The narcs really did a number on me. I lay in my room with the lights off, no music, not a sound. I was conscious of my breathing, careful to not make noise. My mind twisted upon itself.
Are they listening? Did they bug the room? Is there a camera somewhere?
I looked from my spot on the bed, got up, and with the lights off, I creeped around the tight space silently and looked and searched and felt under the table, under the bed, behind the little fridge, inside the fridge, inside the jamb of the closet door, beneath wherever the carpet was loose. Then I took my new butter knife and unscrewed the plate over the outlet, checked in there. I balanced on the chair, with the room still dark, and reached up to look and feel all around the circular fluorescent bulb. I found nothing. No cameras, no bugs.
They followed me, that much was obvious. They didn’t just accidentally wander into that burger joint. I lay down again, quiet and still. My imagination filled that silence with voices I did not want to hear. I turned the radio on low, WFMT, the classical station. Sometimes I listen to this when I need to tone down.
I left the lights off and lay down again. It makes no sense, but I’ll say it anyway: the violins in that second song were like sparrows. Some of the weight began to dissolve.
They didn’t play fair, those narcs. They leaned on me with that .38 when they knew I didn’t have shit to do with that homicide. If they thought they could pin a murder rap on me, they’d drop me in seconds flat. Unless, of course, they really figured me for more valuable on the street than in a cell. But I doubted that.
They said they wanted information on Tony and Pelón. But if they wanted Tony off the street, they had the .38. They recovered it from his car.
And Pelón? If they wanted dish on him, all they had to do was stake him out, tap his phone.
So what then? Why pluck my wings?
I lay on the bed and let it swirl. Beethoven surged out of the radio, loud, even though the volume was turned low. I took a break from detection and analysis and let the music fill me. The song crescendoed. I once read that Beethoven went deaf before he composed that piece, and I wondered as I listened, and became infected by its emotion, what is it in certain creatures that they perform better after they crash into a brick wall?
It was obvious that Coltrane and Johnson did not give a shit about removing criminals from the street. They had only one objective regarding Pelón and his big plans, Tony and his big score, and me and my big mouth: another rip-off.
They said they needed me to be an informant. What they wanted was an unwitting accomplice. A runt to execute their insider trades. I give them details, the whens, the hows. They swoop in with their claws and snatch the goods. That was probably how they built intelligence on my stash. And now they wanted to use me to stick it to somebody else.
I got up and switched to WLS, talk radio, and threw myself back on the bed. This time I was able to shake the narcs. But they had already gotten fat off me once. And everybody knows what happens once you feed a stray cat.
That night I dreamt of the first time. It was the 1980s then, a couple years before Tony and I started burglarizing with Pelón. We lived in a neighborhood that had once been a white ethnic enclave of mostly Italians. Even though Tony and I both started life in Humboldt Park, we met in this neighborhood, where my mother and I moved after my father died, and where Tony ended up in a foster home.
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, even some Ecuadorians and Guatemalans, had begun to infiltrate the area then, and the Italians could barely swallow it. Their gang had run this universe since the early fifties and they viewed the streets as their birthright. They clung to that turf by beating the shit out of whoever wasn’t them. Sometimes they slashed your tires or burned your car where you left it. When they felt really proud, they would throw a kitty cocktail—a glass bottle filled with gas and stuffed with a burning rag—through your bedroom window.
Somehow Tony and I survived this environment, and by the time we were teenagers, we cut our teeth on big Italian titties and ran around with their gang. At first it was nothing. Nickel and dime bags of weed. Every once in a while a dustup with other kids, decked in our colors. We would flash hand signs and shout meaningless slogans.
Our clubhouse was a basement in an abandoned building. We kept weights, dumbbells, and a ratty workout bench down there. We would jam to the Police and pump iron. One night Tony and I were down there when a couple of older gangbangers walked in. They were dangerous enough that even now, all these years later, I can’t reveal their full names here.
