Young Junius, page 17
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
Seven nodded. “I get that.” He raised his shoulders. “But you know how these things be. Niggahs popping off, getting shot at for nothing. Just some bullshit.”
“I know.” She looked down at the long strands of her brother’s shag rug. She’d have to ask one of the girls to just throw the damn thing away. “You’re right. But let’s be sure.”
He nodded.
“And put an end to this shit between you and Pickup. You hear me?”
Now he looked toward the door.
“Just know you’re my number one, ok? Nothing going to change that. So dead this. I want you and Pickup to get along.”
Seven turned to head for the door. “Hey,” she said. “Let them go at Rock, but go see them first. Make sure they still ready, then pop them free from TV land.”
Seven nodded. “They gonna want to know where to start again.”
“What’d you tell them last time?”
“Told them Black Jesus. Sent them to watch from the stairs.”
“No,” she said. “Fuck it. Send them into 412. Send them after Rock. This comes to a head right now.”
She crossed her arms, watched him turn to leave. Seven was nodding the whole way to the door.
At Mike’s Diner, Dee and Ness had each had a steak-and-cheese sub with extra peppers and two Cokes, and still nothing was going on. Across the restaurant, Willie Stash sat in a booth with two of his boys, talking shit and playing cards. They were all supposed to be friendly with one another now because Clarence said they were up here waiting for Junius and Little Elf, but Dee didn’t like it one bit: hanging out in wack-ass Somerville, up in bullshit Davis Square.
He was as tired as he could remember being. Cokes or no Cokes, he’d been up all day yesterday, slept on and off during the night in the car, waiting outside Junius’s mother’s place, and now he was supposed to hang out in a diner, watching the main intersection at Davis Square for two kids who weren’t going to show. Just the fact that they were headed toward Porter when they first came out in the morning meant they had somewhere else in mind. No way they were coming to see Willie, and Clarence should have known that, would have if he wasn’t stoned out and high on coke.
“Yo, this is bullshit,” Dee said, tapping a quarter against the red tabletop of the booth. “C Dub losing his grip.”
“These benches ain’t shit.” Ness tried to slide sideways to rest his back against the window and put his feet up, but that didn’t look comfortable—and it kept him from seeing where they were supposed to watch. “I’m fucking ass out, son.”
“Heard that.” Ever since they’d smoked up in the 98, things had been ok for a little while and then gotten worse. “You got any trees?”
Ness shook his head. “Shit, niggah. We smoked all my shit up last night.”
Here they were supposed to be selling, and neither of them had any shit to smoke.
“Yo!” Dee sat up straight. The car! It was only a few blocks from where they were, close to Porter, but walkable from Mike’s Diner, and he had a stash of papers and a nice bag inside.
“Fuck this. I got my shit in the car, still. Those niggahs come back by Davis, let Big Willie handle it. He fucks up, he can tell Rock himself.”
“What about Clarence?”
“Shit.” Dee had already pulled his jacket up onto his arms. He sucked down what was left of his second Coke. “I got trees in the car, niggah. Tell me you don’t want to hit that shit and head home.”
Ness got up fast, hustled to get out of the booth. “I’m a hit that bed like I hit yo moms!”
Dee punched him. “I tried to fuck your moms, but Clarence was already there.”
“Oh!” Ness’s face soured like he swallowed a whole lemon turned inside out. “That’s nasty! Please don’t be talking about my moms and Clarence, yo. Ok?”
Dee pushed Ness toward Big Willie’s table, and his crew looked up.
“Yo. We done. You see your boy J, you know who to call.”
Willie nodded. “Yeah, we hit you. Don’t you worry your pretty little dome piece.”
“Good.” Dee took a few seconds to decide if he should come back at Willie with something, then made his move for the door. The car and the weed were both calling.
He waved to Willie and gave him the finger. “Fuck all you, niggahs, all right?”
One of Willie’s boys shuffled up to start, but Willie pulled him back.
