Outreach Cats: Part 1

Count Down

Five

Fallen girls disposed in a ditch.

Four

Tries to digitize Whispering Jute the killer in the palm of Stevie’s hand.

Three

Clickety. Click. Clicks. Cracking little Astra from the dark backseat.

Two

Squinted blinks spill good nurse Lucinda over the cold hard wheel.

One

Outreach cat at nine lives minus nine, run, Padre, run, outrun time.

1      Mia

Outreach: A true calling - A real killer – An artful craft

Exterior:  Night Butcher Alley Camden, NJ

Mia was a sweet kid, lied saying she was 20.

Kid was only 19.

Whispering Jute lined up five.

Mia - Charisse – Laurie Girl - Dante -Teresa, aka, Renee LaPorte

Here’s hoping WJ gets a special cell with no possibility of parole

In hell

Pissed. That’s why.

Fucked up women.

Useless waste.

Junkie-fiends.

Don’t know how to do real sex.

Don’t know how to prime my pump.

Their fault I do it

Bitches made it that much easier.

To kill them.

Get their skanky asses in the car

Drive around over there.

Twenty. Mia said.

Whispering Jute the killer had to laugh. You’ lucky you’ getting ten. Telling her with that soft voice.

Oh, no, Being pleasant, Mia. I thought you asked how old am I.

Later, the corner-boy in the baggy dungarees and big white tee swore, told Stevie, Yeah. Coming out’ Nefertiti’s,

The corner boy kept flapping his black leather open and closed like he was pumping words out of a hip-hop bellows, Coming out I saw her. Back Butcher Alley offa’ 4th, you know, M, near Liberty. Getting in. Black. Four door. First I thing thought it was po-lice. Nah, I couldn’t say I saw the driver. Dude wearing a hoodie or some shit. Did look to have a soul-patch. Why you askin’, boo?

Taking the ten dollars Stevie offered, smiling, saying, You not the only one askin’ either, slick. Least you slid some my way. Unlike old man Methuselah. Tried to hand me a’ bag a’ M & M’s, an’ open one too. I had to tell ‘im, thanks, but I don’t do peanuts.

But the corner-boy out of Nefertiti’s wouldn’t say anymore, and even though Stevie would like to have confirmed who was old man Methuselah and why he was asking around, ten was all Stevie had till payday. No dinner this shift. Going without on Outreach was nothing new.

And Mia had tried. Looked up at the devil, from the passenger side floor mat, on her knees, like: Now what? She wanted to say, you get off, like this? With this? She’d seen it before. Some guys could. Some did. But never this lame. Never this tweezer. Never even saw one like this, even in pictures. Like that Christmas way back, when she undressed that hard plastic doll Mommy called anatomically correct.

Creep pushed her head down and said, You’ new at this, ain’t you?

Geezer sweat? Really? Tightie whities. Gorilla hairy. Dude shines his shoes.

Keep practicing, chump. The whispering asshole told her. You’ gonna’ be Camden cocksucking champion tonight or choke trying.

Held her head down and started the engine. They didn’t go far. Street got bumpy. Butcher Alley. Creep got out, cobblestoned and pot-holed around to the passenger door. Right then she thought, seeing, no, sensing, what was going on. What shiny-shoed pressed pants wearing soul-patch jerk-off wears a hoodie?

Lock that car door girl! But slow motion panic set in like wet cement. How do you lock this thing - under water? I am. Am I? Under water? But whatever the reason – Reason - Actually laughable. Reason. She couldn’t.

The creep had it open and the putrid nobody gives a fuck Camden night pushed in and took her by the hair. Made more macabre by Mia’s jagged acrylics scraping the soul-patch pastie from the chin of Zohar’s Naamah, the maniacal death mask above spewing oblivion down into her nostrils, infecting her tissue, venomous contagion violating her cellular being, inseminating her psyche, her children’s DNA with an epileptic scourge. 

Screaming, no good, she was. Didn’t signify a goddamn thing. Out here. Even if she wasn’t so far from home. Even if that sick soft voice wasn’t singing, Sleep baby. Dream baby. Happy in your dreams.

Just before, there were Christmas lights in Bethlehem. It was snowing like in a snow globe in the town where she grew up. The burgers at Horn’s were steaming on the flat top, the place she walked home smelling like, never have to scrub onions from her pores, ever again, there was that smell, that job, she couldn’t wait to escape, just before.

And for a minute, two blinks, an opening flickered, and then went out: Shit, I never even did it to get high. Pretty white-powder out here, not my thing, really. So why? I don’t know why. And now Mia was sure, Chad, her son, that was him, wasn’t it, blonde-haired little boy on his blue-eyed father’s lap, with her baby daughter, Deenay, smiling at mommy.

