Pipe Dream Read online

  For a full minute, there was nothing. The footsteps stopped, the whistling stopped, the grunting stopped. Black’s heart, he could have sworn, stopped. The man was listening. He had to be. He was wondering where the sound had come from, or if he had heard a sound at all. He was looking around him for signs that he was not alone. He was deciding if he should call his workmates, if he should call the police, or if he should be the police. Then, just as suddenly as everything had stopped, he started to whistle again.

  Black let out a long breath, then breathed in deeply, a mistake. As the man began to walk toward the basement steps, Black could feel his throat and nose begin to itch again. He was trying to will the itch away, praying for it to disappear, when he heard the man’s foot pound against the first basement step. The step creaked under his weight, and there was a pause between that step and the next one as he stopped to steady himself on the rickety wooden stairs.

  Black covered his nose and mouth, feeling like his heart was going to squeeze out from beneath his eardrums. He sneezed twice and breathed short shallow breaths, praying that the heavy footfalls on the squeaky steps had covered the noise. As the man came to the final step, Black tried to breathe normally.

  The man took several steps toward the oil tank. Black tightened his hands into fists, then sat on his haunches and watched as the man’s shadow crept under the oil tank and blackened the wall behind him. The man stood there for a moment while Black sat coiled tight as a spring. Then the man turned and began to rummage through the boxes on the floor, swearing to himself as he realized that whatever he was looking for was nowhere to be found.

  All at once, the man stopped moving, as if he was trying to think of another place to search. He came and stood in front of the oil tank again, filling the room with a stillness that Black could have reached out and touched. At that moment, the man must have decided to look behind the oil tank.

  As he started to walk slowly around to the side of the tank, Black prepared to spring. The rusting, graffiti-scarred hunk of metal that stood between them seemed to shrink beneath the man’s lengthening shadow. Then the familiar rumble of a car engine broke the silence.

  The driver banged on the basement window.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there,” the man said, his deep voice matching the size of his gargantuan shadow.

  He turned to look at the oil tank once more, and disappeared up the basement stairs.

  After the man left, Black did not move for the next five minutes. It took that long for his heart to descend from the top of his throat down into his chest.

  But it didn’t take nearly that long for Butter, Rock, and Pookie to get away from the house.

  When Pookie pointed to Podres’s late-model Mercury Marquis, Butter and Rock both knew something wasn’t right.

  “What’s this, a cop car?” Butter said.

  “Dude was a cop?” Rock said, backing away. “Y’all must be tryin’ to get popped.”

  “He wasn’t no cop,” Pookie said, as they approached the car. “He said he was some kinda—”

  “Just get in the car,” Butter said. “We can talk about it later.”

  “No, let’s get a hack,” Rock said. “If they see three pipin’-ass niggers rollin’ in a brand-new black Mercury in the middle of the night, they gon’ know somethin’ wrong.”

  “Just keep walkin’,” Pookie said, stressing each word. “And don’t look back. The rollers just pulled up by the house.”

  Butter and Rock both hesitated, almost imperceptibly, then rounded the corner of Park and Erie, hoping that the police car that had just pulled up in front of the house wouldn’t approach them. When the guys at the hack stand saw them walking toward Broad Street, they started to yell, hoping to get a five- or six- dollar fare so they could take the money and go cop some dope.

  “Taxi hack, hack cab!” a piped-out man in a piped-out gray Granada screamed at them across Erie Avenue.

  Pookie started toward him. Butter and Rock followed, thinking that a gray Granada was inconspicuous enough for their purposes.

  Another man, this one in a late-model Oldsmobile with a twisted grill, yelled out, “Taxi hack, taxi hack, take you there and bring you back, faster than SEPTA, cheaper than a cab, taxi hack.”

  “Yo, Rock, c-come here, man,” a familiar voice said to them in a quick stutter.

  They all turned, relieved to see someone they knew, and walked back toward the dull-brown Impala with no hubcaps.

  When they got in, Butter grinned a ghastly yellow-toothed smile and said, “Where you get a ride from?”

