JONATHAN “BORN” MILLER WAS, among other things (crack addict, mugger, prostitute, pimp), a vegetarian. At twenty-four years of age, and fresh from Rikers Island, he felt himself to be at peace with a world he finally understood. True, he was using crack again, but at nowhere near the suicidal pace that had preceded his incarceration. He had been crazy back then, crazy enough to smash the side window of a car waiting for a light at 39th and Ninth, just off the Lincoln Tunnel. He remembered reaching through the broken glass to grab the old broad sitting behind the wheel; he could still hear himself screaming at her for money like she was deaf. A poor helpless old vic in a pearl gray Mercedes-Benz, with cars in front of her and behind her. Where could she go?
Into her purse. Into her mother-fuckin’ purse for a can of mace. When she splashed that shit in his eyes, he stumbled back into the side of a moving delivery van and the mirror knocked him just flat enough for the police to arrive before he could crawl away. Who would believe such bad luck? Who could believe the mace after staying awake for three days and nothing to hold his head up? On top of which, the old cunt, instead of hauling ass like they always do, waits calmly for the pigs, then files a complaint.
The arresting officers (after they put a major beating on his ass) charged him with assault, assault with intent to kill, assault with a deadly weapon (the window glass), reckless endangerment (to the other drivers on Ninth Avenue), possession of a controlled substance, felony possession of a controlled substance, possession with intent to sell a controlled substance and paraphernalia. It was enough, considering the string of plea-bargained misdemeanors that had dominated his street life, to effectively put him away until his sixtieth birthday.
But the DA was sure to cut a deal in return for a guilty plea. All those charges were only there to frighten him into taking the wrong deal. That’s what the jailhouse lawyers, who listened to his case in return for the chicken cutlet sandwiches he smuggled out of the captains’ dining room, predicted. But he didn’t buy it. Fact is, he only turned to those bullshit artists because he never had a lawyer of his own. Never went to court, either. Or saw a cop or heard from anyone in law enforcement except for correction officers, who had less than no interest in his legal situation.
Six months later, his body strong from hundreds of hours in the gym, he had his act together, courtesy of an older inmate, Brian “DeadDog” Patterson, who had taught him (in exchange for certain reciprocal sexual favors) how to discipline his mind while he nourished his body by cleansing his system with fruits and vegetables. Only then, when he was pure in mind and body, when his act was tight and he was ready for the world, did he seek out a correction counselor and ask why his case hadn’t gone to trial. Three days later, after a chagrined Assistant DA named Myra Baines admitted to a phenomenally sarcastic Judge Calvin Smith that inmate Miller’s case had somehow been closed before his trial, Born Miller was out on the street.
Strong and confident, he wandered back to St. Nicholas Avenue, in Harlem, and begged twenty dollars from his mother. “I got to get me a place to stay, mama, else the man gon’ dump me back in the jail. I’m on probation.”
His mother, Maria, nodded maternally, then handed over the twenty because she was afraid of her son. She knew about his prior record, of course, both as a juvenile and as an adult, and she didn’t understand why they had let him out. She did, however, fully understand that twenty dollars would get rid of him, at least temporarily. At least long enough to make preparations for his return.
After six months of abstinence, the first hit on the pipe stem exploded simultaneously in his brain and his crotch. He was in a crack den/shooting gallery on 143rd Street and one of the women, a Dominican crack whore, offered to get him off for a hit on the pipe.
“Suck first, bitch,” he growled, careful not to betray how desperately horny he was. The girl, called Choch, turned the trick so fast and so efficiently, that Born Miller alternately fucked and smoked until the vials were empty. Then he went out to look for money.
At first he considered returning to his mother’s apartment, but now that she knew he was on the street, she’d either have her brother there or refuse to open the door. Born Miller wasn’t afraid of the brother, but he wanted crack and he wouldn’t get it there, no matter how many times he kicked ass. Better to take his chances in the street.
