Queens Noir

Avoid agony by Shailly Agnihotri

Jackson Heights

The week after he placed the advertisement in the India Today matrimonial pages, he received fifty-six requests. Not all, of course, had paid the $200 he charged through PayPal. But twenty-one had. He did a criminal background check of the ten men and eleven women. He ran their credit histories and sent the reports:

With the astrology business and now the Matrimony Investigating Agency up and running, things were looking good. Raj treated himself to a masala dosa at India Grill. “Add more mirshe,” he always reminded them, or else the dosa lacked the requisite zing. He relished the spiced potatoes and the sweet masala tea. All around, families, business people, and ladies sat and gossiped, some in English, some in Punjabi, and some in Gujarati. Almost everyone was Indian. Why, he sometimes thought, Queens is more Indian than India. He took out some quarters, left two as a tip, and went to the register to pay.

It was a Saturday; he would sit and wait for any walk-in business. He headed into the Sari Palace, past the mannequins in langas and saris, nodded his greeting to the ladies setting up the register, and up the stairs to his office. It was best not to speak to them, he had realized, or else they’d draw him into their gossip. Then he’d have to listen to the not-so-subtle suggestions about some cousin or niece who was ready to marry, who cooked so well and sang beautifully. Would you like to see her photo? Best to avoid the tedious talk.

The walls of his second-floor office were bare but for three posters of the most beautiful woman who had ever lived, the 1950s Indian film star, Meena Kumari. When he procured the lease to the office, he had allowed himself the extravagance of taking some publicity photos he’d had since his teens to the copy center and enlarging them. Her gaze never escaped his.

He flicked on the neon Open sign in his window, under a hand-lettered one that read, Vedic Astrology, and checked his e-mail.

He scanned the few requests for matrimonial character checks. One e-mail caught his eye:

Raj read the e-mail over several times and mulled the “full dossier” request. What should be the quote for such a report? $400? This one doesn’t want a report that reassures him that his child will be fine coming to America and marrying his intended. He wants dirt. The salacious detail of depravity. That she drinks, smokes, and dances.

He responded:

Within ten minutes, he received confirmation of a payment and a name: Ritu Rani. Ritu Rani? He smiled and dug through the stack of Little India magazines on his desk, finding the one from four months ago. There she was on the cover: Miss Little India, Queens 2006 — Ritu Rani. He remembered every curve of her delicate body. She was back in his life again.

He waited two days before responding:

Within minutes of sending his report, he received a most pleasant offer.

This time it was signed with the full name: Manny Sharma.

“Lakshmi, praise be to you,” Raj said out loud. Manny Sharma. The Manny Sharma needs his services. How fortunate is his cusp. He must do his horoscope to see what other good karma is coming his way. Manny Sharma needs him. A wayward only-son entangled with a woman. Well, one man’s bad luck is another’s good fortune.

Raj read his work over with care and wondered whether the $95 was high enough to show his worthiness but not too high to make him seem greedy. He changed it to $85 before sending the e-mail.

Raj was so pleased with himself that he left right away for some paan. It was important to sweeten one’s mouth at good news so that it would linger longer. He walked to the corner of 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue. Vinod had set up a paan stand inside the sweet store. Raj came here a few times a week, as nothing was as satisfying as the taste of a freshly made paan. As Vinod wrapped the betel leaf and added areca nut and mineral lime, then sprinkled some spices, sweet mixture, and whatnot, they chatted. But Vinod was always looking for some free advice. What’s an auspicious date for buying stock? Good dates for traveling? Today Vinod wanted to know about his sister’s marriage. What good dates are coming? Nothing annoyed Raj more. Astrology was an ancient and sacred art. It required precise calculations. It was not gossip material. But he loved paan, and Vinod was the only game in town, so he held his tongue and gave general information. “Well, till the eclipse on the thirteenth, not good to set the date.” He finally got the paan, plopped it in his mouth, and chewed.

As he walked back to his office, he stopped at the DVD store at the corner of 37th Road to see what latest Hindi movies they had. All the usual trash. He rented two and headed to his office, feeling satisfied that now his moment had come and Manny Sharma himself would be the vessel.

Manny was around fifty, ten years older than Raj. Manny had made a fortune in the Indian steel business. When Raj had taken his correspondence course in astrology a few years before, Manny’s horoscope had been his final project. Raj remembered that even with all of Manny’s money, the chart showed difficulty in the fifth house — some fracture with a child. And since Manny had but one son... Well, well, well, Manny and Raj’s fortunes intertwined.

Now Raj did a more extensive moon chart of Manny, which showed him to be a ruthless man who destroyed his competition and cared little for others. So it is only fair, Raj reasoned, that though he have a fortune (he was, after all, born in the Shukra ascension), his lack of humility must bring him pain in some other area of his life. And nothing would concern the great Manny Sharma more than the thought of his prince marrying a loose woman.

Neal Sharma was an MBA student at the Stern School at NYU. Raj had no trouble locating him the next day. Raj presented himself in the lounge of the Stern building and waited. Soon classes were over and he spotted Manny’s son with a group of other young men. Neal was handsome, slim, and decidedly casual for being the son of one of the wealthiest families in India. Raj watched and studied him. Was he a good kid? He seemed to be enjoying the company of his friends. No pretentiousness. Not the strongest personality in the group. Not the most handsome. But a good enough fellow.

Raj continued his investigation by doing Neal’s chart. His instincts were correct: Neal was a boy of unquestionably good moral character. Would have a happy family life. Three children. And, of course, lots of wealth. How to play this out? Raj wondered. He felt he was still missing something and so he’d sleep on it. He dreamed all night of Miss Little India, Queens.

Raj woke up with a plan that made him feel young. He knew where his destiny lay. He did not doubt the stars. He went to the electronics store and haggled a digital camera. He knew where Ritu lived and went to her apartment building five blocks away. Soon enough, he saw her. She wore a skirt that covered her knees and a simple pink top. No makeup. Flat sandals. Just the sight of her made his heart beat faster. He moved to the other side of the street.

And took her picture.

For the first time in years, he was hungry for something. His brain — which, as a young man, had been routinely praised for its discipline and quickness — was perhaps going to be used again. Maybe it had just been resting till now. Wearing a hat and dark glasses to obscure his appearance, he went in search of the couple. It wasn’t hard. He waited outside her building, and soon he saw Neal buzzed in. They came out together not ten minutes later, and he took photos of them walking. They went to lunch at Chat Hut. He slid into the table behind her, and she never noticed him. How could she, when all she did was look at Neal and smile? They were chatting about this and that, in the meandering way young couples do when smitten. He had a paper due, she had a job interview; he wanted to go to a movie that night, she said earlier was better. Neal was eating channa with puri and she had a dahl chat plate. She fed him a spoon full of her chat.

“Ritu, I can’t wait to take you to the chat place in Delhi, baby, you will love it,” Neal said as they got up to leave.

Raj waited a few days and sent the photos to Manny. With an email:

Manny replied instantly:

Raj e-mailed again two days later — at night so it would be received early in the morning in Delhi:

Almost immediately, Raj received a response:

The money was in Raj’s account within twenty-four hours.

He put on his best suit with the red tie and first went to the Lakshmi Temple when he knew there’d be no long, drawn-out prayer ceremonies under way. He wrote a check for $201 and left it in the donation box. Bowed to Lakshmi, took a bit of parshad to sweeten his mouth, and left. He knew the right thing to do. And God blessing him for doing the right thing would bring good karma.

Time to visit Miss Ritu. He had with him her astrology chart. Ritu lived in a small studio apartment. It was simple and tastefully decorated. She had taken his call and his request for a visit in a relaxed way. “So nice to hear from you again,” she’d said. She’s all class, he thought.

“Mr. Raj, would you like some tea?” she asked when he arrived. He accepted her gracious offer. When they were seated at the dining table, he opened up the astrology chart.

“Dear Ritu, I have some news I must share with you,” he said. “With the moon on the eclipse and the house of Rahu on the cusp, I urge you to marry quickly. If you need help finding a suitable mate, I will help. You should be with a doctor or businessman...”

She was listening intently. “No, no, I appreciate your offer of help — but I’m—”

“Oh, so you are involved?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good news. Good. Then arrange hastily, if you must. Arrange quickly to marry. It is so written and must be done before the full moon or you risk... Let’s not discuss that. Marry immediately, you must.” He noticed how her delicate fingers twirled the silky strands of her hair as he spoke. He departed then, leaving the chart behind.

Four months before, he had been the judge for Miss Little India, Queens. He had been one of the sponsors of the contest — having given $550 to place his name prominently in the advertisement for the event. For his money he had expected flirting from the contestants, hints of romance, some ego stroking — and these of course had come — but nothing prepared him for the pressures of the final round. It ended up that for the last stretch of the two-day contest, he was the sole judge. So he decided that the five girls in the finals would each dance to a song from the Hindi classic film, Pakeezah. It was enchanting, haunting music that Meena Kumari, the loveliest actress to ever grace the big screen, danced along to with stunning grace. Raj had picked his favorite movie and favorite actress as the challenge. There could be no greater challenge, as the audience, too, knew every gesture and movement that Meena Kumari danced in the film. It was the highlight of Indian cinema — the beauty of the camera movement, the music, the story, Meena Kumari.

During the day of the event he was visited by two contestants, and the fathers of two others. He drew a bit more than just attention from one of the two girls. Her breasts were round and firm and he enjoyed lingering there for a moment. The other, a young woman named Geeta, had kissed him and he’d put his hand on her thin waist when she leaned into him. The fathers left envelopes with cash. One $350, and one $500. Only the fifth contestant failed to visit him or send her father.

And, of course, she won.

It wasn’t just that Ritu didn’t visit: It was the dance. Ritu seemed to possess the characteristics of the Ideal Indian Woman. Her curves were generous, her movements minimal. She didn’t strive too hard, instead the music just swayed her. She smiled at him from the stage, which had excited him even more than the touching or the money. It was the warm smile of innocence untouched by the crass world. He avoided her after that, lest she disappoint him. Or perhaps he would disappoint her. But he thought of her often, alone in his bed.

She deserved abundance — and to be married to the rich only-son of one of India’s wealthiest families. That bastard Manny couldn’t appreciate a classy girl like Ritu. He represented all that was wrong with these situations: the brutish man keeping his son from happiness.

Of course, Raj knew that he, like all the other players, had a predestined role. He was to teach Manny Sharma some humility — and if that humility came with humiliation, so be it. He was to help Ritu in her life. First the contest, then the husband. And he was being rewarded for his good deeds. But it wasn’t just the money; it was knowing that he, not Manny, was in charge of the way this would end. When he was in charge, the good won out. Don’t rest on your laurels, he reminded himself. Destiny was calling.

He turned on his computer and started by changing his e-mail and PayPal accounts. Then he opened a file entitled Wealthiest Indian Bachelors and considered Davinder Shah, son of the pig-headed Minister of Defense, Terjinder Shah. Years of graft had left the family very well off. Davinder, the eldest son, was also enrolled in the Stern School at NYU. Raj had noted his presence among the young men hanging out with Neal Sharma. Raj plugged Davinder’s vital dates into his computer program and printed out his astrology chart. While anyone could run numbers to get a chart, an analysis of the planet positions, the lunar asterism, the ascendants — understanding their relationships with one another was a gift that few possessed. And clearly, Raj knew, he was one of the blessed.

His chart showed Davinder as a weak man, tending to be swayed easily. No great intellect. A bit lazy. Not a great person, petty really. Of course, Raj would find his match. There is, after all, a match for every person. Raj consulted his folder marked Eligible Indian Girls, studying the photo of Geeta. He studied her curves and her look, which was a tad cheap — though he had no regrets about enjoying her wet kiss. He had only chosen her as a runner-up, but he would make it up to her now.

He e-mailed her immediately.

Then he e-mailed another:

Later, as he watched India-Vision in his office, Raj was interrupted by a knock on his door.

Ritu and Neal walked in, arm in arm.

“How do you do, young man?”

“So nice to see you again, Mr. Raj,” Neal said.

“Yes, yes, we did meet at the Miss Little India pageant, right?”

“Yes. And thanks to you, I met Ritu that night.”

“Oh no, these are all events that fate has ordained,” Raj demurred.

“Mr. Kumar,” Ritu said, “Neal and I were married this morning at City Hall.”

“Congratulations, congratulations.”

“We need your advice. You see, Ritu and I, well, we...” Neal began.

“We got married...” Ritu added.

“Blessings, blessings.”

“. . without my father,” Neal continued. “Well, he doesn’t know yet and I want to seek your advice to smooth things over.”

“Oh, I see. But your wife is a blessing to your family.”

“Yes sir. But my father—”

“I will tell you, young man, that only a few get to be married to a girl as lovely, honest, and wise as your bride. Treasure her. Once you have children, I guarantee you all will be well.”

“Children?”

“Yes. I know Ritu’s chart. And all happiness unencumbered by obstructions will be yours in this union. Wait till you have good news of a grandchild and then go to India. All will be well.”

“I shouldn’t tell my father then?”

“No. Wait a few months. Then you will have two good things to tell him.”

Ritu looked at Neal and gave him that sweet smile that Raj knew so well.

“Go and enjoy each other,” Raj counseled. “Give it time. All will be well. All will be well.”

Neal reached for his wallet, “Can I give you something?”

“Oh, please. Please... it’s my pleasure.”

Neal shook Raj’s hand, and the happy newlyweds left his office.

Raj watched the couple from his second-floor window. As they walked away, arm in arm once again, Ritu turned to look up at his window. She met his gaze for a moment and held it. She nodded slightly and then turned her attention once more to her husband.

He was now alone in his office above 74th Street, with all the hustle and flow of life below. With his posters of Meena Kumari. With his foldout chairs. With his TV and DVD player on a stand. He flicked off the Open sign outside his window.

From his desk drawer he took out the DVD. He needed some pleasure too — life could not only be work. He dimmed the lights and sat on the floor cushion, as he always did to watch. Nothing could interrupt him for three hours. He put on the movie Pakeezah. The music stirred and then there she was. Looking for her love. Full of grace. Dancing her pain away. Her soul unappreciated by the wealthy patrons. She is a courtesan who doesn’t get to be with her love, the prince. The callous king forbids it. She has no one to help her. And Raj weeps for her once again as he hears his beloved sing:

Viernes loco by K.J.A. Wishnia

Corona

It’s never good when you open your front door and the first thing you see is uniforms. Only this time, they were military dress green, not 110th Precinct blue, and lucky for us they wanted the house next door. Bad luck for the Mantilla family, whose oldest boy, Freddie, joined up seeking the fast track to citizenship. And now he’s going to get it — posthumously.

The following Thursday I’m standing with the family as the flag-draped coffin is about to be lowered into a hole overshadowed by the Long Island Expressway and a recycling plant. The last notes of “Taps” float by on the wind, mingling with the Doppler-shifting wee-oo-wee-oo of a passing police siren. Someone’s not at peace with the Lord out there.

A white-gloved finger presses the play button on a boom box, and the crash of angry Spanish ghetto rap rips the stillness to shreds. Freddie chose this music as his final shout-out to the world, and, if I know Freddie, as a final screw-you to all the white boys in his unit who would have gone with “Amazing Grace.” The honor guard salutes stiffly as cars roar by on the overpass.

I go up to the cops who brought Freddie’s uncle here, and ask them to take the guy’s handcuffs off for five minutes so he can hug his family. It takes a moment, but they do it for me.

“You on a case?” says Officer Sirota.

“Friend of the family.”

“Uh,” he grunts. “Say, you know what that’s about?”

There’s a group of mourners dancing around a grave across the street in Mount Zion Cemetery. I tell him it’s a splinter sect of Orthodox Jews who believe that their former leader, Rabbi Aaron Teitelboym, is the Messiah, so every year they gather at his grave on the anniversary of his death to celebrate his imminent resurrection.

“That so?” says Sirota. “How long’s he been dead?”

“Nine years.”

“Nine years? Man, it only took Jesus three days. So I guess that’s one up for our side.”

The lieutenant presents Freddie’s mom, Irene, with the purple heart and bronze star, and salutes her. She presses the medals to her chest, and hugs a color photo of her smiling boy, the sharp-eyed soldier who waved his comrades away from the roadside bomb that shattered his skull and left a smoking crater of that handsome young face. It was a closed casket service.

Too soon, they snap the cuffs back on Uncle Reynaldo and escort him to the squad car. I wait my turn as close relatives go up and hug my neighbor. She’s clutching Freddie’s brother Felipe, who’s already sprouting a teen mustache and getting pretty big for a twelve-year-old.

Felipe wrenches his arm away from her and seeks out the masculine ritual of swapping greetings with his cousin Ray Ray, who I once helped dodge a graffiti rap that could have gotten nasty if the cops had felt like pressing it. Just being caught with “graffiti instruments” is a Class B misdemeanor, and it doesn’t help that in order to get proper respect as a graffiti writer in the barrio, the supplies have to be stolen. Reparations were costly, but worth it, since that dark-skinned Dominican kid is now working on a twenty-one-game hitting streak carried over from his previous season at Newtown High School, and the rumor is that he’s being scouted by the Mets.

That night we climb up onto the roof so Felipe can look at the glittering crown of Shea Stadium on the horizon.

“Yo, Filomena,” he says. “I hear los Mets are gonna put their game on real thick this year.”

“They definitely have a shot at it.”

“Remember the subway series when that cabrón de Yanqui Clemens threw the broken bat at Piazza?”

“Sure.”

“Freddie got some tickets for me and Ray Ray. We was in the upper deck, the three of us doing mad daps all around.” He points at the bright lights as if the exact spot is marked for all time, which I suppose it is, in a way. I know what he’s thinking, but he says it anyway. “Some day Ray Ray gonna be playing center field out there.”

The next morning, I’m training my new part-time office assistant, a tanned and freckle-faced sophomore at Queens College named Cristina González. They’re putting her through the wringer at that school, making her take two semesters of Composition, which is encouraging since half the college kids I see lie to me on their resumés and think they can get away with writing crapola like, My mother’s a strong women and roll model for all American’s, which doesn’t look too good in a report.

The last applicant didn’t mention his credit card scam and drug convictions when I asked him if there was anything unusual in his past that I should know about. When I caught it on a routine background check, he said, “Hey, in my neighborhood, that’s nothing unusual.”

“You mean, I beat out a convicted felon for this job?” says Cristina. “Gee, thanks.”

