Shakedown on Hate St

by Matthew Copes

  I'll watch myself Jimmy. Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane. Gotta run. Talking to you is making my balls itch and I'm out of ointment. Can't keep my eyes open either. Take it easy my friend.

  4

  I SPENT THE DAY SNOOZING. At eight o'clock I showered, ate a ham and cheese sandwich on Jewish rye and threw on a worn pair of jeans, a grey wool sweater, and an old pair of faded biker boots with big silver buckles on the sides. I didn't comb my hair and I didn't shave. I grabbed the pink receipt, a pack of smokes, a lighter and five twenties. Three of the twenties went inside my right boot just in case.

  I'd heard of Maxine's but I'd never been. I wasn't much of a jazz fan, and I was pretty sure it wasn't the kind of place frequented by whites. Images of purple-black, pimp-types with ostrich feathered fedoras and gold plated cigarette holders played in slow motion on the movie screen in my mind.

  At ten after nine the 300 pound black bouncer at the door gave me a two second frisk job. We made eye contact just as his hand brushed against my dick, and I thought I saw traces of pleasure and yearning on his glistening face. He didn't ask for my number or seem surprised to see a guy like me, both of which helped me relax.

  Inside it was dark and smoky and a band was playing some nice jazz at a reasonable volume. Around the outside were semicircular booths of black imitation leather. In the center were ten tables. Some for two and some for four. There were a few other white faces around and they seemed to be blending in. The tables were full and the place had a good feel. In the back on my left at a table for two was the beautiful young woman I knew I'd find. If she saw me come in she didn't show it. I walked over, pulled out the empty chair across from her and sat down.

  “That's some black eye. You clumsy?” she asked.

  “Yup,” I said. “Two days ago I walked into a light pole and ended up in a dark basement. I'm all better now though. Thanks for asking.”

  “So do white people like jazz?” she asked.

  “Some do, some don't,” I said. “I prefer rock and the blues, but tonight this sounds nice.”

  “You live around here?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  5

  TWO DREAMS.

  Of all the shit in the world to dream about and Gino only ever had two dreams. Every night it was one or the other. He’d become as used to them as could be expected, but he never had a night off.

  The night before he’d dreamt dream #2. The one of his father dying valiantly while fighting the Germans in Italy in 1943. There were no real memories of his father, but he’d seen pictures and heard stories, and his creative child’s mind had turned those unremembered scraps into a short feature film. One that he’d watched in his sleep every night until he was 21, when a new dream took the #1 spot.

  As a child then living in America, his mother told him the story of his father: the partisan-martyr-hero who’d blasted a Nazi halftrack full of troopers straight to hell with a bazooka just seconds before he was cut in half by a burst from a 900 round-per-minute MG 34. The whole thing had been recounted to her in great detail years later by a fellow-partisan who’d survived the battle.

  In the dream, Gino was behind the men, above and slightly to the right like he was in a director’s chair extended on a boom.

  The rain beat down heavily and was surprisingly cold for August. His old man hunched behind the corner of a partially toppled cobblestone wall. Two drenched men shivered behind him, and two more were similarly hidden on the other side of the road. They squatted on their haunches, shrugging off the nagging stings of cold and hunger, somehow managing to keep their cigarettes lit until the last minute. Gino’s father, the town carpenter and their commander, trembled as the weight of their mission bore down on him.

  The men behind him were anxious. Their tattered shoes unable to gain traction against the mud slick roadway, sliding away from the wall as their backsides inched down and into the murky puddle over which they hovered. The commander swung his left arm around slowly without turning his head. Patience. They’re getting close, but wait for my command.

  They’d spent the previous night in a freezing root cellar in the forest outside town. Another nearly sleepless night accompanied only by the dull cold, wet floor, and a toxic sludge of rotting onions, carrots and potatoes, the stench of which was nearly unbearable. Their sole heavy weapon, a bazooka retrieved from a field where a squad of American soldiers had been ambushed, given the only dry spot, hung from a peg on the wall. Their success lay squarely in its potency and accuracy, and the nerves of the man firing it. After they’d rehearsed the whole thing over and over, they toasted the following day’s mission with their only nourishment: a pilfered bottle of wine that had turned to vinegar. Then they’d collapsed onto one another in the cramped quarters. Falling toward the center, resting on and supporting one another like the poles of a teepee.

