Chapter Four

The point guard had pretty legs. It was not often D could say that about someone bringing the ball up court, but this particular afternoon at the Reebok Sports Club, he couldn’t lie. He loved the way the shorts hung from the point guard’s thighs.

So D wasn’t happy when a knucklehead investment banker with a bad toupee tried to post-up his point guard, the lovely Mercedez, by shoving his butt into her stomach and swinging his arms too liberally. The ball flipped the banker’s way and, with undisguised glee, he prepped to school Mercedez. As he turned to fake, D made his move. By the time the banker began to release the ball, D was airborne. With outright malice, D came across and smashed the ball right into the banker’s mug. Down went the banker, his nose a rosy red.

“Sorry,” D said, “I got too aggressive.”

“You sure did.” This wasn’t the banker, but Mercedez, who’d caught D’s elbow in the head. The investment banker glared and stared, but after a brief pause for the cause, they finished out the run.

“Were you trying to help me or hurt me?” Mercedez asked as they left the court.

“I guess you’ll never know,” D replied.

“All I know,” said Jeff, who’d been playing with them, “is that he lets me get posted on the regular.”

The Reebok was a super-yuppie gym on Manhattan’s West Side. NBA-quality court. Every damn fitness machine imaginable. Scores of trainers. Two restaurants. Four floors. Upscale but not snobbish clientele. Sprinkled in among the white collars were rap stars, ticket scalpers, loan sharks, and private investigators.

Jeff loved the Reebok because the few sistas who worked out there tended to be models, record executives, or personal trainers—three types of women he related to easily. Jeff ran with Mercedez and D, though ball wasn’t his passion. He was addicted to Reebok’s Jacuzzi.

“Jeff,” D warned, “you are gonna turn into a prune.”

“True,” he answered, “but I’m gonna be the most chilled out motherfucking prune ever, son.”

After showering, Mercedez and D met in Reebok’s cafeteria-style dining area for smoothies fortified with protein. Mercedez sat down across from D and, out of the blue, said, “You know, D, you’re full of shit.”

“Okay, what did I do?”

“You gave me that speech when I got the job about being laid-back and not using violence, but I see you definitely go for yours.”

“Mercedez,” D replied, “I do mean what I say. I shouldn’t have touched Brookins. I should have spoken first. And you really shouldn’t have tripped him. You know, if you’d let him attack me, I’d have had a possible assault charge to hold against him.”

“So what you’re saying is I should have let him jump you?”

“Kinda,” D said thoughtfully. “At least then I’d have some leverage if he tries to sue me or the company. Listen, I’m not mad at you, Mercedez. It’s just that we have to be smart about what we do. This company is still young. It’s not even walking yet. I’m not full of shit, but my judgment isn’t always as good as my philosophy.”

“But,” a third voice said, “it’s a lot better than it is used to be.” It was Jeff, his skin flush from the Jacuzzi. “This man tries to act all calm and shit, but you know, there’s a lot of bully in him. I bet he used to take plenty of lunch money when he was a kid.”

“Nah,” D said. “I was a quiet kid. Read books.”

“You believe him, Mercedez?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Thank you.”

“You know,” she went on, “I get the feeling there’s a little boy inside this big guy.”

“Oh,” Jeff groaned, “if you’re gonna talk like that about this dusty motherfucker, I’m leaving.”

“No, we’re all leaving,” D said. “We have a meeting and since I own the company, I need to be there.”

In the cab downtown, Jeff and Mercedez started talking about what they had done on New Year’s Eve 1999. She had been dancing to merengue with cousins at a house party on the Grand Concourse. Jeff had worked, watching the back of a pop star as she and her pals did white lines in a Midtown hotel suite.

“What about you, D?” she asked.

“I just visited with some family,” D answered. “Real low-key. To me it was just another night at the end of a day. It didn’t change anything. Not for me it didn’t.”

