Slowly, Shades rotates his face to us.
Private party.
We on the guest list.
Shades unbends a finger and points it at me.
He ain’t.
He with Digga.
Shades leans his head back, relaxing a little more.
Already got a main attraction. Don’t need an opening act.
Timberlands steps up.
Say he from Digga.
Shades unrelaxes.
Digga don’t have no free white boy passes.
This the Hood. This Digga’s turf.
So they say.
The scent is up on them, rank Vyrus pheromones spraying the air. Blood will be spilled. I start looking for a window I can dive through.
What all this?
Digga and his rhinos come up the hall behind us.
What all this hostility I see? Where the love?
He stops, looks at the standoff in front of the door, a big smile across his face.
What the problem, we ain’t got the juice to get beyond this velvet rope? Doorman don’t like our kicks? We ain’t up to the clientele inside?
Shades points at me again.
He’s white.
Digga looks at me.
Damn! How’d I miss that? Well, shit, you right ’bout that. Still doan see the problem.
He’s white.
Uh-huh. Well, as to that, know what Luther X used to say? He say, We all the same color inside. By that, he mean we all red. Now, I can prove it on you.
He loses the smile.
Or you can open the damn door.
Papa won’t like it.
Somebody elect Papa president of the Hood? Somebody give him my job, forgot to tell me ’bout it? Open up.
Shades takes a step to the side.
I di’nt say move, muthafucka, I said, open up.
Shades opens the door.
Digga sweeps his arm in front of me.
After you.
I walk through followed by Digga, Timberlands, and the rhinos. The door swings shut behind us and we start down a stairwell.
Digga talks to the rhinos.
You know that fool?
Uh-huh.
Get his name on a list.
Uh-huh.
Below us comes a rumble of many voices and the howl of crazed dogs. The air smells like sweat, chlorine, blood, and the Vyrus.
There are a lot of them. I’ve never seen so many in one place. There are at least two hundred packed into the old basement baths. Two hundred of them. Two hundred of us. When I lead the way out of the stairwell every face turns toward me. The room goes silent except for the barking of the dogs that echoes off the tiled walls and ceiling. I have an instant vision of what it will be like to be torn literally to ribbons. Then Digga steps up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
Hey, all. He with me.
He keeps his hand on my shoulder, leading me through the crowd, closer to whatever is at its center. Way is made for him. With his free hand he bumps fists and exchanges backslaps, passing a word with the men and women of the crowd. They are mostly young, mostly hip-hop, all wear the Ecko rhino somewhere on their person, and none are white.
He puts his mouth next to my ear as we press through them.
Shit, muthafucka, I knew I coulda made a entrance like this, I woulda got me a white boy sooner.
We’re approaching the pool. It’s drained of water. An eight-foot-high chain-link fence has been strung around it. The barking comes from inside. He brings me right up to the fence. The cement walls of the pool are stained dark maroon with dry blood; a thin sheet of the freshly spilled variety coats the bottom. A man is dragging a dog’s carcass to the shallow end and passing it up to waiting hands. Three others have cornered a foaming-mad pit bull in the deep end. It darts at them and they dodge out of the way.
Digga shakes his head.
Shit.
He calls to the men.
Put a fuckin’ cap in that beast.
One of them waves, pulls a Glock from his baggy pants, and puts a cap in the beast. The bullet slams it into the wall of the pool. Then it gets up and starts barking again.
Digga looks at the ceiling.
Jezus H. In the head, muthafucka! In the fuckin head!
The guy puts one in the dog’s head. It stays down this time.
The crowd is shifting around us, piling up close, hooking their fingers in the fence.
On one side of the pool a man sits up on the old lifeguard tower. He wears a black suit, wraparound shades, a red fez, and puffs on a cigarette in a long ivory holder. A group of men dressed like the guy from the door stand around the base of the chair. Digga waves to him.
Papa! What up?
Papa gestures with his holder.
Digga holds his arm up and points at the top of my head.
You all see my white boy?
Papa ignores him.
He sweet, right? You want one?
They ignore him.
No? Well, shit then, let’s get to the main e-vent.
The crowd around us rumbles.
Digga whispers in my ear again.