“We catch you,” Willie said, giving one upward nod.
Dee put his hands in his pockets as Ness opened the door, getting ready for the cold. “Not if we catch you first,” he said at last, then spit a short stream onto the floor of the diner before stepping out to the sidewalk.
49
Elf looked at the clock on the wall. I Love Lucy was over and it was coming up on one thirty. He’d been sitting on this couch for close to an hour.
“What you say about them chicken nuggets then?”
“Yeah, that’s a really good idea.” The kid hopped up off the couch and padded into the kitchen. He wore a horizontal-striped turtleneck with brown corduroys and thick slipper-socks. “What do you want to watch next?”
“Damn. Where you get them clothes from? You know your momma dresses you funny?”
He stopped at the refrigerator with the freezer door open and looked back to Elf. “You think I haven’t heard that one before? And may I remind you that you’re the one who’s a guest in my house? And that I’m considering feeding you?”
Elf rolled his eyes and looked toward the dingy window of the apartment. It was made from the same thick plastic material that the windows at school were made from, the kind you weren’t supposed to be able to break.
“My bad.”
He heard the freezer close. “And do you realize that you’ve been here an hour and haven’t even bothered to ask me my name?”
The kid stood waiting, now holding a box of frozen chicken nuggets in his hands. Shit, if he had real food, Elf was not about to take any chances. But the first thing he said was, “How long those take to cook?”
“Did you even hear what I said?”
“Yeah.” Elf nodded. “My bad. What your name is?”
“Malik.” He smiled. “And these take about twenty-five minutes to cook, once we get the oven preheated.”
“Shit,” Elf said. “Don’t you got a toaster oven?”
Malik set the box of nuggets down on the counter and disappeared behind the kitchen partition. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll all seem quick in the end.”
Elf heard him light a match and then open the door to the stove. A few seconds later, he heard a whoosh as the gas caught.
“Put some in for Junius,” Elf said. Then he turned back to the TV. “What be on next?”
“Six for fifty. Six for fifty.”
Junius looked up when he heard the voice above him in the stairwell.
“Six for twenty on that Ready Rock, niggah. Weed bags six for fifty, hundred get you twelve.”
A younger voice said, “Ten dollars?”
“Ten get you one, my niggah. Ten get you one.”
“What about on that Ready?”
“Twenty get you six,” came from another, deeper voice. “Back the fuck up and wait your turn.”
The talk came from no more than two flights up. Junius rubbed his hand across his eyebrows. He was grinding his teeth again. This was what it would come down to sooner or later. Time was ticking—on Elf, on Rock’s crew knowing he was in 412, on Clarence. Then the rest of them would come in waves, unless he was the first to the punch.
And this was fine with him, Junius decided. Punching was what he came here to do—punching toward the top, where he knew he’d find Rock.
Junius took the Tec out of his pants and looked it over. A part of him sparked inside—a part that wanted blood and revenge for what happened to Temple, a part that was mad Roughneck thought Temple was killed over nothing.
Just the drug trade: the answer for everything bad. Drugs and more drugs. Everybody wasted and losing their lives in the game.
But not Temple.
He closed his eyes and thought back to when he shot Lamar. Even that last shot, the one at point-blank that ended it all, had not felt wrong. It felt like he was taking something back.
He’d heard about people worrying their whole lives over someone they killed, even seeing dead faces in their sleep, and he knew already that that wasn’t going to be him. Lamar’s face wouldn’t keep him awake at night. He was glad he’d killed that bitch.
Rock’s boys played for real, too. They didn’t give a shit about killing someone.
Jason’s blood had spread across the pebbles on the roof, the red mixing into the dirt, staining the stones. Jason knew his brother. Now they were both gone.
He didn’t care if Marlene was the Oracle, a prophet, or just a woman who wanted to run these towers; Willie wouldn’t protect him now, so it was prove himself to Marlene or leave everything he’d known his whole life.
That wouldn’t be him.
