Big Man Read online

  “Come on, it won’t bite you.”

  I took the .45, and I felt my hand beginning to sweat against the grip. Jobbo flicked on the flash and was looking at the label inside the coat when I heard the sound of the engine. I turned my head. A Snow White was pulling up to the curb. My heart rushed up into my skull. For a second, I couldn’t say anything, and then all I could do was say one word, “Jobbo!”

  “Whuh?”

  He turned on the bench, looking over to the curb where the squad car had parked.

  “The cops,” he said.

  “Jobbo, what—?”

  He was up already. He moved faster than I thought a fat guy could move. He dropped the coat and the flash and he started sprinting uptown on the Drive.

  “Come on!” he yelled, and it took me another second to get off the bench and start after him. I still had the .45 in my hand.

  “Hold up there!” one of the cops yelled.

  “Frig you, copper!” Jobbo yelled back, running ahead of me, his shoes clattering noisily on the asphalt.

  “Stop or we’ll shoot!” the cop yelled.

  “Jobbo, they’re gonna—”

  The first shot sounded godawful loud on the quiet air. I heard it, and I automatically began running faster. I remembered something about the first shot always being over your head. I remembered, too, that they shot for your legs after that. That was the way Pasco got shot in the leg. So I kept running faster, waiting for the second shot, expecting it to knock my pins from under me. The next two shots came one after the other, bohm, bohm! like two fast beats on a bass drum. I didn’t hear the fourth shot but I felt the bullet rip into my leg and I thought, Oh, Jesus, I’m hit! and then I was pitching forward, like as if someone had stuck out his foot and tripped me by surprise.

  “I got him!” the cop yelled, as if he was surprised too, as if I was the first guy he’d ever shot in his life. I rolled over on the asphalt, feeling the pain burning my calf where the bullet had caught me. Jobbo stopped running, doubling back for me, you’ve got to give that to him, he didn’t just leave me laying there. The cop who’d shot me came running from the other side, the gun still in his hand.

  Behind me, I heard Jobbo shout, “Open up on him, Frankie!” and I didn’t know what he meant at first, and then I remembered I was holding the .45 in my hand. The cop was closer now, a big, red-faced guy waving his gun like a flag. A second cop had come out of the cruiser and was running toward us now, too. Maybe I wouldn’t have shot, maybe I would have just tried to bluff it through, but Jobbo was right next to me now, sweating like a pig, his hands in my armpits, trying to get me up off the street.

  “The gun!” he said. “For Christ’s sake, use the gun!”

  I brought the gun up, and my hand was trembling like a bitch in heat, and I heard the first cop yell, “He’s heeled, George!” and then I pulled the trigger. It was just like a toy gun, the same way—you pull it, and it goes off. Except the gun bucked in my hand, and a flash of yellow-orange spit out of the muzzle and the explosion was a big BOHHMMMM! that echoed on the night. The first cop suddenly fell forward on his face, and Jobbo yelled, “You got him!” and then, for no good reason, I pulled the trigger again.

  I kept firing at the first cop, watching his body give a sort of a little leap every time I hit him. I fired three times, and then I heard more shots, not as deep as the ones the .45 was making, and I realized the second cop was in the act now, shooting at me.

  He was laying flat on the street, with his gun hand resting on a crooked elbow, and he took careful aim as Jobbo said, “You got three left, Frankie. Make them good.”

  I was up on one knee now with Jobbo behind me, bracing me. I guess it was comical the way we looked, him propping me up, and me holding that big damn gun in both hands and looking down the barrel and lining up the cop’s body in the sight. He fired and missed, and I heard the slug sing by, and then I squeezed the trigger, and the .45 bucked in my hand again, once, twice, and the cop threw himself forward with a small scream, his gun jumping out of his hand and making a funny thwunk sound when it hit the ground. He lay very still then.

  “Come on,” Jobbo said. He was excited now, and sweating, and I could smell the stink of him, but I only kept looking at the two cops sprawled unmoving on the street, the squad car parked about fifteen feet behind them. “Come on, come on,” Jobbo kept saying, and then he had my arm over his shoulders, and he half-carried me, half-dragged me up to Pleasant Avenue. I stuck the gun back in my pocket. My leg hurt like hell. On First Avenue, I said, “Where we going, Jobbo?”

