Morgan lay on his bed, drew deeply from the joint. Eyes closed, he held the smoke inside, let it out slowly. A boom box on the bureau played low, a Best of the Delfonics cassette. After a while the pain in his stomach began to fade.
He was almost out of Vicodin, didn’t want to go back into them tonight. He kept a small stash of reefer in the room but only smoked at night, when he was alone and the pain grew too much. Then he would double-lock the door, the Beretta on the nightstand, let the smoke carry him away.
He pinched the roach out, set it in the nightstand ashtray, felt himself slipping into sleep. When he woke, he could hear the muffled thump of music from the club across the street. He went to the window, looked out. A man stood on the corner below, cell phone to his ear. A dark BMW with tinted windows was parked half a block down.
Morgan had lived in this residential hotel for five years, paid seven hundred in cash every month and another hundred on top of that to the manager, to let him know if anyone came around or asked about him. He’d installed his own dead bolts in the door, kept the only keys. His second-floor room looked out over the front entrance, which was why he’d chosen it. From the window, he could see anyone coming or going from the building.
His mouth was dry, cottony, but he was hungry, too. There was a sink in one corner of the room, and he ran water, waited for it to clear, and then drank from the faucet, spit it out, and drank more. He got his cell out-thirty minutes left and he would toss it, buy another-and called in an order to the Chinese restaurant down the block.
His was one of the few rooms with its own bathroom-a toilet and shower stall in a space no larger than a closet, the door barely clearing the seat. Morgan stripped, looked at himself in the mirror. His stomach was loose and sagging, had once been rippled with muscle. His chest hair was mostly gray, a few shiny black ones still hiding in there. He touched his scars. The keloid near his left shoulder where he’d been shot in 1988, the year the crack wars had hit the city. The puckered flesh below his right nipple from being shanked in the chow line at Rahway. Low on his right side, the most recent one, a three-inch mark where they’d removed his appendix.
He showered, dressed, put on the leather coat, the Beretta under it in back. He went out, locked the door behind him. The stairwell smelled of mold and stale fried food. The lobby was empty, no one behind the bulletproof glass at the registration desk. That bothered him.
At the front door, he scanned the street. The man with the cell was gone. The BMW, too.
He went outside, the air cold and clear, crossed the street, and headed up the block to Halsey. He kept the Monte Carlo in a parking garage two blocks away, paid another hundred and fifty a month for that, but he used the car only when he had to.
He turned right at the corner. The restaurant was the only lit storefront on the block, the front windows steamed. Two teenagers stood outside talking on cell phones, wearing puffy coats, long white T-shirts, baggy jeans. One cut a look at Morgan as he crossed the street, then went back to his conversation.
A handful of tables inside, all empty. The Asian woman behind the register-she could have been twenty-five or fifty-five, he couldn’t tell-put his bagged food on the counter without speaking. He paid her, waved off the change, the same ritual every time.
The bag was warm against his left side as he went out. His stomach rumbled with hunger. The teenagers were gone, the street empty. He looked up toward the corner of Halsey. A police car passed by, going fast.
He crossed the street in the opposite direction from which he’d come, taking the long way back. He cut across a vacant lot and into the narrow alley that ran behind it. Abandoned warehouses here, loading docks with graffiti-covered metal gates. A rat scuttled out of an overturned trash can, ran from him along the alley wall.
He stopped a few feet into the alley, turned to listen. Nothing. Kept going.
After two blocks, the alley grew wider. Now it ran behind a row of old houses with small bare yards, low wooden fences. He’d walk up to Mulberry, make a right, double back to the hotel.
He heard the noise then, a slight scuffing far behind him, back by the warehouses.
To his right was a house, the back window lit. A white sheet hung from a clothesline strung between dead trees. He stepped over the fence into the shadows of the yard, moved behind the sheet. There were cutout Halloween decorations in the window: a cat with an arched back, a jack-o’-lantern.
The noise again, then a low voice. The chirp of a cell phone being used as a walkie-talkie.
