Clockers (18 page)

“What’s that?”

“Pina colada mix, it’s sweet.”

“Yeah, that, but not too cold.”

The bartender straightened up, snapped his fingers. “I got to go get it.” He whirled in place, patting himself as if he’d lost something. Abruptly sinking from sight, he descended into his storeroom through a trapdoor under the duckboards. Strike was left staring at the empty spot behind the bar where the bartender had been standing.

“Hey.” The voice came from his right—now what?—and Strike turned as one of the hunched-over shadows unfolded and extended a hand. Strike hissed in exasperation, thinking, Not my night, then shaking hands with his brother, Victor, a dry awkward clasp as if they were going to arm wrestle in midair.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about you.” Strike said it flat and quick, moving away from the bar and then pacing behind his brother’s back, too jumpy to take a stool.

“I’m OK.” Victor spoke to his drink, a tight smile on his face. He seemed liquor-loose, although Strike hadn’t ever been around him in a bar before.

“You still with that girl?”

Eyeing the room, Strike didn’t even hear his own question. A drunken security guard sat three stools down, looking at him through droopy lids, his cap on the bar, soaking up a splash of wetness.

“Yeah, we still together.”

“She have that baby yet?”

“Which one?”

“The other one,” Strike said, pacing, fighting down the urge to shake the security guard and tell him to drain his damn hat.

“Yeah, we got two. Ivan and Mark, Ivan and Mark.”

“Uh-huh. How’s Ma?” Everything coming out of his mouth was automatic.

“She hangin’ in.”

That one caught Strike’s attention. Victor’s tone was tentative and a little mournful, suggesting that in fact their mother was having her problems. But then Strike thought about Rodney, Darryl, himself, all of it—well, she wasn’t the only one. “Oh yeah?” Strike said. “I’m hangin’ in too.”

Victor turned to him, reared back to assess his face, and Strike saw concern in the gesture. Strike felt so moved by Victor’s reaction that for the first time in years he wished that Victor was his brother again, his older brother.

“You know that Ahab’s there?” Strike blindly jerked his hand in the general direction of the front door.

“Hell, yeah, that’s the competition.” Victor sounded sarcastic as he hunkered back down over his drink.

Strike spied a bloom of orange polyester peeking out of a gym bag at Victor’s feet. His Hambone’s uniform, probably: How come Darryl didn’t have to wear no goddamn uniform at Ahab’s? “You-all know the manager?”

“Muhammad? The Indian guy?” Victor began writing something on his napkin.

“Naw, the submanager, the
under
guy, Darryl. Tall guy, skinny.”

“Naw, well yeah. But I only know him from being tall, you know, not like for conversation.”

“That guy is real nasty. He’s some bad people.”

“Nasty how?” Victor was talking down to his napkin, still writing.

Strike didn’t answer. Why the hell was he saying all this? And what was Victor writing?

“Nasty how?” Victor repeated flatly.

“He beat up this young girl.” Strike flashed on the baby-fat girl, wanting to say rape, but rape was too distasteful. “Yeah, he beat her up. She was like thirteen, fourteen, some such.”

“Where?” Victor wouldn’t look up from the napkin. Was he writing down what Strike was saying?

“Where what?” Strike tried to see over his brother’s shoulder to the napkin.

“Where’d he beat her?”

Strike was momentarily distracted by a heavyset elderly woman looking at him in the bar mirror. She wore huge glasses that made each eye-blink seem as if it took place in slow motion.

“Where’d he beat her?” Victor sounded patient, persistent.

The lady locked eyes with Strike in the mirror, then grudgingly turned away.

“You don’t know?” Victor’s tone was gentle, but his words came out almost in a blurt, as if the liquor, more than any natural curiosity, was urging him on.

“Nah, I don’t know.” Strike finally managed to get a look at Victor’s napkin, reading
WASHINGTON
warriors and
DALLAS DEVASTATORS
in small block letters.

Strike shook his head: Goddamn, he’s still fucking around with that dumb-ass Aroundball. Two years earlier, when they had shared a bedroom, Victor jumped out of bed one night and started to write down the rules of a game he had just dreamed about. He called it Aroundball but Strike never really understood how it was played—it seemed to him like a cross between dodgeball and soccer. The game had become an obsession of Victor’s; for months he was writing up new bylaws or trying out new names for the franchises. But Strike had almost forgotten about it since leaving home.

