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swollen. I fished out the card and slid it into the slot. The machine asked me
for my pin number and it took me two tries to get it right.
I entered the amount for withdrawal. Two hundred dollars.
It asked me if that was the correct amount. I pressed YES.
It asked me to please wait while it dispensed my cash.
As the bills, all twenties, rolled out of the machine, I knew there was no
turning back. I d lied to my wife about the cancer, and now I was going behind
her back like this with the money, draining our account. Sure, in the long
run, I was doing it for her and T. J., but it was still fucked up. And now, on
top of everything else, we were going to go buy guns with the cash. Just like
real-life gangsters.
I put the money in my wallet and crammed the wallet into my back pocket. It
felt heavy, like it was made out of lead.
No turning back now, I thought.
The enormity of it all hit me then, and for the next few minutes, I forgot all
about the fact that I was dying.
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I looked up at the moon, pale and cold and lifeless, and saw my face in its
reflection.
No turning back now . . . the moon whispered.
I got back into the car and slammed the door. It sounded like a gunshot, and
John and Sherm both jumped. A gunshot or a closing coffin lid.
Sherm fired up a bowl and passed it up to me. I inhaled, trying not to choke
and trying to ignore the bad feeling in my gut. A feeling that had nothing to
do with cancer.
SEVEN
So what s this guy s name again? I asked Sherm as we drove into the city.
Wallace.
Is that his first name or his last name?
Sherm shrugged. I don t know. Never asked the dude. I just know him as
Wallace. That s what everyone in his crew calls him.
We rolled down West Market Street, past crumbling brownstones and crack
houses, abandoned factories and burned-out apartments, tattoo parlors and
seedy bars. York is a small city, but it has the crime rate of a big
metropolitan area. If you look on a map, it sits right in the middle of
things, an hour or less from Baltimore and Harrisburg, and within a few hours
drive of Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, and New York. This makes it
ideal for drug gangs, mostly crews from New York City and North Philly, but
some from as far away as Chicago and Detroit. Back in the day, the Greek Mafia
had controlled most of York s crime, but those days are gone old and feeble
like the men who made them, men who were now serving life terms upstate. Their
children had turned their backs on a life of organized crime, and the families
died out, replaced by the gangbangers.
John turned onto South Queen Street. A drunken Hispanic woman lurched in front
of the car and he swerved to avoid her. She shot him the finger, shrieked
something in Spanish, and stumbled on. He sank down in the seat, turning off
the Cypress Hill disc we d been jamming to.
Sherm, he whispered, we re the only white people down here.
Chill, John. You don t fuck with nobody and nobody will fuck with you.
What s the big deal, John? I asked. You ve been to downtown York plenty of
times.
Yeah, but not late at night like this. We could get carjacked or something.
Mugged. It s kind of scary, isn t it?
Sherm snorted. No way in hell somebody is gonna jack you for this piece of
shit.
We stopped at another traffic light. The car stereos around us competed for
supremacy, melding into one solid bass line. On the corner, some kids played
in a puddle, long after they should have been in bed. Rough-looking women,
possibly their mothers, leaned into car windows, flashing cleavage and
haggling over the cost of blow jobs. I missed Michelle and T. J. and I wanted
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to be home with them, not driving around in the ghetto, looking for guns. I
felt tired and sick. There was blood in my throat and the taste was
nauseating.
John looked back at Sherm. What s the address again?
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