Clockers (40 page)

“So it’s blown, right? And the guy can’t even tell me face-to-face on the phone.” Rocco rubbed his eye sockets: Let it go, let it go.

“I’m really sorry.”

Rocco searched his brain for a farewell witticism, something to show her that he was bigger than this minor disappointment, but then out of his mouth it came: “How about the earth movie?”

“What about it?”

Rocco touched his forehead to the phone, studied his nails. “You think maybe there’s something for me there? I don’t know, I don’t mean necessarily an
actor
thing, but you know, maybe you need somebody to work security or something?”

“Rocco…”

He felt his cheeks rise into his eyes.

“I’m kidding there, Jackie.” He voice was hollow with mortification. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”

15

STRIKE
woke up at noon, shaking off the last fragments of a dream about Papi—Papi’s car sprouting wings and taking off like an airplane across the Hudson River—and although he almost never picked up a newspaper, on his way to the benches Strike bought the fat Sunday edition of the
Dempsy Advocate
to see if there was a story about what he had seen the night before.

He didn’t have to look far. Even from across the candy store he could read the headline off the stack:
TUNNEL OF DEATH
. Picking up the paper, he saw the grainy black-and-white photo that dominated the front page. Papi in his car, slumped down, chin into chest, eyes glazed, wearing a skirt of blood from the nicked artery that had finally drained him. He had died inside the Holland Tunnel, slamming’into the wall right at the state line and shutting down the whole New York-bound tube for hours.

The paper also reported that there was a big debate about whose investigation it was, New York’s or Hudson County’s, but Papi had driven far enough away that Dempsy wasn’t even mentioned in the article.

At least two people were dead now, but a few minutes later Strike crouched on his customary perch, the front section of the paper folded and quartered on his knees. Papi’s frosted and melancholy gaze seemed to be assessing his own jittery eyes and mouth, watching him jump and twist every time a car alarm went off or someone shouted or laughed too abruptly. Strike heard in all the charged noises around him the coming of Buddha Hat.

The afternoon passed uneventfully, but with the beginning of the dinner hour, business around the benches became more intense. The crew picked up on Strike’s paranoia, everybody acting more edgy than usual, as if anticipating that something bad was about to happen. And then Horace began arguing with a white guy on the sidewalk, both of them shooting out their arms and yelling. Horace’s face became choked with rage. He cut the guy off and walked over to Strike, the veins dancing in his temples.

“This motherfucker say he gave a hundred dollars to a guy around the corner for a clip, says the guy say to come around get the dope from
me. What
motherfuckin’ guy? They ain’t no guy. He running a
game.
“ Although school was out for the summer, Horace held a book bag loosely by the straps, the bulk of it trailing over his shoes, Strike thinking, The kid doesn’t even show up for class during the school year, what the fuck’s he doing with books today?

Strike leaned sideways to see past Horace. The white guy stood on the sidewalk, pacing nervously, not willing to walk inside the projects and risk getting beat.

Strike held Horace by the arm to keep him in place and turned to Futon, who was holding his trick Gummi Bear jar again. “Go over ask him what guy, what he looks like.”

Futon strolled out to the street as Strike turned to Horace and said, “You best relax, my man, or somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

Looking over Horace’s shoulder, Strike saw Tyrone come slowly down the path from 8 Weehawken. Tyrone took his seat on a slump of chain between two metal poles bordering the grass. Strike felt a little kick in his chest but refused to acknowledge the boy. It was too soon.

Futon came back from the sidewalk. “He say it was a tall skinny guy with a red shirt and scars coming up on his neck.”

“Stitch,” Strike said, more irritated than angry.

Horace snapped his hand out of Strike’s grip and stalked off to hunt Stitch down, holding his book bag like a weapon. Strike wanted to call Horace back but his nerves had drained him of all resolve, leaving only an exhausted disgust for himself and all the people around him. He stole a peek at Tyrone and almost barked with surprise when he saw the kid rolling a bottle of vanilla Yoo-Hoo between his palms.

“What do I tell this guy?” Futon popped a Gummi Bear in his mouth.

“What guy?” Strike was momentarily lost. “Tell him he got beat.”

