Livin' After Midnight

by Tom Nelson

  “Yeah,” Tom replies, “I can see that.” Referring to the young man in the jockstrap who had run into the bathroom and locked himself in.

  “It won’t happen again, Tom, I swear!” Brian is pleading a little bit now. He doesn’t want to wind up on the floor like the queen he hired to be his security.

  “Oh, I know it won’t,” Tom says in a matter-of-fact way, “because if it does, and I have to come back over here like this,” he motions with his gun toward the guy on the floor again, “I’m not gonna be as nice as I was tonight.” He looks Brian right in the eyes and can see that Brian believes every word he is saying. Good. Tom kicks the guy on the floor in the back of the head as he leaves just to drive his point further home.

  Tom takes the baggie of meth and stuffs it in his pants. He puts the cash in his back pocket. He tucks the 9mm in the back of his waistband and heads out the door. His pants felt like they have a watermelon in them. He recalls his first time in jail when his pants were full of weed and pills and laughs as he heads down the hall to the stairs.

  1987

  Johnny, a thin African American with a short haircut, wearing jeans, a button-down shirt, and a sports jacket, is standing in a hallway that has only two ways out. He looks down the hall toward the stairs from which emanate the unmistakable sound of the Hollywood narcotics squad crashing down doors. They are on the lower floor but making their way up. He can hear their muffled, but still loud and authoritative, voices as they go from room to room kicking down doors, enforcing warrants, and making arrests.

  He looks toward the other end of the hall. It’s either the stairs, which are crawling with cops and guaranteed jail time, or the window. The sounds of heavy footsteps of the narcotics officers coming up the stairs increase. Johnny runs to the window and tries to open it, but to no avail. It’s stuck! The sounds of the cops coming up the stairs is becoming a roar.

  Johnny frantically tries the window again with no luck. The panes have been painted over so many times that the window is sealed shut. Johnny runs halfway back down the hall as the cops come busting through the exit door at the other end.

  “Don’t move!” the more vocal of the two cops shouts. “Hollywood narcotics officers!”

  Johnny quickly considers his options then turns and runs at full speed toward the window. At the last second, he leaps through the glass-paned window in a protective position.

  ~~~

  Tom is in his car heading down Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. He hears a loud crash and glass suddenly comes flying out of a window on the second floor of an old apartment building. Lights from the hallway illuminate the silhouette of a man flying out the shattered window, arms flailing as though he is swimming in the air. Tom makes brief eye contact with the wide-eyed African American as he falls directly in front of his car. Thump!

  Tom comes screeching to a halt. He slams the 1970 Mach 1 into park and jumps out to check on the flying black man. As he moves to the front of the car, Tom finds a gasping Johnny lying on his side struggling to catch his breath.

  “What the fu—?” Tom’s words are interrupted by commotion from above. He looks up to see two Hollywood narcotics officers peering down from the smashed window.

  “Stay where you are, motherfucker! Don’t move! We’re coming down!” Then “MOVE,” he shouts at his partner to get him moving in the direction of the stairs.

  Tom’s attention turns back to the gasping black man lying in the middle of the street. “Dude, you’re fucked-up!”

  Tom leans in close to hear Johnny’s gasping whisper. “Take me to my homeboy’s.”

  “You need a fucking hospital, dude!” Tom says.

  Johnny repeats, “Just take me to my homie’s house.”

  Tom takes a half-second to think, then snatches Johnny up by his jacket and pants. Johnny groans from the searing pain of broken ribs. Tom half carries and half drags the injured man to the passenger side of the car, opens the door, and dumps him inside. He groans louder.

  “Don’t move, motherfucker! Hollywood narcotics officers!” The cops have made it to street level and are running around the side of the building where Tom and Johnny have just met. Tom hears the two officers encouraging each other as they race toward the Mustang. Tom runs around to the driver’s side of the car, hops in, and tears out of there. He can hear the cops’ voices yelling as he drives as fast as he can down Cahuenga Boulevard into the crazy streets of Hollywood.

  “Fuck, dude, you’re crazy as shit!” Tom says after he gets far enough away from the old apartment building to feel comfortable talking. “What the fuck?”

  “Take me to my homie’s house, man.” Johnny tries to sit up in the car and groans in pain. He’s obviously banged up quite a bit. “And stop calling me dude!”

  Tom asks with a laugh, “Okay. Then what’s your name?”

  “Johnny,” comes the strained reply. “Johnny Dollar.”

  “Okay, Johnny Dollar,” Tom chuckles, “where the fuck does your homie live?”

