South by South Bronx (4 page)

The bedroom used to be a dingy cream color. Once Mink saw words scrawled in black paint on the wall: YOU SPENT IT. Letters trailing paint in rivulets the way blood snakes along cracks in gravel. (Maybe a tequila joint dream?) The words had been painted over. It was all blue now, almost underwater but bright enough to include sunlight making the surfaces sparkle. It was an outdoor blue, a summer sky-blue, each time vaguely different: YOU SPENT IT. Or maybe Mink had dreamed the words, thinking of time SPENT doing
nada
and being SPENT or having SPENT himself doing
nada
, and he had done a lot of
nada
there. Talk and drinks and joints and a good place to end up after a party or maybe Alex was just inviting and he had three women who wanted to come along so

(Monk sometimes partook of)—patchouli girls in sandals. Kisses full of air. That temporary anna joanna bobanna mindless endless fuck—Alex and Mink after laughing—Mink could never remember a single name and wondered if memory loss was contagious. The room was the same, but the bed, wasn't the bed different? It hadn't been floating in the middle of the room like it was now, almost like

an island

some land of enchantment land of some enchantment, some moment waiting to happen. Stolen, snatched, something that passed by. What had escaped him? How had so many years passed into
nada
? How did he become thirty, how did his work become OLD SCHOOL? Though he had only killed time here on four or five occasions, he now felt the weight of time wasted, SPENT. Time that would not come back again. Brushes crispy dry. Oil paint flaking, old paper crinkling up. Time falls like a hammer.

“She's still asleep,” Alex said.

The woman lay amid sheets like a painting. Like renaissance, like a well-lit stage. Alex was saying something. His lips were moving but Mink didn't hear a word. He was tripping island tripping time tripping PUERTO RICAN style which is from one hanging vine to the other, smooth and flow like Tarzan if Tarzan could be Puerto Rican, and why wasn't he? After all, jungle, vines, loincloth—Mink was imploding, looking at this woman on this island of bed, floating in the empty
nada
. A time trip. Snaps from a book. A coily haired blonde frolicking in the woods. It was Eva Braun sleeping there, lying on a hundred-mile island like she washed up on shore after a SPENT life with a madman. Mink was painting the curve of her ass jutting up soft hills, valleys of a mussed sheet. Nothing covered her from him—stormy winds, cream vanilla flesh. Cherryred toenails. Scratches and cuts around her ankles (it had been a rough landing)—it's Eva Braun, he thought, sleeping on the island. Last time all she got was a bunker and that acrid almond aftertaste. A ripoff, a scam, a horizon of barbed-wire detention camps. A multilayered concept of some towering dimensions overwhelmed Mink hurricane style. White black red armband and it figures she would be sleeping—giants always sleep when they find a nice crib, don't matter who was lying there first, because to them maybe Puerto Ricans always appeared as inch-high Lilliputians

(I don't care what the story says, I DON'T WANT NO GULLIVER POPPING UP AROUND HERE! Giants are a problem. It's not so much where they go, as the collateral damage they leave behind.)

a ripoff a scam a tired slogan rolled out after a cataclysmic event, a whole train of thought. Mink walked slowly around, far to near, never too close, as if he could feel the invisible velvet rope. Could see every bit of her except for those bits Rubens covered with raiment and gossamer shit. She radiated words. Mink was looking at a painting. He was getting words. She was more than a painting. She was a whole narrative.

“Where did you find her?” Mink whispered.

Alex, against the wall, slid down to squat. Swishing on that bottle, liquid splashing.

“I don't know,” he said.

Mink didn't think this was any time to joke. He shot Alex a look and saw those vague blurry eyes staring at her with as much question as answer.

“I woke up, and she was there. I thought maybe she was one of yours. A runaway from the Mink refugee camp. You sure she's not one of yours?”

