Noiryorican Page 2

  The dogs hung in perfect harmony, necks snapped perfectly.

  One must have jumped the fence. The other had tried, maybe an instant behind the other, an instant too late. Goddamn dogs. Frank began to shake. What the hell did they want to go and jump the fence for?

  He stood on the cinderblock again, over at his neighbor Jose’s side and saw a fatty, blood-red lamb shank on an unwrapped piece of butcher’s paper in the middle of the yard.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a bitch.”

  Tears stinging his eyes, cursing his stupid damn dogs, Frank got out a .22 he’d picked up at a crime scene he forgot how many years ago, serial numbers filed off. He loaded it. Then he walked out his front door on Metropolitan Avenue, down the stoop, and over to Joe’s door, and then he rang the bell twice.

  Jose was sitting on the couch watching TV when he heard the bell. He got up and went to answer it with a double-barreled shotgun.

  Back to TOC

  THE GODFATHER OF WILLIAMSBURG

  Roachkiller wasn’t always the Roachkiller Roachkiller is today. It took time. See what I’m saying.

  Turn back that clock.

  Back in the day, eighteen years old, dressed in Roachkiller’s best polyester seamless pants, polyester shirt, and of course razor-thin-tipped roachkiller boots—Roachkiller’s patriotic red, white, and blue pair—because it was July 4th and that was how you did it. But where was Roachkiller? Out on the block smoking a doobie to celebrate liberty? Out at Coney Island catching rays with the sweetest squeeze in the world—at that time—Miriam?

  Naw, man.

  Roachkiller was down in the hot-as-ass basement of the punk-ass Pizza Palace with his jive-ass uncle, Tio Cheo, surrounded by the rotten smell of live rooster, rooster shit, dried-up beer, and dead rat. Floor to ceiling a mess of wooden cages, each with a nasty-smelling bird sticking its head out looking at the humans.

  “You take Rocky,” Tio Cheo said, opening a cage, handing over a big-ass red rooster. “I’ll take Apollo.”

  The city had been cracking down on the cockfighting circuit, so all the games was closing down. But what do you do with dozens of retired roosters? The same thing you do with any evidence. You get rid of it.

  “Go ahead,” Tio said, then he demonstrated, taking the rooster he had in his hand, stretching its neck with two hands, the motherfucking bird flapping its wings, screaming squawking, Kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh-KACK! And once that shit started, all the other roosters in their cages started doing the same thing. Then Apollo stopped moving and Tio threw it on the floor.

  “These are going to get cooked up for some asopao de pollo, but they’re tough bastards, so you gotta cook them all day before you can eat them.” He went to another cage, grabbed another one, killed it, threw it on the floor. “Make sure to take one for your grandmother. I promised her.”

  But Tio saw that Roachkiller still had his bird in his hand. Roachkiller tried, but with every stretch that tough bastard Rocky looked at Roachkiller with those tiny, blinking eyes. Accusing me. Begging me.

  “C’mon,” Tio said. “Don’t be a latrine-green recruit. It’s not like you don’t know what choking the chicken is like. Hahaha.” He was an ex-marine with chest and arms like Chinese Hercules. He had a small dark hole in his right eyelid he said came from a bullet, and he liked to say he was able to survive Vietnam because he could keep an eye on the enemy even while he was asleep.

  Roachkiller held the rooster up to him and, with one good twist, the thing was dead.

  Tio smiled. “See? Easy! C’mon. Next one.”

  The next one was easy, the one after that easier. It don’t take as long as you’d think, taking the life out of things. It don’t take so long at all, once you get the hang of it.

  At the end there was a pile of dead roosters. No more tiny eyes blinking at you.

  “Look at your hands,” Tio Cheo said, laughing. “That’s how it starts.”

  Blood and feathers and slime covered Roachkiller’s hands. There was a closet-size bathroom with a bare bulb, no toilet seat, no running water.

  “Fuck!” There was even shit on Roachkiller’s boots. “Tio! Look at this!”

  A woman came down the narrow stairs with a laundry bag and started tossing the dead roosters into it. Tio Cheo held one for himself and held up another for Roachkiller when some fat guy came squeezing down the stairs and said, “Cheo! I heard you was down here.”

