Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

“Once again, for mother Mary, what is it, Joe?” Elefante asked.

  “The Lebanon shipment is nine days off, and I been screwed. I had to get Ray at Coney Island to make the picku—”

  “I don’t wanna know about it.”

  “Tommy, would you let me finish? You know the old paint factory, where we used to swim? Enzo Vitali’s old pier? Your old guy, your shooter, plugged three people down there yesterday.”

  “I don’t have no old guy shooting for me,” Elefante said.

  “Tell that to the dead guy taking a nap with bullet holes in his face. Now the cops are all over me.”

  “Would you come up to street level, Joe? I didn’t have nobody down at Vitali’s last night. We spent the night getting ready for this haul. Thirty-four TV sets from Japan—till you came. Now it’s thirty-two. The other two are at the bottom of the harbor by now.”

  “I told you I’d pay for ’em.”

  “Keep your dough and use it to go dancing next time I got an operation going. It’ll make my life easier. I’m glad you came, though. Showed me what I already knew: that boat captain is just the lizard I thought he was.”

  “So you didn’t have those guys shot?”

  “What do I look like, Joe? You think I’m stupid enough to set fire to money in my own pocket? Why would I have the cops rattling the docks when I had a shipment to move the next day? I had something going.”

  Peck’s anger eased a little. He reached for a glass and poured himself a shot of the Johnnie Walker. He sipped deeply, then said, “You remember that kid? The little whiz kid who worked for me in the Cause Houses? The one who got himself shot by that old bird? Well, last night, the old bird came back with a second old bird to finish the job. The two of ’em shot the kid again—didn’t kill him, if you can believe it. This kid’ll give a gunman blisters before he keels over. But they killed one of the kid’s crew. One of the old guys got plugged. The old guy, your guy I think, he’s dead too, I hear. Floating in the harbor someplace. The cops are dragging for him tomorrow.”

  “Why do you keep calling him my guy? I don’t know him.”

  “You should. He’s your gardener.”

  Elefante blinked hard and sat straight up. “Run that by me again.”

  “The old guy. The one who shot the kid and got tossed in the harbor without instructions. He’s your gardener. He worked in your house. For your mother.”

  Elefante was silent a moment. He stared at the desk, then glanced around the room, as if the answer to this new problem were hiding in the nooks and crannies of the dank old boxcar.

  “That can’t be right.”

  “It is. I got it from a bird in the Seven-Six.”

  Elefante bit his bottom lip, thinking. How many times had he told his mother to be careful who she let in the house? Finally he said, “That old drunk can’t shoot nobody.”

  “Well, he did.”

  “That old man drinks so much you can hear his stomach slosh. The fucker can’t stand up straight. He uses a Mason jar for a jigger.”

  “Well, he’s drinking all he wants now. Harbor water.”

  Elefante rubbed his forehead. He poured another drink and gulped it down. He blew out his cheeks, then swore softly, “Shit.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m telling you, Joe. I didn’t know a thing about it.”

  “Sure. And I’m a butterfly with a Jag.”

  “I swear on my father’s grave, I don’t know nothing about it.”

  Peck poured another shot of Johnnie Walker for himself. That was a pretty heavy denial: he’d never heard the Elephant mention his dead father. Everybody knew the Elephant and his old man had been close.

  “It still screws me up,” Peck said. “There’s cops all over Vitali Pier now. And guess where Ray was gonna make my pickup?”

  Elefante nodded. Vitali Pier would’ve been good. Unused. Vacant. Deep water. Dock still half-usable. This was a screwup, to be sure.

  “When are the things from Lebanon coming?”

  “Nine days.”

  Elefante thought quickly. Now he saw the problem, or the beginning of it. Once again, he thought, Joe’s dropping a bomb on me. The shooting would bring—had brought—the cops. He realized that the only reason the heat hadn’t descended on him tonight was because the night-duty captain at the Seven-Six, whom he regularly paid off, was a good Irishman who kept his word. Elefante had tried to reach the captain today and couldn’t. Now he knew why. The poor cluck must’ve twisted like an octopus to keep squad cars and homicide detectives from trolling through his dock and was likely afraid to pick up the phone, thinking Internal Affairs was on to him. This kind of heat—three shootings, for Christ’s sake—brought the papers and full-blown attention from headquarters down on Centre Street. No precinct lieutenant or captain could hold off that kind of heat for long. Elefante made a mental note to send the captain an extra tip for his diligence.

