American Gangster (11 page)

This lecture continued as Frank led his brothers up the stairs of Red Top's apartment building.

“Nobody owns me,” Frank told them. “Why? Because I own my own company.”

Soon they were heading down a hallway. “And my company,” Frank continued, “sells a product that's better than my competitor's . . . at a lower price.”

Frank stopped outside Red Top's apartment door.

Huey, bright-eyed and as naive as a kid at his first county fair, asked, “What are we sellin', Frank?”

“See for yourself.”

Frank unlocked the door onto a world his brothers had never seen before, outside of maybe a blaxploitation picture at a drive-in movie.

Five naked women—all in their twenties, with the kind of nice bodies that could make any boy's mouth hang open, country or city—sat at worktables with their faces veiled by surgical masks. Four of the topless quintet were cutting heroin with lactose and quinine in a precise Frank Lucas–dictated mixture of controlled purity. Another of the women was stamping small packets of blue cellophane with the words “Blue Magic.”

Frank shut the door behind his slack-jawed brethren as Red Top—in a halter top and leather miniskirt—came over and smiled in that way of hers, both friendly and businesslike.

“Hi, Frank,” she said. “What turnip truck did these boys fall off of?”

“A truck out of Greensboro, honey,” he said good-naturedly. “These are my brothers.”

She grinned at them and started shaking hands, saying, “Any brother of yours, Frank. Any brother of yours.”

Huey was watching the women work, not just taking in their titties like the other boys. He asked Red Top, “Why are you putting ‘Blue Magic' on the packets?”

She said, “There's lots of brands of dope in Harlem—Tru Blue, Mean Machine, Could Be Fatal, Dick Down, more than you could count even with your shoes off.”

Frank picked it up: “Blue Magic's a new brand name,
our
brand name, for this new, stronger shit.”

Red Top put in: “Ten percent purity, when other brands are five percent or less.”

Huey was paying close attention, even if Frank's other brothers were still ogling the help.

Next stop on Frank's nickel tour was just across the way, his favorite diner, where they pushed a couple of tables together and ordered lunch. As they waited for Charlene to bring their blue plate specials, Frank continued to hold court.

“What matters in business,” Frank was saying, “is honesty, integrity, hard work and loyalty.”

Out the window Frank spotted Tango Black, wearing his Shaft-like black leather jacket, bald head gleaming in the sunlight, standing at a fruit stand and helping himself. A fine-looking long-legged gal hung on his arm, and that bodyguard as big as Tango stood watch.

“Most important,” Frank said, reaching for the glass sugar dispenser, screwing off the lid, “is never forget where you come from.”

His brothers watched with eyes wide as Frank dumped the contents of the dispenser onto his plate, as if he was preparing to chow down on a hill of sugar.

“You are what you are,” Frank said, “and that's one of two things: you're nothing, or you're something. You following this?”

His brothers managed to nod, though they remained fascinated by the empty sugar dispenser, its abandoned lid and the pile of sugar on his plate.

“Excuse me, fellas,” he said, and stood. “I'll be right back.”

His brothers watched, bewildered, as Frank exited the diner and, weaving between this car and that one, headed across the street, where a big bald guy with a good-looking girl on his arm was filling a brown-paper grocery sack with fruit.

Empty sugar dispenser in his left hand, Frank approached Tango cheerfully, saying, “Hey, man, what's up? I was just thinking about you.”

Tango turned and frowned, more confused than irritated.

Frank was saying, “You know, I was looking at the jar
you told me about?” He held up the empty sugar dispenser. “And you know what? I didn't see nothing in it.”

Tango sneered and snarled, “What the fuck you want, Frank?”

But Frank's answer wasn't words.

Frank's answer was to pull his revolver from its shoulder holster and shove the gun's snout into Tango's forehead.

Right out on the sidewalk, on the street, in front of the fruit stand, in front of his brothers and Tango's girl and bodyguard and God and everybody.