It’s hard to find good help for $6.50 an hour, which is all I can afford to pay. But striking out on your own is risky at my age, and I wouldn’t even be able to pay that much if my former bosses at Davis & Brown Investigations didn’t toss a few heavy bones my way, continuing a long-standing American business practice of subcontracting out to cheap immigrant labor like me.

So I’m sitting in my eight-by-fourteen storefront office, directly beneath the flight path of every other jet approaching LaGuardia Airport, trying to debug the Hebrew font we installed for a case involving an Orthodox congregation in Kew Gardens Hills. The font’s right-to-left coding has defeated the security protocols and migrated to some of the neighboring programs, causing system commands to come up randomly in Hebrew.

Oy vey, couldn’t it have at least been Yiddish?

I look up as a man in a light gray business suit who I’ve been expecting knocks on the glass. I buzz the door open for the junior executive, who looks like he’s worried about contracting malaria through the soles of his wingtips from walking on these cracked sidewalks.

“Miss Buscarella?” he says.

“Close enough. It’s Buscarsela.”

He doesn’t seem to be listening as he sits in a chair that was once bright orange and hands me his card, which says his name is F. Scott Anderson, and his title is Assistant Director of Product Security for the Syndose Corporation.

“What can I do for you on this fine spring day, Mr. Anderson?”

He snaps open his briefcase and pulls out a plastic bottle of dandruff shampoo with a blue-green label you can find in any drugstore in the northeast.

“What’s wrong with this?” he says, holding up the bottle.

I check the label and tell him, “That used to be an eight-ounce size, and now you’re selling six and a half ounces for the same price.”

He doesn’t bite. He just places the plastic bottle on my desk and pulls a seemingly identical one out of his briefcase. “How about this one?”

I study it for a moment, and it’s obvious that the blue-green color isn’t as saturated as it should be, and the white lettering isn’t perfectly aligned with the other colors on the label.

“It’s counterfeit,” I announce.

Cristina butts in. “What kind of dumb-ass would counterfeit shampoo? Ain’t no money in that.”

I’m about to tell her to keep out of this, but Mr. Anderson beats me to it. He says, “Counterfeiting and product diversion cost my company several million dollars a year. The police just raided a store in Jackson Heights and seized 24,000 bottles of counterfeit shampoo. In one store. That’s a tremendous economic loss.”

“To say nothing of the babies who get sick from diluted baby formula,” I say.

He smiles. “Mr. Davis told me that if anyone could find an illicit manufacturing operation in Corona, you could.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. What makes you think Corona’s the place to start?”

“Because the store owner in Jackson Heights gave the police an important clue. He said one of the suspects had dark hair, a gang tattoo, and listened to Spanish music.”

I wait for more. Nothing doing.

“That’s your clue?” I say, because I practically fit that description myself.

“Well, no. Not just Spanish music, some special kind. It’s in the report. It also said something about the tattoo indicating that he’s Ecuadorian. Anyway, they figure he’s a member of a street gang like the Latin Kings or MS-13.”

Wow, that’s some terrific random profiling there, Mr. Anderson. But the rent’s due, so I try to keep a placid surface. And tell him, “The Latin Kings are Puerto Rican, the Maras are Salvadoran, and they rarely let anybody else in. I don’t know of any Ecuadorians who’ve jumped in with them, but you never know what could happen as the new generation gets Americanized. I’ll check it out for you.”

He gives me the cocksure grin of a man who just bought exactly what he wanted, as always. But after we sign and file away our copies of the contracts, this glorified errand boy looks like he can’t wait to bug out of the jungle before the headhunters get wind of his scent.

I usually meet the reps from the big clients at the cushy offices of Davis & Brown in downtown Jamaica, but I was getting a weird vibe from this bunch so I just said screw it, I’ll take their money, but I want this guy to come to me and have to drag his skinny white ass to the barrio. Let him feel what it’s like to be a stranger, on alien turf. And I must say, I’m awful glad I did that.

I start with the police reports of the big shampoo bust and other recent crimes relating to counterfeiting, product diversion, and the rest of the gray-goods racket covering the area between Elmhurst and Corona south of Roosevelt Avenue, and Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst north of Roosevelt. That’s right, East Elmhurst is due north of Elmhurst. What do you expect from a borough where you have to know a different language on every block, where pigeons ride the A train to Rockaway Beach to scavenge from the garbage, where you know that Spider-Man lives at 20 Ingram Street in Forest Hills? No, really. He does.

Most of the cases deal with pirating — unauthorized duplication of CDs, DVDs, and computer software — which are of no interest to my client. The counterfeiting is mostly luxury items like watches, perfume, and designer handbags peddled by West African immigrants on fold-up tables, and the occasional case of Mouton-Cadet with labels made on a laser printer that fool the eye but not the fingers (they lack the raised embossments). But five-and-dime products like shampoo and antibacterial soap? Not much. Time to check out the shelves at the local farmacias.

Latinos take their music seriously, especially on Roosevelt Avenue east of 102nd Street. There’s a music store on every other block, and the cars — from tricked-out pimpmobiles to body-rot jobs with plastic wrap covering the gaping holes where the passenger windows should be — have top-of-the-line subwoofers pumping out bachata and merengue loud enough to compete with the 7 train roaring by overhead. And not one noise complaint is ever called in to the boys at the One-Ten. Though I do think that a spoiler on a battered Toyota Corolla is kind of pointless.

The store owner in the police report described the suspect’s nationality based on his choice of music and a tattoo of the Ecuadorian flag on his left bicep. But the only music style around here that is exclusively Ecuadorian is pasillo, which is too old-fashioned and sentimental for any self-respecting gangbanger to listen to. He probably meant reggaetón, the Spanish version of gangsta rap, which crosses ethnic borders in all directions, to the dismay of proud parents everywhere.

And the flag is not a “gang” tattoo. Most people don’t know the basic difference between the Colombian and Ecuadorian flags, which boldly fly yellow, blue, and red from second-floor windows and storefronts. (And to anyone who complains about Latinos in the U.S. flying the flags of their homelands, I dare you to go down Fifth Avenue on St. Pat’s Day, or to Little Italy during the Feast of San Gennaro, and try to take down the flags. See what happens.)

I stop by a few farmacias and botánicas and find a number of Syndose knock-offs, including a tube of minty toothpaste with the brand name Goldbloom misspelled Goldvloom, a mistake that only a Latino would make.

The panadería and ferretería — that is, the bakery and hardware store — are displaying handmade posters of Ray Ray in his Newtown High uniform, with his full name, Raymundo Reyes, keeping track of his hitting streak, which after yesterday’s ninth-inning blooper now stands at twenty-two games. Go, Ray Ray.

We take our sports seriously too, although soccer’s the favorite among Ecuadorians. It didn’t get much press up here, but a coach back home was shot when he didn’t select the ex-president’s son for the Under-20 World Cup in Argentina. Yeah, in case I haven’t mentioned it, Ecuador’s major exports are bananas, cocoa, shrimp, and unstable politicians, which is why so many of us come here hoping to catch a piece of the American dream. And sports offers a way out for many, even if it remains a distant dream most of the time. Either way, the bright lights of Shea Stadium cast a long shadow over the neighborhood.

Interviewing the store managers yields a range of responses. One Salvadoreño says the cops told him not to discuss the case without the state attorney general’s consent, but he won’t give me a name or a badge number, or sign a statement to that effect, even though I tell him it’s a bunch of tonterías. You know, B.S., but even the legal immigrants don’t want to tangle with the authorities when their citizenship applications are pending.

Another place is staffed by sullen teenagers making minimum wage who don’t seem to know anything but one-syllable words, and the next place has employed some fresh-off-the-boats who are still having trouble telling the difference between five- and ten-dollar bills. Then I hit a place on 104th Street where the manager talks a Caribbean mile-a-minute about beisbol and the pride of Corona, but he clams up when I ask about the antibiotics in the faded yellow boxes.

“How’d they get so faded? You leave them lying out in the sun?”

Dead air.

I make a show of flipping through my notes, writing a few things down very slowly.

“They’ve just been on the shelf a long time,” he says.

“Then it’s probably time to replace them,” I say, picking up one of the boxes. The expiration date is two years down the road. I mention this. “They can’t have been here that long.”

More silence.

I like the silence. It tells me a lot. “I’ll be back,” I say.

Next up is a drugstore run by a Colombiano whose attitude is: It’s the same stuff for half the price, so his customers buy it. What’s the big deal?

The next guy’s a compatriota, a paisano, an Ecuatoriano like me, who turns into a walking attitude problem when he accuses me of helping the big gringo corporations protect their money instead of going after the real criminals, like the hijos de puta who charged a couple of hundred would-be immigrants $5,000 each for a boat ride to Florida, then left them floundering in rough seas about 200 miles from the coast of Mexico; or the sinvergüenzas who hire day laborers and abandon them without pay in the middle of Nassau County because they can’t go and complain to the Board of Labor; or the perros at the Hartley Hotel in midtown Manhattan who laid off one-third of their employees after 9/11 and told the rest of them to work double shifts if they wanted to keep their jobs, because business was bad. So they were just using 9/11 as an excuse to run the old speed-up.

A ring on my cell phone interrupts this tirade. It’s Felipe, and he must be in big trouble if he’s calling me instead of his mamí.

His school is only a few blocks away, so I can fit it in. I head over on foot, crossing under the El tracks as the train rattles by, thinking about the changing seasons, time passing, and my own parental obligations. Yeah, my generation was supposed to be different. I never thought that my daughter would be growing up in an era when rock stars are dying of old age, or that I would come to know the joys of having a teenage daughter who goes from manic to suicidal on an hourly basis. It all started a few years ago when she was in eighth grade. We had ten minutes to get to some school function, and Antonia was in the bathroom putting on makeup. I asked her, “Do you want to take anything to eat? Some fruit? A sandwich?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t have time,” she replied, in that universally adolescent don’t-you-know-anything whine that drives parents up the wall. And I knew right then that my daughter had reached the age where makeup is more important than food. God help me. And after all these years, I can still recite Green Eggs and Ham word-for-freaking-word.

Every school cafeteria in the country smells the same, a uniquely American blend of rotten apples and plastic, evaporating floor cleaner, ripening half-pint cartons of milk, and other food garbage. No wonder the kids all live on chips and soda.

The halls are filled with thirteen-year-olds plugged into the current fashion of low-slung jeans and hip-hugging thongs. I never thought I’d use this expression, but in my day, it took some work to see a girl’s panties. Now it’s pretty much on display, and all I can say is that, fortunately, pimples and braces are God’s way of saying you’re not ready for sex.

And you know you’re in a public institution when you pass a classroom with a sign taped to the blackboard saying, Do Not Tape Anything to This Blackboard, which is clearly a test of the logical skills needed to survive in the absurd bureaucracies of the information age.

Felipe is sitting by himself in a tiny interrogation room in the assistant principal’s office.

“Are you his guardian?” asks the secretary, whose plastic ID plate says her name is Evelyn Cabezas.

“I’m the person he called.”

“Do you know why he’s here?”

“No, but I’d like to hear it from him first.”

She makes me sit across from Felipe like a court-appointed lawyer with a three-time loser, then she leans on the doorframe with her arms crossed.

“Dime lo que pasó,” I say.

Ms. Cabezas interrupts. “I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to speak Spanish to the kids inside the building.”

“Why not?”

“The principal sent out a memo saying that the under- achieving students bring our test scores down and we’ll lose funding. So, no Spanish. English only.”

“What about the parents who don’t know enough English?”

“Hey, I just do what they tell me, like when they had us opening the mail with rubber gloves during that whole anthrax scare.”

I don’t push it. I just ask what happened.

“I didn’t have my homework,” he says.

“You didn’t call me in here for that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the third time this week.”

“And now you’re in trouble. Tell me why.”

“I got mugged.”

“Mugged? A couple of hard cases said, ‘Forget the cash, we want the English homework’? Try again.”

Same sentence, he just changes a crucial verb: “Okay. I didn’t do my homework.”

“Why the hell not?”

He gets all tight-lipped, like he’s taken a vow of silence, but I’m not the one looking at serious detention time, so I just sit there letting the emptiness fill the silence until he says, “Ray Ray and his crew was hanging with his primo who works at the gas station, gearing up for some mad viernes loco action.”

He means those crazy Fridays near the end of the school year when kids push their parents’ tolerance to the limit.

“You know Ray Ray, he got that pretty-boy face, always looking all ghetto fabulous. He’d go up to Deirdre, the boss, and just put his game on her fat, ugly self. Yo, we be doin’ some crazy stuff.”

“Keep talking.”

“Man, we be a-capellin’ and buggin’ out. He had us laughing up a lung, smoking the sheba with his primo.”

“You were smoking in a gas station, pendejo? Let me get this straight. You went out and partied with your friends the night of your brother’s funeral?”

“Well, Ray Ray had a game that day. And we always party after a game.”

“So it’s sort of like a tradition.”

“Don’t tell my mom, okay?”

“Don’t put me in that position.”

“I mean, this is like confession, right?”

“Go on.”

“Ain’t that what Jesus said?”

“I’m thinking Jesus would be kicking your ass right about now.”

“It don’t say that in the Bible.”

“Sure it does. Check out chapter forty-one, verse three: And thou shalt kick the asses of all those that offend thee. So what did you do next?”

He tells me they went on a shoplifting spree and got away with a few bags of chocolate chip cookies, a six-pack of Bud Light, and a couple of sixteen-ounce bottles of Coke, which proves what a bunch of idiots they are. I mean, if you’re going to boost the merchandise, at least grab something worth stealing.

So he didn’t do his homework because he was busy emulating Ray Ray, and he doesn’t want to roll over on his cousin and — at this point — his primary male role model. What am I supposed to say? Some platitudinous crap he won’t listen to? Still, it falls to me to be el malo de la película and teach him a life lesson. So I tell him, “Listen chico, you better not do anything that freaking stupid ever again. And if you’re going to hang out with older kids, you better make damn sure you do your homework first, you hear me?... I asked if you heard me.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“Good, because you’ve still got a lot to learn, hijito, and dropping out of high school is a joke in a world that has no sense of humor, unless you’ve got some rich celebrities in the family I don’t know about. You think the cops are going to give you some special treatment when you screw up? Let you off with a warning?”

“Hey, you got Ray Ray off.”

“Is that a reason to start a Juvenile Offender record? ’Cause maybe the judge won’t be so kind-hearted next time. And I’m going to give your mamí the same message. After that, it’s up to her. I’ve got my own kid to raise.”

I’ve also got to have a little chat with the pride of Corona.

But all that has to wait. Something was clearly hinky about the pharmacy with the faded-yellow antibiotics. It takes a couple hours of expensive online searching, billable to my deep-pocketed clients, but I find it. Late last year, a sixteen-year-old boy died of septicemia — a galloping blood infection that rode right over the diluted antibiotics the curandera bought for him. At first, the cops thought it was a drug overdose, but the autopsy didn’t turn up any known street drugs in his system. By all accounts, he was a good kid who studied hard, kept his grades up, and made the varsity wrestling team. He lived about three blocks from the pharmacy. There’s no visible connection, but a dead teenager gives me all the motivation I need to stop playing nice and kick it up a notch or two. This goes way beyond watered-down baby formula.

The victim’s name was Edison Narvaez, which sure sounds Ecuadorian. His parents found him in his bedroom. He had already turned blue. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. My heart goes out to them for having to come face-to-face with every parent’s worst nightmare. It’s a professional hazard, I guess. I feel the urge to pull the plug on all the technology, stop traffic, and run home to hug my daughter for the rest of the afternoon.

But I have to swallow my maternal instincts and check the police report first.

It’s impossible to find out what the victim’s parents actually said, because the detectives didn’t know any Spanish, and the report isn’t even signed. I could talk to the Narvaez family myself, though I wouldn’t want to put them through that unless it’s absolutely necessary.

But I do know someone else I can lean on.

“Where’d you get this?” I say, holding the yellow box under the pharmacist’s nose.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I mean, a guy who worked here during the holiday season handled it, but he was gone by the end of December.”

“He only worked here for one month?”

“Yeah.”

“And you let him handle bulk orders of prescription medicine?” I’m not letting him get an inch of breathing room.

“He said he had a source, and the price was right.”

“What was his name?”

“José.”

“I’m running out of patience here.”

“We all called him José.”

I turn on my patented X-ray eyes and burn a hole clean through the back of his head into the wall behind him. “Do you have a pay stub?” I suggest.

“We paid him in cash.”

“Of course you did. Did he fill out a job application? A health care plan? Anything with a name and address?”

A customer comes in and starts browsing around the lip glosses, which breaks my hold on him for a moment. So I use the opportunity to dig out the camera and snap a bunch of time-stamped photos of the counterfeit merchandise in close-up, medium, and a really nice wide-angle shot with him in the background. Then I take out a couple of quart-sized Ziplocs, double-bag a handful of the fake medicine as evidence, and stuff it in my bag.

The customer makes a choice, pays for it, gets her receipt and change, and heads out the door. The pharmacist’s hands are trembling slightly as he opens a drawer and pulls out a file folder full of invoices and crumpled sheets of pink and yellow paper. He goes through them one by one, wetting his fingers for each sheet, trying to get a grip or else maybe buy the time to come up with a plausible story. Another customer comes in, but I don’t take my eyes off the pharmacist for an instant. Finally, he produces a coffee-stained job application form.

I grab it and smooth it out on the counter. Antonio José de Sucre. Someone’s got a sense of humor, because that name belongs to the heroic general on Ecuador’s five-sucre note. Other warning signs that a legitimate employer should have spotted include out-of-state references with no phone numbers and a list of previous jobs with companies that went out of business years ago. But the price was right, I guess.

There’s an address that’s got to be a fake, and I wouldn’t put too much faith in the phone number either. “This number any good?”

He’s having trouble concentrating.

I repeat, “Did you ever call him at this number?”

“I guess I might have. I don’t remember.”

“Don’t you remember anything? Because you’re not getting rid of me until you give me something. You know that, don’t you?”

The woman gets in line behind me with a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of baby shampoo. I think the shampoo is one of the fakes. He says, “Let me take care of this customer first.” Buying more time, the bastard. When the woman’s gone, he says, “I just remembered — some of the cartons the medicine came in might still be in the storage room.”

