Terminal

by Andrew Vachss

  “Say the name,” Bobby shot at me, cold-eyed.

  I put it on the table. “The Real Brotherhood,” I said, my voice quiet in the empty garage.

  “You didn’t say it right, Burke. It’s the Real Brotherhood.”

  “That’s how you say it, Bobby.”

  “That is how I say it. And that’s how it is.”

  “I told you on the phone. I got no beef with them. I just want to talk.”

  I let it hang there—it was his play. He reached into my pocket and helped himself to a smoke. I saw the pack of Marlboros in the side pocket of his coveralls—he was showing me we were still friends.

  Bobby took the blazing wooden match I handed him, lit up. He slid off the fender until he was sitting on the garage floor, his back against the steel of my car door. The way you sit on the yard.

  He blew smoke at the ceiling, waiting. I hunkered down next to him, lit a smoke of my own.

  When Bobby started to talk his voice was hushed, like in church. He bent one leg, resting his elbow on his knee, his chin in his hands. He looked straight ahead.

  “I got out of the joint way before you did. Remember I left all my stuff for you and Virgil when they cut me loose? I got a job in a machine shop, did my parole, just waiting, you know? A couple of guys I know were going to the Coast. See the sights, nail some of those beach blondes out there, check out the motors, right?

  “I get out there and everybody’s doing weed—like it’s legal or something. I fall in with these hippies. Nice folks—easygoing, sweet music. Better than this shit here. You see it, Burke?”

  “I see it.” It was true—convicts see all kinds of things, always going over the Wall in their minds.

  “I get busted with a vanful of weed. Two hundred keys. Hawaiian. And a pistol. I was making a run down to L.A., and the cops stopped me. Some bullshit about a busted taillight.”

  He took a drag of the smoke, let it out with a sigh. “I never made a statement, never copped a plea. The hippies got me a good lawyer, but he lost the motion to suppress the weed, and they found me guilty. Possession with intent. Ex-con with a handgun. Worse, I wouldn’t give anybody up.

  “They dropped me for one-to-fucking-ever. Knew I’d have to do a pound before I even see the Board.”

  Bobby locked his hands behind his head, resting from the pain. “When I hit the yard I knew what to do—not like the first time, when you and Virgil had to pull me up. I remembered what you told me. When the niggers rolled up on me, I acted like I didn’t know what they were talking about. They told me to draw my commissary the next day and turn it over.”

  Bobby smiled, thinking about it. The smile would have scared a homicide cop. “I turn over my commissary, I might as well turn myself over at the same time—so they could fuck me in the ass. I get myself a shank for two cartons—just a file with some tape on the end for a grip. I work on the thing all night long, getting it sharp.

  “In the morning, I draw my commissary. I put the shank in the paper bag with the tape sticking up. I walk out to the yard with the bag against my chest, like a broad with the groceries. The same niggers move on me, tell me to hand it over. I pull the shank and plant it in the first guy’s chest, trying for his heart.

  “The spike comes out of him when he goes down. I back up to get room to finish him. Turn around and…I’m alone—the niggers took off. I hear a shot, and the dirt flies up right near me. I drop the shank, and the goon squad comes for me.”

  “You should’ve dropped the shank and run,” I said.

  “I know that now. I wasn’t expecting them to shoot so quick. Things are different there.”

  Bobby ground out his cigarette on the garage floor, took one of his own, and lit it. “They put me in the hole. Expected that. Fucking solitary out there, it’s as big as a regular prison; guys spend fucking years in there. Only they call it the ‘Adjustment Center.’ Nice name, huh? There’s three tiers on each side. Little tiny dark cells.

  “The noise was unbelievable—screaming all the time. Not from the guards’ beating on anyone—crazy assholes screaming just to be screaming. Half of them were stone fucking nuts…maybe from being locked up there for so long.

  “I was sitting in my cell, thinking about how much more time I’d get behind this, even if the guy I stuck didn’t rat me out. I mean, they’d caught me with the shank and all. Then it started.

