All Involved (25 page)

Right at that moment, Lu sits straight up at the window like she sees something. She leans forward, almost pressing her nose to the glass, and her spine freezes like a predator's when prey wanders into its zone.

“They're here,” she says, but says it like the scary little blond girl in
Poltergeist, hee
-ere, and my heart spikes up in my chest. I grip my .32 Beretta, ready for whatever, because I know we prepared for every possible thing we could, but I've also been around long enough to know anything can happen.

Things you plan, they don't always work out how you think.

Fate's up and moving, tossing his book across the carpet like a Frisbee, putting on gloves, tucking his sleeves into them, and grabbing the AK. Apache's right behind him, killing all the power in the place. The music from the boom box, “Hand on the Pump,” dies just as it's starting. The gambling machines snap off at the same time and we're in darkness. I hear Oso cock his borrowed Glock like he's in the movies or something, pulling the slide all the way back, but he's already got one in the chamber, and a bullet flies out, hits the carpet, and rolls to the baseboard with a tap.

“Fuck,” he says and gets down on the ground, looking for it.

“Good one, stupid,” Lu says.

I'm up at the window, on Lu's shoulder. My heart's going pretty steady as we see a line of seven fools drift in through the dark with serious gear. The best part is, they're on the other sidewalk and they're so focused, they don't notice the extension cords we've strung out from this house to the curb and up into the bed of the city truck, which, right now, is parked directly across from Lu's house and has two stolen trees of multiarmed construction lights in its bed, the megabright ones, hooked up. So far, things are going
right, which is good, because I count four shotguns. Lu does too.

She leans back and stubs her finger on the glass right about the time Oso gives up looking for his lost bullet.

“Hold up,” she says, “isn't that Momo right there? What the fuck's he doing with them on a mission?”

I don't like hearing that. Killing him might not go over well with the big homies because you know a guy like Momo pays his taxes, but it's not like he's giving us a choice if he's here. If things went down with the big homies like I think over Lil Mosco, I'm sure Fate has some leverage to set it right after we do what we have to though.

“One way to find out,” Fate says as he undoes the deadbolt and opens the door real slow, steps out of the house, and looks up. He gives a little wave to the homie we got on the roof with a sniper rifle. Ranger, his name is, because he used to be in the army until he was dishonorably discharged for brawling with some other gang members in his unit. They were from Detroit. He put one of them in a coma and got stockaded for a year in Colorado first, but he's out now. He's the best shot we got, and he knows not to open up until the lights come on.

I've never seen Trouble close up before—I've had no reason to—but I've heard of him. Everybody has. His name rings out from all the suicide missions he did when he was coming up. He got known for running up in houses and shooting snitches on their couches, in their kitchens, whatever. One time, he even shot a homeboy when he was doing his business in the bathroom, on the toilet and everything. Word is, he got his name before people really knew who was doing those missions. People would say,
Did you hear about such-and-such?
And the response would be,
Yeah, the fool that did them is nothing but trouble
. Pretty soon, that just became his name, with a capital
T
.

They're in the yard now, the seven of them, raising their weapons like they think someone's in there, and that's when a ripple of pride shoots through me because I know the trap worked. Fate knows too, because he hits me light on the shoulder. It's our last calm moment before the night blows up.

It sounds like the Fourth of July when they start blasting on the house, except heavier. Here, there isn't the sound of explosions sputtering out in the air. Instead, it goes boom and then ends in fast, hard thumps as bullets and scattershot bury themselves in walls and window trim. It ends in pings and pops when those same things hit the security door or the iron behind the windows, which smash out and go everywhere in a hurry.

We duck down in a line and head for the truck together. A little homie in there pops his head up when he sees us. Muzzle flashes light his eyes up and I can see he's as scared as anything, but that's okay, all he's got to do is turn the lights on when Fate signals. He doesn't, not yet.

The little homie keeps his eyes on Fate as one shooter with a shotgun stops firing and runs to the door. That has to be Trouble because of the way everybody follows him.

