Sibley's Secret

by Frank Perry

argument against gun control, citing cleverly-skewed statistics and blaming law enforcement for not being more proactive, and targeting the gangs. Gangs in Chicago were responsible for over a quarter of all murders in America. Stop the gangs in major cities and guns will no long be a problem argued the conservative writer. He laughed to himself. Guns are the issue, you right-wing faggot! If the gangs didn’t have guns, his home town wouldn’t be the murder capital.

  Rack had grown-up in the projects. He’d lived in Cabrini Green with his mother, until he was twenty-one when he graduated from college. He had been one of the lucky few to receive a Mayor’s grant to attend City College, then had earned other scholarships to the University of Illinois, Chicago. His degree in Philosophy, under the name, Jerome Juan Giorgis, was his mother’s most prized accomplishment. It was his degree, but it gave them a joint sense of accomplishment. He’d had his name legally changed after graduation, without telling her, to create more distance from his past. His father had been a light-skinned Ethiopian immigrant with no trade skills and his mother was Puerto Rican. The combination of genes gave Rack fine facial features and coloring that looked Mediterranean more than African. After graduation, he was already beginning a successful career and didn’t want anyone associating him with the project gangs that plagued Chicago. He was a professional and expected to be treated as one. He was a killer, a hired assassin. Actually, he would take on any kind of white-collar contract that paid him well. He was a rare breed, an educated well-mannered, heartless killer.

  He didn’t choose his career early in life. It would have been natural to assume it resulted from associating with the gangs that surrounded him growing up. That would be wrong. Although he grew up in the projects, he was never part of the culture and he kept no acquaintances there after leaving. He never went near the South Side now. He’d been blessed with a strong intellect and a mother who wanted her son to break the cycle of poverty she had experienced throughout her life, also growing up in the projects. Rack’s father left them stranded before he was old enough to remember the man. His mother had been attractive in her youth, but labored hard as a domestic worker at city hotels, which took its toll. She was really responsible for what he had achieved, not the killing aspect, that was different, but she had instilled a work ethic and an appreciation of education that would ultimately elevate him. One of the first things he did when the money began flowing from his profession was to buy her a neat condo away from the inner city and south side. She now lived in Glenview in a quiet community, supported by Rack.

  Rack (Jerome in his youth) and his mother had been isolated in the project. They avoided contact with other tenants. Many of the women on their floor were on welfare, prostitutes, or drug users -- and often, all of the above. The hallways were jammed with filthy children locked outside while momma did her business. The whole place smelled from decay and waste, and he sometimes felt a buzz from the cannabis smoke lingering in the halls and stairwells.

  That was where he first experienced violence and murder, while still a small child. It couldn’t be avoided, as much as his mother tried to shield him. He wasn’t allowed to play with the other kids, who grew-up mimicking their older siblings in gangs, evan as little children. His mother kept him indoors and read to him before he could talk and gave him a life-long love of learning. It was also through education that he perfected his craft. He excelled in science and loved studying technologies he could use.

  He knew exactly when his career choice had been made. He was twelve. It involved a bullying couple on their floor. The man always wore a discolored undershirt and filthy pants, and his wife looked about the same. They were both hugely overweight. Both smelled bad and couldn’t talk without cursing almost every word. Neither worked, and they were probably on welfare, like most of the other tenants. This wasn’t why they should die, but it was a manifestation of their characters.

  Rack never knew their names, but he did remember the day his mother carried groceries up the stairs, him beside her, with the woman standing at the top, blocking the top step. It had happened often, whenever the ugly pair heard someone coming up. They lived close to the stairs and kept their door open to hear better. Rack’s mother was only two steps from the top when the fat woman held up her palm, “Stop, mex.”

  Rack’s mother wasn’t the only one they harassed, they hassled everyone. The woman targeted the females, and he came out whenever men were coming up. Everyone along their hallway had suffered the same way. They wanted money. It didn’t matter how poor or how little you had, they wanted it and became violent if they didn’t get it. If someone objected, the man took over; he was always nearby.

