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Juan E frowns, calls over to the Yellow Nigger:

Yo, G.

Whassup? the Yellow Nigger says, and the guy slips the sunglasses down his nose and looks at Juan E like he’s asked for the time of day. His eyes are blurs of blue. The guy is either stoned or he’s about three days short on sleep.

Juan E says: Well?

And the Yellow Nigger just closes those blue eyes and pushes the sunglasses back over them and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t smile and say: Let Mr. Kruikshank do his thing.

Juan E gives CK the nod and CK says something to Mackie and Mackie heads for the parking lot. Everybody else stands around staring at each other while the Yellow Nigger takes in more of the inside of his shades. Finally Mackie’s back with a bulky suit bag and, when CK nods, he unzips the bag and upends the contents onto the bed. It’s a lot of gleaming iron.

CK tells them it’s a little gift, says: Here’s something that’ll let you peel a few caps back.

So now we get smiles and maybe even some juice.

While his homeys are oohing and aahing, the Yellow Nigger stays bored. That takes him up another rung on my ladder. I wouldn’t touch one of those pieces of shit either. But we move them like crazy, especially
in the inner city. Gangsters love this weapon. It’s the Cobray M-11/9, made by the same solid citizens who built the Street Sweeper. A brick of black steel about the weight of a newborn baby, the M-11/9 is descended from the MAC-10, which is a nice piece of work, God bless Gordon Ingram. But you buy a Cobray for the look: evil. It’s the Frankenstein of fullies, the gun that made the eighties roar. Sure they’re sold as semi-automatics, one squeeze, one shot, but with a quick fix, a couple minutes if you know the right guy or read the right book, these little monsters can fire thirty-two rounds in less than two seconds. Sucker torques like a bitch when you squeeze down. You got to use both hands, point and shoot as many rounds as you can, and pray you hit something before it jams.

CK says to Juan E: We have to talk. They’re out the door, buddies for life, with Mackie and Headband in tow, and I’m in here with a roomful of punks with their new guns, not to mention their old ones.

Which means it’s my turn again. So I say to the Yellow Nigger:

Listen, my friend. When we find ourselves in NYC, you’re with me.

Yeah? he says, never taking his eyes off the TV. Who says so?

You say so.

Yeah? he says, and this time he pulls down the sunglasses and gives me the stare, the one about coming close to a line. As if psychos have a line. A straight one, I mean. The kind you can read, the kind you can respect.

Yeah, I say, and I decide to save him some breath. There’s no need to ask why, because I’m going to tell him why:

See, I tell him, the way I figure it, when you get to NYC and you find yourself sitting in some building, lounging in some truck, worrying about a lot of iron and a lot of money with somebody who’s not from your streets and somebody who’s not from your crew, and let’s make that somebody who’s not … somebody who’s white. Well, you need to have the one white guy in the world who you happen to think knows what the hell he’s doing.

Yeah? he says again, and this time he looks back at the TV and tells me:

Fuck you.

That’s when I pull down on him, the barrel of the Glock pressed right into his temple. Renny, I call out, and when I glance back damned if Two Hand doesn’t slap a magazine into the butt end of one of the Cobrays and point it round the rest of the room.

Stay calm, folks, he says. Or this could hurt big-time.

The Yellow Nigger’s eyes don’t leave the TV. Finally he says:

You draw that thing, you better use it.

I will, I tell him. Unless you tell your homey in the bathroom to lay down his gun and get out here.

That’s when the Yellow Nigger smiles and pulls those black-shaded eyes from the TV to me.

You crazy, he says. Ain’t nobody in there.

Yeah, I tell him. And pigs don’t shit and you don’t have a revolver in the bottom left pocket of your jacket. So why don’t we bring those hands up to your lap where I can see them? Nice and slow … nice and slow. Good, good. Now … about your buddy boy in the bathroom. What’s he got? Better be a shotgun for this kind of work. Me, I like the Mossberg. Remington’s not bad, but I like the Mossberg. And you know what? I saw your little video, the First Union thing. And come to think of it, you like the Mossberg too.

The Yellow Nigger’s lips pinch. Maybe it’s a smile. Maybe not.

So, I tell him, let’s get on with it.

That’s when he calls out: Yo, Hitter. Put that fuckin shottie down and get your ass out here.

