When I did sleep, I dreamt of raindrops in the forest and of splattered ink, of magic acts, and laughter that was not my own. The bed itself fell through the sky, through space and time, through clouds, until I was nauseous. When I awoke, it was still dark. I was thirsty. I wanted orange juice bad, and I didn’t have any. I would have settled for coffee, but my milk had curdled. I remembered I had cocaine in the top drawer.
I thought to place the cocaine in the garbage or flush it, so I would not be tempted later, but then I thought, What if I really want it later?
I left the coke where it was, waited for the sunlight, then went for a walk.
I lay in bed most of that day and felt dreary and worn. It was that familiar drop in energy that follows a severe cocaine high. I thought about the coke in my drawer as the cure, but resisted in a way I had practiced in therapy and it worked. You just let the hunger sit for a minute. You live with the hunger until it doesn’t hurt as much. In the end things like this always come down to willpower.
The next day came with the realization that I had reached the end of something. I had come to Chicago to see the city, yes, but I had mostly come because Tony sent word that he needed me. I reconnected with him only to find that he was probably beyond help.
I remained in the city to track my money down and to figure out a way to recover it, but so far there was no sign. Coltrane and Johnson wouldn’t yield any leverage that could spring the money from their grip. They didn’t go for the bones I tossed. And the possible connection between that hit in the park and the .38 they recovered from us kept them well beyond my influence. They squeezed me out of work like it was fun for them. Once Pelón’s caper went bust, they would have a lot less use for me. I didn’t want to see what that would do to their social skills.
Pelón didn’t have any money, so there was no hope to recover my stash from him, even if he did have something to do with ripping me off.
And Xochitl was history. I was tempted to reach out to her, to fight for her, to try and recover a piece of that exquisite supernatural that I felt when I was with her. But she had made it clear that her life was intricate, and I cared about her too much already to tangle her world up with mine. She had made the right choice.
So there really was no reason, no rationale, to remain in Chicago. I had about a buck-fifty left of the three I got off Blutarski. That needed to stretch to Miami. I called Greyhound. I could barely swing it. I’d make it there thin, seeing mirages from the hunger probably. Chiva would just have to come through.
So that was it. That was my plan. Pack my shit, go to the bus terminal downtown, buy the ticket in cash, be on the bus that same night. I felt a sense of relief that soon it would all be over.
Tony startled me in the hallway as I came out of the bathroom after my shower. I was in my slippers and wore only a towel.
“What’re you doing, standing in the dark?”
Tony had his back against the wall. His eyes were bugged-out, almost blank. Even though I was the one just out of the shower, Tony was wet and shivering. He looked pale, although it was hard to tell in the low light of that hallway.
I ushered him to my room, shut the door, dressed in front of him, which we often did in prison. His eyes were gone.
“Tony, sit down, you’re making me anxious.”
He didn’t. He just stood there in a defeated posture, eyes numb. Not a cocaine numb, but another, post-traumatic dullness.
“¿Qué pasó?”
He stared in the direction of the window. I went around and stood in front of him. He looked through me.
I snapped my fingers. “Yo, what the fuck? You need to go to the hospital?”
Tony’s eyes finally found a spot on my chest and climbed slowly to my eyes. He began to tear. “I was just there.”
“What? The hospital? With who, your moms?”
“Moco. JJ.”
Tony’s minions from his dope spot. I imagined the rest. “They been shot?” I said.
“Roach and his boys. Someone. I don’t know.” A single tear creviced along Tony’s laugh line. “They fucking came through the block and sprayed ’em, Eddie. They cut those boys in half.”
“They’re both dead?”
Tony looked down again. “Moco’s gone. JJ ain’t never gonna walk again.”
“Is that for real?”
“The doctor said it to my face.”
I recalled the way JJ strutted the night we met on the Hot Corner.
“They fucked up Moco’s face so bad, his mother won’t be able to give him an open casket.”
