Twenty-Three
PEOPLE’S FRIED CHICKEN WAS THE LATEST BODY SNATCHER TO inhabit the corpse of a seventies-era burger stand in an area of Richmond called the Iron Triangle, saddest neighborhood in the area’s most homicidal city. The canted beams out front bristled with graffiti, a half-dozen bullet holes pocked the window glass. The parking lot’s asphalt buckled so badly Godo imagined some ancient tribal curse gathering force from below, trying to break through. Where better to hawk a black market AK, he thought.
Through the smeary glass he noticed that two of the black girls working the counter wore head scarves and abayas: Muslims. It was a growing subculture here, a way to detox the ghetto. He felt blindsided and not a little pissed off as he grabbed the door, following the others inside, then the smell of the place hit him. What was it Chato said? They do something weird with the chicken. Grilled meat, lemon, tamarind paste, mint, like some of the houses he’d searched in Iraq. A jolt of terror, feeling for the trip wire, waiting for the explosion, even as he knew it wouldn’t come. He checked to see no one had noticed. Wiping his palms on his shirt, he edged another step inside, let the door close behind him.
While Chato and Puchi pimp-strolled across the room to claim the corner table, Efraim went to the counter to order drinks. Godo lingered, neither here nor there, glancing up at the overhead menu and noticing the place sold only Pepsi, just like over there, Coke being linked to Zionists and the devil.
Lowering his eyes, he studied the chunky black girl in the scarf taking Efraim’s order. She had Cherokee cheeks in an otherwise perfectly round face, a laugh-line squint and a blazing smile so selfless Godo could imagine joy coming to her easily. Enviable, that. Inadvertently, he searched her face for tattoos, like the Shia women wore, and shortly not just his palms but his neck and brow were cloying with sweat.
Efraim carried the drinks on a tray to the corner table and Godo followed like a pup, sat down quickly, grabbed his Pepsi. It was oversweet but the cold was what he wanted. He finished the thing in two fierce swallows.
“The fuck, homes.” Puchi, chugging his ice with a straw. “Sucked that down like a junkie.”
Godo wiped his lips, already craving another. Out in the parking lot, two bikers wearing Nomad patches straddled hogs, gazing down into the open trunk of a BMW owned by a catlike Asian dripping gold, hair slicked back, shades despite the darkness. The conversation was quick, close, almost intimate. Maybe thirty feet away, a trio of black hood rats-more gold, worn over a dashiki, a turtleneck, a Raiders jersey-lurked behind a Mercedes SEL, apprising another set of merchandise, staring into the open trunk, listening carefully to the owner’s patter, in this case a bottle blonde in candy-red slacks and slave-maker pumps: body of a porn star, face like a dropped pie.
Fucking place is an open-air gun mart, Godo thought, wondering if any of the players out there were ATF. “How long till your guy shows up?”
Puchi leaned down to his straw like he was snorting a rail. “Ask me when he gets here.”
Godo belched into his fist, looking off. The moon-faced girl was counting change into the palm of a washed-out, splay-footed woman whose body cascaded fat. Her stretch pants matched her hair curlers. Beside her, a bone-thin towheaded girl sucked on her fingers while bumping mindlessly against her mother’s slab of a thigh. It looked like some sort of gag, the two of them together, especially with the moon-faced girl in the head scarf standing just beyond them, that breathtaking smile, the cash register a kind of shield, protect her from the white trash. She reminded Godo of someone, the counter girl, the memory just out of reach at first. Finally, it crystallized: Mobley, Jam Slammer Mo, his squaddie with the hip-hop battle anthems, Outkast’s “Call the Law” the hands-down favorite, bellowing the words into the teeth of the shamal sandstorms from his perch at the Humvee’s turret:
Just grab my gun, and let’s go out Grab my gun, and let’s go out
Godo spotted the two grenades rolling toward them across the concrete floor and had time to shout out, everybody charging back at flash speed, diving for cover, but Mobley was dragging the SAW, those two-hundred-round ammo drums. The explosions tag-teamed, a sheering white one-two thunderclap followed by AK fire from somewhere near the back of the house, muzzle flashes crackling through the smoke and dust. Godo and Chavous answered with suppression fire, Gunny Benedict crawled forward toward Mobley’s screams. The blast had ripped his leg in two, just above the knee, the arteries torn like thread. He bled out so fast he was convulsing from shock by the time Gunny reached him. Calling for a corpsman was pointless. Mobley was dead before they could drag him into the courtyard, the severed half leg still inside the house.
Call the law, and hold the applause
“Hey dude, she asked you a question.”
It was Puchi. Godo glanced up, saw everyone grinning, not kindly. At the table’s edge, the moon-faced girl stood there waiting.
“I just axed if you’d like a refill on your soda,” she said.
Her voice was soft and more feminine than her size suggested. Gazing up into her face, framed by its veil, he searched for what it was that reminded him of Mobley, feeling vaguely ashamed, as though at some level his mind still believed they really did all look alike.
“Yes,” Godo said, a whisper. “Please. A refill would be nice.”
“It’s a dollar,” she said.
He dug into his pocket for the bill, thinking: ax. Who was it in the squad that used to tease Mobley about that? I axed you nicely. Don’t make me ax you again.
He handed her the money and watched her bobbing hips as she ambled away. Girl can work it till you jerk it, he thought, veil or no veil. He wondered if she felt disgusted by his face.
The night Mobley died, army psyops crews roamed the city in their Humvees, cranking out the deafening sounds of men and women screaming, cats fighting, Guns N’ Roses: “Welcome to the Jungle.” The favorite, though, was a gut-knotting laugh, the creature from Predator, played with amped-up bass at a hundred decibels, echoing off the pavement and the concrete walls of the pillbox houses and apartment buildings, like the voice of some cut-rate god.
“Hey hey hey.” Puchi nodded toward the parking lot, sucking loud on his straw, the dregs of his Pepsi. A gray windowless van had just pulled in. “Here comes business.”
Watching as the driver got out and crossed the parking lot, Godo took notice of how underwhelming the man was. Among the contractors he’d met in Iraq, a fair number had come from special forces backgrounds; they’d kept up with the PT, rock-hard bodies, switchblade minds. Cocky, sure, but sometimes you just had to grant that. There were plenty of others, though, who’d simply grabbed the back of the gravy train and refused to let go, slack habits, washed-out eyes, the mouthy swagger of small men: users, gasbags, phonies. They didn’t just lack fire discipline; they used their weapons like bug spray. Everything about them stank of self-delusion and the fear of weakness.
The man pulled a chair from another table and sat near Puchi, neither close enough to be part of the circle nor far enough away to seem too much a prick. He wore work boots and cargo pants, with a khaki T-shirt underneath a frayed cammie combat blouse, the name tape removed. That alone was enough to make Godo hate him. His eyes were smallish and filmy green while his skin had a raw red quality just short of a rash. He had a wisp of a mustache blurring his lip and a fistful of sag hiding his belt. His left eye drooped, suggesting some sort of nerve damage, and his left hand trembled till he jammed it in his pocket, which he did the instant he caught Godo’s stare.
Puchi did introductions. The man went by Chuck. He tugged a cigarette from a pack lodged in his shirt pocket and lit up right there, using a yellow Bic. No one behind the counter so much as frowned, let alone told him to put it out; they seemed to be ignoring him, actually. Christ, Godo thought, maybe he owns the place.