The Vulture (13 page)

I was sitting in the schoolyard across the street from Charles Evans Hughes on a Thursday evening when Spade walked by, strolling actually, profiling for all the cats who thought they were seeing a ghost.

‘Hey, Spade!’ I called. ‘Whuss happnin’?’

‘Nuthin’ that I know of,’ he admitted. He came over and sat with me and Cooly. ‘Could yawl stand a taste?’ he asked, indicating a bottle under his arm.

‘Not me,’ Cooly said.

I took a swig from the bottle. It was some kind of wine.

‘Man o man,’ Spade said, meaning Manischewitz wine.

The three of us sat and smoked, looking across the Ninth Avenue crush. It was almost six, and the sun was gone. A gray
color had taken over the evening and brought the Hawk along as a bodyguard. The children were inside watching cartoons, and I had stayed outside to watch cartoons. Old white ladies running along with TV dinners, and uneducated black soldiers from the docks heading for Eighth Avenue and the A train.

‘I’m sick of this shit!’ I said.

‘What shit!’ Spade asked.

‘All this shit.’ I pointed out the books between my feet. ‘I feel like I’m in jail. Read this and write that. Today I do it, and tomorrow I don’ remember what I did, an’ it don’ make no difference.’

‘Schoolitis,’ Cooly drawled. ‘I think I got me a bad case a that too.’

Spade smiled and took another swig from the wine.

‘You know what I wanna do?’ I asked. ‘I wanna start dealin’. I need to make me some money an’ git the hell away from home.’

‘Schoolitis an’ homeitis,’ Spade said. ‘One uv ’em is named Lee an’ the other is named Isidro. If you deal, you got to deal in yo’ neighborhood. Thass the only way you got a chance. You got to have contacts, or one cat will try a l’il pressure, an’ when he see you ain’ leanin’, he’ll call the Man on you.’

‘Those ain’ the only problems I got,’ I admitted. ‘I ain’ got no lead. John an’ Seedy got a very steady lead, an’ thass whut keeps bizness good. They alwaze have their stuff. I ain’ got idea the first ’bout where Lee iz gittin’ set up.’

‘When the Man jump Lee an’ beat his ass, you gon’ be glad you didn’t know nuthin’,’ Cooly commented.

‘The less you know ’bout another man’s thing, the better,’ Spade declared. ‘An’ thass his woman, his job, his fam’ly, an’ everything else.’

‘We got a meetin’,’ Cooly reminded me.

‘Yeah.’ I guess I must have grimaced at the thought.

‘Whuss the problem?’ Spade asked.

‘Nuthin’,’ I lied. ‘I’m sleepy.’

‘I’ll see you later,’ Spade said. He took off in one direction, Cooly and I in the other. Cooly and I were heading for the basement of José’s store to hold a meeting. The thing that kept puzzling me was that I still had no idea who had turned me over to Isidro. No one had stopped hanging out with the group or acting extraordinary.

There were two reasons that finding the informer was important. The first was that I felt uncomfortable with the group, knowing that we couldn’t plot anything significant. We used to hit a little something once or twice a month. In the summertime, more often that that would’ve been okay. But without knowing who I could depend on, I couldn’t do a thing. The second reason was personal. The rat, whoever he was, was blocking my way to being the man. In so doing, he had almost gotten me killed.

‘Only way you can be the man iz to prove that you are a man,’ Spade said. ‘And in order to deal with other people, you got to make sure your own house is straight.’

That was what I had to do. Before I moved in the street, I had to be sure that things were together with my men in José’s basement.

January 4, 1969

The Hawk was kicking much ass when I stepped out of José’s basement. The three Puerto Rican boys, Cooly, and I had been blowing a few joints, standing in a circle passing the sticks and waving at a small electric heater to keep warm. I had smoked enough to lay out and nod for a week. Somehow I just couldn’t get in the mood to cut loose and laugh at all the funny shit that was happening. The guys were all moving in slow motion, and I was listening to what they said five minutes ago as though I
was communicating with some little green men from Mars by way of a language disc. I never really heard the meaning, but the sounds were familiar.

