Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What the fuck did you slip me?”

“Nothing! I swear!”

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

“What did you slip me!”

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

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

Suddenly I felt myself growing weak.

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

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

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

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

“No!” she groaned. “Who?”

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

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

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

“Men are such half-wits,” she says.

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

“What’s your handle?”

“My what…?”

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

“What the fuck!” I yell out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Witnesses saw me come into your house!”

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

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

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

Brownsville

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

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

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

“Workin’ in this car?”

“Nice, huh?”

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

“Now I’m with DEA.”

“Since when?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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