Let Me Hear a Rhyme Read online

  19

  Jarrell

  Quady ain’t say a word on the train ride back to Brooklyn. He ain’t saying much now in front of the corner store. But he’s pacing. Pacing like he’s about to run a hole into the ground. No way I can sneak him back in my spot; he’s too hyped up to be indoors just yet.

  “Yo, kid, would you calm down? All this back and forth is giving me a headache. Pacing around like some old lady. You sixteen or sixty?”

  “Calm down? Are you serious? What we gonna do?”

  I take a bite of my bacon, egg, and cheese, and a quick sip of ginger ale. I always think better on a full stomach.

  “Psst! I don’t know.”

  “Rell, this ain’t no joke. How the hell are we gonna give him a whole new song when Steph’s dead?”

  “You being mad soft right now! Just chill.”

  Quady cuts me with his eyes.

  “Yo, Pierce ain’t no pretty-boy, kid. He used to be a mad gully street dude. Everyone knows that. He’s like the East Coast Suge Knight. He’ll come for US!” He sighs. “Maybe we should tell him.”

  “Tell him? Nah, no way! Not when we this close.”

  “This close to what? Being killed? If we tell him, maybe he’ll go easy on us.”

  “Then everybody’s gonna know! Cat’s out the bag and shit, and we did all this for nothing!”

  “Well, what else you suggest, then?”

  “Shhhh . . . I’m thinking!”

  Quady throws his hands up. “Thinking. This fool is thinking!”

  He starts pacing again, and I try to keep a cool head for the both of us.

  “You said he has mad music, right?” I remind him. “So let’s use one of his old songs.”

  “We can’t just give him an old song. It has to be a song on one of these tracks.” Quady palms the disc Pierce gave him. “What we gonna do? Say, ‘Oh nah, we didn’t like any of your shit. But here you go. This is the remix!”

  A light turned on above my head and I snap my fingers. “Yo! That’s it!”

  “Man, I was joking!”

  “Nah, you onto something, though. Okay, so boom, remixes are just tracks from original songs laid on a new beat, right? I mean, they do it all the time with reggae remixes. So that’s all we gotta do! Put Steph’s track on one of these beats.”

  Quady raises an eyebrow. “Is that . . . is that something you can do on your computer?”

  I sigh. “Nah. What we need is a professional . . . with a studio. Like a real producer who knows what they doing.”

  “How we gonna find a studio and a producer and do it in a week? And how we gonna explain why we asking him to do it? ‘My main man’s dead, but we want you to produce this track—just don’t tell anybody.’”

  I nod. “Yeah, exactly like that.”

  Quady throws his hands up. “Son, this shit is . . .”

  “Oh snaps!” Dante strolls around the corner grinning. “What’s the dilly? Look like you coming from a party or something.”

  Quady clears his throat as Dante leans in for a dap. “Yeah. A . . . birthday party.”

  “Oh, word?” He gives Quady a once-over. “What’s up? Why he looking mad stressed?”

  “Me? Oh nah, I ain’t stressed. I’m good.” Quady damn near twitching as he lies.

  “Aight, so where’s the party at? Why ain’t nobody invite me? You know if I don’t know about a party then it ain’t really happening, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Yo, hold up,” I say, chuckling. “Dante. You do be knowing everybody. You don’t happen to know any . . . producers, do you?”

  Quady shakes his head behind him.

  “Producers? Hahahaha! Y’all trying to be rappers now? Spit some bars!”

  “Nah, nah . . . my cousin . . . from Jamaica! He got this song that he did, but he wants to . . . fix it. Make it better. On the low low, nah mean?”

  “Oh, no doubt. I got the brotha for you. His name is Kaven, he got a studio on Pulaski.”

  “Pulaski?” Quady says. “Nah. Hell no!”

  “What’s his problem?”

  I take a deep breath. “That’s where they found . . . Steph.”

  “I don’t wanna be anywhere near that place! Ever,” Quady barks, and starts pacing again.

  “Yo, chill, son. It’s cool. The spot is like mad blocks away from there. And the producer is the truth. My mans and them in Marcy fucks with him.”

  I frown. “Oh word? You fucks with people in Marcy?”

