Drive-by

1. THE WORKOUT

Health is the vital principle of bliss,
And exercise of health.

—Thomson, The Castle of Indolence. Canto ii, st. 57.

Gary Greb pulled his car into one of about a dozen parking spaces at the L.A. Lee branch YMCA, which was located in a depressed, predominantly black section of Northwest Ft. Lauderdale and was just a block away from the notorious NW 5th Street, an area where drug dealers and prostitutes ran rampant. It was just approaching dusk, an hour when those numerous individuals who made their livings from the street, were just waking up and getting ready to meet their day and ply their wares. Greb—a former professional boxer—was used to going into gyms across the country in the worst and most plighted ghettoes that the cities usually had to offer, boxing being the renowned poor man’s game. Most gyms charged monthly dues and the YMCA was no different but this Northwest branch charged considerably less than the nearby Northeast branch, the only difference being that one was just off Federal Highway and NE 5th Street, in what was considered a better section of town. Greb paid barely a third of the monthly dues he would have had to pay at the Northeast branch and going into the ghetto was virtually a lifetime experience for him anyway. Although dirty, hungry and tired from eight hours of brutal construction work, done under the high humidity and fry pan temperatures of Ft. Lauderdale in the summer, Greb felt the need for a good workout and a shower. He noticed that a green and white police car sat in a parking space just adjacent to where he had parked and knew it was a local cop who trained any local ghetto youth who felt they wanted to learn the manly art. Of course, of those many youth that streamed into his classes most dreamed of the riches and fame that could be theirs, if they made it all the way to the top of the ladder, a ladder that included fighting your way through the ruthless promoters, managers and trainers that proliferated throughout the sport and who would offer you the world if they thought there was any money in it for them. Of course, somebody had to be champion and those that made it that far could usually be assured of at least enough financial reward to be able to retire without having to work at a regular job again but the vast multitudes that took up boxing would progress little beyond club fighter status and once the little portion of local fame and meager purses ended you were left with skills that were limited to training or managing fighters—a profession even riskier financially than boxing yourself.
Greb got out and walked to the rear of his car where he opened the trunk and removed his gym bag. He saw three black youths coming up the street, and, as he was walking towards the Y’s front entrance, passed by them and nodded but the greeting wasn’t acknowledged, as one growled, “We jus’ goin’ tah Skid Row officah!”

Greb chuckled as he walked into the gym and nodded at the attendant, who said, “Hey, sup G-Man?”

“Aw, same ol’ shit, hey, is Buffalo’s boys still up in the boxin’ room upstairs?”
“Yeah, what jew gonna do—hit the bags tonight?”
“Yeah but I’m gonna lift a lil’ first. How long they been here?”
“Aw, they be gone soon—las’ kid came in over an hour ago G-Man.”

Greb walked towards the dressing room and smiled when he saw the numerous small black boys and girls running rampant on the basketball court. They were part of an after school day-care program and would be picked up at the Y, by their working parents, who were too poor to afford a babysitter. He knew their teacher was hard pressed to keep the program together and was doing so mostly with donations, such as the limousine that sat out front, which had been donated by a local funeral home. She could use it to pick up the kids—aged from five to nine years old—from their school and transport them to the Y until their parents picked them up.

As Greb headed into the dressing room, Helen Cassidy glanced at her watch and frowned. It was getting late and the children had usually been picked up long before it ever turned dark. She knew the program would fall apart without the limo and wanted to get it back to the funeral home as they had a standing agreement that it would be back by six p.m. and even though it was just past five p.m., none of the six parents whose children she was watching had yet shown up and it worried her.

2. PAYBACK

He told how murderers walk the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain.

—Thomas Hood, Eugene Aram.

Bobby ‘Ice’ McGriff nodded at the two other youngsters standing on the street corner with him and then towards a garishly dressed young girl, walking on the other side of the street from them and growled, “Hey X-Man, less get diz ho.”
Xavier ‘X-Man’ Johnson looked at the other young gangster standing next to him. “Naww-aww, ain’t dat one ah Bossman’s ho’s Cat?”

Ronnie ‘Cat-Eyes’ Vincent, who was said to be able to see in the dark, sneered towards the hooker. “Man, I dunno X, where Sugar at man? He supposed to have our pieces.” Cat Eyes looked up and nodded down the street, as a ‘73 Impala, with a souped-up 440 horse power engine in it, roared to the corner of NW 5th Street and 14th Terrace. The driver was a seventeen-year old named Willie ‘Sugar’ White, who leaned out the window and smiled.

“C’mon, get in.”

As the trio of ghetto toughs climbed into the backseat, Cat-Eyes saw the hardware sitting on the backseat and his eyes gleamed. “Day-yum Sugar, you gots nines … where—”

The Impala pulled away from the curb and Sugar eyeballed them through the rearview mirror and barked, “Nine’s is mow-sheen-pistols too man.”

