The Jook

Chapter 14

I woke up to somebody wailing. For a second or two, I was happy, like maybe I was with some fine mama and we were doin' the nasty. But that hope soon left me as it came back to me where I was: in a stank-smelling pipe with my best friend dying beside me.

"You got to keep quiet, Nap." I tried to get my head off where it was resting against the cold concrete pipe, but there was no energy left for me to tap. It took all my juice just to get my eyes open. Nap was laying on his side, that much I could tell in the darkness.

"Oh, man, ain't this… something… we… aw, God." He rolled onto his back, holding onto himself and moaning again.

"Nap, you got to shut the fuck up." The fear that was bouncing around inside me gave my battery a charge. I crawled over to him and put my hand over his mouth. "We gonna make it, big man, we are. But you gotta be tippity-toe quiet for sure, baby." I couldn't hear much of what was happening outside up on the road except some cars moving around and that helicopter flying around. I guess that had covered up homeboy's yelling. At least I hoped so.

Nap wasn't focusing on me. As I adjusted to the darkness, I could see his pupils were tight and the whites of his eyes red like he'd been smoking a pound of dank. I wish he had 'cause the boy was getting agitated and he needed to chill. "Yo, home, you got to come to yourself, man. You got to fight through the pain." That was easy for me to say. My vest had stopped the bullet with my name on it. If I'd been tagged like Nap was, I knew good and well I'd be doing the same as him all out of my head with my guts turning to mashed peas.

Thing was, I did use the vest and it wasn't me who was torn up. You had to play the game the way the breaks went. That's what separated winners from also-rans.

"Nap," I said, leaning over. "Do you know who I am?" His eyes looked all around, and I put my hand over his mouth again, this time with more weight. If he went off there was gonna be more trouble than I could handle. ''It's me, Nap, it's Zelmont. You know where you are, right?"

He shook his head. I didn't know if it meant yes or no or it was just the shakes. But I took my hand away. He didn't yell out, he didn't do anything except breathe deep and ragged like a old locomotive.

"Zelmont, Zelmont, what have I done?"

"Wilma and your brother went to get that old croaker Burroughs, okay? But they got to wait some hours until the cops clear out of here, man." I looked at the glowing numbers on my watch. We'd been in the pipe for about an hour. A couple of rats were squeaking in the other end.

"Man," he said, worn out. Nap laid back down, barely breathing.

I opened his overalls and ripped up his T-shirt underneath. All I could see was grime and slick liquid. What did I expect? I ripped off the wrapping of one of the bundles and put the wadded brown paper over the wound. Using his and my belt I tied the makeshift gauze in place. The wound didn't seem to be bleeding too much now so maybe that would help it.

We waited. Some time passed and I considered poking out of the hole to see if the cops were still scrambling around. I worked around in my mind who could have tipped off Stadanko. It must have been Ysanya. I guess Nap's long dong wasn't enough to make her forget who really was the mack daddy in this situation.

"She didn't, you know."

He was so quiet, at first I wondered if I was losing it and hearing voices in my cabeza. "What you say, man?"

"I know you must be sure Ysanya snitched, but I don't see it that way." He seemed to be coming out of that fog he had been in before.

"Course you'd say that," I said. "She's your stuff."

"It ain't that, Zelmont." He grabbed his side and I was just about to leap on him when he waved me off. "Even if Ysanya wanted to tell him about our plan she knows she'd be dead if she did. How else could she explain what we were up to unless she copped to me and her gettin' it on?"

"Then who?" I wanted to know. Talking about it made me feel like I might walk out of this storm drain and get my shit together. Talking about it kept me from imagining that Wilma had got the best of Danny and was gonna sneak back here in the middle of the night with me and Nap conked out. Then she could pop the both of us and be off livin' large in Switzerland or some place like that. Me and Nap cold as motherfuckahs in the ground.

"Could it have been Weems?" I moved to sit against the side of the pipe again so I could stretch my legs out and they wouldn't cramp so bad.

"How would he know anything?" Nap asked.

I guess Wilma hadn't told him everything. That was good. "Forget it."

"I think it was just Stadanko being careful." Now Nap's voice sounded far away. "Remember, this run was going to have to last him, so he had to be thinking how vulnerable he was. All that money moving over all those miles…" He stopped, getting his strength. ''… from the various stops the truck had to make to collect the dough." Nap quit talking like he was used up.

"We'll find out." I listened for anything. The rats were moving around and there was water dripping back there in the deeper darkness too. It was getting cold. How long did we have to wait?

"I'm going to use some of my money to start a scholarship."

I laughed. "Now I know you must going crazy, Negro."