  “My connection,” he answered.

  2

  “He won’t like it,” I said. “Bringing me there. Jobbo, my leg’s all shot up. I’m bleeding. I—”

  “He’ll take care of you, don’t worry.”

  I was beginning to get real scared. I was beginning to realize I’d shot and probably killed two cops, and I know how bulls felt about members of their club getting hurt. My leg was beginning to feel like it was on fire, little flames licking and burning and then dying and then licking again. I didn’t want to look down at it because I knew it was all bloody, and looking at it might make me sick.

  “Jobbo,” I said. “Those two cops. They—”

  “You did fine,” Jobbo-answered. “You did real fine. Now don’t worry about a thing, you hear? My connection’ll take care of it.”

  I nodded, but I still wasn’t convinced, and I still couldn’t stop worrying. Jobbo kept walking with my arm over his shoulder. It was pretty late and there weren’t many people in the streets. We got a few looks but you could see they thought I was a drunk being carried by a pal. One guy noticed my leg and shook his head, but he didn’t figure I’d got shot, he just thought I’d been in some kind of an accident.

  We went up 119th, past a candy store between Second and Third, and then Jobbo started dragging me up the stoop of one of the buildings. It was just one of the regular buildings, with the garbage cans out front near the curb, and the stoop with iron railings, one of these big gray jobs that are in all the streets of Harlem. I was a little surprised because I figured Jobbo’s connection was a big man, and here he lived in a dump just like my own on 117th.

  “He lives here?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Jobbo answered. “Come on.”

  I looked over my shoulder, across the street to the schoolyard where some young boys and girls were hanging around. They were laughing and clowning, you know, the way kids do when they get together. They weren’t even looking in our direction. Jobbo helped me inside and then past the mailboxes. There was the smell of piss in the hallway. We had trouble trying to get up the steps, but Jobbo helped me all the way. We kept climbing, and then we stopped on the third floor landing. Jobbo looked back down the steps, but there was nobody behind us. Then he helped me hobble to a door at the end of the hall.

  “Now just let me do the talking,” he said.

  “All right.” I think I was ready to pass out by then. He could have talked all night if he wanted to. All I wanted to do was lay down some place and forget about the pain in my leg. He knocked on the door and, considering it was almost one in the morning, I wasn’t surprised we didn’t get an answer right off.

  “Look, Jobbo,” I said weakly, “maybe we better forget this. The guy’s probably sleeping. You wake him up, he’ll—”

  “It’s okay,” Jobbo said. He knocked again, harder this time. A voice from somewhere inside the apartment said, “Who is it?” The voice was a big one, the kind you expect to come from a guy with a hairy chest.

  “It’s me. Jobbo.”

  I heard a grumbling inside and then the voice said, “Just a minute.” The voice sounded angry as hell.

  “Jobbo,” I said, “he’s sore. We’re getting him out of bed. Can’t you see—?”

  “Now just shut up and let me do the talking,” Jobbo said.

  I heard footsteps inside the apartment, and then a police lock was moved back from the door, the heavy steel bar clattering to th
e floor. Then the door opened a crack, held by a thick night chain. It was dark in the hallway, and I could hardly see the face that showed in the crack.

  “What is it?” the voice said. “You know what time it is, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Andy, we need your help. We—”

  “Who’s that with you?” Andy asked.

  “A friend of mine,” Jobbo said. “Can you let us in?”

  Andy peered through the crack for what seemed like a long time. Then he said, “All right, goddamnit!” and he took off the night chain and held the door open just wide enough for us to squeeze through.

  “You better get some newspapers,” Jobbo said. “His leg’s bleeding pretty bad.”

  “Okay,” Andy said, and he started walking toward the kitchen and then did one of those double takes you see all the time in the movies. He snapped his head around, and his mouth fell open, and then he closed his mouth, and then he opened it and said, “Bleeding! What the hell—”

  “Shhh,” Jobbo warned.

