Brooklyn Noir Page 13

  They found that babies who were held and hugged and kissed and loved will cry when other babies are crying, demonstrating empathy (not to be confused with sympathy), while infants that were not loved remain silent while other babies wept.

  I didn’t remember other babies crying when I was grow-ing up, but if they did, I probably just found it annoying. I wrote back, asking about other ingredients that go into the murderous cookie dough.

  They found an inordinate amount of killers suffered from some kind of head trauma.

  I did remember hitting my head as a kid, but I also remembered other kids of my age group suffering from head injuries. In my old neighborhood, kids fell out of trees, off bicycles, down stairs all the time.

  What else? I persisted.

  Many violent personalities were victims of violence themselves during their childhood.

  You sound like you’ve read your stuff, I fired back, pissed at her simplistic, Martha Stewart recipe for how to shake and bake a murderer.

  Only because I live in constant fear of crime. Is that so wrong? Don’t you have any fears?

  Sure.

  What are they?

  It was the perfect opportunity, so I wrote back: I’ll tell you mine, but only if you tell me yours.

  Fine, you first.

  Attempting to be truly macabre, I wrote: Having my penis slowly dissected with my own scalpel. What about you?

  Being cut off. Just floating in a bottomless pit of blackness, still alive, with only your own worthless existence to contemplate. That’s the most harrowing thing I can think of. Apparently she had given the question some thought.

  That engendered my newest fantasy. When I finally found her that’s what I’d do. After blinding and paralyzing her, I’d submerge her in a sensory-deprivation tank with water matching her skin temperature so that she’d feel nothing. Then I’d slip a tube down her throat for oxygen, and an IV drip in her arm for nutrients. I’d just leave her alive for a month or two until she slowly starved to death.

  Some weeks later, two events occurred within days of each other. The first was a simple warning from my e-mail server, stating that I was running out of space for my account. Always a pack rat, reluctant to delete anything, I was forced to download all the e-mails she had sent to me. Upon doing this, I reread all her little messages—they had all the tedium of a drawing-room romance. Aside from that, though, I became aware for the first time exactly how many little geographic references she had made over the weeks and months.

  While walking home the next day, I noticed that the decennial census had just commenced. Young folks with shoulder bags that read U.S. Census were tramping around my neighborhood. Immediately, it struck me that this would be an ideal cover for someone who wanted to inconspicuously canvas an area. I let out an accidental squeal as I realized that an excellent opportunity existed for me to find her.

  I had planned to simply join up and work for the census, but the very next afternoon I stopped at a local Burger King. That’s when I saw a group of them. Four census enumerators were going over their forms with what looked to be a supervisor. I bought a burger and coffee, and taking off my jacket, I headed to a small table at one end where they were sitting. Slowly sipping my coffee and eating my burger, I waited.

  When one census enumerator was up getting food and another was in the bathroom, only two remained at the table. I approached discreetly and draped my jacket over the nearst U.S. Census bag, which was sitting on the floor. Then, pulling it under my arm, I dashed out.

  Now it was a question of which neighborhood. All the clues were there. It was simply a matter of triangulating the various details she had mentioned in her e-mails. I extracted and isolated every single geographical reference into a list. The three most significant details were that she lived a few blocks from the river, and that there was a view of both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. In Dumbo you couldn’t make out the statue. From Cobble Hill you couldn’t see the Bridge. Only Brooklyn Heights allowed views of both—it was just that easy. In fact, those two simple variables only allowed about a three-block stretch of real estate. She had to either be on Montague Terrace, Pierrepont Place, or Columbia Terrace. Montague Terrace had a play-ground across the street that she had mentioned. Behind the Breukelen, a door-manned apartment building, was a row of three small brownstones. She had to be in one of them. Two of the brownstones were single-family occupancies. The last one had apartments.

  I came early the next day, ready to wait her out. Try to see if I could spot a curly-red-haired middle-aged woman with a dark green sea horse tattoo on her ankle. Red is a minority hair color, so the fact that I had insisted she show it was further proof of my superior intellect.

  Her sea horse would be the confirming mark, yet she would have to be wearing a dress or shorts in order to spot the tattoo. As this was unlikely, I realized I might have to subtly interrogate any possible suspects. After four hours, a half-dozen women had come and gone from the buildings, but no big red.

  Finally, around 4, before everyone came home from work—and the risk of her sharp screams could get me caught—I pulled on the census bag, put on a hat, a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, and decided to knock on a few doors.

  In the first brownstone was an old lady that loved to talk. In the second building was a shy kid whose parents weren’t home. Each of them was a perfectly useful victim, and though I couldn’t help but think that the police would eventually interview these two, I was hopeful that the disguise might work. After all, most people aren’t very observant.

