See Them Die

5

Zip continued grinning until Parker had turned the corner and walked off up the avenue. Then the grin dropped from his mouth.

"You'd stool on Pepe for that rotten cop?" he asked Luis.

"Pepe Miranda is no brother of mine," Luis answered.

"A stoolie is a stoolie," Zip said. He swung around and walked to the jukebox. He studied the selections for a moment, inserted his coin, chose one, and then stepped behind the box and turned up the volume so that a mambo fairly blasted into the luncheonette.

"Lower that, lower that," Luis said.

"Shhh, man," Zip said, grinning. "I can't hear the music."

"I said lower that," Luis shouted, and he came around the counter, walked to the juke, and was reaching around to the back when Zip stepped into his way, laughing. The music screeched into the shop, trumpets bellowing, bongo drums pounding their steady beat. At the counter, Jeffs headache responded to the assault wave of sound. He turned toward the juke. The old man was still trying to reach the volume control. Zip, laughing, danced before him, blocking his path, stepping out of it, teasing the old man closer, blocking him again. The grin did not leave his face, but there seemed to be no humor in his laughing defense of the volume control. The old man lunged, and Zip stepped aside finally and danced into the street like a boxer moving away from the ropes. Luis located the volume control and turned it all the way down.

From the street, Zip said, "Not too low, you old bastard. That's still my loot in there."

Luis stamped angrily to the cash register He rang up no sale, took a dime from the cash drawer and threw it on the counter. "Here!" he shouted. "Take your money and go!"

Zip threw back his head and laughed, a loud mocking laugh which - like his earlier smile - was totally devoid of humor. "Keep it, dad," he said. "It probably took you all week to make."

"Puncture my eardrums!" Luis muttered. "On a Sunday morning! No decency, no decency!"

But the music, despite Luis' preference fcr comparative silence, seemed to have awakened the neighborhood all at once. The street had been as still and empty as a country road before the record started, and now it suddenly teemed with humanity. In the distance, the church bells had begun tolling again and, in response to the bells, the people of the neighborhood were coming out of the tenements, drifting down the steps leisurely because this was first call, and there was still time before the Mass would begin. The record spun to an end, but the church bells persisted, and the street was alive with color now, color which seemed appropriate to the heat of July, color so vivid, so tropical, that it assailed the eyeballs. Two young girls in the brightest pink came out of a tenement and walked arm in arm down the street toward the church. An old man in a brown silk suit, wearing a bright green tie, came from another tenement and began in the same direction. A woman carrying a red parasol to shield her from the sun walked with the dignity of a queen, trailing a boy in a short-trousered suit by her side. The people nodded at each other, and smiled, and exchanged a few words. This was Sunday morning. This was the day of rest.

From the other end of the street, rushing against the tide of humanity that swelled with a single mind toward the church at the far end of the block, Cooch appeared with two other boys. Zip saw them instantly, and went to join them.

"What the hell kept you so long?" he asked.

"We had to wait for Sixto," Cooch said.

"What the hell are you, Sixto? A man or a baby sitter?"

Sixto looked as if he were about to blush. He was a thin boy of sixteen with eyes that seemed ready to flinch at so much as an unkind word. He spoke English with a Spanish accent which was sometimes marked and sometimes mild. His voice was very soft, and he used it reticently, as if he were not ever certain that anyone wanted to hear what he had to say.

"I ha' to help my mother," he told Zip.

The other boy with Cooch was a six-footer with a face so dark that all personality somehow became lost in the overall impression of blackness. His features were a mixture of Negroid and Caucasian, a mixture so loosely concocted that even here there was an impression of vagueness, of vacuity. The boy was sixteen years old. He moved slowly, and he thought slowly. His mind a blank, his face a blank, he presented a somewhat creaking portrait to his contemporaries, and so they had named him Papa, as befitted a sixteen-year-old who seemed to be seventy.

