Mirror Image

by Ice-T

  “So, how’d you meet the family?” Carla asked.

  Casey shifted in his chair. “I’d gotten to know the Garcias through Antonio’s mother. She’d been waitressing at the restaurant for five years.” He could tell she wished she hadn’t asked, but fuck it, that how it goes sometimes.

  They had an incredible meal of plantain soup, miniature pupusas, and poached tilapia in a spinach cream sauce. For dessert they had fried coconut ice cream with a chocolate fudge sauce that had every table drooling. When a fellow patron asked for the same thing, Mama Garcia turned to the table and curtly said, “We’re out!”

  Mama Garcia visited their table throughout the night to see how they were enjoying their meal. By the time they were finished, it was almost midnight, and Casa de Honduras was still seating people. Casey and Carla got up and went to the kitchen to say their good-byes. On the way out, Casey tipped their waitress fifty dollars—the meal was no charge, of course.

  Carla was quiet on the drive home. Normally, Casey would have attributed that to the fine meal and good company, but he could tell something was building inside her.

  As he parked in front of her building, Carla turned to him. “I had a wonderful time tonight, Crush.”

  Casey nodded but stayed silent; he knew women well enough to know there was more coming—most likely a lot more. And he was right.

  “You know when you were handlin’ your business with Hen, Mama Garcia was talking about her kids and how it bonded her and her late husband together. That really struck home baby,” Carla said as she interlaced her fingers with his. “I love what we have, and the idea of having a little one with you is, well…” Carla paused as Casey’s face tightened.

  “Carla, as far as kids go, there is no way I’m gonna put anyone I care about—especially flesh and blood—in harm’s way again. As Sunday will attest, you see the potential results. I can only handle so much.” Casey tried to let go of the tension in his body and wished she had just left well enough alone instead of singing this tune again.

  “That either means you don’t care about me, or you don’t think I’m already in harm’s way,” Carla snapped.

  “You know what I meant, Carla!”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid I do.”

  “Look, you have a daughter, you’ve been down that road. What we have is cool, having a child would be nice but it’s not necessary.”

  “Nigga, are you for real right now? Just because I have a daughter doesn’t mean I’m done! I want a child with you! Trust me, I wish I could banish those feelings, but I can’t. What happened to Antonio was horrible, but life is for the living, Crush! I know how you are, you push the envelope in everything but in a calculated way. That doesn’t work in relationships. A child is worth the risk—”

  “Look, Carla, I’m not that guy. Not now at least, and maybe never. If that’s what you want, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe that means you got to make a decision.” He regretted saying those words as soon as they hit the air, and knew he had fucked up.

  The moment Carla heard that, she flipped. “Fine, nigga, have it your way.” Pissed, hurt, and frustrated, she jumped out of the SUV and slammed the door.

  Casey was too wiped out from his day to give a fuck at this point. He popped his SUV into drive and turned his phone off. The day was finally over, and it looked like his relationship was, too.

  4

  The next afternoon, Casey took a cab downtown to meet with Lomax. He never took his own ride there; he didn’t need anyone to start asking questions on how he could afford an Escalade still fresh out of the joint.

  He stepped into the waiting room with all the other parolees, checked in, did his pee test, then sat in the waiting room again. The windowless room was crowded as usual, filled with about twenty guys waiting to see their POs.

  The waiting room was a drag for everyone; it was very likely that all the parolees had been there for a few hours just for a three-minute interview. On top of that, a lotta the guys were sweating their piss-test results. There were always rumors that cough medicine or even Mountain Dew could give you a false positive. The other thing that could jack you up was a warrant you didn’t know about. Casey knew more than one person who’d shown up and was violated back into the joint for a traffic ticket that had turned into a warrant.

