The night air was hot, unseasonably hot, even for Miami, especially given that it was nearly the end of October, and approaching midnight as well. Mike Barnes leaned up against an electrical pole that leaned back against him on the side of 62 Street just outside of Drew Park. Through the white a-shirt he wore, he could feel every rut and splinter in the pole as he shifted his weight, and he grimaced only slightly. Once in a while a car would pass by, but not the car he was waiting for, and not a cop car, so Mike looked straight ahead as if he didn't see them.
The park was deserted, except for a bum sleeping in the cradle of the run-down slide, his feet dangling towards the ground like a child who fell asleep at play. Mike glanced over his shoulder at him from time to time, just to keep him on the radar, knowing that sometimes things were not as they appear, and that your enemies often chose to blend in with the sickness of the city to get into killing distance. Ever since Mike had been a kid, the park had always looked like this, like a mockery of a child's playground, with danger and despair all over it. In fact, he remembered when the city had come in and fixed the swings and slide and painted most of the buildings. That was less than two years ago, and now it looked worse than before. Not one fixture was whole, not one wall undefiled, not one spot on the ground that could produce life in the form of grass, flower, or bush, but the weeds choked out all and imposed their ugly existence over everything else. Mike didn't mind so much, though; at least it was familiar, and his own.
Still, he believed that it had once been a cleaner, nicer place, like his grandmother always told him, before everybody ruined it. The park was spacious, at least. Someone had chose this large plot for its wide expanse, despite all of the apartment buildings surrounding it, or perhaps because of them. When they were new, the swing sets must have been alive with fifteen or more kids, Mike pictured, because there were so many dual sets of screws along the rusted top beam. Yes, it must have been fun jumping off into the newly planted grass from those swings, but like so many things in Liberty City, it had given in to the creeping corruption that had moved in and taken root so deeply that it killed off any resistance before it grew.
Mike was not afraid to be out that late; after all, he was no punk. Still, he wanted this business done and to be back home again. He had promised to do this extra drop for Corleone because the money was so good, but here, in the hot dark, with a full kilo of uncut cocaine stuffed into his loose left pant leg, and a contact who was fifteen minutes late, it didn't seem worth it. It seemed like a setup.
A car turned the corner on the west end of the block, a black Buick Regal with factory rims and dark tinted windows, clearly unmarked police. It turned neatly into the lane nearest Mike and sidled toward him, making almost no noise. Mike looked away, cursing himself for taking this job, comparing the relative worth of five thousand dollars to a year of his life as a free man. He tried to look as casual as he could, standing alone outside a dilapidated park on a hot night at 11:48 with a bulge in his pant leg the size of a phone book.
The car sowed even more as it approached him, but the tinted windows stayed up, which Mike hoped was a good sign. He turned his back slightly to the road, enough so that the passenger of the car couldn't get a good look at his face, but not so much that he couldn't see what the car was doing in the periphery. As he turned, the car slowed down to a crawl. It stopped right beside him.
Experience had taught him that when you aren't sure what to do next, keep doing what you're doing and don't make any sudden changes, so he stayed in the same position with his hands down by his ankles until the passenger got out of the car and stepped up beside him.
"You Mike?" the stranger said, looking down on him with a smirk on his face.
Mike slowly rose to his feet, faced the man, and sized him up. The guy was about an inch or two shorter than him, not much, but broader in the shoulders and looked as if he could handle himself. He stood with his knees loose and his hands free at his sides. His thick brown hair was about shoulder length and must have had about a bottle of that stuff that white guys used to make it look as if they don't care how their hair looks. He had a neatly shaved goatee and a diamond earring in his left ear, trying to cover up the fact that he was a cop. If it wasn't obvious from all that, the blazer he wore with his jeans in almost ninety degree weather was a dead giveaway.
"Who's asking?" he said, looking into the man's eyes with a cold stare.
