Urban Renewal (9 page)

JEAN-BAPTISTE DROVE
slowly to his other apartment. He was trying for that ice inside him that the ancient pimp had warned him he could never allow to melt.

Ronni was still asleep when he let himself in. She wouldn’t wake up for hours, he knew—she always gobbled a handful of pills and washed them down with a double of Crown Royal just before she hit the sheets, never failed.

That one had been easy. Got too much weight on her for the best clubs, but a lot of men like their women thick, and she’d work any room he told her to, so she always came home with real money.

Dependable. That’s what she had going for her. There was a neatly stacked pile of bills on the kitchen table. He riffed through them quickly—twelve big, one half, and the rest double sawbucks … all the way down to singles. Probably didn’t keep a dime for herself. If she wanted something, she knew her man would get it for her. He paid all the bills, didn’t he?

J.B. was still red-rage angry enough to wake the cow up and use the strap he kept hanging in the bedroom closet to remind her of …

Stop that, fool!
his mind shouted at him. Ronni was a good girl. Not just that, until he could put another game plan together, she was his
only
girl.

He still had his ride. And half his wardrobe was sitting only a few feet away. He never left much cash lying around.
Not that any of his women would ever steal a dime, just playing it safe.

Speaking of which …

LESS THAN
an hour passed before he emerged, wearing a subdued daytime outfit, but one that would scream “Money!” at any woman who was in the market for a man who could take her to the best places. And then take her away.

His mother had already left for her job, so he was able to get to the basement pad where True Blue had spent his last days. By then he was pretty much out of conversation, so J.B. had known it was coming.

The safe was hidden inside what looked like a drywall panel. He spun the combination without looking. About seventy thou in there. That calmed him down right away. As he knew it would.

Some other stuff in there, too. The old man had warned him to dispose of the pistol that had earned him his first new car and the extra custom touches that set it apart from the rest. But J.B. just couldn’t do that.

His religion was superstition. Not only was that pistol his personal mojo hand, he wouldn’t know where to get another one like it. The full magazine he’d emptied into Chi-Town Terror had been barely audible—no lights went on, no dog barked. Getting bullets was no problem—more 9mm rounds sitting in boxes on the West Side than there were roaches in the kitchens. But the pistol, that was special. Custom-made. The best.

And no cop was ever going to be searching his mother’s
house. Even if he got dropped for—who knows?—the most they could do would be search any place he was carrying the keys to at the time. He never carried the key to his mother’s house—that was under a back windowsill, on a magnetized strip even she didn’t know about.

His mother’s house. The one safe haven that would always be there for him. The parallel to the house of the Chi-Town Terror’s mother had never entered his mind.

“Always make them underestimate you,” he heard the old man’s voice in his head, counseling him when he proudly returned with the news that he’d earned that bounty money. “Never carry, not even a blade. Only two people know you a genuine life-taker now: you and me. You keep it that way. Let them think,
Oh, that boy, he ain’t nothing
. You don’t want no street rep. Let ’em all sleep on you. That way, if anyone does come for you, they won’t come prepared, see?”

When he hit that club where Taylor danced, she might have warned the bouncer to be on the lookout … you never know. So if he had to stand for a pat-down, he’d be clean. But once he got back to his car …

Besides, all he needed was to make certain she saw him. That alone might be enough to scare her into giving him back his things.
All
his things.

One thing he knew for sure: Taylor had a friend. A friend with enough money to hire that moving crew. So she might not scare that easily. It might come down to something else.

He’d been ready to take that big step-up once. And he was ready if it came to that again.

AS A
rule, J.B. never touched powder. But every once in a while, he used it for what he called “boost.” Sometimes, to work his game, he had to go without sleep for a couple of straight twenty-fours, and there was nothing like a hit of what the old pimp had called Girl to keep a man sharp and alert.

When the old man had first confided this, J.B. was less than eager to embrace it. He knew Girl was cocaine, just as Boy was heroin. And he knew the old man’s core belief: women were both the most loyal and the most treacherous of all God’s creations; to the pimp once known throughout certain parts of Chicago as “True Blue,” it was just a matter of picking those from the first group. And it took more than knowledge to do that—you had to have that special instinct. Not something you could learn, no matter how well schooled you might be. This ability was a gift, like having an ear for music. Either you were born with it, or you weren’t.

After the old man passed, J.B. moved slowly and with great care. But as the years went by, he came to believe that this gift had been implanted in him, as if the old man was schooling him from the grave.

So how could I have been so wrong about Taylor?

If she’d taken just her own things—especially that miserable, mangy cat—he would have chalked her up to The Life’s Unwritten Law: They come, they go. The circle never breaks. But
his
stuff! The custom-tailored suits, the handmade shoes, his jewelry … Not irreplaceable, of course, but certainly a big hit on his wallet. Now, that was just plain evil.

In the past, women had cut up his clothes, or thrown bleach on them. And left some kind of note, too. Girls who did that, he knew he could expect them to come crawling
back. And he knew they wouldn’t even
try
that unless they came with enough cash to replace everything they’d ruined, and then some.

Yeah, this was different.

So it had to be dealt with. The word would get out, and his prestige—far more important than any wardrobe or car—would be damaged beyond repair.

Not going to happen.

Not to him.

Not ever!
he thought to himself, not realizing that he was giving up the protective coloration the old man had warned him was a cloak of safety. The need to send a message to that bitch had overpowered the old man’s warnings in a finger-snap.

Coke
might
kill you, if you didn’t handle it correctly. But ego, no doubt about it, that
would
kill you. And the worst ego of all was the one you didn’t know you had. The one that was sitting inside you, calling all the shots.

J.B. WENT
through five of his one-time-use burner cells before he gave it up. Some of Chicago’s
truly
bad men wouldn’t accompany him to the Double-X no matter how much he offered. He couldn’t even get the Motley brothers, twin gunmen who were reputed to have kept one undertaker in business for a decade, to come into the club by themselves and just watch his back.

“You know whose club that is?”

“What diff—?”

“The Double-X, even damn
winos
know it’s run by the Cross crew.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Guess you never heard of Red 71, either.”

“What’s that, another club?”

“Yeah, man. Just another club. See if you can get a cabbie to take you there.”

“I don’t need a cab, man. I’ll just go—”

“You know, me and my brother, we charge for what we do. But I’m givin’ you this one for free: don’t go near that place. You walk in with bad intentions, they turn you into dog food.”

“That’s just—” J.B. began, before he realized he was talking to a dead line.

RUMORS RUN
through Chicago like white-water rapids. Anyone could watch them from a cliff, but trying to ride them, that was a job for an expert. The street racers worked on the fringe of the Badlands. No worries about the Law out there, but crossing the semi-trailer that marked one entrance was never done twice … not without permission.

The dope slingers wouldn’t work a place where they’d never see a customer. Even the hookers who worked streets nobody should ever walk down gave it a pass. Some of the always-in-motion gambling houses had their own protection from raids, be it the police or some get-rich-quick boys who thought going in armed would change the game. But they never set up shop in the Badlands, not even for one night.

All Jean-Baptiste could learn was that Red 71 was supposed to be somewhere out there, at the other end of the marked entrance.

“If you don’t know, don’t go.” The old man’s words, still echoing. So this Red 71, whatever the hell it was, he’d leave that for some other time. But the Double-X, that was just another strip club. He’d been there before. Time to stop watching the rapids from a distance and climb into that kayak.