The Superman Project

by A. E. Roman

  Pablo ignored me and pleaded with Pedro. “I took responsibility for Mami. Do you know how much her medications alone cost? Emergency-room visits? Hospital stays? I was smart enough to go to college, Pedro. But who could afford college and take care of her at the same time? If I’m guilty, you’re guilty, too, Pedro.”

  Pedro shook him. “Pendejo!”

  “What happened, Pablo?” I asked and pushed Pedro back. Pedro looked like he wanted to kill me but just went and sat down on a bench on the opposite side of the ferry and stared at Pablo.

  “Talk to me, Pablo,” I said.

  Pablo looked at his brother Pedro.

  “Don’t look at him,” I said. “Look at me.”

  “I told my mother that Joey was coming,” Pablo said, “and that I was calling the police so they could pick him up. I told my mother that I was working for Hari. She lost it. She just lost it. She began destroying my room, my things. Tearing everything up. My stuff. I yelled at her. She wouldn’t stop. I grabbed the knife. I . . . I didn’t mean it. I told her to stop. That I was working for Hari, that he was going to make me a Superman. And she just went berserk. She called me a traitor, a false friend and all kinds of names, after everything I had done for her. She said that she was ashamed of me. It was Hari. Hari was going to make everything happen for me. If I got that comic book back and called the police. He promised me.”

  Pablo glanced at Pedro. “Don’t look at him, Pablo. Look at me.”

  Pablo looked back at me. “The bills were breaking my neck, Chico. I was a slave. How many more years could I go on being a slave? I couldn’t go on. Mara was promising me everything. A job. A real job at TSP. Membership. Why shouldn’t I get a shot? At success? Why not me? All I had to do was get the comic book and call the police when Joey got to my apartment. They’d pick Joey up. That’s all Hari wanted. To keep Joey out of the way until he was president. I called Hari and told him that my mother knew and that she wasn’t happy and he told me to take care of it. Take care of her. To become The Superman. So I did. I tried to get her to leave the apartment. To go out so that I could get the comic and call the cops and . . . she wouldn’t go . . . She was going to call some members of TSP and tell them what Hari and I were up to . . . I had to . . .”

  Pablo began to weep. “I was a slave. I wanted to be free.”

  “It’s called a door, bro.”

  “You think it’s that easy, Chico? Look at me.” He spread out his flabby arms and slapped his massive belly. “I’m an elephant. Where can I go? Hari promised me, to help me, train me. My boring loser life for The Superman. Even Joey never offered me membership. I could maybe win Chase back from Elvis. I could be happy.”

  “I understand, Pablo,” I said. “I get it. How’d you get Max to come with you? That was pretty good, Pablo. You’re a smart guy. You have to have brains to get as far as you did with this.”

  “She’s a nice little girl,” Pablo said. “I just wanted you to back off until I could think, Chico. Come up with a plan and fix everything. I just wanted you to back off. I paid a girl that Yayo used to hang around with, a drug addict, to call and leave you a message. I told Max that my dog was missing and asked her to help me find him. I showed her a picture. Then I told her that you found the dog and wanted us to meet in Manhattan. I’m good with kids. She’s a nice girl. I wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “I know,” I said. “You’re not that kind of guy. Things just got out of hand and now that I’ve met your brother Pedro I understand how you could panic and start making really stupid moves, trying to stop me from figuring you out.”

  “I was trying to fix everything, Chico, but things just got worse. I was going to return Max unharmed, I swear, as soon as I figured out—”

  “How to get that Superman comic book from Joey and frame Zena for Joey’s murder, maybe take her out, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Pablo said and shook his head.

  “I know, Pablo,” I said. “At first, I thought it was Giovanni. Giovanni was getting his sculpture money from Hari in exchange for working secretly on a sculpture of him as president of TSP. Giovanni was also getting money from Mara Gupta and Edgar Gupta. It takes all kinds. Mara confessed, after Gabby had a word with her, that you and Giovanni were both on her payroll as lookouts for Joey. Then I remembered what your mother had said, ‘He’s good with kids’ and it all came together. An associate of mine tracked Giovanni, who was double-crossing everybody but Joey all along, and Gabby called Kirsten, who called her brother Larry, who called Solange and they all ran around like it was a telethon until they found somebody who could reach Joey and let him know that Gabby was back. And Joey told me about your meeting here with him and Zena. He told me that he had contacted you and you had set up the meeting.”