  “What the hell you mean, bleeding?” Andy said, his voice lower. He was as big as he’d first sounded, and he was in his shorts and undershirt, with heavy hairy legs sticking out of the bottom of the shorts. He still hadn’t turned on any of the lights, but the shade in the living room was up, and I could see him from the light that came through the window.

  From deeper in the apartment, I heard a woman call, “Who is it, Andy?”

  Andy looked at us sourly and then shouted, “Some friends. Go back to sleep.”

  “What friends?” the woman called, but Andy didn’t answer her this time. He looked at me, and then he looked at my leg, and then he got the most disgusted look I’ve ever seen on anybody’s face. “I’ll get some newspapers,” he said. “Did the Law follow you?”

  “No,” Jobbo said.

  Andy nodded briefly and went into the kitchen, snapping on a light. I heard him fooling around in one of the drawers, and when he came back he had a bunch of old newspapers in his hand.

  “Sit down,” he said gruffly. He turned on a table lamp, and I hobbled over to the sofa, ready to sit. “Not there, for Christ’s sake! My wife’ll have a fit. Over there.”

  He pointed to the beat-up easy chair near the window, and I limped to it and sat down. It felt good to be sitting again. He spread the newspapers under me, and I watched the blood running down my leg, turning the paper soggy and red, and it occurred to me that somebody better stop all that blood before my life ran out of that hole.

  “All right, what’s the story?” Andy asked Jobbo.

  “We had a run-in with the cops,” Jobbo said.

  “I figured. Did they get a good look at you?”

  “Sure,” Jobbo said, smiling. “But that ain’t gonna do them any good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Frankie fixed them,” he said, still smiling.

  “How so? How’d he fix them?”

  “They’re both dead,” Jobbo said. “We swiped this .45, you see? And Frankie was holding the gun when—”

  “Are you sure they’re dead?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you sure they’re dead? Did you check?”

  “Well … no. We ran. I mean … well, what the hell, Andy! We couldn’t stick around and do an autopsy!”

  “Then they maybe ain’t dead, is that what you’re saying?”

  “They’re dead,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Andy asked, turning to me.

  “I know. I can feel it. They’re dead.”

  He looked at me peculiarly for a minute. Then he just nodded his head. “Where’s the gun?”

  “I got it,” I told him.

  “Give it to me.”

  I took the gun out of my pocket and handed it to him. I was beginning to feel very weak. Or maybe just tired. I don’t know. But I felt as if I never wanted to get up out of that chair. Andy sniffed the barrel, and I wondered was he going to sit down and take the gun apart maybe while I bled to death? “We’ll have to get rid of this,” he said. Then he looked at my leg, at last, and yelled, “Celia! Come here, Celia!”

  “What is it, Andy?” the woman called.

  “Never mind, what it is! Come here when I tell you!”

  “It’s sure bleeding, ain’t it?” Jobbo said. “Man, it’s—”

  “Where you live, kid?” Andy cut in.

  “A Hun’ Seventeenth.”

  “With your folks?”

  “Only my mother. My old man is dead.”

  “You got a record? You ever been booked?”

  “Never.”

  “You telling me the truth?”

  “I never been in trouble with the Law,” I said.

  “He’s clean,” Jobbo said. “I know him for a long time, Andy.”

  Andy nodded and turned to me again. “What about the rest of your family? Any arrests?”

  “Listen—”

  “Tell him what he wants to know, Frankie,” Jobbo said.

  “I got an uncle at Riker’s, that’s all.”

  “What for?”

  “Holding,” I said.

  “Just holding? Or pushing?”

  “Pushing.”

  “The big stuff?”

  “Cocaine, I think. How the hell should I know? I hardly ever saw the guy. He’s my old man’s brother.”

  “Celia!” Andy exploded. “When the hell—”

  “I’m coming, keep your shirt on,” the woman answered, and then I heard her footsteps in the other room. From her voice, I expected a kind of dog, if you know what I mean. I guess that’s because we woke her up in the middle of the night and people always sound like hell when you drag them out of bed. She wasn’t half-bad, though. She came through the door, and she was a tall blonde with a silk wrapper thrown over her nightgown, and her hair sort of spilled over one eye, still all messed up from sleeping. She didn’t have on any lipstick or make-up, so I knew the long lashes were her own, and I knew she wasn’t using anything to make her green eyes look that big.

