Jefferson thought of his friend Eastland and smiled bitterly. Maybe Eastland was right, but it was a hard truth to swallow. Easy going Eastland said there wasn’t one fucking thing that could be done about The System. Vietnam was just another version of the South Bronx, Eastland always said. Vietnam didn’t have to happen, but it did; Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, remote as Martians from ordinary life, allowed it to happen. Eastland said the whole world stank—and what else was new? Eastland said all a man could do was try to make his own clean corner in the dirty world and hold fast to the few friends he had. All else was shit.
“Work your day and draw your pay,” was the rule Eastland lived by, or said he did. “Save your money and get the hell out of the South Bronx,” was Eastland’s advice to married men like Michael Jefferson. “And if you don’t make it, see that your children do.”
All this was Eastland’s considered opinion, especially after a few beers. Eastland had nothing to say about himself, and there were times when Jefferson thought that his friend had given up on himself. The war had done things to Eastland that he didn’t want to talk about; inside his head, he seemed to have become a drifter, taking life one day at a time. Sure as hell he had no great hope of ever reforming the world.
Gus Myers sat at his desk and watched the two mobsters through the glass panels that separated the office from the hallway. The bodyguard opened the door and held it open so the boss man, Damico, could come in. The day wasn’t hot but Damico had a sheen of sweat on his jowly face. It wasn’t nervous sweat, just the sweat of a man who ate too much. No one spoke as Damico walked over to Gus Myers’ desk; the newly organized Mob was increasingly security conscious, ever aware that the feds sometimes planted bugs without a businessman’s permission.
The Mob knew that Myers was all right; they ran periodic checks on all their clients; had their backgrounds thoroughly investigated. They knew if a man showed signs of mental derangement, had inoperable cancer, talked of suicide, or got religion. All such men were a danger to the Mob; there was no telling what a desperate man or a crazy man might do.
Damico didn’t even nod at Myers as he opened the briefcase already half-filled with bundles of money exactly like the one on the desk. Myers handed Damico the $1000 and he put it with the rest after he counted it quickly but carefully. Twenty fifty-dollar bills didn’t take much counting; the rule was nothing larger than a fifty, and nothing smaller. To Damico, money was time, so it had to be fifties.
Before he closed the briefcase Damico made a notation in a small notebook. Then he picked up the briefcase and went out with the bodyguard trailing after him. The transaction had taken no more than three minutes—and Gus Myers was $1000 poorer.
“Next year in Jerusalem,” Gus Myers said, putting the pay envelopes in his pocket. “Next week in the South Bronx.” Before he went out to pay the men he picked up the revolver and put it in his inside pocket.
Gus Myers gave a sour smile. A man couldn’t be too careful in this neighborhood. He might even get robbed.
Gus Myers had no system for giving the men their pay envelopes; he paid them where he found them, and the first man he saw was Michael Jefferson pushing a cart piled high with boxes along the covered platform that ran along the front of the warehouse. Myers caught up with Jefferson when he had to stop because people at an outdoor produce stand were blocking the way. Jefferson turned when Myers called him.
“Here you go, Michael,” Myers said, handing him the envelope. “This week there’s a little raise. You’re a good worker, Michael. I wish it could be more.”
“Thanks, Mr. Myers,” Jefferson said. They shook hands and Myers went on to pay the next man he found.
Jefferson was still waiting to get through when he saw Damico’s Cadillac coming back from making the last collection at the end of the market. The driver blasted the horn and men were quick to get out of the way. If it had been any other car, even a police car, they would have moved like they had lead in their asses, and they might have given the driver the finger and said things about his mother. But they knew this was Mister Damico’s car, and that made all the difference. The tough men moved, the scared ones jumped. But it made no difference how they moved—they moved. Men drinking coffee at a lunch wagon looked after the Caddy.
Jefferson grinned when Eastland walked up to him. There was blood on Eastland’s white meat worker’s coat; even his safety helmet was splattered with blood.
