The Sweet Forever

by George Pelecanos

  Ray closed his eyes. It wasn’t all bad inside. There was this one bitch he had, his very own house mouse, with these thick, fine-ass lips…. Ray could almost see him there in front of him, wearin’ eyeliner, how pretty he looked.

  Antony Ray stroked his cock through his jeans. He butted his cigarette and got up from the chair. He walked to the window and stared at the night.

  “Fuck it,” he said.

  Ray went back to the hall, opened the bedroom door, walked inside. He switched on the light.

  “Golden boy,” said Ray, moving toward the bed. “That wing of yours is lookin’ like some August fruit.”

  Eddie’s feet sought purchase on the mattress.

  “Where you goin’? I ain’t gonna hurt you, boy.”

  Eddie lay still. “I’m thirsty.”

  “Figured you would be.” Ray chuckled. “Why I came in here, matter of fact. Gonna help you out there, Golden boy.”

  “Please.”

  Ray moved closer and smiled. “You ever suck a dick, Eddie?”

  “No,” said Eddie, making a small choking sound.

  “Get ready, then,” said Ray, unzipping his fly. “ ’Cause you gonna suck a good one now.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Go ahead, Clarence,” said Marcus Clay. “Unlock the door.”

  Tate turned the key on Real Right’s front door as Clay, Karras, and Adamson stood at the window, watching the men get out of two cars parked on the south side of U.

  “Tall, ain’t he?” said Adamson.

  “And ugly, too,” said Clay. “Tyrell Cleveland.”

  “Tall man like that, you take out his kneecap quick, he’d fall like one of those California redwoods.”

  “Thought we were gonna talk to ’em,” said Karras.

  “Just makin’ an observation,” said Adamson.

  “Al,” said Clay, “you watch Rogers, the young man on the left.”

  “I’ll watch him,” said Tate.

  “Let Al watch Rogers, Clarence. You and Dimitri keep an eye on Tyrell. I’ll watch Short Man.”

  “That’s what the one with the nose mask calls himself?” said Adamson.

  “Yeah.”

  “Now, how’d I know that?”

  A small bell jingled as the three men pushed through the door. Tyrell ducked his head coming in. Rogers and Monroe followed, Rogers standing to Tyrell’s right, and Monroe standing to his left.

  “Gentlemen,” said Tyrell.

  Karras and Tate stepped forward, close to Tyrell. Al Adamson walked to the side of Rogers, and Clay moved up and stood two long steps away from Monroe.

  Get right up on them, thought Karras, like Marcus had said. Put them on the defensive right away.

  “Heard of hospitality,” said Tyrell genially, “but what ya’ll fixin’ to do, give us a kiss? Ain’t you got a back room or somethin’, someplace we can sit quietly, get off our feet?”

  “You ain’t stayin’ long, Cleveland,” said Clay.

  “You must be Mr. Marcus Clay,” said Tyrell, appraising him. “Can see how you handled Short Man here.”

  “Wasn’t nothin’,” said Clay.

  Monroe shifted his toothpick from the left to the right side of his mouth.

  “Prefer you don’t call me Cleveland, either, Mr. Clay. I go by Tyrell. Cleveland’s one of those Caucasian names.” Tyrell’s eyes slid over to Karras and back to Clay. “They was gonna name me after a city, should have been New York, or Hollywood. They was gonna name me after a president, should have gone ahead and named me after a famous one, don’t you think?”

  Clay didn’t answer.

  Tyrell looked around the room. “Okay, you’re Karras. That one’s easy. And you’re—”

  “Tate,” said Monroe, smiling. “Father of Alan’s girl.”

  Tate glanced over at Rogers, who looked away. The boy wasn’t so cocky now; matter of fact, he looked about half ready to turn and run.

  “And what about you?” said Tyrell, his eyes on Adamson. “Damn, you’re about the blackest mothafucker I seen all day.”

  Adamson’s jaw muscles bunched.

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Clay.

  Tyrell took a deep breath. The buzz of fluorescence and the tick of the wall clock were the only sounds in the room.

