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  “Have no fear, sobrino.” Tio Cheo bent over to open a duffle bag he had brought with him. “Souvenirs from the Marines.” He handed Roachkiller a moldy set of goggles that had this weird extra stuff in the front. “See this? Night vision.”

  Roachkiller held the goggles close. “Damn! It stinks!”

  Paco was laughing. “Huele a culo de cerdo,” he said.

  “Hey! It’s been in my trunk for months. You want me to sprinkle it with cologne?”

  “You stay in the dark until it’s done, say, ten minutes. Then come open the door for Benjy and Carmelo, and we’ll all clean up. Got it?”

  The others said they did.

  “You got it, kid?”

  “Sure thing,” Roachkiller said.

  Roachkiller and Tio Cheo got out, went to the building next door. Roachkiller tried to keep a ballad in his head, to keep him cool, calm, Yvonne Elliman or something. But instead the thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump “Chase” dance mix from Midnight Express played on repeat.

  Up the stairs to the top floor, Tio kicked the door wide open.

  “Wasn’t even locked.”

  “A good sign,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They walked over to the next building and tiptoed Bruce Lee-style to the edge of the roof and looked over.

  “When those lights go, we go. I’ll do all the work. Just watch my six.”

  “Your six what?”

  “Behind me. Watch behind me.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  “C’mon, boy. And don’t worry. I got an extra eye to watch out for you. Okay?”

  Roachkiller was not okay. But Roachkiller said he was.

  Tio checked his gun again and put on the goggles. Palms sweating in the cool night, Roachkiller did the same. The world went Hulk green, and everything that was in the dark was visible. But, damn, those goggles smelled.

  They looked over the side, waited—and then in a snap all the lights down the side of the building went dark.

  “Go.”

  Over the side and onto the fire escape they went.

  Roachkiller had known his uncle was a tough guy, but mostly as a big bruto. He had never seen him in action until now. Tio kicked the screen out of the window, then flipped the window wide open like Sammartino throwing Professor Tanaka over the ropes.

  In the green light, Roachkiller saw three men at the apartment’s front door, yelling for whoever was on the other side to go away.

  The plan was working. They didn’t see Tio coming.

  Tio took out the first one with a shot to the back of the head, the red of the blood looking black in the goggles. Tio turned and shot the second man in the chest and face. The third man shot wildly at the wall. Tio calmly, professionally walked right up to him in the darkness and shot him in the face.

  A shadow came from behind Roachkiller and jumped Tio. Damn, Roachkiller was supposed to watch his six, his six!

  Roachkiller tried to help, got in there to pull the shadow off, but we all went down in a tumble, crashing something. The shadow—the man who had run out of the getaway car—he yanked off Tio’s goggles and smacked him in the face with them. Roachkiller tried to aim his gun, but hesitated. Would he hit Tio?

  Then with a snap the lights went back on. Was that ten minutes? So fast?

  Roachkiller stood there useless when a knife the size of skateboard was in Tio’s hand and it flashed up in into the man’s torso, just under his armpit.

  “Get this son of bitch off of me, sobrino.”

  Roachkiller pulled the heavy body off, was bending down to give Tio back his goggles. What happened next took less than two seconds, but it stretched out to forever.

  A young girl ran into the room, about fourteen, with long, black hair, yelling.

  Lydia. Must be, Roachkiller figured, Benny’s daughter. How did she get free?

  “Embustero!” she screamed. “Come mierda!”

  There was a gun in her hand and Tio, who a minute before had moved like lightning didn’t react, stood there, was shot one-two-three in the face. Roachkiller reacted, not thinking, just reacted. She was turning to him, still screaming, not words, just screaming.

  Roachkiller shot once, didn’t even see where the bullet went. She fell to the floor.

  The apartment was quiet now.

  The decoy girl outside of the pizzeria. That was who she was. That was who she better be. Her life was gone. And Tio had been right. It had been easy. You just had to be calm and professional about it. And not throw up like Roachkiller wanted to.

