Death Wish

  Bama stood for a moment in the chill January night looking at the tigerish silhouette pacing in the glow of the desk lamp across the window shade. He entered the building and knocked lightly on the door. Taylor opened it.

  Bama said, “You got a cigarette?”

  Taylor went to the desk and flung a pack of Salems into Bama’s cupped hands and himself into the chair behind the desk. Bama sat down beside the desk. He tossed the pack on the desk and picked up a lighter. They looked into each other’s bloodshot eyes in the burst of fire as Bama lit his cigarette and leaned to light Taylor’s.

  Bama said harshly, “Jessie, you don’t know who did . . .”

  Taylor frowned, and the creak of his chair was loud in the quiet as he leaned back and studied Bama’s face. “Bama, my head ain’t in no shape to juggle shit balls, so don’t throw me none.”

  Bama said, “I’m glad you said that yourself about that mulish head of yours . . . Jessie, you can’t kick off an all-out war against the dagos tomorrow!”

  Taylor’s long fingers worked together in his hair like nesting vipers behind his head. “There ain’t nobody with his asshole pointing to the ground can stop Jessie Taylor from doing nothing he makes up his mind to do,” he said.

  “Bama, I’ve called for a full assembly in the morning. I’m gonna send the death squads out night and day. We got the addresses and hangouts of ninety percent of the Mafia men in Chicago. Bama, just like they usta do in Nam, the Warriors gonna search out and waste until there ain’t no more Mafia men.”

  Bama said, “But why now, Jessie? We’ve only half-completed that same groundwork outside Chicago. Jessie, our necessary advantage of surprise would be lost forever. We’d blow our chance to simultaneously strike the dangerous New York families and the other families in big cities across the country as we’ve planned for so long. We’d have the Mafia and whole police departments alerted and waiting to massacre us. The Warriors are commandos, guerrillas who can only win against our powerful enemies if secrecy and surprise are not denied them!”

  Taylor said, “They almost wasted my heart.”

  Bama said, “But Fluffy, bless her heart, wasn’t hurt. So, why the hell blow our cool and the master plan?”

  Bama paused and shook his head. “Jessie, I just can’t understand how you see this whole thing.”

  Taylor said, “ ’Cause Fluffy ain’t your daughter . . . And, Bama, you forgot they wasted poor Henderson, the undertaker.”

  Bama said, “Oh, shit, Jessie, I love Fluffy, and I haven’t forgotten Henderson. But you’ve forgotten or overlooked the one reason beyond all the others why Jessie Taylor has to stop Jessie Taylor from starting all-out war in the morning.”

  Taylor glared at him for a long moment before he said, “Alright, Solomon, my skull ain’t closed.”

  Bama said, “You agree that our best political friend is in the governor’s mansion up in Springfield?”

  T. nodded yes.

  “You know that corrupt Mafia whores among the police brass want our black asses dead and stinking. Don’t you also know that the Cook County machine is plotting around the clock to frame and impeach the governor out of office and shove some racist cock-sucker in?”

  Taylor nodded.

  Bama said gently, “Then, will you agree, son, that in an all-out war, their man, as governor, would find a technicality, an excuse to send the National Guard against us? Soldiers who would be the brothers, husbands, and others close to the best and only allies we have in the state . . . the people! Jessie, do we want to fight and kill pawns? Soldiers? Be tricked into failure and the grave? Do you understand why we have to wait until we have the capacity to strike a lightning, fatal blow nationwide? Jessie, it would be fatal for the Warriors to lose our cool and blow our stand-up supporters, black and white, across the nation.” Bama darted his eyes heavenward. “And wouldn’t we blow His support too if we failed to waste them all and their evil, through our own selfishly evil misplanning?”

  Taylor got to his feet, gnawing thoughtfully at his bottom lip. He said quietly, “Yeah, Bama, if He’s up there . . . You sure bend and reach high to make a point.”

  He patted Bama’s shoulder and thought what a rotten shame it was that poor dead Mama dear, from the git-go, down in Georgia couldn’t have hooked up with a guy like Bama.

  Old shiny dome sure ’nough always yanked his coattails to save him when blind rage racked him up, he thought, as he looked down fondly on Bama’s bald skull. He wouldn’t send the death squads now.

