“Problems? Oh, yeah. But you know what the mayor’s gonna do tonight, take his mind off his problems? Go on down to This Is It? do a few lines on his favorite glass table, watch some ho suck his dick underneath. Maybe have a nice con-yack to go with his co-caine.”
Tutt high-cackled and air-elbowed Murphy. Murphy turned his head, looked out the window to his right. That old story about This Is It? the titty bar down on 14th, he knew Tutt would bring it up sooner or later. The cop who had reported it got busted down to night duty for his troubles, but the story had managed to leak out to the general public anyway.
Kevin Murphy knew that the mayor was out of control, an alcoholic, drug-addicted, pussy-addicted monster. But Murphy was old enough to remember the District before Home Rule. He wanted to believe that the mayor would wake up and do his job. And he didn’t care to hear about the mayor from a racist mothafucker like Richard Tutt.
“Course,” said Tutt, “seein’ as how the mayor’s most likely gonna be tied up tonight, that frees up his wife to go out and hook up with one of her girlfriends, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Hey, Tutt.”
“What, partner?”
“You ever get tired of hearin’ your own voice?”
Short Man Monroe spun the wheel, one-eightied the Z in the middle of 11th, headed south. He was through collecting for the night. An orange Nike shoebox filled with cash money sat on the bucket to his right.
Monroe sat real low in the driver’s seat, his forearm resting on the lip of the open window, his wrist dangling. Had to have the arm outside the window for the full lean. Monroe reached over to the radio, got it off of KYS and that Billy Ocean bullshit. He punched in his favorite station, WPGC.
It felt good to have the evening’s business taken care of, but he wasn’t done yet. Had to find those kids, the one called himself Chief and the others, before Tutt did. Ain’t no way he was gonna let Tutt, or that other Mr. Charley cop, Murphy, show him up. He had to prove to Tyrell that they didn’t need their kind around anymore. Monroe was out there more than Tyrell these days, and maybe Tyrell didn’t realize how fast the city was changing. Having a couple of cops on the payroll, it didn’t buy you nothin’ anymore. Not really. Look at that open-market thing they had goin’ on over at the Strip, practically untouched by the law.
Monroe glanced at his watch, the one with the braided gold strap. Almost time to swing back around, pick up his boy Alan Rogers at the Temple.
Rogers. Shit, he’d gone all the way over for that young freak. Monroe, now, he wouldn’t let no pussy get his own head turned around. Besides, why waste all that time leading up to it when you could get any ho out here to suck your dick right quick for a little ’caine? Least that’s how it was with the girls he knew.
Monroe ran his finger down the trigger guard on the nine wedged tightly between his thighs. The gun felt good.
Jumbo Linney and Chink Bennet, now there were a couple of niggas who could use some pussy. They had their movies and all that, the ones on tape and the big-screen ones they jacked off to down at the Casino Royal and the Stanton Art. But never any real girls. Course, neither one of them was much to look at. Jumbo was a Fat Albert — lookin’ mug, and Chink, well, little and yellow as he was, he looked like that wax doll — lookin’ sucker hanging off the lamppost on the cover of that Grandmaster Flash record, the one had “The Message” on side two. Monroe used to wonder if Jumbo and Chink were punks or something, the way they always hung together. But he saw now that they were just used to each other, growing up in the same housing unit like they did. Couldn’t separate those boys for nothin’.
Monroe liked movies, but not that porno shit. He liked movies about men who had made it big, who lived large, who got their propers all the time and then checked out right. Like those Godfather movies, and especially that Scarface nigga, baddest mothafucker ever walked down the street. He liked that Terminator one, too. ’Specially that scene where the Terminator walked back into that police station, fucked all those uniformed mothafuckers up. He remembered the night he saw the movie out at the Allen theater on New Hampshire Avenue, some of the harder young niggas were standing up during that scene, yelling, “Kill ’em!” and “Kill ’em again!”
Monroe saw two boys down the street near the alley off T. One of them wore a bright green cap.
“Hey, now,” said Monroe.
He downshifted coming out of a hard right. The boys looked up at the sound of rubber left on the street.
Nine
Wesley Meadows decided on his street name, Chief, after watching this mean old rottweiler dog in the alley behind his row house on O. This rottweiler, named Chief by his teenage owner, had everyone in the neighborhood all the way shook. Got so after a while nobody, kids or adults, would walk down that alley along the backyard fence where the teenager kept that dog. Didn’t matter that Chief, the dog, was tied up to his choke collar by a heavy chain. Way that dog got up on his hindquarters, bared his teeth right up to the gums when you neared the yard, it just plain made you weak with fear. And Wesley, he had the fear more than most. Wesley thought, wasn’t nothin’ alive badder or more fearless than that dog, so he took Chief’s name for his own.
Wesley Meadows and his friend James Willets walked down the alley toward T. They had to step around a bunch of junk — bald tires and old washing machines and shit — put there by Tyrell Cleveland’s boys to slow down the cruisers and the foot cops. It wasn’t that hard anymore to get around back here at night; by now Wesley and his boy James had memorized where all the obstacles were.
Wesley’s friend James went by the name of P-Square. James said he chose the name ’cause it sounded mysterious and all that. He was embarrassed to tell Wesley where he had gotten it, though Wesley knew. P-Square stood for Peter Parker, that boy who was really Spiderman, James’s favorite character from the comic books he loved.
James Willets had a Spiderman action figure in the pocket of his jeans, along with several dimes and quarters of stepped-on cocaine wrapped in individual packets of foil, twisted at the ends. Wesley had a few dimes and quarters of the same stuff in one pocket of his sweatpants and an old .22 with a worn-down firing pin in the other. He had traded a half to some no-ass, nose-running junkie over on 10th for the gun.
Wesley Meadows and James Willets were eleven years old.
Wesley didn’t want to hurt nobody, but you had to have the gun if you were going to play, so there it was. Course, he and James, they weren’t makin’ any kind of money at this yet, but it was something to do at night to get away from his little brothers and sisters, his mom and her loud boyfriend who was always just hangin’ around the house trying to tell him what not to do. Wesley’s older brother, Antoine, now he was in the life for real. Wesley took a little bit of Antoine’s ’caine every so often, just enough so Antoine didn’t notice, and then Wesley would mix in a good amount of that stuff in the blue plastic bottle, the stuff made babies do dookie real quick. Antoine had shown Wesley how it was done.
“We gonna make some change tonight, P-Square?”
“Large change,” said James, smiling that goofy-ass smile of his.
Truth was, they hardly ever sold any of the stuff they carried. Most of the time, they brought the same stuff out with them two, three nights in a row.