X-Man grabbed a 9mm machine pistol and fondled it lovingly. “Hey where dat rat Chuke hidin’?”

Sugar White smiled and growled, “We gone gets some payback on ‘at chump, right Ice?”

Ice McGriff smiled a golden smile and said, “Day-yum straight we are Sug’—day-yum straight—we do a drive-by on ‘at niggah.”

Cat-Eyes Vincent smiled the skull smile of death and took a hit of crack from Sugar White, as did X-Man Johnson and Ice McGriff, performing a ritual that was being duplicated in other ghetto’s in the most heavily armed civilian population, as well as military, in the world, in the U.S.A., and—like all good soldiers—they were ready, willing and able to kill a fellow human being and they were ready to do it in cold blood.

#

Johnny Beasley stared at the computer screen inside his Yellow Cab and frowned, it was an apartment house in the twenty-two hundred block of NW Eighth Court, and knew he wasn’t going to make the pickup. That area of town, even though the police station was directly across the street, separated only by Broward Boulevard, was a veritable war-zone, infested as it was with pimps, prostitutes and teenage thugs. He knew that the police station being in close proximity would do him little good, as the cops didn’t want to go in there anymore than he or his fellow cabbies did. He turned his meter on and then quickly shut it off. If asked about the pickup he would lie and say he had made it and taken her to another apartment house a few blocks away. He pulled onto Broward Boulevard and picked up a fare who flagged him down, just across from the home of Fort Lauderdale’s finest and smiled—glancing at his wristwatch—a quarter after six, too late to be going on a safari in the jungles of the NW Fort Lauderdale hood. He dropped his fare off a couple of miles away and then pulled his cab into the parking lot of Big Al’s Liquor Store. He was shaking and needed a dose of his usual medicinal liquid a prescription only places like Big Al’s could fill.

3. FATE

The bow is bent, the arrow flies,
The winges shaft of fate.

—Ira Aldridge, On William Tell. St. 12.

Geraldine Duffy peeked out of her curtains and frowned. She had called the Yellow Cab taxi service over a half an hour ago and it still hadn’t shown up. Sometimes she had to call three or four times before one would actually show up. She reached for the telephone just as her front door opened and her mother walked in. Beside her was a heavy-set scowling teenager, with an ugly scar running from the left side of his cheek, down his collarbone and all the way down the front of his chest that appeared to give him a permanent sneer. Her mother smiled and pointed at the youth. “Honey Missah Charles here say he gives you a ride to the Y to pick up Shayna and Keesey.”

Geraldine Duffy shrugged and said, “Oh well Moms, I think the cab should be here pre’ soon now.”

Her mother sneered at her. “C’mon now Gerry, you knows them cabs don’t never show up in ah ghetto and its pas’ six.”

Geraldine Duffy glanced at the clock on the wall and exhaled a lungful of air. “Well, if you don’t mind Mister, ah-er-um, Mister Charles.”

The young tough chuckled. “Naw-aw, is aw-rye wid me. And you can call me by my street name, everybody else does.”

Geraldine Duffy smiled laconically, as they walked out her front door; the boy looked like he was only fifteen or sixteen, but obviously, already world-wise and street smart and he had already earned himself a street name. She pulled a cigarette from her purse. “And what might that be?”

“Chuke sister, just call me Chuke.”

#

The cherry-apple red Impala pulled up to the curb and a black teenager with his hair in corn-rows and a blasting boom-box under his arm strolled over and bent down to come face-to-face with the driver, Willie ‘Sugar’ White. “Hey mans, y’all want some shit?”

Sugar scowled at the youth. “Don’t need no shit niggah, I’m lookin’ fo’ Chuke niggah—you knows Chuke?

“Hey man, I knows you.”
“You knows me?”
“Yeah, from Dillard man. I ‘membah you when you cold-cocked the shop teacher. Yeah they kicked me out too, caught me wid my pipe. You Sugar White, right?”
“Yeah, what’s yo’ name … wha’ …?”
“They calls me New Yawk man.”
“Yeah, I ‘members him Sugar. Suckah used to bring shit to the playground; they locked yo’ niggah ass up on ah school grounds one time, right? Yeah man—I’us there when Mo’ got kilt too.”

New York nodded into the backseat at the speaker—Ice McGriff—and the two men slapped skin and New York said, “Yeah, Ice, Dillard, shee-it—I remembers you—heh, we mess up dem teach-chas huh?”

Sugar scowled and fumed. “Hey man, New York, you knows where Chuke at man?”

New York stood up and shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno him man.”

