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  The Lord of Sugar Hill

  Jerome Charyn

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media

  Ebook

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  1

  HE WAS THE BLACK EAGLE, not because of his prowess in the courtroom, but because he had his own lair on Sugar Hill, overlooking the ruins of Harlem. He could have moved to Park Avenue with his former fiancée, Tatiana Klein, but he didn’t want to bunk down with all the honky rednecks. He had an office on Madison, and was seldom there. His junior partner, Harris Teitelbaum, squatted in the office when he wasn’t out in the field with mid-level wise guys or renegade millionaires.

  He himself had only one client, Byron Abando, Mafia prince with a Phi Beta Kappa key who kept out of jail with the help of Edward Parkchester, aka Parky, the eagle of Harlem Heights.

  The Feds couldn’t prosecute Byron while Parky was around. The eagle destroyed whatever witnesses the Justice Department produced, and it was hard to frame this counselor who’d grown up in the Abraham Lincoln projects and was rescued from oblivion by a black detective at the 25th Precinct, Freeman Faulks. Faulks let Parky hang out at the Two-Five, beat up any young bandits who interfered with him, found him all sorts of scholarships so that Parky wouldn’t be tempted to drift away from school. And once his protégé was ensconced at Columbia College, it was Faulks who began to drift,

  Faulks who sucked on a bottle and soon lost his pension, Faulks who had to move into

  Abraham Lincoln Houses and become a bandit while Parky was at Columbia Law.

  The Feds didn’t dare arrest Freeman Faulks. The black eagle might swoop into their own nest, accuse them of manufacturing a case against a former cop. Faulks would hold up a liquor store, and Parky would reimburse the proprietor.

  He rescued Faulks whatever way he could, had a whole forest of clerks and spies to sort out Freeman’s mishaps, including his own white chauffeur, Giles, who’d once worked for the Rockefellers but was a criminal nonetheless. Giles knew more about Harlem than the black eagle did.

  “Mr. Edward, he’s been robbing right and left. It’s a maniacal spree. Almost killed a counterman at Amsterdam Liquors.”

  “Was he drunk or sober?”

  “Drunk as a British lord.”

  “Then who’s been feeding him whiskey?”

  “Couldn’t the old boy feed himself?”

  “He’s not an old boy,” Parky said.

  “Then what would you call him, Mr. Edward?”

  “A man-child lost in the woods.”

  The chauffeur parked in front of the Three Blind Mice, itinerant jazzmen who played outside liquor stores. They were undercover cops, but their riffs were much more important to them, their clarinets like brides they had to embrace. The Blind Mice wore granny glasses with clip-on shades and suits that had once belonged to waiters.

  Parky handed them each a hundred-dollar bill.

  “Counselor, are you cracked? You can’t bribe us in front of our sisters and brothers. We’ll lose our standing in the neighborhood.”

  “You don’t have a neighborhood,” Parky said. “You’re ghosts. You work for Justice, the Maf, and me. What the hell did Detective Faulks do in that liquor store?”

  “He unloaded, man. He was dangerous. Had dragon fire in his eyes. And his detective days are long gone.”

  “You could have pretended to take him in and called me on your cell.”

  “And break our cover, man?”

  “Jesus, everybody knows you’re cops. Otherwise you wouldn’t have lasted a day out on the street. A dead man could make you in your granny glasses. And your music stinks.”

  Their riffs had become famous in the Valley. Tourists were bussed in from all over the place to hear the Three Blind Mice. . . .

  He went inside a liquor store near Marcus Garvey Park. Its manager, Martin Bishop, frowned at him. Parky had smashed his window once when he was a boy and would have sat inside a cage at the Two-Five if Detective Faulks hadn’t convinced Martin to have a fit of forgetfulness. And now Parky would bribe him into having the same fit about Faulks. He tried not to stare at the bandage on Martin’s cheek. He hunched over the counter and began to write a check with his solid gold pen, a gift from Tatiana Klein. “Will a thousand dollars do?”

  “That lunatic pistol-whipped me. Did I ever deny him a donation to one of his police charities? I know him thirty years. And he treats me like a dog. Your checkbook can’t wipe that out.”

