Clockers (51 page)

Popeye shuffled up to Strike’s open window. Rodney laughed. “What the fuck you jumpin’ for?”

“Rodney,” Popeye mumbled, scouring the car interior with hungry eyes. “Rodney the
man.
Strike the man too.”

“Where you gonna be later?” Rodney reached over and tapped Popeye’s hand, which rested on the edge of the window. “Look at him,” Rodney said to Strike, “he’s tryin’ to sniff out the dope.” Then, to Popeye: “Where you gonna be, man? I need a taster.”

“I be wherever you want me to be,” Popeye said, giving them a tiny smile, a paydirt smile.

“Come to the store about twelve.”

“Yeap, yeap.” Popeye straightened up. “You got anything for me you want sampled now?”

Rodney smirked and rolled off.

“What you need a taster for?” Strike asked.

Rodney reached under his seat and pulled up a Ziploc bag of blond-tinted coke. “This from some Colombians in Jersey City. They wanted to give it to me free, you know, like a free sample? But I said, ‘Fuck that, you
take
my goddamn money, motherfuckers, ‘cause gifts have a habit of coming back on you.’ You know what I mean?”

Rodney tossed the bag into Strike’s lap. It was about a quarter ounce, the trial-size offering of a kilo supplier to a prospective customer. Strike let it lie there, his anxiety over Buddha Hat, over Victor, replaced now with an exhausted resignation.

“Yeah, some people you never take gifts from. You always keep it on a strict business level. I mean, other guys, like the guy that owns the building for my store? He’s Egyptian or Israeli or some damn thing, yesterday he says to me, ‘You ain’t foolin’ me, I know what you up to,’ and I’m thinkin’, ‘Damn, he’s gonna kick me out I just moved in, or he’s goin’ to the
cops:
But he says, ‘You ought to try
my
shit sometime, I’ll give you a good price.’ So, him…” Rodney reached over and opened his glove compartment, revealing another Ziploc bag “Him I’ll take a free sample off He’s OK but the other guys? Business is business.”

Strike tried to tune out the fact that they were driving around with felony-weight cocaine.

“Israeli,” Strike said, just to say something.

“Well, I just got to wait till Popeye comes by the store, see who wins the
taste
test.”

“So you going back into weight, huh?” Strike said it more as a sorrowful announcement than a question.

“Yeah, well, I figure they got their lockup on the Ahab’s, and I’m just about coming to the end of my grief period over Papi, you know? So, yeah, the good news is we’re going into business in a few days. Just like we planned.”

We: Shit.

“So ha-how’s it going with Champ?” Strike tried to sound casual. “The knocko make his buys yet?”

“Hell yeah, he’s in like Flynn. Champ’s goin’ down, goin’ down, goin’…mother
fucker!”

Rodney floored the Caddy, banked the steering wheel hard to the left, spun in a shrieking about-face and took off.

“You got anything?” Rodney said angrily, taking the dope from Strike’s lap and tossing it under his seat.

“Anything what?”

“Anything to go to
jail
with.”

Rodney didn’t wait for an answer. He roared up behind a bright red van, honked as if to pass, then pulled abreast and shook a fist at the driver. Strike looked up: it was that white-bearded knocko named Jo-Jo. Sitting above them, his elbow cocked high, Jo-Jo had a hand deep in his shirt as if ready to draw a gun on whoever had been chasing him.

He broke into a big cheery grin and waved when he saw Rodney. But Rodney was having none of it. He leaned across Strike’s lap in order to look up into Jo-Jo’s face and waved for him to pull off the road, acting as if he was the highway patrol and Jo-Jo was some speeder.

Jo-Jo laughed and gunned the engine in little spurts. “Rodney, you wanna drag?”

“Pull the fuck over!” His face livid, Rodney waved wildly for the van to stop.

“What’s up, Rodney?”

“Just pull the fuck over!” Rodney shouted again, misting Strike with spittle.

With an amused, mock-fearful look on his face, Jo-Jo did as he was told, gliding into the parking lane and stopping under the flashing orange chase lights that framed the storefront of an all-night video and smoke shop.

Rodney jerked to a rocking halt parallel to the van, blocking traffic, both cars winking metallically in the lurid gleam.

“What’s up, chief?” Jo-Jo looked down from his roost into Strike’s window.

