by Kieran Shea
“This isn’t over,” he muttered.
“The fuck it is,” I said. I let him go and holstered my Luger back into my jeans. Pete watched the melee with a smug grin, sucking under his bottom lip. He giggled silently in his throat. I nearly let Louie off the leash to pulp his head, but I figured it had been enough to get across the message. It’s not like we planned the fight, but it served a purpose, warning this asshole not to mess with us. We may have been small-time and the mob would never ‘make’ us, but we wouldn’t roll over for anyone, not under threat or tempted with greed. Louie and I had shit, living in these slums all our lives among the lost and the dispossessed. So we clung to our pride, our street spirit, and valued it more than our lives. If we let someone take it away, we’d just be another couple of dumb fucks to be used, corn to be cut and harvested.
No one was going to fuck with us.
“Look. Pete. How about we hang out some more, do a few deals, nothing big. If everything goes well, then we’ll trust you. You can’t begrudge us that?”
Pete grinned and nodded. “If you assholes are still in business then, sure.” Louie flinched, and I held him back. “Don’t take it so personally. With the money I’m going to make you, you can take some abuse. I’ve got the clients up north. Jersey. New York. Percs are popular, and you’re one of the few dealers in the region who can get them in such large quantity. If this works out, we’ll be doing business for years.”
He dropped the pill drum into a valise and got up. “Now if you ladies will excuse me, I have to meet my parole officer.” He pulled his leather coat tight then left the row home, slamming the door and sending a few roaches scurrying.
“I know that dude,” Louie said. “I’ve seen him before. His hair was shorter and he looked all clean-cut. Shit.”
I nodded. “Something’s not right,” I said, looking up at a broken clock on the wall, its hands stuck at four. “Come on.” I ripped off the newspaper coating the filthy window facing the street and spotted Pete walking down the sidewalk then turning down 8th Street. I tugged on Louie’s shoulder and we left the house.
*****
We kept our distance, hanging in the shadows, avoiding light shed from streetlamps and the exposure of headlights from the occasional car turning down 8th street. The rain calmed, spitting at times in the night. Pete strolled ahead in the darkness, stepping over the bums lying on the subway vents who warmed themselves in the steam. We kept to the backs of the cement stoops of the Philly row homes, always with my hand at my belt, ready for a fight. Dealers got mugged down here all the time, even ones like us with syndicate protection—desperate junkies who didn’t care about life or death, just that next hit.
We passed by a couple of dumpsters outside an apartment building. Garbage bags piled on the sidewalk, some of them burst and spilling cereal boxes, old meat and beer bottles into the parking lane on the street. Rats tunneled through the garbage, surviving on the leftovers of human civilization. I wonder if we looked like rats to God, scavenging through His trash.
Before turning the corner onto South Street, Pete paused. He waited at the red light and eased his head to the side, checking the road. We leaned against the brick wall of the nearest house, outside the range of the streetlamps. I relaxed and let my body melt into the darkness. He looked satisfied and turned the corner. We moved to follow.
Pizza turned the corner. “Vince? That you? Shit. You’re a godsend. Jesus Christ sent you tonight.”
“Shit,” Louie said.
We called the guy Pizza because his face was covered in an array of red zits, swollen and leaking pus. His 49ers jacket bulged from his girth as he lumbered toward us. Louie let him close the distance before talking to him, hoping Pete wouldn’t make us. It may have been too late.
“What the fuck do you want, Pizza?”
“I just need some percs to get me through the night,” he said.
“You got money this time?” Louie asked.
“Money? Shit. I’m in pain. It’s this Epstein-Barr shit. My doctors are stumped. It’s fucking up my metabolism. But I can pay you extra when I get Social Security. It’s due me.”
“Push off,” Louie said.
“But I’m in pain, dude.”
“We’re all in pain, asshole!” Louie yelled, then remembered our mission and lowered his voice. I sighed at him.
“Come on man,” he said. “I’ve got a medical condition.” He blubbered, tears pooling on his swollen cheeks. I grabbed a few stray pills I had loose in my pocket and reached to hand them off. Louie smacked my hand, and the pills flew onto the sidewalk. They landed in a greasy puddle and started to dissolve. Pizza dropped to his knees and picked out the pills. “What the fuck did you do that for?” he yelled.