  ~~~

  Tom and Johnny head to his homie’s house.

  “Just be cool, man, and don’t do anything stupid,” Johnny says in a strained voice.

  “Stupid?” Tom asks incredulously. “What the fuck does that mean? You’re the one who jumped through a second-story window!”

  “You know what I mean, man.”

  “Yeah? Define stupid for me, will you?”

  “You know . . .” Johnny starts and his words trail off.

  “Ohhhh,” Tom says in a sarcastic voice, “you mean don’t act too white!”

  “Exactly!” Both men laugh, but from their own perspectives. Johnny groans in pain again.

  Tom drives the car slowly down a central Los Angeles neighborhood street and pulls against the curb when ordered to do so by his passenger, Johnny Dollar.

  “Turn the lights off, man,” Johnny says in a hushed voice, and Tom obeys his command. Tom understands exactly where he is and that he is way out of his element. White guys are looked at as cops or enemies and aren’t very welcome in this part of LA.

  It’s very dark. Tom can barely make out a white T-shirt on someone standing at the corner of a white fence surrounding the property that Tom and Johnny are parked in front of. Johnny gives some sort of signal, which sounds to Tom like a cross between a whistle and a gasp for air, and the white T-shirt comes walking right up to the passenger side of the car. One of the largest men Tom has ever seen kneels down beside the car and looks inside. He immediately recognizes Johnny and is instantly concerned for his safety.

  “What happened, man?” the man asks. “You okay?”

  “I fell,” Johnny says, downplaying the event, “and busted some ribs.”

  “You okay?”

  “No. Not really,” he manages to croak out. “I’m pretty banged up.”

  The huge black man in the extremely large, white T-shirt finally looks over at Tom and asks Johnny, “Who da fuck is this?”

  Tom still hasn’t spoken a word since the man approached the car. Johnny speaks up and says, “Tom.”

  “Okay,” the man says. “But who da fuck is he?” the man asks again.

  “He saved my ass tonight, Biggie.” Johnny says with admiration and what seems like relief that he is among his own people. But he is in pain!

  “Okay, man,” the huge man known as Biggie says, “come on, Tom.”

  Johnny looks at Tom and gives him a head nod toward Biggie indicating Tom should get out of the car and tag along. “Come on.”

  Tom gets out of the car and starts heading around where Biggie is tossing Johnny over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Biggie heads off into the dark toward the house behind the fence while Tom follows. Johnny’s head is down, and he is groaning in pain. Broken ribs, most likely, Tom thinks.

  Biggie, Johnny, and Tom make their way into a shabby single-story house that is not in the most sanitary of states. This, Tom thinks, is my first time inside a Los Angeles crack house. Wow! He looks around with a mix of curiosity and re
vulsion as he makes his way through the den of the house, which is filled with couches and chairs that look as though they were picked up off the street. Filling these seats are several African American men and women all fucked-up on crack. One of the men is searching the floor for something he believes he dropped. A common thing among crack smokers is searching the floor for the rock they think they dropped. It’s annoying as shit! A couple of candles burning on one of the tables and a small, dim bare light bulb in an uncovered table lamp are the only illumination in the room.

  Biggie, with Johnny over his shoulder and Tom in tow, walks through the house seemingly unnoticed by any of the people there. They are too intent on their next hit of coke. Biggie stops at a door at the beginning of a short hallway and knocks as discreetly as the big man can. There is an immediate answer.

  “What?!”

  “It’s Biggie,” the man says through the door. “Johnny’s here, and he’s busted up some.”

