New Jersey Noir Part 4

"Course I know that word," Late Nite snapped. "You mean-"

"Yes, young man, I mean you on your own now. You tell C-4, he see any of 'em coming for their payoff, he better run, because from now on they gonna be ratting on anybody tries to offer them money. That was part of the negotiation." She looked to see was he following her, then added, "Of course, Bigmouth, he on his own too."

He stared at her. "Old lady, how come you telling me this?"

"'Cause you say C-4 too busy to talk to me."

"That ain't what I mean. I-"

"Oh, I know what you mean, boy. I come over here because next week or the week after, new cops is gonna be asking to be paid off by you punks. Things don't never change. But like I say, C-4 a better bet than Bigmouth for the peoples round here." The young man said nothing to that. Miss Crawford waited and then she said, "If C-4 got some smart boys, you ain't one of 'em, so I'm gonna help you out. Was I C-4, not that I'd ever want to be such a devil, but was I, I'd be heading over Bigmouth's way early Friday morning, while all his boys be getting ready for the showdown and his pet police be keeping their hands off. That's called a ambush, maybe C-4 knows that word. But go on, you do as you please. Whatever happen, folks around here be better off, one of 'em goes down." Miss Crawford stared Late Nite in the eyes again, and then she walked away, thinking, was that amnesty real, it might just be a good idea.

That day before supper Miss Crawford had the Monroe boy come over again. He rearranged the pictures on the wall in her bedroom and carried the broken kitchen chair down to the trash. She gave him a slice of apple pie and asked him what he'd heard about the trouble on the block.

"Trouble?" The boy looked up sharply. "Don't know about no trouble."

"Well, you know more than I do, so that's a relief. Maybe it won't come to be."

"Whatever, Bigmouth got it covered." The child was straight-up bragging.

"Hope you're right, boy. I don't like Rashawn none, but the devil you know is always better than the devil you don't."

"What devil's that?"

So she told the child about C-4, over around the other side of the block. "He say he coming over here Friday at noon to take these blocks from Bigmouth."

The Monroe boy stared, then finished his pie in two big bites, and gulped his milk. Miss Crawford packed up the rest of the pie for him to take to his momma, and watched him from her kitchen window as he hurried down the street. She hoped he'd hold that pie careful until he finally got it home.

Miss Crawford heard Officer Aleksandra Joyce come home after her s.h.i.+ft the next afternoon, and she popped her head out the door and asked her in. Miss Crawford had coffee ready and a plate of cinnamon cookies just out from the oven.

"You look tired, child," she observed as Officer Joyce took off her big belt, with the gun and the flashlight and who knew what all, and laid it on the chair beside her. "Hard work bringing law and order to Newark, I suppose."

"That it is," Officer Joyce agreed. "Worth it if it gives folks like you peace enough to make cookies like these, though."

"Why, thank you," Miss Crawford said. "Have another, please do. Those police, they still giving you a hard time?"

Officer Joyce shrugged. "I'm still new."

"Plus," said Miss Crawford, "I expect some of them got other ideas about policing than the ideas you got."

The young woman sighed. "They sure do, Miss Crawford. The mayor, I know he's working on it. Like you told me, things take time." She smiled wearily.

"Well," Miss Crawford took herself another cookie, "maybe if more police like you was in the middle of things, it would all get better. So the question is, how we going to get you in the middle of things?"

"That's one of the reasons I moved to the neighborhood. So I could know what's going on. Know more and more people."

"And what about things? What about if you know things?"

"Like what things?"

"Like, supposing you was to know about a thing that was going to happen. A bad thing, and you was in time to put a stop to it so no one got hurt."

"Miss Crawford?" Officer Joyce put down her mug. "You know a thing like that?"

"If I tell you something," Miss Crawford asked the young woman direct, "do you know people in the police you could tell, who ain't in the pocket of no drug dealers nor no g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers?"

"I do," Officer Joyce said promptly. "My captain was brought in by the chief that was brought in by the mayor."

"You saying you trust him?"

"Yes."

"That's very good." Miss Crawford nodded, satisfied. "Yes, I believe that's very good."

Though she wasn't one for excitement, come Friday morning Miss Crawford was just a little bit wistful that she wasn't a fly on the wall in that bas.e.m.e.nt hole Bigmouth called his headquarters. She wasn't positive what the NPD had planned, but it involved special officers, not the usual ones on these blocks, who were still deep in the pockets of the drug dealers and everybody knew it but no one could prove it. Miss Crawford did go out and sit on the stoop across the street early in the morning, so she saw C-4 and his boys coming around the corner. She was interested to see that the officers who swept them up were in plainclothes, so C-4 and his boys wouldn't scatter nor throw their guns away, while the ones who pounded on the headquarters door just after so they could grab Bigmouth and his crew getting set to head over to C-4's territory, they were in uniforms. One of them in uniform was Officer Joyce, which gratified Miss Crawford. She was also gratified that the whole operation was so cleverly planned that no shots were fired at all. Though still, it was a good thing it had happened in the morning, while the children were at school. No use having them in danger, hanging out on the stoops and all. There was no need for them to see it, they'd hear all about it by suppertime, C-4 and Bigmouth and all their boys in jail.

