Peter Broome
James high fives me at the door as I’m leaving. “Peace out, Peter.” I was too weary to tutor tonight, but did anyway – I couldn’t let James down. I’ve been his volunteer for over three years now, ever since I moved up to the burbs. In fact, we have the longest partnership in the program. And I’m glad I didn’t let him down. You do good things in the world, good comes to you. If I don’t know anything else, I know that to be true.
It looks like the rain’s about to start – misty out, green, purple sky. I slide into my Subaru Outback, rev the engine and I’m cruising out, headlights cutting through the gloom. Wind up the driveway and out onto Broadway when I see some guy in front of Mercy College, probably one of the other tutors. These new guys could just ask for a ride, anyone would give it to them. I recognize the dark down jacket, blond Beatles cut, and the bobbing stride. It’s Tim – knew it was one of the new tutors. Tim, at fifty, still has a bit of the Beach Boy or Kennedy in him. Boyish. Straight.
I ease over to the right, ten paces in front of him, hit the horn and wave him over. As he lurches toward the car, I check over my left shoulder – you never know when some lunatic will crack you from behind, but nothing there but Broadway, dark and quiet, stretching all the way to Albany. The door clicks open, Tim bumps his way in and turns to slam the door.
I glide into the street and pick up speed. “Where you head—” It’s not Tim. It looked like him from behind, but it’s not. My heart jumps and I’m frozen for a moment. The guy is older than Tim, gray hair, not blond, a gaunt face with lines like spider webs.
After my initial start, I realize the humor in this. We’re in a civilized world – he’ll understand. “I thought you were someone else. I thought you were a friend. That’s why I stopped.” He looks confused, agitated, brittle – like a hurricane-blown window about shatter. As we pull up to the light, “I thought you were my friend, Tim.”
The man looks at me in anguish, eyes squinted up, front teeth popping out. “Tim got fucking taken out, man!” he screeches.
I squeeze my body against the door, heart in my throat. I sense I’m in danger, but will myself to stay calm and try to help him understand what’s happening. “I thought you were someone else. You look like my friend Tim. That’s why I stopped,” I explain with a dopey smile, like I’m talking to a six-year-old.
“I thought you were his cousin,” he states suspiciously.
Like Mr. Rogers, “No, I’m his friend.”
“Fucking typical…Didn’t you hear me? Tim’s dead. It was a set-up.” He puts a big yellow hand over mine and squeezes hard. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Tears well up in his eyes and he starts making violent grunting sounds, like a hog or bull, trying to hold back his lament. I just saw Tim less than five minutes ago and he’s fine, and there is no way this guy knows Tim anyway – he’s just some nut. I probably could have said I thought he was Fred or Barney and he’d be wailing over them too. But I don’t say anything, as I don’t want to agitate him anymore.
The light changes and I make a right into town and pull over in front of Tembo, a Japanese restaurant I frequent. The stifled sobs come to an abrupt halt. “What the hell are you doing? We have to move fast. Get the hell back to the train station!” he gurgles hysterically.
“Okay, we’re getting out now,” I chuckle nervously as I open my door.
I feel a Vise-Grip clamp down on my forearm and force me back into the seat. I look down to see his knarled fingers digging into my skin. “We have to go!” he hisses, terror in his wild eyes. “Tim is dead. They’re looking for me. The cops are going to be all over the place in seconds!”
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
“We will go to jail. I still got the shit on me, over two pounds.”
My mind is flipping through every channel trying to find a way out of this mess; this psycho truly believes his delusions, and I have to calm him down. So in my most soothing voice: “Fine. I didn’t realize it was so serious.”
“Tim got half his head blowed off. What the fuck would be serious to you, you idiot?”
“Let go of my arm. We’ve got to get out of here,” I urge.
Relieved, he releases me and leans back ever so slightly. I pretend to bring the keys to the ignition and just as they start to clack against the steering column I whip the door open and spring out into the street.
“No! Please,” he screeches, grabbing at my leg.
A violent CRACK! explodes in my ears as a gray blur whips past me. I feel hot wind as I see my car door skidding down the black asphalt like a hockey puck gliding on ice, knocked clean off by a silver mini-van.
Nico Kravitz
I sit in the old Datsun, still holding up remarkably well (the Datsun), reading a three-day-old New York Times. Where is this schmuck?
“Whasuuuup?” Tim stands outside my window, thirty something, but not a day over fifteen and a half. Half a beard that still can’t come in and a hooded sweatshirt that’s a size and a half too big. He’s smiling like a rogue, like we’re going to get laid or something, not go pull a class A felony. He’s a prick, but you can’t help but like him.
I roll down my window manually. “You’re alone.”
“No, I’m with you.”
I’m not in the mood. “I thought you were bringing a third.”
Tim’s goofy and though I’m semi-intimidating at six two, kind of like a Dead-Head version of Clint Eastwood, who am I kidding? I’m a decrepit hippie and a damn pacifist to boot. So sometimes we bring a little muscle. Usually this big Rasta dude, Trevor. Just kind of like a security blanket.
“We don’t really need a third – these are some little frat boys, little rich kids. But my cousin’s going to be there,” Tim assures me.
I hate when he brings in new people. This shits all a game to him. He just doesn’t get it – fewer people, less potential for getting narced on. I don’t even tell Doris half the shit. “I don’t like it, Tim.”
“He’s cool, really, come on. I think you met him once, that day at Tompkins Square Park.”
“That was years ago. I can’t even remember two days ago,” I bitch as he opens the passenger side door of the Datsun. “Tim, no car at the location. It’s common sense.”
“Dude, this is not a big deal.”
“I’ll turn around and drive home now. I don’t need the money,” I lie.
