Джордж Пелеканос: King Suckerman

“You’re just ignorant, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I’m ignorant. I’m good and ignorant, bleed. And while you readin’ your Little Red Book tonight, I’ll be out havin’ a good-ass time at the movies. And then, inside my crib a little later on, while you’re still recitin’ your proverbs and shit, I’ll be hittin’ the fuck out of some good pussy. You can believe that.”

“Sholinda?” said Rasheed.

“Got-damn right.”

Rasheed and Cheek were still talking shit as Clay walked to the back room. He washed up and changed into a pair of shorts, put his Superstar-highs on his feet and laced them tight. He was back out front in a few, and now Rasheed and Cheek were arguing about some detail on the Pedro Bell cover of America Eats Its Young. Cheek had laid side two on the platter, and the instrumental that kicked things off, “A Joyful Process,” had come on in. Clay liked that one; the comic-book stuff in their lyrics, that he could do without, but Clinton and those boys in Funkadelic, no question, they could play.

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” said Clay, raising his voice over the horns.

Cheek, shaped like a brown snowman with a full Teddy Pendergrass beard, looked up. “What time you want me to cut the register tape, Marcus?”

“ ’Bout an hour from now should do it.”

“Playin’ a little ball today, boss?” said Rasheed.

“Yeah.”

“With your Caucasian friend?”

“He’s Greek.”

“He looks plenty white to me.”

“Claims there’s a difference,” said Clay. “Damn if I know what it is.”

Clay looked back at them before he left the store, standing there, smiling like fools. He knew, soon as he left, they’d be in the stockroom, firing up some of Cheek’s Mexican. It made no difference to him, long as they did their jobs. Way he saw it, if they rang a few sales, didn’t burn the place to the ground, and kept their hands out of the till, he’d be coming out ahead.

Dimitri Karras watched Marcus Clay leave his store, emerge from under the Real Right Records awning, head down Connecticut toward R, where Karras held the ragtop maroon Karmann Ghia idling by the curb. Clay with his smooth, dark skin, a modified Afro and thick mustache, walking with that head-held-high way of his, a kind of bounce, really, not exaggerated but earned. Karras didn’t blame him; if he had Clay’s looks, shit, man, he’d be strutting, too.

Karras checked himself in the rearview: black hair falling in waves to his shoulders, a black handlebar mustache, deep brown eyes picking up the chocolate color of his pocket T. Not bad. Not a stone swordsman like Clay, but not bad. Yeah, Karras, when he smiled — and he was smiling now, giving it to the mirror full on — he could turn some heads.

“Easy, lover,” said Clay, dropping into the shotgun seat. “Next thing you know, you’ll be picking out a ring.”

“I thought I had something in my teeth. I was just—”

“Uh-huh.”

Karras pushed the short-stick into first, checked the sideview before pulling out. “Too hot for you, Marcus? I could put the top back up.”

“Naw, leave it down. That way I don’t have to fold myself up to get in and out of this motherfucker. Course, this toy fits you just fine. Big man like me, though...”

Karras headed up Connecticut. The VW lurched into second, causing Clay’s head to bob involuntarily, like one of those spring-necked dogs set in the back windows of cars. Clay gave Karras a look.

“Poor man’s Porsche,” explained Karras with an apologetic shrug.

“And a Vega GT’s a poor man’s Vette.”

“Some do claim that.”

Karras cut right, headed down into Rock Creek, reached back behind the passenger seat, pulled free a leatherette box filled with eight-track tapes. Clay held the wheel steady while Karras flipped back the lid and looked through the box.

“What you puttin’ in? ’Cause I don’t even want to hear no Mo the Rooster.”

“Mott the Hoople.”

“Yeah, none of that. Put somethin’ in there that’s got some bottom, man.”

Karras slipped a tape into the deck. “Robin Trower. Bridge of Sighs. Rightful heir to Mr. Hendrix—”

“I don’t want to talk about Jimi, now. Okay?”

Karras found a joint in his shirt pocket, fired it up off the VW’s lighter. He hit it, passed it over to Clay. They exited a long tunnel and went by the National Zoo.

