by Rick Jones
He continued to stare at the ceiling.
She at the wall.
Silence.
Johnnie Deveraux put his good hand over the side of the bed to allow his wet sleeve to drip on the floor beside the bed.
. . . drip . . .
. . . drip . . .
. . . drip . . .
The house was no longer silent.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Three Days Later
Kimball avoided the wake of his longtime friend. The idea of seeing his friend lying in gentle repose with his face made up to give him as much as a living glow as possible, was not the way Kimball wanted to remember him.
But he did attend the funeral along with his mother. His father had missed the event, stating that it was October and he didn’t want to miss any of the baseball playoffs.
The sky was overcast and a chill lingered in the air. At the Forestdale Cemetery chairs were set up for the family of the deceased. Johnnie Deveraux sat in one chair and Darlene in the other, with a separation between them quite noticeable. And Kimball knew that the gulf between them would never be filled. The magic that had once connected them was finally gone.
Kimball sighed sadly.
When the service was over Kimball and his mother offered condolences. Darlene and Johnnie Deveraux readily accepted them with artificial smiles and tracks of tears.
As Kimball stepped away for others to offer their sympathies, he noticed a man wearing a finely tailored suit standing last in line. He was big and broad with a stump for a neck. His hair was closely cropped into a military crewcut. And for some reason to Kimball he appeared out of place with this particular group. His clothes were too high-end. His manner and the way he moved and carried himself too gruff. The man was obviously impatient as the line moved slowly along, constantly looking at his watch and throwing his hands up in a what’s-taking-so-long gesture.
When the large man finally made it to Johnnie Deveraux and took his hand to shake it, Deveraux’s eyes exploded to the size of saucers in surprise. The large man forcibly pulled Deveraux into close counsel, his lips inches away from Johnnie Deveraux’s ear as he spoke.
Kimball knew something was wrong.
#
When Johnnie Deveraux recognized the beef-neck who had brought him before his boss on the day his hand had become the object of Cooch’s anger, his eyes sparked with genuine surprise. The man had come out of nowhere. Either that, or he was simply too despondent to care as to who had ventured into the crowd of mourners and never took notice.
The man took Johnnie’s hand in a firm grip and pulled him close with his lips inches away from Johnnie’s right ear.
“Cooch sends his condolences about the kid,” the man said without emotion. “He also wants you to know that he feels bad, so he’s cutting you a break. He’s extending his kind offer to you about paying him what you owe. He’s giving you another week to come up with the funds, interest free.”
He turned to see his wife walking away from the situation. And at that moment her action told Johnnie everything he needed to know: She’s finally abandoned me. And I’m completely alone in this.
Johnnie wanted to tell the guy off with a string of profanities, and to shout out the fact that Vinny Cuchinata will never see a dime of what he owed because he didn’t have a dime to give. But he was a coward at heart with zero courageous fortitude to lift a finger on his own behalf.
“You get what I’m saying to you?” Beef-Neck asked.
Johnnie nodded.
Beef-Neck pointed a thumb toward the casket. “Now this is bad,” he said with a thick Boston accent. “Losing family always is. But it doesn’t excuse you from your obligations. Cooch just wanted you to know that.”
Johnnie closed his eyes. Cooch had to make his point at my son’s funeral? he thought. Really?
The large man released Johnnie’s hand and rearranged the knob of Johnnie’s tie so that it was centered. “You’re looking good for your kid,” he said. “Real good.” Then he gave a light slap to Johnnie’s cheek, one of those supporting gestures not meant to hurt, but one to mean that everything’s-going-to-be-all-right. “You got one week.”
“Are you OK, Mr. Deveraux?” It was Kimball.
Johnnie never saw him approach.
Kimball’s mother tried to grab Kimball’s hand and attempted to usher him away. But Kimball ripped it free. “Mr. Deveraux, are you all right?” he persisted.
Beef-Neck turned his head casually around. He was surprised to see someone so immense in size, but so youthful in the face. “He’s fine,” he said. “So piss off.”
“Suppose you make me.”
Beef-Neck’s face turned to anger. A challenge from anyone was always an insult because of who he was and who he worked for. From a kid this was a cardinal sin, especially when someone like Kimball showed zero respect for Beef-Neck’s authority or seemed to care. Not only was Kimball’s interference a symbolic slap to the man’s face, it was also blasphemous.
When the man squared off against Kimball, Kimball had to look down. The man didn’t budge from his position as the macho posturing between them commenced.
As soon as Kimball’s mother saw this she attempted to grab Kimball’s hand a second time, only to have him whip it from her grasp.
“Maybe you should listen to your mama,” Beef-Neck said. “Maybe you should go.”
“Maybe you should make me go.”
The moment was becoming thickly hot and intense.
When Kimball’s mother grabbed the back of his suit coat and tried to pull him away, Kimball was unmovable. It was like tugging at a stone statue that was firmly rooted to a fixed base. “Kimball, please.”
Beef-Neck scoffed. “Better listen to your mama . . . Boy.”
