KICKIN’ ON THE BOULEVARD is how the brothers put it. Drivin’ a big, black van with big, black windows. Scratchin’ out beats with the point of a knife against the dashboard. Rip this one up today, buy another one tomorrow. Singin’ about the heavy bread and all the sweet, sweet bitches that came with it. Singin’ about the “Pusher Man.”
“Song gotta be at least fifteen years old,” Wendell explained to his companion, Davis Craddock. “Back before nobody never heard about crack. Same shit, though, between them old days and right now. Nigger ain’t seven feet tall and can’t jump over the roof got only one way to get out. And it ain’t by steady beggin’ the white man for no bullshit job.”
They were driving north on FDR Drive, heading for the Bronx and a short conversation with a pure fool by the name of Billy Williams. Gonna pull the motherfucker’s card was what they was gonna do, but the crazy white man was actin’ like it wasn’t no more than a walk in the park.
“See here, Davis. Nothin’ make a brother feel better than pushin’ it back in the white man’s face. When a white man see me cruisin’ through his neighborhood, he thinkin’ one word: ‘nigger.’ When he see that my wheels costin’ twice more than his, he say that word out loud. When he see the gold hangin’ down my chest, he scream it: ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger’ till his tongue fall out his head.”
Craddock turned off the radio (he was taking it serious and Wendell appreciated that) and began tellin’ about how crazy his momma was and how his daddy hit the road and how he lived his life without no family and without no street either. How there was nothin’ in his life at all and how he made his life inside himself.
“That’s the only place to live it,” Craddock finished. “Inside yourself, so you know just who you are. I’m a nigger, too, but I’m invisible. Citizens who see me on the street don’t know what’s inside. I can’t change that…”
“Yeah, baby,” Wendell said playfully, “you can show the world your true intentions. Be like them jailhouse white boys. Get yo’ face tattooed. Little spider webs comin’ out from the corner of yo eyes. The pig see you cruisin’ down his street, he right away throw yo ass up against the car. Jus’ like they do for a brother.”
“I got a question,” Craddock said. “If our enterprise makes you rich and you move to a Caribbean island where everybody has black skin, are you gonna paint yourself white so you’ll be called a honkey?”
“We don’t call ’em no honkeys no more. We call ’em maggots now.”
“C’mon, Wendell, answer the question.”
“Shi-i-it. Be real int’restin’. Jus’ another black face in a black country? Maybe I try it on. See how it fits me.”
“Not ‘just another black face,’ baby. You’ll be the richest black face on whatever island you go to. But that’s not what we’re talking about. See, the thing of it is that I can walk around thinking thoughts from Adolf Hitler’s autobiography and nobody reads my mind. You can walk around thinking thoughts from the goddamned Gospels and the whole white world thinks you’re plannin’ to smash its collective head. It’s really fucking stupid, but it’s there, too. Like mountains or sewers. The only thing you get to control is what’s inside. Inside, you can be whatever you want to be and the best thing, the funniest thing, is that if you look inside, you and me decided to be the same person.”
Wendell cranked up the amps and they listened to Curtis Mayfield tell his stories: “Freddie’s Dead,” “SuperFly,” “Pusher Man,” “No Thing On Me.” The jam was definitely goin’ down. In the dash and in the world. Wendell had lined up wholesalers in Philly, Boston, New Haven and D.C. The man in D.C.—a white Italian man by the name of Rafe Antillo—was very large in the life. A player. Wendell would have to be careful or Rafe Antillo would take his shit off, but Wendell just loved bein’ a brother who sold shit to a white Italian man. Mother-fuckin’ Italians were the ones who brought dope to the ghetto in the first place.
But white or black, everybody loved PURE and when he explained what would happen if the junkies cooked it up, nobody seemed to be too upset. A few dead junkies, more or less, until they learned, wouldn’t bother the man. Look at what AIDS was doin’. Junkies dyin’ everywhere and nobody didn’t give a shit. Meanwhile, PURE was the baddest dope ever to come down the line. Have to be altogether crazy to fuck with it. Davis Craddock wasn’t crazy. Wendell Bogard wasn’t crazy either.
They got to Billy Williams’ apartment at four o’clock in the morning. Billy was at his night job, as expected. Wendell and Davis carried small, hooked pry bars, but they didn’t need them to get in. Davis had taken the set of keys Terry Williams kept in the property room at Hanover House and copied them without anyone knowing. Now he used them on Billy Williams’ lock, and in the quiet of a weekday morning in a middle-class working neighborhood the two men slipped into the empty apartment.
Billy came home at six-thirty. When he turned on the light and recognized Davis Craddock sitting on his living room couch, his face seemed to collapse. He was pale and blond, and the blood draining from his face gave his skin a transparent quality. He didn’t notice Wendell, who was sitting in the kitchen, until Wendell walked back into the living room. There was no pity in Wendell’s eyes, no humanity, either, but somehow Billy rallied. Billy, in his days as an acolyte, had been one of the most vocal of a small group of Therapists who fought against the admission of blacks to Hanover House.
