The Plot Against Hip Hop Page 10

  “Cause your brothers are gone and you’re here?”

  “Maybe.”

  “D?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When was the last time you were intimate with someone?”

  “With myself. Last night. That’s the safest sex I know.”

  “You wanna come upstairs with me?”

  “Would you hold me, Amina? I’d like that.”

  “I think I can do that,” she said.

  “I don’t want your charity.”

  “And I don’t want yours.”

  She took him by the hand and led him through the living room and up the staircase to her bedroom, which was as brown and inviting as her living room.

  CHAPTER 19

  TALKIN’ ALL THAT JAZZ

  It was three weeks after his dinner with Amina-Warren Jones. Three weeks of pleading Fly Ty to contact the FBI and other feds to squeeze out some intel about undercover operative Anthony Jackson, a.k.a. Malik Jones. Reluctantly, Fly Ty finally agreed to dig deeper into the life and times of this increasingly mysterious man with multiple identities.

  Which is why the two men were sitting at a corner table in Balthazar—one of the various Keith McNally–founded bistros that defined high-profile dining in downtown Manhattan—having roasted chicken, oysters, and sundry sides, and sharing a bottle of cognac on D’s tab. Fly Ty had demanded a princely meal for all the aggravation that the search for info on Amina’s husband entailed. Balthazar had been his choice. Luckily for D, he’d done McNally a service a few years back, so getting a power table wasn’t too difficult.

  “This was like pulling the layers of skin off an onion,” Fly Ty said after a nice rich swallow of Chivas Regal. “People aren’t comfortable getting to the core. Besides, it appears only a select group of people knew what Anthony Jackson was into. You ever see Apocalypse Now?”

  “Yeah. Good movie. Got a little weird at the end.”

  “As you may remember, at the start of the film a general tells Martin Sheen that Marlon Brando’s methods are ‘unsound.’ That’s their bureaucratic way of saying the man was becoming a damn cannibal in ’Nam. Well, according to folks I spoke to, Jackson/Jones’s methods were just as unsound.”

  “Unsound. That’s some real bureaucratic bullshit. Don’t act all cute, Fly Ty. I’m paying, so break it down for me. Who is Anthony Jackson?”

  “Well, to start, all that stuff I told you about Malik Jones is both true and totally false. All that stuff I said that Malik Jones did, he did. Now, Anthony Jackson went from beat cop to an NYPD buy-and-bust when Harlem was crack-la-lane. He was decorated for his work and then recruited by the FBI. He started working undercover as a hip hop entrepreneur. Somehow around then he got involved with the Sawyer Group and met your man Dwayne Robinson.

  “Because he was so well known in the streets of NYC, Jackson volunteered to work on the West Coast. Then it gets murky. He was assigned to a special unit that interfaced with a number of other units. His smart idea was to pose as a guy from the East Coast who wanted to invest in West Coast rap. In his cover role, Jackson/Jones got involved in record distribution and even got a piece of a record company.”

  “So he was working for the FBI and clocking dollars on his own.”

  “Turned out Jackson/Jones was a real good businessman. Along the way he gained the confidence of Freeway Ricky Ross and other figures in the crack trade, helping build cases in conjunction with elements of both LAPD and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.”

  “Freeway Rick was all up with the CIA bringing crack into LA, right?”

  “I saw that show on BET too,” said Fly Ty. “I know as much about that as you do. No one proved a thing. It’s just ghetto conjecture.”

  “Sounds like Malik might have known what was up with that.”

  “What Malik knew about that or anything else, I have no idea. I do know he helped build a number of cases on the West Coast. Definitely compiled a fat dossier on Death Row. He was so tight with them, he was in the car behind Tupac and Suge that night in Vegas.”

  “Did he know who did it or speculate on who it was?”

  “If he did, it’s not in his reports.”

  “So when did he become ‘unsound’?”

  “In the year between Tupac’s and Biggie’s murders, he got in with the rogue cops out in the Rampart Division and stopped turning in regular reports. After Biggie was shot in LA, he went totally underground. No word to his office or his wife.”

