Clockers, page 70
Strike was addressing the cop but trying to meet the dope mule’s downcast eyes.
“Ask him,” Strike said again, feeling a trembling in his jaw, a shimmery film building in his eyes, thinking about these cops finding his seven thousand dollars; thinking how, one way or the other, nobody ever really got away with anything in this world.
The cop took his arm. “Come on.”
Strike felt his resistance drain, but then the kid spoke quietly to his shoes. “I don’t know this guy.”
Strike looked away, afraid to meet the kid’s eyes now, afraid that the knockos would misinterpret the flush of gratitude in his face.
The cops went into a silent conference that culminated in a ring of shrugs; they had their grab for the night.
“Well, what are you doing here, then?” the bald cop said.
“I was just leavin’ town.” Strike nodded fervently, figuring cops always liked that answer. “On my way out.”
Backpedaling, watching the cops watch him, Strike moved toward the ticket counter. Once in line, he eyed the departure board directly overhead, reading the cities again.
“Washington, D.C.,” Strike announced, dropping a pinch of tens and twenties in front of a barred window.
“Washington, D.C.,” the clerk repeated, taking Strike’s cash and moving to the keyboard of his computer.
“No, wait.” Still gaping up at the roll call of cities, Strike thrust a staying hand across the counter. “Philadelphia … Yeah, Philadelphia.”
The clerk gave him a quick dry look and started to recount the money.
“Wait a minute, wait.” Strike waggled his hand, licked his lips, squinted upward again. “Give me a second here. Just like one muh-more second…”
Thirty minutes later, Strike sat by the smoke-tinted window in the trembling bus, looking down at a scrawny line of passengers still toddling forward in the drafty bus bay. He held a dozen cities in his fist, the individual tickets in his See America booklet spread out in his grip like a fan. Strike gave himself a little breeze and thought about where to get off. Newark was coming up in about half an hour, but no way he’d be getting off there. The bus was scheduled to make stops in Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh and Atlanta, but with the hand he was holding, he could get off just about anywhere and transfer to just about any other bus going somewhere else.
Strike thought of the hard-luck dope mule who had given him his reprieve from the Port Authority knockos. The kid didn’t have to do that; earlier he had asked Strike for help and Strike had turned his back. Strike couldn’t figure it. People were dropping out of the sky to cut him slack today, as if sending him a message, a blessing, a warning.
He thought of Victor’s son calling him Daddy on the phone. For a moment he was pulled into Victor’s world, Victor’s loss, and the echo of that boy had Strike writhing in his seat, desperate for this bus to back out and roll.
Strike pondered Philadelphia coming up in about ninety minutes, wondering whether he should get off there, cash in all these tickets. Then he decided that he would probably stay on the bus, ride on to Washington, maybe even Atlanta. Maybe he’d try the South for a while, or maybe he’d use another ticket, go out west. He’d see when he got there. He’d just have to see how he felt, think about what he’d be thinking about when he got there.
Besides, there was hardly a place in America where you couldn’t find a pay phone. Just walk right up to it, call anybody you damn want to.
Unannounced and unnoticed, Rocco took up his customary starting position at the back of the crowd. He watched Mazilli and Rockets work the body, Rockets slowly circling with the Nikon, ringing the corpse in a series of flashes while Mazilli logged the shots on a clipboard.
The victim looked to be about eighteen or nineteen. Tall and emaciated, he lay on his back in a puddle, his arms crooked like a cactus, his eyes staring up at the shattered marquee of a long-gone movie theater. Even from thirty feet away, craning past the heads of the onlookers, Rocco counted at least a dozen entry wounds from groin to collarbone. A scatter of ejected shells lay about two feet from the left arm, another grouping a yard south of the right foot. The victim had obviously been killed in a crossfire, and Rocco wondered what the kid might have done to provoke this kind of end for himself.
Rocco watched as Mazilli began to undress the body, initiate the official probe and tally of wounds. The kid wore two pairs of filthy sweatpants, a ripped orange Seton Hall T-shirt, no underwear, no socks, and there were holes on the bottom of his laceless shoes—a basehead chopped down in mid-mission, by the look of him. The mystery began growing in Rocco, taking up house: Who the hell would have bothered to set up an automatic weapons massacre just to take out this stinky and pathetic bag of bones?
Rocco winced as Rockets accidentally backed into his forensic case, knocking his camera to the ground, the flash going off on impact. A ripple of derisive laughter rose from the crowd.
Enough.
Rocco took a deep breath, held it, then let it out nice and slow. He began easing his way up to the yellow tape.
“He was a nice guy, right?” Rocco declared in a conversational tone, his eyes casually scanning the crowd. “Who the hell would want to shoot him?”
Table of Contents
PART 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
PART II
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Part III
17
18
19
20
21
PART IV
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
PART V
33
Richard Price, Clockers
