Karras had a quick look around. Scott was ringing a two-person line at the register. Other customers roved the store, suburban white kids with money to spend. Karras transferred the new Bananarama and the new Miami Sound Machine to the front display. He said hello to a clerk named Mary, a dark-haired Brit with whom he had tongue-wrestled at last year’s Christmas party. No regrets.
The coke was good. Karras was moving fast, he could feel the tick-tick-tick of blood through his veins; he five-slapped Mary’s palm as he passed her in the aisle.
When Scott had finished, Karras asked him to get a reading off the register. Scott did it, handed Karras the cutoff tape. The numbers were typical for a Friday. Karras dialed the U Street store, asked Cootch for Marcus.
“Marcus drove Tate home,” said Cootch.
“Marcus calls in, tell him I phoned from G-town, hear?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“Any business over there?”
“Nothin’. They’re still out there, blockin’ the street.”
“All right, man. You take care.”
“You, too.”
Karras cradled the receiver. He clapped Scott a little too hard on the arm.
“Okay, Scott, I’m outta here. And don’t bother calling the other stores.”
“Calling the other stores?”
“Yeah, you know, like you managers always do, to warn them that I’m making the rounds. ’Cause I am gone for the day.”
“Okay, Dimitri. See you, man.”
Karras gave Mary a nice smile—you never knew—and left the store. Donna was out front, working on her second smoke.
“Come on,” said Karras.
“Where to?”
“My place. I need a quick shower. Then we’re gone.”
“Gonna have fun tonight,” said Donna.
“Gonna Wang Chung tonight,” said Karras. “Let’s go.”
Marcus Clay parked the Peugeot near Karras’s apartment, walked over to the Metro entrance north of Dupont Circle, picked up a Post on the way in, and caught a Red Line train down to Judiciary Square. Clay took a seat next to a thin guy reading a thick novel, its cover illustration depicting a submarine, an aircraft carrier, an American flag, and a hammer and sickle, all about to collide.
Clay scanned the Post’s front page: CIA Director William Casey was pushing hard for the upcoming House vote allotting $100 million in aid to the “freedom fighters” of Nicaragua. Casey had been the key architect in promoting the Reagan Doctrine, covert paramilitary operations in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Angola. Clay shook his head. All it took was a hostage situation in Iran for a whole generation to get gung-ho and forget the horror of Vietnam. Techno-war books, written by those who had never witnessed the violent, useless death of young men, were all the rage. Kids stood in line at the Uptown for tickets to Top Gun. Action in foreign lands, the threat of communism, it stirred the blood. Military buildup spurred the stock market and strengthened the economy. Strong economies opened the door for reelections.
Clay scanned the right-hand story above the fold: Alphonse Hill, D.C.’s deputy mayor, had resigned amidst allegations of receiving kickbacks from an out-of-town contractor. Three months earlier, Ivanhoe Donaldson, the mayor’s longtime right-hand man, pleaded guilty to stealing almost two hundred grand in city funds and to tax evasion. Donaldson drew seven years in a minimum-security Virginia prison.
Clay sighed, folded the newspaper, turned to the man on his right. “How’s it goin’?”
The man looked over, hesitantly said, “Pretty good.”
Clay had broken the Metro rule: no eye contact, no conversation with strangers. Especially not between the races.
Clay said, “Good book?”
“Great.”
“Looks very exciting,” said Clay. “It truly does.”
Clay left the train, got up on the street. He went down to the Superior Court building at 5th and Indiana, had a seat on the edge of a concrete planter, kept an eye on the main doors. Elaine would be coming through one of those doors any minute. He knew she’d be rushing out, like clockwork, to pick up Marcus Jr. at the play-school or the child-development center or whatever fancy name they were calling it this week.
Teenage boys were being hurried along by their mothers or their aunts, who scolded them or looked stone-faced ahead as they walked, the boys trying to maintain the Scowl. Older dudes, waiting for their hearings or to testify, or here to pick up buddies or relatives, stood around smoking cigarettes. Lawyers, rumpled Criminal Justice Act types, stood outside, smoking as well.