  “I knew it,” said Pablo, shaking his head. “I knew it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And here’s the kicker: Gabby Gupta destroyed Joey’s Superman comic book in her fireplace after a fit of rage in Williamsburg. Joey doesn’t even know yet. It’s ashes, Pablo.”

  “I knew it,” Pablo repeated and almost smiled.

  “You’re no killer, Pablo,” I said. “You were just making it up as you went along. Making things go from bad to worse. My friend Nicky found Max calm as pie watching cartoons with your two ugly mutts in Washington Heights. We got her. She’s safe. It’s over, Pablo.”

  Pedro stood up. When we reached the other side, in Staten Island, Pedro said, “You will come with me, brother.”

  “We gotta take him back, Pedro,” I said.

  Pedro shook his head. “Come, brother.”

  “No,” I said.

  I felt the ship dock. The few passengers got off.

  “Come, Pablo.”

  Pablo sat down.

  “Like a man, Pablo,” said Pedro, holding a gun now, low in his left hand. “Stand up. Come.”

  Seeing how Pedro was the guy with the gun, I couldn’t argue much. Pedro, leaving nothing to chance, kept a nice, comfortable distance between us and said, “If you yell out, Chico, it will only make things worse. You can follow or you can go back.”

  “I’ll follow,” I said. “You’re right.”

  We walked off the Staten Island Ferry in the darkness. Pedro pointed his gun at Pablo once we got to the street and it was clear that no one was around.

  “I’m your brother, Pedro,” said Pablo and got down on his knees on the sidewalk. Pedro turned away from him.

  “Tell him to stand up, Chico.”

  “Please, Pedro,” Pablo pleaded. “I’m afraid.”

  “Arriba,” Pedro said, trying to pull him up. “Do no get down on your knees, brother. Not for me, not for nobody. Stand up, Pablo. Arriba!”

  And he choked up, because Pablo touched him and he knew he was telling the truth, that he was scared out of his mind, and he wanted to live, and he wanted to start again, and Pedro knew what that’s like. But this little piggy had to go home. Pedro had decided.

  “This doesn’t have to happen,” I said, moving closer to Pedro and his gun.

  I saw the barrel.

  “It would be unhappy, Chico, if we could not say adios as friends,” said Pedro.

  “You are not the judge, Pedro.”

  “Stand up, Pablo. Stand up and behave yourself. Mami always called you the good boy. Be a good boy now.”

  Pablo stood up and wiped his tears. Pedro looked at me and nodded and pointed his gun at his brother.

  “Don’t!” I said. “No!” I reached out for the gun.

  I lunged and tackled Pedro. Pedro fell back and threw a punch. I ducked and hit Pedro twice in his kidneys. Pedro lunged at me, stumbling, with clenched fists. I bobbed and ducked, and let loose a hard, clean shot. Pedro went down on one knee.

  Then I felt an explosion in my shoulder, a hard metal punch that ripped at the flesh and bone and spun me around and down. Most definitely not part of the plan!

  Pedro walked over to me, still at a safe distance, still holding his gun. “You should never touch a man’
s gun.”

  “I apologize, amigo,” I said through gritted teeth. “Come closer, let me make it up to you.”

  “Pedro, please,” I heard Pablo plead.

  Pedro shook his head and lowered his gun.

  Then I saw Pablo try to run and Pedro move faster than I had ever seen a human being move. Suddenly Pablo’s head jerked forward violently. I heard no loud report of Pedro’s gun firing. When Pablo slammed against the sidewalk, I saw what hit him, protruding from his bloody head, stabbing through the bone into the soft tissue of his brain. It was a professional throwing knife. And I knew then what Pedro had done with that Dominican circus.

