THUGLIT Issue Nine

by Jen Conley

  "Joey! Joey! You okay?" the third man calls out.

  "Fuck! I'm hit. He winged me good. My shoulder. Damn it."

  "You okay to go on?" first man asks.

  "I'm gonna ice this motherfu..."

  BLAM! A rifle crack interrupts the tirade. This time it's from a window on the other side of the house. Again the men concentrate fire on the source. Again, I am already gone.

  "Okay! Okay! Cease fire!" the lead man yells. "Anybody see who fired that shot? It's just supposed to be him and the girls here, right?"

  "No, I didn't see nobody."

  "Me neither."

  "How 'bout you, Gino?"

  No response.

  "Gino!"

  No response.

  "FUCK! Gino's down, boss." the third man finally confirms.

  I'm pleased with myself as I retreat from the windows and take my place in the fortified fireplace. Four is down to a confused two-and-a-half. Much better odds.

  The revelry, such as it is, lasts only a moment. First the front door lock explodes into the house, followed closely by the rear door lock. One of the men storms the front with a leading blast to cover his entrance.

  No matter. He's wasted a shell on an empty room. There are three entrances to the fireplace room. Two from the front, one from the back. The man's moon shadow betrays him when it crosses the doorframe. As soon as the goon fills my sights, I let loose, one, pump, two blasts. Wallboard and doorframe explode. I hear the thump and the groans. A hit. Another man down.

  The second man has made his way through the front rooms seeking another entrance to my position.

  I hear the floors creaking as the backdoor-man is making his way quietly through the house. When he comes to the cellar door, he yanks it open and jumps back into the kitchen.

  Babe fires. The house shakes from the percussion. The doorjamb shatters. The hitman suffers only splinters and scratches.

  "Hmm. Fiesty." I hear him mutter.

  The man turns low into the doorway and fires back.

  I hear the thunder. "BABE!"

  Babe groans loudly and falls.

  Another blast erupts from the front. This time the hitman gets off a shot at me. Couch stuffing flies, but the old table easily absorbs the lead shot.

  I stay low and sneak a peek under the couch. I see the man's feet. I push the Mossberg as far forward as I can and fire from beneath the couch. The roar is somewhat muffled as fabric and wood explode in an orgy of yellow.

  "EEAAHH!" The hitman releases a tortured scream. Enough to draw the backdoor-man into the room.

  He comes in while I am still low. He lays down covering fire while he and the now-downed #3 man scramble from the room. With one dead and two seriously wounded, the team retreats.

  I rush to the cellar.

  Babe is a bloody mess, wounds to her abdomen, her breathing shallow and ragged. Her eyes are rolled back in her head. "Oh Christ, Gracie, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry..." I'm losing it. I've seen this before. I know. The rising stench. I stroke her hair. I summon what I can and I whisper in her ear, "Let go, Gracie, let go." I sob as she exhales.

  A frost of realization sweeps up my spine. "Lisa!" She's nowhere to be found.

  "Lisa! LISA!" I call out.

  I hear the blast from outside.

  Lisa has sprinted around the house from the back cellar door with the speed and agility of the sixteen-year-old soccer player she is. The sawed-off didn't slow her at all. The first two men never see her. Never hear her coming. She gets right up on them; backdoor-man half dragging mangled-foot guy. She raises the gun with both hands as she had witnessed when I refreshed her mother on how it worked.

  She squeezes the trigger.

  A crimson mist rises into the hazy moon-lit sky. The body crashes down on the injured man. Confused but knowing he is in danger, the injured man struggles to get out from beneath the two hundred pound carcass. As he places his palms on the ground to push up, Lisa levels the sawed-off to just below his left shoulder blade. With mist still raining down, the blast shreds his heart, blowing it out the front, into a smoking black hole in the ground.

  The third man is closest to the SUV, furthest from Lisa, but badly injured. He turns in time to see the second blast. He is able to retrieve his handgun from his tracksuit waistband.

  Lisa looks at him as he struggles. The moonlight reveals the injuries he has suffered to both shoulders. She snaps open the shotgun with an icy calm.

