“Ricardo says they don’t bother small people,” Teenager said.
“They built the jail for runners,” Lebron said.
“I should get more than a hundred dollars for taking a chance like this,” Teenager said.
Lebron said nothing. Teenager walked off to the subway.
The man he was delivering to was named Jackson and he lived on the third floor of 498 Washington Avenue in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Teenager carried the paper bag on the subway as if it were a loaf of bread. Jackson was in a rear apartment on the fourth floor. Jackson was an old black man, a frizzle of gray hair atop a mostly bald head. And suspicious. He peered from a door that was chained in two places.
“Just give it to me,” Jackson said.
“How do I know who you are?” Teenager said.
Jackson took down the chains and let Teenager in. There was nobody else in the apartment. A window in the kitchen, the glass frosted, had a hole in it. Through the hole, Teenager saw an airshaft. Teenager put the paper bag down on the stove alongside the window. When Jackson came to inspect the bag, Teenager got his hands under Jackson’s armpits, lifted him up and pushed him through the frosted glass window. The breaking glass made a quick, clear sound.
Teenager kept the paper bag under his mattress in the Bronx for three weeks. When he heard nothing about this old man Jackson in Brooklyn, he went up to East Tremont Avenue and said to the man in the red Plymouth, “Can you use a quarter key?”
“If it is good,” the man said.
“How much do you give me for it?” Teenager asked.
“Thousand dollars.”
The next night, Teenager brought the paper bag. The guy in the Plymouth took Teenager to an apartment on Sheridan Avenue where two others examined the heroin. Then the guy in the Plymouth handed Teenager a thousand dollars in fives and tens. A month later, Teenager asked the man in the Plymouth what he had done with the quarter key.
“Cut it and sold it.”
“For how much?”
“Four thousand dollars.”
“You made four times as much as me?” Teenager said.
“Yes. That is this business.”
“Then it is mine, too,” Teenager said.
8
AND NOW, NINE YEARS later, in 1976, his life bolted together with villainy, he began the last of summer in a bar in the Bronx and waited for life to erupt. That it would do so was inevitable, despite all the concordats between Teenager and Pedro Torres, the man who had grown from street urchin into entity while Teenager was in jail.
There were three conversations between them, mainly clashes of ego and greed. The notion of strict control of drug territory, one block is yours, the next mine, was ridiculous, for legitimate life in the South Bronx was anarchy and thus the notion of controlling anything illegitimate was ludicrous. It was simply a matter of applying enough force about the flagstone on which you stood at the moment in order to ensure that you remained standing. For the third meeting between Teenager and Torres, the site was the Areceibo Club, which was converted from an old garage and stood between junkyards on Southern Boulevard. It took three days for the meeting to occur, for each time it was scheduled, the people on both sides arrived with so many weapons and were so certain that the other side plotted treachery that postponements were required. Finally, Torres and Teenager took places at the end of an otherwise empty bar and began haggling. They were able to agree on only one basic point.
“If you take off one of my pushers, then I take you off,” Teenager said.
“If you take off one of my pushers, I take you off too,” Torres said.
With this settled, they left, and the future of a loose, miserable and dangerous business in an unstructured area was left to whatever havoc the wind could stir.
When it came, it started with other people and it was over a windowshade.
One day Yvette, barmaid at the Caribe Casino on Tremont Avenue, told the owner, Octavio Turin, that she would be delighted to live with him, particularly if she could stop working as a barmaid and stay home in bed and watch television. At fifty, fat and one of the few Puerto Ricans using a toupee, Turin felt that leaving Yvette home alone at night was similar to allowing bank tellers to work unsupervised. He asked the landlord to move the shade down about two inches on Turin’s ground floor bedroom window. At odd moments during the night, Turin would leave his nightclub and rush by gypsy cab to his apartment house, where he then would stand atop a crate on the sidewalk and peer over the top of the shade into the bedroom. Always, Turin found Yvette enthralled by Spanish-language soap operas or 5:00 A.M. reruns of Daniel Boone.