Like the heroes in the kung fu movies, you had to get up and stand against the tower, or whatever was in your way, find your path to the man who needed to be killed. He wasn’t going back to spend years training. He was going on up.
He was already more than halfway to the top. No more waiting.
He held the Tec-9 in both hands, low alongside his waist, and started up the stairs.
50
Randy watched Clarence head down the hall to the elevator. Nathaniel had just passed him three rocks, and Clarence told them to get the money from Rock. Rock wouldn’t like that, and neither would Roughneck. As Clarence waited for the elevator, he turned back to them.
“What I told you?” he asked.
“We heard you,” Nathaniel said. “And we on it.” He pointed his chin at Randy. “You heard him?”
“I heard,” Randy said.
Nathaniel offered him his fist, and Randy bumped it. That was Nathaniel’s way of telling him to get going. Down the hall, the elevator doors opened, and Clarence stepped inside. He turned back once before disappearing, and pointed directly at Randy. “Get on that,” he said. And then he was gone.
Randy turned to Nathaniel. “You for real about this shit?”
Nathaniel looked up at the ceiling. “Let me see: C Dub said there be a mess in the lobby. You be new as shit and trying to get on. You need to get your dumb ass down there and clean that shit up.” His eyes opened wide as he said this last part, and his forehead wrinkled, as if he couldn’t believe he had to explain it. “Now get on that shit!”
Randy shook his head, turning, and felt the smack of Nathaniel’s hand across the back of his head.
“Don’t you shake your head at me, now.”
He felt a push from behind that almost sent him face-first down the stairs, but he caught himself against the wall and started to run.
“That’s right. Get on that shit. You find a mop and some sponges in the closet by the back trash door.”
Randy waved at Nathaniel without looking. At the next landing, he risked a peek back up and Nathaniel was still watching. “You finish and you buzz Rock at 2208. Tell him what C Dub did.”
“Ok.”
He trotted down the steps toward the lobby.
His cousin had hooked him up with Rock’s crew for the vacation week as a trial run, and he’d come through the first two days fine. All he had to do was stand with Nathaniel, watch the count, and back him up if needed. So far, the only one to get bullshit on them was Andre’s moms, the bitch who always yelled at people up on eighteen. She looked skinny as nobody’s business these days, real bad, and she smelled like she needed a shower. When she came to them in her nightgown with no money, trying to pick up some rocks, Nathaniel wasn’t having it. But Randy had to push her down the hall and into the elevator, and he hated every second of that. Even if Andre never found out—his moms didn’t seem like she even recognized him—it felt wrong to be treating her that way. The worst part was when she went for his fly, tried to open his pants by the elevator doors. She offered to suck his dick for the crack, and when he looked in her eyes, he could tell she meant it.
That was the worst part of the two days, but today was looking like things could really start popping off when they got the word about shots fired on the roof and cops patrolling the towers. That fucked with Randy’s head because he didn’t want to get caught doing anything wrong. He knew if someone had to go to jail, it’d just as likely be him, the man on the bottom rung.
Then Nathaniel got word to move up on eight to keep selling. So they did. All in all, the day had more action than the previous two combined, but Andre’s moms still ranked as the worst of it.
That was until he hit the first floor and came into the back hallway, where he found a cop lying against the back doors in a pool of blood. Then things all of a sudden got much worse than dealing with Andre’s moms. This was way worse than any of that shit.
He knelt down next to the cop and looked at his face: there was a welt above the cop’s temple that looked like you could fit a mouse inside it. His nose looked bad, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. Blood was coming from his nose and his mouth, mostly, but it also looked like there had to be another place it was coming from, just from the amount of it.
This cop was busted up, and if C Dub was the one who did it, then he was in for some serious shit. The cop was black too, and that almost made Randy feel worse. Then again, he was a cop. What could you expect? Better this than him in jail.