  Dante laughs. “Hey man, I’m Sweden!”

  “Sweden? What does that mean?”

  “Means I fucks with everybody. I got peoples all over. I’m neutral.”

  “Hmm. Sweden?” I guess that makes sense. Dante don’t have a crew that I know of. Seems like he just knows a bunch of people and all they business, but no one knows nothing about him. Mad incog-negro.

  “Yeah . . . Sweden,” he says, smiling. “They this country with all these blond white people who just mad happy and don’t rep no sets or nothing.”

  “Yo, I think that was an answer on Jeopardy,” Quady says, rubbing his chin.

  WOOP WOOP!

  Three unmarked cars screech up on the curb surrounding us, red and blue lights spinning on the dashboard. The ginger ale slips out my hand, fizzing on the ground.

  “Aye yo,” Quady screams, squinting away from the headlights blinding him.

  “What the fuck?” Dante yells.

  “Get down on the ground!” A man shouts, but I can’t tell from where.

  “Hands up!” Another duke barks.

  “Down on the ground now!”

  “Down now!”

  “On the ground. On the ground now!”

  “Don’t move!”

  I’m so confused that when the plainclothes 5-0 jump out with they guns drawn, it don’t even register to me that they about to shoot us.

  “Oh shit,” Dante says under his breath.

  “Get down!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “The wall! Now!”

  Damn, what they want us to do first? And I can’t get on the ground. I’ll ruin my sweater.

  “Hands in the air,” one says, coming closer. “Hands in the motherfucking air!”

  Quady’s mouth hangs open as he backs up, his hands in the air, staring at the gun pointed in his face. He gulps and turns toward the wall, shaking.

  “What we do? We ain’t do nothing!” Dante shouts as he’s shoved up against the wall by some bald-headed white guy in a gray polo and black jacket, his badge hanging like a necklace on his chest.

  A man with a salt-and-pepper mustache and curly hair turns to me. “You! Turn around!”

  “Huh?”

  “I said turn around!” He mashes my face into the wall.

  “Ah! Yo, chill!” I scream, my cheek throbbing.

  “Yo, chill with all that! He didn’t do nothing,” Dante hollers.

  That only makes him madder. He pins me up against the wall, elbow digging into my back.

  “Ahhh! Shit!”

  “Spread ’em,” he barks in my ear. He pats down my back, sides, ass, legs, ankles, balls, and head. With the lights shining in our faces and me pinned against the wall, I couldn’t get a good look at the cats hemming us up, rummaging through all our pockets. I can’t breathe the way duke has my face pinned into the wall, sniffing bricks like a dog.

  “What you doing this for, man?” Dante says. “You got us up against this wall like—”

  “Yo, stop talking,” Quady snaps, his voice cracking.

  A calypso pan is ringing in my ear and it stings like hell. I know I should be scared like Quady, but I’m so confused that nothing feels real. Like it’s all a dream or something. Across the street, a few people watch from their windows. I keep my head down, hoping no one recognizes us and word get back to Mummy.

  This ain’t no regular stop-and-frisk, and we damn sure didn’t do nothing out here to have anyone call the cops on us. So many lights and cars, you’d think this was a drug bust
and we the plug.

  Dante sucks his teeth. “This some bullshit.”

  Salt-and-Pepper pulls a dime bag of weed out of Dante’s pocket and shakes it in the air.

  “Well, hello! Look what we got here?”

  “That . . . that ain’t mine! You probably put that shit there! Y’all always planting shit on brothas.”

  Damn, we fucked now.

  “Calm down. I ain’t here for this little piece of shit,” the cop says. “Which one of you knows Steph? Any of you assholes know where we can find Steph?”

  Steph? Nah, I must have heard him wrong. My ear is still ringing. Quady and I look at each other. There ain’t no way . . .

  “Steph. Anybody know him?” the other officer says. “Tall, skinny, got braids.”

  “Yo, that’s like half of Brooklyn,” Dante says with a smirk. “You gotta be more specific, b.”

  Salt-and-Pepper slaps Dante upside the head. “Hey, shut the fuck up! You wanna spend the night downtown? Now, Steph got a scar on his cheek and he’s usually on this corner. Nobody knows who I’m talking about?”

