Reggie Evans had spent his entire life falling; through cracks, through people’s hands, through ideas and concepts. He was well-adjusted to the freedom of it, to the rush of air stinging his eyes, to the far-away voices floating in the opposite direction. The kid understood gravity better than some of the world’s best physicists. They could study it for years, hack away at its aspects and velocities and ratios, but he was the only person on the planet that could know it so intimately. It hadn’t let go since the doctor dropped him on day one.

As he tumbled and tossed downward, somersaulting toward the latest in a 17-year string of plane crashes, he noticed something different. This time there was a bottom. Not a metaphorical one, not the famed “end of the line” he’d been warned about by parents and schoolteachers for years, but a beige, dust-covered tile floor.

There were 20 seconds between his frame and a certainly fatal impact. 20 seconds to consider how the priorities in his life had shuffled. Yesterday, his mind had been wrapped around finances, how he would pull together enough scratch to get Christina a birthday present. Today, the primary topic of discussion was the hereafter. Forgiveness. The myriad things he’d been told not to do in Sunday school and the very real possibility that tossing that list in a trash can at age 9 had earned him a balmy final resting place.

Flailing allowed him one final rotation, a chance to look up and see something radiant, white and pure. It sure as hell wasn’t heaven. That beam was coming from someone’s hands, someone old who had been saying things Reggie should have listened to. As usual, Reggie had chosen to listen too little, too late.

5, maybe 7 seconds to go. The light was fading and the assassin had moved on, opting not to watch what was sure to be a sickening impact. He wasn’t going to spin again. Gravity had better things to do. He would end his days ass backwards, just as he’d started them.

Impact.

The floor was as solid as it looked. The tile fractured. So did Reggie’s ribs. The silver dust took flight upon collision, rising like a cloud of spores. Reggie gasped and swallowed the choking residue, coughing and sputtering like an old muffler. His back went numb. He started to gag. Blood rimmed his lips, because you have to bleed when you die. It’s less climactic otherwise.

He wasn’t sure if he was rolling around in pain or if the pounding of gavels in his head was just making him dizzy. Gravity had abandoned him, severing their unspoken bond. The floor, the ceiling and everything in between had joined. His equilibrium was a nightmare.

Someone pulled the plug and his eyes stopped working. Things went from red to gray to sepia-toned, but not black. His sight just went away, as if it had never been there. He hadn’t seen this coming and now he certainly wouldn’t see how it ended.

Most people don’t expect to die when they get up in the morning, but that’s because they’re in no rush to get there. Reggie was different. He didn’t walk or run to his final destination. He drove, in a gas-guzzling four-door truck, built for comfort and speed. He was bobbing his head to a mix of Public Enemy and Rage against the Machine, spouting off choruses that never really meant anything to him. Nothing really did. If something seemed aimless, he was all for it. He kicked down doors, but never left them open for anyone to follow. His life had been a high-octane pursuit. Nobody had led the way, and even worse, nobody had cared enough to chase.

The injuries were taking their toll, but they were taking their damn time doing it. It figured. He’d broken the speed limit for 17 years. He could idle for the last 17 minutes. Why hurry? He hadn’t expected to die that day.

But he sure as hell hadn’t expected to kill anyone either.

SHADESTALKER #1:
Small Time
Homes and Churches (Part 1 of 3)
By James J. Queally

36 Hours Earlier …

“This is the kind of shit that ends up on ‘World’s Stupidest Criminals,’” Reggie said, fidgeting with the armrest of the beat up black Suburban he and his best friend were riding in.

“Would you calm down?” Devon Lane replied, fumbling to light a cigarette and steer the vehicle at the same time. “Always with the negative attitude, can’t you ever just roll with a plan?”

“This isn’t a plan. We should go back to knocking over bodegas and dime stores,” Reggie replied. “At least we could control how fucked we were when that eventually went wrong.”

Devon finally managed to spark the end of his Newport. He took a drag and blew a plume of smoke in his partner’s direction. Reggie slapped wildly at the cloud, turning towards the window looking for escape from the noxious fumes.

“You know I hate that,” Reggie said.

“You stop whining. I’ll stop smoking,” Devon shot back.

Reggie Evans and Devon Lane had been best friends since age 6, when one saved the other from a schoolyard bully. To this day, they still argue about who was playing hero that September afternoon. For 11 years, Devon had gotten Reggie out of and into a sizeable amount of trouble. This night would be no different. Somewhere between baseball cards, puberty and their first taste of beer, Devon Lane decided he wanted to rule Brooklyn’s underworld. Reggie willingly hitched a ride on his compatriot’s pipe dream, for lack of an excuse not to. But even this scheme was too mind-boggling for Reggie.

“Even if we pull this off, they’re only gonna be worthwhile for like, 20 minutes,” Reggie said.

Devon ran the four-door over a speed bump and watched his cigarette roll beneath the gas pedal.

“Hell,” he cursed. “You gonna shut up or you want me to light another one.”

Reggie remained quiet, opting not to deal with his friend’s irritating habit.

“I thought so. Just relax, and do what you said you could when the time comes,” Devon said.

It wasn’t hard to become a hoodlum in Brooklyn. The borough was going to hell on a skateboard. Italian, Japanese, American, Australian. The statistics didn’t discriminate. The criminals came from all backgrounds, with different stories of failure in Chicago, London, Boston, Tokyo… even Manhattan. You could only fuck up so many times. The big fish in Brooklyn’s gang scene had splashed their way down from small pond to small pond, eventually landing in a place they could pass as vice lords. The city had fallen; become a pothole sized puddle, the space creased over on an old Rand McNally’s map of New York.

