Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  The buzzer sounds just in time. The lanky one stands and whistles at me. He just wants to see my face. I quickly push through the door, pretending like I didn’t hear him, and make sure it locks before heading up the stairs.

  The building reeks of trash, and the hallway walls are filled with graffiti. How can anyone stand living in a place like this? I knock once on the metal door of Apartment Fifteen. Reggie opens the door, but leaves the chain on. His one visible eye is looking at me, red-glazed, pupil dilated. He’s getting skulled, I’m sure. It’s a cheap high, requiring a Mindnet app you download to root the firmware of your TLI. The TLI fires a pulse every few seconds, flooding the brain with alpha waves. Stupid in my opinion, because you can get stuck in an endless loop, and eventually, a coma.

  Reggie wipes the dribble dangling from his lip. “Hey.”

  “You going to let me in?”

  He waves a catatonic hand. “Pockets.”

  It’s the same ritual every time. I turn my jean pockets inside out and lift my shirt to show him I’m not packing. He’s too stupid to ask me to lift the cuff on my pants. I’ve got a .22 handgun concealed in an ankle holster. Not much use against the guys downstairs though.

  “Okay.” He unlatches the chain and lets me in.

  I hate the routine—going inside, smelling that rotten Chinese food stink that never goes away, seeing the disarray of clothes, wrappers and dirty dishes everywhere. I’ve asked him a number of times to exchange product for cash at the door, but he wants me to wait on the dirty couch as he tries to remember where he stashed his supply of Switch. This time, I’m glad he let me in. I’ve got to talk to him.

  “Have a seat.” He points at the couch as he teeters toward the kitchen. I don’t bother sitting.

  Reggie is an odd-looking creature, real narrow head, with a leather-brown Columbian complexion, early thirties, although his compulsive drug use has him looking much older. He was a certified informant for us a couple years back, paid to report on local gang activity. He helped me make a buy, and that’s where I got a sample of the good stuff. He’s no longer on payroll, but he’s still my go-to-guy.

  After a few minutes, he staggers back in. “Yo, I can’t find it.”

  It’s not what I want to hear. “You can’t remember where you put it? Maybe it’s in the bedroom, like last time, or the closet.”

  His drowsy face twists into a frown. “You telling me how to run my shit? I”—he yanks his hand haphazardly—“Yo man, I know what I’m doing. Don’t tell me how to run my shit, okay?”

  I let him go through the motions. Part of my brain says I’ve made a mistake coming here, the other part knowing this guy’s track record. He’s always come through for me. I’ve used other sources in the past, but Reggie’s stuff is hands-down the best, even if he’s out of his mind.

  His expression clouds over. Then he starts giggling like a child, snot bubbling from his nose. “Wait!” He snorts his way into a laughing fit. He catches his breath and then settles into a massive grin. “The bathroom! Yeah, it’s there.”

  He weaves out of sight, returning a minute later, waving a plastic dispenser with a Listerine logo, carrying a few more in his other hand. He tosses me the one with the logo. “Hope you like grape.”

  I exchange money for product, taking possession of the five dispensers, a hundred strips total. I’ve asked for more in the past, but Reggie claims it’s all he has.

  I click open each dispenser, examining the contents, making sure I’m getting a full supply per unit. The cardamom scent is subtle.

  “What, you don’t trust me?”

  I ignore him and shove the collection into my jean pocket. I pull out an equal sum of money as I gave him a minute ago, along with a folded printout from my back pocket. He looks at me and just blinks. “What’s this?”

  “I need to find someone. Here, take the money.” He palms it, still blinking in confusion. I show him the blowup image of the knuckle with the y-shaped scar. “I’m looking for a guy who deals, Hispanic, with a scar like this on his hand.”

  He holds up the printout and squints. He looks at me, then the printout, and darts his eyes back and forth several times. He stops and tosses it on the floor, along with the money. Bills spill over the dirty carpet. Damn!

  Reggie points harshly at me. “You crazy, man? What’s this all about? What do you want? I don’t work for you anymore!” He rocks back and forth, anger blossoming into mental discord.

