Right as Rain

Tonio Morris came out of the dark room on the first floor of the Junkyard, where he lived with the other last-stage junkies and the bugs and the rats, lying on a moldy mattress in his own filth. When he was not here he was out on the street, stealing or begging, or collecting cigarette butts gathered along the curbs, or rummaging through the garbage cans in the alleys behind the houses in Trinidad and LeDroit Park.

Here in the Junkyard, he experienced mainly boredom, relieved by the threat of drama, the occasional quick act of physical violence, or the odd joke that struck him funny and made him laugh deep in his wheezy chest. He slept fitfully and ate little, except for the small bites of chocolate he cadged from the others. Mostly his life was blocks of time between getting high, and mostly he waited, sometimes knowing but not caring that he was only waiting for death.

Tonio crossed the big room, his feet crunching pigeon droppings, puddles dampening his brown socks, water entering where the soles had split from the uppers of his shoes. He stood by the brick wall, in a place that had been hammered out, and watched the Ford Taurus pass, driving by the cop car that idled on the street. They were here, on schedule, and he turned and headed for the stairs.

He passed one of Coleman's and went up to the second floor, to the open-stalled bathroom area where those who were still strong and those who had something to trade had staked out their spots. The once-beautiful girl named Sondra was in the last stall, leaning against the steel wall, rubbing her arm with her hand as if she were trying to erase a stain.

Tonio went into the stall and stood very close to her so that he could make out her face. He was beginning to go blind, the final laughing insult of the plague.

'Hello, Tonio.'

'Hello, baby. Your boys are here.'

Sondra smiled and showed filmy teeth; zero nutrition had grayed them. Her lips were chapped and bleeding in spots, raw from the cold. She wore a heavy jacket over her usual outfit, the white shirt and black slacks. An old woman back near Gallaudet College had seen her on the street a week ago and handed the jacket to Sondra out the front door of her row house.

'You better get fresh for your man,' said Tonio.

'I got some water here,' she said. She had found an empty plastic Fruitopia container in a Dumpster and filled it with water from a neighborhood spigot.

'Use this to clean your face,' said Tonio. He handed her a filthy shop rag from his back pocket. 'Go on, girl.' She took it, examined it, and poured freezing water from the bottle onto the rag. She dabbed it on her cheeks. The oily dirt from the rag smudged her face.

'You're good to me,' said Sondra.

'And don't you forget to be good to Tonio, hear?'

'I won't forget you, T. I always get a little bit for you.'

He eyed her in a hungry but completely asexual way. He wanted things from her but not that. Tonio could no longer make it with a woman even if he wanted to. He no longer wanted to or thought of it at all.

'I better be goin' back down,' he said.

'See you later,' she said, watching him walk away, hitching his pants up where they had slipped down his behind.

Sondra was fond of Tonio. He never tried to do her like the others did. Tonio was her friend.

'What's wrong, Cherokee?' said Ray. 'Thought you'd be happy. Way you were talking last time, thought you wanted to get out from under the pressure the Rodriguez brothers were puttin' on you.'

'Didn't ask you to doom 'em, Ray,' said Coleman.

'They asked for it their own selves.'

'Committed suicide, huh?'

'Damn near like it. Anyway, I can't wake neither of them up now, so we're wasting time frettin' on it, right? Besides, I handled it, you can believe that.'

Cherokee Coleman sat behind his desk, his hands tented on the blotter, staring at Ray. His lieutenant, Big-Ass Angelo, stood behind him, his face a fleshy, impassive mask. Earl Boone got a kick out of Angelo's sunglasses, the Hollywood-looking kind with the thick gold stems. Dark as it was already in here, with that green banker's lamp the only light in the room, Earl wondered how fat boy could even see.

'You want to go ahead and tell us how you handled it?' said Cherokee.

'The day after their visit,' said Ray, 'I called Lizardo's wife, asked her where in the hell he and Nestor was. Said that they was due but hadn't showed up or called. 'Bout a New York minute later I get a call on my cell from one of the Vargas people down in Florida. I told him the same thing I told the wife. He mumbled somethin' in Spanish and hung up the phone. Next thing we did was, me and Daddy made two trips with those Contours they was drivin', drove those cars down to Virginia and dumped ' em near Richmond, off Ninety-five south. Dripped some of Nestor's and Lizardo's blood on the seats of those cars. Pulled some hairs from their heads and scattered them in the cars, too. When the cops break into those cars and trace the owners, gonna look like the brothers got killed down there on their way up north.'

'What about the bodies?'

'The bodies I got stashed on my property, until this weather turns. I'm gonna take care of that, too.'

'What happens,' said Cherokee, 'when I get the call from the Vargas family?'

'Hell, Cherokee, you're just gonna have to tell 'em the same. That you heard from me and that Nestor and Lizardo never showed.'

'Why would I do that?'

"Cause partners gotta stick together,' said Ray.

'We're partners now. You hear that, Angie?'

'Look here.' Ray leaned forward in his chair. 'I got nine keys of pure brown I'm sittin' on right now.'

'Got it with you?' said Coleman.

'Nah, man,' said Ray. 'I ain't stupid!'

Ray laughed. Coleman and Angelo laughed, and kept laughing long after Ray was done. Ray frowned, watching them. Were they fuckin' with him now? He couldn't tell.

Coleman drew a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his pretty suit and wiped his eyes.

'Anyhow,' said Ray. 'Me and Daddy, we been wantin' to get out of this business for a while now. What I was thinkin' is, we unload the rest of that brown to you directly, at a price you're really gonna like, and we are gone.'

'Oh, yeah? What kind of price is that?'

'You were payin' a hundred a key, right?'

'Including your bounce. It's all bounce now, so you don't have to add that back in, seein' as how there wasn't any, what do you call that, cost of goods involved.'

'That's right. So I was gonna say sixty a key you take the load. Nine keys time sixty-'

'Five hundred and forty grand.'

'Five forty, right. But, 'cause I like you, Cherokee-'

'You like me, Ray?'

'I do. And 'cause of that, I'm gonna sweeten the pie even more.'

'How you gonna sweeten it?'

'Say an even five hundred grand to you, Cherokee, for the whole shebang.'

'Generous of you, Ray.'

'I think so.'

'So when you gonna bring it in?'

Ray looked over at Earl, back at Coleman. 'We were kind of thinkin', Daddy and me, I mean, that we wouldn't have to come into the city again for this last deal.'

'Got somethin' against D.C.?'

'We prefer the country, you want the truth.'

'For real?'

Coleman and Angelo laughed again. Ray and Earl, expressionless as stones, waited until they were done.

'Tell you what,' said Coleman. 'We'll split the difference, hear? You bring in the first half of the load straight away, and for the last half, I'll send someone out your way to pick it up.'

'What's this half stuff?'

'You don't think I can get my hands on five hundred grand all at once, do you? Think I can walk on over to NationsBank and take out a loan?'