You’d think it would make you feel powerful, in control, to hold a piece of death in your hands, but it only made Tate feel like some kind of coward. Funny how holding a gun could make you so ashamed.
Dimitri Karras knocked on Donna Morgan’s apartment door. Though she tried to hide it, he caught the flash of disappointment in her eyes when she first saw his face.
“Yeah, it’s just me. Can I come in?”
“Sure. I’m sorry, I thought—”
“I know.”
“Come on, take that wet jacket off.”
Karras had a seat next to Donna on her living-room couch. Small pillows were spread about on the furniture, and lace curtains hung in the windows. A print on the wall depicted turn-of-the-century women wearing long dresses and carrying umbrellas at the beach. The room smelled of hairspray and butted cigarettes.
“Well?”
“I went by where Eddie works. You say he hung dice from the truck’s rearview?”
“Yes.”
“His truck’s there in the lot.”
Donna blinked her eyes. “What about his car?”
“His car’s gone.”
I went to the Dumpster where you said he always parks it. A crescent wrench and a flat-head screwdriver were lying on the asphalt near the empty space.
“What’s it mean, Dimitri?”
Karras shrugged. “He finished work, went back and picked up his car, and took off. That’s what you’ve got to assume. It sure doesn’t suggest that anything’s happened to him.”
But it looks like something did happen to him. Or someone was after him, and he knew it. Like he was in a hurry, or got in a scuffle, dropped his tools, and left them there.
“He would’ve called me if he wasn’t coming tonight.”
“You’ve said that already. Okay, so he wasn’t a good Boy Scout and didn’t check in. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong.”
“I was thinking maybe we ought to call the cops.”
“And tell them what, that Eddie ripped off a drug dealer? You ready to get him thrown in jail on top of everything else? For all you know, Eddie’s out celebrating right now, or shopping for something special, you know, to bring home.”
“I’m worried, Dimitri.”
“I know you are. And I don’t mean to make light of it.”
Yes, I do. I can make you laugh, and maybe forget. Whip out this C, get you high. I’m not good for much, but I can do that.
Karras looked down at Donna’s wrist. “Hey, kiddo, you aware you got two watches on?”
Donna nodded. “I was trying one on for a customer, and I walked out with it on when my shift was done.”
“Got two, in case you’re crossing time zones and all that.”
“I’m such a world traveler.” Donna looked at her wrist. “Jesus, you wouldn’t believe it; people are going crazy over these things.”
“That’s what you do at Hecht’s? Sell plastic watches? You makin’ a career out of that?”
Donna laughed. “Yeah, I’m the Swatch queen.”
“C’mere.”
Karras put his arms around her and gave her a hug, kissing the top of her head. He felt himself grow hard as her breasts crushed against his chest. It annoyed him, that his body would betray him when for once he was only trying to be a good guy. He broke away and sat back. He ran his hand through his hair.
Donna grinned. “I felt that, you know.”
“Ah, Christ.”
“You tried, Dimitri. But you’re just not the big brother type.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll stay here, though, right? Until Eddie calls?”
I don’t think he’s gonna call, thought Karras.
“Sure, Donna,” said Karras. “I’ll stay.”
Short Man Monroe, Jumbo Linney, and Chink Bennet stood under the narrow awning out front of Real Right Records on U, the Supra idling at the curb. Monroe rubbed the rest of his cocaine on his gums and dropped the empty paper to the sidewalk.
“He closed, Short,” said Linney.
“I can see that, man. But maybe he forgot somethin’. Maybe he needs to do some of that paperwork, and he’s on his way back.”
“Maybe not,” said Bennet.
“Need to fuck somebody up tonight,” said Monroe, punching a fist into his palm. “Feel like bustin’ somebody good.”
“We oughtta get on back to Tyrell’s,” said Bennet.
Short said, “We got time.” He looked across the street and narrowed his eyes. “Hey, now. See what happens when you wait?”
“Who’s that?”
Monroe smiled. “Calls himself T. And his protector, Vietnam, ain’t around right now.”
