by Neal Pollack
We get in the room and things don't quite go like I think. I mean, Katrina lets this inner tigress out to play. This stone freak Amazon lady is surprising the hell outta me, all pure aggressiveness and shit, and I'm thinking, hell, not what I'm used to but this gonna be good. She pulls out this box of toys, and I'm like, okay, fine, she must be one of them electromagnetized robo-chicks who gets off on modern technology, plenty of those around. But then she announces the toys are for me, not her, and now I'm in way too deep to refuse.
Let's just say we go at it real good, till we both like totally wrung out. And I'm thinking later she uses me maybe like some prison daddy might, only I don't give a shit what she do to me, it being a long, long time for me.
After all that, she figures I'll do whatever she wants— even dig a grave. For her. And even though I see that clear enough, she right about it anyway. I mean, I take the job for the money alone, but she show me some personal interest and it's just what the doctor ordered. I leave that room sure she got a thing for white boys, sure she wants me to be her Chicago man for a while. Cuz all the signs are there. And I need 'em all to be true.
Next night, things with me all arranged, she comes back to the bar and Blue puts her in touch with Hector. Blue got some mad blues playing on the system and I'm watching them from a stool down the other end, sipping drinks while Blue's driver goes on about how Blue got some big-ass moves in the works. I want to see how Katrina plays it with Hector, see if last night's jag was for me alone or if she do that with just anybody.
Katrina start doing the flirt thing with Hector and he's real funny, man. He's like drooling at hello, and right away she know he so totally into her she don't even need to toss him a tumble like she did me. She just shoot him some hot looks, and tease him with a little dirty dance in the middle of the floor. Seems like the dance leaves him half-unconscious with desire. And that is that. Deal is sealed. She tells me later in her room that Hector even buys her excuse why they can't go somewhere and do it tonight, so I figure Katrina really plays that macho muchacho hands down, bitch is something else.
After that, though, when Katrina tells me Hector's the goddamned uncle we gotta take care of, you could push me over with a fingertip. I would never make that guy as an undercover cop. She tells me they find out he the one sours a whole bunch of gigs they got going on while I'm in the joint, tells me it's Hector put some of Blue's key guys in jail, and now they gotta put an end to it. That's when I'm thinking maybe Hector allows Katrina to play him that way in the bar that night, cuz cops ain't supposed to get it on with the women they working to put away.
Probably both are true—Katrina is truly hot enough to get Hector thinking with the little head, but also Hector made it easy for her to seal the deal without having to seduce him cuz he a goddamn cop. Hell, this crazy game's all good to me. One way or another don't change a thing. Just pay me and point the way and I am there.
But like I say, once Katrina lets me in on the job details, one question keeps nagging at me, all night: What's going on with Hector's ghost? These uncle guys almost never work undercover without some other cop keep an eye on them from the shadows. Some cop watching me do away with his partner puts me in mind that this job could toss me in the deepest of shit in a freakin' heartbeat. And nobody do short or easy time off a cop murder, cuz they make sure every single minute you do inside is a living hell.
Katrina quick. She see my concern, tries to calm my nerves by telling how she and Blue have this sweet arrangement with Hector's ghost, this old cop Eddie.
"Eddie?" I say, that name perking me right up. "Eddie McClusky?"
"Yeah, you know him?" she say.
"Bad-ass mother," I say. "Eddie's an Unknown Chicago Legend."
"What d'ya mean, unknown?" she say.
"To the public," I say. "But not to half the population of Joliet. I even hear about Bad-ass Eddie Mac when I'm on the street before I do my stretch. How you so sure Eddie ain't playing y'all?"
"Don't you worry," she say. "Me and Blue don't do this if it ain't all in place."
"Do me favor," I say. "Lay it out for me and I decide if I should worry or not."
I see she pissed at my question, but I guess she decides it's fair to ask, so she gives me the respect I deserve and answers me. "First off, Eddie played ball with Blue plenty in the past."
"Wait a sec, you saying Eddie Mac ain't righteous?" I say. "That ain't the word I hear. How about all them arrests he bring down?"