  But he was gonna kill Collucci quick as he could. No matter if Bama and J.C. himself even, on their knees, begged him to let Collucci slide awhile.

  Bama said, “Well, Jessie, do I call off tomorrow’s assembly?”

  Taylor said, “No, Bama, ’cause while I ain’t gonna use the death squads right away, I’m gonna need volunteers for something I ain’t got worked out yet!”

  Bama said, “Jessie, why the hell . . . Are you planning to get him on his turf like in your kid rumbles?”

  Taylor said, “I’ll lay it out for the council at the bunker table in the morning, like the Warrior rules say.”

  Bama shook his head. “You solo or go without the proper muscle now, and the odds will be a zillion to one for a morgue slab.”

  Taylor flipped off the desk lamp, and they left the office. As they went down the hallway toward their quarters, Taylor said, “Bama, I appreciate you pulling my coat to them traps. But you ain’t stopped Jessie Taylor from doing nothing ’cause Jessie Taylor’s mind wasn’t nowhere near made up.”

  Rachel was staring at the ceiling when Taylor slid into bed beside her. They lay there listening to each other’s breathing for a long while. Taylor’s leg touched Rachel’s, and he felt her stiffen for an instant.

  He scooted up to a sitting position. As he swung his legs and feet over the edge of the bed to the floor, he said, “Ra, ain’t no way I’m staying in this bed if I feel like saying excuse me when I touch you by accident even.”

  She crawled across the bed, and he felt the warmth of her bosom and thighs as she knelt against his back. She threw her arms about his neck to restrain him.

  He struggled feebly and said, “Lemme go on in the spare room, Ra, ’cause since the funeral you been playing games and showing your natural ass.”

  She pressed her cheek against the back of his neck and said, “Do you still love me, Jessie?”

  He struggled harder and heaved a heavy sigh of irritation. “Like I always did, Ra, and forever even. Ra . . . Now lemme go,” he said as he reached to unlock her arms.

  She moved and sat beside him. She looked up at him daringly, yet fearfully, as perhaps would a cunning child beaming bright-eyed naivete before uttering a preposterous request.

  “Then, Jessie, instead of whatever angry thing you planned to say to the assembly tomorrow, tell them you’re taking your family away for a few months . . . to give us our first vacation . . . a change for a little bit away from this place, this tension.”

  Then she burst a torrent of words. “Bama and Smitty could do all right until we got back. Maybe we wouldn’t want to come back from some big city in the South. They say life down there now can be pretty sweet for black people with something on the ball.

  “Martial arts are all the thing. You’re an expert in all of them. We could have a chain of schools in no time. I’ll bet that when Fluffy ‘comes out,’ the Jessie Taylors would be ranked with the black muck-de-mucks down South. Please, Jessie, for us, tell them your family’s nerves are shot and we have to be taken away for a while. Please, Jessie!”

  He got to his feet and looked down at her with bleakly distant eyes. Her eyes were tragic feline slits, looking up and through him.

  She said, “Killing them . . . him . . . comes first with you?”

  He nodded.

  Then she said in a bitter monotone of despair, “No big happy house for me . . . no ‘coming out’ cotillion ball for Fluffy . . . and, Jessie, you’ll die before your sideburns match a white t
ie.”

  He frowned in puzzlement, for he had lost sight of her dream in the blinding dazzle of his own. Before he could ask what she meant, she worked her hands violently in the air like talons.

  Her contralto voice was squeaky with hysteria. “Don’t you dare, Jessie! I’ll tear your eyes out of your head if you do! Don’t ask me to explain.”

  He stood mesmerized and hurt to the quick by the hatred in her eyes. He said softly, “Ra, I can’t get in the wind when the people need me the worst . . . We’ll get away after I finish what I got to do.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and she clawed them away. Then he picked up his pillow and walked away.

  She stood with her face twisted hideously and said stridently to his back, “Goddamn the people! Put the people in your empty bed, Jessie Taylor! Stick your dick in the people, Jessie Taylor! If you don’t announce tomorrow that you’re taking us out of here, I’m leaving you.”

