No one spoke for a while. Wally looked away from Jake, instinctively knowing that he needed some space. Jake shuffled around a bit, trying to walk off some of his steam. He kicked the pizza box again; it splashed up some puddle water as it skidded through the gutter.
Wally had always been drawn to guys who were on the sensitive side—brainy, even—and Jake was the opposite of that. Everything was physical with him. Jake had the chiseled features of the all-American high school jock he had once been, with stormy blue eyes that were sometimes hidden behind what he called his “Samson hair”—dirty blond, unkempt, and grown way out from the military cut his coaches back in Ohio had always insisted on. He had maintained some of his linebacker/wrestler physique—sneaking in sets of push-ups and pull-ups and crunches when he could—and he even wore a letterman’s jacket, purple wool fleece with white leather sleeves and a big varsity letter
P
on the front, that he had found on a Salvation Army rack for a dollar seventy-five.
Jake had no idea what high school the
P
stood for, but it didn’t seem to matter. Wally and the crew could see that the simple article of clothing made Jake feel like himself, a call back to the warm, secure life he led before his parents and sister were all killed in a car wreck, leaving him to the custody of cousins who resented his presence in their home and never stopped letting him know it.
Jake had solved the problem for them by hitchhiking his way out of Ohio, never looking back as he made a solo journey to New York. He had mostly adjusted to life on the streets—and to Wally’s authority within the crew—but sometimes there were flashes of his old jock mentality, some push-back against the idea of a girl making decisions for him.
“Whatever,” Jake finally said, swallowing his objections. “Let’s just go.”
He started pushing the cart toward Riverside Park, muscling it on a straight course despite its loud, bent front wheel. Ella walked beside him—always beside Jake—with little dancing steps mixed into her stride, humming quietly to herself as she moved along, following Jake’s lead like a faithful moon in orbit. Seeing them move together like that, in harmony, made Wally envious. She had the authority and respect that she had earned by seizing control of the crew from Nick, but with that came a certain distance between herself and the others. At least that’s how she felt at times like these.
As if sensing her feelings of isolation, Tevin moved closely into step beside her, giving her a playful little hip check that bumped her off stride.
“It’s a fine day,” Tevin said. “A roof over our heads, money coming in. We’re doing good.”
“Yeah, okay,” Wally said, feeling only halfway convinced.
“I’m hungry,” said Ella from up ahead.
“Surprise surprise,” said Tevin.
Ella was
always
hungry. Like a hummingbird, she constantly needed to refuel her high-revving motor.
“We could dip into the emergency money for Mitey Fine, if you guys want,” Wally said.
“Yay,” said Ella, and squeezed Jake’s arm; the food truck in Harlem served Jake’s favorite fried chicken, and eating there would clearly be a peace offering from Wally. Jake thought about it—reluctant at first—but then he looked back at Wally and gave her a small nod.
The crew made it to the top of Riverside Park in under an hour and, with just twenty minutes more of walking, they were well into Harlem. They found the Mitey Fine food truck and stopped for the promised chicken; Ella ordered three large pieces herself and began carefully nibbling away the slightly burnt crust, savoring each greasy, spicy bite before wolfing down the meat. When Wally dug into the hidden pocket in her shoulder bag to pay for the food—the emergency backup money—she was immediately surprised and pissed off at what she
didn’t
find inside: there had been a hundred dollars in cash hidden there, but now there was only forty. Worse, Wally’s fake ID—the expensive one that listed her as twenty-three years old—was also missing.
“Shit!” she said, angry with herself for letting it happen.
“What?” Jake asked, looking concerned; it was not normal for the crew to see Wally caught off guard, which she obviously had been.
“My ID is gone, and most of the emergency money.”
“How?” asked Tevin. “When’s the last time you went in there?”
Wally tried to remember. “Two weeks?”
No one had to say it: two weeks ago was right around the time they had sent Sophie away.
For Wally, the ID was the bigger loss. The expensive fake was like a visa to the young adult attractions in the city—bars, mainly, or maybe the occasional rave if she could scrape the cover charge together—and the times when she hadn’t had a good ID she had often felt confined, even claustrophobic. Of course, there were plenty of places where underage kids could talk or sneak their way in, but to Wally that felt too much like asking permission. And she hated that.
