Clockers (81 page)

Hoisting his son on his shoulders, Rodney hissed with exasperation. “Who’s behind this shit, man. Who served me up?”

The second stop on Strike’s freedom run was Herman Brown’s apartment. He carried seven thousand dollars in his pocket now, having already cleaned out the safe at the house with the crazy old people and the retarded man. He felt vaguely bad about not telling them that next month there wouldn’t be any money from him to cover their rent, but if he told them, they might say something to somebody else, and pretty soon everybody would know that Strike was up to something. He drove slowly along the boulevard, thinking, Besides, they’re getting money for just being the way they are, all stinky and crazy. It’s not like they’d ever
done
anything for him.

Strike didn’t think he had any money stashed up at Herman’s, but he wanted to pick up the scale and throw away all the dope debris—he didn’t like leaving traces that could come back on him. Plus, he wanted to look for that damn gun one more time. Maybe it was in a different drawer, or maybe in the safe under the bed. The safe: he’d pick that up too. Maybe he could sell it and the scale before he left town, add to his stake. And after he cleaned out Herman’s, he planned to collect the rest of his money, another fifteen thousand at two other apartments, and then he would vanish.

But as he cruised JFK and tried to believe he’d never see the boulevard again, he began to question himself, wondering what the hell he was doing—if, in fact, he really did plan to go anywhere, live a different life. Dempsy was his world, and clocking his only experience with success—was he just making more trouble for himself, running away for no good reason?

Pulling up to Herman’s apartment building, Strike saw a crowd and an ambulance. He rolled off slowly, the Accord in a creeping double-park, until he saw two medics come out the door carrying an orange body bag down the front steps. Following the stretcher was the fifty-year-old Chinese lady. Driving away, Strike wondered if it had been old age or some break-in mayhem, wondered what would happen to all those beautiful old hats, tried to remember if he had any money up there. Probably not, just the scale that cost him ninety-five dollars and maybe the gun that cost him three hundred ninety-five. Also the cheap Sears-bought safe. But everything was replaceable, and maybe this was a sign to leave well enough alone, time to just
go.
Strike thought again about classrooms, quick wrists, kids, some vague notion of working with kids imagining Tyrone’s mother coming up to him someday with tears in her eyes, saying, “Goddamn, was I wrong about
you.
”

Rodney’s girlfriend had never showed up at the precinct, and after a half-hour wait Mazilli had had no choice but to call for a social worker from County, instructing her to pick up the child at BCI, the next stop for Rodney on the road to jail.

At BCI, Mazilli had held the baby as Rodney, declining Rocco’s offer of assistance, fingerprinted himself. Mazilli had also carried the boy up the two flights of stairs to the bail clerk’s window so that Rodney wouldn’t get his son’s clothes inked up. Leading the procession, Rodney had gotten darker and tighter with every step, Rocco smelling the promise of violence coming off him, wondering if the guy would blow and start a free-for-all right there on the stairs.

And now Rodney stood in front of the barred window, cleaning the ink off his hands with a Baby Wipe as the clerk scanned the arrest report and the thick pedigree print-out. Finally the clerk cleared his throat, pushed up his glasses and announced, “Hot Rod Rodney Little. You nathty man, five thousand dollars, that be your bail.”

“Hey, fuck you motherfucker. Call the damn judge like you supposed to.”

“Five large, chief.” The clerk gave the baby a hunched-up kootchy-koo, impervious to Rodney’s rage. The clerks were supposed to get the numbers from the judge on call, but most judges didn’t want to be bothered until after the fact, especially since the clerks knew the bail formulas as well as the judges did.

“Rodney, you want to give somebody a call?” Mazilli said, jiggling the baby. “Bring in the money?”

“Nah, fuck that. I ain’t taking no five thousand dollars off the street. I’ll do the damn bullpen tonight. Tomorrow they gonna knock it down to the ten percent anyhow. This a bullshit headache, man. Who the fuck set me up, Mazilli? My damn kid’s going into a fuckin’ shelter? Who the hell’s behind this?”

Mazilli didn’t answer, focusing instead on the baby, fussing over some invisible problem.

“Yeah, you best
not
tell me.” Rodney looked directly at Rocco, the first time he had acknowledged him all night. “Save me from a homicide rap.”

