Dog Eat Dog

by Edward Bunker

  “You gonna do what I say, man. Right?”

  “Yeah, man, yeah. Hey, I’m gettin’ fuckin’ blood all over my rag, man.”

  “You can buy some more tomorrow.”

  Moon Man said nothing, but he liked what he heard. It meant the head man expected him to be alive tomorrow.

  “Look here,” Troy said as they reached the neighborhood. “You can get more money and more coke. But you can’t get more’n one life. So don’t think you can fake me out. I will kill you. All three of us will kill you. Quick! You got it?”

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  “Good.”

  The Chevy turned onto the ghetto street. The headlights flashed over the torn sofa abandoned at the curb, over the trash banked in the gutter, for the Sanitation Department seldom sent street sweepers down here. A wind had risen to drive the usual street loiterers indoors. That was good.

  “On the right, those bungalows.”

  Mad Dog slowed and made the turn onto the driveway running between the bungalows. It had once been black-topped, but that had worn through in spots, so the car and headlights bounced as it moved ahead. Children scattered to the side and disappeared beside the bungalows.

  Mad Dog stopped outside the bungalow. All three jumped out, Mad Dog with the pump .12 gauge, Diesel with a MAC 10 down low.

  Troy reached back and pulled Moon Man from the car. It took too long for a handcuffed man to climb out unaided. Troy guided him to the door. Diesel and Mad Dog covered his rear, but they saw nothing except the kids peeking around a corner.

  Troy banged on the door. “Tell him to open up,” he said.

  “Deuce Man,” said Moon Man. “Open the door.”

  No answer.

  “Tell him that we ain’ gonna bust him if he opens up.”

  “He ain’t gonna believe that.”

  “Tell him anyway.”

  “Hey, Deuce, these policemen say they ain’t gonna bust you.”

  From inside came a voice: “What the fuck you bring ’em here for, man?”

  “I ain’ brung the motherfuckers. They done knew.”

  “Hey, Deuce,” Troy called.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re gonna let you go if you don’t make us blow a hole in the door.”

  Behind him, Diesel and Mad Dog watched bungalow doors open. Faces peered out. The crowd was growing in numbers and hostility. “Hey, pig! Let the brother go!” someone yelled. Other voices took it up: “Let him go! Let him go!”

  “He better open up,” Troy said, cocking the pistol’s hammer and putting the muzzle behind Moon Man’s head.

  “For God’s sake, motherfucker! Open the door,” Moon Man screamed.

  “Okay, Moon! This better not be no bullshit!”

  The lock clicked, the door opened. Troy shoved in, pulling Moon Man with him. Deuce stood there, a young African-American in baggy clothes with gold chains around his neck. He had his hands up. Troy grabbed him and shoved him out the door. “Hit it, man. You got lucky.”

  Deuce ran down the steps past the two uniformed deputies and disappeared into the night. It was great to be free. It was almost a miracle. His passage through the swiftly growing crowd seemed to galvanize it. Someone picked up a chunk of cement and hurled it at the bungalow. It crashed loud against a wall, making Troy jump.

  “Get the car!” someone yelled. “Burn the motherfucker.”

  “Stop ’em,” Troy said.

  “Right,” Mad Dog said, turning back toward the door with the shotgun.

  “Don’t kill nobody unless you have to,” Troy said, sorry that he had to make the admonishment.

  Mad Dog stepped onto the porch. Near the car, some teenage youths in baggy gang attire were trying to pull up a two-by-four from a bungalow porch rail. “Freeze on that!” Mad Dog yelled, and racked the pump on the shotgun. Only the remonstrance by Troy kept him from blasting them. At twenty feet he would have torn all of them apart with the double-ought buckshot. The unique sound of a shotgun being jacked silenced them. They looked at him, eyes white, and faded back into the darkness. “Gonna kill you, fuckin’ pig!” a voice yelled from out of sight.

  Inside the house, Moon Man said, “You dudes are in trouble.”

  Diesel stepped forward and smashed a fist into his face. It was a straight right-hand punch from a trained heavyweight prizefighter. It cracked Moon Man’s jaw and dropped him straight down onto his knees. “If we’re in trouble, you’re dead, nigger!”