Yvette had a cousin named Luisa Maria Flores. Luisa Maria called Yvette one day to say that she had “fresh sexy movies,” the “fresh” being her word for “French.” Yvette said she couldn’t wait to see them. That night, at 1:00 A.M., Turin stood up on a crate and looked over the windowshade and found Yvette and an unidentified male Hispanic in bed. Giggling told Turin another couple was on the bedroom floor. He saw Luisa Maria’s head bobbing. On a projection screen was a man with a missing incisor tooth and an alert sixteen-inch penis.
Turin leaped from the crate and ran around to the apartment door. The inside lock, the Fox lock, held him out of his own house.
“Who is in the house with you?” Turin called through the door.
“Not you,” his wife, Yvette, said.
Turin took out a .38 Smith & Wesson and fired three shots through the door. He hit nobody inside, but there was considerable screaming. Turin announced he would come back and kill everybody, but the one he blamed for the night, Luisa Maria Flores, her he would torture.
The next morning, Luisa Maria slipped out of the apartment and went to a place called the San Pedro Casino, where Pedro Torres, the drug dealer, sat with four men in the daytime empty club.
Luisa Maria told him a story she knew: some months before, Octavio Turin had sent people to rob one of Torres’ pushers, a man named Junior. Luisa Maria told Torres that Octavio Turin’s people had taken thirteen hundred dollars from Junior.
Torres’ eyes told Luisa Maria that the figure she quoted was absolutely right.
“Octavio Turin also got an eighth key off Junior,” she said.
Torres stood up. This, too, was a precise figure.
“Wait a second,” one of the men at the table said. His name was Paulie and he was a Sicilian from Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn who carried drugs and collected money for Louis Mariani. Paulie was dressed Puerto Rican, with a bright red shirt and gold chain, but it was clear by the manner in which he leaned back in his chair that he was in these clothes only for purposes of sales. Clearly, he regarded his blood as superior. He smiled, showing his newly capped teeth, and put a hand on Torres’ arm.
“All right,” Paulie said. “It looks like you got to do what you got to do.”
“Shoot every one of the bastards,” Torres said.
He motioned to the two Puerto Ricans who had been sitting in silence at the table. Their names were Gigi and Victor. They went over to another table with Torres. He had Luisa Maria join them. Paulie, sneering, above this, remained alone.
Three nights later, Octavio Turin arrived at the Mojujuo Bar at 1:00 A.M., a full hour earlier than the appointment he had made with his wife, Yvette. She had asked for this meeting at the bar in order to explain the French movies, and as she intimated that she would bring Luisa Maria with her, Turin had his toupee pasted firmly and a Browning .9 millimeter automatic pistol stuffed in his belt. He intended to shoot Luisa Maria many times. Octavio Turin sat over grapefruit juice and vodka. Into the barroom came Pete Boogaloo, who sold drugs for Teenager. Boogaloo took a seat next to Octavio.
“I’m buying Octavio a drink,” Pete Boogaloo told the barmaid.
“It’s my drink,” Octavio said.
“No, I’m celebrating,” Pete Boogaloo said.
“Oh, that’s right. Your man is back,” Turin said.
“Teenager!” Pete Bo
ogaloo said. As he laughed, he revealed missing bridgework on the entire right side of his mouth. The dentist wanted $1,500, but Pete Boogaloo had to pay the monthly bill for his leased Mercedes Benz 480, the car being much more important to him than the ability to chew.
As Octavio Turin and Pete Boogaloo were having a drink, a festival appeared in the barroom doorway. Two barmaids known as Oligita and Inez were escorting Clarissa Martinez, a woman of prominence; the night before Clarissa had unanimously won the Bronx Bar Owner’s Go Go Girl contest. There were twenty-five people in the Mojujuo at this hour, but Clarissa Martinez, seeing a visiting bar owner, Turin, chose a seat next to him.
“Buy us a drink,” she said to Turin.
“I’m just having a drink with Pete,” Turin said.
