Chapter Six
Insolvent
The car got dumped between two corrugated steel sheds just over the river. They changed clothes, stuffed the bloody stuff into a gym bag, and washed their hands in the slush from half of bottle of soda that they'd found in a trash can just outside the Metro. From there it was a half hour on the green line and a dozen blocks of walking. They had to go around SMG territory.
Saul said nothing. The sense of relief he’d banked on hadn’t come. He was no closer now to a real place inside the Widmore Crew than he had been before, and the truth was, this might be the end. There wasn’t anywhere to run. He’d seen people try before and it just didn’t work. Run and someone you loved died. So he said nothing, letting Bolo go on and on about the sound of the gun crushing the guy’s nose and how the woman screamed and how it took balls to do all of it in a neighborhood like that… that it was what people like that deserved.
He went on and on and Saul didn’t care. Fuck rich people, fuck poor people. It just didn’t matter; all he wanted was to go home. But why go there?
“You didn’t do shit,” Bolo said as they turned up their street. “Just fucked up my piece is all.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry ain’t shit. You ain’t shit.”
They paused at the corner and Saul turned to walk up the alley to his building.
“Where you goin’?” Bolo grabbed him by the hair.
“Fuck man, fuck!” Saul gasped.
“Ain’t time for you to go home, it’s time to go talk to Vesper. Tell ‘em how you oughta just stay on your corner with your little rocks rolled in trash. Small time bitch.”
“Let go,” Saul twisted around, feeling his coarse hair rip from his scalp. He pushed at Bolo and was rewarded with a shove that put him on his ass. “Don’t touch me you little bitch, com’on.”
Bolo strode across the street, assuming that Saul would follow.
He did.
It always felt grey here, like the wind had blown all of the color out into the suburbs. Grey like the little girl without any blood inside of her, lifeless, spiritless grey.
The whole neighborhood felt that way. It was barren. Rows of five story black bricked buildings, sterile trees, broken glass, and trash. Bags of trash, heaps of trash, and migrant trash that just shuffled around from corner to corner like vapid leaves. People lived here, and they shuffled too. But there wasn’t any life.
During the day it was worse. In the daytime you could
see
the grey in the people. Their hope had taken flight over the river and come to rest in plain sight… but just out of reach. Saul hated it. Everyone hated it, but what could you do? His mom worked all day long and most of the night and all she got was an apartment where she beat rats with pans and tried to get her kids to sleep with cotton in their ears. Go without the cotton and the roaches would crawl inside–and that hurt like a motherfucker, the constant scratching and pressure until you thought you’d go insane. Saul once sucked one out of his brother’s ear with a soda straw.
And that brother was dead. His other one was gone, maybe in California, but he didn’t know. His little sister was too young to understand that she wasn’t born to the right momma. They were all too far back in line to expect any sort of help. The only help you could depend on here was the kind you made for yourself . It was only a cliché if you were rich.
He followed Bolo up a narrow set of steps, hands thrust deep into his pockets, and Saul wondered if he were about to die. He realized there on the stairs in the grey wind that he didn’t really care. Bolo knocked on the steel door, and it opened a few moments later.
“You fucked up boy,” Vesper said from the couch as they entered the room with a swirl of cold wind.
Saul looked up from his shoes, knowing that this was coming but still unsure what it would mean. The day had left him numb, and the brain that he could usually count on to sort and tally everything into some sort of order, had failed him miserably. It felt saturated, taken well beyond the boundaries he’d set out for himself that morning.
Bolo nodded, “I told you he wasn’t nothin’.”
“No,
you
motherfucker,” Vesper said. It was an easygoing, soft voice, always delivered just above a whisper. Saul had known Vesper for a couple of years, known
of
him since he could remember. He hadn’t always been the alpha dog, but he’d always acted like he was despite the quiet, intercessory voice that had led to his name.
“What?” Bolo asked, perplexed.
Vesper pointed the remote at the television.
* * *
Saul had really only talked to Vesper twice before. Once to deliver news that his brother had been killed, and once not too long ago to drop off a day’s worth of profit.
The first meeting had been frightening, the second even more so.
Vesper had been on the telephone the first time and just waved Saul over to his desk. The news hadn’t come out easily, but Saul said what he’d been told to say.
“Your brother got shot today,” he’d said.
Vesper hung up in mid–conversation, just flipped his cell shut,
pop
. “Is he dead?”
“Yeah. He’s dead.” Again Saul searched for the correct empathy card. No one said
sorry
too much around here. It was like saying that you were sorry because it was cloudy. And he didn’t really know if he
should
be sorry. Vesper and his brother didn’t get on like friends, they were brothers.
He nodded, let his head fall back on the chair, and said to the ceiling, "Sure he’s dead?”
“Yeah,” Saul said. “I saw him.” And that was it. Saul left.
After Saul had naively delivered the news, being sacrificed by those who knew better, Vesper had actually given him more and more to do. At fourteen he wasn’t the youngest in the crew by far, but he was still a shorty. He didn’t have a driver’s license, and probably wouldn’t go out of his way to get one because he had the Metro. Anything he carried had to be disposable: rocks of crack folded in candy wrappers so he could just ditch them if the cops rolled up, clothes he could swap out, and a story that was vague but plausible–no details. Everyone knew that he had product, and everyone knew he was selling, but it was hard to prove it if you did things right. He knew how to do it. It wasn't hard.
