The Ballad of Black Tom

Начало книги

People who move to New York always make the same mistake. They can’t see the place. This is true of Manhattan, but even the outer boroughs, too, be it Flushing Meadows in Queens or Red Hook in Brooklyn. They come looking for magic, whether evil or good, and nothing will convince them it isn’t here. This wasn’t all bad, though. Some New Yorkers had learned how to make a living from this error in thinking. Charles Thomas Tester for one.

The morning of most importance began with a trip from Charles’s apartment in Harlem. He’d been hired to make a delivery to a house out in Queens. He shared the crib in Harlem with his ailing father, Otis, a man who’d been dying ever since his wife of twenty-one years expired. They’d had one child, Charles Thomas, and even though he was twenty and exactly the age for independence, he played the role of dutiful son. Charles worked to support his dying dad. He hustled to provide food and shelter and a little extra to lay on a number from time to time. God knows he didn’t make any more than that.

Читать дальше →