Kingston and Lacey were both more passive than active participants in their own lives, mirrors of each other in that sense. Kingston had inherited the mantle of running numbers from his late father, working under his wing after a brief enlistment in the Gulf War. His life’s work was more due to his own passivity than the passion for the numbers game that his father had held close. Kingston loved Gussy in his way but their union was mainly convenient. She was his Girl Friday on the job. Their relationship saved Kingston the trouble of seeking a woman attracted to his limited social graces who could also be trusted and accepting of his illegal trade. Money only goes so far. Despite over half a million squared away from almost two decades of business, Lacey, an exotic dancer from the projects, was the most ideal mistress he found himself able to draw.
Lacey, too, let her life dictate its own direction, leading from a bust-up with her mother at seventeen to accepting dubious advice from her stalker ex-bf Tré-Sean to sell nude photos to websites and dance at Hunts Point holes like Al’s Mr. Wedge and Golden Lady. The night a zooted pair of homeboys roughly snatched off her thong and dashed out the club with their booty nine months ago, she was comforted by Kingston, a familiar, benevolent customer, and their affair began.
Stripping his shirt, standing and leading him to her bedroom, she felt powerless to trip up the chain of events sweeping Kingston out of her life. Lacey thought sex might solve the problem, her familiar recourse. Their cigarette and cigar sat burning away in an Orchard Beach conch, plumes of smoke dancing an acrobatic tango.
Kingston returned to 1839 Bruner Avenue in the early morning to discover the SUV stolen.
Gussy would find the charred BMW of their steady bettor Wallace parked outside Fordham Hill Apartments on her nighttime jog to the Harlem River, stripped and torched to black cinders save for the pristine license plate: CRM-114.
Like aging hippies cooking organic groceries in a kitchen full of all-Hendrix-all-the-time, Gussy and Kingston were throwback ’70s soul babies. This wasn’t immediately obvious but there were telltale signs: Gussy’s leonine Afro and multitudinous silver bracelets, Kingston’s allegiance to jazz musicians like George Benson and Grover Washington, Jr., who were on the rise when he first started buying vinyl.
The couple met in Kuwait and were instantly simpatico. For Kingston the army was brief, another way to synchronize his life with that of his father, who served in WWII. Buckshot shrapnel lodged near his heart resulted in a quick honorable discharge. For Gussy the army was a career move lasting five years longer than the Persian Gulf strike. With her discharge nine years behind her, former Private Augusta Wilson still hit the shooting range a few times a year and took weekly power runs through Fordham with Parliament on her headphones.
On Monday, Kingston and Gussy put in a normal day at the spot. The sparse bodega Kingston rented on Amsterdam was locally understood as a storefront for his operation. Starting shortly after 12 o’clock, Harlemites stopped by with their three-digit numbers on betting slips, handing them off (with their cash) to Hillside at the front counter. Some old-timers sat for a spell with the Daily News, picking out items to talk shit about: the Maori-inspired tattoo covering Mike Tyson’s face; Michael Jackson’s expatriation to Bahrain. Both Kingston and Gussy fielded calls in the large back office, jotting down more phoned-in numbers. (Lacey played Kingston’s DAV-485 license plate in a box combination: 485, 548, 854, etc.) All day Kingston’s two runners — Pookie and Elliott — returned from the backs of bars, bodegas, barbershops, beauty parlors, billiard halls, and street corners throughout the Bronx and Harlem, dropping off their books of bets. Gussy tallied the incoming cash on an old adding machine till her index finger was sore, at which point she’d use the end of her pencil. From noon to 6 each of the three numbers would post based on the last dollar digits of the total handle from Yonkers Raceway’s daily win, place, and show bets.
By 5 o’clock, Monday’s number was four-two. Hillside left for the Bronx, picking up Chinese takeout from the Orient. Kingston and Gussy, alone, still spoke in code, agreeing to hold off talk of the Hernándezes until after work: City Island, Sammy’s Fish Box. Finally a zero came in. Not one person had hit the number. The three totaled all the final slips, over five hundred dollars gross profit.
Hillside walked to nearby Hamilton Terrace to score from his coke dealer. Kingston and Gussy drove onto the Macombs Dam Bridge out of Manhattan just after 7 o’clock. CD101.9 started a David Sanborn marathon as they sped up the Major Deegan Expressway.
Kingston felt like a ghost, but in a good way. Ever since deciding to give up his patch of Harlem to the Dominicans, Kingston was more conscious of his interactions with the people he’d leave behind, more aware of places he probably wouldn’t see for a long time. He thought of getting skied with Hillside for old times’ sake, or fucking Joie, the former girl-on-the-side stripper over at Sin City who preceded Lacey in his life. Stress was at the root of his recent ulcers and so this new feeling of liberation was welcome. Kingston felt relieved, like knowing the exact date of his approaching death (and rebirth) and appreciating his last moments on earth.
“I know you been scheming. Them motherfuckers got it coming. What’s the plan?”
Kingston was getting distracted by the general lilt of a nearby conversation, two overweight brothers seated behind Gussy eating whole Maine lobsters and linguini. The larger man continually mispronounced Nikes to rhyme with Mikes. They waited on their own platter to arrive.
“Gus…” Kingston laughed. “You sound like Foxy Brown. Ease up, Sheba baby.” He took hold of the thick white napkin underneath his flatware, spreading it in his lap over navy velour sweatpants.
Gussy smiled, holding her head in her hands. Bangles slid to her elbows, jangling. “Héctor and Eddie were safer than they knew till they burnt up Wallace’s Beemer. They gotta pay for that shit if anything.” The BMW was in Kingston’s possession as a marker, till one of his regulars finished paying off a big debt. Now Wallace’s X5 was ashes. “Who the fuck are they threatening?” she asked heatedly. “They think they’re just gonna keep upping the ante until we get the fuck outta Dodge? Is a goddamn car bomb next?” Gussy lowered her voice. “I was thinking, maybe we could pay off somebody over at the racetrack to report what we tell ’em, like a fixed hit. If we had one of our own hit the number with Héctor and Eddie for some gigantic amount, then we could bankrupt the sons of bitches. Or… I don’t know who they pay off at the NYPD but we could find out, make a deal, and get ’em locked up for a while.”
“That’s good thinkin’. But really, kiddo, the way to do this is to leave in peace,” Kingston replied wearily. “We’ll send word back by their baby sister. Elizabeth was the one rollin’ up on Hillside last month from the get. She doin’ her brothers’ biddin’, we’ll let it ride like that. Once they know we fixin’ to leave, that’s the end a that.”
Gussy sighed, just as their bald, husky waiter returned delivering shellfish on a Formica tray. (Kingston, as always, ordered the lobster, king crab legs, and Spanish yellow rice for two.) She tied the plastic bib around her neck thinking back to when she first suggested Kingston invest in property. The Creole cottage he bought five years ago in the French Quarter had become the getaway home he’d never have brainstormed on his own. Though Kingston wasn’t much for vacations, running numbers six days a week, Gussy planned ahead for whatever retirement might come with forethought he consistently lacked. A condo in North Carolina, near an old childhood friend of Kingston’s, was Gussy’s first choice. But Kingston overruled, choosing New Orleans instead, for its jazz history.