The Importance of Being Dangerous (17 page)

Koob was running out of ideas and dripping sweat down his tight collar. “It's cool. I'll tell him to take the FDR. We'll just
shoot up the highway. And we can call the doctor and tell him we're coming.”

That sounded good enough. She clenched his hand and they stood together in the street looking for a taxi. At five o'clock exactly, for reasons understandable only to them, every yellow taxicab driver in New York City changes shifts. That's why there were typically no cabs for a good while after five. Marilyn bounced on her toes impatiently as they scanned the horizon. Finally, at 5:32, they stopped a cab and got in. Marilyn did the explaining. Yakoob told the guy they had to take the FDR. The guy nodded, and they sped off.

Moving swiftly up the FDR, they held each other. Marilyn leaned her head into his upper chest and Yakoob stroked her hair. She wanted to know how it went at Fidelity.

“They bullshit in there,” he mumbled. “Ain't doin' that.”

“You didn't go with them?” she asked, pulling her head back to look at him. “And we're in a fucking cab late for the most important appointment of my life, but you didn't even do it?”

“Nah, baby. It's not like that. Just chill.” He pointed toward the cabdriver beyond the partition. “This ain't how we talk about this. C'mon, sweetie. Later.”

A few feet beyond the Thirty-fourth Street exit there was an accident. Somebody cut somebody off near the Thirty-fourth Street on-ramp. It was a mad dash familiar to Westchester commuters who took the highway each day. Get off at Thirty-fourth, race up three or four blocks, and get back on four or five cars ahead of the one you were trailing. But Yakoob didn't know that. He didn't take cabs, he wasn't thinking about Westchester commuters to Wall Street, and when he rode the FDR, it was uptown, and they called it the Harlem River Drive. The taxicab stopped. Marilyn pushed Koob's arm off of her and slid over to the window. Every few minutes, the car lurched a few feet and stopped again. Ahead of them, nothing but red taillights and the faint
sound of sirens. If they'd been on a city street, they could at least have gotten out. They could have taken a train. They could have run to Madison Avenue and Eighty-first Street. But there was nowhere to go now. They were trapped in the cab, the length of the wait ticking steadily on the meter.

Marilyn handed him a slip of paper with the doctor's phone number on it. “Call him,” she demanded.

Koob took out his phone, punched in the numbers, and waited. Marilyn could hear the phone ring and ring. Koob hung up and tried again. Again they weren't answering.

Marilyn stared out the window at the cobalt waves of the East River, her face stiff but her gaze drifting. A sniffle soon broke the silence. A lone tear rushed down her cheek, but she kept her eyes on that water.

Yakoob sighed hard. “It's on me, baby.” He wanted to stomp somebody. He wanted to break open the car door with his elbow. But Koob always reserved any acts of heroism and physical prowess for the abstract safety of a late-night computer screen. “I'll make it up to you, Lyn. I will.”

Without looking at him, she reached over, held his hand, and let out a long, angry breath. “We'll get through it, Koob. I guess this just wasn't meant to be.”

He squeezed her hand, felt in his breast pocket first for the envelope with the money orders, then for Cavanaugh's card, and without another word looked the other way out the window. Dukovny, Yamaguchi, Roisman, he recited in his head. He might have to go back for the receptionist.

THAT TUESDAY NIGHT
, by the time Sidarra arrived, Raul had already decorated the VIP lounge with his customary array of chocolate bars. She'd taken a car and gotten to the Full Count before Griff and Yakoob. Sidarra and Raul had never been alone together. When he saw her come in, he pulled up his low-hanging jeans, made sure the laces on his Tims opened just right, and rubbed his palms across the sides of his head. She wore tight beige pants with a tassel belt that bobbed around, light brown ankle boots, and a low-cut blouse made of red silk. The dull brown splotches across her arms and neck never seemed to register in his sight. Raul offered some quiet compliments on how she looked, but words were no friends of his. He wondered how she was. If she needed anything. He wanted to squeeze her but instead looked for the right place to sit down, someplace dark enough so he could just watch her play. She paused her warm-ups when she noticed him looking around awkwardly and thought about asking him if he played any
pool. But before she could speak, she noticed something askew about his pants. It seemed Raul's body was having a very specific kind of blood flow. Not since high school had Sidarra seen such a public display of erection. She decided to let him find his corner and kept on shooting.

