George Pelecanos: Drama City

“But the Chinaman musta carried that scar forever. Might as well had a sign on him said ‘I got my ass punked.’ How you gonna face your people after, when you got that shit tattooed right on your grille?”

Nigel Johnson, seated at his desk behind the customer counter, tented his hands and felt himself tighten beneath his Sean John sweats. Green, one of his seconds, was just dim like that. He never could see past the obvious.

“Story wasn’t about the robbery,” said Nigel. “Story was about how the man hung in, kept on doing his j-o-b. Passed on the legacy of hard work to the ones around him.”

“I feel you,” said Green. “I’m sayin, though, for me? I’ll just go ahead and murder a motherfucker, he finds the need to put a gun in my face.”

Nigel breathed out slow. He looked past Green, slouched with his elbow on the counter, his Raiders cap cocked on his head, wearing his look-at-me hookup of a thick platinum chain worn out over a bright FUBU shirt, to Michael Butler, standing by the window fronting the shop. Butler just nodded at Nigel, talked with those smart brown eyes of his, telling him he understood, that there wasn’t any need to make further comment.

The boy was mature for his age. At seventeen, he had more sense than DeEric Green and most of these other knuckleheads on the payroll. Respectful, hardworking, and he thought before he spoke. Focused. Butler reminded Nigel of his own self when he was coming up, though Butler was nowhere near as tough. He had a little Lorenzo in him too, with the way he stayed quiet unless something needed to be said. Butler was good.

“Nigel?” said Green.

“What.”

“I had a little thing I had to take care of this morning.”

“Talk about it.”

“Saw this boy they call Jujubee, one of Deacon’s kids, toutin’ his shit on our real estate. Had to pull over and show him what I had in my waistband, you understand what I’m sayin’? Him and his boys, they walked off slow. I don’t see no problem, like reoccurin’ and shit, but I thought you might want to know.”

“Where was he standin’?” said Nigel. “Exactly.”

Green described the exact corner on Morton. When he was done, he smiled proudly.

“Well, then,” said Nigel, “you fucked up.”

“Huh?”

“That ain’t our corner.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sayin’, that’s Deacon Taylor’s corner.”

“It’s close to ours.”

“But it ain’t ours, DeEric. It’s Deacon’s. I got an arrangement with the man.”

Green lowered his eyes.

“Look,” said Nigel. “I appreciate you takin’ some initiative, but you need to get me on the Nextel, or Lawrence here, if you not sure what’s ours and what ain’t. You gonna start a war out here, and that is something I don’t need.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, okay. Right.” Nigel was tired of talking to Green, tired of trying to impress things upon him that he would never understand. Boy had the chrome, the outfits, the chains, the Escalade with the spinners… all the things. But there wasn’t no reasoning behind it, no plan. Boy wasn’t going to last.

“Anyway,” said Green, “’bout time I went and picked up the count.”

“Take Michael with you, hear?”

“ Ni gel,” said Green, protest in his tone.

It’s Ni gel, thought Johnson, not correcting Green, seeing no advantage in correcting him. Man had been working for him for two years now and he still couldn’t get the name right. Said he had a problem with it ’cause his cousin, boy name of Nigel Lewis, pronounced it “the English way.”

“Take Michael,” said Nigel, repeating the order. “Boy needs to learn.”

“Let’s go, youngun,” said Green without looking at the boy, resentment plain on his face.

“Your mom need anything?” said Michael Butler to Nigel.

“She good,” said Nigel, nodding at Butler, thanking him for asking after his mother without thanking him by word. He watched Green and Butler leave the shop.

“DeEric call you Ni gel,” said Lawrence Graham, seated near him behind the counter. Like many of the deadlier young men in the city, those with the fiercest reputations, he was short and slight.

“I know it,” said Nigel. “He got a cousin or somethin’ who say it the wrong way.”

“DeEric stupid.”

“You think?”

“He right about one thing, though,” said Graham.

“What’s that?”

“If that slope had had him a shotgun, a cut-down or something like that, hid in that laundry basket of his? He’d a lit that boy up.”

You stupid too, thought Nigel. But he didn’t say it. Graham followed orders to the letter. It was hard to find people like that. Nigel liked having him on his side.

Through the windshield of a Mercedes S430 parked in a space on the east side of Georgia, Deacon Taylor watched DeEric Green and Michael Butler walk down the sidewalk toward a black Escalade. Beside Deacon sat one of his lieutenants, Melvin Lee, spidery and small, an NY baseball cap worn sideways on his head. Slumped in the backseat was a young man named Rico Miller.

“That him?” said Deacon, thirty-three, handsome, wide-shouldered, and immaculately groomed.

“Way Jujubee described him,” said Lee. “Said he had on that orange FUBU when he told Jew to move on. Said he came out that ’Lade, with the spinners and shit.”

“DeEric Green, right?”

“Yeah. I ran with his brother, James, long time ago. The Greens stayed over there on Lamont when I was livin’ on Kenyon. Me and James, both of us went to the same middle school.”

“Tubman?”

“Yeah. I remember DeEric when he used to tag along at the basketball courts. He wasn’t no more than seventy pounds, but he talked like he was full grown.”

“His brother still out here?”

“Nah, James been dead.”

“What happened?”

“James couldn’t control his self around females. Made the mistake of gettin’ his grind on with some girl even though he got warned that this girl had a George.”

“Man didn’t take kindly to it, huh?”

“I’d say he took it to heart.”

Deacon nodded. One thing about Melvin, he made it a point to know a little something about everyone who was gaming on their side of Park View. Boy just had a talent for learning about the players, their histories, their alliances, and how they’d fucked up. Eventually everyone made that one big mistake. No one knew this better than Melvin Lee, who’d recently come uptown off a three-year sentence.

“Who that slim boy with DeEric?”

“New kid, name of Butler.”

“What you know about him?”

“Nothin’ yet. Nigel groomin’ him. But to me he don’t look like much.”

“Must be one of Nigel’s projects. You know how he gets all hopeful about them young ones.” Deacon tapped a manicured finger on the steering wheel. “Nigel got his corners, I got mine. That corner, the one his boy told Jujubee to step off of? That was mine. Nigel know this.”

“No doubt.”

“Me and Nigel, we ain’t never had no big problems. I been knowin’ him since we was Rough Riders.”

“Roosevelt,” said Lee, enjoying this part of the conversation, the history.

“I ain’t sayin’ either one of us wore the cap and gown.”

“Nigel’s main runnin’ boy, he was there round that time too, right?”

“Lorenzo Brown. Boy was fierce.”

“Yeah, well. He ain’t shit now.”

Deacon Taylor removed his shades, used his shirttail to clean the lenses, and replaced the glasses on his face. “I just can’t understand why Nigel would want to start some bullshit at this point in time.”

“Maybe his boy did it on his own. Green do tend to act bold like that.”

“That could be,” said Deacon Taylor. “Still, even if Nigel ignorant to the situation… I mean, a man needs to control his niggas, you feel me?”