He followed the trail of blood, careful not to step in any of it, one word—evidence—burning into his head the whole way. The blood led him back up the hall, into the lobby, and straight to the elevator. The doors there had more blood on them and a mess of it where they met the floor. Right in front of the elevator there were streaks in it, places where feet had slipped and someone had fallen. From there, the blood was like someone had been dragged through it for a few feet and then after that it was just a trail.
The fight had been right here.
The front doors rattled behind him, and Randy spun fast, half expecting to see a whole crew of cops watching him with their guns drawn.
Instead, an old woman carrying a grocery bag opened the door, intentionally looking away from the elevator and Randy. She started right for the east stairs, the ones Rock didn’t use, where she wouldn’t have to walk past Nathaniel or anyone selling drugs. She didn’t stop on her way through the lobby, not to check her mail or to ask what was going on. She made that line for the stairs and then she was gone. If she’d been around the towers for any amount of time, she knew it was better that way.
But just like she knew that, Randy knew a cop getting fucked up in Rock’s tower was not something that would just go away—especially not on a day when shots had already been fired and more cops were on the scene. Either C Dub had completely lost his mind and his shit or—shit!—Randy looked around and didn’t see any other explanation.
Self-defense? Fuck that. A cop put a beat down on you, you took it and asked questions later.
But there was another problem: that cop wasn’t even dead. That would be some trouble when he woke up, some serious shit, and Randy didn’t want to be there for it.
He went right to the buzzers in the outer lobby, holding the door open as he went to the panel so he wouldn’t get locked out. He didn’t have to think about who to call, either. Nathaniel said to buzz Rock at 2208 when he was done; well, he wasn’t done, but this job was definitely going to need more than just him.
Black Jesus had just sat down on his couch when the phone rang right next to him on the table. It had been one hell of a morning already, what with Berry Rich making her trip to the towers, the shootings on the roof, and now the police going door-to-door in 411.
Now Black Jesus had just gotten to sit down for a minute and the phone was already on ring. Rock was steady fucking; Hammer was back up on the roof trying to watch what the cops would do about the body; Roughneck was in charge of sales in the stairs; and Mike Only, Rock’s driver and Jesus’s sometimes love interest, wouldn’t be calling him in the middle of the day, not on a day that was already this crazy. So he didn’t know who’d be on the other end when he picked it up and said, “Yeah.”
“Yo, we got a issue down the lobby.” It was Rock’s voice. Rock was not happy.
“We not in the lobby.”
“Oh, we ain’t selling. We got bigger shit. Just got buzzed up from downstairs. Clarence busted the fuck out a cop.”
This took more than a second to register. “A cop? What you mean busted?”
“I mean he fucked the niggah up! Beat down. Blood all over the place.”
“C Dub gone crazy?”
“Fuck.” Rock’s voice trailed off, and Black Jesus pictured him naked, his chest heaving from what he’d been up to with Berry Rich. Jesus boxed with Rock three times a week at the gym, and Rock would go topless, so Jesus knew Rock was cut. He looked good.
When Rock came back, he said, “Clarence sent this kid down to clean shit up, and he sees it’s a blood storm, more shit than he can handle. Boy’s got some sense in him. We should recognize that.” Rock paused a few beats and Black Jesus thought he could hear the man drinking. Then he said, “I want you to get your ass down there and see to this. Take who you need. Just get shit fixed.”
Rock hung up before Black Jesus could say anything more. He had no idea how you took care of a cop that was beaten up. A dead cop was one thing, but the prospect of one who was fucked up and still alive?
Black Jesus did not want to be the one to kill a cop.
He started dialing Mike Only. Mike might know what to do about this mess, and even if he didn’t, it would be good to hear his voice.
51
Seven Heaven didn’t bother taking the tunnel on his way back to 411. If the cops wanted to fuck with him, search him, or ask him questions, he was down. All of his answers would come back to Rock and Rock’s boys. It was Hammer shooting on the roof, Hammer and his boys trying to start shit and make a play for Marlene, Hammer who had shot and killed Jason.
