Tuff

  Yolanda protested. “No, baby, that has alcohol in it.”

  “Less than point five percent,” Winston countered. “I probably drank more alcohol than that this morning when I was eating your stank-stank.”

  “Winston!”

  “For real, that strong-ass douche you be using probably ten times the proof of a malta.”

  “God, you’re nasty.”

  “You wasn’t saying that this morning.”

  “No malta.”

  Resigned to a soda pop, Winston entered a bodega just as two young children carrying book bags and ripping open bags of goodies with their teeth exited. “What time is it?” he asked Yolanda.

  “These kids just getting out of school, so I guess it’s about three o’ clock.”

  Pulling on Yolanda’s hand, Winston steered her and Jordy toward 108th Street. “Come on, we late.” The dress rehearsal of the bank robbery was scheduled for three. When they arrived at the corner of 108th and Second Avenue, the bank’s security guard was holding the door as the day’s last customers filed out. He saw Armello calmly waiting in an idling Dodge Winston didn’t recognize, but he thought the baby seat in the back was a nice attention-deflecting touch. Armello gestured toward the side of the bank, where Fariq, holding a box, was leaning against a brick wall. Next to him was an extension ladder, Ms. O’Koren, Charley O’, and a dreadlocked male whom Charles was busy manhanding.

  “What’s up, nigger?” Charles asked. “Yolanda.”

  Winston noticed Charles was wearing only one shoe; his other foot was bare and soiled. Whitey twisted his hostage’s right arm so severely his knuckles touched his forearm. The dread lifted his head and yelped. The tube sock stuffed in his mouth muffled his cry. It was La Mega, the boy Winston had beat senseless a few months ago. Winston slipped a hand under his shirt and rubbed the keloid scar La Mega’s box cutter had raised. La Mega saw Winston and cowered into a fetal position. Winston’s eyes followed the rungs of the ladder. Nadine was on the roof, her hands filled with smoke bombs. She waved hello.

  Fariq lifted a white lab coat from the box. “Got an extra lab coat for you. It’s not too late.”

  Winston knew the basics of the plan. When the next-to-last customer left the bank, on Armello’s signal Ms. O’Koren was to approach the guard, claiming that she had some urgent business and needed to see the manager. After the guard let her in, she’d wait a few moments, giving Nadine time to light the smoke bombs and drop them into air ducts. When the bank filled with smoke, Ms. O’Koren would spill a vial of ammonia, say “What’s that smell?” and pretend to pass out. Fariq and Whitey would enter the bank holding handkerchiefs over their mouths and flashing phony tags that identified them as city terrorism experts. In his best British accent, Charles would quickly explain there’d been a sarin gas leak and if the employees wanted to live they’d have forty-five seconds to drink the antidote—the antidote being a concoction of blueberry-flavored Thirstbusters, Armello’s Rohypnol, and some knockout drug Fariq had gotten from who knows where. Plan B? There was no Plan B. “Why La Mega here?”

  “Man, we forgot to test the antidote,” Fariq explained. “We about to go home, and this unlucky motherfucker walked by.”

  Winston knew the plan would never work but was curious whether the antidote would. He grabbed La Mega from Charles, lifted his dreads off his face, and pressed his finger into the soft spot behind his earlobe. La Mega dropped to his knees. Fariq tossed Whitey a spiked Thirstbuster. “Charley, tilt his head back and pinch his nose,” Winston ordered. “When he start gagging, Ms. O’Koren, you pull the sock out his mouth.” Charles squeezed La Mega’s nostrils shut. “Yolanda, take Jordy around the corner.” Yolanda stayed put. With two hands Ms. O’Koren gingerly pulled on the knee-high sock like a magician’s assistant removing a rope of knot scarves from his mouth. The toe of the sock caught on one of La Mega’s incisors. Ms. O’Koren yanked. La Mega gasped for air. Another yank. The sock was still tangled. La Mega was blabbering in radio Spanish, “Foxes Nightclub de Jersey City—Damas cinco dolares y caballeros diez … Western Union es confianza … llame al dos uno dos seis, cuarenta cinco …,” when Tuffy dislodged the sock with a boot heel to the jaw. Still holding La Mega’s nose, Whitey poured the liquid into his mouth, careful not to get any blood on his clothes. Fariq set his watch. La Mega went limp and fell to the ground as Winston released his hair.

