Queens Noir (40 page)

"The Bel-Air Mountains, yes," the man nodded approvingly as I studied the painting. "That was once the view
from my own window. See there?" He rose to his feet and
approached the image, pointing. "Those mules, those pigs foraging in the garbage pits? Those palms, those coconuts? Is all
Haiti. Is my home."

He turned to face me, scrutinizing me.

"I am Mr. Stuckey," he said finally. "And this is Mrs.
Stuckey."

I nodded and waited for him to continue. He did not.

"You say your son was murdered," I ventured.

Mr. Stuckey nodded, satisfied with my inquiry. "In that room, there." He pointed down a darkened hallway.

Now it was my turn to give him the eye. What's going on
here?

Noting my skepticism, the man rose to his feet. "Follow
me.

Midway down the hall, he paused and flicked on a light
switch. A door stood open adjacent to it, though the other
doors on either side of the room were closed. Warily, I peered
into what appeared to be a child's bedroom or, rather, the
room of an adolescent boy. It was painted a dense, cornflower
blue, and decorated with outdated pop culture posters. A
large, weathered Table of Periodic Elements hung on one wall,
attached with brittle and yellowed tape.

"That once was mine," Mr. Stuckey noted proudly, indicating the poster. "When I was a boy, it hung in the classroom
of my secondary school, the Petion National Lycee." His back
stiffened with pride at the mention of the name. "It was given
to me by the headmaster, a gift. I was to be a great scientist,
then." He paused. "As was Edwin too."

The room was small. Shoved under a window that opened
onto brick was an unmade twin bed, and not two steps from
it stood a modest desk, bowed by a stack of books whose titles were turned away from me. A boom box also sat perched
atop the desk, and there-How had I not seen that!-rested
an overturned chair and a noose hanging limply from a light
fixture above it.

"Jesus!" I stepped backward and clutched the doorframe
in reflex.

"Yes," Mr. Stuckey nodded solemnly. "My son was murdered right here. He was twenty-two years old."

"Same age as me," I whispered.

Mr. Stuckey turned off the light and we returned to the front of the house in silence. I took my seat back on the couch.
My tea had grown cold.

"You will help us?" Mrs. Stuckey piped up.

"What time did the police arrive tonight?" I asked, pen
poised to record the details in my notepad.

"The police," she clucked dismissively with a wave of her
hand.

"The police do not come here anymore," Mr. Stuckey
added.

Anymore? "Were you home then, when the intruder broke
in?"

"The intruder was already here," Mr. Stuckey corrected.

"So there are suspects?"

"Oh," he nodded enthusiastically, "there are suspects."

"'Nice," I added, in spite of myself. "If you could give me a
list of the names you gave to the police ..."

"The last time the police were here, they took no names.
No. Nothing from us," Mrs. Stuckey fumed.

"The last time one month ago," Mr. Stuckey said stoically.

"A month ago?" I closed my notepad. "Sir, listen. I'm not
sure what exactly is going on here, or what it is you want me
to-" I fell silent as I shifted my position on the sofa, making
sure that I had all of my belongings. The Stuckeys looked at
me helplessly, and I was beginning to feel spooked.

At that, a girl stepped into the room from the hallway.

"I'll talk to him, Papa," she said. "I'll tell him what he
needs to know." The girl was brazen. She stood with her hand
on one hip, and she blinked her eyelashes once she was done
taking me in. She wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that was
knotted tightly in the center of her back. Her speech was not the patois of her West Indian parents, who only nodded as she
signaled me with a beckoning finger to the door.

Once we stepped off the porch, she immediately lit a cigarette. "I heard everything," she said, exhaling.

"I'm a reporter for the-"

"I said everything." She rolled her eyes. "Walk with me."

The girl pirouetted gracefully as a ballerina and took off
down the block. She was short, like her mother, barely over
five feet, and though I was nearly six feet, I had to jog to keep
up with her.

