Run (16 page)

Oh, yeah? I tell him.

Oh yeah, he says. You got somethin to tell me, and the sooner you tell me, the better.

Oh, yeah? I tell him.

Oh yeah, he says. Cause we’re almost there.

Oh, yeah? I tell him. Because it’s a sign of weakness to ask him where, and I think I have a pretty good idea about this there place, anyway. It’s one of those places, been there, done that, and it’s probably that rat-trap remains of a gas station up ahead, no, no, come to think of it, that clump of trees behind the station looks more like the place. Yeah, that’s it, that’s … there.

He weaves the Chevy something past the rusted Sunoco sign and through the pumps and around to the back of the station. I don’t even wait for him to tell me to get out of the car. I just dismount and head for the trees.

Hey, he says, hustling from behind the driver’s seat to catch up with me. He’s pulled that Ruger .38.

Let’s get it over with, I tell him, and I duck under some branches, fighting my way deeper into the trees until I find a nice pocket of grass. It’s a shitty place to have to die, but when you think about it,
there’s no good place to die. This looks like a little bit of peace, though, so I say:

Pull the fucking trigger and let me get some sleep.

You a bad man, Burdon Lane. A real bad man. You gonna let me cap you, that it? You gonna step off right here and now?

Believe it or not, I manage to yawn.

I’m tired and I’m hurting, I tell him. So just … do it.

Tell me why, he says. You gonna go down for your crew? This some kind of white-boy G thing?

Maybe you don’t know nothing about that.

Me? Probly not. I’m just a nigga from South East D.C. But you, devil, you capped the Reverend Gideon Parks.

I didn’t kill—

And here I stop because I started to say nobody, but I sure did kill somebody and then I killed somebody else, didn’t I? So I just say:

I didn’t kill Gideon Parks.

You mean you didn’t pull the trigger.

Listen. Believe what you want, pal, but I knew jack nothing. It was a run. A meet. A deal. Money for guns, that was it. And that’s all I do. That’s my job. Money for guns, guns for money.

That’s all you do, then why you wantin to get dead?

Because you want me to tell you something, and I’m not talking.

You gonna go down for them guys? You been played, Burdon Lane.

Could be, I tell him. Could be that you been played, too.

Don’t crack wise with me, white boy.

Easy thing to say, I tell him, when you got a gun in your hand.

Ain’t that the truth, he says, and it’s the funniest truth I’ve ever heard, sort of sounds like the thing you put on top of a house: troof.

I take another pass at this stand of trees. It really is a shitty place to die and I don’t feel like dying yet. And this Jinx guy, he doesn’t feel like killing me. Yet. So that means there’s another game to play. I tell him:

You think I’m gonna tell you something, pal, then you’re wrong. So you got a problem: You can kill me, but then you don’t get to find out what you want to know. But if you don’t kill me, well, then you got to live with me. And that ain’t gonna be easy.

No shit, he says. He armpits the Ruger and stands there for a long, long while before making his move.

So, Mr. Lane, he says. Where we goin?

Funny thing, I tell him. That’s what I was about to ask you.

No, he says. That’s what you bout to tell me.

I just smile and he shakes his head.

You worse than my old grandmomma. Where we goin, you fuckin ghost, is to find your mothafuckin friends. The meetin place. The rendezvous. The one nobody told me or Juan E about. And it ain’t Morristown, neither.

Really? I tell him.

Don’t you really me, punk. Maybe I should just dig you a ditch.

Yeah, right. Sticks and stones, pal. Sticks and fucking stones. You know you don’t want to kill me, and hey, I know you know. So—

So what?

So tell me about Morristown. Why it ain’t Morristown.

I know things too, fool.

Like I told you, pal. I know you know. What I want to know is: How do you know?

I called me that 1-900 number, he says. Dionne Warwick on the Psychic Hotline.

Yeah, well, I hope she told you how you’re gonna take down whoever you find wherever it is you’re going. With a couple handguns or whatever you got.

Ah, he says. But I ain’t gonna be doin it by myself, now am I?

Guess he’s got me there.

He checks the horizon, says:

And the sooner we get started, the sooner we get done.

He straightens his sunglasses.

Okay, white boy. I’m drivin, you’re ridin. Where we goin?

