The Corner III (No Way Out) (10 page)

“What’s up?”

“That thing for tonight, I just got confirmation that it’s on. We need to meet like right now.”

“I’m on my way,” Styles said then pressed the end button. He slipped on his shirt. Clipped his gun and badge on his hip then said, “I love your ass. If I didn’t, I would have let them feds take you along with that dope. I’ll see you tonight.”

Trish listened as Styles’ engine to his Charger roared and the tires screeched as he pulled off. She checked to see who it was that had called her. When she heard Slim’s, voice she smiled then whispered, “Marcellus, I see you know how and when to brighten my day.”

3

“Anyone who doesn’t understand, really doesn’t give a fuck about you”—LUCKY

As the Cadillac Escalade cruised up Michigan Avenue, Lucky stared out the passenger’s side window. He was in deep thought. He didn’t care much for doctors, but he’d been feeling tired lately and knew that it was the cancer.

“What are you thinking about?” Jamel asked, only taking his eyes off the heavy Chicago traffic for a second.

“Life, youngin’. Life,” Lucky told him as he continued his gaze at all the common folk. People who worked nine to five, shift work, or were struggling to make ends meet from unemployment that was about to run out.

Those are real people; they are the backbone to this city. I’ve been getting rich, but have been tearing the city apart.
Lucky thought to himself.

Jamel said nothing. He was Lucky’s personal driver and knew when to keep quiet. He knew all about Lucky’s cancer and thought Lucky had beaten it. But here he was, downtown, turning the cream-colored luxury SUV into a parking garage of one of the buildings that helped make up the scenic Chicago skyline.

“Where do you plan to be five years from now?” Lucky asked Jamel.

 Jamel, who was dressed in casual jeans and a button down, attire he wore when driving Lucky, looked confused. “What’s that, Luck?” he asked.

They stood in front of an elevator waiting for it to come down so they could go up to the twenty-first floor where Lucky’s doctor’s office was. When the elevator door opened, two professionally dressed middle-aged Caucasian women walked out then an African-American man in his late fifties. He had a head full of grey hair and looked to be in good shape. When Lucky noticed the man, he smiled excitedly. “Fight Doctor, damn, it’s been a long time!” he said.

They held each other’s arms and looked one another over.

“Lucky, how’s it been?” he asked.

“Can’t complain. I’m living and you?”

“It’s going. Just here getting checked out. Had a lump. It’s gone now. Went through chemotherapy and now everything’s…good.” Fight Doctor hesitated because he realized that Lucky may have been going up the elevator to the same doctor. “You?” he asked nodding his head upward.

“Yeah, but you know me. Can’t nothing hold me down. By the way, you still training fighters? Got any Golden Gloves prospects down at the gym?”

Fight Doctor finally noticed Jamel, who had noticed him as soon as he had exited the elevator.

An expensively dressed Asian young man asked, “Are you guys going up?”

Lucky waved him off, letting him know to go ahead.

The doors to the elevator closed, that’s when Fight Doctor said, “You have one of the best prospects standing right behind you.”

Surprised, Lucky said, “Oh, yeah?”

“How’s it going, Jamel?” Fight Doctor asked.

“Nothing, just chillin’,” Jamel said feeling embarrassed.

At seventeen, Jamel was one of the top boxing prospects in the city. Not too many people knew about him because the people at Southeast Side Gym were keeping him a secret. They knew what they had in the one hundred and fifty-five pound fighter. Lightning speed and the power of a young man twenty pounds heavier. But the fast life of hustling pulled the young man to the dark side, and he never looked back.

Fight Doctor nodded his head up and down, saying, “
Just chilling
, okay. Well, Lucky, I gotta get going. It was good seeing you.”

They hugged.

“Good seeing you, too.”

Lucky had caught the vibe his old friend had sent. Fight Doctor knew of Lucky’s lifestyle and never approved of it, but it was Lucky’s thing so he never said anything about it. But the look Fight Doctor had on his face said that he figured Lucky had pulled Jamel into the fast life and ruined the young man’s possibility at a career in boxing. Fight Doctor and Lucky had known each other since they were kids living in the Robert Taylor homes. It was a notorious housing project where most kids ended up on the wrong side of the tracks. Fight Doctor took to boxing while Lucky relished the fast money and women the hustle of the streets provided. A pro career was on the horizon for Fight Doctor, but was never to be after a good left hook to the eye from Irish Davey Ryan. His eye socket had cracked, and his eye was injured leaving his peripheral vision in his right eye damaged. Fight Doctor could have felt sorry for himself and gone to the streets and sold cocaine and heroin, but he decided that wasn’t the route for him. He decided to train and made a name for himself as a trainer who could get the best out of fighters. When a lot of his fighters in the late eighties and nineties began selling drugs instead of fighting their way out of the ghetto, he became upset since it was some of his childhood friends behind the drugs being put on the street—Lucky was one of them.

Fight Doctor was walking away, but Lucky stopped him. Without Jamel hearing, Lucky asked his old friend for his number. That he wanted to get Jamel back in the gym to see what he could do. Fight Doctor tried his best to suppress his excitement as he handed Lucky his card, knowing that Jamel was one of the best fighters he’d ever seen. The two men hugged then Fight Doctor was on his way.