"So, you from around here?" I asked, falling back on my
usual opening line. Dumb! Some reporter I was, but I didn't know
where to begin with this girl. I was ecstatic just to be walking
with her. In an instant, my street cred had risen to the umpteenth degree, and the few brothers hanging out seemed to be
getting a kick out of watching a dude like me, in my skippies
and Polo, pursuing a sister like her, whose mane of naturally
red ringlets blew behind her like a superhero's cape.

She didn't respond to my lame attempts at flirting, and
we walked along Jamaica Avenue in silence, passing the
gated entrances of fast-food restaurants, 99-cent stores, and
discount clothing outlets with names like Foxy Lady and Tic
Tock. The sky above its had a chunky, textured look about it;
mounds of cloud clung stubbornly to the midnight blue, as
often happened after a storm. It had been an uncharacteristically stormy summer. A crushed can of Colt 45, however, still
balanced precariously on the fence post of King's Manor.

"I don't know why people drink that swill!" I knocked the
can over in an attempt at irreverence, accidentally splashing
my sneakers with stale beer. Shit.

The girl led me a little further to a Salvadoran cafe with
Christmas bulbs and plastic flowers in its window.

"I'm Janette," she said, as we slid into an upholstered
booth.

"Dougie," I grinned.

"Dougie, huh? That's cute." She drummed her fingernails
on the table between its. "I hate that you can't smoke anywhere anymore."

"Been smoking long?"

"Since I was thirteen."

"Nasty habit."

She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. I ordered beer
for both of us. Music and words incomprehensible to me floated
from a juke box somewhere in the place.

"My brother committed suicide," Janette said suddenly.
My beer caught in my throat and a bit of it dribbled down my
chin. "You're conducting an investigation here, right?"

"Yeah, but-"

"So, here." Janette reached into her back pocket and shot
a scrap of paper across the table at me. "That's the name of
the detective."

"Detective?"

She shook her head at me in disbelief. "What the fuck?
Are you a reporter or what?" She rolled her eyes. "The detective working my brother's case, you moron."

"Right, right." I took a pull on the neck of my beer, trying
to recover. "Here's the thing," I said, leaning toward her across
the table. "Your pops said this happened a month ago."

"A little less than a month ago. We're just really stressed
about how long all this is taking, you know?"

"Right, but a month ago?" I sit up straight. "A month ago is
not a story today. After a month, there's no story. I'm sorry."

"But my brother is dead." Janette's aggressive demeanor
crumbled.

"You're talking suicide here." I shook my head sympathetically. "That's tragic, but I can tell you straight up: If your
brother chose to kill himself, we ain't gonna run it in the paper
now, know what I mean?"

"My brother did not choose to kill himself." Janette's eyes
flashed angrily.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, call the detective."

"Wait." I wave the waiter over for another round. "If you
already have a detective working the case, why the call on the
scanner?"

Janette ignored my question and turned to the waiter. "I'll
have a Jack and ginger."

"And," I continued, "if you already know he took his own
life, why not just grieve and clean out that bedroom and move
on?"

She remained silent.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

"I'm not offended," she shrugged. "Your questions are
valid."

"Any answers?"

"If I had answers, would I be sitting here talking to you?"
She smiled slyly. "I think not."

I never cared for police precincts. Not that I'd had much experience with them.

Occasionally, I was sent to the local station house to
clarify a fuzzy docket that'd come over the teletype, but the
officers always seemed less than welcoming. I usually got out
of there as soon as I could, which was what I intended the
afternoon following my interview with Janette. In a moment
of hopeful lust, I'd promised I would speak to this Detec tive Spurlock, and she, in turn, promised she'd speak to me
again. So here I was in the 103rd Precinct at the detective
squad.

"Come on back." Detective Spurlock motioned toward
one cluttered desk among many. With a swish of a burly arm,
he cleared a chair of paperwork for me to sit. "You got good
timing, kid. Caught me right before sign-out. Minute later, I'd
a been gone for the night ... Coffee?"