These were the notions that kept Reggie and Devon going. Brooklyn had a structure, but it might as well have been built from rubber and quicksand. The criminal hierarchy was an endless game of king of the hill, and in the two young felons’ minds, it would only take one misplaced bullet to catapult them up the ladder. But Reggie wasn’t ready for that kind of heat yet. He doubted he ever would be.

“That’s it up there. Valero. $4.06 for unleaded. And we’re supposed to be the crooks?” Devon said, lighting up a second smoke, ignoring his earlier accord.

Reggie nodded, oblivious to the new layer of carcinogens, lost in his almost nightly pontification.

There was nothing wrong with this life, this life where he stole and ran and injured without consequence or care. This life where he did all those things before he was old enough to play the lotto, the life he lived separately from the comfortable home with two parents with two incomes and one desire to see their son stay out of the gutter for more than 48 hours.

Reggie Evans had more than most Prospect Park residents could ask for, but that was his contention. He didn’t ask for it, and he had already folded the hand life dealt him. He wanted to claim his own ground, a modest invisible territory where he wouldn’t be a role model or an outcast. But Brooklyn didn’t have a blue-collar. There were cops and robbers. Politicos and vagabonds. Angels and devils. Reggie didn’t like being called a thief, but he knew he was more comfortable fighting from underneath. He couldn’t sleep at night if he had a badge or a grandstand.

But even after all that thinking, with the cards laid on the table and the lights on bright, this was just too much. Devon turned into the Valero calmly, rolling to a stop next to a line of air pumps, monitoring the lone attendant struggling to take care of his three impatient customers.

If this was Devon’s idea of a fast track to gangland success, then they were driving the short bus.

“Okay, I’m going to say this one more time before we’re running out of here at 90 miles-per-hour,”  Reggie whispered, leaning out the window. “This is fucking stupid!”

“You need a Xanax?” Devon replied. “This is an easy scam. Snatch, grab and split. You use those MVP legs of yours, wheel around the pumps like your stealing home, and I’ll have us out of here with our ill-gotten gains before you can blink.”

“I was a utility player sophomore year,” Reggie scoffed.

“That’s more than enough to swipe three credit cards. I’m not asking you to be Flo-Jo here. I just want you to get the job done.” Devon spat back.

Reggie leaned back against the headrest, surrendering to Devon’s blind enthusiasm. Despite his forceful tone, Reggie knew his best friend was just anxious, excited at the prospect of finally putting one in the win column.

Hours earlier, Devon told Reggie “This is the kind of thing they notice, the creative grabs. This is the mind set they want.” He spoke with an unwavering energy, an expert’s confidence that he’d borrowed from an anonymous mentor. Devon had been tipped off to their latest scheme by the same somebody with a ludicrous street name who had first taught him how to hot wire a Camaro when they were freshmen.

“He does odd jobs for Casa Nostra, the mafia to you,” Devon disclosed months earlier. “He’s on the scene. He’s got a feeling; knows the pulse. If he tells me they’ll notice, then they’ll notice.”

Reggie knew better. This character was Devon, merely aged seven or eight years. Nobody who was really “in” with the big players would craft a plan this careless.

“Late nights, the gas stations below Carroll Avenue are really understaffed. You know the mid-range chains and the local depots,” Devon reminded him on the ride over, his teeth clicking together as he spoke. “And these days, nobody wants to pay for gas in cash. They want to stop off at a full serve, swipe through, and go grab a coffee while some Johnny Immigrant fills their tank. And there they are, working men’s credit cards just sitting there in the slot. No cameras and 1 employee. I keep the car running. You make the grabs and no one is any wiser. We have ourselves an internet shopping spree and the damn thing is done before they’re even finished arguing with the attendant.”

The only people who were going to notice something like this were beat cops and the guys on the crime desk at the Post or one of the local rags. But Christina needed a birthday gift, and Devon had hooked Reggie with the words “quick money,” before trying to sell his piss-poor plot.

Devon tapped on the glass and nudged towards the fuel islands.
2 out of their 3 marks were convenience store bound, and the attendant was behind the only occupied car. Reggie hopped across to the driver’s side, but nerves slowed his descent out the door. All the ideals and circumstances that Devon was praying for were in place, but Reggie’s legs couldn’t get out of first gear.

“You gonna make her a birthday present? Glue some macaroni to the card?” Devon crooned through the window.

Reggie exhaled, spitting caution into the biting night time air, and made his move. The attendant was chatting with the occupant of a blue Buick LeSabre, bargaining for a tip and annoying the driver.
Reggie dipped around the gas island and snagged the first card, a debit from a bank he hadn’t heard of.

“Yeah, there used to be a time when we got the same cuts as barbers, painters, mechanics,” the attendant’s prattling was serving Reggie all to well.

He ducked under a fuel line and made it to the second slot unnoticed. A silver American Express card stuck out from the space this time, which meant more money and less hassles. Reggie, surprised at the ease of his first two snags, angled his body around the edge of the pump to pick up on the conversation between customer and attendant.

The employee had retreated, angling the nozzle to round out the man’s twenty dollars. He had lost his tip, but more importantly, he wasn’t going to get out of Reggie’s way.

A jingle snapped him to attention. The metallic ringing came courtesy of a bell tied to the convenience store door. His first two victims were making their way back across the lot. If they made eye contact, credit cards would be canceled, money would be lost, and Devon would bitch and smoke for their entire 40-minute ride home.

Use those MVP legs.

