Run (11 page)

Soon enough Juan E leads his people out, and they’re like a pride of young lions. Lots of flash when they check their weapons, and there is no doubt: They may be kids but they mean business. I do think they might do us some good. Right past them comes Renny Two Hand with doughnuts and more black coffee. I swig down what’s left of the last cup and, when no one’s looking, I eat some Dexedrine.

Then the troops are gone, and it’s just the five of us: Renny, Jeffers, Rose, the Yellow Nigger, and me. And all these guns.

Okay, I tell Renny. Go buy yourself more breakfast in that deli across the street. And take your time. It’s gonna be a long morning. Get a seat by the window. Keep your eye on that door. Anybody comes inside, hell, anybody even takes a hard look, call me.

Hey, he says. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Just one of those things, feels right. And you know something? I was talking to some of those U Street guys last night.

Yeah, I tell him. I saw you.

Well, he says, these guys are okay. Tough guys. But they’ve got something going. Sort of like us? They’ve got each other, you know?

Yeah, I tell him. Just don’t make any plans to go visit your new pals in the hood, okay?

Yeah, right, okay, he says. It’s like any time you—

He reaches down to his belt, brings up his cellular phone.

Give me your number again. When I do, he punches at the keypad, smiles, and says: Got you speed-dialed. Rose and Jeffers and CK, too. I was thinking about Pizza Hut, but you know something? I don’t think they deliver here.

He heads for the stairs. You need more coffee, he says, give me a jingle. Maybe I’ll deliver.

I find Jeffers and Rose, and they’re checking their rifles, matching CAR-15s with ACOG Reflex sights and laser aimers. Perfect for an urban firefight, which is about the last thing I want. I tell them to take to the roof, and I tell the Yellow Nigger nothing.

After a while, we both sit inside the van again. I’m on the driver’s side and he’s on the passenger side and that’s the way it’s going to be.

We wait, and then we wait some more.

He’s about thirty-five, though I’m no judge when it comes to age. Could be older. Today the dreadlocks are bundled in a knot at the back. He isn’t big and he isn’t small, just mid-range with a lot of muscle. Not jailhouse muscle, though, you can spot the stuff, smell it too, from a mile away. Maybe he did time, most of these guys from the streets have been in and out two, three times before they’re twenty-one, but nothing major. A real smart man who learned his lesson
early: Never get caught. His face, pale as sand, is an endless enigma. He hides the blue eyes behind those spooky sunglasses. Add in the smooth voice, each of his few words spoken with quiet threat, and you got somebody you aren’t sure you really want to know. Unless you have to run with him.

So what can I say? The silence is getting to me.

Hey, man, what’s up?

I stick out my hand. He doesn’t move. I pull it back.

You mind telling me your name? I say. But I get the dark glasses, tight lips.

Hey, I tell him this time. Not a question. I tell him:

Your name.

He blows a long breath at me, like a school kid you’ve told a story that he doesn’t quite believe. Then he says:

Jinx, fool.

Jinx, I say. No shit. Jinx.

I look out the window. Quite a view in a basement garage.

Yeah, he says, so what the fuck about it?

Look, I tell him. Jinx. The guys, sometimes they call me Loose, you know? Because in the old days I told too many people to stay loose. My girlfriend, sometimes she calls me Birdman. But that’s not my name either. Those are nicknames, right? The name’s Burdon. Burdon Lane. And I’m sitting here, and you’re sitting there, and it seems to me that maybe you should be telling me your name.

Another breath out. He speaks like he’s just met a foreigner:

My slave name is Michael Sexton.

And then he smiles. At least I think it’s a smile.

But you, cracker … you call me Jinx.

He shows me too many teeth for a real smile. This guy is a predator, a wolf walking with what he thinks are lambs.

I know then that I’d better not lose sight of him. Not for a minute. He’s either next to me or dead on the ground.

So, he says. What’re you readin?

I look over at my new pal Jinx. He takes off his sunglasses, polishes at them awhile, then slips them into his jacket pocket. He nods at my lap.

The book, he says. You readin your Bible?

There’s something in the way he says those words, something that says the idea of my reading the Bible is the most ridiculous and most important of things.