  “Six seconds!” Fariq said, looking up from his watch. “That shit works quick.”

  With his shod foot, Charles nudged La Mega’s head. “That nigger’s out, but I don’t know, I think Tuffy’s kick did it.”

  Armello honked his horn, the signal that there was only one customer left in the bank. Nadine climbed down the ladder. “We can’t go through with it now. We don’t even know if the stuff works or not.” Looking at Yolanda, she jabbed her thumb in Winston’s direction. “Your man fuckin’ shit up as usual.” Not knowing what was causing the delay, Armello, trying to be inconspicuous, lightly beeped the car horn. Charles knelt down beside La Mega and thumbed open one of his eyelids. “Damn, Tuff, you forever knockin’ motherfuckers out.”

  Fariq shook his head. “I ain’t too sure it was Tuff who did it. That nigger’s eyes was rolling back in his head before Tuffy put the boot to him.”

  “I don’t know, Winston kicked him pretty hard.”

  Everyone stared at La Mega. Armello gave a long blast of the car horn, and rolled down the window. “What the fuck?” Ms. O’Koren tugged at her dress, hiked her purse high on her shoulder and walked around the corner and into the bank. Winston wanted to tackle her, but did nothing but look quizzically at Charles. “Don’t ask. That six thou she won didn’t do nothing but wet her whistle.”

  “Y’all fuckin’ insane,” said Yolanda.

  “Probably,” Whitey replied, putting on his lab coat. “But if you think I’m about to let Moms go in alone, you insane. Rest of you motherfuckers come on if you want.”

  Fariq motioned for Nadine to scramble back up the ladder, then he hobbled over to Tuffy. He handed him his crutches. “Let me lean on you for a second.” Slowly, Fariq put his arms through the sleeves. “You know we voted for your ass before we came down here, nigger. I didn’t believe it but your name is on the ballot. I thought I’d walk in there and have to be all loud and shit: ’How do you vote for Winston Foshay in this bitch? But your name on the paper.”

  “I got three votes at least.”

  “Naw, just two, Nadine voted for German Jordan.”

  “No, Tuffy got three. My mother voted for him,” Charley O’ said, patting Winston on the back. “But I didn’t expect to be so nervous. The curtain and shit. I didn’t know if it was naked lady behind there or priest. Voting is fuckin’ weird, what they need to play some music in there to set the mood.” Whitey ran a comb through his hair, placed a stethoscope around his neck, then put on a pair of thick black-framed Medicaid glasses. “How I look, yo?” he asked.

  “Like a doctor, I guess,” answered Winston.

  Nadine stuck her head over the edge of the roof. “Okay, all the smoke bombs is lit.”

  Fariq grabbed his crutches. “Well, we be right back.”

  “Except we going be rich and shit,” laughed Charles, picking up the Thirstbusters and easing in behind Fariq.

  Winston watched them disappear. Yolanda pulled on his elbow. “Let’s go.” Eyes glued to the bank’s entrance they walked past Armello and the Dodge. Winston stopped and backtracked to the getaway car while Nadine and Jordy kept walking to the intersection. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  He leaned against the car’s rear door. “Let me get some of them potato chips.” Together they waited for the smoked glass doors to open. At any moment Tuffy half-expected Smush, Whitey, and Ms. O’Koren to come stumbling out of the bank drenched in blood, one hand clutching a bag of money, the other a bullet wound to the stomach. “What you still doin’ here?” It was Nadine, down from the roof and clapping the dust from her cl
othes.

  “Waiting.”

  Without asking she dug her hand into the bag of chips and pulled out more than her share. Aroused from his slumber, La Mega slithered past them, cautiously staying outside of arm’s reach, but still blathering. “La nueva Mega! La emisora oficial para salsa y merengue. La nueva Mega con mas música contigua cada hora! La nueva M-e-e-g-a-a!”

  “Jesus, that fool’s crazy,” Nadine commented, spitting overcooked bits of chips onto the sidewalk.

  “Somethin’ wrong.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong, Tuffy. It ain’t been but four or five minutes. Give them some time.”

  “I don’t know, somethin’ not right.”

  Armello drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You right, kid. La Mega wasn’t out long enough. Even if the knock-out potion work, he wasn’t out long enough for them to rob shit.”