  Almost immediately the door of the room is flung open. In the doorway stands a tall, athletic-looking, African American man wearing only boxer shorts that barely cover his apparent excitement. Inside the room, Tom can see two hot, naked women on the bed—one black girl and one white girl—who are obviously in the process of servicing the man who answers the door. The room smells of cigarettes, cocaine, and sex.

  The man stands aside as Biggie enters the room. The two women scatter as Biggie walks over and dumps Johnny rather unceremoniously onto the bed.

  “Oooohhh,” Johnny groans as he is plopped down.

  “What da fuck happened, Johnny?” the man in the boxers asks with concern as he kneels down beside Johnny Dollar. Johnny just groans in response. The man turns and looks at Tom, then back to Johnny and asks, “And who da fuck is dis white boy?”

  Johnny simply groans again and Biggie responds with, “Tom. Johnny said his name is Tom and dat he saved his ass tonight.”

  “Yeah? What da fuck happened, man?” the kneeling man asks, looking directly at Tom.

  “Johnny was running from the cops,” Tom begins, “and had to jump from a window. He landed on his side and looks like he’s got some busted ribs.”

  “Okay,” the man says, then asks, “then where da fuck do you come in?”

  “Oh,” Tom says, then gives a little chuckle. “Johnny came flying out of a second-floor window while I was drivin’ down Cahuenga. When I got out to check him out, the cops who were after his ass started screaming at me to stay put. Then, Johnny started sayin’ ‘Take me to my homie,’ so I tossed him in the car and here we are.”

  “I’m King,” the man in the boxers says as he stands to face Tom. He is still suspicious of Tom and is sizing him up with a critical eye. After a few seconds, he puts a hand out for Tom to shake. Tom hesitates for a split second, then puts his hand in the other man’s and is immediately pulled closer. “You all right,” King says and releases Tom from his brotherly grip.

  “I think we got a lot more in common than just Johnny Dollar,” Tom says as he takes a look around him, “but we’ll discuss that later.” King looks at Tom with a confused look on his face, then turns to his injured friend to administer whatever comfort he can while waiting for a local doctor to come and treat Johnny’s wounds.