He moved his head from side to side. "No, man, if I get out of this I know I have to atone."

"You been watching Reverend Fred Price again, huh?"

"I'm serious as cancer, Zee. I have to make up for what I've done. That's why God let me be shot up, so I could realize what I had to do." He stopped for so long I thought he'd passed out again. But then he went on.

"Don't you remember when you were young and it was so exciting to play? How it felt to be standing in line and be picked for dodge ball or baseball? How the other kids knew from seeing us before that we had something, that extra spark, the promise of talent that made them say to themselves, 'Yeah, I have to make sure that guy is on my team'?"

"And getting to be a star in high school," I said. I didn't want to think back but couldn't help it.

"The world was ours for the asking," Nap said. "But we still played because we dug it, man, because the game was something that set us apart from the crowd. We felt good going down the field with the other guys 'cause we knew we were part of a team, part of something special."

"Yeah, you're right, Nap."

"God wants me to do better, Zee. He wants me to help make the same thing possible for some poor kids. I have no choice."

Talk of being all holy always got under my skin. And it was worse with us sitting in the dark, shivering and hungry and wounded. That's how them Christians wanted you to be, all wracked up, shit looking lost. So naturally you had to call on De Lawd to save your pathetic ass 'cause who else would come and wipe your nose in the middle of the night?

"Man, Burroughs gonna dig the slugs out of you, then shoot you up with some of his homemade happy formula. After that, you'll be thinkin' about all the pussyoh, I'm sorry, in your case,

Nap, all the poon tang and hairy bootyyou'll be gettin' with your new money."

Nap kinda coughed, trying to laugh. Then there was a pause. I did it, Zee, I killed Davida."

"You trippin'."

"She knew about me and Ysanya."

"How?" I flashed on that tape I'd seen of Davida back at Stadanko's cabin and figured he might be telling me straight.

"Pablo, of all people. He didn't mean it, of course."

"Oh, Pablo was knockin' boots with her too, Nap? I thought he only liked to be poled."

Nap coughed and laughed that time. "He does. But they were drinking together at the club one night. You know, chicks like talking to queens as if they have some special insight into the female condition. Anyway, the lad really can't hold his liquor, and he blurted out about me and Ysanya."

"Why'd you tell him for anyway?"

"Another bad move in hindsight, but pillow talk has done many a man in, I suppose. So he blabs this to Davida, and you know that girl, no matter how tipsy she was, if it was an angle she could use to advance her career she'd hold onto that information."

"You got that right, home." We didn't say anything for a minute, the only sound coming from the rats and the water. I looked to the left and could see one of the little vultures climbing on a stack of money Guard rat.

"Davida sweated you for cash after that, didn't she?"

Nap tried to sit up but couldn't. "I offered to make her a partner, but she said it would take too long to get her dough. She knew this producer was playing her, Zee. All she wanted was enough scratch to finance her album. She didn't really want much. And she was never nasty about it, you know how she was."

"Yes I do."

"She'd call up asking me for a little more or maybe to make a phone call for her."

I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard a car driving around. It had been five hours since we'd holed up in here. Could there still be cops outside, going over the ground again and again? What if they brought back dogs?

"So how come you offed her, Nap?" I suppose I should have been upset but I wasn't. I was pissed that Fahrar, that motherfuckah, had been on me, but I didn't expect Nap to call him up and confess.

"She wasn't getting where she wanted to go." Nap's breathing didn't sound too good. "She called me all wired that Tuesday. I could tell she'd been doing some lines."

That was the day we'd had our fight, but I didn't say anything.

"She was threatening to tell Stadanko if I didn't come up with some real money."

A car door slammed and I could hear footsteps. "Hush up, Nap."

"I decided I'd meet her way out so no one would see us." Nap kept talking, his voice very soft. I listened for anything.

"I don't really know what happened, Zee. She wouldn't believe how deep I was into Stadanko and Chekka. She was too wound up, she'd been doing more coke. Then she offered me sex right there, in the parking structure right behind the building we were at. This was during working hours, man." He coughed some more. I heard another car stop and I got scared. "Of course I was game, the riskier the better, right?"

"Right." It had to be cops.

"We were going at it on the hood of her car. You know how she liked it, rough and rougher."

"So it was an accident." I moved closer to where Nap was laying.

"It would be good if I could think so." Nap starting crying. "But as we were doing it, as I had her panties around her throat, getting her off, she laughed, saying she was going to fuck me all kinds of ways." He hacked up who knows what from his lungs. "I just wanted to be done with her. Even then I was thinking about busting some kind of move against Chekka and Stadanko to get out from under. Her harassing me could go on way too long."