The moment he said the word ‘boy,’ something buried deep inside him surfaced spewed forward like burning magma that was being vomited from the pore of a volcano’s cauldron, something hot and nasty. It was an instant of time too quick for the naked eye as Kimball lashed out with his hand, grabbed the man by the neck, and began to throttle him. The man’s eyes widened in shock. The boy’s grip was vise-like, the strength behind the hold inconceivable as his vision started to blur. His face was turning crimson. He gagged, wheezed, and slapped at Kimball’s hand with blows of his own. But Kimball maintained his hold, squeezing the man’s throat until he went to his knees. Gagged some more. Choked. His eyes flaring, the man suddenly surprised by his own mortality as his conscious mind started to slip away into darkness.
Then Kimball released him with his mother and Mr. Deveraux escorting him away.
Kimball’s eyes remained locked to Beef-Neck’s, and Beef-Neck’s to his as the divide between them grew. Beef-Neck had his hands to his throat as his lungs deeply pulled in oxygen with a wheeze. After staggering to his feet on coltish legs, Beef-Neck pointed an accusing hand at Kimball. Though the man couldn’t speak, the message was quite clear.
I’m coming for you . . .
. . . Booooooy!
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Are you out of your mind?” Kimball’s mother was angry. He had never seen her like this before as they drove home to their residence. “What the hell were you thinking?”
‘Hell’ was a profane word in his mother’s dictionary. For her to use it, he surely must have pushed her buttons. “The guy was threatening Mr. Deveraux,” he said.
“Mr. Deveraux created his own problems. We don’t need to be a part of them. Do you have any idea of what you just did? Who you did it to? And to do it at a funeral service, of all things.”
“He was threatening Mr. Deveraux,” he repeated, trying to justify his action.
“That man you took to the ground is going to come after you and try to save face by making an example out of you. People can’t witness the likes of Cooch’s ties being bettered in a confrontation.”
“Why? Not good for business?”
She lashed out at him hard. “You need to take this seriously!” she hollere
d at him. “He’s going to find out who you are, then he’s going to come after you, and he’s going to hurt you. And maybe us, too.”
He can try.
“I don’t know what it is about you, Kimball. You never look before you leap. You don’t seem to think. You just respond and your temper is getting out of control all of a sudden.”
“So we just stand by and let people like that treat Mr. Deveraux the way he did on probably the worst day of Mr. Deveraux’s life? Is that what you’re saying? Is that the way you want to raise me, Mom? By turning a blind eye against those who are suffering? That’s real Christian-like.”
She seemed to mull this over a moment before she spoke “I want you to help people, Kimball. But not with violence.”
“Sometimes, Mom, it’s the only way. You can’t pick and choose who to help based on whether or not acts of violence are going to be committed. Sometimes you have to stand up against certain people who prey on those who can’t protect themselves.”
Her mood seemed to have tapered off to a neutral level. “Kimball, you’re my son. I love you. But you cannot raise a hand against another. It would make you no different than they are.”
“You’re wrong,” he countered. “I raised a hand against a man who will continue to prey on the weak. People like that jerk at the funeral will just keep coming until somebody finally stands up against them.”
“More will come.”
“And someone will stop them.”
“You’re only seventeen, Kimball. You’re not old enough to understand.”
“I understand just fine.” Now Kimball started to sound heated. “I have a cousin who nobody wants to help because the truth is nobody wants to get involved or lift a hand to help her. I see a lot, Mom. I see people turning away from those in need of help because it would be one less problem to deal with in their own lives.”
“Kimball--” Her words trailed because she didn’t know how to counter.
When they got home nothing more was said until they got inside the house. Even then his mother didn’t address him, but his father, who listened about the events at the end of the service and who was involved in the melee.
“One of Cooch’s people?” His father sounded more impressed than angry. “Maybe the boy’s got a pair after all.” Then the realization of possible retaliation by Cooch surfaced, and his father changed his mood.
Then: “Boooooy!”
Kimball was sitting at the top of the stairway waiting for the call he knew would come. When his father called after him he bounded down the steps and into the kitchen. “What.”
“Is what your mother says true? You took one of Cooch’s men to his knees at the funeral?”
“I didn’t know who he was. Just some guy.”
“Idiot!” his father hollered. “Now you’re flexing your muscles against the members of the mob! Is that what you’re doing?”
“He’s a thug. He was riding Mr. Deveraux--”
“I don’t care what he was doing, you dumb bastard. You think people like Vinny Cuchinata is just gonna let something like this go? Well, do you?”
Kimball didn’t know what to say.
“You dumb bastard!” his father repeated curtly. “You want to get us all killed? Is that it?”
“The guy’s a thug who couldn’t fight off a fly.”
“Boy, you just don’t get it, do you? There’s a certain pecking order out there! Like I said before, it ain’t a pretty place out there like your mother makes it out to be. It’s a sad and depressing world. And you just made it worse.”
“How? By helping out a man who needed help?’
“And who’s going to help us, Boy? You tell me that. The police? Oh, no. By the time they arrive it’ll be too late.”
