The Night Gardener

CHAPTER 5

Two men sat at a bar, drinking slowly from bottles. The day was warm, and the front door had been opened to cool the space and air it out. Beenie Man toasted from the house stereo, and a man and a woman danced lazily in the center of the room.

'Say that name again?' said Conrad Gaskins.

'Red Fury,' said Romeo Brock. He dragged off a Kool cigarette and let the smoke out slow.

'That ain't too common a name.'

'Wasn't his given name,' said Brock. 'Red was what he got called in the street, you know, 'cause of his light skin. Fury was on account of the car.'

'He drove a Mopar?'

'His woman did. Had personalized plates with her name on 'em, said "Coco."'

'All right, what happened?'

'Lotta shit. But I was thinking on this one murder he did. Red shot this dude dead in a carryout on Fourteenth Street, place called the House of Soul. Coco was waitin on him outside in the car. Red comes walkin out slow, the gun still in his hand. He gets in the passenger side real calm, and Coco pulls out the space and drives off like she just taking a Sunday cruise. Neither of them was moving too fast, is what people say. It was like nothing special had gone down.'

'Ain't too smart, leavin off a murder with a car got personal plates.'

'This man didn't care about that. Shit, he wanted folks to know who he was.'

'Was it a Sport Fury?'

Brock nodded. 'Red over white. Seventy-one, had those hidden headlights. Auto on the tree, V-eight, four-barrel carb. Faster than a motherfucker, too.'

'Why they not call him Red Plymouth?'

'Red Fury sounds better,' said Brock. 'Red Plymouth don't ring out the same way.'

Romeo Brock drank the shoulders off a cold bottle of Red Stripe. A loaded revolver sat snugly inside the belt line of his slacks under a red shirt worn tails out. An ice pick, corked at the tip, was taped to his calf.

The business was owned by East African immigrants and located on a soon-to-be-reconstructed stretch of Florida Avenue, east of 7th, in LeDroit Park. An Ethiopian flag was painted on the sign out front, and Haile Selassie's framed image hung beside the wall of liquor behind the stick. The bar, called Hannibal's by the locals because that was the night tender's name, catered to Jamaicans, mostly, which appealed to Brock. His mother, who worked as a maid in a hotel up by the District line, had been born and raised in Kingston. Brock called himself Jamaican but had never set foot on the island. He was as American as folding money and war.

Beside Brock, on a leather-topped stool, sat Conrad Gaskins, his older cousin. Gaskins was short and powerful, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. His eyes were Asiatic and his facial bones were prominent. A scar from a razor blade, acquired in prison, ran diagonally down his left cheek. It did not ruin him with women and it gave men pause. He stank of perspiration. He had not changed out of his work clothes, which he'd been wearing all day.

Gaskins said, 'How he go down?'

'Red?' said Brock. 'He'd done so many murders, assaults, and kidnappings in three months' time that he couldn't even keep track of who his enemies was.'

'Man was on a regular crime spree.'

'Shit, police and the Mob was both after him in the end. You heard of the Genovese family in New York, right?'

'Sure.'

'They had a contract out on his black ass, is what people say. Whether he knew it or not, he killed some man was connected. I guess that's why he left town.'

'He was got, though,' said Gaskins.

'Everyone gets got; you know that. It's how you roll on the way there.'

'Was it the police or the Corleones?'

'FBI got him down in Tennessee. Or West Virginia, I don't know. Caught him sleepin in one of them motor courts.'

'They kill him?'

'Nah. He got doomed in the federal joint. Marion, I believe. White boys murdered his ass.'

'Aryan Brotherhood?'

'Uh-huh. Back then they kept the whites separate from the blacks. Now, you know that some of the Marion prison guards were hooked up with those white supremacists. People say they saw the guards passin out knives to the ABs right before they cornered Red out in the yard. He held them off with a trash can lid for an hour. It took eight of those motherfuckers to kill him.'

'That boy was fierce.'

'You know it. Red Fury was a man.'

Brock liked the old stories about outlaws like Red. Men who just didn't give a good fuck about the law or if and when they'd go down. Having other men talk about you in bars and on street corners after you were dead and gone, that's what made a life worth living. Otherwise, wasn't anything about you that was special. 'Cause everybody, straight and criminal alike, ended up covered in dirt. For that reason alone it was important to leave a powerful name behind.

'Finish your beer,' said Brock. 'We got shit to do.'