  “Damn, his wife is way too fine to ignore.”

  “Well, he did for a year. The bureau wanted to bring him in but he refused, and in that year he apparently set up another identity, so he was hard to track. As far as anyone knew he hadn’t broken any laws, so they didn’t push too hard.”

  “He could have been dead.”

  “But he wasn’t. At some point he began e-mailing in reports and, despite the bureau’s misgivings, the intel was good and played a role in violating a bunch of folks.”

  “That could have gotten him killed.”

  Fly Ty took another sip of cognac and nodded at the obvious.

  D said, “Sounds to me like he was turning in people who he had his reasons to see incarcerated.”

  “You’re not the only genius out here, D. So the bureau terminated his employment and then mounted a big effort to bring him in. But to their credit, they didn’t blow his Malik Jones cover.”

  “Or kill him.”

  “Well, they didn’t find him. No luck. Radio silence. They put his wife under surveillance. Checked her bank accounts. Nothing. A few years go by. He contacts the bureau. Says he’s got info on drug trafficking linked to major hip hop figures in New Orleans, Miami, and Atlanta.”

  “New Orleans?”

  “Yes. Apparently, he’d relocated down South and built a whole new network of music and drug biz contacts. Turns out one of the reasons he’d been so elusive was that he had relationships with local law-enforcement officials in various cities and was slipping them credible info in exchange for money and their silence. And he was obviously spending a lot of time down South.”

  “They didn’t know he was on the run from the FBI?”

  “Maybe he was using another identity. It’s hard to tell how all that worked. Then Malik Jones gets arrested in New York in a car with some NOLA rappers—loud music and erratic driving on Broadway got them pulled over. They found guns in the car. Malik Jones had an outstanding Cali warrant and gets cuffed. The warrant popped up, but not that the FBI wanted him for questioning. A quirk, I guess. By the time the local bureau found out he was in custody, someone lit his ass on fire.”

  “So it was a hit on him?”

  “He shared a cell with a Blood member named Anfernee Brown, a vicious street thug who’d been charged with all manner of mayhem. A lot of people didn’t like Anfernee. It’s possible Malik was in the wrong bed at the wrong time. The other possibility is one of the old school–loving heads at Rikers hated crunk and mistook Malik for one of those country rappers.”

  “You sayin’ he got killed for crunk?”

  “Some of those guys been in the system so long they think KRS-One is still hot … You know, when they finally buried him it was with a closed casket.”

  “Fly Ty, this is the second time you’ve told me this man’s life story, and it’s hard to believe either version.”

  “Yeah, together or separate, they are quite a tale. But I don’t think they bring you any closer to finding who killed your friend.”

  “You know what’s missing? His posse. There’s no way he did all this stuff in the street, both as a hustler and a cop, without someone helping him.”

  Fly Ty asked, “What about the wife?”

  “She didn’t have to tell me her husband was an undercover cop.”

  “So that means she’s clean? Maybe it just means she wants to confess. Maybe she really likes you. And wouldn’t that be sad?”

  “Women still like me,” D smiled. “And I’ve had the conversation with
her.”

  “Okay. You both got your cards on the table. Good for you both. You may get a girlfriend out of this but I’m not so sure it’ll get you a murderer.”

  That night D had another dream.

  He was looking out of the front window of a 3 train as it rose from a tunnel into sunlight. D was both the little boy that he’d once been and the man he was now, each standing next to each other like a father and son, as the subway car rolled into and out of the Rutland Road station. It moved with great speed around the bend through Saratoga and Rockaway avenues.

  Between Rockaway and Junius Street, the train stopped suddenly across from the Samuel J. Tilden projects. From a side window the two D Hunters could see apartment 6C, where his mother, all dressed in black, peered out of her bedroom window down at the street.

