“If you ain’t the president...”
“I’m the president,” a voice said. “What the fuck you want around here?”
Colley turned. Ernie was coming up out of the basement room. Ernie was the one whose head had been in bandages for a month.
“Well, well,” Colley said, and laughed. “You’re the man whose head I busted. Well, well.” The gun made him feel very cool and very tough. “I didn’t know I was busting the president’s head,” he said. The president made one funny move, he was going to be the ex-president. The former president. The late president.
“If you’re the president, how come it was Benny gave the order to have me jumped?” Colley said.
“Benny’s the war counselor,” Ernie said.
“The war counselor, huh?” Colley said, and laughed again. “Well, well.”
“He told us you were putting down the club...”
“I didn’t say nothin about your fuckin club,” Colley said. “You told Benny you was safe. You told him you didn’t need no insurance.”
“Oh, are you insurance salesmen?” Colley said. “I didn’t realize that.”
The gun was still pointing right at Benny’s nose, and everybody was getting nervous. Not as nervous as Benny, who was expecting to get shot any minute now. But pretty damn nervous. They had guns of their own in the gang armory, but the armory was six blocks away, at Concetta’s house, and right here was a guy with a .25 under Benny’s nose. They kept looking up the block for fuzz, and then looking back at the piece under Benny’s nose. Benny kept his eyes on Colley’s face. He was figuring he would know when Colley was about to squeeze the trigger; if only he kept watching Colley’s eyes, the eyes would telegraph, and then Benny would duck away in time. Faster than a speeding bullet, that was Benny Gallitelli.
“He came home and told us you thought you were hot stuff,” Ernie said. “So he’s the war counselor, so I told him to get up a raiding party...”
“You guys always talk like this?” Colley said. “Man, I never heard such shit in my life. War counselor, raiding party... what the hell is this? An Indian tribe?”
“That’s the kind of talk got you in trouble the first time,” Ernie said.
“Ernie, do you see this gun in your war counselor’s left nostril?” Colley said.
“I see it, I ain’t blind,” Ernie said.
“Don’t get him mad,” Benny said.
“If I pull this trigger, your war counselor’s going to be breathing from his nose up on the roof while he’s still here down in the street. Now what I’m going to do, Mr. President, I’m going to ask you whether you want a war counselor without a nose, or whether you want to call off this fuckin warrant shit and make peace. Because if you don’t want peace, then, man, you’ve got war with a crazy guinea, I’m telling you. The first thing I shoot off is fat Benny’s nose, and the next thing I shoot off is your balls, Mr. President. So what do you say?”
“You’re holding the cards,” Ernie said. “Right now you’re the one holding the cards. So okay.”
“Ernie,” Colley said, “what you say right now sticks forever, you dig? You don’t say you want peace now, and then tomorrow I get jumped. No way, Ernie. I want your solemn word, or else lard-ass here will be chasing his nose over the rooftops. Swear on your fuckin mother, Ernie.”
“I swear on my mother,” Ernie said.
“What do you swear, you cocksucker?”
“I swear we won’t try to hurt you.”
“Never. Say never.”
“Never. We won’t try to hurt you never.”
“You swore it on your mother,” Colley said. “You heard him swear it on his mother.”
He put the gun away, and turned his back on them, and went up the street. The next day Benny came to him and asked if he would like to become a member of the Orioles. Colley said he would think it over.
A week later he told them yes.
Four
It had stopped raining by the time he got down to the street again.
He had hung his socks up to dry in the bathroom, and had also left a note for his mother on the kitchen table so she wouldn’t come in the house and drop dead of a heart attack when she saw a pair of men’s socks in the bathroom. The rain had washed the streets clean, washed away the contained heat of the day as well; everything smelled fresh and clean and sweet. He could remember when he was a kid in Harlem, stomping around barefooted in the gutter rainwater. He could remember shooting immies after a summer storm, spanning the marbles in curbside puddles.
He could remember, too... Yeah, it had been raining that afternoon, yeah. This was in the Bronx, he was just sixteen, this was after he’d joined the Orioles, that first summer with the club. It was Benny who brought the girl around. She lived four or five blocks from the clubhouse, she was maybe fourteen. When Benny brought her down the basement that afternoon, she was wearing a miniskirt and a cotton blouse; there was a button missing on the blouse, he could still remember the blouse flaring open over a white brassiere underneath. She and Benny stood just inside the basement door. The record player was going. “This is Laurie,” Benny said. “Laurie likes to fuck, don’t you, Laurie?”
The girl was, well, like a little retarded. They took off her blouse and played with her tits, she had very big tits, and then they took off her panties and one after the other they fucked her on the sofa, her skirt bunched up around her waist, while the Beatles sang their little hearts out. There were six guys in the clubhouse that afternoon. Four of them were virgins, including Colley. It was raining when it got to be his turn. Colley was the third one with her. Ernie, the president, went first of course. Then the war counselor, Benny. Then Colley, who was sergeant at arms, in charge of breaking heads with baseball bats if guys didn’t pay attention, or smoked dope, or chickened out when the shit was on with another club. The girl giggled all the while he was fucking her, and the rain beat against the painted basement windows. Colley felt embarrassed later on.
The girl’s father came down the club the next day, big ginzo could hardly speak English, Colley didn’t think there were still greaseballs like that around. Big wop kept yelling they’d taken advantage of his innocent daughter. “You take anvage my Laura,” he screamed, goddamn sanitation man, still wearing the brownish-green uniform trousers and an underwear top, came there straight from work to protect his daughter’s honor, stopping home first to take off his shirt and grab a quick glass of courage-bolstering wine, which the Orioles could smell on his breath as he stamped around the clubhouse making threatening noises. Ernie told him he should take better care of his daughter if he didn’t want her to get fucked, and then he told the wop to get out of the clubhouse before somebody shot him. Colley was sitting on the sofa, tossing the small .25-caliber pistol on the palm of his hand. The wop looked at the gun and then yelled that he was going to do something about this, and off he went huffing and puffing. He never did do anything about it cause he was afraid the Orioles would come after him, and also he didn’t want it known around the neighborhood that his moron daughter had been gang-banged.
Colley walked through the rain.
He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. It was close to two in the morning, the streets were rain-slick and almost deserted, except for some black dudes shuffling along with that sideways glide they thought was cool, elevator shoes, big pimp hats even though none of them were booking pussy. Thought it looked cool to resemble pimps. Take a man like Benny, he was a pimp, but he looked like your Uncle Dominick come to play the mandolin on Sunday.