Young Junius, page 25
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
Pickup knew this man wasn’t from the towers. At first, he didn’t recognize him, but then about ten feet from the doors, he knew him as the old drunk who was father to Temple and Junius.
Lord only knew what he meant to do in Rock’s building. If he tried to go in playing drunken savior, especially without a gun, it would not turn out well.
Pickup gave him a nod when they were closer, held the lobby door open for the older man. “What up?”
“Ain’t shit up,” the father said. He didn’t exchange Pickup’s nod or meet his eyes, just walked inside the tower and crossed the lobby straight to the elevator. There he pressed the call button and waited.
Pickup followed him in. He saw signs of a mess on the floor tiles, what was left of a bloody struggle, but he didn’t think much of it. There’d be more spilled blood in this tower soon, he would bet.
72
Junius had lowered himself onto his haunches and slid along the wall into the lowest corner when the first blast from the shotgun came. It hit the wall above him and to his left. A shower of plaster rained down.
“I’m coming for you, motherfucker!” Hammer’s voice was unmistakeable.
Junius slid to his right, toward the next down staircase, still holding the gun up at the end of the twenty-first-floor hallway, hoping he wouldn’t see the guy who’d fired the first shot come out of it, but also watching to see if Hammer would come around the corner.
He ground his bottom molars against the tops.
A stream of thoughts flew through his head, but he tried to concentrate on his sight and just breathe. So far it was only two people coming. He knew there’d be more soon: Rock, Black Jesus, and he had no idea who else. He definitely didn’t want to see Clarence.
He would hold his ground here, not continue down. Maybe he could get the jump on Hammer or his boy.
“Yeah,” he said softly, steeling himself for what was to come. “Yeah, motherfucker. This your time.”
He inched back toward the stairs, keeping his head well below where the first shot hit, his gun trained on the next hallway. He held his arms straight, ready for the recoil of the Tec or to swing the gun up if Hammer started down.
“I’m coming for you,” Hammer said again. It sounded like he was on the landing just above. Hammer was waiting.
Junius heard the quick whistle of another Tec firing through a silencer in the hall on twenty-one. It fired much faster than his. He heard Hammer swearing and then he fired the shotgun again, this time into the hallway; Junius saw the blast eat up the second door on the hall.
Another quick burst came from the hall above, more whistles from a Tec. Junius didn’t know who could be firing. A series of bullets sparked against the black metal railing above him.
Junius stayed put, holding his gun ready, both hands on the grip.
Seven stepped into the hall and went down on one knee again as he fired. God help Junius if he was down the other end of the hall, but Seven wanted to scare Hammer back. If Hammer fired again, let off down the hall while Seven was walking it, he’d get carved up, plain and simple.
So he fired off a few rounds. As long as Rock and his boys stayed on twenty-two, Seven could handle things, but a partner to watch the other stairs could help. Maybe Junius, even as young as he was.
“Yo, Junius,” Seven called down the hall.
No answer came back for a few breaths. “Just us killers down here,” Hammer called back. He fired his shotgun again, ate up another chunk of the wall.
Seven wondered how many cartridges the shotgun held. He heard its slide pulled back and knocked forward.
“Yo, J?” Seven tried again, hoping to let Junius know he was here.
“Who that?”
“Seven Heaven, Junius! I just took one boy down and now I’m a come for Hammer. Stay where you is to back me up.”
Seven saw movement at Junius’s end of the hall, then Hammer was at the open end, and he fired the shotgun down the hall. Seven fell back against the closest doorway, but he still felt the sting of buckshot penetrating his shoulder.
Hammer turned fast to shoot down the stairs, but Junius was good, got a few shots off that made him duck back out of sight. He might even have taken a hit.
“You feel that?” Seven called.
“Yeah, niggah. How about you?”
Seven bit his lip, wouldn’t answer to give Hammer the pleasure. “I’m coming,” he said.