So I’m back in the front seat of that Chevy something, shaking out the cramps in my arms and legs and wishing I could get the set of steak knives out of my spine. But I’m not telling this Jinx guy where we’re going, I’m telling him how we’re getting there, which is to say I’m telling him to keep driving south, to stay on the New Jersey Turnpike, to go past the part where the highway divides so the trucks can go one way and the
cars can go another way, past the part where it comes back together again, past the part with three lanes and into the part with two lanes, to keep driving and driving and driving. South.

I wonder whether CK was lying about the second rendezvous. I mean, with what was about to go down, would the guy really tell me the rendezvous? CK’s not that stupid. But he sure is that arrogant.

Hey, I say to Jinx. Don’t suppose you’d let me get into my duffel bag?

Jinx doesn’t answer. He makes that Chevy something leap lanes; the guy must be doing eighty and I’m not sure I like the feeling. Just what we need are some Jersey jackboots busting our chops for speeding.

Hey, man, I tell him. Ease back. I only want to get some aspirin.

You hurtin? Shit, man, you shouldn’t be hurtin. You a bad man. A big bad man. One of the hitters that did the Reverend Gideon Parks.

I told you. I told you, pal. And I ain’t gonna tell you again. I didn’t shoot the guy.

Naw, he says to me. Naw, you didn’t shoot. You just watched. Is that what you’re tellin me? You just watched the parade passin by.

Hey, I say to him. Doesn’t much matter what I say, does it?

Wrong, he says, and then he adds: As rain.

I mean, the guy’s dead. Does anything else matter?

Fuck, yeah, he says to me. Man was dead already. Don’t you think he knew that? Don’t you think he knew he was walkin round with the crosshairs on his head? Don’t you think he knew the time was gonna come? Shit.

What matters, Jinx says, and here comes that word again, is the truth. What people know, what people remember. The time came for him, maybe sooner than he thought, but who knows, maybe later. So the Reverend Parks gets a memorial service, he gets all sorts of speeches, he gets some schools and streets named after him, maybe he even gets a day named after him. But he’s gone, the man is gone, and pretty soon people remember what they been told to remember bout him, and they don’t remember what he did and they sure don’t remember what he stood for. We got our martyrs, man. We got a few too many of em. What we’re missin is the message. We’re good at that, rememberin the man and forgettin the message. Forgettin the truth. You know what I’m sayin?

Right about now I don’t know anything. I don’t want to know anything. I’m just listening and thinking this one through.

Meantime, Jinx says, they got the perfect patsies, don’t they? Bunch of no-good gangstas. Gun-totin pushermen. Worst kind of niggas. Probly say it was rap music made em do it. So hey, Burdon Lane, what do you say? Was it rap music up there? Is that what it was, made things so crazy?

He reaches over and stabs at the radio, gets static, punches at buttons and gets a Country and Western tune, punches again and gets the voice, that voice, the serious voice of death and disaster, the one they must teach in Newscasting 101, the voice that’s saying: Blah blah Gideon Parks blah. Blah blah blah shot blah blah dead. Blah statement blah blah White House blah the President blah blah blah blah blah this tragic blah blah blah civil rights leader blah blah life cut short blah blah blah warring street gangs blah U Street Crew blah blah blah 9 Bravos blah blah methamphetamine blah blah explosion blah blah blah blah still at large—

How do they know all that shit already? Jinx says to me. U Street? The Bravos? And what’s with this … meth lab?

I know what he’s thinking. The Feds tried that one at Waco. I remember passing the hotel room with Toons and Fryer and those satchels. Looked like Semtex to me. And it sure felt like it. The shit just keeps getting deeper. Then:

Still at large? Jinx says to me.

Yeah, I tell him, as the newscast cycles through sound bites of shock and disbelief and sorrow before getting back to the blah blahs.

A little something to keep the boys in blue busy, I tell him. Then I tell him more than I ought to tell him, but I want to remind the guy why he needs to keep me alive. They wasted the Bravo ringleader, I tell him. That Daddy Big guy. They killed him, hell, they killed them all, but they dragged his body out, probably planning to dump him somewhere deep. Nobody’s gonna find him, but a lot of folks with badges are gonna waste a lot of time looking. And hey, it’s gonna make for a lot of search warrants in Harlem and the Ville, maybe even in D.C.

He’s letting that one simmer and the whole thing is a beauty, it’s a piece of work, because he’s right, they’ve got the perfect patsies, they’re
dealers and they’re thugs and they’re killers and they’re black. And best of all, they’re dead. Very, very dead. Talk about tidy.