The second time they'd met, Saul had been stopped twice on the way up the stairs, checked and rechecked by Vesper’s guys, and finally been led inside. Unlike the little room attached to the hallway, this was a big room dedicated to its owner. Lofted and plush, not shag carpet and disco ball plush, but plush in a way that a kid who had slept on the street could
feel
without even looking. It smelled clean. There were a couple of girls, both high, both happy to be pressed together in a big, soft looking chair; and a half dozen guys clustered around a game console in front of the huge television. Vesper sat behind a desk, on the phone as usual.
He smiled and waved Saul over.
Again, he just ended the call in mid–sentence.
“Saul,” he said.
Saul was quiet. He tensed up his gut so that he wouldn’t squeak.
Vesper smirked., "You got it?”
“Yeah,” Saul said and then stooped down to take off his shoes.
It had taken about three hours to cut down into the foam, carve it out, and create a cavity in both shoes, and while they wouldn’t fool everyone, they
did
fool most, even lots of cops. Vesper leaned over his desk and peered into the shoes. “You do that?”
“Yeah,” Saul said. “Better than comin’ up here with nothin’.”
A laugh. “How much you got there?”
“About two grand.”
“Exactly how much?” Vesper leaned back.
“Twenty twenty.”
“You ever seen that much scratch?”
Saul shook his head.
“You gonna miss havin’ it in your kicks?”
“Yeah, made me taller.”
A moment passed and Vesper’s eyes brightened. It was the first time Saul had ever heard him laugh, really laugh. Everyone looked, even the girls.
“You know why I sent you around collecting?”
He nodded, “Yeah.”
“How’s come then little man?”
“You wanted to see if I’d bring it all, twenty twenty.”
Vesper squared the stack of bills away and told Saul to count it out. “Why’d you bring it all? I know your momma ain't gettin’ no extra down at the laundry.”
Saul finished counting out loud and looked up. He was scared; his gut ached from keeping it pent up, and thus his voice was tight, “I knew you’d check with everybody, and I know what I want.”
“Bold shit,” Vesper said and slid the stack over. “Whatcha want Saul?”
“I don’t wanna sleep on no more floors.”
A nod, "You ain’t gonna. Not you, not your momma. You know what I like about you Saul? You’re smart, and you don’t talk the street.” He broke the stack of bills roughly in half. “You know what I don’t like about you?”
Saul shook his head wondering if he’d played this right, or if it was all over before it began.
“You’re smart and you don’t talk the street. You ain’t gonna stop at sleepin’ in no bed. Your gonna want more. And even if ya don’t think so now, you’ll be wantin’ more once you get a taste. That’s what I don’t like. You gonna fuck with me Saul?”
“I just don’t wanna sleep on no more floors, that’s it.”
“Aight,” Vesper said and pushed half of the stack back across the table. “Like I said, you won’t. That’s for you and your momma, get it back in those kicks and you’ll be taller for real.”
“Thanks,” Saul said, afraid to touch the money.
“It ain’t ‘bout thanks little man, you know it. It’s business. Your dome ain’t gonna take you the whole way, smart or not," he tapped Saul's head. "You gotta get wet sometime. You know that too.”
Saul nodded and took the money. And that was the deal. He was moving up, he’d done it right, but like anything in life, it wasn’t free. Soon he'd have to go out with the dog they called Bolo and make a hit. Death was just part of life.
His mom took the money, didn’t ask where it came from… and no one slept on the floor anymore.
*
* *
Now, the television in this same room showed the front of a big brick house, and despite all of the cops clustered around, the white Escalade was still visible, parked just so on the brick driveway. “You do that?”
“Fuck,” Bolo said. "It ain’t no big deal, just a hit for your boy here like I said.”
“You better get your eyes checked motherfucker,” Vesper said. “And then tell me why FOX is runnin’ your jump for the little man here. Tell me that.”
For the first time that day Bolo didn’t seem to have any words. He recovered with, “The little fuck picked the house.”
“That true?” Vesper looked over at Saul.
“Kinda, yeah,” Saul said. “I picked it.”
“Why?”
“No reason, just picked.”
“You pick the neighborhood too?” Vesper asked. He set the remote down, and didn’t look at either of them.
“Just the house,” Saul said, it wasn't time for the whole truth, he could sense it.
“Fuckin’ shit, bullshit,” Bolo said.
“You tellin’ me that my shorty here drove all the way out to Arlington Heights and picked a little girl and her momma to off?”
Bolo was quiet, thinking.
So was Saul.
“You gotta taste for killin’ B, I know it, and I use it. But from what I’m seein’ here, you got other tastes too. You hung your ass out, which means that you hung my ass out. Time to calm down a little.”
“It’ll blow out man,” Bolo said. “Won’t be a day.”
“Yeah, it’ll go away, but not for a long time. The bitch ain’t dead, the daddy ain’t dead and
his
daddy is some kinda face.” He pointed again at the TV where the aerial scene of the house was replaced by a muted anchor woman. WTTG was the only television station in D.C. with its own helicopter, and it was now orbiting Arlington Heights. FOX was willing to foot the gas bill.