Passion for the Heist, page 24
“Say less,” Pain cut him off. “How much my grandmother into you for?” He pulled out his bankroll and started flipping through it.
“Four hundred for this month and last,” Lewis informed him.
“Nigga, what?” Pain stopped his counting. “My grandmother is about a hundred and ten pounds and you trying to tell me she ate up four hundred dollar’s worth of food in two months, outside of what she spent in stamps? Why I feel like you trying to play me like I won’t run up in yo shit?”
“Pain, you know I would never. I love my life too much to try and bullshit you.” Lewis held his hands up in surrender. “Quiet as kept, it ain’t Ms. Pearl’s appetite that ran that bill up, but her big heart.”
“What you mean?”
“Well, I ain’t trying to get up in Ms. Pearl’s business, but you know she’s got a soft spot for every joker with a sob story. One of my cashiers told me she was in here the other day with crackhead Larry, buying food for him and them kids he don’t half take care of no way. Knowing him, he probably ain’t did nothing but went up on the ave and sold whatever she blessed him with to get a blast.”
Pain shook his head in frustration. Ever since he could remember, his grandmother was always taking care of grown folks who didn’t deserve her kindness, including him. He peeled off four hundred dollars from the six or seven he had left, and shoved the money into Lewis’s hand. “I’ll take care of Larry’s thirsty ass when I catch up with him. As far as my grandma, no more credit. I got her from here.”
“You’re a good dude, Percy. I hate to even come at you with it, but I need this gig. You know how it is, right?” Lewis held out his hand to give Pain dap.
“Whatever, nigga.” Pain bumped past him and went into the supermarket.
Pain grabbed the items he needed from the store and headed back to the apartment. His grandmother chatted him up while she prepared his breakfast. Pain offered muttered responses here and there, but his mind was elsewhere. It took everything in him not to get on her about her letting Larry take advantage, but he knew it wouldn’t do much outside aggravating him further. Ms. Pearl’s heart was a rest haven for the downtrodden, overlooked, and lazy alike. Your stamps didn’t come yet and you needed a little something extra to tide you over until the first? Ms. Pearl got you. You need some carfare to get to that job interview? Go knock on Ms. Pearl’s door. Even if she knew you were running game and just wanted to get high or indulge in some other vice, she’d still give you a few dollars just so you wouldn’t be out stealing for it. Ms. Pearl was one of the last of a dying breed, the Big Mamas.
Ms. Pearl slapped together a breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, and pancakes made from scratch. They took longer that way, but Ms. Pearl didn’t believe in pancake mix, or any other kind of mix that couldn’t be made with just a little flour and some love. It was not only the best breakfast, but the best meal Pain had had in years. It was a far cry from powdered eggs and bologna fried on a hot plate. He was so full when he got up from the table that all he wanted to do was lie down and take a nap, but he had things to do.
* * *
When Pain came out of his building he was both full and irritated. His bankroll was dwindling, he didn’t have anything lined up to replenish it just yet, and his granny’s bills were still hanging over his head like an executioner’s blade. He needed some wreck to relieve some of that frustration. He needed to hit something or someone. In a perfect world he’d have run into Larry’s bum ass and thrown him a beating for taking advantage of his grandmother, but it wasn’t to be. However, he did run into another familiar face on his way to the subway station.
A local who went by the name of Ron was coming through the projects with a young girl. Ron was at least a year or two older than Pain, but the girl he was walking with was only about sixteen. For as long as Pain had known Ron he’d always had a thing for young girls, which is why he didn’t fuck with him like that. Pain kept his head down, pretending not to see Ron, but of course Ron went out of his way to speak.
“Oh, shit! Is that my nigga, Pain?” Ron shouted, and greeted him with a toothy grin. He made a big production of his greeting, doing a two-step in place before trying to lean in for a hug. Pain kept him at arm’s length.
“Sup?” Pain greeted him flatly.
“You, sometimes me,” Ron replied. “How long you been home?”
“A min,” Pain said in a tone that most people would’ve taken as a cue that he wasn’t in the mood to talk, but not Ron.
