The Getback

Crime Fiction by Michael Downing

Eddie Reid died sometime after midnight. Cool on the street. A legend. But once you’re dead, all that cool means nothing.

Dead is dead, and dead don’t care who you were or what you did before the end.

His death was violent, ugly, the kind of thing that gets people talking for a minute, but only for a minute. Just three short paragraphs in the late edition of the Atlantic City Press. Three paragraphs, buried in Section Four, below the fold. Right under the ads for Storybook Land, Gordon’s Alley, Brigantine Castle, and Hackney’s Restaurant. By morning, the story was gone. Forgotten. Didn’t even mention his name. In the summer of ’77, nobody cared about a black street hustler or his whore getting shot. There were other things to talk about. Atlantic City’s first casino, Resorts International, would open in less than a year and the town was going to be hot, bigger than Las Vegas. The beach. The boardwalk. The neon lights. Gambling around the clock.

Eddie’s death barely registered.

Just another body in the street, another name lost to the wind. Even in his own neighborhood, no one would remember too much about it. Just another story to tell on the basketball courts or the corner, then forgotten in a year.

The only one who’d recall any details was the first cop on the scene, but only because he was left to do the paperwork after everyone else took off.

“Only gonna get worse,” a detective muttered, walking out. “Wait until the casinos open.”

His partner followed, shaking his head. “Be like the South Bronx around here. Drugs. Murder. Armed robberies. City’ll go to hell.”

The first detective nodded to the patrolman. “You gonna’ earn your pay.”

The cop didn’t say anything, just kept scribbling notes.

Eddie had been caught cold, three rounds to the neck and throat while he was still half asleep in bed. Maybe the shooter was inexperienced. Maybe aiming for the chest, but Eddie flinched, or maybe he just dodged the wrong way. Didn’t matter. The result was the same. Death is fast. It rarely gives you time to figure out the details. The whore barely made it out of bed before the bullets cut her down as well.  Thin and blonde, her face was streaked with blood, no visible bullet wound, maybe the blood came from a fragment off one of the bullets that tore into Eddie. Two slugs to the back must’ve spun her around, and a third blew apart her chest, leaving a gaping hole with a flap of pale white skin covering it.  Eddie’s hands clutched the bits and pieces of tissue and skin where his chin and throat met.  Eyes wide open, body slumped backwards, head tilted to one side with blood sprayed across the wall.

The cop took off his hat, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He dug around in his pocket, pulled out a Marlboro that he lit with a flick of his lighter, taking a hard drag.

He slowly exhaled. Uniforms always got the shit jobs.

Heard a soft noise behind him. Turned to see two elderly women filling the doorway. One in a ragged housecoat with curlers in her hair, the other wearing a robe clutched tight against her body.

“Always knew there’d be trouble,” The lady in curlers said.  “Boy like that, always coming and going. Trouble.”

Her neighbor nodded.  “Don’t know what that boy was into, but it was no good.”

“Just a matter of time,” the first one said, nodding.

The cop didn’t waste time with small talk. “Either one of you see anything? Hear something?”

Both shook their heads. No surprise. The kind of neighbors who always had plenty to say after the fact, but never when it counted.

He turned back to the scene, his eyes dead and cold, as lifeless as the two bodies. Cops always talk about detachment, about getting used to shit. Now, after a couple of years, it was just another day. Another body. Another shift that would drag on too long. Another string of hours, waiting for the clock to tick down so he could file his report then call it a night.

He moved through the shadows of the hallway, wondering how to stretch out another hour at the crime scene.

“Ain’t nothing to see in there,” he told the small crowd gathering on the stairs, his voice flat, like none of it mattered.

#          #          #

Calvin Burnett leaned back on the cool concrete steps, watching the coroner’s wagon roll away with Eddie’s body. Late morning, and the neighborhood was loud. Music blasted from open windows, car speakers shook in rusty frames, buses groaned, people talked shit like they knew something. Passersby slowed at the doorway, eyes flicking over the scene before moving on. Calvin crushed out a Camel under his Chuck Taylors and watched kids spinning through the spray of an open hydrant.

