by Ryan Gattis
Prolly this is why I haven’t slept since it happened, not slept-slept. I drink to stop seeing my brother’s face like that. I drug up to stop seeing his neck all open. It’s all I can do. The only thing that works for sleep is for me to black out, but then when I open my eyes and it’s hours later, it don’t matter. Everything’s still there, right back in my head, and I got an ache all over and I’m still on fire. Is what it is.
I’m all kinds of serious when I snort a fat line of coke off my thumb after we meet up and park on Virginia, all three cars. That burns too. After, I kinda pack up what memories I have of Joker inside me right then, cuz it’s time to do work. Like I could open my ribs up and put it away and close them on it and fasten it down. That’s how I keep him inside me. Keep him close. It’s not long before I feel like I got lightning inside me, pumping me up. And that’s good, cuz right now, I can’t be me anymore. Can’t be Bennett with all his fucking problems. I got to be Trouble. Got to be the one everybody knows is down no matter what.
There’s nobody out on the street but us and some homeless-looking black motherfucker rooting through open trash cans up the block. There hasn’t been trash pickup in days, but people still put them out anyways. Dumb-asses. I don’t need to stare to know this is the same weirdo that Momo asked if he knew anything about his little house fire and got some crazy-ass gibberish back instead, something about shit going to heaven in pieces or something.
Apart from crazy dude’s slow shuffle, it’s a ghost town. Lights out all over this block, curtains closed up tight, only streetlamps. Nice thing is, it smells like flowers over here, I don’t know what kinds, and only a little bit of smoke. We’re over the line all right, right off what they call the Boardwalk. My lil bro told me about this. I know Fate and his click treat it like an escape route, from sheriffs, from whatever, but right now, it’s a path straight into the heart of their turf.
2
The coke’s fucking hitting me and I feel better now. Strong. I feel like it’s time to get ours back, pull some fucking cards. We got nine homies, just the hard-core veteranos, cuz we can’t afford bitch shit on this one from a lil homie trying to earn stripes. They know this is a suicide run, and they’re all down cuz I’m down. I been doing this for a long time and I’m untouchable at it. Nobody expects you to run up in a house and blast fools on their couch, pure vato loco style. But I been doing it and I stay living. And right now, my wild card is that I don’t care. I don’t care about nothing. Before with runs like this, it was just me. I never had to work an operation this big. Just getting everybody over Atlantic was a hassle. There’s more National Guards out patrolling around or sitting on intersections, so we couldn’t’ve done a car train. We had to be smart, so we avoided them by splitting up into two different cars, four into one and five into another, before going different ways to meet up and park.
Cuz we weren’t about to bother them Guards. We got three in there, called up and deployed out of Inglewood. What, you think National Guard don’t got gangsters in there? Shit. Time to wake up. We got three. Ain’t gonna tell you their names though. I’m sure other gangs got homies in there too. Turns out it’s a real good way to learn about guns and tactics and shit. Bring it home, you know?
I told Momo we were gonna hit Fate and them in the afternoon, like right after that trip to see that Chinkmaican where we picked up all that heavy L.A. Gear but we didn’t, and we never were gonna. I lied. Fuck Momo. We would never have rolled through in broad day. Besides, we had shit to do first. Had to bust up a parole office and make a pretty fire with some records so some people could stay free.
That shit was so fun we had to get high to celebrate. Let me say that again, but fix it right this time. Momo got us high courtesy of the goodness of his heart cuz he’s so generous and obviously not trying to save himself like some vibora. That’s a viper right there, one that’ll bite you if you let it.
Momo’s been acting off for weeks. I’m not the only one to see it. He’s not been answering pages or questions when you get in front of him. He’s been disappearing, you know? If I didn’t know no better, I’d say he was fixing to snitch, cuz when I first met him, like met-him-met-him, he wasn’t this way. He didn’t say much, but he was real, and since I know he ain’t been straight with dodging my pages when we knew it was his gun that got Ramiro, then I got cause to worry, and I don’t got to be straight with him either.
My girl said something smart too, about not letting Momo near no more phones on the chance he might try to call someone about how we’re treating him all disrespectful, so I did that and I did one better, I sent his boy Jeffersón home on the end of my new shotgun. Now he didn’t like looking down that barrel, but what was he gonna do but stop looking tough and get the fuck out, all backing up cuz he wasn’t about to take his eyes off me? Nothing, that’s what.
While he was walking out, I told him the only one Momo needs watching his back is me. Which’s exactly why this bitch is on my hip right now, looking all kinds of scared, gripping his busted-looking gun with its tape cuz his hand sweats, cuz he never pops, that’s why.
I look at him and say, “Don’t got any smart questions for me now, do you?”
“There’s a time to talk,” he says, “and a time to act.”
He sounds tough, but you can just tell he don’t even want to do this, but he’s doing cuz he knows I’ll take his head off his shoulders from a foot away if he don’t. That’s the beauty of getting one of the shotties all to myself. I could’ve taken him out earlier but it’s way more fun this way, making him march.