“How did the operation go, Dr. Kildare?” Jefferson said, smiling at his friend. It was a feeble joke but they liked it.
“I’m going to keep trying till I get it right,” Eastland said. “How you doing, Michael?”
“I been better and I been worse, my man.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Nothing a cup of coffee won’t cure,” Jefferson said. “You want some coffee?”
Eastland said, “I wondered what they called that stuff. Why not? We live but once.”
Jefferson slapped the push bar of the cart. “Push this down to Stall 34 and I’ll treat.”
“A deal,” Eastland said, grabbing the push bar and clearing a way through the crowd. An old woman with the face of a dragon cursed him in some language he could only guess at. Maybe Arabic or Albanian. He gave her a good-natured smile that made her madder.
In a minute Eastland came to the familiar place in the platform where the boards were warped and he had to push like a bastard to get the cart over the bump. He still had a way to go when from down the platform, he heard a sharp sound like the detonation of a small caliber bullet. He wasn’t sure what the sound was until he saw a pair of bolt cutters sticking out of the trunk of a souped up Chevy in front of Stall 34. The words GHETTO GHOULS were lettered in day-glo paint on the side of the car. Leaving the cart, Eastland started to run when he saw that the overhead door of Stall 34 had been raised.
Eastland came into the stall, stacked high with cases of beer, and two street hoods turned to face him, their dark eyes sleepy with casual contempt. It had taken a lot of uppers and downers, hash and coke and maybe heroin, to give them eyes like that. They looked at him with cases of beer in their hands.
Eastland walked forward, then stopped. “What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Before he could move or say anything else, a sinewy arm wrapped itself around his throat in a mugger’s hold and a switchblade snapped open. The point of the long blade came up under his chin, and for the first time since Nam he felt himself close to death. There was no pain as the blade pricked the soft skin of his throat.
The knifer’s voice was soft and sneering. It was the voice of a sadist—a sadist with a slightly Spanish accent.
“You got a problem, buddy?” the knifer said.
“Behind you, Smiley,” one of the other Ghouls called out, the one with the earring, the missing teeth and the cowboy hat. The lettering on his jacket said his name was Shimmy.
“Have no fear, Super Spade,” the other Ghoul chimed in. This one’s name was Paco, and he looked like a circus freak who lifted weights and worked out at the gym. He gave an amphetamine giggle and they started forward.
The knifer moved Eastland around until they were facing Michael Jefferson who stood in the doorway holding two containers of coffee. Outside the din of the market continued, but to Eastland it seemed to come from far away. Often in a firefight in Nam it had been like that: the thoughts in your head were louder than anything else.
Michael Jefferson didn’t raise his voice; his voice was that of a civilized man trying to talk sense to savages. It was slow and careful, completely free of antagonism.
“I advise you to leave that beer where it is,” Jefferson said. “You with the knife, I advise you to put it away.”
Jefferson didn’t get a chance to say anything else. The one called Smiley tripped Eastland and sent him sprawling to the floor. Cutting the air with the switchblade, Smiley moved toward Jefferson. Eastland got up to face the other two Ghouls.
Smile
y stopped a few feet from Jefferson, the blade ready to work on the throat or the belly. He looked at Jefferson and what he saw appeared to amuse him.
“You advise,” he sneered. “That’s a pretty big word for a nigger. You don’t mind if I call you a nigger, nigger. I mean, it ain’t like you ain’t a big black ugly nigger.”
Smiley screamed as Jefferson threw black coffee in his face, blinding him for an instant. Before he had time to recover, Jefferson karate kicked him in the chest, lifting him off the floor with the force of the kick. Smiley soared and fell, knocking over cases of beer. Jefferson kicked him in the face when he tried to get up.
The other Ghouls came at Eastland from both sides. He got a hold on Paco and wrestled him to the floor. By then the other one was on his back, trying to strangle him. Bright lights flashed in his head as the pressure on his throat increased. Then, suddenly, the weight was lifted from his back, and the Ghoul screamed as Jefferson ran him across the floor and slammed his head into a concrete pillar. The Ghoul bounced off the pillar and Jefferson threw him into a stack of beer cases.
