Clockers (59 page)

The two of them had never met, but Erroll smirked and nodded at Rocco in dismissive greeting. Rocco just wanted to neutralize the guy, hoping he’d figure Rocco was one of the dozens of detectives who had arrested him over the years. The guy looked bad, sick. Rocco wondered what was in the bag.

“He waiting for you?” Rocco asked Strike.

“No,” the kid said too quickly. “I dunno.”

“‘Cause I’ll be outa here in a minute.”

“Yeah, OK.”

The crew at the benches walked off two and three at a time, glancing at Erroll Barnes as they left, and soon there was no one around but the boy sitting on the chain.

“So you think your brother’s telling the truth, huh?”

“Yeah, he don’t lie.”

“So you don’t think there was maybe something between him and Darryl Adams going down?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Did you know this guy Darryl?”

“Unh-uh.”

Bingo: Lie number one. Mazilli had said that Strike and Darryl had been co-workers in Rodney’s store for close to a year.

Rocco spun in a slow and casual circle, watching the kid try to find a sight line that didn’t take in Rocco or Erroll. “You didn’t know Darryl Adams at all, huh?”

Strike hesitated. “Unh-uh.”

Rocco could see the wincing regret in the kid’s face, the kid
knowing
he had just fucked up. Rocco sighed, forcing himself to be cool, pace himself. “When was the last time you saw your brother?”

The kid lightly touched his stomach and burped silently. “Not, like, you know, na-not for a while.”

“You mean not for a few weeks, a month, two months?”

“Yeah, about two months.”

Lie number two. Rocco took another slow spin around himself, letting the adrenaline subside, not saying anything for a moment. Rocco winked at the boy on the chain before turning back to Strike.

“Ronnie, let me ask your opinion on something. Let’s say, like you say, that your brother’s telling the truth, OK? Why do you think this guy Darryl would come out of the blue like that, attack him,
know
ing he had a gun?” Rocco held his breath, hoping the kid would answer in a way that would tie him into prior knowledge of the gun, the players. But the kid just shook his head, his expression blank.

A beeper went off and Rocco almost laughed, debating with himself whether to use this right now, swing the dope dealer hammer at him. He decided to back off: it was way too soon to be a hard-on.

“You got to get that?”

The kid jerked back, smiling. “It ain’t me.”

“No?”

The beeper sounded again and Rocco checked his hip, saw his home number blinking up at him.

The kid shot him a fast smirk and Rocco laughed. “How ‘bout that,” he said, then held up his hand. “Awright, look. I was just hoping, talking to you, maybe you could’ve helped me figure out a reason for that guy attacking your brother like that. Otherwise, shit, man, thirty years … He’s got those little kids. It’s fucking rough, you know? I don’t think he understands what he’s doing, sticking to this out-of-the-blue bullshit. He’s just hurting himself, and if he had
one
justifiable reason, he could halve his time in.” Rocco exhaled, shook his head. “Thirty fucking years.”

Strike’s face took on a congested color, as if he wanted to say something. But whatever it was, he swallowed it.

“Is there anything on this you can help me help him with?
Any
thing?” Rocco tried to sound concerned without going all sobby about it.

Strike crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, like maybe the guy dissed him sometime aw-or, you know, they had words aw-or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe this guy had like, a, a
at
titude.”

“An attitude…” Rocco waited.

“Like, I ha-had
heard
that he wasn’t like…” The kid coughed into his fist. “Like he was disrespectful of the people.”

“What people?”

Strike floundered. “You know, in the store, the customers, the workers.”

“Yeah? You heard this? Who’d you hear this from?”

“Just, you know, around.” Strike danced with his palm on his gut, an anxiety samba. “No people that cuc-come to mind, just, but maybe he ah-and my brother had words. Maybe he, I don’t know, maybe he-he disrespected my brother wuh-one day, you know in the store, and held it like a
grudge.
”

“Your brother held it like a grudge?”

“No, no, the other—Darryl. Maybe he had it in for him, you know.” Strike exhaled heavily as if disgusted with his own performance.

Rocco was sure the kid was lying out of his ass, making it up as he went along. But that was OK. Each lie opened the door wider for future talks.

Rocco reached into his wallet and extracted his card. “Listen, one last thing. I hear rumors that that Ahab’s was a drug spot, selling drugs. You ever hear anything like that?”

“No.” The kid caressed his torso and looked away. “I don’t know about that.”

