Rizzo, page 6
star restaurant when he was out of town, and the wicked hot escort
he called occasionally when the mood struck, who was so nice and
so sweet. All of that was off the books; Dennis paid his tax and lived
his life.
But he was angry. He was angry when Rizzo had first known him
and looking at him now he could see the anger had only grown
stronger. They both knew enough history to realize that, despite his
stated disinterest, in any other era and in most other places Dennis
would be happily working at a major research center and immersed
full time in study and teaching, with a wife and kids in a pleasant
neighborhood near campus to return to every night. But this wasn’t
that world. In this one he was at the bottom of the food chain.
Rizzo decided to ask what he really wanted to ask. “So, you in?”
he said.
“Huh?” Dennis said. “Of course I’m in.”
8
MOHAMED
MO CRACKED open the bottle of Bushmills and filled all their glasses
halfway.
“To revolution,” he said, raising his glass.
“To chaos,” Dennis said, raising his.
“To revenge,” Rizzo said. His glass was already in the air.
In the kitchen the three men clinked and drank. In the living
room Cole Jr. and Mo’s bull terrier Daisy sniffed each other's butts.
Nat King Cole’s Christmas Song played on a turntable. Rizzo
despised Christmas music.
“People don’t realize the chain gangs started in Philly,” Mo said,
resuming his argument. “It wasn’t a southern thing at all. It was
meant to keep slavery alive, but that don’t mean it was some good ol’
boy’s brainchild.”
“See, that’s the thing, the chain gangs didn’t really have nothing
to do with slavery,” Dennis said, slurring his words a little, “and
everything to do with collecting paper.”
“Son, what the fuck you think slavery was about in the first
goddamn place, if not collecting paper?” Mo said, getting into it.
“Well, let’s see, subjugation, genocide, control over resources, a
means of perpetuating the wealth of the ruling class—”
Rizzo
61
“Son, you’re making my point for me.”
“Rizzo—as the table’s leading chain gang aficionado, you got
anything to add to this debate?”
Rizzo poured himself a refresher and shook his head. “You fellas
are doing just fine without me.” After he’d told them he’d spent the
last year on the chain gang the conversation had taken on a life of its
own. Rizzo respected these men and so allowed them to talk long
past the point he would have otherwise walked away or used his fists
to silence them.
The two men always clashed. They were Rizzo’s boys but not
each other’s. Yet they were similar in many ways. Dennis’s brain was
a sponge, and Mo was a history buff and an autodidact, who prob-
ably should have grown up to be a lawyer or a professor.
“Can you imagine being a freed slave and getting thrown in the
pen cause you took a sip from a whites only fountain and then
having chains thrown on you and being leased back to the planta-
tion you escaped from, only it’s worse this time even than when you
were indentured? Before at least maybe massa saw you as part of
the family same as his dogs or his cows. Now you were just a
machine.”
“I sorta can imagine that, yeah,” Rizzo said.
Rizzo and Mo started as shorties, but they didn’t know each from
school, they knew each other from the streets. Mo hadn’t seen the
inside of a classroom since seventh grade. Mo was in hiding.
Mo’s full name was Mohamed. He was Somali-American. His
parents had come to America during the great wave of asylum immi-
grants from Somalia in the late twentieth century. Mo had been born
in the same hospital and in the same week Rizzo had.
Then the fourteenth amendment was revoked and Mo’s family
were among the tens of thousands of Somalis who were rounded up
and sent back. Made no difference they’d been accepted as refugees.
Didn’t matter that Somalia was still a failed state, a chaotic and
dangerous mess. Meant nothing that Mo and his siblings had been
62
H O C H E A N D E R S O N
raised as Americans, went to American schools, and could barely
speak or understand Somali.
The icemen battered on Mo’s front door when he was twelve
years old, and he went out the bedroom window, jumping to the roof
next door. The jump wasn’t very impressive in and of itself—it was
only six feet give or take, and the next roof was only four feet lower,
not a long jump even for a twelve-year-old. What made it impressive
was that Mo had his four and six-year-old sisters with him, one
under each arm.
