TIGHTROPE

Stabs of anxiety ran through D, like a knife in and out of his gut. He’d sleep thirty or forty minutes, then roll back into consciousness. 2:49 a.m. 3:14 a.m. 4:09 a.m. There was no rest in this slumber. It felt like he’d been lifting boulders; his shoulders and neck ached. It felt like the flu, but was more likely dread.

D was waiting for a knockout punch. Instead he just found himself being pummeled. A fleet little man with hands of stone was pounding his kidneys, ribs, stomach to putty. At 4:45 a.m. D gave up and sat on the side of his bed like James Brown in a cold sweat. If he’d screamed it would have been as passionately piercing anything from the Godfather himself.

D walked over to his window. He was back in Brooklyn. It had been two days since he’d landed at JFK, but his body was still on UK time. His view was nothing special—an alley and an ancient air shaft. But a breeze came in. He could hear a couple fucking or fighting or both somewhere upstairs, which strangely calmed him down. D pulled out his iPod, his Beats by Dre headphones, and sat on his sofa and went to his neosoul song list, playing Maxwell and Badu and D’Angelo and Jill Scott and Night as the sky slowly lightened and his mind drifted.

* * *

London had been a respite, sexy and grim by turns, and it was still very much on D’s mind as he ambled along in the early-evening darkness along Eastern Parkway. After stopping in front of the Botanic Garden, he was about to count off ten paces when he felt eyes on him. Not the causal gaze of a dog walker or of a passing driver, but the intense eyes of someone for whom D’s body was, at that moment, the center of the universe.

D turned around slowly, moving past the Brooklyn Museum toward Franklin Avenue and its hipster enclave. Lots of bars, restaurants, and brightly lit gourmet grocery stores now lined the area north of Eastern Parkway, creating a mini-Williamsburg.

D strolled down Franklin and then turned into Franklin Park. He headed through the corridor into a long, high-ceilinged bar. He ordered a Bud Lite and sat in the patio, positioning himself so he could see both the entrance to the corridor and the establishment’s back door.

The crowd was twentyish and dotted with bearded men, tattooed women, and had a general air of frivolity. Franklin Park was definitely a New Brooklyn spot but D wasn’t feeling judgmental. Though born and raised in the borough, D had spent so much time away that he didn’t feel entitled to look down on its new residents. In a way, D was an intruder too. At least he’d been feeling that way since his “homecoming.” So he sat amongst his fellow newbies, wondering if maybe it was just new-to-Brooklyn paranoia that had him sitting there anxiously.

Before long he noticed a young black man at the bar in a flat-brimmed baseball cap with the word ASYA written in block letters. His pants were narrow and hung slightly off his ass. His high-top sneakers were a garish mix of black, yellow, aqua, and white. D recognized him as one of the guys outside the ARoc office, but he’d been the one who laid back and calmed the commotion.

This kid wasn’t a thug but he definitely knew a few. D decided to wait and see who else showed up. He was finishing his second beer and munching on pretzels when, from the narrow corridor, in came Asya Roc, strutting like he was in total control even while looking completely out of place. His homeboy nodded in D’s direction and the rap star bopped over. D was at a loss, trying to take in the many layers of clothing draped upon the skinny young man’s body. Highlights included gold Nikes with wings, a flat-brimmed cap with his name written across in Gothic letters, and a T-shirt featuring Pam Grier in bodacious Foxy Brown mode. There was a vest in the mix, a couple of chains, and tats popping off sections of exposed flesh.

“You have more ink than when I last saw you,” D said.

“Yeah,” Asya responded warily, “they got mad talent over in Europe. Got all these new tats on my arm right here.” He pulled up a sleeve to reveal his shoulder, where an image of Ron O’Neal as Super Fly in a wide-brimmed hat, a long coat, mutton-chop sideburns, and the whole blaxploitation nine. “I’ma bring that era back. Wait until you see my next video. Long coats. Sideburns. Electra 225s.”

“Nice,” D said and nodded, acting impressed as Asya took a seat across from him. “So, I had a run-in with some dudes who claimed to represent you.”

“They my peeps, no doubt. Hope they didn’t rough you up too much.”

“It didn’t get to that. Your friend over there helped chill things out.”

“Yo, Ree is my boy from way back. He keeps his head on straight.”

“So do I.”

“I see that. I didn’t get what you were doing that night. I got worried. Thought maybe you were gonna try to blackmail me.”

“That’s not how I roll.”

“Like I said, I see. No one seems to really know about the delivery who doesn’t need to know about you. I respect that.”

“So,” D asked, “what are you gonna tell the police?”

