Spades

Whoever it was that said every man had to go through hell to reach his paradise better have been right. 

Once again I found myself in the asshole of the world. A place with more crazies and burnouts, more psychotics and misfits, more idiots and addicts per square inch than any place I’d ever known, and I’d done two combat tours in so called third world countries. 

In the past, they used to call places like this, asylums. Hospitals packed to the gills with society’s rejects and enough drugs to keep them positively pacified. Now they call them men’s housing facilities but they’re still at their core mental institutions. A place to put the crazies, the rejects, the beaten broken men and feed them drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

When I accepted this assignment, I didn’t have much to live for. Nightmares. Grief counseling. Alcoholics Anonymous. A year undercover sounded like a vacation. But so did that year in Mogadishu and Panama before that. 

There was no way for me to know, four years before the end of the twentieth century, in the heart of America’s largest city, that going undercover as a homeless man, would put me in the worst place on earth. No one who was there wanted to be there. But for three months out of every year it was full. The harsh winters forced all the animals inside.

They called it a shelter.

I called it a mad house.

Men who had lost all hope of having loving families and good paying jobs were running through the halls, screaming, fighting, and breaking anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor. 

Somewhere behind me an old man with an axe struck a fire extinguisher and it exploded against the wall. Somewhere ahead of me a guard with a helmet and a vest was on the ground getting stomped out by three hooligans who’d probably get away with it. I couldn’t help. I was too high, and the lunatics were running the asylum.

I pushed through the noise and the smoke. The sirens and the yelling into a small room at the end of the hall on the fifth floor, and closed the door behind me. The sounds of the shelter riot dropped to a muffle and when I looked around Kidd was already there. He must’ve been following me. He was a skinny little black twenty year old bouncing on his heels like he always did when the world got too loud for him. He was good people.

“Manny!” That was me. “What the fuck are you doing? It’s crazy out there. We got to get the fuck out. We gotta go down. We gotta get past the barricade. We gotta get out of here. Manny… Manny.”

I didn’t answer. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with a glass pipe in my hand and smoke on my mind. Crack smoke. There was something about the chaos going on around me that made me want more crack. I could feel Kidd staring at me but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anyone. Especially not myself.

“Manny? You alright, man?” Kidd wasn’t giving up on me. “If you know people, you need to get ‘em on the phone, Manny. You need to get us the fuck out of here.”

There was more than enough drugs to go around. Especially in a place like this. More than enough pain, death and bad luck for everyone involved. I didn’t belong here. I belonged in some shit hole country shooting people who didn’t speak English. 

I didn’t belong in the middle of New York City staring at a crack pipe wondering if I should quit my job and take it up full time. I was a good soldier and I was good cop but after four months of living the life of an addict, I was starting to wonder if that was still true.

None of this made sense without context. I can talk about the barricades and hostages and the fires and explosions but I’d rather talk about the day before.

The day room. The card game. The last normal day any of us would have in this place, if you could call anything that happened in here normal.

The day room was a big open space that smelled like bad decisions and old cigarettes. Dozens of men scattered around doing nothing in particular. Most of them watching daytime talk shows on televisions bolted to the wall. Scratching, muttering, staring into space, having the same conversation again and again with family and friends who moved on when they hadn’t. An older Mexican man crawled along the floor picking up cigarette butts and trying to smoke them. Everyone called him Buttman.

And at card table, off to the side but in the center of all of it, four men played a card game called spades. It was like bridge but less complicated and the spades were always the trump card.

Chicago dealt. Not because it was his turn but because nobody wanted the argument that came with telling him it wasn’t. He was big, loud, and had the kind of overbearing confidence that came from knowing a little about everything but not enough about anything. 

Eddie sat to his left, sixty-something, Jewish, a real horse head, and the only genuinely decent human being in the building. 

Panama sat across from Chicago, thin and quiet, running his little side business between hands. They called him Panama because he was Panamanian. He never dealt the cards because he was too busy dealing drugs. He was everyone’s dealer, including the guards.

I sat across from Eddie. My Jewish spades partner. He was good. We won a lot but we knew not to gloat. Most days in the common room, we were the only two white people in a sea of color. 

Shantay had decided for himself to be the day’s entertainment. A young trans kid with a battered Walkman and hips that moved like a supermodel when he walked, vogued or sashayed back and forth across the common area.