Rocco laughed. “Don’t tell us
before,
man. It takes all the fun out of the investigation.”

Heading down the stairs, Rodney carrying his son now, they bumped into the social worker on her way up. A red-headed Italian woman, she immediately complained about being called out of her house just as she was sitting down to dinner with her family. When Rodney began staring at her with hate-frosted eyes, Rocco again imagined the possibility of a stairway brannigan. But a moment later, right behind the social worker, the baby’s mother appeared. She was young and chunky, dressed in a silver jump suit, her hair braided and dripping amber beads.

“Where the fuck were
you?
“ Rodney shouted over the social worker’s head to the mother, ten steps below her.

“He say
Eastern
Precinct.” Her voice was sharp and loud, like an angry person talking over music.

“I said
Western,
Carol,” Mazilli said, smiling benignly.

Carol tromped up the stairs, roughly shouldered aside the social worker and snatched the kid away. “Yeah, you
best
go to jail.” She wheeled around and marched down again.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “I’ll go to jail. I’ll go anywhere to get away from
you.
”

As Rodney led the two Homicides down to the street, Rocco shrugged to the social worker. “Sorry about that.”

Driving over to the jail, Rocco thought about Rodney’s reputation as the most feared man of his generation still out on the Dempsy streets. He probably deserved it: over the past hour Rodney had mostly confined himself to some dark mutterings, and he had even held his baby for a good part of the time, but Rocco sensed that just underneath the surface lived a blind bonehead fury that, once triggered, could be as nonnegotiable and deadly as any other force of nature. A lot of people on the street liked to bluff a homicidally dangerous side, but the real thing was fairly rare, and as Rocco looked in the rearview mirror at Rodney’s rage-tightened face, he started working on a plan to harness what was building right before his eyes, to direct the inevitable firestorm so that it would come down on Strike, burn his house to the ground and send him running for shelter to his only friend in the world_Rocco Klein.

Strike couldn’t say why, but instead of collecting the rest of his money and taking off, he found himself walking toward the benches. It was a stupid move, especially with seven thousand dollars in his pockets, but there he was. Maybe it was to take a last look, say goodbye to people, his boys. Maybe somewhere in his mind he even had the notion to go up and see his mother, drop off some cash for Victor’s kids.

The sight of his crew lounging around the semicircle of benches filled him with great relief, the Tightness of it tempered only by a peripheral tension about where Andre might be. But even that wasn’t so bad: it was seven-thirty, and Andre was probably on the way to his knocko squad to start his eight-to-four tour.

“What you all sitting around for?” Strike tried to sound angry.

“They ain’t no dope tonight.” Futon sat up on Strike’s perch, acting cool, even a little distant. “Rodney got locked up.”

Strike felt his gut clench. “What he get locked up for?”

Peanut shrugged and Futon looked off, his aqua headphones replaced by a new pair, tomato red.

Everyone else stayed silent, avoiding Strike’s eyes.

“Rodney in
jail?
“ Strike saw Tyrone, not on the chain this time but pacing from his building entrance to the sidewalk, back and forth, furiously trying to catch Strike’s eye. But Strike didn’t want to have anything to do with him: that kid was bad, a bad idea.

“Goddamn, what…” Strike noticed Tyrone patting his belt buckle as if sending a signal. Irritated, Strike waved him off, and the kid threw up his hands in despair and vanished into his building.

“Hey, Ronnie!” The voice behind him made Strike want to drop to his knees. He didn’t turn around, just sought out the eyes on the benches for sympathy, but the whole crew pretended they didn’t see or hear either Strike or the Homicide.

“Ronnie!”

Strike turned to face him. The Homicide was all smiles, waving him over as if he had some great news, extending his hand for a shake, saying, “Hey Ronnie, man.”

Momentarily seduced, Strike grasped the hand offered. He instantly regretted it.

“Your boss is in County, you hear that?” Rocco said. “And, like, I just wanted to come by and say thank you for your help.”

Strike tried to extricate himself from the handshake but the cop wouldn’t let go. “Yeah, wuh-well, I don’t know nothin’ about that. Can I get my
hand
back?”

