The next day, Thanksgiving, Richie spent alone in his tiny apartment, eating a cold sliced turkey sandwich at his kitchen table and half-watching the Macy’s parade playing on the little portable TV.
But Richie wasn’t taking in the big balloons or the happy crowd or Santa Claus on his fucking float. Richie was picturing, in his mind but as clear as if he were there, the Norman Rockwell painting come to life that would be Frank Lucas’s Thanksgiving dinner at his fifty-thousand-dollar suburban home, his family around him, lovely wife, brothers, cousins, other womenfolk, including his momma. The man of the house probably wearing a nice white apron for carving the turkey.
And what had made the feast possible? Richie could picture that, too: addicts spending their holiday shooting up and nodding out in alleys and dingy hovels. Thanksgiving with all the trimmings, all the fixings: needles, spoons, veins, filth...
In another suburb, Detective Trupo of the Special Investigations Unit, with his wife and kids, had enjoyed a Thanksgiving as idyllic as the Lucas family’s. And just like the homeless in Harlem, Trupo received a free turkey from Frank Lucas, though it arrived late, well after the cop and his loved ones had partaken of their holiday feast.
The pumpkin pie with whipped cream was already a memory, and a football game was in full sway on the tube, when the bell summoned Trupo to the front door. There, on his welcome mat, he found a live turkey, squawking its ass off, flapping its wings.
The detective was still trying to process that when his precious Shelby Mustang, parked out front, seemed to speak to him: he glanced up at where the whoosh had emanated, and saw flames engulfing the interior of the car; soon the windows had blown apart and flames were licking.
He stood and stared, bathing in the seasonal reflection of orange-and-blue flames. Then the vehicle, as if this were July Fourth and not Thanksgiving, exploded like a big fat firecracker.
Even the turkey seemed impressed.
Jimmy Zee had seen, firsthand, the lavish Lucas family Thanksgiving. Right now he was in the bathroom, his shirt off, changing batteries on the little tape recorder stuck to his chest.
Most of the brothers and cousins, Frank included, were out in the backyard sitting on patio chairs, watching nephew Stevie, the baseball whiz, knock pop flies for the younger kids to catch.
Jimmy took a chair not too far from Frank. The afternoon was just starting to turn into dusk, and the crispness of the day had become almost cold. The big German shepherd, in the run by its fancy doghouse, was lounging after too much leftover turkey, sleepily watching the ball as it went back and forth between older boy and younger ones.
Frank called out to Stevie: “Come over here!”
Stevie, in a short-sleeve shirt and Sunday slacks, came over, tossing the ball up and down in his palm.
“Stevie, heard you didn’t show up the other day.”
Funny, Jimmy thought, how much disapproval Frank could put into his voice without half-trying.
The lithe, athletic kid said, “Yeah. I missed it. Sorry.”
Frank’s eyes flashed. “You’re too busy to meet with Billy Martin himself? After I set it up?”
Stevie was shifting foot to foot, not exactly afraid of Frank but in any case not wanting to make him mad.
Finally the teenager said, “I don’t wanna play pro ball, I decided.”
Frank leaned forward in the metal chair. “What are you talkin’ about? It’s your dream since you was their age...” He gestured to the younger kids. “... Look. Maybe I can set it up again...”
Stevie sighed. Shifted foot to foot.
“What?” Frank asked, impatient.
“It’s not what I want, Uncle Frank. I wanna do what you do — I wanna be you some day.”
Jimmy was surprised by Frank’s stricken expression, on hearing that; didn’t remember ever seeing his cousin look more unhappy.
Huey came from inside the house and ambled over to Frank. Jimmy sat forward: he could tell from Huey’s gait, his manner, that they’d be going somewhere soon, and Jimmy was the driver...
“Bro,” Huey, leaning in, said to Frank. “We got a problem.”
Jimmy could only hope that problem wasn’t him.
19. Harlem Hijack
In the back of his brother Huey’s Cadillac, Frank — in a tan cashmere topcoat as anonymous as the chinchilla had been flamboyant, yet almost as expensive — sat and listened, trying not to be irritated that business was taking him away from his family on this day of thanks.
Huey was saying, “I keep hearing our shit is weak. Man, our shit is strong, you know our shit is strong...”
“Nicky’s been stepping on it?”
“Stepping on it! He’s been jumping the fuck up and down on it! Been cuttin’ it so much, it’s down to two, three percent pure.”
Frank frowned. “And you tested it? You’re sure?”
Huey said, “Does the pope shit in the woods? Is a bear Catholic?”
Frank noticed driver Jimmy’s eyes on them, in the rearview mirror, and scowled at his stupid cousin, saying, “The fuck you lookin’ at?”
And Jimmy’s eyes went back to the road.
Frank breathed out and, half under his breath, said to his brother, “Shoulda never let you talk me into hanging onto that chump.”
Dusk had fallen when the Cadillac drew up in front of a nondescript building in the clothing district. Frank instructed Jimmy to stay with the car, and he and Huey went on inside.
The interior was chrome and mirrors and Naugahyde and looked like a nightclub out of Cotton Comes to Harlem. This was Nicky Barnes’s “members only” club, and today had been open only to family and staff — turkey carcasses and empty pie tins on the bar indicated those partying here today had, to some degree, enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving.
But things got less traditional quickly, as a bodyguard led Frank and Huey into an area resembling the VIP section of a strip club, right down to the naked girls who were cavorting with Nicky and a couple of his pals.
“Frank!” Nicky said, a long-legged wench on his lap. Nicky was in purple velour and lots of gold chain work. He gestured around the naked woman, a magnanimous host. “Welcome. Make yourself to home.”
Frank just stood there. “We need to talk.”
“Great!” Nicky moved the naked girl off his lap, like a guy moving a potted plant to one side. “Girls, get the fuck out.”
The girls, giggling, a little high, gathered their scanty things and disappeared into the adjacent bar. At Nicky’s nod, his two bodyguards exited, too, so Frank gave Huey a look, to wait in the other room.
Across from Nicky, with a little black table between them, was a modernistic black-leather chair, the seat of which Frank cleaned off with a handkerchief, which he then discarded.
Nicky leaned forward and laid out several lines of coke, then offered his guest first sniff, handing a rolled-up C-note as a straw toward Frank.
“No thanks,” Frank said.
“You must’ve been talking to Charlie,” Nicky said good-naturedly.
Frank hadn’t been, but said nothing.
“You must wanna hear about this big idea of mine, this Black Coalition. It’s great you’re here. I’ll explain it to you...”
That is, Nicky would explain as soon as he’d bent over to suck up a line of that coke.