  The hitman attempts to raise his gun toward her but his now lead-filled shoulders betray him.

  She dumps the empty shells onto the ground. Her eyes never leave the prey.

  With all his strength, moaning in gut-wrenching pain, the man brings his hands together to try to lift the gun.

  Lisa retrieves two more shells from her pocket and drops them into the gun. The dim gray light flashes in her eyes like a nocturnal predator.

  He can't raise the pistol more than a few inches.

  Lisa snaps the gun closed.

  The man turns to run.

  I fly out of the house, my heart pounding in my ears.

  Lisa, moving cheetah quick, closes the ground between them. She raises the gun towards his head.

  I scream,"NOOO!"

  Lisa fires.

  The blast catches the ravaged man in the back of the neck. His body crumples immediately at the loss of instruction from his brain. The brain remains encased in the skull, which is now hurtling across the clearing like some grisly cartoon episode.

  I'm frozen by what I see. The gore. My little girl. My wife. The loss of adrenaline now sapping me.

  But not Lisa. She turns toward me. "She's dead, isn't she?"

  I remain speechless. I move toward her. She gives me the hand. Halts me with a look so dark with hate that I know immediately, feel immediately, that it will haunt me for the rest of my life. In my gut I know, my little girl is gone.

  I work all night. We bury Grace "Babe" Giovani Scalderi on the family property, at a spot she loved down by the lake. Lisa is there but doesn't make a sound, and eerily, sheds not one tear. Afterwards, she locks herself in her room. I gather the bastards' remains onto a tarp and use the lawn tractor to haul them to the shed. Finally, near exhaustion, I sit on the front porch. If not for the night before, I would consider the dawning day beautiful. I light a cigarette.

  What's the play now, Carlo? I ask myself.

  Kill Benny, of course.

  Sure, there was a time that would have been a no-brainer. I could go to war knowing Babe would take care of Lisa, no matter what. But now… Now I know, taking care of Lisa, whoever she became in that instant, whatever dark place she's been transported to, it's a whole new game.

  Where do I even begin? Get her away somewhere, I guess. Start over, maybe. Gracie, maybe with your help, maybe she can get whole again…

  My eyes fill.

  No. Fucking over Benny will have to wait. I can wait. I will wait. But, I can put the bastard on ice, too, 'til I'm ready.

  CRACK! My thoughts are shattered by the sound of a handgun firing around the back of the house. I'm so tired I can barely move, but still I draw my Berretta and lumber around the side of the cabin.

  Lisa has set up target practice. She's firing the snubby at trash cans.

  "What the fuck are you doing?"

  "I'm getting used to the snubby."

  "Now? What for?"

  She gives me the 'think about it for one second' look. "I'm gonna need it."

  Her mother's not dead twenty-four hours. She's killed three men since then. She's preparing for more.

  I turn and leave her to…grieve? Vent? I leave her to whatever it is she's doing. I reach into my pocket, remove my wallet and retrieve that card from within. I dial the burner phone. It connects.

  "FBI. Special Agent Worthington..."

  Pimp Game '76

  by R.J. Martin Jr.

  I was there the night Tony King became a pimp. I was there the night people's lives started spinning out of control and shoot
ing in different directions like a star exploding. It was in the downstairs room of my mother's house on Forty-Third Avenue in San Francisco, but it all started when we began selling weed to Tony's cousins in Oakland.

  In the summer of America's bicentennial year there were only three black families in our neighborhood. Irish-Catholics dominated the area, with subpopulations of Italians and Irish-Mexicans. "Greenbeaners," we called them.

  One of these black families had a son, Tony, who was our age. Tony was tall and lanky with a slow way of moving and talking that hinted at his family's roots in the South. His tawny skin and hazel eyes let you know that his ancestry was mixed, but it was so far back that Tony didn't know the details. He was between two worlds living in this white neighborhood. We called him "Tony," but in Oakland, where the rest of his family lived, he was known as "Tee" or "Green Eyes." Tony and I had both been asked to leave St. Ignatius High School and were in our final year at the public high school in our district.