Mo’s parents didn’t share their son’s athletic prowess. They were
sent back to Mogadishu and Mo hadn’t laid eyes on them since.
From then on, Mo was responsible for himself and his two sisters.
He managed to place his sisters with two sympathetic neighbor-
hood families, the Devareuxs and the Goldbergs, who raised them as
their own. They went to school, made friends, lived normal lives.
Even today, most people call them Susanna and Maria instead of
Suleymaan and Maxamed as they would always be known to Mo.
But those girls knew who they were, and they knew their brother.
They kept him in their hearts all the years the Merit Society and its
policies forced him to survive on the streets.
Rizzo met Mo playing ball at the playground. He was pretty
good, considering he’d never had a single minute of coaching and
had parents who had never seen basketball, and then no parents at
all. He was six one, tall for a Somali, he could have had a solid career
playing high school ball. He had amazing endurance, and he was
quicker than Rizzo, though Rizzo was loathe to admit it. The only
player he’d ever seen with quicker hands and a better first step was
Stone O’Leary.
But Mo’s big talent was stealth. The man was capable of disap-
pearing. He had a preternatural talent for it. He was there—and
then he wasn’t. Or the other way around. Oh, the carnage they
would have wrought with five men like Mo in the Special Forces.
Mo’s gifts extended beyond the ability to merely fool the eye. Just
Rizzo
63
as he could predict your blindspots twelve steps ahead, Mo
somehow also possessed the ability to foresee when and how some
things would happen before they did, and what some people would
do before they did it.
Stealth was how he earned his living, then and now. Mostly he
stole. He’d always been a gifted shoplifter. He started with food and
clothes for himself and his sisters, and graduated up the line. He
could go into a luxury store and figure out exactly the angles on the
surveillance cameras, know exactly what the rounds of the security
people were, spot any undercover security, and figure out exactly
where they would all be looking and when. He never stole from the
poor. His most famous hit was a high-end jewelry store, where he
stole a diamond necklace with two hundred thousand dollars in
easily fencible one carat diamonds while under the eyes of an elabo-
rate camera system, three uniformed, and two undercover security
guards. All this as a black man in a store full of white people. The
only thing they had afterward to put up on TV and in the paper were
a couple of pictures of him on the security tapes—from the back.
Mo had the rage. Rizzo could still see it in his eyes, in his move-
ments, he could hear it in the calm Mo forced into his words. He was
angry at the entire world, but mostly the world assumed the form of
the Merits.
“When my folks came here they thought it was going to be the
same as back home,” Mo said. “They missed slavery, lynching, Jim
Crow, the Klan. All the important lessons and memos about being
less than human. I was raised here but I still think like they do in the
old country. Tell me why I’m not entitled to the same life and privi-
leges and respect as any American?”
“‘Cause you’re a nigger,” Dennis said. Cole Jr’s ear perked up at
the sound of the word. “And an illegal migrant.”
“It was rhetorical,” Mo said. By now the bottle was nothing but
fumes; Mo stood and grabbed a short dog from the cupboard. “You
degenerates can polish off a bottle,” he said, unscrewing the lid.
64
H O C H E A N D E R S O N
He sat back down at the table and poured them all a fresh round.
No one objected. Rizzo looked over at Cole Jr. Him and Daisy were
passed out together. Rizzo laughed to himself. It seemed like now
that the dog had the ability to actually stretch and lie flat that’s all he
ever wanted to do.
Mo said, “If this comes together...I’m thinking I’d use my share...I
want to start an education center. A school I guess. You remember,
Riz, the way they’d punish us if we even looked at ‘em wrong. Those
white kids could get away with slapping their teachers silly if they
felt the need, but us? Teaching us ‘corrected history,’ more like ‘selec-
tive history’, whose fucking history, huh, you tell me that? Maybe if
the next generation have the proper education, tomorrow will be
different from today.” Mo turned away. He looked embarrassed.
“Anyway...you think that’d be OK?”
