Stagger Bay (12 page)

“And why would I want to impose on Gardens hospitality again?”

“I know it means nothing to you, how Big Moe had to scramble to come up with a good reason not to feed you to Natalie and Leo. Maybe Moe’s president of the Crips – but you have no idea what a juggling act it is for him to keep them all happy, and make them toe the line.”

“So I’ll keep it simple,” Sam said. “You’ll come with me for the best of all possible reasons, old man: because there’s something in it for you, something I know will make you very happy.” He turned left and down into the wide hollow the Gardens nestled in.

“You don’t have to worry about Natalie, go ahead and keep playing house with her,” Sam said as we drove around that phantom rectangle of empty lots. “She was always a good girl; I always liked her. She won’t do shit to you without Moe gives her the go ahead, and he ain’t gonna if only because you’re my dad.

“And as for Wayne? He was always an asshole, me and Moe are just as happy he’s gone to tell the truth. Natalie, Randy, and Leo are the only ones who’ll miss him; you won’t get any comeback from any of the other 18th Street Crips.”

“Your cold-blooded analysis is very reassuring, boy. Nice to know I’m staking my life on your people skills.”

Sam slammed on the brakes as we started entering the Gardens through its sole access road. “Something brought you back on up here to Stagger Bay. You ain’t got no parole hanging over your head. You could’ve gone anywhere the waves tossed you without worrying about getting violated – but I guess you got nowhere else to go, do you old man?”

A drug customer honked angrily behind us as Sam scowled at me. “Are you in the car or out of it? No one’s twisting your arm.”

He looked down at Alden’s card, which I was studying after I realized it was still in my wallet. “What up?”

“Some agent wants to represent me, says he can make me a lot of cash.”

I made like I was going to toss it out the window, but Sam grabbed my arm. “Maybe you should sleep on it,” he said, “I’m your next of kin if you get deceased after all.”

He stepped on the gas and we entered the Gardens. I shrugged and put Alden’s pasteboard away in my skinny wallet as Sam pulled up in front of Natalie’s hovel.

Chapter 25

The 18th Street Crips were out there doing their thing as Sam parked.

“Oh, I almost forgot old man. Picked up something at a head shop you’ll be putting on immediately.” Sam reached over and rooted in the glove box, then pulled out something made of leather. As he let it unfold to dangle, I saw it was an eye patch; someone had hand-painted a big red eye on it, like what’s-his-name’s symbol in Lord of the Rings.

I took it from him and turned away, bent over in the seat so no one could see as I peeled off the duct tape and sanitary napkins, then pulled the eye patch on. I took a chance and peeped in the rear view mirror.

The stitches in the healing scars still radiated out spoke-like from beneath the patch, but the empty socket was covered. That red, stylized eye glared back at me as if a separate being were grafted onto my face.

“Pretty evil-looking,” I said, studying my homely profile from various angles. The mirror didn’t seem as much of an enemy now, but I still wasn’t going to make a habit of admiring myself in it.

As Sam and I got out the car and walked up to Natalie’s door, I scoped around for news crews lurking to pounce.

“Looking for something?” Big Moe asked, grinning. It was startling not to see him wearing his habitual Eeyore-on-Prozac expression.

“Some cameras came around figuring to bother Natalie about Wayne,” Moe said. “We convinced them it wasn’t a healthy neighborhood, fun times were had. You’ll still have your privacy here, even with everything all stirred up. Hell, we couldn’t let you interfere with business, could we?”

“Thanks, kid,” I said.

Sam walked over to join Moe as I knocked on the door. They muttered and plotted together on the far end of the stoop, darting amateurish glances my way.

It was good my boy had a place he could call a hometown, and friends who knew him from when he was a baby on. My family had always been on the move when I was a kid, Dad keeping one step ahead of bill collectors, the Man, or whomever.

Natalie opened the door. She was fixing fried bologna sandwiches and when she saw me she hesitated before gesturing me toward an empty seat at the head of the table. I sat down next to Randy and we commenced washing down the sandwiches with grape Kool-Aid.

While we ate I couldn’t help envisioning Wayne sitting down at this same table to eat with Natalie and Randy. Maybe in the very same chair I was sitting in right now?

