Smoke

by Joe Ide

  Cherry watched the cars come out of the woods and drive slowly down the barely paved road. The lead vehicle was a canary-yellow Malibu with shiny rims, blacked-out windows, lowered nearly to the ground. Behind it was a black Impala with blacked-out windows, shiny rims, a voluptuous woman painted on the side. Mexicans loved those old Chevys the way bikers loved old Harleys. The cars stopped in front of the house. The windows were open, cholos in there giving them hard looks. A skinny, shirtless vato with a six-pack and six thousand tats got out of the Malibu. He was cocky, smiling, running his hand over his fuzzy head.

  “I’m Del Rio,” he said. He announced it like, I’m Denzel Washington. The music was so loud he had to shout over it. “You’re Cherry, huh? I bet you’re sweet like one too. That’s cool, man. A chica in charge? You must be a badass, mamacita.” The guys inside the cars laughed. “That ink on your head don’t exactly look feminine,” he went on. “What’s your old man think? Can he still get it up for you?” He’s trying to provoke you, Cherry. Make you show your hand.

  “How about turning the music down?” she said. Del Rio ignored the request. “I want to see the money,” she said.

  He grinned. “You got it, chica.”

  Cherry’s antennae were up. Why hadn’t Del Rio asked to see Isaiah? Wouldn’t that be the first thing you’d do? Three homies emerged from the Impala, all of them high school age. A tubby kid went off to the side, turned his back and started taking a piss. The second kid took a shoe box bound with a rubber band out of the trunk. He brought it to Del Rio. The third kid stayed by the trunk. It was hot, but all of them were wearing gangsta flannel. To hide their guns, Cherry thought. The whole thing looked choreographed. Something’s wrong, Cherry. The music was too loud even for gangstas and why was Del Rio still talking?

  “How do you fucking live out here?” he said. “There ain’t shit to do. All you got is trees and shit. No taco stands, no clubs. What do you do if you want something from the store? Do you get cable out here?”

  “The money,” Cherry repeated.

  Del Rio held the box out with one hand. “Twenty-five grand, chica. All for you.”

  “Open it.”

  “Anything you say, mamacita.” The realization came fast and all at once. The music and Del Rio’s monologue were distractions. The one guy stayed by the trunk because there was a gun in there. The guy who’d brought the shoe box was standing almost behind Del Rio. When he drew his gun, you wouldn’t be able to see him. Cherry looked between the tubby guy’s legs. He wasn’t pissing, he was flanking them. In every drug-money transaction Cherry had ever seen, the cash was in some kind of bag or stuffed into a manila envelope. Not in a fucking shoe box. There’s a gun in there!

  “It’s a setup!” Cherry shouted, and she dropped behind the railing. Del Rio took a pistol out of the shoe box. The homie behind him was drawing a gun. The one near the trunk whipped out a pump-action shotgun. The tubby turned around with a gun in his hand.

  “Fuck ’em up!” Del Rio shouted. The Mexicans barely got off a few shots before they were hit by a nonstop barrage. The guys inside the cars got out on the other side. They dived, dodged and ran for the trees. Del Rio and the guy behind him were hit multiple times. The homeboy with the shotgun was driven back behind the car. The one who wasn’t pissing was crouched and hurrying away.

  “Run for your lives, you assholes!” Cherry shouted.

  “Hallelujah,” Isaiah said. The shooting woke up Ned. He rushed inside the house still holding the beer. Isaiah picked up a wrench, broke the window and cleared the glass fragments out of the frame. There were four heavily oxidized burglar bars. They were do-it-yourself, made from heavy angle iron. The welds were sloppy but looked strong.

  The car jack was on the floor. It was an ordinary scissors type, the kind you’d find in the trunk of your average Toyota. Isaiah inserted the crank into the jack and turned the handle, raising the height of the jack to around eight inches or so, roughly the same width as the space between the bars. He flipped the jack to vertical and wedged it between two of the bars. It was hard getting it into position. Isaiah reinserted the crank and started turning it. Even a simple jack like this one could lift a car weighing three or four tons. It was slow going. The jack was extending sideways. You don’t have the same leverage as you would if the jack was on the ground. The bars screeched and yawned but they didn’t move. Isaiah kept at it, grunting with every turn, his T-shirt like a wet paper towel, his arms and shoulders burning. Then what he hoped would happen, happened. A bar broke loose from its weld with a dull bang. Isaiah gathered up a few tools, pushed the bar out for more space and wriggled out sideways.

