The first time Shattner got involved with the gang was four months after he joined the garage. One evening he could hear loud voices from Cruz’s office, Diego and Jose going at it vowel and syllable. He heard a door slamming, another opening, and Diego stood before him, scowling.
‘You? Can you drive?’
When Shattner looked at him stupidly, he made a steering motion with his hands and asked again, ‘Drive?’
‘Come here at eleven. Night, not day,’ Diego told him when Shattner nodded.
The garage was dead when Shattner returned that night, all the lights off. When he stepped inside the parking lot, Diego stepped out, followed by another, a tall, swarthy man with a teardrop tat under his left eye, carrying a brown paper sack. Diego tossed car keys to Shattner without saying a word.
It was the same dark sedan as the night of the holdup. Diego and the other man got in the back, carrying the paper sack, and Shattner drove them down Lott Avenue and parked behind a school. Diego and the other guy, Rajek, spoke occasionally but ignored Shattner.
They were gone nearly an hour, supplying street dealers Shattner surmised, and when they returned, Shattner powered the car up and waited for them to seat themselves. Diego touched his shoulder just as he was pulling away.
He stopped the sedan and turned back to see the barrel of a gun pointing at him, a couple of inches away from his face.
Diego looked back at him impassively, his finger on the trigger, and beside him Rajek grinned silently, exposing teeth that were strangers to a dentist.
‘You know who we are and what we do?’ Diego asked him.
‘I’m not stupid,’ replied Shattner.
Diego swung the barrel against his head viciously, drawing a thin line of blood from his temple. When the ringing in his head had stopped, Shattner found the black bore of the barrel against his face, steady, Diego’s eyes black and empty looking back at him.
‘Young hoods are desperate to join us. Some rob, some sell drugs, many sell their sisters and mothers. And some kill. To prove themselves to us. You just walked in. Not logical. Jose does not like things that are not logical.’
He paused, his eyes black holes in his face.
‘I’m an enforcer. You know what that means?’
‘People shit in their pants when they see you?’
Diego hit him again on the other temple. A thicker stream of blood started running down Shattner’s head.
‘You think you’re smart. How come I’m holding this gun and you’re at the other end?’
Diego extended his forefinger and touched the blood streaming down Shattner’s face. He inspected it for a while and flicked it away.
‘That’s my business,’ he said, nodding at the copper droplets flying away.
‘I am number two. I am also the enforcer of our chapter.’
He paused, enjoying the fear in Shattner’s eyes.
‘I looked into your past, your history, and your time in the army. I spoke to your previous garage in New Jersey, your landlord… everyone who knew you. You are a criminal, just like us. But I told Jose, better to kill you. Your joining us did not feel right,’ Diego continued without any inflection. He could be reading the weather.
‘But Jose is smart. Smarter than me… is why he is boss. He said we need Anglos. Less suspicious.’
‘He said we didn’t need to worry about you. You got kids. Lisa very pretty, no?’ Diego smiled a feral smile.
Shattner went cold.
Diego smiled thinly. ‘Relax, Anglo. You are alive; your kids are safe… for now.’ He leant back in his seat and gestured at Shattner to drive.
Rajek clicked his tongue and looked disappointed. Maybe happiness for him was Shattner’s brains splattered over the windshield.
His involvement in the gang increased. He was used the most as a driver, but soon started distributing baggies to the street vendors and making collections for the gang.
The garage, while a front, was not very successful. The people who brought their cars in were known to the gang even if they weren’t gang members themselves. Shattner figured out the hierarchy of the gang over time. Cruz ruled it at the top, with Diego as his second in command as well as its chief hit man. Then came a handful of Rajeks — the senior members of the gang, and then there were the doers… those who ran the drugs, the rackets, the women.
In his arms trading, Shattner had dealt with many gangs, but this one was different. This one ran like a smoothly oiled machine, a strong chain of command linking the hierarchies and utter ruthlessness shown to those who disobeyed or challenged the gang. Like a military machine. Shattner learnt over a period of time that most of the gang members, including Jose, Diego and Rajek had military experience, some in European armed forces, some in South America or Africa.
Most of those armed forces must have been happy to see the backs of these guys, he thought.
A month after his close-up with Diego’s gun, he drove Diego to a hit.
Chapter 3
It was at two in the morning.
He drove Diego to an office block, killed the engine, and nervously waited for instructions.
Diego was silent and motionless, his dark eyes seeing nothing and seeing everything. His phone beeped after half an hour, and after a murmured conversation, Diego straightened. In another fifteen minutes, they saw a car make its way from the opposite end of the street, stop about a hundred feet away, and kill its lights.
Two people stepped out of the car and approached theirs, and Diego met them halfway. He bumped fists with them, took wads of cash from them, gave them baggies in return, turned his back on them, and returned to Shattner.
Ten feet away from them, he turned smoothly and drew.
So smooth and balletic was his movement that it took Shattner a couple of seconds to make the gun in his hand. The two reports were muted, hitting the other two in the back of their heads. Shattner didn’t hear the bodies falling; he saw Diego step up to the bodies and fire into their heads again for good measure. He grabbed the baggies and walked back to Shattner leisurely, a thin breeze ruffling his hair slightly.
Shattner felt the cold touch of the barrel to his neck when they reached the first set of lights on their way back.
‘You are too calm, chollo. Maybe you’re a cop?’
Shattner broke. He swerved into the darkness between streetlights and turned back to Diego.
‘A cop? Wouldn’t I have brought the whole force on you guys by now? Remember I’ve seen a lot of shit you guys do and know a lot.’
Diego didn’t say a word but continued pointing the gun at Shattner.
Shattner leaned forward and pulled the gun to his forehead. ‘If in doubt, pull. That’s your motto, isn’t it? Go on, then. Pull.’