The security guard started coughing, a sharp, wet, painful sound, and when Strike turned to the noise he caught the guy staring at him. The bar was starting to resemble a mental hospital now. Where the hell did the bartender go? Strike wanted to leave, took a step to the door, looked out at Ahab’s across the street. He backstepped to stand behind his brother again.

“This girl, her muh-mother’s all gassed up, you know, like to kuhkill him too. Sh-she don’t have no brothers or no father but her old lady is buggin’. I mean, she wants this guy
dead.
“ Strike was making all this up on the fly, desperate for his brother’s commiseration, insisting on Darryl’s condemnation.

“Yeah, huh?”

Strike had seen Victor wince at his stammer, and now he thought about Darryl, so slick and quiet. It bothered him that Darryl didn’t have to wear a uniform like Victor or that dreamy counter girl in the blue smock at Ahab’s. He didn’t even have a name tag on his chest. He was above it all in his expensive red running suit, his gold medallion. Darryl had never worn stuff like that back when he was working in Rodney’s store.

Strike was fuming now: That dope-dealing piece of shit. “He deserve it too, you know? I mean, it was like, sh-she come into the store. He gets her to go in the back office or something, like for a
job
interview, he says ‘Give it up,’ but she’s like a nuh-nice girl, clean and all, you know, innocent? So he just wound up
beatin’
on her, muh-messed up her face, and then he goes right out to the front, starts servin’ up food again like nothin’ happened.” Strike stopped abruptly, overwhelmed with shame, revolted by the sound of his own sputtering speech and the lies that dressed his cowardice.

“Are you in trouble with him?”

“I ain’t afraid a him.” Strike reared back, then realized he hadn’t answered the question and quickly added, “I ain’t even
seen
him in like
months.
”

“You know why I ask, right?” Victor gave Strike a sloppy knowing look.

Unnerved by Victor’s question, Strike turned away. An old man in a blue skipper’s hat walked in behind him, made a face at him in the mirror. Crazy house. Strike felt a pang of sadness for his brother. What the hell was he doing in here with these people?

Again he wanted to leave, but the bartender emerged from the trapdoor holding a can of Coco Lopez mix. Strike noticed the film of grit on the can. The bartender shook it up and punched it open with a can opener without wiping it clean first, just pushing the dust and rust right inside.

“So how’s Ma?”

“She’s good. You know, she’s working.” Victor wrote
CLEVELAND CATASTROPHES
on the napkin. Peering over his shoulder, Strike picked up the smoky sweet scotch fumes coming from his brother.

“Yeah, I hear that. I was gonna come by, you know, say hello.”

The bartender poured the mix into a beer glass, slid it toward Strike. No way on earth he was drinking that.

Not wanting to dwell on the subject of their mother, Strike returned to his Darryl and baby-fat girl story. “Yeah, Darryl got to be got. He de-deserve it. That girl was really nice, clean, all the time clean.
Huh-hair
brushed…” Strike decided that it was too much trouble to complain about how dirty the can was—the Coco Lopez, Victor and Darryl, all conspiring to muddle his head.

“Yeah, he sellin’ dope, too,” Victor said mildly.

Strike went still as a deer. “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Yeah, he
got
to be
got,
“ Victor said in a mock-dramatic tone, as if toying with Strike and his transparent tale. “Dope-dealin’ Mobie-sellin’
rape
artist.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know nothing about that.” Strike put down two dollars for his untouched drink. Victor knew about Ahab’s—shit, everybody probably knew.

”
Got
to be
got,
“ Victor said again, lightly pounding the bar with his fist.

Strike heard an edge of anger underneath the mockery in Victor’s voice, and he couldn’t tell if it was directed toward himself or Darryl. Without thinking about it, Strike took a sip of the filth-and-rust cocktail, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“I know somebody who’d do it, too,” Victor said softly as he returned to his inkings, his shoulders hunched in concentration, the cocktail napkin more black than white now.

“What you say?” Strike stared at Victor in the mirror.

“I said I know somebody who’d do it, too.” He fixed Strike’s eye with a fast, sober look.

