Short Story / The Siege

THE SIEGE
(PROLOUGE)
10:45p.m. The summer sauna night had room 214 shirt-stick humid, the once vibrant and illustrious setting now alien, stripped of its deco-ambiance and more vacant than I’d ever seen it in two semesters. Down the slope of frat-hill, the town of South Oaklands had been stripped just as barren.

It’d taken all of three days after finals concluded to reduce an urban jungle into a veritable ghost town. For all the explosion of pomp and circumstance at the start, it seemed my freshman year at Pittsburgh University was going to end with a fizzle.

As quickly as it’d all begun, it had all come to an end; a year gone by in a drug-induced blur, the roller-coaster rush of college living put on hold until the summer session was over and a new semester of savage fun began.

But that time—of drugs, sex and partying—was still three long, doldrum-months away. Prospects for next year’s antics already loomed on my fantasies, the world’s most enticing nightmare.

After one full year I was departing Pittsburgh University with several academic accolades, my scholarship still intact and a P.H.D. in mind-altered experience. The latter was not the sort of thing learned by your average Joe-college, true. But then, that was exactly the kind of education I’d come for.

We were two of the last to leave, Mortz and I— the last two members left within the halls of the once infamous Pi K. house. We had convened this night to mourn the passing of a year which could never be forgotten—to reflect upon the triumphs and tribulation, ejaculations and hallucinations that had made this year “the most fun we would never want to have again.”
And, of course, we were still waiting for our half-pound of weed to cruise into town, down from the frozen lakes of Ontario above.

Therein lay the problem: it had been two hours—one hour later than agreed upon—and still not a peep had been heard from our dealer, Dan-the-Man. Mortz and I didn’t have to speak a word. Between the tension and the ungodly humidity, we were sweating the very same bullets.

The last we heard had been: “That HP should get here in about an hour fellas, guaranteed.” Every phone call since had gone unanswered. However Mortz and I were seasoned veterans of the University drug market—a place where schedules were never, ever, absolute.

After all, the schedules moved with the product.

The product moved with the people.

The people moved whenever and wherever they could, to circumvent the reaching arm of the law.

It was the way the cogs in the machine had always turned. And there was no real point in being a rusty cog, I had learned—rusty cogs just slowed up the machine. So on a usual night, we would’ve fallen back and kept drinking our beers, kept smoking our blunts—bowls and bongs—and simply waited out the delay.

But tonight was not a usual night. Tonight marked the end of the ride.
“Damn.” Mortz said, crushing an empty can of Keystone and tossing atop the pile teetering over the rim of the trash-can. “Shit is getting nervous. Dan-the-man never takes this long.”

I nodded in agreement and cracked a fresh beer, trying to focus on the TV, watching—for the thousandth time—as Johnny Depp and Benecio Del Toro conquered Sin-City Vegas, their famed attaché of liquor and drugs in tow.
“Been there, done that.” I muttered to the television.

Mortz nodded in agreement.
“Been there. Most definitely did all of that.”

The phone came blaring to life; Mortz was out of his seat and on the receiver before I could sip my beer.

“Hello Dan? This is Mortz. Yeah? Now? Now, now? Fuck dude, fine. We’re on our way.”

By the time I swallowed my sip, Mortz was in his seat again.
“Dude,” he said, “we’ve got to go. Like now.”

“Now?” I said, “Man I just cracked a beer…”

“Well if you want this half-pound you’ll get off your ass. Dan said to come down now; and we got like twenty minutes before this whole “Siege” is supposed to go down; and if it does go down, it’s closed shop, sorry-and-see-you-next-year. I got people waiting back home for a good bag of weed. Are you coming with me or not?”

As an answer I tilted my head back, letting the beer flow freely down my throat while I considered his words and considered the facts, trying to decipher the omens. The pieces fit thus:

This was the last night of the semester—the last night I would have quarter-pounds of weed, eye-droppers full of acid, strips of mescaline or crops of mushrooms, all at my finger-tips like the sweet selections of candy store.
It would be a crime, not to capitalize on such opportunity.

However, this was also a bloody day: one lone gunman had run amok, on a rampage stretching from the County line into the very heart of these South Oaklands streets—a rampage which had claimed five souls, snatched at random from the rut and routine of their mundane lives. Throughout the slaughter, the killer’s method had not wavered: one victim from each walk of life—one of each race, each faith, class, sexuality, politic, or handicap—one’s blood spilt, all’s blood spilt. At least that’s how the newsmen were spinning it.

Regardless if the reporter’s claims were true or not, it was unnerving to watch just how much method, could be derived from such madness.
But then, this was the nature of the city of Pittsburgh: methods of madness. This was the city I had come to know—the city I had come to hold close, an adulterous lover I could not leave.

