I nodded again.
“You can’t run your own string of whores, lessen’ you hook up with some gal will pull the train for the club, then go out there and lube some johns. You got that understood?”
“I do.”
“All right, the things on the side, you can do what you want to the citizens, you know. I don’t care you rob them or rape them or whatever, but you get caught and dragged down town, not a thing we can do. But there is this. Cops, on our turf, which is about twelve blocks, almost square, cause it’s got an old park in it that fucks up the square thing, makes it like a square with an addition—“
“Who gives a shit,” the girl next to him said. “Just tell him what you’re gonna tell him.”
Grillwork looked at her, and she looked back. Her eyes were pretty damn cold too.
He looked back at me, said, “Those twelve blocks, the park, that’s ours… But these cops, they pretty much leave us alone, cause when they don’t, we got a way of not liking it, a way of tracking them down. It’s been done, man.”
I nodded.
Juan was chewing gum now, and I could hear him popping it, and I felt something cold against the back of my neck. I turned. Juan had a nine poking against my neck and he was grinning and chewing his gum.
“That there,” Grillwork said, “that was in case you didn’t have all the right answers. Like maybe you wanted to argue a point.”
“No argument,” I said, turning back to face Grillwork. “I take it you’re the one called Headmaster, since you’re the one laying out the ground rules.”
Juan took the nine out of my neck.
“No. You don’t talk to Headmaster about this shit. I’m one of his lieutenants. You can call me Hummy.”
“All right,” I said. It was a curious name, some nickname, and I wondered about it, but I didn’t really care enough to ask.
“You frisked him?” Hummy said to Juan and Billy.
“Earlier tonight,” Juan said. “He ain’t packing nothing but a dick and balls.”
“All right,” Hummy said. “Let me ask.”
I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t ask who he wanted to ask, and what he wanted to ask them about. I found the best thing was just to be quiet and everyone filled things in for themselves. You said too much, then you gave them room for varied interpretation. You didn’t say anything, they usually filled it up with what they wanted.
Hummy got up and went away. He was gone for a good while. When he came back, he jerked a thumb toward the door he had gone through, and we went through it, along a narrow hall by a bathroom with an open door where a guy that was maybe three hundred pounds, sat on a sagging toilet and made noises like he was trying to pass a water buffalo, antlers and all. The hallway was full of stink.
“Close the fucking door,” Juan said, as we went by. “God damn Rhino, who wants to smell that shit, or see you delivering it. Close the fucking door.”
Rhino didn’t reach out and close the door, and we just kept going along the hallway. At the end of the hall was another door and this one was a thick door that looked as if it had been added recently. Billy knocked, and a voice said, “Come in,” and we went inside.
It was a big stinking room and it was full of weapons. All kinds of things. I saw an AK-47 and some automatic pistols, small and large, and there were machetes and gas cans all over the place. There were some net bags hanging from the ceiling, and in the bags were human heads, and they were the source of the smell. They were jacking with me, trying to see what I was made of, how scared I was.
Way I felt, scared was not on the agenda. I was way past scared and had leveled out into a steady feeling of numbness. My body was numb, my mind was numb, my soul was numb. The world to me was nothing more than one big numb ball of grief.
I could cope with it because of the sensei I had had when I moved away from here, some years back. I had enjoyed the training so much I almost didn’t move back. It almost made me mellow.
Almost.
But I had the demon inside, and I had left sensei and what he had taught me. I wasn’t trying to use martial arts to learn to live my life without violence, with confidence and harmony, way he taught me. I wanted to use it to hurt someone, the thing I wasn’t supposed to do. I had learned nothing that really mattered from my sensei and I knew it and it made me feel a little ill.
There was a guy in the back, and I took him for the Headmaster, way he carried himself, and there were some guys with him. Juan and Billy left me looking at the heads in the bags, and went over to the guy and talked with him. I could hear them whispering, looking back at me from time to time, so I knew I was the subject.
This went on for awhile, and I looked around and saw all the guns and the ammunition; all the representatives of power. Straight people, they tell you they like guns because they like to shoot targets, but it’s the power, man, that’s what it is and all it is. It’s the big dick spurting lead cum all over the place. You can call it our rights or you can call it target practice or you can call it personal protection, but it’s about power, and I wanted power, and I wanted a gun just like everyone else. Martial arts, Shen Chuan, it gave me power, but a gun, that was the ultimate power.
I put that all out of my mind as the crowd back there broke off and I got a really good look at the guy they were surrounding. He was a little blonde guy with a burr hair cut and he came strutting around one of the racks of weapons. He was covered in weapons himself. He had holsters filled with automatics all over him, and his eyes darted from side to side. He was as paranoid as a staked goat at a Fourth of July picnic. And like the goat, just because he was paranoid didn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.
“You’re the Headmaster,” I said.
“They call me that,” he said, and he didn’t offer me his hand when I offered mine. I put my hand away, feeling as if I had offered him a fish. He looked me up and down. He was short, but he was broad and he had legs like tree trunks. They were supported on little feet in little black boots with silver tips; with those things he could kick a cockroach to death in a corner of the room.