“Fucking Devon,” Reggie griped, revealing himself to the attendant. The poor guy seemed more startled than angry, fumbling the nozzle, spraying gas on himself and the LeSabre’s trunk.

Reggie caught his land legs, ripping the third credit card from its place and charging the attendant. The employee put his hands up, prepared to block a head shot. Clearly, he’d been robbed before, but Reggie already had his targets in hand. He was only thinking escape now. The former shortstop executed a hook slide, splitting the distance between the LeSabre’s back tires and the attendant’s feet. There was no home plate for Reggie to tag, so he simply took the man at the shins, driving him chin first into a yellow stanchion pole.

“The fuck are you doing?” someone shouted.

Reggie turned to see a large, bald man with an oval shaped head and ham-sandwich sized hands exiting the LeSabre. That was enough motivation to shake all of the nerves out of his legs.

Reggie took off, sprinting on his toes towards Devon’s car. It didn’t move.

Peel asshole, give me the passenger door. Something to jump into before Bas Rutten over here gets his hands on me.

Reggie was fast, but the big man simply had more of a stride. He was linebacker sized; tall, broad-shouldered and agile. He leapt over the crumpled employee and put himself a breath behind Reggie faster than any middle-aged man driving a shitty LeSabre should have.

Devon still hadn’t moved.

Reggie cut left, but the linebacker angled his path. The big man was poised to cut Reggie off at the bumper. With the look on his thick red Irish face, Reggie would have preferred an arrest.

Before he could imagine anymore pain, Devon’s Subaru roared to life, flashed its headlights, and made a move its turning radius simply shouldn’t have allowed. Reggie caught sight of the lights and rolled left, tucking a hand inside his jacket to make sure he didn’t lose the cards on the dive. The lights stunned the big boy for a minute, leaving him flat on his back and off the pace. Reggie jumped in the passenger’s seat and strapped himself in.

“Step on it!” he shouted.

“Not yet,” Devon replied coolly.

“Excuse me?” Reggie asked.

Heaving and grunting, the big man got to the passenger door, lowering his shoulder on the charge.

“Give me back my damn card!” he howled.

Devon’s left arm flew out like a rattle snake. Reggie didn’t seem to notice the revolver hanging from the appendage.

“What’s it worth to you?” Devon said.

Bullets are sobering little things. In five seconds, Reggie’s heart all but stopped; a dramatic halt from the slapping, sporadic beats it had experienced during the chase. At the same time, the linebacker transformed from raging bull to cornered animal.

“Now the way I see it we have three options here. I shoot and hit, and your brains turn into human gazpacho. I shoot and miss, and this place becomes a five-alarm fire storm. I don’t shoot, and you walk back over to your LeSabre happy to still be packing a pulse.”

The man didn’t move.

“Good choice,” Devon hissed, finally slamming the gas, leaving the man with a lesson in mortality and a cloud of black smoke and ash in his face.

Neither of them spoke for roughly six minutes.

“We did it,” Devon finally said, his voice wavering for the first time all day.

“You have a gun. You pulled a gun,” Reggie said back.

Devon rolled to a stop at a red light. He pulled out a cigarette, fingered the paper tip and lit it.

“I pulled a gun,” he replied, nodding with an uncertain gaze. The kind that revealed self-surprise, self-horror or a disturbing self-confidence.

The smoke swirled. Neither of them spoke for roughly six seconds.

Devon took another heavy drag, wiping beads of cool sweat from his brow.

Reggie shook his head, his eyes darting between Devon and the ground.

They drove a few more blocks, edging closer to their neighborhood.

“Gimme a damn cigarette,” Reggie finally said.

* * *

Ren had two enemies in his life: Nepotism and science.

The former was walking beside him, jaw unhinged, polluting his air with trite phrases and foolish, otherwise boring, claims. The latter, the thing which presented a much larger problem for the 35-year-old, was in a room just down the hall.

Asaiho Ren was a wordsmith, a fixer, a negotiator. He was a gangland social worker. A long romance with the English language kept him at odds with microscopes, beakers and 5′6” braggarts. Science scared him. Loquaciousness simply annoyed him. Most assumed he only had one name. He hadn’t been called Asaiho in over seven years. It sounded too formal to him, and in his line of work, first names were an unnecessary speed bump between his peers’ appearance and demands. Ren chose words with a tedious precision. To him, sentences were like a wine tasting. Nouns and verbs swirled around his gums, teasing and tickling his palate. Ren swallowed the bulk of the syllables he deemed unimportant, and spat out the few letters and vowels he needed to get his point across.

“So you’re coming back to the bar after this right?” his dull partner asked.

Fusamasa Yukonawa was a drug dealer, best known for school yard handoffs to fifteen year olds who needed to buy from someone connected just to say they bought from someone connected. He was a gangland parasite. Ren envisioned strangling Fusamasa to death more often than he pictured his young wife naked. Like Ren, he also had two enemies: Women and Alcohol.

Ren just hoped their contact was male. The bourbon scent biting at his nostrils meant Fusamasa was a little off, but the drink wouldn’t prove too hard to overcome as long as his partner didn’t try to romance their clientele.

Collar open, glamour necklace attached, hair gel glinting on his forehead, Fusamasa looked more Italian than Japanese.

Not like your heritage is anything more than a meal ticket, shit head. Not like you have anyone to answer to anyway. Fucking legacy garbage. Half-breed shit rides a blood tie to an uncle in the old country while I’m clawing, scratching and shooting my way here.