"When my fodder go on a trip," he said, "I hep my mudder. He tell me to hep her." He spoke with a Spanish accent so marked that sometimes his words were unintelligible. At these moments, he would revert back to his native tongue, and this too added to the concept of a young boy who was old, a young boy who clung to the old language and the old slow-moving ways of a land he had deeply loved.

"That's different," Zip said. "When he's away, you're the man of the house. I'm not talking about a man's work."

Proudly, Papa said, "My fodder's a merchan' marine."

"Who the hell are you snowing?" Zip asked. "He's a waiter."

"On a boat! Tha' makes him a merchan' marine."

"That makes him a waiter! Listen, we've wasted enough time already. Let's lay this out. We're gonna have to move if we want to catch that eleven o'clock Mass." He turned suddenly to Sixto who had been staring blankly at the street. "You with us, Sixto?"

"Wah? Oh, yes. I'm… I'm with you, Zip."

"You looked like you was on the moon."

"I wass thinkin'… well, you know. This Alfredo kid, he not sush a bad guy."

"He's getting washed and that's it," Zip said. "I don't even want to hear talk about it." He paused. "What the hell are you looking at, would you please mind telling me?"

"The organ-grinder," Sixto said.

The organ-grinder had rounded the corner and stopped just outside the luncheonette. His parrot had bright-green feathers. The parrot perched on the instrument, accepted coins in his beak, gave them to his master, and then reached down to select a fortune slip from the rack of slips on top of the hand organ. A crowd immediately gathered around the organ-grinder and his trained bird. The crowd was a Sunday churchgoing crowd, bedecked in bright summer colors. The girls shrieked each time they read a fortune. The old men and the old ladies grinned knowingly. Jeff walked out of the luncheonette and handed the parrot a nickel. The parrot reached into the rack, peck, a narrow white slip appeared in his beak. Jeff took the slip and began reading it. The girls squealed in delight. There was an innocence surrounding the organ-grinder; the mechanical music he produced was countered by the skill of the bird and the faith of the crowd. For this was Sunday morning, and this was a time to believe in fortunes, a time to believe that the future would be good. And so they crowded the man and his bird, crowded around the sailor who read his fortune from the card and grinned, laughed again in delight as the parrot dipped his beak for another fortune. There was innocence here, and it shimmered on the summer air like truth.

Not ten feet from the organ-grinder, not ten feet from the crowd in their gay Sunday clothes, Zip stood in a whispering circle with three other boys who wore purple silk jackets. The backs of the jackets were lettered with the words the latin purples. The words were cut from yellow felt and stitched to the purple silk. The Latin Purples, The Latin Purples, The Latin Purples, The Latin Purples, four jacket backs and four young men who huddled close together and spoke in low whispers while the organ-grinder filled the air with the music of innocence and truth.

"I… I wass thinkin'," Sixto said, "maybe we shoul' jus', you know, maybe warn him."

"For messing with one of the debs?" Cooch whispered, astonished.

"So, he dinn really do nothin', Cooch. He jus' ony say hello to her. Thass not so bad."

"He made a grab," Cooch said with finality.

"Thass not what she say. I ask her. She say he ony jus' say hello to her."

"What right did you have to go asking her questions?" Zip wanted to know. "Whose girl is she? Yours or mine?" Sixto remained silent. "Well?"

"Well, Zip," Sixto said, after long deliberation, "I tink… well, I don' tink she knows. I mean, I don' tink she got no understanding with you."

"I don't need no understanding with a chick. I'm telling you she's my girl, and that's good enough."

"But she don' tink so!"

"I don't care what she thinks."

"Anyway," Sixto said, "no matter whose girl she is, if Alfie don' do nothin' to her, why we got to shoot him?"

The boys were silent for a moment, as if mention of the word, as if translation of their plan into sound, into a word which immediately delivered the image of a pistol, had shocked them into silence.