“I got some word you done some things,” he said.
“You mean the girl?” I said.
“I mean the girl. You hit her good?”
“Yeah. I broke her little nose.”
“That shows you got some grit. I’m not saying it takes anything to beat up a little girl, but I’m telling you it takes balls to do it.”
I had already heard this from his guys, but I didn’t say anything.
“We need guys like you, can follow orders, do what needs to be done.”
I said, “Okay.”
“Those heads you’re looking at,” Headmaster said. “They strayed. They started trying to hustle their own business, our drug business and their piece was enough. They wanted more. They wanted to sell a little pussy on the side. The pussy is in the river, these guys, well, you see what’s left of them.”
“Run a pretty tight ship,” I said.
Headmaster laughed. “That I do.”
“What we got to do, man, is we still got some things to try with you.”
“Try with me?”
“Yeah,” Headmaster said, “come back here.”
There was another room beyond this one and I let the Headmaster lead me back there, and when he did, his guys followed me in. Juan hit me a hard one behind the head and made my sight go black, and then my vision jumped back with white dots in it, and I staggered a little. Then someone I didn’t see, kicked me up under the butt from behind and got me in the balls.
I swung out and hit someone, and then the Headmaster, he was on me, slamming one in my stomach, and I guess instinct took over, because I kicked him in the groin and stepped forward, popped my palm against the side of his head and he went down.
I whirled then, and tried to hit another guy with a jab, but he slipped it, and I caught one under the belly. I jammed an elbow into the back of his neck as he stooped, and he grunted, and I slapped my
hands over his ears, and he screamed and turned away. I kicked out at Billy’s knee, and he screamed. I hit Juan in the throat and he dropped, and I smelled shit on the air.
I hit another one of the guys with a knee to the inside of his leg, and that dropped him. I poked my fingers in another guy’s eyes, not enough to blind him, but enough to make him less interested in kicking my butt.
And then the Headmaster yelled, “That’s it, that’s enough.”
He got up holding his nuts with one hand, grinning at me, holding his other hand up in a stop motion.
“All right,” he said. “All right, you got what it takes.”
I wiped blood off my mouth.
“We got to see you can take it same as dish it out, and man, you can dish it out. Can you teach that chop socky to the rest of us?”
“So this was a test?” I said.
“Big time,” Headmaster said, and then he frowned and looked at Juan. “Man, you shit your pants?”
Juan nodded.
“Go get some fresh drawers,” Headmaster said. “Damn, Juan, he didn’t hit you in the belly.”
“When you get hit hard, throat, any kind of place,” I said, “you’re carrying a load, you’ll drop it.”
“Ain’t that something,” Headmaster said. “I’ve seen and smelled them do it when they’re shot, but I didn’t know about the hitting. That’s some shit you got there.”
“No,” I said. “It’s Juan that’s got the shit.”
Everyone, except Juan, who was waddling out of the room, laughed.
· · ·
I GOT RESPECT when everyone in the bowling alley heard about how I had fought, though truth was, had they fought back a little more persistent, martial arts training or not, I would have been toast. They weren’t willing enough. Me, I thought I was in for it, like maybe I was just a test for them, way the girl was supposed to be for me, so I was fighting back big time. Them, they were just testing. I was glad they quit when they did, cause I felt like my balls were trying to crawl out of my asshole from that kick I got.
Anyway, I was in.
So, I guess a week goes by, and I’m doing some little things, like I had to break a guy’s leg to get some money that was owed for something or another the gang had going. I don’t know what. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. I just stomped the side of his knee with my foot and it cracked like a fruit jar tossed on the sidewalk and he gave up the money. He was ready to give anything up. I asked him to suck my dick and lick my nuts, he’d have done it. Anything to keep me from breaking his other knee.
Another week and they gave me permission to go in the gun room, cause you had to have one of the main guys open it with a key, and you had to have permission to go in. They took me in there, Headmaster, Billy, and Juan. They gave me a gun, or rather they told me to pick anything I wanted. I picked an automatic pistol out of the pile, and I pulled an AK-47 off the rack. I got some ammunition. Clips for the AK-47 and the automatic pistol. I should have got more clips, but I was nervous. I ended up with an extra load for the AK-47, one for the automatic.
“You’re gonna need that shit,” Headmaster said. “Things we got going. We got a little gang on the other side, bunch of spicks—”
“Hey,” Juan said.
“Not our spicks,” Headmaster said, and then he looked right at Juan, “and thing is, I don’t care to please you anyway, beaner. I’m the man here, and that makes you the boy, you got me, you fucking pepper gut?”
Juan made a face that looked as if he had just been handed a dead rat to eat. He had been using that kind of talk all along, but it had caught him funny going right at him and mad like that.
Headmaster leaned forward till his nose was almost on Juan’s. “I said, you got me?”
Juan nodded. “Sure, man. I got you. No hard feelings.”
“If there is, you’ll live with them,” Headmaster said. He turned to me then, said, “We’re gonna have to cut down on them spicks from out and away. I thought you ought to get your shot to get some blood in, you know. Something serious, not poking some little girl in the nose or breaking a leg. Something serious.”
