Clockers (85 page)

He got out and headed for the benches, intent on telling people once and for all what had been happening, but they all began backing away from him, walking with little creepy steps as if he was contagious.

“What’s up?” Strike asked.

“What’s up?” Peanut mimicked, smirking.

“Hey,” Strike shouted, “I dint say
nothin
to that cop. That was like a
setup.
”

Everybody looked at him in disbelief.

“You know they was like brothers, Rodney and Erroll,” Futon drawled, sounding both mournful and threatening.

Strike pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “What are you talkin’ about?”

The entire bench turned as one to see Rodney’s Cadillac come to a screeching stop right behind the Accord, Rodney rising out of the driver’s side with something shiny in his hand, moving with a firm-faced skip around his car to the sidewalk, then coming up with an aluminum softball bat, everybody scattering, everybody but Strike, who stood there mesmerized, unable to move, thinking, Quick’wrists, Rodney glaring at him, striding faster, giving the bat little warm-up shakes, then abruptly coming to a halt halfway to the benches and looking past Strike cursing now turning back around, the bat tucked under his armpit.

His body rigid with shock, Strike jerked forward, thinking, He made bail after all, that’s good, that’s good, saying, “Rodney, man…,” then feeling someone clutch him between the legs from behind, another hand on his neck, the sky coming close, Strike going up, up, the buildings revolving, leaning over.

Strike croaked, “Who…”

He came down in a rush, his nose exploding on the sidewalk, his kneecap on fire, his fingers scrabbling like crabs. Then someone lifted him by the back of his sweatshirt and threw him face first across a bench, his throat crushed into the top slat, into his own perch, a hand on the back of his head keeping up the pressure on his throat. Gagging, Strike saw a ring of people standing behind the bench, behind a red film, everybody wincing, frowning, silent, Strike thinking through the pain, Got to tell this hand on the back of my head about my throat, how it’s being crushed, but his tongue was as fat as a fish and now everything was red going to brown.

A voice boomed from above: “You are
gone
from here, gone from these houses, gone from these streets, gone from this
city.
”

Strike saw his mother in her window—no, it was a thought of his mother. There were lips by his ear now, a whisper: “I ever see you again I’m gonna
kill
you. I’ll kill you and put a gun in your hand, say you throwed down on me for this beating you just got. You understand that?”

“Ah-Andre,” Strike said, the name coming out like a squeaky cough.

“You murdered that boy’s life and now you are
gone
from here.”

omeone in the crowd said, “Yo Andre, ease up man, ease up.”

Strike was pulled to his feet like a child, bum-rushed from the benches across the sidewalk, arms flailing and helpless, then rammed chest first into the side of his own car, his knee cracking in his ears as he slid down to the concrete. He looked up: Rodney’s Cadillac was still behind the Accord, waiting.

Strike made it into his car, his fingers fluttering among the keys hanging from the ignition. Eventually he managed to drive off, away from the mob of mute and fascinated faces. Rodney pulled out right behind him like an escort. If Strike ran a light, Rodney ran a light. If Strike stopped for a light, Rodney stopped too.

Strike watched Rodney in his rearview mirror. Rodney didn’t shout threats out his window or use tricky car maneuvers to cut Strike off. Rodney conducted himself as if he was so focused and determined to do Strike harm in a serious and lasting way that he didn’t want to waste any energy on preliminaries or empty gestures.

Strike caught a glimpse of his nose in the mirror; it was clownishly swollen and turning dark. Trapped in the Accord, he drove around Dempsy in ragged circles, wondering how long he could keep going on a half tank of gas.

Rocco sat at his desk and slipped a warrant into his typewriter, filling in the blanks: “Ronald Dunham. Illegal possession of a firearm. Possession of a weapon without a permit. Possession of a weapon without a valid firearms ID card.” He knew that the thing had about as much chance of standing up in court as a charge of parading without a license—but what the hell, it was worth a shot. Rocco played out the whole encounter in his head: hauling Strike in on this, informing him of how the Graves Act mandates that anytime a gun is used in the commission of a crime it’s an automatic three in, then laying Erroll Barnes at his feet, saying, “Your gun, your crime,” the kid squawking, “That boy
stole
my gun,” Rocco shrugging, informing him that he was free to try that out on a jury, the go-around ending with Strike whining, “Man, why you
doing
this to me?”

