The Case of the Graffiti Artist

A short story with artwork by Kellie Malovoz. Read the companion research article “Vandalism, Art, Life: The Double-Disenfranchisement of Graffiti.”

I put my keys down on the table and stared blankly at the wall. Here I was, back in my apartment, after a short stay in Maui. I thought I’d feel better after some time away, but really I felt exactly the same — numb, exhausted, as my heart quietly raged inside of my chest, trying to claw its way out of my ribcage. All because I couldn’t keep it together anymore. I always tried to act calm, cool, and collected during my exhibitions, but really, I was always panicking inside, always struggling, always suffocating under the weight of the guilt and the anxiety about everything I had done and everything I would do.

My eyes roved over the items in the apartment routinely as I let my mind wander freely, tracing the familiar outlines of furniture and old magazines and of course, random, half-used tubes of paint with crusted-over caps and near-empty spray cans scattered everywhere throughout the room. I didn’t really know what to do anymore. I had no inspiration, no mojo. A total creative block.

Mid-sigh, I froze. Instead of the familiar dip in my old armchair’s cushion, there was a figure, sitting very still in the dark corner. It shifted when it realized I had seen it. I backed away, terrified, clutching at the kitchen counter behind me, my hand searching for something to defend myself with.

The shadowy figure surged upwards, seeming to grow with each passing second. “Who the hell are you?!” I yelled, gripping a can of Campbell’s soup that had been sitting on the counter, prepared to hurl it at its temple at any given moment. Then the black blob meowed and jumped to the floor, its silhouette now defined as a black cat, which I could now see by the light from the window.

I breathed a sigh of relief and let the can roll from my hand back onto the counter. “It’s just a cat,” I murmured.

“Why are they bad luck?” I thought to myself, bending down to pet it as it approached. “I think it’s lucky. Anything unexpected is lucky, isn’t it?”

DING-DONG!

The piercing sound of the doorbell made me jump. My heart started racing again. But I shook it off and went to the door.

I swung it open, and standing there was a man in a plaid shirt, wringing his hands and looking a little nervous.

“Hi! I’m Michael,” he said, sticking his hand out and waiting for me to shake it. I blinked, bewildered. “Maybe not everything,” I thought.

“What are you doing here?” I asked with a quiet intensity.

“Right,” he said quietly, and put his hand back down while clearing his throat. “I’m with the NYPD.”

My heart sank down to the floor. My face must’ve shown exactly how horrified I was, because he suddenly looked terrified as well and waved his hands. “No, no, no! You’re not in any trouble.”

I gulped. “Why are you here then?”

“To ask you to come consult for us,” he said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing around.

I scoffed, somehow more incredulous than before. “To consult? On what?”

“Listen, I’m not really supposed to be here…in fact, I could get in trouble for this. But I just thought…”

“What? That I’d be dying to help you with whatever sick and twisted idea you have in your head?”

“No, no! Of course not. Let me start over…”

I raised my eyebrows, urging him to say or do something — anything, really — as he continued to stand there in awkward silence.

“Actually, let me go out and then come back in,” he huffed, briskly walking back out to the driveway. Before I could protest, he had disappeared into the bright light of day.

Slowly, I shut the door.

A few moments later, the doorbell rang.

“What is going on?” I muttered, shaking my head. Suddenly I smirked, imagining for a second how stupid he’d look, just standing there alone on the porch, if I didn’t open the door. But I figured he’d just keep knocking. So I cautiously cracked it open, peering through the chink.

He was beaming an egregiously large, shiningly white smile, holding out his badge with pride. “Detective Michael Matthews! May I come in?”

“Why not?” I asked, swinging the door open wide with a wide, sarcastic gesture. “Be my guest!”

“Thank you!” he said warmly, standing in the foyer like he was a dinner guest who didn’t know whether or not he should continue into the kitchen.

“What can I do for you today?” I asked with an impatient smile.

“I’m working on a case that you might be interested in helping us with.”

“Oh yeah? What case?”

“There is a new, young graffiti artist going around the Bronx. We need your help catching him.”

I looked him up and down for a second. “So, you think…that I’d help you catch him? Another artist?”

Matthews’ face fell. “Well, I — I — ” he stammered.

“I, I, I!” I mocked him. He stared at me silently. “You want me to help erase the only thing in this city that still has a beating heart? No thanks!” I said, pointing towards the door.

He looked undeterred. “I know it’s weird, but it’s the only lead I have to go off right now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Something in his tone told me there was a missing piece of information.

“He keeps tagging SAMO,” he said.

My heart skipped a beat. “SAMO?”

“Everywhere that he can. Damn near almost every single wall, subway car, and bench in the city.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.

