CHAPTER 01:

MONEY AIN’T A THANG

Getting out of prison felt different this time. Not that tired, ex-con bullshit about flying straight and keeping legit. Fuck that noise. I mean, I had a strategy, a definite plan, and it was simple. Legal too. Legit even. It involved forming a corporation, keeping books, paying taxes. But that didn’t mean I was a good guy now. Why would it? I wasn’t a born-again Christian, a Muslim, or even just tired of crime. It was that the rackets had never been that good to me. Not enough to justify the sacrifice. The rackets hadn’t been practical.

Don’t get me wrong: I had my moments. Scores where you hauled so much cash your eyes watered. Hell, I had one five- year era where the crib was sweet, the rides were mint, and the green just kept on flowing. I juggled females and got backslapped by every bouncer in every hot club.

But that turned out to be a mirage. Mostly, my life of crime had turned up dust. I was slipping through my thirties and the only thing I had to show was a criminal record, scars, and some dirty stories to tell. That, and a little over forty thousand dollars in cold, hard cash that I’d stacked running reefer out of my cell during the second half of a dime, a ten-year bid at Stateville Correctional Center, in Crest Hill, near Joliet, Illinois.

The forty large was strapped to my body, my gut. It felt like a part of me. I intended to walk out of the main gate, find my way to Miami, and invest it all with a friend who was starting a record label. We were gonna make salsa records. Good ones. Not the commercial crap that’s been killing the genre.

First I had to sneak the money out of the prison compound. It wouldn’t be easy. Hiding a nut like forty thousand when you’re incarcerated is like trying to cover an elephant with a washcloth. Somehow I pulled it off.

I checked the mirror and gave the money belt one last tug. It didn’t show. Not under my shirt and my new army field jacket. I winked at my reflection to get the nerves down.

The final pat-down on my way out was the main hurdle. I’d already undergone a strip search and retrieved the money belt after dressing.

My escort arrived. He was a new guard I hadn’t gotten to know yet.

“Thanks for coming, Officer.”

“Save it, skell. Move.”

New guards always feel they have something to prove. I picked up my small suitcase, breathed, and took that final march.

The red-haired guard, who I knew too well, chewed gum, lazylike. It was still morning, but already he sounded tired.

“Arms up, Santiago.” He began a slow pat-down.

I held my breath. The red-haired guard had been greased, and so had his supervisor, but you never know. Red let his pudgy fingers linger over the money belt.

“What’s this?”

I swallowed.

“Put on a couple pounds, did we?” He flashed his bleeding gums. “Must’ve been all that high living you did at the taxpayers’ expense.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nothin’ but juicy steaks and red wine up in here.”

“Save the sarcasm, Santiago. Turn around.”

I did.

Red finished the charade and gestured to the guards behind the mesh. “This one’s clean.”

They buzzed me through. One guard was busy putting up Halloween cutouts of witches and black cats with arched backs. I said, “It’s a little early for that,” but she ignored me. A corrections officer with a receding Afro went down a checklist:

“Santiago? Eduardo?”

“Yes.”

“Recite your number.”

I did.

“Eye color?”

“Brown.”

“Hair color?”

“Brown.”

“Height?”

“Six even.”

“Weight?”

“Two-fifteen.”

He looked me up and down.

“All right, two-thirty-five,” I said.

“Better. Stand over there. Toes on the line.”

I stood up straight.

“Look at the red dot. Smile if you want.”

I didn’t. The flash went off.

“Good,” he said. “Talk to Hanks while this thing prints.”

Another guard handed me my discharge papers. He spoke without looking up. “Don’t lose these, Santiago, these are important. Department of Public Health info, so you can get an HIV test.” He examined the next one. “Says here that you been ID’d as alcohol and/or substance dependent. Did those Pre-Start classes help?”

“I feel more reformed already.”

“Anyway, this form is a referral to a treatment program in Chicago. Highly recommend you follow up with that.”

I glanced at the heading on the form and nodded.

The guard inspected everything in front of him. “All right, Santiago, the rest of these forms are self-explanatory. Any questions?”

“None you can answer.”

He smirked.

The photographer handed me a warm piece of plastic. “Here’s your ID then.”

Issued by the Illinois Department of Corrections, it identified me as discharged from state prison. The photo showed the beginning of wrinkles. Little bags under the eyes. Padding under the chin. It had been a while since I had my picture taken.

“You need a better flash for that camera. I look washed- out. Like I got no color.”