“All right,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re gonna get you and Juan and Billy to saddle up, go over there and take a little cruise by, spread some lead. These guys, they got them a little meth thing going, and that’s our finance, baby, and I don’t want them sucking any of our chocolate.”
“A drive by?” I said.
“That’s what I said, only more than that, really. We’re gonna drive by, and then when they think it’s over, we’re gonna come back on them.”
“They’ll be ready,” Billy said.
“What about civilians?” I said.
“Hell,” Headmaster said. “There ain’t no civilians. They're the same as that girl you popped, the shit these guys nailed and burned to get in the gang. There’s us and there’s them. You pop a few wives, girlfriends or kids, that’s the price of doing business, price of fucking on turf ain’t yours.”
“I got you,” I said.
Headmaster nodded, said. “You boys get what you need?”
Billy said, “We got guns, and we got these.”
He grabbed his loose pants where his balls were, and acted like he was shaking them.
· · ·
I SAID I WAS going to the can, and I reluctantly laid the rifle back in the rack, said, “Give me a minute to deliver my last meal,” and I went out of the gun room and into the little bathroom off to the side. It was cleaner than the big bathroom right next to the lanes. And the big fuck wasn’t in there stinking it up. I mean, you wouldn’t want to eat off the floor or nothing, but compared to the other one, it was like it had just been sanitized. The other, it never got cleaned, smelled bad, and the toilets all had dark shit rings inside of them. There were boogers on the wall and things written in pen and pencil, blood and snot, and maybe even shit. You went in there, you might step on a needle, a rubber, or find some guy bending a girl over the sink, doing their business, needling horse—enough to call it a Clydesdale.
I went in and put the lid down on the toilet and sat there and tried to catch my breath. I was in. I belonged to the gang. It’s what I wanted.
I took out the automatic, a nine, and looked at it, felt cold sweat trickle down from my hairline and run along my face and drip off my chin. I laid the automatic on my knee. I thought about my brother. I thought about my father. My father, he never got over it. Killed himself. Shot himself.
My brother, in that store, his feet nailed to the floor, and those two jackasses having set a fire just so they could be in a club, a gang. And now here I was having punched a little girl in the face and taken out a guy’s knee, about to do some real damage. Of course, my reasons for being here were different. I didn’t want to be a member because I respected them, but because I didn’t. I hated them. Especially Juan and Billy, and then the head guy. I wanted what my sensei said was useless to have, vengeance.
After my brother was dead, and we had moved away, my dad had tried to get it together, but couldn’t. He put a gun in his mouth and blew his worries asunder. I was mad at him, hated him for awhile, but then I got over it, because I realized how hard it was to carry on. I was doing the same thing, but in a slightly different manner. Throwing it away. But unlike Dad, it wouldn’t just be me and some blood on the living room floor. There were some guys I was gonna flush with me.
If I got out all right, that was good, but I knew this: I was going to make my mark for dad and for my brother. They were gonna get some blowback on that business they done.
I picked up the automatic and laid in on the sink and lifted the lid and took a piss. I zipped up and washed my face and got the automatic and stuck it in my waist band and went out of there. When I came back into the gun room, the door still open, Juan looked at me kind of funny, said, “Man, we thought you fell in.”
“I was seriously packing,” I said.
I picked up the AK-47. I had shot one befor
e. I had learned a lot about guns from my sensei, the one who told me that guns are about romance and power more than they are about self-defense or constitutional amendments. He also said, “Boys like their toys, the more dangerous and explosive the better.”
He said he liked them too and went to bed at night bothered by it.
I went to bed at night bothered by everything. I didn’t see my brother die, but I could imagine how horrible it was. Him crawling and that fire eating at him and that goddamn popcorn popping, and across the way, those two fucks laughing, getting a kick out of it all.
I looked at Headmaster and Juan and Billy, and I thought, these three, they’re the main guys I want. I could just do it now. I could open up and they wouldn’t know shit from wild honey, and then it would be over.
But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted more than that, and though I was willing to give what it took to get even, I preferred the opportunity to stay alive. Didn’t happen, didn’t happen.
I was ready to play either way.
“What now?” I said.
“I’m thinking,” Headmaster said, “we should probably arm a couple of the other guys, take them with you. It’s best not to take a whole wad. You do that, you’re more likely to end up butt fucking one another. Two many, that’s a fucking crowd. A small hit force, that’s the way to go.”
“You going?” I asked.
The Headmaster looked me as if I had asked if I could stick my finger up his ass and fish for shit.
“No. You’re going. You and Juan and Billy, maybe a couple of others. I go when I want and if I want. You aren’t questioning my chops are you?”
“No,” I said. “I was just wondering.”
“I’ll do the wondering for both of us, blood.”
“All right,” I said.
“Damn right, it’s all right. Juan, you go out there and pick you some wham-bang-dangers, two of them, and then let’s get them fixed with some tools and some lead, and then you guys, I’ll lay it out to you. The whole she-bang of a plan.”