Eastland was hammering his fists into Paco’s face when Jefferson pulled him away. Paco’s head rolled to one side.
“Don’t kill the poor lad,” Jefferson said. “You’re going to have his social worker on your ass, you keep beating on him like that. What say we get rid of these turkeys and get this place cleaned up.”
It was close to quitting time when they put Smiley behind the wheel of the car, the other Ghouls, in the trunk. A few men saw what they were doing and walked away quickly. In the markets the D and D rule applied, just like it did on the docks. You saw nothing, you heard nothing, you said nothing.
The goons in the trunk were still out cold, but Smiley was coming out of the fog. Jefferson popped a can of beer and poured it over Smiley’s head. Some of it ran into his mouth and that made him vomit on the expensive tape deck set into the dashboard. He was bent forward racked by dry heaves when Jefferson reached in and jerked him upright by his long greasy hair. There was grease on his hand when he took it away. He wiped it on Smiley’s jacket.
“Somebody ought to tell this kid about the Dry Look,” Jefferson said.
“Some fucking kid,” said Eastland. “This guy is well into his twenties.”
Face smeared with vomit, Smiley turned to look at Jefferson, who was closer than Eastland. Smiley’s dark eyes burned with mindless hate; he seemed to be photographing Jefferson with his eyes.
“Home to Momma,” Jefferson said. Then he doubled his fist to show Smiley how big and hard it was. “I advise you to stay the fuck away from here. Come around again and you’ll leave in the morgue wagon.”
Smiley’s eyes remained fixed on Jefferson’s face. “How come you don’t call the cops?”
“Cops would come if we called them,” Jefferson said. “Probably they would. The thing is, Smiley, we don’t need the cops. Take off, you slimy son of a bitch.”
Smiley turned the key in the ignition and the hyped-up engine roared to life. Under the hood the motor throbbed like a caged beast. Smiley paused with his hand on the shift.
“You been saying my name like a dirty word,” the boss Ghoul said softly. “Your name, I don’t know your name. That’s all right. I can find out, you know. One of these days, you know, I’ll be seeing you. When I do that karate shit won’t do you any good.”
The car took off burning rubber.
“That Smiley is one hell of a sweet guy,” Jefferson said after they put a new padlock on the door of the stall. “The other night I saw one of those made-for-TV movies and there was a sweet kid like Smiley in it. Course, you know, this kid didn’t start off sweet in the flick. Ricky, his name was, was into some light to medium shit. A little mugging, a touch of dope dealing, that kind of thing.”
“You’re making this up,” Eastland said. They were on their way to the subway.
“No such thing,” Jefferson said. “It became obvious to me that old Ricky was headed for life in prison if he didn’t shape up. Ricky laughed at this idea till a bad guy, a really bad guy, from a rival gang killed a cop and Ricky got blamed for it. So the cops, mad as hell, are hunting him on the highways and byways, as they say. The only person who believes in Ricky’s innocence is this lovely blond sociologist just down from some New England school with ivy on the walls.”
“This is a terrible movie,” Eastland said.
“You’re spoiling the suspense. Anyway, listen to what happened. Ricky and Kathy, that’s the blonde’s name, go looking for the bad man that did the job on the cop. They chase him in Ricky’s hotrod—every movie has to have a car chase, right—and after they knock down half the city they corner the guy and Ricky whacks the truth out of him. By the time the cops get there Ricky has the meanie all trussed up.”
They reached the subway entrance and the wind blowing up the trash littered steps was like the bad breath of a dragon. An elderly man sat on the steps reading a trash can copy of Playboy.
“Does Ricky go to jail in the movie?” Eastland asked. “I mean, does he have to do a little time to atone for his sins? And while he’s doing a little time does the blonde wait for him, so she can encourage him to go to night school and become a credit to his community?”
Michael Jefferson frowned. “You don’t listen, Eastland. I said this was a new movie. All Ricky gets is a suspended and probation. That’s how it works these days.”