We take the blue Nike gym bag and my old backpack out of the trunk and cab it, my stomach in a knot and Tim jibber-jabbin’ the whole time about this “awesome” jujitsu class he started, some girl he met at a coffee house, some old Rush song he heard that talks to him. Fucking Tim.
It’s not a bad set up for a dorm room, but these kids hardly seem rich. Neatly made up beds, a couple of Mets posters, a sultry-looking poster of Beyonce. In the corner is a plywood desk straight out of Office Depot, on it is a lap top with a Caribbean screen saver and a pile of books – math, engineering – pretty torturous looking stuff. A few photos on a corkboard, one of a young girl, maybe a niece or baby sister. I get a pang of guilt. What the fuck am I doing here selling to dorm kids? However, I remind myself that this is going to make these cats big shots around here. They’re going to have a ball. Besides, if I don’t sell it to them, someone else will, and someone else would probably burn these goofy kids.
The big, quiet Italian-looking kid, Richie, is hanging back a bit, seems intimidated by two dudes with ten pounds of pot in his dorm room. The little one, Drake, caramel-colored and freckled, is running the show, acting the big shot. Both have on baseball caps and baggy jeans.
Tim unzips the gym bag and pulls out a big baggy full of dark green buds. These kids are trying to play it cool, but I see easily past the masks. Drake looks like he’s about to bust a nut and Richie stumbles around awkwardly behind the bed. Tim, in his element now, gracefully opens the bag, takes a wiff and hands it to Drake who follows suit. The skunky aroma fills the room, and I relax a bit – the pureness of it. Deep green, delicate purple hairs, tight buds. I can imagine the pungent taste rolling down my tongue and throat. This is fun. I pull my trusty Protopipe out of the front of my jeans’ pocket – had this thing 30 years. Lost it once for over two, till it turned up under the seat of my Datsun. I hand the pipe over to Tim. “Let them sample the product. This stuff is a real mellow high.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t buy a pair a shoes without out trying them on, right?” Tim adds graciously. He deftly pulls out a healthy bud and crushes it in the pipe with his index finger. He brings the pipe to his lips, holding the purple lighter sideways, flame sucking into the bowl. I hear a strange jingling sound at the front door. Tim shoots me a startled glance. “What the fuck?” Drake hisses, snatching the still lit pipe and shoving it down the front of his pants.
At first I think they’re cops, 30-somethings with short haircuts, wearing slacks and button-ups, one beefy guy with an intense widow’s peak, the other taller with a perfectly cropped blond mustache. I think maybe they’re deans until I see the one with the widow’s peak has a heavy black gun pointed at Tim’s neck. This isn’t real, can’t be happening. It’s just pot. “Zip up that bag there and hand it over to my partner here,” says the gunman, almost acting friendly.
I can’t believe these little fucks set us up. But Drake looks terrified: “Please Sir, we’re college students. I have a baby sister.” He’s not acting. Richie is gone, probably hiding behind the bed. My heart is jackhammering, knees shaking like baby rattles. Only Tim seems calm – what the hell is with him? “Everyone cooperate and we got no problems. Give my friend the bag, now.” What’s Tim doing? We always said if they got heat, let it go. I can grow more.
“Give it to him, Tim,” I urge under my breath. Tim hands the bag in front of the gunman toward the guy with the mustache. As he reaches out his hand, Thump – Tim drops it on the floor, and like lightning, does some Bruce Lee spin and snatch for the gun. Pakow! I dive to the floor in a ball. I smell flowery carpet cleaner and burnt sulfur and hear the door slam. I peek up and see the back wall splattered bright red. Tim lays on the floor, face down in a puddle of dark blood that is getting soaked up by the green carpet.
“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” shrieks Drake. Richie brings a gangly arm out from behind the bed and stumbles up and out the door. I’m right behind him, heart pumping in a frenzy, barely breathing. I scramble out onto the sidewalk and realize I don’t have the slightest idea where I am. I just know I need to get far away. Far from the dorm room, the blood and Tim laying there. Dead.
I race toward a clump of trees, my creaky knees raising high in the air, bushes and shrubs grabbing and tearing at my jacket and backpack. It ends too soon as I arrive at a residential street full of little stucco houses. If I can get to the train station in the next few minutes, I might avoid dying an old man in prison. A green station wagon is pulling up as I’m about to run back to the safety of the bushes. The guy stops and tells me to get in. Holy shit, it must be Tim’s cousin coming to get me. Thank God.
Peter Broome
I push my back against the warm side of the Subaru. That van missed me by centimeters – I felt the heat of it. My knees are shaky and my throat is dry. A young, black UPS guy with a raspy voice is at my side. “Hey, Mr., are you okay there? Are you hurt?”
My mind is spinning. For some reason, I touch my legs. “I’m fine. I didn’t get hurt at all.”
“Thank God for that,” he says. “Come on, partner, let’s get you over to the sidewalk. You’ll be all right.” He wraps a firm arm around my shoulder and guides me to the sidewalk. The driver, a middle-aged lady with a ponytail, stands behind her Honda Odyssey, now stopped halfway up the block, yelling hysterically into her pink iPhone. The crazy dude. “It was the crazy dude. He was trying to keep me in the car.”
“Crazy dude?” questions the UPS man.
