Manhattan Noir

The night was misty, colder than September had any right to be. Foggy, too. Murky clouds raced overhead, alternately hiding and revealing the moon.

Across the street the large, imposing black boulders in Central Park, looking like monster sentinels, cast great shadows on the street.

The wind wailed across the park, shaking the trees. Me, too. I wanted to rush back to the sanctuary of my apartment.

For a strange instant all was blackness and silence. Next I spotted a glint, then a shadow lurking just beyond the glow of the streetlamp. I ran across to the park side. Maureen stepped out of the shadows, her face highlighted by a macabre halo of lamp light.

Her blue dress, sans cape, was torn and bloody. Clutched against her chest, her sequined purse, a cell phone, and an elegant Barbie doll in a sparkling white wedding gown also specked with blood.

A yellow cab pulled up. “Taxi, folks?”

Maureen was in such a rush to get the door open she dropped her cell.

“Wait a minute,” I said, peering at the shadowy ground.

“Forget about it!” Maureen shrieked. “Hurry.”

The driver headed downtown to come around.

“No!” Maureen cried. “East. We’ve got to go across the park.”

I patted her hand. “He knows.”

She pulled her hand away. “Nobody knows.”

After a few turns we entered the park at 86th and traveled the empty road east, past angry stone walls, moonlit hundred-year-old shuddering trees, and through their ground-bound silhouettes.

Above, clouds were scudding across angry sky while Maureen mumbled variations of, “Look for him by moonlight, watch for him by moonlight, he’ll come for you by moonlight, fear for him by moonlight, fear him by moonlight…”

As we stopped on Second Avenue, thunder crashed.

Then came the deluge.

Maureen paid no attention to the rain pelting down. She jumped out at Second Avenue and ran to 81st Street. Her building was on the left, perhaps a hundred feet away, next door to a book shop.

I shoved some bills at the driver and chased after her. By the time I reached her building I was drenched. Maureen was nowhere in sight but I could hear her running up the stairs reciting her crazed mantra. “Seek the man by moonlight, snatch the man by moonlight, catch the man by moonlight, he’ll come for you by moonlight, beware of him by moonlight, despair for him by moonlight. Despair for me by moonlight.”

I raced up to the fourth landing two steps at a time and found Maureen in her apartment, soaked from the rain, sitting on the floor like a child. Her collection of Barbie dolls was piled in her lap and scattered around her. Within reach was a large, heavy frying pan and Ken in a dinner jacket, his head snapped off. Surrealistically, a bit of blood spotted his headless neck.

Trails of crimson led to the frying pan and to the open door of the bathroom and to Vitorio, his head bashed in.

“Why do they have to hit?” Maureen asked of her elegant Barbie. “Why do they have to hit?”

BUILDINGBY S. J. ROZAN

Harlem

Wouldn’t none of it have happened, hadn’t the Landry boy took to calling him “sir.”

His mama named him Rex and he was still resentful. Might have been okay for some boy with a handsome face, but that wasn’t him, and in school all it got him was, “Hey, lookee, here come that ugly Tie-RAN-o- sore!”

Later, when he did his stretch in Greenhaven, when someone said his name, he only heard “wrecks” because that’s what he’d made of his life.

It was a hard life, and nobody gave him nothing, not that that was some kind of excuse and he didn’t pretend it was.

His daddy could’ve been any of three different men and his mama never cared to find out. They stood around pointing their fingers at each other, and at her too, and so he didn’t want none of them for a daddy even if they’d wanted the job.

It meant he raised himself, pretty much, and he had to say, he done a lousy job of it.

But he wasn’t making excuses, how he ended up at Greenhaven. Berniece rolled on him, but hell, girl was probably scared shitless. He wouldn’t never hurt her, but how she supposed to know? What she see, he blown away her side man and was likely coming after her. Fact was, Chico’d porked the gun out, Rex just going there to talk to the brother, see about the rumors he was hearing down at the

Lenox Lounge. Seen Chico with Berniece, Bighead the bartender raised eyebrows at him, what’s up with that? So Rex just wanted to talk to Chico, and he even laughed, so funny seeing little skinny Chico with that big.45. Then he looked in Chico’s eyes, heard his voice, not the words but the sound just piling on. Chico never did know enough to shut up. Rex stood there as long as he could, looking at Chico, hearing his noise, and then a pressure started building inside him, building, building, and he threw himself on Chico and pulled the gun from Chico’s hand.

Next thing he knows, NYPD Blue is breaking down the door. Door was wrecked, and Rex was wrecked, and Chico sure as hell was wrecked. And he heard his own named different after that.

In Greenhaven, anyhow, they called you whatever damn thing they wanted, whatever they thought would get your goat. Most times he let it roll off, like when it was the C.O.’s jawing. But sometimes he could feel it happening, that building. And the next asshole gave him a hard time would find his teeth in the back of his throat. That right there accounted for Rex not making parole until his third hearing.

But he’d made it, and now he was out. And since he got out, no more fighting. No more brawling, nothing, not even with that crew of hip-hop assholes hung on the corner. They pissed him the hell off, bopping like they do, like they own the world. They didn’t never try nothing with him, though. They showed him some respect, behind his ten years at Greenhaven. Still, time to time he think they could use a little pounding.

But he ain’t gonna be the one. He was on parole, next eight motherfucking years. No way in hell he was going back inside, that was one thing for certain. He reminded himself that every time he felt the building, felt his temper start to go, found himself about to get physical with half-a-dozen boys could’ve been his children. Might have been his children hanging there, too, if Berniece hadn’t gone messing around with Chico, if she’d married him like he wanted, way back then.

Anyway, that was way back then. Berniece was packed and gone by the time he came out, and good riddance. He didn’t want no more to do with her, to do with nobody. He had a steady job, hard enough to come by. All he wanted was to come home, watch TV, drink some beer, and go to bed.

Less people you talk to, less trouble you could get in.

So he never did say nothing to the Landry boy.

That boy, seem like no one never gave him nothing, same as Rex. Raggedy clothes and no-name sneakers, tough way to make it on the street. But his mama raised him right.

Kid wasn’t no sissy. He put on that hard face Rex knew, face he used to wear himself. But he’d move out the way when the ladies come home from church, and he called Rex “sir.”

Time to time, Rex wanted to tell him watch out. Wanted to say, That crew you hanging with, they gonna drag you under.

He seen the kid’s face, seen how it light up when one of them older boys hand him a paper-bagged Bud; the kid way too young to drink. You fixing to turn out like me, Rex thought to tell him. You think these your homies, you think you tight with ’em. Next thing you know, one of ’em’s gonna be facing some serious time. That happen, he gonna sell the cops everyone’s ass, yours included.

But he kept his head down. Kid wasn’t his problem, and he never did say nothing.