  “Give it up,” Troy said. “Quick.”

  Mad Dog backed through the front door. “Hurry up.”

  “Where is it?” Troy asked.

  “The bathroom.”

  A rock came through the window. The house was pelted with missiles. “Lemme waste a couple,” Mad Dog said.

  Troy shook his head. He held Moon Man’s handcuffs in one hand and kept the pistol muzzle against his head. The drug dealer led them to the bathroom. It was tiny, and the stall shower door had a crack sealed with masking tape.

  Moon Man indicated some built-in shelves. “Lift them all together.”

  Diesel pushed in, went to the shelves, and lifted. Jars and bottles crashed on the floor as the whole built-in section came up and out, exposing a niche the size of a large suitcase. It was piled high with polyurethane bags of white powder. They looked like two-pound bags of white flour.

  Diesel reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a folded shopping bag. He began filling it with the bags of powder. It quickly bulged. More bags remained.

  Holding Moon Man in the doorway and watching Mad Dog at the front door and Diesel behind him, Troy said, “Grab a pillowcase from the bedroom.”

  “Right.” Diesel ran to the bedroom and ran back with the pillow, pulling off the pillowcase as he returned.

  “Where’s the money?” Troy asked.

  “Ain’… money,” Moon Man said; it was hard to speak with the fractured jaw.

  “Let’s kill this lyin’ fuck,” Diesel said as he finished sacking up the cocaine. It was thirty kilos. The Greco had promised them twelve grand a kilo for all they got. It was too much for him to figure in the confusing circumstances, but it was a lot of money, any way it was counted. He squeezed out with the bags.

  “You gonna jes hafta kill this niggah, ’cause there ain’ no mother-fuckin’ money here, man!”

  Was it true? Most dealers kept money separate from the drug stash. They’d ripped three hundred grand in cocaine. Why be greedy?

  While he was thinking, six inches from his face a piece of plaster exploded, splattering pieces against his cheek.

  He started and turned and saw the hole. A bullet had come through the outer wall and the kitchen wall and just missed his head. His heart jumped and missed a beat, but after that he was in control.

  Moon Man had ducked his head. “Motherfucker!” was all he could say.

  Mad Dog put his head into the kitchen. “Some asshole got a gun out there.”

  “No shit?” Troy said. Then he laughed and Mad Dog laughed, too.

  Another shot tore through the front room. It wasn’t even slowed down by the bungalow’s outer wall.

  “Put the light out,” Troy yelled to Diesel, who was crouched behind a stuffed chair. Even a tough guy respected wild gunfire. He reached out and pulled the plug from the wall. The bungalow’s front room went dark.

  Another shot tore through the bungalow. Troy thought it must be a bolt-action rifle. Otherwise whoever it was would simply unload a volley of shots. Even a six-shooter fired faster than the guy outside.

  It was time to leave. He released Moon Man and headed for the door. “Let’s go,” he said, touching Diesel on the shoulder and picking up the pillowcase. He went to the front door and pulled it open while staying back in the shadows.

  When he saw the next muzzle flash, he started pulling the trigger at two-second intervals, aiming at the flash. He simultanously walked forward, out the door. Diesel came next, carrying the other bag while shooting the MAC 10 into the bungalows, but at a h
igh angle unlikely to hit anyone. Mad Dog danced along at the rear, whirling this way and that with the shotgun. He would kill anything that moved—but he saw nobody. The firepower had driven them to cover.

  Troy opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel. The key was waiting. He turned it as the others piled into the back. The engine roared. Troy rammed the shift into reverse and hit the gas. The tires spit gravel as the car leaped backward, weaving back and forth en route to the street, running over a trash can and knocking down a narrow fence post before Troy spun the steering wheel and turned into the street.

  As he threw it into first gear and tromped on the gas, figures appeared next to a bungalow and began hurling rocks. Some banged harmlessly against metal; one cracked a side window.

  Tires burned rubber and spit up gravel as the car fishtailed and gathered momentum, turned a corner, and was gone.

  A block away, Mad Dog announced that nobody was behind them, and all three burst into the laughter of relief.