  Roachkiller looked around. It was regular apartment, a couch, a coffee table, now broken, a TV set, now busted. Regular except for the dead bodies. And there was Tio, still looking up at Roachkiller like Roachkiller was some latrine-green recruit, whatever the fuck that was.

  There was a closet in the bedroom.

  Tied up, squeezed in behind some coats, faces streaked with dirt and tears, Ada and Lydia looked up at Roachkiller and wondered who the hell he was.

  Roachkiller called Miriam from a payphone on Broadway. It was three in the morning, but that wasn’t strange for us.

  She knew it was Roachkiller before he spoke.

  “I got nothing to say to you,” she said. Rough-edged, sleepy, her magic, sexy middle-of-the-night voice. But there was no flirt in it, no piece of a dream. “What, you got nothing to say? You’re an obscene caller now, too?”

  Roachkiller almost busted out laughing, Miriam could always make him laugh, but Roachkiller stayed quiet. Miriam had a chain around her heart that needed to break.

  “Why don’t you hang up?” she said. “No? I’ll do it for you. Don’t call back, RK. Don’t come to the shop. Don’t ever contact me ever again.”

  Roachkiller wasn’t sad. Wasn’t angry. Didn’t feel nothing. Three days later Mami and Abuela were wearing black. They cried soft and quiet and still while they moved around the apartment kitchen, getting food ready for after the funeral.

  Roachkiller sat at the head of the table now. Coffee got cold in front of him. It was over now, this business of his uncle’s. Roachkiller could go back to taking it easy, spending nights at the disco, counting up chump change.

  But there was questions. That girl, she called Tio Cheo a liar. What the hell did she mean? She had known Tio, you could see it in her eyes. Tio had three eyes, and he couldn’t stop what was right in front of him. Because he didn’t want to?

  In the Daily News, the cops said one of the bodies found at the scene was Juan Carrion’s, the Godfather’s second cousin. So was he behind the whole thing? Had the reporter been right, and Tio wrong? Or maybe Tio knew the truth all along?

  Whatever, whatever, whatever. It wasn’t Roachkiller’s business. It didn’t matter. Tonight he would be at the disco and everything would be smooth again.

  The doorbell rang. It was early for mourners, but people sometimes did that, to bring food, or just to be there.

  At the door was Johnny D., dressed in baby blue, shades hiding his eyes. “No questions,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  In the car the radio was playing Hector Lavoe, and there was time to think. Only one person could have put those lights back on so quickly. Maybe they couldn’t see how things might go exactly, but they knew it would be a SNAFU no matter what.

  Roachkiller watched Johnny D. drive.

  “Yeah, when those lights came back on, it scared the shit out of me,” Roachkiller said.

  “The landlord suddenly came down,” Johnny D. said. “I had to get out of there, understand? No choice.”

  “I understand.”

  In the pizzeria, there was an office behind the kitchen that Roachkiller had never seen before. On a leather couch there was Benny, in white slacks, a black guayabera, and red roachkiller boots.

  “There he is. Mr. Roachkiller. See? I like your taste in clothes.”

  Johnny D. took a seat, lit a cigarette.

  No one offered a seat, s
o Roachkiller stood there. “Yeah.”

  “First of all, I want to offer my condolences. Your uncle occupied a special place in my heart and in my business. You won’t have to reach into your pocket for the funeral neither. I’ll take care of that. He’ll get the best. The best!”

  Roachkiller didn’t know if he should thank Benny, just nodded.

  “That said, with Cheo gone, there is now an opening available for someone young and willing to learn.”

  Roachkiller was about to say “Hell, no, smell you later,” spin on the heels of his boots, and book back to the funeral. Say goodbye to Tio Cheo and his life.

  But Tio was still family, and Roachkiller wanted to find out, had to find out what really happened to him. And Roachkiller knew it had something to do with that slick Johnny D.

  “You would be working with Johnny,” the Godfather said then.

