Right as Rain

by George Pelecanos

  “Just testing the water,” said Quinn.

  “The water’s warm.”

  “Deep, too.”

  “Cut it out.” Juana smiled. “Some guys I know, they’d be tripping over themselves right about now, trying to get out the front door.”

  “I’d be trippin’ over somethin’, I tried to leave right now.”

  “Stop bragging.”

  “Anyway, I want to stay right here.”

  “You tellin’ me you’re not the type to hit it and split?”

  “I’ve done it; I’m not gonna lie about that. But I don’t want to do that with you.”

  They were still on the couch. Quinn pulled an afghan up over them. The fire had weakened, and a chill had come into the room. He looked at his white skin atop her brown.

  “Think we can make this work?” asked Quinn.

  “Do you want it to?”

  “Yes.”

  STRANGE was under the covers, lying beside Janine, when Greco walked into the room. He dropped the chuck bone at the foot of the bed, then moved it between his paws as he got himself down on the carpet.

  “He’s tellin’ me it’s time to go home.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to,” said Janine. “It’s nice and warm under this blanket.”

  “It wouldn’t be proper to have Lionel come home and know that I was here.”

  “He already knows, Derek.”

  “It wouldn’t be right, just the same.”

  Janine got up on one elbow and ran her fingers through the short hairs on Strange’s chest.

  “That lawyer I do business with from time to time,” said Strange. “That Fifth Streeter with the cheap suit?”

  “Markowitz?” said Janine.

  “Him. He owes us money, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s got an unpaid balance, I recall.”

  “Give him a call tomorrow, see if he can’t get us the transcripts of the review board hearings on the Quinn case.”

  “You want to wipe out his debt?”

  “See how much it is and settle it the way you see fit.”

  “What’s your feeling on this Quinn?”

  Strange had been thinking of Terry Quinn all night. Quinn was violent, fearless, sensitive, and disturbed … all of those things at once. A cocktail of troubles, a guy who could come in handy in situations like they’d had today, but not the kind of guy who needed to be wearing a uniform, representing the law.

  “I don’t know enough about him yet,” said Strange. “Next thing I’m going to do, I’m going to read those transcripts. Then I’m gonna go out and try and talk to the other players.”

  “You think Quinn was wrong?”

  “I think he’s a white man who saw a black man holding a gun on another white man in the street. He reacted the way he’s been programmed to react in this society, going back to birth.”

  “You saying he’s that way?”

  “He’s like most white people. Don’t you know, most of ’em will tell you they don’t have a racist bone in their bodies.”

  “They’re pure of mind and heart.”

  “Quinn doesn’t think he’s that way,” said Strange. “But he is.”

  Chapter 12

  NESTOR Rodriguez looked in the rearview mirror and spotted the green Ford, ten car lengths back. He punched a number into the cell phone cradled beside him, then snatched the phone up as it began to ring on the other end.

  “Lizardo.”

  “Brother.”

  “We’re almost there. I just now called Boone and told him to pick us up.”

  “We have to do this every time for the midget?”

  “The jerkoff doesn’t want us to know where he and his father live. He insists.”

  “Why can’t we just make the trade in the parking lot?”

  “Because the little one likes to scale out the manteca and test it at his house, in front of us. He’s afraid of being ripped off.”

  “Shit,” said Lizardo. It sounded like “chit.”

  The Rodriguez brothers did not have to worry about their conversation going out over the radio waves. Nestor had paid a young software engineer in Florida to alter his and his brother’s electronic serial numbers and mobile identification numbers. Also, a Secure Cellular device called a Jammer Scrambler, attached to both of their phones, altered their voices.

  Nestor was traveling north on 270 in a blue Ford Contour SVT. Lizardo Rodriguez followed in a green version of the same car. There were five kilograms of Colombian brown heroin in the trunk of Nestor’s Ford and five in the trunk of Lizardo’s.