  “Things will cool down by then, Joe.”

  “Sure. And the Bed-Stuy bastard gunning for my territory is at a peace conference right now,” Joe fumed.

  “Maybe he’s the guy behind all of it.”

  “That’s what I come to ask. You think your old guy worked for him? Was he that type?”

  “I don’t know him,” Elefante said. “I spoke to him once. But he couldn’t pull this kind of stunt. He’s old, Joe. The guy’s so drunk he gets spirit messages from his dead wife. He’s a . . .” He paused. He wanted to say, “a deacon at his church,” but he wasn’t quite sure what that meant. The old bird had told him, but in the thrust of the moment he forgot.

  Peck’s raspy voice cut into his thoughts. “He’s a what?”

  “A lush, Joe. A drunk, dammit. The guy couldn’t see straight enough to shoot an elephant in a bathtub. Not to mention somebody on Vitali Pier in the middle of the night. How’s an old geezer gonna hit two young guys who are likely scrambling and shooting back in the dark? The guy can barely stand up. He’s a gardener, Joe. Works with plants. That’s why my mother got him. You know how crazy she is about plants.”

  Peck considered this. “Well, she’s gonna need a new gardener.”

  “I didn’t know he had anything to do with this kid. What’s his name? The kid that started it all?”

  “Clemens. Deems Clemens. Honest kid. Didn’t start nothing.”

  Elefante listened, aware of the irony. Honest kid. A dope seller. Didn’t start nothing.

  “And the old guy?” he said. “What’s his name?”

  “I was gonna ask you that. You got so much money, you don’t know who you’re paying?”

  “My mother paid him! I can’t remember his name. He’s at the church there.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the next block, where Five Ends sat. Then he said it: “He’s a deacon.”

  Peck looked puzzled. “What do deacons do?” he asked.

  “Carry eggs around, pay bar bills, quilt spaghetti—I don’t know,” Elefante said. “That ain’t the question to be asking. The question is who’s behind it. If I was you, that’s what I’d be asking.”

  “I know who’s behind it. Goddamn nigger bastard in Bed-Stuy, Bunch Moon’s been tryi—”

  “I don’t wanna hear no names, Joe. And I don’t wanna hear no more about any shipments. That’s your business. My business is this dock. That’s all I’m concerned with. I can work with you on anything involving my dock. That’s it. As it stands, that thing at Vitali’s is gonna make me radioactive for a while.”

  “What do you expect?” Joe said.

  “You got a couple of birds down at the Seven-Six. I got one or two ants in that colony too. Let’s find out what happened.”

  “We know what happened.”

  “No we don’t. That guy was so old he sips his booze through a straw. He can’t shoot two young dope slingers. Even with a second old guy he couldn’t do it. Those young dop
e guys, they’re fast and strong. Whoever fed you that story is wrong.”

  “A cop told me.”

  “Some of those goons at the Seven-Six couldn’t fill in the return address on an envelope. Those kids were moving around unless they were tied up. Those boys from the Cause selling that crap are big, strong kids, Joe. I used to see ’em playing baseball against the Watch Houses. You ever see one of ’em with their shirt off? They’re gonna let an old man—or two old men, if it was two—tie ’em up and bang away at ’em? The only way they coulda aired those kids out was if those boys were necking like girl and boy.” He paused to consider. “I could see that. If it was two teenagers kissing or something, yeah, I could see it.”

  “Well, he did say something about a girl.”

  “Who did?”

  “My bird in the Seven-Six. He read the report. He said the report didn’t say anything about a girl. But somebody mentioned a girl.”

  “Who mentioned a girl?”

  “Well, that’s the other thing I forgot to tell you. Potts Mullen is back in the Seven-Six.”

