Conquer (The John Conquer Series Book 1)

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Conquer still had the scar on the back of his right hand.

  “I wanna ask you about gorillas,” Conquer said.

  “What kind?”

  “The kind with no head, hands, or heart. Skinned.”

  Alagba Mustafa stepped aside and let him in.

  Hekima Books had taken up the baton when the white folks had leveled Lewis Michaux’s bigger and more popular National Memorial African Bookstore on the corner of 125th and Seventh three years ago to make way for an office building (and to keep the brothers and sisters from having a place to gather and talk). Though it had always been around somehow, Mustafa had bowed to Professor Michaux’s superior business acumen. Now Hekima was the new hub of afrocentric books in Harlem, continuing Michaux’s policy of being an open free space for any brother or sister who couldn’t afford to drop bread for a book but had the time to sit in a chair and read. It was the Schomburg Center for folks without a library card.

  Along with much of his inventory, Mustafa had snagged the sign over Michaux’s old door; ‘This House Is Packed With All The Facts About All The Blacks All Over The World.’ Carved statues from across Africa kept watch among the stacks of books. A Zulu shield and crossed assegai spears hung on the wall, supposedly given to Mustafa by a king that had gotten it passed down from Shaka. Some kids joked Mustafa was so old, he’d actually gotten it from Shaka himself.

  Conquer didn’t laugh at that. There was something powerful about the old man and this place. Nobody had ever burned it or broken in. He could feel the place was protected, and that Alagba Mustafa was more than he appeared to be.

  But he didn’t let on what he felt.

  Mustafa led him to the reading area, and seated himself in a round backed rattan chair that made him look like a king in a baggy, knit cap crown. He tented his long fingered hands in front of him and waited for Conquer to talk.

  Conquer hitched a foot on the arm of the couch.

  “I know a hunter will eat parts of a kill to gain power,” Conquer said. “But what kind of power? What’s it do for him? Does it work?”

  “You’re damn right it works,” said Mustafa. “The Bulu of Cameroon have an elite society, the Nji, who revere the gorilla as a spirit of fire and power. The Nji take the strength of the gorilla to battle evil sorcerers. The chief of the Nji society wears the skin. He takes the head and eats the brains, and the heart. His hands can strike like the gorilla’s; mash a man’s skull. You know, you aren’t the first person to ask me about this, John Conquer.”

  So the explanation for the skinned gorilla up in the Bronx was either exotic meat or a secret Bulu society. Conquer wondered which one Lazzeroni would go for.

  “Did Preacher Galarza ask about it?” Conquer asked.

  Mustafa shifted in his chair.

  “Preacher walked out of here with two books related to the subject. Somebody pinned them to his chest with an arrow, and nobody saw a shooter. Not on the roofs, not in the soul food place or the shoe store across the street.”

  Some brother in Harlem not only owned a bow, but could shoot like a Comanche. But who?

  Preacher had probably suspected somebody.

  “So who’s William Tell?”

  Mustafa smirked.

  “It’s funny that you say that. Do you know the story of Puncker of Rohrbach?”

  The name was familiar, but Conquer shook his head.

  “Like William Tell, it’s a white story,” Mustafa said, shrugging, “so it may or may not be true. Turns up in the Malleus Maleficarum. It’s about a man who made a deal with the devil. He became so accurate with his bow, he took the castle of Lindelbrunn by himself. He would shoot a number of arrows into a crucifix on Good Friday, and on any given day of the year, he could kill as many men with those arrows whether they stood behind a wall or not.”

  Conquer waited to hear the rest, but Mustafa just stared at him. Conquer’s eyes drifted to the shelves.

  “What books did Preacher try to walk out of here with?”

  “The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,” said Mustafa. “Volume 29. 1899 edition. White adventurers writing about the people they called the Fang. Some truths, some lies. And The Bantu Languages of Africa, Oxford University Press. 1959. Self-explanatory.”

  “You got another copy of either of them?”

  Mustafa showed his palms.

  “I’m just out. What do you want to know?”

  “Anything about Nji worshipers goin’ bad?”

