Джордж Пелеканос: The Sweet Forever

Clay noticed the white beat cop, a no-neck musclehead, walk over to the drug boys and half shake his head. Clay saw his partner talking to the boy in the Raiders jacket. Clay thought about what he had seen just after the Buick had burst into flames.

Dimitri Karras returned. He had been checking on his lady friend, who stood back on the sidewalk huffing a cigarette.

“Guess the show’s about over,” said Karras.

“Yeah,” said Clay, cocking his head. “Funny thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Your girlfriend, what’s her name, Madonna?”

“Donna Morgan.”

“Her. She came with that boy drivin’ the K car, right?”

“He split. She was just wondering if he was comin’ back.”

“I don’t think he is comin’ back. Thing is, I saw him pull somethin’ out of that drug car while it was burnin’ up. Saw him put it in his car — a pillowcase or somethin’ — and take off.”

“Why do you say that’s a drug car?”

“That there’s a brand new Grand National, Dimitri. Top of the line. I got close enough to see the hands wrapped around that wheel. Looked like a kid’s hands. How you gonna figure a young black kid, sixteen, seventeen years old, gonna afford one of those?”

“Sounds like you’re makin’ a big leap, just ’cause he’s young and black.”

“All I see around here every day, it ain’t no leap. And don’t be throwin’ that ‘just ’cause he’s black’ shit up in my face. Remember who you’re talkin’ to, man.”

“Okay, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I have no idea.”

“I do. Trust me. ”

“What’re you sayin’, Marcus?”

“Just...” Clay looked into Karras’s eyes. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I don’t even know why I’m talkin’ to you now. You higher than a mothafucker, man.”

“I am not.”

“Hard eyes, can’t stand in one place. Grindin’ your teeth and shit. Now you’re gonna look at me and tell me, ‘I am not.’ ”

“Marcus—”

“Look, man, I know your girl came down here to cop some blow. I know you were back in the head feeding each other’s noses. Her boyfriend took somethin’ out of a drug car, could’ve been drugs, could’ve been money, could’ve been that dead boy’s dirty laundry for all I know, and he booked. What I’m tellin’ you is, I don’t wanna know. I don’t want to know about that kind of trouble, and I damn sure don’t want you bringin’ that kind of trouble around, hear?”

“I don’t know her boyfriend. I don’t know anything about him or that car.”

“Look—”

“Okay, I hear you, Marcus.”

“I got a business to run.”

“I hear you.”

“You got the rest of the day off, man. Get her out of here and go.”

“I’m sorry, man. I’ll see you back at the apartment.”

“Good.”

Karras rubbed his chin. “Marcus?”

Clay sighed. “Ain’t no thing, man. Just go ahead.”

They shook hands. Clay watched Karras go back and talk to his coke-head girl. He wished Karras hadn’t mentioned the apartment. It was bad enough, what with his business troubles, trying to keep his head up, that Elaine had thrown him out of their own house. That he was separated from her and Marcus Jr., their three-year-old son. Now he and Dimitri, a couple of grown men coming up on forty years old, were sharing an apartment.

He didn’t need to be reminded of all that. Especially not today.

Marcus Clay hit the gas, ascending the big hill of 13th Street that was the drop-off edge of the Piedmont Plateau. His Peugeot fought the hill, knocking all the way. The engine made a sound Clay hated, like the rattle in an empty spray-paint can. He never did like this car. All the buppies in D.C. were buying Peugeots now, from the old money up on North Portal Drive to the suburbanites to the Huxtable-looking trust-fund kids on the campus of Howard U. Elaine had encouraged him to buy his, telling him he’d look like a real businessman behind the wheel of the import. It was what she wanted to be seen in when they pulled up to the houses of her attorney friends. It had hurt him to give up his ’72 Riviera with the boat-tail rear. There wasn’t anything wrong with it that a tune-up and some new rubber couldn’t have cured. Goddamn if that Riviera wasn’t one righteous, beautiful car.

Clarence Tate sat in the passenger seat. His daughter sat in the back. Clay was giving them a lift home, as Tate’s Cutlass Supreme was just coming out of the shop. Denice Tate stared out the window, saying nothing. The burned-up boy in the Buick had been her first close-up look at death.

Clay looked left at the Clifton Terrace apartments. Run-down to the point of irreversible disrepair, roach and rat infested, play areas strewn with garbage and needles and broken glass... a nightmare for the women and children who lived inside its walls. The second of the mayor’s three wives, Mary Treadwell, had skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars out of Pride Incorporated, the agency responsible for much of the city’s subsidized housing. The money she had taken had included Clifton Terrace rent payments. Treadwell had stolen from the poor while living high in the Watergate apartments and cruising the city in her shiny Jag. Treadwell had been sentenced to three years. She was serving it after losing her last appeal in 1985.

Tate looked through his window at Cardoza High on the right. Denice would be entering it next fall. More money was available to D.C. schools than to practically any school district in the country. Despite this, Tate knew of no public school system in worse shape. Leaking roofs, broken windows, lack of running water and working toilets in bathrooms, a severe shortage of supplies, in many cases no supplies. Tate knew that most of the money had gone to midlevel administrators. And Tate had read in the Post how the mayor had awarded many of the major school contracts to minority firms, how those firms had driven up the cost of supplies, materials, and repairs to outrageous levels. Since the well was only so deep, the artificially high cost meant less of everything for the children. Tate was all for brothers giving brothers preferential treatment in business — hell, it worked for the Koreans and Greeks and Italians who had come before them. But the mayor’s administration had made a handful of black men wealthy while tens of thousands of black children went without across the city. Tate couldn’t abide by that. He loved D.C. But he’d be damned if he’d see his little girl have to put up with that kind of day-to-day substandard bullshit much longer. He’d leave the city if he had to, even if it was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

“Daddy?”

“What, baby?”

“I was gonna go over to Ashley’s tonight, watch some video.”

“Ashley’s momma gonna be there?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

It ain’t exactly a lie, thought Denice. Ashley’s mom is gonna be there, but me and Ash are not. Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers are playing at the Masonic Temple tonight. We’re gonna be there . And it is gonna be the bomb.

“All right, honeygirl,” said Tate. “You can go if you’d like.”

Donna Morgan looked across at Dimitri Karras. Karras wore his cat eye — lens Vuarnets, his gray hair moussed and spiked. He sat low in the driver’s seat of the 325, his right hand working the stick.

Karras in a Beamer. Spiked hair and Vuarnets. If the yuppies had a coat of arms, it would be those sunglasses, that haircut, this car. She wasn’t surprised that Karras had adopted the uniform. Karras had always worn masks.

She had met him at College Park, when she was a student and he taught American lit. That was the seventies, when he still wore the Shaggy Professor mask — longish hair, droopy Wyatt Earp mustache, corduroy sport jacket over Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Clydes on his feet. He had that casual thing down cold with his students — I’m older than you but, hey, I’m one of you — and also a rep with the girls. Men who were sexually aggressive didn’t scare Donna. They never had. And besides, Karras was cute. The first day of class, when his eyes flashed on hers from the front to the back of the room, she knew he was going to be inside her. It was just a question of when.