The Lotus Crew

by Stewart Meyer

  The fact that T thrived on fear put distance between them. Insoluble and fixed. Time to move on …

  He never went for the secret society stuff anyway. Too much like a government. It was sure to end up victimizing the very people it was supposed to serve and protect.

  And why gentrify executives? Cooler to indulge gratifications and pleasures privately … in the empire of shadows Alvira knew so well. Maybe that was the prob … Tommy never knew the shadows. He was a hotshot from go. Nobility by birth. Even in the can he was a heavy dude. On the street he was … well, Satano’s nephew. Not a button, but a very well-connected man with proximity to and an ability to influence some very highly placed wise guys.

  That power thing sure sets you up for strange operational and organizational necessities.

  Alvira tapped the paper in his jacket pocket. Now, goodness could be hard to survive, sure. If you’re lookin’ to lose, the lotus will help. Like the racetrack or booze or ineffective business techniques. But if you’re not lookin’ to lose and have a supply, you can manage things. Not as many outside forces working against you. Using sets you up for risks—an o.d. or bust—but no one is looking to kill or replace you. If you’re careful you can age gracefully on the goodness.

  No kick is safe, but if the menu reads lotus or power, lotus has to win.

  Alvira began emptying the vault box into his leather bag. Money, drugs, guns. Simple things for a simple life. Now that his mind was made up, it would be madness to delay. Might not make it.

  Alvira locked his bag in the boot of the old Triumph. No stops to make. No pieces of other lifetimes like childhood chalk on the factory wall. He had no destination, but Alvira never feared open-ended transitions. It was inevitability he feared. And boredom, and mundane inertia.

  Regards from 14-K

  TOMMY SAID IT HAD to be done on the street. As many people as possible should see it close up. Let’m smell it and taste it. Maybe get blood on’m. JJ was the sacred breath of the Emperor and must act with appropriate dignity and precision.

  JJ didn’t pick up on this cool crisp Monday morning. His days of selling bags were over. So with the self-evident authority of Tommy Sparks, JJ focused on his mission … He was a bullet aimed at the enemy of his Triad brothers.

  One thing was sure, fixed, fated. Furman was blood, and now the street would be splashed again with red tears. Before the sun set on arteries and conduits of Nightfìre, Flaco would be the cold victim of a 14-K play.

  JJ made the yellow checker pull over on the corner of Eighth Street and Avenue D. Flaco’s short was parked in front of the Green Tape basement. JJ could see the hack was jumpy, so he slid a fifty through the bullet-proof partition.

  “Keep the change, m’man,” he said. The meter read under twenty. “But’m gonna aks y’all t’sit heah five minutes. Cool?”

  “Sure,” the driver said. He was still nervous, and a moment later, when JJ got out, the taxi peeled away, burning rubber.

  JJ spotted Flaco lounging with a few crew workers from Green. He had a beer in his hand and was sitting on the fender of a ten-year-old red Bonneville ragtop. No police around. Everyone relaxed. Crews hawked competitively. Lookouts on rooftops and corners were quiet. Cars pulled up, scored, split. OD, Green Tape, Black Sunday, and Triad were all open. A young Spanish girl hawked Black Sunday coke. “Open and smokin’ poppa!” The street was thick with clusters of Latins, blacks, blancos. Everyone hustling, scuffling. Some fluid and smooth from lotus, others jittery and tense from lack of lotus.

  Perfect. Let their eyes bulge and their ears ring!

  JJ wore a tan raincoat, black jeans, sneakers, a white sailor’s cap, brim down. In one pocket he had the standard Triad iron: a Raven .25 auto. Kept clean and dry, it was a reliable little bugger. A round was chambered. He slid off the safety.

  No one made his face yet. Time to move …

  JJ nodded to Domino, the Triad worker, as he started west on Eighth Street. He approached from behind, so before Flaco saw him he was a few feet away.

  JJ removed a lit cigarette from his lips and flicked it at his target. A shower of sparks exploded on Flaco’s shirt.

  “What the fuck—”

  “Go f’yo’ piece, m’fucka!”

