Old western movies always feel the same. Eighty-five minutes of lead up until a final gunfight that ends with the piercing howl of a coyote in the background when the bad guy is shot dead.
In modern day Hartford we use ambulances instead of coyotes. The high pitched sirens crying through the city to announce another fresh corpse. And at no time a year did the ambulances like to travel in packs more than the first heat wave of the year.
After spending all winter stuck inside away from each other, the occupants of the city’s notorious South End neighborhoods would start to mingle outside again in the early days of spring. But when the temperatures would start to rise, so too would the tempers. Words would be met with harsh words. Harsh words turn into a straight jab. A straight jab escalates into a knife. A knife quickly becomes a gun. It usually ended with a howl of a coyote.
It wasn’t until the next day that I found out Chaulky was the 8:47 siren the night before. “Darrell Johnston of Whitmore Street was found dead outside his apartment from two gun shot wounds to the chest,” the story went. “No suspects have been identified yet and police are asking any witnesses to call the number listed here.” Good luck with that.
I opened the half-filled bottle of scotch and poured out a sip before taking a straight shot from the bottle myself. I had just seen Chaulky three days before. He showed up on time every time that we agreed I’d pay him his salary for being an informant. He didn’t have any family, not even a girlfriend besides whatever street woman he could talk down to a man of his tax bracket. If I didn’t toast to him, no one would.
I was going to convince myself that he was a good enough guy to make it a double when my burner phone rang with the number of the employer.
“Did you see the paper this morning?”
“I did,” I said putting the cap back on the bottle.
“Is that your boy Chaulky?”
“He did always want to make some ink one day. Looks like he finally lived up to his dreams.”
“Very funny.” The employer never did understand the proper concept of sarcasm. “Will this trace back to us?”
“Are you asking if I shot him? Hell no.”
“I don’t give a damn about who ended him. Will any of this tie back to our use with him?”
A few months ago the employer struck up a partnership with a Mexican friend on behalf of a Colombian friend looking for an American friend to get his product on the streets. The employer wasn’t one to deal with the “animals” that would buy to use, but found a happy medium as the middle man to supply to the dealers in the capital city. He liked to think he was fulfilling the ideals of capitalism that way. He probably wasn’t very far off. What he needed was a man on the inside to let him know what the dealers were charging, how much they were selling, how the market of the streets was leaning since the employer didn’t want to dirty himself with it. As his favorite Shylock I never any problems finding anyone who still owed him money, but when it came to deals on the street I was just as lost as he was. That brought in Chaulky.
“Why the hell did they call him Chaulky anyways? How do you get that from Darrell Johnston?” the employer asked.
“He was good with numbers.”
“That still don’t answer anything.”
“They used to call him the Count. That eventually morphed into Count Chocula, you know, like that stupid cartoon on the cereal box? That eventually was cut short to Chaulky. Probably would have changed again in a few years if he had lived to see it.”
“You’re sure his people had no idea he was passing the goods this way?”
“Damn sure.”
“You’d better be,” he said as he clicked off. He never knew how to end a conversation cordially. I reached for the bottle and that second salute when there was a loud knock on my door. Nothing good ever comes from a knocked door. It was either trouble or the Mormons. At least I knew how to deal with trouble.
I got my wish as the guests didn’t even bother with a second knock and instead chose to barge right on in. It was two gangbangers rocking red and yellow skull caps. One was tall enough to start at power forward for the Celtics. The other looked like the short friend of a power forward ready to fight anyone who tried to mess with his baller pal.
“Who the fuck are you?” the power forward asked.
“The guy who pays rent to live here. That means I’ve got the legal right to ask who the fuck are you?”
“A pair of fucking pissed off thugs who want to know why you iced my boy Chaulky?” the power forward said.
“Yeah, why’d you ice Chaulky?” the friend chimed in.
“What’s his deal?” I asked the power forward. “Were you looking for a parrot and only had the money for what was in the sale bin?”
“He ain’t no parrot.”
“Yeah, I ain’t no parrot.”
“That’s a shame to hear. I was just going to break out my good crackers to give you a treat.”
That pissed the small brawler off real good. He came charging at me and threw a wild running jab, clearly not knowing a thing of my Golden Gloves days. I dodged him with ease and threw my favorite left hook square on the button sending the parrot to the canvas. My corner man would have been proud. That just left me the power forward. By the time I looked up to him he was holding a knife out, but he was still too far away to use it. I pulled out my Colt and took aim.