"When it suits Eddie to play straight, he bring arrests down," she say. "When it don't, he don't. That big Irish gang bust over in Bridgeport? Believe me, Blue helped Eddie out with that. It don't happen if Blue don't come through big."
I'm laughing now. "You saying Blue helping Eddie Mac lock up the bad guys?"
"Blue and Eddie only do deals when they both get something out of it. If they don't, they enemies again."
"Okay, so what's Eddie getting out of knocking off this uncle Hector?" I say.
"Hector knows Eddie play both sides of the street, Eddie don't trust him to be cool. We do this for Eddie, Eddie do something else for Blue," she say. "But I don't know what, cuz that's 'tween Blue and Eddie, and it don't matter to me."
I see it do matter to Katrina, but I leave it right there, cuz I can also see she knows Eddie'll be cool when it all goes down and that's what really matters to me.
"Heavy duty, baby," I say, smiling again. "That's the real deal."
She puts her hand flat on my chest, all sincere and tender.
"We gonna have to lay real low after the job, though," she say. "Think maybe you and me go somewhere and enjoy the quiet life for a little bit?"
"Sounds good," I say, cuz it do sound good.
"I got a place in Costa Rica."
"Gotta get around my parole thing here, baby, but you singing my song."
"Good, Zane," she say. "You gonna like it down there."
I want to ask her about how she first get involved with Blue's business, but I leave that for some other time. Maybe when we in Costa Rica. And I'm wondering how I got this lucky all of a sudden, money in my pocket, beautiful woman all into me. All this shit going through my brain as me and Hector are digging the hole toward head-deep, like Katrina orders us to do, and I keep on thinking and thinking and thinking like this. Wondering what I know.
I know what Katrina say about Eddie, about Blue and Eddie, that's what. And I know Blue owe me. And knowing Blue and Katrina got my back is good enough for me, or I wouldn't be here. But I still can't help coming back around to Eddie Mac, Hector's ghost, lurking out there in the dark watching his partner dig his own grave. I know I should be scared out of my skin over this job, but now that Katrina and Blue lay it out for me, I'm cool. Except for the sweat soaking through my dark green coveralls, about ten percent fear sweat and the rest shoveling sweat, even in the chilly night air.
All this digging is boring now, and I'm sneaking peeks at Katrina checking her watch. We been working this pit a good while, breathing heavy, and my eyes are level with her toes. Hector's head don't even reach up to the grass, he being one short Puerto Rican. Got dirt in my coveralls, dirt on my face, dirt soiling my brand new White Sox cap, dirt in my boots, blisters on my hands, but from this angle I ain't thinking of none a that, cuz I can see right up under that miniskirt, right to Katrina's white thong against her smooth coffee skin, and what a heavenly sight that is. I want to just pull her down and get us both really dirty right here in this black soil.
But she surprise me.
"Good enough," she say. "Zane, use your shovel to get out first."
Show Time is at hand. I prop the shovel against the end of the grave, spade end down on a rock, and use it as a step to boost myself up. My heart's racing now cuz I been thinking about everything else but the big moment.
Katrina back off a step or two as I climb out. Like me and Katrina plan, I hold my hand down to Hector and say, "Don't leave it behind," and he hands me his shovel.
Then he looks down to step
on my spade end, his hands grabbing at the sod above, ready to boost himself out of the grave. He still looking down as his head comes up, and I take a full swing with his shovel right down hard on his head. Only it don't hit quite square and the edge of the shovel scoop off a hunk of Hector's scalp and skull bone, which goes flipping onto the grass at Katrina's feet like a bloody tea saucer.
You could even see some of Hector's brain sitting in it like some freaky Fear Factor stunt. Sight gross me out, man, don't know why cuz I seen that before. Lying back in that grave, Hector give out this puny little cry and his body start in on some serious shaking.
Can't say I feel nothing much as I watch Hector shiver and bleed out the top his skull, 'cept maybe tired and dirty, just want to finish and go clean off this dirt. So I lean down and grab my shovel up out of the pit, and just when I straighten up—BAM —this explosion slams the inside of my head—and everything goes queer and too slow—and then I'm coming out of this blackness and I find myself looking up from inside that pit, Hector underneath me trying to shake even with my weight on top of him.
