Young Junius, page 32
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
Johnson didn’t have time to raise his gun, didn’t even think of it until it was too late.
He thought about the moment a lot later, for weeks and even months after the events he considered it, and in all the time spent, he came to the same conclusion his mind flipped to in that fraction of an instant: he was just trying to save his goddamn ass.
Whether he’d been through more than enough already in the one long, horrible, violent day or whether his natural instinct to seeing the hole at the end of a shotgun was to duck, it didn’t matter. He put his head down on the floor of the elevator car, forehead to the rug, and curled his arms around his face. He went full turtle on the motherfucker, just flinched and ducked.
But that wasn’t what Rock did, or the woman either.
Rock stepped calmly out of the elevator pointing his Uzi at the first thing he saw, a nineteen-year-old resident of the 410 tower named Raphael Michael Rodriguez, who, despite holding a pair of loaded nine-millimeter Browning HPs in good condition, cleaned recently and well cared for, with both hammers cocked, did nothing.
Rock cut him down in less than five seconds as he emptied half the Uzi’s clip across Rodriguez’s chest and face before the woman, Marlene Brown, of the 411 tower, shot Rock twice in the center of his chest from ten feet away with a Benelli M2 semi-automatic shotgun, killing him instantly.
This was exactly how Officer Johnson would write it all up in his report later, as he reconstructed the events in the lobby of 412 Rindge Avenue on the night of February 22.
But at that moment all he knew was the sound of shots fired and the feel of something wet splattering across his hands and neck as Rock fell back hard onto the floor of the elevator.
After a series of breaths, Johnson looked up. He saw the woman, Marlene Brown, staring him straight in the face like she had no idea what to do.
She looked angry, but also about as confused as he was.
The elevator doors started to close, but they hit Rock’s legs at the thigh and rushed back open. They slid forward a moment or two later and tried to close again, only for the same thing to happen.
Johnson heard a door off the lobby open and two men walked in: one holding a black shotgun similar to the woman’s and the other holding a Tec-9. The shotgun man, one Sean Robertson, stood in front of the elevator. He glanced down at Johnson, and the other went right to Marlene Brown. “We got to get on out,” he told her.
“This a fucking cop here,” Robertson said.
Johnson held his hands out to show they were empty, pushed the Smith & Wesson away from him with his wrist. “I didn’t see shit. I did not see shit.”
“But I just—” the woman started to speak and pointed at Rock’s body. The doors started to close again and this time, mercifully, Robertson stepped forward to hold them with a foot. He lowered the muzzle of his gun.
“Self-defense,” Johnson said. “Everything I just saw. Self-defense. I’ll testify to it.”
Johnson knew Rock had been shooting, and for him that constituted enough for a self-defense plea, regardless of how the woman came to be holding a Benelli M2 there in the lobby of a residential building.
Given all he’d seen that day, carrying a loaded shotgun didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“We trust this cop?” Robertson asked.
“Trust him or kill him,” the other man—one Meldrak Mohammed—said, matter of fact. “And that’s not much of a choice.”
All three of them lowered their guns. Mohammed tucked his into his jacket. “Maybe you need us to issue statements,” he said, “but perhaps we can do that back in our own building?”
Johnson looked up in time to see the man wink.
“Other than that, we can assure you of our full cooperation.”
Johnson heard sirens in the distance, police cars coming. He wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to stand. He coughed and waved his hand in front of his face. “You better wait. My backup take you over. They hear your statements.”
Both of the men started to protest, but the woman cut them off. She stepped into the elevator and flipped the red HOLD switch.
The elevator buzzed once and then stopped shaking.
“You be all right?” she asked. “Maybe we should call you an ambulance.”
“There be one here, soon enough.”
The sirens roared louder; the cars were closer. Johnson could see red and blue lights reflected in the glass of the lobby.
The others put their guns down and started toward the doors.
Johnson heard another door off the lobby open and saw them flinch.
They turned and looked calmer. “Big Pickup,” Mohammed said.
A bigger man than the other two came into the lobby and gave one-armed hugs to the others. He gave the woman a big kiss on the cheek. “You all ok?”
