Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (7 page)

I hesitated at the door, checked him through the peephole. He was alone. I thought about what he had seen the day before. The envelope. Considered what he might have figured out, what he might have come back to my
place to carry out. Thought about that nine millimeter tucked down in his waistband. Thought about Jennings and his warning earlier that day. Finally, I realized that in The Root, death doesn't knock first. So, deep sigh, twist of the locks, I opened up, let Ant in.

“Damn, Dog.” He walked in like he owned the place, carrying some rolled up papers. “Took you long enough. You scared of something?” He held the deadpan for a heartbeat. Then there was that fresh-faced smile again. But I wasn't about to let him disarm me. Not yet.

“Got anything to drink . . . David Steven Hunter?”

I checked him, knowing now that he must have known more than just my full name. “Okay, cool, you got a little information on me.” I pulled a Coke out of the refrigerator. “So, what does it tell you?”

He grabbed the Coke, laughed, plopped down on the living room couch. “Oh, I got more than just a
little
information on you.” He popped the can, and it sounded more like a gunshot in his hand. “But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, yo. You're not asking the right questions. I mean, like,
damn,
I thought you were a re-fucking-porter, man. Don't all the best stories start with the right questions?”

“Okay,” I said, backing the shit up, wondering where all this was coming from, where it was going. “Sounds like there's something you want, like there's something you're looking for.”

He nodded, pursed his lips. “That's better. Now you're getting there.”

“Well, thanks for the reporting lesson . . .
yo.
”

He turned real serious. “That's one of the things I want to talk to you about.”

“Reporting?”

“Ripping the covers off the shit.”

I sat in the chair facing him. “Bad day in The Root, Ant?”

He smiled again. “Fact is, this was a pretty good day.”

“No shit?”

He nodded. “Yeah, good day. Sold a few rocks. Went down to Springer's.”

“The funeral parlor?”

“Right. Picked out my box.”

“Your casket.”

“Mahogany, yo.” He waved his hand across the air, conjuring up the image. His fantasy funeral. “Satin lining, whole nine, Dog.”

“And
that
made it a good day?”

He checked me, ditched the little boy demeanor. “Hey, gots to be ready for wha'ever.”

That was it. Self-determination in Little Beirut. You lived without options, but at least you could choose the way you went out.

“Then,” he went on, “day got even better. When I got to school, I went straight to the library. Computer room.”

I don't know why I had figured him for a dropout. Maybe it was those crazy hours he spent on the block. Should have known, though. He clearly was smart enough to have had some kind of agenda. And I was about to find out just what it was.

Ant began to unroll the papers he was carrying, slowly, carefully, like they were part of some precious, ancient scroll. It was a printout from the
Trib
's website. My story. Part of the series I had done on local hookers. Working on the edge of The Root. I had hung with them. The hookers. Paid them for the time, for the interviews. Won a regional award for it, too.

I was impressed by Ant's resourcefulness. “How did you—”

“Told you,” he pointed to his head, the way he had done before, “mind like a computer. Guess I just forgot to tell you that I know how to work with them, too. Looked your shit up.” He tapped the paper on the coffee table between us. “I read the whole series.” He narrowed his eyes. “That shit was cold-blooded. Malicious. Intentionally bad, yo. I mean, bad on purpose. When I read that story I . . . you know what . . .” He leaned forward, arms on his knees. “I saw myself.”

“Reporter or pimp?”

He shook his head, chuckled. “So, you telling me there's a difference?” He slid to the edge of the couch. “Look, here's the thing. I don't want to be world famous in Little Beirut, yo. What you do is bigger than one tired-ass neighborhood. What you do makes a difference.
I
want to make a difference. I want to be known for the way I lived, not the way I died. I mean, hell, twenty years from now, somebody's going to be pulling up your shit on the Net. And where will I be? In that box I just picked out, probably.”

He sat back, arms spread across the back of the couch. “Then again, maybe not. Doesn't have to be that way. I don't really want to go out like that. Don't want to keep doing this shit, Dog. Ain't my flow, understand what I'm saying?”

I stroked my moustache, all the way down the goatee, doing that slightly nervous, mostly thoughtful thing I did sometimes. “So . . . this is all leading to . . . what exactly?”

There was that smile again, slowly moving across his entire face. It was like he was seeing everything happen just the way he had envisioned it before he knocked on my door. Before he walked up my stoop. Hell, before he even left his high school computer room. “What story are you working on, now? I mean, all that Transit Authority shit.” He checked my uniform again. “What is it, ‘hos on the bus?' ”

I laughed. “Yeah, right. Special investigation for H-B-ho.” Then I told him the truth. Or, as much as I
could
tell him. Another installment in my series of lifestyle profiles. This one was on Little Beirut. The uniform was just a cover, the only thing my brother, Isaiah, had left me. An emblem of what had driven us apart. The thing he had to settle for, after I drained the family till to chase my dream in J-school. I thought about all that, and felt the uniform tighten all around me, like a boa constrictor. Maybe that's why I was letting this kid come into my life. Maybe he was like
my
kid brother who took a wrong turn, never made it back. Then again, maybe he represented something else. Ant had said he saw himself in my work. Maybe I was seeing my work in him.
Myself
in him, really. The way things might have been for me, if I hadn't gotten the hell out of my own Little Beirut. Maybe he was right. Maybe I really
could
make a difference. Maybe, sitting there in my dingy little living room on South Woodridge, right in the bosom of The Root, maybe we were both at the crossroads. Trying to figure which way to go.

“Well,” Ant said, as he began to flash his trademark smile, “if you're looking for a hot story here in Little Beirut, yo, I got the bomb for you.”