In a very low voice, Zip asked, "You going turkey?" Sixto did not answer. "I thought you was a down cat, Sixto. I thought you had heart."

"I do got heart."

"He gah heart, Zeep," Papa said, defending Sixto.

"Then why's he backing out? How'd you like it if this was your girl, Sixto? How'd you like it if Alfie went messing around with your girl?"

"But he dinn mess with her. He ony say hello. So wha's so bad about dat?"

"You in this club?" Zip asked.

"Sure."

"Why?"

"I… I don' know. You got to belong to…" Sixto shrugged. "I don' know."

"If you're in this club, if you wear that purple jacket, you do what I say. Okay. I say the Latin Purples are washing Alfredo Gomez right after eleven o'clock Mass. You want to turkey out, go ahead." He paused meaningfully. "All I know is that Alfie give China a rough time. China's my girl whether she knows it or not, you dig? China's my girl, and that means Alfie got himself trouble."

Cooch nodded. "Big trouble."

"And that don't mean a burn. I don't want him burned. I want him washed! You can turkey out, Sixto, go ahead. Only you better watch your step around here afterwards, that's all I'm telling you."

"I jus' thought… oh, I jus' thought… well, Zip, cann we talk to him?"

"Oh, come on, for Christ's sake!" Zip said angrily.

"Cann we jus' tell him to stop… to stop talking to her no more? Cann we do dat? Why we have to… to kill him?"

There was another long silence, for another word had been spoken, and this word was stronger than the first. And this word meant exactly what it said, this word meant kill, to take someone's life, kill, to murder. This was not a euphemism, a handy substitute like "wash." This was kill. And the word hung between them, the sentence hung between them on the still July air: "Why we have to… to kill him?"

"Because I say so," Zip said softly.

"It be diff ren if he really was…"

"What else you going to do, huh? Get pushed around?" Zip asked. "Man, ain't you sick of all the time getting pushed around?"

"I dinn say that. I said…"

"Everybody in the neighborhood knows he made a pass at China!" Zip said plaintively. "Am I supposed to…?"

"He dinn make no pass! He ony say hello!"

"Am I supposed to go over and have a chat with him? How are you, Alfie old boy, how you been? I understand you was feeling up China the other day, was it good? Am I supposed to hold his goddamn hand, Sixto?"

"No, but…"

"Don't you want these other clubs to notice us? Don't you want them to know we got self-respect?"

"Sure, but…"

"So we going to let a creep like Alfie go around screwing our debs?"

Sixto shook his head. "Zip, Zip, he dinn even…"

"Okay, listen to me," Zip said. "After we pull this today, we're in. You understand that? We wash this creep, and there ain't nobody in this neighborhood who don't know the Latin Purples from then on in. They'll know we don't get pushed around by anybody! Every damn kid on this block'll want to be in the club after today. We're gonna be… something! Something!" He paused to catch his breath. His eyes were glowing. "Am I right, Cooch?"

"Sure," Cooch answered.

"Okay, Alfie's going to eleven o'clock Mass, like he always does. Mass'11 break around eleven-forty, a quarter to twelve. I want to get him on the steps as he's coming out."

"On dee-!"

"On the steps! All four of us blast together, and nobody stops until Alfie's down. You better shoot straight 'cause there'll be a lot of innocent people around."

"Zip, on dee church steps?" Sixto said. His face was twisted in pain. "Ave Maria, cann we…?"

"On the steps, I said! Where everybody'll see him die. We've got fou'r pieces. I'm using the.45 because I want to blow that creep's head off."

The organ-grinder stopped his music. The street seemed suddenly silent.

"There's two.38s and the Luger," Zip whispered. "Take whatever you want."

"The Luger," Cooch said.

"You got it. Sixto, you and Papa'11 use the.38s. The pieces are up at my pad. We get them first, and then round up a couple of gun bearers." He paused for a moment. "Second thought, you better stay here, Sixto. Keep an eye on Alfie's house. Right around the corner. The first building."

