LIGHTNING ON THE SUN by Robert Bingham

Author:Robert Bingham [Bingham, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

chapter eight

WITH HIS FINE NINE tucked between his leg and the front seat of his Lincoln, Dwayne and Julie drove up the Henry Hudson Parkway.

“I thought we were going to Brooklyn,” she said.

“How it is, before these gentlemen used to operate out of the Greenpoint area, see,” said Dwayne. “But then one of ’em got, you know, got busted, so they moved to a different hood in Harlem. You got the stuff? ’Cause they know we’re coming and if you don’t got the stuff—”

“I got the stuff.”

Internally she was chanting, the aesthetics of love, the morality of business, over and over again. It had become her mantra. It helped calm her. She was wearing a pair of green hospital orderly pants with a pull tie, an oldie from a guy even before Asher, and a black T-shirt that said CAT POWER. Between her legs was the largest handbag she could find on sale at Bloomingdale’s. It held five kilos of heroin.

“How much you step on it? I hope you didn’t step on it too much ’cause these gentlemen are the ones who do the stepping, you know what I’m saying.”

“It’ll be worth their while,” she said.

The math had been very simple. She’d gone to a stupid head shop in Soho and bought a scale. Then she’d taken Asher’s three kilos and turned it into five with cornstarch. Her deal with Dwayne was 10 percent and silence. With the lights of the George Washington Bridge in sight, they turned off the highway and found themselves heading east on 157th Street. Marks of weariness, marks of woe, thought Julie. Blake. Now there was a man who understood the hallucinatory horrors of a city. Lonely black men with bagged bottles wandered the streets. The sun had set and dusk was quickly handing itself over to the night.

“So, how is this going to go down, Dwayne?”

“Very simple. I go in with the stuff. They check it out. We get the money. We leave.”

“No, that is not how it will go down. If that were to be the scenario, you’d leave and I’m left with your criminal car while you fly to Cabo.”

“What the fuck is Cabo?”

“Cabo San Lucas. You know, where O.J. Simpson used to hang out. You know O.J., right?”

Dwayne didn’t say anything. He was wondering how the Haitians would take to a white lady. He looked over at her.

“So you want to come in.”

“No, I don’t want to come in. I will come. See, I’m the principal in this deal.”

“Baby, you’re white as milk and these gentlemen are Haitians. Like, they don’t know you.”

“Where do they live?”

“Off St. Nicholas.”

St. Nicholas. Julie decided not to linger on the irony. She was too scared.

“Yeah, few years back, the area got busted so many times the cops, they forgot about it now. The place is old school.”

“Great. We’re going to hang out with a bunch of Baby Doc Duvaliers at St. Nicholas. They better have the money.”

When she first moved to New York, she’d had an affair with a Haitian.

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