The kid in the Raiders jacket had come around the corner. He froze for a moment, seeing Monroe in front of Real Right. He turned and ran.
“Let’s go,” said Monroe.
Monroe got behind the wheel of the Supra. He waited for Bennet to scamper over the backseat and for Linney to fold his big self into the passenger side. Monroe slammed the shifter into first, took off. He got around the construction equipment in the middle of U and kicked it south on 12th.
“There he is,” said Monroe, pointing at Anthony Taylor, blowing down the sidewalk on foot.
“Haw, shit,” said Bennet, nervous and stoked. He began to giggle.
Monroe jumped the curb and got the Supra up on the sidewalk. Anthony was full in the headlights now, the rain falling around him like a net. Anthony looked over his shoulder, his eyes and mouth open wide.
“He movin’,” said Bennet.
Monroe downshifted, punched the gas.
“Easy, Short,” said Linney. “You don’t want to kill his ass.”
“I don’t?”
Anthony dove right, rolled between two cars parked at the curb, came up on his feet and reached the west sidewalk, beat it toward T.
“Dag, boy,” said Bennet. “Nigga can go.”
Monroe got the Supra back on the street. He pinned the pedal, skidded into a right at T Street, and came to a stop. The Taylor kid was nowhere in sight.
“Where is he?” said Linney.
“Forget about him,” said Monroe. “Look.”
Monroe pointed to the head of the alley on T, where three boys stood. Even through the wipers working the windshield, Jumbo Linney could see that one of them had a normal build and one was skinny as a Biafra child. The third wore a bright green cap.
Monroe laughed, working the gas against the clutch.
“Now,” said Monroe, “we gonna play for real.”
Anthony Taylor heard the Supra scream by. He waited for the sound to subside and crawled out from underneath the car where he had pinned himself to the ground.
He ran.
He ran as hard as he’d ever run, cutting right on 13th, crossing U, going up the hill between Cardoza and Clifton Terrace without breaking stride. He heard boys yelling at him and laughing as he ran. There were ghosts chasing him, the dead, fire, snakes, rats, everything pale and ugly that slept beneath his bed, and every sharp-toothed, rotted thing that had ever waited in the dark corners of the basement of his granmom’s house. They were all chasing him now, and he wasn’t going to stop, because they had all come out tonight and they were all behind him and close, so close he could feel their stinking, hot breath raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
He heard the crack of a gunshot echo up from the south.
He pounded on the front door of his grandmother’s house. She let him in, openmouthed. He brushed by her and ran up the stairs to his room. He took his mother’s letter off the dresser and crumpled it in his fist. He fell forward on the bed.
Anthony heard another gunshot.
“God please, God please.”
He slammed his hands over his ears and shut his eyes.
NINETEEN
“Got a friend with ’em tonight,” said Short Man Monroe, steering the Supra toward the three boys. They were just turning to run, trying to get their footing in the wet street. He was almost on
top of them now.
“That’s Antoine Meadows’s little brother, Short,” said Jumbo Linney. “Antoine runs with that crew on O.”
“I don’t give a fuck who it is,” said Monroe.
He braked at the head of the alley, kept the Supra running, leaped abruptly from the car. He pulled his Glock from the waistband of his Lees, jacked a round into the chamber, and looked back into the car. Chink Bennet was already slipping between the buckets and settling in behind the wheel.
“Go around the corner,” said Monroe. “We’ll close ’em up on both sides. Jumbo, use my other gun, man, it’s under the driver’s seat.”
“I don’t need no gun, Short,” said Linney.
“Yeah, you do. That little mothafucker Chief waved one at me just the other night.”
“Short—”
“I’m gone.”
Monroe ran into the alley, the gun at his side. Bennet hit the gas, peeled out, hooked left at the next corner. He was giggling as they made the turn.
Chief Meadows, P-Square Willets, and Mooty Wallace bolted into the alley. Mooty was the fastest of the bunch, and his fear had made him jet. Mooty was way out front.
“Buck right, Mooty!” yelled Chief, and Mooty bounded over a low fence.