Booker stood nearby, taking a long pull from his bottle. No first name—just Booker. The kind of old man who’d been on that corner forever, with a story for every scar. Knew your mom when she was a kid, and could tell you things about your dad, if you had one. Hit you up for a cigarette, then a dollar, like time had stopped for him sometime in the 50s. Never left Atlantic City, didn’t need to. He was king of the block.

He squinted down the street. “I liked that kid, you know?”

Calvin didn’t look up.

“I know you two was tight. Like brothers, huh?”

Whatever Calvin could say about that stayed locked up inside.

Booker waited, then shook his head. “Maybe not close like that. Ain’t no surprise, though. Sooner or later something like this was gonna happen.” He exhaled. “Things ain’t the same around here. Can’t get used to that.”

Calvin said nothing. Everything changed and nothing did.

“A man got enemies, a price on his head. Still takes somebody to pull the trigger,” Booker said. “Who you think did it?”

“Ain’t about enemies,” Calvin said, flat.

Booker frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“Money talks,” Calvin replied. “Don’t matter if you got enemies.”

#          #          #

July nights were unbearable. The kind of heat that just laid on you, made you feel like you couldn’t breathe, like your skin was suffocating. Tempers sharp, trash stinking in the gutters, sweat glistening on every face. Nothing to do but sit around and wait for something to happen. When the ocean breeze died, it was impossible to cool down.. Calvin dreamed about a place that wasn’t a Jersey Shore skeleton waiting on casinos. Somewhere with more than hope.

“You gotta do more than dream,” Eddie said.

“If you ain’t got dreams, all you got is nightmares,” Calvin said.

Tall, thin, solid, Eddie didn’t need volume to command a room. Long braids waterfalling down his back, dark glasses over tired eyes. Part of the neighborhood but never completely in it.

Twenty-five. Two years older than Calvin. Two years was a lifetime when measured by experience.

“When’d you turn into a street-corner philosopher?” Eddie asked.

Calvin shrugged.

“Dreams don’t feed you. You need a plan,” Eddie said. “Otherwise you’re Booker, twenty years from now.”

He shook a cigarette from his pack. “A plan’s just a dream with a deadline.”

Eddie always had a plan: an easy score. Calvin boosted a car from the Boardwalk lots, rolled back to the block, the crew piled in. Eddie up front, cool as hell, sparking a joint, voice bouncing off whatever track rattled the speakers. They crossed to the mainland, whiskey warm, coke weak, but still enough to steel their nerves.

“Black Horse Pike and White Horse Pike be like yellow brick roads,” Eddie once said. “Mainland’s Oz.”

“And we them Munchkins? The flying monkeys?” Calvin asked.

“Nah. We that lion. Just gotta find your heart.”

“I thought the lion needed courage.”

“You’re missing the point.”

The mainland hits were smarter than rolling seniors on the Boardwalk or hitting a 7-11 with cops lurking in the shadows. Jewelry, cash, whatever they could pawn. A little spread around the neighborhood—kicks for the courts, bottles for corner boys, chains for girls they chased. Eddie gambled, paid what he could for the kid he barely saw, slipped extra bills to a working girl if she needed it.

“Just keeping the neighborhood running,” he’d say. “Got to help them. They too proud for charity.”

“Not too proud for your money,” Calvin said.

“Things even out.”

The raids became routine. Joints, coke, Thirty-eights. Twenty-two’s. No second thoughts. Eddie had done it the longest. That gave him something none of the others had. Made him somebody they could look up to. Especially Calvin, who didn’t have anyone else.

“You treat him like a hero,” Booker said once.

Calvin shrugged. “He ain’t running into burning buildings, but he’s got something we want. He’s a leader. He’s cool.”

“Cool ain’t everything,” Booker said.

Sometimes, Calvin thought, maybe it was.

“Got to stay alive, too,” Booker said.

Staying alive wasn’t the same as getting ahead. The neighborhood was full of people just barely staying alive, moving from one minute to the next. Calvin wanted more than that.

“You’re smart,” Eddie told him one night. “When you see something you want, take the shot.”

Calvin always remembered that.

#          #          #

In a neighborhood full of liars, braggarts, and thieves, there was only one other guy who commanded real respect, and that was Tyrone Jackson. But unlike Eddie’s respect, which was built on admiration, Tyrone’s was born from something else. Something darker. Fear. His was the kind of respect you earned by making people scared.