Futon shifted his focus to someone approaching behind Strike, his mouth opening a little. Strike read Buddha Hat in Futon’s eyes, wondering with a dazed lucidity if Rodney was dead too now, or if Champ had said, “Do Strike first.” The white guy on the sidewalk saw whoever was coming too, and bolted.

Futon saluted and a voice boomed, “You raisin’ up on me?”

“Yo Andre, man, no
way.
“ Futon shook his head.

Overwhelmed with relief, Strike couldn’t turn to look. He felt a hand on his head and tasted his own adrenaline, like licked metal.

“You OK?” Andre asked.

“Uh-huh.” Strike ran the heel of his hand across his brow, then forced himself to twist around and make fleeting eye contact with Andre the Giant. Bald and goateed, almost as tall as Big Chief, Andre sported a gold tooth, an earring and the expansive gut of a man who liked his desserts.

“Yeah? How’s business?” Andre smirked down at Strike and then casually took the Gummi Bear jar from Futon.

“Business is good,” Strike said distantly, reading Andre’s T-shirt. The outline of a police shield framed the words “Centurion Society,” and a black man and a black woman, both in uniform, stood on either side of the emblem.

Andre unscrewed the false bottom of Futon’s jar. It was empty, and Futon leaped into the air with glee, haw-hawing and pointing at him. Andre gave Futon a long look, appearing to take inventory from head to toe: nice smile, clear eye, good presence, what a waste.

“Get over here,” he snapped at Futon, sounding more like a tough uncle than a cop. Leaning across the back of the bench, Andre searched through Futon’s clothes.

“You know that boy Tariq Wilkins?” Andre said to Futon and Strike. “He just got a scholarship offer from Saint Peter’s for basketball.”

“A scholarship?” Futon squawked. “That nigger can’t play no ball.”

“Yeah, and Daviel Cross? He just got his GED.”

“David’s a dummy.” Futon unzipped his jacket for Andre to take a peek.

“Yeah? Compared to
who’?
You got
your
GED?”

“I’m still in school.”

“Yeah, I see that.” Andre ran his hands up Futon’s socks. “An’ how ‘bout
you,
mastermind?”

“I’m working on it,” Strike said stiffly.

Horace came stomping back around the corner with his book bag, got uh-oh eyes when he saw Andre, did an about-face and disappeared behind a building. Strike saw Andre read it, then stow it away for later.

He also saw Andre spot Tyrone sitting on the chain, saw him take note of the vanilla Yoo-Hoo. “What’s up, little man?” Andre called out, but his greeting was flat and distracted, no humor in it at all. Tyrone shrugged, eyes on the ground, and Strike realized that the rumors about Tyrone’s mother being tight with Andre were true, and that there would be hell to pay for that bottle of Yoo-Hoo.

Just then the Fury rolled up, a weekend overtime special, a surprise party rocking to a stop opposite the benches. Big Chief rose from the car and growled in his gravel-bottom bass, “Fucking up my timing there, Andre.”

“Come back in half a hour.” Andre flashed teeth through his goatee. “These knuckleheads ain’t gonna remember.”

Thumper and Smurf zipped up behind Andre, closing the pincers, and soon the bench was a milling traffic jam of Housing and city knockos, clockers and residents, backpedaling customers and scooting children. Strike ignored the commotion. He was busy making a mental list of all the people in his life who were causing him grief right now.

Thumper put his hand down the back of Strike’s pants, making him jump. “You do Kingpin here, Andre?”

“Naw, I got to check him out yet.”

Thumper wrapped a forearm almost affectionately around Strike’s throat. “You mind if I do it? I
loves
doing Strike.”

Strike saw Andre’s eyes go back to Tyrone. “Yeah,” Andre muttered, “I’ll do him next time.”

As Thumper ran his hands up Strike’s legs, Andre started in the direction of his surveillance roost, then wheeled around. “Little man,” he called, holding out his hand for Tyrone to join him.

Tyrone shot Strike a fleeting look of embarrassed apology as he groaned upright and walked off under Andre’s arm.

“Dicky check,” Thumper sang out, and when Strike, lost in fretful thought, didn’t respond quickly enough, Thumper took the liberty of unbuttoning Strike’s pants himself.