"Okay," Sixto said blankly.

"Make sure he don't leave. If he does, follow him. If you ain't here when we get back, we'll start looking for you."

"Okay."

"What?"

"I said okay."

"Okay," Zip repeated. "Come on." He put his arm around Cooch as they began walking toward his building, Papa shuffling along beside them. "You excited, Cooch?" he asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess. A little."

"Man, I'm excited. This day is beginning to tick, you know what I mean? Things are moving!"

"Yeah, that's true," Cooch said.

"Some Sundays, you can sit on that front stoop and go nuts. Especially like now in the summer. But today is different. Today, there's like a million things to do, ain't there? What I'm trying to say, Cooch, this makes me feel good. This action, you know? Man, it makes me feel real good!"

Cooch grinned as the three boys entered the tenement. "It ain't gonna make Alfie feel so good," he said.

Sixto stood on the corner outside the luncheonette, watching Alfredo's building, nervously biting his lower lip.

Inside the luncheonette, Jeff handed his fortune slip to Luis and said, "How do you like that?"

"Be patient and of firm resolve," Luis read, "and you will achieve all your ends."

"Yeah," Jeff said. "What time does La Gallina open?"

"I had hoped you would forget La Gallina."

"Well, since I'm already up here…" Jeff shrugged and let the sentence trail. "What time does it open?"

"This is Sunday," Luis said, "and La Gallina is a bar - among other things. It does not open until noon."

"Then I've got plenty of time yet."

"If you'd take my advice…"

"Hey! Hey your the voice bellowed, and they both turned simultaneously to face the street. Andy Parker seemed to have materialized from nowhere. He approached Sixto, who stood on the corner, and shouted, "You! You there!"

Sixto, frightened, began to inch away from him "Me?" he asked. "Me?"

"What are you doing?" Parker asked, coming up close to him.

"Nothin'. I wass ony jus' standin'…"

"Against the wall!"

"Huh?"

Parker seized his jacket front and slammed him up against the supporting post at the corner of the luncheonette. "I said against the wall!"

"I… I dinn do nothin'," Sixto said. "I wass only jus'…"

"Bend over!"

Sixto stared at him blankly, uncomprehendingly.

"Bend over, goddamnit!" Parker shouted.

Sixto still did not understand. Furiously, because he felt his command was being openly flouted, Parker chopped a fast right to Sixto's gut, doubling him over. He spun him around then so that he faced the corner post, his hands clutching his stomach, his head bent.

"Put your hands against the wall, palms flat, goddamnit, do what I tell you!" Parker shouted.

Sixto, doubled over with pain, made an abortive attempt to stretch out his arms, clutched his stomach again, and then shoved his arms out convulsively when Parker hit him in the ribs. He extended his hands and placed them, trembling, against the corner post. Quickly, Parker frisked him. He did an intent and thorough job, so thorough that he did not notice Frankie Hernandez who walked up the street and stopped just short of the luncheonette.

"Turn around!" Parker shouted. "Now empty your pockets! Everything on the sidewalk! Hurry up!"

Hernandez walked to where they were standing. "Leave him alone, Andy," he said. He turned to Sixto. "Take off, kid."

Sixto hesitated, frightened, looking first to one detective and then the other.

"Get out of here, go ahead! Beat it!"

Sixto hesitated a moment longer, and then broke into a sprint around the corner, racing up the avenue.

"Thanks, Frankie," Parker said sarcastically.

"There's nothing in the penal code that makes it a crime for a kid to be minding his own business, Andy."

"Who's saying anything?" Parker said. He paused. "But suppose that nice innocent kid was holding a deck of heroin?"

"He wasn't holding anything. He's no junkie, and you know it. He comes from a good family."

"Oh, is that right? Junkies don't come from good families, huh? Suppose he was holding, Frankie? Just suppose?"