“Nice taste,” said Clay.

“The end of my Lumbo. I’m pickin’ up an LB later on today.”

“What you going through now?”

“I move about a pound, pound and a half a week, keep just enough for myself. It’s a living, man, you know?”

“Educated man like you, you ought to find yourself a real job. A good one, too.”

“Smoke a little weed, play some ball, listen to tunes... get some P now and then — I gotta look at it this way: How could my life get any better?”

“For you, maybe. Me, I like to work.”

“I know you do, Marcus.”

Karras took in a deep hit of the pot. He offered it to Clay, who hit it again, passed it back. Karras kissed it one last time, butted what was left, pushed the roach to the back of the ashtray.

Clay checked out the sneakers on Karras’s feet. “Where’d you get those Clydes, Dimitri?”

“Up at Mitchell’s, on Wisconsin.”

“I ain’t seen ’em in that neutral color, though. They look good like that.”

“Mitchell’s,” repeated Karras.

“I’ll have to tell Rasheed. He’s been lookin’ for just that shade.”

“Rasheed X. ”

“That boy’s all right. You two just need to sit down and talk.”

“Right.”

“So where we headed, anyway?”

“Candy Cane City, I guess. Always get a decent game up there.”

Clay nodded, then found his head moving to the gravelly Bill Lordan vocals, Trower’s blues guitar working against a thick slab of bass. The Columbian was talking to him now, pushing him to find things in the music he might have otherwise overlooked. “This is a bad jam, you know it?”

Karras nodded. “‘The Fool and Me.’”

“Your boy Trower, he can play.”

“Yeah,” said Karras. “Trower’s bad.”

Clay put on his shades; Karras put on his. The Karmann Ghia moved through the warm summer air beneath a cooling canopy of trees.

Eddie Marchetti opened up the Post, checked out the TV Highlights chart for the day, went down the grid to four o’clock. The menu showed Money Movie Seven, the one where Johnny Batchelder gave away small-time dollars at the commercial break. It was Yul Brynner week, and today they were running Taras Bulba. Tony Curtis as Yul Brynner’s son — what were they, five, six years apart in age? Right. Marchetti had seen it, and it wouldn’t get any better a second time. Over on 9 was Dinah Shore: Ethel Merman, Frankie Valli, and Jimmie Walker, the skinny titsune with exactly one joke in his repertoire. No, thanks. He could watch Robert Young, Family Doctor on channel 4, but that was nothing but the old Marcus Welby, M.D. in syndication, and he had seen all of those on the first go-round. Anyhow, those geezer shows — Welby, Barnaby Jones, like that — Marchetti could only take so much of those.

Dinah was just about to start. Marchetti pointed the remote in the direction of the nineteen-inch Sony across the room, cut the power. He dropped the remote in the center drawer of the varnished desk in front of him. He swiveled in his chair, looked out the big picture window to the street.

A million-dollar view! A ’dozer pushing gravel into a mountain of it, and past the mountain of stones some kind of tepee-shaped silo. Beyond the fenced-in lot that housed the miniquarry was a big windowless structure of brick, a dead building by day but a fag club by night. Huge, sweaty dance floor, dick shots projected on the walls, angled mirrors in the johns so the tail-gunners could check out your equipment while you were trying to take a leak, disco music so loud you couldn’t even taste the liquor in your drink. Fuck all that. Before Marchetti’s cousin Arturo had gone back to North Jersey, just after he had set Eddie up down in D.C., the two of them had checked the place out, Arturo Marchetti claiming that it would be easy pickings for a couple of swingin’ dicks like them, on account of in a fag joint there wasn’t any competition for the broads. But none of the women had wanted to dance with them, which left Eddie and Arturo standing there, sipping their drinks like a couple of mo-mos, looking at slide shows of bright-eyed, toothy guys with lizards hanging down to their knees. Eddie wanted to leave, but Arturo, he wanted to stay, ride the night out. For all Eddie knew, maybe Arturo was half queer. And the bitches, the ones that wouldn’t dance with Eddie? He figured they must have been faggids themselves.