  He came back and, towering over her, said in his lazy drawl, “Ra, you knowed me in grammar school. And ain’t nobody then and now, my mama even, could make me do a goddamn thing I ain’t wanted to do. Ra, I ain’t gonna hold still for no pressure bullshit. I got used to loving you and Fluffy—” He paused and swallowed. “I guess I gotta get used to making it alone . . . I been alone before and ain’t died.”

  His jaw was steely and his eyes sparkled lasers of determination through her. “Ra, I’m swearing on God Himself . . . if He’s up there . . . and Mama dear’s grave, I’m gonna ship that dago to the maggots . . . and later the rest of the Mafia men running the misery game on the people. Ra, I gotta do my job ’fore luxuries of my mind or body. Your leaving ain’t gonna kill me or drive me crazy . . . So you and Fluffy even, my heart, must be luxuries I can make it without. So, Ra, now you sho’ ’nuff know where I’m coming from.”

  Her eyes flamed, and her cracked lips twisted grotesquely as she said in a deadly voice, “I hate you, Jessie, and this place for every second of my life I’ve lost and suffered here . . . I hope the dagos torture and burn you alive here.”

  He turned sadly away and went to the spare room across the hall next to Fluffy’s and locked the door. There, he listened to Rachel’s sobbing and had a helluva time falling into lumpy sleep.

  • • •

  Next morning while shaving and brushing his teeth he avoided his haggard, red-eyed image in the mirror. He picked at his eggs and grits at breakfast and averted his eyes a dozen times from Rachel’s piercing stare. Finally leaving his coffee untouched, he got to his feet.

  Rachel said, “You going after them?”

  Taylor stared down at the scorched furrow in Fluffy’s natural. He said carefully, “I’m gonna go to a meeting with Bama and Kong.”

  Fluffy looked up at him wide-eyed and said, “T. Dad, take me with you when you go to get even.”

  He leaned and kissed Fluffy’s forehead, then he stepped around the table, and Rachel turned her cheek when he tried to kiss her lips. She rose and followed him as he walked away to the back door. He held the door open and half-turned.

  She said, “Jessie, you understand I meant everything I said last night?”

  He said, “Uh-huh, Ra. And understand this nigger is gonna make that dago drop some bloody turds ’cause Mr. Henderson’s innocent brains was blowed out, and Fluffy was mighty nigh wasted. Ra, they got you more scared and weak than even Fluffy,” he taunted her as he stepped outside.

  Rachel said to his back, “Watch me, Jessie Taylor! I’ll be strong enough to leave you in this shit hole!” She slammed the door and stormed back to reprimand Fluffy for butting in with her juvenile bravado.

  Taylor walked into the command bunker and exchanged solemn nods with Bama and Lester “Kong” Smith at the pine conference table. Taylor went to the coffeepot bubbling and rattling its lid on a hotplate in a corner. He poured himself a cup and fell heavily into a chair facing them. He watched them over the cup rim as he blew on and sipped the coffee.

  Kong grinned weakly, “C’mon, Jessie, don’t dangle us.”

  Taylor, face hardened as he stared at Kong and thought about Kong’s apparent involvement with Charming Mills in the dope-jacker’s murder of pusher L.C. and Mills’s possession of L.C.’s thirty-grand diamond ring.

  “Dummy up, Smitty, I don’t need no priming from you,” Taylor said harshly.

  Kong shrugged elaborately and wondered why Taylor was so hostile toward him of late. Bama sent T. an eye signal.

  Taylor, reading the warning in Bama’s eyes not to tip off their suspicion of Kong, said, “Man, I’m sorry I throwed out that salt . . . but with them dagos and all the other shit happening, I just ain’t myself.”

  Kong felt surprise and suspicion to hear Taylor’s apology for he had never before heard or heard of Taylor apologizing to anybody for anything he had done or said.

  Why really did Jessie kiss his ass like that? He stared at Taylor with a bland face, but he now realized how much he feared and hated Taylor. Perhaps from the beginning he had hated him for taking over leadership of his kid gang. Hated him, because for all the long years he had hurt and been humiliated, standing always as an inferior in Taylor’s all-powerful shadow.

  Kong laughed and said, “You sure as hell ain’t yourself, brother. I been knowing you a thousand years, and I ain’t never heard you be sorry for nothing you ever said to any motherfucker.”

