Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  “I gotta put down them cigarets,” Kitty gasped, lurching to a halt.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Pure chance. I didnt … Oh, lemme get my fuckin breath!” Kitty fanned her face with her hands.

  Rings giggled. “You know what they call me when I do that, flap my hands by my ears?”

  “Whadda they call you, girlfriend?”

  “An airhead refuelin!”

  Kitty groaned.

  “So what do you want from me?” Rings asked, all business again.

  Kitty stared at her, then stared around at the Ramada Inn parking lot, the headlights streaking down the highway, a single plane blinking across the night sky. “I dont know,” she said. “Maybe just a familiar face from home. See, I been stuck here in Texas for months. Only I’m goin back to California tomorrow.”

  Mention of the Golden State awoke Rings’s ruling sorrow. “I totally wish I could go home,” she sobbed.

  “Say what?” Kitty approached, sliding her arm around Rings’s shoulder. “Cmon, girlfriend. You gonna make me cry. Lets sit down and you read me yer beads. Why cant you go home?”

  They sat on the lip of a culvert pipe running beneath the Galveston highway, Kitty hugging Rings to her while the Illustrated Hooker spilled her refritos to the song of the tires above. As she talked, Rings felt Kitty tense with excitement. When she finished, the big TexMex gal made her go back and repeat the stuff about what happened in Glori girl’s apartment, about the blue diamond and all.

  “It’s gotta be the same rock,” Kitty whispered. She seized Rings by both shoulders, turning her to stare wildly in her eyes. “You mean if you turn state against Baby Jewels, they’ll put his fat ass on ice?”

  “Fur shur. But I’m like scared.”

  “I’m scared too,” Kitty admitted. “That’s why I ran after you, I needed someone to talk to.” And she told Rings about Joe and the baby then and how her testimony would take the heat off the three of them.

  Rings gazed at her as she spoke, thinking if Kitty had a feather up her ass, and Rings had her looks, they’d both be tickled. “That totally settles it,” she announced once Kitty had laid bare her soul. “We’ll go back together. Neither of us got nothin to fear with the other watchin her back.”

  “You’ll be a star witness,” bubbled Kitty. “Shitfire! Get asked on talk shows, maybe pose for Penthouse.”

  “I just wanna do what’s right,” Rings insisted modestly.

  Kitty hugged her. “I got a car right over there. We’ll leave tomorrow. Book right back where we started from.” She felt Rings’s hand cup a chichi.

  “I can make kasj chicken salad for the road, girlfriend,” Rings husked. “And deviled eggs to die for.”

  Kitty slapped away the fingers rolling her jalobie like tuning a radio dial.

  THE KITE

  Joe sat alone behind the wheel of the Outside Sergeant’s pickup parked deep in the folded shade of a eucalyptus stand in the foothills. Drinking coffee from a thermos, he watched the penitentiary broiling on the sunblasted plain. The cellblocks shimmered in the record July heat; the bonewhite walls seemed to gently swell and shrink like the flanks of a great somnolent beast breathing back the light. There were the kites, Earl said. The beast was talking in its sleep. Joe watched and dreaded its awaking.

  It had been two weeks since his release from Z-3 back onto the Mainline, yet his focus on reality remained blurred. Time after time he was overcome with a feeling of helpless panic, like a hydroplaning automobile, that sickening feeling when the wheels lift off the pavement. Joe wasn’t sure if it was the slow halflife of the Prolixin or the increasing surrealism at Coldwater.

  His eye strayed across the Movement Sheet on the clipboard hanging from the dash. He snorted amusedly seeing Jesus Molina, aka Magdalena, alongside an X Wing number. The week before it was discovered the Stanford Medical Center records attesting to her womanhood were forgeries. The Goon Squad busted her in the Visiting Room. Ripping off her dress in the Strip Room, they found one still swinging down there. True to the legacy of their fallen leader, they hung a snitch jacket on her to coerce the names of her accomplices in Records who had helped perpetrate the fraud. Now she was locked up with the rest of the damned.

  Thinking of McGee, Joe frowned. In a perverse way he missed the sick monster. His absence from the Mainline removed the last restraint, however malignant, against chaos. Even Hell had its Satan, its arbiter of order.