  The Contours looked liked family sedans, but at 200 horses were hardly that. The cars did 0 to 60 in 6.9 and could top out at over 140 miles per hour. The Fords’ bland body styling was perfect for their runs, but the Rodriguez brothers preferred more flash driving on the streets of Orlando, their adopted city. Nestor in particular, who was the unmarried one of the two, was in love with pretty cars. He owned a new Mustang Cobra, also an SVT. His did 60 in 5.5. He was proud that he had not touched it cosmetically, as many Spanish were prone to do, but had left it stock. Well, not all the way stock. He had put two decals, silhouettes of naked girls with white—girl hair, on the back of the car, with “Ladies Invited” spelled out between the girls in neon letters. But that was the only extra thing he had done to the car.

  “Who were you talking to a few minutes ago?” said Nestor.

  “My woman,” said Lizardo. “Her father doesn’t want to change his crops. I tried to explain to him, the cartel will provide the fertilizer and the seeds, and a guarantee that what he reaps we will sell. The poppy will give him two crops a year, twice what he’ll get from his single crop of coffee beans. And we’ll pay his field—workers four times what they earn to harvest the crop.”

  “What is the problem?”

  “He is a peasant,” said Lizardo. “That is the problem. He sees the American helicopters, the black Bells with the door gunners, and he is afraid. He sees me, his own son—in—law, and he is afraid. He sees his own shadow, brother, and he is afraid.”

  “Farmers,” said Nestor with contempt.

  “Yes. I’m only trying to help him, to get my woman off my back. So that maybe then she can get on her back, for a change.”

  Nestor understood why Lizardo’s woman did not care to sleep with him. Lizardo was often drunk, and when he was drunk he was not a gentleman in bed. When he was so drunk that he couldn’t be a man, he hit her with his fists. Nestor believed that it was sometimes necessary to strike a woman, they expected it, even, but women lost their spirit if you struck them all the time.

  “Bring him to stay with you in Florida,” said Nestor. “You can afford it.”

  “He doesn’t want to come. And I don’t want the filthy bastard in my house. He showers, but still he smells like the country.”

  “Maybe your woman’s brother can help, talk to your father—in—law for you.”

  “The priest? Ah! He has trouble helping himself.”

  “Is he struggling with his vow of celibacy?”

  “He was never celibate. They have a saying in the old village: All the children call the priest father, except for his own children, who call him uncle!”

  Nestor and Lizardo shared hearty laughter. Then Nestor hit his turn signal and got into the right lane, making sure his brother followed.

  Nestor checked his face in the rearview. His black hair was combed back and set in place with gel, and he wore a neat Vandyke beard. He had shaved the hair that had been between his eyebrows his entire life, so that now he had two separate eyebrows. He wore two gold earrings, one small hoop in each ear. His clothing was neat but not flashy. Nestor studied the pictures in the Esquire and GQ magazines so that he could see the latest styles and the proper way to dress. Then he bought clothing that looked like it did in those pictures but without the fancy labels for which you paid extra. He shopped at the Men’s Wearhouse and Today’s Man.

  A mile down the interstate stood a strip shopping ce
nter bordering a field where houses were being constructed. The parking lot was half filled. Nestor found a row of cars with two empty spaces. He pulled into a space and watched his brother pull into the other, situated at the very end of the row. Nestor reached beneath the seat and picked up his gun, a Sig Sauer .9 that held an eight—shot magazine. He slid the Sig into a leather holster inside his jacket.

  “You talk to Coleman?” said Lizardo, still holding the phone.

  “Not since the last time. I’ll call him from Baltimore tonight.”

  “Will he take the cocaine on the next run?”

  “He said that he buys his cocaine from a supplier in Los Angeles and he doesn’t want to change. But I told him, if he wants our manteca, he will have to take the cocaine. I told him that we can no longer sell one without the other. We are selling the manteca to the Boones for a very good price. Even with the bounce the Boones put on it, Coleman knows he cannot buy the heroin any cheaper.”

  “What if he refuses?”

  “We’ll have the Boones sell the manteca to someone else.”

  Lizardo reached across the seat, dropped the glove box door, and removed his Davis .32. It was a small gun, good at close range, and it fit neatly in the pocket of his pleated black slacks. He dropped it there and for a moment considered the situation. Nestor never asked for his business advice, but sometimes Lizardo came up with good ideas. He thought he had one now.

