Sitting by the water now, so many years later, reflecting on young Tony, the tough breaks I knew life had handed him, it took the edge off my anger toward him regarding my forty thousand. It didn’t do anything about my missing loot, but that was a problem that I was going to have to work out over time.
I continued to watch the sure-footed fisherman as he balanced on the rocks and cast his line, unconcerned, it seemed, by the fact that most times he reeled in nothing. Once in a while he did pull in a fish, and one time it was big enough he didn’t have to throw it back.
Waves rolled in at precise, irregular angles and exploded against the rocks. Above the water big white birds, some gray, some white and gray, cawed, floated, dipped, and traced patterns in the air, like musical notes. I watched the sky turn lilac, blue, pink, red, orange, even yellow, randomly and all at once in swirls. A purple ribbon stretched along the fine clean line of the horizon and rose slowly. The great cosmic curtain raised and covered the earth in black lace, and the fisherman finally packed it in.
I accepted that I had something painful to do, and that I could not put it off. I crossed the dark park and walked over to Broadway, hopped a cab, and had him drop me off a couple blocks from the cemetery.
I walked alone and prayed. The sign read, CLOSED AT SUNDOWN. I jumped the fence and took out the small map I’d kept for years.
The moon was not strong enough for that dark. I heard cawing again and feathers ruffling in the shadows. The friction of weighty takeoffs and landings. I imagined big black crows balanced on branches and headstones, watching me. Staring.
Were they laughing? I wondered. Do they cry?
I hunched my shoulders and pulled the collar up on my jacket. The wind stirred leaves and breathed melancholy across the ashen cemetery landscape. And it was not as good to me as it had been to the birds.
CHAPTER 06:
BEHOLD THIS GOLDEN CHARIOT
Some stains are so ground in, there ain’t no way to remove them. I scrubbed the thick yellow paste below the waterline in the community toilet bowl, and it broke apart and flushed. The faint smell of piss lingered, despite all the air freshener.
My own room was better. I got it to smell like artificial lemons. But the sticky carpet had no remedy. I wrapped a new bedsheet around the knotty mattress, and loaded a new pillow into the matching pillowcase. I didn’t purchase curtains on account that they would disrupt the sunlight.
I plugged in my new boom box and flipped through a small collection of CDs still wrapped in cellophane. Several Ray Barrettos, two Eddie Palmieris, plus De Ti Depende and La Gran Fuga. Nuyorican salsa. I unwrapped Que Viva La Música and slipped it in. Barretto ignited his congas like an octopus con soul. The “Puerto Rican Elvis” Adalberto Santiago dropped lyrics.
I took my new hot plate out of the box and set it up, boiled two cups of water in the olla, added oil and salt, two cups of rice, stirred, brought the heat down low, and covered it like my mother used to with aluminum foil and an upside-down plate. I put a skillet on the other burner and heated sardines with tomato sauce and onions in olive oil.
When the food was ready, I switched to Eddie Palmieri, Recorded Live at Sing Sing. He broke open with ten minutes of pure psychedelic salsa, “Pa La Ochá Tambó.” I sat by the window, ate, drank beer, and tried to let the music penetrate.
But I kept thinking about my money. The events surrounding its disappearance. And the fact of Pelón’s sudden reappearance on the stage. To me there was zero chance that Pelón’s presence on the margins of a stickup could be a coincidence. No way. I simply knew him too well to believe that.
The day Pelón introduced himself, he was encased in a giant, fancy white car that had its top down. It was the mid-eighties, but the car had an ornate 1930s styling, with large curving fenders, running boards, bug-eyed headlights, an elaborate chrome grille, and bugle horns over the front bumper so that when he punched the steering wheel, it sounded like a brass quartet announcing the queen’s arrival.
Tony and I were in our teens. Our crew had been selling weed on the street for a little while by then. Pelón pulled right up to the corner in his fancy car, blasting Raphy Leavitt, “Jíbaro Soy,” on the tape deck. He was in his early forties, and still solid, muscular under his white guayabera. He wore a black handlebar mustache down to his jawline then, like Oscar D’León from around the same era. He wore a large hoop earring in his right ear, and he already shaved his head. The hand that would later become a claw was still intact.
