Warpath
Page 4
Bending Boulevard transforms from a five-lane sprawling drag to a two-lane cozy street winding through old, old neighborhoods. Lanes peel off one by one as homes become more prevalent. 3917 South Bending Boulevard is tucked back around a corner. I cruise by, pretending not to be taking in every detail as I pass. I get directly parallel to the home and look without reservation at it, develop the mental picture.
The plan comes with the look. There are three males sitting on the porch, feet up, smoking. Beer bottles on the railing. If I were to get out right now I’d smell weed. I’ve been at this too long to not be right about that. The house faces north. The west side there is a small strip of grass between houses that runs clear though to the next street over.
No lights on inside the home. The houses next door to each side seem quiet as well. Only one car in the driveway. No garage. No good lighting either. Wonderful.
I drive down the block. Turn left. Turn left again. Headlamps off. Park. Leave it unlocked in case I need to clear scene in a hurry. Gun in hand. Crack my neck. Move.
Shadows are the only thing I want to be intimate with right now.
My eyes always one step ahead. Select the next bit of concealment. Someone nearby is grilling. No doubt munchies. Off in the distance a stereo is pumping hip-hop into the night. Crouch behind the topless husk of an old oak tree and see the new spot. Move. Into the strip of grass between the houses. Checking windows as I pass by. A lone, naked shrub is the only obstacle in the strip. I come up from behind 3917. The house next door has six gas meters attached to it. Rentals. 3917 only has one. Good. It’s too small to subdivide anyways. Maybe seven hundred square feet inside. One story. The porch is on my left.
There were three males. The one in the center is the one I want. Crouched low, I stalk along the house until I’m beside the porch. The male now closest to me looked the biggest; probably three hundred pounds. The one on the far outside looked young. Little brother maybe.
These jackoffs consciously organize themselves in a tiered, positions-of-power way. They idolize movies and establishments where powerful men appear as rulers. And by that I mean kings. Literal rulers. They surround themselves with their minions. That can take on a literal form when they move in groups. Or sit on a porch. I want the man surrounded by others. The central figure. The bet is he’s the most powerful among them.
If my hunch is right—and this is me we’re talking about, so it is—that also makes him the target.
Voices. The telltale long, high pitched inhale of someone dragging on a joint. Smell the ditch weed. Talking about some club. Some girl.
Blast off. Up over the rail. Fat boy sees me first. With his kicks up on the railing, he tries a full body spasm to get on his feet. Pistol whip across his mouth. Bridge of his nose. Three hundred pounds of lard and ill-fitting clothes make a deep thud on the wood of the porch. Across him. Elbow to the powerful male, who is all of twenty-five years old. It connects just above his temple and the stars he’s blinded with follow him down to the porch. The younger brother ain’t that young. Twenty-ish. He stands. Digs into his waistband. Pistol whip up side his head. Goes down to his knees. Sways; fights unconsciousness. A small gun slips out from his waistline and strikes the porch with a staccato note. A left cross snaps his head back and into the far railing. Blood everywhere. Collapses into a heap.
Younger brother’s gun goes over the side into the yard. One eye keeps to the front door. The other eye to the powerful male. I roll him over. Toss his pockets. His own firearm, a shitty 9mm goes out into the yard somewhere. A pack of smokes, a lighter. Four cell phones. Must be a drug dealer. A utility bill folded in half. I look at the return address. Andre H. Moss. 3917 S. Bending Boulevard, Saint Ansgar.
Hello, Mr. Moss.
His wallet has his government assistance debit card. I take it. Drug dealers do this: they sell their junk and all the while claim unemployment. There’s no sense in spending your poison-money on things like doctor’s visits when the taxpayers can pick up that tab for you. Better save it for things like guns and a Lexus. Dealers take that as payment as well. A welfare card. A bus ticket. Pussy.
Moss also has a non-driver’s license ID card confirming his name on the bill, ten dollars in cash—which I take because my smokes don’t buy themselves—and two baggies with meth inside.