“About time we got some real niggas moving around the hood again,” Ron continued. “I was just telling my shorty the other day how these young niggas who running around doing their thing now ain’t built like we were. We the last of a dying breed, ya heard?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Pain said. He just wanted to make his appointment and didn’t have time for Ron’s bullshit. He was about to brush Ron off and keep it moving, when he noticed the chain hanging from the young girl’s neck: white gold with two hearts hanging from the end. It was the same necklace that had been snatched from Passion’s neck on the subway. “That’s a nice piece of jewelry, shorty. Where’d you get it?”
“Oh, Ron copped this for me to celebrate our one-year anniversary. It’s real gold, too,” the girl said proudly.
“Is that right? I got a special lady friend that I’m trying to get something nice for, too. You mind telling me where you copped, Ron?” Pain gave him a knowing look.
“Oh … um … I got a connect on Canal Street that gave me a good deal. If you want, I can plug you in,” Ron offered.
“That’d be cool, but I got a better idea. How about I give you two hundred bucks for that one?” Pain pointed to the lockets.
“C’mon, Pain. How am I gonna sell you something that I had custom made for my lady? That wouldn’t be player on my part,” Ron said nervously. He’d really purchased the necklace from some young dudes who were hawking hot items on 125th Street, but he couldn’t tell her that.
“Player?” Pain laughed. “I hear you talking, my nigga, and I’m gonna let you have that. You wanna negotiate? I’m with that.” He draped his arm around Ron’s neck and led him out of earshot of the girl. “Now, your little friend might believe you gave enough of a shit about her to truly invest on something heartfelt, but you and I both know that necklace is as hot as a firecracker.”
“Pain, I—”
“Let me stop you before you let that baby-licking mouth of yours turn this into something this ain’t gotta be,” Pain cut him off. “Where you buy your slum to trick these young girls into giving your depraved ass some pussy ain’t my concern. Today, you just happen to have the misfortune of baiting your twisted-ass hook with something that belongs to a friend of mine. That being said, you can take this money and save face or I can take your face.” He dangled the two hundred dollars.
“Take it off,” Ron told the girl in a shaky voice.
“What? No! You bought this for me!” the girl protested. She had already been flexing with the small necklace on Instagram.
“Bitch, I said take it off!” Ron snapped.
For the first time since she had been dealing with Ron, she saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t ever before: fear. It was at that moment she realized the seriousness of the situation. Without saying another word, she undid the chain and handed it to Pain.
“Thank you.” Pain accepted the necklace. “Y’all enjoy the rest of your day.” He tossed the money in Ron’s face, leaving him standing there embarrassed.
Pain continued his walk to the train station, grinning. What had started out as a not-so-good day was looking to turn around. A part of him felt bad about muscling the necklace from the girl, but she’d get over it. If she didn’t? It wasn’t his problem. He turned the lockets over in his hand, examining them. On the backs were inscribed two names: GEORGE and EDNA. Who were they? And what did they mean to Passion? This was a question he would ask when he returned the piece to the girl. His only dilemma now was how? He knew nothing about her and didn’t have anything to go on other than her name. But it was a start.
* * *
Pain ended up arriving forty minutes late for his scheduled appointment with his new parole officer. This was due to a homeless person who decided he wanted to light a cigarette on the train, and got aggressive when someone suggested he put it out. The police were there to greet him at the next stop, and that turned into an incident. Seems that there was more than tobacco in whatever he was smoking and he turned into a barbarian when the police tried to arrest him. To the homeless guy’s credit, he gave the first two cops on the scene straight hell. He even managed to wrest the nightstick from one of them. When their backup arrived they put a good whipping on the man, which caused a delay with the subway service while they sorted it out. This forced Pain to take the bus the rest of the way downtown, and he swore that the driver was purposely getting caught at every other red light.