“I think you’re overreacting. Both of you.”
“You better hope so, Boy . . . You just better pray we are.”
But when his father said this, Kimball thought he heard a hint of pride for what he did. He took one of Cooch’s own to his knees in a contest that wasn’t even close.
Then his father was gone, the man returning to his seat in the living room to watch the baseball playoffs. His mother stood watching him with a neutral look.
Without saying anything further, Kimball turned and took the stairs to his room. Sitting along the edge of his bed, he stared out the window. The street was lined with maple trees whose leaves were beginning to turn with the colors of the foliage---of red, orange and yellow. Soon it would be Halloween and the creatures of the night would walk the streets, both real and unreal. He wondered if Vinny Cuchinata would pay him a visit as well, a very real monster looking for a soul to keep.
Turning away from the window, Kimball went to the closet and removed his hoodie. He put it on and pulled the hood over his head, masking his features. This was his outfit, his uniform, one he could take to the streets long before Halloween and become a very real creature that stalked his prey from dark corners. Of course he only romanticized the idea about becoming this dark crusader who lived within the shadows of the night, only to come out to make the world right again. And once matters had been neutralized, then he would slink back into the shadows and become a part of them.
If Vinny Cuchinta came after him, then he would wear this vestment of a hoodie that would empower him, and move against him.
On the nightstand lay the rosary coiled like a serpent. Kimball grabbed it, squeezed it within his palm, and wondered if God recognized the right for one man to aid another using whatever means necessary to do so.
Was he right in doing what he did to help Mr. Deveraux?
Then in the back of his mind like a distant whisper in a voice not of his own, he heard a mantra play over an over as if it was trying to emphasize a point: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Kimball laid the rosary down and turned to his image in the mirror.
He was of age now where he had to make a decision of which path to take. He could take the path toward the Light. He could take the path toward the Dark. Or he could keep to the road in the middle, that area of Gray which is the dividing line between the two.
But in the days to come as Kimball began to take his first steps from boyhood and began to venture into manhood, life would make that decision for him.
By the casting of events, Kimball Hayden would remain as the fulcrum between sinner and saint.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You’re trying to tell me that you were brought to your knees by a high-school kid? Is that what you’re telling me?” Cooch sat in his office with his feet elevated to the desktop, and bounced his tented fingers against the point of his chin, and then stopped. “Maybe I should hire his ass to work for me instead of you.”
Everyone in the room started to laugh. And Beef-Neck became hot under the collar with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. So it was natural for him to try to save face. “You had to see the size of this kid,” he tried to defend himself. “He was as big as a house and fast. And I mean fast, Cooch. Really, really fast.”
Cooch stared at him for a long moment. “Anyone else see this?”
Beef-Neck gave a half-hearted shrug. “I think so.”
“You think so or you know so?”
“I’m pretty sure. Yeah.”
“Pretty sure.” Cooch went back to bouncing the tips of his fingers against his chin, thinking. “All right,” he finally said. “I like this kid already. Reminds me of me when I was his age.” Vinny Cuchinata removed his feet from the desktop, stood up, and smoothed out the wrinkles of his suit. “But with that being said, nobody gets away with downing a man from my organization. It might give people the wrong idea that they can push back.”
“You want that I should do something, Cooch?” asked Beef-Neck.
Vinny Cuchinata gave him an incredulous look. “Yeah, I want you to do something,” he stated sharply as if it was common sense. “Find the kid and make an example of him.”
“He obviously
knew Deveraux. I’ll get answers from him.”
“You do that,” said Cooch, sounding perturbed. “And make sure that word circulates on the streets that there are consequences for those who raise a hand to one of my boys.”
“Yeah, Cooch. No problem.”
“Better not be. Have a nice day.” Cooch gave Beef-Neck a look that told him to be out of his office within ten seconds. Beef-Neck complied, closing the door softly behind him.
Then Cooch looked at the two sitting in the chairs at the opposite side of the room. “You got business to attend to?” he asked them with a hard edge. “Or are you just going to sit around all day on my dime?”
Billy-the Blade and Jesse got to their feet. Billy stopped swinging his butterfly knife and pocketed the weapon. Jesse headed for the door.
“Things to do,” said Jesse. “We got people to meet and money to collect.”
Cooch went to the bar, grabbed a glass, and poured himself a scotch. “Then have a good day, gentlemen. And do make sure it’s a profitable one.”
Billy-the-Blade nodded. “Sure thing, Boss.”
When Cooch was left alone in his office he went to the picture window. He stood before the pane and sipped from the glass. In the streets of Malden he had earned the nickname of the Gangster Prince, a man who had a choke hold on police and political figures who foolishly accepted payments to fatten their pockets. The moment they accepted the devil’s hand, they also accepted a fate that would lead them down a dark hole. And Cooch wasn’t stupid, either. He made sure that he created a paper trail of every transaction and payoff. If the Feds should decide to indict him, then he would bring down all those who sat on the highest political thrones in the city of Boston. They knew this, too. So protecting Cooch was optimum in saving their own hides.