Untitled Crime Story

woke up that

I

.— morning with my forehead jammed ' against the end of the mattress, which - itself was but­tressed up against a wall. The pressure seemed to go through the bone right into my brain. The digital clock on the floor next to me read 9:13 a.m. and too-bright sunlight was slamming down through curtainless win­dows that looked out over once industrial, soon to be gentrified Brooklyn. The pressure didn't lessen even after I was sitting up and watching the aboveground subway train barrel onto the Manhattan Bridge, rumbling like distant thunder.

I was thinking about lying back down and giving my brain a little more time to decompress, when what must have been a 16-wheel tractor-trailer hit the on-ramp of the BQE, bucking its chassis hard enough to sound like a bomb going off.

I could have slept for another eight hours but U-Man, Uhuru James, would be downstairs in 17 minutes. We had to get to LaGuar-dia to catch the 11:05 flight to Boston. No time for cof­fee. No time to call Doma to ask her if she would meet me that night after Uhuru and I got back from the funeral. No time to shower or eat because the food in the refrigerator needed to be prepared, or at least heated, and I only had 17 minutes...16 minutes...15 minutes...14 minutes.

I sat on the commode to piss because of the dizzi­ness brought on by the nine (or was it 12?) double shots of ice-cold raspberry vodka I had at the Russian speak­easy the night before. I tried (continued on page 11O)

CRIME STORY

(continued from page 51) to get Doma to come home with me but she told me in the gypsy cab that she was on the first day of her period. I don't know what I would have done with her in the morning anyway. Uhuru had told me that the one time he took her home she stole $200 out of his wallet. I couldn't get U-Man to drop her offon the way because we would barely have enough time to make the flight and, anyway, he hated Doma for stealing from him and he wouldn't have liked it if I was fucking her either. But in spite of all that—if Doma wasn't on the rag I would have brought her home and fucked her like a goddamned con­quering hero. Maybe I would have stayed up in bed with her all morning and blown off the services. I had no business going there in the first place.

It was 18 months, two weeks and three days past my 40th birthday, and in 12 min­utes Uhuru would be honking downstairs. U-Man was like a Chinese death sentence— always on time. And there I was with my drawers down around my ankles holding on to the wall so as not to fall off the porce­lain toilet seat.

Fathead had been declared dead and his mother called U-Man on the throwaway phone that the premed criminal master­mind had given him. I threw my phone away but U-Man held on to his. Mrs. Rob-bins had left the invitation to the funeral/ memorial on Uhuru's voice mail. When he called her back she told him that she didn't know any of his friends from New York and wanted at least one at the service. He didn't know where she got the num­ber. She told him that she couldn't find Fathead's old girlfriend's number.

U-Man should've thrown the damn phone away but, I don't know, it must have felt like a summons from some high court: If he didn't go there'd be a warrant issued for his capture and imprisonment. And when he asked me to come along with him, what could I say? The three of us weren't really friends but in a way we were closer. I at least owed it to Fathead, the cold fuck, to go there for his mom when she was all broke up because her son had disappeared. Nobody had seen or heard from him in nearly a year.

The cops don't know jack shit about any­thing. They had no idea what happened to Mr. Brandon "Fathead" Robbins. They probably just told his mom that he was dead because she kept calling them and they didn't have the time to hold the hand of some poor black woman blubbering over her nappy-headed, fat-assed son. They didn't know a thing. The newspaper report said that they found an XXXL T-shirt with a little blood on it that could have been his, in a car he might have stolen that had been gutted by fire; from that they said he was probably dead. But they didn't do a DNA test or find any witnesses or evidence. They just said foul play and not to expect to see him again. They didn't give a damn about

Fathead or his grieving mother or all his sad brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. They didn't care about his father­less illegitimate children or their mothers or the money the state was going to have to pay to miseducate, unemploy and incar­cerate those kids.

A horn honked down below. I staggered through the bedroom to the living room where I could lean out of the open window.