  I hold up my hands neutrally. “Slow down, Reggie. I just want to know who he is, that’s all.”

  His rocking gets more pronounced. “What do you want with the Candyman?”

  The name rings a bell. A big-time street dealer with an even bigger ego, if memory serves me correctly. “I want to meet him.”

  Reggie grunts. “That’s crazy talk, ’cause he don’t want to meet you.”

  He gets his shoulders into the back-and-forth swing. Spittle flies from his lips. I’m worried he’s going to flip out on me and do something stupid.

  “You know him, Reggie? You know the Candyman?”

  He shakes his head manically.

  I keep my hands raised, a peace offering. “It’s okay, Reggie. Calm down, buddy.”

  The manic jerking continues. “No!” He keeps his eyes fixed on the sprawled printout between full shoulder swings.

  I should leave, cut my losses. But he acts like he knows the guy. I pump him for information. “You see this money? It’s yours. Just tell me who the Candyman is.”

  He snorts, getting his chin into the swing. “Candyman’s crazy. Yessiree. Crazy.”

  “You sure he has a scar on his knuckle? Did you see it yourself?”

  Spit dribbles down his chin, and his eyes are wide, as if in a trance. It reminds me of what a voodoo shaman from Haiti might look like.

  “Reggie?”

  He stops abruptly, gaze leveled my way, drool leaking from the corner of his crooked mouth. His voice turns gravelly. “You’re too slow for the Candyman, white boy.” He opens his mouth in a lunatic grin, revealing a missing front tooth. “Craaaazee slow.”

  He’s not making sense, but I need to see where this leads. “Why am I too slow, Reggie?”

  “Why?” His gaze wanders off, lost in the mess of his apartment. He drops his voice to a whisper. “Why.”

  “Yeah, Reggie, why?”

  He almost sounds lucid as he speaks the next couple of sentences. “Because he’s got the mojo, that’s why. The best mojo, not like yours.”

  “And how to do I get a hold of this mojo?”

  He flicks his eyes at me, insanity restored. “You gotta go down the rabbit hole, white boy. You gotta go deep. And when you get there, the Candyman will be waiting. Yessirree. And when he catches you, he’s gonna snap you in half, ‘cause that’s what he does when you’re too slow.” He cackles, gap in his teeth wide and ugly.

  He’s speaking gibberish. Pure, worthless trash. I bend down to retrieve the printout. He can keep the money, but there’s no way I’m going to leave the photo.

  Reggie shouts at the top of his lungs, scaring me stiff. “Don’t touch that!”

  I unclench my body. “Just grabbing my paper, Reggie. Money’s yours, okay? That was the deal. But this I’m taking.”

  He shakes his head like a rabid dog. “I don’t care. You’re leaving it. Get out!”

  “Look, Reggie, I’ll just take the paper and—”

  He grabs what I imagine is a paper bag stuffed with garbage from the ratty credenza behind him, but when I see the gun, I know better than to make a move. I swallow, watching his hand tremble with the revolver pointed at my chest. It’s a .357, enough to put me six below. I don’t have my vest, so there’s no point questioning whether it’s loaded.

  “Okay, Reggie,” I say in a surrendering tone. “I’m going to leave, all right?”

  “Yeah, you need to go.” He jabs the air with his gun. He’s got his index finger tugging on the trigger. You have to put some effort into pulling it, but I’m not
taking any chances. My thoughts filter over to Suzie and Caitlyn, and I imagine them, for a split second, crying in the hospital room as I lie on a bed with a respirator.

  I back away. Reggie keeps pace with a jagged twitch to his carriage. He then tosses his head back and talks to the air, in Spanish. “Sí. El blanco hombre sigue aquí.” He laughs his twisted laugh, and it chills me to my core. My panic button goes off.

  Who’s he talking to?

  You can do anything through the Mindnet without the other person knowing. Reggie definitely contacted someone, either through a thoughtlink or M-text. The fact he spoke aloud just confirms it.

  I’m out the door in a flash. It rattles closed, muffling Reggie’s hyena laugh. Down below, I hear heavy footsteps reverberating off the treads of the stairwell, and voices. I peek over the railing and see the Dominicans, guns drawn. One spots me and points. They break into a run. Shit!