Out on the street, Brock and Gaskins went to Brock's car, a '96 black Impala SS. It was parked on Wiltberger, a block of bland row houses fronted by stoops rather than porches, a street that looked more like Baltimore than D.C. Wiltberger ran behind the storied Howard Theater, once the local stage for Motown and Stax artists and chitlin circuit comics, the south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line version of Harlem's Apollo. It had been a charred shell since the time of the riots and was now surrounded by a chain-link construction fence.

'Looks like they finally gonna make somethin out the Howard,' said Gaskins.

'Gonna do it like they did the Tivoli,' said Brock. 'They tryin to fuck this whole town up, you ask me.'

They drove out of LeDroit, into Northeast and down into Ivy City off of New York Avenue. For many years this had been one of the grimmest sections of town, off the commuter path of most residents and so ignored and forgotten, a knot of small streets holding warehouses, dilapidated row houses, and brick apartments with plywood doors and windows. It was the long-time home of prostitutes, pipeheads, heroin addicts, dealers, and down-and-out families. Ivy City was nearly framed by Gallaudet University and Mount Olivet Cemetery, with an opening into the neighborhood of Trinidad, once known as the home base of the city's most famous drug lord, Rayful Edmond.

Now properties were being purchased and refurbished all over town, in places that doubters had said would never come back: Far Northeast and Southeast, Petworth and Park View, LeDroit, and the waterfront area around South Capitol, where ground was set to break on the new baseball stadium. Even here in Ivy City, For Sale and Sold signs could be seen on seemingly undesirable properties. Apartment buildings that had been shells for squatters, shooters, and rats were being gutted and turned into condos. Houses were bought and flipped six months later. Workers had begun to remove the rotting wood, put glass in the window frames, and brush on fresh coats of paint. Roofers hauled shingles and tar buckets up ladders, and real estate agents stood on the sidewalks, nervously aware of their surroundings as they talked on their cells.

'They gonna fix up this shithole, too?' said Gaskins.

'Like puttin a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, you ask me,' said Brock.

'Where those boys at?' said Gaskins.

'They always around that corner up there,' said Brock. He drove slowly down Gallaudet Street, passing a row of boxy brick apartment structures opposite a shuttered elementary school.

Brock curbed the SS and cut its engine.

'There go that boy Charles,' said Brock, chinning in the direction of a thirteen-year-old who wore calf-length shorts, a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt, and blue-and-white Nikes. 'Think he slick, too. Duckin my ass.'

'He just a kid.'

'They all just kids. But they gonna grow tall soon enough. Punk 'em now, and they won't have the mind to rise up later on.'

'We don't need to be hurtin no kids, cousin.'

'Why not?'

Brock and Gaskins got out of the car and walked down a weedy sidewalk veined with cracks. Residents sitting on the steps outside their apartments and in folding chairs on lawns of dirt watched them as they approached a group of boys gathered at the intersection of Gallaudet and Fenwick streets. They were corner boys, standing on the spot where they stood on the days when they were not in school, and much of every night.

At the sight of Brock striding toward them, rangy and muscled beneath his red rayon shirt, they turned and ran. The boys moved with more immediacy than they would have had they been pulled up by police. They knew who Brock and Gaskins were and they knew what they were there for and what they would do to get it.

Two of the boys did not run because they realized that running would be futile. The older of the two was named Charles and the younger one was his friend James. Charles led a loosely formed group of teenagers and preteens who sold marijuana exclusively on that particular stretch of Gallaudet. They had started out selling it for fun and because they wanted to be gangsters, but now they found themselves with a growing business. They bought from a supplier in the Trinidad area who had his own retailers, some of whom quietly worked Ivy City, but the supplier did not begrudge them having a corner, as they turned his product and paid as they moved the inventory. Charles's people sold dimes in small plastic bags with tops that sealed.

Charles tried to keep his posture as Brock and Gaskins came up on him. Though James held his ground, he did not look into the eyes of Romeo Brock.

Brock had a foot of height on Charles. He got close in and looked down on the boy. Conrad Gaskins turned his back on them, crossed his arms, and eye-fucked the residents who were watching the scene from across the street.

'Damn, Charles,' said Brock. 'You look like you surprised to see me.'

'I knew you'd come.'

'So why you look surprised?' Brock gave him his bright and menacing smile. His features were sharp and angular, accentuated by a precisely groomed Vandyke. His ears were pointed. He liked to wear the color red. He looked like a tall devil.

'I was there,' said Charles. 'I was where you said.'

'No, you weren't.'

'You said meet me at the corner of Okie and Fenwick at nine o'clock. I was there.'

'I ain't say no motherfuckin Okie. I said Gallaudet and Fenwick, where we at right now. Made it real simple on your little ass, so you wouldn't get confused.'

'You said Okie.'