  Johnny D. smiled, blew smoke circles up to the ceiling. “That’s right, kid. I’ll show you the ropes.”

  That was it. That was how Roachkiller would get his answers. That was the day, the moment, the second Roachkiller really became whoever he is today.

  “Okay. I’m in,” Roachkiller said.

  Back to TOC

  MERRY XMAS FROM ORCHARD BEACH

  Holding her smartphone with one hand and steering her SUV with the other, Heather Rincon simultaneously tapped Tito’s number and U-turned to park in front of his crappy house on Crosby Avenue. She was on her way to doing something right, finally.

  “Merry Christmas, spazzbucket,” she yelled into the phone. Pear-shaped and stocky, she wore her thick hair in braids under a baseball cap. Across her right forearm in fancy script flowed the name “Giselly,” inside a heart. Around her other arm, hands pressed together holding prayer beads above one word: “JESUS.”

  “What time is it?” Tito said over the phone, yawning.

  “Time to wake the hell up, bro.”

  He mumbled that he needed a few more minutes.

  “Did you get wasted last night?” she said. “I told you not to get wasted. You need to be sharp today. Sharp? Look who I’m talking to.”

  “I’m coming. I’m coming. Damn!”

  The Bronx streets shone wet from the previous night’s pathetic attempt at snowfall. Above Heather, the sky was a dull black, layered with slate gray clouds. At just past six in the morning, people were already out, probably on their way to the bakery to get pies and cookies and all that fattening crap for Christmas dinner. Heather drummed her hands on the steering wheel, then surfed through radio stations. She kept hearing snatches of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas,” which made her push the button faster. Where were all the good Christmas songs, the stuff she grew up with? Even WCBS was playing some new, douchebag version of “White Christmas.” But as it ended, Heather was rewarded with a segue into “Dominick the Donkey,” which she hated, but which was better than anything Mariah Carey ever recorded.

  She looked at the time on her phone and then looked at the door of Tito’s house. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

  A few minutes later, Tito emerged, thin as a spliff, puffy eyed, in a denim jacket over a hoodie, and carrying a small duffel bag and two large shopping bags with nutcracker soldiers on them.

  “You’re freaking serious with those?” Heather said.

  “Carmen said as long as I was going out I should drop these at her mom’s because we’re bringing food later, and she doesn’t want to carry so much.”

  “Does she keep your balls on a keychain or in a jar on a shelf?”

  “She keeps them on her chin, where they belong.”

  “You’re a riot, Tito. Don’t ever change.”

  Heather floored the car all the way up Westchester Avenue.

  “Can’t we drop these off now before the thing?”

  “Nope,” she said. “We cannot fucking drop them off before the thing. We’re already running late because of you.” Heather checked the time. “Tell me you got the stuff.”

  “Of course. Damn,” Tito said and took out the shims he had made from crushed beer cans.

  “Good man.”

  Heather lit up a cigarette, and Tito gestured for her to give him one, so she did.

  “What’s with the oldies?” Tito said.

  “It’s Christmastime. Perfect time for the oldies.”

  “You know what my favorite Christmas song is?”

  “I don’t have the slightest.”

  “‘Old Lang Syne,’ by Don Fogelberg.”

  “It’s Dan Fogelberg.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah, and it’s not a Christmas song.”

  Heather sped onto the Hutchinson River Parkway north. No cars anywhere. Thank freaking Jesucristo.

  “Yes, it is. It’s on Christmas Eve,” Tito said, then he sang, “‘The snow was falling Christmas Eve.’ See?”

  “Do me a favor, Tito: Never sing again. Especially that song. It’s a freaking earworm.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “It digs into your skull and never lets go.”

  “That’s why I like it. What’s your favorite?”

  “I don’t know. What a question,” Heather said, then she thought about it. “Honestly, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ Fucking love that song. That song is Christmas to me.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yes!”

  “It’s so cliché.”

  “Shut the fuck up. We’re here.”

