King Suckerman
- Автор: Пелеканос Джордж
- Серия: D.C. Quartet #2
- Год: 1997
- Язык: английский
- Год: Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-69590-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «King Suckerman». Краткое содержание книги:
“Whoa,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Donna.
The two of them laughed.
In a couple of minutes Karras crossed into that zone he always got to when he put reefer on top of a few glasses of beer. He seemed to be floating, rather than sitting, on a stool without legs. The singles on the jukebox, the ones he would never listen to on the radio, sounded damn good. And nothing he said to Donna sounded wrong.
Donna leaned her head on Karras’s shoulder, looked up at him with her waxed green eyes.
“So, Dimitri.”
“What?”
“Wanna fuck?”
“Okay.”
He watched her walk along the bar and into the hallway, watched her stop at the door marked Gents and make a clumsy toss of her feathered hair, her eyes moving broadly and suggestively in the direction of the door. Then she had gone through the door, and Karras got off his stool, excited and kind of sad for both of them at the same time. He tried not to look at Don, who was attempting to catch his eye from behind the bar.
Karras entered the bathroom. He and Donna began to kiss furiously at once. He ran his hands up into her shirt and felt her small, hard breasts. She unbuttoned her jeans, pulled them down around her ankles, turned, faced the mirror, bent forward, gripped the sink. Karras took a dirty bar of soap off the sink’s platform, wet it under the tap, lathered up his right hand. Someone knocked on the door and laughed. Karras slid his soapy hand beneath Donna’s ass, lubricated her sex. He dropped his own jeans, soaping his cock quickly as Donna stood on her tiptoes to let him in.
“Uh,” said Donna.
“All right,” said Karras. He caught his reflection in the mirror, a long-haired, handlebar-mustached, city desperado with a Cheshire grin.
They got down to it. Their bodies moved to the sounds of Rhythm Heritage doing “Theme from ‘S.W.A.T.’” from the small speaker overhead.
Eddie Marchetti watched the last few minutes, the part those QM Production shows called “the epilogue,” of Streets of San Francisco. The show was a repeat, the one where some high school kid is accused of killing his teacher. Marchetti hadn’t cared for it much the first time he caught it, back in the fall. With Karl Malden in his raincoat all the time and lugging around a nose that looked like it had been stuffed with a ten-dollar roll of quarters, Streets was just another geezer show to Eddie. Well, half a geezer show, anyway. It had Kirk Douglas’s kid in it, at least, a young upstart with longish hair and sideburns, as Malden’s partner.
Harry-O would be on in about five.
Marchetti looked around the darkened warehouse. He scratched his balls through his double-knit slacks. Clarence had gone home to see to his little daughter, and Vivian... well, who knew where Vivian had gone, or if she would ever be back. The place was quiet without the two of them. He heard the television and the faint thump of bass from the disco-fag joint down the block, and nothing else.
“Goddamn you, Eddie,” Marchetti said aloud. And to himself: I shoulda been nicer to the girl.
Clarence Tate looked to his right. Denice, his little girl, breathed evenly, one little chocolate hand moving arrhythmically to some tune playing in her head. She stared at the patterns in the wallpapered ceiling, her eyelids dropping slowly, coming open, dropping back down. Almost there.
At least he had gotten home from that pimp movie in time to put her to bed.
Tate closed the book he had been reading to Denice: The Best Time of Day. The book was about a little brother named William who has a full kid’s schedule — at the community center, at his grandparents’, taking an afternoon nap, shit like that — and then sits around with his folks at night, after his daddy comes home from work. Denice loved that one the best of all her books. Tate kind of liked it, too.
Tate got off the bed carefully, turned on Denice’s portable record player, put the kiddie tonearm on the album he perpetually left on the platter, Gil Scott-Heron’s Winter in America. “Your Daddy Loves You,” one of the most beautiful songs Clarence Tate had ever heard, started in, just the vibes at first and then Gil’s rich, deep vocals. As he did every night, Tate began to sing along.
When the song ended, Tate shut off the phonograph, turned out the light. He stayed in the room a few minutes longer, sitting in a chair he had drawn to the edge of the bed. He watched Denice sleep.
Marcus Clay drove his ’72 Riviera with the boat-tail rear through Adams Morgan, sitting low in the bucket, the AC cooling his face. He pushed in a homemade cassette he had labeled “Superjam, Part 1.” The sounds of Creative Source’s “Who Is He and What Is He to You” began to pulse through the car. The band was doing one of those long, insinuating instrumental intros like the Temps had pioneered on “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” the same kind of dramatic, intricate production. Marcus figured Creative Source to be a studio concoction, not really a cohesive group, but regardless of the fact that they would probably have little longevity, this was one of those tunes, like William DeVaughn’s landmark single “Be Thankful for What You Got,” that justified an entire career. The song was just all the way bad.
Marcus stopped at Heller’s Bakery on Mount Pleasant Street and picked up a couple of those Boston creams that Elaine liked so much. Elaine worked as a secretary by day, was doing law school by night. On her two nights off, she liked to cook a nice dinner for the two of them. He knew she’d be doing that now.
He drove over to Brown, a small street on the edge of Mount Pleasant just west of 16th, and parked in front of his row house. He shot the shit with a neighbor of his, a Puerto Rican named Pepe, out on the sidewalk before taking the concrete steps up to his house.
Entering his front door, he smelled the fried chicken Elaine Taylor had prepared for dinner. The living room stereo was softly putting out some planetary jazz, Miles Davis’s Jack Johnson tribute. Elaine loved her Miles. He went to the kitchen, saw her standing there over the gas stove moving some greens around in a lightly oiled frying pan.
“Hey, girlfriend,” said Clay.
“Baby,” said Elaine. “What’s going on?”
“You.” He handed her the Boston creams.
“Mmm, Marcus.”
“Little something for dessert.”
“Come here.”
They embraced, kissed softly. Elaine was a tall woman, six feet without heels, athletic, dark skinned, smooth, proud, beautiful. She looked into his eyes.
“What’s wrong, Marcus? What’s troubling you?”
“Nothin’, baby. Everything’s cool.”
“Uh-huh.” She stood back, looked at him fully. “Pour yourself a glass of wine, go have a seat in that old chair of yours. We’ll have some dinner first, relax. Maybe talk later on. Okay?”
“Right.”
They ate, smoked a little herb, went upstairs to bed. They rubbed each other down with heated oils, made love slowly in a room lit by votive candles. Afterward, Clay told Elaine about his day.
“What’re you going to do about all this, Marcus?”
“Figure out a way to make things right.” Clay stared at the flame shadows licking at the ceiling. “The thing is, I don’t need this right now. I’m trying to build a business, stay on the track.”
“You need to stay away from those influences,” said Elaine. “I been tellin’ you...”
“I know. But see, it was me that did the damage today. Thing is, I never should’ve gone with him in the first place.”
“It’s nothing against Dimitri. I know you care about him, and you know I do, too. It’s just—”
“What?”
“Dimitri’s in a big hurry to get nowhere quick. I hate to put it that plain, but there it is.”