“Oh, I'm sure,” Mink said, because back then, when parties were rampant and white women would come up from downtown, they really didn't want to brave that subway and streets too much at that hour of the morning, so Mink would put them up, no problem. And for some reason many ended up waking in Alex's bed.

“One moment she's not there. The next, there she is. Does that ever happen to you?”

“Not lately, no.”

Mink came close enough to touch. (No touch.) To almost breathe in her breath sleep. (No breath.) He changed his view, not sure if it was him moving or her, revolving.

“The feeling that your life is like slides,” Alex said. “Someone slips in a new one while I pass out. I wake up someplace else.”

She moved. A flutter of eyelashes. The swirling universe of freckles on her back.

“Look, if you don't want to tell me, don't tell me. You don't have to make up some bullshit story on my account.”

“It's no bullshit.” A vague smile. Alex was pleased that Mink was annoyed, churning, involved. Could read how Mink was waiting, a word, any word, explanation, hope. “She's a dancer,” Alex said.

Mink flexed his fingers like a strangler. She was a war. She was combat footage. She was a fucking death camp, ashes raining down from chimneys. Alex passed the bottle.

“She's a model,” he said.

Mink swallowed the hot sting. He was seeing colors splashing canvas. He could smell the paint: a whole series. A sense of wonder at what he was seeing, what his mind was doing with the information.

“She's an actress,” Alex said. Like pitching pennies in a fountain and making wishes.

Mink was about to make a crack when he saw the way Alex was still looking at her.

“She's white as a ghost,” he whispered.

Mink waited. He could feel the splashes of paint slowly forming her on canvas, locking her in forever. He felt terror at the thought of her waking, of her walking away, of anything changing in that room, ever. He wanted the moment only for himself. (In his memoirs he would banish Alex to the outer peripheries.) He was thinking about what generally happened to the women in Alex's life, the women he had seen him with, either on the street at the party or in his bed: They disappeared, each making way for the next flavor. No telling how Belinda managed to stay so long. She succumbed to the disappearing virus. In this empty room everything vanished, even the furniture. He bit his lip.

“One moment she's there,” Alex said, eyes burning, “and the next, she's gone.”

He stared at her. Mink's pulse throbbed like techno.

Alex said, “This is around the time I wake the girl up and say,
Hey, it's time you go home. I got stuff to do today
, right?”

Alex sounded toneless. Mink waited. There was no way Alex could miss what was happening to him, was there? Mink suddenly hated him. He couldn't say anything. He wanted Alex to look at him, to maybe see it on his face. But Alex would not take his eyes off her. What was happening to him, the way he just sank against the wall?

“We should let her sleep,” Alex said.

6.

the tall thin vodka bottle on the kitchen table.

there is no hanging with robert when he gets like that. cross-eyed with drink and horny as all hell behind that cheap smelly cigar. the big
patrón
in his white suit lusting after the slaves, thinking he's going to get laid even if somebody gotta get paid. that was why his fascination with alex the pussy magnet. that was why this sloppy friendship built on a pyramid of wasted weekends, this
amistad
built on booze and pussy. it was probably why he hired alex to work at the shoe store. alex for three years now slipping shoes on girlfeet while robert raked in the cash—the store was owned by his parents anyway, just a present for the unpopular fat kid who needed something to do. he didn't even need to come in every day anymore after his deal with the big department store that grew around and swallowed it. had alex to run it, alex to be there every day, drawing in the ladies with his indefinable something, something robert drove him crazy asking about.

—yes, but what do you think it is about you, he asked too many times last night, waving the cigar like he was doing an interview, and that was the thing: remembering last night. for all intents and purposes, he did. there was no blackout last night. he was almost sure of it.

the rain came down in sheets. her hot tongue zipped across his lips. she showed him the ring in her belly button. green stones on silver.

