on the lips. I felt her tongue tickling my teeth, and I opened my mouth gratefully. My eyes were closed. Through the lids, I could see the flash going off. She kept kissing me. It felt wonderful! Another picture. And then it was over.

“Hey,” she said, “you’re a great kisser!”

“Thank you.”

She got up. Diane was scrolling through the pictures. Katie went over to look.

“Holy shit!” she said. “Did I really do that?”

“You did!” Diane replied.

“We’re gonna win this one!” said Katie.

They walked away, giggling.

“Wait!” I called out. “You’ve still got one more song!”

“Next time, handsome,” said Diane. She whispered something in Katie’s ear. Katie laughed like crazy. They turned around and looked at me and laughed even harder. I laughed back. I wanted them to know I understood.

I got home around midnight. My wife was still awake. She was always awake.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

Sometime in the last ten years, Coney got hot. The people attending the Mermaid Parade started getting younger. Lines got longer at the freak show. Riding the Cyclone became cool again. I saw a headline, “Not Your Father’s Coney Island,” in that Time Out rag. I raised my prices by a dollar. Summers became extremely active. Then they opened the ballpark, and things really went nuts.

The new kids seem desperate to me. For fun, or for something. I spent the sixties behind a desk at the Water Department. My kid brother took me to a Springsteen show in 1975. It was okay, but I never really had a taste for rock-n-roll. Not like I want to deny other people their good time. Life just doesn’t seem like a party to me, and it never has. Except with those girls.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the girls and their scavenger hunt. First, I’d never had a kiss like that. Second, the whole idea of a scavenger hunt as an adult activity baffled me. I thought it was something for a child’s birthday party. Just a dumb activity for dumb times, I supposed, like goldfish-swallowing, pole-sitting, or telephone-booth-stuffing. Maybe they’re trying to forget that there’s a war on. Or maybe they don’t know.

Still, I couldn’t wait for them to come back.

They showed up late on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. There were still a few people riding the carousel, because it was a holiday. Katie winked at me. Diane waved. I smiled. They leaned against the entrance, smoking.

It took about half an hour for me to get everyone else out of there.

“Hello, ladies,” I said, approaching them. “Good to see you.”

“Good to be seen,” Diane said.

“Another scavenger hunt?”

“Yeah,” said Katie. “High-stakes. Winner gets ten grand.”

“No kidding?” I said. “How can I help.”

Diane looked around.

“Pull down the gate,” she said.

“We don’t close for a little while.”

She sidled against me, and I felt something stick into my ribs. Her eyes glared.

“You’re closed,” she said.

I pulled down the gate.

“Shut off the lights,” Katie demanded.

“What?”

“Shut down everything.”

“Aren’t you going to ride?” I asked.

Diane pulled the gun out of my ribs and waved it in front of my face.

“Do it!” she said.

I turned the lights off and shut the power down. The grate was closed. Diane nudged me into the booth. She pointed the .38 at my head. Katie stood behind her, with the camera. “Open the cashbox,” Diane said. She then took a picture. The flash went off. “But…”

“Open the fucking cashbox!”

I did, and took out the money: $275.

“Throw it on the floor,” Katie said.

I hesitated. Diane pressed the gun hard into my ear. I threw the money. Katie took a picture. Then she bent over and started picking the money up. There was enough light coming in from the boardwalk that she could find most of the bills. I looked at her face, back-lit by neon, and she didn’t seem so beautiful anymore.

“Now get on the floor yourself,” Katie said. “On your back.”

I did what she asked. Diane bent over me. She put the gun in my mouth.

“Try anything, and I pull the trigger.”

Katie took another picture.

With her spare hand, Diane undid my belt buckle, and the button and zipper of my jeans. She seemed to hover for a second.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

“What?” Katie replied.

“I’m not going to suck this guy’s cock.”

Oh, please do, I thought.

“Well, I’m not going to do it, either,” Katie said.

They both stared at me. I stared back. Maybe one of them would change her mind.

“Get up and open the gate,” Diane said.

I sighed and did what they said. Diane caressed my cheek.

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Keep the money.”

“Good boy,” said Katie.

