Deacon King Kong(97)

“You never heard it here.”

“Is it hard on you out here?” Potts asked. “With all the changes?”

There was the slightest twitch on Elefante’s eyebrow. “A little. How about you?”

“Same here. But guys in my business retire.”

“They do in mine too.”

“How? Rigor mortis?”

Elefante smirked. “What do you want from me, Potts? You waiting on me to get sore eyelids from blinking too much? I want out. I’m tired. I been working all my life. You know an oak tree doesn’t produce acorns until they’re over fifty years old?”

“So you wanna be an oak tree?”

“I wanna be a guy that every cop in the Seven-Six doesn’t come see twice a year like the dentist.”

“I came because I heard you want to see me.”

“Who told you? I didn’t call.”

“You’re not the only one who’s got birds crowing in the Seven-Six, Tommy. But if you’re Tarzan, I’m Jane. I’m hearing things I don’t understand about a case. I’m hoping you’ll clear them up.”

“Is it really about a case?”

“Goddammit, just because everyone in this precinct wants to skim his neighbor for a piece of bread doesn’t mean I’m the same as them. Yes, it’s really about a case. My last case, if I’m lucky. I come down here to talk to you square. Maybe you can clear some things up for me. Maybe I can do the same for you. Does that sound good? Then we can retire together.”

“We got competing interests, Potts. How exactly I’m getting out is none of your affair. But I’m getting out. I already told you too much.”

“Don’t get smart. I already know too much.”

“I’m not getting smart. In my business, trouble creeps up on you like an old charge account. So you work it out with the guys who won’t knife you in the back and hope the rest that you owe have amnesia. That’s how it works. But where our interests connect, I’m interested in doing business.”

“Fair enough.”

“So what you got?”

“I got a dead kid at Vitali Pier. And two wounded. And an old man on the lam.”

“Who’s the guy?”

Potts looked at Elefante. “C’mon, Tommy.”

“You ever think about it? That I might not know him?”

“He works for your mother, for Chrissake.”

Elefante sighed. “Come up to street level, would ya? You know how she is. She’s the same as she was when you first started kicking tail around here. She wanders around these empty lots looking for anything that doesn’t smell like shit on a stick so she can stick it in my yard.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You see the neighborhood. It’s not safe around here no more.”

“Not even for her?”

“I don’t know these new people, Potts. And I don’t know that guy.”

“He was in your house!”

“He wasn’t. He was in the yard. For a few months. Maybe three months. Once a week. Sticking plants in the ground. Old guy. Called himself the Deacon. They call him Sport Jacket or something. He’s good with plants. Can grow anything. Lots of families on my street used him.”

“So what’s he sticking a burner in Deems’s chest for?”

“I don’t know, Potts. I was gonna ask you.”

“You sound like some guy at a peace conference, Tommy,” Potts said, exasperated. “You’re full of questions with no answers.”

“And I’m telling you I don’t know the guy. I said a few words to the guy in three months. He worked in the yard. He grew whatever weeds my mother told him to grow. She paid him a little cash and he cut out. He’s a drunk. One of those guys who dies at twenty and is buried at eighty. He’s a church guy. A deacon over at the church there.”

“What does a deacon do?” Potts asked.

“You’re the second person that’s asked me that this week. How the fuck do I know? They sing songs, maybe, or give homilies to donkeys, or sleep like snails, or slobber while they collect church money and give out the hymnals.”

“So he drinks and grows plants and goes to church,” Potts said. “So far, he sounds Catholic.”

Elefante laughed. “I always liked you, Potts. Even though you were a headache.”

“Were?” Potts said.

“You said you’re getting out.”

“I am.”

“Maybe you can do me a favor then. ’Cause I’m getting out too.”

“Are you lying, exaggerating, or just thinking big?”

“I’m telling you, I really am.”

“If you’re trying to use that as an excuse to burn yourself out of whatever hole you’ve dug, it ain’t gonna work, Tommy. I hear that all the time.”

“But not from me.”

Potts was silent. Elefante, he thought, sounded serious.

“Honest to God, Potts. I am getting out. My mother, she’s getting up there. And I’m working on . . . I’m . . . can you keep a secret? It’ll brighten your day. I’m moving to the Bronx.”

“What for? Their baseball team stinks.”