The Cut

by George Pelecanos

  Afterward, Lucas asked Constance to spend the night, but she declined. He put on a pair of jeans and phoned for a cab, and when it arrived he walked her downstairs. The street shone with the storm that had come and gone.

  “You could sleep over once,” said Lucas. “You never do.”

  “That’s not what this is,” said Constance, her face close to his in the doorway, her breath warm on his face.

  “You mean it’s not that serious.”

  “Some things are better unspoken.” Constance kissed him softly on his mouth. “Thank you for the wonderful night, Spero.”

  He watched her get into the cab, which then rolled east toward 14th. He stayed in the doorway, looking at the Simmonses’ house next door, its darkened porch, the familiar cars parked on the street. Seeing nothing unusual, Lucas went back up to his apartment and fell asleep.

  TWENTY

  LEO LUCAS stood at the head of his class, wearing a crisp blue oxford shirt, a red-and-blue rep Ralph Lauren tie, plain-front khakis, and Clarke desert boots. His ID badge hung on a chain over the shirt. The boys in the room, in uniform, wore purple and white polo shirts, and khaki pants.

  In Leo’s hand was a slim Avon paperback of a novel called The Hunter. Its author credit read “Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.” The cover art collage featured a red scarf, red pills spilling out of a vial, playing cards and chips, and a stainless steel .38 revolver with wooden grips.

  “Okay,” said Leo. “When we first meet Parker, who I’ll call the antihero of this book, he’s walking across the George Washington Bridge. This is from the first page: Office women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations above their nylons. He was big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders and arms too long in sleeves too short. He wore a gray suit, limp with age and no pressing. What does that tell you, in shorthand?”

  “The ladies want to do him,” said a boy.

  “Yes, women do find him attractive,” said Leo. “But not in a boy-next-door kinda way.”

  “He’s too big for that suit,” said Hannibal, known as Balls.

  “Hold that thought,” said Leo. He looked down at the open book. “This is also from the first page: His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was brown and dry and dead, blowing around his head like a poor toupee about to fly loose. His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless. His suit coat fluttered behind him, and his arms swung easily as he walked.” Leo closed the book. “What does this say about Parker? How does it make you feel?”

  “He’s like an animal or somethin,” said a boy named Mark Norman.

  “Way his hands are swinging,” said another, “it’s like he don’t care about nothin.”

  “He doesn’t belong in that suit,” said William Rogers, aka Moony.

  “Exactly,” said Leo. “The suit doesn’t fit him, both literally and metaphorically. It’s a costume to him. He’d be more comfortable walking naked through a jungle. The Parker books are crime novels, but they’re also about a man whose physicality stands in contrast to a working world that, at the time, had become increasingly mechanized and deskbound.”

  “I don’t get what you’re sayin, Mr. Lucas.”

  “Parker is a man of action. He’s defined by what he does rather than what he says.”

  “We gonna see the movie?” said Moony.

  “Yes,” said Leo. “When we’re done reading this, I’m going to show you Point Blank, the classic film that was made from this book. You’ll see how Lee Marvin embodies the loose-limbed description of Parker that I read to you. He plays him like a big cat.”

  “You mean like a panther.”

  “Right,” said Leo.

  “They made another movie with that character, too.”

  “That Mel Gibson joint,” said a boy. “It was crud.”

  “Y’all haven’t even seen the best one they made,” said Ernest Lindsay, speaking up for the first time because the discussion had veered toward his interests. “It’s called The Outfit.”

  Some of the boys in the class looked at him and then at one another. They didn’t begrudge Ernest his knowledge, but felt he was somewhat strange, being into the old-time stuff that no one else cared about. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to sports, music, video games, or girls. They felt he lived in a fantasy head, when they were more concerned with the real.

  “I’m not familiar with it,” said Leo.

  “I stayed up till three in the morning once to watch it on AMC. Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan… Parker was called Macklin in that movie.”

  The room grew quiet. Ernest, at first proud, now embarrassed, slumped in his seat.

  “What do you all like about this book so far?” said Leo, breaking the tension.

  “It’s short,” said Hannibal, and a few of the boys laughed.

  “Yeah, thank you,” said Mark Norman.

  “We’re at the end of the school year,” said Leo. “I gave you guys a break.”

  The too-loud voice on the intercom boomed suddenly and statically in the room, telling the boys it was time to go to their next class. They got up boisterously, clumsily pushing chairs against chairs, making unnecessary noise.

  My pups, thought Leo.

  “Read this book before the next class,” he called out, and got some groans in return. “Come on, fellas, we want to go out strong. Participation is a large part of your grade.”

  As they filed out, Leo reached out and stopped Ernest with a hand on his arm.

  “You need me?”

  “Stick around for a second,” said Leo. He waited for the others to leave and sat on the edge of his desk. Ernest stood before him, a book bag slung over his shoulder.

  “What’s up?” said Ernest.

  “Just want you to know, you add a lot to this class. When you speak on things you’re passionate about, it gets everyone up, even if they don’t show it.”

  “They think I’m a rain man or somethin. Soft, too.”

