Young Junius, page 14
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
With her hair wet, Rock could smell something like fruit, not an apple, something better, like a fresh fruit you would only get in the tropics. She smelled good. Then she leaned across the table, reached in front of his face for the pack of smokes. As she did, her smell overwhelmed him; this scent that he couldn’t describe, a soap he’d never known before, washed over his face and down into the hot place near his lungs. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the robe fall open to reveal the lower curve of her breast and its nipple. He wanted badly to put that nipple into his mouth—her whole breast!—and he pushed into her, his nose and mouth against her hot skin still wet from the shower. She let him touch her like that for a moment before she pulled away.
“Funny,” she said. “That’s what I was hoping you’d do.” She pulled a Kool from the pack and brought it to her lips. “Light me?” she asked, dropping the pack onto the table.
He did and then cleared his throat. He was ready to lay down his proposition.
“I—” Something caught in his mouth, stopped right there at the front of his idea. “I was thinking,” he said.
Someone knocked at the door, and Rock wasn’t sure if this was him getting saved or rudely interrupted. “Hang on,” he told her, then got up and went to cross the living room. He passed by the couch with the leopard-skin blanket draped over its back, reached the door just as more knocks came.
“This better be fucking important,” he said.
Black Jesus’s voice came through the door: “Yeah, it is.”
Rock unlocked and opened the door partway, then stopped its progress with his foot. In the hallway stood Guardy Little, the one everyone else called Black Jesus because of the Jheri curl he used to wear. Now he kept his hair buzzed short, tight on the sides and on top, practically bald, but he couldn’t get away from the name. The motherfuckers in this community could be ruthless like that, completely unforgiving like they were when Rock moved to Cambridge with his mother back in the early ’70s from Haiti. For the few Haitian kids in his class at Tobin, life had been a daily hell, and especially for him, being just off the boat and still speaking with a heavy Creole accent. Yeah, they had made things hard, but sometimes he wanted to thank them, show his appreciation for hardening him early. And sometimes he did show thanks in the form of small discounts or an extra hit in the weed bags he sold.
When he joined the marines at seventeen, he knew he’d learned a few things about toughness from those kids at school and from the towers. Enough so he wasn’t bothered by anything the US government ever asked him to do—even the odd missions in Haiti and Central America, the ones no one ever mentioned out loud.
Now he was giving back an even bigger gift: the wonders of crack cocaine, with its bigger hits, faster highs, and stronger addiction. This community was lucky to have him around.
Black Jesus tried to push the door open, but Rock’s foot held it in place. “What up?” he asked.
“Some shit on the roof. Shots fired.”
Rock could see Hammer behind Guardy showing a funny look on his face: he was one of the ones who did the shooting, that much was clear. And with some luck, he’d done a good job, not wasted shots.
“Who started this?”
Black Jesus turned toward Hammer. “Someone up on Marlene’s roof. Bucked out and we followed up.”
“They was packing,” Hammer said. “Think I clipped one of Marlene crew.”
Rock nodded. It was bad news, but if it was the worst he heard all day he could live with that. “Good job,” he said. “Now?”
Black Jesus frowned. “Now there cops in the towers. The other towers. They know to stay outside 412.”
“Good. You shut down sales below the second floor?”
He nodded. “No lobby and no outside. Both shut off.”
“Then people know to hit the landings. Keep up eight and sixteen. Nothing else. Who downstairs on watch?”
“Roughneck.”
“Good.” Rock started to shut the door, but Black Jesus stood in the way. “What else?”
“I—” He shook his head and stepped back. “We got things under control.”
Rock started to shut the door, then asked, “You seen Clarence?”
“Nah. C Dub ain’t been around all day. Where he at?”
“Motherfucker supposed to be looking for young Junius.”
“Oh,” Black Jesus nodded and stepped into the hall. “The niggah who shot Lamar? Word to that.”
When he closed the door, Rock turned back toward his Berry. She slipped her hand down the front of her white robe, loosening the belt until it fell open to show she had absolutely nothing on underneath. He saw her trim dark patch of hair and just about forgot everything else in the world.
“Come here,” she said, sliding up onto his glass table and opening her legs to show him the fine moist coochie. She took a last hard drag off her Kool and ground it out.
“Fuck,” he said, taking off his own robe as fast as he could. “Here I come.”
40
The hall was dim, and no one was around. As Junius stepped out onto the cheap carpet, he closed the apartment door softly. When it clicked, he was out. He wished he had a watch, thinking he could try to come back at a specific time, before Elf got crazy and knew he’d been left. He’d get back before two, he decided. If he saw a clock.
He headed to the stairs, knowing it wasn’t safe or smart to take the elevator with police in the building. At first he wasn’t sure which direction made more sense, up or down, but as he got closer to the stairway, he decided that up only limited his options, cut him off from choices. He’d been to the roof already and that hadn’t gotten him anything but shot at. Maybe if he had a bigger gun he could do something at long range from up there, but this Tec-9 wasn’t making it.
Going down he’d have choices, options.
As he made his way toward the lobby, Junius saw police knocking on doors and talking to residents about what they’d seen. He passed a few officers on the stairs who barely noticed him.
