Mortal Lock (17 page)

Then it stopped being winter. Why in hell Pig had to pick such a beautiful spring day to go sit in the luncheonette I’ll never know.
I guess maybe he thought he was waiting for me. All our crew went there after school—the ones on probation, I mean. If you cut school, they’d put you back in juvie.

But he had to know I wouldn’t be going home with him that day, not with the weather being so nice.

It doesn’t matter now.

Our club had never claimed the luncheonette. It was too big of a place, and right on the border, too. No one club could ever hold it.

And if the owner blamed us for losing business, we’d be out. He could do it, too. Always had three or four guys behind the counter. From the look of them, they sold a lot more than those slimy sandwiches nobody ever tried to eat twice.

Pig saw me come in and called out my name. Waved me over to the back booth like we had a meeting set up or something.

When he did that, I didn’t have any choice. If I acted like I didn’t know him, punked him out like that, it would have been serious disrespect. Pig showed a lot of heart, taking that risk. I couldn’t put him down in front of everybody; that would have been just wrong.

So I walked all the way over toward him, passing between the round seats at the counter to my right and the booths on my left. I was going all the way to that back booth. That’s all I wanted to do. Go there, sit down, and tell Pig how things were.

Only I never got that far. I was only about halfway there when someone on my right said, “You gonna pork that piggy tonight, faggot?”

Later I learned the guy’s name had been Tico. Tico something, it doesn’t matter. I keep telling myself I’d been headed straight for that back booth. Over and over, I say that in my mind. That’s the only way I can make what happened come out right.

I was still walking, not looking back, wiping the blood off my
blade on a paper napkin, when I heard the first shots. I snapped my knife closed, wiped it down again, and threw it over the counter.

Tico’s boys were there way before the cops. What else? I mean, they were
already
there.

Mine, too.

When the cops finally rolled Pig off of me, he was dead weight.

Over twenty slugs in him, the way it’s told now.

Any crew would be proud to claim a man like that. So when I poured his “X” onto the sidewalk a few nights later, I wasn’t alone.

Neither was Pig.

for Greg and Marilyn

1

Just because you live someplace, that doesn’t mean you understand how it works. The city where I came up is a perfect example. Everybody who lives there talks like they know all about it, but they never will. If you want to figure out how the city really works, you have to get far away from it. When you’re down too deep in it, all you can see is your own little piece.

I know what I’m saying. I’ve been away, for a long time now. There isn’t much to do here, once you figure out how to stay alive. So I’ve been studying the city long distance, getting ready for when I come back.

What I finally figured out was that there isn’t just the one city, like people think. I mean, everybody knows there’s different parts, like Queens and Brooklyn. And there’s parts inside the parts, like Harlem and Greenwich Village. But the city is really cut up a lot smaller than even that.

2

When I was a kid, the city was split up into little tiny pieces, all the way right down to the blocks. Our territory was three streets, plus a vacant lot, where they had torn down some buildings. Any time you left your territory, no matter where you went, you were an outsider.

Mostly, we got around by subway. You might think, nobody owns the subway, but you would be wrong. The subway, it’s just like the city itself. It’s a great big huge thing; but, the minute you put people into it, it starts getting cut up into pieces.

Like, if you got on a subway car, and it was full of boys from another club, it was their car. And if you had enough boys get on with you, you could maybe make it your car.

Other people riding the subway, they would watch this happen right in front of them, and not pay it any mind. When I was a kid, I thought that was because they didn’t understand what they were seeing. Now I know different. They knew. But to them, the subway was like a bad neighborhood they had to go through every day to get to work. They would never want to live in a neighborhood like that, so they never wanted a piece of it for themselves, that’s all.

But the block, that wasn’t like the subway. The block was permanent. You were there every day. When outsiders came into your block, you had to make them pay tolls. Because if people could go through your territory without paying, it was like it wasn’t yours at all.