“Who?” Strike heard the hopefulness in his question.

“My man.” As if that explained it all, Victor’s eyes dropped to his writing again.

“My man
who?
”

“This guy.”

“You
know
him?”

Victor fixed him with that cold, sober stare in the mirror again. “I said he was my man, didn’t I?”

Strike suddenly knew what to do: Pass it on. Shit, that’s what Rodney did. Pass it on.

“What would he do it for?” He took a gulp of Coco Lopez, forcing himself to sound casual.

Victor shrugged. “For nothin’…For me.”

The bartender poured Victor another shot, and Strike instinctively turned his back so it would look as if they weren’t even talking.

“Where’s he from?”

“Here.”

“Here where?”

“Town, the houses…”

“‘Cause this lady is
serious.”

Victor threw back his drink. “My man’s serious too.”

“Do I know this guy?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know
who
you know anymore. But you might, yeah, you might.”

Strike decided not to ask any more questions—what you don’t know can’t incriminate you. “‘Cause this lady will pay. Money’s no expense to her.”

They fell into silence. Strike thinking, This is great, this is perfect, pass it on. Pass it on. He felt flushed with relief. He was using his head, as always, thinking on where to take this now, how to play it out, when Victor abruptly announced: “If you can’t do the
time,
don’t do the
crime.
“ He said it like a deep-voiced TV announcer and then started in on a new napkin, the first one an ink-stained crazy quilt. Strike watched him doodle for a moment and found himself sinking like a rock.

“If you
play,
you
pay.
“ Victor’s voice was still theatrical and officious, and now Strike saw that his brother was very drunk.

Strike scanned the bar—all the inmates, the old people, the yellow-eyed winos—his eyes coming to rest on Victor’s hunched shoulders. Probably the screwiest drunk in the room, talking trash just like their father. Strike was heartsick with disappointment. He’d been so desperate for help that he’d been blind to Victor’s condition and fallen right into his bullshit. And then disappointment became rage, and Strike was furious at himself, sorry he even opened his mouth. He’d dropped even deeper into the hole: now his brother was nothing more than another witness to his whereabouts. Badmouthing Darryl too—shit, shit.

“I got to go.” Strike looked toward the door, the street. He’d tell Rodney it would have to wait.

“Anything you want me to tell my man?” Victor raised a hand for another shot, his nose still down over his napkin.

“I’ll ask that girl’s mother about it.” Strike paused, wanting to leave on a different subject. “You still living at home?”

“When I’m there.”

Strike hesitated for a second, thinking about what else to say, when Victor added: “I miss my kids.”

Strike heard real sadness and remorse in that and resisted an impulse to tell his brother to go home. “Yeah, well…” He started backing to the door, then stopped when Victor spoke again:

“Davishing.”

“What?”

“You ever hear of a word ‘Davishing’?”

“Unh-uh.” Strike was restless to go.

“I was doing security work today in this clothing store in New York? I got this
other
job too, now. So I was like, standing there, and this lady came up to me, she just tried on this shorty kimono. She came up to me, she says, ‘How do I look?’ You know what I said? ‘Davishing.’ I got all flustered, so I said, ‘Davishing.’” Victor hissed and reared back as if someone had shoved smelling salts under his nose, talking to Strike casually as if they were still sharing a bedroom, saw each other every day. “Davishing.
Goddamn.
“ He shook his head, laughing at himself.

Strike continued backing away. “Yeah, I was just thinking about you. Say hi to Ma.”

Victor raised his hand in a farewell gesture without turning around, his shoulders bunched higher than his head, still writing out his list of dream teams on a wet cocktail napkin.

”
Da
vishing.” The word was a final disgusted hiss that followed Strike right out into the street.

6

ON FRIDAY NIGHT,
exactly one week after their last job, and just as Mazilli was pulling into the parking lot of the Lemon Tree Family Restaurant, Rocco’s beeper went off. This time, everybody including the actor knew that this was no call from home.

Mazilli rocked to a disgusted stop in the middle of the parking lot and made Rocco walk to the phones indoors. When Rocco came back out, Mazilli was still sitting there, an obstinate fifty yards away from the restaurant entrance, as if boycotting the inevitable.