However I was leaving; at daybreak, my father would be at my door, ready to whisk me away from this world of gray days and hard streets, to be returned to the obscuring maze of suburbia, where I would be only as distinguished as the model number branded on my car.

But before that tragedy I had a chance to take one last score out from under the sights, noses and guns of every lawman in the county, as the biggest Siege the city of Pittsburgh had ever seen, descended on South Oaklands.

We had thirty minutes—tops—before it was all supposed to go down.
Publicly, the whole operation had been deemed a manhunt—no coincidence really, considering there was a murderer on the loose. But the streets knew better—the streets always knew better, I’d learned. Behind the effrontery of murder, this was a day of reckoning.

Maybe it was because we had gone too far—taken the envelope of everything moral and ethical and raked it all too far across the coals of party and bullshit.

Maybe it was karma, coming back to collect its due.

Hell, maybe we were finally getting everything we had been deserving for o, so long…

Whatever the reason, inside word had reached us that tonight the cops would be showing up in force in South Oaklands, raiding every house that had ever stepped across the line of the law by any margin. That meant a lot of doors were going to get kicked in—for few were innocent in this town. Fewer still were safe from the retribution at hand.

The specifics were still unclear—no “where”, no ‘how”, no “what” to guide us. Why was it happening? Well you needed only be affiliated to know the answer to that. Most importantly, however, was “when.”

We now had twenty-eight minutes left, before the Siege was supposed to hit.

The beer stopped flowing. I crushed the can in my hand and made my choice, grabbing my black knapsack and black cap off the floor. To be without guts, without nuts, was to go without glory. In the words of the infamous Eddie Neville himself, I proclaimed:
“Fuck the police.” I got a need for that weed. Let’s go.”

The last, lingering sight, as we left the door of room 214, was of Johnny Depp, speeding through the Nevada dessert in his fireball-red soft-top caddy, the law hot on his trail.

It was an ill omen, to say least. For already, the fear and the loathing were as thick in the air as the stagnant Pittsburgh heat.

• *

Friday night. The streets were bumping. Music echoed off the soot-skinned walls of Forbis avenue, all the way down to lights of St. Mary’s church, the last point in South Oaklands before the road bent and curved down the hill into the dark, foreboding rim of the Projects.

Trophy cars lined the strip from tip to tip tonight, candy-paint and chrome sparkling in the nightshade like a scene from a music video. I stopped and inhaled, taking in the smell of the acrid city air, a sugar-stench I was already beginning to miss. For a ghost town, the uproar pouring from the bars was surprisingly jovial.

We cut through South Oaklands’ twisted maze of alleyways, avoiding all the main roads, lest the lawmen were perched and watching. We didn’t have far to travel; Dan-the-man’s row-house was just off of Forbis. After a few twists and turns, we emerged from the alleys right into his back yard. Before stepping onto the porch, Mortz motioned me to stop.

“Listen,” he said, glancing around apprehensively, “we go in, get this done and get out again. Ten minutes tops.”

“Five if we can swing it.” I said, stamping out my cigarette.

Mortz rapped on the door in his signature knock.

“Who is it?” Came the voice from behind the door.

“Come on Stelzman, you heard the knock, you know it’s Mortz.”

“Yeah right dude, I see two people out there. What have I told you about bringing the black man up in my house Chaz?”

“It’s Mortz and Outlaw.” I said, “Open the door Stelzman you asshole!”

The latch clicked open, and then the next latch, the chain-latch and main lock. The door creaked open. Stelzman’s all-too-Jewish nose poked through the crack.

“Damn, calm the fuck down Outlaw!” said Stelzman, “It’s all good bro. Come on in boys.”

Mortz and I shuffled into the cramped, humid kitchen. I made sure to lock all locks behind us.

“Stelzman,” Mortz said, “this ain’t really the time to be fucking around.”

“Oh yeah I forgot, ‘the big crackdown’ is tonight. The fucking day South Oaklands finally gets cleaned up. Yeah. Right.”

“Laugh if you want,” I said shrugging, “It’s your ass. Where’s Dan?”

“In front of the TV watching the ball game—same place he’s been ever since he got done with finals. I swear, that kid can be so fucking lazy when he gets on these weed binges—you wouldn’t guess he was ever student-council president. Go on in though, he’s waiting.”

