Charlie Huston: Every Last Drop

At the north end of Joyce Kilmer Park, a rust, primer and white station wagon that looks like it was recently firebombed cruises up next to me and a match flares inside. -Tell me, Joe.

I put a hand on my gun, wishing I'd maybe used just two bullets instead of three.

The match flame touches the end of a cigarette between two red lips.

— Was doing that as unpleasant as it looked?

— You see who hit her?

— Yeah.

— Want to share?

— Know anything about tweens on pocket rockets, wilding for blood?

She looks at me, puts a tilt on her head, looks away. -Yeah. I know that picture.

She leans her arm out the open window of the decaying station wagon, looking at the towering glass facade of the Bronx County Hall of Justice across One Sixty-one from the Concourse Plaza shopping center where she's parked us. -Was it them?

I do my own head-tilt.

— Did the four spastics buzzing the Stadium crowd chew the chicks tongue out? Tell ya, Esperanza, I didn't witness the act, but I'm assuming they did the deed.

She flicks a spent cigarette butt out the window.

I blow rings at the windshield, watch them explode against the glass.

Not to be outdone, she lights a fresh Pall Mall and blows a ring of her own. -That girl without the tongue. You made a lot of noise. Cops are already over there.

— I guess even around here someone is bound to call in shots fired in their basement.

— Well, were not savages up here. -Didn't say otherwise.

Smoke jets from her nostrils.

— Girl with her face shot off, gonna create some interest. -Maybe. As much interest as another gun killing gets these days. -Could get more than usual attention if anyone saw you. White guy in the Bronx murdering a Rican girl. Never know with a story like that. Turns out she was a college student, maybe supporting her grandma and her little sister, a story like that could end up with legs. Social outrage. White men coming to the Bronx to hunt our Latina sisters. End up with Reverend Sharpton doing interviews at the scene of the murder.

I peel a strip of fabric from the shredded headliner.

— Better give the Post a call. Give your exclusive before its too late.

She blots some sweat from her temple with the back of her hand, a cross tattooed in the flesh where her thumb joins her hand glistens. -I'm not arguing whether it was the thing to do, I'm just saying you could have been a little quieter.

— Sure. I could have left a nice quiet corpse of a woman with a broken neck. And they could have autopsied the body and found nothing else wrong, except that she had only half a tongue. Nice and pink and healed and looking like shed been born that way. And wouldn't that have provoked some interest when her family found out about it. Half a tongue? What are you talking about? Oh, and I imagine the M.E. might also have been intrigued by the way she was missing about half her blood with no fresh wounds through which it could have come out.

She pinches the butt of her cigarette between thumb and forefinger. -And when you showed the fuck up here on my turf I could have cut a deal with the Mungiki and had you escorted into the fucking river. But you said you d be cool. So if I want to talk to you about shit that doesn't play cool by me, you can listen and not talk hardcase. Yeah?

I flick some ash.

— Didn't know you had pull with the Mungiki.

She lights a fresh Pall Mall.

— Yeah, well, you don't mix enough to know shit up here, do you? — Nope.

— No one has pull with the Mungiki. But since they moved to Queens they sometimes need a favor here. -How you get that gig?

She sighs.

— I used to date one of them. -Dated a Mungiki? Filed teeth and all?

She gives me that look again. -Don't believe all the shit you hear, man. They don't file their teeth.

She watches as a handful of couples file out of the Multiplex from the last show.

— Not all of them, anyway. And he wasn't Mungiki when we were hooking up. Just a guy.

— Huh, well, fascinating stuff, but if we're done threatening each other, I thought I might get on. Maybe look into those kids.

She blows ash from the tip of her cigarette. -Don't fuck with the kids.

I eye her. -There a reason I shouldn't?

She eyes me back. -Yeah. I just told you not to.

We do a stare-down while I chew it.

Lady looks twenty-one. Maybe younger. She older? Yeah, a few years, but not by much. You don't feed heavy in the Bronx, not heavy enough to keep the years at bay. Look at me, couple years back I looked maybe late twenties. Now Id be pressed to pass for thirty-five. At this rate I'm gonna catch up with forty-eight in a hurry.

But she's got youth on her side. Real youth, not the borrowed kind.

Long in the legs. Khaki cargo pants, white retro Jordans, a black tank tucked at the waist, tight over a black sports bra. Tattooed shoulders, hands, neck, designs dark against brown skin. Black hair, short and greased back. Sinews running down long arms. Loping muscles built playing point guard with the boys at Rucker Park over the river.

Esperanza Lucretia Benjamin.

Closest thing the Concourse has to a boss. Only one up here seems to care if the lid ever blows off. Only one can talk to the Mungiki and come away with her head unsevered. One tough chick.

Warden.

Two ways you go to prison.

First way is keep your eyes down and suck up against the wall when the big dogs pass by, hope no one notices how harmless you are, how badly you just want to do your time and get back to your life on the outside. Spend your days counting the minutes till someone maybe decides you got a mighty pretty mouth.

Second way is go in and take a look around and find the chair in the day room with the best view of the TV, go up to the skinhead sitting in it, spit in his face, and shank him in the ear with the sharpened end of your toothbrush. Let everyone know you're not going anywhere. You're not a guest, you're fucking home. Do it that way, and when you get out of solitary you'll find that chair waiting for you to plop down in it and watch General Hospital.

Guess which was my approach.

Found a patch of Franz Sigel Park, a patch near the corner of Walton

Avenue and Mabel Wayne Place where they got that cute red, white and blue sign. The Bronx. All-American City. A patch of trees and weeds and rock that reeked of some fucker doing his thing there for years.

Then I staked it out, waited till he dragged someone back into his favorite spot, came up on him as he was getting ready to put on the feedbag and I broke his spine in three places and let him lie there paralyzed and watch me while I dined out on his handiwork.

I peed all over his yard.

Then I killed him.

Soon enough, Esperanza called. Made it clear she was what passed for law around here. Made it clear what she was looking for in a neighbor. Made it clear that One Sixty-one and the Concourse being about as close to civilization as you get up here, she wanted to see it remain that way. Made it clear that the only kind of profile that would do in these parts was a low one. And I made it clear I couldn't agree with her more. Proved the point by showing her the corpse I'd made out of the guy who'd been living in Franz Sigel. A guy it turned out had been the source of Monster in the Park stories amongst the citizens. The kind of stories that attract undue attention.

She was pleased.

And I was home in the Bronx.

Again.

Not that I've strayed over to Hunt's Point to walk down memory lane and see the house I grew up in or anything. Do that and I might get inspired to burn it down. And I kind of doubt that my folks are still living there, so what would be the point?

Any case, not an easy woman to get on the right side of. And, once there, you don't want to circle round to the wrong side.