Rizzo, who remembered teachers raising their mitts to him as a
child all too well, said, “You’d do with your share whatever you felt
was the right thing, boss. If you’re asking me—I think that’s a fine
idea.”
“So do I,” Dennis said.
Mo swilled his drink. He looked up, having settled his mind. “So
what’s the pitch and when’s it happening?”
“Soon. Got one more slot to fill.”
Mo narrowed his eyes. “OK. Anyone I know?”
“Yes,” Rizzo said. He took a long sip. “And I really need you to
have an open mind.”
9
RHINO
RIZZO SQUEEZED OFF A ROUND. Rhino had a red white and blue
bullseye painted on the massive root out behind his trailer. Years of
lead blasting into it had reduced its mass, but only by a little. That
thing was built to last and here to stay.
Part of Rizzo hated how good it felt to have a carbine in his hands
once again. Being forced into a career killing and enforcing on the
state’s behalf had damaged his soul but the one aspect of the job he
had always enjoyed was mastering a weapon and the addictive
power that came from bullets riding an explosive burst of gas.
Not liking the sound of gunfire, Cole Jr. had elected to take a nap
inside Rhino’s trailer, which Rizzo couldn’t see any reason to object
to, the lazy, lovable bastard. He had chosen to leave the other guys
out of his meeting with Rhino. If he agreed to the job there would be
time for the four of them to come together and strategize later.
Rizzo ejected the P90’s spent mag and inserted a new one. The
weapon had become a flats specialty after the stories of the Martin
massacre started to circulate. Within two months of the incident
every gun enthusiast, petty thug and wannabe revenger had to get
their paws on the now legendary machine gun.
“Feels good, don’t it?” Rhino said.
Rizzo
67
Rizzo couldn’t lie. “Oh my god,” he said, shaking his head.
Rhino shot a round from a golden Desert Eagle. It sounded like a
zip gun next to the P90. “So Mohamed agreed to come onboard?
And he knows you want me on the team?”
“He does, and he did.”
“Huh,” Rhino said. “And he doesn’t hold a grudge?”
“I didn’t say that. I mean—it took some doing. I had to use my
words.”
“He must know I’m sorry, right?”
“I think that’s something you need to tell him yourself.”
“I have. He told me...well.... And he still said yes?”
Rizzo nodded.
“Huh,” Rhino said again. “How ‘bout that.”
“How ‘bout that,” Rizzo said.
Rhino grinned proudly as Rizzo opened fire once more on the
root. The nozzle was turning red hot. He was one of those gun
enthusiasts the stories of the P90 had affected. Rhino wished he had
Rizzo’s military background, but like most people Rizzo was close to
in the flats, they knew each other from the courts.
Not that Rhino played basketball anymore, ‘cause he didn’t. That
is, no one would play basketball with him. He was too quick to
anger, and too quick to take that anger out on his opponents. You
could be Rhino’s best friend—like Mo had once been—but if you
were playing on the other team, you could find, hell, you could
expect, that eventually he’d be hitting you with an elbow, stepping
on your heel and knocking you down, submarining you on a jump
shot or rebound, pushing you over on defense.
Perhaps sensing his limits early, Rhino’s main sport in school
became football. He was five-eleven and weighed two hundred and
seventy pounds of solid muscle. He was a human hockey puck who
could absorb an unlimited amount of punishment. Other players
were afraid of him. Rizzo was a little afraid of him. Rhino didn’t have
great skill, but he had a bottomless reserve of ferocity.
68
H O C H E A N D E R S O N
Rizzo had often tried to piece together where Rhino’s rage came
from. God knows they were all deeply angry, Rizzo realized—but
somehow not quite like Rhino. Unlike Dennis, or Mo, or Rizzo
himself, he’d been raised in a “normal” middle class family. Two
parents and a dog. His father was a middle school principal; his
mother sold real estate. They lived in the flats at least partly by
choice. Rhino’s mother had been born and raised there, and had a
strong sense of commitment. His father just went along, which was
how most things went in his family.