The City—that’s the government, not the territory—it owns the subway, so everyone who rides has to pay. But, if you were riding with some of your boys, and a kid got on alone, you could collect, too. Charge a toll, because that was your piece he was standing on, then.

It was the same on our block. We didn’t own the buildings—nobody around there did. Even the men who came to collect the rents, they lived somewhere else. The City owned the streets, just like it owned the subway. But the City wasn’t around all the time, and we were.

3

It was that rule, about paying the tolls, that got me sent away. The vacant lot was between two territories, ours and the Renegades’. We both used it, for different stuff, but neither of us claimed it. If a coolie—a kid who wasn’t with a club, or what they would call
an off-brand today—went through the lot, any club that was there could take the tolls from him.

We had little clashes with the Renegades about the lot, but it was mostly just selling wolf tickets, loudmouthing around. Both clubs knew; that vacant lot, it didn’t move, but it was just like the subway. The only time you had a piece of it was when you were right there to hold it.

The leader of the Renegades was a skinny little guy called Junta. All of the Renegades had those PR names, but PRs, they don’t always look like each other. Some of them were so black, if they didn’t speak that Spanish, you would think they were colored. And some of them were as white as us, with everything in between. The only way you could tell for sure was from listening to them talk—even the ones that talked English, they didn’t talk white.

I didn’t know how Junta got to be leader. He wasn’t a great fist fighter, he didn’t have any kind of rep with a knife, and no one ever saw him with a pistol. I didn’t see where he was any great brains, either.

The reason I knew about Junta is that I had to meet with him a few times, one-on-one. I was president of the Royal Vikings, and, sometimes, we would have a sit-down, to settle a dispute. If the presidents couldn’t settle things, then the warlords would get together, to set the rules for a clash. But it never came to that, between the Renegades and us.

Junta and me, we made a treaty, to have our clubs share the vacant lot. The way Junta explained it, the lot was kind of like the gateway to our two territories. If we fought each other over it, we’d always be having that same fight, over and over. We needed to protect the gateway from outsiders; that was most important. Better to share a little piece than not to have any at all, he said, and he was right. So our treaty was, whoever was on the set, for right then, it was their piece.

4

It started when one of the Mystic Dragons got himself a girlfriend in our territory. He would walk right through our block, flying his colors, and nobody was crazy enough to make him pay tolls. The Mystic Dragons, they were a major club. People said they could put a thousand men into a meet, and a couple of hundred of them would have guns. Real guns, not zips.

The way guys in gangs talk, a lot of that was probably just blowing smoke, but there was enough truth in it to keep us all chilled. Our club, the Royal Vikings, we could put, maybe, twenty guys out for a meet … and some of them would make it only because they’d be scared not to. If a club like ours ever vamped on a Mystic Dragon, we’d be finished.

What kicked it off was the day Bunchie came charging down the steps to the basement we use for a clubhouse.

“Mystic Dragons!” he yelled.

“What?!” Tony Boy said.

“Mystic Dragons! All over the block. They got a car at both ends. And one parked right across from here!”

Everybody was getting all excited, talking at once. “Cool it,” I told them. “If this was a raid, they would have been down here already.”

“The president is right,” Little Augie backed me up. But I could see he was nervous.

I looked around the basement. Just five men, plus me. I thought about sending Sammy out to see what the Mystic Dragons wanted—it wouldn’t look good for the president to go himself. But if they saw the guy we sent was our warlord, they could get the wrong idea.

I could send Little Augie, but he’s not a good talker. And bringing the Mystic Dragons down to that ratty basement would be showing them too much.

I had to think. Everyone went quiet, waiting on me. All we had in the clubhouse was Sammy’s zip, and some bats and chains. I knew at least a couple of the boys always had knives, but Bunchie had said there were three carloads of Mystic Dragons.

“I’ll handle it,” I told the others. “I’ll go see what they want. No reason to let them see what we’re holding down here.”

“You want we should go with?” Little Augie asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “But stay back. Right against the building, understand? Don’t crowd nobody.”