The paperwork guard closed my folder. “It’s a temp, Santiago, take it to the secretary of state within thirty days. Cough up a dollar, they’ll give you a state ID. Maybe that one’ll capture your pretty side. Now come on. Sign here, here, and here.”

I did.

And that was it. My debt to society? Paid.

Outside it was the Midwest in autumn: cool air, decaying leaves, clouds, drizzle—the smell of these mixed together. I scanned the parking lot.

A glossy candy apple red Cadillac, one of those long, wide monsters built in the late seventies, idled. It crouched and kept its distance from the prison structure. Heavy metal pulsed behind its tinted windows. I walked toward it.

Antonio Pacheco, aka “Little Tony,” my oldest friend, slid out from behind the steering wheel. Short and thick, he was dressed all in black. The belt of his leather jacket hung loose. He wore driving gloves and black wraparound shades cocked up on his head, even though the clouds were heavy and gray.

Tony whistled. “What up, dawg?”

“¿Qué pasó, loco?”

We hugged, then looked at each other. I hadn’t seen Tony since his release, a couple years earlier. Standing up close now, I noticed his chin was also thick and visible, even though he wore a goatee. He had new wrinkles too. And his hairline headed for the hills. But he still had the dark, serious eyebrows, the deep-set eyes. He smiled. The fucker still had dimples.

“Looking good, kid.”

“Me?” He squeezed my bicep. “How about you? What the fuck have you been doin’, man? Breaking rocks?”

“A little bit.”

A dark green spider clung to the side of Tony’s neck. I flicked it.

“Wicked tattoo,” I said. “Still a gangster, huh?”

“You know it.”

I was happy to see Tony. A month earlier he had sent a messenger, a fine young Negrita who popped her gum and told me Tony needed to see me in Chicago when I got out. He needed my help on something. I had a contraband prepaid cell phone inside, and Tony had the number, but evidently this innocent request was something he did not want a record of. The girl he sent didn’t say shit either.

I was focused on Miami then, and hadn’t planned a detour to Chicago. But I owed Tony enough to listen. Plus, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to spend a couple of weeks roaming the city, reconnecting. Seeing Tony outside the gate now made me feel satisfied that I’d made the right decision.

I smiled. “Tony, did you get my letter?”

He reached in his pocket, pulled a set of keys, and tossed them. “Got you a room in the old hood. Close to North and California. Near the park.”

I looked at the keys and pressed the teeth into my thumb.

“Tell you the truth,” he said, “I don’t know why you spend the money when you can just bunk at my place.”

I pocketed the keys. “Man, I been sharing space for a hundred years.”

“Understood.” Tony grabbed my bag. “Is this it? Where’s the library? I know it don’t all fit in this little thing.”

“I donated most of my books,” I said. “Those pigeons inside need ’em more than I do.”

“And the congas?”

“Gave those away too.”

Tony said, “You committing hari-kari or something?”

“Naw, man, I just felt like I needed a clean break.”

Tony nodded and dropped my bag in the trunk. I read his bumper sticker: GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.

I tapped the Caddy. “You look to be doing all right.”

“I manage.” He produced a pack of Marlboros and shook one toward me.

I put my palm up. “Got nine months free of them shits.”

“Word? Wish I had the balls.” Tony flipped the square into the corner of his mouth, a trick I’d watched him practice a thousand times when we were teenagers, and later, a million times in the yard, the prison laundry, the kitchen, and his cell.

He smoked and squinted at the thirty-three-foot wall that surrounds Stateville. “The fucking ass of hell, huh?”

I nodded. “Remember when you compared it to our version of a frat house?”

“Hey, I was delirious from lack of pussy, all right? I ever say anything like that again, slap me.”

We stood there, in silence, and stared at the top of the wall. Tony got the shivers. “Let’s pull up,” he said. “This place is stomping on my buzz.”

Inside, the Caddy was clean and shiny. It smelled of a coconut-scented air freshener, which was too sweet. A miniature Puerto Rican flag hung from the rearview mirror. On the dashboard a small statue of Saint Judas, the one with the horn, kept watch.

Tony horseshoed the sunglasses around the little statue, made the sign of the cross, and dropped the transmission into drive. The tires slipped and squealed. I gave Stateville the finger as we fishtailed off.

After a minute I said, “It feels strange to ride in a car again.”

Tony said, “Everything in the free world is gonna be like new to you.”

We got on the interstate. I kept checking the speedometer, certain the car was pushing one hundred, but the needle never moved past seventy.

Tony threw Fat Joe on the system and sparked a blunt. “Cuida’o,” he said, handing it over. “This ain’t that bunk you been smoking in Roundhouse.”

