Queens Noir (39 page)

"It's so beautiful, isn't it?" Beryl said.

He turned his face toward hers and hoped his anguish
didn't show. "Not compared to you."

"Flatterer."

"Truthteller."

"You are free next Sunday, right? There's no reason to miss
my mother's party. You'll enjoy it, it's a fundraiser for the Jewish orphans of Kazakhstan. That's your part of the world."

Ramzi didn't bother to hide his annoyance. "Oh yes, Pakistani Muslims and Kazakh Jews, we are almost brothers. And
clearly we all look the same to the Jews of Scarsdale, New
York." He had bolted upright, his muscles tense and his neck
throbbing.

"Oh Ramzi, this is America, that sort of thing doesn't
matter. Besides, the only religion I've seen you practice is the
same one I do-lapsed. Lapsed Jew, lapsed Muslim, what's the
difference?"

Ramzi had no retort. In truth, he could not be bothered
to find one.

"She wants to raise money to bring the orphans here for
six months to get the medical help they need and to learn
English, math, and Hebrew so they might get a better start in
Israel. My mother's getting on. She thought maybe you could
teach them. We both could. Maybe we could move in with her
and look after her and teach the Kazakh children. You speak
Aramaic."

"How do you know I speak Aramaic?"

"You told me, remember? The first day at school when
you were lost and I told you some of our students were from
central Asia."

He'd forgotten. What other lapses was he guilty of? It was
all too much for him. Great levivot and off tapuzim to die for
was one thing, but no amount of knish was sufficient to entice
him to embrace the Jews, except for Beryl, of course. Then
Ramzi had the merest glimmer of a thought.

"All right already," he said, taking pride in his mastery of New York speak, "I'll come to the party. But only if you let me
take your picture."

Beryl laughed good-naturedly.

"Stand here," he said, positioning her so that his shots
would take in the undercarriage of the bridge.

While she fussed and clucked over her hair, he took a dozen
photos, from all angles. Beryl wasn't in half of them.

As Ramzi walked home on Liberty Avenue that same evening,
he spied standing in a doorway the same man he'd recognized
so many weeks ago at the pawn sellers. As their eyes met, the
man left the cover of the storefront and slowly approached,
his right hand inside his overcoat even though it was much
too warm to be dressed that way.

The man was called Mohammed, Ramzi recalled in a flash.
He had been foolish and naive to think he could avoid Azis.
He would not get away that easily. The best he could hope for
was that Mohammed had come to question his absence from
the mosque. Mohammed's expression gave Ramzi little reason
to hope for the best. If he made a run for it now, he would die.
He would never see Beryl again. Then he admitted the truth
to himself: He had abandoned jihad. He was a changed man,
an infidel, a fornicator. He wanted to live.

"There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah," Ramzi
said in greeting.

"The true believers are those only who believe in Allah
and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with
their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are
the sincere," Mohammed said, closing the distance between
them.

Ramzi knew the quote from the Qur'an, and the guilt it produced in him squeezed his chest like a vice. At first he thought to reply: Allah, most gracious, most merciful, but that implied a
certain culpability, and so instead he said, "Allah is all-knowing,
all-aware."

He approached Mohammed, careful to keep his movements
steady and nonthreatening.

Mohammed's face flashed uncertainty, and taking advantage of this brief moment, Ramzi added, "I have taken
a woman." His tone meant to convey that this explained
everything.

"A Jew," Mohammed said, his mouth pulled tight with
contempt.

"A whore," Ramzi agreed, although it pained him to speak
the words. "A controlling She-Devil to whom I must account
for my every movement. And yet, Azis knows the value of the
hussy and encouraged me to take her."

"No man cowers before a woman. What have you become?" Mohammed's small eyes narrowed to slits and his
glare felt like a laser beam slicing into Ramzi. He moved toward Ramzi.

"I serve Allah through jihad. That is who I am," Ramzi
said, standing very still. He hung his head as if the shame of
his dalliance with Beryl was tangible weight.

"You are a favorite with Azis. I have seen him have a man
killed for less than what you have done. I would be happy to
oblige my imam should he change his mind. You are expected
at the mosque tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Fail to come and I will
be given my chance." He took two more steps toward Ramzi,
meeting him head on, then sidestepped and walked past.

