Right as Rain (6 page)

EDNA
Loomis filled the bowl of a bong with pot and dropped a crystal of methamphetamine on top of the load. She stood at the window of the bedroom where she and Ray slept in the house and watched Ray and Earl leave the barn and head for their car, a hopped—up Ford parked between an F—150 pickup and Ray’s Shovelhead Harley.

Edna flicked the wheel of a Bic lighter and got fire. She held the flame over the bowl and drew in a hit of ice over grass. Holding in the high, she watched Ray dismantle the top of the car’s bumper, then take the heroin out of the day pack and stuff the packets into the space between the bumper and the trunk of the car.

She coughed out the hit, a mushroom of smoke exploding against the glass of the bedroom window.

Ray put a strip of rubber or something over the heroin and replaced the top of the bumper, pounding it into place with the heel of his hand. Earl was facing the wide gravel path that led in from the state road, keeping an eye out for any visitors. The both of them, thought Edna, they were just paranoid as all hell. No one ever came down that road. There was a locked wooden gate at the head of it, anyhow.

Edna was still coughing, thinking of Ray and Earl and their business, and her head started to pound, and for a moment she got a little bit scared. But she knew the pounding was just the rush of the ice hitting her brain, and then she stopped coughing and felt good. Then she felt better than good, suddenly straightened out right. She lit a Virginia Slim from a pack she kept in a leather case, picked up her drink, and sipped at it, trying to make it last.

She went to the TV set on the bureau and turned up the volume. Some white chick with orange hair was up on a stage, sitting next to a big black dude. The white chick was fat and asshole ugly, not surprising, and now some bubble—assed black chick was walking out on the stage and, boy, did she look meaner than a motherfucker, too. Looked like she was about to put a hurtin’ on the white chick for sleeping with her old man. And damn if she wasn’t throwing a punch at the white chick now… . Edna had seen this one, or it could have been that she was just imagining that she had.

She went back to the window and looked down at the yard. Earl and Ray were three—point turning, heading down the gravel and into the trees.

She checked the level of her drink. It was going down real good today. Nothing like a little Jack and some nicotine behind a hit of speed. Course, Ray wouldn’t like it if he came home and found her drunk, but she didn’t have to worry about that yet.

She had a sip from the glass and then, what the hell, drank it all down in one gulp. Maybe she’d go down to the barn and fix one more weak one, mostly Coke with just a little mash in it to change its color. Ray wouldn’t be home for another few hours anyway, and besides, he’d be all stoked and occupied for the rest of the night. Ray liked to count the cash money he brought back after he made his runs.

RAY
and Earl’s property was set back off Route 28, between Dick—erson and Comus, not too far south of Frederick, at the east—central edge of Montgomery County. There was still forest and open country out here, but not for long. Over the years the Boones had seen the development stretch farther and farther north from D.C., white—flighters, mostly, who claimed they wanted “more land” and “more house for the buck.” What they really wanted, Ray knew, was to get away from the niggers and the crime. None of them could stand the prospect of seeing their daughters walking down the street holding the hand of Willie Horton. That was the white man’s biggest nightmare, and they ran from it like a herd of frightened animals, all the way out here. Ray could understand it, but still, he wished those builders would go and put their new houses someplace else.

Ray moved the car to the on—ramp of 270 and drove south.

“Here,” said Ray, handing his pistol butt—out to his father. Earl took the gun, opened the glove box, hit a button, and waited for a false back to drop. He placed the Beretta in the space behind the glove box wall.

Ray had bought this particular vehicle from a trap—car shop up in the Bronx. It was your basic Taurus, outfitted with more horses than was legal, more juice than Ford used to put in its high—horse street model, the SHO. The bumper was a false bumper, which meant it could withstand a medium—velocity impact and could also accommodate relatively large volumes of heroin between its outer shell and the trunk of the car. Hidden compartments behind the glove box, to the left of the steering column, and in other spots throughout the interior concealed Ray’s guns and his personal stash of drugs.

Ray lit a cigarette off the dash lighter, passed the lighter to his daddy so he could light his.

“You’d know we was the bad guys,” said Ray, “if this here was a movie.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause you and me smoke.”

“Huh,” said Earl.

