Like a Jungle, Sometimes

EAST HARLEM, NY 1983:

“Johnson?”

“Here.”

“Jackson?”

“Present.”

“Preston?”

“Check.”

“Brown?.”

“In the hayouse sista.!”

“Cut it out Brown!”

Sister Modesta creaps along the dusty wood floors of the Father Divine orphanage with a wooden pointer in one hand smacking the palm of her other hand to the point where there was a blush mark caused by the blows.

Her eyes are distrustful of the brown boys before her, some of them shaking in fear in front of their beds for the pre-breakfast bed and space check.

Sister Modesta is a cantankerous woman in her late 60s who crosses herself when ever she catches herself cursing at one of the kids.

The youngsters stand at attention they know they can catch a wrap across their knuckles for no reason at all.

Slowly and methodically she glides, preceding more like a detective than the resident director of orphan boarding services.

The boys’ eyes follow her every move. Some of them make faces at her, others are stoic.

The biggest fear is not a hand tapping or an ass whoopin’ but that she won’t take them downstairs when the social workers, adoption people and colored balloons come for the monthly Father Divine “People Fair,” which is only days away.

No matter how mischievous any of the boys could be all of them always eventually complied with her wishes.

That is, all except one.

Without looking up from her list she mouths, “Dominguez,”

And again, this time more annoyed, “Dominguez?.” bed

The gaze in each others eyes, some shrugging, some mad that they would suffer the consequences of his insolence and others laughing silently at yet another bed check that Ronaldo Dominguez was missing on purposely.

Her teeth grit, she slams her pointer to the ground and grunts,

“Dominguez!”

She realizes she’s losing her composure and picks her pointer up slowly.

“Oohhh shoot.”

She crosses herself and inspects the boys’ stoic visages.

“Ok boys, this is the third day in a row that Dominguez has failed to be present for the check, the third day he’s come up missing.”

Ronaldo is the youngest boy in the orphanage, an aged seven year old who moves and operates more like he was a teenager. He never says much. He spends most of his time reading the standard issue Bible and sneaking in comic books that he sells to the rest of the boys who then hide them under their mattresses at night.

“I’m only going to ask you incorrigible young ruffians one time. You know what, forget it. I’m not even going to ask, you know what the question is.”

Silence - the type of quietness that fills the room with the sound of car horns and loud conversations coming from outside.

“Ok, then. Nobody eats until somebody speaks.”

Groans.

“Shut up, you people, particularly our missing little friend, are causing Satan to ruin the peace in this house. No one is special! We are a group, a team a family. There’s no “I” in any of those words,”

Jimmy Brown thinks he’s hardcore. He’s got a smart mouth, he like Ronaldo knows how to push her buttons.

“Any of those words except for fam..,”

“Brown, be quiet this instant. Unless… you know the whereabouts of Mr. Dominguez.”

Now Brown’s got jokes. “He went house shopping.”

Loud laughter permeates the rectangular room.

“Oh now it’s funny. It won’t be so funny when your little stomachs are churning from hunger. Because you know, lunch can be skipped too and there are a lot of chores to be done. Oh and I can sure speak to Sister Sedaris in our education department and she can think of some academic exercises to stimulate your little brains. .”

More sighing and groaning.

“Why are you guys protecting one little crumb snatcher?”

Johnny Preston, like Dominquez, is too clever to be in the social welfare system.

“Uh sister…” he says. “No disrespect but has it occurred to you that none of us know where he is?”

“One of you, if not all of you, know where he is. Now I’m serious I’ll call the charities and grocery stores and impose a food embargo on this place.”

“What’s a embargo?” mutters Johnson.

“Some stupid shit,” answers Brown.

“Have something to say do we Mr. Brown?”

“Yeah, Sis, for me personally. Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you. Cuz’ real niggaz don’t snitch.”

The hole hall erupts in an instigative chorus. “oooooooooh,”

Brown puffs out his chest. He’s 14 and always one outbust away from getting bounced out. He likes it that way.
Beyond rehabilitation, according the Parish shrink, a lost cause. They don’t give a fuck, I don’t give a fuck, that’s his credo.

Ain’t got no mother, she’s gone. Gone, gone, a car accident, Happened, right next to him on their way up from the South for a better life.
His father’s still alive and kicking, a hustler from Brooklyn called Black Brown. Black for his dark skin and Brown for his surname. Black is serving life in Attica for a crime that no one in Harlem believes he did it. ‘Lil’ Black Brown’ now has a chip on his shoulder, bitter because of his fortune and because he didn’t inherit pops’ menacing presence. Yellow as a bananna is what they call him. He hates it when they say, “what’s up Lil white.”

“I hope he don’t come back,” he screams, kicking and posturing as trainee priests remove him from the sleeping quarters.

Again a dead calm, an eerie state of soundlessness. The sister sighs heavily and finally Jackson, who like James Preston has the name Jimmy, spoke up. He goes by Jackson because nobody wants the same name as another unwanted, degenerate boy of color, which they all are. Jackson is the shrewed, sensible one.

“Honestly sister and I think I speak for the rest of the guys when I say that we have-honest to God – no idea where lil’ Ronaldo is. But if my guess serves me right. He’ll return in the late afternoon.”

“He’s a seven year old boy. Where could he have gone,” the sister exclaimed, no longer angry but now worried and saddened.

The boys are taken aback at seeing a soft side of Sister Mo and suddenly it rubs off as they too become somewhat saddened themselves as they witness the long look on her face.

Now the quietness is uncomfortable.

“You boys get ready for breakfast,” she snaps dismissively, more worried than ever.

The boys exit in a single file line for the slow quiet march to the Parish mess hall where they almost never just eat, but instead throw food at the girls who live on the other end of the building and come to the same hall to eat. Sista Mo’ is in a bad mood though and they ancticipated a somber breakfast because of that. Short leash today.”
Preston leans forward and whispers to Jackson, “You think he’s alright?”

Jackson pats the ten-year old Preston on the head, smiling and then taking him in a headlock.

“I know he’s alright, let’s get some breakfast.”

TO BE CONTINUED!

RENO NEVADA 1996

The young man slowly scoops the Reno Gazette Journal off the room service cart. He’s astonished by the headline in the international news section, but hardly surprised. He sits down casually on the bed scratching his head and yawning, reading and smirking at each sentence.

Santo Domingo (CPI)– A bomb at the corporate headquarters of Santa Maria Sugar Exports LP exploded here yesterday at dawn killing 30 peopl

including Federal agents, U.S. Marines and local law enforcement who were attempting to find and capture reputed Dominican drug lord Ronaldo Dominguez.

Officials say Dominguez and his accomplices rigged the entrance to the villa with explosives moments before the soldiers and agents kicked down the large two front doors of this 25,000 square-foot mansion that sits on a 365- acres sugar cane field.¶
Twenty- year-old Dominguez, who as vice president- the youngest executive in Santa Maria history- alledgedly used the company as a front for an $800 million Cocaine and Heorin empire.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, colloborating with local authorities and an elite group of U.S. Marines were acting on a tip that Dominguez was running a drug network that supplied more than 12 states, mostly along the U.S. gulf coast.

After the smoke cleared, Dominguez was nowhere to be found.

“I promise swift justice,” said Dominican President, Julio Cabral yesterday after hearing news of the bombing. “These drug traffickers are the new enemy in a brutal war against terror and we are confident that we will track him down and right this wrong. Meanwhile my heart goes out today to the families of the fallen.” ¶
Ten DEA agents, 8 local police, 2 civilians and the ten marines. were all killed by the blast…..

As he reads on, a wicked smiles forces itself across his lips, ironic and dark, drab and hollow, sorrowful — gallows humor.

Then the smile disappears. He clutches the paper like it was a person’s neck.

Chief Executive Officer Felix Caldoron, a renoun businessman was found shot dead with his remains charred. And Enriquillo Ortiz, a Dominican national wanted for questioning about a New York shooting on Valentine’s Day last year, was also found dead from multiple gunshot wounds and severe burns.

During the raid, the marines shot dozens of farmers who were believed to be in colusion with the drug lord as well as members of an elusive leftist guerilla group called Los Soldados Negros or The Black Soldiers who are reputed to be mercenaries for drug lords.

Santa Maria, is a subsidiary of the international conglomerate La Hoya Intl Corp., which is currently being audited by the Securities and Exchange Commission and as well as the International Monetary Fund for alleged money laundering activities. La Hoya executives had no comment on the incident or the ongoing investigations.
Meanwhile the search for Dominguez continues. Authorities thus far have found no evidence.

His calm somber mood quickly catapults into fury as he hurles the newspaper across the room, gives his face a hard wipe and heads toward the bathroom.

He’s a slim brown man with a precise muscle tone. Around his neck is a platinum necklace with a small medallion in the shape of an Egyptian Ankh—-the symbol for fertility and eternal life. He got it years ago, dipped it in platinum when he started getting major paper. It first belonged to mother, whom he never met, and they’d have to pry it off his dead neck.

Ronaldo clutches the pendant in his hand and takes a long hard look in the mirror. His hair, jet black with tight curls.

Despite his handsome countenance, he detests what he sees. Shower time.

He enjoys the boiling hot water for 20 minutes wishing he could stay there forever. He hops out, grabs a towel - straight to the mini bar - and breaks the seal on a mini-Bacardi bottle. Hot to the chest. Now for the ritual.

Wiping his mouth, he pulls an olive green designer suit out of the closet with his other hand, puts it up against his naked frame and grins without showing teeth. Two sheer black silk socks, a pressed shirt, satin underwear and a $400 tie later, he’s ready.

Looking at the perfectly tailored suit he takes out a shinier-than-life .25 caliber revolver with an ivory handle and places it strategically in a small velcro hoster with a plastic lining above his ankle. Thanks to the fine Italian taper his weapon isn’t visible. He thinks to himself, that the pants hang “oh so gangsta,”

“El Joven” Spanish for the young man, is what they call him in the streets. The women love him, the dudes secretly worship him. Little kids in his old neighborhood, even to this day still play with toy guns, pretending to be him. The old ladies won’t give him up to the police because they thought him to be second grandson. The old men, just play dominos, chug Red Stripe and watch him silently, he has their respect.

But Rafeal Batista, is another story. The Chairman of La Hoya International Corp. wants him dead.

He turns on the TV for a second opinion while snacking on an hours-old breakfast roll from the room service cart. He lounges, propped up by his elbow, CNN cuts from the Presidential Primaries to what he wants to see, as if magically, part of a script or something. The report shows bloody, burned bodies being carted away from a smoldering villa by the sea. “Use to be my villa” is what’s going through his head now. He aims at the television with the remote shoots at it like it’s a bitter enemy and turns it off getting up to leave.

As he comes out the door, a maid navigating a cleaning cart down the hall smiles at him seductively. Being the person he is, he smiles back charasmatically. She blushes uncontrollably.

Walking pass an adjacent room he pounds on the door without stopping.

“Ceasar! Levantate! Get your punk ass up! let’s go!”

He takes the elevator to the lobby floor. The door opens and he strolls out passing a barrage of slot machines, transcends the vestibule heading out to the hotel driveway and looks out into a brisk and misty red horizon. yet another morning he finds himself alive and breathing…

“Reno ain’t such a bad place,” he muses, feeling something poking him from behind and interrupting his vision of a sublime Sierra landscape. “Chico, damn would you quit playing it’s too early for that shit. Is Ceasar coming?”

“Yeah he’ll be here man. I caught you slippin’, right,” Chico snickers.

“Yeah whatever,” Joven replies, still looking out at the scenery in deep thought.

Just then a groggy and yawning Ceasar walks up behind them.

“What are you looking at man?” Ceasar asks with his mouth still wide open and arms outstretched. “It’s too damn early to be up man. You act like you ain’t never seen the damn sun before. But damn,” he continues shielding his eyes from the light. “I can’t remember it ever being this bright,”

Ceasar stares at Chico maliciously and then joins Joven in gazing at the red sun, which is creeping up over the mountains, making the arrid plains and the street in front of them appear orange.