“How do you know it’s not me?” I asked defensively.

“I compared them with photos of your confirmed work. And we’ve seen him a couple times, even though he always wears a mask. It’s not you.”

I looked off. Suddenly I was reliving a particular memory in my mind — Al Diaz and I tagging the streets of the Bronx. One day, we had an argument that had seemed like the end of the world then, but it must’ve been about something stupid because I didn’t even remember what it was anymore. So I went out the next day, a grey, overcast day, and tagged “SAMO© IS DEAD” on some brick wall. And he was dead, because I killed him, in my heart. I didn’t want to be anonymous anymore. And I didn’t want to share the name and the fame. I wanted to be Jean-Michel Basquiat, the king of graffiti artists, even if it killed me. Everyone else for themselves.

Matthews interrupted my thoughts. “My captain thinks I’m crazy for even asking you, but I figured it was worth a shot.”

I shook myself out of my daydream. “Well, Detective.…” I squinted at his nametag, “…Matthews, I don’t want to help you. So I guess your captain was right,” I said curtly.

Looking resigned but still dignified, he sighed. “I’ll leave my card here. In case you change your mind,” he said, handing me his card which he held between his curled fingers. I took it just to placate him, but a quiet “I won’t,” escaped my lips as I slammed the door behind him.

“Come on, Rob! Keep up!” Kato yelled, recklessly scrawling a continuous line of red spray paint on the wall to his left as he sprinted down the alley.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea!” Tes shouted after Kato. “In broad daylight?” she called, but Kato didn’t answer.

I trailed behind, taking in the new sights, smells, and sounds. It was my first trip anywhere, and I couldn’t help but notice how different everything was. Up until now, I thought that everywhere else was basically the same, but I had been dead wrong. The wind smelled sharper, fresher, like it could carry you off with a strong gust at any moment.

In Bristol, there was more greenery, more blue sky, and more color in general. Here, everything was grey and brown, except for the occasional billboard. Ads never failed to put me into a bad mood. Maybe it was because of the horrible puns they always seemed to use. And of course, the constant scrape of the subway on its rails could be heard from underground as we passed any subway station.

It felt good to be somewhere other than Bristol. In Bristol everything was the same old. The only thing that weighed on my heart, though I’d never admit it to my crew, was the thought of my mom, all alone at home. She hadn’t known I was leaving, but she must’ve figured it out by now because I hadn’t been home in three days, and I had left a note on my bed. “But she’ll be okay,” I thought to myself, shoving any other thoughts of her to the side. Especially the image of her sitting alone in the kitchen, staring at the linoleum floor dejectedly.

I noticed that Kato’s red line served as a strikeout for various tags crammed together on the walls. The tag “TATS CRU” stuck out to me because it was a header above a curious mural of a masked graffiti artist, staring at me like he was offended that I would even dare to look at him. I felt defensive when I first looked at him, but on second glance, I softened because he reminded me of me. Not just because he was a graffiti artist, but because he was masked, anonymous. Just a random character on a wall, whose name didn’t matter because his existence depended only on the art. “It must be nice for no one to know who you are,” I thought to myself. “Because then no one can take that away from you.”

“C’mon!” Kato hissed impatiently from the end of the alleyway, as loud as he dared. Tes, who was standing at his side, rolled her eyes at me as she pulled the black bandana up from under chin to cover her nose and mouth. I had lolligagged behind them while musing and I sprinted to catch up.

“You need to pay attention!” Kato snapped when I finally caught up to them. “We need to be quick if we want to do this! In and out!”

“Okay,” I grumbled.

Kato slung the bag that had been on his shoulder onto the concrete and tore it open. A can of spray paint rolled out and back down the alley and Tes jogged to go retrieve it.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked Kato.

“Are you serious?” he asked, glaring at me.

“You dragged me all the way across an entire ocean, just to do the same thing that we do back at home?”

He paused, sitting back on his heels and glaring at me. His eyes were livid. “Listen, arsehole, I’ve already told you a million times why we’re here.”

“It’s a stupid reason.”

He would’ve ripped into me, but Tes had come back and she sat down between us cross-legged. So he just gritted his teeth and pulled out a can of spray paint to inspect.

“NYC is the place for people like us,” he said quietly. “If we hadn’t come here, we’d just be some stupid Bristol pricks who no one remembers, okay? We need to write on their metro, their walls, their city.”

“Okay,” I said resignedly.

We stuffed cans into our pockets — and anywhere else they’d fit — in silence.

“Okay,” Kato said resolutely, standing up, each pocket bulging with a spray paint can. “Let’s go.”

Tes nodded. We all pulled on our coats over everything to hide it, and stealthily, she led us up from the alley over to the entrance to the tube.

