The Jook Page 12

  "Naw, he ain't been here," the beefy girl in the tight red dress and green eye shadow growled at me. She went to wipe down the bar on the other end.

  "Sonny Sticks in always around here," I said, following her.

  "He ain't here now." She stopped moving her rag. "Ain't you supposed to be somebody?"

  "The dude who's looking for the dude who owes me money, that's who I am." Like Zorro, I wrote my initial on a coaster. "Tell him I was here and that next time he better be too." I flipped the coaster toward her.

  "Oh sure." She looked at it, then went over to speak to a older dude in a ratty turtleneck and plaid knit coat sitting on a corner stool. I drove around for a while, half looking for a couple of other Gs who owed me some dough. As the sun went down, I wound up in Watts, dropping by Kelrue Cumming's grandmother's house on 107th near Santa Ana. When he didn't want to be found, that's where he'd go. He'd have heard of me getting the ax again and would know I'd want another ring or two to tide me over.

  "No, no, Mr. Zelmont," his granny said through a crack in the doorway of her shack, "Kelrue hasn't been around much, you see?"

  "Can I leave him a note?" Did I sound innocent enough?

  "I'm not so old I can't remember, Mr. Zelmont." Granny's voice cracked. Kelrue was probably crouching down in a back room.

  Putting some weight on the door, I said, "This won't take but a minute."

  "Please, we don't want no trouble. But I got me what they call a panic button inside the door here, Mr. Zelmont. The city council done gave' em out to us senior citizens in a safe streets program, yes sir."

  Fuck. I could get the door open and knock her down before she could reach that button. If there was one. I pushed my weight against the door some more. "It'll be over before you know it, grandma. Kelrue has a contract he has to honor."

  "Good Jesus."

  I was almost inside when a pair of high beams suddenly flashed on, catching me in the glare. The car had driven up quick across the lawn. A door opened and slammed. I didn't need to be John Shaft to know who it was.

  "Prone out on the lawn, Zelmont." Fahrar stood to one side of the car, the lights barely outlining his form. I was sure he had his gun pointed at me.

  "This ain't none of your concern, cop."

  "You gone simple? Do what I tell you and step away from the citizen."

  Grandma made a face at me. "Serves you right for being so evil."

  I could have popped her but that would give Fahrar an excuse to shoot me. ''Don't you and your fat grandson get too cozy, old lady I'm coming back.''

  That took some of the vinegar out of her. Fahrar was close, his nine pointed at my head. "Do as I told you." He grabbed me, pulling on my arm. Then he pushed the muzzle of the automatic against my cheek, digging it in hard. "Let's go."

  He manhandled me down onto the grass, kicking at the back of my legs with his feet. I got down on my knees and he thumped me in the middle of my back with the butt of his gun. "Prone, motherfuckah."

  I turned my head and saw those crazy eyes of his were full of anger. I went face down, and he patted me all over. Then he made me put my hands behind my back and he cuffed them.

  "Get up."

  I did. Granny and a couple of her neighbors were watching the show. Then Fahrar marched me to his car and told me to sit in the passenger side. He got in on the driver's side. There was a prisoner bar on the dash and he clinked the short chain on it to the cuffs. He reversed the car and we took off.

  "You ain't got nothing, Fahrar. I didn't touch the old lady and she didn't squawk." He wasn't heading down 108th where the station was. But come to think of it, Fahrar didn't work the Watts precinct anyway. "How'd you find me?"

  His fucked-up hat was pressed tight against his head. "When I heard you got cut, I knew you'd be desperate for money. I'd developed a list of the losers who owe you dough." He grinned at me, his yellow eye giving me a shiver.

  "You done lost your mind, boy."

  "I got your boy, Zelmont."

  He pulled his Toronado under where the 105 and 110 freeways cross, near Figueroa and 111th. Overhead the cars and trucks went by Down where we were there was nothing but dark shadows and the smell of gas and trash. Fahrar got out, leaving me chained to the bar. He came around the back of the car and opened the passenger door. Fahrar stuck the gun against my nose.

