Smoked

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  ?

  Empty hand, empty mind.?

  Lola sat cross-legged on a wool blanket.? She had placed the blanket on the gently sloping hill of the city's Eastern Promenade.? Eastern Prom was the extremity of the peninsula that made up downtown Portland.? A long avenue of stately Victorian mansions giving way to early 20th century tenement buildings on one side of the street, and a grassy park and pedestrian walkway overlooking the islands of Casco Bay on the other side, the Prom was just around the corner from her apartment.? Indeed, Lola could see this same bay from her back deck, if she chose.? As on any Sunday in the fall, the bay was dotted with white sails driven by the wind - there was a sailboat rental concession on the waterfront not a half mile away from where she sat.

  Lola came here to meditate.

  Empty hand was karate.? She learned to fight with no weapon but herself - and she believed now, for the first time, that she needed no other.? Empty mind was Zen, a path that had been married to karate almost since the beginning.? It was a term one of her teachers had given her.? The karate practitioner - the karateka - sought to train herself to develop a clear conscience, an empty mind.? This would enable her to face the world truthfully.? An empty mind was tranquil - because to see the truth meant no fear of death, no fear of pain, no fear of anything.? An empty mind lived in the present, the essential time, the only time that was available.? The past was irretrievably lost and the future was forever unattainable.? There was no time but now.

  She sat, eyes closed, facing the water.? Her hands were upturned and resting lightly, one on each folded knee.? She wore jeans and a light jacket.? Her feet were bare, her sandals kicked off in front of her.? The cold breeze blew across her, each gust with the bite of the coming winter embedded deep within it.? She took deep breaths, each one coming from the belly, and with each breath she tried - she tried too hard - to let go.? It was no use.? The memories flooded back.? They always did.?

  She thought of the time when the bad thing happened.?

  She was living with her grandmother, an old woman who had seen more than her share of heartbreak.? They lived together in a two-bedroom unit at the Robert Taylor Houses, the largest public housing complex in the world.? Lola hated it there.? She hated the grim towers that dominated the landscape, and she hated the fenced in outdoor walkway that made their apartment seem like some kind of motel room.? She hated the drug dealers who plied their trade, bottle by bottle, in broad daylight.? She hated the police who circled like vultures.? She hated the pimps and the crack whores and the crack heads.? She hated the couples who fucked - there was no other word for it - in the stairwells, and the muggers and the molesters who lurked in the shadows, and the thieves and the murderers and the corpses that sometimes turned up on the sidewalks in the very early mornings.???

  She hated them all.??

  She kept her hate inside herself, clutched it tightly to her like she clutched her schoolbooks.? She didn't show her hate to them.? Instead, she went about her business and dreamed of the day when she would be away from here.? She knew from the television that there was another life outside of this one, a life where people weren't afraid all the time, where you could go outside after dark, where it was okay to show weakness, where people smiled and said "thank you" and "please."

  But for now, this was where they lived, and since Lola's mother had died, there was nowhere else for her to go.? And Lola's relationship with her grandmother was great.? They talked and laughed together easily, as though there weren't fifty years between them.? Her grandmother had even scraped the money together to send Lola for modern dance instruction.? By sixteen, it was clear that Lola wasn't going to Broadway, but she still enjoyed it and it kept her fit.?

  But dancing for fun ended that early spring afternoon.

  Months before, she had discovered a shortcut, a path that cut across a vacant lot about a quarter of a mile down from where the project started.? She would walk home from the bus station, and spy that path cut through the weeds, and think that it would probably save her five minutes walking time.? At first, she wouldn't walk that path.? But then one day, she got up the guts to do it.? It was a weedy jungle back there, ripped clothes hanging from the bushes, broken glass littering the packed down earth.? Her heart was beating something terrible, but she made it through.?

  Afterward, she realized that if she stuck to the path, there was only a moment, perhaps thirty seconds of walking, perhaps a full minute, where she lost sight of both the street behind her and the one ahead of her.? Surely nothing could happen during those short seconds.? She started taking the path regularly, and nothing happened except she reached home five minutes earlier.