Tension thick in here, huh, Pitt? Feel that hostility? An’ we all black folk. ’Magine what it like when we got the Washington Heights and Spanish Harlem crowds in here. Put the spics in here with the niggahs and it almost always be endin’ in bloodshed. An’ we all on the same side. Me, I sure as shit glad I ain’t white up in this. Can you ’magine what they do to you, you not with me? Oh shit, we ’bout to find out. Look.
He points to the far end of the pool where two more dogs are ready to be brought in. A man is pushed from the steps. His feet slide from beneath him on the blood-slick surface. A couple rhinos jump down after him, get him by the arms and pull him up. The enforcer from the train.
Hey, Pitt, it your friend.
The handlers bring the dogs together. Another man walks up carrying a cooler. He opens it and takes out a blood bag and three syringes.
An’ that, that must be the shit you come up here lookin’ for.
The dogs are led on long wooden poles hooked to their collars. The handlers take a tiny bit of the Vyrus-infected blood into their syringes and kneel by their dogs while their assistants hold the poles. I watch a rhino as he fills the last syringe with several cc’s of the blood. He walks over to the enforcer, who struggles between his guards, eyes fixed on the needle.
Digga gives me a bump with his shoulder.
That bitch down there, the brindle pit, that my bitch. The rot, he belong to Papa. Tonight was supposed to be some head-to-head action, but seein’ as you lead that son of a bitch up here, we thought we improvise. Purse gonna go to the dog gets the killing stroke. Braggin’ rights. How you like the look a my bitch?
Good looking dog.
Damn right she a good lookin’ dog. Want to get something down on this? Make some change while you up here?
No thanks.
No thanks? You don’t believe in my bitch? Don’t think she got what it takes? You dissin’ my bitch, muthafucka?
Don’t like to gamble.
Come up here an you don’t like to gamble? Coulda fooled me. Well, too late now, muthafucka, you in the casino now. Boys tell me they found close to a grand on yo ass.
He raises his hands in the air.
Yo! Yo!
The crowd noise lowers.
Yo! Check it! White boy say he got the fever! Got a G he want to put on my bitch! Who up for that action?
Papa raises his cigarette holder.
Digga points at him.
There you go, Pitt, you down for a G with Papa.
He raises his arms again.
A’ight, muthafuckas, let’s get this bread and circus shit on!
The crowd howls and shakes the chain-link, the dogs howl through their muzzles. Somewhere, a DJ fires up his turntables and bass thunders, turning the tiled cavern into a giant subwoofer.
Digga dips his head at the men in the pool. Simultaneously the handlers jab their dogs in the neck. Instantly the dogs start to tremor, voiding their bowels. The handlers whip the dogs’ muzzles off. The rot snaps and his handler loses a finger. The dogs gnash and foam, clawing at the floor of the pool, trying to chew their way up the poles to the handlers’ assistants struggling to control them.
Near the stairs, a rhino stabs his needle into the enforcer’s neck. A lump appears under his skin as the infected blood is forced in too quickly. His head starts to thrash up and down and vomit spews from his mouth. The rhinos release him and run for the stairs. The handlers’ assistants maneuver the dogs until they frame the spastic enforcer. They catch one another’s eyes and unhook, jumping for the hands waiting to pull them up out of the pool. The gate at the shallow end slams shut. And the business in the pool begins.
He might have had a chance. If they hadn’t shot him up, the enforcer might have had a chance. The action I saw from The Spaz at Doc’s was just a warm-up. That was a new fish who shot a taste too much. This is a Coalition enforcer, fed and trained, and shot full of the nastiest dope on the planet. He flails his limbs with such force, he breaks his own bones on the air. The maddened dogs, bred to the arena, retain just enough of their conditioning to stay focused on the man between them.
They jump like ticks, the Vyrus doing some unspeakable thing to their insides, warping their chemistry and powering their muscles. The enforcer dervishes on the slippery floor of the pool. Digga’s bitch flies at him and one of his arms catches it in midair and sends it into the fence. The crowd jumps back, their screams lost in the hammering bass. One of the fence poles is bent by the impact. The dog drops back into the pool and goes for the man again, one of its forelegs broken.
Papa’s rot stalks the enforcer. It’s frustrated by the speed of its movements, driven by the unfamiliar strength in its legs to bite its hindquarters. Both dogs circle the enforcer in blinding leaps and bursts. He wails and blood pours from his nose. They attack.