Deacon King Kong(31)

“You think there was . . .” Sportcoat moved his hand in a shaking motion.

Rufus grinned. “Y’know, there was always a lot of tipping going ’round in them days.”

“Wasn’t she married to the pastor?” Sportcoat asked.

“Since when did that monkey stop the show?” Rufus snickered. “He wasn’t worth two cents. But to be honest, I don’t know if she and that Eye-talian was doing the ding-a-ling, knock-a-boo thing or not. They got along good, is all. She was the only one he’d talk to. We wouldn’t have built Five Ends without him. When he come along, we got all that digging done. And there was quite a lot of it. That’s how that little church was built, Sport.”

Rufus paused, remembering. “You know he gived the church its name? It was supposed to be Four Ends Baptist, see: north, south, east, and west, representing God’s hand coming from all them directions. That was the pastor’s idea. But when the Eye-talian added that back wall painting, somebody said let’s make it Five Ends, since Jesus is an end to Himself. The pastor didn’t like it. Said, ‘I didn’t want the picture up there in the first place.’ But Sister Paul put her foot down and that was it. That’s how it come to be Five Ends and not Four Ends. They still got that picture on the back wall, by the way?”

“Sure do. Weeds and all is up around it, but it’s there.”

“Do it still say over the top, ‘May God Hold You in the Palm of His Hand’? Y’all ain’t paint over that, did you?”

“Lord no. We ain’t painted over them words, Rufus.”

“Well, you ought not to. That’s a credit to him, see, that Eye-talian. Long dead now. Doing God’s work. A man ain’t got to stand in church every Sunday to do God’s work, y’know, Sport.”

“That ain’t telling me nothing.”

“You asked me about Sister Paul, Sport. And I told it. You ought to take a ride out there and see her. She might know something about where that box is. Maybe she told Hettie where to hide it.”

Sportcoat considered this. “That’s a long subway ride.”

“What you got to lose, Sport? She’s the only one living from that time. I’d go with you. I’d like to see her. But them white folks out in Bensonhurst is a rough shuffle. They’ll throw a pistol on a Negro in a minute.”

At the mention of “pistol,” Sportcoat blanched and reached for the Seagram’s again. “This world is damn complicated,” he said, sipping deeply.

“Maybe Sausage’ll go with you.”

“He’s too busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, he’s in a frolic about something or other,” Sportcoat said. “Running around accusing people of doing stuff they don’t remember.” To change the subject, he nodded at the generator. “Can I help? What’s wrong with it?”

Rufus peered back into the guts of the old machine. “Ain’t nothing wrong with it that I can’t fix. G’wan out to Bensonhurst and take care of your business and look in on Sister Paul for me. Leave the bottle, though. A man needs a little shake and shimmy.”

“Ain’t you making some homemade King Kong?”

Rufus crouched down onto one knee and stuck his head back in the generator. “I’m always making King Kong,” he said. “But it’s a two-part thing. You got to make the ‘King’ first, then the ‘Kong.’ The ‘King’ part is easy. That’s cooked and ready. I’m waiting for the ‘Kong.’ That takes time.”

He hit a button on the side of the machine and the generator sputtered, coughed for a few seconds, howled in agony, then roared to life.

He glanced at Sportcoat, yelling over the din: “G’wan look in on Sister Paul! Let me know how she’s doing. Wear your running shoes out in Bensonhurst!”

Sportcoat nodded, took a last sip of the Seagram’s, and headed out. But instead of using the back emergency exit door, he took the door that led to a short hallway and stairs to the front door, which opened to the plaza. As he opened the outer door, a tall figure in a black leather jacket emerged from a broom closet underneath the stairwell that led upstairs and silently crept up behind him with a raised pipe. The man was two steps away when a baseball suddenly whipped down the stairwell from behind, struck the man in the back of the head, and sent him clattering back into the broom closet and out of sight. The next instant two boys, no older than nine, scampered down the stairs, whipping past a surprised Sportcoat. One of them scooped up the ball, which had come to a rest near the door, and blurted a hasty “Hey, Sportcoat!,” then the boys vanished out the entrance, leaping down the front steps and out of sight, both of them laughing.

Sportcoat, irritated, quickly stepped out the door into the outside plaza to yell at their backs: “Slow your roll! Ain’t y’all ever heard of a baseball field?” He marched down the steps in their direction, never noticing the man behind him.

Inside the broom closet, Earl, Bunch’s hit man, lay sprawled on his rear end with his feet protruding out of the partially opened door, his back resting on the wall. He shook his head to clear his brain. He had to move, quick, before somebody else came downstairs. He smelled bleach. He suddenly realized his rear end was wet. His feet were atop a wheeled yellow bucket full of dirty water that had overturned. He inched his back off the wall, placed his hands on the floor to brace himself, and found his right hand landing on the wet end of a mop. The other hand was on some kind of contraption. He shifted and kicked the door open wide with his feet. In the light he saw, to his horror, that his left hand was sitting on a sprung rat trap—with a furry dead customer inside. He jumped to his feet with a yelp and burst out of the closet, down the hallway, out the front door of the building, speed walking through the plaza toward the nearby subway, wiping his hand frantically on his leather jacket, feeling the cold air blowing at his drenched pants and sneakers.