  Static sizzled the stillness. Joe picked up the radio lying on the passenger seat and mumbled a set of call numbers to Tower One. Sergeant Fortado had yet to be replaced, and Joe made the outside Second Watch counts alone. It was the final joke, the animals guarding their own cages. But Joe wasn’t laughing; the jest was homing in finally, turning deadly.

  A hot wind down the arroyo lisped through the eucalyptus and Joe’s eye was drawn once more to that vast canker on the plain. It was a thing to be strongly smelled and tasted and felt, reminding him of the great pyramids, the nearly palpable power of their mystery. But the penitentiary was more, it was a numinous malignancy he had dreamed within so long that he and it were conjoined as much as if he were turning to stone and it, to flesh and blood.

  At last the light was falling over the dusty plain. Sirius, the dog star, rose over the fences between towers Five and Six. The bright tip of the new moon’s scimitar pricked the Gym roof. Beyond the penitentiary the lights of Coldwater were coming up. Early Saturdaynight cruisers were pulling into the Kwik Fixx for sixpacks. The last crepuscular flush of day rinsed the prison walls a sleepy warm vermilion, reminding Joe of his cell, calling him home. He released the emergency brake, rolling down the hill in silence.

  Earl waylaid him outside Custody. Wordlessly he gripped Joe’s arm and led him down the Mainline toward the Hole in the Wall Wing. Blue eye sparking, he answered Joe’s protests in a tense whisper, “You cant go to your cell. Please, just this once listen to a man with more experience …”

  At the head of the Hole in the Wall Wing, Earl told Joe to wait while he hurriedly conferred with old Art Sweeny, the Third Watch wing guard just coming on duty. Art looped Joe a mournful look and nodded. Earl motioned Joe onto the wing and led him briskly down to his cell. Inside, he turned and snapped a folded piece of paper from his pocket.

  “Custody found it shakin down the Gray Goose. Read it.”

  Joe unfolded the scrap and read,

  CARNAL FLACO DE LA OILSLICK … HECTOR DE UNION CITY FLIES THIS KITE. HIS BONES ARE TRUE. THERE ARE MANY SPARKS IN THE HILLS. WHEN THE FIRE COMES TO THE PLAIN THE BUTCHER BOYS WILL DANCE. THE SPACE COWBOYS STAND WITH THE FAMILIANOS. ONE COWBOY IS PICKED TO DANCE WITH A BLUE WHO HAS NO HEART. COACH SAYS HE MUST TIPTOE THROUGH THE TULIPS. HIS NAME IS JOSE NARRADOR. VENCEREMOS. CARNAL CHICO DE FOLSOM

  Joe handed it back, laughing. “I like choke poetry.”

  “All right, you dont want to get it, so I’ll read it to you in plain English, yeah. ‘Homeboy Flaco, Hector from Union City carries this message. He is a member of the Nuestra Familia. There are many signs of riot, and when it breaks out, our killers will make reprisals against our enemies. The Aryan Brotherhood are our allies. One of them is contracted to kill an inmate with no gang affiliations. This is a Teamster hit. His name is Joe … ’” Earl’s blue eye flicked back and forth between Joe’s surprised brown ones. “You know what narrador means?”

  “Yeah. Talker. In this case, snitch.”

  “You wish, yeah. It’s your name, Speaker. This little note,” shivering it in his hand, making a tiny crackling like distant flames, “is a formality. Notification to Flaco that someone’s operating on his turf. There’s a space cadet on the line with your number on his blade … as we speak, boy!”

  “But I’m aces with the A.B. here at Coldwater,” Joe objected. “Malec and Irons are my homeys.”

  Earl shook his head. “Dont make no nevermind, no. This comes
down over their heads. This comes from the folks who pulled McGee’s strings, the Teamsters. That’s who ‘Coach’ is. Them gumbas bankroll the A.B. street action up and down the state. The A.B. has to carry out any hit they order … Do you hear me?” Earl gripped Joe by the shoulder. “You a dead man walkin!”

  Joe shook his head to clear the Prolixin fogging it. “All right, Earl. Suppose you’re right. What the fuck can I do? Lock up? X Wing’s the fastest place to get hit. There’s no place to hide in this joint.”

  Earl sucked his eyeteeth, the last not bought by the state. “I’ll figure something …” As if to assist thought, he started humming “Saint James Infirmary.”

  “Will you give me a fivecent break with the funeral noise?” Joe snapped.