They pay no attention to yawning bell-hops and college kids coming in from cars after partying through the night.

“NCAA tournament,” Joven says without deviating from the view.

“Oh,” retorts Ceasar scratching his bald head.

Chico brandishes a giant cigar and lights up walking out to the pavement, sitting down on the curb watching the cars pull into the driveway.

“Where the hell is Black Brown,” Joven says without looking at anybody.

“Calm down man,” exclaimed Ceasar. “He called me right after yo’ stupid ass banged on my door. He said he’d be here a little late. He got pulled over, he said.”

Joven frowns. “What?”

Ceasar flails his arms in defense. “It ain’t no big deal Papi. You got Nevada red neck cops and this pimp looking black dude in a brand new benz playin’ Rick James, you’re gonna get pulled over. He said he stuck a benji under his fake drivers license and they said, thank you very much like Elvis or some shit, that nigga’s a fool,”
Chico shakes his head in disgust, suddenly he’s looking at the mountain, perhaps trying to ciphon Ronaldo’s thoughts.

Ceasar and Ronaldo giggle about Black Brown, Rick James and bribing cops for a minute, then the laughing subsides when the reality of what they’re about to do sets in.

They’re headed to the board meeting, on a suicide mission to kill Rafeal Batista and possibly die themsleves in the process.

Ceasar seems worried, out of it, “What about Don Ortega?”

Joven replies, “What about him?”

Now Ronaldo is thinking that it doesn’t matter if his father is there or not. “if he stand in the way, it’s either him or me”

That’s what he wants to say but he pauses, he’s too busy thinking about Chico’s treachery, wondering if Chico knows that he knows or more importanly, if Chico knows, that Joven knows Chico knows.

Shit is complicated.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Moses Prison, Upstate New York 1997

Ticonderoga, NY (CPI)— After an arrogant courtroom display reminiscent of mythic crime bosses, Ronaldo Dominguez, reputed drug lord, turned business prodigy, has not uttered a word in the seven months he has served here at the Robert Moses Federal Detention Center, prison officials said.

His last words “look into Rafael Batista,” refers to the Spanish businessman who has recently come under scrutiny for money laundering and racketeering activities. Federal prosecutors are using the RICO act as a foundation for building a case against Mr. Batista.

Meanwhile Mr. Dominguez, given the street moniker, “El Joven,” is facing myriad Federal charges including conspiriacy, money laundering, and interstate and international drug trafficking. On a state level, the Nevada attorney general’s office has requested that Dominguez be extradited to face multiple murder and conspiriacy to committ murder charges in aiding and abedding known hit men Ernesto “Chico” Sanchez and Cesear H. Ramos in the murders of several businessmen on the day of what is now being called the Reno Massacre.

Dominguez, Ramos and Sanchez have all been connnected to a New Year’s shootout in Atlantic City, part of a 1995 drug war that spilled onto the streets of New York leaving 20 men dead by the end of that year.

Dominguez faces life on all charges state and federal.

Critics say the case will be hard to prove as there are no witnesses to cooberate any of the government’s claims.

Anybody who has ever been involved with Dominguez has been killed, said prosecuting U.S. Attorney Dave Acheson, “It’s going to be difficult to try but we have a few things up our sleeves.”

Late Autumn sun rays reflect off the newly fallen snow outside Robert Moses Prison nestled deep in the Catskills in upstate New York. This ain’t really a prison, Ronaldo thinks as he sits watching the white light that shines through his barless window.

It’s an experimental big house called the Super-mini, the opposite of Super-Max — minimum security for hardcore maximum offenders. Some pshchologists and enterprising businessmen are sick enough to figure, why not give these lowlifes a glimpse of paradise, make ‘em crazier, treat ‘em like actual humans so they can want to be better or as one political person put it, “live until they die with the steak dangling right in front of their noses.”

So Ronaldo’s looking at view of a lake and mountains out of what is actually more like a dorm room. That’s fucked up. Abuelita, the old lady down on 135th street ain’t got no window, he thinks to himself, but get a murder beef and you can look at swans all day.

The events leading up to his imprisonment in a place more like a desolate and obscure country club than a correctional facility, have nearly driven him to psychosis. Maybe those headshrinkers and talking heads are on to something. He never thought — not even in this slap- on-the-wrist-prison — he’d see the day where he would be locked up. He’d always envisioned himself as a martyr like the fictional Tony Montana or real-life figures such as Benjamin Siegel, Albert Anatasia even. He didn’t even part his lips since he first checked in, not one spoken word of Spanish or English for seven months. Inmates josh with him about the circus he makes of court proceedings.

Like he did then, he now refers to any judge as a Chistoso or a joke. At his arraignments he turns to the prosecuting attorneys and clutches his testicles. Nothing matters to him anymore and in many ways he wants it all over with—to die. He even wrestles with the thought of giving everything up, telling the his whole story from start to finish, becoming immortal.

But who is he supposed to be snitching on? Everyone is dead. And while he hates Batista with a passion, he hates even more being put in the position to have to point a finger. Like Black Brown always says, “Real Niggas don’t Snitch.”

Sometimes, during restless nights, he recalls the Taino shaman in the dark and sinister cenote who once warns him that there would be “blood in his future.” Each time he awakes screaming, still wondering if his original ecounter had been a dream itself. At the time it seemed so real. He remembers taking the “blood in future” prediction into consideration and also remembers underestimating the prophecy’s validity because of its surreal overtones. He thinks that it’s too simple, of course there is blood in my future, I’m livin’ the life that I choose to live.

Maybe this is why his master plan to get the cash, kill and destroy is a failure.

Now he sit up nights when he gets no sleep at all looking through the darkness — the small movements illluminated by the prison tower light — at the deer galloping in the distance and the soaring eagles and hawks on a late night sojurn for prey.

As the seasons change he longs to be free spiritually—physically dead. He never allows the prison guards or cops to take the talisman from his neck, sometimes at his peril. He gets his ass whooped a lot. No one wants to put up with shit from a cat who can talk but doesn’t. He hides, the medallion in his mouth and rectum when called for — for the day when it was taken away he would surely die, he believes.

But even in this state of dimentia, he still secretly pays prison guards to bring him books and cigars. Some loyal soldiers still in the ‘hood handle these transactions for him but they’re stealing too, his power is diminished, money dwindling. Maybe ain’t no such thing as loyalty after all..

He hardly leaves his domicile even when allowed to but sometimes he talks to the prison chaplin for 3 hours a day about the Bible, mostly in sporadic Spanish. His words are vague and incoherent as if they come from a raving mad man. He’s easily angered when the chaplin makes faces that reflect confusion and bewilderment. For instance, the chaplin reads a verse and it’s okay for a while. But in time, Joven goes on a tyraid about his love Juanita, Father Tony from the orphanage, Chico, carjacking and religious wars—things that have no relation or pertinence to any other thing he talks about.

Organized gibberish, like his memories.

Still the chaplin marvels at the young man’s uncanny understanding of theology and wonders where the boy went wrong. In the end though, there is never any connection to anything, no insight to be gleaned from Ronaldo’s rambling and even the chaplin can’t convey to the psychiatrists, FBI, or prosecutors what Ronaldo Dominguez is actually thinking.

TO BE CONTINUED!

EAST HARLEM, NY 1983

At Breakfast time Sister Modesta, sits pensively in her office peeling a banana and trying to figure out where little Ronaldo might be. Aside from his excessive absences he’s always a well-mannered and seemingly intelligent boy in both a practical and intellectual sense.

The kid turns up six months earlier and his English is shaky. In a month’s time he masters the concepts of nouns, verbs and gerunds and is reading at a fourth-grade level when called upon. He also has a raw, uncanny knack for mathematics.

He just pops up one day with a benevolent police officer, an Irish Flatfoot who came up himself at Father Divine. Word is the officer caught three slugs in the face from a junkie he was trying to help. Pity, the sister thought recalling the day the policeman dropped Ronaldo off.

Ronaldo has scruffy black curls, puppy dog brown eyes, a button nose and compact lips and he has a little baby fat, a small potbelly. But the rest of him is a stick, the Sister remembers, envisioning him in her mind so she can perhaps describe him to police. He smiles a lot and brings joy and mystery to the place because he hardly speaks — English or Spanish — unless spoken to.

The priests marvel at his retention skills and he is most of the sisters’ favorite including Sister Modesta, who now sits contemplating whether to call the police and report him as a a runaway.

Where could he possibly be?

It’s the beginning of the summer so school is out and most of kids play stickball in the streets all day and those who are old enough got summer jobs. So naturally Ronaldo isn’t missing school and would never willfully do so, the sister believed, because he likes learning. So what’s he up to?

He’s out in those streets learning, that’s what he’s up to. His disappearances start three days earlier when he sets out on his daily summer routine of walking around exploring Harlem’s streets where he receives strange looks from older kids and adoring stares from adults.

He seems to fear no one and smile at everyone. Even the most hardened of criminals can’t help but smile back and he is beloved by prostitutes who gave him money sometimes and take him to breakfast, lunch or dinner depending on what time of day they see him.

His day always starts at five in the morning, waking up and stealthily walking out of the room. He slides down the banister of the long staircase, a stunt that makes only a small hissing sound as he descends at breakneck speed. And then he ducks out of his favorite side window into a vacant lot and out of a hole in the fence.

His first stop is the Puerto Rican guy who stood in front of a newsstand. The candy is always free with a purchase of a Spiderman comic book. He likes the blind superhero Daredevil better though and often watches as the kids back at Father Divine argue about whether Marvel heroes could whoop ass against those distributed by DC comics.

He’s the tiebreaker.

“Marbel,” says Ronaldo softly, having not mastered the English “v” yet. Then he lays back on the pillow, remaining quiet for the rest of the evening.

At the newsstand he snakes extra comic books when the guy isn’t looking, never feeling bad about it because it goes for a good cause.

Back at the orphanage he distributes his spoils to the other boys without saying a word.

Johnson likes the hulk.

“Thanks kiddo!”

Jackson takes Spiderman.

“Cool!”

Preston is a Batman guy.

“Solid.”

And Black Brown, when he admitted that comic books weren’t for “sissies,” goes “ol’ school” with Superman.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout.”

At the newsstand he always asks for a bag to carry the excess candy and the comic books.

Before he goes back, he reads all of the comic books while sitting on steps that go down to an old man’s basement home near the newsstand. The man is always gone between eight and one. Ronaldo is out of there by noon and on his way to the hot dog vendor on the corner.

His weekly allowance is five dollars so with four dollars left, he purchases two fifty-cent hot dogs, having subsisted off candy since the morning time.

The zesty frankfurter, ketchup and spicy mustard spoke to his taste buds while he listened to the rhythmic singing of the Hot Dog vendor. It was a corny ditty that sounded like a commercial gospel song. His melodic voice compensated for the lyrics. Ronaldo likes hearing it.

“Hawt Dawg, get you fresh all beef Hot Dog, Hebrew National, so fashionable, a tasty treat, so good to eat It’s Koshur’ you can fill that belly up fo’sure.”

Across from the Hot Dog vendor is a place Ronaldo has not noticed before, a store front with what looked to Ronaldo like a red, white and blue striped candy cane.

Grown men who leaned up against its windows smoking cigarettes are making melodramatic gestures and talking loud.

They were words he hears Lil’ black use under his breath but these men seemed to be more casual with the words and probably wouldn’t clam up in front of any nun.

The boy walks across the street and over into the store thinking maybe he’d have one of those red, white and blue candy canes. He smiled at the men standing outside to which they reply “What’s up lil man.”

No candy, only a pungent sweet smell, something fresh, like cologne, the same type of cologne his countrymen put on when they go out from the safehouse in Miami to meet women.

There was hair all over the floor and the men talk loud about everything from sports, to the goings on of the neighborhood , to Marvin Gaye’s death, to politics.

