Rough Men

by Aric Davis

  Chris piped up. “Man, see that’s exactly what I’m talking about. We’ve been sitting tight as two nuts in a sac, waiting for some shit just like this to happen.”

  “Hey, check it out,” said Isaac. “It’s all ice-age snow, and now it’s raining. That’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, it’s nuts, crazy,” said Jason. “Chris, I want to know who this guy is and what exactly you were really doing at that bank. If it wasn’t for money, then why did you pick that spot, and why did you shoot Alex if he was such a good friend? I’m really having a hard time with some of it, mostly because it all sounds like total bullshit.”

  “It happened like this.”

  “My boys and I got to eat, right? So when a job comes along, and it sounds like something some of my boys and I can do without causing us too much shit, we do it.

  “This job, the bank one, wasn’t something I was initially very high on. It sounded like a high-risk thing, and everybody knows that all that bank money is marked and recorded by the FBI, specifically to keep people like me from doing the dirty on ’em, coming in strapped and just taking that shit. Anyways, my man, Jefe, he says that this job isn’t like that, and I’m not supposed to share that shit with anybody, especially not the guys doing the job with me. I remember asking him why, and he said he would try and set up a meeting with me and the dude who wanted the shit done, so I said cool.

  “Anyways, Jefe called me back the same day, just later that night. I had just smoked out, and I was feeling good about shit, especially if we could get the job. I knew that Mumbo was getting hard up, and it had been a little while since we had a score that wasn’t just nickel-and-dime bullshit. So when my phone rang and I saw it was Jefe, I was like, ‘Cool,’ you know? So I answered the phone, and Jefe said that he had talked to his dude, and we could meet. I asked him when he thought that might be, and he asked if I was at Rob’s or Mumbo and Alex’s house. I don’t know how he knew I wasn’t at Mom’s—maybe he could tell I was high. Mom doesn’t play that shit for a minute, but she’ll take money I make off of doing stuff a lot worse than just selling dope. Sort of fucked up, when you think about it.

  “I told him I was at Mumbo and Alex’s, and he said that a car would be there to pick me up in an hour. I was like, ‘Oh shit, a car?’ It all seemed fancy as hell to me. I’ve worked with and for a lot of motherfuckers, but nobody ever just says, ‘I’ll send a car for you.’ That’s like getting off a plane and seeing a nigga in a suit holding a sign with your name on it, big-time shit, you know? I told Mumbo and Alex that some guy was sending a car over so that I could talk to him about a job. Their eyes got all big like I expected, big-time shit, you know? I just acted like it was no big deal, but I figured if they had money to come get me in a car, they might have real money, make this a real score, not just a job to tide me over for a month or two. Ask any cop, mistakes come in volume in crime, usually not just in one job, unless you’re a fucking idiot, and that was making me nervy. We were pulling all these little jobs just to get right, when fewer bigger jobs were what we needed.

  “So I’m looking out the window and this car pulls up, black, all black windows, no logos anywhere on it. I mean, I’m sure it was just a regular car with perks, boosted engine, bulletproof glass, maybe solid rubber tires, but that thing was fucking awesome. My crew, guys my age, we all want like a bright-orange Camaro on dubs, you know? Something flashy, make girls want to get a ride, make other dudes want what you got. This was gangster, but like a grown-up gangster. It was bad as a motherfucker.

  “I got off that couch, said later to Mumbo and Alex, and walked outside. I had such a good feeling about it I didn’t even bring a heater, and I always stay strapped.

  “When I got outside, a dude was standing next to the car, wearing a suit and shit, and he opened the door for me. I got in the backseat, and there was a dude sitting there with weird makeup on his face. Looked like he’d passed out and somebody had hit him up with a Sharpie. He hands me a black bag and says real slowly in fucked-up English, ‘Put on your head.’ I wanted to say something, but that motherfucker, Magic Marker face or not, was seriously kind of tripping me out, so I just put the bag on my head like he told me to.

