Tuff (37 page)

Winston, his metabolism slowed to a crawl, dreamed of rough-and-tumble sumo matches fought inside the rings of Saturn.

O
n election day, Tuffy was in the kitchen roasting a hot dog over the stove’s gas burner. Using a fork as a spit, he rotated his lunch, flaming, sizzling droplets of grease falling onto the stove top. “Come on, Winston. Let’s go vote, I have to get to the computer center before it closes. I ain’t got time to be waiting on you. Plus you talking about going to the movies.”

“The polls are open till nine. If you want, go on to school and vote when you get back. I’ll watch Jordy. I ain’t doing nothing.”

“Just hurry the fuck on up. Every fucking time.”

When the meat was bubbled and burnt to perfection, Winston wrapped the frankfurter in a doughy slice of wheat bread, covered it with loops of ketchup and mustard, then stuffed half of it into his mouth. On his way out the door he stopped in front of the casserole dish. Plucking his pets out of the water, he gave each a loving kiss on the lips, then dropped them back into the ersatz aquarium.

Three abreast and hand in hand, the Foshays looked like a trio of paper-cutout dolls on their way to join the rest of the foldout accordion. But any similarity to the mythical happy-go-lucky American family on their way to exercise their inalienable rights was purely superficial.

“I need something to drink.”

“Winston, you promised, no alcohol before eight o’clock at night.”

“I don’t want no beer. I’m going to get me a malta,” Winston said, referring to the small bottles of carbonated molasses.

Yolanda protested. “No, baby, that has alcohol in it.”

“Less than point five percent,” Winston countered. “I probably drank more alcohol than that this morning when I was eating your stank-stank.”

“Winston!”

“For real, that strong-ass douche you be using probably ten times the proof of a malta.”

“God, you’re nasty.”

“You wasn’t saying that this morning.”

“No malta.”

Resigned to a soda pop, Winston entered a bodega just as two young children carrying book bags and ripping open bags of goodies with their teeth exited. “What time is it?” he asked Yolanda.

“These kids just getting out of school, so I guess it’s about three o’ clock.”

Pulling on Yolanda’s hand, Winston steered her and Jordy toward 108th Street. “Come on, we late.” The dress rehearsal of the bank robbery was scheduled for three. When they arrived at the corner of 108th and Second Avenue, the bank’s security guard was holding the door as the day’s last customers filed out. He saw Armello calmly waiting in an idling Dodge Winston didn’t recognize, but he thought the baby seat in the back was a nice attention-deflecting touch. Armello gestured toward the side of the bank, where Fariq, holding a box, was leaning against a brick wall. Next to him was an extension ladder, Ms. O’Koren, Charley O’, and a dreadlocked male whom Charles was busy manhanding.

“What’s up, nigger?” Charles asked. “Yolanda.”

Winston noticed Charles was wearing only one shoe; his other foot was bare and soiled. Whitey twisted his hostage’s right arm so severely his knuckles touched his forearm. The dread lifted his head and yelped. The tube sock stuffed in his mouth muffled his cry. It was La Mega, the boy Winston had beat senseless a few months ago. Winston slipped a hand under his shirt and rubbed the keloid scar La Mega’s box cutter had raised. La Mega saw Winston and cowered into a fetal position. Winston’s eyes followed the rungs of the ladder. Nadine was on the roof, her hands filled with smoke bombs. She waved hello.

Fariq lifted a white lab coat from the box. “Got an extra lab coat for you. It’s not too late.”

Winston knew the basics of the plan. When the next-to-last customer left the bank, on Armello’s signal Ms. O’Koren was to approach the guard, claiming that she had some urgent business and needed to see the manager. After the guard let her in, she’d wait a few moments, giving Nadine time to light the smoke bombs and drop them into air ducts. When the bank filled with smoke, Ms. O’Koren would spill a vial of ammonia, say “What’s that smell?” and pretend to pass out. Fariq and Whitey would enter the bank holding handkerchiefs over their mouths and flashing phony tags that identified them as city terrorism experts. In his best British accent, Charles would quickly explain there’d been a sarin gas leak and if the employees wanted to live they’d have forty-five seconds to drink the antidote—the antidote being a concoction of blueberry-flavored Thirstbusters, Armello’s Rohypnol, and some knockout drug Fariq had gotten from who knows where. Plan B? There was no Plan B. “Why La Mega here?”

“Man, we forgot to test the antidote,” Fariq explained. “We about to go home, and this unlucky motherfucker walked by.”