I glance around – not in my door-less Subaru, not in the small crowds of gawking bystanders, not in the restaurant. One of the workers stands in front, Asian and sturdy, long white apron, arms crossed in front of his chest. Distant sirens wail. Good, the police will help me. The UPS guy is looking at me with concern, his brows furrowed. I explain, “I had picked this guy up and he wouldn’t let me get out of the car…”
The sound and vibration of sirens swallow up my words. Two white Dobbs Ferry cop cars park at odd angles. Doors slam, footsteps approach. The UPS guy waves them over to me. “You’ll be all right now.” One of the cops makes a beeline for me. He is husky with a blond mustache and a reddish face, 40’s. “What happened here?” he asks, seeming aggravated, mist dripping off his hat. What’s he aggravated at me for? I’m the damn victim.
“I picked this guy up in front of Mercy College…”
“What guy?” he sneers.
“Just some guy. He looked like Tim, my friend, Tim. So I stopped and he got in. And I realized it wasn’t him. “
“Sir, what happened with your car door?” he asks annoyed.
“The guy was strange, so I pulled over here and tried to get out, but he held me in the car, against my will. So I made a break for it and just as I got out this van came flying by and knocked my door off.”
“Where is this guy?”
“He must have ran off.”
“Can you give me a description?”
“Yes, he had grayish hair, in a Beatles haircut, maybe in his fifties, brown jacket.”
To the UPS guy, “You see this guy?”
“Uh, no, just this fella almost getting run over. But there was a lot of commotion.”
The cop is looking at me like I stink or something. “So some guy, you let some strange guy in your car?”
“I thought he was a friend.”
“So you stop for a stranger, he gets in even though he doesn’t know you, and then he tries to keep you in the car?”
“Yes, yes. You know, you should really be looking for him before he gets too far.” Red face turns three shades brighter, staring at me incredulously, big green vein pulsing in his temple.
I see the fleshy finger zooming right for my nose, stopping an inch short. “I been on the force 17 years. You don’t tell me what I should do. You, you should not open your door in traffic." A call comes in from the radio, and Red Face trudges over to the car, maintaining his squinty eyes on me the whole time.
I stand awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot. Red Face is on his radio peering at me with distrust. Folks stand around in doorways watching, a couple of local teen delinquents think it’s hilarious, a stooped old lady is shaking her head muttering. What’s the big deal? They never saw a traffic accident before? I search for the UPS guy, but can’t find him.
I look down and notice a black canvas backpack on the floor of the passenger side of my car. What the hell? Psycho must have left it. Yes, now I have proof. I reach through the window to pick it up when I hear a booming voice: “Drop the bag and put your hands on the car.” What the hell? I look up and Red Face is on the sidewalk, ten paces off, like a cowboy, hand hanging like a spider over the colt in his holster, already unbuckled. “Drop the bag and put your hands on the car.”
We’re in Dobbs Ferry, I’m an upright citizen. Surely this can’t be happening. In my peripheral vision, I see the other cops closing in on me, like a pack of wolves. With reason, I explain, “I found the backpack, the guy—“
Pistols pointed directly at my chest, “Drop the bag, hands on the car.” His voice is calm, face relaxed, eyes wide open, the vein in his left temple pulsing. I drop the bag and find the roof of the car with my palms. Instantly there is a blunt assault of hands simultaneously rubbing, patting, probing every part of my body, the three cops working as a single being. “Please, you’ve made a mistake.” Surely if I just reason.
Suddenly my arm is wrenched back, I feel cold metal snap around my wrist and I panic. I can’t breath. Suddenly they’re no longer cops and my life is in danger. I flail my body frantically like a swordfish hauled out on a dock, my only chance of survival. A wall of flesh and muscle begin to take me to the ground. As I’m going down my left arm gets loose and flails wildly. I hear a loud crack, like an A-Rod line drive, as the loose handcuff hits Red Face in the forehead. I’m crushed into the concrete, a knee smashed directly into my spine, arms being torn back. I fight for my life, for breath – squiggle, squirm, befuddle their every attempt to chain my wrists, to contain me. My skin is sandpapered by the asphalt, but I can’t feel it. Click. It’s done.
“What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? I’m a coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. I tutor underprivileged kids in the neighborhood. There’s been a mistake.”
I’m yanked up by the back of my arms. Two more police cars arrive and four new cops come rushing to the scene. Red Face has a nasty welt over his eyebrow, blood dripping down his temple and smeared on his cheek. They’re going to kill me. I squat down on the sidewalk, but they lift me. I scream to the crowd, “Help! Help me, please! I didn’t do anything.” They toss me into the car, wrestling me down. I kick frantically, feeling forceful blows to my ribs. Every time they try to get out of the car, I squirm out with them like an octopus, twisting, squirming, clinging. Finally, my legs are in a battle with the door. My knees buckle. A muffled click. I’m captured. I try to open the door. I pound on the safety glass with my heels.
Through the closed window, a tall skinny cop with wiry black hair: “You’re under arrest for possession of an illegal substance…”
“It’s not mine. A guy left it there.”
“…and for suspicion of homicide,” I think I hear him say, but realize I must be mistaken. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law…” I slump down in the back seat, crushed body and spirit. More cop cars pull up from Tarrytown. What the hell just happened? Surreal. Surreal.
Nico Kravitz
I take out my key-chain pocketknife, and wrench it open with my ragged finger nails. Cheap crap’s dull as a spoon – in fact, that’s what I’ve mostly used it for. I scan the earth around me, but can’t see much in the darkness: mounds of dead and decaying leaves, shapes that look like broken branches and chunks of bark, soft black earth walled in by bushes and shrubs. I sift through the soil with my stiff fingers till I find a few pebbles, not what I want, but will have to do. I don’t dare leave my leafy sanctuary to search for better. I select a nickel-sized pebble, light in color and smooth. Squatting in the dirt, gripping the pebble with my knotted fingers, I slowly rub the little blade across it. Repeating this action several times, I find the sound and rhythm of the twangy metal scratching across the stone strangely calming, but I keep my eyes on the driveway of the house I’m hiding behind.