—that's because I'm irish, she said slurry, she slurred blurry. scotch-flavor kisses. sitting up against him in the backseat of the cab. had to kiss her to get her to shut up. laughing spinning merry-go-round city. lights through the back window of a cab flashing. round glowy pinpricks through half-closed eyes. the feel of her through the dress was bony but strong insistence to the way she clutched him in mid-kiss. they were both riding in a cab going uptown. uptown to where? he was skunk drunk and she was drunk skunk so they exchanged numbers—no reason this couldn't happen when they were sober—some story like that. the cab pulled up to the curb, across from her building. “the rain came down in sheets.” he got out of the cab like he would walk her to the canopied stoop, but they fell drunken laughing through slip-slide rain. and her name was

monica

thought he was sweet for NOT fucking her. promised to call him but he knew like she knew. that she would wake in the morning, angry for a lost night, grateful she hadn't given anything away. his number scribbled on a matchbook. the reminder of an almost-cost. how she would rip it. toss it into the trash can like it would give her strength.

the cabbie was a mustache dominican guy who was scared of airplanes.

—I just don't get what holds them up there, he said. someday they just gonna fall.

alex gave him a big tip for riding him up to the south bronx.

he came alone last night.

the truth came splashing, as luminescent as a jesus painting sold on astor place with little blinking lights in them to make them glow. monk had three of them. a jesus by the waterfall, a jesus in the valley with some lambs, and another jesus with disciples all lit up glimmering above his flat-screen TV. monk was usually the person he went to on sundays for clarity and commiseration. monk was a writer and so good with plot development and with filling in those blank spaces. alex thought about him again now as he sat in the kitchen, alone with the tall thin vodka bottle. the sound of her breathing filled the entire apartment. what could monk possibly tell him about this?

monica

a name scribbled on a piece of paper folded small, which he found in his leather pants. a name, a phone number. proof of reality, but in a way, still not an answer. all he knew from past blackouts was that coming out of one felt different than just waking after a big drunk. there was a black curtain feel, images with no connection flashing feverish. there was even a taste, of lead or something metallic. now he tried to distinguish between petty distinctions, red lights green lights and still no sense of what really happened because deep down still, there lurked a massive distrust of his mind, his memory, and any pat narrative. and so he had to admit that even if he came home alone or had the memory of riding back in the cab, anything still could have happened between the time he left monica under the canopy and the time he crawled under the sheets. (she was half under the sheets, clutching pillow tight. he thought he heard her whimper, saw her hands flex the way a dreaming dog gets twitchy paws from a running dream. running toward, running from.) it could have happend that he met her, but maybe only if he wanted to believe it. the flash of images came quite suddenly, clustered like after-thoughts: he was still negotiating a trip to the bronx with the cabbie when she got into the cab

it was the kind of confusion that sent him to the hall closet to fetch the wooden box. crafted in india, from a woman named sandra. she must have seen his restless nature at a glance and accepted she would not last but still gave him many things to remember her by, including a book on
santería
and this box to clear away clouds. sometimes bad spirits will come, she said. there were trinkets. rooster claw. holy water. a picture of santa barbara and a few cigars. bad spirits come to confuse, she said, and when they come, it's good to blow cigar smoke to diffuse and dispel. and for protection, he should ask for changó
.

as he lit the cigar and slowly walked through the silent apartment, a new feeling in him. the open window presented him with an obvious answer. if she had been puerto rican and not a white blond woman, he might have even believed it.

she slept still. the curve of her back was to him. he puffed.

—changó, changó, he whispered.

7.

It started with a day in the office.

The captain was a gray hair who wore his epaulettes with a dismal gravity. Displeased with the ill wind that blew his way after my dance with Internal Affairs, we generally didn't talk much. It was all business with us, cordial and distant. I knew he tried to keep contact to a minimum, suffering those moments when we had to cross paths with the solemn dignity of a weary priest. So it was the other day when he came over to tell me there was a special agent coming to see me. It was no special briefing—he knew nothing about it, he said, only that the guy wanted my help and that he was coming all the way from Washington. I wondered if it had anything to do with Internal Affairs, but the captain shrugged off my questions with a terse request. “Just try not to give the department a shiner on this one.” This was no tongue in cheek. This was his parting shot, his way of letting me know he didn't plan to be around for any of it. It put a rumble to my stomach that made me resent my visitor from Washington before I'd even laid eyes on him.