  Later, however, when they had changed cars and were driving up the Harbor Freeway toward the clustered towers of downtown L.A., the adrenaline drained and Troy felt a great wave of melancholy wash through him. He’d taken off the biggest score of his life. It would buy what money bought: freedom and possibility. To be anything in this time and place necessitated money, unless one had inclinations toward monasticism. Troy had no other way to get money, so he did what he had to. Yet this left him empty. Still, he smiled when his partners laughed and slapped him on the back. In a few days they would cut up about $360,000. It was a lot of money even with inflation.

  10

  Even at four in the morning the Bicycle Club, a giant poker casino beside the Long Beach Freeway, was so full that erstwhile gamblers had to wait for a seat. Games included Seven-Card Stud and Lowball, but the most popular was Texas Hold ’Em, a wild and woolly poker variation that favored those who bluffed and played loose and relied on luck. The many gamblers were an ethnic stew, heavy on Asian, for awareness of chance in life was deeply imprinted on their culture. It inclined them toward gambling, unlike the stern Puritan streak still running through Protestant America. The Bicycle Club was the size of a football field filled with tables. Each table had seven seats, and every seat at every table had a rump in it, while a blackboard on the sidelines listed each game and had initials of those waiting to play. The humming roar of voices were a counterpoint to the rattling chips, broken by a cursing voice or exclamation of joy.

  In the coffee shop booth sat Troy and his gang, drinking coffee and waiting for Alex Aris, who was late as usual.

  The waitress refilled their coffee mugs.

  “You don’t think anything happened to him, do you?” Diesel asked.

  “No, no,” Troy said. “I told you how he is. He runs late.”

  “He wouldn’t split with our money, would he?” Mad Dog asked. Troy’s look of bemused disdain reassured Mad Dog. He thought about the money again. What to do with it? He’d send his sister a few thou. She had AIDS and was living in a ragged mobile home outside Tacoma. He could get high, too, when this was done and he could get away from his partners. He had opened one of the bags and dug out a tablespoon of cocaine. He’d buy some smack and really get blowed out on speedballs—escape the torments of his life for a while. He might even get hooked with a hundred grand plus.

  Troy wanted to fire up a cigar, but he’d seen a sign on the casino wall: Cigars not permitted on casino floor. No cigars in a gambling hall? What kinda shit is that? Vegas had probably changed, too. God, he loved Vegas. He could dive into the neon sea and forget the day, the hour, and everything else except the dice dancing across the green felt table. He could use a few days in Vegas after the scene at the bungalows. It had come out all right, and he had experienced no fear while the heist was in progress, but whenever he thought about it afterward, like now, nervous fear sent butterflies flying in his guts. He glanced at Diesel, whose glazed eyes bespoke distant thoughts.

  “Hey, Big Man,” Troy said. “How ya doin’?”

  “I’m great, bro’. You know what I’m gonna do with my end, man, I’m gonna pay off most of the mortgage on my pad. Hey, did you ever think that I’d own my own fuckin’ house?”

  Grinning, Troy shook his head. It was as unlikely as anything in the world. “You’re changing in your old age. One more score and you’ll be rehabilitated.”

  “Yeah, ain’t that true. I might vote Republican.” He paused. “You know I don’t like abortion. It’s killin’ babies to me.”

  Troy nodded, remembering his surprise at Diesel’s vehemence on the subject in the San Quentin yard when the big man had been ready to fight after another convict cracked a joke about abortion. It contradicted everything else about him.

  “Do you vote?” Troy asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I registered when the kid came. The guys in The Face’s local make sure everybody is registered.”

  In a way it surprised Troy; this was the first ex-con he knew who voted. On the other hand, it was obvious why the Teamsters Local made sure of registration. He looked to Mad Dog, whose eyes were blank and whose mind was far away. “What about you, Dog? You vote?”

  Mad Dog snorted derisively. “Hell, no! Fuck a vote! That’s shit for suckers.”

  A red flush rushed to Diesel’s cheeks. Just then Troy saw Alex Aris enter. “There he is,” Troy said, then stood up and waved.