A fuck up at this juncture would leave Fusamasa with nothing more than a pay cut, a slap on the wrist. Despite all his previous accomplishments, it would leave Ren with actual cuts, possibly short one wrist. Even though he hovered outside of the “family,” there were people with more than enough pull to drag him screaming out of orbit and right back into the chain-of-command. He would hear it from Yamagichi, and then from Horoko. Then someone would come to his apartment, with a cigar cutter or a melon knife, and they would drop one name before turning one of his appendages into a wind chime.

Kozu. The voice of God as far as he was concerned. The one link between the soldiers and the true general, a man with a name he knew not to utter and a title he preferred not to say. Ren loved words, but some left him bitter in the mouth, with tastes like sandpaper and paint thinner.

“Think this will get us in good with the Oyabun?” Fusamasa asked, finally turning his attention to business.

Something coarse and chemical rose up on Ren’s tongue.

“Do not complicate what can remain simple,” Ren finally responded. “This is a business deal. That’s it. I talk. They respond. We agree on a price and an amount, and we leave. We might as well be fucking grocery shopping.”

Fusamasa finally, and thankfully, fell silent.

As they entered the lab, Ren was surrounded by adversaries. Periodic Tables, scalpels, test tubes, other tools and items whose names he couldn’t remember or never learned. Fusamasa, infantile to the last, began tinkering with things. Ten feet away, furiously scribbling notes at a lamp lit desk stood a figure in a lab coat with long brunette hair. Thin. Bottle shaped. Fusamasa’s M.O. was anything skinny, plus a vagina and minus a birth defect. Before the female employee even turned around, Ren knew that this had to be his contact and Fusamasa was bound to fuck it up.

“You’ll be here then to pick me up? Excellent, I have to go. Meeting,” she said into a receiver.

“Are we interrupting something Miss…?” Ren started.

“Weiss. Dr. Catherine Weiss,” she replied. “I wish you wouldn’t have come here at this time. I shouldn’t even be here. If somebody sees me associating with men from the Y-”

“That word is taboo and you know that,” Ren replied. “Andyour reputation precedes you Dr. Weiss. This isn’t the first time you’ve cooked something up that could cause your company a PR nightmare.”

“But never anything this size, or this dangerous,” Weiss said.

“Well let’s see how dangerous,” Ren said calmly.

They headed over to a row of 20 gallon fish tanks set below a shelf lined with sterilizers and syringes. The smell of formaldehyde slapped Ren back to one of his many hospital visits in his younger days.

“I don’t believe we’ve met Catherine,” Fusamasa interrupted. “My name is Fusamasa Yukonawa and I would just like to say I’m greatly impressed with what I’ve heard about your work.”

“How sweet,” Weiss responded, failing to make eye contact with or otherwise acknowledge Fusamasa.

Ren drove his heel into Fusamasa’s shin, whispering the word “simple.”

The negotiator didn’t quite understand what he was looking at. The two fresh water tanks were separated by breed. A school of a thin, agile blue fish was swimming back and forth in the pool on the right, circling their territory with predator stares. To their left were five or six oval shaped silver fish, bobbing their heads to an unseen rhythm, nibbling at algae and convenience store brand fish food. Hunter and prey.

“I don’t see what this has to do with the product,” Ren said.

It didn’t help that he had no idea what the product was.
Despite the good standing he had with the local Yakuza, his lack of tattoos or blood oath marked him as an outsider. Fusamasa’s presence forced him to believe this was a drug thing, but why the fish?

“You will,” Weiss replied, reaching for a silver tin. She took out an orange powder substance and sprinkled it into the silver fish’s water, mixing it with their tasteless rainbow colored fish food. The bumbling sea creatures rose to the top of the tank, swallowing the new substance in small gulps.

“To your left are bunker fish. If you ever head down to the harbor you’ll see them sliced up into buckets next to minnows and other bait fish. They’re small, slow and hive minded. On the right are blue fish, a natural predator of the bunker. Typically, the blue fish will frenzy in the summers, either killing the bunker or driving them into shallow waters where they suffocate due to a lack of dissolvable oxygen. According to nature, the bunker is meant to die,” Weiss said.

Weiss laughed as she removed a glass sheet between the two tanks, inviting hunter and pretty to get better acquainted.

“You’re bosses pay me to defy nature,” she continued.

The blue fish raced forward, reacting to an invisible starter’s gun, moving in a way that required both practice and bloodlust. Four established a perimeter while two cornered the nearest bunker and started biting.

Blood hit the water.

“What am I supposed to be seeing here Miss Weiss?” Ren asked, intrigued but skeptical.

“It should be reacting already,” she muttered.

The first bunker’s carcass crashed into the red gravel at the bottom of the tank. The blue fish continued to circle, as if they needed time to pick their next victim.

A brash one, smaller than the rest of the attackers, cut through the water with its teeth barred and eyes wild. Another bunker was about to drop into the clay dust cellar of the tank. Except the blue fish missed; badly. The would-be entrée swam up to the top of the pool, leaving the hunter surrounded by its very miffed prey. The four remaining bunker swarmed their assailant, devouring it in a flash of crimson and bone and scale. What followed was simply disgusting. The bunker fish moved like a silver lined hurricane, meticulously obliterating their predators in a matter of minutes.

“And I’m never eating sushi again,” Fusamasa said, tugging at his gold chain nervously.

“If that did what I think it just did Miss Weiss, we may have a very lucrative deal in place. Explain please,”

“Before that graphic kill scene, I fed the bunker an oxygen reactant steroid. You’ve all seen the idiot athletes bloated on anabolics, and you’ve seen what happens to them when they get older. This has far less downside. This increases strength and agility without altering muscle mass or development.

