Clockers (36 page)

“I don’t believe this shit,” Rodney said, leaning down, forearms crossed over the bottom of the window. “I say replace the mother-fuckin’ Super Mario or I’m gonna throw the piece of shit out into the street, throw
all
the goddamn machines out into the street, fuck
all
you Dempsy Guineas, I go over to goddamn New York City, buy my own damn games. He say, ‘You do that, you ain’t gettin’ no
milk
deliveries, no
bread
deliveries, no
candy:
I say, ‘Hey, you do what you got to, ‘cause I don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck be you Mafia, Colombian, black, white. Just so long you ain’t a cop, it’s me and you, ‘cause I just don’t
give
a fuck.’ You know what I’m sayin’?” Rodney stood up straight, arched his back, then dropped back down to the window. “The delivery man come up so much as one quart of milk shy on me? Shit, I’ll come back up here, snap that ol’-time motherfucker like a kitchen match.”

“They shot up Pa-Papi.” Strike closed his eyes, concentrating on the effort to control his tongue.

“I’ll take out that whole motherfuckin’ bar. I’ll get me Erroll, I’ll get me—”

“You
hear
me?”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Rodney said. “Who did?”

“I don’t know. Champ?”

“So…” Rodney shrugged, then pushed off from the window, looking tense and defiant. “They kill him?”

“He drove off buh-but he all shot up.” Strike let loose with another burning belch.

“You still got the money?”

Strike hunched down and brought the bag up to his lap.

“How you know it’s Champ?”

“Well, who else?”

“What happened to his boys? They get shot up too?”

“Th-they weren’t there.”

“See? Maybe
they
did it. Took him off. See what I’m sayin’? Maybe he got problems with his own people in New York.”

Strike nodded, only half listening.

“Maybe Papi, maybe…” Rodney faltered, frowning at the street. He reached in and took the money off Strike’s lap, then added vaguely, “You don’t know it’s Champ.” He palmed his midsection, turning in a gimpy half circle, the money bag held between his elbow and ribs.

“You think we next?” Strike asked it lightly, lucidly, as if he didn’t really care.

“I ain’t got no beef with Champ.” Rodney’s voice went singsong. “I don’t know what the fuck you talkin’ about. I ain’t the one that come in here from New York try to sell shit. I
work
for the man. He got a beef with me I’m right here, ‘cause I don’t
give
a fuck.”

Strike stared at Rodney, watching him swell up with his own words.

“In fact, I got some business with the nigger
tonight.
”

Strike looked down at his upturned hands again, telling himself that it was every man for himself—like it always was, always would be. But then Rodney hunched back down into the car window, his voice holding a teasing confidentiality.

“You want to come? Or you want to
run?
”

Strike sat in Rodney’s Cadillac. He had left his own car back in Guineatown. They were parked in a shut-down gas station in Dempsy, and Strike waited while Rodney talked on a pay phone. Strike thought about Tyrone again, thinking, Watch it, don’t buy anything else for the kid because he’ll just get spoiled, get into expecting shit for nothing, and then he’ll be no use at all. Wind up just like everybody else, blank-faced and treacherous.

Rodney came back to the car and drove off in silence. When he reached Jersey City he pulled into the lot of an all-night diner and sat there, fanning his knees and saying nothing.

Finally he spoke: “Where Papi get shot?”

“Right where we was supposed to meet, right outside—”

“Naw, I mean on his body.”

“Aw-all over. Up and down…”

“His face?”

“Unh-uh, his legs and chest. He had this shoe? It was like fuh-filled up with blood from his leg.”

Rodney sucked his teeth and shook his head. The car returned to silence.

A minute later the rear door opened and someone slid into the back. Strike jumped in surprise but Rodney didn’t even turn his head, just extended his arm back over his shoulder for an upside-down handshake.

The guy was young, black, maybe a few years older than Strike. He wore gold, but a nice quarter-inch herringbone chain. He was dressed clean too: acid-washed jeans, a pullover shirt in a matching shade of gray, red and white Air Jordans. Strike first thought he was a hit man—he could sense that the guy was carrying a gun somewhere on his body.

“Who the fuck is this?”

Strike turned to see the guy nodding at him but looking at Rodney, as if Strike was there but not there.

“He’s with me,” Rodney said.