I wasn't so much “office” once. Once I was so much more street. Contact hard ground tenement brick. Puerto Rican face molding fit to shape. Tenement hard or candyass soft, all shrink to fit. All devil with no bite but a lot of
culo
. First it was to prove I was smart enough. Then it was to prove I was tough. I thought I wanted power to help people. That was why I became a cop. Contact with the streets in a new way. And not so much “office,” like now.

It was nothing like now.

I was the cop spick ducking shells in 1991 when the South Bronx was more like Kosovo. I collected bullet holes while they fresh-scooped teenage bodies off the sidewalks. Spick kids getting ripped by high-caliber shells when I was flush with first love. The new missionary returning to his people. I was the young priest in that old
Kojak
episode. At the bedside handing the kid a Richard Wright. Twenty years on the force. Gold shield. And so much more street.

I knew streets. I knew them like people and the faces they make. Every nook every route. Every backyard pooch barking at a cat. I came from there. I was connected, born and bred South Bronx bonafide. I knew those people in my files and the places they lived. Each one had a story better than Broadway. I saw openings, I saw closings. Better than Cagney Edward G. and Bogey. Bad endings and funny names. Droopy, Cesar, Gooch. Like I was battling cartoon characters. Snort, Debit, Spider. The men of my Puerto Rican time. The schemers the achievers the heads of state. The diplomats the soldiers the army generals. A whole generation, how nobody noticed. Came and went. The wind blowing ash free tumbling over ashtray rim. I didn't only see them climb to power and props. I always stepped onstage to bring the house down. To follow that simple Hollywood formula: There's bad guys and there's good guys. It was my personal arm wrestle, my eyeball to eyeball.

I did my job. I busted them. I busted them running, I busted them under the bed, hiding. I chased them over rooftops. I waited. Patient, parked down the block. They knew I was there. Building a file, getting to know habits, manners, style, face. I waited like an old lover throwing pebbles at a back window. I didn't need some impatient trigger fuck to come start piling up bodies in the name of the law. I did it by the book for twenty years, and it was working. Crime was down drug dealing wasn't so visible and the streets started to glow with people again, just hanging and gathering over there by the stoop … when this Dirty Harry motherfucker starts shooting people in the back.

Dirty Harry
is a classic cop movie from 1971 directed by Don Siegel. It stars Clint Eastwood as a cop who takes the law into his own hands after a serial killer gets sprung on a technicality. The resulting murder spree inspired four sequels and made the vigilante cop a mainstay of Americana.

Two summers ago, drug dealers started getting popped. During arrests and mop-ups. Falling from rooftops, stairs. Cracked skulls after falling. Shot while trying to escape.

“He pulled a gun.”

“He was resisting arrest.”

“He turned in a hostile, aggressive manner,” because yeah, some cops get tired of process. Of filling out forms in triplicate. Of taking time off from real life to testify in court, only to watch the guy stroll out the revolving doors. It starts small like that, almost by accident. The pushing, shoving. The first-time kick or handful of hair. It starts to flow out of hand. How the other buddies cover for you. For each other. A special club. The precinct rippled every time someone got gunned down during a street stop. The rush to files: Was it one of ours? (Correction: They were all MINE, four names crossed off, plus two who only looked like drug dealers. My alleys and streets invaded by a “special task force” doing sweeps as if to clean up my mess.) There were some late-night debates about it, hand-wringing wrenchers about where did loyalty lie and duty and other big words, but nobody wanted to deal with it. It was a problem for some other precinct, maybe some other cop. But these people that were getting popped were from my files, and I was from here.

