It was early afternoon by the time Sam got back to the apartment. Panting from the climb, he threw open the door, but the place was empty. No trace of any of them except for the faint reek of Eli’s aftershave. “Pack,” he said out loud, but he didn’t. He needed a plan and he didn’t have one. It was windy out on the street. He couldn’t just wander around with his backpack. And what if Kim came back to look for him? What if she wanted to make up—get back together? “Fat chance,” he said. He polished off the last of the donuts and grabbed his backpack off the hook on the wall. If worse came to worst he could always go home. His mother would take him back in a heartbeat—and even his father had probably forgiven him by now. Forgiven him for what? Being honest?
But if he went home, what would happen to Tutu?
Sam slumped back on the sofa and let his hands dangle between his knees. Tutu cared about him. She believed in him. She had devoted almost twenty years of her life to raising him. And in all that time, she’d never let him down. Not once.
But what was he to Tutu? Honestly? A bed to make. A mouth to feed. A plate to wash. A job. Maybe that’s why he was having so much trouble with that story about Leon: the truth was that he didn’t want to write about Leon—he wanted to be Leon.
“Well, that ain’t gonna happen, Sammy boy,” he said out loud—and the response chimed in his head: Quit talking to yourself, child. Folks gonna think you’re crazy.
Maybe he was. Maybe all writers were crazy. Maybe you had to be crazy to be a writer. Look at Dostoyevsky. Look at Baudelaire. Look at Poe and Melville and Emily Freaking Dickinson. Whack jobs every last one of them. Sam brushed the donut crumbs off his notebook, shut it, and surrendered to fantasy. Someday he was going to be as famous as all of those guys. Famous and rich. He’d buy his father’s company, fire his father, and let the workers take over. He’d buy Tutu a marble headstone—no, a mausoleum. He’d dedicate a novel to Kim. “To K, the first.” And she’d read it and show up at his door—his penthouse suite—in tears. Oh, Sam, I was such a fool. . . .
He was so submerged that he nearly fell off the couch when he heard a key rattling in the lock. Top lock, dead bolt, lower lock, creaking hinges—and there was Kim, wild-eyed and pale as a cloud. Where did that weird tie-dyed blouse come from? “Oh, Sam.” It was like she’d mind-read his daydream—and the next moment she was in his arms, her face against his chest, her sparrow bones trembling in his grip. “Oh god, oh god” was all she said. Then she broke away and started talking fast. “Listen, Sam, listen.” She stood before him but she wouldn’t look at his face. “I’ve done something stupid—really, really stupid—and I need your help. I can’t trust anyone else and I can’t fix it myself.”
“Anything,” he breathed.
She started to pace. “Remember those Uzis that Eli’s always bragging about?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, we made a deal to sell them to the Panthers.”
“We?”
“Okay, I made the deal—this morning—on a pay phone on St. Mark’s. Only I just found out that it’s a trap. It’s not the Panthers but the FBI.”
“What? The FBI are buying Eli’s guns?”
“Not buying—seizing. I was tricked. Royally fucking tricked. God, I’m such an idiot.” Pacing with both hands balled in her hair. “It never occurred to me that Jeff could be an FBI plant. COINTELPRO, they call it. Counterintelligence something blah blah bullshit. Don’t ask how I know—but I found out and now I’m screwed. Instead of actual Panthers buying those Uzis, it’s gonna be FBI agents masquerading as Panthers. As soon as they hand over the guns, Eli and Leon will be arrested for trafficking in stolen weapons.”
“Leon?” Sam caught her and spun her. “Tutu’s Leon?” She nodded. “What the fuck does—what did you do—don’t tell me—it must have been Richard. . . .” His brain was sparking faster than his mouth could spit out the words.
“Sam.” She laid her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t have time to explain. Yes, it was Richard’s idea to rope in Leon—but that doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to head them off.”
“We?”