  “We drove for a while. I don’t know how long. I should have kept track by counting, I guess, but it’s not like it really mattered. I was going somewhere, and I was going to do whatever the dude I was supposed to meet said to do. I didn’t feel like a big badass anymore. I was scared, and something about that dude’s marker face was sticking in my head sideways, like I knew what it was but couldn’t quite get my brain wrapped around it.

  “Finally, the car stopped. I heard the door open, and somebody yanked me out of the car and pulled me to my feet.

  “I still had the hood on, but it was nice to be out of the car. The dude in back with me didn’t smell the best. I didn’t notice it at first, but the longer I was back there, the smell came through the hood, and the only thing I can think to compare that shit to is death. That dude smelled like a corpse, that’s just all there is to it.

  “So I’m out of the car and walking with a hand not on my back but sort of hovering over it. I hear a door open, and it’s loud as fuck. At that point, I was trying to take in anything I could, and that was definitely a steel door, a heavy one, in a steel doorframe. I could feel the temperature change, so I knew I was inside. Plus, I could tell I was walking on indoor cement now—there was no slush or snow. Then they took the hood off of me.

  “The first thing I saw was a fucking machine gun; it was pointed at my face, a couple of inches away, tops. The guy holding it was wearing a bandanna over his face and had his hood pulled up, but it looked like he had some of that marker shit on his face too. I just stared right down that barrel while some other dude frisked me. When he was done, he said something in Spanish, and the dude with the machine gun lowered it so that it was pointed at my chest. Sort of an improvement, but not really, you know?

  “The guy with a gun is staring me down and finally starts nodding his head, and then he says, ‘Sigueme,’ and starts walking away from me. The dude who was frisking me starts pushing a gun into my back, and I was like, ‘OK, cool, follow Machine Gun Guy.’

  “He walks through another steel door and gestures for me to come on in. I do, and the guy who was behind me stays in the first room, so it’s just me and the other dude. He motions at a chair. It had some dried blood on it, but I tell myself not to worry; they were going to way too much trouble just to kill me. I sit down, and Machine Gun Guy stands by a door opposite of the one we came into the room through, the gun across his chest. That door opens, and Machine Gun Guy leaves, and I was alone.

  “A few minutes later, another dude comes in. He’s got a suit on, but there are tattoos all over his face; he almost looks like he has a mask on. There’s a big M over half of it and a big S over the other half. He had the cartilage cut off of his ears, and there was a scar across his throat, like somebody had almost killed this fucker, but he lived somehow. He looks at me and says in perfect English, ‘How are you doing, Chris?’

  “‘I’m doing fine,’ I said. ‘What can I help you with, Mr.—’

  “‘My name does not matter. Nothing about this matters except for what I’m about to tell you. If you can do this job, I will make you rich. If you fail, you will die. If you say no today, my man will come back in here and kill you. There will be nothing you can do about it. Are we clear?’

  “‘Yes, sir.’

  “‘Good. I need a job done. On February eighteenth, I need you to rob Great Lakes Credit Union branch four twenty-one. I want it to look like a regular robbery. I want you to take money and say scary things. I want it to be clean, but if you need to kill people to get me what I want...the only other thing I care about, besides this looking like a regular robbery that got nasty, is that you open safety deposit box number eleven thirty-eight and take its contents. No one is to know about this, aside from you. The contents of that box are going to be there on that day alone, and I need w
hat’s in that box.

  “‘If one of your partners finds out that you have taken something from that box, you must kill him. If all of your partners find that you took from this box, you must kill all of them. I do not care if they do not know what was in that box, but if they so much as mention it, they must die. If you think there is a possibility that they know about it, they have to die. There is no negotiating this. Perhaps you kill them just to make sure I think you take care of business? That’s fine with me. But, Chris, if I find out that one of them knows, and you do not kill them, you die a bad way. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. I just want what’s in that box, and I want that to be between you and me. No one from my crew knows, just you and just me.

  “‘If you see what’s in the box, you put that thought out of your mind—you make it all the way gone. You see it if you have to, like if it is not packaged, but then you forget you ever see it. Understand?’