Ten minutes later, he was in a room on the second floor of an abandoned tenement near Convent Avenue, watching for prey, when three kids, teenagers, strolled by. The boys were fresh in their Task Force jackets, Guess jeans, and white Reeboks. One, the smallest, had a dope rope, a gold chain thicker than Miller’s thumb, hanging all the way down his chest. Man, did Born Miller want that fucker. That chain would keep him stoned for two weeks. Keep him stoned until he connected with DeadDog who was up in the Bronx somewhere.
The kids stopped to bullshit. Miller could see their lips moving, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then a miracle happened. Two of the boys left, walking west toward Riverside Park, while the third, the one with the chain, already unzipping his fly, turned into a narrow alleyway alongside the tenement.
Born Miller’s spirits jumped almost as high as they would when he fired up the pipe again. The broken piece of cinderblock someone had chipped out of the window seemed to leap into his hand. The boy with the chain was right below him, as if waiting for the hand of God to descend, and Born, leaning out over the empty windowframe, let the cinderblock go like a World War Two bombardier over Berlin.
The stone seemed to drift downward, as gently as a parachutist dropping onto a spring meadow, but when it found the boy’s head, it made a very audible sound, a solid chunk, and the boy, still pissing away, dropped to the concrete and lay motionless as the blood ran down along the side of his face and pooled up under his head.
Born Miller took the chain to a pawnshop in Chinatown and sold it for a straight one hundred dollars per ounce. The pawn broker, a squinty-eyed ancient who peered at him from behind two-inch plexiglass, would get three times as much when he offered it at retail, but Miller didn’t mind. The fucking thing weighed more than twelve ounces and the cash made a satisfying pocket print when he slipped it into his worn Levis. Talk about fresh—he had enough to tighten his threads and still beam up for a week.
“Say what, my man,” he called to the Chinaman before walking back onto Bayard Street. “Could y’all direct me to a public phone. I have to make an important call.” The Oriental responded with a shower of high-pitched Chinese, but Miller wasn’t insulted. It’s hard, he speculated, to disrespect a man who’s about to get as high as he was. “Bye-bye, li’l Chinaman,” he called. “Don’ eat too many wontons.”
He found a phone on the corner which not only worked, but, even more miraculously, was not in use, and dialed DeadDog’s phone number.
“Speakin’,” the voice on the other end announced without preamble.
“That y’all, DeadDog?” Miller asked.
“Born Miller?”
“That’s my name. Dope is my game.” He tried to be cute. The man always liked him when he was cute.
“Homeboy,” DeadDog shouted. “Just the man I been waitin’ on. I got plans for you, baby. We openin’ up new territory and you gonna be the main man. You gon’ be mah banker.”
Born Miller, under DeadDog’s spell as if they were both still at Rikers, nodded as he took in the information. Most drug operations revolve around a banker who collects the money and a mule who hands out the dope, a structure which makes it hard to rip off both ends at the same time. DeadDog was in the midst of setting up a crack and smack distributorship in a quiet Queens neighborhood. “Virgin territory, y’unnerstand what I’m sayin’? No competition. We gon’ start workin’ out this apartment, but we be on the street in a month. Turn these white boys and these yellow boys on to some good crack and we have more customers than we can handle. Y’unnerstand what I’m sayin’? Y’all hold yo head together, you gon’ be one rich nigger.”
Born Miller dutifully memorized the address DeadDog gave him, but the minute he was off the phone, he headed straight up the Bowery to the Lower East Side, where every kind of drug was readily available. The first dealer he saw, part of a crew that worked Allen Street, sold him twenty vials of crack and a battered .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog for three hundred dollars, throwing in a dozen extra rounds as a sign of good faith.
The tool felt good tucked into his waistband. It made him feel bigger, an insurance policy to prevent some punk from lifting his roll the way he’d yanked the gold off that brother’s neck. He did have every intention of heading out to Queens, but he made the mistake of ducking into a doorway for a quick hit on the pipe and didn’t stop sucking on it for two days, when a sudden burst of paranoia warned him that if he didn’t move soon, DeadDog’s offer would, indeed, be dead.
