Young Junius, page 26
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
The older man gave a slight nod.
“I figured. But you don’t have to worry, he didn’t get hurt in that shooting we had up on the roof. I seen to that myself.”
“Shooting?”
Pickup shrugged. “Just some shit. But I got him out. He all right last I seen him.”
Pickup saw more of the other man’s face now, and that he hadn’t been drinking today, though it looked like that was having an effect for the worse—his skin looked gray, his eyes bloodshot and small.
“But now he up in the wrong house.”
Pickup wished he had something he could offer the old man for a pull. He patted his jacket where the Tec was, hitting it extra hard with his ring finger so his gold clinked against the steel of the gun. “It be all right, though. I’m here to help him, so he be ok.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that for him. He in enough trouble already.” The father knew what he was saying, had seen enough to know exactly what his son was involved in. “This my family,” he said. “And I take care of it.”
“Can’t do that now,” Pickup said. “This be my business. He in my towers.”
Aldo Posey turned away; he faced the elevator doors again and took another step forward, moving away from Pickup.
He shook his head and said, “Leave my boy alone,” without meeting Pickup’s eyes. Then he pushed the call button.
Rock heard one of the boys he’d just sent down cry out in pain from the stairwell. By the sound of it, someone had shot him up bad. Rock could only hear the screams.
When he glanced down that end of the hall, he saw Dee, the other one, staring back, unsure of what to do. Rock pointed one finger and then made a pronounced movement down so Dee knew with no uncertainty where he was supposed to go. If someone was shooting at you, you crept up on them and took them out. You did not turn around and ask for more orders.
If he’d had this crew with him when he went through boot camp for the marines, they’d have all gotten buried. He looked at Dee again, saw him start down like he was supposed to. Then again, even back in boot camp he’d been older than these boys by a few years.
He made his way toward Hammer’s end of the hall, Bonnie still barking in his apartment.
“Yo, Hammer,” Rock called. “Please hurt those motherfuckers!”
From the stairwell the shotgun blasted out, followed by the sound of Hammer chambering a new cartridge and shooting again.
“Yeah,” Rock yelled. He let off a spray from his Uzi down the stairs, cutting into the plaster.
“Hear that, motherfuckers? This Rock, baby! Coming to get ya!”
He stepped up the hall.
75
Seven saw Ness still holding his hands up, crawling back up the stairs without his gun. Tears glistened on his cheeks.
Rock was yelling on the floor above them—yelling and shooting off his Uzi for no cause. Seven would be damned if he let one of his buildings come to shit in a fight like this. Shooting up your own walls and doors? It just didn’t make sense.
But Rock probably figured he’d bring in workmen tomorrow, get them to spackle and paint over the whole mess for just a few hundred dollars. He was probably right, but the people who lived here—they’d find bullet holes in their walls, their space torn up like a war went down. And how could they not care, not know everything was wrong? Even if they weren’t home now, cowering in their bathrooms as they heard the shots, they would know and realize it was time to move. If they could.
But they had no choice. That was why they’d stay; there was simply nowhere else for them.
Maybe Rock figured a few hundred dollars’ worth of spackle was a small price to pay for defending his home, but Seven wanted something better for the people who lived here: better than watching those around them turned to zombies by a new drug, better than living in a war zone.
Seven wanted to explain himself to the people in the hallway. He wanted to tell them why he was doing this: for them.
Rock yelled down for Hammer to start shooting, and Hammer bucked off another shotgun blast on the stairs.
He loaded again, and Seven was watching for him, but he didn’t bring the Tec across his body fast enough.
Hammer spun into view and leveled the shotgun at his waist. Seven saw the barrel flash and he squeezed himself up against the doorway to hide. Buckshot chipped the wall in front of him, but the bulk of the spray carried on down the hall. He felt the front of his sweatshirt, looked down to see if he was hit. He wasn’t, but standing in the middle of this hallway where people could take shots at him from both ends was no kind of place to be.
