Then he turned serious and looked at his watch. “Got to take care of some business back at my office. Let’s move the game over there. Amos, bring the deeds. I’ll spot you for your brownstones.”
He unfolded himself from his chair. “How much you think they’re worth?”
I didn’t blink. I said, “Fifty thousand each.”
Harry laughed and moved a silver dollar through his fingers. “A joke, eh? Fifty thousand for both.”
“Okay, forty thousand each.” I called myself being firm.
Harry exploded. “You deef, man? What I want with your brownstones? Fifty-five thousand for both. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, before Harry had a chance to change his mind. It was no problem for me to let Harry think he had gotten the best of me.
With Harry’s offer, everyone knew the ante had rocketed. An electricity shot through the room, and people grabbed jackets, money, cocaine, and vacated—tootie sweetie, like the French say. The city attorney copped out, but the rest headed over to Harry’s place.
Walking to my car, I knew I really didn’t care which way the wind blew. After all, nothing from nothing left nothing. I gave it over to fate, put it in the driver’s seat.
Stepchild must have been listening. When I tried to start her, she threw up on me.
Stuck. It was after two o’clock in the morning and no cabs in sight. Not even a jitney cab. Damn.
I kicked Stepchild’s tires. No response. I left the car and footed it to Harry’s place. Did I mention that Harry didn’t like to be kept waiting? I hoped to God the car would be in one piece when I returned.
When I got to Harry’s, all eyes were on me as I sat down to the table. Harry spoke. “Thought you changed your mind. Waiting on you. My deal. Five stud. Four up, one down. Cut the cards, Amos.”
Chapter 25
The next four hours slid by like molasses in July. I was up and I was down. You’d think it would be easy to lose fifty-five gees, but I’m here to tell you, it wasn’t. Four A.M. came, four of us remained at the table, all sweating in a second-floor room at Harry’s, no air-conditioning. The air was close and steamy. No one complained. The game was so intense Harry finally took off his hat. We were back to playing five stud.
Toothpick Flynn was the big winner so far, the lawyer came in second, T-Bone had dropped out and was fast asleep on the couch, Harry remained about even. Me, I was down five gees, and it was my deal.
“Dealing the cards. Five, queen, nine, my ace. Your queen, Harry.” I said, “Ace bets five hundred.”
Toothpick scooped up the five-card, and turned it face down on the table. “Fold.”
The lawyer sighed and said, “Play ’em like you got ’em. I fold.”
Toothpick left the table to recharge his drink. Harry and me sat looking at each other. The lawyer just looked.
“Me and you, Harry. What do you say?”
“Call.”
“Coming out. Possible jack queen. Uh-oh. Another queen. And a deuce. Pair of ladies bet, Harry.”
Harry smiled a shit-eating grin. “Five thousand.”
“No respect for my aces?” I said.
“Make me a believer, Amos.”
“Going to do that.” Harry’s smirk was getting to me. “Here’s your five and bump it another ten. Show my aces some respect, Harry.”
The lawyer let out a groan.
“You’re lying, Amos. Call.”
I dealt two more cards. “Here we go. Queens with a ... king, and—a pair of deuces with an ace kicker. On you, Harry.”
“Me boy. It’s gone cost you. What you got left, eh?” Harry calculated, and came up smiling. “Thirty more, let’s get real.”
T-Bone suddenly woke up and so did I. The moment had arrived. I maintained my composure on the outside, but my heart did a few skips. “Call.”
I kept my eyes on Harry and dealt a jack to him and a seven to me.
Smooth as silk, Harry said, “Way I figure, you ain’t got nothing else to bet.”
T-Bone crept forward to the table and took a place behind the lawyer. The lawyer shot quick looks between Harry and me.
“I got ten more, Harry, ten more.”
I didn’t waver. A baptism. Washing myself clean. Brownstones disappearing in a cloud of smoke and a heigh-ho, Silver. I smiled at Harry. A river of sweat ran down my body. Turning a new page in the book of life. For a second I flashed on my tenants. Sweat trickled on my cards. I wiped them. Harry saw the gesture and considered what his next move would be. The man didn’t like to lose, and he also wasn’t about to punk out. Harry dripped a goodly amount of sweat as well.
