The Last Street Novel (16 page)

Shareef listened to his words while watching the men in the yard who were watching them. He even nodded to those who seemed to recognize him. Even though they had only been together for a few minutes, with armed security guards and other prisoners eyeing their every move, the time between them seemed infinite. Their short walk inside the yard was like a mile long.

“So, what kind of book would you want me to write? A book about a surrender from the street life, and call it,
I Surrender
?” Shareef asked his host.

Michael leaned his head sideways toward the sunny sky and nodded while he thought it over.

He repeated, “
I Surrender.
” Then he nodded again. “That’s a good fuckin’ title right there, playboy. She told me you called yourself a genius.”

Michael was grinning from ear to ear, proud as hell of his choice of a writer.

Shareef said, “I’m just using your own words, playboy. That’s what a good writer does. He takes the information that’s right there in front of him and makes it work.” But he couldn’t recall telling Cynthia that he thought of himself as a genius. Maybe she had read that somewhere. He surely had said it before, just not to her.

His host said, “Well, yeah, I surrendered, but first we gotta start with the war. You know that.”

Suddenly, his demeanor turned back into street warrior mode.

He said, “You get caught up in that shit, man, that lifestyle, and you can’t fuckin’ sleep. I mean, every hour is like the front line. You gotta have ya’ guns ready. ’Cause these motherfuckers are definitely shootin’ at you. And I don’t mean like real bullets every day, but mental bullets. People plottin’ to take you down.”

He looked straight into Shareef’s mug to make sure he was recording his intensity.

He said, “It’s a real human chess game out there, playboy. And I ain’t even play chess until I got in this place. But now I play it. Playing wit’ these Italian niggas. They funny in here, man. Too many of ’em been watching that
Sopranos
shit.”

Shareef smiled, but he was focused at that point, and all about the business of reporting and writing.
I Surrender
was indeed a perfect title. Every prisoner understood that statement. Most had not surrendered voluntarily, but once they had been captured, they were forced to deal with that reality.

He said, “So, how do we start this off? We go back to your childhood years or what?”

He could already see the story taking shape. It would be another
Manchild in the Promised Land,
the classic Harlem autobiography by Claude Brown. Or
Down These Mean Streets,
the Spanish Harlem tale of Piri Thomas. But this one would be more up-to-date from Shareef Crawford, using the on-point ghostwriting styles of Alex Haley and Quincy Troupe. It was all about pulling the most truth from your subject. There were no lies allowed, except for the ones that made the story bigger. Such was the truth of all great books. They were recreations of the largest ideas of humanity. The smaller ideas rarely deserved a book, so they were ignored by the public. The public craved the big dreams. Yet how big could Michael Springfield’s dream be? That was the question Shareef would soon have to answer for himself. Was the urban dream of Michael Springfield big enough to re-create?

Michael answered, “I grew up on the West Side at One Twenty-eighth and Amsterdam. I had two older brothers who died in the war before I was even drafted. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or no overseas shit like that. I’m talkin’ ’bout the wars in Harlem. The motherfuckin’ street wars. There needs to be a book about that shit.”

He said, “And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no rap shit, either. Them attention-gettin’ niggas be clownin’ our history. So if you gon’ talk about it, then you need to get the story right.”

“And you got the right story?” Shareef asked him.

Michael looked at him and frowned. “Shit, playboy, you ain’t in here by accident. This shit right here is a hustler’s destiny.”

Shareef asked him, “But how many other hustlers in here could tell it?”

It was a legitimate question. The writer was back in his normal position of authority. He needed to know that the man’s words were worth the real deal from his pen.

Michael began to smile, understanding the writer’s technique. He had him inside the prison walls, now he had to show and prove.

He looked around at some of the clueless prisoners eyeing them in the yard and responded, “Let’s put it this way: if half these motherfuckers could have read your books, studied your style, and masterminded a way to get you in here to talk to them, then they deserve to say something. But since it didn’t go down like that, then that’s obviously telling you something.”

He said, “I read somewhere that victory goes to the man who is most prepared to win. Well, I’m prepared to win. But I can’t speak for these other guys. You know what I mean? Let each man speak for himself.”

Shareef nodded and was impressed with the man. He could hold his own.

By that time they had walked nearly the entire yard and were approaching the gates at the far end. Cynthia was still following behind them, close enough to be in their party, but far enough away to stay out of their business.

