There was a distance now, between him and Earl. He felt it. Earl, after his initial rage and displeasure with the whole Sportcoat business, now suddenly seemed to shrug the whole thing off. He insisted Mr. Bunch was pleased with his work. “The Cause is your area. You handle it like you want. Just keep moving the dope.”
That wasn’t like Earl. Everybody knew Earl got his head bonked in by a baseball at the Watch Houses after trying to bust down on Sportcoat. And then that doofus Soup Lopez was seen carrying Earl to the subway station after Earl tried to bust up Soup’s homecoming party—with Sister Gee walking behind them like a damn schoolteacher. He’d also heard Earl got dragged out of Building 17 by Sportcoat and Sausage—after the two old fuckers supposedly tried to electrocute him in the basement of Building 17 but screwed up and put out the building lights for two hours instead. Earl was getting punked. There was something wrong with that.
If Mr. Bunch was so cool about his screwup with Sportcoat, why was he letting his main man, Earl, get his ass kicked up and down the Cause District? And why was Earl so cool about it? It felt like a trap. He’d copped heroin from Earl twice a week for four years. He’d watched him work. He’d seen Earl stick a fork in a guy’s eye just for looking at him wrong. He’d once watched Earl pistol-whip a rival drug dealer to unconsciousness over a ten-dollar short. Earl did not fuck around. Something was wrong.
He couldn’t get it out his head. There was a play involved. It was just a matter of time before it showed itself. But what was it?
The waiting didn’t bother Deems, but the uncertainty of strategy did. Everything to him was about strategy. That’s how he’d survived. He heard that other big-time dealers called him a boy genius. He liked that. It pleased him that his crew, his rivals, and even at times Mr. Bunch marveled at how someone so young managed to figure things out on his own and keep ahead of older men, some of whom were vicious and clawing to get his business. He liked that they wondered how he could stay ahead of the competition, knew when to attack rival drug dealers and when to back away, what to sell and when and for how much, what button to push and who to push against. Mr. Bunch once told him that the drug game is like war. Deems disagreed. He watched people, observed how they moved. He saw drug dealing as a kind of baseball game, a game involving strategy.
Deems loved baseball. He’d pitched all the way through high school and could have gone further had not his cousin Rooster lured him into the fast money of the heroin game. He still kept track of the game, the teams, the squads, the statistics, the hitters, the Miracle Mets, who, miraculously, might be in the World Series that year, and most of all, the strategy. Baseball was a pitcher’s game. Your basic batter knew the pitcher had to throw the ball over the plate in order to get him out of the game. When you did, the batter would try to clobber it. So you had to keep him guessing. Was the batter looking for a curve? A fastball? A curve outside? Or a fastball inside? Hitters, like most people, were guessers. The good hitters studied pitchers, watched their moves, anything that might give them a hint of what pitch was coming. But the good pitchers were smarter than that. They kept the hitters guessing. Throw inside? Outside? Curveball? Splitter? Fastball up and away? Guess wrong and the hitter knocks your pitch out of the yard. Guess right and the guy’s out and you’re a baseball millionaire.
Drug selling was the same. Keep ’em guessing. Is that dealer coming at me this way? Or that way? At night? Or during the day? Is he selling smack now cheaper than me? Or the Big H? The Asian stuff? Or the stuff from Turkey? Why was he giving away the brown smoking shit out in Jamaica, Queens, for practically nothing and then selling it at triple cost to buyers in Wyandanch, Long Island?
That kind of thinking had vaulted him to the top of the game in South Brooklyn, and it allowed him to push into Queens and even parts of Manhattan and Long Island. He felt good about that. He had a tight crew and, most important, a baseball mind. He’d been trained by the best. A man who knew the game.
Fucking Sportcoat.
Sportcoat was, Deems thought bitterly, a fucking idiot and a sticky issue to be dealt with later. He had to focus on Earl now, and Mr. Bunch. Had to.