  “No, they don’t. They respect you because you’re smart.” Leo looked him over. “You get out in the world, what you know is going to set you apart from other folks. But first thing, you got to get that higher education.”

  “I know it.”

  “Did you fill out the college application yet?”

  “I didn’t get to it.”

  “Thought your mother was going to help you.”

  “She is,” said Ernest. “But she went away this week with her man. Took a vacation with him, like.”

  Leo caught the distaste in Ernest’s voice. “Look, we’ve got applications in the office. Come past after school today and I’ll help you knock it out.”

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “Just come by,” said Leo.

  “Thank you,” said Ernest. “And tell your brother I said thanks, too. He gave me a couple of movie books that were tight.”

  “What’d he do that for?”

  “I helped him out with somethin, is all.”

  Leo digested that but asked nothing further.

  “Okay,” said Leo. “I’ll see you after school.”

  “Bet,” said Ernest.

  Leo waited for a long while that afternoon, but Ernest did not return.

  BERNARD WHITE and Beano Mobley were parked on 12th Street facing north, White under the wheel of the Expedition and Mobley on the other side of the console, seated in the shotgun bucket. White thinking, Mobley’s small, like Earl. But Mobley seemed bigger, because he was an endomorph. Meaning Mobley was round and muscular, and Nance had been skinny and wiry. Had the body type they called ectomorph. Those were good words. White had written them down and put them in a file he kept at home.

  The Tahoe Bernard White and Earl Nance used to drive was large, but the Expedition was like a bus. No one in the city needed a vehicle this huge, but people wanted to own the biggest SUV
on the block. That name, Expedition, it suggested adventure, a safari, the discovery of new worlds. Lewis and motherfucking Clark. But all Bernard ever saw behind the wheels of these beasts were fat brothers and sisters holding cell phones and white middle-aged fathers with beer guts and goatees. If they ever went off-road, it was an accident when they’d drunk too much. Highlander. Pathfinder. Expedition. To where, the Walmart? That shit liked to kill him, man.

  “Kids got out,” said Mobley, looking in his side-view, seeing students coming from Cardozo in groups. “You see him?”

  White glanced in his mirror. “No. He’ll be along.”

  They had been sitting on the street for hours. That morning, after the Lindsay boy had gone to school, they watched as the boy’s mother and a middle-aged man who had the sour, baggy-eyed look of a mean drinker, left out the row house they stayed in and, carrying a couple of suitcases, got into a VW Cabriolet and sped off. Had to be her car, ’cause a man wouldn’t own a Cabriolet. White had laughed out loud at their good fortune. Obviously the adults of the house weren’t coming home that evening at least. Now was the time to steal the boy.

  “They’re all wearin the same shit,” said Mobley with that sandpaper voice of his, observing the sea of purple and white polo shirts. “Why the school make them put on those shirts?”

  “Regimentation,” said White.

  “What?”

  White knew he’d get Mobley on that one. He surprised Ricardo and them when he threw in a word they didn’t know. They thought he was stupid. Everyone did, going back to his mother, his uncles, his teachers, the other kids in his neighborhood. He was always way big for his age, six foot two by the time he turned twelve, and big to them meant dumb. Played football for the Marlboro Mustangs in the peewee league, then later at Largo High. The coaches yelling at him, Hit somebody, son! And he did, with fire. Broke this one boy’s neck with a helmet-to-helmet thing, got him while his head was turned toward a pass, running a sideline pattern. He could have hit him low, but hey. White had a powerful feeling when he saw the kid lying there, eyes all wide and scared, his head taped to a gurney. He apologized for the unfortunate hit: he didn’t mean to hurt no one, football was a contact sport, etc. It was called a tragic accident and largely forgotten. The boy never did walk again.

  Yeah, he put some hurt on those kids, and if they looked at him wrong or called him a retard, he gave them double hurt. That is, until he dropped out. He didn’t get past the tenth grade, but that didn’t mean anything. He read bodybuilding magazines and did crossword puzzles. He could break down an engine. He was smart.

  White had liked using words to fuck with Earl. Like saying Earl was compensating when he really meant overcompensating. By doing this, he could get Earl to admit that he was touchy about his lack of size. He did it all the time to Earl when they were working in the service bays. Earl talking about women, and how he was small of stature but plenty big “down there,” “thick as a can of Mountain Dew,” and how he liked to use it, though White had never seen him with a girl. White saying, “You just a diminutive fellow, is all you are,” Earl saying, “Huh?”

  Earl Nance was a funny little dude to hang with. Even when they murdered together, after it was done, the back and forth they had, what was called the banter, was fun. He wished Earl was still sitting next to him, instead of this bad-tempered, Have-a-Tampa-smellin old man. He’d give it to that Lucas dude fierce when he had the opportunity. It wouldn’t bring Earl back, but it would make White feel good.

  “Regimentation mean they like to keep those kids in order,” said White.

  “That so,” said Beano Mobley.

  Some time must have passed while he’d been, what was that word, ruminating, because when White looked in the side-view again, most of the schoolkids were gone. Except for one, a tall, thin boy with braids, coming down the block on foot. He was kind of looking around, taking his time, his mouth moving though there was no one with him. Had to be the Lindsay kid, since he was slowing down near the steps that led to the Lindsay row house. He was coming closer, damn near right beside their vehicle.

