In white America, people could make a major mistake and recoup. In Harlem, your first big one was your last big one. It had seemed so easy eight years before when he should have remembered his grandmother’s advice and taken counsel of his own beliefs. But the money was so good.
He was sipping a Big Apple special, three shots of scotch for the price of two, when another runner, they were all small time then, laid the word on him that a man wanted to see him.
He had purposely continued to sip his scotch slowly, showing no great concern. When he was finished, with great effort at being casual he left the Big Apple bar, out onto chilly Lenox Avenue, where a black man in a gray suit sat in a gray car and nodded to him.
“Sweet Shiv?” said the man, opening the door.
“Yeah,” said Jackson, not moving closer, but keeping his hand in the right pocket of his jacket over the neat .25 caliber Beretta.
“I want to give you two numbers and $100,” the man said. “The first number you play tomorrow. The second number you phone tomorrow night. Play only $10 and don’t play with your boss, Derellio.”
He should have asked why he was the lucky recipient. He should have been more suspicious at the man knowing his nature so well, knowing that having been told to play a number with all the money, he would have played none of it. Having been just given a number he would have ignored it. But having been given $100 to play $10, he would risk the $10, just to make the phone call more interesting.
Jackson’s first thought was that he was being set up to break a banker. But not on $10. Did the man in the car really want him to play the $100 and another $500 on top of that?
If so, why pick Sweet Shiv? Sweet Shiv wasn’t going to put his own money into something he couldn’t control. That was for little old ladies with their quarters and their dreams. That was what the numbers were in Harlem. The dream. If people really wanted to make money they would go to the Man’s numbers, the stock market, where the odds were in your favor. But the Man’s numbers were too real, it reminded you you didn’t have nothing worth betting and you’d never make it out of the mud.
The numbers, however, they were pure sweet fantasy. You bought a day of dreaming of what you’d do with $5,400 for $10. And for a quarter, you got $135 worth of groceries, or rent, or a new suit, or a good taste if that was your pleasure. Or whatever your pleasure.
Nothing would ever replace the numbers in Harlem. Nothing would ever stop them, not unless someone came along with a new instant dream, payable the next day at the corner candy store.
Jackson bet the number and won. Then he phoned the other number.
“Now,” came the voice, “bet 851 and 857, small. Play it with your boss, Derellio, and tell your players to play those numbers too. And phone back tomorrow night.”
Eight fifty one paid off but the hit was not that big because Jackson’s players did not trust him. Not that they thought he was untrustful, Jackson knew, but that they did not really have a handle on him.
When he phoned the number again, the voice said, “The number tomorrow is 962. Tell your people you have the strongest hunch ever. And tell them you can only take so much, they’ll have to go to Derellio personally. And play the number straight.”
The play the next day was heavy. Big. And when 962 appeared in the day’s parimutuel handle on the next to the last page of the Daily News, Derellio was broken. He had been hit for $480,000 and had not laid off any of the bets.
The next night, the voice said, “Meet me on the ferry going towards Staten Island that leaves in an hour.”
It was bitter cold on the ferry, but the man who had been in the car seemed not to mind the cold. He was well trussed in fur-lined coat and boots and fur-lined field cap. He gave Jackson an attache case.
“There’s half a million in there. Pay off all Derellio’s winners. And phone me again tomorrow night.”
“What’s your game?” asked Jackson.
“Would you believe,” the man said, “that the more I learn of what I do, the less I know why I’m doing it.”
“You don’t talk like a brother.”
“Ah, that’s the problem of the black bourgeoisie, my friend. Goodbye.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jackson, hopping up and down on the deck of the ferry, beating his arms for warmth while trying to balance the attache case between his legs, “what if I take a walk with this bread, man?”
“Well,” said the man wearily, “I sort of figure you’re pretty smart. And you’re not going to walk until you know who you’re walking from. And the more you know, the less you’re going to want to walk.”
“You don’t make sense, dude.”