I run my fingers through my sweaty hair and get a fierce grip on a fat chunk right in front of my forehead. I take the blade to the taut cord of hair and saw. I clench to fight the quiver that is trying to possess my lower lip. I’ve had this hair for over forty years, since I was a kid and I saw the Beatles singing “She Loves You” on the Ed Sullivan show. I was going to be a rock star – George was my idol.
I get into the rhythm of cutting clumps of hair, using my fingers to pull at the strands and feel the length, trying to make them even. And once entrenched in this routine and rhythm, my mind begins to wander back to the dorm room. I tighten my muscles – clench my jaw, knot my calves, wrench my stomach – keep the thoughts away. Don’t let those demons in. Stay the fuck out! But they slip in through the cracks like drafts in an old house. It seemed so easy. Go down and unload a few kilos on some rich dorm kids. They’d be the most happening dudes on campus for the next month and I get my damn rent paid. No big deal. Shit, last year Tim had me in Harlem, in the Bronx. We go to the basement of this bodega near Fordam Road in the Bronx. Trudging down these rickety old stairs, had to duck my head. My T-shirt was soaked in sweat and, for the only time in my adult life, I felt a weakness in my bowels as if they would evacuate their contents down my legs. I thought for sure these characters would slit our throats and leave us in a dumpster. But it turned out these Puerto Rican cats were cool, even friendly. The one offered us Heinekens, showed me a picture of his daughter who was away at college. Shook hands at the end like we were old comrades.
But I never expected some crap like this to go down here, in some dorm room – I did everything right, followed all the damn rules: stuck to grass, no hard shit; I only dealt with level-headed, mellow people like Tim. Why the fuck did he do it? Suddenly I’m sniffling again, snotting up again. Fucking scumbags murdered Tim, the stupid ass. We always said, if they ever pull out heat, we surrender what we have. No cowboy shit, I’ll just grow more. They won’t bother to shoot us because we can’t go to the cops. It’s still so fucking surreal – I lost my partner, lost a friend. I don’t even know if we were friends. We were both just in it for the cash, a symbiotic relationship, I guess you could say. I had the pot, he had the buyers. But he was about as close as I have to a friend these days and I liked him. He was light-hearted, not like me, and I liked that about him. Clench the fucking jaw, clench the fucking jaw! Keep the pain out – no time for it now.
The soil is a bit damp from the mist, but not enough. My knees crack as I stand up. I unzip my pants and let a trickle of piss flow into the dirt. Man, I really need to get my prostate checked. I squat down and claw my fingers into the pissy mud, massaging it till it gets to the consistency of pudding. I scoop up a glob, warm and weighty in my hand, and glide it back through my hair, making sure to smooth it over my entire scalp, but being careful not to get even a miniscule smudge on my face.
I shove my gray and yellow locks under a pile of rotting leaves and as I toss my jacket over the fence, I notice the sun is just starting to peek out. I head out into the street, short black-haired, and try to make my way back to the old Datsun at the train station.
Peter Broome
I feel like I’m not me anymore, like I’m not in my body. I’m lying on the cold cement floor of a holding cell in the Dobbs Ferry police station, scrunched forward so I can fit. The Smell of Pine-Sol twinging my nose hairs, seeing into the police station through steel bars. Stabbing pains, relentless aches, ruthless stiffness in all my joints: shoulders, knees, neck, earthquakes flaring up in my hands. I notice it all, but can’t feel it. I’ve retreated into the relative safety of the spongy gray maze in my head, but it doesn’t feel too welcoming there either.
It turns out psycho is not psycho and good is not good. Some guy named Tim Parker, not Tim the tutor, was shot in the head in a dorm room at Mercy College during some type of drug deal, and my car was seen leaving the area with one of the suspected dealers. Apparently the call Red Face got on the radio was to be on the look out for two guys in a green Subaru Outback, armed and dangerous. They think I’m involved in a murder and they have a backpack full of marijuana to prove their hypothesis. And even if I get the murder-drug deal confusion resolved, there’s the issue of the thirteen stitches to a beloved Lieutenant’s forehead.
I watch a black carpenter ant frantically crawling around in the corner, inches from my nose, the kind I catch and let go when I see them in my house. Up until a few hours ago, I would have thought this was an impossibility. How could a good guy, a tutor for the underprivileged, an environmentalist, a caring uncle, be subject to this kind of barbarism? I always believed if you’re a good person, good things come to you. And my main rule in life was to be good. Shit, I’m a law-abiding citizen – I don’t even cheat on my taxes. My accountant’s like, well we could bump this number up a bit for the itemized deduction, and I tell him just use what’s on the receipt.
Now I know what it’s like for James, the kid I work with. He’s been harassed by the police on different occasions – questioned, yelled at, even frisked and cuffed once. He always tells me he didn’t do anything. You must have done something I tell him. If you’re doing the right thing, obeying the law, being respectful, these things won’t happen to you. I remember the first time I said that to him, he narrowed his eyes and said, sounding much older than his fourteen years, “The only thing I did wrong was be black.”
I notice two sets of long legs walking toward the cell. “Broome, Mr. Broome.” I look up to see the black-haired cop who read me my rights with another cop, blond, looks about twelve. “We’re going up to central booking now.” The lawyer had told me I would be transferred to the “real” jail later today and that I’d get a hearing tomorrow in which they would set my bail. I hear the clack of the lock opening as the blond kid-cop opens the cage door. I reach a hand for a bar, clutch it and hoist myself up. The other cop comes in, and without noticing it steps on the ant. He grasps my arm to steady me and leads me out into a world that is not what I thought it to be.
