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Adept Writer
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: America.
Gender: Male
Posts: 915
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Too Low To Count
Both of them laughed, but both of them heard nothing. That’s how you got by in the business: laughing, fucking, and wise-cracking. Most of all you had to know when to shut up.
Follow those rules, the final an imperative commandment, and you’d be ok. Chase knew that. He’d learned it from others. Jose, primarily, but Jose was dead now, so what that counted for was anyone’s guess. He didn’t brood on it too much. It wasn’t smart to brood too much. He’d learned that from Jose, too.
Anyways, both of them laughed, and both of them didn’t know why. They just did. Chase stopped first.
“How many more shipments you think he’ll need before the fuck’s happy?”
Conner shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno.”
“Did he say anything to August?”
Conner shrugged again, this time a crate in his hands. He loaded it onto the end of the truck, then, with a shove, slid it to the back. “Dunno.”
“Right.” Chase grabbed a crate, handed it Conner, and began to whistle.
“Whas’ that?”
Chase stopped. “What’s what?”
“That tune you whistlin.”
Chase smiled as he handed him another crate.
“Just a Friend. Biz Markie. You hear it before?”
“Might of. How’s it go?”
Chase eyed the dock for another crate while he kept his voice low to sing the chorus. The low tide of the sea brushed the legs of the docks and soothed him, making it easier to press out old memories. “Oh baby, you…you got what I neeeeed, but you say he’s just a friend, but you say”—
“Yeah, I heard that.” Conner looked at the sky for a moment, then out at the ocean, a large crate of the dope still held between his boulder-formed arms. “Thas’ an old one, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” Chase said, bending down to grab another of the crates labeled as sushi. “An oldie but a goodie. Better than what we’ve got today, anyway.”
Conner didn’t answer him but instead went on humming Biz Markie’s chorus to himself. Chase thought of Jose. Both of them sitting on a porch, walkmans on their laps, Rakim and Tupac making life go away for just a little while longer; he wondered how old they were then.
“Hey. Kyle.” Chase turned around to see Rodney walking up behind him, touting his 9mm like it was the hottest shit since mom’s home made spaghetti. That got Chase thinking again, but he stopped himself. “Why you starin’ out at the sky like that, huh? Come on. No dreamy shit, get the cargo on and let’s get the fuck outta’ here. Marcus says if we don’t get it off by sunrise then the chinks are out.” He spit a wad of his tobacco over the rail of the dock. Chase watched it plop into the black blue. “Slit-eyed queers. Rather work with some fuckin’ immigrants or somethin.”
Or niggers, if I wasn’t here, Chase thought with some amusement. He nodded. “Sorry.”
Rodney fished out a pack of smokes from his jean pocket and lit the stick of substance in a blur consisting of hand and lighter. The orange focal point bloomed like a supernova in the cool night. He nodded and began to walk back to his point. “Oh.” He turned. “And stop with the whistlin’n shit. Sounds faggish. Conner.”
Conner, who had been focused on loading up the last of crates and humming his own version of Markie’s classic, looked up.
“You too. No hummin. Next thing you know you’ll be dreaming and getting all starry eyed like Kyle here.”
Conner blinked, then nodded. “Sor’ bos.”
Rodney snorted. “Dumb fuck,” he said to himself, and then walked back.
When he was out of sight, Chase checked his watch. Two thirty. Amy was asleep by now. Most of the city was. That’s when they get down and dirty, Chase, when people don’t notice and when those who do are too tired to care. Chase shook Jose’s ghost away and looked around. No sign of anyone, which he supposed meant everything was going as intended. Still. The feeling of social claustrophobia could do wonders when release waited minutes away. A cramp began to knot his stomach. He walked over to Conner, who now leaned up against the trucks closed back.
“Rodney’s a nice little fucker, huh?”
Conner, all 6’5 of him, shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Nah, you never do.”
Chased dug in his pocket for a cigarette. He found one and lit it, sighing in the way only a smoker could understand. He had started soon after Jose died. “You want one?”
“Dun’ smoke.”
“Big guy like you? You’re ruining your image, buddy.”
Conner just shrugged. Then, so low that Chase almost didn’t hear it, Conner began to hum. Just a Friend. Jose had loved that song.
Chase checked his watch and saw only two minutes had passed. He looked around as if expecting to see the squad come any moment. But he wouldn’t. He knew that.
