Up From Hell

I’d wanted to be a policeman since I was eight. The first time I saw a cop was in 1970, when a couple of officers rolled up to my mom’s low-rent building on Oakey Boulevard off Las Vegas Boulevard South.

My mother’s place was called The Broken Arms. We lived on the second floor of the two-story building. As a kid, the name made me laugh. Of course, I was skinny, with all elbows. Sometimes, I pretended to be a cowboy with six-shooters on my hips, and I’d stage showdowns with my shadow. He always drew faster, and I always died first.

One hot summer night, everything changed. A gunshot cracked from the ground floor directly below us. A few minutes later, police sirens screamed outside. I opened the apartment door and saw a squad car screech into the parking lot below. Two policemen got out, drew their guns, and spread out, looking for the person who had shot the gun.

“Get the hell away from the door, you idiot,” my mom shouted. “We don’t want those bastard cops rushing in here.”

“Someone shot a gun,” I said, inching the door wider.

“There’s always people shooting guns around this place.”

I stayed a few more seconds, curious and bored the way kids are. Two officers

swarmed a guy in a black-and-white Adidas tracksuit. My mom hooked a finger in my T-shirt, dragged me back inside, and kicked the door shut. Flinging her dirty-blond, uncombed hair aside, she cracked the blinds and peered out. Her thin pink terry-cloth robe hung off one shoulder, showing the needle scars dotting her bare arm.

“That asshole Jasper’s hanging around,” she muttered. “Oh, hell—he’s making a delivery to Gary. Poor bastard. I hope Gary’s in his right mind.” She let the blinds fall and stumbled to her room. “Get away from there, Neil.”

I didn’t know what she did in her bedroom. I only knew it wasn’t good. I went to the window and watched the police take down Jasper. He was a mean guy. Always picking a fight. In and out of jail, my mom said. Jasper and my mom talked about it once a week, when he delivered a package wrapped in brown paper to Gary, who’d give him money for it. I didn’t know what that was about. But I hoped Gary wouldn’t get in trouble. Whenever my mom was busy, I would stay with Gary for a few hours at a time, and most of the time, Gary would take me to school in the mornings.

Gary also watched me when Mom had male visitors. That’s how she paid the rent, she said. She told me that if I ever met one of them, I wasn't supposed to mention that I was her son. I ended up meeting them a lot. One guy patted me on my head and called me blackie. I guess it was because my hair was long and black as coal.