Shella (23 page)

I kept going to the bar. Every night. That woman Ginger didn’t come back into the place.

I kept going to the car wash too.

The Indian boss came by one day. When he leaned over to get his light, he said, “There’s a basement in your house, where you stay. Go there tonight when you get back from the bar.”

There was a guy with Mack that night. A younger guy, a skinhead. He had an earring in one ear, a metal loop, with a little hand grenade dangling from it. Tattoos all over his forearms. He was wearing a leather jacket, jeans, big stomping boots on his feet.

“This is Rusty,” Mack said to me.

The skinhead looked hard at me, smiling all across his face so I could see his teeth. “But I ain’t rusty, friend. I keep in practice, you get what I mean?”

“No,” I told him.

“Johnny ain’t no big talker, Rusty. Like I told you. He’s a man
does
things.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” It was Mack answering the skinhead, not me. We had hamburgers, like always. Mack started talking about the niggers and the Jews. The skinhead, Rusty, he wasn’t really listening. He didn’t settle in his chair, all bristly, jumpy. He kept staring at me. I looked back sometimes, so he wouldn’t think I was afraid. I know his kind—they think you’re afraid, they try and hurt you.

“You like to go hunting, man?” he finally asked me.

“I never been,” I said.

“Nigger-hunting, man. You up for that?”

“Sure.”

The skinhead looked over at Mack. He was smiling again.

“Just like that?” he asked me.

“Like what?”

“Go out cruising, spot a nigger, shoot him?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?
Okay, huh? You got any particular … preference … what kind a nigger you want to shoot?”

I thought about it a minute, trying to get it right. “A fat one,” I told him.

Mack laughed so hard he spit up some of his beer.

I could feel him in the basement when I went downstairs that night.

“They’re about ready to break,” the Indian said.

“They asked me tonight,” I told him.

“You know when they want to do it?”

“No.”

The glow from his cigarette tip lit his face for a minute. I waited for him to tell me.

“I don’t think they got the heart to cruise the South Side, do a drive-by on some gang-banger. But they might…. They go that route, you got to do it. Just stick the piece out the window and crank some off. Try to hit some buck flying the colors, okay?”

“I don’t …”

“One of them in a gang jacket, okay? You’ve seen them, right?”

“Right.”

“Don’t spray the stuff around. Make ’em get you close, you understand. You start firing wild, you’re liable to take down some kid…. Even late at night, they’re all over the street.”

“Okay.”

“I got a better idea. Don’t know if we can pull this one off, but it’d be worth it. Come on, let’s take a ride.”

It was a black four-door Ford. We got in the back seat. A couple of Indians were in the front. I looked close—they were the same ones.

They didn’t say anything to me.

“We got a job order,” the Indian said. “On a pimp. He works close by, just past Belmont. Runs a string of street girls. He does the gorilla thing, works
little
girls too, understand?”

“Yes.” It felt funny to understand what he was saying. I did understand, this time.

“His name is Lamont James, but he goes by Steel. That’s what he calls himself, Steel. He’s going anyway. You get a chance, do him, it’d be perfect.”

I didn’t say anything. The Ford turned a corner, doubled back, went around again.

A few minutes later, one of the Indians in the front seat said something I didn’t get.

“There he is,” the Indian next to me said. “Look at him. Right out of the fifties. Thinks he’s Iceberg fucking Slim.”

I saw him. A tall, thin man, leaning against the fender of a big pink car with a white padded top. He was wearing
a long black coat. He had a white hat too, a big one with a thick pink band.

“You have him?” the Indian asked.

“Yes.”

It didn’t happen until a couple of nights later. A Thursday night it was. I was talking to Mack in the booth when the skinhead walked in. He had a little baseball bat in one hand.

“Come on out back,” he said to me.

When I stepped out into the alley it didn’t feel like it had so many times before. I got asked to step out into alleys a lot, and I was always alone when I did. There was a bunch of guys there, all with shaved heads.

“I’ll let you know,” the skinhead said to Mack. Then he told me, “Come on,” and we all walked over to a car. An old white Chrysler.

They showed me where to sit. Next to the window in the back, on the passenger side.

The car started moving, heading south.

The skinhead reached in his jacket, took out a pistol. A big one. He handed it to me.

“I got one,” I said, showed it to him.

He slapped hands with the guy in the front seat.

“Let’s do it!” he said.

I saw the pink car at the end of the block. A lot of people on the street. I couldn’t see him. The Chrysler was moving good—like they had a long way to go.

“There’s one,” I said.

The guy driving slowed down. “What?”

“A perfect nigger,” I told him.

“Where?” Rusty said.

He was just stepping out of the pink car. “There,” I told him.

“A pimp,” Rusty said. “You wanna do him? It’s pretty close to home.…”

“Go around the block again,” I said.

Rusty rubbed the top of his head. “Do it,” he said to the driver.

We came back around, moving slow. “I don’t know about this,” the guy in the passenger seat said.

I was afraid they’d go someplace else. I wished I could think of something. Then I said, “Stop the car.”

They pulled over to the curb.

“Let me out. Keep driving. I’ll catch up with you at the end of the block.”

Rusty looked at me. Like he never saw me before. Then he nodded. I took out the gun, held it next to my leg—the way the guy with the eyeliner did in the hall when they told me to get out of the rooming house. I opened the door, stepped out. The car moved away.

I walked up the block. The pimp was back against his car, talking to a fat little white girl. He had his hand on the back of her neck. She was wearing a pair of red shorts and a halter top, looked about fifteen.

I walked up real close, people all around. I held the gun up, pointed it at his chest. He saw it. “Hey, man! Don’t…”

The girl put her hands over her mouth, like trying to stop a scream. I pulled the trigger. It made a loud bang. The pimp grabbed his chest. I put the gun real close to
him and kept pulling the trigger. I heard a click, the gun was empty. The pimp was on the ground. People were running around, yelling. I walked away. I can move faster than it looks.

The white Chrysler was at the end of the block. I started running when I saw it. The back door was standing open. I jumped inside.

“Go!” Rusty yelled.

We didn’t hear the sirens until we were a couple of blocks away. The Chrysler pulled over to the curb. We all got out, got into another car, a small red one. It was a tight fit in there.

The driver went down by the lake, then he came back, driving slow. They stopped right in front of my house.

“You think you got him?” Rusty asked. “We didn’t see nothing, just heard the shots.”

“I got him.”

“Better give me the gun. We’ll get rid of it for you.”

“Okay.”

“We got one!” the guy in the front said. Like he was surprised. Scared too.