“Okay,” Harry said. “Ten. But why be chickenshit about it, eh? Another ten.”
I looked at Harry and reminded him.
“We set a limit, Harry. You going to live up to your word?”
Harry glanced around at the others in the room and smiled. “What’s the matter, Amos? Got no balls?”
“No, Harry, I got no more money.”
“A shame. You wouldn’t have that problem if you worked for me.”
“No, I’d have another problem.” Harry waited for me to explain.
I said, “The risk.”
He laughed. “Ain’t no more risk than you taking here. Tell me true, ain’t you gambling your life?”
That hit me where it hurt. I looked at the others. They knew something was going on besides cards. I snapped back, “What is it, Harry? Why you want Amos Brown in your pocket? Your pocket ain’t fat enough? Drugs are evil, invented by the devil.”
Harry’s eyes closed to slits again, glowed like a fiend’s; his wheeze menaced.
“What you saying, Amos? You think you better than me? Better than me? It ain’t about evil or good. It’s about money. Me chased the great American dream, and me caught it. You hear me? Me caught it and wrestled it to the ground. How else you think a black man’s gonna make any real money? I’m talking Rockefeller real, Dupont real. Tell me that. I ain’t never forced nobody to take drugs. Ever. I don’t have to.” The room was silent.
Harry was annoyed. I didn’t back down, I moved on. I smiled, gave Harry a thumbs-up, and picked up the deck of cards. I dealt the last card. Down and dirty. “Call,” I said.
Harry’s sour face disappeared. He grinned like the cat who ate the cream.
“Put your money on out there, Harry.”
“Put your marker up.”
I complied and shoved the two deeds into the center of the table. And stared Harry down.
From nothing. To nothing. It all meant less than nothing to me.
Harry flipped over his card and slammed it down. An eight. No help, but he didn’t need it. His queens would still beat a pair of deuces any day.
I was at the bottom of a vortex, traveling at the speed of light, yet things unfolded in front of me in the slowest of motion.
I turned my card over, and I gasped. So did everybody else. A deuce. I was stunned. Three deuces. Shit. Harry leaped out of his seat, upsetting cards and money.
“Game’s over,” Harry announced.
Chapter 26
Depression rolled over me like a two-ton tank. I won the hand, sure, even came out ahead, but I was depressed. The brownstones were a weight I couldn’t throw off. Fate dealt me a rotten hand.
The rest of the players cleared. Harry settled up, and we sipped brandy in the wilds of Africa. For the first time I noticed the room. Decorated in a jungle motif, it was Harry’s gambling den. Fake leopard skin patterned the walls. If you looked for too long a time you got dizzy. Elephant tusks and other animal horns adorned the walls, and I wondered what that was all about. Harry on safari? Anything was possible. You could never tell with Harry.
A well-stocked bar, a maroon couch, white leather chairs, and the leather-covered poker table filled the room to bursting. A bear rug, with head intact, lay on the floor in front of the couch. Next to it, a naked-lady floor lamp. A lightbulb crescendoed out of her head, and her gigantic titties blink
ed on and off and added to the décor. What can I say? The room was like Harry, tasteless and excessive.
I hadn’t drunk all night, but Harry’s brandy was mellow and I felt entitled.
“Ah well, next time you won’t be so lucky,” Harry said.
“Won’t be a next time.”
“Heard that before—from you, I think. And here you are.”
Harry was right. Damn his eyes. Now that my gambling fever had dissipated, I acknowledged to myself that he was probably right when he said earlier that I was no better than him. I had put the lives of people I liked and lived with into a cutthroat drug dealer’s hands, the very same dealer with whom I was now having a brandy, and had yet to feel remorse.
Instead, I felt empty. I had switched my feelings off altogether.
Harry studied me through the slits of his eyes and posed a philosophical question to me. “What are you looking for, Amos?”
The question struck me as odd, coming from Harry, but I gave him the courtesy of an answer. “What do you mean?” I said.