  As he cooled his heels, Casey surveyed the room to make sure nobody he had beef with was there. A couple unlucky bastards were already in cuffs for breaking parole, and would be sitting there all day until they went to lockup. Casey overheard one violated Puerto Rican guy telling his sob story about how he got busted. Apparently, he was a tattoo artist and was working at an apartment he shared with his girl and their six-year-old kid. One of his customers showed up with a twelve-pack to calm his nerves, because he knew he was gonna be tortured by the needle for three hours. The guy drank half the beers, but the tattoo man didn’t touch a drop, knowin’ he’d be tested the next day. The Puerto Rican worked on the dude for a few hours and sent him home around midnight. At 7 A.M. the next morning, his PO walked right into the apartment—no knock, just walks right in, went straight to the fridge, and found the beer. He then walked in the bedroom, cuffed the guy, and dragged him out while his wife’s screaming her head off and his kid’s bawling his eyes out. Now the guy’s gonna do two more years behind bars, and the dumb-ass who brought the beer’s stuck with a half-finished tattoo.

  The guard broke up this sad tale and announced, “Hekimyan and Casey for Lomax.”

  Casey and a Middle Eastern–looking guy with a scar across his face both got up and walked to the guard, who took them past a room of cubicles filled with POs interviewing their cons. The guard told them sarcastically they must be something special to be assigned to the boss man.

  At Lomax’s office, the guard told Casey to sit outside the door while Hekimyan walked inside. After about five minutes, Hekimyan came back out and said to Casey in a thick accent, “You’re next, sunshine.”

  Casey eyed the dude for a second, then ignored him, thinking, It’s comments like that probably got your dumb ass that scar.

  As Casey opened the office door, he was hit with the stench of Lomax’s lunch. As always, the PO’s fat ass was overflowing his chair while he chowed down on a thick corned beef sandwich. He was looking at files on his desk, and told Casey to sit down. Without looking up, he asked, “Have you had any recent contact with the law, Mr. Casey?”

  “Nope.”

  “Employment the same?”

  “Yes.”

  “Residence the same?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lomax looked up at Casey and after a moment said, “Shut the door.” Working his teeth with a toothpick, Lomax leaned back and regarded Casey for a few more seconds. “You gotta pretty easy parole, Mr. Casey. No spot checks, no GPS ankle bracelet, and your curfew isn’t until nine P.M. That’s a lot of free time to be productive, don’t you think?”

  Casey knew this was Lomax’s way of pushing him to get the next target, Alek Petrosian. When Casey had visited Lomax a month ago, the PO made a big deal of how Rono had been taken off the streets and that he hoped Petrosian would meet the same fate. Alek Petrosian was an Armenian mobster who, for the past two years, had flooded the streets with heroin and Eastern European prostitutes. Casey’d heard of him while he was doing time in Attica. The word was that he was ruthless and a bad muthafucka and blah blah blah.

  Casey stared at Lomax. “I assumed I got the parole I got because I did what I was supposed to do.”

  “That’s right, your dedication to playing by the rules is the difference between you wearing an ankle bracelet or worse, Mr. Casey. In two weeks, I’ll want to see you again and review your performance. Who knows—if all goes well, you could graduate to mail-in status. Good day, Mr. Casey.”

  Annoyed, but careful not to show it, Casey left the office. On top of everything else, now he had to deal with Lomax’s increasing pressure on him to take out Alek Petrosian. The only reason Casey’d played ball to begin with
was because Lomax, in his own subtle way, had let it be known that he had Casey’s St. Jude medal. That medal could link Casey to the murder of Gulliver Rono.

  As he left Lomax’s office and walked through the waiting room, he heard the Puerto Rican guy telling his story again. He put on his shades and headed outside, glad to be out of the stench and presence of that fat fuck.

  Casey hailed a cab and dialed Shinzo on the way to the office. He knew Shin’s sister-in-law was Armenian; maybe she was the key to facilitating a meeting between Casey and Petrosian. It was a long shot, but what the fuck. When Shin answered, he sounded like he was out of breath.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Casey asked.

  “Me and Champa were meeting with Big Rich when a shoot-out erupted. One of Rich’s customers got tagged in the leg, but everyone else’s good—”

  Casey could tell Shin was about to go into more detail and interrupted him. “Kill game and meet me at the office.” Holding up a twenty, he told the cabbie to step on it. His biggest concern was that the shoot-out was a hit attempt on Big Rich. He wasn’t gonna jump to conclusions, however, because it could have been as simple one of Rich’s girls losing her mind and trying to kill a nigga.

