She has a way of pausing that makes Jones think he should say something. “You want a cup of coffee?” he asks, “and tell me this story sitting down?”
“All you got’s instant, and I already told you I don’t drink instant. Anyways, I gotta get to work, so let me just finish.”
Jones nods.
What she tells Jones is that the house next to hers, the downstairs of which stood empty for going on a year, has recently been occupied by a bunch of young guys.
“At first,” she says, “I thought it was college students. I think I was hoping.” She shakes her head. “Russell, he laughed at me, said look how they dress, the car they drive.” She pauses, like she’s asking Jones to consider these things. “Plus,” she adds, “the hours they keep. When are they studying?” Jones doesn’t have an answer. “No, they’re not college students.”
Jones moves his head side to side.
L’vonte says, “You’re thinking they’re a gang.”
He wasn’t thinking anything just yet.
“Russell says they’re selling weed. I don’t know about that, but they’re smoking it. I can smell it coming out of their windows if I walk up the driveway between the houses.”
She looks at Jones, as if he might not know what she’s talking about.
“By weed,” she explains, “I mean marijuana. Round-the-clock burners is what I think.” She shakes her head. “No, I don’t know what they do or what they are. The only thing I know is how loud they play their damned music in their car.”
She shuffles her feet, and for an instant Jones thinks she’s performing a dance step. But she’s just repositioning herself.
“Rap, hip hop, you know what I’m talking about?” Not waiting for an answer. “It’s fine with me, any kind of music. But not when they play it so I can hear it when I’m in my own shower. And not—” Pushing the air with her hand. “—at two in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.” She takes a breath. “Leastways not every night.”
These guys, she tells Jones, come and go at all hours, and it’s like their car won’t work without the music being loud enough to wake up the entire city.
“You can hear them coming two blocks away. They turn the corner, and the noise scares you. Rattles the windows, jiggles the glasses in the cupboard, makes the TV screen quiver.” She wiggles her fingers. “If you happen to be watching TV. Drowns out your own radio. It’s like an earthquake. It’s like a spaceship landing on top of your house.” She looks at Jones. “You ever hear anything like that?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Okay,” she says, “it’s where I live. That’s what you’re thinking. But this goes on day and night. One A.M., they drive up and sit there listening, like they just gotta hear the whole song before they can turn it off.” She shakes her head. “They oughta have some consideration.”
Consideration, that’s a sore spot with Jones these days. People crossing the street when the light’s already changed, blocking traffic, taking their time, sending a text message as they mosey along. Sitting around the coffee shops yammering on their phones in voices loud enough for a lecture hall. Not to mention the treble-heavy ringtones set at fire alarm volume.
This is where Russell comes in. L’vonte wanted to call the cops, but Russell said the cops wouldn’t do anything, how could they? They’d have to sit and wait to catch them, which they aren’t going to do, and even if they did then what? Say, turn your car radios down, boys.
“Now, Russell,” L’vonte says, “he sometimes thinks he’s Mister Street-Smart-Home-Boy-from-the-Hood.” She laughs, not her best laugh. “You ever hear him talk? He sounds like... like some actor or something.”
Jones knows what she’s talking about. Russell with his perfect grammar, never dropping the endings to words, saying whom and whomever. Jones thinks of Sidney Poitier, but figures that’s not who she means.
“He don’t sound like me, anyways.” And this time she flashes her good laugh. “Plus, he don’t look like anybody from the street, unless you mean a street from 1975 or something.”
Jones thinks of Superfly, but Russell doesn’t look like that either. Although, yeah, he does resemble a young Curtis Mayfield.
“So,” L’vonte continues, “last night even Russell was fed up, and he decides he’s going to go out and speak to them. I tried to tell him, but he’s stubborn.” Now, she’s blinking like crazy. “What do you think happened?”
She wipes her eyes with the back of her index finger, flaps her hand in the air.
“I was watching from the window. He goes right up to the car, smiling and waving like he’s coming out for a toke. They turn down the radio, and Russell says, Pardon me, gentlemen—” L’vonte mimes Russell’s actions. “—and all three of the guys jump out of car...” L’vonte’s eyes get big, her hands fly through the air. “They beat the living daylights outa him.”
She has to swallow, take a deep breath.
“One of them was doing this kung-fu stuff, the way he held his hands and used his feet. One of them kicked him about ten times after he was on the ground. And then one of them leaned over him, holding a knife.”
She stops. Then says, “I didn’t see what happened after that because I screamed and ran outside.”
She’s out of steam, and Jones has to ask questions to get the remaining details.
Starting with, yes, Russell is okay. He’s at home. He refused to go to the emergency room last night and wouldn’t go to the doctor this morning. And he definitely prohibited her from calling the cops.
Then, backing up to when she got outside. Russell was lying on the grass between the sidewalk and the curb.
“Nearly blacked out from pain.”
His face was bloody, both eyes swollen, his lips split in about five places. His knee was hurt where the kung-fu guy kicked him, and he had a cut, not too bad, L’vonte didn’t think, on the side of his neck where the guy pricked him with the knife.
“That one,” L’vonte tells Jones, “the one with the knife, he was standing on his porch when I got out there, wiping his knife with a rag, watching me. You know what he said to me? He asks, Hey, baby, you wanna come in an’ party with us?”
She helped Russell into the house, practically dragging him up the stairs, got him cleaned up.
“This morning,” she says, “he told me he was okay, just sore. He said I should go to work.” She flaps her hand over Jones’s apartment. “So, here I am, and that’s my story of... what did you call it?”
Jones thinks for a moment, says, “First thing, we need to get Russell looked at by a physician, see if that cut requires stitching, see if he needs X-rays or anything. I’ll send someone to your house. You’ll have to go there now.”
L’vonte starts to protest, but looks at Jones and stops. She tells him the address, picks up her stuff. Jones walks her to the door.
“Give the doctor an hour or so,” he tells her, and closes the door.
Jones is sitting outside at Aroma Caffe when the black BMW glides around the corner, Elmwood onto Bidwell, pulls up to the curb, and Konnie Kondrasin emerges from the back seat. Jones is always surprised by the man’s agility doing normal things, like getting in and out of cars.