“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 Rocawear 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.