  Elefante was silent a moment, then he sighed. “Gotta hand it to ya, Joe. When you bring trouble, you always bring it in threes. I thought Potts was gone.”

  “What you blaming me for?” Joe said. “Potts was gone. My guy told me Potts got sent to One-Oh-Three in Queens, then crossed a captain out there by trying to be a supercop and got busted from detective back to blues. He’s a sergeant, or close to it. They say Potts was telling some of the guys in squad cars to look out for a girl shooter. Said he’d heard there’d been a girl at the dock.”

  “How’d he find that out?”

  “Potts told my guy he went into the old paint factory behind Vitali Pier and found a drunk back there who saw it all. The guy told Potts there was a girl.”

  “You talked to Potts?”

  Peck looked scornful. “Right. Me and Potts gonna sit down and sip ales and sing Irish ditties. I can’t stand that holy-rolling mick bastard.”

  Elefante considered a moment. “Me and Potts go back a ways. I’ll talk to him.”

  “You’d be dumb to try to grease him,” Peck said as a warning.

  “I ain’t that stupid. I said I’ll talk to him. I’ll go to him before he comes to me.”

  “Why you gonna ask for trouble? He’s not gonna tell you nothing.”

  “You forget, Joe. I run a legitimate business here. I rent boats. I got a construction company. I run a storage place. My mother walks around the neighborhood looking for plants. I can ask him about a dead guy in the harbor around here, especially since the guy worked for me—for Ma, really.”

  Peck shook his head slowly. “This area used to be safe. Before the coloreds came.”

  Elefante frowned. “Before the drugs came, Joe. It’s not the coloreds. It’s the drugs.”

  Peck shrugged and sipped his drink.

  “We’ll work this one together,” Elefante said. “But you keep me outta that other business. And spread the word to those so-called honest kids of yours that my mother had nothing to do with that shooting at Vitali’s. Because if something happens to her while she’s walking around here picking daffodils and ferns and whatever the fuck else she feels a need to gather up, if she so much as falls down and scrapes a knee, they’ll be outta business. And so will you.”

  “What you making something out of nothing for? Your mom’s walked these lots for years. Nobody bothers her.”

  “That’s just it. The old coloreds know her. The kids don’t.”

  “I can’t do anything about that, Tommy.”

  Elefante rose, downed his drink, put the bottle of Johnnie Walker back inside his desk drawer, and closed it. “You been told,” he said.

  20

  PLANT MAN

  Sportcoat lay on a battered couch in Rufus’s basement. He had been there by his count for three days, drinking, sleeping, drinking, eating a little, sleeping, and mostly, Rufus acknowledged curtly to him, drinking. Rufus came and went, delivering news that was not so good, not so bad. Sausage and Deems were alive and in the hospital in Borough Park. The cops were looking for him. So was everyone at his various jobs: Mr. Itkin; the ladies from Five Ends, including Sister Gee; Miss Four Pie; and assorted customers he did odd work for. So were some unusual-looking white men who had come over to the Cause before.

  Sportcoat didn’t care. He was consumed with the events around fishing Deems out the water, the feel of being in the harbor water at night. He had never done that. Once many years ago when he first came to New York, when he and Hettie were young, they’d agreed they would try that one day—just jump into the harbor at night to see the shore from the water, to feel the water and what New York felt like from there. It was one of the many promises they’d made to each other when they were young. There were others. See the giant redwood trees in Northern California. Visit Hettie’s brother in Oklahoma. Visit the Bronx botanical garden to see the hundreds of plants there. So many resolutions, none of them ever fulfilled—except that one. In the end, though, she had done it alone. She had felt that water at night.

  That day, the third day, in the afternoon, he fell asleep and dreamed of her.

  For the first time since her death, she appeared young. Her brown skin was shiny, moist, and clear. Her eyes were wide and sparkled with enthusiasm. Her hair was braided and parted neatly. She wore the brown dress that he remembered. She’d made it herself with her mother’s sewing machine. It was adorned with a yellow flower stitched onto the left side, just above her breast.