Rodney, stretched out across the length of the front seat, planted his elbow on Strike’s thigh and bellowed up at the cop. “We finished, motherfucker. Me and you. We
through.
”

“What’s the problem?” Jo-Jo said mildly.

”
You
know what the problem is.” Rodney dug deeper into Strike’s thigh.

“Hey Rodney, I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“You hung my motherfuckin’ phone.”

”
Me?
“ Jo-Jo pressed his fingers to his chest, smiled through his beard.

“Yeah,
you.
”

Jo-Jo retreated from his window, apparently in conference with whoever else was in the van, then popped his head out again. “Who told you this, Rodney?”

Rodney glared at him.

“Hey, you might have a tapped phone or not, but we didn’t hang it.”

“I ain’t payin’ you one red dime
no
more!”

Not following any of this, worried about the sample under the driver’s seat and the other quarter ounce in the glove compartment, Strike casually turned his head into Rodney’s ribs, which were almost crushing his nose. There was something so physically overpowering about the way Rodney was ignoring him now, something so willful and unstoppable in the way he had reduced Strike to the status of furniture, that Strike experienced a moment of pure clarity: he would never make it out of here, would never rise above his current position as Rodney’s lieutenant, because all the intelligence and prudence and vision came to nothing if it wasn’t tempered and supported by a certain blindness, an oblivious animal will that Rodney had, that Champ probably had and that he, Strike, did not have. Rodney would survive all this—Champ, Buddha Hat, Darryl Adams, Jo-Jo, the Homicides, the Latinos, the Mafia, the Virus, maybe even old age—not because of his guts or his brains, but because he understood that there was no real life out here on the street, no real lives other than his own, and that what really mattered was coming first in all things, in all ways and at all costs.

Jo-Jo’s face had lost a little of its humor. “Hey Rodney, you’re paranoid enough to be a cop.”

“Not one red
dime!
”

“Hey, what can I say?” Jo-Jo scratched his beard. “It’s a free country, right?”

“And you
know
I got a mouth, so you best not be thinkin’ payback on this, ‘cause I swear before God—”

“Hey Rodney, did I not just say it was a free country?”

Rodney gave him a long stare, Strike’s thigh going pins and needles from the pressure.

“We finished!”

Jo-Jo sighed, gazed dreamily down JFK, shook his head with theatrical regret. “Paranoid, very paranoid, Rodney.”

“And stop calling me
Rodney.
”

“Very paranoid.”

“Yeah, I’m paranoid. I’m stupid too.”

Rodney straightened up off Strike, gestured “finished” to Jo-Jo with the flat of his hand and sped off down JFK. “Paranoid,” he muttered. “That’s why I’m rich and alive, you short fat ugly potato-teeth motherfucker. Paranoid … I’m payin’ off that motherfucker every fuckin’ week and now Mazilli tells me he’s settin’ me up
any
how, tappin’ my phone. ‘Buy me a Cadillac’—I’ll buy you a fuckin’ Cadillac, you pink-eyed piece of shit, you motherfuckin’
hamster…
”

Rodney retreated into mumbles for a while, then turned to Strike. “So your brother, he’s gonna keep his mouth shut?”

Strike didn’t know how to answer; he’d said all he could say. “Victor ain’t no killer,” he said finally. “That’s all I know.”

“He got family?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you should help them out, you know, financially. You should always take care of your family, because a man’s family is the most important thing in his life. Besides, next week?” Rodney winked, then waved expansively toward the boulevard as if the city was an unlocked, unguarded treasure chest. “You gonna start makin’ some
serious
money.”

20

ROCCO
shared the stairs down to BCI with Thumper and Smurf, who were leading a herd of chained white weightlifters, a few with cuts and bruises, the one bringing up the rear dripping blood from his nose in rich steady splashes on the back of the kid in front of him.

Rocco nodded to Smurf. “They look like a volleyball team.”

“From Rydell. A guy got beat on some bad coke over in O’Brien. Came back with his friends.” Smurf rolled his eyes. “A whole fucking Brannigan went down.”

“Serves them right, right?”

“Lucky they weren’t killed.”

Bobby Bones saw Rocco coming down the stairs and stood at the BCI counter looking tense, almost hateful.

“Ready?” Rocco grinned.

“Who…”

“The guy you mentioned before, Ronald Dunham.”

”
Now
you’re talkin’ business,” Bones said, his face lighting up with relief.

“Please.” Rocco bowed a little for Bones to proceed.

