Deacon King Kong(53)
“Stick your hand in a jar of maple syrup.”
“Sprinkle seed corn and butter bean hulls outside the door.”
“Step backward over a pole ten times.”
“Swallow three pebbles . . .”
They were off like that for several minutes, each topping the other with his list of ways to keep witches out, talking mojo as the modern life of the world’s greatest metropolis bustled about them. Brooklyn traffic roared aboveground. In Borough Hall, twenty blocks away, the Brooklyn borough president was welcoming Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. In Flushing, Queens, the New York Mets, the former dogs of baseball and now the toast of the town, were warming up for a game at Shea Stadium under TV lights with fifty-six thousand people in the stands. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Bella Abzug, the flamboyant Jewish congresswoman, was meeting with fund-raisers to consider a run for president. Meanwhile, the two old men sitting in the basement sipping moonshine were having a mojo contest:
“Never turn your head to the side while a horse is passing . . .”
“Drop a dead mouse on a red rag.”
“Give your sweetheart an umbrella on a Thursday.”
“Blow on a mirror and walk it around a tree ten times . . .”
They had reached the remedy of putting a gas lamp in every window of every second house on the fourth Thursday of every month when the generator, as if on its own, roared up wildly, sputtered miserably, coughed, and died.
The basement went nearly dark, the lights dimming low, and they would have gone almost completely black but for the second generator, which sputtered onward, powering a single bulb in a far corner of the basement. It shone brightly, as did the exit light over the hallway door through which Sportcoat had entered and which he had tightly closed upon entering.
“Now you done it,” Sausage grumbled in the near dark. “Coming down here carrying on about witches and all, you put a spell on the damn thing.”
He knelt, groped inside the generator, and made a few adjustments. The generator coughed miserably, sputtered, and grumbled back up. The lights in the room came up full again.
Sportcoat glared at the generator, puzzled. It seemed louder than ever, roaring at a speed that was unusual, powering along with a shake-rattle so loud that Hot Sausage had to shout over it at the top of his lungs.
“I think it’s got a short,” he shouted over the roar.
Sportcoat nodded. “But if it’s connected to four apartments upstairs,” he yelled, “why’s the lights going out down here?”
“What?”
“Forget it,” he yelled. “I got to get to work. Where’s my umpire uniform?”
“What?”
Sportcoat pointed to the roaring generator. Sausage knelt and adjusted the machine, and the roar kicked back a decibel. From his crouch he repeated, “What?”
“I’m getting the baseball game going again,” Sportcoat said. “I need my umpire uniform, remember? I know it’s down here someplace.”
“What you need that for? We ain’t got no pitching. Our star pitcher ain’t got no ear. And he’s gunning for you.”
Sportcoat, irritated again, took another sip of King Kong. “Just git it.”
“It’s right where you put it last,” Sausage said, taking the bottle and nodding at a closet in a far corner. Sportcoat gazed at the pile of refuse that stood between them and the closet. He looked down at his plaid sport coat. “I’mma mess up my jacket digging through that.”
Sausage sucked his teeth, handed the bottle to Sportcoat, and disappeared into the cacophony of junk. After several clangs, grunts, kicks, and shoves, he reappeared moments later with a black plastic bag, which he tossed on the floor.
At that moment, the generator emitted a horrible burst, coughed, sputtered, sparked, and died again. A moment later, the second generator quit as well.
The room went completely dark this time, save the exit sign over the door. The door, which neither noticed, now stood slightly ajar.
“Goddamn,” Sausage said in the silence. “This one here musta shorted out the other one. Gimme a flashlight, Sport.”
“That ain’t something I normally carries about, Sausage.”
“Stay here. I’mma check the generator on the other side.”
There was more clattering as Sausage scrambled to the other side of the room. Sportcoat sipped his Kong nonchalantly, felt for the crate with his feet, found it, and sat down.
Neither of them noticed the tall figure in the leather jacket who had slipped into the room through the door underneath the exit sign.
“Do this happen all the time?” Sportcoat said in the silence.
“Never like this,” Sausage said from across the room. “Course when you calling on witches and so forth . . .” Sportcoat heard him curse and grunt, then heard a noise near the door and glanced at it. In the light of the exit sign he saw—or thought he saw—a shadow move past it.
“Sausage, I think there’s somebo—”
“I got it!” Sausage called. “Okay. There’s a switch box behind that generator where you’re at. Go back behind it and throw it when I tell you. That’ll bring the lights up.”
“Throw what?”
“The switch. Behind the generator where you’re standing. Feel ’round that generator and throw that switch there,” Hot Sausage said. “That’ll fire ’em both.”