Alien Nation #5 - Slag Like Me

by Barry B. Longyear

  There’s only one thing upon which the fehn gangs on the borders of the Chay turf agree: Danny Mikubeh must die. Danny and his friends formed Nightshade three years ago on Breed Street, and then proceeded to fight, run, bludgeon, and kill the fehn gangs out of the area, bringing Chayville into existence. He initiated the treaties between most of the Tenctonese gangs, and keeps the relative peace within the Chay with a heavy fist. Any gang on the borders of the Chay who ventures to cross the line will find Danny Mikubeh on its case.

  We walked the streets of the Chay, Danny’s bodyguards on point, trailing behind, and gathered around him and his inner circle of lieutenants. I saw the way the people on the street looked at Danny and his gang. In a few cases it was stone-faced fear, but for the majority it was respect ranging from the grudging acceptance of a necessary evil to unabashed worship. I even saw how they looked at me, Ellison Robb took a moment and basked in the fantasy of one permitted to walk with the hivek, or leader, of the Shade. I got a little taste of what it was like to own the street. It felt good, empowering.

  My surgical disguise, I should add, besides making me appear Tenctonese, also made me look as though I was in my mid-twenties. The image, to Danny Mikubeh, was more powerful in the short run than the reality that I was fehn. To Danny I became a new friend, one of the Chay, a great addition to the leader’s entourage and world plan, up until he introduced me to his sister. Her eyes went wide, hearts went all pitty-pat, there was a suggestive hum, and a self-satisfied look on Danny’s face that would have rivaled any matchmaker’s. That self-satisfied look suddenly vanished to be instantly replaced by the grotesque expression of one who suddenly realizes one has placed one’s foot in a bucket full of rattlesnakes.

  He screamed his sister back indoors, ordered two of his lieutenants to drag me along, and stormed up the street to a storefront that served as Shade headquarters where I found him sitting behind a table, his eyes wild with anger and confusion. Upon Danny’s signal, the two aides vanished into the woodwork. The comfortably furnished room was hung with gang jackets torn from the backs of defeated Shade adversaries. There had been no attempt at hiding the brown patches of dried blood that stained most of the jackets. They were Shade scalps.

  “You really aren’t Tenct,” he stated in Tenctonese.

  “No, I’m not,” I replied in kind.

  “Man, that disguise is good,” he said in English. “Your accent is right off the ship. You move Tenct. You feel debah. It really messes me.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shook his head. “You look and feel debah, but you’re all hair. Just another lint ball.”

  “Not just another lint ball, Danny. I’m a unique lint ball.”

  “How much did all that plastic cost?”

  “The paper paid for the surgery and training. It cost about half a million.”

  I expected an outraged protest concerning the price of the plastic surgery, but Danny simply sat there, thinking. While he was thinking, it occurred to me that half a mill to the hivek of the Shade was chump change. They run protection inside the Chay, which amounts to millions by itself. Add to that the tributes from the other Tenct gangs, and the cut Nightshade gets from every burglary, mugging, bet, drug deal, and trick in the Chay, and it soon becomes obvious that Nightshade is one of the state’s major corporations.

  “You suppose they could make me up like a human?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Why would I want to, man?”

  “Maybe to see what it’s like, to look through someone else’s eyes, to walk in their shoes.”

  Danny’s quick gaze fixed on me. “Is that what you’re doing, man? Are you taking a stroll in slag sneakers?”

  “Something like that.”

  He snorted out a laugh and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah. Maybe you are. You got your spots on for only a couple of hours and the cops hammer the shit out of you.” Again he laughed. “But maybe you aren’t. You’re trying, but see, the Blues sometime thump the fehn sickies they catch hanging around outside the schools, not just the Tencts. You didn’t get lumpy because you’re Tenct, my man; you got it because you had your dick out.”

  “I did not!”

  Danny held out his hands. “Smooth down, man. Just a figure of speech.” He let his hands drop into his lap. “It’s like this: a couple of bad looks on Ocean Park don’t make you Tenctonese. Getting the shit kicked out of you by a couple of cops don’t make you debah. Not in this town. You haven’t walked my street; not yet.”