“Money, power, women, excitement—what is it that you want?”
The response hovered on the edge of my brain. I didn’t have the words to answer Harry. And frankly, Harry was getting too chummy for me.
I settled for an answer that was, well, not untrue. “A comfortable life,” I said. I didn’t want to take it further. Wasn’t Harry’s business.
“Just comfortable? Hah. You ain’t wantin’ much. Me, the day I come to the United States, I want everything. Everything that growing up in the islands poor and wanting, I ain’t never had.”
“Take a look, Harry. You pretty much have it now, don’t you?”
He smiled. “Not yet. Next thing, a plane. Anyway, that was when I was young. Since then I found out, it ain’t about getting things. It’s about glory. That’s all it ever was. I want the glory. Look at me. Turned me-self into a somebody—him who was a nobody.”
I stared at Harry.
“Ain’t that what you want, Amos? Eh? I could make you somebody, you know. A hell of a somebody. No problem.”
If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never know what made me do it. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or maybe it was Harry’s snake eyes that hypnotized me, but I was lulled by his words to a place in my head where I had never been before. I thought hard about Harry’s offer and told him I might be interested. The possibility of making a million a day seduced me like no woman could.
Harry smiled and nodded. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
I followed the swaying cobra up to the third floor and down a hallway. We stopped in front of a closed door. Key in hand, Harry turned the lock.
“You got a handkerchief?” Harry asked. He didn’t wait for my reply. “Use it,” he said, and opened the door.
Puzzled, I got out my handkerchief and followed Harry into the room. Good God. Winter wonderland. I covered my nose and mouth the same as Harry.
In the center of the room were wide tables stacked with what must have been millions of dollars’ worth of heroin. Standing next to the tables and chopping away like mad were seven naked women with surgical masks covering their faces. Vestal virgins? Not likely. Not the way Harry caressed the hind parts of the head woman he referred to as Peaches.
He had her ass in his beefy hand as he introduced me to her and her girls. Peaches didn’t miss a beat and kept on whacking. Drifts of snow settled on the globes hanging from her chest. I looked around at the rest of the women. Dark nipples peeked from under the drifts like the mountains of Kilimanjaro and their pubic hair was frosty with fine powder. A regular Currier and Ives winter scene.
I tried to act as though it were an everyday thing, but with naked women standing around jiggling titties and chopping, it was a chore. The women continued their work as if Harry and I were invisible.
Harry turned out to be quite the tour director. He informed me the heroin was cut with 60 percent mannite and 40 percent quinine. The women weighed it and slipped it into plastic bags, ready for street sale. Harry grinned like a fat cat, but his asthma soon got the best of him and we ditched the room in a hurry.
Next Harry wanted to show off his ammo room. Guns, ammo, and even grenades filled closets and shelves. What I was about to get into got real to me in a hurry. A small fear turned around an axis in the pit of my stomach. Harry was a bona fide gangster with all the trappings. The tour over, we headed back down to Harry’s private office.
“So, what you think, man?”
“Uh, impressive, Harry. Impressive.”
“All that smack you see? Be gone in a week. Supply and demand, babe. And I make good profits ’cause I cut the Guineas out. This stuff comes straight from southeast Asia, the Golden Triangle—no middle man. Tragic Magic, me calls it, the best stuff out there—ten percent purity, no lie. Cleaned by a factory owned and operated by the CIA.”
I raised my eyebrows at that. Harry nodded smugly, knowingly. “Would I lie?”
I didn’t answer. Hell, at this moment, I didn’t know what Harry was capable of. But I had no illusions about the CIA, either. Again, anything was possible.
“So much money you can make, man. Wave a bag on any street corner, and like cockroaches, junkies be swarming all over you, begging for it, ready to sell their souls for it. Any idea how rich I am?”
I had an idea, but I didn’t share. I figured Harry would tell me anyway.
“I own four cars, three houses, a chain of dry cleaners, a grocery store, and a pool hall. Got money stashed in the Cayman Islands and two, three places around town. I got a bank in my pocket that launders money for me. I own furs, jewels, diamonds—and people. I own people, man. That’s how rich I am.”
