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Everything was the same, but different. Twenty years after Marcus Casey had first walked into Attica Correctional Facility, he walked out again, dressed in the same clothes he’d worn back in the day.
The tailored suit and custom shoes had once been the height of urban fashion. The waist of his pants still fit right, even a little loose now. The jacket and button-down shirt, with the collar open in the city heat, were a degree or two snug, given that his torso was more heavily muscled than when he’d last worn these clothes. He carried a small nylon sports bag that held the rest of his worldly possessions.
Eyes always scanning, he neared the end of the pedestrian tunnel that would let him out from Central Park onto 110th Street. At the tunnel mouth, a gaunt, stooped figure leaned against the wall, but roused himself as Casey approached. Casey casually switched the soft-sided equipment bag to his left hand. He liked to lead with his right.
“Say, man, gotta dollar I can hold?” He rattled coins in a small, foil-lined bowl he pushed toward Casey. The panhandler’s dirty clothes billowed on his skeletal frame. It seemed the only thing anchoring him to the ground was the brand-new black and orange backpack hanging off one shoulder. His face was whiskered and creased, his eyes bleary, but his teeth were surprisingly even and showy white.
Even crackheads can afford new dentures nowadays, Casey thought. “Can’t do anything for you today, homes. I’m a little light myself.” He frowned, a memory shaking loose as he stared at the scrawny bum.
“You sure?” It was more pleading than threat.
Casey stared back at him, the corner of his mouth crooking up in a thin smile. “Tol’ you that shit would bite you in the ass someday, Ten Spot.”
The other man reacted to hearing his street name as if he’d just been punched. “Huh? Who you?”
“Guess it has been that long, hasn’t it?”
Ten Spot peered closer at Casey, the stoned cloud momentarily lifting from his gaze. “Fuck.” He pointed a greasy, trembling finger. “That you, Crush? Thought you was dead.”
Several teenagers skateboarded past on the street, the wheels clicking on the sidewalk making Casey tense for a moment. Gotta watch that shit, jumping at every shadow, every noise out here. Just been gone a while, that’s all. He tuned back in to Ten Spot’s slurred mumbling.
“You bust out?”
“Paroled. They cut me loose this morning.”
“Da-yamn.”
“Yeah.”
Ten Spot frowned. “So, you gonna get back into it? You know?”
Casey said, “I got an idea or two.” He started to walk away.
“You gonna need soljahs, Crush.”
Casey stopped, but didn’t say anything, only stared at the other man out of the corner of his eye.
Ten Spot cackled. “Aw, man, I’m’a get right. Now that you’re out, I got a goal, dawg. You know, hope and shit.”
“’Kay,” he answered noncommittally as he walked off again.
“You’ll see,” Ten Spot called to Casey’s back. “You’ll see.”
Casey walked north along Malcolm X Boulevard in the early afternoon. One thing certainly hadn’t changed—it was still damn hot in July, whether in the can or on the streets. His nose filled with the many smells of the city in summer—the acrid bite of car exhaust, the reek of stagnant water, melting tar on the hot asphalt. But he smelled other things as well—the green trees in the breeze, the smell of dry grass browning under the merciless sun. The wafting scent of a woman’s perfume as she strolled by. That one made Casey pause a moment as he drank in a smell he hadn’t known since forever.
He had enough gate money, what he’d earned inside on his book when the prison authorities released him, to afford a bus or a subway MetroCard, but he walked instead. He needed to take it all in again—let the energy of the city and its denizens soak into him. He needed to feel how the streets had both changed and were still the same.
A friend on the outside had also offered to pick him up, but Casey had declined. He’d wanted to walk out of Attica. He wanted to stride away from that cage that had held him for the past two decades, feel the screws’ eyes on him for the last time, and know with absolute certainty that he wasn’t ever going back inside. Either he was gonna do what he had been planning for the last 7,300 days, or he’d be dead. There would be no arrest, no surrender this time.
There was another reason he wanted to leg it into the city proper—he wanted to see what had become of the place while he was away. The city that had been his at one time. Not so much in title or name, but when he’d been at the top, there’d been no doubt that Marcus “Crush” Casey had ruled the streets of New York City as the head of the Vicetown Kings.
Now he was back, and he wanted to immerse himself in the neighborhoods he hadn’t seen in what seemed like forever—he wanted to see and hear and smell everything he had missed over the past twenty years. His friends could wait a bit. His enemies—their turn would come soon enough.
Casey stopped at a hot dog cart. He set his bag at his feet, standing over it protectively. Some habits never died, whether on the street or in the cantone.
A young woman in a watch cap and dreads was leaving with her hot dog. She was chewing and looking at the small screen of an instrument. He’d read about these new phones. They could take your picture or shoot a video the world could see in seconds. “Gimme one with heavy mustard and relish, the other with onions,” Casey told the vendor. The smell of the hot, cooked meat intoxicated him.
“No problem,” the black man said, a multicolored knit skullcap on his head. Without looking at his hands, he completed the order while glaring at a brightly painted catering truck parked across the street offering Thai fusion tacos and burritos. Several patrons stood in a line to order at its window. Casey figured the interloper would find his tires slashed soon, and probably not for the first time. Refreshing to see that New York City street vendors were still very territorial. Casey smiled as he paid for his food, appreciating a wolfish mentality.
Holding both hot dogs in one large hand and his bag in the other, he found an alcove step of an empty storefront and sat down to enjoy his meal. He could feel the inside of his mouth water and tighten in anticipation of his first bite. He chewed slowly, appreciating the individual flavors, the tang of the mustard, the bite of the onions, all over the rich, juicy meat. The damn hot dogs were magnificent. His enjoyment was interrupted by the memory of eating hot dogs with his son. That was a lifetime ago. Those days were over. Casey pushed the memory out of his head and thought about having two more, but that would make him sleepy, and he had far too much to do today before securing a place to lay his head and enjoying a short dog of real whiskey.
Casey wiped his mouth and chin with a napkin and got up to toss it in the trash before continuing on his way. A blue-and-white came down the street, but paid him little attention as it passed, the two cops inside chatting away....