Louie kicked under him in his fat gut, and he rolled over from the shock, clutching his belly and moaning. “How could you do that to someone handicapped?” he yelled again between sobs.
Louie kicked him again in the chest, and Pizza groaned. “Shut your crippled ass up,” Louie said. “Pussy.” He reached into his pocket for his ball bearings.
“That’s enough, Lou. Shit.”
“This asshole’s probably given us away.”
“Yeah. But that’s enough. You touch him again, and by Lucifer I’ll clip you. I’ll put my piece right up to your chest and shoot you through the heart.”
“Right, Vincent. You’ll shoot me. Sure. You won’t kill anyone. You’re too afraid of not going to Heaven when you die.”
He knew my anxiety, how I haggled for my immortal soul. Father Gabe had gotten to me, convinced me of the existence of an afterlife, or at least that it would be reckless to dismiss Heaven and Hell. Still, I knew I couldn’t get by without spilling blood, not on these streets, not in the ruined kingdom of the junkie and the poor. I had to sacrifice, make a choice about the way I handled myself. I’d be tested sooner or later, my soul made prize in contest.
“I won’t hurt anyone innocent,” I said. “But I will kill you. Don’t doubt it. You are far from innocent.”
“No one’s innocent,” Louie said. He backed off. Pizza moaned in the corner, crying like a baby. I felt sorry for him. Hell, I envied him. I hadn’t been able to weep like that since I was five, left alone for three days when my mother disappeared with another one of her boyfriends. I’d wandered the streets, and neighbors took me to Father Gabe. That’s when I decided I’d weep no more and be a man. I gave up something precious.
“Here. Pizza.” I dropped my two remaining percs on his lap. He didn’t stop crying, just grabbed one of them then swallowed it dry. Finally, he calmed.
Louie shook his head. “So fucking naïve,” he said. “They’re going to walk all over your ass. Dominic. Your mother. Even Father Gabe. They’re going to use you then wipe the shit off their hands on your shirt.”
“Just shut your mouth and come on,” I said. I didn’t react, ignoring his big mouth, but it stung me, burrowed into my head and laid larva. I shook it off and focused on the mission ahead.
We turned the corner and followed South Street, passing the bars and clubs, walking by the exotic stores and down to Penn’s Landing on the Delaware. Wind blew off the cold breast of the river and chilled my flesh. Fresh rain drizzled, building in strength.
“Where the hell is he?” Louie asked. “Did he learn how to fly?”
The clubs and bars closed an hour ago, and he didn’t drive—at least we’d never seen him with a car. He couldn’t have gotten far. “What did he say? He had to meet his parole officer?”
“That was bullshit,” Louie said.
We scanned the parked cars, and four blocks down I spotted a Toyota Corolla with its engine running, steam pouring from its muffler. A streetlight illuminated the front seat, exposing two figures sitting and smoking. I crouched down and crawled closer. They had the window rolled down, and the driver hung his arm out, flicking ash. I listened to them talking over the melancholy howling of the wind.
“I came home and the bitch was gone,” the g
ruff voice of a lifetime smoker said—his lungs eroded and corroded, probably not long for lung cancer. I didn’t recognize him. “She took the kids. Most of her shit. She’s done this before. Such a drama queen. Soon as she gets sick of her mother, she’ll be back. Her mother’s a bigger bitch than she is, which I didn’t think was possible.” He flicked off red coal from his cig then puffed it.
I snuck closer, keeping to the shadows, soaking my boats in muddy puddles, creeping far enough to get a make on the dude in the passenger side. He appeared to have the physical dimensions of Pete, but the darkness cloaked him.
“My ex-wife wants me to pay more,” the passenger said. It could have been Pete, same voice, but he sounded different, relaxed. “I had to get married. I come from a Catholic family and knocked her up.”
A delivery truck barreled down South Street and flooded the lanes with high beams. It momentarily illuminated the car’s occupants. The passenger wore a Phillies cap, but I recognized the face, the smug bearing. Who the hell meets their parole officer at three in the morning? Louie threw a stone at me from the sidewalk. I ignored him.
