The Sweet Forever

  “How you doin’?” said Karras.

  “Doin’ good, man.”

  Karras had a look at the kid. He knew a member of the club when he saw one. He leaned forward, put his mouth near Stefanos’s ear.

  “Wanna do a bump?”

  “Yeah,” said Stefanos. “Sure.”

  Karras pointed Donna to a spot over by the left wall. He winked at her, told her he’d be right back. Her eyes were eager and bright. She was wired, but he knew she’d be okay by herself. No one had even looked at the two of them since they’d entered the hall.

  Karras and Stefanos went to the bathroom, found an empty stall. Karras latched the door, leaned against it, pulled his amber vial from his jeans. Stefanos made a fist and turned it up; Karras dumped a mound on the crook of his hand. Stefanos hit it, took in another mound through the other nostril. Karras used the cap-spoon for himself.

  “Nice shake,” said Stefanos.

  “Always,” said Karras. “What’re you up to, man?”

  Stefanos held up his left hand Indian style, flipped it so Karras could see the ring.

  “You got married.”

  “Yeah, last year.”

  “Congratulations. Greek girl?”

  “Nope. White girl named Karen. Met her down at the Local. Teresa Gunn was playing that night. Karen looked just like Chrissie Hynde. That is, she did back then. We partied and, you know, kind of fell in love.”

  Karras didn’t think Stefanos looked to happy about it. He said, “She here?”

  “Uh-uh, not her scene. Not anymore, anyway. She’s at home. I’m outta here, too, right after the Scream set.”

  “Not staying for Black Flag?”

  “Rollins? Nah.”

  Karras had the vial out again. He set Stefanos up the same way.

  “Thanks.”

  “Tipota.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “Good flake.”

  Stefanos laughed. “Besides that.”

  “Working with my buddy Marcus Clay. You remember that record store—”

  “Real Right.”

  “Yeah, there.”

  They were talking awfully fast. Karras did a couple more jolts. Stefanos lit a Camel he had pulled from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “You mind?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Stefanos hit his cigarette hard. He held the smoke in deep, let it out while he took another drag.

  Karras said, “What’re you doing now?”

  “Still working for Nutty Nathan’s.”

  “On Connecticut Avenue?”

  “Yep.”

  “My dealer’s over that way.”

  “Stop in, man, say hey.”

  “You were a stock boy—”

  “I’m a salesman. Been one for years. Karen wants me to go for management.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Fuck, man, I don’t know. I been doing this other shit, too, with this guy I work with, Johnny McGinnes? Process serving. We find people. Follow them and find ’em. I don’t know, I can’t seem to get too serious about anything, you know? Shit, man, I’m twenty-seven years old; I’m still having fun.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You’re twenty-seven?”

  “Get outta here, re.” Karras wiped at something dripping from his nose. “Am I bleeding?”

  “No, you’re all right.”

  “So, what about your grandfather. He still alive?”

  Stefanos blew smoke at the ceiling. “Yeah, he’s… Papou’s okay. He sold the grill. He’s nearly blind now, walks with a cane. I go over there to Irving Street, have dinner with him once a week.”

  “Good man.”

  “Me?”

  “Your papou.”

  “The best.”

  “Want another taste for the road?”

  “Okay.”

  Stefanos pitched his butt in the toilet before they left the stall, had another lit by the time they hit the auditorium. They shook hands and clapped shoulders. Stefanos headed for the stage, where Scream was really blowing the roof off. Karras moved quickly toward Donna.

  It was good to see the Stefanos kid. Good, and kind of sad at the same time. He didn’t quite know why. Karras made it to Donna, told her it was time to go. He needed air. He needed to be outside.

  “Glad you could make it,” said Richard Tutt.

  Kevin Murphy said, “I needed to get out of the house.”

  They were driving south on 13th in Tutt’s Bronco. They had met at their usual spot, outside a bar called O’Grady’s on Longfellow and Colorado, where Murphy had left his Trans Am.

  “How’s Wanda?”