“But don’t come back,” I added.

“Don’t worry,” Katie said, “you’ll never see us again.”

And they were gone.

I stopped for a couple of drinks on the way home. On the television hanging over the bar was a news report. Some yuppie kids had been arrested trying to stick someone up in front of the TKTS booth in Times Square, and a similar incident had occurred at the Bronx Zoo. They said they’d been on a scavenger hunt. The Scavenger Hunt Robberies, the news called them.

By morning, the Post would have reports of a half-dozen. Mine wasn’t among them. It never would be.

I got home around 3 a.m.

“Who do you think you are?” said my wife.

“No one,” I answered.

Just the creepy guy who runs the carousel.

The Code by Norman Kelley [Produced by T-Sound. 17:20; EP

Prospect Heights

Code had always survived by the philosophy that he lived by; he recognized no other man’s law but his own: Take whatever is needed and fuck all the rest. He was the real thing: a bona fide nigga-man who lived and survived the streets. Unlike an array of fake niggaz who recorded stories about the ’hood, he was the real deal. He had the scars to prove it, the wages of sin, and he made sure that bitchez paid special attention to them when they worshipped his battle-scared body. No bitch ever left his threatening grip without kissing his keloid medals of the street, wounds received from rival niggaz and Five-Os.

Upon arriving upstate he had shanked two motherfuckahs Day One who looked at him as if he were sweet meat. He wasn’t gonna play that faggot shit. He got their minds right — as well as the whole cellblock. He had no time for that shit. His time was short and he wasn’t going to be cornered into taking sides in simple-minded prison gangs. A tag quickly went down that Code wasn’t somebody you wanted to fuck with. He sat alone and was given respect. OGs nodded and went their way; the younger ones just kept moving.

Code did his time: He worked in the prison shops, did his daily 300 push-ups, and worked on his rhymes. He was planning to make his own luck when he returned to the city and produce his masterstroke: The Code It would be the story of one bold, bad, crazy nigga’s life in the ’hood, back in Brooklyn, back in Prospect Heights. It would have everything that urban contemporary airplay craved: phat beats, flowing delivery, and the chronicle of a real nigga’s life, not back in the day but here in the moment, meaning a nigga telling it like it is — gun-play, lurid depiction of urban scenes, and plenty of fucking. He was going to go even further and have the screams of snuffed-out bitchez mixed in. Of course, no one would know if the cries were true or not (except him), but he would let others know that when he spoke of contemporary urban reality, he was beyond keepin’ it real. He was making it a fuckin’ reality. He had no time for fake niggaz frontin’ a reality he already knew about.

When Code’s lurid tales of murderous mayhem coursed their way through the underground, neighborhoods that had been relatively quiet spiked in crime. It took awhile for the police to figure out what was going on in certain neighborhoods, but they eventually found a correlation between Code’s underground tapes and an increase in robbery, spousal abuse, and urban cowboy antics. He “Ain’t Fuckin’ Around,” as he relayed in one song:

Or:

“You Know You Like It” was accompanied by the dickhardening, ass-smacking sound of a woman screaming, “Yeah, fuck me!” That caught the ear of Dr. Rhyme, one of hip hop’s most influential producers, the genius behind Da Sick Niggaz Convention Rhyme put his trackers out to find that “crazy motherfuckah with the sick-ass lyrics and slick production.”

Word went out on the street, and Code’s hands went into his pocket when two unfamiliar niggaz unexpectedly approached him at his local hang spot, Club Prospect on Franklin Street.

“Who the FUCK sent you?” he screamed at one, who was down on his knees, mouth bleeding from the pistol whipping he had just received from Code. Code was nervous; rumors were circulating that two of the other chart-topping rappers, Wuz Dat and Killadelic, had ceased their war and were thinking about jacking his ass up: The new nigga on the block was a threat. And Code could always smell another nigga’s evil ways blocks ahead.

