Morris orders a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich and a coffee at Marcelo’s Hot To-Go-Go.
N.J. gone. It’s for real.
After the limo had left, Morris waited a solid five minutes, expecting them to circle the block and come back, expecting the long, black Mercedes to pull up and for N.J. to roll down his window and say, “Gotcha, man. You really thought I was leaving, didn’t you?”
It didn’t happen.
They didn’t return.
Sitting at a sticky table with his coffee and breakfast sandwich, Morris picks up a copy of the Post someone left behind. He needs a job, needs to start looking for a place to live. His father wants him out.
The bacon in his sandwich smells rancid. His coffee is bitter. Nothing tastes good. Still, he eats, needing something in his stomach.
Looking at the paper’s headline, Morris nearly chokes. Plastered on the front page: ES‘SEX’ STREET SCANDAL. The photo shows the police raiding the Essex Street Retail Market.
Morris doesn’t believe it. “I don’t believe it,” he says aloud.
He turns to the full story on page four. The market had been raided last night, the police breaking up a large sex ring. “The atrocities, the sin,” the mayor’s quoted. “We need to ensure it never happens again.”
It’s just as N.J. claimed.
“My God,” Morris says, stunned. His friend’s credibility’s finally found footing.
As he rereads the article, Morris’s eye wanders to the opposite page, which shows the body of a nine-year-old African boy, an AK-47 at his side. COUP ATTEMPT IN CONGO, the headline reads. A group of fifteen youths, all under the age of twelve, and all dressed in powder pink camouflage, launched a failed attempt to take over the presidential palace. They’d parachuted from purple hot air balloons and showered the palace with bullets and grenades.
All the boy rebels were killed.
One line in the article stood out. It stated that “each of the youthful rebels had a red string around his neck, giving them the look of a slit throat.”
The Red Thread.
A new member’s initiation into the cartel.
Chapter 41
The Trouble with Bliss Page 44