“I’m not,” said Ben quickly.
“I’m glad you’re not,” said Sonny. “I want you thinkin clear. We gonna go someplace now and have a quiet conversation. Okay?”
Sonny drove several blocks, hooked a left onto 6th Street, and parked along the curb. They were beside an old, boxy, three-story building surrounded by a chain-link fence, standing out in a residential neighborhood of row homes. Metal security screens and plywood were fitted in its large windows, and a sign announcing the coming of the Ward Six Senior Wellness Center was posted on the south face. Ben had seen buildings such as this, shuttered or laced with creeping ivy, around the city. He guessed that this one, like the others, had once been a school.
“Wait,” said Sonny. Two young men were walking down the sidewalk in their direction, talking loudly, and when they had passed, Sonny tossed the keys over the seat to Wayne and said, “Get the things.”
Wayne handed Sonny his gun and got out of the car. Sonny kept the gun low and pointed at Ben. The trunk opened, and Ben could hear Wayne ratfucking through it.
Wayne returned and opened the passenger door. He was wearing latex gloves and tossed a pair to Sonny.
“Don’t worry,” said Sonny, noticing a twitch in Ben’s lip and the sweat bulleting his forehead.
“Put your hands behind your back,” said Wayne.
Ben looked at Sonny.
“It’s all just a pre-caution,” said Sonny, fitting the gloves on his hands.
Ben allowed the little man to cuff him. When Sonny was satisfied that the street was clear, Wayne pulled on Ben’s arm and brought him out of the car. Wayne locked the Mercury, and the three of them went north on the sidewalk, along the school, whose main entrance faced 6th. Ben made out a naked flagpole mounted over the wide front doors, and big letters that spelled out “Hayes School.”
“Round the side,” said Sonny. Wayne pushed on a gate that had been padlocked but was open because its chain had been severed by a pair of cutters, now in the Mercury’s trunk. Ben moved off the sidewalk and walked onto the asphalt and weeds of the property.
“Hey,” said Ben. He was encouraged by the sound of his own voice, and he screamed, “Hey!”
Wayne jumped up and punched him behind the ear. Ben stumbled, and Sonny grabbed his left arm and righted him.
“That wasn’t smart,” said Sonny. “Now, you just relax.”
From a nearby porch, out front of one of the houses on 6th, Ben heard someone laugh.
They went to the north face of the school, out of the glow of streetlamps. There were two windows on the ground floor covered by heavy wire screen, and one in the center holding a square of plywood painted white. Wayne removed the plywood, which he had kicked in earlier that day. Ben saw only complete darkness there and in fear he turned away from it, but Sonny spun him and pushed him from behind. As Ben fell into the room, it was illuminated, slightly, by the beam of a mini Maglite held in Wayne’s hand. Wayne moved the flashlight beam and it hit on eyes that glowed. Ben heard the fluttering of clawed feet and saw animals, big as cats, scatter back into the shadows. His stomach dropped.
“Rats gotta live someplace, too,” said Sonny.
Wayne used his butane lighter to put fire to candles pushed into the necks of beer bottles placed in a circular shape on the concrete floor. A child’s chair with a plastic seat and steel legs was set in the center of the circle. As the old classroom revealed itself, Sonny gestured to the chair and said, “That’s for you.”
Wayne refitted the plywood to the frame as Sonny helped Ben down into the chair. Its seat was small, and Ben had to rest on the edge of it to accommodate his arms, cuffed behind his back. His rolled his shoulders to alleviate the ache in his neck. He saw a bottle of water standing on the floor and he licked his parched lips.
“I know it’s uncomfortable,” said Sonny, standing before him. Sonny picked up the bottle, drank from it, then placed the bottle back on the floor. “So let’s get this over with and we’ll all go home.”
Wayne moved through the light and crouched down on one knee, half of him in darkness. Then he stood and moved beside the chair. Ben did not look at him. He focused on the big man. He seemed to be reasonable and he was the one in charge.