  “Good and bad are subjective,” said Mustafa. “The gorilla spirit has no more concern about a man’s sense of right and wrong than the knowledge in all these books. It’s a power a man can tap into. What he does with it is his affair. What’s your real question?”

  “How do I separate one of these men from their power?”

  “When a man reads something in a book, he can’t un-read it. In the Nji society, the soul of the man and the gorilla are joined. Take the soul from the body. It’s the only way.”

  “But how do I deal with that?”

  “Don’t let him get a hold of you. Otherwise, get a really big gun. That’s how the white man did it.”

  “Hot socks,” Conquer mumbled, getting to his feet.

  “One last thing,” he said, as he turned toward the door, playing out his hunch. “What’s the name Essangui mean to you?”

  Mustafa chuckled. The old man’s smile gave Conquer the creeps.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s Bulu. Means ‘Father Gorilla.’ ”

  Well, that was that then. Two birds with one stone.

  He pushed open the door, and called over the jingling bells to Mustafa, still lounging in his high-backed chair.

  “Hey, how’d they get rid of that Punker of Rohrbach dude?”

  “Some peasants killed him with their spades.”

  “Like Frankenstein,” said Conquer.

  “Frankenstein’s monster,” said Mustafa.

  “I know that,” said Conquer, annoyed, letting the door fall shut behind him.

  He found J.K. leaning against the lamppost beside the parked Cordoba, smoking.

  “Yo,” said J.K., flicking away his butt when Conquer walked up. “Your car’s weird, man. I tried to sleep in there but I kept hearin’ voices on the radio.”

  “What the hell you expect to hear on the radio?” Conquer said, scowling as he got into the driver’s seat.

  “Nah, but…”

  J.K. blew out his lips and ran around to the passenger’s side as Conquer started the car.

  “Where we goin’ now, man?”

  “I wanna meet the new President,” said Conquer. “Clubhouse still on 167th?”

  “Yeah. But hey, let’s take the train. You don’t wanna park over there, man.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  * * * *

  The building was as Conquer remembered it, crumbling, coated in graffiti scrawls. Better suited as a lair or a nest than as affordable housing. Conquer parked in front and nobody on the street batted an eye when he left the car for the front stoop.

  “Your bucket’s gonna be on blocks when you come out. If you come out,” J.K. warned.

  “No it won’t,” said Conquer. Nobody touched the Cordoba. The mojo hand and the resident spirit within the car insured that. Nobody would even notice it was there.

  He went first through the front door, and a little dark-skinned kid came out of the shadows and flashed a stiletto at him. Conquer flung his skinny ass down the hallway and snapped the blade off.

  “Yo! Cool it, Spaceman! This is O.G. Juju!” J.K. said, breathless.

  The kid picked himself off the trash strewn floor and shook sense back into his head, staring wide-eyed.

  “Take me to your leader, Spaceman,” said Conquer with relish. You couldn’t write an opportunity like that.

  The Black Enchanters’ clubhouse was shittier than he’d left it. Same old busted couches, maybe even a couple bottles he had drunk from himself still
rattling around on the putrid floor. This was where he and Preacher and Black Adam had laid their jackets in a circle and pissed on them, declaring their allegiance to the outlaw life. By the reek of the joint, that ritual, at least, had survived Essangui’s reformations.

  The décor had changed only a little. The stubby candles they had used to dress the gang’s mojo hands still squatted, fused to every surface, but the pictures of the Virgin Mary that had doubled for Yemaya in Preacher’s Santeria rituals were replaced with African carvings, and melted pools of red and black wax. There was a central altar with a stylized figure surrounded by what looked to be ashtrays of human teeth, perhaps donated by the Saigons and the Ministers, whose pilfered vests were tacked upside down on the wall above the couch, seven trophies representing defeated enemies.

  There were half a dozen Enchanters and sister Enchantresses hanging around when Conquer came in. Some of them even managed to look up at him through a haze of twisting marijuana smoke as he crossed the room to the president’s chair, where a giant of a kid sprawled on a torn recliner, a hefty black girl curled up dozing on his lap.

