Run (12 page)

I was right, he’s got them folded in his shirt pocket, and they look real, and I take the pieces of paper, check them out, the CUSIP numbers match, and I fold them up and put them into my shirt pocket and then I tell him:

The keys are in the van.

Jinx sticks his pistol in his pocket, and he’s up the stairs with the two other guys.

Then Mr. Branch Manager says the last thing he says to me. He says:

And?

And I walk back to the van and grab my duffel bag, and then I walk away. I pull the cellular phone from my belt and I call CK and I tell him we’re done, and do you know what CK says to me? He says:

Hang on.

There’s this long silence, then he’s back to me and he says:

Had to get some privacy. You there?

I say yes, and he says:

Get the hell out of New York.

His voice is like a whisper, deep-fried by the airwaves.

Go to the second place or go to Wilmington, the train station, maybe. Get way out, get close to home. Find someplace off road to take a blow. You get there and you hunker down.

A distant voice, so soft and suddenly so very clear:

And as soon as you get the chance, kill the nigger.

When I click down the Motorola and hook the phone back onto my belt, I remember why it was I hated math:

Two plus two doesn’t always mean four.

This I remember in the moment it takes me to realize that Jinx is up the stairs and out. Gone. Shit. Back to the phone. I punch up Two Hand’s number. He takes it on the first ring.

Yeah, what?

I’m coming up, I tell him. Have you seen Jinx?

Who? he says.

The Yellow Nigger, I tell him.

No, he says, and then: He’s with you.

No, I tell him. He’s not with me, and that’s a problem. A big problem. Our problem. Keep your eyes open. Call Jeffers and tell him. I’ll be right with you.

The van revs up with a tired dog growl, and I stand there staring until I catch the eye of Mr. Branch Manager. I don’t like what I see. The guy didn’t even check the back of the van. I don’t like it at all.

I’m through the door to the stairs and up and back out on the street. No one on the sidewalk, no one in sight. Jinx and Mr. Branch Manager’s spear-carriers are gone. Across from the entrance to the garage, through the gauntlet of light Sunday morning traffic, Two Hand is standing at the
window of the deli. He shakes his head side to side: No. So I shove my hands into the pockets of my raincoat and make like a New Yorker, head down, jaywalking, intent on cappuccino and a bagel.

Renny meets me at the door, gives me a lost look.

Jeffers and Rose—

Let me guess, I tell him. They took their Chevy and booked.

Yeah, but—

Were they following Jinx? The U Street guy?

No, no, Renny tells me. I didn’t see him, but look, Burdon, I couldn’t have missed him. No way. I was—

You did fine, kid, I tell him. But we have to move, and I do mean move. Something is squirrelly.

I dig in my pockets: Here.

I hand the valet parking stub to him.

Warwick Hotel. That’s 54th and, shit—I can never remember—Sixth Avenue, I think. Cabbie’ll know. Take the Olds from the hotel and get your ass to Jersey. But whatever you do, stay away from Morristown. Listen to me. This is important. Don’t go to Morristown, okay?

I take the pen out of his shirt pocket and write the directions on a napkin.

This is the other rendezvous, I tell him. South Jersey. Some warehouses. I’ll meet you there. By one o’clock. Don’t wait any longer than one. If I don’t show … shit, man, if I don’t show, go home and find Trey Costa, okay?

But if I—

I turn my back on him because I know he’s a good soldier, just like me, he’s a good soldier and he’s going to go to the Warwick, he’s going to take the car, he’s going to drive to the second rendezvous, he’s going to stay out of trouble.

Me, on the other hand? I’ve got business. Jinx is gone, and he’s either talking money market accounts with the banker guys or he’s heading for Juan E and the rest of his crew. This is a no-brainer. I’ve got to keep Jinx out of that hotel. And find out what kind of shit is really going down.

I flag a taxi and tell the cabbie, one of those guys with a turban, the destination. His eyes sort of glaze over and he starts digging at a
Frommer’s Guide to Manhattan
. By now most of the world knows its name, but at right about 9:30 a.m. on this particular Sunday morning, most of Manhattan had forgotten, if they ever even knew about, the Excelsior Hotel.

Shit, I tell the cabbie, and then I give him the street, the avenue, the intersection. Move it, Gandhi, I tell him.