Miss Crawford went home and turned on the radio while she baked a sweet potato pie. She listened to WBGO because of the old-school jazz they played, which she and her Teddy had always enjoyed, and then the news came on. It told about the alleged gang members arrested, most of them in possession of weapons, just that very morning. The police suspected these young men of dealing drugs, though they couldn't prove that yet. All very well, thought Miss Crawford as the radio went back to music, but those guns every one of them were carrying was the real problem for those boys, and that problem was very bad. Being caught with a gun like that was a sentence for sure. How long it was going to be, well, that depended on if you had anything to say that the police wanted to hear. Those boys would be racing to sell each other out, starting already.

The timer dinged and Miss Crawford took the pie out of the oven and set it to cool. Then she settled herself in front of the TV with the cat on her lap. The new mayor was going to be making a speech, about how the people of Newark were taking the city back. Miss Crawford wanted to hear it.

NEWARK BLACK: 19401954

BY C.K. WILLIAMS.

Vailsburg (Newark) Black coal with a thunderous shush plunging into the clearly evil-inhabited coal bin.

The black furnace into whose maw you could feed paper to watch it curl to black char.

The hats women wore with black, mysterious veils, even your mother. The "mascara" she'd apply more meticulously than she did anything else.

With her black lashes she was almost somebody else.

The incomprehensible marks on blackboards at school you conquered without knowing quite how.

The black ink in the inkwell. The metal pens with blots that diabolically slid from their nibs.

Black slush, after the blizzard had pa.s.sed and the diesel buses and trucks were fuming again, but you still remembered how blackly lovely the branches of trees looked in new snow.

The gunk on the chain of your bike.

The black stuff always under your nails.

Where did it come from, how to get it out?

Even between your toes sometimes there was black.

The filthy tires hung on hooks in the garage-store we had to pa.s.s through to get to our shul.

Black Book of Europe, first proof of the war on Jews- illicit volume, as forbidden to Jewish children as p.o.r.n.

Black people the states in the South began to send up, keeping what they needed for cheap labor and maids and exporting the rest: a stream of discarded humans, with the manufacturing plants just then closing down.

The photo of black children in the '20s, frolicking on the bench of the Lincoln statue by the courthouse.

I took the bus once to go sit in its lap, his lap: how kind he looked, how surprisingly hard his bronze lap.

The other statue, Captive's Choice, in a park: the girl kidnapped by Indians who forgets she's white, then, "saved," gives up Indian husband and children.

Who decided it should have been that, and there?

The first black kids in our school, fine with me, because Clarence Murphy, sixteen in fourth grade, stopped beating me up because I'd killed Christ and raged instead with even more venom at them.

I was afraid of Clarence but not of black people, except that day on the bus: the sweat-stench of men who'd worked hard and not had time yet to change.

Though I already knew it was shameful, I fled.

"Blackb.a.l.l.s" to keep Jews, Italians, and Irish, then naturally blacks, out of the country clubs in Maplewood and Montclair. The unfunny jokes about signs on their gates: No Dogs, n.i.g.g.e.rs, or Jews.

Our gangster hero, Longie Zwillman, who had a black car; so did our mayors-bought off, we were told by "interests."

Irish, Italian, finally at last a black mayor: all the bought-off ones with their Cadillacs of corruption.

Thick soot on the bricks of the mills by the tracks, smoke billowing, then extinguished forever.

Rivers with rainbows of oil on their surface, their beds eternally black venomous chemical sludge.

Miles of black turnpike and parkway pavement scrolled out onto the soil of the no-longer farms.

You could speed now from one place to another and not see the slums, the factories in broken-eyed ruin.

Everywhere ruin-did n.o.body see it arriving?

Urban flight, urban decay, shopping centers and malls, the department stores downtown shuttered, then small businesses, theaters, and the rest.

The finally unrecognizable city, done in by us all.

Only the ever benevolent Lincoln, unblackened by time or pollution, emblem of promise and hope, patiently waited, patiently waits.

PART II.

ROMANCE & NOSTALGIA.

LOLA.

BY JONATHAN SANTLOFER.

Hoboken I met Lola on the PATH, the train that goes under the Hudson River, a thought I tried to deny twice a day when I rode it back and forth to Hoboken, the idea of the tunnel suddenly sprouting a leak, water shattering subway windows, pouring in, drowning me, always on the edge of my mind, which is why I focused on everything else.