  “That’s the last thing you need to be worried about right now,” Leroy said as he pulled away from Germantown Avenue and drove across Broad Street. “The last thing.”

  “So what you sayin’, man?” Butter asked, his grin disappearing. “You know somethin’ I don’t know?”

  Leroy, sensing that he had slipped up, said quickly, “You need to be worryin’ about where you tryin’ to go.”

  “We should go to the Crescent Moon,” Pookie said. “I’m tryin’ to lay back and take a bath before I take my blast.”

  “I can’t go to West Philly,” Rock said. “They lookin’ for me out there.”

  “For what?” Butter said.

  “I snatched a pack off this young boy out 52nd Street.”

  “You swear you a gangster, don’t you?”

  “I ain’t say all that,” Rock said. “I just gotta get mine.”

  “All right, well, get mine and break me off some o’ them caps you got.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout that, I got you,” Rock said, while he passed ten caps apiece to Rock and Pookie. “You worry ’bout gettin’ that cash outta that wallet and throwin’ the rest of that shit outta here.”

  “Shakedown, breakdown,” Leroy said, smiling.

  Rock passed five caps to Leroy.

  “That’s a down payment,” Rock said with authority. Then, as if he were trying to confirm that he was in charge, he added, “Now, shut your dumb ass up.”

  Leroy glanced in the rearview mirror, wondering if Rock and Butter still had the gun.

  “Dig this here, man,” Leroy said as he pulled the car over at 21st and Erie, about two blocks from the 39th Police District. “You think I don’t know where you got all that dope? I was comin’ up in the house when everything jumped off. I know wussup.”

  Rock glanced at Butter to see his reaction, but Butter seemed oblivious to the fact that there was now a witness to Podres’s murder. He just sat completely still, wearing a blank stare. Pookie, on the other hand, seemed to hang on Leroy’s every word.

  “You can play that hard role on Butter and them, but that don’t move me,” Leroy said matter-of-factly. “Now, you can either get out and tell five-o how that Puerto Rican got slumped, or you can throw that gun and all that I.D. down the sewer before we all get popped.”

  With that, everything stopped, until Pookie tore her gaze away from Leroy and looked expectantly at Rock.

  Rock glanced at Pookie and then turned his murderous stare on Leroy. Then he pulled the gun from his groin and chambered a round with an ominous double click.

  “I’ll splatter your brain against that windshield. Now, shut up and drive.”

  Leroy glanced leisurely at Rock, bent down, emptied two caps into his straight shooter, lit two matches, and pulled the smoke into his lungs. He held the smoke in for half a minute, then released it slowly through his nostrils, filling the car with the sickeningly sweet smell of burning crack. He turned around, his eyes the size of half-dollars, and stared at Rock.

  “Do it,” Leroy said, reaching for the barrel of the gun and placing it gingerly against his own forehead. “Do it now, while they still lookin’ for you from the last body.”

  He paused and pressed the gun more firmly against his forehead.

  “I just hope you know how you goin’ somewhere in a car with blood all inside the windows and a gun with at least two bodies on it.”

  Rock stared back at Ler
oy and decided to kill him. But as his finger began to tighten around the trigger, a police car rode slowly down Erie Avenue from Hunting Park. He lowered the gun, allowing the police car to pass, and eased his grip on the trigger. Then he glanced away from Leroy.

  “Man, you know I was just bullshittin’,” he said, grinning nervously. “Let’s get outta here.”

  Leroy stared at Rock for a second longer. Then he turned around, put the car in drive, and pulled off slowly, his jaw moving from side to side, as it always did when he took a hit. There was silence as everyone took in what had just occurred.

  Butter thought that it might be a good time to change the subject. All the gunplay was blowing his high. And in this, his first moment of clarity since the shooting, the thought of the white hand pulling back the curtain came roaring back to him in Technicolor. He could even see the heavy gold bracelet dangling from the wrist.

  “Yo, Rock,” he said suddenly. “You see a white boy come in the house tonight?”

  “No, I ain’t see no white boy tonight,” Rock said, his voice a little harder because Leroy had embarrassed him. “You know them white boys don’t come through after Friday. What, that shit got you hallucinatin’ again?”

