Target Down

by Glenn Trust

  “No.” Maggie shook her head. “Not a problem. You did what you thought you had to. I just wanted to make sure that Benjamin was not part of it.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “Things have been quiet on the street,” Edgar interjected, changing the topic. “Since those gang people left the store … and you … it’s been quieter than usual.” His eyes met Sole’s. “A couple of different cars cruising back and forth, not bothering anyone, just keeping an eye on things.”

  “That so?” Sole looked through the kitchen to the living room window facing the street below. “I think it will be quieter around here for now.”

  “I see.” Edgar nodded without making further comment.

  He remained with them for another two days. A few times, he and Ben took walks around the neighborhood. They talked little. Sole figured he’d said enough. Ben just seemed to like to have him there while he walked and thought things through.

  On one of their walks, Ben said, “They found Joey.”

  “Did they?”

  “Yeah. I saw it in the news … out by the river it said.” Ben stopped and looked at Sole. “There were some others nearby, Slice and some DMs. They’d all been shot. Police called it an execution.”

  “How’s that make you feel?”

  “Sad. Joey was my friend, growing up.”

  “That’s understandable,” Sole said, nodding.

  “Yeah, except one side of me is sad, but the other side is relieved. I mean, he turned on me in front of the DMs said I should do it … rape the girl, Juanita.” He looked up at the sky and shook his head, trying to understand. “He changed … wasn’t the same Joey.”

  A boyhood friend had become a willing accomplice to rape. It was a serious, illusion-shattering lesson about the human condition and the fine line that some people, even people we think we know, walk between the darkness and the light. There was nothing to say. When Ben was ready, they continued walking in silence.

  On the third day after the ambush by the river, he rose early. Maggie and Edgar found him drinking coffee at the kitchen table. They poured a cup and sat with him without speaking for several minutes.

  As he finished his first cup, Edgar said, “You’re leaving today.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “I am,” Sole agreed. “It’s time, and I have …”

  “Other business,” Maggie interjected. She stood and walked around the table, leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for being here … for everything you did. Remember you always have a home here, if you want it.”

  She choked off the words, turned, and left the kitchen, brushing a hand across her eyes. Edgar sat and stared at his coffee cup.

  “Sorry, to see you go, son.” Edgar looked up, his eyes damp. “It’s been …” He shrugged. “Having you around has been good for all of us.”

  Sole nodded. “It’s been good for me too.”

  More words would only make things harder. Sole rose, gathered up his duffel from the living room, gave Edgar a final smile, and left.

  Pulling his pickup from the alley, he caught the sun making its way down the sides of the buildings. It was a sight he had come to appreciate, one that he would remember.

  An older couple strolled past, walking a dog. Two teenagers ran down the sidewalk, without threatening or harassing them or anyone else. A woman waited alone at the corner bus stop, reading a book. For now, peace reigned in the neighborhood.

  The Hunter - No Ghosts

  Nothing had changed.

  In Cassit Pass, the tidal waves of change rushing around and over the world, merely swirled in eddies like the surf around boulders along the seashore. Like the boulders, the rock-solid society of Cassit Pass remained impervious, eroding around the edges a little perhaps, but mostly the same from one generation to the next.

  Even so, he stood before the tiny house and marveled. It looked as if the woman and young boy who had lived there once might step out onto the porch and wave to the stranger staring at their house.

  ***

  “Come on up,” the woman would say. “What are you waiting for? Hurry and I’ll set a place for you at supper.”

  Her son would stare and wonder what to think of the man, the hunter. When he put his hand out to touch the boy’s head and ruffle his hair, he would pull away. Embarrassed at being so forward, the man would put his hand back in his pocket and offer a nervous smile.

  Brow lowered, sending creases across his young forehead, the boy would stare for seconds until he asked, “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “You boy. I want you … I’ve been hunting you for these past few years.”

  “Why?” The boy’s face would be deadly serious now, all business, ready to meet whatever threat the man posed to him and his mother.

  The hunter stared at the spot on the porch where the boy would be standing while his mother clattered the pots and pans inside, readying their supper. How could he tell the boy why he was hunting him? He couldn’t.

  “You’ll grow up to be a man one day, and I will come to find you.”

  “Why?”

  There was the damned question again. “You’re too young now to understand.”

  “Bullshit,” the boy would snap out and his mother would call from inside for him to mind his language.

  Then the boy would continue, “I’m not so young. You just come on ahead and find me if you think you can.”

  He would stare defiantly at the man standing at the edge of the yard, waiting, ready to take him on, to take the world on if necessary. The man would remain silent, respecting the boy’s innocent fearlessness.

  Finally, the boy would speak. “You’re just talk … hot air … wind blowing in the trees. You ain’t nothing to be worried about, and I sure ain’t scared of you.” Then the boy would bark a final warning, “Get the hell out of here.”

  Another rebuke for his language would be called out by his mother, and he would turn with a final sneer and go into the house, closing the door firmly behind him.