“What else happened up there?” she asked.
Johnson pushed himself up onto his elbows. He recognized the big man who had last whipped him in the head with a gun barrel. It would not go unmentioned.
“Nothing good,” the big man said. He turned and Johnson saw him start to smile when he noticed Rock dead on the floor. He stopped himself fast when he saw Johnson.
“Nothing good at all,” he said.
92
By the time Junius and Elf got to the lobby level, they could hear police cars on Rindge Ave., sirens calling from the front side of the building, and loud voices in the lobby.
“Fuck that,” Junius said. He nodded toward the back door. “We best be out.”
“What about Ness? We said we bring him a ambulance.”
“Yo.” Junius tilted his head away from the lobby, already taking a step in that direction. Even worse than fucking with whoever might be in the building, the idea of talking to the police and waiting for the paramedics was not one Junius liked.
“We could tell them—” Elf stopped, both his feet planted.
“He gonna die.” Junius put it out there. Whether Elf was fragile or not, they didn’t have time for decisions.
“I’m out,” he said, taking a step closer to the door. “You should come.”
Elf teetered toward the lobby and rocked in Junius’s direction. He almost fell forward. Junius laughed. He hit the back door and knocked it open, didn’t even look around as he started to run.
By the time the door slammed closed, they were both past the dumpster and running along the cold, rusted fence behind the towers.
The door slam echoed into the night. Someone would hear it and come looking, but by the time they did, Junius and Elf would be gone.
They came to a hole in the fence and crawled through it, ran down the rocky slope to the tracks, their breaths puffing out in front of them in the night.
Careful not to trip on the wooden cross ties, they ran on until they couldn’t run anymore, then they walked, knowing the tracks would lead them through Cambridge and back to Porter Square or even farther—into Boston—if they kept going.
Junius knew the tracks were just a start. He didn’t have a choice anymore—no way he could go back home after all that had happened.
His mother told him to leave on a bus for New York City. She had been right. Much later, he would realize it didn’t make a difference either way.
Now he walked on into the cold night with Elf. He said he was going to take the Red Line to Boston and then straight to South Station to get on a bus bound for New York City. He’d find his aunt and fade in and disappear, never to be found again by Rock or Marlene or Willie Stash.
“What about me?” Elf asked.
“You be ok. Don’t worry. You be ok here.” Then, as an afterthought he added, “Didn’t kill no one, so you be all right.”
“Did you?” Elf stopped.
Junius didn’t answer him, just kept walking along the cold tracks, his hands in his pockets.
“Think they won’t find you? Come up to New York and track your ass down?”
“I change my name,” Junius said. “Never liked Posey anyway. It belong to him: that sack of shit back there on the stairs.”
Elf caught up, and they walked on. Eventually he asked, “Who you gonna be?”
“Ponds,” Junius said. He looked right at his boy and clapped Elf on the back, then started to run again.
Up ahead he could see the lights of the new Porter Square T station and he knew there would be a train along soon to take him into Boston to South Station, to the bus depot where he could buy a ticket for New York.
“Junius Ponds,” he said as he ran.
“Junius Ponds.”
JOIN THE FAMILY
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ALSO BY SETH HARWOOD
Have you read them all?
JACK PALMS CRIME
Now that you’ve read the prequel to Jack Wakes Up, you’re ready to read the original, the introduction to Jack Palms and the first place (in fiction) where Junius showed up.
Jack Wakes Up
Washed-up movie star Jack Palms left Hollywood, kicked his drug habit, and played it as straight as anyone could ask for three years. Now the residual checks are drying up and the monastic lifestyle's starting to wear thin. When Jack tries to cash in on his former celebrity by showing some out-of-town high rollers around San Francisco's club scene, he finds himself knee-deep in a Bay Area drug war.
And the thing that scares Jack the most? He's starting to enjoy himself.
It'll take the performance of a lifetime to get him through it alive.
