as they kicked, and all of them were breathing hard. Leo was curled up in a fetal ball with his forearms up guarding his head. When they were done the 18th Street Crips walked away from him and resumed their various places together in front of Natalie’s porch.
Leo crawled a few feet away from them, and then tried the difficult experiment of standing upright. He finally managed, but his balance seemed none too certain. When he tottered away down the street he looked as though something had gone missing inside him.
Natalie still smiled approval out the window as I headed for the door. Her capacity for Christian mercy was limited, and I counted my blessings Big Moe ever placed me off limits to her.
Chapter 26
I stepped out on the porch in time to watch Leo creep around the corner of the abandoned bungalow next door. Sam stood off to the side; he hadn’t joined in on the stomping but apparently hadn’t felt the need to stop things either.
“Hey,” Moe said. He jerked his chin in the direction Leo had disappeared in. “You saw? Beat in, beat out, that’s how the 18th Street Crips roll.” He darted a glance at me as if he wanted me to think he needed my approval. “Just like in Oakland, right? He was getting high on his own supply. Bad for business.”
I started after Leo. “Don’t waste your time on him, old man,” Sam called softly behind me as I rounded the corner of the next door bungalow.
Leo was nowhere in sight but the front door was off its hinges and I heard a furtive noise from inside. I peeked around from the stoop, into what passed for a living room.
Leo squatted against a graffiti-covered wall next to a rolled-up sleeping bag. He’d just set a used match book on the floor, its cover folded back with all the matches burned up.
He had one sleeve rolled up – tracks ran up and down his arm. Dried blood was crusted around a few of the holes; he wasn’t even washing up between hits anymore. A boot lace was wrapped around his bicep.
He put a piece of cigarette filter in the blackened spoon to use as a cotton, to strain out any cut sediment in the load he’d just cooked up. With practiced fingers he picked up his syringe and stuck the tip of the needle into the cotton. He worked his outfit one-handed, holding the tip of the needle steady as brain surgery in that puddle of chiva while drawing back the plunger to load up the syringe with his shot.
Leo set the spoon down, gripped one end of the boot lace between his teeth to keep it snug, and pumped his fist a few times to get his flabby veins fat enough to register on. His eyes glittered as he got ready to slide the point home into his rigidly outstretched arm. He looked like he could see God in that needle.
Part of me kept visualizing Angela in front of me instead of Leo, watching him play out the exact steps she took the day she did up the hot shot that finished her. Angela, my beautiful girl, down on her knuckles in her own Gethsemane with me nowhere around.
Leo became aware of my presence and stared at me, rig poised and ready. “What the fuck you want?”
I stepped into full view, a peeping tom busted in the act. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you,” Leo said. “A brother has no chance in your cracker world.” He gazed longingly at his ready needle but he wasn’t quite degenerate enough to do up right in front of me. Yet.
“I know you don’t like me Leo, but you don’t need to. You’re not a victim, that’s all you gotta know.” I gestured vaguely at him, groping toward whatever it was I was trying to say. “You got to be bigger than this, Leo; you can’t give up. Don’t let them make you weak, young blood.”
“I don’t care what you did at that school,” Leo said, his voice jittering and shimmering. “Don’t mean nothin. Don’t change shit.” His eyes glittered, flickered from side to side. “Hell, man, why couldn’t you have been black?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, unsure what I was apologizing for.
Leo jumped to his feet and lunged toward me pulling his hand back fast, and I tensed for him to throw a blow. But instead it was the syringe he threw. The outfit broke apart as it hit next to me and the liquid inside splashed onto the wall.
“Blue-eyed devil,” Leo screamed, trembling. “Get the fuck away from me.” Then he looked at what he’d done to his own rig, his own stash, and an expression of abject despair crawled across his face.
Nothing had changed because of my interference here; Leo was a junkie through and through, and would be for the foreseeable future. He started to cry and I creeped back around the corner and out the door, ashamed of this whole wretched fiasco.
Ashamed for him? Ashamed for me? For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you. Death row had eaten both our daddies alive but we had nothing for each other.
I wondered, though, what the career options were for a street dealer once he’d been chased off his corner. The Life was a bitch – always had been, always would be.
Chapter 27
When I got back to the Crips, Sam beckoned me over. “This is what Moe’s been needing to tell you.”
Big Moe licked his lips. “If it’s okay to ask, I was wondering just how long you’re going to be sticking around.” He held up both hands as if in placation. “You were always free to come and go as you please. Natalie was just messing with your head, a’ight?”
I considered. “Well, I was going to lie low long enough for this media thing to die down a tad, and then take off. No offense, but some place far away from Stagger Bay. I got nothing keeping me here.” I looked at Sam, who looked away.
“Little Moe, come here,” Big Moe said. A wiry black boy wriggled his way through the Crips to stand in front of me.
“This is my nephew. Little Moe, tell Markus about the Driver.”
Little Moe was pumped to be hanging with the men, and also seemed excited to be talking to me. “The Driver comes and takes kids if they don’t listen to they mama, or if they be alone,” he said hurriedly, his words piling up on each other.
“Ah,” I said, wondering what this was all about, wondering when they were going to cut to the chase. Why were they using this eight-year-old kid to be their spokesman? They were all tap-dancing respectfully around me and I fought impatience. “Like the Boogey Man or something?”
“Oh no,” Little Moe said, his eyes wide. “He real. I seen him. He drives one of those big old hotrods. It’s fast and it’s loud.
“One time, he drove right past me while I was at the playground, the one up past the hospital at Boat Park. Mama told me never to play alone, never to leave the Gardens, and I knew I was being bad going there by myself. I was scared when I saw him coming, and he smiled at me, and I thought he’d come to take me where he takes all the others.”
“Others?” I said, watching his face close for signs he was lying. Whatever else, this wasn’t a put-up job by the Crips. Little Moe obviously believed he was telling no more than the truth; he looked less and less happy as he told his tale.
“Sure. He took my big sister last year, from the Mall. We never found her, but we all knew.” He abruptly stopped his narrative and tugged sharply at Big Moe’s flannel shirt. “It be getting late; I gotta get back, I gotta be to home. Take me to Mama, Big Moe.”
“I gots to talk to Markus, Little Moe. Jojo, walk him to the crib.” Big Moe’s skinny white partner reached out to Little Moe and the two walked away down the row of bungalows, hand in hand.
“He has dreams about the Driver,” Moe said, moping at me like an undertaker. “All the kids around here dream about that beast. Like Little Moe said, son of a bitch took my niece.”
“I don’t know why you’re talking to me. Maybe you need to go to the cops,” I said.
All the 18th Street Crips had a laugh about that one but I shook my head. “I’m serious, dime him. Fuck anyone