“So it’s an adrenaline rush. Speed, angel dust; they’re both good for that,” Fusamasa said, shocking Ren with a somewhat relevant comment.

“Yes, except this isn’t just an adrenaline rush,” Weiss replied, smiling. “It fires endorphins throughout the body; it dulls pain reactors, and induces a state of bliss that removes natural mental blocks. The bunker never fought back because they knew they were prey. Their fight or flight reaction told them to flee. This drug turns that option off.”

“Effective, but its not marketable,” Ren replied. “You expect me to pass off something that looks like fish flakes as a street drug.”

“No. I expect you to pass off something that your clients can inhale as a street drug. It’s oxygen reactant. I have an aerosol version in the works,” Weiss said confidently.

“Brilliant,” Fusamasa interjected, admiring both Weiss’ features and her mind for the drug culture.

Weiss shot him another smile, this one a little more flirtatious than the first.

“I’ll give you a sample of the aerosol version after we discuss the particulars. As long as the price is right, you’ll have the catalyst for your next army of hopped up street soldiers,” she said.

Weiss closed the silver tin as the remnants of the blue fish began rising to the top of the tank. The bunker fish were pressing against the glass of the tank, sizing up Weiss, Fusamasa and Ren as potential opponents.

“Oh, and Mr. Ren, if you’re so worried about marketability, I have a cute little name for my wonder drug,” Weiss added.

“And what’s that?” Fusamasa asked, excitedly moving towards her.

“Fuel,” she smirked.

* * *

Maybe he didn’t have service. Maybe she didn’t have service. He could have gone over his text messaging limit for the month, or paid his phone bill late.

Reggie doesn’t pay his own bills. He doesn’t have a job.

Christina Hill tossed her frayed black hair out of her face and walked to the window one last time. Her backyard was empty. The shed he usually climbed over to get to her window was dark and undisturbed. The wind screen had been cracked open for several hours, forcing Christina to retreat beneath her heavy gray comforter. There was no need for the cold anymore. He wasn’t coming.

Christina surrendered via technology, sending Reggie a final text reading “Happy Birthday.”

Granted, this would have been her third celebration on the day, but it was the only one that would have meant anything to her. Her father did what he could, but it’s hard to have energy when you’re at the halfway point of a 50-hour work week. Her boyfriend did what he could, but if he was enough to keep her satisfied, then she wouldn’t have been up at 1 in the morning, staring into her crab grass riddled backyard, wondering why Reggie Evans wasn’t climbing up a shed, rattling her window frame and getting her out of bed.

“You can’t change a man into what you want. You can only hope he changes for you.”

Her mother had taught her that. Or day time television. It’s hard to tell the difference at age 5, when your mother is dying of lymphoma and the only thing she can do with you is guide you through the soap operas and contrive happy endings when the plot gets too convoluted.

So to her, the little things mattered. The little things like late night rendezvous and cute, easily forgettable details that her father didn’t have time for and that her boyfriend didn’t understand. The little things that Reggie did so well.

Her biggest problem with their relationship was the lying, the impossible title he had given to it: “Semi-Attached Fuck Buddies.” His biggest problem was remembering it existed.

Christina rolled over, shutting out the sounds and lights filtering in from the backyard. She hadn’t closed the window after all. Maybe that would leave enough space for Reggie to show up in her dreams.

* * *

Eugene Evans was on his third cup of coffee, which was masking his third shot of Jack Daniels. He was supposed to be writing a speech, or an affidavit, possibly both. He forgot. He wasn’t drunk, not even close. Prosecution was an exhausting task in its own right, but when you sandwich it between weekends of politicking, it was enough to make a man hibernate. Judging by the stack of case files, forms and fliers on his desk, Eugene wouldn’t mind packing up his things and sleeping off the winter.

He closed the word file on his laptop. His fingers were running away from his brain, filling in the white space with gibberish and typo-laden copy. His hands found their way to the case files. The names all rang out the same ethnic soundtrack. DiScala, Minucci, Cusamano, Michinoku, Sano, Yamagishi. As the assistant district attorney presiding over homicide cases, it was Eugene’s job to know these names, and to know how to convict one of the Italian sounding names after they killed one of the Japanese sounding names. If the bullets changed directions, he was given the day off.

Eugene pushed the case files away and re-opened the word file, the mish-mash of arguments and self-promotion. It wasn’t quite a stump speech, but in the cesspool that was the Brooklyn DA’s office, it had been enough to toss his hat over the barbed wire bureaucracy and into the ring. It was also just enough to get him killed. His boss’ bosses wouldn’t be too happy to see a dissenter in the ranks, let alone a dissenter with enough gall to pull the District Attorney’s office out of the Hudson River, with enough pull to actually prosecute criminals of all races.

His house alarm beeped twice. Two doors were open. Eugene closed the laptop and tossed his flask of Jack under a jacket of court dockets he wouldn’t be touching for another two weeks. The sound of hurried and not-so hurried footsteps chased away his political troubles … and welcomed his family troubles.

Ariana through the garage. Reggie through a back window. Every couple of nights it was the same routine. His wife and son coming back from places he didn’t want them to go, but couldn’t stop them from going. Eugene laughed at the irony. He was paid to stand up in rooms full of made men and vicious murderers to send their kin to prison, but he was powerless against his freewheeling son and wife.

All of the motion on the first floor stopped as he descended the stairs. Ariana turned out of the foyer and found herself wrapped in Eugene’s arms.

“Hi, honey,” she stammered.

“Don’t give me that honey crap,” Eugene whispered back in a sing-song voice, holding her close as Reggie came into view with a disgusted look on his face. “I know where you were and I’ll deal with you later.”