  She stopped near the television set, and then she put her hands on her hips and looked at Jobbo and then at me, and her eyes dropped to the newspapers and my leg right away.

  “What’s this?” she said. “The Harlem Hospital clinic?”

  “Never mind the wisecracks,” Andy said. “Get some bandages. And hurry up before he bleeds to death.”

  “He won’t bleed to death,” she said.

  She walked across the room. Jobbo wet his lips, but Andy didn’t notice him because he was looking over the gun again.

  “Where’d you say you got this?” he asked.

  “From a parked car,” Jobbo said. Celia was already in the kitchen, and I heard her open the bathroom door, and then the door to the medicine chest.

  “That’s good,” Andy said. “Even if Ballistics gets anything on the slugs, they won’t be able to trace the gun to you. That’s very good.”

  “What’re we gonna do, Andy?” Jobbo asked.

  “Well, if the cops are really dead, and what with the gun not even belonging to you, this should be a cinch. Can you stay away from home for a while, kid?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If we get you out of the city, can you square it with your old lady?”

  “Sure. I been away before.” I paused. “She don’t know whether I’m dead or alive, anyway.”

  I didn’t bother telling him that she was most of the time drunk, or that she spent the welfare allowance on booze. There was no sense trying to explain it. She’d been that way ever since my old man died, first drinking up all the damn insurance money and then drinking up every cent she could lay her hands on. I didn’t even like to think about it. I could remember my mother when she dressed nice and smelled nice, and when she made a kid feel proud he had a good-looking mother. Now, at forty-two, she looked like just what she was: an old drunk.

  “Good,” Andy said. “If the cops are dead, they sure can’t tell anyone you’ve been wounded.” He shook his head immedi
ately. “No, you probably left blood. It’ll be safer all around if we get you out of the city. Hey, Celia, you getting those bandages?”

  I heard her footsteps again, and then she was back in the room. I watched her carefully this time. She saw me watching, but her face didn’t show any sign of it. She stopped right in front of me and she looked at my leg again and then she said, “You better come in the bedroom.”

  “Good idea,” Andy said. “I want to talk to Jobbo alone, anyway.”

  Jobbo helped me into the bedroom, and Celia followed us. I sat down on the edge of the bed. Jobbo looked at my leg, worried now.

  “Come here, Jobbo,” Andy said. “Few things I want to ask you. Celia’ll take care of him.”

  Jobbo went back into the living room and sat next to Andy. “What about this kid?” Andy said. “What’s his name, and how long—” He cut himself short and looked over his shoulder. “Close that door, Celia,” he said.

  Celia walked to the door and closed it tightly and the room was suddenly completely dark. I could hear her breathing in the room, and then her footsteps coming toward me in the darkness. I held my breath. A lamp clicked on next to the bed. Celia smiled at me.

  “Who shot you?”

  “A cop.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she said sarcastically. “That’s just dandy. You sure you weren’t followed here?”

  “I killed him and his partner,” I said. I was getting used to saying it. The idea didn’t scare me so much any more.

  She raised her eyebrows and looked at me appreciatively, and then she stared down at my soggy pants leg.

  “You’d better take off your pants.”

  “Couldn’t we just roll—?”

  “Take them off.”

  I swung my legs up onto the bed and undid my belt. I lifted my backside and shoved the pants down over my thighs. I was a little embarrassed, to tell the truth. Besides her being a woman, I was also wearing cheap cotton undershorts which I’d bought in Woolworth’s. I used to have a job before the summer, you see, working in a dry-goods store. But it was slow during the summer, and the owner had to lay me off, not that I blamed him—what the hell, he wasn’t in business for his health. But with the old lady drinking up any money the city gave us, there wasn’t much left for fancy clothes. So my undershorts were cheap, and I was embarrassed by them. Celia helped me pull the pants off, easing them over my legs.