“Okay—you. The FBI is onto me, remember that agent you blabbed my name to at the rally? And now there’s something worse. I can’t tell you. The less you know the better. They’re closing in. But you’re clean, Sam. No record. No contacts. No trace. You could head up to the park. . . .”
“What park?”
“It’s all going down in Central Park at four this afternoon. But if you got there first, if you intercepted Leon, if you warned them off—”
Then you’ll love me forever and the world will live as one.
“I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry about everything. I loved you, Sam—I really did. I still love you. You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant. You’re going to be a great writer. But . . .” Their eyes met. “But you’re totally clueless. Can’t you see what’s going on? Everything’s on fire—the whole country—Jesus, the entire world! And you had no idea. You missed it. You want to be a writer but you completely missed the story. Wake up, Sam. You have to commit to something—something bigger than having a girlfriend. I’ve been trying to tell—”
But whatever she was going to say got swallowed by the knocking—pounding—on the apartment door. “Open up!” a voice boomed. “Law enforcement.”
“Shit. Shit shit shit,” Kim seethed. “Four o’clock. North end of Central Park where Lenox comes in. They’ll be in a black Olds.” She was moving toward the window.
“Wait!” Sam shouted. Kim opened the window. Sam started to tremble. “Kim—please,” he was crying and begging. “Whatever you did, it’s not worth . . .” but she was already out the window and onto the fire escape. Up, not down.
leon got a bad feeling as soon as Eli sat down in the car. The guy had weird hair, his aftershave smelled like roach spray, and half of what he said was impossible to understand. “Turn zhere—change zeh lane!” Whoever taught him English had left out “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me.” But once they crossed the bridge into Jersey, Leon settled in at the wheel and let Eli talk. The guy obviously liked to run his mouth—even more than Sam—and he wouldn’t shut up about some girl he just met on the subway.
“Brown like you, Leo.”
“It’s Leon.”
“And so warm—”
“Hot, you mean?”
“Yes. A hot brown chicken.”
“How come you’re running after our folks? White girls aren’t good enough for you?”
“Of course!” Eli roared. “White—black—pink—who cares the color?”
“Okay, okay, I get it. You like the ladies.” Leon sized him up out of the corner of his eyes. Compared to Richard, Eli was a toad—but you never knew what girls saw.
“Eight—no, nine ladies since I come to New York. Not so bad, right?”
Leon nodded, eyes on the road.
“But no browns till Denise.”
“The hot chick you met in the subway?”
“So hot.” Eli laughed like a kid cracking up at his own joke. “But tell me, Leo”—downshifting to a confidential tone—“are they different, the brown girls? More—you know—sexier?”
The hell I know, Leon was thinking, but he bluffed. “You better believe it.”
Another gust of laughter. “I do believe.” Pause. “So tell. How many girls you have had?”
As in had sex with? “Well,” Leon took a deep breath, stalling. “I don’t want but one, but Shauna won’t even look at me.”
“Make her look!” Eli fired back—and he pushed his face so close Leon thought he was going to kiss him. “Like that. So she can’t look apart. Then smile with all the teeth—see? Then say her name with just the lips moving . . . Shauna Shauna Shauna.”
“Thank you, brother,” Leon said when he finally stopped howling. “I’ll try it next time I see her in church. Shauna Shauna Shauna.” He practically sang it. The front seat shook with their laughter. That must be his secret, Leon thought—he gets them laughing. But nine? That would be on his conscience all his life.
Leon exited the highway onto a glaring four-lane artery lined with strip malls and used car lots. A couple of miles down, Eli told him to turn right into a warehouse parking lot. “Uncle,” he said, pointing to a short frowning man in a black overcoat waiting for them out front. Leon pulled up next to him, lowering the window so he could ask where the loading dock was, but the man brusquely motioned him out of the car. “You wait here,” he barked as he slid behind the steering wheel. “Eli and I will load up the—”
“Records!” Eli yelled.
“The records—and then you take over again.”