  “My plan was to take him alive, Pedro,” I whispered as everything started growing fuzzy and sirens became audible but distant.

  Pedro looked around and said, “My job is done here.”

  He shoved a cigar in his mouth, winked down at me, said, “Vaya con Dios,” and disappeared into Staten Island.

  I closed my eyes because my shoulder hurt so much, and I lay there on my back as a trickle of pedestrians walked past me toward the docked ferry without stopping, and someone . . . slowly . . . turned off the lights . . . until I heard: “Chico?”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I opened my eyes. I was in a hospital room. Nicky was there and Willow was there and Zena was there, too.

  Nicky said, “Hola, pal. Sorry I missed the boat.”

  “How are you, Yankee?” Willow asked.

  “Flesh wound,” I said. I tried to laugh. “Pablo?”

  Zena looked down at me. Nicky and Willow shook their heads.

  “I’m sorry,” Willow said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “May I speak with Chico alone a minute?” said Zena.

  Willow took Nicky’s hand and they left. Then it was me there, in my hospital bed, alone, with Zena.

  Honeysuckle.

  “I’d kiss you,” I said. “Only I just washed my hair.”

  “Don’t be cruel.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Hari’s waiting outside,” she said. “He wants to start over. We’re going to India.”

  “Why me?”

  “You looked sad,” she said, “and I’m the comforting type. Chico Santana, tough and lonesome. Who can resist that?”

  “Many have tried and succeeded.”

  “You and I could go on a trip instead,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Did you ever love Hari?”

  “Hari did whatever was required of him,” she said. “To save TSP. Hari is one of the most noble men I know.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I respect him.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “You lied to me, Zena. You were just using me to find Joey all along. You were in love with him.”

  Zena’s lower lip began to tremble, and her eyes welled up. “Maybe at first.”

  “Fool me once,” I said, “shame on you. Fool me twice, that’s two times.”

  “I haven’t been lying to you,” she said. “Just in parts.”

  “Hari doesn’t know about you and Joey or you and me, does he?”

  She lowered her head.

  “I didn’t think so,” I said. “All that talk about ‘no rules’ was just a lot of who shot Juan.”

  “You think I’m wicked,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  “Look, baby—”

  “I was protecting TSP,” she said.

  “From me?”

  “From enemies, real, imagined, or . . .”

  “You were protecting yourself,” I said. “And your inheritance.”

  “Do you think we still stand a chance?”

  “We have a better chance of dying on a train.”

  “It wasn’t just business,” she said. “Hari loves me. I don’t love him. I’m married to a man who cares about me and if you ask me, I won’t go back. It’ll be over, Chico.”

  “What about Joey?”

  “Joey was yesterday.”

  “What was I?”

  “Love?”

  I laughed until it hurt, so I stopped laughing. “There’s a guy in the Philippines,” I said, “who sells smoked fish and has nails driven through his hands and feet annually for the tourists to gawk at. I’m not that guy.”

  “I’m not asking you to be that guy.”

  “What do you want me to do, Zena? Bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder? We kiss and the pretty music comes up?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

  “Do you want me to go back to Hari, Chico?”

  “Let me think it over,” I said. “Yes.”

  “I’m crazy about you, Santana, aren’t you listening?”

  “Take a walk around the block. It’ll wear off. It always does.”

  She went for the door and started crying softly and then she turned. “I hope someone hurts you, Chico Santana. I hope someone hurts you the way you’re hurting me right now.”

  “Too late, baby,” I said. “Goodbye, Zena Gupta.” I pointed at the door. “It turns to the left.”

  “You’re wrong about me,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Nicky came back in and saw me watching Zena go, shook his head and I said, “It beez that way sometimes, papá.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nothing you can do.”

  I was shot. Pablo was dead. Gabby and Joey were in love again. Ramona and Chris were in love.

  Zena . . .

  It beez that way, sometimes, papá.

  “You should go see your mother,” Nicky said.

  That was the last thing I heard, before I felt a shooting pain in my shoulder and I pressed down on the morphine drip . . . pain . . . pain . . . pain . . . then nothing . . . nothing at all . . . tissue paper . . . and yellow ribbons . . . and . . . honeysuckle . . .

