King Suckerman

by George Pelecanos

  “Yeah.”

  “What branch?”

  “Look—”

  “It’s not important. It’s okay.” Farrelly got off the desk, straightened his raincoat. “After a while—after you’ve seen all that death, I mean—it gets to be like you’re wearing a mask. But it’s still just a mask. The fear and the turning in your gut, they’re still there. So, anyway… I was just asking to make sure you were doing all right.”

  “Thanks, Detective.”

  “Make it Doc.”

  “Okay, Doc. Thanks.”

  “I’m going to talk to your friend for a few minutes, then you can go. We’ll secure the premises for you. You go straight home, hear? Mix yourself a stiff one—”

  “I will.”

  “And try to get some sleep.”

  Detective Doc Farrelly found Karras standing against the wall. While Farrelly was questioning him, Karras noticed Clay emerge from the backroom and walk with purpose to the Rock section of the store. He saw Clay lift several records out of the H bin and carry the records over to Soul. He watched Clay file them carefully in place.

  “That’s all,” said Farrelly.

  “What?” said Karras.

  Farrelly said, “You can go.”

  Karras and Clay drove through Rock Creek Park, the top down at Marcus’s request. They listened to the rush of the wind, the buzz of the small engine working from the back of the car, nothing else. Neither of them spoke. The air was thick with humidity, dampening the seats and filming the windshield. Karras gave the wipers a swipe to clear the glass as he turned off Beach Drive and headed toward Arkansas Avenue. Just before Arkansas he hooked a right, downshifted, took the winding hill up to Mount Pleasant.

  Karras stopped in front of Clay’s row house on Brown. A light shone in the second-story window that faced the street.

  “Marcus?”

  “What.”

  “That detective told me about the note. It was Cooper—”

  “I know.”

  “Cooper was in my house. With my mother, man.”

  “I said I know.”

  “I didn’t let on to that detective that I knew who Cooper was.”

  “Neither did I.”

  They listened to the crickets and the hiss of tires running north and south on 16th, one block east.

  “Marcus?”

  “What.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Shut up, Dimitri.” Clay turned to Karras, spoke softly. His eyes were moist in the light. “Just shut your mouth, man. Don’t want to hear about who’s sorry, whose fault it was. Don’t want to hear none of that. You can’t undo death. The only thing that matters is what happens next.”

  “Marcus—”

  “I don’t want to talk about a damn thing tonight. Just want to close my eyes and hold on to my woman. I just want to do that, and think.”

  “Okay.”

  Clay shook Karras’s hand. “You take it light, hear?”

  “Yeah. You, too.”

  Karras watched Clay take the steps up to his house. He waited for Marcus to go inside, but Clay stopped on the porch and stood in the light of a yellow bulb and did not move. Karras waited a little while longer and drove away.

  When the VW was out of sight, Marcus Clay had a seat on the top step of his porch. He cried until he couldn’t any longer, then wiped his face clean with the tail of his shirt. After a while Clay stood up, straightened his shoulders, and walked into the house.

  Dimitri Karras entered his apartment. Vivian had thrown away the empty beer cans and washed out the glasses, dumped the ashtrays and wiped the place clean. There was nothing to suggest that a party had been thrown here earlier in the night. Karras had crashed immediately at the sight of the cop standing in the door; now he was completely straight.

  He extinguished the lights and went through the hall to his bedroom. Vivian Lee lay beneath a single cover, her bare shoulders visible, the curves of her nude body defined against the thin cotton fabric, her hair black as ink spilled out atop the white of the sheet.

  Karras stripped naked and got under the sheet. He reached over and clicked off his bedside lamp. Vivian turned her body so that it touched his. He felt the weight of her breasts against his back.

  Pearl slats of moonlight fell into the room. Karras listened to the tick of his wristwatch and studied the light inching across the floor. Time passed like this. He thought he might remain awake all night. But as the sky outside his window began to lighten, his eyes grew heavy, and Karras went to sleep.

