Run (22 page)

Doctor D gives the beret guy a look that might have wet his Fruit of the Looms. He takes my Glock from Ray-Ban and nods at Cue Ball, who says to me:

You alive, devil. Maybe not for long. But for now, you alive. You want to stay that way, then the Doctor’s got a prescription for you: Do what the Doctor say.

Right about now Kareem or whatever they call the beret guy hauls out a pistol of his own, a Walther P5, that’s old technology, no ambidextrous controls, shoots only eight, and he starts waving the P5 around.

Lemme smoke him, he says to Doctor D. When you done with this devil, lemme be the one, D. Lemme smoke him. I gots to be the one.

Jinx pushes Kareem’s P5 away and says to his playmates:

I got one word for this white piece of shit: Evidence. We been set up. The whole mothafuckin crew. Newspaper tomorrow gonna say that U Street’s the one that did Gideon Parks. Hell, CNN’s sayin it now. They
sayin we pulled the trigger. And this here’s the one man who can say it ain’t so.

The good Doctor looks at Jinx and he looks at me.

I know that, friend, he says to Jinx.

What I don’t know, he says, is why this man would say such a thing.

His arm curls over Jinx’s shoulder and he brings him around. What about Daddy Big and those 9 Bravos?

Them fuckin Bravos got dead, Jinx tells him. And Daddy Big? Man here says they capped him, but then they took him out of there, made him go missing on purpose. It’ll bring down more heat on the Bravos. Us too.

Figured it. 9 Bravos are too stupid with drugs to work something this large.

Hey, I say to them. That starts the beret guy, the one with the P5, going again, and I get another wave of that pistol. But the Doctor and Jinx are still working their words.

Hey, I say again.

No go, so I say it again:

Hey, I say, and I put some piss into my voice. Hey, Doctor D. Things are looking a little crazy here. What’s the problem? Your welfare checks late?

That gets the Doctor’s attention, and his eyes flash my way. He’s amazed; he’s furious. It’s now or never.

Listen, I tell him. That was a joke, okay? I mean, I know you guys are busy and all that, but hey. D. Can I call you D? Okay, so D … listen, could I ask you a question?

Doctor D’s eyes go dull and dire. Not a nice look. Kareem steps between us and that P5 is back at my throat.

Lemme smoke him, D. Another dead cracker don’t stop the show.

But the Doctor’s going to listen. I know he’s going to listen.

You just did ask me a question, he says. Two of em, matter of fact. And nobody needs permission to ask the Doctor.

There’s a pause, and here it comes:

Gettin answers, boy. Now that is another matter.

Doctor D takes a step in my direction.

You know how to pray, boy? Do you know how to pray? Because that’s about all you got left to do in this life. The Doctor’s gonna give you a minute to pray—he offers a gold-toothed smile—and a second to die.

That lights up Kareem’s face and earns me another poke of the P5.

So I tell him:

Maybe so, D. Maybe so. But before I start asking God for things, I want to ask you. Just one question. Call it the condemned man’s last request, okay?

That almost gets me a smile. Then:

Yeah. Aw’ight. One question. Ask away, devil.

Well, I tell him. You see, it’s a nice neighborhood you got here. Nice houses, nice folks, nice kids. Not the
Cosby Show
, but … nice. So what I’m wondering, see, what I keep asking myself, and what I want to ask you, is:

Do they always pick up your garbage on Sunday?

Kareem shoves that fucking Walther into the side of my nose and I can feel the cartilage tear.

I’m gonna smoke him, D. Lemme do him now, lemme—

Doctor D’s eyes narrow to slits and I know I don’t ever want to see that look again. For a second I think I’ll never have the chance.

He pushes Kareem out of the way and goes to the window. He pulls the blinds and looks outside. He looks back at me. He wheels toward me, raising the Glock, my Glock, and he swings that pistol up and …

He hands it to me.

Doctor D turns his back on me and my pistol, and he gives the U Street Crew the word, and it’s the word of the day:

Fuck.

Then it’s all business, a voice that is concrete steady and in command.

Yo. Listen up, he says, and that’s all he needs to say to have silence and the rapt attention of his crew. Couple minutes, we gonna have five-oh in the house. Y’all know what to do, dogs. So do it.

Then he says: Yoda. He’s talking to the skinny runt with the laptop computer. The kid brings his face out of the computer screen, but it’s not a kid, the guy must be pushing thirty.