His 17-year-old charge nodded to his father and mother, ducking past the couple, heading for his room.

“It’s two in the morning Reggie,” Eugene said calmly, releasing his wife, shooting her an irritated look.

“Yeah. It is,” he replied, half closing the bedroom door behind him.

“Care to tell me where you were?” Eugene asked.

“Just hanging out with some friends,” Reggie said.

“Was one of those friends Devon?” he continued.

“Yeah, it was. Is that a problem?” Reggie shot back, reappearing from his room wearing the same white tee-shirt and a new pair of basketball shorts.

“You already know the answer to that question Reggie,” Eugene was advancing on the door now. His wife followed close behind.

“Please not with this again Eugene,” Ariana pleaded from behind. He ignored her. She was next in line for interrogation anyway.

“What? I just want to know what Reggie was doing out at two in the morning with Devon,” Eugene continued.

Reggie ignored the line of questioning, moving to close his door. Eugene put his arm in the way.

“And why he smells like gasoline…”

Reggie opened the door.

“And why he looks so out of breath and flustered…”

Reggie stepped forward, directly into his father’s line of questioning, his line of fire.

“Looks like he was running from someone.”

“Stop it Eugene. I know where you’re going with this. Why don’t we try and hear his side of…”

Eugene raised his hand, silencing her. He was four steps ahead of both of them.

“Why are you coming home at 2 a.m., looking like you just lost a heated foot race, smelling like gasoline, after hanging out with your distinguished friend Devon Lane?” Eugene asked

“And by distinguished friend I mean the skell I specifically told you to stop wasting your nights with after you begged me to pull every string I could to get him off of a petty B&E charge,” the assistant district attorney continued.

Ariana and Reggie exchanged frustrated glances. They hadn’t seen the pattern but they had an idea. Eugene knew mentioning Devon would put them off-balance. This was no longer a family conversation, this was a cross-examination.

“Why do you need to do this Reggie? Why do you have to act like you were born into a stereotype? I work six days a week, I bring home more money in one year than most people who live in Prospect see in five. You have been blessed with every opportunity, but you don’t want to do anything with them,” Eugene said, his voice rising to a low roar.

His son seemed to be obsessed with winding up in a starring role on an NYPD scanner, portraying every bigot’s favorite suspect description: 17 to 25, black male, possibly armed.

“How many times am I going to have to look the other way?” Eugene howled, looking into his son’s street hardened eyes, realizing that this would be his legacy.

“As long as it benefits you Dad,” Reggie shot back, refusing to make eye contact.

“Excuse me,” Eugene said, falling off his train of thought.

“Oh come on, I might be a ’skell’ as far as you’re concerned but I’m not stupid. Nobody at the office wants to know that dear old Dad’s pride and joy is committing small time crimes throughout the borough,” Reggie spat. “You look the other way because you have to, not because you want to.”

Eugene turned back to his wife for support, but Ariana had retreated in silence.

“We’re on the wrong side of Brooklyn to be in a rich black family Dad,” Reggie continued. “Can’t you just accept that my dreams don’t end with a 9 to 5 work week?”

“I can accept that part. I’m worried that your dreams are going to end with a 3 to 5 stretch in Rikers’.” Eugene shot back.

The door shut. Eugene stood still as time moved without him. Things clattered, drawers closed, and eventually a window opened. The house alarm beeped again. Reggie had signaled his covert exit but he might as well have walked out the front door. Eugene held this conversation with his son on a monthly basis. Lectures were futile. He wanted to learn from the street, and so he would.

* * *

Hours later, Reggie was in Devon’s truck once more. The old, ash-laden, smokehouse smelling Subaru was inescapable. If he took half the time he’d spent in that car, and devoted it evenly between his parents, Christina and school, he would be headed in what most people called “the right direction.” Everyone would be happy. Maybe one day he’d have 2.5 kids and a fridge stocked with milk, orange juice and Eggo waffles, too.

Stereotypes. What do you know about stereotypes Dad?

The only stereotype Reggie was afraid of was the black man who wanted to be one of the Cosby clan. He was a child of his environment and his culture. A native of the parts and pieces of downtown Brooklyn that gumshoe crime writers wanted people to be afraid of. Well he wasn’t yet, but he could be. That was what Devon wanted to be.

The Subaru prowled Church Avenue, bobbing up and down the stretch of asphalt between Dahill Road and Ocean Parkway, turning right or left carelessly on side streets, failing to distort its obvious pattern. As they drove, Reggie stared at his best friend, with his black guinea-tee, his right shoulder slouched, driving one hand on the wheel with a cigarette hanging loosely from his pursed lips. He wondered about stereotypes again. He wondered why he had buried the image of Devon holding a gun to a man’s head far below the repeating sound of his father’s scathing voice. He wondered why every time one of Devon’s plans seemed success proof, he jumped on with less and less enthusiasm, but said “yes” faster and faster.

“Two of the credit cards were canceled,” Devon muttered, turning to retrace their path again. “One was maxed out.”

Reggie hadn’t even asked. If their late evening scam had worked they wouldn’t be stalking the outside of a Boro Park White Castle, counting down the seconds until Devon’s latest hail mary pass at infamy. Another scam signed off on by Devon’s alleged mob associate, but this ploy seemed to have some legitimacy.

“Ever wonder how many fast food joints there are in Brooklyn? A lot. You see how many people down Mc-Whatevers, and Whoppers and shit. That’s a lot of money getting thrown around. But they all have those less than x amount of dollars after dark signs. All that money has to go somewhere,” Devon had explained. “From what I’ve heard, each chain has three or four main places where they stow their cash at the end of the week. You know, for transfers or whatever.”

