by Ritz, David
I kept playing and replaying the night of Mi’s murder. Sugar was the target, and Sugar’s reaction—overturning the table—had thrown the assassin off balance so that his shots were scattered, and for no reason except pure fuckin’ fate, Mi caught the worst bullet. After that, it was chaos. Cops and medics, stretchers and ambulances, hospital hallways, doctors and nurses and phone calls to Japan by Yuko, who controlled her hysteria long enough to call Mi’s parents in Tokyo.
“I don’t care what it costs,” said Sugar, whose arm had suffered a flesh wound but nothing more. “Make sure she gets back to Tokyo first-class. I want to send her back in style.”
I wanted to say to Sugar, Motherfucker—she’s dead. What the fuck does first-class matter to someone who’s dead? But I didn’t because I knew Sugar was shook up by the attempt on his life. Sugar had escaped death in the blink of an eye. And by “first-class” he meant make sure that her body got home as quickly as possible with flowers all over the portable casket. With Yuko’s help, I made those arrangements. I was there when the transport company came to the hospital and packed up her corpse. They asked me to identify her. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want the wrong body to arrive in Tokyo. I saw her face for the last time. Her face looked peaceful and calm. I felt anything but peaceful and calm.
I drove Yuko to the airport. She was going on the same flight to Tokyo that was carrying Mi. After having helped me with all the arrangements, she was now free to fall apart. She did. She cried her eyes out, cried and sobbed and wept like a little child.
“My heart . . .” she said through tears, “my heart is sick.”
“My heart is broken,” I said.
“Broken,” she repeated. “Very broken.”
I parked and accompanied her inside, carrying her bags. I waited as she checked in, then walked her to the security line.
“I’m sorry” was all I could say.
Her eyes were still filled with tears as she reached in her purse and found a small piece of notepad paper shaded in light purple and smelling of lavender. On it was a Japanese letter.
“I want you to have it,” she said.
“What does it mean?”
“It just says ‘Mi.’ It is her name.”
I took the small piece of paper into my hand and examined it for a long while. The letter looked like a piece of sculpture.
“ ‘Mi’ has special meaning in Japanese. Do you know what that is?”
“No,” I said.
“ ‘Beauty,’ ” Yuko explained. “ ‘Mi’ is ‘beauty.’ ”
When I got back from the airport, I called Wanda to make sure Beauty was okay.
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Wanda asked.
I couldn’t go into it. “I just need to know that she’s all right.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll call. But I’m not giving you the number. I told her I wouldn’t.”
Five minutes later Wanda called back to say that nothing was wrong.
“Is something wrong with you?” Wanda asked. “Boy, you sound like you done lost your best friend.”
“It’s all good,” I lied.
Weeks had passed since that happened. Weeks when my mind was fucked up. Weeks when Sugar explained why the dude with the Marlins cap was looking to off him.
The dude called himself Gigante. Turns out that Sugar had caught the dude’s brother—Pretty Boy Pablo—trying to leave Miami with fifty kilos of Sugar’s primo inventory. According to Sugar, Pretty Boy was the scum of the earth, a fellow Cuban who pretended to be his best friend while all the time plotting to steal from under his nose. Pablo had set up a secret organization with the sole purpose of bringing down Sugar and taking over his property and possessions. Sugar hadn’t seen it coming until a girl—a chick whose specialty was balling gangstas—whispered the truth in Sugar’s ear. Sugar personally took out Pretty Boy Pablo with a baseball bat.
“Why you’d use a baseball bat?” I asked Sugar.
“ ’Cause he rooted for the Marlins. I like Tampa Bay.”
“And Gigante? What are you going to do about him?”
“I figure there’s more in it for you than me.”
“How do you figure that?”
“He only got a little piece of my arm,” said Sugar. “But he got all of your girl, didn’t he?”