  Casey pulled up to the office and hopped the elevator to the Urban Victory offices, walking into a mild flurry of activity. Urban Victory was a nonprofit whose focus was to help at-risk kids stay out of trouble. It organized events at schools and parks, primarily in the Bronx, consisting of ex-cons speaking to kids about prison, staying away from a life of crime, and how to deal with potentially violent or dangerous situations. Funded by “anonymous donations,” it was where Casey told Lomax he worked. It was the perfect cover, because it allowed him to be around ex-cons without violating his parole. Casey’s “job” was to file papers, do miscellaneous office work, run errands, and sometimes talk at the events. If there was a spot check by a PO while Casey was handling something, well, then, he was on an “errand,” and would be back later.

  The head of Urban Victory was Joe Pica, a white guy who was also an ex-con, and who took the job very seriously. He’d met Casey through Shin, who’d done time with him at Sing Sing. Joe had landed there when he was sixteen years old because he’d murdered a friend’s uncle who was a molester. The State tried him as an adult and gave him twenty years, but he only served seventeen. When Shin introduced him to Casey, he already knew who Casey was by reputation. And for his part, Casey knew from Shin that Joe had a nonprofit struggling to stay afloat.

  At their first meeting, Casey told him that his funding problems were over and that he already had office space set up for him and his staff. Casey said that the nonprofit would continue doing its thing; the only stipulations were that Joe needed to change the name to Urban Victory, cover for Casey at any time if needed, and run it like a legit nonprofit. It was hard for anyone to say no to Casey, and Joe was no different. The fact that he was on the verge of shutting down and that Shin co-signed for Casey made it a no-brainer. The next day, Joe walked into his new office space, it was laid out with desks, chairs, and phones, even a sign on the wall that read URBAN VICTORY. As far as Casey’s secret office and his real plans, Joe was completely clueless to that, and Casey aimed to keep it that way.

  As Casey walked back to his office, Joe came over to him. “Mr. Casey, I got a call from Officer Lomax to verify your employment. I told him what he needed to hear.”

  “Okay, cool, good lookin’ out, Joe,” said Casey.

  Two minutes later, Shin and Champa walked in and quickly went back to Crush’s office. Shin was covered in blood and a goddamn mess. Casey looked at him in disbelief. “What the fuck happened? Are you shot?”

  Before Shin could get a word in Champa started talking. “Nigga, you will not believe the wild shit that just went down at Big Rich’s—”

  Casey held up one hand. “Just hang for a second, Champa.” He walked to the door and hollered for Joe. When he came over, Casey peeled off two C-notes and instructed him to get Shin some new pants, shirt, socks, and shoes—pronto. Joe looked over Casey’s shoulder to Shin covered in blood, his eyes widening, but before he could say a word, Casey snapped his fingers twice to get his attention. “It’s nothin’, just be cool, no cops are showing up. Get him some gear and when you get back, don’t knock, call my cell. Go right now.” Not waiting for a response, Casey closed the door and turned to Champa. “Okay, what the fuck happened?”

  “Okay, me and Shin went to see Big Rich at his massage parlor, The Good Times. Rich and us were chopping it up—you know, bullshittin’ and whatnot—when in the middle of our conversatin’ we all hear one of his broads bitchin’ from one of the back rooms. Well, we both looked at Rich and started laughing, till—”

  “We heard a gunshot,” Shinzo broke in.

  Champa frowned briefly, then continued. “Then we heard some dude screaming like a bitch—‘Oh shit, I been shot’—but it’s from a totally different room. Then this big country-lookin’ nigga that’s been shot in the leg stumbles out of the room butt naked with a gun. He looks at us and thinks we shot him. So this nigga starts busting caps off like a fucking maniac. Bullets’re flying all over the goddamn place while the dude’s slippin’ in his own blood leakin’ from his leg. We all scatter, but there’s no real place to hide because the walls are like paper thin. Then this crazy muthafucka—” Champa waved at Shin, who smiled and looked embarrassed. “—figures the nigga’s outta bullets, rushes him and nails him in the jaw with a right hook, and wrestles him down to the floor. There’s blood all over the fucking place!”

