Lotsa Black slid his bulk slowly from the car seat. He took a step and a half toward the rear before he bellowed, whirled, and lunged for the snub-nose. The thirty-eight exploded, and a tiny bolt of orange lightning leaped from the muzzle. The Pontiac rocked as Lotsa Black smashed back against it and fell.
Ivory shouted, “You’re gonna be iced, you faggot nigger, if you waste him. We’re Warriors, motherfuckers.”
Slim moved quickly and shoved the muzzle of his shotgun hard against Ivory’s throat under the jawbone and pleaded in his loud voice, “Please! Please! Crack another word! Come on, you terrible bastard, do me a favor and open your jib again so your mammy can bury you without your head. Now let’s march!”
Ivory went toward the front of the Pontiac and its rigid occupants, with the shotgun rammed under his jawbone. He kneeled beside the front wheel with his palms on the fender.
Slim stepped back to cover Ivory and the interior of the Pontiac. He said, “Where did you hit Lard Ass?”
Thick Set laughed and said, “Through the right eye and out the top of his skull.”
He pointed the thirty-eight at Dew Drop through the open door and said, “Get out and kneel beside this loud-mouthed nigger.”
Dew Drop got out and followed the order. Thick Set stood behind Dew Drop and Ivory. Slim moved to the open rear window of the Pontiac. He pointed the shotgun at Bumpy and Roscoe on the backseat.
Thick Set said, “Whitey Blue Eyes, are you a Warrior too?”
Dew Drop said loudly, “I sure am, and you can bet your mother’s fucking life I’m—”
Dew Drop’s reply was cut off as Thick Set took a step forward and fired two rapid shots. Roscoe and Bumpy saw the arms and hands of Dew Drop and Ivory slide lifelessly from the front fender.
Thick Set threw his head back and said gleefully, “What the hell, let’s be tidy and go all the way.”
Slim swung open the rear door and said, “You niggers hit the ground and go the clean way or sit right there and I’ll blow you away nasty with this shotgun.”
Bumpy hurtled though the open door toward Slim and seized the barrel of the shotgun with both hands. Roscoe was paralyzed. His teeth chattered as if he were encased in ice. Bumpy struggled with Slim for the shotgun. Thick Set sprinted toward them casually, pressed the thirty-eight against the back of Bumpy’s head, and pulled the trigger. Bumpy sagged to the ground. Slim and Thick Set stuck their faces into the Pontiac. Vomit dribbled from Roscoe’s mouth. His eyes walled toward the top of his head. He lay on the floor in a ball, whimpering piteously like a puppy with a crushed rear end.
Slim guffawed and said, “We should have a camera to get a shot of this bad Warrior crapping in his pants.”
Thick Set reached in and jerked Roscoe to the alley floor. He pointed the muzzle of the thirty-eight at his temple.
Roscoe stared into the muzzle. His heels clicked together in a spasm of terror, and he blubbered rapidly, “I ain’t no Warrior, I swear I ain’t. I’m one of you. Call Lieutenant Porta at Eleventh Street Station. He’ll tell you I ain’t lying.”
Thick Set snorted and said, “Bullshit, you’re no undercover cop. We’d know because we’re members of Porta’s special squad. What’s your badge number?”
Roscoe waved his arms and pleaded, “I ain’t got no badge number ’cause I didn’t mean I was a real roller. I mean the lieutenant is got me working to get inside the Warriors’ hideout, to set them up an stuff like that. Please believe me, Officers. I ain’t stuffing on you. Call Lieutenant Porta at Eleventh Street. If he ain’t there, I got his unlisted private number at home. I ain’t jiving, Officers. I ain’t no Warrior.”
Slim said, “Write it down.” He dug into his coat pocket and took out a small address book, then he threw it on Roscoe’s chest.
Thick Set flung a ballpoint beside it. Roscoe, in the glow of the spotlight, shakily scrawled a telephone number in the book. They pulled Roscoe to his feet. He leaned against the rear fender of the Pontiac. Then he shuddered and batted his eyes rapidly at a terrifying spectacle. Bumpy sprang up, grimly alive. He came toward Roscoe, followed by Dew Drop, Lotsa Black, and Ivory Jones. They stood in a half circle glaring at Roscoe.
Bumpy said coldly, “You a dirty nigger, Roscoe. We all Warriors, chump, and you gonna be executed!”
