Deacon King Kong(28)

He turned to Beanie and the pain from his ear shot through his head. He grimaced and asked, “Sportcoat been ’round these parts?”

“A little bit. Drinking like always.”

“But he’s around?”

“Not like always. But he’s still around. So’s Pudgy Fingers,” Beanie said, referring to Sportcoat’s blind son. Pudgy was a beloved fixture in the Cause Houses, wandering around freely, often brought to his door by any neighbor he happened to run across. The boys had known him all their lives. He was an easy target.

“Ain’t no need to touch Pudgy Fingers,” Deems said.

“I’m just saying.”

“Don’t fuck with Pudgy Fingers.”

The three were silent as Deems blinked, deep in thought. Finally he spoke. “Okay, I’ll let Earl take care of my business—just this once.”

The two boys immediately looked glum. Now Deems felt worse. They had wanted to take care of Sportcoat, now he’d agreed, and now they were sad. Goddamn!

“Stop being crybabies,” he said. “You said we got to do it, and now it’s done. Otherwise, the Watch Houses is gonna come gunning for the plaza. So let Earl deal with Sport.”

The two boys stared at the floor. Neither looked at the other.

“That’s how it is out here.”

They remained silent.

“This is the last time we let Earl take care of our business,” Deems said.

“Thing is . . .” Beanie said softly, then stopped.

“Thing is what?”

“Well . . .”

“What the fuck’s the matter with you, man?” Deems said. “You so scared of Earl you want him to take care of our business. Okay, I said let him. It’s done. Tell him go ’head. I’ll tell him myself when I get on my feet.”

“There’s something else,” Beanie said.

“Spit it out, man!”

“Thing is, when Earl come around yesterday, he was asking about Sausage, too.”

Another hit. Sausage was a friend. He’d helped out Sportcoat with baseball in the old days. Sausage gave out the cheese to their families every month. Everybody knew about Hot Sausage and Sister Bibb, the church organist for Five Ends. She was also Beanie’s aunt.

That’s the problem, Deems thought. Everybody’s related to everybody in these goddamned pisshole projects.

“Earl probably thinks Sausage is hiding Sportcoat,” Beanie said. “Or that Sausage is diming us out to the cops.”

“Sausage ain’t diming nobody,” Deems scoffed. “We working right in front of Sausage’s face. He ain’t no stoolie.”

“Everybody in the Cause knows that. But Earl ain’t from the Cause.”

Deems glanced at Beanie, then at Lightbulb. One looked concerned, the other frightened. He nodded. “All right. Leave it to me. Earl ain’t moving on Sausage. I’ll talk to him. In the meantime, listen: In the next week or two, it’s the March of the Ants. You two take turns setting on top of Building Nine like we used to. Let me know when the ants come. You the only ones that know how to do that.”

“What for?” Lightbulb asked.

“Just do it. When you see signs they’re coming, wherever I’m at, come fetch me. The first sign you see, come get me. Got it? You remember the signs, right? You know what to look for?”

They nodded.

“Say it.”

Beanie spoke up: “Mice and rats running in that little hallway near the roof. Bunch of roaches running up there, too.”

“That’s right. Come get me if you see that. Understand?”

They nodded. Deems looked at his watch. It was almost noon. He felt sleepy; the medicine was taking effect. “Y’all get down there and help Stick make us some money. Post all the lookouts on the buildings and pay ’em afterward, not before. Beanie, check the roof of Nine before you go to the plaza.”

He saw the look of worry on their faces.

“Just be cool,” he said. “I got a plan. We’ll get everything back to normal in no time.”

With that, Deems lay sideways, his bandaged ear toward the ceiling, closed his eyes, and slept the sleep of a troubled boy who, over the course of an hour, had suddenly become what he’d always wanted to be: not a boy from one of New York City’s worst housing projects, an unhappy boy who had no dream, no house, no direction, no safety, no aspiration, no house keys, no backyard, no Jesus, no marching-band practice, no mother who listened to him, no father who knew him, no cousin who showed him right or wrong. He was no longer a boy who could throw a baseball seventy-eight miles an hour at the of age thirteen because back then it was the one thing in his sorry life he could control. All that was past. He was a man with a plan now, and he had to make a big play, no matter what. That was the game.





8





THE DIG



three days after Hot Sausage predicted his doom, Sportcoat decided to stop in at the Watch Houses to see his buddy Rufus.

Despite Sausage’s prediction that the world was going to end, Sportcoat hadn’t seen a sign of it. He teetered through Building 9 as always, arguing with Hettie in the hall, then wandered over to the Social Security office in downtown Brooklyn, where they ignored him as usual, then on to his various jobs. The church ladies at Five Ends stepped in to walk Pudgy Fingers to the bus stop to take him to the social center and even kept Pudgy overnight, cycling Pudgy between them. “Five Ends takes care of their own,” Sport bragged to his friends, though he had to admit to himself that his friends were fewer and fewer with Hettie gone and that Christmas money missing. The church ladies helping with Pudgy Fingers hadn’t said a word about it, which made him feel even more guilty about not knowing where it was. He’d seen them place their precious envelopes bearing dollars and quarters into the Christmas Club collection tray every week. He’d already sought out Pastor Gee in his office after Bible study to clear the air.