“And how do you plan to verify what he's telling you? I mean, how do you know he's not setting us
all
up? The paper, or even worse, you.” Jennings
was like that. Always played by the rules. And the basic rule of reporting called for double-sourcing. If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.

“Cross-checking police files, court records for a lot of it,” I said. “Also picked up a few new sources. Amazing how many inmates want to get their stories in print. Anonymously.”

He eyeballed me. “That's what worries me. Or have you forgotten—”

“That's not going to happen again. I won't let it,” I insisted, as I remembered what I had hoped I could forget. All that I had revealed in that hooker series. All that I had placed in jeopardy because of it. All that my lust for the story, for the truth, had cost a young unsuspecting life. And what had we gained? People dug the stories, I took home another trophy, and the Sisters were still walking the streets. All but one.

“And you're sure that's the only thing he wants out of all this?”

“That's it,” I considered Ant and the deal he had struck. Back there at the crossroads. A kid smart enough to read the signs. Dead end, or freedom's trail. And I was his ticket.

“Poor baby.”

I turned, looked behind to see Gladys Sampson standing at the top of our stoop. I wondered what had taken her so long to come out since I had been there for about twenty-five minutes already—twenty-five minutes that seemed like a lifetime.

“I watched that little boy grow up.” She set her heavy frame down on the concrete bench by the front door. “Always figured if anybody could get out this hellhole, it would be Antwon. Poor baby.”

The pain was heavy in that husky voice, but nowhere else, it seemed. Like she was surprised and not surprised all at the same time. Like all the hope she had ever felt for Ant was only some distant longing now. Like she had given up hope of anything, really, years ago. Like now she was only witnessing the inevitable outcome of a life where all your expectations are one day ripped from your soul the way your most precious and irreplaceable possessions might be snatched from your purse in the chill of some lonely late-night corner.

I looked down at Carver, who turned back toward the street. We knew she really wasn't talking to us anyway. I dropped the cigarette butt on the stoop. Stepped on it only to feel the back of my head getting singed. I turned to see Mrs. Sampson glaring at me. I kicked the butt down off the steps out onto the sidewalk. She looked back at the murder scene. I took out the pack of Salems. Lit one.

“Why do you always do that?”

I looked across my dining table at Ant, put out the match, blew out the smoke.

“Do what?”

“Smoke like that.” He looked at the two packs on the table. “Marlboro, then a Salem. Back to back. Wha'sup with that?”

I laughed, shrugged. “Don't know, really. Maybe it's just the yin and yang of my fucked-up world,” I said, knowing by now that he knew what that meant. “It's like the extremes of my life. Hot and cold. Sweet and sour. Bad and . . . worse.”

He just shook his head. “Bad habits like that keep people like me in business.”

“Yeah, well, not for long.” I took another puff.

He checked me, nodded. “Yeah, right. Not for long. So, everything's set, right? Internship, on-line edition? That's the
dealio,
right?”

“Bet,” I said. “Solid.” Just a shot. That's all he wanted. Chance to prove himself. That, and some heavy-duty mentoring from me. I wondered what I could possibly teach a kid who had seen so much life already. Wondered what I would
owe
a kid who was showing
me
so much of the life he had seen.

I didn't know why I kept feeding his fantasy about becoming a reporter. Was I just using him to get my story? I didn't think so. Seemed like, after several sessions, we were bonding. Not father and son. I was only thirty, not old enough to be his father. Except, well, maybe in Little Beirut. But it wasn't like that, really. No, I was more like a big brother, he was more like the kid brother I had lost, and it scared me. We were developing the kind of connection you should never have with a source.

I got up, checked the window. Saw the Gator, other side of the street. Then I saw that unmarked police car, with the detective, Moore, the one who had been fucking with Ant the other night. He was just cruising. It was like Moore was challenging T-Rex by trespassing on his ground, and like T-Rex was challenging Moore by standing his ground.

Ant stood to leave. “You know the drill, yo.”

With that, he pulled a rock from his pocket and I threw down a twenty. We had decided this was the best way to make it look good, all these trips to my crib. He snatched up the money, dropped the drugs into the cigar box. I gazed down at the growing rock pile. Felt the rush of the moment. Thought about what Ant had said on another visit. “Not my flow.”

Not mine either, Ant. Adrenaline, that was my drug of choice. That's why living in The Root was my high. And my low.

The story was progressing beautifully. But I still found myself sitting in Jennings's office, trying to convince my editor that I could make it work, that it was worth giving me more time. In just a few days, Ant had given me the profile of the whole neighborhood. The people, the culture, the deals. And how he had gotten his start, his initiation in the Imperial Viceroys. It was only a year ago, when T-Rex and his chief lieutenants wanted to go to a rap concert. They let young Ant hold their stuff. He sold it all while they were at the concert. Turned in all the money. Earned their trust.

Things started going south in the last few months, though. Somebody was muscling in on T-Rex. Viceroys were getting set up, arrested. Some were getting killed. T-Rex was fighting back. Only way he knew how. Lowdown, dirty. He had fixed up a suspected informant with a “hot batch,” a rich mixture that made the guy OD. No one even knew whether the guy had talked in the first place. But everyone knew he wasn't talking anymore. And that's the only thing T-Rex wanted everybody to know. Made me worried about Ant. He kept saying he could handle it, that everything was still cool with T-Rex. I wasn't sure. It was on in Little Beirut. Tension was high. And I was caught all up in it. The tension
and
the high. The thrill of what
Ant and I were able to find out over those few days—between his street connections, his Internet skills, and my work with inmate sources and official documents. It was all part of some drug chain that led all the way up from Miami. It's just that nobody knew the phantom who was running things on our end. T-Rex was getting edgy. Caught between cops like Moore, and all the rest of the vicious thugs. Time was running out. I was depending on a kid who was street smart. But still just a kid.