Ninety at Midnight
Jack Bludis

Jack Bludis has been a cab driver, a doorman, a private
investigator, an actor, and a teacher. More than
thirty of his novels have been published in various
genres. Over two hundred of his stories and several of
his novellas have appeared on the Internet under a
number of pseudonyms. His mysteries include The
Walcott Plot, X-Rated Murder and Dead Blondes
Don’t Tell. Jack can be reached by E-mail at 
buildsnburns@yahoo.com
©Copyright 2001
Jack Bludis

Loretta was hung up in a part of town I’d never go without a
right hand, but I didn’t have time for that, because she was calling
from a pay phone in front of a Seven-Eleven.
Should be simple, I thought, thumbing down the button of the
cell.
Drive by and pick her up, right?
Wrong.
I knew it was a trap. I think she did too, and she knew she was
the bait.
I thought about it as I drove past the state penitentiary and turned
north on Harford Avenue. The street lights were brilliant and people
were sitting on their steps or lying in their hallways, trying to get
relief from the steaming summer heat. Some were already trying to
sleep. Others were fanning themselves with newspapers. I saw one
old man trying to fan a hallway with a shirt.
That was the way it was on the East Side of Baltimore in a heat
wave. There were very few air-conditioners, but a lot of window
fans, which gave little relief when it was a hundred degrees during
the day and over ninety at midnight.
Punks stood on corners, smoking or talking. Seven and eightyear-
old kids were still playing.
I stopped for a red light and kept shifting my eyes from mirror to
mirror to mirror and back to the front again. A kid about six-six was
coming toward my car as the light turned green, and I pulled away.
“Hey!” he called after me. “I got what you want.”
The drug super market had not been at that corner for months.
He was just looking for a skull, and I wasn’t about to be it.
Two more blocks. I drove slowly, because they already knew my
car, a ZX. If they’d set a trap with Loretta, they didn’t even need to
see me coming. They just had to wait.
“I’d rather be dead than loose my little girl,” she told me on the
phone. But one way or another, she was going to lose little Sheeny.
Loretta had been doing too many kinds of powder for too long. She
was going to serve time, and Social Services was going to take
Sheeny for good.
I pulled onto the small lot, stopped the ZX, and jumped out, top
shirt open Glock at the ready on my ass. I was scanning the area
for them, because she was supposed to be inside anyway.
“Hey Wally!” Teaser Boy called from the shadows.
I kept walking and went into the store. If Teaser wanted a shoot
out, it would be inside where I had a chance, and where the Hindu
at the cash register could make the call if he needed to-or not.
Probably not. He probably had some kind of bunker in the back
where he bailed.
“Loretta,” I called.
“She is in the back,” the guy behind the counter said with a
clipped, middle-Asian accent.
When I went behind the last rack, there she was, sitting on the
floor against the cold cases, rocking back and forward and needing
a fix-she always needed a fix. She was wearing that same red
blouse I saw her in more then a week ago, only now it wasn’t new
anymore.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She looked up tear-eyed. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it this time, not
ever. I’m done. Just let me go. It’s all over.”
“Go to jail. You’ll get clean, maybe,” I said.
“No. Please. I can’t do it. Somebody has to take care of Sheeny.
Take care of Sheeny for me.”
Loretta had more chances to get clean than any six people I
knew. Even she understood now that it was never going to happen,
but I was not going to give up on her.
“Let’s go,” I said, and I heard the bell on the front door.
“Hit the buzz or pick up the phone, and you are dead,” Teaser
said to the man on the counter.
“Don’t tell me you all alone, Cock Fight. Just for a piece of tail,”
Teaser said. He was talking to me now.
Teaser didn’t know or didn’t care that Loretta was my sister. The
way I figured it now, there were at least two bad guys, maybe even
three. I drew my Glock and ratched it.
“Get up,” I said to Loretta.
“You do what the man say,” Teaser said.
And I heard a second pair of feet shuffling around the racks at
the window side of the store. 
“Nasty white shit is gonna die with his hoe,” Teaser said. “But we
take her out first. That all right with you, Lo-retta?”
Loretta literally squealed and pulled herself even tighter into her
fetal ball. She looked up with her eyes wide, and I knew it was
trap: the boys on the East side, ready to take out the white nigger
from the West.
“I didn’t mean for you to-” She was in tears. No doubt they had
promised her a fix, but don’t they always? I had done the same
thing myself. If I didn’t, I’d have been made long before now. No,
they trusted me in West Baltimore, but they kept me one step below
the top because I wasn’t a brother.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Stay right there and stay low. I’m gonna get
you out of here.”
I wouldn’t explain that once I got her out that I would manage to
get her straight to jail. It was the only place she would ever get
clean, and even that wasn’t sure, but she would be alive, and
maybe seven or eight years down the road, she would . . .
