by Nick Petrie
“He’s young.”
“Yeah, younger than most for that job. Especially for this shift. He’s either somebody’s relation or he’s pretty smart. This is entry-level, pays a couple dollars an hour. Maybe he’s helping feed his family, maybe he’s on his own and he’s feeding himself. The first step on the ladder.”
Peter watched Stevie standing under the tree, tuned in to the walkie-talkie. “There’s no other ladder to climb?”
Wanda shook her head. “There are other ladders, but they’re steep, and that first rung is damn hard to reach,” she said. “I know these folks. Schools are lousy, families are fractured, most people are dirt-poor. A lot of these corner boys, they don’t have anybody who really cares about them. They find their community on the streets. If they can earn money in that community, it seems like a good decision. The fact that they might die doing the work, well, that’s part of the deal. They might die anyway.”
Stevie shot a glance back at the Toyota, kept talking. Maybe working his way up the food chain. Wanda the gangster photographer would be easy. Casper the Unknown Ghost was the problem.
“You got out,” he said.
“As much as anybody does,” she said. “I came back, too. Taking people’s pictures is pretty intimate, you know? You’re looking at them, and they’re showing you who they are. You see their humanity, even these gangsters. Sometimes especially. Most of them are just kids anyway.”
“How’d you end up photographing war zones?”
“I grew up in one,” she said. “Half a mile from here. Back then it was crack, now it’s also meth and heroin. You could get beat up or shot just walking home from school, no reason at all.”
“Sounds rough.”
“I got lucky,” she said. “I found something I liked, and I had people who encouraged me to chase it. My uncle would loan me his Polaroid if I’d watch his kids. At Frayser High, a teacher saw my pictures and gave me an old Nikon. She had a darkroom in her closet at home, made me a deal. We traded good grades for film and paper and darkroom time.” She gave Peter an odd little smile. “I was her project. She was tough on me, but she found me a scholarship at DePaul in Chicago. She was also the first lesbian I ever met.”
Peter looked at her. Wanda shrugged. “It’s not like she forced me. Serena was only ten years older than me, and kinda cute.” She looked away into the past. “Lot of worse things could have happened. And did.”
Peter watched her hand tremble as she took it from the steering wheel. She reached down, lifted the camera from her bag, and took a few shots of Stevie on his walkie-talkie under the low-hanging branches.
Holding the camera, her hand was steady.
Stevie turned and walked toward them, all smiles. “Chester says okay.”
He gave Wanda directions, and she got out of the car and took a dozen or more pictures. Stevie grinning and happy, then flexing his muscles in a strong-man pose, then with his hands formed into pistols and crossed over his chest, dead-faced as any hardened gangster.
Ten years old.
She wrote the boy’s Instagram tag in her notebook, leaned in to kiss him lightly on the cheek, and they drove away.
Peter said, “That house is in the only part of Frayser we haven’t seen. You already knew where it was.”
“And who runs it,” she said. “I was hoping we’d find your truck someplace else first. And it’s better if they know we’re coming.”
24
The house was two blocks away, a small, narrow, shotgun-style structure in dire need of a new roof and everything else. The windows were still covered, but someone had taken the plywood down from the front door and laid it over the rotten planks of the leaning front porch.
Three teenagers were ranged out across the small dirt yard, one of them with a broken-off branch the size of a baseball bat, the bark peeled away, a heavy knot at one end. A shirtless man stood in the doorway, mid-twenties and heavy with muscle. He had a pair of black lightning bolts tattooed across his wide brown chest.
“Wanda,” he called out. “How you doin’, girl?”
“I’m good, Chester, how ’bout you?” She got out of the car. “I was hoping to take some pictures today, if that’s okay.”
“Long as you start with me.” Chester gave her a wide toothy smile. “We’re light on customers right now anyway. Just keep the house out of the pictures.”
Peter opened his door and stepped out. He had Wanda’s notebook in one hand and a pencil behind his ear.
“Who’s that you got with you,” Chester asked.
“My name’s Peter, I’m a friend of Wanda’s. How’s your day going?”
Mad Chester’s smile dropped like a stone. “I didn’t ask you.”
“He’s my helper,” Wanda said. “Taking down your tags so you can find your pictures on my feed. I know all you gangsters follow my ass online.” She raised her camera. “Now give me that handsome smile again.” Her finger flickered on the shutter.
She spent fifteen minutes taking pictures of Mad Chester and three other men from inside the house, portraits and group shots. The men were solid and capable, sure of themselves, their brown skin dense with tattoos. They brought out pistols and long guns to pose with empty faces and hardware on display.
Peter had met enough warlords to know who these men were. They lived in a world where there was no safe place, no refuge, and it changed them. Like an occupying militia, they would be hard and unpredictable and violent, killers when necessary. Some of them might have learned to like it. The youngest were a kind of cannon fodder, and each year of survival both marked them and moved them further up the food chain.
Peter wasn’t one of them. He was tolerated only because he was sponsored by Wanda, under a kind of cease-fire.