It was one in the afternoon on a Tuesday, so there were people around, but not many. A homeless man asleep on a bench. A mother with a stroller, gently pushing the stroller back and forth. Two teenagers huddled together under one of the fluorescent lights that was flickering. A bloke in a trench coat shifting nervously and waiting for the next train. We waited too.

The next train finally arrived with a screech after we had stood nervously for a few minutes. As soon as it appeared, we sprung into action, each of us getting to work on a separate train car. We were just trying to test out how much time we had before the train left so we could plan to do something better later, so we were just doing three throw-ups of our tags.

I stared at the train car in front of me nervously for a couple seconds. I wanted to write my own tag, but every time I had tried to during this trip, I always ended up writing the same thing — “SAMO©.” It wasn’t even really clever, and I felt stupid for not even coming up with a clever, philosophical turn of phrase like Jean-Michel Basquiat — the real SAMO — had.

I took a deep breath and started tracing the familiar pattern — a big, swooping S, a tent-like A…but as I worked I felt nervous for some reason, more nervous than usual when we did this. Like writing SAMO on the car was writing a spell, and something bad was about to happen. And little did I know at that moment, I was right.

The sound of heavy steps pounding down the stairs sent a shiver down my spine, even before I knew what it really meant.

“THERE THEY ARE! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!” A loud, booming voice sounded.

I turned to look.

It was the police.

My heart jumped into my throat. But it wasn’t just the policemen that had scared me. It was the man behind him — I would’ve recognized him from anywhere.

A brown Armani suit, white paint splattered on his shoulder gracefully, so graceful that it looked like it was there on purpose, white Adidas sneakers that were scuffed and dirty from wear, his hands tucked in his coat pockets. It was SAMO. And he was looking directly at me.

Somewhere in the distance I heard Kato yell something but I couldn’t have been sure. I felt like I was rooted to the ground, my heart beating fast, my mind racing, my tongue twisting around thick and useless in my mouth. All that I could see was Basquiat, standing there, off the side, behind the police, who were rushing towards us. Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion.

Suddenly I was whipped back into reality when Kato grabbed my arm from behind and yanked me away. “COME ON!” he growled in my ear. Running was the only thing that sort of made sense to me at that moment.

At first I could think of nothing else as we ran, but the further we got, the more I wondered: what had just happened?

After what seemed like an eternity, Kato finally slowed down and came to a stop in the middle of a gravel lot right next to a burned-out five-story building. I leaned over with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

“What the hell was that?” Kato asked me angrily. “You could’ve gotten caught! You could’ve gotten us all caught, you absolute dickhead! And then what, we’re all stuck in an American jail? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

He paced back and forth angrily as he hurled more insults at me, and even though I felt a little sheepish for getting all frozen up back there, my mind was spinning. I desperately wanted to know why Basquiat had been there with the police. It was very, very strange, and a sense of uneasiness and dread was settling over me. Besides, I knew Kato wasn’t actually angry at me. He was just worried as usual, and whatever he might say, I knew it was only because he cared about me and Tes. He had also been the self-appointed leader of our graffiti group, DryBreadz Crew. He had even come up with the name after Tes had choked on a bit of dry toast she was trying to eat mid-graffiti bomb one time.

I cut him off mid-sentence. “Did you see Basquiat back there?”

He paused, looking at me incredulously. “What?”

“The bloke in the suit. He was there with the police.”

“What are you on about?” he asked, more bewildered than upset.

“Nevermind,” I said. It was clear that neither of my friends had seen him by the way they were looking at me, but that didn’t mean that I hadn’t. I would just have to do my own research. I’d have to find Basquiat, and ask him myself, exactly what was he doing catching other graffiti artists?

I spun around on the swivel chair that was on the other side of Matthews’ desk, bored out of my mind. I felt listless, but really, I was avoiding thinking about what had just happened. For some reason, seeing that kid had rocked me to my core, and I didn’t even want to know why. It was like seeing myself in the mirror, except instead of feeling self-loathing as usual, I felt proud. But I wanted to pretend like nothing had changed, like I could go back to my regular life, even though everything had changed, and I could never go back.

I grabbed the nearest small object, a ball of rubber bands on the edge of his desk, and threw it at Matthews.

He jerked back and looked up at me, expressionless, but it amused me all the same. “You know you could be helping me right now?” he said.

“What am I supposed to do?! You dragged me all the way out here, and I helped you find the kid, but you weren’t able to arrest him! That’s on you!” I snapped.

“We just have to try and find him again,” he said, shaking his head and holding a document in the air while he looked at the one that had been below it.

I stood up, striding towards the door. He ran over and blocked my path. “Where are you going?” he asked, bewildered.

