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:
She opened the main door, looked through the glass of the storm door at the smiling mavros. It was a Friday afternoon, broad daylight. What could happen?
Eleni opened the storm door a quarter way. “Yes?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Cooper. “I was wonderin’... Is this the Dimitri Karras residence?”
“Dimitri doesn’t live here anymore. But, yeah, it used to be. I’m his mother.”
Cooper laughed shortly in relief, shook his head. “Good. Was worried I had the wrong address.”
“You—”
“I was supposed to meet Dimitri and Marcus here this afternoon. Least, I thought Marcus said here when I spoke to him on the phone this morning. All of us had plans to play a little basketball, see.”
“You friends with Dimitri?”
“Not exactly. I was in the same outfit with Marcus overseas, few years back. Came into town for the Bicentennial celebration, thought I’d hook up with my old friend.”
“You were in Vietnam with Marcus?”
“Proud to serve, too,” said Cooper, extending his hand. “Name’s Wilton Cooper, ma’am.”
“Eleni Karras.” She took his hand.
Cooper retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket, patted the sweat from his forehead. “Sure is a hot one.”
“Oh, pardon me,” said Eleni. “Please, c’mon in for a minute, cool off.”
“Much obliged.”
“Your friend want to come in, too?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about we give him a little water?”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s all right.”
Cooper walked through the open storm door, closed it and the main door behind him. It was cool in the house. Damn near cold, in fact.
“C’mon,” said Eleni, with a flip of her hand.
Cooper followed her through a hall. She was a friendly woman, on the plump side but sturdy. A woman with a little weight on her, who asked the right questions at the door and, satisfied, was not afraid to let a black man into her house. Not a bright thing to do in his case, but Cooper liked her for that right away. Be a shame, really, if he had to go ahead and fuck her up.
“My husband was a veteran, too,” she said, turning her head to the side and speaking over her shoulder as she walked. “Marine Corps.”
“Semper Fi,” said Cooper.
“Yes, Semper Fi.”
They were in the kitchen. Eleni pointed Cooper to a chair at a Formica-topped table, in the middle of which sat a bunch of yellow flowers in a vase. She served him a tall, cool glass of water from the tap. He drank it down close to the bottom.
“Ah,” he said. “I do thank you.”
“You hungry?”
“Hungry?”
“Yeah, hungry. I made a little rice pudding this morning, still warm.”
Cooper smiled. “I guess I could stand a taste.”
She scooped some pudding into a glass dessert bowl, sprinkled cinnamon on top, placed the bowl in front of him with a spoon and folded paper napkin. She leaned her back against the counter at the sink, watched him take his first bite.
“Mmmm,” said Cooper, pointing the spoon at Eleni. “This is bad.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Pardon, ma’am. What I mean to say is I like it just fine.”
Eleni crossed her arms. “You just missed Dimitri, you know, little while back.”
“Shame I did. Like I said, we had this game set up—”
“Dimitri talked about a game. But he said the game was for this evening.”
“Marcus and me, we musta got our signals crossed.” Cooper scooped up another mouthful. “You know, the raisins, they really make this pudding.”
“The raisins are key,” said Eleni.
“Maybe I ought to give Marcus a call, see if we can’t get this straightened out. You don’t have his number, do you?”
Eleni’s face screwed up on one side. “I thought you spoke to him on the phone this morning.”
Cooper swallowed slowly, buying time. The Greek lady with the fat ankles was smarter than she looked. Hoped for her sake she didn’t get too smart with him now. “I did, see. But that was this morning, when Marcus was at his crib... His apartment, I mean. Marcus would be at work now, right, but it didn’t come up in the conversation, where that is.”
“He’s got a record store,” said Eleni, a quaver in her voice as she uttered the words, realizing just then that maybe the mavros was not a friend to Marcus and Dimitri at all. He had mentioned Marcus’s apartment, but Marcus had a nice row house down on Brown Street. Wouldn’t this Cooper fellow know that if he was a friend? Wouldn’t he know that Marcus owned his own shop?
Eleni turned around, opened the cold spigot, began to rinse out a glass that was already clean.
“What was the name of that store again?” she heard Cooper say.
There’s nothing to worry about, thought Eleni. If he’s not really a friend, he’s a bill collector, that’s all. When you’re in business for yourself, you have to dodge those guys all the time. She pretended not to hear Cooper’s question and did not reply.
Cooper swallowed the last mouthful of the rice pudding, got up out of his chair. Okay, so now if the woman didn’t want to talk, he’d just have to go and make her talk. And if he had to pull the .45, then of course he’d have to use it. Smash the barrel against her temple first, drag her ass down the stairs, put a bullet in her head down there. That old drill. He’d have to, much as he didn’t care to, just to buy a couple of days more time. Shame for her, but the truth was it had been her son and Trouble Man who had started the ball rolling on the whole affair. If they wanted to play, then everyone they knew was gonna play. That’s just the way it was.
Eleni heard the mavros move toward her behind her back. She remembered how big and strong he had looked, coming up the walk. Okay, so he was a collection agent, looking for Marcus. “Leg breakers” — her husband, Pete, had called them that in the old days. Did they really hurt people that way?
“Ma’am?”
Cooper was right behind her. She could feel his warm breath on her neck.
“Real Right Records,” she said, dropping the glass in the sink. She picked the glass up and set it on its base.
“What’s that?”
Eleni Karras turned around. Cooper was standing there, holding up the glass dessert bowl near her face.
“I was just... you wanted to know where Marcus worked.”
“Oh, that,” said Cooper. “Thanks. But what I was really wonderin’—”
“Yes?”
“Could I get a little more of this puddin’ to go?”
Eleni breathed out. “Sure... sure. I got a... I got a plastic container over here. You can give it back to Dimitri when you see him.”
“Much obliged, ma’am. And could you fill it to the top?” Cooper smiled. “My friend out in the car, he’s got a little problem with his teeth. Boy’s on a soft food diet, if you know what I mean.”
Fifteen
Dimitri Karras drove his Karmann Ghia down 14th Street, crossed Clifton, downshifted descending the big hill that was the drop-off of the Piedmont Plateau. He passed Florida Avenue, W, V, and then U. Fourteenth and U: one of the most legendary intersections in the city, the cross-street suburban whites always referred to when they were talking or joking about blacks. As in, “Hey, I thought I saw your mother last night down at Fourteenth and U,” or “Where’d you get those shoes, man, Fourteenth and U?” Lame talk like that. It had been something once, a hub of black-owned business and music and nightlife for Washington’s old Negro community. By the sixties it had become a hard four-corner home for pushers and junkies, criminals and whores. Then came the riots of ’68. Now, 14th and U didn’t look like much of anything alive at all.