Clockers (13 page)

The kid looked a little frightened by Strike’s presence, his wails subsiding into deep shudders and sighs as he stripped to his underwear and crawled wearily under his Ghostbusters blanket.

Strike didn’t know if he was supposed to say something, but felt that he should give it a shot.

“Y’all goin’ to sleep like a
man,
now.” Strike backstepped out of the room. The kid didn’t say anything. He seemed to hold his breath until Strike was gone.

Strike lay on Crystal’s bed in his undershorts, hands behind his head, staring at a yellow butterfly revolving on the end of the sweep-second hand inside a big diorama clock filled with plastic flowers. A Japanese beetle was at the tip of the minute hand and a snail on the hour hand. The clock’s business and clutter filled him with fascinated disgust.

The butterfly clock read one-fifteen. Outside the window behind Strike’ head, a car stereo boomed up brassy from the street. Strike lay there thinking about how ever since he had left Rodney’s house everything had been going wrong: first Futon, sloppy by the benches, then that cop downstairs, then Crystal, yakety-yak ninety miles an hour like she was hiding something. But the worst was Rodney himself: Rodney picking the wrong man to count on, then coming to Strike to rectify the situation. So much betrayal in the air, and Strike tried to think it through and concentrate on the rewards—being off the street, how much money he could be pocketing. Think it through, lay out the potential consequences, the advantages, envision the future.

Crystal came into the room, her quilted robe gone. She wore a bell-shaped shorty nightgown and Strike, studying her silhouette in the darkness, tried to guess the color. She crawled up on the bed next to him on all fours and looked out the window, clucking her tongue.

“I hate this. Every night they down there with those goddamn radios, like all night long.”

Strike turned over and peered out. The rear of the building was built into the side of a hill, and a junk-littered slope ran from the basement windows down to the street. On the other side of the sidewalk was another trash-strewn vacant lot in between two abandoned buildings, the cement-filled windows covered with red and gray life-size decals of windowpanes complete with potted plants, kittens and louvered shutters. Two clusters of people stood out on the street, one crowd hanging around an Isuzu Trooper, the other at the end of the block under a bodega’s red and yellow awning. Loud music shook the Isuzu. and the heaviness of the bass line suggested to Strike that the rear seat had been ripped out to make space for the speakers. The crowd around the car seemed relaxed, but the people by the corner were silent and disconnected, as if strangers to each other. Strike looked from one group to the other, thinking, Crew here, customers there. He mused on the difference between walking out the front of Crystal’s building and looking out the back window at this other world, this other reality.

“Yeah, here they come,” Crystal drawled with irritation. Strike saw a small bony guy with an affected street limp detach himself from the Isuzu crowd, walk halfway to the corner and gesture to the group gathered at the bodega. The entire bunch began to race-walk down the block and line up in front of one of the abandoned buildings, maybe twenty people all told. The guy with the rolling limp and another, bigger guy from the Isuzu gang came over to shape up the line, pulling elbows, pushing chests, getting everybody nice and compact and quiet. A third guy from the car crowd moved out to the street side of the Isuzu and, after making a big show of putting a gun over the rear tire, just stood there, arms crossed, staring down everybody on the line.

Fascinated, Strike watched as a Nissan Pathfinder complete with overhead stun lights suddenly came flying down the street, rocking to an abrupt stop. Someone jumped out and everybody in line held out money, the guy snatching up the cash, jumping back into the Pathfinder and rolling out of sight. Thirty seconds later another car rolled up, a Hyundai with blackout windows, and another guy hopped out and passed around either heroin bundles or crack bottles, wham wham wham, before getting back into the Hyundai and tearing off. By the time the Hyundai was two blocks away the entire line had evaporated, every doper into the wind, across the lots, around the corner, down the street, inside the deserted buildings—all vanished.

Strike said, “Huh.” He watched the muscle take his gun off the top of the tire and go back to the other side of the car to bullshit with his buddies, the limpy guy and the other line-tender joining them as if nothing had happened.

“Huh.” Strike nodded, feeling that what he’d seen was as fast and efficient as a tire change in a racing pit.