“C” was a blond, blue-eyed Italian who styled his hair like Chachi from Happy Days. For a medallion he wore a big Italian cornuto, a horn that hung from the gold chain around his neck. C had a reputation among those who grew up with him for fearlessness. He was in his early twenties then and had already been to prison twice. One time I saw him inject steroids directly into his own neck.
“J” was a squat, American-born Mexican who prided himself on the fact that he spoke no Spanish whatsoever except for a few choice swear words. He referred to other Mexicans as “wetbacks.” J had a pig nose and his main role since C’s return from prison was to kiss C’s ass and laugh at everything that C said.
When C and J walked into our weight room, Tony and I moved right out of their way. C and J pressed the weights we were working with like they were filled with helium.
C, the Italian, talked as he lifted. “You pussies warmin’ up with this?”
Tony and I were at the peak of our workout, but I said, “Yeah, warmin’ up.”
C got up from the bench and punched himself in the chest. “Fuckin’ A, eye of the tiger, baby! No pain, no gain, right, spics?”
They stacked weights. Tony and I tried to keep up, but the only thing we did was bulge our eyes and make red blowfish faces.
J, the Mexican, released his high-pitched laugh. “These spics are fuckin’ lightweights, right, C?”
“Maron!” said C. “You girls lift like you got a friggin’ salchiche shoved up your bungholes.”
Tony and I did not want to let C down. But it got to the point where the weights did not move for us. Literally, I could not lift the bar to begin the exercise.
C shook his head and thumbed at me. “I think rubber neck forgot to eat his spinach.”
J laughed. Then Tony laughed. Then I laughed, even though I was “rubber neck.”
C adjusted the weight and began to do curls and admire his hair in the mirror. “What’re you faggots doin’ tonight?”
I put my hands in my pockets. “Us? Nothin’. Hanging out, I guess.”
“Wanna hang with us?”
Right there, if I ever listened to my mother, the things that she told me to avoid, I would have made a beeline for home. Tony and I glanced at each other.
Tony picked up a dumbbell and started to pump. “What’re you guys doin’?”
J produced a plastic bag of white powder. “You lightweights know about this?”
Tony and I did not know heavy drugs yet. The only thing we ever did was smoke weed. A couple times we got drunk on peppermint schnapps.
Tony put down the dumbbell. “What’s that? Cocaine?”
J nodded. “Peruvian flake.”
I told them that we never tried that, but I don’t think they heard. J set up a line and snorted. C put the weights down and followed. Then he set up a somewhat smaller line. He looked at me.
“Your turn, rubber neck.”
I looked at the line. It was soft and white. The most innocent-looking thing. I thought I knew what drugs did, that they were bad for you. I saw all the commercials and read the brochures. I was certainly old enough to know better. I snorted the coke.
Before that moment I thought inhaling cocaine might burn, and it did, it does, but not for long. A smooth, cool numbness rushed in to extinguish everything, like menthol, but a thousand times stronger. There was an instant spike in my chest. Parts of me began to tingle. I felt a sudden, instant happiness. I felt powerful. C took his time to line up another bump.
I fake-punched Tony in the arm to show my excitement. “Damn, Tony, you gotta try this shit.” My lips felt like inner tubes and I figured that must be good. “Do it, Tone.”
Tony’s eyes drooped a little. In that moment my mind, my whole life, was a coke-fueled steam engine exiting the station. I wish now that I had left Tony standing there.
“Go on,” I said.
Tony looked at me and I nodded. He leaned forward, took a hit, and came up with his eyes wide.
C clapped. “That’s the shit, ain’t it?”
Tony managed to say, “Uh-huh,” and then sneezed.
“Smooth too, right, Tone? Must be some good shit.”
C cut two more lines. Thick ones. He looked at me and Tony. “Go.”
We snorted them. The shit hit directly in the sinus, and this time it hurt a little. Like a needle that pricks you in the brain. Or a brain freeze from a snow cone, again times a thousand. Tony wore a confused look. His nostrils reddened.
