IN SOME WAYS, MUHAMMAD Latif had more in common with Marek Najowski than with his partner, Marty Blanks. Like Marek, Latif enjoyed style for its own sake, while Marty Blanks had been committed to drab colors and a lower-than-low profile. Their differences had begun at the very roots of their experience. Blanks had grown up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood, had been taught (at least before he was sent off to the baby jails society euphemistically calls reform schools) by celibate nuns in long black robes. The men in his father’s world favored navy pea coats and black watchcaps. The women wore dark cotton dresses and rarely went outside without covering their heads with faded silk scarves.
Latif, on the other hand, had passed his formative years in the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side. He’d seen poverty at its worst—seen economically devastated human beings who owned little more than the clothes they put on their backs. No surprise that clothing then became a major form of self-expression for those who couldn’t penetrate the system.
“In New York, they built cages for their niggers,” Latif had explained to Marty Blanks. They were in Clinton at the time, caught in a lockdown after a small disturbance. “They called these cages ‘the projects’ and they said, ‘You niggers can live here cheap. You can’t leave, but you can live here cheap.’ It was always the man’s property that he was lettin’ you live on. Like the plantation was for the slaves. Word, Marty, from the time I got my hands on my first money, me and all the brothers I ran with, I put it on my back. ‘Get fresh’ don’t refer to no sister buyin’ a new couch. We leave that for the integrationists. ‘Get fresh’ means a new suit, a ruby ring, a mink coat.”
“That’s a nice story,” Blanks had returned evenly, “but you ain’t in the projects no more.”
“Say what? Marty, them projects are in my damn soul. I’m gonna die with them projects.”
“Look here, Muhammad,” Blanks had smiled, “bein’ Irish, I nat’rally have some cops in my family, so I can tell you for a fact that cops hate it when people like us throw it in their faces. Cops ain’t machines, Muhammad. Cops are mostly kids from the neighborhoods. If they think you’re shittin’ on ’em, they stop puttin’ out their hands and start bustin’ heads. You know it just as well as I do: if the pigs make you a target, you’re goin’ down.”
In the end, once they were out and establishing their business, Latif had given in to his partner’s paranoia. Low profile was central to Blanks; he went about his business as quietly as a Mafia don. Nobody moved unless movement was absolutely necessary and travel always involved bodyguards and elaborate precautions.
No surprise that, despite Muhammad’s sincere grief (he felt a chunk of himself, solid and fleshy, go into Blanks’ grave), he felt like a man who’d just escaped from prison. The gold jewelry came out of the drawer and the 500 Benz sedan with the heavily tinted windows and the three-hundred-watt stereo came out of the garage. Instead of surreptitious visits to his cousin’s and his mother, he had every intention of mingling with the other big players at the most exclusive uptown social clubs.
“Baby,” Latif explained to his sister, Lily Brown, “Marty was the best friend I ever had. Shit, he was the only friend. The only man I ever let that close to me. But he had one big fault that I could never show him. The boy thought he was gonna live forever without gettin’ himself busted or killed. Man was a pure fool about that. Way I see it, my life is gonna be damn sure short, so I wanna make it damn sure sweet.”
Lily Brown, who had her own priorities and her own business, nodded patiently. “Without Marty, it’s gonna be shorter still.” She was referring to Blanks’ near legendary savagery. It had always kept the ogres at bay.
“You remember the time he broke on Paco Santiago?” Latif asked, shaking his head. He’d cried at the grave and, again, on the ride back into the city. Now he felt the tears building.
“Marty was always buggin’ out on people who fucked with him,” Lily said, taking her brother’s hand.
“When Paco tried to jump the price on us, Marty was ready to beat him down in a minute. Didn’t matter that Paco had most of the guns in the room. Marty squeezes his face together, like he does when he’s pissed, and screams in Paco’s face: ‘Man, you fuckin’ wit’ me.’ Like he can’t believe what’s goin’ down.
“Paco says, ‘I can’ no hep it, man. The Customs got half my keeeeelos. I got to pay the man in South America, don’ I?’
