Denice was scared, excited, and a little bit ashamed. All of those things at the same time. She couldn’t stop thinking of Alan. Even with all the bad in his world, she couldn’t wait to see him again.
Tutt pulled over alongside Murphy’s Trans Am on Colorado Avenue. He looked at his partner.
“Tomorrow we talk to some of those people in the neighborhood, Murph. See what we come up with on Junie’s money.”
“All right.”
“Maybe try and hook up with that little—”
“Little what?”
Little nigger. Say it.
“That little fuck, Chief.”
“Right.”
Murphy stared through the windshield at some clean young brother and his girl, dressed nice, headed over to Twin’s Lounge to hear a little jazz. Wasn’t that long ago that he and Wanda used to go there, have a nice late evening together, one or two drinks.
“Murphy, you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Tutt said, “You see that little piece of ass hangin’ on Alan Rogers’s arm? Wouldn’t mind cuttin’ a slice of that myself.”
Cuttin’ a slice. Tutt was always quoting that Grease Monkey, or whatever his name was, the deejay on DC-101 that all the white boys loved.
“She ain’t but thirteen, fourteen years old, Tutt.”
“Yeah, she’s young, but you know what the Greaseman says, don’t ya?”
Greaseman, that’s what the fool’s name is.
“No, Tutt, what’s your boy say?”
“‘Old enough to sit at the table, old enough to eat.’”
Tutt was high-cackling as Murphy got out of the Bronco. Murphy didn’t look back or say good-bye. He wanted to forget he knew Richard Tutt. He wanted to scrub down until the skin came off his hands.
Kevin Murphy drove up to his neighborhood, parked in front of his house, slipped his gun beneath the bucket seat. He walked over to Takoma Station at 4th and Butternut, had a beer and then another while listening to the quartet headed by a tenor sax, with piano, sticks, and upright bass backing the reed man up. He drank his third beer quietly, facing the bar. No one initiated a conversation or bothered him in any way. He knew a couple of the folks in the bar. A couple of others he didn’t know had made him as a cop.
Murphy bought a six at the corner market. He popped the ring on one as he walked back home. He went to Wanda’s bedroom and put the chocolate Turtles on her nightstand. He turned off her lamp. He stood in the dark for a minute or two and listened to her sleep.
Murphy went down to the basement, had a seat on the couch, put the rest of the six-pack on the floor beside him. He turned on the late game, Kentucky versus Davidson, and watched the last ten minutes as he drank.
The game was a rout. Murphy was bored and drunk. He looked around the room. Knotty pine walls, signed Redskins photos, a full-length bar, a beautiful pool table... everything he had wanted when he was first coming up.
Everything he’d wanted — every thing — and now he had them, and none of these things made him happy. He wondered, What’s left to acquire? What could possibly make me happy now?
He thought of a dark and quiet place he called the Peace.
Murphy pulled on the chain of his gold crucifix, let it hang out over his shirt. He fingered the cross and rested his head against the back of the couch. He closed his eyes.
Eddie Golden lay in his bed, his fists clenched tight. He unballed them and tried to relax. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, his back arching slightly, coming up off the bed. He knew he’d never get to sleep. God-damnit, he’d be up all night.
Round about now, like he always did, Eddie wondered why he had done so much blow. What the fuck was so good about this shit, anyway?
So now he had money. He had brought the pillowcase inside. He had dropped it in the hall closet. You couldn’t spend it, though, could you? He was just an appliance installer, after all, and walking around with a bunch of show money, that would cause suspicion. And you couldn’t just put it in the bank. Someone would get hip to that, too.
Eddie Golden didn’t want to look at the clock radio on his night-stand. He had been lying in bed for hours now, and looking at the time, it would only get him upset.
Eddie noticed that, once again, his fists were balled tight. He turned over on his side and closed his eyes.
Eddie wanted to see Donna, tell her what he had done, how he had reached into that burning car and taken the money.
What to do with the money, that was Eddie’s question now. He’d hook up with Donna in the morning. Donna would know what to do.
Dimitri Karras used a hard kitchen match to scrape the last residue of cocaine from his amber vial. The end of your coke: It was flagged by the hasty exit of friends, the pitifully thin line, the empty inhaler, the final canine lick of the snow-seal. But it was never truly the end. If you went through all your containers, you could always find a little more blow.
Karras managed to create a minimound on the glass paperweight he kept under his bed. He used his blade to chop it further. He spread what he’d made into a short line.
The tap tap tap of the blade on the glass. His dealer called that sound the mating call of the eighties.
At the moment, Donna Morgan couldn’t hear the call. She was in the bathroom, moving about, getting herself ready for bed. She had run water from the spigot to cover the sound of her urination. Now he could hear her brushing her teeth. Then the click of the light switch by the door.
Donna came out of the bathroom wearing only her black panties and bra. Karras felt his stomach jump; it was always like this when a woman first came to him undressed. It gave him those good butterflies, like when he was eight years old, leafing through Playboys against the side of his house, feeling hard in his blue jeans, dizzy and guilty and nearly desperate because he didn’t know what to do next. But now he knew. Sitting there in his briefs, stretching them straight out.
Donna stumbled, caught herself as she opened her fist and dumped six aspirin on the bed. Her black hair fell sloppily about her face.
“I’m going to get us a glass of water.”
“I’ll be here,” Karras said.
He listened to The Good Earth coming through the Bose 301s wired into his bedroom. He had put it on the platter before they had shut off the living-room lights.
Donna returned, squinted as she picked up three of the aspirin and washed them down with water. She handed the glass to Karras and he did the same. He placed the water on the nightstand, the ice cubes like muted chimes banging against the sides of the glass.
He stood before her and kissed her. He unclasped her bra, peeled it off her shoulders. He kissed her breasts and licked them, going slowly to his knees, kissing her warm belly and the inside of her hard thighs as he tugged at her panties and she stepped out of them. The heat and smell of her hit him as he buried his face in her sex. He split her folds with his tongue.
“Dimitri.”
“Been waitin’ for you to say my name.”
Donna came, gripping his shoulders.
They sat facing each other on the bed. Donna’s thighs rested atop his. Karras dipped one finger in the cocaine, rubbed some on Donna’s clit and along the silk pink of her lips. Donna followed, touching cocaine to the head of his cock, running the remainder down the underside of his shaft and massaging his balls. Karras’s sex felt frozen and hot at once.