Roscoe’s lips pounded together soundlessly. Slim tore a page from the address book and gave it to Ivory.
Roscoe croaked, “Ivory, that number ain’t nothing but jive. I ain’t never laid eyes on Lieutenant Porta.”
Roscoe glanced resentfully at Dew Drop and said, “Ivory, I’m a black brother, and you dudes shot me through hot grease. ’cause I stuffed like I was working for the rollers, I gotta get wasted? Man, it ain’t right, and it ain’t fair.”
Bumpy shouted, “Lemme go, Lotsa! I wanta bust his goosul pipe. I told that stupid motherfucker a hundred times before I sponsored him to cut me loose if he was wrong. Lemme go, Lotsa.”
Ivory said firmly, “Cool it, Bumpy. I can understand your feelings about the brother. But you know, even if we knew for a fact that Roscoe is working with Porta, none of us here has the authority to waste him.”
Finally Bumpy relaxed in Lotsa Black’s arms and was allowed to step free. Ivory nodded. A fake cop handcuffed Roscoe’s hands behind his back and shoved him onto the rear floor of the Pontiac. Ivory sat alone on the rear seat as the Pontiac, followed by the Plymouth, and went down the alley with Bumpy seated between Dew Drop and Lotsa Black.
Roscoe looked up at Ivory’s tight face when the Pontiac came out of the dark alley and said weakly, “I ain’t been done right from the git-go. What’s gonna happen now?”
Ivory looked down at him for a long moment and then said coldly, “Guilty or not, you’re a cunt sonuvabitch. I’m calling that telephone number when we get inside the Zone. If it fits Porta’s pad, you get your big chance to meet our leader and rap for your life.”
7
Collucci stared at the marble of light bouncing on the floor indicator panel as the elevator zoomed toward the Tonelli penthouse. He felt a twinge of paranoia. What if the meeting was really a cover for a Tonelli trap? What if Bellini, his only buffer against Tonelli’s treachery, was absent? He suddenly felt stifled. He removed his overcoat.
The cage came to a halt, and he stepped out onto the red entrance hall carpet. A brass chandelier shone like a cache of gold in the ceiling. He stepped into a large lounge. It was an around-the-clock station for Tonelli guards. But now the room was strangely unmanned.
Collucci froze in the silence. He felt the weight of the derringers dangling on the elastics down his arms. Just let him pick up an inflection between Cocio and Tonelli, a mere flicker of fatal electricity in a glance between them, and he would leap like a lethal jack-in-the-box and dumdum the brains from their skulls.
He looked at the closed-circuit TV monitors flickering on a control panel on a wall to the right where he saw the dome machine gunner reading a magazine. The two garage guards were flapping jaws and waving playing cards on the limousine’s backseat. He moved his eyes across other tiny screens that revealed street activity around the building.
On a monitor flashing colorful action he watched a children’s Christmas Party beneath a retractable plastic bubble on the terrace. Two dozen parents, including Consuella with Tonelli beside her holding her twins on his lap, sat with faces turned toward a makeshift stage watching children perform a play in biblical costumes.
Collucci went down a brightly lit hallway. He went past a dozen-and-a-half rooms and suites on both sides of the hall occupied by Tonelli guards and aides. He paused for a moment at the locked three-inch-thick steel door behind which lay Tonelli’s private quarters.
He felt a twinge of hopelessness, but he moved on and stepped down into the sunken living room. He thought, how tough can it get to put the bastard to sleep? He dropped himself down on a blue satin chair facing open glass doors. The terrace was glowing and pulsing with colorful Japanese lanterns and Christmas merriment.
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The child actors took bows to the applause of their proud parents.
He lit a cigarette and casually eyed through the crowd for Papa Bellini. He didn’t spot him. Once again, he swept his eyes through the terrace. The twins leaped from Tonelli’s lap. They scampered away toward a mound of presents and Santa Claus.
Tonelli glimpsed Collucci, and his Barrymore-handsome face beamed. He rose from a sofa and left the terrace to greet Collucci. Collucci painfully managed to display his teeth as he went toward Tonelli.
Tonelli embraced him and said in Sicilian, “Son, my very best to you and your family for the holidays and always.”
Collucci replied in Sicilian, “Thank you, sir, and my best to you and yours.”
Collucci stepped back gently out of Tonelli’s embrace and said, “Please excuse my lateness.”