“I haven’t made sense since I took this job. Just accuracy.” The black man said goodbye again and walked away. So Jackson had paid off the players and taken over the bank. If they could give him a half million to throw away, they could give him a million for himself. Besides, then he would walk.
But he did not walk. He did not walk when he received his bankroll. He did not walk, even when he was told to stand on a street corner one night, only to be told by a white man an hour later, “You can go now.” Derellio and two of his henchmen were discovered with their necks broken in a nearby store a half hour later, and Sweet Shiv Jackson suddenly had a reputation for having killed three men with his bare hands which vastly increased the honesty of his numbers runners. And all it cost was just a little favor every now and then for the weary-voiced black dude.
Just little favors. Usually information, and sometimes it was putting this device here or that there, or providing an absolutely unshakeable witness for a trial or making sure another witness had money to leave town. And within a year, his main job was running an information network that stretched from the Polo Grounds to Central Park.
Even his vacation in the Bahamas was not his own. He found himself in a classroom with an old white man with a Hungarian accent discussing in terms he had not used, things Jackson thought only the street knew. There were names for things like seals, links, cells, variables of accuracy. He had liked variables of accuracy. In street terms, it was “where he coming from?” It was cool.
And then his network one fine autumn day was suddenly very interested in Orientals. Nothing specific. Just anything about Orientals that might come up.
And then the dude reappeared and informed Sweet Shiv that now he would pay back in full for his good fortune. He would kill a man whose picture was in this envelope and he would kill him at the Bong Rhee karate dojo. The man had insisted that Sweet Shiv not open the envelope until he left.
And so for the second time, Sweet Shiv saw the face, the high cheekbones, the deep brown eyes, the thin lips. The first time had been when he stood on a corner he had been told to stand on at a certain time, and the man had come out of the shop where Derellio’s body was found later and had said simply: “You can go now.”
He was now going to see that face again, and this time Sweet Shiv was supposed to put a bullet in it. And Sweet Shiv knew as he turned south into Manhattan on the East River Drive that he was going to be wasted.
Somewhere a machine he had been part of was coming apart. And that machine belonged to the man. And the man had decided that one of its little black wheels was now going to be a piston. And if you lose a little black wheel trying to be a piston, well, what the hell, what’s one Nigger more or less?
Sweet Shiv turned right on 14th Street, then made a U turn in the middle of the block, got back on the East Side Highway and headed north.
He had $800 in his pocket. He would not stop at his home to pick up his cash, he would not even bother to seal his car when he reached Rochester. He would leave nothing by which anyone could trace him.
Let them have the money. Let some stranger take the car. Let them have everything. He was going to live.
“Baby,” he said to himself, “they really had you going.”
He felt somewhat happy that he was going to live another day. He felt this way until just before the Major De
egan Highway leading to the New York Thruway and upstate. A black family was sitting by their stalled 1957 Chevrolet, a paint-worn, chipped, banged-up leftover of a car which had apparently surrendered its ghost for the last time. But Jackson figured he could make it run again.
He pulled it over, the wide soft wheels with their magnificent springs and shocks, taking the curb like a twig. He stopped on the grass which rose to a fence which separated the Bronx from the Major Deegan a few miles south of Yankee Stadium, the Black and Puerto Rican Bronx with dying buildings teeming with life.
He opened the door and got out into the stale smelling air and looked at the family. Four youngsters had been playing with a can, four youngsters in clothes so casual they looked as if they had been rejected by the Salvation Army. These four youngsters, one of whom might have been Sweet Shiv Jackson 15 years before, stopped playing to look at him.
The father sat by the front left fender, his back to the flat bald tire, his face cemented in resignation. A woman, old as flesh and weary as millstones, snored in the front seat.
“How you doin’, brother?”
“Fine,” said the man, looking up. “You got a tire that will fit?”
“I got a whole car that will fit.”
“Who I got to kill?”
“Nobody.”
