A Drink Before the War Page 13

  “A plane ticket to Tangiers would be my suggestion. He’ll still get to you but at least you could say you’d seen the world.” He scuffed the thick, stubby grass in front of him. “Word on the street, though, is he wants to talk with you first. Seems to think you got something he needs.” He raised his foot, used his hand to brush the grass off his shoe. “Now, what could that be, Patrick?”

  I shrugged. Those eyes never left me. I’ve seen frozen ponds with more empathy. I said, “The man’s deluded.”

  “No argument there. Hell of a good shot though. I hear he likes to pull the trigger a lot, hit his victims in superficial places. You know, take his time. Give them the head shot about a half hour after they start begging for it. A real humanitarian, our Socia.” He crossed his hands in front of him, cracked the knuckles. “So, why does he think you have something he needs, Patrick?”

  Angie squeezed my hand and slipped her other hand under my arm. It felt warm and slightly bittersweet. She said, “Who’s the guy with the umbrella?”

  Devin said, “I thought you two were detectives.”

  Trench Coat had turned now, too. He was following Socia’s gaze, his eyes landing on me as well. I felt like a minnow in a shark tank.

  Angie said, “No, Devin, we’re still studying. So, tell us—who’s the guy with the umbrella?”

  He cracked his knuckles again, sighed with the ease of a man drinking a beer in a hammock. “That’s Jenna’s son.”

  I said, “Jenna’s son.”

  “Did I stutter? Jenna’s son. He runs the Angel Avengers.”

  Angel Avenue runs through the heart of Black Dorchester. It’s not a place where you stop at red lights. Even in broad daylight.

  “He got a hard-on for me, too?”

  “Not as far as I know,” he said.

  Angie said, “Is Socia his father?”

  Devin looked at the two of them, then the two of us. He nodded. “But I think it was the mother who named him Roland.”

  18

  “One angry child, our Roland,” Devin was saying.

  I sipped some coffee. “He didn’t look much like a child to me,” I said.

  Devin swallowed a hunk of doughnut, reached for his coffee. “He’s sixteen years old.”

  Angie said, “Sixteen?”

  “Just turned sixteen,” Devin said, “last month.”

  I thought of what I’d seen of him—a tall, muscular body, the bearing of a young general, standing on the small knoll above his mother’s grave, umbrella in hand. He looked like he already knew his place in this world—at the forefront, with his minions behind him.

  When I was sixteen, I barely knew my place in the school lunch line. I said, “How’s a sixteen-year-old boy run a network like the Avengers?”

  “With a big gun,” Devin said. He looked at me, shrugged. “He’s a pretty smart boy, Roland is. He’s got balls the size of truck radials, too. A good thing to have if you want to run a gang.”

  “And Socia?” Angie asked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something about Roland and his daddy, Marion. They say the only natural force in this city that’s possibly more dangerous than Roland is his daddy. And believe me, I’ve sat in a cold interrogation room with Marion for seven hours: the man has a cavity where his heart should be.”

  “And he and Roland are about to go head to head?”

  “Seems to be the case,” Devin said. “They ain’t Ward and the Beav’, that’s for sure. Take my word, Roland’s not walking around breathing because of any help from his old man. Socia was born without paternal instincts. The Avengers used to be a sort of brother gang to the Saints. But Roland changed all that about three months ago, broke away from his old man’s organization. Socia’s tried to hit Roland at least four times that we know of, but the kid doesn’t die. A lot of bodies been showing up in Mattapan and the ’Bury the last few months, but none of them has been Roland.”

  Angie said, “But sooner or later…”

  Devin nodded. “Something’s got to give. Roland hates his old man something fierce. No one knows why exactly. Although now, with Jenna dead, he pretty much has all the motivation he needs, doesn’t he?”

  “He was close to her?” I asked.

  Devin shrugged, his large palms up in front of him. “I don’t know. She visited him a lot when he was in juvie lockup at Wildwood, and some say he’d drop by her place every now and then, leave her some cash. But it’s really hard to say—Roland’s got about as much love in him as his father.”