“Now come on Ray,” one man says. “Walter Mondale ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell. These white people love them some Ronald Reagan.”

“The reason Mondale won’t win is that he chose a woman as a running mate,” another posits.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout. Not to mention Mondale just ain’t a good candidate,” yells another.

Ronaldo listens intently sitting on a chair near the door below a large window with big red letters that read: Ray’s Barbershop.

Although there was no candy, this would be a good opportunity to kick it with men, real men. He is accustomed to being with grown ups and coming from the Dominican Republic at an early age with a group of starry-eyed men who got on a cargo skiff bound for Pensacola, Florida..

A deep, smooth voice captures his attention.

“You niggas is something else,” said a man laid back in the barber chair receiving a shave from Ray, the man talking to another who, Ronaldo had surmised, was waiting for a haircut. That’s what a barbershop is, he figures out, proud of himself for deducing the obvious.

“Aww sheet, infinite wisdom from the shark man,” Ray, a short brown and balding man exclaims running the fine-edged razor down the side of “shark man’s” face.

The man in the chair continues to chat as he gets a towel wrapped around his face.

“I’m sayin,’ niggas is always runnin’ roun’ talkin’ bout’ voting. Like voting gone change some shit for ya’ll black asses.”

“Ah shit,” says the man waiting on line. “That’s that hustla talking. Real black men concerned about the movement don’t talk like that brotha.”

“Look, brotha, I’m all for improvement but votin’ ain’t gone do it!”

“But Sharkie, listen to what you’re saying, people died fo…”

“For what?” The “shark man,” beams softly as his chair sits up and the towel came off revealing a handsome and clean but sinisterly-dark face.

“Nigga I’m from Mississippi. They was down there organizing and organizing and organizing. Tell me something. If you vote in November will that keep a cop from busting you head open when you come out the polls?”

“Man you talkin’ nonsense.”

“Am I? Voting don’t do a damn thing but put the lesser of two honkey evils in power. They ain’t thinkin’ bout ya’ll, bout us. Whatever we need to do, we should do it for ourselves.”

“That’s that Marcus Garvey, Malcom X shit right there,” Ray says proudly.

“Yeah whatever,” the skeptical man says getting up and then passing “the shark man.” to sit down in the chair. He then lifts his head to let the barber gown fall down on onto his torso.

Meanwhile Ronaldo becomes enthralled with what the man had said about “doing it for ourselves.” Ronaldo wonders, could this be the same Sharkie who was the biggest pimp, best nine-ball player and richest numbers man this side of Lennox Ave, that Black Brown and Preston always holler about?

It was.

The man they call “shark” is a well-dressed man with a flawless peach suit over a white shirt white tie and tops it off white straw fedora hat.
On his feet are peach-colored alligator skin shoes or “gators,” that Ronaldo had heard Lil’ Black speak of. “That’s what all the real niggaz wear,” he would say.

And here Sharkie is in the flesh, the hustlas’s hustla and Ronaldo’s introduction to the game, though he doesn’t know it yet. He’s like a kid in a candy store, or is it a Barber Shop?

TO BE CONTINUED!

RENO, NEVADA 1996

The Nevada sun is rising high into the morning air now, three gangsters all stare silently, mental chess.

Each one has a different beef, with one another, with the world, with themselves. Ceasar felt a chill come over his body, he has the Jones, for either death or for some of that choice “Horse,” either through needle or nose. Most of all, he’s addicted now to the thought of bloody revenge.

Chico, still sitting on the curb is stone faced with the look of murder on his mug. He’s a heartless brutal warrior who thrived on the sight of blood and guts, puss and stool, nearly orgasmic at the things he could make the human body do with a knife, gun, bat or his bare hands. Ain’t nothing in the world, not money, street fame, women or fast cars, better than killing for that dude.

Ronaldo Dominguz, who goes by Joven now, knows that, knew Chico to be that way since he first met Chico at age 9.

Suddenly Chico springs up impatiently and runs over to Joven and Ceasar.

“Man fuck this, I’m ready to bang,” he yells with his 6″1, 215-pound frame heaving and throbbing with anxiety.

“Calm your big Venezuelan ass down,” Ceasar said waving him off.

Chico starts toward him in anger and is stopped in his tracks by Joven, who can see the evil in his eye and in the reflection of Chico’s eyes, see his own evil.

“Alright, forget Black Brown for now, I’m about to go for a drive to this place and scope it out, come back and go the fuck back to sleep.” Joven says in his usual calm, butterscotch tone. “Ya’ll know the plan for this afternoon, fill that dude in when he gets here. I’m not going to see you cats again until then, so remember the signal, show no mercy and I’m serious because they won’t show any.”

Joven turns to Ceasar looking at him solemnly and placing a hand on his comrade’s shoulder.

Chico darted off swinging at the air and full of adrenalin.

“Man I don’t like that dude, in fact I hate him” fumes Ceasar in a silent rage. “I known that cat since I was like thirteen even though I knew he was foul, I rolled with him anyway but I never liked that dude man and yo!, I know he had something to do with…..”

“Not here man,” Joven whispers back attempting to calm his boy down with a steady hand that seems to be lecturing. “I know, I know. Believe me hermano. Look he’s wild, he’s no good, he’s out for himself, he’s fucking crazy, you and I both know that. You can expect that from him. Look the truth is I need him, understand me. I need him.”

” You don’t really need him…. but after this look…He’s dead Joven, you hear me. I ain’t got nothin’ to lose now man, word up.”

“Speak up punk,” Chico yells from the background.

Ceasar’s body quivers with rage. “I ain’t biting my toungue motherfucker! I should dust your ass off right here in front of all these people, you fuckin’ coward!”

“Listen, stay focused,” Joven softly remarks to Ceasar pushing him back, “If we don’t pull this off none of us survives—Listen man, I……”

“What?!”

Joven embraces Ceasar but is quickly pushed off.

“Get off me man we ain’t that damn close you goin’ RuPaul on me,” Ceasar said calming down and smiling. His smile fades when he realizes that Joven, who has never ever looked like he’s looking now, was hardly joking.

Joven says softly, pulling Ceasar close, “The beef’s been on for a long time man. We’re livin’ on the run dog. And I’m startin’ to piece together what this all means. I need Chico around to study what he’s going to do, if he’s with them.”

Chico stood staring with blind hate at Ceasar.

“That bitch, Joven I think he knows I’m..we’re piecing stuff together,” Ceasar whispers staring back hard at Chico.

Joven wants to break the stalemate.

“You see,” he said running over and grabbing Chico around the shoulder. “Chico’s very serious, now gentlemen this has to go right or that’s my….well that’s all of our asses.”

Ceasar’s eyes stay on Chico and then shift to his other cohort. Ceasar sees the eyes of a young man troubled and in trouble. He sees a black Spanish kid who maybe needs to be attending a university with all the smarts he has. He sees in his friends eyes a depressing fear that pierces his own heart. At that moment he knows that this is do or die and that this would be the last day the three of them would be together as they were, the team is disbanded, the glorious days gone, the game over.

Ceasar feels his own clock ticking away. He don’t want to live at all no more. He’d seen his new wife murdered, his new baby burned to death and knew in his heart it was Chico’s doing. With his eyes he silently told Joven, “Man I love you too.”

Joven acknowledges without speaking while watching his friend’s eyes water.

“I know the plan, I’m outta here.” Ceasar says walking away.

Now the young man’s attention was back to the horizon, which was now a bluish yellow. Ronaldo knows that Ceez is going back to his room to find every last centigram of Heroin that’s left and try to numb the pain. He knows Ceez has the hurt, fury and desparation of a suicide bomber. Joven’s hurt for all those reasons and even more hurt because he’s using Ceasar to cancel out Chico and might have to shoot his best friend or have Black Brown clip Ceasar, put him out of his memory and misery. Ceasar used to be a charming thug, fastest gun in the east. He’s a murderous junky with nothing left now, his quick thinking and shooting skills diminished, his mind in dimentia, the type of dude that would testify in court and then hang himself, the type of dude that would stick a sharpened spoon in your neck for the next fix. He had to go either way.

Sharkie had been right, “only two hots and a cot or a pine box for all of us in this game, eventually”.

Ronaldo turns to Chico, he’s going to mind-fuck him now.

“You spoke english for a change hermano,” Joven says striking up the conversation. “I’m surprised. Hey man, look I knew you since I was knee-high to an ant. I used to run the raw for you all over I was the young brains, you was the muscle, Ceasar was the enforcer.”

Chico’s eyes dart away he looks up and then down. Joven continues the bombardment, tapping Chico playfully on the chest for emphasis.

“We were moving that shit nigga! Wall Street, Uptown, L.E.S, Mott Haven in the Bronx, we was gettin’ money nigga! Remember? You put me on and we were set. We was rolling. Remember Vazquez, that gruesome shit, you pulled off. I admit that grossed me out but I see now that it had to be done. Man looking back on that old street stuff seems like child’s play little league stuff.”

Chico frowns and looks away again. Joven knows he’s tugging at Chico’s missing heart a little bit and certainly getting in his head.

” Remember bro, you was talking about the vien in the nigga’s neck when you sliced that shit and how it was some special doctor’s shit. I was cracking up when I thought the other day about how you bodied that dude. You was eatin’ chips and drinking beer with your foot on the man’s back. This man’s lying on the floor bleeding like a mothaf…….you was watching wrestling with your foot on his back Wild shit.”

Finally Chico begins to laugh for reasons Joven knew. Talk about Chico’s handy work and he always smiles. Joven is serious again as he sighs.

“Laughter is good medicine and you’re a sick cat. But let me tell you something man, In my short time on this earth, I’ve learned that you can’t trust women, you can’t trust the government, business partners none of that all you got is your homies, you know down for whatever.”

A brand new convertable Land Rover pulls up and a valet jumps out and hands Joven the keys. It was seemless as if he had planned it, perfect timing, he’s getting out of there before Chico can even respond. With the car running and driveway full of people, Joven is emboldened.

He steps within inches of Chico’s face like he fears nothing.

“Hey man look, I know what you did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I knew you were out there in DR, in Puerto Rico, I didn’t say anything ‘cuz that’s the game, that’s the business, that’s our life, but…man what you did was fucked up.”

“What are you accusing me of……Don’t accuse me of …what are you saying you little punk ass, black ass faggot, I made you, I saved your life, you would’nt be shit if it wasn’t for me!”

Joven’s suspicions are confirmed. Chico would never deny a murder, and he’s never seen Chico this irritated. No Chico he brags about the killing and shit, it gets him off. Chico also false started. Joven didn’t accuse him yet here he is immediately defensive standing as if he were accused. Joven has no doubt now that Chico is the trigger man on the homeboy Enriquillo’s murder, one of the front men for what was all over the television right now and a killer of wives and babies — of his own people. Yeap. He looks in the dude’s eyes, not scared anymore, not flinching like he used to be, he’s looking at Satan’s portal. He has no doubt that Chico is the arsonist behind the fire at Caesar’s ranch that killed Maricela and the baby. Damn.

“We don’t have to discuss it,” Joven says backing away toward the car. “Put it this way my man, You can walk or you can stick with us. You know what you did. But it’s done. You’ve got a chance to make up for it today.”

Joven can’t believe he just said that, how would that dude ever make up for that? He shakes his head, smirks and turns the keys as the protege and the teacher stare each other down for almost a minute. Chico walks toward the car, Joven reaches for the gun at his ankle subtly and then starts to speak again so that Chico doesn’t notice he’s going for his piece.

“Somone, let’s be real, it was my father papa Ortega, who told me once that life was a war, now I know what that means. I look at you my friend and I know what that means, I’ll see you around.”

Joven, puts on sunglasses, buckles his seatbelt and drives off. The hot wind hits his face and a bitter-sweet nausea hits his stomach, butterflies with wings made of heavy, cancerous tumors. It’s only a matter of time before his picture is on every television set and law enforcment fax machine in the country. He’s been taking chances since this morning, standing out there in the driveway hoping cops would pull up so he could go out like Clyde Barrow. Now he’s headed to a corporae board meeting with a gun, how absurd is that? Sure he’s headed to the country club now, he’s headed to his destiny, he’s headed to jail or the grave and he knows it.

