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Part 4

thirty-four

Moses Duncan unlocked the door to his dark little farht behind hiry He felt for the light switch

Then the hands

They grabbed him from all directions; Eddie too Moses tried to twist away and earned a fist on the side of the head

A voice "Be still, bitch"

He was thrown to the floor, facedown A kick in the ribs Moses whuffed air, heard Eddie hts

"Damn," Moses shouted "Take what you want"

"Shut the fuck up" Another kick, but halfhearted this time

A black rinned, no hu his body, keeping him pinned down He wouldn&039;t have tried to move anyway He froze, kept his mouth shut, waited to be told what to do

"They call me Red Zach You heard of me?"

"No, sir," Moses said He chanced a look, swiveled his eyes around the room A bunch of coons Hell Just his luck Some kind of damn poetic justice maybe to die in the hands of a mob of coons Maybe they ith that Ellis son of a bitch Maybe they knew Moses had been looking to splatter some buckshot across Ellis&039;s face, and these coons were here to kill hi with those thite guys Theroom was strictly an all-coon outfit Hell and shit

"Well, you going to hear a lot more about oing to get acquainted because you work for me now"

Moses opened his mouth to protest, but a heavy hand on the back of his head pushed hiainst his upper lip A trickle of blood

"Think of this like a hostile corporate takeover," Zach said "Just how hostile is up to you, but oing to work for no goddaer coon in a purple pirave But he shut up and kept his ears open

So next to his head, a suitcase He looked at it from the corner of his eye It was his, the one he used to stash his h the whole house Maybe even found the sawed-off, single-shot410 he kept duct-taped to the back of the toilet in case somebody came at him when he was on the crapper

"The bad news," Zach told him, "is that your freelance days are over You answer to Red Zach now That piss you off? I see it in your eyes Don&039;t try to hide it Good I&039; for me But I don&039;t want no fools either You play it smart and it works out for everybody You hear what I&039; "I hear you"

"Good," Zach said "Now here&039;s the part oing to do a lot ot in your little suitcase here We going to talk about soe town here Ripe I&039;ll show you hoork it So your territory, I send my boys down, stomp it out quicker than a forest fire You see the potential?"

Moses said that he saw

"You got any objections?" Zach asked "Can you see any reason this business arrangement won&039;t be htened just slightly

"Sounds like a good deal to uy&039;s face?"

It took Moses a second to understand he&039;d et up now?" asked Moses

"Nope We got just oneto talk about first"

"Okay"

Zach softened his voice, friendly, put his hand on Moses&039;s shoulder "I think a brotherscore A shitload of premium coke Why don&039;t you telland don&039;t leave anything out"

thirty-five

Don&039;t you ever go stir-crazy in here, un in yourbrains out?" Jenks asked

Tad Valentine scratched his wild, white beard and considered the question This Sher cooped up He&039;d offered histon Hughes or Etheridge Knight that Valentine mistakenly believed would appeal to Ellis/Jenks&039;s ethnicity

But the young man had instead latched on to a copy of Jerzy Kosinski&039;s The Painted Bird The novel&039;s nonstop atrocity fest seemed to hold a special horrified fascination for him Jenks frequently consulted a Webster&039;s Dictionary between chapters Valentine decided-not for the first time-that he was simply not in tune with the multicultural complexities of today&039;s youth Ellis/Jenks puzzled hi and part of a world that did not need or want men like Valentine They wanted MTV and PlayStation and the Internet and soft drink cos that scared the hell out of Valentine

And this young black man made him nervous, on the laather It wasn&039;t that he disliked Ellis/Jenks But the kid was a bold sy out there, and noanted to hide in here Valentine worried Ellis/Jenks would bring the world and its troubles with him

And just what the hell was the kid&039;s name anyway? Sherman Ellis or Harold Jenks It seemed there was a halfhearted effort under way to conceal the o had started with Sherradually abandoned it for Harold Jenks

Valentine had decided to think of the black kid as Sharold Jenkis It seemed a reasonable compromise

"Sometimes," Valentine said

Jenks looked up frootten that he&039;d asked Valentine a question

"Soun in my mouth But it&039;s not because I&039; out there" He pointed at the rest of the world through the dirtyThe glass was badly sed

Jenks looked out the"It&039;s just a parking lot"

"Ho today?"

"Snuck out," Jenks said "He&039;s stir-crazy too"

"It wouldn&039;t fit anyway," Valentine said

"Say what?"

"The gun I couldn&039;t get it intoone A thinly padded bench ran the length beneath it He flipped the lid, hinges squealing, and pulled out three and a half feet of soain and set the bundle on top, peeled away the cloth slowly, and revealed a long, double-barreled shotgun

"It&039;s a twenty-gauge," Valentine said "I wouldn&039;t be able to reach the trigger"

Jenks set the book aside, caave it to raduation present We hunted duck quite often before I went off to New Haven" He picked up the shotgun, cradled it lovingly, broke it in half, and looked down each barrel "Still clean"

The darkly polished wood gleamed, ornate silver scrollwork An expensive firearm Valentine had not held the weapon in over a year The cold metal in his hand sparked a e over the lake The lastbefore Valentine had left for the East His father had wanted hiun, the private lake, Valentine&039;s education Father had been bitterly disappointed when his son turned poet Poet The word had struck his father like a toot-slacker to an Oklahoma oil man His father had died before the Pulitzer Prize, before the New York Tiun froo reluctantly, watched Jenks sight along the barrel

"What you shoot with this?"

"Ducks," Valentine said "Or geese"

"What you use?" asked Jenks "Slugs?"

"If you want to scatter the bird across the county"

Jenks&039;s eyes shifted back to the bench seat "Any shells in there?"

Valentine followed Jenks&039;s gaze to the bench seat He looked back at Jenks and said, "I&039;ve made it a point not to pry into your business"

"Good"

"Buton, eh? Perhaps I could even help"

Jenks bit the end of his thu pause, he shook his head "I think you&039;d rather not know"

Valentine lifted an eyebrow

"But I appreciate it," Jenks said "Thanks for lettingto showme look at Painted Bird It&039;s wasted on "

"Education is never a waste on anyone," Valentine said