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:
The padlock and broken chain lay coiled on the concrete. Clay kicked the chain against the wall.
“Where’s Al?” said Karras.
Clay said, “On the roof.”
A heavy sound echoed in the stairwell from far below, and then the indecipherable voices of two men.
“Get behind the door,” said Clay.
“Marcus,” said Karras. “I’m—”
“I know it, man,” said Clay. Before he extinguished the light he added, “I am, too.”
Ronald Thomas eased up on the accelerator as he neared Meridian Heights on 15th.
“Park this bitch on the street,” said Cooper.
“Right here?”
“Park it.”
Ronald double-parked beside a tricked-out Chevelle, hit the blinkers. Russell dumped a mound of blow onto the crook of his thumb, hit it all at once. He laid out a mound for his brother, and Ronald took it in. Russell wiped blood off his upper lip and stuffed the Baggie in the glove box.
“Y’all ready?” said Cooper.
“Readier than a motherfucker, man,” said Russell. His eyes were jittery and bright.
Cooper said, “Let’s take it to the bridge.”
They climbed out of the Dodge and crossed the street. B. R. Clagget ran alongside Cooper, the sawed-off pressed tightly against his leg. He caught his heel on a step leading into the building, and Cooper grabbed him under the arm to prevent his fall. Clagget felt light as paper in Cooper’s grasp.
“Come along,” said Cooper.
“I ain’t feelin’ so good, Wilton.”
In the fluorescence of the lobby, Clagget looked waxy and gray, the vomit of acne purple on his sunken cheeks.
“Never you mind. Soon as we get out of this town we gonna get you strong again.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, little brother. Tonight.”
Ronald and Russell stepped forward as they came to the open elevator.
“Uh-uh,” said Cooper. “You and your brother take the stairs.”
”All right, Coop,” said Ronald. “See you up there, man.”
Cooper said, “Right.”
“Marcus,” whispered Karras.
Clay said, “Hush.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder behind the door. From outside the time between explosions grew shorter; the silence was filled by the conversation of the men coming up the stairs. The men were taking the stairs more rapidly now, and the concrete beneath Clay and Karras’s feet began to vibrate as the men advanced.
Underneath the driving gloves, Karras’s hands were hot, slick with sweat. He had one hand behind him, wrapped around the grip of the .38. Sweat pooled in the collar of his shirt and snaked down his back. He could hear a thin wheeze in Clay’s breathing. Then the wheezing stopped. Clay had stopped breathing, that’s what it was; Karras stopped breathing, too. The men had rounded the corner of the top-floor landing and were coming up the last set of stairs toward the door that gave to the roof.
Marcus looked through the crack between the door and its jamb.
In his rectangular tunnel of vision, he saw Ronald Thomas pass. Russell passed next, his face flashing blue. They stepped outside and turned a corner, and then they were gone.
Clay pushed against Karras’s shoulder. Karras stepped out from behind the door and pressed his back against the wall. He exhaled slowly and took in a lungful of thick, damp air.
“Move it,” whispered Clay.
“Where?” whispered Karras.
Clay pointed his chin at the top of the stairs.
Twenty-Seven
The Thomas brothers stood on the roof, facing south. The roof was nearly clear: There were a couple of overturned beach chairs, three empty beer cans, and an air-conditioning system, ductwork and compressors and such, that cluttered the northernmost end. Ladders leading down to fire escapes hung on the building’s east and west walls.
Below, in the park, people moved about, holding sparklers, lighting off cones, firecrackers, and cherry bombs. A bottle rocket shot up above the trees. Beyond the park and downtown, the fireworks rose above the Mall, flowering and exploding now relentlessly, coloring the monuments, coloring the Thomas brothers and the roof.
“Whew,” said Russell, stumbling back a step.
“What?” said Ronald.
“I am tripping, Ronald. All this blow is just fuckin’ up my head!”
“There it is.”
“Look here. I gotta run some water through my pipe.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“Need a little privacy, though.”
“What, you shamed about somethin’?”
“Shamed? Shoot, man, I’m right proud!”
“Go ahead, man.”
“’Cause you know I got some weight.”
“Just go ahead.”
Russell drifted, lighting a Kool along the way. Ronald drew his .357. He watched his brother walking slowly, putting that dip into it the way he always had. Ronald smiled.
Russell went behind the air-conditioning ducts, stood at the building’s edge. He let the cigarette dangle from the corner of his mouth while he unzipped his fly. Russell pulled his cock out and let a hard stream of piss fly over the ledge.
“Ahhh,” said Russell. “Goddamn.”
Being higher than a motherfucker and taking a good-ass pee: It occurred to Russell just then that he’d never felt happier in his life.
The elevator crept toward the top floor. Wilton Cooper racked the receiver on one .45, then the other, reholstered them both. He looked over at B. R. Clagget, narrow of shoulder, wasted, hunched in the corner of the car. He nodded at Clagget’s weapon.
“You best ready that hog’s leg, little brother.”
“My movie. Gonna take it all the way to the last reel, blood.”
The car came to a stop. The doors opened to the hall.
“How you want to play it, Wilton?”
“The Greek’ll be with him. Kill the Greek, soon as you get a chance. Marcus Clay is mine.”
“After we get the money?”
“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with money. Kill ’em all, straightaway.”
They walked out into the hall, found the door to the stairwell. Cooper gave it a push.
The stairwell was dark as they entered, darker as the door closed behind them. From where they stood they could see the open door past the landing above and the rockets spreading fire in the square of night.
A light came on abruptly, and Clagget shielded his eyes. Cooper looked to the top of the stairs and smiled. Clay and Karras stood there, guns at their sides.
“Trouble Man,” said Cooper.
“Cooper.”
“Takin’ the high ground, like a good soldier.”
“Cooper?”
“What.”
“You ain’t got much time. I wouldn’t be wastin’ what you got left talkin’ all that bullshit.”
“What would you have me do, then, Clay?”
“I was you, I’d be prayin’ there’s a God who forgives.”
Al Adamson rushed forward from behind the air-conditioning ducts, the Ka-bar knife in his hand, and slashed Russell Thomas’s throat clean through his windpipe.
A wave of blood arced over the building’s edge. Russell crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been released, his head flopping back against his shoulders as if hinged.
Adamson wiped the Ka-bar off on his black slacks, put his foot up on a square of ductwork, and sheathed the knife. He walked out from behind a large compressor.
Thirty feet away, Ronald Thomas stood with his back turned, gun in hand, watching the fireworks. Adamson pulled his .45, jacked a round into the chamber.
“Turn around slow!” yelled Adamson.