  “‘If you think I saw what was in that box,’ I said, ‘then I die a bad way.’

  “‘Yes, Chris,’ the dude said, and he looked sad when he said it, like he knew he was putting me in a bad spot. I couldn’t say no, because then I died right away. I couldn’t tell anybody on my crew the truth. I mean, no one would do a job like that, no matter how much money it was worth. I just had to act like I set up a bunch of stuff myself, based on a tip. I had a tip, all right, and it was going to get us all killed, I just knew it.’”

  They’d been back at the house in Isaac’s parked Camry for about five minutes as Chris finished the story. Will had a hard time believing it, but it all made sense.

  The wind was howling and battering rain at them while they sat in the car. Will could feel the gun in his jacket, the one the girl had tried to take away, and realized just how tired he was, like someone had been slowly scraping the life from him and was just now letting him know what they’d been up to.

  “So you hooked up with MS-Thirteen,” said Jason. “You should have just said no and let them kill you.”

  “I know,” said Chris, “but it’s too late for that.”

  “C’mon, let’s get back in the house. Law ain’t coming.” Jason said it with malice, but Will could hear something else in his voice, and Will was pretty sure what he was hearing was fear. If Jason is scared, then what the fuck am I supposed to be doing, running away? Will tried to ignore the thought, push it away like it had never happened. He got out of the car, following Isaac, Jason, and Chris across the street.

  The rain was falling like mad now, snow disappearing from the lawns like a magic trick. Lightning crashing, thunder rumbling, like the weather could somehow understand the fix they were in.

  “Jason, what’s MS-Thirteen?” Isaac asked as they walked.

  Jason, still walking forward, replied, “MS-Thirteen started in El Salvador. They’re the kind of gang that other gangs are scared of. They’re brutal and very efficient. They favor tattooed faces and machetes, and they’re supposed to be scared of nothing. I read once about how they even had their own language so they could communicate secretly in prison. Fuckhead here got lucky too. Worst he’ll see from us is something quiet. Of course, he could get lucky, keep saying what I want to hear. Those dudes? They’ll cut his dick off and feed it to him, pull his tongue through his throat, wrap him in tires, coat him in gas, and let him burn. I forgot that part—they’re famously creative. Open the door.”

  Chris obliged him, opening the door and walking into the house, but not rushing, knowing that to try and get away from Jason would just mean a bullet in the back.

  “So what now?” Will asked.

  “Well, we’re going to see to your man here, and then I’m going to ice the girls in the basement. After that, we’re going to leave and hope that we can forget any of this ever happened.”

  “Hey,” said Will, “somebody turned off the music.”

  Jason threw Chris, hard. The kid bounced over a coffee table, landing face-first in the piss that was partially soaked into the couch. “Time to go, guys,” said Jason. “Right now, go.”

  It was too late.

  The house must have been filled with bangers, and they filed into the living room quickly. The men wore hoods and bandannas across their faces. The most minimally armed of them had pistols; the rest had AK-47 or AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. Between the hoods and bandannas, their tattoos were visible.

  Jason dropped his gun, and Isaac followed suit. Will was last, slowly laying the Sig on the floor and then placing the revolver that Chris had given to Jason next to it. Two of the men came over and collected their pistols, and a third began to frisk them. He took a small automatic from Jason’s right ankle and a revolver from his lower back. Will could feel the man grinning at them through his bandanna, tattoos savaged into the skin above his eyes, while another took their phones and everything else that was in their pockets.

  “You got something for my friend?” said one of the men in the group. He was holding one of the short-barreled AR-15s and clearly talking to Chris.

  “Yeah,” said Chris, “it’s upstairs. You want me to go get it?”

  “Si.” The man barked something else in Spanish, and two of the other men walked to Chris. The three of them left the room. Will could hear their feet as they went up the stairs. No one said anything while Chris was gone. Will, Jason, and Isaac just stared at the feet of the men who were now in control of the situation.

