“Man was African.”
“Come over here, takin’ our jobs.”
“You ain’t lookin’ for no job, Short.”
“Shut up, man.”
Monroe pulled over at the first beer market he saw. He went inside and drew a forty of Olde English from the cooler, raised his voice to the Korean woman behind the counter, told her to get him a Maryland phone book. Her husband and Monroe stared at each other while the woman went to the back room. She returned with the phone book. Monroe opened it and found what he wanted while the woman rang the sale.
“Got the street number of that joint,” said Monroe, back in the car.
“What joint?” said Rogers.
“Appliance Installers Unlimited. That’s what that boy said, right?”
“I guess. What we gonna do now?”
“Get the ball rollin’,” said Monroe. He twisted the top of the malt liquor bottle and took a long swig.
“Maybe we ought to call Tutt and Murphy.”
“Uh-uh,” said Monroe. “We gonna do this mothafucker right.”
Chink Bennet said, “Shit, Jumbo, why you gotta be makin’ so much noise? Show my girl a little respect.”
Jumbo Linney was reaching into his party-sized bag of Doritos, bringing out some ranch-flavored chips. The sound of crushed cellophane competed with the grunts, moans, and short breathing of the men jacking off around them.
“Your girl? She yours now, huh? You think Vanessa know you, Chink? You ain’t had no girl since as far back as I can remember. Last time you had a piece of ass was when your finger broke through the toilet paper while you was givin’ yourself a wipe, ha ha ha.”
“Ain’t heard that stupid shit since grade school, man.”
“Grade school be the only place a tiny mug like you would get some play. Remember that group picture they used to take every year when we was in grade school? How they always put the itty-bitty mothafuckers in the front row? They made a new front row for your Tattoo-lookin’ ass.”
“Quiet down,” said someone behind them.
“Take a walk,” said someone else from the back of the theater.
“Who gonna walk me?” shouted Linney. “You?”
“Talk about it, Jumbo,” said Bennet.
“Nigga tryin’ to take me for bad.”
Bennett and Linney sat with two seats between them so no one would think they were punks. The Gayety Theatre was half filled for its Saturday matinee. “Ladies Free with Escort,” the ads always said, but Chink and Jumbo had never seen a woman in the place, except for the hand-job hookers the patrons brought in and the women up on the screen. Vanessa Del Rio was up there now, sitting on some dude’s face.
“Her Name Is Lisa,” said Bennett with reverence, the way a priest might say “The Song of Bernadette” when asked to name his favorite film. “Why don’t they call it Her Name Is Vanessa, though, Jumbo?”
“’Cause she’s playin’ a character got the name Lisa.”
“There you go,” said Bennet, pointing at the screen. “She workin’ that mothafucker now, boy.”
The actress was saying something like, “Oh, your cock is so big,” but Chink Bennet wasn’t listening to her words. He studied her mouth, mostly, his favorite Vanessa body part, though he liked her big titties and the muscle action way up on her thighs. Girl had a nice onion on her, too.
A guy two rows up gave a horse-shake of his head and pitched forward as he shot off into a dirty sock. Bennet and Linney laughed. The guy got up and left the theater a few minutes later.
“Hey, Mr. Ed, where you goin’?” said Linney.
“Movie ain’t over yet!” shouted Bennet.
“Forgot your Ban-lons and shit!”
Bennet and Linney touched hands.
“Vanessa,” said Bennet a little later on. “That there is my girl.”
“You ask me, I’d like to have me a girl like Karen Johnson.”
“What, you sayin’ she near as good as Vanessa Del Rio?”
“Naw, Chink. I’m not talkin’ about the way she looks. I’m talkin’ about what she did for the mayor. Gave up that pussy and supplied him with cocaine any time he wanted, man. Then went to jail for his ass instead of testifyin’.”
“They say the mayor’s friends paid her off, Jumbo. The ones he gives those contracts to and shit. Gave her some of that hush money you hear about.”
“Why she did it, I don’t know. But any man could get with a woman who’d do that for him.”
Chink Bennet stroked his chin. “I had a choice, I’d stay with my girl V, right up there.”
Out on 9th Street, Bennet and Linney walked toward the Supra.
“Better get over to Tyrell’s,” said Bennet. “He’ll be lookin’ for us, man.”
“Make a stop first at the Seven-Eleven, okay? Got my heart set on some nachos, man.”
“Damn, Jumbo, can’t we ever get in the car and drive without stoppin’ for food?”
“I guess I just love food the way you love pussy, Chink.” Jumbo side-glanced his friend. “Difference is, I can eat any time I want to.”
Richard Tutt had an apartment in Silver Spring Towers, just a half mile over the District line on Thayer Avenue. He had stopped at the Safeway across the street on Fenton, bought a few Hungry Man dinners and a box of ice-cream sandwiches, and parked his Bronco in the side lot. He took the elevator up to his place.
Tutt lived in downtown Silver Spring for its proximity to his work. This was as close as you could get to D.C. without actually having a District address. Tutt would never live in a place where he was in the minority, though sometimes it seemed as if Silver Spring was headed that way, too. Looking down to the street, he could see the spics and the spades, the punjabs and the A-rabs, walking up toward the Metro or waiting for Ride On buses, or hauling those two-wheeled carts of theirs up to the grocery store. Tutt was thinking of moving to the country, maybe toward Frederick or out 29, where you could still get a lot of house for the money and some open land. The commute was hell, but at least out there you could wake up in the morning and say hello to your own kind.
Tutt’s two-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished, a floor mattress in one bedroom, a This End Up living-room set and a dining-room table from his parents’ old house in the living area. A bench, some free weights, and a floor-to-ceiling mirror sat in the spare bedroom.
Tutt’s parents were dead. He didn’t have many friends to speak of. He guessed Murphy was his best friend, although Murphy always had some kind of excuse when Tutt suggested they get together outside work. Tutt occasionally saw his sister, who had rowed with one oar in the water since she was a little kid, but only on special holidays and on her birthday. He generally avoided her because her husband, Tutt’s light-in-his-loafers brother-in-law, came with the package.
Other than his sister, Tutt never brought girls to his apartment. He didn’t like waking up next to a woman he didn’t know, and he especially didn’t like the awkward way it felt after you pulled out and there was nothing more to say.
Tutt hadn’t had a girlfriend since the tenth grade. Tonight, like most weekend nights, he had no plans.
Tutt got back in the baby blue Bronco and drove over to the Erol’s on East-West Highway. He picked out a Death Wish movie he thought he might have rented before, though he couldn’t tell from the box. One of those was interchangeable with the next, and Tutt thought all of them were pretty good. Charlie Bronson wreaking righteous havoc on a bunch of rug-heads and Third World cretins. Nothing better than that.
He went back to his apartment, did four sets of fifty push-ups, undressed, and picked up a fuck magazine that lay on the floor by his bed. He leafed through the mag and played with himself a little, but he couldn’t make his dick stand up, so he went into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. Tutt dried off and got into a clean pair of acid-washed jeans, microwaved a Salisbury steak platter, and took the dinner and can of Bud Light out to the living room, and set up in front of the tube to watch the flick.