Pain finally made it to the sixth floor of the Department of Parole. He had run all the way from the bus stop as he didn’t want to be any later than he already was. Thankfully it wasn’t that crowded. The way he’d heard it, the building had only recently started receiving parolees in person again since the pandemic had everything shut down. During the outbreak they had to resort to Zoom calls or phone-ins for those who didn’t have access to the internet. The officers weren’t even allowed to make home visits during those times. Pain wished that he’d come home just a few months sooner so he could’ve been in that number that didn’t have to deal with the bullshit of reporting in.
He ended up waiting about an hour before his name was called. Not because there were so many people ahead of him, but because the staff seemed more interested in doing everything but their jobs. There was more socializing between the employees than anything else. His new parole officer, Ms. Day, was hardly what he had imagined. Back when Pain had been on juvenile probation, most of the officers who worked in the building were older ladies, bookish looking, hard, or somewhere in between. Ms. Day was none of the above. She was young—older than Pain, but not by much—and attractive. A pretty brown-skinned girl who wore her hair in a short cut. Her face was made up, not heavily, just a bit of lipstick and some eyeliner. She was chewing a piece of gum and when she blew out a small bubble, Pain couldn’t help but to zero in on her lips. They were full and soft. He wondered to himself what they would taste like if she let him suck on them.
For as sweet as Ms. Day looked on the outside, her insides were all sour. When she spoke to Pain, her words were short and to the point. “I’m gonna make this short and sweet because I got a hair appointment in an hour, so I’m trying to get y’all out my face as soon as possible. I need to see you twice a month and I expect you to be on time.”
“My fault. There was a situation on the train and—”
“Your excuses don’t concern me. You playing with my time does. You’re late, you get kicked to the back of the line and stay there until I say otherwise. Now, from your records,” she flipped through the folder on her desk, which contained both Pain’s juvenile and adult mug shots, “this isn’t your first time at the rodeo, but I play a little different. You miss a check-in, I’m violating you. You piss dirty, I’m violating you. I ain’t no babysitter, so what you do in your spare time doesn’t concern me so long as you don’t get caught and cause me to have to fill out a bunch of paperwork. You wanna trick yourself back into prison—”
“I know, you’re gonna violate me.” Pain finished her sentence with a playful smile.
Ms. Day scowled. “Don’t get cute, Mr. Wells. That pretty smile might work on the hood rats in whatever slum you crawled out of, but it’ll get you nowhere with me. Get it?”
“My bad. Just trying to lighten the mood,” Pain said apologetically. Ms. Day was proving to be a real bitch.
She eyeballed him for a beat longer to make sure her message had been received, before pulling a sticky-note loose from a pink pad and scribbling a name and address on it. “Go to this address and ask for Mr. Carson. He runs the job program and should be able to help you with gainful employment. You got a résumé, Mr. Wells?”
“Never really had use for one,” Pain said honestly. The closest thing he ever had to a job was the brief time he worked at the butcher shop and that had been a hook up, not a situation where he had to apply.
“Of course not. You’ve probably been in the streets all your life and never had a job outside of stressing your mother out,” Ms. Day said accusingly. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure Mr. Carson can find something for you to do. What? I don’t know, nor care, so long as you’re gainfully employed. Do you have any questions?”
“Nah, you’ve showed me everything I need to know,” Pain said, not bothering to hide his growing dislike for Ms. Day. He wasn’t sure how he was going to make it through the length of his parole term under Ms. Day before she provoked him to do or say something that would likely get him sent back to prison.
“Good, then that means you and I should get along just fine.” Ms. Day matched his tone, letting him know that the feeling was mutual. She reached into one of her drawers and pulled out a small plastic container. “Drop some piss, bring it back, and be about your way,” she dismissed him.