“Home!” I said ferociously, trying to step past him, but he maneuvered in front of me.

“You signed a contract!”

I rolled my eyes. Even though I wanted to leave, part of me wanted to say, just to be able to meet the kid we had almost caught. I smirked a little, thinking about how he looked like a pathetic deer in the headlights when we caught him.

I sighed, making up my mind that I would stay, just so I could find the kid again and talk to him. And I’d try to do it without the police nearby, ready and waiting to handcuff him and put him behind bars. I wanted to talk to him mano a mano.

“If you want me to stay, then tell me what our next move is,” I said.

“I’m working on it! It’s just difficult when there’s so many different pieces to this puzzle,” he said, sighing. For the first time, I noticed the dark purple bags under his eyes and how pale his face was. It almost moved me to pity, but I know that his tiredness meant he was perpetually busy with exterminating joy and life from the city.

I bit the inside of my mouth to stop myself from saying something stupid, but curiosity killed the cat. “Why are you even working on this case? Who cares if some kid is tagging the entire city?”

“It’s disruptive!” he said, irritated. He had sat back down at his desk and began shuffling through the papers again. I had followed him back to the desk and was leaning on it, both palms facedown on its cold surface.

“It’s supposed to be!” I returned.

“You think vandalism is art? Real art takes skill. Not spray cans at 2 am.”

“Graffiti isn’t just vandalism! It’s art, it’s life! And my art does take skill. I spend hours and hours on it!”

He looked up. “Not all of us have the luxury of doing whatever we want whenever we want!” he said angrily. “Some of us have actual work to do!”

“I work!”

“Not like the rest of us! You don’t know what it’s like to not live a glamorous life!”

I scoffed. “You don’t know me at all,” I said quietly, looking down at my shoes, which were as scuffed up as my life had been so far.

He shook his head. “Regular people have to do the same thing all day, every day, walk to work, stop at the coffee shop, get their $1.35 cup of coffee, dodge the shady characters on the street, get to your desk, shuffle paper all day, talk to your air-headed coworkers, go home, eat some leftover meatloaf for dinner, fight with my wife, sleep on the couch, and do it all over again!”

I was silent, bewildered by his sudden outburst. Yesterday, after I had called him and agreed to look for the graffitist (mostly because I was bored), we had worked together somewhat silently. Of course he made some demeaning jokes about graffiti, but I had ignored them for the sake of finding the kid. He debriefed me, and I did the detective work when we went to the kid’s last graffiti bomb spot. I had found a discarded spray can in the bushes next to the mural and realized it was from this one shop on East 149th Street. We went, saw one of the kids, and followed them from there. It had all seemed terribly interesting to me, but I realized it must be very mundane for Matthews. “He feels trapped,” I thought to myself.

He buried himself in his paperwork again, shutting me out, so I sauntered over to the kitchen area, picking up a blueberry muffin that had been sitting on the counter. I bit into it aggressively and chewed, but suddenly I paused. “This is the best damn muffin I’ve had in my entire life!” I murmured. It had a hard, candy-like topping that was a perfect balance between lemony acidity and sweet and sugary, the crumb was perfectly moist, and the blueberry came through just enough, the subtle berries supercharged by the blueberry jam swirled inside.

I stared at its delicious center. “Who made these?” I asked a nearby officer who was pouring themselves a cup of black coffee.

“Detective Matthews,” she said, gesturing towards where his desk was. She continued absent-mindedly, stirring an inordinate amount of sugar into her mug of coffee. “He loves baking, but I don’t think he likes people to know it. Last Christmas Eve, he brought dozens upon dozens of cookies, all different kinds. But he always sneaks them in here where he thinks nobody is looking because I don’t think he wants anyone to see his “soft” side, but sometimes I see him doing it because my desk faces the break room and there’s a crack in the wall in front of it.”

She looked up at me, but I was too shocked to respond. As she was speaking, it clicked for me. Matthews wasn’t an art hater. He was an artist, but he didn’t want anyone to know that a tough policeman like him had a lust for life underneath his cold, hard shell. Because being inscrutable was an imperative for his job. Everything made sense to me now, and I knew what I had to do.

I handed the woman the half-eaten muffin and sprinted out of the office. Maybe I could try to talk to Matthews, but first, I needed to talk to the kid. I had to find my imposter before Matthews found him first.

Earlier that day, I had gone to Basquiat’s house. I thought I’d be clever and check the White Pages, but of course he wasn’t there. Still, somehow I ended up at his door. By chance, I had wound up at one of the galleries Kato wanted us to go to, and had weaseled it out of one of the dealers by pretending to be a rich and snooty art collector. I still don’t know how I managed it.

