the now...
// the innacity
1
The night weighed down with a humidity as thick as the tension in the city, a breeze so tentative that it barely coerced the boulevard palm fronds into a tetchy quaver, and a drizzle so hesitant that the grime wouldn't even rinse from the gutter drains. Instead, the pissy droplets dampened the dirty concrete just enough that the street lamps gave the Firestone Blvd sidewalk a greasy sheen. Something was going to break and the elements, at least, were averse to throwing the first punch and unsettling the precarious standoff. When the glistening concrete reflected a faint hue of purple, Detective Perry Twist didn't need the neon over the door reading
theInNaCitY
to confirm it. He knew that he was at the right place. A group of three black men and two women stood close to the wall chatting and smoking, the men in ball caps, jackets and loose jeans, the women in tight tops and skirts stretched over bulgy figures topped with caramel dyed braids. Various bits of bling glinted in the pale yellow of the street lamp. They eyed him warily. Another group of thugs hung out just a few yards down the block, sharing fist bumps. One of them in a black sweater with the hood shrouding his face gave him an appraising glare from over the shoulder of his cohort. A few feet from the door, a homeless guy, shabby with a greying scruff of beard not nearly so dark as his craggy skin sat on damp cardboard next to a tattery yet proud sandwich sign with the message "justice 4 SHOMARI" scrawled over it in bold magic marker. The old man looked up at him and rattled the loose change in his cup.
"He'p a brotha out?" he asked in a dry rasp. Twist only smirked. "A'ight homes," the panhandler nodded. "We all make our own bed."
The walls of the club passed on the dull muted throb of the heavy beat inside. Grinding the grit under his shoe, Twist turned and approached the entrance.
"'Sup?" the tall black shaved-headed bouncer nodded coldly in his quilted black satin jacket zipped all the way up to his thick neck.
"I'm here to see Marcy," he answered.
"She busy," he informed him, cocking his head. Twist wasn't short but he still tilted his neck back to look the bouncer in the eye.
"Vice," said Twist, flashing his badge. The bouncer sighed casually and with an expression unimpressed, gestured the white cop to enter first and followed.
The detective walked into the muggy warmth of the club as if passing through a beaded curtain. The sound system shuddered and whalloped the heavy churning beat to which some rapper howled incoherent profanities. Out in the hallway the music was muffled but the subwoofers still shook the floor beneath his feet like random jackhammerings and he winced with each bassy blast that rattled through his bones. A few steps in, the bouncer waved him to the cash window.
"Marcy, you gots a gues'," he announced in his deep voice, then returned to his post at the front entrance.
"Oh it's you," the detective was greeted as two dark eyes under a cap brim, amidst a round flat face peered up through the little window before narrowing in indignance. Marcy was half-black, half-Chinese, with her mother's Asian eyes, her father's African nose, a moderate brassy complexion and small pouty lips that spat malediction almost as well as they sucked cock. "What tha fuck are you doin' here? You stoopit?"
"Miss Vicente," he began in cold condescension. "What the fuck are
you
doing here?"
"I'm working," she said, the little diamond stud in the left side of her nose giving away the subtle flare in her nostrils. "Legit, ya know. Like a day job fer fuckin' realz."
"I coulda sworn as I walked in that the sky out there is as black as his ass," Twist remarked as he rested his elbow on the little window ledge and gestured in the doorman's direction with his free hand. "Don't you have a curfew?"
"Le-
git
," she emphasized with a trace of swagger in her neck. "Vukovich knows. Tha brokedown-ass bitch approved."
"Let's talk."
"Did I stutter? I'm mo-tha-fuck-in'
work-in'
!"
"Take a break," he glared with insistence. The heavy churning beat gnawed at his nerves. Marcy's mouth got even tighter as she furrowed her brow at him in contemplation for a moment before exhaling in relent and rolling back in her chair.
"Hey Booty!" she called over her shoulder into the unseen corners of the dingy club behind the checked coats. Twist seized the opportunity to take in the view of her soft cleavage on display through the little window. "Can you cover me for a few?"
2
She led the detective through the club, past the bar line packed with afros dreadlocks and shaved heads, even a couple of cornrow tops, then along the edge of the noisy gyrating crowd (of perhaps 400 which was almost certainly in violation of fire safety code for the small joint) on the dance floor under the shifting colored lights, past the left stack of the house speakers and the stage where the gaunt deejay in a rasta bonnet and long thin goatee controlled the beat while the emcee in his thick bare chest and tattooed muscled arms and sideways ball cap had the fingers of one hand elaborately wrapped about the microphone at his lips while his other hand hung over the front row bobbing in rhythm, then into a narrow hallway connecting the washrooms and finally to the back door where another bouncer in smooth black leather nodded and pushed it open for them to step into the cooler air of the damp night.
Twist stood in the alley, the spittle of rain not enough to wet his thick and unkempt dark and wiry locks, the odd drop of dew merely ensnaring itself fully intact in the dim corona around the edges of his head, cast by the street lamp at the end of the block. He was a slender man of low maintenance, his hollow cheeks peppered with a couple of days of stubble, and stood with a slight stoop. The blue-grey suit that hung about him was well-worn and long since broken to the contours of his frame, and the entirety of his style was carried in a mauve silk shirt left open at the collar. Marcy, on the other hand, was fully decked out for the evening in black platform wedges with gold zippers up the front just past her ankles. Fishnets kept her fleshy thighs together and a black miniskirt clung to her round hips and protrudent booty while a white blouse pinstriped in gold had sleeves rolled up to display stacks of bangles and bracelets and was knotted beneath her bust, showing off the black lacy edges of her bra's cups and the large soft mounds of her tits with deep crevice between where suspended from a thin chain, the one-inch high letters JJ in gold and studded with small diamonds in their hanging curls rested just above. The little black satin cropped jacket that she had donned for the outdoors did nothing to cover her midriff, the dangly diamond hook in her navel nor the roll of flesh about her waist cinched by the tight fit of her skirt. Her hair hung down in one length, black shiny and perfectly straight, from which the golden arcs of three-inch hoop earrings emerged as they subtly swayed, was trimmed neatly just above her ass and was topped with a crisp new black ball cap with the font 'Lakers' stitched across the front in gold threading.
"You call that shit music?" he remarked.
"What the fuck you want?" she pressed him to get to the point.
"Turn around."
"Serious like? Out here?"
"Assume the position," he insisted in the onset of his mild agitation. Marcy huffed in displeasure of her capitulation.
"You got a lotta nerve, a white cop alone in this hood. After what you guys did, there's brothas here dat'll bust a cap in yo skim milk ass first and chat you up later," she advised. "I mean I know this is one sweet piece o' tail but wouldn't it be easier to just do the massage parlor thang if you so hard up?"
"I prefer it this way. Now, let's go," he insisted with a quick shove to the chest that stepped her back.
"Just gimme a minute ta git my fuckin' diaphragm on," she said as she dug into her shiny gold handbag.
"That didn't stop you before," he smirked.
"I wasn't gettin' fucked by a
pig
