Tony was really skinny then, even though he ate everything that was not already in somebody else’s mouth. He inhaled his third thick slice and reached for another.
Pelón said, “Coño, pero you eating them like Tic Tacs. With an appetite like that, I soprise you no hustle more.”
Tony pumped his chest. “What’re you talking about, Pelón? We out here twenty-four, twenty-four.”
Pelón looked at me. “And look how hungry I found you.”
I said, “We know there’s no free lunch, Pelón. So I guess that means you didn’t come by here to feed the needy, right?”
Pelón picked his teeth and grinned. “Eduardo, you talk real direct. I like that.”
“So?”
He looked at his toothpick. “You nenes feel like another trip to the suburbs?”
Stealing became a vocation for us. A thing that we did. Our practice. It was fun. Pelón would find a house and case it. We would strike when the people were away. We didn’t know Pelón’s sources of information, and we didn’t care. If it was Christmas, we rode to your crib listening to Asalto Navideño, climbed in through the windows, and ripped all of the wrapping off everything under the tree to see what was worth taking. On every job the take was cash, never less than a thousand dollars apiece. And the freedom to help ourselves personally to various items.
Pelón did all of the fencing. Sometimes he would come back after a job and give us each an extra five hundred, a thousand, saying the take was better than he thought.
Tony and I shared an apartment then, a big, raw loft on Ogden. Before long, it looked like a flea market. We had all kinds of electronics, works of art, carpets, lamps, books, cassettes, LPs, CDs, picture frames, video games, golf clubs, Rollerblades, a huge vintage collection of Playboy magazines, and a complete, leather-bound, gold-leaf 1975 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia that I found in a house with an actual library inside.
Pelón never allowed us to keep any weapons, saying that he did not want to be responsible for any accidents, but one time I dropped a samurai sword in the bushes outside a window in Highland Park when Pelón was distracted. I went back for it later that night. I hung it over my headboard, which saw a lot of action in those days. Tony and I threw big parties and gave wealthy women’s jewelry to the boricuas, italianas, morenas, and mexicanas who danced wildest for us. The way Tony and I saw it, the burglaries were easy, and the benefits were awesome.
One day Pelón combed his handlebar mustache and pursed his lips like he was considering something pitiful. “You boys don’t have any real ambitions, do you?”
Tony put his hands in his pockets. “One day I’m gonna own a boat.”
Pelón shook his head. “How you think that gonna happen?”
Tony blinked.
“You boys need to grow you business. Think big.”
“What you mean?”
Pelón rolled his R’s. “Crack. Thees ees the new hot thing, no? And you boys wasting you time with marijuana?”
I said, “Pelón, the jail time on crack’s heavier than any other drug. Even coke. I saw it on channel eleven.”
“Sí, you right,” he said, nodding like I’d made a point that he had somehow overlooked. “Coca the rich man’s drug. Uncle Sam no gonna fuck with his own kind, right?” He looked at us both. “So, OK. You boys think you ready for a real score?”
It was a whole new scheme, different from the walk-in-and-take-it routine that we were accustomed to.
“This time we gonna rob a stash house.”
Tony looked from me to Pelón. “A what?”
“Dónde guardan las drogas.”
I said, “Pelón, we know what a stash house is. You feelin’ suicidal?”
Tony said, “Stash house gangsters are always strapped with major firepower.”
Pelón said, “Not always.”
I said, “This ain’t one of your insurance scams, Pelón. Nobody goes on vacation and leaves packages of dope lying around.”
“I has a connect that gonna give us perfect intelligence.”
“You and your connects are gonna get us all killed.”
“Fíjate que no. I has a friend who tell me about these white boys who run a transfer station in Skokie. Real quiet. They never got trouble from nobody. To them is just a business. They got a dude in a wheelchair, one guy, a homo, he never leave the house. He in there full-time, watching the stash. Nobody suspect a thing. He hold the coca for a day or two. It comes from México. Then some other people come down from Canada and take it the rest of the way. Regular, every two weeks.”