  “I’m here now,” I answered. “What do you suggest?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. Danny Mikubeh never made a suggestion in his life. He gives orders. Danny grinned. The grin faded slowly as he pondered something. Danny looked out of a window facing the street as his eyes narrowed. “I got something.” His grin became quite wicked. “Yeah. I got a suggestion.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I think I’ll take you on a stroll tonight down on The Place.” He nodded. “Yeah, we’ll go and pull those rubberhead rubbers over your bunions and see how they fit. If you live through it, you ought to get something to write about. Maybe you can do a book on the complete Tenct experience. Slagging on Five Dollars a Day.”

  He took me home to his mother’s house for dinner. There was nothing strange about the food; no weasel jerky or roach croutons on the salad. He didn’t reveal my secret to his family, and his sister Varina kept coming on until I let it drop that I was married. Mrs. Mikubeh was a very good hostess and cook, although very quiet. She seemed to make a practice out of not questioning her son about anything out of fear of the answers.

  Her husband as well as Danny’s Binnaum had been shot and killed the year before by a Korean gang during an East Eighth Street slaghunt. Immediately afterward, some of the unidentified Chay rode onto White Dragon turf, captured the shooters, and executed them by suspending them, one at a time, between the back bumpers of two pickup trucks: the left leg and right wrist over the chest tied to one bumper and the right leg and left wrist behind the back tied to the other bumper. When the cars are driven in opposite directions the suspension arrangement and length of the ropes causes the upper body to wrench about, breaking the back, just before limbs begin being ripped off. They call this “doing the twist.”

  It’s amazing how much of this horror one can listen to and not vomit. It’s even more amazing how many of these horrors never make the news, they’re so commonplace. But it’s just bangers killing bangers. Not really newsworthy. There are times when I wonder why the riots in this city are so far apart.

  While dinner progressed, Danny’s bodyguards stood watch on the house and at both ends of the street. Beyond the street was a network of eyes and ears that covered the Chay. Twice while we ate I heard shots. Both times one of the Shade came in, whispered to Danny, then went back out. Both times Danny faced the table and said, “It’s taken care of.”

  Watching Danny hold court at his mother’s dinner table while, at the same time, controlling the eyes, ears, scams, and forces of the Shade, made me think of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, and how every time a group is crushed by being set apart, cheated, humiliated, and subjected to brutality, a certain kind of defender is wrung from the ethnic pulp. Vito Corleone was a fictional representation of the original “Moustache Petes” that rose among exploited Italian immigrants. They are not heroes, for they add to the exploitation and abuse. They are, however, grass roots community leaders.

  Talk about your worst nightmare. Among all of the gangs, fehn and Tenct, there are close to two thousand Danny Mikubehs in the L.A. area. Despite the public spin put on for the media, there is no desire among the police or the city or county administrations to end the warfare between the gangs. This is for a very good reason: if the gangs should ever make peace and join together, they would become an army of some ten divisions manned by hate-fiiled, tough, experienced fighters who think they have nothing to lose. There is no danger of the gangs getting together,
however, so long as the “us” and “them” mentality governs what we call ourselves and, hence, who we will be to ourselves.

  Danny took me for a stroll on Third Place. Danny and I walked together up front while Iron Roc, Sticker, Slice, and Tank were strung out behind, forgoing Danny’s usual careful security. No one was wearing the pink, instead they dressed down, civilian clothes. Just six unattached Tenct youths on the town looking for a little lethal excitement. We were fishing. What I didn’t know at the time was that we were the bait.

  The Place, as it’s called by all of the gangs, is the southern border of the Indiana and Lorena streets triangle on the western limit of East L.A. “The Angle” lies between Nightshade turf on the west, the White Dragon and the X south of Lanfranco, and the Choya east of Indiana. Above the apex of the Angle, north of the Evergreen Cemetery on Bernal, is the southern outpost of the Jets. (I am not kidding, and yes, they took their name from the musical. Although they are exceptional killers, they can’t dance very well. Anglos, you know.)