Tony whistled and eyeballed Pelón’s vehicle. “Hey, mister, what kind of car is this?”
Pelón turned down the music. “Excalibur. Phaeton. Don’t get any fingerprints on it.”
Tony inspected the lines. “Shit, man, this looks like something Capone would’ve rode.”
Pelón winked. “Only if he knew what was good for him.” Pelón looked at me. In his Puerto Rican accent he said, “What you boys throwing out here?”
I didn’t know this asshole from the chief of police. I said, “Excuse me?”
“Aquí. ¿Qué es lo están vendiendo?” He rolled his R’s. “¿Marijuana? Coca? Crack?”
I made a confused face. “Sorry, mister. The government taught us to just say no.”
Pelón smiled. He took his time to light a humongous cigar, really puffed it, creating lots of smoke. “Nene, if you too stupid to know who a cop and who not a cop, how I’m gonna know I can trust you with my business?” He pulled a knot from his pocket and peeled off ten hundreds, like they were singles. “You gonna tell me you no holding pasto?”
Tony sprang up. “Weed? Hell yeah, we got weed. Will nickel bags do?”
Pelón answered Tony, but directed his voice at me. “One at a time is two hundred bolsitas. I’m buying bulk now. Make me a better offer.”
I shot Tony a look. “Sir, my friend don’t even know what you’re talking about. We’re church people.”
Pelón blew a fat cloud of smoke. “You really gonna let me drive away with a thousand dollars? And you call youself a businessman?” Pelón started the Excalibur. “They got pendejitos like you humping corners all over this town. I find someplace else to leave my spinach.”
Tony said, “Hold up, hold up.”
Tony pulled me to the side. “Bro, that’s a couple days’ work in one shot. What if this cocopelao becomes a regular?”
“Yeah, Tony, and what if he’s an undercover cop?”
“Get real.”
“What you think, Tone? Think the government’ll send someone who looks like a preppie? Watch Miami Vice, bro. Fuckin’ cops and rats lie so much, they forget what side they’re on.”
“Eddie, that’s TV. This is real life. What about this deal?”
“Too risky.”
Tony crossed his arms. “If he’s a narc, I’ll take the rap. I’ll make the exchange. You don’t touch nothin’.”
“You really that confident?”
“Look at him.” Tony gestured at the back of Pelón’s shaved head. “He’s one of us, just all grown-up.”
Tony made a deal for 250 bags, which was four dollars a nickel, which we figured as three in profits, since each bag cost us a dollar when we bought in bulk from a fat guy named Flaco, who ran a spot out of a tire shop. We weren’t clever enough to calculate the hours spent copping, bagging, standing on the sidewalk, selling, making change, and getting into arguments with potheads, but that was only labor and we had no way of appreciating its value. The first deal with Pelón went easier than ordering drive-thru.
Tony sniffed his cut of the money. “See that, Eddie? No problem. Now let’s pull up to the Centrium. They don’t card there and they got girls from Wells High School who dress like Madonna.”
“Sweet.” I folded and pocketed my share of the loot. “So, did your new idol say anything?”
“Yeah, he called you a chocha.”
“Fuck him.”
Tony laughed. “Man, I made that up. Nothin’, he didn’t say shit. Just that he thinks it’s the start of somet
hing new.”
Thinking too much about my history with Pelón was bound to ruin my appetite, and the sardines and rice was the first meal I prepared for myself since getting out of prison. I made it a point then to actively think of something other than scheming-ass Pelón as I served myself and sat by the window of my little room to eat alone. I savored the salty fish, the sweetness of the rice and sauce, the privacy. I tried to recall the women I’d seen on the streets of Chicago that day. There had been so many.
The music coming out of my new CD player filled my little room. Palmieri wrapped up his concert for the inmates at Sing Sing with a funky rendition of an early hit, “Azúcar,” which he delivered in two parts. My new neighbor banged on the wall. I turned the sound down, but not so much that I couldn’t imagine being present at the actual performance.