“Yeah, old Hot Rod. The guy’s probably looking at three and a half in on this one, and ah, he don’t know who set him up but he
does
know that me and you, we got to be like asshole buddies over this last week, and he
does
know that I was in on the lockup today, and you know, Rodney might be an ugly motherfucker but he ain’t stupid. Plus, you see all these windows, empty windows with all those people up there
not
watching me and you shake hands?”

The Homicide kept squeezing Strike’s hand and glancing around as if he’d never seen big buildings before. Strike high-stepped in place, thinking maybe he
should
punch this fat motherfucker—it might be worth it even if it did cost him the roll he was holding plus some jail time. But, as if he could read Strike’s mind, the Homicide said quietly, “Don’t even think about it.”

Strike went still, his nostrils flaring.

“Yeah, all these windows, and your boys there, your posse. What do you call them, posse or crew?”

Strike looked away.

“Anyways, let me tell you. Rodney? He’s gonna be pissed. He makes bail tomorrow, gets back out in the street? People start whispering, gassing up his head … Whew. He’s gonna be one steamed-up brother.”

“I di-dint
do
nothin’,” Strike said, trying to jerk his arm free. “I dint
say
nothin’.”

The Homicide gripped tighter. “I wouldn’t know what the fuck I’d do if I was you come tomorrow. Probably the best thing? If I was you, I’d run down to the prosecutor’s office
tonight,
start banging on the door, ‘Let me in, let me in,’ work something out to get my ass protected.”

Strike flashed on the memory of looking up into Rodney’s eyes, the gun in his face, the taste of metal in his mouth. He jerked his arm again and the Homicide hissed “Easy, easy,” not letting him go, saying, “Get yourself in a room with me, tell me what happened on that Ahab’s thing, how Rodney pressured you into capping that guy. I mean, that’s what you tried to tell me on the phone yesterday, right? Right?”

Strike palmed his face with his free hand, then briefly doubled over himself.

“Just get it off your chest, Ronnie. You’ll feel like a million bucks. Just like you tried to do yesterday. C’mon in with me right now, we’ll work something out. It’ll be the best of all possible worlds, ‘cause shit, this way Rodney’s not gonna get out tomorrow or
ever,
and you just might beat the whole thing. I mean, nobody wants
you
on this. You had no choice, everybody knows that. Rodney had you scared to death, right? Right?”

The Homicide searched for his eyes, and Strike swiveled his head right left right to escape, to get air. “But tomorrow? If you don’t come in on this? It’s just you, him and the foliage, you know what I mean? Hah?”

Right left right. Got to
go.

“Hey Ronnie, you got a gun?”

“Naw, I-I ain’t got no gun.”

“You want to borrow mine?”

“Man, what are you doing this to me for?”

“Because
you’re
doin’ it to
him.
”

“Who!” For a second, Strike forgot about his brother, and then his head filled with images of Victor—in Rudy’s, in the rain, in the visitors’ room at County. “Gah-damn. Niggers say they dint do something, you don’t believe them. Niggers suh-say they
did
do something, you
still
don’t believe them. My brother said he-he did it. I didn’t. Now
please
give me back my goddamn hand, ‘cause right now you got me kuk-killed over nothing ‘cause you don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

The Homicide’s grip relaxed slightly, and at last Strike pulled free and held the squeezed hand in the cup of his other palm.

The cop eyed him coldly for a second, then reached into his sport jacket, came up with another card and dropped it into Strike’s curled palm.

“Rodney gets out tomorrow, brother, you better
duck.
“ He gave Strike a long look, then walked off.

Strike stared helplessly at the blank-faced boys on the bench, wanting and not wanting to leave, knowing the minute he walked out of sight the talk would start.

Rocco drove back to the office, exasperated by his inability to bluff the kid. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to scare him with Rodney. Maybe … No, Rodney was the right club. The kid said it himself: “You got me killed.” So why hadn’t he come in?

Maybe he’d come in tomorrow, when Rodney hit the street again. But what if Rodney didn’t hear about the handshake play? Or what if he trusted Strike too much or trusted Strike’s fear of him too much to ever fall for the rumors? Maybe he liked the kid too much to ever believe them or maybe Rodney was just too stupid to put it together or maybe … Getting more and more fretful about all the sputter-factors involved, Rocco decided as he drove that what he’d just done was no guarantee of anything. In order to bring this all the way home, he would have to walk right into the lion’s den, throw the “meat on the floor.