“Niggas tried to rob me. You dragged me out. I bounced. Had a plane to catch. That’s all.”

“And the delivery?”

“If anyone saw shit, it was you carrying a bag that you left with. Feel me?”

“So we’re good?”

“All that official shit will be good. But I paid for a delivery and I’m willing to pay more to get it back.”

“You can dead that idea,” D said. “The items are gone. I wanted you to know that. Face-to-face. They’re gone. Won’t be coming back.”

Asya sat back in his chair and stared at D, anger and disbelief communicated with a smirk. He glanced over to his pal who, as if tugged by an invisible cord, got pulled into his orbit.

“Is there a problem, A?” Ree asked upon arrival.

For a hip hop hanger-on, this young man’s delivery was surprisingly refined and calm. Not what D had expected. Asya explained the situation to Ree, who listened silently and then said, “Move over.”

The star shifted docilely to make space.

“We haven’t been formally introduced.” The kid reached his hand across the table. “D, my name is Ree. I’m A’s partner. Most people don’t know me cause I play the background. Now, I need to know something—have you really tossed the guns away or are you holding them until you figure out when you gonna blackmail us?”

“Neither,” D answered. “As I told Asya, I’m not gonna blackmail you. But I haven’t tossed them in the river yet either.”

“You just closed your office,” Ree said. “Your business is falling apart. Why should we believe you won’t come at us for some dough?”

“Why do you want those guns? There are a lot of them out there.”

“We paid for them. We want them,” Ree said.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay,” D said, “are you close to Ice?”

“We know of him.”

“Well, speak to him or one of his people and they’ll let you know I’m legit.”

Then Asya asked, “You know a nigga named Ray Ray from Tilden?”

“Yeah. He works for me sometimes.”

“Okay,” Ree said, “I know him. He’s been trying to get in the rap game with us. He has some decent beats.” Then he got up, took out his phone, and walked away from the table, leaving in his wake an awkward silence.

D broke it by saying, “I heard you turned out Birmingham.”

“We did it big, yo. I had no idea it was gonna be like that. The women up there were crazy. You hit that with Night, right?”

“Yeah. He loved it too. Did you meet a woman named Kira?”

“Oh hell yeah, I did. Her crew were all dimes. She rolled with us back to London and I don’t think we slept that night.”

“She’s dead.”

“What?”

“Just last week, in a car accident riding between London and Birmingham.”

The little boy who resided behind the gear and inside the rap star popped out. “Oh damn, that’s crazy. That’s so crazy.” And then he fell silent, staring into space, eyes empty.

Asya was still off in his own London memories when Ree sat back down and said to his partner, “Remember that story about the brothers who got killed over on Mother Gaston? Well, this is the one who lived.”

“Yo,” Asya said, “you the one they tell stories about? Three dead brothers, right?”

D nodded calmly but inside was upset that Ray Ray had told Ree his sad history. He was also surprised at how fascinated these two young men were with it.

“My uncle told me about your family. Lots of people know that story. They all got murked on Rockaway Avenue.”

“It was on the corner of Livonia and Stone, or what they call Mother Gaston now,” D said.

Asya sat back and gazed at D with new eyes. “You that nigga. You the survivor. I’m gonna write a song called ‘The Survivor’ based on your story. If I’d known all this we wouldn’t have had no kind of misunderstanding. Right, Ree?”

“D, you are a real B-Ville homey,” Ree said slowly. “So I don’t feel like I got to worry about you.”

“You don’t,” D assured him.

“But there were people who had plans for those guns. It’s got nothing to do with us now cause we don’t have them and we are no longer involved. But we can’t call them off either.”

“Does this involve a Detective Rivera?”

Ree smiled. “Yo, you don’t snitch, right? Same thing over here.”

“There’s such a thing as dry snitching,” D said.

Ree and Asya exchanged a look and then turned back toward D. “He’s a force out there,” Ree said, and considered his next words carefully. “There’s this real estate company that’s moving into Brownsville called AKBK. Detective Rivera is doing some private security for them. I hear they have big plans for the Ville. You should check them out.”

“This is connected to the delivery?”

“Like he said, you should look into that, yo,” Asya chimed in. “You and your pal Ice.”

“So we were being set up. No—Ice was being set up?”

“D,” Ree said, “that’s as dry as I can be. We good on that now, okay? So could you tell Asya a bit about what happened to your brothers? If you help us there may be a ways we could give you a piece of the song. What you say, Asya?”

“That could happen,” the MC replied.

So, in the spirit of making potential enemies into collaborators, clients into comrades, D shared the bloody tale of his family while calculating the connection between Rivera, Ice, and AKBK Realty.