But he’d worked and served with men from every background and every major religion, with every skin tone under the sun. His best friends from the Corps were two sergeants, one black, one Hispanic. One was dead, one ran a roofing company in Seattle. Lewis was his closest friend and a career criminal. Each of those men had put their lives on the line for Peter, without hesitation, more times than he cared to think about. And they’d killed for him, too.
So he had no problem talking with these rough men as he wrote their tags in Wanda’s notebook.
They were guarded, not quite sure how to react, because he clearly wasn’t afraid of them. But he didn’t act like a hard-ass, either. To Peter, they were serious men with real responsibilities, facing significant threats, and he treated them with respect. By the end of the session, they’d each looked him over and given him the slow nod, which was pretty good for fifteen minutes.
Wanda took less time with the yard crew, who were younger and goofier and maybe hadn’t lost as many friends as Chester and his group. Peter noticed she took a lot more pictures, though, most of them candid shots while the boys weren’t looking.
As she worked, a few men and women began to linger on the sidewalks, ragged and twitchy, customers looking to buy but unwilling to interrupt and maybe risk a beating. When Wanda asked if she could take their pictures, too, their faces lit up like fireflies, even though their smiles were full of holes, their clothing thin as old lace.
Chester let her shoot until seven or eight customers were waiting and two got into a shoving match. Then he sent his men back inside and the yard crew formed the customers into some kind of order, the boy with the stick breaking up the argument without having to hit anybody, sending the muttering main offender to the back of the line.
* * *
• • •
When everything was running smoothly, Chester came over to Peter and stood a little too close. He still had a flat black pistol hanging loosely from his right hand.
“Okay, white boy. Now tell me what you’re really doing here.”
“Honestly? I’m looking for my truck,” Peter said. “Somebody held me up this mo
rning.”
Mad Chester threw back his head and laughed.
Peter said, “I don’t care about my phone or my wallet. I don’t even care who did it. But I want my goddamn truck back.”
“Well, what’s in it for me, white boy?”
“A thousand for you and five hundred for the kid who finds it.”
Chester stopped laughing and looked at Peter thoughtfully.
“What kind of truck?”
“A clean green 1968 Chevy with a nice wood cargo box on the back. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Mad Chester’s fingers slowly gathered the pistol into a tighter grip. It was a banged-up Colt 1911, a weapon Peter knew well. It was one of the options for Marine officers when he’d signed up. He also was pretty sure he knew what was coming. He tasted copper in his mouth.
Chester said, “What if you’re not the only one looking for this truck?”
Peter figured he might as well get this over with. “I know I’m not. I caught a ride with King Robbie this morning.”
“That was you?” Chester’s voice was quiet. The gun still hung down, but it twitched in his hand. “I don’t know what you did, but you’re in some serious shit. Charlene Scott wants you bad.”
“Chester, come on.” Wanda kept her voice light, but she was taking slow, deep breaths, suppressing her nerves. “Peter’s with me. He gets a pass today.”
“Nobody gets a pass from the King.”
Mad Chester stood close, staring Peter in the face. Chester would be strong and used to fighting. There would be no warning.
Peter smiled. The adrenaline sang in his blood. He was ready. He was always ready. He said, “Why do they call you Mad Chester?”
Chester raised the pistol and Peter grabbed it with both hands. He pushed the barrel down and away, with a finger jammed behind the trigger to keep it from firing, then twisted the gun butt inside, hard and fast. Chester was thick with muscle, but he was too close. He tried to head-butt Peter, but Peter turtled back to avoid the blow and twisted harder, pulling the other man off-balance.
Chester had no other move. His hand released its grip automatically to keep his wrist from breaking, then Peter had the gun.
If it had taken another half second, Peter thought Chester might have let his own wrist break to keep hold of the pistol.
Not that it would have made any difference.
Peter stepped back to put some space between them, the heavy automatic now reversed toward Mad Chester. The man took a deep inward breath, the lightning bolt tattoos rising with his chest, shoulders back, arms hanging heavy at his sides. As if finally facing something he’d long known would eventually arrive.
“Go on, do what you’re gonna do. My boys will come out shooting.”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t want to kill you, Chester. I just want my truck back.”
Mad Chester’s mouth bunched up like a fist. “You some kind of pussy, afraid to kill a man? Never done it before?”
Peter locked eyes with Mad Chester. The white static crackled between them, a living thing. “You have no fucking idea what I’ve done,” Peter said. “What I’m capable of. If I leave you standing, it’s a gift. You hear me?”
Peter watched Chester’s face change, just a little, as he saw something surface in Peter. Something Peter didn’t allow to show very often. Something he wasn’t always proud of, but something that had been an inseparable part of him since the war. Sometimes it was useful. Sometimes it was necessary.
Then Chester dipped his chin, a minimal nod. “All right.”
“I’ll ask again. Have you seen my truck?”
Chester shook his head, again the smallest possible gesture. As if each concession hurt, no matter the risk. “No.”
