The Sweet Forever

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Tutt.

  He found a quarter and dropped it in the slot. He made his call.

  Kevin Murphy sipped from his beer, watched the point guard take the ball down the court. The guard had a nice way of protecting the ball on the dribble. And his teammate, this Farmer kid from Alabama, he could really play.

  Murphy leaned back on the couch, used the remote to kick up the volume on his brand new Mitsubishi set. He didn’t want to hear his wife’s footsteps. He knew his wife Wanda was in the bedroom doing a little crying this time of night, maybe getting up off the bed, walking around the room, sitting back down on the bed, rubbing her hands together, like that. Hers were ordinary footsteps, nothing unusual in their sound, except that he could picture Wanda’s troubled face, all wrinkled up as she made those footsteps in that dark room, not going anywhere, not knowing where to go.

  This new set, it sure did have a nice picture. Murphy had read about the special blue picture tube, Diamond Vision, some shit like that, in a magazine before he had even walked into the store. The salesman, side-burned white dude trying to talk black after he had a look at Murphy, called it an ‘ass-kickin’, booty-whippin’ ” picture. Went so far as to call it the Cadillac of televisions, winking on the word Cadillac, like the mention of that car would trigger a black man’s hot button. Murphy stayed cool and disinterested, smiled inside when the salesman thought he had lost the handle and said something good and stupid about how owning this television was like having a “poontang magnet” in your very own home. Despite the fact that he was ignorant, there was something about this salesman’s blind determination that Murphy had liked. So he bought the set. But he couldn’t let this guy get away with all that fool talk. So after Murphy had paid from a roll of hundreds, he shook the salesman’s hand and said, “By the way, haven’t heard the word poontang in about twenty years. Can’t recall if I’ve ever heard a black man use it.” And to the salesman’s nervous smirk he added, “Smooth as your rap is, I thought you might like to know.”

  Yeah, the picture on the set was all right. Truth of it was, though, he didn’t enjoy watching the game on the Mitsubishi any more than he had on his old chipped-up-cabinet thirteen-inch Admiral. In that way this new set was kind of like his new black metal-flake Trans Am. He’d always wanted one, sure, and he had it now, and it was top of the line. But he never enjoyed a car like he did his first, a used ’70 Camaro, springtime gold with saddle interior. Now that was one beautiful car.

  Strange about how the money meant very little to him anymore. You couldn’t bank too much of it, what with the paper trail and all that. So Murphy had to spend it on things.

  Course, in the beginning, the money was going toward the adoption. A baby for him and Wanda. And the baby would need “things,” too. When they had first looked into it, after all the fertility quacks with their shots and cycles and drugs had bled his bank account dry, Murphy couldn’t believe how much an adoption cost. But he knew he’d have to find a way for Wanda, unhappy as she was.

  He’d confided in Tutt about the hole he was in. And Tutt began to talk to Murphy, right about then, about taking a little bit here and there. Tutt said they could control the situation on their beat like that, keep the drug dealers and their foot soldiers and enforcers calmed down, not let them get crazy behind their violent territorial shit. Tutt made it seem sensible, or maybe that’s the way Murphy wanted to hear it. He almost had himself convinced it was the right thing to do.

  Kevin Murphy didn’t think on it all that long. He began to take.

  It was about that time, funny how it worked out, that Wanda started to withdraw. She had spent years fretting over their inability to have a child, and now that Murphy was making it possible for her, she was suddenly unsure. And acting weirder than a mothafucker, too, saying how the Lord had “told” her it wasn’t in the cards for them to have a child of their own. Even went on to say, during one of their many arguments, “Why would I want a baby, Kev, that someone else gave away?” This was a woman who, just a few months earlier, could no longer bear to be around their friends who had kids. Who had quit her government job because she couldn’t hide the shame of childlessness. Maybe Murphy should have seen that she had been fragile all along. Murphy’s brother, Ted, the reverend, had claimed when he first met her that Wanda had a “sick heart.” Ted always did have a knack for seeing inside people straight away, knowing how to help them before their problems got too bad. In the end, when Ted was down to ninety pounds, the only one he couldn’t help was himself.