I had knocked on the door, but there was no response. I stood there for a few minutes, absolutely miffed that I had come so close to greatness and yet missed it. A Haitian voodoo statue in the corner of the porch stared at me blankly, and it felt like it was mocking me.

I didn’t know what else to do. The curiosity was consuming me. And after all, this is what Kato said we had come to New York to do, right? Experience NYC graffiti culture? And what better way to do that than talk to the king of graffiti, Basquiat himself? But suddenly I realized how terribly childish I had been to think that I could just find a celebrity and talk to him.

I slouched further into the bench I was sitting on, observing the pigeons glumly. “Maybe I can go back later?” I thought to myself. But it felt stupid to go and harass someone famous like that. So I made up my mind not to, and I was coming to terms with it, when suddenly all the pigeons flew away. I turned to see who it was behind me that had disturbed them. I was expecting to see Kato, since I told him I would be here, but to my utter shock, surprise, and horror, it was Basquiat.

He plopped down on the bench beside me, clearly out of breath and clutching a stitch in his side. “Been looking for you,” he managed to get out.

“What?! How do you even know who I am? How did you know where I was? And why were you with the police the other day?”

He leaned back, panting, and his face contorted in pain. “Your — friend told me…”

“Kato?”

He nodded. “Whatever the little dip’s name is.”

He paused for a moment, and I let him catch his breath before I asked, “How did you know where Kato was?”

“We followed you the other day, from the art store. I figured out where you guys have been shopping, or should I say, stealing from, because of that paint can you tossed in the weeds the other day.”

“Oh…” I said, turning a little red. “That was me.”

He shook his head. “You gotta be more careful, kid.”

“Okay.” A couple seconds of silence elapsed.

“I saw your mural,” he said, looking away.

“You did?!” I exclaimed happily.

He smiled. “Yeah, it wasn’t too bad.”

I smiled too, picturing it again in my head. A chimpanzee holding a banana to his head like a gun. The word “UNCANNY” tagged above it in blue bubble letters.

“So why are you helping them?” I asked.

“The police?” he said, looking surprised. “Eh, I don’t know, I’m bored. Or maybe it was for the extra cash. And to be honest, I wanted to meet you,” he said, smiling at me.

“Me?! I should think I want to meet you!”

He laughed. “Well, maybe I wanted to meet you because there’s something about you…” he narrowed his eyes and examined my face. “You’re young and stupid right now, but honestly, I think you’re the face of the future. You’re going to change the world.”

“The face? No, I don’t want to show my face to the world.”

He looked taken aback. “Why not?”

I looked off. “Too much pressure. And then I won’t get to say what I want.” I shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true…” he said absent-mindedly. It felt like he was turning a little hostile towards me, like he regretted that he had made the opposite choice as me.

“Do you have any advice for me?”

“Advice? You’re already doing it,” he said dismissively, waving his hand superfluously.

I shook my head. “Surely there’s something else I should know.” But he was tight-lipped now. The cooing of the birds slowly gathering around us distracted me for a second, until I blurted out the next thing on my mind without thinking: “Is it really true what they say, that you did it all for the money?” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I didn’t think he’d really care.

“For the money?! Are you asking if I’m a…sellout?” he said very quietly. His cheeks were flushed.

“I didn’t mean — ” I began. I couldn’t believe I was actually in an argument with Basquiat himself at the moment.

“You think I’m a sellout?! I sold my soul to make my art better, not so I could do whatever I want, like you asshole Brits, running around the city like you own this place! You don’t even live here! I own this place!” he exclaimed, becoming angrier by the second.

I stood up. “I didn’t mean it like that!” I shouted. Suddenly I was upset. He seemed terribly childish to me all of the sudden, like he was just an unusually large kid sitting here in front of me, a kid who had never learned how to act. “If you really get mad that easily when someone asks you a simple question, then maybe it struck a nerve!” I added.

He scoffed, standing as well. But he just stared for a little bit. I stared back daringly. The tension hung in the air for a few seconds as we stared each other down. “You’ll never hang in the galleries. You’ll never have a canvas with your name on it. You’re just a kid who scribbled on walls. No one will ever know your name,” he said finally, very quietly and intensely.

My eyebrows rose. I couldn’t believe I had met my idol, only for him to turn out to be an arsehole. Or maybe I could. I guess it was cliché. Regardless, it’s one of those moments that change you forever.

Hot, angry tears were welling in my eyes, so I turned away. “Piss off!” I shouted at him as I stormed off, but my voice had cracked as the tears streamed down my face.

He must have just stood there, maybe in shock, maybe in regret, maybe in outrage, but in admiration with a twinge of jealousy. Later, when I was older, I realized that in that moment, he was probably wishing he hadn’t scared off his last chance at having a friend.