C said, “So?”
I wiped my nose. “Maybe we better slow down.”
C laughed and J echoed his laughter.
C looked at J. “All right, brougham. Let’s take that ride.”
J pulled up in a Chevy Impala that I never saw before. C and I jumped in the back. Tony sat up front. There was a paper bag on the floor by C’s feet.
I tapped J on the shoulder. “Whose car is this? Your mom’s?”
“Naw, man.”
C said, “We found it. Don’t ask.”
Nickel bags of weed was one thing, but I wasn’t up for joyriding in a stolen car.
“I read in the paper that they throw hard time for grand theft auto these days.”
C said, “You a lawyer now, motormouth? You see this, J? A Puerto Rican lawyer! Ha-ha!”
J slapped the steering wheel. “Yeah, right. This ain’t The Jeffersons.”
C looked at me. “Repeat after me, Rican. Loose lips sink ships.”
“OK.”
“Say it!”
“Don’t ever forget.”
We rode in silence for a while.
Tony said, “So where we goin’?”
I got excited. “We goin’ to the show?”
Nobody answered.
“They got a double feature at the State Lake. Trading Places and they brought back 48 Hours.”
C said, “We ain’t going to no movie, kid.”
I looked at the paper bag between his feet. The power and control of the first shot of coke spilled out of me. My heart galloped like it wanted out of my chest. Suddenly, I felt afraid. Tony stared out the window.
“Guys, I think I better go home.”
J looked in the rearview mirror. “What, are you high? Nobody’s goin’ anywhere. We’re on a mission.”
“Huh?”
C said, “You ain’t going anywhere until this shit gets settled.”
“What shit?”
C reached down between his legs and picked up the paper bag. He opened it and took out a gun. “Here.”
I looked at the piece.
“Take it.”
Tony turned to look. We eyeballed each other.
C pushed the weapon into my hand. “It won’t bite.”
I took it. The handle felt big, rigid, and cold. I’d never held a gun before. C grabbed another one out of the bag and handed it to Tony.
“Here you go, little man.”
Tony looked at the gun. He looked at me. Then he reached for it.
I felt a cold sweat form. “What’re these for?”
C blew up the paper bag and popped it. Then he tossed it out of the window. “Froggy got a flat over here. Couple porch monkeys jumped him and beat his ass with his own car jack. You believe that shit?”
Froggy was another gang elder, an Italian who had the reputation of being stupid but quick. He got the nickname of Froggy for dodging bullets in front of a disco on Grand Avenue one night after closing, then dodging more bullets a week later while still holding his Italian beef in front of Pepe’s, just a few blocks away. As legend had it, Froggy never dropped the beef and actually ate it after the shooting was over.
J, the Mexican, said, “Them fucking coons put Froggy’s ass in Cook County. Doctors say he might never walk again.”
I felt the gun in my palm.
C cracked his knuckles and said the name of a black street gang. “You know we’ve always been at war wit them.”
I knew that. We were at war. We had always been at war. The country was in a Cold War with the Soviets, the Middle East was at war with itself, and our gang was at war with pretty much every black street gang in Chicago. We were also at war with the Puerto Rican gangs, the Mexican gangs, and most other white gangs. I just did not know how all the wars got started or what the wars were actually about. I said, “So what’re we supposed to do now, C?”
C rolled his eyes and the Italian came right out of him. “Maron, it’s so easy. You see a nigger, you point, you pull the trigger. You see another nigger, you point, you pull the trigger. Simple.” C made a gun with his thumb and forefinger, pointed it, and flicked his index finger to demonstrate just how easy it would be.
At that moment I was already a teenager. I understood that murder was not only illegal, but that it was immoral. I think I even knew that it was absurd, although I don’t remember now. In C’s universe Tony and I were ultimately spics, less than the dog shit on the bottom of your shoe, barely different from how he saw blacks or anybody else that wasn’t him. Why had Tony and I sided with C about anything? I don’t know.
