Jordan in the Time of Cold War

Other books by Seth Harwood

Jack Wakes Up

Young Junius

Triad Death Match

A Long Way from Disney

This Is Life – A Jack Palms Novel

Jordan in the Time of Cold War

This was before I got straightened out, back when I was running ragged on the Lower East Side, doing whatever I could to get by. I was betting heavy on NBA games, trying not to piss away what little I had.

Mostly I did favors for a guy named Joe S. Whatever he needed. He started me out small, but before I knew it he had me doing dirty, busting guys up when they didn't have his money, things like that and sometimes worse.

The first time I ever came down hard on one of Joe's deadbeats, I pictured someone else doing the same to me, almost like I could see it coming from not too far off. If things hadn't gone different, I would've wound up there. No doubt about it.

 
      
But that's another story for a different time. What this is about is the one time I had to go out and leave this nice girl who claimed to love me to do something for Joe.

Her name? We can call her Delilah, but if I said her real name it's not like she'd care. She's in a better place now, with lots more going on than listening to my shit. 

Back then we were both using whatever we could get out hands on. This week it'd be weed; next week coke or e or whatever. Put it up our nose, smoke it, shoot it, stick it in a vein, we didn't care; we did whatever.

This particular week she'd managed to score some opium, a black tar ball that smoked sweeter than weed. Like cooking incense. Nothing like hash. It didn't do anything particularly for me, but it felt cool to smoke, like I would wake up with amazing dreams. Delilah was real into the literature thing then; told me about these writers who'd smoked it back in the day and written crazy shit, guys with three names, like Coleridge and Langhorne and Tennyson. 

I might've been able to make something good with her, something that'd last, but back then I couldn't stop betting against the Bulls. Sure, Jordan did it all, but I kept picking his luck to run out. An injury, Pippen getting a migraine, or Horace Grant punking out.
Something.

Of course, that never came.

Instead they kept rolling their way through games, playoff series, and titles. This was the decade when, if Jordan wasn't playing baseball, that's how it was. I was in the hole to Joe for enough that I didn't have an option to say no when he called. And I hadn't heard from Joe in a while. So I knew it was gonna be bad. 

He called just after the first game of a Sunday triple-header. I think the third game was Celtics and Knicks, so I was glad when he said he didn't need me until after 10. 

Even junked out, Delilah read the whole deal on my face as Joe talked into my ear.

"He wants you tonight," she said when I hung up. She had on a tight black tank that came down to her thighs. Not like I gave a shit about sex right then with the games on
and
Joe's call, but she always had enough to make me stutter.

"So what is it?" she asked. "What'd he ask you to do?"

"He just asked?" I said.

"What?"

"You asked me like he didn't just say it. Like it's not something that's already happened."

"Bullshit. You don't have to do this."

Like that, I was already making it a bigger problem. Things changed on me like that too easily back then. Part of the reason I went straight, I guess. Someone called in the middle of a fine Sunday afternoon and it made everything crazy. Just fucked up my whole world.

Stands to reason Delilah could've done better.

"I guess you'd be better off not to know."

"Not to know you."

"What'd you say?"

She rolled over on the couch to face the wall. I was in the chair next to the phone and sitting close to the TV. If I wanted, I could've just turned up the volume again and gone back to watching. Barkley and Phoenix were getting ready to play Malone, Stockton, and the Jazz. I watched the announcers sitting on little stools in the middle of the court with players running layup lines behind them. Barkley was on his back, getting stretched out by a trainer.

"Fuck is wrong with doing a favor for Joe?"

Delilah didn't say anything. I watched her side rise up and down as she breathed.

"You know I owe him money."

"I know," she said. "So go on and do whatever you're going to do."

"It's not till later. He doesn't need me now." I stood up and walked into the bedroom and shut the door. Barkley, Stockton, Delilah: they could all do without me. Even the Mailman. Especially the Mailman.

It was technically her apartment, but when I first came in I gave her the next two months rent right up front. Just like that, to let her know where I stood. Now I walked to her closet and bent down, looked in the back behind all her shoes at the typewriter case where I kept my few things—the ones worth any real money.

The typewriter case had a lock with three numbers. I'd programmed them to 666 because I was smart like that. That's how much I wanted things to go well.

Far as Delilah knew, I had just a typewriter in there. Exactly like me to use one—me the writer. But she believed it anyway and so never touched the case. If she did, she'd know the weight wasn't right and then she'd want to know what else was inside, something that wouldn't be good for either of us.

In the case was my old man's .38, the one he taught me to shoot back in the alleyway behind our house. Bricks, bottles, beer cans, that's where I learned. 

Delilah would've not been good with me keeping a gun, not in the apartment or anywhere else. Another one of our differences.

I opened the top and took out the actual typewriter, an ancient Remington where the whole carriage lifted up when you used shift. Underneath, wedged into the bottom under the keys, was the gun. I popped the cylinder and gave it a spin. Six bullets, the full load. If things went well, I'd only need one. But you never knew how things would go. 

Delilah tried the knob and then knocked. "Why's this door locked?" 

"Just a minute." I didn't move to let her in. My eyelids felt tired, like someone had stolen the energy right out of me, taken away what was supposed to make me sit up straight and be in the world.

I could hear the TV, an announcer talking about the starting lineups for the game.

"What's in there? You holding out on me? Is that…?" She was off onto something else, looking for the next big high.

"I'll be right there."