Sounds almost too good to be true. I’ll follow this guy, but I’m not going to turn my back on him. I open my jacket so I can get to my .38 revolver quickly as we go down the back stairs to the storage room. Then we toss the place until we find a couple of boxes with the Syndose logo on them. The shipping labels have been torn in half. Another red flag. Who gets a delivery and tears the shipping label in half? Not the whole thing, just the return address.

“Tell me something. Did this guy have a tattoo of the Ecuadorian or Colombian flag on his left bicep?”

“I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“It was Christmas and we couldn’t afford to keep the heat up high, so we were all wearing long-sleeved shirts and sweaters.”

“It seems like you can remember things if you try.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to send this guy to a place where he can’t choose his neighbors.”

“I mean about me.”

“That depends. Maybe we can swing a deal if you cooperate.”

“I’m cooperating.”

“Yeah? Well, I know another word for it.”

The phone number’s no longer in service, but a quick search turns up the previous owner’s name, Julio Cesar Gallegos, which just might lead somewhere. A lot of career criminals in my culture favor such grandiose names, as if they stand to inherit the power of the name by sympathetic magic. The biggest one, of course, being Jesús. I mean, there are a lot of Muslims named Mohammed, but nobody names their kid Allah.

The name, it turns out, doesn’t connect to an address in any of the usual places — motor vehicle and property records, bankruptcy court, government benefits — and I’m starting to get a feeling about this guy. Seems like he only used the name once to get the phone. Nobody makes themselves that invisible unless they’re working hard at it, and the kind of swagger he showed on the job doesn’t sound like a timid illegal trying to stay off the radar. I don’t give the street gang theory much credence. The pandillas are into curbside extortion, jacking cars, and drug dealing. They might have a piece of the street action on this, but staking out a one-month undercover in a local pharmacy seems a little beyond their scope. No disrespect.

But I figure if he is my guy, he’s got to have had a brush with the law at some point, even if it’s just a speeding ticket. I do a county-by-county search of the tri-state area and come up with nothing. I finally catch a break and match his name with an accident report that gives a recent address on Queens Boulevard, a wide thoroughfare that more than seventy people have died trying to cross in the last ten years, giving it the catchy nickname of the Boulevard of Death.

I call with a pretext about an insurance payment from the accident, and a woman named Gloria confirms Gallegos’s existence by telling me that he’s not in right now. But people will tell you anything if they think it’ll lead to money, and she practically offers to FedEx me a sample of his DNA. She says he’s watching the game in a bar a couple of blocks from the stadium. She doesn’t know the exact address, but it’s under the elevated tracks, which means from what she’s told me that it’s on Roosevelt Avenue east of 108th Street. I know the place.

The setting sun paints the store windows with an orange glow that transforms them into heavenly palaces for about a minute and a half. Dueling sound systems thump out bachatas from storefronts and apartment windows, while men in sweat-stained T-shirts hang out on the steps, laughing and enjoying the end of another work day with bottles of cerveza Pilsener, a taste of the old country. The hardware store owner is changing the numbers beneath Ray Ray’s dark Dominican features to include the results of today’s game, showing that he’s just extended his hitting streak to twenty-three games, while the 7 train shakes the sidewalks as it thunders on toward Flushing.

The big blue-and-orange Mets banner tells me I’m in the right place, and only one of the guys hunched over the bar matches the description I extracted from the fast-talking pharmacist. There’s a spot next to him, opposite the big color TV. I slide onto the empty stool as the Mets take on their archrivals, the Atlanta Braves. Glavine’s on the mound, facing his old teammates. Top of the third, one out, no one on. Both teams scoreless.

The bartender comes over and asks me what I’ll have.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“You gotta have something if you’re gonna sit here.”

“Oh, I’ve got to pay rent, huh? Okay, I’ll have a seltzer with a twist.”

He doesn’t try to hide his annoyance with me for ordering something so girly-girly and cheap, and unlikely to result in a big tip. I keep a close watch to make sure that’s all he’s giving me, and leave a few extra bills on the bar.

The batter pops up to center field, and Beltran gets under it with plenty of time.

“Así se hace!” says my neighbor.

“Vamos Carlosito!” I chime in.

He looks at me. I toast him with my seltzer. He returns the salute with his beer.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“You’ve probably seen me around. I think I’ve seen you around too. How’s it going?”

“Me? Just trying to get through the day.”

“It’s good to set realistic goals.”

Díaz comes up for Atlanta. He takes a few practice swings, then gets into his stance. Glavine throws low and inside. Ball one.

“So, a qué te dedicas?”

He says, “Oh, this and that. Y tú?”

“I’ve got my own business.”

“Uh-huh. Doing what?”

“I’m a private contractor.”

Glavine shakes his head. Lo Duca spreads three fingers and taps them against his right thigh, pinky extended. Glavine takes his time, then fans the guy with a devastating curveball.

“Yeah!” My guy pumps his fist in the air, and his T-shirt sleeve slides halfway down his bicep. I gently slide it the rest of the way. No tattoo.

He looks at me. “You like that?” He can’t resist making a muscle for me. “Want to see more?”

“That depends. Is your name really Julio César Gallegos?”

His face darkens. “Hey, what is this?”

“Well, it started out as a counterfeiting case, but I think it’s turning into a homicide investigation, although a good lawyer would probably get the charges reduced to second-degree manslaughter.”

He goes hard on me and swallows the stale beer at the bottom of his glass, then says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“And I always know I’m getting close when the guys I’m interviewing start thinking about what they’re going to say in court. Uh, your honor, my client’s remark, ‘I’ll blow his fucking head off,’ was taken out of context,” I say, mimicking a typical mob lawyer, then wave it all away like bad smell. “Give me a break.”

“You got nothing on me.”

“I also know I’m getting close when they start talking in clichés.”

“This is entrapment.”

“I’m not the law, dude. I told you, I’m a private contractor.”

I give him a brief rundown of my activities for the past few hours, solidly connecting him to a shipment of counterfeit medicine at the pharmacy on 104th Street and implying an equally strong connection to the death of Edison Narvaez, with suspicion of possible intent, unless he comes clean with me.

“Now, what do you know about the stuff that killed that boy?”

“It’s always the one you least suspect, right?” he says, trying to make it into a joke.

“That would mean Brigitte Bardot did it. She’s pretty low on my list of suspects. No, I’m looking for a guy with a tattoo of the Ecuadorian or Colombian flag on his left arm.” I let him catch a glimpse of the .38 under my jacket. Díaz connects and sends the ball sailing over Delgado’s glove, but Chavez gets to it quickly and holds Díaz at first. While the place erupts with cheers, Gallegos looks at his shoes and says the words very quietly, “It’s the Ecuadorian flag.”

I nod. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I knew one of these days someone like you would be walking through that door.” He looks around. “No cops, all right?”

“Aw, shucks. And I just called them.”

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

“Yo, buddy. Your language,” says the guy two stools over.

“Yeah, it’s English. What the fuck’s your problem?”

“Settle down, guys,” says the bartender.

I tell Gallegos, “You’ve got about three minutes, unless you give me some sugar, comprendes?” I’m making that up, but screw it — it’s working. The next batter hits a hard one up the middle and Reyes stops it cold to end the inning. That’s José Reyes, hometown: Villa González in the D.R.

Gallegos says, “We could have worked something out.”

“Before all this, maybe. Not with the Narvaez kid dying from tainted meds, or whatever the hell you guys sold him. Tell me where to find him.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Do you hear sirens?” That’s kind of a trick question, because you always hear sirens in this part of Queens. “Look, if you point me to someone else further up the ladder, I’ll leave you out of it.”

“I’ve been wanting to get out of the life,” he says. “’Cause me and Gloria are gonna get married, and we’re planning to have babies.”

“You can plan to have babies? That’s news to me.”

“I want immunity.”

“Then tell me something that’ll take the focus off you, hermano.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

The lights are on at Shea as twilight turns to darkness, and we can hear the fans cheering in the distance as a ring of cops closes in on a clandestine warehouse near the boat basin off Willets Point Boulevard. The police find what they’re after: a conveyor belt, pill counters, stacks of empty bottles and jars, state-of-the-art printing equipment, boxes of fake labels, crates of ready-made knock-offs from Pakistan, Vietnam, Malaysia — talk about the effects of globalization — drums of raw chemicals from Colombia and China for mixing up everything from cough medicine to horse steroids, as well as invoices, account books, and a list of contact names, including delivery boys.

Ray Ray’s name is right in the middle of the list.

They’re willing to let me talk to him first, but Ray Ray’s out celebrating his twenty-three-game hitting streak, and by the time he comes home from his viernes loco a couple hours later, the cops have gotten a warrant, stormed right past me, torn up his room, and are tramping down his front steps with their arms full of cases of counterfeit steroids. And I have a sick feeling that the lab is going to find significant traces of the active ingredient in Edison Narvaez’s blood samples.

“What the—” he starts to say, but he knows what’s going on.

I tell him, “I was on my way over to talk to you, but I guess it’s too late for that now.”

They read him his rights under the harsh lights of Shea while the fans cheer somebody’s throw-beating play. The cheers that he’ll never hear. And I can just imagine Felipe when he finds out tomorrow. When they all find out: “Dime que no es cierto, Fil.”

Which translates roughly as, “Say it ain’t so.”

Out of body by Glenville Lovell

South Jamaica

Phisto remembered it like it was yesterday. The first time he saw a dead body. It was in the embalming room of his father’s funeral home. He was almost twelve years old, already bored with school and given to playing hooky, cruising around in stolen cars with his new friends from a Bloods gang that controlled the Baisley Projects.

That day the police had stopped them in a stolen green Caddy on Archer Avenue and had taken the older boys off to jail. He later found out the only reason he’d escaped a trip to the lockup was because one officer had known his old man. Turned out the tough-love cop wasn’t doing him any favor by not taking him to jail.

The cop drove him home and he almost bluffed his way out of trouble. But the guy refused to release him without first speaking to his parents. The house was empty that afternoon. His mother had died earlier in the year, and soon afterward, his eighteen-year-old sister ran off with the pastor who conducted his mother’s funeral.

The cop took him down to his father’s funeral parlor over there on Guy Brewer Boulevard about a mile away from where they lived on 178th Place, a quiet leafy neighborhood of one-and two-family homes dense with Caribbean immigrants like his father who’d settled there in 1960.

Phisto had never visited the funeral home until that day. He knew what his father did for a living. He knew that his father buried people. And made a pretty good living from it, evidenced by the latest appliances and new furniture they had in their one-family brick house, but it was never talked about in his company.

While the officer explained to his father why Phisto had arrived there in the back of a patrol car, his father showed no emotion, merely nodding and shaking his head. Moments after the blue-and-white drove off, his father exploded, displaying a temper that Phisto had heard his mother talk about but had never seen before.

His father took him down into the basement and ordered him to strip. Defiant, Phisto grabbed his crotch, aping the bad-boy posturing he’d picked up on the street. With this bluff, he tried to walk away. His father grabbed him in a choke-hold and slammed him to the ground. Phisto was surprised by his father’s strength. The slightly built man from the island of St. Kitts, though no more than a few inches taller than his son, was well-muscled with surprising power in his upper body from cutting sugar cane and working construction in his youth. With a piece of electrical cord, he tied his scrawny son to a chair next to the dead body he was preparing for burial and proceeded to rip Phisto’s clothes from his body until he was naked in the cold room.

Then the mortician went back to his work. The smell of embalming fluid soon filled Phisto’s lungs. The prickly odor knifed through his toughness and singed his palate until he puked all over himself. His father paid no attention to him at all. Singing cheerfully and going about his business, stepping over Phisto sitting there in his own vomit, admiring how craftily he’d restored the young woman’s face, mutilated by a jealous boyfriend after he’d killed her.

With nothing left in his stomach, Phisto leaned against the table leg. He was weak and bleeding where the wire chafed his wrist. Slime dripped from the corners of his mouth. From where he sat he could see the blood and fluid draining from the woman’s body, flowing down into the waste receptacle.

He glanced at the corpse’s face and felt a strange relief, a sort of bonding with something outside of himself. Quietly, as if he’d somehow acquired the facility to remove his spirit from his body, he stared at the pathetic little boy with spittle drooling from his mouth, trembling at his father’s feet. He saw himself, the pathetic little boy, rise up and walk over to his father and put his arm around the man’s shoulder and whisper, Thank you.

Then he headed out of the room, pausing at the door for one final glance at the sniffling kid sitting in vomit.

Phisto stored that dead woman’s face in his mind, embracing that stillness characterized by death as a part of himself. By the time his father released him two hours later, the smell of vomit and the sickly odor of embalming fluid had disappeared from his senses. He wasn’t even aware of the cold anymore. He could’ve sat there for another two hours as comfortably as if he were lounging poolside at the Four Seasons in Miami.

Years later, he came to realize that in those two hours he sat in that frigid room while his father worked on that body, he’d formulated the virtue that would rule his life: Feel no pain or remorse.

In 1984, he quit school at sixteen and started selling weed. In three months he had moved onto powder, making as much as $8,000 off an ounce. He struck a deal with some Colombians and by the end of the year was flipping $100,000 a week with rock houses in South Jamaica. In two years, he controlled the large housing projects which dominated the two sections of the southside. But he knew that this game wasn’t going to last, so he started taking business classes in sales and real estate. By the time the crack craze was over, he’d amassed a fortune and an army, and while maintaining his stranglehold on the drug trade, exporting to as far away as Texas, he had diversified his holdings into real estate in Atlanta, Miami, and the Caribbean.

People saw him as a drug lord. A gang leader. A killer. A psychopath. He laughed whenever he read those kinds of descriptions in the news. America worshipped psychopaths and other miscreants in the name of business. Just pick up Business Week or the Wall Street Journal or any major business magazine and you found profiles of men who ran businesses, who on the surface appeared to be legal, but with a little digging were discovered to be looting the companies, stealing employee pensions, and knowingly selling products that killed people. The newspapers and magazines lauded those muthafuckers as visionaries, but condemned people of a similar personality profile like himself, who did business on the margins of society. Ain’t that some shit.

Was he any different from the CEOs of big corporations in this country? He was just as charismatic, as visionary, as tough as a Steve Jobs. In fact, you could say he was tougher. He had never operated any business at a loss. If his businesses were listed on the stock market, the share values would rise every year. His underlings worshipped him just as shareholders worshipped the Bernie Ebberses or Jack Welches of the world. He did whatever he had to do to get the job done. Just as they did. And just as they were celebrated and applauded by their peers and profit-worshippers for their willingness to take chances, to be aggressive and visionary, so was he by the many people who depended on him for their survival.

There were two codes he lived by. They were ruthless, but effective. His first motto: Snitches must die. The silencing of witnesses was the rule he lived by and everyone in his orbit, including all the Baisley Projects, paid heed. Neither the NYPD nor the Feds had ever built a case against him.

The second motto: Accept no disrespect.

Which was why he had no choice but to put down Fred Lawrence in view of everyone in the playground in Baisley Pond Park. It was as necessary as any CEO firing a junior executive who disrespected him in public. As much as he liked the youngster, if he let the upstart get away with this, the mystique of being Phisto Shepherd would be destroyed. Forever. The youngster had stepped to him in a way that no one in their right mind should be tempted to do. And bragging on top of it. You disrespect Phisto and walk around bragging? That’s asking to be cut down. There’s no surer way to commit suicide than to disrespect Phisto Shepherd and brag on it.

When Phisto claimed a woman, she was his for life. Only when he said the relationship was done could the woman walk away. And until such time, all other suitors were expected to wither way, to drop into the gutter like rats running from the exterminator. This young pup, Fred Lawrence, had laid some pipe on one of his women and then told the world that the girl had begged to be his bitch. Said she would give up Phisto and all his money for another night with him.

Phisto had reached a point in his life where he seldom handled disputes personally. There were any number of young guns in his organization he could call on to quash a beef. Of any sort. If the resolution needed to be quick and permanent, he had enough specialists for every day of the week. If gentle nudging or mediation was required in a sensitive matter, there were people who could be trusted to be discreet.

But he had to show the world that he was still Phisto Shepherd. That the Phisto who survived his father’s beat-down, who remade himself into a fire-breathing dragon to create the baddest outfit in Queens, wasn’t finished, as many were beginning to whisper on the street after word got around that Fred the baller had fucked Phisto’s woman. He’d taken on the dreaded Jamaican Shower Posse for turf and sent them scampering back to Miami. He’d ordered the hit on a corrupt cop who tried to shake him down, and he’d gotten away with it. Why hadn’t this youngster heeded his warning? When the message was conveyed to the kid, he’d signed his own death warrant with a laugh.

Once in a while, even with the large army at his disposal, Caesar still had to go out and slay somebody to remind his soldiers why and how he became Emperor. This one wasn’t a head-cracker. The youngster had to be bodied, and he would do it himself.

Fred Lawrence was a talented young baller who’d just finished his senior year at LSU. Some pundits thought he was sure to be drafted by the NBA. Maybe not a first-rounder, but definitely a second or third. He was that good. Phisto had seen him play and didn’t like the kid’s game as much as others did. Not enough range on his jumper, but the quick first step and the physical nature of his game reminded Phisto of Stephon Marbury. Fred could have gotten his shot.

That is, had he not come back from Louisiana thinking he could spit in King Kong’s eye. Thinking he could steal Fay Wray and not suffer the consequences. Thinking his dribbling skills would get him a buy after dissing Phisto.

Like everyone else who tried to fuck with Phisto’s program without considering the consequences, the young man had to pay. The beating and humiliation Phisto took from his father that day in the mortuary taught him never to bluff. Once you bluff you have to back down. And when you back down you lose respect.

His core crew had advised him to let the matter drop. Why knuckle up with this young stud? But he knew they were begging for the youngster’s life simply because they were in love with his game. Phisto knew they converged on the park on Saturdays and Sundays, just like everybody else, to watch the muscular youngster play. Everyone on the southside loved this young man, wanted to see one of their own make it in the NBA. Putting the grip on him wouldn’t go down well with the residents.

