by Robert Swetz
The Box
By
Robert C. Swetz
The Box
Copyright © 2021 by Robert C. Swetz. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, descriptions, entities, and incidents included in the
story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, and entities is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.
www.gobookcoverdesign.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 1
He opened the glass door and pulled out half a gallon of milk. Letting the door close, he moved further along the row of doors, searching for the next item his mother had asked for. Eggs.
“Guess what old man,” the voice came from the front of the store. “It’s money time. Hand it over.”
Very slowly and silently, he moved closer to the front of the store until he could just see the holdup. No surprise, the voice had given him away. It was Little Paul, and he wasn’t even wearing a mask or anything to hide who he was. He figured Little Paul probably didn’t think he needed one since he had a gun pointed at Mister Geovanni’s face. From his hidden position, he watched silently as Mister Geovanni pulled all the money out of his cash register and handed it to Little Paul.
“That’s right!” Little Paul said as he grabbed the wad of bills out of Geovanni’s hand. He stood there and briefly counted it. “A hundred and eighty-seven,” he said with a laugh. “Pretty good!” With a smile and a nod, Little Paul walked out like nothing had happened.
Only then did he go back and open the next glass door to pull out a dozen eggs. Not far from the eggs was a package of sliced cheese, the final item on his short shopping list. He grabbed a package of cheese too.
As he approached the front counter, Mister Geovanni was still looking at the door where Little Paul had walked out. Slowly, almost tentatively, he set his things on the counter. “Is it okay?” he asked the owner of the little neighborhood grocery store.
Geovanni looked at him for a moment. “Yeah. It’s fine.”
He handed over the two five-dollar bills his mother had given him to pay for the items.
Geovanni looked at them, then gave one of them back. Sorry,” he said. “I can’t make change right now.” He grabbed the half gallon of milk, the cheese, and the eggs and put them in a bag. “Have a good day,” he said somewhat sarcastically as he handed the bag to the kid in front of him.
“You too,” he replied quietly. He walked out with the bag in his hands and headed home, two blocks up the street and three stories up to their cheap apartment where he lived with his mother.
He put the milk, eggs, and cheese in the refrigerator, looking forward to when his mother would get home from work and fix him dinner. Eggs tonight. His favorite. He glanced at the clock. She probably wouldn’t get home for another hour and a half.
He stood to the side of the open window and looked out on the city street below. He saw Cougar crossing the street toward him. Cougar dodged around a car coming up the street, then angled further down. He didn’t have to wonder where Cougar was going. The building next to theirs was abandoned. Except it wasn’t completely abandoned. For as long as anyone could remember, it had been where the Scorpions hung out, the local gang that ran the neighborhood.
Everyone feared the Scorpions. Except him. Which was strange because as far as he knew, he was the only kid for blocks around that didn’t belong to the gang. The only one. It wasn’t that he never got the chance, it was simply that he didn’t want to. And somehow, nobody ever bothered him about it. Nobody. Which was just the way he wanted it.
As far as everyone else was concerned, he barely existed. He was there, but their eyes usually passed right over him. Most people didn’t even know his name, and that’s how he liked it. He wanted to remain…nobody. Overlooked. Unnoticed. Beyond all the other reasons his mother harped about, since they lived in New York City, as far as he was concerned, it was his best chance to survive. How often had his mother told him the same thing? Keep your head down. Don’t talk to people. Don’t make a fuss.
It was a little after six when he finally caught sight of his mother walking along the sidewalk in front of their building. He opened the door and went out to the landing to wait for her. Her steps were slow and weary as she climbed to the third floor. The higher she got, the slower her steps came. He watched as her head finally appeared, then the rest of her. She stopped halfway up the final flight of stairs and smiled at him. “Brian. How was your day?”
“Okay.”
She started climbing again. “Did you get the things I asked you to buy?”
“Yes Mom. Of course.”
She got to the top and smiled at him when he didn’t move. “Brian Winston,” she said. “You’re only thirteen. You’re not too old yet to give your mother a hug.”
Too old? He’d never be too old. They hugged each other and she kissed his cheek.
“So,” she said as they pulled apart and headed into the apartment. “Any trouble today?”
“No Mom.”
“Good! Was there any change from the money I gave you earlier?”
“Yeah,” he said as he pulled the five-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“Brian. This is half the money I gave you. Weren’t you able to get everything?”
“I got it all Mom, the milk, the eggs, and the cheese. But while I was there, Little Paul came in and held the place up. When I tried to pay for it, Mr. Giovanni didn’t have any change, so he handed that one back to me.”
“Ugh!” she grunted. “That gang! Don’t worry, I’ll see Mr. Giovanni later and make sure he gets all his money.”