  I glance at Quady, eyes bugging out. Damn, he really is talking about Steph.

  Dante sucks his teeth. “Man, y’all about two months too late as usual. That kid’s dead.”

  The cop’s whole body stiffens behind me. “What?”

  “Steph’s dead. Steph’s been dead!”

  “You better not be lying,” Salt-and-Pepper growls through his teeth, shoving him harder.

  “Yo, word on my momma, Steph got popped right before Labor Day.”

  “He ain’t lying,” Quady says softly, eyeing the ground.

  “Don’t y’all cops talk to each other or nothing?” Dante snaps. “Last time I heard, y’all were supposed to be investigating his murder.”

  The cops look at one another. They silent, but you can sense their confusion. No one knows what to do. Finally, Salt-and-Pepper eases his elbow from between my shoulder blades.

  “Alright,” one of them says. “Have a good night, gentlemen.”

  The army that had surrounded us seems much smaller and less like killers as they retreat back into their whips.

  “Yo, that’s it? Y’all fuck with us, then bounce?”

  They don’t say nothing as they slam their car doors and speed off down Patchen Ave.

  Dante’s in the street, screaming at their taillights like he got a death wish. Quady limps over, hands on his knees like he about to faint. I wipe the blood off my ear, rubbing it between my fingers.

  “Yo,” he gasps, looking up at me. And I know we thinking the same thing.

  Why the fuck are they looking for Steph?

  20

  Jasmine

  Here we are, cleaning again. Except Mom’s purging stuff now. Throwing away papers, broken toys, and collecting old clothes to donate to the shelter.

  “Jasmine, pass me them baby coats,” she says from the living room. “Not like we need them.”

  I step over Carl and rip the coats off the wire hangers. Life just don’t seem fair. While the boys are out partying, I’m stuck up in the house, cleaning out a dusty hallway closet. Quady told me I couldn’t come, probably so he wouldn’t be seen with me. He rather be up in the club with girls like Ronnie, with fake nails and hair, dressed in designer clothes made by folks who don’t care about black people.

  I need to get the idea of “us” out of my head. Not because I don’t think I’m good enough. But because I can only take so much heartache.

  “And how many times I gotta tell you to put your book bag in your room?” Mom fusses. “I’m trying to keep this place clean!”

  “Yesss, Mom,” I sigh. I didn’t notice the opened top zipper, and just as I grab my bag, a stack of the CDs slips out onto the coffee table. Within seconds, I shove them back in, but that was all the time Mom’s eagle-eye vision needed before she snatches up the last runaway. I keep quiet, hoping she won’t recognize him. But I should have known a mother always knows her son.

  “It’s . . . Steph,” she says, rubbing her finger along his picture. “Wh-what is this, Jasmine?”

  I’m trying to keep calm and figure out how to frame it. I wasn’t expecting to tell her so soon.

  “Jasmine! What. Is. This? Why his picture look so funny?”

  “It’s a demo,” I mumble.

  “A what?”

  “A demo. Of Steph’s music.”

  “He made this? How come I didn’t know?”

  “Nah. Um . . . me, Jarrell, and Quady did it.”

  “What?”

  “We made a demo of some of his songs.”

  Mom’s hands are shaking.

  “So y’all made a tape . . . of my baby’s music, selling it . . . so they making money off my baby? You using your own brother, Jasmine!”

  “Nah, Mom, not like that!”

  “Then why?” she screams, grabbing my shoulders. “Why you do this? Why you do your brother like this?”

  “It’s for him, Mom! It’s all for him!” I can feel myself choking up but refuse to cry. “Mom, Steph was real good at this music thang. I know you didn’t really listen, but . . . people are buying his music, playing it at parties, and I’ve been saving all the money I’m making.”

  “Them thugs are buying from you with they drug money!”

  “No! It’s just regular people, like me, that like good music! Mom, I wanna use this money and hire a detective. One of them private ones, to find out what really happened to Steph. They cost $250 a day, and I—”

  “What did I tell you? The police are handling it. We don’t need no fake gumshoe getting in their way.”