  “She’s doin’ okay.”

  Tutt figured Wanda Murphy for some sort of head case. Last time he’d seen her, she’d come to the door in some piece-of-shit housedress, looking like someone’s maid. Had some wicked body odor coming off her, too, like she’d blown off showers for a week. Tutt knew from experience that black women liked to smell nice, sometimes even went overboard with that sweet perfume of theirs. But Murphy’s wife had long since given up on hygiene or caring for the way she looked. She’d become a wall-hugger, always had to think real hard on what she was going to say. Vacancy signs hung in her eyes. You asked Tutt, she was way past gone.

  Tutt made a point of keeping the Wanda conversations to a minimum. Murphy, he was acting kind of touchy lately, too.

  “You see the mayor on TV today?” said Tutt.

  “Nah, Tutt.”

  “His deputy resigned under a… what do you call it?”

  “A cloud of suspicion.”

  “Yeah, a cloud. Citywide corruption, baby, and now another one of those geniuses went and fell out of the tree. Reporters were askin’ questions; the mayor kept on saying, ‘You people got no cause to question my veracity.’ Pattin’ his head with that handkerchief of his. I do believe our mayor got a case of the cocaine sweats.”

  “Yeah,” said Murphy tiredly, hoping to put the conversation to an end. “They got their problems down there at the District Building.”

  “Problems? Oh, yeah. But you know what the mayor’s gonna do tonight, take his mind off his problems? Go on down to This Is It?, do a few lines on his favorite glass table, watch some ho suck his dick underneath. Maybe have a nice con-yack to go with his co-caine.”

  Tutt high-cackled and air-elbowed Murphy. Murphy turned his head, looked out the window to his right. That old story about This Is It?, the titty bar down on 14th, he knew Tutt would bring it up sooner or later. The cop who had reported it got busted down to night duty for his troubles, but the story had managed to leak out to the general public anyway.

  Kevin Murphy knew that the mayor was out of control, an alcoholic, drug-addicted, pussy-addicted monster. But Murphy was old enough to remember the District before Home Rule. He wanted to believe that the mayor would wake up and do his job. And he didn’t care to hear about the mayor from a racist mothafucker like Richard Tutt.

  “Course,” said Tutt, “seein’ as how the mayor’s most likely gonna be tied up tonight, that frees up his wife to go out and hook up with one of her girlfriends, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Hey, Tutt.”

  “What, partner?”

  “You ever get tired of hearin’ your own voice?”

  Short Man Monroe spun the wheel, one-eightied the Z in the middle of 11th, headed south. He was through collecting for the night. An orange Nike shoebox filled with cash money sat on the bucket to his right.

  Monroe sat real low in the driver’s seat, his forearm resting on the lip of the open window, his wrist dangling. Had to have the arm outside the window for the full lean. Monroe reached over to the radio, got it off of KYS and that Billy Ocean bullshit. He punched in his favorite station, WPGC.

  It felt good to have the evening’s business taken care of, but he wasn’t done yet. Had to find those kids, the one called himself Chief and the others, before
Tutt did. Ain’t no way he was gonna let Tutt, or that other Mr. Charley cop, Murphy, show him up. He had to prove to Tyrell that they didn’t need their kind around anymore. Monroe was out there more than Tyrell these days, and maybe Tyrell didn’t realize how fast the city was changing. Having a couple of cops on the payroll, it didn’t buy you nothin’ anymore. Not really. Look at that open-market thing they had goin’ on over at the Strip, practically untouched by the law.

  Monroe glanced at his watch, the one with the braided gold strap. Almost time to swing back around, pick up his boy Alan Rogers at the Temple.

  Rogers. Shit, he’d gone all the way over for that young freak. Monroe, now, he wouldn’t let no pussy get his own head turned around. Besides, why waste all that time leading up to it when you could get any ho out here to suck your dick right quick for a little ’caine? Least that’s how it was with the girls he knew.

  Monroe ran his finger down the trigger guard on the nine wedged tightly between his thighs. The gun felt good.