Tony began to cry. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he dropped right to his knees and sobbed. He howled so loud that it was almost unnatural. I hunkered next to him.
“You can’t blame yourself, T.” I put my hand on his back. I wanted to say that those kids knew what gangbanging was all about when they signed up, but then I really didn’t know what I bargained for, when I first got started. Nobody does.
Tony remained on the floor. His breathing was out of control. I stood and got him some water, then sat on the bed and allowed him a shade of privacy. Eventually, he stopped crying. The room grew silent. I imagined an entire roll of cloud cover pass over us in the sky while we waited for the appropriate gesture.
Finally, I said, “My heart breaks for those kids and their families, Tone.”
Tony looked at me. “Then help me make it right.”
“Tony, I cannot—”
“Help me make a truce, Eddie. No more war. This whole thing happened because I was greedy. Those kids, they got shot because of me. Help me make it right. I can’t live with this. I’m ready to tell Roach he can have the whole neighborhood.”
“You’re gonna get out of the business, Tone? You don’t mean that.”
“On my word. I just need to tell Roach. He can work the whole West Side. I wave the white flag. At least then my moms, my people, will be safe. I got kids running around all over, you know that. I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life waiting for a piano to fall on top of us.”
I was skeptical. “Just like that, Tony? What about that shipment you been talking about?”
“Fuck that. I don’t want no more blood.” Tony sounded as if he might begin to cry again. “I feel sick, Eddie. I need help.”
I looked in his eyes and believed him.
“Just come with me to the meet,” he said. “Watch my back. I’ll do the talking. This is my mess to clean up.”
“What if Roach don’t wanna talk, Tone? What if he just wants to blast?”
“We’ll do it someplace neutral, like you said before. Someplace where we know everybody gotta check their gats at the door.”
My suitcase was already packed. Miami was waiting.
Tony said, “I don’t stand a chance without you, Eddie.”
There was a bus leaving that very night. But then, they left on a regular schedule.
I said, “When do you wanna do this?”
Tony stood and went to the window. “As soon as possible. I don’t want nobody else to get hurt.”
I walked over to him. “I’ll get word to Chulo and set it up.”
He nodded.
“We still friends, Tony?”
He looked at me. We shook hands the way we did when we were seventeen.
The meeting went down at a spot called La Caverna, aka “Da Cave.” It was an underground club, located in an industrial part of the city, on the far South Side, practically next to Indiana. It is the type of place that does not advertise, and isn’t noticed from the street. You don’t need a secret password, but you do have to know where it is, that it’s there. From the outside it just looks like a low building in pale yellow brick. A small plant or a small factory of some sort. The windows had been filled in with bricks that were a different shade of pale yellow from the originals.
Da Cave was owned by a guy named Big Mike, aka “Bam-Bam,” and he didn’t get either nickname because of his size. He was a half-black, half-Mexican leader of a notori
ous Chicago street gang that had tentacles throughout most public-housing projects, and every major prison in the Midwest. Big Mike was known as the wrong nigga to fuck with. Nobody wanted to be in the crew that pulled a stunt at his personal club.
We walked up and heard the music pump from inside. Barely. It was more like something you felt. We walked in.
The bouncers inside the door patted us down. One waved a metal detector over us and it went off by my feet. I said, “Steel-toed boots,” and he rapped each one with his knuckles. Satisfied that we carried no knives or guns, they let us pass through the black curtain into the club.
Inside the club a mix of black, white, yellow, and beautiful brown people bopped, stomped, ground, made sex faces, and grinned in a musical orgy of bumping house music. Tony led me to the back.
Roach sat and drank with Chulo at a little table in the farthest corner. Mirrors went all around the room, and Roach and Chulo sat with their backs against the mirror. There were two empty seats at the table. Tony and I walked over and stood in front of them.
Roach made a face and pointed at his watch. “Get yourself a rollie. Maybe you won’t be late for business meetings.”
