Blackjack (14 page)

“
I MAKE
it three-to-one it blows up,” Buddha said to the crew watching him manipulate a robot originally intended
for disarming bombs. “Be just like that rodent to pay us off in plastique.”

Cross said nothing.

“Credit cards?” a thick-necked Hispanic youth mused aloud.

“Not plastic, fool,” a small, slender black youth wearing a pair of glasses with one orange lens snapped. “Plastique. Like dynamite, only you can shape it any way you want, like it was a piece of clay.”

“All of you, shut up, okay?” Condor hissed. “You know the rules: we get to watch so long as we watch
quiet
.”

All the watchers immediately fell silent. Theirs was a gang with no name. None was needed. No rival crew was going to claim the Badlands—the Cross crew was only a whispered rumor to most outlaws, but none wanted to test it.

The gang’s members came in all sizes and shapes, all colors and creeds. All they shared were survival skills so finely honed that they were able to permanently reside in an area nobody in his right mind would even enter.

Years ago, a daredevil graffiti artist had accepted a challenge to plant his tag on a semi-trailer that had been stripped of its axles. Now completely coated with a solid layer of rust, the trailer stood only about a hundred feet past the twin piles of crookedly stacked junkyard cars that marked the border to the Badlands.

The tagger knew if he managed to pull off that stunt he’d immediately be crowned as the King of Graffiti throughout the city—a stake worth playing for.

The tagger picked broad daylight for his move, knowing that the darkness which usually cloaked his work would not be his friend on this mission. Besides, maybe only
some
of the rumors were true—whoever heard of a gang that got up before noon?

It was just before ten in the morning when the tagger
stepped behind the pillars of junked cars and advanced on the semi. He carried only two cans of spray paint: one for lettering, the other for outlining. He had no need of any of his usual equipment—there would be no climbing involved in this exploit. He didn’t even carry his prized notebook—he could spray his personal tag with his eyes closed.

The assembled watchers on the other side of the border never agreed on what happened next—a cloud of metallic rusty dirt rose like a curtain between their eyes and the doomed tagger. But there was no argument that the body of the tagger came flying at them in a long, high arc, as if it had been launched from a catapult.

The rule was as simple as the skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison: you didn’t enter the Badlands unless you planned to stay. You might join the gang—provided you proved in according to whatever requirements were current—or you might just have created your own gravestone.

THE NO-NAME
gang watched as Buddha deftly moved the controls of the robot, sending it across obstacle after obstacle.

“You picked a good spot,” Cross said to Condor. The young man visibly swelled with pride at the praise. He deftly snatched the rubber-banded roll of bills Cross tossed in his direction, and immediately threw it over his shoulder to a Samoan youth whose bulk belied his speed.

The robot reached the silver case. Its long arms tapped their way to the single latch, and popped it open.

Silence descended.

“Go,” Cross said.

Condor raced across to the case, picked it up with both
hands so he wouldn’t have to shut it, and ran back to where Cross was waiting.

Cross dropped to one knee and methodically played a flex wand with a tiny fiber-optic light at its tip over the contents.

“It didn’t blow up,” Condor said, unnecessarily.

“You never celebrate a kill until you make sure the body’s not breathing,” Cross said, softly.

Condor nodded. It wasn’t a lesson he would forget. If the Badlands had ever built an idol to worship, it would have looked like Cross.

“Thirteen bars,” Cross finally said.

“Looks like Chang was throwing us a bonus,” Buddha said, surprised.

“Or setting us up for one,” Cross answered. “Maybe he was just staging a scene. There’s always a next time.”

“Not for Chang, there won’t be,” Buddha replied.

THE CREW
arrived back at Red 71, entering by different paths. They were all inside the poolroom when three men approached. Bowing deeply, they handed Cross a carved wooden stick wrapped in black silk.

Cross returned their bow, after which the three men turned sharply and walked out of the poolroom.

“What’s that?” Princess demanded to know.

“A message,” Cross told him. “From the head of the gray-tooth crew.”

“What message?”

Cross twirled the stick slowly in his hands. “Buddha?”

“Got me, boss.”

Rhino took the stick from Cross and disappeared behind the beaded curtain.

BUDDHA HAD
dropped three hundred dollars to Princess at the pool table before Rhino returned.