There was a mystical clarity in that final involuntary exchange, with dude, pressing down, retching that irrevocable expiratory grunt from her throat, another faceless offender inducing her last gasp on this isolated plane. Asphyxiated Mia was nothing, if not curious, would she exhale her final inhalation rammed down her windpipe by rapacious evil, would she have to do that work too, or would it just seep out slowly, her uttermost breath, on its own, her soul? And down the narrowing sensory portal the blood in her throat – sound fading like a visual wind chime with a tactile snap when she clutched at the silver thing torn from the sleeve, and it fell from her grasp, broken, to the ground.

2   Abuelo, Astrid, Hector, & Peeti

Outreach: Don’t dead-end - Dovetail

Exterior: Morning 40th & Federal Camden, NJ

Abuelo, sitting on his lawn-chair throne, outside the tire-store, saying to his son, When you go to 26th Street make sure you don’t leave without what they owe me, Peeti. Abuelo never called him Big Boy. He knew Peeti hated going to that house. I raised the rent, Peeti. That good? Trying to appease his son but knowing it wouldn’t make any difference to the boy.

Pop, Peeti told Abuelo, I hate those fucks.

Big Boy re-upped the sets, making sure the drug corners stayed supplied with product, but collecting rent, from these people?

Everybody knows, Pop. You don’t care what they’re doing in there, those perverts? On your property? Why we wanna’ touch that money? Let me lob a gas cocktail in there, be done with it.

Peeti was pissed ever since it came out what was really going on, what Enver and Hoxha were doing there at his father’s 26th Street property.

Hector, mean ass Hector, sitting on the curb at Abuelo’s feet like a dog made of stone, got done what the old man wanted getting done, looking up to see how Abuelo would react.

––––––––

Abuelo looked over his shoulder to blow the smoke away from his son. He knew the boy didn’t like getting high. Peeti could see her behind the large plate-glass window. He could see Astrid, Hector’s sister, inside where it was cool and a little dark. Abuelo squinted, he saw Peeti looking.

Like your sister. He said to Peeti.

Astrid had come up in the family. She had been there for Peeti’s when his wife, Lizette, Lizette with a z, had been murdered.

Astrid was there behind the window every morning, running the register, keeping the mayhem of that raggedy-ass crunked-up garage crew to a minimum, managing the tire store, topping up the thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory, fender flares, tricked out rims, factory and custom wheels, all kinds of aftermarket accessories, racks of tires, Astrid, all day enveloped, immersed in that keen cooked rubber cordage smell from stacks and stacks of tires.

Peeti watched her move, tall, and tan, and something, and lovely, like the song from when he was a kid, watched her move between the window signs: Living Large $ No Credit No Problem – New Used Tires – Compre Aqui * Pague Aqui – Llantas Usadas... Abuelo couldn’t do shit without Astrid.

On top of everything else baby girl collected baby stuff, new things for new babies, diapers, cribs, playpens, pacifiers, nipples, bottles, and swing-sets, collected it from all around Camden County and the affluent suburbs, sent it in fifty-five gallon drums down to the island, to the home village for the poor.

In fact it was the man they used to called Z, or Zorro in this part of Camden, who helped Astrid start that project a few years back, and now that Zorro had retired, his son Stevie, who they called Mister Stevie, or M, he kept an eye on things.

But for Peeti, it was a bitter song, Oh but he watches so sadly, how can he tell her he loves her, yes, he would give his heart gladly...

Astrid, exquisite Astrid. As a boy he’d heard his mother talk about a rare hummingbird in El Yunque, the Puerto Rican Rain Forest, a Green Mango hummingbird, that she called Veste Verde. For some reason Mommy knew some Portugués. Peeti wished he’d asked before she died. To Peeti, a woman like Astrid, in a place like Camden, so rare, like that Mango hummingbird, she somehow just didn’t fit. And she knew it.

She could tell what he was feeling when Peeti looked at her. She felt it too. They did the dance. Every morning, behind the plate glass, she moved like the hummingbird, flower to flower, while he could only sigh and watch. When she walks she’s like a samba that swings so cool and sways so gently, and when she passes each one she passes, goes, Ah... But they both knew, there was nothing to be done about it.

Besides, there were others in her orbit. Several of the garage crew, married men, true, but ever hopeful. Vendors, police, like LaGata, coming around, making excuses just to see her, customers with money and custom designs, I prefer talking to Astrid. Even women. Peeti wasn’t the only one under her spell.