Hated
.
“Shit,” said Jake. “Fuckin’ Sophie.”
Tevin opened his mouth as if to object, but changed his mind. There was no defense for the girl.
The crew moved on. Another ten minutes and they were within shouting distance of the 131st Street Smoke Shop, on the corner of Fredrick Douglass Boulevard, where by chance they met up with Panama himself; he was lumbering his way back to the shop, carrying a big greasy bag from the Harlem Papaya, containing at least three hot dogs piled high with onions and peppers and dripping with mustard.
“Little sister,” Panama greeted Wally in his low growl, ignoring the others in the crew but taking notice of the two large boxes in their shopping cart.
The man called Panama was large—wide and tall with enormous, powerful hands—and wore short-sleeved Hawaiian-themed shirts year-round, today with a layer of gray, long-sleeved thermals underneath, his long hair woven in a thick braid that ran halfway down the length of his back. Panama stepped toward the shopping cart and, glancing around first in case anyone might be observing him, looked inside both of the cardboard boxes.
“Espresso machines?” he asked Wally.
“Brand new,” she confirmed. “Swiss. A complete station, two servers, molded copper casing—that’s an upgrade. Retail is seven thousand.”
“Retail.”
Panama snorted, as if offended by the very concept.
“We’ll take fifteen hundred,” said Wally.
Another snort from Panama.
“Ha. We gonna see,” he said. “They can take ’em round back.”
The group walked together the final distance to the smoke shop, where Jake, Ella, and Tevin peeled off, wheeling the shopping cart toward an open garage door at the west end of the shop where two of Panama’s men waited, ready to take delivery of the machines.
Wally followed Panama into the small smoke shop and all the way through to a back room office, where assorted stolen goods crowded the space in stacks that reached nearly to the ceiling. Panama sat down at a cluttered desk and opened his greasy bag, purring at the sight of the unwrapped hot dogs. Wally sat down on a small folding chair opposite the desk. A second chair, empty beside her, reminded Wally that Sophie had sat beside Wally during most of these meetings. It was Sophie, with three years on the street and all the experience that came with that, who first introduced Wally to Panama.
The big man set his food aside for the moment, picked up his cell phone, and began calling. He carried on brief discussions with several unnamed parties, then set down the phone and picked up his first hot dog.
“Three hundred,” he said.
“Hell no,” said Wally. “Looks like I’ll have to shop ’em around.”
“Yeah, guess so,” Panama said, speaking through a full mouth. “If you don’t mind walkin’. Course, they already in my garage.”
“You go to six hundred, that’s fair,” said Wally, feeling the pressure of having the cash and ID stolen, needing to make up for that loss for both herself and the crew.
Panama didn’t reply to the offer. “Where you jack ’em, anyways?”
Wally just shrugged. A restaurant on Columbus Avenue had shut its doors after only a few months in business; Wally and the others had cased the place as a possible crash site and found the espresso machines still sitting inside the gutted shop, unopened. Panama didn’t need to know any of that, but this was a chance for Wally to use a strategy she had learned from Nick, a way to avoid getting ripped off by scum like Panama: always dangle the next deal, even if it was total bullshit.
“I can’t tell you where I got them,” she said, “but there might be more, if you can move these.”
“Oh, Panama can
move
’em. …”
“Something else,” Wally said, changing the subject. “I lost my good ID, the one your guy Train cut for me last summer.”
Panama set down his hot dog, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and shook his head. “My man Train is unavailable for the next twelve to eighteen months. I got a few good places I use. There a place up in Queens, an old Russian shop in Brighton Beach is pretty good, or these Nigerians in Jersey City …”
“Brighton is good.”
From memory, Panama dictated an address in Brighton Beach, and Wally jotted it down. She would need to skim at least two hundred dollars off the sale of the espresso machines to pay for a new ID.
“I can’t go lower than five hundred on the machines,” Wally finally said. “I’d look bad to my crew.”
Panama considered this with a skeptical look on his face.