  “How much did he steal?”

  “You’re talking cash registers, I’m talking pride. Didn’t I see you through law school? I wasn’t a miser.”

  “I’m grateful, Martin. To all the Harlem merchants. And Free was just as grateful. That’s why I can’t believe he took a pistol to you.”

  Martin pulled at the bandage. “Should I show you what he did?”

  Parky had to maneuver like the million-dollar mouthpiece he’d become. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint Lord Byron, would you?”

  The bandage twitched with an excitement that wasn’t under Martin’s control.

  “Byron’s involved? That’s another story. I’d never put a crimp in that man’s style. Can you get to him, Parky, ask him to visit my store? It would mean a lot.”

  “Hey, I’m his lawyer, not his social secretary.”

  “At least a signed photograph of him and you in my window. Can you manage that?”

  “I’ll get you your photograph. But I want Free put back into the land of the forgotten. He never visited your store. It never happened.”

  “That’s correct. Never heard of Free Faulks.”

  Parky stepped out into the sun while the Three Blind Mice performed for a crowd of tourists near a bus with Ohio plates. The Blind Mice signaled to Parky, swerved their clarinets in his direction. He was entering a war zone. Giles had vanished with Parky’s lightning blue Town Car. Then the car reappeared with Giles at the wheel, his face forlorn, blood on his lip. Giles stared straight ahead, stopped in front of the black eagle. The rear door opened, and Parky recognized his old nemesis from the projects, Samuel Brown. Samuel controlled the Valley, and Edward Parkchester, Esq., had Sugar Hill. Neither one invaded the other’s turf. Samuel was a barbarian who might pitch an enemy off the roof or barbecue him with a blowtorch. Byron paid him “ransom money” to sit where he was and not venture from the Valley. And if Byron had a problem with some homeboy who liked to freelance, it was Samuel who got rid of the homey at a significant fee. The Maf called him Byron’s colored captain, but Byron was clever enough not to interfere in Samuel’s feuds, and if the warlord required legal advice, Byron would lend him his black eagle for half an hour. Parky hated those half-hour sessions. He couldn’t seem to forget how Samuel had bullied old men in the halls of the Lincoln Houses, robbed grandmas, felt up girls from his junior high, until Faulks found him in the elevator one afternoon and slapped him silly. And that’s how young Edward Parkchester’s affliction began. Samuel blamed him for the beating, and never stopped blaming him.

  He sat in Parky’s Town Car without a single lieutenant. He didn’t wear a fiberglass vest. He was his own calling card, and an open invitation to get himself killed. But no one took up the chall
enge. Because if you should happen to miss his heart by half an inch, or not kill him completely, he would rise up from his invalid’s bed and go after all your kin with his blowtorch and a gallon of gasoline.

  Samuel grinned with a mouthful of gold teeth, like the great Jack Johnson, boxing champion of the world, who’d settled in the Valley once upon a time, after white judges, lawyers, and policemen took his championship away.

  “Samuel, don’t you hurt my chauffeur, hear?” Parky said, resorting to his Lincoln Houses dialect.

  “Li’l Ed, you’re invited to all them banquets at ten thousand dollars a dish. Did you ever meet J. Lo? . . . With the heart-shaped buns? I hear she digs boots with stiletto heels that could cut the wrong man to pieces. I got that out of the style section. Don’t you read?”

  “Giles isn’t—”

  “Jennifer Lopez, did you ever meet her?’

  “Christ,” Parky said. “Yes, for a few minutes. It was at a charity ball Byron gave for kids with bone cancer.”

  “Did you tell her that she lost too much weight? Her ass has disappeared. They worry about her in the barrio. A Latina like that living with all the Hollywood riffraff and laying off the rice and beans. I’d like to go out with her, Li’l Ed. Can you arrange it?”

  “Only if you stop the car and give Giles back to me.”

  “Too late for that. I’m just the babysitter. And you’re the package I promised to deliver.”

  They arrived at a warehouse under the Madison Avenue Bridge. The warehouse had been part of Paramount during the silent era, when Manhattan was America’s movie capital, and stars would promenade on Harlem’s streets, dressed like Arabian princes and harem girls in silky veils. . . .

