‘Two to three months at the most, Shawn. And then we’ll live like any other normal family. We’ll celebrate birthdays, go on holidays, and have loads of friends… trust me, buddy. Okay?’
Shawn nodded, his eyes dark, the faintest sheen of tears in them.
Shattner pulled him close, crushed him in a hug, and walked him to bed and sat beside him till sleep claimed him.
He checked his phone after dinner and saw the text message silently winking at him.
It was the one he was dreading.
‘Tomorrow.’
Short, terse, like the sender.
He went to his gun cabinet, a grand description for a wooden drawer high up in the closet in the bedroom, and removed his Glock 30 and cleaning materials, and carried them to the drawing room.
He stripped the gun, wiped the parts clean, and then started a more thorough job of lubricating them. The smell of gun oil filled the room, a comforting smell, bringing back good memories. He assembled the gun, loaded its magazine, and chambered a round. He didn’t think he would need the gun the next day, but it never hurt to be prepared.
Chapter 2
Jose Cruz owned Brownsville Autos, the used car dealership and garage where Shattner worked. The garage had a staff of six, a diverse mix of East Europeans, Hispanics and… William Shattner.
Jose Cruz was also regional kingpin of 5Clubs, the fastest-growing gang in New York City that had outmuscled all other gangs and ran its criminal empire like a business.
Cruz, the head of the Brooklyn chapter, was ruthless, ambitious, and rising fast in the gang.
Cruz owned Brownsville; not a single deal went down in Brownsville without his knowledge and involvement, or permission. Brownsville Autos was a legitimate business and gave him the façade to operate from.
It had been surprisingly easy for Shattner to join the gang. Later, he realized, that was one of their strengths. Making it easy to join, and making sure no one ever left.
He had been walking along Tapscott Street late one night soon after moving to Brownsville, real late at night, drifting in and out of the dark shadows, when he saw the holdup. A dark sedan had been parked on the other end of the street with five men leaning against it.
They were not leaning.
Two of them were being held at gunpoint by three others; one of the three was waving a gun and gesticulating, the other two slapping and kicking the one against the car. Shattner didn’t stop to think. He wore rubber-soled shoes, dressed in dark clothes, and wasn’t spotted by the group till he was a few feet away. By then it was too late.
Before the gunman could turn and train his gun on Shattner, he had gone down with a kick to his kidneys, followed by a blow to his throat. As he fell down choking, the two held up against the car turned on their attackers and felled them brutally.
A couple of minutes, that’s all it had taken. Once Shattner’s breathing slowed and the adrenaline subsided, he took stock of the two he had rushed to help. Hispanic was his first thought. Short, swarthy, one of them bent to retrieve a bag from an attacker and kicked him in the head for good measure.
‘You guys okay? Shouldn’t we call the police,’ Shattner addressed them.
‘No. No police,’ the guy bending down replied as the other walked around the car, searching for something.
‘Are you sure? These guys might file a report, and it’s better if we get ours in first,’ Shattner persisted.
The bent guy straightened up, holding a brown paper bag, which was half open and filled with small baggies. He glared at Shattner. ‘You dumb or something? We said no police.’
The other man came around the car, tucking a pistol in his waistband, and looked appraisingly at Shattner. Perhaps he’s wondering if he should shoot me, Shattner thought.
‘Gracias,’ he said. ‘If you need anything, come here.’ He handed a card to Shattner, and they left without another word or a backward glance. The next day he hoofed it to the garage and handed the card to a teenager in the reception.
‘Two men gave this to me last night. They asked me to come here if I needed help. I need a job. I’m a good mechanic.’
The teenager stared at him disbelievingly for a long time — the garage wasn’t exactly a career magnet — and then placed the card on the counter. ‘Dude, there are thousands of these cards in the city. We don’t offer a job to anyone who just walks in, hands over one of them, and tells a fantastic story. In any case, we’re not hiring.’
Shattner stared back at him. ‘Son, don’t you think this is way above your pay grade? Why don’t you get the manager and let me speak to him?’
Back and forth they went till a side door opened and one of the two men came in, the one who had spoken to him last.
‘You? What’re you doing here?’
‘Looking for a job.’
‘Why here?’
‘Why not? You did ask me to come here if I needed help. I need a job. I am a good mechanic. Mechanics work in garages.’
The man looked at Shattner for some time and then jerked his head.
‘Come.’
Shattner followed him, and the man introduced him to Jose Cruz.
Cruz was as tall as Shattner, an inch over six feet, lean and sinewy, a hatchet face with eyes that were probing all the time. He looked Shattner over as Diego, the other gang member, fired off a fusillade in Spanish at him.
Jose barked at Diego and turned away without acknowledging Shattner. Being the boss had privileges.
Diego grabbed Shattner by his elbow and took him to a windowless room, and Shattner’s interrogation commenced.
The night before, Shattner had worked out that he’d crashed into a gang takedown and had thought long and hard about approaching the garage for a job. Two things had finally persuaded him — he needed a job and his savings had nearly run out, and jobs weren’t easy to find for one with a criminal record.
He had also matured and believed that being a loser wasn’t a lifetime sentence.
What he had not expected was meeting Cruz so easily. He had thought gang bosses were harder to meet, but he later came to know that Cruz oversaw every aspect of his business with manic attention, personally recruited every gang member, and enforced discipline ferociously.
There was a gang member who’d had ambitions of his own and started dealing on the side. One afternoon Cruz had him brought to his office, where the gang member was rewarded by the sight of Cruz raping his wife and seven-year-old daughter. When he had finished, he shot them and then sat down to have his supper. He hadn’t uttered a single word to the gang member, who by then was in a state of catatonic shock. The gangster was never seen again. There were many such stories surrounding Cruz.
Cruz’s gang was large, more than fifty members; the six in the garage were kept separate from the gang. The gang members seldom came to the garage, and if they did, it was after the garage had closed for the day and the mechanics had gone home. Shattner was by far the best mechanic they had; he often stayed late working on the cars, and over the months he could identify the gang members and had developed a conversational relationship with many of them — if greetings and grunted acknowledgements could be called a conversation.