His mother was the biggest activist in the flats. She was in the
streets, was chaining herself to the gates, was lying down in front of
police cars, was putting daisies in the gun barrels of the National
Guard, was using a bullhorn in front of a mob. She had been
arrested more times than you could count, and had done stretches in
jail ranging from overnight to six months. There was a rumor in the
flats that the police had a special officer whose job was to go to any
demonstration and arrest Rhino’s mom. The Merit revolution had
changed her from a politically active housewife into a whirlwind.
As he got older and bigger, Rhino developed his real sports
passion: bar fighting. His favorite move was to go to a joint full of
young guys from the heights and start conversations in which he
loudly denounced the police, the courts, congress, the president, the
Merit Party, the Dagger Cross Society, and any other symptom of the
establishment he could think of. It would soon become a swill of
testosterone, beer, anger, entitlement, and inevitably one of those
young men would take a swing.
That was Rhino’s cue to go into berserker mode. With fists,
elbows, head, feet, and knees flying, he waded into the group
surrounding him like the Tasmanian Devil. Rhino always came out
with bloodied noses, blackened eyes, split lips, bruised jaws. But at
least Rhino could still walk.
The man seemed impervious to pain and injury. Rizzo was proud
to say he’d witnessed the event that made Rhino a legend in the flats.
Rizzo
69
They’d been playing a pick-up ball game, one of the last games
Rhino ever took part in, and afterward Mo suggested they head to
Mama D’s for a slice. Losers were buying, so Rhino was probably
already in a bad mood.
Some kid with a loud voice and a poncy Heights accent walked
in the place. Rhino got his back up at the sight of him. Wearing a
scarf in June. After he started in on his usual routine when he saw a
hill rat, Mo put his hand on Rhino’s forearm and told him to keep his
voice down ‘cause neither of them needed the extra trouble.
Rhino grabbed his best friend’s finger and bent it back until
something popped and the finger felt loose. He didn’t mean to do
what he did but Mo screamed in agony regardless. Rhino stood and
was about to say something directly to the hill rat when the hill rat
pulled out a gat and demanded Mama hand over the day’s take.
he called occasionally when the mood struck, who was so nice and
so sweet. All of that was off the books; Dennis paid his tax and lived
his life.
But he was angry. He was angry when Rizzo had first known him
and looking at him now he could see the anger had only grown
stronger. They both knew enough history to realize that, despite his
stated disinterest, in any other era and in most other places Dennis
would be happily working at a major research center and immersed
full time in study and teaching, with a wife and kids in a pleasant
neighborhood near campus to return to every night. But this wasn’t
that world. In this one he was at the bottom of the food chain.
Rizzo decided to ask what he really wanted to ask. “So, you in?”
he said.
“Huh?” Dennis said. “Of course I’m in.”
8
MOHAMED
MO CRACKED open the bottle of Bushmills and filled all their glasses
halfway.
“To revolution,” he said, raising his glass.
“To chaos,” Dennis said, raising his.
“To revenge,” Rizzo said. His glass was already in the air.
In the kitchen the three men clinked and drank. In the living
room Cole Jr. and Mo’s bull terrier Daisy sniffed each other's butts.
Nat King Cole’s Christmas Song played on a turntable. Rizzo
despised Christmas music.
“People don’t realize the chain gangs started in Philly,” Mo said,
resuming his argument. “It wasn’t a southern thing at all. It was
meant to keep slavery alive, but that don’t mean it was some good ol’
boy’s brainchild.”
“See, that’s the thing, the chain gangs didn’t really have nothing
to do with slavery,” Dennis said, slurring his words a little, “and
everything to do with collecting paper.”
“Son, what the fuck you think slavery was about in the first
goddamn place, if not collecting paper?” Mo said, getting into it.
“Well, let’s see, subjugation, genocide, control over resources, a
means of perpetuating the wealth of the ruling class—”
Rizzo
61
“Son, you’re making my point for me.”
“Rizzo—as the table’s leading chain gang aficionado, you got
anything to add to this debate?”