“Sounds fine, but… ”
“But what?”
“But I wouldn’t make it to your wheels, man. You got company.”
Sweet Shiv, maintaining his cool, slowly scanned behind him. A simple black sedan had pulled up behind his Fleetwood. From the near window, a black face stared at him. It was the dude, the man on the ferry, the man who had given him the numbers and the methods, and the orders.
Jackson’s stomach dissolved into strings. His arms hung leaden as though enervated by electricity.
The man stared directly into his eyes and shook his head. All Bernoy (Sweet Shiv) Jackson could do was nod. “Yowsah,” he said, and the man in the car smiled.
Jackson turned to the man on the grass and carefully peeled from the roll of bills in his pocket all but $20.
The man eyed him suspiciously.
“Take it,” said Jackson.
The man did not move.
“You got more smarts than I got, brother. Take it. I won’t need it. I’m a dead man.”
Still no movement.
So Sweet Shiv Jackson dropped the money in the front seat of the remnant of a 1957 Chevrolet and returned to his Fleetwood which still had one payment on it outstanding. The life of Bernoy (Sweet Shiv) Jackson.
CHAPTER TWENTY
REMO WILLIAMS SPOTTED THE MAN WITH the .357 Magnum first. Then the man with the very big bulge in his Oscar de la Renta suit spotted Remo. Then the man smiled weakly.
Remo smiled too.
The man stood before the Bong Rhee karate school, a walkup entrance with a painted sign telling people to walk up one flight and that when they traversed the stairs they would be in one of the leading schools of self defense in the Western Hemisphere.
Remo said, “What’s your name?”
“Bernoy Jackson.”
“How do you want to die, Bernoy?”
“No way, man,” said Bernoy honestly.
“Then tell me who sent you.”
Bernoy recounted the story. His black boss. The numbers that hit. Then standing on the corner near where three men were killed. And the information.
“That corner. That’s where I saw you.”
“That’s right,” Remo said. “I probably should kill you now.”
Sweet Shiv went for the gun. Remo snapped out his knuckles into the man’s wrist. Jackson grimaced in pain and clutched his wrist. His pain brought sweat to his large forehead. “All I gotta say, honkey, is you a bunch of mean bastards. You the meanest, toughest bastards on this planet earf.”
“I hope so,” Remo said. “Now beat it.”
Sweet Shiv turned and walked away and Remo watched him go, quietly sympathizing with the man who was obviously a CURE agent and did not know it. Remo had been framed. Bernoy Jackson had been bought. But they were brothers under the skin somehow, and so Jackson lived.
What hurt was that Remo had been marked for death. And now he could trust no one. But why had they sent that Jackson? CURE must be compromised beyond saving. Then why go through with the search for Liu? What else was there to do?
Remo went into the door of the karate school. He felt Chiun follow him up the creaky wood steps in the narrow stairway, boxed in by grease-coated, dust-catching green paint. A light bulb at the top of the stairs illuminated a red painted arrow. The paint was fresh. Mei Soong followed Chiun.
“Oh how wonderful it is to work with you, Remo,” Chiun said.
“Drop dead.”
“Not only are you a detective and secretary of state but now you are becoming socially aware. Why did you let that man walk away?”
“Swallow your spit.”
“He recognized you. And you let him go.”
“Suck cyanide.”
Remo paused at the top of the stairs, Chiun and Mei Soong waiting behind him.
“Are you contemplating the stairwell or a new cause of social justice?” Chiun’s face was serene.
It would be Chiun. Remo had always known it, but did not want to believe it. Who else could do it? Not that Jackson. Yet Chiun had not terminated him.
That Chiun had not been able to was out of the question. The thought momentarily arose in Remo’s mind that Chiun might have refrained because of affection for Remo. The thought was as fleeting as it was absurd. If Remo had to go, Chiun would do it. Just another job.