  Now Gino saw the halftrack creeping forward. Its steel tracks slapping against the crumbled roadbed rhythmically as the hunched driver peered through a slit which provided his only vision from inside the steel box. The soldiers in the back clutched their submachine guns, and their shoulders slouched forward.

  His father peered around the stone wall as the first few feet of the halftrack became visible. Quickly he looked at the others and nodded. The weapon clutched in his hand burned like it’d been baked in a kiln. His parched throat constricted, choking off the flow of oxygen to his stinging lungs. He thought of his family. So far away. Perhaps already dead, or worse. Maybe his beautiful young wife had been taken as a Nazi major or colonel’s whore, his infant son cast away to an orphanage or left in the forest to die of hunger and hypothermia.

  He willed his trembling thighs to press his heels down into the soft earth. To elevate his body above the wall. Grudgingly they complied, the bazooka already perched on his shoulder, his eye lined up on the rudimentary sight. He was nearly fully extended, hand on the firing mechanism when he locked eyes with a German soldier whose torso stuck up over the side armor just as his did over the wall. Each man’s weapon was pointed at the other. Neither flinched nor retreated. Their fingers squeezed, tight tendons sliding against taut bone, releasing the killing projectiles.

  The rocket launched from its tube with a jolt, spraying a violent stream of exhaust gas rearward over the heads of the two men behind him. That was their cue. Once the bazooka had fired they were to rise, aim their battered carbines and finish off the survivors.

  The bazooka’s exhaust dissipated, but as they rose dutifully their faces were sprayed with the blood of their commander, the bullets from the German’s belching machine gun ripping holes through his body in a straight line between his left shoulder and right hip. The bazooka shot hit its mark as if it’d ridden on rails rather than flown through the air. The partisans sprung from both sides as the halftrack lurched, buckled, and erupted in a fireball. They emptied their rifles into its sidewalls. The rounds bulged the steel armor but didn’t penetrate. Not that it mattered. The troopers were already dead or dying from shrapnel and concussion.

  That’s where the dream always ended. Never a moment more. He never even saw his father’s riddled body hit the ground. It just hung weightless as the scene faded from view.

  GINO HAD BEEN WORKING his regular security job and moonlighting as a chauffeur a few nights a week for nearly a year. 60 hours a week on the clock, and another 20 toting around millionaire cheapskates and even worse, playing tour guide, social worker, and pussy-finder for drunken, 20-something trust fund boy-brats on their last nights as bachelors. With those hours in addition to his dream filled nights he was lucky to get a few solid hours of real sleep.

  He exhaled, ran his fingers through his thick hair, and depressed the electric switch that lowered the limo’s tinted window. He stuck his head through the vacant space and sucked in the damp vapor wafting off the macadam on Baltimore’s gloomy east side. The glowing green numerals on the digital clock in the dash showed 2:09 AM. His right hand reached to the passenger seat groping for the cigare
ttes he knew were there. He fished the Zippo out of his pocket and flicked its lid with an upward motion of his thumb, then with the reverse motion he struck the roller, sparking a blue-yellow flame which ignited the KOOL hanging from his lips. He inhaled, savoring the nicotine rush that swept through his body, then lowered the window and wiped the grime from the rearview mirror with an old McDonald's napkin before dropping it onto the street. The radiation-red sign from the strip club across the street pulsed methodically, sending wavy tentacles across the moist blacktop.

  He leered at the dimly lit phone booth just a few feet away, willing the plastic and chrome mechanism inside to ring mercifully early, even though he knew it wouldn’t.

  He lowered the driver’s window a few inches so he’d hear it when it finally did ring, then checked that the doors were locked and slid the .38 from the glove box. He wedged it under his left thigh so the handle and trigger were exposed, then reclined the seat as far as it would go and closed his eyes.