After I don't know how long, I'm coming out of another darkness and I see Eddie Mac and Katrina looking down at me. Eddie Mac holds a nine with a silencer on it. Then things go black again.
Next time I come back from the dark, I'm half covered with dirt. I can't hardly see cuz dirt's on part of my face and some in my mouth and I can't lift my head to shake it off. I try to call out to Katrina, but can't make no words. I try to get up but my body don't care what I try, it won't budge.
With my one eye that can see, I see that Eddie Mac's busy shoving dirt down from the pile, working at the end where my feet are. I can hear him pant cuz the old guy's working hard. I can move my left arm and I try to bring it up and take the dirt off my face. On the way up my stomach, I feel my strap under the coverall, hanging just under my arm. Real slow, inch at a time, I crawl my hand in and slip my nine out. They don't see me move cuz … well, I don't know why, I guess it's too dark or they think I'm already dead.
I ain't thinking about what happened or why. It don't matter to me now if Katrina done me dirty this way, or Eddie, or even Blue, though all of them must have, I'm sure now. It plain this is where I'm gonna be for, like, ever. I don't even give that much of a damn, really. Never know how you gonna end up. Or when and where. Or why, for that matter. You just know you will. Somehow, somewhere, sometime. That, and how'd you use your time? Those all some things to think about. Now, anyway. My line of work, I always figured I have something like this shit coming.
I coulda finished high school, coulda fixed cars. I could say I shoulda done all that. But this is what I want, so this is what I do, and this is what I get, no big deal.
They say before you leave the world you see your life flash before your eyes like some kind of big movie, which amounts to making some kind of sense of things. Nothing big and grand like that happening for me right here and now, probably cuz my life never make much sense anyway.
So I can't even say why I'm looking up with my one free eye, lifting my nine out from under the dirt and pointing it at Eddie Mac. I can't exactly say why it makes sense for me to put two quick slugs in him and then turn my wrist and put another two in Katrina. But as soon as I do, it feels okay.
Eddie Mac, he falls on top of that dirt pile and I can see his legs shaking bad as they stick down over the edge of the grave. More and more dirt slips in and I know it's only a matter of time till his body slides down here.
Meantime, sweet Katrina, she down to her knees on the other edge, gurgling and gasping as she holds herself, red spreading across that blouse, down onto that cute little mini. She look so beautiful to me. And so sad. She cries a little bit, but I guess the pain cuts into that, and then she loses her balance and she fall right in on top of me.
Time short now. I can't see nothing. I guess that's Katrina's blood making my face wet. I like the warm feeling. I like it's her blood, not some stranger. She making it hard for me to breathe, which is just as well, I don't mind. The kind of guy I am.
Just before the dark closes in on me again, I'm laughing on the inside, cuz we all four ended up in this pit here, all four headed underground no matter what other plans they had. And I'm also laughing cuz when anybody, Blue maybe, come looking to find one uncle, one ghost, and two gangstas, all they gonna find themselves is four ghosts, surprise surprise. Like to see them try to figure this one out.
Still can't form no words, but in my mind I'm saying, Don't you worry, Blue, you be in here soon enough.
And now that I finish thinking all these last thoughts, weak as I ever been in my whole idiot life, heading into the darkness again, all I can think to add is four more silent little words in my grave in the big, bad Southside, not one mile from the place where I was born: Goodnight, Chicago, and amen.
THE GOSPEL OF MORAL ENDS
BY BAYO OJIKUTU
77th & Jeffery
Swear I'm trying to keep up with Reverend this morning. Ain't so easy, not with the black angels crooning at his back, alleluia, and these amens rising in flocks from the Mount's bloody red carpet and gleaming pews, and the Payless heels square stomping up above my head until Calvary's balcony rocks in rhythm with the charcoal drum sergeant's skins. Seems the flock understands his sermon mighty fine, else why would they make all such noise in Mount Calvary? It's me then. I am the lost.
"Today is a good day, Church. Ain't it, Church? Always a good day for fellowshipping in the community of the Lord God, ain't it?"