Peter believed him. “Okay. You got anything else to say?”
“You the one holding the gun.”
Peter tripped the release and dropped the mag into his right hand, then cycled the action to pop out the extra round. He tucked the empty gun into the back of his pants, the mag into his pocket, then held his hands out, palms up. The whole thing in under three seconds.
“Now I’m not.” He gave Mad Chester his werewolf smile. “You got anything else?”
Chester’s muscles popped and twitched under his bare skin. The man’s barely contained violence like a shimmering wave of heat and rage. His weight shifted forward onto his toes.
Peter’s balance was perfect. He felt his chest fill with oxygen. A breeze stirred the leaves in the trees. This whole thing a bad idea, but a welcome chance to burn off this surge of aggression, vent his frustration. Do some damage and damn the consequences.
The boys in the yard, the men in the house. Wanda behind him.
He wanted Chester to come. He longed for it.
Then Chester stepped back, shaking his head. He’d seen it, too. “White folks are fucking weird.”
Peter nodded once. “Not all white folks,” he said. “Just me. Are we done?”
“Call it a truce.” Mad Chester looked steadily at Peter. “Get out of here before my boys get itchy and somebody end up dead.”
Wanda had backed away to avoid catching a stray bullet. She had good instincts, thought Peter. Now she stepped carefully to her Toyota and fired up the engine.
Peter slapped the magazine back into the pistol, scooped up the fallen round, and hopped into the passenger seat.
The yard crew stood there wondering what exactly had happened.
Peter wasn’t quite sure himself.
But now he had a half-decent weapon again.
25
Wanda was breathing hard, her entire body shaking as she found her way back to Watkins and headed south. Driving with her knees, she fumbled a pill bottle out of her purse, shook a few out into her hand, and swallowed them dry. “What the fuck was that?”
“Sorry,” Peter said. He was checking out the 1911, mostly to give his own hands something to do. He chambered a fresh round and thumbed the extra into the magazine. The action was smooth and the weapon smelled faintly of oil. “Is that going to come back on you?”
She waved it away. “When were you planning to tell me about King Robbie?”
When would he have mentioned it, Peter wondered. While she was in shock? Or nearly comatose? Or wired to the gills, driving around King Robbie’s business district?
“There’s not much to tell,” said Peter. “He gave me a ride after my truck got stolen. He was pretty interested in the truck and the kid who took it. I guess that trickled down the food chain to Chester.”
Wanda looked at him, the Land Cruiser drifting from its lane. “You say this like it’s nothing.”
Peter shrugged. “It is what it is. Anyway, I asked King to drop me off a block from your place. But that lunatic with the machine gun was there, so I took a pistol from a woman named Charlene Scott to try and chase him off.”
“I know who Charlene Scott is.” Wanda still stared at Peter, the Land Cruiser still drifting. “We went to Frayser High together. She kills people for King Robbie.”
Now she was crossing the yellow line into oncoming traffic. The other cars honked and swerved but she didn’t seem to notice. Peter reached out and put his hand on the wheel to ease her back into her lane. “Is Chester’s house part of King Robbie’s operation?”
“That house is like the farthest tip of the longest tentacle. Chester runs four houses total, I think. King might not even know about that particular house. But yeah, it’s his, it’s all his. And now he’s after you?”
“I guess so.” Peter smiled. “But maybe I’m after him, too.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Wanda shuddered. “You’re as bad as Chester. You are in way over your head. Does June know how crazy you are?”
“Pretty sure,” he admitted. “But she puts up with it because I’ve got mad skills in the sack.”
; “Oh, no,” she said. “You are not going there.”
“Horizontal mambo? The beast with two backs?”
“Ugh!” Wanda groaned. “Like I wanted that picture in my head. Straight people!”
But she was smiling again, and focused on the road. Her pills had kicked in. Peter took his hand off the wheel.
* * *
• • •
She made it under the freeway and across the Wolf River before she spoke again.
“You weren’t afraid of those guys at the house. I mean, before Chester tried to shoot you. Why not?”
“I was afraid, and for the same reasons as you. They’re gangsters with guns and drugs and anger management problems. They’re unpredictable. But they’ve got no reason to hurt you unless you give them one. They’re just people. They’ve got friends and grandmothers like everyone else.”
“They’re not like everyone else,” Wanda said. “They’re dangerous. They kill people.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with dangerous people. We have a lot in common.” Peter didn’t mention that he was a killer, too.
“And the guys with the machine gun? The guy with the dump truck? What about them?”
“I’ll work on that tomorrow. At least King’s motives are clear. I have no idea what those other assholes want.”
“So now we’ve got two groups of people after us.”
“This is why I wanted you to stay in your hotel room,” Peter said.
“Yeah, I’m not so good at that.”
“No, really?” He bumped her shoulder with his elbow. “Me neither.”
“I thought you were supposed to help, not make things worse.”
“I’ve got a friend coming down in the morning. He’s pretty good.”