Street Eyes
Protection
Merrian walked through the banks of ancient
metal detectors with the pistol pressed against the side of his chest. Not a
gun in any traditional sense. Neither body nor bullets were made of metal, the
whole compact weapon made of high impact plastic with projectiles built from
plastic explosives. High tech stuff that had no more business on him, than he
had any business stepping out of an armored limo. But he had with Quadro's fat hand shoving him out onto the street.
``You do this for us, boy, and we'll talk
about the other thing.''
Talk? That's all he had gone to Quadro for, to talk, to figure out some kind of angle that
would give him protection.
``The street's insane, man, and I'm a
small operator. It's not like I'm an insider, that can
go scurrying behind a neighborhood wall at night, confident I've got guards to
keep me safe. I need the organization. Otherwise, I'm going to get myself
killed.''
The idea had come on him slowly and
perhaps far later than it should have. Outside was a jungle where a man ducked
bullets to and from work, and if he had no work, he ducked bullets, looking for
work, begging work from the greasy spoons along Broadway or the fast food shops
uptown.
Outside, man, people died in the street,
starving like dogs, fighting with dogs for crusts of bread, robbing trash
trucks when they came out from the neighborhoods. These days, the trash trucks
ran with armed guards, rolling out the iron gates from one neighborhood into
the iron gates of the next, half the time shooting down people in the process.
``Protection?'' Quadro
laughed, removing his long cigar as he cast a knowing glance at his boys, all
of them in suits and ties, though none looked a bit like an office worker.
``You come to us for protection? What you got to offer us? What skills you
got?''
``I run numbers sometimes,'' Merrian said, hopefully.
``So does the corner store when they sell
lottery. You ever shot a gun? You ever killed somebody with your hands?''
``Sure, I have,'' Merrian
said, remembering having held a gun once, and aimed it, and pulled the trigger,
though it held no ammunition at the time. He imagined he knew what it felt like
going off in his hand, imagined he knew what it was like to watch the bullet
strike. He'd seen that part often enough, the sudden explosion of blood from
the back of some poor fools chest, and the spray of red rain on anybody unlucky
enough to be walking by.
``He's shot a gun,'' Quadro
said, pointing at Merrian with his cigar as the suit &
tie boys laughed.
``Maybe you should send him out to do the
job for us, Quadro,'' one of the men said, still
laughing. ``Maybe if he comes back alive, we can take him in.''
``Yeah,'' Merrian
said. ``I can do that.''
Quadro grew
serious. ``You don't know what you're saying,'' he said, taking a long pull on
his cigar. ``You can't kill a fed with no imaginary pistol. You can't even get
close to a fed these days without someone shooting you first.''
``I can do it,'' Merrian
insisted, never having seen a fed, only the outside police force parading
around the broken streets in their armored police cars, or the walls guards
from this neighborhood or that neighborhood taking pot shots at him, thinking
he was trying to climb inside, thinking he was looking to steal something from
the rich folks who lived there -- safe and protected.
``Maybe he can, Quadro,''
one of the other men said. ``The feds don't pay much attention to kids. If he ain't got a record two miles long, they won't even know
him. Maybe he can get close, put a slug in the dude for us.''
``And then what? Have them trace him back to us when he gets caught.''
``If he does it, he won't get caught,''
one of the other men said. ``That's not the way the feds work. If the kid
doesn't get out after he shoots, they shoot him. No questions. Even if he
misses, they'll cut his balls off with bullets. That's the way they work.''
So, Quadro sent
Merrian along, giving him the plastic pistol and
instructions on how to use it.
``You don't need to aim for the head or
chest. You don't even need to hit him. Just aim it near him and the explosion
will do the rest.''
``If I do it will I get protection?'' Merrian asked. ``I can't stand it out on the street any more.
I need someone to look out for my back, to make sure the gangs don't get me, or
the wall guards, to make sure my mother doesn't get raped every time she goes
to the store.''
