The voice of King Funeral: So why you want to do a story on the Hoovers? We been cool lately. It’s them Sixties niggas and them Grape Streets, they be the ones starting shit. The fuckin’ Mexicans, too. F-Thirteen. Florencia. Do something about them, fool.
Mike Lyons: I had a big story on the Rollin Sixties already. About Wild Cat. You know him?
Funeral: I know him. We cool. We was at the SHU in Corcoran together.
Mike: I didn’t know that.
Funeral: You don’t know a lot of shit. You just think you do. You just think because you know ten percent and all them other reporters at the Times only know one percent that you the gang man, the expert, but you don’t know what the fuck is going on.
Mike: Educate me, then.
Funeral: I’m not your teacher.
Mike: Look, first of all, you don’t know anything about me and my past.
Funeral: I don’t need to.
Mike: I lived in South Bronx slums and East St. Louis. Where I lived makes the worst blocks on Hoover Street look like Disneyland.
Funeral: Fuck you. New York is old, motherfucker. Them’s the old days. John Corleone times. This is today. We got sets all over the country. Even the Bloods are setting up, taking over in New York. Even in the Bronx. L.A. gangs is the takeover crews. You feel me? Invaders. Marauders. Just because we got some flowers on some blocks don’t mean shit. We also have the firepower. So don’t try and impress me with your badness. Please.
Mike: All I’m saying is, you know what, forget it. You probably ain’t never been out of California and you know everything.
Funeral: Oh, so you gonna come down to my crib and disrespect me.
Mike: I ain’t disrespecting you. I wouldn’t do that. I’m just tryin’ to get the true story. We going to do a story on you guys, you’re a famous set, you know that.
Funeral: We ain’t no damn set. We a straight-out cartel.
Mike: Okay, but the other reporters and the editors they’re fine with just talking to the cops and shit and writing and publishing the story about the Hoovers that way. I’m the only one reaching out and trying to get the story from you guys.
Funeral: Reason no reporters come down here is they liable to get their ass shot.
Mike: Worse things can happen.
Funeral: Like what? What, you don’t care? Is that right? You that much a badass reporter you don’t care if you get shot? Nigga, please. I oughta shoot you myself. And I might just do that, but I know you put out a safety net, prob’ly told everyone at the paper where you were going. Probly bragging to everyone, too. “I got me an interview with King Funeral.” Am I right? Tell me.
Mike: Yeah, I ain’t gonna lie. I did tell my editor I was gonna interview you, but only because I needed an excuse to get out the office early and go to my bar.
Funeral: I can smell it. You wanna drink? Hoovers got hospitality. Give you a drink, then shoot your ass.
Mike: Well, I’d hate to get shot sober.
Pause. Some liquid noise.
Mike: To the boys who couldn’t be here.
Funeral: That’s cool. I don’t know. I don’t trust reporters. Maybe you ah’ight for a reporter. Compared to what, though?
Mike: Eddie Harris, Les McCain.
Funeral: Got that right. I do gotta say I ain’t never seen a reporter anywhere ’round the ’hood ’cept when there’s a shootin’ and all the police is here. All the TV crews. But that don’t even happen that much anymore. Guess shooting on Hoover ain’t news anymore. But no one, not a one, ever comes here when nothin’s going on. ‘Specially at night.
Mike: I’m here and nothin’s going on. And it’s night.
Funeral: Yeah, I guess you are. Now let me ask you a question. What you just said. You just talking tough or trying to impress me? ’Cause if you are, you wasting your time and mine. But, what you said, “There’s worse things than getting shot.” What you mean?
Mike: I’m just sayin’ there’s worse things than getting shot.
Funeral: Like what?
Mike: Getting tortured. For one. Like being punked out and having to live with it.
Funeral: You been punked out?
Mike: No. I ain’t never been punked out, you know, jail-style, that’s what you mean. No. Fuck no. But, I’ve done some things. Or not done some things that kinda were, I don’t know, like backing down and regretting it. You know what I mean?
Funeral: I ain’t never backed down.
Mike: Well, it’s like, like there was this time way back in the, I think it was the tenth grade. Over at Gardena High.
Funeral: Gardena High? You went there?
Mike: Yeah, for a year.
Funeral: Nigga, I thought you from East St. Louis or the South Bronx. Come to find out, you a lyin’ motherfucker.
Mike: I ain’t lyin’. I was born here, went to school here, then moved to New York. To the South Bronx. Chicago. East St. Louis, Illinois. Baltimore, too.
Funeral: One of my niggas is from the South Bronx. Mad Bone. I should get him and test your ass.
Mike: Go ahead. Get him. I probably kicked his ass back there anyway. I’ll do it again. Most of them fools from the day. Now, twenty years later, they let themselves go. Got fat. Don’t work out. Me, I’m still strong.