  But there was a boy named Kendrick who said he liked her and kept nagging her when she walked the streets.? She didn't like him.? He had been tall, a big dumb boy, always playing basketball in junior high school and early on in high school.? He was gonna go pro one day, right?? He was still tall, but now he was selling drugs and he didn't go to school anymore.? With his vacant stare, and his bloodshot eyes, he looked like he was high most of the time.

  Kendrick was a loser.?

  He was never going to get out of the neighborhood, and by that age, Lola realized that the only hope a person had was to get out of the neighborhood.? In any event, she could tell the look in his eyes.? He only wanted her for sex.? She wanted no part of that - no part of a boy who thought of himself as a desperado, and would soon go the same way as the rest of the desperadoes.? Jail.? Addiction.? Death.? One of those, and maybe all three.???

  But Kendrick the loser was insistent.

  "Oh, you're gonna be with me," he told her with a smile.? "You think you're too good for everybody.? I tell you little sister, you ain't gonna be uppity like that for long."

  On the fateful day, she debated with herself as she always did.? Should I take the shortcut?? Should I go the long way around?? Once again, she took the shortcut.? As soon as she reached that point where neither street was visible, a voice spoke behind her.?

  "Little Miss Uppity Nigger.? Girl, why you always cutting through this back way?? You looking for somebody back in here?"

  There was laughter.? She turned.

  Maybe twenty feet behind her was Kendrick, and he wasn't alone.? He was accompanied by two other boys, Tyrone and Abel.? Lola knew all three of them.? Tyrone and Abel were a year behind her at school.? They were following Kendrick down the sewer.? They grinned at her.??

  The facts came to her in one second flat - pierced her awareness like a bullet to the brain.? The boys were here for a reason, and it was all business.? They had been watching her, and they knew she took this shortcut.???

  She dropped her books, turned and ran.

  Just ahead on the path were two more boys.? They were brothers.? Michael and Ishmael.? Coming this way.? For a moment she thought she was saved.? Two people on the path.? Witnesses.? Then she saw the grins - the boys hadn't come to rescue her.? They had looped around the block on Kendrick's orders.?

  They went for her.? She tried to bolt past them with her big legs and her speed.? But then their strong young hands were on her.? One hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head backwards.

  "Bitch, where you think you going?"

  Bitch.? The word stung like a slap.? It was a strong word, a hateful word, and she felt paralyzed against its force.?

  They took her deeper into the lot, behind some bushes.? There was an old mattress back there, and some old and tattered pornographic magazines.? She could hear the traffic out on Dan Ryan Freeway, but she didn't cry out.? Then they stuffed a dirty sweat sock in her mouth and she couldn't cry out.???

  They did their dirty business, one at a time, while the others looked on and critiqued the action.? She didn't remember much except the sharp and terrible pain in the beginning, and then the sun in her eyes as it sank behind the buildings, bringing an end to another gray day in Chicago.? That and the sound of their whispering voices as they talked about her as if she weren't human, as if
except for her body, she wasn't even there.

  "Damn.? I didn't know she was a virgin."

  "Nigger, how you gonna know something like that?"

  "Learn something new every day."

  "She ain't one no more."

  They giggled like the children they had been only recently.

  Then she was alone.? No, there was one person left.? It was Kendrick, more than six feet tall, towering over her as she lay on the mattress.? He spit on her, and the saliva landed on her breasts and stomach.???

  "You ain't so uppity now.? Am I right?"

  Then he too was gone.

  It was almost dark.? There were sounds of rustling in the weeds, the rats that lived at the edge of human society.? Thousands of them were all around the Robert Taylor Houses, maybe millions of them, feeding off the garbage of more than twenty thousand people.? She didn't want to stay there a moment longer.? She didn't want to see the rats, of course.? But at night, back in that horrible lot, there were worse things than rats.? Anybody might come along.? Somebody worse than those boys, even.?

  Her clothes were all around her, on the mattress and on the ground. ?They at least had the decency to leave her something to wear home.? She got dressed, went back to the trail, gathered up her books, and went on home.

  ?

  * * *

  ?

  Smoke lay in bed, enjoying the bright play of light, and the cool breeze coming through the open window.? Both Lola and Pamela were out somewhere.?