  "You bad now?"

  "You better"

  "Shut up," he yelled, slapping me with the gun.

  "Fuck you, punk. Let me loose and let's see how hard you are."

  His answer was to poke the side of my face with his nine again. "I could run you in on assault for harassing the old lady."

  "I didn't assault anybody, clown. You the one doing the assaulting."

  He backed up, the gun still out toward me. "You're going to own up for once, Zelmont."

  I screamed, "You gonna shoot me, Fahrar? You didn't even know Davida."

  "It's not about her, asshole." He reached in and hit me with the gat again. I could feel blood on the side of my nose.

  The end of that gun was the only thing in my world. I didn't hear the cars going by above us or my own breathing. It was just the gun and nothing else. He undid the chain and pulled me out, throwing me to my knees in the dirt.

  "Your time's coming." He walked a wide circle around me, keeping out of reach. Then he got back in his car and took off, leaving me handcuffed and dirty.

  "Let me loose, you high yella bitch," I hollered into the cloud of dust his wheels kicked up in my face. His tail lights disappeared into the darkness. I got to my feet, one of my knees skinned. Like an idiot I strained against the handcuffs, knowing they weren't going to break apart.

  It was getting cold, and with only a shirt and no jacket I needed to get moving just to stay warm. I walked around under the freeway looking for something to get myself loose. Off to one side there was a lumpy shape. I walked over there. It was a homeless man sleeping on a ragged bunch of towels, his shopping cart near him. It was hard, but I did my best to dig through his junk in the cart. I wasn't in no mood to be delicate, and the noise woke him up.

  "Say, man, you better get away." He sat up, stink coming off him like a backed-up toilet.

  "Sit down," I kicked him in the chest, not too hard, but hard enough so he got the message.

  "I'll cut you."

  "You best sit the fuck down." I kept moving his junk around, trying to watch him too in case he wasn't bullshitting about having a blade. But all he had in the cart was broken plastic toys, pieces of faucets, used pens, hunks of Styrofoam, and other crap. There was nothing of use to me, or anybody else for that matter.

  I left the cat and his sad life and went out on the sidewalk. I was shivering and probably looked like a nut to anybody passing by. I had to walk with my arms down in front of me to try and hide the cuffs. A Mexican woman with a basket of laundry on her head was coming at me from the other direction. She must have seen the cuffs 'cause she cut across the street in a hurry, almost getting run over by a pick-up truck.

  At Imperial and Flower there was a filling station with a working phone on the east end of the lot. I managed to turn my pocket inside out, spilling out a few coins. A lowered Chevy Caprice rolled by, the eight-ballers inside scoping me out. They must have figured me for a mark, a drunk mark. I was down on my knees picking up the coins. The car came onto the lot, a Mack 10 number thumpin' on the car's speakers.

  I got the phone off the hook and managed to get a quarter in the slot. But I dropped the dime. I bent down to pick it up, knowing that the hawks in the car were sizing me up. I couldn't see their faces, but I could read their minds. If things had gone different, if I hadn't had that scholarship and been picked ninth round in the draft, maybe I'd be in the car, looking to push up on a fool.

  I got the dime in the slot and punched her inside line. The thing rang on the other end, me holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder and two hands clinked together. I watched the car.

  "Hello," Wilma said.

 
"I need you to pick me up at the corner of Imperial and Flower, it's a Exxon Station."

  "Zelmont, what's"

  "Now, okay?"

  "All right."

  I let the phone dangle and walked to the lights shining down on the gas pumps. If them boys in the ride flexed, then so be it. I'd get these cuffs around the neck of one of those studs and take him with me to wherever the hell it was we went after this bullshit.

  I stood under the lights waiting for Wilma. A couple of people who pulled in for gas seemed surprised when I didn't ask to fill their cars up like I was any other motherfuckah beggin' for spare change.

  After a while, the punks in the Caprice got bored and drove off. When Wilma got there, I was moving back and forth, trying not to freeze.

  "What happened?" she said, getting out of her Phaeton.