Nevertheless, Phisto’s code was his code. The situation reminded him of when his father was shot to death on 121st Avenue during a robbery in 1995. By that time his father had disowned him and he and the old man hadn’t spoken in more than ten years. But everyone in the neighborhood knew this was Phisto’s father, and accorded him due respect. Phisto found the young killer, and in sight of other customers spaded him as he sat in the barber’s chair. Phisto was arrested the next day. But the case never made it to trial. The man who had identified him to the police was Bobby Tanner, a retired postal worker. Tanner got a bullet in the back of the head for his trouble. Word soon got around that Bobby Tanner got tagged for snitching. The next Sunday, Phisto visited the church where another of the witnesses worshipped. The bloated man saw Phisto’s six-foot, 275-pound frame blocking the sidewalk and, fortunately for him, fell down in the street from sheer fright. No one ever appeared in the grand jury to finger Phisto.

Contrary to what his advisors believed, Phisto didn’t actually want to put the youngster under at first. He would’ve let the matter go had the young stud not been stupid enough to woof that he had more dog in him that Phisto. After that, his hands were tied.

That summer evening, the sun had left a band of endless purple across the sky. An unusually high wind curled the young tree limbs and stirred leaves and dust in the park. It blew hard and heavy against the houses on Sutphin Boulevard, rattling the sign on the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Baisley Boulevard.

A storm was coming. Colored balloons, left over from an abandoned family picnic, hung from tree limbs. Yet the approaching inclement weather wasn’t enough to delay the fitness fanatics doing laps around the track, or to arrest the pick-up game on one of the three courts behind the racquetball wall.

The few daring souls on the sidelines that evening who’d scoffed at the looming bad weather witnessed a near flawless performance from Fred Lawrence on the court. The perfection of his long lean body, snaking through small spaces, piercing the tough wind and a tougher defense, twirling and swerving around defenders with precision, left most people shaking their heads in disbelief.

Fred scored on a driving, twisting lay-up off the glass, using a classic crossover move that left his defender flat on his back. The small crowd screamed. Fred ran back down the court pumping his fist in the air, yelling, “You forgot your jock, bitch!”

The next time down the court, Fred took a pass on the wing and without breaking stride elevated past a closing defender for a rim-rattling dunk.

People were whooping and hopping up and down and spinning around in circles of disbelief.

“Did you see that?”

“No he didn’t!”

“Replay! Replay!”

“Jordanesqe.”

“Better than Jordan.”

Phisto’s black BMW pulled up on 155th Street behind a white Explorer. The doors of the truck were open and Jay-Z’s latest joint was blasting full force. Phisto wanted to tell the idiot to turn his music down, but decided to ignore the disturbance and walked the short distance across the grass to the courts.

There was a hush as Fred got the ball back on a steal. He veered left and was met by an agile defender. He slipped the ball between his legs and dribbled backward, looking for another opening. Shifting the ball from side to side, through his legs, and then a glance to his left as if searching for someone in the crowd. Everyone knew what was coming. Fred jabbed to the right and the defender bit on the fake. The elusive youngster changed direction and in a split second flew by his defender for another dunk.

Oh, the ecstasy of the crowd. Fred soaked up their response for a full second, posing under the rim.

And then, praack! praack!

Heads jerked around. Too loud for a firecracker. Too close to be the backfire of a car. People scattered when they saw Fred stumble and fall to the ground. Even his friends on the court ran and left him.

Seconds later, only five people were left. Phisto handed the.45 to someone in his three-man posse to dispose of it. He walked over to the only person who hadn’t run away.

“Do I know you?” Phisto said.

“I don’t know.”

Phisto took hold of the man’s face, digging his fingers through his scraggly beard into his jaws. “Do you know me?”

“Yeah, I know you.”

Phisto laughed. “Why didn’t you run away like the rest?”

The man hesitated. “Why?”

Phisto’s eyes screwed up and he lifted the man’s dark glasses from his face. “What’d you say, muthafucker?”

“Why? I didn’t think the game was over.”

Phisto laughed. “You think you’re funny.”

“I mean, he was so amazing, the way he defied gravity. I thought he was Superman. I thought he would get up and fly above that rim again.”

“He was amazing, wasn’t he?” Phisto said.

“Yeah. Amazing.”

Phisto said, “Did you see anything else here?”

The guy took his sunglasses from Phisto’s hand and put them back over his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly. That’s what I mean,” Phisto replied, turning away. “You better bounce. Cops gonna show any minute.”

“I am a cop,” the man said.

Phisto turned slowly, his face scarred with a dark smile. “For real?”

The man adjusted his dark glasses and smiled. “Just fucking with you.”

Phisto relaxed. “I should kill you for fucking with me.”

“Actually, I wasn’t. I’m really a cop.”

The man opened his jacket. An NYPD detective badge hung from a chain around his neck. Phisto also noticed the 9mm stuck loosely in his waistband.

Phisto gauged the distance between him and the man. “You gonna arrest me?”

“No.”

“If you ain’t gonna arrest me, what you gonna do?”

“Shoot you between the eyes.”

Phisto laughed.

The man wriggled his fingers. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re gonna shoot me between the eyes?”

“Yeah.”

Pointing at the dead baller, Phisto said, “For him?”

“No.”

“Is this personal?”

“Remember the cop you ambushed in that crack house?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He had a son. That son became a cop.”

“And that son...”

“Would be me.”

Phisto turned to the member of his crew holding the.45. “Shoot this muthafucker.”

Nobody moved.

Phisto made a quick grab at the.45. His hand closed on the grip and that’s when he felt a jolt to his chest as if he’d been kicked by a mule. He bounced against the white wall of one of the racquetball courts and slid to the ground on his back.

Phisto had often thought of what this moment would be like for a person. The moment that separated life from death. Was there some brilliant light to illuminate your path into the next world, as some people claimed who’d had so-called near-death experiences? Was there such a thing as coming close to death? He knew what death looked like. His father had made sure of that.

He looked up and saw streams and streams of white clouds. And then he felt a strange relief swell in his chest, a sort of bonding with an energy entering him. A sadness overcame him and he wanted to cry. He saw the faces of his crew and knew that he’d been betrayed. By one or all of them. He also knew it didn’t matter anymore. The light was approaching fast.

Lights out for Frankie by Liz MartÍnez

Woodside

Frankie tapped his foot and wished the clerk would hurry up. How long could it take to scan a couple of items and punch the keys on the cash register? He lifted his baseball cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead, then slipped it back on, pulling the bill lower. The heatwave was taking its toll on everyone. The air-conditioning inside the store helped a little, but the customers still looked like they were wilting.

Finally, the cashier got her act together. She handed him the transaction slip and her pen. He scribbled Gerry Adams in the signature space. In the past, Frankie had passed himself off as Billy Clinton, Charles Prince, and Johnny Depp. The cashier counted out crisp currency and gave it to him along with a command to have a nice day. Her name tag read Rochelle.

“Thanks, Rochelle,” he said, and asked her for the receipt. She stared vacantly at the piece of paper. “Oh. Sure,” she said, then handed it to him and wandered off.

Frankie glanced around the customer service desk. What a misnomer. The three clerks behind the counter were doing anything but servicing customers. One was chatting on her cell phone with her back to the store. Another was deep in thought, staring intently into the middle distance. The third mindlessly folded and refolded the same article of clothing. He spied a roll of thermal cash register tape sitting out on the counter. Somebody had probably started changing the tape and then forgot about it midstream. Nobody was paying any attention to him, so he swiped the tape and tucked it into the white plastic bag. He was sure he could find some use for it.

He hopped into his black SUV and merged into traffic on Northern Boulevard. He headed toward his next stop near the Queens Center Mall. Most of his NYPD colleagues worked extra jobs on their RDOS. Having regular days off gave them an opportunity to land good gigs like guarding one of the Commerce Bank branches. Stand there for eight hours in uniform, flirting with the tellers. Nice.

Frankie sighed and looked at the list his wife had made for him. This was how he spent his RDOS — running from store to store. He thought about his wife and their two kids and sighed again. For the millionth time, he questioned the way his life was unfolding. Shouldn’t he try to land a private-pay job with a bank for his days off? Or maybe with a store? He grimaced. It was only July, but the kids would need new school supplies soon, and then Christmas... Always something.

He pulled into the left lane on Queens Boulevard and waited for the light to change. One of the guys in the livery cab that sailed through the light on his right looked familiar, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to think who it might be. The memory came to him just as he pulled into the Marshall’s parking lot.

On his first day in the Police Academy, Frankie had buddied up with three other recruits: Thompson, Edwards, and... the third guy’s name escaped him. The group had coffee before classes, studied together, and ate lunch in a diner two blocks from the Academy. The man in the black car reminded Frankie of the last member of the Fearsome Foursome. (How young they’d been! That name had sounded so cool at the time.) He was a lanky, raw-boned shit-kicker from the hills of West Virginia. The guy had heard an ad for the NYPD on his short-wave radio and had spent a day driving northeast to take the test. Everybody thought he was stupid because of his hillbilly accent, but Frankie copied his homework every chance he got.

Williams — that was his name. Frankie must have been the first Mexican-American Williams had ever seen. Right off the bat, the guy made a remark about Frankie’s nose. Frankie, who thought his nose was regal, like the profile on the statue of an Aztec warrior, was slightly insulted. “What do you know?” he’d asked Williams. “Your last girlfriend was probably a sheep.”

The other guys chuckled, but Williams took it seriously. “We never had no sheep in our family,” he said. “I had an uncle once, kept goats. He was pretty tight with one of them — called her Priscilla.” He looked puzzled when the other three recruits doubled over with laughter. He must have figured he’d made a slight miscalculation because he tried to backtrack. “I don’t think he was improper with Priscilla or nothin’,” he protested. “They was just real good companions.”

Frankie could hardly catch his breath, he couldn’t stop laughing. “They never got married, huh, Williams? Your uncle and his goat?”

“That’s disgusting,” Williams said. He refused to speak to the other three for the rest of the day.

One of the guys found out later that Williams had a degree from some Bible college, but it was too late. He’d earned himself the nickname Officer Goatfucker. Nobody called him that anymore. He was a captain now, working out of the 115th Precinct. Now they called him Captain Goatfucker. Behind his back, of course.

Frankie smiled, thinking about the old days. Fifteen years had slipped by. He sometimes regretted that he didn’t have more to show for the time besides a few gray hairs and occasional heartburn. He’d been so naïve when he first came on the job. Thought everything was the way they showed it on TV. Boy, did he know better now.

Frankie pushed open the heavy entrance door to the store and made a beeline for the customer service desk. “I’d like to return this merchandise,” he told the clerk, and handed her a receipt. This one’s name tag said Shaquanna.

She gazed blankly at the clothing he pulled out of his shopping bag and lifted her electronic scanner. She passed it over the tags and pressed a key on her register. “A hundred and eighty-six dollars. Would you like a store credit?”

“Cash, please,” he said.

She ripped both layers of register tape off and held them together with her thumb and forefinger. Her nails were painted tomato-red and had rhinestones embedded in the polish. “Fill out your name and address and sign on the line here.” He scrawled on the paper and handed it back. The clerk pressed a button on the register with her long, fake fingernail. There was a noise like a lawnmower starting, then everything went dark.

Silence enveloped the store for a long moment, then shouts erupted. Frankie’s first thought was another terrorist attack. He’d spent 9/11 pulling people out of the World Trade Center. A part of him had been on edge ever since, always halfway expecting a repeat performance. His heart raced into fourth gear. He whipped out his phone, praying that the cell towers were still relaying calls.

“Seven-three Precinct,” a voice snarled. Frankie never thought he’d be so glad to hear PAA Malloy’s nasal twang.

“Hernandez here. What’s going on?”

“I’m busy. Whadaya mean, what’s going on? With what?”

Lovable old Malloy, the best police administrative aide in the department. Frankie gritted his teeth. “With the lights. The lights are out. Is it citywide? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no lights out. We got plentya light here. Whyn’t ya come in and use the lights here? Maybe you could see to make out the reports right once in a while. Say, is that it? I gotta get back. Somebody has to do some work around here.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, “that’s it.” He pressed the End Call button.

His heart downshifted to third gear. The chaos that had threatened to erupt calmed to a dull murmur. Late afternoon light streamed in through the front windows, diluted by the grime. Drawn like moths to a flame, shoppers swarmed in the sunlight, their intended purchases clutched uncertainly to their chests. Store security was already in action. Uniformed guards gathered with the store managers near the exits to make sure no one took advantage of the power outage to sneak merchandise past the electronic monitoring pedestals.

Electric signs on businesses across Queens Boulevard were illuminated, so maybe it was just the store’s system that had given up the ghost. That’s why the PAA at Frankie’s Brooklyn precinct didn’t know anything about it. He smiled grimly, gently chiding himself for jumping the gun and heading right to thoughts of disaster. He turned back to the cashier. “Uh, what about my refund?”

She looked at the cash register without focusing. “It won’t open without electricity,” she said.

“I understand that,” he said slowly, patiently. “How can I get my money?”

“We’ll mail it to you, I guess.” She consulted the tape where he’d identified himself as Colonel Parker, with an address at 12 Finger Lickin Lane in Fried Chicken, Kentucky. “You’re from Kentucky?” She squinted uncertainly. “They got mail there, I guess. We’ll send it to you.”

A knot formed in Frankie’s stomach. “I need it now,” he said.

She shrugged. “I can’t give it to you. Hey, I got kids. I better pick them up from day care.” She shuffled off, leaving Frankie standing at the customer service counter by himself in the dark.

Fuck! Who would have thought giving a wrong name and address would come back to bite him in the ass? No cop in his right mind handed over that information to strangers. Now he was out the money and the merchandise. He glanced behind the counter, but efficient old Shaquanna had hustled his returns to the back, so he couldn’t even take them with him.

The crowd thinned rapidly as people poured outside. Maybe he could find the manager. And then what? The guy would grab the money out of petty cash and hand it over to Colonel Parker? Shit. Frankie cursed himself silently. He’d just fucked himself out of almost two hundred dollars.

He got back into his family-sized gas-guzzler and took off to finish the rest of the errands on his wife’s list. Her family came from the Mexican state of Puebla. Frankie’s family, which hailed from the West Coast state of Jalísco, secretly looked down their regal noses on Puebla, which they considered to be the asshole of Mexico. (When you looked at Puebla on the map, it really did look like the end of the long intestine, which made Oaxaca and Chiapas and a few other states the shit end of the country, as far as Frankie’s parents were concerned.) Frankie himself didn’t really have an opinion, having never spent more than a few school vacations in any part of Mexico. All he knew about the people from Puebla was that the food they cooked in the local Woodside restaurants wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

He had to admit that his wife came from a long line of savvy politicians. In Mexico, that meant that they stole with both hands and lied out of both sides of their mouths. Some of the family had emigrated to the States, where they continued the family tradition by becoming involved in New Jersey politics.

María was a perfect blend of North and South. She ran their little tribe with an iron fist, the way the matriarchs in her lineage always had. And she was clever, much like the rest of her family members. She had a number of friends, but the relationships were always transactional, rather than emotional. María had no interest in socializing with anyone who didn’t trade in the currency of favors. If she couldn’t get something on somebody, she wasn’t interested in pursuing the friendship.

Of course, she had plenty to hold over Frankie’s head. She was also bewitching. She would dazzle you with her smile and enchant you with her personality. Once in a while, Frankie caught glimpses beneath María’s charming veneer to a heart of stone. Other times, he thought he must be imagining things and that she was the best thing to ever happen to him. Occasionally, he thought that if it weren’t for María, he could have had a much different — probably better — kind of life.

He followed the directions on his list, the chores taking him out to Nassau County, on Long Island but close to the Queens border. He listened intently to the radio, changing stations to catch any news about the power situation. The oppressive heatwave that was plaguing the New York Metropolitan Area was taking its toll. A blackout was focused mostly in western Queens, caused by excessive demands on the power grid. Too many people in illegal apartments running extra air conditioners. Astoria, Woodside, and Sunnyside bore the brunt. But, the announcer said, residents in that area shouldn’t feel too badly — people in other areas of the city were also suffering.

Frankie felt much better hearing that. Wow, other people were suffering too. Yippee.

His wife called his cell to report that their lights were still on, but their neighbors’ houses had lost power. “Thanks for the update,” he said. “Does that mean you’re gonna cook dinner?” She hung up on him.

On his return trip to Queens, he was going against rush-hour traffic, but the cars still crawled. He decided to stop on the other side of Woodside before heading home. He owed Tía Alba a visit. He lived only a five-minute drive away, but didn’t see her as much as she wanted. He parked outside Seán Óg’s, the Irish pub on Woodside Avenue. It was 8:30 and the darkness was settling in slowly. He loved the way the day took its time ending during the height of summer. The extended daylight brought back memories of riding his bike at dusk and playing ball with the other children. Remote, simpler times, when the most important decisions he made revolved around which kids to torment for the day.

Most of the businesses on Woodside Avenue were dark, but a few had lights. Weird how the power grid worked, skipping over certain places but hitting the ones next door. He briefly wondered whether someone got paid off to keep the lights on in certain places. Nah. That was too paranoid, even for him.

The big wooden sign on the side of Seán Óg’s read Drinking Consultant. He wondered about that every time he saw it. He could picture the scene inside: A guy walks up to the bar, says, “I want to consult you about drinking.” The bartender says, “Yes, sir, what would you like to drink?” Frankie wondered if the consultation cost fifty bucks an hour, like a shrink. Probably, he thought, if you downed the booze fast enough. Then again, you’d probably wind up lying down in Seán Óg’s, just like at a shrink’s, you drank enough. He remembered when the place was some other Irish joint where you could bet on soccer games and horse races. Of course, the son of a bitch running the place taped the soccer games and got suckers to bet on the losing team when he rebroadcast them, but it only took a couple of losses for people to wise up. The guy went out of business years ago, go figure.

Frankie’s family had been among the first wave of Latinos to settle in Woodside. He’d gotten his ass kicked a few times before the other kids in the Irish working-class neighborhood accepted him. It helped that his family was Catholic. Also that his old man brought them here when Frankie was young enough that he didn’t grow up speaking with an accent. His pop, on the other hand, had the whole Señor Wences thing going.

Now, of course, it didn’t matter. Aside from a few old, entrenched Irish families, the neighborhood was predominantly Latino. Not too many Mexicans, but a few here and there. Mostly Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, some Puerto Ricans. Plus your Indians, Pakistanis, and Koreans, of course. Most of those were in neighboring Jackson Heights, but a lot of them had slipped over into Woodside. And now the Russians were discovering the neighborhood. Not to mention the blacks who were swarming into the projects the next block over from Frankie’s house.