From the window I saw Tony’s Cadillac roll up and park quietly across the street. He jumped out and hustled toward my building without looking up. I listened as he took the stairs, two at a time, and waited for his knock.
Tony stood outside my door for a short while. His knock came soft. I put my empty plate on the table, turned the music down, opened the door without speaking, and returned to my spot by the window. Tony closed the door. He stood with his hands in his pockets.
I gestured toward my makeshift kitchen. “Serve yourself.”
Tony nodded and quietly piled rice and sardines, and sat on the edge of the bed. For five minutes all you heard was the sound of his fork hitting the plate.
“Pretty good, Eddie. You learned a thing or two in that prison kitchen.”
I got up and pulled two Coronas from the little fridge under my table, opened them with my shiny new Windy City bottle opener, the one with the image of the giant Picasso downtown, and handed Tony a cold one.
He thanked me and, almost as an afterthought, took a paper bag out of his jacket pocket. “I got you some incense.”
I put the bag on top of the dresser, and sat next to the window again to drink. Tony emptied his plate and downed his beer. He took my plate and fork off the table, grabbed the dishwashing liquid and sponge, and disappeared to the bathroom. He returned and placed the clean utensils on the corner of the table. Tony stood in the center of the room.
“So. . . you look settled in.”
I didn’t say anything. Tony walked over and studied my new book collection. He checked out the CDs. “Can I put this on?”
“Sure. But don’t scratch it. They’re sensitive.”
Tony took it back to Barretto, only this time with Tito Allen. He found a crack in the molding around my door where he could jam a couple sticks of incense. He lit them. They poured sweet red smoke.
“Strawberry,” he said. “They come in different flavors.”
I barely nodded.
Tony lit a joint, but I passed. He stood in the middle of the room to smoke by himself. When the joint was half gone, he said, “Eddie, I’m real sorry about what happened to your money.”
I stared out the window.
“You know I’d get it back for you if I could.”
I turned to look at Tony.
He didn’t avoid me. “I’m hurt about it too, Eddie. You know that.”
I downed the rest of my beer, but did not let Tony out of my sight. Then I stood, opened the dresser, and fished out the clipping about the shooting in Humboldt Park. I handed it to Tony.
“You making news again, gangster?”
Tony looked at the clipping and put it down on the table without reading. “I saw it on TV,” he said. “So?”
“That was one of Roach’s boys, wasn’t it?”
“I heard he was from their set, yeah.”
“Don’t front, Tony. The paper says they used a .38.”
“It gets the job done.”
“The paper also said it looks like the killer used hollow points.”
Tony said, “They do make things go splat.”
“Any chance that’s the same .38 you handed me last night, Tony?”
Tony paused. “Now, why the fuck would you think that?”
“Tony?”
“Why would I stick you with a hot piece, Eddie? Are you nuts?”
“Am I?”
“That gun I handed you was clean, Eddie. Never been used. I kept it in my own crib, up on the kitchen cabinet. Nobody even knew it was there.”
“Tony, nowadays people carry nine-millimeters. They don’t carry .38s.”
“Don’t be so sure. Work like that? Nine-millies tend to jam. Revolver? Functions every time.”
“But it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, Tony? You handing me that .38. Getting my fingerprints on it the way that you did. Then me reading in the paper how somebody used a .38 on one of Roach’s baggers?”
“Coincidence is all it is, Eddie. Nothing more.”
I looked Tony right in the eye. He didn’t flinch.
I pointed at the article. “Tell me you offed that kid, Tone.”
“I would if I did.”
“Did you order it?”
“Uh-uh. But that doesn’t matter, does it, Eddie?”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause Roach is gonna think that I did.”
There was no doubt about that. I said, “So, Tony, what’re you gonna do?”
He shrugged. “Deal with it, I guess.”
The smell of incense filled the room.
Tony took a deep hit of reefer. He did not say a word, but I thought I saw a shadow of the same unease that I saw the first time I urged him to shoplift, in the sixth grade.