  I sprint up two flights of stairs to the top landing and slam open the door to the rooftop. The gravel on the flat roof crunches as I scamper for cover. I duck behind the industrial cooler as the door shuts, and take out my .22 pistol. The one thing in my favor is that it’s dark, with the only strong light source behind me, by the door I exited. Ahead, the roof’s ledge rises a couple of feet, blocking some of the city lights, aiding in my concealment.

  I hurriedly scan my surroundings. I’m sandwiched between two apartment buildings. The rooftop of the closer one is about a half flight lower. I might be able to outrun these guys and get to the door on the other side. It’ll either be open, or I’m screwed. Calling for backup is out of the question.

  I get ready to launch, quickly estimating my jump and landing. The door swings open before I take one step. I hear the familiar whistle of the lanky Dominican. “Hey blanco, oh blanco,” he calls out in a singsong voice. He claps, then makes kissing noises. From the sound of their footfall, I can tell they’re splitting up. They know I’m hiding, and I know they’re hunting. I can fire a warning shot to buy more time, perhaps create a standoff. Except, when they realize I’m using a small-caliber weapon, it will be for naught, and I will have wasted a precious bullet.

  “Hey, blanco, come out,” the lanky one says. “We just want to talk.” The other one laughs, giving away his position. They’re closing in from either side, covering all angles of escape.

  My heart is racing. How the hell did I end up here? Again, my thoughts turn to my family. No hospital room this time, just an image of my bullet-riddled corpse being scraped off the concrete sidewalk below. I won’t even get an honorable burial. This isn’t getting killed in the line of duty. Not even close.

  I’m swelling with anger. I had no business coming here. There was a reason my supply of Switch was almost out. There was a reason why I witnessed what it did to a teenager with no priors. And there was a reason why my gut told me to leave Reggie alone and head home.

  All the signs; yet I didn’t pay attention to any of them.

  I yank the bundle of dispensers from my pocket. I’m tempted to hurl them toward the edge of the roof. Or better, try to barter my way out of this predicament. The product has street value, although I doubt my stalkers would be interested. As I squeeze the collection of plastic dispensers in frustration, one pops open. Reggie’s cackling fills my thoughts, and his accusation: You’re too slow for the Candyman, white boy.

  Too slow.

  Craaaazee slow.

  My fingers go to work, hinging on a ridiculous idea. I wedge the .22 into my belt and rip the plastic sheath open. I drop the rest of the dispensers on the ground. I grab the whole stack of strips from the open container and bite down. I chomp furiously. The Dominicans are maybe eight or ten paces away. In a few seconds, they’ll have a clean shot. Saliva mixes with film, and my mouth is awash in grape and cardamom. I slosh around the shreds, feeling bits churn into a paste. I chew frantically, trying to get the mixture to dissolve in time.

  Within a couple of seconds, my cheeks warm. Two more, and my face flushes.

  Then something inexplicable happens.

  Time slows, as if each frame of the film reel in my vision is moving a tenth of its normal speed. Yet my mind accelerates in a hundred different directions.

  My eyes dart around, picking up the minutest details: bird droppings along the ledge, peanut shells in the gravel, the hoarse breathing of my pursuers, the step of each foot, the position of their bodies, and the intention of each movement.

  My .22 is no longer useful, I realize. I rest it on the ground and crouch, leg muscles bunched to spring. There’s a clarity in my thoughts so bright that I could count the strands of hair on my head and still have time to measure my next move. My other senses kick in, and I pick up the scent of unwashed skin, the change in air pressure, the tang of foreign sweat.

  I scoop up two large pieces of gravel, and transfer one to my throwing hand. The lanky one clears my line of sight first, just as I hurl the rock. It strikes him in the left eye, and he staggers sideways.

  The second guy appears on the other side, momentarily distracted by his partner—enough for me to hit him squarely below the Adam’s apple. He drops his .38 and clutches his throat, wheezing as he steps back.

  Everything is happening in slow motion.