He glanced up Woodside Avenue and suddenly felt old. He could remember when almost every business had been something else. Except the Astoria Federal Bank. They’d been annoying people in the same spot for years. A fee for this, a fee for that; I’m sorry, sir, we’ve misplaced your records... He couldn’t think of a place that gave him more heartburn than that bank. Well, maybe the DMV, but it was close.

Get a grip, Frankie told himself. He knew his thoughts were careening crazily because he had to go see his aunt. She wasn’t his real aunt, of course; that was just what everybody called her. At the corner of Woodside Avenue and 62nd Street, he glanced at the building on his right. The lights dotted the windows of The Jefferson. It figured Tía Alba’s building would still have electricity. She would keep the power on through sheer force of will. He stepped into the vestibule and took a deep breath. He pressed the buzzer for her apartment. After a pause for whoever was manning the door to look at him through the camera, he got an answering ring. He dragged himself up the three flights, prolonging the inevitable.

Tía Alba threw open the door. “Ay, Paquito!” she squealed. “Ven acá!” She held her arms open. Paquito was Spanish for “Frankie.” He hated to be called Paquito. His aunt smelled of lavender water. He was mildly allergic to the scent and felt his nose tickle uncomfortably. He hated lavender water. He embraced her quickly and stepped back.

“Come in, come in,” she said. “Sit down. I have some empanadas heating up.” She bustled toward the kitchen.

“No, gracias, tía,” he said. “I’m not hungry, really.” He patted his stomach to indicate how full he was. He hated her empanadas.

“Okay, some coffee then, sí? You’ll have some café conmigo?”

Sure, he would have coffee with her. Her coffee was tolerable. Besides, it would take her a few more minutes to pour.

But no, she was back instantly with two steaming cups. “Just perked,” she said. She still used a stovetop percolator, rather than a coffee machine, although God knew she could have had a new one every week. She claimed the machines didn’t brew the coffee properly. “I knew you were coming.”

This prescience was less a function of her mind-reading abilities and more the result of the phone call he’d made to her in the morning before leaving the house, telling her he planned to stop by later.

And now it was later, and he owed her money, and he didn’t know how to tell her he didn’t have it.

She got right to the point. “What did you bring me?” She beamed at him.

“Well, listen, tía, it’s like this...” he started.

Her face darkened like a storm cloud. “Don’t tell me any stories, Paquito. I’m not in the mood for stories. Just give me what you owe me.”

Don Pedro stuck his head out of the back bedroom. “Trouble?” he asked. He and Tía Alba had been together for longer than Frankie could remember. Hardly anyone saw him unless something bad was about to happen. Don Pedro had an uncanny sense of when things were going to shit.

“No, no trouble,” Frankie croaked.

“Depends on what you mean by trouble,” Tía Alba said. “I think Paquito is a little short today.”

Don Pedro hauled his bulk into the living room. “Short? How can that be?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

“Well, listen,” Frankie said, looking up at the big man. Don Pedro towered over everybody, especially when he was standing and they were sitting. “I ran into a little trouble today. Because of the blackout.” He shrugged, letting them know that he could hardly be held responsible for the vagaries of Con Edison.

“No excuses, Paquito,” Don Pedro said. “We don’t tolerate excuses here. You know that.” He sounded almost regretful.

“I have almost all of it. Here,” he said, and pulled out his wallet. “I owe you another two hundred. Less, even.” He handed over a fat wad of bills.

Tía Alba counted them quickly. She shook her head. “Two hundred dollars. That’s not acceptable.” She brightened, as though struck with an idea. “Why don’t you go down to the bank and get the rest?” She turned to Don Pedro. “Walk him down to the ATM. You could stand to get a little air. You’ve been inside all day.”

“That’s a fine idea. Come, m’ijo.” He beckoned toward the front door.

“I... I can’t,” Frankie said. He swallowed hard. “I don’t have that much in my account.”

Don Pedro loomed over him. “Listen, cabrón, you better figure out a way to get the two hundred. Or we’ll have to figure it out for you, comprende?”

“I don’t have it,” Frankie repeated. A voice in the back of his head told him he was being ridiculous. He had an NYPD shield in his pocket and a gun in a holster. He had nothing to fear from this lug. The voice of reason cut in and told the other voice to shut the fuck up. He cleared his throat, started to explain.

Don Pedro got red in the face, but Tía Alba spoke calmly. “It’s all right, Paquito. These things happen. Don’t worry, Pedro, we’ll work it out. Paco’s a good boy. We can make some arrangement.”

Don Pedro looked like he wanted to arrange Frankie’s face in a new configuration, but then he nodded. “As always, you are right, Alba. I will leave it to you to work something out with the boy.” He wandered back into the bedroom.

“Now,” she said, “what can we work out?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I know! We are in need of a guard. You will be the guard.”

“A guard? You already have a security system here.”

“No, no. More of a... bodyguard. Yes, a bodyguard.” She nodded. “It’s settled. You will go down to the second floor and make sure that everything is all right with our guests. Then we will be even.”

“Oh, no, tía. Not that. I can’t...”

She clapped her hands. “You can, and you will.” She checked her watch. “Starting now. And you will come here every night this week. Then I will see you next week, as usual,” she said, beaming again. “Now, come. I will bring you downstairs.”

Frankie trailed her down the flight of steps, feebly protesting the whole way, although he knew it was useless. If only he had been able to get that refund, he wouldn’t be into Tía Alba for the two hundred. He’d started out working in this enterprise at his wife’s insistence. At first, it had been a way to earn easy money, just a simple method of stretching their budget a little further. Somehow, he’d wound up behind the eight ball, into Alba for more money each week. It reminded him of that Tennessee Ernie Ford song “Sixteen Tons”: Another day older and deeper in debt... And now he did indeed owe his soul to the company store.

That store, in this case, was Tía Alba and her merry band of fences, who specialized in moving hot — or at the very least, lukewarm — goods. He had a sneaking suspicion that the profits somehow got sent back to the land of the camel jockeys and the home of the ragheads, but his ass was so deep in the alligator pool that he was in no position to do anything about it, even if he knew for sure, which he didn’t. He made damn sure he didn’t. Which was another reason he didn’t want to go downstairs.

He stopped his thoughts as Alba led him into her other apartment on the second floor. The place was jammed, mostly with women, but quite a few men swarmed around as well. It had the feel and sound of a casbah or bazaar. Merchandise was selected, haggling ensued, and deals were finalized. A Middle Eastern — looking man in Western dress approached Alba. She made the introductions quickly, calling the man Mohammed. She turned Frankie over to him, saying, “Mohammed will show you what to do. Now you visit me again tomorrow night before you come down here.” She squeezed his cheek before she left. Hard.

Frankie rubbed his face. Mohammed’s hands snaked over Frankie’s torso and legs expertly. Before Frankie could smack the guy, Mohammed said, “Ah, you are armed. It is good to be prepared. Come, I will show you what to do.”

Frankie glared at him, but what choice did he have? He followed Mohammed to a stool next to the front door. Frankie was to sit there and guard the place for the next four hours.

I can’t stand this, he thought. What am I doing here? His life started flashing in front of his eyes. Was he dying? Or just wishing he were dead? He knew that was a sin, but at this point, what was one more? He pictured María at home, working comfortably at the laptop, using the scanner like a pro, churning stuff out of the color printer like a one-woman Kinko’s.

He sighed and tried to pretend he was on a shit-fixer — a post in the bowels of some shithole in Brooklyn where you got sent if you fucked up. Well, that was apt. He’d ridden out a couple of assignments to shit-fixers in his time, and he supposed he could do it again. Of course he could. He pulled himself up taller. Just another... he glanced at his watch... three hours and thirty-eight minutes to go. He opened the door to let a stout Dominican woman with three gold teeth leave. She waddled out with a bundle of clothing wrapped in string. Frankie spotted the store tags still hanging from the items.

As soon as he closed the door, the buzzer rang. Mohammed appeared and inspected the visitor through the closed-circuit TV system. He nodded to Frankie. “It’s okay, my friend. You can let her in. She is good customer.” He disappeared into the throng, calling out, “Ladies, ladies! No fighting. We have plenty for everyone.”

There was a smart rap at the door. Frankie peered through the peep and saw the same woman who had just been spotted on the CCTV. She was a petite Latina wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with a denim vest that had embroidered flowers on it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He didn’t know why, but his cop intuition kicked in and told him something was wrong.

She tapped on the door again. Mohammed appeared, glaring at Frankie. “Let her in, my friend. That is what you are here for.” Before Frankie could protest, Mohammed opened the door and ushered the woman in. “Hello, my friend,” he said to her, taking her hand between both of his. “We have fine selection today. Check it out.”

The woman smiled at him. Frankie noticed she had good white teeth. No gold. The alarm bells clanged in the back of his skull. He looked for Mohammed and spotted him bent over a clothing rack in the back, making a deal with a heavyset lady in a purple pantsuit.

Frankie tucked his hand in the crook of Mohammed’s elbow and pulled the man upright. “I am making deal,” Mohammed spit at him. “You go back to door.”

Frankie pulled the man roughly out of the crowd. “I need to talk to you,” he hissed. “There’s something about that woman that’s not right.” He indicated the newest arrival by lifting his chin in her direction.

Mohammed glanced her way. “She is good customer. She has shopped here many times before. You go back to door.” He shook Frankie off and lost himself among the shoppers.

Frankie stood there for a moment, unused to people ignoring him. He headed back to the door, thinking to let Tía Alba know what was going on. She was a businesswoman, yes, but she was also smart. She obviously ran the show, and she would be able to straighten out Ali Baba.

He whipped out his cell phone, ready to ring her upstairs. Before he could press the button, however, the door flew open. “Police! Put your hands up!” A sea of blue uniforms fanned out, screaming the order a second time in Spanish. “Policía! Manos arriba!”

As one, the female shoppers let out a high-pitched wail. No doubt they were all illegals worried about being sent back to their countries on a bus. Frankie could have told them not to worry about it. They’d be out of Central Booking and on their way back to their Queens apartments before the cops finished the paperwork for the bust. The women were crying and screaming. All except one. The petite brunette in the flowered vest had whipped out her gun and was herding the others back against the wall.

He knew it! No one in her right mind would be wearing an extra layer in this heat — unless she needed the vest to conceal her shoulder holster. The vest, plus the fact that she had good teeth, were the clues he’d picked up on subconsciously. He’d known she didn’t fit in with the rest of the women. Fat lot of good it had done him.

He felt a gun pressing in the small of his back. A man yelled, “Hands up!” into his ear.

“I’m a cop!” he shot back, and reached for his shield.

“I know who you are,” the voice said. Hands reached for his gun and slid it out of his holster. He felt the sweat slide down his sides. Now he was naked.

“I’m a cop!” he said again. The same hands spun him around.

“I know who you are,” the man repeated.

Frankie’s eyes flew open. “Captain Goatfucker!” He winced at his own stupidity. “Er — ah — I mean, Captain Williams. How the hell are you?”

“Better than you, Frankie, m’boy,” the captain said as he snapped the cuffs around Frankie’s wrists. “Better than you.”

“Hey, Williams, whadaya doing here? It’s me, Frankie. From the Fearsome Foursome, remember? I’m on your side. One of the good guys.” He tried a weak grin.

“Oh no, Frankie. You done crossed over to the other side a long time ago.” Williams shook his head. “My Organized Retail Crime Task Force has been watchin’ you, m’boy. We got videotapes, still photos, receipts with your fingerprints on ’em — you name it, we got it. Your ass is fried.” He made a kissing noise. “You can kiss that pension goodbye.”

Frankie felt dizzy. “But — but my kids. My wife...”

“Tsk, tsk. You should have thought about your family while you were committing fraud.”

Frankie wanted to throw up. The cops were hustling the wailing women out the door. He was gratified to see Mohammed trussed up like a chicken in ankle cuffs and handcuffs — the guy should have known better than to fight a cop, Frankie thought. Meanwhile, he was standing there with his hands behind his back like some two-bit perp. “Come on, Williams. We can work this out. You’re a cop, I’m a cop...”

“Oh no, that’s where you’re wrong, Frankie. You’re no cop. Not no more. Least, not when we get through with you. I’d say you were the next candidate for protective custody.” He squinted at Frankie. “’Less you wanna go straight into population and spend your days playin’ Drop the Soap with the Bloods and Crips.” He grinned sorrowfully.

Frankie scrambled frantically for the magic words that would get him out of this mess. “No, hey, look, you came in here to make a bust, I’m a cop, I’m helping you out...” he tried.

Williams shook his head. His voice became businesslike. “No good. You’re caught, Hernandez. Game over.”

“Williams, please. For old times’ sake?” Frankie was disgusted with himself for pleading, but he was out of options.

Williams gave Frankie a pitiful glance. “I’ll tell you what I can do. For old times’ sake.” Frankie looked at him eagerly. “I’ll let you ride in the back of the RMP instead of the van with the rest of the perps.”

Williams handed Frankie over to the small female officer with the vest. “Guzman, bring this one in. Let ’im ride in the back of your car.”

Officer Guzman wrinkled her nose as though smelling something rotting. But all she said was, “Yes, sir.”

As she shoved him out the door, Frankie turned back and yelled, “Fuck you, Goatfucker! Chinga tu madre!”

Guzman clucked her tongue at him. “That’s no way to talk. Captain Williams would never do that to his mother. He’s a very religious man, you know.”

“I want my delegate!” Frankie snarled. “Call the PBA and tell them to get my delegate down here pronto.”

“Don’t worry,” Guzman said. “We’ll make the call once we get to the precinct.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Although the way I hear it, the delegate’s not gonna be able to do much for you. Your wife’s already down there, singing like a canary.” She glanced sideways at him. “Course, if you wanna tell me about it, I can maybe work out a little something for you.”

Frankie wanted to cry and scream and throw up, all at the same time. How could she think he’d fall for that trick? He’d used it often enough himself — get a perp to talk by pretending his confederate was giving him up. But what if it was true? What if María was selling him down the river even while he was being hustled into the backseat of the RMP? He wouldn’t put it past her. The blood of generations of corrupt Mexican politicians ran through her veins. She had probably learned how to sell out her partner while other kids were playing hopscotch.

Within ten minutes, Frankie was being hustled toward an interrogation room in the 115th Precinct. Jackson Heights was just a stone’s throw from Woodside, so it didn’t take long. As he passed one of the other interrogation rooms, he glanced inside and saw his wife sitting at a table, chatting with a bunch of detectives. Her jacket was draped over her shoulders in defense against the air-conditioning, and she warmed her hands around a steaming paper cup of coffee.

“María, you bitch!” he screamed as he passed the window.

Guzman shoved him into the next room and plunked him into a hard chair. “You wanna tell me about it?” she asked, pulling out a notebook.

“You bet,” Frankie said. “It was all her idea.”

Guzman held up her hand. “You sure you don’t want to wait for your delegate before you talk to me? You don’t want me to Mirandize you?”

“Hell no!” Frankie replied. He missed the small smile that curled up at the corner of Guzman’s mouth for a fleeting moment.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Officer Guzman opened the door to the neighboring interrogation room. “Thanks for coming down and waiting, María,” she said. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t look too good for Frankie. He’s confessed to a lot of crimes, and he didn’t wait for his delegate before he talked.”

María shook her head. “My father told me not to marry him, but I thought I knew better. What am I going to tell the kids?”

Guzman patted her hand. “I know it looks tough now, but you’ll make it through. Can you take your children to your parents’ house tonight? It’s only a matter of time before the press comes knocking on your door.”

“That’s a good idea, thanks. Does Frankie want to see me now?”

“I don’t think that would be for the best. You can see him once he’s booked.”

María stood up. “Well. Thanks for everything.”

“You’re welcome. And it will all work out. You’ll see.”

You bet it will, María thought.

As she slid behind the wheel of her car, she mentally ran through the contents of her home office. She had packed up the laptop, scanner, and printer and stashed them in the trunk of her car as soon as Roberta Guzman called. She’d had a mental escape plan in place since the day she and Frankie had gotten involved in what she thought of as “refunding for profit.”

Her family and Roberta’s had been close for at least two generations, but the two women hadn’t seen each other very often since Roberta went on the job. She had let María know that she would have to take a step back because she was going to play it straight. (Roberta’s family had treated her like the proverbial black sheep — What’s wrong with the girl that she isn’t open to taking bribes? How could we have gone so wrong?)

María only pretended to understand her friend’s choices. She heard about Roberta’s successes in the department through her parents and aunts and uncles, but like her relatives, she always puzzled over why her longtime friend would work harder than she had to.

Well, no matter. She’d held Roberta’s marker from when they were teenagers. María held the key to a moment of youthful indiscretion on Roberta’s part, and Roberta owed her for keeping her mouth shut. She knew she’d collect on it someday, but she’d always hoped it would be for something bigger than this harmless little scam.

She fingered the tickets in her handbag. Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., she and the kids were taking off for a long-overdue vacation to visit relatives in Mexico. Depending on what happened with Frankie, she might just stay there.

Jihad sucks; Or, the conversion of the jews by Jillian Abbott

Richmond Hill

Ramzi Saleh wondered how this nation had become the most powerful in the world. The despicable little urchins who turned up to harass him at Richmond Hill High, where he taught math to ninth graders, were indifferent to his lessons. They cheated him of his time on earth.

It was with no little pleasure that he contemplated being an instrument of their demise, those cocksure boys and strutting girls. Now that winter had set in and the sidewalks were treacherous with ice, he was spared the exposed flesh that assaulted him every warm day. What sort of parents let their daughters out wearing less than what would pass for acceptable underwear at home? And the boys were little better. He found their lack of modesty and wayward attitudes blasphemous.

Ramzi pulled the collar of his overcoat tight against a biting wind. Above him, the 7 train rattled by, its brakes screeching as it pulled into the Roosevelt Avenue station. Beneath his feet the sidewalk trembled. Two levels underground, a subway train, maybe the E he’d just gotten off, was pulling up or leaving.

He knew no one here, at least not in person. He kept walking, and soon caught a whiff of fennel as he approached his destination: the paan seller on 74th Street. It seemed that Satan himself had a hand in his being here. How else could he explain the impulse that had propelled him to the E train? He told himself that he was going to pray, but when he got to Sutphin Boulevard, instead of leaving the station and making his way along Jamaica Avenue toward Azis’s mosque tucked away on 146th Street, he’d raced onto the E, which brought him straight here to Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights.

