Deacon King Kong

At the monthly cheese distribution, which Sister Gee takes over in Hot Sausage’s place, Potts tells her the outcome of the shooting on the pier. He believes Hot Sausage’s body is missing and that he drowned himself in the harbor. Deems’s bodyguard was killed, but Sportcoat and Deems are in the hospital and expected to survive. However, based on the names that Potts is using, it becomes clear that he’s confusing Sportcoat and Hot Sausage again: Sportcoat has disappeared, and Hot Sausage is in the hospital.

Potts needs to talk to a woman whom Hot Sausage is romantically involved with because “Sportcoat” (actually Sausage) keeps mumbling about her in his medicated daze. Sister Gee knows the woman is right outside in the boiler room, but she wants Potts to come back, so she tells him the woman isn’t there. 

Joe Peck shows up at Elefante’s dock one night, disrupting a smuggled shipment of TV sets. Peck has come to tell Elefante about the shooting on the pier, which Elefante hasn’t heard about because a police officer he’s bribing has kept the matter quiet. Peck tells Elefante that the shooter was Sportcoat, but Elefante doesn’t believe that Sportcoat could shoot two active young men like Deems and his bodyguard. Peck came to ask Elefante if Sportcoat was involved with Bunch, knowing that Sportcoat works for Mrs. Elefante, and Elefante dismisses the idea.

Peck was planning on using the pier where the shooting happened to receive his drug shipment, because Elefante refused to let him use his dock, and worries that police activity there over the shooting will prevent him from doing so. Peck also tells Elefante that Potts, whom he doesn’t like, is back in the area and will be involved with the shooting investigation. Peck blames the issues in the neighborhood on the Black community, but Elefante tells him that drugs (which Peck helps sell) are the real problem. Elefante warns Peck that he’ll punish anyone who thinks that his mother was involved with the shooting because Sportcoat works for her.

Sportcoat is hiding out in Rufus’s basement and drinks heavily for three days after the second shooting. He sees the apparition of Hettie, and she says that she’s a product of Sportcoat’s own mind. He must release her before she can leave him alone. She talks about their childhoods in South Carolina and reminisces about Sportcoat’s green thumb in those years. She laments that he never grew any plants in New York City and rebukes him for drinking so much.

Ashamed, Sportcoat chooses not to drink when Rufus comes in the room, even though his friend is drinking. The two talk again about the early years of Five Ends, and Rufus says that Hettie was also involved with the construction of the church. This makes Sportcoat think that the key to finding the Christmas Club money is linked to the construction process, and he asks Rufus for Sister Paul’s address again. He heads out to see her, as his friend suggested in Chapter 8. 

Potts, who knows Elefante from his years working the neighborhood, goes to Elefante’s dock to talk to him about the shooting. He asks if Elefante knows Sportcoat, and Elefante dismisses his relationship with Sportcoat, saying he barely knows him. The two talk about the neighborhood and how it has become more volatile and dangerous over the years. Potts believes that it’s on the cusp of a violent outbreak because of the tensions between the drug gang members, and he relates how he met Elefante’s father. Potts was patrolling near the elder Elefante’s dock and ran after a man who pulled a gun on him. Just in time, Elefante’s father, who saw what was going on, drove up in a truck and flattened the man.

Potts alludes to his impending retirement from the police force, and Elefante says that he also will be retiring soon and moving to the Bronx to make bagels—an allusion to his hope of starting a relationship with Melissa. This declaration also means that he’s counting on the Governor’s Venus job being successful and earning him enough money to retire. Potts, who can see the Five Ends church from the dock, thinks of Sister Gee longingly.