Flood

shadows, smartly said, “Hey, my man,” and the driver looked me over. “Where to, amigo?”

“Oh, someplace downtown, you know?”

“Like the Waldorf?”

“That’s it.” I climbed in the back without further negotiations. The cab shot straight up 161st like it was headed for the highway to go downtown and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Rules are rules. The local cops aren’t too bad, but some of the federal lunatics don’t believe the Constitution applies to banana republics like the South Bronx. If I ever got strapped into a polygraph, I wanted the needles to read No Deception Indicated when they asked me where Una Gente Libre had its headquarters.

35

EITHER THE DRIVER really worked a gypsy cab as a regular job or he was a hell of an actor. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the lurch of the miserably-maintained hunk of metal every time we floundered around a corner. Normal potholes put my head against the ceiling, and each genuine home-grown South Bronx edition almost knocked me unconscious. He had the radio tuned to some Spanish-language station at a volume that reminded me of the holding tank at Riker’s Island-and for an added touch of authenticity he screamed “Maricon!” and waved his fist out the open window at another driver who had the audacity to attempt to share the road with us.

We turned a sharp corner; the driver doused the radio. He switched to a smooth cruising mode and spoke distinctly without taking his eyes from the windshield. “At the next corner, I stop the cab. You get out. You walk in the same direction as I drive for half a block. You see a bunch of lobos in front of a burn- out. You walk right up to them and they let you through. You go into the burn-out and someone meet you there.”

I said nothing-he obviously wasn’t going to answer questions. Lobo may mean wolf in Spanish, but I understood he was describing a street gang that would be in front of an abandoned building.

The cab stopped at the corner and got moving again as I was swinging the rear door closed. I looked at the cab as it moved away-it sure looked like a gypsy cab, but someone must have stolen the rear license plate. I marched the half block until I spotted about a dozen kids-some sitting on the steps of the abandoned building, some standing. Only about half of them were looking in my direction.

The lobos came fully equipped-they all wore denim cut-offs with a winged and bloody-taloned bird of prey on the back-the birds had human skulls instead of heads. I spotted bicycle chains, car antennas, and baseball bats-one kid had a machete in a sheath. No firearms on display, but two of them were sitting next to a long flat cardboard box.

As I got closer I could see they weren’t kids at all-none of them looked under twenty years old. They wouldn’t fool a beat patrolman too easily either-no radios playing, no wisecracking among themselves, just quietly watching the street.

I glanced up and saw a gleam of metal at one of the windows-there wouldn’t be any winos sleeping in that building tonight. A car turned into the block from the other end and came toward me. The lobos moved off the steps and I stepped back in the shadows. The car was a year-old white Caddy-it never slowed down but I glimpsed three people in the front seat-two girls and a driver with a plantation hat. Some pimp was on his way to the Hunts Point Market, and suddenly I knew just about where I was in the South Bronx.

When I got within fifty feet of the building I saw hands go into pockets but I kept on coming. It wasn’t bravery- there was no place else to go. When the hands came out of the pockets with mirror-lensed sunglasses I figured I was going to be all right. Nobody needs a disguise to take your life.

I approached the gang. They looked briefly at me then past me to see if I had come alone. I kept walking up the broken steps, heard movements behind me, didn’t turn around. I went through the door into a black pit-and stopped. A voice said: “Burke. Don’t move, okay? Just stay where you are.”

I didn’t. I felt a hand on my arm. I didn’t jump-it was expected. The hand groped, found mine, and a heavily knotted rope was pushed into my palm. I grabbed one of the knots and felt a gentle tug. I got the message and followed along in the direction I was pulled. I couldn’t see a damned thing-the guy leading me must have been using sonar or something.

The same voice finally said, “In here,” and I stepped through a door covered with dark blankets. Now I could see a dim light ahead and I followed the back of the man leading me down a long flight of stairs until we came to another blanket-covered door at the bottom. My guide felt his way through the blankets until he found a bare spot, knocked three times, waited patiently, heard two raps from the other side, rapped once in response, waited, rapped one more time. He gently pushed against my chest to indicate that we should stand back, and then from the other side of the wall bolts sliding, metal scraping, something heavy being moved. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to move my hands. After a couple of minutes the door slid open and a large man parted the blankets and stepped out. I couldn’t see him too well but there was enough light to catch the highlights bouncing off the Uzi submachine gun he held in one hand. He stood there covering us both for what seemed like a long minute, saying nothing.

Then I felt a breeze on the back of my neck and heard Pablo’s voice behind me saying, “This way, Burke,” and I turned and entered the door behind me, my back now to the man with the Uzi. By the time anyone broke down the blanketed door and confronted the guard, the people in the room I was stepping into would have been long gone.

The big room was as anonymous as a cell block-a round table in the center, several couches and old stuffed chairs scattered around, concrete floor, plasterboard walls. A light fixture dangled from someplace in the blacked- out ceiling, hanging so low it was almost touching the table-no windows that I could see. There was a large TV set in one corner on a metal stand with a videotape deck hooked up below it. The rest of the room was in shadow. The chairs and the couches were occupied but I couldn’t see anything except shapes.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me where I was to sit. As I approached the table I noticed a large ashtray on top and a green plastic garbage bag sitting underneath. When we all left this room, it would be as if nobody had ever been there. Fine with me.

I sat down. Pablo sat directly opposite me. He gave me the two-handed handshake he always uses. He made no motion that I could see, but the shadows moved closer as he spoke, especially those behind me. “I’m going to say some things in Spanish to my people now. After I finish I’ll talk with you in English, okay?”

“Good.”

Pablo launched into rapid-fire Spanish, only some of which I understood. I caught “amigo mio,” not “amigo de nostros.” He was saying this man is a friend of mine, not a friend of ours. He would be vouching for my character, not my politics. Most of the rest got past me but I caught compadre more than once and couldn’t tell if he was referring to me or someone else in the room. When he’d finished he looked around. Someone asked a soft-voiced question-Pablo appeared to be giving the matter some thought, then said “No!” in a flat voice. No more questions. Pablo turned to face me, and the shadows moved even closer.

“I told them it would not be necessary to search you, that you were not of the federales. I told them you were not with the police, and that you would be here for your own reasons. I told them that you have helped me in the past and that you would help me again in the future. And I told them that we would help you if it did not conflict with our purpose. Okay?”

“Sure. Okay to smoke?”

Pablo nodded and I slowly, carefully took out the cigarettes, left the pack on the table, reached for the wooden matches, and lit up. I heard one of the watchers in the shadows mutter something and I reached out for the cigarette pack, tore it open and laid out the smokes one by one. I tore the wrapping paper into small bits and put the whole mess into the garbage bag. I heard “Bueno” from one of them, a short laugh from another. Pablo took it up. “My friend, you said that it was necessary for us to meet. So?”

I picked my words and the pace of my speech carefully, trying for a show of dignity they would respect and that would show my respect for them. You have to talk a lot of different ways in my business. You don’t throw in a lot of references to Allah when you’re talking to a Black Muslim, but you don’t offer him a ham sandwich either.