August 2nd
Felipe Sousa had a dark past, an indeterminate present, and, he hoped, a bright future. But he couldn’t get to said bright future if he didn’t grapple with a few more demons.
“Sousa, I trust that self-preservation ensured that you brought the stuff?”
“I did, Simon.” He said ‘Simon’ with some degree of derision, but the other boy didn’t catch it. It was such a lame name for a gangster. Of course, Felipe had no illusions that a soft name made a soft person. He had seen first-hand just how dangerous Simon could be.
“Well, let me see it.”
“Right here?”
“Where the fuck else, bitch?”
Felipe sighed inwardly but kept his face calm, level. He opened the bag he’d been carrying on his back and gestured at the contents, looking around warily to make sure no one was watching them.
“This is it, though, right?” he couldn’t help saying. “After this we’re done?”
“We’re done when the boss says we’re done.”
“But you said—”
“Listen, Sousa, I like you. I may not always show it, but I do. And if it was up to me, sure, you could walk away right now. But the thing is, everything goes through the boss. You know that. So when I say ‘we’re done when the boss says we’re done’, you need to appreciate what I’m telling you.”
“Well when will you talk to him?”
Felipe was getting nervous. He’d run with these guys for long enough to know that getting out wasn’t easy, but the job he’d just pulled should have been enough to guarantee his retirement. Mr. Murphy wasn’t always a rational man, though.
Simon ignored the question.
“Hey, this is good stuff, Sousa. Really good.”
Felipe went to zip the bag back up, but Simon drew a single item out before it was all the way closed and held it up, admiring it in the dim light forty feet from the nearest street lamp. It was a Sig Sauer P320, and Felipe was about to hand a whole bag full of them to a man who worked for one of the most violent gang leaders in New York.
I work for him, too. Until he lets me go, he had to remind himself.
He’d been something of a novelty when he’d made friends with Simon’s little brother a few years back and ended up in the employ of the family business: the only Brazilian member of the Irish mob.
Back then he’d still had a home—a shitty one with one parent who was too busy nodding off every time she had enough cash to scrape together a meager high, or else looking for ways to get that cash together to pay him much attention to him, and another who spent what little time he was around either shouting about nothing or punching holes in the wall. Felipe had learned to avoid them both.
He’d met Simon’s brother, Liam, when the family had moved and Liam started going to Felipe’s school.
Liam had been a good kid, innocent and earnest and caring. He’d possessed the traits that were uncommon—bordering on nonexistent—in the rest of his family, and those traits had gotten him dead.
No, a voice in Felipe’s head insisted. That wasn’t what got him killed.
Four Years Ago
Liam had invited Felipe over to eat pizza and play video games, and, as Felipe had hardly had a friend in his life, he’d agreed, hardly able to believe his luck.
Halfway through their third or fourth Smash Bros match, Liam’s older brother, Simon, who Felipe had only seen in passing, came into the room and sat down on the couch between them.
“Mind if I join you guys?”
“Nooooo, Simon. You’re too good. How can I possibly win if you’re playing?” said Liam, jokingly.
“Shut up, turd. I’ll kick your butt as long as you don’t cheat like you usually do. I’m Simon, by the way,” he said, turning to Felipe and offering his hand.
“Hi, I’m—”
“This is my best friend, Felipe Sousa,” said Liam, smiling broadly. “And how do you even cheat at Smash Bros? Get a grip, big brother.”
Simon ignored his little brother and kept his attention on Felipe.
“Felipe, huh? That’s a cool name. You from around here? Brooklyn, I mean?”
“I am, yeah. My parents are from Brazil, though. They moved to the States when they were pretty young, though. I don’t think they remember it much.”
“You guys speak Brazilian at home?”
“… You mean Portuguese?”
“I’m messing with you. Yes, I mean Portuguese.”
Felipe didn’t know if Simon was messing with him or not. His initially friendly demeanor seemed like it was masking something else. And, despite his jovial tone, his face had gone dark briefly first when his brother insulted his Smash Bro’s skills, and again when Felipe had corrected him.
“Oh … No, not really. They slip into it sometimes, but I hardly speak a word of it, to be honest.”
“That’s a shame, Felipe. Can I call you ‘Sousa’? Sorry, it’s a cool name. I just think everyone seems more badass when you call them by their last name? Know what I mean?”
“Sure,” said Felipe. Despite his misgivings about Simon, he did feel a little more badass being addressed as ‘Sousa’. It felt grown up.
“So, Sousa, you think my kid brother is really going to kick my butt at this game?”
“Only one way to find out, I guess.”
They played a few more rounds, and as Liam had hinted, Simon was really, truly bad at the game. He kept his composure and laughed it off, but more than once Felipe saw that dark look flash across his features before his face rearranged itself into a smile again.
Simon finished the last of his soda in several large gulps.
“Lee-lee. Go grab us some more sodas, will you?”
“Why can’t you—”
Simon punched his brother’s arm.
“Because I asked you nicely.”
“Geez, Simon. That wasn’t nice at all,” Liam grumbled, getting up from his seat and heading into the kitchen.