  She pulled slowly into the parking lot of Orchard Beach. Empty. She parked at the west end of the lot, as far as possible from the bus stop and the security guard office. She checked her watch. Four minutes to spare.

  They got out of the car and made their way toward the beach.

  Orchard Beach, aka Chocha Beach, aka La Playa De Los Mojones, aka the Riviera of the Bronx, was a manmade beach stretched out for more than a mile in an arc that hugged a bay that was less a bay and more the rectal end of Long Island Sound. The water was brown, so calm it was almost stagnant. Underneath it, rocks and broken glass and broken shells waited to stab you. On the surface plastic bags floated like fields of urban jellyfish.

  Heather had spent many summer days there, too many. Always packed, not a spot of sand free by the time her family finally arrived, usually in the afternoons. Music blasted from one boom box after another, and you had a real mix of the Bronx there, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Puerto Ricans, and, for they most part, they got along. Her father would plop down on his beach chair and drink one Budweiser after another until he stewed in the sun. He would get sunburn every June but turn nut-brown by August. And yet cancer hadn’t killed him. Yet.

  It was her mother who showed her how to swim and how to get the attention of the boys, both lessons taught before Heather was ten. She liked the swimming all right, but the boys bored her. By the time she was twelve she was filling out and damned proud of it, lording it over the flat-chested girls at Saint Theresa’s. Although there was one girl she never lorded it over, one that made her feel weird but good. And when she tried to kiss AnnaMaria Pannuzio in the deep woods facing Twin Island, way at the end of the beach, well, her screams sealed Heather’s reputation and her fate. AnnaMaria ran away, and Heather stayed behind, sitting on a log, chewing on a cigarette she had intended to share.

  But that summer was a long time ago.

  Heather and Tito made their way to the back of the bathhouse in section eight of the beach. The city was always threatening to revitalize the beach’s bathhouses. A little bit here and little bit there got fixed. But it was still the Bronx and nobody gave a shit about the Bronx.

  They got to the cinder block bathroom station, with a men’s entrance on one side and a women’s on the other. Heather peeked around. One person in jogging clothes way over by section two, and another couple heading into the cold hideaway of the woods. She hoped they had condoms.

  “Why the hell do people come to Chocha Beach on Chri
stmas Day?” Heather said.

  “You mean they should be home unwrapping presents, like we should be,” Tito said.

  “Shithead,” she said. “This is my present.”

  In the winter, the bathroom doors were padlocked. They went around to the women’s entrance.

  “This is the one,” Heather said. “Get to work, my friend.”

  From the duffle bag, Tito took out the shims and began working them into the shank holes of the padlock, easing them open.

  “Ow! Shit!” he said.

  “What?”

  “I cut myself.”

  “Stop crying and hurry up.”

  “It’s cold out here. My fingers are numb.”

  “So’s your head. C’mon, guy’ll be here soon. I hope he follows instructions.”

  A few moments later, Tito announced he was in.

  Dirty white tiles covered the floor. The wall had aqua blue waves, chipped and fading, a tiny window was painted shut. The metal mirror hung broken over dirty, rusted sinks. Cans of paints and paint thinner had been stacked under the sinks, for a job that looked like it would never get done.

  “Go find a good spot in the trees,” Heather said. “Try not to freeze your delicate ass.”

  She stayed by the building and kept watch.

  She knew Giselly would be up because the kids would be up. Heather wanted to call her but the time wasn’t right yet.

  It was starting to get bright out when Ledesma finally appeared, making his way up the path from the parking. He was alone, per Heather’s instructions.

  She waved at him, and the lawyer made a move to wave back but stopped himself.

  Ledesma was tall, had on one of those wool fedoras that older men wear even though he wasn’t that old. And he wore what Heather recognized was a seven hundred dollar Canada Goose jacket with coyote fur lining. That would have some nice resale value.

  “Okay, I’m here,” he said when he came up to Heather. “I’m guessing you’re supposed to be ‘Mr. X.’”

  “I am indeed, buddy. Follow me.”