He smiles, it feels great to be a motherfucking gangster and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re not just trying anymore, you are indeed a gangster.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Moses Prison, Upstate New York 1997

Joven is like night and day, left brain and right brain, yin and yang for all seven months. At times flashing his vintage intoxicating smile, where his dimples would highlight his baby face only to turn around and snarl up, raving mad man flipping his bed in the air and banging on the walls, only to come to his senses hours later.

His mind is congested with all he’d ever been, ever wanted to do, ever seen, ever failed to do, ever done, ever read and ever heard. Murders, rapes, plots, drug abuse, alcohol, shootouts, explosions, treachery, death, gunplay, millions of dollars, strokes, robberies, blood, lust.

In the night hours he looks at the mountains on the far side of Eagle Bay, wishing he could turn into a flying animal.

During the swealtering summer months, he thinks about the cool and dirty snow of New York Barrios and snow fights among killers and hoodlums who really weren’t such bad guys. As the cold air begins to reasonate, he thinks about kids in the waterplug and the hot waves on the pavement that seem to crawl downtown from uptown and back.

He pictures of Juanita, her face, her skin and her scent in all seasons. Jasmine scented spray mixed with lovely feminine sweat in the summer. Expensive perfume that warmed the cold night air in the winter.

He laughs hard and scream out loud violently, talking of revenge— against who, he never really knows. Oh yeah, Rafeal Batista but then again, who really?

The other prisoners, wayward accountants, former bookies and gangsters who couldn’t be caught for anything but tax evasion hear him during many a night. They know of his reputation and wonder what slip u landed him there with them. They figure he is coming apart at the seams as a man who could do the crime but not the time.

That not it at all.

Everyone he’d ever known, loved, broke bread with is dead both by his on doing and by the business they all chose.

Almost every night, he prays for what to whom and why, he dosen’t know, doesn’t care, doesn’t give a fuck . Seems like the right thing to aim for, redemption.

Thanksgiving Day, also his birthday, comes and goes. He can still taste the turkey. Not that prison Turkey but the turkey he scarfed when he was eight years old. He remembers the bitterness of the ice water they served at Batista’s mansion that fateful thanksgiving in Schenectady. Three-hundred guests. All senators, diginitaries, princes, executives and high-priced call girls.

These flashbacks, on yet another sleepless morning, derived from a sleepless night, are interrupted by a loud wrap on his iron door, which had a small slot through which to see.

“Laundry!”

It’s the prison launderer yelling out to him to get his fresh digs. Joven reachs outside the door without eye contact and grabs his standard denim top and Levi Jeans. As he puts the clothes on, he chuckles at the thought of incarcerated mafia bosses who are permitted to wear designer sweatsuits. It’s like a vacation getaway for them.

On the rare occasion that he goes to the day room, he listens to them with their cool ganster talk : “Get the fuck outta here,” “No shit you jag-ovv?” “Hey, what am I an asshole?”

They talk about the days in their neighborhoods and in the old country. They don’t care who was listening, they are used to hearing themselves talk, and acclamated to being listened to.

One in particular, Eddie Mancuso likes him, knew through old association. In the world he’s a car salesman not even a “made man.” in here he can front like a Don.

Jovens thoughts jump

When many people in Joven’s neighborhood joke with him that he would see the pen, they mean Attica, Sing-Sing, Comstock, not this.

Wood paneling on the dayroom walls, ping-pong tables and soft leather couches. A gym with a fuckin’ sauna?

Sometimes he says to himself, I have it better than anyone in the free world. He could have been fed to the sharks at a maximum security joint. But he knew the cases against him were weak and that they might be grooming him for a case against a bigger fish. That fish, he hoped, was Rafael Batista.

His hair is long and wooly as he scratchs it and watched CNN. No cut or shave in seven months. So on this day he is amused when he runs his fingers through his own hair as a sharp annoying knock vibrates his door. It’s one of the punk ass Co’s on site, Marshals guarding the prison, Ray Stokes, a tobacco chewing yahoo, who called himself a “red-blooded-one-hundred-percent-American. All the immigrants and minorities in the prison know just what he means when he calls himself that.

“FBI here to see you boy, your black ass is gonna frrrrrrrrrrrry,”

What a cliche, is what Joven is thinking but he says nothing.

All the talking he planned to do would happen in a few minutes.. He decided to break his silence.

He is scheduled to meet with Special Agent Ron C. Young, a ten-year veteran of the Special NARCO/RICO, who fucked with him down in Florida almost a year before everything went awry.

Joven remembers liking this guy, stopping the flow of poison to his people, what he’s always. He gave Stokes a fake smile and said, “He Billy Bob, my barber here yet? I need to get my wig fucked with my nigga.”

Joven loves the look on Stokes’ face, loves using the word nigga in the presence of people who use the word “nigger,” to make them uncomfortable. Ignorance fighting ignorance, winner Ignorance with a capital “I,” Ronaldo surmises.

Stokes can hardly hide his disgust. “Oh so you’ve decided to speak English now have you boy?”

Joven looks Stokes up and down and dies laughing, feeling a shove toward the infirmary where a makeshift barber chair is set up for him, he arranged to Tino’s cousin, Raul to come up from Boston road to fuck with his crop, for $400 plus travel expenses.

Within thirty minutes he is clean-shaven and as youthful has ever. Jet-black waves lay on his head. He now has a manicured goatee and the sinister slants in his brown eyes are red from lack of sleep. He walks with a bop to Interview Room #12 to meet Young. Young ain’t there yet. He puts his feet up and sighs o pening a package of cigarillos — flavored cigarettes that burn like cigars, his favorite smokes. He feels like “the man,” again as he waits for Young in the interview room, leaning back like he’s in the movies, noting that the place looked more like a lounge than anything else.

He’s in his right mind now, so he thought, his nose stuck above the threshold of self-hate and doubt.

“Damn,” said Young entering the room with a stack of files. “Do you think you’re George Burns off in here or something. What is that cherries? Put that shit out.”

But he defiantly blows more smoke in Young’s direction like this is an episode of Law and Order and not his life on the line.

The agent tries not to cough but couldn’t help it with his virgin lungs.

“Alright enough games,” he continues, fanning the smoke. “You’re facing hard, hard time if you don’t cooperate. I’m trying to help you out.”

“You, help me, how?” Joven retorted.

“I already helped you out Youngblood. First of all I put you up in this vacation spot so you could relax before the big dance. You see, I’ve seen a thousand Ronaldo’s come and go. I’m from the South Bronx, I came up with Expressway Espinosa and those cats, went to school with ‘em. Ain’t nothin knew under the sun man, you think others ain’t tried what you did. You’re not fooling anybody and you’re not special at all, just another dumbass, in over his head, locked the fuck up.”

Joven admires him, a fed who understands his background and comes from the same environment, even knows him and Chico’s first real girl and boy connection up in Mott Haven,, Expressway Eduardo Espinosa — nother story for another day. But there’s no way I’m gonna kiss his ass, Joven thinks silently, He’s tyring to come at me on this homie shit but he’s still the beast, he’s still Babylon in a suit.

Joven, does however, extinguish the bone and lean back with a smile.

“What do you know about me, Benson? The Bronx, that’s cool. My shit is international though. Originally I come from a place that makes the Bronx look like Beverly Hills. I contend with two piles of bullshit everday. Black, Immigrant get it. And no one’s ever done it like me. Nineteen year-old nigga with stock options and shit. Seventeen-year-old nigga takin’ trips overseas politickin’ with corporation niggas. You don’t scare me man. I could have gone underground or weaved my way out of the situation. Ya’ll ain’t great. You wouldn’t have even found me if I hadn’t voluntarily come back to the states. And I can decay in jail for all I care, who gonna come visit me, I ain’t got shit, I’ll live it up for the rest of my days as a legend.”

Young laughs like he’s in the front row of a comedy show.

“Oh you’re priceless, you really are. You’re wilder than I thought. They said you had an IQ of 180. I believed them but I didn’t figure you wanted to get into a pissing match with a federal agent. I’m the government stupid. The government don’t lose, we the house, we always when, we rig the dice, we set the game. This ain’t dragnet fool, you can get buried and personally I could give a fuck less.”

“Don’t you see, Sidney Poitier, I ain’t afraid to die. I ain’t scared time to serve time in prison which will be very little time cuz’ you mothafucka’s got no kind of case. DR, I can beat that with a stick. Didn’t know what was going on, Reno? Nigga please, my lawyer gonna eat that shit, you ain’t got matching ballistics, you got no witnesses, you let me come into the country without detaining me, just to catch me in the act and everyone ends up dead except me and you can’t find my pistol either. Wow, you mothafuckas suck. Come on, Young we both know what it is. You’re stalling for time and hoping to sweet talk me into a plea bargain by putting me in this vacation paradise. Sorry Uncle Tom, you don’t have the chips. I do.”

“Who do you think you are? I can look in your eyes and tell your’re a punk, only scared niggas walk around talkin’ bout how nothing scares them. How dare you assasinate my character by calling me a Tom, I role with a group with a code which is more than I can say for you baby killers. As a matter of fact all you dope dealers are a bunch of uncle toms, doing the establishments work for them. Making my job easy. Showing tax payers that there money is well spent to keep black and brown skin people out of there neighborhoods and immediate lives. Fine you can die up in here for all I care. But you know us goverment people, we can make up something and have you begging to die. We’re crafty that way especially against black people as all you conspiracy theorists know. Look, why am I even giving you this spiel? I don’t care about you. You know what I want man. You’re small change and you know it, you ain’t a legend you a peon, you ain’t even a thug, you’re an actor, puffin on cigarette like Al Pacino. Boy this is real. Man you’re wasting my time. I think you’ll love Sing, Sing, or maybe we let you go back to Nevada, They gonna take you to booty town whereever you go. You best fuck with me otherwise I’m wasting my time.”

Young springs out of his chair acting as if he was leaving, gathering his files, which are really just a collection of doodlings and an unfiinished screenplay about life in the Bureau. He has nothing and he knows it but he knows Ronaldo don’t know it. He gets up to bounce, it’s obvioulsy an attempt to shake Ronaldo.

It works.

Joven grabs a new cigar and fires it up.

“You know your’re a slave right?”

Young darts back to the table slamming the file down, snatching the cigar away.

“You’re really starting to piss me off. You have a chance to put away someone who put you here and you’re protecting him rattling off mindless bullshit!”

Ronaldo smirks, lights up another one, blows the smoke out. “Testy, testy, Bill Cosby. Maybe I needed that because I feel great, can you please slap me again. Sit down. Let’s rap a taste.

“Is this going anywhere? I have an investigation to pursue.”

“Just listen, man.”

“No you listen, you know why you’re here I know why you’re here, you know why I’m here cutie. La Hoya. You’re small fucking change. Rafael Batista is who I’ve been after all along. Don’t you know that my superiors want you though, a black face, latin at that, that’s a double word score. He’s sippin’ Pina Coladas plottin on your life as we speak. You need to help me convince them who the real boss is so we can shut down this guy. Otherwise the mean black face on the news is what they’ll get and we will hang you. There I go again, listen the truth is, I want a promotion and I don’t care what you do, I’m tired of pinching middle men who don’t know didley and watching the whales swim away. You ain’t shit but a guest at the table. Help yourself out.”