This neighborhood meant peril. At how many points along the way could he have abandoned his quest and gone to Azis’s, or even home to Liberty Avenue? But now his destination was Little India. He stopped outside the paan shop. Why not? He’d resisted for as long as he could, but the first time he’d slid the paan inside his cheek to an explosion of flavor, he’d known he was lost.

He was supposed to avoid his countrymen and spend his time among the gora. Not that Richmond Hill was Infidel Central. But many of the Asians there were West Indians who had lived in the Caribbean for generations before coming to America. The neighborhood was mixed, not exclusive, and while the roti shops had few rivals, the paan could not compete. He should take it home. He should eat it unobserved in his recliner, but he couldn’t.

At times it seemed to Ramzi that America offered nothing but temptation. Could a man be wise, let alone moral, living among such sirens? Was his sophisticated Jackson Heights palate evidence that the Great Satan had corrupted him? Perhaps he should buy two paan? One for now, and one he could put in the fridge for after dinner.

As he pressed toward the paan seller, his worst fear was realized: He recognized a man ahead of him in the line. They had been at camp together in Afghanistan. The fellow licked his lips and inched closer to the booth as if mesmerized by the vendor’s red-gummed grin and nimble fingers as he smeared red kathha and chuna on a fresh betel leaf. The veins in Ramzi’s neck throbbed. Even if the fellow recognized him, they would not acknowledge each other.

His breath quickened. Their time at camp was long ago, and he wondered if this man was part of the same mission? He knew little about his task other than that he was to assimilate and wait. On that glorious day of victory, when, with the rest of the world, he’d watched the Twin Towers fall, he’d hoped his time among the infidels would end. But it was not to be.

The man from camp took his paan, looked around with the sly delight of a thief, and, using his thumb, thrust it inside his cheek and disappeared into the throng.

The paan seller remembered Ramzi. “Meetha paan, no coconut,” he said, his eyes bright with the pride of a man who knows his customers.

Despite his inward panic at being known, Ramzi smiled and nodded. “How do you do it?” he asked. “Every time, your paan is delicious.”

“It is all in the balance of chuna and kathha,” the paan seller said, rolling his head from side to side as he smeared a leaf with his special masala.

The proportion of betel nut to lime paste was crucial to a good paan, but Ramzi came to this fellow for his perfect masala — no one around mixed the spices and chutneys quite like he did. Now he behaved as if Ramzi was one of his regulars. Was that good or bad? To leave one or two footprints might be for the best. Ramzi imagined the Queens Chronicle story following his mission... They’d quote this man. A paan seller on 74th Street described Ramzi Saleh as a polite man, quiet and predictable. “He loved my meetha paan, but it was always, ‘Hold the coconut.’” Ramzi smiled to himself. Not a bad epitaph.

He stuffed the folded packet inside his cheek and turned toward the street to watch the bustle of rush-hour traffic nudge by. The heady smells of curry leaves, cardamom, and incense wafted from the many restaurants and swirled around him. In his time at Richmond Hill High, he had not met one child — well, there was one — who was grateful for the education his cover required him to provide. His teaching was scrupulously average, he knew. His biggest challenge: to remain invisible.

He had a talent for teaching. He had been plucked from the rubble of an earthquake, all his parents’ properties ruined, and had been educated by the charity of the Great Satan itself. But it had promised and not delivered. Before the earthquake his family had been among the wealthiest in the village; afterwards they had nothing. When the American aid workers left, he was no longer hungry and ignorant, he was hungry and educated.

When the mujahideen entered his village in western Pakistan as they fled the Russians, he had seen fear in the village elders’ eyes. He had vowed to teach all who wished to learn, so that no Pakistani would ever again know ignorance and hunger, but he was still hungry himself, as were all his pupils. He craved to be the cause of that fear he saw in his elders — he saw the respect it inspired. From the day he joined the jihad, he lost the knowledge of hunger. That was nearly twenty years ago.

Saliva stimulated by the paan built in his mouth and he spat a stream of red liquid onto the sidewalk. Behind him a door opened and Hindi music spilled out to compete with the sounds of traffic. Ramzi’s nose twitched at the blasphemy. Bloody Hindus with their Devil’s music, idolatry, and fuzzy logic. There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah. And yet lounging in the street, chewing paan, and feeling contemptuously superior to Hindus brought a deep comfort and satisfaction to Ramzi. Oddly, it was like going home — his real home, not the squat little one-bedroom, eat-in-kitchen apartment on 115th Street off Liberty Avenue. There were Hindus in Richmond Hill, but not nearly so many. He lingered to drink in the sights of brazen, sari-clad Hindu whores, their faces fully exposed to him, and to the world.

Allah is merciful. He led Ramzi to Azis. Azis had helped him find the righteous path. At the training camp he had learned the art of destruction. The American education taught him that he would always be less than they were. When the time came he would play his part.

The earthquake had taken everything from his parents and denied him his future as a landowner. But this loss left him free for jihad. In due course, the Americans would lose their livelihoods. Husbands would lose wives, though Ramzi wondered if that would cause them pain. He doubted it. In this godforsaken nation, whores were elevated and virtuous women despised. A young girl in salwar-kameez skipped by clutching her mother’s hand. Something about her brought back the image of his laughing sister the day before the kitchen collapsed on her, and a sharp pain stabbed at his chest as if someone had slammed a knife into his heart. Soon their sisters would be taken away: a mass of bloody, twisted bodies and tangled limbs all that remained.

The Great Satan was so naïve — had helped him to immigrate when he had shown them his certificate from the Peace Corps. And now, between his salary as a teacher and his payments from al-Qaeda, he would be able to take another wife, maybe two — virtuous Muslim women to keep his current wife, Fatima, company and produce more mujahideen for the cause.

A group of women wearing saris and salwar-kameez glided by. How much more beautiful and elegant than the jeans and T-shirts of Richmond Hill. He should not have come to this neighborhood. The sight of these glorious hussies stirred long-dormant yearnings in Ramzi and he silently cursed himself for giving into temptation. Tears welled in his eyes, but he steeled himself. He missed his wife and children, and understood he might not live to see them again, let alone take another wife. He had pledged his life to this holy war and would do whatever was asked.

He turned back toward the subway and headed for Azis, exchanging the noise and crush of the street for the noise and crush of Mexicans, blacks, and West Indians packed like sardines into the E. Perhaps there would be word. Perhaps today his long wait would end.

He remembered the anticipation he felt when he first arrived in Queens. Back then, he thought his mission was imminent, and he would take the stairs down from the J train two at a time in his rush to get to the mosque. Always his heart pounded in his chest as he waited for Azis. Was today the day? He would catch Azis’s eye, his own face hot with anticipation, but Azis would shake his head discreetly and lower his eyes. Ramzi waited. He undertook reconnaissance as instructed. He reported to Azis. Time passed. In his daily life he was indistinguishable from every other Pakistani immigrant. Familiar, reliable, recognizable, known by no one.

He knew that he should stop by the mosque on the way home. There was no excuse. He’d be right there at Sutphin Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue. But he felt no enthusiasm, no anticipation. Jihad had become rather like his day job. He went through the motions.

By the time he got to Liberty Avenue it was dark, and the roadway was treacherous to cross. In the shade of the elevated A line, the ice never melted, and if he slipped and fell in his haste to be out of the cold, it wouldn’t be the first time. He turned onto 115th Street and climbed the steps to his front door. In his mailbox he found the usual array of bills and magazines. He clicked his tongue. What a country this was, so many magazines, so much information. The day an issue of the Herald arrived in his isolated village, the men would gather at the tea house and Ramzi would read it out loud. It was never less than six months out of date, but they were hungry for its wealth of knowledge.

The Smithsonian had arrived. He went inside and dropped into his recliner. Such luxury, if only Fatima could see his leather chair. He flipped through the magazine to examine the pictures. Then he read the headlines and breakout paragraphs. He always did this to decide the order in which he’d read the articles. Then he’d put on a pot of coffee, slide back into his recliner, and read every word. Today he broke his routine. Five pages in he found a piece on the science of biological weaponry. The infidel never tired of telling him all he needed to know. He would not rise again until he’d read it at least twice.

Ramzi Saleh basked in the fortune of having the staff room at Richmond Hill High all to himself. This was a first. The place was always overcrowded and stuffy. Heat blasted from the radiator, and the musty odor of too many bodies lingered. Ramzi headed for the coffee machine, found a clean cup — Praise be to Allah, this is a great day — poured his coffee, heaped in four spoons of sugar and extra cream, and made his way toward his cramped cubbyhole at the back of the room. He raised his mug in thanks for the twenty-five-percent absentee rate due to Monday flu and dropped into his chair. Just as he finished arranging his desk exactly the way he liked it — coffee on the left, pens on the right — he heard the door fly open. Too good to last. The sound of women’s voices reached him over the thump and hiss of the radiator. He identified them instantly. Beryl Johnson was a science teacher; Lucy Gruber a fellow math teacher.

They kept chatting. Perhaps they couldn’t see him back here.

“You’re too ordinary?” Lucy said. “Hello. He’s an assistant manager at Home Depot.”

“Manager. They promoted him just before he left.”

Ah, thought Ramzi, they were talking about Beryl’s husband. What a scoundrel. He’d run out on her two years ago for a girl just six years older than their daughter. Why would he do such a thing? Beryl was a nice enough woman, nothing special, but for an infidel whore she had a good heart. It never ceased to surprise Ramzi the way even the most humble citizens here tried to live like movie stars — to their ruin.

He should speak up, let his presence be known, but the godless fornicators fascinated him, so he continued to eavesdrop. As they loitered by the coffee machine, Ramzi could see their bobbing shadows on the linoleum.

“It makes me sick to admit I went to an online dating site, but what could I do? I was so lonely,” Beryl said, her voice choked with emotion. “I wanted someone to hold me, to be tender.”

“I know,” Lucy replied.

Ramzi detected a catty undertone. Beryl should hold her tongue — this Lucy was no friend, and besides, why would anyone publicize their shame in this way? Living among the godless affected him, moderating his true beliefs. He knew Beryl was contemptible, but he pitied her anyway. He had known her from his first day at this school. He had been bewildered, not knowing where to go and what to do, and Beryl had found him wandering in the corridor.

She took him to his classroom and introduced him to his students. She had a way about her that put Ramzi at ease. He felt he could talk to her about almost anything. An involuntary shudder moved through him as he thought back to that day. He had told her more about himself than he ever meant to. After that, she had adopted him, helping him become part of the school community, helping him to follow his prime directive: Blend in, attract no notice.

“This isn’t the place. We can’t talk here, someone might overhear,” Beryl said.

Ramzi scrunched himself up as small as he could, even gritting his teeth and grimacing like a kid trying to make himself invisible. He didn’t dare look in their direction.

“Look. It’s empty — not a soul here. Come on, you’re going to crack up if you don’t tell someone.”

“I’m so ashamed,” Beryl said between sobs. “When I started it wasn’t so bad. I mean, I thought it was terrible, those boring dates with fat guys. But this one, Mike, he didn’t just rape me, he beat the hell out of me, and then robbed me.”

“You should have said something. When was this?”

Ramzi craned his neck in their direction to hear better.

“The beginning of summer. The marks faded just in time for the start of school in September.” Beryl’s sobs drowned out the wheezing radiator.

Lucy responded with those little clucking noises women make when they comfort each other. The thought of someone raping Beryl brought heat to Ramzi’s cheeks. Who would do such a thing? Beryl’s rape caused him a dilemma. Yes, he knew the infidel whore deserved what she got — she was divorced, a matter of shame for any decent Muslim woman. She had brought shame to her whole family, in fact. Yet Beryl was kind, and raised her children with no help from their father. Though jihad had separated him from his Fatima, she was provided for and had staff to help run the household. If he died in jihad, she would be taken care of, and if, Allah forbid, he fell out with Azis, he had paid a great uncle in Karachi enough to ensure she would disappear and be safe. But no one was there for Beryl. Ramzi struggled for control of his mind. He must banish thoughts of Beryl’s goodness. Her loneliness presented him with an opportunity. Her fate was in Allah’s hands.

“But what was the alternative? I was lonely. Do you know how many single women there are out there? I didn’t stand a chance. Who’d look at me?” Beryl said, a bitter edge to her voice.

Ramzi had looked closely at Beryl when they first met, and he liked what he saw. Though a bit older than he, she was still a handsome woman. Rich, black hair (although he knew it was probably dyed, as all of the women in this country colored their hair), complemented by deep blue eyes. A soft face, lines around the eyes and mouth. To him the lines indicated character.

Beryl had a lush figure, and this was so much more appealing than the skinny, barren women so highly prized here. American women were either stick-thin or waddling giants. The women of Islam were robust and fertile.

Beryl blew her nose loudly, bringing Ramzi back to the present. He struggled to keep his breath even, to remain undetected. Before either spoke again, the school bell went off. The room would be crowded within minutes.

“Come on,” Lucy said. “Let’s get out of here.”

He heard the door flung open. Teachers flooded into the room, talking, laughing, heading for their desks. Ramzi, with two free periods back-to-back, waited until the room filled up to slip out.

Ramzi kneeled on the carpet in the corner of the large prayer room at the mosque. Azis, his imam, kneeled next to him, smiled indulgently, and took Ramzi’s hand in his. The warmth and strength of Azis’s touch comforted Ramzi.

Ramzi guessed the imam was in his mid-forties, the wiry black beard showing streaks of gray. Azis’s leathery skin fit tight over his facial bones, a result of early deprivation, a testament to years of living in the harsh light of Pakistan’s mountains. He had a cruel mouth and Ramzi was pleased he could not see Azis’s eyes. The times when he had, he’d been unnerved by the black void that stared back at him. Warm hands, cold heart.

“I’m confused,” Ramzi said, searching the room with his eyes. It was empty but for the rich, blood-red carpet and three low squat desks along the opposite wall. The faint odor of working men emanated from the worn rug.

Azis stroked the back of Ramzi’s hand with his index finger. Ramzi watched this, and for the first time in his life he felt uncomfortable with the physicality of it. Among the people of the Great Satan, when one man touched another it led to the abomination of homosexuality. But in Pakistan, men never hesitated to express their affection and concern for one another in this way. Watching Azis’s hand, Ramzi wondered if this was how Adam felt once he had eaten from the forbidden tree. The Great Satan corrupted all that was good, even to the point of undermining the purity of his contact with Azis.

“If your feelings for this woman are strong, you should take her,” Azis counseled, “but remember that Americans pride themselves on turning their wives and daughters into whores, and that any goodness you see in her is an illusion. This woman, the Jew, Beryl, is a whore.”

Ramzi glanced then at Azis. Being an imam had freed Azis from the need to assimilate. The infidel seemed to expect him to retain his ethnicity, and he hadn’t disappointed. His perfectly white turban was arranged so skillfully it appeared to be an extension of his brow. Azis wore a long beard which extended to his ears. He shaved it almost to the edge of his jaw line, leaving his face exposed and causing the beard to jut out at an angle from his chin that gave Ramzi the impression that Azis’s face grew out of his facial hair instead of the other way around. Azis shifted slightly and the glare left the bifocals he habitually wore. Ramzi saw that Azis was contemplating him fondly.

Ramzi turned his hand over, allowing him to wrap his fingers around Azis’s. Why had he doubted? He let his breath out and with it went his anxiety about Beryl. Allah is all-knowing. Azis was wise indeed. Richmond Hill High bragged at its role in producing fallen women. Mae West and Cyndi Lauper were two of its proudest alumni. He need not fear becoming too involved with the hussy, Beryl.

He smiled at Azis, who smiled back.

“You came to me with the idea to take this Jew woman. It is a good idea. It will deepen your cover, and I see in your eyes you know it is right. Now that you are sure, there are things I must tell you, things you need to know about these fornicating She-Devils...”

A week later, Ramzi waited by the staff room door. “Heading out?” he asked, trying to sound casual when he saw Beryl. He fell in with her as she left for the day. When he pushed the door open for her, his jaw was tight and his stomach fluttered. It was ridiculous; he was forty years old, after all. Beryl wore a tight skirt and a low-cut blouse, and as she sauntered along beside him her coat flared open revealing cleavage. Ramzi looked away discreetly. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“Not bad. How are you doing with 9B? Have they settled down?”

“Yes, thanks to you. You told me to get on top of Kasan and you were right. Once he was under control the others fell in line.”

Beryl grinned. “He’s a tough customer that one. Way too big and strong for his years. His father is in the Russian mafia.”

Ramzi raised his eyebrows and shook his head as if he were shocked, although he knew all about Kasan’s connections.

Beryl’s heels clicked pleasantly to the end of the hallway and then stopped as she paused inside the door to do up her coat. Their eyes met and Ramzi smiled at her. He felt a pang of guilt. But why? Beryl was an infidel hussy, and he had Azis’s dispensation. Ramzi opened the outside door and held it for her. As Beryl passed him, he caught a whiff of perfume. It brought to mind lilacs and spring.

The air was frigid, turning their breath into clouds of vapor. Azis’s warning haunted him. He caught himself staring at Beryl. He blushed and forced himself to focus on the ground as they walked in silence to her car. The moody sky threatened snow, and it would be dark by 4:30 p.m. Beryl drew her scarf tight around her neck. Her cheeks, ears, and the tip of her nose had turned red; her beauty made him ache. If her husband were a real man, if he’d stuck by his wife, then Ramzi could never have contemplated using her in this way. The thought that it was Jeff’s fault, not his, comforted him.

Taking a woman would help deepen his cover. Handled correctly, it would make him even more invisible. Beside an American woman, his surveillance wouldn’t draw suspicion. And there were other benefits. He could go to the beach and to the Museum of Natural History and all the other places in New York he wanted to see, but felt too conspicuous to go alone.

Beryl pushed the key into her car door. It was now or never. He cleared his throat.

“Beryl, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie this Saturday night?”

She looked confused, then slightly amused — he had been too formal, he knew. He had met Fatima on their wedding day; today was the first time in his life he had asked a woman out. He was more nervous than he expected to be and cursed himself for this.

She smiled. “Dinner and a movie. Why not?”

It was all Ramzi could do not to high-five her.

Ramzi swept inside the mosque amid a flurry of coats and scarves and wet umbrellas. Azis stood against the wall surrounded by his followers. Ramzi tried to control his expression. He wanted to appear his usual calm self but his emotions were in turmoil. He raised his eyebrows in inquiry when he caught the imam’s eye. Azis shook his head and lowered his gaze.