Strike squatted in front of the safe hidden under the sink and counted his money. He was in the suffocatingly greasy kitchen of an old shotgun flat, a safe house, this one owned by an elderly couple with a retarded middle-aged son, the last white people in an all-black neighborhood. Almost invisible even when they were here, the owners were out now, and Strike had the entire place to himself.

Still feeling jumpy and unhinged, Strike had walked away from the benches as soon as the crowd of knockos had cleared out. He had driven aimlessly through the deserted Sunday streets of downtown Dempsy for a while before deciding to make the rounds of his safes. He didn’t need to visit his money—he knew to within a hundred dollars how much he had stashed across town—but he wanted to reassure himself that he had the means if not the resolve to make a new life for himself.

Now Strike flicked a roach off his jeans with a fistful of twenties, thinking, Seven thousand here, fifteen thousand in the other two safes, equals a lot of miles and a lot of time away from all this business.

But the numbers gave him small pleasure: that kid was tugging at him again. He never should have gotten him a haircut, and he could just imagine the grilling Tyrone’s mother must have given him, could see her running to Andre, saying, “Somebody out there gave your son a
haircut.
“ When talking to Andre, a lot of the women in Roosevelt referred to their kids as “your son” or “your daughter,” half joking, half trying to get him to take a proprietary interest. But Iris already had Andre’s attention, and the Yoo-Hoo told Andre all he needed to know.

Strike knew Andre’s style with young kids and figured Tyrone was probably up in the surveillance apartment right now, Andre letting him scope out the benches with his binoculars or fool with the cement-filled barbells, just roam around free-form for a few minutes, and then
wham,
Andre would suddenly pull the kid close and say, “See, now he’s not talking to you. He got you all messed up wondering how come he don’t like you no more. But I’m gonna tell you something, Tyrone. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday soon he’s gonna come up to you and say, ‘Take this package over to this man’s house’ or ‘Follow that nasty-looking guy over there’ or ‘Take this bag upstairs and keep it for me,’ and you’re gonna jump like a puppy and do anything he wants just so he keeps talking to you, treat you nice again.” The kid would stare at his feet for a long minute and then Andre would say “Just watch yourself ‘cause I’d hate for you to be wearing my bracelets someday.” He’d nut the finishing, touch on it by wrapping the boy in a bear hug and saying, “‘Cause you my special man You know that, right?”

Strike knew all about that speech. It was exactly the one Andre had given to him, complete with hug, when Strike’s mother had gone to Andre four years ago, after some long-gone local crew chief had taken Strike out for
his
haircut. That was two years before he’d ever heard of Rodney Little, and Strike would never forget that day—the visit to Andre’s old basement office, the mixed feelings of hunger and contempt he’d felt for Andre and his transparent play, the whole thing collapsing into almost unbearable jealousy when Andre had walked him out of his office and they had passed another kid standing at the door, waiting for
his
man-to-man talk.

The heat in the kitchen and the smell of garbage became intolerable and Strike rose to his feet. He turned and was frozen in his tracks by the sight of the retarded son, a rubber-faced man with a wet lower lip who stood in the kitchen doorway, rocking a little, smiling tentatively, his fingertips playing delicately in front of his chest. Strike had no idea how to handle this—he had never been alone with him, had never seen him without his parents. Looking skittish about being alone with Strike too, the retarded man abruptly announced, “My daddy was a train driver. He once took me on it.”

Spooked by the mystery of this kind of affliction, Strike experienced a welling sensation in his chest. Impulsively he took out his money roll, peeled off a five, handed it to the man and said, “Here.” Gently pushing him back into the living room, Strike moved past him quickly, walked through the apartment and cut out for the benches.

There was nowhere else to go.

***

Later, just as Strike expected, Andre came back. Wearing his game face now, Andre walked slowly and kept his eyes on Strike’s crew. He was trying to make somebody nervous enough to bolt.

Strike sat quietly on his perch, watching the play develop. Peanut pointed at Andre and chanted “Five-oh! Five-oh! Five-oh!” as if it was OK to be obvious, since Andre was being obvious too. Grinning, Futon held out his phony jar, and Horace danced from foot to foot, his book bag swinging low, brushing his sneaker laces. Then Strike saw Andre give Horace the thousand-yard stare, and Horace began to lose it as the giant knocko came straight at him. When Andre was ten feet from a reach-out, Horace raced into the street, leaving his book bag on the ground.