Then it was the message that had failed. It had not reached Chiun. Remo thought of the phone call to Smith, and his insistence that Remo tell Chiun to return to Folcroft. Of course that was the signal — and Remo had not transmitted it.
The course for Remo now was clear. Just throw a shot to the frail yellow throat in the hallway, now while they were pressed together. Stun him. Kill him. And then run. And keep running.
That was his only hope.
Chiun looked up at him quizzically.
“Well,” he said, “are we to reside here forever to become an element of the scenery?”
“No,” said Remo with heaviness in his voice. “We’re going inside.”
“You will find it a most attractive and rewarding experience to witness the martial arts,” Mei Soong said.
Chiun smiled. Mei Soong pushed past them and opened the door. Chiun and Remo followed, into the large low-ceilinged white room with sunlight coming in over the backs of large pictures in the front windows of what had once been a loft. Off to the right were the usual paraphernalia of karate schools, sandbags, and roofing tiles, and a large box filled with beans, used for toughening the fingertips.
Mei Soong confidently walked over to a small glass-windowed office with a bare desk upon which sat a young Oriental man in white floppy karate suit tied with a red belt. His head was shaven almost clean, his features smooth, his expression calm with the kind of calmness that comes with years of training and years of discipline.
Chiun whispered to Remo: “He is very good. One of only eight true red belts. A very young man in his early 40’s.”
“He looks 20.”
“He is very, very good. And would give you an interesting exercise, if you chose to allow it to be interesting. His father, however, would give you more than an interesting exercise.”
“Danger?”
“You are an insulting young man. How dare you think that someone I trained these many years would be in danger of such a red belt? What insulting stupidity. I have given you years of my life and you dare to say that.” Chiun’s voice lowered slightly. “You are a very stupid man and also forgetful. You fail to remember that anyone taught pure attack can defeat karate, even a man in a wheelchair. Karate is an art. A minimal art. Its weakness is that it is a killing art only at times, a small slice of the circle. We approach the circle. They do not.”
&nbs
p; Remo watched Mei Soong, her back to him. The Oriental in the red belt listened closely. Then he looked up, seeing Remo but concentrating on Chiun. He left his office, still peering at Chiun and when he was five feet away, his mouth opened and blood appeared to drain from his face.
“No,” he said. “No.”
“I see, Mr. Kyoto, that you have earned young your red belt. Your father must be very proud. Your family has always loved dancing. I am honored to be in your presence and extend utmost cordialities to your honorable father.” Chiun bowed slightly.
Kyoto did not move. Then, recollecting his functions, he bowed extremely deeply in a smooth graceful motion, then backed away quickly until he bumped into Mei Soong.
From the wall farthest from the window, where a sign read “dressing room,” a file of men emerged through a door, seven black men in phalanx, all wearing black belts. They moved with grace and silence, their white karate uniforms blurring against each other, creating a mass which made definition more difficult.
“Go back, go back,” yelled Kyoto. But they kept coming until they had surrounded Chiun and Remo.
“It is all right, Mr. Kyoto,” said Chiun. “I am just an innocent observer. I give you my word I will not get involved.”
Kyoto glanced back at him. Chiun nodded politely, smiling.
One of the black men spoke. He was tall, six feet four, 245 pounds and no flab. His face looked carved of ebony. He was grinning.
“We of the third world has nothin’ against a brother of the third world. We wants the honkey.”
Remo glanced at Mei Soong. Her face was frozen, her lips clamped thin. She was undoubtedly going through more emotional tension than Remo, who was just going to do what he was trained to do. A woman in love betraying her lover was an airport of signals.
“Learned master of all arts, am I to understand you will not intrude yourself?” asked Kyoto.
“I will stand aside to witness the spectacle of all these people attacking one poor white man. For I can see that is what they are prepared to do.” Chiun said this almost as a sermon, then pointing a shaking forefinger at Mei Soong, he added: “And you, faithless woman, luring this unsuspecting young man into this den of death. For shame.”
Chinese Puzzle Page 13