We sat. Tony didn’t flinch. Chulo and I acknowledged each other with a quick nod.
Roach began to talk. Actually, he shouted, but I couldn’t make out a lot of what he said, because the music was so loud. I leaned in.
Roach repeated: “You niggas wanted to talk, so talk.”
I shouted over the music: “Tony wants to say something.”
I leaned into Tony’s ear. “Just drop it straight, see how they react.”
Roach waited. Chulo waited. We all waited. Tony did not speak. He seemed catatonic.
Roach sucked a cigarette until there was no tobacco left. “Listen, assholes, you called this meeting. You got me down here. Now speak.”
Tony stared at Roach.
Roach looked at me. “Is your boy playing games again?”
I elbowed Tony, but Tony did not react. He kept his eyes on Roach.
Roach shook his head and blew smoke. “These niggas call me down here, talking truce. Now he’s trying to pull that stare-down bullshit. Nigga, I already perfected that.”
Tony licked his lips. “I gotta piss.”
Roach said, “Don’t forget to wash your hands after.”
Roach and Chulo laughed.
I figured Tony went to the bathroom to snort himself numb. It was a lot for him to concede. While Tony was away, Roach talked about all of the trouble Tony had caused him. How much money he lost. How tampering with the business brought the heat down.
Roach said, “Palo, you’re a reasonable man. You understand my problem, right? Before your boy fucked with my supply, everything was straight. Dope spots was blowin’ up. Supply came steady. And the law was on ice. Now, all of a sudden, this nigga spikes my shit, my custies are fallin’ off, and I’m like, practically outta business. I got narcs up my ass. And my suppliers are tripping because I can’t move white or brown like I used to. How the fuck am I supposed to take that?”
“I understand, Roach, but listen. Tony didn’t spike your dope.”
“Bullshit.”
“He didn’t. And you didn’t have to blast those two kids who worked for him.”
“I ain’t blasted nobody. Not yet.”
I said, “You guys shot up Tony’s car comin’ out of the taco stand. And yesterday you did the drive-by at Tony’s dope spot.”
“None of that shit was me.”
“C’mon, Roach. Everybody knows it was you. That’s why we’re here. That’s why Tony’s calling this truce. He wants this shit to stop.”
“We’ll take it however we can get it,” said Chulo. “But that shit wasn’t us. Tony’s the one who’s been fuckin’ our deal. And he killed one of our youngest, most productive soldiers.”
I looked at both of them. I could see no reason for them to lie. I wondered if Pelón had been telling the truth when he laid it all on Coltrane and Johnson.
Roach made a face. I saw Tony approach in the mirror behind them.
“Squash it,” I said. “Here he comes.”
Tony sat next to me. I turned to him and spoke directly in his ear. “Let’s get this over with. Tell them you want out of the business and that they can take over your spot. You’re retired.”
Roach and Chulo leaned forward.
Tony said, “I want out.”
His rivals waited to hear if there was anything more. There wasn’t.
“Is that all you got to say? What’s the catch?”
I said, “That’s it, Roach. Tony’s retiring, moving on. We’re pushing to Florida. You guys can waste your lives chasing junkies. We’re going to Miami to work on our tans. Tony’s only request is that you lay off the rest of them kids that sling for him.”
Roach knit his eyebrows together. “Don’t tell me what I gotta do, muthafucka. Any one of them punks tries to pick up where this asshole left off is gonna find I do things lovely.”
It was then that I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that Tony had something in each hand, at his side. He held each beneath the level of the table, out of Chulo and Roach’s view. I strained to see through the flashing multicolored darkness of the club, the shadows that bounced off the mirrors, to make out the reflection of what it was. I suddenly realized that Tony was holding two wooden stakes. He must have stashed them in his snakeskin boots and recovered them in the bathroom. The metal detector wouldn’t have picked up on them.
