Bloodbrothers (35 page)

Stony leapt to his feet, ran into the kitchen and grabbed the receiver before the second ring. The clock read two-fifteen.

"Hello?" he whispered.

"Stony?" Chubby's voice sounded childlike and alien. Stony covered his crotch with a dishtowel.

"Chubby?"

"Yeah, it's me. Stony, did your dad go up to my place tonight?"

"Yeah, we cleaned it all up."

"You went too? Oh, Stony, it was a mess, hah?"

Stony shrugged but didn't answer.

"Stony, I'm so ashamed. I can't tell you," Chubby whined. The tone of his voice made Stony want to cry.

"It's O.K. now, Chub, it's clean, you wouldn't even know that..." Stony cut himself short.

"Stony, you're a good boy. You look after your own people like a man. You help me, Stony. I need you."

For the first time in his life, Stony felt like he was bigger than Chubby and that frightened him.

"I need you, Stony." Chubby sounded like a midnight lover. A woman. "I'm gonna be home tomorrow."

"I'll come up tomorrow night, keep you company." Stony wanted to be a little kid again.

"Maybe we can watch TV or go to the movies, hah?"

"Sure." Stony pinched the flesh between his eyes, fought back tears. "I gotta go, Chubby."

"You come up tomorrow night."

"Sure. I gotta go, Chubby."

"I can lean on you, Stony."

"You can lean on me."

"You're a man, Stony."

"I'm a man."

"You're one of us."

"I'll come up tomorrow."

Stony listened to the dial tone for a long time before hanging up the receiver. He walked back to the living room. James Brown screamed with insect tinniness on the barely audible stereo. He sat down in the middle of "King Heroin." "You're
hooked ...
your ... foot ... is ... in ... the
stir-rup!
So
mount
the steed ... and ride ... him ...
well..."
Stony got up, padded back into his bedroom, sat down at the desk, lifted the blotter and slipped out the piece of paper with Doctor Harris' phone number, lifted it into the moonlight and dialed in the darkness. Albert mumbled something in his sleep. One ring, two, three, four ... Stony slammed down the receiver. Albert jumped upright in bed and whimpered in a half-sleep.

Stony sat next to him on the bed. He touched Albert's chest with an outspread palm. Albert gasped, focused his eyes on his brother.

"Ssh." Stony eased Albert back down on his pillow. Albert fretted and whimpered but fell back to sleep almost immediately, his hand closing around Stony's arm. Stony stared at his brother, then gently ran a hand over his face, his chest, his crotch, his legs. Albert's face had a petulant frown as if he were in the middle of a nightmare. Stony freed his wrist from Albert's grip.

He returned to the living room.

"Ah was talkin'...ah was talkin' to a cat th' other naht, he say what ev-bahdy lookin' for today is
escap-
ism." The record clicked off and Stony was alone with his thoughts. He collapsed on the couch, one arm flung across his eyes. Take care of his own. One of us. You don't do the hospital Monday, don't come by Monday night. Butler. Bastard. Stony crossed his arms in front of his chest, stared at his biceps. "I'm a
man!
Mah father's a
man!
Mah uncle's a
man!
You, you're a fuckin'
pan
tyhose salesman an' you're tryna
fuck me up!
Stony ran back into the bedroom and dialed Butler's number. After two rings he quietly replaced the receiver. "Ah, bullshit," he muttered. Fresh air. Need some fresh air. He fumbled for his dungarees and stumbled out of the apartment.

***

Efram Concepción was the security guard on the midnight to 8:00
A.M.
shift for the Roosevelt Loop section of Co-op City. For $140 a week he hung around jerking off his nightstick five nights a week while the three high rises and six town houses on his beat slept. Usually he was an easygoing lay-back guy, but tonight he was in a mean and twisted head. Five hours earlier his wife had discovered a diaphragm in his sixteen-year-old daughter's bottom dresser drawer and all hell broke loose. For the first time in his life he struck his daughter—knocked her right out of her platform shoes.
Puta!
She ran from the house cursing as his wife cried and fluttered around like a bird out of its cage. He took the diaphragm, holding it with delicate disgust as if it were a huge dead roach and dropped it down the incinerator. When he left for work at eleven, his daughter was still out. Now at three-thirty he was sitting on a bench in Roosevelt Loop, his face rigid, his back straight as a ramrod, steadily slapping his nightstick into his open palm, his brain filled with images of low income housing, all-nigger gang bangs, cocksuckings, ass fuckings. Those god-damn platform shoes... He got up and paced his beat like a caged animal. He gripped his nightstick so tightly his knuckles were almost translucent with tension.

He wheeled around at the noise. Thirty yards away a half-naked teen-ager stood in the doorway of one of the high rises. He stepped forward, stopped, then headed for the garage. "Hey! Yo!" Concepción strode toward the lurching form. At the barking command, Stony stopped dead in his tracks. He inhaled, hitched up his pants and slowly turned. Shit. Sergeant Garcia.

"Where you runnin' to?" Concepción laid his nightstick across Stony's naked chest. Stony looked down at the stick, then back up at his interrogator. Fucking spic Mickey Mouse cop.

"You take that stick outta my
face,
Cap'n
Bubba,
and I
might
just tell you!"

Concepción pressed the stick harder into Stony's chest. "I'll lay your fuckin' brains out all over the ground." Despite the calm tone of his voice. Stony felt Concepción trembling through the wood across his chest. "Fuck off," Stony sneered and pushed the nightstick away. Concepción smiled, allowing Stony to turn. Out of the corner of his eye Stony saw the stick coming down, lunged to the left and felt a stinging pain in his shoulder. Struggling to keep his balance and wheeling around he charged head down at Concepción's gut. Concepción fell over backward with Stony on top. Stony grappled for the nightstick, flung it into the grass and brought his fist down across Concepción's cheek. Stony went berserk. Tried to pound Concepción's face into jelly. "Where you
run
nin'! Where you
run
nin'! Where you
run
nin'!" in rhythm with the blows. Concepción was out cold. Blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Stony got to his feet with a delicious exhaustion. He tasted blood in his mouth. He was high as a kite. With his bare foot he kicked Concepción in the ribs. Concepción grunted but hardly moved. Stony stumbled to a bench near the back of the building, sat down and tried to stop shaking.

He took some deep breaths through his nostrils. The faint familiar stench of the bay was soothing. He shut down all his other senses and concentrated on that smell. Stony felt calm. His mind was clear. Blank. Peaceful. He rose and headed upstairs.

One ring, two, six, ten...

"Yeah?" Doctor Harris' voice was thick with sleep.

"Harris? You stay the
fuck
away from me..." Stony jabbed the air with his finger as he hissed in the phone. "You stay the
fuck
away from Albert. You stay the
fuck
away from
all
of us, unnerstand?"

"Who the hell is this?" Harris growled.

"Take a goddamn guess." Stony almost spat the words, then hung up.

He started to remove his dungarees, stopped, zippered them up again, took the white canvas utility belt that was hanging on the bedpost and buckled it on. He sat cross-legged, hunched over, staring at the weak gray light filtering through the curtains. The pliers in his belt stuck him under his ribs but he didn't move.

"
No wait, hold it, hold on, hold on.
" He couldn't tell if he spoke out loud or if he just thought the words. He couldn't tell if he was crying or not.

He was.