“Whaddup, G?” Yakoob asked Raul as he came through the back door, followed quickly by the sound of hands slapping hard. “Hey, Sid. Whassup, girl?” and he hugged her. Koob's tone was different. He sounded on edge and serious. Humor had left his face, like he had just come from a fight, or was headed for one. “Griff here yet? No? Good. Raul, go see if Q got some hip-hop for this motherfucker.”

Raul got up and went out the curtains to investigate. It didn't matter. Whatever privileges Q was instructed to permit Raul, messing with the private stereo wasn't one of them. And Griff arrived.

There was more palm-slapping, a man hug, a Sidarra hold, a sweet schoolboy kiss, then business to do about the holiday weekend's untouched resentments. Yakoob and Griff took their cue sticks out of their cases and assembled them in unusual silence. Yakoob hardly met anyone's eyes. Sidarra knocked balls around behind him. Though he pulled a case of CDs out of his leather sack, Griff did not make his customary trip to the stereo yet. He had not shaved since they saw him at the party three days before, and through his grizzled look he seemed distracted and a bit tired. Their bodies weaved around each other as they practiced. Nobody mentioned Sid's party. Raul stepped back into the lounge for a moment and retreated to a corner again to wait until their drinks were dry.

When the table was warm, Griff picked up his CDs. “Well, I brought some nice grooves to play.”

“We'll get to it, motherfucker!” Yakoob suddenly snapped at him. “You ain't the ear traffic controller in these parts. This is
my
night. Here, Raul,” he said, pulling a home-mixed CD from his
large velour pocket. “Tell Q to put this on. I'm not trying to feel ‘nice.' We gonna hear some hard shit. Let's play.”

And Whiteboy was on. Curtis Mayfield rolled into “Pusher Man” on the speakers. Yakoob shot first. “For starters, I nominate James W. Morrison,” he said, chalking his cue after a powerful break. “That's the motherfucker who invented Jheri-Curls. He thought that was some funny shit. Embarrassed half my fucking family for
years
. Well, he gonna pay now.” And Koob fired away, naming various family members, celebrities, and random people on the African continent as his reasons. Yakoob ignored specifics. He had entered a zone. Everyone—Sidarra, Griff, even the miscreant Raul—sat back and watched something take angry hold of Yakoob. He shot with authority and righteous exasperation, every ball going to its death with an exclamation point.

“You okay, baby?” Sidarra teased during a break after four straight games.

Yakoob smiled quickly, but neither answered nor looked at her. Instead, he vanquished the fifteenth ball in a row. The table remained his. Next was the Harlem franchise coordination executive for Popeyes Chicken, “the motherfucker who made my wife fat,” Koob barked, a guy named Wainright.
Bam!
Balls separated and prostrated themselves for surrender. Nobody had ever been concerned about the health of the table before. It was a $12,000 table after all, made of the best slate, the highest-quality felt and rails, all the materials rare, handcrafted, and professional grade. Yet Koob was beating the shit out of it. And wouldn't quit.

“I'm yo mama, I'm yo daddy, I'm that nigga in the alley…”
he sang with Curtis.

“May I cut in?” Sidarra asked, finally assuming her turn. Yakoob nodded and fell back into a stool. He looked almost hurt. He was only warming up. The lounge went through an oxygen change with someone else at the table. Sidarra nominated the woman who held the original rights to Barbie dolls because she was sick of
Raquel praising blond hair. But after just five balls she missed badly.

“I got it,” Yakoob said, sliding off his stool in a hurry.

“It's not your turn,” Griff said, slowly hauling his weight off the stool he'd been warming for several games. Griff had been stewing quietly, constipated by an apology he was holding in.

