Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

The kid laughed too. But nervous. “I’m down, man.”

“I need to find somebody’s crib. Somebody going to Langston Hughes. You go there?”

“Yeah, most of us.” He nodded toward the courts.

“I’m looking for the girl was on the news this morning.”

“Her? Geneva? Saw some dude get capped or something? The straight-A bitch?”

“I don’t know. She get straight A’s?”

“Yeah. She smart.”

“Where’s she live?”

He fell silent, cautious. Debating. Was he going to get fucked up for asking what he wanted to? He decided he wasn’t. “You were talking ’bout paper?”

Jax slipped him some bills.

“I myself don’ know the bitch, man. But I can hook you up with a brother who does. Nigger of mine name of Kevin. Want me to give him a call?”

“Yeah.”

A tiny cell phone emerged from the boy’s shorts. “Yo, dog. It’s Willy… The half courts…Yeah. Listen, dude here with some benjamins, looking fo’ yo’ bitch… Geneva. The Settle bitch…Hey, chill, man. S’a joke, you know what I’m saying?…Right. Now, this dude, he – ”

Jax snatched the phone from Willy’s hand and said, “Two hundred, you give up her address.”

A hesitation.

“Cash?” Kevin asked.

“No,” Jax snapped, “American Fuckin’ Express. Yeah, cash.”

“I’ma come by the courts. You got those C-notes on you?”

“Yeah, they’re sitting right next to my Colt, you’re interested. And when I say Colt I don’t mean malt in a forty.”

“I’m down, man. Just askin’. I don’t go round fielding folk.”

“I’ll be hanging with my crew,” Jax said, grinning at the uneasy Willy. He disconnected the phone and tossed it to the kid. Then he walked back to the fence and leaned against it and watched the game.

Ten minutes later Kevin arrived – unlike Willy, he was a real playa, tall, handsome, poised. Looked like some actor Jax couldn’t place. To show off for the old dude, show he wasn’t too eager to earn any C-notes – and to impress a few of the bling girls, of course – Kevin took his time. Paused, tapped fists, hugged a boy or two. Tossed out, “Yo, yo, my man,” a few times and then stepped onto the court, commandeered the ball and did a couple of impressive dunks.

Man could play hoops, no question.

Finally Kevin loped up to Jax and looked him over, because that was what you did when an outsider walked into a pack – whether it was on half courts or in a bar or even in Alonzo Henderson’s Victorian-era barbershops, Jax guessed. Kevin tried to figure out where Jax was carrying the piece, how much paper he really had on him, what he was about. Jax asked, “Just lemme know how long you’re going keep giving me the bad-eye, okay? ’Cause it’s gettin’ boring.”

Kevin didn’t smile. “Where’s the benjamins?”

Jax slipped Kevin the money.

“Where’s the girl?”

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

“Just the address.”

“You afraid of me?”

“Just the address.” Eyes not wavering.

Kevin grinned. “Don’t know the number, man. I know the building. I walked her home last spring. I gotta point it out.”

Jax nodded.

They started west and south, surprising Jax; he thought the girl would live in one of the tougher neighborhoods – farther north toward the Harlem River, or east. The streets here weren’t elegant but they were clean, and many of the buildings had been renovated, it seemed. There was also a lot of new construction underway.

Jax frowned, looking around at the nice streets. “You sure we’re talking Geneva Settle.”

“That’s the bitch you ask about. That’s the crib I’m showing you… Yo, man, you wanta buy some weed, some rock?”

“No.”

“Sure? I got some good shit.”

“A damn shame, you going deaf and all at your young age.”

Kevin shrugged.

They came to a block near Morningside Park. On top of the rocky incline was the Columbia University campus, a place he had frequently bombed with Jax 157 years ago.

They started to turn the corner but both of them stopped fast.

“Yo, check it out,” Kevin whispered. There was a Crown Vic – clearly an unmarked police car – double-parked in front of an old building.

“That’s her crib? The car’s in front of?”

“Naw. Hers’s two buildings closer. That one there.” He pointed.

It was old but in perfect shape. Flowers in the window boxes, everything clean. Nice curtains. Paint looked new.

Kevin asked, “You going to fuck up the bitch?” He looked Jax up and down.

“What I’m about is my business.”

“Your business, your business… Sure it is,” Kevin said in a soft voice. “Only…the reason I’m asking is, ’cause if she was to get fucked up – which I have no problem with, I’m saying – but if something was to happen to her, yo, check it out: I’d know it was you. And somebody might come round and wanna talk to me ’bout it. So, I’m thinking, with all that tall paper you carrying around in your pocket there, maybe I had a little more of it, I might forget I even seen you. On th’ other hand, it’s possible I could remember a lot ’bout you and that you was interested in the little bitch.”

Jax had seen quite a bit of life. Been a graffiti king, been a soldier in Desert Storm, known gangstas in prison and outside, been shot at…If there was a rule in this crazy world it was that however stupid you thought people were, they were always happy to be stupider.

In a fraction of a second, Jax grabbed the boy’s collar with his left hand and swung his fist up hard into the boy’s gut, three times, four, five…

“Fuck – ” was all the boy got out.

The way you fought in prison. Never give ’em a single second to recover.

Again, again, again…

Jax let go and the kid rolled into the alley, groaning in pain. With the deliberate, slow movement of a baseball player picking out a bat, Jax bent down and pulled the gun from his sock. As terrified Kevin watched helplessly, the ex-con worked the slide of the automatic to chamber a round then wrapped his do-rag around the barrel a number of times. This was, Jax had learned from DeLisle Marshall on S block, one of the best, and cheapest, ways to muffle the sound of a gunshot.

That evening, 7:30 P.M., Thompson Boyd had just finished painting a cartoon bear on the wall of Lucy’s room. He stepped back and glanced at his work. He’d done what the book had told him to do and, sure enough, it looked pretty much like a bear. It was the first picture in his life he’d ever painted, outside of school – which is why he’d worked so hard studying the book in his safe house earlier today.

The girls seemed to love it. He thought he himself should be pleased with the picture. But he wasn’t sure. He stared at it for a long time, waiting to feel proud. He didn’t. Oh, well. He stepped into the hallway, glanced at his cell phone. “Got a message,” he said absently. He dialed. “Hey, it’s Thompson. How you doing? Saw you called.”

Jeanne glanced at him then returned to drying the dishes.

“No, kidding?” Thompson chuckled. For a man who didn’t laugh, he thought he sounded real. Of course, he’d done the same thing that morning, in the library, laughing to put the Settle girl at ease, and that hadn’t worked so well. He reminded himself not to overact. “Man, that’s a bummer,” he said into the dead phone. “Sure. Won’t take too long, will it? Got that negotiation again tomorrow, yeah, the one we postponed…Gimme ten and I’ll see you there.”

He folded the phone closed and said to Jeanne, “Vern’s over at Joey’s. He’s got a flat.”