The Undertaker (31 page)

Maybe, but we had enough problems of our own at that moment. Cars were speeding past, front and back. I glanced left and saw a Greyhound bus changing lanes, heading right for us, straddling the bright white line we were standing on.

“Oh, shit!” Sandy said as she pulled me forward. We darted in front of the bus and kept running, across the last lane of traffic, and onto the relative safety of the El station median. Hand-in-hand, we jumped onto the low concrete retaining wall as a big Mercedes sped past behind us, horn blaring, narrowly missing us. The wall was perhaps twelve inches wide and four feet high, separating the busy express lanes from the steel tracks. Twelve inches wasn't very much. Sandy tottered back and forth next to me as we fought to keep our balance. Maybe I was too concerned about her making it up to the top with me, and maybe I was a bigger klutz than she was to begin with, but I couldn't stop. I let go of her hand, but my momentum carried me over the top and I fell face-first on the grimy, sharp-edged gravel of the railroad bed.

“Eee-Yeeagh!” My hands and knees rebelled in pain.

“Uh, Talbott,” Sandy shouted a warning. “See that blue-black rail in the middle? The one next to your left hand?”

“Yeah,” I answered as I looked down. My shins rested on the brightly polished track where the train's wheels ran and my right hand was a few inches away. Next to my left hand, where I had narrowly missed landing, was an evil-looking, blue-black rail.

“That's the third rail. There's about a gazillion volts of electricity in that thing. You touch it; it'll ruin your whole day.”

“Hey, I'm from LA,” I replied. “What do I know from rails?” Carefully, very carefully, I rose to my feet and brushed the dirt and gravel off my hands, giving the third rail a wide berth. Sandy jumped down next to me and we looked up at the subway platform. The concrete slab was even higher than the divider, at my eye level, and there was no ladder or stairs to climb. To make matters worse, I saw the front headlight of a fast moving train coming up the northbound tracks, heading straight for us.

“Here,” I said as I put my hands together and bent my knees. “Give me your foot. Quick. I'll boost you up.”

“No sweat, it'll slow down as it comes in,” she announced confidently, slowly raising her left foot and placing it in my hands. As she did, I glanced past her again. The train was close enough for me to see the panicked expression on the engineer's face as he saw us standing on his tracks.

Fortunately, Sandy did not weigh very much. “One, two… three,” I yelled and flipped her upward. She soared onto the air in a tight, acrobatic flip and landed on the platform on both feet, light as a feather.

I looked left again and I could see she was dead wrong about the train. It had not slowed a bit. I was tall and in pretty good shape. Desperation and a speeding train can make great motivators, so I put my hands flat on the platform and launched myself upward, rolling over the edge just as the lead El car roared past.

“Oops. Guess that was an express,” I heard her say as I lay on the platform looking up at the concrete roof of the station, thankful I was able to look up at anything at all.

That was when I heard a loud, sarcastic, and very black male voice say, “My, my, what
do
we have here?”

“They be the Fucking Wallendas, Jamal. You know, them dudes in the circus,” a second voice added.

“Yeah, das who they be,” came a third voice, “the Fucking Wallendas.”

“Check out the mess they made back on LaSalle. Dey fucked that up good.”

“Check it out, Rashid. All them po-lice cars? Cops gonna be really pissed.”

I looked around as six young, black men closed around us in a tight circle, complete with dark sunglasses, oversized, cockeyed baseball caps – mostly White Sox and Bears — blue jeans slung below their hips, and unlaced, hi-top work boots. Harlem, Watts, or the South Side of Chicago, it was definitely your urban gang-banger-out-on-the-town outfit, complete with matching blue plaid flannel shirts hanging out at the waist and “do-rags” on their heads under the hats.

“You be right, Toothpick. You be right,” the one in the center said as he looked back toward the chaos on the expressway with a smile. “But why the Fucking Wallendas drop in on my El platform this fine morning? Das what ah wants to know.”

Toothpick was the biggest of the lot, maybe 6’ 6”, well over 300 lbs, and fat as a house. He grinned as he reached out and ran a finger slowly down Sandy's arm. “Lookey here, Jamal,” he said. “The Wallendas done brung us lunch.”