Buy it: US UK
This Is Life
Jack finds himself in the middle of a whodunit in the seedy red-light district of San Francisco. Young girls, shipped as merchandise from Balkan countries and sold to city heavyweights, are turning up dead and no one knows why. Closer to home, a crooked cop steps out of Jack’s past and into his backyard, taking potshots from the bushes at midnight.
Buy it: US UK
JESS HARDING, FBI
In Broad Daylight
During the endless days of an Alaskan summer, a fiend slashes his way through the rural community, where everyone knows your name and always distrusts the outsider. FBI agent Jess Harding treks back to Anchorage to hunt down this sadistic killer who's reemerged from a five-year hiatus—a killer who has already slipped from her grasp once before.
As Jess attempts to immerse herself in the area's culture, she finds a strange rural village inhabited by Russian Old Believers hell-bent on protecting their way of life. Soon Jess needs a safehaven from the glare of daylight—a blood-stained message left at the scene of a murder says she’s no longer the hunter, but the hunted.
Buy it: US UK
CLARA DONNER, SFPD HOMICIDE
Everyone Pays
Detective Clara Donner worked vice in San Francisco for years alongside the runaways and vulnerable women who walk the night. She thinks she’s seen the worst people can do—until she’s assigned to investigate a particularly ruthless serial killer.
As the body count rises and a pattern emerges—each victim is known for his brutal abuse of women—Donner follows the killer’s trail across the city. In spite of a nagging sense that the world may be better off without these men, that maybe this killer is doing good, she pursues every lead… until she finds a damaged girl with links to both the killer and his prey. Is this new witness the key to unraveling these murders or another victim left in the killer’s wake?
Buy it: US UK
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Mrs. Varella, Mrs. Haynes, Mr. Hutch, and that whole thuggish bunch at the Longfellow School way back when. Mrs. Varella actually made me believe I could be a good English student, and Mrs. Haynes tirelessly read us The Good Earth and A Tale of Two Cities out loud every day in a class called—what else?—Reading.
Thanks to Scott Sigler for paving the way and showing me how to win an audience, then turn the publishing world on its head. Big ups to J.C. Hutchins, Evo Terra, and all the other podcast novelists taking the world by storm.
Thanks to everybody at the Writers’ Workshop, especially Marilynne and Jim.
Eric Campbell believed in this project early on. From him to Ben, Alison, and Ashley, the team at Tyrus has been nothing short of awesome. Thanks for letting me take it out of the box!
Shah Anderson, Tresca Behling, Drew Valderrama, Phil Riberra and a great many online fans provided me with superb information on subjects too strange and varied to include here. Needless to say, all of these improved this book by leaps and bounds.
Margot Welch, Mark Coggins, Jerry Scullion, Shaukat Ghaswala, and Bob Ostrom provided artwork and photos for which I’m grateful. Shirley Bruce was first on PayPal the day the Special Edition went live. The Palms Family listened to me read this book as I wrote it, Digital Dickens style, as well as spurred me on in their desire for more about Junius Ponds.
Steven J. McDermott originally requested a short story for Storyglossia’s crime edition, which later became chapter 1 of the novel. Thanks to him, and to Anthony Neil Smith for early encouragement and not messing with the piece.
Thanks to Stacia Decker for being the best agent I can imagine—for blasting through an early read of this novel and helping me edit it down, then supporting me through each and all of my changes and market moves. She’s a fast reader and one of the best editors I’ve seen in action.
Thanks to my dad for so, so much. Especially for getting me away to Tanzania when the time was right. To Jess for coming along and supporting me all the way. Thanks to my mom for always being there. And finally, thanks to Cambridge, the city, where I was lucky to spend a part of my youth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph by Eric Fernandez
Seth Harwood is the author of the bestsellers Everyone Pays, In Broad Daylight, and Jack Wakes Up, as well as Young Junius and This Is Life. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing for Harvard and Stanford. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. Find more online at sethharwood.com and patreon.com/sethharwood
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2010 Seth Harwood
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by CRIMEWAV Books
ISBN-13: 9781611097887
ISBN-10: 1611097886
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012948062
Seth Harwood, Young Junius
