“No, Wanda, I’m not sayin’ that. This boy’s life is incomplete, but he’s got his own kin.” Murphy looked down at the carpet. “Look, all I’m sayin’ is, there’s plenty of boys like Anthony out there in this world, got nobody to guide them, tell ’em what they gotta do to be a man. Babies and toddlers, too, lookin’ at a future with no real love. Now, you and me, we can make a home for a child like that. We’ve got this house, you know it’s too big for the two of us, and I’ve got the money put away. Between you and me, we can provide a whole lot of love for some—”
“Kevin!” Wanda laughed raucously. She rocked back and forth and pointed to the TV screen. “You see what that girl did? Oh, Lord, I can’t believe it!”
Murphy took the empty soup bowl and water glass to the kitchen. He changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt and went down to the basement. He did some stretches, put on a pair of twenty-ounce gloves, and began to hit the Everlast heavy bag suspended from the ceiling beams near his workbench. The bag had duct tape wrapped around its middle where a split had begun; Murphy had copped the bag from an acquaintance, a karate instructor whose students had given it a punishing hands-and-feet workout over many years.
Murphy started slowly, light brushes and then hard combinations, pounding the canvas with jabs and hooks and straight rights. He broke a good sweat and stopped to catch his breath. He listened to the sound of rain pebbling the glass of the window wells that ran around the house. He relaced his gloves and worked the bag until his shirt was soaked and his head felt light.
Just about then his father phoned about Sunday dinner. Murphy told him he’d try to make it and said good-bye.
Murphy showered, opened a can of beer, and went back down to the basement. He watched a little ball. He got up, grabbed another beer, and carried it to his workbench. There was a cardboard box filled with old lottery tickets from his father’s church on it. He put the box on the floor. He opened up a box of Remington ammo and spilled rounds out onto the workbench top. One by one, he clamped the bullets in a vise and cut X’s in their heads using a hammer and fine-edged chisel. He brought his S & W Combat Magnums down from the shelf, dismantled them, and used his Hoppe’s kit to clean and oil the parts. He reassembled the guns, replaced them in their cases, and put the bullets that he had dumdummed back in the box.
Murphy glanced at his watch. He had been three hours at his bench.
The phone rang in the basement, and Murphy picked it up.
Murphy listened and said, “Lord.” Then he said, “I’ll meet you at O’Grady’s in fifteen.”
Seventeen
Eddie Golden turned right off Route 1 and drove his Ford Courier down Sunnyside Avenue toward a concrete horizon of two-story warehouses and fenced-in lots. On weekdays this part of Beltsville’s industrial district was traffic heavy, but on Saturdays the landscape was barren and bleak. There’d be tumbleweeds blowing across the street, thought Eddie, if tumbleweeds tumbled in Prince George’s County.
Eddie was glad his friends from Hunter’s weren’t around to see him driving the Jap-made truck. The way the Courier looked, short based and low to the ground, like a kid’s toy, they might as well have removed the Ford logo on the tailgate and painted on a rising sun.
Eddie pulled into the lot of Appliance Installers Unlimited, a squat little building not much more than a hollow rectangle of cinder blocks housing two bays. He backed the Courier close to the building, got out, and climbed into the bed, then he pushed an old GSD-400 dishwasher, which he had taken out of a rental unit earlier in the day, to the edge of the tailgate. He pushed the dishwasher off the truck. It landed next to several others where his fellow installers had made a pile.
Eddie locked up the truck. He got his tool belt from the bed and walked toward his car. The Reliant was the sole car in the lot. He had parked it next to a Dumpster set along the building’s side wall. A black sports car sat on the street, parked along Sunnyside’s curb.
Eddie sang an April Wine tune he liked as he looked up in the sky. Clouds had gathered, and he could smell rain in the air. But he wouldn’t let a little weather kill his evening. He was in a really good mood. He hated working weekends, but with the money and all, he wouldn’t have to much longer. He couldn’t wait to spend the evening with Donna, sit her down, make some plans.
Florida. Goddamn, boy, that would be nice.
He put his key into the lock of the Reliant. He heard footsteps scrape gravel.
Someone grabbed his free hand from behind and twisted it upward. Eddie went forward, his cheek smashed up against the car window, his eyes clearing the roof.
“Whoa,” said Eddie, trying to stay on his feet. “Wait a—”
“Shut the fuck up,” said a voice.
Eddie had a blood rush, hearing the black-man’s inflection in the words.
A car pulled from a lot down the street and began to drive away. Eddie panicked and let out a high-pitched yell.
He heard a crack. A fire bolt traveled up his arm, rocketed through his neck, and flared at the base of his skull. He felt his fingers touch the back of his forearm.
Eddie screamed. Eddie went to black.
Eddie stared at the back of a black seat. He was on the floor of a car, and he felt very close to the ground. There was vibration and city music and two men arguing over the music, and when the music stopped there was still the arguing and the sound of wipers on glass.
He was near fetal behind the seats. Something heavy lay across his legs. He moved his arm up an inch and looked down so that he could see what was causing all the pain. His hand was bent too far, and his wrist bone pushed out against the skin where it had snapped. A tear rolled down his cheek.
“Fuck you had to break his arm for, Short?”
“Bitch screamed; I had to make him stop.”
“What we gonna do with him now?”
“Couldn’t just leave him there. Take him back to Ty’s, find out what we need to know.”
“Tyrell ain’t gonna like it, man, you bringin’ him to the house.”
“He’s gonna like how we found the one tried to beat him for his money. You can believe that.”
“What if someone comes around, looks for him where he parked his truck?”
“Why I had you drive his car and park it a couple miles away, behind that car wash. Anybody comes around, they’ll think he got back from work, took off, went and got drunk, some shit like that. That is, if anybody cares.”
Eddie Golden closed his eyes. Maybe none of this was real.
Alan Rogers slipped the Z in the space between the Supra and Tyrell’s 633. He cut the engine and watched rain cloud the windshield.
“Go ahead, Alan, I’ll get our boy inside.”
“I’ll get him, Short. Take his tool belt and go on in. Let Tyrell know we got him ’fore I bring him through the door.”
“Right.”
Monroe reached behind him and lifted the tool belt off the white boy’s legs. He got out of the car and walked through the rain, stepped up onto the porch and into the bungalow.
Rogers looked into the back of the car at the white boy. His eyes were open but set kind of strange.
“What’s your name?” said Rogers.
“Ed.”
“Ed what?”
“Ed Golden.”
“Okay. I’m gonna tell you what’s what, ’cause once we get inside I’m just another employee. Can’t help you none in there.”
Eddie licked some crust off his lips. “I’m listening.”