24

Last night around 10:00 p.m., Max Manning was alive. A moment later, he was dead.

Someone pointed a gun at Manning and either thought or did not think, “Yes, in fact, I will take this man’s life away from him.” Then he curled in his finger the way you would beckon a friend or a toddler would pick his nose. A scalding lead pill entered Manning’s skull at a velocity no human has ever traveled.

There it remained, I imagine. Max Manning either saw it coming or didn’t see it coming. He either fell forward, smashing his nose on the concrete, or he fell backward, his head trailing his body by a split second and snapping to the ground with a sound he could no longer hear.

I found out about the murder this morning through a police report listserv. The subject header on the e-mail was “23 PRECINCT – HOMICIDE.”

I don’t read all the e-mails I get through this listserv—there are a lot. But for some reason I opened this one. Immediately, I saw “70 EAST 115 STREET.” I live at 16 EAST 116 STREET. I thought, “Perhaps there are streets by that name in other boroughs.” I went to the NYPD website. I live in the 23^rd Precinct.

I closed my browser and decided to browse the crime scene. I walked south on Fifth Avenue and turned left on 115^th Street. I looked left—odd numbers. I looked right—30, 36, 50. I crossed Madison.

Between Madison and Park, 115^th Street is more like an alley. It’s just tall buildings and wide concrete spaces. The buildings don’t really have fronts or backs; they are just pillars of brick laced with fire escapes and air conditioners. The open spaces are just long walks for the people in these projects, who walk everywhere they go. The darker it is, the longer the walk.

I looked up and saw a blue, rectangular sign high up on the building. It said, “70 E. 115^th St.” I looked back down and saw a parking lot, a short fence, and a sidewalk. There was a metal trash can on the sidewalk.

A bunched up bundle of police tape—POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS—spilled out of the trash can onto the street. Well, I can’t really cross it when it’s bunched up like that, can I?

I saw no blood. I saw a tall Hispanic man walking with his young son, holding his hand. They were not talking. I looked around and saw more sidewalk and bodegas with their metal gates pulled down. I went home.

Around 8 p.m., I received another e-mail: “23 PCT UPDATE.” It contained the original e-mail, verbatim, in all uppercase Courier New, like a weather bulletin:

ON SEPTEMBER 24 2005, AT APPROXIMATELY 10:00 P.M. IN FRONT OF 70 EAST 115 STREET, IN THE CONFINES OF THE 23 PRECINCT, THE VICTIM, A M/B/29 WAS SHOT ONCE IN THE HEAD BY UNKNOWN SUSPECTS, FOR UNKNOWN REASONS. THE VICTIM WAS REMOVED TO ST LUKES AND PRONOUNCED UPON ARRIVAL. THERE ARE NO ARRESTS AT THIS TIME, THE INVESTIGATION IS ONGOING.

NAME OF THE VICTIM IS PENDING FAMILY NOTIFICATION.

Confines. M/B/29. Unknown. Unknown. Removed. Pronounced. Pending.

Below the original e-mail, an update:

*******UPDATE 09/25/2005 1810 HOURS JS*******

THE DOA HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS:

MAX MANNING M/B/29
XXXX EAST XXX ST. APT XXX
BRONX NY

NO ARRESTS. INVESTIGATION ONGOING.

Max. “Hey, Max!” Max, Schmax, he doesn’t really need a name anymore, does he?

After reading the update e-mail, I realized it was almost 10 p.m. At 9:35, I poured myself a glass of Jameson and put a couple cigarettes in my pocket.

At 9:55, stomach warm and strong, I grabbed my Dictaphone and walked out the door.

116^th Street is not an alley. Bodegas, bargain stores, and restaurants line the street. There weren’t many people out, though. It was dark, the only lights coming from inside the bodegas. The ground seemed to stretch out in front of me as I walked. My heart raced. I walked past people whom I would have looked in the eye yesterday, and I did not acknowledge them.

