George Pelecanos - Hard Revolution

Vaughn swallowed slowly. “What you starin’ at, doll?”

“Big old dog. I’m staring at you.” She rubbed her hand over his flattop. “For luck,” she said.

“I can use it.”

Linda ran her fingers down Vaughn’s shoulder, unconsciously touching the tattoo of his wife’s name floating in a heart. “Think we can go see some music one night? We haven’t gone out in a while.”

“Where you wanna go?”

“I like that girl, sings upstairs at Mr. Henry’s in Southeast. Remember her?”

“The colored singer, with the trio.”

“Roberta Flack,” said Linda, recalling the singer’s name.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Can we go?”

“Sometime,” said Vaughn.

Vaughn touched her left breast, squeezed the tip of her pink nipple, and felt it swell.

“You keep that up, you’re gonna have to stay.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I gotta get back on the street.”

BUZZ STEWART, DOMINIC Martini, and Walter Hess drove downtown in Walter’s ’631/ 2 Galaxie, a red-over-black beauty, drinking beer all the way. Hess had heard about the Ford from a cell mate of his and bought it from a mechanic up in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, when he was released. It had a 427 under the hood, a four-speed on the console, small hubcaps, rear skirts, and the chrome dress-up option from the factory. It was the cleanest vehicle of its kind on the street.

Hess worked in a machine shop on Brookeville Road and put every extra dime he earned into the car. He had few expenses outside of beer and cigarettes, the amphetamines he bought with regularity, and the Ford. He lived with his mother and father in a bungalow on the 700 block of Silver Spring Avenue. He bought his speed from bikers who rented a group house on the same block. His pills of choice were Black Beauties. When the bikers were out of Beauties, he bought White Crosses and ate twice as many. Whatever it took to get that tingle going in his skull.

Hess felt he had grown up some since his stay in prison. Certainly he had not hurt anyone as badly as he had in that final incident, the last of several similar but less serious attacks, that got him sent away. He had been standing on Cameron Street off Georgia, smoking a butt outside Eddie Leonard’s sandwich shop, when a group of young men drove by in a new Chevelle, yelling out the window at him and laughing, calling him “little greaser” and shit like that. It had got his back up and made him yell back, screaming “college faggots” at them ’cause he’d seen the Maryland U decal on the rear window of their car. Right away, they stopped the Chevy in the middle of Cameron. A big guy wearing a leather jacket with a football sewed over the M got out of the car. Hess pulled his hunting knife, a six-inch serrated stainless job he was carrying at the time, from the sheath in his boot and held it tight against his thigh. When the football player reached him, Hess brought the knife up and stabbed him in the face, just below his left eye. He then opened him up from his cheek clean down to the collarbone. All that blood. One of the college boys puked his lunch it was so bad. Walter Hess knew right away he was going to get sent up for that one. Too many witnesses, and there were his assault priors, too.

He had expected to get offered a deal like some of his friends had gotten back then. Join the Corps and we’ll drop the charges, like that. He brought it up to the lawyer the court gave him, but the fancy guy just shook his head. “They don’t want people like you,” the lawyer said. In his cell at night, Walter would sometimes think about that and get confused. The army trained guys to kill, didn’t they? He didn’t even need training; it came natural to him. And if they took pretty-boy pussy boys like Dominic Martini, why wouldn’t they take a man like him?

“Pull over,” said Stewart. “Anywhere around here’s good.”

“Not yet,” said Hess.

Hess drove by the bus station, where people stood out front on the sidewalk, killing time and catching cigarettes. Martini watched the eyes of the young blacks tracking them as they passed. He and his companions looked like trouble, he guessed. Trouble and hate.

“Park it,” said Stewart, seeing an empty spot. They were on the 1200 block of New York Avenue, headed for the Famous.

“I need to find a spot closer to the club,” said Hess. “I don’t want none of these boofers down here fuckin’ with my ride.”

“Right there,” said Stewart. “Shit, Shorty, what you want to do, park it in the bar?”

Hess cackled like a witch. “Think they’ll let me?”

They parked and went inside. Immediately they found folks they knew among the white blue-collar crowd. Bikers from various gangs mixed with hard cases, construction workers, electricians’ apprentices, pipe fitters, waitresses, secretaries, and young men from good homes who had no business being there but aspired to grit. Some of the women had tattoos, both store-bought and home inflicted. One girl, who called herself Danny and had the tat to prove it, had lost a tooth in a fight with her old man but had not replaced it because, she said, the hole made a good place to fit her cigar. Stewart bought her a CC and Seven as soon as he came in. He had done her one night a year back, before her boyfriend had ruined her face, and felt he owed her a drink. The girl was sloppy, but she was all right. Stewart was feeling generous. He was happy to be with his people.

Martini stayed with beer. Stewart and Hess went over to the hard stuff as Link Wray and his latest version of the Raymen took the stand. Between the British Invasion, the white blues revival, Dylan, psychedelia, and the soul revolution, Wray’s music had not gotten much radio time these past few years, but he was still bringing in the local crowds. His set now consisted of his early smashes with some Elvis covers thrown into the mix. He opened with “Jack the Ripper,” his last big hit, from ’63. The place got moving straightaway. Stewart rested his back against the bar. He saw Dominic smiling, tapping his foot to the music. Hell, when Wray turned up his amp and let it rip, even that dumb shit could find a way to have a good time.

Stewart wondered why the world couldn’t be the way it was in here, right now, all the time.

“Buzz,” said Hess, standing beside him, a shot of Jack Daniel’s in one hand, a draft beer in the other.

“Yeah.”

“You see that fuckin’ girl over there in the corner?”

Stewart looked in that direction. He saw a guy, drinking a beer, grinning, listening to the music, not bothering a soul. Stewart looked at Shorty, his eyes somewhat crossed, nodding his head rapidly for no reason except that the speed was telling him to.

“So?”

Hess threw his head back to drain his mash, placed the empty glass on the bar. “I don’t like the way he’s smiling.”

“Shit, he ain’t smilin’ at you.”

Hess stepped forward. Stewart grabbed the sleeve of his leather and pulled him back.

“Let him be, Shorty. He’s just havin’ a good time.”

Stewart felt the bunched muscles of Hess’s arm loosen under his grip.

“Buy me another shot, will ya, Buzz? I can stand another brew, too. Man, I’m thirsty as shit.”

Course you are, thought Stewart. All that speed you got in you.

They had two more rounds. After the set, Stewart got a go order from the bartender and motioned Hess and Martini toward the door. They killed a six on the drive uptown.

DEREK STRANGE HAD parked his Impala on Princeton Place under a street lamp and was locking it down when he saw Kenneth Willis’s green Monterey coming up the block. Willis slowed and pulled up to the curb, stopping behind the Impala. Strange saw that Alvin Jones, a crawler who never had been no good or brought any good along with him, sat beside his younger cousin. Dennis was in the backseat.