“That’s kind of why I wanted to get in there and try to kick your ass,” Dan told Troy, and Troy’s like, “That’s all right. I would’ve felt the same way.”
“But the thing was,” Dan continued, “at first he wasn’t about fighting. He wanted me to do some burglaries for him.”
I’m like, “Burglaries? No kidding?”
“That’s right. He had him some floor plans and all kinds of other information on these mansions he’d been to. He knew how to get in without setting off the alarm and where all the good stuff was to steal and everything. The deal was supposed to be he’d pay me, and I’d also get to keep everything I stole except for a few items he could use to prove to his friends he was in on it.”
“That must’ve been one of his games,” I said. “He figured he’d pull off a real crime instead of just this fake-gangster stuff.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dan said. “It seemed real important to him. But I wasn’t about to get involved in all that. Sure, me and Dickie done a couple burglaries when I was a kid, but I’m through with that kind of stuff.”
And Troy goes, “How do you like that? Same thing happened to me.”
It turned out Troy had been hired by Rowan toward the end of summer, but after the first two fights, Rowan approached him about robbing a pharmacy.
“Can you believe that?” Troy asked. “Like just because I’m black, I’m gonna knock over some pharmacy for his punk ass. He don’t even know I’m only doing these fights so I can get some extra money and get back in the community college. But I pretended like I was all for doing a holdup if he’d drive, just to see how far he’d go. He kept putting it off until one night I tell him, ‘Hey, bro, tonight’s the night. We gotta hit that pharmacy, man.’ It was just like I thought—he couldn’t go through with it. I thought he was gonna start crying. Nothing but big talk, that’s all he was.”
Things started to come clear. The Gangland boys wanted to pull something big—an authentic crime they could brag about on Saturday night after ten o’clock, something that would push them into the all-time winner’s circle of their pathetic competition. Sure, Rowan was too chicken to drive the getaway car, but maybe he thought he could still find someone who’d pull the deal off without him anywhere near it.
I asked Beto if Rowan wanted him to do a crime too, and he said no. “I never seen that dude before tonight,” he said. “It was the little skinny one who hired me.”
“Tres?” I asked.
“That’s right—Tres. From what he told me, he just took over half that club. He didn’t ask me to do no crime, though. He just wanted a fighter.”
More ideas started clicking. Tres had a deeper stake in Gangland than I thought. Now somehow he’d managed to take over Rowan’s half interest in the club. At least he hadn’t tried to recruit Beto to do any dirty work besides fighting for him. Not yet anyway. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a creep. After all, he never tried to stop the fight between Beto and me. Only Rowan had that to his credit. Maybe Tres had his sights set on making himself the one and only godfather of Gangland, and Nash knew it all along. Now that I knew what a lying dog Nash was, I could see him snatching Ashton as a way to gain an advantage on Tres in the Gangland wars, and maybe Hector got in the way.
It sounded plausible, but who could I get to believe me?
Since I lived the furthest away, Beto dropped everyone else off first, and I told them all to Facebook me. In the Virgo Club parking lot, I opened the car door for Melody, and she told me to bend down. When I did, she said I looked great for having just been punched in the face, and then she gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“When you get old enough,” she said, “come by the V. You can buy me a drink.”
“You bet,” I told her, but I hoped when I got old enough, she wouldn’t be working at the V anymore.
As Beto and I cruised to my house, the streetlights shimmering on the green hood of the lowrider, I figured I ought to try to dig a little deeper into what he knew about things. There were just too many coincidences concerning him and Hector, Ashton Browning and Gangland.
“So,” I said, “how did Tres happen to get in touch with you about fighting for him?”
Beto kept his eyes on the road. “He didn’t get in touch with me. I got in touch with him.”
“You got in touch with him?”
“Yeah, only he didn’t know it. He thought he was doing it all.”
“But why? What interest did you have in it?”
“I been wanting to get in that place for a while. That’s why I called you that time. I heard you was involved. But you never called me back, so I had to go about it like this.”
This was getting more interesting all the time, so I’m like, “Yeah, sorry I didn’t call, but how did you know anything about me ever going to Gangland?”
Still staring at the road, he goes, “I got a friend who used to have something to do with that place—until things got too weird.”
“Yeah? Who was it? One of the other fighters?”
“Nah. You don’t know ’em.”
“But you thought Gangland might have something to do with Hector’s death, right?”
Now he looked at me. “What makes you say that?”
“Because the first time we met, you said something about the North Side Monarchs. And anyway, why else would you want to go there? I don’t peg you for someone who wants to make money by pummeling a guy.”