“Last week?” Crystal whispered as if the Isuzu crowd downstairs could hear her. “The police did a sweep, right? They busted so many guys, they had to put them on a city bus. It was on the news. It was funny because the bus had a big poster on the side for
Les Misérables,
this play?”

Strike blinked at her, not getting it.

“There’s like ten bus windows with busted dope dealers in them over a big sign that says
Les Misérables,
“ she said, pronouncing the French words as if they were English.

Strike was silent. Crystal hesitated, looking like she might be worried that she had offended him. “They all back the next night anyhow,” she added.

Strike said “Huh” again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke.

“Anyways, they’re down there all night with those radios? And you know, if you complain? You know, like yell out for them to turn it down? They shoot at you. My girlfriend almost got killed because someone the floor below said something out the window and this guy down there just shot blind at the building.”

Strike looked down, thinking about the dopers winging shots at the windows. He scanned the street and the corners, seeing one guy at either end of the block, lookouts he hadn’t noticed before. Suddenly he got a pounding, a rush, an impulse that he didn’t want to think about right now.

Crystal was still on all fours, staring out the window. Strike flipped over on his back and slipped a hand up along her thigh, up and into her, doing it slow, thinking, Like a gentleman. Crystal grunted softly, her eyes still out the window. She absently reached over and grabbed his dick, giving it a slow yank before coming away from the show downstairs to sit on him, closing her eyes now, lolling her head from shoulder to shoulder and making husky moans.

Strike was skeptical of the moans: she seemed to be lolling her head and making those noises in an effort to roll out some waitressing kinks in her neck and back. Maybe to Crystal it was either this or a hot bath. She might even be thinking about her kid right now up there, thinking about replacing his Coca-Cola with Tab because of the sugar. He never understood how women could do one thing with their thing, another with their head, all at the same time.

Strike glared at her, watching her ride him without making eye contact. Or maybe she was thinking about Malfie. Yeah, she’s got to be thinking about that cop right now. Strike pictured Malfie’s teeth—“Tell her Malfie says hello”—the cop going right up in his face, like saying, What you gonna do about it? But Strike didn’t want to think about that anymore. His mind slid off to Rodney, to Darryl, to the dope crew downstairs.

Crystal snapped him out of it by putting her hands on the caps of his shoulders, making a deeper sound and lowering her head toward his face, her hair tickling his eyes. When she was about to kiss him, Strike got tight with self-consciousness. Kissing made him feel awkward, and he never knew what was expected of him—tongue? just lips? for how long? He wasn’t good at it, didn’t like it.

But then Crystal jerked her head back and straightened up, and even though he had been unhappy about the prospect of messing up yet another kiss, he felt disappointed when he realized that the kiss was a false alarm, that she had probably lowered her head just to work out the knots in her neck. And then he came, thinking, Smoke, everybody’s just smoke. Crystal slid off him sideways and fell on her back, stroking her own belly and making a distracted humming sound. Strike lay there, blank with rage, enveloped in the insistent thumping bass coming up from downstairs like a monstrous heart: arrogant invading filling his head drowning out the hiss of his own clenched exhalations.

“That was nice,” Crystal whispered hoarsely, and suddenly Strike was up, striding naked through the apartment, his wet and chilling hard-on leading the way. He reached for his gun behind the loving cup and brought it back to bed with him. Crystal panicked again on seeing it, but Strike ignored her. Tingling with the unrealness of it all, he stuck his gun hand out the window, turned his head away to the butterfly clock and fired down into the music below, the grip snapping back in his palm like an angry dog. He pulled the gun back in, dropped it on the rug, then flopped on his back, giddy and amazed. It was the first time he had ever fired the .25, and his mind was stuck on a single thought: That sucker was
loud.

Chest pumping, he looked over at Crystal, regarded her frozen on the bed, heard her say in that sad voice of hers, as if in a trance at the speed of things: “I don’t think we should see each other that much for a while.”

Strike ignored that too, listening, the radio still down there but moving now, driving away, Strike waiting another minute before peeking out the window. The street was deserted—no cars, no crew, no bodies, no blood.

Strike drifted down. This shit was easy.