“You know that thing I told you ’bout my tat?” said Sonny. “You ride with the rock, you take a blood oath to the Aryan Brotherhood. Well, I didn’t take no oath. I put this ink on after I got out the federal joint. If any genuine AB saw me carryin it, he’d cut my throat. I just put it on my hand to make an impression with folks that need to get a certain message. Like Mindy Kramer. You know her, don’t you, Ben?”
Ben’s eyes betrayed him, and Sonny chuckled low.
“Course you do.” Sonny shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I wasn’t bad enough to be Aryan Brotherhood. I’m not ashamed to say it. I don’t even sub -scribe to their notions of race. I don’t hate African American people. Want you to know that. This here ain’t got nothin to do with the color of your skin. Truth is, the modern Aryan Brotherhood ain’t even about hatin blacks, Mexicans, or Jews. It’s about power, money, and control. Now, Wayne here, he does have a bit of a problem with, what’s that they call it, people of color. Wayne wanted to get in, but they don’t let itty-bitty boys like him into the club. I’m a big man, as you can see, but I look like queer bait next to them ABs. They are some big specimens. They’re honest-to-god animals, Ben.”
“Can I get a drink of water?” said Ben.
“Not just yet,” said Sonny. “To finish my point: Me and Wayne were just cogs in the machine at Lewisburg. We did favors for the bad boys. Runnin errands and such. They called our kind peckerwoods.”
“They called you it,” said Wayne.
“Not that I wasn’t capable of doing bad things,” said Sonny. “Wayne, too. Got to give it to my little friend, because he can be fierce. But I wasn’t interested in that power thing. I only wanted to have what I worked for. I like a roll of folding money in my pocket, and when I get it I expect to keep it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I had some money,” said Sonny. “Fifty thousand dollars, give or take. Me and an associate, fella named Leslie Hawkins, took off four jewelry stores in the Baltimore area over the course of, I don’t know, five or six months. Wasn’t any kind of trick to it. You put a gun up in someone’s face, they gonna give you what you askin for. I was a young man at the time, about your age, and I had a kind of energy comin off me that was very convincing. The Jews and the slopes who we were robbin, they knew we meant business. Me and Hawk, we made over a hundred grand on those jobs after we fenced it out. I gave him half, even though the only thing he did was drive a car. And it was all clean. I wore a mask when I was workin, a hood with cutout eyes, like a hangman’s bag. So the cameras didn’t pick up on shit. The problem wasn’t that the law knew who I was. The problem was Leslie Hawkins. I should have known better than to partner up with a man had a girl’s name.”
“Please,” said Ben, sweat stinging his eyes. “Can I get some water?”
“When I’m done,” said Sonny. “Hawkins got pulled over one night by a state trooper for a busted taillight. Leslie panicked and booked, thinking they had made his vehicle from the robberies. Led the police on one of those high-speed chases you see on the tee-vee, and of course he got caught. Dumbass had his share of the money in the trunk of the car. He spilled soon as they got him into a room. Hawkins put me in for the robberies. That wasn’t no surprise. Through the underworld telegraph, I’d heard he got picked up, and I figured it was just a matter of time before the law got around to me. So I went to visit my uncle, who lived here in D.C.”
“Hot in here, ain’t it?” said Wayne.
“It is stuffy,” said Sonny, and he removed his windbreaker and tossed it aside. The semiautomatic was holstered in a leather rig looped over his shoulder and chest.
“I need a drink,” said Ben, desperation entering his voice.
“My uncle came from the same place I do,” said Sonny, ignoring the request. “What passes for mountain country, way up in Maryland. Ever been there, Ben?”
“No.”
“Well, my uncle had one of those alternative lifestyles, and they don’t exactly tolerate that kind of thing up there. So he moved down here to the city, got a job managing a fancy furniture store, had a partner for a while, bought a house. Carved out a nice life for himself. I never had no problem with him or who he was. Matter of fact, I loved him. Now that he’s gone, makes me feel a little bad that I buried my money without his knowledge in that library-slash-den of his before I got arrested. He died while I was in the joint, and then his home went to auction. But I won’t go on about it. You know the rest. Don’t you, fella.”
“I didn’t take that money,” said Ben.
