The Poe Consequence

by Keith Steinbaum

  As he neared the store the following day, Face told Leticia what he expected of Tank after he returned the necklace. “Let him know I took care of my part of the deal,” he said. “Tell him I’m waitin’.”

  “I ain’t gonna ask you where you got the money, okay?” Leticia said, her eyes watering as she looked into his. “I’m just happy you got it. Tank will take care of you now. You’ll see.”

  “My sister’s the only one in the whole fuckin’ world I’d do this for,” he said, more to himself than Leticia. The next moment, Face bolted up in his seat in disbelief. “Oh shit!” he shouted. “What the FUCK?”

  Leticia spun around to look through the car window at the store. The roll-away bars just inside the door remained visible in their locked position. Nothing but darkness showed from inside. The “Closed” sign confronted them like a rude challenge.

  “He ain’t supposed to be closed!” Leticia yelled. “It ain’t Sunday. He told me he’s only closed on fuckin’ Sunday!”

  Face pulled over to the curb, threw his door open and hurried to the window, hoping to see someone inside. He fought the urge to kick his foot through the glass, disappointment scraping at his gut like sandpaper. He grabbed his cell phone from his jacket pocket, calling the number written on the window. No answer. No message.

  “Where the fuck is this asshole?” he said to himself, straining to peer through the window. He lurched backwards and turned to face Leticia. “Fuck this shit!” he yelled. “We’ll wait for him in the park!” Their time across the street proved fruitless. The shop never opened.

  The following Friday, after three more days of unsuccessful attempts, Leticia contacted the owner. Offering no explanation for the store’s closure, he told her that he had returned to the store and would be there that day during normal business hours. Face’s anxiety lessened when he saw the open door of the shop as they arrived. “Let’s get this fuckin’ thing over with,” he muttered.

  Face walked in and observed the owner’s reaction to his presence from behind the counter. The look of surprise, then visible concern, offered nothing unusual to a ‘banger like Face. In a neighborhood with gangs and trouble, everyone remained on guard 24/7. Today, however, there’d be no problems. Face had the cash.

  Remaining behind the counter, the owner looked at Leticia. “May I help you, young lady?”

  “I came for my necklace,” she said, pointing toward the wooden box, still occupying the same spot. “I was here on Monday, remember?”

  The owner studied her for a moment before glancing at Face. Taking a couple of steps closer to the camera, he reached out and flipped a switch on the wall. Within a few moments Face saw himself on the camera screen situated above the owner’s head. He felt irritated by the little man’s obvious paranoia, concerned with just wanting to take care of business and get the hell out of there.

  “I’m sorry,” the owner said. “I already have another buyer offering a lot more than you.”

  “What?” Face and Leticia screamed, in shocked unison.

  The troubled expression returned to the owner’s face. “I told you two more days, right?” he said, continuing to direct his attention toward Leticia. “You were here on Monday. May I remind you, today’s Saturday.”

  “You weren’t here!” she shouted. Looking at Face, she pointed toward the shelf. “The box is still there!”

  “So what?” the owner replied, looking smug. “It’s mine, now. I can sell it to anyone I want.”

  Complete clarity of the owner’s scheme hit Face like a sucker’s punch to the gut. The little prick purposely stayed away from his store until the end of the two remaining days. He never intended to sell the necklace back to Leticia. Face’s eyes burned and his muscles tensed as he struggled to maintain his composure. He reached into his pocket for the cash. Looking at the owner, he caught the look of nervousness on his face.

  “I got your seven hundred dollars!” he growled. Approaching the counter, Face prepared to drop the crinkled bills on the glass top when the owner held up his hand and shook his head, rejecting Face’s attempt at payment.

  “It’ll take a lot more than seven hundred dollars, young man,” he told him. “I did some research and discovered those are valuable fire opals on that cross. The necklace is worth more than I make in a month.”

  Face’s hourglass of patience trickled down to its final few grains. “Take my money and give me the fuckin’ necklace! “Now!”

