Clockers, page 2
But if Big Chief or Thumper caught one of the boys dirty, someone like Peanut, then got him alone . . . well, everbody was out for
himself. Peanut was being cool and funny with Strike sitting there, but Peanut went to Catholic pay school, his mother was a working woman and he was scared of her. If Peanut ever got caught, he might turn.
Big Chief had finished with Peanut, and now both of them were looking over at Strike. Big Chief knew Strike was clean, but here it came anyhow, just like always. Strike took a swig of Yoo-Hoo to brace himself.
Big Chief clomped over, six foot five, snow-white hair, bounce-lurching on the toes of his sneakers like a playground Frankenstein, wearing his Fury T-shirt — six wolves hanging out of a police car, growling, "Strike, strike, strike." Thumper shoved Ahmed away and chimed in, "No, Big Chief, it be S-S-S-Strike S-S-S-Strike."
Stroke eased off the bench top, raising his arms, looking deadpan, solemn, enduring.
"You got bottles there, Strike?" Big Chief began finger-walking his front pockets, pulling out Strike's money — ten dollars, never more — his house keys and the house keys for three other people who held his dope, his money.
"What are you, a janitor?" Big Chief jingled the keys, giving them to a baby in a stroller, and lazily scanned the curious and growing crowd around the benches.
Strike's eyes went straight to Big Chiefs throat, then shifted over his shoulder, across the projects to where his mother lived with his brother, Victor. Strike imagined them looking out now, seeing this, drawing down the shade.
Thumper barked to a few eight-year-olds, "What's up, yo, you got bottles?"
"I ain't got no bottles," said one little kid, rearing back in disdain.
"Who's Mister Big?" Thumper leaned down, growling like Big Chief.
"This Mister Big," the kid said, grabbing his own crotch, then running away.
"Open your mouth there, Strike." Big Chief checked his teeth as if he was a horse, or a slave.
Strike, yawning wide, saw Rodney roll by in the beat-up rust-colored Cadillac that he'd bought from a pipehead for two hundred dollars cash and another hundred in bottles, kicking the guy in the ass on his way out the door. Rodney in his Jheri curls, his gold wraparound sunglasses and his Cadillac: an old-timer, thirty-five, maybe older.
Strike saw Rodney smirk in disgust, shake his head and raise a lazy hand off the seat back. But he kept moving; he never even slowed down.
"OK." Big Chief looked right, left, then moved close. "Drop your drawers there, Strike. Dicky check."
Strike hesitated as always, holding it in, weighing his options, finally unzipping and pulling down, some of the tenants in the crowd looking away and talking under their breath, some cursing out the Fury, some cursing out Strike.
"Drop your drawers, bend over, say ah-h-h," Thumper said, getting in on it now.
Strike held his underwear band out so Big Chief could look in.
"Short and sweet there, Strike." Big Chief frowned. "Let's see under your balls, there. See what you got taped under your balls."
"Strike's balls," Thumper drawled. "Strikes and balls, three and two, full count."
Strike pulled up his scrotum, caught Peanut grinning on the sidewalk and then looking away quick when he saw Strike watching him, Strike thinking, Peanut's a dead man.
Thumper peeked in. "Jesus, Strike, you got some bacon strips in there, brother. Where's your hygiene?"
Strike bugged out: it was a damn lie. Nothing sickened Strike more than filth, any kind of filth. He was clean, cleaner than any of them. Losing it, Strike looked right into Thumper's eyes, totally blowing his own play.
"W-W-W-What's a m-m-m-matter, S-S-Strike? Y-Y-You OK?"
Strike looked away, pulled up his pants, took his keys back from the baby. It was all Thumper's show now, Big Chief moving off to look under the bench for bottles.
"How come you never smile, Strike? You're clean, man. Crack a smile."
Strike looked off sourly, although he was smiling a little on the inside as he caught sight of the twelve-year-old mule with his two-hundred-bottle lunch box zooming right by Big Chief — Big Chief even stepping out of the way, the kid going into 6 Weehawken to make his delivery.
"Look at Futon." Thumper used his chin as a pointer. "We bust Futon every month, right, Futon?"
