It was Saturday, August 26, 2006. Tad had been a free man for one day and had already committed enough major crimes to land him in prison for life, possibly even land him a needle in the arm. But, to Tad, the slate was clean. A fresh start had begun.
He didn’t have to be anywhere, but he had to be out of the house. Even the simple task of sitting in the driver’s seat too long irked him; the confinement, the restriction from the seatbelt, the speed limits. For five years, he’d been confined to a tiny cell and followed every rule. He wanted to feel free. Real freedom; the kind that only money can buy.
While locked up, he plotted daily about what he would do, who he would do, and how he would survive once he got out. There was always the Suns, but as much as he hated to admit it, they were small-time. Small-time for the kind of life he wanted. He could pull about forty-G’s in a good year with the Suns, tax free, of course. All of his products were sold and paid for in cash: Drugs, stolen electronics, whatever he and the Suns could get their hands on. Forty a year allowed him to have a decent whip, a decent apartment, and a decent clubhouse. But decent wasn’t cutting it anymore. He was already behind—in his thinking—three years with the Suns’ progress, and that was before he got locked up. Negative eight was a hell of a hard pill to swallow.
There was fifteen-grand hidden behind an enlarged photograph of Tupac Shakur’s “All Eyez on Me” album cover, resting in a safe in his old bedroom at home. Only his mother knew about it. He had convinced her to let him have the safe installed, on the conditions that money would be the only item allowed in it. No guns, drugs, anything. Just money. He respected her wishes, and it was a good thing he kept the money there, because after the “attempted murder” of Ray Wilmer, the cops got a warrant to search his apartment. As he expected, they found nothing. Of course, they didn’t need evidence when they had two fellow gang members spilling their guts. Convicted felons or not, a witness is a witness, and, unfortunately, there were two of them throwing Tad to the wolves.
As he sat at a red light, with no cars in either direction, he picked up the Final Destination 3 DVD, poking his index finger through the center hole and wedging the bottom with his thumb. This was it; this was his ticket to freedom. Piracy was only getting bigger; it wasn’t just music anymore. Leif opened his eyes to a new game. He knew the economy was steady collapsing. Even a man on the inside knew how high gas prices were, and everything else that was going wrong with the country.
People in 2006 were in a constant state of post-9/11 paranoia. He didn’t blame them. He still remembered when the Twin Towers fell. He was lying down on his bunk, thinking about nothing in particular, when everyone started to get rowdy. There was a delay in information—and plain outright confusion regarding the information—but it eventually spread down to his block. According to his cell neighbor—Francisco, a gay Latino, skilled in hairdressing and… other things—World War III was starting. Terrorists had flown two airplanes into the Twin Towers, and that was just in New York. The news speculated on more hijackings, and US Marines were already being deployed in tanks and helicopters. There were special drones ready to drop atomic bombs. All wildly exaggerated claims from prisoners who had no way out; had no way of protecting their loved ones on the outside. Tad never forgot that day. He thought about his mother, Leif, Rachael, and the Suns. If the claims were true, then they could be in danger. He had to get out. So, he did what everyone else did that day: went fucking ballistic. He banged on the bars, punched them, screamed until his lungs gave way, told guards horrible things about themselves and their mothers. And, finally, the riot squad came down and cleared everything up. Yes, there was an attack on US soil they were told. And, no, it was not World War III, and Florida was not under immediate threat. Oh, and any more of this “pre-rioting bullshit” will result in a mandatory forty-eight hour lock-down.
Tad had never experienced lock-downs, but heard stories, horror stories. Eventually all the problem children shut their mouths and minds, and sanity began to replace insanity. It didn’t let go of Tad so easily; he’d only been incarcerated for a few weeks. He still had just under five years to go, and that was a long time to worry about things in which he had no control over.
Tad eyed each intersection, tossed the DVD back on the passenger seat, and hit the gas; staying put also wasn’t an option, he had places to be.
He came to the intersection of N Disston Ave and E Alfred St, headed south on E Alfred for half a block, and pulled into the unofficial, lime-rock laden driveway of Hector Santiago’s house. Hector Santiago was a four-foot-ten, ninety-five pound, Chihuahua, who never bit ankles and had his hands—and pockets—lined with every gang in a hundred mile radius. Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos; he dealt with them all. A neutral peddler, who saw no color but green. Tad trusted him.
He got out of the car, and walked up to the house. It was small, single-story, and painted all purple, with a white roof and white shutters.
What up with the purple? God.
He walked up the four concrete steps—lined with flowerpots on each side—and knocked on the all-white front door. Nothing. He knocked again. Nothing.
Aight, guess I come back.
