Urban Renewal

by Andrew Vachss

“I can get you a hundred large.”

  “Yeah? Who I gotta kill?”

  “Boy calls himself the ‘Chi-Town Terror.’ ”

  “The rapper? Him? You got to be crazy, old man.”

  “What I got to be is what I am now: old. Get it? I buried a hundred men, and I’m not gonna die from no bullet.”

  “You were a killer?”

  “No, fool. I needed that done, I always paid some sucker to do it. I mean, I’ve watched a hundred men go. And I’m still here. Did I roll the bones? Sure. Swig champagne? Snort some powder? Of course—that’s what a mack man did then. I came up same way you should. By getting schooled.

  “The man who taught me the game told me something I never forgot: The one thing you can’t never pick up is the one thing you can’t never shake. You know what that is? Worse than the clap, worse than a crazy whore who’ll slice you in your sleep, worse than a prison jolt. The worst thing a man can pick up is a need.

  “You never even go near anything you can’t walk away from. That’s the only law a pimp has to know. But he has to have it memorized and internalized. Down cold. A pimp on the spike is just a junkie with some nice clothes. A pimp on the bottle is just a drunk with a Cadillac that he’s gonna drive into a wall. A pimp who can’t stay away from the tables, he’s gonna end up under those tables.”

  “I get it.”

  “Not yet, you don’t. You understand, maybe you understand, you don’t play a game you can’t win. But you got to be willing to die before you even get to try.”

  “Come on, old man. That rhyme-time thing is too old-school for me. I can’t break it down.”

  “Try this, then. This ‘Chi-Town Terror’ has made himself a mistake. The worst a man can make. When it comes to rap, there’s East Coast and West Coast. That’s it. There ain’t no Midwest. And there ain’t no ‘neutral,’ either. He thinks, okay, maybe he can’t travel, but this town is big enough for him to be big in. See, he ain’t signed. He wants to run his own show. Produce his own stuff. Sign up talent. Keep all the money.”

  “So?”

  “So, if he pulls that off, gonna make a lot of people brave. You think they ain’t got rappers all the way from Denver to Dallas? The way it is now, some go left and some go right. But who goes to the middle? Chicago, that’s the middle. East and West, they go to the death to prove who’s the best. Only thing they agree on is there can’t be no ‘rest’—you see the picture I’m painting for you?” The old man sighed and took another deep inhale from his oxygen tank. “You surprised I know this, I can tell.”

  “I didn’t think you even listened to rap.”

  “I don’t. But I listen to the drums. Never stopped, even when they changed the beat. So—tell me, boy: you down with the whole rap scene, right?”

  “Well, not—”

  “Never mind. That ain’t the point. ’Cause I know what you can’t tell me. Who killed Tupac? Who killed Biggie?”

  The young man said nothing, but his posture finally completed its gradual shift from half-slouch to full-attention.

  “One hundred large for the Chi-Town Terror. All you got to do is walk up and put a couple in his head.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “I don’t even have a gun.”

  “I do. And I got something even better. I got his crib.”

  “That palace on Lakeshore? How could I even get past the doorman, never mind his bodyguards?”

  “Not his showroom, boy. His home-crib. When they tore down the high-rises, he moved his mother out to Chicago Heights. Ain’t as nice as it sounds. Been a hard town for as long as I can remember. But it’s a private house.”

  “Sure. Probably guarded around the—”

  “Boy, try and listen! That house ain’t guarded with guns; it’s guarded with knowledge. Even his own crew don’t know about it. When he comes over to see his mama, he goes Plain-Jane on the ride. And he goes alone.”

  “How did you—?”

  “Stop acting the fool! I found out from a fool. You could torture that sucker for days and he still wouldn’t say my name. He didn’t even know what he was telling me while he was doing it.”

  “How could—?”

  “Boy, how much time you think I have to keep filling in the blanks for you? The fool with the mouth, that’s his mother’s man. Younger than her, but he ain’t nothing special, and he knows it. He’s still in the saddle—he don’t work for a living, but he’s never broke. All he knows is that the old lady’s son comes by, gives her cash. The rest I figured out for myself. And figured it was info I’d save for a rainy day. Check the weather out there, young boy—this is Chicago, not L.A. When it rains here, it rains hard.”

