“Why does it bother you, what these people think of us?” Travis had asked.
“Because, Trav, we might not be as fortunate as them but there’s no reason to be disrespectful, no reason to be disgusted by us,” I informed him.
****
We had been together for a couple of months, hanging about, trying not to get picked up by the cops or perverts when an opportunity arose. Not one I would normally like to have taken but I was hungry, Travis was hungry but also he was sick. He needed some medicine. Not that I was a doctor but he sounded like he could do with something for his chest, he had a terrible cough and he had a fever. His forehead was covered in beads of sweat and he winced, holding his sides every time he coughed.
A woman walked past me distracted, searching in her handbag for something and allowing one arm of the bag to fall down her shoulder. Easy pickings. I snatched the purse that was sitting, conveniently, at the top. She gave chase for a little while, calling out to me. I looked over my shoulder and I saw her crouch down on that cold, dirty sidewalk. People strolled past her as if she was nothing. No one stopped to help and I saw a tear fall from her eye. I felt like a complete dick. I walked back and handed her the purse. She looked at me, she had dark brown eyes, not as dark as mine of course but I saw a sadness and a kindness in them. She was tired, she had a tired soul. I bent down, held out my hand to her and helped her to her feet. She smoothed down her dress and placed her purse back in her bag.
“My friend is sick, I needed money for medicine,” I said, to explain my actions.
“Where is your friend?” she asked.
“Not far,” I replied, not wanting to give away our location.
“Can I see him? I might be able to help.”
“Yeah lady, then you’ll be back with the cops,” I said, standing tall.
I could see a flicker of fear in her eyes. I loved to see that normally but not in her case, I didn’t want her to fear me. There was something about her, something I didn’t understand but I knew I could trust her.
“Come on,” I said, and she followed me.
Travis was wrapped up in a blanket I had stolen, he was not asleep but had his eyes shut. No one ever slept on the streets, you couldn’t afford to. It was too dangerous once the sun set, once the street lights lit and once the normal people had left it. So, no, we never slept as such, just dozed enough for our bodies to repair of whatever exhaustion we had met with that day. She bent down to him and placed her hand on his burning forehead.
“He’s so hot, he must have a fever,” she said.
She took out her purse and handed me a $10 bill.
“You’re right, he needs medicine. Just around the block is a pharmacy. Ask them for paracetamol and get a bottle of water too,” she said.
I rushed away knowing that she would still be there when I got back. I bought what she asked for and it felt odd. It was the first time I had ever entered a store with money and paid for something.
I ran back as fast as I could and she was still there. She told me that he needed the paracetamol to bring the fever down and to make sure he had regular sips of water. She also said that she would be back later with some food. It wasn’t long before she returned with some hot pies in a bag, some coffee in take out containers and it was the best meal we’d ever had.
“Will you be here tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yeah, unless the cops come, then we might have to move,” I replied.
Until Travis was well, I was hoping we weren’t going anywhere. If the cops came, he wasn’t well enough to run and there was no way we wanted to get caught. Some of the other kids on the street had told us the horror stories of what happened in the cells or the homes they had been placed in.
As she left I asked her, “What’s your name, lady?”
“Evelyn,” she replied. “But you can call me Ev if you want. And what do I call you?” she asked.
“Robert Stone, at your service,” I said, bowing at the waist. “And this here, is Travis.”
From that day forwards Travis and I saw Evelyn nearly every day.
Travis got well, Ev came by frequently to check on us, making sure we had something to eat. She worked in a local office, typing and stuff she’d told me. She would pick up something for us on her way to work and sometimes we would walk with her. Often, we would wait for her at the end of the day, hanging around outside her office, smiling when we saw her then walking her home. We would chat about our day and she would be doubled over with laughter at some of our antics. It didn’t take long to see the sadness in her eyes start to fade. I had often wondered what had made her so sad, but never asked.
****
It was a few months later, on a sunny day, mid August, when our lives changed. I went into a small grocery store without thinking about how many times we had hit it, all I wanted was some water, something to drink. I walked into the store, snatched a couple of bottles from a shelf and ran for the door. I noticed a shadow fall across the floor in front of the doorway and as I came to an abrupt halt, I looked up into the brown eyes of a huge guy. Behind him were two others. He had a smile on his face, but with one large hand he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and turning me around, he made me place the bottles of water back on the shelf.
I didn’t fight as such, that was pointless, he was larger and stronger than I was, but I would not back down. As much as he stared at me, I would not look away. I was not ashamed of what I had done, I was surviving that’s all. His grip released on my collar and I straightened my shirt. I held out my hand to him, which he took.
“Robert Stone,” I introduced myself. He had no need to return his name, I knew exactly who he was.
He laughed. Here was some kid, shaking his hand like a man, staring him down without a shred of fear in my eyes, I guessed that amused him. He admired me, he told me many years later, for that.
“So you’re Robert Stone. I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “You best follow me kid, and where’s your partner in crime?”
