Deacon King Kong(80)

Lightbulb.

There was something about Lightbulb Deems didn’t like. Lightbulb hadn’t been feeling it. Ever since Deems had been shot, and Lightbulb and Beanie came to visit him two weeks ago, and Lightbulb got scared, talking about “you” instead of “we” when Deems said he planned to approach Peck, Deems had gotten suspicious. Lightbulb didn’t like that plan. In fact, when Deems really thought about it, Lightbulb never had the heart for the game. Bunch was on to him because somebody had dimed on him. He’d gone through the list of possible double-crossers, and if he had to bet on the outcome . . .

He felt a burning in his throat as anger fought to take hold.

The cooing of the honeyed girl next to him, sighing and dangling her feet over the water, cooled the burning and brought him back to the moment. She was speaking to him but he didn’t hear. His mind couldn’t stop moving. It circled the Harold Dean problem again, then settled back on Lightbulb.

Fucking Lightbulb.

He couldn’t believe it, but he had to. Lightbulb had tipped his hand when they were in the apartment two weeks ago. He hadn’t been around much. He was also using, which meant that when Lightbulb made deliveries, he might be cutting the stuff with baking soda or whatever he could get his hands on. Diluting the goods to keep the good stuff for himself.

Rage climbed into Deems’s clear thinking. It was a mistake, he knew. But he couldn’t help it.

“He tipped his hand right then and there in the apartment.” He spit out the words.

“Say what?” Phyllis was talking. She was so sweet. Her voice, lovely and lilting with that Southern accent, was a turn-on. She was almost like a real woman, like the black chicks he’d seen in the movies and on TV, Diahann Carroll and Cicely Tyson, sitting there looking fully grown with her fine self. He felt like a movie star and a grown man all at once, too, sitting next to her. He was embarrassed that he didn’t have much experience with girls. She was twenty-four, five years older than him. Most of the girls he knew were younger and worked for him; the older ones occasionally screwed him for dope, or simply became whores for their own habit, which made them untouchable. This little honey was so fine and smart, it seemed a waste to let her get all fucked up on heroin before he got his dibs. Plus she was a little cold and distant, which made her irresistible.

She’d agreed to walk with him to the dock, where there were plenty of empty corners, perfect places for a guy to get his nuts dipped. It was better than risking his life using an apartment of some dopehead in the Cause who might set him up for the price of a ten-dollar bag of brown scag.

She looked at him oddly, waiting for his response. He shrugged and said, “It ain’t nothing,” then gazed out over the water at the twinkling lights, which began to appear one by one, as the sun made its last descent over the western skyline. He said, “Look at them lights.”

“Nice.”

“The very next thing I’m gonna get me is an apartment. In Manhattan.”

“That’s cool,” she said.

He placed his arm around her shoulder. She removed it.

“I ain’t that type of girl,” she said.

He snickered, slightly embarrassed, aware that Beanie was fifteen feet off packing a Davis .380-caliber handgun, watching their backs. “What type of girl are you?”

“Well, not that type. Not yet. I don’t know you that good.”

“That’s why we’re here, baby.”

She laughed. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Girl, we ain’t gonna bang skins out here like teenagers, if that’s what you asking. Not with him standing right there.” He nodded to Beanie. “We come out here to just see the water and cool out and talk.”

“Okay. But I need a little bit of something, y’know. I’m just feeling it . . . y’know. You ain’t gonna ask me to do a little extra here for it, are you?”

He was disappointed. “Girl, I don’t want no extra. Not right now. You need a hit, I’ll give you a hit.”

“Forget it,” she said. She tilted her head side to side as if she were thinking about something, then said, “Well . . . I probably could use a little taste,” she said.

He glared at her.

“I thought you said you wasn’t hooked.”

“I ain’t talking about doing no works. I’m talking about tasting you, boy!” She tapped his pants near his zipper.

He chuckled. Once again, he had a fleeting feeling of sudden alert and would have driven into that feeling further had he not been interrupted by the sound of Beanie behind him bursting into laughter and saying, “Deems, oh shit, check this out!”

He turned around. Beanie, a good ten feet off, was standing next to old Hot Sausage, of all people, who was stone drunk and without his stupid porkpie cap. He was dressed instead in the garb of an umpire, complete with jacket, cap, and chest protector, and holding the face mask in his hand. He swayed unsteadily, completely blitzed.

Deems scrambled to his feet and stepped over to them. “What you doing here, Sausage?” he said, snickering. “You drunk? It ain’t Halloween yet.” He could smell the booze. Sausage was totaled and looked so ready to collapse that Deems almost felt sorry for him.

Sausage was bombed. “It wasn’t my idea,” he slurred. “But being that as you . . . well . . . I was told if you seen this here umpire outfit, it would be a message.”