Chapter 14: Consolidate

The knife was a deadly flash of silver from hand to target. It came at him almost too fast to see, but Chad was keyed up and ready for anything. Spinning a net of mental energy, he caught the knife in midflight. Slowing and turning it as it drew near, he caught it easily in one hand.

"Thanks, but like I said, I really don't need a knife to take care of the likes of you." He flipped the knife back at the stunned Rafe, giving it enough of a boost as it flew through the air to bury it handledeep in a supporting post right next to Rafe's left ear. He kept on walking forward, his eyes intent on Rafe but his senses alert to all that went on around him.

"You... You knifed them kids, an' then cut out!" Rafe's voice grated as he backed away nervously. His eyes darted from side to side as he sought support from those around him, but none of them dared to so much as move. This certainly wasn't the carefree, easygoing Chad they'd known. "You ain't no Wolf, not no more you ain't. Git outa here, 'fore we run ya out!"

Chad walked toward him slowly, steadily, each footfall echoing through the sudden stillness. Rafe looked frantically around for support, his face paling to gray beneath its normal chocolate brown, but still found none. Gathering his courage, he lunged at Chad. What happened then was never quite clear to him. Something that looked like a fist but felt more like a chunk of concrete crashed solidly against his jaw. He struggled to get up off the floor, but his knees were wobbly and his vision blurred.

Chad reached down. Grabbing a handful of dirty Tshirt, he heaved Rafe to his feet as easily as if he'd been a child. Something exploded on Rafe's chin a second time, and this time the lights really went out. They stayed out for a long, long time.

"Any of the rest of you feel like you want to argue about whether I'm still a Wolf?" Chad's deep voice was level, almost uninterested, as chill as the expression in his eyes as he swiveled to face the rest of the Wolves.

Nobody breathed, feeling like they'd just discovered a live bomb ticking away in the center of the room. Then Kenny broke the silence with a shrill whoop.

"Chad Douglas! King of the Wolves!"

More and more voices echoed his cry until it rang throughout the room, only a few dissenters here and there sitting glumly with their mouths clamped tight shut.

"Okay! Okay! That's enough of that." Chad's grin was still more of a snarl, relaxing visibly but still menacingly alert. He glanced down, as though noticing for the first time that he still held a goodsized piece of Rafe's shirt in his hand, and tossed the tattered cloth aside. "All right, I'll take over as King Wolf for a while if you really want me to, but I'm warnin' you right now that it's only gonna be for a couple of weeks. Just long enough for me to get some things straightened out around here, and then I'm gone. I've got bigger fish to fry than baby-sitting you Wolves, so you'd better start right away figuring out who you're gonna get to take my place. Okay now, I want the head Wolf of each den to stick around for a rap fest. The rest of you take off til we holler for you. Some of you'd better lug Rafe outa here, 'fore he wakes up and I hafta belt him another one. If I hafta hit him again, I might really hurt him."

The laughing, shouting Wolves straggled out. A couple of them dragged the unconscious Rafe feet first up the stairs to the alley, his head bumping on the edges of the steps. When there were only eight of the older Wolves left, he started firing questions at them.

"Kenny says some of the other gangs are leanin' on us. Which one's the worst?"

"The Cats!"

"Black Cats!"

"Slick Jim's Black Cats!" The name echoed from all parts of the room.

"Okay. We still send messages back and forth?"

"Yeah. Through Blind Fred's cigar store," Mig Perez answered, his dark eyes watchful in a face like a brooding Aztec mask.

"Send word that I wanta talk with Slick Jim tonight. Six o'clock. What's the next big problem?"

"Droppin' out." This was Kwando, a massive youngster with skin the color of wellcreamed coffee. He was another one who hadn't been cheering for Chad. "Too many Wolves've got families movin' away after jobs. Too many more been sayin' the Wolves're on their way out, an' they don' wanna get sucked down with us. One good thing, though. The Black Cats don' have it as bad as us yet, but it's startin' to happen with them, too."

"We've got enough guys left for right now. Enough girls, too." Chad nodded to Nora, who was sitting with one of her SheWolves at one side of the room. "At least, I hope you're still with us."