  The blank, gray sky was filled with shouting and gunfire, an acrid cloud of gun smoke obscuring the view. The Mexicans had dispersed into the woods. It was hard to tell if anybody was hit or where the return fire was coming from. The front of the house was ripped to shit with bullet holes. Reems and Solo shot up the Asesinos’ cars just for fun. They screamed Death to your pinche madres and worse.

  Cherry stopped shooting. She sat with her back against the file cabinet and shook her head. What a fucking disaster. She was broke, two dead guys were lying in the yard, and the house was shredded. What had she expected? That everything would turn out fine? It was amazing how dumb you can be when you think there’s an easy score. There was no such thing as an easy score. Something always went wrong, because that’s what happens when everybody you know, love and do business with is a ruthless fucking criminal.

  “Ned,” she shouted, “get some more ammo!”

  Isaiah ran over to the row of motorcycles parked on the cement apron. He had tools he’d taken from the garage. The first bike in line was a red Sportster with high-rise handlebars and a seat so small it looked like it belonged on a bicycle. It was fifty years old, the electrics much simpler than they were now. Isaiah looked under the headlight and found the ignition wire. He pulled it out a few inches and cut it. Inside it were three more wires. One for ignition, one for power and a third for the headlight. Isaiah separated them and touched the ends together. The power bypassed the starter and the bike’s ignition clicked on.

  The bike had a kick starter, never easy on an old Harley. Isaiah mounted up and stood on the pegs, one foot on the starting lever. He plunged his foot down like he was trying to smash it through the cement. The engine sputtered, coughed and died. He tried it again. Same thing. He tried it again. Same thing. The shooting was sporadic, everyone was probably running out of ammo. Sooner or later, somebody would come back here to get more. At last, the Sportster started. Ned came out the back door with a beer in his hand.

  “You know why you’re not getting out of here?” he said with a lazy smile. “Because I want your car.”

  The bike’s engine died again and Isaiah quickly dismounted. Ned crossed the cement apron surprisingly fast for somebody who was half drunk. The speediest thing Isaiah had seen him do was sit down. Ned threw a big right hand. Isaiah ducked under it, grabbed Ned by the thighs and hoisted him over his shoulder. Ned went crashing into the red bike, which crashed into the bike next to it and then they all went down like dominoes. Only the one at the end was left standing.

  Ned was sprawled on top of the red bike, out cold, gash on his head, his arms and legs tangled up with the handlebars. Isaiah couldn’t move him and the bike was leaking gas. He jogged over to the last bike, the Electra Glide. It was as old as the Sportster but looked new. It was a bulky thing, much bigger than the Sportster. The wiring was virtually the same, but you had to take the dashboard off, a chrome cover that held the speedometer. Unscrewing it took forever. Isaiah got the cover off. He did the same with the ignition wires as he had on the other bike. The ignition clicked on. He mounted up and stomped on the starter lever. There was a deafening backfire, as loud as a .45, but the bike rumbled to a start. He pulled in the clutch and put it in gear. He had to keep revving it or the engine would die.

  A big guy with a beard and a red bandanna came lumbering out of the house.
“Ned, are you fucking with my ride?” he said angrily. He saw Isaiah and stopped. His voice was low and gutteral and menacing. “Get off the bike,” he said. Isaiah was corralled on three sides by a barbed wire fence, an empty chicken coop and the downed bikes. The only way out was through the guy. “You hurt my bike, and I’ll bury you, motherfucker.”

  If Isaiah went right at the guy, he would sidestep, grab him as he went by and knock the bike over. Try to go around him, and it would be even easier for him. Isaiah thought a moment. He’d done this before on a Kawasaki, but it was built low with low handlebars for street racing. The Electra Glide was wider, nearly three times as heavy, and it had regular handlebars. Was it even possible? It was all about timing. Here we go. Isaiah let out the clutch and rolled slowly toward the big man, revving the engine, higher and higher. The big man was gesturing with his hands, inviting him to bring it. Simultaneously, Isaiah cranked the gas, let go of the clutch and jerked hard on the handlebars. The bike burned rubber, rose back and wheelied! The big man’s eyes went wide. The front wheel was coming right at his face.

  “Oh, fuck!” he shouted. He had to sidestep and duck at the same time, no chance to grab Isaiah as he roared past, touching the brake to bring the front wheel down. He drove over the grass and around the house to the road, hearing gunshots as he sped away.

