Clockers (65 page)

Rocco grunted in encouraging disapproval, and then Kiki startled him by taking one of the pebbles from the wicker basket and popping it into her mouth like a sucking candy.

“Anyway, Victor’s about to close the door, because I told him, don’t ever get down on their level.” She spit the pebble into her palm. “And then this kid reaches into his pocket and I almost had a heart attack. I thought he had a gun because he had this
look.
But you know what he comes up with? A hundred-dollar bill. He holds it up and says, ‘This is what I think of
you,
motherfucker,’ then crumbles it up and throws it right in Victor’s face, says, ‘Here’s your salary, nigger. But next time I see you, I put a
hole
in your chest. And my word is
bond:
“

Rocco raised his eyebrows and Kiki nodded, confirming the truth of her story.

“Anyway, the guy walks off and Victor closes the door like nothing happened. The hundred dollars, it’s lying out on the sidewalk. He won’t even
look
at it. He’s just standing by the kimono rack like a cigar-store Indian. The kid who came by must’ve been a drug dealer or something, throwing away that kind of money. What was that, allowance? Anyway, I felt so bad for him, for Victor. The money lay out there for two hours before somebody picked it up. Both of us were like holding our breath for two hours. And when somebody picked it up I saw Victor, his whole body goes—” She slumped forward in a deep exhalation of relief.

Rocco absently eyed the new guard. “You ever see that kid again? With the money?”

“Nope. But sometimes they’ll be a group of women. Not kids,
people.
Women who work—you know, outer-borough types.”

Rocco nodded, assuming “outer borough” meant nonwhite.

“I don’t know what they do, work for the city or something, but sometimes there’d be five or six at a time out there trying to come in. I told Victor to only let them in two at a time, and, you know, they read into it, get offended. But hey, my markup’s not so big that I can absorb a hell of a lot of shoplifting, so if I have to take some verbal abuse for defending my stock, so be it. You can’t be thin-skinned and run a retail business. But of course
he’s
the one that’s got the arm across the door, not me, so…” She shrugged, looking around. “Shit, this city—you know what I mean?”

“Hey, that’s why I live in Dempsy,” Rocco said. When he realized that for a moment he’d forgotten where he lived, he became a little rattled. Suddenly he was anxious to wrap it up. “So Victor never lost his cool in here?”

“He was the best. You know, we had a lot of dead time in here, me and him. We used to have these long talks. Well, mostly oneway, he wasn’t much of a talker, but he was … I never picked up any anger, any attitude. He was a real doll, a sweetheart.” In a lower voice, nodding toward her new guard, she said, “This kid, I don’t know about yet.”

“OK.” Rocco stuck his hands in his pockets and slowly wheeled around for the door. “Last thing. What did you think when you first heard about him getting arrested? First thought that popped into your head.”

“Look,” she said slowly, “let me tell you. Victor was unprovocable, absolutely unprovocable. I don’t know how he pulled it off. What he put up with, the, the
women
out there. Those goddamn
kids.
Just unprovocable.” She cocked her head at Rocco. “Are you sure it was him who did it?”

As Rocco left the store, he had to squeeze around the security guard, passing so close that he picked up the sour tang of the kid’s perspiration.

Kids. He had never thought of that word as a racial epithet before.

25

”
ERROLL
told me you talked to that Homicide cop,” Rodney said mildly as he palmed two nickels off the counter glass, then adjusted the vertical hold on the tiny TV perched on top of his cash register. “How’d that go?”

“OK.” Strike jiggled a Yoo-Hoo bottle cap and leaned against a cracked bar stool behind the counter.

“OK?”

“Yeah. He just wanted to know about my buh-brother’n shit, but like what could I say about it? You know?” Strike slid away from the subject. “Meanwhile, that muh-motherfucker Jo-Jo? He put his hand in my pocket for five hundred dollars last night.” He left out the part about the Homicide’s business card, which was definitely from Jo-Jo, since this morning Strike had found the first card, the one the Homicide himself had given him, in the muff of a sweatshirt he’d worn yesterday.

Rodney took some grape gum from the candy display and came around the counter. He gave a stick to his eighteen-month-old son, who was sitting in a stroller by the pool table.

“So now he’s takin’ it from you, huh?” Rodney laughed. “Flexible motherfucker, ain’t he?”