  “Sorry, amigo. I was jist lookin at yer cap n rememberin Jack Moran, yeah. Wonder what he’d think of the pass things have come to in these pens. In the old days a convict could walk the line with a little pride, a little dignity. I often think Whisper knew his day had gone n left him behind. Hittin the fence was the only way left to catch up …”

  “You’re a romantic ole fool,” Joe said. He removed the cap and examined it himself, turning it in his fingers. He picked a piece of lint from its crown. “Although I’ve often thought myself that there was more than a little magic in this ole cap.”

  A bell rang from the Mainline signaling fifteen minutes until the movie.

  “Let’s make the flick,” Joe said. “It’ll take our minds off this shit. Lemme take a piss n we’ll head down to the Gym …” He laid the cap on Earl’s bunk and stepped to the toilet, moaning softly as he drained his bladder of all the coffee he drank watching the prison like a mad dog sleeping. “Earl,” he said, “we gonna have to hook up if ever we raise up. Christ, the more I think about it, the more I wanna give this armadillo business a shot … Just dont ask me to jerk the lil motherfuckers off for hair cream …”

  The cell gate crashed behind him; its deadbolt fell with a clang. Joe whirled buttoning his fly. Earl stood on the other side of the bars wearing the cap and a faraway smile. The blue eye burned like a planet on a clear night, the grey shone like a pearl.

  “This is the only way,” Earl said. “Dont bother hollerin for Sweeny, he aint gonna break you out …”

  Joe rushed the bars, lunging his arms through. Earl skipped nimbly back.

  “Where do you think you’re going in my cap?” Joe shouted.

  “The picture show, amigo.” He tugged the bill. “So long, Joe Speaker. It’s been a reward knowin you. Adios.”

  With that, the old coonass yanked the cap lower, snapped a big knuckle to its bill, and was gone.

  Joe shook the bars and screamed for Sweeny, but as Earl had warned, to no avail. He pled with passing convicts, who ignored him. He heard the movie bell ring again, the ragged tramp of feet down the Mainline to the Gym. Earl’s gone clean Eleven Ninetyeight, Joe told himself.

  He gave up and sat on Earl’s bunk, lighting a cigaret. He laid back with his hands laced behind his head. The pen was eerily quiet. Then he heard a sound, a rasping from above. He pleated his brows staring at the ceiling. It sounded like gnawing rats, if at last a mutant had evolved that relished concrete. The cadence picked up, something scraping … Suddenly Joe knew what it was, someone above with butchery on his mind was fashioning the implement to articulate it, sharpening a strip of metal on his cell floor.

  Joe jumped up and punched the PLAY button on Earl’s cassette machine. The scraping from above was washed away on Hank Williams’s adenoidal lament:

  No matter how I struggle and strive

  I’ll never get out of this world alive

  Joe distracted himself looking again at the gallery of cracked and yellowed photos stuck right with toothpaste to the old con’s cell walls. Distantly he heard a roar from the Gym. A breeze through the window bars fluttered the old photos, chattering their curled edges.

  There Earl was in New Orleans again, drinking coffee on a wroughtiron balcony, a girl nuzzling his shoulder. They had that quiet smug look of having just made love in the room through the French windows behind them. It was hard imagining Earl as young as the man in the photograph. And here, in Angola, the smiling kid killer. But he looked so bashful, innocent. Or maybe it was just the way the sun had to be behind old cameras, making their subjects duck their heads and squint. Maybe Earl really had been some kind of badass desperado.

  Next, the baseball idols of the kid from the town they called the Big Easy. Their vintage proved Earl to be older than Joe had estimated. Roger Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Eddie Stankey, one of the Babe himself, when he still pitched for the Boston Browns. All with those crazy raw liver gloves, baggy uniforms, teeny beanies, and granny spikes. The last portrait in the corner smiled out of a sunny centerfield beneath bleachers strewn with straw skimmers. Joe bent closer to read the signature. He frowned first, then his eyes popped wide. He snatched the photo from the wall and sprang to the cell window. By tilting it to the light of the sodium searchlamps atop the opposite cellblock, he could make out the signature clearly now—Tris Speaker.

