Rhozier Brown - DC Noir 2 - The Classics

Sergeant Wendell wrote the pass without bothering his boss behind the closed door. Wendell knew about Lucus and his Help the Homeless Project, all the grants and reports.

The library filled the second floor of the recreation complex. Lucus shivered as he hurried through the outside fenced tunnel from admin building to the rec. Couldn’t help himself, he turned his face up to the cold sun as if to kiss the sky like he was a free man with a future. His exhaled clouds floated through the chain-link fence. The blade hugged his arm.

Inside the rec, Lucus glanced at the standing-room-only crowd of orange jumpsuits watching a soap on the prison’s big-screen TV that the Feds had confiscated in a drug bust. Cons laughed and joked, but soaked up the story about a beautiful blonde in slinky dresses. Lucus couldn’t spot that face in the crowd, but he knew it was there.

The guard at the library door blinked at Lucus’s pass with eyes that coveted first-floor duty where he could watch TV too.

The A-Designate con working as librarian stood by the checkout desk, stacking books on a delivery cart to be rolled along the tiers. Another A-Designate replaced books on a shelf. Three residents sat at tables, surrounded by law books and yellow legal pads.

Over in the corner, reading at his Thursday table: James Clawson. The Man.

An orange tent loomed in front of Lucus: Manster, the only creature in the institution bigger than Cooley. Manster stayed out of chains because whatever he wanted from another con, the other con gave up. Outside, Manster had pistol-whipped a cop to death.

“I’m here to see the Man,” Lucus told Manster.

“Maybe.” Manster kept his eyes on Lucus, coughed to get the Man’s attention.

The three other iron men between the Man’s table and the world made a space for their ruler to check out the petitioner. He read to the end of the paragraph, glanced through the orange jumpsuits, and let Lucus fall into his eyes.

“How you doin’, J.C.?” said Lucus.

“Lucus the lone wolf,” replied J.C. “Join me.”

J.C. picked up some chump’s pink commissary pass, used it as a bookmark for the page he was reading, then closed the volume. He turned the book so Lucus could see the cover: a picture of a suit-and-tie dude with a cocked sword in one hand and a briefcase in the other. The book’s title read: Corporate Samurai — Classic Japanese Combat Principles for the 21st Century’s Global Business Economy .

“Are you still reading, Lucus?”

“When I got time.”

“You know what the underlying fallacy of this book is?” asked J.C., who was working on his MBA, correspondence and good-faith-in-your-prison-jacket style.

“Ain’t read it.”

“You don’t need to. Look at the cover.”

The suit with a briefcase and a sword and a going-places face.

“Give a twelve-year-old a dime and a nine,” said J.C., “and he’ll punch a dozen red holes in Mr. Global Business Corporate Samurai before that sword even gets close.”

A national gang once sent a crew from Angel Town to Death City to “negotiate” J.C.’s outfit into their fold. A freezer truck carted the five gangbangers back to L.A., dumped the meat in their hood.

“Business ain’t my thing,” said Lucus.

“It’s the wave of the future,” counseled J.C., who was down on a drug kingpin sentence running longer than any life.

“I’ve got something for you,” said Lucus.

“Ah.”

“But I need something too.”

“Of course you do. Or you wouldn’t be here. Respect and such, you’ve been smart about it. But it’s always been Lone-Wolf Lucus.”

“I’ve had bad luck at partnering.”

“Perhaps prison has taught you something.”

“Oh yeah,” said Lucus. “Deal is, there’s trouble coming down. You run most of what moves inside here.”

J.C. shrugged.

“Trouble comes down,” said Lucus, “all the politics buzzing outside, the admin will tighten the screws, and that’ll crimp business, be bad for you.”

“The innocent always suffer,” said J.C. “What ‘trouble’ has made you its prophet?”

“There’s a hit on, likely for this afternoon. The guarantee is it won’t be quick and clean, and you don’t need any out-of-hand mess tightening the screws on your machine.”

“What’s the ‘guarantee’?”

“I am.” Risk it . Maybe he knows, maybe not. Maybe he gave the nod, maybe he just heard the Word and let it melt in his eyes.

“The hit’s on my boy — Kevin. He got drunk, got in a stupid beef over a basketball game in the yard. Trash flew, couple pushes before some guards walked by and chilled it down. Dude named Jerome’s claimed the beef with my boy, and Jerome and his Orchard Terrace Projects crew gonna make it a pack hit.”

“This is just a beef? Not turf or trade?”

“Nothing ever stays clean, J.C. You know that. The Orchard Terrace crew does my boy, it’ll make them heavy — balance of power shifting don’t do you no good.”

“Unless the teeter-totter dips my way,” said J.C.

“Far as I know, you ain’t in this.”

Gotta be that way! Or …

J.C. sent his eyes to one of his lieutenants.

“Lucus’s punk runs with the Q Street Rockers,” said the man whose job it was to know. “Wild boys. Orchard Terrace crew, they been proper, smart.”

J.C. sat for a moment. Closed his eyes and enjoyed the sunshine streaming through the grilled window. “You’re in a hard place,” he told Lucus.

“Life story.”

“What do you want from me?” asked J.C.

“Squash the hit — you could do it, no cost.”

“Everything costs. What’s in that play for me?”

“Your profits stay cool,” said Lucus.

“Your concern for my profits is touching.”

“We got the same problem here.”

“No,” sighed J.C., “we don’t. If I squash the hit, then I tilt the teeter-totter. Why should I become the cause instead of just one of the bystanders? Your boy picked his crew—”

“It’s a neighborhood thing, he didn’t pick.”

“He didn’t grow up,” said J.C. “Now, if he runs to me out of fear, wants to join up … I’d be signing on a weak link. I’d gain more if I fed him back to the Orchard Terrace boys — then they’d owe me. Better to be owed by lions than to own a rabbit.”

“I figured that already.”

“What else is in your column of calculations?”

Fast, everything’s rushing so fast, too fast.

“You quash the hit,” said Lucus, drawing the bottom line, “I’ll owe you one.”

“Well, well, well. What would you owe me?” asked the man with a wallet full of souls.

“Eye for an eye. One for one.”

“Eye for an eye plus interest.” J.C. smiled. His teeth were white and even. “You really aren’t a businessman, Lucus.”

“I am who I am.”

“Yes. A gray legend when I walked in here. Lone wolf and wicked. You mind your step, never push but never walk away. Smart. Smarter than smart — schooled.”

“I’m worth it.”

“You ever kill anybody, Lucus?”

“I’m down for five murders — plus.”

“My question is,” said the man whose eyes punished lies, “have your hands ever drained blood?”

“Nobody ever quite died,” confessed Lucus.

“ Quite is a lot.” J.C.’s smile was soft. “I know you’re stand-up. You’d keep your word, wear my collar. But the fit would be too tight. And down the line, who knows what problems that would mean?”

Lucus felt his stomach fall away. His face never changed.

“So … I can’t help you. Your boy’s beef is none of my business — either way, I promise you that. He makes it clean, I’m not in his shadow. But his future is his future.”