Jillian Abbott's - Queens Noir

“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.”