  “Okay,” said Tyrell. “Let’s do that. We’ll talk about the money in a minute. First thing, though, wanna talk about a problem you have with my operation down here. Heard you were shoutin’ out in the street yesterday how you didn’t want our kind around.”

  “That’s right,” said Clay. “After tonight, I don’t expect to see you or your boys again. And don’t want those sold-out cops you got in your pocket anywhere near my shop. I earned all this. Proud of it, too. Don’t need you contaminatin’ what I built myself.”

  “That a fact.”

  “Yes.”

  Tyrell’s lip twitched. “We ain’t nothin’ but two sides of the same coin, Mr. Clay. Couple of businessmen tryin’ to get along—”

  “Uh-uh. You and me got nothin’ in common. You poison your own people, Cleveland. You’re a killer of children, Cleveland.”

  Monroe said, “I’ll fuck him up, Ty—”

  “Shut up, boy!” said Clay. “Don’t make me open-hand you again.”

  “Easy, Short,” said Tyrell. “Let’s just keep talkin’.”

  Karras was afraid, but a rush of pride had swelled in him, too, standing next to his friend. He studied Tyrell, his long frame, his knees, thinking that Al had been right. If it came to it, hit Tyrell low.

  “Sorry you feel that way,” said Tyrell. His eyes narrowed, and he forced a smile. “Well, let’s move on. Let’s get off that other thing and get to the money.”

  “The money?” said Clay. “We ain’t got no got-damn money.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said nothin’.”

  Al Adamson saw Tyrell’s eyes dart over to Monroe. He watched Monroe use his right hand to hitch up his jeans, and then he saw Monroe’s hand kind of snake around the belt line toward the back.

  “What about my money?” said Tyrell.

  “Fuck your money, Cleveland. Ain’t got nothin’ to do with me.”

  “Marcus,” said Adamson, trying to move Clay’s attention back to Monroe.

  “What?” said Tyrell. “I’m just supposed to turn around and walk away?”

  “You mean you ain’t gone yet?” said Clay.

  “Marcus!” said Adamson. “Short Man’s goin’ for his—”

  “I see him,” said Clay, calmly stepping in and back-fisting Monroe square in the middle of his face, aiming for two feet behind the mask, connecting deep, the nose giving like the shell of an egg.

  Monroe screamed and fell to the floor.

  Adamson stepped behind Rogers, twisted his arm up, used his other hand to pull the Ka-Bar knife from where it was sheathed. He put the serrated edge to Rogers’s throat, put pressure on the blade, moved it a hair so it drew a drop of blood.

  Tyrell looked at Karras and Tate, who had moved in very close. Tyrell raised his hands.

  The packing in Monroe’s nose turned black with blood. He whimpered, got up on one arm, began to reach behind him once again.

  “Don’t do it, boy,” said Clay.

  “Don’t do it, Short,” said Tyrell, slowly lowering his hands. “Mr. Marcus Clay is a quick one. There’ll be another time for all that.”

  “Tyrell,” said Rogers, off balance, up on his toes, his eyes wide.

  “Looks like they got you, Alan,” said Tyrell.

  “Your boy goes for that gun again,” said Adamson, “I’m gonna cut this one’s throat. I’ll kill him, Cleveland, I swear to God.”

  “Kill him, then,” said Tyrell.

  “Tyrell!” said Rogers.

  “You heard me.” Tyrell looked at Clay. “Think I give a fuck about that boy? Got young niggas all over this city give a nut to work for me. Lost two today, and it don’t mean a mothafuckin’ thing to me.” Tyrell looked at Adamson
. “So go ahead, man, cut him open! Do it—”

  “No!” shouted Tate. “Let him go, Al. Can’t stand to see another young man die.”

  Rogers rubbed at his neck as Adamson set him free.

  “What I thought,” said Tyrell. “Y’all ain’t hard. Not really.”

  “Get out,” said Clay.