Two hours later, he was standing across the street from 337-11 37th Avenue and wondering just what kind of bullshit DeadDog was tossing these days. Except for a trio of moving men filling their truck with furniture, there wasn’t another black face anywhere on the street. Born was wearing his working clothes: nondescript Levis, cheap sneakers, a down jacket that reversed from black to blue and a throwaway Yankee baseball cap. His hair was close-cropped, without any of the fashionable designs black barbers shave into the scalps of their customers.
“You got to be cool on the streets, my man,” DeadDog had explained. “These boys with the fancy cars and the dope ropes all gon’ do long bits. Y’all shove yo shit in the man’s face, he get you if it take twenty years. Shit, the pig got all the money, he can afford to wait. Y’unnerstan’ what ah’m sayin’? We talkin’ survival here.”
But this scene didn’t have any cool to it. If coming into a white neighborhood (as far as Born Miller was concerned, the Orientals were even whiter than the maggots) and opening a crack den wasn’t throwing it in the pig’s face, he wasn’t a stoned-out coke freak. Born Miller was accustomed to tenements and projects, had never been outside Harlem until mama took him to the circus on his fifth birthday. He could deal with situations that would paralyze ordinary citizens; could, for instance, creep through an abandoned tenement on a pitch-black moonless night in search of a dealer. Or of prey.
Unfortunately, there were no abandoned tenements in Jackson Heights. The apartments and the two family homes, Born Miller noted in amazement, were nearly spotless. Even the shrubbery and the lawns had the look of a neighborhood holding its own against the tide of urban decay. How could DeadDog be such a fool? Anyone trying to work these streets would be busted in a minute. This was a place you came to do a quick rip-off, then subway up to Corona where the brothers lived. But even as he started to turn away, a black woman, Yolande Montgomery, came through the door of 337-11 and walked left, toward Broadway.
“Man,” Born Miller said out loud, “the sister’s a damn bulldyke. This shit is wrong.” Born Miller didn’t like it when things didn’t make sense; he didn’t like being confused. In fact, that was the only good thing about jail—you were never confused. It always came straight at you. Not like this shit. He knew he wasn’t ready for it, not after two days of crack, but he couldn’t seem to walk away, either. Then his eye found a stairwell leading to a long unused basement door and he walked down the steps without hesitation, pulling out the pipe stem as he went.
Five minutes later, his head was on straight, but he still couldn’t bring himself to enter the building. “Ain’t no up to this scene,” he whispered to the neurons popping off inside his head. “DeadDog know how bad I hate these white mother-fuckers. Can’t do mah shit when the maggots be on my case.” Finally, too stoned to stand still, he walked back along 37th Avenue, trying to mix with the pedestrians, but the shoppers, whites and Asians for the most part, made him even more uncomfortable. No matter how good the crack felt, he was aware of its darker side, of its potential for terror and panic. He felt like a declawed, toothless lion wandering among a herd of elephants. If they stampeded, he’d be trampled in a second.
Impulsively, he turned into the Happy Sea Produce Market. He hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, maybe an apple or some grapes would help take the edge off. He was rummaging through the apples when he noticed Mee-Suk Park looking at him. Her glance was casual, actually benevolent, but Born Miller felt it burn him as furiously as the perfunctory commands of the Correction Officers on Rikers Island. Why was that damn gook watching him? Was he some kind of freak that she should stare at him like that? He hated the Koreans worse than the Jews. At least the Jews hired blacks to front for them. The slopes didn’t trust nobody.
He strutted to the cash register, staring straight into her eyes. If the bitch was a Jew, he thought, she’d have turned away by now The gooks were mother-fucking hard to read. He couldn’t see anything in her eyes as she took his apples, dumped them on the scale, then punched the buttons on the register with practiced skill. When he paid her, she slapped the change down on the counter, ignoring his outstretched palm, and proceeded to the next customer. In an instant, the panic changed to anger. He had two pockets stuffed with crack vials and a .44 pressing against his gut. Why should he fear a slanty-eyed cunt?
