Manhattan Noir

“I told you, I don’t know nothing about that gun.”

His boss was watching from the doorway.

“You shouldn’t of come here,” Rex told the cops. “I need this job.”

“And we need that gun. And funny, we find none of those boys seems interested in talking to us. Can you believe that? Good thing the Landry boy already talked to you.”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, then.” The white teeth smiled, the brown ones following like a shadow. “Then it’s a good thing he’s going to.” The two cops made a point to nod and wave to Rex’s frowning boss as they left.

That night Rex dreamed he was back inside. Not in his cell, but in one of them crooked, leaky passageways they got all over Greenhaven, connecting someplace you don’t want to be in to someplace you don’t want to go. The passageway was filled with garbage and he was digging through it, his heart pounding, fit to burst, things getting scarier and scarier as he went looking for something, he didn’t even know what. He could feel the pressure building, building. And before he got even close to finding anything, a bright white shape and its dark shadow came and swept all the garbage up, and him too, buried him in it.

He woke up all tangled in sweaty sheets. Shit, he thought.

Shit, and shit.

That day he didn’t get as far as work, not even as far as the corner, before Something and Something Else come swooping, one from the front and one from the back, surrounding him all by their two selves.

“Let’s take a ride downtown,” Something said through them damn brown teeth.

“What the hell for?”

“You’re a material witness, Rex. Maybe you remembered some details that might help us.”

“I ain’t remembered nothing because ain’t nothing for me to remember! The Landry boy never said nothing to me!”

“Not even lately?”

“I ain’t spoke to him lately.”

“Why not? I thought we agreed you would.”

“Didn’t agree about nothing! I ain’t spoke to the kid. Look, I can’t go downtown with you. I got to get to work.”

“That’s okay, Rex. We’ll call your boss. We’ll explain where you are.”

Rex looked at them, a matched set in different colors. Looked a couple of times. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I tell you where the gun is.”

Because Rex had an idea, a great one, fucking genius.

Tell them a lie.

Why not? Say he seen someone, not the Landry boy and he wasn’t sure who, but someone, seen him drop a.45 in the basement. Make him up: tall kid, with one droopy eye. Not one of them rapper assholes from the corner. Someone he ain’t never seen before or since. Say, when he run into the Landry boy he’d been out to get some chips and beer, but when he come home from work earlier, he seen this tall kid then. Yeah. Yeah, that would work. Then he take them to the boiler room. They ain’t gonna find nothing, and he’d say, Well, shit, there’s where I seen him drop it. They’d be pissed, bust his balls that he ain’t told them before, but who gives a shit? After that, they’d go away, leave him alone.

“Okay,” he said.

He told them the story, listened to some bullshit about How come you ain’t told us before? He said, because he’s trying to stay out the whole thing, do they want to see the place or not? Of course they do. He took them into the basement.

“Here,” he said, and pointed to the darkest, dirtiest place, the shadows behind the furnace. Above the white teeth and the brown teeth a black nose and a white nose wrinkled all up, like don’t either of them want to go back there. “Shit,” he said, “right here,” and reached like he was gonna find something, moved his hand around. And thought, shit.

Shit if he don’t feel something hard and cold.

He wrapped two fingers around it and pulled it out.

Both cops jumped back, so funny, like Chico. “What the fuck!” one of them yelled, he didn’t see which. Then they both had guns pointing at him, standing legs spread, two hands like in the movies.

“Hey!” Rex told them, his heart thumping his chest like it want to get out and run away. “Chill! Y’all don’t want to get your hands dirty, I’m just taking it out for you.” He held up his hands, the.45 dangling.

Something Else took out a handkerchief, took the.45 with it, while Something kept his gun pointed at Rex. Whole thing over, they looked at it and looked at him. Finally they both smiled, all them teeth gleaming in the dark. “Thanks, Rex,” they told him.

Cops so grateful, they gave Rex a ride to work, so he ain’t late. He tell them drop him a block away, don’t want his boss seeing them.

“You think you’re a pretty smart son of a bitch, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.” And he did, finding them a fucking gun in a place he didn’t even know no gun was. And he did all day, till he come home just in time to see them two motherfuck-ers hauling the Landry boy out in handcuffs. The boy’s eyes looked right into Rex’s again, like before, and this time they looked even more scared.

More like Chico’s.

“What the fuck? What up with this?”

The white cop shrugged. “His gun, Rex.”

“It ain’t mine!” the boy shouted.

“Street says it’s your brother’s. Same thing.”

“How’s it the same thing?” Rex stood in their way.

“His brother’s in North Carolina, has been for a month. So it wasn’t him used it on the old lady.”

“Wasn’t me neither!”

“He just a kid,” Rex said.

“Old enough to be tried as an adult if the charge is serious. We’re talking about murder here, Rex. Hey, by the way, thanks.” The cop smiled his teeth at Rex. “We appreciate that you gave up the gun. I’d suggest you get out of the way now, though. Unless you want to come with us?”

The kid’s eyes widened when the cop said the part about the gun. He looked like Rex just took away all his candy, and he looked young enough to care.

That night Rex couldn’t sleep for dreaming.

He dreamed the Landry boy’s mama ask him to give the boy a Hershey’s bar but he can’t find him. He started to eat the chocolate himself but when he looked at it, it wasn’t no candy, it was old smelly garbage.

He dreamed Chico was walking down the street and he wouldn’t turn around when Rex called his name.

He dreamed he was standing in the middle of his apartment, pressure building inside him. The door and windows had bars on them, and he was stuck in there with the roaches.

At work his boss asked him, “How long did you work for my cousin, Rex?”

“Three years,” Rex said. “On and off.”

Rex could see him doing the math, see him thinking, How much do I owe this guy? Rex figured one more visit from them two detectives, he have his answer. Then where was Rex gonna get rent money from, even for that dump? And how was he gonna explain to his parole officer how come he can’t keep a job shoveling shit?

That night, same as the one before. This time when he woke up, Rex couldn’t remember what he dreamed, except all three of his mama’s men pointing and laughing at him, him being so little and them real big. Make him so mad, make all that pressure begin building, but nothing he can do.

Next day on the way to work he saw the Landry boy’s mama dressed in her church hat, getting on the subway. From the look in her eyes you might’ve thought someone punched her in the stomach. Long ride down to Rikers, Rex thought.

And more dreams the next night. This time he woke up at 4, sat staring out the window until the sky got gray.

When morning finally came, he called in sick. He spent the rest of the day getting let into Rikers to see the