  Flaco’s face tightened with fear as the workers moved away. This was none of their business, and they were glad. All eyes were on them. Domino stepped closer in case JJ needed backup.

  “I don’ hab no piece, señor, please.”

  “Tha’s too bad, Flaco. A scumbag like yo’seff should always have a piece.”

  “What I do t’jou?” Flaco tried to muster indignation. His eyes darted around. There was no cover, no time, no hope.

  “This is f’m’main man Furman. Goooodbye, fucka!”

  The Raven sparked twice in JJ’s hand. One hole between the eyes, one in the throat. The mark of the 14-K.

  The quivering body slumped down on a car fender, slid to the pavement in a pool of bright red blood. JJ kicked the corpse over on its back. Big dumb eyes stared up at the curious.

  A blanco girl shrieked in horror. No one else made a sound.

  JJ slid the iron in his pocket and lit a cigarette. As dangerous as his situation was at the moment, he felt good … safe … removed.

  “Ba hondo!”

  “Agua! Ba hondo! Fao! Fao!”

  In a moment the street would flood with sirens. JJ walked slowly towards Avenue D, the crowd parting for him. A bus waited for the light across the street. He forced himself to stand perfectly still. When the bus crossed, he got on.

  Vomitorium

  THE POLICE ARE FULL of surprises. Suddenly they got serious. Heat came down in a wild sweeping flurry of bad news. A punkish white girl scored a bundle from Triad on Rivington Street. She returned an hour later for more, paid in marked cash. Two thick blancos popped out of a taxi and made the bust.

  Simultaneously, four undercovers rushed the hole—the Triad spot on Fourth and C. They arrested two crew workers and confiscated hundreds of bags and twenty thousand in cash. As Saturday nights went, this one was for shitski. Things in Brooklyn were just as bad. The building Triad used to sort cash and material was surrounded and penetrated by detectives. Chu was inside, as were a dozen workers. Not a shot was fired, but they were all busted. Two kilos of unbagged number four, over one-point-five million in cash, cutting and bagging equipment, worst of all some paperwork—all confiscated. The paperwork recorded cash flow between Triad and Uncle Satano’s people. The records were coded, but the numbers were high and would trigger intense investigation. Beaucoup shit!

  “Red light” and “Fao!” rang like bells of doom through arteries and conduits.

  On Eighth Street and Avenue D the police sweep was more visible and not as concentrated on Triad. They hit Green Tape first.

  JJ—just returned from his vacation—was by checking on the new bagman when the heat arrived. They were working the foyer of an abandoned building. The detectives barged in, shotgun first. JJ saw the artillery and scampered up the stairs for the roof. The man looked fevered—like he had more than arrests in mind—and JJ didn’t want to test the vengeance of authority.

  Someone—maybe the new Triad worker—pulled iron, and all hell broke loose promptly. JJ pulled his Raven and emptied it, firing down into the moving shadows. The heat opened up their .38s, returning fire. The shotgun went off. The new bagman fell, gushing blood from his chest and mouth.

  JJ stumbled over him and continued up. He made the roof, leaped to the next building, then the next.

  They were close, bullets whizzing around his head. He ducked in and put a fresh clip in his iron, quickly emptying it and booking.

  Below, on the street, sirens wailed and patrol cars blinked and darted frantically. A Black Maria sat mid-block, loading up with chains of lost souls. An ambulance screeched to a halt. Gunfire punctuating screams of exploding chao
s.

  Something moved behind JJ, and he spun and fired.

  A shadow bit the tar. But he’d given away his position and was drawing fire from two points. No sense dropping it now. They’d kill him for sure. He took off again, miraculously made the next roof. He hurdled a ledge and fell one story to the next building.

  It was a brick skeleton JJ used to work, and he knew something about it that just might save his life. It was one of the few constructions on the Lower East Side that had a sub-basement. A trapdoor in the basement led to a stairway, which led to a dank, damp, forbiddingly slimy pit. Beyond this small room was a narrow tunnel, possibly a sewer line.

  JJ stormed down the stairway a landing at a leap, smashing into the wall facing the stairs each time. He made the basement, then the subcellar.