Eastland wasn’t smiling now. “You think Smiley will ever go to jail? You think any of the Ghouls will ever go to jail?”
Jefferson took out a handful of change and searched for a subway token. They went through the turnstile to the platform. Two short transit cops with long hair and droopy mustaches stood close by, watching for fare cheaters.
“Smiley’s been in a jail,” Jefferson said. “But never for long. There’s no such thing as a bad boy, did you know that? You see, my man, the judges we have don’t like to throw a kid like Smiley in with hardened criminals, the theory being that jail only makes them worse.”
“Makes a lot of sense when you explain it. Be a shame to throw Smiley in jail for ten years and make him do every minute of it.”
“I’ll make a liberal out of you yet,” Jefferson said. The local train was pulling in.
But somehow their smiles faded when they thought of Smiley and the Ghouls. Eastland put it into words.
“Watch yourself, Michael,” Eastland said. “Watch yourself all the time.”
CHAPTER 2
Michael Jefferson’s heart always beat a little faster when he got close to home. That was where his wife and daughters lived. It was as simple as that. What he would do without them he didn’t know. Well yes, he did—and that was simple too. Every day of his life, Michael Jefferson counted himself lucky because he had what he had, and no matter how bad it got on the outside, and it could get pretty bad at times, always there was home.
Home was the rock on which Michael Jefferson built his life; his refuge in an ever hostile world. Except for Eastland he had no friends, and didn’t need any. But John Eastland was more than a friend; they had come through hell together, and that made all the difference. Eastland was part of his past; a past so terrible that even now there were times when he woke up in the dark hours and for a moment it was hard to realize that he wasn’t back in Nam, waiting to go out to be killed. And then he would feel the warmth of his wife’s body beside him, or he would hear his children stirring in the other room. But even then, for a while, the feeling would persist. At such times he knew he was going to be all right, even though he winced at the thought of another day slinging crates around the goddamned market.
The late Thirties apartment in which they lived was better than most in the South Bronx. Nothing could be done about the row of mailboxes that were always being ripped off by enterprising young men from the neighborhood. Most of the younger tenants like the Jeffersons got their mail via General Delivery; the people in trouble were the old, the ones who couldn’t get around so good, or not at
all. In the South Bronx waiting for a Social Security check was like betting the races once a month; you might be a winner, or you might not. When you got ripped off, you applied to the Welfare Department for emergency funds. Meanwhile, you starved or dined on delicious dog food, the kind that looks like hamburger but is made of horsemeat. There was a lot of protein in horsemeat, it was said.
The super was mopping the hall when Jefferson came in. A weird old Jew who spoke Spanish with a Yiddish accent. “Battling Ben” Raskow had spent fifteen years of his life fighting as a welterweight in small towns in South America, and he had the fight cards with his name and picture on them to prove it. In some provincial capital he had married a woman who was mostly Indian; his family wanted no part of him when he came back to New York ten years later. Battling Ben and his Indian wife spoke nothing but Spanish; his special terms of affection always sounded faintly though fondly lewd to Jefferson, and they probably were. Now in his early sixties, Battling Ben kept fairly good order in the building, just as he kept it fairly clean. A few years ago his picture had appeared on Page 5 of the Daily News after he dropped two muggers with a series of rights and lefts. Battling Ben was the mortal enemy of every young punk in the neighborhood and liked to brag that he wasn’t afraid of any man that ever walked in shoe leather. Michael Jefferson was pretty sure that Battling Ben was going to get a knife in the kidneys one of these days.
Before he got to the door of his apartment, Jefferson heard the sound of inexpert typing, and knew that his wife Mary was hard at work trying to improve her lot in life. He found her in the small living room, dressed for work in the Burger King uniform he hated, practicing her typing on the nearly new electric typewriter she had bought with her own money. It had to be an electric or nothing, Mary said, because nobody used manuals anymore. Besides, the keys on the manuals were in different positions.
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