Tonelli said, “With Olivia and Petey under the weather, you don’t have to apologize. Besides, we cannot have undienza until Santa Claus Bellini finishes with the kids and shark Cocio trims the last sucker in the billiard room.”
Tonelli said, “Excuse me, Jimmy,” and moved to a nearby table and lifted an intercom receiver. He gave a brief order and cradled the instrument.
Tonelli said, “Let’s have a smoke while we wait for the others.”
Collucci followed him to the steel door. It was opened from the inside by Tonelli’s eccentric and deadly chief bodyguard, lanky Carl “The Sphinx” Dinzio. He was heavily bearded and dressed as usual in a navy mohair suit. He wore heavy black sunglasses, and his black hair fell to his shoulders.
Collucci nodded as he went past Dinzio. Dinzio grunted. A corner of Collucci’s eye snared a shiny device Dinzio manipulated in his palm. The steel door swung shut with a whooshing sound.
Tonelli draped an arm across Collucci’s shoulders and took him down a shadowy corridor. Collucci felt a chill at the sound of Dinzio’s catlike footsteps behind him.
8
The Warrior ruling council, in uniform, stood at attention in the stripped-bare, echoing cavern of the church reviewing the troops. The church was used as an all-purpose assembly area. Once a month a portable obstacle course was set up for punishing guerrilla maneuvers and toughening of the Warriors.
In the wintry night, the five hundred-man force of interracial Warriors was crisp and immaculate.
The barrels of the automatic rifles on their shoulders shone like a dull blue lake in the fierce glare of klieg lights. The solemn-faced columns had marched and maneuvered for the council with precise and vigorous grace.
The council gazed out at them proudly as they stood rigidly at attention.
T. used the reviewing stand microphone to dismiss the assembly. The council hurried from the church-arena for their return to the command bunker. They went into the basement of the parsonage attached to the church. T., his family, and fifteen of his interracial squad leaders lived with their wives in the once-palatial forty-room mansion.
The basement was crammed to the ceiling with abandoned refrigerators, stoves, and shattered furniture. T. opened a heavy door.
Here, if necessary, the Warriors’ total force could retreat. Here, they could indefinitely survive and pop in and out of the myriad camouflaged exits and entrances. The system and the Warrior training was designed to survive possible commando strikes by an enemy invading the Zone.
The council seated themselves at the table in the command bunker. Bama nodded toward the tiny image of the Pontiac on a TV monitor as it approached the perimeter of the Zone.
Tat Taylor’s wife, Rachel, and teenage daughter, Fluffy, in crisp white aprons, served Christmas dinner to the trio seated at the bunker table. They and other Warrior women had served dinners to scores of interracial residents of the Zone since early afternoon.
Rachel said, “T., promise me you’ll eat all your salad and the green vegetables. And don’t leave yours, Bama and Smitty.”
They nodded as they forked in steamy mounds of turkey and dressing. As Rachel and Fluffy turned to leave, Tat raised and pursed his greasy lips for their kisses.
George “Bama” Lewis, seventy-year-old ex-con man, with his jaws inflated with candied yams, jabbed his fork toward a large painting of slain council member Darrel “The Mole” Miller, in Sandhog clothing, studying blueprints on a table. The Mole had been married to Willie Poe’s sister, Reva. He had been the genius engineer responsible for the elaborate tunnel system beneath the Zone, and the free electricity and gas leeched from utilities’ lines and pipes.
Bama said, “Too bad The Mole ain’t here this Christmas to enjoy these yams.”
Taylor stopped eating and looked at the painting hung on the earthen wall between shoring of steel rods and oak beams. He said, “Yeah, it’s a heartache to hear his name. Everybody loved him except Porta and his killers.”
Gigantic Lester “Kong” Smith snickered and said, “Sure, he was really together alright . . . for a paddy. But I hope you guys don’t break down and bawl like a coupla bitches and spoil my dinner.”
Bama snorted and said, “Smitty, I feel sorry for you. You’re in bad trouble.”
Kong frowned and said, “Old Man, why you cracking on me?”
Bama said quietly, “Because, son, Mole had forgotten he was white, and even when he’s dead you can’t.”
Tat said, “The Mole is been wasted by Porta’s killers close to two months. Soon we got to find a way to send Porta where Darrel is.”