His finger didn't make it as far as her elbow. In one smooth motion, Sandy jumped four feet in the air. With a blood-curdling scream, her Reeboks lashed out in a series of lightening-quick karate kicks. She caught Toothpick at the base of his throat, in the face, and a coup-de-grace in the groin, dropping him to his knees, bug-eyed, holding his throat and his crotch and coughing, all at once. The others took a step toward her, but she had dropped back on the platform and into a defensive Karate crouch, fingers out, eyes darting back and forth. “The next one who gets smart goes to intensive care.”

Jamal defused the situation. “Nice hang time, girl,” he laughed.

I got to my feet and stood behind her, figuring my best efforts would be spent covering her back, but Jamal was more effective.

“Thas enough, Toothpick, we don't want you to hurt her no more, now do we?” he said as he raised his hand and the others immediately stopped. “Very im-pressive, very im-pressive indeed,” he said as he slowly clapped his hands. Clearly, he was their leader. He looked over at the growing line of police cars back on LaSalle Street, his eyes dancing with amusement. “But ya'll seem to have gotten seriously lost. This here ain't Oak-brook or Win-net-ka. This here be the south side —
my
south side — and we call it “The People's Republic of 35th Street.” So, ya'll need to show some respect.”

“Look,” she said. “All we want is to get on the next train out of here, that's all.”

“Thas all?” Jamal pointed at the police cars and grinned like a malevolent shark. “What you think them pigs up on LaSalle want? You the fuckin' Tupperware Lady? They come down here to give you a po-lice escort through the projects? No, ah think they be chasin’ yo’ asses, thas what ah think.”

We stood our ground and the six gang members did the same. That was something, but I could tell Jamal wasn't finished with us. He was cagey and street-smart. Behind those Oakley sunglasses, his dark-brown eyes were studying all the angles. Down here, a man couldn't reach his eighteenth birthday alive and out of jail if he was stupid.

“’Speakin’ of chasin’,” Jamal looked across the expressway, “Ah don't know what ya'll done, but them two “suits” down there running between the cars want yo little white ass some kinda bad, girl.”

“We didn't do anything,” I told him.

“They sho think you did.”

“They're wrong.”

“Imagine that! The Chi-ca-go Po-lice chasin’ somebody on 35th Street -– a white man and a white woman at that — and they got it wrong?”

In the distance, I saw another train coming toward us. This one was on the southbound tracks heading out of the city, and I intended for us to be on it. The cops had given up and turned back toward LaSalle, but Tinkerton and his goon managed to get across the express lanes and had reached the retaining wall on the other side of the tracks, barely ten feet away. Time was running out.

“What do you want?” I asked Jamal.

“You askin' what
we
want?” A homie in a blue-plaid shirt shot back. “Shit, we
takes
what we want.”

“Reparations, man. We want reparations.” Another homie postured.

“Yeah, some serious reparations.”

“Ya'll trespassin’ on our turf without permission, without no passports or visas.”

“And look at what she done to Toothpick, man.”

“Yeah, that was flat out rude, man.”

Sandy cocked her head and took a long look at the gang leader. “Hey, I know you. That's Jamal Sanders hiding behind those “Oaks”, isn't it?”

“Jamal don't hide, bitch!” Toothpick threatened again, but Sandy's foot twitched and Toothpick took a step back.

She came out of her crouch and pulled her camera out of her shoulder bag for Jamal to see. “Yeah, Jamal Sanders of the Black P-stone Disciples? Right?”

“We now the Disciple 35
^th
Nation. We be franchisin’,” Jamal corrected her. “And ah
do
remember. You that crazy bitch with the camera walked thru the ‘hood and took all those pictures wif me. The brothers over on Cottage Grove called you “Lil’ Sister”. When was that? Two years ago? Yeah, ah remember you, all right.”

“Crazy? You never saw better shots — of you, the homies, or life in the projects — have you? That was a great spread.”

“Yeah. Got you some kinda award, didn't it?” he asked. “What it get us?”

