by Paul Griffin
‘Right, you just stole their money.’
‘We stole food, mostly. At first.’
‘I must have Sucker tattooed on me somewhere I don’t see. Here my heart’s breakin for you boys, all those sob stories about foster care—’
‘Yo.’ He calmed himself. ‘Those were true.’
His anger surprised her. She looked away, pouted. ‘Ttt.’
He studied her in the mirror’s reflection, found Yolie in her eyes, the fullness of her lips. ‘How come your aunt ain’t married?’ Ray said.
‘Lost her man in Gulf One, never got over it.’ She turned back to Ray. ‘This whole import business thing, she’s doing it for you, you know? She doesn’t give a damn about the money. She talks about you every night, says she thinks you’re gonna be a big man someday, somebody gives you half a chance. She’s your half a chance, and y’all are too stupid to come on uphill. What a waste.’
‘I’ll talk to him, T. The J-man, he’s set in his ways, though. Give him a little time to settle down. We’ll see. I gotta tell you, though, I’m a little worried about bringin trouble to your aunt. Some neighbor gets mad at her, drops a dime, cops find out she’s harborin two fugitives in her attic—’
‘You know how many illegals she’s hidden in that attic while they were on their way to getting green cards?’
‘Harriet Tubman of Washington Heights, huh?’
‘Raymond, you can’t lie to me like that, not ever again, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And promise me y’all aren’t gonna do any more rustlin.’
‘No more rustlin,’ he said. If I can get out of this last job tonight, he didn’t say.
10
Ray knocked on Jerry’s door. José could wait another goddam month or so for his Ninja.
‘Round Face. You’re early.’ Jerry looked out into his lot. ‘Where’s the ride?’
‘Yeah, um, about that. We don’t wanna do it.’
Jerry frowned. ‘Well, you’re gonna do it anyway.’
‘Look man, I came here out of courtesy—’
‘No, you came because you know if you scooch out on me I’ll have somebody ram a screwdriver through the back of your beach ball head there, and you’re right. Listen, it’s too late now, kid. Yous are either bringing me a Lincoln Navigator or a pair of thumbs.’
‘How’s that?’ Ray said.
‘I already got a buyer gave me half the money. This is gonna be an ek-scape vehicle this thing yous’re boosting tonight. I scooch this guy and the guy, he’s this maniac Russian, he’ll cut off my thumbs. Now, if I’m short a pair of thumbs I’ll need yours for replacements, see? You and José, which one of you’s a lefty?’
Ray liked his thumbs, especially when they were attached to his hands. ‘Okay, but this’ll be our last job with you.’
‘Right. Yous kids, you’ll be back again next week begging me for work.’
‘Don’t bet your daughter’s Catholic school tuition on it,’ Ray said.
‘Talkin about my daughter, Round Face? Half-breed mutt. Get over to that vehicle heist before I pop a cap into your fat ass.’
Ray left. ‘Asshole.’
‘Don’t try to skip out on me, Ray. Wherever yous go, I’ll find you. Believe me.’
Ray believed him.
Some gangbanger leaned out of a bass-booming, cruising Mercedes, chucked a Dunkin’ Donuts bag into the street. A flock of lean pigeons dropped down on the fresh trash.
‘How’d I get here?’ Ray said to the pigeons.
The pigeons didn’t give a damn about Ray. They pecked that Dunkin’ waste as if it were manna.
‘Four hours ago I’m promisin her I’m-a go clean, here I am again, hidin in the park bushes, lookin to boost an eighty-five-thousand-dollar ride that’s gonna be used as an escape vehicle for drug runners, a hit maybe? That woman’s brain is an audio recorder, girl remembers what you said word for word from the day she met you. She finds about this, she’s gonna play me back that conversation to the syllable, “And then you said, No more rustlin, and then I said—” ’
José skidded up, a pie box strapped to the back of his bike. ‘You gotta stop talkin to yourself, Ray. I seen you, son, from halfway up the block. It’s gettin serious. That was a full-out conversation you were havin with you.’
‘I was talkin to the pigeons.’
‘What a relief. Fourteen skippin straight to salinity.’
‘Senility.’
‘Like I said.’ José broke out the pizza, slapped some into Ray’s hand. ‘The mark park his Navvie yet?’
