Chapter 1

December 24, 1989
2:15 p.m.
Christmas Eve on a Sunday in Washington Heights. The air was crammed with Yuletide spirit. Dyckman Street was a gaudy festival of blinking lights, melting snowball pocks, excited children, opportunistic drunks, late shoppers, Dominican Santas, and plastic Christs, reindeer, Marys, and Magi. An army of fat snowflakes drifted down like fish food in a winter aquarium.
Juanito stepped wide off the curb to avoid a slate-gray puddle of once driven snow. He darted through the scant traffic on Dyckman and cut toward Post Avenue, his Timberlands tapping crisply on the wet, salt-crusted asphalt. The cold on his face, he tasted salty mucus on his upper lip—the thin clear stuff that ran uncontrollably when the mercury limboed under the twenty-degree mark. His fingers were already numb against the box he was clutching to when he entered the cloying warmth of a bodega on the corner of Post. He shook his head to free it of snowflakes, though most had already seeped into the black of his knit hat. The cold had caused his cheeks to rosy up and contract so that his face was contorted into a dopy grin. He pointed this frozen grin at the man behind the Plexiglas-framed counter, who returned the smile and threw in a Feliz Navidad! for good measure. Juanito made his way to the cold case in the rear, weaving through a group of older men who were standing around or sitting on milk crates in the front of the store, drinking rum out of paper coffee cups.
Before sliding the cold case door open, Juanito put down the box containing the Nintendo he’d bought his brother, Pedrito. He looked at his hands. They were frozen into talons. He clenched and relaxed them a few times until they were more or less working again, and opened the case. He filled in the empty slots of a battered six-pack of El Presidente and slid it out of the case. Picking up the Nintendo, he pushed his way back through the cluster of old men. One of them ruffled his head and offered him a, “Eh, Juanito! Cómo está?” Juanito flashed his stupid smile at the man and kept moving. He slapped the frosty six-pack on the counter and fought four numb fingers into the tight front pocket of his jeans. Eventually, he came up with some crinkled bills, paid for the beer, repositioned his awkward grip on the Nintendo box, and headed toward the door.
It was then, exiting the bodega, that Juanito first noticed the Acura.
Heading eastbound on Dyckman Street, it was the color of maroon bleeding, sporting black—almost opaque—tinted windows. Both windows on the driver’s side slid down halfway, and Juanito could see in. There were three of them, looking right at him.
This was it. It had to be.
From the corner, Juanito watched the Acura go down to the end of the block and make a left. He heard the tires peel as took off to circle the block and appear in front of him. He thought of running to his building—in all likelihood he could get there before the car came around the corner and down Post Avenue—but he didn’t. He had to prepare himself. He would need to see the car again. To wait until the last possible moment. To experience and embrace the point of no return, before he would be able to do what he knew he had to.
He proceeded up Post Avenue, outwardly the picture of calm—fighting to keep his breath steady, and marveling at the myriad ways his body sought to defy his relaxed projection. Trembling, fatigue, breathlessness, tingling in his extremities. He had a desperate urge to throw down the Nintendo and the beer, and put his hands in his pockets to warm them and get the circulation going. But they’d seen him with these things already. It was important that he do nothing to signal he was on to them. So he kept walking at a steady pace, carrying his bulky parcels up Post Avenue; his eyes fixed on corner ahead of him, thrilling and dreading to see the Acura.
He was on the verge of second-guessing his assessment of the situation when the Acura turned off Academy Street and roll down Post Avenue toward him at a pace that suggested that, like him, its occupants wanted to convey an attitude of nonchalance. But he knew them for what they were. Could feel the retrained energy coming off them in palpable waves, like a tiger coiled for the pounce. He looked at the building next to him: 17 Post Avenue. Almost there. From the corner of his eye, he watched the Acura come even with him across the street. Heard it cut the quick U-turn. He was in front of 23 Post Avenue. Going to be close. Now it was coming up behind him at a creep. The last few paces seemed to take years.
