I hate the subway. I dislike Brooklyn and its meat shriveling women. It’s why I like and work in Queens, the sleaziest, sexiest borough of the five. So I figure there’s no coincidence in my needing to hit the trains on this whole Faustian pack thing. So do you want to explain to me again, oops, you never explained in the first place, why Brooklyn?
Well, Staten Island would be better, but it’s easier to get to Brooklyn to get you mugged.
Yeah, and now about that too. I’ve always thought the object of the game was to avoid it.
Usually it is, but we need to feed, and we don’t have the positron juice to kick us around the STG fabric.
Huh?
Space-Time-Gravitation.
Sorry. Don’t mind me, I’m still the new guy.
In more ways than one. You are an experiment.
Wouldn’t you guys have been off with a lab rat? Or maybe one of the millions of people that China seems to have to spare?
Look. Stop wasting energy. To make the story short, you were about the best of a rather bad lot. And believe me, nobody was bubbling over with ecstasy at the prospect. Get in the fucking train. We need to find somebody who’ll try to kill you.
I like that try word. What’s the plan if we get lucky and run into someone who happens to be good at it?
I guess we’ll have to train him on the spot. But remember, you worked with Dirty Pancho. You know the drill. Let the fuck in with the same welcome Afghanistan provides for any invader across its centuries of history. Just when they think they’ve won, end it.
You knew about Dirty Pancho?
Does Michael Jackson know his way around a little boy?
Ouch.
Time’s wasting, Buy a bottle of Colt forty five and let’s get down there.
I don’t drink anymore.
It’s cosmetic. Got a couple of twenties handy too, right?
I’ll have one and change after the booze.
Good enough.
Paper bagged purchase in hand, we descend into the pit.
You’re going to take the G and bump into the L at Lorimer street. Then it’s Rockaway Parkway bound, till I say so.
I see where this is going.
Listen, we better be quick about this one. When that pinky of yours looks healthy it’s back to-
We don’t talk place. Ten Commandments are nothing but a formality with lip service due next to going back there.
That’s the Darius Wheeler III I want to hear talking.
Am I correct in guessing that door number one is I’m going to be wearing this swill in the not too distant future?
After we make the transfer.
I got it. Harmless.
Like a Cobra.
So here I am a Lottery millionaire and I have be an even lower life than ever, huh?
For the moment. And anyway, irony is a lot more than a literary device. It’s the condition of all who lose their innocence.
I’m getting that sinking feeling.
Don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of time to think about it after we pull this off.
So, what’s the plan, Stan?
Actually simple enough. Jump off the L somewhere around Montrose Ave, take a bath in Colt 45, and then stagger around the neighborhood asking, "Who’s the nigger with the best crack?" We should have somebody bagged and tagged in under a half hour.
That’s cold.
It should work though. Cowards are good eating. The fear and greed should get us up to full charge in no time, and then we can hit the STG fabric, and clear sailing.
I don’t smoke crack.
Just give it away. Call it giving back to the community.
You should be mayor. Then do I get to boink Cleopatra?
Ah, shit, we can do better than that. But whatever you want will be fine.
Then in case, let’s rescue Monica!
You can do better.
I can do worse too. Call me a romantic asshole. I love her.
Romantic asshole it is then. We’re at Lorimer Street. Time to switch to the L. It’s show time.
From Lorimer onward, the L train turns into a recruiting station for jail fodder. Kids often make their colors with a first slashing, or some other such fun little first low grade felony. You get hit by a pack then. I really hope we make it up to the street where I can nail a thug or a dealer. I’m a little queasy about feeding on the young, however vicious the youth in question may be.
Three stops into the ride in walks a swaggering crew of about eight. We’re just past the rush hour and the car is virtually empty, but for about six shattered looking men and women staring at their feet, dazed from some overtime menial horror. A case study in the New York ethnic rainbow of drudgery.
The crew blows right past them. They’re all in white do rags but for the oldest, who also happens to be the biggest by far. At about six feet tall he looks to me the size of a small house. He‘s built like he could move refrigerators for a living, but he walks with the predatory delicacy of leopard.