  Winston sucked his teeth, raised up off the car. “Smush always got to be so elaborate all the damn time. Why didn’t y’all use guns like some normal motherfuckers?”

  “Niggers not try to catch no armed robbery charge, that’s why.”

  As Winston walked toward the bank, Yolanda put Jordy on her hip and marched toward him, joining him at the entrance. Faces pressed against the glass and hands cupped over their eyes so they could see through the tinted window, they evaluated the situation.

  “Blue smoke, Tuffy?”

  “I guess.”

  “But why is it all in one corner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look at Whitey’s mother. She look like she really passed out. Everyone in the bank standing around her looking all concerned. And look at Whitey checking her pulse and listening to her heart like he’s a doctor. But where are the Thirstbusters?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well nobody’s behind the counter. Smush should be robbing the place.… Where Smush at?”

  “He over there in the smoke. See him? Near the safe.” Though the dense cloud of blue smoke obscured him, the spindly figure had to be Fariq. And judging by the way he was squirming on the floor, downing pills and sucking on his inhaler, he seemed to be having a grand mal seizure of indeterminate origin. Panic-stricken, he unwrapped a hypodermic needle and jammed it into his thigh. The shaking stopped.

  “He don’t look good.”

  The smoke around Fariq began to thin. Worried about being seen by the security cameras, he stuck his inhaler in his mouth, discreetly removed a smoke bomb from a lab-coat pocket, lit the fuse, placed it on the floor next to him, and vanished in the billowy haze like a cheesy television genie. Winston noticed the security guard, though unconcerned about the O’Korens, seemed to be getting edgy about Fariq’s being so close to the open safe.

  “I don’t like how that security guard lookin’ at Smush.”

  “Why? You thinking about doing something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t look like anyone suspects them of trying to rob the bank, so they can end this fiasco anytime they want. All they have to do is get up and go. And you can do the same thing.”

  “Smush don’t look like he got the strength to walk. And look at him, he can’t take his eyes off the safe.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Winston stuck a hand in his pocket and clicked off the safety of his gun, then he picked up a paper bag off the sidewalk, and poked two eye holes into it. “I’m going to go in there and stick my gun in somebody’s face,” he said. The comic struggle of him trying to slip the medium-sized sack over his large head almost negated his seriousness. Disgusted, Yolanda snatched the bag, which fit him like a brown chef’s hat, off her husband’s head. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “What then?”

  “Just go in there and get Smush.”

  Winston motioned for Nadine to get in the car, and for Armello to be ready to drive off. He took a deep breath and balled his fists so hard his knuckles cracked. “Don’t go in there all Nigger Tuffy from Ninth Street,” Yolanda cautioned, slipping her hand into his pocket and clicking on the pistol’s safety. “Don’t be all ‘What? What?’ You’re liable to get everybody shot. Go in there and be another nigger. All right?”

  Who? Winston wondered as he walked in the door, stepping over the threshold and into a puddle of spilled Thirstbusters. As soon as the door closed behind him, the security guard and a well-dressed man Tuffy took to be the bank manager rushed him. Winston’s first thought was to emulate an action hero and slam their noggins together like orchestra cymbals. Always wanted to do that. I wonder if it works like in the movies? But as the men approached him, they walked past an easel that displayed one of his campaign flyers next to the interest rates for CDs and treasury bills. Winston now knew who the other nigger was.

  “Sir, we’re closed.”

  “That’s okay, I’m Winston Foshay, that’s my picture on the flyer.”

  Seeing that the burly local in front of them was indeed the politician on the flyer, the men calmed down appreciably. Winston shook each man’s hand. “I came to … uh … check on my medical staff.… We’re … uh … giving out free checkups around the corner, and they were supposed to get some money because we ran out of … uh … uh … those wooden things they stick in your mouth.”

  “Tongue depressors.”

  “Yeah, tongue depressors. What happened?”

  “This woman,” the bank manager said, pointing to Ms. O’Koren who was just starting to come around, “one of our most valued customers, came into the bank, when all of a sudden there was blue smoke coming from the vent and the smell of ammonia. She passed out. We called an ambulance, then, thank goodness, these two doctors came in a few seconds later, but the handicapped one had some sort of attack. He knocked the blue drinks out the other one’s hands and staggered into the smoke, saying to stay away from him, he was a doctor, and he’d be okay.”