Guiseppi took me back to his office with him. It was only a short walk to a doorway in between two stores and up a flight of stairs. Travis followed behind. We had developed a code as such, a slight nod of the head or a gesture of our hands. I’d told him to hold back until I knew what we were dealing with. What I noticed was, as we walked, people either moved out of Guiseppi’s way or practically fell over themselves wanting to shake his hand.
Guiseppi opened the door into a room with barely any light, bars at the cracked, dirty windows and people sitting about smoking or drinking. It looked like a sleaze bar and the place stank of stale cigarettes and booze. I wrinkled my nose.
“Nice place you got here,” I said, sarcastically.
“Says he, whose office is a doorstep in an alley.”
“At least I keep it clean, I know where everything is,” I said, a slight smile playing across my lips.
“If you pay us, me and my friend will clean this place up,” I added, looking around.
“And what kind of payment do you want?” he asked, amused by me.
“$5 each, which you will see once we’re done, will be a bargain.”
So started our careers with Guiseppi Morietti, an Italian immigrant from Naples, the local kingpin, the gangland boss and, as I found out later, Evelyn’s father.
Travis and I spent the next day cleaning the office. We lugged out some old, broken furniture which we left on the sidewalk, then swept and cleaned the whole place. Cleaning was something I had done every day when I lived in Sterling. Cleaning was something Travis had never done and he grumbled the whole day. For that we received our $5 each, a huge amount of money, or so we thought. I learnt one valuable lesson that day, I had sold us too cheap.
“Well, well, you did good, kid,” Guiseppi said when he returned, flanked by two of the largest guys I had ever seen.
“Of course we did. Now, if you have any other jobs we can do?” I replied.
He thought for a moment. “Come back tomorrow, earl
y,” he said, as he dismissed us.
As we turned to leave we saw Evelyn entering the office, she smiled at us.
“Papa, I see you’ve met Robert and Travis then,” she said.
Papa! So her father was the great Guiseppi Morietti. At that moment I was quite glad I had given back her purse. I chuckled and she winked at me as we left.
The first thing Travis did was run to the candy shop. I bought a small writing book and a pen. I had decided that I wanted Joe, as we called him, to hold onto my earnings and I would record every dime, until such a time as I needed it.
The following morning we were there, sitting on the doorstep before anyone arrived. I watched as a huge black car pulled up to the curb. A driver and passenger got out before opening the rear door for Joe to exit and we stood as he made his way towards us.
“If you are going to work for me you need clean clothes,” he said, peeling off $50. “Go and get some, then get straight back here.”
“Oh man, look at all that money,” Travis said as we walked away. “We could live on that for a month.”
“No, Trav, we’re going to do as he says. We’ll buy some clothes and give him back the change.”
“Rob, come on, look at it, when are we going to see $50 again,” he said.
We bought new jeans, a couple of new T-shirts each, underwear and some sneakers. I asked for a receipt from the store and handed it to Joe with the change once we returned. He took them both with raised eyebrows, surprise registering in his eyes.
“I thought you might not have come back,” he said.
“I guess we passed your test then, didn’t we,” I answered.
We started to run errands, sometimes it was just to collect his dry cleaning or drop off a package to someone and for that we earned. The amount depended on what we did but by the end of a week Travis had nothing and I had $30. I was 12 years old and to me, and back then, that was an extraordinary amount of money. Joe allowed us to sleep at his office. We made up camp beds in a corner and Evelyn had brought us linen and a couple of pillows from their house. She would also, each morning, bring down something for us to eat, returning in the evening with another meal.
Joe had a team of guys around him, some in their twenties, some older. The older guys, Jonathan especially, were fine with us. I guess they humoured us more than anything, the younger ones though, they were a different bunch altogether. Paul was the one I struggled with the most at first, although I was eight years younger, we were about the same size, evenly matched in build but I believed he saw me as a threat somehow. He was shifty, his eyes never met anyone’s when he spoke. He always looked as if he had something to hide.
****
The first time I had to hit anyone was when I had to deliver a package and collect a payment for it. Climbing the stairs in a grubby apartment block, I held my breath. The stench of decay and piss overwhelmed me. We arrived at a broken front door, hanging by its brackets and walked in, stepping over garbage bags spewing with rotting food. A skinny guy, older than us was slouched on a couch. He looked to be more stuck to it such was the layer of grime. I handed over the package and was told to, “Now, fuck off.”
I stood my ground. “I want the money, you know I can’t go back to Guiseppi without your payment,” I said, quite calmly.
I didn’t know the man’s name nor what we had delivered but he laughed at me, not something I liked people doing, it was disrespectful.
“Money,” I said, taking a step closer to him and holding out my hand.
Looking in his eyes, all I could see was some faraway look. The guy was obviously on drugs and perhaps that was making him brave. Forget him being scared of me but he should have been scared of Joe, everyone else was.
“Beat it, kid,” he said, as he started to open the package. Travis was standing by the doorway, waiting to see how I would respond.
The guy must have been in his twenties and constantly wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He would have looked at me, all of twelve and thought he could have one over on me. But I was much, much stronger. As quick as a flash I pulled back my fist and punched him square in the face. I felt the crunch as his nose broke, a hot liquid run over my fist as the blood squirted and he fell from the couch to his knees, his hands over his face.