  In San Francisco, prostitution took place in brothels that were controlled by organized crime, or on the streets, completely uncontrolled—where maniacal transgenders, despairing addicts, and the deeply disturbed roamed the avenues of the Tenderloin with nobody to tell them what to do, to protect them, or to love them for who they were.

  Across the Bay Bridge it was different. The Pimp Game was a way of life for hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Oakland, California, in the glory days of American pimps, in a fortress of American pimping, was where the icon of the American pimp was forged. Oakland had the largest prostitution trade in all of California and the city was overrun with pimps. The infrastructure was perfect—plenty of freeway access, cheap motels, and an embattled police force struggling to maintain integrity as Oakland scored, year after bloody year, the distinction of having the highest murder rate in the country.

  On the border between Oakland and Berkeley was the California Hotel: 500 rooms, a ballroom, and a nightclub—a gathering place for black people who had some measure of success, or at least a little money to toss around on Saturday night. The California Hotel was also ground zero for the Pimp Game. The girls paraded up and down San Pablo Avenue soliciting the cars that passed by—hot pants, miniskirts, afro hairdos, and hats as big as manhole covers, while the pimps gathered in the hotel bar, drinking fruity multicolored beverages with tiny American flags in them. It was our country's 200th birthday.

  When we first started going down there, we rode over in my mother's Volkswagen. We went about once a week to drop a package with Tony's cousins. Those guys were enamored with the Oakland pimps, who all seemed to be vying for the most fur, the longest coat, or the most outrageous ride. While smoking a joint in the car and watching the Game unfold, one of the cousins might say in reverential tones, "There go MacDuff!" or "L'il Kenny!"

  One night, one of their role models passed close to the car and I asked him if he wanted to smoke a joint. The guy laughed, but sidled up and took a hit. When he saw what quality stuff we had, he asked for a sample. We gave him a baggie with a little bit. When we saw him a couple of weeks later, I told Tony, "Go talk to him! Ask him if he wants some weed." One thing led to another, and Tony King became the weed connection for these pimps in Oakland. More importantly, he let us know he was learning the Pimp Game.

  At some point Tony made the decision that it was more important to him to be a successful pimp than anything else. He took a big step, one that his cousins were unwilling to make, and dropped out of school. He asked us to call him "Tee" instead of "Tony" and his speech became peppered with peculiar adages like "Pimpin's as easy as breathin' air" and "A ho without instruction is headed for destruction." One night after one of our soirees, crossing the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco, with the city lights twinkling against a moonless sky, I asked him about it.

  "So Tony…I mean Tee…when ya' gonna start pimping?"

  "I don't know, man. I'm still learning the rules."

  "Rules? Like what rules?"

  "I can't be talkin' 'bout that man, it's part of showing respect for the Game."

  This, I could understand.

  Back then, there was an honor and dignity in crime. A social hierarchy in which you could have a place. You would earn your place through the mastery of a certain set of skills. When you learned them, you were a part of something larger than yourself. As a safecracker, an extortionist, a grifter, a thief, or even a pimp, you would share a social network that included colorful people: raconteurs and roustabouts, call girls and street corner prostitutes, people who carried guns and people who carried little phone books with lists of numbers. Camaraderie and opportunity came through the social network. My friends and I had already begun internships in various avenues of crime. I interned with scammers, learning the three-card Monte, Brown Cow, the Murphy, and the Gypsy Twist. The first lesson in all these arrangements was to "respect the game" and not share trade secrets outside of the community.

  "C'mon Tony—Tee! You never would have met those guys if it wasn't for me. I called them over the first time, that first night."

  "Yeah, I guess I could tell you some of it."

  "It's just between you and me, Tony."

  "Yeah, well, there's a gentleman-like agreement that's one of the rules of the Game."

  "Okay…"

  "If a pimp or girl don't understand the rules and laws, then they in violation, or what they call 'outta pocket' or 'bitch being outta pocket.' Every girl is supposed to have a pimp. Every pimp's supposed to give her a quota to earn and not let her come home until she earns it. And the pimp takes all the money."