  “Great,” I said. “Two machines without emotion.”

  “Oh, they got plenty of emotion,” Devin said. “It’s just all hate.” He caught the waitress’s eye. “More coffee.”

  We were sitting in the Dunkin’ Donuts on Morton Street. Outside the window a few guys passed around a bottle in a brown paper bag, drinking Sunday into Monday. Across the street, four punks prowled, eyes roving, every now and then one of them banging his fist off the top of another’s—jacked up on hate and pain and ready to ignite as soon as they found a spark. Down the block, a young girl pushing a carriage veered it off the curb and began crossing to the other side of the street, head down, hoping they wouldn’t notice her.

  Devin said, “You know, it’s too bad about Jenna. Don’t seem right, a woman like that being stuck with two stone killers like Socia and Roland. Shit, the worst thing the woman ever did was rack up a lot of parking tickets. And who the hell doesn’t in this city.” He dipped his second doughnut into his third cup of coffee, his voice as inflectionless as a single piano key struck over and over again. “Too bad.” He looked at us. “Opened her safe-deposit box last night.”

  Very slowly I said, “And?”

  “Nothing,” he said, watching me. “A government bond, some jewelry wasn’t worth the rental fee on the box.”

  A muffled explosion went off outside, and the inside of the doughnut shop rattled. I looked toward the window and saw the group of punks. One of them was staring in, the veins in his neck prominent, his face a war mask. He met our eyes and his hand shot out again into the window. A couple of people flinched but the window didn’t break. His friends laughed but he didn’t. His eyes were red, blazing with rage. He hit the window one more time, got a few more flinches, and then his friends pulled him away. He was laughing by the time he reached the corner. Nice world.

  I said, “No one knows why Roland has this beef with Socia?”

  “Could be anything. You weren’t particularly fond of your old man, were you, Kenzie?”

  I shook my head.

  He pointed at Angie. “You?”

  “My father and I got along all right,” she said. “When he was home. My mother and I were another story.”

  “I hated my old man,” Devin said. “Turned every waking hour in my house into the Friday night fights. Took so much shit from him growing up, I swore I’d never take it from anyone else for the rest of my life, even if that meant dying young. Maybe Roland’s like that. His juvie sheet is one long list of authority problems, going back to the fifth grade when he split open the substitute teacher’s head. Bit off some of his ear too.”

  Fifth grade. Jesus.

  Devin said, “Fucked up his share of social workers too, not to mention another teacher. Kicked a cop’s head through the windshield of his cruiser when he was taking him to juvie once. Broke the nose of an emergency-room doctor, this while he had a bullet lodged near his spine. Come to think of it—everyone Roland’s jammed on has been male. He doesn’t respond well to female authority, either, but he doesn’t get violent, he just walks away.”

  “What about Socia?”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s his deal?” I said. “I mean, I know he runs the Saints, but besides that.”

  “Marion is a true opportunist. Up till about ten years ago, he was just a small-time pimp. A very vicious small-time pimp, but he didn’t give the computer an overload when you keyed his name into it.”

  “And then?”

 
; “Then came crack. Socia knew what it would mean, long before it made the cover of Newsweek. He killed the mule of one of the Jamaican syndicates, took over the man’s action. We all figured he had about a week to live after that, but he flew to Kingston, showed the Boss the size of his balls, dared him to retaliate.” Devin shrugged. “Next thing you know, the man to see for crack in this town was Marion Socia. This was back in the early days, but even now, with all the competition, he’s still the top man. He’s got an army of kids willing to die for him, no questions asked, and he’s got a network that’s so detailed, you could bust one of his upper-echelon suppliers and still be four or five buffer people removed from Socia himself.”

  We sat silent for a while, drinking our coffee.

  Angie said, “How’s Roland ever hope to beat Socia?”

  Devin shrugged. “You got me. I got a hundred bucks on Socia in the pool, myself.”

  “The pool?” I said.

  He nodded. “Of course. The departmental pool, see who wins the gang war. They don’t pay me enough to do this job, so I got to take my perks where I find them. Odds on Roland are about sixty to one.”