I kicked the rocks on my path as I headed back home. I felt more isolated, more bored, more foolish than ever. And of course, it started raining, to match my blubbering mood. I didn’t know why I had said that. I really didn’t mean to say things like that but sometimes, they came out anyway.

When I had gone to pay a visit to the other members of the kid’s crew, they were already shaken. They told me that someone else had just stopped by to try and find the kid. I asked them to describe who it was, and sure enough, it was Matthews.

He must’ve had the same idea as me, since the only lead we had to go on was where they were staying — an abandoned building on Trinity Avenue — because we had followed them yesterday. Except the crew had told him the wrong place as to the kid’s whereabouts, and they were hurriedly packing up to leave when I had come.

I convinced them to give me the right place, because they didn’t know I was technically working with the police, and because the girl, Tes, extorted me to make a small signed painting right in front of them, then and there, which I did. It was a small square canvas, and I just painted the kid wearing a mask over a green and blue background, with my signature crown floating above him.

Basquiat’s Painting by Kellie Malovoz 12/14/2025

So now I felt like I had no choice but to go and find Matthews, who would probably still be searching in the wrong place that the crew had told him, an abandoned building on East 170th Street.

I meandered there, sulking all the way. When I got there, I marched into the building without reserve, which was probably a bad idea, because it was dark inside and he couldn’t see who I was. I was met with a gun to the face and a loud “FREEZE!” from Matthews, his hands shaking a little. Then he blinked. “Shit, you scared me,” he mumbled as he holstered his weapon.

“Relax, buddy, it’s just me,” I said, pretending to be annoyed despite the lurch I had felt in my stomach.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, sighing.

“You really just left your partner behind and think I wouldn’t find you?” I asked with a slight smile.

He looked up. “You asked his crew where I was?”

“Yeah, except they told me where the kid really was, and I went and talked to him,” I said coolly.

“What?!” he said, shocked.

“Those kids lied to you. Why didn’t you just arrest them in the first place?”

He looked down despondently, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess I underestimated them. And if I had hauled them in, it might’ve scared the other one away. But what did Rob say to you?”

I shrugged. “We argued and he ran away.”

“Did you get any info from him?! Do you know where he’s going next?” He asked, gripping one of my shoulders earnestly.

“I think so,” I said. “Before I left, I listened from behind the door after I closed it behind me, and I heard them whispering about a place on Westchester Avenue. They’ll probably go there.”

He gave me a forceful pat on the back that sent me reeling forward a little. “Good job!” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, a little hesitant. “I had one of your muffins, by the way.”

He looked surprised. “You…you did?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “It was the best damn muffin I’ve ever had in my life.”

He smiled warily. “Thanks. How’d you know it was mine?”

I shrugged. “That’s art, you know.”

“I guess so,” he said, looking off into the distance. The rain pattered on the roof as he contemplated. “I guess so.”

“Well,” I said, “should we go catch those bastards once and for all?”

“Let’s do it,” he said, turning and leading me back to his car parked outside.

That afternoon, I found myself splattering paint angrily on the wall, practicing my wildstyle tag on the wall in the abandoned building we were squatting in. I was gutted by my run-in with Baquiat, and trying to get the tangled mess of arrows right was only making me more frustrated. I was using a paintbrush and a couple buckets of paint I had found in the basement because we needed to save our spray cans for the big graffiti bomb Tes were planning. She was always coming up with witty new ideas for our designs.

Usually, doing graffiti usually helped calm me down. But this time, I was only getting more and more irritable. I wasn’t very good at this particular design, and every little error, every little wobbly line, made Basquiat’s words reverberate in my head.

His insult didn’t really hit me until I made it back to the place where our crew had been staying after I ran away from him. It was completely empty by the time I had gotten back, and the only thing still in there was a little note Kato had left for me — encoded in wildstyle — that they had moved to the building where we were right now because the cops had dropped by looking for me.

In the silence, at the moment when I stood all alone in that empty building, staring at Kato’s note, I thought maybe Basquiat was right — that I’d never become anything more than a kid from Bristol. I hadn’t realized it until then, but I really did want to become great. I wanted to do something that people would whisper and gossip about until the end of time. I told Tes about my run-in when I found my friends again, but I felt silly afterwards, like I had over-shared. She had only nodded while I talked, and she didn’t say anything afterwards except a mumbled “I’m sorry,” and then she got up and walked away to go find Kato.

Lost in my thoughts, I went to dip my paintbrush into the bucket of paint without looking, but I had shoved it too far down and now my thumb and the handle was covered in it. There was too much paint on the bristles now, but exasperated, I didn’t feel like wiping any of it off on the lid. Instead, I tried to transfer all of it to the wall, smacking the paintbrush on the wall forcefully. Some of it ricocheted and landed on Kato, who was sitting on a large, unopened paint bucket nearby.