  “I don’t know,” Butter said, but the image stayed in his mind as he handed Podres’s I.D. to Rock. “Throw this out the window on your side.”

  “All right,” Rock said, already feeling his authority slipping away. “Pull over by this sewer, Leroy.”

  Leroy pulled over. Rock got out, stood with his back to the car, and threw the I.D. and the gun holster into the sewer. But he stuck the gun back into his underwear.

  Rock, like everyone else in the car, knew that Leroy had just taken his heart—humiliated him in front of a woman. He couldn’t leave a slight like that unanswered. Not ever. So, while he realized that it would have been stupid to kill Leroy at that moment and in that place, Rock knew that when his chance came, he’d take it. He was one of the big boys now. He was a killer. And in his mind, he couldn’t allow anyone or anything to return him to the status of a mere piper.

  “Come on,” Pookie said, interrupting Rock’s thoughts.

  “Shut up, Pookie,” Rock said as he opened the back door and got in the car.

  Satisfied that Rock had thrown the gun and the I.D. into the sewer, Leroy pulled off, just as the police car that had passed them a moment before turned on its dome lights and made a U-turn.

  When Leroy looked in his rearview mirror and saw that the cop was following him, he floored it.

  Officer Harry Flannagan, a rookie assigned to the 39th District, had lucked out and been assigned to work steady last out, the midnight to eight A.M. shift that was coveted by most officers because it allowed for a somewhat regular life. That’s if being a constant target for bad guys with better guns can be viewed as regular.

  He learned during his first two months of duty that the things that happened on last out—burglaries, murders, and the like—weren’t discovered until the morning shift. And that shift, he learned, was manned by pissed-off guys who had to rotate every two weeks between eight to four and four to midnight. They weren’t like him, guys who slept on one schedule and saw their wives regularly. More often than not, the day-shift guys were the type of cops who would sooner bust somebody’s head than give them a ticket.

  Flannagan, on the other hand, was the type of guy who loved people. He distributed more warnings than tickets, and he generally gave people a break whenever he could. So when he passed three guys and a girl in a car that was parked on the side of the street, he figured they were just having some fun. And when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a guy get out of the car and throw some stuff down the sewer, he wasn’t immediately suspicious. But he took a second look when he saw the guy coming back to the car trying to stuff something in his waistband. And when Harry Flannagan had to take a second look, he knew it was always for a good reason.

  Flannagan hung a U-turn and picked up his handset to call for backup just as a message went out over the police radio for East and Northwest divisions.

  “Cars, stand by,” a dispatcher said. “Committed at Park Avenue and Pike Street within the last five minutes, a founded shooting. Suspects may have fled from Broad and Erie in a vehicle. No flash. All units use extreme caution when . . .”

  In the middle of the message, the car Flannagan was trying to stop suddenly darted toward Hunting Park Avenue. Flannagan couldn’t wait for the dispatcher to drone on anymore.

  “3910, priority!” Flannagan screamed into his handset to make it known that he had an emergency. “I’m in pursuit of a brown Impala, Pennsylvania license tag Tom Edward X-ray Andy Nathan, west on Erie from 21st.”

  “3910 is in pursuit of a brown Impala, license tag, TEXAN, west on Erie from 2-1,” the dispatcher repeated. “3910, occupants?”

  “Three black males, one black female, wanted for investigation at this time,” Flannagan said loudly.

  “What’s your location?”

  “West on Hunting Park from 2-7.”

  “39A, put me in, I’m at 2-6 and Hunting Park,” the sergeant said, joining the chase.

  “396, put me in, I’m at 2-8 and Pike, approaching Hunting Park.”

  “3910, I’m going north on Henry from Hunting Park.”

  The brown Impala turned at Roberts Avenue, and Flannagan skidded around the corner in pursuit.

  “East on Roberts from Henry,” Flannagan screamed into the radio as a popping sound erupted in the background. “3910!”

  The radio hissed for half a beat.

  “Shots fired!” Flannagan said loudly as the radio began to hiss and crackle again.