I yelled, “Tony, don’t!” but it was too late.
He jumped up and plunged one supersharp stake right through Roach’s silk shirt, cracking the sternum. A stunned Roach toppled backward into the mirror behind his chair with Tony on top of him. Tony pushed the stake into Roach’s chest with all his weight and muscle.
“Die, motherfucker!”
The violence popped off so sudden and unexpected, that both Chulo and I just froze for one instant, two seconds, as Tony pistoned the other stake into Roach’s gut. Roach rolled his eyes and slid down along the mirror toward the floor.
Chulo finally reacted. He grabbed Tony around the neck, yanked him off Roach, and tossed him backward to the floor. Tony scrambled to his feet with one bloody stake in his left hand. He switched it to his right, and he and Chulo faced off. People around us reacted like it was a regular club fight and started toward the action, but when they noticed the bloody stake and all the blood on Tony’s face and chest, they exploded in panic. Women screamed over the music, and everybody scattered in a masterpiece of confusion.
Chulo charged Tony and avoided the stake to grab ahold of Tony’s other arm and swing Tony into a wall. The mirror that covered that wall cracked into big pieces and Tony dropped to the floor, losing the bloody stake in the stampede. Chulo jumped on top of Tony and began to choke him. He was much bigger than Tony and it was clear that he would soon cut off all oxygen. Without thinking, I jumped and kicked Chulo in the temple with my steel-toed boot. He jumped up, grabbing his head. Chulo swung around and punched me so hard in the chest, the air went right out of me. He slapped me, and I fell to one knee, but then I jumped up and we traded blows.
Bouncers jumped on us and tried to bring us down like bulls. Chulo and I made eye contact. I don’t know what passed through his mind, but I saw Tony’s fist fly from behind Chulo and the bouncer who had Chulo tied up. The bloody stake was in Tony’s fist. Tony popped that stake right through Chulo’s neck like it was made of cellophane. The tip of the stake was on one side of Chulo’s neck and the base of the stake stuck out the other side, like the bolts on Frankenstein’s monster.
House music still pumped. The bouncer who held Chulo released him, jumped back, and screamed from the shock. Chulo did a little dance, a freak-out that I think meant his spirit was flying out of him in that instant, like static lightning. He reached for the stake, but couldn’t raise his arms up to his neck. He dropped to the floor. I yanked myself away from the grip of the bouncer who held me back,
and Tony and I scrambled for the exit with the rest of the crowd.
We flew in a car Tony claimed was a rental.
“Are you insane?” My heart was going a thousand beats per minute. “Why the fuck did you do that, Tony? What the fuck have you done?”
“Shut up, Eddie!”
“Tony, you stupid motherfucker. . . you committed two hits in public view! At Big Mike’s! We’re fucked! You signed our arrest warrants, you stupid son of a bitch! You signed our death certificates.”
Tony said, “Moco was my nephew, Eddie!”
“What?”
“He was my nephew. He was my sister’s kid. Yoli.” Tony looked at me. “I was supposed to take care of him, Eddie. And look. Look what I did to him.”
I remembered how Tony howled when he told me about the drive-by shooting and about his visit to the hospital.
“That kid was your family?”
“Yoli’s son.”
There was blood all over our clothes.
“Why did you have him out on the street, Tony? You killed two people over nothing. Roach didn’t even do it.”
“Bullshit!”
“You fucking sociopath. You’re beyond help. And you threw the noose around my neck right with you.”
“He was my blood.”
“Then you should’ve been giving him a ride to school! Instead, you put him to work. You practically pulled the trigger.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re twisted, Tony. I’m sick of you.”
“Stop it!”
“You’re evil.”
Tony screamed at the top of his lungs, “Shut the fuck up!” and pressed his foot on the gas as we got to the Dan Ryan.
I punched the dashboard. “Take the speed down to normal, you fuckin’ asshole, before you get us pinched in these bloody clothes!”
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