Death Wish

  Finally L. C. said hoarsely, “Don’t waste me! Take this five grand. Here! Here! Take it, but please don’t waste me!”

  Charming Mills snatched the bills and stuffed them into his overcoat pocket. He said in his soprano voice, “Slick ass, it’s too late. You stopped selling our merchandise and got in the wind, and now you’re in business for yourself. Whose dope is that you bagging?”

  “It’s Big Melvin’s from New York,” L. C. mumbled.

  Charming stuck a finger into the white heap and put it against his tongue. He said, “Melvin’s got good dope. I want to meet him.”

  L. C. walled his big gray eyes and said, “He split back to the Apple. Please give me a chance. Please! I’ll sell your stuff or pay two bills a day to deal Melvin’s.”

  Buncha Grief, gargantuan cousin of Kong, stood behind L. C. with the snout of his forty-five automatic pressed against L. C.’s head.

  He said, “Nigger, get up away from the table so your motherfucking blood won’t ruin that smack. Get up, nigger, and kneel.”

  L. C. blubbered and tried to stand. He collapsed and rolled under the table. Buncha Grief stooped and thundered four slugs into his skull. Charming rolled the heroin up into the plastic tablecloth and shoved it and the wad of money inside into Buncha’s jumpsuit.

  He was leaving the basement when Charming glanced down at the thirty-grand ring on L. C.’s dead hand. He came back and worked it off the finger. Then he pushed it into a cigarette pack in his shirt pocket.

  The five dope jackers walked casually to the pitch-black alley and removed their masks. Then three split off and went to their cars parked on the street at both ends of the alley. Buncha Grief and Mills went to Buncha’s souped-up old Imperial.

  As Buncha shot away he said, “Taking him off was sweet as nun pussy. Too bad, Charming, you ain’t still pimping so maybe you could cop his slew of hoes. If I was a cute little yellow nigger like you, I’d cop his stable. My half-white mama and Kong’s was two of the finest sister hoes in the streets. Ain’t it a bitch they both got bigged by two black ugly tricks?”

  Mills frowned. “I had class, Grief. I never had any filthy low-life junkie bitches when I was playing. The last and only stinking junkie whore that even touched me was when my old lady dumped my two-month-old ass into a trash bin.”

  A mile of silence away Buncha pulled to a stop, and they went into his gaudy first-floor apartment on Sixty-first Street.

  Mills removed the black leather jumpsuit and dressed in a blue suit and overcoat. L. C.’s bankroll counted out to fifty-five hundred. His dope weighed one pound three ounces. Buncha leaned forward on his black and gold checked sofa. He rolled up one of L. C.’s C-notes, then he snorted up one of the sparkling rows of crystal cocaine off the black onyx coffee table.

  Buncha turned to Mills and said, “Here, man, take a blow. It’s the last of that lady we heisted from Double Head’s old bitch, Wanda.”

  Mills chewed his bottom lip and hesitantly took the rolled C-note from Buncha.

  Buncha said, “You ain’t got to worry this super bad lady will fuck up your skull in the ring tonight. Go on take a blow and get a firstset knockout over that no-punch chump.”

  Charming mumbled, “I’m not worried. Even pissy loaded I’d hang him . . . But snorting coke is against T.’s rules.”

  Buncha grinned and winked and said, “I ain’t gonna snitch on you, baby.” He laughed his eyes moist as Mills slowly dipped his head and snorted up a row of coke.

  Buncha said, “Nigger, are you for real? For that blow of coke, at worse, T. would maybe bury his foot in your ass and toss you into that dungeon under the Zone. Do I have to run down to you what T. would do to you just for the L. C. set? Nigger, worry about serious things like what would Cous and me do to you if you dropped out of our thing.”

  Mills waved a hand and said, “Man, the bread is too sweet and regular to cut loose.”

  Buncha said, “Charming, you sure know what to say!”

  Mills got to his feet and said, “Any message for Smitty besides the L. C. rundown?”

  Buncha stood and walked Mills to the door. His small eyes were bright maroon dancers in his gorilla face as he said, “Tell Cous I found out there is at least a quarter of a mil in Double Head’s safe. It’s Wanda’s cocaine take and the numbers skim from the dago’s sixty-percent end. Tell Cous I said for a big one like this, he’s gonna have to risk a meet with me soon so we can polish the plan to take off that bread.”