‘Nope. Damn this sausage smells good.’
‘Only reason I work at that place, the sausage pie. I’m goddam addicted to it. Hoo, son, I am jacked up tonight. I can almost feel that Ninja throttle in my right hand. Vrrm-vrrrrooom.’
‘This is my last heist job, J. Serious.’
‘Right, right, I know, I know. Check it out. Here’s our boy now, right on schedule. Them pimps keep to a clock a’right. Workin habits are admiral.’
‘Admirable.’
‘Why you keep repeatin me all the time?’
The Lincoln Navigator ate up four squares of hydrant sidewalk. Two blingy dudes got out, yawned, stretched, made their way into a building.
‘That’s some high-class velour there,’ José said. ‘Rope-a-dope gold. That’s us in five years.’
Ray gagged on a glob of pizza cheese knotting in his throat.
José slapped Ray’s head. ‘You don’t like it, go to school come fall.’
‘Hell with that.’
‘Up to you. A’right then, let’s do it, brother.’
Just like last time, they jimmied the lock clean and quiet, clipped the alarm before it blipped twice. Ray slid into the driver’s seat. José swung his bike into the back, took shotgun lookout.
Ray made the first stretch of road fine. The next stretch he swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel, plowed the car into a tree. The air bags popped.
‘Dag, man!’ Ray said. ‘Yo! Ah God. Sorry, man!’ He was covered in airbag powder.
José wiped the powder from his face. ‘All to spare a squirrel. Gonna catch that critter, make you eat it raw.’
Ray hyperventilated.
‘Easy, kid. You’re a’right.’ José pulled his airbag clear of his body, laughed. ‘All this powder, ain’t gonna be too hard to spot us. We be like Casper without the cash.’
Ray tried to pop his seat belt, jammed locked. ‘Git, J! Run, man!’
‘The hell I will.’ José wrestled Ray’s seat belt, no go.
The sirens came fast.
‘J, please, man. Yo, I’m beggin you, just leave me, man.’
‘Scarface don’t leave his pals behind.’
‘Hell with Scarface, yo. This is real time now.’
‘Ain’t I know it.’
The spared squirrel settled on a branch overhanging the crashed car, chucked an acorn hull onto the car hood as it stared at the boys.
Ray punched the dashboard. ‘José, man, just leave me alone, man.’
The Five Two was jamming with criminals, a line of perps and their catchers snaking all the way up to the booking desk.
‘How long you reckon we get?’ Ray said.
‘Year, prob’ly. Year ain’t bad.’ José winked. ‘Out in six on good b.’
‘Yup,’ Ray said.
The desk sergeant was tired but almost nice. ‘You want to call anybody? You got anybody to call?’
They weren’t talking, only to each other. Ray mouthed to José, Yolie?
José shook no.
‘Fellas, I’m gonna find out your names sooner or later.’ The sergeant called for a cop to take the boys back to a holding cell.
On the way down the hall José whispered, ‘We prob’ly don’t want Trini knowin about this one. She kill us, she finds out we swiped a car. She don’t even like me playin Grand Theft on the TeeVee.’
‘Gonna hurt her bad, not knowin where we went.’
‘I’ll let her know at
some point,’ José said. ‘Meantime, nothin to be done about it, her wonderin. Hurts me more than her, her sadness, but that’s just the way it is.’
‘Yo, José, man!’ some kid called from behind the cell bars.
‘Yo, Tivo, what up, kid!’ José threw a nod and a grin Tivo’s way.
Tivo was in a tagger crew Ray and José had run with in juvie. They called him Tivo because he did great impressions. ‘Yo y’all, look yo, it’s the J-man, yo!’ He busted out his José impression, slick movie star style. ‘“Yo, kid, what up, son? Where’s the shorties at, brothuh?”’
The crew had been booked all together. They brightened at seeing José. ‘Yo, José man, what up?’
‘’Sup, José?’
‘Yo, remember me, J-man?’
He’s rolling in welcome as Jesus on the palms, Ray thought. He wished he had that in him, that king thing. He nodded hi to the fellas in José’s wake, but nobody noticed him.
The cop put them into a holding cell.
‘God damn you, man,’ Ray said. ‘How you so mad cool all the time? You ain’t worried a lick, are ya?’