As he headed for his car, he shot a quick glance at the house, hoping Hector was maybe in the bathroom or something, and was just slow to the door. But, instead, he saw small, brown fingers moving the blinds over from behind the far-left window.
Lil’ bitch!
He sprinted back up the steps, knocked over a flowerpot on accident, and pounded on the door.
“Hector, I know you in there! I just saw yo ass! Open up, man!” More raps.
A second later, the door opened; it was little Hector, wearing blue jeans and a black wife-beater.
“Yo, whatchu want?” Hector said, forcibly going for a deep tone that his voice could only unnaturally produce.
“Damn,” Tad said, “you swallow a frog, homie? I just wanna talk, aight?”
“Hector!” An older, feminine voice said in the background. “Don’t leave the door open! You’ll let out the cats!”
Tad leaned into the doorway, peaked around Hector’s shoulder, and saw a short, old Latina, with gray hair and a rotund belly plopped on the couch. Her stomach poked through the thin cotton dress she was wearing that ended at her ankles, meeting generic house slippers.
“Oh,” Tad said. “Damn, dog. Didn’t know you was robbing the grave. I’ll leave you to the granny fetish. Nasty ass…” He shook his head.
“Who’s at the door?” the woman said. Persistent she was. “Is it FedEx? I’ve been waiting for a package from the Amazons, and—”
“Mom!” Hector said, “It’s not FedEx. And it’s Amazon. There’s no s. It’s just a friend. Ay Dios Mio!” He started to close the front door behind him, stopping halfway and kneeling down to push a black cat’s head inside, then finally shut it.
Tad just smiled at Hector. Hardcore Hector Santiago lived with Mommy and the Cats.
“Not a word, Tad. Not one word.”
Tad raised his hands in the air, and said, “I’m not judging. Didn’t know you lived with your moms.”
Hector walked down the steps, stood in the front lawn and said, “You know that package she was just talking about?”
Tad nodded.
“Well, she ordered it last year; she already got the damn thing.” He paused, waved his hand for Tad to follow him to the backyard. “Dementia man… It’s got her ass, and ain’t nobody else to take care of her.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Tad said, walking behind Hector.
“All good.”
Upon entering the backyard—through the fenced-in gate—they were greeted by two large Rottweilers, who were more friendly than furious, but looked like Cujo’s twin babies.
“This is Mattie,” Hector said, rubbing behind her ears, “and this is Molly.” He stopped petting Mattie, and started on Molly.
“They best not bite my ass,” Tad said, “I don’t do dogs, man.” He had a scar behind his left knee from a Chow and German Shepherd mix named Whizzer. Whizzer was Tad’s dog when he was younger. He got his name from simply taking a piss in their house every chance he got when he was a puppy. When Tad was seven, he was playing a little too rough with Whizzer, and, well, Whizzer took a bite, latched on, and caused Tad to get ten stitches. The stitches were removed, the scar faded, but the real scar—the emotional one that accompanies every tragedy—stayed. Tad hated dogs ever since, but mostly he feared them.
“They ain’t gonna hurt you, man,” Hector said, then paused, and added, “Unless I tell them to.”
Now, Hector had a good reputation, and he’d helped the Suns on many occasions, but still, Tad took the warning and nodded.
“Almost there,” Hector said. He walked strategically through the yard, avoiding dog-shit piles, as if they were land mines, pointing them out to Tad, until they got to a shed. The shed was tan with a red roof—a cross between a barn and a small house. “This is my baby.” He opened the door.
There were more electronics, gadgets, and just plain shit in that little shed than there were in Hector’s entire house; it was his base of operations. Tad walked inside, and when he shut the door behind him, he felt as if he were standing in the Land of Oz, Kansas just outside the door. He took it all in. Three fifty-inch HDTVs were mounted side-by-side on the back wall, and a leather recliner with a doohickey attached to the side sat below them. There was another HDTV—a seventy incher—standing atop a smoked-glass entertainment stand, with an Xbox 360 in one chamber, a DVR and a PS2 in the chamber below that. Tad looked down; the floors were shiny, all stained-hardwood. There was a leather sofa to the left of them that could easily sit five, maybe even six people. Behind him and to the right was a stainless-steel fridge, standing next to a double-sink, and a microwave. The air was cool.
Tad was steady shaking his head, taking in every nook and cranny, then said, “Jesus, Hector. This shit clean.”
Hector stood, spine-aligned, smiling from ear-to-ear, and said, “I told you… this is my baby.” He stretched his hands out in a V, as if he were Caesar, showing off Rome to a woman from his balcony. “Need a drink?”
“Naw, I’m good.”