  Jumbo Linney and Chink Bennet, now there were a couple of niggas who could use some pussy. They had their movies and all that, the ones on tape and the big-screen ones they jacked off to down at the Casino Royal and the Stanton Art. But never any real girls. Course, neither one of them was much to look at. Jumbo was a Fat Albert–lookin’ mug, and Chink, well, little and yellow as he was, he looked like that wax doll–lookin’ sucker hanging off the lamppost on the cover of that Grandmaster Flash record, the one had “The Message” on side two. Monroe used to wonder if Jumbo and Chink were punks or something, the way they always hung together. But he saw now that they were just used to each other, growing up in the same housing unit like they did. Couldn’t separate those boys for nothin’.

  Monroe liked movies, but not that porno shit. He liked movies about men who had made it big, who lived large, who got their propers all the time and then checked out right. Like those Godfather movies, and especially that Scarface nigga, baddest mothafucker ever walked down the street. He liked that Terminator one, too. ’Specially that scene where the Terminator walked back into that police station, fucked all those uniformed motha-fuckers up. He remembered the night he saw the movie out at the Allen theater on New Hampshire Avenue, some of the harder young niggas were standing up during that scene, yelling, “Kill ’em!” and “Kill ’em again!”

  Monroe saw two boys down the street near the alley off T. One of them wore a bright green cap.

  “Hey, now,” said Monroe.

  He downshifted coming out of a hard right. The boys looked up at the sound of rubber left on the street.

  NINE

  Wesley Meadows decided on his street name, Chief, after watching this mean old rottweiler dog in the alley behind his row house on O. This rottweiler, named Chief by his teenage owner, had everyone in the neighborhood all the way shook. Got so after a while nobody, kids or adults, would walk down that alley along the backyard fence where the teenager kept that dog. Didn’t matter that Chief, the dog, was tied up to his choke collar by a heavy chain. Way that dog got up on his hindquarters, bared his teeth right up to the gums when you neared the yard, it just plain made you weak with fear. And Wesley, he had the fear more than most. Wesley thought, wasn’t nothin’ alive badder or more fearless than that dog, so he took Chief’s name for his own.

  Wesley Meadows and his friend James Willets walked down the alley toward T. They had to step around a bunch of junk—bald tires and old washing machines and shit—put there by Tyrell Cleveland’s boys to slow down the cruisers and the foot cops. It wasn’t that hard anymore to get around back here at night; by now Wesley and his boy James had memorized where all the obstacles were.

  Wesley’s friend James went by the name of P-Square. James said he chose the name ’cause it sounded mysterious and all that. He was embarrassed to tell Wesley where he had gotten it, though Wesley knew. P-Square stood for Peter Parker, that boy who was really Spiderman, James’s favorite character from the comic books he loved.

  James Willets had a Spiderman action figure in the pocket of his jeans, along with several dimes and quarters of stepped-on cocaine wrapped in individual packets of foil, twisted at the ends. Wesley had a few dimes and quarters of the same stuff in one pocket of his sweatpants and an old .22 with a worn-down firing pin in the other. He had traded a half to some no-ass, nose-running junkie over on 10th for the gun.

  Wesley Meadows and James Willets were eleven years old.

  Wesley didn’t want to hurt nobody, but you had to have the gun if you were going to play, so there it was. Course, he and James, they weren’t makin’ any kind of money at this yet, but it was something to do at night to get away from his little brothers and sisters, his mom and her loud boyfriend who was always just hangin’ around the house trying to tell him what not to do. Wesley’s older brother, Antoine, now he was in the life for real. Wesley took a little bit of Antoine’s ’caine every so often, just enough so Antoine didn’t notice, and then Wesley would mix in a good amount of that stuff in the blue plastic bottle, the stuff made babies do dookie real quick. Antoine had shown Wesley how it was done.

  “We gonna make some change tonight, P-Square?”

  “Large change,” said James, smiling that goofy-ass smile of his.