Jinx punches the buttons on the radio again and there’s no one talking, there’s just music
thrown like a stone in my vast sea
and I look at him but he can’t know, he doesn’t know, he can’t possibly know
I opened my eyes to take a peek
and I reach for the
POWER
button
to find that I was by the sea
and turn the damn thing off.

Here’s what we’re gonna do, I tell him. Take the next exit. You decide which way you want to go, west or east. You got even odds; maybe you’ll guess right. If you don’t, well, maybe I’ll tell you, maybe not. Whichever way we go, I’m gonna start telling you to take turns. Maybe they’ll take us where we’re going, maybe not.

You scared of somethin? he says.

No, I tell him. It’s just a good day for a drive. You take care of your business, which is driving the car, and I’ll take care of mine.

So we take the next exit and we go right and then we go right again, and I tell him to take a left and we take a left and we go for a while before I tell him to take another left and after enough of this wandering around south Jersey, we get to what looks like the middle of nowhere, which is where it is, and I tell him to stop the car and get it over onto the shoulder of the road.

Time to walk, I tell him, and he’s no dummy, he knows we’re not going to drive right up to the place. So he’s out of the Chevy something and he keys the trunk and takes out my duffel bag and he says:

Lead on.

But I ain’t going nowhere, which is what I tell him. Not yet.

I nod to my duffel bag and I tell him: Hey. You know what that Bible guy said about walking through that valley? The one with the shadow of death? The guy who was fearing no evil?

Yeah, Jinx says to me. I know him. Book of Psalms.

Well, that guy, he was carrying a Glock. Two of them, in fact. So what do you say? If you find what you’re looking for out there, you’re gonna need the help.

Doubt it, he says. And there ain’t nothin in the King James version bout Glocks. But maybe in the King Jinx version—

He reaches into the duffel, slips out the first of my pistols, hands it to me, then gives me the second one.

While I’m popping and checking the magazines, he says:

How do I know you ain’t gonna find a time to pull one of those things and blast me?

You don’t, I tell him. And you know what? That’s the sort of thing that makes life so interesting.

So we diddybop through the trees, staying low, and there’s my new pal Jinx doing the bob-and-weave and I know for a fact, looking at him move, that he’s been in both kinds of jungles: the grey and the green. Moves like a cat. No doubt bites like one, too.

He’s got that Ruger revolver, carries it out and down, finger off the trigger and pointing down the barrel. Definitely a professional.

I’ve got the duffel bag looped over my shoulder and the Glocks parked back in my holsters. Jinx follows my lead but keeps a good interval, about ten yards behind me. Sooner or later he takes my cue and slides behind a tree trunk as the foliage starts to clear. Checks his pistol and brings it up to his shoulder, at the ready.

Stay loose, man, I tell him—and maybe myself. Just stay loose.

I nod ahead to what we can see of the warehouse, the first in a series of low-slung two-story jobs that are owned by Vanegar Chemical Supply, and I know nothing about the company but I know a lot about the line of automobiles parked on the far side of the warehouse next to a concrete viaduct. I’ve driven a few of those cars in my time.

There’s two ways we can do this thing, I say to Jinx: My way or the wrong way. So stay close. And whatever you do, don’t shoot until I say to shoot.

Without another word we work the tree line to the cover closest to the warehouse, a swatch of brush that’s nearly man height. I look at Jinx and he shrugs, nothing doing, so I take a peek. What I count is about a hundred yards of grass and weeds between us and the building. We’ve got pistols. Maybe they can do it in the movies—shit, they can do anything in the movies—but there’s no way we can use handguns across that kind of distance and have a prayer of hitting anything but empty space.

Check out the windows, I tell him. The backside of the warehouse is dressed in cheap aluminum siding, with a pair of windows and a fire door at its midpoint. If someone’s there, we’re seen as soon as we break cover; if not, maybe it’s a way inside. Sunlight is on the glass, so it’s one big guess about whether anyone’s at home.

My guess is no, and Jinx’s must be the same, because when I step through the brush he steps out from the tree line like he’s joining me on a picnic. There’s nothing doing, nothing at all but sunshine and blue skies, and I’m thinking we should skirt the right side of the warehouse, use the trash Dumpster there for cover, but I’m also thinking it’s quiet. Just like they say in the movies: too quiet.