Five minutes later they were back. The redheaded astronaut bent down to pick or pop the lock on the grate and rolled it up while the other pretended to consult a clipboard. On a job, wearing the clothes of a waiter or porter gave Pepper free passage among white people. Same way a white man in an official-looking uniform in a Negro neighborhood can get into a lot of places, no sweat. A cop uniform sends one message, a utility man’s another, long as they’re not there to turn off the electricity. The redheaded astronaut picked the front door without a fuss and his companion wheeled a metallic box over the threshold. Acetylene torch, most likely.
Once inside, their movements turned slow and they entered the hunt. In tandem: one step, pause and survey, another step. The redhead taking Carney’s office and the blond heading for Marie’s. Halfway into the store, the blond let go of the box and the both of them reached for their pistols, Colt Cobras. They continued toward the back of the store with predatory attention.
Pepper was at a disadvantage in that he was not armed. His last gun had been the throwaway he used in the hijack, and he’d last seen it on the floor of Dootsie Bell’s Cadillac before Dootsie dumped him in front of Harlem Hospital. Pepper had a meet-up with Billy Bill scheduled that evening to buy a piece. What he had on hand now was a baseball bat and a hunting knife.
The bat to start. Pepper popped the redhead below the rib cage with the head of the baseball bat, then brought it down with gruesome force on the base of the man’s skull. He’d left the office door ajar and pounced when the man got in range, had the astronaut seeing stars. There were scarce seconds before his scream attracted his partner. Go for the gun or use the fallen astronaut? The Colt Cobra had bounced and skittered on the floor—where? The sounds of its passage had muffled, so across the rug. No time to scramble for it.
Pepper pressed the hunting knife to the redhead’s throat when the other one appeared in the doorway. His body was half shielded by the redhead. A certain kind of man would have fired anyway, but the blond wasn’t that breed.
“Move on back, buddy,” Pepper said. The redhead yelped as Pepper increased the pressure on his neck. “We’re getting up, right?” They rose. Pepper sensed the man trying to figure out his opening. He steered him a foot closer to the entrance. The astronaut moved deliberately, to force an opportunity. Pepper reached out to slam the office door shut and rammed the man into it. He hit the button on the doorknob to lock it.
The astronaut elbowed Pepper in the stomach, then slugged him in the jaw. Pepper had been protecting his stomach where he got stabbed, angling his body, and it gave the man his chance. The other man tried the lock, then rammed his shoulder into the door to break it down. The redhead tackled Pepper and brought him down.
The office window shattered inward before the weight of the Collins-Hathaway ottoman the other astronaut hurled against it. The blinds were twisted up. The rug: Pepper saw the butt of the fallen pistol. So did the redhead. They crawled over each other to get it. Pepper got there first and twisted and fired at the shape in the office window. He missed. He brought the butt down on the redhead’s cranium.
Last time it was bloodstains on the man’s rug, this time his window.
The window gaped. “Cool it, baby,” Pepper said. “Anything pops up, I’m shooting it.” He got ahold of the redheaded astronaut and continued to address the man’s partner. “You get on back to the front window. I’m coming out with this motherfucker.” He instructed the redhead to open the office door.
It was odd—the white man’s silhouette against the 125th Street scene, which proceeded as if their violent drama did not exist. On the opposite sidewalk, a teenage girl tried to master her Hula-Hoop. The gunshot hadn’t attracted the stepped-up police patrols. So far.
From the way he aimed the gun, the blond astronaut’s ambitions lay in the vicinity of a headshot. Maybe two in the belly as a chaser.
“You can drop that,” Pepper said. “Unless you want to leave him here.”
The astronaut bent low to place the gun on the floor and put his hands up.
“Now get the fuck out of here,” Pepper said.
The message had been delivered, as the young people of Harlem liked to say.
* * *
*
Carney saw the broken glass and ran to his office phone. Elizabeth didn’t answer. At the store, the park, no telling.
“I know a guy who’ll buy the torch, you don’t want it,” Pepper said.
“The what?”
“Over there. They were going to torch the safe.” He paused. “No, J.J. got pinched. I’m sure there’s another guy.”