‘Why worry?’ José smiled. ‘We be a’right, Ray-Ray. You see.’
No sooner had the door shut than another cop, the arresting officer, came back. ‘Now I know who you two are. You were the ones that broke into that supermarket on Broadway a couple years back, right? The Bread Thieves, we were calling you. You break into a store full of cash registers, and all you take is ten loaves of Wonder.’
Ray was embarrassed.
José grinned. ‘That’s us, the Wonder Thieves.’
‘Yeah well, you two been running together too long. Have the whole house throwing a riot inside of a day. I’m splitting you up.’ The cop nodded to Ray. ‘You, Big Boy, let’s go.’
Ray cuffed, José cuffed, their hands behind their backs, they went back to back, grabbed hands. ‘Peace, yo,’ Ray said over his shoulder.
José squeezed Ray’s hands, whispered over his shoulder, ‘Be cool, kid. Be brave, Ray. I see you. I see you, brother.’
‘All right, break it up,’ the cop said. He led Ray away.
‘Ain’t nothin but a thang, Ray,’ José called through the bars. ‘We be a’right, kid. I see you in six. We be a’right.’
‘Yup,’ Ray said, except the word died in his throat. He looked back once, over his shoulder.
Head down, José was resting his head against the bars, shaking his head. He was crying.
After Ray pled down he was locked up in The Sprungs, where he would sit for a week or more while awaiting sentencing. The Sprungs was a juvenile detention unit on Rikers Island just east of The South Bronx, two hard shell tents in the airport’s takeoff path, three hundred yards across the water in Queens. Every thirty seconds, Boom!…Boom!…Boom! the tent plastic rattled. No cells here, just six hundred rickety cots, a scratchy blanket per kid. Yelling that never stopped, piss puddles, snickering.
The snickering as Ray walked in.
They had put Ray in with the big kids this time.
The biggest kid stepped to Ray. ‘Whassup mariposa?’
With one throw, the game was on and then over.
Ray stared at the kid convulsing at his feet, blood trickling from his face. He stared at his hand. My hand did that? He’d been in fights, been tagged, but he’d never hit anyone before, not like this.
‘You broke my nose.’ The kid spit teeth, wept. ‘Ah, my neck. My neck hurts. He opened up my face. I feel it. He ripped it.’
Ray gulped. ‘I’m…I. Sorry.’
‘What?’
The other kids closed in on Ray. The guards got into it and broke everybody up. As the guards pulled him away it occurred to him that he’d put on four inches and almost a hundred pounds since his last juvie run. He was top dog now, top target.
11
Same crime, same time. They got six months, but at different juvies. José pulled Crossroads in Brooklyn, Ray Spofford/Bridges, South Bronx. They could have walked if they served up Jerry, but they didn’t. A man didn’t rat.
The view out Ray’s cell window was empty tarmac and the back of the kitchen, Dumpsters full of food, party central for the rats who seemed to say, No, you move, when they crossed paths with the kitchen workers. Days became weeks, each hour an eon, the heat shimmered less off the tarmac, dead leaves from weed trees scraped across the lot. Then the snow fell, and the tarmac was for the shortest time pink crystals before it turned to slush. Then the last day came.
Ray gathered his few things, thought about this last juvie run, what he’d learned after all the hours of feeling like an idiot because he couldn’t muster the guts to run over a squirrel. The gray hours of lame school, group counseling, kids falling asleep, sliding out of plastic chairs. He’d learned something, all right: Yet again, he’d learned nothing.
He’d relearned a couple of things, though: Outside was better than inside. That he had been caught being desperate and stupid, he’d be desperate and stupid again, he’d be caught again, if he wasn’t killed first.
He packed his brown paper bag with books, his underwear—he had nothing else. A local prep school had donated the out-of-date science texts, better than nothing and much better than the prison library, See Spot Run. He studied his hands, bigger, harder than when he’d come in six months before, his knuckles scarred from that first day when he cracked that kid’s teeth. He’d been jumped a few times after that, crushed his attackers until no one jumped him anymore and the fellas let him keep to himself. The realization hit him only now: He was a tough kid. Maybe even a man. Un hombre fuerte.