“So now, like, I got to pay it?” Strike smelled the gum; it was like a cloud of purple chemicals.

“Well / ain’t payin’ it,” Rodney said.

“That’s every woo-week, man.”

“Well hey, tell him to go fuck himself. / did.”

Rodney tilted his head to peer out the doorway, and Strike’s eyes followed. A car with Delaware plates pulled up across the street.

“Yeah, here we go.” Rodney touched Strike’s arm and spoke quickly. “These niggers getting two ounces with a half-ounce cut.” Then he barked out, “Uh-oh! Uh-oh!
Hold
up!” He laughed loudly as three grinning teenagers wearing enough gold to snap a skinny man’s neck walked into the store, hands raised for a pound.

Rodney made the introductions, and Strike, torn between excitement and a vague paranoid gloom, committed the faces and the cut ratio to memory for future business.

After a few minutes of small talk, Strike slipped out of the store, made his way to Herman’s and weighed out the dope. A half hour later he returned with the two stepped-on ounces in a paper bag and tossed it under the rear wheel of the teenagers’ car. He walked into the store empty-handed.

When the country boys left they were eighteen hundred dollars lighter, and Rodney was holding a clear profit of one thousand fifty dollars.

“The further south you go, the weaker the blow,” Rodney recited. “Except if you go
too
far south, then you in Miami.”

“So Delaware’s like perfect, right?”

“More like Virginia.” Rodney counted the money with his back to the street. “So tell me more about this Homicide cop.”

“Nothing
to
tell.” Strike hoped he sounded casual.

“Nothing, huh?”

Strike hoped that was the end of it, but then Rodney glanced up from the money and gave him a long penetrating look before asking, “Did I ever tell you the first time I killed somebody?”

Strike shook his head, then went still.

“It was me and Erroll like in seventy-two, seventy-three, something like that. We was over in New York and we got beat on some dope. Erroll says to me, ‘Let’s kill them motherfuckers.’ I says yeah, you know, so we go to where we copped. It was this tenement uptown. There was a shooting gallery on the top floor, so we go up there,
nasty-looking
place. Erroll had like a sawed-off, I got like a thirty-eight. I used to carry this thirty-eight…” Rodney was talking with his eyes drifting between Strike and the TV, and now he paused to adjust the vertical hold again. “We get up there, go in waving the guns, we see the three guys that beat us sitting on the floor with their works tying up and shit everybody else going like ‘Whoa whoa.’ Erroll yells for everybody to get the fuck out. He’s holdin^ down the three guys with the sawed-off people running out of there an’these three motherfuckers on their knees, they start blubbering You know like ‘Yo please please it ain’t personal man it’s the
sickness,
it’s the
sickness
man ‘ And then one motherfucker tries to make a run for it. Erroll just take that sawed-off …” Rodney hunched down in a slight crouch, aiming, shouting ”
Boofn!
“ so loud that Strike let out yelp. ’

Rodney screwed up his face in distaste. “The motherfucker like
splattered
all over the wall, come right up off his feet like a pulled puppet just … oh shit it was like, you know, and like
me,
I jumped twice as high as the guy that got shot because when Erroll said let’s
kill
them, I thought he meant like, just fuck them up because I used to pistol whip an’ shit, baseball bats an’ shit, but I never, I mean, I was a damn
kid.
So I’m lookin’ at this guy all over the wall and I’m
scared
and I’m sayin’, ‘Erroll, let’s go, man, let’s go,’ and Erroll just … you know,
boom!
That
second
guy’s all over the wall.”

Rodney’s son started to cry, the gum all sticky in his fist. Rodney gave his kid a sour look, then turned back to Strike. “His head just
fly
off. I ain’t never seen nothing like that. I’m sayin’, ‘Oh Erroll, c’mon man,’ and this third guy, he’s sobbing, begging,
snot
coming out, and Erroll says to me, ‘Shoot him.’ I says,
‘What?’
Erroll says, ‘Shoot him.’ I says, ‘You crazy? I ain’t shooting nobody.’ Erroll puts that sawed-off right in my goddamn face, he says, ‘You shoot him or I’m gonna shoot you.’ And I ain’t believing this now but Erroll’s crazy, you know? And this third guy, he’s begging, ‘Please mister, please mister, I ain’t gonna tell. I’m sorry man, I’m sorry I get your money back, it’s the
sickness:
And Erroll’s aiming that thing at me, so I just take out my piece. I can’t even
look
at the guy, I just hide my eyes, go
boom boom boom:
’

Rodney’s son started crying again. Strike fought down twitches, hoping Rodney wasn’t going to do any more sound effects.