“Got your face all over the front page of the Trib. That was serious pub, my man, better than you ever seen before, and you didn't have to go to jail to get it, did you?”

“There is that.”

“Was I fair?”

“Oh, yeah. You was fair. Ah'll give you that much, Lil’ Sister.”

To our left, the outbound train roared into the station and ground to a halt. In the lead car, the motorman looked at us with round, terrified eyes as he saw what was going on, but it was too late for him to do anything about it. The train stopped, the doors automatically opened with a loud hiss, and a dozen black passengers stepped out onto the open platform. They took one look at the gang, at us, and at the cop cars with their sirens and flashing lights, and thought better of it. In unison, they stepped back inside the cars and prayed the doors would quickly close.

As they did, I heard a voice shout up at us from the track bed to our right. “You, up on the platform, stay the fuck where you are.” I looked down and saw Tinkerton's dark-suited goon standing on the tracks below us.

“I'd do what he says, Pete,” Ralph Tinkerton's sarcastic, hardscrabble twang joined in. His usually cold, gray eyes were red-hot and angry as he tasted his impending victory. “You too, Miz Kasmarek.”

I looked longingly at the El cars behind us, but we had blown our chance. The doors closed with a loud “Hiss” and the train immediately started up. It gathered speed and pulled away as quickly as the anxious motorman could make it move, to the obvious relief of his frightened passengers. That was when Tinkerton's goon raised his Glock and pointed it up at us. That was a big mistake. All around us, I heard shuffling feet and loud clicks as a dozen other handguns suddenly materialized in the gang member's hands, one and often two per man. There were matte-black Glocks, a wicked .357 Magnum, a long barreled .38, a .45 Colt, and a huge, chrome .44 Magnum “Dirty Harry” cannon among others, and they were all pointed down at Tinkerton and his goon.

Jamal folded his arms across his chest. “This really be some morning,” he crowed. “Everybody be forgettin' themselves today, forgettin' where they be.”

“Ralph,” I smiled down at him. “This isn't the Columbus Rotary Club up here. I'd be real careful if I were you.”

Tinkerton burned with anger, but that didn‘t make him stupid. “Pete,” he managed a smile. “You and I need to talk.”

“I don't think so. The last time we tried that, I got cut and you got that bruise on your cheek and that big, ugly bandage on your hand. Is that from the fire?” Tinkerton glared and said nothing. “Too bad it didn't fry your sorry ass.”

Jamal and the rest of the gang broke up laughing, pointing down at Tinkerton, and chattering. “He diss'ed you, Chuck.” “The White Boy diss'ed you good.” “Swish!” “Two points. Two points for White Boy.”

Tinkerton could barely contain his rage. “Look, Talbott... Pete.” He tried another tack. “You can't win this thing. You can't run fast enough or far enough. I can reach out and grab you by the throat anywhere you try to hide.”

“So far, your grab ain't been too good, Ralph,” I said.

“Two more points for White Boy.”

“He be killin' you, Chuck.”

“You been poster-ized, my man.”

“No mas, no mas!” another homie ridiculed him.

Tinkerton's eyes flashed up at them. “If you continue with this folly, you're only going to earn yourself a lot of pain. You should remember that before you go dragging other people into it with you.”

“Nobody dragged me into anything,” Sandy snapped.

“No, no!” Someone in the crowd called out. “The bitch don't count. Dis be one-on-one.” And, “Yeah, dat be a technical. She be on da bench.”

“You be right, Doughboy,” The others joined in. “Jus’ White Boy and Chuck. Da bitch don't count.”

“Yeah, 'cause she could kick both their sorry asses, she want to.”

They all broke up laughing, all except Toothpick who was still holding his crotch. “Yeah, ya'll got that right,” he added warily.

“The score still White Boy four, Chuck zip.”

“Look, Pete, you're an intelligent fellow,” Tinkerton said, pointedly glancing around at the homies. “I won't scam you or try to scare you anymore. The world's full of two kinds of people — those who understand the moment and seize it, and those who let it run roughshod over them. As I told you in Columbus, we're the good guys. We're cleaning up this country, putting the low lifes and the riff-raff in jail where they belong.”