Up ahead, a truck parked in front of a late-night market flashed its lights at the Z. Monroe eased his foot off the gas, pulled over to the curb.
“Yo, Short, what you stoppin’ for?”
“Man wants to talk to us, I guess.”
“What man?” said Rogers.
“Looks like our pocket cop,” said Monroe. “King Tutt.”
Ten
Marcus Clay first noticed the group standing around the baby blue truck with the big wheels as he cleared the intersection at 12th and U. Rolling nearer to the group, he recognized those drug boys who had been across the street from the store, the short one with the pumped-up arms and the taller one with the gentle face. They were talking with a weight-lifter type, white man with a buzz cut. Clay couldn’t be sure — the white man wore street clothes — but it looked to be that beat cop from the neighborhood. The taller boy had his arm around a girl, seemed like he was doing it to keep her warm the way he softly rubbed her shoulder and arm. Clay passed by, looked them all over. It sure was that cop, probably shaking those boys down. And the girl, goddamn, it looked like — no, it was — Denice Tate.
“What the hell,” said Clay.
“What’s that?” said Anthony Taylor.
“Nothin’.”
He punched the gas. No sense in getting this kid Taylor involved in anything. And no reason to stop. While Clay was pretty certain that Clarence Tate didn’t know his little girl was out here tonight, Clay didn’t believe she was in any kind of immediate danger. What could happen to her? After all, they were with a cop. The cop would make sure she came to no harm. The cop would see that she got on home. Denice was a smart girl; she knew how to steer away from trouble. Probably out having a good time is all it was. Maybe she didn’t even know this kid was in the life.
The next thing he had to think of was should he tell Clarence, straight up, about Denice?
Clay drove the boy up to Fairmont, kept the Peugeot running outside Taylor’s house.
“This it?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then, get on inside.”
Taylor looked over at Clay. “Can I come by tomorrow?”
“Sure,” said Clay. “You come on by.”
“Thanks, Mr. Clay.”
“Pleasure, Anthony.”
Clay watched the boy walk toward his row house. He waited there until the boy had gone inside.
Richard Tutt saw the Z coming down U at about the same time that Kevin Murphy entered the market to pick up some chocolate for his wife. He flashed his lights, and the Z pulled over to the curb. Tutt got out of his Bronco just as Monroe and Rogers and some young girl got out of the Z.
Rogers and the girl hung back as Monroe walked toward Tutt in that slow, deep-dip way of his, a toothpick dangling from between his lips. Tutt thought, What I wouldn’t give to slap that toothpick out of that little nigger’s mouth.
“Wha’sup, Tutt?” said Monroe. “Where go your darker half?”
“My partner’s in the store. He’ll be right out.”
“What brings y’all out tonight?”
“Just checking out our neighborhood.”
“Your neighborhood. You own it now, huh?”
“The good citizens own it. I’m just the caretaker.”
“Whatever you say, big man.”
Tutt grinned. He reached behind him like he was hitching up his jeans.
“Here’s a joke for you, Short.”
“I’m listenin’.”
“What did Marvin Gaye’s father say to him right before he smoked him?”
“What?”
Tutt pulled his gun, racked the receiver, pointed it in Monroe’s face, in one fluid motion.
Tutt said, “This is the last forty-five you’ll ever hear.”
Monroe didn’t even twitch. If this white boy wanted to high-noon it out here, he was ready for it any time. And he didn’t give a fuck if he was a cop.
Tutt laughed. “Don’t you get it, Short? Marvin Gaye. Forty-five, as in forty-five caliber. As in forty-five RPMs.”
“I get it. It just ain’t all that funny, Tutt.”
Alan Rogers put his arm around Denice Tate. He stroked her arm, could feel her shiver beneath his touch.
Tutt replaced his Colt in the waistband of his jeans. A car approached. None of them looked directly at the car as it slowed and then accelerated and passed. In his side vision, Tutt only noticed that the car was one of those French jobs that were all the rage these days with the city’s spades.
Murphy came out of the market holding a package of Turtles, Wanda’s favorite chocolate.
“What’s goin’ on?” said Murphy, trying to break the strange silence he had walked into. He stood behind Tutt, always behind him, because Tutt would cowboy it without thought if anything went down. Tutt would protect him, take that first hit. Murphy thought he saw contempt in Monroe’s eyes, and maybe disappointment in Rogers’s. Both of them knew what Murphy knew himself: that he didn’t have the same kind of balls-out courage as the white cop.
“Your partner, he just tellin’ jokes, Officer Murphy,” said Monroe.
“What you got there, Rogers?” said Tutt, nodding at the girl, looking her over slowly, letting Rogers know, law-of-the-jungle style, that he could make the girl his own if that’s what he wanted to do. “Got you some new stuff, man?”
Rogers held Denice close.
“She looks fine, too,” said Tutt with an ugly smile and a wink at Murphy. “Don’t she, Murph?”
Shut your mouth. Just shut it, man, for once. And don’t look at her like that. Shit, can’t you see that she ain’t nothin’ but a kid? Even you ought to have enough decency to see that.
“Let’s go,” said Murphy.
“Yeah,” said Tutt. “We got work to do. You geniuses have yourselves a good night.”
Tutt and Murphy walked back to the truck. Monroe’s voice stopped them.
“Yo, King Tutt. I ran into Chief tonight, that young boy been tryin’ to move into our strip.”
Tutt turned around. “Yeah?”
“Gonna take care of that my own self, Tutt. Gonna do your job for you, man.”
“You ain’t qualified to have no job, Short.”
Monroe smiled, transferred the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “We’ll see.”
Monroe, Rogers, and Denice Tate watched the two cops get back in the Bronco. They watched them drive away.
“I’m cold,” said Denice.
“I know it, baby,” said Rogers. “So am I.”
“I want to go home, Alan.”
Rogers said, “Let’s go, black.”
Monroe said, “We gone.”
Clarence Tate pulled the Cutlass up to the curb, cut the engine. He took the concrete steps leading to his row house, entered, hung his coat on a tree by the door. He went up the staircase, knocked on Denice’s bedroom door.
“Denice? Honeygirl, you in there?”
He pushed on the door, stepped inside. The room was dark, but light spilled in from the hall. Tate could see his daughter’s form beneath the covers of her bed, the cornrows roped on the back of her head.
“Denice?”
She didn’t stir. He backed out of the room smiling, went downstairs. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, turned on the set in the den. Maybe he could catch one of those late-night tournament games they had playing tonight.
In her room, under the covers with her street clothes still on, Denice felt her heart race. She had just barely beaten her father home. She thought of Alan, and that awful boy he ran with, and that ugly white cop with the small eyes and the pink face.