"Come on up, U-Man!" I shouted. "I need a couple a minutes!"

I hunkered down on the floor with my back against the west wall of the front room. I was spent from all the vodka and ciga­rette smoke, from the blunts and lines of coke, too.

You couldn't smoke tobacco, much less do drugs, in any legal establishment in New York anymore, but I had found places in the last year that were unlicensed, places where you could smoke, do blow or have sex in your booth and nobody would give you a second glance. Pressing my back against the wall I pushed myself up, almost fell from a dizzy spell and then blundered to the bedroom, where I sat on my one piece of furniture, a pine chair. I stepped into the pants lying there and stood up, pull­ing them to my waist. I had just snagged my ruby-red silk shirt from the floor when the doorbell, which sounded like the recess bell at my old elementary school, rang out so loudly that my teeth actually chattered. It was a long walk back through the living room, past the open kitchen and down the long hallway to the door. I stopped there feeling like an abused animal at the end of his chain.

The school bell rang again and I yanked the door open.

"Man, Friend, you look like dog shit" were the first words out of Uhuru's mouth. "No, no, no, no...you look like dog diarrhea."

U-Man was a few inches taller than I, and a shade or two darker. People sometimes asked if we were cousins.

Closer, I once answered, cut from the same triple-X doth.

"You out at the Russian's last night?" Uhuru asked as he passed me walking into the sublet condo of the half-occupied building.

"Uh-huh."

"You ret to go?" Uhuru said.

"Do I look like I'm ready? I'ont think I could make it, man."

"Uh-huh." His grunt was an indictment. "That's why I told you the flight was at 11. It's really 12. I knew you'd be all hung-ovah from the Russian's. I told you 11 so I could come ovah an' get you up. So th'ow yo' ass in the shower and let's get this bad boy on."

I had to sit on the floor of the shower. It was a fancy stall in a high-priced building. A stockbroker had bought the unit but didn't want to move in yet, not until the building and the neighborhood had risen up to his standard. I knew a guy working as a porter in the place—Roger. Roger wanted them to make him a doorman when they finally had a permanent staff.

He didn't have much ambition but he knew the hustle.

I paid Roger $500 to lie me in, and then I gave the stockbroker $2,500 a month under the table so I could sit on his semiopaque green shower tiles trying to keep from heav­ing. The water ran over me like downpours must fall on rain forest aborigines along the Amazon. Hot water on exhausted flesh in between drug-induced orgies, hunting for­ays and turf wars.

"You gettin' it together in there, Friend?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm havin' a good ol' time in here."

Even though we'd only been acquainted for a year U-Man knew me better than I knew my own father, which, all things con­sidered, isn't saying much. Even though he'd only just turned 30 Uhuru could read me like I read most books. I think he liked me because of my education. I had three years and some change at CCNY, almost enough for a degree. I never finished, but that didn't matter because of my felony conviction: just one of those things.

Back before my arrest my mother was on disability and my sister worked at this ham­burger joint. She, my sister Wanette, had two kids and was pregnant again. It was only a three-room apartment my mother had. I was selling bootleg movies on East 153rd Street to keep food on the table and maybe save enough to get a place of my own.

It was all good.

I'd hit the street at seven in the morning, take a break from 11 to two and then come back around three. That way I got people going to work and school and those coming back home. I was clearing a couple hun­dred dollars a day until Maxwell Hardison came up on me. I never even heard of the motherfucker before but there he was telling me that I had to move because his man was going to sell movies there from now on.

Most businesses in this country are protected to a certain degree by guilds, mob­sters, unions, big government agencies, city councils and cops. But up in Harlem, all over Brooklyn and in the Bronx you had to take matters of protection into your own hands. And that's what I did.

I pulled out a hardwood baton from under my crate and put a few dents in Maxwell's head and sides. After that I whacked at his legs and he ran from my corner screaming. How was I to know that he was an undercover cop? How was I to know that he was setting up his own man to bring down the supplier? I told the police when they picked me up that I was just trying to protect my business. I told them that I hadn't hurt the man and I sure didn't know he was one of them. They didn't care. I got beat so bad that my lawyer had to get three continuances before I was able to show up in court. During that time my mother got evicted and Wanette lost her baby; the state came in and took the two kids that were left.