He eyed his sill and the last thing left to pack, a stack of letters. He’d written to Yolie his first day in, to apologise. He’d written to Trini every day after. He’d never sent any of the letters. He flushed the letter to Yolie down the toilet, and then the rest of the stack, a love letter a flush.
‘Afraid to mail a letter. Un hombre fuerte. Sure.’
‘Now, Raymundo,’ the parole officer said, ‘you know the drill here.’
‘I do. Yes, ma’am. I know it.’
‘This couple that’s taking you in, they’re very strict.’
‘I understand.’ Ray jiggled his foot to reposition the tracking device bracelet choking his ankle.
‘Raymundo, do you promise to—’
‘To be a good boy, you bet, I promise. I double swear it I will.’
The P.O. nodded, shook her head, nodded, shook and stamped Ray’s papers.
The foster parents drove Ray north to Bronxville, what the J-man would call a white folks’ town. Jesus on the cross hung from the BMW’s rearview. Out the window the snow was deep. The old man gave Ray a lecture, Ray cried in all the right spots, swore up and down he’d be a good boy, had the guy and his old lady bawling. They told him he was going to Fieldston, a swanky prep school. He’d placed into the gifted and talented group because of the results of exams they made him take at juvie. He pretended to be thrilled. He ripped open his jacket and mopped his brow with his shirt.
‘Want me to turn down the heat, Raymundo?’ The old lady said his name as if it were three words.
‘I’m fine, ma’am.’
‘I really wish you’d call me Mom,’ she said.
What the hell. ‘Thank you, Mom.’ Ray sniffled and kissed her hand, and she cried so hard Ray thought she would bust her eyes.
As they drove through the town Ray looked for some grime and the comfort it might have given him, but even the curb snow was white. The people looked as if they had stepped out from catalog pages, bright new clothes, perfect hair. Ray rolled down the window and spit.
‘Please don’t do that, Ray Moon Do.’
‘Yes, Mom. Sorry.’
‘Easy, Elaine,’ the old man said.
‘It’s a violation. They fine people for that kind of behavior.’
The old man winked at Ray from the rearview. ‘One step at a time, right, kiddo?’
‘Yup,’ Ray said. ‘Real sorry about that.’
&n
bsp; ‘How you feeling, Sport?’
Sport said, ‘Real, real good, Dad.’
A sad maid served dinner. Ray helped her with the dishes. He tried to talk with her, gave her a go in English then in Spanish, got nothing.
He looked around the house for signs of a dog, but there were no dogs. The house smelled like flowers, but there weren’t any flowers. On top of the toilet Ray found flower spray. He came back out to the table for dessert. ‘Ray Moon Do,’ Dad said. ‘Was thinking we could jog on down to the model store tomorrow, grab ourselves a sailboat or two.’
‘Oh, you’ll have a fine time, Ray Moon Do. There’s a miniature train that rides around the store!’
‘Awesome!’
The old folks showed him to his posh room, big as the Ten Mile River stationhouse, tucked him to bed. The old lady kissed his forehead. Her lips were dry. For half a minute Ray thought about riding out the next six months here until he turned sixteen, when he could declare himself an emancipated minor. He could hook up with Yolie and Trini and do the Enrique Hormón thing. ‘Nah, you fucked that one up beyond fixing. They’ll hate you into the next life.’
Ray waited until he heard his foster parents go to bed, their voices muffled through the wall, their whispers hopeful. He heard good boy over and over. Half an hour later he snuck downstairs, found the old man’s wallet and cigarettes, grabbed a book from the library and slipped out a basement window.
An hour later he was at the train station. As he waited for the southbound he read the book he’d swiped from the old man’s den. Some Buddhist cat assured Ray that life was meaningless. This was supposed to make Ray feel free. It didn’t. It made him feel meaningless.
The train let him off in The West Bronx, a ten-minute walk from Jerry’s Auto Glass. Ray popped the lock and waited.
Jerry showed early—Jerry was an early riser, you had to give him that much. He didn’t like finding Ray in his office. ‘Round Face, huh?’
‘See you still got your thumbs there, Jerry.’
‘Lucky me. Get outta my chair.’
Ray got up.
‘So yous kept quiet, huh?’ Jerry wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Not that it matters. Cops got nothing on me but parking tickets.’