  “Listen,” said Lizardo. “We’ll go back to selling Coleman direct. It’ll be cheaper for him, right? Maybe that will convince him to take the coke as well.”

  “You forget why we got the Boones involved to begin with?”

  “We didn’t. Our cousin Roberto did, when he and the little one were together in the joint.”

  “We asked Roberto to find a mule for us, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Nestor exhaled a long breath. He had to remember to be patient with his brother, whose brain worked very slowly.

  “Lizardo. Do you want to go into that lousy city, deal with the niggers directly?”

  “No.”

  “Then we need the Boones. For now, anyway. So leave little Ray alone, understand? You are always trying to get him excited.”

  “Fuck,” said Lizardo. It sounded like “fawk.”

  EDNA Loomis had the Ford pickup bouncing on the gravel road, doing a real good number on the shocks but not really thinking on it, as she was in a big hurry to get on back to the house. Travis Tritt sang loudly in the cab. She had turned up the volume on the dash radio to keep herself pumped.

  The night before, she had made an impression of Ray’s key in some special putty she’d picked up at the hardware store, on the advice of a girlfriend of hers who loved to smoke crystal, too. This girlfriend, a big—hair girl named Johanna, got her convinced that Ray would never miss a little here and there if she was to take it, and besides, all the good stuff Edna was giving away to Ray for free, it was owed her to get some of that stash on a regular basis. Edna was Ray’s woman, after all, almost a wife, and why should a wife have to ask every time she wanted to get high? After a couple of Courage and Cokes, Edna began to see Johanna’s point.

  So, the night before, after Ray had gone to sleep, Edna’d slipped the key off that ring of his with the chain attached to it. He woke up in the morning, the key was right where it had been when he’d hung his jeans over the bedroom chair, and Ray was none the wiser. She had taken the putty to this dude Johanna knew, and he’d fixed her up. She had a shiny new key in her pocket now.

  Edna pulled the F—150 into the yard between the Taurus and Ray’s Shovelhead. Ray’s legs were hanging out the open door of the Taurus, his steel toolbox on the ground at his feet. He was always fooling with that car, that or the Harley. He got to his feet and stood, brushing himself off, as Edna came down out of the truck’s cab.

  “Thought I told you to go out to a movie or somethin’,” said Ray. “You know me and Daddy got business here today.”

  “Forgot my tape box,” said Edna. “Can’t be drivin’ around all day without my music.”

  “Well, hurry up and get it, then get gone.”

  “Where’s Earl?”

  “In the house, why you ask that?”

  “No reason, just wonderin’ where he was. Look, don’t worry about me, you just finish up whatever it is you’re doin’.”

  Ray got back into the car and laid himself down between the bench seat and the gas and brake pedals, wondering why women talked so much about nothin’. He was putting the trapdoor by the steering column back together, having taken it apart and oiled the movable parts. The door had been dropping slow lately, and he couldn’t have that. A little WD—40 to finish the job, then put everything back in place. After that, he and his father would be ready to meet the Rodriguez brothers, out by that mall.

  EDNA walked through the barn to the back of it real quick, running on adrenaline. She put her new key to the lock of the steel door and smiled as the key caught and turned. She went inside the drug room without even looking over her shoulder. Johanna had been right: If you had the guts, it was easy.

  She didn’t throw the slide bolt on the door because that would be worse, trying to explain to Ray why she was in here behind a locked door. The other way, he just walked in on her, she wouldn’t look so guilty, and anyhow, she could always use that old excuse, female curiosity.

  All right now, Edna, don’t you go lingerin.

  She saw the stove where Ray cooked the meth straight away. Above it was a shelf, and on the shelf were old prescription pill bottles, amber plastic with white plastic tops, and she opened one and found spansules, Ray’s personal stash. This was not what she was looking for. She opened another and found it to be filled with rocks of ice. She dumped half the rocks out into her hand and dropped them in a film canister she carried in her pocket. What, was Ray going to count every piece of ice he had? Like Johanna liked to say, I don’t think so.

