The Poe Consequence

by Keith Steinbaum

  In the ten years since jumping into the Diablos, Face had survived the wars. At twelve-years-old, he got educated fast and without mercy. He proved a quick learner, and soon he started delivering the punishment instead. An eye for an eye—that’s just the way life is in the jungle. The last couple of months, however, instilled within him another fact of life: he’d grown tired of the jungle.

  Face understood the impossibility of controlling a lot of shit that went down in the Diablos, including recruiting thirteen and fourteen-year-old wannabes. Anxious to prove themselves, some of these kids didn’t make it to their next birthday. During those ten months at the correctional facility, lying on his cot in the darkness, Face had plenty of time to think about those dead kids and how lucky he’d been so far. For him, a tough, street-wise gangbanger raised in a war zone, a truce needed declaring between his present life and future dreams. The time to leave the gang approached, but not until meting out retaliation for Stoner and Tick and getting satisfying answers about the deaths of Cherry and Player.

  His mother walking out from the kitchen interrupted his gloomy thoughts.

  “I’m cooking menudo,” she said. “Your favorite. Are you hungry?”

  Keeping his eyes on the TV screen, Face muttered, “Yeah, I can eat.”

  “Are you going out tonight?” she asked.

  “Yeah, don’t know how long.”

  Face turned his head to look at his mother as she headed back into the kitchen, his emotions as drab as a morning fog. She made him wanna puke whenever he thought about the beatings he took from his father, and how she sniveled in the corner, too afraid to say or do anything. He’d never forgive her for not being there when he needed her most.

  Before he drank himself to death, his old man pissed away any money he had on booze, bitches, and gambling. When his luck went south, the usual direction, he took his frustrations out on Face. His sister escaped most of that shit because she was smart and went to school and got good grades, unlike her “stupid shit of a brother.” That’s who and what he was to the old man: “a stupid shit” of a brother. And “a stupid shit” of a son. “I’m gonna kick your ass, you stupid shit!” he shouted. “Don’t waste your time helping that stupid shit.” “Don’t talk to your mother like that, you stupid shit.” When Face argued with his mother, his father defended her and came after him, but his mother didn’t escape his father’s outbursts either. Sometimes he slapped her so hard he heard the smacking sound from the other room. He detested his mother’s weakness. Her few, pitiful attempts to protect him from the beatings remained in his memory like a foul, lingering odor, and although his father died a couple of years ago, Face’s resentment toward his mother remained strong.

  When his sister tried to intervene to stop their father from hitting him, she got hurt, too. Face never forgot how she dared to protect her little brother during those years, and he vowed to return the favor as long as he lived. But after his first incarceration, he returned home too late. The damage had been done.

  When his father died, Face had to admit he detected a certain change for the better in his mother. She seemed more outgoing, and made friends with other women in the neighborhood, something his old man had discouraged. He also acknowledged his mother’s attempts to reach out to him, unlike before, but he compared these late efforts to someone trying to start an unused engine. He wasn’t sure there was a spark left in the battery.

  With all his resentment, however, Face possessed something for which he gave her complete credit: His gift. Without that, he knew for damn sure he’d never be here today on his twenty-second birthday. His mother passed something on from her family genes and blessed him with the extraordinary ability to foresee approaching danger. The first time he experienced the vision, he had no idea what it meant.

  * * *

  He was nine-year old Alejandro, playing soccer with the next-door neighbor and trying to smash his face in with the hardest kick of his life. He wanted to give that mama’s boy a going-away present to remember him by before the kid moved. But the ball sailed wide of the mark, past the “For Lease” sign in the boy’s front yard, and into the street. Alejandro realized that if he lost the boy’s ball and his father bought him a new one, he’d make Alejandro pay the price with a beating. He fantasized rolling away like the escaping soccer ball, rushing further and further into the distance as he searched for a place to hide.

  “My ball!” the boy screamed in pursuit. “I’m gonna lose my ball!”