The club went silent: The doors were locked and all the customers witnessed the legendary Bad One in action. Only a few were disgusted by Code’s criminal-mindedness. Most of the patrons, young men and women from the neighborhood, had become inured to the random display of violence, which was increasingly the soundtrack to their reality. Watching Code was like watching a power fantasy in actual play. He was a brother in control and knew how to handle another nigga. Even the club’s exotic dancers stopped moving and watched Code at work. Finally, one of the men was given permission to reach into his jacket pocket and retrieve a card with Dr. Rhyme’s telephone number.

With his 9mm’s barrel jacked up against the roof of one of the nigga’s mouths, his foot on the neck of the other emissary from Rhyme & Crime Records, dialing his cellphone with his thumb, Code found that the doctor was in New York. The doctor wanted to know if he was ready to be a serious music playa. If so, would he join him for dinner in Manhattan?

Used to Mickey D’s or curry goat with dirty rice and beans, Code and his thuggish trio of bodyguards rolled into an Upper East Side restaurant on 61st Street. Their presence caused some consternation (it was mainly the display of do-rags, sports jerseys, oversized trousers, and untied shoes) until Dr. Rhyme approached the maitre d’ and interceded. A gray velvet jacket was placed on Code, and his boys were told to park their rumpled asses at a bar that kept him in their eyesight.

“I’m sorry about that misunderstanding with yo’ niggaz,” said Code as he sat down, referring to Rhyme’s messengers.

Dr. Rhyme was gracious; as a former Cali gang-banger, he understood the dictates of security; it was the code of the streets. Obviously, his agents hadn’t approached Code with respect, and respect was important. He would dispose of them accordingly.

Code was nodding to all that Rhyme said, but kept his eyes on the most magnificent-looking one-eyed bitch he had ever laid his own bloodshot eyes on. She was dark, and Code, like most niggaz, tended to go for the current J. Lo model of Boricua negritude. But T-Sound was fine, despite the one eye, and she displayed her finery with even more subtlety when she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. Code assumed that she sucked Rhyme’s dick; that’s what bitchez were good for. That, and giving a nigga a son. Rhyme recognized the trajectory of Code’s male gaze.

“She’s one of my producers,” said Rhyme. “T-Sound discovered your tape and listened to it. Girl got ears.”

“And one eye,” Code retorted. Not bad for a one-eyed bitch — and with a wicked ass to boot, thought Code. If she didn’t return, he’d have to start licking the chair she sat in.

She was Tanya Sonido, from el barrio, and Code was trying to calculate how he could get her away from his new contact, the man who was going to produce his way outta the ghetto. He may have to kill him to snatch her. He had done it before — but before business?

“Will she be my producer?” asked Code.

Rhyme looked at him. “You don’t mind a woman producing your sound?” This was unheard of, and Rhyme recognized that this was one nigga who didn’t give a fuck what other niggaz said or thought.

“Shit, she could suck my dick while doing it.”

Rhyme nodded: “Yeah, she’s a bad motherfuckah…”

“You Negroes talking about me?” asked a suave voice.

The two turned around and found T-Sound standing behind them. She returned to her seat and flashed the whitest pair of teeth that Code ever saw on a black woman. It was also her almond-shaped eye and wide, sensuous smile. She was an older woman, maybe about thirty. She probably knew how to really fuck a man. Not like these amateur bitchez who watched skeezer videos and acted like they could hump. This bitch could probably fuck as well as a dude; that is, putting her back into it as if she had a dick. Men knew how to fuck; bitchez just got laid.

Dinner proceeded with Rhyme and T-Sound finding their prospective new talent something to eat on the exotic menu. After coffee and cognac, they — Code, along with his boys — went to Rhyme’s nearby hotel room and discussed his vision for his project, The Code

While fixing drinks at the room’s wet bar, Rhyme saw the effect that T-Sound’s bod was having on Code. It was her pulchritudinous figure and that black eye patch. There was something mysterious, remotely kinky, about a fine-looking woman wearing an eye-patch that got some men’s third leg thumping in their pants. There was heat between them, the bitch and the nigga. Rhyme watched them as they sat down and talked about his lyrics, life, and production ideas; who he listened to and what he wanted to incorporate. It would be a chronicle of gunz, bitchez, and bodacious niggatude. Code was surprised that T-Sound had produced many of the CDs that he liked and had been deejaying in clubs. Code mentioned that he enjoyed listening to women screaming and hollering, and told her that he watched a lot of porn.