Shareef stopped walking and said, “So, if we’re gon’ make this all happen, then I need you to make notes on your chronology; what came first, what came second, what came third, the whole nine. That makes it easier for us to organize. And we go step by step, chapter by chapter, day by day. It’s a long process.”

Michael paused and nodded back to him. He said, “Well, all I got is time in this place, playboy. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. We got years to put this shit together.”

No they didn’t, either. Shareef was an impatient writer. He would want the story yesterday. Last week. Last year. Then he could take his time with it. That was the major difference between fiction and nonfiction. In fiction, you could create from your own recollections and the recollections of others on your own time. But with this story, he had to wait to hear from his subject first—he was on some one else’s time. So how many visits would it take him to get it all?

Shareef extended his hand anyway. He said, “We’ll work it out.” That’s when the reality hit him, inside the far gate of the yard in the New York State correctional facility where eyes were always watching them.

Michael Springfield shook his hand in agreement, while Shareef wondered what would be the final result of all of his time, toil, and research. How many hours, days, and nights would he spend away from his wife, mistress, and kids in Florida to write this story? And how much would he be paid for it? Those were all real concerns.

Michael smiled again and whispered. “You still didn’t answer my question, though, Shareef. How did she feel?”

He was back to asking about Cynthia again. Shareef began to wonder if Michael had had private time with her on any of her visits. He assumed that the man had, but he blocked that thought from his mind. How many degrees of connection did he care to confirm?

He answered, “Some things just ain’t meant to be talked about like that, man. Maybe I’m just old school.”

Michael studied his calm reserve and nodded to him. The man was telling the truth. It wasn’t his M.O. to fuck and give names. Shareef was the private party thrower. He only wrote from his ideas, rarely from actualities.

Michael said, “Okay, I can respect that. I don’t know nothing either then. That’s loyalty.”

He raised his fist and pumped it forward.

Shareef grinned and accepted the man’s show of respect. Respect was a good thing. They could build from there on equal footing.

W
HEN
S
HAREEF
and Cynthia left the state prison and headed to the bus stop to return to Harlem, she asked him, “So, what do you think?”

Shareef was still pulling all the details together in his mind, trying to remind himself where the story begins:
I grew up on the West Side of Harlem at 128th and Amsterdam.

Then he responded to Cynthia’s question.

“It was interesting,” he told her. That’s all he wanted to say about it. Anything more would tax too much of his concentration. He wanted to slip back into his zone of deep thought. It was the way he worked. The world could all go to hell while he was thinking, because thinking was his heaven—as much a heaven as great sex.

Cynthia read as much from him and left him to his thoughts. But she did grab his hand at the bus stop. She liked him, and she wanted to remind him of that. Michael Springfield had even given her a second okay to fuck him as she pleased. He respected the man that much. And he realized that a private man would not intentionally hurt her.

E
ARLY IN THE AFTERNOON
, two brown-skinned East Indian men walked toward a run-down, storefront off Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, north of 125th Street. The shorter and older man in front, graying hair on the edges, pulled out a ring of keys from his beige khakis as the younger, taller man followed close behind him. They were fifty-something and thirty-something in age, respectively.

“This is a good location here, you know, right?” the older man said to his younger friend.

The younger man, adorned in gold jewelry, was more interested in seeing it all and hearing the price tags of business first.

He nodded quickly and said, “Yeah, let me see, let me see it.”

“I’m gonna let you see it,” the older man fussed at him. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the younger man repeated in haste.

As soon as they got the heavy front door open, a whiff of repugnant air rushed into their noses.

“Shit, what is that smell?” the younger man asked immediately. He raised his right hand over his nose to protect it from the foulness. “It smells like a dead cat and dog in here.”

The older man was hesitant as he walked farther into the empty store to investigate. Sitting in the center of the open floor was a dead man strapped to a chair with duct tape who had been shot to death.

The younger man saw that and cursed even louder.

“Shit!”

The older man was more poised. He slowly raised his right hand to cover his nose.

“Fuck me,” he cursed himself. He thought,
This is the last thing I needed right now.

W
HEN THE
NYPD
ARRIVED
at the scene, they had a million questions for the older man.

“When was the last time you were here?”

He answered, “I’ve been out of the country for three, four weeks. I come back to renovate, sell, or rent out the building. I opened the front door with my key, and I find this…this man sitting there in the chair, shot to death, just like that.”