  ***

  Standing at the edge of the yard, the man who would come to find the boy one day imagined the meeting in every detail, as he had a thousand times before. The difference was this time he stood before the little house that had not changed in all these years.

  He walked across the yard and stepped up on the porch, almost expecting the boy from the past to come outside and challenge him. But the house was empty. A gust from the north washed away the images of the boy and woman. With clearer eyes, he saw that the house was not just as it had been. It was run down and bore the signs of having been abandoned years earlier.

  The porch creaked. The planks had warped, and the nails popped loose.

  A window on one side was broken. He found a tree limb under the window inside, blown through, probably in the wind from a spring thunderstorm.

  The back door hung at an angle by one hinge. Someone had forced their way in to scavenge what was left after the house had been abandoned.

  He entered and stood in the center of the kitchen, then moved into the living room and found a spot where he could see out through the broken window. He sat down and leaned against the wall, taking everything in, sniffing the air, trying to pick up a scent, a thread of the boy who had lived there once with his mother. He listened for ghosts rustling in the other rooms. There were no ghosts and no trace of the one he hunted.

  Outside, the night came on. Shadows stretched across the floor until they met the night outside, filling the empty house with darkness. There, in the abandoned home where the boy and woman once lived, he slept soundly for the first time in years.

  Bogey Man

  Driving north on Interstate 85, Alejandro Garza passed through country that vaguely reminded him of semitropical regions in Mexico. The trees were different and the landscape flatter, but the same brilliant green covered the countryside.

  There was history here, too, and he had always been a student of history, using the lessons of the past
to reinforce the ones he taught to the cartel’s enemies. Virginia was home to the first permanent English colony in America where John Smith and his party established set up a camp in what would become Jamestown in 1607. Many battles of the American Revolution and the War Between the States had been fought on this Virginia ground.

  The North Americans thought that their history had given them some sacred claim to the region. They had begun by driving out the native inhabitants and claiming the land for their own. Then they flagellated themselves for their harsh treatment of the people they had conquered.

  “Foolish weakness,” he thought as he drove, contemplating the land, farms, fields, quaint villages, busy cities, and burgeoning industry he passed.

  None of it meant anything to him. The Norteamericanos were weak, and the English were inept peasants when it came to colonization. For him, the real history of the Americas began a century earlier, in 1519, when the Spanish established a colony on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula. The Spanish knew how to conquer and colonize, adding brutality upon brutality, extracting vast wealth from the land, and taking it to their homeland on galleons to enrich the sovereigns and adorn the churches.

  The descendants of those English colonists were soft, insecure, fools. He felt no pity for them as the cartel took their wealth back to Mexico in exchange for the drugs they craved. The North Americans were now the peasants, and he and Bebé Elizondo the sovereign lords, enriched by those same peasants who hunted them with their law enforcement agencies.

  He was close now. A few miles south of Petersburg, he took his foot off the accelerator and allowed the car to slow, entering the ramp to the rest area. He drove past the line of parked cars, picnic tables, and restrooms to a space at the far end of the parking area.

  A man waited for him there, leaning on the fender of a gold Mercedes. Tall and thin, he wore a white, short-sleeved cotton shirt over designer slacks and tan moccasins. He grinned widely as Garza rolled to a stop beside the Mercedes E-class sedan and stepped out of his rental car.

  ***

  Roman Madera’s parents were Marielitos, Cubans who had fled the island in 1980 during the days of the Mariel Boatlift. The event became a policy and credibility crisis for the Carter administration. For the Madera family, it was salvation.

  Unlike the cinema portrayal of Tony Montana in Scarface, the Maderas were descended from slaves once owned by landed Spanish gentry. In Miami, they managed to open a small cigar shop with a loan from other Cuban ex-pats. Law-abiding and grateful to be in America, they avoided the drug culture that had immigrated along with the legitimate asylum-seekers, terrorizing the city in the eighties.

  Their son, Roman, followed a different path. Born in the States, he had no memory of the deprivations and persecutions his parents had suffered in Cuba. They were just stories the old people told at gatherings. In his teens, he was a known runner for local cocaine smugglers. After being accused of theft by one of the Florida narcotics lords, he fled to the north to avoid a midnight bullet in the brain.

  Virginia seemed as good a place as any to stop and see if anyone was following. When it appeared he had been forgotten by his pursuers, he immersed himself in Richmond’s drug culture. Eventually, he became a trusted member of the local drug hierarchy and when Los Salvajes moved into the region, he was among the first to recognize the writing on the wall. He went over to the cartel as a dealer and enforcer and worked his way up through the organization, taking the places of others who had proved untrustworthy or disloyal.

  Now, he led the cartel’s distribution network in the Mid-Atlantic States, and his region was always one of the top producers. Once he had even been honored with a phone call from Bebé Elizondo, commending him for his efforts. He was warned by the man standing before him now never to discuss the call or even mention it to others in the organization, but still, he had spoken to Bebé himself.

  ***

  “Señor Garza,” Roman said, the smile widening.

  He made no effort to extend a hand to Garza. Such familiarity with one as elevated and universally feared was unthinkable.