  I’m after the lanky Dominican, predator urge unfettered.

  He fires a blind shot, ricocheting off the ground where my foot was a moment earlier, his good eye blinking reflexively and tearing. A second shot rings out as I dodge to the right. I shift all my weight, calculate the distance to close on him, and spring, taking to the air.

  My fist catches his jaw with an audible crack, dislocating it. He shrieks as I land opposite him, grabbing his wrist and wresting his pistol in one fluid motion. He loses his balance, sprawling to the gravel, crying out in pain, neutralized.

  His partner is gasping, trying to recover his breath while aiming at me. I’m moving again, a blur, faster than before. I run to the side of the cooler, concealed for little over a second, and skid, throwing up a shower of rocks.

  He pulls the trigger prematurely, hitting nothing. By the time I appear on the other side, I’m on him. My brain computes a combination of fatal blows—strike to the temple, elbow to the summit of the nose, hook to the base of the cerebellum. The information is just coming at me, as if my brain has been transformed into a supercomputer.

  I opt for a non-fatal blow, and shatter his clavicle instead, pile-driving my fist with agonizing force. It knocks him back into a screaming tumble.

  I hold still, both assailants in my peripheral vision. My heart is pumping harder than it’s ever pumped. I’m supercharged, and I know I can kill these men a dozen ways to Sunday if I want to. And I do.

  But I need to resist the craving. I’m a vampire, fighting my nature to drain their lives. Thoughts even go to Reggie and what I might do to him. I clench my fists, try to remain rigid and block out the temptation. I’m not going to become a Kurt Rodriguez. I’m not going to indulge, even though I want to snap these creatures to pieces.

  I straddle the chest of the second man, startling him. The doorway light catches the dread in his eyes. He’s breathing fast, groaning from the agony of the pressure I’m placing with my knee squashed against his broken clavicle. He’s mine.

  I squeeze either side of his mouth with my fingers like a vise. “I’m going to ask you once, and if you lie, I’m going to rip your fucking jaw off. Comprende?”

  He nods, scared out of his ever-loving mind.

  My voice is a hiss, a venomous hiss. “Where do I find the Candyman?”

  ***

  There is no coming down from a twenty-strip high, at least not in the first couple of hours. Before this moment, I had no idea what it was like to do more than two hits in a twenty-four-hour period. Now I’m worried the high will never end.

  I’ve got the worst case of the jitters, and I’m holding my arms to keep from shaking, braced against an I-beam beneath the elevated transit line that ferries the 7 train to and from Manhattan.
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br />   Mullins picks up on the other end of my call. “Hey.” He’s barely awake. A second later and, “God, it’s one in the morning. What’s up?”

  There are a thousand things I want to say, blistering thoughts competing at light speed in my overclocked brain. “Rodriguez wasn’t a victim.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “He enjoyed every minute of his high. He wanted to kill those cops. You see, it’s a dark side, Ed. It’s a dark side that wants to control you. And if you don’t have the strength, well, you’re a goner.”

  There’s a pause on the other end. Mullins’ voice comes back dead serious. “Hey, is everything okay? This doesn’t sound like you.”

  Mullins has it wrong again. It sounds exactly like me. The true me. The unleashed me. “You’re a good guy, Ed. I know you’ve had it rough, but I’m telling you, it’s going to work out in the end.”

  “Man, you’re scaring me. You’ve been drinking or something?”

  “Ed, I want you to listen for a second, okay?”

  He keeps quiet on the other end.

  “If anything happens to me, I want you to take care of Suzie and Caitlyn. It’s a partner’s oath. You remember that, right?”

  “Of course.” He sounds like he wants to say more, but he’s afraid, I can tell.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Ed. I’ve got something to take care of, and I’m going to follow the rabbit hole. I’m going to dig deep, real deep, and finish this.”

  “Finish what?”

  “What we started. I’m going to close out the Rodriguez case. I’m going to make it right for Yee’s parents, for the family of the other two officers that were shot, for my brother Tommy, for Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez. For you, buddy, and the rest of the boys. I’m going to rip out the source and make it right.”