Young Junius, page 8
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
“You did what?”
“You ain’t know? This goes back a couple summers. Wanted to get my nut. You know.”
“But Sharon?”
Elf nodded. He started to smile, then stopped himself.
“Fat Sharon?” Now Junius started to laugh, and Elf’s smile broke through. In a moment they were both laughing. “Fuck. Damn, yo. How old was you?”
“Shit. We was like thirteen.” Elf kept stepping, and Junius jumped to catch up.
“Yeah.” Junius didn’t know what Elf was up to that summer. He’d started playing on a traveling team for Junior League baseball and lost track. Plus, fucking Fat Sharon wasn’t something you talked about after. Still, it surprised him. “You tell anyone?”
Elf laughed. “Would you?”
Junius spit onto the sidewalk. “So it was good?”
“I was fourteen. Fuck I know? Just bust my cherry. Shit good enough. Up until Lamar.”
Junius could see the parking lot ahead, cars and the first of the towers: 410—one of Marlene’s. They had to watch what they did and how they moved. Junius put his hand on Elf’s shoulder.
They ducked behind the first row of cars in the lot to watch the front of 410.
Junius didn’t remind Elf that he was only fourteen now, that even when he was thirteen he knew better than to fuck Fat Sharon. Shit, even at twelve.
He didn’t say anything about it, or about Dawn or Adrianna, the girls he’d fucked, who were in a whole other league.
None of it mattered now.
But he had to ask. “How long until he knew?”
“Lamar?” Elf laughed, then said, “Shit, about two weeks.”
They both broke up laughing again, and Junius sat between two cars to get it out of himself before getting up to look around.
“So you fucked her like four, five times?”
“Shit,” Elf said. “I’m hungry. You?”
Junius stood up. “Maybe Marlene have pancakes.”
“Yeah, right.”
When Junius looked across the cars at 410, he saw a black BMW roll into the lot, creep up to the front and stop. It had tinted side windows, but through the windshield he could see a white guy was driving.
The car idled for a minute, clouds puffing out of the muffler. Finally the lobby door to 410 opened and one of Marlene’s soldiers walked out.
Junius knew the guy from around but wasn’t sure of his name. He was older, someone Temple knew. He wore a thick tan parka with gray fur up around the edges of the hood. He walked behind the car and came up the driver’s side.
When he did, the driver’s window went down. Inside, a bald white dude with a scruffy beard barely held his head over the door. One of his eyebrows arced halfway up to the top of his forehead, and he looked wild in the eyes. His hair wasn’t like most bald dudes, with some around the edges. This was more like he’d shaved it himself. Not slick like Kojak, more like it happened only now and then.
The guy talked loud enough that Junius could hear his voice—nasal and angry—but not what he said. Marlene’s soldier looked away, spit onto the asphalt, and shook his head. Junius heard him say the word “police” when he turned back to the car, and the white guy started waving his hands. Now Junius could hear him louder.
“Makes you think I’m a cop?” he said.
Marlene’s guy turned again, leaned up against the car’s trunk, and stared at his fingers. Another soldier came out of 410: Big Pickup. He got the name when he bought a used Ford a few summers back. He drove that shit around North Cambridge, the only brother any of them had ever seen in a pickup truck, so the name stuck to him stronger than herpes.
The big part couldn’t be disputed; he looked at least six foot six and 250. He wore a Triple Fat Goose jacket inside out, with the geese emblem patterned all over his upper body.
“Yo,” Junius said. He could feel Elf next to him, watching the scene go down. “Who that motherfucker with Pickup?”
“Meldrak,” Elf said. “Niggahs call him Drak. He ain’t right. Him you do not fuck with.”
“Not when Big P got his back.”
Big Pickup reached the front of the BMW. He stood in front of the car and folded his arms across his chest. The only way the car could pull out now was in reverse.
The white guy said something else, and Drak shook his head. Then the guy opened his door, and even got out, holding his hands up around his shoulders.