Shantay wasn’t playing spades. He was dancing around the room like the scorched up floor was a runway and every man in here was the paparazzi. Singing, snapping, vogueing, spinning. Somebody wanted to be the center of attention really bad.

“Sashay, Shantay…” he sang. “Shantay, shantay, shantay!”

Chicago liked to misgender him because he knew it bothered him. Chicago watched him the way a dog watched a squirrel through a window. 

“Yo… Shawn!”

Shantay ignored him.

“Sit the fuck down, man. You’re getting on my last nerve, dude.”

“I am not a dude. I am a diva.”

Panama was getting impatient. “Deal the cards, Chicago. Don’t bother with that fag, man.”

Chicago turned on his partner quickly. “Don’t be telling me what to do. I’ll deal the fucking cards when I feel like dealing the cards.” Then back to Shantay. “Yo, homo. Sit your faggot ass down.”

Eddie, who had a talent for stepping into the middle of things that weren’t his business, put a hand on Chicago’s arm.

“Chicago, my friend. Listen to me. Don’t let foolish people like that bother you. He’s not your enemy. You know what Benjamin Franklin said, ‘We’ve got to hang together or we will all hang separately.’ He was a wise man you should listen to him.”

Chicago looked at Eddie with a confused expression. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means lay off a Shantay, Chicago. She’s a good girl.”

“He gets on my nerves, Eddie.”

“Yeah, but what I’m saying is we’re all the same in here.” He put a hand on his own heart. “And in here.” He indicated with a swinging finger that he meant the shelter. “We’ve all got problems with drugs and alcohol, or whatever.”

“I ain’t nothing like this idiot.”

Shantay was already sashaying away when he added, “And you never will be, honey.”

“You want to be respected,” Eddie continued, keeping Chicago’s focus on him. “So does she. You can at least call her by her name and her proper pronoun. Your parents did not name you Chicago. We call you that out of respect. Shantay is the name that shows that we respect her.”

“I don’t respect that hooker.”

“I know. But you know what I mean,” Eddie said. “Everybody suffers from the same oppression and we’re all in this together. Alright?”

Chicago settled back into his chair like a storm deciding not to make landfall. “Alright, Eddie. I’ll leave IT alone if you give me a dollar.”

“My friend, Chicago. I am Jewish as you are fond of reminding me. And what do we know about jews?”

“They don’t like to give away money.”

“That is correct. Now deal the cards.”

Chicago started dealing. “You in a rush to lose, Pops?” He said. “You still owe me twenty pushups from the last game.”

“I can’t do pushups at my age, son. I’m an old man.”

“Don’t give me that shit, Pop. You know we play for pushups at this table.”

“Stop frontin’, Pop,” Panama said, watching a man approach the table holding a few tightly folded bills. The man held out two fingers and got two vials. Panama made the exchange under the table like it was magic. You saw nothing. Misdirection. Smoke and lost dreams. Another vial sold. It happened every ten minutes.

I didn’t want to listen to anymore complaining, so I stood up for my old partner. “I’ll do Eddie’s pushups,” I said and I dropped to the floor and knocked out twenty half assed pushups before Chicago could argue about it. He didn’t care. 

“I don’t give a fuck who does ’em.” He said. “As long as you pay what you owe. Right, Panama?”

We played another hand. And another. And another. As around the room men moved sluggishly. Except for the ones who made a beeline for the table and scurried back to their bunks to smoke their rock. Men with stalled lives, unmoved with regularity. Every day indistinguishable from the last. A long continuous chain of smoke and lost dreams.

Kidd came through the door waving a pack of cigarettes like a white flag.

“Looseys,” he yelled. “I got looseys, two for a quarter. Two for a quarter, looseys.”

Chicago threw down a four of spades on trick. “Yo, Kidd,” he said. “Give me two cigarettes.” He made a show of reaching for his pocket.

Kidd handed him two cigs and said, “That’s a quarter.”

“I said give me two cigarettes,” Chicago informed him. “You GAVE me two cigarettes. Okay? Thanks. Bye.”

“Give me my fucking quarter, Chicago.”

“Get out of my face, Kidd.” He turned back to the table. “Eddie, what happened?”

Eddie took the cards. “We won that book.”

Chicago grabbed the book back. “No you didn’t. I threw the queen of spades. Why you gotta cheat?”

“Chicago, you threw the four. That was Manny’s queen.”