I hesitated to answer. I didn’t know what to say. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Part of me wanted to see Gigante dead. He had killed a beautiful young woman with her whole life in front of her. The killing, though, was an accident. He had meant to kill Sugar. So shouldn’t Sugar be the one to get him? Gigante and his brother, Pretty Boy Pablo, were part of Sugar’s story, Sugar’s world—not mine.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sugar, “that this here shit, homes, is my bizness, not yours. But your bizness and my bizness are the same bizness. We in this together, ain’t we? Besides, it’s time to pop your cherry. Maybe that’s why Slim sent your young ass down this way. Slim knows this is cherry-poppin’ territory.”
Sugar had called Slim right after the shooting to assure him I was all right. When Slim called me, he didn’t sound too worried.
“You livin’ the life, boy, ain’t you?” asked Slim.
I didn’t say nothing about Mi. What would be the point?
“I’m lucky to be alive,” I said.
“You a blessed man,” said Slim. “You hanging tough, baby. You ain’t backing off and you building a rep strong as steel.”
I didn’t see it that way. Truth is, I didn’t do shit that night. It was Sugar who turned over the table and saved his own ass. Maybe I would have chased after Gigante if I hadn’t been pinned down—or maybe I wouldn’t have. No way of telling. But now I was suddenly faced with that decision all over again. Was I gonna chase after Gigante and bring him down?
“I gotta go to Atlanta this weekend and catch up with Slim for a hot minute,” I told Sugar. “We can work it out when I get back.”
“When will that be?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“No problem, hombre,” said Sugar. “No fuckin’ problem at all.”
I figured Sugar knew that I was going home to ask Slim’s approval. He knew it was something I couldn’t discuss on the phone—and he also knew that since Slim had been his mentor as well as mine, it wasn’t a bad idea.
I was back in Slim’s house in Cascade Heights with the ice-white walls and mermaid fountain. I had arrived at eight P.M. Now it was ten P.M and Slim was just pulling up. He’d bought himself a new lotus-green Maybach 57, the kind of sedan that sells for $350,000.
“What do you think?” he said, leaping out of the car and giving me a hug. Dre was behind the wheel.
“Beautiful,” I said. “Business has got to be good.”
“Business is beautiful,” said Slim.
“P-P-P-P-P-P-P-Power,” said Dre, dressed elegantly, as always, in a custom-tailored pinstripe suit. “M-m-m-m-m-man, it’s good to see you. Y-y-y-y-you okay?”
“He’s alive, ain’t he?” said Slim. “He’s out there dodging them bullets. This boy is damn near bulletproof.”
“Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s g-g-g-g-g-good,” said Dre.
“You wanna drive this thing?” Slim asked me. “Motherfucker drives likes a dream, don’t it, Dre?”
“It sure d-d-d-d-d-do,” Dre agreed.
I didn’t feel like driving a car. The plane ride had been turbulent from takeoff to landing. My stomach was queasy and my head, filled with questions about how or if I should deal with Gigante, was aching.
“I’d rather be driven than drive,” I said, “if that’s okay.”
“M-m-m-m-m-m-my p-p-p-p-p-p-pleasure,” said Dre. “You ge-ge-ge-ge-ge-gentlemen hop in the back. I’m glad you’re back h-h-h-h-ho—”
“Shut the fuck up, Dre,” Slim snapped. “We don’t got time for you to spit out those words. We got biz to discuss.”
I felt bad for Dre and wanted to say something but figured now wasn’t the
time. I had more pressing things on my mind than trying to get Slim to stop humiliating Dre.
“This here leather is the finest money can buy,” said Slim, sliding in the backseat. I nearly choked on the smell of leather. Slim hit a button to electronically close the curtains that separated us from Dre. He hit another button that turned on the video screen showing soft-core porn. “See shorty with the crazy red wig and that booty from outer space? She was over two nights ago. She something, ain’t she, Power?”
I nodded. I wasn’t really in the mood to watch fake fucking on the Maybach’s DVD player. I turned away from the screen. Sensing my seriousness, Slim turned it off and said, “You do understand that Sugar’s out of the modeling biz, don’t you, Power?”
“He hasn’t really discussed it with me.”
“Nothing to discuss. One of his models murdered right at his table. What the fuck are the other models gonna do? They gonna ditch him. They leaving like rats running off a sinking ship. He got to go back to his core biz. And no doubt he will. Sugar’s a practical man. He knows he’s got to do what he does best.”
