Blue and white lights bounced off every surface in that alley like bottle rockets. My heart did the same.
Tony punched the dashboard. “Shit! It’s Coltrane and Johnson.”
“Who?”
I looked back at the unmarked squad. A white light flooded us, but I could see that they had snuck up and pinned the Caddy to the utility pole, which left no way out.
“Tony, you know these humps?”
A bullhorn blared: “All right, Pacheco. Get out.”
Tony looked back. “We’re stuck.”
The horn: “Outta the vehicle! Now!”
Tony shut off the engine.
I caught his arm. “What’re you gonna do?”
He jerked away from me. “Pull it together, Eddie. These leprechauns don’t play.”
Tony climbed out with his hands in front of him. Even if I made a run, they’d recover my suitcase from the trunk and ID me from what they found inside. It wasn’t worth a bullet in the back either. I followed Tony into the spotlight.
Two plainclothes officers hopped toward us with their guns drawn. They doubled us over the hood of Tony’s car and shackled our hands behind our backs, but didn’t bother to pat us down.
One cop was black, the other was white. Their outfits were standard issue: blue jeans, windbreakers, baseball caps. The black cop wielded a round gut. A thin wedding band pinched his sausage-link ring finger. The white one was lanky, and tucked his jeans into skinny cowboy boots.
The black cop breathed raw onions down my neck. “Stay down, big man.”
I did not resist.
The white cop flexed a deep rasp of a voice, with a slight Southern accent. “You too, Pacheco, stay down.”
For reasons known only to him, Tony flopped like a marlin on a hook. The white cop unholstered a big metal flashlight and jabbed it into Tony’s ribs. Tony tensed like he’d been stunned with an electric current.
The white cop reholstered the flashlight and looked at his partner. “See that, Johnson? Still breaking ’em after all these years.”
Tony flared his nostrils and said something nasty about the white cop’s mother. The man’s pockmarked face almost cracked in two. He grabbed Tony by the collar and the back of the pants and shoveled him into a garage door, making a loud percussive thump and putting a dent in the thin door metal. The cop then picked Tony up and rammed him into trash bins, knocking them over like bowling pins. Garbage bags spilled. For a finale the tall white cop swung the point of his cowboy boot in a sudden, perfect arc, right into Tony’s gut. Tony yelped.
The cop bent down and grabbed Tony by the wisps of his receding hair. “Don’t you never say nothin’ about my momma!”
Tony’s face sagged. If he had anything else to say, he swallowed it. The black cop, Johnson, did nothing.
Coltrane let go of Tony and turned his square jaw at me. “And who the hell are you?”
I cleared my throat. “Santiago. Eddie Santiago.”
“Santiago, why are you polluting my jurisdiction?”
“Excuse me?”
“Speak up!”
“I’m from around here.”
“Around where?”
“This neighborhood.”
“Where, Santiago? I want an address.”
I didn’t even know where I lived.
“By the park. I just moved here.”
“You don’t know your own address?”
“I’m new in town.”
“Where from? My patience is growing thin.”
There was no use hiding it. Coltrane could simply punch my name into the computer and it would all pour down. Or he could check my wallet and see my newly minted Department of Corrections ID.
I cleared my throat. “Stateville. I just got out.”
Coltrane raised an eyebrow. “Now we’re sharing.”
Johnson crinkled his nose. “I thought I smelled convict.”
Coltrane took a comb from his back pocket and raked it through his oily, dirty blond head. “Fresh from the penitentiary, and already itchin’ to get back.”
Coltrane put the comb away and dug a tin of chewing tobacco from his breast pocket. He pinched a wad and stuffed it between his cheek and gum. He looked at his partner. “Let’s investigate, Johnson.”
They frisked us, Coltrane on Tony, Johnson on me. Johnson immediately felt my money belt. My throat tightened.
“What’s this?”
The chemicals in my stomach churned.
Johnson yanked my shirt open and the buttons flew. His eyes widened. He removed the money belt and unzipped it. “Aw, hell naw!”
Coltrane leaned and eyeballed the money without a reaction. He rubbed his chin like it was an unanticipated turn of events. Finally, he thumbed the cash.
“How much?”
My gears jammed. I couldn’t process the words.
Coltrane’s pitch rose. “Are you deaf, Santiago? I asked you a question.”
My voice almost cracked. “It’s a little over forty thousand.”
The cops looked at each other, paused, then burst out laughing.