In the distance he could hear Rodney chastising another loading pair. The groups were separated around the dock, in case the operation had to cut short. The main shipment split into four groups, four stations, leaving ample time for one fourth of the merchandise to bail if Marcus’ precious goods found themselves raided. Chase grinned inside as dry vapors of smoke swelled there. Every station he’d seen and marked. He thought of Jose, telling him he’d done good, applauding him with a pat on the back and a smile that said the one who owned it deserved more.
Conner had stopped humming.
Chase looked up, eyebrow raised, cigarette jutted like an accusing finger, and nearly gawked when he saw two tears running down the big guy’s cheeks.
“Whoa, whoa.” He plucked his cigarette from his mouth and looked behind himself for Rodney. Rodney was nowhere in sight. Probably off waving his dick around in some low-mans face. He looked back to Conner, who looked ahead, two tears now dimpled on the bottom of his chin. “You ok, big guy? You alright? Hey?”
“My brotha’ liked tha’ song. He sang it a lot. Back when he was livin.”
Shit. “Oh…I’m sorry.” Chase kept his voice low. It was a tactic he’d learned from Jose, when you wanted to weed out information from people on a cliff. He hated himself for using it now, but techniques, when used enough, become habits—a Jose idiom. “How did he pass, man? If it’s too much, I mean”—
“Kidnapped. He was kidnapped. Never saw him ‘gain. My mama cried a lots when we cudn’t find him.” He looked down at his feet, his sobs still a silent shock to Chase. There was no shake or tremble in his voice. Just those wet lines. “I cried lots, too. Mama went crazy. Din’t work much afta’words. Lost ha’ job.”
Chase saw where the line trailed, but assumption was never a good bait to be lured by, Jose always said that. Hint your way there. Conduct the trail, allow them to run it. “What happened after she lost her job?”
Off in the distance, Rodney shouted something at someone and cackled. Forced cackles concurred with whatever shitty witticism he’d thrown out. Conner shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t has one. I took this, so…” he looked up, and Chase could see his eyes, wet but impassive, a retarded man with a heart of gold. There was always something frightening in that. People who could seem to be such shells, capable of more selfless will than those who preached the ideals they lived by. In Jose’s words, Fucking humanity, man! Chase tried to offer some sort of expression to say he understood, but couldn’t find the right façade.
“I’m na’ real smart, I’m sure you seen that.” Conner looked at the ocean. “I was fired from a pizza place. A repair shop afta’ that. Both bosses said I was dumb. I met mista Rodney, and he said he had a job fo’ me, so I said yes, since we needed money.” He gave his signature shoulder rise. “So. It’s a nice song.”
“Yeah,” Chase said, and found himself lost for whatever reason. Something Jose had said was trying to creep up, but he couldn’t find it. In that one moment, his old friend’s line seemed nonexistent. “Yeah, it’s a nice”—
He heard the faint click, the rattle, and the scream, in that order, that sequence, just before the scream of the people he knew shrilled the night cheer of Rodney and company.
“Police! Hands in the air! Hands in the air!”
Murk of red light bloomed on and off, painting the night in a blood stroke as footsteps came from every direction of the docks. Rodney cussed up a storm before being muted by a gun to his torso and an order to get on his knees. Chase saw Alicia and Tom among the others assigned to his station. He put his hands up, crossed his thumbs over his palms, and they nodded in return. He turned and saw Conner shaking.
“Calm down big guy. It’ll be over soon.”
Conner didn’t answer. His eyes seemed to be shaking from their sockets, like a mouse cornered by a cat. Chase felt a pang but didn’t allow the pang to go far. He looked away, made sure others in uniform caught his signal, and then placed his hands behind his head. Conner’s hand slipped into the deep cave of his pocket.
Chase saw the silver wink of steel slip slowly out. Someone shouted from far away to freeze. Conner didn’t listen, his eyes bulging. Chase opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what it was he wanted to say. Conner pulled forth the pistol, brought it up, his face like a scared child’s. A snap of a gun split the drums in Chase’s ears.
Conner’s head jerked backwards and followed a red spray. His body fell knees first, then torso and head. His eyes open, he lay on the ground, a hole through his head. Chase stared, and the world seemed a white noise.
You sure you want to be a cop, Chase? He could hear Jose asking. You sure you want to be the guy enforcing the law? Positive, now?
Chase forgot where he was, for just that moment. Staring at Conner’s body, he couldn’t remember what he’d been sent for.
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