"We still with you," she replied soberly, her soft voice deliberately neutral. "At least until you start pullin' the same kinda stupid stunts Rafe did, or worse. We've had enough of his kinda bonehead plays to last us a long, long time. The next problem you got, an' it's the worst one of all, is money. We 'bout flatbusted, and not a lot of moola in sight. Things've been stretched so tight you wouldn't believe, jess lately, an' less than nothin' comin' in."

"I've got the answer to that one, too." He smiled, trying to sound more confident than he felt. This was the crucial part of his plan, if only he could put it over. If it fell through he was really in deep trouble, his plan stymied before it got started. "You all know that things're changin'. This whole end of the city's gone to pot, so far as kid gangs're concerned. From what I heard before I took off the rest of the country's in even worse shape, 'specially since the big gangs like the Crips an' the Bloods got busted up for good. People're movin' out, and legit money is comin' in. That means we're out, unless we come up with sumpin' pretty damned good, damned quick! We always got our cut from the pimps an' the pushers an' did a fair amount of pushin' ourselves, up to when our connections got blown away. Now, pretty soon the little guys ain't gonna be around no more, and the ones that're left'll be too big for us to lean on. No more crack comin' in from outa the country, and no real money in pot since they made it legal. The kinda stores that's comin' in won't stand for us boostin' stuff, neither."

"So, what're we gonna do?" Kwando's sarcastic voice asked bluntly. "Join the goddamned Boy Scouts?"

"If that's what you wanta do, I sure ain't gonna stop you," Chad shot back at him without changing his expression. "Me, I never did like short pants and all that salutin' crap. Nope, what I wanta try is a straight business deal, but we'll all hafta be behind it a hundred percent for it to work. Just listen to me and tell me if you think it can be done. We've got sumpin' to sell, and people what'll buy if it's put to them right."

"I dunno what it is, then," a voice muttered from somewhere in the room. He thought that it came from Kwando, but he wasn't sure.

"We've got the best lookout and runner setup there is, that's what, and we've still got plenty of muscle to back it up with. What with the big new stores an' businesses movin' in, any time a place gets knocked over the cops'll come arunnin' and they're gettin' better equipment to handle it all the time. The first thing they'll do is start whalin' on us, 'cause we're handy. If we can make money and at the same time keep the fuzz outa our hair, we'll be ahead all the way around. What we've gotta do is to set up a network on our territory that's about ten times tighter'n the one we've already got. We'll blow the whistle on holdups, burglaries, crimes of any kind, an' even put the finger on shoplifters when we get the chance."

"So, we'll sell protection like always," Kwando jeered. "So, what else is new?"

"Yeah." Mig nodded agreement. "Ain't that what we've been doin' all along?"

"You still don't get it, do you? Neither one of you. What I'm tellin' you is, law an' order're comin' back to stay, no matter what we do. We either gotta stay on top of it by goin' legit, or we'll go under. And I mean really legit, no fakin' it. One hundred and fifty percent straight arrow, right down the line! Now, if we keep our heads down the fuzz ain't gonna bother with us for a while, not so long as we don't make no waves. They ain't got the men or the money to watch everything, not yet, but that won't last much longer. By the time they get 'round to us, we've gotta have things all sewed up. The only way we can make it stick, though, is by doin' a better job than what the fuzz can do and work with them, 'stead of against them. The hardest part is gonna be gettin people to believe us. You're all of you gonna hafta keep your sections in line, really crack down on them, else the whole thing's gonna fall to pieces on us. Just one Wolf fucks up, just once, and it'll knock the props out from under all of us. If that happens, we'll find ourselves on the bottom of the pile when the dust settles. The Wolves'll be dead as a gang, an' some of us'll be dead right along with them."

"But even if you can make it work, what're we gonna use for money until things start movin'?" The speaker was little Sammy Sawbucks, the club treasurer. "We've got us a few real important payoffs we gotta make, real quicklike. There just ain't nuthin' left in the pot for us to make 'em with. We're like flat busted. We can't even pay the light bill on this hole. Come the first of the month, we'll be meetin' out in a vacant lot!"

"We'll get us some cash first, an' get the plan rollin' at the same time." Chad figured that it was time to head off more questions. He hadn't given them time to stop and think, but pretty soon some dumb asshole would start yelling about 'selling out to The Man' and then there'd maybe be more trouble than he could handle. He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed a heavy chunk of yellowgleaming rough metal onto the table, where it bounced to a noisy stop. "This should keep us rollin' for a while, anyhow."