I looked at Tony. Tony looked down at his gun. Nobody said another word until we arrived at our destination.
We rolled up on some projects, I won’t say which ones. J shut off the lights and cruised quietly up and down the streets until we got to the block he looked for.
C practically whispered: “All right, here we are, get out.”
I looked at C. “Why here?”
“This clique hangs up the block. We can’t just roll up on them in this thing, they’ll hear us.”
I said, “So what’s the plan?”
“Creep up on them until you get close. Then shoot.”
J threw the car into park. C and J looked at me. Tony kept his face toward his lap.
“Don’t worry,” said C. “Once you start capping, we’ll be right there to pick youse up.”
J said, “Don’t let go of the guns. Make sure you bring them back into the car. We’ll get rid of ’em later.”
Neither C nor J had anything else to say. The engine idled.
Finally, C leaned past me and opened my door. “Go on, Eddie. Earn those stripes.”
I looked at Tony. He had his back toward me. I exited the car, shut the door soft, walked around to the passenger side. My knees wobbled. Tony looked up with those big, sad eyes.
“You coming?”
Tony slouched like a tired old woman. C patted him on the back.
“Go on, little man.”
Tony opened the door, got out, and closed the door softer than I did.
J repeated his admonition about not losing the guns.
We walked down the dark, empty street, toward the courtyard. Up the street we heard music from a boom box, voices in an African-American Chicago accent, with its twinge of the South. Shouts and laughter echoed off concrete courtyard walls.
Tony and I crept across the street. We ground broken glass beneath our feet as we slithered and crouched behind parked cars to watch.
They were kids, all of them. Maybe thirteen to seventeen years of age. They wore their gang’s colors, and lurked late, but they looked no more sinister than our own crew. A few collected around a cardboard box set up as a table. They sat on milk crates and played cards near the wall. Others gathered around a piece of linoleum and break-danced.
I looked at Tony. His eyes watered. I wanted to cry, too, but held it in. I tapped Tony on the leg and whispered, “What’re we gonna do?”
Tony shrugged his shoulders. Snot dripped out of his nose.
I looked at the break-dancers. One of them did a move called “the Snake,” where he waved his entire body across the linoleum. It was Tony’s signature move; he had nearly perfected it. In a time of peace we might have joined those kids or maybe battled them on the dance floor as friendly rivals. I thought about C back in the basement, the way he pressed our dumbbells like they were made of aluminum foil.
“Tony, we gotta do it.”
He did not respond. I grabbed his chin. He looked at me. I showed him the gun in my right hand. He lifted his like it weighed fifty pounds.
I held up my left hand. Three fingers. Two fingers. One.
Headlights suddenly shone down the street, aborting our attack. A car turned onto the block and creeped in our direction. I put my hand on Tony’s shoulder and we froze. We watched the car roll to a complete stop in front of us, maybe ten feet away. It was an Electra 225—a “Deuce-and-a-quarter”—loaded with black men. The driver powered his window down.
One of the dancers stopped in mid–pop-lock and ran to the Electra.
The driver had a deep voice. “What up, shawty?”
“What y’all need?”
“Ten nics.”
“Dang, y’all finnin’ to get high’ ’an a muthafucka.”
He reached in his pants and counted out ten nickel bags.
The driver handed him the cash. “Stay up, shorty mac.”
“Aw’ight.”
The break-dancer hustled back. The Electra zoomed off. Tony and I were alone again.
I looked at him. There was no use waiting. I held up the three fingers again. Two fingers. One.
We crossed the street, entered the courtyard in short, quick steps. Most of the kids had their eyes on playing cards or dance moves on the linoleum. The music thumped. I pointed my gun toward the crowd of dancers and squeezed the trigger.
PAH!
The first blast was so loud, it kicked up my arm, stung my palm, and startled my eyes shut. I kept them half-closed as I gripped the handle, dropped the gun to position, and squeezed again.
