Deacon King Kong(55)

“Deems is a boy, Hot Sausage. This here’s a man. Plus little Deems ain’t got no money to hire nobody to do nothing.”

“Little Deems got a Firebird car.”

“He do? Glory. That boy’s running a big mill, ain’t he!”

“Goddammit, Sport, I’ll take my baseball bat and send you hooting and hollering out that damn door! You brung trouble to my job! Now he got to go! And you got to help!”

“All right. You ain’t got to get all tied up in a knot about it.”

But Sausage was already moving. He yanked a four-wheel dolly from the junk pile in the middle of the floor, wheeled it over to Earl, then, kneeling over him, checked his pulse again. “I been shocked by that generator before,” he said. “It’s gonna take him awhile to come to hisself, but he’ll be all right. In the meantime, let the devil have him.”

They set to work.

Twenty minutes later, Earl woke up in the alley behind Building 17. He was lying on his back. His burned leather jacket smelled like scorched hair. His arms ached so bad he was afraid he’d broken both. His head, knotted with a lump from where the bottle had knocked him cold, felt as if a jackhammer were banging away at it. He raised his right arm, a movement that sent pain roaring down his shoulder, and checked his watch. The crystal was broken. The watch was dead. His moved his left arm, found it alive, and pulled his gun out of his left pocket. He noted the bullets had been emptied from it. He shoved it back into his pocket and sat up. His feet were wet. So were his legs. He’d wet himself. He looked up at the sky and the windows above him. He saw no faces peering at him but could tell by the sun’s position in the sky that it was afternoon. He was late. He was supposed to collect yesterday’s take from Bunch’s Bed-Stuy street dealers by noon.

He got to his feet slowly, every muscle in his body protesting, and staggered toward the nearby Silver Street subway, leaning on the wall as he went. He felt like he was falling to pieces, but moved faster as he got his wind, keeping one eye out for the giant who had escorted him there that morning. He had to make it to Bed-Stuy to pick up Bunch’s cash before heading back to the boss’s house. The least he could do was to show up with Bunch’s rocks. It might keep the boss from killing him.





13





THE COUNTRY GIRL



Elefante and the Governor sat in the living room of the Governor’s modest two-family brick house in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, a calm enclave of apartment buildings dotted with a few leafy trees amid coming urban decay, when the door burst open and a mop swept into the room, followed by an attractive woman pulling a wheeled bucket full of soapy water. Her head was down and she mopped at the floor with such speed and intensity that at first she didn’t notice the two men sitting in the room. Elefante was in the rocking chair with his back to the door. The old man was on the couch. The woman swept from left to right and then hit the leg of the rocking chair and saw a foot. She looked up in surprise at Elefante, her face flushed a deep red, and at that moment Elefante saw his future.

She was a heavyset woman, getting on in years but with a sweet face that could not bridle the shyness that emanated from it, with wide brown eyes that, at the moment, blinked in surprise. Her brown hair was pulled back to a bun, and a long, cute, dimpled chin lived beneath a pleasant mouth. Though heavy, she had the frame of a tall, thin woman, her neck was long, and she hung her head a bit, as if to deemphasize her height. She wore a green dress and her feet were bare.

“Whoops. I was just coming in to clean.” She backed out of the room quickly and slammed the door. Elefante heard her footsteps retreating to the back of the apartment.

“Sorry,” the Governor said. “That’s my lass, Melissa. She lives downstairs.”

Elefante nodded. He had not seen Melissa long but he had seen her long enough. It was the barefoot part, Elefante thought later, that did it. The no shoes. What a beauty. A country beauty. The type he’d always dreamed about. He liked heavy women. And she was deeply shy. He saw that immediately. It was the way she moved, with slight clumsiness, her head down, that long neck swinging that pretty face away from what was happening. In that moment, he felt an inside part of his tightly wound heart loosen, and understood, with certainty, the Governor’s problem. He doubted that shy beauty had the guile to run a bagel shop, much less take care of whatever business the Governor had with this piece that he wanted to dump for dollars, whatever it was. That type ought to be running a country store someplace, he thought dreamily. Running it with me.

He shook the thought as he saw the Governor watching him, a slight smile on his lined face. They had spent the afternoon together. The old man had been cordial. He’d greeted Elefante like they were old friends. The bagel shop was just two blocks away, and despite the Governor’s wheezing and poor health, he insisted they walk over. He proudly showed Elefante the entire operation, the large eating area, the display cases, the store crowded with customers. He showed him the back garage area where he kept his two delivery trucks, and finally the kitchen, which he saved for last, where the two Puerto Rican cooks were finishing up. “We start at two a.m.,” the Governor explained. “By four thirty the bagels are hot and rolling out the door. By nine we’ve moved eight hundred bagels. Sometimes we move a couple thousand a day,” he said proudly. “Not just for us. We sell to shops all over the Bronx.”