  Noise on the stairs again snapped Will’s head back up, and Chris and the other two men came sauntering back into the room. Chris had a backpack slung over one shoulder, and the swagger that had turned to fear was back. Chris had lucked out; he was winning. It made Will sick. Not because he was probably going to die soon, but that he’d had the chance—thousands of chances, really—to kill Chris and just walk away. He hadn’t, though. He’d been so sure that he needed to get to the bottom of everything, but there was no bottom. A man with lots of power was going to see to their ends. Will would never get to see Alison again, never get to enjoy the life that he had left and had always taken for granted.

  As they were walked out of the house into a pair of waiting black vans, Will wanted to run so they’d be forced to shoot him in the streets. Getting into the van, he wasn’t sure what was worse: not having the balls to run or that they weren’t even bothering to cover their heads with hoods, like Chris had said they’d done to him. Will sat with a banger on either side of him, behind him Isaac was similarly surrounded, and in the row in front of him, Will could see that Jason was as well. When Chris got into the van and sat two rows in front of him, Will could hear him cracking jokes to himself, the idiot not yet realizing that no hood for him this time meant that the real joke was on him too.

  Lightning flashed again, and the wind buffeted the still-stationary van, making it bobble right to left as the thunder crashed around them. What an odd night for a thunderstorm, Will thought. Storms in late February or early March weren’t impossible, but they were not a common thing, not by a long shot. Hail came with the rain, pitter-pattering off of the van like shot rolling down a tin roof. No one else in the vehicle seemed to notice, so Will tried to ignore it as well. Still, it was odd. A near blizzard two days ago, a thunderstorm this late in winter, and now pea-sized hail, maybe even bigger than that. It was a fitting end to the night, a winter maelstrom still deciding what type of storm it wanted to be, snow or thunder, ice, or lightning.

  The driver of their van was cursing in Spanish. Will couldn’t understand the words, but he was clearly not very happy. The weather had not gotten any better since they’d left the southwest side, the rain and hail mixed with occasional blasts of snow. A weatherman would have called it “wintry mix”—cold and warm fronts clashing to create conditions that could be politely described as difficult to drive in. One of the men next to Will was ignoring it, playing a game on his phone, but the other, a boy younger than Alex at the time of his death, looked terrified. Will didn’t blame him.

  The van was rocking so much that Will felt as tho
ugh he were on a ship. The windows around them were fouled by weather; the rain made the snow stick to the van, and then more rain would glaze it into a thick crust. Only the front windshield remained clean, and that was only because the wipers were working at a frenetic pace. Will couldn’t see the speedometer well enough to read it from where he sat, but he would have guessed their speed at no more than thirty miles per hour. There were almost no other cars on the road for them to have to worry about, but Will thought he understood the fear in some of the men and in the eyes of the driver.

  The package Chris had secured obviously had some sort of significance beyond what some random little trinket in a bag could have supplied. The crew of gangbangers that had met them at the house hadn’t been sent to stop them; they were still a wildcard. The show of force was a coincidence, likely intended for the intimidation and probable deaths of Mumbo and Rob. The gangsters were likely as shocked to see them back at the house as they had been to see the gangsters there.

  An especially strong gust of wind threatened to spill the van, but the vehicle righted itself, the driver spitting a song of foreign obscenities as the bulky vehicle regained its footing.

  They’re going to take us to wherever they took Chris, to a place with bloody chairs and grinning men who smell like death, thought Will. Where could that be? Had they been headed south on 131, the highway that splices through the middle of Grand Rapids, he would have assumed they were heading to a farm or slaughterhouse. Since it would have been faster to take Ivanrest to the northwest side, especially in this weather, Will decided they were being brought north of Alpine. There were a number of nondescript warehouses out there, the Grand Rapids Press had one of its own among the anonymous others. It would be a perfect place—outside the city, but close enough to be there in ten minutes if need be. Passing through the lights adorning the tall buildings of Grand Rapids, Will felt miserable that this was the last time he was going to see them.