He finally made it to the long, narrow walkway that led to the lobby vestibule of 25 Post Avenue, where he had lived all his life. Once he crested the corner of the walkway and was momentarily out of the Acura’s line of sight, Juanito sprinted to the building’s vestibule. The front door was open as always, and the inner door was locked. Nobody in the building had a key to the inner door, but it was a moot issue, as the top Plexiglas panel of the door was missing, and one had only to reach in and open the door from the inside. Not so easy to do when rushing with your hands full, so Juanito flung the Nintendo through the opening and used his free hand to fling the door open. Once inside, he tripped violently trying to scoop the goddamn thing back up again.
Up and running, fumbling with the beer, he tore off up the stairs, tossing the beer and the fucking Nintendo under the staircase. Flying up by threes, he bungled a bulky DynaTac phone out of his waistband with numb fingers and dialed 911. As he hit the second floor landing, an operator answered asking where the emergency was.
Juanito forced his breath under control. "Veinticinco. . . I mean, twenty-five Post Avenue!"
"What’s the nature of . . ."
"It’s a fire! Help! Fire!" he wheezed. The lobby door banged open and soon Juanito was aware of footsteps pounding up the stairs behind him. He was on the third floor; it was going to be very close.
". . . I said is this a residential or a commercial location?" The operator had an attitude now.
"What? It’s a building! The fuckin’ building’s on fire . . . fifth floor!" Juanito spat, feeling sluggish and dizzy.
"Please hold while I connect you to the Fire Depar. . ."
"Fifth floor!" Juanito whispered hoarsely and disconnected. He was on the fourth floor. Still hauling ass up the stairs, he ripped his keys from his pocket, almost dropped them, caught them, and lost the cell phone.
Finally he made it to the dimly lit fifth floor landing. He threw himself against a scarred metal door marked "5D" and jammed the key at the lock, but the vicious thing wouldn’t go in, it only danced around the hole without mating. Juanito could hear them passing the third floor. He petitioned God to damn the stubborn key in English and Spanish, and the first real wave of panic hit him, almost buckling his knees with its force. Could he actually not pull this off? He always knew he was playing a deadly game, but at every turn he’d been able to manipulate the players so easily, get them to do exactly as he wanted. Had it been simple vanity to think he was smarter than everyone else around him? And was death to be his penalty for the mistake? His resolve began to fray. He felt like one of those stupid little fucking kids in the cautionary tales his grandmother used to tell him when he visited her in the DR. They were rounding the fourth floor landing with relentless, black determination, and he was on the fringe of losing his composure altogether when his wrist lurched forward as the key found the lock.
There were two of them. Big, dark-skinned Dominicans in hoodies worn backward with the hoods up over their faces, sporting ragged black eyeholes devoid of symmetry or humanity. Points of light glinted of the oiled metal of the ugly Tec-9 submachine guns in their hands as they flew at the closing door. It slammed shut an instant before the first man hit it with his full weight. He seized the doorknob, pulled, pushed, twisted and turned. Locked. They began kicking at it with frenetic passion, cursing and hollering in tongues that knew no language, but the old ghetto door and frame had been built to resist such assaults, and both held. A cacophony of pounding and howling echoed up and down the stairwell, pressing all the building’s residents ever deeper into their apartments, devouring all ambient noise.
So the two assassins never heard the flick of a Zippo on the landing above them. And when one of them craned his featureless hooded face upward, drawn by the new source of wavering light from above, he knew that the target had never run into the apartment. But it was already too late.
Juanito spun around the corner leading from the roof landing with the flaming Snapple bottle of gasoline held high. Before the two men could react, he lofted the firebomb hard at their feet. It exploded with a dull roar, instantly engulfing the entire left side of one man in spectacular yellow flames that vomited up a terrible cloud of black smoke. By the time the engulfed man’s weapon clacked on the floor, the sinister black billow was pouring up to the ceiling, surging up the stairwell toward Juanito.
He dropped to an awkward kneel on the stairs and, squinting through burning eyes, leveled a Lorcin .380 semi-auto where he thought the chest of the second man would be. He felt the gunmetal frame of the .380 jolt crisply in his hands three times. The first shot was utterly deafening, he did not hear the other two.