“We get back to Dempsy? Man, I was never so scared in my life. See, I didn’t
know
you could get away with murder. I was so scared, I wouldn’t come out my house for like two weeks. Every time a police car come by? A siren? I
never
been so scared. But then Erroll starts comin’ around, like coaxing me out and then, like little by little I start hangin’ out again, doin’ other shit and then, one time, like about a month later? When I’m getting all calmed down? I finally ask Erroll, I say, ‘Erroll, would you have really shot me up in that place?’ Erroll says, ‘Shit yeah.’ An’ I says, ‘Why, man?
Why?
It’s
me:
“

Rodney leaned forward and his voice went low. “He says, ‘Because you were so motherfuckin’ scared up there, if I had to do all of them myself and the cops got hold of you with nothing hanging over you from that? Like in Dempsy, New York, Newark or like anywhere for anything? You would’ve given me up in a motherfuckin’ minute. An’ I ain’t goin’ down like that if there’s something I can
do
about it. So yeah, I would’ve shot you dead ‘cause you
knew
too much and you was too scared to be trusted.’”

Rodney paused to look Strike in the eye, leaning forward some more. “In a motherfuckin’ minute. My best friend too.”

Strike grunted and shook his head appreciatively. He was amazed at how calm he felt while listening to this story.

Rodney continued to stare at him for a minute, then added, “See, I guess that’s why I had been hoping that you had got yourself a little
bloody
on that Darryl thing, you know what I mean? Give me some peace of mind.”

“I’m involved,” Strike said, avoiding Rodney’s eyes, looking out to the street.

Rodney regarded him for another long minute. He sighed, opened the Delaware envelope and took out three hundred dollars, folding the money over forked fingers and passing it to Strike. “Awright, why don’t you go see what’s happenin’ on the benches.”

Strike counted the bills, all twenties and smaller. “This ain’t no fuh-fifty-fifty, Rodney,” he said.

Rodney shrugged. “Yeah, well, we ain’t set up yet. We working out of
here
this week. The risk’s on me now, so…”

Strike knew right then that he would never get fifty percent no matter what. But now was not the time to pursue it. He took the three hundred, stuffed it in his pocket and stared blindly out to the street.

“You OK?” Rodney cocked his head, still in his intense eyeballing mood.

Strike shrugged.

“I tell you one last thing about that story. After that first time? Killing that guy? Man, after that there was nothing to it. Shit, for a while there it even got to be like
fun—
you know, back when I was young.”

Strike walked from his car to the benches in a heads-down funk. He was sick of everybody asking him, You OK? You OK? Rodney, Jo-Jo, everybody out to fuck him and always ending by asking if he was OK. Strike thought about Rodney’s story, wondered if he should start carrying his gun. But how could he, with Andre, Thumper and every other damn cop patting him down every time he turned around? Are you OK? Yeah, I’m great, doing great, just fucking great. Strike stared at the rolling sidewalk as he marched full steam ahead—and then crashed into somebody’s chest. He fell back on his ass, sneakers high.

“Holy Christ, just the man I want to see.” The heavyset Homicide, beaming and red-faced, went into a crouch and extended a hand to help him to his feet. “You OK?”

Dusting off his pants, Strike got to his feet on his own.

“I mean, I was hoping to run into you but…” The Homicide laughed. Strike smelled alcohol and wrinkled his nose.

They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the benches, the same place they had talked the last time. The crew sat there silently, watching them again.

“No, I was just asking the fellas here where I could find you. They said to hang around, I’d probably run into you sooner or later.” He laughed again. “So how you been? You OK?”

Strike didn’t answer. He frowned down at himself and brushed at his sweatshirt, the red glow coming into his stomach like a familiar enemy.

“Listen, can I talk to you?”

“I got to
book.
“ Strike started to move off.

The Homicide extended an arm to block his escape. “Hey Ronnie, your brother’s looking at thirty years, you think you could spare me five minutes?”