James

by Glenn Gamble

  ###

  As instructed, Bones sat on a park bench at Garfield Park waiting for a black Cadillac sedan to pick him up at noon. Not a second ticked pass 5:00 pm when a black Cadillac pulled in front of Bones. Next to him stood James who had grown four inches taller in the past year and a half. Jim, who sat in the backseat, instructed the limousine driver to open the rear passenger door on the right side. Another man sat in the front passenger seat. Jim’s driver let down the automatic back window.

  Bones started to draw his weapon, but James had already brandished his weapon. “I don’t think you wanna do that, B.”

  “You double crossed me,” Bones said.

  “Naw, man you know what it is,” James said. “Give me your gun and get in the fucking car.”

  ###

  They rode to an undisclosed warehouse, with James still holding a gun to Bones’ head, Jim on the opposite side. Now parked behind the warehouse, Jim ordered everyone to stay in the car. He and Bones got out. Jim instructed the men to give James a ride home, for he needed Bones to stay and supervise the warehouse. Both Jim and Bones walked to the loading dock, where Steve, Frank and Pete supervised the unloading of the trailers. Once they were on the dock, the overhead dock doors automatically lowered behind them.

  “How long are you gonna keep that gun on me?”

  “For as long as it takes for you to tell me why you were going to shoot me.”

  “Man, you crept up on me and I saw two other men in the car,” Bones explained. “I thought y’all were gonna do a drive by.”

  “Next time you do some shit like that, I’ll have Frank to kill you and Steve to eat the flesh off your bones.” Jim laughed.

  Bones returned a nervous laugh.

  “Jim, we got four truckloads,” Steve yelled.

  The two men walked to the trailer where Steve stood. “What we got?”

  “They got brown, green, white and pills too,” Steve whispered with excitement. “Jim, this is a dope dealer’s dream.”

  “Okay, we’ll figure out what to do with that later,” Jim said. “What else we got?”

  “We got two trailers full of guns.”

  “Pete gets both trailers.”

  “Jim, they only took—“

  “I said Pete gets two trailers.”

  “But I—“

  “Steve, I don’t care what side deal you made with whom. Pete better see these two trailers here tomorrow.”

  “I think we’ll take ‘em tonight,” Pete said.

  “Listen to me Pete. You need to get two semi-trucks with 40-foot trailers down here tomorrow morning. It’s too risky to pull these trailers tonight.”

  Bones listened attentively, eager to get the information that he knew back to Don once he figured a way out of this warehouse alive. He envisioned what his empire would look like once Steve, Frank and Jim were out of the picture. Jim had other plans.

  “I need you to remit payment for one-fourth the amount that you actually owe Don, and a body.”

  “What body?” Steve asked.

  “Watch out, Jim,” Pete shouted.

  Before Jim could react, Bones delivered a hard elbow to his ribs and threw loose dirt in Steve’s eyes before Frank approached. He decided that it would be smarter to outrun Frank’s fat ass than to face him. Bones ran out the warehouse toward a dark road. Steve, struggling to regain his composure, gave chase on foot.

  Jim lay on the ground clutching his ribs. “Pete, get the trailers out tonight.”

  “You need help, Jim?”

  “What the fuck do you think?”

  Pete helped Jim into the feeder truck, coupled his trailer and pulled off. A Cobra gang member coupled the second trailer and took off behind Jim and Pete. Frank and another gang member pulled the other two trailers. He took off in the direction Bones and Steve ran.

  ###

  Bones ran into a dark forest preserve, and Steve followed from a distance of 20 feet. Only a handful of cars in the parking lot –they were harmless. In some vehicles perverted men masturbated to porn displayed on their portable DVD players. One man in the lot stroked off to child porn. In other vehicles, teens were having sex in the backseat of their parents’ sedans. As he ran past those cars, Bones thought to himself that this would be a great place to hang out once he was out of harm’s way. Plenty of potential prey, he thought. First, he would have to escape Steve’s wrath. Bones continued to run across the grassy field until he no longer heard footsteps.

  He found a ditch hidden beneath a dense patch of trees; he hid there cursing himself for handing over his gun to James earlier. Bones crouched in a fetal position as he listened for the sounds of footsteps. Instead, he heard the sounds of frogs, owls, and garden snakes. The uneasy calm unnerved him. Bones was usually a calm, resourceful man, but never had he faced such a dangerous situation. Most of the harm that he’d inflicted had been under carefully planned, covert setups. He was always the wolf in sheep’s clothing as he assassinated his opponents unexpectedly. In reality, he had the heart of a mustard seed and now he was crossed into the uncharted territory of being the one who was being hunted under the dark autumn sky.

  Bones heard a sound; he flinched as some leaves rattled. The sound got closer and closer to the ditch. His life depended upon him making the right decision. Would he hide and hope that Steve didn’t find him, and risk being caught in a defenseless fetal position? Would he run aimlessly in an unfamiliar area? Sure he knew that he was in a forest preserve between Schaumburg and Buffalo Grove, Illinois, but how far was the other side of the forest preserve? What did it lead to? It didn’t matter, he heard that sound again. This time a quick rattle of the leaves echoed as he sat in that ditch defenseless. He decided to attack as the sound approached. Then, he felt something grab his left leg. Bones jumped straight up and used his right leg to kick in that direction. It was a rabbit, which escaped unscathed while his heart beat as if it could leap out of his chest.

