King Suckerman

  “Right.”

  They ate, smoked a little herb, went upstairs to bed. They rubbed each other down with heated oils, made love slowly in a room lit by votive candles. Afterward, Clay told Elaine about his day.

  “What’re you going to do about all this, Marcus?”

  “Figure out a way to make things right.” Clay stared at the flame shadows licking at the ceiling. “The thing is, I don’t need this right now. I’m trying to build a business, stay on the track.”

  “You need to stay away from those influences,” said Elaine. “I been tellin’ you…”

  “I know. But see, it was me that did the damage today. Thing is, I never should’ve gone with him in the first place.”

  “It’s nothing against Dimitri. I know you care about him, and you know I do, too. It’s just—”

  “What?”

  “Dimitri’s in a big hurry to get nowhere quick. I hate to put it that plain, but there it is.”

  “You’re right,” said Clay. “But he’s my friend.”

  “What about you?” said Elaine. “What about me?”

  Clay rolled onto his side, slipped an arm beneath Elaine, wrapped the other around her shoulder. He pulled her to him tight.

  Dimitri Karras stumbled up the stairs. The big gray house cat, Dumbo, tore down a flight from out of who knew where, disappeared. Karras made it to the next landing, listened to Irvine Nichols from behind his door, lecturing one of his young black lovers about being late. Karras took the next set of stairs.

  He used his key to enter his apartment. Vivian lay on the couch facedown, one arm off and touching the floor, her breath heavy and stale and souring the air. The lamps and overheads had been turned off; only the blue glow of the television tube lit the room. Karras stood for a couple of minutes, watching the end of an old Mannix. God, it was late. He went to the girl, turned her face so that her nose and mouth were off the cushion, put his palm on her back. She had sweat into her shirt. He killed the power on the TV.

  In the closeness of his bathroom, Karras could smell the cigarettes, booze, and reefer in his clothes. He stripped and clumsily kicked his jeans and Hawaiian shirt toward a straw hamper that sat against the wall. Looking in the mirror, he placed his fingers beneath his nose, took in the lingering fish smell of Donna’s box.

  “You old bastard,” said Karras roguishly, but he couldn’t even bring himself to smile. Maybe he’d get Marcus on the phone, tell him about his stand-up fuck in the head at Benbow’s, have a few laughs about it, then go into that bit about his guilt, how he’d felt sad after he’d pulled out, looking at the jiz shot trail down good-time Donna’s leg. How he really was only looking for that one good girl out there, that one he’d never been able to find. But Marcus would be asleep now, next to Elaine. And Marcus, Karras saw it more often now in his face, he was getting tired of listening to that song. The truth was, Karras could barely stand to listen to it himself.

  Karras washed, went to bed. In the dark of his room he remembered that his mother had phoned earlier in the week. Before passing to sleep, he made a promise to himself that he would visit her soon.

  Bobby Roy Clagget lay facedown on the bed, his head turned toward the window. Reflected light from the motel pool below played across the brownish curtains that covered the window facing the street. Over a song coming from the nightstand’s clock radio he could hear the movement of tractor trailers along New York Avenue, the industrial-corridor artery that led in and out of town. He felt Wilton Cooper’s callused palm and fingers, slick with some sort of grease, rub his naked thighs and then knead his bare behind.

  Cooper sang along to the tune coming from the radio: “Are you man enough, big and baaad enough?” The Four Tops had seen their best days, Cooper knew. But this cut was kickin’, and Levi Stubbs, you could always count on him to be bad. Cooper took a long swig of his Near Beer, put the can down on the stained green carpet by the bed.

  Clagget swallowed hard. Ugly and skinny as he was, he had never had a woman, had never expected to have one. What Wilton was doing to him, he had not considered it himself. Strangely, Wilton’s touch, it didn’t feel all that wrong. After all, Wilton was family, like an older brother, or an uncle, someone like that.

  Or a father. That was something else Clagget had never had.

