Bigger Than Jesus Read online

  You pull your gun and point it at his head. You feel the energetic connection between your muzzle and the middle of the man’s forehead. Pull the trigger now and he’ll have a small red hole in front and a sick, yawning maw of brains squirting out the back. The pink mist will be followed by gray and white and red: All the colors of a head shot.

  The shakes take over the pizza man’s body. Hunters call it buck fever when they have a stag lined up in their scope but can’t stop the tremors. He sees your steady eyes.

  As gently as you can, you say, “You ain’t Batman.”

  The pizza man understands now that he’s not a killer. He’s a worker ant who manages a little place that sells bad food. You are the hit man. He lowers the revolver and, still trembling, drops it to the sidewalk. He raises his empty hands, shaking so bad it looks like he’s waving goodbye. A tear rolls down a cheek. He closes his eyes and begins a Hail Mary as he waits for you to throw him into whirling red blades.

  You should shoot, but he’s just a civilian. You’ve done a lot of things, but you don’t shoot civilians. There’s enough war without bringing civvies into it.

  You’re off down the alley, running again. You run with your chest thrown out, your head tilted back, opening your throat to your lungs to suck in as much air as you can gasp, driving your legs hard, long gone and far away before the pizza man is done his prayer.

  THE BUG MAN OF SURFSIDE BEACH

  “Balseros! Balseros!”

  You don’t remember the last 200 feet to the shore. You remember the waves pushing you away from America’s promises and back toward Cuba. Your mother gasps and curses your father. Your brother whimpers and kicks as hard as he can, which isn’t hard at all.

  Sometimes, maybe once or twice a year, you wake from this same nightmare. Sometimes the nightmare keeps going and you can’t wake up. You relive the moment the Captain threw your family overboard and Rodolpho panics again. This time he succeeds in drowning you.

  Usually, the part that wakes you with a start and in a sweat is you, close to shore but still no sand under your feet. Your thighs burn. Your calves cramp. The ocean floor rises under you, but not fast enough. Somewhere behind you, your one-eyed, white-eyed zombie father is still reaching up, grabbing, pulling you back, pulling you under.

  The safety of the beach is close, but as you and your brother and mother kick and kick and kick, pushing the old truck tire, you’re sure it’s just a tease and a cruel trick. As soon as your foot touches sand, your dead, drowned ghoul of a father — a moray eel where his tongue should be — will rip you away from the air and yank you down into the dark with him.

  “Balseros! Balseros!” someone yells from the shore. A cluster of people gather and point your way. Are they pointing at you or are they pointing at a shark fin rising out of the water behind you? Maybe a shark will get you before your dead father can. Either way, at least you will rest. You’ve got no energy left to kick. Instead of pointing, they should be swimming out to you and helping.

  Then you remember something your father said about feet. What was it? It was important. Wet foot. Dry foot. You have to get to the shore and then you’ll be safe. No one will punish you and send you back to Cuba if you can get to the shore on your own. Your father told a terrible story of the US Coast Guard drowning Cubans who were trying to get to safety.

  “White men, privileged to be Americans by accident of birth, might use water cannons on us. Us! People who just want to have a better life! They would kill us for having the temerity to grasp for what they were given for free and take for granted!”

  Your mother said attacks by the Coast Guard rarely happened, or might even be Castro’s propaganda, but Marco was firm. Until you step on dry land in Florida with your legs under you, you’re a slave. Stand up, and you won’t be any man’s slave ever again.

  “Wet foot? We get sent back to Cuba,” he said. “Dry foot? We go see spring training.”

  The baseball, you admit, could be fun, but you’re not quite twelve and all you can think about is men with water cannons shooting you far out into the ocean to die.

  A man in a boat is coming. It is a fancy, fast boat like you’ve never seen. It is loud and painted white. A small American flag flutters behind the driver from a red and white stick that looks like a candy cane. You have heard of go-fast boats, but this is a rich man’s boat made for racing. It is mostly made of throaty engines. Go-fast boats from Cuba could hold ten or more people, but this long, low-slung cigarette boat swings in front of you, between your family and the shore, and the engines seem to roar even as they idle. The man is tan, but his low-riding Bermuda shorts reveal bright white skin. Big mirrored sunglasses make him look like a bug.