Rocco knew that Strike wasn’t likely to react to this gambit any differently than he had reacted to all the others, but the Graves Act had a nice heavy ring to it, and maybe, just maybe, he could put enough fake heat on Strike to get him to start trading, to talk, and at last to tell the truth.

Tearing the completed warrant from the typewriter, Rocco rose and marched down the hallway to the glass doors, feeling for his car keys, thinking about how he’d play it after getting a judge’s signature on this. He pushed out through the main doors of the building and crashed into Strike, who was limping up the stairs on his way in. Rocco, not missing a beat, smiled and said, “Hey-y, happy birthday.” He flashed Strike the unsigned warrant. “I was just coming to pick you up.”

Strike didn’t look at the paper, didn’t even look at Rocco, just stared over his shoulder, back to a gentle rise above the parking lot where Rodney Little stood, leaning against the passenger door of his Cadillac, arms folded across his chest, still as a hunting dog, eyes trained on Strike.

Rocco waved to Rodney but got not a flicker of reaction. At first Rocco thought Rodney had driven Strike to the office, but then Rocco looked at the kid’s face and said, “Jesus Christ, what happened to your nose?” Strike was transfixed by the sight of Rodney and didn’t respond. Rocco made the connection, crumpled up the bullshit warrant and said with forced casualness, “What’s up there, Strike?” The kid still didn’t answer. Pushing past Rocco, he moved deep into the safety of the building, limping, swollen-faced, ready to talk.

Strike sat by himself in the interrogation room, his mind fragmented by a riot of murderous faces and half-recalled threats, whatever alertness he still possessed drawn to the throbbing bloom in the center of his face, the jagged burn in his right kneecap. Massaging his knee, he stared stupidly at a calendar two months out of date on the wall in front of him. The door to the room was ajar, and he could hear the heavyset Homicide pacing in the hallway, breathing deeply.

Strike looked up and saw the cop from Shaft Deli-Liquors peering at him through the window, the other Homicide’s face floating just behind the Shaft guy’s shoulder. Feeling like an animal in a zoo, Strike averted his eyes. The conversation between the two men came drifting through the slightly open door.

“What’s up?” the Shaft Homicide asked.

“Nothin’. Just some bullshit follow-up.”

“What the fuck happened to his nose?
Meep-meep.
That must fucking hurt. You do that?”

The heavyset Homicide laughed. -Not yet.”

“T and R, Tortured and Released,” the Shaft Homicide announced. “When men were men…”

Staring at his knuckles, Strike heard the footsteps of one of the cops retreat down the hall. When he looked up again, the heavyset Homicide was entering the room.

“Do you want something for your nose? Some cotton balls? A cool cloth?” Rocco nodded to the parking lot. “Maybe we can file an assault complaint.”

“Andre did this.”

“Andre the cop? Huh.” Rocco moved away from that quickly. He wanted to stay with Rodney all the way, make an ally out of this kid he had screamed at two days ago, called a nigger to his face.

“How come Ah-Andre beat on me like that?” Strike gently cupped his nose with both hands.

“Hey, he was probably a little upset about what happened with Tyrone.”

“With Tyrone? I don’t hang out with him no more. What’s he want from me?”

“Welp, the kid did use your gun.”

“My gun for what?” Strike started, then added, “I don’t have no gun.”

“Where you been, Strike? The boy shot Erroll Barnes.”

“He
what!
Shot how?”

“Dead.”

“Ahh, man.” His mouth wide open, Strike breathed heavily, cast a sorrowful eye out to the street where Rodney was, then hunched forward and clamped his hands to the sides of his head. “What he do
that
for? I don’t know nuh-nothin’ about that, nothin’ about that.”

Surprised by the sadness in the kid’s voice, Rocco withdrew for a second, thinking about Rodney and Erroll, Rodney and Strike, that kid Tyrone walking around with Strike’s gun. The boy had said something on tape about Erroll grabbing him by the elbow, asking, “Where’s he at, where’s he at,” scaring the piss out of him, Tyrone automatically going for the stolen .25 behind his belt buckle, everything flowing blind from that elbow grab. “Well, I hope you don’t have nothing coming down on you for that, because if it’s your gun—”

“Why the hell he go do something like that for? What’s gonna ha-happen to him?”

“Hey, right now I’d be a little more concerned with what’s gonna happen to you.”

“He go to the Youth House?”

