Drama City

TWENTY-FOUR

Deacon Taylor sat under the wheel of his E-Class, parked on Iowa Avenue, with Marcus Griffin beside him. Griff’s midnight blue Infiniti was parked on the street as well. In view was Roosevelt High. Across from the school, a group of young men sat on the porch of a row house, smoking marijuana and drinking from bottles in paper bags.

“Here go his Lex,” said Deacon, watching as Nigel Johnson’s import rolled slowly down the street.

“Looks like he got Graham with him,” said Griff.

“That ain’t no surprise.”

“What you want me to do?”

“Watch my car, is all. Me and Nigel gonna go down to the track, walk around it some.”

“And do what?”

“I’m gonna listen, mostly,” said Deacon. “When I come back, I’ll tell you what I learned.”

Nigel parked on Iowa. He got out of the Lexus with two cigars in hand and walked across the street. Deacon met him in the middle of the street, and the two of them shook hands. Nigel offered Deacon a cigar and Deacon accepted. Nigel lit Deacon’s cigar, then put fire to his own. They agreed to go down to the sky blue running track that encircled the football field in Roosevelt’s bowl.

Griff leaned his back against the Mercedes and folded his arms. Graham affected the same pose against the Lexus. They stood on opposite sides of the street and stared at each other without animosity. They were playing their roles. As they stared, their bosses went along a high fence, entered the school grounds through an open gate, and descended the stadium stairs.

Down in the bowl, on the lighted track, Deacon Taylor and Nigel Johnson walked side by side, occasionally dragging on their Cubans. Nigel wore pressed jeans and a short-sleeved silk designer shirt. Deacon was dressed in a similarly casual, expensive way.

“You look good, big man,” said Deacon.

“You too,” said Nigel. “Prosperous.”

“I’m tryin’. Game ain’t gettin’ any easier.”

“Tell it,” said Nigel. “All this death too.”

“My sympathy for your losses,” said Deacon. “Want to put that out front straight away.”

“I appreciate that,” said Nigel. “Losin’ DeEric was one thing. But to lose Michael Butler over something that foolish -”

“I know,” said Deacon. “I know.”

“That boy was good.”

“What I heard.”

“’Course, this whole thing got to rollin’ off a misunderstanding started by my own. I admit that. I wanted to get up with you and make it right, but this thing happened before I could.”

“I told my people to talk to Green. Make it known, in no uncertain terms, that he made a serious mistake. But understand, I didn’t order no hit.”

“I never thought you did.”

“Rico Miller took it upon his self.”

“What I figured.”

“Now I got this other thing to deal with, the thing with the probation officer.”

“You know about that?”

“I didn’t know shit about it till Homicide come knockin’ on my door.”

“Bad business for all of us, Deacon. We can’t be havin’ our people involved in this kinda dirt. You fuck with police, even probation police, whole force gonna come down on you hard. I know Miller’s your boy, but… question is, how we gonna handle this?”

“I’m not gonna handle it,” said Deacon. “You are.”

“You givin’ me permission to do what I need to?”

Deacon nodded.

“Why?”

“Straight business, like you say. I can’t control Rico no more.”

“What about Lee?” said Nigel.

“Melvin with Rico, far as I’m concerned.”

“He been with you a while.”

“Police put him in the box, he gonna flip. Melvin can’t jail again. He knows this.”

“And when this thing gets done, how you gonna play it?”

“Gonna have to make a show of it. Throw the funeral, buy the T-shirts, the flowers. Say the strong words that need to be said. But that’s where it’s gonna end.”

“What about your people?”

“Long as it’s you behind it, they gonna be straight. You send some underlings to do this thing, it might make mine feel like they got the right to be heroic and shit. But ain’t nobody gonna come at Nigel Johnson.” Deacon looked Nigel in the eye. “You got my word.”

They rounded the curve of the track.

“Where the police at on this?” said Nigel.