  Taking several quick steps backwards, the owner brought his hand to his waist and pulled out a gun. Face held his position as Leticia stood behind him.

  “Get out of my store!” he yelled. “If you don’t I’ll call the police.”

  The street fighter governing his psyche could no longer be contained. With a sudden mobility that caught the owner unprepared, Face leaped over the glass counter, knocking the gun from his hand as the sound of shattering glass echoed from the misfired bullet. Blood soon gushed from the man’s eyes and nose as the relentless force of Face’s piston-like punches ignored the diminishing resistance of his helpless victim. He wanted to punish this lying asshole, make him pay for what he tried to do and for what he didn’t understand, but the sound of Leticia’s voice broke through the concentrated focus of his fury.

  “Face, stop!” she screamed. “You’ll kill him! Stop!”

  With his right hand hovering over the red-splattered face of the groaning shop owner, Face’s thoughts reeled back to the matter at hand. Needing to steal the film from the camera before they left, he jumped on top of the counter thinking he could reach it, but his hand fell several feet short. His eyes scanned the store looking for something to knock it down, but the high-pitched wail of police sirens sounded in the distance. He darted over to the jewelry box, removed it from the shelf, and handed it to Leticia.

  “Is that it?” he asked, eyes still wild.

  “Yeah!” she shouted.

  Face grabbed her arm. “Let’s go!”

  Despite their escape in his car, he recognized his fate. The cops knew him well, the camera proved his guilt, and he couldn’t challenge the shop owner’s explanation of the events. Leticia, however, had no record or known face, so they might not come after her. No matter what happened to him, she needed to get that necklace back to Tank’s mother.

  “They’ll be comin’ for me, not you,” he told her. “I gotta drive ya to Tank’s before they find me.”

  Leticia didn’t answer for a few moments. “Whatcha gonna do, Face?”

  “There ain’t nothin’ I can do,” he said. “The rest is up to you. And Tank. Go see him as fast as you can. It’s his turn now.”

  * * *

  Downing the last of his beer, Face recalled that day with pride, as it ultimately led to Tank honoring his sister the only way possible. Knowing Viper had been killed made every moment of his ten months away tolerable. But Viper had said he wasn’t alone that night and Face’s determination to finish off that second Lobo remained as strong as ever. If he wasn’t dead already, Face planned to send that culero to the grave as soon as possible, but in a way where he wouldn’t be caught. Envisioning an end to his banging, he’d leave the Diablos in peace, knowing his work was complete.

  He thought back to Apache’s anniversary again, and how the Diablos and Lobos started dropping from heart attacks starting that night with Swat. Was there a connection? Something indescribable had occurred without any explanation and maybe no end in sight. Along with the other Diablos who’d been contacted, Rocket, Thorn, Root, Zoom, and Haze, tomorrow’s meeting not only created added suspicion about the police, but disgust over sharing the same room with the North Rampart Lobos. But what else could they do? They needed answers and tomorrow offered them their best chance.

  Face wondered if they’d have to change somehow by turning away from what they represented. In the quiet of the blackened room, as the invasive ticking of a kitchen clock reminded him that time might be running out, he started to think the unthinkable. The Alvarado Street Diablos and
North Rampart Lobos, deadly rivals for as long as he could remember, were now united by a common enemy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Like strategic positions on a war map, four officers dressed in civilian attire sat in four unmarked police cars on the north, south, east and west side boundaries of the sports club. Forty-five minutes earlier, the six selected members of the North Rampart Lobos were shuttled to the meeting from the designated pickup spot on North San Fernando Road. Concurrent to this arrangement, several blocks away on West Avenue 26, the initiation of the same plan occurred with six members of the Alvarado Street Diablos. Along the entrance off Figueroa Street, yellow caution tape cordoned off any access to the entrance, while large white signs announcing the gym’s closure for the day appeared on the doors.