  The doctor is someone who had gotten out of the ’hood and gone to medical school, but got addicted to crack, and crack whores, while visiting home in the middle of the great crack epidemic of Los Angeles. The doctor will be paid in cocaine, of course.

  ~~~

  The doctor begins tending to Johnny in the bedroom while Tom and King make their way into the kitchen. King motions Tom toward a chair at a shabby ’50s style kitchen table with a yellow glittery surface. The man in his boxers has put a robe on over them. Tom and King sit opposite each other. King turns his chair backward at the table, like he is about to interrogate Tom. The two strawberries, as crack whores are referred to, are exiting the bedroom as they finish getting their clothes on. Groans are emanating from the bedroom where Johnny lies helpless at the hands of the crackhead doctor. Tom figures the doc is poking around to “find out where it hurts” and go from there. LOL. Poor Johnny.

  The fact that Johnny has homies who will look after him like this, though, means he’s a decent guy, despite being a crackhead crack dealer in some of the roughest times in the nation’s recent history. Tom decides he likes Johnny.

  Now, though, Tom’s focus is on King sitting across from him. The African American is still sizing Tom up, so Tom has time to take a closer look at the person who calls himself King. The guy has rough skin, probably from acne as a child, and has a cut that is barely visible under his right eyebrow, most likely from a fight through his years in the ’hood. King has an almost-bald head that is normally shaven, but currently has a two A.M., two-nights-later shadow. It can use a good shave.

  “So, who da fuck is you, man? And how da hell did you end up here with Johnny all busted up?” King finally breaks the silence. The man shifts in his seat and the collar of the robe parts to expose a scar that runs the length of the man’s throat. That musta hurt like hell, Tom immediately thinks, then, how the fuck does someone survive a wound like that?

  Tom turns his gaze back to the eyes of the man sitting in front of him and says, “My name’s Tom. I hang up in the Hollywood area where Johnny was tonight. He came flying out a plate-glass window from the second story of a building and landed right in front of my car. The cops were after him, so I tossed him in the car and he led me here.”

  “And that’s it?!” King asks. “You just grabbed Johnny up and brought him home?” There is an obvious mix of admiration and suspicion of Tom.

  “Yep.”

  King considers that for a moment, then motions Biggie over to the table. “Get me some dope,” he tells the other man, who takes off down the hallway and into another bedroom. He emerges a few seconds later with a baggie containing about an ounce of crack cocaine, which he promptly places on the table in front of King. The robed man’s attention turns to Tom again and he says, “I’m gonna hook you up, wood,” as he picks up the baggie.

  “I could use a blast right about now, that’s for sure.” Tom breathes a sigh of relief as he knows he will be able to smoke some coke in a minute and relax a little.

  “Gimme a pipe too,” King says to Biggie without taking his eyes off the white boy sitting in front of him. Biggie obliges by grabbing one from the top of the refrigerator. He hands it over and King puts a few small pieces of cocaine onto the pipe. He uses a lighter to heat the coke up just enough to make it melt onto the screen without burning up it all up. He hands the pipe over to Tom, who accepts it, then reaches his hand out for King to give him the lighter.

  Tom takes a deep hit off the pipe and hands it over to King, who adds another piece of cocaine before lighting up his own blast. King takes a long drag from the now sizzling pipe and sets it down on the table between them. He lets out an enormous cloud of smoke, which joins the cloud that Tom has just exhaled toward the ceiling. Tom’s mind begins to wander a moment while the intense effects of the cocaine wash over him. He thinks of Gandalf and Bilbo telling stories and blowing smoke rings, as they do in stories of the Shire. Tom regains his sense of reality pretty quickly and sees that King is now returning to reality as well.

  “Nice.” Tom gives a short compliment to King’s cocaine and waits for the other man to kick off more conversation.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty good.” King reaches for the baggie and asks Biggie to provide an empty baggie. He turns back to Tom and says, “I’m gonna give you a little something for helpin’ our homeboy tonight.” He takes the baggie from the big man and begins breaking off pieces of coke to transfer from the baggie already containing coke to the one that didn’t.

  “Hang on, man,” Tom says. “I don’t want anything for helpin’ his sorry ass.”

  “Nah, man, I want to hook you up, wood,” King repeats.

  “I’ll tell ya what,” Tom begins, “let me get my shit out of the car before
the cops are all over it in front of your house. That motherfucker is burned now!” Tom looks at the other man who thought Tom might be about to ask for more coke or even money. “It needs to be dropped off at the LA River and caught on fire. You got anybody who can do that?”

  “Yeah,” King says. “But I can’t afford to pay you for no car.”

  “I’m not asking you to pay for my car, King. You don’t owe me nothing.” Tom says. “I got myself into this shit when I decided to toss his ass in the car, but I need to get my shit out of that car and it needs to be torched. There’s no way the pigs didn’t get the license number.” Tom takes a breath before going on. “And they were a couple of big, corn-fed white boys, so they know what a Mach 1 looks like, for sure.”

  King considers Tom for a moment and suddenly becomes more suspicious of the white man who is now standing up from the table.

  “I’ll be right back,” Tom says as he heads for the den with its candles and one bulb. He reaches into his pocket for the keys and heads outside.

  King motions with his head for Biggie to follow Tom, which he promptly does. The big man catches up to Tom by the time he reaches the car.

  Tom opens the passenger door of the Mustang and retrieves his jacket, which is a lightweight hoodie. He goes to the rear of the car and opens the trunk. He bends forward and pushes. The rear seat backs fall forward and there is a passthrough from the trunk to the back seat. Tom pulls a small portion of the trunk carpet aside and exposes a cutout that is built into the vehicle for mechanics to be able to reach the upper shock mounts under the body of the car. Tom reaches into this opening and removes a small tin box. It’s sitting inside a pocket naturally created by the welding together of different parts by the auto manufacturer. Biggie is eying Tom carefully the whole time and seems a little surprised that Tom has something stashed in his car.

  “Don’t worry,” Tom says and smiles at the big man who is appropriately nicknamed, “it’s not a gun.” Tom holds the small box out in front of him for Biggie to inspect.