After leaving Ms. Day’s office, Pain found himself back on the subway. This time he was headed north. The address she had given him was deep in the Bronx, near the Hunts Point area. At one time that had been one of his favorite hunting grounds. The section was lousy and filled with strip clubs and pockets of stray prostitutes, which meant that there was always cash around. Pain would play the strip clubs, laying in the cut and watching to see who was spending what or had the flashiest jewelry. He was always able to catch one of them slipping. At some point he didn’t have to go inside the clubs anymore. He’d just bless one of the dancers with a few dollars and they would tip him off as to who was holding the biggest bag that night. Once they came out of the spot tipsy and horny they’d be greeted by the barrel of Pain’s 9mm. Pain feasted on all the strip clubs and their patrons. Sometimes he would even hit the same spots two or three times in one night. He was brazen like that. When the clubs started getting hip and things got hot for Pain, he turned his predatory sights to the prostitutes and their Johns. Robbing the tricks never yielded as big a bag as the strip club licks, but if he hit enough people a night the money started to add up.
The re-entry program Ms. Day sent him to was run out of an old trailer that sat at the rear of a junkyard. Pain looked around in disgust as he navigated the heaps of trash and broken-down cars. The place smelled like the graveyard, which it probably was if the area was still anything like Pain had remembered. It wasn’t unheard of for bodies in various states of decay to be found hidden inside old junkers, or buried in shallow graves on the properties. It was sometimes weeks or more before some of the victims were discovered. By then, between being out in the elements and the rats, there usually wasn’t enough left of them for police to trace back to the killer. Pain knew this from first-hand experience.
The inside of the shed smelled nearly as bad as the outside. The smell of mold filled the air, coupled with that of food left sitting out. He found Mr. Carson sitting in the back office, which was only slightly larger than a bathroom. Mr. Carson was hands down the fattest white man Pain had ever laid eyes on. He weighed at least four hundred pounds, with a sack of loose pink skin that hung from his jaws down the front of his shirt. It made him look like a pelican. He sat behind a desk with part of his belly hanging over the top, chomping on a jumbo-size bacon cheeseburger that looked to be more bacon that burger. He was just taking another bite, ketchup dripping down his chin and grease squirting from the burger onto some papers on the desk, when he noticed Pain standing in the doorway. He cast his beady eyes on Pain and swallowed the burger without bothering to chew. “Help you?”
“Percy Wells. Ms. Day sent me over,” Pain introduced himself. He considered extending his hand to shake, but decided against it.
“Right,” Mr. Carson said with a nod. He reluctantly placed his burger down before wiping his hands on the blue coveralls he was wearing. While Pain waited, he shuffled through one of the drawers in the desk until he came up with the one containing Pain’s file. He thumbed through it briefly, getting grease on it but not seeming to care. “I see you just did time for drugs. Let me tell you straight off the bat that if you get caught with any of that shit on my yard I’ll call the police on you.”
“That won’t be a problem, sir,” Pain assured him.
“Good,” Mr. Carson said before flipping through Pain’s file again. “I don’t see any résumé or job skills listed. What do you know how to do?”
“Anything that’ll put a few dollars in my pocket and keep me off Ms. Day’s shit list,” Pain said honestly.
Mr. Carson studied Pain for a few seconds, before letting a smile form on his thin lips, exposing the tobacco-stained teeth behind them. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. You’ll fit right in around here.”
If by “fit right in” Mr. Carson meant that Pain would work like a slave for long hours, doing backbreaking work for low wages, he had hit the nail right on the head. He started Pain off where he started most new parolees, sorting trash. Pain was placed with a group of young men who would receive the trucks when they came in with junk. The cargo was emptied onto the lot and it was up to Pain to separate the junk accordingly: metal, wood, copper, etc. Everything went from the dumped pile into a separate pile of its like. The work was hard, disgusting, and in his onion, demeaning, but it kept him out of jail, so he suffered through it. His days started at 6 AM and ended at 6 PM. By the time Pain made it back to his grandmother’s house most nights, he was too tired to eat, so he just crashed. Slave, sleep, repeat. That became his routine.
After being there for about a week, Mr. Carson discovered that Pain knew his way around an engine, so he pulled him off the sort pile and put him in the garage. That wasn’t so bad. Pain mostly helped keep the yard’s vehicles maintained, but he’d occasionally find himself performing repairs that Mr. Carson brought in after-hours. These repairs became his side hustle, amongst other things.