Tony said, “A dude in a wheelchair? How much coke?”
Pelón said, “Kilos.”
I shook my head. “That can’t be right.”
He wagged his finger. “Eduardo, you know the story about the drowning man? God send three people to help, but he push them away. Then he ask God, ‘Why you forgot about me?’ That’s you.”
“Is the sermon finished? What’re we gonna do with all that coke?”
Pelón passed his hand over his bald head. “You let me lose hair about it. I give you five thousand each after I unload, and you don’t have to do shit except come with me to scare this cocksucker good.”
Tony and I looked at each other. Five thousand dollars? Apiece?
Tony looked at Pelón. “Scare him? Pelón, for five thousand dollars I could be the fucking Exorcist.”
We recruited Beto to be the getaway driver. This was before Beto was known as GQ, and way before he fell completely into heroin and became just plain, deteriorated Beto. We knew young Beto from gangbanging, and he was not a cat who lost his mind when things got hairy. One time we raced against a carload of Indian punks on Lake Shore Drive. Beto was behind the wheel. When we hit the S curve by Oak Street Beach, our car swayed. The rear wheels skipped as we plowed toward a low concrete wall. Tony and I, as the passengers, screamed as we headed for a crash, but Beto simply countersteered, and stuttered his foot on the pedals in just the right way to recapture traction and torque away from the wall. Our tires screamed as we fell back into the curve, but the Indians behind us failed in that maneuver and smashed their car to pieces on the concrete wall. One of them died and it made the news.
On the day of the stash house job, Beto, the getaway driver, pulled the van into the parking lot of the apartment complex.
Pelón leaned over Beto’s shoulders and inspected the view. “Park where we can watch the apartment with the ramp in front.”
Beto found a spot where we were partially obscured by a leafy tree. We watched the front door to the apartment for fifteen minutes. Nothing happened. Finally, Pelón said, “I think we ready to go with the plan.”
The plan consisted of me going up to the door in a Commonwealth Edison uniform and pretending that I was there to read the meter. Once inside, I would evaluate whether Pelón’s information was correct. If I found the invalid home alone, as expected, I was to simply overpower him, knock him out of his chair, signal the others, unlock the front door, and wait for Pelón and Little Tony to enter.
“After that,” said Pelón, “we has to work a little, because this hijo de puta no gonna wanna tell us where the coke is, what the combination is if they keep it in a safe. Like this. That’s why we prepare to go all the way, to scare him, OK? We gotta let this cocksucker know we serious. We make him think we cut his balls off and feed ’em to a lizard, but he gonna present us with the freaking coke. No other way about it. ¿M’entienden?”
Tony said, “Yeah, we got it.”
I said, “Why do I have to be the one who goes in first?”
Pelón straightened my hat. “ ’Cause you the best actor. Besides, this guy’s a pato, and you the best-looking one. Remember to smile like you like him. You the one who gonna get us inside.”
I stepped to the door in the uniform Pelón got me, complete with the ComEd hat, a clipboard, and a fake ComEd ID.
It took a long time for the man to answer. He spoke to me from the other side of the door without opening.
I said, “Yes, sir, it turns out that reading was incorrect. It shows you used an impossible amount of hours. It has to be a mistake. If we don’t correct it right now, the old numbers’ll stand, and you’re gonna get a bill for thousands of dollars.”
The man paused. I was looking at a closed door.
“You don’t sound like the regular guy. Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”
“That’s just it, sir. He didn’t do such a good job, so he was fired. I’m on this route now.”
The man waited a long time. Finally, he cracked the door.
“Let me see your ID.”
I showed it to him. He looked at it, looked up in my face, and smiled.
“Will it mean anything,” he said, “if I tell you what a terrible inconvenience this all is?”
I tried to smile the way Pelón said. “I understand, sir.”
“You’re so polite.” The man opened the screen door. “Come in then, and do what you must.”
I tipped my hat brim as I walked past. “This’ll only take a moment.”