  There is a sixth gang allegedly contesting the area: the Blue Crew—the LAPD. it is only alleged, however. There was no evidence of their existence on The Place that night. Third Place is where all of the surrounding gangs come to socialize with each other, push the edges of tolerance, and settle a few old scores without resorting to formally declared warfare.

  “Here you can roam in some rubberhead Reeboks, Robb man.” Danny nodded his head toward the street where the colors, strangely enough, weren’t at each other’s throats. A group of five Choya, flashing their bright green, was holding up a wall outside a liquor store actually laughing with and talking to three Jets, who wore black with orange blazes on their backs. Each of the Jets wore one black sock and one orange sock (“When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way . . .”).

  A closer look, however, showed Choya and Jet lookouts between buildings and on rooftops keeping a close watch on the social scene in front of the liquor store. An even closer look revealed sentinels for the X, the Dragon, and the Shade. There were platoons of reaction raiders waiting in the wings for the signal to launch.

  A wrong word, a rude gesture, a suspicious move. None of these were on The Place. Everyone was very polite, except to the few Tenctonese who were on the street. All of the fehn gangs had become an “us” by making the Tencts the “them.”

  “Now, check this,” said Danny. “Before the crash, the newcomers were the Koreans, Viets, and Bozzies. The day they let the Tencts out of the quarantine camps, though, the White Dragon, the Deltas, and the Splits organized to keep us down and out. Suddenly they were the natives and we were the invasion.” His train of thought was interrupted by something he saw. Suddenly he raised his hand and pointed. “Scan the man, Stan. I thought we’d have to hang half the night, but here they are.”

  At Turd & Turd (where Third Place and Third Street intersect), a big red Dodge 4x4, its roof rowed with headlights, came roaring onto The Place. There were three fehn in the cab and four more in the bed. The one in the passenger seat and the four in the bed of the truck all had weapons. They weren’t carrying colors and were ethnically diverse. Red and yellow, black and white, they are assholes in his sight. My God, Goober, it was you and your alcoholic buddies after a hard day at the plant out on a slaghunt.

  There must be a new name for this emotion that exploded inside me; this incredible compound of rage and terror. I could see them all: Choya, White Dragon, Jets, and X; Hispan, Asian, Anglo, and Afro, and they were all watching. No one was running and hiding, save the Tencts: the homeless, the meek, the dispossessed, the addicted, and the Nightshade. Targets all. No one was the least little bit concerned about being shot, except for the Tencts. Whitey and the Latinos were hanging together, the blacks and the Koreans, all of them watching rubberhead catch it. They weren’t the ones I was the most angry at, however. I was ripped at the Shade. Danny Mikubeh had made me a goddamned duck in his personal shooting gallery for some kind of bizarre object lesson. This was his mosey in another man’s moccasins bit.

  I turned to run west toward Nightshade turf, but Danny stopped me with a muscular arm. “C’mon, man. it’s time to climb on the monster and ride. You want to see through Tenct eyes? This is it, man. In Technifuckingcolor.”

  Danny and his soldiers simply stood there, waiting, as the truck full of yahooing jerk-offs fired shots at anyone without hair, streetlights, store windows, and the halt and lame. (Joke: hey, man, what’s that pink stuff stuck in your tire treads? Bubble gum? No. Slow slags.)

  I saw a Tenctonese woman hit in the leg and a Tenctonese child struck in the chest. It wasn’t just Goober and his buddies that were cheering, but all of the fehn on the street. “Get him, get him, get him!” yelled an X as the truck bore down on a Tenctonese male on crutches. He was missing a leg. Two shots hit him. One in his remaining leg and one in his back. His crutches went flying as he sprawled face down on the filthy concrete. A cheer went up from the fehn.

  “Wait for it,” Danny urged his companions. “Wait for it,” he repeated. We were the only Tencts left on the street. Everyone else had either fled or was down and bleeding. The red Dodge wheeled about and one of the fehn leaned on the top of the cab and fired two shots over the cab. The first shot went through the window of the storefront behind us. Tank took the second one through his left shoulder. He looked like a mosquito had nipped him. Tank didn’t let his gaze stray from the truck for a second.