“What the hell?!” Kato shouted at me, gesturing towards the big, red splotch of paint on the knee of his jeans.

A few seconds of silence stretched between us before an idea bubbled up in my head. “We should do the big one,” I blurted out. Maybe I should’ve apologized first, but this was much more important than the paint on his pants leg, and I knew that he would be intrigued.

Sure enough, he leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of my face, hoping that I was serious. He was always eager to bomb at any moment. “Right now?” he asked.

I nodded solemnly. His eyes widened.

“The big one?” Tes piped up. “I thought we agreed that we need to do that in the middle of the night?”

Kato held his palm out towards Tes. “Wait, hear him out. This might be the smartest thing he’s said all weekend.”

“It’s not smart if we all get caught!” Tes snapped.

I interrupted Kato, who had opened his mouth to yell back at Tes. “I have a plan,” I said.

“What’s your plan?” he asked.

I smiled. My plan was to make us the most famous Bristol kids ever. “It won’t need to be nighttime,” I said, “because they won’t be able to catch us anyway.”

Sometime later we found ourselves on the roof of an apartment building on Simpson Street, above the highway, where we could be spotted if we got too close to the edge.

“This is dangerous,” Tes murmured as her hair whipped about her face.

“That’s the point!” I shouted over the wind.

In the distance, the sun was low, setting the sky on fire with hazy, bronze and red streaks. Kato looked out over the edge, shielding his eyes with his hand and gazing at the sunset which was semi-hidden behind greyish clouds.

“Back away from there!” I yelled, stepping over to him and yanking him backwards by the hood of his jacket.

He threw me a scornful look, but he didn’t say anything. We continued walking along the rooftop until we reached our goal: the hideous red and yellow billboard overlooking the highway. It was an advertisement for McDonald’s, and it had their slogan, “You deserve a break today,” plastered over a red background, a burger and fries to its right, and the golden arches to its left.

“Here we go!” I said proudly, gesturing towards the sign.

Tes looked at me, then at the billboard, then back at me again. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to because I knew exactly what she was thinking: “Should we be doing this?” But neither me nor Kato was stopping to give it a second thought. Kato was already kneeling on the ground, rummaging through our paint bag and choosing colors.

“Alright,” he said, shoving a paint can into Tes’ face. She took it hesitantly. “Let’s get started,” he said.

I nodded, and we got to work. Tes turned the burger into a rotten mess with a worm poking out of the top bun, Kato wrote “FAST FOOD, FAST DEATH” over the slogan, and I stood there motionless for a second, contemplating how to mutilate the arches, when something from below on the street caught my eye.

It was Basquiat and a police officer, staring straight up at me.

My heart went icy. “Hey guys!” I called, but they were working furiously and they must not have heard me over the gusts of wind. I turned my head to yell at them, “GUYS!” and this time both of their heads snapped towards me.

“What?!” Kato asked.

I looked back towards the ground, and I could see the police officer disappearing into the lower level of the building we were on top of.

“We have to go!” I yelled. “It’s the police!”

Both Tes and Kato’s eyes widened in fear.

I slung the bag of paints over his shoulder. “Let’s use the fire escape!” I shouted frantically. They nodded and followed behind me as I ran towards the edge of the roof.

The only thing I could focus on was my raggedy breaths as I climbed down flights of stairs. “What are the chances?” I thought to myself. “He must have found me somehow,” I thought, but as much as I racked my brain, I couldn’t figure out how.

By the time we were three-quarters of the way down, the police officer had made it to the top of the roof and was yelling down at us. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it terrified me because I couldn’t make out if he was holding his gun out or not.

Suddenly, I tripped down the last step in one of the flights and my heart sank with horror. I clung to the railing to steady myself, but I felt incredibly nauseous. I felt like sinking down onto the landing and crying, but Kato shouted at me from behind to “HURRY THE HELL UP!” forcing me to keep going.

Finally, we reached the bottom. The three of us were panting heavily with exhaustion, but a wave of relief swept over us once we realized we were safe.

Until I threw a glance over my shoulder, and saw Basquiat ducking behind a wall.

I seized Tes’ arm in terror. “What?” she asked breathlessly.

I pointed towards where Basquiat had been, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s wrong?” Kato asked, but I couldn’t find the words.

I was shaking in fear, and my instinct to flee again overtook me. I booked it for the entrance to the subway station, hoping maybe there was a train boarding down there, so that I could hop on it and escape.

I ran as fast as I could, leaping down the stairs in a couple bounds, and tried to disappear into the crowd. I kept checking over my shoulder, but I didn’t see him. After a couple minutes, I slowed down and my breathing slowed down a little too.

