On nine, I take a breather at the landing. One floor to go. I hear a voice but can’t make much of it. Someone humming. A cough. So things are okay.
Maybe.
I take the last set of steps with a lot of patience. The door to the tenth floor, like many on the floors below, is gone, wrenched from its hinges to make a table or firewood. Or sold somewhere for dope. I can’t see a thing in the hallway beyond. So I wait for a while in the shadows until finally I hear the voice again, and this time the words: Ten a.m.
I look at my watch, and it must be slow, since it reads 9:50.
The voice belongs to Martinez, and Martinez belongs to CK and Mackie. I set my duffel bag on the stairwell, then:
Rudy? I say, and take a deep breath and step out into the hallway.
Martinez is there, in the shadows. Another one of our guys, I think it’s Crimso, is down the hall, and he’s got something long-barreled and automatic, an AK with a custom wooden stock, held high on his hip.
Lane? Martinez says back, in a half whisper, and what else can I say?
Yeah, Rudy, it’s me.
Jeez, he says. You could of got yourself shot. What you doin here? Thought you was downtown with the—
I put my finger to my lips.
I tell him: I need to see CK.
Martinez rolls his eyes. Yeah? he says, and he’s loose, and the guy down the hall—yeah, it’s Crimso—isn’t paying one bit of attention, so I say:
He called. It’s important.
So Rudy says:
Why didn’t you say so? Come on.
We head down the long hallway, and there’s nothing much to see, bare lightbulbs, about half of them lit, and this queasy green wallpaper that hangs in torn strips and wedges. The doors to what once were rooms are either open or gone, and there’s nothing inside the rooms until we near the end of the hallway. Then things start to get interesting.
Light’s coming from a room on our left, and it’s full of the brothers, 9 Bravos and U Streeters lounging around on the floor and the torn-up furniture, chilled out, knocking back forty-ouncers of malt liquor, sucking on joints and booshitting, a real social gathering.
Then, past more empty rooms, there’s one with Toons and Fryer and they’ve got canvas satchels on a couple chairs and they’re diddling with whatever they’ve got in the satchels and when we walk on by Toons gives me a thumbs-up and then gets back to diddling.
Then we’re at the end of the hall, and there’s a door this time, on the right, and the door is shut, and I don’t need to be told who’s inside.
Martinez raps at the door and when it angles open he says:
Company. It’s Lane.
Mackie the Lackey shows me into a roomful of tight smiles. I take in the room, what must have been a suite, wide and long and empty except for a table and chairs, the remains of a dinette set. CK stands at the far end, before two wide and curtainless windows, like the host of a surreal dinner party. Juan E and his Django guy sit at one side of the table, and some boss nigger from Central Casting sits at the other side with a guy who looks like an NFL linebacker turned thug. The boss man must be Daddy Big, a high-stepper for the 9 Bravos.
On the table in front of them are an open briefcase, thick wads of cash, a lot of handguns, and like twenty baggies of llejo. White daddy. Cocaine.
Fuck. I knew it was drugs. I knew it.
Listen, CK says, not to me but to the guys at the table. He’s cool. One of mine. Right, Lane?
I nod as I cross the room with Mackie, pass the table, pass Dawkins. The guy’s slumped against the wall like he’s waiting on a very slow train.
Hey, says Juan E, and he’s talking to me: Yo, hey. You. Wonder Bread. How’s my bust-yo-ass nigga Jinx?
I give CK the look he needs, the one that says nothing and everything, and I say to Juan E: Hey, Jinx is just fine.
Then I find my space, an empty spot on the far wall, between the two big windows, with a clear view of the players and a clear path to the door, and I lean back to enjoy what’s left of the show.
The 9 Bravo warlord sits, unmoving, unmoved. An onyx statue with two Desert Eagle .45s for a table setting. The linebacker is counting out dollars, and I haven’t seen such angry boredom since the last State of the Union address.
Two things stink: The deal is done. And when the deal is done, you don’t stick around to shake hands. Or sell drugs. And then there’s Mackie, standing over by the window to my right, looking alternately at his watch and then outside and down, to something on the street. Looking just a little too often.