Futon smiled, holding the bottles in the Gummi Bear jar.
"See, Futon smiles all the time. What's your problem, man?"
Strike stayed mute, glancing over at Futon doing the gooney bird.
"It takes six muscles to smile, two hundred forty-eight to frown, you know that?"
"C'mon there, Thumper." Big Chief rummaged in the garbage can now like a hungry bear. "Strike's got rights."
"I never said that," Strike protested, flinching as soon as he opened his mouth. Shit.
"Hey, you didn't stutter, that was very good." Thumper put out his hand, forcing Strike to shake it. "Now say, 'She sells seashells by the seashore.' "
Strike's stomach turned red, pulsing. Thumper held his hand, waiting.
Big Chief yawned, going up on tiptoe, then grabbed a bunch of Gummi Bears from Futon's jar, chewing them open-mouthed and then lazily sticking his big paws in Futon's pockets, feeling around in his socks, up his legs.
"Cold, Big Chief, cold, cold . . . warm, getting warm now," Futon said. He offered the Gummi Bears to Thumper. A dumb play, to Strike's eye, but at least Thumper let got of Strike's hand to take some candy.
"Yo, Big Chief," Futon said, feigning anger. "What you doin' back here anyhow? You said if I won Thumper, you leave off on us for a month."
"You know not to trust the police," Big Chief grunted. "What's wrong with you?"
"Gah-damn, ain't that right? Man, I dint even get out of first gear. I was like fopin'." Futon was talking to Strike now, as if Strike hadn't been there. "Thumper was like, huh huh huh. Man, he was huffin' so bad I thought he was gonna drown me in wheeze snot. You all's drink too much, eat too much, smoke too much." Futon counted off their habits on his fingers, making a face.
"See, the problem is, I don't like to run." Thumper flashed teeth. "So how 'bout next time we get into an elevator, push fourteen, and have us a one-on-one?" Strike could almost smell the rage coming off Thumper now, behind the grin. " 'Cause I hate to run."
"Yeah? I put my whooping crane style on you?" Oblivious to Thumper's heat, Futon went up on one leg, wrists high over his head like the Karate Kid, lashing out a kick, switching feet, trying to come off delicate and lethal. "You be beggirC to get off by the third floor, bawh."
The Word came out of 6 Weehawken too soon. Big Chief saw the St. Louis Cardinals hat and went after him with a little hobble-
skip, snatching him up against the fence, a big hand on his heart. "What's up, yo?" Big Chief plucked a fat roll of singles, fives and tens out of The Word's pocket.
The Word started to whine. "I dint serve no one, Big Chief! It's for mah mother's birthday, I swear."
All the knockos bellowed in chorus, "Mother's Day! Mother's Day!," everybody having a good laugh as Big Chief escorted The Word to the car.
"Please, Big Chief . . . My mother, I swear.'"
Strike forgot about Thumper for a second, thinking, What's that nigger doing still holding all the money? Was he stealing? Will he set me up? Rodney just met guys in diners, made payoffs over coffee like a gentleman. Strike swore to himself: If I don't step up, I'm stepping out. I can't take it no more.
The bounty run over for now, two of the knockos walked back through the projects toward the second hidden car.
Thumper came back in his face. "Strike, why you always look depressed? Are you depressed? Are you angry at me?" Thumper looked concerned, waiting for an answer.
"You gotta do what you gotta do." Strike controlled himself, the words coming out low and lazy.
"Yeah? Let me ask you something else. Do you think I'm an effective deterrent in the war on drugs?" He stared Strike in the eye, mouth open, innocent and earnest. Strike turned his head away, but Thumper moved his own head to keep up the eye contact. "Or do you think I'm just a big asshole?"
Strike caught Peanut looking at him again. Peanut definitely out of work. The Word out too.
"Oh shit." Thumper snapped his fingers. "Did we do socks and shoes?"
Strike breathed through his nose and hunched over to unlace. Thumper said, "Allow me," then dropped to one knee as if they were in a shoe store, undoing Strike's sneakers and then slipping off his socks.