A note on clothing: some thugwear clothing companies sew concealed pockets into their shit. A pair of jeans will have deep, deep pockets running down the legs, or little hidey holes tucked behind a normal pocket. They do this the same way potwear companies will sew in small, easy to miss pockets for a dime bag or a dug out. Stashing pockets. Drugs, a pager, a small gun.
In one of these stashing pockets Andre has a nice, antique pearl necklace. Out of place on this guy. I take it as well. It might be nothing, but my finely tuned piggy sense says it’s worth a second look.
Examine his hands, arms. Unkempt and long nails. Fake gold watch. A tattoo on the webbing between his pointer finger and thumb. Prison ink. He’s got a teardrop under his left eye. Names tattooed in cursive on both sides of his neck.
Shirt up. Some usual gang graffiti that passes as ink on these fools. One scar on the outside of his torso that might be a small caliber entry wound. He stinks like bathing just isn’t as sexy as it should be.
Amidst all this, my eyes move back and forth in a constant scan. Three hundred pound guy, front door, younger brother. Three hundred pound guy, front door, younger brother. Three hundred pound guy, front door, younger brother.
I give fleeting thought to taking Andre Moss with me somewhere else so we can talk. As I decide it’s probably better that I do, he stirs. Consciousness floods back. Eye lids flutter. Licks his lips. He comes alive with a jolt of confusion and the remainder of adrenaline. I shove his arms under his body and drop both my knees onto his chest. Pinned. Muzzle to his eyeball. We do this here, then.
I grab his neck and shove his head backwards as far as it goes. Harder for him to scream that way.
“You shout, you die. All I want is to talk.”
His non-gun eye rolls down and looks at me. He tries to speak but all it does is bare his teeth. Tries to be tough. I strike him on the forehead with the gun barrel; put it back in his eye.
“You got no one to show off for, Andre,” I say, yanking his head side-to-side. “Your friends have checked out. Someone tried to kill you tonight but they got the wrong house. Who was it?”
“Man, I don’t know what—”
Strike to the head.
“Try again.”
“Cops,” he says in the smart ass tone that any arrogant punk has. “Baby mamma. White people. Gang. They all want me,” he says, trying to smile. A laundry list of potential enemies means he’s doing something right. What a world he lives in.
“Gangs. Name them.”
“Every gang in the world, bitch.”
“Which one tonight?”
He wrenches his body and gets an arm out. I drop my piece onto his face. Grab his flailing wrist. He bucks his head; the gun falls off to the side. Cuts on his nose and inner eyebrow. Both my hands on his, I take his pinky finger.
“We’re out of time, son,” I say. A snap fills the cold air as his cutest finger finds a new angle to point in. My hand down to his head, shove it back under his jaw and push as far as it goes. No scream. I’ll let the burn from the broken bone settle in.
“You answer my question and you get to dry swallow some of that meth in your wallet. It might numb the pain. Plus, the quicker you give me answers as opposed to this gangbanger represent bullshit the quicker you stop losing fingers.”
He struggles against me. Like a snake caught by its tail he whips as hard as he can. I look to his buddies but they do not stir. Once one of them does, this will get out of hand. Fast.
I pull his head up off the porch, slam it back down. His eyes jiggle with the impact. Next finger in hand.
“What’ll it be, Andre?”
“Fuck you—”
Snap.
Next finger.
“What gang?”
“I roll with the 39th Street Felons! My parole officer gonna know ’bout this! Motherfucker, you goin’ in the pen and I got friends who gonna shower rape your ass—”
Head up off the porch, slam back down.
“Don’t threaten me with butt-fucking, son.” There’s a certain decorum we follow, and cornholing isn’t included.
39th Street Felons. Not what I was asking for but might be just as good. I still know some guys on the gang unit. They’ll know who Andre’s folks cross most often.
Andre groans, trying to fight back sobs. Rolls his head off to the side and spits. That’s a great sign. He spit...and not in my direction. He might not respect me, but he knows the consequence of disrespect. We finally understand one another.