They called him Ghost. A guy who lived in the shadows, a presence you could feel, even when you couldn’t see him, like a weight who hung over the neighborhood. Brutal, not because he wanted to be but because he didn’t know any other way.  Ghost was always in the middle of everything—the center of chaos inside every deal, the guy who always got a cut. Whether it was Eddie’s late-night raids or the dope flowing through the street, Ghost was there, in between the Philly mobs and local gangs, making sure he got a piece of the action.

When the money moved, Ghost had his hands on it. He took a slice of the gambling, the loan sharking, and the numbers. When somebody wound up in a basement apartment with a cheap hooker from Pacific Avenue, the Ghost was getting paid before the pimp even saw a dime. He’d offer you better terms than the Guinea mobsters, but if you fell too far behind, you weren’t just getting worked over, he would chop off a thumb.

The neighborhood kids watched from fire escapes and windows as he walked the streets like he owned them. Big neck, thick hands, gold rings on every finger, up to his knuckles, the kind of man who could crush a skull just by squeezing too hard. The gangs, the pimps, the hustlers, even the junkies in the alleys made way for Ghost.

One look from him could make a dozen hearts skip a beat.

“Man’s got power,” Booker said one night. “Power lets you do whatever the fuck you want.”

Calvin would watch him pass, same as the others.

Eddie’s rise in the neighborhood caught Ghost’s attention. Eddie was an earner. He knew the streets, knew how to move, how to make things happen. So when Ghost decided his fifteen-year-old nephew Rico needed to learn the ropes, he put Eddie in charge of his education.

“He’s my sister’s kid,” Ghost said, his voice low, like everything he said carried weight.

“Seen him around,” Eddie said.

“Kid ain’t never been nowhere the bus didn’t take him. Barely figured out how to take the jitney uptown.”

“Don’t know what I can do about that.”

Ghost shrugged. “Give him an education.”

“I ain’t that good of a teacher.”

“Take him along. Give him a taste.”

Eddie’s face twisted, trying to hide his irritation.

“No disrespect, but my crew’s tight. Bringing him on is just asking for trouble.”

Ghost’s smile didn’t budge. “You’ll do fine. Show him what you know.”

“What I know is that no fifteen-year-old kid should be tagging along with us,” Eddie said to Calvin. “Ain’t no place for a cherry.”

But they were stuck with the kid. Raids took patience, timing, balls and cool. The kid had none of that. Word around the neighborhood was that Rico was a fucking animal, hot-headed, unpredictable, and filled with rage. A few years younger than Calvin, they’d tangled before. Hard fouls on the basketball courts. Elbows, knees, trash talk with nothing to back it up. The only thing that kept Calvin from beating his ass was his uncle.

But Ghost wasn’t asking Eddie.

He was telling.

The sun was setting low over the bay as Eddie, Calvin, Rico, and a guy named Tonio climbed into an Oldsmobile Calvin boosted from the parking garage at Convention Hall. Tonio was Eddie’s baby mama’s brother—another hothead with a short fuse and a bigger ego. New to the crew, like Rico. Words didn’t mean shit to him. Just action. Always action.

“Feel like a damn babysitter,” Eddie muttered, flashing Calvin a tired smile.

“Guess we just do what we gotta do,” Calvin said, shrugging.

Eddie checked the clip in his forty-five, swept the braids out of his eyes, and pulled a crumpled joint from his pocket. He cranked up the radio, sinking into the passenger seat. He pushed his Ray-Bans up on his nose, lost in thought as the car rumbled to life. Calvin shifted into drive, tires spinning against the asphalt, the Oldsmobile melting into a sea of tail lights and traffic signals, disappearing down the street.

Putting something in motion they couldn’t take back if it fell apart.

But that was the way it worked. You made your move, and you lived with it.

#          #          #

The Ruptured Duck was a crumbling brick-and-cinderblock joint on the White Horse Pike, last stop for road crews, locals killing time, and kids with bad fake IDs. Twenty miles outside AC, it barely stayed alive, liquor store in Egg Harbor gone a year and no one in town sober enough to care.

