Deacon King Kong(63)

Lightbulb glanced at the end of the table where Earl, fresh from his painful electrocution in Sausage’s basement boiler room, silently scratched at a crossword puzzle, his right arm in a sling and his head bandaged from where the bottle had smashed him at Soup’s coming-home party. Earl kept his head down.

“So tell me about Deems,” Bunch said.

“What you wanna know?” Lightbulb asked.

“How’d he win the flagpole?” he asked. “That’s the busiest section of the Cause. Who was doing business there before Deems took over?”

“I want the flagpole plaza, by the way,” Lightbulb said. “If this works out.”

“How about a flagpole up your ass. I asked you about how Deems won it. I didn’t ask you what you want.”

“I’m just saying I can do a better job than him. I’d need the flagpole to do it.”

“Who you think you talking to, kid, Santa Claus? I don’t care about your needs. You ain’t done nothing so far other than say what you need and lick your nasty fingers while eating my chicken.”

Lightbulb blinked and started in. “Back when we was all playing baseball, Deems had an older cousin named Rooster. Rooster started selling first. He was making so much bank we quit ball to work under him. We ran customers to him. Junkies on the street. White boys from New Jersey cruising through, like that. Rooster got killed by somebody who tried to rob him. So Deems took over.”

“Just like that? Y’all just let Deems be top dog?”

“Well . . . he done some things, Deems did.”

“Like?”

“Well . . . a boy named Mark Bumpus was the first guy. He dead now.”

“How’d he get that way? Was he a heavy sleeper? Did he fall down a flight of stairs?”

“Deems set him up.”

“How so?”

“Well, Rooster died while we was all in jail. When we come out, Bumps—Mark Bumpus—ran things.”

“And Deems didn’t mind? Even though Rooster was his cousin?”

“We got, like, forty dollars a day. That’s a lot of money.”

“And Deems didn’t say nothing?”

“I got to back up a minute to tell it right,” Lightbulb said. “See, we was all in Spofford together,” Lightbulb said, referring to the juvenile center. “Me, Beanie, Sugar, Deems, and Bumps. Deems and Bumps got into it in Spofford, in the rec room. It wasn’t over Rooster. He was already dead.”

“Over what then?”

“The TV. Deems wanted to watch baseball. Bumps didn’t. They got into it. Deems whipped up on Bumps pretty bad. Then Deems’s grandfather visited and gave Deems fifty dollars. The food was bad in Spofford, so Deems went to the commissary and bought some rice and beans. He shared it with his boys: me, Beanie, Sugar. Bumps wasn’t his boys. When Bumps asked Deems for some rice and beans, Deems said no, I just share with my boys. So that night Bumps and a couple of his friends caught Deems alone in the shower and cut him up bad. They took his rice and beans and the rest of that fifty dollars.

“Deems never forgot that,” Lightbulb said. “Bumps got out of Spofford before Deems did. When he come out Spofford a few months later, Bumps had taken over the plaza. Bumps was hot, man, selling dope, weed, acid, everything. By that time most of us was out of Spofford. We all needed money, so we went to work for Bumps. He paid forty dollars a day. He even hired Deems. He told Deems, ‘Forget all that stuff from Spofford. You’re with me now. We boys now.’

“Deems ran customers to Bumps better than any of us. Deems knew how to find dopeheads. Deems would go all the way downtown to get customers and run them over to Bumps. It got so that Bumps would let Deems carry dope to his far-off customers, because Bumps was rolling. He was selling to everybody. That’s when Deems got him.

“He sent Deems out with thirty grams of coke to this Jamaican guy out in Hollis, Queens. Deems switched out the dope for some white soap flakes and flour and gived the bag to the guy. The guy used it and damn near died. He called on the phone and Deems had Beanie answer the telephone and Beanie told the guy ‘Fuck off.’ So the guy got his revenge. Deems took a bunch of us to the top of Building Nine where we could wait to watch the ants come—”

“What ants?”

“It don’t matter. Just a bunch of ants that crawl up there every year. But you can see the plaza from there. You could see Bumps out there working. Deems said, ‘Remember my rice and beans when we was in juvy? I’mma square that with punk-ass Bumps. Just watch.’

“Sure enough, a couple of nights later this pretty Jamaican girl come around to the flagpole saying to Bumps she wanted some dope but didn’t have no money. She offered to, you know, service his rod if he let her shoot up afterward. Bumps said okay. He followed her to the alley behind the plaza and them Jamaicans was waiting for him. They damn near killed him. Cut his face, down his forehead, all down his eye, oh man, messed him up. They left him like that.

“Soon as they started whipping on him, Deems ran off the roof. He run off soon as they started cutting Bumps up. The minute them Jamaicans left Bumps laying in the alley, Deems came out the back door of Building Nine and ran over to Bumps holding a steaming pot of rice and beans. He must’ve had it cooking in his house. He said, ‘Here’s your rice and beans, Bumps.’ He poured that whole pot on him.