Deacon King Kong(44)

Still, seeing the lonely brandy by itself on the bottom step, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick nip. Nothing wrong with getting a little daily relief before the job.

He stood up and stepped down the stairs to grab the brandy on the bottom step. As he reached, someone kicked the bottle onto its back and it skidded onto the plaza and into the melee, unbroken but spinning on its side, stopping a few feet away. He followed it, wading into the crowd. Just as he reached it, the bottle was kicked again and slid between the legs of Sister Billings and the young pregnant mother, the two still tangling as Dominic and the woman’s boyfriend sought to separate them. He followed it, only to watch it get kicked again. This time it took a bouncing, flipping ride before sliding past the feet of Sausage and Calvin the transit worker, slowing to a miraculous, agonizing, twirling stop between the legs of two women who were grappling with one another, each cursing and threatening to rip the other’s wig off.

The bottle spun ’round and ’round beneath their legs, slowly coming to a stop.

Sportcoat crouched low, swiped it up, and was about to unscrew the lid when the bottle was suddenly swiped from his hand.

“This is the white man’s poison, Mr. Sportcoat,” Soup said calmly, holding the bottle. “We don’t need this stuff ’round here no more.”

He tossed the bottle casually over his shoulder, away from the crowd.

Soup, as a kid baseball player, never had much of an arm. But as a giant he had velocity. Several sets of eyes followed the bottle as it made a long, slow arc into the air, high up, twirling end over end, arching a bit as it reached its apex, then falling back to earth in a long, lazy, crazy spiraling curve—boinking Earl, Bunch’s hit man, right on the noggin.

Amazingly the bottle remained intact after pinging off Earl’s head, then struck the pavement before finally smashing into pieces. Earl fell next to it, crumpling to the ground like a paper doll.

The crash of the shattering glass and the sight of the fallen man stopped everyone. The crabbing and scratching ceased and everyone hustled over, gathering around the prostrate Earl, who was out cold.

In the distance, a police siren was heard.

“Now y’all did it,” Joaquin said gloomily.

Everyone realized the crisis instantly. Joaquin’s apartment would be searched. He’d be closed for days, weeks, even months. That meant no numbers. Even worse, Soup was on probation. Any kind of trouble would put him back in the clink. What a mean world!

“Everybody git,” Sister Gee said calmly. “I’ll take care of this.”

“I’ll stay too,” Dominic said. “It’s my fault. I got Bum-Bum stirred up.”

“Can’t no man stir me up, Dominic Lefleur,” Sister Billings snapped defensively. “I don’t need no man to stir my drink!”

“That depends on the straw and the man,” Dominic said, smiling. “I’m the Haitian Sensation—emphasis on ‘sensation.’”

“Don’t try that scalawag sweet talk on me, mister! I know you don’t mean it!”

Dominic shrugged as if to say “What do I do now?”

“We’re wasting time,” Sister Gee said. She turned to the crowd. “Get moving, y’all,” she snapped. She turned to Calvin, the subway toll collector. “Calvin, you and Soup stay. You too, Izi.” To the rest she said, “Hurry up, y’all. Git.”

The crowd vanished. Most ran inside their buildings or hurried to work. But not everybody. Sportcoat and Hot Sausage returned to the stoop, where Joaquin and Los So?adores were hastily packing up. Sausage nodded at the band. “If they was the O’Jays, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.

“Bongo music,” Sportcoat agreed, shaking his head. “I never did favor it.”

“Is you gonna wait here to be arrested?” Sausage asked.

“I gotta get to work.”

“Let’s get a snort before we set out,” Hot Sausage said. “I got some Kong in the workshop. We can take the back door and cut through the coal tunnel under Building Thirty-Four. That’ll puts us back at Nine.”

“I thought that coal tunnel was closed up.”

“Not if you the boiler man.”

Sportcoat grinned. “Doggone it, you’s a good rooster, Sausage. C’mon then.”

The two disappeared inside. Behind them, Sausage noticed Soup hoisting Earl over one shoulder and trotting out of the plaza. By the time the cops rolled up minutes later, the plaza was deserted.



* * *





Twenty minutes later Earl came to and found himself on a bench on the platform of the Silver Street subway station. Seated on one side was the biggest Puerto Rican he’d ever seen, and on the other a handsome black woman in a church hat. He felt his head. He’d been struck on the same spot where the errant baseball had hit him days before. He had a lump there the size of Milwaukee.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“You was hit in the head with a bottle,” the lady said.

“Why’s my clothes wet?”

“We doused you with water to get you up.”

He felt in his pocket for his switchblade. It was gone. Then he noticed the handle of the folded knife poking out from the closed fist of the giant Puerto Rican, who had a face ugly enough to belong to a cadaver. His blade, Earl realized, wouldn’t do shit on that Spanish elephant motherfucker but tickle him. Earl glanced nervously around the subway platform again. It was completely empty.