The Excelsior. Nice enough name for a hotel, though a bit grandiose for a place that hasn’t housed a paying guest for twenty or so years. Way up across 110th Street in a DMZ, the edge of Harlem.

The cabbie is still dicking around with his guidebook and his maps.

Move it, I tell him again. I rap once on the Plexiglas.

He doesn’t blink, just puts the maps aside, and we start uptown. He takes the west side of Central Park and I never know whether I’m being had by one of these guys or not and I watch the brownstones give way to blocks of buildings at the fringe of a fantasy of urban renewal that went down hard in the late sixties. Apartment complexes that look like junkyards. Each new cross street offers some pathetic vista, a burned-out building, a burned-out car, and among them burned-out men and women and kids who look out at you like refugees from a war.

As the cab hits the intersection, pulls to the curb, I see a line of police cruisers and nearly say out loud what I’m thinking: Oh, shit. But then I see the people gathering across the street and their faces, smiling faces, black faces on black bodies decked out in their Sunday best, a restless tide of pink and blue and yellow and white that seems to wash against the wide and welcoming mouth of the Free African Methodist Church, and I’m thinking: Leave it to CK to set up a meet in the middle of a Sunday-morning church service.

I give the cabbie a ten, tell him to keep the change, a buck tip, nothing too memorable, and then I’m on the street, moving slowly, huddled up in my New-Yorker-in-a-raincoat pose that sweeps me past more cops than I’m likely to see in a week in Virginia. They look bored, journeyman duty, and the street is blocked off for the service, must be one hell of a popular church, and across the way I see a short line of NYPD wagons, plus a couple limos, even some radio and television vans.

On this side of the street is an apartment building, some kind of subsidized housing, a retirement home, still looking good, and flush against it leans the weary Hotel Excelsior. The weathered hood of an awning offers the ghost of its name. The shattered windows on each side of the entrance are guarded by wrought-iron grates that spin into ornate webs. What’s left of the building, the bottom few floors, has been taken over by the Methodists and turned into some kind of fleabag flophouse, what they call a shelter, for the homeless and the helpless and, of course, the crackheads.

It’s a perfect place for a meet. A place of the vague, the anonymous, the unnoticed, the lost. A place where faces, black and white, could mingle. Even on Sunday.

In the lobby of the Excelsior the usual scum are lounging around, most of them with the heroin nod, and the smell is astounding, a wet stew of Lysol and spent semen. Wood Williams pretends he’s half asleep behind a newspaper, but he grins when I stroll past. I lamp the bank of elevators and can’t believe that the door of one is open, the insides lit, because I’d rather take the ten flights of stairs in a wheelchair than commit my life to that wretched box.

The stairwell says it all: The building is dead and rotting from the inside out. Paint and plaster have peeled back, urban leprosy that exposes decaying wallboard and cinder blocks. Holes gape in the walls. The landing of each floor is a mix of busted concrete, shattered glass, beer cans, crack pipes, used Bic lighters, and empty prescription bottles. The stairs seem to give with each step, and each new floor offers new wounds in the structure. At seven I have to jump over steps lumped with broken plaster and brick that have fallen from the ceiling.

On nine, I take a breather at the landing. One floor to go. I hear a voice but can’t make much of it. Someone humming. A cough. So things are okay.

Maybe.

I take the last set of steps with a lot of patience. The door to the tenth floor, like many on the floors below, is gone, wrenched from its hinges to make a table or firewood. Or sold somewhere for dope. I can’t see a thing in the hallway beyond. So I wait for a while in the shadows until finally I hear the voice again, and this time the words: Ten a.m.

I look at my watch, and it must be slow, since it reads 9:50.

The voice belongs to Martinez, and Martinez belongs to CK and Mackie. I set my duffel bag on the stairwell, then:

Rudy? I say, and take a deep breath and step out into the hallway.

Martinez is there, in the shadows. Another one of our guys, I think it’s Crimso, is down the hall, and he’s got something long-barreled and automatic, an AK with a custom wooden stock, held high on his hip.

Lane? Martinez says back, in a half whisper, and what else can I say?

Yeah, Rudy, it’s me.

Jeez, he says. You could of got yourself shot. What you doin here? Thought you was downtown with the—

I put my finger to my lips.

I tell him: I need to see CK.