“Who tried to kill you tonight?”
“Don’t know,” he says with a hint of honesty. “Coupla gangs is out for me. We took some hood from the SA Crips. We cornered and jacked some fool who got crew in Los Carniceros or what the fuck ever.”
“The Butchers?” I ask. The Los Carniceros are a Mexican gang who made their name decapitating the families of their adversaries. Gangs and cops went to war with them, and luckily for the world the Carniceros took some heavy losses. But they still exist.
“The street says Thuggie in Carnivore Messiahs is after me. That’s bullshit.”
“If they’re after you, a drive-by is quite tame.”
“Thuggie just got outta the joint. He’s gettin back in the game but he’s gotta lay low so he don’t go back.”
“Who is Thuggie and why does he want you?”
“He started the Carnivores. LaTrell something. He says I strong-armed his auntie or his nana.”
“You robbed his grandmother?”
“Yeah. Bitch be cruisin’ through my hood, she pays the toll. Fuck that bitch. I ain’t in this business to help other peoples’ grannies. Shit is simple.”
“You robbed an old woman?”
“I said yes. Bitch ain’t walkin through my hood and not know who owns it.”
“What kind of guy robs an old woman?”
“I always let ’em know I mean business. That’s how I run my show.”
Let ’em know I mean business. Translation: I use a gun.
I look up, out into the street. Party is over.
“You know what Thuggie drives?”
“Eighty-one Buick Regal, up on hydraulics.”
“What about an old Pontiac Grand Am? Dark body with a red driver’s side door?”
“He got crew with that car, yeah.”
“Didn’t take them long to figure out they hit the wrong house,” I say to myself.
“What?”
The car douses the headlamps. Crawling by. Back window down.
“Andre, you said something about paying a toll, right?”
“Yeah! That bitch—”
I throw an elbow across his eye socket and shove him full-body into the air. Into view.
He tries to scream as the night erupts into a cacophony of shrill barks. Street sweeper. Andre gets perforated. I duck and roll before they get me.
Bullets spray the house. I get behind the three hundred pound guy. Shove him up, use him as a wall and feel one bullet punch into him. Glass shatters. Wood plinks and gives way to lead. Snaps come alive all around and I make myself as small as I can.
Andre collapses in a pile, blood everywhere. The bullets stop the same time the car peels out and I move. Grab my heater and I’ve got one more thing to accomplish.
Andre committed the original sin here. He lived in the mirror address of Clevenger’s grandparents. He committed the crime that put a bounty on his head. He got Eudora killed. He’s now done. Toll paid. That end is clean.
The guys in the car are no doubt the same ones who rolled up on Clevenger’s family.
Engine snarls. Tires squeal. I brace against the stair railing. Sights to my eye. One good shot. The shooter is in the backseat, driver’s side. A single .44 Magnum roars into the night. Back windshield shatters. The shooter’s head drops down. The driver freaks the fuck out and sideswipes a tree as he mashes the gas. Nearly loses control of the car. Swerves, over-corrects and swerves again. Takes the corner on two wheels.
Fatty took a round in his chest. His eyes are too glazed to be alive. Younger brother has at least one entry wound in his thigh. He hasn’t moved since I punched him. Hard.
No looking back. I bolt back down between houses. Lungs burn. I swear behind every shadow there is someone waiting to shoot me. Nerves. Gun in hand, keys in the other. Get to the car, unlocked in case I need to clear scene in a hurry. Gun on the seat, ram the keys home. No headlamps for a quarter mile. I get it three times the speed limit within ten seconds. Dart through neighborhoods, head north.
PD will flood the new shooting. Once Collins hears the address he’ll follow. I cross the Mannasmith Memorial Bridge back into the northland and start to think about Clarence Petticoat, his at-large rapist, Clevenger, calling Howard Michigan at five a.m.
The usual fare.
Ann Long Memorial.