Rizzo poured himself a refresher and shook his head. “You fellas
are doing just fine without me.” After he’d told them he’d spent the
last year on the chain gang the conversation had taken on a life of its
own. Rizzo respected these men and so allowed them to talk long
past the point he would have otherwise walked away or used his fists
to silence them.
The two men always clashed. They were Rizzo’s boys but not
each other’s. Yet they were similar in many ways. Dennis’s brain was
a sponge, and Mo was a history buff and an autodidact, who prob-
ably should have grown up to be a lawyer or a professor.
“Can you imagine being a freed slave and getting thrown in the
pen cause you took a sip from a whites only fountain and then
having chains thrown on you and being leased back to the planta-
tion you escaped from, only it’s worse this time even than when you
were indentured? Before at least maybe massa saw you as part of
the family same as his dogs or his cows. Now you were just a
machine.”
“I sorta can imagine that, yeah,” Rizzo said.
Rizzo and Mo started as shorties, but they didn’t know each from
school, they knew each other from the streets. Mo hadn’t seen the
inside of a classroom since seventh grade. Mo was in hiding.
Mo’s full name was Mohamed. He was Somali-American. His
parents had come to America during the great wave of asylum immi-
grants from Somalia in the late twentieth century. Mo had been born
in the same hospital and in the same week Rizzo had.
Then the fourteenth amendment was revoked and Mo’s family
were among the tens of thousands of Somalis who were rounded up
and sent back. Made no difference they’d been accepted as refugees.
Didn’t matter that Somalia was still a failed state, a chaotic and
dangerous mess. Meant nothing that Mo and his siblings had been
62
H O C H E A N D E R S O N
raised as Americans, went to American schools, and could barely
speak or understand Somali.
The icemen battered on Mo’s front door when he was twelve
years old, and he went out the bedroom window, jumping to the roof
next door. The jump wasn’t very impressive in and of itself—it was
only six feet give or take, and the next roof was only four feet lower,
not a long jump even for a twelve-year-old. What made it impressive
was that Mo had his four and six-year-old sisters with him, one
under each arm.
Mo’s parents didn’t share their son’s athletic prowess. They were
sent back to Mogadishu and Mo hadn’t laid eyes on them since.
From then on, Mo was responsible for himself and his two sisters.
He managed to place his sisters with two sympathetic neighbor-
hood families, the Devareuxs and the Goldbergs, who raised them as
their own. They went to school, made friends, lived normal lives.
Even today, most people call them Susanna and Maria instead of
Suleymaan and Maxamed as they would always be known to Mo.
But those girls knew who they were, and they knew their brother.
They kept him in their hearts all the years the Merit Society and its
policies forced him to survive on the streets.
Rizzo met Mo playing ball at the playground. He was pretty
good, considering he’d never had a single minute of coaching and
had parents who had never seen basketball, and then no parents at
all. He was six one, tall for a Somali, he could have had a solid career
playing high school ball. He had amazing endurance, and he was
quicker than Rizzo, though Rizzo was loathe to admit it. The only
player he’d ever seen with quicker hands and a better first step was
Stone O’Leary.
But Mo’s big talent was stealth. The man was capable of disap-
pearing. He had a preternatural talent for it. He was there—and
then he wasn’t. Or the other way around. Oh, the carnage they
would have wrought with five men like Mo in the Special Forces.
Mo’s gifts extended beyond the ability to merely fool the eye. Just
Rizzo
63
as he could predict your blindspots twelve steps ahead, Mo
somehow also possessed the ability to foresee when and how some
things would happen before they did, and what some people would
do before they did it.
Stealth was how he earned his living, then and now. Mostly he
stole. He’d always been a gifted shoplifter. He started with food and
clothes for himself and his sisters, and graduated up the line. He
could go into a luxury store and figure out exactly the angles on the
surveillance cameras, know exactly what the rounds of the security
people were, spot any undercover security, and figure out exactly
where they would all be looking and when. He never stole from the
poor. His most famous hit was a high-end jewelry store, where he
stole a diamond necklace with two hundred thousand dollars in
easily fencible one carat diamonds while under the eyes of an elabo-
rate camera system, three uniformed, and two undercover security
guards. All this as a black man in a store full of white people. The
only thing they had afterward to put up on TV and in the paper were
a couple of pictures of him on the security tapes—from the back.