I tell both drivers to stay at the cars and keep them warm cuz we’re coming out hot and right when we’re all ready to roll up, I make Momo go first, right in front of me. A shield if I need it, you know? The six of us and Momo roll up army style, pure stealth passing through that Boardwalk where the only sounds are our footsteps and leaves and branches getting pushed back. I smile knowing they won’t even see us coming. We’re Viet-Conging this shit. For Ramiro, for Fox, for Lil Blanco that got it by the fence, and all them others at the party that got caught up.
We go through an alley with garages on either side and then back into the Boardwalk and out onto Pope in one long fast line like ants, looking both ways but nobody’s there either, and then we go through one more alley to Duncan Avenue. Momo’s first out and I’m second. Right away I spot the house Fate and that manflora Payasa and them been living in and jog my ass up the block.
Turns out Momo was good for something after all, with the way he came up with that info on where they stay. I asked him how he knows for sure, and he says his hypes say all kinds of shit when they’re high, and when this motherfucker Lil Creeper gets high he talks and talks and so Momo would ask him questions sometimes about Fate’s click so he could keep track of what was up, you know? When he said that, I just kinda nodded, cuz that was smart but it was still some viper shit.
Right now the house’s set up behind a chain-link fence hip-high that leads my eye to three mailboxes out front of a shared driveway that goes way back. To the right of that concrete strip is the house. It’s a boxy, sand-colored piece of stucco shit, one with a roof that slopes toward the street, like a baseball hat down low, and it’s held up by six spaced posts. It’s got a front door between the middle two and windows on either side that look out on the saddest lawn you ever seen.
The shades are drawn up tight, but there’s a cut of light in the left one showing from the inside, a lamp or something. There’s a TV throwing out colors too. Good.
I put my hand up right then and I go up the driveway first, around the boxes and onto the lawn, coming straight at the door. No hesitation. For Ramiro. For our Yesenia. When I’m in a good spot, I set my feet and we all do. When I open up, we all open up. We go Al Capone right then, just a line of gangsters unloading.
The window bars don’t stop us, but they must be doing something cuz I keep hearing ping, ping, ping, and I think that’s weird but don’t think much of it cuz we blast that glass all
the way out. It goes everywhere, scattering over the walkway, the lawn.
I laugh when I blast the security door, like boo-yaa, cuz I feel invincible, and you know it ain’t iron the way it bends and curls after I put the shotgun on it, and reload, and go again, and when it’s kinda hanging there, I’m right up on top of it cuz I rushed up and I’m kicking it off its hinges and ripping at the doorknob and the handle’s all dented with buckshot and it comes off in my hand, and I’m like, “Hell, yeah!”
I lean back as far as I can and kick the door, putting all my weight into it, and that shit is wood with no knob or deadbolt so it should just bust under my boot.
It don’t. I fucking bounce off!
And my heel hurts. My knee too.
So I kick it again. But it’s the same thing. Nothing moves.
Behind me, somebody’s like, “What the fuck?”
And real quick I scope the hole where the knob used to be, but there’s not really a hole there. I mean, it’s a hole, but there’s something behind it. Iron.
I shove into it with the lip of my gun but it don’t go nowhere. Must be thick as manhole covers. It’s got dents in it from buckshot and I run my fingers over it and it’s still so hot it burns my fingers and as I rip them away, I’m like, What the fuck?
That’s when it hits me like a rush of hot water down my back. That’s when my whole body gets hot again. And I’m embarrassed and I’m sad and I’m mad all at once. No. No, no.
This shit is a setup. The most fucked-up setup there ever was. No.
I walked us right into this shit. Me. Fuck!
My mouth’s dry when I’m about to yell out for homies to save themselves but then lights come on. No, no . . .
Blinding yellow-white lights behind me and from the side, making me blink as I turn, making me close my eyes and raise my shotgun up to my eyebrows to block the light and duck down and that’s when I hear the first shot from far away and hear fools scramble.
And I’m thinking What? as I scrunch down low as I can and get my back to the house and slide across the stucco and it digs into my back, cutting me as I move fast sideways, toward the corner of the house so I can break out behind.
I scream when I say, “Get the fuck out!” But it comes out strangled.
I hear more blams, faster this time, closer. Like, blam-blam-blam . . .
No.
Bullets whiz and one hits the house over me and stucco explodes above my head with a crack-thump, chucking dust and pebbles down into my face, and then it’s the worst noise I ever heard, a brrrat, brrrat . . .
And that right there’s the fat lady singing cuz that’s what sound an AK makes when it spits. I don’t know how far away it is or where it’s aiming, but I feel that noise in my chest, moving my heart around, and I know we’re getting done, right here, right now. No, no.
I hear screams everywhere, all around me. My heart’s beating hard and fast in my ears, making my head hot and hurting.
No. Everything’s too loud now. Too fast.
“No,” I say, and that’s all I can think to say.
This shit is my fault. But this’s no time to mess with guilt. We gotta do the only thing we can and shoot our way out.
I got almost a roll call of all the homies I let down running in my head. Best I can do for Ramiro right now, and our Yesenia, and Lil Blanco, and, and . . .
For Fox, and Looney, and . . .