  You thought you’d drown. Or your father’s hand would wrap around your ankle or that you’d die of exhaustion or that sharks would rip you in two and eat you and your mother and brother. Then you were sure the Bug Man was going to kill you with his monster boat. The wake rolls over you and you spit saltwater. Rodolpho cries out weakly and the wash nearly pulls him from the tire. Somehow, you and your mother hold on to your brother.

  “Help!” your mother cries.

  The Bug Man smiles and twirls his wheel. Far off voices shout from the safety of the sand, but you can’t see land anymore. There are no buildings rising up to give you hope of rest and shelter as soon as your feet are dry. The Bug Man stretches out his hand and hauls you up first. Spent, you collapse to the deck gasping.

  “Landed a fish,” the tanned man says.

  You thank him and beg him to save Rodolpho and your mother. He hesitates and pulls down his glasses to look you up and down. He smiles and turns to haul up Rodolpho. He’s not ten yet. “Scrawny fish.”

  Your mother is spent, but she swims over with the last of her energy in an awkward, one-handed stroke since she doesn’t dare let go of the tire. She reaches up, smiling at the Bug Man, one hand still on her makeshift life preserver. The Bug Man is still smiling as he reaches down to touch Maritza’s fingertips. He then straightens and waggles his fingers goodbye. He turns back to the wheel. Your mother’s screams are swallowed as he guns the engine.

  You try to stop the Bug Man from taking you away from your mother, pulling at his elbow. You plead. You bite the meat of his upper arm.

  The Bug Man elbows you in the forehead and you are dazed but somehow grab a rail and keep your feet. You go back to bite him. You were in an after-school fight once. A bigger, older boy got you in a headlock and hit your head with his knuckles. He laughed until you wriggled out a little and bit him on the back of his arm. He screamed in pain. Then he screamed you were a girl for fighting that way, but that ended the fight. You go for the same spot and the Bug Man yelps, too, but he shakes you off and backhands you to the deck. As your head hits the rail, you turn to see your beautiful, terrified mother, her mouth making a huge “O”.

  As the Bug Man drives you away from your mother, you do the only thing that’s left to do. You pull Rodolpho to his feet. His legs are wobbly, but for what you need to do, he doesn’t have to walk. He only needs to fly past the sharp and savage propellers whirling and cutting the water behind the boat.

  The engines roar louder. The bow rises high as the props dig in and churn. The boat jets forward, throwing you and Rodolpho back against the rail. The shift in inertia helps you throw your little brother away from the clutches of the Bug Man, but not quite enough.

  You’re about to jump, too. You hesitate only a second or two, preparing yourself to follow Rodolpho into the darkness. That’s just enough time for the Bug Man to bring a fist down on the top of your head, all his weight behind the blow. It’s much worse than knuckles. It makes your knees bend and you can’t straighten them. You are the nail to the Bug Man’s hammer.

  Dazed, you see the sun come out from behind gray clouds. It’s going to be a beautiful day somewhere else not far away.

  “You let my scrawny fish get away!” the Bug Man says. He hammers you again and bright day drains to night.

>   You stand by Lily’s car parked next to the NYU campus, bent over and gasping for breath, waiting for your heart to slow. A civilian just tried to kill you. Bob’s dead. The cops have your picture from Panama Bob’s murder scene by now. Big Denny is alive — you’re almost sure. If you’re right, Denny’s talking to Jimmy Lima and the boss has the key to the skim. If Jimmy’s listening to Denny, Pete’s going to jam himself up, too. Harv is dead by Lily’s hand.

  Lily. The woman of your dreams, the one who balances out all the nightmares, is waiting for you in New Jersey. She’s waiting for you to save her from a murder rap and this life of blood.

  You are Maritza abandoned in the water, screaming and unheard. You’re watching the life you could have had slip away.

  You are a helpless boy, denied victory and trying to do the next best thing.

  Worse: All this? You’re doing it again. Loss is the loop of your life. You’ve fallen into the propeller blades.