I gestured for Tony to pass the reefer finally. “You gonna watch your back on this one, Tony?”
Tony passed it. “I’ll sleep with one eye open.”
I inhaled.
Tony kept his hand out. “So you and I still homeboys then?”
I looked out the window, then back at Tony. I’d come to a decision about him. The only one that made any sense. I blew the smoke out.
“To the end,” I said.
We shook on it.
We went to the basketball court at Eckhart Park. You can play there at night because of the streetlights on Noble. Tony stretched like a professional dancer, very methodical. He delivered a lecture about muscles, joints, tendons, and the effects of aging. When he was through, he lit a fat joint and cracked open a forty.
I laughed.
“What?” he said. “Malt liquor’s the food of the gods.”
Tony got drunk and stoned, but, of course, it didn’t matter. He was short, but a helluva ball handler and a monster on the boards. Once he got in the zone, only a brick wall could stop him. He walked through me for three easy victories.
I dropped to the ground, out of breath. “Damn, Tony, twenty years of drugs and alcohol, and you ain’t lost a step.”
Tony flashed his dimples and the wrinkles around his eyes. He dribbled out beyond the three-point line. “Of course I’ve lost a step, Eddie. It’s just”—Tony paused to release a perfect rainbow arc of a shot that was all net—“I’m so fuckin’ good, I’m the only one who can notice.”
Tony dropped next to me to smoke a cigarette. I stared at the halo around a streetlamp.
“Tony, I wanna ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“What about Pelón?”
“What about him?”
“You think he may have set me up to get rolled?”
Tony made a face, like he wished I would drop the subject. “Eddie, why would he do that?”
“He knew that I was coming.”
“So?”
“He must’ve figured that I’d be holding cash.”
“I doubt it. Besides, the guy’s banking off legitimate shit now. All kinds of real estate and shit. No offense, Eddie, but to him forty G’s don’t even qualify. And like I said, he wants to use you for that big casino job.”
“Yeah, like that’s really gonna happen.”
“Bank on it.”
“Tony, Pelón probably just made that s
hit up to get you to draw me to Chicago.”
“No way. And I don’t think he planned a job on your money either. Why bang you like that, when he needs you?”
“To throw me in the skillet is why. Put me on the defensive. Maybe he really is casing a big job, and he figures if I’m desperate enough, I’ll jump at a chance to roll with him. I don’t know. Don’t you think he was quick with that loan?”
“Maybe he believes in hookin’ a brother up.”
“I ain’t his brother.” I paused. “You ever know Pelón to do business with cops before?”
“Of course. CPD is the biggest gang out here. They’re corrupt as shit.”
“Right. So it’s possible Pelón worked with them on my money, isn’t it? Just drop a dime, at least? Let ’em know I’m coming?”
“I doubt it.”
“I’m saying it’s possible, Tony.”
“Yes, it’s possible. But not likely.”
My bullshit detector didn’t register any clicks. It was possible that Tony really bought into Pelón’s line and believed what he was saying.
I toned it down a little. “So what, you work for him now?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is he backing you on this beef with Roach?”
“No, that’s my business.”
I thought about that. “You saying you don’t kick up from the heroin?”
“It’s not like he’s a capo or a don, Eddie. He’s just a businessman flipping real estate. Pelón owns a couple bodegas. He throws weed out the bodegas, but nothing hard. He don’t want hypes on his premises.”
“Does he run numbers?”
“Of course he does. Shylock too.”
“So then he must be giving a percentage to someone. I can’t see a cripple like Pelón, all past his prime and shit, collecting vigorish and not paying tribute to somebody to actually lay down the muscle.”
Tony shook his head. “You’d be surprised, Eddie. Pelón keeps his shit down low. The paisans don’t even know he exists.”
“So how’s Pelón collect when the payments don’t flow?”
Tony flexed his bicep. “I told you I ran errands, didn’t I?”
I wasn’t sure where I was getting. Tony was on the brink of war with Roach, yet he didn’t seem worried. What he told me about Pelón’s business didn’t quite add up.
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