  He was alone. No Don to protect him, and no Jim; just him, the woods, earth dwelling critters and his fears. Bones stayed in the ditch for a half hour. His heart rate had slowed down, the adrenaline had come and gone. Now it was time to get out of the woods. Only uncouth animals could survive out there he thought, but he planned a late-evening return to find a teen girl to fuck. Walking toward the parking lot, he envisioned the possibility of victimizing one of those comely teens. He loved jamming his extra medium dick into preteen and teen girls against their will. The more they fought, the more joy he felt in molesting them. His fantasy was interrupted by a hard tackled to the ground.

  Bones felt three crushing blows to his face.

  “You dumb fuck, you threw dust in my eyes.”

  “But—“

  “I see I can’t trust you.”

  “You were going to kill me.”

  “No fuck head, I was going to kill Jim, remember?”

  “That’s not how it looked in the warehouse,” Bones explained. “This gangbanger kid took my gun from me when Jim arrived and you all surrounded me.”

  “I should have known that you were nothing but a damn coward.”

  “We had no plan in place,” Bones shouted. “Jim just called me and told me to meet him at the park.”

  “He does that to everyone, that’s why you gotta think on your toes when it comes to Jim,” Steve shouted. “I couldn’t kill him in that warehouse because he had a bunch of guys with him that I’d never seen before.”

  “Jim always keeps an ace in the hole. He thinks that no one can get to him, but we can get to him.”

  “Bones, you’re gonna have to cool out for a while.”

  “You need to keep a lower profile than me. Of all people, you all pulled a heist on Don Carson. He’s got the mayor in his pocket. You know he’s the one who really got the power.”

  “All of that means nothing to Jim whenever someone crosses him. You’re on the top of his shit list right now.”

  “You l
isten to me, if you and I walk out of here with our deal still intact then we can get Jim out of our hair for good. See that heist he pulled. Jim will never get away with killing a bunch of made men. I’m going to give his ass up, where he lives, everything.”

  “Knowing Jim, that place no longer exists.”

  “My men were able to find his Memphis residence before,” Bones said. “We can find him again.”

  “Yeah, and the men who found him are fertilizing Tennessee’s soil.”

  “What are you saying, Steve?”

  “You better damn sure know what you’re doing when it comes to Jim.”

  “Once we get Jim out the picture, everything will be gravy, you’ll see.”

  “What about Don?”

  “Jim told you to send him a body, right?”

  Steve looked toward the parking lot; his blood boiled with anger. One car remained: the child porn guy. “Yeah?”

  Bones having now recovered his placidity said, “What are we waiting for?”

  “I gotta call Jessica.”

  “For what?”

  “To let her know that I’m bringing home dinner.”

  “We can’t make any stops.”

  “I know.”

  “Then—“

  “Don’t ask.” A sinister look surfaced.

  “Let’s get to it.”

  Chapter 9

  Don stayed awake all night trying to get in touch with his underboss and caporegimes also known as his captains. He instructed his consigliore to arrange an emergency meeting at Abbey’s Pub to determine who was involved in the heist and what to do about the snitches and the ones who actually pulled the heist. His consigliore called hourly to inform Don that he wasn’t able to get in touch after sending someone to call and visit their homes. After six hours had passed, Don’s worst fears came to fruition. All the mob captains were murdered courtesy of the 59th Street gang that James belonged to. This was worse than the heist. His captains were responsible for generating money through running drug, gambling, and prostitution rackets. The heist only shut down his warehouse, but murdering the captains would cripple his business as he envisioned foot soldiers killing each other to take the five vacant spots.

  He assumed that Jim was behind the massacre, but he wasn’t sure because Jim never had the muscle to pull off that kind of job. Not to mention that Jim was never known to be a gangster of any sort. In fact, Jim had a reputation for avoiding violence, but Don knew that he was capable of pulling off such a sophisticated crime provided that he had the resources. He was still unsure because Jim hadn’t done business in Chicago for over a year and he seemed to have no interest in his own business.

  Don respected Jim for delivering the south side vote the mayor needed during a tightly-contested election. He simply convinced the neighborhood drug dealers and gang leaders in each south side neighborhood that it was in their best interest to initiate a voter registration drive and to carpool the elderly to the polls. In exchange for his services, Jim brokered a deal where he received a large sum of money and an agreement where he wouldn’t cannibalize his gambling racket for as long as his business remained south of Bridgeport. Occasionally, Jim would pay Don a commission to collect unpaid debts, and use his connections with the mayor to have the police department do surprise drug busts on the gangs who leaned on him to pay for protection. Don knew that he was smart. He saw Jim as a capable underboss, but he wasn’t Irish and the captains and soldiers would resent him for not making his bones in Don’s family.

