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:
“Okay.”
Dewey’s horn sounded, and Jimmy Castle went outside.
Jimmy sat in the back of the Firebird as he always did, Jerry riding shotgun with Dewey driving. Dewey sat low in the seat, steering with the wrist of his right hand on top of the wheel. They drove down University toward Sligo Creek Park.
“I was lookin’ at Led Zeppelin Three this morning,” said Jerry, “before I went to work.”
“What,” said Dewey. “You were playin’ with the cover again?”
“Naw, not the cover. I was lookin’ at the album. This guy at school, Randolph Seman—”
“Randolph Seman? Go ahead, man. You know I’d change my name.”
“Yeah, no shit. So Randy’s this Zep freak, and he’s telling me that they put messages in the vinyl. You know, that smooth place between where the last cut ends and the label begins?”
“So?”
“So he was right, man! It’s etched in cursive, right there: ‘Do What Thou Wilt,’ it says. Whaddaya think that means?”
“Sounds British,” offered Jimmy.
“He knows it sounds British, Toothpick,” said Dewey. “He asked what it means. I’ll tell you what that motherfucker means. Bet you Jimmy Page put that shit on there himself. Got something to do with the devil and shit.”
“Like the Houses of the Holy cover,” said Jerry, “with all those naked little girls climbing up that pyramid or whatever it is, trying to get to the top, and then you open up the cover and on the inside there’s a guy holdin’ up one of the girls over his head, gettin’ ready to sacrifice her or somethin’. ”
“Put a whole bunch of ’em on his dick first, prob’ly,” said Dewey. “Like a shish kebab.”
“No question,” said Jerry.
He and Jerry gave each other skin.
“ ‘No Quarter’ is bad,” said Jimmy, but no one replied.
Dewey rifled through his eight-track box while Jerry pulled an amber-colored vial from his pocket.
“Where in the fuck’s my Uriah Heep tape?” said Dewey.
“Demons and Wizards?” said Jerry.
“Yeah.”
“I dunno,” mumbled Jerry, who had borrowed the tape without asking and left it out in the sun. “Hey, let’s check out some of this.” He held up the vial.
Dewey found a Mahogany Rush tape and slapped it into the deck. “What’s that, Jer, perfume?”
“Naw,” said Jerry. “This dishwasher at work gave it to me, got it at some head shop on Route One out in College Park. Heart On, it’s called. This dishwasher, he’s one of those disco boys on the weekends, goes down to Last Hurrah and the Pier and places like that.”
Dewey said, “He pull that out of some guy’s tar pit?”
“He ain’t no faggot, Dewey,” said Jerry. “This guy gets more pussy than you ever had a dream about gettin’. Looks like Travolta and shit. He likes to dance, that’s all. Anyway, he said this stuff is a rush.”
Jerry unscrewed the top, put the vial under his nose, snorted in some fumes. His eyes widened, and he sat back in his seat. “Whew. You gotta try this shit, maaan.”
Dewey hooked a right into the park. Jerry passed the vial back to Jimmy, who inhaled a deep hit of the amyl nitrite. Jimmy threw his head back, closed his eyes. He felt his heartbeat accelerate and then a pounding in his head. The pounding wouldn’t stop. He thought his head might explode. For a moment he was scared.
“It is too fuckin’ Hendrix,” Jimmy heard Jerry say.
“Bullshit,” said Dewey, who turned up the volume on “Child of the Novelty,” the tape’s title cut.
“I’m tellin’ you, man,” said Jerry, raising his voice over the music. “Frank Marino was in this car crash, dude. He never sang or played guitar or nothin’ before. But after the crash he woke up out of his coma and just started playin’. They say the spirit of Hendrix entered his body—”
“Bullshit,” said Dewey Schmidt.
Jimmy opened his eyes. The pounding had gone away. He wiped sweat off his forehead. “That was a rush.” He smiled with relief and handed the vial up to Jerry.
“You want some?” Jerry said to Dewey.
“Yeah, right,” said Dewey. “And then I’ll put in a Bee Gees tape. And right after that maybe I’ll have you put your tongue in my ass.”
Dewey and Jerry laughed.
“Hey, Toothpick,” said Dewey. “Where we meetin’ this guy?”
“By that footbridge down near the basketball courts.”
“He got good weed?”
“My brother says he does.”
“What’s his name, anyway?”
“I don’t remember,” said Jimmy. “Dimitri Carrots, some shit like that.”
Dimitri Karras drove out of Northwest toward the District line. He turned the dial of his radio to 102.3, found his station, WHFS. The deejay played a road-themed set: Lowell George’s “Willin’,” Elvin Bishop’s “Travelin’ Shoes,” and Danny O’Keefe’s “Drive On, Driver” in succession. The station had broken artists like Little Feat and Springsteen early on in Washington, the latter sparking Karras to catch Bruce one night at the Childe Harold, a club date that truly lived up to its subsequent legend. HFS had turned Karras on to new music he otherwise would have missed; he always said that HomeGrown Radio was just another reason he would never leave D.C.
Karras stopped on Cameron Street in Silver Spring, went into Eddie Leonard’s for one of their messy steak-and-cheese subs. He had heard their ancient jingle (“Eddie Leonard’s Sandwich Shops/You should tryyyyy ’em”) on the radio a few minutes earlier, and something primal had been awakened in his gut. He ate his sub, studying the robin’s-egg blue wall on which cartoon drawings of all the sandwiches ran circularly around the store. There were two Latinos at the next table and a family of Latinos across the room.
The two Latinos argued loudly about the recent Forman-Frazier fight, one of the men jumping out of his chair, throwing a hook and a cross at the air. The other man, whose pants were stained crotch to knee with urine, yelled something in broken English about Frazier’s manager prematurely forcing the TKO. Karras had seen the fight: Foreman had punished Frazier in the fifth, put him down with a hook and a right cross, put him down for the last time with a left-right combination that knocked him clean off his feet and left him hanging on the ropes. Frazier had taken a seven count and claimed he was fit to go on, but his eyes said something else. His manager had been right to throw in the towel.
The Latino family left hurriedly, the father’s arms around the shoulders of both of his little girls. Karras left ten minutes later, the two men still arguing about the fight as he went through the door.
Karras drove out to Sligo Creek Park, cut the Karmann Ghia’s engine in a lot off Dennis Avenue near some basketball and tennis courts. He watched a four-on-four pickup game for a little while, waiting for his customers to show. Out of the eight, only three of the kids had a game. One of them in particular, a boy of medium height and build, was active on both ends of the court and knew how to drive the lane.
A jacked-up green Firebird pulled into the lot. Karras made eye contact with the driver and walked over a nearby footbridge that spanned the creek. He stood on a path near the start of the woods, withdrew an ounce from his pants pocket, watched the three boys approach. The driver of the Firebird had a solid build and a cocky walk. The tall one breathing through his mouth looked stupid. The third one wore a long-sleeved shirt in the heat, which only flagged the fact that the boy was insecure about his scarecrow build. Karras flashed on an image of himself at seventeen, thinking, It’s tough to be a kid.
“Hey,” said the cocky one.