A Real Hot Corner

The tall and dark-haired NYPD officer who clicked the cuffs on Gabriel and stuffed him in the back of the patrol car clearly looked Italian and he was almost certainly from somewhere in Brooklyn or Queens based on his accent. He was a nice enough guy though and didn’t get rough or angry or anything like that, but this was Gabe’s third pop in the last year or so. They wouldn’t be seeing him out on the block for a while. He wasn’t gonna make bail. He was going to Rikers, and then somewhere up north for a while.

Angel came back out and sat on the stoop outside his grandmother’s apartment building on West 176h Street, just off Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights, as the patrol car pulled away. Some dude got lit up a few blocks away early that morning just before the sun came up so the NYPD patrol cars were coming back and forth all day and when this one came racing up the block they were caught off-guard. Dudes got popped all the time. The only real problem that day was the temperature. It was currently 14 degrees Fahrenheit and the temps were expected to drop further, with heavy snow on the way. Angel was a hard kid who had survived a whole lot more than snow storms during his lifetime and he was fine in his Timberland jacket and boots and a Carhartt beanie but the problem was that the weather was apparently slowing down the flow of customer traffic that day.

“Hey yo, ‘Fonso. Wha’ choo think about all this? Help me out, man. You aint said shit all day, yo. I don’t even know the difference between when you here and when you aint, man. What da’ fuck, dude? What I’m payin’ you for? Shit. I’ll get your little brother out here.”

“Man, chinga tu madre,” Alfonso muttered in response, kicking an empty beer can into the street and standing with his back turned to the rest of the crew, now all gathered back around the stoop with the patrol car still waiting to make the left turn down at the end of the block. Angel laughed, harder than necessary, and Alfonso glowered back at him for a moment with minimal conviction and then turned away.

“Hey yo, No-Neck. Wha’ choo think, man? Should I be gettin’ with this bitch Adriana or what? I mean, she looked pretty fucking fine down there at Blast last week but I keep hearing that every nigga from here to Gun Hill Road done been up in that already. I’m not trying to get burned again, son, straight up.” Angel grabbed his own genitals and looked around with a silly grin. The snow was just starting to fall and No-Neck Tony stared at him for a second and then looked back out towards the street as he replied.

“I don’t know, Angel. I think maybe you got some other shit you need to be worried ‘bout right now, son. That’s what I heard anyway.” No-Neck Tony waited for a reply for almost a full minute, along with everyone else gathered around the stoop, silently anticipating how Angel might respond to this. But eventually Angel just reached down and picked up his copy of The New York Post and opened it straight to the Sports section in the rear and No-Neck Tony quietly strolled off towards the corner bodega. When everyone else seemed to have forgotten Tony’s ominous words Angel suddenly smiled and spoke up, speaking fast as always, his breath steaming the cold air before him.

“Oh, he talkin’ bout that cat Tito? Shit, I aint worrying about no Tito or any other nigga neither. Shit, we seven poppin' all droppin'. This the nation. Any motherfucker want to come at me, I’m right here. All day, baby. Alllll day,” he stretched out the word all to emphasize his lack of concern and held a fist out for some dap from little ‘Nello, who was standing right next to him. ‘Nello bumped his fist up and down off Angel’s, as if to show he wasn’t scared of Tito either, but he was too young to know better and looked up to his corner boss like the big brother he wished he still had.

Angel was a loud and colorful personality who was nothing if not bold and self-confident. Everyone from the crew knew that he stabbed and killed an older kid down at the basketball courts one night when he was just 15 years old and there were rumors that he blasted another down on the subway platform last summer, although Angel never spoke on that. He had just turned 18 years old a few weeks ago though and now real prison time was a possibility. He wasn’t scared of that - he expected it eventually - but he wasn’t in any big rush to get sent upstate either. There was money to be made. Honeys to get with. Maybe a few dudes from the neighborhood who needed to get straightened out to settle some old beefs first.

Tito Tavarez was the head of a crew who had been running about six or seven corners up along Broadway for the last few years, selling dope and coke 24 hours a day, or pretty close to it anyway. Lately Tito had started to expand the edges of his territory a bit. A couple of warning shots were fired to run one crew off its corner and that’s all it took. Now he was looking to cross over to the other side of Broadway and that put him in Angel’s neighborhood. Tito had already given Angel’s crew fair warning yesterday afternoon. From the passenger seat of a black BMW he told them all that the next time he came back past here he expected to find this corner dead empty and waiting for his boys to set up shop. Tiny and Bigger were standing right there the whole time - Angel’s muscle - but Tito never even glanced at them. (Tiny was 6 foot 3 inches tall and around 280 pounds. Bigger was, well, bigger. They were both well-armed.)