But the going was difficult. He was so bent on trying to figure out Mr. Bunch’s strategy behind Earl’s getting punked that he was losing sleep. He woke up in the mornings feeling achy and with bumps on his arms from rolling against the wall. His ear, what was left of it, still hurt all the time. He needed sleep. And rest. And this fly girl Phyllis, seated with him at Vitali Pier, was the perfect distraction. He needed this break. Otherwise, he was an explosion waiting to happen. He’d seen in his own housing project what happened to the dealers who didn’t ease up and figure things out. Mr. Bunch and Earl had a plan. What was it? He wasn’t sure. But if he busted hard on Earl now, or even defended himself against Earl should he attack, his plan to get with Joe Peck could come crashing down before it even got started.
Peck, Deems knew, was the World Series. He was the man with the means. Deems couldn’t toss a pitch for Peck till he got his own team together; he was still working on that, adding muscle to his crew, figuring the costs, the risks, the allies in the Watch Houses, in Far Rockaway, and the two trusted guys in Bed-Stuy from his days in Spofford, all of whom he needed to be in tight shape before he could approach Joe Peck. He’d sent Beanie, his most trusted crew member, out to Queens to sound out some fellow dealers in Jamaica, to ask if they’d buy from him if he sold to them at 20 percent less than Mr. Bunch. The answer was a quiet yes. He just needed to tighten things a little more before he approached Peck. Just be cool a few more weeks, then make his move.
But the stress was difficult to handle. There were so few people to trust. More and more, Deems found himself leaning on Beanie, who was more mature than the others and could keep his lips closed and not say dumb things. Outside of that, everything had gotten complicated. His mother was drinking more. His sister had disappeared someplace and hadn’t been seen in months. Deems found himself unable to get out of bed in the morning. He’d lie in place, pining for the old days, hearing the crack of a baseball bat on a warm summer day, watching Beanie, Lightbulb, Dome, and his main ace boon coon Sugar shag balls in the outfield while Sportcoat hollered at them, sitting them down in the rancid dugout and telling them stupid stories of the old men in the Negro leagues with funny names. He’d recall the days he and his friends used to lie on the roof of Building 9 waiting for the ants in fall. They were innocent boys then. Not now. Deems at nineteen felt like fifty. He got out of bed each morning feeling like he’d slept on the edge of a dark abyss. He actually toyed with the idea of running away to Alabama, where Sugar had moved to, and cooling out at Sugar’s house, just giving up the whole business altogether and finding a college down south that had a baseball team. He still had his stuff. He could still throw ninety miles per hour. He was sure he could still make a good college team as a walk-on. Mr. Bill Boyle, the baseball coach at St. John’s, had said so. Deems had known Mr. Boyle for years. Mr. Boyle used to come around every summer asking about him, watching him throw. He kept scorecards, and ratings, and notes on him. Deems liked that. All the way through his days at John Jay High School, where his pitching took the team to the state championship, Mr. Boyle said, “You got a future if you don’t screw up.” But Deems screwed up. The summer after he graduated from high school, already enrolled in St. John’s, Mr. Boyle came to visit, and by then his dope business was booming. He saw Mr. Boyle coming and scattered his dealers and pretended nothing was going on. He walked Mr. Boyle to the old ball field in the Cause and showed him he could still toss at ninety miles per hour and even faster. The old coach was excited. He called Deems when the fall semester began, and Deems said, “I’ll be there,” but something came up in his business—he couldn’t even remember what it was, looking back, just some bullshit. And that was it. Mr. Boyle hadn’t heard from him so he showed up in the Cause, unannounced, and spotted Deems at the flagpole, surrounded by dopers, moving heroin. “You’re
a waste of talent,” he said to Deems, and was gone. Deems wanted to call him again, but he was too embarrassed.
Then again, he told himself, Mr. Boyle drove an old Dodge Dart. My Firebird, he told himself, is nicer than his car. Besides, Mr. Boyle didn’t live out here in the Cause, where life was hard.