Kong said, “Porta’s asshole could chew up railroad ties when he gets the wire his latest shot at us missed and Roscoe is executed.”
Taylor stood and stretched his lean frame and went to the water cooler in a corner. As the water gurgled into a paper cup he said, “Easy, Smitty, the young brother ain’t been found no kinda guilty yet. And if he is, ain’t no way now we know what kinda shitty game Porta ran on Roscoe. Maybe we will, and maybe we ain’t gonna waste the brother if he’s guilty. Smitty, if he’s guilty.”
Bama nodded toward the tiny image of the Pontiac on a TV monitor as it penetrated to the heart of the Zone. The Pontiac glided past other TV cameras. They were concealed in table lamps in the front windows of houses at all points of entry around the ten square blocks of the Zone. Driver Lotsa Black waved several times at sentries on foot and in unmarked cars.
Squad leader Ivory Jones, seated on the backseat, said, “Lotsa, pull over to that phone booth next to that grocery store.”
Lotsa Black coasted the Pontiac to a stop. Ivory got out and went into the booth.
Bumpy Lewis, on the front seat, said, “Roscoe, Ivory’s calling that number. Shame on you, nigger, if it jingles Porta.”
Roscoe, huddled on the rear floorboards, shaking with fear, eased his head up and peered at grim-faced Ivory leaving the phone booth. Roscoe smashed the heels of his handcuffed hands down on the door handle and leaped through the open door to the sidewalk. He scrambled to his feet and pumped his long legs madly down the sidewalk. Lotsa Black, Dew Drop, and Bumpy Lewis took up the chase. Ivory fired two pistol shots over Roscoe’s head and three at his legs.
Ivory shouted, “Stop, Roscoe, or I’ll kill you!”
Then as he raced out of pistol range the squad shouted, “Escaped prisoner!”
Roscoe had nearly reached the Zone perimeter when a rifle-carrying sentry ran into the street twenty yards ahead of Roscoe, put his rifle to his shoulder, and shouted, “Halt!”
Roscoe veered onto the sidewalk. He zigzagged across a yard to escape between two houses. The M-16 chattered and flashed fire, and Roscoe fell in the snow. The sentry and the squad ran to the scene and stood looking down at the ooze of brain and blood from the blasted-away back of Roscoe’s head.
Ivory said, “He was Porta’s nigger, alright . . . Porta’s wife answered.”
Bumpy said softly, “We lived next door to each other since we was crumb crushers. We stole together, laid foxes together, did five years in a cell together . . . Why did he turn around for Porta?”
Then Bumpy sadly shook his head and said, ?
??His mama ain’t gonna never stop crying when I tell her he’s wasted!”
The sentry put his hand on Bumpy’s shoulder and said, “Man, I’m sorry. I had to do it.”
Bumpy said, “I guess the nigger earned it.”
Ivory turned and said to the sentry, “I’ll send a wagon for him in a few minutes. Get your report ready for the council.” The squad walked silently back to the Pontiac.
As Lotsa Black drove toward the parsonage, Ivory said, “Bumpy, I’m almost certain T. will want Roscoe buried here. It will be best for his mama and the Warriors if she never knows what happened to him.”
Lotsa Black said, “I don’t wanta guess what T. will do to us for losing Roscoe like we did.”
• • •
Two hours after Roscoe’s death, Ivory Jones stood in the command bunker. He stood shaken by withering reprimand and demotion from squad leader by the council for his careless loss of his prisoner.
At the moment of Ivory’s humiliation, Warrior Charming Mills and a band of masked dope jackers with pistols and shotguns battered in Pretty L. C.’s basement whore crib and shooting gallery beneath a condemned tenement in the forty-eight hundred block of Calumet Avenue.
Half pimp, half drug pusher, L. C. sat alone in purple shirtsleeves at a table filling glassine bags with heroin for his big retail trade. Charming Mills ripped from L. C.’s cute face the surgical mask worn against inhalation of the half-kilo mound of white powder before him.
L. C.’s teeth banged together in fear. A huge ring on a manicured pinky flamed and flashed his initials in diamonds and rubies like a swarm of pastel fireflies as he jerked wads of cash from his pockets. His yellow face was chalky as he held the money out in trembly hands. His Adam’s apple yo-yoed in his throat as he tried to speak.
The gang, dressed in black jumpsuits, surrounded him with eyes glittering in their Halloween masks.