The rest seemed pretty simple. White Castle was open all night. There was one on Church Avenue, and it was safely removed from any police precincts. Barring any unforeseen chaos, this should have been an easy score. Except Reggie knew that Devon was an instant calamity. Just add water.

They parked in a side lot and rolled the car to a stop on an angle facing the nearest exit.

“You ready?” Devon said.

“Yeah,” Reggie replied. He was still trying to justify this. Money for a gift for Christina; escaping his father’s grasp. Reckless teenage rebellion. He liked the sound of the third one.

“You gonna freak if I pull a gun?” Devon asked.

“You’re gonna have to,” Reggie smirked, opening the door and exhaling with a false swagger, a counterfeit confidence. “After all, this is a stick up.”

The pair of would-be criminals strolled through the eatery’s silver sliding doors without any sense of purpose, like their visit was the result of drunken munchies. The few scattered customers didn’t seem to notice, poking and prying at the cardboard prisons holding their .79 cent grease stacks hostage.

Reggie scanned them as Devon took a spot behind him in line.
An old man stirring a pool of ketchup with two French fries. Three or four guys with backwards hats and fraternity letters on, likely rehashing their favorite Family Guy quotes. A drifter in a dusty leather jacket, likely hiding out from the Church avenue cold. He was occasionally chatting with the old man, who was tossing him fries like he was feeding a stray. Nobody that seemed like they would be a problem.

“Can I take the next order?” a short, pale white-skinned man asked with a slightly European accent. His face slouched slightly left, which Reggie found funny since the brim of his hat was facing the same way.

“Number 3,” Reggie replied.

Devon elbowed him in the ribs.

“What? We’re here. I’m going to eat something.”

Reggie collected his early morning meal and slid over to the soda machines, pushing the coke button, spilling the liquid all over his hands. He was splitting his field of view between Devon and the customers. The old man was still playing with his human dog. The college kids were attacking a crave case. They were loud, and they had gas. Drunk, high or maybe both. Nobody posed a threat.

“Next order,” the meek cashier asked.

“Mine might take a while,” Devon spat, revealing the butt of the black revolver within.

“Oh god,” the little man yelped.

“Give me what I’m here for, and the only stain that gets on your pretty little blue and white uniform is the piss running down your leg,” Devon said.

The cashier began dumping the contents of the register in a white paper bag, on top of fries and a sack of chicken rings.

“Here’s..-He— you’re order,” the employee stammered. Reggie decided that while he was shaking, the man looked like a leprechaun shitting out razorblades.

“My order?” Devon spat back. “I know which one this is asshole. I want the rest of it, the transfer money.”

“Transfer money?” the little man asked, regaining a little dignity, seemingly puzzled by Devon’s question.

“You know, the shit in the safe. C’mon dude, I’m on the level,” Devon said.

“Sir, we don’t have a safe,” the man whispered.

Reggie looked around the room. The homeless man seemed to be catching onto the conflict. He was scratching his messy, spiral curled hair, eyes darting between Reggie, Devon and the floor. Reggie acknowledged his street instincts. This poor guy was probably used to sensing danger, so he could stay away from it.

“Listen asshole,” Devon said, his voice rising, drawing more attention. “I was told, by a very reliable person, that there was a lot of fucking money here. I need that money. If I don’t get it, you’re going to see a lot more than the butt of this gun.”

“Devon…” Reggie said, still fiddling with the soda, keeping an eye on the vagabond. The drifter was rattling his long, predator fingernails against the table top, stirring the old man.

“I’m…I’m sorry sir. I just gave you… gave you all of it,” the tiny man repeated.

“But I know it’s here!” Devon howled, desperation hanging on every syllable. “This is where they keep the money before the end of the…”

“There’s no transfer,” the man whispered. “You’re wrong.”

Reggie started moving towards Devon.

“What did you say?”

Those were the two words in the English language that could make Devon Lane feral.

“You’re wrong,” the cashier said again.

Devon whipped the revolver out, smashing it down across the man’s jaw in one motion. He grabbed him by the throat and pulled him across the counter, pressing the mouth of the gun against his logo emblazoned hat. Of course, they now had an unwanted audience.

“Nobody fucking move!” Devon screamed, training the gun on everything he could, even Reggie. “I know that money is here! The transfer money, somebody get it or I’m going to shoot this fucker!”

“Woah. Calm down man. This shit is getting way too serious,” Reggie pleaded, walking closer to the loaded gun than he ever wanted to be.

“Serious! We need to be serious. I’m tired of pulling off these nickel and dime jobs that get us nowhere. I’m punching my ticket today. I want that money!” Devon screamed, his eyes bulging with intent and fire he didn’t possess.

He jabbed the clerk with the gun again.

“And…” he ripped the name tag off of the man’s chest. “Earl here, is going to get it for me!”

“Devon, why don’t you just calm down,” a new voice crooned, with a decisive cool and aged rasp.

The old man had left his seat, his homeless associate scurrying beneath one of the booths. He was slightly shorter than Reggie, with blue eyes and clumps of gray hair that looked like piles of dirty snow. The man walked slowly, not due to age or limp, but because it seemed to suit him.

“Old man, I don’t care who you are, but you better sit back down. I don’t want to shoot anyone I don’t have to. I just want the money,” Devon said.

“You don’t have to shoot anyone. Just put the gun down, let Earl go, and you and Reggie can leave before anyone gets hurt,” the man continued, speaking in an unflinching tone, like he’d handled these situations before.