  “Guiso! Is Benny upstairs? I brought my nephew to meet him.”

  “You didn’t hear what happened?

  “No. What happened?”

  “Benny’s at the house. You better go right away.”

  “I’ll take him a rooster.”

  “Leave the rooster. Go right away.”

  In Tio Cheo’s Chevy Lacuna, speeding down Bushwick Avenue, all garages, bodegas, and jean stores back then, Tio said, “You know why I picked you up today?”

  Roachkiller was still trying to get shit off his shoes. “To kill chickens.”

  “Naw, boy, that was just practice. I had to see how strong you were. C’mon, why?”

  “Because you don’t want Roachkiller to have no fun.”

  “You know, why do you keep talking that way? It makes no sense. Just be Roberto, man. That’s your father’s name. It’s your name. Just use it, be proud of it.”

  Roachkiller thought he was all growed up by then. Though he wasn’t too far from Saturday morning cartoon, Malta India, Yoo-Hoo, Tip Top, cherry red piragua melting down his arm. But Roachkiller had hair on his balls and no one could tell him shit. So he played with the 8-track of Fania All-Stars, jumping from track to track, tried to ignore Tio.

  “I picked you up today because I got a job for you,” Tio said.

  “It’s the 4th of July. Nobody works 4th of July.”

  “Bullshit. The men who work, they always work. There ain’t no days off. Not even Christmas. Listen, your mother’s been talking to me and she’s worried because you dropped out of high school way back, you don’t have a job and it don’t look like you want a job.”

  “You got that right.”

  Roachkiller was making fine money. Sometimes there was a car or TV store to boost, but better was hooking people up at the disco because then the disco was the place for fun and the place for business. Who needed anything else?

  “The good thing is you ain’t got nobody pregnant yet, far as we know.” Tio knocked on the dashboard. “But you can’t spend all your nights out at the clubs with no future. You gotta have a trade. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m helping you out and taking you to meet Benny. You met him before, at your father’s funeral. You probably don’t remember.”

  “Roachkiller remembers him.”

  Benny Alicea was the big collector for the numbers racket in Williamsburg, covering everything from the Navy Yard up to Grand Street and over to Flushing Avenue. Every bet in the neighborhood, from a nickel to a thousand bucks, had to go through him.

  “I’m introducing you now as a man. And now you gotta talk to him with respect. You know we call him the Godfather now. At first, it was like a joke, when the movie came out. You know the movie?”

  “Everybody knows the movie!”

  “Benny’s been around a long time now, and he’s built up a crew, and he’s always looking for new recruits. And it sounds like he might be having some trouble, so this’ll be a good opportunity for you. See what I’m saying?”

  Tio Cheo drove to East New York and slowed the car down in front of a house on Jerome Avenue, across the street from a schoolyard. There were a bunch of police cars parked in front.

  “Stay cool,” Tio said to himself more than to Roachkiller, and he pulled past the cops and found a spot around the corner. Two men were standing there, and one Roachkiller recognized as Johnny D. walked up to the car.

  “Cheo. Get inside.” He was a serious guy, brown and hard like a brick, wearing shades and a black-and-purple guayabera that looked like it had just
come off the ironing board.

  “What’s up with the cops?”

  “Don’t worry. Just say you’re a friend of the family, if they ask.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They kidnapped Benny’s wife and daughter last night.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Go inside. He’s been asking for you.”

  There were cops up and down the sidewalk like a gauntlet, but Roachkiller and Tio Cheo walked cool as Bomb Pops into the house, door wide open.

  Right inside the gated door was the living room. Benny sat in the middle of a plastic-covered red coach. He wore a white polyester guayabera, white pants, black ankle boots. He had a mustache black and thick as a belt on a take-no-shit face, and he nodded at us as we all walked in.

  Standing over him was a cop in a black suit with a yellow tie, sweatstains on his collar. “Seventy-five grand,” the cop was saying. “You want to tell me how these kidnappers think you have that kind of cash? Help me understand that, Mr. Alicea.”