He set the bag on the ground, got the Beretta out, held it at his side. The chirp again, then silence. He waited.
Five minutes later, the man came up the alley after him, into the light wash from the back window. He wore a black watch cap, baggy denim. Morgan saw the three tattooed dog paws on the side of his neck.
The man looked at the house, then back the way he’d come. Morgan could see the automatic in his right hand. The other held the cell. He lifted it to his face. It chirped. He spoke low.
“Nah, man. He gone. He must be out on Mulberry by now. Bring the car around.” He clicked the phone shut, looked at the house.
Morgan followed his glance. There was a boy-nine or ten at most-looking out the window, his arms folded on the sill. He watched the man without expression.
Black Cap lowered the gun so it was hidden at his side. He said, “Hello, little man,” and then Morgan stepped out from behind the sheet, raised the Beretta, and shot him through the head.
He fell without a sound, the quick spinal looseness of instant death. Morgan stepped over the fence, looked back down the alley the way he’d come. There was a figure there, moving toward him, an outline against the streetlights at the far end. Morgan raised the Beretta, fired, heard the bullet whine off pavement. The figure leaped, hit and hugged the ground. Morgan turned and ran.
Mulberry was in sight, a block ahead. He headed for it, pain in his chest, and then the BMW screeched to a halt at the alley entrance, half on the sidewalk. He saw the back driver’s side window roll down, the shotgun barrel come out. He fired at it twice, heard bullets punch metal, break glass.
There was a gap between the front bumper and the alley wall. He made it through, ran across Mulberry toward an empty lot, heard the engine roar, tires squeal behind him.
Another alley here, close walls and cracked blacktop. He ran, tripped, went down hard, the Beretta flying from his hand, skittering across the ground.
He lay on the blacktop, out of breath, the pain an iron band around his stomach and sides. The far end of the alley was about thirty feet ahead. He looked toward it but could not move. He looked behind him, back down the alley to the street beyond. The BMW was gone.
He sucked in air, felt the pain in his chest, rolled onto his side. His left palm was bloody where he’d tried to break his fall. Bits of gravel were embedded in the skin.
He got to his feet, looked around until he found the Beretta. He shuffled toward it, one hand on the wall for support. When he bent to pick it up, dizziness swept over him. He leaned against the wall until it ended. He could hear distant sirens.
When he reached the end of the alley, the street was empty. Still breathing hard, he waited in the shadows. A cab went past slow, stopped at a light. He slipped the Beretta into his right-hand coat pocket, stepped out into the street.
Morgan sat in the Monte Carlo, the Beretta on the seat beside him, the pain like a hot coal in his stomach.
He was parked a block down from his hotel, could see the BMW just around the corner up ahead, exhaust curling from its tailpipe, waiting.
He got his cell out, speed-dialed.
C-Love answered. “Yo.”
“I have a situation here. I can’t go back to my place.”
Silence for a moment.
“Where you at?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is I need a place to go.”
“I hear you. Hold on.”
When C-Love came back on he said, “Big Man says he can fix you up. You driving?”
“Yeah.”
“Know that motel by the airport, one we party at sometimes?”
“I know it.”
“He gonna call ahead, get a room for you. You go there, park around the back. Manager gonna give you the key, ain’t gonna say anything else. You hang there till one of us call you back. You need anything?”
Morgan thought about what he’d left in the room. Some clothes, his pills, the boom box, about half his tapes. The others were in the car. The cash he’d taken from Rohan and the thousand Mikey had given him were in a safe deposit box at his bank, with the rest of his money. He had nothing else.
He looked at the BMW.
“Nah,” he said. “I’m good.”
“See you there, then,” C-Love said and ended the call.
Morgan closed the cell, then started the engine, U-turned away from the curb. He watched the BMW in his rearview. It didn’t move.
He switched on the stereo, the cassette player clicking on. Walter Jackson singing that his ship was coming in. He turned it louder. Drove with one hand on the gun.