“I know that, I’m trying to eat like them, just want my piece of the dream. I’m a street kid with a little bit of smarts. You think I don’t know that. Look, let me tell you what I know and what you know. Okay let me redirect, Steppin Fetchit. You know and I both know this federal shit ain’t gonna stick, you got no case. Who you got to turn on me? And Reno, again, circumstancial at best. That shit that was in the news on the Island. Man, I didn’t even know the house was rigged to blow the fuck up. I was on my way to the annual meeting and you have no proof that I wasn’t in route to the annual meeting with no knowledge of plots on my life. No proof that I as you guys say, hired Chico or Ceasar old friends as they may have been, to kill anyone. Oh but wait maybe you can ask Chico and Ceasar, oh wait, them niggas is dead. Yo got bubkus Nat King Cole. So since we know this, I need to wet my beak Benson. So if you can kindly bring me a piece of paper right now that says..what’s the word I’m looking for professor?”

Joven scratches his head sardonically, as if in deep thought.

Young grimaces, “Immunity, huh, you’re a piece of fuckin’ work you know that.”

“Damn you read my mind, see we brothas after all right? Okay so you see about that and you get back to me. Go on, now Chicken George. You do that and……”

“And, yeah, yeah I get it slickster. Then you only have the state charges, which you think stick less than ours and you walk away free and reclaim the streets.”

“Naw, man fuck the streets. I’m through with the bullshit. I thought I’d lay low for a little while and go into politics. Them the real gangstas there. It’s all the same anyway you know.”

“We’ll see, I’m not convinced you can give us anything so I ain’t makin’ no promises, but if something could be worked out, you’re gonna have to go all out.”

“Trust me Popye, if you can pull this off cats ain’t gonna be able to get me to stop talkin.’ I’ll be up in court tellin’ on everybody they gone have to say Joven shut the fuck up. I’ll be a snitchin’ ass broad, a pigeon on a stool, a rat with chesse, a fat lady singing…..a”

“Cut that shit out! You facin’ life boy. The cases ain’t as weak as you think neither. Damn, you’re awfully smug for someone in your position. I’ll tell you what, I’ll see what I can do. Alright, alright but look remember, no one ever really gets off free, remember that. And I swear on my grandmother if you renege, we’ll burn you worse than you could have ever imagined.”

“Yeah, Yeah, Brian Gumbel get the cats to draw up the papers man, my word is bond.”

Young is gonna give it a shot, maybe he could actually fill those files with something real after all, maybe this would be the break he’s looking for, one that gets him in the papers and out of paperwork. He knows he doesn’t have to deliver anyway but he likes the kids style, they both know that if the government doesn’t like what it hears, no deal. That goes for both sides of the law. That’s why they were on giggling terms now. Young gathers up his non-files and walks out, turning around for one last jibe.

“It’s Bryant Gumbel you dumbass, it’s pronounced Bryant Gumbel. It’s Bryant Gumbel, Nigga.”

“You would know, Uncle Ben, no go get a brotha some rice and a mothafuckin plea slash immunity deal,” Joven chuckles, blowing out more smoke.

They smile at each other like long lost brothers. Their faces seem to be saying to each other, “ahhhh fuck it, it’s worth a try.”

TO BE CONTINUED!

East Harlem, NY 1983

“…Sheeeeeet, brotha she ain’t gonna give you no rhythm Jack, you might as well go on ahead and let me rap to her if Sharkie ain’t already got to that foxy ass already.”
“Stop puttin’ my business out in the street, punk…….”
“You take that back right now, I love my black nation but I will cut you nigga…….”
“Okay, calm down Akbar, or is it Leroy, it’s hard to keep track these days……..”
“…He won’t never be better than Sugah Ray Robinson, ever, you jivin yourself if you think otherwise, ”

“So the only way we can rise as a people….”
“Shut that black power shit up, you ain’t Malcolm X…………”
“You know, that Johnson Publishing is doing interesting things with that Jet Magazine……….”
“Only thing interesting ’bout that is how barbershops and beauty salons keep Jet in business.”
“What about Mondale?”
“Mondale is gonna lose, sit your Nat King Cole, Zulu lookin, black ass down talkin’ bout that voting…………”
“Say, Sharkie, let me get 10-25-65, that’s the wife’s birthday, gotta bring me some luck, I know she ain’t bringing me none…………”

“Negro, what I tell you bout messin’ with reefers, are you crazy? You think I wanna get pinched, taking bids in a barbershop? I don’t know whose finkin’ in this mothafucka, holla at my man outside!”
One wouldn’t even know who is talking here, they all talked to, with and over each other. And in the company of gangsters, hustlers, pimps, bus drivers, cabbies and even policemen and lawyers, one could find themselves conducting their own social experiment at a Harlem barbershop. Ray’s on Lenox Ave is no different and Ronaldo is enthralled by men he can look up to, particularly Sharkie, the dapperist and coolest of them all. His attention is centered on two propped up leather chairs at the far corner of the shop, which he walks over to. At the base of the chairs is a large brush next to some black shoe polish. Ronaldo picks up the brush.
“Hey lil’ man put that down,” said a man in the barber’s chair.
The man they called “Shark man” turns around and smiles, looking down at his shoes and then goes over and sits up in one of the chairs.
“Leave em’ alone,” said Ray, the owner of the shop. “Hey boy, you hear for a cut?”
Ronaldo nods no.

“So you a shine boy,” said the Shark on the propped up chair.
Ronaldo shrugs.
“You shine?” Ray seconds.
Ronaldo gives him a look that told them he wanted to “shine,” whatever that was. He knows shine is a good thing. The sun shines so why couldn’t he?
Shark man takes the brush and grazes it against his iridescent shoes, following that he takes the cloth and it makes a smacking sound covering his shoes as it runs and forth rapidly of the dead alligator.
Ronaldo is enthralled by the rhythmic movement.
“I used to do this when I was bout’ your age,” says Sharkie finishing the shine job. “Here you try.”

Ronaldo follows every movement like clockwork.
“What’s your name?”
Sharike wants to know my name, Ronaldo thinks.
“Ronaldo,”
“Rrrrronawldo? This lil’ brotha got a accent on him. What are you part, Mexican.?”
Ronaldo frowns comically and shakes his head.
“Dominicano y Negro Americano.”
He doesn’t know them or trust them yet, no English, even though he needs them to know he understands it.
“Oh you Dominican, uh the Republic, like them baseball players huh?” asks Ray.

The boy smiles, points, and nods.
“You a cool lil’ nigga. Look here, I’m Sharkie, that’s my handle and with me, the women always turn out the lights and light a candle.”
“Awwww shit, here we go,” Ray said laughing.
“How old are ya,” Sharkie asks.
The boy holds up seven fingers. Everyone in the shop laughs. The two men outside come inside to witness the festivities.
“Smart lil’ booga. Where yo mama at?.”
The boy shrugs and Sharkie frowns and leans down.
“You ain’t got no mom and pop, where you stay at then?”
“Orrfahnage, ’round the corner.”

Meanwhile, Sharkie leans down again and puts one hundred dollars in the pocket of the boy’s starched white shirt. All the boys at Divine had white shirts and blue pants with black shoes.
The boy looks up and smiles and his eyes lit up as if to say “this is what I get for just putting a rag on your shoe and making it clean?”.

“These two cats gone get shines,” Sharkie says.

One of them the men protests.

“I don’t need no….”

“Yes you do,” Sharkie replies with authority and then goes and sits down, cracking open an Amsterdam News and sipping on apple juice as he holds court on the edge of the seat.

Sharkie, then quickly folds the newspaper, looks at his diamond-studded Rolex and gets up, starts to walk out and stops at the door turning around saying goodbye to Ray and the political lawyer guy, that’s what they called him, he was cool and dapper but nobody says much to anyone that did anything related to law.

“You gone vote in the primaries though Shark?” asked Ray.
“Oh yeah, I’m going to vote, you have to vote for the spirit of what it could mean for the principle of what it’s supposed to give us. You underdig what I’m sayin?”
“Right on.”
“Hey ‘Nardo, if you need anything at all, I mean anything, Ol’ Sharkie come to Ray’s every Monday,” says the exiting gentleman gangster with the crisp peach suit.
The boy nods and grins continuing to shine the men’s shoes.
“Yeah Ronardo the shop is closed on Monday to everyone but the VIN’s.”
“What’s a VIN?” one of the men in the shine chair asks.
“Very important Negroes.”
Ronaldo’s head turns to hear booming music. It’s coming from the Peach man’s big black 1983 Caddy, clean, whitewall tires, gangster whitewalls.
So fine. Helps to relieve my mind. Sexual healin’ baby it’s good for me.

The rest of the shop bursts forth with laughter.
“That boy Sharkie is that Nigga!”
“He’s doin his thang that’s for sure.”
“Look at them Whitewalls.”

“Yeah, them gangster whitewalls.”
“He’s a gangster?”
“Alright everybody shut up, political lawyer man, asking questions again, nigga might be a Fed, I’m just kiddin’ with you brotha. You a Fed though?”
Political lawyer man smirks, taps Ronaldo on the shoulder with the newspaper, and addresses him jokingly.
“This is the gangster right here I think, yeah this little man here, he’s the real don, isn’t that right?”
The barbershop explodes in laughter.
The boy shrugs and laughs along with them.
Four hours later at the end of the day he has $180.56 in his pocket. The sheer feel of the bills and coins in his hands makes him hold his head high. He scoops up his bags after hearing Ray tell him that he should be there early every morning because that’s when all the big spenders come in to get “prettied up for the day.”

At nightfall he comes back to the orphanage amid hysteria as his roommates ask him all kinds of questions. But the questions stop when he opens the bags producing candy, comic books and bags of potato chips.
Then they hear Sister Modesta stalking up the stairs, and hide all the stuff quickly, planting themselves like statutes in front of their beds.
Ronaldo, gone all day, is ready for the tongue-lashing. He just stands there and takes it when she storms in. He’d heard it all before.
“We were worried sick. Don’t do that again. You’re going to be in big trouble if you ever do that again!”
And so, on and so on.
The boys hold in their laughs as Ronaldo smiles and nods saying he understood.
“Yes seester. I’m sorry seester. I won’t do it again seester”
He so knows he’s going to do it again, who could pass up that much money?
Then he holds out his hand and receives the obligatory loud and painful smack with what the boy’s affectionately call Sister Modesta’s “dip stick.”
It hurt but the cute boy shows no outward signs of injury.
Sister Modesta leaves in the same way she comes - in a comical fury, her boots making door- knocking sounds as she walks out.
“You my man!” Lil Black Brown yelled out embracing the boy. “He didn’t even flinch. That’s some real shit. You took that like a man.”

“Where was you at?” Preston inquired.

Ronaldo shakes his head as if saying “wouldn’t you like to know.”

TO BE CONTINUED!

The sport utitlity vehicle turns onto I-80, headed deep into Reno. He looks up at the sun with his sunglasses and protects his face from the beaming rays. The sun is in a different position now, almost at his back. He’s headed to La Sierra Country Club, owned by La Hoya International. He hates everything that that company and his former boss Rafeal Batista stands for and wants to settle the score in the boardroom, but he would do it the street way.

As the dry afternoon dust collects on his shades, the CD blasts Sade’s song “Cherish the Day.” Some chick must have left it in there but he finds it appropriate nonetheless. The beautiful music fills the air and memories fill his mind. How had it gotten to this point? Why did he choose this road? What would become of him because of certain actions? He pounds the steering wheel close to tears, not with sadness but with anger thinking about what Ceasar is going through. Then he thinks of his foster-father Orlando Ortega and what went wrong with that? Why is my pop a stooge for this Batista? ¶

Something within his control, yet beyond it, had torn his life asunder. Was it the conditions from which he came? Was it the world in which he lived? He wonders now what event had been the
turning point—lives lost, smoking guns or families destroyed?

Then he remebers what Orlando told him not to long ago. He sniffles as he recalls the words:

“You wanna play this game huh? Remember though, if you lose and you know you’re gonna lose and I’m not talking about a game, I’m talking about if you lose everything. Don’t ask why, never ask why.”

Nevertheless, the young man, is on his grizzly, gripping the steering wheel with bitterness, continuing to deduce what’s going, on running the facts over and over again in his mind.