  "I'll tell you when I'm warm." I managed to open the door and got inside.

  Wilma pointed at the cuffs. "One of your chicks get too rough for you?"

  I put the stare on her. "Can you get these off me?"

  "Sure, baby," she giggled. She called Nap on her cell phone and drove me to where he was staying in the Valley in Van Nuys. It was a funky-looking apartment building near the Anheuser-Busch plant.

  Nap worked on cutting the cuffs with a heavy-duty hacksaw he borrowed from the manager. After he got them off, I told them what happened.

  "So we have to be careful," Nap said, looking at the cuffs. "With this cop having a big stick up his ass about you, he's going to make it his mission to fuck with your life until he can bust you for Davida's murder."

  Nobody said anything for a few ticks, but I knew the gears were turning in Wilma's head. "Does Fahrar know Weems?"

  "That's being overly paranoid, Zelmont." Wilma walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door. "You have any beer?"

  "Rolling Rock," Nap said.

  "Really?" I said, walking around. "Then why don't you check, Wilma? Weems has a hard-on for law and order, ain't that right, Nap?"

  "That's true. It's a known fact some of the members of his Internal Truth Squad are ex-cops."

  "I know that," she said.

  "Then check," I said. "We have to know what we got lining up against us."

  She didn't like being ordered around. But she also didn't like being caught from behind. I waited while she sipped her beer.

  "Fine."

  I laughed. "Big spoiled baby."

  "Shut up." She sat on the couch.

  "Got anything stronger than that pale-ass brew?"

  "In the cupboard." Nap pointed with the hand holding the cuffs.

  I got down a bottle of gin. "Ysanya know you're here?"

  "Why you want to know?"

  "We got enough to worry about without that dizzy bitch spilling the goods, that's why."

  Nap came towards me. "I said she's cool, Zee. You worry about your end of things."

  "I am, that's why I want to know." The bottle was on the counter, my hand on the neck.

  His shoulders hitched.

  "She's unreliable, man," I said.

  "You should know about being unreliable." He was breathing in my face. Now I'd find out how long I'd last before Nap beat me into the ground.

  Wilma got between us. "All right, let's not fall apart until we're millionaires, okay? You two are supposed to be tight. Don't let a woman come between you."

  She put her arm around my waist. "Grab the bottle and let's go. Everything's going to be all ours." She pulled me to her. "Then we can get out of here and start over, make it good."

  "You and me?" It sounded natural when I said the words.

  "Yeah, you and me."

  We tongued, and later at her pad we got down. Not like was the usual for me, being the macker and bangin' the coochie, or getting off on rough sex like with Davida. We were tender with each other, held on to each other and touched the other one's body with our fingertips. That was something, really something.

  Chapter 11

  "We got it," the note from Wilma read. "Meet me at The Townhouse, 9:30 tonight."

  I'd been out running the hills. I wondered if that asshole Fahrar was watching my house and had seen the messenger come by. The note was in a big envelope, so maybe that fuck would think I was being served with a new suit or something. Maybe he'd found out that I'd put the crib on the auction block this morning, short on bread like I was.

  Even though the job was coming up, I needed cash to cover living expenses. My NFL pension was nothing 'cause I had borrowed heavily against it, and the house note was just too big a nut each goddamn month. I didn't see anything for selling my ring, and Terri had got her lawyer daddy to get an injunction on me so now they were going after what was left in my bank account. What a fuckin' fool I was to have sent her money like Weems was gonna let me play and I was gonna be able to make regular payments.

  There were envelopes in the mailbox and one was from Terri. There was a letter in there on pink paper and photos of her and the baby. She'd put on weight but was still into wearing them form-fitting dresses over her packed ass. The kid looked cool, though. He had his mother's wide eyes and a cute kinda mohawk look. She'd insisted on naming him Cody 'cause that's the name her favorite TV star, Kathie Lee Gifford, had given one of her kids. I tried telling her that any black kid named Cody was gonna have a hard row to hoe, but she didn't listen.

