Avenue D

Evening shift and not much action. Gio and me hear about a shake-up at one of the dope spots at Third Street and conduct surveillance from an unrented apartment in the Wald Houses on the D that the building’s manager gave me the keys to at the end of the summer. It’s a good vantage point and the manager is a good guy, so the inspection and small amount of painting the apartment needs to get listed available in the NYCHA system isn’t getting done. There’s not much to see tonight, or at least nothing we hadn’t seen before that will help us unlock the higher mechanics of the street dope trade. I’m feeling restless. We both are.

Back out in the RMP, I watch a blond chick in five-inch heels and a white leather mini totter out to a fancy pimped out Cadillac on the curb. NYCHA and the heroin trade are both equal opportunity, but most foot traffic on the D in the eighties is Hispanic. We nearly always stop and watch Caucasians and blacks we don’t already know to see what brings them to our little corner of the word: 99.99 percent of the time it’s the same thing.

You don’t have to be a street genius to realize what this broad is all about. By the time she arrives at the Caddy, we’re there, flashing tin. The car, a total throwback seventies Super Fly–style Caddy looks familiar to me, but I don’t dwell on it at first. When he powers down his window and smiles at our badges, the driver, a rail-thin overdressed black dude, looks even more familiar than the car.

“Evening, ma’am. Sir. Police officers,” Gio says in his best Joe Friday impersonation. “Help you with something?” I kick one of the fenders with my shoe to gauge just how fucked up everybody is. The guy snaps his eyes back at me but keeps his face pointed at Gio. The woman just sort of sways instead of jumping. What was obvious half a block away is depressingly clear up close. She’s a prostitute and a user with the double dead-eyed gaze of someone who’s surrendered way more of themselves than they can ever get back. She has on long opera-type gloves but they don’t quite cover an abscess and a small tangle of track marks on one arm. The guy in the car is clearly her pimp. I suddenly realize why the car looks so familiar. Holy shit. Small fucking world…I start to laugh.

“Cat, right?” I say to the guy. He’s the Forty-second Street pimp who shot up Richie Gascon’s car on Eighth Avenue when we were in high school. It’s so far from what Gio expects to hear that he breaks character with a “what the fuck?” look at me. The pimp is stunned. I know his name but he has no idea why or how to play it. Is this good news or is he fucked?

It’s like old home week all of a sudden. A few days before I see another familiar face on the D. This one’s from Canarsie. I know him as Taco. His kid brother is my age and was in some of my high school classes. It’s one of those perfect “Autumn in New York” type days and for once I’m not caring about who’s selling and what’s going down. But Taco’s clearly there to cop and it looks like he’s making to score from a guy we’ve used a lot for information. Worst of all, Taco calls me “Rambo,” a nickname nobody in Canarsie was gonna learn if I had anything to do about it, and starts whispering shit to me about who’s selling, and hints that he’s earned a few bags from me for sharing. It’s fucking surreal. The longest conversation I ever have with a guy whose brother sat next to me in algebra and it’s about trading fucking dope for information? No explanation, no apology, no “Hey, don’t tell no one in the old neighborhood but I’ve had some hard luck,” nothing. He’s a rat and I’m THE MAN? Nah, he’s Taco and I’m Mike and we’re both a long fucking way from Canarsie. I blow him off and two hours later I see him licking his finger, sticking it into empty glassines from the gutter then back into his mouth.

Now this scumbag from the past, Cat. He’s got his act a little better together.

“Yeah, yo Officers, my lady friend and I were just leaving,” he says pointing uptown with an upraised pinkie with an inch-long lacquered nail on the tip. I don’t remember that from the last time I saw him. He’s got both hands flat on the dash. It’s like a dog rolling over on his back in submission. He wants us to know he’s not going to pull anything out of his pockets or turn the motor on in a hurry.

“Yeah? You and your lady friend mind stepping to the curb?” Gio replies. Cat looks at me.

“Yo, listen,” the pimp hisses, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, “can you give us a break, man?”

“Why should we do that, Cat?” I ask, frankly enjoying fucking with the guy by using his name. He’ll never remember who I am in a thousand years. Cat looks at me with awkwardly theatrical confidence. He’s gotta be high on blow.

“I know Rambo, man. Fastback and Rambo! We know those dudes!” What? This just got even weirder. I recognized him and know his street name and now he’s throwing around my and Gio’s nicknames like we’re his ticket out.

Enough. “Get the fuck out of here,” I tell him. “Seriously, just get the fuck out of here. We see either of you anywhere in the projects again, we’re gonna tell your friends Fastback and Rambo how much you pissed us off.” I say the names like I never heard them before.

The girl wobbles around the back of the car and gets in. Cat the pimp thanks us and they drive off. Gio looks at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“Feel like telling me what the fuck that was all about?” he asks. “You and ‘Cat’ go way back?”

“Bro, you’re not going to believe me.”

“Try me,” he says and walks back to the RMP. It’s probably the first time Gio’s ever seen me let a potential toss and bust slide and for sure the first skell I don’t ask about Davey Blue Eyes since White Boy Ronnie let the name slip. I steal one last look at the Caddy’s taillights heading back to Times Square and laugh again. Cat gets a pass. For old time’s sake. First Taco from Canarsie, now this. Small fucking world.