I eyeballed the space. The man was white, but his artwork had an African theme. Statues of skinny men with big ones. I looked him over. He checked me out. He wore a paisley shirt.
“Beautiful apartment,” I said. “You decorate this yourself?”
“With my own hands.”
“Is that a real elephant’s tusk? It’s huge.”
The man followed me in his wheelchair. “I’m not supposed to have it, it’s contraband. A friend of mine brought it back from Kenya. Got it from a bona fide witch doctor. Do you believe that? Supposedly, it has amazing curative powers, if you just touch it. Take your gloves off and feel.”
“My hands are still cold,” I said. “This job has me outdoors a lot. Your apartment’s more spacious than it looks from outside. Two bedrooms?”
“Wouldn’t your paperwork show that?”
I almost stumbled over my tongue. “Oh, yeah, well. Part of the problem with the other guy, he lost a lot of paperwork. They say he was, you know—” I pretended to gulp from an imaginary bottle of booze.
“Hmm. He didn’t seem like the type.”
I tilted my head. “They say you can’t always tell.”
The man in the wheelchair stared at me. “The second bedroom’s an office,” he said. “I run a consulting firm out of there. That one over there is the lone bedroom.”
I nodded. “You live alone?”
“Who’s asking?”
I smiled at him.
He smiled back. “Exactly how much time do they give you to read these meters?”
I walked toward him. “Listen, mister, I’m sorry about this.”
“About what?”
I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him over onto his back.
“What the hell? What are you doing?”
I pulled the chair away from him. His skinny, lifeless limbs slanted at disturbing angles.
“Christ, what is this? You don’t have to rape me.”
I quickly checked the other rooms. “I don’t wanna hurt you, mister. But I got a couple friends coming in here now, and they won’t blink to chop you into little pieces. Just cough up the kilos and we’ll be out of your way.”
The man screamed. There was no way that thin drywall would contain all of that noise. I bent over and smacked him once so hard that he stopped immediately.
“I’m not joking, mister. Put on a display like that and these guys’ll bury you in the woods.” I pointed at him. “Do not move.”
I went to the blinds and did the signal that Pelón worked out, then yanked the phone from the wall. In fifteen seconds I heard a light knock at the door.
Pelón and Tony walked in with backpacks slung over their shoulders, like it was the first day of school.
The man was still on his back. “Who are you people?”
Pelón said, “You gonna find out who we are if you no give us what we come for.” He threw his backpack on the couch. “Where’s the coca?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Pelón looked at Tony. Tony bent over the guy and pulled him up by the hair into a seated position on the floor.
“Owwww! What do you want?”
Pelón said, “You gonna be quiet, maricón?”
“Fuck you.”
“Where’s the coke?”
“In the fridge, but I drink Pepsi, asshole.”
Tony said, “You think this is a fucking joke?” and slapped the guy back onto his side. Then he grabbed him by the neck and pulled him up again.
“Help! Help!”
Pelón went in his backpack and pulled a pair of sweat socks balled into each other. Tony held the guy’s hands behind his back while Pelón overpowered him to stuff the sweat socks into his mouth.
“¿Ya ve, mamáo? Cállate la freaking boca.”
The man’s eyes watered. He blew his cheeks out to breathe with the socks in. Tony bent on one knee behind him and kept him restrained. Pelón went in his backpack again and pulled out a straight razor.
“Aha?” He opened it and showed it. “You think we come to play?”
I clapped my hands together, once and loud. “Hey, mister! We can just tear your place apart looking for it. If it’s in a safe, we’re gonna need you anyway. You may as well cooperate.”
The man’s eyes pleaded. He began to really cry. I looked at Pelón.
Pelón said, “¡Basta! I didn’t come here to do nothing but leave with all the coke.” He looked at Tony. “Dame la mano.”
Tony still held the guy by the wrists, behind his back. He forced the man’s right hand in front of his face. Pelón slashed the man across the palm. The man’s eyes bulged, but his scream was muffled by the socks in his mouth.