  September. Yayo was released from jail and got clean. He even took me out for a little Flaco’s Pizza. Extra cheese. The end. Morning again. Mimi’s Cuchifrito. I was toying, my busted arm in a blue sling, with that phony baseball and a brand-new pack of Djarum cigarettes. I thought about my mother and father as Mimi went past and sucked her teeth and shook her red head at my cigs.

  Adjusting my blue arm sling, I pocketed my cancer sticks.

  “Sir?”

  I turned and faced two tall, barrel-chested men in suits, one white, one black, flashing badges marked FBI. “We’re looking for Pedro Sanchez.”

  I eyeballed their FBI badges. The real deal.

  “He’s wanted for multiple murders,” said the black agent.

  “Whose?”

  “Twelve men,” said the white agent.

  “Kidnappers, killers,” said the black agent.

  “Seems Officer Sanchez took the law into his own hands after one of these men murdered a husband and wife and their kid. The husband owed their group some money.”

  “They killed a child?”

  “The law is the law,” said one agent. “Officer Pedro Sanchez is an illegal in the U.S. and a wanted man in the Dominican Republic.”

  “We know you’ve been in contact with Pedro Sanchez.”

  “I was,” I said. “He disappeared. I don’t really know the guy. I only knew his brother Pablo from a case I was working on. Pablo’s dead. Pedro killed him.”

  “We also know,” said the white agent, “you were involved with that TSP group that was caught in the steroids scandal.”

  It’s true. The Superman Project was charged with illegally providing members with steroids and growth hormone. It turns out that two hundred members were on steroids. TSP was indicted on reckless endangerment and violation of public health laws. It was also revealed that they were one million dollars in debt. Their assets were frozen. The Superman Project doors were closed and a theater school took over their building. Then Father Ravi died abo
ut noon on August 25. Joey, who was cooperating with investigators, gave his funeral oration.

  “Do you know the whereabouts of Joseph Valentin and Giovanni Vaninni?”

  “I last saw them at a funeral,” I said.

  It was true. Giovanni had been playing everybody for a sucker, including me, everybody but Joey. The last thing Joey had said to me at Father Ravi’s funeral was that he was finally heading to Tahiti with Gabby and Giovanni. “I apologize if I caused you any trouble, Chico. I’m still learning. Goodbye, pal.”

  I didn’t like that goodbye. There was something final in it.

  “Are you familiar with a gang that specializes in Goya forgeries?”

  “I’m no art historian,” I said. “But it’s impossible to imagine a Goya painting coming out of the woodwork and someone getting away with selling it.”

  “Not in New Delhi. Not in Uganda.”

  “A New York dealer,” said the white FBI agent, “was visiting Uganda and was called to appraise a work, supposedly by Goya.”

  “He bought the Goya,” said the black FBI agent, “suspecting that the Africans had no idea what they were selling, and then, when he got back to New York, found it was an almost perfect forgery.”

  “That’s where Joey Valentin comes in. The Africans were arrested and charged, and they named Joey Valentin and his associates Gabby Gupta and Giovanni Vaninni as the people who originally sold them the work.”

  “Listen, fellas,” I said. “I’m just a Bronx boy trying to stay off drugs, outta jail, and outta the statistics. I don’t know nothin’ about Pedro Sanchez except that he killed his brother. He disappeared after that. As for Joey and Gabby and Giovanni, I haven’t seen them or had contact with them since that funeral.”

  One of the agents handed me a card and said, “Call us if you remember something you forgot.”

  I nodded.

  The two agents left as Nicky and Willow entered with Max. Nicky was holding a brown box full of old comic books that I had given to Max. Hundreds of pages of legends, gods, mutants, freaks, heroes. My world before Ramona, after the Bible stories, after Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah.

  Willow stopped to talk with Mimi at the counter. Nicky and Max came toward me. Max seemed taller. She was wearing the new glasses with wire rims and the Yankee baseball cap I bought her.