“Let the good times roll,” said Johnson.
I tried to weigh them down. “I worked real hard for that.”
Coltrane stopped laughing on a dime. “Hey! Santiago! Blow it up somebody else’s ass. Them prison jobs don’t pay but a couple cents an hour. We know you didn’t earn this.”
Coltrane took the money belt from Johnson’s hands, zipped it, slung it over his shoulder like it was the championship belt. “Keep your eye on the suspects, Johnson, while I check what else we got.”
The black cop ordered us to our knees.
Coltrane went straight for Tony’s stash. “Aha! Johnson, look at this jackpot. We got marijuana. . . a white substance that appears to be”—he sniffed it without snorting—“powder cocaine. And, oh yes”—he held up the .38-caliber revolver—“we got ourselves a peashooter.”
Johnson leaned toward us. “Boy, you dumb fucks really stepped in it with that one. We coordinate with the feds on one of them RICO joints? You’re talkin’ mandatory minimums. So much time, you’ll learn to suck your own balls.”
Coltrane examined the gun. “That is, of course, unless CPD Forensics is looking for this.” He looked right at me. “In that case it gets serious, doesn’t it?”
Coltrane opened the .38’s chamber, ejected the bullets into his palm. “Hollow points. Fat stretch right there.” He sniffed the barrel and reacted like it was rotten milk. “Dang thing’s been fired recently too.”
Coltrane closed the chamber, put the bullets in his breast pocket, and tilted his head at me as he tucked the gun into his waistband. I looked at Little Tony, but he played “Keep Away” with his eyes.
Coltrane found my suitcase in the Caddy’s trunk. He laid it on the pavement. “What’s inside, Santiago?”
“Personal property.”
“You claiming it?”
I knew from all of my jailhouse lawyering that I should never say or admit anything to a cop other than my pedigree information—name, address, and birthday. Whatever else you say will never be used to excuse you, and will only be used to screw you. I said, “Everything in that suitcase belongs to me.”
Coltrane opened it and shook everything onto the wet, dirty pavement. Then he pulled a bowie knife from his boot to pick through my stuff. I only had a couple of books left in my collection, but Coltrane said, “Brace yourself, Johnson. Another convict who loves to read.”
Johnson shook his head. “Nigga, you a straight-up cliché.”
Coltrane resheathed the knife in his boot. He opened a jewelry box and the one thing contained within it fell onto the clothes on the street. Coltrane’s hand moved slowly toward it. He held it up.
“Is this a genuine Purple Heart?”
I did not say.
“Answer me, Santiago. My pappy earned his getting blinded while killin’ Red Chinese. How’s a sperm bag like you get one?”
“Be careful with it.”
Coltrane stepped closer. I could smell the tobacco and saliva on his breath. “You serve in the military?”
I was a veteran of too many wars, but not in the way Coltrane meant. “No.”
“Hmm. Figured this couldn’t be rightfully yours.”
Coltrane put the Purple Heart into the same pocket where he kept his chewing tobacco. Then he flipped through my mother’s Bible. Rose petals preserved between the pages for nearly thirty years came loose and fluttered lifelessly to the pavement. I wanted to kick Coltrane’s yellow teeth in.
For a second he appeared to read one of the passages. He shut the book. “Santiago, you one of them jailhouse converts?”
I clenched my teeth. “Put my things back as you found them.”
The flame in Coltrane’s fading gray eyes sputtered, and I got ready for the flashlight in the ribs. But he turned the heat down.
“Perp, you ain’t worth the sweat.” He looked at Johnson. “Let’s wrap these two in a bow.”
Johnson shoved Tony into the backseat of their unmarked squad, while Coltrane tossed my things back in the suitcase, then tossed the suitcase back into Tony’s trunk. He put the gun, the coke, the reefer, and my money belt into the trunk of their squad car and said, “Official evidence” as he slammed it shut.
Johnson folded me into the backseat. “Looks like you dildos just fell into a hole.”
My throat constricted. “Where are you taking us?”
Johnson curled his lips. “Like you don’t know.”
Coltrane jumped behind the steering wheel and looked over his shoulder. “You belong to us now, Santiago.”
He shifted the machine into drive and took off. My stomach flipped. We turned onto the street that leads to the station, and sped the rest of the way.
My heart squeezed against the walls inside my chest. We were a couple blocks from the station. Coltrane turned toward us as he drove.