Mo had the rage. Rizzo could still see it in his eyes, in his move-
ments, he could hear it in the calm Mo forced into his words. He was
angry at the entire world, but mostly the world assumed the form of
the Merits.
“When my folks came here they thought it was going to be the
same as back home,” Mo said. “They missed slavery, lynching, Jim
Crow, the Klan. All the important lessons and memos about being
less than human. I was raised here but I still think like they do in the
old country. Tell me why I’m not entitled to the same life and privi-
leges and respect as any American?”
“‘Cause you’re a nigger,” Dennis said. Cole Jr’s ear perked up at
the sound of the word. “And an illegal migrant.”
“It was rhetorical,” Mo said. By now the bottle was nothing but
fumes; Mo stood and grabbed a short dog from the cupboard. “You
degenerates can polish off a bottle,” he said, unscrewing the lid.
64
H O C H E A N D E R S O N
He sat back down at the table and poured them all a fresh round.
No one objected. Rizzo looked over at Cole Jr. Him and Daisy were
passed out together. Rizzo laughed to himself. It seemed like now
that the dog had the ability to actually stretch and lie flat that’s all he
ever wanted to do.
Mo said, “If this comes together...I’m thinking I’d use my share...I
want to start an education center. A school I guess. You remember,
Riz, the way they’d punish us if we even looked at ‘em wrong. Those
white kids could get away with slapping their teachers silly if they
felt the need, but us? Teaching us ‘corrected history,’ more like ‘selec-
tive history’, whose fucking history, huh, you tell me that? Maybe if
the next generation have the proper education, tomorrow will be
different from today.” Mo turned away. He looked embarrassed.
“Anyway...you think that’d be OK?”
Rizzo, who remembered teachers raising their mitts to him as a
child all too well, said, “You’d do with your share whatever you felt
was the right thing, boss. If you’re asking me—I think that’s a fine
idea.”
“So do I,” Dennis said.
Mo swilled his drink. He looked up, having settled his mind. “So
what’s the pitch and when’s it happening?”
“Soon. Got one more slot to fill.”
Mo narrowed his eyes. “OK. Anyone I know?”
“Yes,” Rizzo said. He took a long sip. “And I really need you to
have an open mind.”
9
RHINO
RIZZO SQUEEZED OFF A ROUND. Rhino had a red white and blue
bullseye painted on the massive root out behind his trailer. Years of
lead blasting into it had reduced its mass, but only by a little. That
thing was built to last and here to stay.
Part of Rizzo hated how good it felt to have a carbine in his hands
once again. Being forced into a career killing and enforcing on the
state’s behalf had damaged his soul but the one aspect of the job he
had always enjoyed was mastering a weapon and the addictive
power that came from bullets riding an explosive burst of gas.
Not liking the sound of gunfire, Cole Jr. had elected to take a nap
inside Rhino’s trailer, which Rizzo couldn’t see any reason to object
to, the lazy, lovable bastard. He had chosen to leave the other guys
out of his meeting with Rhino. If he agreed to the job there would be
time for the four of them to come together and strategize later.
Rizzo ejected the P90’s spent mag and inserted a new one. The
weapon had become a flats specialty after the stories of the Martin
massacre started to circulate. Within two months of the incident
every gun enthusiast, petty thug and wannabe revenger had to get
their paws on the now legendary machine gun.
“Feels good, don’t it?” Rhino said.
Rizzo
67
Rizzo couldn’t lie. “Oh my god,” he said, shaking his head.
Rhino shot a round from a golden Desert Eagle. It sounded like a
zip gun next to the P90. “So Mohamed agreed to come onboard?
And he knows you want me on the team?”
“He does, and he did.”
“Huh,” Rhino said. “And he doesn’t hold a grudge?”
