Avenue D

Felix Pardo is a high roller moving big quantities of dope to Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Queens. He doesn’t sell to anyone on the D so he’s not directly my problem. I’m curious about him, though. I know a lot about Felix from our snitches. Supposedly he’s been dealing with Chinese gangs his whole life. His parents are from the Dominican Republic and barely speak English but Felix is fluent in Cantonese, English, and Spanish. He’s supposed to be an okay guy for what he is. Someone points him out to me and I’m surprised how innocent and ordinary he looks. He’s not dressed in flash clothes or rings, doing a macho gangsta prison yard walk, or driving some eye-grabbing jeep. If it weren’t for the nearly six-foot blond Puerto Rican girl covered in jewelry holding his hand he would have looked like a kid in grad school. Word on the street is that for some reason the big guys on Third and D hate Felix. Davey Blue Eyes himself has supposedly taken a particular dislike to Felix. So have Davey’s sometime allies and assassins from Cherry Street, the Navarro brothers. There isn’t much rhyme or reason for the animosity, but in their world there doesn’t have to be.

One night Felix comes out of a Pathmark on Pike Street along with his cousin, an accounting student at City College. His cousin doesn’t notice a customized Mertz with black tinted windows that glides into gear as they cross the parking lot, but Felix makes it instantly. The car draws close and Felix shoves his cousin and tells him to run like hell. They drop the Heinekens they just bought and take off like shots. Felix knows the terrain and heads down an alley that looks left over from the nineteenth century and is too narrow and uneven for the Mercedes to get through. His cousin follows him. But when they get to the far end the car is already there. A rear door opens and they see Davey Blue Eyes pointing two nine millimeter pistols at their balls. “Get in,” Davey says to Felix. The two cousins look at the guns and each other, Felix gets into the Mertz, and the door slams. A moment later Davey’s window rolls down. “A hundred thousand tomorrow,” Davey says to Felix’s cousin. “A hundred thousand or his mother never sees him again. Right here, tomorrow six A.M.” The cousin waits until the car drives off, runs to a payphone and passes the message on to Señora Pardo. Before she’s hung up the phone she’s rummaging in the back of her closets for the dozen shoeboxes of cash Felix stashed there. She hangs up the phone and starts counting out bills.

The following morning Davey’s Mertz pulls up and Felix’s mother is there at the curb watching. A rear window slides down just far enough to accommodate the shoebox Felix’s cousin has under his arm. The cousin pushes the box through, the window goes back up, and the Pardos wait while somebody inside counts. A short while later the door opens, Felix tumbles out onto the street and the car roars away. Even from fifty feet away Felix’s mother can see that her son spent a lot of the previous ten hours having the shit kicked out of him. She fights back the urge to scream at Felix’s bruised and bloodied face. It’s better after his cousin helps him up. At least he’s alive, no sense in attracting attention.