Winston knew the plan would never work but was curious whether the antidote would. He grabbed La Mega from Charles, lifted his dreads off his face, and pressed his finger into the soft spot behind his earlobe. La Mega dropped to his knees. Fariq tossed Whitey a spiked Thirstbuster. “Charley, tilt his head back and pinch his nose,” Winston ordered. “When he start gagging, Ms. O’Koren, you pull the sock out his mouth.” Charles squeezed La Mega’s nostrils shut. “Yolanda, take Jordy around the corner.” Yolanda stayed put. With two hands Ms. O’Koren gingerly pulled on the knee-high sock like a magician’s assistant removing a rope of knot scarves from his mouth. The toe of the sock caught on one of La Mega’s incisors. Ms. O’Koren yanked. La Mega gasped for air. Another yank. The sock was still tangled. La Mega was blabbering in radio Spanish,
“Foxes Nightclub de Jersey City—Damas cinco dolares y caballeros diez … Western Union es confianza … llame al dos uno dos seis, cuarenta cinco …,”
when Tuffy dislodged the sock with a boot heel to the jaw. Still holding La Mega’s nose, Whitey poured the liquid into his mouth, careful not to get any blood on his clothes. Fariq set his watch. La Mega went limp and fell to the ground as Winston released his hair.

“Six seconds!” Fariq said, looking up from his watch. “That shit works quick.”

With his shod foot, Charles nudged La Mega’s head. “That nigger’s out, but I don’t know, I think Tuffy’s kick did it.”

Armello honked his horn, the signal that there was only one customer left in the bank. Nadine climbed down the ladder. “We can’t go through with it now. We don’t even know if the stuff works or not.” Looking at Yolanda, she jabbed her thumb in Winston’s direction. “Your man fuckin’ shit up as usual.” Not knowing what was causing the delay, Armello, trying to be inconspicuous, lightly beeped the car horn. Charles knelt down beside La Mega and thumbed open one of his eyelids. “Damn, Tuff, you forever knockin’ motherfuckers out.”

Fariq shook his head. “I ain’t too sure it was Tuff who did it. That nigger’s eyes was rolling back in his head before Tuffy put the boot to him.”

“I don’t know, Winston kicked him pretty hard.”

Everyone stared at La Mega. Armello gave a long blast of the car horn, and rolled down the window. “What the fuck?” Ms. O’Koren tugged at her dress, hiked her purse high on her shoulder and walked around the corner and into the bank. Winston wanted to tackle her, but did nothing but look quizzically at Charles. “Don’t ask. That six thou she won didn’t do nothing but wet her whistle.”

“Y’all fuckin’ insane,” said Yolanda.

“Probably,” Whitey replied, putting on his lab coat. “But if you think I’m about to let Moms go in alone,
you
insane. Rest of you motherfuckers come on if you want.”

Fariq motioned for Nadine to scramble back up the ladder, then he hobbled over to Tuffy. He handed him his crutches. “Let me lean on you for a second.” Slowly, Fariq put his arms through the sleeves. “You know we voted for your ass before we came down here, nigger. I didn’t believe it but your name is on the ballot. I thought I’d walk in there and have to be all loud and shit: ’How do you vote for Winston Foshay in this bitch? But your name on the paper.”

“I got three votes at least.”

“Naw, just two, Nadine voted for German Jordan.”

“No, Tuffy got three. My mother voted for him,” Charley O’ said, patting Winston on the back. “But I didn’t expect to be so nervous. The curtain and shit. I didn’t know if it was naked lady behind there or priest.
Voting is fuckin’ weird, what they need to play some music in there to set the mood.” Whitey ran a comb through his hair, placed a stethoscope around his neck, then put on a pair of thick black-framed Medicaid glasses. “How I look, yo?” he asked.

“Like a doctor, I guess,” answered Winston.

Nadine stuck her head over the edge of the roof. “Okay, all the smoke bombs is lit.”

Fariq grabbed his crutches. “Well, we be right back.”

“Except we going be rich and shit,” laughed Charles, picking up the Thirstbusters and easing in behind Fariq.

Winston watched them disappear. Yolanda pulled on his elbow. “Let’s go.” Eyes glued to the bank’s entrance they walked past Armello and the Dodge. Winston stopped and backtracked to the getaway car while Nadine and Jordy kept walking to the intersection. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll be right there.”