He was gone into the darkness of a yard and through it quick, out onto the next street west. He stopped behind a parked car, watched the Supra blow by, saw a fat man in the passenger seat and a little boy behind the wheel. He ran in the direction of his house.
“Chief!” said P-Square, running beside his friend. He had pulled his Spiderman action figure from his sweatpants pocket and was gripping it tight. “He comin’, man!”
Chief looked behind him. Tyrell Cleveland’s enforcer was running straight at them through the rain. Demon had some kind of white mask on his face, covering his nose.
Chief looked ahead. The Supra had pulled in front of the alley and blocked the exit down the street. A big man and what looked like a kid were getting out of the car.
“P-Square,” said Chief. “Buck right!”
P-Square turned, slipped, slid onto his side. He scrambled back to his feet. He ran toward the nearest fence. He tightened his fist on his Spiderman and left his feet. It was a good jump; he knew he would clear the fence.
“Peter Parker,” said P-Square Willets. “Fly!”
Something punched him in the back. He heard a popping sound and felt pain. He saw pink wet things spooling from his chest. He saw the black ground rush up to meet him.
He said, “Gaaaa.”
He said nothing after that.
At the sound of the gunshot, Chief Meadows ran into an open yard and slipped in the mud. He slid onto his chest. He stayed there and began to crawl toward the house. A dog was growling somewhere around the outside of the house. The lights in the house had gone off at the sound of the shot. It was dark in the yard, and that was good.
Chief heard someone giggling back in the alley. The giggling got louder, and so did the growl of the dog. Tyrell’s enforcer called Chiefs name.
God, why, help me, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong to nobody for real; I didn’t mean nothin’, God.
Chief couldn’t hear nothin’ of P-Square. P-Square had gotten away, that’s what it was. P-Square was fast like Mooty, and he could sky. P-Square was little, but he was braver than—
The dog, a rottweiler, leaped from the shadows.
Barking insanely, it ran toward Chief, its eyes catching the light from the spotlamp hanging off the next-door house. Chief’s blood jumped, and he was up on his feet. He turned without thought and ran out of the yard, seeing the dog behind him, closing in on him, then seeing the dog yanked back by its chain.
Chief stood in the middle of the alley. He leaned over and placed his hands on his knees to catch a breath.
“Lord,” he said. “Thank you for that chain.”
When he stood up he saw Tyrell’s enforcer, smiling at him beneath that mask, standing just ten feet away.
“Dog scare you, man?”
Chief twitch-smiled back. “Yeah. I’m… I ain’t ashamed to admit it, man, I’m afraid of dogs.”
“Got to conquer that fear, Chief.” His smile faded. Tyrell’s enforcer head-motioned to the yard on the other side of the alley. “Check out your boy, nigga.”
Chief looked over, saw P-Square lying facedown, not moving at all, his jacket all torn and shit in the back.
Chief began to cry.
“Aw, look at you. Funny how you ain’t mockin’ me now.”
There was a siren coming from far away. The siren, the rain, and high-pitched laughter. Chief couldn’t stop crying.
“Let’s go, Short,” said a deep voice behind Chief. “We gotta be gettin’ outta here, man.”
“Step to the side, Jumbo. You too, Chink.”
“Short—”
“Do it, man.”
Chief heard footsteps moving off behind him. Chief peed his pants.
Chief said, “I ain’t mean nothin’, man. I was just playin’, see? Look here.” He pulled his .22. from his waistband. “This thing here, it can’t even fire no bullets, man, for real.”
“You pullin’ that gun on me, Chief?”
“Nah, man, I ain’t pullin’ nothin’.” Chief tossed the gun aside. “See? C-c-come on.”
“W-w-where you wanna g-g-g-go? Wanna g-g-g-go see your f-f-friend?”
“Momma!” cried Chief, and the alley flashed white.
TWENTY
Dimitri Karras was chopping out lines when the martial theme music for the eleven o’clock edition of Eyewitness News began blaring through the speaker of Donna Morgan’s nineteen-inch set. Karras slid the mirror over to Donna.
Donna pushed a beer can aside and fitted a burning cigarette in the U of the ashtray. She used the empty casing of a Bic pen to inhale the coke.