Studying Natalie out the corner of my eye, I wondered why she and Wayne hadn’t had more kids. She struck me as a Fertile Myrtle by nature.

“Somebody told me you didn’t really kill my daddy,” Randy said. “They said his friends killed him.”

“Some friends, huh?” I said, hazarding a smile. But he didn’t return it, so I wiped mine off my face. “No, that’s truth, Randy. It was those other guys did it, not me.”

“My daddy could never have been part of that,” Randy said in a rush. “He didn’t know what they were going to do or he never would have rode with them.”

I remembered back to how Wayne giggled when Slash murdered Kendra. I remembered the last instants of Wayne’s life, watching him stare down in terror at the grenade skittering against his shoes.

“Well,” I said, “I figure at the end there, he was trying to help me. He made a mistake, that’s all. In the end your daddy was a hero, too.”

Randy rewarded me with a grin that looked to be displaying every tooth he owned, framing the hole where two missing front teeth had been. Natalie hustled him into the bathroom. When she came back out few minutes later Randy was singing to himself in there, splashing and banging and babbling in the tub, sounding like a normal kid for the first time since I’d intruded myself on his home.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Natalie said. “Wayne was always mean, even when he was trying to be nice.” She started to clear off the table, and I came to help.

“He didn’t have that good an upbringing, but that was no excuse, you know?” she said as she commenced washing the dishes.

“Well,” I said, putting away the sandwich fixings in the fridge, “I wasn’t the nicest guy in the world when I was his age, either.” I stood next to her and dried each dish as she rinsed it.

“I want to see under your eye patch,” Natalie said when we were done. “I need to find something out.”

This was more than I’d bargained for, I’ll admit. But I’d helped make her a widow and I’d imposed on her hospitality. She’d shown me mercy; I could trust her with my life. I reached up, pulled the eye patch off fast before I could change my mind, and stood looking at her, feeling naked.

I’ll give her credit, she didn’t flinch. Still, I could see in her eyes just how ugly it was. I didn’t have to study my reflection in those big brown eyes to remember how much my own new face repulsed me now. “I know it’s pretty hideous,” I said.

“People could get used to it if they had to.”

I opened my mouth to answer, unsure of what was going on here. But the sounds of a scuffle came from outside, interrupting my reply.

Natalie peeked out the curtained window above the kitchenette sink. “I been waiting for this for a while,” she said with a smile.

I stepped up to join her and we stood together looking out the window as she held the curtain open for both our benefits.

Leo was on the ground, surrounded by the 18th Street Crips as they lay the boots into him; their arms pumped as they kicked, and all of them were breathing hard. Leo was curled up in a fetal ball with his forearms up guarding his head. When they were done the 18th Street Crips walked away from him and resumed their various places together in front of Natalie’s porch.

Leo crawled a few feet away from them, and then tried the difficult experiment of standing upright. He finally managed, but his balance seemed none too certain. When he tottered away down the street he looked as though something had gone missing inside him.

Natalie still smiled approval out the window as I headed for the door. Her capacity for Christian mercy was limited, and I counted my blessings Big Moe ever placed me off limits to her.

Chapter 26

I stepped out on the porch in time to watch Leo creep around the corner of the abandoned bungalow next door. Sam stood off to the side; he hadn’t joined in on the stomping but apparently hadn’t felt the need to stop things either.

“Hey,” Moe said. He jerked his chin in the direction Leo had disappeared in. “You saw? Beat in, beat out, that’s how the 18th Street Crips roll.” He darted a glance at me as if he wanted me to think he needed my approval. “Just like in Oakland, right? He was getting high on his own supply. Bad for business.”

I started after Leo. “Don’t waste your time on him, old man,” Sam called softly behind me as I rounded the corner of the next door bungalow.

Leo was nowhere in sight but the front door was off its hinges and I heard a furtive noise from inside. I peeked around from the stoop, into what passed for a living room.

Leo squatted against a graffiti-covered wall next to a rolled-up sleeping bag. He’d just set a used match book on the floor, its cover folded back with all the matches burned up.