Jeff, an often excitable guy, took issue with D and rolled into an explanation of all the changes the new century had brought forth, from Internet billions to 9/11. D just got quiet and gazed out the window.

* * *

There were already two members of D Security waiting when they got there. Within fifteen minutes, three more of the team had arrived. A half hour later, ten men and two women piled into the conference room. Once a month, the staff of D Security gathered together to catch up and compare notes. Danny Wallace, a burly, slightly effeminate bouncer from Hollis, talked about the latest trend in drag queens—black guys dressed as Britney Spears. Jeff Fuchs talked about the growth of the Bloods gang and how it was affecting security at hip hop parties. When it was D’s turn he talked about money: “Between salaries, insurance, medical, overhead for the office, and miscellaneous, we’re in the red for the third month in a row.” The room was quiet and then Jeff, trying to lighten the mood, said, “Sowhatchasayin’?”

“I’m saying the concept of D Security is sound, but we simply need to bring in more business.”

There was a lot of discontented grumbling after D’s announcement. Some wanted to lose the office. Others suggested charging more. They all agreed on one thing—whoever brought in new clients received a 10 percent commission on the deal. Afterward, when only D and Jeff were left, they sat in D’s black-walled office. Jeff’s right leg pumped up and down as he spoke.

“Yo, son,” he said in a high-pitched, rapid tone, the relaxation of the Jacuzzi long gone, “we can’t let this go down. If this company closes up, I got to go look for work again. You know that can be hard for me.” Jeff had a small but pungent criminal record that included breaking and entering at a sneaker store when he was twenty (he was going to hawk the overpriced footwear for wholesale prices) and robbing a cabbie at knife-point two blocks from One Police Plaza (“By the time I got up my nerve, we were already downtown”). Not the résumé of a hardened thug, but certainly not that of a white-collar employee either. Between his stint in a methadone center, his white-Negro accent, and his high-school equivalency diploma, Jeff was a white man with limited prospects.

Besides, handling the door at Manhattan nightclubs gave Jeff prestige and power he both adored and needed. Although not incredibly lucrative, club security was steady, and you met stars and young women in really tight dresses. “D, I know another way we could make some paper.” D could tell by Jeff’s hungry expression that he wasn’t going to like the suggestion. “We could just start taxing some of the dealers at the Tea Party and the other spots. We don’t have to carry no weight—just tap the flow.”

“Life’s too short,” D said, sounding as final as a coffin closing. “I’m not getting my hands dirty. Neither are you. We can build D Security into a real business, Jeff. We can get out of entertainment and eventually provide guards for banks, malls, the works. Everybody these days is afraid of everybody else—fuck what the crime stats say. The whole world wants to feel safe and no one does. We just need to stay afloat to capitalize on it. Taxing drug dealers will just pull us down.”

Jeff, to D’s surprise, simply sat back and let him talk. When D was through, his friend sighed. “Sorry I brought it up, D. I know how you feel about being safe and all that.” Jeff was going to let it drop, but then anger flashed in his pale blue eyes and his voice filled with jailhouse passion. “But if we really need to get a little dirty to stay in business . . . Don’t be proud, D,” he said. “I want to stay legal. But you and I both know not everybody legal is clean. Surviving is what it’s really about.”

“Living is the thing, Jeff,” D countered. “Survival and living are not the same thing.”

“The man in black wants to live? Then why do you dress like a motherfucking undertaker?” It was an old tease but one that Jeff never tired of. And D replied as he always did:

“This way I never have a problem matching.”

“Whatever, D. I’m out.” Jeff stood and put on a bloodred Philly 76ers baseball cap. “Yo, son, you hittin’ Mercedez yet or are you still plannin’ to hit it?”

“Double no.”

“But you know she’s feelin’ you?”

“And what about you? You’re feelin’ her, aren’t you?”

His pale friend, going out the door with a thugged-out swagger, shouted over his shoulder, “Nigga, please!”