Karl’s gang was the Skins. The Skins were every bit as tough as the black gangs and the Hispanic gangs and the Vietnamese gangs, and they made sure that everybody knew it. When they moved into an area, resplendent in their purple Dacron jackets, with their skull tattoos and pierced eyebrows and buzz-cut hair, everybody with any sense quietly found another place to go. Even the other gangs mostly steered clear of Skins turf.
Johnny had done a little boosting, some drugs, but wasn’t in any of the gangs yet. He didn’t really like what drugs did to his head, but it kept him cool with the other high-school kids, and his school was one where it was not wise to stand out.
Karl disapproved: He wanted Johnny to fly straight and grow up to be somebody, not some punk-ass low-life criminal like him. He was constantly telling Johnny to stay out of trouble. You’ve got some brains, he said. You’ve got something on the ball. You don’t want to end up as just another one of the dead-enders and burned-out crackheads in the projects. But Karl was a hotshot gangbanger himself, and, although he did everything he could to discourage Johnny, he was the only role model that Johnny had.
Johnny was a sophomore in high school, not flunking out, exactly, but he was careful not to get grades that would get him noticed.
Weasel was a year older than the rest of Johnny’s buddies; he’d been held back in school. He had a driver’s license already, and a car. On that Thursday night, they had driven into Brooklyn, into a neighborhood where they wouldn’t be recognized. They’d cruised by the storefront three times, checking it out. It closed up at midnight, and the car was idling at the end of the block, the four of them sitting inside smoking and talking, waiting for the cash register to get full.
“I don’t know,” Johnny said. “I tell you what, you wanna just go back, pick up some girls, maybe get high?”
“You crazy? No way,” Weasel said. “You gotta do it, man. You ain’t chickening ’cause you’re a fag, are you?”
Fishface gave him the gun.
Johnny shoved it in his waistband. He didn’t feel very good. The smoke was beginning to make him light-headed. He didn’t have to use the gun; he could just show it, and the guy would open the register right up. He definitely wasn’t going to use it.
A simple transaction: Johnny would show him the gun, and the cashier would give him the money in the register. Easy. Anybody could do it.
“So what’cha waiting for, pussy?” Fishface said.
He opened the door, took a deep breath, and pulled his T-shirt out over the gun to keep it from being quite so noticeable. The air was a relief from the stale, smoky air in the car, but he barely noticed. He walked the quarter block to the store.
The store on the corner had bars over the dirty glass window. A glowing orange worm in the window flickered UDWEISER. He stopped at the counter by the cash register. It sold Lotto tickets, cigarette lighters in the shape of buxom women, gum, condoms, and cigarettes.
After a moment, the cashier—who was also the owner—looked up and said, “You want to buy cigarettes, you better show some ID.”
He pushed the shirt over the handle of the gun, exposing it. “I don’t—”
I don’t want anybody to get hurt, is what he’d started to say, but he didn’t get that far.
The man said, “Shit!” He reached under the counter and pulled out a shotgun.
Johnny had to shoot, there wasn’t any choice. He didn’t even have time to think, but only to grab the gun and fire. At the same time the shotgun went off with an incredible concussion, and Johnny thought, I’m dead. A rack of Stolichniya behind him blew apart, spraying him with shards of glass and vodka. Johnny’s shot hit the owner and jerked him backward. A small bubble of blood appeared in his chest and popped. He dropped the shotgun, a surprised expression on his face.
Johnny dropped his gun and ran.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A simple transaction. His buddies were waiting with the car, but even in the confusion of the moment, Johnny realized that going to the car would be stupid; the sounds of the shots had certainly drawn attention, and they could track down Weasel easily enough from the license plate.
He ran down the street and into an alley, jumped up and caught the lower rung of a fire escape, then across two roofs and then down into a subway and over the turnstile. No train on the platform, so he ran up again and outside. Three Mocks away, and the Pitkin Avenue A train was waiting at the elevated platform. He ran onto it, panting, and changed to the F train at Jay Street. Only when the train had pulled out, when he could see he wasn’t being followed, did his heart stop racing.
His efforts to avoid being tracked had been useless. A bystander had noticed the car full of a gang of teenage delinquents loitering in front of the convenience store when the shots were heard, and written down the plate number when it had sped off.
And there had been a security camera.
When Weasel had returned, police had already been waiting for him. Half of the neighborhood watched as they took him to the station for questioning.
“You moron,” Karl said. “What the hell kind of trouble are you in this time? Spill it, asshole.”
Johnny didn’t have any real choice. He’d never been able to keep anything from his older brother anyway. He told him the whole story.
“Shit,” Karl said. “You sure do know how to pick friends, you. That asshole Weasel’s no friend of yours. The cops push on him, threaten him with a little time if he doesn’t talk, you know he’ll roll over so fast you won’t even see him move.”
“Shit, Karl. What am I going to do?”
“You’re gonna do nothing. You’re going to shut up and sit tight. If the cops come here, tell ’em you know nothing, got it? You’ve been home all day. I’m going to talk to the police.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“Shut up and trust me.”
It was two days before he saw his brother again.
Karl had gone directly to the station, asked to see a detective, and told them he did it. The detective called an attorney and two more cops as witnesses, told Karl his rights, and asked him if he wanted to say that over again. Karl did.
The police were overloaded with crimes to solve, and had no compulsion to put any extra time into investigating one that had already been solved. The loose ends didn’t matter; with a confession from Karl, the case was closed, and the police had no reason to go after Johnny.
It was Karl’s third offense, and he got twenty-five years, no parole. The convenience store owner had gotten shot in the lung. He was in intensive care, but would probably pull through.
“I’m doing this for you, asshole,” Karl told him. “I’m inside, but I got contacts. If you stray off the straight and narrow, I’m sending somebody after you to break your teeth. You dump those rotten friends of yours and fly straight. I want you to keep your nose so clean that when you pick it, it squeaks. You gonna be the teacher’s pet. I’m taking the fall for you to give you a chance, you asshole, and you better use it right or I’m going to be pissed. Don’t think I can’t pound your ass just because I’m inside. I got friends.”
Johnny nodded. He was crying. It was the last time in his life that he would ever cry.
“I got some money saved up,” Karl said. “Guess I can’t use it now. It’s enough to put you in a boarding school upstate. We gotta get you out of this shithole we call a ’hood. Get you a scholarship, maybe one of those ROTC things, whatever it takes, just get yourself into a college, and never come back here, you got that? Never come back.”
18
Meeting