Bronx Noir

Kingston believed he wasn’t a regular at Golden Lady, seated at the bar sipping a plastic cup of whiskey. Silky served his Scotch and amaretto without asking only because she had a great memory like most bartenders, he thought. Kingston considered the cup in his hand and reminisced over the club serving bottles of beer and glasses of mixed drinks years back, before some brawls with smashed Coronas forced a policy change. He also recalled gonzo tricks Silky used to perform with Heinekens in her dancing days, way before her transition to barkeep. Kingston raised his Godfather to Lacey, onstage sliding down a silver pole at the center of her baby-oiled, spread-eagle legs, eyeing him from upside down. Lacey was just the thing to take Kingston’s mind off the hundreds he’d lost earlier at Yonkers Raceway, the robbery of his house days ago, and other recent troubles.

Disorienting strobes bathed Lacey and two other bodacious young women pacing the stage, gyrating hips and stripping under the synthesized pulse of Ciara’s “Oh.” Kingston didn’t consider himself a regular but Lacey’s partners knew from experience not to bother trying to entice money out of the black guy in the stingy-brim fedora. Lacey sauntered over to the head of the crowded bar, bent down, and flashed her fleshy ass just for Kingston, flexing the muscles of each cheek to the beat. Kingston shifted her garish yellow lace garter belt with a finger to place one, two, three paper-cut-crisp twenty-dollar bills between her thigh and the elastic band. Lacey undulated her thick behind in ecstatic waves of motion.

Come 2 o’clock, Golden Lady’s neon sign—a naked blonde lounging in a martini glass—quickly faded into the distance. Kingston and Lacey sat in his onyx Buick zooming up the Bruckner Expressway and out of Hunts Point. Full-blast cool air circulated new-car smell throughout the ride. Kingston’s radio, per usual, tuned in to CD101.9: “I’m in the Mood for Love,” King Pleasure. Plastic jewel cases of smooth jazz CDs cluttered the floor and butter-leather backseats. En route to Baychester Diner, Lacey peered into the illuminated sun visor applying foundation, lipstick, and eyeliner, bitching about the shady tactics Butterfly and Sunflower used to dominate lap dances all summer long. Kingston’s characteristic silence was so typical that Lacey never considered that her sugar daddy might be disturbed.

The all-night Baychester Diner harbored the same two wisecracking women in kempt hairweaves found at the counter every weekend past midnight. Each sported something slightly outré signaling her street profession. One wore a bright Wonder Woman bodice with deep cleavage on display, the other scarlet fishnets with a spiked leather dominatrix collar. Both brandished five-inch stilettos. At the far corner banquette a young couple argued in Creole patois.

“Si ou pa vlé bébé-an, ale vous an,” hissed the pregnant teen in the pink Von Dutch cap.

Kingston and Lacey found an isolated booth and ordered breakfast from a homely waitress. Rain broke the August humidity, slicking the asphalt of Boston Road, while Kingston explained all about the Hernández brothers pushing their numbers turf further down Washington Heights into Harlem, their violent efforts to force him out, and his contingency flight plan to New Orleans.

“King. You gonna up and leave just like that?” Lacey asked. She craved a Newport.

“They ain’t runnin’ me out,” he bluffed. “I done made plenty these past fifteen years. I don’t mind it. Business ain’t like it used to be nohow. Playin’ the numbers is old school, kiddo. More white folks is movin’ into Harlem now and they don’t know nothin’ about me. They play Lotto.”

Lacey laughed.

“You never talked about retiring to New Orleans before.” Not to me, she thought.

“I done told you ’bout the house. We ain’t never been together, but it’s down there. Since 2000. My cousin look after it, she over in Baton Rouge.”

“When are you talking about going?”

“I ain’t right decided yet. Could be two weeks.”

“Two weeks? That’s enough time for you to wrap up everything?”

“We gon’ see.”

Kingston held the door for Lacey and a trucker hand-in-hand with the collared mistress from the counter. Outside all four smelled a faint aroma of barbecue sauce wafting from the local KFC. The illicit couple commiserated on the corner and crossed Baychester Avenue, stilettos clicking on concrete, to a motel with three-hour rates.

Kingston pulled his sedan out of the lot and down Boston Road blaring “This Masquerade.” By the song’s end he’d parked again, less than a mile away at Boston Secor Houses. Lacey grabbed his humidor from the glove compartment.