a sudden comeback with a quick flurry of jabs before the round ended and, in a savvy preemptive move, raised her hands in victory despite getting pounded for most of round two.
Asya Roc told Junot he’d be right back and strutted over to where D and Ice stood. “I see you guys got acquainted and shit.”
“Yeah,” D said, a little irritated by the kid’s tough-guy tone.
“So,” the MC said, “let’s do this.”
Ice nodded and started past the ring with Asya behind him and D bringing up the rear. Asya Roc didn’t completely owe D an explanation—it was for-hire work, after all. Show up and guard the fool. But making D part of a gun deal wasn’t in his job description. This was felony shit. No plea bargain. Mandatory sentences. A gun deal transacted in the back of an illegal fight club was just plain reckless.
They went through a metal door and into a storage area converted into a dressing room where a bunch of the fighters were in various states of undress and activity. One woman was removing tape from her hand. Another was squeezing her red-tinted weave under headgear. Another was making out with a boyish little teenaged girl. They paid scant attention to the three men.
The trio entered a small washroom—toilet, stall, urinal, sink—all of it grimy. The room smelled like mildew stirred in a blender with vomit. D knew this was about the worst place imaginable for this transaction. One way in and out. No windows. No backup. D was cool with Ice—they had a serious bond—but would Ice have set up a jack move on this sucker MC before he knew D was on the case?
Ice took the backpack off his shoulder and handed it to Asya Roc, who unzipped it greedily. Two Berettas. A Desert Eagle. A couple boxes of bullets.
“Yes,” Asya Roc said. He stuck his hands in the backpack and pulled out the two Berettas and held them up like Eastwood in Josey Wales. Ice rolled his eyes at D.
At that moment, the door burst open and a pint-sized kid with a red bandanna covering everything but his eyes stuck out a Glock like it was shit on a stick. “Yo—”
Before he got his second word out, D slammed the door on his arm twice. The gun dropped from the kid gangsta’s skinny arm, but the bullet in the chamber discharged when the weapon hit the floor and lodged itself in Ice’s thigh.
“Stupid motherfucker!” Ice yelled as he fell backward into the toilet stall.
Asya Roc now had the two guns out and was trying to jimmy the safety on one of them. “I’m shooting my way out!” he shouted.
D reached over and slapped Asya Roc silly with his right hand, took the guns out of his hand with his left. He dropped them both back into the backpack, grabbed the MC by the collar, and kicked the door open. The dressing room had cleared.
“Yo, get the fuck off me!” Asya said.
“Shut up,” D shot back, pushing his face near the MCs, “and live.” D grabbed him around the waist, damn near picking the kid up, and peered into the main room.
If anyone out there had heard the shot they didn’t show it. The next bout was underway and most eyes were on the ring. All the people who’d been in the “dressing room” had evaporated save the kissing couple who were holding hands just outside the door.
“Where the others?” D asked.
The boyish one replied, “I didn’t see no one else, but I do need glasses.”
To Asya Roc, D said, “You stay behind me. When I say run, you haul ass.”
The MC, bravado on mute, murmured, “Yeah.” His eyes darted uneasily around the room.
They moved past the ring, D guarding the MC like Mom on her kid’s first day of school.
Junot walked up to D. “Yeah,” he said, “you better get him out of here. Niggas is talkin’.”
“They’re doing more than that.”
“Oh, that’s what that was,” Junot said with a half-smile. “Thought it was outside.”
“You like this clown enough to help us out?” D asked.
Junot glanced over at the MC. “You know I like his money.”
“Okay,” D said. “I’ll make sure you get hit off.” He needed another set of eyes. He wasn’t sure if he trusted Junot, but in a room of treacherous people, one semihonest Negro was an asset.
The current fight was a furious affair, both women tossing blows with video-game vigor. Most eyes still seemed to be on the match, but D knew better. There had to be someone else. A couple of someones in fact. These kids ran in packs. That punk with the gun was on some initiation mission, no doubt about that, but there was rarely a lone gunman in the hood. D searched for signs of imminent danger, trying to separate mere curiosity from larcenous intent.
And then they were outside. The Denali was parked right out front and the driver, a wavy-haired Dominican in his thirties, hopped out and opened the door for Asya Roc.
A cutie in black stretch pants and a brunette with a bone straight-haired weave intercepted the MC. Immediately Asya, out on the street and seemingly out of danger, started kicking it to her.
D noticed another jeep, a ragged-looking late-model Range Rover with illegally tinted front windows, parked across the street and down the block. He snatched up Asya again, tossed him into the backseat.
“What the fuck!”
“Get him out of here!” D said to the driver. “Do it right now!”
“What about you?” the driver asked.
“Just get him to JFK!” D replied before slamming the door shut.
Asya Roc rolled down his window. “What about my package?”
“I’m gonna hold it.”
When the Denali pulled off, D stood looking at the beat-down Range Rover. He held the bag over his head a moment. They’d want the guns, D was certain about that. He’d taken a risk not getting in the truck, but holding onto the bag was the only way to find out for sure.
Once the Denali was out of sight, the Range Rover jerked off the curb. Then it stopped. D imagined an animated conversation underway behind the tinted windows. Not awaiting its resolution, he started down the block, away from the club and deep into Brownsville.
D walked fast but didn’t run. While the guys inside the jeep decided what to do, he opened the bag and looked inside at the three guns and the boxes of shells. How many bodies were on these? How’d they get here? Up I-95 from Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia? Maybe they came cross-country from Colorado or Texas? If his client’s prints weren’t on at least two of them, he would have tossed them in the trash and kept moving. D was about to reach in and start wiping them down with his shirt when a shot zipped over his head. He tucked the bag under his arm like a football and turned the corner like Adrian Peterson.
At Howard Street, D ducked into the crook of a doorway. He wished he’d run in the other direction, toward the Broadway Junction station where he could have hopped on the A, C, or J, or even to Atlantic Avenue where there was an LIRR stop. Either