The dude Batista has Chinese, Colombians, Bolivians, Italians, all kind of countries and people on his payroll, he’s washing money for all those people, under the guise of running a legit multi-national. Yet, you take a guy like me, I get dupped into washing money for him, selling dope for him— he’s untouched. The guy’s making billions selling commodities and moonlighting as probably the biggest drug dealer the world has ever known. Yet I’m stuck. But what he’s not
counting on is that I’m gonna kill him.

He turns the CD player off and on comes the radio. Ironically it’s was the CEO of La Hoya brand sugar, — his shell company is the subsidiary of La Hoya Sugar — George Klien. The advertisement blares, explaining that La Hoya is the official sponsor of the NCAA west regionals, which were to be held in Reno later that week.

La Hoya pure cane sugar, how sweet it is.

It ain’t gonna be so sweet when I get through with you assholes, he thinks as he turns the radio off, taking a deep breath. He knows he has to be calm. He can’t show anger or fear.
Everything he’d been through, done and seen in his whole life had led up to this moment and he has to be sharp, devoid of emotion. He has to mask what he was thinking and feeling. This isn’t a meeting to carve up drug territory, it was the annual La Hoya International Board Meeting— his second. He recalls about the last meeting, when he gave an inspirational speech about saving the beleagured sugar exports company. He honestly believes, and to some extend still does think he was for once in his life doing something legitimate. He still wants so bad for that to be the first legal thing he’s successful at but it turned out that by joining the ranks of the business world, he was sucked deeper into the dirtiest of games. He know finds himself, albeit unknowingly and knowingly, thrust onto the center stage of murder.

Why are they after him? Here’s how he’ll tell it to anyone who will listen:

I turned the scheme against Batista and beat him at his own corporate game. Instead of kicking revenue back up stairs—customary in business and organized crime—I recirculated it into the dying company and since, they let me do what I want, I started cutting costs, selling off unused assets, buying new equipment with drug money, going to private financiers, pulling off funding, a ghetto IPO. All this while Batista stands by helplessly.

The truth is, and Joven knows it, if the Spaniard had removed Joven from his position as vice president, shareholders would have called Batista a fool, unwanted attention comes around, inquiries are made w into his clandestine pratices. Then the SEC, then the FBI. Batista. So
yeah, Batista was powerless to stop him.

The valuation of the Santa Maria unit quickly shot up, not because the sugar market was booming, but because the young man had generated phantom revenue from drug money. Now they want the company and the money back without raising a public stink. Only way that happens is if Dominguez is dead.

The young executive, Ronaldo Dominguez—El Joven—had struck it rich with a net worth of $70 million. So they leak it to the feds that I’m a drug dealer, some news, and here I am, he thought. Not bad for a bastard from Harlem.

One question still weighs heavy though. They know his whereabouts, they know he is coming to the meeting to relenquish his share of the sugar company. Yet they didn’t alert the authorities at all. They were going to kill him at the meeting, he thought at first. No they’ll get their stupid share back and then call in the feds who’ll be hiding there.

Joven, at this point is prepared for anything. He tries to reassure himself by telling himself they were all “old farts.”

His father, the CEO of a La Hoya susidiary that sells Cigars, is now a mere shell of the man he used to be and it remained and enigma as to why that was so. George Klien is a Harvard business school brat who and La Hoya board member who, no matter how hard he tried, could never live up to his old man Chuck’s cunning instinct. That’s why Batista is running it and pushing drugs to save the company, no tricky acccounting here, they’ve got real revenue, real profits, but fake business strategy.

So now he would dissolve the partnership once and for all and either die in a blaze of glory like in the movies or get away with more than $20 million for the sale of his shares and hide in Latin America, Europe, Africa anywhere, for the rest of his life in obscurity, that is if he got away, which at this point is next to impossible.

“Oh well,” he looks back up at the sun. How small I am in the scheme of things, he thinks. His meditation is interrupted by the sound of his cellular phone which he barely heard over the sound of the wind.

“Black, is that you, Black?”

It’s Black Brown one of three hitters, who Joven hopes will help him set it off today. Four men, with nothing left, dumping bullets on the guilty and the innocent. Fuck it.

“What’s up Nardo’ sorry I’m late you know the man, always trying to keep a playa from doin’ his thing.”

“Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” groans Joven in a tone that clearly suggested he was annoyed by Brown’s’ tardiness. “Did Ceas, feel you in?”

“Sho’ did and I got some freaky shit for dat ass baby.”

“Yeah but do you know the plan?”

“Yeah, they at the club right now.”

“Shut up stupid, don’t you know…man, wires, maybe they, you know they’re tapping, aw shit. Oh well. Damn it’s so hard to find good help.”

“Man you crazy, let me put you up on what I got.”

“Ok.”

If they were tapping, why not let them know what’s about to jump off, maybe it will save him from doing what he really doesn’t want to do but feels he has to.

“You’ll be a’ight ain’t no cops feds nothin’ and I’m callin from one of my gals cribs don’t know body know her but I seen some Colombian lookin cats walking around the joint early this morning. I had to watch from a distant. They constantly trying to keep a brotha down. Can you believe security wouldn’t even let me in the building. Gotta be a black thing, you know what I’m sayin? ”

The old Colombian “security” service is there just like he thought they’d be. More like an Army of hitters. No doubt they would let Joven in.

“Just as I figured, they want me pushin’ up cauliflower,” says Ronaldo, smirking at how corny what he just said is.

“Man you a gas, you a wild boy, look here, the pizza guy got two pepsis to go (Ceasar: two, tech nines) and the big coffee guy got a double expresso with a straw (Chico: sawed off, double barrel shotgun plus machete) and guess what!”

“What man,” Joven asked, beginning to laugh at Brown’s high pitched excited voice.

“Yo nigga, aka yours forever, got a Big Mac sandwich, two all beef patties, special sauce lettuce cheese, brotha. With fries. (Brown: Israeli Mack 11 Semi-auto with reversable clips three hundred rounds each) Fries baby! Frankly I’m a little aroused.”

“And the strawberry shakes? (tear gas) what about that. We have to even it out, they’ll have plenty of food (guns) there at the meeting.”

“Got it. You holdin.’”

“Yeah, I brough some cigar and a Zip lighter (six-round revolver pistol) one for Klien, one and five for Batista. He likes to smoke.”

“Well yeppeekiyeah.”

Ronaldo laughs,

“You’re straight out of a bad 70s movie man. Look play time is over you’re excited and all that but ya’ll better be on point or else I’m comin’ back from the grave and throw a party for all of you (kill everyone). And uh Brown, about Atlantic City….”

“Don’t even mention it. All is well, Allah is in his holy temple.”

“You need professional help. Bueno suerte.”

“Bone suer what the hell does that mean?”

“All these years you been kickin’ it with latin-cats you don’t know what that means?”

“For some reason I never gave a shit, I sincerely hope you don’t hold that against me my Afro-Hispanic brotha.”

“Oh you done lost it. It means good luck.”

“Hide ho.”

Joven shakes his head smiling and seeing the road sign that led to the exit where the country club is. He exits the interstate, navigates the service road and heads up a steep hill. The club is at the summit of the hill. It’s an exclusive Nevada country club of less than 30 members—most on the board of La Hoya, but also some casino executives and Nevada legislators. The car approaches a large two-sided iron gate which leads into a giant coutyard drive way with a circular parking lot surrouding an elegant three-level fountain.

At that moment, Ronaldo remembered how much he hates this type of enviroment. He’d seen it earlier in the day and was reminded of how he loathes aristocrats even though he is a millionare.

He longs at that moment to be singing folk songs with Campesinos on the island or drinking a brew on 145th st. sittin’ on a stoop watching the kids play in a dirty Harlem waterplug.

Meanwhile his mind switches to the plan. The burly, muderous, thug guards let him right in, with indifferent stares, no irony, no hate, nothing. Professional.

He wants to get in the meeting, dispense with pleasantries, reliquish his interest have them transfer and make sure the money is in his foreign account and then fly on a chartered private get-away plane to Cuba where he would seek political asylum and grease local palms while
he figured out his next move. What a stupid plan, he admits to himself.

But, the likely course of action is that he will everybody except Ortega, his father, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

He drummed on the steering wheel, nervous, pulling up to the valet park, in front of the palatial entrance. He hops out, struting, feeling his iron rub against his ankle. They don’t even frisk him.

A limo pulls up, he whirls around.

The limo stops at the valet.

Oh shit!

She steps out.

His heart jumps.

Damn, what is she doing here?

Juanita, still delicious, still dreaming of owning her own retail chain no doubt. Still clueless. She’s no idiot but she still doesn’t deserve to be caught in a fire-fight though.

What the hell is she doing here?

Then he figures it out. Insurance policy, human shield, game-leveling pawn, pretty sacrificial lamb. Human shield.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Over the weekend he sleeps well. He reads the Bible and some essays by James Baldwin. On Sunday he goes to early morning mass, which is held in the spacious gymnasium. When he gets back, he reads “The Grapes of Wrath,” in its entirety. He laughs out loud and throws it across the room when he finishes. Depression, recession, inflation, deflation none of it matters, he thinks, the rich stay rich and everyone else doesn’t.

He does however admire poor farmers and tries to infuse their work ethic into his own but it never works. He’s always believed that there was no such thing as an honest living.

That night as he pulls the covers up over his shoulders he continues to chuckle. He himself is still rich with money stashed away with the help of a well-known Harlem financier, Reginald Jones.

Jones is the son of “Galloping” George Jones a legend who played basketball with the early New York Rens. Now he’s a pastor of one of Harlems biggest churches. The elder Jones’ other son was a criminal lawyer, Clayton who had defended the likes of Black Brown, Sharkie and other Harlem racketeers. He is also Joven’s lawyer. A strange paradox that family is, Joven thought, but I’m still worth just over $20 million. They’ll take care of me.

Joven still had bodegas in old ladies’ names, Ice cream trucks and a restaurant venture particularly dear to his heart called the El Casa De Bistec Dominicana (Clueless tourists are impressed with the name, which simply means “Dominican Steakhouse.”) Not to mention $3 million cash in a safe deposit box at the Chemical Bank in lower Manhattan under the name J. LeFlure. He had given the key to a trusted leutinent to do deals, one who operated in the shadows as a criminal and in the light as a law clerk.

Then there was the Nigerian crude oil and the money given to finance tribal warlords over there.

The biggest of his fortune was selling his share of the Santa Maria Sugar Exports Co. to Richard Ricano for $15 million American. But the bank of Santo Domingo seized that and was working with the U.S. government to split it.

Then they’re the prison guards, even Stokes — who grudingly dirves his new Corvette and pays the mortgage on his new fishing cabin upstate with Joven’s money — are bought off for the next six months.

But as his eyes begin to get heavy, he knows that, despite the loot he no longer has any friends-if he ever did-just associates who would help when called upon. That’s how it is, he says out loud before dozing off.

The next morning the glare from the sun, which reflected off the nearly frozen lake, awakens him.

He has missed breakfast but he knows old man Mancuso would have some snacks for him. The old half-Italian, half-Irishman thought of Joven as a son.

Rubbing his eyes, he calls for Stokes to walk him to the dayroom to which he had never been.

When he arrives he smiles ear to ear seeing that there is a pool table, video games and a large television in front of a large plush couch.

“Hey you, come get some of these canolis,” said old man Mancuso smiling with his eyes barely open.

Mancuso is a family friend of the Ricanos, the most legitimate family ever to be hassled by the feds in the history of La Cosa Nostra.

The other old Italians sitting at the table say little to him. It was obvious they aren’t thrilled with this young “black kid” sitting with them. It’s unheard of. In prison or anywhere else.
But Ronaldo devours the canoli and a glass of milk taking his seat at Mancuso’s side.

Mancuso went into stories about Richard Ricano as a business administration teacher at Brooklyn Tech.

He did it part-time as his full-time job was chief executive of an up-and-coming managed health care company called ETHOS.

“Son of a….there’s little Ricky right there,” Mancuso wheezed pointing with a decrepit hand at the television.