James high fives me at the door as I’m leaving. “Peace out, Peter.” I was too weary to tutor tonight, but did anyway – I couldn’t let James down. I’ve been his volunteer for over three years now, ever since I moved up to the burbs. In fact, we have the longest partnership in the program. And I’m glad I didn’t let him down. You do good things in the world, good comes to you. If I don’t know anything else, I know that to be true.
It looks like the rain’s about to start – misty out, green, purple sky. I slide into my Subaru Outback, rev the engine and I’m cruising out, headlights cutting through the gloom. Wind up the driveway and out onto Broadway when I see some guy in front of Mercy College, probably one of the other tutors. These new guys could just ask for a ride, anyone would give it to them. I recognize the dark down jacket, blond Beatles cut, and the bobbing stride. It’s Tim – knew it was one of the new tutors. Tim, at fifty, still has a bit of the Beach Boy or Kennedy in him. Boyish. Straight.
I ease over to the right, ten paces in front of him, hit the horn and wave him over. As he lurches toward the car, I check over my left shoulder – you never know when some lunatic will crack you from behind, but nothing there but Broadway, dark and quiet, stretching all the way to Albany. The door clicks open, Tim bumps his way in and turns to slam the door.
I glide into the street and pick up speed. “Where you head—” It’s not Tim. It looked like him from behind, but it’s not. My heart jumps and I’m frozen for a moment. The guy is older than Tim, gray hair, not blond, a gaunt face with lines like spider webs.
After my initial start, I realize the humor in this. We’re in a civilized world – he’ll understand. “I thought you were someone else. I thought you were a friend. That’s why I stopped.” He looks confused, agitated, brittle – like a hurricane-blown window about shatter. As we pull up to the light, “I thought you were my friend, Tim.”
The man looks at me in anguish, eyes squinted up, front teeth popping out. “Tim got fucking taken out, man!” he screeches.
I squeeze my body against the door, heart in my throat. I sense I’m in danger, but will myself to stay calm and try to help him understand what’s happening. “I thought you were someone else. You look like my friend Tim. That’s why I stopped,” I explain with a dopey smile, like I’m talking to a six-year-old.
“I thought you were his cousin,” he states suspiciously.
Like Mr. Rogers, “No, I’m his friend.”
“Fucking typical…Didn’t you hear me? Tim’s dead. It was a set-up.” He puts a big yellow hand over mine and squeezes hard. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Tears well up in his eyes and he starts making violent grunting sounds, like a hog or bull, trying to hold back his lament. I just saw Tim less than five minutes ago and he’s fine, and there is no way this guy knows Tim anyway – he’s just some nut. I probably could have said I thought he was Fred or Barney and he’d be wailing over them too. But I don’t say anything, as I don’t want to agitate him anymore.
The light changes and I make a right into town and pull over in front of Tembo, a Japanese restaurant I frequent. The stifled sobs come to an abrupt halt. “What the hell are you doing? We have to move fast. Get the hell back to the train station!” he gurgles hysterically.
“Okay, we’re getting out now,” I chuckle nervously as I open my door.
I feel a Vise-Grip clamp down on my forearm and force me back into the seat. I look down to see his knarled fingers digging into my skin. “We have to go!” he hisses, terror in his wild eyes. “Tim is dead. They’re looking for me. The cops are going to be all over the place in seconds!”
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
“We will go to jail. I still got the shit on me, over two pounds.”
My mind is flipping through every channel trying to find a way out of this mess; this psycho truly believes his delusions, and I have to calm him down. So in my most soothing voice: “Fine. I didn’t realize it was so serious.”
“Tim got half his head blowed off. What the fuck would be serious to you, you idiot?”
“Let go of my arm. We’ve got to get out of here,” I urge.
Relieved, he releases me and leans back ever so slightly. I pretend to bring the keys to the ignition and just as they start to clack against the steering column I whip the door open and spring out into the street.
“No! Please,” he screeches, grabbing at my leg.
A violent CRACK! explodes in my ears as a gray blur whips past me. I feel hot wind as I see my car door skidding down the black asphalt like a hockey puck gliding on ice, knocked clean off by a silver mini-van.
Nico Kravitz
I sit in the old Datsun, still holding up remarkably well (the Datsun), reading a three-day-old New York Times. Where is this schmuck?
“Whasuuuup?” Tim stands outside my window, thirty something, but not a day over fifteen and a half. Half a beard that still can’t come in and a hooded sweatshirt that’s a size and a half too big. He’s smiling like a rogue, like we’re going to get laid or something, not go pull a class A felony. He’s a prick, but you can’t help but like him.
I roll down my window manually. “You’re alone.”
“No, I’m with you.”
I’m not in the mood. “I thought you were bringing a third.”
Tim’s goofy and though I’m semi-intimidating at six two, kind of like a Dead-Head version of Clint Eastwood, who am I kidding? I’m a decrepit hippie and a damn pacifist to boot. So sometimes we bring a little muscle. Usually this big Rasta dude, Trevor. Just kind of like a security blanket.
“We don’t really need a third – these are some little frat boys, little rich kids. But my cousin’s going to be there,” Tim assures me.
I hate when he brings in new people. This shits all a game to him. He just doesn’t get it – fewer people, less potential for getting narced on. I don’t even tell Doris half the shit. “I don’t like it, Tim.”
“He’s cool, really, come on. I think you met him once, that day at Tompkins Square Park.”
“That was years ago. I can’t even remember two days ago,” I bitch as he opens the passenger side door of the Datsun. “Tim, no car at the location. It’s common sense.”
“Dude, this is not a big deal.”
“I’ll turn around and drive home now. I don’t need the money,” I lie.