“Marty says, ‘I don’t care if your mother took the coke and stuffed it up her greaseball ass. You ain’t jumpin’ no fuckin’ price on me. You think I done twenty years in jail to get ripped off by a punk?’ ”
Lily Brown shook her head in wonder. “You must’ve thought you was one dead nigger.”
“Check it out, Lily. You coulda cut the vibes in the room with a knife. There was three of us and six of them and all the mother-fuckers was armed to the max. Right then, I knew Marty Blanks was up in the zone somewhere, but I was pickin’ out my targets, too. Gettin’ ready for my dyin’ day. Only Paco opens his mouth and smiles like hate is chippin’ his teeth. Prob’ly, he’s thinkin’ if the shit goes down, Marty’s gonna take him out first, but whatever way it is, he does the deal at the original price and me and Marty’s reps are made.”
Lily smiled and shook her head again. Without thinking much about it, she bent her head to the mirror lying on the kitchen table and drew up a line of cocaine. Muhammad grinned at her. “That’s somethin’ else Marty didn’t approve of.”
“The boy was hard,” Lily declared. The coke was nearly pure; she could already feel it taking her up. “If you gonna be hard like that, what you need with money? Might as well get a straight job and live in the projects.”
Two hours later, a very stoned Muhammad Latif and his equally stoned sister, Lily Brown, emerged onto 49th Street. It was almost two in the morning, but a knot of junkies crowded around the steps leading to a basement apartment and a number of homeless alkies slept in doorways. Muhammad, who felt like a kid sneaking out of school, looked the street over and saw nothing frightening. The big players rarely fucked with each other, as long as payments were made on time. It’s the small dealers fighting over street corners who make the tabloids hum.
Lily’s 500 Benz, the one with the vanity plates that read HOMEGIRL, was parked at the curb, untouched by vandals. Muhammad ran his fingers over the pearl gray surface. He could see himself reflected in the paint. Not on the surface, but deep within the metal.
“Don’t you love this car?” Lily asked, a huge smile spread across her face. “Don’t you just love this mother-fuckin’ car?”
“I do, Lily,” Muhammad grinned, “I do love this mother-fuckin’ car.”
They got inside with every intention of heading for the bright lights, but the mother-fuckin’ car only made it half a block before Muhammad Latif received a strong reminder of Marty Blanks’ warnings. It was almost as if Blanks had reached up out of the grave to deliver a final lecture. Lily Brown, having carefully pulled out of the parking space, was still accelerating when an ancient Buick slid from between two vans and planted its nose directly in front of her right fender.
Fender benders are very common in the heavy Manhattan traffic. For the most part, they are never reported, either to the cops or to insurance companies. The three-year rise in insurance premiums comes to more than the cost of the repairs. For the same basic reasons, Manhattanites, unless they’re very, very rich, don’t like to drive new cars and have contempt for people who do.
Lily Brown, on the other hand, wanted her new car because most New Yorkers have to make do with dented clunkers. She was pissed when she got out of the car, and the contemptuous smile on the face of the white boy who got out of the Buick to meet her only fueled the anger rolling within her skull like cocaine boiling up in a pot of baking soda. Sensing Lily’s mood, Muhammad opened the passenger door and climbed out to calm her down. Lily was his older sister and he’d felt her temper more than once when they were growing up. The one thing they didn’t need, considering they had an ounce of cocaine in the glovebox, was a street fight.
“Lily,” Muhammad said in his gentlest, most reassuring voice, “Lily, I think…” He was so involved in defusing the potentially dangerous situation that he didn’t see the obviously drunk derelict wander out of the doorway behind him. He didn’t hear the alkie, either, but he felt the press of metal against his ribs, and when he looked down to see a sawed-off 12 gauge, an ancient double-barreled Ithaca with its two triggers hidden by the finger that caressed them, his voice (along with his basic psychological state) jumped into terror.
“Please. Don’t. Please. Don’t. Please.”
Lily, alerted to the drama behind, started to turn around, but was restrained by the driver of the Buick. Astounded by his touch, she spun back to face a gold shield and .38 S&W.
“Stay out of this, miss. It ain’t your problem.”