We moved through the kitchen; Stelzman stopped in the doorway and nodded towards the living room. Dan-the-man was in his Lazy-boy watching the baseball game, his arm slung over a large bong like it was a crutch. His face—usually frat-boy-style clean cut, complete with gelled hair—was wooly with stubble, his cropped hair matted, like he hadn’t showered in days. His eyes—usually a sharp blue—were weighted down with a bruised shade of violet bags.

The Dealer’s languid gaze didn’t swerve an inch from the television screen as we took seats on the adjacent couch, which was molded with enough stale beer to be considered foliage.

“Boys,” muttered Dan-the-man, “this is it huh? Last transaction of the year. And what a year it’s been right? Fucking unbelievable.”

“Yeah,” I said “Crazy.”

On the TV screen a pitcher in signature Pittsburgh black-on-gold uniform threw the final strikeout, bringing the 7th inning to a close. A momentary lapse in his sports-hypnosis, Dan-the-man reached under his Lazy-Boy and pulled out a vacuum-sealed sack the size of a small pillow. He tossed it onto Mortz’s lap.

“There you go, one half-pound of Ontario’s finest diesel-haze. That’ll be $2,000 if you please boys.”

I broke out the wad of bills from my back pocket, slipped off the rubber-band and began the count.

“What’s the score?” Mortz asked, nodding to the television.

I flipped the stack of bills over in my hand and began the recount.

“Pirates are up 5-3. Phillies are a shit-show today.”

I handed over the money. ”$2,000 to you, Dan-the-man.”

Our history doing business being what it was, he didn’t even bother to count it.

“Thank you Mr. Outlaw, Mr. Mortz. It has been nice doing business with you boys all year. Hope we can do it all again next semester. The doors to the Sigma A. house will always be open. In the meantime, you boys want to test out your green in the bong?”

I looked to Mortz, who was already glancing inquisitively at me. We endured a hard struggle with temptation for all of a minute before discipline set in and I shook my head for both of us.
“No thanks,” I said, “We’ve got to get going.”

Dan-the-man shrugged his shoulders in the suit-yourself manner. I popped open the knapsack and tossed the weed in before nudging Mortz out of his enthrallment with the game, motioning towards the kitchen.

“Yeah Dan, we’re going to get going.” Mortz slapped hands and traded half-hugs with his old friend.

“Mortz, enjoy the summer brother. Two years down in this hell-hole, two more to go.”

“Yeah, maybe you can tell me where those two years went.”

“Sorry,” Dan said grinning, “Still can’t recall. Hope to see you back here in the fall buddy.”

“Same to you.” Mortz said.

The look between him and Dan was somber, both men considering the weight of such hopes. With one final bid goodbye, Mortz and I retraced our way through the kitchen and out the back door again.

We were across the yard, into the alleyway, before we heard the authoritative bang echoing from the front door of Dan-the-man’s house.

“Don’t even stop.” I said to Mortz, quickening my own pace. “Don’t even look back.”

• *

Our trip back through the alley-maze was much more arduous the second time around. Retracing our steps through each series of twists, turns, switchbacks and bends was hard enough in the eclipsing dark—harder still, as each time we reached an exit, a gang of swirling red-on-blue lights greeted our arrival and sent us fleeing back into the safety of the shadows.

The Siege was underway. By first light, heads would be rolling in the streets—but I would not be one of those heads, if I had any say in the matter.

Thirty minutes of blind fumbling later, we stumbled out of the maze, emerging blocks away from the South Oaklands streets, behind the library on the cusp of Schenland Park. Our shoes were covered with enough dirt and mystery-mud to grow a garden.

“Fuck.” Said Mortz. “Thought we’d never get out of there.”

We turned up the street, following the thin patch of parkland back onto the main strip of Forbis Avenue. As we walked, our faces were cut now and again by the swirling police lights beaming from every corner, striping the street in plaid-pattern colors. With each new side street we passed, we saw a new scene of people being “escorted” from their houses, hands on head, into the back of a patty-wagon patrolling the streets like a great white whale, scooping all the small fish into its gullet.

More than a few of those small fish were people we could call by name. But we didn’t stop to call, to protest, or intervene. We just kept moving.
These were the inevitable moments, when you had to let the chips fall where they may.

“Jesus.” Mortz said finally. “All these crackdowns; all these peeps we know getting arrested; everyone rushing out of here like this was Babylon falling—this shit is too depressing. I need a drink. C.J. Bob’s?”

“The bar? I said arching an eyebrow. “You wanna go to the bar now?”

“Yeah why not?” Mortz said shrugging. “When else are we gonna have a chance to catch a drink together? Three months from now when school is back in session? Fuck that, grab a beer with me.”

“What about the…”

“Just bring the bag with you. Come on…when have you ever turned down a free beer Outlaw?”

