As we crested the top, three men approached us. They were young, light-skinned blacks, and dressed in traditional gangbanger wear. Low-hanging jeans, team jackets, and ball caps. The ball caps were brand-new Sox game caps, flat-billed and still boasting a 59Fifty sticker. All wore thick chains, gold and silver, and sported simple mustaches. They were hardened men, but not as old as a decent whiskey.
“You Hawk?” said a young guy with shoulder-length cornrows.
Hawk nodded.
“I heard of you,” he said.
“’Course you have.”
“I’m DeVeiga,” he said, not bothering to introduce his friends. Of course, Hawk didn’t introduce me, either.
One of his boys was light-skinned and short. The other was taller and of a darker complexion. The darker one wore earrings in both ears and a very unpleasant scowl as Hawk spoke to Jesus DeVeiga. I smiled at him, but he acted as if he did not notice.
“Your sister is dead,” Hawk said.
DeVeiga nodded.
“She tied in with Victor Lima?”
“Mr. Marcus said you’re cool,” DeVeiga said.
“Mr. Marcus knows his shit.”
“Yeah,” DeVeiga said. “Lela and Victor. They were together. Been together for a long time.”
Hawk stood there, right foot on the tallest step, back foot behind him, but still taller than DeVeiga and his crew. I stood off to the right, very aware of the gun on my hip and the time it would take to draw.
“Where’s the kid, Jesus?” Hawk said, pronouncing the name with a hard J.
DeVeiga stood his ground, his ball cap obscuring his eyes like a gunfighter in a Stetson. He nodded in thought and looked to Hawk. I smiled again at DeVeiga’s crew. No use in spreading a bad attitude for the day.
“Kid’s dead,” DeVeiga said.
I swallowed and took in a long breath.
“Who?” Hawk said.
“Like you said, Lima,” he said. “Him and his brother were Outlaws. But their mama wanted them out. Moved them to New York, tried to get them out of the life around here. Lela come to be with them. She was with Antonio but then with the brother when Antonio got killed. Then they come back to Boston. But this ain’t Outlaw stuff, man. This his own shit he swimming in. This gonna be a problem for us?”
Hawk nodded. “You bet, Jesus. You bet.”
I stepped forward. “Where’s Lima?” I said.
DeVeiga shook his head.
“Can you find him?”
He shrugged, not once looking at me. “That five mil for real?” he said.
“Kinjo Heywood says so,” I said. “You get his kid back.”
“Money wasn’t for finding the kid,” he said. “I heard the money was for killing who took him.”
“And that’s already started.”
“Somebody is hunting,” DeVeiga said. “Damn, Lela. She fucked up as soon as she hooked up with those boys. Should have come back home when Antonio was shot.”
Up behind DeVeiga and his men sat several large, rusted cages connected to failing brick walls. Beyond the cages was a large stone wall with a frieze of two bears caught on their hind legs in a sort of royal seal. The rain was coming down harder now, pinging off the bill of my ball cap, the gangbangers’ ball caps, and Hawk’s bald head. No one seemed to want to call it quits on account of the rain.
“You helping them?” Hawk said.
“Outlaws got no fucking business with folks kill a child,” DeVeiga said.
Hawk nodded, and DeVeiga turned to me. He stared at me and I stared back.
When the rifle cracked in the woods, I recoiled and ducked and DeVeiga spun and turned and hit the ground, toppling down a couple concrete steps. His boys fanned out, pulling automatics and firing wildly into the woods. Two more rifle shots sounded, and the kid with the double earrings was down, too. A large and ugly wound bloomed in his chest. I hopped the side of the stone steps, seeking cover. I had my .357 out, leveled on the concrete wall and firing toward the shots.
The firing stopped. I heard DeVeiga screaming from the top of the steps. I heard my own breath and the patter of rain from the trees. Hawk called out to me, and I called back. Everything was still and silent. I did not move from the wall. I steadied my breath and eased up along the rock barrier against the staircase and raised the gun.
Two more quick rifle shots. Stone and concrete flew upward. The sound of Hawk’s .44 boomed like a cannon into the woods. I looked up in time to see Hawk pulling Jesus DeVeiga from the top of the steps and behind the wall. I fired to give them cover.
The rifle sounded twice more and then went quiet again.
60
DeVeiga had been shot in the upper chest. Hawk removed his jacket and used it as a compress on the wound. One of DeVeiga’s men was dead. The other had run for the woods. I wasn’t sure if he’d made it or not.
There seemed to be only one shooter taking careful aim from somewhere in the thick woods below the old stone cages. I could jump up again and fire off a few rounds. But it wouldn’t do any good. I had absolutely no idea, beyond the sound of the shot, where the shooter had set up.
If I tried to run from the cover of the stone steps, I’d have a nice big target on my back. I could call the cops and wait. But that would give the shooter time to move through the woods and gain a better position. My best chance was to leave Hawk and DeVeiga and get north, beyond the back of the cages, and circle around to the shooter. The only trouble came from about twenty yards of open ground to the cages. I thought about yelling “time out” but figured the bad guy or guys to be not all that sporting.
Instead I looked to Hawk and nodded to the old cages. He nodded back, pressing the wadded-up jacket into DeVeiga’s chest. I made it down onto my belly, and snake-crawled inch by inch on the mud and leaves and trash and debris. The rain came on even harder now, and I continued to crawl, stomach and thighs and chest pressed to the ground. Two shots cracked again from the woods. Still, I was confident I could make it without being seen, until the last eight to ten yards, when my plan was to run like hell to the stone wall.
Inch by inch, mud up under my hands and on my .357 carried in my right hand, I made it close to the wall. And then I ran like hell.
Three shots echoed through the woods. I saw stone chip a few feet away to my right and another chip off the far wall as I dove to the ground and crawled behind the wall. The bear cages were more than ample cover, reaching up fifty feet, built of sturdy stone and concrete. The gun went silent. I ran behind the curvature of the old cages, well protected, and hoped to make it back into the woods before the shooter was gone. My clothes were soaked, jeans drenched in water and mud, bomber jacket coated and heavy. I dropped the jacket at the far corner of the cages, looking into the depths of the Long Crouch Woods. The thick trees, leaf-covered ground, and the stillness of the rain in the woods made it difficult to believe I was still in Roxbury.
I called 911 and reported a shooting and the need for an ambulance. I quickly reloaded my .357 and checked the load on the .38 from my jacket pocket. I listened and waited. I hoped I’d see a movement, a glint off a scope. But in the rain, I couldn’t have spotted a rhino tap-dancing to “Stormy Weather.” I just needed to make it far enough behind the shooter and come back on him before he spotted or heard me. I would walk with stealth. The wilderness preservation of my world.
I again took up the old tactic of running like hell. I sprinted far into the woods, following the stone fence around the park until I was confident I was beyond the shooter. I cut back into the woods, water dappling muddy holes and tapping hard off the yellowing leaves. I ducked low branches and jumped over fallen logs until I was far within the park. I breathed quietly and tried to listen, but again heard only the rain. If Pearl was with me, perhaps she might point to the shooter. But if Pearl had been with me, I’d have been worried about her safety. I kept moving, kept walking, far into the woods, heading back to the stone steps where I’d left Hawk tending to DeVeiga. I could see the steps raising up from the walking path and leading up into the old bear cages. I turned from left to right and saw nothing. I had my .357 held tight and at the ready. At another fallen log, I stopped and scouted the woods before me.