  Benny leaned forward, smooth shouldered, cara palo. He was surrounded by cops who probably wanted to beat his ass but you could see Benny was the one in control. “I be honest,” he said. “I got no idea. Like I told you, I’m just a simple tobacco seller. I make two-seventy-five a week. These are criminals. I don’t know what they are thinking.”

  The cop in the stained shirt said, “Maybe because you drive that brand-new Buick parked outside.”

  “It is brand new, sure, but I got a good deal on it. If you want the name of the dealer, I get it for you.”

  “No gracias, amigo. You said they took the money you had on you? How much was that?”

  “About eight hundred dollars, more or less.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of tobacco, Mr. Alicea.”

  “I had just took it out the bank because we’re supposed to go on a family vacation. And it wasn’t enough for these guys. They got greedy. They must think I got money coming out of my ass.”

  “Maybe you do, since you’ve set yourself up as the local big shot and go around calling yourself ‘Godfather.’ A spic Godfather, of all the fucking things. Who’da thought?”

  Another cop came over and pulled the first one away.

  Benny relaxed back into the plastic-covered couch with a crunch. Roachkiller could see easy what he was doing was all fake. The cop could probably see it, too. But it didn’t seem like anybody cared.

  Johnny D. came in and led Tio and Roachkiller down a long hall and to a kitchen. No cops there. He pointed to the table, which was covered with comida criolla takeout.

  “Who’s this?” he said, looking Roachkiller up and down.

  “My nephew, Rob—”

  “Roachkiller.”

  “Roachkiller? Like those shoes?”

  Johnny D. looked down at Roachkiller’s supersharp, supersexy, superpointed boots. Clean now. “You could stab somebody with those,” he said.

  “Yeah. So?” said Roachkiller.

  “This one has balls, Cheo.”

  “Like boulders,” Cheo said.

  “Sit down here, kid. Eat. You’re family. This house is your house.”

  Roachkiller was shameless hungry, so he sat down and started chowing down on the arroz con pollo and the pile of platanos laid out.

  Johnny D. sat at the table and whispered to us. “Last night Benny was going to the Pizza Palace II, the one on Myrtle. He gets out of the car and some young thing—you know how Benny likes them young—she starts flirting with him and whatnot. All of a sudden, four guys pop out of nowhere, put him back in his car and make him drive home. They took all the money he had in the house but they wanted more. He told them he didn’t have it, so they instead took Ada and Lydia.”

  “Ada’s his wife,” Tio said to me. “Lydia’s his daughter. She’s thirteen.”

  “Fourteen. Another thing,” Johnny D. said. “Those are G-Men in there, not just cops. They all showed up this morning out of nowhere. How they found out about this we don’t know. But first the kidnappers wanted ten grand. The Feds show, and now they want seventy-five. The Feds are going to stick to Benny like glue for a while. So here’s what he wants. You gotta find out who did this before the Feds do.”

  “Copy that.” Tio practically saluted the guy. “We’re on it.”

  “And how we supposed to find these guys?” Roachkiller said.

  “I was special ops in Vietnam,” Tio said. “I have ways.”

  “Listen to your uncle, kid. Now eat fast and get your asses out of here.”

  “Roachkiller don’t want no part of this. Roachkiller stays under the radar. No Feds on me.”

  In the Lacuna on the way back, Tio Cheo kept his eyes on the road, but Roachkiller could swear he was looking at him through the hole in his eyelid, looking at him hard-hearted as a nun.

  “Boy, we’ve been assigned a mission and we ain’t going to fail.”

  “Nah, man, count Roachkiller out.”

  “You’re talking like you got a choice, sobrino. You owe me, and you owe your family. Why do you think your ma and abuela are not on the gwelfare? Who do you think has been supporting your family since your father died, huh? You think your grandmother and mother cleaning houses is enough to take care of you and your big fat brother? You know I been paying your rent, paying electricity, gas, paying for groceries?”

  “You remind us every day.”

  “You bet I do, you spoiled brat. You know what your problem is?”

  “No, but you’re gonna tell Roachkiller.”

