Run (6 page)

Like me, Jules is a businessman. And he takes care of business.

The guy’s short, built like a brick wall, his features chipped but somehow gentle, like he’s somebody’s grandfather, even though he’s not. At least I hope not. Sometimes only his eyes move: Grey ice, spinning, spinning. A lot of thinking goes on behind those eyes, playing more angles than a bagful of protractors. I tell myself that once we get inside the office, I’m not going to say a thing. Just sit down and watch what happens.

Jules is sixty years old and, like most guys his age, no matter what he does, he still looks his age. Hairpiece, a little tuck beneath the eyes, the chin, but still the guy looks sixty years old. Acts his age, too. Which means he chases anything and everything in a skirt.

Now money may not buy much these days, but it can still get you laid. And Jules gets the bang for the buck. Back when I was coming up, there was this blonde named Megan, didn’t have a clue but boy did she have a pumpkin of an ass. Then there was Sherry, only she totaled Jules’s BMW and that was that, and then this Japanese piece of work, Yuki or Yoko, who lasted about a month. Then came Connie, she studied massage therapy at the community college, and now there’s Sally, she does decorating for hotels or something, but mainly she just does. This Sally isn’t built, she’s constructed. Body by Fisher, face by Mary Kay. Does she look good? This babe looks like the Indian woman on the fucking butter package.

CK knocks on the glass, and this voice inside says: One minute.

CK looks at me and I look at CK and CK looks at me again and
then the door opens and out come the suits, single file, three of them, and they don’t look at me and I don’t look at them and then we’re inside.

Hey, Jules, I say. You’re looking good. In fact he looks like he needs a long vacation. Needs to lose about thirty pounds and that hairpiece, which looks like something the cat dragged through the gutter before he dragged it in. But hey, the man’s the boss. And like my Uncle Mort used to say, if you can’t say something nice about somebody, then shut the fuck up.

CK throws his ass down on one of the upholstered chairs and Mackie the Lackey does the same, which means that Lukas and Two Hand and I have to stand. Nobody, and I mean nobody but the girls, ever sits over there on the divan.

For a long time nobody says a word. Jules goes first, that’s the law, so sometimes we stand around like waiters while he makes phone calls or shuffles paper or diddles with himself. Nice work if you could get paid by the hour. Finally, and it’s a long, long finally, he looks up from the Famous Desk like we just walked in the door and he says:

You don’t look so good, Lane. In fact, you look like you need a long vacation.

Thank you, sir.

We got a few little things on the agenda here, then we get down to business. First, accounting says the new numbers add up on this Safari Guns place, the one out in Annandale. Nice work, Lane. But next time a little less drama, okay?

I nod my earnest yes.

Now what about this Kazanian deal. The Greek Gourmet? Pita-bread guys?

So it’s somebody else’s turn to step in the shit.

Lukas puts on his white bucks and steps forward: Checked them out like you asked, Mr. Berenger. They’re clean.

This Lukas guy is a bad act and a bad actor. He doesn’t do his job and then he finds somebody else to take the fall. But that’s not going to happen today.

I wait for Jules to begin: Okay, here’s what—

Then I give Lukas the burn:

You want them, Lukas? Because, hey, you can have them. I dropped by the place today around lunchtime, third time in the past two weeks, and let me tell you what I did. I sat, that’s what I did, I sat and I counted the customers. Half hour’s worth. This is at noontime, mind you, and they’ve got sixteen people in and out of there. Sixteen people, thirty minutes. At best they’re serving maybe fifty lunches a day, maybe fifty dinners. So tell me this, Lukas. That kind of business, what are they doing with four, five, six deliveries of meat a week? Why do they need all those trucks coming in and out, in and out?

Lukas is lost. He’s deep in a forest and he’s lost. Finally he says: I talked to these people, Mr. Berenger. I talked to them. Lukas sounds pissed off, but at me, not them. That’s his problem, and he better get it fixed.

I tell him:

They’re working outside you, pal. They’re fucking your wife and your dog and you don’t even know it.

Okay, okay, Jules says. I’ve heard enough. You get your butt out there, Lukas—

Wait a minute, Jules, I tell him. I can take care of—

He doesn’t even look at me.

Lukas, he says, I want you to get your butt out there and I want you to shut them down. And I want it done day before yesterday, you got me?

