“We’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t think you realize—”
“We’ll take care of it,” said Donna. “Thanks for the advice. And thanks for letting me know about it so quickly, too.”
There was enough sarcasm in her voice to convince Karras to end the conversation. Anyway, they were coming up on her place.
Karras pulled into the lot of Donna’s garden apartment, a small complex butting up against the Chevrolet dealership at the south end of the Wheaton business district. Eddie Golden sat on the steps leading up to Donna’s unit.
Karras pulled up alongside a group of cars parked in front of the steps. Eddie stood but did not move toward Karras’s car. Eddie smiled seeing Donna’s face. He didn’t even bother to look at Karras or shoot him a hard glance. Karras felt an unfamiliar stab of guilt then, thinking, This Eddie character, he seems like a pretty good guy.
Donna shook Karras’s hand. “I had a good time, Dimitri. I had fun.”
“Wait a second.”
“Huh-uh.” She reached over and patted him on the arm. “I gotta go.”
She was out of the car quickly, closing the door behind her and moving toward Eddie. She had a bounce in her step, a sudden rejuvenation triggered by the thought of the money or the sight of her man, Karras couldn’t tell which. He watched them embrace before pulling the BMW out of the lot.
Heading down Georgia toward D.C., Karras pulled into a Shell station to gas up and use the head. In the men’s room he blew his nose into some toilet paper and dropped the bloody mess into the bowl.
He washed his face, stared at his wasted reflection in the smudged mirror. He had a long workday ahead of him and some weekend left over after that. He knew what he needed to bring himself back. Not too much, nothing in quantity like last night. Just a little bit would do him right. A little bit of something to clear his head.
Eddie dipped his head, kissed Donna’s cool lips. He stroked her belly, took in the pleasure of her naked body beside him.
“I gotta go to work,” said Donna.
“I know,” said Eddie.
They had made love as soon as they had gotten in the door. Donna was sore from the night before, but she couldn’t mention it to Eddie. Her bedside jar of Vaseline helped. Also, Eddie was on the small side, and he never did last too long, a blessing for once.
“Eddie?”
“Huh?”
“I’m proud of you, Eddie.”
Eddie Golden smiled. “Thanks, Donna. I don’t know what made me do it. I don’t know if it was right. I still don’t know.”
“That’s drug money, Eddie.” She pointed lazily to the bills spilled out on the carpet beside her bed. Eddie had brought the pillowcase up from the trunk of his car. “It doesn’t belong to anybody, not really.”
“Who told you that?”
“Karras.”
“Your new boyfriend?”
“You’re my boyfriend, Eddie. Like I told you, nothing happened last night.”
She had said they’d gone out to a show and it had gotten too late for Karras to drive her home. She had said that she’d slept out on his living-room couch.
Eddie knew she’d fucked Karras. He knew and he didn’t care. He didn’t want to lose her. With the money it would be different between them. The money and what he’d done to get it. She respected him now.
Eddie kissed her again on the lips.
“Stop it,” she said playfully. “I gotta go to work.”
“You don’t have to, not really. Not anymore.”
“What are we gonna do, run away together?”
“We could.”
“How about Florida?” said Donna.
And Eddie said, “Why not?”
Donna showered for the second time that day and changed into fresh clothes. Eddie had cut out a couple of lines from the coke he had left over from the night before. Donna did both lines, figuring it would help her get through her shift behind the novelty jewelry counter at Hecht’s. The blow made her feel much better, and she did two more bumps before leaving the apartment with Eddie.
Out in the parking lot, Eddie said, “I’ve got a dishwasher installation this afternoon. Gotta go over to Beltsville to pick up my tools and my truck. Afterwards I’m gonna swing back by my place, get some clothes. I’m thinkin’, till we find out if anybody’s looking for me, I’ll stay here for a day or two. That okay by you?”
“Fine.” Donna touched Eddie’s brow, then his hairline where it had been singed. “You okay?”
“It’ll grow back, I hope.”
“I love you, Eddie.”
“We gotta talk, Donna, tonight. We gotta make some kind of plan.”
“I get off at six. And I promise, I’m coming straight home.”
He kissed her and went to his Plymouth. On the ride out to Beltsville, he pushed in a John Cougar Mellencamp tape and played it loud.
“Little pink houses for you and me,” sang Eddie.
He looked in the rearview, checked out his smile. Donna sayin’ she loved him, that was really something. He’d been waiting on that for a long time.
Karras studied the checkbook register in his hand. Looking down the withdrawals column, he saw mostly 50s, with the odd 100 inked in here and there. He might as well have written the words half, gram, half right next to the numbers. One look at his checkbook reminded him of how much coke he had been doing these last few months. Well, he’d give it up someday soon. He’d get bored with it, most likely, the way he’d gotten bored with grass.
Karras put the checkbook back in his glove box, exited his car, and went up Connecticut on foot. Clouds passed across the sun and shaded the street. He pulled up his jeans, which were hanging loose at his waist. At the ATM by the Safeway he withdrew another fifty, crossed the avenue and headed toward the old apartment house on the corner of Albemarle. His dealer lived on the building’s eighth floor. The dealer, a guy named Billy Smith, owned an antique store on 18th Street in Adams Morgan. Sometimes it seemed to Karras that half the antique dealers in D.C. dealt coke.
Near the corner, Karras looked across the street at the Nutty Nathan’s on the west side of Connecticut, the electronics store where that Nick Stefanos guy worked. Karras had been there to see him, must have been ten years back, when Stefanos was just a teenager.
A black kid with a bandanna wrapped around his head was standing on the sidewalk outside the store, watching the Hoyas game on the televisions lined up in the display window.
Karras went into the apartment house, sampled a taste of Billy Smith’s new batch of freeze, and copped a half.
Driving across town fifteen minutes later, he turned on HFS, heard the intro to “Back on the Chain Gang,” and cranked the volume way up. The sun had broken out from the clouds. His head was clear, and he was no longer tired, and the deejay was playing his favorite Pretenders jam.
Karras smiled. He’d felt like roadkill just a while ago. Now, suddenly, there was promise in the day.
Twelve
Kevin Murphy saw the Taylor kid standing outside the liquor store at 12th and U, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his Raiders jacket. He told Tutt to take the cruiser down the block a ways, and then told him to pull it over to the curb.
“What’s up, Murph?”
“I’m gonna talk to that boy back on the corner there. Maybe he saw something with Junie and the money.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Uh-uh. Might be better if I do this one-on-one.”
“Maybe I’ll find out how Rogers and Monroe are coming along.”