  Sunday was the day Smoke most loved to sleep in.? It had little or nothing to do with it being a day of rest after a week of labor.? Smoke's schedule was his own.? No, it was a sense of nostalgia, of romance.

  And football.

  It was already noon.? In an hour, the Patriots would come on TV.? Smoke had adopted them since he had been here in Maine.? He would spend the day with them, sipping his wine, and perhaps enjoying a cigar on the deck during half-time.? He might watch the second game, he might not - but for three hours, the New England Patriots would command his complete attention.

  He lay there and relished this thought.??

  Then he remembered sitting in the darkened living room.

  It was a sunken living room in another life, when he wasn't yet Smoke.? It was the kind of living room in the kind of house that middle class housewives looked at and salivated over in glossy magazines.? Black leather furniture converged in the center of the room.? At the far end, there was a fireplace that was as clean as a hospital floor - split logs were piled inside it, but it probably hadn't been lit in years.? Floor to ceiling windows looked out across the patio and the sloping lawn to the Long Island Sound.? To the left of the patio, blue and red lights beamed up from the floor of the in-ground swimming pool.? Behind the sofa Smoke sat on, there was a huge canvas - a giant orange dot on a white background.?

  Modern art.? The fat man was a collector.

  Presently the fat man came out of the nearby bedroom wrapped in a thick terrycloth robe.? He wore slippers and walked through the shadows of the living room, headed toward the kitchen.? Must've heard something in his sleep, Smoke mused.? Decided to eat something.? Smoke noted that his hair was greased, even now.

  Smoke reached inside his jacket and fingered the Taser pistol strapped there.? Before he came he had popped eight new Energizer AA batteries in it.? It was ready to fry.???

  The fat man waddled along like he wasn't going to stop.?

  "Roselli," Smoke said.

  The fat man stopped, did a double take, looked again at Smoke sitting there on his couch, legs folded, cane in hand.

  Give Roselli credit.? He was half-asleep, no reason to expect anyone, no way anyone could get in, the whole house alarmed, yet he didn't look frightened or even all that surprised.? The fat fuck never lost his composure - if he had, Smoke had never seen it.? Roselli was like all the rest.? When it came right down to it, it was hard to scare these guys.? The only emotion you could get from them was anger.

  "O'Malley?? What the fuck are you doing in my living room?? At?" he looked at the clock on the opposite wall.? "Three-thirty in the morning?"

  "I came to talk.? Why don't you sit down?"?

  Smoke gestured at one of the leather chairs.?

  "Sit down, shit.? How the fuck did you get in here?"

  Smoke offered the chair again.?

  Something in Smoke's eyes registered with Roselli.? The fat man walked over and eased his weight down into the chair.? He pulled the robe tight around his belly.? He ran a beefy hand through his hair, making sure it was slicked back.? He stared at Smoke across the short distance between them.? He squinted.???

  "O'Malley?? I wanna say something to you right now.? I known you a good long time.? You were always a good kid.? This ain't right, you being in my house like this.? People eat shit for this kind of thing.? Less than this.? What if my wife was here?? My kids?? It don't look right."

  "Your wife and kids live in Florida, Roselli."

  Roselli stabbed the air with a finger.? His face turned red.? "Don't fuck with me, O'Malley.? You know that's not my point.? You want me to come over there and wring your neck?? Is that why you're here?? You're in my fucking house, you fuck.? And you got exactly three seconds to explain what you're doing here."

  Smoke took a deep breath.? "Flight 1311," he said.? "New York to Helsinki with ninety-seven people on board."

  Roselli stopped.? He shrugged.? His hands floated upward in the air, palms toward the ceiling.? They lingered there, and a long moment passed.?

  "Well, I'll tell you what," Roselli said.? "You wanna talk about that, I got no problem.? But now ain't the time.? And this ain't the place.? You got a work related problem, you need to call me and set up a meet.? Go home, O'Malley.? Call Angela on Monday, she'll set you up with a time.? Then we can talk."

  Smoke didn't move.? "In 1978, I torched twenty-one buildings up in the Bronx.? Remember?? That was 1978 alone.? We did buildings starting in '74, and I did my last one in '80.? It was a brisk business there for a while.? You know how many people died in all those buildings I did?? You know how many?"