"Let's go, there, Thumper," Big Chief yelled from the car. Thumper sighed, rising, shaking out the socks for hidden dope.
"OK. I gotta go, hon." Thumper swiveled on his hips like a discus thrower. Strike tensed, bracing himself for the goodbye. Thumper uncorked it, slapping Strike between the shoulder blades, a heavy, bone-rattling pock, sending a shock wave of pain through Strike's 125-pound frame. "Catch you later."
Thumper walked over to a group of little kids who were watching the show, dropped his hand on a six-year-old shoulder: "Walk me, Big Time." He strolled to the car with the kid as security against a toaster thrown out a window, Strike's socks dangling from his back pocket.
Strike pulled on his sneakers over bare feet, clenching his teeth so the porcelain squeak was a hundred times magnified to his head, thinking: Lose all the idiots around me. Clowns, thieves, juveniles . . .
Strike walked to the curb and looked into the Fury: The Word sat in the back. Strike tried to catch his eye, throw some fear, but The Word was sitting on the street side and wouldn't look his way. Crunch sat on the curb side, elbow out the window, waiting to roll. Little kids hung all over the car, wide-eyed; Big Chief nodded to one kid and growled, "What's up, yo? Dempsy burnin'?"
Strike turned and noticed a boy of eleven or twelve standing there staring at Crunch, stick legs in wide-cut shorts, arms crossed high on his chest like an old-time comic-book weightlifter. The kid was giving Crunch the thousand-yard stare, testing himself, putting on his I-aint-afraid-a-no-knocko face. Crunch, feeling the eyes, the attitude, stared right back. "What's your problem?"
The skinny boy didn't answer, just kept staring, and Crunch went with it, playing, staring back.
But Crunch couldn't hold it. He started laughing, and what happened next threw Strike completely. Strike expected the kid to go on staring or walk away triumphant, but when Crunch started laughing, the kid laughed too. The kid had play in him. The kid had flex, and flex was rare. Flex was intelligent, special, a good sign, like big paws on a puppy. For a minute Strike lost his anger, entranced by this kid, by possibilities.
As the Fury rolled off, Big Chief said goodbye to Strike by making a gun with his fingers and winking. As soon as they were gone, the baby-fat girl came up to him again.
"Can I ask you something?" she said. Her smile was tense, jittery, begging.
Strike ignored her, then asked a question of his own. "Who that kid there?"
"Where?"
"Him."
"That Tyrone Jeeter."
"He live here?"
"He just moved into Eight Weehawken from over on the other side. You know his mother? That woman Iris? Strike, can I borrow a bottle?"
Strike started to walk away, thinking about flex, when the rust-colored Caddy came rolling up again, Rodney at the wheel with his arm flung out along the back of the shotgun seat. Rodney ducked his head down to see over the gold frames of his sunglasses, then curled a finger for Strike.
Strike looked right and left, frowning, not liking to be seen talking to Rodney out in the open, even though any kid in the street could draw a diagram: Champ on top, then down to Rodney, then down to Strike and finally down to whomever Strike was trusting this week.
Strike walked to the car, stuck his head in the passenger-side window and got hit with a heavy cherry smell coming from the deodorizers Rodney had in front and back. Six Garfield cats were suction-cupped and spread-eagled on all the rear and side windows, staring bug-eyed out at the traffic.
Rodney sat with a hand on his crotch. Zodiac and Apollo XII patches sprouted from the thighs of his dry-cleaned jeans, and a button was missing from the belly of his white ruffle-paneled shirt. But he was handsome, smooth-skinned and in pretty good shape from all the prison time and from being an ex-boxer.
"Who'd they take?" Rodney thumbed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
"The Woo-Word." Strike was annoyed to hear the stutter come back on him. "He ain't holding or nothing."
"You gonna go tell his aunt to get him?" Rodney spoke in singsong, like a schoolteacher.
"I take care of it." Maybe Rodney should take care of some things too, Strike thought, like losing the Garfields. And lose the Caddy while he was at it — the only monied nigger left in creation to drive a big-body Cadillac.
"What you want?" Strike sniffed, picking up a vague fried-food smell underneath the cherry scent.
