Caught Stealing

– This is perfect for you, a real classic.

I know this gun. It’s a.32 Colt Detective Special. It’s a narrow snub-nose revolver with the hammer filed down to a nubbin so it won’t snag on anything as you whip it out of your shoulder holster. It has no safety, minimum recoil, is designed for concealment and very short range combat. I take the gun from Ed.

– Careful, it’s loaded.

I keep my finger off the trigger and keep the barrel of the weapon pointed at the floor. I thumb the catch and flip the cylinder open: full load, five rounds. I empty the bullets into the palm of my left hand, flip the cylinder closed, place my finger on the trigger, raise the weapon, point it at the wall, inhale and, in the pause just before I exhale, I squeeze the trigger in a single smooth motion. The action is just a bit tight, so that it gives you a real sense of control at the firing point. The hammer pulls back as the cylinder rotates and then snaps down hard with the sound unique to an empty gun.

– Hey, Paris, looks like our boy knows what he’s doing here.

Paris nods.

– Just full of hidden talents, ain’t he?

I hand the gun and the bullets back to Ed.

– I’ll pass. My mom wouldn’t like it.

I nod in the direction of a little black-and-white TV, with rabbit ears on top of it, that sits on the kitchen counter underneath a picture of a black Jesus.

– Any chance we might get a look at the game on that thing?

The brothersDuRanté look at each other and you’d think those boys might never stop laughing.

Mets vs. Braves: top of the third, no score, rain delay. The Giants game won’t start for a couple hours yet.

We flip on the news. They’ve found Russ. Some do-gooder got concerned when Russ’s body tumbled to the floor of the C train and lay there without moving for about five minutes. She waited until she got out at the JFK stop and told the station manager that there was a guy on the train who looked pretty sick. The train had pulled out of the station by then, but he radioed ahead. A couple stops down the line, some cops checked it out and things moved pretty quickly after that. They’re calling him one of my “known associates” and have added his murder to the list of crimes for which I am being sought.

Paris has been taking the guns and the money to the Caddie, along with a few odds and ends from the house, while Ed and I flip through the few channels that come in clearly on this relic TV.

– How’s it feel, Hank?

– What’s that?

– Being wanted?

I think about that. I think about it for a while.

– OK, I guess. I haven’t really been wanted for a long time.

– Infamous.

– Yeah.

– Kinda cool, isn’t it?

– Kinda.

– Got no past, nowhere to go back to.

– Yeah.

– Just today and maybe tomorrow.

– Yeah.

– ’Cept, course, you got people out there still.Right?

– Yeah.

– That’s tough, man, very tough. Me and Paris, we only got each other, so we just roll. Be tough to have folks out there worrying after you.

– Yeah.

– Best way to deal with that? Know what it is?

– What?

– Just don’t think about them. Justdon’t fucking think about them at all.

Paris comes back in, walks over to the TV and switches it off.

– Fuckin’ thing will rot your brain. Let’s go.

Once again, Paris drives while Ed and I ride in the back. Bud sits in my lap, being mellow. The Caddie is vintage prime, so there’s no tape deck, but Paris grabbed an oldboombox back at the apartment and he has it up in the front seat with him. He drives with one hand and, with the other, he sorts through a shoebox full of old cassettes, some store-bought, some homemade, none with cases. He pulls them out one after another, checks them out and tosses them back in the box. He pulls one out, reads the hand-lettered label on its front and sticks it in the player.

– Check it out.

He hits play. It’s Curtis Mayfield, “Keep on Keeping On.” Ed leans forward.

– Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah. You know this, Hank?

– Sure.

– Curtis. Wow.

He reaches into the front seat and turns it up. He and Paris sing along a little.

– Many think that we have blown it. But they, too, will soon admit that there’s still a lot of love among us and there’s still a lot of faith, warmth, and trust when we keep on keeping on.

They start laughing and Ed squeezes his brother’s shoulder and leans back next to me.

– That was our mom’s shit, all the classic soul, all the funky stuff.Talkin’ all the time about the music of our people and a “positive black self-image.”

Up front, Paris is still singing along under his breath. Ed leans his head close to mine and whispers.

– That’skinda why she washed her hands of us. Far as she was concerned, we turned out just another couple a nigger hoodlums and she raised us for better. I wrote her off years before, but Paris took it pretty hard,bein ’ cast out and never talkin’ to her before she died. He’s my big brother, butdamn, he’s sensitive.

We’re on the Queensboro Bridge, heading back into Manhattan. Ed points straight ahead.

– Take the scenic route. All goes well, none of us will see this place again, ’least not for a long-ass time.

Paris takes us west on 59th, along Central Park South, past the Plaza and the Ritz, to Columbus Circle and down Broadway. Someone visited me from California once and said he thought of Times Square as the pumping heart of New York. I told him it was more like the running asshole. But it is something to see, at night, in the rain.

By the time we reach Broadway and Astor, “The Underground” is playing. It’s all fucked up, distorted guitar and Curtis growling “the underground” over and over. Paris stops at the curb. I open the door and step out into pouring rain. I want to bring Bud, but Ed is afraid he’ll get in my way, so he’s making me leave him behind.

Ed sticks his head out the door. Rainwater streams off the brim of his hat. He’s holding Bud, keeping him from leaping out of the car after me.

– Now just do as you’re told this time, no fucking improvisation. We took you in this once. Fuck up again, I’m gonna take off the leashes an’ put the fucking dogs on your ass. Got it?

– Got it.

– Becool, Hank. In an hour, you’re gonna be on your way to a new an’ better life.

He ducks back into the car with Bud. The door slams shut, the Caddie rolls off. They gave me an old ball cap with an eight ball inexplicably embroidered on the front. I pull the cap down tighter on my head and walk around the block to my post.

I sit in the window at Starbucks, the one on Astor Place as opposed to the one a block away on Third