Pipe Dream

by Solomon Jones

  “Honey,” she said. “Being a woman and working at night when you live in North Philly, you’d better have a gun or something, because you never know who’s waiting for you to leave your house at eleven-thirty. So what was I saying? Oh, I crept in the house and pulled my gun out of my pocketbook, and I heard music and voices coming from upstairs. It sounded like somebody was arguing or fighting at first, but by the time I got to the bottom of the steps, it sounded like . . . it sounded like . . .”

  She put her face in her hands and shook her head violently from side to side, as if she were trying to make the image disappear. Then she looked up and stared into the past, and the rest of the story almost seemed to come alive.

  “I got to the top of the steps and stood outside my bedroom door with the gun in my hand,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I stood there and imagined what it would feel like to kill somebody. I stood there and ran my hand along the door, rubbed against the door, edged closer to the door. And then I just pushed it open.”

  Black looked away, feeling like an intruder in Clarisse’s private hell. He was ashamed to listen to her, embarrassed for her. Yet he wanted her to continue. He wanted her to finish it.

  “They didn’t even notice me at first,” she said, the bitterness in her voice strangling the words. “They just kept fucking, like two dogs.”

  Clarisse laughed, a humorless, dry sound that died as soon as it left her lips.

  “So I blew a hole in the stereo,” she said, a sort of madness playing in her eyes. “And a hole in the television, and a hole in the mirror, and a hole in the nightstand, and a hole in the dresser. And I kept shooting until I shot every bullet in that gun.”

  Clarisse’s chest heaved up and down as if she might hyperventilate. But in a few seconds she calmed herself enough to continue.

  “By the time I finished,” she said, her nostrils flaring, “Carl and Nicole, my man and my best friend, the people I had trusted with my life, both of them were balled up on my bed like babies, crying and shaking and probably wondering if they were still alive.”

  Clarisse sighed and looked across the room at Black. “I didn’t have to wonder whether I was still alive. I knew the answer to that as soon as I walked in that room. I knew I had died more times than anybody deserves to. I just hadn’t stopped breathing yet.

  “I guess that’s when I stopped caring. I started drinking at first. Then I started stealing painkillers from the job. When they stopped working, I started stealing morphine. That lasted for about a year, until they found out I was stealing medication and told me to either leave voluntarily or go to jail. Well you know what my choice was, right?

  “For a while, I didn’t even want to work anymore. I just stayed in the house listening to old Billie Holiday records and drinking. I did a little private-duty nursing now and then, but I mostly just stayed in the house and waited for . . . well, I don’t know what I was waiting for. But by the time I ran into you last month, it was like: Okay, so Everett’s smoking crack and he’s not dead yet, so I might as well try it, too.

  “So here I am,” she said, looking around her as if she were just accepting what was happening to her. “Stuck between wanting to live and wanting to die.”

  Black looked down at the traffic that passed by on I-95. Since it was after rush hour, everything was running smoothly. The only unusual thing he saw was a helicopter hovering over the highway. If they were looking for them that way, he thought as he turned to face Clarisse, they would have an awfully long search. Because they weren’t going to see Clarisse’s car for a while.

  “Everett?” Clarisse said, sounding like a frightened little girl.

  “What?”

  “We’re not going to make it out of this alive, are we?”

  The question took him by surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, then remembered the images of police bursting into the room that had crowded his thoughts earlier.

  “Yeah. We’ll make it.”

  “Even if I leave?” she said.

  Black walked over to the corner of the room where she and Leroy sat and looked down at her.

  “Where you goin’ if I let you leave?” he asked harshly. “Where would you go? What would you do? You don’t have no friends. You don’t have no family. Far as I know, don’t nobody care if you live or die. Not even you.”

  She stood up slowly—her body flowing up from the floor like steam—and looked him in the eye.

  “Including you, too?” she asked, her voice a sultry whisper. “Do you care if I live or die?”