  Mills’s mouth gaped open, and he shook his head. He said, “It’s a death trap, Buncha. There must be a dozen guards inside and others in disguise on the street outside the numbers bank. Even the police cruise by often when the runners are checking in. And that’s the only time to get even a chump shot at that safe. And the baddest nigger in Chicago, Double Head himself, is always hiding somewhere with a machine gun.”

  Buncha held the door open and said, “Charming, squeeze your bowels together and listen. That punkin-head fat ass ain’t so bad. For guts and rep, he’s at the bottom of the list after T., Cous, and then me. We’ll ice his guards and blast into his pasteboard bank. I’ll have him on his knees begging me like a broad not to waste him.”

  Mills grinned weakly, looked at his wristwatch, and said, “I’m hitting the wind so I won’t blow my title by default.”

  He went past Buncha to his Volkswagen a block away.

  • • •

  As Charming drove into the Zone, referee Tat was counting ten over a young Warrior heavyweight in the semimain bout of the Christmas boxing show.

  The arena was in the huge church. The three thousand interracial spectators sat on folding metal chairs. They cheered and applauded the winning underdog who banged his gloves together and leaped wildly into the air.

  Taylor walked across the ring and whispered to the announcer, then climbed over the ropes and threaded his way through the excited throngs in the aisles. He went to one of the basement dressing rooms shared by Charming and his opponent.

  Bama’s naked skull glistened like an ebony pond as he kneaded the shoulders of Charming’s challenger, stretched out on his belly atop a table. Kong, wearing a T-shirt stenciled “Charming Mills” on the back in pink letters, paced the concrete and violently chewed a wad of gum.

  Taylor said, “Smitty, where the hell is your fighter?”

  Kong scowled and said, “Somewhere either pulling his head outta a pussy or wiping off his dick. I’ll wring his fucking neck and—”

  At that moment Mills burst into the room with a radiant smile on his face. He shucked out of his overcoat and bent over. He said, “Here it is; get in line and kick it good.”

  Taylor grinned and said, “Charming, go on and whip your tale on us.”

  Charming shot a look at Kong and said, “I muscled a gorilla off an innocent young sister from the big foot country on Sixty-first Street. We blew two hours before we found the alley and the raggedy van where her mama and ten brothers and sisters were padding.”

  Then he walled his doe eyes toward Taylor and cocked his curly head to one side and said, “Big T., you should have seen all of them crying and thanking God for sending me. They actually kissed the hem of my overcoat when I gave them money for kerosene and their first meal in two days. Good buddies, I was a Christmas miracle for them. I’ll never forget their faces. How I turned them on! I felt like J. C. himself doing his encore thing.”

  The council and the challenger laughed as Kong booted Mills in the buttocks with his knee and snatched off his suit coat.

  “C’mon, outta your street clothes, you conning shit-colored bastard,” Kong said as he lifted Mills and sat him on the end of the table.

  Taylor and Kong started to undress him. Kong stooped to remove his shoes, and Taylor started to unbutton his shirt.

  Mills suddenly remembered the ring stashed in the cigarette package in his shirt pocket. He stiffened and leaped away from Taylor’s hands to the floor. But not before L. C.’s diamonds and rubies flashed for an instant in Taylor
’s eyes.

  Mills stared at Taylor’s stone face for a long moment. He swung his right arm in a circle. He said, “Damn! That was a helluva pain. I guess I pinched something when I punched out that gorilla.”

  Taylor laughed dryly through his teeth and said, “Charming, if he’s up there, maybe God is chastising you for using his name in your jive and shuck.”

  Kong grabbed Charming’s arm and took him to his locker in a corner across the room. Bama and his fighter left for the ring, followed by Taylor.

  Kong glanced at the door closing behind Taylor and said, “You shaky sonuvabitch. What went wrong?”

  Mills handed the cigarette pack to Kong and said, “All news good. We stung for a pound three ounces of ass-kicking horse, and fifty-five hundred cash. Now gander L. C.’s ring I copped for you. I did that number with T. so he couldn’t snatch that pack and grab a smoke like he does.”