“Funny. Nobody has to get hurt as long as I get - wait a minute? How the hell do you know our names?” Devon shot back, exchanging puzzled glances with Reggie.

Reggie had no idea how the old, white, Boro Park resident had any ties to the two Prospect Park street rats.

“Don’t concern yourself with who I am. Just concentrate with leaving without causing any permanent damage,” the man said. “I don’t want this to get ugly Devon. Don’t want to see your name wind up on the local prosecutor’s desk again.”

Devon tightened his grip on Earl. Some of the other employees had come out to watch the show, but had disappeared after noticing the gun. Reggie wasn’t moving an inch. He was as paralyzed as poor Earl with the revolver against his head.

“The fuck do you know all this about me? Reggie, take care of him,” Devon said, his voice growing frantic as he swung the gun around in frenetic, spastic motions.

Reggie didn’t move. The man took a step forward.

“Today!” he shouted. Reggie finally moved, grabbing the man under his shoulder, forcing him against a nearby window. He was gentler then he should have been. Maybe he was pitiful, maybe he was curious.

Devon shrugged the strange altercation off, and went back to shouting at Earl.

“Listen man,” Reggie whispered in his ear, twisting his arm behind his back and pressing him against the glass. “I don’t know or care who you are or what you know about this. I don’t want to see him kill anyone, and you aren’t helping.”

“That’s noble of you. It’s nice to see you keeping some moral fiber intact with all this looting. Your father should see this side of you,” the man said back.

Reggie tried to get Devon’s attention, but he was too busy slapping Earl, still desperately pleading for “transfer money” that likely never existed.

“Don’t let him kill that man Reggie. Once he gets that first blood it won’t stop. There’s a monster growing over your left shoulder. You don’t want that on your conscience do you?” the man’s voice was still steady, like a drum beat or a pendulum on a clock. He spoke with the utter grace of a prophet, devoutly believing every word he was saying.

“Just shut up,” Reggie said. Every time the old man opened his mouth, Reggie felt his stomach grow cold.

“You know he’s capable of it. He pulls that gun out like it’s a toy. You really thought he was going to kill that other person at the gas station, didn’t you?”

Reggie spun the man around, slamming his back hard against the glass. His head snapped back on impact. The gentle curiosity was gone, replaced by a very disturbed, survival-fueled fear.

“How do you know all of this?” Reggie shouted.

“Everything cool over there?” Devon asked.

“Not really,” Reggie replied, suddenly remembering they were supposed to be committing a robbery. “Earl give you the money yet?”

“Little shit says its not here. Little shit is about to get his brains splattered all over the counter,”

“It’s not here, I told y–” the smack of gun metal against flesh punctuated Earl’s sentence.

Devon pressed the gun flush against Earl’s ear canal.

“This is getting old Earl. Stop lying to me.”

“It’s not here Devon,” the old man yelled.

“Control the hero,” Devon said.

Reggie knew this man was a lot of things, but reckless hero was not one of them.

“Who are you?” Reggie asked, already afraid of the answer.

“My name is John McKinley,” he said. “I’m going to change your life.”

Reggie wound up on his back before he could even process McKinley’s bold claim.

“There’s so much more we need to talk about Reggie, but right now, I need to stop you two from making a big mistake,” he said, his eyes starting to glow white.

“I said you should have left before somebody got hurt,” McKinley said, his hands taking on the same fluorescent glow. “Now somebody is.”

Something started to squeeze Reggie’s head. It wasn’t anything physical and it wasn’t this McKinley guy. It was like someone had driven a studded vice into both sides of his head, and they were squeezing with enough force to split a refrigerator in half like a walnut. His nose bled. A black haze took hold of his vision, rimming everything in shadow. McKinley walked forward.

“Man, are you crazy? I don’t care if you’re hands can glow. I will shoot you and everyone in this place to get my money,” Devon shouted, arms and finger trembling as he struggled to grip the revolver he seemed so comfortable with hours prior.

“You talk too much,” McKinley said, firing a beam of light from his hands, striking Devon in the shoulder. Reggie’s best friend fell to the ground, his down jacket singed by the old man’s attack.

Devon fired three bullets as soon as he hit the ground. Each of them a sure kill. Except each of them were caught in a glowing web of radiant energy, spun by McKinley’s hands.

“Fuck,” Devon said, leaping to his feet, holding the gun inches from McKinley’s face.

“Alright David Blaine. Let’s see your light show magic get you out of this one.”

Devon fired again. Another sure kill. Another useless ball of lead on the White Castle floor.

“Be quiet,” McKinley responded, driving his palm into Devon’s jaw. The blow was clean, sending Devon back to the floor, this time for a longer duration.

Earl and Reggie both rose to the feet, blood on their lips and noses for drastically different reasons. McKinley walked up to Reggie and placed a hand on his shoulder, with a fraternal air about him, he spoke again, jarring Reggie from his dizzy, disjointed state.

“Your best friend can become your worst enemy faster than anything or anyone else in this world,” McKinley said.

With that he left, exiting through the front door like a rush of air, like he hadn’t been there at all.

“You’re just going to leave me here?” Earl shouted.

“Tough shit for you,” Devon said, rising to his feet, clutching his jaw with his free hand.

“One left in the chamber Earl. Money. Now,” Devon said with a defeated look in his eyes, as if he were resigned to what he was about to do.

“I told you we don’t have it,” Earl said, exhaustion seeping through every word.

“I thought you would say that,” Devon replied, with a vile, unsettling cool.

There was a gun shot.

Reggie and Earl fell to the ground, blood on their lips and noses for drastically different reasons.