Drak walked away from the car, looking to the street. Junius ducked.
“Shit, now the time to move. While they watching this.”
Elf was right. “But I want to see.”
Elf swore and told Junius to come on. As he stood up, the white guy walked to Drak. Pickup said something, his arms still crossed, and the white guy stopped.
Just the fact that he almost walked away from his car, a loaded BMW with the engine running, certified this motherfucker as one of the crazier white people Junius had ever seen. Elf crossed behind a car, heading parallel to the BMW and toward 411. Every step he took brought him closer to Rock’s territory.
The white guy came back to the door of his BMW. Even as cold as it was, he untucked his shirt and held his jacket open. Inside he wore a T-shirt with some kind of crazy eyeball in a triangle on it. He pulled his shirt up past the nipples and showed Pickup his skinny chest. The guy was pink and barely taller than his car.
“Yo,” Junius said. “He your white brother.”
Elf didn’t answer.
Pickup just stared at the man like he was crazy. That was when he started to go for his belt to drop his pants. Junius got a chill just watching, knowing how Big Pickup would respond. And just like that, Pickup drew, held out a little black gun that looked like a toy. It wasn’t.
The white guy laughed and held up his hands. “It’s cool, man. It’s cool, yo.” He’d already undone his belt buckle and his jeans though, and his pants started to sag. Then they fell around his ankles. Junius could see his red bikini underwear from twenty feet away.
“You seeing this?” he asked Elf. “Can’t believe this shit!”
“Come on.”
Junius hoped Elf was watching where they went, because he couldn’t take his eyes away from what Drak would do next.
Pickup had already put his gun away and was turning around, heading away from the car. He shook his head, and from the way his shoulders moved, Junius could see he was laughing.
Drak hit the white guy on the arm, saying something Junius couldn’t hear.
The guy bent over and pulled up his pants. “Twenty,” he said in his angry voice.
Drak watched him tuck his shirt in and buckle his belt. Finally the guy pulled out his wallet.
But when Drak took a bill from the man, he just turned toward the building.
“What? How about the handoff? You know.”
The guy started to raise his voice again, and Drak stepped back. He pointed inside to Big Pickup. “You want to see him again?”
“Yo, hold up,” Elf said, stopping short. He got down fast behind a car, pulling Junius with him.
“Hey, man,” the white guy said. “I just want my shit.”
Junius could see the two of them and the BMW, but he couldn’t see what Elf was watching.
“Twenty,” Drak said, holding out his hand.
“Man, I—” The bald guy pointed at Drak’s pocket, the first bill, and then gave up and reached back for another twenty. “Fuck it. Let me see the bag this time.”
Drak scanned the area fast, though if anything was going to happen it’d have gone down long ago. He reached into the back of his pants for a bag.
“Check this out,” Elf said.
Junius turned around and peered over the hood of the car. “What?”
“Check out 412,” Elf said. “I think something getting ready to go down.”
24
Gazing across the front of 411 and beyond a few rows of cars, Junius could see the front of 412 as a long white Lincoln with tinted windows pulled in. A couple of Rock’s boys, Roughneck and Black Jesus, came out of the building through the double front doors.
Roughneck was just rough, that was how he got his name.
Black Jesus?
Black Jesus had Jheri curl worse than A. C. Green—all the way down to his shoulders.
Neither Roughneck nor Black Jesus were out selling. They just stood by the doors of 412, watching everything go down, barely paying attention to the BMW.
“What is this?”
“Wait.” As Elf said it, Roughneck stopped and held his right hand up—just a hand, the one closer to the doors. Everything seemed to stop. Black Jesus looked at Rough and then turned to face the same way. They both watched the car Junius and Elf were behind.
“Get down,” Elf whispered.
Junius dropped lower, below where he could see the front of 412. He turned, put his back against the car and leaned against it, keeping his head down.