I hit it. “Please, Tony, who taught who how to smoke weed?”

But Tony was right, the shit was flame, and more banging than anything on the market inside. Two tokes and the music got tasty, the sky became infinite, and the road stretched to some unseen point beyond the horizon.

Tony slapped my leg. “How the brothers doin’?”

“The same, I guess.”

“Probably gonna cut each other to pieces, now that you’re gone.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I sold my reefer business to Múcaro.”

Tony shook his head. “I give that bug-eyed motherfucker a week before he catches another case behind it.”

“Yeah, or lets the Aryans muscle him out.”

“Exactly.”

“Fuck it,” I said, toking. “That’s his problem now.”

I turned the music down to listen for the wind. It was silent, but visible in the leaves and the flocks of birds that ricocheted like molecules in the turbulence.

Tony glanced over. “So what’s up with your drums, bro? You don’t play no more? I thought I was gonna hear your tumbao.”

It was my intention to buy new congas as part of my business venture. Like an expense. Part of me was eager to tell Tony all about it. But I knew it was too soon. I looked at him.

“I’ll probably pick up some new congas, once I settle in somewhere. I didn’t wanna carry all that weight around. But how about you, Tone? What’re you up to?”

Tony licked the corner of his mouth. “Me? Not much. Got a little crew goin’. Young bucks. You know, can’t tell their tongues from their assholes, but they do the trick.”

Like most men we knew, Tony and I had fallen into gangbanging early on. We started by hanging out with friends from the neighborhood, and before we knew it, we were a crew slinging nickel bags of weed on the corner. Most of our operations had been fairly small-time.

Ever since those early days, it had been Tony’s dream to make the shit more sophisticated, like a Latino version of La Cosa Nostra. Part of it was that Tony was a born schemer and a natural thug. Another part was his fetish for all things Italian. The only book he ever finished was about Lucky Luciano. At least half of Tony’s eight or nine illegitimate kids were, as he put it, “half-Guinea and part Wop.”

I asked Tony a direct question. “So what exactly are you slinging these days?”

“A little bit of everything. Mostly H-ball.”

“Really? You cutting heroin now?”

“Yep. Got a smooth operation going. You’d be surpised: the Hot Corner still gets traffic. I call my shit cornuto. Italian for ‘the horn.’” Tony glanced at me. “Don’t front like You don’t know what’s poppin’.”

Tony knew full well that most of what happens on the street winds its way to the prison grapevine.

I grinned. “You know them hags I did my stir with. Nothing to do inside but gamble, gossip, and smoke.”

“Uh-huh. And talk shit about niggas too.” Tony paused, but I acted like I didn’t realize he was waiting for me to say something.

He cocked his head at me. “So?”

“So what, Tony?”

“What did you hear?”

“About you?” I turned to get a good look at him. “Nothin’ much. Just a couple rumors.”

“Lies, you mean?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, Tone. I heard a really wild one about how you muscled in on Roach’s cut.”

“Oh, Roach’s cut?” Tony nodded like he absorbed it all. He took one last annoyed pull off his cigarette, then ground it into the ashtray. Smoke escaped from the corners of his mouth. “Let me tell you something, Eddie: that business fell into my lap. You understand? I didn’t muscle nobody outta nothin’.”

“No?”

“Fuck no.” Tony shut the music off. “I don’t know what them tricks inside been telling you, Eddie, but—”

“Forget about what you think I heard, Tony. Just tell me the truth.”

“Don’t I always?”

I did not change my expression.

Tony shifted. “Roach must’ve got a bad shipment of Pitorro.”

“What?”

“Pitorro. Puerto Rican moonshine.”

“I know what it means.”

“Well, that’s what Roach calls his dope: ‘Pitorro.’ Maybe he stepped on it with something toxic, I don’t know.”

“Why, what happened?”

“Junkies started droppin’ like panties in a two-dollar whorehouse.”

“ODs?”

“Yup.”

“Only Roach’s customers? Not yours?”

“Nope. Four or five a day, for like a week.”

“A bad batch of Pitorro?”

“Looks like it. Bucketheads on the street started calling it ‘Da Holocaust.’ It was all over the news.”

I knew the news accounts. I read the Sun-Times every day. “You know what I don’t understand, Tony?”

“What?”

“How Roach’s junkies going belly up add up to you walking away with his clientele.”

“Do the math, Eddie.”

“Whyn’t you do it for me, Tone?”

