“How did you get it back?”
“I just, you know, politely showed this girl the error of her ways.”
Mr. Baker moved into her personal space, looming over her, powerful. La Trice was a short thing, and he was so tall.
“Thank you, Charles.”
“That’s the first time you called me by my Christian name.”
“Would you like to have some coffee with me sometime?”
“Oh, I’d like that very much, La Trice.”
He had seemed like such a good man then. La Trice heard the slam of the front door as he entered her house, and felt herself flinch.
The young men went off to play Xbox back in the TV room. Cody rented an apartment nearby where he and Deon stored, scaled, and bagged the marijuana they moved. It was also where Cody kept his gun. Deon still stayed in his mother’s house, partly to keep an eye on his mom and partly because he felt it was the wise thing to do, given Cody’s reckless nature.
Baker told them he’d be back shortly. He wanted to have a word with Deon’s mom.
Baker went up the stairs. La Trice had been acting funny lately. Talking back, getting annoyed when he spoke on his plans for the future, like she had heard his bullshit stories one too many times. The worst thing was, she sometimes recoiled at his touch. Once you lost that sexual hold on a woman, the relationship was done. You could only get it back temporary, but never all the way. Not that he cared about her. But he needed her son and his friend. He would have to get the girl in control of her emotions until he used the boys up.
La Trice was standing back in the corner of her bedroom when he entered. She was very short, with big breasts that were too big, if there was such a thing, when the brassiere hit the floor. She was all-right looking when she smiled, but she didn’t do much of that anymore, and when she was brooding she had that cartoon character thing going on, thyroid eyes, lips out, like some animated canine. He was sick of looking at her.
“What’s goin on, girlfriend?” said Baker pleasantly.
“I just got home from work. You?”
“Been lookin for work.”
“Weren’t you on the schedule today?”
“Called in sick.”
“A condition of your parole is that you have gainful employment. You need that job.”
“Need got nothing to do with it. I’m done with that place. I’m telling you, I can’t stand the smell of it anymore.”
He didn’t like working with all those foreigners, either. Like that Haitian nurse. He knew it was her who stole that perfume from La Trice’s grandmother. Wasn’t the first resident that girl hit. Always took from the ones who were mixed up in the head. When he confronted the Haitian about the theft, she denied it, so he went ahead and pushed her into a vacant room and pinned her to the wall with a forearm across her neck. Squeezed one of her nipples hard between his thumb and forefinger, right through the fabric of her uniform, until a tear ran down her cheek. She brought that bottle of perfume to him the very next day. His gallant act had made him a hero to La Trice.
“I got what I wanted out of that nursing home, anyway,” said Baker. “I made the acquaintance of a sweet old lady named Miss L’Annette. And I met you.”
Baker remembered when words like that would dampen La Trice’s panties. But now she just looked away.
“We gonna be all right, girl,” said Baker. He stepped to her and lifted her chin with his hand. He bent forward and kissed her still lips.
She wanted him to go away. She didn’t love him. She didn’t care for the influence he had on her son. They were doing some kind of dirt together, Charles and Deon and Cody. Whatever it was, it had to be wrong.
“I’m out,” said Baker.
“Where you off to now?”
“Over to the apartment with the fellas. ’Less you want me to stay here with you.”
“No,” said La Trice. “You go ahead.”
Charles went downstairs, found the boys, and told them it was time to go.
Nine
Deon Brown had attended Coolidge High in the District, and Cody Kruger had gone to Wheaton High, out in Maryland. Deon had graduated with low grades, and Cody had not graduated at all. They met as coworkers at one of the many athletic-shoe stores in the Westfield Mall, which some of a certain age still called Wheaton Plaza. It was not the store that required its employees to wear referee jerseys. Neither of them would have done it.
The first time Deon saw him, Cody had an open gash over his right eyebrow and scrapes on the side of his forehead. Cody explained that he had been sucker punched by “a boy who was trying to see me” but that he had gone on to “punish” his attacker and that the marks on his face “wasn’t no thing.” Deon never actually saw Cody fight. Still, Cody talked about violence incessantly, the way other young men talked about sex. Females didn’t seem to be into him, anyway. He had wide-set eyes, a pasty complexion, spaces between his teeth, and acne, chunky as vomit, on his cheeks.
They became friends. Deon had always been a bit of a loner, and for all his bluster, so had Cody. They were into weed, video games, and the same kind of music. They both liked TCB, 3D, Reaction, CCB, Backyard, and other local go-go bands, and rap, if it got combined with go-go, like with that dude Wale. They knew who Tony Montana was but not Nelson Mandela. They bought clothes with labels and disdained the brands that were common and out. They wore Helly Hansen rather than North Face, Nike Dunks over Timbs. They were both sneakerheads. The employee discount at the store was why they worked there.
Cody called all Hispanics “Mexicans” and considered them his adversaries and the thieves of American jobs. Cody wore his hair very short and only got it cut at black barbershops. Cody said “forf ” for “fourth” and “bruva” for “brother,” but to Deon it didn’t seem like he was trying too hard, like other white boys. It was who he was.
After a chance meeting with an old acquaintance who’d become a supplier, Deon and Cody had started dealing a little weed to the other employees in the mall. There was a natural market for it, and they could do it discreetly, through the network, all the young heads who worked the kiosks, the urban-clothing stores, the hat-and-athletic-jersey places, and the shoe shops. They’d buy a pound at a time and get their own smoke free. They’d never exchange marijuana or money on the Westfield grounds. That could be done after a short drive to one of the many nearby parking areas serving the CVS, the surplus store, or the county lot behind the Wheaton Triangle. When they began to see a profit, Deon put a down payment on a used Marauder, a car he had long coveted, and Cody rented an apartment near the Fourth District police station. They stepped up their order from their supplier and turned the extra inventory without effort. They spent the profit as quickly as it came in.
Plasma television, multiple iPods, furniture bought on time from Marlo, a gun. To Cody, it was the life he had imagined for himself. Deon was not so sure. He had bouts with depression, and often, even while chilled on Paxil, he could not see the positives. If you had all this, what was there to look forward to? Mr. Charles, who had been in their lives since the start of their business, said, “More.”
Stepping out of La Trice’s house, Baker, Cody, and Deon got into the Mercury. Deon’s Marauder was tricked with Kooks headers, Flowmaster pipes with big chrome tips, twenties with Motto rims. The windows were tinted to the legal limit, and this and the other extras drew the eyes of police. Baker also knew that a black boy and a white boy seen riding together in a car were considered to be suspicious and were more likely to be stopped than same-race occupants. For this reason he insisted that the Marauder be free of contraband. For their work, they used Cody’s Honda, a reliable and relatively invisible car.
They went to Cody’s apartment, located on Longfellow Street. The place was always messy and smelled of unwashed clothing and food left on dishes in the sink. The carpet was littered with gum wrappers and slips of paper holding Xbox codes. The boys sat on the couch and played the latest version of NBA Live while Baker sat at a countertop-on-file-cabinet desk and fired up Cody’s computer. The boys used the desktop to look at porno, rate girls on MySpace, check out the latest sports scores, and surf eBay for sneaker purchases both classic and new. Baker used it for business.