Death Wish (10 page)

T. nodded.

Bama got to his feet and said, “Remember, we must play the con that all's well and normal . . . And normally I go to bed around this time of night.”

T. sat at the desk deep in thought.

Bama stopped at the door. “I said I'm turning in.”

T. looked up and almost whispered, “Bama, I got a stout feeling Smitty ain't got no dealings in dope. And even L. C.'s ring and killing, except Smitty got foolish trying to save his friend Mills from some kinda crooked hassle. Bama, Smitty ain't gone crazy. He ain't forgot them times I climbed in the devil's ass to save his life and saved him from a bum's bag.”

“T . . . If he tests out guilty, maybe he soured and derailed because his debt got too big and painful to pay,” Bama said over his shoulder and went down the hall.

T.
flicked off the desk light and sat in the darkness. He spun the chair toward the window behind him and raised it several inches at the bottom. Great volumes of hurt and rage shook him as he dry-retched and sucked air. He leaned back into the chair.

His heavy lips shaped a grim line as he remembered a Fourth of July night forty-five years before. He was eight years old when he watched his mother, Pearl, heaving sobs as she took off his tennis shoe and hid the last few dollars left of his stepfather's paycheck.

Then, trembling, they huddled together at the front window. They stared at the ripply neon front of the Playhouse Saloon with sucker-trap blackjack and craps tables in the basement.

He could feel the snub barrel of Sarge's rusty Saturday Night Special against his knees. His mother had hidden it beneath the sofa cushion. He stroked fingertips tenderly across the lump on his mother's cheekbone as he stared at the saloon door half a block away. He thought that he would kill Sarge if he came home cussing and abusing his mother again.

He said, “Mama, I hope Sarge get kilt shooting crap and don't never come back here no more.”

Pearl kissed him and said, “Jessie, stop that kinda hoping. We all he's got, and he's been my salvation man since Reverend Taylor passed away and we left Georgia.”

He looked at her quizzically and said, “Mama, why you call my real daddy Reverend Taylor all the time?”

She laughed mirthlessly and said, “ 'cause he'd puff up like a hoptoad if I didn't. I guess even his mama wouldn't call him Eli to his face.”

She laughed loudly. “Maybe he let that chippy Reba he set up in luxury and silk dresses, while I had no decent shoes even, call him Eli. Jessie, we owe Sarge a lot.”

With a puzzled frown wrinkling his forehead he said, “But, Mama, we don't owe that old crazy nigger no right to beat up on you, huh?”

“Jessie, I fell in the scuffle and hit my face myself on the kitchen table. Sarge ain't been real bad 'cept the past year. Now you think back real hard and see I'm right.

“I was broke, sick, and still carrying you when Reverend Taylor passed. Sarge courted me with flowers and money once a week for months. He never touched me, until I made him kiss me.

“He'd just sit way 'cross the living room in that old green chair. He'd moon-eye me like I was a royal queen. He worked two jobs and loved you like his own when I birthed you.”

“But, Mama, he's crazy. We oughta ease away on his next payday. We oughta move to the Southside.”

She shook her head and said, “He ain't . . . real crazy . . . I mean, he couldn't be a sweeter husband until he's drinking heavy or thinking he's back fighting in the Bulge battle. I guess anybody's brains could scramble in all that blood and noise.”

She caught her breath, and her eyes widened at the sight of Sarge. She said, “He's broke again . . . fooling the people again. Look at
Mister Handsome marching home with his shoulders all reared back like some rich general.”

“But, Mama, look at his face in the light. He's in the war again! We oughta go next door to Rachel's mama's house and stay all night.”

She said, “Jessie, don't be scared. He's gonna come in here and flop down into the land of nod. Jessie, don't butt in or anything and upset him. Keep quiet and leave him to Mama.”

Sarge burst through the door. He stood weaving at attention with bloodshot eyes.

She said, “Sarge, stop looking at me so mean and I'll make you some fried chicken.”

Sarge smiled crookedly and said in a quiet voice, “Paymaster, I ain't got the time. I'm gonna have a steak in Paree with a fine oo-la-la. The transports are loading right now. Don't fuck me around, Paymaster. Give me all my money before I split your motherfucking head.”

He went several steps to the sewing machine money stash. Immediately, he jerked the drawers out and stomped them to pieces. He shoved the tattered officer's cap back off his face and stood glaring at her and gritting his teeth.