“Fuck this,” he said, resigning himself to damaging Rock’s building. He shot a few rounds into the lock and handle of the door across the hall, and kicked it open with all he had.
The door banged against the inside wall, slapped back against its frame, and fell open. As it did, Seven saw a sudden movement from the end of the hall where Ness was, heard the loud report of a handgun and a bullet ricochet off a wall.
He hoped there wouldn’t be a family freaking out inside, yelled out a warning, and jumped through the doorway and into the living room of the apartment across the hall.
The elevator doors creaked open in the lobby, and Pickup stood aside to let Aldo Posey go first. The older man crossed to the back of the elevator and stared at the buttons, waiting to tell Pickup his floor.
“Which one you want?” Pickup asked.
“Fifteen.”
Pickup pushed the button, ready to let the old man get off and do whatever he needed to. If Junius was really going after Rock, he’d be on a higher floor. Pickup pushed the top button, then thought better of it and pushed the button for twenty as well, not sure he wanted to end up right in front of Rock.
“All the way up, huh?”
“I need to see the man.”
“That’s right, then. You see him. But if he has my boy with him, tell him I’m taking Junius on home.”
“I can do that. Unless you want to just come and tell him yourself.”
The older man shook his head. “No. I need to see an old friend first, find out what all this is about.”
The doors crept shut and the elevator shuttered, then started crawling up the shaft. Pickup turned to face front, his hand inside his jacket on the grip of his Tec, his finger outside the trigger guard. Now was not the time to get jumpy.
The old man started to whistle as the elevator climbed, and the whistling made Pickup nervous. But he’d be damned if he would ask the old man to stop.
Pickup felt the elevator slow. He squeezed the Tec, brought his finger onto the trigger.
The elevator came to a complete stop and the bell chimed. Pickup raised the barrel of his gun, still inside his jacket.
Aldo Posey stopped whistling.
The doors opened slowly to reveal a cop: the last thing Big Pickup wanted to see. He pushed his finger hard against the front of the trigger guard, making sure with every bit of him that he didn’t panic and let off shots. This wasn’t what he was here for, and he hoped this cop wasn’t here for him.
Pickup pointed the gun back down, took his hand out of his jacket, and folded one hand in the other; he cupped the two in front of his groin like a boy in a choir.
The cop’s face looked gray, like he’d lost a lot of blood. His cop life-force had been drained out and he was running on fumes. The side of his face was one big bruised cut from forehead to chin, but his eyes were cold.
He looked to Aldo and then to Pickup as he stepped into the car.
“Gentlemen.”
He stepped in slowly, like his leg might have a broken bone, and then he turned around to face the front of the car just like Aldo and Pickup.
The elevator doors began to close.
As the car started its way up again, Aldo Posey resumed his whistling.
Junius heard a scream above him, from down at the other end of the hall. Whoever it was, that person was in pain. The scream sounded like they had just been stabbed in the eye, what you’d yell like if that happened.
Rock called down the stairs that he was coming, and Hammer fired off a couple more rounds. Rock tore shit up with whatever gun he had—something big and automatic. Junius did not want to get involved with that.
Roughneck was still partway up the steps to Junius’s landing, looking like he wasn’t sure what to do. He held his hands out empty in front of him.
“What now?” Junius asked.
“Yeah!” Milk came up next to Rough. He waited for an answer.
Roughneck shook his head. “I know Seven, man. Me and him came up together. This ain’t just business.”
Milk was older than Junius but too young to have grown up with Rough and Seven. He looked to be about as old as Temple.
“You known me a long-ass time, too,” Milk said, his face sour. “You and 412 the only family I know. What it gonna be?”
Rough looked down and chewed his lip. “You do what you need, then. But you not shooting this niggah here.” He nodded at Junius.
