The Last Street Novel

  However, Cynthia continued to smile and remained speechless as they made it to 124th and Adam Clayton Powell. She would allow her body to do the talking once they had reached the room on Frederick Douglass, another block away. A drunken man was a long-lasting man. And she had plans for the rodeo that night.

  As they got closer, Shareef began to grin to himself, thinking about another roll in the hay with her. It felt good for a man to be able to take care of his needs when he needed to.

  This is what my wife needs to learn to do, he insisted to himself as he walked with Cynthia in his inebriated stupor.

  “We’re almost there now,” he looked over at her and joked. “We’re almost there.”

  INSIDE A DARK SEDAN parked on Frederick Douglass Boulevard near the corner of 123rd Street, two black men in their late twenties sat up front with a younger man in the back.

  The man in the passenger seat looked forward to his right and spoke.

  “Yo, that’s him right there with the girl.”

  The driver looked and studied the woman more than he did the man. “Damn, she a bad ma-fucka, son. He got ’em like that?”

  The passenger nodded. “Yeah.”

  The younger man in the backseat didn’t care about any of that.

  He said, “Yo, B, you want me to pop him right now?” He already had his gun out.

  The passenger snapped, “Look, man, I don’t want you to do shit but watch. Just know who he is, all right. That’s all you’re here to do.”

  The passenger then jumped out of the car and walked toward the couple on the sidewalk. The young man in the back put his gun away and watched from inside the car.

  SHAREEF BEGAN TO DIG in his right pocket for his room key as he and Cynthia approached the hotel entrance.

  “Yo, you Shareef Crawford, ain’t you?” someone asked him out front.

  Shareef looked to his right and spotted a slightly younger man in dark summer clothes. They were about the same height and build.

  He joked and said, “What you want, an autograph?” He was still thinking fast. He knew that a well-placed joke would catch an enemy off guard, especially while he had a pretty woman with him. Black men loved to keep their cool around sexy women.

  And it worked. The man smiled and responded, “Nah, maybe for my li’l sister or something, but I’m here to ask you a few questions.”

  “About publishing and writing?” Shareef joked again.

  The smile left the man’s face. Enough bullshit was enough.

  He answered, “Yeah, you can say that. I’m here to ask you about a book you’re supposed to be writing.”

  Cynthia squeezed Shareef’s hand to keep his composure.

  “What book is that?” Shareef asked.

  The man seemed to be getting more irritated by the second.

  “Look, man, you know what fuckin’ book I’m talking about, that Michael Springfield shit you ’sposed to be writing.”

  Cynthia spoke up and said, “What about it?”

  The man looked in her face and responded, “Excuse me, miss, but I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Well, I think it’s a little too late to be out here talking about some damn book,” she told him. “Y’all need to do that at another time.”

  The man got ready to speak, only for Cynthia to cut him off.

  She said, “I’m standing out here tired, my feet are hurting, my back is bothering me, and I need to get up in this room, take off these clothes, and lay down and get my medicine, if you know what I mean. And all this shit right here is just slowing up the process.”

  Shareef looked at her and giggled. “Lay down and get your medicine, hunh?” he repeated.

  He was impressed with her perfectly timed speech.

  “Yeah, come on,” she told him, dragging him toward the entrance by his hand.

  The man in front of them looked on and said, “Aw’ight, we gon’ do this another time then.”

  He also noticed the security guard standing behind the entrance of the hotel.

  “Aw’ight,” Shareef told the man as they parted ways.

  THE PASSENGER RETURNED to the car.

  “So, what he say?” the driver asked him.

  The man shook it off. “It ain’t the right time. We’ll catch up to him,” he commented.

  “It ain’t the right time?” his young triggerman questioned from the back.

  “Yeah, it ain’t the right time. I don’t want to be out here forcing it. We’ll catch up to him.”

  He figured he wouldn’t want another man messing up his pussy, either. That was bad karma. So he let it ride.

  The triggerman grunted from the backseat and mumbled, “If you say so.”

  The driver started up the engine of the car before they drove off into the Harlem night.

  UP INSIDE THE HOTEL ROOM, Cynthia was incensed. She paced the floor and blasted, “These motherfuckers! Let me use your cell phone.”

  Shareef gave it right up to her.

  He said, “I told you they’ve been asking me about it.” He smiled and added, “I like how you got us out of it though.”

  “But how do they know where you stay?” she asked him before she used his phone.

  Shareef had to think about that. Outside of the other guests who stayed there, Polo, Spoonie, Trap, and Cynthia were the only people who knew.

  Before he could respond, she concluded, “You’re gonna have to move down to a hotel in Times Square in the morning. Because you can’t let them know how to get to you.”

  “I thought you told me it was no big deal?” Shareef reminded her.

  Cynthia ignored him and dialed a number on his cell phone.

  She continued to pace the room while she spoke into it, “Yeah, this is Coffee. What’s up? I need a favor from you.”

  Shareef had a seat on the bed near the bathroom. He thought to himself, Did Trap tell these guys where to find me? Is he still trying to warn me to get the fuck out of here? Maybe I need to call his ass after she gets finished.