“I know what I threw.” He stacked the cards in his pile like the argument was over because he said it was over. Then he turned to Kidd, who was still standing there. “Get out of my face, Kidd.” He pushed the deck to Eddie. “It’s your deal. Stop cheating.”

“You’re the one that’s cheating.”

“Then why ain’t your partner say nothing?”

“Deal the cards, Eddie. We’ll win the next  one,” I said.

“You ain’t winning shit, white boy.” Chicago looked at Panama for approval. “Ain’t that right?”

Panama shrugged. “Ain’t nobody up in here can play no spades,” he said under his breath.

Kidd stared at Chicago’s back for a long moment. Then decided to walk away.

“Fuck the cigarettes. They’re just fucking cigarettes, for Christ’s sake.” he mumbled.

Chicago was having the best day ever. 

Another customer walked up to Panama, and he didn’t miss a beat. “What do you want?” Business as usual.

Shantay, who had been quiet for almost five minutes — a personal record — started up again. Louder than before. “Work it, girl. Too much swirl.” He snapped his fingers and did a runway turn in the middle of the room.

Chicago put his cards down. “Shantay!” At least he got the name right. “Sit your bitch ass down.”

“Bitch? I got your bitch, honey.” Snap.

“Let’s play, Chicago,” I said.

Chicago got up from the table. “I’ll kick your little bitch ass. You fucking faggot.” He walked into Shantay’s personal space.

“Chicago.” Panama took an interest because a situation that required guard intervention would shut his operation down. “He’s half your size. Why do you wanna fuck with him?”

Chicago smiled back at his friend and then down at his prey. “It would be something to do,” he said.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Shantay told him.

Two guards rushed in, one holding a stun gun drawn and ready.

“Christian. You starting trouble in here?” the guard asked Chicago, using his legal name.

Chicago went back to the table like a switch had been flipped. “You’re lucky, man.” He sat down and picked up one of his two free cigarette. “Smokin’ it up here, boss,” he said. “Smokin’ it up.”

The guard looked around the room, decided nothing was worth the paperwork, and laughed.

Chicago picked up his cards and made a face. “Who dealt this shit?” He looked at Panama. “I ain’t got nothing. It’s on you, partner.”

“No talking across the board, fellas,” Eddie said.

The game went on. Chicago and Panama couldn’t get it together. Panama was too busy selling rocks to pay attention to the board and Chicago was too busy being Chicago.

“Throw the fucking card, Panama.” A card dropped. “Where’s your three books, nigger?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“You said you had three.”

Eddie handed me the cards. “Just ain’t your game, I guess.”

Chicago looked at Panama like he wanted to strangle him. “Yo, motherfucker, you ain’t paying attention to the board, man. Too busy with that rock. We’re gonna get beaten by this old Jewish junkie and this undercover cop looking motherfucker.” He stared at me. “What the fuck are you doing in a shelter anyway, white boy?”

I had my answer ready. I always had an answer ready. The truth was always the easiest lie.

“I used to live in an abandoned building but a crazy lesbian shot herself in the heart. So we had a choice. Nobody volunteered to clean it. So we packed up and left. Then it got cold. Now I’m in here.”

“That’s life in the big city, man,” Chicago said.

“It’s too fucking cold to be sleeping in the park.”

“So now you’re in here with the niggers and the crazies and Eddie here, the world’s only living homeless Jewish junkie.”

Eddie looked at the score sheet. “All we need is ten more books, partner.”

“No talking across the board, Eddie.”

“I’m just telling him the score.”

I picked up my cards and pretended to do my job. “So why are you here, Chicago?”

“I think it’s because I fight and fuck too much. You know?” 

“I know it well.”

He looked at his hand. “Tell me you got something, partner.”

Panama threw his cards down in disgust. “I ain’t got shit, man.”

“I’ve got six books, Eddie.” I said.

“And I’ve got the rest.” Eddie turned to Chicago. “Any time you’re ready, big boy, you can drop and give me twenty.”

Chicago hit the floor. “Fuck you, old man.”

Panama slid two vials of crack across the table. “There’s my twenty. You guys can split that. I’m outta here.”

Panama got up and left. I looked down at the vial in my hands. Eddie didn’t smoke crack but I did. I looked up and he was smiling at me and not just because the shelter bully was doing the worst pushups either of us had ever seen. Or the free drugs. Or the epic come back. It was a moment of happiness in a horrible place. A fox hole, a hospital ward, a prison cell, a war zone. Moments of happiness happened where they happened. There was no rhyme or reason. 