No. Not the Bible, I tell him. Tried one time but I couldn’t get past all those begats. No, this is my book. It’s called
Crime and Punishment
.

Then I show him the cover, as if he wouldn’t take my word on it.

Yeah, he says. Nice book.

Nice book? I say to him, and catch myself, ease back before I laugh. Did you read it?

Suddenly he’s the one who’s laughing.

Read it? Hell, man, I wrote it.

And we’re both laughing then, and somehow it happens, somehow, before I know what I’m doing, as the morning winds its way out of the dark and into the time when the children wake, when the alarms and clock radios roust the sleeping people from their dreams and into the nightmares of their lives, when CK and Mackie and Juan E and the others climb the stairs to the tenth floor of the Hotel Excelsior, I tell my new pal Jinx the story, the one about the book, the one I’ve never told to anyone, not Renny Two Hand, not even Fiona.

It’s my mother’s book, I tell him. One of them. She had lots of books, my mom, shelves and shelves of books, up in the bedroom of the old house. About all she did, the last few years of her life, was read. It was about all she could do, lying in bed and letting the cancer eat at her insides. I was there when the doctors told her about the cancer, told her about the time she had left, and they might as well have been telling her about fall fashions for all the attention she paid them; it was like what they had to tell her wasn’t anything she didn’t already know. She let them drift away, one by one, and then she got back to reading her books.

One time I asked her, I just flat out asked her about the books. I’d visit her a couple times a week, up in that bedroom, and she’d have a book in her hands, on her lap, at the nightstand, and I had to ask her:

Mom, why do you sit here and read all these books?

And she looked at me with eyes so clear that I could see right into
her. She folded over the corner of the page and she closed the book, and it was this book, this
Crime and Punishment
book, and she put it right into my hands. And after a long while, she said to me:

Take this book, Burdon, and you’ll see.

Read it, she said. Don’t look at it, really read it. When you read a book, she told me, you get to the end of a page, and then, well, you turn to the next page. Another page. You get to the end of a chapter, and then there’s another chapter. There’s always another page, another chapter, another story, another book. You’re never done. Even when the words say
THE END
.

That was the last time I saw Mom cry, but she was smiling, too.

There’s always another page, she said. Another chapter.

You’re never done.

I don’t know what I’ve said, I don’t know what I have done, until Jinx hands the book back to me and says:

Yeah.

Which is when the Motorola rings and I pull it from my belt.

Hello?

It’s CK: Your turn.

I hear you, I tell him.

Click.

Click.

And with enough minutes, the Motorola rings again.

This time it’s Renny Two Hand: We got company, he says. Three guys and I don’t like them. Not at all. They’re—

Stay loose, I tell him. Stay in that deli and stay loose.

I click down on the cellular and I know I don’t have to tell Jinx a thing. Because down the steps they come, three suits in rumpled raincoats, looking for all the world like Wall Street bankers seriously lost on their way to lunch. Quiet faces. Tight faces.

White faces.

So this is it: The Connection. The Make. The Meet. I’ve heard a hundred words for this thing but none of them works, not in the real world. Like shit, this thing just happens. You can make plans, you can figure all the angles, you can get busy and get ready. But then it just happens.

There’s this awful feeling every time a major deal goes down. Not a rush, no way, none of this nerves-on-edge adrenaline highball that they serve up to the mall zombies in those caper movies. It’s nothing but this cold thing that sleigh-rides up your spine. A gremlin born down somewhere in your butt just shoots into the back of your brain and sits there, whispering for you to run like a whippet and not to stop running till tomorrow.

This message has astounding clarity. It hurts your head. Sometimes it hurts your stomach too, makes you want to drop your pants and let go.

You want to listen to this thing. Every once in a while it’s right, and you don’t know it until you just … 
know
it. That’s when you cut your losses. If you don’t feel this thing, you’re an idiot or you’re dead. Probably both.

Right now it’s telling me lies.

White faces. And not just the faces, it’s the haircuts, the overcoats. It’s the way these guys are walking toward the van, the way that not one of them is looking back, looking over his shoulder, worrying about what might be back there behind them.

