"Whadda we do now?" Totò asked as he pulled the car over down the block from the lot.
"I say we try to find out more about what they been dumping," Sunny replied.
"You crazy or what?"
"Well, you just wanna go home after we came all this way?"
"Okay, okay, but don't tell me I didn't warn ya."
They got out of the car and walked along the fence. It was impossible to see through the canvas that covered the wire mesh. There was a gate at the entrance through which the truck had driven; it was still open. There, on the other side of the lot, was the truck. Sunny and Totò looked around the yard but couldn't see anybody. After watching awhile, they decided that the driver must have gone into the office building, which stood on the opposite side of the yard.
After a quick whispered consultation, Sunny and Totò headed over to the truck. Totò went around to peek into the cab while Sunny looked into the back of it. They had just met up on the far side of the truck and were about to head back out of the lot when a loud voice stopped them in their tracks.
"Who the fuck are you and what're you doing here?"
Two men were moving fast toward them from the office building. The one who had spoken was big and burly, and was dressed in a suit.
"We ain't doing nothing, mister," Totò blurted out. "We was just looking for a place to be alone."
"Just looking for a place to be alone, huh? You planning on getting some action tonight, huh? Well, let's take a look at your girlfriend."
The two men were now standing right in front of them. The suit walked up to within a foot of Sunny while his partner, a short guy dressed in jeans and a nylon jacket, hung back.
"Oh man, she's pretty weird looking. What's with the spiky hair? You put your finger in an electric socket or something, sweetheart? And why're you dressed like a boy? Not very attractive, I must say, but I bet your pussy is still sweet. Say, my friend, I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing some of that sweet poontang, now, would you? What you think, Joe, shall we sample this funky thing's merchandise?"
"Sure thing, boss," the short guy said, "even if she is kinda scrawny."
Totò lost it and made a run at the suit, who saw him coming and punched him hard in the stomach. Totò reeled backward, into the arms of the suit's partner, who grabbed him from behind, threw him onto the ground, and started delivering a series of thudding punches to his head.
"Now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?" the suit said, as he advanced toward Sunny. "Oh yes, I was speaking admiringly of your pussy. I'm sure you don't want to disappoint my great expectations, do you now? So, let's get down to business, shall we?"
Sunny stood still, paralyzed by fear. But just as he reached her, she yelled "Stronzo!" with eardrum-popping volume and swung her steel-capped Dr. Marten–clad foot up into his kneecap. The suit screamed out in pain and toppled over. Sunny stepped back and delivered another carefully aimed kick to his stomach. The suit's high-pitch screeching turned into a deep groan.
Sunny wheeled around just in time to see Totò leap onto the back of the short guy, who had stopped punching him and was coming over to help his boss. Totò couldn't see much since his eyes were already swelling up from the punches, but he did momentarily distract the guy. Sunny cocked her leg back and delivered one more kick, this one straight to the man's groin. He howled and crumpled to the ground.
Sunny grabbed Totò by the hand and dragged him out of the yard and down the street. As they approached the Camaro, she grabbed the keys out of his pocket, pushed Totò into the passenger seat, climbed in, and gunned the car's engine. They took off back toward Staten Island in a screech of burning tires.
"Oh fuck, they sure kicked the shit outta me," Totò moaned as they flew back across the Goethals Bridge. "But I gotta hand it to you, you really saved my ass."
"Don't mention it. Those assholes really had it coming to 'em. They didn't even know what we was doing and they still wanted to fuck us up!"
"Fuck you up, more like it."
"Well, they won't be trying that stunt again anytime soon."
"Yeah, you were so cool! They really picked the wrong chick to fuck with. Watch out, muthafuckas: she's got DMs and she ain't afraid to use 'em. So cool! Oh shit, I'm bleeding all over my dad's car. He's gonna fuck me up even worse than those guys did."
"Don't sweat it, Totò. I'll explain to him. I have proof that we weren't just fuckin' around. Check this out!"
Sunny took a small plastic container out of her jacket.
