Deacon King Kong

Jet was transferred to Queens, so Potts is assigned to Sportcoat’s shooting case and shows up at Five Ends looking for the shooter. (It’s later revealed that the police have mixed up Hot Sausage and Sportcoat because the two share a driver’s license.) Five End’s pastor’s wife, Sister Gee, is at the church and appoints herself as the representative of the community to speak with him. Both she and Potts are attracted to each other as they converse, even though they’re married to other people. Sister Gee doesn’t tell Potts much about Sportcoat because she doesn’t want to turn him in and is deliberately vague about what she knows about the shooting. As Potts is leaving, Sister Gee invites him to come see her at the church again. 

The Cause residents gather on the plaza between the buildings to celebrate the release of one of their young men, Soup, from prison. One of the residents, a numbers runner, has a band and they play Latin music out on the steps of a building. As everyone is dancing to the music, Sportcoat comes out, one of his first appearances since the shooting. Everyone stares at him and urges him to get out of town. The mix-up with the name Potts gave Sister Gee is explained by the shared driver’s license. 

Soup, a huge 6’10” man who continues to have a penchant for children’s television shows like Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, comes out onto the plaza, reigniting the celebration. A huge brawl between nearly all of the residents breaks out after a fight between a resident and her ex-husband, the numbers runner. Earl is there and again tries to come after Sportcoat but is hit over the head with a bottle of brandy and knocked unconscious. At that point, the residents hear police sirens and Sister Gee breaks up the brawl, sending everyone away but Soup, whom she commissions to carry Earl’s unconscious body to the train station. One of the residents who works as a subway teller holds back a crowd of passengers so Soup and Sister Gee can wait for Earl to come around and put him on the right train. Meanwhile, Sportcoat and Hot Sausage slip away to the boiler room where Hot Sausage works.

The novel’s point-of-view shifts from the Cause back to Elefante. He’s about to go to the Bronx to meet the Governor and find out more about the Venus job; he says goodbye to his mother, whom he lives with. His mother is one of Sportcoat’s odd-jobs employers and tells Elefante that Sportcoat will be coming by to help her dig up plants around the city—she’s a voracious gardener and believes in herbal remedies for ailments. She can’t remember Sportcoat’s name, and Elefante doesn’t know that his men pulled Sportcoat’s wife Hettie out of the harbor after she drowned.

Elefante is about to get in his car when Joe Peck drives up and asks him to receive a “Lebanon shipment” (code for heroin) at his dock for him. Elefante is leery because it will involve sending a barge out to deeper waters in the harbor to a freighter, then unloading the drug shipment again on shore. He refuses the job, not liking the other man’s style of doing business with people he doesn’t trust, even though Peck claims that this is his last job in the drug trade. Peck drives away angrily, and his interaction with the other man makes Elefante reflect on his life, relationships, and loneliness.