Leon paced the parking lot in the chill March sun for a good fifteen minutes before the Chevy reappeared from behind the warehouse. The car’s trunk was two inches ajar and a tail of frayed rope dangled over the fender. “So much record we not close,” Eli explained.
“Well, as long as nothing bounces out on the highway.”
“You make sure that don’t happen,” the short man said, fixing Leon with a hooded stare. “Otherwise you get bubkes. Understand, junior?”
Leon knew not to ask what bubkes meant. With guys like that there was nothing to do but smile and go, “Yes, sir.”
Neither of them said much on the ride back to the city. It was like bubkes man had killed the fun. No jokes, no more advice on getting with the ladies. Leon flipped on the radio and sang along quietly. It was funny about white folks—you go from buddy to lackey in the blink of an eye. At least no one had called him “boy.”
Leon assumed they’d be dropping off at one of the big music stores around Times Square so he was surprised when Eli told him to take the bridge back. “You sure you don’t want the tunnel?” he asked as they rolled toward the toll booths—but Eli just shook his head. Fifteen minutes later they were back in front of the Orange Julius. “Wait a minute here,” Eli told him. Then he hopped out the passenger door and disappeared inside the restaurant. “No Denise” was all he said when he returned to the car.
“Are you crazy, man? You said you had a date for five o’clock and now it’s”—Leon glanced at his watch—“three thirty. You really think she’s gonna spend all day waiting on some strange white dude who hit on her in the subway?”
“Not strange,” Eli said morosely.
“She’ll be there at five, trust me.” But Eli just grunted. “Meanwhile, we got a trunkful of records to deliver and you still haven’t told me where.”
“Drive,” said Eli. “Lenox Avenue—down.”
“Downtown on Lenox? Okay, whatever you say.”
after blowing fifteen dollars on a fancy haircut, Richard decided to pay a call on his pal Bill William, a conceptual artist who supported himself and his six children with a sideline in dope. Richard hadn’t been to Bill’s in a while because he owed him money (he owed everyone money) but in T minus two hours he’d be flush, and it wouldn’t hurt to pre-order.
Bill’s loft on Lower Broadway was the kind of place Richard wished he lived in—cast-iron columns, high ceiling, wide-plank wood floor big enough to play basketball, dusty shafts of light angling down through huge arched windows. God! The killer parties he could throw in a space like that. One day—maybe soon.
Bill looked none too pleased to find Richard grinning and bobbing at his door, but he brightened up when he heard the amount of coke involved. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“Wrong.”
“I won’t ask where the money’s coming from.”
“Don’t.” Richard winked.
“Okay. But it’s gonna take me a couple three days to lay my hands on that much product.”
“Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.” Richard picked his way through the mattresses, clothes, books, and toys so he could examine the works in progress that Bill had hung on the loft’s brick walls: huge blank canvases stenciled in primary colors with a single letter or word. A six-foot-high “GREEN” in saturated kelly acrylic. The letter “B” in glossy enamel stripes of black and yellow. “COOL” spray-painted in a prism of blues. Richard emitted the requisite burbles—“Whoa, awesome, yes, wow, that green totally pops, I’m loving these”—just enough to warm the cockles of Bill’s drug-jaded heart. It worked. Bill extracted a tiny rock from a lacquer box on his drafting table and began chopping lines. “Just a taste, my man—this shit will be dumping down in drifts once you cop the cash.”