The ranks of “everybody,” however, were thinning, as people faded away in the deadly silence, including the bodyguard, who backed way the fuck off. Even the young long-legged gal wasn't on Tango's arm anymore—she was heading down the sidewalk, her high heels clicking on cement, like she had a doctor's appointment she just remembered.

If Tango was worried, though, he didn't show it. He just stared at Frank, eyes cold under the gun barrel whose nose was dimpling his forehead, and the would-be king of 116th Street sneered some more as he said, “What're you gonna do now, boy? Shoot me in broad daylight? Front of
everyone
?”

The world froze.

Life on the street stopped, like an atom bomb had just dropped, nobody moving, everybody looking at Frank and his captive audience.

“Big show,” Tango said derisively. “Everybody looking at the big man. But what next? You really gonna shoot me, motherfucker?”

“Yeah,” Frank said, “I am.”

Frank squeezed the trigger and Tango was dead so fast it didn't have time to register in the insolent eyes, and the big man fell back and hit the pavement, hard, but feeling no pain. Blood and brains drained out under the bald head like somebody had dropped a melon off the stand.

Tango was history but Frank still had a point to make.

He emptied the revolver into the corpse's chest and the shots made little cracks yet echoed like thunder down the canyon of buildings.

When the gun was empty, and the echo had died away, silence again shrouding the street, Frank just stood there and, one by one, looked into the face of each spectator, including the bodyguard and the fruit vendor, daring them to remember him.

Then, calmly as a meter maid giving a parking ticket, he knelt and reached inside Tango's jacket and found a money clip fat with cash. He set the empty sugar dispenser down and jammed the money in.

To nobody in particular, Frank said, “For the cops. Should be plenty.”

Then he got to his feet, crossed the street—no cars at the moment, for some reason—and went back into the diner and sat back down with his brothers. He ignored their astonished stares and tucked his napkin back into his shirt collar, like any good country boy. The blue plate specials had arrived, steam rising off meat loaf.

“That's basically the whole picture,” Frank said. He smiled from face to face, then asked, “Any questions?”

At the same time
Richie Roberts was settling in with his squad at an abandoned church in New Jersey, Frank Lucas was being shown around an Upper East Side penthouse in New York. Just as a city maintenance worker had watched Richie deciding, so did a real estate broker—an attractive white woman—stand patiently on the sidelines while Frank considered the high-ceilinged spaciousness of a grand, unfurnished apartment.

Frank liked the modern look of the place, which probably dated to the 1950s when things got sleeker and all atomic and shit. The light streaming in from the garden terrace was right out of an old painting in a museum, and the curtains were themselves twelve feet high; this wasn't an apartment, it was a damn cathedral.

Without looking at the real estate agent, Frank said, “No loan, no contingencies.”

“That's fine. How—”

“Cash sale.”

“Fine! I know you'll just love it here. . . .”

And he did know he would love it there. The penthouse would be his refuge, his sanctuary, from the streets and business, and even from Teaneck and his family. Country boys made good help and were great family, but Frank had goals and tastes that were not at all country.

His home away from home, however, was a nightclub called Small's Paradise at the southwest corner of 135th Street. Harlem had lots of choices in the nightlife department, Mr. B's, the Shalimar, the Gold Lounge. But Small's had history; it was the kind of place where a guy like Frank Lucas, even back when he was a glorified bodyguard for Bumpy Johnson, could rub shoulders with the likes of Wilt Chamberlain or even Howard Hughes.

Rain had turned the streets as slick and glistening as black patent leather, and off that sheen reflected the neons of the night, including the Apollo sign itself, the famous theater just across the way and down—James Brown appearing. Outside Small's, a welldressed lineup of blacks and whites waited behind a velvet rope for the doorman's decision on whether they were cool enough for the room. In a beautifully tailored Brooks Brothers, Frank, of course, brushed right on by and in; he was a silent partner, after all.

Frank didn't take a ringside table—he preferred not to be in the spotlight—and sat talking and drinking and laughing a little with two business associates, Charlie Williams and Cattano's man, Rossi. Like
Frank, the two men favored expensive threads, nothing flashy, but sharp. Even their women, two pretty black call girls, were tastefully attired, not so heavy on the makeup or jewelry, some cleavage but no
Playboy
Bunny spillage.