  Cherry packed her things in boxes and stacked them in the living room. They had to move before the landlord or the law came by. She heard an engine popping and blatting. Ned had fixed his bike. They were going to Reno. Fucking Reno. The ballsack of the universe. Ned had buddies there. And then what? More squalid living, long scorching rides, stripping in some shitty club and eating Hormel Chili and white bread on a paper plate? There had to be something else, Cherry thought. There had to be.

  Hmm, what are your choices, Cherry? You could stay here and live with Jesse, but why would that be any different than living with Ned? It would be like jumping from the frying pan into another frying pan. Or she could go live with her mom in Fresno, listen to her constant bitching and get her job back at the DMV. Ned, on the other hand, was as wretched as she was. He didn’t hassle her or judge her. She wondered what would happen if she didn’t choose from the obvious and struck out on her own. Ned was shouting, impatient to get going, yelling over the engine noise.

  “Cherry! For fuck sake, what are you doing?”

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming.”

  She went to the front door and opened it halfway. Ned was sitting on his bike, revving the engine in short bursts. “Come on, Cherry! Why are you just standing there?” Her bike was next to his, the handlebars and the narrow seat beckoning. He’d started the engine for her. Easiest thing in the world was to mount up, take off and let the wind clear the shit out of your head. She didn’t move, fixed to the spot.

  “Cherry, what the fuck, huh?” Ned said. He kept twisting the throttle, the bike’s exhaust snarling at her, telling her to get on her fucking bike. “Cherry, are you coming or not?” He was angry now. “The fuck is wrong with you! I’ll leave you behind, I swear to God I will!” She stood there. Ned screamed at her. “CHERRY, ARE YOU COMING OR NOT!” She stood there.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Puff Adder

  Brad was in a state. He’d been grinding his teeth since he woke up this morning, and he was eating Tums like Raisinets. The meeting was at eleven and Stimson hadn’t arrived. Seven minutes to go. The BeHeard people had come in force. Brad hadn’t expected so many. An art director, copywriter, project manager, account manager, two creatives, three assistants and Vice President of Campaign Development Seth Adder, “Puff Adder” to his friends. He was Walsh’s counterpart.

  By all reports, Adder was a rude, impatient, abrasive, unreasonably demanding asshole. People said he made Brad look like Andy Griffith. Adder had been a star from the beginning. Creative executive at nineteen, creative director at twenty-five, a VP at twenty-nine, and an executive VP at thirty-five. His looks belied his personality. He had soft eyes, set in a round, benign face, square tortoiseshell glasses, his hairline retreating fast. He dressed like a teenager. Chick-fil-A T-shirt, gold chains, tight jeans and patent leather sneakers. He looked like Sidney Lumet in Justin Bieber’s wardrobe. When Brad met Adder in the lobby, the first thing Adder said was, “This better be fucking good. I hate wasting my fucking time.”

  Everyone had seated themselves at the long white conference table. Adder said, “Can we get on with this? What am I waiting for?” Brad was overcome with anxiety. It was two minutes past eleven. Where the hell was Stimson? Earlier, they had talked on the phone. Brad wanted to see the presentation first, but the doofus said it wasn’t ready yet.

  Adder was already agitated. “Well?” he said.

  Walsh looked sharply at Brad. “The creative should be here shortly,” Brad said. Where the hell are you, Stimson? An endless thirty seconds went by, everyone restless, listening for footsteps, waiting for Adder to explode.

  Adder stood up. “Okay, we’re going.”

  “Come on, Seth,” Walsh said. “You’ve been here five minutes. Have a little patience, will you?” Adder heaved a sigh that was almost a groan and sat down again. Walsh leaned over and whispered to Brad. “Where’s Stimson?”

  “He should be here any second.”

  “This is your idea too. Why don’t you pitch it?” Walsh said.

  “Stimson’s got the visuals.”

  “You’re a professional, aren’t you? Pitch it,” Walsh demanded.

  Slowly, Brad stood up. “Okay. Well. The creative is a little late so I’ll get started.” He paused, poured himself a glass of water and took a very long drink.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Adder said.

  “Brad,” Walsh said, impatiently. “Let’s begin, shall we?”

  “Right,” Brad said. He was rarely lacking for ideas, but his mind was so empty his breathing echoed. “So, um, what we’ve developed here is a sixty-second commercial for BeHeard’s new voice-to-text software, version two point one.”