“So, listen, Sousa,” said Simon as soon as he was certain his brother was out of earshot. “Do you feel like making a little bit of money? Before you answer, know that I like you. And my brother likes you. And if you say no, that’s cool. But if you say yes, you’re as good as family.”
Two friends made in a matter of weeks, and now the offer to make some money? Felipe could hardly believe his good fortune. And the idea of family certainly appealed to him.
Still, it wasn’t completely without reservations that he said, “I—I’ve never had a job before. What do I have to do?”
“Well, now, I’m glad you asked.”
Now
That had been the start of Felipe’s criminal career. He’d been twelve years old.
“Yeah, I think the boss is really gonna like this.” Simon let out an appreciative whistle before holding the gun out to Felipe.
Felipe backed away.
“Hey, man. I haven’t gotten my prints on any of those guns yet, and I don’t plan to start now.”
“Shhhh,” said Simon. “Don’t say the word ‘gun’, you idiot. Anyone could hear.
Felipe didn’t bother to point out the irony in Simon waving a gun in the air and whistling his appreciation yet being paranoid about the word, only opened the bag up and let Simon drop the gun inside.
The guns had been stolen from a rival gang with shockingly poor security. Felipe had an in because he was seeing the girl whose older brother was in charge. After a tryst with her, he’d simply grabbed a bedsheet and used it to sweep a table full of guns into his backpack while Sammy, the girl, was outside smoking. No one else in their hideout was even around to keep an eye on things.
The old Felipe, the one who lived for stuff like this, the one who loved the thrill of the gang life, would have said that they deserved to get ripped off for being so lackadaisical about their inventory. The new Felipe just wanted to get this job done and move on.
By now, Sammy would have ratted on him, and the others would be out in the city looking for him. It was a big city, and he was good at hiding, but this cat and mouse game could only go on so long.
When he wrapped up things here, he planned to go back to his favorite shelter and sleep peacefully, knowing that within a few weeks he’d be out of New York for good.
He’d agreed to do this job—with assurances from Simon and Mr. Murphy that if he pulled it off, he’d be free and clear—only because he didn’t want the Murphys after him when he left. Their reach was long, and he didn’t want to live the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.
“What does the boss need all this firepower for, anyway?” It was a rhetorical question; the mob needed guns for a large number of things, none of them good. And, in the grand scheme of things, this was a pretty small score. A tiny fraction of their overall firepower.
Simon confirmed as much.
“These? They’re beautiful specimens, Sousa, and I’m real impressed with you getting ‘em, but we don’t really need them. This was about sending a message to those two-bit little thugs who think they can move into our territory in Brooklyn.”
“But they don’t even know I work—worked— for you? They’d hardly have let me in if they had known. So how does this send a message?”
“You wait and see, little Felipe.”
Felipe had a feeling he knew what the message was, and how it would be delivered. Ever since La Cuarenta, the Murphys didn’t suffer the antics of upstart gangs for very long.
Sending a message meant bloodshed. Usually the blood that was shed belonged to those who were so deep in the cycle of violence that it was the only possible end their lives could have come to.
But sometimes it was the blood of the people least deserving. The innocent, earnest, caring ones.
The one good person in a whole crooked, twisted organization.
Soon, though, with the craziness that was boiling in this city—in every city—the messages sent would get more violent. Soon guns wouldn’t be the only means of sending a message. New and fantastical weapons were being given out at random, and it was only a matter of time before the balance of power shifted so completely that the current paradigm of violence and reactionary violence would seem like a distant dream of peaceful times.
It was a good time to be getting out of the game.
“We good here? You’ll let me know what the boss says?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” said Simon, looking Felipe up and down appraisingly. “You woulda made a pretty good foot soldier. Or a spy. Hell, you could’ve made it pretty high up, you know? But it ain’t for everyone.”
Felipe wasn’t willing to let himself hope that these words meant he was free—not yet. He started to turn away, leaving the bag on the ground between them.
“You ever think about him?” Simon said to his back.
“All the time,” he said, choosing not to turn around and engage.
——————
He saw the red and blue lights reflecting off of windows in the low brick apartment buildings that lined every street in this area before he even turned onto the street where the shelter was.
Fuck, he thought. You’ve gotta be shitting me. How had they known it was him? How had they known they could find him here?
Had Detective Gonzalez snitched? Had the Murphys enacted their plan already and somehow the cops already put together where the guns had come from?
No. He steadied himself. Think straight.
It was too quick. He’d only left the meeting with Simon a little over two hours ago, when dusk had just descended. The police cars outside of the shelter were for something unrelated.
Not surprising, really. People got into fights here all the time. Not as often as a lot of the other shelters he’d stayed at before finding this one, but still …
Whenever he saw squad cars parked around, lights flashing, he remembered the scene behind the schoolyard the day Liam had been found.
Can’t think about that right now.
But he couldn’t help it. Once the memory set in, the guilt took hold, and he couldn’t shake it until the recollection was complete, until the guilt was mollified.
