Hunting in Harlem (22 page)

"We're going to have our first issue up by next week, can you believe that? I'm teaching all the kids how to write articles,
they're coming up with the story ideas, it'll be great. I'm talking a three-thousand-copy print run, that goon Horus is putting
thirty-five-cent news boxes all over Harlem as we speak!"

"Piper, you shouldn't be here," Snowden begged.

"Are you kidding? This company's amazing! It's going to be called
Harlem Outcry,
you like that? It was my idea. This is nothing, this is just a favor I'm doing in exchange for things to come. You wouldn't
believe the offer they made me." Piper winked at him like maybe he did know.

"This is going to end badly," Snowden thought aloud.

"No, don't be pessimistic. In a couple of weeks I'll have these little runts writing great."

Lester refused to talk to Snowden about Piper. They passed the Channel 9 News crew on 116th doing an editorial on the police
shooting of Trevor Barber, but aside from shutting up until out of earshot, Lester was undistracted. Snowden was saying things,
disparaging things, about Piper Goines, the obvious hazards of her inquisitive nature, her lack of moral character, her unsuitability
to be left alone with children, slandering her as viciously as he dared without making her a potential hunting accident. Most
of it was lies and Lester didn't pretend to take them as anything but, yet Snowden kept talking till they were almost at the
building and it was time to kill someone.

Wrapped in trash bags and duct tape, Snowden had brought something big to hit Ryan Waters in the head with. It was heavy too,
after a couple of blocks walking, Snowden was getting tired in both arms. The weapon of the evening was that lid that sits
on the back of the toilet. The constructors of the building they were about to go up in had used the same manufacturer for
the sink basins, toilets, and bathtubs. All three were made from the exact same East Rutherford, New Jersey, porcelain, so
that even the closest forensic study could confuse a blow to the head from this toilet lid with a simple slip in the shower.

Lester was unimpressed.

"The blood splatter marks would be different," Snowden confessed. "But I thought I'd just leave the shower on to get rid of
them."

"No, bad idea. It's not that it's not a good plan. It's just. . . he's a puny thing, isn't he? Do you really think he deserves
the A material? It's freezing, and it rained till two last night. That fire escape up there is going to be covered in ice;
that's all the alibi you need. Just go up and throw his little ass out the window and then we'll go get lunch."

Snowden was not impressed, either, pulling his potty lid close to him like Lester might try to take it away.

At Waters's door the lock stubbornly resisted several turns before finally admitting that Snowden's key was the right one,
and even still it barely opened for him. It was getting easier. It was getting mundane, Snowden heard the faint music inside
and didn't once worry that Waters would hear the door opening. If black people just lowered their radios they really would
be a lot safer. Lester motioned to his eyes to emphasize that he would use them, then went over to where Wendell was balled
near the stairs, his cell phone out and dialing before Snowden could even close the door quietly behind him.

The apartment was hot, damp, smelled like sweaty socks were preheating in the oven. The place was obviously a hermit's, just
like all the other hermitages Snowden had bagged up in the months before. The way people lived, the way people really lived
when they were alone, when they didn't think anyone would ever be coming by and shame had no hold on them, was like this.
The smell, the curtains pulled to hide from satellites and God, the dishes kept in a dirty sink jam and cleaned one at a time
as need arose, the total absence of a bare surface of any kind. We resent rats for their similarities to humans, not their
differences.

The clothes lining the narrow hallway made it easier for Snowden to walk down it without being heard, but not much. The toilet
top wanted badly to swing out and bang into the wall, and Snowden's left hand threatened to drop the thing altogether if it
didn't start cooperating. Snowden's right hand held the gun and it was pretty comfortable with that. A string of slow steps
to avoid creaking on the hardwood floors. Snowden was doing well until about eight feet in when his foot went down and made
a sound like a giant eating wooden cereal without milk, echoing down the hall to the room of the man he was supposed to be
surprising. The only thing Snowden could think was, Oh poop.