“So do I,” she said, “but I like to watch men getting their asses busted.”

Code smoothed the waves on his head. “Shit, the only people who do that are faggots.”

“Yep, and they be the only ones getting it up the ass, baby. I especially enjoy she-males busting a nigga’s ass.”

“Whut?” He looked at Rhyme and then back at her.

“Have you tried it?” asked T-Sound, an inquisitive arch rising over her good eye.

“Fuck no,” laughed Code, slightly put off that a bitch he was getting hard for would ask a 100-percent black man like himself that kind of question. “I’m the fucker; not the fucked!”

“Too bad.” She looked him over as if she were imagining herself doing something very nasty to him.

“If you were a dude, I’d have killed you for…”

Tanya tossed her head back. A mane of rich black hair swept through the air as she sat invitingly across from him. Her legs were parted slightly, as if she was offering a taste of herself.

“Well, come on, nigguh,” she challenged. “You want to slay me like you do those niggaz back in Brooklyn? Or you wanna fuck this Boricua bitch? This black bitch? This disease-free bitch? I got something for you.”

She rocked her head as if she was good to go, kicking it to him in Spanish. “Yo, popi…”

Rhyme watched him. Tanya was taunting him before a room full of men, his niggaz. This would have been different if it were just him and the boys, but Tanya was playing with fire. A few seconds went by and Code gave her a hard nigga stare, an icy glance that he had perfected when deciding another man’s fate.

Rhyme understood what was going on and walked over with a drink and handed it to Code, who took it down in one swallow and said to his boys, Bebop and Cisco, “Let’s roll. I’ll have my lawyer contact you about a contract. Bitch, I’ll see your fine ass in the studio.” He grabbed a fist full of crotch before he went out the door, then added, “You better not bend over while we’re there, or you’ll get this!”

With that, they left.

“Damn, that nigga was fine,” moaned Tanya as she grabbed her own crotch, taking a drink from Rhyme. “I wanted to fuck his ass there on the spot!”

“Shit, that boy would have shot you, Tanya.”

Tanya reached down and pulled up a Glock pistol from between the cushions of the couch. “Or he would have died trying. How much do you think we can get for him?”

“Well… if we do this CD, he’ll be a premium,” surmised Rhyme.

A few months later, a contract signed and time spent in the studio, Tanya walked into Club Prospect on Franklin Street and sat down beside Code, who was sticking dollar bills in a dancer’s G-string with his teeth. He could feel himself thickening even when she sat an inch or so away. Lately he had been having dreams about her… pulling her clothes off, inching his way down to her crotch, getting her hot and nasty for his coup de grâce. But now she wanted to talk about some business, music business.

“Look, one of them sounds like someone is being choked to death,” she said, flicking an ash of her clove cigarette into a tray on the bar.

It was homage to an original gangsta, the legendary Nate Ford, he told her. Ford excelled in the “asphixiation of love,” a love/death grip. Ford had learned that by choking a bitch, his hands on her throat, he could involuntary cause her vaginal muscles to firmly grip his dick as he simultaneously exploded into and suffocated her.

Not even the Marquis de Sade had that one in his arsenal of techniques, Ford was reported to have told a Russian business associate as they sat around one evening laughing over coke and cognac. “Kinky technique,” Code explained. Ford had even shown his Russian guest a video of himself snuffing a young Puerto Rican woman. On the tape, Ford leered into the camera and then, with the brio of ultimate contempt, pulled out and discharged over the dead woman’s body. “Good to the last drop,” Ford then said. This was the sort of video that Code collected.

“That’s what you want on your debut album?” asked T-Sound. “You want people to see you as a sick, demented fuck?”

“I don’t care what people think,” snarled Code, his eyes narrowed nearly to slits, mocking an African mask. “I am the last of a dying breed: the last of the bad-ass niggaz. True to form, true to the code: I just want niggaz to buy my music…”

“And shine your shoes…”

“Whut?”

