Jerome Charyn - Bronx Noir

“Mercedes, I don’ know if this is such a good idea—”

“You said you would do it,” she replied before he could back out any further, a mocking, angry look across her face. Then she held his hand. “Let me take care of everything. All you have to do is be a man.”

He agreed to let her make the plan, thinking just maybe she was smarter than he was. She told him it would have to be done before the end of the season. He didn’t understand why, but she assured him they needed the big crowds.

“We need the noise,” she explained. “To get away. Leave the rest to me. I know where his guns are. I know where his money is.”

She set it for the last weekday afternoon game of the season — so they would do it before his compañeros came around, before all the junkies were up and looking for their next fix. The weather had finally broken, and there was the first taste of fall in the air. The day was cool and overcast and he remembered that she looked more beautiful than ever, wearing a short baby-blue rain slicker over her shirt and shorts. It was also the first time that he could remember seeing her nervous — looking up repeatedly at the gray, swirling skies, wondering if the game was going to be called.

They had gone to the upper deck as always, and there, to his amazement, she handed him one of Roberto’s .38s, wrapped in a brown paper bag — the weight of the gun surprisingly, thrillingly heavy in his hand.

“You got this from him ?”

“Tha’s right. You know how to use it?” she asked him, her face more serious than he had ever seen it.

“ Course I know how to use it!” But he was still worried. “Don’ he got more?”

“Not anymore,” she told him, pulling back the edge of the baby-blue rain slicker, showing him the handle of another pistol shoved into the belt of her shorts there. His stomach nearly convulsed, but the sight of it there both excited and comforted him, knowing that they would be doing this together.

She waited until the Yankees began a rally, got a couple men on. Then she stood up abruptly, motioning for him to hurry.

“C’mon. We don’ know how much time we got.”

He saw that she had already plotted the best, quickest route out of the stadium, past the perpetually broken escalators. They were back on the street within seconds, legging their way rapidly up the hill on 158 th. Luis had felt his knees shaking under him, hoping it wasn’t visible to her — consumed by that falling sensation again.

They reached the building and ducked down the metal steps at the side, walking under a brick archway to the courtyard. She had gone first along the littered path, telling him to wait in case Roberto was watching. But they could already hear the whine of his saw, knew that he was preoccupied with his mysterious work. They could hear another sound as well. The noise of the crowd from the stadium beginning to rise — a short, tense, staccato cry, signaling something good; a hit, a walk, a rally in the offing. She looked back at him and bit her lip, touching the handle of the gun at her side.

“Hurry,” she ordered.

They went in the basement door, Mercedes first, Luis following. The whine of the saws stopped, and now Luis could only hear the noise from the stadium, gathering, growing. He could see Roberto in the far corner of the basement working on something over a pair of sawhorses. He slowly unbent and turned to face them as they came in, scratching at his hairy stomach. He looked as if he had just gotten up, Luis thought, his eyes squinting dully at them through his hideous insect glasses.

“Wait for it,” Mercedes told Luis.

“What? Wait for what? What he want?” Roberto asked, looking back and forth, from one to the other.

Mercedes didn’t answer him, only wandered casually off to one side, pretending to look at something, so that they formed a triangle with Roberto at the top. She put her hand on her hip — and then Luis could hear it. The cheers like waves, louder even than the blood pounding in his head. That low prolonged hiss, like the first lap of the waves coming in—

He thrust his hand inside the paper bag, felt the handle of his .38.

“Wha’s that? Money?” Roberto’s eyes gleamed with a sudden interest.

Luis said nothing, using the growing noise to slip the safety off. Feeling her eyes on him from the shadows across the room.

“What you doin’ here anyway?” Roberto turned his gaze on her, his brow creasing with suspicion. “You supposed to be at the game.”

Luis let the paper bag float to the floor, raised his arm. Roberto waved a hand at him dismissively, his eyes still on her.

“You go away, come back later. I don’ do business in the day,” he said.

That’s when the wave crashed over them all, the noise from the stadium suddenly one long, atavistic roar. He aimed the .38 at Roberto’s chest and fired, then he walked forward, firing again as fast as he could, making sure to steady the gun with both hands. The first shot tore through Roberto’s hairy bull chest and spun him around. The second one ripped into his back just under the shoulder blade, the third going through his neck and spraying a geyser of blood against the wall as Roberto fell forward over the sawhorses and Luis realized that he was almost on top of him, where his body was jackknifed like the butchered hogs that Luis loaded onto the trucks all day.

That was when he felt the blow in his side, just below the rib cage. The next thing he knew he was on the basement floor. Surprised by it at first, the gun skidding away from his hand and his head bouncing off the concrete. He was certain Roberto hadn’t had time to reach for a weapon, he hadn’t even had time to put his hands up, and Luis laughed to himself, thinking that he must have slipped on something. He struggled to raise his head from the floor, and he wanted to make a joke to Mercedes, but he realized he had been almost deafened from the sound of so many gunshots in so a close space, the cheers from the stadium still sweeping over him, even through the ringing in his ears.

He saw that Mercedes had her gun out too, and that she was approaching Roberto, her wonderful legs moving across the room in long strides. She took one look at him splayed over the sawhorses, then thrust the gun into the dying man’s hand; wrapping his fingers around it and making them fire another shot into the dark recesses of the basement. After that she went over to the wall, removed three bricks, and took a couple of packages out, pushing them up under her windbreaker before she replaced the bricks. Only then did she come over to Luis where he lay on the concrete, staring down at him, her big brown eyes thoughtful and almost sad.

“What?” Luis shouted into his deafness, still unable to understand that she had shot him. “Was this part of the plan?”

“Oh, yes it was, cara mia .”

She knelt on the floor beside him. Her cheek against his cheek, the exquisite smell of her flesh still redolent even through the metallic odor of the guns and the blood.

“You did just fine, amado! ” she shouted into his ear, and smiled down at him more affectionately than she ever had before.

Then she ran out the basement door, screaming bloody murder.

Luis got off the elevator at his old floor — her floor now. He shuffled down the hallway, one hand still carrying his suitcase, the other one clutching the paper bag inside his jacket. He was not really surprised to see that the hall too was now immaculately clean and bright, and freshly painted; all the bags of garbage and the roaches were gone.

He walked down to the end of the hall, to his door — her door. There he stopped, frowning, surprised to see that it was slightly ajar. Suspicious, he gave it a soft push with one hand, just enough to let the door swing open another couple of feet, and dodged back to one side as he did so. But nothing happened. There was no noise, no reaction. Only a wave of heat emanating from within, something else he remembered well enough. That, and something else. There was a terrible smell of decay, something putrid, coming from deep within the apartment. He sniffed at it curiously for a moment, and silently lowered the suitcase to the hallway floor. Then he pulled the gun he had picked up at 124 thStreet out of its paper bag and went inside.