Young Junius, page 15
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
Or maybe he was pissed off to see the lack of cooperation from this population he was trying his best to help. Maybe he just couldn’t hold himself back from doing what he wanted to when faced with the blank fucking reality of how hard it was to make anything right. Or maybe this was the kind of police work he really needed to do.
Regardless, the punch had worked. Maybe too well.
The boy was down in an awkward position, his head rolled back under the car and his eyes closed. If it was a cartoon, he’d have little canaries flying in circles around him.
Johnson shook out his hand. It didn’t even hurt. “Yeah,” he said. “Now tell me your fucking name. Pooh! Fucking Winnie the bear?”
His leg kicked, and Johnson drew his gun before he could even think. Then an arm twitched and Johnson realized it was just a spasm. For a second he worried he’d actually hurt the little fucker, but he’d seen people laid out way worse than this and get up. He came around the side of the car to look at the boy, and his leg was shaking a little, Johnson had to admit.
He heard a sound behind him and spun with the gun.
43
Roughneck watched Junius walk out of 411 and turn right toward 412, then come up the path. Even with the cops around, there was no way he should be making a move to 412. He should have made that clear up on the roof, made sure Junius knew not to come on Rock’s ground. He tried to wave him off, but just as he lifted his arm to do it, he caught sight of Clarence coming up from the other side of the building.
“Shit.”
He liked Junius, didn’t want to see Clarence get ahead with Rock, but if C Dub was going to drop a body right out in front of 412 like this, he couldn’t stop it now.
This kid made his own rules. He’d have to live or die by them.
Then Clarence stopped and turned back around to where he’d come from. He still wouldn’t be able to see Junius for another few feet, so Rough waved toward 411, trying to stop him, but Junius kept coming. From where he was, he wouldn’t be able to see Clarence until it was too late.
Then a sound came from around the side of the building, and Clarence took a step away from the doors. That was when Junius would have come into Clarence’s line of sight. But he wasn’t looking. He took another step toward the back of the building and then disappeared in a run.
Just after that, Junius hit the doors and walked right into the lobby. Rough knew they were alone, but for how long?
“Fuck you doing here?” he asked, even knowing he didn’t care about the answer. He didn’t care and didn’t have time to hear it, because if Clarence came back and saw him, he’d drop Junius fast.
“You know,” Junius said, and Rough came up on him.
He knew Junius had a gun, had seen it in his hand on the roof, but Junius couldn’t be that fast. He stepped to him in three quick moves and scooped Junius up at his shoulder and between the legs. Before he could fight back, Rough had him two steps closer to the stairway, and threw him through the door feet first.
Clarence heard the noise of something hitting his car and started running back around toward the Olds. He saw the cop standing over Pooh, and Pooh laid out flat. The cop drew his gun, and that was enough to stop Clarence cold.
Suddenly the cop spun on his heels and pointed the gun at him. Clarence threw up his hands. “What the fuck?”
“You seeing this?”
“Seeing what? I don’t see shit.” Clarence shook his head. The gun was small, just a little revolver the cop-pussies carried, but its black eye looked right at him. He kept his hands raised.
The cop started toward him.
“Yo. The fuck—” The cop pointed the gun at Clarence’s face, and he stopped talking.
He also knew a small revolver like that would have a hard time hitting his head from twenty feet away, at least. Twenty feet of jump, Clarence figured, and with this his only chance, he took it.
“Yo, look out!” he called, pointing to the tracks, a trick that didn’t get the cop to turn but at least stopped him for a moment. And in that time, Clarence spun and began a sprint for the front of 412. He knew if the cop actually took a shot, he’d have to explain firing in a public area to the rest of the police force. And if he actually hit him, would have to explain why he shot a man in the back. So Clarence was banking on him not to shoot.
True to form, the cop didn’t fire. Clarence made the turn to the front of the building and rushed into the lobby.