“The dude who shot him . . .”
“The brother of Pretty Boy Pablo . . .”
“You know about him?”
“I know about everything I needs to know about.”
“He’s called Gigante. And he’s still out there.”
“Not for long, baby. Sugar will see to that.”
“He wants me to see to that.”
My last statement stopped Slim cold. He took off his dark Gucci sunglasses and looked me deep in the eye. I think he was trying to see whether I was scared or not.
“I see,” he said. “Now I see what’s happening.”
“What do you think?”
Slim put back on his shades and, without missing a beat, said, “I think you’ve been given a job, boy.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s the life. You done had all the foreplay you need. Now it’s time to stick it in. That what you came home to hear me say?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, sir, you done heard me say it.” And with that, Slim turned back on the DVD to watch the lady with the red wig and big butt.
The dreams were crazy. They started on the plane back to Miami when I drifted off. In one dream I took a butcher’s knife and slit the throat of a pig. In another I blasted a lion with a shotgun and the lion turned into a little boy. There was another dream where I was strangling an old man whose face was covered with pimples and wet blood. As I strangled him, blood oozed from his pimples.
“We’ve located him,” said Sugar on my first day back in the office. It was early August, only days from my twentieth birthday. “We know where he is.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What did Slim say?” asked Sugar.
“He said the modeling agency was in trouble.”
“Hey, man, fuck the modeling agency. What did he say about Gigante?”
“Same thing as you’re saying.”
Sugar smiled. “I got you an address. So get going.”
“Just like that? No plan. No prep. No word on his posse.”
“I figure you’re the Lone Ranger. You’re Slim’s star student. You don’t need no help. Far as machinery goes, ask and you will receive. Whatever you want. But the main thing I got for you is an address. Boca Raton. Ever been to Boca?”
“Never.”
“You’ll dig it. Nice class of people.”
Sugar opened the drawer to his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper and a small envelope. He handed me the paper, which had the words “1236 Marble Street” on it. Then he emptied out the contents of the envelope on a mirror.
“I’m taking one little hit that’ll last me for the next few days. You down?”
“I’ll pass. I got to stay clear.”
“This’ll help,” said Sugar.
“Like you said, I don’t need no help.”
Sugar half laughed before snorting up all the blow, including the line he had left for me.
I thought about that statement: I don’t need no help. I guess I made it as a declaration to Sugar and, though he wasn’t there, to Slim. I also made it a statement to myself. I didn’t see any other way. If Slim had said, No, I don’t want my boy involved in any payback shit, I’d have had an out. In truth, I would have welcomed the out. The idea of flat-out murder didn’t thrill me. On the other hand, if Sugar had given me a couple of guys and a game plan, I might have felt differently. But I was given nothing. I was told nothing except this one lousy address. It was all up to me.
I recognized this is as part test, part initiation rite. In Chicago, I had seen some stuff go down, but I wasn’t the guy who brought it down. Now I was the guy. Now my only choice was to leave this life or do what the life required. If I left this life, where would I go? I didn’t see any future outside of it. Besides, I was being groomed as a leader. This life—the life given to me by Slim after the death of my mom—had rewarded me handsomely. Beginning with my move to Slim’s place, look where I’d been living—in mansions, hip lofts, fancy apartments. Look who I’d been meeting—super-powerful men and superfine women. Look what I’d been learning—how to deal with real life, real problems; how to make real money. Now I had a real challenge: figure out how to kill the motherfucker who killed Mi and tried to kill Sugar.
My mind was made up, but my motivation needed to be stronger. I thought how this scumbag Gigante had robbed Mi of a long and good life. That got me mad, but mad enough to murder him? I wasn’t sure. I thought of how Gigante had tried to take out my friend Sugar. But was Sugar really my friend? Maybe yes, maybe no. It didn’t matter. Sugar was one of the teachers Slim had assigned to me. Sugar was testing me. I’d either pass or flunk. And I wasn’t about to flunk.