I put on a screw face. Not an “I’m not to be fucked with” face, but maybe more of an “I just saw something fucked up, don’t bother me” face.

I turned right on Park. To my left, a Metro North train rumbled over La Marqueta, the market that splits Park Avenue in half. No salsa music played, and spicy smells did not make my mouth water. The block was completely deserted.

I saw yellow light peek from around the corner of 115^th Street, and I exhaled. The corner bodega was open. At least someone would be around. I turned the corner.

There it was, right across the street. Twenty-four hours earlier, Max Manning did something here that we’re all going to do, in a way none of us wants to do it.

In front of the bodega, a man on a pay phone raged at someone. “You go STAND somewhere where you GET some motherfucking RECEPTION!”

A police siren wailed in the distance.

I crossed the street at approximately 10 p.m. The trash can was full of trash now, and the police tape spilled out from the bottom of the can.

Maybe UNKNOWN SUSPECT told Max Manning that he was going to waste him.

Twenty-four hours earlier. To the minute. You’d never know, unless you got an e-mail about it, or you were a Manning, or you pulled the trigger. If I had been running my Dictaphone twenty-four hours earlier, it would have either captured or not captured two men screaming at each other. It definitely would have captured a crack, the sound that surprises everyone, what you think will sound like a cannon but sounds like a whippersnapper.

I didn’t stay long. I did think about what would happen if someone told me he was going to kill me. I thought about reaching in my pocket, hitting the record button on my Dictaphone, and saying, “Please tell me your name. If you’re really going to kill me, please have enough respect to tell me the name of the person who will take my life with him everywhere he goes in the future and won’t be able to share it with anyone else, even if he wanted to.”

Then they’d catch him, because he wouldn’t know I had a tape running.

I went back across the street and walked into the bodega. A man bought beer and asked if he could buy loose cigarettes. He couldn’t.

I walked up to the counter. “Do you know anything about what happened last night?”

“I heard someone got shot, but I wasn’t working last night.”

The fuck you weren’t.

I walked back up Park. It seemed even more deserted. Bagged trash lined the curb. At 116^th Street, I turned left.

The man who had asked about loose cigarettes now walked out of a bodega and poured a miniature of liquor down his throat. Then he snuck up on a man who was talking to a woman and a child. He grabbed the man’s shoulder. The man, alarmed, opened his eyes wide in shock. Then he saw who had grabbed him, said, “Nig-GUH!” and shook his hand.

As I crossed Madison, I reached for my keys. “Always have your keys out when you get close to home,” they tell you. I thought about the first week in my apartment, when it took me anywhere between one and five minutes to jiggle the key and open the stubborn lock. I’ve since learned to open it in less than two seconds. I thought about a bullet slicing my brain during those two seconds.

I opened the door and walked up three flights of stairs, the clacking of my shoes echoing off the tile. I thought, “Ahhhh, home.” I remembered my friend telling me earlier in the day that she had looked at an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in Baltimore. She didn’t feel safe there, but she wondered if it would be “white bread” to turn it down.

“No, no, no,” I had said, having just read about Max Manning. I thought about how lucky I was to have the option of saying, “no, no, no,” how I can choose to move somewhere with a lower risk of being robbed, beaten, or killed. I thought about a friend from childhood who once asked me why in the world I would want to live in the city, and I wished I had superhuman powers so I could pick a giant project out of the ground and put it down next door to his house.

Once I got back in my apartment, I googled Max Manning. Thousands of results for Max Manning, former Negro League pitcher, came up. Not only is there nothing left of Max Manning on 115^th Street, but now he suffers the eternal, virtual indignity of having his online presence—if there even is one—buried beneath the legacy of someone famous who happens to share his name.

I called 411 for his phone number. There is no listing for Max Manning on 229^th Street in the Bronx, but there is an M. Manning, the operator told me. “I’d like that number,” I said.

“Hold, please,” said the operator. A robotic voice followed: “Please hold while Verizon connects you to—”

I hung up.