  Sweat burned his eyes as pain attacked his chest and sides. Adrenaline pumped through him as he flew through the putrid cellar into the darker tunnel. Cool slimy water soothed his swollen agonized ankles. Sparking a lighter after crawling twenty feet, he shivered in horror. A decomposing, half-eaten corpse stared dumbly at him from a corner. Rats scurried off to avoid the intruder, and a spoon and weeper fell. It’d been the dead man’s gimmicks.

  The tunnel opened onto a damp stone room with all the charm of an abandoned vomitorium. Nothing living had been in this place for a long time, except rats. There was a ledge above his head, and he went for it. He slipped on slimy surface, falling and getting a taste of heinous water in his mouth. On the second try he made the ledge.

  JJ chased the rats away with a stick, then lay back using his denim jacket as a pillow. He lit a cigarette. Every bone burned. He had a bundle on him, in a waterproof box. It was dry. JJ placed the iron where he could get to it in a flash. He quickly opened two bags and prepared gimmicks. Both ankles were sprained, getting swollen, and he was scraped bad, in some spots to the bone.

  Have to sit tight. They will kill me. No food. No water. Pack of butts and my bags. One more clip left. Six rounds.

  After a while he began to nod, but a few hungry rats woke him by going for his ear. Ugly bastards. He’d have to stay awake. He fought the nod until time made him straight.

  Hours of detached vacant agony …

  Gradually, he stopped smelling the rancid effluvium, slowly assimilating it. Suddenly, inexplicably, he burst into tears. “His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of THE DEAD.” In the dripping shadows a dark, impalpable form … Furman D. Whittle? … quivering in agony dripping hot wax powdered onto his blinded eyes wishing for death to swing down low on the sweet chariot of a merciful hotshot. “I wanna go somewhere it don’ hurt no mo’.” Eight bags left. Enough for uno adios. “See here, m’main, le’s not go’n git all existential, it jus’ give you warts.” Self-mocking laughter in the coal bin prop the corpse into comfortable positions. Above the sirens wail. Messy business.

  “Furman! Z’at you?”

  “Shit be strong, JJ. Eight left. Make yo’ play. Got a gimmick?”

  “Yeah … I got a gimmick.”

  “What ch’waitin’ on, m’main? Make yo’ play!”

  JJ threw eight bags in the cooker. Death soup. He drew it up into the chamber. Smokin’ poppa! He looked at the point of the weeper. He’d seen plenty of points in his day, but knowing where this one was going made him stare at it. He hit a line.

  The eyelids descended in a final curtain.

  Nightfire

  POLICE SWEEPING OUT the Lower East Side heroin emporium did not wipe Tommy out … completely. It cost him plenty. It was apparent that the primary focus of the police blitz was Triad. They were hit with all the ferocity of an urban swat team in frontal assault. Rodent scraggly junkies with snot dangling from torn coats suddenly whipped out badges and guns, rematerializing as undercover narcs. Plainclothes burst out of Con Ed trucks with guns drawn and arrest reports dangling from their back pockets. Burly dicks oozed out of taxis, laundry trucks, out-of-state cars, after watching or triggering a transaction. Sirens, police whistles, and the metal click of locking handcuffs.

  The occupation was complete, and the street became a shadowed tomb. The vibrance of an open market was gone.

  Every crew lost heavy on the invasion. Continued police permeation forced the crew owners—used to heavy cash flow—into stepping back.

  But Tommy’s losses were, well, to him somehow more personal. His mind had always been methodical. Now he was filing, referencing, analyzing bad news so frantically he felt like hitting the cooker … just enough to achieve some remnants of detached objectivity and be able to look this mess in the face. Whew! Ugly face. Inverted daydreams.

  He stashed the Jaguar on Staten Island and rolled a rented Chevy out onto the open road. Clunky old heap of Detroit iron. Didn’t come near his own wheels. But obviously the heat knew a lot about Triad. After the sweep it came out in the papers that stakeout had been planted for months gathering a picture of the narcotics market on the street. They’d pin the Jag. Somehow the cops thought JJ—who was missing—was the main man. Amusing. Police science, T thought. Like the ginzos Uncle Satano did shylock with, cops are procedural, predictable. A tip becomes a lead. The lead becomes a theory. Progressional logic takes over, however flimsy the first premise.