She tried to smile, but her lips only trembled as she went toward him, her big eyes flashing fear in the Watusi head.

“Please, Sarge, I can't let you take our food and insurance money to them Playhouse slickers. Come on, Sweetie Daddy, let's have black coffee together and watch fireworks on the roof with Jessie.”

He leaped at her with vacant eyes. He seized her outstretched arms and spun her, then he locked her in a violent full nelson. She screamed as he hurled her to the floor.

He ground his knees into her spine and shouted in her ear, “Where's my money? Gimme! Gimme!”

Jessie came off the couch with the pistol held behind his back. He
almost touched the ragged shrapnel scar behind Sarge's right ear and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, and Sarge stiffened and walled his eyes back at Jessie clicking again behind him.

Sarge whirled off Pearl. She raced toward the kitchen. He vised Jessie's throat with one hand and snatched the gun with the other. He smashed the butt down on Jessie's reddening head until his blows snuffed the lights in the boy's eyes . . .

The police took Jessie to a hospital for scalp stitches and then to a juvenile holding station until a foster home could be found. Within two weeks Rachel's mother signed the papers to become his foster mother.

For weeks after his mother's funeral, nightmares woke him up dripping sweat. And he fell into a deep silent depression whenever he thought of her. Three years later, when he was fifteen, he slipped into Rachel's bedroom and her strait-laced mother caught them petting and giggling on the side of the bed.

Two days after he was thrown out, he came out of an all-night Westside theater. On the sidewalk down the street he saw six tough-looking Italians leap from a jalopy. They had knives and ran to attack a powerfully built young black guy. He drew a switchblade and put his back against a building.

The black guy shouted at Jessie, “Man, you gonna let these dagos waste me?”

Jessie dashed to a sawhorse over a repair hole in the street. He stomped off a leg and gripping the two by four, rushed into the fray. A lean guy with odd yellowish eyes thrust for a heart shot. Instead, he plunged his stiletto into the black guy's shoulder as he twisted away. Jessie brought the club down and saw the wrist of the hand holding the stiletto pop bone and blood. The lean guy screeched and spun to face Jessie. For an instant, Jessie stared into his eyes, radiant with pain and anger. Jessie felt stinging slashes on his back. The lean guy rocketed a foot at his crotch. Jessie turned and felt toothache pain in his hip.

He stared into Jessie's eyes and said in a hoarse whisper, “I'll remember you, and I'll get you for this, nigger.”

Jessie swung the club at his head. He heard the crunch and saw his jaw drop stupidly as bloody spittle leaked down his chin. He heard bones crack and break as he whirled and swung his club on the others. The gang fled. Jessie's and the giant's superficial stab wounds were oozing blood.

The giant said, “Man, I'm Kong.”

Jessie said, “I'm Jessie. Why was they out to waste you?”

Kong answered, “Gang war, man, gang war. C'mon, and let's get some patching.”

They went to a jalopy, and Kong drove away.

Kong said, “Them dagos is members of the Sicilian Knights. I'm the leader of the Black Devastators. That stringbean dago you busted up was Lupo Collucci, their leader.”

Jessie said, “I guess I'll need a piece to stay on this side of town.”

Kong grunted. “Jessie, you gonna need to be a Black Devastator. I'll shoot you right in. Make up your mind, brother. We need bad dudes like you to take over the Westside from Lupo.”

Six months later, Jessie had a steel plate in his skull from a bullet Lupo Collucci fired into his head in an ambush on Devastator turf in Douglas Park.

Kong had become dependent on Jessie's gems of strategy which gobbled up big chunks of Collucci's turf. Jessie's planning of creative burglaries and shakedowns of hustlers and dope pushers and their pads bulged the Devastator treasury.

Kong took a Collucci slug through a lung. When he got back to the turf, all the Devastators wanted Jessie to lead them.

Jessie's habit of taking prompt and reckless vengeance against any odds earned him the “Tit For Tat” moniker.

T. and Kong remained tight buddies. They and Kong's cousin, Buncha Grief, were ambushed one midnight on Sicilian Knights' turf. They were gunned down by Lupo Collucci and his constant
shadow and right hand, Angelo Serelli. Buncha Grief left the scene with a grazed skull.