  Alejandro straggled behind, pausing to admire the longest kick he’d ever achieved—until the image of his angry father got him going. He lived halfway up a hill, so there wasn’t a chance they’d retrieve the ball until it flattened out at the road below. He felt relieved as he watched the ball lodge near the back tire of a white pickup truck parked across the street.

  “You’re an asshole, Alejandro!” the neighbor shouted, trying to catch his breath at the corner, his hands on his knees.

  “Shut up, you idiot. You’ll get your ball back.”

  “Fuck you!” he screamed, his middle finger waving in the air.

  Alejandro looked on as the boy waited for several cars to pass before stepping off the curb. “I’m glad you’re movin’ away, you stupid ass,” he muttered. As he looked back to see how far they’d run, Alejandro felt a sudden lightheadedness that made his legs wobble and his eyes burn. Trying to blink the odd sensation away, he visualized a strange and powerful image of a red Thunderbird speeding toward the boy. Nearby noises from the neighborhood dissolved into the unmistakable screech of tires echoing between his ears.

  Alejandro broke into an uncertain jog, coming to a halt at the curb. He gazed at his surroundings but saw nothing unusual as the boy approached the back of the pickup, crouching low with his hand outstretched. In the next instant the truck started up and zoomed off like a bullet, forcing him to straighten and leap back into the street as a red Thunderbird emerged, barreling around the corner straight toward him. Alejandro knew he had to act fast. He sprinted toward the boy and crashed into him like a linebacker, sending the two of them tumbling onto the sidewalk. Alejandro turned his head in time to see the car speed past the spot where they’d been seconds before. The high-pitched sound of burning rubber signaled the car’s adios. As he lay his head back to ponder what had just happened, the moment alerted him to another type of sound.

  “Aaah shit! Shit! I’m hurt! Aaah aaah!...” Alejandro stared in astonishment as the boy rolled on the ground, covering his face with his hands. Blood seeped through his fingers and down his arm.

  “I’ll get you back for this, you fuckin’ asshole!”

  “That car was gonna hit you!”

  “Bullshit! Aaah aaah!” The boy tried to sit up, but couldn’t rise further than halfway, forced to lie flat again.

  Alejandro whipped off his tee shirt and handed it to him to help with the bleeding. A woman who observed what had happened ran out to help. She asked who to call, but the bleeding boy didn’t know where to locate either parent. Alejandro knew his father had gone somewhere with the car, but at least his mother was home and she’d know what to do. She arrived with her friend, Mrs. Ortega, who drove them to the clínica in her own car.

  Alejandro’s father didn’t have to buy a new soccer ball after all, but the neighbor’s angry mother told them, “they better pay every fuckin’ cent” of the money she dished out for the visit, stitches, and medicine. His father didn’t argue, believing his son completely responsible. “You’re a lying, stupid shit!” he shouted when Alejandro explained what happened. As his mother wept and his sister tried without success to shield him, Alejandro remained on his bedroom floor, bruised and whimpering, for much of the night.

  The next incident occurred later that summer, when Alejandro accompanied his mother to the market.

  “Go get me two onions, Alex,” she told him. “They’re near the back.”

  “What do you want ‘em for?” he asked, preferring to look through the cereal section instead.<
br />
  “Híjole, boy, I need them for dinner tonight. Burritos con carne y queso. Your father likes lots of onions with his meat and cheese. Now go.”

  Alejandro turned the corner toward the section with vegetables and fruit, then stopped and stared as a man and woman stood kissing and rubbing their hands over each other’s bodies near the onion bin. Two little kids ran around their legs in circles, laughing and pointing. As he waited for them to leave, the woman looked at the children, smiled, and resumed kissing the man. Alejandro hesitated, unsure what to do. Out of nowhere, a similar sensation to the one he experienced when he saved his neighbor from the speeding car overtook him, and an alarming, bloody image of a man shooting the people in front of him appeared like a movie in his mind. Hearing loud screams and gunshots in his head, he hurried back, frightened, to his mother.

