“I can call-” Shit. Jenks remembered Wayne DelPrego’s phone had been cut off. “I can get it. Damn, Zach, you know I wouldn’t-”

“Shut your fucking mouth, nigger.”

“I’m just saying, you got to let me explain about-”

Zach lifted his foot and stomped his heel across Jenks’s mouth, mashed his lips against his teeth. Blood smeared down Jenks’s chin. One of his lower teeth was loose.

“Save the bullshit. You’re close to being a dead motherfucker, Harold Jenks. Now save your life and get my fucking cocaine.” Zach pressed the barrel of the pistol against Jenks’s head. “Or am I saying something too hard for you to understand? I think I’m saying some pretty simple shit here, but let me know if I’m going too fast for you.”

“I hear you,” Jenks said. His lips throbbed. “But it’s not here.”

“We know that, motherfucker. We already looked.”

“I can get it.”

And he would. You didn’t cross Red Zach. It was like a law of nature. The tides, the rotation of the Earth, the flow of time and Red Zach. Jenks had been crazy to try. Now he was looking at a pair of broken legs if he was lucky. A one-way trip to the bottom of a lake if he wasn’t.

“If you just wait an hour,” Jenks said, “I can bring you the stuff.”

Zach kicked him in the side of the head. Jenks went flat to the floor, bells going off in his head, his ear buzzing hot where the heel of Zach’s shoe had dug in.

“How fucking stupid you think I am?” Zach said. “You think I’m going to let you cut out again? You know how much trouble I had already tracking you down to this shithole, redneck town? I got a car around back. We’ll take you. Keep an eye on you the whole way.”

Red Zach’s stretch limo eased to a stop in front of Wayne DelPrego’s shabby trailer. The pickup was parked out front. Jenks had half hoped DelPrego would be gone. No such luck.

“I’ll go in and get it,” Jenks said.

“I’ll send one of my boys to keep you company,” Zach said. He nudged one of the bruisers, who got out of the limo.

Jenks got out too. He walked ahead, the bruiser right on his heels. “Yo. What’s your name?” Jenks asked.

“My name is Mr. Stomp-your-punk-ass if you trying anything,” said the gangster. “Just keep walking.”

As they passed the pickup, Jenks glanced into the bed. No gym bag.

Jenks climbed the three metal steps and knocked on the trailer door, the bruiser crowding him close from behind. Nobody answered. Jenks knocked again. He was sweating now, feeling a little dizzy. Come on Wayne, you dumb shit. These motherfuckers are going to bag my ass. Be home.

“Try the knob.” The bruiser shoved his shoulder.

“Okay, man. Take it easy.”

Jenks turned the knob, pushed. The door swung inward. The bruiser shoved again, and they both entered the trailer. Jenks thought about calling Wayne’s name but didn’t. The trailer smelled like burnt coffee. It was a cramped single-wide, the kitchen/dining room to the right, a narrow hall leading left.

“Where’s the coke?” the bruiser asked.

“We have to look for it.”

“Best get looking then.” The bruiser cracked his knuckles.

“Cool it, okay? Let me look around.”

“I’ll come with.”

They walked down the hall, and Jenks looked in two of the open doors, a dingy bathroom with a wad of dirty towels on the floor and a small bedroom full of junk. The door at the end of the hall was closed.

The bruiser crossed his arms behind Jenks; he was becoming bored with the situation. “Last door.”

“Uh-huh.” Jenks opened it, walked into the trailer’s master bedroom.

He turned and stood there, looking back through the door at the bruiser. He didn’t move.

“Well?” The bruiser looked at Jenks expectantly.

Jenks looked back at him, face blank.

“You just going to stand there, nigger?”

“I need you to help me move the bed. The stuff is in the floor underneath.”

“Move it your own damn self.”

“Don’t be like that. Help me move this.”

The bruiser sighed, walked into the bedroom. “I don’t get paid to be no-”

The golf club smacked into the side of the bruiser’s head with a sickening crunch. The bruiser stumbled forward, frantic, high-pitched screams jumping out of his throat. He tried to go into his jacket for his gun.

DelPrego leapt from his hiding spot beside his dresser, swung the club again in a long, overhand arc, brought it down with a loud thwack on top of the bruiser’s skull. The bruiser’s eyes rolled back. He pitched forward, landed facefirst, and didn’t move.

DelPrego’s eyes were wild and jittery. “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.” He knelt next to the bruiser and dropped the club, threw open the unconscious man’s jacket. An enormous automatic pistol hung from a shoulder holster. DelPrego drew it from the holster, held it up to his eyes. It said Desert Eagle.357 on the side. “Oh shit shit shit.”

Jenks said, “Goddamn. You whacked him good. I bet he’s dead.”

“Shit shit shit shit. I saw you guys coming, looked like trouble.” DelPrego’s eyes bounced between the dead man and the gun in his own hand. “I thought you needed help-this guy-I was just trying to help!”

DelPrego was wired, freaked out. Jenks shook him by the shoulder. “Wayne, listen to me. This guy’s just the tip of the motherfucking iceberg. You got a back door?”

DelPrego stood, grabbed his denim jacket off the bed. “This way.”

“Wait!” Jenks grabbed DelPrego’s arm. “Where’s the coke?”

“It ain’t here.”

“What!”

“I stashed it.” DelPrego jerked his arm away from Jenks. “Come on.”

He led Jenks back to the kitchen. On the way, Jenks glanced out the window. Zach’s other bruiser was out of the limo and coming toward the trailer.

“We got to hurry.”

DelPrego threw open the back door and jumped. No steps. Jenks followed, tumbled on the grass, but jumped up again quick. The backyard led to trees.

“Come on,” yelled DelPrego. He ran for the trees.

The other bruiser came around the far end of the trailer, gun drawn. He spotted Jenks.

Jenks followed DelPrego into the trees. Thick underbrush, limbs, and vines grabbing at Jenks’s arms and face.

“You’re dead, Jenks.” Shots tore through the trees, whipped overhead.

Jenks plunged after DelPrego farther into the bush. Jenks had thought this merely a stand of trees. He’d expected to come through them, emerge on the other side in another neighborhood, but this was deep, dark, no-shit jungle. He prayed DelPrego knew where he was going.

“Jenks!” More shots. But both shots and shouts were more distant now. Zach’s thug wasn’t following them into the woods.

Jenks didn’t slow down. He pumped his legs, dodged low-hanging branches trying to keep up with DelPrego. He’d never seen a white boy run so fast.

twenty-two

Maybe we should take a break,” Fred Jones said. “You seem distracted.”

“I’m sorry.” Morgan shuffled the stack of poems, set them aside. “I’m worried about one of my students. He wasn’t in class.” Neither Sherman Ellis nor Wayne DelPrego had shown for yesterday’s workshop. When Morgan had asked Timothy Lancaster about it, the young man simply looked nervous and denied knowing anything. And Lancaster sported a wicked bruise across the bridge of his nose.

Morgan hadn’t asked.

The university poetry reading was only a week away. He needed to get in touch with Ellis. Soon.

“Here.” Fred Jones handed a cellophane-wrapped cigar to Morgan. “It’s a Macanudo. Smoke it.”

“I don’t smoke, but thanks,” Morgan said.

“No, smoke it for me.” The old man folded his gnarled hands on the table in front of him. He had a long face, weary and slack with age. “Please,” he said again quietly. “The doctor don’t let me smoke ’em no more, but I like the smell. I ain’t smelled one in months and I’m going loopy.”