“You want to get some coffee, Joe?” the driver asked.
“Yeah. Then it’s home to that shithole apartment on Walnut. I never should have signed up for this shit.”
“How long you in?”
“Soon as they give up their source, then they’ll pull me out.”
I crawled back to the sidewalk, splashing through a muddy pool on the curb. The Luger barrel dug into my gut, and I ignored it. I kept low so they couldn’t spot me and jogged by Louie into the closest alley. He followed me, rolling the ball bearings in his pocket.
“They’re cops,” I said.
“Shit. I knew it. He arrested me a few years ago for that whole acid-prom shit.” I remembered Louie’s triumph, lacing the punch at our high school prom. “We have to handle this carefully, do the right thing, or Dominic’s going to think we’re involved. He’ll order us clipped.”
“We go see Dominic,” I said. “And hope he doesn’t kill us.”
*****
We sipped the rest of the night down with burnt coffee at Captain Spizzie’s Diner then headed over to Kingdom Come Pizza where Dominic held court and ruled his kingdom of South Philly. He’d risen to the position of boss of the local crew after the old boss, Jackie Fingers, got pinched for the murder of a rat. Dominic ruled in peace and dealt with threats to his order swiftly and brutally, often ending it with a body dumped in the river. If he believed we were involved, that’s the way he’d do us—or he might just kill us to sterilize the wound. These made guys didn’t like taking chances.
Bright and early at 8 AM we entered Kingdom Come Pizza. Dominic sat at his usual booth in the corner and read the Philadelphia Daily News. He sipped from a cappuccino, careful not to spill any of the foam on his silk shirt and imported jacket. He brushed back his dark hair from his forehead and tried hard to look older, more experienced. Dominic wasn’t much older than Louie and me. He only rose to the position because most of the older generation got pinched and sent up for ten-to-twenty on drug charges.
Leon, his front man, met us at the door.
“Hello boys,” he said. He held out his hand, and I gave up my Luger. He still patted us down. Then he took us to see the skipper.
“Louie. Vincent.” He waved for us to sit down. “Cappuccino? We have the finest boiler in the kitchen. I insist on it.” His boys sat in the other booths, chewing on bagles or cold pizza; they watched us with a keen hawk’s eye.
I sighed, inhaled deep, and put my life on the wheel. “We’ve got a problem, boss,” I said. We weren’t made guys, never would be, but we still called him boss. He liked respect. “We’re dealing to this guy Pete, expanding our market. We found out he’s a narc. A filthy pig.”
Dominic sipped from his coffee. He didn’t raise an eyebrow, cool as ice freezing at the North Pole. Most other guys would have freaked. “What does he know?” I told him everything, and he sipped his coffee, his eyes focused on the neon sign in the window. If he sent us out with some of his guys, we wouldn’t survive the day. He gestured for Leon, who handed me a .45.
“This gun just came to us from some friends of ours at Sullivan Gun Works in Connecticut. Tell this cop you want to meet him to reveal your source cause you need to unload some inventory. Then take care of it.”
I hesitated to take the gun. He forced it in my hand and raked me with his cold gaze—empty lethal eyes on the soulless man. “Use this gun, only this gun, these bullets. They’re untraceable. If you lead this back to us, we’ll take care of you, your family, your friends, even your priest.” He clenched my hand when I took the gun. I nodded. We left there alive. I wish he’d killed us. I knew once I shot a cop I’d be going to Hell. That would be the end of me.
*****
After leaving Kingdom Come Pizza, we left a message on Pete’s phone and told him to meet us in a few hours on vacant pier off Penn’s Landing, down where the old casino boats used to pick up passengers. We did a lot of business down there, away from civilians and far enough to silence gunshots. We walked down South Street and cut through the park along the river, then headed out to the pier to hang out, get a view of the terrain. The rain had dried, but the clouds still swelled gray in the sky, threatening a renewal.
“That shit seem weird to you?” I asked.
Louie nodded. “Dominic can’t be that cool. Either he doesn’t give a shit about anything, or he was expecting it.”