The bathroom door opens and Two Hand points the Cobray at the slash of light. Hands up and out, he says. And out comes a wiry and nasty-looking dude. With his hands up.

Thank you, I say to this Hitter guy. Just have a seat over there on the bed with your friends.

When he’s done just that, I pull back the Glock, ease my finger off the trigger. I roll it over butt first and hand it to the Yellow Nigger. He doesn’t even blink, just takes my pistol and points it right back at me. I hear that sound, that almost inaudible click, something like a camera, as the Yellow Nigger presses the trigger safety of the Glock, my Glock, aiming fifteen sonic booms into the starboard side of my skull.

I say: I don’t like people pointing pistols at me. Guess you don’t either.

I turn to Renny, tell him: Yank the magazine and put the weapon down.

Then I look at his homeys, say: Your guy here can kill me. But he won’t. There’s a reason he won’t kill me, and it’s a good reason. It’s the same reason I didn’t kill him, and I could have, you saw me, I could have blown his brains to jelly and my friend here could have made you dance the hot lead cha-cha and then we could have gone on down to Denny’s and gotten ourselves some pancakes.

So I could have killed him and I didn’t. We could have killed you and we didn’t. We could have gone to Denny’s, damn it, and we didn’t.

Why? Because we got no fight with you. We got no reason to fight with you. We got only one reason even to be with you. And that’s cash.

I look down at the bed.

Okay, so there’s another reason. Guns.

That guy Kruikshank, the one outside with Juan E, is the man who’s gonna get you both of these things. Me, I’m the guy who’s gonna make sure nobody gets in the way. Or that, if they do, they get hurt.

There’s only one way this is gonna work, and it’s the hard way. Meaning we trust each other, we look out for each other’s back. This guy, his name’s Renny Two Hand, this guy and I are your backup. Which means we’re gonna kill any motherfucker who looks sideways at you. And you guys are our backup. Which means we put our lives in your hands. Just like your lives were just in ours. So listen:

You were all just dead men.

I roll my eyes toward the Yellow Nigger.

Now I’m the dead man. But I think we like each other a lot better alive. So—

But it’s the Yellow Nigger talking now: So this kinda bullshit ain’t gonna happen again, he says. Because right now you a ghost. Least you white as one.

His crew starts laughing as he drops the Glock away from my head and points it toward the floor. Nothing like a little comic relief to make your morning. Then:

Fuck all you all, he says to them. And to me: Fuck you too. Maybe I want to be dead. You ever think of that? Should of pulled the trigger, Snow White. Last chance you ever get.

Only chance I want, I tell him. And: I need my Glock.

Yeah, he says, I s’pose you do. He hands the pistol back to me like it’s pocket change.

You know somethin? he says. You one mad agent.

Somehow I doubt that this is a compliment. I check and armpit the gun. Then I breathe out everything that’s been inside twisting at my guts for the past few minutes.

The Yellow Nigger slumps back down in his seat and into TV land but there’s those words again, spoken louder, to his homeys:

White boy’s one mad agent.

So I tell him: You really got an attitude, pal.

I don’t got no attitude, he says. I got a Mossberg pump.

And then it’s Friday and I’m waiting for Two Hand. We’re picking out a sedan for the road, some drab something with a monster of an engine, and then it’s down to the warehouse for a look-see at the iron we’re moving. We’re cooping there tonight—CK’s orders—so I’m getting my stuff together, and it’s not much but you have to take care. Packed a suit, two shirts, three sets of underwear and socks, shaving kit, six high-cap magazines, and five boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition. That’s the leather case. The duffel bag is always ready to go.

Fiona’s having another one of those mornings, first it was the espresso maker—why couldn’t I have bought her a Braun?—and then it was the contact lens, and there is no feeling more helpless than watching a woman, not just any woman but the woman you love, with her contact lens caught in her eye and she’s crying and she can’t get it out and she is wanting you to do something but you can’t, you have to watch those tears and that eye seeping to pink and then red and you hold her and then you don’t hold her and then you hold her again and you tell her to relax but she can’t relax so you tell her to relax again and again and after a while there’s nothing else she can do but relax, and then she tries again and like magic the lens slips out of her eye and into her hand.