I was proud of my boys. They looked sharp and hard, in their white silk jackets with
Royal Vikings
across the back. Our jackets are all custom-made, by this very classy place down in Little Italy. They cost a lot, but they say a lot about us, too, so they’re worth it. Two of the boys stepped out first, then moved off to the side to let me through, while the others filled in behind.

The Mystic Dragons’ car was a big black Buick. A four-door. Facing the wrong direction on our one-way street, so the driver was against the curb. As I walked over, the back door opened, and three men got out. They didn’t say anything. The driver looked at me out of his window.

“You Hawk?” he asked.

“Right,” I said. That’s the name I go by. It was written in purple script on the left side of my jacket. On my right sleeve, there were four little hearts; meaning, I’m the president. Sammy, our warlord, had three on his. We didn’t spell out the offices, the way some clubs do.

“The man wants to talk to you,” the driver said.

“Here I am,” I told him, cool.

“Boss,” he said, as he climbed out of the car, holding the door open.

I couldn’t tell if he meant, “boss!” it was good I was willing to talk, or that I would be talking to his boss, but I got in. It was
classy, the way they set it up. I didn’t have an excuse to refuse, because I would be the one behind the wheel, so they couldn’t take off with me as a prisoner. Besides, all their men were already standing on the sidewalk. Except for the ones in the cars at the end of the block.

The guy in the passenger seat was colored. I expected that, him being a Mystic Dragon and all. But I was surprised at how old he was.

“I’m Baron James,” he said. “You know my name?”

“I heard it,” I said. Which was the truth. Everybody in the city who ran with a club had heard of Baron James. He killed two men in a clash a long time ago, when he was real little. Baron James was famous. His name was in the
Daily News
, with headlines and everything. The paper said it was wrong that they couldn’t send him to the state pen, just because he was only fourteen at the time. People wrote letters to the paper, saying, for what Baron James did, they should give him the electric chair, no matter how old he was.

“You’re leader of … what’s the name of your club?”

“The Royal Vikings,” I told him, like I didn’t know he was saying that just to say we were nothing.

“Yeah. Well, then you’re the man I have to talk to. About what happened to Chango.”

“Who’s Chango?”

“All you need to know about Chango is two things, man. One, Chango is a Mystic Dragon. And, two, some of your boys jumped him two nights ago, in the vacant lot over by Twenty-ninth.”

“Not my boys.”

“Yeah, your boys. Chango’s got himself a little twist around here. She’s a PR, but she lives over in your turf.”

“I don’t know any names,” I said. “But we know a guy who flies Mystic Dragon colors has a girl around here. He comes and goes. Whenever he wants. Nobody ever bothers him.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Baron James said. “Only, it wasn’t. Chango, he’s going to make it. But he got hurt pretty bad.”

“Shot?”

“Stomped,” Baron James said. “Wasn’t no fair one, either. No challenge, nothing. He said he was just cutting through the lot when he got piled on.”

“It wasn’t any of my—”

“You Vikings, you going to pull something like that, you should’ve left those jackets at home,” he said. He reached over and rubbed the back of his fingers against where my name was. “Nice,” he said.

“Look,” I said, being reasonable, “you know a club like ours, we’d never start anything with—”

“Oh, I don’t think it was your club,” he said. “We thought it was your club, there wouldn’t be no Royal Vikings now. No, what we figure is, it was a couple of members of your club. See the difference?”

“No,” I said. I took out my pack of smokes, held it out toward Baron James—I wanted him to see my hand wasn’t shaking. I was a little surprised when he took one. I lit us both up from my lighter.

Baron James took a deep drag. Then he said, “Difference is, a club makes a move, it has to be approved, am I right? The president has to give his okay.”

“Unless it’s—”

“This wasn’t no self-defense,” he said. “Don’t even try to run that.”

“I wasn’t saying—”

“And, if it’s not approved, that means the boys went freelance. Now, if that was one of the Mystic Dragons, anybody who would try a breakaway move like that, he’d be disciplined, understand?”