“Yup. That poor kid’s fucked.” Rocco shook his head theatrically. “But the thing of it is, you know
why
he shot Erroll Barnes?”

Strike looked at him blankly.

“Because he was protecting you. Because Erroll Barnes was hunting you down. He did it for
you.
Yeah, Rodney’s not stupid, he’s not gonna get blood on his hands. He sent Erroll after you, and this poor fuckin’ kid just stepped into the breach like David and Goliath, and now he’s a twelve-year-old murderer.”

Bullseye: The kid looked totally miserable.

“I tell you, Ronnie, you must be one hell of a guy, all these people going off to jail to protect you, you know? Your brother, this kid … But you know what? They all went down protecting you from the same guy, that prick out there, Rodney fuckin’ Little.”

Strike turned in his chair, staring as if he could see Rodney through the wall.

“But now they’re all in jail, and he’s still out there, and he’s still coming at you. All your protectors are gone, all the people that loved you. They’re all fucked, he fucked them, and now it’s just him and you, him and you.”

Rocco and Strike looked at each other for a long moment.

“Except you got one ally left.”

Rocco watched Strike’s chin slowly drop to his chest.

“Now, I could lend you my piece, you could limp out that door, start shooting. Maybe you’ll get lucky, nail him first.”

Strike grimaced with impatience.

“Or we could do this.” Rocco hunched forward, whispering as if Rodney might overhear. “We put our heads together, right here and now. And after we talk? I make a call, get some goddamn swat team out there, he goes to blow his nose, he goes into his pocket, anything, they’re going to wind up sponge-mopping the spot he was standing on last, OK? So what I want to happen here is, I get up out of this chair in a little while, me and you, we look out the window and see him being taken off in cuffs, dropped down some fucking federal hole somewheres, they have to airlift his meals to him for the rest of his life. That sound good to you?” The kid nodded tentatively.

“Because let me tell you something, on that Ahab’s situation? Regardless of who pulled the trigger—me and you, we know who the true shooter was, right?”

Strike let out a thin sigh.

“See, the way I see it, I think you got in way over your head on this Ahab’s deal. I think maybe you owed Rodney big-time for something, and he just terrorized you into this thing. I mean, I just don’t believe you had much choice one way or the other. And I
know
you didn’t do it for cash.” Rocco gave Strike his out on the heaviest motive, murder for money, mandatory injection for that one.

“I mean basically, the way I see it, it was either you or Darryl Adams. One of you was gonna die, and I guess you figured, Hey, all I’m gonna do is get another lowlife drug dealer off the street. And you probably figured, If I do this, if / do
this—
which I have to do or Rodney is gonna
kill
me—then I don’t owe Rodney shit anymore. I’m free. Now I can get away from the whole drug scene, just give it up, wipe the slate clean and start a new life.”

Strike still looked unhappy, but Rocco wasn’t worried. A few more minutes and he’d have the kid believing that the murder was so understandable that it might even be technically legal or something.

“But what / think happened was that Rodney didn’t keep up his end of the deal. He wouldn’t let you go, plus, now he
really
had you by the short hairs, and he was gonna make you take the weight on this because that’s just the kind of guy he is.”

Strike didn’t move, didn’t look up, Rocco thinking, Time for some amen bobs, what’s the problem?

“And your brother, he hears what kind of jam you’re in, he decides to save you. He decides that he’s gonna come in on this because he’s so clean he can beat the rap. Hey Ronnie, you know what it is? You’re like a million guys out there. You got caught up in the streets, you got caught up in the survival game, you got your basic raw deal in life, and you thought that if you came in to tell us how it went down, who the hell would ever believe you?”

The kid shook his head, but Rocco couldn’t tell what he meant by it. Rocco palmed his face and plunged ahead.

“And Rodney, he don’t give a fuck either way. He don’t give a damn
who
goes down on this—you, your brother, what’s the difference, as long as it’s not him, right? Fuck Victor, fuck Strike—hey, fuck Erroll and fuck Tyrone for that matter. But what Fm saying is”—Rocco leaned in—“fuck
Rodney.
Nobody wants you on this, you’re a victim. Man, we been after that prick for
years.
He’s the brass ring. There’s not a cop in this town who doesn’t go to sleep every night dreaming about nailing his ass, OK? And don’t take this in the wrong way, but you’re nobody. You’re small beer here.”