The ride on the elevator was quiet. Lucky didn’t say a word to Jamel, and the young man knew what his boss was thinking. Lucky had heard from Noonie and the others that Jamel boxed in the police athletic league when he was ten years old, but no one said anything about him boxing with Fight Doctor. Lucky had assumed Jamel had boxed a year or two when he was young when they talked about him fighting in PAL. They stepped out of the elevator and the short walk down the hallway brought them to Dr. Ali’s office. The young receptionist smiled when she saw Lucky and greeted him, then noticed that he wasn’t his cheery self. After handing him the clipboard so he could sign in, she asked, “Mr. Davis, is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Michelle. I just have a couple of things on my mind. How have things been? Has that young man asked you to marry him, yet?”

Michelle chatted with Lucky whenever she could when he visited the office, had one day rambled about how she’d been with her boyfriend for six years, and he still hadn’t popped the question. She was an attractive sista in her mid-twenties who made decent money as a receptionist for the doctor. She had just received her degree in education and had a job lined up to teach at a middle-school on the north side.

Lucky signed his name then handed Michelle the clipboard. “Don’t wait too long, Michelle.”

Surprised at Lucky’s statement, she said, “Excuse me, Mr. Davis.”

Lucky usually simply listened to her. He was never one to give a person advice about their love life, but lately he’d been realizing that people were wasting a lot of time in life with the things they were doing.

“Michelle, you told me that your man was working full time for Jameson Construction, that his father was a foreman for the company for years and got him the job when he got out of high school. He’s been working there for nearly ten years. Construction work is usually twelve hour days and off in the winter. You said that he has a towing and snow removal service that he runs during that down time. You’re finished with college and start teaching the sixth grade this year. Money isn’t the issue, and you two have been together for years, so if there’s one thing I do know. It doesn’t take a man ten years to know if he wants to marry a woman.” Lucky coughed. “Excuse me. All I’m saying is, don’t waste too much time. You can never get it back.”

Michelle smiled then said, “Thank you, Mr. Davis.”

Lucky sat next to Jamel who was reading an Esquire magazine he’d picked up off the table. He picked up a Time magazine then Jamel asked, “I wonder why they don’t have black magazines in here.”

Lucky said, “Because a diverse group of people come here. Besides, most of the magazines in here are giving knowledge.” He pointed to the table. “Time, Newsweek, People. You have Sports Illustrated for the sport guy and Cosmopolitan for the women.”

“White women,” Jamel added.

Lucky smiled because Jamel was right. “That Esquire you have in your hand, men with money subscribe to that. You can learn from some of the articles, and it also has money making ideas in it. Ways for a man to prosper.”

“You didn’t need this magazine and you make mad loot.”

“Mr. Davis,” Doctor Ali said as he stood in the doorway to his office. He was all smiles and ready to see Lucky. Usually it wasn’t the doctor who called you to the back and that made Lucky slightly nervous.

When Lucky stood, he felt a sharp pain in his gut, and it wasn’t from the cancer. It was from Jamel’s statement. He knew that the young man looked up to him. That a lot of young people who were on his team did. It was the second time in less than thirty minutes that he’d been reminded that he was doing more harm than good. And he was coming to the realization that it was time for change.

Lucky shook hands with the doctor then exited his office. He had been with the doctor for about forty minutes. He’d had a couple of x-rays taken, blood drawn and a talking to from the doctor. Lucky’s health hadn’t changed. The cancer in his lungs hadn’t spread, but it was still there. The doctor again recommended chemotherapy, but Lucky wasn’t having it. He was thinking if God was ready to take him, it was his time. He just hoped that he could do some good before he left the earth. If he had to pay for his sins by dancing with the devil, he was ready.

Jamel and Lucky were at the exit of the parking garage. Jamel paid the attendant, the arm rose, he and Lucky were on their way. The sky was cloudy, and a light rain began to fall. Lucky remembered when he was a young boy, and his grandmother used to say that it was God crying. He remembered asking her since God could do anything, why would he be crying? A smile painted his face when he thought about her telling him to shut up, that he thinks too much.

Lucky glanced at Jamel then asked, “You still have your equipment?”

“Huh?” Jamel asked wondering if he’d heard Lucky correctly.

“Huh? If you can huh, you can hear. You heard me,” Lucky said.

Jamel said, “Nah, threw it away.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Man, this one Mexican kid. He was from the east side. I read in the paper where he had made Golden Gloves and was fighting to make the Olympics. He’d made the Pan Am games and everything,” Jamel said as he clicked the power up on the wiper blades as the rain began to fall heavily.

Not sure where the young man was going, Lucky asked, “What does that have to do with the question I asked you?”

“When I saw that shit, I got pissed and threw my gear away. Well, let me take it back. I just gave it to this one shorty in the ’hood who wanted to box. I was pissed because I had beaten that Mexican dude’s ass bad, twice. I had knocked that motherfucker out in the first and second round.”

Jamel brought the SUV to a halt at a red light. He then punched his right hand with his left. “He talked shit to me after the first fight even though I knocked him out, so when we fought again, I toyed with him the first round to teach him a lesson, then knocked him out in the first fifteen seconds of the second round.”