I heard voices up top. I got close to Nap. "I understand, man. She got on my last nerve too. But right now you gotta be quiet until I make sure who's up there."

If he heard me it didn't make any difference. He let his side go, grabbed his head, and started wailing again. "Aw, man, God wants me to do better, Zee. He's taken me to the brink to teach me right from wrong." From somewhere strength came into him and he grabbed me, holding me close to his chest. "We've got to repent, Zee. We've got to use the money for more than just us."

He was hollering so loud I didn't know what to do. I heard the footsteps again, and it sounded like someone was coming down the hill. "Shut up, Nap, you've got to shut up," I whispered in his face, scared like I didn't know what.

Nap got me in a bear hug, his big arms suddenly filled with an energy I was shocked to see he still had. The pain in my back almost made me pass out as Nap crushed me. "Nap, Nap, come to yourself, man."

"Jesus is calling on us, Zee. He knows what we've done."

"Nap," I cried out despite the footsteps. My hands went to his throat in the dark, his sweat and blood all over me. His breath was rotten and he had me very tight in his grip. I let go of his throat, trying to pry myself loose. Our bodies shifted and I got leverage over him.

"Nap," I said, gritting my teeth.

"Zelmont," his voice boomed in the pipe. The rats got excited and started scooting all over the place.

His arms were like steel around me and I had to get my hands under his jaw and push him away. His body shook and he let out air like a bad tire. Then his grip went limp and I rolled clear.

"Zelmont."

I looked over where Nap was lying still. "Zelmont," the voice said again. It wasn't Nap. It was Wilma.

"In here." I could barely talk.

"We're coming."

Pretty soon a light came through the grate of the water pipe. I could hear Wilma's feet crunching on the earth as she came closer to the entrance.

"Zelmont. We've been driving around for a while. The cops removed the trucks, and in the dark we couldn't tell exactly where the drain pipe was."

"Where's Burroughs?" I finally said.

"He came with Danny. I thought it would be better to bring two cars just in case Nap had to be stretched out. Danny drove Burroughs' station wagon."

"That's good," I said.

I half-crawled over to the entrance. Together we removed the grate. "I guess that old bag of bones ain't gonna come down the mountain."

She was shining her light past me, like she thought me and Nap had buried the bundles somewhere. "Is he okay?"

"He's dead."

"Shit." She was thinking what I was, that Danny was gonna go straight off.

"What happened?" She came into the pipe.

"He went nuts, kept talkin' about how he had to get right with Jesus. He told me he killed Davida."

She put the light on me, studying my face. "I assumed"

"You and everybody else, Wilma. Me and Nap struggled some. He'd grabbed me, damn near busting my back. I don't know if me fighting with him caused him to die sooner. But we need Burroughs to come down here and say Nap died of his bullet wounds.''

She looked at me, then nodded her head. "I'll go up and tell them he's barely hanging on."

"If you can, on the QT tell Burroughs there's more money in it for him to do as we say."

"He was Nap's friend."

"Nap can't pay him, we can." At that moment I couldn't afford to feel anything about my friend.

It took some doing, but with Danny's help they got Burroughs down the hill. The old scarecrow was at the entrance of the pipe, the moon lighting him from behind. He looked like death himself come to call.

"You better hurry, he don't look good." I stood back as Danny rushed in.

"Nap, I got the doc here, Nap, is you awake?" Danny was all over him, slobbering and crying. Wilma had her flashlight on us.

He looked up at me like a little lost kid. I had on the face I wore when I didn't want a defender to know anything I might be up to.

The ancient pill roller got on his knees and bent over Nap, going over his body with his stethoscope. Burroughs' long, hinged fingers were like insect legs dancing over the big man's form. Under his breath I could hear him talking to himself. Danny stood to one side, a flashlight in his left hand. He kept his right free for the gat I knew he had hidden under his sweat top.

"One of the high-velocity shells shattered his clavicle, and another drove part of his ribs into his stomach, puncturing the lining. He bled into his stomach over time, eventually choking to death on his own blood and bile." Burroughs' voice was the same as it always was, flat with no emotion. What would Danny think?

The youngster put the light dead on Burroughs, then on me. I didn't look away, I didn't want to seem guilty.

Wilma stood between me and Danny. "We have to move the body because if the cops find him they will know we did the robbery. Dr. Burroughs can make sure he's cremated properly."

"We ain't gonna bury him?" Danny said softly.

"Danny, we gotta think clearly now. We have to get rid of the body."

I helped Burroughs get up. He looked at me sideways behind his glasses but didn't let on anything. If Danny went buck wild, he'd talk to save his skin. But otherwise he could be depended on to go along with the flow 'cause there was the promise of bigger ducats in it for him.