The waiting room is small; quaint. Clevenger sits next to his ninety-two-year-old grandfather in a room where the walls are a psychologically calming hue of white, the gentle pattern of the carpet, carefully designed to avoid the appearance of being busy. Busy designs can irritate a person. Irate people take death notifications worse than calm people. Clevenger’s grandfather looks calm. Defeated, but calm. His face, a formerly empty palette now scribbled by the hard pressings of being stunned. Stupefied. Numb and overwhelmed.
What a night. One minute you’re sleeping next to the woman who you’ve been married to for so long you have to work to unearth a memory without her in it, and the next moment your house is alive with gunfire and screaming and bleeding out. Alive with death, that dirty whore pulling her veil of eternal sleep over your spouse.
Clevenger’s grandfather is named Willibald, which impresses me just because he sounds like a legendary medieval swordsman. But now as I walk into the gulf of sorrow that fills the small room, he’s a man who was proud five hours ago and broken now.
Clevenger looks up, his eyes a hard question. The thirst for revenge that floats to the top of a person’s eyes, like the hunger of lust I have seen in other men’s eyes, it occupies his face.
I nod. Half-smile.
Graham Clevenger exhales, long. He’s been holding that particular breath since he got the word. Exhaling, the first time he has since the bullets ripped apart his family. He’s got his arm around his wife Molly. He shrugs and pulls her tighter. She sees me, smiles. Lovely. I don’t know if she fakes it or not, but when she smiles at me I feel welcome. If Graham were my son, Molly would make me proud as a daughter-in-law.
“Come. Sit with us.” Molly is on the end of the waiting room couch. She reaches across Graham and pats the open seat. She grips her tissue a little tighter in one small hand, streaks of sorrow-black mascara cutting tiger stripes across it.
I near the open seat, see Willibald. The old man looks up to me, his eyes void of tears but only because he hails from a generation who still does those things in private.
“Hello, Richard,” his voice, nails and ash.
“Hello,” I say, look at Graham. He nods ever so slightly. I turn back to Willibald. “If it eases something inside, I heard from some cop-buddies that the men who did this got the address wrong. They went south of the river to get it right and were killed during the drive-by.”
I rub my face. “The shooter is in a body bag. Maybe two.”
“Did he have a wife?” Willibald asks, looking down at his gruff hands. “Do shitheads like that still respect marriage?”
“No.”
He looks up to me, his face as honest a
s a child’s. “You were married once, am I right?”
“Yes. Widowed.”
He looks away and that word, widowed, it floats through the air like a spider’s web and settles down upon him. It has him now; that definition fits his life. Widower.
“We have that in common, I guess. How does it work?”
I’ve spent my life pondering that. “It made me believe in God.”
“You didn’t before then?”
“If you met my parents you wouldn’t either.”
“Why then? After He took away your other half, why then did you believe in Him?”
Molly reaches across Graham and pats my hand, as if, since she is the only living wife in our circle, she has to somehow fill a spiritual gap. “Two reasons. The first is because I need her. She is gone in this life, but in the next I keep hearing promises from the Holy Bible she’ll be around. So I want there to be a heaven so I may have her again.”
“I see,” he says, looking off into some great distance that is beyond the waiting room wall. I can see he hopes that as well. To be reunited. A secret desire. Without facing me he says, “And the second reason you believe in God?”
“So I can get my hands on Him for doing that in the first place.”
“You say that with conviction.”
“I mean it with conviction.”
After some time of being quiet, visiting with the doctor, people in and out, Graham taking some cell phone calls about the second crime scene, my best friend steps out of the room.
Molly rustles through her purse. “I need a coffee. Anybody else want one?”
I give her some cash. “This round is on me.”
“Thank you, Richard.”
She smiles again, and that’s enough thanks for me. “If they have booze, make sure it finds its way into mine.”
“Sure.” Halfway out the door Willibald speaks up. “Molly.” She stops, turns around. He stares at her for a second, says, “I want the same thing.”
“Oh. Of course. Two spiked coffees from the hospital. Coming up.”