Джордж Пелеканос - The Sweet Forever

“Fuck!” screamed Eddie, dropping to the bench seat, covering his eyes with his hands.

An explosion filled his ears, and he felt his own car move a couple of feet as if it had been windblown, the tires abutting the curb.

Eddie sat up. He took the crushed cigarette from his lips, tossed it aside.

Eddie stood in the street. He had stepped out of the Plymouth without knowing that he had. He was thinking, I’m no hero, as he walked toward the car that had crashed. It got hotter as he approached because the interior of the car was on fire. The car had flown right into the platform truck parked in the middle of the street. An I beam overhanging the back of the flatbed had gone through the car’s windshield and out the rear window, and now the car hung suspended, smoke and licks of flame coming from the openings made by the beam.

A green rectangular piece of paper blew out of the open windshield and was lifted in the air. It was a coupon of some kind, or one of those things they throw out of skyscrapers at New York parades — no, it was money.

Eddie heard people yelling. Black men’s voices, the winos, maybe, from outside the liquor store. He saw a tall black guy, broad of shoulder and chest, come from the front door of the record store, walk slowly toward the center of the street.

Eddie pulled back his hand. He had burned it on the handle of the back door of the burning GM. He must have opened the door, because the door was open, and there was a pillowcase spread out on the floor in back. Money spilled out of its open top. Medium denominations, not hundreds and not ones. A black head, its nose flattened, its mouth a stew of bloody, mashed teeth and gums, lay on the backseat. The I beam rested where the head had been, on the smoking shoulders of the torso behind the wheel.

The pillowcase looked damn near full. Eddie’s face stung from the heat. His hair seemed to rise momentarily off his head. He was stumble-walking back toward his car, swallowing the bile that had risen in his throat, letting go of the pillowcase gripped tightly in his hand and allowing it to fall to the Plymouth’s bench seat. The kid with the Oakland Raiders coat stood just outside the passenger window of Eddie’s car, and he was tapping on the window, and there were many people shouting now, though it seemed not at him, and sirens, he had heard them first moments ago, and now they grew loud.

Eddie fumbled the ignition, cranked it, pulled down on the tree, got away from the curb. Donna. He couldn’t wait for her. She’d understand. She’d be happy when she saw what he’d done. She’d be proud.

He carefully negotiated his car around a cop cruiser that had just pulled in at the scene. A black cop and a white cop got out of the cruiser. Eddie went by them briskly, turning his head so they could not see his face.

He glanced back over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of Donna and some dude with gray hair, coming out of the record store.

Eddie hooked a left on 9th. He floored the Reliant, felt it hesitate and knock. His heart raced. He felt good. He checked himself in the rearview: face sunburn-red, his rooster-cut hair black and curled at the ends, his eyebrows singed. The smell of burning things was strong in the car.

Eddie reached to the right, let his fingers go to the money.

Eddie thought of himself dropping to the bench, covering his eyes before the crash. He had been scared, like always. But he had done something, too.

Eddie laughed without knowing why.

Dimitri Karras flipped the switch and extinguished the bathroom light. He stood motionless, savoring the cool drip of cocaine back in his throat, the touch of ice behind his eyes, the charge of energy flowing toward his brain. It was his first jolt of the day, and his first was always the best. The world was better than it had been moments before. The day would surely be more interesting now. There would be interesting people to meet, interesting things to talk about. What did his dealer call it? Medicinal optimism. The promise of a clean and deathless future.

He smiled. It was comforting, standing in the darkness. It felt better here, out of the light.

Karras fingered the amber-colored glass vial in the pocket of his jeans. That was the crazy thing about this stuff — well, one of the crazy things: Once you did your first hit, you were thinking about your next right away. What you were holding, when you’d get to it, how much you had left, how far it would go... you’d get so wrapped up in the plan, it was easy to forget the high itself.

Through the bathroom door he could hear the announcer calling the Maryland-Pepperdine game from the thirteen-inch Sharp set atop Marcus Clay’s desk in the back office of the new store. Karras heard the announcer raise his voice, the surge of the crowd, Clay’s voice.

“Lord!” yelled Clay. “Mitri, man, come on out, you’re missin’ this shit. Pepperdine’s making a run!”

Marcus — he loved the epic four-day, sixty-four-team first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament. He waited for it like a child does Christmas morning, called it “the best four days in all of sports.” Damned if Karras could disagree.

“I’ll be out in a second,” said Karras.

“What’re you, waxin’ your little old carrot in there?”

“I said I’ll be right out.”

Fuck it. Might as well do another jolt.

He turned the light back on, caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror. His hair was short and gray and spiked with gel, the post — new wave look for aging rock and rollers. Thirty-seven years old and all gray. Just ten years earlier he’d had a head of long brown hair and a desperado mustache. The hair had come off when a girl in a bar had told him he looked “so seventies” by way of a quick get-lost. As for the mustache, he had removed it when some cowboy hat — wearing gay boys eye-fucked him on the street near his Dupont Circle pad.

Karras retrieved the vial from his black Levi’s and unscrewed the plastic top. A tiny spoon dangled from the inside of the top on an attached chain. He dipped the spoon into the vial, removed a miniature mound of coke, fed one nostril, repeated the action, fed the other. He put everything back in place, ran some water from the spigot, wet his fingers, put the tips of his fingers into his nostrils, and inhaled. Karras splashed water on his face, dried it with a towel, and winked at his reflection. He switched off the light and headed out the door.

“Oh, shit,” said Clay, pointing at the set. “Lefty, don’t be lettin’ Gatlin throw that ball in. ’Cause you know Gatlin threw it to the wrong uniform when they played Georgia Tech in the ACC tournament.”

“Pulled a Fred Brown,” said Karras, moving alongside Clay.

But Gatlin didn’t pull a Fred Brown. He got the ball in to Len Bias. Bias drove and was fouled before the shot.

“What do we got?” said Karras.

“Thirty-nine seconds left,” said Clay, and Karras grinned at the sight of spit flying from Marcus’s mouth. He was just so into this shit.

“And?”

“Pepperdine came back from a twelve-point deficit to bring it to within two.”

“Your boy Bias gonna let it get away?”

“Man can’t do it all himself. Got twenty-four, and he’s been pullin’ down mucho rebounds, too. Help if he had a center out there. Know how many Terry Long’s hit today? Zeee-ro.”

“Relax, Marcus.”

“Relax? Man, fuck all that.”

Bias hit the one-and-one, and then the Waves had no option but to foul. Keith Gatlin went to the line, hit both from the charity line, and ended the game. The Terps had made it past the first round. Karras and Clay gave each other skin.