He hadn’t exactly been worried about it.
Several hours later, his mother hugged him and kissed him goodnight. He laid in his bed and listened as she went into her room and closed the door. He waited, knowing his mother was a creature of habit. Through the thin walls of the apartment, he could tell to the minute when and what she was doing. Twenty minutes later, he heard the slight sound of snoring coming through the wall. She was asleep. Still, he waited, making sure she would be sound asleep for the rest of the night.
He got out of bed and got dressed. He opened his closet door. They kept the kitchen stepstool in his room where it would be out of the way. He grabbed it, pulled it into his closet, and opened it fully. He climbed it until he could reach the square panel set in the ceiling, which was the access hatch from their apartment into the attic over the entire building. As he went up, his hand found the flashlight he kept up there. Switching it on, he climbed the rest of the way into the attic.
Slowly and soundlessly, he walked to the brick wall at the end of the attic. There was a square board in the middle of that wall. A square board that had part of the bottom corner cut away so that a thick wire could go through it. He pulled on the board, and it open like a door. The open door revealed another board stuck in an identical hole in the brick wall of the next building. He pushed open the small door leading into that attic. Climbing through was easy. He was now in the attic of the next building. The building where the Scorpions hung out.
Not far from the opening, there was a big square hole in the attic floor where part o
f the heating system used to be. Someone had built a wooden ladder into one side of the hole that went from the attic all the way down to the bottom floor. Slowly, cautiously, he descended the ladder. Not far down, he came across the first big airduct leading off the central shaft. The main airduct for the third floor. He had explored it before and knew every room off it. He couldn’t get through the smaller ducts leading from the large duct he crawled through so he couldn’t see into the rooms themselves, but he could certainly hear everything that went on in them. But the third floor was never used. Not as far as he could tell.
He continued down the wooden ladder to the next floor. The layout for the second floor was the same as for the third. The Scorpions often used the second floor for different things, particularly for sex. Often, the gang members stayed the night there, sometimes for days, but as far as he could tell, never permanently. He had learned a lot of secrets about the gang by crawling through the large part of the air system on the second floor. But tonight he wasn’t interested in the second floor.
He continued climbing down the wooden ladder to the opening that was the main airduct for the first floor. The layout for the first floor wasn’t the same as the others. The first floor had once been a store of some kind, empty now of course…except for the Scorpions.
The airduct system down here wasn’t nearly as safe for him to crawl through. It had been damaged over the years and was falling apart in places. But he had been through it many times now. He knew where he could go and where he couldn’t. But what he liked the most about the duct system here, was that through the damaged sections, he could not only hear, but he could see the people below him.
He didn’t go further down the ladder yet, but at the bottom there was a narrow hole in the metal shaft and a matching hole in the adjoining wall. Several times now he had been brave enough to squeeze himself through that tight hole and explore the large room where the gang gathered every day.
This time, he climbed off the ladder into the large air duct for the first floor and headed for his favorite spot to watch. He could already hear voices below him, but he couldn’t see anyone yet. Finally, he got where he wanted to be and laid down in the duct, his head turned to look out the small opening at the lights and people below.
The electric should have been off in the building, but it still worked. He didn’t know how, but he suspected it had something to do with the wire that passed through the square hatches in the brick walls between the two buildings.
“Tank!”
His eyes moved up to where the voice had come from. He saw Frank sitting in his usual chair, his girlfriend, Raven, was next to him. Frank was the boss. The leader. The head guy. He ran the Scorpions, and the Scorpions ran the neighborhood. Which basically made him God.
“What’s up?”
His eyes turned the other way. Tank was asking what Frank wanted.
“Another bottle!” Frank told him.
“We ain’t got no more!”
“Then get some!”
He saw Tank roll his eyes, then go over to the money box on the shelf and open it. He pulled a few bills out, then closed the box and headed for the door. He couldn’t see as far as the door, but he was betting that Tank’s wide heavy body brushed both sides of the door frame whenever he went through. Basically, Tank was as big as a tank.
He watched as Big Paul came through the door a minute later. He headed straight for Frank and Raven. By the time he got there, his main girlfriend, Bella, had joined him from somewhere else in the room that he couldn’t see from his position. He couldn’t hear what they initially talked about, but it appeared to be business of some sort. But after the business, both Big Paul and Bella sat down in the group of chairs with Frank and Raven.