He paused for a second just inside the doors. Roughneck stood before him, just next to one of the stairwells, and Clarence wasn’t sure if he’d try some shit. He raised his fists in case it came to that, but Rough held up open palms.
“Yo,” he said. “Why you running?”
“Cop.”
Roughneck pointed toward the left stairs, telling him to go and that he’d cover the lobby. Clarence paused a hard second, weighing whether Rough would send the cop after him—it didn’t matter now—and hit the left-side stairs at a sprint, busting through the door and ready to kick it up the eleven flights to his apartment.
Roughneck still had his hands up when the cop came around the side of the building with his gun drawn. He knew Clarence would trust him to follow the code—the law to never say shit about any other member of Rock’s crew or another resident of the towers to a cop.
“I don’t know shit,” he said, as soon as the officer came through the doors.
The cop paused just inside, spread his legs and leveled the gun at Rough. This wasn’t the first time he’d looked down the barrel of a cop’s gun, and he knew it wouldn’t be his last. Since it had first happened six years ago, it scared him less every time.
“Yes, Officer,” Rough said, his hands high above his shoulders. He could hear Junius moving on the other side of the door just behind him. If he came through it holding a gun, there was no stopping this brother-blue patrolman from firing.
“Where that motherfucker go? The one just ran through here?”
“Him?” Rough pointed to the other stairwell. “He just ran up the stairs to his apartment. He live on—”
“Give me his name.”
“Yo, that dude is Lee Dal Monte. He live on six.”
The cop lowered his gun and started jogging to the stairs, then stopped short. “Is that where he’s going?”
Rough held his hands higher. “Fuck if I know. But check his apartment: 611, sir.”
Something squawked out of the cop’s walkie-talkie: an angry voice asking for Officer Johnson. He pulled it off his belt with his left hand as he ran for the stairs. “Just doing a routine check—”
The slam of the door behind him cut off the rest of the sentence. Roughneck could hear boots pounding up the stairs. Keeping his hands raised, he turned to face the other stairway door.
“You all right to come out now, young buck. Heard who was just here?”
Junius opened the door, the gun out of sight, and Rough lowered his hands. “Clarence?” he asked.
“C Dub and a cop going after him. You don’t want to be near that.”
Junius nodded. He stayed inside the stairway with the door open. “He really live on six?”
“No. Fuck no.” Roughneck started to the front of the lobby, and told Junius to hang on. He went outside to the buzzers and rang up to Milk’s apartment.
Milk answered after two buzzes. “What’s up?”
“Need you down here. I got to be out.”
“Five minutes.”
Rough pushed the buzzer again, then hit talk. “Nah, niggah. You got two.”
He was already through the doors when he heard Milk say he was on his way down. He still knew how to respect the man in charge.
The one thing Roughneck didn’t want was to be here in the lobby when the cop came back looking for Clarence. Anyone, especially a pissed-off cop, would be hell to deal with after finding 611 was the home of the meanest bitch in the towers—old Josephina—and her five crazy girls. When he didn’t find Clarence, the cop was going to want Roughneck too.
“Come on.” He waved Junius toward the elevator then pushed the button hard like you had to. He was glad to hear the whir of the motors running in the shaft.
“Where we going?” Junius asked.
“Just the fuck out of here.”
44
Junius rode up in the elevator with Roughneck to fifteen. He wasn’t sure what was going on and didn’t fully trust Rough after the way he’d slammed him through the stairway door, but what else was he going to do?
“You know Clarence was coming when you put me through that door?”
Rough nodded. He wasn’t saying anything now, something else that made Junius unsure.
“Where we going?”
“Chill. You be all right.”
Junius bit his lip. He wanted to be cool, just grip the handle of his gun and know he could deal for himself if anything went wrong, no matter where the elevator took them. Instead, he wanted to know more.
“Why you doing this?”
Roughneck turned. “Can’t shut up for a minute, can you?”
