'Make it easy on you,' Juicy was saying to him now. 'No fuss, stick your leg out, your foot on the bumper of that car, we be done and gone.'
'You want to break my leg?'
Juicy held up the bat. 'Check it out. What have I got here?'
'For what?'
'Listen, I told the person I do more. They say no, don't put him away, put him in the hospital a while. That be fine, that do it.'
'What person you talking about?'
'Can't tell you that, man. Same as like a lawyer won't tell you shit how he knows something. Check it out, it's the same thing what I'm saying.'
'Was it Donnell Lewis?'
'Man, I just told you what I ain't gonna tell you.'
Chris saw Juicy look up and move slowly toward the back of the old building. Chris stepped to the parking lot side and a car crept past them, going up the alley. Juicy came away from the building watching Chris, about twenty feet between them, but said to the young guys, 'You get it open?'
One of them said, 'I need a tire iron. Something to pop it.'
Chris said, 'You think I'm going in there with you?'
He unbuttoned his coat, his hand brushing the big grip of the automatic stuck in his waist, and held the coat open for Juicy. 'You see it?' He half turned to the three guys by the door, still holding open the coat. 'You see it?' Then said to Juicy again, 'Was it Donnell?'
Juicy said, 'You not suppose to have that, man. What is that, some kind of gun?'
Chris pulled the Glock from his waist and looked at the three well-built young guys as he palmed the slide, racked it and the gun was ready to fire. He said to them, 'What you do now, you run, fast as you can. I don't want to ever see you again.'
Juicy, taking his time, was coming toward him now, saying, 'Man, is that thing real? That's a strange-looking piece, man. It shoot bullets or what?'
Chris said to the three young guys, 'I'm gonna count to two.'
The three guys stood posed at rest, dull-eyed, slack, hips cocked at studied angles.
Chris said, 'One,' raised the Glock and fired at the metal door behind them, past the nearest guy's head, and they were running as that hard sound filled the alley and Chris said, 'Two.'
He saw Juicy duck into the parking lot and went after him down a line of cars, catching glimpses of a moving figure, silky green, came to the exit drive, on the street, and there was no sign of him. An older black guy, the parking attendant, stood in the door of the shack, his office. He kept staring at the gun in Chris's hand till finally he pointed a direction and stepped back inside. Chris moved along the front of the cars facing the street, past the grill of a Rolls, another car, heard door locks snap closed and saw Juicy behind the wheel of a white Cadillac sedan, Juicy staring straight ahead. Chris approached on the passenger side and tapped the barrel of the Glock against the window.
'Hey, Juice? Who is it wants my leg busted?'
The guy refused to speak or turn his head, hands locked on the steering wheel.
'You can tell me, it's okay. Just don't stick out your tongue. Man, that thing is scary, like it's something alive, you know what I mean? Living in your mouth. . . . Who was it, Donnell?'
Juicy didn't answer or move or twitch or anything.
Chris said, 'You think I don't see you? Okay, that's how you want it.' Chris put the muzzle of the gun flat against the glass and said, 'Juice? Look.'
But the guy still wouldn't move.
Chris said, 'You know what Mel Gibson would do?' and was anxious to show him as he thought of Mel blazing away with his Beretta. Shit, the Glock held more rounds.
First, though, Juicy had to be looking at him. And second, he had to be careful, not shoot through the car and hit something else, or somebody on the street a block away. So Chris walked around to the front of the Cadillac. He raised the Glock in one hand and stood sideways--not the way Mel Gibson did it, two-handed--Juicy looking right at him now, aimed at the fat top part of the seat next to the guy and began squeezing off shots--loud, Jesus, they'd hear it at 1300--counting 'four' as the shatterproof windshield came apart, counted from five through ten and stopped. Where was Juicy? There, his head showing as he came up, very cautious, behind the steering wheel. Chris fired five more quick rounds into the car before Juicy could move, continued to hold the gun aimed in the silence and said, 'Was it Donnell?'
Juicy nodded, up and down.
'Say it.'
'It was him.'
'You feel better now?'
'I don't owe him nothing. He busted off my tooth one time, was in a Men's.'
'You could've told me it was Donnell before and saved your car getting wrecked.'
Juicy said, 'What, this? This ain't my car.'
Robin used to roll joints Skip said were the next thing to being factory made. She had rolled him one hard and tight he was smoking now, sitting low in her fake-leather chair. Robin had a hip on the edge of her desk, red sunburst still on the wall behind her, watching him as she fooled with her braid.
'Are you afraid of him?'
'All I'm trying to tell you,' Skip said, 'I think he's the kind of fella we could've cut a deal with. Stays out of our way long as we don't make a lot of noise.' Skip drew on the cigarette and his voice changed, tightened. 'I didn't even want to do it to him, send him over there to be crippled.'
'I guess he could've picked up a gun,' Robin said. 'But to start shooting--'
'Listen,' Skip said. 'I was across the street. These guys come by me like they're out to set a new four-forty record. He goes after the other guy, finds him and I swear fires twenty shots into that car before he's through. You see him as some broke dick with his hand out. I saw him holding a gun in it that never stops firing.'
'What did he do then?'
'I told you, I took off. He might've gone back to the bar. He knows who set him up.'
'You're saying he might come here.'
'I was him I'd already be here. That's why we have to clear out. What I've been trying to tell you.'
'You have a gun, don't you?'
Skip said, 'You want me to do it? You keep changing the plan, come up with different ideas, shit, now you want me to clean up your mess. He comes in, shoot him right here in your apartment. That what you want?' He inhaled and reached out, offering her the joint.
Robin shook her head; she straightened. Skip watched her step away from the desk but not going anywhere. Inside her head now, still stroking her braid.
Skip said, 'I think we better move out to your mom's for the night.'
'He knows you were there.'
'Then let's go to a motel.'
She stopped pacing and turned to him and he liked the schemy smile coming into her eyes.
'I've got a better idea,' Robin said.
Chapter 25
The part Greta played in the movie they shot in Detroit was GIRL IN BAR, filmed in an actual bar, Jacoby's, on Brush Street. The camera follows an actor playing a detective as he enters and comes over to the bar where she's standing with another actor. (Both of them had familiar faces, but she didn't know their names.) The one at the bar says to the one that comes in, 'She's trying to figure out what I do for a living.' GIRL IN BAR: 'Don't tell me, okay?' The guy is wearing a tie with a plaid wool shirt and a suitcoat that doesn't match the pants. GIRL IN BAR: 'You teach shop at a high school, right?' Then there's the sound of a beeper going off. As the one that comes
