“What are we doing?” Mikey asked.
“Pest control,” I said. “My sister Julie bought a car from a guy out here, and now he won’t give her the money back.”
“What’s wrong with the car?”
“She don’t like it, Mikey. I talked to him on the phone, but he won’t listen to reason. Already got himself an Eldo. Don’t have the money now. A black. You know.”
“You made him an offer he could refuse.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up about it.”
Me and Mikey had seen that movie at least a dozen times. Best movie they ever made ’til Scarface. The violence was right on, especially how Sonny takes care of Carlo. Mikey tried to tell me the flick was about honor and commitment and loyalty, and all that was fine with me, but when they got Sonny at the toll booth, it made me want to pick up a tommy gun and start blasting away myself.
Mikey didn’t like it that, in that movie, it always came down to the money. To business. Welcome to the real fuckin’ world, I told him. I also told him that business could be personal, that it didn’t have to be all one or the other, that the movie oversimplified that issue.
In Jamaica, I drove alongside the expressway. It was all Rasta this and that, every block. You could smell the ganja burning. It was hard to find the right street through my dirty windshield. Finally, I did, and I drove by the address, and sure enough, there’s a late-model Caddy Eldo, black and gleaming with white sidewalls, exactly like you’d figure for a black dude.
I drove past and parked along the curb and watched a minute. “We’re gonna detail his car for him.”
“How?” asked Mikey.
“Monkey see, monkey do.” I swung open the trunk and we put on the ski masks and got the bats. The new aluminum ones. “Come on. This’ll be fun.”
We crossed the street and came up on the car from behind. There were lights on in the house, but I didn’t care. I smashed the left brake light, then the turn signal. The aluminum made the plastic explode. The Caddy’s back windshield took more hits because the safety glass cracked in place but didn’t blow up like the plastic.
By then Mikey was on the other side. I only glanced at him, but he was slugging away like a pro. I was whacking the driver’s side door when the porch light came on and a big black dude in gym trunks and flip-flops came running down the stoop with a baseball bat of his own, the old-fashioned wooden kind. He stopped short and looked at me.
I said, “Give me the money you stole for that piece a shit Mercury, and we’ll stop.”
“That money helped buy the Cadillac you wreckin’.”
“Up to you, man.”
“You be sorry.”
He came at me in a funny-looking way, sideways kind of, with the bat cocked over his shoulder. I stepped back like I was confused, then ducked in and took out his kneecap. He yelped and caved in both at once, and I let him have it with the bat. Over and over. Then I thought I’d be like Sonny and kick him, so I did that, too. He was bleedin’ and yellin’, and I couldn’t believe the weird charge of adrenaline going through me. Felt like a river of electricity. Like something I could ride all the way to the moon and back.
“Finish the Eldo!” I screamed at Mikey.
“It’s finished! It’s done! Let’s go!”
I kicked the man once more in the face and told him, “Next time, you give the girl her money back.”
All he could say back was “Uck ou,” which made me laugh, so I kicked him again and headed for the car.
Mikey drove. I talked the whole way back to Little Italy, I was so high on the violence, the crack of the lights and the crack of his knee, and the whole glory of having power over a bigger man, the glory of having power itself.
“We gotta do this again sometime,” I said. My mouth was dry from panting so hard.
He gave me a funny look. “That was some ugly shit, Ray.”
“What do you mean, ugly?”
He looked pale and used up. “Forget about it.”
We did do it again. A lot. Stuff like that and stuff worse. Mikey, the deeper he got into the enforcement side of the business, the more serious he got. One night, drunk, he told me this life was worse than he had dreamed and feared when he was a boy. Much worse. He hated it.
The family business.
Marriage and children for both of us.
Twelve years went by.