The woman leaning on her walking stick across the aisle echoes loud as the speaker box boom.
"Amen!"
"We come in here on this good day looking for the righteous way to serve Him to bring manifest—y'all like that word, Church, that's a good word—let me say it again. We come in here to bring man-i-fest His glory in a world gone wicked, Church. We got this here fine church built on a mount—and we call it Calvary, like that hilltop where the Lord God sent His One Son to hang from a cross for us and save us from sin, deliver us from black death, Church. Make me so happy when I talk bout how the Savior came to this world to sacrifice His life for us, so happy, Church, all so we could come back here to the hilltop and build up a palace that'd shine bright in His city, so all would know. But all still ain't here celebrating the Good News, Church—no matter how loud I speak it, y'all sing it, and no matter the blazing beauty of this here Mount Calvary. City's wicked, Church, so wicked; we got folk look like us, talk like us, breath like us out here. But them folk is confused, Church, lost out in concrete Gomorrah. Y'all know too much about that place already. That's right, the wicked place right outside the oak doors to our Mount Calvary. Right down there on 79th Street, where sin whirls among folk blind to the Good News."
Maybe my trouble understanding Reverend Jack comes from these tiny ears, a quarter of the space the Good Lord carved on either side of my head for hearing. Or maybe confusion comes from eyes gone pus-yellow driving Sunday sunrise fares out to the good places north, south, and west; far, far from the wicked, whirling city and never back into concrete Gomorrah a moment before 7 o'clock the following Saturday night.
Or maybe I'm carrying the soul of a Black Jew up inside me. Not like the one-eyed Candy Man, or the musty shysters on the corner of State and Madison, their nappy heads hid underneath unraveling crochet hats. Sammy Davis was a happy half-monkey/half-rat, and the zero corner hustlers call themselves "Ethiopian Hebrews," selling their stinky incense sticks. I know I ain't no chimp dancing on a music box or no rat running into corners, or no shyster either. Ain't looking to get down with no big-boned Swedish honeys or start no funky sweet revolution. Just getting hold of this preacher's babble before salvation passes me by, trying to—Black Jews, you see, don't sing or dance God or shout alleluia in the temple. We read holy script in quiet. That way, we understand what the rabbi's spewing. We Black Jews get to know what the sermon means, Church.
My religion would explain this Scandinavian wanderer's nose misplaced on my Dow
n-Deep-in-the-field face. I smell from it plenty good, better had what with this crooked beak jabbing from my head, stabbing and jabbing at the rearview mirror reflection as I pull on seeing holes to explore my rot. The nose's tip hooks down like those of the old olive diamond hawks underneath the tracks on Wabash Avenue, except that nostrils gape wide and jungle-black where cheeks meet. I breathe the stank of the Lord Jesus' celebration: this funk of salt, Walgreens makeup counter product, relaxer lye, and air panted from deep in guts filled with only starvation and desperation. Smelling lets my beak know something's ill in the reverend's Sunday spiel, and that knowledge means trouble on the Mount.
"But why's the world still so wicked if the Lord God sent His One Son down here to die and save us from sin? Let the Reverend explain the mystery to you—"
Reverend Jack's Satan changes every first and third Sunday. God is always the father, Jesus is his namesake son, and the Holy Ghost is that daytime creeping soul who slips inside the good Calvary Baptist lady in the satin dress, takes hold of her up in row ten after the reverend drops the sermon's main point. Twists her skull at the base of the neck, bends her in half, then snaps her holy rockhead front to back with the drum sergeant's beat; until the Ghost is done with her and he tosses the top half of this lady free so the end of her spine slams into wood pew.
She never cries or screams in pain as the Holy Ghost works her fierce like so; saved lady just shouts in this thrusting rhythm, "Praise you in me, Holy Ghost. Stay up in me, Holy Ghost. Deep up in me, Holy Ghost. Glory. Praise you in me, Holy Ghost," and then again, before she hops into the aisle, mist rising from cocoa forehead, arms and legs flapping against each other while her neck snaps backwards without wood to interrupt the flow of ecstasy. There she goes with that sanctified chicken jig, same dance every other Sunday of the month.