White faces.

Jinx knows what I’m thinking.

Yeah, he says. Who the fuck are these albinos? But hey, you know what? Somethin look this wrong, it’s just got to be right.

He takes the pistol from his lap.

It’s cool, he says. Nobody gonna get capped. Them Bravos may be niggas, but they sure ain’t stupid niggas. So they get some white bwanas to do their dirty work. Just like you went and got yourself some natives to do yours. Makes about as much sense as anything else on this ride. Come on. Let’s get dancin.

Wait a second, I tell him, and I dial Rose, standing watch on the roof.

Yeah?

What’ve you got?

Three in, nobody out.

Okay, I tell him. Stand by.

I dial Jeffers.

What?

Got anything?

Got nothing. Just tell me when.

Okay, I tell him. Stand by.

Jinx?

He’s halfway out the door to the van when he turns back and says: Yeah?

Keep your mouth shut and your finger off the trigger. Just remember one thing: If you hear me say something original like, oh, kill them, well, that’s when you kill them, okay? But for now, I’ll take Mr. Branch Manager. You go get chummy with his buttboys.

Jinx blows wind over his upper lip and he’s out of the van, right arm curved to hold the Ruger behind his back.

I shove my Glock into the front of my belt, where it can be seen.

Mr. Branch Manager hauls up about ten feet shy of the van, sticks out a pale white hand, and says:

How you doon?

That’s how he says it, one syllable, like a big pile of sand: Dune.

I’m doon just fine, I tell him back. But I don’t shake his hand. I say to him: You got the paper?

Oh yeah, he says. I got the paper. Pause. You got the keys? He cuts his eyes to the van and then back to me.

Oh yeah, I tell him. I got the keys.

Great, he says. So you give me the keys, and then I give you the paper.

No, sir, I tell him. That’s not the way it works.

Look, he says. Maybe there’s been some misunderstanding, but my job is to come to this garage. Your job is to give me the keys.

No sir, I tell him. Maybe your job is to come to this garage. But if you want the keys, you’re gonna have to take them. Because I’m giving them up only at the point of death. Unless, of course, you want to give me the paper first.

His face drops. He glances back at his friends, who are looking a bit worried now that they’ve met my new pal Jinx. He shows them the pistol and then he shows them the way back to the stairs. This has got to go down one-on-one.

Hey, I tell Mr. Branch Manager. Hey. This time I get his attention.
Listen, fella, why don’t we start this all over again? Pretend you just walked in here, okay, and that you said to me: How you doon? That’s when I tell you: Hey, I’m doon just fine. Then here’s what you say to me: Here is the paper that I was asked to give you. And you want to emphasize the word give, because this is no trade. This is nothing like that. Okay? So: Ready? Now’s when I tell you …

Hey, I’m doon just fine.

Mr. Branch Manager glances back at his friends again, and Jinx has them nearly to the stairs, and he looks at me with more impatience than a junkie waiting on a fix.

I tell Mr. Branch Manager: You gonna give me the fucking paper or what?

He’s losing it, little beads of sweat at the temple, the whole nervous works, and that’s when he says: Look, you got to give me the keys.

I don’t got to give you jack, pal. And you know why?

I reach for my belt and the guy flinches, I kid you not, he flinches, but all I do is pull the cellular and punch up Two Hand.

Yeah?

What have you got?

Nothing.

Cool.

I click down and then I have my say with Mr. Branch Manager:

Here’s why. You walk in here with these pieces of paper, right? You, him, and him, just the three of you and these pieces of paper. Which are where? Probably in your shirt pocket. So now I’ve got you and I’ve got the paper, and my pal over there has got your two dinner dates and my buddy across town has your Bravos and the other pieces of paper, and … well, maybe I’m missing something, but tell me, okay, why don’t you tell me: Just why am I supposed to give you the keys to this van?

He gulps, and now it’s like he doesn’t want to turn around to look at his friends for fear of what he might see. At last his voice comes creeping out:

Because we had a deal?

Sorry? I say. I can’t hear you.

Because … we had a deal?

Bingo, I tell him. Now give me the fucking paper.