Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father (77 page)

The woman’s face
fell and cracked, her eyes narrowed with menace. She’d just been buttering them up like toast, and just that fast, within a flash, her inner demon lunged forth once the guy with the big mouth set his sights on her. She looked at Bomb and rolled her tongue, clicking it against the roof of her mouth, and then hurled the grittiest Spanish insults at him, as if she were a rapper in a duel, spitting venom-laced bars. He came back after her, wearing his Puerto Rican bravado like a suave porno mustache, and Saint found himself just like that in the middle of Spanish crossfire, a world of utter, passionate verbal chaos.

The light turned green and he thanked his lucky stars as he sped away. Bomb continued on, his head sticking out the window
, the wispy dark hairs that framed his face blowing in the wind like ebony ribbons while he waved his fist and told her a few more disgusting things in his native tongue.

“I k
now that bitch. That’s Felicia,” he said as he sat back in his seat. “She used to be good lookin’ back in the day. I fucked her a couple of times, wasn’t anything worth going back to. Her pussy all loosey goosey. I’m sure it’s much worse now, with all the cock she lets run through it. She wasn’t no ho then, though, when I had ’er. She’s all fucked up, didn’t even know who the hell I was just now. She mess with heroin.” He said it like he was better than her, as if his drug of choice made him somehow superior. “Don’t ever fuck with her if you come over this way again. She got the clap, gave it to my man, Jose. She knew she had that shit, too. He messed around and ended up givin’ it to his girl…fuckin’ cunt.”

Saint rolled his eyes in disbelief. Yeah, Bomb needed an intervention and pronto. If the mothafucka wasn’t jonesing, the scene would’ve been a hair
humorous but as it was, his funny bone wasn’t tickled. Felicia called him out on his bullshit, and Bomb didn’t care for that too much. He knew Saint understood every damned word of it, but it didn’t stop the man from trying to play it off and pretend like she was out of her mind due to her habit. She knew her own kind, and she wasn’t having it.

“Play that song again, man. That beat is something fierce.”

“You know it.” He put Timbaland on repeat and turned it up louder, so loud, it gandered the attention of two guys standing on the corner, one with what appeared to be a chinchilla scarf wrapped around his long, tawny neck. It was entirely too hot for such attire, but fashion was fashion. He made his way over to Saint’s car, while the other guy blocked him from turning at the light.

Oh God, here we go with some more bull.

Saint honked his horn, but no one seemed to pay it any mind.

Saint looked at the dude the same way he’d looked at Felicia. In an effeminate voice, the man spoke in the half-rolled down window as copious
cigarette smoke bellowed out his mouth.

“Are you a cabbie? We need a ride down
to—”

“No, I’m not a cab driver
, man.” Saint rolled the window up in his face and kept moving. Everyone in this part of town that looked Arab or Indian was asked the same bullshit: whether they were a bootleg cab driver. Saint understood the year had changed, but the mentality was the same. After a while, Bomb pointed to a dark doorway in a run down apartment complex.

“Stop right here
, man. I need to see my man for a second.”

Before Saint could ask what he was doing, Bomb jumped out the vehicle and
disappeared through the door. Saint cracked the window again, letting the smoke out, and lay back in his seat with the car running. The street was crawling with life. He knew not to look directly at any of the women or men standing alone on the corners. If you looked, they thought you wanted to do business and he wasn’t interested in anyone else coming up to him to sell pussy, weed, cocaine, crack, stolen cologne, hot DVD players, bootleg movies, home-made pornos, knock-off purses or their firstborn baby to get whatever it was they thought he had. He snatched his phone out of his pocket and called Raphael as he waited.

“Yo, man, what’s up. You cancellin’ on me?”
the man immediately said.

“No man, of course not.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course not,” he mocked, no doubt rolling his eyes. “What’s up then?”

“Hey, I need to
get with you all a little later than the original time agreed upon. We’re still on but I have a question.”

“Like at what time?”

“Maybe seven instead of six. Is that cool?’