Back on the street, Ramzi realized Beryl’s acceptance had left him cranky. A woman her age shouldn’t be dating at all. Azis had not only approved his plan to take a woman, he had encouraged it. But now Ramzi no longer wanted to go through with it.

The wind picked up, and icy needles attacked his exposed cheeks. He moved quickly and almost went flying when his foot hit ice and shot out in front of him. By the time he got to his apartment, he was moving at a steady trot. He paused on his stoop, ripped open his mailbox, and flipped through the contents. He sweated and his legs twitched from the run. What must it feel like? His breathing didn’t slow even though he’d been still for several minutes. To his eternal shame, there was movement in his trousers. He must complete his mission and leave this country. But first, dinner and a movie with Beryl.

Ramzi squeezed Beryl’s hand. To think he’d once dreaded dating her. She had become as familiar to him as his leather recliner. Today she wore her cobalt-blue jacket open, revealing a long-sleeved T-shirt that looked perfect with her jeans and sneakers.

He parked on Utopia Parkway near the off-ramp of the Cross Island Parkway. Behind them was an entrance to Little Bay Park that followed the water’s edge to Fort Totten and then on to the Bayside Marina. On his first visit he had discovered that if you keep walking south, the path leads beneath the Long Island Rail Road and up onto Northern Boulevard.

He got out of the car, opened the trunk, and grabbed a picnic basket and blanket. Beryl scanned for the entrance. Along the road, just inside the park, was a dark wooded area where the spring grass was unkempt, and several ragged trees made it seem unwelcoming.

“Follow me,” Ramzi said. He headed back up toward the off-ramp and waited for her by two rectangular brick piles that marked the entry to the park. “This is the back way, but you get a nice view of the bridge and water.”

“How do you know so many beautiful places? I’ve lived in Queens all my life and I never knew this was here,” Beryl said.

As they entered the park, Ramzi touched his finger to his lip to silence her. A crumbling concrete trail began at the entrance, but petered out within fifty yards of the gate, leaving them to walk through grass. Ramzi breathed in the scent. Fresh cut grass, blossoms, and manure, it all added up to spring. It was barely April, but the forecast said seventy, and already it was warm and sunny. The sky was the richest blue, and the water, though grayish-green, was mirror-still, reflecting the bridge.

“I came from the mountains in what is almost desert, not this lush green and expanse of water,” he said by way of explanation.

Had he made a mistake? Yes, it was a good idea to use this woman for cover, but he should have chosen a more brazen, less likeable one. It was a constant struggle to keep her at a distance. It troubled him. He had to remind himself this was a She-Devil, however kind, and that he was performing his duty to Allah by deceiving her. But he couldn’t banish the thought that she was a good woman trapped in an evil culture. He felt her round hip rub against his, and despite himself he was aroused. The first time they’d slept together he’d been terrified. He had listened to Azis’s warning, and read New York magazine every week. The sexual habits of New Yorkers repelled, yet fascinated him.

He had been content with his wife. In truth, sex wasn’t something he’d given much thought to before coming to live in Queens. Americans seemed obsessed with it, as if it were the most important thing in the world. It was true that he enjoyed sex. When he and Fatima did it, he felt close and safe. No one in Pakistan ever talked about love. That was something for the blasphemers of Bollywood to churn out in their endless stream of movies. Seeing Fatima was often accompanied by a feeling of warmth and longing, and if he’d ever given it any thought, he’d have been happy to call that love.

Beryl turned to him and smiled. He knew she looked forward to these outings. She’d lost fifteen pounds from the exercise and claimed to be fitter than she’d been in years. Even in winter, Ramzi had led her along the water’s edge, although one day in early March he’d had to abandon his plans because the path was slick with ice. Instead, he’d taken her on a luxury water cruise. He felt a twinge of guilt when he remembered Beryl that night — giggling like a schoolgirl, posing for his pictures. She couldn’t have guessed that the true subject of those photos were the bridges and buildings and port facilities in the background. He’d taken enough photos to fill a 256MB memory card. Their expeditions became more frequent as the weather warmed up. They’d explored the whole length of the Long Island waterfront from the Brooklyn Bridge to today’s outing at the Throgs Neck Bridge.

“What’s that?” Ramzi asked, pointing to a chicken-wire enclosure about the size of a residential building block.

The park was crowded with people, some lone walkers, some in groups, and some on bicycles. The slope down to the water was dotted with sunbathers who had dragged fold-up chairs to the park and sprawled in their swimsuits. Two women in leotards power-walked, while another couple glided by on rollerblades. Inside the enclosure he’d pointed at, the grass had been worn to dirt. It was mobbed with people and dogs, and the stench of animal excrement, fur, dog breath, and urine wafted from it.

“It’s a dog run.”

“A what?”

“A dog run. In New York City you have to keep your dog leashed most of the time. Inside that, you can let it run free.”

“Really?” Ramzi was appalled: In his country, dogs were rabid curs. Here they were more pampered than children.

They made their way down the gentle, sloping lawn toward the path, and met up with it under the bridge’s pylons. The tide was low and the air had a decidedly fishy tinge to it.

“Look at this bridge,” he said. “What a magnificent achievement. Look at the pylons, they’re solid. And the cables could hold it up on their own.”

“I suppose I should be grateful we’re not discussing piston engines,” Beryl said.

Ramzi turned his attention from the bridge to his companion. He glared at her. “You know how much I admire these bridges, not just the engineering either, they are magnificent.” He slid his arm around her. They passed under the bridge and beside some soccer fields where elementary and middle school children battled it out. The shouts from the parents fought with the noise of the traffic on the bridge overhead.

Ramzi’s mission loomed before him, and the thought of it filled him with dread. The longer he stayed here, the harder it was to maintain his rage. Jihad had saved him from shiftlessness and had given him direction. Of course, he despised Beryl, but until he started to date her he hadn’t realized how much he missed a woman’s touch. Then, despite himself, Beryl had begun to mean something to him. In time, he began to know the infidel, and had developed a liking for many of them.

Beryl’s hand crept around his waist and she kissed his cheek as they strolled along. At the same time, he was fully cognizant that a war was being fought and he had chosen a side. Beryl was a weapon the Great Satan had abandoned in the field. He had merely picked it up where it lay and was putting it to good use.

They rounded a bend. “Let’s look for a place to eat,” Beryl said. There was a hilly section where man-made mounds of earth had long since become part of the landscape; grass and trees grew on them.

“Let’s eat up there on the plateau,” he suggested. “That way you can watch the view and I can watch the soccer.” Ramzi laid out the blanket and Beryl spread the food on it. She’d made sandwiches, brought sodas, and packed grapes into Ziploc bags. She’d gotten used to Ramzi not drinking alcohol, and had given it up herself. For dessert, she’d bought a pie at The Stork in College Point.

After they ate, Ramzi lay his head on her lap and stared at the sky. Several trees were just coming into blossom and filled the air with a heady but pleasant scent. Immediately, an image of Beryl on her knees before him, her mouth clamped firmly around his penis, came to mind. He remembered the fear he felt when she did it the first time. Ramzi had never hit a woman, but looking down on Beryl’s soft, shiny hair, her head bobbing at his crotch, he wanted to knock her across the room and scream, Have you no pride, woman? No fear of God?

Azis had given Ramzi absolution when he first warned him this would happen. They had prayed together. In the end, Ramzi grew too ashamed to face Azis. Perhaps God would forgive him. After all, he had submitted to serve Allah. But Beryl would go to Hell.

He feared telling Azis the worst. This abomination had given him the most intense pleasure of his life, while the shame crushed him. How could he ever speak with a decent Muslim woman again? Azis’s dispensation meant nothing. He was tainted, dirty, and the shame of it would never leave him.

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Beryl said.

He turned his face toward hers and hoped his anguish didn’t show. “Not compared to you.”

“Flatterer.”

“Truthteller.”

“You are free next Sunday, right? There’s no reason to miss my mother’s party. You’ll enjoy it, it’s a fundraiser for the Jewish orphans of Kazakhstan. That’s your part of the world.”

Ramzi didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. “Oh yes, Pakistani Muslims and Kazakh Jews, we are almost brothers. And clearly we all look the same to the Jews of Scarsdale, New York.” He had bolted upright, his muscles tense and his neck throbbing.

“Oh Ramzi, this is America, that sort of thing doesn’t matter. Besides, the only religion I’ve seen you practice is the same one I do — lapsed. Lapsed Jew, lapsed Muslim, what’s the difference?”

Ramzi had no retort. In truth, he could not be bothered to find one.

“She wants to raise money to bring the orphans here for six months to get the medical help they need and to learn English, math, and Hebrew so they might get a better start in Israel. My mother’s getting on. She thought maybe you could teach them. We both could. Maybe we could move in with her and look after her and teach the Kazakh children. You speak Aramaic.”

“How do you know I speak Aramaic?”

“You told me, remember? The first day at school when you were lost and I told you some of our students were from central Asia.”

He’d forgotten. What other lapses was he guilty of? It was all too much for him. Great levivot and off tapuzim to die for was one thing, but no amount of knish was sufficient to entice him to embrace the Jews, except for Beryl, of course. Then Ramzi had the merest glimmer of a thought.

“All right already,” he said, taking pride in his mastery of New York speak, “I’ll come to the party. But only if you let me take your picture.”

Beryl laughed good-naturedly.

“Stand here,” he said, positioning her so that his shots would take in the undercarriage of the bridge.

While she fussed and clucked over her hair, he took a dozen photos, from all angles. Beryl wasn’t in half of them.

As Ramzi walked home on Liberty Avenue that same evening, he spied standing in a doorway the same man he’d recognized so many weeks ago at the paan sellers. As their eyes met, the man left the cover of the storefront and slowly approached, his right hand inside his overcoat even though it was much too warm to be dressed that way.

The man was called Mohammed, Ramzi recalled in a flash. He had been foolish and naïve to think he could avoid Azis. He would not get away that easily. The best he could hope for was that Mohammed had come to question his absence from the mosque. Mohammed’s expression gave Ramzi little reason to hope for the best. If he made a run for it now, he would die. He would never see Beryl again. Then he admitted the truth to himself: He had abandoned jihad. He was a changed man, an infidel, a fornicator. He wanted to live.

“There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah,” Ramzi said in greeting.

“The true believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are the sincere,” Mohammed said, closing the distance between them.

Ramzi knew the quote from the Qur’an, and the guilt it produced in him squeezed his chest like a vice. At first he thought to reply: Allah, most gracious, most merciful, but that implied a certain culpability, and so instead he said, “Allah is all-knowing, all-aware.”

He approached Mohammed, careful to keep his movements steady and nonthreatening.

Mohammed’s face flashed uncertainty, and taking advantage of this brief moment, Ramzi added, “I have taken a woman.” His tone meant to convey that this explained everything.

“A Jew,” Mohammed said, his mouth pulled tight with contempt.

“A whore,” Ramzi agreed, although it pained him to speak the words. “A controlling She-Devil to whom I must account for my every movement. And yet, Azis knows the value of the hussy and encouraged me to take her.”

“No man cowers before a woman. What have you become?” Mohammed’s small eyes narrowed to slits and his glare felt like a laser beam slicing into Ramzi. He moved toward Ramzi.

“I serve Allah through jihad. That is who I am,” Ramzi said, standing very still. He hung his head as if the shame of his dalliance with Beryl was tangible weight.

“You are a favorite with Azis. I have seen him have a man killed for less than what you have done. I would be happy to oblige my imam should he change his mind. You are expected at the mosque tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Fail to come and I will be given my chance.” He took two more steps toward Ramzi, meeting him head on, then sidestepped and walked past.

When Ramzi was sure Mohammed had gone, he headed up the stairs to his apartment. As he put keys to the lock, he caught the end of a message being recorded on his answering machine. “I know you’re probably tired but I’ve got to run a bunch of chairs and plates and flatware over to my mother’s. You wouldn’t help, would you? I could really use you.”

Ramzi dashed into the apartment and grabbed the phone. Life was mysterious, and he, merely a fallen leaf tossed and blown on the wind. “Beryl, my love, of course I will. And why don’t we visit awhile?”

Had it really been six months since his meeting with Mohammed? The first class of Kazakh orphans were about to graduate. As they fed the pet rabbits and turtles kept at the school behind the Chabad, he realized he’d grown quite fond of them, and was sad to think they’d soon be leaving for Israel. What a pleasure to teach children so hungry to learn.

He glanced up as Beryl entered the classroom. She leaned against the blackboard beside him and smiled at the children. He wanted to slide his arm around her but knew he couldn’t do that in front of the orphans. He stroked his beard. He’d been surprised by how quickly it had grown in. He’d dyed all of his hair silver, making him look at least fifteen years older than he was. This may be America, but he still equated age with wisdom, and was happy to think of himself as growing wise.

“Almost done?” Beryl asked.

He nodded.

“Good. Mom’s cooking up a storm. She loves you... almost as much as I do.”

Ramzi’s world had shrunk in the relocation. He felt safe here, and he kept to the neighborhood. He walked each day from Beryl’s mother’s house, which was now his home, to the Chabad and back, occasionally stopping at the local deli to pick something up for the evening meal. Except perhaps for the paan, he didn’t miss his old life at all. Beryl was due to move in with him when school ended in June, and he looked forward to that.

It was Hanukkah and the menorah would be lit tonight. As with many converts, the rituals of Judaism seemed to have more meaning for him than for those who’d practiced from birth. Most of all, he was looking forward to Gloria’s (he had begun calling Beryl’s mom by her first name) famous levivot and applesauce.

The last few orphans left the room and he took Beryl’s hand as they strolled home to Gloria’s, the chill air turning Beryl’s nose bright red.

The investigation by Belinda Farley

Jamaica

So Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn’t have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens — when the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight had sprung to their feet in a fervor — I, who had so often scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on open palms reverberated. Shouted hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I praying?

I should’ve been taking notes.

Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the police scanner: a “1010” announcing a possible death at Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters — all four of whom were white — for no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway, housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they’d shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn’t been a complete waste.

I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn brownstone that had been in my family for three generations. I’d been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class, or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a catch within my circle; I’d escorted no less than three females to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I’d have had enough of my journalism career and would join an uncle on Wall Street.

The call came in while I was alone in the office. Later — when things had run their course — I thought of a photograph that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.

The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course, it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb, and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely. Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo — or story, for that matter — ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in J-school.

There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when I arrived. I didn’t feel too confident as I rapped on the door of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed to get a byline under my belt.

“Yes?” The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.

“Evening, uh, morning, sir,” I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn’t too late. “I’m a reporter for the—”

“Who is it, Gershorn?” A thick, squat woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days appeared at the man’s side. With her elaborate coif, and skin the color of a gingersnap, she could’ve been an aged starlet. In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.

The man bristled. “We were expecting someone, but not you,” he said. “What is your business here, young man?”

Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought and hardship that had ever befallen the man was noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing nearly two heads above her.

“I’m Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item.” I extended my hand. “I’m responding to a call that came over our police scanner regarding a possible death...?”

The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand. I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.

“Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police came?”

The man contemplated my question before opening the door to me. “A crime, young man, not an incident. Come in.”

I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped his hands behind his back.

“Claudette,” he called to the woman. “Tea. Tea for our guest.”

In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.

On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light was switched on.

The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the room to memory, to be described later in my story.

“Do you take sugar?” the woman asked haltingly.

I shook my head.

The man sat down beside me, and the woman took a seat across the room at a dining room set of heroic proportion. It spoke of some other time — a time in which there were castles and feudal systems — with elaborate inlaid carvings, mounted on claw feet. An unframed oil painting of a Caribbean landscape hung above it.

“The Bel-Air Mountains, yes,” the man nodded approvingly as I studied the painting. “That was once the view from my own window. See there?” He rose to his feet and approached the image, pointing. “Those mules, those pigs foraging in the garbage pits? Those palms, those coconuts? Is all Haiti. Is my home.”

He turned to face me, scrutinizing me.

“I am Mr. Stuckey,” he said finally. “And this is Mrs. Stuckey.”

I nodded and waited for him to continue. He did not.

“You say your son was murdered,” I ventured.

Mr. Stuckey nodded, satisfied with my inquiry. “In that room, there.” He pointed down a darkened hallway.

Now it was my turn to give him the eye. What’s going on here?

Noting my skepticism, the man rose to his feet. “Follow me.”

Midway down the hall, he paused and flicked on a light switch. A door stood open adjacent to it, though the other doors on either side of the room were closed. Warily, I peered into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom or, rather, the room of an adolescent boy. It was painted a dense, cornflower blue, and decorated with outdated pop culture posters. A large, weathered Table of Periodic Elements hung on one wall, attached with brittle and yellowed tape.

“That once was mine,” Mr. Stuckey noted proudly, indicating the poster. “When I was a boy, it hung in the classroom of my secondary school, the Petion National Lycée.” His back stiffened with pride at the mention of the name. “It was given to me by the headmaster, a gift. I was to be a great scientist, then.” He paused. “As was Edwin too.”

The room was small. Shoved under a window that opened onto brick was an unmade twin bed, and not two steps from it stood a modest desk, bowed by a stack of books whose titles were turned away from me. A boom box also sat perched atop the desk, and there — How had I not seen that! — rested an overturned chair and a noose hanging limply from a light fixture above it.

“Jesus!” I stepped backward and clutched the doorframe in reflex.

“Yes,” Mr. Stuckey nodded solemnly. “My son was murdered right here. He was twenty-two years old.”

“Same age as me,” I whispered.

Mr. Stuckey turned off the light and we returned to the front of the house in silence. I took my seat back on the couch. My tea had grown cold.

“You will help us?” Mrs. Stuckey piped up.

“What time did the police arrive tonight?” I asked, pen poised to record the details in my notepad.

“The police,” she clucked dismissively with a wave of her hand.

“The police do not come here anymore,” Mr. Stuckey added.

Anymore? “Were you home then, when the intruder broke in?”

“The intruder was already here,” Mr. Stuckey corrected.

“So there are suspects?”

“Oh,” he nodded enthusiastically, “there are suspects.”

‘”Nice,” I added, in spite of myself. “If you could give me a list of the names you gave to the police...”

“The last time the police were here, they took no names. No. Nothing from us,” Mrs. Stuckey fumed.

