Fifteen Houses

Fifteen Houses

Fifteen fucking houses.

The grey one, he’d told me. And I was looking at fifteen grey fucking houses.
Can’t be the one with the car on bricks. He’s too clean for that. Wouldn’t have no car jacked up in public like that.
Got no kids. Not that one then. Toys out front.
Two down. Thirteen grey houses.

I almost called him, on the way in from Queens, but carried on with the radio instead. WKMA had six in a row that meant something to me. Doesn’t happen often. I’d forgotten how good …………. could be.
So I didn’t call him.

Thirteen grey houses.
He aint Mexican. Looks like a Latino house right there, and he aint no gardener. Two more.

Joey Marran was the first man I ever actually saw carry a gun on his ankle. I just got a glimpse once as he slid out of a four seat table in a diner called Heaven. There it was, sat in some leather holster right above his ankle.
“Watcha got there Joe?” I’d said and he’d shrugged it off with a drop of the shoulder. Didn’t ask again.

Later, a couple of months say, we’d got in on a take from a new housing project. Low end stuff, bricks, cement, tiles. Too much carrying we both thought.
“Gotta be better ways Ron”. That’s what he’d said.

Eleven grey ones.

Would ya look at that? Door wide open. Fucking crazy in this neighbourhood. Too careful for that, our Joe. Far too careful. He’d grilled that guy on security for a few bagsa lousy cement. More than once. Wouldn’t leave no front door open like that. Probably car keys on that table in the hall.
Too late to change my ways.

I got a one in ten now. Not my kinda odds. Never gonna get rich on those odds.

Watch it Ron, those four on the corner, pretending you invisible. Well, I aint and they know it. Reckon my size will be enough.
Let’s see what they got.
Ten feet away.

“Fellas”

Nothing back. What do you expect?

“Looking for Joey Marran’s place”

Got em sussed. Three look right back at me, blinking. The fourth, wiry motherfucker on a low bike, spits and looks away, says
“that’s him right there” and nods at Joey coming down his front steps.

“Hey Ron” he says, shoulders up, moving across the street. The four move off, behind the bike. Nothin happnin’.
“Hey Joe”I say.
“What you doin’talkin’with them motherfuckers Ron?”
“Lookin’for you Joe”
Ï’m up from street corners Ron” he says, sticking out a hand. As I shake it I realize. Kids toys on the lawn.
“You got kids?” I wanna know.
“Hell no!” he says with a smile, “but nobody gonna shoot up a house with them lying right there in view, are they Ron?”
“You aint Mexican?” I ask the white man in front of me.

I aint never been no detective.