“Yeah, that’s cool. So what’s up?”

“Is that old school house we used to fuck around in still standing? The one over there on 118
th
street?”

“In
East Harlem? Are you in Harlem, man?”

“About to be.”

“Hmmm, I think so. At least it was a year ago. That damn thing won’t even handle the fiends, Saint. Last I saw, it is crumbling and falling apart. If they haven’t torn it down already, they are getting ready to. Matter of fact, that entire street is dead. No one goes over there; it is slated to be torn down and new stuff built. But for right now, there are plenty of buildings like that over there though, if that one is gone.”

“
But that one has what I need.”

“
What you need? Like for what? Ain’t nothing there but some boarded up windows, sunken floors you’re liable to fall through and old classrooms full of shit no one wants to see.”

Saint didn’t respo
nd and Raphael kept on talking anyway.

“
Why would you need access to some old ass school building? We used to go in there when we were, what? Like sixteen or seventeen and blaze up. It was on our way to Murphy’s. A few years ago it had nothing but addicts in it, and you know when
they
abandon some shit, it has to be hell on Earth.”

Saint grinned into the phone as the distinct aroma of strong marijuana infiltrated his personal space.
He hated to admit it, but he still loved the smell of it because of some of the memories it evoked, but he had no desire to ever indulge again.

Saint changed the subject and they spoke a while longer, then he said his goodbyes to Raphael and looked around. A
teenage boy propped his foot on a fire hydrant, looking aimlessly about. Clearly, he had nowhere to go and nothing to do. But he did have nice kicks, and he wanted the world to see them, because being noticed while frozen in time was all that mattered. A young couple smooched close by, playing with one another’s faces and laughing, bouncing around with the joy of new love, while an older man in some drug-induced stupor leaned against a brick store wall, mumbling to himself, occasionally baring his teeth—or what was left of them—as he grasped a cigarette butt between two dark-skinned fingers. He had enough dirt in his hair to make a mud pie.

“What you got planned, man?”

“I can’t get into that right now.” Bomb came back through the half-opened, white chipped painted apartment building door, a swing in his swagged out Puerto Rican stride, as if he’d just sunk his wand in some primo chacha or won a pot of weed. His back hunch was less noticeable. Saint wasn’t sure if he straightened through the pain, or he’d had medical intervention while away. Bomb jumped in the car and Saint pulled away from the curb. Just then, a police car drove past real slow. The cop, a stern faced white guy, eyeballed him from his rearview window.

You mothafuckas over here kill me. You checkin’ me out, and mothafuckas selling
balzuco right in front of your damned faces…backwards-assed bastards…

Yeah, Saint had had some unpleasant experiences with the police department
s in New York and California, as well. If he hadn’t been running from them as a youth, sometimes justified sometimes not—or backstabbed as an adult during the investigation of the crooked cop that had arranged to have him killed—he wouldn’t have felt that way. An ugly memory came to the surface as that man kept staring at him until he was forced to make a right turn…

Saint was standing near his old stomping ground of the Bronx.
It was around five P.M. The dusk waved its cloudy rag lazily around in the sky, inviting people out into the street before its sweet surrender to a darker hue, but few arrived. For the most part, he felt acutely alone, and that was all right because in an hour or so, the whole damn block would be crowded, even though he’d be long gone by then. He’d just gotten dropped off by his boy, Merv. Merv was a few years older than Saint, one of the reasons he enjoyed hanging around him. He was about to go score, but Saint was hungry, so he dropped him off and headed on his way. Wanting to get a bite to eat before heading back to Brooklyn, he made his way to the little Jamaican dive in Morrisania. Before he’d even got to the beaten and bruised metal door of the elusive spot where the jerk chicken was calling his name, lights blinded him as two cops jumped out of their car and grabbed him like pro-wrestlers would. In all the commotion, he could barely breathe as their big bodies pressed into his skinny frame.

“What are you doing out here?!”
one of them barked. “Do you live here?”

