Those same dozen-odd young hard men were still out there around the porch; maybe they camped out on the lawn or something. This was like a miniaturized fish-bowl version of street life down in the East Bay; it was hard to feel threatened here at all. Hick kids or not though, they sure outnumbered me if I really was a prisoner here.
They huddled around a duct-taped antique of a boom box, listening as a newscaster spoke my name several times. They noted my presence and Big Moe changed it over to the CD player. Dre and Tupac commenced going on and on about ‘California Love’ – given the mood I was in, that sounded like a contradiction in terms.
Looking around at these kids was pretty strange. Here we were in the sticks, in a hillbilly town buried up on the Lost Coast behind the Redwood Curtain, and these young bloods were all dressed up banger style in starter jackets and colored bandanas; many of them wore pants half-mast in baggin saggin style, living large. But they seemed a little awkward about their ensembles, like they knew they were play acting – my take was they’d watched one too many gangsta rap video.
Big Moe came my way; it was hard to reconcile his friendly demeanor with him being my Kiddy Korral prison guard. A skinny white boy walked with him, as close as if they were welded together at the hip. “Hey,” Moe said. “You’re looking almost human today.”
A car pulled up, a Volvo with a couple college students in it. Moe’s skinny little partner trotted over to the passenger door. A transaction took place involving a greenback and a plastic bindle. The Volvo sped off without a word having been exchanged.
“A man’s got to eat,” Moe said, as if defensive.
“I ain’t judging,” I said, wondering why this mopey kid seemed to take everything personally.
“That’s mighty white of ya,” he snorted. “Shit dude, they ain’t even burger flipping jobs in this town. They’s a lot of construction jobs around lately, but I ain’t the right color to get hired even though I was born here. This is it if I want to earn; this is all I got to feed my son and his mama.”
A husky Indian kid with a big, shaved cranium worthy of Lex Luthor came from the direction of the liquor store, carrying an armful of paper bags. He passed out several forty-ouncers and packs of smokes. Then it was apparently his turn to earn and he ran to the curb to deal with a van-load of tweakers.
“Thanks, Mackie,” Big Moe called after him.
Moe offered me a hit off his forty but I shook my head. He shrugged took a healthy swill himself.
Big Moe’s skinny white partner finished his own beer and disposed of it in the garbage can at the end of the stoop. A coffee can was next to the trash, filled with sand and cigarette butts. There wasn’t a speck of litter in front of Natalie’s crib, either on the lawn or in the gutter.
Moe saw my gaze. “Natalie takes care of us, and we make sure nobody litters. We keep the noise down for her too; keep all our biz on a professional level. And as long as the 18th Street Crips are around, both Natalie and Randy will always be well protected. I’d skin a motherfucker alive for either of ‘em.”
“Sounds like a good deal all around,” I said. “The 18th Street Crips, huh? That’s your clique’s name?”
“Yeah,” Mackie the big-headed Indian kid said. “We’ve even got a secret handshake. We’re getting some of those decoder rings made up special.”
He laughed, a jolly shaking sound from deep in his barrel chest. I figured if Mackie lived long enough, when he was older folks would be drafting him into putting on a fake beard and playing Santa every Christmas.
Leo stepped up to us – he couldn’t hold still, like he was ready to jump out of his skin. He looked at me and away, then back at me again; like a stranger dog trying not to antagonize but not really knowing how not to.
“You some kind of killing machine?” he asked. “You offed people before this?”
“That’s no kind of question, son. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. And even if I was stupid enough to answer the way you seem to figure, I’d just be making you an accessory anyways.”
“I ain’t your son,” Leo said. “My daddy’s on death row. They even had him on America’s Most Wanted before they popped him. You wouldn’t know what that’s like.” He twitched his way to the curb to deal with a cowboy in a pickup truck.
“Can I ask you something?” Moe asked. “I know you’re from Oaktown, Karl always made a point of it. That's how you guys roll down there; we’re well aware.”
I was uncomfortable. Just what kind of bull had Karl fed these kids all these years? That him and me just cruised down the block in a drop-top Caddie back in the day, spraying our AKs randomly at all and sundry? It made me wonder if Karl had ever informed these kids that he himself had never done time – somehow he always skated by, and it was inevitably me taking the fall for our shenanigans.
“So how did you take them out so easy?” Moe asked. “You’re not all that big.”
This kid needed reassurance of some kind; he seemed to be in permanent distress. “Do you really think I’m cool, because I killed those men?” I asked him. “It’s certainly nothing to brag of. Do you really think you’re less of a man because you didn’t?”
Before Moe could answer, a cop car rolled through the entrance to the Gardens and pulled up right in front of us. Several customers gunned away from the curb to escape past the cop out the Gardens’ only exit.
Another car entering the Gardens stopped in the middle of the street when the driver saw the black and white. After a few seconds the car backed up, Y-turned, and sped off around the empty development toward the highway.
The 18th Street Crips scattered, walking in different directions without looking back, their backs tight like they were ready to toss-and-run but trying to act casual. Officer Hoffman opened his door and stepped out, adjusting his gear as he stood and stretched. He stood there fussing with his junk as he aimed that handsome mannequin face my way.
“Care to go for a drive?” he asked, fingering the black leather strap running across his rippling chest down to his Sam Browne belt. He turned on that infantile smile and I was forced to smile back almost against my will, at the free ride he offered out of the invisible cage this situation felt to be.
As we left I saw Moe staring after me. I started to give him a grin and a wave over having escaped his clutches. Then I thought about the time and energy they’d expended keeping me alive, and refrained. I faced back forward as Officer Hoffman chauffeured me away from the Gardens.