  Before she left the room she had a quick look around at Ray’s tools and weights. Boys’ toys. She’d never complain about his liftin’ weights, though. Ray was on the short side, but he did make her damp down there when he took off his shirt at night. She liked that bulldog look.

  Somewhere in here was the entrance to their little tunnel, too. She’d had a good laugh with Johanna over that one, after the two of them had had way too many drinks one time at this tavern, place that had the jukebox played Whitesnake and Warrant and those other groups Johanna liked, down near Poolesville. Ray liked to try and scare her, tell her about the snakes that lived down in the tunnel, but she didn’t pay him much mind. She wasn’t afraid of no snakes; snakes weren’t nothin’ but overgrown worms. And why would she want to go down in that dirty tunnel for, anyway?

  She walked out of the room as confidently as she’d gone in. No one was in the saloon area of the bar that Ray and Earl had built and decorated themselves. No one had seen a thing.

  She locked the door behind her, shaking hair off her shoulders. She’d done it, and she was proud of what she’d done.

  EARL Boone sat on the edge of his bed, killing off a can of Busch beer. He crushed the can in his hand, dropped it in a wastebasket, where it clanged against other empties, and went to his bedroom window. He flipped open the lid on a box of Marlboros, shook out a smoke, and drew it from the box with his lips. He lit it with a Zippo that had a raised map of Vietnam on one side and the Marine Corps insignia on the other. Below the map were the words “Paid to Kill.” Every time he looked at the lighter, he recalled with some bit of fondness that he was full of piss and vinegar when he was a kid.

  Edna was coming out the barn like she was on fire, walking real fast and shaking that hair and ass of hers, heading for the truck. Girl was always going fast, ’cept in the morning, when she looked like somethin’ that the cat wouldn’t think of dragging indoors. Now she and Ray were talking or arguing over something, he couldn’t never tell which. Earl didn’t understand why Ray didn’t just backhand the girl when sh
e got to sass—talking like she was prone to do. Around other men, Ray had a temper he couldn’t control, but put him near anything with a fur piece between its legs and he was tamer than a broke—dick dog.

  Some men were like that, but not Earl. Back when Earl was married to Ray’s mother, Margo, God have mercy on her soul, he’d shown her the back of his hand and even a fist once or twice, when she got real brave and disrespectful behind that gin she liked to drink. The gin took her liver eventually. At the end, when she was on those machines with the tubes running out her nose, waiting on a transplant, he’d almost apologized for those times he’d raised his hand to her, but it was not in his nature to do so, and the moment had passed. Hell, he knew she’d never get a liver from the start. It would go to some rich person, even if that person was below her on the list. That was the way the world worked. He’d known it from the time he’d fallen out his cradle and begun to walk on two feet.

  Now Edna was driving the truck out of the yard and down the gravel road.

  Earl got into his winter jacket. He put his smokes and lighter in one pocket and his .38 in the other. He picked up his six—pack cooler and turned out the lamp in his room. Looked like Ray was done tamperin’ with the car, and right about now he’d be looking to move out, nervous and ready to roll. Nervous in that way he got, when somethin’ was about to happen.

  Chapter 13

  NESTOR Rodriguez saw the Taurus enter the parking lot and snake up and down the rows of cars. Ray Boone always looked for cops and DEA types in unmarked vehicles when he pulled into the lot. Nestor had already checked and was satisfied that there was no problem, as these kinds of cars were very easy to spot. But Ray was the kind of person who needed to know this for himself.

  Into the phone Nestor said, “They’re here,” and, still watching the Taurus in his rear— and sideview mirrors, added, “Wait until I tell you, then lock your car down and walk on over to mine.”

  Ray Boone parked the Taurus next to Nestor’s Contour. Nestor’s eyes went past the old man, unshaven and looking like a two—day drunk as usual, and on to Ray, who was seated behind the wheel. Nestor nodded to Ray as he spoke into the phone: “All right, Lizardo, come on.”