It was almost two in the morning when the group broke up and headed home. I shuffled through the snow toward my crib, hoping to God that my mom was in bed so that I wouldn’t have to hear no Sermon on the Mount or whatever. I walked over to Eighth Avenue and then uptown. The avenue was still lit up a bit with Christmas lights and big signs about white-elephant sales that the Puerto Ricans loved. All the P.R. and blood women had been running up and down 14th Street and traipsing off with bundles of shit.

Christmas hadn’t been bad at my house for the first time in a long time. My baby brother had given up the idea of Santa Claus, but he got a bicycle with the training wheels and a few other
practical
gifts. I had given my mother a clock-radio that I stole from 42nd Street and told her I had been saving for. What I had been doing was giving my money to Lee. My mother fell for what I told her, and enjoyed the holiday in spite of herself. She didn’t work because of the nervous breakdown she had had, but with money from Matt plus her check, we managed to have a tree and a big Christmas dinner and the whole family bit. As a special holiday surprise, my big brother, Matt, left Vietnam in one piece. My mother swore that it was an act of God and that the seven years of famine were over.

‘Step over here an’ don’t move.’ My thoughts about the season were cut short at that instant. I knew the voice.

‘Okay, amigo, I give up. Why me?’ The guy’s name was Pedro. I had met him at the park the day John gave his summer party. He had had a bottle of wine, and I had given him some rum.

‘Jus’ step careful.’ I could feel the point of the gun jammed into my back. ‘What eef I tol’ you Seedy wuz dead, man? What
would you say?’ I half-turned and then halted when I heard him cock the trigger.

‘I’d say this was the first I heard,’ I said.

‘I don’ believe you, you bastard!’ He pushed me ahead of him. ‘Start walkin’.’

‘Whut if I say I ain’ goin’ nowhere?’

‘Then I’ll shoot you here. But you gonna die anyway.’

Isidro was dead? I had laid a contract on him almost six months ago and hadn’t done anything to him now, but by the time Pedro found that out, it would be too late for me.

‘What time wuz Seedy killed?’ I asked. ‘I been with frien’s all night.’

‘I would be su’prised eef you didn’ have a lie worked out. I ain’ sellin’ time. Yo’ time ran out this summer when you plotted on our man. I been jus’ waitin’ ’cauz I knew you couldn’ be trusted. I didn’ know you planned to keel ’eem.’ The faster Pedro tried to talk, the more pronounced his accent became. I could see his breath coming past my shoulder in long streams.

‘Look! I didn’ hook Seedy. I don’ know who did. I been wit’ my boys blowin’ bush all night. Why don’t you check it out?’

‘Whatever I check mean that more than the dead man knows who killed you. I can’ check nuthin’. They would lie for you.’ He paused. ‘Start.’

We started walking slowly toward 18th Street, and then he prodded me into a left turn that pointed us west, toward the river and the docks.

‘Look! I wuz wit’ my men,’ I said. ‘I ain’ seen Seedy in three months or more. He wuz the las’ thing on my mind.’

‘That’s right,’ someone else said. ‘He wuz with us.’

Pedro and I turned, to see Ricky Manning right behind us. He was breathing heavily into his hands. He wore no gloves.

‘When? Cuando?’ Pedro moved at an angle so that he could watch us both at the same time.

‘From ten-thirty till about ten minutes ago,’ Ricky said.

Ricky, you stupid bastard! I was thinking. You should have come up on him with a gun. You standin’ there ain’t givin’ us a chance. Now he’s gotta get both of us out of the way.

There was silence. I watched Pedro. I was looking for a chance to grab the gun from him. He shook his head and then looked at me and gestured with the rod. I nodded that Ricky was telling the truth. Pedro turned and walked away.

‘I’m grateful to you, Rick,’ I managed. ‘You saved my life. I owe you.’

‘It was nothing, brother.’ Ricky turned, and before I could add anything, he was gone, wheeling around the corner at a trot. I broke into a trot too, even though I don’t know why. My nerves were on edge. The cold weather was no factor. The chills I had were goosebumps.

That’s a weird cat, I said to myself.

Ricky was the quietest of us all. He hung around with I.Q., like a Siamese twin most of the time. Even when I was with them and they were getting high, they were arguing over the merits of this and that. Ricky was my age, but he had skipped a class because he was smart. That had put him only two years behind I.Q., and he seemed to thrive on the thought that even though he was younger and might not have read as much, he was as smart as the Q. In my mind, and most of the other corner cats’, there was no chance of anyone being as heavy as Ivan Quinn. He had been on TV for the High School Bowl, voted to
High School America’s Who’s Who
. There were very few honors he had not gotten in school. Out of class, he smoked and got high like the rest of us.

