George Pelecanos - Soul Circus

Oliver had been his first hookup. He’d started taking payoff money from Oliver when he, Foreman, had been a cop. It was about then that Foreman had seen a way to make big money for real. His years as a police officer had given him insights into the criminal mind, and he’d learned the mechanics of illegal gun sales, straw buys and the like, the same way. Oliver had been his first customer, and his best up until the time the Feds busted him on those RICO charges.

But even with Oliver and his boys put away, there would always be a market down here. This new breed of hard boys comin’ up, they all wanted shiny new guns, the same way they wanted nice whips. And the turnover was high, on account of you couldn’t hold on to any one crime-gun too long. Long as there was poverty, long as there wasn’t no good education, long as there wasn’t no real opportunity, long as kids down here had no fathers and were looking to belong to something, then there was gonna be gangs and a need for guns. This textbook he’d had called it supply-and-demand economics. Foreman had learned about that during the one semester of courses he’d taken at the community college over in Prince George’s County.

So he’d quit the force, citing the burnout effect of the job. Six months later, Ashley Swann, who he’d been doing since he met her, resigned from the MPD as well. She left her white-boy husband, a lawn mower repairman, no joke, and moved into this house with him. Ashley hadn’t worked a day since.

She didn’t need to work. She didn’t need to get out of those pajamas or put her wineglass down, she didn’t want to. Foreman was making good money moving guns around, and he worked about twenty hours a week as a security guard on top of that, just so he could show something to the IRS come tax time.

Course, he wasn’t the only dealer in this part of the city. But he was the quality man. He didn’t sell Davis or Lorcin or Hi-Point or Raven, none of those cheap-ass guns project kids bought on their first go-round. He carried fine American, Austrian, and German pieces, pistols, mostly, and occasionally special-order stuff the young ones had seen in the gun mags and the movies, AKs and Calico autoloaders, carbines, and the like. He customized some of the guns himself. You could still buy a Hyundai down here, you wanted to, but he was the Benz dealer in this part of town. His goods were marked way up, but he had no problem moving them. Shit, the high price tag was a badge of honor for these kids, like bragging that you had spent a couple thousand on a Rolex watch or a clean grand on a set of rims.

Foreman had a couple of boys working for him. These boys rounded up young girls, just old enough and with no priors, to do the straw buys in the gun store over in Forestville on the Maryland side, and in Virginia, in these shops they had way down Route 1. They used junkies and indigents, too, long as they had no record. You had to be careful with the junkies, though. The 4473 had a question, asked if you used drugs, and if you got caught lying on a federal form after the trace, that was a felony. Filing off the serial number, that was another amateur play right there, something Foreman would never do. Another felony, good for an automatic five. It was the way police squeezed testimony out of suspects and got them to flip. As far as solving cases went, shaking down suspects to give up other suspects worked better than ballistics and forensics every time.

Another of Foreman’s boys was a student at Howard who had been raised in Georgia. He made the 95 South run in his trap-car once a month to his hometown, where family and friends made purchases in the area on his behalf. This boy was putting himself through college with what Foreman was paying him. It was true that D.C. had a handgun ban, but its good neighbor states, especially those to the south, did not. So there wasn’t no thing to getting a gun in the District. Simple as buying a carton of milk. And you didn’t even need big money to do it. You could rent a gun or trade drugs to get one, or the community could chip in to buy one. What they called a neighborhood gun. In many of the Section 8s there was a pistol buried somewhere, could be got to quick, in a shoe box. Most everyone knew where that shoe box was.

It was an easy business to be in and manage. Situation wasn’t getting any better for these kids, so there would always be a need, and the money continued to flow in. So why was Foreman feeling those burning pains in his chest? Had to be the start of an ulcer, or what he imagined an ulcer to be. It was because he had been a cop, and in that time he had learned something about criminals, and being a criminal himself now, this is what he knew: His time was gonna come. No one in this game, be he gun dealer or gang leader or dope salesman, lasted forever. It could be the police or someone younger, stronger, or crazier than you, but the fact remained that someone was going to take you down.

It was kinda like playing the stock market. You had to know when to sell, not let greed make you stay in too long. He knew he had to get out, and get his woman out the clean way, too. The question was, how?

Foreman heard some heavy bass as a car pulled off the road, came down his long asphalt entrance, and slowed, arriving at the circular drive that fronted the house. That would be Dewayne Durham. Prob’ly had that big-ass sucker they called Zulu with him, too.

Foreman slipped back into the house and went down the stairs off the kitchen. He hoped Ashley had got herself dressed by now. She could show Durham in, and his personal giant, too.

FOREMAN had spread out several pistols on the felt of his pool table down in the recreation room of the rambler. He had bought a ring once for Ashley, and this was the way the jeweler had presented it to him, on a square of red felt. When Foreman had chosen his pool table at that wholesale store he went to, he had gone for the red, remembering how he had been sold on the ring. This was the way he presented all his goods.

Five guns were set in a row, turned at a forty-five-degree angle to the line of the table. Above them were boxes of ammunition, “bricks,” the contents of which fit the guns. A Heckler amp; Koch 9mm automatic was at the head of the row. A Sig Sauer.45 was next, followed by a stainless steel Colt of the same caliber, then a Glock 17. The Glock was the MPD sidearm and, Foreman knew, was always a sure sale. The young ones wanted what the police carried, nothing less. At the end of the row was a Calico M-110 auto pistol, a multiround, 22-caliber chatter gun. It was generally ineffective and hard to conceal but had recently gained popularity on the street due to its round capacity and exotic look.

“That’s pretty right there,” said Dewayne Durham. He was pointing to the Colt.45 set between the Sig and the drab plastic Glock. Foreman had placed the gun there strategically, knowing it would stand out.

“You like it, huh?”

“What kinda grips you got on there?”

“That’s rosewood,” said Foreman. “The checkered style. Ordered them from Altamont and put ’em on my own self. Looks good against the stainless, right?”

Durham picked up the gun, felt its weight in his hand. He racked the slide and dry-fired at the wall. He placed the gun back on the table.

“Pretty,” repeated Durham, Foreman knowing right then that he had made a sale. “That’s like that gun you got, right?”

“Same gun,” said Foreman. “Only I got the ivory grips on mine.”

“You had it long?”

“Just came in. Got bought at a store down in Virginia and changed hands once since. Never even been fired.”

“How you know?”

“Smell it.”

“Okay, then. I’m gonna take that Glock, too, if it’s clean.”

“You could eat off it, dawg.”