When he sits down in the seat across from me like a Sultan awaiting his entertainment, I feel a knot deep in the pit of my stomach. His thick ebony lips curl into a thin half smile, and he deliberately holds his gaze on me. His bullet shaped mahogany face has a jagged scar running from right cheekbone down to his chin.
Two of the crew sit at either side like eager little trained puppies. The other five form a half circle around him. Jostling, shouting, and crudely joking with giddy bravado. The world may be waiting to eat them alive before they are thirty, but right now, like a blushing bride, this is their day, and they own this car. And I see furtive glances darting my way. I wonder if I’m imagining quick second takes on the bagged, unopened Colt 45 Malt Liquor in my lap.
Above the clatter of the train, about all I cam make out are isolated "fucking, niggah, and bitch faggot. Noble concepts never so elegantly expressed.
"I be thirsty man. How ’bout you Shabazz?"
&#Motherfuckah, I be thirsty too. How come they ain’t got no water on this mothafuckah train? All the money goes into this bullshit, and they can’t hook a brother with water?"
An eruption of knowing, scornful laughter from volcanoes of ignorance. A volcano that’s got me trapped in the lava flow. Then the inevitable.
"Hey, white guy! Is that beer?"
"No. Actually it’s Colt Forty Five." Nothing to lose. I extract the quart and hold it like Lady Liberty with her torch. Often the best way to get get nothing to happen is to make it look too easy. Maybe I’m an undercover cop. I see two of them shoot in opposite directions to check the doors at each end of the car. Not good. Theoretical bluff called. Their move.
One of the younger ones turns around, a lanky five foot eight. Chiseled African cheek bones and a broad flat hunter’s nose. His smile displays perfect even teeth. A young ebony wolf.
"You be drinking niggah water! What’s a white boy doing with a forty o on the train. Don’t we got laws against that?" Saying nothing will not work.
"No law broken yet, bro. I haven’t opened it yet."
"You be talking law. You must have gone to Harvard. You one of the Kennedy’s?"
"I bet he’s at least Irish. He drink cheap liquor and he be fish belly pale." Another wolf chimes in.
"Hey man, can you give me some of your beer?"
"Sure man. Let me open it for you. I feel like partying too. No five oh here." Fair warning, guy. I talk the talk, and I’ve walked the walk. But he’s reaching into his baggy jeans. I feel an impending moment of truth.
I unscrew the cap and spill some on my, then I toss him the bottle. Catches him off guard. He was taking out a screwdriver. He drops it when he goes to make the catch.
Say goodnight Rasheed, or whatever your name is. I’m already on my feet and my two fingered right hand has shot over his hands cupped around the Colt Forty Five and has made a direct thrust into his throat. His eyes are wide open. His mouth is in a perfect circle of surprise. It’s over.
He’s flat on his back and never going to breath again. The train has just arrived at a station. The crew vaporizes. I watch his eyes brim with terror as he suffocates on his own throat. Chest spasms. I see the tell tale purple wisp spiral from his nose. I straddle him and inhale the psychic essence deeply. It’s quenching effect is sublime and ecstatic. I lose any sense of even being, much less being here in this squalid graveyard of the senses. It passes. I glimpse my pinky and it is radiant amethyst. Good to go!
I look up and see before me the defiance of all the odds that define the great urban gamble. Two very big, very black cops must have just walked into the car. The larger, and blacker of the two looms over me with a terrifying sneer. He’s wearing a Sergeant’s bars. Then he looks over at his partner.
"Jesus, get a camera. We got a victim trying to save a perp’s life. Get off that scumbag will you?"
I’m on my feet in obedient mode. He glances over at the screwdriver with contempt. I’ll bet he regards every black criminal as a personal insult. He leans down and touches the carotid.
"This one’s moot." A voice sandpapered with disgust.
He looks at me and holds the gaze. There is century’s worth of moment’s hesitation. The train is pulling into another station. He glances at his partner, who’s reaching for his cuffs. The Sergeant throws a hand up to a stopping gesture with a condescending flourish.
"Get out of here. This shit isn’t worth anybody’s time."
I am up the stairs and on the street in a blur. I do a little circle on the corner checking the street sign and trying to figure out where I even am. But it does not matter. With the positron pump now in good order, I am everywhere.
If I weren’t so worried about Monica! I believe I’d be dropping in on old Cleopatra just about now.