Officer Johnson heard the sound of the first blast as soon as he left Clarence’s apartment. He expected to go straight to the hospital, turn in his badge and gun, and get the treatment he required. He didn’t care how long it took or how long he’d be out on disability, either. The crime on the streets could take care of itself.
But then he heard what sounded like a shotgun, and he felt the call of a whole new situation.
“Fuck,” he said, limping toward the elevator. He checked the cylinder of his gun, saw it had just been fired twice. Steadying himself against the side of the hallway, he pulled two shells off his belt, took out the empties, and slid in the new. Then he flipped the cylinder closed.
He tapped his belt with his left hand, feeling the hard nightstick hanging where it should. He started moving again, his right forearm bracing him against the wall with each step, the S & W 60 in his hand the whole time.
He would take the elevator to the floors above and find out exactly what was going on. Banged up and hurting or if he was even shot—thank God he wasn’t—Johnson still owed it to the city and its people to investigate a shot fired in a residential tower. Even with a population as fucked up as Clarence and the rest of his crew, Johnson couldn’t give them all up. There were good people who lived in this tower.
He pushed the call button when he got to the elevator shaft, and it didn’t light. That was when he heard a second shot.
Junius thought he’d hit Hammer.
And Seven Heaven was above him in the next hallway. How Seven got this far into Rock’s building, Junius didn’t know, but at least now he wasn’t alone.
He’d hit Hammer. It wasn’t a body shot and wouldn’t kill or stop him, but Junius had fired before Hammer could shoot the shotgun and that had saved his ass, at least for now.
He sat on his heels, looking up and waiting for Hammer’s next move. That was when he heard a sound on the stairs below him and dove sideways, flat along the ground against the wall. If someone was coming up from below, they had to come up a lot farther to see him if he was flat to the floor. He pulled his legs in, trying to keep them from where Hammer would be able to see if he turned down the stairwell again.
Another quick burst of shots—the familiar whistle of Seven’s Tec—echoed against the railing above. Junius heard more sounds from the stairs below him and crawled forward to get a look. He pulled himself along by his forearms, keeping his head low.
Someone told someone else to hold up.
Junius peeked over the top of the stairs: he saw Roughneck and Milk below him on the next landing, Milk holding a big, silver gun pointed right at Junius.
He pulled his head back fast and heard Roughneck swear, then hit something. Milk fired, but it sounded like the shot went high, way over the landing.
“Fuck you doing?” Milk said.
73
Rock told Berry Rich to stay in the bedroom. She started panicking as soon as she heard the first shots in the hall, and Bonnie started barking too. Problem was, if Bonnie got too worked up and there was a stranger around, you didn’t know how she might act.
Better for Berry Rich to keep her beautiful body up in the bedroom, save those pretty legs and arms.
He took his top gun, the Uzi, out of the cabinet by the door. Even knowing her as well as he did, paying for all that damned training, Rock couldn’t look at Bonnie now without having just a little worry. She’d never been worked up like this before, gone this wild.
She snapped her long canines at the door, slobber starting to foam and drip around her mouth. Rock considered just letting her go out there and tear at whoever was causing the fuss, but he knew Hammer was the closest and either he or his boy Deacon Speakin would get torn up. He also knew he couldn’t take it if Bonnie got shot.
“Shut it,” he yelled. “Down, girl!”
Rock stuffed three clips for the Uzi into the pockets of his black tracksuit and pulled on the jacket with no shirt underneath. Damned if he had time to find one now.
At the door, he shoved Bonnie out of the way, got it open just enough to squeeze through, and slid out into the hall. He shut the door fast to keep her inside.
Bonnie’s barking sounded even louder now in the hall, but not loud enough that Rock didn’t hear the elevator chime its arrival on his floor and turn with his gun ready. He didn’t know where Hammer or Speakin were, but they weren’t in the hall and he was the only one here to protect it. He raised his Uzi at the elevator doors and watched for who’d come out.
As the doors slid open, he heard someone inside fall. Then he heard laughing.