Three Years Ago
The Murphys had been on edge. A little crew of drug runners from Mexico, ambassadors of some cartel or another, had recently staked a claim in the city. The Murphys considered them small fish in the beginning, had even laughed at the silly narcos trying to gain a foothold in a city where the lines had been drawn for a very long time. There was already a cartel presence in New York, of course, and they were as respected as any of the other major players, but this new group was an upstart, with no connection to or respect for the others.
The Murphys had been forced to start taking them seriously when two of Murphy dealers had been found floating in the Hudson, their heads having been liberated from their bodies, and a tattoo of the number forty on their arms. Forced to take them more seriously yet when the Boss’s brother had been found dead with no fewer than forty stab wounds. El Cuarenta didn’t seem like such a joke anymore.
Simon and Liam were ‘confined to quarters’, so to speak, housebound by order of their parents so that they’d be safe.
The lesser employees, the ones not under the same strict protection as the boss’s kids, the ones like Felipe, were still out on the streets, keeping things running.
In truth, Felipe had one of the least dangerous jobs in the whole operation, simply carting inconspicuous packages from A to B. The most dangerous part of it most days was the boredom. A boredom which had been made all the worse by the fact that he wasn’t allowed to see Liam.
So, thinking he was doing them both a favor, he texted Liam and encouraged him to sneak out. They met in the field behind the school where, in simpler days when Felipe had been—well, not innocent, but certainly not so guilty—they’d played tag and talked about girls.
“Liam, man. How’ve you been?”
“Felipe,” said Liam, “embracing him and patting his back. You have no idea how bad it’s been at home.”
“Your parents treating you all right?”
“Of course, man. But it’s … tense, to say the least. I just don’t get it. Why can’t they just pay this gang off or … or give them a little bit of whatever they want. Some territory. How bad would that really hurt us?”
Felipe didn’t know how much Liam knew about the current circumstances, but he knew the kid was way too naive for his own good. He knew that these things didn't end in negotiations and peace talks.
“It doesn’t really work that way.”
“I know. I just really wish that it did.”
Felipe looked at his friend—all freckles and big ears and green eyes and impossibly messy red hair—and for the first time saw in his face not innocence, but idealism. Liam knew how things were, and still believed they could get better.
“Shit, man, me too,” Felipe said after a minute’s consideration.
They spent the next few hours sitting and shooting the shit, talking more like two average adolescents than like the son of a mob boss and his young employee.
Finally, Felipe looked at his watch and his face went wide with surprise.
“Holy shit, man. I gotta go. I’ve got a package that needs to be picked up in like forty minutes. On the other side of Brooklyn.”
“You’ve gotta go already?”
“Yeah, man. I’m sorry. But we can do this again tomorrow if you’re game.”
Liam’s eyes went up to Felipe’s and he broke out into a wide smile.
“You know I am.”
Liam continued sitting and staring down the slight hill toward the back wall of the school.
“Well,” said Felipe, “are you coming or what?”
“Am I coming?”
“Yeah, man. I thought I should probably walk you home. Make sure everything’s good?”
“Oh. You think it would be all right if I just hung out here for a bit longer? I can make it home on my own.”
Felipe bounced up and down on his feet a few times, thinking.
“Look, Fel. You’ve gotta get going and I can make it home fine. I snuck out without getting caught and got this far without issue.”
“You won’t … won’t tell your parents that leaving was my idea?”
“I won’t get caught coming back in, so I won’t have to tell them anything.”
Felipe still wasn't convinced and he stood his ground.
“Yes, okay. If I get caught, I’ll tell them I just wanted to slip out for a few hours to … to go see a movie.”
“Bet?”
“Bet.”
“Thanks, man. See you tomorrow!”
Felipe hardly gave the black van parked on the street at the bottom of the hill across from the school a second glance as he ran down the block to where he’d left his bike locked in an alleyway between two apartment buildings.
Now
That’s it, okay? Felipe begged himself, cursed himself, slapped himself in the face. He’d gone through the full recollection so many times over the years that its details stood out sharper and crisper in his mind than the world around him most days.
But that wasn’t it, not yet. And his brain wouldn’t let him off the hook that easily. There was still the matter of what he’d seen the following day.
He hadn’t been able to get a hold of Liam, but had figured their plan was set in stone. He’d returned to the schoolyard at the same time the next day, hoping he’d find his friend there, waiting to while away a few hours talking about stupid shit and pretending to be ordinary kids.
Instead he’d seen red and blue lights flashing through the gloom. He’d seen officers milling around, shaking their heads and looking sick. He’d seen the tarp on the ground, not fifteen feet away from where the two of them had sat the day before.
He’d turned away and ran before he saw the body. He didn't need to see it. He never wondered who it was.
In the years that had followed, he’d been a good little employee. He’d left home and stayed at a safehouse of the Murphy’s. He’d been utterly devoted, and he’d never once mentioned the hand he’d played in Liam’s death.
His getting a letter from his uncle in Maine had been the thing that had finally drawn him out of the cycle he was in long enough to examine it critically.