  Kevin and Wanda stopped seeing their friends. After a while, in fear that Wanda would break into uncontrollable laughter or hysterical tears, they couldn’t even have neighborhood couples over for barbecues. Out of the office environment and with only family dropping by occasionally, Wanda rapidly lost most of her social skills. Along with any kind of hope.

  And though there was no longer a pressing need for the extra cash, Kevin Murphy continued to take. Because once you started, you couldn’t stop. There just wasn’t any such thing as a “reformed” cop. Sure, there was the option of quitting the force, just walking away. But he would never exercise it. As far back as he could remember, Murphy, just like his damned partner, had only wanted to be one thing. And it was everything now; in the face of what he had lost, being a cop was all he had.

  The phone rang on the table beside him; Murphy picked it up.

  “Yes,” said Murphy. He listened and said, “All right. See you there.”

  He replaced the receiver. This game was ending, and there would be late games coming up. It would be good, for a little while anyway, to get out of the house.

  Murphy walked across the knotty pine finished basement, the room he had redone just a few months back. Had a nice wood bar in it, with a Formica top, like his father had always wanted to own. Redskins memorabilia on the walls, plenty of signed glossies going all the way back to Bobby Mitchell, Sonny and Charley Taylor. And a full-size pool table under a big rectangular lamp.

  He went through a door into the unfinished half of the basement, past a locked upright case with a glass front where he kept his shotguns, two Remington autoloads, racked. He brushed against the heavy bag he had hung from the beams of the ceiling. He reached above his workbench to an oak shelf. There were several handguns there: a double-action .380 Walther PPK, two S&W .357 Combat Magnums, and a 92F Beretta nine. He brought down the Walther case, opened it, picked up the PPK, checked the magazine, slapped it home. He safetied the gun, holstered it in his waistband, pulled his shirttails out over the bulge.

  Kevin Murphy excelled on the range. He shot regularly and had won several marksmanship awards. He had never killed, though, or wounded a man. Of this he was proud.

  Murphy went up the stairs to the bedroom, knocked on the door, and pushed it open. Wanda was lying on the bed, wearing that Kmart housedress of hers, her hands folded across her chest as if in death.

  “I’m going out for a little bit, sweetheart.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want anything?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “How about some of those chocolates you like?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “All right, sweetheart. I’ll be back soon.”

  Murphy closed the door softly, snatched his car keys off a nail he had driven into the wall. Wanda hadn’t asked where he was going. Her eyes hadn’t moved toward him when he’d entered the room. She had only stared at the brush strokes on the ceiling of their room. She hadn’t even blinked.

  Murphy left the house. He walked down the steps to his shiny new car.

  EIGHT

  Denice Tate first noticed Alan Rogers and that short, mean-looking boy he hung with about halfway into Chuck Brown’s show. Brown was doing a call and response to that big hit of his, “We Need Some Money,” and the packed house at the Masonic Temple seemed to move in unison as the jam went on and on, building to a sweat-soaked, natural high. Chuck Brown, the Godfather of Go-Go, was set to play with
that other Godfather, James Brown, at the Convention Center later in the month, but Denice could not imagine a more bumpin’ show than this one right here. She hated lying to her father, but now, ’specially since she had seen Rogers, she sure was glad she had come.

  “He’s looking at you, girl,” said her friend Ashley, doing a kind of deep dip, one step up, one step back thing.

  “No he ain’t, Ash!”

  “Trust me,” said Ashley.

  Alan Rogers had been keeping on the lookout for that cute girl, the one they called Neecie around the way. Nice young girl like that, unspoiled, you could make a girlfriend out of her if you wanted. Now he had her in his sights, standing over there with another girl who didn’t look half as fine. Neecie looked good, too.

  Short Man Monroe turned to Alan Rogers. “You ready, black?”

  “Nah, Short. Gonna fuck with the show.”

  “Gotta get out of here, man. Tyrell ’spects us to collect.”

  “You go on. I wanna check this shit out.”

  “I know what you be checkin’ out.”

  “She got a friend, man.”

  “I ain’t interested. Stay if you want. I’ll come on around back, pick you up.”