Jules—

The guy isn’t deaf. He just isn’t listening.

Okay, he says. One other thing.

Now, at last, he’s talking to me.

The Philly drop. Give it to Trey Costa.

Done, I say, and hustle my shoulders inside my suit. It’s getting warm. A little too warm. So I ask him, first thing: What’ve we got here, Jules?

Jules looks at Lukas. Get lost, he says. Lukas tries to smile at him and backsteps quickly and carefully to the door and then he’s gone.

Jules looks at CK. You told him, CK. Is that right? You told him?

CK nods.

Jules turns to me and says: He told you.

He told me squat, I say. He told me where, which is to say New York
City, which is sort of like saying, oh, Rhode Island. He told me when, which is to say this weekend. Lots of hours in there. He told me who, which is to say twenty or so million people. Though he did say niggers, so maybe that cuts things in half. Didn’t know we were dealing with gangs again, Jules. Thought we were out of that trade. Thought that kind of action might get some people locked up for something like the rest of their lives. Might get some people dead.

It might, he says. That’s why you’re going along for the ride. To make sure those things don’t happen.

Who’s going with me?

You have Mr. James. Spoken as if Two Hand isn’t in the room.

I look at Renny. He isn’t going to like what he hears, but it’s true: If you really need muscle, the kid’s not enough, Jules.

I know that, he says. His eyes squinch tight. A bloated piglet. Will you just listen? It’s taken care of. And with that he gives a little jerk of the head toward the door.

The two guys on the couch?

There’s nothing else to say. Jules starts this shuffling-around thing, pulling open the drawers of the Famous Desk, pawing inside for the matches he can’t light, the cigarettes he can’t smoke. After a while, he comes up with his favorite play toy, the Barlow knife, and he says: It’s not your problem.

These guys are our backup, and you’re telling me it’s not my problem?

It’s not your problem. This is Mr. Kruikshank’s run. Have you got a problem, CK?

All heads turn. The psycho smile, straight from a toothpaste commercial:

No problem.

Anyway, Jules is saying. These guys, they’re steady. Rock steady.

Oh, yeah, I tell him. They sure look like Gibraltar to me. Did you check out the pants on the little guy? Were they hanging off his butt or am I just imagining things? Tell me something else, Jules. And I don’t want
People
magazine, I want
Consumer Reports
. I want who and how, and what I really want to know is … why.

Which brings us to the moment. Jules points the Barlow knife
down. He stabs it right into the top of the Famous Desk, one of these antique Chippendale things, must have cost him twenty grand, and he digs awhile and he cuts a big chunk of mahogany right out of it. Looks at what he’s done like an artist taking in his canvas. Blows air. Then:

What do you do with the money I give you, Lane? Spend it, right?

I nod.

You ever put any aside?

Like in a bank?

Yeah, he says. Like in a bank. Or the market.

The bank, I tell him. Savings account, checking account. An IRA, too.

What about the market?

Nope.

He gives me that
you asshole
shake of the head. Then he starts back to work on the Famous Desk. This time it’s a gouge in the side.

Let me tell you something about investments, he says. You play the stock market, you do this thing like a dog race, and you lose. Now maybe, every once in a while, you get the long shot, but that’s not what the market is all about. Buy low, sell high, sure. But that doesn’t happen enough to keep you ahead of the game. It’s about the long haul. Meaning that the winners are the ones who know how to ride the fucking tiger.

You have to hang in there, and if you’re gonna hang in there, you’ve got to diversify. That’s what it’s all about. So I play the market, sure, and I’m playing this bullshit biotech thing at the moment. Who knows, maybe one of these monkey-murdering brain barns is gonna get us a cure for AIDS and get me more bank than a Saudi. But that’s the side bet, that’s the one for fun.

The one for winning, my friend, is what they call diversification. A diversified portfolio. I’ve got Paramount. I’ve got U.S. Steel, Glaxo. I’ve got Lockheed Martin; shit, they’re at fifty-four bucks and in three years I bet they’re topping a hundred again. Bell Atlantic. Even some iffy internationals. I have money in gold, in futures, in municipal bonds.

And there is a reason that I’m telling you this, Lane.

Yeah, I tell him. Clear as crystal, Jules. Hedge your bets. Diversify.
So you’re telling me that this pair of yard monkeys out there is Paramount Pictures?