  Jim wouldn’t have taken his offer anyway. He detested prostitution and dope, despite having baited and switched many dope dealers himself, but he saw that as more of a con than actual drug dealing. He would get someone to rob the biggest neighborhood distributors one at a time, usually a dealer from another side of town. Most of these dealers bought drugs in large quantities on consignment. Usually a day after the robbery, Jim, Steve and Frank would break into the dealer’s house, strip him down naked, tie him up, and say that someone ordered them to kill him. Steve would fire up a blow torch for added effect. He’d tell the dealer that he could either carry out the hit and collect the kill fee, or he could pay for protection on a weekly basis and live. Every dealer chose the latter, and all of the dealers revealed that they owed money to their supplier. He took care of those favors out of his cut from the robbery. The dealer who committed the robberies made a lot of money (free drugs to sell, all profit) and Jim made even more money providing false protection. The ones who stopped paying got raided. He paid a third party to snitch the dealer out.

  Jim never needed Don, for he made plenty of money on dogs, ponies, sports, cards, craps, roulette and shylocking. Jim, however, did not have the same muscle as Don because his organization was smaller than Don’s. His ability to think his way out of potential turf wars enabled him to do more with less which is what Don respected from afar. After contemplating the possibilities, Don took a three-hour nap before being awakened by two of his own men.

  “Don, you should take a look at this package.”

  “Then what the hell am I paying you two for?”

  “It has a note in there.”

  Don snatched the note and read aloud, “I have remitted payment for our previous loan. This makes us even. Regards, SSS.” He looked at the package. It was a trunk with a suitcase on top and the mutilated body of the pervert on the bottom, hacked to pieces. The suitcase contained only one-fourth of the money owed. This unnerved Don, but now he knew that the package came from SSS –South Side Steve. It was now time for his underboss to figure out who his new captains would be.

  Jim Returns to Memphis

  Chapter 10

  Carla flipped through the channels, and then stopped at CNN. The leading story caught her attention. Twenty-four killed in a massacre at a warehouse in Chicago. Don Carson gave his statement and so did the mayor of Chicago. Jim walked in the door shortly after.

  “Jim, tell me you weren’t involved in this.”

  “Carla, turn the TV off.”

  “How could you?”

  “Carla, don’t ask me about my business.”

  “You cold-hearted bastard, how could you?”

  “I told you not to ask about my business.”

  “We have a child on the way and you’re out here killing people.”

  “Carla, do you think I want to do this?” Jim shouted. “I had no fucking choice.”

  “Sure you did, Jim. You could have not gone to Chicago. You could have told those guys thanks, but no thanks. You could have just stayed here with me. Now your life’s in danger. Don’t you understand that?”

  “More than you know, but I do what I have to do.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “I don’t expect you to, dear.”

  “You are a very smart guy. You can be anything you want to be and you chose to kill people.”

  “That’s enough,” Jim shouted. “I don’t want to hear another word from you. I told you before that I’m going to do things that you won’t like to serve a bigger purpose. I told you I needed you to trust me.”

  “I do trust you.”

  Jim shot a cold stare into Carla’s eyes. “Don’t insult my intelligence. If you don’t want to be with me, that’s fine, leave. I don’t want you to, but I understand if you choose to do so.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Jim. I want you to see our child grow up. I want you to be at the graduation. Jim, I need you to be a father and raise your son into a real man.”

  Jim’s heart softened. “It’s only been a few weeks. How do you know it’s a boy?”

  She embraced Jim. “I just know.”

  He hugged her, tears silently streamed down his face. “I love you, Carla.”

  “I love you, too, Jim.”

  “You scared me Carla.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought you were going to leave me.”

  “No Jim, I need you. I
get so scared for you every time you go to Chicago. It’s safer in Afghanistan than it is there.”

  “It sure seems that way.”

  “I just can’t understand how I can scare you, but Don Carson doesn’t.”

  “Because I’ll walk to Don Carson, hand him my weapon and let him kill me right on the spot if you were to ever walk away from me.”

  “Jim, you’re really a softie.”

  “So is your booty.”

  She giggled. “You like me even if I’m preggy?”

  They kissed. “Yes, even if you are preggy.”

  “And here I thought I would have to go nine months without.”

  Jim guided her hand down where he wanted it. “Does this feel like I can wait nine months?”

  “Jim, you mannish boy!”

  ###

  Carla laid her head on Jim’s chest as he stroked her long, thick hair. She was beautiful, and he pinched himself to make sure that he was really this lucky. Carla kissed his chest and smiled to herself. She knew that Jim wasn’t perfect, but none of that matter. For the first time she felt like she had her man all to herself.

  “Jim, I want to lie like this until we get old.”

  “Okay, we must promise that we will never start smoking cigarettes.”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Jim,” Carla whispered. “They’re going to come after you.”

  “No they won’t,” Jim said. “But Steve is going to get killed.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He’s desperate for money, so I loaned him some money to get the games back running. I gave up my control of the south side to him.”

  “I can’t believe you would do such a thing.”

  “I thought you wanted me out.”

  “I do, but I don’t believe that you laid down to him.”

  “Steve is still facing an appeal for assaulting that child molester. If his conviction isn’t overturned, he’ll be in the penitentiary for 10 years.”