  TWENTY

  Clarence Tate looked through the warehouse window down to the street. A nerve rippled along his right eye. He had read in the morning Post about the slayings on the Howard County farm, and he had read, deep in Metro, about the awful murder-robbery at Marcus Clay’s Real Right Records. Now he would find out if all his fears were true.

  “Eddie?”

  “What?”

  Marchetti’s eyes were glued to Soul of the City, the local Saturday morning dance show on channel 20.

  “Cooper just got here.”

  “So? He called, said he’d be stopping by, didn’t he?”

  Tate hadn’t mentioned the killings to Marchetti. It wouldn’t have done anybody any good to get Eddie all emotionally riled. Maybe Cooper wasn’t involved. There was still an outside chance that this was all some freaky kind of coincidence. Maybe Cooper was just coming over one last time to say good-bye.

  Tate said, “You ought to see the ride he pulled up in.”

  “Got rid of that red Mopar?”

  “Traded it in for something a little flashier.”

  “Flashier than the Challenger? His prerogative, I guess.”

  Tate took in the car, spoke softly. “Boy just don’t give a good fuck about nothin’.”

  “Say it again?”

  “Nothin,’ Eddie. Looks like him and that skinny white kid are coming up alone.”

  Marchetti shrugged. “Buzz him in, then.”

  Tate watched the two Bamas lean against the yellow car. The better built of the two offered the stupid-looking one a cigarette while Cooper and the white boy walked across the street. Tate went to the office door and waited for them to ring the bell. When he had let them in, he went over to the television set and cut the power.

  “Hey,” said Marchetti.

  “No distractions, Eddie,” said Tate.

  A moment later Cooper and Clagget entered the office.

  “Mr. Tate,” said Cooper, smiling. “Mr. Spags.”

  “Wilton,” said Marchetti, getting out of his chair to reach across the desk and shake Cooper’s hand.

  Tate studied the boy in the high stacks who leaned his narrow frame against the wall, his face whiter than before, his eyes sunk deep. He seemed weak, almost too weak to stand on his own two feet.

  Cooper had a seat, put his feet up on Eddie’s desk. He pulled a pack of Salems from his breast pocket, lit one, tossed the match to the concrete floor. He dragged deeply, let some smoke pass through his nose, blew a ring and power-blew another through the first.

  “Well,” said Marchetti, “how are we doing?”

  “Oh, we doin’ fine. Look here.” Cooper let the cigarette dangle from the side of his mouth, raised his hips, reached into the pocket of his jeans, withdrew a rubber-banded roll of bills. “Can’t get a damn thing out these jeans once I’m sittin’ down. Last pair of these disco blues I’m gonna buy, you can believe that.”

  “What’s that?” said Marchetti, pointing his chin at the bills.

  “Half your money, Spags.” Cooper tossed the roll onto the desk. “After I took my fifty points, of course.”

  “You got the twenty G’s back from Clay already?”

  “Like I said, only half.”

  “He give you any trouble?”

  “He didn’t, no.” Cooper lowered his eyes in theatrical remorse. “Had to kill one of his employees, though. Nice kid, too, one of those Marcus Garvey brothers. Guess you could say that boy was just unlu
cky to be where he was at.”

  “Kill?” said Marchetti.

  “B. R. did it,” said Cooper, jerking his head toward Clagget. “Blew the face off the young brother with his shotgun. Those double-aught shells sure did make an awful mess.”

  The color drained from Marchetti’s face. Tate stayed where he was, standing behind the desk with his back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, his fists balled tight.

  “You okay, Spags?” said Cooper. “You lookin’ as pale as my young friend B. R.”

  “I, I’m all right.”

  “Sure you are. I mean, you did want me to recover your money, didn’t you?”

  Marchetti spread his hands. “I’m just… Look, I’m just doing a little business in this town. Brokering a few deals, understand? I don’t know anything about killing—”

  “Now you do,” said Cooper.

  “But—”

  “Here it is. You deal with men like me, you gotta deal all the way. I mean, you want to run with the big elephants, you gotta pee in the big bushes. Right?”

