George Pelecanos - Soul Circus

“Aiight, then.”

“What about that?” said Bernard Walker. Foreman had been watching the tall man’s eyes and knew he was talking about the Calico.

“Brand-new,” said Foreman.

“Where the bullets come from?”

“Right up top there, why it’s long like it is. They call it a helical feed.”

“What you need that for, Zulu?” said Durham. “Shit ain’t even, like, practical.”

“I guess I don’t need it,” said Walker. “I was just askin’ after it, is all.”

Durham said to Walker, “I’m buyin’ you the Glock.” To Foreman he said, “How much for the two?”

Foreman closed his eyes like he was counting it up. He had already decided on a price.

“Sixteen for the both of them is what I’d normally charge. With those grips and all, price got up.”

“Sixteen hundred for two guns?” Durham made a face like he had bitten into a lemon. “Damn, boy, you gonna make me pay list price, too. What, you see me pull up in my new whip and the price went up? Or I got the word sucker stamped on my forehead and nobody done told me.”

“I said it’s what I’d normally charge. I’m gonna make it fifteen for you. And I’ll throw in the bricks.”

Durham looked down at his Pennys. He had made up his mind, but he was going to let Foreman wait. They both knew it was part of the process.

Durham looked up. “You got anything to drink up in this piece?”

Foreman smiled. “I’ll throw that in, too.”

Foreman got them a couple of beers from the short refrigerator he kept running behind his bar and opened one for himself. He brought them frosted pilsner glasses he stored in the fridge for his guests. They sat in leather chairs grouped around a leather couch studded with nail heads, a glass-topped table in the center of the arrangement. Italian leather on the couch, Durham guessed, soft as it was. Foreman did have nice things. Why wouldn’t he, with the prices he charged?

The room was paneled in knotty pine. Foreman had always wanted a room like this, a room that he imagined a secure man would own, and now he had it. To him, the wood had the smell of success. There was the pool table and a deep-pile carpet, wall-to-wall, and a wide-screen Sony with a flat picture tube, the best model they made, with a DVD player racked beneath the set. His stereo, with the biggest speakers they had in the store, was first-class. He had a gas-burning fireplace in here, too, and the bar with the imitation marble top. He was all hooked up. He’d rather sit down here and catch a game than go out to the new football stadium or the MCI Center, matter of fact. He’d rather sit down here and chill than do just about anything else.

Durham took a taste of beer. He had a look around the room. Looked like some old man, wore his pants up high, owned it. Foreman was playing some old-school stuff on the stereo, Luther Vandross from when Luther could sing, had some weight behind his voice. Music from the eighties, that fit this place, too.

“Saw your woman,” said Durham, after enjoying a long sip of beer. “She looked good.”

“Thank you, man,” said Foreman.

It made Durham kinda sick just to think about her. Why it was, he wondered, that black men who went for white women always went for the most fugly ones. When a white boy had a black woman she always seemed to be fine. You could bet money on that shit damn near every time.

Foreman’s woman, she had come to the door in some JCPenney’s-lookin’ outfit, no makeup on her face and wine breath coming out her big mouth. Looked like she just dragged her elephant ass out of bed; must have remembered that it was feeding time, sumshit like that. Talkin’ about, “How you two be doin’?” A big-ass, ugly-ass white girl trying to talk black, her idea of it, anyway, from ten years ago.

“Yeah,” said Durham, “she looked good.”

“She’s gettin’ her rest,” said Foreman.

Foreman took a Cuban out of a wooden box on the glass table before him, clipped it with a silver tool set beside the box, and lit the cigar. He got a nice draw going and sat back.

“Saw your brother, Mario, today,” said Foreman casually, as if it had just come into his mind.

“So did I,” said Durham. “Just a little while ago.”

“This was in the morning,” said Foreman. “I had a little transaction with him.”

“Yeah?”

“No big thing. Rented him a gun. Traded him five days’ worth for a little bit of hydro he was holding.”

Walker glanced over at Durham. No one said anything for a while, as Foreman had expected. But he wanted his business with Twigs to be up front, on the outside chance that some kind of problem came up later on.

Durham’s eyes went a little dark. “Now why you want to do that? I’d get you some smoke, you needed it.”

“Well, for some reason, Mario’s always got the best chronic.” Foreman chuckled. “The older I get, seems I need the potent shit to get me high.”

“What, mine don’t get you up?”

“The truth? It hasn’t lately. When Mario lays some on me, I trip behind it.”

’Cause what I give to Mario, I give to him out of my private stash, thought Durham. And you know this.

Durham exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the ache in his stomach. “What he needs a gun for, anyway?”

“Said he was lookin’ to make an impression on someone. I didn’t get the feeling he was gonna use it.”

“He ain’t say nothin’ to me.”

“Boy’s harmless, though, right?”

Durham cut his eyes away from Foreman. “He ain’t gonna do nothin’, most likely.” He did believe this in his heart.

“What I thought, too. Now look, he didn’t want me to tell you. Didn’t want to worry you or y’all’s moms. But I just thought it might be better if you knew.”

“Okay, then.”

“We all right, dawg?”

Durham nodded. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“We better be gone,” said Walker, placing his empty pilsner on the table.

“Gotta see the troops get out for the night,” said Durham.

“I’ll get you a bag for your guns,” said Foreman.

Durham pulled a roll of cash from out of his jeans. “Fourteen, right?”

“Fifteen,” said Foreman, standing from his chair.

“Why you want to do me like that?” said Durham, but Foreman was ignoring him, already walking toward a side room where he kept his supplies.

FOREMAN stood on the stoop of his house, watching the Benz go down the drive. He was under a pink awning that Ashley loved but he hated. It was a little thing, though, one of them concessions you make to a woman, so he told her that he liked the awning, too.

He had played it right, telling Dewayne about Mario and the gun. Now there wouldn’t be no misunderstanding later on. If Dewayne didn’t like it, well, next time he’d give him some of that good smoke he kept in the family. Everything was negotiation in this business, nothing but a game.

“It go okay?” said Ashley, coming up behind him with a fresh glass of wine in her hand.

“Went good.” Foreman put his arm around her waist, looked her over, then kissed her neck. “Those boys were noticing you.”

“You jealous?”

“I don’t think you’re goin’ anywhere.”

“You got that right, boyfriend.”

“I better keep an eye on you, though. Fine as you look, someone might try to steal you out from under me.”

“That’s where they’d have to steal me from, too.”

Foreman kissed Ashley on the mouth. She bit his lower lip, and they both laughed as he pulled away.

YOU ever been back in there?” said Strange, looking through the windshield to the brick wall bordering St. Elizabeth’s.

“Once,” said Devra Stokes. “This girl and me jumped the wall when we was like, twelve.”