After T.'s and Kong's wounds healed in the prison ward of county hospital, two crooked detectives put T. and Kong on show-up. Two of their shakedown victims had reported fake armed robberies. They fingered sixteen-year-old T. and Kong into Pontiac Reformatory until they were twenty-one years old.

They were put to work in the kitchen of the crowded prison and lived in a four-man cell. T. and Kong soon became the most feared cons in the tough joint.

•  •  •

Thirty days before T.'s release, Skinny Man Blake, a Devastator member, came in from the street. A half-dozen Devastators serving bits, including T. and Kong, led Blake to an uncrowded corner of the yard to get a rundown on recent street happenings in the free world.

They stripped off their shirts and lay on the grass in a semicircle around Blake. Beneath the lush June sun they shimmered like seals lolling on a jade beach.

Blake said, “I guess you all hip to the trouble the Devastators was in when we lost T. and Kong. The club died a year ago from members OD'ing, bits in these joints, square-ups with wives and squealers, and the rest Lupo Collucci's Sicilians crippled or wasted.”

T. said, “I'm gonna chase Lupo back up his mammy's ass when I hit the bricks next month.”

Blake took a puff of his cigarette. “T., lemme pull your coat to the fact Collucci is poison you don't wanta take.” He walled his eyes fearfully and almost whispered, “The dude is a Mafia man.”

Kong said, “Ain't that a bitch, T.?”

T. said, “Yeah, we been standing still in a cage while the free world is speeding.”

Blake said, “No shit, T., like when you and Kong got busted,
there was maybe a dozen hustlers making a big buck. But now, on the Westside and the Southside, boo koo niggers, poor as Lazrus a coupla years ago, is living like kings.”

Kong said, “How?”

“Offa dealing dope. Mafia dope,” Blake said. “All of 'em got new Lincolns and hogs. Their customers is everywhere, thick as bedbugs in a flop joint. They stealing and nodding and dying.”

Blake paused while the captain of the yard, with brass buttons a-dazzle, passed swinging a leaded cane and beaming his sweet psychotic smile.

Blake continued. “Remember all the fat gut niggers that usta own the numbers and policy banks? Well, all of them, except one, is got a new partner taking sixty percent off the top, and the bankers gotta meet the nut outta their ends.”

T. said, “When did the Mafia muscle in?”

Blake said, “Amos Lightfoot got a bit in Leavenworth for income tax a coupla years ago. Amos got diarrhea of the jib and woke up a dago hood from the Windy about the gold mine behind the nickel-and-dime policy game.”

One of the original Devastators said, “Who is the policy dude shaking his dick at the Mafia?”

Blake said, “Willie Poe, outta the Apple. When the Mafia first moved in they killed Poe's son and dumped a banker into an alley with a mouth fulla balls. Willie Poe tried to organize the bankers. But they was all on their knees with shit for blood.

“Coupla months ago, Poe shot and stomped two Mafia runners to death. Willie Poe is the only nigger in the history of the world that ever stuck his black ass out and told the Mafia to kiss it. He's the greatest and the baddest on the planet.”

The whistle screamed that the yard period was over. T. lagged back with Blake as the cons moved off the yard into the cell houses.

T. said, “Blake, I ain't got my nose open and nothing like that.
Understand me, for real, but about Rachel, she ain't answered my kites for six months. She died or what?”

Blake said, “T., you know I love you and I know you. Forget about her.”

T. knifed his fingernails into Blake's arm and said, “Nigger, I'll tear your arm off if you dangle me about my woman.”

Blake said, “You had to know. Well, a week after she copped the Miss Black Chicago beauty title, Dandy Ike taught her hoss is boss. He turned her out on the ‘boost.' They say she was like a magician stealing furs and C-note dresses from Marshall Fields and other ritzy Loop stores. They say she got busted, and the judge sent her to Lex Hospital to kick the thing.”

T. couldn't sleep for days. Until his release he murdered Dandy Ike dozens of way in bloody day fantasies and night dreams. They released him with a bus ticket to the Windy, a sawbuck, and a roughly cut suit that hollered, “Penitentiary!”

He got off the Greyhound in Chicago's Loop and went to the street. He blinked in the sunlight. He was shaken by the exploding bomb of traffic and the insane stampede of well-dressed people with white blank faces. T. felt filthy, inferior, and lost. A shabby alien covered with jail rot.