Eight Weeks Ago
He was sitting on a park bench—the only outdoor fixture still standing in this ill-maintained neighborhood park—across the street from his old house, and staring around at the world with a mixture of rage and sadness.
He looked at the spot where, not so long ago, his mother—before she’d gotten hooked, first on the oxys and then on the harder stuff—had pushed him in a swing. Only two of the posts were still standing, and one of the seats from the swing was sitting on its side fifteen yards away.
He didn’t know where his parents were anymore. He wasn’t even sure if they’d noticed when he moved out, if they’d looked for him, if they cared. They certainly weren’t here anymore. He’d seen a homeless man in a subway station who looked a bit like his dad, but he hadn’t gotten up close enough to confirm that. Somehow, even though he had no real good feelings where his parents were concerned, he didn’t want that for them.
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He watched as a postal worker came up the street, shuffling envelopes in her hands, and stopped in front of the old house. She looked around, like she found it hard to believe that anyone would want a letter delivered to this ramshackle old shack that it was clear no one lived in.
Finally, she shook her head, walked up to the mailbox, and pushed the letter in. She walked away humming, the odd delivery probably already fading from her memory.
Felipe stared after her, dumbfounded, for what seemed like minutes. Then, getting to his feet unsteadily, he made his hesitant way across the street and picked the letter out of the mailbox.
“Benecio and Beatriz Sousa,” he read aloud. Those were his parents’ names, and the address underneath was the one for this house.
His hands shaking slightly, he opened the envelope gingerly, as if he already knew the gift that it held, and he was afraid it might crumble to dust if he didn’t treat it with due reverence.
“My dear sister Beatriz,” he read, mouthing the words as tears welled in his eyes. “I received your letter from almost a year ago. I want you to know that I didn’t write this response lightly. I apologize that it’s taken so long, but I wasn’t sure for a long time what I should say, or what I should do.”
He paused, part of his heart telling him to cast the letter aside and go back to the safehouse and get back to work, and the other, greater part of his heart—which he was only now discovering was still there—was telling him to read on, to accept the things he felt.
“I want to say, I am very sorry for how things have turned out for you and Benicio. I know that when you moved to New York, you had such high hopes for your future. I know that Felipe, surprise though he was, was the light of your life for many years.
“So I know it isn’t easy for you to ask me for help. To ask me to take him in. Nevertheless, I have decided that if you believe this is what’s best for your son, then I must agree. I will be taking the train into the city on the seventeenth of August, and I will meet you at your house then. I do hope that Felipe will agree to come.
“I wish you all the best, and I send you all my love,
“Antonio”
Felipe hadn't known that his mother was still in touch with her brother. He certainly didn't know that she'd contacted him and asked him to take Felipe in. It was perhaps the most motherly thing she'd done for him.
And now, when the response came, she wasn't here to see it. But he was.
And it changed everything.
Now
He’d moved out of the safehouse and onto the streets that very evening, hating the idea of being homeless, but hating even more the idea of accepting any more charity from the Murphys. His every action had started to feel disgusting to him. He looked back on his years of indentured servitude with a mixture of regret and anger. And he had the luxury of looking back now, because for the first time in years, he had something to look forward to—a break in the cycle.
And now that he knew that there was someone out there, unconnected to all of this, who wanted him, who loved him, he was only counting the days until he could get away.
One last job. The thought had come to him almost fully formed. Ask them what you can do to get out.
And now that job was done, and he’d just have to pray that it was enough.
He waited until the squad cars departed well after midnight before approaching the shelter. Even though it was obvious to him now that they weren’t there for him, attracting undue attention from the cops wasn’t a good idea at the best of times. Shocking, then, that one of the people he trusted most in the city should be a cop.
He’d met detective Gonzalez at the shelter many times in the past few weeks, usually as one or the other of them was just coming or going. He’d established enough of a friendly rapport with most of the other regulars there that the volunteers saw him and smiled, happy to have someone around they could count on to help keep things safe and sane. All except the bitchy one—Kayla, he thought her name was.
He had an easy time getting along with people, he always had. That had helped him get in with the Murphys—although he hadn’t been aiming to at first—and it helped him now, to gain the trust of the authorities and the others he met on the streets.
Detective Gonzalez, though, was different. He seemed to look not just at Felipe, but through him. And even though he looked deeper than other people, it seemed like he still liked what he saw.
The fifth time they’d met, the detective had given Felipe his card and told him if he ever needed anything—‘anything at all,’ he’d said—to give him a call.
“Ayyyy Felipe, where you been, sugar? You missed all the action tonight.” The voice came from a side alley as Felipe was making his way up to the shelter’s front door.
That was Carla, and Felipe groaned inwardly at her presence. She was maybe three or four years his senior and clearly interested in him. He didn’t have any real problem with her, besides that she knew him from his other life. He’d delivered packages to one of the Murphy’s dealers before while Carla was at said dealer’s apartment, getting high.