  Tyrell smiled, reached down, and helped Monroe to his feet. Monroe spit blood on the black-and-white tiles, turned and followed Tyrell out the door. Rogers nodded at Tate and left the store.

  Out in the street, Tyrell and Monroe stopped at Tyrell’s car, waited for Rogers to join them. But Rogers kept walking straight for the Z, put his key to the door.

  “Alan!” said Tyrell.

  “What?”

  “Why you trippin’, man? You know I didn’t mean nothin’ in there. Just makin’ a point.”

  “Get up with you later on,” said Rogers. “See you back at the house.” He got into the 300 and turned the ignition.

  “Alan’s turned punk,” said Monroe, blood still streaming into his mouth, the wet gauze hanging from beneath the tattered mask.

  “Boy’s too emotional,” said Tyrell, “that’s all. Not hard like you. You did good, Short. We get back, give you somethin’ to drink, swallow some pills I got, do a couple lines, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”

  “Feel better when I fuck that nigga up,” said Monroe, looking with malignance toward Real Right.

  “He can’t win. We gonna take over down here. Give it a little time, let him get comfortable, then catch him walkin’ out his shop one night. Gonna put him on his knees in the alley and let him look at you before you bust him in the head. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Short?”

  “Yeah,” said Monroe, smiling at the thought, his teeth pink in the light of the streetlamp. “Think Clay was lyin’ about the money?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tyrell. “We get back, gonna take my cousin off his leash. Find out the truth once and for all.”

  “My knees were knockin’ together,” said Karras. “Guess you could hear ’em, right, Clarence?”

  “Thought that sound was comin’ from me,” said Tate.

  Karras, Clay, Tate, and Adamson stood at the window, watching Tyrell and Monroe talking in the street.

  “You told a lie, Marcus,” said Adamson.

  “What lie?”

  “You told that boy you were gonna open-hand him. Could be wrong, but it looked to me like you struck him with your fist.”

  “Did I?”

  “Uh-huh. And you hit him right where his nose was already broke, too. Couldn’t you see that was gonna hurt real bad?”

  “Meant to just tap him a little.”

  Adamson adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “Wonder who did the original damage to that boy’s face.”

  “That was Marcus, too,” said Karras.

  “See?” Adamson smiled. “Cleveland was wrong. You are hard, Marcus.”

  “Nah,” said Clay, trying not to grin. “Not really.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Looking down from her bedroom window, Denice Tate watched Alan Rogers approach her house. With his head down and his shoulders kind of slouched, he looked different coming up the walk, not his usual confident self. She heard a knocking sound from one floor below.

  Denice went down the stairs. She stopped in the foyer and leaned against the door.

  “Alan?”

  “Neecie, it’s me. Open up, girl.”

  “Can’t. My father’s gonna be comin’ back any minute now, Alan. You got to go away.”

  “Get on down by the mail slot, Neecie.”

  Denice sat on the linoleum and lifted the rectangular copper flap. Alan had a seat on the cold concrete in front of the door. He unbuttoned his shirt cuff and put his hand through the slot. Neecie held his fingers. Through the space she saw Alan’s spent, bloodshot eyes.

  “You okay?”

  “Came to say good-bye, Neecie.”

  “Alan—”

  “Quiet, now, let me say it. Shouldn’t have been messin’ with you to begin with, young as you are.” Rogers blinked slowly. “You’re good. What you got to do is stay away from boys like me. Ain’t nothin’ up the road but trouble in that. You hear me, girl?”

  “I hear you, Alan.” Denice swallowed. “But Alan, you got good in you, too.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. You don’t belong with those boys you run with. You can change. Find yourself a real job.”

  “You know I can’t hardly read.”

  “Go back to school, then. Get that GED you been talkin’ about.”

  “Too late for me.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Go ahead, girl.” Rogers tightened his fingers in Denice’s hand. “You listen to your father, now, Denice; let him guide you. Never was lucky enough my own self to have someone like that.” He tried to smile. “Want you to know somethin’ else. I cared for you, for real. Wasn’t just that you were so fine.”