  She appeared in Rufus’s basement boiler room looking as if she’d just breezed in from a Sunday church picnic back home in Possum Point. She sat on an old kitchen sink that lay on its side. She perched on it lightly, easily, the picture of grace, as if she were seated on an armchair and could float away from it if it fell over. Her pretty legs were crossed. Her brown arms rested on her lap. Sportcoat stared at her. With her brown dress and its yellow flower and her hair parted, her brown skin shimmering from some secret source of light in the dank, dark basement, she looked achingly beautiful.

  “I remember that dress,” he said.

  She offered a sad, bashful smile. “Oh hush,” she said.

  “I do recollects it,” he said. It was his awkward way of making up for previous arguments they’d had, tossing off a compliment at once.

  She looked at him sadly. “You look like you been living rough and wrong, Cuffy. What’s the matter?”

  Cuffy. She hadn’t called him that in years. Not since they were young. She called him “daddy,” or “honey,” or “fool,” or sometimes even “Sportcoat,” a name she despised. But rarely Cuffy. That was something from long ago. A different time.

  “Everything’s right as rain,” he said cheerfully.

  “Yet so much has gone wrong,” she said.

  “Not a bit,” he said. “Everything is skippy now. It’s all fixed. ’Cept that Christmas Club money. You can fix that.”

  She smiled and gave him the look. He’d forgotten Hettie’s “look”: her smile of understanding and acceptance that said, “All intangibles are forgiven, I accept them and more—your faults, your dips and turns, everything, because our love is a hammer forged at the anvil of God and not even your most foolish, irrational act can break it.” That look. Sportcoat found it unsettling.

  “I been thinking about back home,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s old-time stuff,” he said, waving his hand.

  She ignored that. “I was thinking about them moonflowers. Remember how I used to go through the woods and gather up moonflowers? The ones that blossom at night? I was crazy about them things. I loved the way they smell! I’ve forgotten those things!”

  “Oh, that ain’t nothing,” he said.

  “Oh, c’mon! The way them things smell. How could you forget?”

  She stood, clasping her hands near her chest
, emboldened with the enthusiasm of love and youth, a way of being he’d long forgotten. That attachment was so long ago it seemed like it had never happened. The newness of love, the absolute freshness of youth. He was startled but tried to hide it by making a “pfffft” noise with his lips. He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t. She was so pretty. So young.

  She sat back down onto the sink and, noticing his expression, leaned forward and touched his forearm playfully. He didn’t move, but frowned: he was afraid to give in to the moment.

  She sat up straight again, serious now, all playfulness gone. “Back home when I was little, I used to walk through the woods gathering up moonflowers,” she said. “My daddy warned me off it. You know how he was. A colored girl’s life wasn’t worth two cents. And he wanted me to go to college and all. But I liked adventure. I was about seven or eight years old, jumping around the woods like a rabbit, having my fun, doing what I was told not to do. I had to search out quite a distance to find them flowers. I was deep out there one day and heard some yelling and hollering and jumped out of sight. The yelling was so loud and I got curious, so I crept up on it and who do I see but you and your daddy lumbering. Y’all was sawing a big old maple tree with a crosscut saw.”

  She paused, remembering. “Well, he was sawing it. He was drunk and you was a little bitty thing. And he was swinging you back and forth like a rag doll, working that crosscut saw to death, sawing at that tree.”

  She chuckled at the memory.

  “You done your best, but you got tired. Back and forth you went and finally you dropped off. And your daddy was so drunk he loosed his end of the saw and stepped to you hard. He picked you up with one hand and hollered at you in a way that I never forgot. He didn’t say but two words.”

  “‘Saw on,’” Sportcoat said sadly.

  Hettie sat thoughtfully a moment.

  “Saw on,” she said. “Imagine that. Talking to a child that way. There is nothing on this earth so low as a mother or father who treats their child cruel.”

  She scratched her jaw thoughtfully. “The world was just becoming clear to me then. Seeing how we lived under the white folks, how they treated us, how they treated each other, their cruelty and their phoniness, the lies they told each other, and the lies we learned to tell. The South was hard.”