David Putnam - The Disposables

I backed out. I drove under the speed limit. He probably thought it cautious. I needed the time to think.

“Pick it up, man, pick it up. Once our thugs hit the street, and the Crips figure out what’s going down, they’ll all go to ground, and we’ll have to dig ’em out with shovels. I wanna catch one or two ourselves, you know, like the old days. Here, take a right on Imperial. Come on, you haven’t been gone that long. You know the way.”

Some of his excitement came my way, contagious, infectious excitement I so dearly missed. The way it felt when we rode together and were close to uncovering someone’s hidey-hole.

At Alameda Avenue, not far from the Imperial Courts housing project, a couple of miles from Nickerson Gardens, a male black on a bike rode like hell right at us. He wore a white football jersey dyed purple with the name Montana on the back. The Grape Street Crips never ventured this far east. At least not alone. Something had spooked him. It was Gang Enforcement Team and Operation Safe Streets hitting Nickerson hard.

“There. There.” Robby pointed, as if I hadn’t spotted him. “Get over there and cut his ass off.”

I went across the lanes of traffic, the bike rider still looking back, not watching where he was going. I braked, thinking he would look up in time. He crashed into the side of Robby’s county ride and flipped over on his back onto the hood. His black bowler hat snugged down on his head stayed that way.

Robby jumped, dragged him off, put him facedown in a wrist-lock, and was taking out the cuffs before I got around the nose of the car to help. The crook gasped for air. I looked down the road toward Nickerson. It wouldn’t be long before Operation Safe Street interrogated a few and figured out my game. I didn’t have much time.

Robby picked the guy up. He was an OG, an Original Gangster, someone older than twenty-one, still alive, and not in prison. He tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come, the air still had not returned to his lungs. I got a closer look. “I know you. You’re Jesse Cole’s nephew. I thought you moved to Rialto?”

“What’d I do?” The first words he could utter.

Robby laughed, “Well, obviously you’re driving that bike on the street without a light because you crashed right into the side of my hooptie.”

“Man, that ain’t right and you know it.”

“Why you ridin’ like that, lookin’ over your shoulder?”

“You know why. The sheriff’s in the hood ridin’ deep. Jackin’ all the homeboys for nuthin’. Nuthin’, man.”

Robby reached up and took a joint from behind the guy’s ear and put it behind his own. “Now we’re going to add a Primo to the charge.”

“Dey ain’t any rock in dere, it’s pure weed.”

“We’ll just send it to the lab and find out. Until then we’re going to put you on ice. Unless you want to make a deal.”

Even if the game was correct and Grape Street was at the bottom of it, Robby was moving too fast. Under normal circumstances, we’d have taken him in and put him in a cell, let him fester while we grabbed a cup of joe. Robby wanted this too badly.

“I ain’t got nuthin’.”

Someone on the radio said, “Ten-thirty-three.” The code for emergency traffic.

Robby yanked on the dude’s arm, “Come on, get him in the car.”

A panicked voice on the radio said, “My partner’s in foot pursuit, Nickerson Gardens, east side, south of 115th.” Deputies from all over came up on the air advising they were en route.

Robby yelled, “Come on, come on. Get his ass in the car we gotta get over there.”

We shoved the Crip in the back. I got in and put the pedal to the floor, burning rubber, leaving the Crip’s bike back in the street. He didn’t seem to care.

The deputy came back up on the air screaming, “Shots fired. Shots fired.”

Robby spun in the seat. “This is going to be better than I thought. We just kicked over a hornet’s nest.”

“Man, let me out.” The Crip in the back said, “Doan take me in dere inta that.”

He knew in situations where deputies get in over their heads, the responding units don’t differentiate the good and bad and beat down anything that moves.

Robby reached over with his foot and slammed it down on top of mine holding it to the floor after I’d eased off a little. The car leapt out, grabbing asphalt faster and faster.

“It’s going to be crazy when we get there,” Robby said. “Here, take this.” He handed me his sheriff’s gold star on a chain and I put it around my neck. It felt strange, warm to the touch as if a religious medallion. I didn’t want it, not at all. There had been a time when I worshipped the fraternity. He was right though, without it I became fair game.

Ten years ago we would’ve just driven over the curb and into the projects. Nickerson was now surrounded by ten-foot wrought iron and could now only be accessed by a few streets.

I took a couple of fast corners, the tires squealing, the passengers inside getting batted around. It didn’t stop Robby, “Tell me who’s throwing gas and lightin’ up the people for initiation.”

“Man, what the fuck are you talkin’ about? Is this what all this shit’s about? You’re crazy. Swear to gawd, you’re off your rock.”

“Gimme something good and I’ll let you go. We know it’s Grape Street doin’ it.”

“Someone’s playin’ you a fool. You got it all wrong.”

Robby leaned over and punched the Crip right in the chest. The thump sounded hollow and followed by a long groan. The Crip lay across the backseat.

We were in the Nickerson driving west on 115th.

“There. There.” Robby yelled and pointed to a throng of blacks moving toward two deputies with their guns out, a suspect down at their feet. They stood back to back right in the center of a quad area. I went over the curb and headed right toward them, fishtailing, kicking up grass clods. Robby reached under his dash, down by my right leg, and hit the siren to disperse the crowd and to keep the deputies from misinterpreting who we were and opening up on us. A half-empty forty-ounce beer bottle bounced off our car. Yellow foam rolled down across the windshield.

Robby said, “This is going to get real shitty before it’s over.”

The crowd moved out of the way for us. The deputies held their guns at the ready. They would shoot into the crowd if it got any worse. I recognized Carter Bingham, a good old white boy transplanted from Tennessee who’d finally made it off of patrol and into the Gang Enforcement Team. They called him Pig Farmer because of his faint accent. He wouldn’t let the mob overrun them, not without taking a few with them.

The guy on the ground was shot in the back. He was dressed in denim pants and a Raiders jacket with a purple rag tied to his belt. He didn’t look too hurt the way he thrashed around in the handcuffs, screaming bloody murder how he was shot in the back and that he was going to sue.

Robby popped the trunk button, jumped out, pulled a riot gun from the back, and racked it. The loud, metallic noise made everyone in the crowd moving toward us freeze. “Get his ass in the car. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Half a red brick hit the windshield and shattered it. Red grit mixed with yellow beer foam and clung to the spiderweb damage. The Gang Enforcement Team deputies didn’t have to be told twice. They each grabbed an arm of their victim, drag-carried him over to the car, and threw him in on top of the other guy. Then Robby got in standing on the running board with his door open. The deputies followed suit in the back doors. I gunned it, spinning a brodie. The crowd took their cue. Rocks and bottles rained down. As we bounced back onto the street in our headlong flight, LAPD rolled in six cars deep. Behind them came all of Century Station Patrol, their heads large in the windshields from riot helmets. All of them braked, pulled U-turns, and exited. We met up in the shopping center parking lot on Wilmington where the ambulance came to tend to the wounded Crip gang member bleeding in the backseat. They put him on a gurney and rolled him out.