Brock's right hand flew up and slapped Charles hard across the face. Charles was knocked back a step, and his eyes rolled some as he took the strike. Tears welled in his eyes, and his closed lips went out like a muzzle. Far as stripping a boy of his pride, Brock knew that the open hand was more powerful than the closed fist.

'Where was we gonna meet?' said Brock.

'I…' Charles struggled to speak but could not.

'Aw, you fixin to cry?'

Charles shook his head.

'Are you a girl or a man?'

'I'm a man.'

'"I'm a man,"' repeated Brock. 'Well, if you are, you a poor excuse for one.'

A tear rolled down Charles's cheek. Brock laughed.

'Get the money and let's get gone,' said Gaskins, his back still turned.

'I'm gonna ask you again,' said Brock. 'Where was we supposed to meet, Charles?'

'Right here.'

'Good. And why you ain't post?'

"Cause I ain't had no money,' said Charles.

'You still in business, right?'

'I just now bought my stash. I'm fixin to have some money soon.'

'Oh, you gonna have some soon.'

'Uh-huh. Soon as I move my stash.'

'What's that lump in your pocket, then? And don't even try and tell me it's your manhood, 'cause we already established that you ain't got none.'

'Leave him alone,' said James.

Brock turned his attention to the smaller of the two boys, who couldn't have been more than twelve. He had braids under an NY cap turned sideways.

'You say somethin?' said Brock.

James raised his chin and for the first time looked Brock in the eye. His fists were balled as he spoke. 'I said, leave my boy alone.'

Brock's eyes crinkled at the corners. 'Look at you. Hey, Conrad, this boy here showin some heart.'

'I heard him,' said Gaskins. 'Let's go.'

'I'm here now,' said Charles desperately. 'I wasn't runnin. I been waitin on you to show all day.'

'But you shouldn't have lied. Now I'm 'a have to give you your medicine.'

'Please,' said Charles.

'Beggin-ass bitch.'

Brock grabbed hold of the right pocket on Charles's low-riding jean shorts and pulled down on it so violently that the boy fell to the sidewalk. The jeans ripped open at the side, exposing the inner pocket. Brock tore the pocket clean away and turned it inside out. He found cash and some dime bags of marijuana. He tossed the marijuana to the ground and counted the money. He frowned but slipped the money into his own pocket.

'One more thing,' said Brock.

Brock kicked Charles in the ribs. He kicked him again, his teeth bared, and Charles rolled over on his side as bile poured from his open mouth. James looked away.

Gaskins pulled on Brock's arm and moved between him and Charles. They stared at each other until the fire went out of Brock's eyes.

'Y'all coulda made this easy,' said Brock, stepping back and shaking his head. 'I was willin to share. I was only lookin to take half. But you had to fuck up and lie. And now you prob'ly thinking, We gonna get this motherfucker. We gonna come back on him, or we gonna find someone who can, and get righteous on his ass.' Brock straightened his shirt. 'But you know what? You never will. Y'all ain't man enough to fuck with me. And you don't have anyone to protect you. If you knew someone bad enough to do it, they dead or in jail. If you had someone in your life who gave a fuck about you to begin with, you wouldn't be out here on this corner. So what do you have? Your little-ass, no-ass selves.'

The boy on the ground said nothing and neither did his friend.

'What's my name?'

'Romeo,' said Charles, his eyes closed in pain.

'We'll be comin 'round again.'

Brock and Gaskins walked back to the Impala SS. None of the residents or onlookers had made a move to help the boys, and now they averted their eyes. None, Brock knew, would talk to the police. But he wasn't satisfied. It was too easy, and not worth the effort for a man of his reputation. It hadn't been a challenge, and the payoff was shit.

'How much we get?' said Gaskins.

'Buck forty.'

'Hardly seem worth it.'

'Don't worry. We gonna step it up from here.'

'It's lookin to me that all we doin is roughin kids and shit. I'm askin where we goin with this, cuz. What's this about?'

'Money and respect,' said Brock.

They got into the car.

'We'll head back to Northwest,' said Brock. 'Got a couple more appointments we need to keep.'

'Not me,' said Gaskins. 'I got to be up before the sunrise. 'Less you sayin you need me.'

'I'll drop you off at the house,' said Brock. 'I can handle the rest myself.'

Brock made a call on his cell, ignitioned the SS, and drove off.

Soon after he and Gaskins left the neighborhood, a police cruiser came slowly down Gallaudet. Its driver, a white man in uniform, looked at the residents in front of the apartments and at the boy on the corner who was helping another boy, holding his side, to his feet. The uniformed officer gave the cruiser gas and continued on his way.