There used to be a particular hangout that we don’t use much anymore down on Eleventh Avenue. It was an old warehouse that had been abandoned. Whenever we wanted a little privacy, we went up there to smoke and pop pills. It was there that I first saw and heard Ricky and the Q get into
their philosophical who-did-what. They were as high as two kites. When I showed up, they had already popped three ‘cats’ apiece. I wanted to smoke, but they told me that in order to relate to the greater realm and a lot of other shit, I had to be high on what they were with. The only thing about ‘cats’ that I had ever heard was that they were ‘downs.’ I avoided all kinds of downs, because I thought they would make me feel like I was at home.

‘Look at mankind,’ Ricky was saying. ‘There is nothing right with the world the way it is. Everywhere you look there are bombs being dropped and people being flooded and diseased. For the advanced state that mankind has reached technologically, he has achieved nothing humanely. Discomfort and discontent. Hippies, yippies, beatniks, anarchists, revolutionists, rebels, communists . . . are there no more just plain people who believe in living life singularly and finding a separate peace?’

‘Peace was created by people as a way of describing oneness with God. There are no more Thomas Mores, if that’s what you mean,’ I.Q. said.

‘Then why must I remain in this state? I believe in reincarnation. I think that I would be much better off as another form of animal if this is the highest form. I need to know nothing of all this. Why must I conform?’ Ricky turned to me. ‘Do you know what the answers are? The purpose of life can’t be in preparation for praising God forever. . . . Just as I can’t see myself burning in hell throughout eternity, I can’t see myself kneeling at the feet of an Almighty God and singing of his glory.’ Ricky looked up, and there were tears in his eyes. I was thinking that this was some white-boy action. All of this conversation and these words that sounded like some kind of a book. What kind of a brother got high and ran all of this shit down? ‘It simply means that I will be as well off anywhere in the universe as I am here,’ Ricky said. ‘The brain is made up
of electrical impulses that can never be shut off. That means that when death comes it cuts off the transmitting of signals from the brain to the body. It does not mean that the brain itself desists. Electricity does not fade like breath . . . I should not have to live under oppression and something less than the ideal humane conditions when I can end this fiasco . . . I should kill myself.’

‘Who, then, is free? The wise man who cannot command his passions, who fears not want, nor death, nor chains, firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been rounded off and polished.’ I.Q. made a long speech and then explained it for my benefit. ‘If you have no need of life, then you have no need of death. Who knows what you may someday do to inform others of your unconcern?’

‘You’re full of shit!’ Ricky screamed. ‘You talk all that shit tonight when you’re high, but what about when you need and want? I have already experienced the pains of a man who has lived twice my age, and not half of the joy that one is supposed to squeeze from life like juice from an orange. I know what you want. You want like the rest of us. The cool of I.Q. is not as notorious and impregnable to me as it might be to others. I reject life in a test tube. I shall leave you to your maker.’

The conversation continued. Ricky would tell about sixteen years of pain. That he had ached for the salvation of mankind since his first realistic look at the system.

I.Q. was the master of the quote. As he supplied quotes to explain to Ricky why life was worth living, he would name the author, the year, and the speech if he felt like it. Ricky screamed about suicide and actually looked like he was trying to jump one time. Q and I managed to control him. The pills that we took kept us up. I nodded as Q and Ricky continued, and finally cried myself to sleep as the sun rose.

June, 1969

‘You workin’ for John?’ Cooly asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Whattaya do?’

‘I deal.’

‘Thass why you don’ hang out no mo’?’

‘Yeah, I’m too busy.’ I lied and exaggerated a bit.

I was working part time for Lee. It started at the end of May, when he went down to take his physical for the service. He had had some appointments to make that couldn’t be canceled, so he sent me to deliver the stuff and started to use me as an errand boy after that. To no one’s surprise, he didn’t pass the physical and beamed on the block about his 4-F.

I spent as much time as I could watching Lee. He had become good at smelling the Man and staying out of trouble for almost a year. The closest he had ever come to getting nailed was the night I burned the car. I was learning all that I could.

‘In other words, you ain’ gonna be with us no mo’?’