  “I care about me,” he said. “I care if Black live or die. I don’t have time to be worried about nothin’ else, or nobody else.”

  She began to lick behind his ear.

  “A-and I . . . if you wanna make it out th-this . . .”

  She walked around him and began to kiss the back of his neck.

  “I’m s-s-sayin’ . . .”

  “Damn, Black,” Leroy said as he pulled out another cap to dump into his straight shooter. “You startin’ to sound like me.”

  Black grinned. “She keep lickin’ my neck.”

  “Don’t act like you don’t like it,” Leroy said, pulling two matches from the matchbook and taking a blast.

  “Look,” Black said, hunching his shoulders and turning around as she began to make circles on his neck with her tongue. “I care about you. That’s what you wanna hear?”

  “Yeah, that’s what she wanna hear,” Leroy said, his jaw moving rhythmically from side to side as he went through his ritual of searching for rocks in the carpet.

  “It look like I’m talkin’ to you, rug man?” Black said.

  “Least I ain’t all in love,” Leroy said, relighting his straight and pulling out the remainder of the smoke.

  Black didn’t respond because he recognized the truth in Leroy’s words. Clarisse had become real to him. He couldn’t lump her in with other women, because now she had thoughts, and wants, and a past, and a life. And although she didn’t realize it, she’d chipped his shell just enough to allow a shaft of light to creep inside. She’d chipped it just enough to allow him to feel.

  “You need to be tryin’ to figure out how we gon’ get outta here,” Leroy said, speaking so quickly that Black had to take a moment to replay the words in his head.

  Black turned around and looked at Clarisse, then traced a vein in her neck with his forefinger. She shuddered slightly, and he pretended not to notice.

  “I already know how we gettin’ outta here,” he said.

  “How?” Clarisse said, looking at him with an expression of amused puzzlement.

  “You havin’ a baby.”

  Pookie looked up from the bed and Leroy stopped digging in the carpet. And for the first time since they’d left Clarisse’s house the night before, Black felt like he was in control.

  “You ready?” Leroy said, puffing impatiently as Clarisse slipped a trench coat over a stomach that was artificially swelled by a rolled-up blanket.

  “Why is he rushing me?” she said to Pookie.

  “ ’Cause that’s what ignorant asses like him do.”

  “Why I gotta be all that?” Leroy said.

  “I don’t know,” Pookie said. “I was hopin’ you could tell me.”

  “Look,” Black said, trying to stop another petty argument before it began. “A cab is on the way and we ain’t got a whole lotta time for all this. So could y’all just stop arguin’ for once so we can get outta this damn hotel?”

  Everyone looked at one another like little kids who’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

  “I still don’t know what it is I’m supposed to be doing,” Clarisse said, breaking the silence.

  “You supposed to be pregnant,” Black said. “What’s so hard about that?”

  “I mean, if I’m going to act, don’t I need some motivation for the role or something?”

  “Your motivation is keepin’ my foot out yo’ ass.”

  “That’s excellent,�
�� Clarisse said. “You’re obviously directing this in the John Singleton, Boyz N the Hood tradition.”

  “Why you messin’ with me?”

  “Because you’re there.”

  “You’re forgettin’ your motivation,” Black said.

  “Oh yes, keeping your foot out of my ass.”

  “Right.”

  “Man, y’all trippin’,” Leroy said. “Can we just get outta here?”

  He was right, of course. They had been in the same spot for too long. And if they hoped to ever make it out of that place alive, the time to move was then.

  The plan was solid enough. Clarisse would get off the elevator with the rest of them, acting really loud and crazy, and they would all pile into the cab like she was going to have the baby any minute. Then they would do whatever they had to do to get the cabbie to drive them to 30th Street Station, where they would split up and catch trains to wherever. Black figured it was safer than trying to go to the airport, and faster than trying to go to the bus station. Of course there was the matter of the Amtrak police. But the Amtrak police probably wouldn’t be able to recognize them from the previous night’s descriptions. Leroy and Black weren’t wearing church hats and sunglasses anymore. They were going to go out there in suits and ties. And Clarisse would be the only one wearing a trench coat, since she was playing the role of the pregnant woman.