Through a teary haze, Juanito saw the second man stagger back against another apartment door. Then, in a surrealistic scene, he saw the burning man cross in front of his partner and run wildly down the stairs. The man Juanito shot at didn’t fall, but bounced off the door and hurled himself sloppily down the stairs as well and in an instant, both were out of sight. Realizing they were getting away, Juanito climbed over the railing and dropped directly onto the turnaround below the blazing fifth floor landing, wrenching his knee and slamming into the wall. Pain spasmed though his leg, but he grit his teeth, pulled himself up, and threw himself down the stairs after the fleeing assassins, his throat and chest burning in the thick smoke trail of the one on fire. By the time he saw the second floor landing in front of him, gagging and nearly blind from the smoke, his knee threatening to give out with every pounding step, exhaustion and lethargy took him. He body felt hollow, his arms and legs distant; he could hardly feel the stairs beneath his feet. It was all he could do to fight though the floating sense of detachment and remain focused. Then, swinging himself around the railing, he glimpsed the second man.
Without making a conscious decision the weapon kicked twice, and this time he saw the muzzle flash. The man pitched headlong down to the turnaround, where he collided with the burning man and his weapon flew from his grip toward the lobby. While the two men fought to get running again, Juanito rounded the corner and charged straight at the bucking human torch. He fired into him twice, point-blank, and the man sagged against the wall, then tipped over the top step and rolled down the stairs—tumbling going some way toward putting out the flames. Just then, Juanito was pushed hard into the railing and his head cracked against the upper stairs. Not realizing it, he had been straddling the second man. The man, his hood hanging down to reveal a blood spattered grimace of black determination, was now trying to shove him over the railing with all the effort he could muster. Juanito flailed his arms for balance, feeling his center of gravity shift precariously as the man labored feverishly to bundle him over the eleven-foot drop. And then the battle was lost. Juanito felt himself slip past the point of no return and knew he would fall. But he would go down fighting. In that final instant before gravity took over, Juanito’s fingers found his assailant’s hair, pulled the man’s head toward him, shoved the .380 into his neck, and pulled the trigger. A flash of light blossomed under his victim’s jaw. Black matter splatted against the chipped gray paint of the wall behind. He felt the man stiffen and weaken at the same time.
Then he was falling sickeningly backward. The man was falling too, but on the opposite of the banister. A second later the man’s face thunked into the railing, and his hair whisked from Juanito’s fingers.
Juanito’s stomach turned over for an impossible moment while he hung in the air, his legs kicked up in front of his face. Suddenly he met the bottom staircase and the entire world jarred so terribly he thought the building would come crashing down around him. The air was expelled form his lungs with violence, and he heard the awful, sharp, unmistakable crunching of bone. He somersaulted to the lobby floor and waited for sweet unconsciousness to take him.
But it didn’t. Gasping and wheezing, he waited to be wracked by unbearable pain, but the pain was surprisingly manageable. In fact, as great as his impact had been, he now realized it had been oddly soft…and the realization filled him with horror. At that moment he knew he was paralyzed. He had broken his back when he hit the stairs, and now he would never stand again. Never walk or run again. Never climb a fence or push a shopping cart. He looked at the smoldering body of the first assassin lying a few feet away. The flames had finally died out, but smoke poured copiously from a glowing pattern of embers where scorched clothing met flaky charred patches of flesh, cracked to reveal hissing, yellow fat beneath. The acrid stench of burning flesh and gasoline filled Juanito’s nose, and the thought that he couldn’t move away from this grotesque made him want to vomit. But the idea that remaining there he would likely be made to answer for this atrocity was infinitely worse. He wanted to scream.
Then his waking nightmare became a living hell. The smoking, blackened thing began to move. It was trying to rise, no it was rising. Eddies of smoke whirled about its shoulders as it hauled itself to its feet, its skin crackling. The hood looked to have half burned away, half melted onto its face, so only one terrible eye was revealed. It was lidless and glistening and searching. It found him.
