A droplight had been looped through the rafters and hung over the two men. It cast yellow light upon their pale faces.
Hess threw his head back to kill his beer. He crushed the can in his fist and tossed it into a trash can, half filled with empties, in the corner of the garage. Martini stepped inside.
He said, “Buzz,” then nodded at Hess.
“Pretty boy,” said Hess.
“Shorty,” said Martini.
“Drop that door,” said Stewart.
Martini pulled the garage door down to the cement floor. Hess found another can of beer and pulled its ring. He dropped the ring into the opening at the top of the can.
Stewart head-motioned Martini toward a workbench set against one of the cinder-block walls. “Check this out.”
Martini followed Stewart to a corner of the bench. Stewart pulled back a tarp covering a lumpen shape. A double-barreled, double-triggered, Italian-made shotgun was set tight in a vise. The barrel and stock had been cut down. A hacksaw lay nearby in a thick film of metal shavings.
Martini hadn’t held a gun since he’d turned in his rifle. He had no desire to touch one again.
“Whaddaya think?”
“It’s gotta be fifty years old. A bird shooter.” Martini could think of nothing else to say.
“It makes its point. A man stares down two barrels of anything, he’s gonna give up whatever it is you askin’ for.” Stewart dragged on his smoke. “Go on, take it out the vise and get a feel for it.”
“I don’t want to,” said Martini.
“I don’t want to,” said Hess in a girlish way.
“Shut up, Shorty,” said Stewart.
“What,” said Hess, “you gonna let him pussy out on us now?”
Martini shook his head. “That’s not what I’m sayin’.”
“What, then?” said Stewart.
“Told you once before. I don’t want to see nobody hurt.”
“Shit,” said Hess, “you didn’t have no problem with greasin’ them pieheads over there, did ya?”
Martini kept his eyes on Stewart. “All I’m tryin’ to say is, I ain’t up for no blood.”
“You don’t have nothin’ against getting rich, though, do you?” said Stewart.
“Course not.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry, then,” said Stewart. “The cut-down’s for me. All you gotta do is drive. Three equal shares, like I promised. Course, you will have to carry a gun, just in case. All for one. But there won’t be no need to use it.”
“When?” said Martini.
“Soon.”
Stewart studied Martini. Martini lowered his eyes.
Hess hit his smoke down to the filter and crushed it under his boot. He looked at the radio on the shelf with something like hate. “Buzz?”
“What?”
“What the fuck is this rughead singin’ about, anyway?”
Stewart turned to Hess. “That’s Levi Stubbs, you dumb shit.”
“So?”
“So it shows what you don’t know.”
“Thought we was gonna do some sportin’ tonight. I ain’t come here to listen to no songs.”
Stewart said, “Let’s go.”
Martini grabbed a can of Schlitz and popped it. Hess casually took a pill from his pocket, popped it in his mouth, and washed it down with beer. Stewart found a small black case in a footlocker, set the case on the workbench, and opened its lid. He extracted his derringer, an American single-shot stainless .38 with rosewood grips, from its place in the red velvet lining. He put one foot up on a stool and slipped the derringer into his boot.
“I’ll meet you guys out front,” said Stewart. “I gotta say good-bye to my mom.”
“WHERE YOUR GIRL at, Alvin?” said Kenneth Willis.
“Back there fuckin’ with that kid.”
“Must not have been back there all day, though.”
“Why you say that?”
“It smells like Charlie the Tuna been swimmin’ through here, cuz.”
“Yeah, well, you know.”
Alvin Jones and Kenneth Willis laughed and touched hands.
Jones sat on a big cushioned chair. He had the smell of whiskey on him but had not offered any kind of refreshment to Willis or Dennis Strange. Both were standing in the cramped living room of Lula Bacon’s apartment.
Dennis looked down at Jones, compact, freckled, with a yellow color to his skin. Wearing a gold Ban-Lon shirt with wide vertical black stripes, black slacks, and hard shoes of imitation-reptile tooled leather. Dennis could see his socks, sheer, almost, except for the solid parallel lines running through them. The slick brothers called these Thick ’n Thins. This was one slick man right here.
