THE SUV is curbed along Cicero just north of the expressway, near a long brick building with the word FURNITURE stamped across the window, the store all boarded up and caged. “Turn that shit off,” says Disco, alone in the back seat, to the men in the front, playing obnoxious dance music. “Or…move it to the front of the car.”
“I don’t know how to move it to the front.” The two men in the front seat, dressed, like Disco, in shabby clothes and baseball caps, fiddle with the dashboard, trying to figure out how to transfer the music from the rear of the vehicle.
“Then turn it off!” Disco snaps, bowing his head, tapping his finger to his earpiece.
“The last customer just drove away,” says the voice in his earpiece. “It’s been a busy morning. They were lined up six cars long an hour ago.”
“And everyone’s outside?”
“Yeah. Shiv’s on the porch with the girl.”
“And you’re ready with the backup?” he asks.
“Ready.”
Disco glances at the men in the front seat. Do we look like three dopeheads? Close enough, he figures—three white guys in casual clothes. They come in all shapes and sizes these days. Addicts wear business suits and turtleneck sweaters and trendy clothes and torn shirts and sweatpants. They are lawyers and accountants and housewives and students and homeless junkies.
Do they look too much like they’re trying to look like dopeheads? Disco, for his part, is wearing a sweatshirt he bought in a sporting goods store yesterday that he slept in last night, so it wouldn’t look too nice and fresh.
He stretches his arms, shaking out the nerves. “Okay, let’s go.”
The men in front straighten up, check their weapons. One of them kills the music. The SUV—an eight-year-old model with a dented fender—pulls off the curb and turns onto Van Buren by a convenience store littered with spray-painted graffiti. The signs advertise two-liter bottles of pop for ninety-nine cents and lotto cards and Marlboros and an ATM.
“They have lookouts past the alley by Kilpatrick, north side.”
“Okay. Boys,” Disco calls out, “say something to each other and laugh. Look like you’re not worried.”
Disco sits back, playing it calm, seeing three African American girls jumping rope on a sidewalk, eyeing the SUV as it passes. Otherwise, Van Buren is quiet this time of day, shiny and bright from the noon sun, almost tranquil in outward appearances despite the dilapidated homes, the vacant lots littered with garbage.
His partners in front are doing as he asked, joking around, trying to smile—pulling it off better than he would’ve expected—as the SUV turns north onto Kilbourn.
“Backup is ready?” Disco whispers into his earpiece.
“Ready.”
Here we go.
Disco removes his earpiece, throws it to the floorboard.
The SUV rolls northbound on Kilbourn. The men in front grow quiet. Disco’s pulse thumps like a bass drum inside him. They pass an alley, a row of brick flats, a Dumpster. The vehicle pulls over to the left side, near a two-story brick walk-up where Shiv sits on the porch with the girl. A man idles by on the sidewalk, or pretends to be idling by, in an untucked Chicago Bears jersey. He glances up at the porch, at Shiv, who nods back. Then the man ambles over to the SUV.
“Roll down your window,” Disco tells the driver, bracing himself.
“How you fellas doin’?” says the man, standing a few feet away, bent at the waist.
Disco slowly moves his head in the direction of the porch. Shiv, wearing a tight black shirt, long basketball shorts, and high-tops, sits on a step up to the porch. The girl, wearing a T-shirt too long and drooping over her shoulders, sitting next to him, arms wrapped around her knees.
Wait till the cash changes hands.
The driver hands over the cash. The man sweeps it away, tucks it into his pocket, and turns and tells them where to go, up the street and around the corner, to pick up the heroin.
While the man gestures up the street, the cash transaction already completed, Disco’s right foot lifts up, raising the AR-15 at his feet. He grabs hold of it without moving his head or shoulders, tipping off nothing. Tucks his finger under the trigger.
He rolls down the window, sticks the barrel out the window, and starts firing.
The bullets rattle the front porch, splintering the wood, ripping across the chests of Shiv and the girl before they have a chance to react, shattering the window behind them and spraying the house’s interior.
“Go! Go!” he hears himself shout as the SUV peels north.