“
No. I live in Brooklyn and my boy dropped me off. Tryna get something to eat, damn. Is it a crime to eat?” He kept his hands up, but he wasn’t scared. He should’ve been, but he’d seen it happen to too many other cats to get all worked up. He didn’t have any weed on him. He hadn’t committed any crimes that day, no stealing or jumping trains and there was nothing they could pin on him. Minus his mouth.

“Better yet, what the hell are you two doing out here? I didn’t do shit! You never come when people call your ass, but you show up for this shit right here.” Saint became more belligerent
when one cop thrust his hand down into his pocket, violating his personal space.

That was the wrong answer
, the wrong thing to say. One of the officers accused him of being a smart ass and threatened to take him to the station. They riffled through his wallet and pockets once again. One of them grabbed his nuts and twisted, causing Saint to buckle at the knees and grit his teeth in pain. He collapsed like a dropped potato sack out of a tenth floor window. Some of his boys were used to this shit, would tell him all the time to not be at certain spots on certain days because the police were doing raids, and if they saw one mofo walking their beat, he became an instant suspect. Saint had forgotten all about that warning. He peered regretfully at a well-known illegal massage parlor and drug dealer’s home less than a spit streak away. He’d gotten caught up in some bullshit. His overly-big pants, just like the ones Bomb was wearing, must’ve made him look like a thug and it didn’t help that he was wearing a navy blue hoodie with a cross and bones on the back of it, along with a thick gold chain—one of his most prized possessions. They took out the only twenty-dollar bill to his name from his wallet and laughed when they pulled out a fresh, not yet cracked open three-pack of Magnum condoms.

“Oh you a big boy, huh?
Gotta date tonight?”

As a matter of fact he did…
He planned to stop by the girl’s house sometime later that evening and put in some work. He’d met her a couple of days prior, and was going to cash in all of that ridiculous sweet talk he’d put in her ear.

“
You need Maaaaaaagnums, huh? Three? Is this for three separate occasions? You gonna bust three times, huh? Damn delinquent!” one of the cops joked, his face the color of wet mud and his lips reminding him of uncooked chicken. He was a strange looking cat, and if he wasn’t so funny looking, the situation would have felt graver. Instead, Saint relaxed a bit as he took a strong look at this fella. He was the same one that had manhandled his junk, and he wanted to complain about that as his nuts throbbed from the degenerate’s stronghold. Now the man was making jokes about his dick and sex life. This wasn’t on the up and up. Something was wrong with this picture. He felt violated, now realizing the truth of the situation. Saint knew one thing for sure; he didn’t want this bastard touching him again. Just as the thought left his mind, he felt a hand graze against his ass.

“Don’t touch my shit again
,” Saint warned, avoiding direct eye contact. “Stop patting my ass! What the fuck’s wrong with you? I don’t get down like that! Don’t grab my dick again, either.”

“Say what?!”
Officer Chicken Lip asked, a big, blubbery smirk on his face.

Saint kept quiet as his heart beat out of his chest. It beat so
fast, it sounded like a beat-box remix from the Fat Boys.

“You don’t have anything smart to say?” The cop smirked as he continued to go through the wallet. “Mr. Crime-To-Eat.”

The other cop snatched the wallet and looked at Saint’s state ID, then back at him. “Saint Ache-gnat-ten. Did I say that right?” The cop had a strong Boston accent; it threw him for a loop.

This mothafucka from
Beantown. He must be new on the block… They put him with this mothafucka goin’ around grabbin’ guys’ sacks and dicks. The joke is on him…

“Close enough…” Saint rolled his eyes as he stood there pegged between the big men.

“What the fuck are you?” The Boston transplant asked with mirth in his eyes but steel in his tone. “What nationality is Ache-gnat-ten? Sounds Muslim, but your eyes are kinda chinky shaped…but they’re light brown…gold maybe? You have strange colored eyes. What is that? Bronze?” He laughed obnoxiously. Saint ignored him.