“Skip it,” said T-Sound. She wasn’t going to engage in self-disgust just because of dealing with low-lifes like him. This was a business, and it sometimes became nasty when dealing with nasty people.

“T-Sound…” he rolled off his tongue.

“What?” She was looking at a dancer who could have made better money by keeping her clothes on.

“How’d you lose your eye?”

“Fighting a nigga who wanted to get some free pussy the hard way,” she coolly replied. “He didn’t understand any part of the word no.” She went into her hand purse and pulled out a matching onyx cigarette case and lighter.

“Did he get any?”

“No,” she said, lighting the cigarette. Tanya turned and faced him fully. A shadow fell across her face, the dark patch growing into a partial shroud over one side of her head. “All he got was an eyeball, but his balls got some of this!” She pushed a little black switch upward on the lighter with her thumb, and a gleaming, sharp two-inch blade appeared.

What Code found menacing wasn’t the blade, but that she was too cool; nothing frazzled her. She was just like him: a deadly nigga. Weeks ago he had walked into the recording studio with his boys, armed, stinking of liquor, and she had thrown out his bodyguards with her even bigger, badder, and bolder bodyguards, niggaz who worked day jobs with the city’s most feared gang, NYPD. He tried to stare her down during a disagreement about one song in which he was going for the soap-soft. After dissing women for ten tracks, he wanted to include some lovey-dovey sop — asking a “girl” if she would love him even if he didn’t have money — after having extolled the sociopathic virtues of getting it by any means necessary on the rest of the recording!

T-sound had told him: “Look, it is clear to me that even though you enjoy fucking us, you don’t like or have any respect for women. So who are you trying to fool with this track, your mother? Niggaz like you don’t have mothers. You’re the classic son of a bitch, tu sabes?

She told him this an inch from his face, like a Marine DI to a jarhead, and added: “You gonna be hard, be hard all the way. No half-steppin’. Save that pussy love shit for your second album — if you live that long.”

Tanya Sonido. She looked like a woman, smelled like a woman, and even dressed like one. She wore the kind of clothes — dresses, suits, or blazers with jeans — that accented a woman’s best features, and she had rounds of features like the military had rounds of ammunition in Iraq. A phat, firm ass that didn’t bust out the seams like other nigga bitchez; voluptuous breasts that hung underneath her shirts in their own right, not assisted by silicone injections. She had nice calves and strong-looking muscles that ran along her thighs, evidence of gym work, and nice definition to her shoulders and biceps. The bitch was built. She was hard like him: ghetto — but she had style and grace, and wasn’t nigga-down 24/7. That was all he could ever be, and he was beginning to suspect that this was limiting.

T-Sound exhaled some smoke from her nostrils: “Hear that, Code? Hear 5 °Cent kickin’ it on the jukebox? That’s the nigga you ought to have a problem with, not me. I’m on your side.” She set down her cigarette and looked at him, her full red lips slightly parted. “Or are you having trouble concentrating?”

Suddenly it was getting hot. OGs had talked about a special kind of woman that men found hard to beat, hard to resist. The French called them femmes fatales, mysterious women that could do a nigga in if he wasn’t careful. Code realized that his dick was getting hard due to his overpowering lust and fear of her. She could do what no other man or woman had ever been able to do: read him. She knew what he wanted from her, needed from her, and what he could never allow anyone else to do: become close to him. His rules of engagement dictated that he possess no friends, only associates; that he have no real love, only pussy; no family — that had been destroyed years ago.

But Tanya was different; she took her time with him. She reminded him that despite being shot four times; despite never being convicted of killing two men and exterminating another man and his two children; despite raping or gangbanging a dozen women of various races and nationalities, as well as engaging in numerous hold-ups and burglaries; and despite selling vast quantities of controlled substances, he was just breaking twenty-two. She could be his mentor and get him out of a life that he didn’t mind rapping about, but had worn thin since the last time he was shot. The code dictated that a nigga didn’t last too long.

But he did have a problem with her, and she had scoped that out earlier.

“You want to fuck me, right?” prompted T-Sound. She reached over in his direction to get another napkin from a bar dispenser for her drink. “No can do. Someone else has fucking rights to my cunt.”