  Greco saw them and came over. As always, he was stylishly dressed, tonight in dark blue cashmere jacket and gray flannel slacks, cuffed and pleated in the latest style. He was smiling as he got close. Troy slid over to make room on his side of the booth.

  “How you guys doin’?” he asked.

  “Tell us,” Troy said. “You got the news.”

  “You mean about those thirty keys?”

  “Hell, yes, man. Damn!”

  “The best I could do was twelve-five a key. I thought I’d get a little more, but the fuckin’ market is flooded. They gimme three hundred grand and they’ll give me the rest on the weekend.”

  “You got three hundred grand in the car?” Mad Dog asked.

  “No, no. I’m too likely to get stopped. I got it at a pad. I’ll take Troy and get it when we leave.”

  Forgotten was the anger of a minute earlier; both Diesel and Mad Dog grinned widely. Greco looked at them and decided it was time to mention other shares—without mentioning that he had actually gotten thirteen-five for each key, and so had thirty grand in hand already. “What about the lawyer?”

  “Lawyer?” Mad Dog said.

  “Yeah … the lip that fingered the score in the first place?”

  “Oh, yeah. What do you think?”

  “He should get twenty-five grand, and I should get five apiece from you guys.”

  “Outta what you got already?”

  “No, no, out of what I get on the weekend.”

  The trio nodded at each other. “That’s cool,” Troy said.

  “I’ll give you the change next week.”

  The waitress arrived to see if Alex wanted anything. He shook his head. “I’m leaving in a minute.”

  When she was gone, Alex looked at Troy. “You know Chepe Hernandez?”

  “I met him once. I know his brother better.”

  “He knows you. He wants to see you.”

  “Sure. What’s he want?”

  “You know he’s in La Mesa.”

  “The joint in Tijuana?” Mad Dog asked.

  “Yeah. He’s doin’ a dime. He could get out whenever he wants, but Uncle Sam has an indictment on him and they’re pressing Mexico City to get him back. You know how they snatch suckers back from down there. Fuck an extradition warrant. But they can’t snatch him outta La Mesa.”

  Troy nodded. He could appreciate Chepe’s dilemma. Once the feds had him in Leavenworth or Marion, he would be history. High-security inmates never escaped from a U.S. penitentiary. Under the new sentences guidelines, an international drug smuggler would serve the rest of his life—case
closed. Troy remembered that Chepe was fifty a decade ago. He was an easygoing guy with a sense of humor. He’d begun selling joints in Hazard Park on Soto. “You got any idea what he wants?” Troy asked again.

  “Who knows? I don’t think he wants you to kill anybody. He can get that real quick and a lot cheaper.”

  “I don’t kill on contract,” Troy said.

  “I know that. I told him. It’s something else. Somebody owes him, I think. Anyway, he wants me to bring you down to see him. I’m going next week. I gotta take a toilet bowl.”

  “They don’t have plumbers down there?” Mad Dog asked.

  “It’s not for Chepe. Shit, he’s got a suite like a Hilton. You ready for it? Shit, you can visit and stay all night.”

  “You guys go,” Diesel said. “I’ll visit my old lady and check with Jimmy the Face and meet you at the end of the week.”

  Troy looked at Mad Dog. “You and me?”

  Mad Dog nodded and it was decided.

  “I’ll take Troy to get the dough,” Alex said. “You guys wait at the hotel.”

  In addition to the fancy Jaguar, Alex Aris also drove a six-year-old Seville. It was nice enough to arouse no attention in Beverly Hills, yet old enough to blend into South Central. He was constantly on the move throughout Southern California. Nobody worked harder at being a criminal.

  When they got underway, Troy wondered why he felt flat. The huge score would never be reported. Moon Man had big money and niggers to kill for him—but their underworld was as segregated as most of black and white in America. Moon Man would never know who got him. He probably believed they were rogue cops. Half the Sheriff’s Department narco squad was under indictment for extorting drug dealers and stealing money and drugs during busts. Once upon a time a score like this would have thrilled him. What had changed? Why did he feel tired and depressed? Even if he knew, what could he do? It was too late to change. He had to keep playing or kill himself; he wasn’t that depressed.

  “How you gettin’ along with Mad Dog?” Alex asked.

  “He loves me.”