We take the blue Nike gym bag and my old backpack out of the trunk and cab it, my stomach in a knot and Tim jibber-jabbin’ the whole time about this “awesome” jujitsu class he started, some girl he met at a coffee house, some old Rush song he heard that talks to him. Fucking Tim.
It’s not a bad set up for a dorm room, but these kids hardly seem rich. Neatly made up beds, a couple of Mets posters, a sultry-looking poster of Beyonce. In the corner is a plywood desk straight out of Office Depot, on it is a lap top with a Caribbean screen saver and a pile of books – math, engineering – pretty torturous looking stuff. A few photos on a corkboard, one of a young girl, maybe a niece or baby sister. I get a pang of guilt. What the fuck am I doing here selling to dorm kids? However, I remind myself that this is going to make these cats big shots around here. They’re going to have a ball. Besides, if I don’t sell it to them, someone else will, and someone else would probably burn these goofy kids.
The big, quiet Italian-looking kid, Richie, is hanging back a bit, seems intimidated by two dudes with ten pounds of pot in his dorm room. The little one, Drake, caramel-colored and freckled, is running the show, acting the big shot. Both have on baseball caps and baggy jeans.
Tim unzips the gym bag and pulls out a big baggy full of dark green buds. These kids are trying to play it cool, but I see easily past the masks. Drake looks like he’s about to bust a nut and Richie stumbles around awkwardly behind the bed. Tim, in his element now, gracefully opens the bag, takes a wiff and hands it to Drake who follows suit. The skunky aroma fills the room, and I relax a bit – the pureness of it. Deep green, delicate purple hairs, tight buds. I can imagine the pungent taste rolling down my tongue and throat. This is fun. I pull my trusty Protopipe out of the front of my jeans’ pocket – had this thing 30 years. Lost it once for over two, till it turned up under the seat of my Datsun. I hand the pipe over to Tim. “Let them sample the product. This stuff is a real mellow high.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t buy a pair a shoes without out trying them on, right?” Tim adds graciously. He deftly pulls out a healthy bud and crushes it in the pipe with his index finger. He brings the pipe to his lips, holding the purple lighter sideways, flame sucking into the bowl. I hear a strange jingling sound at the front door. Tim shoots me a startled glance. “What the fuck?” Drake hisses, snatching the still lit pipe and shoving it down the front of his pants.
At first I think they’re cops, 30-somethings with short haircuts, wearing slacks and button-ups, one beefy guy with an intense widow’s peak, the other taller with a perfectly cropped blond mustache. I think maybe they’re deans until I see the one with the widow’s peak has a heavy black gun pointed at Tim’s neck. This isn’t real, can’t be happening. It’s just pot. “Zip up that bag there and hand it over to my partner here,” says the gunman, almost acting friendly.
I can’t believe these little fucks set us up. But Drake looks terrified: “Please Sir, we’re college students. I have a baby sister.” He’s not acting. Richie is gone, probably hiding behind the bed. My heart is jackhammering, knees shaking like baby rattles. Only Tim seems calm – what the hell is with him? “Everyone cooperate and we got no problems. Give my friend the bag, now.” What’s Tim doing? We always said if they got heat, let it go. I can grow more.
“Give it to him, Tim,” I urge under my breath. Tim hands the bag in front of the gunman toward the guy with the mustache. As he reaches out his hand, Thump – Tim drops it on the floor, and like lightning, does some Bruce Lee spin and snatch for the gun. Pakow! I dive to the floor in a ball. I smell flowery carpet cleaner and burnt sulfur and hear the door slam. I peek up and see the back wall splattered bright red. Tim lays on the floor, face down in a puddle of dark blood that is getting soaked up by the green carpet.
“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” shrieks Drake. Richie brings a gangly arm out from behind the bed and stumbles up and out the door. I’m right behind him, heart pumping in a frenzy, barely breathing. I scramble out onto the sidewalk and realize I don’t have the slightest idea where I am. I just know I need to get far away. Far from the dorm room, the blood and Tim laying there. Dead.
I race toward a clump of trees, my creaky knees raising high in the air, bushes and shrubs grabbing and tearing at my jacket and backpack. It ends too soon as I arrive at a residential street full of little stucco houses. If I can get to the train station in the next few minutes, I might avoid dying an old man in prison. A green station wagon is pulling up as I’m about to run back to the safety of the bushes. The guy stops and tells me to get in. Holy shit, it must be Tim’s cousin coming to get me. Thank God.
Peter Broome
I push my back against the warm side of the Subaru. That van missed me by centimeters – I felt the heat of it. My knees are shaky and my throat is dry. A young, black UPS guy with a raspy voice is at my side. “Hey, Mr., are you okay there? Are you hurt?”
My mind is spinning. For some reason, I touch my legs. “I’m fine. I didn’t get hurt at all.”
“Thank God for that,” he says. “Come on, partner, let’s get you over to the sidewalk. You’ll be all right.” He wraps a firm arm around my shoulder and guides me to the sidewalk. The driver, a middle-aged lady with a ponytail, stands behind her Honda Odyssey, now stopped halfway up the block, yelling hysterically into her pink iPhone. The crazy dude. “It was the crazy dude. He was trying to keep me in the car.”
“Crazy dude?” questions the UPS man.
I glance around – not in my door-less Subaru, not in the small crowds of gawking bystanders, not in the restaurant. One of the workers stands in front, Asian and sturdy, long white apron, arms crossed in front of his chest. Distant sirens wail. Good, the police will help me. The UPS guy is looking at me with concern, his brows furrowed. I explain, “I had picked this guy up and he wouldn’t let me get out of the car…”
The sound and vibration of sirens swallow up my words. Two white Dobbs Ferry cop cars park at odd angles. Doors slam, footsteps approach. The UPS guy waves them over to me. “You’ll be all right now.” One of the cops makes a beeline for me. He is husky with a blond mustache and a reddish face, 40’s. “What happened here?” he asks, seeming aggravated, mist dripping off his hat. What’s he aggravated at me for? I’m the damn victim.