"What the fuck's that? You gonna show him that you been eating yogurt for your diet or something?" Totò quipped, and groaned as his joke brought a painful smile to his face.
"No, dipshit, I scooped some of the liquid from the back of that truck into this yogurt container. This is all the evidence we need to bust those sons a bitches."
"Jesus! Nice move, Sunny, but get that shit away from me."
* * *
Two days later, Sunny was standing in the usual corner of the playground waiting for the morning assembly bell to ring. Today she was alone. She didn't feel like shooting the bull with the other kids. Debate about the merits of Patti Smith's collaboration with Springsteen on Easter or even about the death of Sid Vicious, so significant just a week ago, seemed pretty tame in comparison with what she'd been going through. Like a giant toxic whirlpool, Staten Island had sucked Sunny back in, but it left her even more alienated from everyone around her than before.
And Totò was still out of school. His dad had been pretty cool about the blood in his car when they explained what they'd found at the dump. Turned out he was actually pretty worried about Totò's cough, and angry at the authorities for not doing anything. Typical fucked-up way they treat people, he'd said. Then he started railing at the government for dropping Agent Orange on the Vietnamese and dumping heroin and other shit here in the States. Damn, he really is like the complete opposite of my dad, Sunny thought. But Enzo didn't have any good ideas about who to turn to. And Totò wouldn't be back in circulation for a week or so while the bruises on his face healed.
Sunny's fear that the suit from Jersey would track her down somehow was starting to fade, but she was still feeling really jumpy. She had all the evidence that she needed to bust Refinement International, or whoever was behind it, but she didn't have any way to figure out what was really in that yogurt container, which she'd been keeping at the back of the fridge, hoping none of her family would accidentally eat it. And even if she could figure out what that pungent black liquid was, who could she tell about it? Even if her dad wasn't involved in any way, Totò was probably right that the local authorities in the Department of Sanitation were on the take. Despite having come so far in such a short time, Sunny felt totally stuck.
The assembly bell rang and Sunny started toward the school auditorium for another day of mindless tedium. She hadn't gone more than a few steps, though, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned and found a man in a dark suit and tie standing a few feet away from her. No, not the same suit, not the same guy, she thought. The man smiled at her.
"Hello, Annunziata. I'm a friend of your dad's. I and my associates would like you to talk to you about what you've been up to lately."
"Do I have any choice?"
"No, mi dispiace, cara, you don't."
Sunny walked slowly over toward the black car indicated by her dad's "friend."
The two got in and drove in silence for about fifteen minutes. Sunny tried to sit like a statue as her mind flipped backward and forward between white-hot rage and blind terror. Come what may, she wasn't going to let this asshole see what was going on inside her.
After the car pulled up outside a place called Joe and Pat's Pizzeria, the guy in the black suit took her into the joint and led her over to a table near the window, where another man, also wearing a suit, was sitting. He pulled out a chair for her and asked if she'd like something to eat or drink. Sunny declined and sat waiting to hear some sort of explanation. The driver strolle
d out of the store.
The man who'd been waiting for her in the pizzeria began: "Hello, Annunziata. My name's Rocco. I'm a friend of your dad's. You don't need to know anything more about me. But I want to know more about you. I hear you've been doing some investigations at the dump recently?"
"Did my dad tell you about this?" Sunny asked, her anger barely in check.
"No, but we have our ways of getting information about matters in the community."
"Okay," Sunny said, knowing that it wouldn't make much sense to lie about the basics, "I found out that a lot of people in my neighborhood were getting sick. I figured it might be related to Fresh Kills somehow, so I checked it out one night. What's it to you?"
"I'm askin' the questions for now, Annunziata. What did you find during your investigation?"
"I saw some trucks dumping stuff."
"That's all you know?"
"Yeah, that's all I know at the moment, Rocco. Why do you care?"
"Let's just say that it's a matter of territorial integrity, Annunziata."
"What?"