  “Now,” Danny said calmly.

  I saw him reach into his jacket and pull out a rather large automatic pistol. I turned my head and saw Tank pull a revolver from his belt while Slice, Iron Roc, and Sticker reached for their weapons. They all opened up on the truck at the same time. The windshield exploded, the man sitting in the middle caught a face full of shattered glass, the shooter leaning on the top of the cab was knocked back into the bed, and the truck jammed hard right and proved for all time that you really can drive on flat tires. One of the four in the back raised a rifle to make a parting shot, and caught at least two rounds in the gut. He tumbled out of the bed, landed headfirst on the pavement, and crumpled into a still lump. In a second the truck was gone, the street empty.

  Feelings.

  Victory, nausea, outrage, terror, guilt, exhilaration, hate. I had become a Tenct racist, instantly an anti-fehn, complicated somewhat by still being a fehn myself. The moment called for something, but I didn’t know what. Goober and his friends went off to hospitals, rehabs, and other repair and burial facilities, as did the wounded on the street, all except for the lump that fell from the back of the Dodge and the little Tenctonese boy who caught one of Goober’s shots through his chest. They both stayed until the coroner showed up. Danny and his friends went back to the Chay, and Ellison Robb went home to a place that once seemed part of a moderately understandable universe.

  At home I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t relax. The monster that had always been under my bed was now out in the open, and what to do about it? The aimless claptrap about jobs programs, money for schools, community groups, education, police training, and all of the Jesus-jamming everybody-love-one-another bullshit flying from countless pulpits made me choke, want to cry, hide my face in shame.

  I don’t have answers to anything. Gang violence, racism, the hole in the ozone layer, nothing. I’m beginning to suspect that no one has any answers. Hell. My job is to walk in those rubberhead rubbers and tell you about it. That’s all. My job is to find the questions. Someone else will have to find the answers.

  Incidentally, the official police report on the Third Place shootout listed the dead Tenctonese boy and Goober’s dead buddy both as victims of a gang drive-by shooting. There were “some” reports of other shootings in the neighborhood that night, and no suspects. It got six seconds on one nightly news broadcast and nothing on the rest. My own newspaper gave it two and a half column inches on page seven, which also included eleven other shootings that resulted in three other deaths in the barrio that night.

  Bangers killing
bangers, sez Blue. Tough. And that’s where the cops plan to leave it. Maybe that’s where everybody thinks it’s going to be left, but scan this. Goober:

  I have what is called a photographic memory. I can draw every face I saw that night in detail from memory. I remember the make, model, year, and license number of the truck. I even remember who shot which victim. I have at my disposal the resources of one of the great newspapers of the world. Some of those wounds you and your alcoholic friends received that night had to be treated, and doctors and hospitals keep records. Your dead buddy has a name, a place he worked, a home, family, friends, people who know where he was that night, and with whom. It may take a little time, Goob, but I’ll track you down.

  Once you’re nailed I can’t say it will accomplish anything. The Tencts will still be down, the Chay will still be in there killing and dying, and the next crowd of Goobers will be frying out their brain cells and going down to Turd & Turd to smoke the slags. It will make me feel better, though.

  C H A P T E R 2 0

  THE AUTHOR OF “Slag Like Me” was dead. As an automatic reaction the city used the writer’s murder to once again try to kill itself. As Matt Sikes walked the city, trying to arrange a meeting with Danny Mikubeh, stores were looted and burned, people were killed, and those old enough to have been through it all before wept. A meeting was arranged, and as Matt waited, there was a light drizzle as the fog rolled in on the Chay, making the streets slick, but not clean, leaving the smell of wet ashes on the night air. The moisture was not enough to keep itinerant looters, eager TV reporters, and opportunistic clergy persons indoors, although it did lower the temperature of the violence somewhat. Perhaps the damp allowed a few to reflect on why they were doing what they were doing. After all, pondered many Tencts, Micky Cass was fehn. Avenging his death was a human matter.