  “Mama, something bad’s gonna happen!” he shouted. “I saw it!”

  Alejandro’s mother stared at her son in silence. Leaning down, she whispered into his ear, “Quiet down. What did you see? Tell me quick.”

  Lowering his voice, he looked into her troubled eyes. “I saw people over there getting shot at. There was lots of blood, too. And I heard screaming.”

  Abandoning the food in her cart, his mother grabbed his hand, pulling him hard as they rushed out. Walking at a speedy pace through the parking lot and across the street, Alejandro spotted a man running from a parked car into the market. They had gone halfway up the block when gunshots reverberated in the distance, followed by a lady’s scream that brought Alejandro’s mother to tears. “Hurry!” she shouted, tightening her grip.

  By the time they arrived home, the wail of sirens had already sounded and stopped. His mother turned on the television, found a news station, and told Alejandro to sit. The eventual announcement of a breaking news special report led to a reporter interviewing a grocery clerk explaining with great difficulty how a man ran into the market and started shouting at the woman before shooting her and the man she was with. He broke down as he described the scene with “blood everywhere.” Alejandro and his mother watched in silence as crying customers, police cars, and ambulances appeared on the screen. When the reporter concluded his story, she turned off the television and looked at Alejandro.

  “I want to ask you something,” she said. “What you saw in the market, was it like the day with the car? Did you see something that wasn’t happening yet?” Alejandro nodded. Making the sign of the cross, she said, “Now I know for sure.”

  Alejandro didn’t understand. “Know what?” he asked.

  As her eyes filled with tears, she looked more serious than he could ever remember. “Before I tell you anything, promise me, promise me that you’ll keep this a secret between you and me. Your sister doesn’t need to know, and your father will only get angry, do you understand?

  “I understand, Mama,” he replied, as confused as he could remember.

  She smiled and paused a bit before continuing. “You were born with something special,” she said. “In my family, a boy from every other generation has been blessed with this gift.” Reaching for his hand, she added, “That means you, Alejandro.”

  “What gift?” he asked.

  “You never knew your grandfather, but he also saw things like you do. My mother told me in the Mexican village where he lived, he was respected and known by everybody. Miners would give him money to go with them, to make sure they’d be able to escape trouble.”

  “You mean he could see what was gonna happen?”

  “He knew when danger was coming,” she replied. “More than once he saw the mine collapsing before it really did.” Lowering her head and closing her eyes for several moments, she took a long, slow breath before looking up at him. “That’s why you saw the car. And the shootings.”

  Alejandro blinked back tears. “I don’t like seeing all those scary things, Mama. Make it stop.”

  She leaned forward and placed his hand in hers. “I can’t,” she told him. “But as you grow older you’ll learn to live with the power and use it to help you. Just like your grandfather.”

  In the ensuing years, their shared secret did nothing to lessen his animosity toward his mother. Her bullshit about his father having once been a decent man didn’t mean a damn thing because he’d only known a different reality. On Face’s sixteenth birthday, however, a new, permanent reality emerged. When his sister and mother presented him with a chocolate cake after dinner, his old man, drunk as usual, flipped the cake high into the air, causing it to land in a flattened mess on the floor. His laughter and sneer of superiority shattered Face’s control, and despite the screams from his mother and sister to stop, the years of his pent-up anger and pain unleashed themselves in a flurry of punches, breaking his father’s nose, blackening his eye, and bloodying his face. At six feet tall, possessing a body made tough and muscular by conscious effort and a street fighter’s education, Face sent an unmistakable message of contempt notifying his father that the days of fucking with his son were over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lieutenant Atkinson sat on the chair outside Captain Dean’s office and placed the two sheets of paper on the nearby table. Moments later, he picked them up again to evaluate something else. In the next few minutes he’d show Dean his findings, and he wanted to make sure the information contained no inaccuracies or overlooked data. Here they were, the updated names and dates of death of all the North Rampart Lobos and Alvarado Street Diablos who had died since the first reported heart attack a little over four months ago. Something about the impersonal finality of the dead from a computer printout made the situation seem even gloomier. One column contained the list of victims murdered through the usual fashion—guns, knives, and lethal complications caused by various types of beatings. The other included gang members dead from heart failure.