“Down county, I hear they want to outlaw smoking in bars.”

“That so.”

“They can have mine,” said Ray, beaming at his cleverness, “when they pry ’em from my cold, dead fingers. Right?”

Earl didn’t answer. He didn’t talk much to begin with, and he talked even less with his son. Ray had been absent the day God passed out brains, and when he did say something, it tended to be about how tough he was or how smart he was. Earl had twenty years on Ray, and Earl could take Ray on his weakest day. Ray knew it, too. Earl figured this was just another thing that had kept the chip on his boy’s shoulder his entire life.

Earl popped the top on a can of Busch.

Ray dragged on his cigarette. It bothered him that his father barely gave him the time of day. It was him, Ray, who had set up this business they had going on right here. It was him, Ray, who had made all the right decisions. If he had left business matters up to his father, who had never even been able to hold a longtime job on his own, they’d have nothing now, nothing at all.

Course, it took a stretch in Hagerstown, where Ray had done a ten—year jolt on a manslaughter beef, for him to find the opportunity to connect to this gig he had here. Ray had been paid to kill some K—head who’d ripped off the stash of a dealer out in Frederick County. Ray had killed a couple of guys for money since high school, and he’d gotten a rep among certain types as the go—to man in that part of the state. He’d never intended to become a hired murderer — not that he ever lost any sleep over it or anything like that — but these were people who deserved to die, after all. After his first kill, who begged and didn’t go quick, it had been easy.

This particular job, Ray’s idea had been to do it in the bathroom of a bar where the K—head hung out, then climb out the window and make his escape. After he gutted the thief with a Ka—Bar knife, though, the bar’s bouncer came in to take a leak and disarmed Ray, holding him until the pigs could get to the scene. Ray should’ve killed the bouncer, too, he had replayed it in his head many times, but the bouncer was one of those cro—mags, he broke Ray’s wrist real quick, and then there wasn’t all that much Ray could do.

What he did do, he claimed the dust bunny had attacked
him,
and lucky for Ray, a piece—of—shit .22 was found in the jacket pocket of the corpse. So the hard rap couldn’t stick, and Ray drew manslaughter and Hagerstown.

Prison life was okay if you could avoid getting punked. The way to avoid it some was strong attitude, but mostly alliances and gangs. The whites hooked up with Christian Identity and the like. The blacks hung together and so did the Spanish, but the whites and Spanish hated the blacks more than they hated each other, so once in a while Ray made talk with a brown or two.

One of them was Roberto Mantilla. Roberto had a cousin in the Orlando area, Nestor Rodriguez, who worked for the Vargas cartel operating out of the Cauca Valley in northern Colombia. Nestor and his brother Lizardo made the East Coast run, selling powder to dealers in D.C., Baltimore, Wilmington, Philly, and New York. Purer heroin at a lower cost had expanded their market, crushed their foreign competition, and fueled the growth of their business. Roberto said that his cousins could no longer handle the logistics of the transactions themselves and would be willing to sell to a middleman who could make the back—and—forth into D.C. and satisfy the demands of the dealers more readily than they. For this, said Roberto, the middleman would receive a ten—thousand—dollar bounce per transaction.

Ray said, “All right, soon as I get out, I’d like to give that a try.” A year later, after a parole board hearing at which he convinced the attendees that the good behavior he had exhibited during his term was not an aberration, he was out of Hagerstown. And two years after that, when he had completed his outside time and said good—bye to his PO, he was free to go to work.

Ray supposed he had Roberto Mantilla to thank for his success. But this was impossible, as Roberto had been raped and bludgeoned to death by a cock—diesel with a lead pipe shortly after Ray’s release.

“This load we got, it’s eighty—five—percent pure, Daddy,” said Ray, thinking of the heroin sealed in the bumper compartment at the rear of the car.

“Lizardo tell you that?” asked Earl, needling his son, knowing Ray hated the Rodriguez brother who never showed Ray an ounce of respect.

“Nestor
told me. Down in Florida, they got brown heroin, it’s ninety—five—percent pure when it hits the street.”

“So? What’s that do?”