  After driving onto the ferry, T took out a mirror, a narrow sterling straw, and a small plastic bag of pure goodness. Two snowy lines went up his nose. The ferry ride from Staten Island to Manhattan took just over one-half hour. He set his alarm watch for twenty minutes. That way he’d return to the car and sniff a line of coke so he’d be straight enough to drive off the ferry. Just a brief interlude of reflection.

  Tommy took a walk and found a deserted spot lower starboard.

  With Alvira gone, it all rested on his head. The dope giving him distance, he began the dreaded inventory. He’d just reupped when the shit fell. He lost virtually millions in cash and material. Some of it, most even, was his own. But over three bucks belonged to Unc and his wise guys. Ginzos. They would not be amused, forgiving, understanding. Pissed is what they’d be! Pissed and nasty. Well, T did have some assets left, and some material. But he needed cash to bail out men he hadn’t gotten to already, before someone sang. So far every Triad arrested had pulled a tight lip. T had to keep up his end of things. His cash stash was almost gone, but he did have dope. The dope was worthless without a crew. He couldn’t let the old crew work while out on bail. Too risky. And throwing a new crew together would be all but impossible. Triad had already assimilated the cream of the crop as far as slumbums. Very little worthwhile human material left. Maybe he could off some shit on other retailers, but he’d have to sell wholesale and take losses.

  Other retailers! Had ShyWun known about …? Nawww. The throne is on fire! My kingdom for some horse.

  He poked on a reefer, watching Manhattan lights get closer as the sun dropped below the horizon. Everything was sure different just a short few weeks ago. Oh, there were problems. Alvira’s desertion threw a swamp of business details on him, and petty complications proliferated. But Triad was set up and functioning. Leadership was only necessary to keep things smooth.

  All different now. Unfamiliar, fear-inspiring. He’d dumped the downtown cribs and rented new digs on 100th Street and Riverside Drive, looking down on the Hudson River. A nice sunny place. But one with no past, and with none of his boys around to remind him of how essential he was.

  JJ was missing and had been since the first day of combat. Chu had blown away an informer and was undercover in Philly chilling out. Muggles made bail and was stashed away with some relatives in Wilmington, Delaware. That fact threw a wrench into the Rasta reefer trade. No cake coming in.

  Four crew workers were dead, nine arrested, six on the lam. Two for shooting cops. This was eternal heat. The 14-K was wiped out before it could bud. In fact the whole upper echelon of Triad—excluding the Emperor—was gone. Whoosh. No more. Regards from Cognit
o.

  Just Tommy left. With no one to acknowledge his masterful position.

  For the first time since it happened, T admitted to himself that maybe it wasn’t weakness or stupidity that made Alvira duck out. Walking away from power was incomprehensible to T. Maybe Alvira understood something T didn’t.

  The alarm watch sounded, summoning him back to consciousness. He jumped. It was uncool to get too far inside himself now. No one to cover his back.

  Tommy Sparks was now as vulnerable as the next man.

  Later, T’s head rolled loose and light as the fix hit. He laid back on his couch when the phone sounded.

  “Listen, kid, make a move quick. I’m not futzing around, Tommy. If you don’t show class I’m a dead man.”

  T knew Uncle Satano never spoke on the phone. The urgency scared him. He’d never heard fear in Unc’s voice before.

  “I can throw out half a buck right now, Unc.” He would dump material below cost and wipe out his gold coin collection. Dump some valuable jewelry. His Rolex collection. The genuine Tiffany lamps he’d bought when things were looking good.

  “Half a buck! We’re talking over three bucks! These people are dangerous, T. Even for me. You’re going to make sparks, Mr. Sparks!”

  “Toss them the half and ask for a little time. Gimme a month to turn some material above wholesale and—”

  “Month? We’re talkin’ days, kid. Look, come drop the half and we’ll talk. No, don’t come here, for chrissakes.”