  THE SLENDER man looked at his manicured nails, fingered the thin platinum chain under his royal-purple silk shirt. He’d been a good listener. And had become a good practitioner. The old man had been right: If a girl’s fine enough to work the pole in a classy club, no reason to put her on the street, take all those risks. Dancing, she’s going to make some real money. And bring it home to her man.

  But no man spends all day playing with his Xbox. He doesn’t act like a boy. He’s got real game. Working on something big. Can’t talk about it to his woman—he’s got to protect her, and the less she knows, the better … for her.

  He knows where she is at night. But she doesn’t know where he is. Or what he’s doing. Or when he’s coming back.

  But she knows this: when he does, there better be some cash on the table.

  Trolling for new stuff is hard. Lot of competition out there. But when you got the goods, that stuff comes to you.

  A man who understands The Life understands that it will always be there, but not always in the same form. “Evolution” is what the old man called it, and that sounded right.

  So he knew Taylor would come back, sooner or later. After all, everything she owned, from her clothes to her jewelry to that stupid cat she was always fussing over, it was all back at his apartment. His apartment. His name was the only name on the lease. That way, she couldn’t lock him out … and a bitch will do that, you don’t plan ahead. Call the police, they’d never find a mark on her. And the cops couldn’t even tell him to spend the night someplace else—they’re not allowed to do evictions. They tell anyone to sleep someplace else, it’d be her.

  As far as Taylor knew, her man was always on the edge of danger. The money for the car and the clothes and the bling—he’d had all that before they’d ever gotten together. It all came from working a robbery of some Colombians, down in Miami. After they dumped their powder, the way a real pro does—his crew wanted the cash, not the product.

  The Colombians were still looking for him. That’s why his next score had to be big enough to last them the rest of their lives. The rest of their lives together. No more dancing for her. He didn’t like the idea of men looking at her that way. Not at his woman. But every time he hinted that he wanted her to quit, Taylor always managed to talk him out of it.

  Naturally, his own crew was close by—you never pull a job in the same state twice. “You don’t want to meet them,” he’d told her. Promised they’d get this all sorted out pretty soon. Might be some blood spilled, but none of it was going to get on him.

  In the meantime, she brought in the money while he worked the edges. Once he took care of the planning—that was his role; guns were for fools—the big job, that last job was going to go down. Taylor earned good, but she couldn’t hope to make major bucks if she never left the stage. And he sure wasn’t going to make her do anything she didn’t want to do.

  Yes, he had to slap her around every so often, but only when she got too pushy. “You hear the word ‘When?’—don’t matter if the next word out her mouth is ‘Daddy,’ you do what you got to do. But you never leave a mark.” The old man had taught him both meanings of that last sentence, and Lawrence never forgot either one.

  I’m the one holding all the cards, the player silently gloated, as he pulled his Lexus into the garage behi
nd the building where his apartment was located.

  All he had to do was wait. The same way he’d waited for Chi-Town Terror to visit his mother years ago.

  “A MAN with style can’t have all that ‘MF’ stuff come out his mouth,” the old man had told him. “You don’t need to sound like a preacher, but you got to have manners. Class. Always be professional. Don’t show your cards on your face.

  “Lawrence? That’s the kind of name a boy gets from his mama. You got that voodoo blood in you, shows everywhere. So you either a swamp nigger or a Creole prince. Which sounds better to you, huh? Try this one on for size: Jean-Baptiste. Nice, am I right? Okay, Jean-Baptiste LaRue. That’s gonna be you. ‘LaRue’—you know what it means in Creole? ‘The Street.’ Get it?

  “Now, you practice saying that name, saying it the way I just said it. I know where you can get the right ID, match you all the way. But ID’s like a custom suit—it’s got to fit to be right. That name, it’s special. You don’t say it like you spell it, so you got to know both. Cop looks at your ID, asks you your name, it got to come out like you been saying it all your life.”

