TWENTY

I USED FIDEL’S key on the spiked gate guarding the service entrance and took the stairs from the basement to the lobby, where Blue called to me.

“Hey, Artie, Julius Hemphill, the cat is beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Blue.” I waved on the way to the elevator. I didn’t want to talk about the saxophone or about Julius Hemphill, beautiful as he is.

Calabash stepped into the elevator behind me. He appeared from out of nowhere. There is nothing in my lobby, an expanse of marble floor. All the furniture had been stolen. There was nothing to hide behind. Where did he come from? He clutched my upper arms as the door slid closed.

“You ever do dat again, I leave your ass in de lurch. I believed you were comin’ back here after you leave de bar, but you don’t. Dat’s fuckin’ stupid! You got a bodyguard, but you go off without tellin’ him!”

I burst out crying like a child. I had had it, I could take no more reprimands.

“Hey, it ain’t dat big a thing. I just tellin’ you, dat’s all.”

But I couldn’t stop. Calabash hugged me in giant arms and patted my back until we reached my floor. “I’m sorry,” I managed.

“Dat’s okay, no problem. What we need is a big rum swizzle like de tourists drink all day.”

He made one while I called Sybel. Still no answer. I took great gulps of rum swizzle and waited for the impact. “Where did Kiley go from the bar?”

“He went up Amsterdam Avenue, he hurryin’ right along, lookin’ over his shoulder. I thought he spotted me, but, no, he didn’t. About four blocks on, a black car come up beside him. Den he got in and dey drive away. I couldn’t see anybody in de car for de black windows.”

What did that mean? “He’s the blackmailer. He got Billie killed.”

Jellyroll walked over and sat down on that spot near the radiator where he used to pee on newspaper when he was a puppy. Jellyroll has extraordinary holding power, but when he sits on that spot and stares at me, I take him to be in distress. Dogs must go outside regardless of the operative level of insanity. Calabash and I walked only a few steps toward the park before Jellyroll peed in the gutter between two parked cars.

Before he finished, another car, a green one, pulled up beside us and stopped as if to double-park. The driver opened his door and stepped out. I recognized him. He propped the butt of his handgun on the roof and aimed at my chest. Calabash shoved me out of the line of fire as the gun went off. I flew into the rear of the parked car and bounced into the gutter. I grabbed a handful of flesh on the back of Jellyroll’s neck and yanked him under me. I curled into a ball and didn’t even realize I was lying in three inches of water.

Calabash dropped behind the other parked car and drew his big black automatic from his waistband, but he had no time to use it before the machine gun ended it all.

Every window in the green car disintegrated simultaneously, the side-view mirror cartwheeling in the air. I heard screams from somewhere. Neighbors in terror taking cover. The green car trembled and shuddered under the barrage, pieces flying. I never saw the effect of those bullets on the man, and for that I remain grateful, but I could extrapolate from his car.

The silence seemed ghostly after the ceasefire. Jellyroll struggled to stand, but I held him down.

“Hey, Artie,” someone called.

I looked out from under a rear tire and saw Leon Palomino standing behind a red Japanese car across the street. He held his gun above his head with both hands like a guerrilla fighter posing for a publicity shot, smiling. It wasn’t actually a machine gun but it was some kind of automatic weapon. Then Leon laid the gun on the hood of the red car and said, “Hey, Artie, you take care now, huh?” He put his hands in the pockets of his fatigue jacket and walked west in no hurry. I never saw him again.

Screams from my neighbors. Faces appeared in windows. An incessant whine near my head. Why? Was someone hit? Was that the sound of dying? Was I screaming? No, it was the burglar alarm inside the green car, more holes than anything solid. Calabash walked around to see the body, but he didn’t linger. I stood up, careful to keep the car between the body and myself. A fat rivulet of blood flowed from beneath the car and like a tributary joined the stream of gutter water. The next thing I remember was in my living room and the strange absence of music. My eyes were blurry, but I saw that Calabash’s forehead was bleeding. I clutched his cheeks in my hands to focus on the wound. It seemed to be a scratch, nothing more. Sirens wailed from all directions.

“Calabash! Are you all right!”

“Hit my head on de bumper. It ain’t a worry?”

“You’ve got to get out of here with your guns!” I handed him the key to Jerry’s apartment. I have no view of 104th Street from my apartment, but I didn’t need one to know it was filling up with police. “At the end of the hall. Apartment 12F. Hurry.”

“I call you in ten minutes,” he said, and left.

Jellyroll’s body trembled and shook. I sat on the floor and stroked his back, told him lies like “it’s okay, boy.” He buried his head in my armpit. I don’t know how long I did that before they pounded on my door as if with battering rams.

“Police! Open up!”

I peeped out the view hole. They did have a battering ram. It was a squat cylinder of steel with pipe-like handles. I saw Cobb and Loccatuchi and a hall full of uniforms. They were all wearing bullet-proof vests like fencer’s plastrons. Every man had his gun drawn; two carried shotguns and one a sledgehammer, probably used in conjunction with the battering ram. All that battle gear notwithstanding, it was the looks on their faces—determined, tense, and dangerous, that frightened me most.

Careful to keep my hands in full view, I opened the door. They poured in on me. Two uniforms wedged themselves in the doorway shoulder to shoulder in their haste, but their comrades dislodged them from behind. The flood of armed officers drove me into the living room. The jig was definitely up. Cobb grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and shoved me against my own wall. He kicked my legs apart and frisked me with, I thought, undue roughness. He yanked my arms behind me and handcuffed them there. Only then did the troops holster their guns.

“Now it’s your ass, Deemer,” said Cobb as he squeezed the cuffs tightly against my wrist bones.

“Fuck me!” someone said. “That looks like the R-r-ruff Dog!”

“That is the R-r-ruff Dog,” said Loccatuchi.

Then the phalanx swept me into the hall, now full of my neighbors. Mrs. Fishbein, her mouth agape. Fidel, looking grim. News crews shot blinding lights at me. A female reporter stuck a microphone in my face and asked for a statement, but Cobb knocked it out of her hands. Six cops and I crowded into the freight elevator, which Fidel drove to the lobby. I didn’t see much point just then in explaining that I was the intended victim, not the perpetrator.

Lined with blue-and-white squad cars, lights pulsing everywhere, 104th Street looked like a war zone. Two cars had been driven up onto the sidewalk, their headlights pointing into my lobby, where Blue narrated events he probably didn’t witness to a clot of reporters. When they saw me in handcuffs, they bolted from Blue and charged, but a cordon of uniforms headed them off. Out on the street, stringers and freelancers stuck more cameras in my face. Cobb straight-armed them roughly aside with one big hand and dragged me along by the shirtfront with the other. I glimpsed two attendants in yellow foul-weather gear load the black rubber body bag into the rear of an EMS truck before Cobb shoved me into the backseat of a squad car. There was more blood on the pavement beside the riddled green car than I imagined a single human body could contain. The media were getting some great blood shots, film at eleven. Siren blaring, we sped east after Cobb, on the loud-hailer, bullied the curious out of our way.

“Who was that fucker, Deemer?”

“Ricardo.”

“The other guy! The guy who shot Ricky?”

“Ricky?”

“Ricky Ricardo, asshole! Who shot him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you’re in deep shit, pal.”