Born Miller was what police like to call an opportunistic thief. He had no special modus operandi, but was content to accept whatever the day happened to offer. Thus, when he saw the New York Telephone envelope lying on the counter, he automatically noted the address: Yong Park, 337-11 37th Avenue, Apartment 3H. He looked around the store again, counting the Oriental faces busy with the fruits and vegetables. Koreans, Born Miller knew, worked very hard. Most of the time, the whole family was involved, especially when it was busy. Maybe he’d make a quick stop in 3H before he checked out DeadDog’s scene. Everybody know the gooks ain’t trustin’ no banks. Might be any kind of money hidden behind the mattress.
On the way back to the Jackson Arms, he stopped in the stairway to really do his head up, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be coming down for a couple of days. Not until he connected for enough smack to grease the runway. When he walked across the street to 337-11, he was buzzing from his crotch to his eyeballs, but he noted the broken front door with surprise. Definitely wrong for honkey heaven. And someone had torn out the mailboxes, jimmied them with a steel bar so they hung out like broken teeth. And the elevator smelled of piss, the door closing in little jerks, the cage shaking so wildly that Born thought he was back in the projects.
Apartment 3H, as Born expected, had two double-bolt locks in addition to the landlord-supplied burglar’s special under the doorknob. DeadDog had introduced him to the fundamentals of lock-picking in Rikers, but he didn’t have the patience to spend weeks setting up a score. He knew there was a much simpler way and once he had 3H properly placed within the geography of the Jackson Arms, he went back outside the building, to the rear, and began to climb the appropriate fire escape.
It was after three o’clock and most of the housewives had gathered up their broods and retired to the kitchen. The sun had begun to drop behind the skyline of Manhattan; it peered dimly through gathering clouds. None of this, though it undeniably aided him, ever pierced the glow suffusing Born Miller’s brain. In his mind, the deed was already accomplished and he stopped on the first landing to listen to the voices in apartment 1H while he fired up the pipe.
Five minutes later, he was outside Yong Park’s window, staring, undismayed, at the window gate. “Pussy shit,” he said, then climbed to the railing and casually executed a graceful leap to an adjoining window ledge. He was prepared to crack the glass with the butt of his newly acquired .44, but the window slid upward at his touch and he was inside without making a sound.
He listened carefully for a moment, crouched by the side of a bed, but there was no one in the apartment. Only the soothing hiss of crack dancing up and down his spine. Still cautious, he went from room to room, carefully opening doors, his “tool,” his .44, in his hand.
The trick when doing burglaries, he knew, was to get in and out as fast as he could. It was like banks, in a way. Every second counted. Unless you were so fuckin’ stoned, your mind was on Pluto. Unless you were so fuckin’ stoned, you were hopin’ the assholes’d show up.
Born Miller giggled, as he thrust the barrel of the Bulldog .44 into his waistband and pulled out the pipe. This time the crack lit up what he called “the safety zone.” He had the revolver, a dozen vials filled with tiny white pellets, a pocketful of twenty-dollar bills and every hope of a big score in the great here and now. That was the safety zone. The Cave of the Untouchable. Fresh and tight.
He started in the back, in the adult bedroom, with the mattress and the boxspring, slicing the covers neatly, working his hand around the yellowing foam. Nothing. He went to the bureaus, pulling out the drawers, overturning them on the bed, examining the contents. He ripped open a jewelry box, snarling at the cheap costume pieces, then smashed it to pieces on the top of the bureau.
“Sweet baby, show me gold.” He stuffed the two chains and the earrings that tumbled out of the secret drawer into his pockets, knowing this was only the beginning, then yanked both bureaus away from the wall, examining the backs for taped packages, tipping them against the bed so he could check the bottoms. The wall mirror followed, crashing to pieces.