“What you lookin’ at, boy?” said Jones. His eyes were golden, the same color as his shirt.
“Nothin’,” said Dennis.
“Oh, you lookin’, all right. Always lookin’. You into the details of everything, I can tell. Got this outfit at Cavalier, on Seventh, case you wonderin’.” Jones wiggled one foot. “I can see you diggin’ on my gators, too. Saw ’em in the window of Flagg Brothers. Wouldn’t buy my shoes anyplace else.”
Those aren’t real gators, thought Dennis. And you ain’t shit.
“I’ll take you down to F Street with me next time; we can hook you up with a pair, too,” said Jones, going on despite the fact that Dennis had not replied. “Get you out of them Kinneys you wearin’.”
“I don’t need you to pick out my shoes.”
Jones laughed. “Well, you damn sure look like you could use someone’s help.”
“Why we listenin’ to the news?” said Willis, who had gone to the stereo and was reaching for the tuner dial.
“Don’t touch that,” said Jones.
“I was gonna move it over to OL,” said Willis. “All’s they doin’ is talkin’.”
“Uh-uh, man, leave it on OOK. That’s me right there.”
“They both the same.”
“K comes before L,” said Jones. “Don’t you know that?”
Willis looked at him, openmouthed, and stepped back from the unit. “Say, man, what you fixin’ to play tomorrow?”
“Well, I got a problem with that,” said Jones. “I was picking Frank Howard for the first number, but Howard plays left. Ain’t no base you can draw it from. . . .”
“Seven,” said Dennis Strange.
“Say what?”
“Left is the seventh position on the field. It’s what the stats man uses when he’s making a mark in his book.”
Jones winked. “Damn, boy, you smart. All them books you be readin’ must be sinkin’ in.”
“Just tryin’ to help.”
“Nah, you a smart one, I can tell.” Jones showed Dennis Strange his teeth. “A detail man.”
Dennis knew Alvin Jones from nine years back, through Kenneth, but it seemed he had always known his kind. Jones had that crocodile smile and those cut-you-for-nothin’ eyes that Dennis had seen on certain neighborhood crawlers his whole life. Dennis had returned from the navy determined not to hang with these types, who perpetrated violent shit against their own people and treated their women like dogs. It was Willis, stupid and not as slick, but just as willing to do low things, who had put them all back together. And here was Dennis, selling reefer for a Park View dealer, taking government disability, high during the daytime, having no job. Just like them. Dennis’s father called them no-accounts. Now he was one, too.
“You want your gage?” said Dennis, cutting his eyes away from Jones’s.
“You bring it?”
Dennis patted the pocket of his slacks. “Right here.”
“Lemme see.”
Dennis found a bag in his pocket and handed Jones the ounce he had asked for. Jones opened it and smelled the contents. He hefted the bag to feel its weight.
“It’s right,” said Dennis.
“How much?”
“Thirty.”
“For this here?”
“Didn’t grow in no a
lley.”
“Okay. But I’m a little light this evening. I don’t have the full amount on me, see?”
“You don’t have it on you, huh. You gonna get it, though, right?”
“What, you don’t trust a brother? You, who’s always goin’ on about unity, now you gonna act like that?”
“I trust you,” said Dennis, hating his weakness and the lie.
“Look here.” Jones made a show of glancing around, making sure Lula was not anywhere nearby. “This woman I know, she gonna front me for it.”
“When?”
“We’ll go over there right now. She’s gonna have to write you out a check, though.”
“My man don’t take checks.”
“He gonna have to take one tonight. It’s Sunday, man. What you think, they gonna open up the banks just for this girl?”
“Check better be good.”
“This girl is square,” said Jones. “You can believe that.”
Dennis stared at Jones, then looked away.
“Somethin’ you wanted to talk to Dennis about?” said Willis.
“We gonna do that on the way.”