  At the corner of Mother Gaston and Livonia, under the elevated tracks, train wheels shrieked and engines grinded, and older and younger D, dressed in vanilla suits perfect for Puff’s white party, stood before three wreathes, a dozen candles, hand-written condolence cards, a dirty Adidas shell toe, a pair of Clarks Wallabees, black Tims, a deflated basketball, an unopened golden Trojan package, a Black Panther comic book, and a stack of twelve-inch singles with the Stop the Violence Movement’s “Self-Destruction” on top. Old D reached down and handed “Self-Destruction” to young D, who snapped it like a potato chip in his small hands and laughed.

  CHAPTER 20

  THINGS DONE CHANGED

  Ever since D was a boy in the hood, he’d possessed a sixth sense about being watched with bad intentions, and he’d learned to trust it the hard way. When he was ten, two teenagers yoked him from behind in a smelly project staircase and bloodied him pretty good. D knew he’d felt something coming down those stairs but had been so fixated on getting to a Mister Softee truck, he’d ignored the feeling of being clocked through a cracked staircase door. Not paying proper attention had cost him his ice-cream money, a bloody bottom lip, and a bruised collarbone. He never ignored that vibe again.

  So, as soon as he exited the subway at Broadway and Lafayette, D knew eyes were on him. Between the legion of shoppers ogling the bare-chested male models in front of the Hollister store, the vendors hawking caps, ice cream, and bracelets, and the wave of shoppers rolling down toward Soho, this intersection was as crowded as any in the city. D’s ghetto Spidey sense was tingling and he looked left and right, mostly seeing scores of females with shopping bags. Then someone bumped into him from behind. He turned and spied two young black men with flat-fronted baseball caps, diamonds in their ears, skinny jeans, and multicolored kicks. Immediately D recognized they were students at the high school for gay teens up on Astor Place. One said, “Excuse me,” politely, while the other said something flirtatious.

  Deciding there was no point lingering, D continued down Broadway toward his office at 580. In the elevator he was joined by three female yogis headed up to Virayoga, located on the floor below his office. Sussanah, a comely little brunette instructor, dressed in orange-and-green flowing yoga gear, flip-flops, and a charming smile, chatted him up.

  “It’s time you came downstairs and took a class. It’ll be great for your stress.” She squeezed his arm. “Obviously you lift weights, but your energy always seems a bit blocked to me.”

  “It has been hectic lately.”

  “I heard about what happened.”

  “Yeah. It was bad.”

  “All the more reason to come to a class,” she said with practiced calm. “It’ll help you connect to your breath, and that’s something you can draw on any time.”

  “I hear you,” D replied, thinking that watching Sussanah twist up her prêt little body while they both sweated would probably keep him tense. She gave him a class schedule before exiting and he watched her tight yoga booty as the door closed. He laughed as he thought of himself stretched out on a rubber matt with Sussanah guiding his body into pretzel-like shapes.

  His smile faded as the door opened onto the site of Dwayne Robinson’s death. It became an outright scowl when he saw the building’s super and two white men in suits standing at D Security’s door.

  “William, what’s going on here?”

  All three men turned as D approached. The older of the two white men, maybe forty-five, already gray on top with a matching silver mustache and a Long Island accent, reached into his pocket and pulled out a badge.

  “Agent Robert Van Winkle, FBI.”

  Van Winkle sat on the other side of D’s desk, while Aubrey Graham, thirtyish and silent, sat off to the side, taking notes and occasionally nodding. “So,” Van Winkle began, “we know you’ve been trying to find your friend’s murderers. I personally respect your efforts. That’s what I’d do if I thought NYPD wasn’t really following through. Now, I take it you feel this Sawyer memorandum is some kind of key to the attack on him.”

  “Before we go any further, can I know why Dwayne Robinson’s death interests the FBI?”

  “Aubrey,” Van Winkle said, “step outside for a minute, could you?”

  The younger agent nodded and left the room wordlessly. D thought it was a nice bit of theater, creating a false intimacy between D and the remaining agent. Alone with D, the man pulled out his BlackBerry, scrolled through it, and then handed it across the desk. On the screen was a photo taken in winter of Dwayne Robinson in an overcoat and wool cap, talking animatedly with a tall white man wearing shades, a Russian fur hat, and an oversized parka.

  “Scroll across.”