“Cool it man,” the power forward said. “Shit like this is how you get an ambulance in here.”
“How about we start back at the beginning,” I kept my aim at his red and yellow ‘do rag. “Who the fuck are you?”
He was no parrot. He took pride in showing how hard he was by how soft he played the situation.
Looking down the barrel of the gun he gave his best badass smirk. “You tell me first why you iced Chaulky. C’mon man, you got the piece on me. I ain’t goin’ nowheres. Only fair you go first.”
“I don’t know any Chaulky.”
“Bull shit.”
“Why would I let some random gangbanger in my house tell me what is or is not bullshit?”
“I followed Chaulky myself three days ago. He ain’t have a clue. Followed him all the way ‘cross town to this big brutty white dude’s house. Two days later, my boy is gunned down outside his pad. Then I go pay a visit to this white dude and he’s got a gun on me in no time flat, as if he’s expectin’ some comp’ny. Well shit, that’s how I’d act if I just gunned someone down and was waitin’ for his boys to come.”
I gave his words a moment to think it over. These two did know where I lived, and they came in instantly talking Chaulky, so the story of them following Mr. Johnston made sense. I still let the power forward sweat it out for an extra moment before lowering the Colt. “I didn’t shoot your boy.”
“Don’t listen to him Easy,” the parrot chimed in from the ground.
Easy took a moment to think it over. “Prove it.”
“I didn’t know he was dead until the papers this morning.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word on that?”
I looked down at the parrot who was finally getting his breath back. “How about this? You two get the fuck out of here and we’ll call that proof enough. If I did kill your boy, I would be afraid people like you’d come to kill me so I’d ice the pair of you right here and now. Could even call it self defense from a home invasion, no jury would ever convict me. Hell, they’d probably give me a medal. But since I didn’t kill Chaulky, I don’t have anything to worry about. So the fact that I’m telling you two to get the fuck out of my house rather than blasting the both of you… yeah, we’ll call it proof enough.”
The parrot had gotten up to his knees, but was still wheezing. “Yeah…” I couldn’t help myself, “we’ll call it proof enough,” and sent a swift kick right into his ribs, sending him crashing to the ground again. I looked at Easy, “Get him out of here before he bleeds any more on my floors.”
Easy tucked away his knife and took his partner by the arm and led him out of the house. Maybe Chaulky wasn’t a good enough guy for a second salute.
***
I gave my two house guests a few hours to clear out of the neighborhood before I decided to show my face outside again. The employer was kind enough to remind me I had a pair of pick-ups to make in less than six swear words. The hot early summer weather must be making his wife frisky.
I was in between the jobs, driving around in my beat up ’96 Blazer, when I noticed directly behind me a dented ’01 Saab. The kind someone without money could afford to pretend like they were behind the wheel of a Saab that still mattered in the world. I also noticed the two guys in the front seats with matching red and yellow ‘do rags. It wasn’t my two friends this morning, but that still didn’t make me feel any better. I hung a left onto Flatbush Avenue and headed west towards New Park and the traffic light from hell. The lines to get through that intersection would take three light cycles easily. Plenty of time for me to scope out the gangbangers who were following me.
What I wasn’t expecting was for the Saab to refuse to follow the decency of Flatbush intersection waiting. Instead the car pulled out into the on coming traffic and fired six rounds into my Blazer. It was a VW Beetle of all things that saved me, driving in the opposite traffic and forcing the Saab to swerve sharply to avoid it that pulled away the gunman’s aim as he was hanging out of the window. Four shots cleaned out my back window, the other two dented the second row door.
By the time I got my bearings back the Saab had sped off down Flatbush leaving me trapped at the intersection. In my line of business, any kind of business involving the police is bad business, even if I was the victim for once. I decided to follow suit and peeled out going back along Flatbush to the 84 entrance. I made a few trips on and off exits to make sure I didn’t have any cops following a Blazer with bullet holes in it before heading home. There were enough cars beat up on my block that one without a back window wasn’t anything out of place. Home sweet home.
That same home had the second surprise of the day for me when I found the UPS package waiting on the front porch. The return address was listed as 216 South Beacon Street. In Hartford there’s a North Beacon, but no South Beacon. Someone was sending me a message incognito.