***

Strike had a nightmare: he was on the path train from Dempsy to New York, dressed all in white like a bride. White dungarees, white hooded sweatshirt, white high-top Nike Airs — everything spotless, crisp, dazzlingly clean. But then some bummy pipehead, red-eyed, stinky, pulled a big knife from the pocket of his ripped-up overcoat and started cutting people right and left, black and white, drops of blood spraying every which way, people screaming and crying, begging for mercy. Strike was up like a shot, dancing out of the way of the drops, trying to keep them off his clothes, people dying now, yelling for help. Strike couldn’t stay clear, drops of blood all over him yelling at the pipehead cut it out cut it out the guy working his knife arm like a buzz saw mowing everybody down Strike’s clothes a bloody bunch of rags, everything ruined, blood on his sneakers, blood in his goddamn
hair…

4

DRIVING IN
for the start of Thursday’s four-to-twelve tour, Rocco negotiated a road that was more pothole than asphalt, weaving his way down a lane of truck stops and Highway Department equipment sheds before pulling into the Dempsy County prosecutor’s office parking lot. The lot lay in the shadow of the rusted and hulking Majeski Skyway, which spanned a flame-belching marsh that separated Rocco’s office from a long-defunct coke smelting plant one town over in Rydell. The office building itself suited the neighborhood: an asbestos-lined snuffbox with a cracked flagstone and concrete facade, it was fronted by a dedication plaque honoring six freeholders, four of whom were either acquitted, convicted or suicides.

Rocco strolled into the Homicide office, jiggling the change in his pocket. He nodded to Vy at the reception desk.

Wearing headphones, her lips moving silently, Vy momentarily ignored him as she transcribed a confession off a tape recorder.

“Rocco.” Vy spoke directly to her typewriter. “Is ‘them all’ one word or two?”

“One.” Rocco checked his mailbox: nothing. “Like ‘whatnot.’”

Vy finally looked up, slipped the headphones onto the back of her neck and hiked her eyebrows to draw him close for a confidence.

“He’s back.” She tilted her chin to the corridor that led to the squad room.

“Why, what happened?” Rocco sank back on his heels, thinking tripleheader, assassination, something volatile enough to yank the captain of the squad back to the office only three days into his two-week vacation.

Vy read his face. “Not him,” she said. “The actor. Touhey.”

“Yeah? I thought he almost died of boredom.”

Vy shrugged. “He’s back.”

“No shit.” Rocco straightened up, experiencing a small rush of excitement. He headed back to the squad room feeling light on his feet, hoping something would come in tonight.

He saw Sean Touhey sitting alone in the darkness right outside the interrogation room. Head down, elbows on knees, fingertips to temples, he sat as if in prayer, the buttery orange shoulder bag lying between his shoes.

Rocco walked up to the actor but Touhey didn’t acknowledge him, apparently lost in concentration. Not wanting to disturb him or say something stupid like “Hello,” Rocco studied the actor’s perfect hair for a second, then leaned over his huddled form and peeked through the interrogation room window.

Mazilli was working on Nelson Maldonado. Both of them were chain-smoking, and the kid kept kissing his own fingertips, then shaking his hand in the air, the gesture a new one for Rocco. Suddenly the kid broke into tears and Mazilli waved him off in disgust.

Rocco recognized Maldonado from a year-old mug shot he had been carrying in his jacket for the last two weeks. The kid must have just been picked up in the last few hours; when Rocco had phoned in at noon, he was still at large.

Rocco could barely hear through the door, but he could tell from the pantomime that the interview with Mazilli had already deteriorated into no-win bullshit. He turned back to look down at Touhey. The actor had been eavesdropping, picking up interrogation techniques: he sat with his chin in his hand, shaking his head sadly, wisely, as if he knew something. A real hambone, thought Rocco, but he was worried that Touhey might be getting a crush on Mazilli, might wind up basing his character on him.

Rocco dropped into a squat in front of the actor and spoke to him in a confidential murmur. “You know the back story on this?” Back story: Jesus Christ, listen to me.

Touhey made a wavering gesture, looking up to Rocco open-mouthed, waiting.