Until he turns to CK and says, Hey, we got to go.
Which is when CK turns up the high beams for his little audience:
Gentlemen, he says, that seems to conclude things for today. There’s only one thing to add. A little something. A little gratuity.
CK nods to Mackie, and Mackie lifts two long cases from the floor, placing them carefully side by side on the table.
Attend, CK says to Juan E and the Bravo warlord. Whatever that means. He acts like one of those prissy French waiters you see on TV comedies.
CK takes a pair of those white latex gloves, the ones doctors use, the ones like rubbers, from his coat, and he slips a glove slowly onto each hand as he tells them: Mint condition. Gems. The finest. For each of you, gentlemen.
He reaches and flicks the locks on each case, then tilts back the lids like he’s showing off the Crown Jewels. And now that I can see inside, I know that, in a way, these are jewels.
Compliments of Mr. Berenger.
and god said to cain
I’ve read about these rifles, heard the stories, seen the photos, even seen them in trophy cases, but I’ve never seen the real deal in a shooter’s hands. Until now.
The room is silent. A fucking hear-the-pin-drop cathedral. CK raises the first rifle from the case gently, with a kind of reverence, and holds it out toward that Bravo warlord, Daddy Big. An offering. And the guy, at last, is moved. He stands and takes possession of the Maltese Falcon of modern gunnery. The stuff that dreams are made of:
The Van Doekken Longbore.
The most sought-after sporting rifle in the world. One of those things that people will swear to their dying day is a myth, a fantasy, a fairy tale. But it’s for real.
Only a couple hundred of the Longbores exist, no one knows the exact number, except maybe Van Doekken, and he’s dead. It’s the sort of thing owned by royalty, whether kings and queens or movie stars and rock stars. Made in South Africa in the seventies, hand-tooled, engraved, world-class accuracy, the favored trigger of millionaires and well-paid mercenaries. I saw my first Longbore in Central America; it belonged to one of the CIA flavors of the month down there. The second was in a silk-lined case at the South African Embassy in D.C. This one, in the steady hands of the Bravo, is my third, and it looks like Juan E’s getting the fourth.
I wonder if he even knows what he’s getting, but his eyes widen as CK hands him the prize. He’s dancing inside his skin like a kid who’s struck it rich on Christmas Day.
The Longbore is huge, well over four feet long, almost three feet of barrel, and it weighs somewhere near fifteen pounds. It’s got a bolt-action repeating center-fire that supposedly sings.
These numbers have been customized, outfitted for the savanna. The titanium-blue barrel is topped off with a Nikon scope and a laser aimer. Satinwood stock, Bavarian cheek piece, gold-plated trigger assembly. Hand-crafted stock work, metal work, inlays. Such a beautiful piece of iron, and such a fucking shame. This is meant for museums, not mobsters.
And whether Juan E and the Bravo know what they’re looking at or not, this isn’t right. This is not right at all.
In a room full of crazy men and guns, money, and drugs, there aren’t many options. I keep my mouth shut, but I put my hand to my belt, find the grip of the Glock. When the shit goes down, I’m not going down too.
Take a look, gentlemen, CK is saying. Take a look down that scope.
Juan E’s got the Longbore t
o his shoulder and he’s peeking down that sight like Davy Crockett.
The Bravo, Daddy Big, is intense. His hand circles the grip and his finger dances at the trigger guard. Itching.
Mackie is looking out the window again, and when the Bravo swings the Longbore his way, peering through the scope all the way to Albany, the room takes a slight spin to the right.
Boss, Mackie says. He turns away from the window, looks at the Bravo and that big rifle and doesn’t even blink.
Boss, he says again. We got to get going.
CK ignores him. You can drop an elephant at a thousand yards with that baby, CK tells his grateful audience. But with that scope, that feel, hell, you can drop an ant if you want to.
Juan E swings the rifle around.
Careful, CK tells him, and laughs.
Mu’fuck, Juan E says. Damn.
The Bravo is still silent. He looks through the scope, then pulls away, squints, looks into the distance with his own eyes. Then he goes to parade rest, feels the heft of the gun.