“They workin’ the murders from last night. They got nothin’ so far. Far as the probation lady goes, I don’t know. They got to be lookin’ hard for Melvin. But Rico must have left his prints all over that apartment. They put those prints into the system, they gonna identify him through his priors. Won’t be long before they after Rico too.”

“Means I don’t have much time.”

“You know where Rico at, right?” said Deacon.

“Northeast,” said Nigel.

Deacon’s eyes moved to Nigel. “He at that same place…”

“Forty-sixth and Hayes,” said Nigel.

“Right.”

They walked farther. Nigel thought of Lorenzo, back in high school, running this track at night in his jeans and basketball sneaks. Nigel watching him, cutting on his technique. Lorenzo bragging about how he’d smoke anyone in the forty, they had the mind to try him. Talking about running for the school, wearing the colors of the Rough Riders. Nigel telling him that he had no business in school, that school was for faggots and suckers. That if he stuck with Nigel, the two of them were going to have it all.

“Shit,” said Nigel softly.

“What?” said Deacon.

“Nothin’. I’m tired, is all. You ever feel that way?”

“Yeah,” said Deacon, narrowing his eyes. “Sometimes I do get tired. Just like you.”

Nigel got behind the wheel of the Lexus. Lawrence Graham slipped into the bucket beside him.

“I’m on,” said Nigel.

“What about me?” said Graham.

“I’m gonna need you for somethin’ else.”

Nigel turned the key and put the car in drive.

“Where we goin’?” said Graham.

“Pick up Lorenzo at the hospital. Listen to me careful, ’cause we ain’t got all that far to go.”

Nigel drove up Iowa, passing the Mercedes on the other side of the street.

Deacon Taylor and Marcus Griffin, sitting in Deacon’s car, watched Nigel pass.

“You two square it up?”

“Yeah,” said Deacon. “We good.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Told you, I don’t plan,” said Deacon. “I look for opportunities.”

Nigel picked up Lorenzo outside the hospital, where they dropped off the people going in for surgery and picked up those who were recovering. Lorenzo, slump shouldered, standing by an old head smoking a cigarette, looked like he’d been under the knife himself.

Graham got out, allowing Lorenzo to take the passenger bucket, and slid into the backseat.

“How she doin’?” said Nigel.

“She’s dead.”

Nigel drove back into the old neighborhood. No one spoke or reached for the radio. Nigel pulled into a spot on Warder Street, by Park View Elementary, and cut the engine.

“Why we stoppin’ here?” said Lorenzo.

“Thought we’d walk some,” said Nigel. “Talk.”

“I’m done talkin’. I’m ready to go. You said you were lookin’ for some clean hardware. I got everything back at my apartment that we gonna need.”

Nigel looked past the headrest to the backseat. He tossed his keys over his shoulder into Graham’s cupped hands. “Stay here, Lawrence.”

Nigel got out of the car. Lorenzo hesitated for a moment, then got out too.

They walked onto the elementary school grounds, lighted in some spots and in others under a blanket of full dark. The silhouetted figures of two boys, no older than eleven or twelve, moved through the night. Marijuana smoke roiled faintly in the air.

Nigel had a seat on a wooden bench by the swings. Lorenzo sat beside him.

“You see them kids?” said Nigel.

“Yeah.”

“’Bout the same age we were when we started out.”

“They look to be.”

“Smells like they’re sampling the product. The way you used to do.”

“I did love it,” said Lorenzo.

“And I was all about business. Even before I started grindin’, when I had my paper route and I’d bring you out with me before sunup.”

“You were focused on getting the newspaper on the doorstep just right. So you could get those Christmas tips.”

“And all you wanted to do was bust out streetlights.”

“I had the arm to do it too,” said Lorenzo. “I could wing some rocks. Someone should have put me up on the mound.”

“That’s what you should’ ve been doin’ with your youth. Pitchin’ for some baseball team. Running track like you wanted to. ’Stead of gettin’ high and following me.”

“Past is past,” said Lorenzo, echoing what he’d heard so many times at the meetings.