"My associates and I like to take care of the people who take care of us. We don't like anyone else comin' in an' messin' with La Cosa Nostra, with our people and our business, if you understand me. We got wind recently that someone has been dumpin' somethin' at Fresh Kills. Bad stuff. Really bad stuff. Cyanide, naphthalene, and all kinds of other very unhealthy chemicals. Now, we like to think of Fresh Kills as part of our garden, even if the rest of New York City believes it belongs to them. We admit, there's a lot of unpleasant material in that garden of ours. But there are limits. And we like to make sure those limits are properly observed, you get me?"
"Sure," Sunny replied, "I get you."
"So we want to know who's behind this dumpin'. We don't know yet, but we heard that you might know. Is that true, Annunziata?"
Sunny's heart leaped into her throat. How much did these guys really know? Were they wise to her trip to Elizabeth? She decided to gamble.
"Well, I saw that the trucks had outta-state license plates."
"And that's all you know?"
"Yeah, that's all I know."
"Okay, but just in case you learn anything else, let me leave you my number. Remember, Annunziata, we're only trying to protect you and the other good people of this island."
"Thanks, Rocco. I'll be in touch if I find out anything else."
"Va bene, Annunziata. Ma stai attenta, be careful. Garbage is a dangerous business."
"So I've heard."
Rocco got up and sauntered out of the pizzeria, leaving Sunny staring at the opposite wall. What the hell was she going to do? Had her dad ratted her out because of some kind of twisted desire to protect her? Should she confide in these genteel thugs? The idea of turning to them to save the neighborhood from the shit at Fresh Kills was ludicrous. After all, they were the ones who helped make sure the place stayed open all these years in the first place. But where else could she turn?
As her thoughts became increasingly agitated, her eyes slowly came to focus on a headline in a copy of the New York Times lying on a nearby table: Love Canal Is Extra Tough on Children. She walked over to the table, sat down, and began to read. The article told the story of a toxic waste dump in upstate New York. Local authorities had built a school on top of land sold to them by a chemical company, and now kids from the community were starting to get sick. Local women were having miscarriages and giving birth to kids with horrible defects. The article talked about a housewife, Lois Gibbs, who'd demanded that the government pay for people to be relocated from homes built near the dump. When she got no response, she started organizing the community. Gibbs, the article said, had held government officials hostage, feeding them milk and cookies for days and demanding that they release information about the waste buried in the community. She'd even formed an organization to push for what she called environmental justice. She was a real fighter.
Sunny looked up from the paper. Her mind gradually settled. She knew where she was going to send her toxic waste.
LIGHTHOUSE
BY S.J. ROZAN
St. George
It sucked to be him.
Paul huffed and wheezed up Lighthouse Avenue, pumping his bony legs and wiping sweat from his face. His thighs burned and his breath rasped but he knew better than to ask if he could stop. One more uphill block, he figured, then he’d turn and head back down. That would be okay. That would take him past the mark one more time, even though there wasn’t much to see from the street. A wall with a couple of doors, a chain-link fence, raggedy bright flags curling in the autumn breeze. The building itself, the little museum, nestled into the hillside just below. Paul didn’t really have to see it. He didn’t have to do this run at all, truth be told. He’d been there a bunch of times, inside, in that square stone room. He used to go just to stand in the odd cool stillness, just to look at those peculiar statues with all their arms and their fierce eyes. Long time ago, of course, before The Guys came, but the place hadn’t changed and he already knew all he had to know about it. Alarm, yes; dog, no. Most important, people in residence: no.
He kept climbing, closing in on the end of the block. Paul liked it here. Lighthouse Hill was easy pickings.
It always had been, back from when he was a kid. The first B&E he pulled, he boosted a laptop from the pink house on Edinboro. Years ago, but he remembered. The planning, the job, his slamming heart. The swag. Everything.