Sitting at the edge of the dock with the flyest girl he’d ever had a chance to put his arm around, with his feet clad in brand-new Converse sneakers with the star on the side, $3,200 cash in one pocket and a .32 caliber in the other, Beanie serving as his bodyguard because now he never went anywhere without crew, Deems dismissed the baseball idea and forced his mind back into the other game. The real one. He had to keep focused. He had gotten a call that afternoon from one of his boys in Bed-Stuy who’d served time with him in Spofford. His hunch was right. Bunch was about to make a play.
Bunch was on to him, the guy said. Bunch somehow learned that Deems wanted to cut a deal with Joe Peck to take over Bunch’s distribution. Earl was just a feint to lull him to sleep. “Earl ain’t the guy to look out for. Bunch sent for somebody else.”
“Who?” Deems had asked.
“Some motherfucker named Harold Dean. Don’t know nothing about him. But he’s a shooter. Watch your back with him.”
So that was it. Okay. Curveball. Harold Dean. He sent out an alert and got his crew ready, moving them into every building. Any strange dude not from the Cause, who walked through Buildings 9, 34, 17, all his strongholds, any man or kid who lagged through the flagpole plaza looking suspicious, watch him. It could be Harold Dean. Don’t do nothing. Just report to him. That was the word. He’d made it clear. He spent some money and sent out a few extra bodies. There wasn’t a corner of the Cause he hadn’t considered. Every roof. Every building. Every alley had someone in his crew watching it, including his own Building 9, where he placed Stick on the roof, along with a second kid named Rick working the hallways, along with Lightbulb.
Lightbulb.
There was something about Lightbulb Deems didn’t like. Lightbulb hadn’t been feeling it. Ever since Deems had been shot, and Lightbulb and Beanie came to visit him two weeks ago, and Lightbulb got scared, talking about “you” instead of “we” when Deems said he planned to approach Peck, Deems had gotten suspicious. Lightbulb didn’t like that plan. In fact, when Deems really thought about it, Lightbulb never had the heart for the game. Bunch was on to him because somebody had dimed on him. He’d gone through the list of possible double-crossers, and if he had to bet on the outcome . . .
He felt a burning in his throat as anger fought to take hold.
The cooing of the honeyed girl next to him, sighing and dangling her feet over the water, cooled the burning and brought him back to the moment. She was speaking to him but he didn’t hear. His mind couldn’t stop moving. It circled the Harold Dean problem again, then settled back on Lightbulb.
Fucking Lightbulb.
He couldn’t believe it, but he had to. Lightbulb had tipped his hand when they were in the apartment two weeks ago. He hadn’t been around much. He was also using, which meant that when Lightbulb made deliveries, he might be cutting the stuff with baking soda or whatever he could get his hands on. Diluting the goods to keep the good stuff for himself.
Rage climbed into Deems’s clear thinking. It was a mistake, he knew. But he couldn’t help it.
“He tipped his hand right then and there in the apartment.” He spit out the words.
“Say what?” Phyllis was talking. She was so sweet. Her voice, lovely and lilting with that Southern accent, was a turn-on. She was almost like a real woman, like the black chicks he’d seen in the movies and on TV, Diahann Carroll and Cicely Tyson, sitting there looking fully grown with her fine self. He felt like a movie star and a grown man all at once, too, sitting next to her. He was embarrassed that he didn’t have much experience with girls. She was twenty-four, five years older than him. Most of the girls he knew were younger and worked for him; the older ones occasionally screwed him for dope, or simply became whores for their own habit, which made them untouchable. This little honey was so fine and smart, it seemed a waste to let her get all fucked up on heroin before he got his dibs. Plus she was a little cold and distant, which made her irresistible.
She’d agreed to walk with him to the dock, where there were plenty of empty corners, perfect places for a guy to get his nuts dipped. It was better than risking his life using an apartment of some dopehead in the Cause who might set him up for the price of a ten-dollar bag of brown scag.
She looked at him oddly, waiting for his response. He shrugged and said, “It ain’t nothing,” then gazed out over the water at the twinkling lights, which began to appear one by one, as the sun made its last descent over the western skyline. He said, “Look at them lights.”
“Nice.”
“The very next thing I’m gonna get me is an apartment. In Manhattan.”