  D did as he was instructed and saw that in the following five pictures the conversation became more animated, and by the last one the man had pushed Dwayne to the ground.

  “Who’s the white dude?”

  “He’s not familiar to you?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  Ignoring D’s question Van Winkle said, “You were the last person to see Dwayne Robinson alive. I read the police report but wanted to meet you myself.”

  “To see if I knew this guy.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I’d sure like to.”

  Van Winkle stared at D, sizing him up. “Mr. Robinson’s murder is unfortunate, but it’s not the reason I’m here today. Mr. Robinson had some dealings with the man in these pictures. His name is Eric Mayer.”

  “I know that name,” D replied. “He used to promote parties around New York. A lot of stuff in the Hamptons. He never hired me to do any of his events so I don’t know him personally. Maybe we met in passing.”

  “As far as you know, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Mayer had no business dealings?”

  “I mean, I never heard Dwayne mention him. Dwayne was more a historian than in the mix these days. So hanging at hot parties in the Hamptons wouldn’t have interested him. I have no idea why they’d be in contact.”

  “Okay, Mr. Hunter.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Unless you know more about Mr. Robinson and Mr. Mayer’s relationship.”

  “What did this man do that would interest the FBI?”

  “Violations of numerous statutes involving interstate commerce.”

  “Smuggling.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of what?”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Hunter.”

  “Do you know anything about an ex-agent named Anthony Jackson—sometimes known as Malik Jones?”

  “No.”

  “You know who I’m talking about?”

  “No. Does this Jackson have something to do with Mr. Robinson’s death?”

  “Somehow, though he’s been dead three years or so.”

  Van Winkle lifted his BlackBerry off D’s desk and typed on the keyboard. “I’ll make a note of his name.” There was a pause. D expected him to get up, but the agent lingered. “You know people in this hip hop world. People who’d trust you more than an FBI agent. Some tip about Mr. Mayer might come your way. If it does, let me know.” Van Winkle handed his business card to D and stood up.

  “You haven’t given me much informatio
n to go on.”

  “Sounds to me like you already have a lot on your plate,” Van Winkle replied, ending the discussion.

  And then he was gone, leaving D to wonder what the conversation meant. Seemed like the FBI agent didn’t know about Jackson/Jones. Could Van Winkle really know less than Fly Ty? Still, he definitely wanted D to go after Eric Mayer. No question about that. Those photos fired him up just as Van Winkle knew they would. Interstate commerce? What was that a euphemism for? If it was drugs, he would have said so. Guns? Cigarettes?

  D Googled Eric Mayer and was surprised to find that the man’s hip hop career was pretty deep. He’d actually been involved with several labels, including Profile (home of Run-D.M.C.), and managed a few acts too, before getting brands like Xbox and Sony Playstation to house hip hop–themed gigs for rich white rap aficionados. He had even partnered with Diddy and Jessica Rosenblum on parties in the Hamptons, Manhattan, Vegas, and Miami. There were photos online of Mayer tossing back champagne with Penny Marshall, Paris Hilton, Adrien Brody, and other hip hop Hamptons habitues during the ’90s and early ’00s.

  There wasn’t much online about Eric Mayer after 2005, though there was a 2007 item in Page Six about a charity he started to bring technology to inner-city youth. What made D’s eyes widen was the charity’s name: the Sawyer Foundation. According to a short profile in Hamptons magazine, Mayer was a big fan of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; he explained how the book had a natural connection to today’s youth: “The style of Twain’s writing is colloquial and raw, like that of a great MC.”

  D hadn’t read Tom Sawyer since fourth grade and wasn’t gonna start now. He skimmed the summary on Wikipedia and didn’t really see anything too interesting about it. Then he noticed the name Huck Finn in the text and remembered that there had been some racial issues with the book, that some black parents had wanted it banned from school back in the day. He looked up the summary of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the name Nigger Jim jumped off the page. Jim was a big, raw, ignorant brother who shared a raft on the Mississippi River with a little white boy who helped him survive. It was a leap to see Mayer as a modern-day Huck Finn, but this weird throwback reference to Sawyer made D uneasy.