  Essangui must have been pushing 6’3” and over two hundred pounds. He was light skinned, freckled, with an upper body he liked to show off, the swollen pectorals bulging between the lapels of his black denim vest, shiny like a dude in a Hercules movie. A thick chain and combination lock were draped over one bunched shoulder; a full afro and a prodigious beard obscured his stone cut face.

  He opened his eyes lazily over the rim of his mirrored sunglasses as Conquer stood over him.

  “Who the fuck is this old man?” he demanded.

  He couldn’t be more than six or seven years younger than Conquer.

  The sleek girl on the kid’s lap fluttered her long eyelashes and regarded him.

  “This is O.G. Juju. One of our founders! You need to come correct, man,” said J.K. He turned and looked at all the others, who had almost perked up at the introduction. “All y’all need to come correct.”

  Some of them straightened up.

  “The fuck you bring him here for, J.K.?” Essangui groaned. “What, you had to run out and get yourself a new Preacher to get on my ass about some bullshit?”

  A couple tough dudes holding down stools around the president’s throne snickered in the dark, but a good deal didn’t.

  “What was Preacher on your ass about, President?” Conquer asked.

  Essangui glared at him, but seemed to soften a little at Conquer’s use of his proper title. He adjusted his glasses so Conquer wound up staring back at himself.

  “That old spic wanted to cut the balls off this club,” Essangui said. “Always talkin’ peace and love and shit.”

  “Yo, you shouldn’t disrespect Preacher like that,” J.K. insisted.

  Conquer noticed more than a few of the gang nodding quietly. He also noticed Preacher’s crucifix hanging on the wall through the green and black beaded curtain obscuring the adjoining bedroom. He squinted at it. The wood carved crucifix had belonged to Preacher’s grandmother and he had used it in some of their hybrid rites. It looked like a woodpecker had been at it. He remembered Mustafa’s story. How many holes? Three? Four? What was that dark stuff congealed on the wall below it? Old red wax, or something else?

  “Fuck Preacher,” said Essangui. “And fuck you too, J.K. Man, you ain’t done nothin’ but tell me what I need to do.”

  He pushed the dozing girl off his lap and she fell to the floor with a squeal and scurried away on her hands and knees.

  Conquer got a better look at Essangui with the girl out of the way; at the iron cross and tooth necklace around his neck, the swastikas on his jacket, and on those of the gestapo gathered around him. Preacher would’ve never allowed that level of outlaw shit back in the day. He’d been a Marrano Jew, though nobody but Conquer had ever known. This kid couldn’t lick Preacher’s boots. He pictured Preacher gasping in front of the bookstore, spitting up blood, and he got mad.

  J.K. stepped over, and Essangui started to rise. Conquer got between them.

  “Man, get out the way!” Essangui said, and made the mistake of grabbing the sleeve of his jacket. Conquer had gone easy on Spaceman downstairs. He didn’t throw Essangui, but locked his wrist, bent his hand, and gave it a press that brought him immediately down on his knees.

  The gestapo moved in, pulling straight razors and bats, but Conquer turned Essangui around and put him between them, made him shriek till he raised his free hand and waved it furiously, like a southern belle bidding adieu to her beau out the window of a northbound train. They backed off.

  “I just wanted to come down here and take a look at the old gang,” Conquer said evenly, and hiked up Essangui’s wrist so he shrieked again. “Wanted to remind myself why I gave all this jive assed juvenile delinquent shit up. At least Preacher stood for something, even when I was no better than this little high yellow piece of shit here, wanting to war and burn the whole damn block down. ‘Burn down the block, and where you gonna live, Juju?’ That’s what he used to tell me. But I ain’t here to tell you shit ‘cause I know your dumbasses ain’t gonna listen. Y’all just keep on like you are, doin’ the Man’s job for him. Be one less fool sleepin’ in the gutter for me to step over.”

  He urged Essangui to his feet and flung him so hard into his recliner the old chair flipped over and dumped him ass over end on the floor with a reverberating sound of uncoiling springs.

  The gestapo boys rushed forward, but Conquer just held open his arms as if to embrace them. They faltered. The majority of the gang stayed glued to their sofas, unsure of who to throw in with.

  Conquer made it easy and backed to the door at his own pace.

  “I’ma see you dead, man!” Essangui shrieked in rage, scrambling to his feet.

