The black dudes were standing now. One of them was looking Terry up and down, Colley felt like going over and punching the guy out. The black girl introduced them to Terry, and the dude who’d been looking her over put his arm around her, his fingers spread on her hip. Colley looked at the black girl, trying to place her. He suddenly realized she was the hooker who’d made the kissing sound in his mother’s doorway earlier tonight.
He watched as Terry and the black girl went off with the two black dudes.
Jesus, he thought.
No, he was wrong.
Jesus.
He ordered another drink and sat there drinking alone in the booth, listening to tunes he couldn’t remember, imagining things that probably weren’t true — she probably just knew the girl to talk to, but the girl was a hooker, the girl had made kissing sounds in his mother’s doorway. And the dress Terry was wearing, a party dress, this was Saturday night, true enough, but she’d been alone on the street at close to two in the morning, wearing a long-sleeved party dress — were the long sleeves covering tread marks on her arms, was she a junkie like almost every other hooker Colley knew in the world? No, he thought, hey, come on, she ain’t a junkie, she ain’t even a hooker, she probably just knows that girl, she’d told him up front the girl was a friend, hadn’t she? When the girl waved to her? Sure, she had. Hell, his own mother had black ladies in for coffee, so why shouldn’t Terry know a black girl, the whole fucking neighborhood was turning black, it was only natural to know black people if you lived around here. But the girl had made kissing sounds.
He suddenly had to take a piss. He got up from the table, surprised to find his legs unsteady under him — had he had that much to drink again? There were three black guys in the men’s room. He always felt nervous when he went in a men’s room and there were other guys in there leaning against the sinks smoking or talking — especially when they were black. He went into one of the booths and locked the door behind him, and unzipped his fly and took out his cock. Standing there with his cock in his hand, he began pissing into the bowl, and he began weeping because Terry was a whore, Terry was a junkie whore, and oh, Jesus, he stood there weeping and pissing, and he continued weeping long after the stream of urine stopped, stood there with his cock in his hand, looking down into the bowl and weeping.
At last he shook out his cock and put it back in his pants, and zipped up his fly, and wiped his eyes dry, and thought Jesus, Terry’s a hooker, Jesus, she went off with those two guys, Jesus. He washed his hands and face at the sink, and he thought again of Terry back when they were kids — but no, we couldn’t call ourselves kids, he thought. She was twenty and I was twenty-four, and that wasn’t kids, but Jesus, how did I get so old so fast?
He went out of the men’s room and over to the bar and climbed up on a leatherette stool alongside a black girl who was probably a whore just like Terry and her friend. He didn’t say a word to her. He ordered another double, and when it came he sipped at it slowly. He didn’t want to get too drunk. He suspected he was already too drunk, but he didn’t want to get any drunker. The girl kept looking him over as if she was trying to decide whether he wanted a piece of ass or not, and then finally she said, “You got a match?”
He looked at her, and he said, “What are you, a hooker?”
“Yes,” she said. “You got a match?”
“You want a match, or you looking for a john, which is it?”
“Right now, I want a match,” she said.
“Here’s a match,” he said, and he took the book from his pocket and struck a match and held it to the tip of her cigarette.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You know Terry Brufani?” he asked.
“No, I don’t know Terry Brufani,” she said. “Who’s that?”
“A hooker,” he said. “Like you.”
“No, I don’t know her.”
“What the fuck do you know?” he said. “You don’t know nothin. What are you?” he said. “A junkie?”
“What difference does it make?” she said.
“No difference. Whole fuckin world’s full of junkies and hookers and fuckin armed robbers, what’s the difference?”
“No difference,” she said.
“None,” he said. “Right.”
“Right,” she said.
“And burglars,” he said.
“What?”
“In the world. Burglars.”
“Right,” she said.
It occurred to him that this was the second time he’d been drunk in four or five hours, six hours — who the fuck was counting? But that was because he’d killed a cop. Kill a cop, man’s entitled to get drunk. Maybe he was entitled to change his luck, too, knock off a fuckin piece of black ass.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Colley,” he said, “and for Christ’s sake don’t ask me what that’s short for.”
“What’s it short for?”
“Nothing. What’s your name?”
“Barbara,” she said. “Don’t ask me what that’s short for.”
“Listen,” he said, “would you mind if I told you something?”
“What’s that?”
“I have never been to bed with a black girl in my life.”
“You’re missing something,” she said.
“It’s good, huh?”
“Oh, my,” she said.
“It is, huh?”
“Oh, my, my, my,” she said.
“Well, maybe I’ll give it a try,” he said. “Listen,” he said, “how much would it cost me?”
“Police officer,” someone at his elbow said.
Colley automatically reached into his pocket for the gun, and then remembered the gun was up his mother’s house, in the closet, the back of the closet. He turned, his fist clenched, ready to put up a fight, he had killed a cop tonight. But the cop here in the bar wasn’t even looking at him; he was holding up his shield to the bartender. Another guy stood to his left, another fuckin plainclothes cop; his eyes were on the bartender, too.
“Yeah, what is it?” the bartender said.
He was a white bartender in a neighborhood going black, Colley figured he had cops in here every day of the week. Half of them were on the pad, probably bugging him about one bullshit violation or another — you didn’t put out the garbage, your toilet’s leaking, your napkins are dirty, your fuckin fly is open.
“Know anybody named Nicholas Donato?” the cop asked.
Colley froze.
“Nicholas who?” the bartender asked.
“Donato. He lives up the street, his mother does, anyway. Upstairs from the pizzeria. You know him?”
“Why do you want him?” the bartender said.
“You know him or not?” the cop said.
“You want some prices, huh?” the girl said.
“Yes,” Colley said, and turned on the stool, and looked the girl straight in the face. She was the ugliest fuckin woman he’d ever seen in his life, blackheads all over her face, the kind of complexion only niggers had, wearing a blond wig that was lopsided on her head, pair of gold teeth in the front of her mouth, no bra under her dress, tits sagging to her navel.
“Yes, sweetheart,” he said, “let’s talk price.”
“You saw the shield, or didn’t you see the shield?” the cop asked the bartender.
“I saw it.”
“Okay. Do you know a person named Nicholas Donato, and don’t give me any bullshit about why we want him. Okay?”
“Why do you want him?” the bartender said.
The cop looked at his partner. “Wise guy,” he said.
“Yeah,” the partner said.
“All right, wise guy, he killed somebody, all right?”