Bending down, I grabbed a handful of hair raising his face so he could look at me. “Money, now,” I growled.
He gestured with one hand, the other still holding his broken nose. Travis moved to the other side of the room and counted out the notes, taking an extra $10 because of the effort we’d had to exert to complete a simple transaction. We arrived back at Joe’s and I handed him the money, bloodied.
“What happened?” he asked, looking at my fist and the money.
“He didn’t want to pay so I made him. Travis took an extra $10 for the effort, if you think we deserve it for having to hit the guy, we’ll split it, if not, keep it yourself,” I said.
Joe looked stunned, as did the guys he always surrounded himself with.
“Let me get this straight. That prick didn’t want to pay, so you hit him. You then took an extra $10 which you are asking me to give you, if I think you deserve it.”
“Yes,” I said, I thought it was quite simple really. “If I hadn’t of hit him, you would not have been paid. Not only have we delivered the package, I then had to fight to get the money, that meant an extra job.”
He laughed, a real belly laugh. “Kid, with pleasure,” he said, as he handed over the money. “Paul, go let that fucker know he always pays,” he added.
I had started to keep hold of Travis’s money, giving him a daily allowance. If he had it all, it would be spent in minutes and, as I kept telling him, we had to think about the future. Saving money was a good thing, only spend what you need, I’d told him.
“Kid, tomorrow I want you to meet someone,” Joe said.
****
We sat in the office the following morning waiting for that big car to arrive. Instead of Joe getting out, we were told to get in. We slid along the smooth leather seats in the rear of the car. I don’t think I had ever sat in anything so big. As tall as I was, my feet didn’t touch the seats in front. We drove for a short while before we arrived at a slightly run-down building. Entering, I saw that it was a boxing club. A ring dominated the centre of the hall, punch bags and speed balls hung on chains from the ceiling. There were soft mats around and people were working out, some skipping, some lying on their backs having the heavy ball thrown at them and I looked around wide eyed.
“Kids, this is Ted. Ted the kids I told you about,” Joe said, by way of an introduction.
Standing in front of me was a man, middle aged I guessed, a broken nose and a cigarette hanging from his lips. His gnarled hand engulfed mine in a shake.
“Ted here used to be one of my best fighters,” Joe told us. “He’s going to show you some moves, channel that anger of yours a bit better.”
Travis and I were shown to a changing area and given vests and shorts to wear. Travis was bouncing around on his toes, he’d seen a movie about boxers and thought he knew it all. Ted took us to one of the soft mats.
“Now boys, I want to teach you to dance,” he said smiling.
“Fuck off mate, we don’t dance,” Travis replied, skipping about and punching the air already breathless.
He chuckled and called over a guy to demonstrate.
“Mack, come over, show these girls here how it’s done.”
Mack looked to be mid twenties and fit. He had muscles on muscles and from his moves, he had been training as a boxer for some time. He showed us how to stand and keep the weight on the back foot. He showed us how to defend, the position of our arms and hands to deflect any punches and finally he showed us how to throw a punch.
We mucked about for a bit on the soft mats, Travis had seen Rocky, he knew what to do. We were not allowed to hit each other, but to stand apart and throw a soft punch to teach the other to block it. Before I knew it, a couple of hours
had passed and Joe had returned. He was waving us over, it was time to go. I was disappointed, I could have stayed there all day. I had found something that I really enjoyed. Ted had said that we could come again and we looked at Joe in earnest. It was a dilemma, I would have gone every day but we still needed to earn money.
“You can come back tomorrow kid,” he said, seeing the look on my face. “After you’ve run a couple of errands for me.”
The following day the errands were much the same as we had done before. Drop off a package, collect the money and bring it back to Joe. We never asked what was in the packages, sometimes they were small, sometimes not. Travis had wanted to open one but I wouldn’t let him. Some were wrapped in brown paper and some were boxes of kitchen items, toasters and such like. We had been trusted with a job and we had to get on with it. I had half an idea what we were delivering in the brown paper packages and I wasn’t happy about it, but it was a way to survive. We took these deliveries to sleezy, run-down apartments and sometimes to big, large houses with long drives. Over a week we must have walked for miles. Often we would collect items from the office that Evelyn worked at, an import company I was told. It was always nice to see her and she would stop her work and make a point of chatting to us, checking we had eaten and we were clean. She fussed over us like I think a mother should have.
At one point she grabbed Travis by the collar and dragged him to the bathroom, dampening tissue she shoved it his ears while he squealed and tried to squirm away. I laughed until she stared, hard at me. I washed my own ears. There was a small bathroom in the office that we used but, according to Evelyn, not well enough.
****
We came close to getting picked up by the cops one day. I had a sense of being followed and without looking behind, I signalled to Travis to divert from the regular route we took. We scuttled down an alleyway and waited to see if I was right. I noticed a man in a blue jacket and jeans, one I had seen at various points throughout the day, stop at the top of the alley and stare down it, after us.
Robert (Fallen Angel Series Book 1) Page 5