  There was his own father, not even a memory, gone before he had even gotten up on his own two feet. And then there was the stepfather with the sour-mash breath who beat him near bloody every goddamn night, until Bobby Roy had to hurt someone, anyone, or anything else, had to give some of that pain back. But Clagget had been too thin and weak to put a hurting on any of the farm boys who called him names in his hometown. Animals, now—animals were something else. Animals were easy. Clagget started with chickens, pulverizing them with buckshot and sometimes cutting them slowly at the base of their skinny necks with the buck knife he always kept whetting-stone sharp. Then barnyard kittens, so many of them always around they would never be missed. You could get one to like you real easy, so that it crawled right into your lap. While it was purring, just a hard, sure push of your thumbnail into the soft spot right behind its ear. Or shove the buck straight up into its chest while the kitten squirmed in your hand, the warm blood splashing across your fingers.

  Warm. Like the warmth of being held by a father.

  Clagget winced as Cooper’s finger slipped inside him.

  “Wilton,” whispered Clagget.

  “Hush,” said Cooper. “Just gettin’ friendly, is all.”

  The song ended, and the station’s jock went into a commercial about a place called the Style Shop. The Style Shop, the Style Shop, the Style Shop… he must have repeated it a half dozen times.

  Clagget said, “Wilton?”

  “Yes, little brother?”

  “What are we doing here?”

  Wilton’s voice was silk. “Oh, a little bit of this and that. Gonna go out to that farm tomorrow, pick up that cocaine from those biker boys. Gonna need your help there, B. R. Give you a chance to realize the promise I seen in you back at the drive-in.”

  “And then?”

  “Get the money back from Trouble Man, I guess. After that, hang out, enjoy that Bicentennial thing they got planned up here. Then take the ’caine back to Carlos, keep all the money, Carlos’s drug money and the money we get back from Trouble Man, for ourselves. Carlos, as far as we are from Miami, he won’t know a thing. How’s that sound to you?”

  Clagget concentrated on the brown curtain, the blue reflection rippling against the fabric. A thick black bug crawled across the curtain, its antennae wiggling in the light.

  “B. R.?” said Cooper. “I asked you how that sounds.”

  “Sounds good, Wilton.” Clagget swallowed. “Sounds good.”

  Wilton Cooper undid his belt buckle as he stood away from the bed. He looked at the skinny boy lying there, the bare-twig arms, the acned buttocks and back. Well, the boy sure wasn’t no prize. But he was his for the trip, and he was steady with a gun.

  Cooper stepped out of his drawers. It wasn’t like he was anybody’s sissy, nothing like that. Uh-uh. And he would cut any man who dared call him a punk. He had learned something in prison, though, and once you learned it you never went back: There wasn’t no pussy in the world tighter than the brown eye on a young boy. You could take that motherfucker to the bank and draw interest on it, every goddamn time.

  TEN

  Ronald Thomas shook a Kool out from the bottom of the deck. He sat on the stoop, watched his brother Russell approach a couple of fine young girls who stood on the street corner, talking and laughing and telling stories. Russell looked back at his brother, smiled as he put a little down-strut into his walk. Ronald lit his smoke.

  Russell couldn’t talk to the ladies, had never even been close to having the rap down, but he was one of those dudes who believed he could. Ronald couldn’t think of a time Russell had gotten any play his own self. It was always Ronald, hooking Russell up on a double, a girlfriend of one of Ronald
’s freaks, situations like that. Nothing but mercy-pussy for young Russell, on account of he was one sorry-looking motherfucker for real. Their uncle even had him going on one of those special buses for a while back in grade school, this bus where all the kids wore helmets and shit, had drool going down their chins, falling onto raggedy-ass bibs that were always gray and wet. Russell dropped out of school sometime after that, partly ’cause he couldn’t keep up and partly from shame. Soon after, Ronald dropped out with him.

  They grew up on their uncle’s farm, worked it hard. Hotter than the devil’s living room down in Carolina, and the heat made you hornier than a motherfucker, too. It made Russell that way, for sure. More than one time Ronald had caught Russell on the treeline side of the barn, stump-breaking some mule. Once, a few kids from a neighboring farm caught Russell doing just that, and Ronald had to fuck a couple of them up just to save some kind of dignity for the family name. It seemed that Ronald was always looking after Russell, except for during those hard bits Ronald had to do later on. The first armed robbery stretch in Delaware, in that prison they had up there on 113, and then in Angola, where Ronald had met Wilton Cooper. But once he got out, Ronald went right back to wet-nursing his younger brother. Someone had to look after Russell, foolish as he was.