It was good he did, because The Guys liked to hear about it. While he was planning a job they liked to help, and then when it was done they liked to hear the story over and over. Even though they’d been there. They wanted him to compare each job to other jobs so they could point out dumb things he did, and stuff that went right. That used to piss Paul off, how they made him go over everything a million times. Turned out, though, it was pretty worthwhile to listen to them, even though in the beginning he’d wondered what a bunch of stupid aliens knew about running a B&E. He was right about Roman too. Roman really was stupid. He never knew anything about anything. Paul had to be careful when and where he said that, even just thought it, because if Roman was listening he could do that kick thing and give Paul one of those sonuvabitch headaches. There was a way he’d found where he could sometimes think about stuff, sort of sideways and not using words, and The Guys didn’t notice. But the thing was, even if Roman did catch Paul thinking about how stupid he was, it didn’t matter; it was still true.
Larry and Stoom, though, they were pretty sharp. “You mean, for aliens?” Stoom asked once, with that sneer he always had. Paul thought for sure he was curling his lip, like in a cartoon. That was how he knew they must have lips, because of Stoom’s sneer. Stoom was the only one who still used his alien name, and he was the nastiest (but not as pig-eyed mean as Roman). He was always ragging on Paul, telling him what a loser he was.
“Then why’d you pick me?” Paul yelled back once, a long time ago. “I didn’t invite you. Why don’t you just go the fuck back where you came from?”
Stoom said it was none of his business and then whammo, the headache.
But as far as the sharp-for-aliens thing, Stoom and Larry were actually pretty sharp for anybody. It was Larry who suggested Paul do his preliminary reconnaissance (“Casing the joint!” Roman bawled. “Call it casing the joint!”) in sweats, jogging past a place a couple of times, at different hours. That was good for a whole bunch of reasons. For one thing, Larry was right: no one noticed a jogger, except other joggers, who were only interested in sizing you up, figuring if they were better or you were better. If they could take you. Of course, if it came to it, any of them could take Paul and he knew it. Real runners were all muscle and sinew. Paul looked like them, lanky, with short hair and sunken cheeks, but his skinniness was blasted out of what he used to be, drained by junk. As though the needles in his arm had been day by day drawing something out instead of pumping it in.
But he still laced up his running shoes and made himself circle whatever
neighborhood it was, every time he was ready to plan a job. Which was pretty much every time the rent was due or the skag ran out. Even if he had the whole job ready to go in his head and didn’t need to, like now, he still ran the streets around it. For one thing, The Guys liked that he did it this way, and as awful as the wheezing and the fire in his legs were, the headaches when they got mad were always worse.
Another thing: suiting up and going by a couple times over a couple days stretched out the planning part. That was Paul’s favorite. He liked to learn stuff about his marks: who they were, how they lived, what they liked to do.
“Oh, please,” said Stoom, about that. He sounded like he was rolling his eyes, though Paul didn’t know if they had eyes, either. He’d asked once, what they looked like, but that turned out to be another thing that was none of his business. “You’re a crook,” Stoom went on. “You’re a junkie. You’re a loser with aliens in your head. All you need to know about people is what they have and when they won’t be home.”
“Maybe he wants to write a book about them,” Larry suggested, in a bored and mocking voice. “Maybe he’s going to be a big best-selling author.”
That had burned Paul up, because that was exactly what he’d wanted before The Guys showed up. He always had an imagination; he was going to grow up and be a writer.
He never talked about The Guys anymore. He had, at first. It took him awhile to figure out no one else could hear them and everyone thought he was nuts. “There are no aliens, Paul. It’s all in your head. You need to get help.” Stuff like that.
Well, that first point, that was completely wrong. Paul used to argue, say obvious things like, “You can’t see time either, but no one says it isn’t there.” All people did was stare and back away, so he stopped saying anything.
The second point, though, was completely right. That’s where The Guys lived: in Paul’s head. Where they’d beamed when they came to earth on some kind of scouting mission, Paul didn’t know what for. Or from where. They never did tell him why, but Stoom had told him from where. It’s just, it was some planet he’d never heard of circling some star he’d never heard of in some galaxy really, really far away. Magribke was the closest Paul could come to pronouncing it. The Guys laughed at him when he said it that way, but they didn’t tell him how to really say it. They didn’t talk about their home planet much. Mostly, they just told Paul the Loser what to do.
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