  TOOLS OF THE TRADE

  Big Denny De Molina’s flop is Apartment C in a building in Washington Heights. The C is a real problem because, as Brad Pitt mentions in Fight Club, lettered doors are for sad basement apartments. You can’t look in a window or check to see if the lights are on. You’re going into the situation blind, but you’ve got to get into Denny’s apartment. He’s got hardware you’ll need stashed in there. It’s even possible that Denny survived his fall into the construction pit and he’s in there, covered in bandages and waiting for you to show up so he can kneecap you and demand a sincere apology before he puts a hole in your head. Or Marv is in there, waiting to take you to Jimmy Lima and a very uncomfortable death.

  There’s no doorman or security. There used to be two secure doors to the street, but even the residents stopped blaming the slum lord after the locks were destroyed every time they were replaced. Poor people robbing poor people isn’t just illogical, it’s downright stupid. If you’re well off and a junkie wants to run off with your TV to fund a fix, you’ll have the fun of picking out a new TV at Best Buy that afternoon. When all you’ve got is a dirty mattress on the floor and a coffeemaker, you’ll blast whoever comes through the door with .00 buckshot to keep your coffeemaker.

  You’ve been to Denny’s plenty of times, but never with such trepidation. You’re operating off a hunch based on Jimmy trying the same scalding coffee move that saved you from Denny. However, you have to trust your instincts and the alarm bells in your head are going off.

  Years ago, every door in this building had a gold-plated door knocker. When those were stolen, silver knockers replaced them. Now there are no door knockers. Now it’s all colorful spray painted tagger designs and wary eyes peering from peepholes.

  You slip down the stairs and a couple of black kids, a boy and a girl of about seventeen, walk past you. They barely notice you. The cliche is true: They only have eyes for each other. You take a moment to watch them go.

  Lily is just the right height so, when you walk side by side, your arm across her shoulders, you both move as one person. She’s your perfect fit. You don’t believe in soul mates, but Lily is so powerful you want to believe. You’re ashamed you ever suspected for a moment that Lily would rat you out to Jimmy. You look at her the same way that young kid looked at his girl. One day soon, once you have Bob’s skim and you can get away from all this, you could be your true self. When Lily sees the real you — not the enforcer — she’ll see you the same way you see her. You’re almost sure.

  You don’t know who your real self will be, but you’re excited to find out. Getting away with no money worries or responsibilities? That’s why everyone plays the lottery. That kind of freedom makes you a kid and you can finally have that childhood you missed out on. The way you grew up, the real Jesus Diaz never had a chance. You and Lily can find out who you really are together and you’re almost sure that’s going to be great.

  Bare bulbs hang like dead men above dim yellow pools of light down the basement hallway. You wait at the bottom of the stairs for five…ten…fifteen minutes. Somewhere above you, maybe on a landing far up the old iron staircase, a woman is screeching. You only hear one side of the fight, so it’s like you’re listening to a hysterical woman screaming into a phone. “It’s mine! That’s all mine! No, no, you are not taking that with you! That’s mine, too!”

  Christ, man, just go. Don’t stay to haggle over an iPod full of James Brown, pirated ironic Manilow albums and LMFAO. If all the sinners in hell screamed out their torment in one voice, this woman would be their spokesperson.

  Tia Marta is in your head again: Ugly threats, jibes and bullying. You push those thoughts away, but she’s never far. If you could fix it so thoughts of Tia Marta would never return, if you could erase her with a well-aimed, sharp stick in the brain without anaesthetic, you would.

  You wait and listen for any sounds of life down the hallway. Harv said Jimmy sent Marv to stake out Denny’s place. A new thought: Maybe Marv is in the apartment, standing over Denny’s corpse and he’s the assassin waiting for you to come through the door. If Denny told Jimmy Lima everything, Jimmy might thank him and then whack him so his plans for The Machine would be safe from Vincent. Fathers and sons, bosses and underbosses: All had secrets from each other and would go to great lengths to keep them secret.

  Or maybe it’s simpler than all that and Denny and Marv are just playing a quiet game of poker, their weapons ready for you to poke your stupid face in so they can shoot off your big, puffy nose.

