“We got money on this table right here.”
“This is on a whole’nother level. Man been owin me for over thirty years. I’m sayin, the interest been compounding. Payday gonna be large, too.”
“I got to see to this. You can borrow my car.”
“How am I gonna drive a car with no license? The po-po pull me over, I’m going back to jail.”
Kruger wetted the tail of a baggie with his tongue and sealed up an ounce. If he kept working, maybe Mr. Charles would drop the plan.
“I asked this old friend of mine to take me, but he gone soft on me. Now, I know you aren’t gonna turn your back on me like he did.”
“I’m busy here.”
“Thought you had some rod on you, man.”
“I got product promised to some customers in the morning. I need to get this done before I can think of anything else.”
“Okay, then. I’m gonna walk on over to the Avenue, find me a bar stool, and have myself a beer. You should be done in a couple hours.” Baker shook himself into his leather. “What’s the door code when I come back?”
“I know what it is.”
“Say it.”
“Knock knock pause knock.”
“Right. See you in a bit, young man.”
Kruger scaled and bagged diligently after Baker had slipped out the door. He would have been happy to sit here all night, working, getting blazed, listening to music, thinking about the things he could get with the cash this weed would bring. The new Vans and Dunks, the T-shirts with the rock star look, the Authentic jerseys with lids that matched.
If Deon were here, they’d talk, joke, and dream on the things that they might buy. He wondered where Deon was at and why he wasn’t answering his cell. Deon had been his boy, and now it seemed that Deon had up and walked away. What Kruger had left was Charles Baker.
Kruger had thrown his gun down a storm drain in the parking lot outside Dominique’s after he had transferred the weed from the white van to his Honda. It had made him sick to hold a gun on a boy his age while Mr. Charles did what he did. Kruger didn’t want to have a gun anymore. He didn’t want to do anything like that again.
Cody Kruger began to lose his high. He knew that Mr. Charles would not forget about that ride out to Maryland. He would be back soon, knock knock pause knock. There was no way to deny Mr. Charles when he set his mind to hunting. Kruger would drive him to see the man who owed him money, because with Deon gone, Mr. Charles was his only friend. Kruger was dim-witted and fried, and there was nothing else that he could see to do.
Twenty-two
Raymond Monroe, standing in Gavin’s Garage, closed the lid of his cell and slipped the phone into the pocket of his jeans. James Monroe was under the hood of an ’89 Caprice Classic, loosening a crippled water pump that he intended to replace. An open can of Pabst Blue Ribbon was balanced on the lip of the quarter panel. James stood straight, picked up the can, and took a long pull of beer.
“That was Rodney Draper just called,” said Raymond.
“Rod the Rooster,” said James, smiling, recalling the nickname they’d given him as kids on account of his funny nose. “Who’d ’a thought that boy would be running a company someday?”
“Rodney always did work hard. I’m not surprised.”
“What he wanted?”
“Alex Pappas called him today. Said he had a history question. Rodney didn’t answer it direct. He wanted to speak to me first.”
James looked into his beer can, shook it, then took another swig.
“Alex is tryin to find Miss Elaine,” said Raymond.
“Why?”
“To talk to her, I suppose. I’m guessing he’s looking to put all this to rest.”
“What did you tell Rod?”
“I told him to wait.”
“Ray…”
“What?”
“Charles Baker contacted me today. He was looking for a ride out to Pappas’s house. Wanted me with him, he said. He didn’t say why.”
“Did Charles say how it went with Whitten?”
“He didn’t.”
“That means it went wrong. And now he’s gonna try and shake down Pappas. This time it’s not gonna be over lunch in some fancy restaurant. This time Charles gonna do it his old way.”
“Well, I told him I wouldn’t do it,” said James. “I told him this ain’t none of my business.”
“It is if Charles hurts that man or his family. It is to me if he keeps trying to pull my brother down into the dirt.”
“Charles can’t help what he is.”
“Plenty of folks had bad childhoods. They found ways to carry it.”
“He never killed anybody,” said James.
“No,” said Raymond, meeting his brother’s stare. “He never did that.”
“Let me get back to this water pump.”
“Go ahead,” said Raymond Monroe.
Calvin Dixon and his friend Markos sat on plush chairs in the living room of Calvin’s luxurious condominium, located on V Street, behind the Lincoln Theater, in the heart of Shaw. They were smoking cigars and drinking single-barrel bourbons, neat with waters back, the bottle set between them on a table made of iron and glass. They had everything young men could want: women, money, good looks, vehicles that went fast. But on this night they did not look happy.
“Did you make the call?” said Markos, a handsome young man with his father’s Ethiopian skin tone and his mother’s leonine features.
“I was waiting to talk to you,” said Calvin, a bigger, cut, more rugged version of Dominique.
“You want some more water? I’m about to get some.”
“Sure.”
Markos rose and went to the open kitchen, equipped with a Wolf cooktop and wall oven, an ASKO dishwasher, and a Sub-Zero side-by-side. He poured filtered water into two glasses from a dispenser built into a marble countertop and brought the glasses back to the table. He used his hand to retrieve ice from a bucket and dropped cubes into the water.
Calvin poured more bourbon from a numbered bottle of Blanton’s. They tapped tumblers and drank.
“How you like that stick?” said Markos, referring to the Padron cigar Calvin was drawing on.
“Nice,” said Calvin. “The sixty-four got the twenty-three beat, you ask me.”
A woman opened the bedroom door and stood in the frame. She was very young, black haired, and supercharged, a mix of Bolivia and Africa. Her breasts strained the fabric of her button-down shirt, and her ass was the inverted heart so many times invoked but rarely realized. Her name was Rita. Calvin had retired her from a haircutting salon in Wheaton after she had given him a shampoo and scalp massage.
“Did you call me?” said Rita to Calvin.
“Nah, baby. Let us have some privacy for a little while longer, okay?”
She pouted for a moment, then went back into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
“Girl must have thought we said her name,” said Calvin.
“I asked you ’bout your stick,” said Markos. “I didn’t say ‘trick.’ ”
Calvin smiled a little, taking no offense. Rita was gorgeous, and a slut. They both felt the same way about women, even each other’s occasional girlfriends.
“How’s Dominique?” said Markos.
“Stayin at my parents’ for the time being. He don’t want to be at his apartment right now. He might be out for good. I don’t know.”
“We can get someone else to move weight for us.”
“I agree.”
“Question is, what are we gonna do about our problem?”
“The old man damn near ass-raped my kid brother. The white boy held a gun on him and watched.”
“ ‘Damn near’ ain’t rape.”
“That’s a hair so fine you can’t split it. Tell that shit to Dominique.”
“What about the other one they were in with?”
“Deon? Dominique says he wasn’t involved. We been tryin to reach him to confirm that, but he’s not taking his calls. That cell probably ringin at the bottom of the Anacostia River right now. If he’s smart, he dumped it on the way out of town. But I’m not worried about him. It’s the other two.”
“Comes back to the original question: what are we gonna do?”