Джордж Пелеканос - King Suckerman

“A source,” said Cooper.

“That’s right,” said Marchetti. “A biker I know. Guy by the name of Larry.”

“Larry.”

“Uh-huh. Him and his gang — well, I don’t know if you can call them a gang, exactly, but they all ride bikes — they’re staying out in a little house on some farmland in a place called Marriottsville, up near Baltimore. Larry and his friends, they deal in quantity.”

“You know this.”

“I struck up a friendship with Larry and his lady — Larry calls her his lady — in a bar here in D.C. Right on Capitol Hill. Same bar I took Viv over there away from, the place where she was serving drinks, getting her ass patted all day by the customers. Right, Viv?”

“Yeah, Eddie,” said Vivian. “You swept me off my feet.”

“So I tell Larry what I do. ‘I buy and sell things for a living,’ I say. And Larry says, ‘I got something you can buy, bro, and you can turn around and sell it for a whole lot more.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah?’”

“Why didn’t you, then?” said Cooper.

“What I do here,” said Marchetti, “I buy hard goods, move them around for a profit.”

“You’re a fence.”

“Yeah. And I move a little reefer, too. Viv likes to smoke it now and again, so it keeps us in a private stash. But cocaine? Shit, Wilton, I gotta be honest with you, I’m playing an away game there. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if it was sitting in my lap.”

“Start by gettin’ it out your lap,” said Russell, “and up your got-damn nose.”

“Got that shit right,” said Ronald, cooler than a corpse, giving soft skin to Russell without even moving his eyes.

“So you got to talking to Carlos,” said Cooper.

“Thought we could work something out.”

“You be the broker,” said Cooper.

“For the standard ten points,” said Marchetti.

“And that would bring us up to today.”

“Right. The way Carlos put it, he’d send you up here, you show me you got the money so I don’t embarrass myself, and I put you up with Larry. You make the buy, I get my twenty G’s, you go home, everyone’s happy. How’s that sound?”

“Solid as a motherfucker, Eddie.”

“So,” said Marchetti with a nervous smile. “The money.”

“What,” said Cooper, “you thought I’d forget about that?”

Tate looked over at the white boy, hip cocked, his finger grazing the back of the shotgun’s trigger.

Cooper arched his back, dug into his front pocket, grunted. “Be glad when these tight jeans go out of style. Here we are.” He pulled free a roll of bills, leaned forward, dropped the bills on Marchetti’s desk. “Twenty grand. How’s that look to you, Spags?”

Eddie Marchetti smiled, picked up the money. He looked at it briefly, like he didn’t need to count it, counted it quickly in his head. Tate got off the desk at the sound of a car door, went to the window behind Marchetti’s desk.

“Black dude and a white dude, Eddie, comin’ to the door.”

“White dude look like a Greek?” said Marchetti, his eyes still on the bills.

“How should I know, man?”

“It’s that Karras guy, most likely, come to pick up his dope.”

“Should I tell him to come back later?” said Tate.

“Hey, Wilton,” said Marchetti, “you don’t mind I do a little business real quick, do ya?”

“No,” said Cooper, “I don’t mind.”

“Go ahead, Clarenze,” said Marchetti. “Buzz the Greek in.”

Up this way, I guess,” said Karras. Clay followed him up a darkened concrete-and-steel stairwell.

“You mean you’ve never been here before?”

“This isn’t my usual distributor.”

“So you don’t even know who you’re dealing with.”

“Technically, yeah. But my distributor, guy named Loopy, he’s going on vacation, he offered to hook me up with his man, just this one week.”

“Loopy.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, Loopy’s cool.”

“Name like Loopy, he don’t sound all that cool to me.”

Karras opened the heavy door at the top of the landing. He and Clay walked into a large room with a concrete floor, where several men stood and sat around and one young woman reclined on a wine leather couch. One of those standing, a skinny white kid with a face full of acne, held a sawed-off shotgun at his side.

Karras and Clay had a look at the group, all of whom had turned to look at them. Clay knew then he should not have come along. His friend had asked him to, and because Karras was his friend, Clay had done it. But he shouldn’t have come, just the same. He only wanted to run his business, live a quiet kind of life. He had seen all the guns he would ever want to see. And here he was, facing a roomful of country knuckleheads and a teenage peckerwood with his finger curled around the hot trigger of doom. Clay knew there was nothing more dangerous than a young boy with a loaded gun. The young, they just didn’t understand death.

“Who’s Eddie Marchetti?” said Karras in a gregarious, confident tone, stepping across the room, a friendly smile on his face. He’d talked his way out of tighter situations than this: squarehead cops and jealous boyfriends and barroom bad-asses and all the rest. Clay walked with him.

“That’s me,” said Marchetti, dropping the money on his desk. “You Dimitri Karras?”

“That’s right. This is my friend Marcus Clay.”

Clay nodded, noticed the tall brother, the one with the gentle eyes who sat on the edge of the desk, give him a second look at the sound of his name.

“Dimitri and Marcus,” said Marchetti, giving it his smile, just one of the boys. “Sounds like a couple of gladiators.”

“Look more like Christopher Salt and Charlie Pepper to me,” said Clagget. “Right, Wilton?”

“What’s that?” said Marchetti.

“ Salt and Pepper, ” said Cooper. “Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. Nineteen sixty-eight. Am I right, B.R.?”

“That’s right,” said Clagget. “But what was the sequel?”

“ One More Time ?”

“Damn,” said Clagget. “Most people get snagged on that one.”

Clay turned his head briefly, checked out the two Bamas who were arguing about something behind his back.

“Loopy said you could hook me up,” said Karras to Marchetti, hoping to get the transaction in gear.

“Sure. You’re looking for what, an LB?”

“A pound ought to do it.”

“Premium Lumbo,” said Marchetti.

“Sounds good.”

“Four bills, for you. You get what, fifty an OZ, you make a nice four-hundred-dollar profit.”

“Sounds fair,” said Karras with another smile. If this Marchetti wanted to brag like he knew the business, make himself look bigger in front of his guests, that was all right with him. “So let’s do it.”

“Clarenze,” said Marchetti, “go get that bag out of the back.”

Tate got off the desk, began to walk through the door to the hall, stopped, turned around to look at Clay. “Marcus Clay. I hear that right?”

“Right,” said Clay.

“You played for Cardoza. Y’all won the Interhigh title in what, nineteen sixty-four?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Clarenze,” said Marchetti, “go get the weed.”

“In a second.” Tate put one finger up in the air. If Eddie would’ve asked, he would have told him that he, Tate, that is, was simply trying to get to know the men who had entered the office. Trying to qualify the customer. But Eddie never would have thought to ask.

Tate said, “I remember that championship game against Dunbar. Aaron Webster had the winning bucket, got a pass inside from that tiny-ass guard you had, what was his name?”

“Phil Scott.”