[center][b]Prologue[/b] [i]"Melting pot Harlem—Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown."[/i] -- Langston Hughes[/center] Harlem. There's nowhere else like it in the world. I always hated school, but I loved listening and reading about the history of the neighborhood. A bunch of Dutch settlers founded Harlem as a village way back in 1658, named if after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Back in the day everyone from Alexander Hamilton to Harry Houdini called Harlem home. It's where Jim Reese Europe invented Jazz music. It's where Norman Rockwell, that guy who painted all those pictures of happy white people, was raised. In the early 20th century black people began flocking here in en masse to escape the Jim Crow south. Sometime during that migration a twelve year old boy from South Carolina by the name of Joe Lucas made his way up to Harlem. He'd be my great grandfather. Joe was here during the Renaissance, when Louis Armstrong blew his horn and Langston Hughes wrote about a dream deferred. The 20's and 30's were filled with beauty and intense horror. For every Marcus Garvey or Lena Horne you had gangsters like Queenie St. Clair, the Madam of Harlem herself, and Bumpy Johnson who ran numbers and pushed Horse for the mob. The speakeasies and underground jazz clubs in Harlem were the best in the world during Prohibition. Naturally white people came running. The Cotton Club, located in Harlem and built on the backs of ever great Jazz musician of the day, was white's only. We were good enough to smuggle the booze, serve it, and even sing while they drank it but we sure as hell couldn't sit beside them and drink it. The sixties brought Frank Lucas, the man who ran the East Coast heroin trade and forced the mob to bend to their knee. Civil Rights and rent strikes existed concurrent to Lucas' drug empire. Half of the neighborhood were getting their heads stomped by riot police, the other half were blasting hypos full of heroin into their veins. Cheap and strong heroin gutted the neighborhood. Junkies and unemployment plagued Harlem over the years. Crime got so bad that anybody with any kind of money got while the getting was good. Upper and middle class flight meant that only the poorest and most desperate will still around in the eighties. That was when I entered the scene. Crack was king when I was growing up, plenty of people I went to school with and knew around the neighborhood chased the rock until there wasn't anything left of them but skin and bones, so empty you could hear their insides echo when they walked. Those of us that didn't smoke it ended up selling it. I was sixteen years old when I left school for good to work on a corner. Four years of ripping and running on the streets and I got pinched. The funny thing was that, for all the shit I did as a corner boy, I actually went to jail for something I didn't do. Ten years away and I came back to a different Harlem. It was still tough and dangerous, but it was on the comeback. Good people were tired of how it was around here and wanted to change it. Right now they're trying to turn things around without reverting to the soul destroying process of gentrification, but it isn't easy. There's a lot of money to be had in that game. the temptation to gut that old rowhouse and turn it into a yuppie condo is fierce. But if there's one thing I've learned about Harlem over the years is that the people are tough. Black don't crack, and it certainly don't run. Through good times and bad times, Harlem still survives. **** [b]Harlem, Manhattan 9:22 PM[/b] Greasy moo goo gai pan was my dinner that night. Red Dragon's on West 131st Street near the playground. Mr. Hsu always made a new batch of it whenever I walked in, thanks for helping him out a few months ago when I stopped a would-be blackmailer from trying to extort Hsu. Turns out the old man was in America illegally after he jumped ship on a barge in San Diego thirty years ago. A little flexing of my muscle and the blackmailer stepped off and handed over what he had on Hsu. The old man to his credit turned himself over to immigration who decided he'd been in the country to long to deport. Also didn't hurt that he was the rare illegal that paid taxes. For helping him out I get half off moo goo gai pan and get to make eyes at Hsu's hot daughter while she works the register. There was a pretty steady rain outside that night. That's usually good news for everyone. Rain means the gangbangers are too scared to go out, lest they get their sneakers dirty, and the cops aren't up to getting out of their cruisers unless they really need to so they avoid banging people up on the small fry stuff that really pisses off communities. My previous observation was contradicted almost at once. Two NYPD patrol cars with rooftop lights flashing sped by the restaurant. Like I said, the rain is usually good news but not always. Joannie Hsu rung my meal up without giving me her number once again. That's alright, I'd ask again when I'm back in a week. I walked out into the rain and pulled my yellow hoodie up over my head. There weren't many people on the street, but the few that were all headed in the same direction: down the street and around the corner. The corner blocked the sight, but I could see the blue and red flash of police lights reflecting off the buildings. A few minutes later and I stood in front of police tape. My hood kept my head dry against the slow pitter patter of rain. The crime scene was at the playground just around the corner from the Red Dragon. Two uniformed cops kept the small crowd gathering back from the scene, but everyone could see through them to the white tarp covering a dead body sprawled out in a sandbox. There were murmurs and talk rippling through the crowd. I didn't take part, but I listened and got the gist. The body under the tarp was Bobbito Garcia, seventeen years old and a nearby resident. Someone said he had his girlfriend with him when he got shot, someone said they heard the shots and turned around to see Bobbito falling to the ground and an unknown shooter running from the scene. A detective in a cheap suit walked trough the crowd, flashing a badge. I started to fade back into the crowd to avoid being seen. The less police attention I attracted, the better. From my vantage point I could see the crime scene and the few places the officers had protected from the rain. Bobbito's body was covered, as was a small space I assumed covered up the murder weapon. A plastic baggie lay on the ground with a small card inside. I couldn't make out the words scribbled on the card, but I saw the logo in the middle of the card as clear as day. A bright red crown, dripping blood. Who murders a seventeen year old kid execution style and leaves a calling card? I didn't know, but I was going to find out. [center][b]Luke Cage Hero for Hire in The King of Harlem [/b][/center]