Calvin eased into the lot a little after eight. The front door was propped open with a brick. Inside, a couple whispered at the far end of the bar, two road-crew guys downed beers with shots, and a long-haired kid stared into a Schlitz like it held answers. A bored thirtysomething blonde tended bar, half-pouring, half-flirting.

Rico went in first. Jittery, like he knew the place was already judging him.

“Got Bud?” he asked.

“Need ID,” the bartender said, peeling her eyes off the Phillies game on TV.

“I ain’t got it.”

“Then you ain’t getting any beer.”

Rico held her stare a beat too long, then backed away to the open door, lighting a smoke to steady himself. Out in the Olds, the crew saw the signal. His free hand brushed the .22 at his ribs.

“Hey,” one of the road crew called out, puffing himself up. Voice hard, tough. “You hear the lady?”

“I ain’t deaf.”

“Then get the fuck out.”

Rico exhaled slowly. “This don’t concern you, motherfucker.”

The words landed like a slap across the whole room. The guy started off his stool. Rico flinched, but didn’t move. Didn’t have to.

Before the man could move another step, Tonio burst in, waving his piece like it came with flames. Rico drew too, steady now, aiming at the bartender. Whatever she meant to say died.

Tonio hopped onto the bar, eyes wild. “This look like a game? Y’all wanna get dead?”

Silence. The muted TV buzzed. Phillies down by two but it didn’t matter.

The bartender stood dead still, hands half-raised. Not pleading. Just calculating. Trying to figure out if this was the day it ended, or the day life changed.

Tonio’s voice cut again, cold now. Focused.

“Money in the register. Let’s go.”

“There’s not much money,“ the bartender said.

Rico came across the room quickly, easily.  A cruel smile crossed his face. Slapped a glass off the counter with the butt of his gun.  “Not much money, huh?  Maybe a couple of bullets help you find me some cash.”

Panic rose in the bartender’s voice.

“Please,” she begged.  “There’s not much, but it’s yours.”

Rico laughed, waving the gun in her face.  “You fucking right, it’s mine!”

One of the road workers rose, trying to play peacemaker. Tonio met him on the floor. Bared a crooked smile that held the man’s stare. Neither one of them giving an inch until Tonio slammed him in the mouth with the gun barrel. The guy dropped to the floor on his hands and knees, blood spilling between his lips and broken teeth. 

“Stay the fuck down,” Tonio said.

That’s when Eddie walked in slow, forty-five low, expression carved from something older than trouble. A hand on Tonio’s shoulder, nothing friendly in it.

“Finish it.”

“Empty that fucking register,” Tonio snarled.

He slid behind the bar. “We ain’t here to hurt you,” he told the bartender. “Don’t be stupid.”

Everyone dropped to the floor as Eddie emptied wallets and cracked the register. The bartender opened her mouth but the words were still stuck in her throat.

Eddie looked around.  Heard movement.

Rico’s voice rang out.  “How’s that feel, motherfucker?”

Eddie saw Rico burying a foot in the road worker’s ribs, standing over him with a vicious sneer. Slammed a foot into the same spot again. The man groaned, barely able to rasp out a breath.

“Back off,” Eddie yelled.  “That’s not the way it’s done. Told you to be cool. That cool to you?”

Rico shot Eddie a stare.

“You heard me, fool,” Eddie said, this time stronger.

“I should blow his brains out,” Rico said.

Eddie faced Rico.  “You ain’t doing shit I don’t tell you to do.”

Rico opened his mouth to speak but Eddie shook his head again.

“Don’t push me.  Go see if there’s anything in the back.”

Eddie’s ice cold stare snuffed out Rico’s response, the words dying in silence. 

The bartender had moved away from the register and Rico backed her towards the cooler, keeping his gun pointed at her chest. She trembled, mouthing the words, “don’t hurt me”, her voice gone. Quiet. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

Rico slammed the gun barrel into her temple, her knees stiffening as she lurched sideways.

A cruel smile crossed his face.

“Please,” she begged,

“Shut up bitch.”

Eddie slid behind him, body tensed, something crossing his expression. Pushed him away from the bartender.

“Told you to be chill. This ain’t chill.”

Rico turned, sneering at Eddie.

“Fuck you.”

“What’d you say?”