The judge had to find me guilty; she had to. But she suspended the sentence and made the cops that nearly killed me apol­ogize for what they'd done. The apology just made them hate me more. That's why I moved to Brooklyn....

"You okay in there?" Uhuru called. "Out in five."

It was maybe 10 when I came out of the bathroom and into the bedchamber of the unfurnished condo. Tall, dark and naturally thin, U-Man was standing in the middle of the room as if he were in the process of going from one place to another. I could see that my mattress had been pushed and the books under the win­dow were out of order. None of that was a surprise. U-Man was always looking for clues to what I had done with my share. I don't know what he would have done if he'd found out, but that didn't mat­ter because he wasn't ever going to find out. One thing I learned when I was very young was how to keep a secret secret. "You ready?" he asked. "Can I put my pants on first?" "Ain't nuthin' much to hide anyway." "More than enough for your sister." "Come on, Friend, let's go." Again, I put on my black silk trousers and the ruby-red shirt. There was an orange hat to go with the ensemble but that seemed a little over-the-top for a funeral.

Homeland Security had a field day with me that Tuesday. Everything from my belt buckle to the cell phone I forgot was in my pocket set off their damn machine. My driver's license was old and frayed— and therefore suspicious. I didn't have any luggage, not even a briefcase, and that was some kind of red flag too. I tried to tell them that I was just going up to a funeral.

"In a red shirt?"

"Man, this is what I got. I don't have no funeral suits up in my closet or no cotton pants like you got on. All I own is party clothes 'cause that's mostly what I do."

They didn't like me, but the supervisor couldn't find anything wrong. She stared at me long and hard, though. My eyes must have been nearly as red as my shirt.

I slept at the gate until U-Man dragged me onto the plane.

"Is he all right?" a flight attendant asked.

"My man been partyin' hard 12 months straight," U-Man explained.

I remember opening my eyes when we were in a rented SUV driving down a suburban road. We passed a sign that said i.kxington 4 milks. There were houses on either side of the highway-like road. At one point I saw a hornet's nest hanging from a power line stretched across the road. I remember that I was going to point it out to U-Man but then we passed under it and it was gone.

When I closed my eyes it was like I was

asleep and awake at the same time, in

between the real world and the world that

was me. I was remembering my sister beg­

ging me to help her kidnap her kids. She

knew where Tanya and Little John were liv­

ing in the Bronx and planned to take them

and go down to Tampa, where our mother

had gone to stay with her sister, Bertha. Aunt

B had seen the light and become a minister in

the Universal Church of Christ Incorporated.

I told Wanette that that was the first place the

cops would look and that Bertha would give

her up in a heartbeat. Wanette walked out of

my rented room that day and never talked

to me again. She refused to understand that

I was trying to stay out of trouble. That was

back when I thought I could get around the

felony conviction and get a good job working

for a bank or some other business

The engine cut off, leaving a peaceful feel­ing in its wake.

"Friend," Uhuru said.

A cool breeze wafted in from the win­dow. That pleasant draft revived me a little, reminding me of a spring day when fat Brandon Robbins dropped down on the other side of me at a table in the City Col­lege library.

"Friend Williams, right?" he asked.

"Who're you?"

"They call me Fathead." He made about a nickel's worth of small talk and then said,

"I heard it that you beat the shit out of an undercover cop."

"So?"

"That's some bad shit, man. I mean either you a fool or some kinda hero. Either way that's just what I need."

"You need?"

"Uh-huh. That's right, brutha," he said. Fathead had a very intelligent face. It was like he was seeing every possible angle, every sec­ond. He was in the biology department, doing a premed major. "I need and you do too."

