Rude Boy USA

by Victoria Bolton

  Ben heard about the situation and ran from his post. He joined in the melee, beating and hitting rival gang members with his fists and objects from the ground. He was desperately trying to defend his group. Someone began beating Jose to the point where he became unconscious. After Jose was down, they continued to kick him. Authorities soon arrived after one of the residents called the police. They were ready to arrest the participants for unlawful assembly. Gang members scattered while those injured remained on the ground. Their brothers were assisting them until ambulances arrived. Other members started throwing rocks and other objects at the police officers.

  An hour after Jose arrived at the hospital, he passed away from injuries he sustained during the beating. This angered Ben, and he went out immediately to seek revenge. He left the hospital and began walking home. Since Ben had already had a taste of what it was like to take a life, his conscience no longer processed the consequences of his actions. He did not care anymore. When he passed the block where the fight occurred, it had already returned to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. Little girls were back outside playing double Dutch, older men sat at makeshift tables playing dominoes, and kids were throwing a football.

  Ben spotted a member of the Seven Immortals walking down the street. He knew that the man had been one of the gang members in the melee. Ben yelled at him, saying that he was walking into the wrong territory. The man stopped, turned around, and told him, “Shut the fuck up, white boy! I’ll fuck you up too.”

  Enraged, Ben reached into one of the pockets of his jacket and pulled out a gun. This was his James Bond moment; he thought to himself. He could hear the theme music playing in his head. He began to march to the gang member, who started to run up the center of the street. Ben yelled back, “I’m gonna give you hell, baby!” and chased him. He started shooting at the guy as they both ran down the middle of the block. The girls who were skipping rope stopped, the men stopped their game of dominoes, and the kids stopped throwing their football back and forth to watch what was going on. None of them ran. Everyone paused to see what the outcome of the street shooting would be.

  Ben used all of his bullets but did not hit the man once because he managed to run off. He succeeded in hitting cars, the sides of buildings, and a storefront window, and he narrowly missing one of the children in the street. That kid ran home to tell his parents what had just happened. After the shooting was over, everyone in the neighborhood turned around and resumed their activities, as if this had been just another episode of a show. Ben headed toward his apartment.

  Word on the street of Jose’s death and the shooting afterward spread quickly. Members of the Ghetto Brothers wanted to put an end to the fighting. They were all mourning Jose’s sudden death. Instead of continuing the cycle of attacks and retaliation, they decided to call a truce. Not all of the members were on board, but enough of them agreed to participate. Jose’s death affected many people throughout the community because heads of rival gangs had respected him. Some of the lower members did not share the same regard for the Ghetto Brothers or Jose, but the leaders knew what he was about and appreciated him because he represented peace.

  Ben sat on his dirty couch and stared at the wall. The apartment was quiet, and he knew it would remain that way because Jose was not coming back. Some parts of the wall and carpet were pristine white; other parts of it had faded to a light-brown eggshell color due to time and dirt. The white parts were the areas he had scrubbed with bleach to get Jerome’s blood spatter off the walls. For the first time in a while, he sat there and did not pick up a needle to mask his emotions. He wept without the help of narcotics. Instead, he wondered what had become of his life and how he had ended up here. He felt like the failure that he had accused John of being. Ben continued to cry until he fell asleep.

  Bangs on the door suddenly woke him up. Ben asked who was there as he picked up his pistol. “Police!” the voices shouted, and they knocked down the door. Ben had nowhere to go. The only ways out of the basement were the front and back doors, and police had both surrounded. The cops told him to drop the weapon. Ben complied and put his hands up. He begged the police officer to shoot him. The police rushed over to him, knocked him down to the floor, and cuffed his hands behind his back. The detective announced that he was under arrest for some charges, which included possession of an illegal weapon, destruction of property, assault with a deadly weapon, and the robbery of money from Edina’s apartment.

  The parents of the child who ran home after the street shooting had called the authorities and that kid had led them right to Ben. People knew that Ben and Jose were roommates. After the police had read Ben his rights, they proceeded to take Ben to the county lockup. Brenda was on her way to the apartment to see him after leaving the hospital. She walked up as they were taking him away. She began to scream at the police. “Where are you taking him? Put him back, you fuckin pigs! That’s my baby’s father!” she said.

  “Be quiet before we take you in,” the officer said to her. Ben looked over at her as they were pushing him toward the vehicle.

  They pushed Ben’s head into the police car and shoved the rest of him onto the back seat. He and Brenda looked at each other through the window as the police drove away with him. She attempted to go into the apartment, but the police would not let her in, as they were conducting an investigation. On the way to the holding facility, Ben knew what was ahead for him, and he did not care anymore. He just wanted to get away from life. He knew he would fail every ballistics test they took; however; he would not confess to anything—not to taking Edina’s money, not to drugs, not even to Jerome’s murder—unless they could prove 100 percent that he was responsible. He knew how the system worked.