"Corleone said to meet you here to complete a transaction." The guy looked Mike over and sucked his teeth. "Look, bro, I don't have all night" he said, "You're Corleone's boy."
"And you're late." Mike stared hard at the guy. He might be a cop, but a dirty cop, and you could get leverage on those. Of course if he wasn't a dirty cop, then Mike knew his night was about to get a lot longer and a lot hotter. "Another ten minutes and the price would have gone up."
"Well, I guess it's good that I came when I did." the man went into his coat pocket with his right hand and Mike's eyes widened. His nose flared as he drew in a deep, even breath and reached behind his back for the Glock nine millimeter stuffed into his waistband under the tail of his sweaty undershirt. The man smiled and drew out a Black and Mild cigarette and a lighter. "Jumpy?" he said, bringing the small black cigar to his lips and lighting it. After drawing in his first puff, he chuckled and blew out the smoke.
Mike kept his hand near his gun. "Let's get this done Crockett," he said, "Open your car door and get the money ready."
The guy opened the passenger side of the car and then walked around to the trunk. Mike kneeled down in the crook of the door, as if he were tying his shoe, and pulled the brick of cocaine out of his pant leg and slid it under the seat of the car. He kept his eye on the driver the whole time, but the guy just stared ahead the whole time. This guy was no cop, but he didn't seem too happy about being here either.
The contact returned to Mike's side with the money, wrapped in plastic and shoved into a brown paper grocery bag. He handed it to Mike, who was still on the floor, and Mike opened it briefly to make sure it looked right, then shoved it into the pant leg where the brick had come from before. He pulled the hem down over it, rolled it under, shifted the money in there to secure it, and then stood slowly up.
This was it. The moment where he either it busted or closed the deal. He knew that if this cop took him in, he would be out tonight anyway, Corleone would definitely get him out. Still, the one thing Mike knew about dirty cops was that you couldn't trust them to do the smart thing or even the wrong thing. Sometimes they just did whatever they felt like doing, and that was often unpredictable.
Mike stepped back away from the Buick, nodded his sincere farewell to his contact, and waited for him to get back in the car. The guy smiled at Mike again in a way he didn't like, but then lowered himself into the car, keeping his twinkling blue eyes on Mike he whole time. He closed the door and put down the window at the same time.
"Next time, bro." the guy said, still smiling.
Mike nodded and returned his own confident smile. "Watch out for cops on the way back with that," he said, "not that you'd have any problems there any way."
As soon as the door closed, the car started moving, picking up fast with a slight squall of tires and spray of sand and stone. Mike watched them turn the corner before moving on down the street, toward the corner where his own car was parked.
Suddenly, a wave of fear and panic swept through him, like a dizzy spell after standing up too quick. He looked back over his shoulder, almost certain that he had done something wrong, something stupid, and left himself open, but no one was there. He walked even faster, favoring the left leg with its burden, ending up with a sort of limp. When he reached the car, he practically jumped inside, snatching the package out of his pants and tossing it on the seat beside him.
"That's the last time," he said to himself. "I don't mind carrying a few hits or taking a few orders, but this is crazy. I ain't going to prison for his money."
He nodded to himself as he started the engine and pulled onto the street from off the grass and turned up the DMX on the radio. Definitely the last time.
Then he looked over at the package wrapped in brown paper on the seat beside him. Stopping at a red light, he reached over and peeked into the bag again. There was a whole lot of money in that bag, and five thousand of it was his just for making the exchange. His money. He knew he couldn't stop, but he didn't want to run up against a jail cell or a bullet like so many before him. The call of that money was overwhelming, as if he could smell it, feel it drawing him in, but here had to be some other way. All he knew was that he wanted more, much more, and even this petty few thousand at a time wasn't going to get him to the place he wanted to be soon enough. He wanted millions and millions, and didn't want to have to make deals with dirty cops outside of run-down parks to get it, or risk a life behind bars to have it.
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