Joven’s neck twists in that direction and sure enough the good-looking Ricano was standing in a hospital surrounded by little black and white children for a television commercial:

“The word ETHOS is latin for culture or way of life and is a derivative of ethics,” said the voice over.

Then Ricano smiles into the camera and speaks as a politician would.

“Here at ETHOS care we believe in an ethical and structured healthcare system. A system that best serves diverse communities like the ones right here in the Big Apple.”

At this point, Ricano picks up a black boy and holds the hand of a white girl walking forward toward the camera.

“ETHOS because even health care has a culture of its own.”

Corny Music. Cue “Ethos” Logo.

The tables erupt in laughter and Joven just smiles and shakes his head wondering what would have become of him if he had chose another road in life.

Everybody’s attention is now turned toward CNN world news.

There was a small segment on unrest in the Dominican Republic.

The fighting began when authorities allegedly executed a young priest and his brother a labor leader.
Emilio Guerrero, a Catholic priest and his brother Humberto, leader of the local sugar famers alliance were shot to death by firing squad yesterday for there reputed collusion with a militant rebel group funded by drug money, Los Soldados Negros or the black soldiers.
Joven got up from the table and lit a cigarillo in disgust. Father Emilio had been a source of comfort on the Island and now Joven’s corrupt enemies were taking out their frustrations on the people close to him.

Mancuso saw the frustration on the boy’s face and looked to console him.
“What is that cherries? Say, Say Ronny, uh, we play cards every now and then. Uh 21, you wanna play sometime.”
Joven surveys the stone faces of the other men and then replies, “Sure, why not.”

Once again it’s time for his psychiatric appointment. He’d always avoided them but after he got back from the dayroom he was informed by the warden that the visits would be mandatory from here on out.

He is also informed that he had been referred to a black shrink from Wayne State University named Dr. Milner.

John Milner, from the inner-city of Detroit, he found out. He thought this would be a good match but much to his chagrin, the black doctor proved to be more patronizing than any of the white ones.

Milner had a pipe, thick glasses, a blazer with suede elbow pads, a bow-tie and an oxford accent to boot.

Joven looks him over and smirks.

What could he possibly know about me?

TO BE CONTINUED!

EAST HARLEM, 1983

At the Father Divine Orphanage, the orphan boys stand giddily around Joven, looking upon him with adulation, watching Ronaldo in awe and benevolent envy. He’s withstood Sister Modesta’s dipstick, without crying. He’s defied the rules and chilled at the barbershop with the biggest numbers man, craftiest pool shark and slickest hustler in Harlem Sharkie. He’s
lived to tell about it. They look at him as members of a family would survey a decorated war hero coming home for Thanksgiving, his medals shiny, his jaw tightened, his face ruggedly hallowed by a world few in the room new. Brown anxiously reaches for Joven’s bag. “Let’s see what you got here,” Brown says, looking as if he was going to take the smaller boys money. But the boy stands firm, giving Brown a dastardly glare.

“Aw man, If I wanted that shit, I’d take it.” Ronaldo likes his style but would never trust Black Brown from that point on.

Three days later at about that same time Ronaldo finds himself in the office with a social worker, Sister Modesta and Father Tony De La Rosa, a Dominican like himself who ran the Orphanage.

“You’re a smart boy so I guess you know by now that this behavior will not be tolerated,” the priest said, his scruffy voice focusing on the word tolerated. “Tu Sabes? Dije, comprendes?” He said signifying do you know and understand in Spanish making sure his young countryman knew what he meant. Ronaldo nods. “We just want to know why you leave every morning and where you go that keeps you until the afternoon,” said Sister Modesta in a motherly tone. She acted so sweet when Father Tony was around, Ronaldo observes.

Father Tony coughed ferociously and sat down as if he would lose strength by remaining standing. He’s never without a small tattered black fedora hat and has a couple of teeth missing. He’s always talking about “the nature of man.” Brown says Father Tony is deep and when Brown was caught smoking a cigarette he gets off light. The sisters are astonished. It turns out the Father has an affinity for cigars and he merely tells the sisters that “one man’s pleasure is another’s vice.”

Sensing the tension in the room, the prissy social worker, a bleeding heart liberal child of the now defunct hippy sixties and disco seventies, tentatively smiles at Ronaldo.

“Yeah it’s like you’re going to a job or something. That’s what it sounds like,” the social worker adds.

“That what it is,” the boy says as if he’s watched gangster movies way too much. Which he does. The adults are all proud for some reason.

“Doing what son,” the father asks. Ronaldo smiles and says “shine boy,” with a majestic look on his face. The Father wheezes, laughs and coughed again, this time worse than
before. He;s sick. The prevailing rumor at Father Divine was that he had cancer.

“And where are you a shine boy?” Sister Modesta asks skeptically, doubting that a boy of that age could be doing anything else in the streets of Harlem but getting in trouble.

Ronaldo mumbles, “Ray’s.”

The father grins, “Ray’s eh.”

“Ah, ha, a dive. A place of moral decadence,” insists Sister Modesta.

“Isn’t that a barber shop about three blocks from here?” the social worker asks more innocently than she should have. Feeling out of place, the social worker then takes leave, stuffing a folder into a large baggy wicker purse, most likely to check the story out.

“I believe it is a Barber shop,” says the Father, who knows damn well it’ s a barbershop where poicy number bids, drug packages and informal prostitute purchase orders are dispensed. The father gets up and walks around the desk to embrace the boy’s shoulders. “A workman need not be ashamed. Your marks in school are favorable and you seem to have the
right idea.”

Sister Modesta, knowing perhaps more about the barbershop than even Father Tony — she frequently bet on baseball with Sharkie’s bookie underlings — is outraged. “But father we have rules, he can’t just go gallivanting off whenever he feels like it!”

“My sister in Christ is correct son. From now on you eat breakfast with the boys and girls like you’re supposed to and then go to this shine job if you still wish to pursue it.”

“He’s seven. He should be playing baseb..,” Sister Modesta caught herself, both out of respect for the father and for the fact that she invoked the game she frequently makes wagers on.

Father Tony sits down, soothing the sister by patting her on the knee. “Sister, he’s been instructed to follow the rules. But this isn’t a prison, we do permit these precious sons and daughters of ours to expand their horizons. They will, after all, some day be adults.”

“Father Tony I just don’t think….”

“How many of the boys on your floor came to this country from another one before the first grade, by themselves, with no parents?” Ronaldo shakes his head in concordance with the priest’s words, taunting the sister with playful eyes.

“But Father the point is…”

“The point is, how many?”

The sister lowers her head and rolled her eyes in defeat saying under her breath the word “none.”

“God go with you my son,” the father said.

The news is back in the room before Ronaldo even gets there and he’s greeted with the regular “shine boy,” teases and insults. He just waves them off and jumps into bed opening his Bible trying to find out if any of what the father said was contained therein. He falls asleep with a the Holy Bible on his chest and later on smells sweet, honey like perfume that stings the nose a little. Chanel No. 5. He knows and feels Sister Modesta tucking him in and placing the good book on one of the many nightstands adorning the room. With his eyes closed and ears open he hears her sniffling. She was crying. What he doesn’t know is why. He might think it’s because she loved him and maybe that’s true in a sense. But she’s frustrated. She doesn’t feel she’s making any difference at all. Father Tony’s dying, the sweet soft-skinned brown boy asleep below her is headed toward a life of crime as are most of the boys in the hall with him. She knows this. God is absent.

“Good to have you back beautiful child,” she whispers planting a kiss on his forehead.

Moses Prison, Upstate New York 1997

Ronaldo is headed to see Dr. Everett Milner, a black man from the inner-city of Detroit.

Joven thinks this will be a good match but much to his chagrin, the black doctor, when he sees him, proves to be more patronizing than any of the white ones.

Milner has a pipe, thick glasses, a blazer with suede elbow pads, a bow-tie and an oxford accent to boot. Ronaldo’s thougts: What could he possibly know about me?

“Good morning Mr. Dominguez,” grumbles Milner looking at a clipboard with past evaluations on it.

He find Milner’s tone insulting.

Why does he have to talk to me like I’m outta my mind or something, Joven thinks. Or like I’m a lost little kid stuck in a tree. “What’s up doc? You here to tell me what’s wrong with me. How fucked up I am?”

“No I’m here to help you understand, or at least try to understand from my standpoint, a professional vantage point, why you hate the world.”

Joven laughs uncontrollably.

“Is something funny?” Milner asked, clearly annoyed. “Is this attempt to re-direct your emotions maybe? Avoid the issue at hand so to speak.”

“Please your killing me,” Joven says, eyes watering with hilarity. “That Psycho babble jargon, good stuff doc, good stuff, you ever thought about taking that on the road.”

“Ok that’s quite enough,” Milner growls. “Now should I come back at another time or do you want to waste time. This is outside of my normal purvew, you’re a special case a sociopath, pyschopath, possibly Bi-Polar, possibly, well I’m here at the behest of the federal government, which I’m doing a joint research project. As much as it may trouble you to hear, you’re well a hamster.”

“Tell me something new man. Look probe away poindexter, I didn’t ask for this,” Joven says in a more serious tone. “Warden said I had to do it.”

“Okay fair enough but I undestand from your files…yes, I understand that you wanted counseling, you requested it. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“Then please let me help you. I’ve gone over your files vigorously, you’re an exceptional young man and I just want to get to the root of whatever it is that’s going on in there.”

Joven loosens up. Maybe he isn’t so bad after all.

Milner clears his throat. “The prison psychologist tells me that you feel paranoid. Why do you feel this way? Do you feel like you’re alone. Special, persecuted unlike any other person?”

“That psychologist was sexy don’t you think? I could hardly keep my eyes off her. The way she moved. Those lips when she said those big word, I must admit I was aroused. Seriously though I think she was paranoid, that she would end up butt naked on her hands and knees in my cell or something. Maybe taking it like a doggy, a sweet little psychologist doggy. Oh Joven Oh Joven!”

Ronaldo’s having fun now.

Milner’s annoyed, bumpy flight to the middle of nowhere for this? Kid must think he’s on television or something. Milner decides he’ll humor him. But he’ll do it methodically.

“I can’t help you if you don’t cooperate please answer my question.”

“Okay, lighten up. Maybe you need some ass or something. Anyway, yes it’s all around me. The world is a dangerous, beautiful and terrible place. Shit is real to me because it’s my reality.”

“I hear that you’re having trouble sleeping, a re-occuring dream perhaps?”

“Perhaps? Listen, you actually get paid for this bullshit? Do you even give a shit what I say?”

Joven is suddenly becoming impatient and angry. He starts rambling about the “president, the guards, the cartels, everybody is in on it! and so are you,” he says to Milner, pointing an accusatory finger.

“Mr. Dominguez please calm down.”

“Where are you from?” Joven asks in a sporadic voice, even though he knows the answer.

“What relevance does…..”

“Answer the motha fuckin’ question!”

MILNER’S NOTES: “TYPE A SOCIOPATH; RAMBLED THOUGHTS; QUICK TO ANGER”

“It looks like I’ll have to come back when you have calmed your nerves, guard, guard!”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Joven exclaims loudly, springing up, shutting the door and locking it.

Milner is terrified as he put his hands up to try to calm Ronaldo down. The doctor then returns slowly to his seat and activates a small cassette recorder.

Joven smirked and sat back down. All the world is a stage, he recalls, thinking suddenly of, what’s his name SHake-a-spear, for some dumb reason. He loves to ham it up, put on performances, just to mindscrew people. Dr. Milner is no exception.

Joven lights a cigarillo for effect more than anything else. He speaks:

“Not only do you think I’m crazy. You think I’m an idiot. Sit down man, the guards are at lunch. I’m not gonna hurt you. Now where are you from?”

“Detroit, I grew up in a rough neighborhood, dirt poor, maybe somewhat similar to your Harlem upbringing.”

“So then you somewhat understand my fear don’t you?”