  After he had arrived at the precinct, they photographed and fingerprinted him. Central booking staff interviewed him for more information. They asked him why he had Jerome’s personal belongings in his possession. He refused to expound. They then escorted him to the court building and spoke to the assistant district attorney, who told them that this case was going to the courts and filed a formal complaint against him in criminal court on the behalf of the people of the state of New York. He was arraigned before a judge and appointed counsel. They informed him that they were charging him with assault, robbery, drug possession, drug distribution, and illegal use of a weapon. More charges were possible pending the results of an investigation. He pleaded guilty. He knew that if he went to trial, it would guarantee that he would be put away for life. The judge decided to hold Ben without bail, as he was a flight risk. The judge ordered him confined in custody pending a grand jury action.

  Ben was taken back to holding, stripped of his clothing, and given prison garb and a roll of tissue. Because of overcrowding due to a large number of arrests in the city, and because he was not likely to receive bail, they transferred him from the precinct holding cell to the central jail until his next court hearing.

  Investigators continued to look around the apartment after police took Ben away. One of the detectives noticed what looked like dried blood on the couch and a few spots left on the carpet and the walls. Ben must have missed them while cleaning up the scene. They sorted through the other piles of miscellaneous items strewn about the apartment and found various drug paraphernalia, suitcases of cash (mostly hundred-dollar bills in stacks), and Jerome’s wallet, wedding ring, and chain in a purple Crown Royal bag. The box of baby clothes that Jerome had brought into the apartment with him lay closed in the same spot next to the couch. The police were aware that all of these items were missing. They had a forensics crew come in and take samples of the spots to see if they were indeed blood splatter. They wanted to check and see if this was Edina’s blood.

  Twelve hours after placement in the tank, Ben began to have withdrawals from the heroin. He began to sweat profusely and to experience stomach cramps and muscle aches. He asked the deputies for help. They ignored him. After a couple of hours, they gave him a garbage bag and told him to vomit in it. The cops said th
at the drugs needed to leave his system. The officers would take him to the hospital if his symptoms became worse. They had seen many like him go through there before, and they thought he was a little dramatic. They handed Ben a cup of water and suggested that he sit in the corner and wait it out. This was different from when he had overdosed in Vietnam. There, they had been more willing to treat him. The local law enforcement did not care.

  Brenda returned to her family’s place. She was worried. Ben was in jail, and it did not look like he would be getting out anytime soon. She was pregnant. She was almost sure it was Ben’s child. She was not planning to terminate the pregnancy. Having a white baby was seen as a novelty in that area. She and Ben had never used protection, and Jose always used rubbers, sometimes more than one at the same time because he did not trust her. During her visits to the apartment, Brenda had discovered cash hidden in furniture and holes that they had cut in the walls and the couch. When Jose and Ben were not looking, she would take a stack. She figured that they would not miss it. Over time, she had stolen eleven stacks, which totaled about eight thousand dollars. She hid the money in a hole that she cut in her mattress so her brothers and sisters would not find it. Brenda planned to use it to take care of herself and her baby. She had started spending some of the money before she learned of her condition. Until she could find some financial support for herself, she decided to go to Jose’s family and friends and pass the baby off as his until Ben got out of jail, if he got out. She knew that the Ghetto Brothers would make sure that she was taken care of in the meantime.

  After Jose’s funeral, which many of the gang leaders in the area attended, the co-leader of the Ghetto Brothers decided to call all of the leaders of the other gang families to have a peace summit. The head of each sector attended as the voice of the eleven thousand members they represented in the Bronx. After hours of arguments and tough talk about reality, they all agreed to a resolution of peace and decided to make an attempt as a whole unit to better their neighborhoods instead of tearing them apart. They concluded that the enemy was not each other but the status quo that held them all down as a community.

  Chapter 14

  John and a few people from the Jet Mafia met with Enzo Ambrosino. Their numbers were even. Five from each side were in attendance in the room, drawn along racial lines. John was ready to negotiate with them in exchange for the rights to the Chimera name. Both sides were armed, as this meeting could end in a number of ways. If John’s years of experience paid off, he would leave this meeting a victor, just as Bernie had done many times before when John accompanied him to meetings with other families. Enzo Ambrosino agreed to meet with John but warned him not to get out of line, or else he would end up like his wife. John enticed him with not only money but also the promise not to testify against him if anything went down with the feds. John felt that he was negotiating with the devil and had to agree to do things that he considered wrong to get things done. Enzo Ambrosino did not care about the Chimera name, as it meant nothing to him. He only wanted the money-making potential that came with it. He did not gain much from the company when it was all said and done. They barely made anything more than their initial investment, despite the company being worth millions more. Chimera’s assets had mostly been in cash, which John had removed before the Ambrosino family raided the office and accounts. John had kept that money hidden away the whole time, using it to support himself, Jerome, and Mariana as well as to pay for the security for all of them. That totaled tens of millions. Four million was not much for him to give back to the Ambrosinos.