Junius shook his head. He was inside 412 alone with no one to back him up. He licked his lips. “Calm my nerves. Clue me in.”
Rough shook his head. “Call this my vendetta against C Dub. Just say me and him don’t get along.”
“And what about Rock? Lamar?”
“Yeah.” Rough nodded. “Best just leave that alone. I haven’t figured them out yet myself.”
The elevator whined and creaked as they moved upward. Roughneck looked at the floor beneath their feet, the dirty tan tiles, and said, “But you know the truth? I think you could use a friend.”
Junius tilted his head to the side, and turned to the front of the car. He did need a friend; he wasn’t going to argue that.
On fifteen, the elevator doors opened and Roughneck stepped out into the hall. It was empty and smelled like fried goodness. Junius could hear the sound of a TV. He followed Rough to an apartment like the others, not close to the elevator or to the end, just another one in the middle. When Rough opened the door, Junius stepped into a world that looked like it hadn’t come past 1975. There was a big wooden couch on the right: ugly plaid pillows and white crocheted doilies over its arms. A macrame throw rug with a landscape design—mountains, maybe?—hung behind it on the wall. In front of the couch, a dark wood coffee table with white doilies under the magazines to match the ones on the couch.
Beside the couch was a wooden rocking chair, the kind that slid back and forth on gliders. An old woman sat in it with a multicolored blanket over her lap. She smiled when she saw Rough, even turned the smile on Junius when he walked in.
“Hello, my boy,” she said.
Roughneck nodded—almost a bow. “Hi, Miss Emma.”
“This your friend?”
Roughneck nodded. “This Junius.”
“Welcome.” She held her hands up to greet him, and Junius realized she was still working on the blanket at one end, crocheting it even as it warmed her legs. “Do I know you?”
Junius looked at Rough, then shook his head.
“Who your people?”
Roughneck closed the door behind them as Junius stepped onto the thick rug. “I’m not from these towers, ma’am.”
“No. ’Course not. If you were I wouldn’t be asking. I’d already know you.”
“I’m from near Teele Square. My people are Gail Ponds and Aldo Posey.”
“Ahhh.” She nodded. “Your brother is Temple? You must be the younger handsome one.”
Junius looked down at the rug; at the mention of his brother’s name, a chill ran through him. He wanted to know what the hell he was doing now in this old woman’s apartment when he could be out in the halls finding Black Jesus and then working his way toward Rock. But Roughneck stood still in front of a bookcase filled with books. Without Rough telling him where he could find Black Jesus, Junius had little choice but to walk the halls and see who he came across.
Either he could do that or he could start at the top of the building and work his way down.
“You all right?” Miss Emma asked. “How about some Kool-Aid? Randall, get your friend some Kool-Aid out the ’frigerator.”
Roughneck looked at Junius for a moment, then started toward the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of red Kool-Aid.
“I’m a be out, man,” Junius said.
Rough came back and handed him a glass. “Where you going?”
“Tell me where I can find Black Jesus.”
45
Clarence shut the door of his apartment hard behind him. The place was a mess and he didn’t care. The blankets and sheets on his bed were in knots from how fast he got up to get the phone. Dirty clothes and a towel hung off the back of his old couch.
He leaned against the door, breathing fast and listening for footfalls in the hall. If Roughneck told the cop where to find him, he’d kill the cop and go kill Roughneck. That much was simple. But the loudest sound he heard was his own breathing. Time to quit the smokes, maybe. If he couldn’t run up the stairs to his apartment without close to dying, wheezing, then he’d have to quit or lay off soon. Even as he thought this, his hand found the pack and started it out of his pocket. Fuck if the body didn’t know what it wanted sometimes before the mind.
He lit up and started to feel better after the first drag. Even the burning in his lungs started to subside. His heartbeat slowed. He took another long drag and thought about how good he’d feel when he got some of that Ready. He had a piece on the nightstand, the last of his stash. It would be enough for a few hits, enough to get him through the now, but he should have gotten more while he was out. Another way this hunt for Junius was fucking him up.