He leaned against the car’s rear door. “Let me get some of them potato chips.” Together they waited for the smoked glass doors to open. At any moment Tuffy half-expected Smush, Whitey, and Ms. O’Koren to come stumbling out of the bank drenched in blood, one hand clutching a bag of money, the other a bullet wound to the stomach. “What you still doin’ here?” It was Nadine, down from the roof and clapping the dust from her clothes.

“Waiting.”

Without asking she dug her hand into the bag of chips and pulled out more than her share. Aroused from his slumber, La Mega slithered past them, cautiously staying outside of arm’s reach, but still blathering.
“La nueva Mega! La emisora oficial para salsa y merengue. La nueva Mega con mas música contigua cada hora! La nueva M-e-e-g-a-a!”

“Jesus, that fool’s crazy,” Nadine commented, spitting overcooked bits of chips onto the sidewalk.

“Somethin’ wrong.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong, Tuffy. It ain’t been but four or five minutes. Give them some time.”

“I don’t know, somethin’ not right.”

Armello drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You right, kid. La Mega wasn’t out long enough. Even if the knock-out potion work, he wasn’t out long enough for them to rob shit.”

Winston sucked his teeth, raised up off the car. “Smush always got to be so elaborate all the damn time. Why didn’t y’all use guns like some normal motherfuckers?”

“Niggers not try to catch no armed robbery charge, that’s why.”

As Winston walked toward the bank, Yolanda put Jordy on her hip and marched toward him, joining him at the entrance. Faces pressed against the glass and hands cupped over their eyes so they could see through the tinted window, they evaluated the situation.

“Blue smoke, Tuffy?”

“I guess.”

“But why is it all in one corner?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look at Whitey’s mother. She look like she really passed out. Everyone in the bank standing around her looking all concerned. And look at Whitey checking her pulse and listening to her heart like he’s a doctor. But where are the Thirstbusters?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well nobody’s behind the counter. Smush should be robbing the place.… Where Smush at?”

“He over there in the smoke. See him? Near the safe.” Though the dense cloud of blue smoke obscured him, the spindly figure had to be Fariq. And judging by the way he was squirming on the floor, downing pills and sucking on his inhaler, he seemed to be having a grand mal seizure of indeterminate origin. Panic-stricken, he unwrapped a hypodermic needle and jammed it into his thigh. The shaking stopped.

“He don’t look good.”

The smoke around Fariq began to thin. Worried about being seen by the security cameras, he stuck his inhaler in his mouth, discreetly removed a smoke bomb from a lab-coat pocket, lit the fuse, placed it on the floor next to him, and vanished in the billowy haze like a cheesy television genie. Winston noticed the security guard, though unconcerned about the O’Korens, seemed to be getting edgy about Fariq’s being so close to the open safe.

“I don’t like how that security guard lookin’ at Smush.”

“Why? You thinking about doing something?”

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone suspects them of trying to rob the bank, so they can end this fiasco anytime they want. All they have to do is get up and go. And you can do the same thing.”

“Smush don’t look like he got the strength to walk. And look at him, he can’t take his eyes off the safe.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Winston stuck a hand in his pocket and clicked off the safety of his gun, then he picked up a paper bag off the sidewalk, and poked two eye holes into it. “I’m going to go in there and stick my gun in somebody’s face,” he said. The comic struggle of him trying to slip the medium-sized sack over his large head almost negated his seriousness. Disgusted, Yolanda snatched the bag, which fit him like a brown chef’s hat, off her husband’s head. “Don’t be stupid.”

“What then?”

“Just go in there and get Smush.”

Winston motioned for Nadine to get in the car, and for Armello to be ready to drive off. He took a deep breath and balled his fists so hard his knuckles cracked. “Don’t go in there all Nigger Tuffy from Ninth Street,” Yolanda cautioned, slipping her hand into his pocket and clicking on the pistol’s safety. “Don’t be all ‘What? What?’ You’re liable to get everybody shot. Go in there and be
another
nigger. All right?”

Who?
Winston wondered as he walked in the door, stepping over the threshold and into a puddle of spilled Thirstbusters. As soon as the door closed behind him, the security guard and a well-dressed man Tuffy took to be the bank manager rushed him. Winston’s first thought was to emulate an action hero and slam their noggins together like orchestra cymbals.
Always wanted to do that. I wonder if it works like in the movies?
But as the men approached him, they walked past an easel that displayed one of his campaign flyers next to the interest rates for CDs and treasury bills. Winston now knew who the other nigger was.