“Got you girls shittin’, don’t I?”
He smirked, cut the wheel, and burned rubber down an alley, away from the precinct. I didn’t know what to think. Obviously, we weren’t on our way to the lockup. If we did not go to the precinct, we would not be processed. No process, no judges. No DAs. No indictments. No prison.
My pulse came down a little. I realized the whole thing was some kind of shakedown.
My money was in the trunk. My number one object became to get out of the vehicle and away from these assholes with as much of my savings as possible. I wondered whether I should speak up. I’d witnessed many power plays and it was usually the guy who shut his mouth the longest who came up aces in the end.
But not always.
I cleared my throat. “Where are we going?”
Coltrane and Johnson ignored me.
“Are we under arrest?”
Their body language portrayed nothing, no movement. They were like a still life of the backs of two heads.
I raised my voice a little. “Officers, I demand to speak to an attorney—”
Johnson turned. “Boy, if you don’t shut that blow-hole—”
I cut him off with, “Detective, I demand to speak—”
Johnson cut me off with a solid right hook to the side of the head. A black shroud dropped over my frontal lobe. I was knocked out.
When I came to, we were parked someplace quiet, and dark. My head felt heavy. Everything was dim. Tony and I were alone in the car. Coltrane and Johnson hovered above us like ghosts. I closed my eyes. Everything spun.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Coltrane and Johnson again, only now they stood on a loading dock next to the car. A sign behind them read, WHOLESALE MEATS.
Tony sounded far away. “You up, Eddie? Can you hear me?”
“Whut?” It hurt to talk.
Tony whispered, “Are you all right?”
It felt like I’d had too much to drink, only a lot worse. I had to concentrate because Tony was on some kind of time delay. His words only made sense a few seconds after he spoke them. The pain spiked inside my head.
“Goddamn. Where are we?”
“Meat market.”
I had no clue. I looked around. The area seemed deserted.
“What are we doing here, Tony?”
“Coltrane stopped at a pay phone while you were zonked. Made a quick call, then drove straight here.”
Tony looked out the window, away from me, away from the dock and from Coltrane and Johnson. “I think we’re up for sale.”
“For sale?” Maybe I was punch-drunk. “What’d you just say?”
“Roach.”
“Roach?” It took me a second to recollect who he meant. “You mean. . . your street war?” It took me another second to realize what Tony was getting at. “Are you saying they’d turn you over?”
“Turn us over.”
“They know you got beef with Roach and his crew?”
“Of course they do. And they know Roach’ll pay.”
“Don’t they know what he’ll do if he gets his hands on you?”
Tony turned to me. “Eddie, for a price, these niggas’ll do it themselves.”
“You’re outta your mind.” The pain shifted from my head to my stomach. “These guys are cops!”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Whatta you think we’re doing out here? Look around. Nobody knows we’re out here.”
I looked up at Coltrane and Johnson, and again felt the impulse to run. I scouted a route, but the car door was locked, with no way to open it from inside. No key in the ignition. Kicking the glass out and trying to jump through was too many steps to complete before Coltrane and Johnson’d be off that dock and on top of me.
At some point they would open that door, to get us out. I determined that at that exact moment I would hoof it, even with my hands shackled behind my back.
Johnson looked down on me from the loading dock. It was like he’d read my mind. His eyes said: “I’ll shoot you in the fuckin’ back, punk.”
I turned to Tony. “Think we can negotiate?”
“With what?”
“My money. We can give them some.”
“They already have that.”
We were in wet cement. “Ain’t you got something saved, Tony? What about that cash you picked up at the Spot?”
“Man, that was just a couple G’s.”
“Nothing in the bank?”
“Nope.”
“I thought you were rolling. Where’s all that cheese you been grating?”
Tony said, “Wake up, Eddie!” He hard-whispered: “If they wanted to deal with us, they would. Obviously, that ain’t why they dragged us to bumfuck.”
Tony left no doubt: I was without a partner and without a chance. And if the line between love and hate is a thin one, the one between hope and desperation is even more so. I crossed it.
I shrank farther into the seat. My chest tightened. I envisioned Roach leading us to some dark place to cap us, or maybe hang us from some pipes. At once, an image of my dead mother flashed, looking pasty, waiting for me at the end of the tunnel with her droopy eyes. Blood drained to my feet.
Just then, a long white limousine flew out of the mist. It slid to a stop in the gravel next to us.