  Rack’s mother was usually able to walk softly enough to sneak up the stairs and turn the opposite way down the hall, away from the danger. This time, though, the woman was standing in front of them at the top. Rack’s mother protested, “Get out of my way!” She tried to push past. She was defenseless with groceries in one arm and Rack beside her.

  “Ain’t happn’n bitch.”

  Rack could still remembered the meaty black arms pushing into his mother’s chest and her cry as she stumbled backward, falling down eight concrete steps to the landing. She landed hard on her side with food spread everywhere. Then the woman lumbered down the stairs, pushing him aside while he tried to help his mother, who was bleeding and crying. The woman ripped his mother’s housedress apart for a few dollars. She even took the loose coins. His mother tried to protect herself but was too badly injured and flat on her back, kicking and screaming Latin invectives. The attacker was twice her size and his mother had never been in a fight before that he knew of. The woman even collected some cans off the floor before walking back up the stairs, disappearing toward her apartment. Rack tearfully helped his mother to their apartment. She was crying, cringing from pain. She was crying partly because they had nothing to eat that night. This incident left a scar that would never heal in his psyche. A son could never forget the image of his mother being brutalized.

  That was when he decided to stop the bullies himself -- a small, underdeveloped boy. The police wouldn’t come into the projects unless there was a murder. It was up to the tenants to solve other problems. The big man and his woman terrorized the whole floor, and Rack knew he needed to stop them. They’d threatened everyone for almost a year, and it had to stop.

  It had taken his mother a year to save enough money to buy Rack a used laptop for Christmas. He valued it above anything else he owned. She also stretched each month to pay for basic cable service so he could use the internet for school at home. He was an incredible student. That night, after her attack, he devised his plan.

  On Saturday, he sat in the hallway with his back against a wall, doing homework. It wasn’t unusual to study outside. He often let his mother sleep after a hard week and late hours, sometimes with double shifts. Even with kids screaming and running up and down the halls, he’d learned to study. He heard adults yelling behind doors and bangs on the walls as heads were repeatedly bashed. He’d spent the entire day observing, just as he had two days earlier. His mother came out a couple times, asking him to come in or announcing meals, but he persisted, sitting and watching.

  By nine o’clock at night, he knew they were not coming out. Their door had been closed all day, which had never been the case before. It usually opened in the early afternoon and stayed open until after supper when most of the people had stopped using the stairs. This Saturday, their door was closed all day. He finally collected his books and went inside with his mother. She motioned for him to sit with her on the couch in their neat little apartment. She would be sleeping on it later that night. “Jerome, you study so hard, I am proud of you.”

  “It’s for us, momma. Someday we’ll get out of here. I’ll get a good job, and we’ll live like the men at your hotel.” He kissed her cheek and went to bed.

  Hours later, before dawn, he crept past her and went into the
hall as silently as he could. He’d learned days earlier that the fat couple didn’t have a working door lock; most of the locks in the building didn’t work. Some people had multiple deadbolts on their fire doors, but these people were so accustomed to leaving the door open during the day that they didn’t even check it before passing out at night. Who would dare come in to their place?

  Rack had been inside two days earlier and knew his way around their filth. It smelled awful, and he could hear the roaches moving in the debris covering the floors and every other flat surface. It was silent this time. He thought he could see them in the darkness, unmoving, covered in some old blanket, but he didn’t look closely. He just listed. No sounds, not even the roaches. He stepped onto a chair and lifted the canister hidden behind trash on top of the kitchen cabinet and placed it in the paper bag he brought with him.

  Back in the hallway, he went to the trash shoot and dropped the bag inside. He was back in their apartment only a few minutes after sneaking out. Sleep came easy as he smiled to himself.

  It had been easy. He had studied the internet and read