  “The niggers. ‘You a dead white motherfucker!’ ‘You gonna suck every black dick in the joint, pussy-boy!’ All that shit. I yelled back at the first one, but they kept it up, like they were working in shifts or something. And then one of them yelled out that the guy I stabbed was his main man, so he was personally gonna cut off my balls and make me eat them.

  “They were fucking animals, Burke. They never stopped. Day and night, calling my name, telling me they were gonna throw gasoline in my cell and fire me up, put glass in my food, gang-fuck me until I was dead.”

  Bobby was quiet for a minute. His voice was solid, but his hands were shaking. He looked, curled them into fists. “After a couple of days, I didn’t have the strength to yell back at them. It sounded like there were hundreds of them. Even the trusty—the nigger scumbag who brought the food cart around—he spit in my coffee, dared me to kite the warden.

  “Finally, they pulled me out to see the Disciplinary Committee. They knew the score—even asked me if the niggers had hit on me. I didn’t say a word.

  “The lieutenant told me the shank itself was no big deal—the other guy was going to make it, claimed he’d never seen who stuck him. But I’d have to take a lockup—go into PC for the rest of my bit. You know what that means?”

  “Yeah,” I said. PC is supposed to stand for “protective custody.” For guys who can’t be on the mainline: informers, obvious femmes, guys who didn’t pay a gambling debt…targets. To cons, PC means Punk City. You go in, you never get to walk the yard. And you carry that jacket the rest of your bit.

  “They kept me locked down two weeks—no cigarettes, nothing to read, no radio, nothing. Just those niggers working on me every day. They never got tired, Burke, like they fucking loved that evil shit. Screaming about cutting pregnant white women open and pulling out the babies, stuff like that.

  “Then, one day, it got real quiet. I couldn’t figure it out. That fucking trusty came around. He didn’t have coffee that time; he had a note for me—a folded piece of paper. I opened it up. There was a big thick glob of white stuff inside. Nigger cum.

  “I got sick, but I was afraid to throw up—afraid they’d hear me.

  “That’s when one of them whispered to me—it was so quiet it sounded like it was coming from the next cell—‘Lick it up, white boy! Lick it all up, pussy! We got yard tomorrow, punk. The Man letting us all out, you know what that means. You lick it all up, tell me how good it was!’ He’s saying all this to me, and all I could think of was, there was no way to kill myself in that lousy little cell. All I wanted was to die. I pissed on myself—I was sure they could all smell it.”

  Bobby was shaking hard now. I put my hand on his shoulder, but he was lost in the fear. “I got on my knees. I prayed with everything I had. I prayed for Jesus—stuff I hadn’t thought of since I was a kid.

  “If I didn’t say anything, I was dead. Worse than dead. I looked at that paper with that nigger’s cum on it. I went into myself—and then I saw how it had to be. I found a way to get the only thing I still wanted…to die like a man.

  “I got to my feet. My voice was all messed up from not saying anything for so long, but it came out good and steady. It was still quiet; everybody heard me. ‘Tell me your name, cocksucker!’ I yelled at him. ‘I don’t want to kill the wrong nigger when we go on the yard, and you monkeys all look alike to me.’

  “As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt different—like God came into me—just like I’d been praying for.

  “Then they went fucking crazy! Like a pack of raving maniacs. But it was like they were screaming on some upper register…and u
nderneath it was this heavy bass line, like in music. A chant, something. It was from the white guys in the other cells—some of them right near me. They hadn’t made a sound through all this shit—just waiting to see how I’d handle myself, I found out later. I couldn’t hear them too good at first, just this heavy, low rumbling. But then it came through all the other stuff. ‘R B! R B! R B!’”

  Bobby was chanting the way he’d heard it back in his cell, hitting the second letter for emphasis, pumping strength back into himself, squeezing the pus out of the wound again.

  “They kept it up. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. There for me. They didn’t say anything else. I started to say it, too. First to myself. Then out loud. Real loud. Like prayer words.

  “When they racked the bars for us to hit the exercise yard—one at a time—I walked out. After so long, the second the sunlight hit me in the face, I almost couldn’t see.