Muhammad Latif expected to be killed on the spot, just like in the movies. It wasn’t until after the alkie ordered him into the Mercedes, that he found the courage to raise his eyes from the shotgun to his assailant’s face. “I know you,” he said. “I know you.”
“If you say my name, I’ll kill you where you stand,” Moodrow replied evenly. “Get in the fuckin’ car right now.”
Muhammad found himself complying without ever making a clear decision to obey. Lily, further from the shotgun, was much less frightened, especially after she saw the badge. Dealers are used to being hassled on the street by ambitious narcs and she was sure the badge was genuine.
“If y’all want money,” she said contemptuously, “why don’t you just name your price. ’Stead of all this bullshit.”
The cop didn’t answer; he put his shield back in his pocket, but kept his hand on the butt of his .38. Lily, helpless, watched Muhammad get into the car, then push across the seat. The other cop, the big one, got in next to him.
“I’ll be back,” Muhammad called to Lily, as he slid the Mercedes by the Buick. “Soon as I find out what the man wants.”
He was rewarded by the twin barrels of the shotgun jamming into his ribs. The orders that followed were crisp and businesslike. “Work your way over to the West Side Highway. Head downtown. We’re goin’ over the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Look, Moodrow, if…”
“Don’t say a fuckin’ word, Muhammad. Not a word.”
Moodrow’s voice radiated danger. Latif felt it, but couldn’t eliminate the possibility that it was designed to get something from him. He decided to keep his mouth shut, to wait until Moodrow was ready to say what it was he wanted. At the same time, he made a second decision: he vowed that if God spared him, he would forever adhere to the lifestyle espoused by his dead partner. The only certainty in this mess, as far as he was concerned, was the inescapable fact that Marty Blanks would never have fallen into this trap.
Twenty minutes later, having made their way around the edge of the deserted island, they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, then cut east, down Tillary, to Flushing Avenue. Moodrow barked instructions (reinforcing them with the barrels of the Ithaca) as they drove beside the old Brooklyn Navy Yard and onto Kent Avenue in industrial Williamsburg. It was after three and the streets were temporarily deserted. Later, around six, when the small manufacturing lofts opened their doors, the hookers who serviced the truckdrivers would come out onto Kent Avenue, but at three, even the burglars seemed to have gone home.
“Slow down. Slow down and make a left.”
“Hey, man, this here’s the damn river.”
“Take the fucking left and turn your lights off.”
The tires crackled over a gravel drive and onto a wooden pier, one of dozens that had formerly served the shipping industry. The industry had gone to New Jersey twenty years before, leaving the piers behind to rot.
“Stop the car. Gimme your left hand.”
“You’re crazy, Moodrow. You’re goddamn crazy.”
“Shut the fuck up. Gimme your left hand.”
Moodrow closed one end of his handcuffs around Latif’s left wrist and yanked him across the car, sliding the cuffs through the bars on the headrest before locking him in.
“You got to talk to me, mother-fucker,” Latif yelled. “You got to talk to me before you pull this shit.”
Moodrow responded by getting out of the car and walking slowly around to Latif’s window. “You tried to kill me,” he said, reaching inside to yank the gearshift into neutral. “You and your scumbag partner, Marty Blanks.” Without any seeming effort, he began to push the car along the pier.
The minute the Mercedes’ tires began to turn, Muhammad Latif lost all control of his bladder and his mouth. The East River, so black it was nearly invisible, lay dead ahead. “I never had nothin’ to do with it,” he screamed. “That was Marty’s shit altogether.”
“It wasn’t enough to half burn the fucking place down. Raping old ladies, beating old men…that was just baby shit for Muhammad and Marty. That was just warm-ups for the main event. Well, I’ll tell ya a little story, asshole. You shoulda hired some better shooters, ’cause there’s only one thing worse than trying to kill me and that’s trying and missing. Now you gotta pay, mutt. Play, then pay. That’s the rule, ain’t it?”
“It wasn’t me. I swear on my mother, man. I didn’t know nothin’ about it. Please. I can’t deal with the water. I hate the fucking water.”
“You were Blanks’ partner when you were in the joint. For all I know, you mighta even been asshole buddies. In fact, from the way you’re shitting your pants right now, I’d have to guess you were doin’ the bend-and-spread the whole time you were inside.”