Clarissa Martinez looked at Pete Boogaloo, who sat on the other side of Turin.
“Then you buy us a drink.”
“We are just talking,” Pete Boogaloo said.
“These two are no good dirty bastards!” Clarissa Martinez said.
No one noticed Luisa Maria walk into the place with two men. She stood just inside the doorway and pointed to Octavio Turin. “Him,” she said. She then fled to the ladies’ room and the two who had arrived with her, Victor and Gigi, two of Torres’ men, walked toward the bar. Gigi took a nickel-plated Colt .45 Combat Commander from his waist and walked up and shot Octavio Turin in the head. The toupee flew. Victor took out a black Charter Arms .44 Bulldog and, deciding that Pete Boogaloo was as bad as Turin, shot Boogaloo in the head.
There was noise and a desperate rush for the door. Gigi and Victor had trouble getting out because so many customers were jammed in the doorway ahead of them. Neither thought of getting Luisa Maria, who had been told to stay in the ladies’ room until one of the gunmen came for her.
At the bar, Clarissa Martinez and her girlfriends did not move. Clarissa went into her purse for part of her topless dancing contest winnings, pinches of coke, and placed the crystals on the bar for the others to share. The bar owner, who had made a 911 call, stood in the middle of the room and stared at the two bodies on the floor next to the girls. The owner became ill and went to the men’s room. Clarissa and her girlfriends all took deep, delicious breaths with cocaine crystals. They were chattering high and the pleasant sounds caused Luisa Maria to look out of the ladies’ room. Clarissa Martinez absently swung her lovely young legs back and forth over the two bodies on the floor.
A cop blustered in, the visor jammed down over his flat face.
“Did anything happen?” he asked.
“Sure,” Clarissa said.
Statement taken by 41st Precinct on Sept. 10, 1976 by Assistant District Attorney Irwin Weiss.
Statement of: Clarissa Martinez
Present: Detective Robert McGuire, Shield #1417, 29th Homicide Squad
Reporter: Patricia Curtin
Time: 7:00 A.M.
Examination Conducted by Mr. Weiss
Q. Your name is Clarissa Martinez. Is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you born on March 1, 1957?
A. Yes.
Q. Your telephone number is 767-4611.
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know your Social Security number?
A. I don’t have one.
Q. Do you understand what an ADA is?
A. No.
Q. I am a prosecutor.
A. Pros—what? You a pros?
Q. Do you understand English?
A. A little bit.
Q. Anytime you don’t understand what I am saying, I will try to explain it better for you, okay?
A. Okay.
Q. I call your attention to earlier this morning. Where were you?
A. In the bar.
Q. What bar?
A. Mojujuo—I can’t pronounce the name.
Q. And what happened there?
A. Some dudes shot Octavio and Pete.
Q. Who shot who?
A. The dudes.
Q. You don’t know who the dudes were?
A. I don’t know their names.
Q. You saw someone shoot Octavio and Pete Boogaloo?
A. Yes.
Q. How many shots were fired?
A. Whole lot of shots.
Q. How many people did you see with a gun?
A. It was two.
Q. You were in the bar when the two dudes who shot Octavio and Boogaloo came into the bar?
A. Yes, I was in there already.
Q. What time did you get there?
A. About 1:00 A.M.
Q. Until about 5:30, right?
A. Yes.
Q. About 5:30 this morning, what did you see happen?
A. They started shooting.
Q. When you say they started shooting—I am going to show you some pictures. Were the men that started shooting any of these men? Look carefully.
A. Number four I saw.
Q. Did you see anyone else?
A. Not that I know.
Q. Look at them individually one more time just to make sure.
A. Only number four.
Q. This fellow number four, what is his name?
A. His name is Primo.
Q. Did you see him at all before this day?
A. Yes.
Q. About how many times?
A. I worked once in this bar and that was—it’s been about four months ago. I meet him about two years ago with my father.
