“Yeah, your boys. Chango’s got himself a little twist around here. She’s a PR, but she lives over in your turf.”
“I don’t know any names,” I said. “But we know a guy who flies Mystic Dragon colors has a girl around here. He comes and goes. Whenever he wants. Nobody ever bothers him.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Baron James said. “Only, it wasn’t. Chango, he’s going to make it. But he got hurt pretty bad.”
“Shot?”
“Stomped,” Baron James said. “Wasn’t no fair one, either. No challenge, nothing. He said he was just cutting through the lot when he got piled on.”
“It wasn’t any of my—”
“You Vikings, you going to pull something like that, you should’ve left those jackets at home,” he said. He reached over and rubbed the back of his fingers against where my name was. “Nice,” he said.
“Look,” I said, being reasonable. “You know a club like ours, we’d never start anything with—”
“Oh, I don’t think it was your club,” he said. “We thought it was your club, there wouldn’t be no Royal Vikings, now. No, what we figure is, it was a couple of members of your club. See the difference?”
“No,” I said. I took out my pack of smokes, held it out toward Baron James — I wanted him to see my hand wasn’t shaking. I was a little surprised when he took one. I lit us both up from my lighter.
Baron James took a deep drag. Then he said, “Difference is, a club makes a move, it has to be approved, am I right? The president has to give his okay.”
“Unless it’s—”
“This wasn’t no self-defense,” he said. “Don’t even try to run that.”
“I wasn’t saying—”
“And, if it’s not approved, that means the boys went freelance. Now, if that was one of the Mystic Dragons, anybody who would try a breakaway move like that, he’d be disciplined, understand?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s all we’re asking for,” he said. “A little discipline.”
“But none of our—”
“Only thing is,” he said, talking right over me, “we’d kind of like to do the discipline ourselves. I mean, you do whatever you think needs to be done. But, when that’s over, we get our turn. Fair enough?”
“If one of the Vikings did anything like that, I would—”
“Not one,” Baron James said. “At least two. Probably three, but we’ll settle for two.”
“Who are you saying jumped your man?”
“I just told you,” he said.
“You said Vikings,” I said. I knew if I backed off, even a little, we were all done. “I asked you which ones?”
“How would Chango know your boys?”
“Well, you said—”
“I said Vikings. I didn’t say which ones. That’s for you to find out. And deal with.”
“There’s no way any of—”
“This here is Wednesday,” Baron James said. His voice was soft, but it was ice cold. “We give you until Sunday night. Now, your boys, they seen us talking for a while now. Seen us talking like men. No screaming and yelling. Calm and cool, am I right? So when you go on back, what you tell them is, the Mystic Dragons thinking about making you Vikings an affiliate club. You know what that is?”
“Yeah. But I thought you guys only took—”
“Times are changing,” Baron James said. “This color thing, it put a lot of good men in the ground. And a lot more in the penitentiary. There ain’t no money in it. The Mystic Dragons, we got plans. There’s all kinds of rackets going on in the city, and we’re going to take our place, soon enough. This is a big city, and we entitled to our piece of it.
“Now, the only way we make the right people listen is behind numbers. Big numbers. What we got to do is consolidate,” he said, like he loved the word. “We can’t be fighting each other all the time; what we get out of that? So, that’s what you tell your boys.”
“But you’re not really...”
“What I just tell you, that’s the stone truth,” Baron James said. “Everybody be doing this, you see soon enough. Even the China-boys, way downtown, they stepping past color when it come to business. Us, too. We reaching out to the little clubs... no offense... to bring them in. You don’t get to be Mystic Dragons, but you get to be with us, you understand?”
“I think I do.”
“But you know the rules,” he said. “And the toll you got to pay. You got to give us the boys who stomped Chango.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew more was coming.
“Sunday night,” Baron James said, “we pull up to the curb, just like now. We get out, just like now. You walk over to us, just like now. Only, Sunday night, you have two men with you. The ones we want.” Baron James looked at me. His eyes were green — I never saw that on a colored before. “Everybody gets in the car,” he said. “The car takes off. Later, when you come back, you president of an official Mystic Dragons affiliate.”
Baron James leaned in, close to me. “Only, when you come back, you come back alone.”
5.
We started that same night. First, I put out the word — all the Royal Vikings had to come in, emergency. Then I questioned every single one of the boys.
Little Augie and Bunchie helped me. Sammy, too. I knew it couldn’t have been any of those three, because they had all been with me the night Chango got stomped.
Everybody denied doing it. I expected that. What I didn’t expect was that I couldn’t tell which one was lying, the way I usually can.
Even in our own little piece of the city, you didn’t see Royal Vikings out by themselves too often. We had our clubhouse, the candy store, the corner; that was about it. The school had dances at night, sometimes, but that was too far out of our territory for anyone to go alone. And, if you did go alone, it would take a lot of heart to fly colors. Sammy might do it, or Little Augie, but not the rest, I didn’t think.
And Baron James had said it was at least two men.
The clubhouse had a back room. We used it for initiations, and for when we got the debs to come down. That night, we used it for the interrogations.
We all suspected these particular two boys might be guilty. They were real tight with each other, partners, and we figured they might be plotting to move up in the organization. But even after Sammy hurt one of them pretty bad, they wouldn’t admit anything.
By Friday night, I knew I wouldn’t have anyone I could give to Baron James.
6.
I got my men together, and I told them how it had to be. I talked for a long time before I was finished.
“What happens to us?” Little Augie asked. He was talking to me, but I knew he was speaking for the whole club.
“The Mystic Dragons don’t know any of our real names,” I said. “Not even mine. Just ‘Hawk.’ The first thing, the jackets have to go. I mean, burn them. The Royal Vikings are done. Once this is over, the only one the Mystic Dragons are going to be looking for is me.”
“You sure you want to—?” Sammy said.
“What choice is there?” I told them. “I’m not going to play Judas on guys who didn’t do anything. If we want to keep our little piece, here, we’d have to go to war against the Mystic Dragons. That’s crazy; we’d all be wiped out in a day. I’m the president; I know what I have to do. I got people in Chicago. Soon as it’s done, that’s where I’ll go.”
“The hell with that,” Little Augie said. “Just go. Tonight.”
Little Augie was a good man. I was sorry to lie to him about having people in Chicago. But the whole club was there when I was talking, and I wasn’t sure of them all. I knew the Mystic Dragons would be around right after I took off, asking questions, and I couldn’t take a chance that one of them wouldn’t turn rat, if they got scared enough.