Want some target practice? CK says. Out of his jacket pocket he pulls a shiny magazine. He waves the magazine at Juan E. Let me show you how it’s done.
He presses the magazine into Juan E’s right hand. Then he digs into his jacket, pulls free another magazine, and tosses it to the Bravo. I cannot believe this is happening.
Okay, CK says. Three-shot magazine, .557 in Magnum calibers. They’re monsters. Winchester FailSafes, crossbreed of the best two bullets on earth, the Nosler Partition and the Barnes X. They’ll shoot through a Mercedes to get to what you want. A little tricky to load, though. You can’t just stick those babies in there. You go at an angle, notch forward and first, okay?
Juan E works the magazine into the Longbore, slaps the bottom. Très chic, he says, with that golden smile. You know what I’m sayin?
Boss, Mackie says. We really do have to go. Like now.
Okay, okay, CK says. But he’s talking to Juan E and the Bravo. Now this is the hard part, he says. You got a three-position safety. Let me show you the drill. Toss that baby over to me a minute.
Juan E pitches the rifle toward CK, and the rifle twists, tumbles, rolls, and the sunlight sprays off its gold and into my eyes and I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I just don’t know why but I cry out:
No
And then it happens.
Mackie leaves his place at the window, his hand darting up from beneath his jacket to stab the silenced pistol into the back of Juan E’s skull, which erupts in a sudden whoosh of red.
Dawkins sweeps past the Bravo warlord with a sickle of a forearm that slams him against the wall and sends him and his rifle to the floor.
Django and the other Bravo jerk and fall as Quillen empties his silenced pistol into their torsos.
And CK moves with righteous certainty toward the far window, the Longbore raised in his gloved hands, while Dawkins slides the second Longbore from the floor, swipes the magazine from the fallen Bravo’s hand, and I see that Dawkins’s hands are gloved, too, those white latex gloves, and he slams the magazine home and moves with that same righteous certainty toward the other window.
I turn and look out, I turn and look down, across the street, to the Free African Methodist Church, to the place where the tide of pink and blue and yellow and white is parted, circling the mighty staircase to the church’s open doors, where the microphones are arranged, where the suits are black and the uniforms are blue, where the red-robed pastor gives way to his white-robed colleague from the south, the white-robed man I’ve seen on TV, in magazines, the newspapers, the white-robed man who is named Gideon Parks, the Reverend Gideon Parks, who is leading his people, these people, from their long captivity in this modern Egypt, out of slavery and into salvation.
The sound is brute thunder, and the kick of the Longbore shudders through CK and the glass of the window shatters and sends light in all directions and then comes the distant ring of the shell casing as it hits the wooden floor and then the thunder again, this time from my left, from Dawkins’s rifle, and the second window shatters, and then again from my right, and then again from my left, and after six shots, three each, they are done, they are done with their shooting but not with what they have planned.
CK spins around, kneels, drops the Longbore to the floor and stabs its stock into the flat of Juan E’s lifeless right hand. Dawkins tosses his rifle into the corner of the room. Like Oswald, I’m thinking, just like Oswald.
Okay, CK says, standing and snapping a peek at his watch. Five minutes. Dawkins, Quillen. Go.
Just as the door opens and Rudy Martinez looks in and whistles, says: Party time. He slaps the butt end of the magazine on his machine pistol and heads on down the hallway. Dawkins and Quillen follow, and I hear Martinez, yelling:
They killed Juan E. Those fuckin Bravos killed Juan E.
I look at CK.
CK looks at me.
What the fuck are you doing? I say to CK.
Not a thing, CK says. Not a goddamn thing. Jeez, Lane, I’m not even here. Mackie, Dawkins, Quillen … they aren’t here. You aren’t here.
Wild animals are growling somewhere, a few rooms away. Automatic weapons, bursts of rapid fire. Then voices. Shouts. More gunfire.
Listen to that music, CK says. Niggers do such good work. And it’s always the same work. They even got a name for it: Black-on-black crime. They’re killing each other.
Oh, yeah, I tell him. Nice. Real nice. Let me guess about tomorrow’s headlines. Something about a street gang that killed a civil rights leader.