“You take some cards in trade?” he suggested. Panama had a connection for cards that added minutes to prepaid cell phones, something about scamming FEMA disaster relief. Whenever there was a natural disaster in the country, the relief agency passed out prepaid cell phones to victims, plus cards to recharge the minutes. Within days, Panama would have a new shipment of the phones and cards off the black market. He would sell or trade them to Wally and the crew for twenty cents on the dollar, which they could turn around for double on the street.
“Yeah, cards could be part of it …” Wally tentatively agreed, already starting to feel the buzz of closing a profitable deal.
“Tell you what …” Panama reached inside his desk drawer and pulled a small box with the logo of a cell phone manufacturer on the side. He opened the box and pulled out a shiny new smart phone with a large touch screen in front. He passed the phone to Wally, along with its small portable charger.
“I can be generous, go three hundred on the ’spresso machines,” Panama said. “Plus some phone cards that you can bump to two hundred on the street, if you hustle. And you keep that smart phone, thrown in. That a clone, got a thousand minutes on it. You can sell that, get a hundred easy. If you want to keep it, though, I maybe got some business opportunities comin’ up in the next few weeks, might be right for you. This way we can be in touch.”
“What kind of opportunities are we talking about?”
“Don’t worry ’bout it. Good money. I gonna call you when we ready to go.”
When Wally emerged
from the smoke shop, she found the others waiting on a stoop two doors up.
“We got three hundred cash,” Wally said to the group.
“What?”
Jake protested. “That’s bullshit.”
“Take it easy,” Wally said. “That’s plus phone cards that we can sell for maybe two hundred downtown. All together that’s a good score.”
They nodded in agreement, though Jake still looked a little ticked off.
“Here’s the thing, though,” Wally said. “I gotta replace my ID. So that’s two hundred of the cash, right there.”
The others didn’t question Wally’s need to replace the lost ID, and they knew the turnover on the cards would be pretty easy. Wally dug into her pockets and pulled out the wad of tens and twenties that Panama had paid her. She kept two hundred and passed the rest to the others, along with the packet of phone cards.
“You guys get started on selling the cards, okay?” Wally said.
“Sure. Where are you headed?” Tevin asked.
“To get the ID. And some personal stuff.”
The others didn’t object. By now they were used to the boundaries that Wally had erected around her personal history. Everyone in the crew had their own secrets, and they respected hers.
The four of them walked to the subway station at 134th Street and grabbed the C train downtown. As they rode, Jake brought out his MP3 player and, on cue, the others each plugged their own earbuds into the “splitter” that allowed them to listen in on the mix together. The first song was a techno-house remix with a sort of hypnotic effect that almost caused them to miss their transfer at Columbus Circle. Jake realized it first and nudged the others; Tevin, Ella, and Jake waved goodbye to Wally as they hopped off and headed to the 3 train that would take them to Times Square.
Wally stayed on the C. As the train pulled out of the station, leaving her crew behind, Wally sighed, feeling relieved, and even spread out on the bench a little, expanding her personal space. Her crew relied on her leadership so much that Wally sometimes felt trapped under the weight of their expectations. When she was out in the city by herself, Wally reveled in the sense of freedom and possibility. More than once, Wally had imagined where she might end up if, one day, she stepped onto a train alone and allowed herself to keep riding, all the way to the end of the line and beyond.
Wally got off the train
at the Port Authority and walked to Harmony House, a resource center for homeless youth on 41st Street. She went immediately to the women’s washroom—an impersonal, almost industrial space—and signed in to use a shower. The attendant gave her a clean towel and the key to an individual, prefab plastic stall, fairly clean but water-stained yellow from years of heavy use; the tight space reeked of the bleach that the Harmony staff used every night to fight back the crud. Wally eagerly stripped down and stepped under the strong, hot stream of water, the steam quickly filling up the stall. She soaped and rinsed herself twice, imagining the stink of Panama’s oniony hot dog breath washing off her and swirling away down the drain. When the soaping was done, she stood under the hot stream, unmoving, soaking up the heat until the six-minute timer ran out and the water turned off on its own.