“No not entirely. But I want to understand your fear. Do you want me to understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then tell me about this re-occuring dream.”

“It’s this old man that’s…forget it. You should understand my fear but I’ll tell you why you don’t. You’re out of touch, your suede elbow pads are covering up your ashy black ass arms, your bowtie is cutting off oxygen to your dome. Look, when is the last time you’ve been back to your old neighborhood, Detroit?”

“I live in Detroit now, but this is not about me. Your smart enough to know that redirection and projection is a classic cry for help. I don’t have to tell you that. If you must know, I go back all the time, trying to understand the pathology, the souls of black folk as DuBois once wrote about. I’ll humor you. I work at Wayne State, I’m a medical physician and have a doctorate I live in Auburn Hills. That’s a little more information than you need to know but I’m trying to build a rapport with you. I want you to trust me as I trust you.”

“You don’t hardly trust me and it’s just like I figured. You ain’t been back to the real side of things. You ain’t been back to mingle with those who seldom conform to social norms.”

“Interesting. What do you mean Ronaldo? May I call you Ronaldo or do you prefer Joven as they called you on your block. Or maybe Mr. Dominguez perhaps.”

“Man whatever! Look at you, you’re a joke. Damn, you’re so out of touch with reality.”

Typical young brother, Milner thinks, smiling leaning back, like an amused father and lighting his pipe. He broke ranks with his profession, chuckling amusingly.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what I think, just as a man. Forget about the hardware on the walls for a second. It would seem to me that it is you who are out of touch young man. I see this all the time Ronaldo. And this may be news to you. It is not necessarily the fault of greater society or even myself that certain people tend to violate social norms and laws of this country’s municipalities. I’m no more to blame for your problems than you are for my idiocyncracies. Do you feel like a product of your environment? Maybe like the world owes you something because you came of age in the ghetto? It is you young man who may need to wake up and smell the coffee. Look at yourself. You’re too sharp to be locked up. And why do you make excuses for crooks, deviants with the same mental illnesses as yourself?”

Milner has him cold and they both know it.

Under normal circumstances Joven would have punched him dead in his mouth but he wants to be tactful and respect his professional opinion. He’s too proud to concede the truth in what Milner said though.

“Hmm sounds like you’re judging me. I thought your job was to offer an objective analysis. Yeah that’s right, a arroz-con-pollo nigger from Harlem said, ‘objective’ analysis.’ What’s wrong doc? Seems like you’re infusing personal opinion into this session. You know nothing about me what I’ve been through. As a matter of fact, you’re too old to understand the game. And you’re too brainwashed by that bullshit medical degree to empathize with a young man the same color as you.”

Dr Milner frowned, his texturized salt and pepper hair glistens in the light as he wipes his brow. He’s intrigued. This kid is likable for some odd reason.

“Son listen, I’m as real as one can get. I understand you perfectly. I fought my own people and others. Forty-years to get where I am now. And I won’t let anyone invalidate that. I worked hard son. Work! Something your generation has forgotten about. Your generation has it so easy. But you’d love for the world to think you have real problems.”

Broken record, the fed and all these other old as negroes tell him the same thing, Joven quips to himself.

Milner then takes off his glasses and wiped his eyes. He quickly gathers himself and clears his throat once more. Not revealing his empathy for the young man, he leans back and sees himself at a young age. Mad at the world and establishment, wanting to tear shit up. He turns now back to his notes, doodling.

A curious Joven looks over at the pad and then solemnly at Milner.

“You wrong about me,” Joven says in a soft genuine voice. “I did everything America says do. I was on the honor roll in high school, you believe that. I even went to a Junior College and got a two-year degree. I had the GPA to go to any four-year in the country.”

Suddenly he’s violently loud again, pounding his fist on the table for emphasis.

“But I made a choice!” I chose not to conform. I didn’t want to fake it in a fake university. I’m a realist. This is a artificial world so I don’t belong. Tell me, what education do you speak of doctor? Because I can’t think of any kind that would have been of more value than what I got in the fuckin’ world, the streets. I made a choice. Some choose to live like saints. No sex. No alcohol, very little material wealth. Fuck that! Are you blaming me because I wanted it all and did any and everything to get it. But you know what. God let me live so I could taste life and then suffer the consequences.”

Calmly he sits back, clearly winding down and clearly ending his soliloquy.

“Even you sir, must someday be judged. So who are you.”

Dr. Milner finishes writing, tears a sheet from the pad and stands up with a stern face.

“Here is a prescription to help you sleep and help you calm down. If my professional diagnosis is correct. You have what’s called a bi-polar disorder. You see, you’re under the dillusion that everyone is out to get you. Up one day, down the next. Let me tell you something and this is from a man who rioted in the streets like a mad man looking for justice. The only injustice that has been done you has been self-imposed. Your violent behavior and rebellious manner is a perfect indication of that. You know you’ve gone out of your way to perpetuate the very stereotypes that keep people of color down. And how dare you imply that you have been divinely inspired to be a criminal.”

Joven lights another cigarillo even though one is already burning on the ash tray in front of him. Obviously no one understands him. He sinned just like everyone else. He’d used the capitalist system against the capitalists, yet he was the one who was evil and a shame to his community. How could this be?

“Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re part of the talented tenth, ain’t that DuBois? You’ve underestimated me from the time you walked in, everybody has, that’s why I’m rich bitch!”

When he says ‘talented tenth,’ again for no reason in particular, Joven’s fingers make quotation marks.

“Man you’re just mad because I understand your profession and you can’t dazzle me with your jargon and make me fill bad about myself. You’re mad because I’ve been on the covers of magazines. You, like all the other jealous assholes, sellouts and establishment flunkies, are mad because at age 20 I got more money than a pro athlete without ever having played a damn thing. Look, I ain’t paranoid at all. It’s just reality. Real, reality. Not scientific, theoretical reality. How many can say they’ve done what I’ve done. I’m worth more dead than some
people would ever be alive, money or no money? Get the outta here with this bullshit man. I got all the time in the world and you’re still wasting it.”

Ronaldo looks down at the paper Milner handed him skeptically and then rolls his eyes cynically.

“Depakote, huh?” he says referring to the prescription. “Is this some kind of medicine. A drug to put me to sleep forever, make me oblivious to my own reality. Why not just give me some weed.”

Again he leans back, balls up the paper and hurled it, hitting Milner square between his eyes and knocking his glasses to the floor. Now Ronaldo was laughing with rage.

“You academics and pseudo scientists kill me. How can you say that I’m crazy.”

“I’m not saying you’re crazy,” Milner answersm still calm picking up his glasses and wiping them off.

This further angered Ronaldo and he now thinks the shrink is patronizing him. So he gets up and walks calmly toward Milner.

“Guard, Guard! Gu..,” Milner yells with futility.

But Joven covered his mouth and placed the index finger of his other hand on his own lips, “Shhhhhhh,” he whispred.

“It’s ludicrous to opress a group of people with lynchings, racism, poverty and turn the other way when it comes to letting drugs into our communities. Then you turn around and give that same group of people derivatives of those same illegal drugs that you made legal in order to silence independent thinkers and people you just can’t figure out and don’t want to. Then you make illegal drugs so profitable that desperate people don’t care about real work anymore that’s the truth. Me I just like the gangster life and that, too, is the truth.”

Joven backs off him and walks over to call the guard to open the door.

With a cigarillo hanging from the corner of his lips like Cagney or Edward G. Robinson or Bogie in Casablanca he chuckles at Milner.

“You’re nothing but a legal drug dealer, an educated pimp trying to sweet talk people into thinking their lives are fucked up. Doctor Milner, thanks but no thanks. I don’t need your kind of help.”

With a loud shriek the door swings open and Joven walked out.

Milner followed slowly.

Incredible, Dr. Milner thinks to himself. Stokes came up chewing on a sandwich. The guards really were out to lunch.

“Amazing,” Dr. Milner said sarcastically to Stokes while shaking his head. “Simply fascinating.”

“See you next time Doc,” Stokes said, trying to make up for the fact that he was away from his post.

“I won’t be back guard, I don’t think I can do anything with this kid,”

TO BE CONTINUED!

RENO, NEVADA 1996

No circular driveways, no gangsters, no crooked executivesm - - just her, frozen in time, in the sun shine, a statue in the high desert planes.

Juanita Diamente Ortega is stunning, she is beautiful, she us crafty, she is sweet, she is naive, she is bait..She is his sister, she is his ex-girlfiend. She is idealistic, she is protective of her daddy. She is a worm on a hook for Joven to bite.

Joven knows this, he tells her as much, not exactly but passive agressively.

“You should go,” he said turning from her ,walking toward the elevator. “Get outta here please I’m begging you sweetheart, go, leave now.”

But she just stands there staring at him almost wanting to go but not wanting to leave without him.

“Why did you do this to us Ronaldo?”

He lets the elevator door close slowly like he thinks a gangster should, staring at his shoes, palm over palm, cool focused.

She knows better. Must have been the hot wind on her almond-brown neck that tells her he loves her.

She says, “Me too, Me too.” only in her mind, she puts on her designer shades and escorts her father into the main lobby.

On the elevator Joven bounces up and down on the balls of his feet, his head throbbing in ancticpation, his little gun stuck to his sweaty ankle.

Things are too far gone now.

Now he’s even more angry then before. Ortega and Batista know that they can always put him at a disadvantage by bringing her into the equation. How could he stand by and just let Batista pull the strings and make him and everyone he loves dance like a fool. Joven thought about his father. He doesn’t hate Orlando Ortega, surrogate and non-biological papa, not even now. Ortega is still a mentor and deep in the recesses of his hardened heart, he definitely still can’t shake his adoration for the lovely Juanita. Now it’s truly over, he convinces himself. At this juncture he believes he can’t live with himself if anything happens to the people he loves. And dammit something is going to happen. Nothing he can do about it.

By the time he gets off the elevator and walks down the hall, his hate for Batista intensifies. He suffocates with blind, raw hatred. He reaches for the double doors and fling them open. He laughs to himself that he took the elevator one flight up and it seemed like seventy stories on the way up. He laughs at all the stupid clueless men before him, some of whom will die simply because they associated themselves with crooked Batista. Some won’t know why they’re being killed. He stands there for a while, like a field general staring onto a smokey
battlefield. Then in a flash, all of the talking ceases in the Cigar-smoke filled room. He cautiously walks in. Every occupant is staring at him. Some look with contempt, while others are indifferent.

It’s clear though that they have a morbid respect for the young man for standing up to Batista. Joven cases the joint, whirls around subtly to see two muscle-bound guards who looked to be of Latin descent. Colombians? They’re certainly not regular security. He’s walking into a hit in a boardroom at a quarterly executive board meeting of the board of directors of a publicly-traded company in the United States of America. How ridiculous is his plan? How ludicrous is there’s? How dumb is the world for everyone to be in it and act as they do? As he surveys the room, he sees something, or the lack thereof that makes his blood boil.

No Batista!

First instinct just start blasting and go out in a hail of bullets on the six o’clock news or in the 24-hour madness that is cable news. He’d be in all the papers on all the TVs, they’d make a movie about him, He’d be an American-made self-made immortal gangster. Reality hit. He starts to walk out and just run. Yeah right, maybe in his mind. Maybe even grab Juanita if she is still downstairs take her away. Yeah right again. It’s either the police or the paneling. That’s what they say in the neighborhood about the thugs. You either get the law or your family gets to admire the fake facade, the pinstripe wood paneling adorning the walls of a funeral home that smelled like ammonia, rubbing alchohol and grief. It’s confirmed now — a set up. Play it cool like he always does.

“Gentlemen, where’s your fearless leader, surely he wouldn’t miss such a festive occasion.”

He walks authoritatively toward his seat and the head of the table where Batista should be were he present. To him, it’s their way of saying, “this is your last meeting enjoy it.” Behind the chair is a large plate glass window through which he looks out and sees a catering truck coming through the gate. The cor