But my on-again, off-again hip had started to pain me something fierce after I’d been tackled by this wheat-smellin’ Russian fuck playing for the Monarchs two weeks ago in Wembley Stadium. Bad enough after that I’d started cutting the pain with crack, knowing it would hype the demand in me if I wasn’t cool, and I could be the monkey dancing on the string again.
The fuck? Enough of that inspecting myself humbug. This wasn’t no excursion to some all broads college with me working to get some muff diving professor and her prize pupil back with me to my room. Had to stay on point. I crossed behind a bulldozer on the low end of a mound of torn-down brick and wood and glass. There were a couple of figures moving over the mound, picking at this and lifting that in their search for plumbing pipes or porcelain to sell, I assumed.
I went past them and, checking the directions Maura had written for me, found the doorway I was looking for in the night. Not too surprisingly, there were some kids bivouacked in front of the building I’d been told to find. A couple of them were passing a joint and another was bopping to a boom box blazing a Tupac number, “Dear Mama.” The aroma of their chronic drifted to me as I got close. Their blunt popped and sizzled, too many seeds in the cheap shit they were toking on.
“Hey,” one of the kids said, spying me as Shakur growled, “I reminisced on tha stress I caused, it wuz hell huggin’ on my mama from a jail cell.”
“You a boxer, are you, mistah? Come to show us hooligans how to put our energies and urges to good use?” He did a quick flurry, hands and feet movin’ and grovin’ all the time, his eyes never leaving mine.
The others cracked up. The oldest of them couldn’t have been over thirteen. Since yesterday it had been hard as Chinese chess for me to understand their accents. But now with the jones all over me like poison ivy, I was getting every word.
To the one, they all looked hungry. Not for a burger so much as that something they couldn’t get growing up around here. Say what you want about anything else, but that was a condition I knew something about, ’cause it was how I’d come up in South Central L.A., even if I never did live in the projects.
“Gotta do some business.” I flashed a ducat.
“Yeah?” the one who’d called me a boxer said. “Like ’em young, do you?”
“Sound like I’m cooing like Michael Jackson?” Not that I believed for a second these little shits wouldn’t have taken me around the corner and laid a busted chair leg or rusted muffler upside my head in a heartbeat. I pressed the money into the kid’s chest and he took hold of it. I pointed at the door behind him.
He snorted and, making a show like he was Jeeves, stepped aside, bowing and indicating for me to come forward. What a surprise, the door wasn’t locked, and I entered the tower called Pearse, whoever the hell that was.
As the door closed behind me, my radar bumpin’ in case one of them got a notion, I heard a clop-clop. I looked back through the safety glass and got sight of another kid in a watchcap and torn windbreaker galloping up to the others on a spotted nag. The horse’s belly was sagging, the hind legs barely thicker than my arms, but damned if those kids didn’t gather around it, petting and nuzzling the sad beast. Maybe they’d use the scratch I gave them to feed the thing rather than waste it on weed. Yeah, maybe.
I went up the stairs; the hallways were pretty clean and there were few busted lights considering it was public housing. I got to the fourth floor, an older lady all bundled up coming at me from the opposite direction, humming a tune. She lifted her head and then stopped singing. Her eyes went wide and she breathed all funny ’cause she wasn’t sure what to make of me prowlin’ about.
“What’s this then?” she said as I stepped past. “You going undercover for the Gardaí?” She smelled of cigarettes and crushed flowers, and I finally got to the door I’d been directed to after Maura had made her third call.
“Now, mind you, you’re an able lad, Zelmont,” Maura had said, her hand down between my legs, “but you want to stay sharp, right? They’ll be more scared of you, what with you being big and black and delicious”-she kissed me-“but they grow them tough over there too, right? Just because this isn’t the South Side or Harlem doesn’t mean they’ll all curl up and cry.”
“Thanks, baby,” I’d said, kissing her back. “You just order up a roast beef sandwich or potato pancakes or whatever the hell y’all eat over here from room service, and I’ll be back soon for round two.”
“You better,” and she put some flutter in her lids while she locked her hand around my johnson, sliding her grip up and down its growing length. But I had the cravings so bad I didn’t let her finish and left her snug under the blankets and me flicking icicles off my nose.
“What?” came a voice from inside the apartment after I knocked on number 435 a second time.
“Ian said I was cool.” That was the name Maura told me to give.
“Did he now?” I didn’t hear any feet scuffling.
I felt like hitting the door with the dull end of my fist to let him know I wasn’t fuckin’ around, but didn’t want to jump wrong on turf I was clearly out of my element in. “Look here, I don’t want to conduct my business in the street.” A pensioner from the next door apartment was glaring at me. She wasn’t going nowhere until I did.
“Who did you say?”
Fuck. “Ian. What? I talk like I got feathers in my mouth? Open this mothafuckah up, man, c’mon. I got the cheddah,” I spat close to the wood. “Got dollars if you want.”
The door hinged back. “Oh, well, that’s different then, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t see much of the room beyond and didn’t much care. I pushed through, if only to keep the old girl from giving me more of her vulture’s stare. She was getting on my nerves, which were already about to shoot out of my pores, tingling as my sweat dripped over their raw ends.
“You a long way from home, my brother.”
“You ain’t never lied.” The one who’d opened the door was lanky, with a dainty potbelly like you saw on cats who appreciated their apple pop tarts too much. He wore a pullover shirt and pants made out of cotton so goddamn thin I wondered how he didn’t freeze his nuts off when he went out in them. He was barefoot but had on a plaid snap-brim hat pulled low over longish hair.
“And you’re in need, yeah?”
“That’s right.” We’d each taken a step back from the other. I knew I could take his skinny ass, just like I knew it wasn’t only me and homeboy in this crib. Which wasn’t jacked up-no holes in the wall, the furniture, while there wasn’t much of it, wasn’t busted up, and there were no panes missing from the windows. There was even a TV on low with that big-headed Al Gore on it answering questions about him getting his campaign for the Dems nomination underway.
“So what is it you want, sir?” He smiled, lifting his chin some even though he was pretty much my height.
I was holding a few folded bills. “What I want is some crack.”
He cocked his head to one side.
“But I’ll settle for some snow,” I said, putting a finger to the side of my nose and sniffing. Maura had explained to me that rock cocaine wasn’t that big over here like it was in London, but that I should be able to purchase some flake. I figured at the hotel I could find some ammonia and cook it down to the shit I wanted.
“Ah, well, you’ve come to the right place, my American friend.” He made to take the money from my hand.
“Don’t play me for no chump,” I said, holding onto them benjamins like I was guarding grandma’s teeth
He snapped his fingers. “Right you are. Barbara,” he said, adjusting his hat. To my left, where I guess the bedroom was, a thick-shouldered but pretty-in-a-rough-way chick with dirty blond hair stepped into the doorway. She had on tight jeans and a loose shirt, heavy boots on her feet. She jiggled a plastic baggie with a measure of white stuff in it. Maybe she figured I’d make like Rover and start panting. Did I look that messed up?