``You do this, we'll watch out for your
family,'' Quadro said. ``That's a promise. I've never
let one of my boys down. We'll watch your mother and your sister. We'll even
move them inside a neighborhood somewhere, so they don't have to worry about
walking the streets.''
``Really Quadro,
you promise.''
``I said so didn't I, now just don't make
a mistake. You got to kill that son of a bitch fed before puts the finger on
us. You got to send the message to those boys that they can't mess with Quadro and get away with it.''
``I will, Quadro,''
Merrian promised, wondering why the feds would come
after Quadro in the first place, since the feds
mostly went after the interstate stuff and let the intercity drug traffic to
the state police or the interneighborhood cops
downtown. It was a rare sight to see the Feds coming through town with their
tanks and armored cars, machine guns popping off rounds at the smart assed wall
guards who took pot shots at them. More frequently, it was the blue and white
state machines that came through, armored ground cars covered by choppers and
air support, heat seeking air to ground missiles taking out the worst of the
gang before anyone of the cops arrived. What did Quadro
do to earn this kind of attention? Merrian didn't ask.
But he didn't trust the son of a bitch
either. Nobody trusted anybody outside the walls. It was dog eat dog here, a
knife in the back the minute you turned. That was the reason Merrian needed protection. A wall guard had shot his best
friend after a small burglary attempt, a slip over and back for some fresh
fruit or maybe -- if real lucky -- chunk of frozen meat.
Pop! Pop! It was all over except for the meatwagon wheeling its way through the stripped cars and
burned out storefronts to scrape up the body from the street. Nobody asked Merrian about it. Nobody cared. It was too routine to
investigate, unless the city or town wanted to give the wall guard an
accommodation for his hundredth kill. But the pop had taken out Merrian's best friend, Jake, a grammar school-high school
buddy who had helped keep Merrian alive, a gruesome
twosome who'd survived longer than most of their classmates, after dropping
out. Now Merrian had to fend for himself, and he was
scared, and he didn't trust Quadro to keep his word.
So, when Quadro said to come back the next day, Merrian went home, wrote out a letter explaining everything
had to do, put it in an envelop, put a stamp on it, then wrote out the address
of the feds.
``Mail this on your way to the laundry,
Ma,'' Merrian told his mother before leaving in the
morning to meet Quadro again.
``What is it?''
``A letter.''
``Who you writing to?'' his mother asked,
squinting at the envelop, though she didn't know how to read.
``Somebody about a job,'' Merrian asked, thinking that if he got away, if he went
back to Quadro and Quadro
gave him what he wanted, then he would still have time to call home and tell
her not to mail it after all.
``All right, I'll mail it,'' she
grumbled, and then crawled off to bed to sleep off the night's work and prepare
for another tough night in the steaming room at the laundry.
Now, Merrian
walked into city hall, shocked at the lack of security, any neighborhood had
more protection than this. The ancient metal detectors were only the start. He
couldn't see one machine gun and only a half dozen guards, most of them leaning
against the wall smoking under the ``no smoking'' signs, looking so weary and
careless that Merrian actually thought he might pull
this off, going to the elevator bank where there was only one small camera watching
him, and not watching the stairs. He slipped up them, shocked that they were
even open. Didn't anybody care here about what could happen. Any neighborhood
security chief could have pointed out the dangers, the bums that would swarm
into any unlocked door, to drink or die in a warm place, or to build a nest. Merrian saw a few signs of occupation, rags cast into
corners where the homeless people lived. City hall was like one big hotel for
the homeless, and the violent -- he saw snatches of dried blood on the scuffed
tiles and a few bullet holes in the wall. Yet far less of either than the lax
security warranted.
Then, he reached the floor he wanted, and
opened the door with care. A few guards lounged against the wall here, too, as
tired looking as the bunch downstairs, though at the end of the hall, where
gold letters above the door, marked out the mayor's office for Merrian, a few suited men stood more seriously armed,
holding machine guns and eyeing the hall warily as if expecting an attack.