Close enough, CK says. For government work. Because guns and drugs spells assassins. They’re the perfect bad guys. They kill the Reverend Gideon Parks and then they kill each other.
Then he says to Mackie: Go.
CK reaches inside his leather jacket and hauls the .44 Magnum from his shoulder holster.
Thought I told you to get out of Dodge, he says.
His eyes drift to the side of my head and his knuckles flex and I pull to the side as he squeezes down and there’s this scream in my left ear, this wide-mouthed scream, and I grab at my ear as I look back behind me and I see that Bravo warlord, Daddy Big, trying to stand and then going down like a kid on a Slip’n’Slide, his feet losing it first, arms flailing, and then—bam!—flat on his back. Only this kid isn’t getting up to play anymore.
CK looks down the silver snout of that cannon and says to me:
I just saved your life.
I can barely hear, but I tell him right back:
I don’t think so. I think that was temporary. I think I’m dead, and it’s not so much a question of when but where. You want to tell me why?
If you did what I told you to do—
If I’d done what you said, then what? What?
You’d be heading south, heading home.
As if I care whether you kill me there … as opposed to, let’s say, here?
I ain’t got time for this, Lane.
No, I tell him. They’re coming. If you can get past the Bravos and the U Street guys, then the guys downstairs are coming. Cops. Feds. They’re coming, CK. They’re coming.
He takes another look at his watch. Seems ready to yawn.
Yeah, he says. All in the line of work.
That’s when I pull the Glock, there’s nothing else to do, I pull the Glock from my belt and I hold it on him as I scoot past the bodies, and he’s smiling, just standing there smiling.
Where you gonna go, Lane? Where you gonna go?
I don’t know, CK, I tell him. Maybe to hell.
I fire once, blowing plaster out of the wall beside him.
I just saved your life, I tell him. So now we’re even.
Then I’m outside, in the hallway, and to my left I see faces, I see black faces and the faces have guns and they’re coming up the hallway and I turn to the right and I see white faces and these faces have guns, and there is nothing left for me to do, I dive across the hall and there’s another doorway, but there’s Martine
z and he’s hosing the room next door with his machine pistol and when he runs the magazine, Crimso steps in with his AK, jolting flames from the muzzle, and you know the room’s a mess. Things go silent and the two of them start to laugh.
Then a voice down the hall, Mackie maybe: Here we go.
Then it’s bang bang bang and it’s that voice—yes, it is Mackie—and he’s saying: He’s down. And then there’s more laughter and I’ve got to get to my duffel bag.
They’re hustling in the hallway. Five, somebody says. Five down. No, no, four, says somebody else. Then CK:
Count em, he says. Eleven came in, I want ten staying. Make it happen.
Quillen comes past, and he’s dragging the body of Daddy Big.
Watch it! Watch it! And this one I can see, some kid darting from his hiding place, a hall closet, and leaping into the middle of them, sawed-off shotgun at his hip.
Gangsta! he yells and lets go with both barrels, but CK puts him down with a classic Mozambique: Two shots to the body, one to the head. Blows the kid right out of his shoes. Punk lost his life to put a couple holes in the ceiling.
It’s no contest. These guys are used to drive-bys or just running up and bopping some joker on the street. CK’s crew is ready for World War Three.
I roll out of the doorway and scramble down the hall, shooting high, covering fire, as I go. Fifty feet to the staircase and my duffel bag and maybe freedom.
Come on, I’m saying to no one, everyone, but really to myself: Come on. I can’t hear the words, just that ringing in my ear and then the snarl of some kind of machine pistol. Rounds bite into the wall behind me, chewing up fat chunks of plaster and drywall and spitting them out.
I pop off the rest of the magazine as I fall into the stairwell. Blue suit coming up the stairs, handgun pointing my way, and I’ve got no time to reload. I pull the other Glock from my coat and let go left-handed. I’m off balance and the shots are high, out of the center of mass, but they’re good ones. Crimson bursts from his head and shoulder, and he spins back and out of sight before I even realize what I’ve done. Oh, Christ, a dead cop. So call me CK, too.
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