“Some of the symbols are Cambodian, I think,” he said. “Nothing matched exactly, but pretty close.”

“And …” Cross prompted.

“It says either that our enemies are now his enemies … or that we can redeem the stick for a body. Payable anytime, and it can be any body we want.”

“Now,
there’s
a man with class,” Buddha said, answering an unasked question.

THE SHARK
Car slid into the darkness of a parking lot and spun so that it came to rest with its nose facing out. The view through its windshield was once a large housing project. Its low-rise section had already been converted into expensive condos, but the high-rise buildings were still listed as “slated for demolition.”

This being Chicago, “slated” could mean years. In the interim, one of the high-rise buildings had been converted into a major drug supermarket.

The arrival of the Shark Car was immediately noticed by the gang assembled at the entrance to the high-rise.

“Don’t those fools know they got to come over
here
, they want to make a buy?” a black teenager with long dreads sneered. “What they think, we gonna send over some bitch on roller skates?”

“Zip it, boy,” a far more experienced gangster ordered. He was immediately obeyed. After all, wasn’t he twenty-six years old, with nine of those years spent in various lockdowns,
a known killer who had embraced the “don’t mind dying” credo well over a decade ago and lived it since? In a world where the road ahead forks just once—the jailhouse or the graveyard—he qualified as a tribal elder.

“You know them?” another youth asked the leader.

“Yeah, I know them. You better know them, too.”

“Why would I—?”

The speaker stopped mid-sentence, awestruck. His eyes were riveted to a man climbing out of the back seat of the Shark Car. He was looking at a creature from another world: a man whose body was so outrageously muscled that it looked like a comic-book creation. The creature’s head was shaven. Despite the evening chill, he wore only a Day-Glo lilac tank top over a blousy pair of baby-blue parachute pants. A diamond bracelet flashed on one wrist; a watch with a huge luminescent face graced the other.

But none of that shocked the youth as much as the creature’s face. He wore conspicuous rouge on his cheeks and a liberal supply of eyeliner, and his mouth was slathered with pink lip gloss. A long earring dangled from his right ear.

“That … can’t be.”

“Oh yeah, it can,” the elder said. “You looking at Princess himself, boy. The real thing.”

“Princess?”

“That’s his
name
, fool.”

“He’s a—?”

“Don’t fall for the costume,” the elder warned, now addressing an ever-gathering crowd. “All you got to know about that man over there is that he is a stone
beast
. Stronger than a team of oxen, and crazier than a flock of loons. Totally in
-sane
. He dresses up like that so he can get people to jump him.”

“What?”

“Like I said, crazy to the max. The only screws he
don’t
got loose, they entirely
missing
. Understand? To that maniac, the other guy has to
start
it. Otherwise, he don’t do nothing.

“Listen close, now. That … thing over there, you can even call him out of his name, he still won’t make a move. But if you move on
him
, you as good as gone. That man so strong he could kill a refrigerator.”

The leader looked around carefully. Then he directly addressed the younger man. “You think I’m blowing smoke, you think a man looks like that can’t tear you apart, just walk over and bitch-slap him.”

“Bitch-slap him with
this
,” another young man boasted, pulling a 9mm semi-auto from his belt. “What he gonna do then?”

“Put that away, fool! You show steel to those guys and they make you a corpse. Guaranteed.”

“What guys?”

“That’s the Cross crew in that car, youngblood. Or some of them, anyway. Trust me on this—your dinky little nine wouldn’t make a dent in that car, not even in the glass. And whoever’s
in
that car, they packing heavy enough to level this whole damn building behind us.”

“Damn!”

“Damn is right, bro. They been around since forever. You ever hear of the guy they call the Ace of Spades, over on the South Side?”

“The hit man? The one who walks around with a sawed-off around his neck?”

“Himself. He’s an OG of that crew. Him and this white dude, Cross. Word is, they hooked up Inside. Same place I did time in myself,” he added, with an undertone of pride. “They been together ever since.”

“He’s in that car?”

“How would I tell? Look through that black glass? I’m trying to school you and all you do is ask me dumb-ass questions.
Listen! Just learn this much and you be fine: you don’t want
no
part of
nobody
you ever see in that car. Case closed.”

“So what they doing—?”

“Fine,” the elder says, in the resigned voice of a man having to prove the obvious. “Just stay here. I mean, don’t
move
, you hear me?”