She hadn’t brought up anything about it with him or anyone else at the shelter, but he couldn’t help feeling like it was something she was holding over him. Of course, he could have told the others that she was an addict, but that wasn’t really something that could be weaponized; anyone who talked to her for more than a minute could figure that out on their own.
He wouldn’t normally engage with her if he didn’t have to, but right now his curiosity about the night’s events pushed away his wariness.
“What action? Was there a fight?”
She sauntered up to him and placed her hands on his shoulders, swaying back and forth as if dancing.
“You want some action, Felipe baby?”
“Focus, Carla. What action did I miss here tonight?”
“Come down the alley with me and maybe I’ll show you some action.”
He pushed her hands away and started to turn back toward the shelter.
“Only kidding, Felipe. Don’t be such a baby,” she droned. She made her face pouty. “You’re never any fun. You seemed like you’d be a fun sort of guy the first time I saw you.”
“Never mind that, Carla. Are you going to answer the question or not?”
“Fine, whatever. Yeah there was a fight, in a manner of speaking. You know Gary? Good ol’ Gary who got kicked out for getting a little handsy with a gal? And one who didn’t even appreciate that kind of thing, if you can imagine that.”
“I know Gary, sure.” Felipe shuddered. He’d known some very bad people over the years, but Gary was a creep of a different sort.
“Gary got himself some power, and he was not willing to forgive the people here for what they done to him.”
“Power as in … As in powers?”
“That’s right, baby. I didn’t see it so can’t say for sure, but it sounded like he had some sort of … dust … people who turned into werewolves or something? Went after the detective and then disappeared. And Gary turned into a cloud of dust and flew away.”
If Felipe hadn’t known with certainty that superpowers were a real thing, and that they could come in some very strange sizes and shapes, he would have dismissed everything Carla had just said as the ramblings of a psychotic drug addict. Even knowing those things, the story still seemed a bit far fetched.
He ran through what she’d said and caught on one specific detail.
“Wait a minute … the detective. Is he okay?”
“Sure, baby. I saw him leaving just as I got here. Police are still milling around, as you can see. The place is a crime scene, but they’re not kicking out anyone who got in before shit went down.”
“But they’re not letting anyone else in?” Felipe said, dejected. It wouldn’t be the first night he’d spent literally on the streets, but that didn’t make it much easier to face.
“That’s right. But don’t worry so much, baby. I’ve got a sleeping bag down here that’s big enough for two.”
Felipe didn’t respond, only turned and walked away, going over his options in his mind. It was summer, so being outdoors wasn’t so tough. And the night really wasn’t that long. More likely than not he’d find a bench somewhere to doze on, getting no real sleep, and feeling like shit tomorrow.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me, baby!” shouted Carla at his back.
The good news was that his job still paid, and he had money. If he was over eighteen, he’d be renting an apartment, but he was too young to sign a lease. And hotels, besides the seediest ones, required you to have a credit card on file in order to rent a room.
But the money he had would be good enough to buy an extra large coffee in the morning, and that was better than nothing.
“Felipe Sousa! You piece of shit!” Initially he mistook the voice of the person behind him for Carla’s and was going to keep walking. But when he turned his head a fraction, he could see in his peripheral vision a girl who was decidedly not Carla, and she was flanked by two men who were both bigger and meaner than him.
The girl he’d been sleeping with, Sammy. And two members of her brother’s gang, the Novaks.
Fuck, he thought, and started running.
——————
Felipe found himself hunched over, his hands resting on his knees and his breath coming in great heaves in the middle of the night, in the middle of the city, behind a rock at the edge of Central Park, and still his would-be assailants weren’t far behind. He was fast, slippery, but he hadn’t managed to shake them yet.
“Feliiiiiiipeeeee,” came a high, almost laughing voice. “Come out, little buddy, and I promise we won’t hurt you.”
“Much,” said another voice, and both broke into a laughing fit.
The third voice—the voice of Sammy, a girl he’d professed to love in order to get in her good graces and rip her brother off—hadn’t spoken or shouted in a while. That was the voice he really didn’t want to hear. And yet, the absence of it spoke to a degree of anger and hurt that made her all the more dangerous.
He knew the others would hurt him, perhaps quite badly. But Sammy was the one he really had to fear, because she’d make sure the others didn’t kill him. She’d make sure he saw her brother first.
He was still breathing heavily, but he tried to will his lungs to need less from him, for his heartbeat to slow its maniac pace. He feared that the noise of his forceful exhalations or else the pounding of heart against chest would give him away. They couldn’t see him right now, he reasoned, and this park was blessedly dark, with two lights burnt out nearby. If he stopped running and started slinking through the shadows instead, he might have a chance.
But he wouldn’t get that far on his own, and he knew that. He considered calling Simon. No doubt the Murphys could get some guys out here pretty quick. And given that they were considering attacking Sammy’s brother’s gang anyway—with their own guns, no less—it didn’t seem that outrageous to get the gang war started a little early.
But no … He wouldn’t accept any more help from them, and he wouldn’t have even more blood on his hands.
He looked at the number in his phone, debated for sparse seconds, and then hit dial.