Elaine was one of the CJA attorneys, court-appointed lawyers, the ones they called the Fifth Streeters. She never looked rumpled, though, not like the others. And she didn’t have the buttoned-to-the-neck business look that so many women felt they had to adopt these days. Clay saw women all over town, looked like they had doilies hanging off the front of their dresses; Karras called them their clown outfits. None of that bib and bow tie stuff for Elaine. Elaine always looked like a woman. She always looked fine.
Yeah, Elaine would be coming out that door any second. It was different now, not like before the separation, when she used to work those crazy hours, expecting him to drop everything to pick up M. J., expecting him to leave his business while she managed her caseload. That had been one of the problems between them. One of many, and then Clay had done that Big Thing that had severed it between him and Elaine.
Here she was now.
And damn, she did look fine. Elaine wore a two-piece rust-colored suit, the skirt clinging to those long, muscular legs of hers, the jacket over a cream silk blouse. She was some kind of woman, all woman, taller than the man she walked with, some slick dude in pinstripes, powder blue shirt with white Peter Pan collar—Clay hated that elegant-running-to-dandy look—soft leather loafers on his feet.
Clay stood up, got in their path. Elaine saw him, frowned, then smiled cordially. He walked up to the two of them.
“Elaine.”
“Marcus.”
Clay cupped his hand around her arm, kissed her check. She took the kiss, pulled her arm away from his touch.
“This is Marcus,” said Elaine. “Marcus, meet Eric Williamson.”
“Marcus Clay.” He shook Williamson’s hand, released it quickly. Man had a conk, Clay couldn’t believe it, and a weak-ass mustache. He turned to Elaine. “How you doin’?”
“I’m doing well.”
“Thought we might, I don’t know, get a cup of coffee or somethin’.”
“Can’t, Marcus. Got to pick up Marcus Jr.”
“Maybe I can ride uptown with you. I’m on foot, see—”
“I don’t think so, Marcus.”
Clay put his hand back on her arm.
“Marcus, don’t.”
Williamson said to Elaine, “You all right?”
Clay felt the warmth of blood in his face. He balled his fist, then relaxed it as he took a breath.
“I’m fine,” said Elaine. “Really, Eric.”
Clay stepped between Williamson and Elaine. As he did, he put the heel of his shoe on the toe of Williamson’s thin loafer. Clay put all his weight on the heel.
“Ow!” said Williamson.
Clay stepped off and smiled. Clay said, “You all right?”
“Marcus, please,” said Elaine. She bit down on her lip. “Look, Eric… I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”
Williamson gave Clay a short look. He said to Elaine, “Okay. You have a good one.” He walked away.
Elaine got close to Clay’s face, spoke firmly. “Marcus, what the hell do you think—”
“Just wanted to see you is all. Didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your pretty friend.”
“My friends aren’t pretty, Marcus. We’re all just doing a job down here, tryin’ to defend these people got no one else.”
“Save it, baby.”
“And, oh, because my friend is a professional, because he wears a suit, now he’s pretty.”
“French cuffs…
man had a conk and shit. That ain’t pretty? Man walkin’ around lookin’ like the whole DeBarge family put together.”
“Look, Marcus…” Elaine waved a hand in front of her face. “You’re not making any sense. This makes no sense. Listen, I’ve got to go.” She walked off.
Clay said, “Elaine! When am I going to see M. J.?”
“Call me,” she said, and kept right on stepping in that sure way of hers. He watched her disappear into the crowd.
Clay stood there for a few more minutes, just shaking his head, thinking how funny it was: Once you fuck up, seems you can’t stop fuckin’ up to save your life.
Anthony Taylor watched the last few minutes of the Alabama/Xavier game on the old set he had on the dresser up in his room. Above his dresser hung a Day-Glo Globe concert poster advertising a D.C. Scorpio show coming to town; Bobby Bennett had been talkin’ about that show on the radio for a long time. Anthony had ripped the poster off a telephone pole at 14th and Fairmont.