Funeral (laughing): Nigga, you a crazy drunk ass motherfucker. Talkin’ all this shit. Yeah, you might be ah’ight for a white boy.
Mike: I ain’t no white boy. I’m an Armenian man.
Funeral: Sure look white to me. But, you a trip, fool. Go ahead, Armenian man. I want to hear this tenth grade story now. Though it’s probably some bullshit, too. Here, have ’nother sip a cognac. Good stuff. Courvoisier. Usually, I have me some Rémy, some XO.
Mike: It’s pretty smooth. I’ll bring you some Armenian cognac, Armenian brandy called Ararat one of these days.
Funeral: Yeah, if you make it out of here alive. Go ahead, nigga.
Mike: Where was I? Oh, yeah. Anyway, this guy, this muscular Mexican guy, he was really no bigger than me, a gangster from G-Thirteen. Gardena-Thirteen. Anyways, I bumped into him one day accidentally and he just like stared at me and I walked on. Right? So the next day, at the very same place near the lockers, there’s a lot of people, big crowd just walking to another class, right? So we’re walking toward each other and he goes out of his way to bump into me, hard. You know, shoulder-rams me and just stops and stares me down. And I’m thinkin’, ah shit. But anyway, he just looking at me like “What you going to do?”
Funeral: Whadd’ya do? Don’t tell me.
Mike: I walked away.
Funeral: Bitch.
Mike: Yeah, I guess. The rest of that day I just felt like shit, like such a coward. And I got to thinking the ass whopping that Mexican might have given me had to be a whole lot better than the mind whopping I was giving myself. I was beating my own self down over it. Way down.
Funeral: So what happened the next day or was that it?
Mike: Well, the next day, I’m thinking about it all morning because I know we’re gonna meet up again and I just can’t go through with this torment I put myself through for backing down. So couple hours later, we’re walking toward each other, same place, by the lockers. Then, outta nowhere, my neighbor, Blinky, this Samoan guy, the baddest street fighter I have ever known in my life, he comes over to me and hits me on the shoulder and says like, “Let’s get a football game going on St. Andrews after school.” I say, “For sure.” We lived on St. Andrews Place. So anyway, the Mexican sees that Blinky is my friend and from that day on, he avoids me. Like the bubonic. Still, ever since then, I get pushed, I push back and hard. Even if I know I’m the underdog.
A pause for several seconds.
Funeral: So what’s the point? Getting shot is better than getting punked?
Mike: Getting shot isn’t better than getting punked if you die in the shooting. But, if you just get wounded, you know, wounded, but not left crippled, that has its benefits.
Funeral: How? You mean you can brag about it? That what you mean?
Mike: In a way. I know it’s sick, but that’s just the way it is. Even in the Army or Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan. Like the guy that gets shot, you know, shot not too badly, but shot and then he returns to the unit. That guy? That guy gets respect. Instant respect. The other Marines are envious of him. Damn, Smith got shot. He’s a man. He took the ultimate test and made it back. You see what I’m saying? Walked right up to death’s door, knocked, and came out all right. People envy that. That’s just the facts.
Funeral: Yeah. But I ain’t never been shot. Been out here twenty-five, thirty years and never took a hit. Been shot at fifty times, never took one bullet. And I’m cool with that. And believe me, I get my respect.
Mike: I know you do. That’s why I’m here, man. I respect you. But, I’m just saying getting shot has some good points.
Slight pause, then the soft sound of liquid pouring is heard.
Mike: Thanks. I’m used to Early Times or Jack Daniel’s. This stuff is smooth.
Funeral: Look, if you want, as a favor, I can have one of my boys shoot you.
They both laugh.
Mike: For how much? Yeah, set it up. Little wounding. Not a graze. Something kind of serious. Like a shot in the side. So it can be like, “Where did Mike get shot? The torso. Ah, man. He gonna make it? I don’t know, man. Took two in the torso.”
On the couch, a rapt Hart and LaBarbera look at each other. “That’s what he got, two in the torso,” said Hart.
Funeral: Come back to work, big hero.
Mike: Yeah, walk in the newsroom, greeted royally.
Funeral: Big time hero.
Mike: All because a couple little pieces of hot metal went though some fatty part of my body. Not in any organs. I’d plan it out. Study the body.
Funeral: Sounds like you’ve been giving this some thought.
Mike: I think about a lot of things. So when we going to do this? Just my luck. We’ll set it up and your boy turns out to be a bad shot.
Laughter.
Back in the living room, King Funeral thumbed the remote. “That’s it.”
“So?” asked Hart. “So, did you have Lyons shot?”
“You think I’m stupid? Just thought you might wanna hear that.”