I could’ve started the car and taken off. If I waited until they climbed the stairs and went inside, I could’ve hauled ass. They couldn’t stop me.
But Jeanette wanted Olivet’s money, bad, and if I took off, she and I turned to shit. The air inside the sedan drew close, hot. I opened the window for relief. Don’t run, I repeated to myself, over and over.
Michael led the way up the metal stairs. He held the key in his left hand, extended. A handgun dangled from his other, I could see the chrome. Ray raised his own gun. Dee followed, two steps behind, the sawed-off cradled against his chest.
“Port arms,” Richie called it, when he showed off his army drills. He used a broomstick instead of a rifle, but Pop and I got the idea. Maybe Dee was in the army, maybe that’s how he got that scar. Maybe he knew Richie.
Michael stopped at the last step, below the landing, and pushed the key into the lock. He lay flat against the building, hidden from the square of light in the door. When the door opened, they shoved inside.
My hand reached for the shifter, I pumped the clutch once, but couldn’t put it in gear. Not without Jeanette.
I leaned across the seat to roll Michael’s window down, and a loud sound, like a cannon, exploded the night. I buried myself into the seat, low, and peeked over the back to see out the rear window. Michael burst through the door at the top of the landing and charged down the flight of metal stairs. A bulging sack swung from his gunless hand. Ray came right behind him, fast, and Dee so close he nearly fell over Ray. All three hit the drive running and moved across the lot toward me.
The smell of burnt gunpowder came off them when they piled into the sedan.
“Go, go, go!” Michael yelled, and I punched the gas. We lurched down the alley, tires squealing, and left rubber on Polk where the gravel drive ended. I took a screeching left, and pulled on the headlights.
“Take Kenilworth,” Michael said, and I smashed the gas pedal to the floor. Dee broke the sawed-off open and dumped the cartridges into his hand. He caught me watching him in the rearview.
“Mind your business, boy,” he said. Michael and Ray stared out their side windows, unsmiling, nodding their heads slow, like they were in a trance.
Thoughts of Jeanette raced through my brain during the ride to Chick’s. Olivet’s money. Her money. Fuck the money. All I cared about was Jeanette. She loved me, not the money.
Jeanette was waiting for us in Pop’s van. The lots were empty. She’d parked in the same spot beside the dumpster. I pulled in next to her.
She slunk out of the van into the glare of our headlights. Her skirt hiked up and showed the whites of her thighs. I climbed out of the sedan fast, but she looked right past me, even as I moved beside her.
“How’d it go?” she asked Michael.
“Why you asking him?” I said.
“Good.” Michael held up the fat sack.
He didn’t look at anyone but Jeanette when he spoke. He handed her the sack and she unrolled the top and looked inside. She touched the sleeve of Michael’s coat.
“They shot him,” I said, grabbing at her attention, and Ray told me to shut the fuck up. I lost Dee behind me in the shadow of the dumpster.
Jeanette glanced at me, but spoke to Michael. “You shot Olivet?” She sounded pissed, like Michael had deliberately disobeyed.
“Let’s go, Jeanette,” I said and grabbed her wrist. Forget Michael’s sack of money, we needed to be gone. I tugged her arm. Cops don’t wait to track down killers, no matter how long the city fires burned.
She didn’t move.
“Let’s go,” I said. I tried to make my voice strong, but even to myself I sounded weak.
“Get your hands off me,” she said, and jerked away. She looked like the sight of me might make her sick.
Michael reached out to her and she went to him. He pulled her close.
“You shot him?” she said, her voice bedroom soft.
“The fat slob wouldn’t open the safe.” Michael lifted his arm and Jeanette cozied into his chest beneath it. She put her open hand on his belly. “Smart girl,” he said. His eyes burned right through me.
My heart closed down, I couldn’t breathe, I lunged toward Jeanette with both hands. Jeanette. My Jeanette.
“Who does he think he is?” she said, shrieking, dodging me. Something drove into the side of my skull and I sank to the lot like rocks in water.
All three men came on me like vultures. I couldn’t do anything.
“Fucker came after my girl,” Michael said.
The first kick caught me below the ribs, and I felt myself lift off the asphalt parking lot. I saw the shotgun stock coming and it caught me on the bridge of my nose and felt like it tore half my face away. Then the blood, my blood, spraying everywhere, and the smell of copper filled my head. I tried to stand but couldn’t make myself move. A boot heel crushed the fingers of my left hand, and I screamed, but no sound came. My teeth were gone and my tongue filled my mouth. A jumping foot snapped my forearm like a dried stick. Dee lifted my head by my hair and looked into my face. I saw the blur of Jeanette tight against Michael’s chest.
“You still living, motherfucker,” Dee said, and let my hair go. My face thudded hard against the asphalt, splashing in my own blood. He stomped my jaw, twice, and my body shuddered. Then, all sense was gone.
Olivet lived. So did I.
He fingered Michael’s gang and they fingered me, to cut down their own sentences. It cost me four on a three-to-five.
Visitor days came and went. I got some calls. Pop came once a month, my public defender twice in four, but not Jeanette.
Never Jeanette.
Part IV
The Hill & The Edge
The bottom line
by James Grady
Capitol Hill, N.E./S.E.
The Capitol building glowed in the night like a white icing cake.
Can’t believe I’m here, thought Joel Rudd as he drove toward that fortress on a hill. The car wheels rumbled his eyes to the passenger he’d picked up at a prestigious down-town hotel. She had the edgy burn of a 1940s movie star. Used the name Lena.
As they neared Capitol Hill, she said: “So you’re the Senator’s number one boy.”
“I’m his Administrative Assistant, his Chief of Staff. A long way from boy.”
“Is this ride assisting administering?
“Call it the end of a long day.”
Joel had made his play earlier, when sunset pinked the marble Capitol. Legislative Director Dick Harvie and Personal Secretary Mimi sat with Joel on the leather couch in the Senator’s inner office, sipped cold beers while they waited for their boss.
Senator Carl Ness strode into his office, filled a glass with vodka and ice.
“Here’s to us fools on a hill,” toasted the Senator. “We got through another day without wrecking the country.”
They went over the schedule Mimi’d beamed to the BlackBerry the Senator carried along with two cell phones — the taxpayer provided one for official calls, the private one wrapped in blue tape for conversations nobody wanted logged in public records.
The Senator told Dick and Mimi: “Joel will drive me home.”
Meaning: Leave us now
The Senator and Joel sat alone in an office once assigned to assassinated RFK.
Senator Ness said, “Fuck it, I’m not making give-me-money calls tonight.”