  Winston punched his palm in pretend disappointment. “Those drinks was for the kids.”

  Charles stood up and helped his mother to her feet. “Is this citizen okay, Dr.… Dr. Whitey, I mean Dr. White?” Winston asked Charles, biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling. “I say, I believe she’s starting to show some life. It was nothing more than a dizzy spell brought on by the smoke and fumes and all that rot. Some proper rest, a spot of tea, and she’ll be fine,” Charles answered, barely hiding his own grin and enunciating like an Oxford graduate. “Bit of a fright, though.”

  Winston jogged over to Fariq, who, groggy from the medication, was working his crutches like chopsticks, trying to pick up a loose bundle of hundred-dollar bills that was just out of reach. “Come on, kid, let’s go,” Winston whispered, as he lifted his limp friend by the knees and armpits.

  “Yo, Tuffy, we came in ready to get this money, yo. Ms. O’Koren fakin’ a seizure, and my ass get a real one.” Fariq raised a crutch toward the vault. “Look at all that money, son. What you doin’, nigger? Go back! Go back!”

  “Chill, man. You ’posed to be a doctor.”

  Tuffy hustled Fariq past the bewildered employees. “Dr. Allah seems a bit woozy.” Stopping at the doorway, he thanked everyone for their help and reminded them to vote for him. When they got to the car Winston placed the gelatin-jointed Fariq in the backseat, folding each loose limb into the cramped space like a puppeteer putting his favorite marionette back in the box. Everyone thanked him for his efforts, Charley O’s gratitude laced with his usual aspersion. “Yeah boy, your shit was on time like German railroad, but you did come in kinda pussy. All ‘Howdy, y’all. Glad to meet you,’ and shit. You supposed to come to the rescue toolie out, blasting shots U.S. cavalry style.” Armello put a fist to his lips and blew into his air bugle. “Dit doot dit doot ditooo. Charge!”

  Charley O’ nodded his head, “Yeah, Tuffy, if you not going to use the gun, give that shit to me.”

  Winston backed out of the window, his hands still gripping the car door. He looked at his boys, Armello at the wheel, Fariq and Charley O’ smashed sh
oulder to shoulder in the backseat, crowded with a baby chair and Ms. O’Koren. They reminded him of the doomed gun-boat crew in Apocalypse Now headed upriver to Cambodia, the Bronx, to who knows where. He could hear Robert Duvall yelling in his ear over the shelling:

  “Do you want to surf soldier?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “That’s good, son, because you either surf or fight.”

  Winston wanted to surf like never before. He pressed down the car door’s lock. “We out, y’all.”

  “You got your pager, nukka?” Fariq asked. Tuffy nodded. “Then I’ll beep you in an hour or so. We’ll go to Old Timers’. Smoke some isms. Get some drink.”

  “We probably goin’ to be at the movies, so …”

  Fariq tapped Armello on the shoulder and the car pulled away.

  On the way to the elementary school Winston held Yolanda’s hand so tight they could feel one another’s pulses.

  “You kicked that guy on purpose, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t no accident.”

  “You know what I mean. You meant to knock him out.” Tuffy raised a foot in the air. “Timberland makes a hell of a shoe. These shits is waterproof. No-skid soles. Reinforced heels.”

  “Thanks, Boo.”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing.”

  A block away the band of addicts and derelicts hired by Inez stormed a municipal bus like Entebbe commandos. After handing out flyers to the passengers, they poured into Second Avenue, halting traffic, slipping the handbills under the wipers of stopped cars, tossing them through open windows. The chaos caused an onslaught of blaring car horns. Winston squeezed Yolanda’s hand even tighter. Her knuckles cracked. She was the only thing in his life that was real. Even Jordy plodding in front of them, nose to the ground like an anteater scouting bug lairs, seemed imaginary. Little light-skin motherfucker don’t even look like me. The pressure from Yolanda’s return squeeze quieted his fears.

  When they got to the school the flag over the entrance was flying at half-mast because the pulleys had rusted shut. A cracked-out man stood outside the door exchanging goo-goo eyes with a preteen. “What you doing, Marvin? I thought Ms. Nomura hired you to hand out flyers today.”