A fish sandwich was the only thing I had on my mind that night. A fried whiting sandwich, to be exact, from a smoky, fish-fry joint just off Central Avenue in Newark. I could almost taste its crisp, greasy goodness slapped between two slices of soft white bread with a mess of greens on the side, a tiny cup of Red Devil hot sauce tossed in the bag for the hell of it and a pale dab of tartar sauce smeared on the far edge of the plate just to tempt me.
That fish sandwich damned near got me killed.
I didn't hear him coming, tipping on the toes of his shoes, like somebody's ghost. I didn't hear the sharp breath he must have taken or see the way his eyes shifted from one side of the parking lot to the other to make sure we were alone. I didn't smell trouble coming. But I felt it-- the nose of his gun ramming into the middle of my spine, the way it shook when his hand did.
"Give it up, bitch!" It was a kid's voice. High and whispery, not even deepened into manhood or cracking yet like my son Jamal's did. It took me a minute to get it together-- that soft voice and the hard metal thing wedged up against my back.
"I told you to give it up! Did you hear me?"
He said "did you hear me" like his mama probably said it to him, wavering between threat and violence--a kid being mannish, showing off. I stiffened, as scared as he probably was. Maybe more.
The street was empty, the parking lot dim. It was close to midnight. I'd been working late, making some last minute notes on a surveillance case so I could give my final report to the client along with my bill. I'd walked into the parking lot hungry and drag-ass tired, not even aware of how dark it was. On its best days, the cheap lot near my P.I.'s office has maybe two dull spotlights, but there was only one shining tonight, throwing its gleam about two feet on either side. I'd been walking toward my car, fumbling for my keys in the bottom of my bag when he stopped me. I stood stiff now, sweat sliding down my back, clutching the leather strap of my bag so tight it hurt my hand.
"What do you want? My money? Keys? Here ." I thrust my red and green Kenya bag behind me, not waiting for an answer, hoping it would knock him off-balance. It knocked against him, and his gun went deeper in my back as he snatched my bag and emptied it on the ground between us. My things hit the ground and something broke.
Damn it! My thirty dollar Guerlain blusher! I thought and in the same moment realized that nothing mattered but this boy with his gun poked into my spine. I pulled away from him. He stayed with me.
"Get it!"
"Get what?"
"The shit out your bag, the shit out your bag! Get it!
Get it yourself you little bastard.
"Okay," My voice broke like a scared girl's does. I hated to show my fear to him. I steadied it. "I've got to turn around to pick it up. Okay?" I said it like I'd say it to my own son, like I was explaining something to him he might not understand. My heart was beating fast, my mouth dry. But I knew he was scared too. I knew it because his voice shook, and I know how a frightened boy sounds. The gun was shaking now too as he rocked it back and forth in the middle of my back. A scared kid is the last person in the world you want holding a gun on you. None of its real to him: not you, not the gun, nothing. He'll pop you quicker than he'll pop a stick of gum.
"I'm going to step forward now. Okay?"
Silence.
"I want to get the things out of my bag so that I can give them to you." He paused, unsure of himself.
"Okay." His voice was irritable but easy. I felt a rush of relief.
I turned around and stooped down, catching a quick look at him in the dim streetlight, putting a face and body with the kid voice.
He was taller than that voice had sounded but still shorter than me by about five inches, and I outweighed him by a good thirty pounds. Thin slightly stooped shoulders and a skinny neck made him look like a young bird of prey. His skin was that dull, flat brown that comes from a diet of chocolate drink and orange soda instead of milk and orange juice. He was dressed the way kids dress on gangsta videos-- how my son might dress if he could get out the house without me catching him--with a swagger and a fuck-you attitude: Baggy jeans drooping low off his butt, black bubble jacket, unlaced Timberlands, head shaved clean to the scalp. A boy looking like inmates look in the joint, like he knew he had nothing waiting for him but prison or the graveyard. Jailhouse Chic.
I stood back up to face him now, my wallet and keys in my hand. He had a boy's face, what I could see of it, not even the hint of a mustache on his upper lip. I wondered if he caught hell in the school yard or on the corner for a soft little face like that.
"If you take these from me now it's a felony. You can do some serious time, if you take this out my hand." Looking this boy in the face, I wasn't afraid of him. How old was he? Twelve? Thirteen? I wondered if the gun was real. I'd heard about that, kids like this breaking bad with a gun that isn't really a gun. It was big enough to be real--it looked like it might be a Colt, definitely a .38, but I'd seen toys that looked like that. They look real these days, get them started early.
"Do you understand me? It's a felony."
He looked lost for a moment, as if he didn't quite get it. His face still obscured in shadow.
"If they hear about it."
My hair stood up on the back of my neck. My stomach dropped.
"So you don't think they'll hear about it?" I found my voice and forced it out strong. Damned if I was going to let a skinny kid take away my voice. But even as I spoke, I though about something I'd read a while back in the Star-Ledger, about a woman, who had tried to touch the conscience of a kid who she feared was going to kill her. She had tried to reason with him as he drove around with her in the passenger seat of her new car, talking to him, pleading with him, reasoning with him, and damned if he didn't kill her anyway, despite everything she'd said. Just for the hell of it. Just because he felt it. She'd ended up as dead as if she'd cussed him out. As dead as I could end up. I studied his baby face and the gun that he had lowered now so it pointed at my heart. But I sensed something about this kid, a hesitancy and uncertainity. I decided to take a chance.
"First time you've done something like this?"
He looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
"Here." I tossed the keys at him surprising him, he jumped back as if they were hot or I'd taken a punch at him, and they hit the ground with a metal tinkle. "You want my car? Take it."