I began looking around and taking in the sights around me. There was graffiti everywhere. Once in hot pink stood out to me — it said “Lady Pink.” I couldn’t remember if that was one of the artists Kato said he had hoped to meet on our way over to the US. I stopped to look at it, still glancing around nervously every few seconds, but apparently, I had lost him. So I kept walking, trying to see if there was another exit that was closer so I could go back up and find my friends.

That’s when I came upon a wall with minimal graffiti. A lightpost had fallen over in front of it, and it was out of sight of the crowd gathered waiting for the next train. I stopped and looked at it. My first instinct was to paint SAMO©, but I thought it should be more clever than that. So I set the bag of paints I was still wearing on the ground, and suddenly the idea popped into my head. I got to work.

I emerged again from the shadows of the wall I had been hiding behind. Clearly, the kid had seen me, but not his friends, and I needed to slip past them quietly to follow him. Really, I just wanted to talk to him. I had an uncanny feeling that my time was coming to end somehow — maybe it was going to be a new era for me, or something more sinister, but either way, I felt bad for what I had said earlier, and I wanted to make it right before Matthews caught him.

I hesitated to make a move, but ultimately I decided that the best way to get past Tes and Kato was to just walk past them and hope they didn’t see me amid the bustling sidewalk. I was miserably wrong.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Tes yelled at me angrily, blocking my path to the subway entrance.

“Listen,” I said, “I have to talk to the kid! I made a mistake earlier,”

“I’ll say you did! We gave you his location because we thought you just wanted to meet him, that you might be interested in his works! And who are we to stand in the way of greatness, you bloody coward!”

“Tes…” Kato said quietly.

“But no! All you care about is your fancy art world and how great you are! But you know what, I’m not even going to sell that painting you made for us! I’m going to burn it instead!”

“Tes!” Kato hissed, looking past me. I turned to see who he was looking at. It was Matthews, coming out of the building and marching towards us. He was red in the face, chagrined at having had to run up and down several flights of stairs.

“WHERE…! IS HE?!” he exclaimed breathlessly, pointing accusatorily at the two street artists.

“Uh…we don’t…we don’t know — he just ran off,” Kato stuttered.

Fuming, he rushed past them and towards the train station. I hurried to catch up with him.

“Whoa, whoa, where are you going?” I asked him.

“He must’ve gone this way!” he said between breaths.

“Yeah, yeah, he did, but Matthews, don’t you think this is getting a little ridiculous? They’re just kids, and they are running circles around you. And this is all for what? To catch a teenager, who is making some honestly hilarious and harmless art?” I said, gesturing to the billboard high above us.

He sighed, scrutinizing my face.

“Can I be honest with you?” he said, looking me squarely in the eye.

I nodded.

“I’m just doing this for a promotion. My captain is trying to bury me in cases like these, and the quicker I can get through them, the quicker I can prove to him and to everyone else that I’m fully capable of doing this job. I don’t like doing this anymore than you do.”

“Why don’t you just quit?”

He shook his head.

“Your muffins, Matthews, your muffins!” I said, gripping him by the shoulders. He avoided eye contact. “You could open a bakery with that kind of skill!”

He looked at me disbelievingly. “In the Bronx?” he asked.

“Why not? Gangstas need their muffins too. And you’re a tough guy, aren’t you? I’m sure you could hold down your own fort.”

“Maybe, but let’s just get through this please, okay? I can’t quit today at least,” he said.

“Only if you promise me that you will try to open your own bakery within the next year, okay?” I said, smiling

He stared at me. Then he blinked, sighing. “Okay,” he said, holding out his hand for me to shake.

It shook it excitedly.

“Come on,” he said quietly, once again jogging towards the station.

There was a sea of people downstairs, all waiting for the train. It was peak hours, since the sun setting meant that everyone was going home for the day. Matthews searched the crowd, but I felt a strange pull to walk past the crowd to a space beyond the platform where no one was standing.

I froze. My nostrils flared at the smell of wet paint, and the screeching of a distant train faded into the background. My own face was staring back at me from the wall, a broken crown at my side, a pair of cartoon heart eyes bulging from my head, transfixed by a pile of green cash. On the other side was the masked kid, his arms encircling the money, stealing it away from me.

Sketch of the Kid’s Mural by Kellie Malovoz 12/14/2025

I let out a bitter laugh, whispering, “You’ll outlive me, kid. You’ve got what it takes. And I guess what I said is true, if that’s really your plan — that no one will know your name.” I turned away. Matthews trotted up to me and asked if I had seen him. I shook my head, but as we left, I glanced back one more time at where the mural was and smiled.

The End