  A pair of gunsels were waiting for Parky. They didn’t belong to Samuel’s crew. They had coats with mink collars that marked them as Canadians. American mobsters would never wear mink.

  The gunsels brought Parky and Giles into the warehouse. There were still old movie sets lying around like fixtures without a function. The Maf must have converted this studio into a killing ground. They could pose their dead among the ancient props. Parky stared at a fake forest, or a tiny strip of it, with a lone deer composed of cardboard and papier-mâché. But in the somber light, the deer with its crown of antlers looked vivid enough to pass for a live creature frozen in fright.

  The gunsels never bothered to introduce themselves. They hid Giles somewhere, buried him among all the painted debris. They pulled on their winter gloves and took turns punching the daylights out of Edward Parkchester. They would offer him food after every beating. Nothing at law school or the Lincoln projects had ever prepared him for this. He was a criminal lawyer, perhaps the best, but the criminals in Parky’s cosmos were never so purposeless, never so detached. There must have been some meaning behind these men in mink. Were they looking for information or revenge that was outside Parky’s registers? Were they on a crazy quest that could only be interpreted by another Canadian gang?

  He vomited blood, fell into a stupor, and woke to Tatiana Klein. His former fiancée was feeding him a ham sandwich and wiping his face with a wet rag. The cardboard deer fluttered in front of his eyes, but the men in mink were gone.

  “Where’s my chauffeur?”

  “Poor baby, you’re so considerate. Giles is resting in our place.”

  “Why couldn’t he go back to Sugar Hill?”

  “Your place is being watched.”

  “Watched? By whom?”

  “Byron’s best soldiers. They’re prepared to skin you alive.”

  “That’s a pretty unique definition of lawyer-client privilege. Couldn’t Byron say hello before he decides to whack me?”

  “He doesn’t want to whack you. He’s torn. He likes you a lot.”

  “So he sends his Canadian pinch hitters to give me a rubdown with iron in their gloves.”

  “It was the best he could do under the circumstances.”

  The antlers were still in his eye. “Where’s Carla?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s also at our place. You shouldn’t have left me for that bitch. She’s white trash.”

  He’d met Carla at a bordello for the black bourgeoisie. She was engaged to a general who already had a wife. Parky was fond of this brigadier, Washington Starke, who worked at the Pentagon, and he didn’t want to watch him ruin his life. So he kidnapped Carla from the cathouse, meant to give her to white slavers in Chinatown, but he brought her home to his crib, and she hadn’t been out of Parky’s bed . . . until now. He had to break off his engagement to Tatiana, an heiress who was ten times lovelier than Carla. But Tatiana didn’t suffer very long. Lord Byron left his wife and kids to marry Tatiana Klein at Temple Emanu-El, and began to sock the Mafia’s money into her father’s private banking house.

  Tatiana had come with her maid, who was ironing the blood out of Parky’s shirt with a patch that could eat up any stain. He was bewildered. Tatiana could bivouac like a brigadier.

  “You’ll have to hide in London for six months. I rented a house for you near the British Museum.”

  “I have court dates,” Parky muttered in his own defense.

  “You’ll have to postpone. But it doesn’t matter. Byron can work with Harris Teitelbaum.”

  “Is your husband taking over my practice?’

  “Counselor, you don’t have a practice,” a voice boomed over the deserted cavern. It was Lord Byron. He’d brought a bottle of champagne and four priceless flutes that had once belonged to a king of Naples. He pried the bottle open with his thumb, poured the champagne, and offered a glass to Maria, the maid.

  He toasted Parky. “Salud, you piece of shit.”

  “Enlighten me,” Parky said, sucking up his own blood with the champagne. “When did I stab you in the back?’

  “Are you the last guy on the block to hear the weather report? Freeman Faulks is a registered rat. He works for Sandra Sutpen.”

  Sutpen was United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the high priestess of federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the Bronx. She’d gone to Columbia Law with Parky, had graduated at the head of their class. The Maf couldn’t seem to recover from her sovereignty at St. Andrew’s Plaza. She had a whole variety of rats, and when they performed for Sandra, she’d give each of them a pair of her own silk underpants. Soon as the Mafia got rid of a rat, they’d stuff Sandra’s silk panties into his mouth. And for a minute, Parky could imagine Free Faulks with his eyes closed, sucking silk.

