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:
Twenty-Five
Sherril Drive dropped away from upper 16th and wound down through the park, the serpentine road sloping steeply, leveling out at a bridge that crossed Rock Creek. Karras navigated the turns, parked the Karmann Ghia next to Marcus Clay’s Riviera in a small lot.
Karras walked back over the bridge and took a bridle trail into the woods that rose and dipped alongside the creek. He hiked for a quarter mile, encountering no one, then jumped off a small embankment to a narrow strip of white sand at the water’s edge. Marcus sat in the sand, his legs outstretched.
“Marcus.”
“Dimitri. Thanks for comin’, man.”
They had been meeting at this place since childhood, a quiet, neutral spot in a park that had become an unofficial north-south dividing line separating the city by income and race. In the summer the oaks were full across the creek and blocked the view and muted the car sounds of Beach Drive. The water moved slowly here, and the air felt cool in the shade of the trees.
Clay said, “Have a seat.”
“I’ll stand. I been sleeping all day.”
“Was gonna say, you look like you just crawled out of bed. You don’t look so good.”
“I know it.” Karras dug his hands into his pockets. “Why’d you call me out, Marcus?”
Clay stood up, brushed sand off his tailored jeans. He found a flat stone and skipped it across the creek.
“I’m gonna ask you again, Marcus. Why’d you call me out?”
“All right.” Clay turned to Karras. “You want it short and to the point, here it is. I’m squarin’ off against Wilton Cooper and his boys tonight. Thought you might want to know.”
“Squaring off.”
“Gonna meet him face-to-face, the way he wants. The only way he understands.”
“You know where he’s at?”
“Clarence Tate knows. Tate’s settin’ it up.”
“And you trust Tate.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Shit, Marcus, you know where Cooper and the rest of them are, why not just turn ’em in?”
“For what? So they can rehabilitate Cooper? Maybe they gonna rehabilitate that white boy got death in his eyes, too. You think?”
“Aw, hell, Marcus, I don’t know.”
“I know. I know what’s got to be done. You can believe that.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about, man? Revenge?”
“Revenge is a little boy’s game. I’m talkin’ about somethin’ else.”
“Justice,” said Karras. “You’ve got some warped idea about justice. That’s what this is about. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“Christ.”
“Listen. Cooper came into my store, wrecked it, and took one of mine. And it wasn’t just Rasheed they killed. They did those bikers out in Howard County, the ones were on the TV news. Blew up their shit on their own turf. Greased a man down in Carolina as well, and those are just the ones I know about. Those boys are on a killing spree. Someone’s got to put a stop to it, and I’m not talkin’ about puttin’ them in handcuffs and leadin’ them away to a warm bed and a hot meal. I mean stop it for real. Rasheed Adamson, he stood up for me when the time came. Now I gotta go on and do the same for him.”
“Just you,” Karras said bitterly. “You’re gonna face these guys yourself.”
“Not by myself. Rasheed’s brother will be there. Thought you might want to come along, too.”
“No,” said Karras quickly. “Not me.”
Clay said, “Suit yourself.”
Karras walked to the edge of the creek, watched the run of brown water. “You think I like letting you down, Marcus? Is that what you think?”
Clay spoke softly. “You ain’t never let me down, Dimitri. You always been a friend. But you just ain’t the type to step up. To step up and do something, I mean. In the end, I guess I didn’t expect you to join me. I just thought you might want me to give you the chance.”
“The chance to kill a man. The chance to get killed. That’s what this is. You can forget it, man, because it’s not for me.”
“Like I said, suit yourself.”
“Right.”
“You might want to get the girl out the way, though. At least do that. This doesn’t work out, they’re gonna come lookin’ for Vivian, just for sport.”
“I did it already,” said Karras. “I took her home.”
“Yeah, makes sense. You were done with her, I guess.”
“I never fucked her, Marcus, if that’s what you mean.”
“Congratulations, man. You held back on gettin’ a nut with a nineteen-year-old girl. Takes a real sensitive stud to make a sacrifice like that.”
“Look, Marcus—”
“Next thing you know, you’ll be tellin’ me you’re givin’ up dealin’.”
“I am,” said Karras. He turned from the water to face Clay. “I’m through.”
Clay looked into Karras’s hollow eyes. “What happened to you, man? You ready to talk to me about it now?”
“What happened? I finally fucked up.” Karras’s voice shook. “I sold a bag of dope a couple days ago to Noah Castle’s kid brother. The kid was in a car accident on Saturday with his friends. All of them got killed.”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“The paper said they found dope and paraphernalia in the car. The kid was in high school, Marcus. I might as well have put a gun to his head myself and pulled the trigger.”
“Bullshit, man. That’s bullshit. You don’t know what happened in that car. And that boy would have found a way to cop his herb whether you sold it to him or not. Anyway, where they grow it, people be dyin’ over that shit every day. You ever stop to grieve about that? I mean, what’d you think all this time, Dimitri? All these fine times we been havin’ these last few years, gettin’ high, easy pussy anytime you want it, all that? You go up a mountain, man, sooner or later you gotta walk back down. Sooner or later you got to pay. Didn’t you think there’d be a downside to all of this?”
“No. I guess I didn’t think there would be.”
“Yeah. You never have stopped to think. Long as I’ve been knowin’ you it’s been that way.” Clay gave Karras a sad smile. “I remember the first time my mother brought me over to your neighborhood. Up till then, I had rarely been west of the park. You took me over to your playground, where we got into a game. All your other friends, they were trying to talk black around me, act street, put on a show for the nigger from Shaw. Not you. You didn’t do it then and you’ve never done it since. At first I thought you were avoiding who we were. Then I started to wonder if you even noticed the differences between us.”
“I noticed. But what? You tellin’ me because you’re black and I’m not we can’t be friends?”
“We are friends. I love you like a brother, man, you know that. But the fact is, you’ve been sleepwalkin’ through your whole life.”
“Marcus, man—”
“I’m sorry, Dimitri. I thought that this time you’d be ready to step up. I shouldn’t have expected so much.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“Yeah, well.” Clay checked his watch. “Gotta get out of here, man. You with me?”
“No.”
“All right, then,” said Clay.
Karras turned his head, listened to the crack of twigs beneath Clay’s feet. The sound began to fade. Karras stared at his reflection, broken in the ripples of the creek. He looked behind him at the path on which they had arrived.
Marcus Clay was gone.
Wilton Cooper took a swig of Near Beer, looked at B. R. Clagget, naked and facedown on the bed. Dried blood was streaked on the boy’s buttocks from where Cooper had withdrawn. The copy of Pimp was still in Clagget’s limp hand; he had been reading it for a few minutes after Cooper had had his way with him, before he fell to sleep.