He left it at that, but on the following day he came to my table again and explained that he had noticed a basement apartment on his old block of 164th Street. That apart­ment, he said, was frequented by many different drug dealers. They went in at all hours with nothing in their hands and left the same way. Finally, Fathead would see that late on Wednesday nights a little guy with two big guys stopped by the basement meeting place and would walk out with one or more big suitcases.

"It's got to be money, man," Fathead said, "big money too. You know it don't make sense that the drug dealers be droppin' off product and they don't evah leave with nuthin'. That apartment on 164 is the bank."

"Why you tellin' me this, man?"

"'Cause I don't know you but I know about you."

"What kinda sense do that make?"

"If we gonna take that money down, people can't be able to put us together. I figure I need two dudes to take that money wit' me."

"An' you think I'ma just follow you like some kinda fool?"

"Big suitcases, Friend. Big. You'n me both know what that means. That's med school and a house on the beach in Jamaica for me."

The third man was Uhuru. He was from the East Village, where it was common knowledge that he'd killed a neighborhood bully for raping one of his childhood girl­friends. Fathead thought that he needed somebody who had killed before in case his plan went awry. He brought us to a roof on the 165 side and from there we spied upon the basement apartment one block over. A lot of people went in and out of there and for three Wednesday nights straight a black Lincoln with three men would come by at three in the morning. These men always carried away at least one large suitcase, sometimes two. During that time Uhuru and I became friends. We never hung out together in our regular places and so it was pretty intense between the three of us. Many days Fathead went off on his own to put together the materials we needed for the heist. U-Man and I would get pizza and sit on the roof watching the bank. I told Uhuru that I came late to college and he told me that he couldn't read all that well. I tried to give him some pointers. He appreciated the help and I just liked him.

U-Man had told Fathead up front that he didn't want to hurt anybody in a permanent kind of way.

"Three mild headaches for a whole lotta cash, brother," Fathead said. "That's the trade we gonna make."

Fathead, who was short and weighed

at least 300 pounds, had moved off that block within a few days of realizing what that apartment was. He was a very smart guy, but he had no personality, no personal human connection to the world around him. Everything about him was a plan: from his education, to the girl he was dating and intended to marry, to the robbery. I le could work with strangers because other people were just moving parts to him. I could work with him because I knew that this was the only chance I would ever have to get some serious money in my hands; U-Man felt the same way I did.

Fathead had gotten a job at a midtown parking garage that he was supposed to close down every weeknight at midnight.

That gave him the choice of any car parked overnight.

On the night of the robbery he took a maroon station wagon with Jersey plates and picked us up in front of a fancy diner on 57th Street.

Fathead drove us to 165th Street. From around the block on 165 Uhuru and I went and climbed down into the shad­ows of a basement entrance a few build­ings away from the bank. Fathead had left ski masks and baseball bats in a trash can down there.

The Lincoln always parked in the same place and the men walked the same route (right past our hiding place). When they pulled up I called Fat­head on his cell. He answered and I said, "They're here."

The men went into the bank, spent their predictable seven minutes and came out again—carrying

three suitcases. As they passed us I whis­pered, "Now," on the cell phone and U-Man and I ran out, bashing heads as we went. I hit the biggest guy while U-Man swung on the other guard. His guy went down and out but mine only fell to one knee. I hit him again while Uhuru chased the little dude a few steps before turning out the lights on him. My heart was beating so fast that I wor­ried I might have a heart attack or faint. But then the station wagon pulled up and my thinking got straight again. We should have left one of those suitcases. But we were greedy enough that Fathead took the time to run out and help us.

We shoved the luggage into the back of the wagon and drove off—all in under two minutes.

That night we counted over $3 million in

the empty parking garage. Three million. I never expected to make (much less see) that much money in my entire life. Fathead had new suitcases for us and we divvied up the cash at lightning speed. The bankers had bundled it into $10,000 packs of hundred-dollar bills. 1 waited until nine and then went out to the storage place where I'd rented a room and put my money, my $1,162,000, in a place that only I knew about.