  Shin picked up the story from there. “Meanwhile, the guy who fired first comes running out of the room in a rage, so Rich and Champa draw down on his ass and say, ‘Drop your piece, nigga!’ The guy thinks they’re undercover cops or whatever and does it. Before they can say anything, the guy sees me on the ground with this naked nigga covered in blood and completely loses his shit. He runs over to us, screamin’, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, what have I done, shit, shit, shit!’”

  Laughing, Champa said, “Now, get this—apparently this dumb muthafucka shot his own brotha! Those dumb-asses went to get a rub and tug and now the nigga realizes he shot his own brotha!”

  Casey looked at Champa and said, “Wait a minute, why’d he start shootin’ to begin with?”

  Shin said, “Rich’s girl told us he was pissed ’cause he said she made him ‘pop’ too quick. So he’s like, ‘Bitch, you need to give me another one for free.’ She told him to fuck off and said he was the only bitch in the room. He got pissed, pulled out his shit to scare her, and fired it into the wall … and, well, you know the rest.”

  Casey stared at them both in amazement. “What about the pigs?”

  Champa shrugged. “After all that bullshit, we got the fuck outta there and left it in Big Rich’s hands.”

  Shin nodded. “Crush, all that shit went down in about three minutes, I swear.”

  “Get Rich on the phone.”

  Shin did just that and handed it to him after Rich was on. “Whatssup, nigga?”

  Rich said, “Ahh shit, Crush, you gotta get this playa a big payday. I can’t handle this retail shit no more.”

  “I hear that. You get any visitors after your little party?”

  “Nah, it’s cool, my neighbors know what the fuck time it is. I got my cleanup crew to tidy things up quick fast and sent that nigga around the corner to a guy that does body work, so that’s that.”

  “All right, nigga. Well, keep me posted—I’m out.”

  “Hold up, Crush. That young nigga showed his stuff today, he was a good call.”

  “You got that right. Okay, movin’.” Casey hung up.

  Casey’s phone buzzed with a call from Joe Pica, who said he had the clothes for Shin. Casey told Shin to go to the bathroom and clean up. When he was out of the room, Casey looked at Champa. “So, how you feelin’ Shin now?”

  Champa nodded. “Yeah, my man put it in today. I know word’s gonna spread about this, so that�
�s a good look for him.”

  After a few moments, Shin came back in. Casey told him to lock the door, then introduced him to the secret back office.

  Shin looked around, clearly impressed. “Man, this is some real double-oh-seven shit!”

  Champa laughed. “Nigga, I said the same damn thing!”

  They all sat down, and Casey asked both men if they knew an Armenian named Alek Petrosian. “This is the guy I gotta tag for Lomax. He’s supposed to be a helluva baller.”

  “The only Armenian I ever knew was Luca Bagramian, who was killed ten months ago in a drive-by hit,” Champa said. “Luca was a bad muthafucka, always runnin’ a lot of big shit. I actually pulled a couple jobs with him back in the day.”

  Casey turned to Shin, who said, “I don’t know him, but I know of him. He runs a lot of H and supposedly imports broads from the Ukraine. My sister-in-law could probably find out who he runs with or where he hangs out. It’s a pretty tight-knit community, for the most part.”

  “Talk to her on the DL and get back to me as soon as you hear anything.” Casey turned back to Champa. “What’s the status of that team I asked you to pull together?”

  “I gotta phone guy and I also called Jacob to set up a meet to check him out.”

  “Okay, I wanna see the phone guy, so make that happen for tomorrow. I’ll tell you a location later.”

  Casey walked Shin and Champa out and locked the door behind them. He walked back and sat behind his desk, running over the plan in his head and taking stock of where he was at. As he did, however, thoughts of Carla crept into his mind. He hadn’t heard from her today, but then again, he hadn’t reached out to her, either. He went back and forth on whether he should text or call her, and decided to text, given she was probably at work and couldn’t talk anyway. It also meant he didn’t have to deal with voice mail.

  Casey wrote, Our communication got twisted up last night, you doing ok? and sent it. He rose, left his office, and decided to pay a visit to Mick Benzo in West Harlem.