Several officers studied the tortured body in the chair as they continued to ask the older man questions. The younger man kept his distance near the front door. He tried to catch the fresh air while he continued to cover his nose.

“Did anyone know you were leaving the country?”

“Yes, all of my employees who work at my dry cleaners down the street.”

“You have a list of those employees?”

He said, “Of course.”

Another officer inspected the kicked-in door at the back.

“Did you know that this back door was broken?”

“Well, I know it now, but it was not broken when I last left here.”

The older man was clearly agitated by it all. The incident could cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in resale value.

“Is this the only property you own?”

The man became hesitant. He didn’t want to answer that question.

He said, “Well, I own a few…a few other properties, but not anymore in Harlem. Why?”

The officers became more interested by the minute.

“Are there employees at these other properties?”

“Well, of course,” he answered. He said, “I own a few Indian grocery stores, and a restaurant, but not in Harlem.”

“Well, where are these other properties?”

“Ah, near Midtown. But what does that have to do with this?”

“Do any of those, ah, employees, know that you have this property?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure? Of course, I’m sure. What are you trying to say, that one of my employees did this?”

He surely didn’t want to accuse anyone in particular with black, white, and Latino officers in the room. There were six officers there in all, and more were on their way, including a coroner and a crime scene unit.

“Well, they at least knew that you were out of the country, right? And who’s to say that none of them ever saw you walk in here with the keys? You said your dry-cleaning business is down the street, right?”

The case was elementary to the officers. Someone knew he was going out of the country, knew the property would be empty, and they knew no one would find a dead body inside until the owner returned. That line of information was more than just a coincidence.

One of the officers looked toward the younger Indian man and asked, “Is he one of your employees, too? Or he doesn’t count?”

“No, he does not work for me,” the older man answered. “He was interested in buying this property. I was showing it to him.”

“Is that right? Did he know how long you were gonna be out of the country, too?”

That question sounded incriminating.

The younger Indian man decided to speak up and defend himself immediately.

He said, “I had never even seen this place before.”

“Did he tell you where it was?”

“No. I just knew it was in Harlem,” he answered. “There are a million different storefronts in Harlem. What are you trying to say? This is bullshit!” he cursed the officers as more of them showed up on the scene. A few plainclothes detectives walked in.

“You do not think that we had anything to do with this, do you?” the older man asked them all. “I can not believe you believe that.” He wanted to give the officers the benefit of the doubt. He strongly believed in American justice.

The younger man, however, repeated, “This is bullshit! I don’t have to take this.” He was deeply offended. He said, “I am a legitimate businessman. And I will tell my lawyer
everything
.”

One of the detectives told him, “Look, calm down, sir, we’re all just doing our jobs in here. Now there are certain questions that we need to ask.”

“Well, you can ask the rest of them with my
lawyer,”
the younger man snapped again.

The detective shook his head and knew it was going to be a long night.

S
HAREEF AND
C
YNTHIA
walked out of the subway station at 125th and Lenox Avenue at close to six o’clock that evening, and into a human flood of summer foot traffic. Folks were everywhere in Harlem—short ones, tall ones, hairy ones, bald ones, men, women, children, foreigners. Shareef hadn’t witnessed the carnival-like atmosphere in his Harlem hometown in years. He smiled with his head bouncing left to right to left, as if following a tennis match.

Cynthia took in his glee and grinned at him.

“You haven’t been up in Harlem in a while, hunh?”

He said, “Nah, I’ve only been doing bookstore events up here for the last few years. Either that or taking my grandparents out to eat somewhere. So no, I haven’t seen this in a while.”

Cynthia looked across the street to Starbucks Coffee at the corner.

“You want some coffee? My treat.”

Shareef eyed the coffee shop sitting right in the center of things, but he still wasn’t a coffee drinker. He was hungry instead.

He shook his head and answered, “Nah, I want something to eat.”

“Sylvia’s Restaurant is right up the street,” she told him. “But I want to get some coffee right quick first.”

As they crossed the busy Harlem street in the direction of Starbuck’s, Shareef looked through the glass window and into an already crowded line.

“I don’t know how quick you plan to get it, but it looks like you’re about to be waiting for a while.”

“Yeah, it’s always crowded in here.”

“Get the real deal, the truth from the streets. The black man is in a crisis!” they both heard at the same time.

The Spear was out in his military garb, selling his books up and down the Harlem streets again.

Shareef caught his eye and nodded to him.