  Rogers moved through the crowd, careful not to bump anyone hard, make anyone feel like they had to step to him. The whole city seemed to be here tonight. He saw some of Rayful Edmond’s boys from the Strip, and some Northeast boys out of Montana Terrace, and a couple of leftovers from the old Hanover Place crew on the west side of North Capitol. Rogers was chin-nod familiar with a few of them, but he didn’t look any of them in the eye.

  You never knew out here anymore. He had seen this one boy shot over nothing but a misunderstood glance at Chapter III one night down in Southeast, convulsing in the parking lot with a bullet in his back, froth and shit coming out of his mouth like overflowed laundry suds as the life leaked right out of his eyes. Rogers had dreamed about it a few times since. Sometimes he’d keep himself awake at night in fear that he’d dream of it again. He had the walk and the look down, because you had to, but Alan Rogers didn’t want none of that, the death part of being in the life.

  But you had to do somethin’, right? Couldn’t just be like some raggedy-ass welfare case, or one of those pee-smellin’, wine-breath old mothafuckers sleeping on the subway grates in the middle of the winter. You needed things, needed to look sharp to get respect from your boys and the looks from the girls. But how would you get those things when you couldn’t do much better than write your name? His teachers had moved him up, grade by grade, but they hadn’t really taught him shit. Not to read and write all the way, or to add things up in his head, not really. Not even how to go out and get a job.

  One time, when he’d applied for this busboy thing at this bar over on 2nd Street, this white boy who ran the place, after he told him he couldn’t hire him, decided to give him a little advice. “Next time,” the white boy said, “when you’re applying for a job, act like you want it. Wear a clean shirt and sit up in your chair; smile, maybe; look the person you’re dealing with in the eye. Ask for the job. And don’t keep looking at your prospective employer like you want to kick his ass.” Right about then Rogers had wanted to kick Pretty Boy’s ass, but later, when he was thinking about it, he realized that the white boy had been right. Alan Rogers never had examples. Never had anyone to explain even the simple shit, like what to wear, what to do when you apply for a job, how to act. How to get along.

  At a house party in Shaw, a friend who was now in jail had introduced him to Tyrell Cleveland. Next day, Tyrell called him up. Asked him if he wanted to make a little bit of change. Rogers knew what time it was as soon as he had met Tyrell, but he couldn’t get a clear picture of a future anywhere else. Rogers saw other people looking good, getting new things, wearing designer clothes, driving nice rides, on the streets and every time he turned on the TV. He needed some of those things, too. Decided, yeah, it was time to get paid like everybody else.

  “Hey, girl,” said Rogers, smiling broadly.

  “Hey.”

  “Been lookin’ for you all night.”

  “You have, huh.”

  “Lookin’ for somethin’ jazzy and fine. Didn’t know it was you till I saw you. You know you got to be the finest one here tonight.”

  “Go ahead, Alan.”

  “You know my name?”

  “Sure. You know mine?”

  “Call you Neecie, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “See?” said Alan Rogers.

  Denice Tate had her hands clasped behind her back. “See what?”

  “You and me, we got that ESP thing goin’ on. We was meant to hook up, girl.”

  Denice laughed. Ashley rolled her eyes and giggled.

  Rogers said, “Let’s go for a walk, okay? This is a bad show, but I can’t hear nothin’ but the band this close to the stage. I want to talk to you.”

  Denice looked at her friend for a moment and said, “All right.”

  They went to the back of the hall, where it was less crowded, and found a place in the corner. Alan Rogers did most of the talking. Denice liked his voice, his style, the way he moved his strong hands in the air to make a point. And his beautiful brown eyes. He made a joke, and both of them laughed. Then he leaned in to kiss her. She closed her eyes and let him. He was a nice boy. The kiss felt good.

  Clarence Tate looked at the March calendar that the Ibex Club sent out to all the folks on their mailing list. He figured Denice would be out for a few hours at Ashley’s house. He thought he’d treat himself for a change, go out, have himself a drink.