  Kong stood gazing at the ring and shaking his head. He looked at Mills sternly and said, “Nigger, why? Why? Why? Why would you lug our death into the Zone?”

  Mills winced and said, “That’s a twenty-five . . . maybe even thirty-gee hoop, and you miss the point?”

  Kong slapped Mills hard on the side of his head. He seized Mills’s face between his huge palms. He pushed his fearsome face against Mills’s and roared, “What point, you idiot muthuhfuckah?”

  Mills trembled and, with his face still imprisoned, slipped out of his trousers and whispered, “Your first initial, Smitty . . . it’s L . . . I thought remounting the C side with a S would be easy.”

  Kong flung Mills, and he bounced off the lockers. As they left for the ring Kong shoved the ring to the bottom of the pack. He crushed it closed at the top and slipped it into one of the outside pockets of the canvas first aid bag he would use in Mills’s corner.

  Taylor went back to the dressing room when he saw Kong and Mills go to the ring. He searched all the clothing and the room for the ring. Finding nothing, he got back to his ringside seat as the first round bell rang.

  He noticed a bruise on Mills’s cheek as he left the corner. He also noticed that Mills seemed unusually nervous. Taylor got up and went to stoop down beside Kong. Kong was glumly watching Mills’s challenger flick stinging jabs into Mills’s face without a return from Mills.

  Taylor leaned and said into Kong’s ear, “Smitty, your fighter ain’t got his mind nowhere near the ring. What you say to going down the drain with him for another fifty, he don’t win?”

  Kong turned and studied Taylor’s bland face for a long moment to catch a clue that Taylor’s remark had a hook in it. The bell rang the ending of the first round.

  Kong took several articles from the canvas bag and said as he and an assistant climbed through the ropes, “My fighter’s got nothing on his mind but punching the dooky outta the other dude. I call the half a yard.”

  Taylor was about to get to his feet when he swept his eyes across the outside pockets of the canvas bag. He saw the bulge of the pack. He stared up at Kong busily attending Mills. Quickly, he removed the ring and saw it was real. He returned the ring and the pack. When the bell rang for the second round, he was in his seat across the ring.

  Mills came out punching recklessly. He missed a whistling overhand right lead and received a crunching left hook to the jaw. He shuddered in the center of the ring before the back of his head crashed against the canvas with a sickening thud.

  The referee took one look at his motionless form, stooped, and pulled back his eyelids. He waved it over as a knockout.

  Bama and his assistant climbed into the ring. They worked on Mills for three minutes. Finally he came around and climbed through the ropes for the long and painful walk through a bedlam of boos.

  Taylor stopped Bama and whispered, “Meet me quick as you can in the parsonage office.”

  • • •

  T. had just finished his rundown to Bama about the L. C. ring when a media monitor in the bunker reached T. by telephone. He relayed the news of L. C.’s death and the police theory that L. C. had been robbed and slain by black gangsters for Chicago’s white-crime syndicate.

  T. hung up the phone and said, “Bama, you called the shot! That ring Smitty and Charming is holding belonged to dope-pushing L. C.”

  Bama nodded. “He’s dead?”

  T. said, “Uh-huh, the rollers either conning or been conned. They throwing out that black gangsters wasted L. C. for the dagos.”

  Bama chuckled. “No way. Anybody the dagos gave a contract to wouldn’t fall in love with a stiff’s flash.”

  “Then, Bama, it’s them black dope jackers,” T. said. “And I’m gonna walk Charming’s and Smitty’s butts ’til they confess what kinda mess they fucking the Warriors and all our dreams up in!”

  Bama, sitting in a chair beside the desk, leaned toward T., who drummed his fingertips on the phone base. He patted the back of T.’s hand and said, “Now, son, I’m sad and hurting like you. I love Smitty and Mills like sons. But this is no time for anything except our smoothest control of the situation and ourselves. Before we tip our hands, we have to find out whether the mess they’re in is in seed or blossom.”

  T. said, “You mean other Warriors . . . ?”

  Bama said, “I mean that. And also, that since we sleep under the same roof with Smitty, we must not wake up him, or Mills, to our suspicions. Since Smitty’s a council member, we could try him openly for any connection with drugs whatsoever.”