  When informed of the gathering, each gang was told to expect a search for weapons and that cell phones would be placed in two separate boxes in front of the two exit doors for the duration of the meeting. Two policemen dressed as sanitation workers conducted a separate frisking of the gang members before going outside to wait in the truck. At the conclusion of the gathering, their orders involved escorting the gangs in opposite directions toward the parked shuttles that brought them there.

  Within the aging confines of the indoor facility a barbed climate filled the room. Captain Dean and Lieutenant Atkinson sat facing the group as the point of the triangle between the two benches separating each gang. From his vantage point under the bright glare of the metallic mushroom-shaped lights descending from the ceiling, Atkinson diagnosed their darting eyes and slumped shoulders as telltale signs of mistrust and anxiety. He rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and addressed the group.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said. “Some of you may know me from my days in the Community Law Enforcement and Recovery program, or, perhaps, the Jeopardy program, but for those of you who don’t, I’m Lieutenant Carl Atkinson of the L.A.P.D. Sitting between you is Captain Sherman Dean.”

  Atkinson waited for their heads to turn toward Dean and back again before continuing. “The urgency of this meeting cannot be overstated because it involves each and every member of both gangs, not just the twelve of you here today. When we’re finished, I want all of you, I need all of you, to spread the word, so that everyone, and I mean everyone, understands the danger that your two gangs face.”

  He watched as the majority of the gang members squirmed on the benches, smirking and shaking their heads. He knew they would never admit to any problem, but Atkinson interpreted their reaction as indicators of apprehension.

  “What’s with the fuckin’ heart attacks, man?” someone yelled out. “What do you know?"

  “Yeah, tell us, damn it!” another shouted.

  “What the hell’s goin’ down?”

  “Why don’t you fuckin’ do somethin’, man?”

  “What are you hidin’, Atkinson?”

  “Tell us, man!”

  “Let’s hear it!”

  Captain Dean bolted from his chair. “You’ll get your damn answers if you let him talk!”

  The gang members grew silent.

  Dean scanned the different faces, looking back and forth from one group to the next. “Believe me,” he said, “if you value your life you better listen to what Lieutenant Atkinson has to say today.” He turned back toward Atkinson. “Continue, Lieutenant.”

  Atkinson reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I’ve got something I want to read to you,” he said. “This information dates back to the first known heart attack. It happened in the early morning of April thirtieth, just a few hours after the April twenty-ninth murder of Warren Palmer. If I need to remind any of you, Mr. Palmer was the man who got killed in a drive-by shooting at Alfredo’s Market.”

  Commencing with the death by heart attack of Rafael Carranza on April thirtieth, Atkinson proceeded through a sobering, deliberately slow recitation of each Lobo and Diablo gang member that died from heart failure or a known murder weapon, as well as the dates of their demise. Three weeks had passed since Atkinson met Captain Dean in his office, confronting him with his astonishing report on the facts behind the thirty-four deaths. With the discovery of Marcos Ceniceros’ body in the front yard of a neighbor’s home three days before the meeting, there now totaled one less North Rampart Lobo and one more victim of heart failure. The death count had reached thirty-eight, and the last four, like all the others, maintained the consistent time separation between each death.

  In a further continuation of the pattern, two of the four deaths stemmed from a heart attack, including Ceniceros, who prompted two separate 9-1-1 calls to occur shortly before four a.m. According to the coroner’s report, the other recent victim, a known Alvarado Street Diablo named Gonzalo Rios, died “close” to four a.m. Captain Dean and Lieutenant Atkinson were now convinced that “close” wasn’t close enough. Rios died at four a.m.

  Atkinson concluded with the details of Marcos Ceniceros before sitting back in his chair. As he refolded the paper, preparing to place the sheet back into his pocket, he wondered if any of this information mattered to these guys. Maybe they didn’t believe any of the facts they’d just heard, or that one of them could be next if they took an act of vengeance too far, but as he peered out at the faces he knew he had reached them. The intensity in their eyes verbalized the concern that their silence could not.

