Run

by Douglas E. Winter

  Get your fuckin head down.

  That sets his homeys to laughing and I see the intersection ahead, and there’s a crowd on the street and the windows of a liquor store go smash and fire climbs the side of the brownstone next door and I decide to get my fucking head down. Jinx sort of leans over me and QP Green puts that Lex through a hard turn and does corners and more corners until it crosses a bridge, the Anacostia River maybe, and finally it stops, I don’t have a clue where, and Jinx is telling me to get up and get out, and the next thing I know I’m standing on a street corner and Jinx is standing next to me.

  QP Green is saying something to Jinx, and it’s a number, that’s all I catch, a number, and then Jinx is saying it back to him, like it’s something he’s memorizing, and QP Green is shaking his head up and down, right, right, yes. Then Jinx slaps my arm and says to me, he says:

  Okay, plain vanilla. Time for our appointment with the Doctor.

  QP Green yells out something, sounds like do or die, while he cranks the volume on that tape deck, and some loudmouth rapper is walkin, walkin in his big black boots, and it’s boom boom boom as the Lex speeds on out of sight.

  I start to wonder if this makes a lot of sense, the two of us strolling around some lost part of Dirty City, but Jinx catches what’s on my mind and sends it right back to me:

  People be thinkin bout you and me, they think we five-oh. Police. Ain’t that the shits? Tells you somethin bout how many white guys you see walkin round with black ones. Especially down here.

  But hey, he says, and he nods on down the street to our left. This is a good place, you know? Good people here.

  And he’s right. I have no idea where we are, but it’s a neighborhood. A nice neighborhood. Detached houses lined close on each other in neat rows. Perfect place for a safe house, a crib, whatever. I was expecting a broken-down crackhouse, some litterbox in the South East badlands, but this is so serene it’s almost middle class. And it’s almost, just almost, any other day. If it wasn’t a sad day. There are kids outside, and they’re riding bikes and shooting hoops and skipping double dutch. There are mothers and aunts and sisters, looking pained, looking at the sky, looking out for their children. And there are guys, too, fathers watering their lawns and pulling at the weeds and talking in quiet voices. A dog barks, gallops across the street and into the arms of a teenager on his porch. Picket fences, and damned if they aren’t white and painted. Garbage trucks making their way down the street. It’s hard to believe that, over there, beneath those grey clouds, is that restless and rundown place called Dirty City.

  This is it, Jinx says. We stop in front of another nice house on this nice street in this nice neighborhood. He shoves me hard, fingers into my bruised back. Get em up and out. And do you and me a favor and shut that mouth of yours.

  I bring my hands wide as I follow the little concrete path and wobble up the little porch to the house. It looks like every other house on the street, except for the desperate face and the barrel of an AK-47 peeking out an upstairs window.

  Jinx steps around me, opens the front door, and hustles me into the dim interior.

  Fuck all, he announces. Then he kicks the door shut.

  The inside of the house is another deception, a foyer and a hallway that are wallpapered and decorated in a prim and feminine way, but then, down the hallway, waits a large room that’s straight out of an industrial park, painted dirty white and scrawled with more graffiti than a bus station toilet. The room has been torn apart, furniture dumped over and pushed aside to make way for opened crates. Inside the crates are guns: Kalashnikovs and Uncle Sam’s favorite, M-16A2s. War guns. On the walls are posters of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, looking down on the madness like martyred saints, and who knows if they really are. Now there’s a place on that wall for the Reverend Parks, too.

  A guy in a Kangol cap waltzes by, a Sig .40 in each hand. Folks are pissed off and wanting to get busy. The fireplace is burning and a lot of paper is going into its throat. There’s this scrawny runt sitting behind a school desk; his head is too big for his body, and his fingers are like pencils, and they’re doing these frantic jabs into the keyboard of a laptop computer, and the computer is jacked into a phone line and whatever the runt guy’s doing, he’s doing it for real.

  Looks like the U Street Crew is getting out of here and getting out fast.

  I know the whole thing in one look, which is all I get, since Jinx pulls me like a bad dog through that room and into the next one, the remains of a bedroom.

  Hey, ghetto star.

  A guy with a beret high-fives it with Jinx.

  Heard you livin, the beret guy tells Jinx. Nobody but you, man. Nobody but you.

  The truth, homes. Where’s the Doctor?

  Counselin, the beret guy says. With Ray-Ban and Cue Ball. You just in time. Lookin like war, man. Lookin like war.

  The beret guy decides to notice me. He gives me a sneer. So this is the white meat?

  Yeah, Jinx tells him. Then to me:

  Wait here. Don’t fuckin move.

  He follows the beret guy into the next room.

  So I’m alone in this empty place. No, no, not alone, it’s not empty at all. I hear before I see, tucked in the shadows between a bureau and the far corner, two women, girls, really, holding babies tight to their chests and looking back at me with suspicious eyes, angry eyes. One of the babies swivels her little head and her mouth is open in a sweet laugh that hurts me to see.

  Then it’s loud voices and heavy footsteps, and here’s the guy wearing the same beret and the same sneer he left with, and a guy wearing shades, and there’s Jinx and he’s in this other guy’s face, and the guy is a black Buddha, a hulking heavyweight whose head is shaved, and he’s got to be, just got to be, Cue Ball, and the beret guy is talking the talk with Cue Ball:

  The shit was crazy, man. Tag Juan E and my nigga Jinx with killers. Fuckin white devils. Tried to tell you but you wouldn’t be listenin. Tried to—

  His words disappear into a sudden silence. A shadow walks across the wall, the ceiling, and onto me, and I feel a gremlin whispering in my ear but I stand in, I stand tall, as the shadow walks into the room and solidifies into a man.

  There is only one Doctor D, the King of U Street, the King of South East, the King of Dirty City for all I know or care. The newspaper photos don’t do him justice. The guy gives new meaning to the word ebony. He’s beyond black, he’s darker than dark, and he’s not cold, he’s not ice, he’s fucking Antarctica.

  Jinx says the one thing that no one needs to say:

  This is Doctor D.

  So what do you do? Just what the fuck do you do?

  I stick out my hand and I tell him:

  Burdon Lane. Pleased to meet you.

  Doctor D looks at my hand and then he looks at me like I’m a fly, no, a fly turd, something so small he wouldn’t spend the time to wipe me off his boot. Then:

  If you know me, he says, you owe me.

  The guy’s voice is absolute power. It could convert the dead.

  The guy in the shades wanders over, dances his hands around inside my suit coat, leaves the Glock in the Bianchi holster but yanks the one from my armpit.

  Boy, the guy in the shades tells me, you gots to be the only white meat inside a mile, cept for police and fire and EMS. Are you crazy? he says. Then he pushes the Glock into the hollow of my throat. Or are you Jesus?

  He lets his finger curl onto the trigger.

  Bang, the guy in the shades says, and he starts laughing like a loon. He slides the Glock up to my chin before he drops it away. Then he says:

  Cause nobody else this white come to visit the D.

  Hey, Ray-Ban. The guy with the beret is tugging at the elbow of the guy in the shades. Hey, Ray-Ban, bro, what you sayin? Jesus was black. He was a black man. You know that.

  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, dev
il. 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.

  grave new world

  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.