  “I need two more heaters,” he heard Cynthia say into the phone. That got Shareef’s undivided attention.

  Who the fuck is she talking to? How deep in the streets is she? he was forced to wonder.

  She said, “My fucking pocketbook got stolen out on Lenox…I don’t know, some little boy just ran past and snatched it off my arm and kept running down One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Street…Less than an hour ago…I had the heater in there with my house keys, my IDs, every-fuckin’-thing. I gotta get all that shit back tomorrow.”

  She looked Shareef in his face and answered “Yeah” to whatever question was asked of her over the phone.

  “It’s on Frederick Douglass, right down the street from Magic Johnson’s movie theater.”

  Shareef stared at her. She must have been telling somebody to come there.

  “How you gon’ get them guns past security?” he asked her calmly.

  Cynthia ignored him again.

  “In about an hour?” she asked over the cell phone. “Aw’ight, just call me back on this number when you get here. And oh, bring another bag for me to put it in.”

  When she ended the call, Shareef was all over her.

  “Yo, who you all dealing with up here?”

  The seriousness of his concerns began to snap him out of his drunkenness. He could feel a headache coming on from thinking too hard. A thousand thoughts were zipping through his mind all at once.

  “I know a few people,” Cynthia answered.

  Shareef continued to stare at her.

  “So now you’re gon’ carry two guns?”

  “No, one is for you.”

  Shareef looked bewildered. Now he really felt a headache coming on.

  He shook his head and said, “I’m not carrying no gun. I don’t trust myself with that shit. I mean, you got some people who bluff with guns all day long, but I’m not the bluffing type. So if I gotta gun…”

  He shook his aching head. “Damn, all this shit is making me need some T
ylenol or something,” and he grabbed the front of his head, massaging both temples with the thumb and middle fingers of his right hand.

  Cynthia told him, “You gon’ have to carry a gun. You don’t have no choice now.”

  Shareef refocused and asked her, “Well, who the fuck is his enemies?”

  Cynthia shook it off again. “Look, I don’t know. All I know is that you need to protect yourself no matter what.”

  “Protect myself from what, thug niggas who don’t want me to write a book? I mean, come on, man, this is crazy. Half these niggas don’t even read.”

  Shareef attempted to deny the urgency again. He even chuckled at it. But that only increased his throbbing headache.

  Cynthia told him, “You can believe that if you want. But they know how to read what they want to read. They read that damn Feds magazine. Don Diva. XXL. King. They read all that. And some of them even read your novels, like Michael does. What you think, he’s the only one ‘up north’ who knows about Shareef Crawford? I mean, think about it. They have your books in the prison library. Requested.”

  The last thing in the world he needed was an argument with her.

  “Ah, shit,” he complained, sinking his head down into both of his hands.

  Cynthia immediately became motherly. She sat down beside him on the bed and hugged him around his shoulders.

  “Aw, man, and all my aspirin and stuff was in my bag. Let me call downstairs to see if they have a vending machine or an all-night gift shop or something.”

  “This ain’t the Sheraton,” Shareef looked up and reminded her. “Why don’t you call your boy with the heaters back and tell him to stop off at an all-night drugstore to buy a box of Tylenol for you? Tell him you got a headache.”

  Cynthia smiled and picked the phone up. “Men,” she stated. “Y’all can have headaches, too. Obviously.”

  Shareef only wondered what he was doing with that girl up in Harlem in the first place. He figured he deserved a headache.

  She dialed the number again and spoke into the phone, “Yeah, it’s Coffee. I need you to do me another favor…”

  The Plot Thickens

  EVEN AFTER A HANGOVER, Tylenol, and all-night thoughts about guns, friends, loyalty, street life, and the personalities of Harlem, Shareef was up bright and early at slightly after seven in the morning. And while Cynthia remained asleep in the bed near the bathroom, he sat on his bed near the window and searched the Yves Saint Laurent handbag she had placed on the floor.

  He slid his hand inside the bag and quietly pulled out a black Beretta handgun that he refused to keep. It was a perfectly sized gun to conceal inside a waistband. It fit so well inside of Shareef’s right hand that he found it hard to ever imagine missing the target with it.

  He aimed it at the small television set and thought, Shit! I would have to be a terrible shot to miss with this.

  Realizing how easy it was to become attached to a gun, Shareef shook it off and returned it to Cynthia’s bag on the floor. He then stretched out across his bed and spoke to the ceiling:

  “Call me a fool, but if I’m gon’ go out, I’d rather go out without using a gun. So which one of you ma-fuckers wanna fight me with your hands? Old School style.”

  Out of the blue, Cynthia started chuckling. She said, “People don’t fight with their hands anymore. So you can forget about that. Unless you’re in a boxing ring.”

  She faced him from her bed and added, “Either you’re gonna use that gun I got for you, or they’re gonna shoot you without one.”

  He said, “All this coming from the same woman who told me at dinner last night that I was safe. Funny how things change once somebody gives you a reason to fear something.

  “It looks like you’re the one with cold feet now,” he commented.

  Cynthia mumbled, “Yeah, well, some of us have to live and die here. We all don’t have a big old house out in the suburbs somewhere that we can run back home to.”