  “What’s goin’ on, baby?” said Russell to the girl leaning her forearm on the corner mailbox, a short, tight thing wearing hoop earrings and filling a jean skirt with her bubble ass.

  “Nothin’ much,” she said, glancing warily at her girlfriend, who was older, taller, wearing a short-sleeved jumper and cork-wedge heels.

  Russell stood near the girl in the hoop earrings, appraised her carefully. “Uh-huh. Mmm-huh.” He stroked his spare goatee, nodded his head. “Yeah. You are fine, too.”

  Ronald blew a smoke ring, watched his brother move closer to the short girl, watched the short girl kind of back away. The tall one looked over at Ronald, gave him a little smile. It had always been easy for him.

  “My Nubian princess,” said Russell, going straight into his tired rap.

  “What you talkin’ about, fool?” said the girl. “You don’t even know me.”

  “What’samatter, baby?” said Russell. “You got a George?”

  “Whether I got a George or not, you know it ain’t none of your business.” She once-overed Russell’s green patterned-knit slacks. “So you best get your Cavalier Men’s Shop–lookin’ ass the fuck on out of here ’fore my older brother comes around, sees you botherin’ us, hear?”

  “Shit, baby, it’s cool.” Russell made a parting-of-the-waves motion with his hands. “You change your mind, me and my brother are stayin’ with our cuz, just up the way.”

  Russell walked slowly back to Ronald on the stoop. He put out his hand. “Gimme one of them double-O’s,” he said.

  Ronald shook a Kool out for Russell, gave him a light. Right about then, the red Challenger came around the corner and moved down the block.

  “There’s Cooper,” said Ronald.

  “Yeah,” said Russell. “Good thing for Shorty he showed up, too. ’Cause I was fixin’ to go back over there, talk her into a date. And you know I would’ve torn that shit up.”

  “Yeah, she was into you, Russell.”

  “Damn sure was. Said I was cavalier and shit.”

  “Go ahead, boy.”

  “Who you callin’ boy?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You see a boy, give him five dollars.”

  “Aw, go ahead.”

  The Thomas brothers folded themselves into the backseat of the Challenger. Wilton Cooper drove to a surplus store on F Street, downtown. He bought a lightweight hunting vest for Bobby Roy Clagget and threw it in the trunk with the guns and ammunition they had brought up from the South. He went to a record store and bought some new cassette tapes, stopped at a 7-Eleven for cigarettes, gassed up on New York Avenue. In the bathroom of the service station he patted his Afro in the mirror, made certain that he was looking clean.

  They drove out of D.C., cut off of the BW Parkway, crossed over to 95 and headed north. Cooper slid an Edwin Birdsong cassette into the box, something called What’s Your Sign?, and he put it up loud enough so that no one even thought about trying to speak. Ronald Thomas could tell that Cooper just wanted to drive, smoke his Salem longs down to the filter, think. Every so often he’d see the white boy lean real close to Cooper, whisper something in his ear, so close that it looked like the white boy had become Cooper’s bitch. Not that Ronald would even think about cracking on Cooper about being a sissy, even in fun. He knew Cooper could fuck a nigger up if that’s what he had a mind to do; he’d seen Cooper strike quicker than a woodpile snake in the yard so many times before. If Cooper wanted the white boy to be his girl, shit, man, it was cool by Ronald.

  Around a place called Columbia, Cooper tossed the Baggie of cocaine over his shoulder, told Russell and Ronald to knock themselves out. The Thomas brothers used their fingernails to hit the coke, laughing and giving each other skin after each go-round. Ronald thought the freeze was pretty good, not stepped on too hard, with a fast rush to it and a nice drip back in the throat. Russell seemed to be enjoying it, too; he was talking shit now, much shit, even for Russell, his mouth overloading his asshole. The two of them couldn’t light their cigarettes fast enough. Cooper had put a Jimmy Castor Bunch cassette into the deck, kept the volume cranked. Ronald and Russell sang along to a bad jam called “Supersound.”