“Rhyme?”

She shook her head. “No, we’re partners. My wet-box is saved for someone else… but you can either fuck my ass or come in my mouth. Two out of three ain’t bad, is it?”

T-Sound, looking at her watch and announcing an impending meeting, told him that if he wanted to do it, it had to be now, in the piss-smelling, HIV-potential men’s room of Club Prospect. “And you better get that tongue of yours good and moist, because you’re going to stick it up my ass before you stick your third leg in me. See you in a few minutes, chocolate.” She slid off her seat and grabbed a handful of him at his below-the-belt area. “Hmmm, I’m gonna like this entering my back door. She slipped into the men’s room, making sure the video camera would capture them at the right angle.

Code went to work on his tongue. Water, followed by orange and grapefruit juice, and then some club soda with a twist of lime. He purchased a few sample bottles of one of those new-fangled sweet-tasting cognacs that all the niggaz had been singing about and promoting over the airwaves and in intellectually deficient shop-and-fuck magazines. He was going to drink them out of her ass-crack. Armed with them in the side-pockets of his urban fatigues, Code pulled out his notebook and jotted down a few pre-coital lines:

The Prospect Place Ladies’ Auxiliary liked what they saw. They saw fine-looking black meat inching in and out of an even finer, perspiration-coated posterior — Tanya’s. The audio portion was still better, with Tanya saying all kinds of nasty things Español, and the preferred exclamations in Niggaese about bitch this and bitch that

“Believe me, girls, this boy can barely read,” confirmed Tanya, “but he knows how to work a woman’s ass.”

The women cackled and hooted when Tanya told them that she had emptied him three times, enjoying the feel of his warm spunk oozing down her legs as she left him nearly drained on the john at Club Prospect.

“Watch this, ladies,” she said, directing their attention back to the TV/video monitor. The tape showed a limp but massive black snake slowly retreating from Tanya’s rear.

“Mon Dieu, that boy is hung!” said Francesca, an Afro-Francophone from Paris. “But can he eat?”

“He can be trained,” Tanya commented with an authoritative crack of her crop against her boots. “Any man can be trained under the proper regimen.”

“What’s the word on the bidding?” asked Janette.

“It’s starting at a million,” replied Tanya.

“What?” said another woman, Carmen. “Why so much?”

“Because your GOP friends in the Log Cabin Society and several of the Sons of the Confederacy want a raw nigga as much as some of you do,” Tanya explained, “and when The Code is released and he suddenly disappears, he’ll be a collector’s item.”

“No wonder they call it the Log Cabin Society,” quipped Dominique.

“I heard that even a few Saudi princes are taking a bid on him,” commented Francesca. “Non?”

“Oui,” affirmed Tanya. “Raw niggaz are the rage; hip hop has advertised that.”

The women assembled at Tanya’s Prospect Heights brownstone, the crème of nouveau black womanhood, were wealthy. Businesswomen, achievers, well-known role models, church-going hot moms — they had all acquired a taste for supine men, especially hard-co’ raw niggaz. Over the years, certain people had tried to eradicate the scourge of what some called gangsta rap, but had been less than successful. While others had managed to assassinate some well-known acts and perpetuate the myth that their deaths had been the result of incessant male-ego feuding, Tanya had been developing the art of “slutting,” turning street niggaz into cunt-lapping dawgz.

There was no better example of her handiwork than “Juliette,” a corseted, black-fishnet-wearing, muscular servant whose pecs had been tagged with the emblems of his gang-banging days. Jam-Bone Jones had been lured to Tanya’s basement months ago. She could always pick the sluts by their inordinate fear of “faggots.” These young ghetto bucks were obsessed with homosexuals and treacherous black women — people who had to be either exterminated or kept down. She could always tell which ones could be flipped. In her mind, Code was no different. Soon after showing him that her ass-muscles could squeeze him into a climax, she knew she had him hooked. She had even encouraged him to include the piece he had written about their toilet tryst, “Slutz and Dawgz,” on The Code That way, she thought, his mind would always be on her and what she could do for him — and him.