  “Thank you, Brad,” Adder said. “We didn’t know that. Why don’t you tell us the ladies’ room is for ladies or how many twos there are in one two three?”

  “Right,” Brad said again. “Um, what we’re going for here is a fresh take, a unique perspective on voice-to-text software. What is beyond, what it can be.” Everyone sat rigid with fear. Adder was breathing deeply, glaring at his hands, folded on the table. They seemed to be choking each other. He was like that comedian who slips a balloon over his head and blows it up, the balloon expanding and expanding and you’re cringing because you know it’s going to pop but you don’t know when. Brad went on. “We here at Apex want to elevate voice-to-text software to something approaching the first computer or the introduction of the cell phone or—”

  “A can of pork and beans!” Adder shouted. The balloon popped. “GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT OR I’M OUT OF HERE!” Brad felt himself shriveling into his shoes. Walsh was furious, Adder was getting up. Stimson stumbled in, red-faced and sweating.

  “Seth,” Brad said, so relieved he might have fainted. “This is the creative executive on the project, Arnold Stim—”

  “I don’t care what his fucking name is!” Adder said. “Just fucking start!”

  Stimson was fumbling with his laptop, in a panic, typing furiously. “Just a second! Just a second! I’m getting it.”

  “That’s it,” Adder said. He stood up and his entire entourage stood up too, feet shuffling, deep breaths, muttering and chairs scraping against the floor. It sounded like a flock of flamingos taking off. “I told you not to waste my time, Brad,” Adder said with a lethal glare. “I’ll fucking remember this.”

  Walsh’s look was no less heated, and in his eyes Brad saw his termination package, his brothers laughing and his parents locking him in his room.

  “Okay, okay! I’ve got it!” Stimson said. Brad closed his eyes and took a long breath.

  Walsh said, “Please, Seth, sit down. We’re ready now.”
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br />   Brad’s sweat was cooling as a video began on the wall monitor. He was immediately dismayed. An elderly, surly-looking woman nearly filled the frame. And she was black. Oh God, thought Brad, does everything in the fucking world have to be diverse? He had just seen a black footman in a movie about Mary, Queen of Scots. If the man had been that close to the queen in real life, he’d have been eating mouse turds in the Tower of London if he wasn’t hanging from a yardarm. Adder was already shaking his head. Walsh seemed to be staring through the monitor into his office down the hall.

  “Dr. King began the Freedom March in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965,” the woman said. Adder actually rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, here we go,” he muttered.

  “There was five or six hundred of us,” the woman went on, “ordinary folks, nobody special, holding our signs and singing our songs.”

  Brad leaned over to Walsh and whispered, “I don’t know what Stimson was thinking. This isn’t the idea we talked about.”

  “Why is everything in the background brown?” Walsh said.

  The old woman continued. “We were walking up Route 80, everybody in good spirits. We only got as far as the bridge, and there were the police, a group of them, white men, as big as football players. They had helmets and batons and everything. Well, Dr. King stopped, and the rest of us did too. We didn’t know what was going to happen, nobody did.” The woman was intense now, getting upset, getting angry. You could feel it coming off the screen. Authenticity was rare, Brad thought, striking when you see it. Even Adder was paying attention.

  Suddenly, the woman was terrified. “The police came running at us! They were knocking people down, kicking and hitting us with their batons and shooting tear gas at us!!” The woman was trembling, shaking her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. She’s there, Brad thought, on the bridge, watching the police big as football players coming at her with batons and shields and hateful faces. “No reason to do that, no reason at all. We were just folks, just people!” She kept shaking her head, as outraged and bewildered as she must have been that day. “Well, everybody starts running and screaming. There were old people in the crowd, women and children too! But the police didn’t care. They trampled right over us! How could they do that?” She stared into her memory, unable to believe that men could be so cruel and unthinking. “I got knocked down. I was hurt and bleeding and I’m trying to get up and this big policeman comes over, smacking his club in his hand. He smiles and says to me, ‘Girl, you’re in a world of trouble.’” The woman’s face seemed to fall apart, as if everything she had ever believed about America had fallen apart too, and nothing remained but heartbreak and sorrow. Her voice got low and hollow, a sheen over her eyes. She said, “What happened next, I’ll remember ’til the day I die.” Freeze-frame on the woman’s anguished face. The caption: