Young Junius, page 18
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
Time had come to fuck all the treaties and cop-silence rules; the war with Rock and his crew was about to heat up whether or not Marlene knew it, wanted it, or was ready.
Marlene might be wrong to dig in and deny the towers their upgrade in fuck-you-up from crack, but if that was her decision—and Seven understood the logic behind it every time he saw what the crack users looked like after just a few weeks—then he would help her make her stand. Malik didn’t get it, that much was sure. He was out of the game, couldn’t see the street. So they were on their own with this strategy; it was their fight.
If they fucked things up, they would have to answer to Malik. Seven was ok with that.
The elevator doors opened onto the lobby of 410, and Seven saw a few boys and girls playing outside and an elderly couple waiting to ride up. He stepped out of their way coming out and then held the doors open, trying to make things easy, but they still wouldn’t look at him or stop to say thanks. He’d go down in a war trying to stop the further destruction of these towers, and these people would still hate him for the way he made his money.
“Have a good day now,” he said as he let the door close. They turned to face the front of the car, and the man stared him down, refusing to speak, hate in his eyes until the doors closed and he was gone.
Meldrak and Big Pickup stood sentry by the front doors, waiting to sell or act ambassador if the cops decided to head into the building. They both gave him the upward nod, and he returned their stares.
If Big Pickup was going to make a move, it would come soon. But Seven knew it wouldn’t work: the way Marlene looked at him was different than how she looked at Pickup. Only one of them fit what she wanted in her bed, and even if Pickup carried her from here to Harvard Square, his fat gut and big legs just weren’t going to be that. Plus, she and Seven had history.
“You two doing the right thing,” Seven said, winking at Pickup. “Definitely holding it down. The cops come through, buzz up to Marlene and be sure she know.”
Drak just nodded; only Pickup continued to stare. Drak had less at stake, less ambition, even if he was smart. So Seven gave him a pound as he stepped to the doors. Big Pickup he put a big soul clap on, brought the man to him in a one-arm hug.
He slapped Pickup on the back. “Yo, let’s dead this, my man.”
If it was what Marlene wanted, he’d do his best to try—at least on the outside.
“Oh, word?”
Seven felt Pickup pulling back, drawing away from him.
“Dead what? What is up here to dead now?”
Now Seven let him go. He looked Pickup in the eyes, waiting for the other to acknowledge what they both knew, but Pickup didn’t blink. He wouldn’t come clean about it and that meant it was even worse than Seven thought. But shit, he’d done his best to try. What else was there for him to do?
“Oh, that’s cool,” he said. “Guess there nothing to be dead then.”
Pickup nodded. He patted himself on the chest, almost as if he wanted to wipe Seven’s touch off his hand.
“Ok, my man,” Seven said.
Seven brushed past Pickup and headed out the doors. He needed to watch now: Pickup would come at him from behind.
Sun Tzu, the master of war, would be his guide in this time of strategy. And Sun Tzu, bad motherfucker that he was, would guide his ass through into the clear. Go into a war, you had to know who your loyal soldiers were. That’s what he’d read.
Seven knew both sides of the equation. Now he just needed to wait for an opportunity to make his move.
The kids outside didn’t hate him, instead they smiled and said, “What up?” as Seven walked through the doors. He caught their ball on a high bounce as it came off the wall and for a second acted like he would tuck it under his sweatshirt to keep.
“Hey!” one of the bigger boys said, and then pulled himself back, realizing who he was talking to. Seven smiled and tossed the ball back. Maybe this one would make a good soldier some day. Seven winked.
The cold greeted him more harshly than the police. There didn’t seem to be anybody on patrol outside 410 yet. Maybe the cops were with Rock now so much that they’d just target 411. Maybe he’d paid them all off.
Seven stepped to 411 and saw the old white cop standing out front. Let this captain cop search him down. He’d left one Tec-9 back in Malik’s apartment and he had another waiting in the freezer on sixteen.
“Hello, young man,” the cop said.
“Hello.” Seven saluted him halfheartedly, walking up to the front of his building. “Everything ok here now?”
“Oh, some bad shit went down up in here,” the cop said. The tag over his badge read “Sgt. O’Scullion.” This was the guy Rock had bought out completely, according to Marlene.
“How about up in there?” Seven pointed to 412 and watched the sergeant shrug as he expected. “Nothing up there?”
“Not that I know of at present. Shots fired on the roof of this tower, is what I heard.” O’Scullion pointed up at the top of 411 and his eyes narrowed. “You know anything about that?”
“Just a citizen with concerns,” Seven said, showing the palms of his hands.
This cop knew Seven; they’d seen each other enough times on his drive-throughs of the towers, shared enough eye-fuckings that they were both aware of the games. The sergeant couldn’t declare all-out war on Marlene’s crew yet—it would generate too much attention—but he usually acted like he wanted to.
“Why aren’t you working today?”
Seven had reached the spot in front of 411 where he either made his move to the lobby, turning his back on the cop, or turned to have a real conversation. Instead of either, he stopped where he was, half facing the doors and half not.
“Just my day off,” Seven said. “Today my day.”
O’Scullion squinted like he was trying to decide what to ask next. “Really, how much you know about what happened here today?” he asked. His face went slack when he asked it, almost like he was taking off a mask. The real face underneath was concerned, just wanted a clue, some idea of why there was another dead body on the roof. “We could use a little insight.”
“Just the shit,” Seven said. He took another step closer to the cop. “You know the shit, Sergeant, and how it be.”
O’Scullion nodded.
“Bullshit, is what it is. Same thing left Lamar out here.” He gestured behind them. “Same thing that’s bound to happen a few more times this week before everything cools off.”
O’Scullion chewed on his lips, sucking the bottom of his mustache into his mouth. A cold wind whipped across them both, and Seven realized the cop had been standing outside for a long time. His cheeks were a deep red, his nose, already red from drink, was like a shining beacon lined with veins.
“The shit?”
“My guess? It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
Seven dug his hands into his pockets, waiting for what was next. He’d presented the truth, and the cop could choose to see it or turn a blind eye.
What worried Seven most was the cop almost seemed ready to care and get involved. There was no telling where that would lead.
But just as O’Scullion opened his mouth to speak, the radio unit on his shoulder squawked to life. “Sergeant, we got a body out back in the alley. Second body. Looks like this time we will need an ambulance. Back side of 412 closest to the freeway.” The radio squawked and then came back again. “Sergeant, we got a body.”
O’Scullion leaned his head toward that shoulder and pushed the talk button. “Ten-four, Officer. I am en route.” He let the radio go quiet and stood in front of Seven for a moment.
He’d been about to say something real and now that was gone. The disdain was back on his face, and he was a cold cop again.
“I see you got a hand in any of this shit,” he said, raising a finger to point at Seven’s face. “I am one hundred percent intent on taking you down.”
Seven didn’t say anything, just waited for the cop to turn around and run where his radio had called him. O’Scullion started to trot sideways, still looking back at Seven and eyeing him for a few strides before he turned full around to run for the alley.
When the cop was gone, Seven spit a stream onto the ground. “Fuck you,” he said, hands still in his pockets.
He turned to go inside.
52
“Twenty get you six. Step up here.”
“Ten get me three? Can I get three?”
“Whoo! You want that crack rock? Yo, little niggah need that crack rock!”
“Then give him the crack rock,” the deep voice said.
“Word. Ten get you three, little man.”
Junius reached the next flight of stairs, halfway between fifteen and sixteen. The voices were closer now, just back above where he came out the door on fifteen. He peered around the edge of the stairs and saw two legs in jeans standing partway up the next flight. This would be the one with the deep voice: not the salesman, but his support, his backup. This would be the guy closest to his gun.
But not as ready as Junius was with his.
The steel felt familiar in his hands now, comfortable enough that he was ready to fire shots. He was ready to start punching.
He heard the slap of the palms as the baggie changed hands, heard feet shuffle, perhaps another person waiting in line, and then he moved.
He jogged up the next few stairs and turned, threw his body toward the next landing and raised the gun at the same time. Like he expected, the closest one was the soldier—black as night and arms crossed over his chest, a gun handle sticking up from the waist of his pants.
Junius aimed and pulled the trigger once, twice, then again. The gun bucked, and he kept moving until he felt the wall behind him. First he fired low, hitting the soldier in the left leg about thigh high.
The soldier’s eyes went wide and he started for his gun, but not before Junius fired four more times—four quick trigger pulls, four quick whistles from the barrel—each shot hitting higher on the soldier’s chest.
“Fuck me.” The soldier looked at his hands and saw his own blood.
He fell forward, then down the stairs, and landed in a bad way on his head, then flipped once and wound up splayed out on the landing, just above Junius.
Junius looked up and saw a kid about ten or eleven years old staring back at him in disbelief.
The salesman ducked around the corner out of sight, a Latino not much older than Junius. Junius shot at him once, missed, and started up the stairs.
“Who the fuck is you?” the salesman yelled, throwing a handful of singles down the stairs.
The soldier reached around and grabbed Junius by the legs with what strength he had left. It brought Junius down, but he was able to kick free. He saw the gun raised in the soldier’s other hand and kicked at it, heard it bounce and fall down the next set of stairs.
The soldier tried to punch, but Junius moved, scrambled up the rest of the stairs just as the salesman reached around to his back for his gun.
Junius raised the Tec and shook his head, but the salesman pulled out a small black revolver.
Junius fired again—twice more. Both shots hit home and the salesman buckled. When Junius fired a third time, he hit a shoulder and punched it back into the wall. The salesman let out a quick scream as he slid down the wall onto his butt, leaving a line of blood above him.
Junius had a moment of fear as he finally saw the next flight, then sighed with relief when all he saw was a woman in her pajamas holding a twenty-dollar bill. The boy was down against the wall now, sitting on his haunches and holding up both hands: one with the crack bag and one empty.
“Please,” he said, his eyes closed. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Shut up.” Junius slapped the crack out of his hand. When he was out on the corner for Willie, he never sold to anyone this young. “Who you buying for?” he asked.
“This for my momma. She sent me down to get it.”
“She can’t come down to buy her own shit?”