He paused like a kid does, unsure of himself, studying the keys that lay on the ground between us like he'd never seen a set of keys before, not sure what his next move should be. I realized then that he wasn't going to use the gun. If he were, he would have done it when I threw the keys at him suddenly like I had. That disrespect would have cost me my life if he was ready to kill me, if any little excuse would do.
He was alone, which was a good thing. There was no crew to back him up, to show off for. No one to be embarrased in front of. No chance for macho bonding or bragging and that was what it would be about in the end. I wouldn't have had a chance if one of his boys had been riding back-up with him, had seen me dis him like that, throwing those keys at him like I'd just done. It was just me and him, here together in the parking lot. If he wanted my car and money he had it now. He'd gotten what he'd come for. He could tell any tale he wanted to tell to anybody he wanted to tell it to now, and there was nobody to set things straight, to say how things had really gone down.
He glanced down at the keys, his eyes not leaving mine, the gun still on me. Then he kneeled down and felt around the ground, forgetting the wallet I still held in my hand. He stood back up clutching the keys.
"What one is yours?" His voice was shaking. I could hear his excitement. He wanted this to be over as much as I did.
I pointed to my car, which my son Jamal sarcastically calls the "Blue Demon." It's a faded blue diesel Jetta, which saw its best days ten years ago. Rust spots have settled on its hood like chicken pox, and there is a crack shaped like an egg in the passenger side's window. Twisted wire hangers have replaced vital parts: One is twisted into a figure-eight and sprouts from the hole in the hood that used to hold the antenna, but I can get any FM station in a radius of fifty miles. Its twin, which has kept me from the Midas muffler man for the last six weeks, props up the exhaust pipe so it won't drag on the ground. The kid took one look at my car, and his mouth dropped open.
"That!" He said the word like my son Jamal says it, squealing in a long, disgusted cry of outrage. I answered him like I answer my son, with that blend of sad resignation and acceptance that only no bucks and life kicking your ass can bring.
"That."
"You telling me, that fucked-up piece of junk is your ride?"
"That's what I'm telling you."
"Oh, shit!"
"What did you think I was driving, that Benz over there?" I risked a sarcastic comment and nodded toward a sleek silver Mercedes that clung to the curb and belonged to a small-time local hustler who did business in a club down the street. He looked at me and then at my Jetta and then back at me in dismay realizing in that terrible second that he had broken the first and only rule that thieves have: Know what you're stealing.
He was obviously an amateur. He'd probably gotten into this mess spur of the moment, mad at somebody--his mama, his junior-high girlfriend--he'd taken me on with this gun he got from somewhere and climbed in deeper than he'd meant to.
But he was in it now.
I stepped slightly away from him, glancing around to see if help was anywhere to be seen, praying that Mr. Hustler would round the bend. The kid moved toward me suddenly, and I felt a thin line of sweat like a wet string drip from the nape of my neck down my spine.
He would need to save face.
"Give it to me?
"You got it."
"You know what I mean. The money. Give me the money. Bitch!"
He spat that one word out, making it sound as mean and as ugly as I'd ever heard it sound, and that scared the hell out of me because I could hear the contempt and shame in his voice. Contempt for me because I was at his mercy and shame that he didn't know what he should have known, and that combination will make you kill as quick as fear. He was getting ready to make his second chance move, his I don't-want-to-feel -like-a chump play.
"Give it to me!"
The gun was back at my heart, the look of menace back on his babyface.
"You want my money?" I stalled.
"What the fuck else do you think I want."
I had exactly six dollars and fifty cents in my wallet. I knew it because I'd counted it out before I left the office. Just enough for that fish sandwich I'd been dreaming about. I knew he would kill me because there wasn't more. Because he would have blown it twice on what was probably his first time out on a woman who was old enough to be his mama. Older than his mama probably, and in the end saving face when he looked at himself in the mirror was all it was going to be about. He had a gun, and now he was going to have to shoot somebody with it, just to prove he wasn't a punk, to prove it to himself. I knew that simple truth as clearly as I knew my name.
So I said the three words that I knew might buy me some time.
"I'm a cop." They rolled out of my mouth with every bit of threat I could put in them, like I was telling the truth even though I haven't been a cop for almost a decade. I don't even like most cops much. But if he wasn't sharp enough to check out a car before he stole the keys he wasn't sharp enough to ask for the badge I didn't have in my wallet. Nobody was stupid enough to shoot a cop. I could tell by the look that had settled on his face that he knew it.
"We're staking this lot out. My partner will be here before you get that gun back in your drawers good," I lied fast and sure, my voice matter of fact. "Why do you think I'm up in your punk-ass little face like this? Why I'm not scared of you? How long you think it's going to take them to find you? You're getting ready to throw your life away over a couple of bucks and a car older than your mama. Nobody ever gets away with shooting a cop."
He swallowed hard. I could see his Adam's apple bob in his throat.
"Put the gun away, son."
Son.
He looked up at me. I could see his face fully in the dim light. He had high cheekbones, strong and prominent and full, pretty, sweetheart lips. His eyes were hazel--brownish golden eyes in dark brown skin. It was a boy's face that might grow into that of a good-looking man, a heartbreaking kind of man. And in that moment I knew it was a face from my past, a blur from somewhere distant and painful.
I know this boy.
"Did you hear me, son?"
Where do I know this boy from?
He stared at me hard, his eyes wide with something I couldn't read. Then he turned tail and ran, his sneakers pounding the asphalt like he was being chased by the devil.
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