“Good,” Hector said. He paused, then took a seat on the sofa, gesturing Tad to sit, please sit down. Tad did. “I didn’t know you was out yet. How was it?”
“Fucking vacation, what you think?” Tad smiled, gently shoved Hector’s arm.
“I did some time. Three years.” He sucked in a breath, looked down, then back at Tad. “I’m never going back.” He shook his head, as if trying to forget a painful memory.
“I feel you.”
There was a moment or so of silence, nothing awkward, just two free men sitting down on a sofa and breathing. Just breathing.
“So,” Hector said, “what can I do for you?”
Tad reached into his pocket, pulled out Final Destination 3 and handed it to Hector. Tad knew that Hector had connections with a black gang called the Ghosts, and he knew the Ghosts sold these kinds of items, secondary, of course, to their weapons and drugs. Supplemental income.
“Gotta DVD player?” Tad asked.
“Yeah.” Hector got up, pulled out Call of Duty 2 from the Xbox, showed it to Tad. “This is a game.”
Tad leaned forward and squinted—his vision had declined over the last few years—and said, “I played that with Leif last night. On the PC, though.”
“Nice. I got it on this and the computer.” He placed Final Destination 3 onto the tray and pushed it closed.
“Damn. Didn’t know you was such a nerd.” Tad smiled, forcibly.
“Call it what you want,” Hector said, heading back to the sofa, with the Xbox controller in his hand, “at least I’m happy. Plenty of peeps game now, fool. It’s not like it used to be.”
“I get it,” Tad said, “I suck at it, but it was straight.”
The movie started playing immediately, no trailers, no bloatware, just the film. It had only been running for a minute, when Hector looked at Tad.
“This quality,” Hector said, “it’s so… it’s so—”
“Good,” Tad said. “Like a real DVD?”
“Yeah. Shit man. Where’d you get this?”
“Don’t worry about that. Just know that I can get more. A lot more.”
Tad hadn’t stopped and seen Hector for nothing. Not only did he know about his connections with the Ghosts, he knew the quality of product they supplied: Cheap shit. The kind that was filmed by someone in the theater with a fifty-dollar camera. They sold that cheap shit to plenty of people, though, for anywhere from five to ten bucks a disc, depending on how old the film was. Leif had produced one hell of a product; he just didn’t know it yet. Tad planned on sealing a deal with Hector, at first, to test the waters out with the Ghosts. He was curious to see how much these movies could bring in.
Just as the roller-coaster-from-hell was derailing on the movie, Hector paused it, and said, “How much more?”
Tad waited for a second, then said, “Sample this out with your boys, and get back to me with how much they need. Don’t say who you got it from neither.”
“Okay, I can get an answer for you in a day or two. You gotta phone?”
“Don’t worry, I be around, aight?” Tad stood, signaling their meeting was over, and that’s when he heard brakes squealing outside, car doors opening and shutting vociferously, footsteps and mutters approaching.
“Shit!” Hector said. He ran to the window over-looking the sink and parted the blinds. “It’s your boys. The fuck are the Suns doing here?”
Tad’s heart exploded. His internal temperature rose ten degrees, and, almost immediately, he began to sweat.
“Shit,” Tad said, “They can’t know I’m here. How many?”
“Why, it’s just your boy—”
“How many?”
“One, two, four. No. Five. There’s five.”
Tad grabbed Hector, spun him around, and said, “Is there anywhere to hide?”
“Yeah, but you gotta—”
“There’s no time. Get me out this; I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
“Fine. Over there,” Hector said, pointing to the right of the wall with the mounted TVs. He led the way, and Tad ran behind him. When he got to the corner, he flicked a light switch up, and in the tucked-in corner to the right of them, a door began sliding upward like a garage door. “Get in. And don’t fucking touch anything.”
Tad ducked under the door, which was still rising, and fit his body through the small crevice. There was a loud knock on the door, followed by an aggressive, “I know you’re in there, Hector,” from a deep, masculine voice. Hector flipped the switch down and the door started to reverse.
“There’s a light-switch on the inside wall,” Hector said, as the door was almost sealed. “If you can’t find it, just sit down and wait. And for the love of God, don’t touch anything.”
“Okay,” Tad said, and was then swallowed by darkness. The last thing he heard Hector say was, “Just a minute! Damn!”
Whatever he was in now was almost soundproof. He held his body up against the wall and felt for the switch. No luck. He pressed forward, carefully, his hand sliding across the smooth surface of the wall. Finally, he felt a plastic base, then fingered his way to the switch, flipping it up. Light flooded his eyes fiercely, as if he had just come out of a movie theater, and he closed them tight.
When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.