Okay, so maybe that is going a bit far. Jules yanks the knife out of the Famous Desk and shows me its point.

Sit down and shut your pie hole.

Jules, I—

Sit down, sit right there on the divan, and shut your fucking pie hole.

I do what the man says. Like I have an alternative.

What you have out there, whether you like it or not, he tells me, is cash. Cold cash. Big cash.

Jules, I say. No offense, okay? But what you’ve got out there are a couple guys rolling in so much cash they buy their clothes at Sunny’s Surplus. Who the fuck are these guys?

He doesn’t answer, just gives me a blank look that sends me this signal that hits the top of my head like lightning.

No, Jules.

But the look says it all: Yes yes yes.

Oh, shit. I’m up off the divan. U Street?

Renny Two Hand leans in, and the kid’s got guts; he actually talks. Not the U Street Crew, Mr. Berenger.

Say it, Jules, I tell him. Say it: No, not, never.

Those tight lips tell all. It’s U Street, all right. USC. Then he says the words:

Big money.

The world is starting to turn sideways.

Right, I tell him. Oh, yeah, Jules. Big money, all right. Drug money, gang money, crazy money.

Renny starts to say something: Just how are we supposed—

Then he stops because no one is giving him the time of day. He crosses his arms and leans back into the wall. My turn again.

How many?

The floor is definitely tilting.

How many, Jules?

These two, he says. And a few more, meeting you in the Apple. This
is no big thing, Lane. This is a milk run. This is money in the bank. And they’re gonna make it happen.

Then—

Listen close now. The little one, the one with the rag on his head? That’s DeJuan Wilkes. You call him Juan E. You call him Lil D. Better yet, you call him Mr. Wilkes. He’s Doctor D’s half brother.

Oh, shit. I’m telling myself as much as him, which is when Jules says:

The other one, though, is trouble.

The other one? When the first one is the half brother of D.C.’s own King of the Streets, Deacon Bailey, Doctor D—and that’s D as in Death—it’s the
other
one who’s trouble?

The yellow one’s the real gangster. Remember the First Union pull?

Of course I remember the First Union robbery. So do most folks who live in and around the capital. Bloodbaths are hard to forget. Especially the ones videotaped in color on security cameras and broadcast on CNN for about a week after. Before the First Union gig was history, the body count ran to two guards, a teller, a customer, and some poor guy just walking his dog on the street outside. Two perps in ski masks, one with an MP 40, the other with a Mossberg pump, chewed the living daylights out of a First Union branch office six blocks from the Capitol Building while making an unauthorized withdrawal of around $40,000. In the pursuit, D.C. Police got one of them, about forty-seven times by the look of what was left of his raggedy-ass Impala. The other one got away.

Now Jules is telling me that he’s sitting right outside the door.

If he gets loose, gentlemen, make sure you’re not in the way. But that’s not gonna happen, is it? Right, Lane? CK?

No, sir, CK tells him. Then: I mean, yes, sir, it’s not gonna happen.

Jules nods back at him like this is all yesterday’s news.

Okay, so you go clue in our new business partners. Otherwise, that’s it. Except for you, Lane. We need to talk, so … gentlemen?

The party’s over. CK and the rest of the guys are dismissed, and Jules decides he’s done with his whittling. He glances down the edge of the blade, cutting the world in two. Then he puts the knife away and comes over to me, gives me the arm-around-the-shoulder routine.

Burdon, he says.

You were always a good soldier, he says.

Right now I need a soldier, he says.

A good soldier, he says.

The words are one thing. The way he’s saying them is another. They’re as phony as a kiss from a whore. But I listen, and I look like I’m listening, and that’s when it starts becoming clear.

The U Street Crew, like all good pimps and dealers, is no doubt cash-heavy, and that cash is dirty, and what do they need? Guns.

So Jules does Doctor D a deal: not just for guns, but for guns and a little laundry service … more guns and more money. Clean money. He brings some of Doctor D’s soldiers along for the ride north to keep the buyers, these New York brothers they call the 9 Bravos, in line. The Bravos don’t care, and they don’t scare either. But if shit happens, and one of the U Street Crew goes down, they’ve bought themselves war. Which means that Jules gets protection for free.