He was twisting my arm past the point of refusal.

“Alright, fuck, fine. One drink though alright? One!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mortz said, “Just keep that backpack close and let’s go.”

C.J. Bob’s Bar & Tavern sat at the end of the block—the worn and withered edifice a familiar oasis amidst the South Oaklands jungle. Looking through the large pane window which faced the street, we could see that the bar was packed. But with the campus nearly depleted of students, the crowd was an unrecognizable exhibition of older faces, all talking, laughing and full of mirth, as if these stomping grounds had always been theirs, and we, the youth, simply borrowed the land for the thirty-five weeks of the year where our numbers reigned the streets.

I turned to Mortz, my belly suddenly aflame with that same burning feeling I’d come to welcome: hunger—the kind of hunger which food could never sate.
“Yo fuck this,” I said to Mortz. “Let’s go in there and remind these old-heads who runs South Oaklands. I’m feeling thirsty.”

“Alright!” Mortz said, giving me daps. “That’s my boy!”

We made our way to the door, brandishing our fake I.D. The bouncer was seated on a stool, his thick-veined muscles on full display. He spit an oily glob of tobacco-chew into the paper cup clutched in his hand, not even bothering to check our I.D.

“Sorry fellas,” the bouncer said. “Bar’s closed.”

“Closed?” Mortz’s eyes scanned the window and the boisterous scene inside. “You sure man?”

The bouncer glanced back at the scene in the bar. He spit another oily glob into the cup, barely finding his target this time.

“Not what it looks like fellas,” he said after a few chews. “Trust me, I’m doing you guys a favor. BAR IS CLOSED, feel me?”

There was a signal coded into the wide-eyed look on his face. I glanced at Mortz, who glanced at me. This bouncer was the same guy we had dealt with (and dealt to, on more than a few occasions,) ever since first coming to C.J. Bob’s. On the strength of that history, we conceded and fell back, posting up against the adjacent wall.

With a final glob of chew, the bouncer checked his watch and then stood up from his stool.

“Midnight.” He said wiping the grease from his lips. “Yinz should watch this shit.”

It happened all at once; a burly man with a devil-red goatee walked out of C.J. Bob’s, stopped and sniffed as if to test the night air, then he spat on the curb and, calm as zen, pulled a Glock 9mm from the holster on his waist.

Mortz and I jumped; the masked man’s hand moved to his collar, pulling the brass badge free from beneath his black tee-shirt.

The undercover cop waved two fingers in a circular motion above his head and without pause, started across the street, pistol at his side.

If I could’ve only photographed, the sight of what came next.

Without warning, every trophy car lined along Forbis avenue opened its doors. Out of the cars climbed dozens of police in full tactical gear, the badges hung ‘round their necks blinging in the night, giving my eyes that music video feeling all over again.

The jovial uproar from the bars had fallen mute; additional police units emerged from every tavern door, pouring onto the street. A flood of uniforms spilled from the door of C.J. Bob’s—past me, past Mortz, past the knapsack on my shoulder filled with enough marijuana to have us both watching our Senior graduations from a 10×3 window in county jail.
My breath was held so long, I nearly passed out.

“Hey, whoa there. You ok?”

A thin officer in a flack-jacket, toting a sizeable shotgun, stopped in the doorway, his bird-neck craning my way.

“Yeah officer,” said Mortz, coming to my rescue. “We’re cool.”

The officer sauntered out from the doorway, shotgun rested on his shoulder.
“Yeah?” he said, his expression eerily discerning. “Can you tell me what you boys are doing out here?”

Mortz and I both stood up straight as rods.

“Um nothing officer,” Mortz started, “We were just on our way back from the library when we saw all these cops with guns all over the street. We just started watching. Crazy, you know?”

“The library?” Predatory eyes scanned us up and down, and up again. “School’s out for the year and the Library is definitely closed this time of night. So what’s in the bag boys?”

Shit.

“Yeah Library is closed, we know,” I chimed in. “But you gotta get those books in the drop-slot before that summer deadline. After that, they start charging you out the ass—try to get you for all the money you still got you know?”

I took a risk and tapped the knapsack, just for good measure. To deal with the law, I’d learned, was to understand that the eyes of a cop always looked for what you were hiding, not what you were showing. If you offered it freely, to the eyes of a cop it was inconsequential.

The officer’s predatory stare bore down upon me, peeling back my skin, bone and soul like corn husks.

My breath held like a promise, I waited and I prayed.

And prayed.

And prayed, to a God I hadn’t called on in nearly a year of Babylon living. And when you’d lived like we had—the crew and I—one had to wonder, if one had any favors left with God to call on at all.

END

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