  Roselli waved his meaty hand.? "O'Malley," he said.? "I'm telling you.? You go on out the way you came in.? If you disappear right now, I'm gonna forget this ever happened.? You call Angela on Monday, and we'll set up a time and place.? We'll talk all you want."

  "None," Smoke said.? "That's how many.? We spread the word, cleared everybody out, and nobody died.? We even cleared the bums and the junkies out of the real shit-holes, didn't we?? Even gave them a chance to live, right?"

  Roselli cleared his throat.? "That's right, we did."

  Smoke reached inside his jacket again.? "So what changed?? What changed so much that you're willing to blow planes out of the sky, with women and children and goddamn fucking exchange school students on board?? What happened, you fat piece of shit?"

  Roselli was silent for a time.

  "Times changed, O'Malley.? And money changes things.? You know that.? It was the Russians.? You know how those motherfuckers are.? There was a guy on that plane, a Moscow guy on his way home.? They couldn't get near him on the ground, so??? Listen, O'Malley.? Somebody tells you the biggest score out there is you bring down a plane.? They're gonna pay you, maybe you owe them a favor and this is a way to get out of it.? Maybe there's even more to it than that.? I don't give a shit who you are.? You do it."

  "You told me it was a bank job.? You told me you needed some C-4, a timer, and a blasting cap, something to detonate with.? Did I have the stuff?? Could I put it together?? You said you had some guys who needed to bring down a cinderblock wall."

  Roselli stood from his chair.? He sighed, and then managed a small smile.? He seemed to like the smile, so he tried on a bigger one.? It worked for him.? He showed his teeth.?

  "I didn't think you'd do it if you knew what it was for."?

  Despite the grin, his eyes flashed malice.? They said he would never forget this intrusion, that as far as he was concerned, O'Malley had signe
d his own death warrant.

  Smoke stood, rising on his cane.? "I wouldn't have."

  They faced each other.? Abruptly, Roselli's grin disappeared.? "Is that what you came to tell me?? That you're better than I am?? Got more principles?? If so, it could've waited.? It can wait forever, actually."? He pursed his lips.? "You want more money?? That I'll consider.? Call the office, like I said."

  Roselli turned to go.?

  "Now get the fuck out."

  Smoke pulled the Taser out of his jacket.?

  "Roselli, one thing before I leave."

  The fat man spun around.? His robe flapped open again, exposing the hairy expanse of his chest.? "Yeah?"

  Smoke stepped forward and let Roselli have it.? The twin probes of the Taser flew out and caught Roselli just below the neck.? Fifty thousand volts of electricity coursed into Roselli's body.? His nervous system overwhelmed, Roselli jittered and jived, the rolls of fat on his neck jiggling, his teeth clicking together.? Five seconds was a long time.? He danced a bit more then went down, all three hundred pounds dropping like a lead weight.? His eyes rolled back in his head.? Drool formed at the corners of his mouth.

  Smoke looked down at him.?

  "Roselli?"

  The fat man's eyes fluttered, then opened.? After a moment, they focused on Smoke again.? When Roselli spoke, his voice was a rasp.? "You know Ice Pick Tony?? Maybe you never had the pleasure.? Well, now you're gonna.? I give you my word.? Tony's gonna take you to his place in Queens, hang you upside down in the shower, and bleed you like the fucking pig that you are."

  The probes spent, Smoke used the Taser's touch stun feature to give him another jolt.

  Roselli blanked out.? He woke up one more time before the end.

  "You ain't shit, O'Malley.? You never were more than hired help.? Ask anybody."

  Then he rode the juice again.

  Smoke was three miles away when the place blew.? He parked on a hillside, looking back west toward the city.? Over the far horizon, he could see the glow from millions of lights against the darkened sky.? New York City, where the lights never went out.

  Much closer, a fireball went up suddenly, literally a ball of fire, on a straight vertical line like a rocket ship headed for orbit.? A long rolling boom came across the land a few seconds later.? An after-burst went up, a smaller one, and then another boom.?