Do your little thing, the Doctor tells him.

This Yoda guy gives up a squirrelly smile and pulls a metal box of some kind from the junk scattered on the desk. The box is wired and the wires run down the leg of the desk and into a little package taped beneath the near window and then down to the floor and then up again at the other windows, and they’re all rigged, it must be plastique explosive, and I’m thinking: Oh … shit.

Kareem is rocking back and forth on his heels. He says to me: We gonna make Waco look like
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
.

I’m still thinking: Oh, shit. I’ve come all the way from Manhattan to D.C. for a guest role in a weenie roast.

Cept for one thing, Kareem says. We ain’t going out like that. We ain’t goin out at all.

Cue Ball. That big black Buddha is checking his handgun, a whopper of an Automag V. Get the womenfolks, Doctor D tells him. Then:

Blondie. Jeff.

Two guys in ski masks step up, loading their AKs with long banana clips.

Count to thirty, Doctor D tells them. Then get your asses out front and light things up. Two garbage trucks comin east. It’s cops. Shoot to miss, you hear? Just give em noise. And don’t get dead. Get your asses back in here and get gone.

Gone?

Jinx, D says, get this devil out of here. And keep him alive. Even if you have to kill him to do it.

The beret guy, Kareem, whoever, tells Jinx: Come on. And Jinx shoves me in Kareem’s direction, through a doorway and into the kitchen and toward another doorway and stairs leading to a basement or a cellar, and down and down we go.

I flex my grip on the Glock and keep my head up.

This ain’t gonna work, I tell Jinx.

Move, he says to me. Just move. Don’t look back. Don’t even think about lookin back. Just move.

Those hitters with the AKs must be stone cold, because right about now I can hear them chopping things up outside.

In the basement is this blank darkness, and I can’t see a thing. The beret guy catches up with us and he’s got a flashlight, he goes on ahead and I can make out something, a sliver of light, and the beret guy pulls at another door, and it’s a closet or something, a naked bulb giving off enough light to show rough concrete walls and the outline of the raw-hewn corridor ahead. A tunnel. A fucking tunnel.

It’s like an old-time Western movie, a mine shaft cut through the dirt and clay and reinforced every few yards with wooden beams. The beret guy shines the flashlight and we go for a hundred feet, maybe more, and there’s a right angle and then we stumble into a concrete room, not much of one, eight feet square, with an opening onto what looks like a concrete tunnel at the far side. I’m thinking air raid shelter, I’m thinking sewer, I’m thinking basement of the house next door, I’m thinking who knows and who cares, I’m just moving, and Jinx keeps prodding me with his hand and I see people in the room, a lot of women, some children, a couple more guys with assault rifles.

Whassup? one of the guys says, and the beret guy tells him:

Five-oh.

I say to the guy, he’s a kid, really, sixteen, seventeen years old, I say: Not cops. Not just cops. Feds too. FBI, maybe. ATF.

The heat, he says, his eyes burning, and he slaps the bottom of the magazine in his AK and double-times back toward the house.

MJ! says one of the women, and she’s dancing up off the floor. MJ! She starts running after him.

Shit, says Jinx.

Let’s get, the beret guy says to the rest of the women. C’mon.

Jinx and I head into the concrete tunnel, and the tunnel weaves and wanders, and it seems to go on forever, our footsteps echoing down its walls, joined by the sound of footsteps behind us, lots of footsteps, and voices, and finally a voice that carries over the rest, the voice that says: Move move
move!

The voice brings Jinx up like a hound hitting a scent.
Move!
he yells at me. He pushes me forward, and I stumble, nearly fall, as the tunnel goes suddenly white and I feel a rush of heat pouring over me from
behind and then I see light and the tunnel is gone and there’s sunlight and, in the midst of the sunlight, another shadow.

I lamp this guy and it’s one of the evil Doublemint Twins from the Lexus. He’s got the gold chains, he’s got the wide smile, he’s got the MAC-10.

Welcome to hell, QP Green tells me.

Down the throat and into the belly of the beast. Like that Job guy, that Jonah guy, whoever. The Bible guy who got himself swallowed by the whale. That guy. Right about now, that’s me.