  “3910, your location!” the dispatcher said. “3910!”

  “3910, they’re . . .” There was another popping noise, then a loud crashing sound in the radio, followed by a tortured scream and an abrupt end to the transmission.

  “Cars, stand by,” the dispatcher said, flicking the switches that would allow her transmission to go out over every division. “Henry and Roberts, assist the officer, police by radio. Henry and Roberts, assist the officer, police by radio!”

  Every car within ten miles of 3910’s last location, except the ones that were still at the house at Park and Pike, started toward Henry and Roberts. It seemed like a hundred sirens went off at once.

  Leroy knew what the sirens meant. Every cop in Philadelphia would be looking for them now. They would know what they were driving and how many people were in the car, all because Rock had shot at that cop and made him crash.

  In his rearview mirror, Leroy could still see the flames from the police car shooting ominously toward the sky. If the cop hadn’t made it out of the car, he was either dead or so burnt up he would wish for death. Leroy knew what that meant, too. If he didn’t get that gun from Rock before he killed somebody else, and if he didn’t figure out a way to get out of Philadelphia before first light, they’d all be dead by daybreak.

  Cop killers don’t live long in Philadelphia.

  Chapter 3

  When Black was sure that the men weren’t coming back, he crept out the back door carrying a band saw, the microwave, a jigsaw, and a power drill. There was a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that separated the backyard from the alley, so he had to put the stuff in a plastic trash can cushioned with wrinkled newspapers, hoist it over the fence, and hope the mud in the alley would soften the fall and keep the stuff from breaking. He climbed over the fence after it, then carried the can to the wooden gate at the end of the alley and hoisted it up and over again, this time hoping a little harder that it wouldn’t break, since there was only a concrete sidewalk to cushion the fall. When it hit the ground, he picked up the can and set off for Tone’s house, looking over his shoulder once or twice to make sure no one was watching him.

  Tone, of course, was the dope man. With him, Black could sell the stuff for caps, get straight cash, or get half and half. That, and the fact that Tone had the best dope, made him option number one.
Pop Squaly, the other dope man, would pay in caps, no cash, so he was option number two. Option three was Mr. Paulem. He would pay in straight cash, but he was cheap. He would try to get the microwave, the band saw, the jigsaw, and the power drill for thirty dollars. Paulem was definitely a last resort.

  Having worked out his options, Black started toward Broad Street, heading for Tone’s. He was counting up how much the stuff would be worth when he turned the corner of 15th and hit Butler Street. That’s when he heard the sirens. There were dozens of them, twenty or thirty maybe, coming from every direction. For an instant he thought they might be coming for him, but he knew that if they were trying to catch a burglar, they would come maybe three or four cars deep, lights out and sirens off. There wouldn’t be twenty cars. And they certainly wouldn’t be coming from every direction. To be on the safe side, though, he carried the trash can to the curb, like it was garbage, and walked away from it. Anybody who hadn’t seen him climb over the fence would have thought he was taking out the trash—he hoped.

  After Black tucked the trash can safely behind a tree, he started walking toward Broad Street, trying hard not to look over his shoulder and get a clue as to what the hell was going on. Within five seconds a police car rolled past him, going the wrong way down Butler Street. A second later, another one flew up 15th Street toward Hunting Park, again in the wrong direction.

  “Somethin’ musta happened to a cop,” he mused to himself, “’cause ain’t no way in hell they rollin’ like that for no nigger.”

  Satisfied that they weren’t looking for him, Black went back to retrieve the trash can and walked quickly across Germantown Avenue to Broad Street, his mouth watering and his stomach flipping as he thought about that first hit. As he got closer to Lee’s Chicken, though, he noticed something odd, something that caused him to stop in his tracks. It was a rescue truck. And it was right in back of the house.

  Black knew that no one would call rescue for a piper. If anything, other smokers would shoot through his pockets to see if he had any more dope or any more money. Then they would leave him for dead. And if the cops happened to roll up and he wasn’t dead yet, they would do everything they could to finish the job. If they were nice, they might even lock him up. Or if they were really nice cops, they might take him to the hospital. But rescue?