Deacon King Kong(100)

Haroldeen bit her lower lip. “Those two old guys came outta nowhere.”

“I’m paying you to work through them kind of problems.”

“I said I’ll take care of it. I mean it.”

Bunch sighed. How to keep this whole thing from toppling down—or worse, blowing up in his face? He’d tipped his hand to Peck now for sure.

“You sure there was nobody else down there at the pier?”

“Nobody I saw. Just the two young guys and the two old drunks.”

“How about the people in the plaza? At the flagpole. They saw you, right? You were there for a week getting a line on Deems.”

“I’m not going back there anyway. I’ll take care of Deems and the old guy somewhere else.”

“What are you, Agent 007? You gonna put on a fuckin’ disguise? Deems is in the hospital. The old drunk, he’s disappeared I heard.”

“I told you I’d take care of it somewhere else.”

“Where would that be? And how can I be sure?”

Haroldeen sat in silence, her face a mask. He had to admit, she was the most beautiful stone wall he’d ever seen. A cold fucking beauty. You never knew what you were looking at. She could play petulant beauty one moment and bright innocent teenager the next. She was his greatest discovery. He’d heard a rumor that when she had sex she barked like a dog. He remembered her faintly from his years of running wild, working his way up, but it was so long ago and she was so young. Maybe fourteen or fifteen? She didn’t bark like a dog then. He would’ve remembered it. She said nothing. She didn’t whimper, groan, or lose a breath. Even as a child, that pretty girl with the soft features was hard as a rock inside. Now, at twenty-nine, she could still pass for twenty, but if somebody looked close, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and around her ears suggested that maybe she was twenty-three, or even twenty-five. Was it that long ago that he had at her? Fourteen years? He couldn’t remember.

She nodded at the newspapers on the table before him. “When I finish, you’ll read about it. But I need my money.”

“You ain’t finished.”

She glanced at him, and the lines of her face that had twisted into petulance when she talked about college were gone. Rather there was a grim coldness to the look, and he was glad, at that moment, that he’d insisted they meet at a place he suggested. She had certainly checked out his safe house and likely assumed that he, not she, was safe with backup, surrounded by his people, all of whom were close but none of whom she could see. The emptiness of the room was a warning to her that there was danger nearby, because death meant eyewitnesses, and the fewer witnesses the better. He was sure she understood that the emptiness of this room in this old brownstone deep in Bed-Stuy, his country, meant her life was in danger, not his, though the truth was, there was no backup. No men surrounding 281 Delphi, not working the street, not in cars, not pretending to be neighbors, not driving past. Two eighty-one Delphi was safe because it was a secret. He wasn’t sure she sensed that, but he decided it didn’t matter. She wanted to collect her gold dust and split town on the first thing smoking, which is what he’d have wanted if he were in her shoes. Anyway, he had a revolver on the seat of the chair next to him. He needed no more eyeballs putting him and Haroldeen the Death Queen in the same place, not after Earl had fucked up so bad.

Discovering that Earl was a squealer had been a stroke of luck, a chance encounter with a black cop from the Seven-Six who told him, “You better tighten down.” The knowledge had nearly dropped him. He trusted Earl more than anyone. What had made Earl, who once had balls, so squeamish? Was it the thought of killing off Joe Peck’s distribution network and maybe taking down Peck himself and making their own that did it? Because Joe Peck was white? Or was it that church shit that Earl was always so weird about? Why is the Negro, he thought bitterly, so scared of the white man? What’s in their souls that makes them that way? It had to be that church shit.

“Did you grow up in church, believing in Jesus?” he asked Haroldeen.

Haroldeen snorted. “Please.”

He eyed her a moment, the grim stare, the gleaming eyes, the face that could soften into tenderness at the snap of a finger, inviting trust, then harden to ice. “I could use ten of you,” he said.

“How about paying this one of me.”

“I’ll give you half now. Plus train fare. The other half when you’re finished.”

“How I’m gonna get the other half?”

“Pony express. Overnight mail. However you want it.”

“I look that stupid?”

“I’ll bring it myself. I’ll drive it down.”

“No thanks.”

“Why not? Virginia ain’t far. Unless you live in one of those places where the welcome mat’s printed in Old English and they don’t like niggers. If that’s the case, I’ll pretend I’m the milkman. Or the gardener. You oughta be familiar with gardeners.”

She frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t know much about what happened.”

“Fuckups carry far, sister.”

“All right. Gimme half now. I’ll tell you where to send the rest after I’m done.”

“I got a junkpile of shit now ’cause of you. I got Joe Peck on my ass. He’ll be gunning for all my people. He’ll try to switch out my people with his Uncle Tom niggers.”