TWENTY
Leo Lucas stood at the head of his class, wearing a crisp blue oxford shirt, a red-and-blue rep Ralph Lauren tie, plain-front khakis, and Clarke desert boots. His ID badge hung on a chain over the shirt. The boys in the room, in uniform, wore purple and white polo shirts, and khaki pants.
In Leo’s hand was a slim Avon paperback of a novel called The Hunter. Its author credit read “Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.” The cover art collage featured a red scarf, red pills spilling out of a vial, playing cards and chips, and a stainless steel. 38 revolver with wooden grips.
“Okay,” said Leo. “When we first meet Parker, who I’ll call the antihero of this book, he’s walking across the George Washington Bridge. This is from the first page: Office women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations above their nylons. He was big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders and arms too long in sleeves too short. He wore a gray suit, limp with age and no pressing. What does that tell you, in shorthand?”
“The ladies want to do him,” said a boy.
“Yes, women do find him attractive,” said Leo. “But not in a boy-next-door kinda way.”
“He’s too big for that suit,” said Hannibal, known as Balls.
“Hold that thought,” said Leo. He looked down at the open book. “This is also from the first page: His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was brown and dry and dead, blowing around his head like a poor toupee about to fly loose. His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless. His suit coat fluttered behind him, and his arms swung easily as he walked.” Leo closed the book. “What does this say about Parker? How does it make you feel?”
“He’s like an animal or somethin,” said a boy named Mark Norman.
“Way his hands are swinging,” said another, “it’s like he don’t care about nothin.”
“He doesn’t belong in that suit,” said William Rogers, aka Moony.
“Exactly,” said Leo. “The suit doesn’t fit him, both literally and metaphorically. It’s a costume to him. He’d be more comfortable walking naked through a jungle. The Parker books are crime novels, but they’re also about a man whose physicality stands in contrast to a working world that, at the time, had become increasingly mechanized and deskbound.”
“I don’t get what you’re sayin, Mr. Lucas.”
“Parker is a man of action. He’s defined by what he does rather than what he says.”
“We gonna see the movie?” said Moony.
“Yes,” said Leo. “When we’re done reading this, I’m going to show you Point Blank, the classic film that was made from this book. You’ll see how Lee Marvin embodies the loose-limbed description of Parker that I read to you. He plays him like a big cat.”
“You mean like a panther.”
“Right,” said Leo.
“They made another movie with that character, too.”
“That Mel Gibson joint,” said a boy. “It was crud.”
“Y’all haven’t even seen the best one they made,” said Ernest Lindsay, speaking up for the first time because the discussion had veered toward his interests. “It’s called The Outfit.”
Some of the boys in the class looked at him and then at one another. They didn’t begrudge Ernest his knowledge, but felt he was somewhat strange, being into the old-time stuff that no one else cared about. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to sports, music, video games, or girls. They felt he lived in a fantasy head, when they were more concerned with the real.
“I’m not familiar with it,” said Leo.
“I stayed up till three in the morning once to watch it on AMC. Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan… Parker was called Macklin in that movie.”
The room grew quiet. Ernest, at first proud, now embarrassed, slumped in his seat.
“What do you all like about this book so far?” said Leo, breaking the tension.
“It’s short,” said Hannibal, and a few of the boys laughed.
“Yeah, thank you,” said Mark Norman.
“We’re at the end of the school year,” said Leo. “I gave you guys a break.”
The too-loud voice on the intercom boomed suddenly and statically in the room, telling the boys it was time to go to their next class. They got up boisterously, clumsily pushing chairs against chairs, making unnecessary noise.
My pups, thought Leo.
“Read this book before the next class,” he called out, and got some groans in return. “Come on, fellas, we want to go out strong. Participation is a large part of your grade.”
As they filed out, Leo reached out and stopped Ernest with a hand on his arm.
“You need me?”
“Stick around for a second,” said Leo. He waited for the others to leave and sat on the edge of his desk. Ernest stood before him, a book bag slung over his shoulder.
“What’s up?” said Ernest.
“Just want you to know, you add a lot to this class. When you speak on things you’re passionate about, it gets everyone up, even if they don’t show it.”
“They think I’m a rain man or somethin. Soft, too.”
“No, they don’t. They respect you because you’re smart.” Leo looked him over. “You get out in the world, what you know is going to set you apart from other folks. But first thing, you got to get that higher education.”
“I know it.”
“Did you fill out the college application yet?”
“I didn’t get to it.”
“Thought your mother was going to help you.”
“She is,” said Ernest. “But she went away this week with her man. Took a vacation with him, like.”
Leo caught the distaste in Ernest’s voice. “Look, we’ve got applications in the office. Come past after school today and I’ll help you knock it out.”
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“Just come by,” said Leo.
“Thank you,” said Ernest. “And tell your brother I said thanks, too. He gave me a couple of movie books that were tight.”
“What’d he do that for?”
“I helped him out with somethin, is all.”
Leo digested that but asked nothing further.
“Okay,” said Leo. “I’ll see you after school.”
“Bet,” said Ernest.
Leo waited for a long while that afternoon, but Ernest did not return.
Bernard White and Beano Mobley were parked on 12th Street facing north, White under the wheel of the Expedition and Mobley on the other side of the console, seated in the shotgun bucket. White thinking, Mobley’s small, like Earl. But Mobley seemed bigger, because he was an endomorph. Meaning Mobley was round and muscular, and Nance had been skinny and wiry. Had the body type they called ectomorph. Those were good words. White had written them down and put them in a file he kept at home.
The Tahoe Bernard White and Earl Nance used to drive was large, but the Expedition was like a bus. No one in the city needed a vehicle this huge, but people wanted to own the biggest SUV on the block. That name, Expedition, it suggested adventure, a safari, the discovery of new worlds. Lewis and motherfucking Clark. But all Bernard ever saw behind the wheels of these beasts were fat brothers and sisters holding cell phones and white middle-aged fathers with beer guts and goatees. If they ever went off-road, it was an accident when they’d drunk too much. Highlander. Pathfinder. Expedition. To where, the Walmart? That shit liked to kill him, man.
“Kids got out,” said Mobley, looking in his side-view, seeing students coming from Cardozo in groups. “You see him?”
White glanced in his mirror. “No. He’ll be along.”
They had been sitting on the street for hours. That morning, after the Lindsay boy had gone to school, they watched as the boy’s mother and a middle-aged man who had the sour, baggy-eyed look of a mean drinker, left out the row house they stayed in and, carrying a couple of suitcases, got into a VW Cabriolet and sped off. Had to be her car, ’cause a man wouldn’t own a Cabriolet. White had laughed out loud at their good fortune. Obviously the adults of the house weren’t coming home that evening at least. Now was the time to steal the boy.