I felt the outside of the box and convinced myself it wasn’t a bomb. I took another shot of scotch and started feeling brave enough to open it. Inside was another box, tightly fitted into the first box with a load of beach towels. On the towels was a note.
Keep this safe for me. I’ll pick it up next pay day. And don’t fuck with opening it. It’s sealed shut with tape, so I’ll know if you’ve been touching it. -Chaulky
He always had an eloquent way with words. However considering he’d been dead for nearly 24 hours, to hell with him and his threats. I had already gotten threats in my home from two of his gangbangin’ buddies and then shot at by two others. I was done with Chaulky, even if he was already too dead for me to say it to his face. I wasn’t going to hold on to some kind of mystery package for him.
I pulled out my car keys and cut through the tape of the second box. Inside were more beach towels, only this time they wrapped around a pair of nine millimeter pistols and a bag of bullets to match. I picked up the guns with the towels, keeping my hands off them to give them a look over. They were both in pristine condition. Serial numbers still glistened proudly. I sniffed the barrels but couldn’t get a whiff of anything. They had never been fired. “God damn it Chaulky, what are you doing sending me never used guns,” I cursed out loud. Cops wouldn’t be looking for weapons that hadn’t been used to commit a crime yet. And besides, where did they come from? There was a real easy way to get an answer to that.
I waited until midnight and then headed out with the package to a barber shop I knew in the Blue Hills section of the city. Pedro’s place was falling apart, but the old bastard refuse to do anything about it. I looked around to make sure the street was empty when I walked up to front glass windows and checked to make sure no one was inside either. Pedro would be too cheap and committing too many illegal things of his own to have any kind of security cameras around. I pulled out one of Chaulky’s gifts and fired three rounds into the window. The whole thing shattered. Would do Pedro some good to get insurance money out of the ordeal to fix the place up.
I left the three shell casings clearly visible on the sidewalk, and then dropped the gun inside the broken window and calmly left. Now all there was to do was wait for the lab boys to get my results, and they came through in flying colors. The story got bumped to page five of the next day’s paper due to two more fresh homicides over night, but it still had all my answers.
“Police are investigating a shootout in Hartford’s Blue Hills neighborhood that resulted in the destruction of a local barber shop… A gun used and three compatible bullets were found at the scene, however no sign of any injuries have been found yet.” Leave it to the paper to always think everything in Blue Hills was a turf war. “Police believe the gun was obtained on the black market as it originally registers to a man in Decatur, Georgia who claims the gun had been stolen from him weeks ago. Laws in Georgia do not require citizens to report if guns they own have been stolen or misplaced.”
That last line peaked my interest and got me to fire up Google and look for “shooting stolen gun Georgia.” The entire first page was filled with news reports of two cops in New York that were shot down on the street a few weeks earlier with a gun that originated somewhere around where “Deliverance” was probably filmed. The gun was apparently stolen but not reported. Another execution style murder in Philadelphia was used with a gun that the original owner from Stone Mountain, Georgia claimed was stolen or misplaced, he couldn’t remember. He had so many guns in case the guv’ment tried to take his property in a Marxist revolution that he lost track of them all. Besides, if he reported one of his guns missing the guv’ment would march in and take the rest. That’s how they operate.
Chaulky however wasn’t trying to hide weapons used in a murder by stashing them on me. Chaulky’s guns had never been fired until I gave Pedro the gift of a new window. So why keep these Georgia peaches under wraps? I was now getting angry at myself for even taking the one sip salute for Mr. Johnstone.
***
The next day I was up at the crack of noon, just in time to hear someone at the front door knock once and then enter. This time I was praying it was the Mormons. Knowing it wasn’t I sat at my kitchen table and put on a leather glove before picking up the last remaining 9mm. Easy and his parrot friend seemed a little surprised when they came around the corner looking down the barrel of Chaulky’s gift.
“Shit dawg!” Easy put his hands to his side, “can’t a couple of old friends stop by for a little chat?”
“Yeah, stop by for a little chat?” the parrot followed.
“I’ve seen what being your friend turns into.”
“What you talkin’ ’bout dawg?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You mean Chaulky?”
“Fuck Chaulky.”
“Then what the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“Yeah, what the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
I took a moment to read their faces. Gangbangers for the most part only know how to be tough. The more hard edge they are, the bigger they are in the neighborhood. Acting confused isn’t exactly in their repertoire and these two couldn’t seem more confused. Or else it was quite an Oscar-worthy performance. Either way, the 9mm was keeping them in line.