When he gets to the front door, he says, “Hell, yeah!”

He kicks the door hard and stumbles back, and all I can think is how much that must hurt, trying to kick a door with two hundred pounds behind it. It must be worse than kicking a boulder. Still, he kicks again, because he obviously didn't figure it out the first time. And this is when Fate pulls his sunglasses off his front collar and puts them on, so we all do.

Somebody else on the lawn says, “What the fuck?”

Which must be when Trouble sees the iron, because he shoves the barrel of the shotgun against the door, and then puts his fingers on it and tears them away fast like it's hot. He stands up straight right then.

And that's when Fate signals the little homie inside the truck bed, and the six-foot-tall construction lights go on with a pop behind us. Almost immediately, the lights of both houses next door go on too. After that, Ranger's fastest. He puts a perfect bullet through the left eyebrow of the one closest to us and I see the blood mist out the back of his head and into the air like someone spraying Windex. He goes down like a puppet with every one of its strings cut.

Trouble gets low right after, trying to shield his eyes. He tries to yell for his little crew to get the fuck out, but it doesn't come out too loud, and besides, it's already too late. Me and Lu, we're down on one knee at the fence and sticking our guns through, steadying our barrels on the bottoms of the chain-link holes.

We open up at hip height on the runners. Lu shreds some kneecaps and pumps, and then she does it again. I aim for Trouble and miss high, but Fate's behind me, walking up, unleashing the AK. Even from feet away, it shakes my whole body when he lets off a burst and sprays all the way across the front of the house, cutting people the hell down. That's when the ones who can still do it start screaming and that sets something off in Trouble because he's up and walking straight toward us.

“Shoot them lights out,” he yells, pumps his shotgun, and raises up blasting.

Buckshot piles into the truck behind me and I feel something hot bite the back of my neck, but I run my hand over it and there's no blood, so right away I know it's nothing. I'm more concerned with Trouble pumping again, firing high, and taking out one of the construction lights on the truck. He pumps again, but nothing happens. Trouble's out of ammo and he knows it.

He says, “Come on, motherfuckers! You better fucking kill me! You better—”

Right then the guy behind him steps up and puts a gun under Trouble's ear, on the black smudge of one of his neck tattoos, and fires. The bullet exits Trouble's neck on the other side and for a big second, there's a pause, because no one saw that one coming, not even Fate, as Trouble hits the deck.

Lu says, “Fucking Momo just blasted him!”

One of Trouble's homies I shot in the side sees this and puts four bullets in Momo's chest right after. The last thing Momo ever does
is sneer at Trouble's body on the ground like he'd wanted to do that since forever, and he smiles as his legs give out and he goes down hard on top of Trouble. That's when Ranger snipes one through the neck of the guy who shot him.

Neck wounds are the ugliest way to go. With them, there's nothing but coughing and sputtering and bleeding out. He trips over and hits dirt as Ranger's next bullet smashes into the house where his head used to be.

“Jesus,” Apache says, steps up, and taps his gun to the guy's skull and sends one through the dude's brain with a crack.

His skull kicks up with a jolt and he stops breathing, but for a moment it's so quiet you can hear the blood still coming out of his neck with little splashes as Oso and the two other soldiers go real carefully from body to body, taking guns away. There's still a few breathing, enough for the little homies to step up and earn stripes by finishing them off with one to the head, but I'm already moving because we don't have much time.

Sheriffs will be coming soon. Probably Vikings. Maybe National Guard too. Even with three houses cleared in every direction, somebody will be calling this in. To counteract that, we had homies with orders to speed to Montgomery Wards when this started and try to put an old Chrysler through one of the security gates there. We also called in six fake 911 calls in six different locations miles from here.

It's safe to assume we have ten minutes at most to clean up, three at the least.

One of the O.G.'s who stole the city truck jumps in it and backs it up to us at the curb in front of Lu's chewed-up house, and when it finishes beeping, I toss my gun in the bed, a little sad to see it go, but not sad enough to ever get caught with it. Everybody else who shot does the same. Those are my rules. Lu's goes in next, then Oso's, Apache's, the soldiers', and even Ranger's rifle and the AK. After a
few more pops when the survivors get what's coming, those pistols go in too, along with all of Trouble's crew's gear.