Maybe they were. Maybe people took potshots at feds more frequently than the
feds let on. These suited men were obviously feds and frowned when Merrian emerged from the stairs, as uncomfortable with the
lax security as Merrian was surprised.
``You! Boy! What you doing there?'' they
asked, but were interrupted by the mayor's door opening behind them, and the
man -- who photograph Quadro had shown him -- stepped
out, arm in arm with the mayor. Merrian yanked out
the pistol, aimed it, and squeezed off all eight shots, each one sounding like
a pop on his end and all hell on the other. When he turned to run, smoke and
debris were all he saw, and all that remained of the mayor's side of the hall.
The police guards, dropped their cigarettes and grabbed for their guns, but Merrian already flew down the stairs the way he had come,
knowing that if he didn't reach the front door quick, security would close it
against him.
If he had taken an elevator, they would
have caught him. All four carriages came to a halt at the same time, trapping
passengers between floors. Merrian could hear the
people screaming in panic, each believing this was some trick by the outsiders
to rape or rob them, neighborhood people grown soft from living the good life
behind walls and guards, coming and going in cars built with bullet proof
glass, alarms and anti-robbery devices. But here, in the heart of the city,
protected by the town's central government, they squealed like pigs in pens
waiting for slaughter.
Merrian had no
respect for them. They had looted the city with their investments and taken
their wealth away, leaving him, his best friend, his mother and his sisters to
scramble with the rest of the rats for what remained, dog
eating dog. Such soft fools had no right to survive in a dog eat dog world,
where security devices and paid guard substituted for instinct. If Merrian could have cut the cables to those elevator cars,
he would have. If any bullets had remained, he would have shot the cars instead
of the feds. Those people had killed his friend. Those people had robbed him of
his protection.
But then, their squealing faded as he
raced to the doors, the once-lackadaisical guards suddenly up and armed and
aiming their pistols at him, squeezing off one round then many, only to catch
themselves in the cross fire before they stopped and he slipped back out onto
the street, onto the outside where gangs roved the street stripping security
devices off the cars, breaking windows, shooting guards from neighborhood
walls, catching innocent people in their cross fire, too.
Behind Merrian,
the alarms on the building ran and blue uniformed guards piled out of City Hall
like roaches fleeing a flooding flat, all of them shooting now as the word went
out for the regular police, and a fax message went to
He'd done it! He'd killed the man Quadro wanted killed! Done it by himself without protection
and got away. Quadro would have to listen to him now,
Merrian thought as he ran, weaving through the streets
in a fashion that only long experience could have taught, hurrying to get
himself out of the net of police that would soon drop on that whole part of the
city.
Then, he thought of the letter, and
realized he had made a dreadful mistake. He had to get to a phone. He had to
make sure his mother didn't mail it, even by accident. If the feds knew Quadro was behind this, they would swoop down on him, too.
All that about instilling fear was the big man's bull. He just wanted one small
federal agent dead. No message sent. No clue as to who had done it.
They won't catch him, the other
man had said.
Why not, Marrian
wondered. What had the man meant about feds always taking care of things the
same way?
Did he really need to ponder it? Hadn't Merrian seen enough of that kind of thing with ordinary
police, and eye for a brutal eye. One killing leading always to another and
another. The feds killed people who threatened them. But here, Merrian had killed three maybe four of them in one small
shoot-out in City Hall.
They would kill him without thinking.
They would hunt him down street by street. Merrian
had to get to a phone. He had to stop his mother from mailing that letter. Quadro had promised protection for Merrian's
family. Merrian needed Quadro
to survive.
Then, above him, hovering over the tops
of six and seven story buildings, the helicopters appeared, not the blue and
white helicopters of the state police, or the drab green of the local police,
but the deep black color Merrian knew signified the
feds. No message came down from them when they him. Only a heatseeking
missile that blew up the sidewalk under his feet. One minute he was running on
pavement, the next minute, running on air, his face feeling first the sting of
the concrete dust striking it, and then the rip of the blast through his chest.
But in that last moment, he didn't think of dying, the thought of the letter,
and the protection, he almost had.