A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) (22 page)

“Pick it up,” he said. I looked to my left and then my right. The way our chairs were positioned, we were in a private space. The lady and the other set of breasts were serving other customers. There were six other men in the room, all engaged in their own private talks. Two of them were into a quiet chess game.

With my washcloth, I eased the envelope my way and held it between the cloth without placing my prints. Santiaga had one finger on his jaw and one on his forehead. He’s watching me discreetly. Inside was a thick stack of crisp and clean hundreds. I looked at him.

“That’s ten thousand,” he said. “The other fifteen is in my glove compartment. That’s yours too,” he told me. Then he waited for my reaction.

“Nah, this can’t be mine,” I said. “Wish it was. But I missed too many games already. And the most valuable player won’t be chosen until after the playoffs.” I pushed the envelope back to his side of the table.

“I placed a wager on that game you played, the night that you closed your eyes and took the winning shot. It was a huge wager. I bet on you. I just had a feeling in my gut from the first time we met. I don’t get that feeling often, but when I do, I listen to it. I got that feeling once when I was about to make a run. I had some money at stake on that run. I knew it was better to get it right then. If I waited it could have slipped out of my reach. Because of that feeling in my gut, I didn’t chase that paper that night that was owed to me. I let it go. That shit burned. Next day, I found out, all the parties to that transaction got clapped up. That gut feeling saved my life even though I lost some money on the transaction. The second time I caught that feeling was the first time I saw my wife. She was fourteen. I was nineteen. End of story, I made it happen because of that feeling in my gut. Now she’s my wife and the mother of my daughters. The third time I caught that feeling in my gut
was when I met you. Don’t get me wrong—I handpicked the black team, love my squad. But you stand out. You got that fire in your heart and a good head on your shoulders. You don’t run your mouth and you don’t seek attention. You’re mean with that basketball and calm with your teammates, a quiet leader. I see big things for you in the future.”

“If I recall, I only scored two points in that game. It was my worst performance for the whole stretch of the junior league,” I said, and I meant it.

“That’s where you’re wrong. I watched the game. You fed your teammates, without worrying about yourself. You set up the right plays and the right picks. You rebounded. Played the whole game beautifully. And when the heat was up to its hottest point, and you had successfully misled your opponents to believe that you were not the man to watch, they left you open. You stepped out of the shadows, closed your eyes, and sank it, crazy! Couldn’t’ve been better.” He leaned back.

“I went into that wager with all the liquid cash I had on hand that night. The rest of my capital was all tied up in other ventures. Damn near all or nothing. You weren’t the high score. But you were the man. Timing is everything. Knowing when to lay low and when to come up, when to step out of the light and when to come out of the shadows—perfect.” He held his hands together, like a clap. He leaned forward.

“I came up so big it gave me the liquid capital that propelled me to the next level in my business. The twenty-five I’m giving you, you earned it. But because I see that you’re into honesty, and I like that, I’mma let you know that twenty-five thousand is not even one-hundredth the amount I earned off of you.” He gave me a serious stare so I would believe him.

“Cigars?” The breasts were back to refresh our smoke.

“We’re good for now,” Santiaga said. She was smiling widely. He pulled out his wallet and folded a clean one hundred once and slid it between her coconut-sized titties. She wiggled them, said a
string of graciases, and asked if she could get him a drink, “or anything else?” He ordered a glass of Louis XIII. She left.

I was sitting, calculating. One hundred times twenty-five thousand. I was moving the commas over on the numbers. One mistake with a comma or a zero and my answer would be all wrong. I calculated it three times in my head. That’s $2,500,000. My eyes widened. I calculated it one more time. That’s the minimum amount he earned on the bet, that he won based on the shot that I made. On top of that, he had the balls to tell me calmly that what he was paying out to me wasn’t even one percent of his prize. I leaned back. Some minutes slipped by.

“You said you are a businessman, right?” Santiaga said impatiently. It wasn’t a question, I know. Leaning forward again, he checked his Rolex, letting me know we were running out of time.