  “He’s a bandit,” Parky said. “He holds up liquor stores, but he isn’t a rat. Byron, that was never his MO. He bought lollipops for little girls in the projects. He was a loner at the Two-Five. I couldn’t have become a lawyer without him.”

  “Don’t congratulate yourself, counselor. My whole tribe is asking for your blood. You went to school with Sandra, you dicked around with her.”

  “Christ, I was engaged to her for three weeks.”

  “That’s enough for an alliance”

  “What alliance?”

  “You, Sutpen, and Faulks.”

  “And I suppose Sandra is telling Free how to knock off liquor stores?”

  “You getting naïve all of sudden? That’s his cover. Counselor, he came to me a couple of months ago. Used your lousy name, or why would I have seen him? He asked for work. How could I refuse? He’s like your second dad. So I gave him little things. I let him collect. That hot little pistol was wearing Sandra’s wire.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I still have a few friends at Justice.”

  “And they told you about the tapes. But did you hear them yourself?”

  “I don’t have to hear. Free was a little too free with my own bill collectors. He started ripping them off. He attacks my messengers. Steals diamonds and cash from me and my organization. I’m not a caliph, Mr. Parkchester. I have to live by the rules.”

  “So you send Sam Brown to kidnap me.”

  “Would you have gone with anybody else? I figured you�
��d listen to Sam.”

  “He wants to fuck Jennifer Lopez. That’s all he has on his mind.”

  “That’s a worthy ambition,” Byron said, winking to his wife. “Hey, we’re all trying to keep you alive. And it isn’t easy, counselor. Tatiana’s put me on notice. No sex for a month if anything happens to you.”

  “Maestro,” Parky said. “You had to rely on espionage? You could have come to me direct.”

  “I can’t be seen with you in public.”

  “And what if I had nothing to do with Free?”

  “It’s too late. My family says it’s your problem. Freeman belongs to you. He’s your responsibility. You have to deliver him to us.”

  “Or what? You’ll keep Carla?”

  “Worse. Samuel will hunt you down in forty-eight hours. And Carla goes back to the cathouse.”

  “Where she belongs,” said Tatiana Klein.

  “So it’s hunt or get hunted.”

  He finished the champagne and put on his ironed shirt. Unbelievable. The blood was all gone.

  2

  PARKY HAD HIS OWN TROOPS. But it would have meant a civil war. He tapped out a message on his Nokia to General Washington Starke at the Pentagon. URGENT. RITA’S. Rita’s was a restaurant in the Valley where a black brigadier could sit with a Mafia lawyer and never be disturbed. Parky’s amber screen blinked back at him after five minutes. RITA’S. FULL MOON, which meant Wash could meet him at midnight.

  He took a gypsy cab down to St. Andrew’s Plaza and went right in to Sandra Sutpen, who sat behind her desk and smiled like a matador.

  “Sandra, when do I get the panties with your perfume?

  “Darling, you took my cherry years ago.”

  She wasn’t white trash, like Carla, didn’t have a halo of platinum hair. She was born into tradition. The Sutpens were among the first settlers of Long Island. Farmers and soldiers. Her ancestors had fought side by side with George Washington against King George. A Sutpen had been an assistant secretary of state, a lieutenant governor of New York, elders of Nassau and Suffolk counties, oligarchs of Long Island potatoes, farming barons, bankers, patrons of libraries and museums, collectors of art. Sandra had groomed herself from childhood for a career in politics, a fabulous, overwhelming career, from St. Andrew’s doorstep to the White House, not as a First Lady married to someone even more ambitious than herself, but as Madam President, supreme mistress of the Oval Office. Sandra needed a kick start, a big bang that would catapult her onto the national scene. And Lord Byron was the object of her desire. She had to catch him with his pants down, destroy him in open court. But she couldn’t do it unless Edward Parkchester, the Lord of Sugar Hill, was her accomplice. She couldn’t bribe him or scare him, so she played on his one vulnerable point: Freeman Faulks.