Yakoob stopped and looked over at him with a strange fierceness. “I said I
got
it.”

Griff wouldn't step away. “How's that, brother?”

Yakoob stepped back. “Oh. Well, go 'head then.” He looked down at his empty glass, as distracted as disappointed. “Damn,” he muttered. “I gotta pee.”

“We'll wait,” Sidarra said quickly as Yakoob rose to leave the room. On cue, Raul followed him out to the bar.

Sidarra locked eyes with Griff and wasted no private time getting in his face. She put her hand on his chest, never leaving his eyes. He blinked first and smiled. “All right, quiet guy,” she said. “I was wondering about what happened on Sunday.”

He started to put his hands on her arms, then held up. “I'm sorry about that, baby. That wasn't too cool, was it? I apologize for what you had to deal with, but—”

“I didn't actually have to deal with that, Griff,” she interrupted. He looked a little confused. “She was a woman in my house. She said what she said, and I could have given her replies she could always remember me by. But I didn't. For you.”

“I understand. I hear you, Sid. It's difficult for me, but it was unfair to you. The whole thing was awkward—even for her, though that's not your concern.” Sidarra had to love this side of Griff, too. It was much more attractive than his scenes at the housewarming party. It was the real she was often waiting for. “These aren't small things, Sidarra. I felt exposed, you know? I was embarrassed. I've been struggling with it ever since, to tell you the truth.”

The man was apologizing for his wife, which was more than she expected. In response, Sidarra got playful, doing a little dance with her body in a circle because, well, she wasn't used to these moments with a man like him, and because love may choreograph awkwardness all of a sudden. “Know how to do a Cicero Spin?” she asked.

“No,” he said, staying serious and drawing her back to him. “I'm your biggest fan, Sid, really. I'd kill to keep my front-row seat just to watch you. Few times a day, I just look up and think…” He paused for words he couldn't find. “Anyway, I appreciated your generosity Sunday. I really did. You were gracious and”—he took her hands and looked around almost nervously—“delicious.”

“I didn't cook. Q cooked.”

“I'm not talking about your cooking.” He kept glancing over at the curtain, expecting Koob and Raul to part it again. “You don't understand, Sid. I'm not very practiced at this.” He searched her eyes. Apparently the apology was only the start. Griff had something he didn't know how to share with her. “I found you in a blind spot, baby. It never occurred to me to look for you before.”

They almost kissed. Sidarra stepped into him, but she too could feel the curtains about to open again. “Let me show you my uncle's patented spin.”

Yakoob snatched the curtains back and stepped through with his crease-eyed chaperone in tow. His music choices still played defiantly overhead as he sat down with his drink and waited for Griff to nominate. Raul, enjoying special privileges on account of Koob tonight, remained in cahoots with Koob's mood. And Griff, showing none of his confident body language, stepped unassumingly to the head for the break. It was as though Yakoob's play (or Sidarra's face) had drained all the game from him.

“All right,” Griff began, stepping to the break and sizing the maroon felt before him, “here's one. That talk show host who
raises his ratings by blaming family assistance programs for high taxes. Buford O'Toole.” Griff leaned down to shoot. He aimed and fired from a strange angle. While the cue ball raced stupidly around the table, most of the balls remained unmoved in the center. “Okay,” Griff said with mild resignation as he moved toward a seat. “Do your thing, O'Toole.”

Yakoob was back up at the table, and the hunger in his eyes returned. On cue, classic Rakim rapped overhead against Eric B's shuffling beat, “
Thinking of a master plan/Cuz ain't nuthin but sweat inside my hand…
”

“This is a Fidelity Investments joint,” Koob declared. “I nominate a dude named Cavanaugh.” He proceeded to take out a very certain rage on the break. The shots ricocheted so violently it made the others twitch. Again, the reasons were not detailed. Koob was simply blowing his nominee away in rapid succession, one ball at a time. He would mutter reasons in passing—“by-appointment-only for new accounts, but no fuckin' sign sayin' so.” The crew learned only that their friend was humiliated while trying to give an investment house his money. Yet Koob's own good shooting form was feeling good to him. His bad mood could be tempered by a private satisfaction he found in the precision with which each shot was executed. It took him nine shots to drop fifteen balls.