  “I heard a voice. ‘Stand with us, brother,’ it said.”

  Bobby looked at me. His eyes were wet, but his hands were steady, and his voice was cold. “I’ve been standing with them ever since, Burke,” he said in the quiet garage. “If you got a beef with them, you got one with me.”

  I stood up. Bobby stayed where he was. “I already told you—I got no beef with your brothers. I want to ask some questions, that’s all. I’ll pay my own way.”

  Bobby pushed himself off the floor. “You think you could find the Brotherhood without me?”

  “Yeah,” I told him, “I could. And you know I could. If I was looking for them like you think, I wouldn’t have come here, would I?”

  He was thinking it over, leaning against the car, making up his mind.

  Bobby made a circuit around my Plymouth—the one I’d had back then—peering into the engine compartment, bouncing the rear end like he was checking the shocks.

  “When’s the last time this beast got a real tune-up, Burke?”

  “A year ago, maybe a year and a half, I don’t know,” I said.

  “Tell you what,” he said, his voice soft and friendly, “you leave the car here, okay? I’ll put in some new plugs, time the engine for you. Change the fluids and filters, align the front end. Take about a week or so, okay? No charge.”

  “I need a car for my work,” I said, my voice as soft and even as his.

  “So I’ll lend you one, all right? You come back in a few days—a week at the most—your car will be like new.”

  I didn’t say anything, watching him. “And while I’m working on your car, I’ll make some phone calls. Check some things out, see what’s happening with my brothers…”

  I got the picture. My old Plymouth could be a lot of things—a gypsy cab, an anonymous fish in the city’s slimy streets—whatever I needed. This was the first time it would be a hostage.

  “You won’t know your own car when you come back, Burke,” Bobby said, his hand on my shoulder, leading me out to the front garage.

  “I always know what’s mine,” I reminded him.

  Bobby had done his checking. And when he called, I’d been ready for his questions:

  “All I got is this, Bobby. One of them, big guy, he did some work. Delivering money.”

  “For her?”

  “With her. Bodyguard work.”

  “We do that…” he mused, thinking.

  I waited.

  “You never joined us,” he said. Not an accusation; a fact.

  “I joined you,” I reminded him. Again.

  When I pulled into the shop a few days later, Bobby was waiting. “The other guys are out back, Burke. Okay?”

  “Okay. You want me to leave Pansy out here?”

  “Fuck, no! She might eat one of the cars.”

  Bobby led the way, me following, Pansy on my left, just slightly in front of each stride.

  There was only one car in the back—a Mustang. And three men—two a few years older than Bobby, the other more like my age.

  They all had prison faces. The older guy had a regular haircut and was wearing a dark jacket over a white shirt, sunglasses hiding his eyes. The other two were much bigger men, flanking the guy in the sunglasses like they were used to standing that way. One was blond, the other dark, both with kind of long hair, wearing white T-shirts over jeans and boots.

  The blond had tattoos on both arms. In case anyone could miss where he got them, he had chains tattooed on both wrists. Black leather gloves on his hands. The dark one had calm eyes; he stood with his hands in front of him, right hand holding his left wrist. On the back of his right hand were the crossed lightning bolts.

  I stopped a few feet short of the triangle. Pansy immediately came to a sitting position just in front of me. Her eyes pinned the blond—she knew.

  Bobby stepped into the space between us, speaking to the older guy in the middle.

  “This is Burke. The guy I told you about.”

  The older guy nodded to me. I nodded back. He made a “come closer” gesture. I stepped forward. So did Pansy.

  The blond rolled his shoulders, watching Pansy. “The dog do any tricks?” he asked.

  The hair on the back of Pansy’s neck stood up. I patted her head to keep her calm.

  “Like what?” I asked him.

  The blond’s voice was half snarl, half sneer. “I don’t fucking know. Like shake hands?”

  “She’ll shake anything she gets in her mouth,” I told him, a smile on my face to say I wasn’t threatening him.