That they were knocking on doors, trying to find people home on a weekday to talk about shots fired on the roof, that was just crazy. They had a better chance of finding out what happened if they stood in front of the building with a megaphone, asking the shooters to come out.
Here he was, fourteen, over six feet tall, and carrying a loaded semi-auto in his pants, and no one stopped him or said boo.
In the lobby, he looked outside and saw two cops standing together talking. One of them was waving at an Oldsmobile as it drove off, a 98 that looked too much like the car he’d seen Clarence in earlier, the one that almost ran them down on Mass Ave. Then the older cop, a white guy with crazy hair, started yelling and pointing in the other cop’s face. The first cop was getting chewed a fresh one, a big one, and Junius shook his head. He hated to see a brother, even a cop, getting treated like that.
He looked out toward the street and saw a total of four police cars. With the boys upstairs knocking doors and some still no doubt looking over the scene on the roof, Junius guessed they’d be around a couple hours. He took a good look over at 412 and didn’t see any officers. He wondered if they even realized 412 was where the shots that killed Jason had come from.
Junius watched the lobby and saw Milk, one of Roughneck’s boys. He wondered again about the sign Rough had made up on the roof.
Milk looked like just another soldier, and Junius doubted whether the message from Rough would extend to his boy. He couldn’t just walk right in to 412, could he?
The cops on the front walk yelled at each other for a bit longer, or really the white one yelled at the black one, and then the white cop pointed toward 410 and the other cop headed off in that direction.
Junius looked away just as the white cop turned around. He faced Junius and examined him with cop’s eyes. Junius shoved his hands into his pockets, acted like he was waiting for a ride, someone coming to pick him up from the direction of Route 2.
The cop stepped forward, and Junius could feel the cold air rush in when he opened the door.
“You.” The cop pointed at Junius. Even though he knew no one else was around, Junius glanced back toward the stairs.
“Right here.” The cop jabbed his badge. “You see anything suspicious here today, young man? Anything I should know about?”
Junius had to think hard about his answer. Anything strange? What wasn’t strange?
Finally he just shook his head. “Nah, Officer. I ain’t seen nothing.”
“You live here in these towers?”
Junius said he was just visiting.
“Visiting who?”
Now Junius wanted to say “Marlene,” that he was here consulting the Oracle to find out who killed his brother—and how were the cops doing at solving that case? But this was a Cambridge cop and Temple got killed in Somerville. They probably didn’t even share the case.
“Just visiting a friend on sixteen.”
The cop asked for his friend’s name, and Junius gave the name Todd Bridges, who played Willis on Diff’rent Strokes. He didn’t know the name of the kid sitting watching TV with Elf, but neither would the cop. “Apartment 1611,” Junius said.
The cop nodded, acted like he was writing it all down.
“You got anybody looking at that building?” Junius asked, pointing to 412.
The sergeant shook his head. “No. Should we?”
Junius lifted his shoulders. “I’m just saying. There’s three buildings—”
“We’ll get to it. Three buildings and you come here to 411, want us to go check out 412. Let me guess: someone you visiting is down with Marlene’s crew, right? You don’t like Rock?”
“Who?”
The cop laughed. “Stick to the day job, kid. Your acting career ain’t going to work out.” He patted Junius on the shoulder and started toward the elevator.
41
Patrolman Gary Johnson stared off in the direction the 98 had gone: the dirtbag had driven past 410 and made a turn toward the back side of the towers. He hadn’t even taken off, just driven around the lot.
And now O’Scullion the scallion wanted him to check out 410 for anything that seemed out of whack. Well, he could do that for old Onion Head. He walked into 410 through the front entrance, and the lobby was empty. That was definitely suspicious. These towers crews never left a lobby unguarded, without someone watching or selling. Something was going down connected to the shooting on the roof.
Johnson looked at the elevator and decided to play his other hunch: to go after the 98 instead of knocking on doors. His knuckles hurt just thinking about twenty-two floors of it.
He went into the right-hand stairwell, then back around to the rear hallway. Yet another problem with these damn towers and trying to police them was these back doors: sure, they stayed locked from the outside, for the most part, but from the inside you could always slip out, making the buildings impossible to lock down.
There was always another way out.
Johnson took the back door and came out among the garbage dumpsters along the rear of the building. He almost tripped over a broken-open trash bag, stepped past it and saw another one, this one hanging off the side of the dumpster and spilling half its contents onto the ground. A flap of white plastic blew in the breeze. He looked for the 98 but didn’t see it.
“Shit,” he said. Around the dumpsters lay a scattered mess of trash bags, both black and white. Looking up, it was pretty obvious what was going on: instead of bringing their trash down through the lobby and out the back door, some of the residents on the back side were just dropping their bags out the windows, hoping they landed in the dumpster where they belonged.
Looking at the debris, Johnson could guess what floor the bags had been dropped from—just based on how badly split apart they were.
He stepped farther into the back lot. Fewer cars were parked here, and as he went along, he saw the back half of the Olds, its taillights go on and then off as it parked.