Milk sucked his teeth. “This shit ain’t right. Brothers choosing new sides, splitting shit up? Uh uh.” He waved a hand at Rough, dismissing him, and started back down the stairs toward twenty. “You don’t know what you want? I’m ass out. Come get me when you know who we play for.”
Rough watched him go. He called to wait, and Milk turned on the landing, looking up before taking the next flight. He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“I respect that.”
“Get with me when you know your shit right.”
With that, Milk kept going down the stairs. Rough turned back to Junius. “What can I say? Ain’t no one way in this game. Not no right and true always. Sometimes? Ain’t even no up.”
Rough stepped up the stairs. “You hear that? Don’t trust no one: Marlene, Rock, Big Willie? No one. They all fuck you over.”
“But not you?”
A new voice spoke behind Roughneck, a very deep voice. “You done talking shit?”
Rough turned. From the next landing down, Black Jesus held a cannon on him.
In his hand, Black Jesus had the biggest gun Junius had ever seen. It looked like the gun from the Dirty Harry movies, the one where he said, “Go ahead…make my day.”
But no one was copping any dumb lines, and the gun looked even bigger in real life than it did on the screen.
“Shit,” Junius said under his breath. “There you is.”
76
Elf waited on fifteen for the elevator. He could hear it rumbling in the shaft, getting closer, and he tightened his grip on the pistol. He heard his own breaths. The building had gone completely silent except for the shots from above, as if everyone turned off their TVs and radios and stopped talking to listen—like the whole building waited, wondering and thinking about what would happen next.
Elf listened to the movement of the elevator and waited like the rest.
When the elevator bell dinged above him, Elf started. He stayed still as the doors crept open, and then he turned fast to look inside the car and smacked right into Mr. Posey.
Elf knocked him back into the car and stumbled. A blue-uniform cop who looked half-dead caught Mr. Posey.
“I’m sorry,” Elf said.
“You my boy’s friend?”
The cop helped Mr. Posey get firm on his feet.
“What up, boy?” Big Pickup stood in the back of the car, next to the cop and behind Junius’s father. The scene was getting weirder to Elf by the moment. Then he heard another shot from above, the loud blast of Hammer’s shotgun.
“Let’s go,” the cop said. “Move along now.”
Mr. Posey stepped out of the car, and Elf stepped in. “You know where my son is?” he asked, turning to look back into the car.
Elf shook his head. “Maybe up top,” he said. “That’s where I think he be.”
Mr. Posey just looked at him, squinting as if big thoughts were running through his head. The elevator doors started to close. He lifted his hand as if to stop them, but then pulled it back. He looked confused, like a man unsettled, pushed out of his place.
“What up, son?” Big Pickup asked when the doors had closed.
“Nothing. What up?”
The car started its climb.
The buttons for twenty and twenty-two were lit. Elf decided he’d get off on twenty. Anything he could do to keep from going right to Rock sounded good. He tried not to look at the cop. He didn’t want to seem odd, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see how much the cop was alive.
“You come with me,” Pickup told Elf. It was not the first time Elf wanted to question the day’s decisions.
As they neared the top, the cop pulled his gun. Elf took a step back, bumped into Pickup, and then found himself shoved against the doors of the car. He turned and the cop was staring him in the face.
“What?”
“Huh?”
“Where you think you’re going? Don’t you know there’s trouble up here?”
Elf swallowed hard. “I’m looking for my friend. He’s—”
“Go back on down,” the cop said.
“Enough of this shit!” Pickup pulled his arm out of his jacket fast and, before anyone could move, he had the barrel of his Tec up against the back of the cop’s head.
“You in the wrong place, blue boy. Now you the one don’t know what the fuck you doing.”
The cop didn’t say anything, just turned to look at Pickup, the gun barrel sliding across his bald head as he did, tripping past his ear to rest at the corner of his forehead. His eyes were cold, thin. “What you gonna do, boy? You want to shoot me right here in the head?”
Pickup didn’t move. The car kept rising.
“Do it then. Show me what you got!”