  The tumblers fell crashing in his head with a force that quivered his legs like freshly killed meat. That day in Vacaville R&R, Earl’s head lifting behind the camera like a bad moon rising, asking his name, mentioning the mythic ballplayer. Christ! All my life I’ve carried this false surname of a John Doe father stolen from his childhood idol. Joe loosed a plaintive groan. He whirled to the opposite wall, where he knew the Air Force snapshots were grouped. There it was, the one in the nightclub with the cap on the back of his narrow head, cigaret dangling from a crooked smile. It was the same face beside the big airplane beaming down from the mantle, the face belonging to the man his mother once loved.

  You’re just in time to be too late, ole Hank read Joe’s beads.

  He rushed to the bars, pressing his face between their cold. His howl was swept up on the sudden storm of klaxons and alarms ringing the penitentiary like Hell’s own jackpotting slotmachine.

  THE CURSE

  Tarzon sat huffing a Hav-A-Tampa Jewel at his desk. He still didn’t know whether McGee had forced Speaker to reveal the diamond’s hiding place before diving off the tier. And if he had, whether McGee had time to get the information to the Fat Man. Tarzon hadn’t been able save his daughter’s life, his only hope now was to avenge her death. And for that he needed the diamond.

  Reaching across the desk for his Screaming Eagles Zippo, his eye fell once more on the newspaper folded to the announcement of the recovery of Belinda’s head. Juxtaposed to the article was an advertisement heralding the opening of a new exhibit at Steinhart Aquarium. Idly he examined it for the first time. He was bitterly noting the blurb ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY when the aquarium logo, a leaping blue dolphin, triggered something deep in his memory. Where had he seen it? He thumped his head with the heel of his hand. Of course! The ticket stub in the Porsche’s inventory! The one he’d presumed belonged to its owner.

  Suddenly the jigsaw pieces clattering in his skull these past months were fitting themselves together like an animated cartoon. The shells in the Porsche’s tire treads, the petals pasted to its fenders; the reference the Cowley girl made to the earlyblooming cherry blossoms at the Japanese Tea Gardens … right across the bandshell park from the aquarium!

  The cheroot sprang erect in a wild and wiley grimace. The stub was Speaker’s! From a ticket bought that fateful evening.

  Tarzon jumped up and snatched his jacket from the wooden tree beside the door. In less than five minutes his unmarked had rocketed up the underground police ramp and was using its pulsing blue light to nudge through rushhour traffic.

  He wheeled into Golden Gate Park at Oak Street. The winding road was empty. Already the night fog off the Pacific was stealing on the city through the darkling trees, blurring the roadside lamps. This must be about the same time Speaker came this way, he thought, reaching down for
his lights to bore two fuzzy shafts into the misty blueblack.

  He came out of the trees by the DeYoung Museum, pale and somber as a mausoleum. Across the bandshell’s formal garden loomed the aquarium’s long low monolith. He shut off the engine in the oblong lot of the Japanese Tea Gardens. It was paved with white shell chips. He softly closed his door and took a deep breath of moonlit fog scented ghostily with cherry blossoms.

  In the silence he heard another door slam—right in front of the aquarium. But it was closed, had been for over an hour. Who else had business there, unless … Tarzon reached into his car for his handradio and stole across the deserted bandshell park.

  Approaching, he saw the armorplated Mercedes. He crouched behind a hedge and whispered its plate numbers into his handset. Awaiting a response, he peered anxiously around. The car’s occupants were nowhere to be seen; had to have already entered the aquarium.

  The radio blatted softly; he cocked his head, smiling in the dark. As he suspected, registered to Climax Produxions. Not only had Speaker given up the secret, but McGee had passed it on. Yet fate had placed Tarzon on the scene at the hour the Fat Man chose to recover the diamond.

  He set out stealthily circling the building. In the rear he found the jimmied fire door, its bolt taped, its alarm circuit bypassed with magnesium wire and alligator clips. Tarzon slipped inside, grateful for his rubber soles. Down the shadowy corridors he stole, left and right through the maze of silent shimmering marine light. Past the tidal pool tank, circling the crocodile pit, and around a corner where he spotted another taped door, this one marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  “To the left, the left, you nebbish!” Tarzon’s scalp tingled hearing the odious baby voice. Baby Jewels stood not ten feet away in front of the shark tank. Tarzon had missed his huge shape in the shadows. He ducked back around the corner.

  “Next to the wooden steering wheel, you klutz!” the Fat Man squealed. Tarzon peeked back around the corner. Moses was throwing a tantrum, beating fat flashing fists against the glass, enraging the sharks, which began gliding in swift circuits.