“Said, fuck you. You don’t talk to me like that. Don’t disrespect me like I’m nobody.”

Eddie’s stare narrowed. “You think you’re somebody?

“Think you and me both know who my uncle is. Makes me somebody.”

“Your uncle ain’t here to wipe your little ass,” Eddie said.

Rico’s expression changed. Intensified. Hardened, just for a moment. The thoughts that crossed his mind took shape. He brought his arm up quickly. Did it without thinking, leveling the twenty-two at Eddie.

He hesitated. That was his mistake.

Eddie didn’t flinch. Raised his gun. Didn’t hesitate as he squeezed the forty-five’s trigger.

The moment erupted in an explosion of sound.

The shot had hit Rico in the chest, dropping him to his knees. The twenty-two fell from his fingers. Face slack, staring at the bartender with eyes that didn’t understand. Surprise was the only thing left. Surprise, and blood. He clawed at his chest like he was trying to dig the pain out, coughing thick red that bubbled over his lip. Tried to speak, but nothing came. Just the sound of him dying as he fell to the floor.

Eddie stared at his body.

“Should’ve listened,” Eddie said. Not cold. Just empty.

He looked at the bartender, at the body, at Tonio holding the room still with a gun and too much breath in his chest.

Outside, the Olds idled with Calvin behind the wheel, engine twitching like it wanted to run.

Eddie exhaled. “Let’s go.”

#          #          #

Later.

“Nothing to talk about,” Eddie said on the ride back. “It’s done.”

“Shit,” Tonio muttered. “Kid was just having fun. Wasn’t no big deal. He was just like me.”

“He was man enough to carry a gun,” Eddie said. “Means he was man enough to get shot.”

“Cops will be all over this,” Calvin said. “Surprised if we don’t see lights in the rearview by the time we get to Pleasantville.”

Eddie pointed at a sign up ahead.

“Go to Ocean City. Cut through Longport. Get back to the neighborhood that way.”

Calvin cut the wheel and turned.

“Ditch the car. Lay low. Don’t talk to nobody,” Eddie said.

“What about his uncle?”

Eddie offered a quiet shrug but said nothing else the rest of the ride home.

Word beat them home.

By the time Eddie sat on the stoop that night, blood crusted on his tan boots, the neighborhood already knew. Calvin sat next to him, quiet.

“I did what I had to do. What I thought was right,” Eddie said. Voice soft. “Some folks gonna see it different. Can’t fix that.”

“You could try,” Calvin said.

“Sometimes words don’t matter.”

“What’ll you tell Ghost?”

Eddie didn’t turn away. “I’ll tell him the truth. Only thing I got.”

Calvin nodded. “He won’t like it.”

Eddie’s face didn’t change. “Ain’t about what he likes. It’s about what happened.”

“You think he’ll care?”

Eddie didn’t answer that one. He didn’t have to.

#          #          #

By morning, Eddie was gone. Shot in his apartment. No warnings. No questions. Just consequences.

Calvin sat on the steps, staring at the street. Thought about everything Eddie said, and how principles and being right don’t matter. Not when you’re dead.

Eddie made a call. Paid the price. That’s all.

“Calvin!” a voice called. “You playing?”

He waved back. “In a minute!”

Picked up the basketball. Tied his red bandanna a little tighter. Walked toward the courts to finish what he started yesterday.

Double E was playing him for five dollars a point – spotting him three to start.  Everything had a price. Calvin’s was five hundred dollars. He had wiped the thirty-eight clean before dropping it down a sewer, right after coming out of Eddie’s apartment. Did it just like Ghost told him.  Still couldn’t shake the look on Eddie’s face, the one right before he pulled the trigger.

Like he knew it was coming. Just didn’t expect it to be him.

Calvin was down seven points to Double E, but he’d play it out, all the way.

You take the shot because you don’t know how it ends unless you go all the way.

Eddie said that once.

It was a good lesson.

---

Bio: Michael Downing is the author of Saints of the Asphalt. Over the past twenty years, he’s written plays, published several other books, and had short stories featured in a range of literary magazines and anthologies, some of which have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. He can be found at: www.downingfiction.com

Cover photo by: pexels/Allen Beilschmidt sr.

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