  6

  “SHOT TOWER. 20 MINUTES. Short. White miniskirt. Nice Tits.”

  That’s what the scratchy voice on the other end of the phone said at 3:03. Gino’s slumped body had jerked hard and to the left, banging his head into the limousine’s window when the metallic jangling jolted him from Saigon back to Baltimore.

  It’d been a dream #1 night.

  He’d just sat down at the café where they always met. Under the big billboard with that huge smiling face, those too big and too white teeth advertising some awful toothpaste that tasted like salt and had the consistency of quicksand.

  He’d already told the waiter to bring a cold bottle of 33 Beer for him, and a can of orange drink, glass of ice, and straw for her. Then he saw her walking toward him. Her flowing white ao dai clinging to her narrow shoulders and petite waist and hips. Its short, upright collar partially obscured her neck, and silver silk flowers and vines spiraled down its long sleeves. Her hair was different too, like she’d had it professionally done. Frugal girls from provincial peasant stock didn’t spend money without a good reason. She must have news.

  That’s where the dream had abruptly ended when the phone rang.

  From his position under the I-95/895 overpass he headed north on Ponca Street, then turned left onto Eastern Avenue, blowing through the lights in Highlandtown, Patterson Park and Fells Prospect. He banked right onto South High taking that through the yeastiness that hovered over Little Italy's abandoned streets. After lefts on East Fayette and Guilford he made another onto East Baltimore, then slowed to a crawl, dropped the window and fired a KOOL.

  At the corner of Commerce and East Baltimore a pair of twig-thin, Latina working girls in blond wigs whistled and smacked their lips as he slid by.

  “Two for one. Tonight only baby. In the back of that sweet ride,” one of them said.

  At the intersection of North Gay a bearded zealot in rags emerged from the darkness and lurched toward him. Soft purple light illuminated his smudgy glasses.

  “Repent sinner!” he said. He raised his arms skyward, then faded into the black like an apparition.

  Gino feathered the accelerator past the Baltimore Police Department Headquarters. His foot hovered over the brake pedal as he approached the shabby string of food vendors tucked along the sidewalk next to the Shot Tower. Bum fights, drug busts, and overdoses were nightly occurrences, and he wasn't in the mood for any drama. A too-hip-for-IHOP starving artist was nursing a bowl of menudo at the Mexican stall. Three wasted frat boys were devouring pizza and sneaking gulps from the quart bottles semi-hidden under their jackets at the brick oven pizza shack, and a toothless, Hare Krishna-wannabe-schizoid was gumming a sausage sub and conversing with his nonexistent companion in front of the Polish food truck.

  He eased to the curb and killed the engine. His tense core relaxed, jettisoning the stale breath that had been trapped inside. He scanned the street but saw only a hobo pushing a shopping cart heaped with junk on the opposite side of the street.

  “Hey fella. Let me in. It’s freezing out here,” she said, just after her forceful knock on the passenger window had startled Gino and sent him diving for his .38, which he clumsily knocked onto the floor.

  “You wanna get killed?” he quipped, giving her a quick once over.

  It was her. Short. White miniskirt. Nice tits. Check, check, check. They left out gorgeous, young, and sexy as hell.

  Despite his years of combat and security experience which taught him caution and wariness above all else, he lunged across the seat and popped the passenger door like a bumbling teenager about to get his first grope.

  He visualized the headline: Chauffeur and Mayoral Bodyguard Robbed and Shot in Face after Opening Door for Short, Gorgeous Thief with Nice Tits: Limo Still Missing.

  She slid in followed by a blast of early morning Baltimore cold.

  “Not exactly dressed for the weather honey,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “V,” she said. “It’s short for Veronica. And I know you’re Gino. Only Italian-American in a limo I’ve seen all night.” She said Italian with a long I.

  “So where is it?” he asked.

  “Jeez. In a rush huh?” she said. “Let a girl catch her breath and warm up for a minute why don’t ya,” she said, handing him the small wrapped package that’d been in her oversize sequin purse.