“I knew you’d come,” Billy said directly to his former mentor. “But why this?” He gestured toward Wendell.
“Oh, man,” Wendell moaned, “the maggot done dis me. I mus’ be gettin’ to be a old motherfucker or somethin’.”
“What is he talking about?” Billy continued to speak to Davis Craddock.
“See,” Wendell said, “if I was a maggot, the bitch’d introduce hisself. Soft as he is, he oughta be takin’ care he don’t disrespect a man like me. ’Stead, he talkin’ like I’m his punk. No way I can eat that. I eat that, all the niggers be steady sayin’ ah’m soft. That shit is bad for bidness.”
Wendell took a long, slender folding knife from his jacket pocket and flicked the blade open. Billy was sure the knife was meant for him, but Wendell went to the sofa and quickly slit the cushions and the backrest. He pulled out a small amount of crumbly yellow foam and threw it into the center of the room before repeating the action on the single club chair next to the couch. For a moment, Billy thought Wendell was searching for something, but Wendell wasn’t even looking at the cushions when he cut them open.
“What…” Billy began. “I don’t understand.” Then he noticed that both his visitors wore gloves and his heart sank.
“Who’d you talk to, Billy?”
Craddock’s voice was devoid of amusement. Billy Williams had never heard it this way. Neither had Wendell Bogard, who grinned in appreciation before turning his attention to a sideboard in the dining room. Very quietly, he began to pull out the drawers and empty them onto the dining room table.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone since Flo came to see me.”
“Flo Alamare came out to see you?”
“Some time ago. That’s why I sent my daughter back to Hanover House. Flo must have told you.”
Craddock shook his head. “Flo’s dead. She never came back to Hanover House after she saw you, Billy. I hope you didn’t kill her.”
“Are you crazy?” Billy spoke without thinking, but Craddock didn’t react to it. “I’ve never been violent. You used to tell me that I needed to be violent, but I could never even manage to get angry. How would I kill Flo?”
“Maybe you didn’t kill her out of anger. Maybe you killed her out of fear. She was found a few miles from this apartment. In a vacant lot.”
Wendell was in the kitchen, quietly emptying the cupboards and the drawers onto the floor. “He killed the bitch,” Wendell said. “I know he done it. He got guilty all over his face.”
“Look,” Billy said, “Flo came here and told me that I couldn’t keep my daughter.” His voice broke for the first time. He didn’t know what they wanted, but he knew they were going to hurt him. It was all so unjust. He’d worked as hard as anybody to establish Hanover House. Now he was being rewarded. “If I wanted to be defiant, I wouldn’t have sent Terry back to Hanover House. I mean Terry was with Flo when Flo came here. If I killed Flo, I would have had to do it in front of my daughter.”
“So, who’d you talk to?” Craddock seemed more relaxed. He was beginning to smile.
“Nobody.”
“Bullshit, I know you were talking to a lawyer and a writer.”
“I mean after Flo came to see me. I haven’t spoken to anyone since then.”
Craddock sighed. “I realize that you didn’t kill Flo. How could an asshole like you kill Flo Alamare? You gave up your own daughter because you were afraid. Because you were the same chicken-shit pussy who first walked into my office. Because you were, in fact, my greatest fucking failure.” He paused, waiting for a response, but Williams refused to look up. “So who’d you speak to, Billy?”
“Please…”
“You didn’t by any chance speak to a fat detective named Stanley Moodrow?”
“Oh, God…Yeah, a detective came out here asking about Flo, but I didn’t speak to him. As soon as he told me what he wanted, I sent him away. I swear it, Davis. I sent him away without another word.”
“This fat detective says he can prove that Flo Alamare was living at Hanover House right up until her death. Now you tell me how a fat detective could prove a thing like that if you didn’t speak to him?” Davis was lying. Moodrow had only said he could put Flo inside Hanover House within two years, but the good fisherman feels no conscience when he disguises the bait. Craddock wanted to get a feel for how much Moodrow knew.
Wendell broke in before Billy could reply. “What we oughta do is fuck this little bitch in his ass, then ask the questions.” He came back into the living room, pulling at his crotch while he stroked Billy Williams’ hair. “Lil bitch fall in love when he feel mah dick in his butt. Ain’ that right, lil bitch?”
Billy shuddered, but made no effort to pull away from the much larger Wendell Bogard. “I don’t know who told him,” Billy said to Craddock. “Anybody at Hanover House could have told him. There’s probably another ten people who’ve left within the last year. Suppose he visited all of them?”
“But they didn’t see her on the day of her death.”
Bogard playfully tugged Williams’ head into his lap. “C’mon, Billy, tell the man what he want to hear. He’s yo goddamn psychiatrist. He doin’ this shit for your own fuckin’ good. Ain’ that right, Davis?”
“Maybe we’re being too hard on Billy,” Craddock said.
“Did y’all say ‘hard-on’?”
Davis ignored his partner’s humor. “I mean we have to do what we have to do. Even if Billy didn’t snitch us out to the fat detective, he knows all about PURE. He’s the only one outside Hanover House who does.”
“Maybe I could go back into therapy,” Billy whispered. The black man holding him was incredibly strong. As strong as all the people he’d feared in his life. He felt like a child lying in the dark. Watching the closet door for the slightest movement.
“I don’t think so, Billy. I think we should take a little walk.”
Billy Williams didn’t resist Craddock’s gentle tug. He allowed himself to be led across the room to the front door of the apartment.
“All right, Billy,” Craddock said. “Far enough. Now turn around. That’s good. Just a little to the left and it’ll be perfect.”
Davis Craddock, anxious to impress his companion, put all his strength into the first blow, swinging the pry bar in a long arc from his knees to the top of Billy Williams’ head. Craddock had expected Billy to fall unconscious, but the slender, balding man only dropped to his knees. There was plenty of blood, though, which was encouraging, and Davis Craddock was too professional to let disappointment interfere with the pursuit of his declared intentions. He raised the hooked bar above his head and again brought it down on a whimpering Billy Williams. Still, the job wasn’t done.
“Lemme hit the bitch one time,” Bogard whined. “I can’t watch this ’thout gettin’ in mah shots.”
“No way,” Craddock said firmly. “You’re left-handed and I’m right-handed. All these wounds have to come from the same hand. Besides, you lost the coin toss.”
“Shi-i-i-it.”
Craddock decided to get it over with quickly. He began to work the top of Billy Williams’ now-unmoving head with short, chopping strokes. Davis was not a doctor and he’d been a little worried about whether he would know the moment when Billy Williams died. He’d feared he might continue pounding until he made himself a fool in Wendell’s eyes, but Billy Williams’ bladder and bowel untied at the moment of death and the stench left no doubt in either of the partners’ minds.
The man was motherfuckin’ amazin’. Goin’ through the door alone. Just the way they planned it. It was closin’ in on seven AM and there’d likely be people on the street. Black and white together looked wrong. White neighbors see that, they gon’ remember.
A few minutes later, Wendell followed Davis through the front door, closing it softly behind him. Then he slid the hooked end of the pry bar between the jamb and the lock and popped the door back open. Nobody around. Nobody to see that he was bustin’ out the lock after he was finished in the house.
The porter was in front, messin’ with the garbage cans, when Wendell pushed the door open and walked down the stoop. A nigger from the old school, shufflin’ his appreciation of the white man’s shitty job. Wendell gave the nigger his hardest badass look and the man turned away. But he’d remember. Which was the whole point.
A moment later and Wendell was around the corner where Craddock was waiting in the van with the engine running. Smilin’ his happy maggot smile. Crazy as crazy could be.
“What’d I tell you?” he asked. “Did I tell you he wouldn’t scream? Did I tell you he’d take it like a bitch takes cock?”
“Got to say for a fact that yo peoples go easy. He knew what we was gonna do to his ass, but he didn’t even think about fightin’ back. You white boys got some strange ways. Nigger don’t go out like that.”
“Yeah?” Craddock quickly outlined the realities of the Jonestown massacre, emphasizing the large number of blacks who drank the Kool-Aid. Then he told his partner about Poochie and his own theories. “The poochie,” he concluded, “stretches across all barriers. Race, religion, nationality. It may be that conditions for blacks are so harsh that most of the weak are eliminated, but there are always a few. In fact, if it wasn’t for the poochies, men like us would be in deep trouble.”
Kickin’ down the boulevard. There was about ten million cars all goin’ to work. Suckers for that nine-to-five bullshit. Wendell knew he could never have that. Couldn’t even goddamn read was the truth of it. But his partner coulda done it. Could still do it. Still turn back to the world. If he wasn’t so crazy.
“What do you say we celebrate?” Craddock said. “Seeing as we’re going to be a long time getting back downtown.” He waved his hand at the sea of cars, trucks and buses.
“What you wanna do? Pusher Man?”
“Let’s have a little white celebration for a change. Reach around in the back and get that box behind the seat. Got a little surprise in there.”
Surprise? Man had a whole ice chest in there. Had two glasses so thin they’d break if you spit on them. Wendell fumbled with the cork until it blew, bouncing off the windshield, then whistling past his ear. He peered at the label, puzzling out the letters, but unable to make sense of the words. L. Roederer Cristal.
“Don’t usually drink this shit,” he announced. “Too faggoty. Too maggoty. If you catch my meanin’.”
“Make an exception, Wendell. It’s been a good night.”
Drivin’ in silence. Crazy maggot and his crazy nigger partner sippin’ on French champagne. Wendell hadn’t ever had no best bro’. DTA was the motto on the street—Don’t Trust Anyone. But there was definitely times when he wanted to. When he sometimes did feel like he was in the presence of the twin brother he used to imagine when he was a kid.