After a long day at the studio, where she had castigated him for lame delivery, she had him stay behind for some vocal-relaxation exercises: She blew him. But she wouldn’t allow him to speak or come near her without a withering comment or a comparison to 50 or Nas or Jay-Z, or the ultimate insult, Eminem. (“That cracker makes niggaz like you look counterfeit!” she told him after a flaccid flow.)

Jam-Bone Jones had been the same. He excoriated faggots but wasn’t beyond sucking off a vivacious she-male like Dominique, and he was definitely surprised that T-Sound had a little something extra.

“What’s the plan?” asked Darlene, while testing Juliette’s serving etiquette. As the newly minted slut poured tea, Darlene grabbed “her” dangling meat and Juliette didn’t even flinch. How could she with her exacting cycloptric mistress watching her every move, ready to punish her with the severe sting of a silver-tipped riding crop. Tanya looked every bit the bitch goddess; she wore a white linen shirt, jodhpur breeches, and knee-high riding boots.

“Well,” said Tanya measuredly, “I thought I would appeal to his masculine nature and tell him that a bunch of hot bitches — you all — wanted to meet him. This will be the night of the CD release party at Club Prospect. He’ll be high and ready… and hot. Muy caliente!”

The Source, Vibe, XXL, Murder Dawg Review, Rolling Stone, SPIN and even one commentator on National Public Radio proclaimed the era of The Code “The most vicious piece of misogynistic and anti-gay pornography ever produced by the team of Dr. Rhyme and T-Sound,” wrote a reviewer — and she liked it.

“What’s not to like/I’m a powerful motherfuckah when I’m on the mike,” rapped Code as he walked the length of the bar at Club Prospect. The joint was jammed and nigga deep; the ’hood had turned out to see one of their own, who had gone platinum before the CD was even released.

“King Kong with a powerful ding-dong!!!” he roared, thumping his chest, grabbing his meat. “Give me cash! I’m a ho’ too! You got it! You got it! I want it!” And they gave it to him — small green piles of dollar bills formed at his feet. Code tore off his shirt, used it to mop his face and chest, and thew it to his fans. Half-naked, his ripped musculature was coated in a thin sweat; he had the aura of a champion boxer, a new jack Muhammad Ali. As a matter of fact, he was thinking about calling himself that, toying with naming his next album Jihad Real Niggaz Die. He took in the adulation and the sullen stares of the wanna-be players, confident that he could whack any one of them as he jumped off the bar with his hands on his heater. A real nigga, he thought, was always ready to die. That’s why the likes of Eminem and the legion of other pallid wanna-bes were counterfeit; they weren’t going to die like real niggaz.

Rhyme sat in a special VIP section of Club Prospect, a cushioned alcove that rose above the floor and allowed him to peer down at an elevated angle at the masses. Code was making his way through the crowd, toward the club’s door. Code’s executive producer made a phone call: All was ready. The place was stinkin’ on a midsummer night and management hadn’t fixed the air conditioner. Everything was set. Tanya had left and waited outside. It was 9 p.m. and a crowd was still waiting to get in to see “King” Code.

With a phone to her ear, Tanya leaned against a car and took in a sultry summer breeze, an amazing relief after experiencing the sweatbox that passed for a club.

“T-Sound!”

Tanya, flipping down the cover of her c-phone, turned and saw him. He looked magnificent; the moonlight made his dark skin glisten. He was manly beautiful, gorgeous, and she was going to break him.

“The party is in there,” he said, pointing back to the club.

“Nigga, are you high?” she asked.

“I’m always high when I’m with yo’ fine ass.”

Before he could say another word, she embraced him and burned his lips with an infinite kiss, brushing a thumb against an exposed nipple on his chest.

“Goddamn…” he said, catching his breath. “You can bring a nigga down with that.”

“I want you to meet some people, Code,” she said softly. “I’m having a special celebration at my place…”

“Naw, I got my peeps, my crew back there, and…”

“… and then you can fuck me, really fuck me…”

Code looked at her. “We’re talkin’ pussy, right?”

“All that you can eat, nigga…”

“I’m way down for that.”

“What about your peeps?”