PAH!
Somebody screamed.
PAH!
I heard glass break, more screams, and footsteps in a crazy pattern.
PAH! PAH! PAH!
I emptied the weapon and heard the echoes of the shots and terrified voices that fled as the music continued. I opened my eyes.
What I saw next will follow me to the Gates of Hell: two bodies. One kid facedown on the cardboard, his head surrounded by a fast-spreading halo of blood. Another kid, a card player, slumped against the brick wall. He still held his last hand, although he looked surprised, shot in the eye through the lens of his glasses. His homies had abandoned him at death’s door.
All except one.
The kid who sold the nickel bags to the Electra pulled his weapon from his waistband. He raised it and pointed it right at me.
Fire flashed out of the barrel as his first shot startled me, but missed. I didn’t think to squeeze, and it would not have mattered anyway, since my gun was empty. I began to turn, to run, but his second bullet caught me right in the side, by the ribs, so hot and stinging that I landed on my back. The kid pointed the gun out in front of him and flew toward me with eyes of rage.
POP-POP!
The avenger dropped out of the sky and landed on the concrete next to me, a carcass. His weapon landed useless at his side. I looked up. Tony held his gun with two shaking hands. Smoke plumed out of the barrel. Tony’s eyes were wide open. I realized instantly that I had not previously heard him fire a single shot.
The Impala screeched to a stop. C suddenly stood over me. He picked me up by the armpits, dragged me toward the car, and yelled at Tony to snap out of it. I remember thinking to hold on to the gun like J had said. They pulled me into the car. Blood was everywhere, wet and sticky. It pasted my flimsy T-shirt to my torso.
I was on my back in the backseat. J stopped the car on a bridge over the Chicago River and threw the guns over the rail. Even in my fever I heard the guns break the surface like turds in a toilet bowl. We took off again and the streetlights passed over me. I thought for sure that I was dying, and felt an odd acceptance about that as I drifted off.
It turned out that it was only a flesh wound. In and out, like an inoculation. I woke up in our basement hangout, stretched out on blankets. C treated the wound with alcohol, peroxide, and Mercurochrome, covered it with gauze, and it was fine. I was thirsty, dehydrated, but otherwise I was OK.
After that, mine and Tony’s rank went up. Nobody treated us like peewees anymore, not even C. Froggy came out of the hospital dependent on crutches for a while, but it was never as grave as everyone said. Worse was the fact that he wasn’t even sure that the gang we blasted was the one that beat his ass.
C bulged his neck muscles. “What the fuck are you saying, Froggy? Now you don’t know it was them?”
Froggy shrugged and bit into his Italian sausage. Tony and I avoided eye contact. C called Froggy a degenerate hard-on.
My mother and I eventually moved out of that neighborhood, to be with our own kind, Puerto Ricans, near Humboldt Park again. Tony ran away from the foster home and came to stay for a time in my room. He eventually returned to his birth mother’s house, which wasn’t too far away, and we began to hang and make ourselves part of a different, more notorious Puerto Rican gang. History and loyalty in Chicago street gangs sometimes only travels a certain number of blocks.
C and J continued their careers in crime. Each went back and forth to prison on different raps over the years, each time growing more powerful and corrupt. I’m not sure where either of them is right now, but they are not in prison and they are very dangerous to be around.
Froggy, of course, as the joke became, lost the spring in his step after the carjack beating. Somebody who had it in for him saw him leave the shoe store in a new pair of Chucky T Converse All Stars. They followed Froggy and unloaded before he could get to Pepe’s for a pizza puff. Every bullet found its mark. Froggy’s funeral was closed casket, but according to legend he was buried in his gleaming new All Stars.
Me and Tony? We only had to live with what we did. I committed murder. Tony killed a kid to save my life. It hung between us, unspoken. And even now, all these years later, I don’t think either one of us ever forgave me for it.