Martinez rolls his eyes. Yeah? he says, and he’s loose, and the guy down the hall—yeah, it’s Crimso—isn’t paying one bit of attention, so I say:

He called. It’s important.

So Rudy says:

Why didn’t you say so? Come on.

We head down the long hallway, and there’s nothing much to see, bare lightbulbs, about half of them lit, and this queasy green wallpaper that hangs in torn strips and wedges. The doors to what once were rooms are either open or gone, and there’s nothing inside the rooms until we near the end of the hallway. Then things start to get interesting.

Light’s coming from a room on our left, and it’s full of the brothers, 9 Bravos and U Streeters lounging around on the floor and the torn-up furniture, chilled out, knocking back forty-ouncers of malt liquor, sucking on joints and booshitting, a real social gathering.

Then, past more empty rooms, there’s one with Toons and Fryer and they’ve got canvas satchels on a couple chairs and they’re diddling with whatever they’ve got in the satchels and when we walk on by Toons gives me a thumbs-up and then gets back to diddling.

Then we’re at the end of the hall, and there’s a door this time, on the right, and the door is shut, and I don’t need to be told who’s inside.

Martinez raps at the door and when it angles open he says:

Company. It’s Lane.

Mackie the Lackey shows me into a roomful of tight smiles. I take in the room, what must have been a suite, wide and long and empty except for a table and chairs, the remains of a dinette set. CK stands at the far end, before two wide and curtainless windows, like the host of a surreal dinner party. Juan E and his Django guy sit at one side of the table, and some boss nigger from Central Casting sits at the other side with a guy who looks like an NFL linebacker turned thug. The boss man must be Daddy Big, a high-stepper for the 9 Bravos.

On the table in front of them are an open briefcase, thick wads of cash, a lot of handguns, and like twenty baggies of llejo. White daddy. Cocaine.

Fuck. I knew it was drugs. I knew it.

Listen, CK says, not to me but to the guys at the table. He’s cool. One of mine. Right, Lane?

I nod as I cross the room with Mackie, pass the table, pass Dawkins. The guy’s slumped against the wall like he’s waiting on a very slow train.

Hey, says Juan E, and he’s talking to me: Yo, hey. You. Wonder Bread. How’s my bust-yo-ass nigga Jinx?

I give CK the look he needs, the one that says nothing and everything, and I say to Juan E: Hey, Jinx is just fine.

Then I find my space, an empty spot on the far wall, between the two big windows, with a clear view of the players and a clear path to the door, and I lean back to enjoy what’s left of the show.

The 9 Bravo warlord sits, unmoving, unmoved. An onyx statue with two Desert Eagle .45s for a table setting. The linebacker is counting out dollars, and I haven’t seen such angry boredom since the last State of the Union address.

Two things stink: The deal is done. And when the deal is done, you don’t stick around to shake hands. Or sell drugs. And then there’s Mackie, standing over by the window to my right, looking alternately at his watch and then outside and down, to something on the street. Looking just a little too often.

Until he turns to CK and says, Hey, we got to go.

Which is when CK turns up the high beams for his little audience:

Gentlemen, he says, that seems to conclude things for today. There’s only one thing to add. A little something. A little gratuity.

CK nods to Mackie, and Mackie lifts two long cases from the floor, placing them carefully side by side on the table.

Attend, CK says to Juan E and the Bravo warlord. Whatever that means. He acts like one of those prissy French waiters you see on TV comedies.

CK takes a pair of those white latex gloves, the ones doctors use, the ones like rubbers, from his coat, and he slips a glove slowly onto each hand as he tells them: Mint condition. Gems. The finest. For each of you, gentlemen.

He reaches and flicks the locks on each case, then tilts back the lids like he’s showing off the Crown Jewels. And now that I can see inside, I know that, in a way, these are jewels.

Compliments of Mr. Berenger.

I’ve read about these rifles, heard the stories, seen the photos, even seen them in trophy cases, but I’ve never seen the real deal in a shooter’s hands. Until now.

The room is silent. A fucking hear-the-pin-drop cathedral. CK raises the first rifle from the case gently, with a kind of reverence, and holds it out toward that Bravo warlord, Daddy Big. An offering. And the guy, at last, is moved. He stands and takes possession of the Maltese Falcon of modern gunnery. The stuff that dreams are made of: