Джордж Пелеканос - King Suckerman

“Yeah, that boy could play. You could sky, too. Saw you jump from the foul line once all the way to the bucket, just like Connie Hawkins.”

“You played, too, didn’t you?”

Tate nodded. “Clarence Tate. I was a forward for Roosevelt then. Sixth man.”

“You played with Harvey Sebree, right?”

“Sebree and Ronald Graham.” Tate looked over at Karras. “You look familiar, too, man.”

“Wilson,” muttered Karras.

“Guard, right?”

“Yep.”

“The Wilson Tigers.” Tate grinned. “Losingest basketball team in high school history. Even made Sports Illustrated and shit. What were y’all, oh and seventy-three?”

“Something like that, I guess. I don’t remember.”

“And that’s why you’re white to day, ” offered Russell Thomas.

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

“Hold on a second, Eddie,” said Tate, and he looked at Clay. “Funny. I ain’t seen you around D.C. in all these years gone by. Not in the Jellef league, nothin’ like that. Where you been, man?”

“I was out of town for a few years,” said Clay.

Wilton Cooper sized up Clay. Out of town ... Vietnam. Which meant the tall cool brother with the easy walk knew how to handle a gun. The way he was built, Trouble Man looked like he could use his hands to fuck some niggers up, too.

“Out of town?” said Tate.

“Overseas.”

“And I didn’t happen to catch what you said you were doin’ now.”

“I didn’t say.”

Cooper laughed.

“We wouldn’t mind hangin’ around with you guys” — Karras drew four one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, slapped them against his palm — “but we gotta get on our way.”

“The weed,” said Marchetti.

Tate looked at Clay a moment longer, pushed on the door, went through.

Cooper pulled his Salems from his shirt pocket, drew one for himself, tossed the pack over to Clagget, who caught it with his free hand. Cooper gave himself a light, lit a cigarette for Clagget, who walked over slow and cocky, off the same match.

“Guess you two basketball players are wonderin’ who we are,” said Cooper, examining the cigarette between his fingers.

Clay turned to the side a little. That way he could keep the two dark-skinned brothers in his sight.

“I’ll tell you anyway,” said Cooper, “ ’cause I got the feeling, despite the way you’re actin’, all ice-cool and shit, you want to know. We come up to D.C. to do a little business, see. But I figure, we finish our business straightaway or not, we gonna stick around a little bit. You all got this Bicentennial celebration up here next week, they claimin’ it’s gonna be the biggest party in the history of the Yoonited States. Thought it might be somethin’ for us to see.”

“Got some freaks up here, too,” said Ronald Thomas.

“Ain’t that cold?” said Russell Thomas.

“ Talk about it,” said Ronald.

“You and your boy,” said Cooper, “you gonna check it out? Bet you two know all the spots.”

Clay didn’t answer. He wondered what was keeping Tate.

“You too good to talk to me, brother?” said Cooper to Clay.

Clay glanced at Karras, now checking out the Chinese freak on the couch. She was checking him out, too. Karras, even in a situation like this, always looking to get some play. Someone needed to talk a little sense to that boy.

“I see you’ve noticed Vivian,” said Marchetti, good-naturedly enough but with an edge. Karras saw a hardness in Marchetti’s eyes, but a surface hardness, with only insecurity beneath the veneer.

Vivian smiled at Karras.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” said Marchetti, raising his voice some. “You gotta admit, she’s a mover.”

“She’s a mover,” repeated Karras, because it made him think of the song. “Big Star.”

“ Radio City, ” said Vivian, naming the LP, which made Karras smile. A hot-looking chick like this, hip and into good tunes, sitting in a dark warehouse in Southeast with a meatball like Eddie Spags. Why?

“Chill, man,” said Clay in a soft way.

Marchetti wiped sweat off his forehead. With the AC on, it was colder than a nun’s snatch in there, and still he was sweating. It was the Greek and his little Chinese girlfriend, the one who never even fucked him, it was those two and the way they were flirting in front of him — in front of everyone — it was the two of them and the way they were disrespecting him that was making him sweat.

“Hey, Viv, honey,” said Marchetti, but she didn’t answer.

Clarence Tate came back into the room with a brown paper grocery bag in his hand. He walked it over to Karras, who exchanged it for the four hundred dollars.

Tate folded the money. “You want to weigh it, make sure? I got a scale in the back.”

Karras hefted the bag, shook his head. “I don’t need to scale it out. It’s got good weight.”

Tate said, “Solid.” He walked back to the desk, where Clagget now stood, dragging on his cigarette.

“Let’s go, man,” said Clay.

“Vivian,” said Marchetti. “Get me a beer out of the fridge, bring it over to Daddy, will you?”

“Get it yourself, Ed—”

“I said bring it here!”

Marchetti’s voice left an echo in the room. Cooper put his cigarette between his lips, stifled a grin. His eyes moved from the Italian to the girl.

“All right, Eddie,” said Vivian, uncoiling off the couch and walking, back straight and with a bounce, to the compact refrigerator in the corner of the room.

Dimitri Karras took her in: not just hip and hot and tune savvy. Long legs, a rack, and a nice package in the back, too.

“Hey, Mitri,” said Clay. “Didn’t you hear me, man? I said let’s go.”

Both of them turned, but Marchetti, standing out of his seat now, said, “Wait a sec, fellas, I want you to see something here. After all, Karras, you been lookin’ at it the whole time. You might as well stay another minute, have a look at it all.”

Vivian was moving across the room with quick, even steps, the can of beer in her hand. She pulled the ring off the top of the can and tossed it back over her shoulder.

“Aw, look at her,” said Marchetti, “she’s all upset.”

“Let’s do it, boy,” said Clay.

“Karras,” said Marchetti. “You ever see a Chinese broad with such a beautiful set of tits?”

No, thought Karras, I haven’t. But why’d you have to go and disrespect her like that?

Vivian reached the desk, made a quick, sharp jerk of her wrist. The can in her hand shot off a short arc of beer. The beer splashed across Eddie Marchetti’s face.

Clagget flicked his Salem against the cinder-block wall.

Marchetti said, “Bitch.” He backhanded Vivian at the jawline. There was the dull clap of flesh on flesh, and Vivian went down before the desk.

Later, Karras couldn’t remember crossing the room. It was like he was by the door one moment and around Marchetti’s desk the next. With the pound of pot still in his left hand, he punched the fat little Italian in the eye with a short right, followed through with the punch. Marchetti went back over his own chair, did a half somersault to the concrete floor.

Clay had moved with Karras and now he pulled on the back of Karras’s T-shirt. Then he turned at the sound of the shotgun’s pump. The white boy with the fucked-up face was walking toward them, gun up and pointed, now just two feet away. No one else, not the dark-skinned brothers or the slick brother or Clarence Tate, had moved an inch.

It was slow motion from there but quick in its own way, the way heat time had always been for Clay. He straightened his arm, dropped it a little, came up with a snake-strike, knocked the short barrel of the shotgun to the side, grabbed as he did, and pulled the gun free. He had one hand on the pump then and the other on the stock, and the white boy stood in front of him with nothing in his own hands but air. Clay swung the stock of the shotgun sharply, smashed it into the white boy’s mouth. Something cracked, and a couple of thin dice flew away from the kid’s face in one direction while some blood and saliva sailed off in the other. The kid went down. Clay pumped out the shells that had been loaded into the shotgun. He tossed the shotgun across the room.