Джеффри Дивер - Ninth and Nowhere

“Three Cs ain’t buying you a Glock or anything fancy, dog. You didn’t think that, did you?”

“I didn’t know.” He reached for the small revolver.

Lester waved his hand abruptly and Jamal froze.

The gangbanger picked up the gun using a paper towel, sprayed it with the window cleaner and then wiped it down, his flesh never coming in contact with the weapon. He set it down and did the same with each bullet. Jamal’s eyes slid to the TV. Still the story about the missing kid.

Lester plopped down the last bullet. “’Kay, dog. The green?”

Jamal dug the money out of his pocket and damn if Lester didn’t pick up the money, too, with a paper towel and put the wad in his pocket. He didn’t count it but Jamal supposed nobody ever in the history of the universe had fucked over Lester.

“You mention my name and you’re gone and Grandma’s gone, too, you know what I’m saying?”

“Sure, Lester.” Jamal started to load the gun.

“Now get the fuck out.”

When he was at the door Lester said, “Dog?”

Jamal looked back.

“Don’t never do a bank or check-cashing shop. You jack a car, I know a place’ll pay good green. Only cost you ten points to me. You do a house and end up with merch, I’ll move it. Cost you fifteen points there — riskier’n shit from cars, you know what I’m saying?”

Jamal nodded, then swallowed.

“Phone-card stores’re good. And remember, convenience stores, lotta times, put up cameras, you know, security? But they fake, to save money. An’ one last thing.” A nod toward the pocket where the gun rested. “Don’t use it ’less you for sure got to. Bullets — they change everything. But if you do, it’s pop, pop.” Lester reached up and poked Jamal hard in the temple twice. “Two. The head. Don’t bother no place else. You good with that?”

“I can do it,” Jamal said.

Lester looked him over and laughed. “Damn, dog, I b’lieve you can. Now , get the fuck out.”

“He say where he going?”

“Nothing,” Sharpe told Lester Banks. “Punk ass looked me in the eye, like pushing me, you know.”

Lester figured that Jamal could take Sharpe, skinny as an old rooster, one on one. Beatdown. Except if it came to metal, Sharpe had his Glock and Jamal had the Shit and Wesson.

They were on the doorstep of 414 West, Lester and Sharpe. Doug, too, but he was hanging back. Lester scared him. Lester was watching Jamal’s receding form. Easy to spot. The orange shoes.

Lester said, “I got some intelligence is interesting.”

Sharpe asked what it was.

“His brother’s in medium sec at Burlington.”

“Yeah. MT, he solid.”

“Do I care?”

“Well, you—”

“You don’t gotta answer.” Lester was thinking. “You see his face?”

Sharpe was silent.

“ That you can fucking answer.”

“Jamal, yeah. I seen his face.”

“He got something in mind. Something big going down. I think his brother tipped to something, heard something inside. Told the dog about it, and he comes here playing closemouthed. Boy don’t want to share. Only reason I gave him that piece, find out what he’s about.”

“I wondered why,” Sharpe replied. Then fell silent under Lester’s probing gaze.

Lester asked, “What’s on about town?”

“The Flatland?” Sharpe asked. “Only thing big I know about.”

Lester hadn’t thought about that. There’d been talk of a crew across town getting a load of fent and oxy, a big load, up from North Carolina. They were in the Flatland neighborhood, near the docks. Bad fuckers.

“Damn, punk takes the fent, tags the courier and anybody nearby. Worth, what? A couple hundred large.”

Sharpe said, “Man, we could move that shit fast. Market always want it. But might be something else.”

“Then I’ll cap his ass and take what he got. Get my Smittie back. Punk boy got no business playing with that. Something ’bout that dog I don’t like. Gimme yo Glock.”

Sharpe instantly handed over the pistol.

Lester checked the magazine and made sure a round was chambered. He looked up the street, where Jamal was turning the corner. He slipped the gun in his pocket.

“Later.”

The crack in the plaster ceiling was different things at different times.

It might be a map of an interstate, it might be a mountain range, it might be a woman’s voluptuous body.

This morning, as he lay in his sagging bed, what Adam Rangel saw was something he’d never characterized the crack as in his eight months of living here: a pirate ship.

Well, any old-time ship, he supposed, but for some reason Adam thought of it as a pirate ship. He remembered seeing that movie with Christie, Pirates of the Caribbean . Maybe that was it. Maybe he’d had a dream about the date.

No, it wasn’t Christie.

He couldn’t recall. Somebody blond. Christie wasn’t blond.

Sometimes, lying in his rickety twin bed, looking up, Adam wondered if the crack was a risk. It looked pretty deep. Did it mean that the ceiling would come tumbling down on him? The building was ancient, built with plaster. Sheetrock didn’t fall. It rotted. And even if it did fall it wasn’t heavy. Plaster fell and it weighed a ton.

But was it worth calling the landlord?

Probably not a good idea. Adam hadn’t been so good about paying rent on time. The checks somehow never stretched the way they should. The fewer waves he made, the better. No lease here. He could be kicked out anytime. He knew he couldn’t find anything this cheap and he sure wasn’t going to pass a credit check for anything else. Just keep it down and keep it low.

Sometimes Adam Rangel walked a very fine line.

Besides, he’d never heard of anybody getting crushed to death by a plaster ceiling.

He rolled upright, planting his feet on the green linoleum floor. He massaged his calf. This was out of habit, not to temper the pain. The five-year-old wound didn’t ache at the moment. Hadn’t for a long time. But massage it he did.

Adam slept, as always, in boxers. And he glanced down now, over his forty-one-year-old body, which was in good shape. Unfair, considering he got very little exercise and his diet was a joke.

Last year, Priscilla — he was sure it was Priscilla — had a chance to see virtually every square inch of that body and she’d told him she thought he was in his twenties. Sometimes he missed her and wondered where she was now. She’d traced her finger over the tattoo on his neck, an arrowhead in which a skyward-pointing sword was crossed by three lightning bolts.

“Special Forces,” he had told her in answer to her question.

“Oh, is that where that thing came from?” She had massaged the bullet-hole scar too.

Thing.

“Did it hurt?”

“Did. Doesn’t now. Usually.”

“Was it the Taliban?”

“Friendly fire. Happens a lot. More than you’d think.”

He slipped his feet into loafers and walked into the bathroom to pee. Debated brushing his teeth and decided to. Today the effort wasn’t too much.

Pay attention to the little things, accomplish the little tasks. What doctor had told him that?

Adam could remember former girlfriends’ names better, if only slightly better, than doctors’.

He checked text messages. None.

This both depressed and relieved him. When he had to respond he sometimes got tense. He might get it wrong, people might ask him to explain what he meant, might ask him questions whose answers didn’t come easily to him.

He went online.

Several e-mails but they didn’t bother him. E-mails were in a demilitarized zone. Texts were immediate, high-pressure, front line. E-mails you could stack up and let sit. You answered them on your terms.