“Look, Lorenzo -”

“Don’t apologize, Nigel. I made my choices.”

“Right. At least you doin’ good now.”

“I get headaches.”

“Damn near everyone go to work each day gets headaches. I’m sayin’, I see you in that uniform, doin’ something good out here, it makes me feel proud of you, man. Makes me think maybe I didn’t fuck you over all the way.”

“That uniform don’t change who I am.”

“Who you are is who you are today. Not what you were before you did your bid.”

“Bullshit. You come on back to my apartment, you gonna see how much I changed.”

“One thing ain’t changed,” said Nigel with a sad chuckle. “You still thickheaded.”

A young woman pushing a baby carriage turned the corner off Warder, walked down Otis, and passed under a street lamp. Lorenzo and Nigel studied her with interest.

“What you think her thing is?” said Lorenzo.

“I don’t know. Fine at fifteen, a mother at sixteen. Fucked and forgotten by some boy she ain’t never gonna hear from again. She done made her own mother a grandmother at thirty-two. Now she livin’ at home, a high school dropout with no skills, wonderin’ what she gonna do with her life. Sitting on the couch, watchin’ Judge Brown and the soaps, eatin’ sweets and smokin’ cigarettes. Fifteen years from now? She gonna be a grandmother herself, and that fine young girl gonna look like every other dusty-ass woman you see on the bus.”

“You ain’t been on a Metrobus for twenty years.”

“You know what I mean.”

“How about this?” said Lorenzo. “She made a mistake and she knows it. The boy who got her that way is working hard to rent an apartment so they can live together as a family. Her mother watches the baby during the day so the girl can stay in school, get her degree. And maybe her mother will raise the baby for a few years while the girl goes on to college. And that kid gonna watch an educated mother and a hardworking father, and by example, all those good things gonna rub off.”

“Another way of looking at it, I guess.”

“You ought to see all the people I meet on my job every day, Nigel. All the stories I hear.”

“I can imagine,” said Nigel. “The game, it’s just a tiny part of what’s goin’ on out here. Remember back when they was callin’ this town Dodge City?”

“That was reporters and shit, made that name up. The ones who were too scared to come into the neighborhoods they were writin’ about.”

“The everyday people who lived in this city hated that name.”

“As they should have,” said Lorenzo. “Drama City be more like it.”

“Like them two faces they got hangin’ over the stage in those theaters. The smiling face and the sad.”

“City got more than two sides.”

“Whatever it got,” said Nigel, “you on the right side now. The side where people get up and go to work. Wash their cars out in the street, tend to their gardens. Watch their kids grow.”

“Maybe. But I’m still gonna avenge my friend. Rico Miller? Shit, motherfuckers like him, they’re in their element behind those walls. I ain’t gonna let him have that gift. Boy needs to be put down like an animal.”

“I’m not sayin’ he doesn’t deserve to die. I’m telling you you can’t be a part of it.”

“You don’t need to worry, Nigel. I’m not goin’ back over to where I been. I’m gonna be at work tomorrow and the day after that. But I’m still gonna do this thing tonight.”

“It don’t work that way.”

“We’ll see.”

“You been out of it so long, you forgot how it goes. You go in, you got to go in fierce. Forget they’re human. Forget that you’re human too.”

“I know it. Remember, I’ve done this before.”

“But you cleaned your slate. Now, what, you gonna go and throw away your soul again?”

“What about yours?”

“Mine’s been lost forever.” Nigel looked away. “I’m sayin’, this ain’t you anymore.”

“I’m on this.”

“I don’t want you with me, Lorenzo.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you do or if you don’t,” said Lorenzo, turning to stare directly into his friend’s eyes.

“You that set on it?”

“I am.”

“Thickheaded,” said Nigel.

“C’mon.” Lorenzo stood. “Let’s get on over to my crib. Wanna show you what I got.”

They walked down Otis toward Lorenzo’s apartment. Lawrence Graham followed in the Lex.