Sugar looked into the rearview mirror and caught Ice’s eyes—they had grown up in the neighborhood together, had got suspended from school together, had gotten high together and now both boys were ready to kill together. Neither had ever known a father, their male role models being what they saw and experienced in the neighborhood and from watching the cartoons and Clint Eastwood epics that they were bombarded with daily on the one thing all American households were sure to contain, no matter how rich or poor—the one thing that they all agreed upon as a necessity—that evolutionary squawk-box and hypnotic babysitter also known as the television set. The welfare checks that the majority of their mothers collected monthly were a joke to them—by the time they were entering grade school—the money they were paid as runners for the local drug-dealers doubling or even tripling those checks, in barely a few days. Teenage drug dealers were killed in turf-wars, or sent away to prison, and were replaced as easily as a discarded pair of shoes. The neighborhood had changed drastically in the past few years; Sugar used to know just about everybody in the neighborhood but now they moved in and out so fast it was the rare occasion that he actually recognized anybody. He knew the straight people, the mothers on welfare and the working poor—the restaurant workers—housekeepers and seasonal migrants all lived in a total state of siege mentality—a constant state of fear—and left their homes only when absolutely necessary, especially after dark and never looking anyone in the face, as they didn’t wish to know anyone beyond their immediate families. The only people they ever talked to on a regular basis were cops and when a cop showed up in this neighborhood it usually meant someone had been either robbed or killed—or both.

Sugar nodded at New York, as another young blood strolled over to them, a boom box blasting under his arm. New York smiled at him and then looked into the backseat. “Hey Iceman, this here be Detroit Red, he be aw-rye.”

Before Ice McGriff could reply Sugar White sneered up at Detroit Red and hissed, “Hey Red, we lookin’ fo’ a niggah go ‘bout two bills, you seen him aroun’ niggah?”

Detroit Red scowled harshly and put his boom box on the sidewalk then reached for his piece, a .32 he carried inside his waistband but stopped short when he saw the nine millimeters staring him in the face. He shrugged his gangly shoulders. “Ah-nah-rarumnah, ah-er diz niggah gots a scar on ‘is face?”
“Das him niggah, where he at … where he be …?”

Detroit Red smiled, showing two gold-capped front teeth, one with a D and the other an R. “I hear some ho’ ast ‘im to take her daughter down to dah Y man, pick up her kids.”

Sugar slapped skin with Detroit Red. “See you aroun’ niggah,” he said.

As the Impala performed a screeching u-turn, Detroit Red turned towards New York. “Some bad niggahs, baaad niggahs…yeah-uh…”

4. DRIVEBY

Though this may be play to you,
Tis death to us.

—Aesop Fables: The Boys and the Frog.

Gary Greb walked to his car and inhaled a deep breath; he always felt better after a workout, especially after a hard day’s work. He had taken a long refreshing shower and felt on top of the world. He was ready to jump on I-95 and head home, to his house in North Fort Lauderdale, where his wife and four young children awaited his arrival. He had just gotten off the phone and knew a full-course chicken parmigiana and spaghetti dinner awaited him and smiled at two small children standing in front of a light blue limousine that he noticed had a funeral home’s logo on the side. A light-skinned black woman, maybe thirty-five or forty, was telling them to stay out of the street. He nodded at her and she smiled and nodded back, as he opened his trunk and was putting in his gym-bag when a canary yellow Plymouth Roadrunner pulled into the parking space next to him, the engine roaring like a hungry tiger. Greb slammed his trunk down, just as a young girl exited the passenger side of the Roadrunner and the lady with the two small children looked her way and hissed, “I was jus’ about to take yo’ chil’ren to the few-rill home Miz Duffy.”

Greb didn’t catch the reply, as his head turned sideways when a cherry-apple red Impala pulled alongside the curb and four 9 mm machine pistols spoke the only language they understood, death and destruction, spitting out indiscriminate mayhem within a twenty-yard radius. Gary Greb took two bullets in his side and one through the side of his face. He was spitting up blood and uprooted teeth and gums, as bullets ricocheted off the concrete and cement block walls and ripped up the street and side of the building, blowing clods of dirt and pieces of the Roadrunner’s fenders in every direction. The high velocity steel-jacketed bullets also ripped through the bodies of Shayna and Keesey Duffy, as their bodies were flung against the blood-splattered walls—like two small dolls in a hurricane-force wind—along with their mother Geraldine and the, unbeknownst to her, two-month-old fetus inside her belly. The only teacher that the after-school program ever had—Helen Cassidy—was so riddled with bullets that her face was virtually unrecognizable, as she was killed instantly.
The only person to escape unscathed was Charles ‘Chuke’ Quigly who had jumped to the floor in the backseat of his Roadrunner, during the sixty-odd seconds of murderous mayhem.

#

The local funeral home’s limousine stood eerily still in the early evening’s haze, a stark remainder of where it did business, the fenders and windows splattered with blood, bones and remnants of human flesh.

The police sirens wailed—they responded within just minutes—as nine-one-one was dialed by any and every human soul within visual distance of the murderous massacre but—nevertheless—by the time they actually arrived the bodies of the five victims were already stripped clean of any jewelry or cash.

—–
Author: Keith G. Laufenberg (on Facebook)
Site: Keith Laufenberg – Writer