  Shareef said, “You wasn’t born in Harlem. You got somewhere else to run to. But I was born here.”

  “So what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That means that anybody can get up and leave if they want to,” he told her. “We got all these new people moving to Harlem every year, and just like they came, they can leave.”

  He said, “You’re not stuck here. Harlem’s not a prison, it’s a community. So if you can’t handle it here, then relocate, just like you told me to do.”

  Cynthia raised her head from her pillow and looked at Shareef with concern.

  “I hope you’re not planning on staying here, especially with no gun. Is that what you’re saying? Because I hope you’re not.”

  He said, “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Well, you need to make it up fast, because check out is in what, three, four hours?”

  “What about your prison visit? Are you going up there with these guns?”

  He had a good point.

  She said, “I told you, I don’t take guns up there. But now I have to get all of my IDs and keys and everything back. So…”

  “So you’re not going?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “When are you coming back? Are you still willing to write the book or what?”

  Shareef stared at her and asked, “Just out of curiosity, what do you think I should do?”

  She looked at him for a minute before she dropped her eyes to the pillow.

  She said, “To be honest with you…I wouldn’t blame you if you just walked away.” She looked back into his eyes and added, “I mean, you have a whole lot to lose, and I think your friend Polo realizes that. And I can’t let myself be selfish about it. That would be wrong.”

  Shareef chuckled and said, “Yeah, ’cause Polo would hunt your ass down if you got me killed.”

  Cynthia remained silent for a minute. She said, “Look, I’m sorry for getting you involved in this. But like I said, I don’t know who his enemies are, and Michael doesn’t even talk about specific names and stuff, just what’s going on in general. So I don’t even know why they’re trippin’. He’s not a snitch. He’s more like a street philosopher, that’s why I started dealing with him as friends. I just felt like he had a lot to say in all the letters that he wrote me.”

  “That’s how you met him, through letters?” Shareef finally asked her.

  “Well, I had a friend who knew him before he went to prison, and started writing me letters, but yeah, that’s when I first started to get to know him.”

  “And then he came up with this book idea?”

  “It was both of us actually.”

  Shareef nodded. “So, what’s in this book deal for you? He plans on paying you for it?” In his excitement over a project about Harlem, he had been slipping on his research.

  Cynthia seemed uneasy with the question. She took a breath and frowned. She said, “Well, of course he’s gonna try and take care of me for my part in it, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because he has an important message to share about the streets. And it’s not just about the money, it’s about trying to get people to see what’s going on out here. And we both felt that you would be the best writer to do it.”

  Shareef had heard the rationalizations for publishing street literature before. And adding his expertise to the equation was indeed a plus. Nevertheless, he was tempted again to ask Cynthia the more personal question of whether she and Michael had been involved in any conjugal visits in the time that she’d been associating with him, and did that push her over the edge of reason. But he still wasn’t ready to know that answer.

  He said, “Well, somebody thinks he has something to say that they won’t like, and it looks like they don’t want me to hear it.”

  They were both silent for a period. What was there left to say? Would Shareef still pursue the Michael Springfield story? Was Cynthia serious about letting him walk away from it?

  “So…you wanna go get some breakfast?” he asked to break the awkward silence between th
em. He was hungry.

  They both laughed at it.

  “What, in the same clothes I wore last night, with no deodorant and no new underwear?” Cynthia answered him. She said, “I can’t even brush my teeth this morning. And you want me to go to breakfast with you. I don’t think so.”

  “So, what are you gonna do?” he asked.

  “You’re gonna pay for me to catch a cab back home, then I’ll get a new key to my apartment, get myself showered up and situated, and start pulling together everything I lost in my handbag last night.”

  Shareef nodded. Her plans all made sense to him, but he had no idea what he was planning to do that day. He figured he’d start off by calling Trap to see what he had to say about the man who questioned him outside of his hotel the night before.

  “Are you still gonna try and stay here tonight, or are you going downtown?” Cynthia asked him.

  Shareef remained undecided. He could stick it out for two more nights up in Harlem, or punk out and check into a Times Square hotel. That’s how he viewed it. It was a simple choice of courage or cowardice.

  Cynthia insisted. “I mean, you’re only here for two more days, right? Why chance it? Just go on downtown and enjoy yourself, Shareef. You’ve earned it.”

  He nodded and began to see her point. Two days didn’t make much of a difference in bravery, but staying just an hour too long could end his life.

  “Yeah, aw’ight, I’ll make the move,” he grumbled. He added, “But that don’t mean I’m scared. I ain’t never scared,” he joked.

  Cynthia shook her head and chuckled at him. She said, “I’ll give that to you. For you to walk around like you do with no posse, no bodyguards, and no gun, you gotta be one of the bravest guys in Harlem.”

  “Or the dumbest, right?” he questioned.

  Cynthia shook his comment off. She knew better than to believe he thought that. It was only his sarcasm.

  She said, “No, you’re hardly dumb. You’re a man of strong principles who’s willing to stand up for something. And they don’t make a whole lot of guys like you anymore.”

  Shareef responded, “Strong principles, hunh? What do you think about me breaking out on my wife then?”