Later that morning my phone rang.

"Friend?"

"U-Man?"

"Fathead called. Said that somebody runned out from the bank and seen him. They lookin' for him all ovah Harlem."

"How did they recognize him?"

"They must'a kept tabs on all the buil-din's on that block and you know his fat ass stand out anyway. They might'a seen his face, too. His girlfriend's up in Boston this week. He wants me to come get him at her place tonight and take him to the train."

"Why you?"

"I'ont know. I guess he thinks 'cause I did somethin' for a friend once that I'm better'n you."

"You got to do it," I said. "You know if they catch his fat ass he will definitely give us up."

Uhuru picked up Fathead that night in a cream-colored Caddy that he stole from the parking garage. Fathead told him where the keys to the gate were hidden.

"Did you tell Friend about this?" was the first thing Fathead asked when he got into the front seat.

"Naw. But why shouldn't I?"

"He don't trust me. He probably think I'd turn him ovah if I was caught."

That's when I reached around from the backseat and stabbed him in the neck. He shrieked like some kind of animal, a pig or something, and I felt the blood on my hand. It was very warm and thick. I had never killed anybody before. Even then Fat­head wasn't fully dead right away. He was struggling, but I held him back against the seat until he stopped moving, until he died. Right after Fathead had expired U-Man and I looked at each other. Now we had murdered a man together; you can't get a closer bond than that. Uhuru drove a few

i. unui u move a lew blocks to a car he had borrowed and I took the wheel of the sto­len car. He followed me to a bog I knew about a few miles outside of Riverhead, Long Island. It was a place this white girl I once dated used to take me. She said it was our secret place, but I knew that she just wanted to fuck me in the backseat of her car where her boyfriend would never find us.

We buried Fat­

head's body deep.

After that we drove

to a deserted beach

out toward Montauk

and torched the sto­

len car with gasoline.

Before we burned

the car we took Fat­

head's bags from the

trunk. There was no

reason to burn his

share, just like there

was no reason for

him to expect us to

trust him in the first

goddamn place

Luxuriating in the

breeze I opened my eyes onto a huge, mazelike parking lot.

"This it, Friend."

"It is?"

"Uh-huh. Yeah. All we got to do is walk down them steps over there. Come on. Wake up."

"I'm sick."

"Get up, man. You know you better not be late to no funeral."

We started walking together, but I was moving slow and U-Man pulled ahead. The cemetery and chapel were at the bottom of a fairly long, simple wooden stairway. Uhuru was already a couple of dozen steps down when I got to the top stair. I stopped because from there I could see the sky. It was beautiful. The

air was clean and cool and I was the clos­

est I'd been to sober in a long time. I felt

almost good

While U-Man's shoes were clattering down the stairs, bound as always to be on time, I was, in a single breath, deciding to change my life. I would find Wanette, help her get her kids back, and move down to Tampa, maybe even become a deacon in Aunt B's incorporated church.

I heard a woman's voice and U-Man answering. Another man, in a brusque tone, said something, and a chill entered my daydream.

A muffled shot sounded and I looked down just in time to see maybe my only true friend crumple to the ground. He had turned to run back up the stairs. A woman, I couldn't tell her age, and two men stood over my friend's prostrate form; all four of them were black like me. One man looked up and my heart lurched. I turned to run. That vast blue sky was in my chest and legs. I was past the rental car and out on the road so quickly that I was disorien­tated for a moment. There was a shopping mall across the street and, beyond that, an undeveloped lot that led up to a hill that still had trees covering it.

In less than a minute I crossed the road and passed up into the scant wood. There

I laid down flat and opened my eyes wide enough to take in three skies.

The two men that shot Uhuru James came out from the cemetery driveway. They scanned the area with practiced efficiency. One of them gazed up at my little woods. I swear he was looking right at me. It took everything I had not to jump up and run.

The woman came up then and the three of them conferred. They couldn't stay long. There was a man shot, maybe dead, and they had the weapon on them. A minute passed and then another. The assassins made their way back to the parking lot.