“That’s cool,” she said.
He placed his arm around her shoulder. She removed it.
“I ain’t that type of girl,” she said.
He snickered, slightly embarrassed, aware that Beanie was fifteen feet off packing a Davis .380-caliber handgun, watching their backs. “What type of girl are you?”
“Well, not that type. Not yet. I don’t know you that good.”
“That’s why we’re here, baby.”
She laughed. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Girl, we ain’t gonna bang skins out here like teenagers, if that’s what you asking. Not with him standing right there.” He nodded to Beanie. “We come out here to just see the water and cool out and talk.”
“Okay. But I need a little bit of something, y’know. I’m just feeling it . . . y’know. You ain’t gonna ask me to do a little extra here for it, are you?”
He was disappointed. “Girl, I don’t want no extra. Not right now. You need a hit, I’ll give you a hit.”
“Forget it,” she said. She tilted her head side to side as if she were thinking about something, then said, “Well . . . I probably could use a little taste,” she said.
He glared at her.
“I thought you said you wasn’t hooked.”
“I ain’t talking about doing no works. I’m talking about tasting you, boy!” She tapped his pants near his zipper.
He chuckled. Once again, he had a fleeting feeling of sudden alert and would have driven into that feeling further had he not been interrupted by the sound of Beanie behind him bursting into laughter and saying, “Deems, oh shit, check this out!”
He turned around. Beanie, a good ten feet off, was standing next to old Hot Sausage, of all people, who was stone drunk and without his stupid porkpie cap. He was dressed instead in the garb of an umpire, complete with jacket, cap, and chest protector, and holding the face mask in his hand. He swayed unsteadily, completely blitzed.
Deems scrambled to his feet and stepped over to them. “What you doing here, Sausage?” he said, snickering. “You drunk? It ain’t Halloween yet.” He could smell the booze. Sausage was totaled and looked so ready to collapse that Deems almost felt sorry for him.
Sausage was bombed. “It wasn’t my idea,” he slurred. “But being that as you . . . well . . . I was told if you seen this here umpire outfit, it would be a message.”
“What you talking about?” Deems said. An idea was forming in his head. He glanced at Beanie, who was still laughing, and at Phyllis, who had wandered over. He pointed in the direction of the park, several blocks away. “Baseball field’s that way, Sausage,” he said.
“Can I speak to you private a minute?” Sausage asked.
Now Deems smelled a rat. He glanced around. The dock was empty save Beanie, the new girl Phyllis, and Sausage. Behind them, the empty paint factory lay dark. Sausage, despite his inebriation, seemed nervous and was breathing hard.
“Come see me tomorrow. When you ain’t drunk. I’
m busy here.”
“It won’t take long, Mr. Deems.”
“Don’t Mr. Deems me, motherfucker. I hear you talking about me at the flagpole. You think I’m sitting around sucking eggs while you sneaking Sportcoat about? If it wasn’t for my granddaddy, I’da knocked your teeth out two weeks ago. You and Sport. You two old-bag motherfuckers, starting up shit . . .”
“Gimme a minute, son. I gotta tell you something. It’s important.”
“Open your talking hole then. Go ’head.”
Sausage seemed terrified. He glanced at Phyllis, then at Beanie, then back at Deems.
“It’s private, Deems, I’m telling you. Man to man. It’s about Sportcoat . . .”
“Fuck Sportcoat,” Deems said.
“He wants to tell you something important!” Sausage insisted. “In private.”
“Fuck him! Get the fuck outta here!”
“Show some respect for an old man, would ya? What have I ever done to you?”
Deems thought it through quickly, checking off boxes in his mind. His crew was at the flagpole. Chink was in place. Rags was in place. Stick had a crew of kids on the roofs. Beanie was there with him, packing heat. He was packing heat himself. Lightbulb was . . . well, in place, and far distant and no threat and was a problem that would be dealt with soon. He glanced at Phyllis, who was dusting off her pretty rear end. She took a step back toward the empty paint factory.
Deacon King Kong Page 25