“Yeah, I
see
that. Who the fuck is he?”

“That’s Strike. He’s OK.”

The guy lurched forward off the back seat. “What the fuck you think you doing, Rodney?”

“Hey, hey. I
know
the man, see, and I’m tellin’ you, it’s better we go over there in a group—all casual, you understand? We go in a group, it takes the eyeball weight off you. See what I’m sayin’?”

“You don’t spring somebody on me without some beforehand say-so.” The guy poked Strike in the back of the head with a fingertip and Strike instinctively snatched at the air where the offending finger had been. He had had enough, more than enough.

“Hey, I tried to call you, man,” Rodney said, palms up. “You just don’t answer your damn beeper. What can I do about that?”

The guy snorted and Strike looked out the window. Hit man: Was Rodney going after Champ before Champ could come after him?

“Strike.” The guy said his name as if it had just come to him. “Yeah, I know you. Yeah, yeah, I
know
you, you understand?” He leaned forward and put his hand on Strike’s arm, waiting until Strike turned around and met his threat eye-to-eye. “You fuck with me, my man, you into a
world
of darkness. You want to get verification on that, you check with my man over here.”

Strike almost squawked with revelation. Only a cop could deliver a proprietary speech like that one, talking as if he owned Rodney, as if he owned Strike too, Strike and all the once and future jailbirds out on the street.

Rodney clucked his tongue and laid his fingers on the cop’s arm. “Yo, lighten up, man. Strike’s right. I wouldn’t have asked him if he wasn’t right.”

The cop sat back, still boring into Strike with his eyes. “Yeah, well, he’s right
now.
”

Strike figured the guy was probably an undercover who Rodney hoped to introduce into Champ’s machine, although Strike had no idea why Rodney would want to take such a risk to help out the cops. But having
anything
to do with a knocko bring-down on Champ was almost too crazy to think about, and Strike intuitively understood that the way to survive the night was to go loose, just glide until the sun came up. And despite Rodney’s snaky ways, staying close to him right now was probably the best plan. Stick tight with the survivors: the man was thirty-seven and still around.

“Gerbers.” The cop frowned down at some cartons of strained fruit from the store that sat next to him on the back seat. “Goddamn, Rodney, how many kids you got?”

“I got me a tribe.” Rodney turned on the ignition.

“Hold up, hold up.” The guy leaned forward again, extended a staying hand. “Don’t go nowhere. Let’s just…”

Rodney sighed, rubbing his eyes under his sunglasses.

“Newark, Delaware,” Rodney said, the name a tired announcement.

“New
Ark,
New
Ark.
“ The guy was very tense now, Strike seeing a shiny film appear across his forehead.

“New Ark, Delaware.”

“And?”

“You my cousin Lonnie.”

”
Nephew.
I’m your motherfuckin’
nephew.
”

“What’s the difference?” Rodney said.

“The difference is, that’s what you already told the man, so stay with it.”

“My nephew Lonnie, my sister’s boy.”

“And?” The cop nodded for more, knees pumping as if ready to race.

“Your connect’s doing thirty in.”

“Thirty in, that’s right. Let’s go.” He smacked Rodney on the arm with the back of his hand and threw himself against the rear seat, chewing on his thumbnail as Rodney pulled out of the lot.

The O’Brien Houses, Champ’s base of operations, were six high rises aligned in a crescent just inside the Dempsy city line. The long driveway in front of the houses served as a drive-by dope market for neighboring all-white Rydell, and in the evenings, especially on weekends, the gently curved one-way strip was often bumper-to-bumper with white-boy muscle cars, sports cars, jeeps and vans, the servers working the line like carhops. About a third of the dope was beat, but a customer had to be high out of his mind to come back and complain. The Rydell dopers knew the odds of getting burned, knew the odds of getting robbed if they came over in the hours after midnight when the traffic was slower. They also knew that the Rydell cops were often staked out on the Rydell side, scoping out the dope line with binoculars so they would know who to pop the minute a customer came back into town. But O’Brien was so convenient, and the drive-up crescent so fast and simple, that the customers took their chances. Besides, the same coke or heroin automatically doubled in price if they bought it a hundred yards east, over the line, so it all evened out in the end.