  He put on a sport jacket over an open-collar shirt, got into his newly tuned Cutlass Supreme, and headed out, listening to an old Stylistics tape on the stereo all the way uptown. He parked off Georgia and Missouri, a block south of the club. He knew one of the club’s owners, a dude he had gone to Roosevelt with, now on the D.C. boxing commission. He mentioned this dude’s name to the doorman, who nodded to a second doorman, which meant he had beat the cover. The first doorman ran one of those U-shaped metal detectors over his clothes before letting him in. Something new here, but he could dig it, what with all the guns out there now. Still and all, the Ibex was a pretty nice place.

  Tate went up red carpeted stairs. He passed the landing on the second floor, where he could see younger people congregated and hear the thump of bass from a hip-hop group playing in the adjoining hall. He continued on up to the third floor and went into the big room. It was people closer to his age here, dressed nicely, drinking from glasses, listening to the man up on the stage.

  Tate ordered a Remy with a side of ice water, leaned against the bar. He closed his eyes for a moment, listened to Gil Scott-Heron’s rich voice singing the beautiful words to “95 South,” one of Tate’s favorite songs. Gil was solo tonight, just him and his piano, right for this setting. He looked thinner than the last time Tate had seen him, and his hair had gone gray.

  Tate remembered how he used to play the Winter in America LP for Denice, sing her to sleep when “Your Daddy Loves You” came around. What was that, ten years gone already? Damn, she was growing up too fast.

  At the set break, Tate struck up a conversation with a woman at the bar. She was a handsome woman with a nice way about her, heavy in the hips and with plenty of leg on her, but that was all right. Tate was no show prize either, what with the weight he’d put on.

  They talked with one another and had a few laughs. The two of them had a real nice evening. The woman had an easy smile. He got her phone number before he left. She seemed a little surprised that he didn’t at least try to make a play for her that night. But he hadn’t even considered it. He had to be getting back home to Denice, and anyway, it wouldn’t be proper to bring a woman back to the house with him. Not while he was trying to set an example for his sweet little girl.

  Dimitri Karras and Donna Morgan stood well to the back of the St. Augustine School auditorium off 15th and V. They could hear fine there, c
ould feel the music pulse right through them as the mostly male crowd got off on the sounds of Scream, one of D.C.’s hottest bands. Karras had gray hair, and Donna was nearly thirty years old. They didn’t belong in the fray.

  But Karras had wanted to check out this show. Scream, a band on the local Dischord label, was one of those punk-metal outfits that turned it out with melody and drive. He liked the crowd, too—not all the way head-banger or absolute punk. It was a rock-and-roll crowd he could relate to, some sober and some half fucked up and some nearly out of control. Karras didn’t exactly get this Straight Edge movement, the postpunk kids who were anti-alcohol and anti-drug. Some of these kids, they’d even put Xes on their own hands before they entered the clubs these days, proud to show that they were booze free. Shit, drugs went hand in hand with rock, didn’t they? At least in Karras’s mind they did. Minor Threat and those other Straight Edge bands, he dug the energy in their music, but the other part he couldn’t comprehend. He figured it was just a new generation of kids carving out their own identity, trying to separate themselves from the beards and the potheads who came before them. And though he didn’t care to admit it, he knew his confusion had a lot to do with his age. There were plenty of things lately he didn’t understand.

  The Stahl brothers were up front on stage, Peter at the mike and Franz ripping his ax, with Skeeter Thompson anchoring on bass and Kent Stax’s sticks pounding the skins. They were finishing “Feel Like That” when Karras felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around.

  Karras recognized the guy standing before him. Late twenties, black jeans, fifties-style sport jacket over a tails-out oxford shirt. Greek kid; he knew him, but he had aged, changed….

  “Nick Stefanos,” the guy said, holding out his hand. “Dimitri Karras, right?”

  “Right.” Karras shook his hand.

  “You remember me?”

  “Sure,” said Karras with a smile.

  He did remember him, now. Stefanos was the grandson of this old guy, also named Nick Stefanos, owned a diner down on 14th and S, a place where Karras’s father had worked back in the late forties, at the time of his death. The last time Karras had seen the Stefanos kid was Bicentennial weekend, right after that bad shit had gone down with Wilton Cooper and the others. Stefanos had been heading out of town with this friend of his on some road trip, and Karras had gone to see him off. He could no longer remember why.