Pickup moved fast: he hit the cop in the back of his head—just where the skull meets the neck—with his elbow. It was what Elf heard the boys at football practice call a “forearm shiver,” but the cop didn’t shake. Instead he fell hard into the corner of the elevator, slumping to the floor like the sack of skin and bones he looked like he was. Pickup didn’t wait to see what’d happen next; he turned the Tec in his hand and brought the side of the barrel down hard against the top of the cop’s head. Then he reared back and backhand-slapped him again across the side of the face with it.
The cop fell onto his side and didn’t get up.
Elf blinked. “You serious?”
Pickup just laughed, wiped the barrel of the Tec off on his pants. “Where we going, we don’t be needing no police. Now get your ass ready.”
Elf nodded once and reached around to his back for the Smith & Wesson.
The elevator stopped. They were on twenty.
“What up, son?” Rough turned all the way around to face Black Jesus. Mike Only stood to his side, holding a semi-auto .45 on Junius. Rough stepped in front of it.
“Son, the fuck you doing?” Black Jesus said. “Stand back.”
Rough shook his head. “Can’t do.”
He didn’t know what he could do, only that he had to be here to stop them from killing Junius.
“The fuck you say?” Mike Only stepped around Black Jesus to get a clearer look. “You sure you know what you doing?”
“No.”
“Say what?”
“I said, ‘No.’ But this where I be. And you not coming through me.”
“What he say?” Mike Only turned to Black Jesus in disbelief.
“This where it ends,” Rough said. “No more. We got niggahs wild up above, Seven and Hammer trying to kill each other, and killing this kid for Lamar ain’t gonna make none of it right.”
Black Jesus put one foot on the bottom stair of the flight. “We here for Rock. People fucking with this building, we protect it.”
“This boy ain’t about fucking with Rock.” Rough nodded at where Junius was. “He just young, don’t know what he doing. Let me get him out.”
From above them, Rock screamed: an angry yell like he was going into some kind of reenactment of the last scene in Scarface, trying to shoot up everything in the building. He followed it with another long blast from the Uzi, though Rough couldn’t guess who it was directed at.
“Rock just crazy. Has been. You know that.”
Black Jesus paused to look at Mike Only, and it was Mike who spoke. “Nah. You the one acting crazy. We represent. This a family. Family where Rock be the head.”
“My man,” Rough said. “But we leave this kid.”
“Yo, Hammer!” Mike Only called as he started to climb the stairs. Rough looked up and got caught completely off guard by a series of shots from right behind him, a quick whistling burst from Junius’s Tec.
He spun and saw Junius flat on his chest. He’d crawled forward to the edge of the landing to look down at Black Jesus and Mike Only. Now he’d fired on Black Jesus and all this was going to get crazy real fast.
“For my brother,” Junius said.
Rough spun back around in time to see Black Jesus fall. He bent in the middle like he’d been punched, his chest caving in toward the stairs, and as he fell, his gun went off. Mike Only turned fast to see his man, firing blind in Junius’s direction.
All Rough could do was duck against the railing.
“Motherfuck!” Mike Only caught Black Jesus and held him up.
Rough saw a blood bubble form over Black J’s lips. He turned to Junius. “The fuck?” he asked.
Junius was up against the wall now with his gun in front of him, pointed at Mike Only.
Mike pulled Black Jesus to him, smearing blood across the front of his jacket. His chin went all wrinkles and his eyes were squeezed tight. “Fuck,” he said, drawing out the word in a groan.
“Goddamn,” Rough said. He thought about stepping to Junius and taking away his gun, but instead he went forward, to Mike Only, and that was a mistake.
“Killed my brother,” Junius said so softly that no one seemed to hear. “Killed—” But he couldn’t say it again. He saw the pain in how Black Jesus went down and now he saw the hurt on Mike Only’s face: more than just the hurt of losing a friend, he looked like he lost his brother.