After a few minutes, she gave up. I could hear the TV click off and then the flick of our lighter. The handle of the .38 had gone warm in my hand. I suppose that's what I'd wanted. I pushed the typewriter case back into the closet and tucked the gun into her dresser's top drawer, underneath what was left of my clean underwear.

In the living room, she was on the loveseat again, nodding off into her high. She looked up at me for a few seconds, then stopped. I wanted to turn the TV on again, but didn't. Instead I lit a cigarette and went to the kitchen to make coffee. It was going to be a long night.

Later, after the third game of the triple-header had ended—my last bet drew me even on the day when the Celtics won—I went back into the bedroom and put the gun down the back of my pants. She was there when I turned.

"What's that?"

"What?"

She cocked her head to the side and squinted. "Jeff, do not start this shit with me."

"It's a gun. There. How about that?"

"A gun in
my
apartment?"

Something about the way she said it, taking full ownership for her place, pissed me off. I wanted to walk out right then, but knew I'd need her for an alibi later. "You know, baby. Just something I had to have on hand for that odd time. I was actually keeping it in a locker outside the apartment until yesterday."

She tilted her head. I don't suppose either of us believed me. I definitely could've put more into selling the lie. She stayed quiet. I wanted her to go back in the other room, toot out on the opium again, and nod into a high. If we'd had something stronger that week, something like H or dust, this might have been a smaller problem.

"Know what?" I asked her.

"What?"

"I'm leaving." I grabbed my jacket off the chair and pushed past her out of the room.

"Good," she said.

"Good."

I didn't stop in the living room; left my smokes on the coffee table next to the black chunk and kept going. Joe didn't need me for hours, but what could I do?

The bar around the corner was called Anderson's. She'd know to find me there if she cared to look. All I had to do was stay sober enough to do what needed doing and hang tough.

I drank two beers staring at the digital clock behind the bar. The fat bartender didn't give two shits as she poured shots to her meager customers and shoveled pints across the wood as chasers.

"Damn motherfuckers!" Some assholes at the other end of the place had been fighting for a while about who would win the finals, going back and forth about the Lakers, Pistons, and Celts. Problem was, the guy who thought the Lakers would win didn't know what kind of trouble that could put him in around here. 

I got up to walk it off, stepped out of the bar, and turned north on 3rd Ave. Joe said I'd find his guy in the 20s on the west side, at Billy's Topless. I knew the place, of course. Not too many sleazebags like myself who didn't. It wasn't my favorite, but I knew enough guys who made it their afternoon ritual that I'd been in.

Took me close to an hour to make my way up and across Manhattan. I could've been there sooner, but took it slow. When I got there around 9:30, I saw they'd changed the sign. Just like that. Some city regulations had probably gotten upset about them being topless, and so now Billy had set an awkward "S" in the middle so it read Billy's Stopless. Well, good for everyone. None of us were planning to stop.
 

There were guys lined up before the stage, waving dollar bills in front of their face. Just like any other night. My guy was sitting at the bar and he was easy to make. Joe called him Cold War; told me I'd recognize him easy by the Gorbachev birthmark on his forehead. If he didn't have an accent straight off the Staten Island Ferry, I might've thought he actually was the old Russian bastard. That, and the fact he had a mustache, too.

"Joe says you owe him money." I didn't waste time, just clapped my hand onto his shoulder, cut off his talk with the bartender, and laid it out. That was how Joe liked things done: clean and efficient.

"That right?" He turned to face me and my hand fell off him. Had a gut on him, one real nice one, and a white polo shirt with a white Jordache jacket to match. "You his piss boy now?"

This was where I should've hit him; how things were supposed to go. It's just that I hate to break up a good show. The girls on the stage had their G-strings stripped off and had dropped onto their backs to wave their legs open and shut. Who could resist? Maybe I was distracted.

Cold War hauled off and hit me in the gut then and it flashed in my mind that I might not have been the right man for this job. Things with Delilah could've probably predicted that.

Then Cold War stood up and took me by the arm, straightened me up to look him in the eye. He started to say something, but that was when I kneed him in the chestnuts hard enough to hurt one of the girls up on the stage. He gasped and tried to buckle, but I held him up, backing him away from the bar and into the john. Fuck if I had any choice in the matter. Like I said, if I didn't do this to him, next thing there'd be somebody showing up to do it to me.

We went into the stall, the two of us, and I backed him into the wall. The toilet was an old one with the tank up above and a long chain to make it flush. I caught Cold War up under his fat chin between his neck rolls, and pushed his head back into the porcelain tank. Once I did it, and then again a second time,
hard.
I saw some blood trickle down behind his ear.

"You hear me now?" I asked him.

He nodded.

"I don't care about the money. That's for Joe. What I'm here for is the beating. The money, you get that to Joe. Our business? That's just the blood."

I took the gun from the back of my pants and jabbed it into his stomach hard like it was a knife. I wished it were; maybe that should've been the tool for this job. I stabbed him again with it and then again and he tried to double forward. "You gonna remember this?"

"I swear I will," he said. "I'll get Joe his money."

"Joe said to make sure you remember. Seems to me like this is something you could forget about in a couple weeks."

Someone tried to come into the bathroom then behind me, and I kicked the door shut. "We're not finished," I yelled, to the guy and Cold War both.

I was getting ideas then, things I wanted to do, ways I could get back at him for all the things I'd got wrong in my life. I thought about hanging him up by the toilet chain, stringing his ass up and pulling it tight around his neck, choking him out long enough to leave a mark. I thought about looping the chain around one of his wrists.