“All right, whatever. Just do me a favor, OK? Here’s my card. If you hear anything, help your brother and give me a call.”

Strike ignored the card. Rocco slipped it into his sweatshirt muff for him.

“I’m just curious. Where do you work?”

“In a grocery store aw-on Jackson.”

Lie number three, at least. An embarrassment of riches.

“On Jackson. What, Rodney Little’s?”

“Naw.”

“That’s the only grocery store
I
know on Jackson.”

“Naw, I mean yeah, Ra-Rodney’s. Uh-huh, I guess it’s Rodney’s.” The kid bared his teeth and shot Rocco a fleeting murderous glance.

“OK.” Rocco quickly retreated, not wanting his line snapped. He slipped his hands in his pants pockets and slowly wheeled around. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Walking to his car, he nodded to Erroll Barnes, who was still leaning on the Le Baron. “How ya been?”

Erroll nodded minutely and Rocco wondered if the package was drugs: not his department. And as he drove off to canvass liquor stores on the cemetery job, he had the fleeting thought that Erroll Barnes was the actor on this Ahab’s shooting. But then he dismissed it out of hand. It’s the brother, he thought. It’s this lying little shit right here.

Rocco hit a half-dozen liquor stores within walking distance of the cemetery, automatically flashing the photo of the girl and her boyfriend to a dozen clerks and cashiers. None of the people could identify either one of them, and given that the neighborhood was predominantly Puerto Rican and Filipino, Rocco tended to believe the shrugs and head shakes. Young white customers would have stood out.

Rocco worked slowly, distractedly, his mind still back by those benches in Roosevelt. He drove at a crawl from store to store, mulling over his options, wondering how to work Ronald Dunham. His instincts told him that if he came down too hard or too fast, the kid would simply disappear or, worse, go to a lawyer. So how should he play it?

Visiting the neighborhood’s last liquor store, Rocco finally came up with the beginnings of a plan. As he walked in, some clocker was buying a wine cooler. The kid had his roll out, exposing what looked like a few hundred dollars to pay for a two-dollar drink. When he saw Rocco standing there, he got so spooked that he jammed his roll back in his pocket as if the money itself was illegal. It took a few seconds for the kid to figure out that Rocco wasn’t Narcotics, and then he took his money out again, almost defiantly. But by that time Rocco was already leaving.

He found Jo-Jo Kronic in the Narcotics squad room of the Eastern District station house fifteen minutes later. Jo-Jo’s crew must have just come in from a bounty run, because there were four mutts in the holding cell and four narcs typing at their desks under the bare overhead lights.

Jo-Jo and one of his boys stood just outside the cell. Arms across their chests, they watched a young muscular guy pull off his pants and boxer shorts for a body check. The guy grinned and held out his shorts for their consideration. Even from a distance, Rocco could see the bright brown stain.

“I got
scared,
man,” the prisoner said. “I dint know
what
was happenin’.”

“Put them the fuck down, will you?” Jo-Jo shielded his face with his palm, but the guy held them up a little longer. The three other grabs behind bars paced like nervous cats, waiting their turn, as iridescent green moths flitted around a bare overhead bulb.

Jo-Jo shook his head and then noticed Rocco in the doorway. He fixed Rocco with eyes that appeared bleached and electric. His white beard was luminous under the harsh lighting.

Rocco introduced himself and shook Jo-Jo’s hand, instinctively looking for telltale signs of secret wealth—a Rolex, some neck gold—but all he saw was a Santa’s helper in a pair of dungarees and a Hawaiian shirt.

“I’m working a job now, it involves this bottle crew, and I can’t get anybody to talk to me.” Rocco took a seat opposite Jo-Jo’s desk. “I tell them, Hey, I don’t give a fuck about your business out here. I’m into the
dead,
not the living. But they think they’re hot shit, you know?”

“So who do you need help with?” Jo-Jo swiveled in his chair, struggling to lift an ankle up and across his knee.

“You know that guy Rodney Little?”

“Rodney?” Jo-Jo stared off at the mint-green walls. “Yeah, I know Rodney.”

“Well, there’s this kid who works for him in the Roosevelt Houses named—”

Rocco was interrupted by one of the guys behind bars, a tall, thin kid with huge hands. “You motherfuckers got some mother-fucking
quota
thing here, because I dint serve nobody. I’m a
man,
motherfuckers, and you all faggots, sucker-punching blind-side faggots that got to keep a man behind bars because you can’t
deal
with that.”

