Painted Cities Read Online Free Page A

girlfriend. “Motherfuckers should’ve seen it coming,” he’d told Joker, his Party Boy brother, his best friend in the neighborhood. “You look for trouble, shit’s going to find you first.” Joker’s only response had been to laugh. Joker was a thief, of everything.
    But it figured the grim reaper was living in the neighborhood. Probably renting out a musty concrete basement for a buck fifty a month, utilities included, stolen from a next-door neighbor. Might have assumed the name Julio Ramirez, or Juan Calderon, one of those generic Mexican names nobody’d suspect it was Death himself, coming in at strange hours. Whoever owned the building, the landlord living in the front, highest apartment, like they always do, probably thought Death was just a good worker. Probably thought he was some mojado busting his ass making calculators in Elgin for fourteen hours a day, wiring cash back home to Mexico, supporting seven growing children and a wife named Iris, or Esmeralda, some name that brought to mind young beauty, though she herself was tired and worn. Landlord probably thought to hire Death too, being he was such a good worker. Give him twenty bucks to patch the front sidewalk, holes so big kids be falling down there, assumed kidnapped until someone heard the screaming.
    And all along it was the grim reaper, filling in holes, living in the neighborhood, existing incognito.
    Jr. Chine said it first, to no one in particular: “Hey, bro, that’s Joker.” Exactly how he knew the grim reaper was really Joker was impossible to tell, but they were good friends, and good friends can generally sense one another, like when you know a hit’s pulling down the street five minutes before you actually see the car, cab darker than the street itself, orange street light thick as humidity.
    It had been Jr. Chine’s shot. He’d had the ball on the low post, about to release his patented baseline jumper, dramatic for its disregard of the backboard, its confidence as it cycled through the air and then swooped the chain-mesh net. The ball dropped from his hands like a whistle’d been blown. It trotted toward the field house, down the slope of the compressed basketball court, each bounce accompanied by the twang of an overinflated ball, into the slot between the cyclone retaining fence and the back of the brick building, where ball players, drunks, and wicky-stick fiends pissed, the piss collecting over generations, reeking, giving the field house its neighborhood moniker, “Stinky.”
    The figure’s hands were hidden in his sweatshirt pockets. The deep hood hung low over his brow and his arms were locked at the elbows. The material was being stretched down as if the figure were cupping his balls, making the body seem even more ominous, an open mouth screaming, melting. If the crowd on the court could’ve seen the hands, a positive identification could’ve been made. They would’ve known for sure it was Death: long, white fingers, black fingernails. Or they would’ve known it was really Joker: bleeding crucifix tattoo on the web of his right hand, P ARTY B OYS etched in Old English script like a banner over the crucifix. Jr. Chine approached the descending figure cautiously, his own right handgripping the .25 automatic stuffed in the pocket of his cutoff jeans. He flipped the safety off, though, like always, he questioned immediately whether he’d actually flipped it on, and was now about to die feeling stupid. If he lived, he vowed, he’d memorize which action was the correct one, get the safety situation down pat, like he had the clip-loading maneuvers down pat, practicing for hours as he lay in bed, popping the clip in and out, in the dark, sightless, the clicks of the release mechanism like second nature. He sidestepped toward the figure. His steps shortened as he neared. And suddenly Jr. Chine’s vision went third-person. Everything—the game, those standing behind, the cigarette Jr. Chine had left smoldering until he