The kid’s nose started to run, and he began to whimper, crying with as little noise as he could manage.
“Go on. Go back upstairs.”
He opened his eyes and grabbed two of the crack baggies, then took off.
“Don’t—” The rest of the thought had something to do with him not telling anyone what he’d seen and not giving the crack to his mother, but Junius realized the impossibility of each before he could finish.
A bubble of blood popped over the salesman’s mouth; he was still breathing. He cradled his stomach with bloody hands, dark red spilling out between his fingers.
“Please,” he said through another blood bubble. In addition to the shot in his stomach, Junius could tell he’d hit something hard—bone—in the saleman’s shoulder. He looked wrecked, his life dripping out of him and soaking into his clothes. Junius didn’t want to pull the trigger again, see more of his body explode at close range. He didn’t hate this kid like he hated Lamar.
This kid was basically him. Doing the same job for a different person, in a different place. But Junius didn’t sell crack, and these towers—this woman in her pajamas and the boy buying for his mother—was a whole different world than the one Junius knew.
“You best kill me, son,” the soldier said from below. Junius looked down and saw him crawling up the stairs empty-handed.
He raised the Tec again. “You sure?”
For a moment, the soldier’s conviction held, then the fight dropped out of his eyes. His anger subsided, and he shook his head. He turned to sit on the steps.
Junius turned away. Killing wasn’t what he wanted to see.
He turned to the woman on the stairs: she wore a light blue nightgown that hung long to her shins, probably flannel, and her stomach puffed out perfectly round below her breasts. Her hair spread out from her head at all angles, like she hadn’t given it any thought for today at least, if not longer.
“You here to steal them rocks?” she asked. Her crusty eyes fixed on the Latino’s jeans, his pockets bulging on both sides. “You let me have them,” she said, “I suck your dick.”
Junius didn’t know what to say. The wrecked body of the salesman, his eyes pleading at Junius as he tried for breaths, and this woman: neither were things he knew how to deal with.
He brushed past the woman, leaving it for the two of them to work out as he climbed the next flight of stairs.
53
Roughneck stood in the lobby looking at a bloody mess in front of the elevator. If Miss Emma came down and saw this in her building, she’d be so far gone she’d have to move. He couldn’t have that. And what if Rock or someone else started asking why he wasn’t in the lobby when all this went down?
He could say he was pulled off the first floor after the shooting, that he was up watching his boys on eight and sixteen. That’d work well enough as an explanation—shit, it was pretty much exactly what Rock had told him to do—but now, looking at the mess, he felt like things were getting ready to explode.
Milk stood behind him at the foot of the stairs, watching Randy wrestle with the mop. So far he’d filled the bucket of the roller with water, and now he worked to squeeze the mop dry using the wringer. This kid had clearly never mopped a floor in his life.
Roughneck nodded at the blood. “How the fuck C Dub gonna do some shit like this and we’re supposed to handle it?”
Milk spit a thin stream out the side of his mouth onto the tiles. “Seems like he out of control today. Coming up on you like he did before and now this shit?”
Rough didn’t say anything; Clarence was a subject he planned to avoid.
Milk went on. “Should have let me cap a bitch right then. At least scare him with the gat.”
“Yeah. And Rock come back with love. You go up the ladder on him, pull a gat on a bigger man?”
Milk unfolded his arms and held his hands out. “Oh! Self-defense, my man. Self-defense! C Dub wilding. What could I do?”
Rough laughed. It might even have worked. “Maybe.” He tilted his head to the side. “But what we do now?”
“We take the fucking trash out. Throw that cop in the dumpster around back, hope he wake up and only think about C Dub.”
Rough turned back to the lobby. The elevator doors opened just as he was considering the thought; as long as the cop didn’t wake up while you were throwing his ass in the dumpster, this might not be such a bad plan. Then the doors opened, and Black Jesus and Mike Only stepped out of the car.
“Yo,” Rough said. “Glad to see you stopped wearing that hat.”
Mike Only ran his hand over his temple. “Fucking true that shit. Least I only have to wear it in the car.”
“Yo, hell, no. You got to tell Rock to straight-up fuck that shit. You ain’t no chauffeur.”
The two men stepped out of the elevator to its side, careful to avoid stepping in the blood that the kid still hadn’t started to mop up. Milk yelled at him to start.
He took the too-wet mop and slopped it onto the floor, spreading the blood around, watering it down and making a bigger mess. Rough didn’t bother to say anything. At least it was something.
Mike Only said, “Check out how he paying me, and you think twice about wearing that hat if it was you.”
Roughneck looked at Mike Only and thought about it. Could Rock really be paying him that much? If he wasn’t in charge of pushing product, just washing the car, driving it, making sure it stayed clean? Even if Mike Only had done his time with a crew selling in back of the projects and trying to run shit out from under Malik, he still wasn’t doing shit now but driving. Anyone could do that job.
“Yo, help this fool,” Black Jesus said to Milk as the kid pushed blood and water around in circles. Then he came right out and said, “Show us the cop.”
Rough gestured toward the door that led to the alley. It wasn’t hard to follow the trail of blood, either. He considered letting the kid use paper towels, if the mop was too much of a skill job for him to handle.