Still, I paused for a minute or so, then said, “True, I made the shot, but I didn’t make the wager, you did. I don’t know nobody who could wager those kinds of numbers, or who could afford to lose that amount if their gut feeling turned out to be wrong. That means that all of the winnings are yours, not mine. You went all in with the money that you earned. I didn’t help you earn a penny of it. ‘Winner take all,’ as they say. So you take all of it. But thank you, word,” I added sincerely.

“How much are those vending machines you’re selling?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars each,” I said, thinking of the model I purchased, not the discounted seven-hundred-dollar “horsey ride.” “But since we’re being honest, I pocket five hundred dollars off of each sale,” I confided.

“Give me seventeen of those at fifteen hundred each,” he said. “I’ll put them in my stores.” I was calculating. Seventeen machines times fifteen hundred dollars each equals $25,500.
Damn
, he was swift with his numbers and figured out seventeen machines would get the deed done. He was determined to place $25,000 in my hand either way. Now he’d made me a straight-up business proposition,
not a charitable donation or a gift, or a questionable payoff, all of which I could never accept.

“You’re a young businessman, not a young fool, right, son?” he asked me with an even more serious look. “You either take the twenty-five I’m handing you as your earnings on the amazing shot you pulled off, or you sell me seventeen machines for twenty-five thousand. You drop the extra five hundred since I’m buying so many, and you pocket twelve thousand dollars profit since you’ll have to pay for the machines, and you don’t want to take twenty-five thousand no-strings-attached free dollars.” He stood up. Because he stood, I stood.

He checked his Rolex again. “You got twenty-five seconds. Each second is worth a thousand dollars. Go!” he said.

“Deal,” I said in less than a second. “You ordered seventeen machines at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars total, a five-hundred-dollar discount. I pocket twelve thousand dollars,” I said. He smiled.

“Now you and I are in business.” He extended his hand to me.

“It’s a clean sale. Once the machines are delivered to you, our deal is done, no strings attached. I don’t owe you, you don’t owe me nothing,” I said. His smile evaporated.

“Deal,” he said. “After tonight, I don’t owe you nothing. You don’t owe me nothing,” he confirmed with a serious expression, mixed with a disappointed, angry, and almost sad look.

“I’ll come play for the team. That’s a separate matter, though. Treat me like every other player. If I miss one more game I disqualify myself from the possibility of earning the most valuable player purse,” I said. “I’ll be at every practice and every game barring an emergency.”

He smiled brightly, and it seems his smile made the ladies, who were all looking in our direction since we had stood up, happy too. We gave each other a pound on it.

*  *  *

“You drive. I had a couple of drinks,” Santiaga said, throwing me the keys. It was a test, I knew. I opened the driver’s-side door. He got in the back. “If the cops pull us over, which I doubt, not twice in one day, we’ll say I’m sick and you’re driving me to the emergency room. If that don’t work, we’ll press some paper in his palms.” He reclined and closed his eyes. I was thinking this cat either believed or knew for sure that money straightens out all matters. I hoped so. We were on River Road in Edgewater, New Jersey. I didn’t think his arms reached all the way across the George Washington Bridge or through the Lincoln Tunnel, same as they reached across the Brooklyn Bridge to uptown Manhattan.

Sitting in the driver’s seat in his Maserati, which my shot probably paid for, I was thinking about my father, and how he used to challenge me, just like how I was being challenged right then by this man. In both cases they were men who were much older than me, placing me in an unreasonable situation and challenging me to work my way through it and come out clean. I knew Santiaga was not drunk and that his one drink was not strong. Even if it was strong, it still wouldn’t matter ’cause he only sipped it for show. He watched me. I watched him.

I accept the challenge from him, same as I accepted the challenges handed down by my father. In both cases they were not challenges to be turned down or avoided. They were tasks all about manhood, and of course they involved risks.

“I’m ’bout to turn the ignition.
Insha’Allah
 . . .” was the most I could feel or think at the moment.