“I picked this guy up in front of Mercy College…”
“What guy?” he sneers.
“Just some guy. He looked like Tim, my friend, Tim. So I stopped and he got in. And I realized it wasn’t him. “
“Sir, what happened with your car door?” he asks annoyed.
“The guy was strange, so I pulled over here and tried to get out, but he held me in the car, against my will. So I made a break for it and just as I got out this van came flying by and knocked my door off.”
“Where is this guy?”
“He must have ran off.”
“Can you give me a description?”
“Yes, he had grayish hair, in a Beatles haircut, maybe in his fifties, brown jacket.”
To the UPS guy, “You see this guy?”
“Uh, no, just this fella almost getting run over. But there was a lot of commotion.”
The cop is looking at me like I stink or something. “So some guy, you let some strange guy in your car?”
“I thought he was a friend.”
“So you stop for a stranger, he gets in even though he doesn’t know you, and then he tries to keep you in the car?”
“Yes, yes. You know, you should really be looking for him before he gets too far.” Red face turns three shades brighter, staring at me incredulously, big green vein pulsing in his temple.
I see the fleshy finger zooming right for my nose, stopping an inch short. “I been on the force 17 years. You don’t tell me what I should do. You, you should not open your door in traffic." A call comes in from the radio, and Red Face trudges over to the car, maintaining his squinty eyes on me the whole time.
I stand awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot. Red Face is on his radio peering at me with distrust. Folks stand around in doorways watching, a couple of local teen delinquents think it’s hilarious, a stooped old lady is shaking her head muttering. What’s the big deal? They never saw a traffic accident before? I search for the UPS guy, but can’t find him.
I look down and notice a black canvas backpack on the floor of the passenger side of my car. What the hell? Psycho must have left it. Yes, now I have proof. I reach through the window to pick it up when I hear a booming voice: “Drop the bag and put your hands on the car.” What the hell? I look up and Red Face is on the sidewalk, ten paces off, like a cowboy, hand hanging like a spider over the colt in his holster, already unbuckled. “Drop the bag and put your hands on the car.”
We’re in Dobbs Ferry, I’m an upright citizen. Surely this can’t be happening. In my peripheral vision, I see the other cops closing in on me, like a pack of wolves. With reason, I explain, “I found the backpack, the guy—“
Pistols pointed directly at my chest, “Drop the bag, hands on the car.” His voice is calm, face relaxed, eyes wide open, the vein in his left temple pulsing. I drop the bag and find the roof of the car with my palms. Instantly there is a blunt assault of hands simultaneously rubbing, patting, probing every part of my body, the three cops working as a single being. “Please, you’ve made a mistake.” Surely if I just reason.
Suddenly my arm is wrenched back, I feel cold metal snap around my wrist and I panic. I can’t breath. Suddenly they’re no longer cops and my life is in danger. I flail my body frantically like a swordfish hauled out on a dock, my only chance of survival. A wall of flesh and muscle begin to take me to the ground. As I’m going down my left arm gets loose and flails wildly. I hear a loud crack, like an A-Rod line drive, as the loose handcuff hits Red Face in the forehead. I’m crushed into the concrete, a knee smashed directly into my spine, arms being torn back. I fight for my life, for breath – squiggle, squirm, befuddle their every attempt to chain my wrists, to contain me. My skin is sandpapered by the asphalt, but I can’t feel it. Click. It’s done.
“What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? I’m a coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. I tutor underprivileged kids in the neighborhood. There’s been a mistake.”
I’m yanked up by the back of my arms. Two more police cars arrive and four new cops come rushing to the scene. Red Face has a nasty welt over his eyebrow, blood dripping down his temple and smeared on his cheek. They’re going to kill me. I squat down on the sidewalk, but they lift me. I scream to the crowd, “Help! Help me, please! I didn’t do anything.” They toss me into the car, wrestling me down. I kick frantically, feeling forceful blows to my ribs. Every time they try to get out of the car, I squirm out with them like an octopus, twisting, squirming, clinging. Finally, my legs are in a battle with the door. My knees buckle. A muffled click. I’m captured. I try to open the door. I pound on the safety glass with my heels.
Through the closed window, a tall skinny cop with wiry black hair: “You’re under arrest for possession of an illegal substance…”
“It’s not mine. A guy left it there.”
“…and for suspicion of homicide,” I think I hear him say, but realize I must be mistaken. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law…” I slump down in the back seat, crushed body and spirit. More cop cars pull up from Tarrytown. What the hell just happened? Surreal. Surreal.
Nico Kravitz
I take out my key-chain pocketknife, and wrench it open with my ragged finger nails. Cheap crap’s dull as a spoon – in fact, that’s what I’ve mostly used it for. I scan the earth around me, but can’t see much in the darkness: mounds of dead and decaying leaves, shapes that look like broken branches and chunks of bark, soft black earth walled in by bushes and shrubs. I sift through the soil with my stiff fingers till I find a few pebbles, not what I want, but will have to do. I don’t dare leave my leafy sanctuary to search for better. I select a nickel-sized pebble, light in color and smooth. Squatting in the dirt, gripping the pebble with my knotted fingers, I slowly rub the little blade across it. Repeating this action several times, I find the sound and rhythm of the twangy metal scratching across the stone strangely calming, but I keep my eyes on the driveway of the house I’m hiding behind.