We leave the lights in the truck, along with the body of the little homie who flipped them on. Trouble took half his face with his last shot that put some lights out. I didn't even know his name. Lu didn't like seeing him where he was, half sitting up, propped against the back wall of the truck bed like he was playing hide-and-seek and still waiting to be found.

She spits before she says, “Dumb lil one wanted to watch. Should've put his fucking head down, huh? Might've kept it that way.”

But something else in the truck is bothering her, and it's been bothering me too. The gun Momo used, the one with the tape on it, looks identical to the one Fate bought from Lil Creeper for her to use.

“Do you think,” Lu says, “the one I used on Joker came from the same place? That it was Momo's too?”

“Wouldn't put it past Lil Creeper to rob Momo,” I say and then sniffle. “But that doesn't mean Trouble knew that. Might explain why Momo was with them anyway, and maybe even why he popped Trouble when he had the chance. They could have thought he helped us before, so they forced him to come.”

“Don't matter so much now though,” she says. “He's
done
.”

She's right, so I shrug and we step to the side to make way for the other dead bodies of Momo, and Trouble, and Trouble's crew to go into the bed of the truck. Oso, Fate, and the soldiers move all seven of them no problem, chucking bodies in the back like they're just big bloody sacks of rice. Now Lu's house is just a shooting scene. There are no bodies and no weapons.

Apache, Lu, and I drag trash cans off the curb from where they were behind the city truck and open them. The smell overpowers us at first, but between us three, we pull out three sets of bedsheets that have been marinating in gasoline for days and get them into the bed for a little homie to spread out over the bodies. He holds his breath the whole time. It doesn't help. When he jumps down all wobbly, Oso and Fate and the soldiers are there to throw firewood
on top from the back of a pickup we got parked right next to the truck last night and then, on top of all that, Lu chucks in one more bedsheet set.

Everybody strips down after that, chucking their clothes and shoes into a big black trash bag that Apache holds open. The only things they're allowed to keep are boxers or
chonies
if they don't have blood on them. If they do, those go in too. When they get down to skin, they get a blanket from the floor of the firewood pickup and fade away in all directions before sheriffs come. If caught, they're to lie and say they got jumped for everything they had. If asked why they have blankets, though, they're to say a neighbor lady took pity on them. It wouldn't be the first time either one has happened around here. Nobody's going too far, though, three blocks at most.

For Fate, me, Lu, and Apache, though, it's new clothes. Lu's first, then Apache. When he's done, he takes the black bag of used clothes with him and hops into the city truck. It takes off toward MLK, followed by the Cutlass. Lu's driving that. I don't hear sirens yet. We might have two minutes left.

As I jump into a new pair of khakis, I'm glad to see four little homies I prepped earlier finishing up on the lawn with shoebox tops strapped to their feet and plastic hospital gloves on their hands. Without leaving fingerprints, they sweep up as many shell casings as they can in a minute before scattering old ones from all kinds of different weapons, weapons inconsistent with bullets the sheriffs'll pull out of the house.

Walking over the crime scene, the lil homies leave rectangular marks but nothing identifiable, no shoeprints. It's 'hood, but this way, sheriffs get nothing. The footprints are gone and so are the shoes that made them. After that, the little boxtop homies turn on the hose from the side of the house and soak the lawn down good to destroy blood patterns, and I almost feel sorry for the guy who draws the straw on this scene.

I got a professor, Sturm, he used to be in the military, and he says the word
FUBAR
all the time. I had to ask him what he meant,
and he said it's
Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition
. When I first heard it, I thought it would make a good name for a homie, but Sturm uses it to describe how natural events can ruin scene evidence, like rain or wind in some unforeseen way. I don't think it ever occurred to him that I paid real close attention during those talks so that I could be one of those events someday.