  Having compiled all the names, Atkinson counted and recounted them for the same reason a driver slows down to look at a car wreck: perverse fascination with tragedy. The total of thirty still caused the same numbing sensation from the night before when he made his discovery after cross-referencing the deaths with their respective dates. The “murdered” column listed thirteen dead gang members. The “heart failure” column recorded seventeen names. But in actuality, as Atkinson now realized, the numbers from both columns equaled each other. That brought a whole new light to the heart attacks.

  “Come in, Carl,” Dean said, opening the door. “Sorry for the delay, but the Mayor kept me on the phone to praise me for the kick-ass job he thinks I’m doing.”

  Atkinson heard the sarcasm in Dean’s voice and decided to skip right to the point. “I’ve pieced something together you might find interesting, Captain,” he said. “Take a look at this.”

  Atkinson handed him the first of the two sheets. Dean sat in his chair and studied the information, tilting his head in a slight, almost imperceptible manner while using his finger to guide his eyesight along the two columns.

  “Thirteen gang members murdered and thirteen heart attacks occurring the day after,” he said. Doesn’t take an Einstein to see when this guy strikes. But there have been a total of seventeen heart attacks, not thirteen. If we’re looking for a tit for tat, that discrepancy puzzles me.“

  “I think I have the answer on this other page,” Atkinson said, handing him the paper. “Maybe the murder victim doesn’t have to be a gang member for the heart attacks to occur.”

  “There’s four names on this list,” Dean said, scanning the sheet. “Are you telling me these deaths are linked to those four extra heart attacks?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Dean read the names out loud. “Warren Palmer, April twenty-eighth. Alfredo Valenzuela, May first. Gregorio Plata, June twenty-fourth. Reynaldo Cisneros, July fourteenth.” He shook his head. “Palmer’s murder seems like an eternity ago. Killed in the parking lot of the same store on the same night Alfredo Valenzuela was shot. Palmer died in two minutes, Valenzuela in two days.” He recited the other two names. “Reynaldo Cisn
eros. Gregorio Plata. If there’s a relationship there, I don’t know what it is.”

  Atkinson stared over Dean’s shoulder at the names. “I don’t believe there has to be a relationship, Captain. These two men were a couple of innocent victims, like Mr. Palmer and Mr. Valenzuela, and they were killed in the same neighborhood.”

  “And there’s our fifty-fifty split,” Dean said, nodding like a bobble-head doll. “An eye for an eye all the way down the line.”

  Atkinson took the first sheet from Dean’s desk, reviewing several of the names and dates. “You’d think that at least a few of these street-smart gangbangers could have escaped their fate, or at least delayed it,” he said. “When I first put this list together, I had no idea what these dates would come to mean. I started off with the earliest one and went from there. Warren Palmer, shot and killed on April twenty-eighth. On April twenty-ninth, just a few hours afterwards, Rafael Carranza died of a heart attack. Alfredo Valenzuela, shot on April twenty-ninth, died on May first. The next day, May second, a member of the North Rampart Lobos, Jose Leyva, died of a heart attack. On May twenty-ninth, another Lobo, Omar Rodriguez, was shot and killed. On May thirtieth, a member of the Alvarado Street Diablos, Rodolfo Crespo, died of a heart attack.”

  “So now you had three killings and three heart attacks, each pair within twenty-four hours of each other,” Dean said. “Is that when the alarm bells went off?”

  “Let’s just say those bells weren’t ringing loud yet,” he answered. “My thoughts centered more on the whole question of why gang members were suddenly getting heart attacks.”

  “Fair enough,” Dean replied.

  “The next one opened my eyes to a possible pattern developing,” Atkinson said. “Come the fifth one, I knew I’d stumbled onto something. It suddenly became very clear.”