This particular belly is carved out of concrete, a grey gut that has sucked in years of muddy water, twigs and branches, broken bottles, cast-off cans and needles. It’s a waterway of some kind, a drainage ditch or sewer maybe, sunk forty feet into the earth and curving its way to who knows where, probably the Anacostia River. I can’t see anything but steep-angled walls of concrete and the burnt sky above. I’m standing on the bottom and so is QP Green.

Move that happy white ass, says QP Green, and he’s hustling away, down the waterway, hopscotching the patches of mud and pools of dirty water, and I move my white ass, though it isn’t happy. After we run and we walk and we run some more, QP Green hauls up and starts sucking wind and so do I. He pulls a cell phone from his belt, dials down and says a breathless something, and then we wait.

There’s a fork in the waterway, with a jungle gym of pipes and grillwork at the far wall, and after a while I hear footsteps behind us and after that there’s Jinx and the beret guy, and by the time I’m breathing easy there’s the U Street Crew and a cluster of their women and children, and
finally, strolling through the middle of them like it’s a Sunday afternoon in the park, not breaking a sweat, there’s Doctor D.

The Doctor juts his chin, and Ray-Ban takes the cue.

Who we got? says Ray-Ban.

Cue Ball lumbers out of the pack and barks out names like it’s roll call. We got Gemstone, we got Andre, we got Chilly Mac, we got Khalid, we got High Boy, we got Lil Toby, we got Tiny and Hotpoint, we got Levon, we got—

Well, what we got are a lot of very young and very tough black guys who are armed to their pearlies. And pissed off.

And we got their women and we got their kids and then we got the sound of more footsteps and a couple AKs drop to the ready, but it’s Blondie and Jeff playing catch-up with the pack. That weird little Yoda guy lopes in their wake like a puppy, the laptop computer clutched to his chest. He’s got bracelets of det cord on each wrist. So we got—

Everbody, says Cue Ball. We got everbody cept MJ. Brotha said he wasn’t leavin. He wanted to go out shootin and I guess he done it. And Debbie ain’t leavin him. So she’s dead too.

Shit, says Ray-Ban, and he looks over to Doctor D. They all look over to Doctor D.

Things go quiet in a bad way. It takes one of those hour-long minutes, but Doctor D locks eyes with every person there, his crew, the women, the children, even me.

The man died for us, says Doctor D. So did his woman. He died for us, and she went and died for him. Don’t no one go forgettin that.

He walks over to Gemstone, and his fingers trace the letters that front the USC sweatshirt the guy is wearing. Doctor D looks a long time at those letters before he says:

You listen to me now. You listen good. This ain’t about settin, trippin, bangin. Not anymore. This ain’t about niggas doin each other over a bunch of concrete nobody owns. This is the real deal here. This is war. And we’re gonna fight it now. We’re gonna fight it good.

Gemstone, you and Billy take the women here and the little ones; you take em down to Billy’s place.

Doctor D calls out names. The choices aren’t random; the guy has
his reasons and they’re the kind you can see: size, firepower, but mostly it’s the look, the look that says the guys he calls out are for real.

Rest of you, he says, be goin with Gems and Billy.

There are pained responses from some of the younger guys, the ones he hasn’t chosen, but he shushes them and says:

Get on, now. You can do your dyin for us, you just ain’t gonna be doin it today.

This Gemstone guy ducks under the pipes at the far side of the concrete valley, tugs the grillwork apart, and shepherds his people inside, into another tunnel that goes somewhere, maybe even somewhere safe.

Throw it up, Gems, somebody says, and this Gemstone guy does something funny with his hand, a sign, a signal, and then he’s gone, and then this Billy guy is gone, and the last thing, the only thing, he says sounds like: Do or die.

What’s left makes the Dirty Dozen look like debutantes. Bad isn’t the word to describe these guys, and worse is a compliment. They’re the kind of nightmare that makes the Attorney General wake up screaming. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and give them assault rifles. That’s the U Street Crew.

Yo, Ray-Ban says, and I realize these guys are like a military unit; I’m listening to the chain of command. Ray-Ban says: Let’s get steppin.

But Doctor D speaks and suddenly it’s the Ice Age again.

Everbody cept you, High Boy.

This High Boy guy stops so hard he could’ve walked into a wall. Looks at his homeys. Looks at Ray-Ban. Looks at Doctor D.

What you mean, bro? He tries out a laugh. It’s not a good one. He follows up with a smile that doesn’t fool me and I’m damn sure it doesn’t fool the good Doctor. What you sayin, D?