Rodney parked the car on a small rise overlooking the projects, and the three of them watched the O’Brien run, the procession of stop-and-go headlights steaming in the drizzle, the six towers looming behind the clockers like giant dominoes.

“White, white, white.” Rodney clucked his tongue. “Oh please, Officer, it’s my first time. My father gonna kill me.” He laughed but the knocko was too tense, not listening, and just then Strike spotted Champ standing in front of one of the buildings. Champ was hard to miss even in the nighttime mist: jumbo-size in a white T-shirt, white knee-length shorts and a fat pair of Reebok Pumps, each sneaker looking big enough to house a puppy. He lumbered back and forth like a caged bear, divorced from the action, ignoring the servers out in the rain, wading through a cloud of aimless teenagers who seemed to follow him wherever he moved. Strike noticed that if Champ waddled fifty feet to the west, the human cloud would somehow re-form around him a few moments later. When he waddled fifty feet to the east, the same slow re-formation took place.

“Look at that boy,” Rodney said affectionately, as if he’d forgotten about Papi altogether. ’

Champ stepped back to the sidewalk and yelled something up into the nearest building. Seconds later a bucket was lowered out a third-floor window into his waiting hands. Rodney said, “Snack time.” Champ shuffled back under the overhang, plunked himself down on an overturned shopping cart and pulled out a crab with each hand, alternating his bites from fist to fist, the cloud of kids forming a loose circle around the shopping cart now.

“Look at that boy eat,” Rodney said. “Y’all don’t have to bust him, he gonna bust hisself. Shit, he’s gonna explode.”

None of the kids around Champ talked to him or even acted as though they were aware of him; they simply moved with him, unthinkingly. Strike knew what it was—it was the Power. He had met Champ only two times, but each time he felt it. When you stood next to him, you just didn’t want to leave. The Power: Rodney had it too.

The knocko barked “Go!” then made the sign of the cross. Strike was amazed by the gesture, but Rodney laughed. “You like my goddamn wife with that,” he said. “Just go, motherfucker.
Go, go.
”

Strike shut his eyes, feeling the downward roll of the car in his belly. The thing was, he really didn’t have any need for Tyrone now that Papi was gone. He guessed that meant he was out of the ounce business. Out before he even got in.

Rodney coasted into the drive and parked next to a new black Mustang. The car was all tricked out, from fully dropped skirts to leather grille covers to overhead stun lights, just the thing for some nighttime hunting in the bush.

“New
Ark,
“ the knocko snapped. “Say it.”

“Wilmington,” Rodney said.

Champ had seen Rodney’s Cadillac come in. Now he kicked up and rose off the shopping cart and walked toward them through the mist like a baby dinosaur, the cloud of kids hanging back for a few seconds before starting to follow him. Strike was worried by Champ’s aggressive lope, not knowing if they had stepped into the shit now or what, then deciding it was probably OK because of all the customers. It amazed Strike that Champ always looked so bummy—pigpen bummy, with yellowy slices under the arms of his T-shirt, belly hanging over the wrinkled jumbo shorts, filthy laces on his sneakers, Mets hat hanging sideways over his ear. He was six foot two, three hundred fifty pounds, and his tiny, bearded head sat on a long and thick curved stalk of a neck like a petal-less sunflower. At twenty years old Champ directed the whole show: he ran Rodney and six others besides raking in a hundred thousand dollars a week.

“Yo, pimp!” Champ bellowed as he skipped sideways between the customers’ cars, moving fast toward Rodney. He wore a paper bag upside down on his hand like a wrist cuff, his fingers thrust through the bottom and clutching a quart bottle of malt liquor.

The three of them were out of Rodney’s car now, Strike tensing for an explosion.

“What’s up, pimp!” Champ beamed through his beard, looking at Rodney as though he might taste good.

“Watch your fuckin’ mouth,” Rodney snapped back, wading into Champ, pummeling his midsection, bulling him backwards. Champ crossed his arms, yelling “Help! Help!” and laughing, dropping his bottle, the crash making all the servers straighten up and turn their heads for a second.

“Look what you did.” Champ flicked a hand at the puddle and the broken glass. “That was my goddamn dinner, pimp!”

The cloud had completed its’drift out to Champ, and Strike saw that two of the older teenage girls were still sucking their thumbs, and one of the boys had the hung-open mouth and dull eye of an idiot.