“Are we playing spades or what?” I shouted. “Who’s next?”

The worst of it started in the bathroom with Shantay stirring up trouble, Chicago and friends taking the bait, and a trained professional killer who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

It was late. The halls were dim and quiet. Except for the sounds of snoring coming from every dorm. I needed a piss. I walked past the guard station, a glorified chicken coop. There was one guard. He was half asleep, chin to his chest, not even pretending to care. He saw me. 

The bathroom door was closed. I could hear voices inside. I pushed it open and the smell hit me first — crack smoke, thick and sweet. Chicago and two of his boys were huddled by the sinks, passing a pipe between them. I kept my head down and walked to the last stall. They saw me.

The boys didn’t stop talking. People like Chicago never stopped talking. It was how they convince themselves they matter. It was how they kept the dark thoughts at bay. When you knew you weren’t a good person, when you knew down deep that you were in fact a terrible human being, the last thing you wanted was silence.

“Yo, I hear the nigger’s got a warehouse down by the water,” Chicago said. “They make plastic weapons. They even make plastic explosives.”

“That’s bullshit. Ain’t nobody blowing up shit with plastic. Ain’t nobody making bombs out of tupperware.”

“Why are you so stupid?”

“They kicked me out of school.”

“See. That’s the problem. They wanna say my man here belongs in prison but really he belongs in school.”

“Yo. I ain’t doing no white people school where they make you sit in a little chair in a line and you stare at a fucking teacher. What the hell is that? Niggers can’t do that. Sitting all uncomfortable like lemmings.”

“What the fucks a lemming?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go to school.”

“Fuck you. You don’t know shit, man.”

“I know high school ain’t about learning nothing. It’s all about memorizing shit for the test.”

“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

“Yeah man and that I before E shit.”

The bathroom door swung open. I heard the Walkman before I heard the footsteps. It was Shantay, walking into the bathroom late at night by himself. 

He walked past Chicago and his boys and into a stall. 

Chicago motioned toward him.

“Then there’s that nigger over there.”

“Yo, we can give you a hand with that, baby.”

“Looks like somebody needs a real man.”

They started laughing.

Shantay came out of the stall and walked to the sink. He saw them laughing and pulled off his headphones.

“You know what’s funny about crack?” he said. “Crack will take your teeth out, make your skin crack and your eyes yellow but smoke a rock and you think you look like a million bucks.” Shantay said. “Y’all boys listening. Crack will take your apartment, your wife, your kid, your job and all of your friends but smoke a rock and dignity crawls right up out your ass and tells you you’re the shit.” 

Shantay was spitting. 

“Crack will take your life away and then sell it back to you for a ten dollar hit. And you’ll pay it. Every time, honey. You will pay it because everything you love lives in that pipe. Everything you were. Everything you wanted to be.” Shantay snapped his fingers twice. “And then it will convince you that it loves you while it kicks your ass up and down the street and leaves you barely alive so you can do it all again tomorrow. That’s not romance. That’s an abusive relationship with a man who doesn’t love you.”

It happened fast. The two boys grabbed Shantay and threw him into the stall. All three of them crammed in after.

I came out of the stall and pulled the first one off by his collar. He swung around. I used his momentum to slam his head into the porcelain sink. The second one jumped out leading with his fist and I caught his wrist and twisted it up and back so that his knees buckled and he lost his balance. I threw him toward the first guy and he fell over him and into the sinks.

Chicago emerged from the stall with his belt unbuckled and his arms in the air.

He looked at me. I looked at him. He had fifty pounds on me but something in my eyes must have told him the math didn’t work the way he thought it did.

“Get out of there, Shantay,” I said.

Shantay didn’t need to be told twice. He squeezed past us. “I didn’t need your help. I had them just where I wanted them,” he said with a trembling voice that disagreed with his assessment. He left the bathroom in a hurry.

Chicago was mumbling something about not being gay when I left. He still had his hands in the air like he was under arrest.

I didn’t know if my cover was blown or not but I walked out of the bathroom without saying a word. 

The guard in the cage was still asleep at his station. Down the hall, I could hear Shantay singing and twirling back to bed. I went back to my dorm and my bunk and stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out how much damage I’d done to my career.

The next morning I was sitting at the card table alone, shuffling a deck with nowhere to deal it. A couple of the men were watching soaps. 