A few minutes later a broad-faced dark green Chevy rolled out of the driveway.

I stayed on my belly for two hours. Then I crawled through the woods and down into a junkyard on the other side of the hill. I crossed that devastation to another street, called a taxi that took me to Boston's Chi­natown. From there I took the $10 Chinese bus back to New York.

The men who ran the bank must've got­ten to Fathead's place after they recognized him. They must've found the phone num­bers of the cell phones he gave us; maybe he had Uhuru's name next to it. U-Man had said that there were a lot of voice mails with nobody speaking. U-Man never answered and only used the phone when he really

needed it. He was a poor man down in his bones and couldn't throw anything of value away. Then the woman calling herself Fat­head's mother left her lie about a funeral. It was all a setup and it worked—they got him and almost got me.

It was a long bus ride—eight hours—and that was good because I had time to think. Sooner or later somebody was going to fig­ure out who Uhuru was. And we'd been running together since the heist because, we believed, no one could connect us to Fat­head. And even though I'd spent a lot of money in the last year it was mostly what I got from Fathead's share. I had dodged a bullet and was still rich. I racked my brain trying to remember what Uhuru said about the woman who called him. I thought that he said that she called him U-Man. Uhuru told me that Fathead had made up that name for him. Fathead didn't want to use real names. And even if he had used my name it sounded like it was made up.

That was the turning point of my entire life. If I wanted to survive I had to leave everything I knew, just walk away.

When I got home I sat up the rest of the night wondering about where I had never been and where no one ever expected me

to be. At seven the next morning my new life was set. I boarded a train headed for Montpelier, Vermont that afternoon with two suitcases in my possession. I called them Mom and Dad and kept a close eye on them for the whole ride. A week later I had an apartment at the corner of State Street and Main in the middle of town.

This morning I woke up with my head pressed up against the headboard of my bed, the pressure reminding me of the morning of the last day of my life after 41 years, six months, two weeks and three days of living like a sleepwalker wandering up and down the streets of New York.

I've been here, in Montpelier, for a year. Not too many people of color living in the Green Mountain state capital but the white people leave me alone. Ruby says it's because they never had slavery in Vermont.

"They don't hate you because they don't feel guilty about slavery," she whispered before kissing my chest.

I tell anyone who asks that I'm living on a small inheritance left by my mother.

There are colleges all around the tiny city and bookstores where I can find my read­ing pleasure. Nobody knows me except this one young woman—Ruby. She's white, of course, a waitress who doesn't ask many questions. I have anonymity in Vermont; I mean I stand out like a sore thumb, but nobody knows me. That obscurity, I now realize, has been my entire life. My one suc­cess, Fathead's heist, only underscored the vagueness of my existence.

I always thought that the only thing hold­ing me back was not having any money. But now I realize that was never true.

My biggest score was like winning a vaca­tion to a South Pacific island, only nobody told me that the destination was deserted and the ticket was one way. And so here I sit, sober and aware that one day someone is going to kill me; either they will find me and send their assassins, or I'll finally go home, or maybe down to Tampa, and they'll be wait­ing. But in the meantime I've read a dozen novels and seen about a hundred movies.

Every once in a while I audit a class lec­ture but I never sign up because someone might question my identity.

I've shaved my head and grown a beard.

I walk the few blocks between my front door and the capitol building twice a day. On that route I wave to people and even say hello now and then. Every time I see a new black face my heart races and my skin goes cold.

I bought a .45 pistol and a .30-30 hunter's rifle at Zeke's Guns and Ammo. I keep them both loaded and next to my bed. I don't smoke or drink, inhale or inject anything anymore. I am completely sober and aware in the small apartment, in the dark...alone except for when Ruby comes over after the late shift, sometimes.

She's a nice young woman but I plan to move on in another year or so, maybe up to Burlington or down to Brattleboro, some­place where nobody knows me, where a low-budget black man on the run can read his books and watch his movies in peace.