  The older guy laughed. “Bobby vouches for you. That’s enough. If we can help you, we will.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “And I’m willing to pay my way.”

  “Good enough,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “I know you,” the blond suddenly blurted out.

  I looked at his face—I’d never seen him before. “I don’t know you,” I said, my voice neutral.

  “You were in Auburn, right?” he said, as if daring me to deny it. “I saw you on the yard.”

  I shrugged—Auburn was a big place.

  “You mixed with niggers,” the blond said.

  “I mixed with my friends,” I said. “Same as you did.”

  “I said niggers!”

  “I heard you. You hear me?” I said, knowing the price of showing weakness to one of his kind.

  The blond rolled his shoulders again, cracking the knuckles of one gloved fist.

  “B.T., I told you what Burke did for me,” Bobby put in. No anxiety in his voice, just setting the record straight.

  “Maybe you like niggers?” the blond said, a step away from chesting me.

  No point keeping my voice neutral any longer—he’d take it for fear. “What’s your problem, pal?”

  The blond looked at me, watching my face. “I lost money on you.”

  “What?” I said, honestly confused.

  “I fucking lost money on you. I remember now. You was a fighter, right? You fought that nigger. I forget his name…the one that was a pro light-heavy?”

  Ah. That nonsense. The black guy had been a for-real contender before he beat a guy to death over a traffic accident. I don’t remember how it got started—although I still figure the Prof for the culprit—but it ended up with a bet that I couldn’t go three rounds with him.

  I remember sitting on the stool in my corner waiting for the bell to start the first round, the Prof whispering in my ear. “Send the fool to school, Burke,” reminding me how we had it scripted.

  I was a good fifteen pounds lighter than the black guy, and quite a bit faster. Everybody betting on me to last the three rounds was expecting me to keep a jab in his face, bicycle backward, use the whole ring. Make him catch me. That’s what he expected, too.

  When the bell sounded, he came off his stool like he was jet-propelled. I threw a pillow-soft jab in his general direction and started back–pedaling to the ropes. The black guy didn’t waste any time countering. He walked through my jab and pulled his right hand all the way down to his hip, trying for one killer punch
that would end it all.

  That was when I stepped forward and fired a left hook. Caught him flush on the chin as he was coming in, and down he went.

  But then the plan came unglued. He took an eight-count, shaking his head to clear it. He got to his feet so smoothly that I knew I hadn’t really hurt him. The black guy waved me in, grinning. I took him up on the offer and pinned him to the ropes, firing shot after shot. But he wasn’t just a tough guy—he was a pro. He blocked almost everything with his forearms, picking off my punches until I realized I was running out of gas.

  I leaned against him to get a breath. He buried his head in my chest, loading up an uppercut. I collapsed all my weight on his neck, stepping on his toes, not giving him an inch of room to punch. The guard in charge of the bell rang it early—he’d bet on me, too.

  I let him chase me through the second round, still an easy step faster than he was. He wasn’t going to bull-rush me again, so he just took his time, taking what I gave him, pounding my shoulder, my forearm, whatever I blocked with, waiting for my hands to come down. He hit like a hammer. My arms ached so much from blocking I could hardly lift them.

  He caught me good at the beginning of the third round—I felt a rib go from a right hook. He doubled up, catching me on the bridge of the nose with the same hand.

  “Grab him!” I heard the Prof scream. I brought my gloves up over his elbows, pulling his hands under my armpits, until the referee finally forced us apart. He butted me on the break, aiming for my bloody nose. I staggered back, letting my knees wobble to get closer to the ground.

  When he came over to finish me, I threw a Mexican left hook—so far south of the border that I connected squarely with his cup.

  The black guy dropped both hands to his crotch, and I launched a haymaker at his exposed head—missed by a foot and fell down from the effort. The referee wiped off my gloves, calling it a slip, killing time.

  He came at me again. I couldn’t breathe through my nose, so I spit out the mouthpiece, catching a sharp right-hand lead a second later. I heard the Prof yell, “Thirty seconds!,” just before another shot dropped me to the canvas.