Donna held the plastic tube out to Karras and said, “You ready for a bump?”
“Hold on a second,” said Karras, who was squinting at the television screen.
Donna looked at the picture on the set: in the foreground, a solemn reporter holding a microphone and speaking into the camera; in the background, uniformed police, police types in suits under raincoats, wet streets, ambulances, ambulance workers moving slowly, a small lump beneath a sheet.
Karras picked up the phone and punched numbers into the grid.
“What’s wrong?” said Donna, but Karras didn’t answer.
“Marcus?” said Karras. “Hey, man, it’s me. Turn on channel nine.” Karras kept studying the broadcast, and after a while he said, “Yeah, that’s just a block south of the store…. I know it, man. They weren’t much more than little kids. No, they haven’t released the names. Thought you’d want to know…. No problem. Listen, I might not make it back to the apartment tonight. Yeah, you too.”
Karras cut the line.
Donna said, “You okay?”
He took a moment and said, “I’m fine.”
“Here,” said Donna offering him the Bic. “Do this, Dimitri, you’ll feel better.”
Karras looked down at the snow trailed out on the mirror. “Not right now,” he said. “You go ahead.”
Tyrell Cleveland put down the phone. He leaned back in his armchair and looked into the fire. He ran a finger down his cheek.
Antony Ray squatted on the hearth, used a poker to lift a log off another. Flames curled upward through the space.
“That was Jumbo,” said Tyrell. “We got some serious problems.”
“Yeah?”
“Eddie Golden told a lie. Wasn’t no pillowcase back at his place.”
“Coulda told you that.”
“That ain’t all. Short Man, he killed a couple kids tonight. Real kids. That boy Chief, been playin’ dealer down on our turf? Him and some other little kid. Shot ’em both.”
Ray clucked his tongue. “Cold, man. And stupid, too. You’d think Rogers would’ve stopped him.”
“Rogers wasn’t with them at the time. They’re on their way back i
n right now.”
“You need to get your boys under control, cuz.”
“Yes.”
“You get any other details?”
“Must be on the TV news by now.”
“Gonna watch it?”
“What for? Need to sit here and think on it some.”
Ray did a line he had cut out on the mirror. He walked to the hallway, went into the bedroom on the left, and closed the door behind him.
Time passed. Tyrell heard the white boy scream.
The screaming was loud and high pitched, and it bothered Tyrell’s ears. He rose from his chair, went into the other room, and turned up the Run-D.M.C. that was already coming from the box. He stood there by the stereo until Ray came back out of the bedroom. Ray’s eyes were bright, and he was holding back a smile. Tyrell cut the volume back low to where he could gather his thoughts.
“He talk?”
“Started sayin’ somethin’ about some white dude, workin’ in that record store down on U. Boy passed out cold on me right after that. Guess I put a little too much pressure on that broken wing of his. Way he looked, might be out for the rest of the night.”
“He don’t look like the hero type to me. Either he’s dumb or he’s tellin’ the truth. He took the money, now, he’s said as much. But maybe someone he knew took him off after that.”
“Maybe that record store dude.”
“Have to ask him about it when he wakes up.”
“I will.”
Tyrell saw that smile again, creeping up. “Don’t kill him, Antony.”
“Don’t worry,” said Ray. “Havin’ too much fun just keepin’ him alive.”
Richard Tutt phoned his partner right after he picked up the initial call on his scanner. Kevin Murphy met Tutt at O’Grady’s fifteen minutes later. The two of them drove downtown in Murphy’s Trans Am. Murphy blew through reds all the way and shut off his wipers as they approached Shaw. The rain had passed.
At the crime scene, Murphy and Tutt showed their badges, clipped them to their belts, and ducked under the yellow tape. Print and broadcast news reporters and their tech crews, meat wagons, neighborhood kids, uniforms and plainclothes dicks from their precinct, forensics technicians, their own Sergeant Miller and his Lieutenant Breen, a media-savvy local reverend, and a prominent city councilman were all on site. The alley was lit now and well protected.