Bronx Noir

Rosary continued with the story of the suburban geek, a CEO called Bill Cunningham. What Cunningham did to violate his secret aviary caused the sheets and walls and carpeting to become sticky with chicken blood, tomato-red turning to rust-brown. Little chicken heads were in a heap by the bathroom doorway, where Cunningham’s pinstripes were carefully hung on the knob.

The birds had put up a spirited fight, especially the roosters. There were feathers everywhere.

The D.A. indicted Cunningham for animal cruelty. The geek was sorely embarrassed in front of his golf club buddies, but they rallied around him in support of a sick man. Cunningham kept his mouth shut like I told him.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I said at the concluding day of trial. Then I said what I always say: “I’ll be short. No—I’m already short, I’ll be brief.”

A laughing jury is not a hanging jury.

I had earlier produced the sole defense witness—Juan Baltasar, proprietor of a chicken stand at La Marquéta. Baltasar testifled that Cunningham had been particular about his purchase, insisting that the chicken heads be severed before paying.

“Thus, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Cunningham had his way with dead chickens—not live chickens. Therefore, he violated no law, because a man cannot commit cruelty against a fowl corpse.” I spun around on my heels to address the assistant D.A. at the prosecution table, a sallow-faced guy with the likeability factor of an IRS auditor. “Case closed,” I said.

Then I addressed the good jurors and the judge.

“I would only add my personal promise, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Cunningham—with not so much as a speeding ticket heretofore and who is, as you have heard, innocent before the law—will nevertheless enroll in psycho-sexual counseling at a mental hospital in White Plains. He is a deeply disturbed man, my friends. Yet who among us would care to stand before the scales of justice to hear of our own sins of thought—and actions for which we were never ourselves apprehended. For what it is worth, Mr. Cunningham will dwell among his own disturbed kind as he seeks redemption, beyond the reach of the dear hearts and gentle people of the Bronx. This I promise, on the grave of my own sweet wife.” I turn to the bench. “How’s that, judge?”

He raps down his gavel and Cunningham scrams out of court, never to be seen in the Bronx again, right as the judge says, “Whatever.”

Hearing Rosary tell the story again gives me an idea for the limited counsel I suddenly decide to give Nutsy and the Pipe and Pencil Man. I hand one of their polyesters a couple of hundred bucks and tell him, “Buy some groceries, then hit the mattresses. Capice?” Then I give a nod to Lewis to come with me. And before the polyester leaves my office, I tell him, “Send me another button and I’ll return him with Blake here—blindfolded, so he can’t spill the location where he can film. Same goes for me if I decide to show up. I don’t want to know from the mattresses.”

Lewis and I walk around the corner to the Palomino, which is mentioned as the genesis of Slattery’s story that is now all over town. He’s very proud of himself, this Hollywood producer. My friends buy him drinks.

I tell Lewis I need a minute to make a discreet phone call. So I slip out into the street with my cell. But I don’t call right away.

I wait for the cars I know are going to show up. The dark blue, unmarked Chryslers with the no-nonsense guys inside. They get out of the cars with their hands firmly inside of their coats, where they’re wearing shoulder holsters and federal badges.

I dial my kid’s number out in Los Angeles.

She’s on the line right when Lewis is bum-rushed out of the Palomino Club.

“You should come home, kiddo.”

“We’ve been all over that—”

“Your big client, Blake Lewis, he’s been arrested.”

“Where are they taking him?”

“Search me. Maybe Guantánamo.”

I walk back to my building on the Concourse and I slip into bed and sleep like a dead person.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

THOMAS ADCOCK, an Edgar Award—winning novelist, was born in Detroit, raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, and schooled just across the Harlem River in Fordham, the Bronx. A staff writer for the New York Law Journal, he has also worked on television drama projects in Los Angeles for Aaron Spelling Productions and NBC. He is coeditor with Tim McLoughlin of Brooklyn Noir 3 (forthcoming).

KEVIN BAKER is a novelist and historian. His latest book, Strivers Row, is set in Harlem in 1943. His father was born on Fordham Road, and many of his father’s people lived (and died) in the Bronx.