  Marchetti shook his head. “This is over.”

  “Naw,” said Cooper. “Not yet. Got to recover the rest of that ten thousand for you, Spags.”

  “I don’t need any more money.”

  “Funny thing is,” said Cooper, “neither do I. Got a whole suitcase full of it back where I’m stayin’. Know what else? Got a shitload of blow, too. Got everything I need and more. But, regardless, I’m gonna get the rest of that money from Trouble Man. ’Cause right now? I’m just plain having fun.”

  Marchetti glanced over his shoulder at Tate, then back at Cooper. He squirmed in his seat. “What do you mean you got the money and the blow? I thought—”

  “You thought. Ain’t you read the paper today, Spags?”

  “We don’t want to know about that, man,” said Tate.

  “Know about what?” said Marchetti.

  “Your boy Clarence—excuse me, I mean Clarenze—he reads the newspaper, I bet. There’s this story in this mornin’s edition, you ought to check it out, ’bout how all these bikers got themselves doomed out on some Howard County farm.”

  “You—”

  “Oh, yeah. Killed ’em like animals, Spags. Larry and his woman and all the rest.”

  Tate pushed off from the wall. He put a hand on Marchetti’s shoulder. “Why you tellin’ us, Cooper?”

  “ ’Cause we’re partners, that’s why. I’d call us partners, anyway. The law, they’d probably call the two of you ‘accessories.’ But I’d like to think of all of us as bein’ on the same side.”

  “Ain’t too careful of you,” said Tate. “The more people you tell, the better chance that someone’s gonna talk about it later on.”

  “You’re smarter than that, Clarence. Way smarter than your boss, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Mr. Spags. You recognized the kind of person I was the first time you laid eyes on me, man. You know that if I ever even had a notion that you turned me in… well, you know what I’d do. Even if I were to be incarcerated, I’d find a way. Always someone on the outside owes an influential inside nigger like me a favor. And it wouldn’t be just you I’d rain on. I’d find your kin, too.”

  “I ain’t got no kin,” said Tate.

  “Oh, yes you do. You got ‘Daddy’ written all over your face.” Cooper smiled. “What you got, man? Little boy? Cute little girl?”

  Tate said nothing. But his face betrayed him.

  Cooper said, “Girl, huh?”

  Again, Tate did not respond. Cooper looked at him and laughed.

  “Well,” said Cooper, getting out of his chair. “We best be on our way. Just thought we’d stop by, give you one of them progress reports.”

  “What’re you going to do now?” said Marchetti, a catch in his voice.

  “Now? Gonna try and relax today, get ready for the big party tomorrow night. Think about how I can hook up with Trouble Man, get the rest of our jack. Mind, gonna be a little more difficult now, what with all the violence we done perpetrated yesterday.” Cooper looked at Tate. “Clarenze, maybe you can put us up with T-Man. Y’all played ball together, right? Maybe he’ll listen to you. You could hook us up someplace quiet, where I could go on and… conclude our business.”

  “Maybe I could,” said Tate, with narrowed eyes.

  “Go ahead and think on it. And Spags?”

  “What.”

  “Gonna check on your Chinese girlfriend, too.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “What, you givin’ up on her, man? Be a shame to let a fine piece of clevvies like her walk away. After all, it was her got the ball rolling on this whole conflict we got. I’ll have to remember to ask that Greek boy what happened to her when I see him.”

  “Wilton?”

  “What you want, little brother?”

  “Let’s go, blood. I don’t feel so good.”

  “Yeah, you are lookin’ a little peaked. C’mon.” Cooper made a slight, mocking bow to Marchetti and Tate. “Later, fellas. Let’s all keep in touch.”

  Cooper and Clagget walked from the office. A few minutes later Tate heard the rumble of the muscle car and then its fade.

  “Clarenze?” said Marchetti.

  “Not now, Eddie,” said Tate. “I need to think.”