“He’s testing us,” I said. “If we fail, we die.”
The wind pushed against us as we walked the path along the pier, cutting deep into the wide river. Camden on the other bank pulsed with traffic, and I thought about the trips Father Gabe used to take me to the aquarium. I loved to watch the stingrays.
It came down to this: If we didn’t kill the cop, Dominic would have us clipped. I’d already given so much to him, to this way of life, to the dark soul of the city, the under-life on which the over-world of Philly thrived. Still, it had to be done, and I’d face it like a man. I’d give up the little piece of myself I’d protected all this time, then I’d be initiated. We’d all burn together. I’d never be able to face Father Gabe again. He’d see the bloodstain on me, the hole ripped open in me from where Dominic tore out my soul and chewed it in his teeth. He’d know. He wouldn’t say anything or maybe speak of redemption, but we'd both know there’d be no going back.
We hung out behind an abandoned seafood restaurant, leaning against fake harpoons and a plastic squid bolted to the wall. The wind chipped the paint, and I thrummed the handle of the .45. I missed the feel and the weight of my German-engineered Luger, and I rubbed its handle in my jeans, soothing my anxious limb. After an hour of silence, of watching the black ink river flow, Pete showed up. He’d combed his bangs over his forehead and walked hunched over, trying too hard to look like a hood. I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before. I didn’t have enough of the street in my blood, and that comforted me.
“Hey. What’s up, assholes?” he said. He extended his hand. I didn’t shake it. That would make me a monster. “What’s this about another shipment? It’s doable, but it ain’t going to be free.”
“A deal with the devil?” I asked.
“Trust. A deeper stake in your business.”
“Our source?” He nodded. Louie stepped behind him, standing in the ruined parking lot on the pier. He covered his exit and rolled the ball bearings in his pocket, ready to jump him.
“So did you meet your parole officer last night?” I asked.
“No. Just went straight home and slept. So beat.”
“Sure. Joe.”
His eyes focused on mine, and he read my face, a bird facing a cobra. He looked down and noticed I had my arm to the side, hiding the .45. “Aww shit,” he said. Pete dodged Louie and tried to run, but Louie cut him off. I aimed Dominic’s .45. I would have preferred my Luger, snug in my jeans, but I followed orders. I had to step carefully to survive, and not just
for me but everyone I loved. I was sure he had his crew close by keeping an eye on the pier.
“Fucking narc,” I said. He shook his head.
“I’m no cop,” he said. His skin bleached white, and he shook in the bitter wind off the bitch river. My finger stroked the loose trigger. I built myself up to it. My stomach churned, and vomit filled my throat. I gagged it back down.
“Just shoot him, Vincent!”
“Shut your mouth, Louie,” I said. “So lucky you have me around, doing all your hard shit. Such a pussy.”
“Fine,” Pete said. “You got me. I’m undercover, but you really think you can get away with shooting a cop?”
“I have no choice,” I said, lying to him and myself.
“We’ll give you immunity and get you out of the city,” he said, trying to bargain with me, keeping cool. “There are cops all over this pier. You didn’t think I’d be stupid enough to meet you alone?”
“He’ll find us,” I said, wanting to believe he could protect us, give us a way out of this shit. “He’s got dirty cops sucking his cock. Even FBI. If a man’s got a soul, Dominic can corrupt him. He’s the devil in a suit. Smooth and full of hellfire.”
My hand shook, nearly tossing the gun in the river. Louie kept nudging his head, pushing me to fire. I pressed on the trigger, moving the hammer—such an inelegant weapon, not like my Luger. Soon as I shot him, we’d dump his body in the river; and I considered jumping in after him. The world weighed on my head, crashed on my chest. I choked on vomit. With one bullet, I’d kill both of us.
“Do it, you fucking coward,” Pete said.
I dropped the gun, and it clattered on the rotting boards.
“What the fuck are you doing, Vincent?”
“I’ve given up too much,” I said. “Let them kill me. At least I’ll die with my soul intact. It’s all a fucking game played by sadists like Dominic. Fuck it.” Louie reached to pick up the gun but he hesitated then finally left it.