Jo-Jo glanced at Rocco. “Excuse me,” he said, then walked over and unlocked the cell. He slipped inside and locked himself in. The kid growled a little and Jo-Jo backed him into a corner.

“Hey, Alfred, listen to me.” Jo-Jo touched the kid between the eyes with a fingertip, his face right under the kid’s chin. “Listen to me. You were leaning up against the dumpster like
this,
yes? Your arm was up like
this,
yes?” Jo-Jo raised an arm, forking the fingers of his other hand back and forth under his armpit like somebody working something sneaky. “We saw you serve five people, three of which we popped right after, so for’once in your fucking life be fucking smart and shut the fuck up, yes?” He crowded the kid, jamming him up, and then after a long moment let himself out of the cell, winking at Rocco as he tossed the keys on an empty desk.

“Give me re
spect,
man,” the kid muttered to Jo-Jo’s back.

Jo-Jo wheeled around and spoke in a placid, firm tone. “Hey, you want respect? Then act like you fucking deserve it. You want to be treated like a man? Then
be
a fucking man and stop your fucking crying. You’re dirty and you’re grabbed, so shut the fuck up.”

Jo-Jo returned to the desk. “Sorry,” he said, then added in a low voice, “We got this apartment overlooking Pavonia and JFK?” He mimed looking through binoculars. “It’s like a turkey shoot, a sniper’s dream.”

Rocco decided that perhaps Jo-Jo was on the up-and-up after all—he was doing an awful lot of garbage-level grabs here. But maybe all this was just for appearances. Maybe Rocco was too naive, not ever having liked the odds of being dirty on this job.

“Anyways, Rodney Little, he’s got this kid, Strike? In Roosevelt. You know this Strike kid?”

Jo-Jo squinted. “Skinny little prick? Looks like he hasn’t shit in a week?”

Rocco laughed. “He’s the kid I need to talk to. You think you guys could give him one of these for me?” Rocco took out a few business cards, laid them on Jo-Jo’s desk. “I just need him a little stressed out right now.”

Hands clasped over his belly, Jo-Jo regarded the cards on his desk and shrugged. “What are you gonna do for me?”

The question was so blunt that for a moment Rocco didn’t know how to respond. “Hey,” he finally said, “summer’s almost here. It’s getting all hotted up out there on the streets. You guys never know when you might need a friend on the shooting team, right?”

Jo-Jo thought about that, then bobbed his head. “Fair enough.”

Rocco drove back to the office, his head buzzing, wondering if there was anything more he could do on the Darryl Adams job tonight. Strike: this kid was in the crosshairs.

Mazilli was interviewing the boyfriend of the murdered girl in the interrogation room, and Rocco stood for a moment outside the door, eavesdropping.

“C’mon, hey. Look at me. Do I sound pissed? You’re no killer. It was a crime of passion, she just got to your head. It happens. Listen, this is how I see it. She rolls you into the van, drives you all the way out to the cemetery, rolls you out of the van, helps you onto the grass, gets you down there all damp in the dew and shit, you’re helpless, you’re horny, you got a hard-on to play fucking jump rope with, she gets down next to you, rubbing up all against you and shit, you go to do the deed, she says … What, what did she say? You tell me.”

Thrown by the details of that scenario, Rocco sneaked a peek through the window. “Huh.”

The boyfriend was sitting in a wheelchair.

“Huh,” Rocco said again, then lost interest and began pacing the hallway, his mind already busy roughing out his next encounter with Strike. Arms outstretched, he slapped cadence on the glazed walls and muttered like a mantra, “What next, what next, what next.”

23

FOREHEAD
to knees, his stomach on fire, Strike sat on the lower part of the bench, in too much pain to perch on top. He could feel Tyrone staring at him from his chain, but he couldn’t even muster the strength to wave the boy off.

Are you Ronnie Dunham…

At first, between the smooth and dangerous talk of the Homicide and the squinty-faced silence of Erroll Barnes, he was scared, but then he felt anxious and down. The Homicide had made him think about things he didn’t know how to handle—his brother in County, the kids with no father now—and there was no way to pull the Homicide’s coat about his brother taking the rap for Buddha Hat without implicating himself. Hoping to take the weight off Victor, he had sputtered out some spontaneous badmouthing on Darryl, but even that was a mistake, because the minute you imply other knowledge, you’re involved, and they never let you go until the truth comes out. And that held for talking to any of them: Rodney, Andre, the Homicide.