  “You ready?” Black said, picking up the suit jacket he had draped over the chair in the corner of the room.

  “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” Pookie said.

  Black sighed, genuinely frustrated that someone who spent so much time conning people couldn’t run game when it really counted.

  “I told you. Act like you Clarisse sister. Hold her hand and push people out the way. Cuss out the clerk and the cabdriver. Stir up somethin’.”

  “Oh,” she said. “The same thing I do all the time.”

  Clarisse opened the door and pale light flooded in from the hallway. Without a backward glance, she affected the wobbly walk of the expectant mother she was supposed to be, and started toward the elevator. Black followed Clarisse, then looked over at Leroy, who seemed the most hesitant of them all. Pookie came next, walking quickly toward Clarisse and reaching for her arm like the dutiful sister.

  “You talked all that shit,” she said to Leroy, looking back at him as they waited for the elevator. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m comin’,” he said, and walked out of the room like a baby taking its first steps toward its mother.

  “You was supposed to say, ‘I’m comin’ honey,’ Black said. “Tryin’ to front like that ain’t your woman.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Leroy said, trying to dismiss Black’s words.

  Black looked over at Leroy and saw that he’d accomplished what he wanted. Leroy didn’t look as tense as he had a few seconds before. Not that Black could blame him. None of them, not even Black, had as much to lose as Leroy. If the cops rolled up on them, they would concentrate the most energy on Leroy. He might not even make it to jail. Instead, he might become really clumsy all of a sudden and suffer one of those falls in the back of the police van: the kind of fall that results in multiple contusions about the face and head; the kind of fall that Rodney King took, only worse; the kind where the victim never gets up.

  As far as Black could tell, the best way to keep Leroy—or any of them—from taking that type of fall was to be relaxed, because people think better when they’re relaxed. And thinking better than the police was the best, if not the only, chance they had. They needed every chance they could get, too, because every rent-a-cop, Robocop, wanna-be-cop, used-to-be-cop, and never-been-cop in the city would be looking for them.

  “You okay, Black?” Leroy said, pulling him from his thoughts.

  “Yeah, I’m cool. I was just thinkin’ about somethin’.”

  “You better think about what we gon’ do when we get outta here.”

  The bell rang and the doors opened on the first floor. Leroy and Black just stood there, spellbound. But Pookie and Clarisse went right into their act, as if they had been practicing it for years.

  “Get out the way!” Pookie screamed to no one in particular, then spoke to Clarisse in a comforting whisper. “You can make it, baby. You’ll be there soon.”

  Clarisse clutched Pookie’s arm and looked at her with an expression of pain mixed with fear. Black walked off the elevator and approached the man behind the desk, who looked as if he were asking himself why something like this had to happen on his shift.

  “Where’s the cab?” Black said calmly.

  “What cab?”

  “What cab!” Pookie repeated the question loudly. “What the hell you mean, what cab? My sister ’bout to have a baby and you talkin’ ’bout what cab! We called down here ten minutes ago for a cab and you mean to tell me it ain’t here yet?”

  “Call ’em again,” Black said. “Call ’em and tell ’em it’s an emergency.”

  “But, sir—”

  “But nothin’,” Leroy said, slamming his hand against the counter. “Just do it.”

  Clarisse let go a wail that seemed to echo off the walls of the lobby. The clerk craned his neck to look around Black and see what was the matter with her.

  “Don’t be lookin’ at her,” Leroy said. “You just call the cab.”

  “He ain’t call the cab yet?” Pookie said, leaving Clarisse’s side and running toward the desk like she was about to jump over it and attack the clerk.

  Black grabbed her just as she reached the desk.

  “If somethin’ happens to my pregnant wife . . . ,” he said in low, threatening tones.