“Shoot them lights out,” I yell, and I pump my shot and raise up blasting at black outlines moving in front of the brightness.
I pump and blast and kill one of the lights with sparks and a ksssssss, so I pump and blast again, and that’s when I’m out and I know I’m out, but I pump and hit the trigger anyway. But nothing happens.
Is what it is.
I say, “Motherfuckers, you better fucking kill me! You better—”
Whatever else I’m gonna say, the words don’t come. I’m flat on my side and I don’t even remember falling down.
My ears ring like I got sirens in them. And I’m coughing. That’s when I hear four quick pops, like pop-pop-pop-pop.
And then somebody falls on me, right on my shoulder too. Hard.
And I wanna see what’s going on but I can’t really keep my eyes open right then, they’re just so heavy.
ROBERT ALÀN RIVERA,
A.K.A. CLEVER,
A.K.A. SHERLOCK HOMEBOY
MAY 2, 1992
12:58 A.M.
1
With the way we shot up Joker and them, we knew their homies were coming, we just didn’t know when, so Fate had us do everything we could to bunker up. Lu wasn’t happy about the plan at first, because it was her house that had to be the decoy, but she came around to it. She liked living better than she liked the other option.
So two nights ago we went door-to-door to clear the block three houses in every direction. It was me, Fate, and Apache mostly, unless homies lived there, and if they did, they talked to their own families. We explained to people that it’d be really a good time to see relatives or friends. We even helped a few load up their cars to get ready. Apache even carried someone’s abuelo to the car because he couldn’t walk himself. Everybody might not have liked it at first, but they did what we asked and left, which was good because Fate didn’t want it on his conscience if bullets started flying like he thought they would.
Lu didn’t go with us. She’d had a fight with her girl, Lorraine, right as we were gearing up to go. It started in her room first and got louder and louder till the door flew open and they ended up in the living room. There was some screaming and crying from Lorraine and through the doorway, I saw Lu packing a bag with all her girl’s clothes and everything in it, and Lu told her not to be such a dumb, dramatic bitch. Right after that, Lorraine threw a bottle of nail polish at her, hard too. It caught Lu in the left eye as she flinched away, and it gave her a shiner almost instantly. I was surprised Lorraine didn’t get her ass beat after that, but Lu held off, and that’s when I knew Lu was doing right by her, getting her out, because it just wasn’t safe to be here. Her pushing her away meant she cared, but some people you never can explain that to, and Lorraine didn’t get it. She drove off crying.
In a way, it worked out for Lu, though, because Elena Sanchez came by to say thanks for killing Joker not too long after that, and they went into Lu’s room and shut the door. At first I thought it was just to hear how it went down, even though I know Lu wasn’t one for talking about that kind of thing. I didn’t know if Lu was trying to flip her to the other team, but I wouldn’t be shocked. She’s a player. If she could, she would. I guess it depends on if Elena was up for that, but I can’t speak to whether or not that went down for sure. They were in there awhile though.
I left before Elena did because Fate needed me across the street. A couple of O.G.’s caught the score of a lifetime by stealing an official city truck that first night of the riots, the tall white kind with a city seal on the doors and a big, tall bed almost four feet high in the back. Ever since they took it they’ve been able to go wherever they want, wearing the orange vests, and cops and National Guard just wave them through, wherever they want to go, so they’ve just been driving around looting, hitting construction sites mostly. They got a bunch of tools and materials that got abandoned when everything popped off. They sold them to people in the neighborhood.
Also, they picked up a grip of steel plates, just recruited a small crew of guys to pull them up off the streets and load them in the back. It was the kind the city uses as a base for asphalt or to cover potholes they weren’t ready to fix yet, or might never. That steel was half an inch thick and some of the slabs can weigh over three hundred pounds depending on dimensions. We took that right off their hands and used it to secure the house.
We had homies haul it in through the front door and line it up all along the front wall. Each plate took six of our biggest homies too. The metal was so heavy the drywall groaned when it had to take the weight to the left and right of the front window. We bloc
ked that off to protect the inside of the house, so that if somebody wanted to shoot in, they’d have to aim for the top two inches to get anything through. At first, it was plated up completely, but I took a look and knew it wouldn’t work, so I had them moved till a sliver of light could show through and then I set the curtain so you couldn’t see the iron from the outside. To me, that was the key to the whole setup. It wouldn’t work unless they thought people were inside, so I turned the TV on too and made sure it could be seen from the lawn and from the street.
“If you don’t put a flame up,” I said when Apache asked me why I did that, “you can’t draw any moths.”
2
We’ve been taking shifts across the street since we finished, waiting up in the house of our compadre Wizard. It’s a little casino house he runs, but he’s not here. He’s back with his wife in an apartment they kept from when they lived in Lil TJ over on Louise, because he’s kind of paisa, but the good kind, reliable, even if he’s a bit country.
This whole place is empty now, except for us. It doesn’t have much of a living room, not one with couches and chairs arranged around a TV or anything. Instead, it’s got gambling machines along every wall and little brown chairs in front of them, like the cheap kind you’d find in a bar, the ones where if they break, it’s not a big deal.