With 3:10 left to play, it looked like Alabama had it in the bag. He watched it through the end, though, just to see the highlights of the Maryland game earlier in the day, Lenny Bias taking it to the hole against Pepperdine. There he was, too, Number 34. Pretty as shit the way he elevated, and stayed elevated, all the way to the dunk.
Anthony shut off the TV. He went over to his dresser, picked up the letter that had come in the mail that day from his moms, read it over again for the third time. The letter started the usual way, talkin’ about how his mother was looking for a job, how the girls were doing good, how it got warmer earlier in the year in Georgia and how it got greener down there than it ever did in D.C. “Maybe when school lets out you can come on down, spend the summer with me and your sisters.” Spend the summer, the letter said, not come down to live for good.
Anthony knew there wasn’t no room for the four of them in his great-uncle’s house, a three-bedroom place on some farmland out in Fulton County. No room and never enough money. That’s how his mother had explained it when she had left town with his two baby sisters a year ago, left him with her mother, a woman he had always called Granmom. Anyway, she said, he was settled here in D.C., it would do him more harm than good to take him out of his school, pull him away from his friends and the teachers he knew. That’s what she told him, and that’s how it played out. He didn’t argue with his mother. His mother had been on welfare and she’d got to using the checks to buy drugs. The drugs had made her skinny and sick. The last time Anthony’d seen her, she looked like forty years old, and she wasn’t no more than twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He understood that she needed to get away from the District, start fresh, get herself well.
Anthony had got himself in trouble a few times this past year. He got beat up twice by his school “friends” and his teacher had told him she didn’t much care for his attitude. He wasn’t hard, not hard for real like some of the other boys, but he had to act tough because if you didn’t those other boys would take you for bad and punk you out. He began to cut the classes he could and sometimes entire days. He spent much of his time in the Martin Luther King library down on 9th, reading sports biographies and old-timey books about the West and black cowboys and such, and the rest of his time he’d hang on the corner of 12th and U, where he had gotten to know some of the winos and the merchants around the liquor store. You saw things down there, too. And after a while, the older guys on the corner and in the houses down the way, it got comfortable to be around them, like they were some kind of kin.
Granmom tried her best to keep him in the house, but he hung there less and less. Not that she was weak—she wasn’t no Moms Mabley–looking grandmother, neither. She was strong, a Viceroy smoker with big arms who supervised an office cleaning crew. Granmom wasn’t too old, after all, maybe forty-six, something like that. She was a good woman, too; he knew she meant well with all those lectures she was always giving him. She was real sorry that one time when she’d gotten so mad at him, said his mama had left him behind because he wasn’t no good. She apologized right after, even cried some, which he had never seen her do, but it stuck with him just the same. Made him think, Maybe I am no good.
Granmom had this boyfriend name of Louis, no-account hustler type, wore velvet sport jackets, wide-brimmed hats, dressed like old school. Came over Friday nights, helped Granmom spend her fresh paycheck on beer and expensive liquor. The two of them would listen to that old Philadelphia sound and some Stax/Volt jive from the days when they were both coming up, get to dancing as the night wore on. Then some loving, or a big argument, one of the two. Either way it ended, Anthony didn’t like to be around the house on Friday nights.
He sure would like to see his moms again. And his half sisters, Keechie and Michelle, fathered by a man named Rondo who used to come around and then was just gone. Least they had seen their father, could recall his voice and smell. Anthony had never known his, not even a picture. When he asked about his father he got no straight-up answers. When he kept asking, his moms and Granmom told him to hush his mouth.
Anthony looked at the time on his clock radio. Solid Gold was coming on soon on channel 20, right after the Benson rerun, but any minute now Louis would be walking through the front door. Anthony changed his shirt, put his Raiders jacket on, double-knotted his Nikes, told Granmom he was going out for a while, and left the house. It was dark now out on the streets.
He walked east on Fairmont. He crossed 13th, quickened his step when he saw a few Clifton Terrace boys hanging out around some parked cars, fast-stepping by them, but not too fast. Head up, eyes straight ahead. At 11th he turned right, went down the hill to U.