  When I finally came to the old outdoor intercom of the last building, I felt my heart beat in my ears, and I knew she was here. Ringing the first-floor and then the second-floor apartments, I got no response. Upon pressing the loose top-floor button, I wondered if the buzzer was even connected to anything.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s timid voice peeped out.

  “Census.”

  A buzz sounded and the downstairs door popped open, allowing access to a musty, dark stairwell. There were no bikes, shopping carts, or baby carriages in the hallway. If there were other tenants in the building, I saw no immediate signs of them. By the time I got up the stairs to her door, it was slightly ajar. I opened it and called out, “Hello, U.S. Government, anyone home?”

  “Hi there,” a middle-aged woman muttered.

  “Hi, we didn’t get your census form,” I began, looking her up and down. Her hair was a brownish red bundle, so she could’ve been the one, but it wasn’t decisive. She was wearing loose shapeless pants, so it wasn’t evident if she had the tattoo on her calf. As I took a form out of my bag and started slowly going through the questions, she spotted the fact that the sides of my shirt were wet with perspiration—the result of hours in the sun waiting for her. I kept wiping off my forehead to keep the sweat from dripping on the form.

  “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.”

  NEW LOTS AVENUE

  BY NELSON GEORGE

  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.

  As Johnny sat, camera in lap, he teased little Essence, who welcomed the friendly male attention. Cynthia, who was feeling all sorts of conflicting feelings, said, “I know it’s good money and benefits, but niggas is buck out here.” Johnny seemed unconcerned. He’d made his decision about the kind of life he was living a long time ago. There was nothing Cynthia could say that her aunt Lucille hadn’t said many times before. Johnny just picked up his video camera, flipped the switch, and took a nice shot of Cynthia and Essence.

  “Tell your mother I send my love,” he said, as his cousin walked away and Essence waved at him.

  That evening, when Johnny’s car was gone (perhaps replaced by another, but who could tell?), Cynthia stopped by Victorious’s place. His parents lived downstairs and Victorious and his wife upstairs. Cynthia wondered if they could take a walk together. He was a lanky, slightly handsome yellow-skinned man with a goatee and a baldy. There was the tip of a tattoo visible on his neck just above the turned-up lapels of his beige Rocaw
ear jacket.

  She could see his breath in the cold and how the patterns of his breathing changed as she spoke. It surprised him that she had a DEA agent for a cousin, but nothing else she said did. Victorious told her the DEA had busted his apartment just the month before, confiscating “a lot of money,” but didn’t find any drugs. His wife had been there alone when it happened and the DEA had given her a receipt on the way out. She hadn’t been sleeping too well since that visit. In fact, he finally admitted to Cynthia, she’d moved back to her mother’s house in Bushwick just last week. Victorious told Cynthia what he told his wife—the money had come from the city job and from selling her jewelry, the drug stuff was just some mess. Cynthia didn’t speak on it: That part wasn’t her business. But he was a long-time friend. That’s why they were standing under the bare branches of a tree on New Lots Avenue on this night in thirty-degree weather.

  “Just be chill,” Cynthia told him finally. “Maybe you better try and get your money back, you know, and start a video store or a laundry. People always have to get their clothes washed.”

  “Good looking out,” he said, and then gave her a hug. She could feel his body shaking slightly, though his face was impassive. After Cynthia left, Victorious stood in the doorway of the two-story building, his head turning left and right as he peered into cars parked along the street and listened to the roar from the elevated IRT train a few blocks away. He’d lived on New Lots Avenue his whole life and almost every day thought about when he’d be ready to move.

  The next afternoon, when Johnny rolled by the house, video camera on the seat, he noticed that the curtains on Victorious’s windows were gone. It wouldn’t be until the day after that he discovered Victorious had moved.

  SCAVENGER HUNT

  BY NEAL POLLACK

  Coney Island

  The nighttime air at Coney smells like corn dogs and fried clams and a little bit like garbage. It’s a good smell, once you get used to it, and a good place. There are lights and activity and you never know who’s going to walk past. For an old man who’s kind of curious, but also kind of not interested in talking to anyone, it’s perfect. I can watch the people and still concentrate on my world, a swirl of wooden horses and songs from the thirties that no one remembers anymore. I oil the poles when they get squeaky, track real horses in the Post, and count the quarters at the end of the shift. There’s not much conversation. I’m basically an ugly bastard with a thick accent, and I don’t want to scare anyone. Why should I play to type? I wasn’t born to be the creepy guy who runs the carousel.