“Stop Dreaming,” I told myself.
“We knew we was goin’ to get you once we corner that hunk of
ass you always after,” hollered Teaser.
“Yeah, Oh, yeah,” said the other, a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Tommy . . .”
“Shhh. Lay flat.”
“I can’t, my belly, I need-”
“Flat or it’ll be all over.”
“I don’t care I can’t, I-” She started to whimper
I looked in the concave mirror and saw Teaser and the other
crouching behind the counters. They checked the next aisle even
though they could see me, but I had to take care of Loretta.
“Low, Lo. You got to get low.”
She was useless for help, less than useless, but she did as I told
her. She flattened out on her belly, with her hands over he head,
but she was still shaking like a three-point dieseling down.
“Good girl,” I whispered.
I knew that when they came around the corners of the racks they
would be aiming low figuring me to crouch as soon as the swung
around. They saw everything in the concave mirror, but they didn’t
know what I was going to do when they made the corner.
The other guy, the no-name punk, came around the other corner
first. He was firing a 9 mm and holding on with both hands like he
was in the movies, but he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
He wasn’t even looking, he was firing wild and hoping he would
hit me. His shells knocked cans off shelves, clipped potato chip
bags, and cracked the glass on the fridge.
Then Teaser.
I threw myself against the rack and fired at the same time. I hit 
him high on his chest but near his right shoulder and he lowered
his 9 mm. He looked surprised, like he couldn’t even believe I got
him. He was the number one trigger man on the Eastside, and I was
just some punk who felt too protective of his whore.
But the other guy was coming at me and firing, and I swung my
Glock in his direction and squeezed.
“Amen,” I thought as he flew back and practically slung his 9 mm
into the air, but at the same time, he had hit me in the thigh. I
growled and went down, bleeding all over my jeans. Damn that
hurt.
He was looking for his gun and I went up on both knees and
leveled my Glock. I squeezed off one round and got him in the
middle of his chest. His arms dropped and he stopped looking for
his gun. The dumb son of a bitch had a death wish, I thought.
My thigh was still killing me, but I crawled to Loretta.
“Tommy!” she said, and she pointed.
I swung and squeezed, but Teaser got his shot off first and it
cracked the glass on the cold box. I completed the squeeze, and I
got him again. This time it was easy and final. Right in the middle
of the chest, like the no-name punk.
In the concave mirror, I saw the blue and red lights flashing
outside the windows, but I dragged myself back to Lo, who was no
longer shaking.
“Lo?” I said.
She smiled.
“Are you OK?”
She nodded.
Oh, God! The red of her blouse was getting darker.
“Ambo!” I shouted, as the front door swung open.
“On the way,” somebody said.
“Lo,” I said, getting close to her, but she was out, not totally out,
but most of the way, and she tried to open her eyes.
“Tommy.”
“Hang in there,” I said, and I put my Glock on the floor beside
her.
“Freeze,” said the uniformed cop who came around the corner
leveled his own Glock and looked down at me.
“She needs a medic,” I said.
But even as I said it, I knew it was over-dead over.
She wouldn’t have to worry about Sheeny anymore, or about jail,
or about kicking habits-not about anything.
“She’s my sister,” I said.
Then he said one of those dumb things people say at a time like
this, “You got a permit for that gun?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, and after a pause, he told me I was under arrest
The ambulance came and the paramedics did what they could,
but it was over. I wouldn’t have to worry about my baby sister ever
again, but I’d have to defend myself in court and stay undercover.
With Teaser gone in the East, I would probably move another notch
out West, maybe even ride in with some new guys and claim turf.
But that wouldn’t last. It was all a waste anyhow, a losing battle
against the Columbian peasants.
Teaser was gone, I was up, and the empire was in tact. And
when we got Arnold one of the other tribes would take over and it
would be the same cycle all over again.
“Wouldn’t be like that if we could get the powder at the Seven-
Eleven,” one of the punks said a few years back.
Maybe not quite like this, I thought, but maybe worse.
Who knows? Not me, not Teaser, not Arnold and damn sure not
Loretta.
“Aw, shit,” I said, and I broke into tears. Here I was almost
twenty-two years old and crying like a baby. I want to do good, but
it just won’t work out. I can’t cure it no matter what I do.
The cops booked me and growled and called me punk and
nigger, and took me through the motions, but it was all formality. I
was pretty sure I would move up another notch.
All that meant is that I was closer to getting killed by the bad
guys and closer to getting killed by the good guys.
I lost my baby sister, and my niece had no mama.
Damn.
I wasn’t sure it was worth it anymore, but I couldn’t quit. The
power and the drive was like the powder. The more you got, the
more you wanted, even though you knew it all seemed a waste.