  True Blue had passed on, but not before Jean-Baptiste had learned it all. Now he was as smooth as ice, and patient as a glacier.

  BUT WHEN he walked into an apartment that had been stripped to the bare walls, he could barely suppress the urge to go out, get a gun, and teach that bitch …

  Teach her what, fool? True Blue’s voice echoed, as if the old man were right there with him, both looking at the empty space. Take a half-dozen men to pull off something like this. You think that bitch got friends that good? Nah. This was something that got paid for. Time for you to float, boy.

  Fighting for calm, he pulled the mate to Taylor’s phone from the pocket of his russet suede jacket and hit her speeddialed number. Number One, as he never failed to remind her.

  “You know what to do. And when to do it.” Taylor’s sultry voice, followed by the beep signaling voice-mail was coming next.

  Phone’s in my name, he thought. So she can’t cancel the account. When the next bill comes, I’ll know who she set this up with.

  Breathing deeply, as if preparing to dive off a cliff, Jean-Baptiste walked through the spacious apartment. Every room had been emptied.

  Not my clothes! He fought off panic. But when he saw that his own walk-in closet was as empty as the rest of the place, he had to summon all his inner strength not to throw Taylor’s phone through a window.

  “HE SAID if J.B. showed up here, I could go home.”

  “Oh, honey,” Arabella said, “you have to learn to really listen when a man talks. Especially that man.”

  “But I was!”

  “Stop being a baby,” the little blonde said. “Sure, you can go back to where you lived. Not ‘home.’ It’s not going to be that, ever again. And he said ‘sooner or later,’ didn’t he? That spells out ‘not tonight’ any way you look at it.”

  “But if I don’t go back, he’ll do something.…”

  “If you don’t go back, whatever that trash does, he’ll have to do it to himself, honey. They even took your cat.”

  “Huh?”

  Arabella expertly piloted her little Mercedes out of the safe zone and into the streets. “This is yours.” She smiled, handing the brunette a folded piece of paper.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a rental agreement. For this huge storage unit—the address is on top. You paid three months in advance. Fifteen hundred, cash. The numbers on the bottom, they’re for the combination lock.”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars?!”

  “The unit’s big enough to live in, girl. Had to be, to hold everything in that apartment of yours.”

  “It’s been emptied out?”

  “Are you really this thick? Yes, it’s been emptied out. Right down to the walls. Check your phone, you’ll see.”

  “But if—”

  “If we’re going to be roommates, you’re going to have to learn to do what makes sense, honey. And what makes sense right this minute is for you to check your phone.”

  Taylor fumbled in her brand-name bag, pulled her latest-model phone from its slot, and saw she had a text waiting.

  I FIND U. I WONT B ALONE. U GET *EVERYTHING* BACK WHERE POS’ 2B, OR *U* B 1 *VERY* SORRY HO.

  “Oh my God!”

  “Will you stop all the damn drama? What did he do, threaten you or something?”

  “Yes! And he knows where to find me. I mean, if I go back to that club …”

  “Oh, you are going back to that club, girl. Who do you think cleaned out your apartment?”

  “But …”

  “It’s gonna be your butt if you don’t, baby. You stay with me until … until we can find ourselves a nice little three-bedroom. I know a perfect spot. In Uptown. Second floor. We’re going to be college girls, far as the owner knows. Old Polish guy, minds his own business. Last place that punk would ever expect to find you.”

  “But the club? I mean, he’ll come after me. I know he will. And he’s with this whole gang. Professionals.”

  “Sure, he is. And the Double-X, the people that work there, they’re all amateurs, huh?”

  “I … I guess not.”

  “Give me your phone.”

  “My phone?”

  “Am I speaking a foreign language? That so-called man of yours, he has your phone on the same plan as his, right?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “I better not hear ‘but’ come out of your mouth again, girl. You make any calls on that phone, he’s going to know soon as the bill comes. Why do you think I’m driving in circles? He’s probably got his own chip in that phone, too.”

  “Oh.”