Shantay sat down across from me and started talking like we were old friends. He made me uncomfortable.

“So what are we playing, Manchester? Man bun? Manfred Mann?”

He didn’t mention the bathroom. Neither did I.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You may ask.”

“Why do you let these guys make fun of you? Why do you act like that — the dancing, the snapping — when you know it makes them want to hurt you?”

“This is me. Take it or leave it, honey.”

“So because you’re gay, you have to act like a fag?”

“I’m not a homosexual. What makes you think I’m a homosexual? I got a wife and a kid, honey. You don’t know me.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. She split when I got locked up the first time.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Damn right.”

We sat with that for a second. Two men at a card table with no women, no families, no game between us.

“What are we doing in here, Shantay? What are two fellas like us doing in a place like this?”

“I don’t know about you, baby. But I got people after me. I’m hiding out. I ain’t no crackhead like the rest of you fools.”

Something snapped in me. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the crack. Maybe it was the four months of watching people rot in place. Maybe it was the way he said “hiding out” like that was a life. I swept the cards off the table.

“I don’t get you fucking people. You complain about how you can’t stand it in here and then you’re too scared to just walk out.”

Shantay tilted his… her head and looked at me the way you’d look at a dog chasing its own tail.

“Are we alright there, Manifred?” Shantay put on a condescending voice. “I think we should check ourselves into a detox tomorrow. Okay, Charles Manson? Manhattan Transfer?”

“Shantay. You realize I can kill you with one hand?”  

They didn’t flinch. Not even a little.

“And what did you do to end up in here?”

“Nothing. Did nothing, had nothing, made nothing. Lost a couple of jobs. Broke a couple of laws. Laughed out loud one time too many and I was here.”

Shantay stood up.

“I gotta tell you. Everybody here thinks you’re a cop.”

“Who says I’m a cop?”

“‘Cause you always got money. And you don’t hustle none.” 

“Who?”

Shantay leaned over the table. “Everyone.” Then she walked away.

I sat there for a while after she left. The television played on. The men stared. The nothing continued.

I think I’m losing my mind. No. It’s not me. It’s everyone else. Yeah. Everyone else is losing their mind. Wait… Scratch that.

The door opened and I was back.

Not back in the memory. Back in the room. Back in the riot. Kidd was on his feet. Eddie was standing in the doorway, out of breath, holding the frame like it was the only thing keeping him upright. The world was blowing up and I was coming down.

The night of the riot, the hallway was unrecognizable. The same hallway I’d walked to get to the bathroom was now a tunnel of broken furniture and chaos. Through the haze I could see men running, pushing, laughing… rioting.

I closed the door and went back to the pipe.

Kidd was still talking but I wasn’t listening. The pipe had gone out and the noise outside was getting worse. I put the guitar case on the bed and opened the door.

“Shantay’s dead.”

“What?”

“Shantay’s dead. The guards killed her and everybody’s going crazy.”

Shantay’s death hit me hard and fast but in the end it was like any other casualty of war. There was no time to mourn while bullets were flying. Keep your head down and run.

“What happened?”

“Chicago lost his mind, man. When he saw Shantay dead, he lost his mind. I can’t even get back to my room and get my stuff. I say we get the hell out of here before the cops come with the riot gear, beat the hell out of us and throw us in jail.”

He looked at me. He looked at the pipe.

“What’s wrong with you guys?”

“It’s not us.”

“Let’s get out of here.” I grabbed the guitar case and headed for the door. “We’ll take the back stairs. They’re closed off, so the police will come up the front.”

We pushed into the hallway. The melee was everywhere — men swinging, men running, men on the ground. The air was still thick with fire extinguisher haze. Somewhere a window shattered. Somewhere else a man was crying.

Kidd was behind me. Then he wasn’t.

I turned around and he was gone. Vanished into the chaos like it had swallowed him. I didn’t have time to look. Eddie was still with me and that was enough.

We reached the stairway. A big chain held the doors shut.

“Oh, shit,” Eddie said. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I never planned anything in my life.”

“It’s locked. We’ve got to go back the way we came.” Eddie looked behind us. “Where’s Kidd?”

“I thought he was right behind you.”

I pulled the doors apart. There was a gap — narrow, maybe a foot wide. Enough for me. Not enough for Eddie.

“I can squeeze through this. Watch the hall.”

