Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Or they’ll be complacent, thinking there must be no danger if security is so lax.”

“That’s quite a gamble, don’t you think?”

“No, because even if you’re right and they’re super-jumpy I still won’t bring a gun or even go with you if you bring a gun.”

“You’re serious.”

“Of course.”

“We need guns.”

“I won’t do it.”

“We’ll be killed.”

“Doubt it, who would kill me?”

“Who? Someone who has a gun and isn’t keen on you taking their millions.”

“I can live with that risk Dane. After all we’re the ones creating this contentious situation right? It seems only right that we should take the brunt of the risk.”

“What exactly is your objection to the guns? You prefer a grave risk of death? I personally don’t fear death in the slightest, but the overwhelmingly majority do so I’m rather curious.”

“Guns are for the stupid Dane. A well-trained monkey can go in and fire a gun, big fucking deal.”

“You propose we just ask nicely for the money?”

“Violence is the language of the simple. You initially proposed that we formulate a plan using our intellects and execute it using our wills, but now you propose we go in with guns like a couple of high-school-dropout-liquor-store-robbers. That’s you’re idea of perfection? If you think we will fail without guns, if you think we’ll be killed, then let’s not do it. You wanted me to do it remember? Not the other way around. Did you think I would just be a passenger on your train to criminality? I bring my own beliefs about what constitutes a proper plan. That’s why you wanted me remember?”

“Is there anything else I should know about?”

“The chest.”

“Whose chest?”

“The Tansu with the drugs in it.”

“What about it?”

“I want it.”

“I see. Greed. How do you propose we turn it into cash while still paying extreme attention to avoiding apprehension as you have mandated?”

“I don’t want to turn it into cash I want to destroy it.”

“Destroy it? Why’s that?”

“You’re insane if you think I’m going to be even peripherally responsible for some two-month-old girl being left unattended and gasping around in search of a tit in some ratty apartment while her mother goes out looking for crack.”

“I see. But you’re not willing to bring a gun into that house lest one of these people, who does actively contribute to the creation of gasping, unattended babies, gets hurt.”

“Right.”

“Do I have it all now?”

“More or less.”

“Great, let’s review. You’re willing to come along on the heist but only if we go into an apartment where an extremely high-level drug deal is about to go down, completely unarmed, at precisely the moment the deal is to be consummated, so that the mule, who we don’t know, can’t be blamed, and take about fifteen million dollars and drugs worth seven times that from these undoubtedly heavily-armed fellows. We then destroy the drugs, in the process ensuring we’ve made mortal enemies of numerous violent people both here and in Santo Domingo. Do I present the general picture?”

“Yes.”

“I like it.”

Dessert was an espresso — is there a greater beverage? — which I willingly imbibed despite the fact it never failed to later create in me an inordinate anxiety, and a piece of cheesecake. The cheesecake was perfect, not that shitty New York crap, but Italian ricotta cheesecake. Light and grainy, barely sweet with the edges nice and brown at just the right thickness and topped with a sweet but natural tasting strawberry sauce swirl. Bliss.

“That was a brilliant meal my good man,” said Dane addressing the serious waiter. “I can’t speak for my tight-lipped friend here but I think everything was highly delicious. You work in proximity to a near-genius kitchen and by extension I’m prepared to label you, whether warranted or not, a man of extraordinary culinary gifts.”

“Oh good, I’m glad you likeh. You come again no?”

“If I came any more I’d have to don an apron.”

“Hah, hah, hah! And you signor?”

“I also thought everything was superb, thank you.”

“Let’s go,” said Dane a bit later.

“Yeah,” I said and we split.

Outside, in the cold, was all the reality you could bear. I still had to go to Cymbeline to hear Soldera’s fate. Dane said he was going home to think so we parted ways somewhat abruptly. I looked up at the sky without real cause. It was true that the temperatures had unmistakably belonged to winter for quite some time but now the sky was finally reflecting true winter as well. And not early festive winter or dwindling late-stage winter either. This was exact midpoint winter, in appearance and fact, topped by a perfectly white firmament. Perfectly and uniformly White in a way that made me think Star Trek et alii had it all wrong when they portrayed the vast outer reaches of space as occasionally-interrupted black. It wasn’t black out there, it was white, and this was being revealed to me all at once without intervening gradations. You could climb high as you might and look all around but all you would see is missing color. Absence in every direction. Isotropic and sad White, nothing else and nothing more. And how could I have failed to notice until just then such an achromatic expanse? Such a vapid emptiness that precluded all matter and meaning. But those days it was true that a great many critical things were hidden from my view by their very prevalence.

Waiting for them to bring Raul Soldera down, and for Cymbeline to deign to return to the bench after the lunch break, I thought, surmised, conjectured, discovered, remembered, wished, guessed, intuited, researched, hoped, prayed, feared, speculated, theorized, recalled, learned, posited, and deduced that although Wilfred Benitez was born in the Bronx, as I said earlier, he actually lived most of his life in Puerto Rico.

His father Gregorio, or “Goyo”, was in agreement with Dick Van Patten that eight was enough. Enough children and probably not too difficult to get Clara Benitez to agree. Wilfred Benitez was eighth and last. Of Wilfred’s seven sibs, three were brothers and the three were Gregory, Alfonso, and Frankie. They weren’t just brothers either they were colleagues, because Goyo didn’t have sons, he had boxers. Boxers he managed and trained. His favorite boxer was his namesake Gregory. Gregory started boxing when he was eleven and if you’ve never heard of him, or of Wilfred’s other two brothers and their boxing careers, rest assured that, outside of this, you likely never will. Wilfred Benitez, about whom you will hear a lot, first began boxing, that is, first had his skull repositioned around his brain, when he was seven years old.

He did this in a ring located in the backyard of the Benitez home in San Just, Puerto Rico, a barrio hidden a couple miles east of the capital, San Juan. The Benitez family was split, some in San Just, some in New York, and it was Gregory Benitez’s misfortune to be in Puerto Rico, in that makeshift ring, in that sweltering backyard, across from his younger brother with the immense talent who repeatedly kicked his ass — a curious expression that rarely if ever involves an actual ass being actually kicked but which does seem to accurately reflect what it must feel like.

But Gregory was good too. Good enough that Goyo, whatever his level of ability at talent evaluation, could almost taste the distinct flavor of success nearby and so pursued it with his entire spirit. He threw himself into this. You’ve seen Goyos before. He was the mother teetering back and forth on her heels, at an angle from the stage, mouthing from memory all the lines her daughter will soon spit out to a receptive sea of docile heads wearing video cameras at the school play. He was that sagging father yelling at his son to pick up the back elbow as the little league ball approaches the vicinity of the plate, then reducing that batter to tears when, after being verbally paralyzed into inaction, he looks at a called third strike. He was them in extremis . And what was the result of that? If all the Benitez boys were given the Goyo treatment why did Wilfred become who he did and the others just his brothers?