The pedestrians had gone home, and the residents were in their houses. He saw a couple of drug cars he recognized, one cruising and one idling at the curb. He saw a foot soldier on the corner and another at a pay phone. Tyrell Cleveland’s, all of them. Anthony walked on.
There wasn’t anyone in front of the liquor store this evening, just patrons buzzing in, leaving hurriedly, carrying forties and pints wrapped in brown paper. The cops and ambulance people had cleaned up and left the scene. Anthony had recognized that black Buick. He knew the driver by sight, a boy named Junie, a runner for Tyrell. He’d seen the skinny white guy take the money or the drugs or whatever it was out of the burning Buick. The woman who had been with him, the good-looking white woman wearing that short skirt with the short boots, she had gotten out of the skinny dude’s Plymouth before it all happened. She had walked into that new record store, come out with another white guy, gray-haired but not too old, after the crash. By then, her friend in the Plymouth had taken off.
Anthony noticed these kinds of things, standing for hours like he did out on this street. He wondered who else would want to know, and if he told them, would he get paid.
Anthony Taylor put his hands in his pockets, looked across the street at the new record store. No customers, just one young brother working inside. Anthony wondered where the owner was, the tall man with the wide shoulders. The guys on the corner said that the tall man was one of those soldiers in that war, Vietnam, ended about the year Anthony was born. The tall man didn’t look like any old businessman. He looked kind of hard, like he could go with his hands if the situation came up.
The night, young as it was, felt cold. And there wasn’t nobody out tonight ’cept for drug dealers and drunks. Maybe Anthony should go over to that record store when the tall man came back to close up, introduce himself, warm up. Way the tall man looked, he might turn out to be a good man to know.
SIX
Tyrell Cleveland ran one long finger down his cheek and sat back in his chair. He uncrossed his long legs, stretched them out before him. He cracked his knuckles, then let one wrist dangle off the chair’s arm.
Tyrell’s cousin Antony Ray, whip thin and dressed in a black shirt and black slacks, sat silently on a hard chair against the wall.
“Chink,” said Tyrell, “turn that shit off.”
“Tyrell, man,” said Charles “Chink” Bennet.
“Turn it off.”
Bennet scampered off the couch, went over to the wide-screen, kicking Atari wires and empty Doritos bags out of the way. He stood in the blue light for a moment, watching the Suzie Wong video, Oriental Jade, that was playing on the set.
“Damn, Chink,” said Mario “Jumbo” Linney. He smiled, leaned forward from his place on the couch, where he sat twisting up a fat bone. “Can’t you bring your tiny self to stop watchin’ that shit?”
“Look at her, though, Jumbo. She’s a straight-up freak.” Bennet lifted his arm dreamily and pointed at the set. “She pantin’ like a dog, man.”
“She be takin’ it like a dog, too.”
“Turn it off,” said Tyrell.
Bennet reached down and turned off the set. Tyrell relaxed his shoulders. That was better. The sound from the TV was no longer competing with Whodini’s new one, Back in Black, coming from the stereo. Tyrell could deal with loud music or loud television, one or the other, but not with both. There were a couple of girls making noise and laughing back in the kitchen, high schoolers from Northeast who Alan Rogers and Short Man Monroe had picked up on their way out East Capitol. Tyrell didn’t mind their voices; he planned to double them up later on.
Chink Bennet went back to the couch, sat down next to his friend Jumbo Linney. Linney handed Bennet the lit bone. Bennet hit it hard, kept the smoke down in his lungs.
Jumbo Linney was dark and round and went three hundred pounds at six foot four. He ate greasy hamburgers and food from buckets and bags. But he still had his youth, and he was hard. He was certain his size would protect him. He was too dumb to know fear.
Chink Bennet was tiny, wiry, light-skinned with almond-shaped Asian eyes. When violence went down or was about to, he got giggly, silly as a slumber-party girl. So far he had always held up his end. Sitting next to Linney, he looked like an Afro-Chinese Webster.
The Sweet Forever Page 5