“Junkies wanna live too. Roach’s clients needed a place to cop. Someplace safe. They didn’t wanna drop Pitorro anymore, not if they could help it. Everybody out here knew you shoot that, it’s Russian roulette. Roach tried to rename it, but everybody knew it was from the same source and looked for another shop.”

“So you set up your own franchise?”

“Hey, it’s a free country.”

“Cornuto to the rescue.”

“The fuck you want, Eddie? I saw a market.”

It was exactly what I expected Tony to say. I looked him over. No sweating. No shifting. Tony was a killer at poker.

I sucked my teeth. “So you got no idea who spiked Roach’s supply?”

Tony knew exactly what I was asking. He sniffed. “C’mon, Eddie, you know I don’t play dirty pool.”

I let out a sharp, one-second laugh.

“All right,” said Tony. “Sometimes I play dirty pool. But not this time. You know I’d tell you.”

I wondered. Long as I’d known Tony, I just couldn’t be sure.

“So? How’s the money?”

Tony slanted an eyebrow. “In heroin?”

It was a stupid question.

Tony flicked the gold necklace that hung heavily around his neck. “Like a sweet piece of ass on a Sunday morning.”

Tony’s cell phone rang. He fished it out and flipped it open, secret agent–style. “Yo. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.” He glanced over at me. “Whenever I get there. Quit breaking my balls.” He shut the phone.

I said, “Girlfriend?”

“What?”

“Who was that on the phone?”

Tony hesitated. “Nobody. Customers. Where was I?”

“You were telling me about your business.”

“Right. Anyway, the thing is, right now I got a chance to invest in some serious weight. Brown stuff, the good sticky shit. So pure, you can step on it and restep on it. I’m getting it from some Sicilians. Profits’ll be through the roof.”

“Yeah, Tony? And what about Roach?”

“What about him?”

“How you gonna deal him out?”

Tony tilted his head. “The old-fashioned way, I guess.”

Not smart, I thought. With a big drop in business, Roach was certain to be desperate and more dangerous than ever.

I shook my head. “Tony, aren’t we a little senior for this?”

“For what?”

“Street war. You got beef with Roach right now, and I mean I got your back and everything, but—”

“Hey, Eddie, do I look like I’m asking you to fight my battles?”

“Yeah, Tony, as a matter of fact, you do. I was all set to ride to Miami.”

“Miami? To do what?”

“That girl you sent said you needed my help on something.”

“I do.”

“She made it sound important.”

“It is. But it ain’t got nothing to do with this other shit about Roach. That’s my business. But how come you gotta be so serious? We ain’t seen each other in two years.”

I already knew that Tony had crossed into Roach’s turf. Even a donkey could see that equals street war. For me, it was the most logical thing in the world to expect Tony to ask me to back him up on that. Now it appeared he wanted something else.

“I just wanna know the scheme, Tony. Why did you send for me?”

Tony nodded. “OK. You have a right. But keep an open mind, ’cause this? This shit is over the top.” Tony licked the corner of his mouth. “I need you to muscle with me on another heist.”

“Another what?”

“A heist, bro. A stick job. You, me. Couple other cats. Shotguns and balls. Like the olden days.”

And that’s just how he said it. Like he was talking about baking a cake or putting up some drywall. I should’ve told Tony to drop it right there. To take me to the airport, the bus depot, drop me anywhere. Hell, if I’d have jumped out of the car at seventy miles an hour, I’d have been better off.

But then Tony said, “Listen, we’re talking about a fuckload of money here, papa,” and it was hypnosis. Like seeing your fat aunt’s humongous tit, the dark brown nipple, that time she forgot to lock the bathroom. Or a cat with its guts hanging out.

I licked my bottom lip. “How much is a fuckload?”

“A million. Maybe more.”

“Bullshit.”

“Per man, Eddie. A million dollars per swinging dick on this job.”

“Tony, you been smoking too much of that happy stick.”

“Naw, kid. How you think I’m getting the buy money for that shipment I told you about? That’s at least three quarters of a mill right there.”

“Three quarters of a mill?” Tony had grown up on welfare like the rest of us. Even in our heyday as burglars and coke dealers, we never pulled a six-figure job. And we spent every penny without ever investing. “Tony, who the fuck you know that’s got that much paper lying around?”

“Casinos.”

“Like Las Vegas?”

“Uh-uh. Joliet. Shit’s full of ’em now. Right down the block from Stateville. Big-ass boats on the river.”

I almost laughed. “Tony, you ain’t heisting no friggin’ casino boat.”

“You bet your brown ass I am. Pelón’s got a foolproof plan.”

