A sometime friend had gotten hold of a couple of cans of black spray paint and suggested Vega join him and another boy to tag some buildings and earn points with the local gang leader. Vega took the can and followed the boys down the street—right past Freddy Torres who was thirteen at the time and babysitting his kid sister Donna, who had Down syndrome. Torres saw the can of paint sticking out of Vega’s backpack, swiped it, and ordered Vega to quit hanging out with street toughs and go home. Vega, afraid to lose face, shoved Torres and demanded his paint back. Torres gave it to him, all right. He aimed the can and coated Vega’s clothes with permanent black paint. They both ended up on the sidewalk in a hail of fists after that. But Torres at thirteen had the advantage of weight and size. Vega was quickly dispatched. The other boys jeered him and left.
Bruised, covered in paint, and burning with humiliation, Vega trudged home for the punishment he knew he was going to get, hatred for Freddy Torres in every pore. The following day he found out that the other two boys he’d been with had been arrested for vandalism. They were both so young; they probably got off with a warning. But still. Vega’s mother was horrified. She moved them out of the Bronx soon after that. Years later Vega heard that one of those two boys went to prison for burglary and drug possession. The other died of an overdose. Vega often wondered if a can of black paint had spared him the same fate.
That, and Freddy Torres.
They crossed the street now, away from the mob.
“Listen, Freddy.” Vega rubbed his sore back. He felt grimy and sweat-soaked. “I don’t want to be the reason your school burns down or you get beat up.”
Torres laughed. “I’ve survived a dozen mayors, urban renewal, and both the crack and the AIDs epidemics in this neighborhood. I think I can survive your little visit today.”
Vega hadn’t seen Torres since his mother’s funeral nearly two years ago. His friend seemed to have grown old in the interim. His black hair had receded on the sides, leaving a little island of dark bird’s nest fuzz in the middle of his head. His droopy black mustache did nothing to hide the sag of his chin. His shoulders sloped. He wasn’t fat but beneath his hooded sweatshirt his belly had grown a little soft and pendulous. Vega had to remind himself that Torres had suffered even more losses than he had these past couple of years. His father died of cancer. Then his mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Then his younger sister, Donna, the one with Down syndrome, slipped and fell to her death from the family’s fifth-floor apartment window. Torres had an older sister, Jackie, but she lived out west somewhere, so Torres—never married and childless—had had to handle everything by himself. It couldn’t have been easy. And now here was Vega, as usual, bringing more trouble.
“I hate to ask, but can I beg one more favor?” Vega told him about Joy, still waiting at St. Raymond’s Church. “You wouldn’t happen to have a car nearby, would you?”
“My SUV is behind the school. Happy to be your chauffeur.”
“I owe you.” An understatement.
Vega dialed Joy and told her he’d run into “an old friend” who was going to drive Vega to the church to pick her up. She chewed him out for taking so long to call but she bought the lie. That’s all he was interested in.
“Good,” said Torres. “Now let’s get you cleaned up.”
Torres’s charter school, the Bronx Academy of Achievement was a block away. It was housed in a former tool-and-dye factory, four stories tall, with a fenced-in basketball court beside it. Everything about the building was square: square windows. Square flat roof. Square panes of glass in the front doors. What it lacked in architectural embellishments, however, it made up for in wow-factor. The entire stucco exterior was painted in tropical hues of lavender, orange, turquoise, and pink.
A knot of teenagers gathered by the chain-link fence of the basketball court next to the school, eyeing Vega and pretending not to at the same time. Reggaeton and rap music blared over a stereo speaker. Vega missed those sounds. In the suburbs, loud music was considered an assault, not an expression of joy.
Torres walked over to the fence and knuckle-rapped a few of the teenagers. “Game’s over today, hombres.” There was a collective groan. “Come back for the tournament tomorrow.” Torres turned to Vega. “We’re doing a basketball tournament in the indoor gym tomorrow at two. I’d invite you inside to wash up and take a tour of the school, but I’ve got painters redoing the stairwells at the moment and they don’t even let me walk around.” Torres nodded to the laundromat on the other side of the basketball court. “You can wash up at EZ Clean.”
“They’ll let me?”
“Carmela better.” Torres smiled. “I own the place.”
The Bronx had once been bargain-basement real estate. But no more. The guys who hung around and put a few dollars into the borough were reaping big profits now.
“So you’re into real estate these days?” asked Vega.
“I own a couple of small businesses, that’s all,” said Torres. “Somebody’s got to keep the neighborhood institutions going.”