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:
Rasheed stood behind the counter, gave Karras an eye sweep. Karras nodded, and Rasheed nodded back. He head-motioned Karras to the back room.
Marcus Clay sat doing the books at an old desk amongst general clutter and cartons of stock, squinting in the dim light. He looked up as Karras entered.
“Mitri.”
“Marcus.”
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Marvin Gaye.”
“What you doin’ today, man? Anything? Or you just wanderin’ around?”
“Got a little business to take care of.”
“Business, huh?”
“Yeah. After that, maybe go out and see my mom.”
“Tell her I said hey.”
“I will.”
Clay rubbed his face, looked through the open door frame leading to the floor. “Damn, those boys are playin’ that Larry Graham loud.”
“Ain’t No Bout-a-Doubt It.”
“You agree!”
“I’m sayin’ that’s the name of the LP.”
“Whatever the name, it’s still too goddamn loud.”
“You got a record store here, Marcus.”
“Now you’re gonna tell me how to run my shop?”
“Just pointing it out.” Karras had a seat on the edge of Clay’s desk. “What’s up, man? What’s botherin’ you?”
“The money and shit.” Clay dropped his pencil on his desk. “Still haven’t figured out what to do about that. Damn fool thing I did.”
“You haven’t heard from anyone yet, have you?”
“Not a damn thing yet.”
“Then relax. We’re all right.”
Clay looked up. “Where’s your girl?”
“Out.”
“You—?”
“Uh-uh.”
Clay grinned. “Showin’ some restraint. Not like you, man.”
Karras started to tell Clay about Donna DiConstanza and the Benbow’s men’s room the night before: how he’d gone out and just fucked someone, anyone, to keep himself from hitting on the teenage girl back at his crib.
“You know me, Marcus,” said Karras. “Just trying to do right.”
Clay, agitated and tight, stood up. “Goddamn, man, those boys just gotta turn that shit down!”
Karras followed Clay out to the floor. Clay went behind the counter as Rasheed stepped aside. Cheek and the Mills kid had kept up their intense discussion without missing a beat. Clay lowered the volume in the store.
“All right?” said Clay.
“Solid, boss,” said Rasheed.
“Hey, Marcus,” said Karras, who had stopped at the H bin of the store’s Rock section. “When you gonna get around to moving Jimi into Soul?”
“What?” said Clay.
“What, haven’t you ever listened to Band of Gypsys?” said Karras.
Rasheed laughed as Karras walked toward the door.
“Dimitri,” said Clay. “We still got a game this evening?”
“Chevy Chase Library,” said Karras.
“I was thinkin’, after that we could hook up at your place for a little thing. Listen to a few records, dance some.” Clay’s eyes smiled. “Me and Elaine, you and your... friend. You know?”
“Sounds good,” said Karras. “Later, Marcus. Later, Rasheed. Y’all take it light.”
Clay said, “You too.”
Rasheed stood on the throw rug covering the cash box in the floor. “You hear what your boy said about Hendrix?”
“Yeah,” said Clay, moving out from behind the counter. “Told you he was down.”
“He knows his music is all. But down? I wouldn’t go so far as all that.”
Clay grinned a little as he walked away.
Karras went back to his place, scaled out some ounces, bagged them, rolled a joint for himself. He made a couple of phone calls, put some ball clothes together with the herb into a gym bag, and left his apartment. He put the top down on his Karmann Ghia, slapped his eight-track of Johnny Winter And into the deck, and pulled out of his spot. Down on Corcoran Street he hooked up with a guy named Robert Berk, passed him three ounces of weed, took back a hundred and fifty in cash.
Karras took a few hits of Columbian while driving north through Rock Creek Park. He went slowly by a group of city kids riding tenspeeds showing orange flags; the kids blew whistles at him as he passed, Karras watching them in the rearview. The reefer had taken, Winter singing the Winwood-Capaldi song “No Time to Live,” Johnny’s junk-ravaged vocals going out against his own lovely blues guitar.
Riding high in the park in his sporty ragtop, the wind blowing back his long hair, Dimitri Karras smiled.
Twelve
Wilton Cooper stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist. Coming out into the room, he cracked a cold Near Beer straight off. He had a long pull, had another, put the can down on the nightstand.
“Go ahead and have yours,” he said to Bobby Roy Clagget, who stood naked before him. “I like it cold in the summertime, so there’s plenty of hot water for you, if that’s your pleasure.”
“Thanks, Wilton.”
“Go on, boy.”
Cooper watched Clagget walk to the bathroom. From the backside the boy wasn’t too bad. Scarier than a motherfucker, though, in the face. Cooper had noticed, on top of the pimples and his general ugliness, that now the boy had a line of white pus along his gums where his teeth had been. Infection, most likely, which meant a fever’d be setting in anytime soon. But like the brothers in lockup used to say, you ain’t gonna fuck no face anyhow, and in the heinie-parts department the Clagget kid looked as fine as any young boy he’d seen. Yeah, Cooper, he figured he’d wait on getting dressed himself, just sit around in the coolness of the AC and sip his funny beer, let the boy come out from the shower and put him where he was born to be, facedown on the bed.
The kid, he had done all right out there at that farm, too, played it real good and cool. Cooper had known Clagget would be down when the time came. He’d seen it that first night, with his shotgun fitted in his pant leg, strutting across that field.
Cooper lit a Salem long.
He looked at the briefcase filled with money, the grocery bag filled with cocaine, the briefcase and the bag side by side in the corner of the room. Funny how neither one meant a damn thing to him. The money couldn’t buy him anything better than he had right now, than he had felt that afternoon: the rush of just taking something you decided was yours, the head-up feeling in your stride afterward when you were walking away. The ride... It was all about the ride.
As far as the blow went, Cooper had already decided he wasn’t going to bother driving Carlos’s shit all the way down to South Florida. For what? To be some brown motherfucker’s butt-boy again? Uh-uh, man, that shit was way done. Cooper was going to take this ride as far as it would go, ’cause it felt good. Course, he knew the way it was going to end, the same way it always ended for guys like him who had never had no chance and didn’t give a good fuck if one came along. The point of it all was to walk like a motherfuckin’ man; if you had to, go down like one, too.