  T. shook his head and said, “We, and the Zone, would lose all the support and protection of the people.”

  Bama said, “No, we can’t survive without the favor of all those white and black parents and decent citizens here and across the nation who believe in our sincerity. Police and soldiers would blitz and blast us out of the Zone the same day the public got solid evidence a Warrior leader was dirty with drugs and murder.”

  T. said, “I hope it ain’t like it looks for Smitty and Mills. I been knowing them both long and good . . . I thought.”

  Bama said, “Let’s feed Smitty and Mills with a long-handled spoon to set them up for a moment of truth. We’ll run a powerful psychodrama on them in a private place the first chance we get. Maybe their innocence will let them pass it. If they flunk it, we quietly execute them on the spot. We’ll bury them and any Warrior accomplices.”

  T. nodded.

  Bama got to his feet and said, “Remember, we must play the con that all’s well and normal . . . And normally I go to bed around this time of night.”

  T. sat at the desk deep in thought.

  Bama stopped at the door. “I said I’m turning in.”

  T. looked up and almost whispered, “Bama, I got a stout feeling Smitty ain’t got no dealings in dope. And even L. C.’s ring and killing, except Smitty got foolish trying to save his friend Mills from some kinda crooked hassle. Bama, Smitty ain’t gone crazy. He ain’t forgot them times I climbed in the devil’s ass to save his life and saved him from a bum’s bag.”

  “T . . . If he tests out guilty, maybe he soured and derailed because his debt got too big and painful to pay,” Bama said over his shoulder and went down the hall.

  9

  T. flicked off the desk light and sat in the darkness. He spun the chair toward the window behind him and raised it several inches at the bottom. Great volumes of hurt and rage shook him as he dry-retched and sucked air. He leaned back into the chair.

  His heavy lips shaped a grim line as he remembered a Fourth of July night forty-five years before. He was eight years old when he watched his mother, Pearl, heaving sobs as she took off his tennis shoe and hid the last few dollars left of his stepfather’s paycheck.

  Then, trembling, they huddled together at the front window. They stared at the ripply neon front of the Playhouse Saloon with sucker-trap blackjack and craps tables in the basement.

  He could feel the snub barrel of Sarge’s rusty Saturday Night Special against his knees. His mother had hidden it beneath the sofa cushion. He stroked fingertips tenderly across the
lump on his mother’s cheekbone as he stared at the saloon door half a block away. He thought that he would kill Sarge if he came home cussing and abusing his mother again.

  He said, “Mama, I hope Sarge get kilt shooting crap and don’t never come back here no more.”

  Pearl kissed him and said, “Jessie, stop that kinda hoping. We all he’s got, and he’s been my salvation man since Reverend Taylor passed away and we left Georgia.”

  He looked at her quizzically and said, “Mama, why you call my real daddy Reverend Taylor all the time?”

  She laughed mirthlessly and said, “ ’cause he’d puff up like a hoptoad if I didn’t. I guess even his mama wouldn’t call him Eli to his face.”

  She laughed loudly. “Maybe he let that chippy Reba he set up in luxury and silk dresses, while I had no decent shoes even, call him Eli. Jessie, we owe Sarge a lot.”

  With a puzzled frown wrinkling his forehead he said, “But, Mama, we don’t owe that old crazy nigger no right to beat up on you, huh?”

  “Jessie, I fell in the scuffle and hit my face myself on the kitchen table. Sarge ain’t been real bad ’cept the past year. Now you think back real hard and see I’m right.

  “I was broke, sick, and still carrying you when Reverend Taylor passed. Sarge courted me with flowers and money once a week for months. He never touched me, until I made him kiss me.

  “He’d just sit way ’cross the living room in that old green chair. He’d moon-eye me like I was a royal queen. He worked two jobs and loved you like his own when I birthed you.”

  “But, Mama, he’s crazy. We oughta ease away on his next payday. We oughta move to the Southside.”

  She shook her head and said, “He ain’t . . . real crazy . . . I mean, he couldn’t be a sweeter husband until he’s drinking heavy or thinking he’s back fighting in the Bulge battle. I guess anybody’s brains could scramble in all that blood and noise.”

  She caught her breath, and her eyes widened at the sight of Sarge. She said, “He’s broke again . . . fooling the people again. Look at Mister Handsome marching home with his shoulders all reared back like some rich general.”