“I’m talking about your little stunt on Flatbush yesterday. You come into my house accusing me of icing Chaulky. You come in here looking to ice me as well, but then we come to an understanding and rather than shoot the both of you I let you walk out of here unharmed…” I looked at the parrot and his shiner from my left hook, “for the most part. So what happens next? You get your brothers to hunt me down and put six bullets in my Blazer.”
“Holy shit dawg, that was you?”
“What the fuck? Of course it was.”
“Look, I ain’t know shit about that,” Easy started to laugh. “I only heard ’bout it on the news.”
“Bullshit. It was your boys pulled the trigger. Tell me again how this makes me your friend.”
“You fuckin’ lyin’ whitey.”
“Yeah, you lyin’ whitey.”
“I never told anyone to ice you,” Easy kept his voice level, but with that hint of his hardcore coldness behind it. “Trust me, if I did you wouldn’t be here right now. Shit, look at us now. We come in yesterday as a surprise and you pull a gun on us. Today we stop by, knowing you’d be packin’ and yet here we are without any steel ourselves.” Easy turned slowly in a 360 showing he wasn’t packing anything in his belt. Nothing bulging from his side pockets either. The parrot did the same with similar results.
“It was two thugs in red and yellow skull caps who followed me and then opened fire.”
“If someone was going to shoot ya, it could be anyone put on one of those to pin it on us.”
“Two thugs in red and yellow skull caps driving a Saab?” I tossed it out there.
The two thugs in front of me looked at each other for a moment, giving away they knew something.
“Could be anyone,” Easy badly attempted at lying.
“Let me ask you this. Do you you know what I have in my hand?”
“A gun.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“A mother-fuckin’ gun.”
“Do you know what this is?” I asked. Both just glared at me. “This is what we in the business like to call a 9mm.”
“You’re point?”
“This ain’t exactly my style. I’m a Hartford boy myself and like to buy local to my Colts.”
“My cousin at the factory thanks you.”
“You have no clue what’s the difference between these two weapons do you?”
Easy seemed a little embarrassed for a second before snapping back into tough guy mode, “a gun’s a gun. What difference does it make?”
“A whole world of difference. That Colt I had on you yesterday was all my doing. But this 9mm here? I’ve got a feeling this is the answer you’re looking for to why your boy Chaulky got bumped off.”
“How do you know that?”
“Yeah, how do you know that?”
“I don’t know. But you go back to the South End and tell your two boys in the Saab to meet me outside Chaulky’s place tonight at midnight. We’ll get our answers there.”
***
It was a really stupid idea to go out there by myself figuring there’d be two of them showing up but I just wanted to get it over with. If my hour glass was to run out of sand that night, it was better than always looking over my shoulder at every intersection for a drive-by or having gangbangers barging into my house every day. This would end it, either for better or worse.
I took no chances and got to Chaulky’s place an hour early. The police had finished their look over and cleaned the sidewalk of his body, but didn’t have the decency to hose down the sidewalk of his blood. I cursed Chaulky one last time. If it wasn’t for him getting gunned down I wouldn’t have been in this mess.
Around 11:20 that I saw the Saab cruise down the street to take a look over the situation. I ducked around the corner of the house to make sure I wasn’t seen. I heard the engine shut off and two car doors slam. Apparently my friends had the same idea I did, but weren’t early enough to get the drop.
“Yo, go ’round back,” I heard one call out. “I’ll keep an eye out front.”
Footsteps. The noise of the city streets disappeared. All I could hear were those soft footsteps coming around the corner. I held my breath as best I could until the noise came around the corner. It wasn’t my best left hook but it did the job, catching him right in the jaw and sending him to the ground. The thug was frozen for a moment on the ground before gathering himself and tried to reach for his gun. I grabbed him by the wrist and twisted his arm back, sending a vicious kick square to his nose. He dropped the gun and rolled over on his side, blood spewing from his mouth and nose. With the 9mm in hand I bashed him again on the temple. He was a tough son of a bitch and stayed awake, but I was fairly certain he wouldn’t be getting off the ground of a while.
I could hear the second pair of footsteps, running this time, heading towards the corner. I took the gun the thug had dropped in my right hand and pointed it at the newcomer. In my left I took aim with the 9mm and waiting for whatever was coming around the corner, but this gangbanger was smarter. He stopped just short and took a peek around the corner. I fired from the 9mm. The bullet dug itself into the wood siding of the house.