  Truth was, they hardly ever sold any of the stuff they carried. Most of the time, they brought the same stuff out with them two, three nights in a row.

  Wesley looked over at James. James was short and skinny, with a mouthful of buck teeth. The other kids at school were always crackin’ on him over those teeth, calling him Hee-Haw Willets and shit. James was too small and scared to be useful in a bind, but Wesley had named him his lieutenant anyway. Gave James confidence. One thing you could count on with James, he hung with it, not like their friend Mooty Wallace, who would run home the first time one of Tyrell Cleveland’s boys gave them any kind of hard look. Truth was, Mooty was faster on his feet than the two of them combined.

  Shoot, they were just out here having fun, basically, gettin’ a little bit but not too much, not cutting into Tyrell’s turf at all. Tyrell’s boys, they could see that Chief and P-Square weren’t much more than a couple of kids. Came down to it, they wouldn’t waste their time.

  Wesley and James came to the head of the alley and heard a screech of tires on the street. They looked up to see a black Z heading straight toward them.

  “Buck!” said Wesley Meadows.

  They turned and ran.

  Short Man Monroe curbed the Z. He pulled his keys from the ignition, came out of the car with the Glock in his hand and pointed up in the air. He ran into the alley.

  He could see that green hat even in the dark. The head of some other young boy, too, waggin’ back and forth as he ran next to the one who called himself Chief.

  “Yo, man, hold up!” screamed Monroe. He jumped over a tire, landed clean, kept going without breaking his stride.

  Wesley said, “P-Square!”

  “Chief!”

  Their voices sounded funny to them, mixed with their hard breath, running all out like they were.

  “Go right, man,” said Wesley. “I’ll meet you on our street!”

  “Okay!”

  James Willets turned abruptly, ran straight for someone’s backyard fence. He had the action figure out of his pocket, clutched tightly in his fist. He knew he’d have to leap that fence clean….

  “Peter Parker,” said James. “Fly!”

  And he was over the fence with barely a touch, heading into the darkness of the side yard and out the front, adrenaline pushing him on, his feet hardly lighting on the dead grass and then the asphalt of the street.

  “You!” shouted Monroe. He had let the skinny one go, was concentrating on the one called Chief. He was gaining on him now.

  Wesley Meadows cut hard coming out of the alley and booked west on S. A woman was walking down the sidewalk; Meadows danced around her, kept right on.

  Monroe came around the corner, almost ran right into some fool woman carry
ing grocery bags. She looked into Monroe’s eyes, looked at the automatic in his hand. Her own eyes widened. She hurried past with her head down, staring at the sidewalk and her feet.

  Monroe ran a few more steps, slowed down and stopped. He bent forward to catch his breath.

  “Damn,” he said.

  He stood up straight. That woman would remember him. Stupid to finish this tonight. Kid was plain lucky she came on them like she did. He slipped the Glock in the waistband of his jeans.

  Monroe looked down S. Around 12th, under a streetlamp, he saw the kid in the green cap stop and look back, jump up and down cheerleader style, wave his arms. What, did this little mothafucker think Monroe was playin’? And what was that he was holding up in his hand? Looked like… goddamn, it was, some kind of gun.

  “You done sealed your doom, Chief,” said Monroe, narrowing his eyes, watching the kid, watching the smoke of his own breath. “Now you’re gonna die for sure.”

  Dimitri Karras leaned forward from his seat on the couch. He used his single-edge blade to lengthen the long line on the mirror. He moved the snow back and forth, making it longer with each stroke. He loved to play with the stuff; sometimes he thought the ritual was the best part of doing coke.

  Donna Morgan stood in the center of the room, moving to No Free Lunch, the Green on Red EP that Karras had thrown on the turntable. While Donna danced, she stared at the Miami Vice episode playing silently on the television. Karras thought it funny—ironic, he would have said in his teaching days—that a nation of coke-using young people watched this show every Friday night, religiously following the exploits of these stylish undercover cops. Karras would have said something to Donna about it, but she wouldn’t have heard him. The music was up too loud.