He was on top of his game, now, working up a real sweat. After all those months in Rikers, his act was tight. Bad Born Miller come up to breathe. Check him out.
He took down the large cross hanging on the wall by the headboard with every intention of pissing all over it. Show the slopes where his head was at. But when he tossed it on the bed, the back slid out in his hand and a roll of bills tumbled onto the mountain of clothing already placed on the torn mattress.
The bills, a thick stack of twenties and fifties, were in his hand almost before they hit the bed. He cradled them in his palm as if holding a lover’s breast. A little voice whispered, “Get out quick. Get in. Get out.” It was DeadDog’s voice, but this was too good to be believed. He sat on the edge of his bed, pulled out the pipe, inflated his brain to its proper level and was preparing to count the loot, when he heard the front door slam shut, the sharp clack of multiple locks being thrown, the sing-song voice of an older woman lecturing a child.
Born Miller looked around the room calmly, noting both the chaos and the open window. “Check this shit,” he whispered softly. The pipe was still in his hand and he was tempted to light it instead of either fleeing or preparing for battle, but he put it back into his pocket and strolled, his shoulder dipping with each step as he picked his way through the debris, to the open window. The old lady (he could almost see her wrinkled face screwed up so far her eyes were black lines against pale yellow skin) was still jabbering away. Why should he fear something so ugly? He flashed back to his first years in school, to a handful of Oriental children who always knew the answer. To the sullen grandmas waiting to see them safely home.
He looked at the window ledge and imagined himself stepping out and making the leap to the fire escape. There was a time he would have done it just to impress the homeboys on St. Nicholas Avenue, but DeadDog had cut that macho shit dead.
“You come in the window; you go out the door,” DeadDog had told him as they lay together on the cot in DeadDog’s cell. “You ain’t never take nothin’ you can’t hide in yo pocket. No televisions. No VCRs. No stereos. Y’unnerstan’ what ah’m sayin’? You don’t give the man no reason to search yo ass, so once you out the door, you home free.”
Out the mother-fuckin’ door, he thought. Ain’t no gook gon’ push Born Miller through no window. Fuck, no. Not when the boy got himself a .44 near touchin’ his dick.
He crept to the door and listened closely. The old lady and the kid were still going at it, the sharp meaningless sounds chipping away at his head. The need for the goddamned pipe was beginning to fill him and he knew he wasn’t about to get to it until after he offed the bitch. He wanted to crash through the door and just do it, but he remembered DeadDog’s instructions on cool, on how that urge to get the shit over with had put him in Rikers in the first place. Quickly, his ears still glued to the voices outside, he found a pair of panty hose in the pile on the bed, ripped one leg off them and pulled it over his face. “Okay, maggot,” he whispered, “here I come.”
He dropped to the floor and looked through the keyhole just as the old woman began marching the child along the hallway toward the bathroom. The kid was tiny, no more than three or four, and she was crying silently. The granny was as ageless as her body was shapeless, a sausage stuffed into a pink housedress. Her eyes, as she came right toward him, were tiny and lost in her wrinkled, ivory face.
He waited until he had just enough room to open the door before he rushed out into the hallway, the pistol raised above his head. The old lady, suddenly mute, stared up at him and her eyes widened until they were nearly as round as his.
“That’s a favor, bitch,” he said, bringing the butt of the gun down across the top of her head. “Makin’ them eyes round. People gon’ think you white.” He raised the gun again, but she was already dropping to the brown carpet. Blood was dripping from the tips of her stiff, black hair and the housedress had ridden up, bunching around her hips. Born Miller stared down at her heavy thighs, at the white strip of cotton running between her open legs.
“Ain’t this some shit,” he whispered. His crotch was already aflame as his fingers busied themselves with the pipe and a small vial of tiny white pellets. “Party time,” he announced to the pipe, to the warm buzz pulsing in his body, to the little girl with the red ribbon in her hair.