  The first thing Dimitri Karras did on Saturday morning, after he had put down half a cup of coffee, was phone his mother’s first cousin, Homer Bacas, and ask him if it would be all right if Eleni spent the weekend out at his place in Burke, a Northern Virginia suburb of D.C. Homer had a nice house on Athens Road with a deep lot shaded by tall trees and a large vegetable garden featuring ripe, juicy tomatoes. Eleni always enjoyed her visits there. Homer said he’d invite her over for the Fourth and, without asking why, promised to honor Dimitri’s request that he not mention to Eleni that her son had prompted the call.

  The second thing Karras did was to gather Vivian Lee’s few articles of clothing and toiletries, put them in one of his gym bags, and tell her that it was time to take a ride.

  “Where we off to?” asked Vivian.

  Karras said, “I’m taking you home.”

  Vivian looked vaguely betrayed, but there was something in Karras’s tone that seemed to preclude further discussion. Karras finished his coffee and the two of them left the Trauma Arms.

  They drove north on Wisconsin Avenue, out of the city. Vivian bent forward to light a cigarette in the wind, and when it had burned down to the filter she lit another off the first. She didn’t try to argue or make conversation with Karras. Wisconsin Avenue became Rockville Pike.

  “Go right up there,” said Vivian, and Karras turned east onto Randolph Road.

  They got over to Viers Mill and made another turn, entering a neighborhood of smallish houses originally offered to World War II veterans on the GI Bill. Vivian was in the place in which she had been raised. Her anger flared.

  “This is about last night, is that it?”

  “What?”

  “The murder last night, at Marcus’s record store. It was connected to those guys who were at Eddie’s office, right?”

  Karras shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Sure you do. You’re worried about me. You don’t think I can take care of myself.”

  Karras put on his shades. “I think you can take care of yourself fine. I just don’t want you around anymore, that’s all.”

  Vivian dragged on her cigarette. She tapped ash onto her jeans and rubbed the ash in roughly until it disappeared. She hit her cigarette, pitched it into the wind.

  “You don’t want me around.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why take me home, then? Why not just let me hit the streets?”

  “I pulled you out of that place. You’re my responsibility. I’m taking you home.”

  Vivian chuckled. “God, you’re such a hypocrite. You wake up this morning and you decide that you want to be my daddy. But just last night you were ready to fuck me. So who are you, Dim
itri? Or don’t you know?”

  “Where’s your house?” said Karras.

  Vivian said, “Just up ahead.”

  Karras parked across the street from a boxy one-story house with peeling white paint. A young man stood on the porch reading a racing form, a short pencil wedged behind his ear. A chain-link fence ran around the house, with herb and flower gardens taking up the entire front yard. A small pond sat in the middle of the herb garden, a miniature concrete temple by its side. Lily pads floated in the copper-colored water, and large goldfish flashed beneath the pads in the sun. An old Chinaman with a face like a walnut sat in a beach chair by the pond, staring into the water, and a Chinese woman who could have been fifty or eighty tended the flower garden nearby on her hands and knees. She looked over at the Karmann Ghia, stared at Vivian for a while without expression, then pulled some weeds from alongside a ground cover of purple phlox.

  “My mother,” said Vivian with contempt.

  “Who’s that in the chair? Your father?”

  “My mother’s father. He must be a hundred years old. My God, these people never die.”

  “They will,” said Karras.

  “Oh, there’ll always be someone else to replace them. All my life we had ten, fifteen people living in that house. Relatives, friends, guys who worked in the kitchen at my father’s restaurant. Sometimes I didn’t know who they belonged to. You have no idea.”

  “So you had a lot of people around the house. And I bet a few of them even had the nerve to love you. Is that the worst you can say about it?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  The woman was looking at Vivian again from inside the fence. Vivian wiped her eyes dry with the palm of her hand.

  “Go on,” said Karras.

  “I’ll be out of here tomorrow. You know that, don’t you? I’ll be down on the Mall for the fireworks and I’ll see someone I know and then I’ll just be gone. I won’t come back this time, either. I don’t belong here.”

  “What you do after I split is your business,” said Karras. “It makes no difference to me.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “Listen, Vivian—”