This was causing a lot of concern for most of the guys on the block but apparently not for Angel. He barely even acknowledged that there was a problem to be dealt with. He had just nodded at Tito yesterday without saying a word and when the car sped off down the block he immediately went back to talking about the losses to the Yankees pitching staff and the recent departure of their star third baseman that off-season, like nothing had even happened. Some of his crew, mostly the younger guys who weren’t smart enough to be scared, saw that as courage. The rest saw it as a dangerous form of insanity, one that could easily get them all killed.

“Hey yo, Hector. Looks like you got business. Step on up, son. We slow enough today. Shit.” Angel spotted the tall thin guy in the old army jacket shambling up the block towards their corner before anyone else did, as usual. The guy was a regular. Hector got up from his spot and met the dude before he reached the corner. After a very brief exchange of words there was a discreet exchange of cash and then Hector whistled across the street and held up two fingers. A few seconds later the new kid named Arturo ran over and handed the guy in the Army jacket something small that quickly disappeared into one of his pockets as he turned and walked back down the block in the opposite direction.

Suddenly the little kid named Fernando - Angel’s corner lookout that day - yelled out the high pitched “WOOP WOOP!” sound just as another NYPD patrol car came around the corner fast, it’s roof-rack lights flashing red and white. Out of the corner of his eye, Angel also saw the black unmarked NYPD car with its dash lights flashing coming down the block from the opposite way, against the direction of the one-way street, and he quickly got up and stepped back inside his grandmother’s building, a few of his boys trailing right behind. After he watched the police cars depart through the window of his grandmother’s living room he went back outside and Jasper and Rico and Tiny were all gone, on their way downtown to central booking and the MCC. Tiny would surely be going up to Elmira or someplace like that for the illegal gun charge, which would be his third overall and second as an adult.

“God damn, it’s hot out here today,” Angel said, looking up and down the block as the snowflakes thickened on his shoulders and around his feet. No one responded for a while but then Caesar spoke up.

“Hey yo, Angel. I aint no pussy and you know I always stand tall for my crew, but this motherfucker Tito aint no joke, man. Him and that nigga Maceo been known to drop bodies when peoples don’t get out they way, son. He gonna be back. Only a matter of time.” A car alarm started blaring a block away. A few more junkies came and went, but not enough. Some of the boys started bitching about the falling temperature and the rising winds. After several minutes of reading his newspaper Angel eventually responded.

“Yo, I don’t give a fuck about no Tito and I don’t give a fuck how cold it get. I do give a fuck that you aint get me something to drink down there, Tony. How much that shit cost? Ninety nine cent? Damn son, you better get yo ass back down there and bring me back an ice tea.” Angel pulled a five dollar bill from his pocket, crumbled it up and threw it at No-Neck Tony, who just left it lying on the ground as he walked back towards the corner bodega.

Angel exhaled audibly and raised his voice to address the whole group of them, five guys in all now, scattered around the stoop. “Y’all motherfuckers know how to look out for me, right? You my crew. You got my back!” It wasn’t a question. The tattoo reading Trinitarios in a thin black script just below his right eye was almost illegible due to the angry cast of his face and after a moment he got up and declared that he had to take a piss, then disappeared into the building as the snow began to pile up on the sidewalk around the crumbled five dollar bill.

No one said anything for a little while, but finally Caesar spoke up. He was generally considered to be Angel’s right hand man and second in charge of this crew. When Angel had to be somewhere else he always left Caesar in charge of the count.

“Hey yo, I don’t really know how to say this shit but I think Angel is buggin’, man. Just sitting out here and waiting for bullets to fly is fuckin’ stupid. We should at least tool up and get ready for these niggas, right? I’m nineteen years old and I damn sure want to live to see twenty, yo. We gotta talk to Angel when he come back down. This shit is crazy, y’all.”

Caesar’s words loosened several tongues at once, and the crew that was working the corner on that day quickly broke into a one-sided discussion about the realities of survival on the streets of Harlem.

“It’s so fucking dumb, man. We just waiting to get lit up out here.”

“Word, this is craziness, son. I aint trying to die before my baby’s born. We sittin’ ducks out here right now.”

“This nigga Tito aint no joke, Caesar. You know my cousin ‘Nando seen him and Maceo drop them two Jamaican dudes on 125th Street last summer. Sent people running and screaming everywhere. Y’all remember. That shit was front page news, New York Post. For real.”

“Hey yo, Caesar. You need to talk to him, man. He’ll listen to you.”