Even with the volume all the way down, he cursed each ring as he waited for the detective to pick up. His ears were tuned into every noise of the city and the park around him. He could hear approaching footsteps, but they didn’t sound sure of their direction or destination. Still searching.
After five rings, the detective answered.
“This is Gonzalez. Who am I talking to?”
“Gon—Detective Gonzalez. This is Felipe Sousa. You gave me this number, told me to call if I was ever in trouble.”
The detective didn’t sound tired, which shocked Felipe. It was almost two in the morning. Detectives must keep some strange hours, he thought.
“I said if you ever needed anything. I never said anything about trouble.”
“I know, but I’m—”
“You’re in Central Park, by the sounds I’m hearing through the phone. And your breathing and the speed and volume of your speech suggests you’re extremely agitated but trying to stay quiet. Why? You’re being followed. You need to get out of there quickly. I’m on my way.” He hung up.
What the fuck was that? Felipe wondered, putting his phone back in his pocket. How could the detective have gotten so much from so little. He’d hardly given Felipe a chance to speak.
But he was on his way. That was the important thing. In the meantime, though, Felipe still had to keep out of sight. He was on the Southwestern edge of Central Park, not far from Hell’s Kitchen, and he debated whether to slink farther into the park, which was both darker and more open than the city streets, or to trust the brighter but more maze-like city to conceal him.
He decided on the park, but he’d stick close to the edge. Detective Gonzalez hadn’t even asked him where in the park he was, and despite his incredible leaps of logic to figure out that Felipe was there at all, Felipe wasn’t banking on him being able to pinpoint him anywhere. At least if he could see the street, he’d see the detective driving by. Hopefully.
He snuck around behind the Maine Monument, and looked back toward Columbus Circle, where he could see one of Sammy’s ‘friends’ perched on the base of the statue of Christopher Columbus, and looking in every direction for a sign of him. He turned and, staying low to the ground, headed a little farther into the park, keeping Central Park West in sight and heading in the general direction of Greyshot Arch.
A shout of triumph behind him told him they’d seen him. So much for the shadows. He broke into a run again.
He’d had enough time to catch his breath, and he was back to running at near his top speed. He made it the nearly 700 feet to Dalehead Arch in fifteen seconds and was almost ready to celebrate, certain that there was no way they could’ve kept him in sight that far when someone tackled him from his left and he went flying headfirst into the stone at the underside of the arch.
His vision turned to static and his thoughts were a jumbled mess. He came around to someone slapping him in the face.
“You’ve been a very naughty boy, lover,” said a voice he almost recognized. He looked up into a face whose features were all mixed up. Another slap was delivered to his face, this time from the other side. His vision came into sharper focus. Sammy.
“Sammy, I don’t know what this is about …” he began. Stupid. If you didn’t know then you wouldn’t have run.
“That’s funny, and I bet you could weave us quite the entertaining tale if I let you, Fel, but I don’t think any of us have time for that. Do we, boys?” The guys in her company looked at him menacingly and shook their heads.
“Nah, and besides, it would end the same way. We’d have to cut you. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Sammy, please. I had to.”
“You had to? You’ve been with the Murphys all along—”
He started to shake his head.
“Yes, Fel. Don’t try to deny it. When some of our stuff went missing, we had some people look into it. ‘Is there a gang in New York with a slimy, traitorous little Brazilian streetrat working with them?’ we asked around. And, sure enough, we found out there is.”
She paused for dramatic effect, and one of her accomplices tugged on her shirtsleeve.
“What the fuck is it, Gregor?” she asked, shooting him an annoyed look.
Gregor pointed over Felipe’s left shoulder. He tried to crane his neck around to see what they were looking at, but Sammy smacked him again.
“Don’t move, streetrat,” she whispered, her tone all venom.
She got up and moved in the direction they’d been looking while the other two stayed by him, looking at him as if daring him to shout for help.
“Good evening, Father,” he heard Sammy saying to someone he couldn’t see.
Father? he thought. He’d been certain she was about to end that sentence with ‘officer’ or ‘detective’. Am I about to be saved by a priest?
He was seated with his back to a low stone wall, and Sammy’s two goons were crouched down, keeping an eye on him. He wanted badly to turn around and see what was happening, but he didn’t like the look in their eyes. He knew it was only the thought of what Sammy’s brother would do to them if they didn’t bring Felipe in in one piece that kept them from beating him to death themselves right there and then.
“What the fuck?” said one of them, his eyes drifting away from Felipe and up to the sky. “Matty, do you fuckin’ see that?” he asked the other one.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Patrice? And what are you looking at?” Matty looked up at the sky, scanning his eyes back and forth, searching for whatever had caught Patrice’s attention.
Felipe realized he hadn’t heard either Sammy or the person she had gone to see—the priest, apparently—say anything in several minutes.
“Holy shit. Holy mother of God,” muttered Matty under his breath. “What the fuck is that thing? Is that a goddamn angel?”