Jones got up out of his chair and took a hat, a black sporty number with a bright gold band, off a coat tree by the door. He put the hat on his head and cocked it right.
“Thought you was stayin’ in with Lula tonight,” said Willis.
“I already fucked the bitch,” said Jones. “Ain’t no need to stay in now.”
TWELVE
SO WHICH ONE was the Bad?” “Van Cleef. The guy they called Angel Eyes.”
“See, I thought the little Mexican dude could have been the Bad, too. What was his name?”
“Tuco.” Strange smiled. “Otherwise known as the Rat.”
“Yeah,” said Darla Harris. “Him.”
“Tuco was the Ugly.”
“But he was bad, too.”
“Not exactly,” said Strange. “He was more like the dark side of Blondie. Someplace in between the Bad and the Good.”
“I like it better when you can tell who the good guy is and who the bad guy is.”
“Like, white hat, black hat, you mean. John Wayne and all that.”
“Well, yeah.”
“That’s over, baby. The movies finally be gettin’ around to how the world is. Complex.”
“I don’t get it.”
I know you don’t, thought Strange. Which is one reason why you and me are never gonna connect all the way.
They were headed east on Irving, coming from the Tivoli Theater on 14th and Park. Strange was under the wheel of his ’65 Impala, a blue clean-line V-8 he’d purchased used at Curtis Chevrolet. He liked the car, but it was no Cadillac. Like his father, he’d always wanted a Caddy. Like his father, he didn’t know if he’d ever have the means.
“We always go to the movies,” said the woman.
“Gives me peace. Sit in a dark theater, forget about what I see out here every day.”
“We always go to the movies and the movies are always westerns.”
“Tell you what,” said Strange. “You like that guy Coburn, right?”
“You mean Flint?”
“Him.”
“That’s a sexy man right there.”
“He’s in this new movie, playin’ at the Atlas, thought we’d check it out later this week.”
The woman raised an eyebrow, looked at Strange with skepticism. “What’s the name of it?”
“Waterhole #3.”
Darla, who was a dark, cute, Northeast girl, slapped Strange on the arm and laughed. “You are pushin’ it now.”
“C’mere,” said Strange, patting the bench seat. Darla slid over so that her thigh, exposed from her short skirt, was touching his. It was a nice thigh, tight and compact like the rest of her. Strange put his hand on the inside of it and gave it a little rub.
They had been together for a few months. Strange didn’t love her, but they were compatible and fit together in bed. He had never pledged fidelity to her, and she hadn’t asked him to. If she had, he would have run. Strange often had other women on his mind; there was one in particular who’d been haunting his thoughts for a long time. Anyway, he and Darla got along fine. She didn’t make him want to pick flowers for her or write a song in her name or anything like that. What they had was just all right.
“My mother’s out with her man,” said Darla.
“She gonna be out all night?”
“I expect.”
“I’ll drop you, then come back over later, if that’s all right.”
“You got plans right now?”
“You know I always have Sunday supper with my parents.”
“Okay.” She kissed him behind his ear. “You get some food in you, then come on by.”
“Go ahead and find something on the box,” said Strange, putting his right arm around Darla’s shoulder, settling into his seat.
She turned on the dash radio. At WWDC, she came upon a symphonic instrumental and recognized the theme.
“That’s from the movie.”
“The bullshit version,” said Strange.
Darla got off of 1260. At all-news WAVA the announcer said that President Johnson would address the nation that night. She spun the dial, went right by a rock-and-roll tune, then stopped for a moment on WOOK. Strange caught a couple lines of an Otis Redding, which he recognized as “Chained and Bound,” before Darla went past it. She found WOL at 1450, took her fingers off the dial, and sat back.
“Girl, you got a quick hand.”
“Tired of listening to that ’Bama.”
“He was from Georgia.”
“Same thing to me. Anyway, you play him all the time at your crib.” Darla smiled as “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone” came up through the shelf speaker. “This is more like it right here.”
