George Pelecanos - Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

“How many in the room?”

“Four.”

“How many guns?”

“One.”

I cut a long length of rope, then a shorter one. I tied Sweet’s hands to his feet, behind his back. Then I stuffed the rag into his mouth and wrapped the short length of rope around his face. I tied it off behind his head and slipped the razor in the seat pocket of my jeans.

LaDuke sniffed the air. “What’s that, paint thinner?”

“It won’t kill him,” I said. “It’ll make him too dizzy to move much, though. Come on.”

LaDuke took the barrel away from the man’s face, rested it across his own forearm. I pulled my Browning, picked up the spool of rope, and gave LaDuke’s shirt a tug.

We walked quickly down the hall, our steps quiet on the concrete floor. At the end, we made a right and went down a hall no different from the first. I had to jog a few steps to keep pace with LaDuke.

“I could run right through a fucking wall,” he said.

“You’re doing fine,” I said. Just as I said it, we reached the last metal door on the right.

We stood there, listening to male voices behind the door; under the voices, the buzz of a caged lightbulb suspended above our heads. I looked at LaDuke and placed the spool of rope at my feet. LaDuke managed a tight smile.

I stood straight, knocked two times on the door.

Footsteps. Then: “Yes?”

“Sweet,” I said with an edge.

The knob turned. When the door opened a crack, I put my instep to it and screamed. Something popped, and the man behind the door went down. LaDuke and I stepped inside.

“This is a robbery,” LaDuke said.

I made a quick coverage. The man on the floor: heavy, bald, and soft, holding his mouth, blood seeping through his fingers, repeating, “Oh, oh, oh…” A black man, mid-thirties, sat on a worktable set against a cinder-block wall. He watched us with amusement and made no movement at all. Two shirtless actors stood in front of a tripoded camera, in the center of a triangular light arrangement, a spot and a couple of fills. The first actor, who wore a tool belt around his bare waist, could have been the star of any soap, some housewife’s idea of a stud, all show muscles, his plump mouth open wide. The second actor, the only one of them with the nerve or the stupidity to scowl, was a young black man, thin and long-featured-Roland Lewis, no question.

LaDuke motioned the barrel of the shotgun at the pretty actor. “First, you get down, lie geheig flat, facedown. Don’t hurt yourself, now.”

“Better do it, Pretty Man,” the black man said.

“This isn’t what you think,” Pretty Man said. “This is just a job. You think I’m some kind of faggot? I have a girlfriend…”

The black man laughed. I kept my gun dead on him.

“Get down,” LaDuke said, “and put your face right on the concrete.” Pretty Man got down.

“You have a gun,” I said to the black man. “Pull it slow, by the barrel, and slide it to the end of the table.”

“Now what makes you think that I have a gun?” the black man said.

“I talked to your friend Sweet. He talked back.”

“Sweet?” The black man smiled. “I thought you were Sweet. You said you were Sweet, just before you came in.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not Sweet.”

“Then where’s Sweet?” said the black man.

“We put him to sleep,” said LaDuke.

“He ain’t gonna like that, when he wakes up.”

“Pull it,” LaDuke said. He had his shotgun on the black man now, too. I had an eye on Roland, who had not yet spoken but who stared at us hatefully.

“You know,” the black man said to LaDuke, “you kinda pretty, too. Maybe you and Pretty Man here ought to get together and-”

“You shut your mouth,” said LaDuke.

“Relax,” I said, looking at the black man but speaking to LaDuke.

“You boys are higher than a motherfucker,” the black man said, studying us with a hard glint in his eye. “You ought to cool out some. Maybe we can talk.”

“Pull it!” LaDuke screamed.

“You’re the man,” the black man said, “for now.” He put one hand up and reached the other behind his back. For a moment, I thought Roland might make a move-he was balling and unballing his fists, and he was leaning forward, like he was in the blocks-but then the black man’s hand came around, dangling an automatic by the barrel. He tossed it on the worktable and it slid neatly to the end. I went and picked it up, slipped it behind my back.

“All right now,” LaDuke said. “The money.”

“You’ve broken my crown,” the plump man whined, still on the floor, his hand and face smeared with blood. “You’ve broken it! Are you satisfied?”

The black man laughed.

Pretty Man raised his head from the floor, tears on his face. He looked at LaDuke. heig="0em"›

“Put your head down,” LaDuke said.

“Please don’t make me put me head down,” Pretty Man said, his fat lip quivering like a piece of raw liver. “Please.”

LaDuke pushed the muzzle of the shotgun against Pretty Man’s cheek, forced his head to the floor. Pretty Man’s back shook as he sobbed, and soon after that, the stench of his voided bowels permeated the room.

“Whew,” the black man said.

“Don’t be givin’ up no cash money, Coley,” Roland said to the black man.

“Shut up,” LaDuke said.

“Yeah,” Coley said, “you really ought to shut your mouth, Youngblood. ’Specially when a couple of crazy white boys are holdin’ the guns. You ought to just shut the fuck up and shit. Understand what I’m sayin’?”

But Roland did not appear to agree. He went on staring at LaDuke and I as if we were stealing his future. Then Coley got off the table, went to a metal desk that adjoined it, and opened a drawer. He withdrew a cash box, the type used in restaurants and bars, placed it on top of the desk, and opened it.

“It’s not all that much,” he said with a flourish and a wave of his hand. “Take it and go.”

I wrist-jerked the Browning in the direction of the table, and Coley went back to it and took his seat. He was tall and lean, and he moved with an athletic confidence. He would have been handsome, if not for his pitted complexion and his left ear, which had been removed to the drum. I grabbed the money from the cash box-three banded stacks of hundreds and fifties-and stuffed it into my jeans.

I said to LaDuke, “I’m gonna get the rope.”

The spool was right outside the door. I came back in with it, tied Pretty Man’s hands to his feet, tried not to gag at his smell.

“Yeah,” Coley said, “Pretty Man done shit his drawers. Kinda funny, tough man like him, needin’ diapers and shit. See, in the movie we’re makin’, he’s supposed to be some kind of carpenter. Guess you can tell by that tool belt he’s wearin’. And Youngblood here, he’s like the apprentice, come in for his lesson. The way the story line goes-what we call the screen treatment — the carpenter’s gonna teach the apprentice a thing or two about showin’ up late for his lesson-”

“Oh no,” the plump man said. Blood and saliva pooled on the concrete where it had splashed from his mouth.

“This here’s our director.” Coley gestured to the plump man with a contemptuous limp wrist and a flick of his fingers. “Maybe I ought to let him tell you about tonight’s film.”

“My crown,” the plump man said.

“Everybody,” LaDuke said, “keep your mouths shut.”

I tied the plump man up, then pointed my chin at Coley. “Put the shotgunut fide on him,” I said.

I told Coley to roll over onto his stomach and lie facedown on the table. He did it without protest, and I bound him in the same manner, but more tightly than the others. I cut the excess with the razor and slipped the razor back in my jeans.