A few more buyers came and went, leaving their foot tracks in the mounting sidewalk snow, before Angel returned. He resumed the same spot where he had been sitting on the stoop and his smile was back as he popped open the can of ice tea that Tony had left for him. An old Acura Integra with tinted windows raced up the block towards the corner. Everyone seemed to brace for what might happen next except Angel, who just kept his head down. The car pulled over to the curb and the passenger window dropped. A scrawny white kid with a sad excuse for a goatee leaned out a bit and quickly waved a twenty dollar bill. “Let me get two,” he said.

Just as the Acura pulled away a black Chevy Tahoe SUV pulled up and this time when the passenger window dropped Maceo leaned out with a Beretta 9mm pistol in his right hand. He shook his head briefly and then waggled the gun back and forth. As the Tahoe pulled away he fired two random shots into the sidewalk. He wasn’t trying to hit anyone but they all knew what it meant. He would be back, and next time he would take aim.

The whole crew was quiet for a bit, waiting for Angel to say something, but he just drank his ice tea and read his newspaper and ignored this casus belli. Just as Caesar walked over and leaned up against the railing next to him, looking like he was about to break the ice, a white Audi A6 slowly pulled around the corner.

“Time for a re-up. Keep an eye on things, Caesar. You the man. I’ll be right back,” Angel said in his rapid-fire cadence of speech as he walked over to meet the car at the curb and opened the passenger-side back door. Before he climbed in Caesar shook his head slightly and called out to him.

“Hey yo, Angel. What we supposed to do if this cat come back around while you gone?”

Angel gave him that same broad, silly grin. “Shoot that motherfucker. Or run I guess. Shit man, I gotta tell you everything?” He barked a laugh then slammed the door and the car raced off down the block and made a hard right, disappearing out of sight.

Caesar didn’t seem to know just what to say and everyone else remained silent and about ten minutes later the white Audi returned and Angel hopped out of the backseat with a small but stuffed brown paper bag in his hand. He took this inside to his grandmother’s apartment and came right back out to the stoop.

“So what I miss? Why y’all niggas so quiet?”

Caesar spoke up.

“Hey yo, Angel. I think we all just a little riled about Tito and Maceo. Maybe we need to take this indoors for a minute. Let them little hoppers down on the corner handle business until we get this shit sorted out.”

Angel frowned at his best friend, a look of semi-disgust in his eyes.

“Shit. Pull the car around, Caesar. I’ll go get my whistle and we can go sort this shit out right now. I aint scared’a these motherfuckers. I’m just trying to be a gentleman but-.” Angel stopped talking and looked up. “Ay yo, we got customers.” Two guys in filthy clothing were walking up the block towards them. Caesar gave the hand signal and Arturo came running across the street with his hands in his coat pockets, kicking up slush as he went.

Right after one of the guys handed over two twenty dollar bills and Arturo gave him the four small bags he grabbed the boy by the shoulder and held him in place. He and his partner both pulled the NYPD badges hanging from neck chains beneath their shirts and told everyone not to move. The taller cop was looking at Angel the whole time. He obviously knew and just a few seconds later two black unmarked Crown Vics pulled up to the curb with their dash lights flashing and four more cops had them surrounded quickly. They had a search warrant for Angel’s grandmother’s apartment. The snow was really starting to fall and blow almost sideways in the wind now.

Just before the NYPD Narcotics Task Force officers cuffed and stuffed the remaining members of the corner crew that day, Angel looked over at Caesar and just shook his head.

“God damn, it’s hot out here today,” was all Caesar could say.

“Hottest day of the year,” Angel replied.

Caesar was quiet for a moment.

“See you down at The Tombs, or maybe the indictment. Hope you got a toothbrush on you.”

Angel just smiled and lifted his chin a little bit.

“See you at Rikers. Find a deck of cards. We prolly gonna be there for a minute.”

"Well, I aint seen your cousin for a while, so..."

Angel instinctively tried to throw up the three-finger hand sign before he was lowered into the backseat but his hands were cuffed behind his back and as the police cars pulled away the snow was falling hard and the temperature had dipped below ten degrees for the first time that day. It would drop further overnight and the city would be blanketed in white when the sun rose and Angel looked out the windows of the Manhattan Correctional Center the following morning, just hoping for the chance to get in front of a judge before the end of the day. He knew he wouldn't be released but it was dangerous here and this was Friday. He didn't want to be there in The Tombs for the whole weekend awaiting a Monday court appearance. The sooner he got to Rikers with the rest of his people the sooner he would be able to get some sleep.

THE END