  Jesus she was gorgeous. Just his type too. Small, dark and curvy. And that smell. What was it? Shampoo? Perfume? Deodorant? Feminine perfection.

  In the 20 years since that soul-killing day in Vietnam he’d screwed exactly three women. All of them hookers and none of them more than once. And all three encounters had been after a night of serious boozing, which he’d given up eight years before. He doubted he could manage it sober. Too many emotions. That’s why the alcohol was so critical, and why he’d been as abstinent as a Franciscan friar for nearly a decade.

  “Sorry V,” he said, acutely aware of the tingling in his groin. “Listen, right over there is place called Mammy’s,” he said, pointing with his left hand. “They have the best Cuban sandwiches and espresso outside of Havana. How about we get two orders to go, my treat. We’ll eat them in the nice warm car, then I’ll take you home. Sound good?”

  She nodded.

  Mammy and Poppy were Cuban immigrants who'd come to America during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. He’d heard their story more than once. It made their delicious food taste even better, like provenance increases the value of an already priceless antique. They did two things only: Cuban sandwiches and espresso. Served from a walk-in closet on wheels towed by an ancient Chevy station wagon. Situated around the trailer were a few small circular tables and an army of faded metal chairs. Crisscrossing strings of white lights swayed overhead, and weathered speakers exuded distorted salsa music even in winter.

  When he got back to the car he told Veronica there was a correct way to consume the sandwich and espresso to induce the greatest possible pleasure.

  “There’s a method,” he told her. She listened carefully and followed his lead, inwardly chuckling at the oohs, aahs, slurps, and groans that emanated from him as he ate, though she was sure he wasn’t aware he was doing it.

  “Where are you from?” he asked, folding the last sublime corner of velvety soft roll, ham, roast pork and yellow mustard into his already full mouth.

  She told him she was Puerto Rican, and that her family had moved to the states when she was ten in search of the American dream. Fifteen years gone and she still missed Puerto Rico every day. He asked if they'd found it. They hadn't. Her father had worked in a chemical plant and died of lung cancer at 54, her mother cleaned offices for minimum wage and lived alone in a thimble of an apartment, and her older sister died of a heroin overdose in Buffalo three years before. They'd have been better off staying in Puerto Rico, she said. He agreed.

  “What about your American dream?” he asked, embarrassed at how ridiculous it sounded.

  “You're kidding right?” she said. “Look what I'm wearing. Look where I
am. Look at the time. Take my word for it, this ain't the American dream.”

  He grinned. She’d nailed his moronic question like a line-drive back into his forehead.

  “What’re you doing out here?” he asked.

  It was a long story. She had bills to pay and debts to settle like everybody else. He wasn’t in the mood to push it. He was just lucky that the men he worked for – Baltimore’s apex criminals – always required payment for their regular narcotics transactions upfront, and that it just so happened to be his week to collect. He usually met some semi-recovering junky with jittery hands and sparse, Indian corn teeth who talked too fast, bummed his smokes, and wanted to hang-out like they were old buds. She was a nice change.

  “Let’s get outta here,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Mind if I slide over?” she asked.

  He nodded casually, eager to disguise the lump in his throat and longing in his heart. She put her purse on the dash and scooted to him, nestling between his chest and the seat. His arm slid casually over her shoulders. She exhaled, closed her eyes and rested her head on him.

  Before he pulled away he pressed his favorite cassette into the tape-deck. It picked up right where he'd left off. His favorite song. Billy Joel. The Ballad of Billy the Kid.

  “I love this song,” she said.

  He pulled from the curb and headed west. Baltimore's grey-brown skyline loomed as they slipped over abandoned streets and past sentinel streetlights. As if drawn by Veronica's warm breath, his eyes moved down and right to the fleshy crescent between her neck and breasts.

  He stopped a block from her apartment, but couldn't bring himself to wake her. Instead he dropped his left hand down between the door and seat just above the floorboard. His middle finger depressed a switch, jolting a tiny electric motor to life. The seat reclined emitting a faint mechanical hum, pulling Veronica's limp and pleasantly warm body into his.