“King of Harlem, huh, Harry?”
“Is right. Throw in with me, and you—hey, I’ll let you be a duke, no lieutenant stuff for you. How’s that? Have your own little turf. Sweet, eh?”
“All your boys are island boys, Harry.”
“That’s right, most of them relatives too. That’s how I know I can trust them.”
“So why are you making this offer to me? What exactly do I got to do to be a duke, Harry?”
He smirked at me like he knew a secret. “Well, you an almost relative. What you got to do? The name of the game is drugs, Amos. Drugs. I need people around me I can trust. Demand is overriding my supply. Got to expand. Like the CEOs downtown, you know?”
“What makes you think you can trust me?”
“I hear things. Bonus is, you smart. Plus I ain’t crazy—gone give you a lil’ test. You pass, you’re in.”
I dug my hands in my pocket, switched off any emotions that threatened to surface, and waited for Harry to explain.
Harry pushed a button under his desk and one of the Clots appeared. For the next half hour, Harry filled me in on what he expected. The test seemed easy, but risky. All I had to do was make a buy. One of the Clots was going to be my backup. I told Harry I was confused. I thought he told me he got his drugs straight from the Triangle.
“Yeah, well, this bundle done drop from heaven. A bargain, me think. Anyway, that’s what you gone find out. Can we trust this somebody we dealing with, and can I trust you? Two mints in one, man.” Harry chuckled at his joke, but I wasn’t laughing.
If my plan was to self-destruct, this was sure the way to do it. I’d better have my own backup and a plan B.
Harry handed me a case filled with money. “They promised ten kilos. Tomorrow night, one A.M., East Harlem River at 135th Street under the bridge next to the expressway.” Then Harry grinned. “If things turn funky, to come back with the drugs and the money, well, that would be a real fine thing. Play it like you see it.”
He nodded to the Clot. “George there gone pick you up and take you there.”
Hell no, I trusted George about as far as I could throw him. “If you don’t mind, Harry, I’d rather take my own wheels. Trust runs both ways, and I’d feel easier, you know. I’ll meet him there.” I guess the Clot was insulted, ’cause he s
norted like a bull, but I was letting Harry know he wasn’t dealing with no fool. I planned to come out of it, no matter how the deal went down.
Harry smiled. “You the duke, it’s up to you. Either way, gone find out if them are balls or cream puffs hanging between your legs.”
Once again, I turned off my mind and let fate take the lead. I looked Harry in the eye and said, “One A.M., tomorrow.” I hefted the case and walked. Harry’s voice caught me at the door.
“You got a piece, man?”
“Not heavy artillery, Harry.”
Harry pulled a 9mm from his desk drawer and handed it over to me. The gun sealed the deal.
Outside, the mugginess assaulted me. I felt its pressure on my chest. My face dripped sweat. I was in need of a cool, cleansing shower. And where was my fucking car when I needed it? Me, with a hundred thousand swinging off the end of my arm. For God’s sake, fucking criminals were loose in these streets.
Chapter 27
Dawn leapfrogged over the Harlem skyline and was peeking through the buildings by the time I returned home. My dogs hurt and I didn’t know money could weigh so much. I flung the briefcase across a folding chair in the office, opened a bottle of bourbon, and took a swig. I eased off my shoes and went to the window in my bare socks and gazed out.
I stood there for a long while, not really seeing anything. When the street lamps blinked off, it startled me and I became aware of the activity on the street.
With the first rays of dawn, the night people had melted back into their cracks and crevasses. But three young punks across the street, two with doo-rags tied around their heads, didn’t move. They swarmed in the front of the basement entrance to my brownstone.
Instantly alert, I followed their actions. The smallest one, baseball cap on head, slid his hand through the iron bars and tapped on the window. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure they were up to no good. Friends of Youngblood?
I backed up to the file cabinet where I had stashed my twenty-five. Forget Harry’s piece; I was more comfortable with mine. I pulled the small weapon from the top drawer and returned to the window and stood watch.
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