Juanito’s horror was so absolute his sanity almost left him. The charred hulk rose to its full height and lurched toward him. He covered his face with both hands, and the frame of the Lorcin smacked into his forehead. The surprise that he was still holding on to the gun was followed instantly by the realization that he could move his arms. He quickly tried to point the gun at the monster but as soon as he uncovered his face a sooty steel-toe boot crashed into his jaw. The blow wasn’t nearly as mighty as it could have been, but nevertheless, a camera flash went off across Jauito’s field of vision and his head snapped back. Everything seemed to constrict. His limbs became leaden. Distantly, his mouth filling with the taste of blood, he was aware the thing was stepping over him. As consciousness receded, Juanito considered that he must have landed on this man when he fell. That’s what broke his fall and why he wasn’t paralyzed. The thought rekindled resolve, and he struggled to clear his head. What were the odds of landing on that guy? Clearly, he was being preserved by a higher force. Call it God or destiny… Juanito knew that he was meant to get through this ordeal, kill this indestructible motherfucker and realize his plan. This battle was the price of greatness, and he would pay it.
As his enemy finished striding over him, Juanito shot out his free hand and grabbed its ankle. The beast dragged him a foot and a half, but when skin and crispy scales of scorched cloth sloughed off in Juanito’s hand, it teetered off balance and went down. It crashed into the lobby floor with a puff of smoke, and a burst of glowing embers; a trail of downy black flakes drifting in its wake like dust motes.
Juanito released the grotesque ankle, and tried to scramble drunkenly to his feet, but bright pain shot from his injured knee and the floor tiles rose to meet him. Blood spattered on the floor between his hands, and he saw that his upper lip was ripped open from the kick. Looking up, he saw the thing dragging itself toward something on the ground. The partner’s Tec-9.
Without hesitation, Juanito launched himself onto the assassin’s smoking back as shiny black fingers curled around the submachine gun’s handle—but before the weapon could be brought to bear, he got the barrel of the .380 against its charred scalp.
When it was done, Juanito found himself in a strangely private place. Feeling alone and out of joint with time, he rolled off the corpse and sat up, breathing heavily, blood running freely down his chin. He heard sobbing, and was vaguely aware that it was his own. He wanted to close his eyes. . .
But he couldn’t. It wasn’t over.
He checked the Lorcin. Its slide was locked back. Empty. The last shot had saved his life, and the last shot was the last shot. This was indeed God’s work. His strength began to return. He could finish this; would finish this. He struggled to his feet, ignoring the persistent complaint of his knee, and released the weapon’s magazine. The gun was bloody. He pulled a handful of .380 rounds from his coat pocket and was about to start threading them into the magazine when he saw the Tec-9 clutched in the dead man’s hand.
Grimacing, Juanito prised the weapon from dead fingers. He hobbled through the lobby, and out the vestibule. Using one hand to keep the Tec-9 hidden behind his back and the other hand to support himself against the wall, he made his way along the walkway to the street, thankful to see that the Acura had stopped short of the walkway entrance. When he got to the end of the walkway, he turned left, angling toward the street at a brisk pace.
Immediately, the Acura’s wheels screeched as it took off. But as the car made to pass Juanito, he swung the submachine gun up. A violent staccato of shots tore loose from the weapon, and the car’s front passenger window shattered while rents ripped across its roof.
Several car alarms wailed. The Acura veered hard to the left, straightened out, then suddenly cut across oncoming traffic and into the parked cars on the far side of Post Avenue. Tires screeched as an SUV swerved to avoid the wayward Acura, and more car alarms sounded after the collision. The Acura’s horn had jammed. A smattering screams.
Juanito lumbered toward the howling car. As he limped around to the driver’s side from the rear, the front door swung half-open and the driver managed to get a foot out. Juanito raised the Tec-9 and let off another terrible burst. Both windows on the driver’s side of the Acura exploded, and several pocks appeared almost simultaneously on the rear door. The driver slumped back. The echo of the shots rolled down Post Avenue like a distant surf behind the shrill car alarms and the Acura’s horn.
When Juanito made it to the side of the Acura, he reached the Tec-9 into the open door, and finished the clip.
The urgent wail of fire engine sirens droned distantly, but Juanito did not hear them. He limped a couple of feeble steps back from the Acura. The smoking Tec-9 was suddenly heavy. Anvil-heavy. He looked around. The blinking Christmas lights. He was alone again. Post Avenue was empty.
But now it was his.
There was a new force uptown, and fourteen-year-old Juan Gustavo Chodas was a force to be reckoned with.