But there goes the time you had, the time you needed to spread her
out on the bed, to lick that feral life into her, to taste and touch and try to make it right this time. Right for her.

Instead, you have to say goodbye.

I want to understand her, but she speaks in tongues. Fiery prophecies. Faith. Hope. Love, silent at a distant horizon, waiting to fade in like a made-for-television dawn, so bright it burns.

I met her playing pool at this dive called Spunky’s, getting hustled for nickels and dimes by Two Hand when this jerk—I was taking the 8-ball on a soft bank into the left corner pocket, cozy shot, end of story, end of game, and this jerk bumps into the butt end of my cue and makes me scratch and lose, and of course the jerk is her. This girl—yeah, I know, I’m supposed to say something like woman but this was a girl, she’s even got her long long hair in these two ponytails, like pigtails only without the braids—she’s got these eyes, and though I did, later on, I just couldn’t get past those eyes, those wide brown eyes that shone with innocent intensity—I want to know the world, I want to love the world, I want to own the world—and she says to me:

Oops.

She’s trying to carry a couple beers and a Coke to her friends, these zoned-out big-haired dinner whores at a table across the way, and she’s got these three big mugs sort of wedged together in her hands and she’s not paying any attention but she says it’s like my cue went back and hit her, not the other way around. And she’s got beer on her skirt, this blue-jean thing, and it’s short, really short, and that’s when I see those legs and so what am I going to tell her? Just:

Let me get you another beer.

That’s the last time I played pool with Renny.

Talk to me, she says. And it’s now, not then.

I manage to shut the leather case before she comes back down the hall and to the door of our bedroom. I scan the dresser. Nothing on top but my prescription bottle. The top left-hand drawer is closed but not locked.

I am talking to you, I tell her. Though I’d rather say, Let me get you another beer. She smiled when I said that. Her smile.

No, you’re not, she says. You’re talking to me like you’re talking to
your mother. You’re talking to some goddamn picture. You’re talking to something that can’t talk back.

One time I saw this guy on
Oprah
who did this funny thing with his hands. Said he could talk to chimpanzees with hand signals, like that sign language stuff for the deaf. Wish I could do that.

Goddamn it, Burdon, Fiona says. Talk to me.

I’m trying, baby, I really am trying. But I’ve got about five minutes before Renny shows, and about twenty minutes of stuff I’ve got to do.

Can I take some money out of the bank?

Use the ATM? Sure.

Hundred okay?

Take two hundred. Buy yourself something nice.

She slinks into the bedroom, pulling her T-shirt down taut over her boobs. No bra. Only day of the week she doesn’t wear a bra.

Got any ideas?

Yeah, I say. You could use some new pruning shears.

Ummm, she says. Then she purrs. What a guy.

Her fingers are twisting at the back of my hair, she knows I love that, and I flub the knot on my tie. She notices and she seems almost overjoyed.

So hey, Birdman. Where are you going this time?

Business, baby. It’s business.

Yeah, Burdon, I know that. You and Renny. You and Renny. Maybe you two guys ought to get married.

She looks over at the mirror again, checking the tangle of my tie and then her lipstick.

Let’s see, she says, and she scrunches up her nose, which means she’s thinking. After that she smiles, and it’s a melter, the one that makes you want to give her everything, and she starts tap-tapping her fingernails against the top of the dresser.

You’re going on the road, she says.

Yeah, I say. After all, here’s my leather case and the duffel bag is right out there in the hall.

But not for long, she says.

Yeah yeah, I say. No suitcase, no suit bag, so it can’t be for long.

You’re gonna be back by Sunday, she says.

Yeah, I say, and that one takes a second. Maybe it’s a good guess, the luggage is light, but then I remember the wedding. Meredith Berenger’s wedding. On Sunday night. And that I promised Fiona she could buy a new dress.

You’re going north, she says.

Which is a tough one, which is why I don’t say yeah quite as quickly, because it could be just a really good guess, I mean, one out of three is not exactly the stuff of lotteries, and it’s north, south, or west because east means the Atlantic Ocean, and after I finally get the knot together on my tie I decide to say:

North?

Yeah, she says. North. North to Alaska, hurry up, the rush is on. Which is some kind of song from some John Wayne movie, and she just laughs and looks at me and says, You know something, Birdman?