  “You problem is you grew up here, not back in the old country, not back on the island. You don’t know how tough life can be, shitting in a hole in the ground, not having meat for days. You got no idea. You had it easy. You’re spoiled rotten. Your grandmother and mother give you way too much and you give them nothing. Probably why you talk so weird, all about yourself all the time, plus all that sugar they put in the breakfast cereal.”

  “But Ro—. But I give Abuela money.”

  “Chump change. You spend most of your money on fancy shoes and dime bags that you sell to the fags and the Jews at them discos. Yeah, I know about your part-time work. You can’t get shit past me. I used to do special ops in Vietnam. I have—”

  Enough of this bullshit. Tio Cheo was slowing down at the light, and Roachkiller saw his chance—“I’m outta here, man”—opening the door, and running in boots down the block and up the stairs to the elevated train at Hewes Street.

  Roachkiller took the train deeper into Brooklyn, back to Miriam’s crib on Central Avenue to chill. Knocked three times on the door and before she could get “What the heck are you doin’ here?” out of her sweet mouth, Roachkiller’s lips were on hers, and she was “Mmmmming” backwards to her bedroom where the plaster statue of St. Jude looked down from the wardrobe, rocking and rocking and always about to fall off but never quite.

  Roachkiller had a baby face back then but he had pull to get into any disco in the city. Paradise Garage, Studio 54, Le Clique, Roseland Ballroom, Bond’s. Back in the day, Roachkiller went to all of them and had special friends at each one. Special friends meaning customers.

  At Bond’s that night, everyone was getting down, DJ mixing into Cerrone, dancers doing their thing, Roachkiller spinning Miriam around and going in for a kiss—when he spied a short dude trying to get his attention, pointing to a hallway with his head. Dude was goofy and nervous about it, uncool.

  “Be right back, baby.”

  “Where you goin’?” Miriam said. “I was just getting warmed up.” She was one of the high-yellow, moon-faced Puerto Rican girls, family from Guanica, with sleepy eyes and lips glossier than any fashion magazine. “You’re blowing my mood!”

  “Chill out, baby. I gotta go to work.”

  She crossed her arms, and so Roachkiller took her in his.

  “Two minutes. Two minutes. Then we’ll dance till—”

  “Till you get another customer. Go on. I�
��ll go powder my nose. Again.”

  Roachkiller walked Miriam to the ladies’, didn’t see the uncool short dude anywhere, went into the men’s. Was there shaking the snake, when little dude, young guy, shoulder-tapped me.

  “Give Roachkiller a minute, bro.”

  “Mr., uh, Roachkiller,” the dude said. “Can I talk to you?”

  He had a big ’fro, bigger than his skull, and a full beard, wore gold Aviators, a windbreaker, and a cloth tie. You get all types in the disco, but something about this motherfucker didn’t fit.

  “What you need?” Roachkiller said. “Sens? Blow?”

  The dude chuckled, tipped his chin at Roachkiller. “I got something to sell you, bro.”

  “Roachkiller don’t need nothing, Shorty.”

  “I know you work for Benny Alicea.”

  Roachkiller was halfway walking away but his head whipped around. “Who told you that shit?”

  “His wife and daughter got taken, right? You need to find them.”

  Roachkiller grabbed dude by his jacket and pulled him into a stall. Two guys were already in there.

  “Get your own!” one of them said.

  “Ohmp-pfft,” the other one said.

  Roachkiller dragged the dude to the next stall.

  “What’s with the hostility?” the dude said. “I want to help you out.”

  “The fuck why?”

  “Watch with the tie. It’s the only one I own.”

  Roachkiller took his hands off, but those hands stayed in fists.

  “My name’s Ernie Fuentes. I’m a reporter, okay. Just starting out. Trying to make my bones, you know? Listen, you know this kidnapping is all over the news and the police are keeping shut and nobody knows nothing? But you know something, I bet. I bet you and I can help each other out.”

  “This is bullshit. Roachkiller got nothing to do with Benny.”

  “How do you explain pictures of you leaving his h—”

  Roachkiller kneed him good in the jewels. “You following me?”