  Angie said, “They looked pretty even at the funeral.”

  “Looks can be deceiving. Roland’s tough, he’s smart, and he’s got a pretty good posse working for him up on Angel Avenue. But he’s not his father, not yet. Marion is ruthless and he’s got nine lives. There ain’t a member of the Saints who isn’t convinced he’s Satan. You fuck up even slightly in Socia’s organization and you die. No outs. No compromises. The Saints think they’re in a holy war.”

  “And the Avengers?”

  “Oh, they’re dedicated. Don’t doubt that. But, push come to shove, enough of them die, they’ll back down. Roland’s going to lose. Bank on it. Couple years from now, it might be a different story, but he’s too green right now.” He looked down at his cold coffee and grimaced. “What time is it?”

  Angie looked at her watch. “Eleven.”

  “Hell, it’s noon somewhere,” he said. “I need alcohol.” He stood up, dropped some coins on the table. “Come on, kids.”

  I stood. “Where?”

  “There’s a bar around the corner. Lemme buy you a drink before the war.”

  The bar was small, cramped, and the black rubber tile on the floor smelled of stale beer and wet soot and sweat. It was one of those paradoxes that are common in this city—a white Irish bar in a black neighborhood. The men who drank here had been drinking here for decades. They walled themselves up inside with their dollar drafts and their pickled eggs and their frozen attitudes and pretended the world outside hadn’t changed. They were construction workers who’d been working within the same five-mile radius since they got their union cards because something’s always being built in Boston; they were foremen from the docks, from the General Electric plant, from Sears and Roebuck. They chased cut-rate whiskey with impossibly cold beer at eleven o’clock in the morning and watched a videotape of the Notre Dame-Colorado Orange Bowl from last New Year’s.

  When we entered, they glanced at us long enough to assess our color, then resumed their argument. One of them was up on his knees atop the bar, pointing at the screen, counting some of the players. He said, “There, they got eight on the defense alone. Fucking eight. You tell me again about Notre Dame.”

  The bartender was an old-timer with slightly fewer scars on his face than Devin. He had the bored, opaque face of someone who’s definitely heard it all and made up his mind about most of it years ago. He raised a tired eyebrow at Devin. “Hey, Sarge, what can I get you?”

  “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,” someone by the TV said. “Count ’em again.”

  “Fuck you—count ’em again. You count ’em.”

  Devin said, “What’s the thrust of the intellectual discourse at the other end of the bar?”

  The bartender wiped the bar in front of us as we sat down. “Roy—the guy on the bar—he claims Notre Dame’s the better team because they got less niggers. They’re counting to decide.”

  “Hey, Roy,” someone yelled, “the fucking quarterback’s a nigger. How white can the Fighting Irish be?”

  Angie said, “If I wasn’t used to this, I’d be embarrassed.”

  Devin said, “We could shoot ’em all, maybe get a medal for it.”

  I said, “Why waste the bullets?”

  The bartender was waiting. Devin said, “Oh, sorry, Tommy. Three drafts and a shot.”

  Someone less familiar with him might have assumed he’d ordered for the three of us. I wasn’t fooled. “A draft,” I said.

  Angie said, “Me too.”

  Devin hammered a box of unopened cigarettes against his wrist, then removed the wrapping. He took one, offered the pack. Angie took another. I resisted. With pain, as always.

  At the other end of the bar, Roy—his pale, hairy belly spilling out of a sweaty blue softball shirt—was banging his finger off the TV faster than tapped Morse code on a sinking ship. “One nigger, two, three, four, five…six, another makes seven, eight, nine. Nine and that’s just the offense. Buffaloes my ass. Colorado Spearchuckers.”

  Someone laughed. Someone always does.

  I said, “How do these fucks stay alive in this neighborhood?”