“Fuck ’em!”

They wouldn’t even have to take a car. Her place was only a few blocks away and they walked over hand-in-hand, crossing Washington Avenue, passing the stores he had once robbed, the owners he had brutalized because they didn’t move fast enough or didn’t have enough cash on hand. Code was excited. Things were finally coming together, coming his way. He could now get off the streets and do new things, like take the time to think about what was going on. No nigga had the time to think in the ’hood; it was all about survivin’. He had crawled, inched, shot, knifed, and fucked his way to this moment with this incredible woman.

When they turned onto Prospect Place, their pace slowed. A swarm of emotions swelled up in him; Code was feeling something that he had never known existed.

“Yo, I got to tell you something,” he said, stopping at the ground floor entrance that led to her playroom and dungeon. She had a series of reinforced restraints ready for him.

“What?” she replied, as she unlocked the door; she felt that he sensed what was about to transpire.

“I… I…” he grappled. “Shit…”

“What’s wrong, baby?” solicited Tanya, caressing his face. He was so handsome, she thought. So beautiful, but deadly.

“I’ve never been in love before,” he answered, looking at her with open and inviting eyes, no longer, at least at this moment, suspicious slits of mayhem.

Warmly murmuring a response, Tanya thought that this was indeed a very nasty business, but peered at him intensely and pressed him against the door, then knelt down. All that could be heard was the un-zipping of his trousers; all that he felt was her warm and experienced mouth, and the joy of repetition that her tongue offered. After she voraciously milked him, Code was changed. He was left feeling woozy, as if he been spiked, Vanessa Del Rio’d. Slowly, he opened the door and entered the basement that was blasting his music, the sound of the hip hop generation. It was young men like him who had dethroned a previous generation and ushered in the reign of the new HNIC, a reign in which authentication meant death.

Half-dressed as he had been since leaving the club, Code, still dazed, walked into a room with scores of naked women who appeared glad to see him, kissing his keloid medals of the street. He was offered a palette of tastes: breasts, asses, thighs, legs, buttocks, vaginas, cunts, and pussies. While being told that they were making a home movie of his triumph with a bevy of hot bodies, he didn’t notice that he was also being given the “Dawg of the Year Award,” a choke collar. Dominique fastened it around his neck just as Darlene lowered his trousers and stripped him of the rest of his clothes and his 9mm. The women admired his flaccid male-thang that ran halfway down his thigh. They could tell that he was happy to be in their presence, even happier when a group of them began devouring him, attending to every part of his body with probing hands and tongues, rubbing their sticky, lubricated orifices against his street-toughened, muscular black body.

When Francesca slipped on the black metal handcuffs, Code was still woozy from the weed and booze and Tanya’s mouth-fucking, and didn’t think too much about it when he was made to kneel down to service Dominique, who waited with opened legs; her warm aroma greeted his quivering nostrils. This was fun: doing dawg duty amongst all the booty. But his enthusiasm waned when he discovered Dominique’s ever-enlarging cock staring him in the face — and hers was just as large as Code’s. Protesting, struggling against the handcuffs now holding his arms behind his back, Code was forced into service upon feeling the cold barrel of his own “nigga-stopper” behind his right ear and the grip of the choke chain around his neck. Knee-deep into deep-throating Dominique, Code could feel his own backdoor being prepared for a rear-entry maneuver.

Upstairs, Tanya was offered a cognac by Juliette and sighed as she began the bidding, watching Code’s ravishing on the monitor. In a few days, the training would begin and she would bust his opened, dark ass with her own twelve inches — without lubrication. As a fully equipped hermaphrodite, she would teach him how to service her wet slit while he lay on his back in a supine position with his legs and arms beneath him. His transformation from man to bitch would begin. In a few more weeks, Code would disappear and be corseted, shaved, lipsticked, and turned into “Charlene,” sold to the highest bidder. Code’s disappearance would drive up The Code’s sales and further the rumor that the system had taken down another black man. No one would believe that he had been turned into a woman-manufactured male slut, especially not the brothers on the street. But T-Sound knew differently. Music, like sex, was a nasty business, a very nasty business.