  “You have what I want?” Garza said without preliminaries.

  “Yes.” Roman nodded. “He has been spotted.”

  “Where?”

  “In Richmond. Another forty miles from here.”

  “Is he aware we are looking for him?”

  “No.” Roman shook his head. “I have handled this personally, making inquiries but making no mention of you or your visit. I told his street supplier, one of our people, I was interested in expanding the streets where he works as a reward for his sales.” He smiled, proud of his deception. “I am told he was pleased by this.”

  “Good.” Garza nodded. “Let’s hope that he doesn’t see through your ruse and disappear.” Garza’s dark eyes bored into Roman’s. “That would be unfortunate.”

  “Yes, yes. I think it has worked and we should be able to find him quickly.”

  Roman said a silent prayer—Dear Mary, mother of God, please make sure we find the sneaking little rat bastard quickly.

  He wished he could make the sign of the cross the way the nuns taught him, but Garza’s intense stare made that unthinkable. He put forward his most confident expression and cleared his throat.

  “Of course, I could have my men pick him up and hold him for you, if that would be satisfactory.”

  “It is not.” Garza’s eyes narrowed. “I handle this alone. I will extract the information I require and ensure that it is accurate. You will be with me to assist if I should require it. Otherwise, you will remain silent.”

  “Certainly, I understand,” Roman said quickly. “As, I said, we have not mentioned your visit. I was only suggesting …”

  “Don’t,” Garza snapped.

  Roman’s mouth clamped shut.

  “Lead me to him,” Garza said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Roman climbed behind the Mercedes’ wheel, conscious of Garza’s stare of disapproval. He should have driven a more modest car. What was he thinking? Clearly, a man like Garza did not approve of such ostentation.

  Roman led the way down the ramp to the interstate in the very visible gold Mercedes. Garza followed in the rental.

  The drive north to Richmond took half an hour. Roman prayed that his people had everything in order.

  As they approached the James River crossing into downtown Richmond, Roman took an exit ramp. A few minutes later, they were winding through streets lined with small frame houses. It was an older section of the city, once a suburban enclave of working-class homes. Now the long-time residents were struggling to hold on to their quality of life as drugs and gangs seeped into the area.

  Roman pulled into a shopping center parking lot and got out of the Mercedes. Garza waited in the rental.

  “He is in a small house that he shares with two other dealers not far from here,” Roman said standing beside Garza’s open driver’s window. “They will not be there. I sent them on an errand to check sales in another part of the city, gave them some cash so they would not lose revenue from lost sales today.”

  If he expected a compliment for his ingenuity, none was forthcoming. Garza was focused on one thing.

  “How can you be certain he is there?”

  “We know he is low on inventory.” Roman smiled. “He’s been working hard, making money.”

  “And you are certain he will be there?”

  “He needs inventory. One of our runners, a twelve-year-old boy, is supposed to deliver a package with the inventory. He won’t leave until the runner comes with the package.”

  “Good.” Garza nodded. “Get in.”

  “Get in? Here?” Roman cast a glance at the gold Mercedes. “This is not a good area to leave a car like this. Perhaps I can take it to a garage in the city first, then we …”

  “Get in. If you are worried about your car, you should have driven another.” Garza waited, hands on the wheel, staring at him.

  “Yes, of course. You are c
orrect.” Roman said, going to the passenger door. “It was thoughtless of me not to have considered that you would want to arrive in the same vehicle.”

  “Direct me to the house,” Garza said when Roman was seated.

  They wound through another series of streets. The farther they drove the more rundown the houses appeared. Block by block, the neat working-class homes morphed into ramshackle hovels, bearing the signs of urban decay—broken fences and gates, trash in yards, windows broken or missing, paint that had faded away or chipped off decades earlier. As they came to a corner, Roman pointed.

  “There. The third house down this block.”

  It was a house like all the others. A four-foot-high chain-link fence surrounded the yard. In one section the fence was bent over, apparently from the impact of a vehicle that left the street and plowed into the yard. A lone shutter hung at an angle from one of the windows. There were no shutters on any of the others. Garza drove past and pulled the rental to the curb a block from the house.

  “When is the runner due to arrive?” Garza asked, his eyes not leaving the house.

  Roman checked his watch. “In another half hour.”

  “Good. We will wait, and I will tell you how to proceed.”

  ***

  Luis Acero sat on a frayed sofa, smoking a joint, waiting for the runner. He eyed his personal stash of cocaine and thought better of taking a hit now. Later, when it was time to work the streets. Then he could do a line to clear his head. For now, he needed to conserve his resources.

  If shabbiness marked the neighborhood, filth was the identifying trait of this house. It was a shit hole.

  The air reeked of old food, burned food, rotting food, the pungent smell of urine and unflushed toilets. Dirt and debris littered the floors. The only furniture, the sofa and two chairs of the same type, were stained and soiled with body fluids from sexual encounters and bladders that had released while one of the occupants slept through a drug-induced coma. Scratching noises in the walls marked the passage of mice and rats, scurrying back and forth.