He had one sleeve rolled up – tracks ran up and down his arm. Dried blood was crusted around a few of the holes; he wasn’t even washing up between hits anymore. A boot lace was wrapped around his bicep.

He put a piece of cigarette filter in the blackened spoon to use as a cotton, to strain out any cut sediment in the load he’d just cooked up. With practiced fingers he picked up his syringe and stuck the tip of the needle into the cotton. He worked his outfit one-handed, holding the tip of the needle steady as brain surgery in that puddle of chiva while drawing back the plunger to load up the syringe with his shot.

Leo set the spoon down, gripped one end of the boot lace between his teeth to keep it snug, and pumped his fist a few times to get his flabby veins fat enough to register on. His eyes glittered as he got ready to slide the point home into his rigidly outstretched arm. He looked like he could see God in that needle.

Part of me kept visualizing Angela in front of me instead of Leo, watching him play out the exact steps she took the day she did up the hot shot that finished her. Angela, my beautiful girl, down on her knuckles in her own Gethsemane with me nowhere around.

Leo became aware of my presence and stared at me, rig poised and ready. “What the fuck you want?”

I stepped into full view, a peeping tom busted in the act. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you,” Leo said. “A brother has no chance in your cracker world.” He gazed longingly at his ready needle but he wasn’t quite degenerate enough to do up right in front of me. Yet.

“I know you don’t like me Leo, but you don’t need to. You’re not a victim, that’s all you gotta know.” I gestured vaguely at him, groping toward whatever it was I was trying to say. “You got to be bigger than this, Leo; you can’t give up. Don’t let them make you weak, young blood.”

“I don’t care what you did at that school,” Leo said, his voice jittering and shimmering. “Don’t mean nothin. Don’t change shit.” His eyes glittered, flickered from side to side. “Hell, man, why couldn’t you have been black?”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, unsure what I was apologizing for.

Leo jumped to his feet and lunged toward me pulling his hand back fast, and I tensed for him to throw a blow. But instead it was the syringe he threw. The outfit broke apart as it hit next to me and the liquid inside splashed onto the wall.

“Blue-eyed devil,” Leo screamed, trembling. “Get the fuck away from me.” Then he looked at what he’d done to his own rig, his own stash, and an expression of abject despair crawled across his face.

Nothing had changed because of my interference here; Leo was a junkie through and through, and would be for the foreseeable future. He started to cry and I creeped back around the corner and out the door, ashamed of this whole wretched fiasco.

Ashamed for him? Ashamed for me? For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you. Death row had eaten both our daddies alive but we had nothing for each other.

I wondered, though, what the career options were for a street dealer once he’d been chased off his corner. The Life was a bitch – always had been, always would be.

Chapter 27

When I got back to the Crips, Sam beckoned me over. “This is what Moe’s been needing to tell you.”

Big Moe licked his lips. “If it’s okay to ask, I was wondering just how long you’re going to be sticking around.” He held up both hands as if in placation. “You were always free to come and go as you please. Natalie was just messing with your head, a’ight?”

I considered. “Well, I was going to lie low long enough for this media thing to die down a tad, and then take off. No offense, but some place far away from Stagger Bay. I got nothing keeping me here.” I looked at Sam, who looked away.

“Little Moe, come here,” Big Moe said. A wiry black boy wriggled his way through the Crips to stand in front of me.

“This is my nephew. Little Moe, tell Markus about the Driver.”

Little Moe was pumped to be hanging with the men, and also seemed excited to be talking to me. “The Driver comes and takes kids if they don’t listen to they mama, or if they be alone,” he said hurriedly, his words piling up on each other.

“Ah,” I said, wondering what this was all about, wondering when they were going to cut to the chase. Why were they using this eight-year-old kid to be their spokesman? They were all tap-dancing respectfully around me and I fought impatience. “Like the Boogey Man or something?”

“Oh no,” Little Moe said, his eyes wide. “He real. I seen him. He drives one of those big old hotrods. It’s fast and it’s loud.

“One time, he drove right past me while I was at the playground, the one up past the hospital at Boat Park. Mama told me never to play alone, never to leave the Gardens, and I knew I was being bad going there by myself. I was scared when I saw him coming, and he smiled at me, and I thought he’d come to take me where he takes all the others.”