It couldn't have been as loud as he'd heard it, that was silly, no mere footstep could thunder like that. I'm not Paul Bunyan,
I'm Cedric Snowden, the second (the first one didn't turn out quite right). Snowden calmed himself and he felt, in a way not
familiar with rational thought, that if he could focus hard enough he could calm his entire surroundings as well. As he concentrated,
it seemed to be working. No shadows started moving toward him, no new sounds, creaks responded, just that sound of the radio
and the constant call of sirens outside. I have nothing to fear, Snowden reminded himself. Then, without warning, the music
stopped and a man Snowden immediately recognized as Ryan Waters (smaller in person) came screaming down the hall, an ax held
above him.

Irving Howe's hairpiece served as a pretty good shield, composed as it was of good old-fashion porcelain almost an inch thick.
It was heavy and hard to lift up to meet the repeated blows, but Snowden found just enough strength in his arm to do it. Snowden's
lid was at almost no risk of even chipping, because even though Waters's weapon was a blur as it rained down, up close Snowden
could see that it was not actually a metal ax head at the end of the wooden stick but instead the question mark crook of a
cane. Emboldened by the revelation, Snowden pushed Waters back with each pounding, yelling several fragments such as, "I mean
you no - ," "I come in - ," "I'm trying to - ," "Oh for the love of God - ," all of which went unnoticed as Ryan Waters kept
screaming, "Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!" at the top of his lungs.

A block stronger than a blow and Ryan Waters went down the short distance to his feet. It was a hard fall, a leg caught completely
off guard shot out from beneath him and Waters went straight down on his tailbone. That crunching sound, it wasn't just a
product of loose floorboards. Snowden almost leaned his toilet top against the wall and offered a hand, but instead offered,
"Ryan Waters, I'm here to help you." Maybe Ryan didn't want help, at least from Cedric Snowden.

Maybe the look on Waters's face was just because Snowden pushed his own face to mere inches away and was talking in the lightest
audible whisper to keep Lester from overhearing. Maybe it was simply the fact that this intruder knew his name that sent Ryan
Waters running down the hall, but it didn't matter because, like that, Waters had scrambled away and was gone.

Snowden stood, gun in one hand, oversized potty protection in the other, stunned at the spurning of his offer. It took a good
three seconds of Waters not coming charging back for Snowden to remember himself and chase after him.

It was the decor of the bedroom that caught Snowden off guard. It was a mess, more so than the rest of the apartment, but
it wasn't the clothes that lined the floor that were so startling, it was the clothes affixed to nearly every inch of the
walls. The man had taken women's panties and nailed them up as trophies. Huge panties, most of them, Snowden saw the big thick
and dull fabrics and was imagining the big thick and dull women who'd been in them when Waters popped up from behind and slammed
his cane full force into the back of Snowden's skull.

The reason Snowden didn't pass out was pure physics, and the luck that he'd looked up to see the drawers hanging saggy from
the ceiling so that the cane hit where his head was the hardest. Snowden's legs did buckle, a hand did reach out to find this
world again, but when Snowden righted himself, even Ryan Waters seemed a bit impressed as Snowden managed to lift the gun
and point it at him.

They went into the bathroom because Snowden found the bedroom disgusting and he was the one with the gun in his hand. It was
a good choice - it was the least cluttered room in the apartment and the slight smell of urine actually canceled out some
of the more aggressive odors of the place. Snowden told Waters to sit down, nodded the gun barrel at the lip of the tub, and
Waters did it.
Now
we're getting somewhere.

"Look, I am sorry for this little unannounced entry, but you have got to believe me, it could be worse. I've been hired to
kill you. If you listen to me, I can help you save your life." Snowden used Lester's gun as part of his hand gestures and
Ryan Waters stared at it like it was a ventriloquist's dummy. Sweat dripped down Snowden's face in a long stream, he could
feel it. Only when he followed Ryan Waters's growing eyes to the floor did Snowden see that it was blood instead.

"Hey man," Snowden touched his scalp with his gun hand; his hair was like a wet sponge. "You almost freaking killed me."

"What are you bitching about? You're the one that just broke in my place, ain't you?" Waters asked. "Oh man, that's disgusting!"
The last thing Snowden wanted to see, as his vision began to blur, was the face of revulsion on this man, curator of the bloomer
museum. "Goddamn, brother," Waters cringed. "You're bleeding all over my floor. Why don't you put some toilet paper on that
shit or something?"