“I can’t fit through there, Manny. We’ve got to find another way.”

“There is no other way, Eddie. Watch the hall. You’ll find another way out.”

“I can’t make it.”

Something in me broke. Not anger. Something worse. The part of me that had been carrying everyone else’s weight for four months and couldn’t do it for one more second.

“Stop feeding off me.”

Eddie looked at me like I’d hit him.

I squeezed through the gap and ran down the stairs with the guitar case banging against the railing. I didn’t look back.

I made it down half a flight before I heard it.

“Where the fuck you think you’re going, Pop?”

Chicago.

I stopped on the stairs. My hand was on the railing and my feet wanted to keep moving but the rest of me wouldn’t let them. Through the gap in the chained doors I could hear Eddie’s voice, thin and scared.

“Let me go, Chicago.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Pop. You ain’t the enemy. They are.” A pause. “Where are you guys going?”

“We’re getting out of here. Let me go.”

“But we can win this thing, Eddie. We got to fight these motherfuckers.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I should have kept running. That’s what the training says. That’s what the mission says. But I stood there on the stairs in the dark, listening to a man lose his mind on the other side of a locked door.

“They keep us locked up. They try to kill our spirit. Just like when I was in the joint.” Chicago’s voice was getting louder, bouncing off the hallway walls and down through the gap in the door. “They think just because we’re down, we can’t fight. They think just because we ain’t educated, we don’t know what they up to. They think just because we’re homeless, we can’t get together.”

All at once the lights went out. The emergency lights kicked on and the stairwell turned red.

“They’re trying to make us hate each other. I’m not your enemy, Eddie. The Jews. The Blacks. The Latinos. The Chinese. The Indians. They don’t want us to get together. They’re trying to keep us apart. They’re the enemy.”

I could hear Eddie trying to reason with him. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re down here fighting a race war, fighting a drug war, fighting an imaginary war, while they’re fighting a class war, Pop. A class war.”

Then Chicago’s voice changed. The ranting stopped. Something underneath it came through — something raw and cracked open that I don’t think he knew was there.

“You know what they did to him, Eddie? You know what they did to Shantay?”

Eddie didn’t answer.

“He bit one of them. That’s all he did. He bit a guard’s hand and that motherfucker beat him with a flashlight. Beat him until he stopped moving. And then -“ Chicago’s voice broke. Just for a second. “Then they decided he was a problem. Not a person. A problem. And problems got solutions.”

I sat down on the stairs.

“They crushed her head with a cinder block, Eddie. Like she was nothing. Like she was a cockroach on the floor. Because they didn’t want to do the paperwork. Because a dead homeless trans woman was easier to explain than a crippled one.”

The hallway was quiet for the first time since the riot started.

“That’s why I started this war. Because they think they can do that to her. Because they think nobody gives a shit.” His voice was shaking now. “I give a shit, Eddie. I didn’t know I did. But I do.”

“Chicago.”

“So this is it, Pop. This is where we make our stand. Right here. Right now. Jews and Blacks. Crackheads and crazies. Everybody they threw away. We go back in there together and we show these motherfuckers that we ain’t nothing. That Shantay wasn’t nothing.”

“Chicago.“

“I’m serious, Eddie. Tonight we stop running. Tonight we stop being afraid. Tonight we fight. For Shantay. For every motherfucker in this building they ever put their hands on. We charge at them. Put them in cages and now we’re the guards. Who’s with me?”

In the distance I could hear the sounds of the barricades being pulled down. Tables, chairs and mattresses tumbling down the stairs.

“Eddie,” Chicago insisted. “Bubbeleh. Are you with me?”

Suddenly a bright light filled the hall. A flashlight hit them both in the face.

“Freeze,” a young voice said. “Put your hands up. You’re going to jail.”

Chicago put his hands in the air but Eddie wasn’t buying into the prank. It sounded like Kidd’s voice and it was. “Don’t worry, Eddie,” the big man said. “We’re gonna win this thing.”

The flashlight clicked off.

“It’s just me, guys. Relax.”

I turned and went down the stairs.

Behind me I heard the lock open. Kidd had found a guard’s keys and opened the lock.

I heard Kidd’s voice. Not loud. Not meant for me. Meant for Chicago.

“I know where to go. Mister Rook is going to love you.”

I didn’t stop when I heard it. I kept running. 

I had pushed my way out of hell through the back door, into the cold embrace of purgatory. ||