Danny was massaging his face with one of his hands, pacing back and forth at the entrance of the big pipe. I guess his shock was wearing off, 'cause he was pointing and shaking his finger at us. "See, see what happened when I went along with you motherfuckahs? My brother is dead… dead, goddammit." He pulled out the piece but I didn't make a move, even though I felt I could have. This was one time when talk, not head ringing, was called for.

"What are you gonna do, Danny? Dust all of us and run off with the money by yourself?"

He stopped moving around, bringing the piece up on me. "What if I do, Zelmont? Nap ain't around to protect your ass now, is he? You the one that let him down, wasn't you? How I know you didn't fuck up and he died 'fore he was supposed to?"

If Burroughs was staring at me, I didn't let on. "Nap died from his gunshot wounds, Danny. I know you've been around enough to know how that can go, how at any minute the bullets sitting there in the wounds can cause all kinds of shit to happen. You must have had a homeboy go out like that before."

Danny wasn't about to let logic get in the way of his mad-on. But in some part of his eight-ballin' head he had to be wondering how a small-timer like him would move all that cash. He needed Wilma, at least. Now she had to buy my life.

"Whatever you decide, Danny," Wilma started, "you're going to need Zelmont to help you move the body back up to Dr. Burroughs' car. I assume you know you can't let one of your boys in on this."

"You let this dope fiend skeleton in on it." He jerked the pistol at Burroughs.

"He's used to this, Danny," Wilma said. "What happened to Napoleon was unfortunate, but it has happened. It's nobody's fault. And if you decide you don't need any of us, then get the killing over now, stop screwing around."

I wasn't sure that reverse psychology bullshit was the right angle with a hothead like Danny, but there was nothing I could do. She either convinced him or weat least me and the doc would be sucking on his gun in a few ticks.

Danny didn't speak. He stood there, staring at his brother. Then, slowly, he cranked his head to look at the stacks of bills. He moved more into the pipe, giving me the stare-down. "Let's get him out of here," he finally said.

It took a lot of effort from the four of us to get Nap up the hill. Even Burroughs pitched in, more out of fear of Danny than greed for what he was gonna charge us afterwards.

With a lot of stops and starts we got Danny up to the station wagon. Burroughs had brought along some kind of liquid he used for cleaning his tools. I used that stuff to swab out the pipe as best I could so there wasn't much trace of his blood or our fingerprints. You never knew, the cops might come back and find the hiding spot. No point in giving them a head start on finding out who died in there.

We got the bundles up and headed back to the Seven Souls Clinic in North Hollywood, me and Danny in Wilma's car, the doc and her in the station wagon with Nap's body. I was sweating all the way there, what with all those cops and sheriffs running around. But damn if that old pharmaceutical junkie Burroughs didn't bring us luck. We made it back to his clinic without being stopped.

Burroughs had me get a gurney and we wheeled Nap in through a side entrance, a sheet draped over him. We left him in a room with nothing in it except a white metal trash can and a scale. He locked it up and we went into his office. The bundles were in there too.

Wilma cut a bundle open with a pair of snips he had on a shelf. She counted out seventy grand in fifties and hundreds. "This do it?" She handed the money over to him. He sat behind his desk, rocking back and forth in his chair.

"Well," he said, picking up the cash. "There has to be some compensation for all my exertion." He licked his lips like a lizard flicking his tongue for a fly.

"Fuck you." Danny stepped up and tapped Burroughs' large forehead with his gat. "Exert this, motherfuckah."

I had to hand it to him, that old spook Burroughs kept his head. He took off his glasses and closed his eyes like he was waiting to be sent to that big pharmacy in the sky.

"Danny," Wilma said, putting a hand on the boy's arm.

"Give him another $30,000," I said. "Stop playing Wesley Snipes every time something don't go your way, Danny. This is business."

He mumbled at me and Wilma and quietly put the gun away. Burroughs opened his eyes, and I swear for a second he looked disappointed. I counted out his bills and handed them over.

"I shall take care of everything on my end." He sat back, examining us like I'm sure he did when he was getting ready to cut a body open.

We split in Wilma's car, the bundles in the trunk. We were goddamn millionaires. We'd taken money from a dude that couldn't report it and who'd soon have even bigger worries to occupy his time. 'Course there was still his wild-ass cousin Rudy to deal with, but I wasn't sweatin' him right then. My cut was gonna be two, three million. I could get my thing going again, get myself set up sweet. Maybe I'd take over the Locker Room and franchise that bad rascal, then let the pussy and money roll in.

But something didn't feel right, and it wasn't just 'cause my best friend was lying on the slab.