From everything he could see, it was another usual night. Nothing happening. Which was good. He would have left and gone back to his room, but just listening wasn’t why he was there that night. In the sheltered confines of the airduct, he laid his head on his arm and rested, barely watching and listening to what little was happening below. Tank coming back with a few bottles of liquor barely raised his interest. A few times he nodded off to sleep, only to catch himself and force himself awake.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait more than an hour before he saw Frank and Raven head for the stairs leading up to the second floor. The six other gang members who were there left soon after. As Big Paul and Bella went out, Bella flipped a switch and most of the lights in the big room went out. Only one light remained at the back of the room so anyone else coming in or anyone staying upstairs for a few more hours would be able to see if they decided to go out. He seriously doubted that Frank and Raven would be leaving anytime soon. Probably not at all.
He pushed himself backwards in the airduct until he reached the ladder. He went down just a short distance until he got to the spot where the metal had been cut open and forced back. He squeezed through it, then through the hole in the wall. He was in a small office now, behind a pile of old junk stacked up against the corner, probably left there to hide the hole and the possible escape route. He had often wondered if anyone currently in the gang knew about the hole and the ladder. He didn’t know if they knew, but he certainly knew about it.
From the office, he silently made his way out into the main room. He looked around but didn’t see or hear anyone. He went straight to the cash box and opened it. He pulled out all the money and counted it. A hundred and fifty-four dollars. He put all the bills straight into his pocket and closed the cash box.
He hurried back to the hidden hole in the wall, back up the ladder all the way to the attic, then back through to his own building, closing the hatches behind him. Two minutes later, he was back in his own bedroom, folding the stepstool and putting it back against the wall where they kept it. He briefly opened his bedroom door to peer out. Everything was quiet and dark. He got undressed and went to bed.
Lying in bed, he thought about the money he had just taken. He thought longer about what would happen when the Scorpions discovered that their little bit of shared money was gone. But as usual, even those thoughts were drowned out by his ancient memories. Memories that he fell asleep to every night.
He remembered a big house, and a big yard with a swing set and a sandbox and a big playset he could climb. He remembered maids that took care of the house. He remembered fancy cars and nice clothes. And he remembered that there had once been a man there. His father. But it had been so long ago now that he could no longer remember his face at all. He and his mother had a different name then, but he couldn’t remember that either. All he could remember was little bits of the house, and having a big bright room filled with lots of toys.
And then everything had changed. His father was no longer there and from that point on, he and his mother had moved from one place to another. Always someplace far away. And every time they moved, it seemed like they moved to someplace much worse. Until they had finally ended up here, in New York. In the worst place yet. Where instead of maids to take care of their house, his mother worked as a maid in some big hotel downtown. The little money she brought in had to be carefully spent and counted just for them to survive.
He knew his mother often cried over where they lived now, but she never cried when she thought he could see her. But he did. He knew. What he didn’t know, was why they kept having to move. Why she had always told him they had to blend in, not be noticed. Why it was the only way they could stay safe. They had lived here for five years now. Far longer than anywhere else, but he had a feeling that there was no place worse they could move to. Maybe that was why they hadn’t moved again.
He fell asleep, wondering as he always did, about all the mysteries in his life.
Chapter 2
He missed school. As bad as it was, school was someplace to go. Something to do. Something different to see. But school didn’t exist in the summer heat. Even though he did his best to remain a nobody at school, he still preferred going there than staying home where he had absolu
tely nothing to do. Well, almost nothing. Today he had a mission. A small one, but it was still better than sitting in their apartment all day staring out the window.
His mother had gone off to work earlier, leaving him home alone. She did that five days a week. Sometimes six. Sometimes seven. His mother always took every opportunity to work as many hours as she could. The bad times though were when she took a double shift without notice and had no way to let him know. They couldn’t afford cellphones like so many other people had. He worried about her the most during those times when she was missing. But it had happened enough now that after waiting another eight hours, she always showed up. She was exhausted each time, but she always came home, and she always hugged him desperately as she said how sorry she was that she had left him alone and couldn’t let him know that she had to work.
He understood work. It was how everyone made what little money they could to survive. Except the Scorpions. They just took everyone else’s money. He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen a police car in this neighborhood in the last year. And the police never came because someone got robbed or beaten. They only seemed to come when someone was murdered. As far as he could tell, only he knew that the Scorpions had been behind three of the recent murders in the last few months. The other two had been Scorpion members who had been shot by other New York gangs. Otherwise, the police didn’t come into his neighborhood.
He waited until midmorning, after the rush of people hurrying off to work, before he left their apartment and went down to the street. There weren’t many people on the streets, just the locals. No sign of any of the Scorpions yet. It was still too early for most of them.
He walked the two blocks and went into Giovanni’s. But this time he wasn’t there to buy anything. He walked around the shelves, not to look at what was on them, but to look for anyone else there. Except for Mr. Giovanni, the place seemed to be empty. He headed for the front counter.