Theo could understand that. At least he wanted to understand. It wasn’t easy to stand by and watch his brother pass up a golden opportunity to prove himself innocent, clear his name, get the bloodhounds on somebody else’s trail. Not after losing four years on death row for someone else’s crime. It took balls to stand up to a homicide detective that way, to look the demon in the eye and say, “You want me? Come get me.” Theo admired that in his brother. Actually, they were a lot alike in that respect. The Knight brothers were never the ones to back down from anyone or anything, never afraid to butt heads with their worst nightmares. With one exception. There was one demon Theo had never confronted. He’d never gone back to that all-night convenience store where he’d found that clerk in a puddle of blood.
’Bout damn time you did.
Theo remembered the way. He drove the exact route they’d taken that night, last night it seemed, or was it a million years ago?
It was nine o’clock in the evening, much earlier than his disastrous visit at 4 A.M., just as dark but much more traffic. The street was freshly paved, and there was a new median down the middle. Public works had planted a few palm trees to pretty-up the neighborhood, not the towering and beautiful royal palms or the Canary Island date palms you saw on wide boulevards cutting through tony Coral Gables, just the straggly, brown variety that got planted for no other reason than to shut people up whenever they bitched and moaned about the lack of green space in their neighborhood. So after all these years, they finally got the weed palms, sickly looking trees plucked from somewhere in the Everglades, one or two puny fronds reaching aimlessly for the sky like Alfalfa’s haircut, their trunks propped up by two-by-fours and covered top to bottom with gang graffiti, clearly some bureau crat’s idea of landscaping.
Theo turned at the traffic light. The pool hall was gone, the whole building boarded up and scorched around the edges, the fire probably caused by a careless cigarette or more likely the owner’s dumb-ass refusal to make good on a gambling debt. The gas station was still on the corner, but the new self-serve pumps looked like something out of The Jetsons compared to the old equipment Theo remembered. And Theo did remember. He’d forgotten nothing, having gone over that night many times in his mind while lying alone on a prison bunk. But just the thought of actually retracing his steps had his heart pounding.
He parked the car and switched off the radio. The music had been playing loudly that night, as he recalled, until they parked behind the convenience store, where Lionel, the gang leader, gave him his instructions and started the initiation.
“You want to be a Grove Lord or don’t you?”
“Shit, yeah.”
“You got five minutes to prove it. Then I’m gone, wit or wit’out you.”
Theo got out of the car and shut the door, his head clear of alcohol this time yet clouded with so many memories, so many doubts.
Loose gravel on the pavement crunched beneath his feet as he started down the alley. He was approaching the store from the back, just as he had before. It was a solitary journey, the passageway narrow and dark, brightened only by the streetlight at the front entrance. He’d sprinted up this alley the last time, but tonight he walked, absorbing the details. The dirty bricks on the walls on either side of him, the cracks in the pavement beneath his feet, the sound of the traffic somewhere ahead of him. He reached the sidewalk and turned left, toward the entrance to Shelby’s, except that it wasn’t called Shelby’s anymore. The sign on the door said MORTON’S MARKET. Theo had heard that old man Shelby had sold it. He couldn’t take it anymore, his business off badly from all the talk on the street about that poor nineteen-year-old kid who got beat to death by that black piece of shit from Liberty City and his pocket-size crowbar.
“Got a buck, bro’?” asked the homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk outside the entrance.
“Get you on the way out,” said Theo, and then he stopped at the glass doors. He remembered the butterflies in his stomach the last time he’d come here, how relieved he was to see no one inside the store, the cash register unattended. It was a little different at this hour, two customers inside that he could count, the clerk seated at the counter and watching ESPN on the little television. But everything else looked virtually identical, the aisles configured the same way, the same beige tile floors, the beer and snack foods stacked the same way near the entrance. It may have been called Morton’s Market, but he was going back to Shelby’s.
He pushed the door open and walked inside.
The clerk glanced over his shoulder, checked him out, then turned his attention back to the television. Theo walked around the stack of newspapers and the barrel of iced-down singles. The clerk didn’t give him a second look. Theo Knight, former death row inmate, had just walked into the store, and the kid didn’t seem to care. Did he know what had happened here? Had anyone told him?
Have you been in that stockroom?
Theo stopped and looked down the hall, his gaze carrying him all the way back to that first sight of blood, the bright crimson trail that he’d followed like a fool, followed all the way to Florida State Prison and four years of near misses with the electric chair.
The front door opened. Theo turned, the clerk’s head jerked. Two teenage boys walked in. Both were black. Both wore baggy pants, Miami Hurricane football jerseys, thick gold chains, and black knit caps, which seemed to have replaced the backward baseball caps of Theo’s era, even in the tropical climates. They walked with the typical gang swagger, something that never seemed to change from one generation to the next. This time, the clerk looked nervous. The boys separated. One went down the far aisle, the other took the near aisle. Up and down they walked, as if casing the place, biding their time until the customers had the good sense to leave them alone with the clerk and the cash drawer.
Theo watched them. This time he wasn’t going to run. I’m here for you, pal.
Finally, the nearest one burst into laughter. The other laughed even harder, no apparent reason, some kind of private joke that was at the expense of Theo or the scared clerk. Either way, Theo didn’t like it, and they were starting to piss him off.
Their laughter faded; the joke was over. The one who’d laughed first grabbed a couple of Gatorades from the cooler, walked up to the counter, and laid down his money. The clerk still looked nervous, but it was no longer a fear of the unknown but rather the fear of a danger that was all too familiar. He handed over the change and said, “Thanks, Lenny.”
“I’m Leroy, dumbshit. Lenny’s the ugly one.”
Theo watched as the two boys walked out the front door, laughing and hassling each other. “Who you calling ugly, motha’ fucka’?”
Then they were gone, on to the next joint, no place in particular. Lenny and Leroy, like Theo and Tatum. Teenage brothers. Couple of neighborhood badasses who got their kicks just skulking around and watching people scare. Looked alike. Dressed alike. Acted alike. People always getting them mixed up, confusing one for the other.