  I can’t believe she’s tripping like this. I’m doing this for Steph! Don’t she want to know what really happened? Don’t she want to see the person that killed Steph in jail?

  “Mom, I’m saying . . .”

  Mom grabs the CDs out of my bag, storms in the kitchen, and dumps them in the trash, snapping them into pieces.

  “I don’t want to hear NOTHING about this no more. You get those tapes back from them boys. Tell them to stop using my baby to fill they pockets. No more ‘demo.’ No more talk about hiring a detective. And I don’t want you ANYWHERE near them two again. You get on that phone and tell them they done.”

  “But—”

  “Go to your room, Jasmine! Don’t make me say it again.”

  I grab my bag, head to my room, and close the door. (I could’ve slammed it, but I ain’t that brave.)

  21

  Quadir

  “This it? You sure?”

  “Yeah, this is the place,” Jarrell says, raising an eyebrow.

  “This don’t look like no studio.”

  The rusted gate to the basement of a beat-up brownstone looks like a door to Satan’s playhouse, and I ain’t about to skip inside some vampire’s lair. We don’t even know who could be in there. Probably won’t be a body to be found after they finish eating us . . .

  Headline: The Case of Two Bed-Stuy Teens Mysteriously Vanishing Remains Unsolved

  Ever since them cops hemmed us up, I’ve been having nightmares about being locked up and dying. Elevators feel mad tight, walls in school squeeze in, even the subway cars seem smaller. I keep opening all the windows around the house, and Mom closes them behind me, calling me crazy. I couldn’t tell her what had happened without ratting myself out. I couldn’t tell Ronnie—she’d only be mad I went to a party without her—and I couldn’t tell Jasmine ’cause . . . well . . . I don’t want her assuming the worst.

  A blue tarp covering a broken window flaps in the wind. The red cement stairs are crumbling into a pile of rocks.

  Jarrell steps over a puddle of water pooling by a storm drain, shaking his head.

  “I better not fuck up my kicks in this place,” he grumbles, and presses the buzzer.

  The gate unlocks automatically, and I let Jarrell step inside first. We walk down a dark hallway as I try to hold in my panic before we step into the light.

  “Damnnnn,” Jarre
ll says with a grin.

  The basement looks nothing like it does outside. Polished oak floors, green leather sofas, glass audio booths, and pristine equipment surrounded by warm orange lighting. This spot is mad official.

  Kaven stands by the audio board, his arms crossed. Behind him, a security monitor with four different angles around the outside of the house. He sizes us up in silence.

  “So, you Dante’s people?” he asks in a husky smoker’s voice as he sits in a black swivel chair.

  Kaven didn’t look how I expected him to either. He’s about Jarrell’s height and weight, a bald head with rolls stacked on his neck, grays peeking out his goatee. Old like my pops but dressed like he’s late for a Wu-Tang Clan concert. When Dante mentioned him, I thought it would be some young guy, not an Old G.

  “Yeah. I’m Rell. That’s Quady.”

  “What y’all need? Dante didn’t give no details.”

  Kaven didn’t seem like the type interested in small talk. He probably hasn’t smiled in ten years. Jarrell gives him the scoop, leaving Steph’s and Pierce’s names out of it. Kaven listens, swiveling in his chair, deep in thought.

  After a few moments, he asks, “How you know your man’s good?”

  “Trust me, fam,” Jarrell says. “He’s the real deal. He’s serious about his music.”

  “It’s his dream,” I add. I always feel the need to put that in perspective.

  “Why can’t your boy come and lay some fresh tracks instead of working off his old stuff?”

  “He’s . . . not available.”

  He chuckles. “Is he dead?”

  Jarrell blinks hard.

  “Wh-wh . . . what makes you think that?” I choke out.

  “That’s the only reason homeboy wouldn’t show up on his own. You said he all about his music, and only a grave can stop you from your dreams. So, is he dead?”

  “Uh . . . sorta,” Jarrell says.

  “Dead to the world,” I jump in. “He got some family stuff to take care of.”

  Kaven pulls a bottle of Guinness out of the mini fridge under his desk. “I don’t work with zombies.”

  Is it just me, or this Old G a mind reader or something? Jarrell brushes his hair down, something he does when he’s nervous.