“For the Colombians, it kills the competition. I’m talkin’ about the Asians, who were putting out seven—, ten—percent product, and the Mexicans, too. The Colombians upped the purity and lowered the price, and now they’re gonna own most of the U.S. market. And what this pure shit does, it creates a whole new class of customers: college kids, the boy next door, like that. It’s not just for coloreds anymore, Daddy. ’Cause you don’t have to pop it, see, to get a rush. You can smoke it or snort it, you want to.”

“That’s nice.”

“You’re not interested in what we’re doin’?”

“Not really, no. Get in, sell it, get out; that’s all I’m interested in. Wasn’t for the money, I’d just as soon never set eyes on that city again. Let them all kill themselves over this shit for all I care.”

“You wouldn’t want that,” said Ray, smiling at his father across the bench. “Wouldn’t have no customers, they all up and died.”

“Critter?”

“What.”

“Someday, you and me, we’re gonna wake up and figure out we got enough money. You ever think about that?”

“I’m startin’ to,” said Ray, goosing the Ford into the passing lane.

Truth be told, Ray had been thinkin’ on it for quite some time. Only piece missing was a way to get out. That’s all he and his daddy needed: some kind of plan.

Chapter
6

B
y the time Earl had killed another beer, Ray had gotten off the Beltway and was on New Hampshire Avenue, heading south into D.C. Later, on North Capitol, down near Florida Avenue, he made a call on his cell phone and told Cherokee Coleman’s boys that he and his father were on their way in.

He turned left onto Florida when things were really starting to look rough, and went along a kind of complex of old warehouses and truck bays that had once been an industrial hub of sorts in a largely nonindustrial town but were now mainly abandoned. The entire area had been going steadily downhill since the riots of ’68.

Ray passed by Cherokee Coleman’s place of business, one of several small brick row houses in the complex, indistinguishable from the rest. Coleman’s place was across the street from what folks in the area called the Junkyard, a crumbling warehouse where crack fiends, blow addicts, and heroin users had been squatting for the past year or so. They had come to be near Coleman’s supply.

Ray drove slowly down the block. Coleman’s army — steerers, pitchers, money handlers, lookouts, and managers — was spread out on the sidewalk and on several corners of the street. An M3 BMW, an Acura Legend, a spoilered Lexus, and a two—seater Mercedes with chromed—out wheel wells, along with several SUVs, were curbed along the block.

A cop car approached from the other direction. Ray did not look at its uniformed driver but rather at the large numbers printed on the side of the cruiser, a Crown Vic, as it passed.

“Ray,” said Earl.

“It’s all right,” said Ray, matching the numbers on the car to the numbers he had memorized.

In the rearview, Ray saw the MPD cruiser make a right at the next corner, circling the block. Ray punched the gas and made it quickly to a bay door at a garage on the end of the block. He honked his horn, two shorts and a long. The bay door rose and Ray drove through, into a garage where several young men and a couple of very young men waited.

The door closed behind them. Ray got his gun out of the glove box trap and pushed his hips forward so that he could holster the .9 beneath the waistband of his jeans. He knew his father had slipped his .38 into his jacket pocket, back in the barn. He didn’t care if the young men in the garage saw the guns. He
wanted
them to see. Ray and Earl got out of the car.

There was no greeting from Coleman’s men, no nod of recognition. Ray knew from his prison days not to smile, or show any other gesture of humanity, because it would be seen as a weakness, an opening, a place to stick the knife. As for Earl, he saw hard black faces, one no different from the other. That was all he needed to know.

“Money, clothes, cars,” rapped a dead, even voice from a small stereo set up on a shelf. “Clockin’ Gs, gettin’ skeezed …”

“It’s behind the bumper,” said Ray to the oldest of the bunch, whom he’d seen on the last run.

“Then get it, chief,” said the young man, the manager, with a slow tilt of his head.

“You get it,” said Ray.

Now you’re gonna look at each other for a while, thought Earl, like you can’t decide whether to mix it up or fall in love.

That’s what they did. Ray stared them down and they stared him down, and a couple of the older ones laughed, and Ray laughed some, and then there were more hard stares.

And then the manager said, “Get it,” to one of the younger ones, who nodded to the guy next to him. Those two dismantled the bumper and got the heroin packs out of the space.