Nose numb, eyes snapping, brain tingling, Richard clattered down the steps and joined the freak parade on Lower Broadway. “Seventy-Six Trombones” from The Music Man began to thump inside his head. Richard skipped to the beat. His head wouldn’t quit swerving. Tendrils of air coiled around his neck and down his back. Wow. Everyone was so beautiful. That Puerto Rican girl with the velvet cleavage. That guy with the ponytail so red it was shooting sparks. And the boots—every foot bound in supple vintage leather—burgundy, ruby, maroon, ebony, banana, burnt sienna, apricot. What a stroke of luck that he had his camera in his backpack. Richard set the pack on his knee, gently lifted out the used Canonflex R2000 that was his prize possession, hung the strap around his neck, and started snapping. No one on the sidewalk gave him a second look. He checked his watch—such a perfect little machine, so shiny, so intricately coiled, so cool the way the black leather band perfectly matched the hairs on his wrist. Ten to three. He still had time to get to the park. He could be there for all of it. Wait! He had to be there. What was he thinking? Never forget the money. Like Daddy always said, it pays to be close when the bills change hands. No telling what that crazy Eli would do with $3K in his pocket. Trust no one—not even your cousin. Waste nothing, no matter how wasted you are. Click, flash, click, flash. Yes! He’d photograph the deal going down—and then sell the pictures to Interview. Film noir, film blanc, film ultra verité. Life morphing into art morphing into money. Rich and famous. Fucking genius.
Richard’s sneakers barely grazed the sidewalk as he glided to the subway.
it was after three by the time Sam got rid of the feds. He was sure they would bust him when Richard’s hash pipe came tumbling out of a kitchen drawer, but they weren’t interested in drugs. “Just tell us where your girlfriend is, and everything will be fine.” That’s what the big one kept repeating. And Sam kept saying, “I don’t have a girlfriend. Do I look like I have a girlfriend?” The little one didn’t talk. He just riffled through drawers, turned mattresses upside down, broke the backs of books, and shook out the pages. Sam’s notebook got swept into his briefcase. Ditto with five canisters of film under Richard’s bed. All they found of Kim’s was a box of tampons under the sink and a pair of panties wadded up in a corner of the bathroom. “Yours, I suppose?” the big one sneered. “My sister’s,” Sam replied without thinking.
Without thinking was the only way he was going to get through this.
“We know Kim Goodman is your girlfriend,” the little one yelped at him when he was done trashing the place. “And we know you stole one of our agent’s notebooks. Your prison term’s going to be a lot shorter if you cooperate. Starting with: where the hell is she?”
“My father’s a lawyer.” Lie #2. He was getting the hang of it. “Would you like to talk to him? And by the way, where’s your search warrant?”
“Go fuck yourself, sonny,” the big one said.
“Why don’t you show me how it’s done.”
They were about to kick the shit out of him, but a glance passed between them. The big one stomped over to the window and threw it open. “Hey, maybe she’s up on the roof.”
Not anymore, she isn’t.
“You’ll be hearing from us,” the little one said. “It’s gonna take more than Daddy the lawyer to save your punk ass.”
And they were gone. Sam pressed his ear to the door. At the top of the stairs, two flights up, there was a door—sometimes locked, sometimes not—to the roof. As soon as Sam heard it click, he grabbed his coat and headed out. Down.
ten blocks from the park, Eli told Leon to pull over onto a side street and stop the car. “Here’s what’s gonna be,” he said. It was getting cold—the car’s heater was feeble—but Eli’s face looked red and sweaty. “Maybe no need—maybe—but I bring just in case.” He took the pistol out of his parka pocket and let Leon get a good look at it.
“What the hell you need a gun for a record delivery?” Now Leon was sweating too.
“Listen. Listen—I tell you—so we both come out safe and no bad shit.”
Leon sat there shivering while Eli laid it out for him: When you get the money envelope, pass it over and let me count it. Then, and only then, hand over the goods. Make them lift out the crate—not you. Don’t wait around. The second they get the records out of the trunk, take off. If there’s any trouble, there’s this—and Eli patted his parka pocket.
These white boys totally tricked me, Leon was thinking. Richard, Eli—maybe Sam was in on it too. Irv Rines my ass. I’m nothing but the delivery boy on a drug deal. If Leon could have ditched the car and walked away, he would have done it. But the foreign guy had a gun and he looked like he knew how to use it. And what would he tell his uncle?