The last time? “The last time this evening, the last time...?”

“The last time one month ago,” Mr. Stuckey said stoically.

“A month ago?” I closed my notepad. “Sir, listen. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, or what it is you want me to—” I fell silent as I shifted my position on the sofa, making sure that I had all of my belongings. The Stuckeys looked at me helplessly, and I was beginning to feel spooked.

At that, a girl stepped into the room from the hallway.

“I’ll talk to him, Papa,” she said. “I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” The girl was brazen. She stood with her hand on one hip, and she blinked her eyelashes once she was done taking me in. She wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that was knotted tightly in the center of her back. Her speech was not the patois of her West Indian parents, who only nodded as she signaled me with a beckoning finger to the door.

Once we stepped off the porch, she immediately lit a cigarette. “I heard everything,” she said, exhaling.

“I’m a reporter for the—”

“I said everything.” She rolled her eyes. “Walk with me.”

The girl pirouetted gracefully as a ballerina and took off down the block. She was short, like her mother, barely over five feet, and though I was nearly six feet, I had to jog to keep up with her.

“So, you from around here?” I asked, falling back on my usual opening line. Dumb! Some reporter I was, but I didn’t know where to begin with this girl. I was ecstatic just to be walking with her. In an instant, my street cred had risen to the umpteenth degree, and the few brothers hanging out seemed to be getting a kick out of watching a dude like me, in my skippies and Polo, pursuing a sister like her, whose mane of naturally red ringlets blew behind her like a superhero’s cape.

She didn’t respond to my lame attempts at flirting, and we walked along Jamaica Avenue in silence, passing the gated entrances of fast-food restaurants, 99-cent stores, and discount clothing outlets with names like Foxy Lady and Tic Tock. The sky above us had a chunky, textured look about it; mounds of cloud clung stubbornly to the midnight blue, as often happened after a storm. It had been an uncharacteristically stormy summer. A crushed can of Colt 45, however, still balanced precariously on the fence post of King’s Manor.

“I don’t know why people drink that swill!” I knocked the can over in an attempt at irreverence, accidentally splashing my sneakers with stale beer. Shit.

The girl led me a little further to a Salvadoran café with Christmas bulbs and plastic flowers in its window.

“I’m Janette,” she said, as we slid into an upholstered booth.

“Dougie,” I grinned.

“Dougie, huh? That’s cute.” She drummed her fingernails on the table between us. “I hate that you can’t smoke anywhere anymore.”

“Been smoking long?”

“Since I was thirteen.”

“Nasty habit.”

She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. I ordered beer for both of us. Music and words incomprehensible to me floated from a juke box somewhere in the place.

“My brother committed suicide,” Janette said suddenly. My beer caught in my throat and a bit of it dribbled down my chin. “You’re conducting an investigation here, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So, here.” Janette reached into her back pocket and shot a scrap of paper across the table at me. “That’s the name of the detective.”

“Detective?”

She shook her head at me in disbelief. “What the fuck? Are you a reporter or what?” She rolled her eyes. “The detective working my brother’s case, you moron.”

“Right, right.” I took a pull on the neck of my beer, trying to recover. “Here’s the thing,” I said, leaning toward her across the table. “Your pops said this happened a month ago.”

“A little less than a month ago. We’re just really stressed about how long all this is taking, you know?”

“Right, but a month ago?” I sit up straight. “A month ago is not a story today. After a month, there’s no story. I’m sorry.”

“But my brother is dead.” Janette’s aggressive demeanor crumbled.

“You’re talking suicide here.” I shook my head sympathetically. “That’s tragic, but I can tell you straight up: If your brother chose to kill himself, we ain’t gonna run it in the paper now, know what I mean?”

“My brother did not choose to kill himself.” Janette’s eyes flashed angrily.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, call the detective.”

“Wait.” I wave the waiter over for another round. “If you already have a detective working the case, why the call on the scanner?”

Janette ignored my question and turned to the waiter. “I’ll have a Jack and ginger.”

“And,” I continued, “if you already know he took his own life, why not just grieve and clean out that bedroom and move on?”

She remained silent.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended,” she shrugged. “Your questions are valid.”

“Any answers?”

“If I had answers, would I be sitting here talking to you?” She smiled slyly. “I think not.”

I never cared for police precincts. Not that I’d had much experience with them.

Occasionally, I was sent to the local station house to clarify a fuzzy docket that’d come over the teletype, but the officers always seemed less than welcoming. I usually got out of there as soon as I could, which was what I intended the afternoon following my interview with Janette. In a moment of hopeful lust, I’d promised I would speak to this Detective Spurlock, and she, in turn, promised she’d speak to me again. So here I was in the 103rd Precinct at the detective squad.

“Come on back.” Detective Spurlock motioned toward one cluttered desk among many. With a swish of a burly arm, he cleared a chair of paperwork for me to sit. “You got good timing, kid. Caught me right before sign-out. Minute later, I’d a been gone for the night... Coffee?”

I glanced over his shoulder at a stained-glass pot that contained what looked to be black sludge. “No thanks.”

“Smart,” he shrugged, sipping boldly from a chipped mug. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here about the Stuckey case.”

“The Stuckeys.” Spurlock ran a pink hand through a thick head of white hair. “Listen, I don’t know what your connection to this family is, but—”

“I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item,” I interrupted.

“That so?” He nodded. “Well, good luck. Once they’ve got your number, you’re getting no peace from then on. My advice: Steer clear. There’s no story there.”

“That’s what I’m thinking too, but if there was,” I lean in, “what would it be?”

Spurlock furrowed his brow. “Meaning?”

“The parents seem to think their son was murdered.”

“Okay, kid, I’ll indulge you, I’ve got nothing but time, right?” He shuffled through a stack of bulging file folders before selecting the thinnest one. “Here we go.” He took a swig from his mug and whipped on his reading glasses. “Edwin Stuckey, age twenty-two, found hanged in his own bedroom, March 2.” He paused at the date, gave me the once-over, continued reading from his notes. “Apparent suicide, no suspicious circumstances, blah, blah, case closed.”

Spurlock sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“Wait a minute.” I flipped through my own notebook. “If you began your investigation on March 2, why did the call come over my scanner just two days ago?”

“Ahh,” the detective laughed. “They won’t stop, these people. I closed this case one week after it happened, and they’ve been phoning 911 ever since.” He shook his head. “Hell, I’d arrest the two of them for Aggravated Harassment if it weren’t so damn sad.”

“So there’s nothing? Nothing to suggest the murder that the family thinks occurred?”

“Nope.” Spurlock reopened the folder and flipped through the paperwork. “The sister gave me a couple a names of some friends of his, who turned out not to be friends at all. The boy didn’t have any friends.” He handed me the list. “Church members. A bit too pious for my tastes, but hey, to each his own.” He closed the folder and switched off his desk lamp. “Like I said: case closed.”

Of course, there was no story. But I went ahead and crafted a lead and pitched it to my editor.

He glanced at it before tossing it aside. “We don’t do suicides.”

Still, I wanted to see Janette again. I steeled myself for the journey. It took me nearly two hours: the F train, then the Q76 bus to the end of the line. The bus wove its way down residential streets before groaning to a halt at the concrete 165th Street terminal in Jamaica, Queens.

It was bedlam. Greyhound on crack. People mobbed each designated bus slot, frantically directing the drivers into their respective spaces. An open, buzzing vegetable market operated behind the commuters, and as the day was a hot one, clouds of flies swarmed crates of long onions and collard greens. An old woman wearing a hairnet sat on a folding chair selling spices and exotic remedies sealed in plastic baggies. There was too much going on here; I was used to separation: a bus terminal being a bus terminal, a vegetable market being a vegetable market. Here, in Janette’s neighborhood, everything was everything all at once.

I cut behind the terminal through the Colosseum Mall and down tight aisles displaying brightly colored skirts and cell phone accessories. Out on the other side stood the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica; Edwin’s funeral had been held there.

“Yo, man, you good?” A guy about my age peered at me from beneath an open car hood.

“What? Oh, yeah man, yeah.” I kept moving.

Jamaica Avenue, almost there. On the “Ave,” all the girls resembled Janette, with their manicured hands, toes, and eyebrows. Women sashayed bare-legged, wearing tight clothes; streaked, braided hairdos; metallic purses; chatting casually on headsets while munching on meat kebobs and cubes of sugared coconut.

I was tripping.

“Help? A little help?” A thin, thin, thin woman with a red cap pulled so low that she had to raise her chin to look at me blocked my path. “Ice-e?” She extended a cart toward me with a brutal shove. A regulation grocery cart, sealed in duct tape, enclosed with a plastic lid, a cardboard cut-out of brightly colored ice creams taped to its sides.

“Whoa,” I muttered, gripping the cart to keep from being run down. A plastic wheel jumped the rim of my sneaker, leaving a marked trail.

“Ice-e?” the woman repeated sternly.

I hadn’t noticed the man next to her. The old cat was just squatting there on the balls of his feet, arms extended at awkward angles from where they rested on each knee. In front of him stood a stack of newspapers and, atop the stack, a neat pile of quarters. I recognized the paper, a freebie like mine, but here on the street it cost a quarter.

I slapped some coins in his palm and snatched up a copy. The lead caught my eye:

The Crusading Home of Deliverance was located in a sprawling Victorian residence. It wouldn’t have been recognizable as a church were it not for the small cardboard sign and handmade cross posted in a none-too-clean bay window. I checked Detective Spurlock’s directions several times before rapping on the front door.

I’d tried to contact Janette after seeing the brief article about her brother in the competition, but she wasn’t taking my calls. So what was I doing? Seems I needed to know what happened to Edwin Stuckey after all.

“Are you here for evening service?” A smiling elderly woman dressed in white opened the door. I could see behind her into a drab parlor containing metal folding chairs, a podium, and what looked like a small organ.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m here to see Reverend Pine.”

Did I have an appointment? she inquired, continuing to smile.

I admitted I didn’t but assured her it was important, that I was here about Edwin Stuckey.

“Edwin. Yes.” She bowed her head. “We are still mourning his loss, but happy for his deliverance.”

“Yes, well... Reverend Pine?”

I followed the woman into the room and took a seat in the back row. The room was large and half-filled, all its occupants black, conversing in hushed voices.

“Son?” A slim, natty man dressed in a three-piece suit charged toward me with his hand extended. “I’m the Reverend Pine, and I welcome you to our sanctuary.” He shook my hand with an intense vigor before adjusting his chunky glasses and straightening his tie. “We can speak briefly in my office. I’ve got service in an hour and I must prepare.” He cleared his throat. “You understand.”

I studied the hallway he led me down. On either side of the wall were photographs of the reverend with parishioners and community dignitaries. His office, lined with two bookcases of theological texts, contained more of the same.

Reverend Pine took a seat behind his desk. “You’re here for Edwin?”

“Yes, sir.” I shifted in my seat. “I’m a reporter for the—”

“Weekly Item. I know.” He smiled wryly.

I peered up at him sharply.

“I keep myself informed, son.” He laughed and adjusted himself in his seat. “See, my congregation is this here community, and we are all interested in Edwin’s well-being. We even trust that you are interested in his well-being.”

I was suddenly growing wary of this man and his glib talk of dead Edwin’s well-being.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of shop you’re running here—”

“There’s no need to be disrespectful.” Reverend Pine pinned me with his gaze. “What do you want to know? Edwin Stuckey saw a flyer for our church revival last summer, showed up at our doors, and we welcomed him.”

“So why does his family think he was murdered? Why did his sister give the names of members of your congregation to the police?”

Pine shrugged nonchalantly. “Why? You best ask Edwin’s sister, Janette, yourself. Before he came to us, Edwin had no friends. He had no interests. He had no hope. He was very depressed. We tried to comfort him.”

“He killed himself.”

“No, he didn’t.” Pine took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. “There’s a problem in our society, son, that I’m sure you’re familiar with. Loss of hope.”

I stared at the man, attentive despite myself.

“Let me be clear here.” He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I do not advocate suicide. I did not encourage Edwin Stuckey to kill himself. I pray for his soul every day. But Edwin and his family are the reason I do what I do: People do lose hope and not all of them regain it. And not all of them can accept when hopelessness claims one of their own.”

“Look, Reverend Pine, that’s a nice sermon and all, but I’m just here for the facts,” I said.

He opened his arms. “Sadly, those are they.”

To my everlasting surprise, I sat through all three hours of Reverend Pine’s service. It was motivating, it was uplifting, it was hopeful. The tears, the tambourines, the shouting. Most importantly, though, it did not compel me to commit suicide. It made me want to get on with my life.

When the door of Deliverance closed behind me and I stepped onto the cracked sidewalk beyond its front stairway, I decided to phone Janette one final time. I watched a group of middle school girls skip double-dutch further down the street. The clothesline they were using for a jump rope slapped the pavement fiercely and their chants rippled down the block: “All, all, all in together, any kind of weather...”

The father answered, said Janette was out. “Mr. Stuckey, this is Douglass, the reporter,” I began.

“Yes?” His voice rose to an expectant pitch. “Any progress?”

“See the teacher looking out the window. Dong, dong, the fire-bell...” The girls picked up their volume, feet racing the rope.

On the line I let out a sigh, and I heard Mr. Stuckey deflating in the silence. “Unfortunately, sir, I am no longer able to pursue this story.” Across the street, a dude carrying a basketball under one arm shouted after a car rolling past on a wave of bass line.

“That boy who did that to himself was not my son, he was someone else. Somebody did something, or said something that—” Stuckey cleared his throat. “Someone should be held responsible.”

I hesitated, then snapped my phone shut.

“How many ringers can you take? One, two, three, four...” The girls ticked off their chant behind me.

About the contributors

Jillian Abbott's short stories have won awards in the United States and Australia. She is a reporter at the Queens Chronicle and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Writer Magazine, and many other publications. She’s currently at work on a new mystery series as well as her second Morgan Blake thriller. She lives in Queens.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award — nominated author of Queenpin, The Song Is You, and Die a Little, as well as the nonfiction study, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Shailly Agnihotri was born in India, grew up in Baton Rouge, and now lives in New York City. She is a filmmaker and recently completed a documentary entitled Three Soldiers. Her other projects include a feature film, Sangrita (in pre-production), and a novel, East River. She likes to consult Vedic astrologers, buy silver jewelry, and eat spicy chat in Jackson Heights.

Mary Byrne was born in Ireland and now divides her time between teaching, translating, and writing. She collaborated with Lawrence Durrell on his final book of essays, and her short fiction has been published in Ireland, England, France, Canada, and the United States. Byrne won the 1986 Hennessy Literary Award and currently lives in France.

Tori Carrington (a.k.a., Lori and Tony Karayianni) has published nearly forty titles, including those in the Sofie Metropolis, P.I. series, which are set in Astoria, Queens.

Jill Eisenstadt is the author of two novels set in Queens, From Rockaway and Kiss Out. She is an occasional contributor to the New York Times, among other publications, and is a part-time writing professor at The New School’s Eugene Lang College. Her Queens Noir story, “The Golden Venture,” is based on a real event in the borough’s history.

Victoria Eng was born and raised in Chinatown and Queens. She is a graduate of Hunter College and holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. Her work has been published in The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings about New York City. She lived in New Mexico and Costa Rica for seven years, and is currently back in New York working on a historical novel set in Chinatown.

Maggie Estep has published six books and is working on her seventh, Alice Fantastic, which came to be when Robert Knightly asked her to write something for Queens Noir. Her favorite parts of Queens are the Kissena Velodrome, Aqueduct Racetrack, and Fort Tilden in Rockaway.

Belinda Farley resides in Harlem, not Queens, and is currently at work on a novel.

Alan Gordon is the author of the Fools’ Guild Mysteries, including the forthcoming novel The Moneylender of Toulouse and, most recently, The Lark’s Lament. He has been a resident of Queens’ second oldest co-op since 1987, and is a defender of the borough’s alleged miscreants as a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. Gordon is the father of one genuine Queensian, and has been a Little League coach for six years, which has taught him all he needs to know about hard-boiled types.

Joseph Guglielmelli grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He cultivated his love of mysteries by reading golden age classics found while browsing in tiny bookstores in the shadow of the elevated tracks of the 7 train. For the past thirteen years, Joe has been coowner of The Black Orchid Bookshop, which was the 2006 recipient of the Raven Award given by Mystery Writers of America.

Denis Hamill writes a column about Queens for the New York Daily News and has written ten novels, including, Fork in the Road, recently purchased by Alexander Payne’s company for a feature film from Fox Searchlight. He lives in Queens.

Patricia King is the author of four books on business subjects, including Never Work for a Jerk. Her forthcoming book — The Monster in the Corner Office — will be published in 2008.

Robert Knightly moved to Jackson Heights in 1995 and works as a Legal Aid criminal defense lawyer in the Queens courts. As a teenager, he dug graves one summer in First Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, where he set his story for this volume. His short story “Take the Man’s Pay,” from Akashic’s Manhattan Noir, was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. As an NYPD officer and sergeant he patrolled Brooklyn and Manhattan for twenty years.

Glenville Lovell has published four novels: Fire in the Canes, Song of Night, Too Beautiful to Die, and Love and Death in Brooklyn. His stories haved appeared in Conjunctions, Shades of Black, Wanderlust: Erotic Travel Tales, and Hardboiled Brooklyn. For more information, visit www.glenvillelovell.com

Liz Martinez has lived in Woodside, Queens, for the past fifteen years. She is currently collaborating on a mystery anthology with fellow award-winning Mexican-American writer Sarah Cortez. “Lights Out for Frankie” was inspired by an organized retail crime case solved by legendary police detectives Eric Hernando and Sergeant Louie Torres of the Holmdel, New Jersey police department.

Stephen Solomita is the author of sixteen novels. He was born and raised in Bayside, Queens, not far from College Point, the setting for “Crazy Jill Saves the Slinky.”

Kim Sykes is an actress and writer who lives in New York City. She frequently works at Silvercup Studios.

K.J.A. Wishnia's first novel featuring Ecuadorian-American P.I. Filomena Buscarsela, 23 Shades of Black, was a finalist for both Edgar and Anthony Awards, and was followed by four other novels, including Soft Money and Red House. He lived in Ecuador for several years, and taught English at Queens College, CUNY. Wishnia gives special thanks to his students at Suffolk Community College, especially Victor Nieves, for providing him with the authentic ghetto phraseology.