  Conquer turned around and put his hands in his pockets and laughed all the way down the stairs, loud enough to ring in the big kid’s ears.

  He’d gotten what he wanted. Shook his ass in the lion’s face. Now all he had to do was wait for the bite so he could slap down its muzzle.

  He got down to the Cordoba when the door opened behind him. His hand went to the nickel plated Colt Python under his arm, but it was just J.K.

  “Yo, Juju, man… what the fuck was all that about?”

  “Go back inside, asshole!” Conquer hissed.

  But it was too late. Conquer heard the hiss, not a reverberating Errol Flynn Hollywood sound, but more like a puff of air. He even saw it coming. It came right out of the solid wall of the fourth floor of the building. Not out of an open window, out of the solid wall. A black magic ghost arrow, unheeded by obstacles.

  The arrow ripped right through J.K.’s shoulder at a downward angle and sprouted in Conquer’s left leg, just through the meaty part of his calf. Its black feathered shaft was striped red like a barber’s pole.

  “Damn!” he snarled, catching the boy as he fell forward. He had trusted his various talismans to turn the arrow, but the kid had got in the way, disrupted the bodyguards.

  There was a tremendous noise from behind him then, a crash of twisting metal and exploding glass. It came from the old rusted Cutlass parked in front of his car.

  Essangui perched on the collapsed roof, blinking at him from behind the black mask of a gorilla. He had leaped from the top floor of the building. The sagittal crest of the gorilla head peaked on the president’s head like a hood, and its dark fur hung down over his otherwise naked body.

  He clutched a handmade bow decorated with strange red symbols, and there was a modern quarrel strapped to his back, full of sporting goods store fiberglass arrows.

  Conquer mentally ticked off the dead and the holes he’d seen in the crucifix.

  The Italian kid in Westchester, two boppers, Preacher, and now J.K. Hell, Preacher’s crucifix couldn’t hold that many arrows. Could it?

  “Seems like you’re out of arrows, boy.”

  Essangui nocked another.

  “I don’t need magic to kill you, old man,” he snarl
ed.

  “It’d damn sure help,” said Conquer, letting J.K. go and ripping the big Colt from his holster.

  Essangui let fly. Conquer moved, but the arrow in his leg made him stumble and the second arrow pierced the collar of his jacket. He wondered if the crazy bastard had dipped the tip in shit or poison or something.

  Conquer fell back shooting to the door, the Colt coughing thunder, sending the winos scrabbling for the alleys and the rest of the people on the street kissing the busted pavement.

  Essangui jumped and twisted, falling behind the Cutlass. It was too much to hope he’d blown his head off.

  Conquer shoved through the clubhouse door and limped into the foyer.

  Little Spaceman wasn’t on duty. Could be Essangui had called the Enchanters off, made the gestapo stand down. He wanted to prove who was the boss bull.

  Conquer gripped the railing and started climbing up the stairs, covering the door.

  He got to the second floor landing when the front door exploded in a burst of glass and bent metal through which Essangui burst like a human wrecking ball, long overdue in this slum. Conquer saw him down at the bottom of the stair well, sniffing like a dog and glaring about. Essangui looked down at the convenient blood trail Conquer was shedding as he hopped, and glared up, directly into his eyes, peering at him through the eyeholes of that nightmarish, slack gorilla face.

  Conquer put a bullet across his shoulder, but Essangui just winced and bounded for the stairs on his big arms, swinging like what he believed himself to be, vaulting over the railings and coming up fast.

  Conquer pulled himself up the stairs, a dusky Fay Wray in a reverse King Kong scenario. Only he couldn’t pull off a nightgown and there were no planes coming to save his black ass.

  He threw shots down the stairwell and Essangui had sense to stay back as they came hurtling, blowing up the old tiles at his bare feet.

  Fourth floor and there was nothing left but the roof. Conquer threw his shoulder against the metal door and it banged open.

  He stumbled outside and hopped all the way to edge, took a moment to snap the arrow in his leg like John Wayne. He didn’t pull it out though. If Essangui had put the thing in an artery, he’d open up a gusher and die before the man ever got to him.