So I went out on the streets. Treated it no different than if I was hunting down a psycho. I asked questions of people that the other cops didn't bother to ask. The streets talked back full blast. I used to think it had something to do with me being from here, but this was one of the biggest lies I ever believed. It was not the biggest of all, but hard to choose. I believed all of them.

I started a file on Dirty Harry. I packed that shit full and spent a drunken night with Lieutenant Jack, arguing. He said I should forget about it, wasn't worth throwing a career away. I respect him for having said it. I still don't hold it against him on days when I can't join in on their reindeer games. I walked that file over to Internal Affairs. They were not too happy I did that, or that the story got leaked to the
New York Post. (DIRTY HARRY COMES TO THE SOUTH BRONX!)
The
New York Times
started buzzing the commissioner's office. Resignations. The investigation took a year and a half, involved three precincts and led to five major acquittals. There were no riots. The people of the South Bronx went back to sleep as the story slid off the headlines without a squeak. Dirty Harry and his squad remained heroes to some in that Clint Eastwood/Oliver North kind of way, though reassigned—while “doing a Sanchez” became synonymous with squealing singing songs betraying buddies RAT FINKING. It was like throwing twenty years down the toilet. That first year right after everything was the hardest. There was talk that I was taking the death threats seriously. The captain said he had hoped to transfer me but found that no other precinct would have me. So he said I get to stay, suggested putting in for all that vacation time, as a favor to myself and the department. Prevent entanglements. “Scenes.” In any case, he didn't plan on being around by the time I came back. “Let some new captain deal with it,” he said, and from then on developed the ability to not speak to me at all, even when talking.

“So much for moving up the corporate ladder,” Lieutenant Jack said. “Looks like I'm stuck with you.”

Lieutenant Jack had a face like an orange, round and studded with pores. A real bear-hug Irish bastard who loved working the South Bronx. It was the early '90s when we started working together. His files as much as my files. Wasn't a murder scene crackhouse stoop shooting we didn't do together. Crack was the fast lane, the scam that scammed the town. Teenagers formed posses and shot each other to shit. A whole generation scraped off the sidewalk. Southern Boulevard Cypress 138th Street, all bullet-rattled window panes. Baggy-pant shootout boys lingered to watch the body wagons come. The staff at Ortiz Funeral Home got sick of seeing me turn up there, too many funeral parlors where posse members congregated to say adios to their foxhole buddies. I chased some, I jailed some. I scared some out, I scared some away. Back then, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't as fast as what was killing them.

“You gotta let that stuff go.”

Yeah, well, that's what Lieutenant Jack says. I can't forget. All those kids getting killed. You would think it was some kind of civil war. Kids armed and taking charge. And then the pace slowed. Was like the kids got bored. Spotted the truth behind the hype. The big dealers found their young audience dwindling. Like politicians record producers teachers Ricky Martín—they hadn't delivered. Dealers were no longer zipping by in big cars, popping caps across crowded streets. They learned to sit quietly. To keep a low profile. To share booty and bargain with rivals. Overnight, the face of the South Bronx changed. Empty lots got paved to fill up with rows of three-family houses, hedgerow lawn and suburb. The criminals moved indoors, got subtle.

For us, it was slow pace. Informers, alliances, betrayals. Endless surveilance. Took months to get inside, to know the workings and the players. It was all background scenes, establishing shots, and the long roll to end credits. That was my office, my street. My daily life for twenty years. Once there was an US vs. THEM story here somewhere. Once it was what I did for the South Bronx.

“And the New York City Police Department?”