Pelón raised his eyebrows. “You see? Now you got a new life line, pendejo. I predict things no go too good.”
The guy sobbed, and shook his head, defiant. Blood flowed from his palm.
Pelón raised the razor. “¡Oye! Cara de crica! I gonna use this to slice you face a thousand times, eh? I slice you eyeballs. Then I gonna grab a bottle from the bar over there, or maybe I find bleach under you sink, and I gonna put it on you face and you sliced-up balls, OK?”
Tony made an exaggerated face. “That’s right, motherfucker! We’ll pour the whole friggin’ bottle down your throat.”
Snot dangled from the man’s nose; but his sobs began to calm down. He was trying to regain control.
Pelón pulled the socks from his mouth. “You gonna behave?”
The man caught his breath. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into. These fellas are Sicilian, and—”
Almost as a reflex, like a bee sting, Pelón flicked the razor across the man’s soft, fleshy cheek. He opened a four-inch gash, which bled instantly.
“Owwwowowow!”
Pelón replaced the socks in the guy’s mouth. “I tole you. I gonna do that a thousand times. I don’t give a fock who think they own this coke. Is mine now.”
The man’s eyes rolled out of synch with one another. Then he focused on Pelón and nodded. Pelón pulled the socks again.
“You ready?”
The man breathed. The muscles in his face sagged. He bled all over his paisley shirt. “The entertainment center.”
“Inside?” said Pelón.
“Underneath. You gotta move the damn thing.”
Tony released the guy’s wrists and let him flop onto his side again. He and Pelón grabbed opposite ends of the entertainment center and inched it away from the wall.
Tony said, “There’s nothing but carpeting under here.”
The man covered the gash in his face. “Find the square.”
I looked over Tony’s shoulder. Pelón was behind the entertainment center. He felt the surface of the carpeting. He found a straight edge and dug his nails to get ahold of the patch of carpeting and pee
l it back. Underneath was an eighteen-inch by eighteen-inch metal door in the floor. Pelón fingered the handle and pulled the door up. Underneath the door, inside the floor, was a compartment and inside the compartment were the magic kilos, stacked like soft white pillows. Pelón’s grin blossomed.
“Antonio. Agarra las bolsas.”
Tony grabbed the backpacks.
The wheelchair man spoke directly to me. “Think you can just lean me against the couch, please?”
He looked utterly helpless on the floor. Blood was everywhere.
I went over and pulled him up. “You wanna go back in the wheelchair?”
“Just lean me against the couch for now.”
I pulled him to the couch and leaned him, careful to avoid the blood.
He looked at his sliced hand and felt the gash in his face. “You people are vampires. You’re damned.”
Pelón was still behind the console. “Coño, six kilos!”
Tony flashed his tongue. “Scarface himself only got two keys from the Colombians at the motel.”
Pelón said, “And this is a lot better than the movies, niño. I can unload these tonight, unopen, for fifteen apiece! That’s ninety thousand right there! And if I break it up and throw them on the street? ¡Olvídate! I can’t even do that much math. I pretty sure you boys gonna see a bonus. Let’s put them in the bags.”
The bleeding man looked at me. His eyes looked vulnerable. “Do you think you can go in the bathroom and grab me a towel for all this blood?”
I made eye contact with Tony, who held a bag open for Pelón. He nodded. I went to the bathroom and grabbed a towel off the rack. I looked in the medicine cabinet and grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
By the time I came back, ten, maybe fifteen seconds later, the man had a pistol raised with his sliced, wobbly hand. I realized instantly from the bloodstains on the couch that he had reached between the cushions to find it. He pointed the pistol to the side of the entertainment center, where Pelón was just about to emerge with a backpack full of coke. I leapt toward the man, shouted, and executed a snap kick, which was the only kick I bothered to learn in a class during the Karate Kid phase. The gun exploded and flew out of the man’s hand at the same instant. It fell across the room. Tony grabbed it.
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