  Clarisse wailed again. Leroy and Pookie both launched a tirade at the clerk, who picked up the phone and dialed feverishly just as the cab pulled up in front of the door. Black went over to Clarisse and got the room key from her, then placed it on the desk and walked quickly toward the door. He signaled to Pookie that the cab had arrived, and she went over to help Clarisse. Leroy yelled at the clerk for a second more, and in a flash they were gone, piled into the cab and yelling at the driver the same way they had yelled at the confused and nervous clerk.

  “Where to?” the cabdriver asked, an accent thickening his words.

  Clarisse screamed in response. For someone with no children, she had it down pat, right down to the sweat beading up on her forehead.

  “What?” the driver said.

  “Hahnemann Hospital,” Black said.

  “Where is that?”

  “Dig this, man,” Leroy said. “All that actin’ like you don’t know where nothin’ at is gon’ cease right now.”

  “Take my sister to the hospital!” Pookie shouted, raising her voice to a shrill scream.

  Clarisse started to whimper, and Leroy, who was sitting in the front seat, inched closer to the driver.

  “Pull off,” he said in a menacing voice. “Now.”

  The tires of the cab screeched against the white driveway of the hotel, leaving two sweeping black marks in their wake. They were going back to the very city that they were supposed to be running away from, and Black couldn’t help wondering exactly where they would end up. Everything that Black had done in his life—the good and the bad—had come down to that question.

  As the cab rolled down I-95, an announcer on KYW said the name he’d come to despise: Johnny Podres. When he got to the part of the story that included the suspects’ descriptions, the cabbie turned to Leroy and laughed.

  “Can you imagine the whole police department not being able to find four people just because they dressed up in trench coats and ladies’ hats?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Leroy turned his head and the cabbie said nothing more. But the radio announcer went on.

  “In other news, freelance reporter Henry Moore was shot to death this morning in an apparent robbery in the parking lot of Abbottsford Hospital. Police have no suspects in that shooting.”

  When Black heard tha
t, he couldn’t help thinking that the police would find suitable suspects in the Moore shooting, just like they’d found them. It wouldn’t surprise him. In fact, nothing about the police surprised him. He’d seen too much of what they could do to people, and felt too much of what they’d done to him. Maybe someone who’d never seen them beat a man unconscious or plant a gun on an unarmed man would have been shocked.

  But not Black. The only thing that shocked him was that he wasn’t dead yet.

  Chapter 15

  Ramirez and Hillman left the bail commissioner’s office with the arrest warrants. The papers said that Samuel Jackson, Leroy Johnson, and Patricia Oaks would be charged with the murder of city councilman Johnny Podres, criminal conspiracy, violations of the Uniform Firearms Act, aggravated assault, armed robbery, possession of an instrument of crime, theft by unlawful taking, and a variety of other offenses.

  If convicted, they could get the death penalty, or they could get life in prison. But with a “high-quality” victim like Podres, and predatory defendants like drug addicts, the odds always skewed toward capital punishment—something that always seemed to stir up the public’s blood lust.

  Ramirez and Hillman knew that. And as they left the bail commissioner’s office and walked out into the Roundhouse parking lot, they realized that the media knew it, too.

  Ramirez tried to hide behind Hillman so he could slide past the throng of reporters who stood around waiting for the next briefing on the shooting. As soon as the reporters recognized him, though, they descended upon him like locusts.

  “Lieutenant Ramirez, has there been any progress in the investigation?”

  “Lieutenant Ramirez, do you have any leads on the whereabouts of the suspects?”

  “Lieutenant Ramirez, have the suspects been spotted outside Philadelphia?”

  It was all he could do to fight his way through the crowd muttering a few halfhearted “No comments.”

  As they made their way to the car, Ramirez noticed Jeanette Deveraux sitting in a news truck in the parking lot. That struck him as odd. Normally, she was the most aggressive reporter in the crowd. Yet there she was, allowing him to walk by without asking a single question.