My jaw muscles tensed. “Pelón? He’s in on this?”

“Of course. He’s the mastermind.”

I took a second to make certain I heard Tony correctly. “Tony, are you telling me you still deal with that prick? Even after that shit he pulled?”

“Like he had a choice? C’mon, you were there, the bullets were flying. You can’t hold that armored-car thing against him forever.”

“Just keep him away from me.”

Tony said, “I ain’t asking you to lick his twat. The man generates paper, and I want in on that.”

“Tony, you do what you want, but do it without me.”

“I told you to have an open mind, Eddie. Pelón’s got a surefire plan this time. He’s cased the boat. He knows which way to go. Wait’ll you see his crib.”

“Tony, you really think you’re gonna walk out of a casino with their loot? Them places got security up the ass. Cameras watch everything.”

“That ain’t stoppin’ us.”

“No? What, Pelón figure a way to make your ass invisible?”

Tony didn’t come back.

“Fill me in, Tone. What’s this master plan?”

Tony kept silent. The wipers ticked and a thousand beads of rainwater streaked across the surface of the windshield. Tony shifted in his seat.

“I can’t do it, Eddie.”

“You can’t do what?”

“I can’t give away the store like that.”

Tony lit a cigarette and blew a thick stream of smoke, which crashed against the windshield and spread in an uneven circle. Then he turned on the radio and flipped through the stations.

I looked at him. “Tony, are you holding out on me?”

He looked over. “You know that ain’t how it is. Pelón said mum’s the word. Not unless you come on board. I already said too much.”

I knew this made Tony uncomfortable. He was sentimental, and he thought of me as his best friend. He probably worried that I felt betrayed.

I shook my head. “Pelón’s jerking your chain, kid.”

“No he isn’t.”

“Sure he is. You’re buying his loada crap, and you don’t even know what’s underneath.”

“You think I’m that stupid, Eddie?”

“Aren’t you?”

It was a left jab, light, but square on the chin, calculated to shake Tony loose. Maybe he’d spill more info. But he didn’t flinch. I had come prepared to discuss a street war. To let Tony know that I wasn’t gangbanging anymore, how much it bored me. I was not prepared to talk about a heist of any kind. I retreated.

“Tony, this is silly. Let’s just drop it.”

“Good.”

“I’ll take it up with Pelón myself. If he’s got the guts to face me.”

“That’s fine. He wants to talk to you.”

“I’ll bet he does. But like I said, he’s feeding you a load.”

Tony scrunched his shoulders. “¡Coño, man! I thought the shit was dropped?”

We rode in silence for a while. Tony sparked another joint and switched the CD to a classic, Lo Mato by Willie Colón. I thought about the wild things that poured out of Tony’s mouth: Pitorro. Cornuto. Money. Big shipments. Shotguns and balls.

But then I got high again and all I could think about was the poetry of the lyrics, the menace and melancholy of the music, trombone, the spell-casting voice of Héctor Lavoe.

And that’s when it hit me: I was out. I was outside. I was in the open. I was free. No bars. No walls to contain me. I could choose my own direction. I was not restrained. The emotion of that moment rose. I shut my eyes and let it swell.

After a moment Tony said, “Yo, I know you must be ready to bust a nut, though.”

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Brother, it’s been so long, I get solid if I blink too much.”

Tony laughed. “Relief is on the way, maestro. Chicago’s a pussy buffet.”

“I ain’t sweating that.”

Tony smirked. “Yeah you are.”

It was true that a strange feeling had begun to invade me in the months prior to my release. Not the raw lust that Tony was talking about, although that was always there. Something else. A hunger maybe. Consciousness of emptiness. The sense that I had missed out by never getting married, never starting a family, never letting a woman get close. The day that I received Tony’s messenger in the visiting area, I saw another inmate kiss his wife with such passion, it almost hurt. It was their one weekly visit, their only weekly kiss hello, and they meant it. I realized then that there had always been something unnatural about being alone. Like Adam by himself in the Garden. I didn’t say any of this to Tony.

I cracked my knuckles. “Yeah, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of skirts to chase. Right now I’m just looking forward to being able to go for a walk.”

We rode in silence. After a while the skyline came into view.

Tony nodded. “My kind of town.” He switched the CD to “When the Levee Breaks,” by Led Zeppelin. “Still my first love,” he said. “Rock and roll.”

Ahead of us, Chicago spread like a multicolored fire on the plain. Giant buildings reached for something they could never know. And above them were the black and purple clouds. They hung like bunting over the unsuspecting city.

Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Serrano