  Cooper checked Eddie Spaghetti’s directions, turned off 95 at an exit marked Marriottsville. A couple of miles past small farms and wooded land and Cooper made another turn into an unmarked, graveled one-lane that led into a forest of oak and pine. A half mile into the woods, Cooper killed the music, coasted a hundred feet, cut the engine on the Dodge.

  “All right,” said Cooper, “everybody out.”

  They got out of the car and followed Cooper back to the trunk. Cooper turned the key and popped open the lid. B. R. Clagget reached in, put the hunting vest on over his rayon shirt. He pulled free the sawed-off, thumbed in a couple of double-aught shells. He took another half dozen rounds and fitted them through the loops of his vest.

  “We goin’ in showin’ like that?” said Ronald.

  “The Miami way,” said Cooper.

  Ronald Thomas shrugged, looked over at Russell, slack-jawed. Ronald took the short-barreled .357 he favored from the trunk, broke the cylinder, spun it, saw the copper casings snug in their homes. He wrist-snapped the cylinder shut, put the pistol barrel-down behind the waistband of his slacks. Russell withdrew his .38, clumsily aped his brother’s action, fitted the S&W inside his patterned double knits.

  Cooper dressed holsters over each shoulder of his maroon polo shirt. He thumb-checked the top round on each of the magazines of his twin Colts, slapped in the magazines, racked the receivers on both guns. He holstered the .45s. He reached into the trunk, brought out Carlos’s briefcase filled with banded stacks of cash money.

  Cooper nodded at Ronald, tossed him the keys. Ronald caught the ring, swung it on his finger. Cooper looked up at the sun, directly overhead. He wiped sweat off his brow.

  “After these woods clear,” said Cooper, “there’s supposed to be a house in a field. You drive us out halfway, Ronald, drop us off.”

  “Right,” said Ronald.

  “What about me?” said Russell.

  “You stay with your brother. When it starts, he’ll tell you what to do.”

  “Wilton?” said Clagget.

  “You’re comin’ with me.”

  “Thanks!”

  “All right, then,” said Cooper. “Let’s take it to the bridge.”

  They got back into the Challenger. Ronald Thomas situated himself behind the wheel, turned the ignition. He headed for the white light sheeted at the break in the trees.

  Larry Spence popped the ring on a can of National Bohemian, threw back a foamy swig, let some gas pass through his mouth. He had another sip of the warm beer, his first of the day. Rocking back on
the heels of his engineer boots, he looked out the window of the bungalow. Out in the field, Poor Boy, his shirt off, his jeans hung low, a Prussian helmet covering his head, sat on his heels, polishing the chrome on his hog. A half dozen bikes stood nearby in an orderly row, gleaming in the sun.

  “Nice day to get in the wind,” said Larry.

  “Huh?” said Albert, who sat on the couch, cleaning pot on the cover of Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd.

  “He said it’s a good day to ride,” said Charlie, wearing a Tijuana Pussy Posse T-shirt and sitting next to Albert.

  “Oh,” said Albert. “It is a good day.” Albert was high and happy.

  Larry stared out the window. “Why don’t somebody put some fuckin’ music on,” he said.

  “Put some on,” said Charlie to Albert.

  “I’m gettin’ the seeds and stems out of the shit,” said Albert.

  “I’ll put some on, then,” said Charlie.

  Charlie took his can of Natty Bo off the table in front of him and went to the stereo, where the albums were set face out in a peach crate. Charlie flipped past a couple of Dead albums, a New Riders of the Purple Sage, and a scratched London-label Stones that had no cover. He stopped at a double near the back of the crate.

  “Steppenwolf Live all right?” said Charlie.

  “Put it on,” said Larry.

  Charlie put on side four, his favorite, which kicked off with “Hey Lawdy Mama.” He shook his kinky black hair, played some air guitar with the hand that did not hold a beer as Deborah, Larry’s woman, came into the room.

  Deborah stood near six feet and wore hip-hugger jeans with one snap on the fly and a leather headband tied around her long, straight chestnut hair. The headband made her look faintly Indian, that and her deep tan and high cheekbones. The long nipples of her thin, conical breasts pressed out against her shorty T. She flipped her hair off her shoulder, revealing one feather earring. Deborah had just done a line of uncut snow back in the kitchen; she rubbed its residue onto her gums, then licked her finger clean.