"You go to that doctor yet?" Another singsong nag.
"I ain't had time."
"That shit'll kill you quicker than anything out here." Rodney tilted his chin at the Yoo-Hoo.
"What you want, Rodney?" Strike tried to come off patient, but
barely, wanting to get back to the bench and reorganize the post-attack situation.
"Come by the store."
Rodney's long fingernails were shiny and gray with food grease. Strike's gut rippled reflexively. "When?"
"Later."
"It gonna be busy."
Rodney shrugged. "Let Futon run it."
"Futon a idiot." Strike looked away, scowling, not wanting to see those fingernails anymore.
Rodney sighed, shook his head. "You got to get off that bench every now and then, my man. You gonna get all crabbed up."
Strike couldn't respond, the stammer hitting strong, right up from his feet. And he didn't even know the words yet.
"Just come by, OK?"
"I-I-If I can."
The baby-fat girl worked her way up to Rodney's window in a shy slide. She peeked in, smiling. "I like them Garfields."
Rodney gave her a slow eye and fanned his knees. "What you want?"
Strike pushed away from the car, headed back to the bench. Turn my stomach.
"Yo yo, check it out." Horace shoved a Childcraft catalogue under Strike's nose and pointed to a brightly colored set of 250 blocks standing at twice the height of a blank-faced, five-year-old redhead. "That's some bad shit for a kid, them blocks."
They were sitting on the top bench slat, thigh to thigh, birds on a wire.
"What the hell you want with blocks for? You a mfant?" Strike had a Hold Everything catalogue open on his knees.
"Not for me, motherfucker. I'm just sayin' ..." Horace got all red and choke-faced.
"Yo yo, Horace want play blocks." Peanut haw-hawed, spinning out in a tight circle, his own catalogue rolled up into a baton.
"Hey, fuck you, nigger!" Horace flew off the bench and Peanut danced away, his laugh exaggerated, pushing it.
Strike thought Horace did want the blocks. He wanted the blocks, the deluxe colored pencil sets, the construct-a-castle, the miniature
rescue vehicles and maybe even the plastic microbots. Strike knew Horace had been taking his money and buying toys on the sly since the beginning, but he never said anything about it because Horace never had anything before in his life, and he was only thirteen.
Ever since Peanut fished a dozen catalogues out of a garbage can, everybody was in a state of mild disorder, passing around the thin glossies as if they were sex books. Strike would have cracked a whip if it was anything else, but he was the worst. He'd meant to go over to Rodney's store an hour before, during the dinner lull, but had remained glued to the bench, a half-dozen catalogues on his lap, running his fingers down page after page of camisoles, hand-carved Christmas-tree angels, computerized jogging machines, golf putting sets for den and office, personalized stationery, lawn furniture — anything and everything for man, woman or child. The catalogues made him weak in the knees, fascinated him to the point of helplessness, the idea of all these things to be had, organized in a book that he could hold in one hand. Not that he would ever order anything — possessions drew attention, made you a target. None of the boys would order out of a catalogue either, not necessarily because they were paranoid like Strike, but because the ordering process — telephones, mailings, deliveries — required too much contact with the world outside the street. It was easier to go to a store on JFK Boulevard, flash your roll and say "Gimme that."
Strike didn't have a watch, but he knew it was seven o'clock because Popeye came out of 4 Weehawken. Popeye was forty-five but looked sixty, a hobbled-up twist-backed pipehead with a bulging left eye. He shuffled over to the bench licking his lips, probably broke but liking to be near the bottles anyhow, hoping he'd find one in the grass or something. Strike had given Popeye a bottle out of pity a few weeks back, but that had turned out to be a bad mistake, because the only thing worse than a pipehead with no bottle to smoke was a pipehead with one bottle, and Popeye had spent the rest of that night in a frantic scuttle, hassling the crew for hours until Strike had to slap his face. Strike still remembered the slick bristles of Popeye's cheek and something wet — spit, blood — left on his own hand. Strike had rubbed it off against his pant leg in disgust, and all that night he dreamed about that wetness on his palm and fingers.