The Spear nodded back, then he looked at Cynthia.

“What are y’all, writing a book together now?” he asked sarcastically.

“Nah, we just hanging out?” Shareef answered.

The book-hustling man doubted that. They were doing more than hanging out. They looked too comfortable together.

Right before The Spear could respond, a group of girls in their late teens stopped right in front of them all.

“Ay, aren’t you Shareef Crawford? I just got your book.”

“The new one or an old one?” Shareef asked the girl in the middle of her crew of four.

“Um,
Chocolate Candy,
or something like that.”

“
Chocolate Lovers,
” he corrected her. “That’s one of my old ones.”

“Well, I have two of your other books, too. I can’t remember all the names.”

One of her girlfriends spoke up to help her out.

“
I Want More
and
Man to Woman
,” the friend stated. She smiled and said, “We all read ’em. We take turns.”

Shareef nodded and said, “That’s good, as long as you read it.” He would have told them to buy their own books, but not in front of a rival author out there pushing his work on the street. It seemed disrespectful and unnecessary.

The Spear, however, already felt disrespected. He had heard enough. So he butted in and said, “Well, I have a new book right here, sisters. It’s about the black man in the real struggle.
The Streets Keep Calling Me,”
he told them.

The girls were barely willing to pay him any mind with Shareef standing there in front of them. One girl picked up one of the books only to look at the cover jacket, nod, and hand it back to him.

“Only ten dollars, sister.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Well, how much did y’all pay for his books?” The Spear asked them.

Now he was being disrespectful to Shareef.

Shareef told the girls, “Well, keep reading,” and prepared to walk off with Cynthia into Starbuck’s.

“Aren’t you from Harlem?” another one of the girls asked him.

Shareef nodded and moved on, “Yeah.”

“Well, bye, Shareef Crawford,” the girls told him as he walked off.

The Spear shook his head and let it ride. He was poised to move on to the next potential customers who were walking by. The hustle was the hustle.

“Get the real deal, the truth from the streets. The black man is in a crisis!”

As they entered the coffee shop, Cynthia smiled at Shareef and said, “He’s jealous of you.”

“Of course he is,” Shareef told her. “That’s just human nature. I’d be jealous of me if I was him, too. But I put in my dues. I’m not just some fly-by-night author. I got a degree in writing.”

As Cynthia stepped in line, an old grade school nemesis of Shareef’s was just getting his coffee at the front.

He turned with his coffee and cake in a brown bag, spotted Shareef, and addressed him immediately.

“Shareef Crawford, the big-time writer.”

The man moved his coffee and brown bag to his left hand to extend his right for a shake. He was so forward in his greeting that Shareef was forced to accept it despite their history of opposition and several fistfights, the last of which Shareef had won.

“Jurrell Garland,” he responded,
the big-time hoodlum.
Shareef kept this added thought to himself. The Jurrell Garland he knew from nearly fifteen years ago was more than just a thug and a hustler. The Jurrell Garland he knew robbed and assaulted thugs and hustlers.

Jurrell was pure hoodlum, as sinister a street terrorist as you could get. And Shareef was unfortunate enough to attend nine straight years of school with him, from kindergarten through eighth grade. Now Jurrell looked civilized. He was dressed like an average behind-the-counter retail manager, not too fancy, but more than casual. And he was drinking Starbuck’s coffee even.

As they shook hands, Shareef noticed that his nemesis had thickened up in the body since he saw him last on the Harlem streets. Jurrell had also done time in prison for just about everything: assault, manslaughter, narcotics, illegal weapons, bribery—the list went on.

He looked Shareef in the eyes and said, “I’m not involved in any of the stuff I used to be involved in, Shareef. I mean, you just get older and you grow up from all of that, you know.”

He said, “I served my time, and I changed my ways. I sell cell phones for a living now.”

It was as if he was reading Shareef’s mind. Nevertheless, Jurrell realized that everyone who knew him knew his history. His rap sheet was far too long to forget or to ignore. So he had to explain his new way of life often. His speech was even different. There was no more street swagger or slang on his tongue.

He addressed Cynthia with a nod.

“How are you?”

She smiled pleasantly. “I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear, sister. You look fine, too.”

“Thank you.”

He said, “I’m only telling the truth. Shareef always had good taste in women.” Then he focused back on Shareef. “So, what are you doing back up in Harlem, man? You got a book event?”