Just another thing gonna drive me away from her eventually, thought Strange. Woman runs by Otis to get to the Supremes.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” said Darla, looking at the frown on Strange’s face.
“Motown,” said Strange dismissively.
“So?”
“Ain’t nothin’ but soul music for white people, you ask me.”
ALVIN JONES, KENNETH Willis, and Dennis Strange sat in the green Monterey across from a corner store, parked under a street lamp. Dusk had come and gone. The children of the neighborhood and most of its adults had gone indoors. The men had been there, and had been in strong discussion, for some time.
“Go on in, boy,” said Jones to Dennis.
“Told you I don’t need nothin’.”
“Go on.”
“And do what?”
“You the detail man. Use your eyes. Come on back and tell us what you see.”
“Why would I?”
“’Cause me and Kenneth here are fixin’ to rob this motherfucker,” said Jones. “What you think?”
They were on a single-digit street off Rhode Island Avenue, in LeDroit Park. The market was just like many others serving the residential areas of the city. It catered to the needs of the immediate neighborhood in the absence of a large grocery store. A green-and-gold sign hung over the door. The door was tied open with a piece of rope. The lights were on inside.
“Go on in your own self, then,” said Dennis.
“Can’t do that,” said Jones. “It would ruin the surprise we got planned for later on.”
“Well, you gonna have to find someone else to do it,” said Dennis Strange. “’Cause this kind of thing, it ain’t me.”
“You could use the money, right?” Jones, on the passenger side, looked in the rearview at Dennis, alone in the backseat, his book in his hand. Jones’s eyes smiled. “You damn sure look like you could.”
Dennis ignored the cut. He flashed on his father and mother, his brother in his uniform. He said, “It ain’t me.”
Jones adjusted himself in his seat, looked at Willis behind the wheel, looked back in the mirror at Dennis. “So you all talk, then.”
“W
hat’d you say?”
“All the time I been knowin’ you, been hearin’ you talk. How the white man be exploitatin’ the black man, all that. How these crackers come into where we live and open their businesses. Suck all the money out of our people and never put anything back into the community.”
“You got a point?”
“I bet you walk in there, you gonna see some Jew motherfucker behind that counter, doin’ just what you claim. All I’m tellin’ you is, me and Kenneth, we just gonna go and take back what motherfuckers like that been takin’ from all of us all our lives. But you go on ahead and keep talkin’ about it. Meanwhile, me and Kenneth here? We gonna do somethin’.”
“Yeah,” said Dennis, shaking his head, “y’all are a couple of real revolutionaries.”
“More than you.”
“And what you gonna do with all those pennies you get, huh? Put ’em toward the cause?”
“Gonna be a whole lot more than pennies,” said Jones.
“I heard that,” said Willis.
“Let me ask you somethin’, man,” said Jones, still eyeing Dennis. “What’s the date today?”
“Last day of March,” said Dennis.
“And what happens on the first of the month in these places, all over town? I bet you have a market just like this one over in Park View, so you must know.”
“The owner collects,” said Dennis, answering without having to think on it, knowing then what this was about.
“What I’m sayin’. People in the neighborhood got to pay their debt on that day, otherwise they gonna lose their credit. So we ain’t talkin’ about no pennies. We get it done before the man goes to the bank, late in the afternoon, we could walk away with, shit, I don’t know, a thousand dollars. You do this thing for us, you gonna get yourself a cut.”
“And you ain’t have to do nothin’ but look around,” said Willis.
“Be a different kind of thing for you,” said Jones. “A little bit somethin’ more than talk.”
Dennis shook his head. “I ain’t robbin’ no-motherfuckin’-body.”
“Ain’t nobody asked you to,” said Jones. “What I been tryin’ to tell you this whole time.”
“Go on, bro,” said Willis. “We keep lippin’ out here, they gonna close the place up.”
Dennis laid his book down on the seat beside him. He put his hand on the door release and pulled up on it. He was tired of hearing their voices. His high was gone and so was the low, steady feeling from the down he’d taken earlier in the day. He wanted to get away from these two and clear his head.