“Shit!” the thug around the corner called. “What the fuck man?”
“What the fuck? What the fuck?!” I started to lose it. “You don’t like getting shot at? Then try not shooting people on the road.”
“What you talkin’ ’bout?”
“I know it was you two in that Saab over on Flatbush that opened fire on me.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know a lot more than that. I know you’re running guns and you’re boy Easy won’t be too happy about it.” Silence for a moment. Still I knew he was there and thinking things over. I decided to up the ante.
“See this 9mm in hand? A little gift from Chaulky. He left it for me to hold on to, probably insurance in case you ever turned on him for knowing about your operation. Bringing guns up from Georgia and selling them to the hoods that have been shooting up the city since the weather turned warm. Good time for arguments makes a good time for selling stolen guns. My guess is you bumped off Chaulky before he squealed to your boys.”
“You ain’t got no proof of that.”
“So far you’re the only two that have tried to kill me. The rest of your crew thought I shot Chaulky, but came to their senses pretty easily. That leaves only you trying to clean up the mess.”
“So what we gonna do ’bout it? Draw at 10 paces an’ let the only one alive tell the tale?”
Another voice chimed in for the first time. “Don’t think so mother fucker.”
“Yeah, yeah… don’t think so mother fucker.”
I heard the grunt of a man get pistol whipped from behind and fall to the ground. I waited a few seconds before coming around the corner. Easy and his parrot had their guns drawn and were standing over the second thug who was on the ground bleeding from a blow to the head.
“You runnin’ guns now? In my neighborhood? What the fuck are you thinkin’?”
“I ain’t doin’ nothing!” the thug pleaded.
Easy looked up at me but kept his gun pointed at the thug. “That true what you said?”
“Absolutely.” I replied. “I have nothing to do with your gang or any gun running.”
“Then how’d you get involved with Chaulky?”
“He was an informant of mine about how much you were dealing and how much product you needed. That was all. I didn’t know anything about the guns until he left me a package with a pair of these 9mm. You’re boy here thought Chaulky was squealing on him rather than squealing on you. That’s why he came after me yesterday.”
“That true?” Easy asked the thug on the ground. The thug only gave a vicious growl. Easy had heard enough. He pulled the trigger and smashed a bullet right through the thug’s temple leaving nothing to chance.
“Shit,” was the only word I could come up with.
“Sorry, but that’s just bidness,” the Easy said calmly. “Heroine I can deal with, but gun runnin’, after all them homicides been in the paper latey, the five-oh will come down on whoever is supplyin’ the guns. I don’t need them sniffin’ around my turf lookin’ for guns as an excuse to shut me down. I got a woman and three kids to take care of. Ain’t lettin’ some double crosser take my livelihood away from me.”
“Yeah, yeah… ain’t takin’ our livelihood.”
The first thug who was still on the ground moaned quietly. I was afraid to ask since I already knew the answer, but said the words anyways. “What are we going to do about him?”
The parrot this time pointed his gun and let off three shots that did all the answering that was needed.
As accustomed to violence as I was, it was still too hard to turn and look at the second fresh corpse.
“So where does that leave us?”
“Us?” Easy said. “There ain’t no us. I just came to get some revenge for Chaulky. Done deal. Then find out he’s been the one snitchin’. Well, he’s already dead so I can’t go about shootin’ him. I say that cleans us up all nicely. Won’t be any more gun runnin’ in my neighborhood. Won’t be any more cops sniffin’ around lookin’ for steel. Now that the problem’s dead, we all go back to livin’.”
A part of me was thinking of how he could so easily justify two murders. Another part of me was thinking of all the guns that now wouldn’t make the streets of Hartford and how many more murders these two just prevented. Two dead thugs for an untold number of future non-homicides? Sounds like a fair trade to me.
In the distance police sirens were getting close, drawn to the sound of gun fire outside Chaulky’s house.
“I take it you ain’t gonna snitch on us to no coppers. All the same, don’t come in my neighborhood again white boy.”
“Don’t barge into my house again gangsta.”
Easy cracked a grin. He put his gun away, nodded to the parrot and left into the night.
Behind the police sirens was the wailing cry of an ambulance calling the news of another two fresh corpses.