Tony sat up. “Oh shit! It’s Pelón! That’s his ride!”
“You’re lying.”
Tony thanked God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary out loud.
The limo driver got out, waddled to the back, held the door open. I saw the sheen of a white suit against tough dark skin. Pelón, who was in his mid-sixties now, peeled himself slowly from inside. He still shaved his head, and it still looked like a giant coconut.
Pelón poked the gravel with his cane, and worked like a newborn foal to find his posture. Once he got his balance, he moved quickly to the foot of the dock.
Tony kept thanking God under his breath.
I watched Pelón deal with the narcs. I hadn’t seen him in over a decade. He looked older, of course, with more lines in his face. The black handlebar mustache of his middle age was gone, replaced by a thin silver mustache, which ended at the corners of his mouth. His eyebrows were salt-and-pepper, and his face was otherwise as clean-shaven as his skull. He looked thinner than when he was younger and into lifting weights. The cane was a new addition as well.
Pelón and the cops agreed on a price. I began to feel the noose loosen. The narcs jumped from the dock to the hood of Pelón’s limo to make noise and demonstrate how agile they still were. Pelón cursed at them in Spanish, but he fished cash from an envelope.
Tony showed his dimples. “I told you the man was proper.”
The cops yanked us out and undid the cuffs, which let blood rush back to my hands. Johnson licked his lips.
Coltrane flashed his yellowed smile. “Be careful where you walk, Santiago.”
They hopped in their car. My money belt was still in the trunk.
I took one step toward their car with my finger raised. “Hey!”
Johnson looked right at me with his black hand on the door.
I nodded at the trunk. “My money.”
Johnson crinkled his eyes. “Fuck you, Santiago.” He slammed the door shut. “You bring that shit up again, I’ll chop you in the fuckin’ throat.”
Coltrane punched the gas and they sped off, kicking up gravel.
Like a statue of an easy mark, I stood there and watched their taillights disappear into the mist. After they were history, I suddenly picked up a rock and threw it.
Tony spit. “Thank God they’re gone.”
Pelón grunted. “Them cochinos ain’t gone nowhere. They just on ice.”
I stared at the spot where the cops had entered the fog. My money was smoke. Florida? The salsa label I was going to invest in? Vanished.
Pelón coughed into a monogrammed handkerchief. I saw for the first time that his right hand had only the thumb and index finger. The missing fingers made his right hand look like a claw. He extended it.
“Bueno, Eddie, hace mucho tiempo.”
I looked at the claw and did not take it.
Pelón looked at his hand, then back at me as he lowered it to his side. “You found a little trouble, eh?”
I had a lump in my throat. “My money.”
Tony let some air out. “I just can’t believe they gangstered it like that.”
Pelón said, “¿Cuánto fue?”
I held my tongue for a second, then said it. “Forty. Forty thousand dollars.”
“¡Diablo!”
I looked at the ground. “I got nothin’ left.”
Pelón shook his head. “Don’t look at it like this. Is only money.”
I looked at Pelón and wondered how he could possibly say that with a sober face.
We stood in silence for a second. I felt really lost.
Pelón put his claw on my shoulder. In Spanish he said, “Sometimes life hits hard to awaken us.” He opened his envelope again and, with his claw, quickly counted twenty-five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. “Toma. Take this until you get on your feet.”
I looked at the money.
Pelón held it closer. In a Puerto Rican accent he said, “This ain’t time for pride.”
My whole life I’ve known guys like Pelón. They pretend to be stand-up compadres in order to gain advantage. For these types a couple of dollars always means leverage.
I took it. “You know I’ll pay you back, Pelón.”
“Who’s keeping track? We do these things for our friends.”
Pelón clapped his hands. “Bueno, vámonos. I got an appointment. But I take you home first, no?”
The fat driver held open the door. We climbed in and glided off. Inside the limo was very cold. The air was on full blast. Pelón had Tony fix him a drink.
“Later this week we make a little party,” said Pelón. “The three of us.” He touched my knee. In Spanish he said, “We must celebrate our friend’s liberation!”
At that moment the only thing that I could think about was my money.
Tony sat up next to me. “Pelón, can we do something high-class?”
Pelón flaunted a perfect smile. “Ya tú sabe’ que I don’t do it any other way.” He looked at me. “And you, Eddie? Don’t you worry about them pennies. Squash it. Forget about it. Pelón gonna take care of everything.”
As it turns out, he did.