Felipe finally allowed himself to look up, intensely curious what had captured everyone’s attention, and satisfied that they were sufficiently distracted to not notice him moving. He saw nothing. He’d been scared, and he’d been exhausted, but suddenly he felt something else. He felt deeply uneasy, as if he had inadvertently stumbled into something that had nothing to do with gang warfare or the drug trade or any of the other mundane things that had dominated his every day for the last four years, and he very much wanted in that moment for anyone—even Sammy’s brother—to get him out of there.
He was very near the point where he would have spoken aloud, to voice a question, if only to break the uneasy silence in which everyone but him was staring at something captivating in the skies that he couldn’t see, when the two gangsters in front of him fell to their knees and brought their hands up in front of them in prayer. Behind him, he could hear Sammy start to scream. Joyous screaming? No. He knew the sounds of pain when he heard them.
The two in front of him were now crawling away from him on their knees, muttering to themselves and occasionally bringing their faces to the ground and kissing it. He heard footsteps start to come around the wall, and he no longer wanted to look to see what was going on behind him.
“Hello, my child. As you can see, I have taken care of these sinners for you. They’ll renounce their old ways and come to join my flock.” The man standing before him was a priest, without a doubt. A young one, handsome, with skin darker than his own, jet black hair and a charming—but currently very sad—smile.
“Thank you,” said Felipe, slowly, deliberately. “I … appreciate the help.”
“Only by the grace of God do I serve. And if he calls me to save some souls in Central Park in the middle of the night, who am I to deny him?”
“Of course, of course. Well, thanks again, Father.” Felipe got to his feet and smacked the dust off of his pants. “Well, I’ll be on my way, then. Have a good night, Father.”
He took two steps away and found the priest standing in front of him. He turned the other way and the priest was there, too. He looked around and found himself surrounded by dozens of identical priests, all holding their hands out toward him, crosses held in every hand.
“But there’s still a soul to save here, my son.”
“I … I think my soul’s just fine,” he said, and immediately regretted it; the priest’s face shifted from a sad smile to an ugly scowl in no time at all.
“I’m afraid no mortal soul is ‘just fine’. You have work to do, my child. But that’s okay, you have God on your side. You have me on your side. I can see inside your heart, you know. I can see your sins, the things you’ve done”—several of the priests around him melted and changed and became perfect images of his parents, several more became copies of Liam—“and I know that sin attracts sinners. These three sinful animals wouldn’t have been after you if you weren’t of a like kind.”
His voice grew more full of righteous anger as he spoke, and by the end of his speech the voice was ringing out all around Felipe, from the mouths of infinite copies of the priest, Felipe’s mother, his father, Liam; all of their voices bleeding together, and each of them angrier and uglier by the second.
He could no longer see Sammy or the two gangsters; he was surrounded by such a mass of people that he couldn’t see anything but angry faces and a black sky. He spun in circles, looking for an opening as they drew closer, all of them holding their crosses toward him and shouting—no, screeching—prayers and curses at him.
God damn, he thought. I’d take a million of Sammy’s goons over one of this guy.
Suddenly, he heard a sickening crack, and all at once all but one of the figures around him collapsed to the ground.
“Sorry about that, Father,” said detective Gonzalez, standing over the priest with a baseball bat in his hand. “You okay, kid?” he asked, looking over at Felipe, who was shaking and thought he was about to be sick.
“Is … is he …?”
“What? Dead?” The detective actually laughed. “Give me some credit, kid. He’s just out for a few hours.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
The detective took a few seconds, and Felipe had the impression he wasn’t sure how honestly to answer. “Call it intuition?” he said, as if he wasn’t sure.
“Okay? Can we just get out of here? Do you have to call this in or something?”
“Hey, kid. I know this sucks, but yeah. My partner has a real hard-on for this priest guy. Can’t believe I found him.” He looked at Felipe thoughtfully as Felipe settled himself onto a park bench, still shaking slightly. “… On this night, too,” he said quietly, more to himself than Felipe.
“Why the hell was he after you?”
“He wasn’t. He just sort of showed up,” said Felipe. “He was after those guys …” Felipe trailed off, realizing that Sammy and the two gangsters were nowhere to be seen.
Gonzalez followed his gaze, looking around the park. “So you were running from those two—no, three—and you ended up here. The priest shows up and does his light show for them, leaving you thinking you’re saved and safe to go, and boy, are you ever eager to go. But then the priest turns on you, and you realize he’s way off his rocker, and you’ve got nowhere to run, and that’s about when I come in?”
“That’s … unbelievably astute. You want me just to call all that intuition, too?”
“Listen, kid … Felipe. I could let you go, now. You don’t need to be here when the other cops show up. They don’t need to know why I came out here in the first place.”
“Where would I go?” asked Felipe, considering the possibilities.
“Get out of the city. It doesn’t seem like it’s been good for you, and it’s only going to get worse. And that’s more than just intuition. I know enough about how these things go, and there’s been something in the air. Something I’ve felt for a while. These powers, man.”
“Sure, but … I already have a plan to get out. I have to wait another couple weeks. I’ve got this uncle …”
“Well that’s good news.”