“I didn’t say that. I mean—it took some doing. I had to use my
words.”
“He must know I’m sorry, right?”
“I think that’s something you need to tell him yourself.”
“I have. He told me...well.... And he still said yes?”
Rizzo nodded.
“Huh,” Rhino said again. “How ‘bout that.”
“How ‘bout that,” Rizzo said.
Rhino grinned proudly as Rizzo opened fire once more on the
root. The nozzle was turning red hot. He was one of those gun
enthusiasts the stories of the P90 had affected. Rhino wished he had
Rizzo’s military background, but like most people Rizzo was close to
in the flats, they knew each other from the courts.
Not that Rhino played basketball anymore, ‘cause he didn’t. That
is, no one would play basketball with him. He was too quick to
anger, and too quick to take that anger out on his opponents. You
could be Rhino’s best friend—like Mo had once been—but if you
were playing on the other team, you could find, hell, you could
expect, that eventually he’d be hitting you with an elbow, stepping
on your heel and knocking you down, submarining you on a jump
shot or rebound, pushing you over on defense.
Perhaps sensing his limits early, Rhino’s main sport in school
became football. He was five-eleven and weighed two hundred and
seventy pounds of solid muscle. He was a human hockey puck who
could absorb an unlimited amount of punishment. Other players
were afraid of him. Rizzo was a little afraid of him. Rhino didn’t have
great skill, but he had a bottomless reserve of ferocity.
68
H O C H E A N D E R S O N
Rizzo had often tried to piece together where Rhino’s rage came
from. God knows they were all deeply angry, Rizzo realized—but
somehow not quite like Rhino. Unlike Dennis, or Mo, or Rizzo
himself, he’d been raised in a “normal” middle class family. Two
parents and a dog. His father was a middle school principal; his
mother sold real estate. They lived in the flats at least partly by
choice. Rhino’s mother had been born and raised there, and had a
strong sense of commitment. His father just went along, which was
how most things went in his family.
His mother was the biggest activist in the flats. She was in the
streets, was chaining herself to the gates, was lying down in front of
police cars, was putting daisies in the gun barrels of the National
Guard, was using a bullhorn in front of a mob. She had been
arrested more times than you could count, and had done stretches in
jail ranging from overnight to six months. There was a rumor in the
flats that the police had a special officer whose job was to go to any
demonstration and arrest Rhino’s mom. The Merit revolution had
changed her from a politically active housewife into a whirlwind.
As he got older and bigger, Rhino developed his real sports
passion: bar fighting. His favorite move was to go to a joint full of
young guys from the heights and start conversations in which he
loudly denounced the police, the courts, congress, the president, the
Merit Party, the Dagger Cross Society, and any other symptom of the
establishment he could think of. It would soon become a swill of
testosterone, beer, anger, entitlement, and inevitably one of those
young men would take a swing.
That was Rhino’s cue to go into berserker mode. With fists,
elbows, head, feet, and knees flying, he waded into the group
surrounding him like the Tasmanian Devil. Rhino always came out
with bloodied noses, blackened eyes, split lips, bruised jaws. But at
least Rhino could still walk.
The man seemed impervious to pain and injury. Rizzo was proud
to say he’d witnessed the event that made Rhino a legend in the flats.
Rizzo
69
They’d been playing a pick-up ball game, one of the last games
Rhino ever took part in, and afterward Mo suggested they head to
Mama D’s for a slice. Losers were buying, so Rhino was probably
already in a bad mood.
Some kid with a loud voice and a poncy Heights accent walked
in the place. Rhino got his back up at the sight of him. Wearing a
scarf in June. After he started in on his usual routine when he saw a
hill rat, Mo put his hand on Rhino’s forearm and told him to keep his
voice down ‘cause neither of them needed the extra trouble.
Rhino grabbed his best friend’s finger and bent it back until
something popped and the finger felt loose. He didn’t mean to do
what he did but Mo screamed in agony regardless. Rhino stood and
was about to say something directly to the hill rat when the hill rat
pulled out a gat and demanded Mama hand over the day’s take.