  The thrill of taking down Chimera was already gone for Ambrosino. Enzo compared the takeover of Chimera to shooting down an animal as a hunter. He and Bernie never got along, and this had been an ego boost for him and the family. Edina’s death had been his trophy, and he could have hung her head on the wall if he had wanted to. John knew that the Ambrosino family was responsible for Edina’s death, and he added that as a negotiation tool. Enzo stared at John for a second.

  “An eye for an eye. Your wife was an eye for my eye, my son, my everything, Sammy. You know of him?” Enzo said.

  John stared back. “No, I don’t know anything about that.”

  Enzo frowned. “Being only a witness and complacent to an action does not free you from guilt. My son, he was only nineteen years old. He had his entire future in front of him. Losing a child is a pain that no parent should feel. How would your mother feel if she lost you before she died?” he said.

  John shrugged. “Oh, it’s me, of course she would be devastated. I don’t get what my mother has to do with anything going on here. Whatever this is about, I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

  Enzo continued. “Imagine his mother’s devastation at the thought that some trash put a bag over his head and that he slowly suffocated and the extra step they took to humiliate him. The devastating thought of him grasping for his last air sent his mother and me into a breakdown.”

  John responded. “One, if you are implying that I put a bag over your kid’s head. It wasn’t me. Two, perhaps your kid should have been doing other things besides activities that put him in that compromising position. Most sons are loyal, and they do their father’s dirty work if instructed. Some even do the dirty work of their fake partners. That’s something to think about isn’t it?”

  Clearly irritated, Enzo responded to John, “Well, I guess our losses match up, don’t they?”

  On John’s stealth instruction, the guys from Jet Mafia decided to distract Ambrosino’s security. Anytime one of the Jet Mafia moved an inch, Ambrosino’s security moved to attack by pulling out their guns. This also sidetracked Enzo’s attention. Enzo would get up to get in John’s face. While the guards were distracted, one of the Jet men took out a syringe and quickly squirted the contents in Enzo’s drink. The act took no longer than three seconds. When John noticed that it had been done, he urged everyone to calm down. The syringe contained thallium.

  Hours had gone by since John left, and he had not called back to check in as he had promised. Celia began to get worried. She started looking around and noticed some old papers from Chimera—the company stationery. She looked at it and began to reminisce about the good ole days when they were all happy. She began drawing on it to see what it would look like if it were updated. She did this to keep herself busy until John made it back. He’d had the security stay with her to keep her safe. When she finished doodling, she had nothing else to do. She was becoming restless and frustrated. The worst began to invade her thoughts. If something bad happened to John, she would never be the same.

  Celia decided to calm herself and sit down. She turned on the television. CBS News broke into programming to air a special report. It was about Watergate. The televised testimony about the scandal had already begun in the Senate. An informant had indicated that President Nixon had recorded incriminating conversations and that the investigation was widening. The president reassured the questioning public and Congress that he was no crook.

  Celia had been so inundated with her issues that she had tuned out of what was going on around her. Back in Jamaica, the people had been fighting for economic freedom and against Kissinger for opposing their policies, but at home, the country was falling apart, with Kissinger being a participant. She wanted to leave and go back to warmth and paradise, but she knew that she needed to be here with John and her family at this time, at least until things were settled. John had plans, but she wanted to pack everyone up and take them back to Kingston with her. Frustrated with the news, Celia fell asleep for the night with no word on John’s return.

  Celia awakened the next morning. She looked next to her, and John was not there. She panicked as she got up and looked around the house and did not see him. She wanted to pick up the phone to call out, but whom would she call? She sat down on the bed. She looked over at the clock and knew that something had to have gone wrong. She put her head in her hands and covered her face. Celia felt weak and defeated. She did not know what else to
do except call the police. As she sat there, something touched her shoulder. She jumped and looked up. It was John, unscathed. Relieved, she stood up and kissed him, which put a smile on his face. Then she slapped him, which confused him. “You didn’t call home. I thought you were dead,” she said.

  “Bunny, I didn’t want to wake you. I sent the security home for today. We did it!” he said.

  “What does this mean now?” Bunny asked.

  “It means that we can move on,” he said.

  “What’s next?” she asked.

  “I have ideas, but we should talk about it together,” John responded.

  “When I was here waiting for you to show up, I was thinking about what you said. I was looking at an old letterhead with the symbol on it. I think we should redesign it. Not change it too much, but make it represent something new,” she said. Bunny suggested that he keep the symbol but put fire around it.

  “Why fire?” John asked.

  “Well, I know a little about the symbol. I looked it up in the library when I first started. The sign is associated with burning rock. It’s solid, and if you burn it, the fire never goes out. You can burn it, and it stays alive,” she said.

  “Wow. You’re so smart. I thought it was just some weird shit Bernie made up. The way you were explaining it, I was thinking it had something to do with the place burning down,” he said. “Fire it will be.” John paused and looked at Bunny. “I had a rough night, and I would feel better if you hugged me,” he added.

  Bunny laughed. “You are such an ass,” she said. She put her arms around John, and he picked her up.