“Now turn the block and go back on Lenox,” Eli said. “Ten minutes to go.”
richard wished he’d skipped the haircut and saved his money for a cab. The uptown subway was crowded and slow and reeked of garlic breath. He kept worrying someone was going to pinch his camera out of his backpack. By the time they got to Ninety-Sixth Street, his high had unraveled. Everyone was looking at him like he was some kind of freak. A rich lost honky with an expensive haircut. He thought about bailing and taking the train back downtown—but he was broke and a big thick pile of cash was waiting for him just a few blocks away. Besides, it was such a cool idea. If the truth ever came out, no one would believe it. Leonard Bernstein’s radical chic money bouncing from the Black Panthers to the back pocket of Richard Rines’s blue jeans and from there up the noses of the Max’s crowd. It was like one of those Rube Goldberg machines. And anyway, Richard was planning on holding back a few hundred—for a rainy day.
sam got out of the subway at Lexington and 110th Street and ran up the stairs. Shadows were lengthening. When he hit Central Park, he could just glimpse the silver skin of water shining between the trees. He never knew there was a lake up here. A rim of dirty ice near the shore. Bare branches shivering above. The city seemed to be holding its breath. Sam sprinted the long block between Fifth and Lenox. A couple of mothers strolling babies turned and muttered. A kid stuck out his leg to trip him, but Sam steered around. There was a car pulled over just inside the park—exactly where Kim said it would be. One black car. Not Leon’s. Which meant he wasn’t too late. Right?
eli shut his eyes and pretended he was back on the West Bank. He’d done operations like this lots of times in the army. The trick was to get in and out fast before anyone knew what was happening—because once you had a bunch of bystanders milling around, things went south fast. Women and children caught in the crossfire. Human shields seized by the bad guys. Media appearing out of nowhere with cameras rolling. That’s when your major handed you your ass on a platter. Not this time. No majors. No Palestinians. But still, a wad of cash and a couple of crazy black revolutionaries on the other end of it. Luckily, Uncle had thought to pry one of the Uzis out of the crate, pop in an ammo clip, and stash the machine gun under a towel on the backseat. Just in case. By the time the Panthers realized they were short one gun, he and Leon would be home free.
When Eli spotted the car inside the park a block away, he slipped the black-and-white checked keffiyeh scarf out of his left parka pocket and tied it around his head. Richard’s idea. The Panthers would be spooked by a white guy, but with the Palestinian scarf on, he’d look like an Arab terrorist. If things got hairy, he’d shout at them in Hebrew—they’d never know it wasn’t Arabic. Then he’d say, “Brothers!” and raise a clenched fist and everyone would be cool.
Leon’s hands were shaking so violently he could barely hold the steering wheel. “Not worry,” Eli whispered to calm him down. “Almost there.”
there was a clump of trees—thin naked hardwoods—beside the park drive and Richard ambled casually into their striped shadows. Kneeling, he took up position with the camera. The black car parked ten yards away was pointing north—uptown. Richard held the camera up to his face and squinted through the viewfinder. Two guys—both wearing ski masks. Weird. The Panthers didn’t wear masks—or did they? Black berets, leather jackets, ammo belts—but masks? He focused and clicked off a few shots, then lowered the camera. Sure enough, there was Leon’s Chevy cruising very slowly across the intersection and easing to a stop across the road from the Panther vehicle. He watched through the viewfinder as Leon rolled down the window and leaned his head out. Richard saw his lips move but he was too far away to make out the words. Click. Click, click, click, click, click.
sam broke into a fast walk when he saw Leon’s Chevy pull to a stop across from the black car. Kim had told him to abort the deal—but how? Race out screaming and waving his arms? Bad idea. The FBI goons would just open fire. What about this: make like a crazy person—the city was full of them, all ages and colors. Howl, froth at the mouth, dance around in circles, tap on the window of the FBI car, shout out something about Jesus, turn fast to give Leon the high sign, keep on babbling until they split.
Sam pulled his shirttails out of his pants, unzipped his jacket, ruffled his hair, crossed his eyes, and staggered toward the cars, dragging one foot behind him. Crazy as a fucking bedbug.