I did what I thought was right. According to my training and my belief in certain principles. I put a stop to a gang. Nothing more, nothing less. But a lot of people didn't think so. I stood my ground and I'm still standing right here. My wife and I even bought one of those new prefab houses on 156th Street and Kelly. As much of a quiet treelined street as I could get and still call it South Bronx. But connections popped like high-tension wires after Dirty Harry. Dancing, spinning, bursting sparks. Reminders of special non-status. What was I supposed to be doing if I quit being a cop? My wife and I were talking about having a baby, and three weeks in Mallorca ought to do the trick. It would be a gray slow time. Neither here nor there. Time to end things or get things started. A gold badge tossed on the captain's desk. As movie-like an ending as possible.

But so much for Mallorca and great escapes and movie scenes rolling to end credits. I had started smoking again. Swiped loose cigarettes from everywhere. Menthols, kings, filter tips, Chesterfield Regulars. I had just about every type of smokable tobacco squirreled everywhere I could reach like pocket like shelf like desk drawer always a loose one someplace for a sudden drag. And to sit sometimes and smoke them in rows as if waiting for someone to walk through that door. An armload of facts, irrefutable. Maybe they had sicced some dark
yoruba
spick cop on me. Parked outside my house. Getting to know habits, manner, style, face. The pebbles striking my window at 4 a.m.

The agent had two bookends with him. Left them standing at the desk in the entry hall, faces impenetrably stone. Special agent? I expected older, salt-and-pepper hair, abrasive vocals. A face lined with experience and hassles, and not this young guy, hands sunk in the pockets of his long tan raincoat. I would have been more impressed had I caught him picking my lock or rifling through piles on my desk.

I hadn't even stirred my first cup of coffee. It rained buckets that morning and the wet was still in my bones. How I sat and started talking to him about cop life was beyond me. I didn't have visitors for a reason. Didn't have to scratch the surface much to strike a nerve. Nothing to hide, and that's the best policy. How it all comes spilling out.

“I'm Special Agent Myers,” he said.

There was also that hunger for the raspy bite of that first cigarette of the day, which went with the first taste of coffee.

“Detective Sanchez,” I said.

A calm, sure grip. Smile so
simpatico
in that AMERICAN HEARTLANDS kind of way. To trust that face the moment you spot it on the screen. Should I say CIA? It never pays to say. People get riled over the silliest shit these days. Three simple letters in an e-mail like FBI CIA or FALN (that's four letters), and suddenly there's a background check and a black car with tinted windows following you around. Funny clicks on the phone. That guy outside the bodega who for some reason says, “Smile for the FBI,” as you head for your car. Too clean-cut to be a used car salesman. Too much energy for such a small space. Offered him a coffee and that was a mistake. Ripping those sugar packets and sprinkling sugar liberal, then stirring mad. Spoon clang clanging like the fucking bells of Rhymney. On top of which he asked me to close the door. By the time I got behind my desk, it felt like the room had shrunk.

I guess I talked to him because I saw him as a cop from somewhere else—Washington, not South Bronx—another plane of reality where the power was stored. Maybe the feds had decided to step in and order a real investigation into what was happening here. It was an opportunity for me to talk to someone from OUTSIDE of here, OUTSIDE of this narrow confining orbit. To check and see if I was really going crazy. A new federal investigation would mean more new noise at a time when all was a vague limbo, not here not there. Good guys. Bad guys. A hazy blur. I don't know now why I even bothered to raise my hand. I suddenly got the feeling from the deep silence that I didn't want to talk anymore.

“I know about your record,” Myers said. “You came highly recommended.”

The best time to light up that first cigarette of the day is halfway through that first cup of the day. Had to be halfway, give the taste buds enough time to get saturated with coffee. The coffee would be the right temperature. My coffee was not yet at the halfway mark, yet I was already thinking about that cigarette. I was even thinking about what kind: a filterless Chesterfield. That rough, abrasive first taste of smoke. No filter to soften the hammer blow.

“Detective Hanson at Four-Three. Detectives Peterson, Lemmings, and Bryan at the Four-O. The Bronx district attorney's office. There wasn't a single paralegal there that didn't know your name. And your captain.” Vague smile. “He had quite a few things to say about you.”