  Devin considered the jar of pickled eggs. “I have a theory about that.” Tommy set the three beers in front of him, placed the shot beside them, went back for ours. The shot disappeared down Devin’s throat before I saw him pick it up. He wrapped a hand around one of the frosted mugs, downed half a pint before he spoke again. “Cold,” he said. “My theory is this—people like that, you got two choices: you either kill ’em or you let ’em be, because you’ll never change their minds. I figure the folks in this neighborhood are just too tired to kill ’em.” He polished off the rest of his first beer. He still had half a cigarette and two of his drinks were gone.

  I always feel like a Chevette with a bad tire chasing a Porsche when I try to keep up with Devin at a bar.

  Tommy placed two beers in front of Angie and me, poured another shot into Devin’s shot glass.

  Angie said, “My father used to come to this bar.”

  Devin inhaled the second shot sometime while I blinked. “Why’d he stop?”

  “He died.”

  Devin nodded. “That’d do it, sure.” He started on his second pint. “Your old man, Kenzie, the hero fireman, he come to places like this?”

  I shook my head. “He drank at Vaughn’s on Dot Avenue. Only place he went. Used to say, ‘A man who ain’t faithful to his bar ain’t much better than a woman.’”

  “A real prince, his father,” Angie said.

  “Never met the man,” Devin said. “Saw that picture though. Two kids from a burning tenth floor.” He whistled and drank the rest of his second pint. “Tell you what, Kenzie—you got half the balls your old man had, you might live through this.”

  A burst of laughter blew across from the other side of the bar. Roy was pointing at the screen, saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,” doing a little drunken dance on his knees. Soon, they’d start telling AIDS jokes, really bust a gut.

  I thought about what Devin said. “Your concern is touching,” I told him.

  He grimaced, his eyebrows furrowed, the third pint washing down his throat. He put it down, wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin. He said, “Tommy,” and waved his arm like a third-base coach sending the runner home. Tommy came down with two more pints and poured him another shot. Devin held up his hand, downed the shot, and Tommy poured another one. Devin nodded, and he left.

  Devin turned on the stool, looked at me. “Concern?” he said. He chuckled, a graveyard chuckle. “Tell you what concern changes—nothing. I’m concerned that this city’s going to rip itself apart this summer. Won’t stop it from happening. I’m concerned too many kids are dying too young over sneakers and hats and five bucks worth of Grade Z cocaine. Guess what though? They’re still dying. I’m concerned that shitheads
like that”—he jerked a thumb down the bar—“are actually allowed to reproduce and raise new shitheads just as stupid as they are, but it doesn’t stop them from mating like rabbits.” He threw back the shot, and I had the feeling I’d be driving him home. He was favoring the right elbow on the bar over the left, taking deeper drags on his cigarette. “I’m forty-three years old,” he said and Angie sighed quietly. “I’m forty-three,” he repeated, “and I got a gun and a badge and I go into gang zones every night and pretend I’m actually doing something, and my concern doesn’t change the fact that I’m not. I slam sledgehammers into doors in projects that smell of things you couldn’t even begin to identify. I go through doors and people shoot at me and children cry and mothers scream and someone gets busted or someone gets killed. And then, then I go home to my shitty little apartment and eat microwave food and sleep until I have to get up and do it again. This,” he said, “is my life.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Angie and she smiled softly, both of us remembering her voice in the chapel the night before. “This is my life?” Lot of people taking stock of their lives these days. Judging by Devin and Angie, I wasn’t sure how bright that was.

  Somebody down the end of the bar said, “Look at that fucking nigger run, though.”

  Roy said, “Of course he can run, moron. Been hightailing it from the po-lice since he was two. Probably thinks that’s a stolen radio under his arm, ’stead of a football.”

  Lots of laughter from the group. Wits, one and all.

  Devin was watching them now, hollow eyes staring from behind the stream of smoke that flowed from his cigarette. He took a drag from it, the fat forgotten ash tipping forward and dropping to the bar. He didn’t seem to notice, even though half of it hit his arm. He downed the rest of his pint and stared at the group and I had the feeling there was going to be some property damage.

  He stubbed out his cigarette halfway and stood up. I reached out my hand, stopping three inches from his chest. “Devin.”

  He pushed it away like it was a subway turnstile and walked down the bar.