He couldn’t just come real and buy from Hammer or Milk, either. That broke the first rule, and he couldn’t let it get back to Rock that he was smoking crack.
As his heartbeat slowed, he could hear it was quiet out in the hall. Rough must have done something right, sent that cop somewhere else. Maybe he was still good for something. But the cop? He had dropped Pooh like a bad case of crabs, just put him down. That was no way to treat a citizen or a minor. Just let Clarence put that truth in Rock’s ear. Rock would know who to pass it up to. O’Scullion or somebody even higher, and then Officer Dickhead would really find out what kind of crime scene he liked to handle.
Clarence took off his heavy jacket and threw it on the couch. He hacked something up and wanted to spit, but this was his apartment after all, so he went to the kitchen and used the trash can. That settled, he rested a few moments, hands on the counter, and finished his cigarette, ashing into the sink. The cocaine he tooted was just a little, nothing to match what he was about to get into. That Ready Rock was exactly what he’d wanted all day.
Even just a few weeks from the first time he tried it, he couldn’t stop thinking about its high. The shit was like his whole body bloomed on it, like it reworked his mind.
And now here he was with it waiting for him, and he was just standing there.
He went to the bed and sat down, picked up the bag with half a rock in it and shook it out. The little white nugget sat right in front of his eyes.
“Fuck yeah,” he said.
Smoking the rock was still new enough to Clarence that it fascinated him: how he had to break off a piece and put it on the burned scrap of Brillo, then cook it up at the end of the Love Rose tube until it melted into the fibers. He liked watching it disappear under the flame, but that was a tiny pleasure compared with sucking the white smoke out of the glass. When he did that, he felt like there wasn’t anything else in the world.
Willie told him not to inhale it way down like with weed smoke, but Clarence didn’t care. Shit, he’d smoked menthols for ten years, so what could this do to his lungs? Plus, holding it down gave him a better, bigger high.
“Damn,” he said, burning it into the Brillo. He was starting to feel crazy already. This was way beyond anything he’d ever had from cocaine. He listened again for a sound from the hall.
Rock always said never to use what they sold, but Clarence knew a few of them baked the weed out and even had a snort once in a while. What he didn’t know was if Rock understood that the new shit was this good, if he even knew what it could do to you when you got that shit in your lungs. Fuck, he had a blunt, his Kools, and a few toots today and that still wasn’t anything, not beside the Ready.
He brought the glass up and hit the end with his lighter, watching the white smoke fill the pipe. The hair on his arms started to tingle as soon as he hit it, and the apartment stood out like he wasn’t even paying attention before, like the fucking lines of the room started to wiggle.
“Fuck,” he said, sitting back a little. He put his finger over the hole to hold in the smoke. “Fuck me, niggah.”
Then he hit it again. He hit it for the next few minutes until the rock was all gone, and then he lay back on the bed. He rolled in the covers a bit and shook his head until he got a pop in his neck that felt like he just realigned his whole spine.
He jumped up off the bed and hit himself in the chest a couple times. He wanted that cop to walk through the door now, have him come in at this second so he could deal with his ass exactly how it needed. Clarence knew if the cop was here now, he’d be too fast for him, would see the cop’s movements before they happened, maybe even be able to read his mind.
And Junius?
Clarence turned, faced the window, and looked out over the highway at the hills to the west. He could hear footsteps in the apartment above, a door sliding open, maybe the fan in a bathroom. Junius was in this building—he knew it. He closed his eyes and somewhere in 412 he knew he could feel the boy he needed to kill.
If he could ice Junius, then maybe Rock would make him his strict gunman and he’d be off dealing with Dee and Ness. No more worries about sales, corners, stairs—none of that shit! He’d be the man with the burner, the one who bucked shots. Maybe then he could tell Rock about the Ready, let him know how good it was and buy from Hammer.