Back in Atlanta, Andre Gee had schooled me in the use of handguns. He’d given me long lessons on how to handle small arms. I liked Dre because, even though people were often impatient with his stutter, he showed patience with others. He said, “Power, y-y-y-y-y-you a youngblood with g-g-g-g-good aim and g-g-g-g-good eye-hand c-c-c-c-coordination. You ain’t afraid of n-n-n-n-n-n-no guns.”
I wasn’t. Dre took me into the woods, where I shot squirrels with a shotgun. I was quick and steady and liked the kickback and release that came with shooting. Squirrels were one thing, though. Gigante was another.
Gigante stayed on my mind as I drove up to Boca Raton. Sugar had arranged for a car—a plain-looking Ford Taurus—that couldn’t be traced. I was packing enough heat to take out Gigante and, if need be, his six closest friends. I drove carefully, obeying all the rules. The last thing I wanted was to be pulled over. I figured that, given Gigante’s agenda the night of the shooting, he hadn’t noticed me. I doubted if he could recognize me, but just to make sure I shaved my head and gave myself an entirely different look. Being bald helped give me a new attitude. I thought of Dre and his shaven head and how he must have handled many situations like the one facing me. Dre was tough, Dre was fearless; according to Slim, there was no one he trusted more than Dre to get the job done.
Getting the job done—that was my mantra, my focus, my only reason for being alive. That’s how I had to think. That’s how I had to be. I couldn’t look back, couldn’t be sentimental. I had to stuff all feelings except the one that said, This motherfucker is history. This motherfucker is dead meat.
I checked into a Hilton Suites hotel. My room overlooked a parking lot. I unpacked my things and, first thing, went to the bathroom, where I shaved whatever stubble remained on my head. For some reason keeping my head shaved perfectly clean was important. I got a pair of cheap shades at Rite Aid and went to a sporting goods store to buy a Marlins baseball cap, just like the one Gigante had worn. Before locating the address that Sugar had given me, I decided to work out in the small hotel gym. I wanted that muscle burn that comes with lifting too much weight. I needed to feel pumped.
Just after the sun went down, I drove over to 1236 Marble Street. It
was an apartment complex called the Floridian, not fancy, not slummy, just a plain two-story building. I walked into the lobby, where there was a wall of mailboxes and a painting of pink flamingos drinking out of a pool of blue-green water. Of course his name wasn’t on any of the mailboxes. I’d just have to stake out the place until he showed up. When I got back to the Taurus, the sky broke open and rain came down in sheets. The rain broke up the torrid August heat and felt good. But the heavy rain prevented me from seeing who was coming in and out of the building. The rain got worse. It wouldn’t let up. Two hours later, I knew that tonight wasn’t the night.
Back at the Hilton Suites, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to sleep because I knew the dreams would come. Every night the dreams grew more violent. It was crazy—I felt more afraid of my dreams than the job I had to do. When I finally did drift off, I didn’t dream at all. Thank God.
I didn’t wake up till ten A.M. The sound of rain was even louder against the window. I got up and looked outside. The downpour was something to see. Felt like the whole world was being washed away. I went back to bed and felt this tremendous urge to call Beauty. I wanted to discuss the situation with her. I wanted to tell her what was going through my mind. But I didn’t have her number, and Wanda wouldn’t give it to me, and even if I asked Wanda to call her and ask her to call me, I knew that Beauty wouldn’t. She wanted to be left alone.
I wanted to get this over with, but the rain wouldn’t let me. It didn’t make any sense to try something while the storm was still raging. I could sit outside the Floridian, but even if he came out, the rain would get in my way. I took a shower and shaved my face and my head. I got dressed, grabbed an umbrella, walked to the car, and went looking for a place to have lunch. I stopped at a deli called Uncle Lou’s. When Irv took me to delis in Chicago, he told me the best things to order. At Uncle Lou’s, many of the customers looked like Irv—retired Jewish guys with tired eyes. I ordered a pastrami on rye. When it arrived I covered it with hot mustard. I hadn’t realized that I was famished. I wolfed it down. It tasted as good as anything I’ve ever eaten in my life. I had cherry cheesecake for dessert. My mouth was thanking my mind for ordering such great food. I looked outside to see if the rain had let up. It hadn’t.