Up on the stage Joe Williams was tearing it up, doing his signature tune, “Every Day I Have the Blues.” The acts at Small's were always big-time—last week King Curtis, next week Jimmy Smith and his Hammond.

When applause for his signature tune died down, the singer said, “We have a special guest here at Small's Paradise tonight, ladies and gentlemen—Mr. Joe Louis!”

The legendary champ, still a powerful-looking man despite his age, stood and bowed, smiling shyly, and waved to the crowd, which was going wild with applause and whistles and cheers.

After one more tune, the singer went on break but the band started up again, “Green Onions” inspiring couples to flood out to claim their tiny pieces of real estate on the postage-stamp dance floor.

Frank looked past the dancers toward the table where the former champ sat with his dignified wife, Marva, and their guest, a stunningly beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties, her slender shape poured into a gold lamé gown, shoulder-length dark hair cascading to bare shoulders.

Rossi, noticing Frank's eyes were on the Louis table, said, “Twelve years. No champ'll ever pull that off again.”

“Who's the beauty queen?”

Charlie chortled and said, “You called it, Frank: a beauty queen.”

Frank gave Charlie a sideways look.

“A
real
one, Frank,” Charlie said with a grin. “Miss Puerto fuckin' Rico. No kiddin'.”

He found himself staring at her—her smile so real, so natural, her eyes dark and bright and taking everything in . . .

. . . including Frank, when her gaze momentarily caught and held his. He didn't look away. He didn't mind her knowing he was admiring her; he wasn't some gaping pervert, but a man respectfully taking in a vision of beauty.

Anyway, their eyes didn't lock long enough for her to get uneasy or him to be embarrassed, because both had their eyes drawn to a noisy group entering the club, some young dudes and their women striding in, loud as a gospel choir but not near as righteous, with a big ridiculous Superfly figure out front.

Christ
, Frank thought,
what idiots
, and then he
was
embarrassed: it was his brothers, with Huey (who should the fuck
know
better!) in the lead, wearing a damn parrot-green suit with floppy wide-brimmed fedora and slung with a showcase worth of gold chains, acting like he owned the place.

When, after all, it was his
brother
who owned the place. . . .

Frank didn't even let the boys and their wives and girlfriends find their way to a table before he got up, went over and took Huey by the arm and hauled his ass unceremoniously in back to a small dressing room
used by singers like Williams and comics like Nipsey Russell, empty at the moment and perfect for Frank's purpose.

“What is this nonsense?” Frank demanded, turning Huey toward the mirror.

“What?” Huey said, mildly indignant, as if he had no idea what the hell his big brother was talking about. “These are my
clothes
. This is a very nice expensive—”

“Piece of crap,” Frank said, holding onto his brother's green-clad arm. With his free hand, he gestured to his own sharp but not ostentatious apparel. “
These
are clothes.
You're
wearing a costume. Fuckin' Halloween, Huey.”

“That's bullshit, man!”

“Is it? Why don't you just hang a sign around your neck says, ‘Arrest My Ass'? You look like Nicky fuckin' Barnes.”

Huey blinked, looking more hurt than mad. “And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with Nicky Barnes? I like Nicky. He's cool.”

“Cool? You wanna be like Mr. Cool? You wanna be Superfly, when you don't grow up? Then go work for him, Huey. End up in a cell with him, why don't you?”

“Maybe I will.” Huey pulled himself free from his brother's grasp. Trying to regain some pride, he smoothed his ruffled shirt and adjusted his outlandish hat.

Frank sighed. He took the edge out of his voice, stayed calm and even soothing. “Listen for a second, bro. Gotta understand, man—guy making all the noise
in the room, he's the weak one. That's not who we are. That's not who you want to be.”

Lightly, as if changing the subject would make all this go away, Huey said, “Nicky wants to talk to you, by the way. Told him I'd tell you.”

Frank's found his primping brother's eyes in the mirror. “You talked to Nicky about
me
?”