  “Let’s review some facts here,” he said. “With the exception of three murder victims who weren’t gang members and who were murdered, presumably, by one of your gangs, it seems that whenever one of you kills someone from the other gang, that person dies by a heart attack the next day at what appears to be the killer’s designated time of death: four in the morning.”

  “Gimme a fuckin’ break, man. That’s bullshit. People get killed all the time, right? We ain’t the only game in town.”

  Members from both benches nodded their head in agreement.

  Atkinson wasn’t surprised to hear that type of irksome comment from Miguel Ruiz. The kid had always been a bad seed, an incorrigible by-product of two alcoholic parents dumping their shit on society’s doorstep. Atkinson had to wipe his shoes clean from these bad-ass types much too often.

  “Let me tell you something,” Atkinson replied, directing his gaze at Ruiz. “By the time we’re through here today you better understand this is no game.”

  Turning to face the others, he continued. “For every heart attack, a homicide in your neighborhoods occurred the day before. Every…single…time.” Atkinson took a step forward, preparing to raise his voice to underscore the next point. “Between your two gangs, there have been thirty-five deaths since the night of Mr. Valenzuela’s murder. Thirty-five. Those three other killings make a total of thirty-eight. Exactly half of those deaths, nineteen of them, have been from heart failure. And all of them, all of them, took place the day after a murder. It may sound crazy, but the facts speak for themselves. You kill somebody one day, you die from a heart attack the next.”

  Atkinson returned to his chair. After a period of silence, in an atypical softened response, a Lobo announced, “Someone’s usin’ some fuckin’ poison, man. How else you explain it?”

  Without giving Atkinson a chance to answer the question, another Lobo had something else to add. “Your numbers don’t prove nothin’. We can’t be the only ones dyin’ from this heart shit. Why you just pointin’ the finger at us?”

  A strong, unhesitating voice from one of the Diablos responded immediately to the last question.

  “Cause there ain’t no other gangs havin’ heart attacks, right?”

  Derisive laughter from the Lobos followed as members from both benches turned toward the Diablo who ventured the last comment. Showing a calm sense of conviction, he stared at Atkinson and repeated his belief. “Ain’t that right? Nobody else.”

  Atkinson had wondered if that idea dawned on any of them. If he had been a betting man, he’d have laid his money on Alejandro Torres as the one to figur
e out the truth. He knew Alejandro from years back, remembered the problems with his father, and thought of him as a sharp kid. Atkinson felt a slight shame for the sense of pleasure he felt over the opportunity to answer Alejandro’s question in such dramatic fashion, but after listening to the gangs’ sarcastic laughter and observing their skeptical expressions he felt gratified hitting them with the knockout punch. He had been saving that bit of information for the end, as the final jolt to their psyche.

  Atkinson looked at Dean, then back at Alejandro. Pausing briefly, he uttered, “You’re right. No other gangs are having heart attacks.”

  A chorus of chaotic voices followed.

  “What the fuck?”

  “That’s bullshit, man!”

  “No fuckin’ way!”

  “God damn, man, you’re crazy!”

  “I don’t fuckin’ believe that shit!”

  Captain Dean rose from his chair as the Lobos and Diablos huddled in two groups around their respective benches.

  “Sit down, men! Dean ordered. “We’re not done here yet.”

  Dean walked over to stand behind Atkinson after the gang members returned to their places on the bench. Picking up where he left off, Dean addressed the gangs in a spirited voice. “The Lieutenant told you what we know so far. I’ll tell you what we don’t know. We don’t know how this person gets to you guys. We’ve had heart attacks happen in the park, the street, alleys, a deserted railroad yard, and in a number of cases even the goddamn bedroom. We don’t know who the hell the victims were talking to before they died, but witnesses say they were carrying on pretty good. We don’t know why no one else has ever been seen during that time. And we can’t explain how the killer is able to stick to his timetable with such perfection.”