  “That’s him,” said White.

  “Who don’t know that,” said Mobley. He had already opened his door.

  ERNEST LINDSAY had lingered in the library after the last bell. He’d flirted with going by the office to pick up that college application, but in the end he had decided against it. He didn’t like to leave Mr. Lucas hanging like that, but he didn’t feel like spending the time with it, and figured that he could apply to UDC some other day. This was what he told himself, but deep down he knew why he was putting the process off. He was scared.

  Ernest had a comfort thing where he was at. He had lived in the same row home with his mother his whole life. He had walked to all of his schools. This was a big step for him, having to go across town to an unfamiliar neighborhood, face a new challenge, interact with strangers, faculty and students alike, people he wasn’t sure he could trust. And the aspect of it that he could not even admit to himself: he was afraid to fail.

  Ernest had this dream of making movies, but how could he ever make it real? How could a dude from D.C. who had never been out of the city, except to go to amusement parks and such, how could he make that leap from stoop boy to someone who worked in a fast and glamorous business, an industry, one of polish and glamour, personal assistants, conference calls? His dreams were his everything. If he were to lose them, if he were to know for certain that these dreams were never going to be realized, what would he have left?

  Ernest went down the dark interior stairwell of his school, the stone steps beneath him worn in the centers from almost a century of use. He passed through the lobby, where the police and security were stationed, and exited the building. Out in the sunlight, he walked toward 12th.

  It’s just a few people who work in that business get to direct, thought Ernest. They got carpenters, folks who set up the lights, location scouts… I could do something like that. But I bet those folks don’t have that cinema knowledge I do. I know how to look at a film. I like to read about movies, and I like to talk about ’em, too. I could teach.

  He realized he was talking to himself and he stopped. Up ahead, a small, strong, older guy was getting out of a big Ford SUV.

  Ernest wouldn’t mind standing in front of a classroom, turning students on to film. He was still learning. He had been reading the thick biography that Spero had given him. He was in the middle of the chapter on the making of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which in Italy was called Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. He liked those kinds of facts. Ernest felt this was Mr. Sergio Leone’s masterpiece. He was especially into that scene toward the end where the Eastwood character performs an act of kindness for a dying Confederate soldier and gives him a last smoke. There was hardly any dialogue in that scene. What Leone put into the shot, what he left out of it, the framing, the acting, the beautiful music, were all in harmony. That scene right there, Ernest got chills when he watched it. He had bought the soundtrack off a U.K. website using his mother’s credit card, and when it arrived at his house he saw that it had the song titles listed in Italian. He had asked his teacher what “Morte di un soldato” meant, and Mr. Lucas told him it meant “death of a soldier,” and Ernest knew that he had bought the right CD. If he became a teacher someday, he would show the students the film and then play the cues from the soundtrack for them as well. That perfect blend of image and sound.

  “Ernest Lindsay,” said the short man who had gotten out of the big SUV. He stood before Ernest now, blocking his way. He had an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. He wore a jacket in the heat. His hand was in the jacket pocket.

  Ernest nodded. He couldn’t even raise spit.

  Mobley made an eye motion toward the back door of the SUV. “Get in the back, son.”

  Ernest’s head moved birdlike as he glanced around the street. Mobley stepped forward, pulled his hand from his jacket, and pressed the barrel of a revolver hard against Ernest’s stomach.

&nb
sp; “You’ll be all right if you do it,” said Mobley, his breath foul. “Otherwise… Look, I’ll just go ahead and shoot you right here. I don’t even care.”

  Ernest got into the backseat of the Ford. Mobley slid in beside him.

  The big man in the driver’s seat said, “You know he’s got a cell.”

  A few minutes later, going north on 11th, Mobley tossed Ernest’s cell phone out the window. Ernest heard it break into pieces as it hit the street.

  TWENTY-­ONE

  LOQUACIA HAWKINS lived with her son, David, in a clapboard colonial on Quintana Place in Manor Park. It was not far from the community garden on 9th and the Fourth District police station, where huge radio towers landmarked the neighborhood and loomed over the landscape. David and his friend Duron had stolen the Denali on Peabody, in the shadow of the towers.

  Lucas parked his Jeep on Quintana and grabbed a black Patagonia pack off the seat beside him. He slung the pack over his shoulder and walked down the sidewalk, glancing at the parked vehicles, looking for a law car and seeing none. He noticed a shiny Range Rover HSE, black with sand leather interior and spoke alloy wheels. It looked brand-new. No city dweller needed an eighty-thousand-dollar luxury off-road vehicle like this one, but it was beautifully designed and crafted, and Lucas admired it as he passed.

  He stepped up onto the porch of the colonial and knocked on the front door. Soon the door opened, and a tall, handsome woman, strong boned and well proportioned, stood in the frame. She was in her thirties, had liquid ebony eyes and smile lines parenthesizing her mouth. She wore indigo jeans, ankle-strap shoes, a faintly patterned cream-colored shirt that looked expensive, and a small crucifix on a simple gold chain.