The white guy in front of 410 said, “Now, that’s just not right!” But from his position, Junius couldn’t see the BMW. He saw Big Pickup outside again, in front of 410, and heard Drak say, “Then just go fuck yo self.”
“You—”
Junius winced at the possibility of what might come, of how badly this guy would get fucked up if he actually said nigger, but then he just said, “You my man, all right? We cool?”
Drak was already walking away from the BMW, toward the front of 410. He waved his hand as if he were brushing crumbs off a table. “Ok, buddy,” he said with a flat accent. “Keep it moving.”
Junius heard the door of the BMW slam and its engine rev. Pickup stood with his arms crossed on his chest, facing 412. He didn’t notice Junius or Elf.
“What’s going on?” Junius asked.
Elf had almost flattened himself against the ground to see under the car. “They just waiting,” he said.
“They see us?”
“Uh uh. They checking Drak and Big Pick.”
Then Big Pickup nodded in the direction of 412. “Morning,” he told Rock’s boys.
Junius didn’t hear anything come from the others. “Yo, peep this,” Elf said. Junius turned and crept to the front of the car.
Roughneck had started to wave with his right hand, but not at Pickup, at the building. Then the doors of 412 opened and a black Doberman walked out slowly, a big one. The dog wore a gray fur collar, and as it came forward, Junius saw the leash trail behind it. Black Jesus opened the back door of the Lincoln.
“That’s Bonnie,” said Elf.
“Bonnie?”
“The dog, niggah. Bonnie the Doberman.”
That was when Rock came out of 412 holding the other end of the leash.
Junius had seen him maybe twice before, not much more than that. He came to the Cambridge City Championships a year or two back, when Temple’s team played Lamar’s. Junius remembered the way Rock sat in the middle of the stands with all his boys around him, keeping everyone else too far away to touch him.
He had a girl on his arm Junius couldn’t get enough of. She was like a magnet to his eyes; every time he looked, it seemed like he could see more of her body. He kept glancing back, thinking he was definitely going to see her nipple if she moved the right way in her shirt. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do it, that staring at Rock or his girl would get him fucked up. So he tried not to, but damn if he didn’t think about her all through the game and dreamt about her that night.
Rock wore a gray fur coat that fell to his ankles. He wasn’t as tall as Roughneck or Black Jesus, but his coat was long and it looked soft. He had dark black glasses and a high-top fade that slanted to the side in the way the people were calling a Gumby. His skin looked like he’d just come out of a warm bath, like he was cleaner than anyone Junius knew. His goatee was just like the kind Junius wanted but couldn’t grow yet.
His strut and the way his jacket matched the dog’s collar made 412 Rindge Avenue look like an apartment building on Commonwealth Ave. That, or like the one on TV where the Jeffersons lived. Like Roughneck was his personal doorman.
Black Jesus held the Lincoln’s door open and the dog jumped right in. Then Rock followed, never touching the car, his whole exit as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Roughneck hadn’t moved; he still eyed Big Pickup. “Morning,” he said, finally.
Black Jesus closed the door of the Lincoln and got in the passenger’s side in front. The big car hummed and started to roll through the parking lot, Roughneck never turning, not even watching it go. He finally nodded again toward Big Pickup and then went back into the building.
“Shit,” Junius said.
“Yeah. Shit,” Elf said. “That is the motherfucker wants you dead.”
25
They stood up slowly and looked all around. Big Pickup watched them from the front of 410, but Drak was gone.
“What’s up,” Elf said when Big Pickup kept staring. Pickup waved for them to come closer, even stepped partway to them. Elf led and Junius followed. He had to look up at Pickup.
“You Temple’s brother,” Big Pickup said, not asking.
Junius nodded.
“Heard you had trouble.”
Junius waited to find out if it was safe for them to stand out here, where Roughneck or someone else from Rock’s tower might see them. Pickup had big cheeks and hadn’t shaved in a while; stubble ran the length of his neck from one ear to the other.
When nothing happened after a few breaths, Junius went for broke. “I was hoping I could see Marlene.”
Pickup nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I figure I knew that.” He stood calm, still as a summer day, even with each breath visible in the cold. He studied them like he was reading a book, just scanning the pages without even moving his eyes, just absorbing it all in. When he turned to Elf, Junius felt like a weight had been taken off him.
“Either you holding?” Pickup asked.
Elf shook his head.
Junius said, “No.”
“I search you and find a gun, I break your fucking hands.”
Junius nodded.
“You understand me? That’s where I start.”
“I hear you.”
Pickup turned to Elf.
“I understand,” Elf said.
Big Pickup nodded.
“Come on.”
In the lobby, Pickup raised his chin to a couple of his boys, more of Marlene’s soldiers. Junius knew she had crew stationed here at all hours to watch who came in, that they also did some selling and told buyers where to head for their fix. He avoided their stares, and the way they looked at him as if he was a ghost walking.
“Five-O here yesterday,” Pickup said, after pressing the elevator button. He didn’t look at Junius or Elf when he spoke, just faced the twin metal doors. “Shit come down someone get killed. Everyone on the force looking for who killed Lamar, taping off the body, all that shit.”
“What people say?”
“Oh, you best bet someone popped the name Junius Posey. People talking about the brother of the boy killed up in Ball Square.” Now Pickup finally turned toward Junius. “I was you, I be far as fuck from here.”
“Didn’t see no cops out there today.”
Pickup snorted. “Still early. They be here after they doughnuts.”
“Yeah, right,” Junius said. “They come find me good as they found who dropped Temple.”
The elevator chimed above their heads. Twenty-two floors and only one elevator in the whole building. Junius wondered why the police weren’t investigating that.
Pickup shrugged. “I tell you clear as day, they be back. Best watch who knows you up in here.”
When the doors opened, creaking and grinding against their frame, Pickup stepped in, then Junius and Elf followed. Everyone knew Marlene had a penthouse in 411, so Junius was expecting them to go all the way up. Instead Pickup pushed the button for sixteen. Junius was about to ask why, but Elf caught his eye. Elf had a blank face on that said Don’t even think about asking questions.
As they rode up, no one spoke. Big Pickup clearly wasn’t much of a talker.
What surprised Junius was they had the elevator to themselves; it didn’t make any stops between the lobby and sixteen, just climbed steadily, if a little slowly, up the floors. Above the doors there were no numbers that lit up. In fact, from the inside of the car there was no way to know what floor you were at or approaching. All you could do inside was wait. In the lobby, it’d been the same: no indicators to let you know when the doors would open.
On its own, the elevator was clean, its walls free of graffiti. Junius knew he wouldn’t write anything on them if he knew Marlene could see it.
At sixteen, the doors opened and Pickup led them out. The hallway was dim, natural light only coming in through one small window at each end, the two separated by at least thirty-five feet of drab carpet. Along the length of the ceiling, fluorescent bulbs flickered on and off, humming. The carpet below Junius’s feet was thin, worn, a dark shade that could have been brown or black—there was no way to tell in the light. Junius followed Pickup, and Elf walked behind.
Finally Junius asked, “I thought Marlene all the way up top. Penthouse in the sky.”
Pickup glanced back over his shoulder at Junius and kept walking. Close to the end of the hall, he opened one of the apartments and stepped into an empty room with a tan carpet thicker than the one in the hall. Junius padded into the empty space. In the middle of the living room were three chairs: one that looked comfortable, like a nice chair you’d buy at a fancy store, and two wooden chairs that could have come from anybody’s kitchen table.
The kitchen looked small and clean, unused for cooking. The living room windows were blacked out with garbage bags taped in place. The room wasn’t dark, though, because of its emptiness. Just the three chairs in the middle of the floor and nothing else, not even a TV. The three other doors off the room were closed.
“What up now?” Junius asked.
Pickup said, “Show me your clothes.”
“What?” Elf looked like he didn’t want to.