“we got the records in the trunk,” Leon shouted to the driver of the black car, jerking his head back and to the side. “Let me see the money.”
A man in a ski mask got out of the passenger side of the car and walked toward him. The driver stayed put.
“Tell him, ‘Hands to sides,’” Eli muttered through the scarf.
“Hands to the sides,” Leon called.
The man dropped his hands and kept moving. “Show us the guns, motherfucker,” he barked. If he thought he sounded black, he was a fool.
“Guns? What you talking about guns for?”
“Shut up and get out the car,” Eli spat. “Go to trunk, untie rope, but don’t open till they give the money. Remember: money first. Do it.”
Leon got out and went around to the rear of the car. While he fiddled with the knot on the rope, the masked man reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat white envelope. “Want this?” Leon nodded. The knot came loose, and the hood of the trunk glided up. “Let’s trade.”
Leon had his hand out for the envelope when out of nowhere some raggedy guy with his coat pulled over his head spun in front of him. “Jesus saves,” he shouted, turning circles with one foot dragging behind, “but only the righteous!” The voice was muffled by the coat. He swerved at the masked man. “Arms for the poor! Arms for the poor!” he yelled, dancing from one foot to the other. Then quick as a knife he pivoted to Leon and screamed full in his face: “Tutu loves you—now get the hell out of here!”
“Sam?”
At that moment, the air exploded in deafening cracks. It was Eli, bearing down on them with a small machine gun cradled under his right arm. He fired off two more rounds high in the air and then, freeing his left hand, he lunged for the envelope, tearing it out of the masked man’s hand. “Back in car,” he screamed at Leon. He lowered the weapon inch by inch until it was aimed at the heart of the masked man. “Uzis yours,” he said. “Take and go. No bullshit.”
“Hands up! FBI,” the man shouted, reaching into his pocket. But Eli didn’t wait around to see for what. He got off a round at the man’s feet—
“It’s a trap,” Sam was shouting. “They’re—”
Leon was already behind the wheel. Eli dove in beside him. The car lurched forward, and the crate tumbled out of the trunk onto the asphalt. “Leeee-onnnn,” Sam’s voice screamed over the engine roar.
sam was running but he veered off the road and into the bushes when he heard more gunfire. He doubled over on the ground, his side burning. Through the film that hazed his eyes he could see the flashes of fire blazing from the passenger window of the blue Chevy. He turned around. The masked man had dropped to his knee and was returning fire. He motioned behind him with one hand and the black car took off, giving chase. The Chevy disappeared into the shadows and the gunshots ceased. The black car sped by. Like a zombie, Sam staggered after them deeper into the park. He heard footsteps slapping the pavement behind him and there was Richard at his side. Where did he come from? They fell in together for a moment, too winded to speak, then Richard sprinted on ahead, his camera swinging from side to side.
They made it. They made it. Those goons will never catch them now.
Sam kept walking. He rounded the bend and there was the water he’d glimpsed from outside the park. Harlem Meer. The sun was behind the trees now and the surface of the lake looked like lead, not silver. He pitched forward. People were jogging beside him now, streaming across the grass toward the lake, and Sam got swept along. As he approached the mud- and ice-crusted shore, he saw Richard’s back, bisected by the camera strap. Richard’s arms were raised as if he was snapping pictures, but when Sam got close he could see that both palms were clapped to his forehead. He kept going. There was the black car, idling next to the lake, a plume of exhaust spewing from the tailpipe. A crowd was massing on the shore—a small crowd but getting bigger by the second. Sam joined them. His gaze inched from the mud to the ice to the rippling open water until it snagged on the shelf of blue. It could have been a raft. It could have been the bottom of an overturned dinghy. It could have been a submerged barrel. But it was the roof of Leon’s car, sinking agonizingly beneath the surface.
The water, the water. Dead in the water.
He could already hear the wail of sirens.