  "All of it?"

  "That's right. What he does is pay all her expenses—her food, rent, medical bills, outfits, everything. And he protects her territory. A girl don't want to go down and start working somebody else's corner. When you start to do that, you start to be in violation of the Game. And when you in violation of the Game they all gonna come down on you. Another thing is that a girl gets to pick any pimp she wants. They call it 'choosing' or 're-choosing.' If a girl finds a better pimp than the one she has, she gives him a wad of cash she's kept from the first pimp, sort of like a, a…what they call it when a girl gets married?"

  "A dowry?"

  "That's right, a dowry. Then the new pimp goes to the old pimp and the old pimp is supposed to let her go. That's the rule. A guy who is in the Game will say, 'Look man, your woman chose me. I want to pick up her clothes.' It's like a ritual, picking up the clothes."

  "That's deep. So, Tony, how you gonna get started?"

  "That's the thing man, there's only two ways to get started. Either you 'knock'—like, pull some other man's girl, or you got to turn somebody out."

  "What's that mean, 'turn somebody out'?"

  "It means you introduce her to the whole lifestyle."

  "But how do you get her to do it?"

  "That's enough, man. I done told you too much already."

  A couple of weeks later Tony came by my mother's house with Tricia, a cheery copper-colored girl whom he had romanced in Oakland. I knew Tricia. Tony had brought her around a couple of times and she had shown the whole gang how to do the Latin Hustle and the Bump.

  All the houses in our neighborhood had the same architectural scheme. Two stories: the top floor with a kitchen, bedrooms, and living room, and the ground floor with a garage and the "downstairs room," which was probably designed as a family room but was used throughout the neighborhood for teenage intrigue. We were having a party in the downstairs room. Earth, Wind & Fire and KC and the Sunshine Band on the stereo, everybody dancing, smoking dope, drinking malt liquor, and having a good time. Occasionally a couple might drift off to the basement or the backyard to be alone.

  Somebody put "Theme from Soul Train" on the record player and we formed a Soul Train line, boys and girls on either side, everyone strutting, dancing down the middle in consecutive order, imitating the dancers we saw every Saturday morning on the TV show.

  When it was Tony and Tricia's turn to g
o down the line, they started out as robots—as if an unseen puppeteer was moving their arms and legs for them. The gang started shouting encouragement. Then, on some invisible cue, Tony and Tricia turned quickly, faced each other, and launched into a complex routine that culminated with Tony sliding down the length of the line on his knees while the room roared in appreciation. After they went down the line, Tony took Tricia's hand and they moved away from the dance and sat down on the couch. He put his arm around her and said, "You know what, Dave's a little drunk. He wants to go out in the basement with you. He's never been with a girl before, you know what I mean? I told him to give me an ounce of weed and I'd ask you."

  Tricia looks at him kind of cross-eyed and says, "What you talking 'bout, Tee? I ain't doin' nothin' like that!"

  He kept at it: "Well, you know, it's only Dave. It's not a big deal. I could sell that weed and we could use the money. We could go do something, go out to dinner, go buy you a dress or something like that. You take the money. You keep it! I don't want it. You can go buy yourself something with it. Don't nobody have to know, Tricia…"

  After a few minutes of this, and Tony staring intently with his green eyes, this girl said, "Well, okay, it's only Dave. I know Dave. He's not a bad guy. Okay, I'll do it."

  When Dave and Tricia came out of the basement, we were kind of giggling, elbowing each other. And I remember Tony getting very serious and saying, "Man, cut that shit out."

  He talked with her. He hugged her. He kissed her. He showed her a lot of love and I believe he was applying the lessons he learned in his apprenticeship. I understood later that prostituting is like killers say about killing: Once you've done it the first time, it's easy to do it again. Later that night, after Dave came out and Tony and Tricia were plenty high, another guy gave Tony some money and sneaked off into the basement with Tricia.

  Tony became a player. He got chosen by a white woman named Luanne and became an "elevated" pimp. Luanne was older and made serious money. Tony got his own apartment in Oakland and didn't come to our parties anymore.