13. IDENTITY

“Uncuff him,” the lawyer said to the guard posted outside my hospital room the second she arrived. He did. “Please excuse us.” She dismissed him politely but with a tone that caused him to obey her. He exited, but went no farther than the front door, where he stood immediately outside. He was not the same officer who stood over me in the hospital waiting room this morning for three and a half hours. It was nighttime now and she was just arriving, looking hurried and slowly calming herself.

“We have the right to refuse medical treatment,” she said to me strangely. She was the one who had requested the court order that I be checked into a hospital. Why was she saying this now? I didn’t respond. “I want you to be aware of your rights,” she said.

“You have some legitimate—I mean real—injuries, so it was within my power to insist that you be examined at a hospital. However, I also wanted to slow down the process and have you and me get organized. A lot of crucial legal decisions are made in a hurry, without regard for the truth,” she said, and I understood. I took note of how she switched from using the word
legitimate
to her translation of the word into the simple
real.
Of course, I knew the word
legitimate
and did not need her to break it down for me. She didn’t know that, because she didn’t know me.

“Besides, believe it not, the food here is better than the jail food at Rikers Island, much better.” She seemed sure, as though she had
eaten at Rikers, or observed or overheard the opinions of others eating at Rikers. I had eaten a bland but decent meal here in the hospital, challenging myself to lower my standards regarding food so that I could endure imprisonment.

“Baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and string beans—that’s what you ate—and orange juice and water,” she said, making me aware that even when she is not present, she knows each of my actions and choices. “You didn’t eat the slice of chocolate cake,” she added and looked towards me as though she expected a reaction. It was nonsense to me, for her to care about such a small detail. I gave her no reaction. The truth is, I purposely didn’t touch that cake because it’s sugar. As I prepare to be locked away doing real time, I didn’t want to be enslaved to any addictions, like salt, seasonings, sugar, or food prepared with love and quality ingredients like I enjoyed every day at home, whether it was prepared by my Umma or either of my wives. I didn’t want to yearn for things. I would hold on to them in my memory, but not crave them. “Craving anything is a form of self-torture,” my sensei had taught me. “Letting go of your desires is the key to self-control in captivity. Even in living life as a free man, it is necessary that you have the ability to control your desires.”

She opened her briefcase, the one with the stickers plastered on the inside. It was fuller than it had been earlier in the day. She pulled out five thin books, more like pamphlets. “These are each books of names,” she said. I looked as she spread them across the table. “In case you decide to choose a new one for yourself,” she added. Her name books each had a different title:
Spanish Names
,
French Names
,
Christian Names
,
Jewish Names
,
Muslim Names
,
African Names.

“It looks like you were hit in the head. Perhaps you don’t remember your name?” She stared at me. In her eyes was feminine strength. I was thinking carefully. Was she suggesting that I should say that I can’t remember because I was injured by the police? Was this some legal strategy that she needed me to follow, but that she wasn’t allowed to tell me straight out?

“From here forward, your fingerprints, your blood and urine samples, everything will be linked directly with the name that we place on your legal papers, at least until your parents or guardians show up, or an authority discovers and confirms something different. Do you understand?” she asked.

I was sitting still, but my mind was spinning faster than the rotation of the Earth. I had not identified myself to them, but now, they were creating an identity for me through my body fluids and prints.

“And this information that the system collects and compiles will follow you for the rest of your life,” she said. “Since you are a juvenile, or shall we say an adolescent,” she paused and looked again into my eyes, “there are cases where minors can have their records expunged. Hardly ever in the case of murder, but even if your misdemeanor charges are successfully expunged, it’s never actually erased.” She had me now. I did not know the meaning of the word
expunged.
I didn’t have access to a dictionary. I wouldn’t ask her to define it for me, either.

“I’m going to grab a coffee and I’ll be right back,” she said, leaving her opened briefcase on the table. She grabbed some coins from her purse and left her wallet as well. Another test, I knew. She had only been here for six minutes and it seemed that she had set up six different tests for me through each of her words and gestures, questions and actions.