“Who the fuck there?” he asked, just before he heard a quick burst of shots from a silenced gun coming from a lower floor—too close. He’d be damned if he was ready for a war in his tower today. Not when he’d just spent all morning fucking and shooting his precious juice.
“Bring your ass out,” he said to the open elevator, and Dee stumbled into the hallway. Dee, one of the young ones coming up under Clarence, a corner boy who worked the Alewife bus stops. The boy looked stoned as hell, his eyes like slits, his shoulders slumped. He didn’t even have his gun drawn.
“Who with you? And where the fuck your gun is?”
Dee reared his head back like it took that effort to open his eyes wide. Then Ness fell out of the elevator as if someone had tipped up the car and shook him out. He fell against Dee.
“Damn,” Dee said.
Hammer’s shotgun went off again in the stairwell and Rock turned to look. The sound got the boys’ attention. They both stood up straight, and Ness even shook his head like he was trying to jar something free.
“You hear me now,” Rock asked. “Where your guns?”
Dee lifted his shirt and took a Walther by the handle; Ness pulled a Tec-9 from inside his coat.
“We up,” Dee said, his eyes still narrow.
“Right.” The elevator doors closed. “Hit that!” Rock pointed to the call button, hoping to keep the car on his floor and avoid any further surprises, but by the time Ness reacted, the car had started its way back down.
“Fuck me! We got shit popping off up here! This real. Now wake the fuck up and get ready to defend yourselves!”
“Clarence kept us up all night watching that boy Junius’s momma’s house. Then we—”
Rock shook his head. “I don’t give a good fuck about that shit.” He pointed up the hallway. “Get your ass down those stairs and find out what the fuck going on.”
They started down the hall.
As soon as it occurred to Rock, he asked, “Where C Dub at?”
Dee turned back and shrugged, said he didn’t know.
Rock wanted to hit somebody.
He squeezed the grip of his Uzi and ground his teeth. “Get gone.” He waved them toward the other end of the hall.
As he started toward Hammer’s stairwell, he heard another quick whistle of shots.
74
Milk pulled his arms away from Rough’s hands. “That’s that niggah we supposed to want dead.”
“Shit ain’t right. He just young.”
“Right? Who say right? That niggah kill Lamar. Rock put out his all-points APB!”
“He just a kid. Let him be.” Rough couldn’t see Junius on the landing; he’d ducked at the sight of the gun and had to still be lying low.
“Yo, Junius,” Rough said. “I’m coming up. It’s cool.” Milk still held the big Charter Arms in front of his chest, and Rough tried to take it.
Milk wouldn’t let go. “Nah, niggah. You crazy? There be shots up in here and I’m keeping my fucking gun.”
“Then don’t fuck with Junius.”
Milk met Rough’s eyes. They’d been friends for a long time, longer than either had worked for Rock. Milk had two hands on the gun to Rough’s one, but Rough outweighed Milk by more than fifty pounds; he could take the gun if he really wanted.
“Ok,” Milk said, finally. “I leave him be, but no way I give up the gat.”
Rough let go. He turned up the stairs, showing Milk his back. If Milk was going to choose Rock over him and take a shot, Rough wanted to know sooner instead of later.
When he got halfway up the next set of steps, he saw Junius go from a prone position to a crouch, a Tec-9 in his hands trained on the next set of stairs up.
“Who shooting?”
Junius shook his head. “Hammer and his boy. Plus Seven up on the next floor. I’m not sure if he hit, but I think I touched Hammer one time.”
Junius looked scared: he was dug in like an animal in its hole, and his right eye twitched as he watched the stairs. The muscles flexed along his jaw.
“It’s cool,” Rough said. “All gonna be all right.”
“How you know?”
Then Hammer yelled down the stairway. “Roughneck! Shoot that niggah. What be wrong with you? Motherfucker up here to kill Rock!”
Rough heard Milk from behind him. “I’m saying.”
“We settle this without the guns. What this shit about? This about who killed Temple? Lamar?”