  “ ‘Oh’? Oh, what? You just escape from a convent? Soon as you get new ID—”

  “I have ID. ‘Taylor’ is just a name I made up.”

  “Really!”

  “You don’t have to sound so sarcastic.”

  “And you don’t have to act so damn dumb. Who made up that ‘Taylor’ name you use? Yeah, I thought so. All right, like I started to say, you take your phone and throw it in the river when we go over the bridge. Then you take your new ID and use it to get yourself a new phone. What’s the big deal?”

  “I don’t know where I could get new ID.”

  “I am so shocked to hear that! Look, honey, I told you that place was covered, didn’t I? You’ll have to pay for the ID, and they’ll front it, same as for the storage unit. But you’re not going to get cheated, and the only payment the man takes is cash, so don’t waste your time trying to offer him anything else.”

  “The man with the tattoo on the back of his hand?”

  “Bingo. I guess his name wouldn’t mean anything to you. I bet you never even heard of Red 71.”

  The brunette just shook her head.

  JEAN-BAPTISTE DROVE slowly to his other apartment. He was trying for that ice inside him that the ancient pimp had warned him he could never allow to melt.

  Ronni was still asleep when he let himself in. She wouldn’t wake up for hours, he knew—she always gobbled a handful of pills and washed them down with a double of Crown Royal just before she hit the sheets, never failed.

  That one had been easy. Got too much weight on her for the best clubs, but a lot of men like their women thick, and she’d work any room he told her to, so she always came home with real money.

  Dependable. That’s what she had going for her. There was a neatly stacked pile of bills on the kitchen table. He riffed through them quickly—twelve big, one half, and the rest double sawbucks … all the way down to singles. Probably didn’t keep a dime for herself. If she wanted something, she knew her man would get it for her. He paid all the bills, didn’t he?

  J.B. was still red-rage angry enough to wake the cow up and use the strap he kept hanging in the bedroom closet to remind her of …

  Stop that, fool! his mind shouted at him. Ronni was a good girl. Not just that, until he could put another game plan together,
she was his only girl.

  He still had his ride. And half his wardrobe was sitting only a few feet away. He never left much cash lying around. Not that any of his women would ever steal a dime, just playing it safe.

  Speaking of which …

  LESS THAN an hour passed before he emerged, wearing a subdued daytime outfit, but one that would scream “Money!” at any woman who was in the market for a man who could take her to the best places. And then take her away.

  His mother had already left for her job, so he was able to get to the basement pad where True Blue had spent his last days. By then he was pretty much out of conversation, so J.B. had known it was coming.

  The safe was hidden inside what looked like a drywall panel. He spun the combination without looking. About seventy thou in there. That calmed him down right away. As he knew it would.

  Some other stuff in there, too. The old man had warned him to dispose of the pistol that had earned him his first new car and the extra custom touches that set it apart from the rest. But J.B. just couldn’t do that.

  His religion was superstition. Not only was that pistol his personal mojo hand, he wouldn’t know where to get another one like it. The full magazine he’d emptied into Chi-Town Terror had been barely audible—no lights went on, no dog barked. Getting bullets was no problem—more 9mm rounds sitting in boxes on the West Side than there were roaches in the kitchens. But the pistol, that was special. Custom-made. The best.

  And no cop was ever going to be searching his mother’s house. Even if he got dropped for—who knows?—the most they could do would be search any place he was carrying the keys to at the time. He never carried the key to his mother’s house—that was under a back windowsill, on a magnetized strip even she didn’t know about.

  His mother’s house. The one safe haven that would always be there for him. The parallel to the house of the Chi-Town Terror’s mother had never entered his mind.

  “Always make them underestimate you,” he heard the old man’s voice in his head, counseling him when he proudly returned with the news that he’d earned that bounty money. “Never carry, not even a blade. Only two people know you a genuine life-taker now: you and me. You keep it that way. Let them think, Oh, that boy, he ain’t nothing. You don’t want no street rep. Let ’em all sleep on you. That way, if anyone does come for you, they won’t come prepared, see?”