Lola was sitting across from me, head buried in a paperback, one of those romance novels with a girl in the arms of a brawny he-man. Her black-red nails tap-tap-tapping the back cover had me hypnotized until she looked up, blue eyes lined with kohl, dark arching brows as if she were about to ask a question though she wasn't looking at me, just reacting to the sound of the subway doors opening and closing, but it was enough, a moment, a connection. She went back to her book and I noticed the gold band on her finger, which was disappointing, not like I was thinking we'd get married or anything, but I'd have preferred she was single, which makes things easier.

She was a little younger than me, maybe thirty though I'm no good at ages, no good at numbers of any kind, which is why they never let me do the measuring at the place where I build made-to-order stretchers for successful artists, which I don't mind, I like making them-I've always been good with my hands, and it's quiet work, just me and two other guys, and I take pride in it, sanding the edges and making sure the corners are perfectly square because there's nothing worse than a lopsided painting-though sometimes I get a little resentful that I spend my days building stretchers for other artists, but that's life, right?

That first night, Lola was wearing gold sandals, toenails painted the same black-red, and she had really nice feet, nice legs too, bare because it was a hot day though the PATH was frigid. Every once in a while she rubbed her hand up and down her legs like she was trying to warm them, which was even more hypnotizing than her book tapping.

She had a good figure too, her top loose but made of some slinky fabric that outlined her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and her skirt was short enough to see her thighs, which were thin but muscular. I thought about asking her to model for me, a line I'd once used that had worked-women are so easily flattered-but I didn't think she'd go for it, being married and all, and I couldn't come up with anything else, I hadn't prepared and I'm not really good with girls even though some say I'm very good looking.

When the train stopped at Hoboken I knew she'd get off-I didn't see her as the kind who'd live in Jersey City, and no way Newark. I waited for her to go past me, we were only a few inches apart and I could smell her perfume, something flowery but not too sweet, and I breathed it in trying to hold onto it, and then someone in front of her stopped short and she backed into me, her perfume in my nose and her hair tickling my cheek for just a second, and she said, "Oh, sorry," and I saw it in slow motion, her red lips yawning the words, OOOHHHHH SSSSOOOORRRRYYYY, and I never wanted the moment to end. So I followed her.

It was still light out, a mist coming off the Hudson River like a veil in front of the Manhattan skyline. She headed away from the water toward the main drag, Was.h.i.+ngton Street, which had become gentrified over the past years. Hoboken was sort of a dump, famous as the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and not much else, when I first moved there after graduate school because I couldn't afford Manhattan rents, not if I wanted a studio, which I did, and I have a pretty good one, my own building in fact, a small brick one next door to Pablo's Towing Station on the furthest-back street in town, still not developed, a dark lonely stretch, which suits me, and practically no one knows I live in the building because I've done nothing to distinguish it, left the rusted steel door the way it was the day I moved in, and I've yet to clean the broken gla.s.s or ever-acc.u.mulating beer cans from the two-by-four plot of ground out front, so the place looks deserted unless you happen to see the lights go on and off, but there's really no one around to see that either.

She went into a liquor store, the yuppie one, not the wino one, and I watched her through the gla.s.s choosing two bottles of red wine and quickly turned away when she came out, then followed her again, leaving just enough distance between us.

She lived in a renovated brownstone on a quiet side street, a really nice one, so I figured she had money.

After she went inside I waited a few minutes then checked the mailbox. There was a letter addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Moretti, and a postcard, which is how I learned her name, Lola.

Lola. Lola. Lola. Lola. Lola.

I folded it into my pocket, went across the street and stood under the awning of a beauty salon that was closed, and waited until it got dark and a light went on in an upstairs window, and I watched Lola slowly peel her top off, and even after the light went out her image burned in my mind and I stayed up the whole night making one drawing after another of her, naked, framed by the window, smudging the charcoal with my fingers to capture the soft swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The next day I stayed home from work and made paintings based on the drawings. I stopped just before six p.m., changed out of my paint clothes, put on a clean s.h.i.+rt, walked over to the PATH, and sure enough there she was.

This time she went into a little gourmet shop and I followed, brushed past her in the condiment aisle, keeping my head down inhaling her perfume, and on the way out I accidentally-on-purpose banged into her and she dropped her bag and I said I was sorry and helped her pick everything up and offered to carry her bag home but she just smiled and said, "No biggie," and this time I didn't have to follow her because I knew exactly where she was going, so I waited, then went and stood under the awning, and when it got dark she did the same thing-undressed in front of the window, a little slower this time-and I thought I'd go crazy and was even thankful when the light went out so I could go home and make more drawings.

The next day I followed her from the PATH, and the day after I just waited under the awning until she came home. I didn't want to rush it, didn't want it over too soon. I brought my camera with the telephoto lens and took some pictures of her in her window, half naked, and used them for more paintings, which were starting to fill my studio.