Junius nodded.
“No! Not no more it ain’t!” Hammer called down. “Fuck that shit! This niggah shot me. Now this be about blood, war, and his ass!”
Milk said, “War, motherfucker. Now who the fuck’s side you on?”
Rough stopped. He wanted to hear Milk say “we”—“whose side we on”—but he knew he hadn’t. Milk was saying “you” now, like this was going to turn into every man for himself, or like Rough wasn’t calling the shots for them both.
“Yeah, motherfucker,” Hammer called again. “You not gonna help me defend our tower?”
Junius narrowed his eyes.
“Get that somebitch,” Hammer commanded.
Roughneck heard a series of shots from the next floor up, a quick burst from a silenced automatic—Seven’s gun.
On the fifteenth floor, Elf heard the elevator approaching him in its shaft again. He pushed the UP call button.
He’d heard a few more shots coming from above, shots that sounded like they came from the stairwells, and that was enough to keep him from walking up. Whatever he was getting himself into, it was going down and he didn’t need to rush. He wanted to get his man Junius the fuck out, but still.
He gripped the Smith & Wesson tighter, felt the sweaty handle against his hot palm. He would not drop this gun, but he might be a little nervous. He transferred it into his other hand and wiped his right palm on the thigh of his jeans.
The elevator sounded close. He fell back along the wall, holding the gun up by his head. He’d be ready if the car opened and someone stood inside. Just like the shit with Lamar yesterday, Elf had come through and was ready now to step up and be a man.
He knew how to shoot a gun, had played Duck Hunt for hours with his brother.
The elevator came to his floor, creaking down the shaft, and kept going. The call button light stayed on.
“The fuck?” he asked.
He looked at the other call button: the still-dark button to go down. No, he hadn’t pushed that one; he’d made the decision not to go home.
Seven found himself breathing hard in the middle of the hallway. He’d seen Junius hit Hammer, he thought, and he’d fired again in that direction, but it was just to keep Hammer back. He hadn’t hit anything but the railing of the stairs.
Now was as good a time as any to change clips. He could hear Hammer yelling at the end of the hall, calling down to Junius and someone else about what to do.
Deacon Speakin lay not ten feet from him on the floor, still as a coffin, gun in his hand.
Seven’s left shoulder stung from the buckshot, but he knew it wasn’t going to fuck with him. He wouldn’t lose a lot of blood; the shit was just going to hurt. Hammer was a son of a bitch was what Hammer was; Seven had never liked him—Hammer and Lamar always on the other team in baseball, cheating and causing some shit. He bit his lip.
That was when he saw a fast movement on the stairs to his right, back the way he’d just come.
It was feet moving, not even someone being careful or coming down slow; they just walked down like it was a normal day. Seven reached across his body and aimed the Tec down the hall at the stairs. When he saw the legs come around the landing and hit the next flight, he ripped off a quick stream of shots that dashed along them just below the kneecaps.
The man on the stairs crumpled, screaming. He fell forward down the steps and rolled head over ass once before he stopped.
Seven saw it was Ness, just another of Rock’s street soldiers. He had a Tec-9 in one hand, but he let it go and got his hands up fast, which was good because Seven wasn’t planning on waiting to let him think it over.
Down in the lobby, Pickup waited for the elevator with the older man, trying not to attract too much attention and watching the stairways on either side to make sure no one was able to creep up. The old man ignored him, acted like he didn’t want to acknowledge that he was in the towers now, on Pickup’s turf.
“You Temple’s father, right?” Pickup asked.
Aldo Posey shook his head, stared straight ahead at the elevator doors. He pushed the call button again.
“That was your boy.”
Aldo bit his upper lip, didn’t respond.
“Yeah. I know Temple. Good pitcher in his time. Threw the heat.” Still no response. “Junius your boy too, then?” This got a quick glance in Pickup’s direction, then back to the doors.
“Yeah. I seen him here today earlier. You come down to find him?”