I run my fingers through my sweaty hair and get a fierce grip on a fat chunk right in front of my forehead. I take the blade to the taut cord of hair and saw. I clench to fight the quiver that is trying to possess my lower lip. I’ve had this hair for over forty years, since I was a kid and I saw the Beatles singing “She Loves You” on the Ed Sullivan show. I was going to be a rock star – George was my idol.
I get into the rhythm of cutting clumps of hair, using my fingers to pull at the strands and feel the length, trying to make them even. And once entrenched in this routine and rhythm, my mind begins to wander back to the dorm room. I tighten my muscles – clench my jaw, knot my calves, wrench my stomach – keep the thoughts away. Don’t let those demons in. Stay the fuck out! But they slip in through the cracks like drafts in an old house. It seemed so easy. Go down and unload a few kilos on some rich dorm kids. They’d be the most happening dudes on campus for the next month and I get my damn rent paid. No big deal. Shit, last year Tim had me in Harlem, in the Bronx. We go to the basement of this bodega near Fordam Road in the Bronx. Trudging down these rickety old stairs, had to duck my head. My T-shirt was soaked in sweat and, for the only time in my adult life, I felt a weakness in my bowels as if they would evacuate their contents down my legs. I thought for sure these characters would slit our throats and leave us in a dumpster. But it turned out these Puerto Rican cats were cool, even friendly. The one offered us Heinekens, showed me a picture of his daughter who was away at college. Shook hands at the end like we were old comrades.
But I never expected some crap like this to go down here, in some dorm room – I did everything right, followed all the damn rules: stuck to grass, no hard shit; I only dealt with level-headed, mellow people like Tim. Why the fuck did he do it? Suddenly I’m sniffling again, snotting up again. Fucking scumbags murdered Tim, the stupid ass. We always said, if they ever pull out heat, we surrender what we have. No cowboy shit, I’ll just grow more. They won’t bother to shoot us because we can’t go to the cops. It’s still so fucking surreal – I lost my partner, lost a friend. I don’t even know if we were friends. We were both just in it for the cash, a symbiotic relationship, I guess you could say. I had the pot, he had the buyers. But he was about as close as I have to a friend these days and I liked him. He was light-hearted, not like me, and I liked that about him. Clench the fucking jaw, clench the fucking jaw! Keep the pain out – no time for it now.
The soil is a bit damp from the mist, but not enough. My knees crack as I stand up. I unzip my pants and let a trickle of piss flow into the dirt. Man, I really need to get my prostate checked. I squat down and claw my fingers into the pissy mud, massaging it till it gets to the consistency of pudding. I scoop up a glob, warm and weighty in my hand, and glide it back through my hair, making sure to smooth it over my entire scalp, but being careful not to get even a miniscule smudge on my face.
I shove my gray and yellow locks under a pile of rotting leaves and as I toss my jacket over the fence, I notice the sun is just starting to peek out. I head out into the street, short black-haired, and try to make my way back to the old Datsun at the train station.
Peter Broome
I feel like I’m not me anymore, like I’m not in my body. I’m lying on the cold cement floor of a holding cell in the Dobbs Ferry police station, scrunched forward so I can fit. The Smell of Pine-Sol twinging my nose hairs, seeing into the police station through steel bars. Stabbing pains, relentless aches, ruthless stiffness in all my joints: shoulders, knees, neck, earthquakes flaring up in my hands. I notice it all, but can’t feel it. I’ve retreated into the relative safety of the spongy gray maze in my head, but it doesn’t feel too welcoming there either.
It turns out psycho is not psycho and good is not good. Some guy named Tim Parker, not Tim the tutor, was shot in the head in a dorm room at Mercy College during some type of drug deal, and my car was seen leaving the area with one of the suspected dealers. Apparently the call Red Face got on the radio was to be on the look out for two guys in a green Subaru Outback, armed and dangerous. They think I’m involved in a murder and they have a backpack full of marijuana to prove their hypothesis. And even if I get the murder-drug deal confusion resolved, there’s the issue of the thirteen stitches to a beloved Lieutenant’s forehead.
I watch a black carpenter ant frantically crawling around in the corner, inches from my nose, the kind I catch and let go when I see them in my house. Up until a few hours ago, I would have thought this was an impossibility. How could a good guy, a tutor for the underprivileged, an environmentalist, a caring uncle, be subject to this kind of barbarism? I always believed if you’re a good person, good things come to you. And my main rule in life was to be good. Shit, I’m a law-abiding citizen – I don’t even cheat on my taxes. My accountant’s like, well we could bump this number up a bit for the itemized deduction, and I tell him just use what’s on the receipt.
Now I know what it’s like for James, the kid I work with. He’s been harassed by the police on different occasions – questioned, yelled at, even frisked and cuffed once. He always tells me he didn’t do anything. You must have done something I tell him. If you’re doing the right thing, obeying the law, being respectful, these things won’t happen to you. I remember the first time I said that to him, he narrowed his eyes and said, sounding much older than his fourteen years, “The only thing I did wrong was be black.”
I notice two sets of long legs walking toward the cell. “Broome, Mr. Broome.” I look up to see the black-haired cop who read me my rights with another cop, blond, looks about twelve. “We’re going up to central booking now.” The lawyer had told me I would be transferred to the “real” jail later today and that I’d get a hearing tomorrow in which they would set my bail. I hear the clack of the lock opening as the blond kid-cop opens the cage door. I reach a hand for a bar, clutch it and hoist myself up. The other cop comes in, and without noticing it steps on the ant. He grasps my arm to steady me and leads me out into a world that is not what I thought it to be.