The crunch of the tires moving slowly across the wooden planks of the pier echoed in Latif’s ears like the sound of three Uzis firing into a crowd in Jackson Heights. He yanked the cuffs hard enough to rip into the skin around his wrists and blood began to flow along his forearms.
“Ain’t no nigger doin’ no real estate,” Latif shouted in desperation. “I never was involved in no shit like that.”
Moodrow pulled the car to a halt, then leaned through the window. “Say it again?”
“I come out the projects. I know about dope. I seen dope all my life through. But I don’ know shit about no real estate. Marty wanted to get out of the life, that’s why he went along with Najowski. Me, I ain’t got nothin’, but the life.”
“What was that name?”
“Najowski. Najowski. Marek Najowski. Lives in Brooklyn Heights and real estate is all he does. He’s the one who talked Marty into buyin’ them buildings. Sayin’ how Marty was gonna get so rich he could stop dealin’.”
“Well, he can stop dealing forever, now that he’s dead. Tell me how Marty found Najowski?”
“Shit, man, I don’t know. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. Anyways, Marty didn’t find Najowski. It came the other way around. I think it was a lawyer. Right, man. That’s it. It was Najowski’s lawyer who came with the deal. I can’t recollect his name, but he had connections through his clients. Najowski knew about buyin’ buildings. He wanted Marty to supply muscle so the people livin’ there would run.”
“Take a deep breath and hold it, Muhammad.” Moodrow leaned into the car, shifting it forward on the springs, then let off when Latif began to cry.
“Please. I can’t take no water, man. I don’t swim. I don’t even go near no beaches. Please, Moodrow. The fucking river is black out there. I can’t go in no black water.”
“Give me the bullshit name again.”
“Marek Najowski. I’m tellin’ you straight, man.”
“Where does he live?”
“He’s got a co-op in Brooklyn Heights. I don’t know the exact address, but Marty told me it looks over the water at Manhattan.”
“You don’t know where Najowski lives?”
“I never been there. That’s what I’m sayin’, man. But there can’t be no more than one Marek Najowski livin’ in Brooklyn Heights. Like the operator could give you the address.”
Moodrow reached inside the car and jerked the gearshift into park. “How much time you done, Muhammad?”
“Say what?”
“I asked you how much time you’ve done. I know you were upstate with Marty Blanks.”
“I did six years in Clinton.”
“And before that?”
“Small bits on Rikers. What you wanna know this shit for?” If Muhammad’s spirits had begun to rise when Moodrow first stopped pushing the car toward the river, his very essence was flooded with relief when Moodrow locked the transmission. Now, in the face of Moodrow’s new line of questioning, he was uneasy, sensing bad news coming on like the rush of cocaine in reverse.
“You got coke in this car, Muhammad?”
“Yeah. I got an ounce in the glove compartment. Take it, man. Take it and let me go.”
Moodrow patiently walked around the car. Covering his hand with a white handkerchief, he opened the small door, took out the coke in its Ziploc bag and laid it on the seat next to Latif.
“What you doin’, Moodrow? What the fuck you doin’?”
“ ‘In plain view’ is what the lawyers call it.” Moodrow walked back to the driver’s side of the car. He reached inside, flicked the light switch, and an old Buick with a badly dented fender pulled slowly onto the pier. “It don’t matter that Blanks had another partner. You knew what they were doing and you didn’t warn me. You knew it and you were perfectly willing to let me die. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you didn’t consider my safety or the safety of any of the poor bastards your partner killed even one little time. You think I’m such an asshole, I’m gonna let you get by with that, just because you told me a name? A coke-dealing, murdering fuck like you? You done a lot of time, Latif. What with the dope laws bein’ as tight as they are and the judges handin’ out years like fuckin’ Christmas candy, you’ll do fifteen if the cops find you first. See, what I’m gonna do is turn on the headlights before I go. That’s bound to attract some attention, because people around here get nosy about fifty-thousand-dollar cars parked on deserted piers. Now, if I was you, I’d start prayin’ real hard. I’d pray, Dear God, please let the pigs find me before the wolves.”