  You move up and unscrew the lightbulbs as you go. Only the dim light cast down the hall from the stairwell reaches after you with thin yellow fingers. You stop at the door before Denny’s apartment. The door reads: Mechanical. Old pipes gulp and gurgle and some kind of equipment hums unevenly, like something needs a tune up. Denny often complained that he had the worst apartment in the building because of that hum. The sporadic hammer and bang of water in the pipes kept him awake nights. Sometimes it was so bad, Denny left the TV on with the volume way up just to mask the noise from the mechanical room.

  If you had the job of knocking somebody off in this situation, you’d be a smart ninja. You’d pick the lock to the mechanical room and wait in there. As soon as you heard anybody messing with Denny’s door, you’d pop out and blast him. That would be a smart ninja way to solve this equation, given the variables.

  You don’t want somebody popping out of that door behind you. You listen before you make your move. You can’t hear anybody breathing behind the door. If it were Big Denny, you could hear his heavy breathing for sure, but Marv is in shape. He could be waiting to send you to hell, easy. You stand to the side and try the knob. Locked, but it’s nothing but a lock made for bathrooms. A child could defeat that with a straight piece of hanger wire.

  You thought hard about how to get into Denny’s without getting bushwhacked. One tool you’ll need tonight, you already had in your go bag. You thought you might need it to get into the storage locker facility. The other? Super glue. You picked that up at a corner store on the way here.

  You take the little cylinder of super glue out of your pocket. You’ve already cut the tip off the long nose of the plastic cap in the car so you wouldn’t have to fuss with it here. Quiet as a smart ninja can be, you run the tip of the cap down the side of the mechanical room door as you squeeze the tube. The glue solidifies almost instantly. You smile. This is one level up from smart ninja and into James Bond territory. Makes you wish life had a movie soundtrack.

  Maybe you’re acting paranoid and Marv isn’t in there, but you would be if you were Marv. Marv is smarter than Harv. Twins aren’t really identical. Marv was in better shape and attributed his smarts to being twenty-one minutes older than his brother. “I’m more experienced in the world,” Marv joked. Well. The first few times it was a joke. Then he kept saying it.

  The super glue might not hold for long, but it would slow Marv down long enough for you to whirl and unload your SIG into him. Satisfied with stage one, you creep down the hallway to Denny’s door.<
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  There’s no sign of forced entry, as the cops say. You had hoped Marv had come earlier and ransacked the place to find the key and left. From your conversation with Jimmy, it’s clear Denny figured out where the key must be. You’d told him as he was beating your ass by the pit, so there’s more evidence Denny must still be alive.

  Despite everything, you really do hope Denny isn’t dead or even hurt badly. You guys have a lot of history behind you. He saved you a few times. He was a good partner. No. More than that, Denny was like a brother right up until he tried to kill you. If you end up having to kill him twice, you will be genuinely upset.

  You stop again and listen. The woman upstairs still screams in spasms of anger. It sounds like she’s following someone out. Whoever she yells at remains quiet. You can’t even hear a murmur under the hysterical woman’s cries as she comes down the stairs. “This is it, this time! Don’t come back! You come back, the locks will be changed! I’m better off! Don’t you look at me! You don’t deserve to look at me!”

  Again, Tia Marta rises, a thought zombie that won’t stay dead. The last time you saw her, she kind of sounded like the woman upstairs, though Marta’s thick German accent made everything seem more ominous. Of course, with Tia Marta, everything really was more ominous.

  More screaming as they bang down the stairs.

  Just go! I’m trying to hear if there’s someone in my ex-best friend’s apartment waiting to kill me!

  Eventually, you hear the front doors on the ground floor bang shut as the woman follows her ex out. Other guys would have rushed in by now, but you’re a smart ninja. You wait next to Denny’s door, holding your breath and straining your ears.

  You once saw on TV that doctors pitch their hearing when they listen to a patient’s heart through a stethoscope so they sense the finer workings, listening for murmurs and catches that spell doom. It sounded like bullshit, but right now, your head cocked and straining, you believe it. Getting through this door might be the key to getting back in control of your destiny. If you get hold of Denny’s stash, and if you live through tonight, you could spend the rest of a rich, long life with Lily. Most straight-edge citizens wait for extraordinary things to happen to them. But you? You could make this happen.