Q. All right. Did you see him walk in?
A. Walk in when?
Q. When he came into the bar and shot Octavio and Pete Boogaloo.
A. This dude didn’t do that.
Q. I thought you told me that you saw him?
A. I saw him another time last month. My girlfriend Gypsy walk over to kid with him. That’s how I know his face. He sat down first at the bar and they had a couple of drinks and then he got up and put some quarters into the pool table. But that was another time. I just know him.
Q. Why did you just tell me that you recognized his picture?
A. I do. For the time when my girlfriend Gypsy kid him.
Q. Why bring that up now?
A. Why show me his picture now?
Q. Do you know what acting in concert means?
A. Celia Cruz.
Q. Who?
A. Celia Cruz concert.
Q. I do not mean music. I mean that if these two people who did the shooting, and if you were involved with that, that makes you just as guilty as the one who pulled the trigger. That’s what the law is. That is acting in concert.
A. So?
Q. If we have evidence that you were in fact involved with these other people who shot and killed two individuals …
A. You make up lie.
Q. I can’t understand why you don’t tell me exactly who you saw in the bar.
A. I tell you I see two dudes shoot.
Q. What were they wearing?
A. One an army jacket. The other I don’t see.
Q. Why?
A. I see his gun.
Q. The gun you saw, what did the guy do with it?
A. He was standing like about here, the dude that was shooting nearest to me. When I looked at Octavio Turin when he fell, I saw the dude shoot and he walked somewheres. Then I saw this other guy pull his gun, he shoot Pete Boogaloo, and then he puts the gun back inside his pants.
Q. And you didn’t recognize him?
A. No.
Q. You weren’t acting with him?
A. No.
Q. Do you feel at this time that you would like a lawyer?
A. It doesn’t matter, I don’t have no money to pay for the lawyer.
Q. Do you understand that you can talk to a lawyer free of charge if you want to?
A. I don’t understand. I was in the place having drinks, something happens. I have nothing to do with it.
Q. It might help you to talk to a lawyer. Do you understand that?
A. All right.
Q. Would you rather speak to a lawyer first or w
ould you rather talk to me right now?
A. The same thing I am going to tell a lawyer is the same thing I am going to say here.
Q. What’s that?
A. Fuck you, I tell the truth.
The day outside carried the last summer heat. Lieutenant Martin’s office was airless, the windows down.
“Leave it alone,” Martin said when Myles went to open a window. “Planes come right over the building and you can’t hear the game.”
Martin sat in his office in a short-sleeved shirt, the underarms dark with sweat. Arms folded, eyes darting with each pitch, he watched the Yankee game on the small television that was atop an old refrigerator.
“Third inning,” Martin said.
Myles sat down.
Martin returned to the game. In the squad room outside, a couple of detectives sat at gray metal desks and took phone calls. One of them, his face beleaguered, came to the door of Martin’s small hot office.
“Lieutenant.”
“After,” Martin said.
“How much after?”
“After,” Martin said again.
He grunted to Myles. “They got four girls in there.”
“That’s on the double from last night?” Myles said.
When Martin saw Myles’ tenseness, he held up a hand. “You’ll get all the work you need on this. You just stay here with me for a little while. I want to tell you a couple of more things about this job before you go running around not knowing what you’re doing.”
A long fly caused Martin to shift in frustration. A ground ball caused him to grunt. Between innings there was a commercial that featured a black baseball player with a goatee who sat on lawn furniture and extolled its comfort.
“Now they even use them in commercials,” Martin said.
“They sure do,” Myles said.
“Well, they sure use them the right way,” Martin said. “Lawn furniture’s just about perfect for them. I never seen them do anything but sit on their ass.”
Martin sucked on his cigarette. In the fifth inning, the Yankees had three men on and Reggie Jackson up and Jackson hit a line drive down the right field foul line. Martin came forward in his chair.
“Fair!”
He called it a half beat before the Yankee announcer.
On television, Yankee runners scurried across home plate and Reggie Jackson stood in the dust at second base and acknowledged the plaudits from the stands.
Forsaking All Others Page 11