When Ramzi was sure Mohammed had gone, he headed
up the stairs to his apartment. As he put keys to the lock, he
caught the end of a message being recorded on his answering machine. "I know you're probably tired but I've got to run a bunch of chairs and plates and flatware over to my mother's. You
wouldn't help, would you? I could really use you."

Ramzi dashed into the apartment and grabbed the phone.
Life was mysterious, and he, merely a fallen leaf tossed and
blown on the wind. "Beryl, my love, of course I will. And why
don't we visit awhile?"

Had it really been six months since his meeting with Mohammed? The first class of Kazakh orphans were about to graduate. As they fed the pet rabbits and turtles kept at the school
behind the Chabad, he realized he'd grown quite fond of them,
and was sad to think they'd soon be leaving for Israel. What a
pleasure to teach children so hungry to learn.

He glanced up as Beryl entered the classroom. She leaned
against the blackboard beside him and smiled at the children.
He wanted to slide his arm around her but knew he couldn't
do that in front of the orphans. He stroked his beard. He'd
been surprised by how quickly it had grown in. He'd dyed all
of his hair silver, making him look at least fifteen years older
than he was. This may be America, but he still equated age
with wisdom, and was happy to think of himself as growing
wise.

"Almost done?" Beryl asked.

He nodded.

"Good. Mom's cooking up a storm. She loves you ... almost as much as I do."

Ramzi's world had shrunk in the relocation. He felt safe
here, and he kept to the neighborhood. He walked each day
from Beryl's mother's house, which was now his home, to the
Chabad and back, occasionally stopping at the local deli to
pick something up for the evening meal. Except perhaps for
the paan, he didn't miss his old life at all. Beryl was due to move in with him when school ended in June, and he looked
forward to that.

It was Hanukkah and the menorah would be lit tonight.
As with many converts, the rituals of Judaism seemed to have
more meaning for him than for those who'd practiced from
birth. Most of all, he was looking forward to Gloria's (he had
begun calling Beryl's mom by her first name) famous levivot
and applesauce.

The last few orphans left the room and he took Beryl's
hand as they strolled home to Gloria's, the chill air turning
Beryl's nose bright red.

o Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn't
have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading
Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens-when
the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned
to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight
had sprung to their feet in a fervor-I, who had so often
scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All
about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on
open palms reverberated. Shouted hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I
praying?

I should've been taking notes.

Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the
F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the
police scanner: a "1010" announcing a possible death at Guy R.
Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the
Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the
neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters-all four of whom were whitefor no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and
so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway,
housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its
classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they'd shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn't been a complete waste.

I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn
brownstone that had been in my family for three generations.
I'd been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class,
or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots
in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a
catch within my circle; I'd escorted no less than three females
to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I'd
have had enough of my journalism career and would join an
uncle on Wall Street.

The call came in while I was alone in the office. Laterwhen things had run their course-I thought of a photograph
that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.

The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course,
it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb,
and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made
of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely.
Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo-or story,
for that matter-ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in Jschool.

There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when
I arrived. I didn't feel too confident as I rapped on the door
of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street
that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front
porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed
to get a byline under my belt.

"Yes?" The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.

"Evening, uh, morning, sir," I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn't too late. "I'm a reporter for the-"

"Who is it, Gershorn?" A thick, squat woman with a
hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days
appeared at the man's side. With her elaborate coif, and skin
the color of a gingersnap, she could've been an aged starlet.
In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality
of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.

The man bristled. "We were expecting someone, but not
you," he said. "What is your business here, young man?"

Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined
and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought and hardship that had ever befallen the man was
noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to
sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled
in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing
nearly two heads above her.

"I'm Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I'm a reporter for the
Weekly Item." I extended my hand. "I'm responding to a call that
came over our police scanner regarding a possible death ... ?"

The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand.
I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.

"Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police
came?"

The man contemplated my question before opening the
door to me. "A crime, young man, not an incident. Come
in."

I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped
his hands behind his back.

"Claudette," he called to the woman. "Tea. Tea for our
guest."

In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup
on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my
notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.

On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon
a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between
two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily
braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light
was switched on.

The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the
room to memory, to be described later in my story.

"Do you take sugar?" the woman asked haltingly.

I shook my head.

The man sat down beside me, and the woman took a seat
across the room at a dining room set of heroic proportion. It
spoke of some other time-a time in which there were castles
and feudal systems-with elaborate inlaid carvings, mounted
on claw feet. An unframed oil painting of a Caribbean landscape hung above it.