“OK, ah, OK, you got a Possession with Intent about six months back, plea’d to Possession, drew a fine, probation and I think some rehab. You got an Aggravated Assault Second Degree three months ago, plea’d out to Third, drew probation concurrent with the previous beef. Ah, the guy runs with Rodney Little, something like a crew chief, medium-high mojombo, or whatever the fuck they’re calling themselves these days and, ah, that’s Ronald Dunham a k a Strike.”

“Can you cut a picture for me?”

“Absolutely. No problem.”

“You happy now, you fucking whacko?”

“Victor Dunham,” Bones growled. “Fucking guy comes in asks for Victor Dunham.”

“Cut me Rodney Little too, while you’re at it.”

“Rodney Little,” Bones announced, “a k a Hot Rod, a k a Mister, a k a Scorpio, Armed Robbery Third Degree, June 4, 1973—”

“Just a picture, Bobby.”

Waiting for his mug shots, Rocco went over to the holding cells, where Thumper was talking to one of the white weightlifters through the bars, the kid holding a paper towel to his face to stanch the flow of blood.

Thumper looked stunned. “Forty-one fifty an hour?”

“Yup.” The kid delicately refolded the paper to find an unbloodied section.

“So what do you take home, seven fifty a week?”

“More, plus overtime.”

“Overtime…”

“Yup.”

Two more of the prisoners joined their bloody friend at the bars.

“Are you kidding me? You know what
we
pull down on forty hours?” Thumper dropped his voice. “Six
hundred,
Jack, and we’re fucking
out
there, you know?”

“You go time-and-a-half after forty?” asked one of the kids. “We go after thirty-five.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Thumper stepped in place, gripping the bars. “Thirty-five hours. You got any openings?”

“It’s pretty tight.”

“What’s the local?”

“Electrical Workers Seventeen.” All the kids hung around the bars now, Thumper’s envy picking up their spirits.

“Are you kidding me? Ten years, I’m locking assholes with every fucking shithead in town? I mean hey, you just came from O’Brien so you
know,
right? Ten years, I got shot at, stabbed at, broke my nose, my ankle, my finger, ten years in, I
now
got a base pay of forty-two, three ninety-seven. How old are you guys?”

They sang out a chorus of twenties and twenty-ones.

“The only thing keeps my head above water is court time. Collars for dollars. I get called in for an appearance, you know, to testify? Sometimes I’m there seven hours, reading the newspaper, waiting for my name, or sometimes I’m in and out in like a half hour. But the minute I step in the courtroom? I’m on the clock and they got to pay me four hours overtime minimum, no matter what. Collars for dollars.”

They all nodded in faint admiration.

“But seven fifty for thirty-five hours … Jesus, Jesus.”

“Yeah, but you’re out there, we’re in
here.
”

“Well, that’s just tonight. Plus, it’s your own fucking fault. What the hell you copping in O’Brien for?”

“It’s cheaper,” someone said.

“Cheaper!” Thumper squawked. “I had your paycheck I’d hop a fucking Avianca flight, buy it at the source.”

Laughter came from the shadows of the cell, and Rocco could see that everybody thought Thumper was a great guy. But Rocco felt unmoved by the talk about paychecks: it was never about money with him.

“Mikey.”

“Roc, you want to join the Electricians with me?”

Rocco sauntered over to the bars. “Maybe you guys could do some rewiring when they ship you over to County.”

No one in the cell had thought that far ahead.

“Yeah, watch your back in there tonight.” Thumper sounded mournful and ominous. “Don’t go to sleep or nothin’.”

The electricians got very quiet.

“Mikey.” Rocco tilted his head and touched Thumper’s arm.

“Fuckin’ idiots,” Thumper mumbled as Rocco led him up the stairs and into the night.

Out on the street, they leaned against the brass handrails that led up to the courthouse entrance and watched two kids in handcuffs being ushered through the police garage to the stairs that led down to BCI.

Rocco took a roll of mints from his pocket, popped one in his mouth and offered one to Thumper. “Victor Dunham, you remember him? You arrested him about a year ago in the Roosevelt Houses. Assaulting an officer?”

Thumper passed on the mints and lit a cigarette. “Dunham, yeah. What about him?”

“We got him on the Ahab’s shooting.”

”
That
was the guy?” Thumper frowned in disbelief. “No shit.”

“Why ‘no shit’?” Rocco wished he could take notes, but he wanted Thumper just to talk and not think about what he said.