  I sat there, his picture in one hand, the note from Wilma in the other. I picked up the phone and called.

  "Is Terri there?" I asked after some man said hello.

  "Who's this?" The dude put bass in his voice.

  "The father of her baby"

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So put her on the phone if she's there."

  "Yo, man, you don't call over here and bark orders, you ain't my daddy"

  "And you don't own the phone you're talkin' on, chump. Put Terri on the line."

  "She ain't here." The sissy hung up on me.

  No matter. I figured he'd tell Terri I called 'cause he'd want to show off to her about how he'd put me in my place. Then she'd call back, and I knew I could sweet talk her into getting her father to back off. But even so, it was only a delayed hit. The fucked-up truth was the house was too big a drain on my income. Particularly since I didn't have an income.

  With that in mind, I'd gone over to a real estate office on the Strip and talked with a chick who said she'd start things in motion.

  "Making some changes? Wish to go upmarket?" She must have been pushing sixty, but she worked out, so the young outfit she was wearing looked okay on her. The dye job on her hair wasn't as good as Ysanya's, and I had to catch myself from thinking about what color her snatch was.

  "Something like that."

  One of the dudes in the office, a cat in suspenders, recognized me, and that got her more excited about how she could move the property Seems like my past was the only thing of value I had going. She got the paperwork underway and said she'd be by tomorrow to take a look at the house.

  "I'm done, Mr. Raines," my cleaning woman Adrianna said, packing up her bucket of brushes.

  "Thanks." I gave her some dough and a tip too.

  "Thank you," she said, looking at the money. "Everything okay with you now?"

  "Like butter, baby."

  She smiled. I hadn't told her this was probably the last time she'd be cleaning up this house, at least for me.

  I showered and messed around with this and that, mostly chillin' and listening to some CDs. I didn't have any new stuff, but last year's cuts did me fine. I went over to The Townhouse on La Tijera at the right time. As usual, the place was bumping with booty house music, and the babes to go with it. I found the two of them at one of those tall circle-type tables you stand around.

  Nap's chest was out 'cause he was feeling proud. "Ysanya called with the number yesterday, Zee."

  "I back-traced it through a contact I have in the phone company It's a stationary phone and not a cellular," Wilma said. "I have the address in Ridgecrest."

&n
bsp; I was going to ask who her contact in the phone company was. Probably some middle management dude who had his nose wide open for her. I shouldn't have been dwelling on it, but I was. "Now what?"

  A waitress came over. "Can I get you something, sir?"

  I gave her my order and she slipped off.

  "Stadanko and Chekka have a meeting coming up there," Wilma said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "He's made plans to fly down to Miami for an owners' meeting this Tuesday." She tasted her drink. "The meeting is only scheduled for two days, but he doesn't get back for a week."

  "Maybe he's got something on the side he's gonna see about tightening up," I said, not understanding why Wilma was so sure Stadanko and his thug cousin had this chat planned.

  Wilma leaned closer to us over the table. "Look, here's the deal. Chekka came by the office yesterday. I was there for a meeting on the broadcast rights for cable and Fox. Anyway, he's hitting on me"

  "He do that on the regular?"

  The waitress came back with my whisky. I paid her, counting out ones. She went away.

  "Relax," Nap laughed.

  "Rudy says he wants me to meet him in Palm Springs on Sunday."

  "Like I asked, this a new thing he's got for you?" A chick in platforms bumped against me and mumbled something, then stepped off with her girlfriends.

  "He's always sniffing after money or pussy, Zelmont. He's hit on every girl in that office." She drank her drank, eyeing me over the rim of the glass.

  "This is about third and goal, Zee," Nap reminded me.

  He was right, but that didn't change what I wanted to know. "So you two are on your way to Palm Springs and grinnin' watermelon grins."

  Wilma made a sound with her tongue. I strung him along, Zelmont. Yes, he's tried to get his hands up my dress once or twice, and that's it, understand? But it was important that I teased him a little to find out what I could." She knocked off half her drink. "Like you haven't played anyone, right?"

  I let that go by. "So?"