Read Pipe Dream for Free Online Page B

had passed, he said, “Boy, why don’t you just take the car? You can have it. Just let my wife go. I don’t care what you do after that. Just please, let Mother Jones go.”
    “Mother Jones?” Leroy said. “You call your woman ‘mother’? What y’all into, somethin’ kinky, Pops? Probably be tearin’ it up, don’t you?”
    Pookie grinned. Mother Jones patted her hair, turned toward the window, and tried hard to stifle a grin of her own. Pops, who didn’t find Leroy the least bit amusing, pursed his lips and gripped the steering wheel tightly.
    “Make a right on Germantown and make a right on Clarissa,” Leroy said. “We gotta find Black.”
    “Black?” Pookie said, trying unsuccessfully to hide her exasperation.
    “Yeah, Black,” Leroy said. “He ’bout the only one I know smart enough to get us outta this.”
    Pops started to accelerate, causing everyone in the car to grab for something.
    “Slow down, Pops,” Leroy said. “We ain’t tryin’ to get no tickets.”
    The old man looked at Leroy in his rearview mirror, then eased his foot off the gas pedal.
    “Now make this left on Hunting Park,” Leroy said, taking in the dozens of police cars that were darting along Hunting Park Avenue, turning up and down the maze of one-way streets that ran along either side of one of North Philadelphia’s major thoroughfares.
    “Look at these nuts,” Leroy said, talking more to himself than to anyone else.
    He looked to his left and saw five or six officers with flashlights walking through the Simon Gratz High School football field. On his right, a K-9 cop in front of the Amoco station was getting out of a Jeep with a remarkably docile-looking German shepherd.
    “Make a right on Broad Street,” Leroy said, as the old woman turned her head slightly toward him.
    “Turn around, Mother Jones,” Leroy said quickly. “I can’t let you live if you see my face.”
    Pops looked in the rearview mirror again.
    “That’s why Pops gon’ get his ass out that mirror,” Leroy said. “Ain’t that right, Pops?”
    The old man fixed his eyes on the road and nodded.
    As the car turned onto Broad Street, Leroy began to scan both sides of the street. Except for two police cars and a bus going south on Broad from Rockland Street, there were maybe five or six cars going in either direction.
    “Go in this Roy Rogers like you goin’ through the drive-through, Pops,” Leroy said, watching the approaching night-owl bus that he knew only stopped at subway stops after midnight.
    The old man pulled into the parking lot.
    When they entered the drive-through, Leroy said, “What time is it, Pops?”
    “It’s twelve-twenty.”
    “Black probably around Pop Squaly’s by now,” Leroy said to himself.
    “Huh?” Pops said.
    “Nothin’. Just pop the hood and give me the keys.”
    The old man handed over the keys. Leroy broke the lock handles on all four doors and got out of the car, beckoning for Pookie to do the same. When she did, Leroy opened the old man’s door and employed the power locks. Then he looked under the hood and disconnected the battery. With no electricity, the car was all but useless, and there was no way to disengage the locks.
    “Catch that bus,” Leroy said to Pookie as he bent down and pretended to tie his shoe.
    She walked hesitantly toward the bus, thinking that Leroy was going to leave her.
    “Go ’head, girl, ain’t nobody gon’ leave you,” he said, sensing her hesitation.
    Pookie looked back over her shoulder at him, wavering between the bus and the car, then fell in line with the other three people waiting at the corner of Broad and Hunting Park for the bus. One woman looked at her strangely, staring at the long red abrasion down the side of her face, but as quickly as Pookie had gained the woman’s attention, she lost it. A skinny, dirty girl with a fresh scrape along the side of her face was nothing compared to the other sights and sounds of North Philly after dark.
    “Fare, please,”