“Motherfucker,” Johnson said. He thought about whether O’Scullion the Onion would be checking up on him in 410 and realized he didn’t care. This guy in the 98 was more suspicious than anything he’d see in an hour of knocking on doors.
He started around the back of 411. As he did, he heard the slam of a car door—one of the doors of the 98.
Clarence slammed his door closed and headed around the side of 412. He might check in with Rock and see about the cops, or he might go up to his apartment to kick back, hit some Ready. He wasn’t sure which, but did know he had to lose Pooh before either. No way he was sharing his pipe.
“Yo,” he said, stopping along the side of the building. “Drop around back and make sure no cops saw us.”
“Yeah?” Pooh stopped, looking hurt that Clarence didn’t want him along. The welt on his forehead was starting to calm already, even without ice. Clarence remembered when he could get in a fight and tagged up like that, then let it go away on its own. Back when he was young things healed so easily. Now, catch a punch and he had a yellow bruise on his face a week later.
Fuck good getting old did you.
Clarence shook his head. “Yeah. Drop around back and meet me down the lobby in ten minutes.”
“Cool. Ok.” Pooh took off, heading toward the old train tracks.
Clarence knew those tracks and the space under the rusty metal bridge about a hundred yards down where he used to hide and smoke weed when he was even younger than Pooh, hiding from the rain or snow or school—the world even, whatever else was out there.
Alone in the lobby of 411, Junius found himself in a world of choices. He felt the Tec-9 pressing into his waist, a gun he was supposed to use to kill Black Jesus and Rock. Both of these men seemed far off. He didn’t know much about them or where he was now.
But he did know enough about 411 to understand how the stairways worked, where the roof access was, and where you could hide yourself if you had to. He guessed 412 had the same layout, which could help.
The 412 building loomed above, reaching up beyond where Junius could see. Coming to the towers was a risk, a big one, but going into 412 was like entering a fortress of enemy power, something like the hall of mirrors that Bruce Lee went into at the end of Enter the Dragon.
Junius knew the problem and the situation, also that his path lay right outside, just in front of him. His path took him to 412. He could see the simple gray concrete sidewalk on the other side of the glass, out in the cold.
He looked at the building again and saw Milk disappear from the lobby. A moment later, Roughneck appeared in his place, standing by the front entrance. This, Junius recognized, was a sign.
42
Johnson walked along the back of the buildings toward the car. He saw the guy and his boy both get out of the Olds, then they disappeared around the side of the building. When that happened, Johnson started to run. If they were heading up into one of the towers, especially 412, the one Onion O’Scullion was keeping the patrols out of, he’d have to catch them before they hit the elevator and left the lobby.
He crossed the back of 411 and the gap to 412, thought for a second about using it to come up toward the front again, but then realized if he did, Onion Head would see him. So he continued around the back of 412, got a little more than halfway, and that was when he saw the boy come back around to the Olds.
His eyes lit up when he saw Johnson running at him, so Johnson slowed. “Hey,” he said, from about twenty-five feet away. “Stop.”
The boy stopped.
Johnson came up on him slowly, watching to see if the other guy would pop out from somewhere. “Put your hands up.”
“Why?”
Johnson touched the handle of his gun. “Are you fucking joking? Why?”
“I don’t see no point to why you doing this, Officer. What I do wrong?” He raised his hands.
Johnson was about ten feet from him now. He looked at the side of the building and didn’t see the man. “What’s your name, son?”
“Pooh.”
“What?”
“Jacob Stevens. I’m just going home now, man. You know, up to 412.”
“That’s good.” Johnson started patting him down, looking for what, he didn’t know, but doing it just the same. From the look on his face, Jacob Stevens could use a weapon to protect himself. Johnson found a student T pass that read “Steven Jacob” on the back.
“You sure your name Jacob Stevens, now?”
He smiled. “You know. Jacob Stevens, Steven Jacob. They call me what they call me. To me? I don’t care. Pooh be fine.”
Johnson turned to look back in the direction he’d come. He wasn’t worried about his back, just couldn’t believe this line of shit and needed to get away from it for a second. But when he looked away, he saw they were alone in the back of the towers here, just him and this bullshit-spewing kid who would not give him a straight answer.
He studied the gray, rough asphalt of the back lot.
“You know there was a shooting here today, Steven Jacob?” He could feel it coming already, the stupid answer, but more than that too: he felt his whole right arm go tense from the strain of how hard he was making a fist. His neck hurt with it.
“Nah, yo. I didn’t know that. I didn’t—”
That was when Johnson spun, brought his fist from down around his knee and twisted his hips to bring the punch around hard, lining it right up with the boy’s jaw and—bang!—knocked him clear over and onto the hood of the Olds.
Damn if he didn’t hear the crack of a bat, and just like that something came loose in all the tension he had from the bullshit details, O’Scullion’s crap, too many stupid answers, all of it.
The hood of the car made a pop when Pooh slid off it onto the ground.
Johnson watched him lying by the bumper. “How about that shit, young man? You got a stupid answer for that?”
He’d never knocked anyone out before, and maybe the chance to throw a wide-open cold cock like this was just too much.