“Thing is, though. This is my city. It’s been pretty shitty to me, and it’s full of some truly vile fuckers.”
“No denying it,” said the detective, looking at Felipe appraisingly now.
“But … There are also people in it who aren’t so bad. Some who are even pretty good.” He glanced up at the detective as he said it, but he was thinking about Liam, too. “After all the shit I’ve done, all the bad I’ve helped bring into the city …” He wasn’t sure how much to tell the detective. Self-incrimination seemed like a bad idea.
“You looking for a way to give back?” asked the detective.
“I’m not … I mean, what do I have to give?”
“If you have the capacity for evil, you have the capacity for good.”
“That sounds like the sort of thing that priest would’ve said.”
“Just because he’s nuts doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Felipe hadn’t really been thinking about staying, or trying to help people, or save the city, or any other heroic shit like that. At least, he hadn’t been consciously thinking about it, but now that he was talking through things, it felt like something that had been welling inside him for a while. He leaned his head back and stared up at the stars. They’d look the same anywhere else, he thought. Brighter, even, without all the light pollution. But there was something about the view of a clear sky from Central Park on a beautiful summer night that he didn’t think he’d be able to find anywhere else.
“Hey, Sammy!” came a shout from South of them, back by Columbus Circle. “We got your call. Got here as fast as we could. Where you at?”
“Friends of yours?” asked detective Gonzalez, raising an eyebrow at Felipe.
“I wouldn’t classify them as such.”
“Ten to twelve of them,” said the detective, “if the footsteps are anything to go by. I don’t fancy my chances against that many with a baseball bat. My pistol is in my car.”
“So what are we going to do? You haven’t even called for backup yet.” Felipe was cursing himself—cursing both of them—for sitting on a park bench and chatting idly instead of getting more cops to the scene immediately. On the ground in front of them, the priest was stirring.
“Fuck it. Pérez is never going to forgive me for not nabbing this guy, but we should probably go.”
“Where?”
“My car is parked not far away. Come on.”
Felipe got to his feet and followed the detective at a brisk clip to the Western edge of the park. Someone behind them spotted them and shouted, raising the alarm, and they broke into a run. The footsteps behind them grew louder as the ten to twelve thugs gave chase. A gunshot rang out and Felipe redoubled his pace.
They got to the detective’s car, and the man actually slid across the hood, like in some cheesy action movie. Felipe didn’t have time to be impressed as he dove into the backseat and ducked his head low. A bullet hit the rear window and it exploded inward as they peeled away.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he intoned. Something shiny on the floor caught his eye.
“What the fuck is this thing?” he asked, reaching his hand out toward it.
“Wait! Felipe. Don’t touch that thing, not unless … Do you want to touch it? Do you want to know what comes next?”
He’s already given me his permission to give it to you, you know, spoke another voice in Felipe’s head. Smooth, feminine, enticing. But you still have to want it.
“What will happen?” he asked aloud.
“To you? I have no idea. Me, I think I just got really good intuition. Or something like that.”
“That’s a power?” asked Felipe, but he wasn’t as incredulous as he could have been. It explained the ridiculous and accurate leaps of logic the detective had been making all evening.
“Apparently … Not one that’s going to save us from the people chasing us, though,” he said, nodding in the rearview mirror to indicate the car and two motorcycles that were pursuing them.
“If I do this … it means I can’t leave the city, doesn’t it?”
“What? Why would it mean that?” Detective Gonzalez made a fast and entirely irresponsible left turn at an intersection just as the light turned red and a truck came through from the street they were turning onto, barring the way of the car that was following them. Felipe snuck a look out the back window to see the two motorcycles veer around the truck and get back on their tail.
“Not like that. For me, I mean.” Felipe was only talking to himself now, and the detective seemed to realize it because he didn’t respond. “It means I have to do something here. Something to make up for … But I don’t even have a place to live.” He said this and was surprised to find himself getting choked up, as if the reality of his living situation had just hit him now, and in a way it had. He’d been so sure that he’d be out of the city for good soon that it hadn’t mattered where he was living until then. But if he stayed …
“Fuck it,” he said at last, as another bullet grazed the rear window and sent cracks spiderwebbing across it.
He reached his hand down and touched the shiny metal orb that was sitting on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He passed out for a moment and saw lights growing and bursting and winking out of existence. He regained his composure within a few seconds.
“Well, what can you do?” asked the detective.
“I’m glad you asked,” said Felipe, a strange power and confidence surging through his veins, coloring his thoughts and making him suddenly, utterly unafraid of the situation they were in.
He brought his hands up, and then lowered them down, and as he did, a curtain of translucent black settled around the car. He heard the motorcycles slam on their brakes behind them, and he looked back to see the drivers shaking their heads in confusion.
“What did you just do?”
“I made us invisible. Bent the light around the car.”
“That’s … impressive.”
“Well, not to brag, but it is a bit cooler than ‘intuition’.”
Neither of them laughed, but the detective did crack a small smile.
What the fuck did I just get myself into? Felipe wondered. But despite his uncertainty, he felt less sick and more certain than he had in a long time.