  Bama said smoothly, “Smitty, it looks like some of my gentle manly class and grace is at last rubbing off on the big-foot savage from Georgia.”

  They flashed teeth for one another in a chorus of flat laughter.

  Taylor looked at Bama and said, “My mind is made up about that dago we know was up there on the trigger or sent a triggerman up there. I’m gonna ask for a squad to volunteer for a secret mission.”

  Kong said, “You mean you gonna try to find and nail him with one squad? An hour after the first dago spotted you over there, you and the squad would be wasted.”

  Taylor said, “I ain’t gonna underrate him like I did when he sent me to get my skull patched with this steel plate. I’m gonna snatch his head, nigger. I’m gonna shop our turf for Collucci. I think if mean Mack Rivers ain’t strawbossing the thieving tricky niggers dealing numbers and dope, that spaghetti-gut enforcer got to stick his ass out for me to blow it off. Collucci got to collect the Mafia’s usual bread from over here.”

  Bama said, “Jessie, I wish you’d wait until we move against the others . . . But I know your mind is made up on him. It won’t be easy even to bag Rivers. He’s slick and slippery as owl shit, and he’s got a mob of treacherous niggers backing him up . . . How soon?”

  Taylor shrugged, looked at his wristwatch, and stood up. “Soon as I can check out his routine and plot the snatch . . . No more’n a week, and maybe sooner, I hope.”

  They emerged inside the church. Taylor moved to the microphone and gazed out at the Warriors proudly as they stood at attention.

  At the parsonage, Rachel and Fluffy heard his request for volunteers over a speaker in the living room. Rachel went swiftly to the bedroom and started emptying drawers onto the bed. Fluffy came into the bedroom and burst into wild tears.

  The mass of men moved toward Taylor as one at his request for volunteers. He selected the members of the squad that had run the psychodrama test that Rapping Roscoe, Lieutenant Porta’s tool and intended infiltrator, had failed.

  Shortly after, in the command bunker, Taylor briefed the squad and reinstated joyous Ivory Jones to squad leader. Ivory Jones, massive Lotsa Black Hayes, driver of the squad’s battered-looking but supercharged Pontiac, Dew Drop Allen, the tiny, much-loved white Warrior, and Bumpy Lewis, the unwitting sponsor of Roscoe, the dead spy, left the bunker radiant with the challenge of the mission.

  Rachel and Fluffy were loading the last of their possessions into the banged-up family Ford outside the parsonage when Taylor walked up. Rachel, fighting tears, waved good-bye and flung herself under the wheel before she broke down. Fluffy lingered on the sidewa
lk sobbing in Taylor’s arms and begging him to force Rachel to stay.

  Rachel yelled hoarsely, “I’ll leave you, Fluffy, so help me, if you don’t come on this instant.”

  Taylor tenderly led Fluffy to the car and opened the door. Fluffy kissed him and held on until Rachel seized her arm and pulled her into the car.

  Taylor shut the door and leaned in and said softly, “Ra, since we ain’t got no doubt you my forever woman, ain’t no doubt, is it, you ain’t gone for long?”

  She whipped her face away to hide the gush of tears and thundered the Ford away for her mother’s Westside house.

  Taylor’s face was drawn and ashen with emotion as he stumbled against Bama.

  Bama said, “Easy, pal, I know how it hurts from raw experience, but soon it won’t pain except every now and then.”

  Taylor turned his wild face and glared down at Bama. “Goddamn you, Bama! Jessie Taylor don’t need none of your granny-ass nursing.”

  Bama said, “Nigger, don’t be mad with me. I ain’t left you . . . yet . . . and damn my stupid soul, odds are I never will. You ain’t been drunk since the party at Mole’s place when you were a kid. Now you got a star excuse to get flying drunk, and I got enough whiskey to fly us to the moon.”

  Taylor grinned, and arm in arm they went across the sidewalk. Taylor ducked into his quarters to his intercom system. He dispatched patrols and guards to protect Rachel and Fluffy around the clock.

  And across the hall, a curvy black beauty who had climbed through Kong’s bedroom window against Warrior rules, lay in his bed watching him impatiently as he snorted cocaine and wrestled with a momentous decision. Should he tip off Mack Rivers that Taylor was planning to use him to hit Collucci?