Urban Renewal (21 page)
“Some fool,” Ace said, as if that explained everything any reasonable person could ask.
“Me, too!” Princess jumped up. “I can carry a lot of stuff.”
“All right,” said Rhino, before Princess could start pleading.
“I’d better go, too,” Tiger said.
“You? What for?”
Tiger regarded Ace for a long moment before she said, “To make sure none of these ham-fisted males drop anything, or scratch it up, or …”
“I get it,” Ace said, holding up his hands in an “I give up!” gesture. “And I thank you for it.”
“Plus, I’ve got a
real
fine antenna for fools,” Tiger acknowledged Ace’s gesture.
“Damn, girl. I just bet you do!”
“
ALL BUT
one of the houses already got buyers,” Buddha said. “All they need is a mortgage commitment, and So Long’s got that part wrapped.”
Everyone looked up. No one was all that interested.
“And the other’s going to closing.”
Seeing the flat facial expressions, Buddha realized the next move was his. Only Buddha never made a next move.
“So what’s our next move, chief?” he asked Cross.
“Yellow to Orange.”
“Like those dumbass ‘terrorist’ alerts?”
“Yep. Once we turn the baby gang’s turf into a Red Zone, the curtain’ll drop into place. And stay there.”
“
EXACTLY AS
I tell you, yes?”
“You were right, no question,” Cross answered So Long. “You caught East Garfield Park on the come. Now all kinds of people are talking investment schemes in the same neighborhood.”
“The real estate people are very stupid. And very impatient, too. They say everything is location. But location, that means
nothing
. You know why? Because men are always the same, no matter where they ‘locate.’ They are always, how you say, ‘measuring,’ maybe? Who has the biggest—”
“Yeah?” Cross said, clearly not interested, speaking even as his mind replayed a movie. An old movie, always carrying the same message:
Muñoz held his already bloodied machete in both hands. He watched Cross approach, breathed deeply, and flung the machete into the wooden floor, where it quivered as if in its own death throes
.
“You always wanted to know, didn’t you, Cross? Any coward can fight with weapons. Only a real man fights with nothing more than his own hands. And now we see, yes?” Muñoz snarled, as his entire body flowed into a hand-combat crouch
.
“No,” Cross answered, pulling the trigger of his .45. The heavy slug took Muñoz in the stomach, knocking him to his knees
.
Standing over Muñoz, who was writhing on the floor in horrific pain but still clawing at his sworn enemy with his hands, Cross carefully emptied the magazine of his .45 into the dying man’s skull
.
“
YOU KNOW
what I mean, Cross. Only the words they use change. Like they are using different rulers.”
“Sure,” he answered, hoping his one-word responses would eventually give So Long the message. He exchanged a quick glance with Buddha, who shrugged his shoulders in a “Lots of luck!” gesture.
“Men come in off the ore boats, they go to a bar and boast about all the girls they had on the other side of the
lake. Makes them big, see? And men from places where they wear suits to work, they always want to know who has the biggest FICO score.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The money …”
“We had a deal, So Long.”
“Yes. Good deal for you, right?”
“How’s that matter?”
“Matters to me because we could do this again. Maybe many times. But, first, you have to make that block safe. Like you promised,” she reminded the man who never negotiated.
“It’s coming,” Buddha said, stepping in before Cross said something wrong.
When it comes to So Long, the boss writes the checks, but I’m the one who has to make good on them
.
“Soon?”
“Drop me off at the next corner,” Cross told Buddha.
“
WHY CAN
’
T
I play, too?”
“We need a gang, Tiger. An anonymous gang. You … stand out too much.”
“A fight’s a fight.”
“There isn’t going to
be
a fight. We’re building a firebreak, that’s all.”
“So you want a bunch of guys who look like you?”
“Meaning …?”
“Nobody remembers your face, Cross. They remember a tattoo on your hand. Which you change anytime you want. I don’t know how you got that tiny little blue thing that shows up here,” she said, tapping a long fingernail on the orbital bone
under the urban mercenary’s right eye, “or how you make it show up and then go away, but it’s the same kind of trick.”
“I still don’t see—”
“An ‘anonymous’ gang? With Ace and Tracker and Buddha? What are you going to call it, the Deadly Diversity?”
“Nobody’s going to see—”
“Rhino’s too big to forget. And
nobody
forgets Princess.”
“Don’t worry about it. I got a plan.”
“Some plan. The only part I’ve heard so far is no women allowed.”
“You’re giving me a headache, Tiger.”
“Now,
that
I could fix,” she said, standing up and holding out her hand.
“
HERE
’
S THE
thing,” Cross told Rhino. “We never figured on Ace wanting one of the damn houses.”
“We?”
“What’s that mean?”
“You just said it yourself, Cross. If Ace hadn’t wanted one of the houses for his family, we weren’t going to do anything, were we?”
“You mean besides some street sweeping?”
“Yes. That was the deal you made with Buddha’s wife.”
“That was before I had everything checked out. Turns out that the only buffer we’d ever need for that, it’s
already
in place. The block So Long targeted, it was never disputed turf. Nobody’s moving on it from either side, east or west. And now that the block is filling up, the real estate people are selling a lot of stuff nearby. The people moving in now, they wouldn’t know gang territory from their Michelin Guides, so
that’s one neighborhood that
is
going to change. No way yuppies are gonna live in a neighborhood that doesn’t have some special name. You know, like ‘Andersonville’ or ‘Bucktown.’ If it wasn’t for Ace’s family, we wouldn’t have to do a thing.”
“So we’d be screwing So Long?”
“Somebody should.”
“Cross, you’re never going to be a good role model.”
“I’ll get over it, brother. In the meantime, let’s get this ‘gang’ of ours put together.”
“
IT WAS
Tiger who put me on the right track,” Cross told the crew. “No way we could look like a gang,
any
kind of gang.”
“So what we supposed to do?” Ace said. “Walk around in sheets and hoods?”
“Yep.”
“What?!”
“You say ‘sheets and hoods,’ what’s that mean? Klansmen, right? This isn’t about race relations in Chicago, it’s about us all looking the same. Only way to do that is under some white
sheets
, see?”
“I’m not being no kind of—”
“It’s a
disguise
,” Rhino said, his squeaky voice penetrating the fog.
“Camouflage,” Tracker added.
“And now there’s no reason why I can’t—” Tiger began, before Cross held up his hand for silence.
“We’re not going to be Klansmen. That wouldn’t be scary enough for what we want. Plus, it might encourage
some of those Aryan idiots to try a copycat move. That’s the last thing we need. We’re not looking for any kind of racial nonsense—what we want is terror, not territory.”
“That
sounds
good, boss. So we’re supposed to be—what? Arabs?”
“Come on, Buddha. You think I don’t have a plan? How’s this work for you? Remember that Zodiac Killer out on the West Coast years ago? They never caught him, right?”
“Whoever he was, he’s probably under the ground by now.”
“Sure,” Cross acknowledged. “Doesn’t matter. What made him so terrifying was that he was a
random
shooter. A psycho who couldn’t stand people having sex in front of him. Like that ‘Son of Sam’ maniac. That’s what terrorism is—you don’t know what’s coming, but you’re sure it’s coming
back
.”