Terminal

He flipped open his cell phone and made a call. John ate his slice of pizza and I smoked. Ice Cube’s “Until We Rich” played softly, the lyrics matching the echoes of what Sherm had said. Finally, Sherm snapped his cell phone shut and poked John in the back of the head. 

“Let’s go, boys. We’re taking a trip to York. He’s got what we need.”

* * *

Halfway to York, as we stopped at an ATM machine, I felt the world closing in on me. I coughed blood, spat it out, and grimaced at the rawness in my throat. It felt like somebody had sandpapered my insides.

While Sherm and John waited impatiently in the car, I fumbled my wallet out of my pocket. My fingers didn’t seem to work properly. They felt thick and swollen. I fished out the card and slid it into the slot. The machine asked me for my pin number and it took me two tries to get it right. I entered the amount for withdrawal. Two hundred dollars.

It asked me if that was the correct amount. I pressed YES.

It asked me to please wait while it dispensed my cash.

As the bills, all twenties, rolled out of the machine, I knew there was no turning back. I’d lied to my wife about the cancer, and now I was going behind her back like this with the money, draining our account. Sure, in the long run, I was doing it for her and T. J., but it was still fucked up. And now, on top of everything else, we were going to go buy guns with the cash. Just like real-life gangsters.

I put the money in my wallet and crammed the wallet into my back pocket. It felt heavy, like it was made out of lead.

No turning back now, I thought.

The enormity of it all hit me then, and for the next few minutes, I forgot all about the fact that I was dying.

I looked up at the moon, pale and cold and lifeless, and saw my face in its reflection.

“No turning back now . . .” the moon whispered.

I got back into the car and slammed the door. It sounded like a gunshot, and John and Sherm both jumped. A gunshot— or a closing coffin lid.

Sherm fired up a bowl and passed it up to me. I inhaled, trying not to choke— and trying to ignore the bad feeling in my gut. A feeling that had nothing to do with cancer.

SEVEN

So what’s this guy’s name again?” I asked Sherm as we drove into the city.

“Wallace.”

“Is that his first name or his last name?”

Sherm shrugged. “I don’t know. Never asked the dude. I just know him as Wallace. That’s what everyone in his crew calls him.”

We rolled down West Market Street, past crumbling brownstones and crack houses, abandoned factories and burned-out apartments, tattoo parlors and seedy bars. York is a small city, but it has the crime rate of a big metropolitan area. If you look on a map, it sits right in the middle of things, an hour or less from Baltimore and Harrisburg, and within a few hours’ drive of Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, and New York. This makes it ideal for drug gangs, mostly crews from New York City and North Philly, but some from as far away as Chicago and Detroit. Back in the day, the Greek Mafia had controlled most of York’s crime, but those days are gone— old and feeble like the men who made them, men who were now serving life terms upstate. Their children had turned their backs on a life of organized crime, and the families died out, replaced by the gangbangers.

John turned onto South Queen Street. A drunken Hispanic woman lurched in front of the car and he swerved to avoid her. She shot him the finger, shrieked something in Spanish, and stumbled on. He sank down in the seat, turning off the Cypress Hill disc we’d been jamming to.

“Sherm,” he whispered, “we’re the only white people down here.”

“Chill, John. You don’t fuck with nobody and nobody will fuck with you.”

“What’s the big deal, John?” I asked. “You’ve been to downtown York plenty of times.”

“Yeah, but not late at night like this. We could get carjacked or something. Mugged. It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?”

Sherm snorted. “No way in hell somebody is gonna jack you for this piece of shit.”

We stopped at another traffic light. The car stereos around us competed for supremacy, melding into one solid bass line. On the corner, some kids played in a puddle, long after they should have been in bed. Rough-looking women, possibly their mothers, leaned into car windows, flashing cleavage and haggling over the cost of blow jobs. I missed Michelle and T. J. and I wanted to be home with them, not driving around in the ghetto, looking for guns. I felt tired— and sick. There was blood in my throat and the taste was nauseating.

John looked back at Sherm. “What’s the address again?”

“Forty-two. Two-story brick up here on the right. But he doesn’t do business in his crib. We’re supposed to meet him in the alley out back.”

“How come?” I asked.

“He’s got kids and shit, man. He doesn’t mix business and home life.”

“Oh, a drug dealer with principles . . .”

“Yo, how often do you smoke weed, Tommy?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Once or twice a week maybe. Tonight. Whenever you bring it around, I guess.”