“Todd Dukovny,” he declared next.

“Who's that?” Griff asked.

“Fidelity customer,” Koob answered without looking up.

For the next twelve or thirteen balls, Sidarra began to wonder if playing mad was a good investment strategy.

“Somebody Yamaguchi,” Yakoob said as he stood before yet another break. “I'll get the rest of his name once I'm in.” He broke powerfully and lined up to start shooting.

“Who's that?” Griff asked again.

“'Nother customer there. 'Nother motherfucker made me wait.”

Griff shook his head slightly. “How many motherfuckers were ahead of you, baby?”

Koob looked up finally. The whites of his eyes held a bitter redness, and his gaze was cold. “These aren't the people that was ahead of me. These are the motherfuckers who made me wait.”

Griff and Sidarra sat back and watched Koob dispatch Mr. Yamaguchi. They worried the same thing as the next game went on to Andrea Roisman. It seemed too personal, so personal they didn't quite know what to say about it. Whiteboy had rarely been used to handle very personal scores. When Koob dropped the last ball on his nominee, Ms. Roisman, he looked up.

“I'll have to get the receptionist's name when I go back there.”

“Why would you go back there?” Sidarra asked.

“To get her name.”

“Maybe Raul should get her name for you,” Griff suggested. “Sidarra's right. People remember angry people, and these people pissed you off.” Yakoob seemed to think about it. “I mean, from the sound of it,” Griff continued, “you're really planning a fucking bank heist.”

“Nah,” Koob answered, his tone still strangely flat and lifeless, “not really. Cavanaugh's the bank. He's gonna rob his own people, and we're gonna walk off with their shit. The bank's gonna insure it, then these people are gonna fuck him up; he gonna lose his job and Fidelity Bank is gonna start losing customers. At least new ones. I just gotta get in.”

Sidarra squinted her eyes, cocked her neck back, and said, “Whoa! That's like biblical-caliber vengeance, baby. Can you do that?”

Yakoob said nothing, but kept shooting at idle balls. “Sid, that's basically what I been doin', right? Robbin' banks. This is just a little better. The banker robs the bank.”

The comment slightly lifted Griff's funk. “But you gotta become the banker, right?” he asked. “He's not just gonna start jacking customers out of midlife greed.”

“Sho nuff. So I gotta get in,” Koob agreed, “the right way.”

“Koob, try, baby,” Griff said delicately, “try not to let style rule you on this one, okay? I mean, your shit is on fire. You shot a fuckin' masterpiece in here tonight. The man really needs a straight ass-kickin'.”

“What are you tryin' to say?” Koob asked, turning to face Griff.

“I think he's asking why you don't just rob the bank the way you've been doing it, Koob?” Sidarra shot. “Why get fancy now? Keep it simple.”

“Just 'cause you
can
paint a masterpiece doesn't mean you
should
. That's all I'm saying,” Griff added. “There's a certain elegance to stick figures sometimes, ya dig?”

Yakoob chalked his cue excessively. Griff had no real idea how he felt. “A'ight,” Koob conceded. “I won't expose myself. I'm gonna try to go in as this bitch motherfuckin' Cavanaugh if I can, but I won't expose myself. I'll figure these ofays out. Don't trip.”

The itch that had started to burn down Sidarra's lower back cooled somewhat.

These were more moods than Raul could handle right away, and he looked confused as he stood with a fresh tray of drinks beholding the sudden peace. He sat them down and watched the billiard balls zip back and forth. Then Raul raised his voice above the music.

“Yo, I got a question.” All eyes turned on him as if the sofa had suddenly spoken up. “What is it? Y'all hate white folks up in here? Is that what this is about?” It was his eureka moment.