"The only thing he's holding right now is contempt for the cop who shook him down."

"Seems to me you should be interested in looking up the people who are doing something wrong," Jeff said from the luncheonette.

"We do, sailor," Parker answered. "Day and night. That kid belongs to a street gang, don't he? You saw his club jacket, didn't you? Do you expect me to take crap from every hoodlum on the street?"

"That kid probably has little enough self-respect as it is," Hernandez said. "So you come along and…"

"All right, all right, cut it out with the kid, will you? Boy, you'd think I worked him over with a rubber hose." He paused. "Where you headed?"

"To see the Gomez woman," Hernandez said.

"She was quite a little trick, that Gomez woman. Pushing fifty, maybe, but still got it all in the right places. You sure this is a business call, Frankie?"

"I'm sure," Hernandez said.

"Well, just so long as you're sure. Was there any word on Miranda back at the squad?"

"Not when I left, no."

"You know," Luis said thoughtfully, "I think maybe Frankie's right. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, Andy. Don't think that. But this boy could be hurt by such treatment. What I mean… well… on the island, it was not this way."

"Juvenile gangs ain't a problem in Puerto Rico," Parker said flatly.

"No, of course not, but that's not what I meant. There just seemed to be… I don't know… more respect there."

"For what? For siestas?" Parker asked, and he burst out laughing.

"Well, now you're making it a joke," Luis said, embarrassed.

"Me? Why should I joke about your homeland?"

"It was just… you know… we were poor and hungry, true. But there was always the plaza in the center of town, and the pink church, and the poinsettias, and the mango trees. And you could go to the plaza and talk to your friends. And you were a person, and people knew your name. It was important, Andy. You knew who you were."

"Who- were you, Luis?" Parker said, chuckling. "The governor?"

"Ah, he makes it a joke," Luis said good-naturedly. "You know what I mean, don't you, Frankie?"

"Yes. I know what you mean."

"Sometimes here, you feel lost. And without identity, there can be no dignity, no respect."

"I know just what you mean, Louise," Jeff said. "It's like what I was telling you about Fletcher. How you can just get swallowed up in a pile of people and forget who and what you are."

"Si, st. The island had respect for people, and for life… and respect for death, too. Life is cheap here, and death is cheaper. On the island…" He paused, as if giving himself time for the memory to grow, to blossom in his mind. "On the island," he said, "in the towns, when there is a funeral, the casket bearers walk in the center of the main street, and the mourners follow behind the casket."

"I know this," Hernandez said softly. "My father used to talk about this."

"About the little girls dressed in white, carrying their flowers in the sunshine?" Luis said. "The town all dusty and quiet and still."

"Yes," Hernandez said. "About that."

"And the shopkeepers stand in their doorways, and when the casket goes by, they close the doors. They are showing respect for the dead man. They are saying, 'I will not conduct business while you pass by, my friend.'"

"Argh, bullshit," Parker said. "That ain't respect. They're just scared of death. I'll tell you something, Luis. I don't know what it's like on that island of yours, but here - right here - the only ones who get respect are the live ones - the hoodlums like Pepe Miranda."

Luis shook his head quickly and emphatically. "No," he said.

"No, huh? Take my word for it."

"I'm going," Hernandez said. "You argue it out between you."

"Who's arguing?" Parker said. "We're having a discussion."

"Okay, so discuss it," Hernandez said, and he walked out of the luncheonette and around the corner.

Jeff swung around on his stool and stared up the street. Behind him, he could hear the detective and Luis arguing - well, discussing - but he was not interested in what they were saying. He kept staring at the closed door of La Gallina, wondering when the bar would open. He really didn't know whether he actually felt like spending the day in bed with a woman or not, but he couldn't think of much else to do with his time. And he had come all the way uptown, and he hated to think of the trip as a total loss. So he kept staring at the closed door, almost willing it to open and - quite miraculously - it opened.