But brother Hector was crazy as she was beautiful. Big-Boy was afraid of no one on the street. But Hector? He was like the dogs he crazed-up and trunked. Astrid was the only suppressor where Hector’s violence was concerned. Even Abuelo said it was like keeping cohete in your underpants.

Peeti had to laugh the morning Abuelo came up with that line. The old man could be funny, especially when he was stoned.

Angel asked, What’s cohete, Poppi?

"You don’t teach this dumb ass Guero* Spanish? Cohete, trajiste tu cohete." Abuelo could very quickly go from funny to mean.

*(Slang term for a person of fair complexion or with blond, light brown, or red hair that may or may not be used derogatorily.)

Peeti said, It’s your gun, did you bring it?

Abuelo gave another use for cohete, Esta bien cohete!"

You’re really loaded, he’s drunk. Could mean that too. Peeti translated for Angel again. But fireworks, right, Pop? You’ talking about fireworks in your underpants? It’s like keeping fireworks in your underpants, keeping Hector around. Everybody laughing, then quick look around, make sure Hector didn’t hear.

Abuelo put Hector to work when someone came up short on a package. Skinny Hector Hogar, Abuelo changed it. Hector had an Irish father he never met. Hogan, the man’s name. But Hector Homey, everybody called him in the street, Hector Homey, Hogar meaning home, in Spanish, Abuelo changed Hogan to Hogar.

The summer before, down at Angel’s lot, dragging that Vietnamese or Cambodian kid, or whatever the hell he was, Billy Dinh. Hector all calm and shit, Billy begging, terrified.

Hector saying, Angel, bring me Astra.

Angel trying to reason with the devil. Ah c’mon, Mister Hector.

Hector pulling out his big chrome Smith and Wesson 38 Detective Special saying, Well okay then. The gun his girl gave him glinting in the sun.

Angel pleading, Okay, okay, wait, wait. And running back to the brick ledge for Astra, running it back, handing the pocket-pistol over, arm’s length, stretch it out to Homey, careful not to look this mad dog in the eye, backing away not looking. Nobody wanting to look. Can’t believe you’ doing this shit, Home’.

Hector being all avuncular, saying, Ah, Billy boy... Pop! One in the right thigh.

Billy crying. Ah, my leg. Laying down in the lot.

Long, stringy, dirty blonde-haired Hector, another Guero; a fair-skinned, hazel-eyed, light-haired person, obvious mixed-race mean-ass mutt, not much taller than his cop girlfriend, who gave him the big chrome 38, looking down at Billy, saying, You be sure ‘dey ain’t gonna’ be a next time for your Agent Orange behind. No three strikes, or whatever. This ain’t baseball out here. Now they call you Limping Billy. Tossing Astra in the lot back toward Angel and the damn thing accidentally discharging, raising dust, ricocheting, making loose dogs, errant chickens, everybody jump, in that goddamn dusty lot. Hector, who never cursed, never used profanity, just smiling his weird ass smile and strolling away. Misfires half the time anyway.

Later when Angel told Big-Boy about the incident, Big-Boy said, Nothing I can do about it, son. Abuelo got his ideas about discipline and order. Even me and you ain’t free from it. Nobody is.

Peeti didn’t say it but he thought, with maybe the exception of Astrid, maybe she gets a pass. Then he said to Angel, You just be careful that crazy-ass Hector. Mother fucking trunker.

Peeti used to try not to think about it. Hector genetically nuts, reminding his son, "Any man crazes-up poor innocent animals, starving they ass, beating ‘em, cigarette burns, electric cords, and shit. Puts dogs in the trunk of his nasty donk, ugly ass 76 Deville, I hate that car. Tricked-out, blasting speakers with that shit he listens to, locking them poor dogs in the trunk, agitating them to fight each other...

...Bet on which one’ still alive, not torn up by the time they reach the river. That man ain’t right, Ang... Peeti trying to protect his son. And the comic books. Comic books! Grown man reading ThunderCats.

Why he named his bitch dog Cheetara. Angel said.

Man’s sick. Peeti said. Grown man watching Thunder-Cat cartoons.

––––––––

Astrid, by contrast, all serene, and shadowy, and no doubt, all Latina, and all off limits to Peeti, according to Abuelo, and in his own mind too. Some said she was really his sister. Peeti didn’t want to know.

But she enchanted him nonetheless, her mouth, the eyes, hair so black, mystified him that hair could be so perfectly shiny and perfectly black. The way she smelled, and her breath, when she spoke Spanish in his ear, called him Papito. Girl had a figure