Snowden the Snowman felt as pale and cold as his nom de guerre. Looking down at the blood referencing Pollock on his shoes,
Snowden felt pathetic too, powerless to stop the flow, one hand refusing to drop the gun that kept his captive at bay, the
other refusing to drop its heavy shield in case the first hand failed its objective.

"You want me to get a tissue for you?" Waters asked, grimacing.

"I came here to help you. There's someone out there who wants to kill you. You have to get out of town."

"Sure there is. I really appreciate you coming out here and sharing that with me. Could've just looked me up in the phone
book, I'm listed, but you know, that's your thing, I can dig that. Come on, let me get that tissue for you. Maybe you should
put that shirt in cold water so it don't stain."

It was a really nice shirt. A nod, more defeated than permissive, and Ryan Waters was wrapping toilet tissue around his fist,
nearly two inches worth when he was done, which in no way buffered the blow when instead of wiping off the blood from the
floor the little weasel chose to punch Snowden as hard as he could in his groin.

Males spent lifetimes watching other men simulate taking direct, deliberate, forceful blows to the testicles. Sitcoms, women's
self-defense shows, children's movies, it didn't matter how inane or stupid the presentation, men would cringe every time
they saw it because they knew somewhere out there this most painful, incapacitating of attacks was waiting for them. It turned
out that Cedric Snowden's was biding its time in the bathroom of Apartment 24 of 433 West 128th Street, sitting patiently
on the toilet like his balls were Godot.

There was the dropping of the toilet bowl lid onto the top of his own foot, but really, what were a few skinny little bones
at a time like this one? There was the screaming, but that was later, that didn't even start till after Snowden'd collapsed
to the floor, whispered dryly out of a wide-open mouth until his lungs regained their air and gave voice to him. Ryan Waters
had already pushed past and closed the bathroom door by then, Snowden could hear the man placing furniture on the other side
to keep it from opening again. By the time Snowden reasserted his status as biped, he could hear the desperate jiggles of
Waters down the hall trying to open that tricky front door lock and abandon him.

The wood of the door was old, not very thick at all. Snowden flung open the cabinet under the sink in search of a monkey wrench
to hammer through it, found only stacks of brown plastic pill bottles, noticed even in his frenzy that they were all nearly
full, all prescribed to different women's names.
I should have hit him,
Snowden thought,
not just to assert dominance but because this bastard deserves a pop in the mouth.
Bottles spilled to the floor followed by a sweeping hand, but there was nothing useful behind them. Desperation growing, Snowden
yanked open the mirrored medicine cabinet above, was taken completely off guard by the dozens of disembodied human teeth inside
grinning back at him, plastic grimaces bobbing and swaying in excitement.

Snowden stared in disbelief at the collection of stolen dentures lining the glass shelves, each set floating in its own dirty
glass, each set with its own typed name tag pasted proudly at the base, and whispered, "Oh this motherfucker needs to die,"
before turning to kick the door in.

The rage had come back and it was like,
Welcome! Akwaaba! So good
to see jou!
With his full weight behind it, Snowden's foot made a big enough hole in the door's wood to reach his arm through. The dressers
on the other side fell to the floor like they owed gravity money. Bursting into the hall, Snowden could see Ryan Waters still
at the front door, both hands on the knob. On first sighting, Waters gave up his efforts, let go, and ran deeper into the
living room. The knob kept turning wildly without him. Snowden wondered how many seconds he had before Lester would get the
lock to work from the other side.

The sound of a window creaking open was the answer to Snowden's unformed prayer. Go, Ryan Waters, do all of us a favor. When
Snowden reached the living room, Ryan Waters was already halfway out onto the fire escape. Escape me. Incompetence was Snowden's
plan B, as always. Oh Lester, I'm sorry, but that wascally wabbit was just too much for me. Snowden for the first time in
so long felt the muscles below his cheeks contract and realized he was really smiling. In growing glee, Snowden ran toward
Ryan Waters to help him out, to make sure he made it down to the ground safely before Lester could see. It was just that Ryan
Waters didn't know that.