  Denice’s eyes welled with tears. Rogers pulled his hand back through the slot.

  “Alan, wait. Where you goin’?”

  “Back out here, where I belong.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “Got to,” he said.

  Denice pressed her ear against the door. She listened to the sound of his footsteps receding on the concrete.

  Rogers walked to the Z, parked halfway down the block. His beeper sounded as he dropped into the driver’s seat. He switched on the interior light and read the numbers off the display.

  Rogers frowned and said, “Tutt.”

  But when Rogers found a pay phone and dialed the number, it was Murphy on the other end of the line.

  “Need to talk to you, Alan.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m takin’ Tyrell down tonight.”

  “That right.”

  “Yes. Wanted to give you the chance to walk away.”

  Rogers licked his lips. “What I gotta do?”

  “I’m alone,” said Murphy. “I’ll be sittin’ in my Pontiac at Fifteenth and U.”

  Rogers said, “I’ll be right down.”

  “That’s what I been tryin’ to impress on you,” said Kevin Murphy after Rogers had told him about Bennet and Linney. “That life you’re in, it only ends one way.”

  “I know it,” said Rogers, staring through the windshield at the lights of U.

  “Gonna show you the way out, Alan.”

  “They’ll kill me if they find out I’m plottin’ against them,” said Rogers. “And I don’t mind tellin’ you, Murphy, I’m afraid to die.”

  “It’s what makes you human, Alan. Not bein’ afraid, it means you got nothin’ inside, or nothin’ left. I was in that place my own self last night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Spun the chamber and got lucky. Lost the nerve to do it again. Woke up and saw that I still had time to make up for the wrong I’ve done.” Murphy looked across the buckets. “Gonna give you that opportunity, too.”

  “How?”

  “You know those woods around Tyrell’s bungalow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s behind them?”

  Rogers shrugged. “ ’Nother residential street. I walked through ’em once; ain’t nothin’ but a hundred yards—”

  “Okay. Want you to go back to Tyrell’s, park your car on that street, face it into the woods toward the back of Tyrell’s. Then I want you to go in the house and wait. Tell Tyrell we’re comin’ out with the money. Tell him you saw it, hear? Maybe it’ll stop ’em from hurtin’ Golden more than they already have. You with me?”

  “What if they ask where my car’s at?”

  “Tell ’em it broke down on Central Avenue and you walked the rest of the way. Tell ’em anything, man, you figure that out.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me and Tutt’ll be there straightaway. When we come in, I’m gonna ask you to go bring Eddie Golden out. But I don’t want you to bring him ou
t. I want you to get him out that bedroom window back there and take him through the woods to your car. Now, I don’t know how bad they’ve fucked him up. You might have to carry his ass—”

  “He ain’t that heavy.”

  “Good.”

  “What’ll you and Tutt be doin’ in the meantime?”

  “I’ll be positioned so I can see through to the kitchen window back there. I’ll be waitin’ for you to flash me your headlights, let me know you got out.”

  “Then what?”

  “Gonna take Tyrell and the rest of them in.”

  “Arrest Tyrell?”

  “Right.”

  “But you were with him.” Rogers looked into Murphy’s eyes. “What, you fixin’ to turn your own self in, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about Tutt? Can’t believe he’s down with that.”

  “He doesn’t know. Thinks we’re goin’ out there for somethin’ else.”

  “How you gonna deal with that?”

  “Haven’t figured it out yet. You with me, Alan?”

  Rogers nodded. “Yes.”

  “You got good in you, boy.”

  “What people been tellin’ me.”

  “Whatever happens,” said Murphy, “you get Eddie out of there. You hear things start to come apart, you keep goin’. Don’t even look back, hear?”

  “I understand.”

  “Get Eddie to an emergency room; just drop him off. Then you call this number”—Murphy handed Rogers a slip of paper—”and tell the woman who answers where you dropped him. She’s waitin’ for the call. That clear?”

  Rogers nodded, his hands fidgeting in his lap. Murphy noticed the cut on Rogers’s neck.

  “Who cut you, Alan?”