I glanced over his shoulder at a stained-glass pot that contained what looked to be black sludge. "No thanks."

"Smart," he shrugged, sipping boldly from a chipped mug.
"What can I do for you?"

"I'm here about the Stuckey case."

"The Stuckeys." Spurlock ran a pink hand through a thick
head of white hair. "Listen, I don't know what your connection to this family is, but-"

"I'm a reporter for the Weekly Item," I interrupted.

"That so?" He nodded. "Well, good luck. Once they've
got your number, you're getting no peace from then on. My
advice: Steer clear. There's no story there."

"That's what I'm thinking too, but if there was," I lean in,
"what would it be?"

Spurlock furrowed his brow. "Meaning?"

"The parents seem to think their son was murdered."

"Okay, kid, I'll indulge you, I've got nothing but time,
right?" He shuffled through a stack of bulging file folders before
selecting the thinnest one. "Here we go." He took a swig from
his mug and whipped on his reading glasses. "Edwin Stuckey,
age twenty-two, found hanged in his own bedroom, March 2." He
paused at the date, gave me the once-over, continued reading
from his notes. `Apparent suicide, no suspicious circumstances,
blah, blah, case closed."

Spurlock sat back in his chair and folded his arms across
his chest.

"Wait a minute." I flipped through my own notebook. "If
you began your investigation on March 2, why did the call
come over my scanner just two days ago?"

"Ahh," the detective laughed. "They won't stop, these
people. I closed this case one week after it happened, and
they've been phoning 911 ever since." He shook his head.
"Hell, I'd arrest the two of them for Aggravated Harassment
if it weren't so damn sad."

"So there's nothing? Nothing to suggest the murder that
the family thinks occurred?"

"Nope." Spurlock reopened the folder and flipped through
the paperwork. "The sister gave me a couple a names of some
friends of his, who turned out not to be friends at all. The
boy didn't have any friends." He handed me the list. "Church
members. A bit too pious for my tastes, but hey, to each his
own." He closed the folder and switched off his desk lamp.
"Like I said: case closed."

Of course, there was no story. But I went ahead and crafted a
lead and pitched it to my editor.

Jamaica, Queens-A twenty-two-year-old man was
found hanged in his bedroom under mysterious circumstances. Family members suspect foul play.

He glanced at it before tossing it aside. "We don't do
suicides."

Still, I wanted to see Janette again. I steeled myself for the
journey. It took me nearly two hours: the F train, then the
Q76 bus to the end of the line. The bus wove its way down residential streets before groaning to a halt at the concrete
165th Street terminal in Jamaica, Queens.

It was bedlam. Greyhound on crack. People mobbed each
designated bus slot, frantically directing the drivers into their
respective spaces. An open, buzzing vegetable market operated
behind the commuters, and as the day was a hot one, clouds
of flies swarmed crates of long onions and collard greens. An
old woman wearing a hairnet sat on a folding chair selling
spices and exotic remedies sealed in plastic baggies. There was
too much going on here; I was used to separation: a bus terminal being a bus terminal, a vegetable market being a vegetable
market. Here, in Janette's neighborhood, everything was everything all at once.

I cut behind the terminal through the Colosseum Mall
and down tight aisles displaying brightly colored skirts and
cell phone accessories. Out on the other side stood the First
Presbyterian Church of Jamaica; Edwin's funeral had been
held there.

"Yo, man, you good?" A guy about my age peered at me
from beneath an open car hood.

"What? Oh, yeah man, yeah." I kept moving.

Jamaica Avenue, almost there. On the "Ave," all the girls
resembled Janette, with their manicured hands, toes, and eyebrows. Women sashayed bare-legged, wearing tight clothes;
streaked, braided hairdos; metallic purses; chatting casually
on headsets while munching on meat kebobs and cubes of
sugared coconut.