Shoedog

by George Pelecanos

  The apartment was sparsely furnished, Early American on faded hardwood floors, ropy throw rags. Currier and Ives prints centered on white walls. They walked through the living room, passed a dinette set on the way to the kitchen. Delia switched the kitchen light on by pulling on a string that hung from the ceiling fixture. Constantine could see the silhouette of bugs lying in the globe of the fixture.

  “I’ll be in there,” Delia said, pointing across the narrow hall to the only remaining room. “Why don’t you open the wine?”

  Constantine found glasses and a corkscrew. He corked the wine and walked into the darkness of the room across the hall.

  The Venetian blinds had been lowered and drawn in the room. Delia stood in her bra and panties by a tall dresser, removing her earrings as she stared into the mirror. Constantine stopped behind her, traced a group of freckles sprayed across her shoulders. He poured two glasses of wine, placed the bottle on the dresser, and handed one of the glasses to Delia.

  “This your mother’s room?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No, it’s all right.” Delia put the wine glass to her lips, wrinkled her nose, smiled. “It smells like ginger,” she said.

  “That Indian place,” Constantine said.

  Through the window, in the stillness of the room, they could hear the laughter and taunts of children, playing on the grass behind the building. They spoke in English, their accents Asian and Hispanic. “Your mother!” said one, and then “Your father!” from another, and after that more laughter.

  “It would be good to be a child,” Delia said. They were naked on the bed now, lying side by side, the cotton bedspread and sheets drawn back.

  “I don’t know,” Constantine said. “Nature corrects itself, I think. There’s something good about every time.” He kissed her on the lips, then touched his tongue to the cup of her armpit. He tasted her perspiration and perfume.

  “Children don’t have this,” he said.

  Delia’s blond hair fell around the pillow, her arms back and underneath it. She stared at the brushstrokes patterned in the ceiling, swallowed, half-closed her eyes. Constantine kissed her belly, the inside of her thighs. He blew softly on the light brown hair of her pudendum, and took in her scent. He spread her lips with his thumb and forefinger, ran his tongue along the silk of her pink flesh, blew his breath inside of her.

  “Constantine,” Delia said.

  She came quietly. Afterward they sat facing each other on the bed. Delia put her legs over his thighs, held him in her warm hand. She lowered herself onto him, moved him inside her, kept him there. He kissed the long curve of her slender neck, smelted her hair, held her. He rested his head against her breast.

  CONSTANTINE poured wine into his glass. He walked to the window, stood naked beside it, peering through the spaces in the drawn blind. Dusk threw vague slashes of light across his hips and chest.

  Delia rose from the bed, moved across the room, stood behind Constantine. She put her arms around his shoulders. He felt the wetness of her groin against his skin.

  “What about tomorrow?” Delia said. “Are you going to be here after tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” said Constantine.

  “I’d like to go away,” she said.

  “Where would you go?”

  Delia shifted her weight, ran her fingers lightly through the hairs at the top of Constantine’s chest. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’d raise horses somewhere, I guess.”

  Constantine sipped wine, stared at the lines of gray in the blinds. “You’re doing that now. You’re doing it in style.”

  “I want to get away from him, Constantine.”

  Her hand fell to his hips, then touched between his legs. She wrapped her fingers around him. Her fingers brushed the end of him, where the remains of their lovemaking still came and dripped to the hardwood floor.

  “You made a mistake,” Constantine said. “You never should have—”

  “It just happened,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for anything. He came into my life, just after my mother died. I don’t even remember how we met.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know it, Constantine.”

  She moved around to face him, then dropped to her knees. He felt the cool sweat on her hair as it touched his thighs. He felt her breath on him, her lips around him, her tongue. Constantine braced his hand against the trim of the window, and closed his eyes.

  THEY fell to sleep on the bed, woke to darkness. Delia found a candle, pushed it into the wine bottle, lighted it, and set it on the dresser. They showered together, then dressed together in the bedroom.

  Delia stood in front of the mirror and brushed her hair. Constantine stood next to her, took his wristwatch off the dresser. Among the woman’s articles on the dresser, he saw a St. Christopher’s medal, a cloth patch embroidered with the numbers 1221, and a scuffed baseball. He fastened the clasp on his wristwatch.

  “Did a man live here, too?” Constantine said.

  “No,” said Delia. “I found those, in the bottom of the dresser, after she died. My mother had friends, after my father left. But only friends.”

  “A woman can get along all right without a man, I guess.”

  “She lived a long life. But she was never happy.” Delia’s eyes were wet in the light of the candle. She blew out the flame, touched Constantine’s hand in the dark. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  DELIA drove Constantine to the motel on Georgia Avenue, stopped the Mercedes out front. She kept the headlights on and let the engine run. Constantine leaned across the seat, kissed her on the edge of her mouth.

  “Thanks.”

  Delia wrote the number of her private line on a card, handed it to Constantine. She touched his cheek.

  “This isn’t over,” she said.

  Constantine did not answer. He got out of the car, shut the door, moved across the sidewalk to the doors of the motel, heard the Mercedes pull away from the curb. He bought a pack of smokes from the machine in the lobby, went to the elevator and pushed on the up arrow.

  Constantine waited for the elevator, listened to a Johnny Guitar Watson tune coming from the lounge. He smiled a little, shook his head, turned, and headed for the lounge.

  At the entrance, he passed a middle-aged man holding the wall for support. The man nodded at Constantine, tried to focus his eyes.

  Constantine smiled. “A real mother for ya,” he said.

  The man pushed his hat back on his head and said, “Ain’t that cold?”

  Constantine entered the lounge and took a seat at the bar.

  Chapter

  18

  ISAAC sat on the edge of the bed, polishing his .45 in the yellow light of the lamp that sat on the nightstand. Next to the lamp, a General Electric clock radio, the dial set on WHUR, played softly in the room: Norman Conners, “You Are My Starship.” Isaac loved that one. He rubbed the oilskin down the barrel of the Colt, and sang along.

  He had cleaned and oiled the gun while Nettie, his wife of twenty-three years, cooked dinner one floor down. Isaac could smell the garlic of the pork roast, the biscuits, the onions frying with the potatoes, all of it coming up the stairs, warming the house. It felt right, sitting there, the aroma of the dinner in the room, Nettie working in the kitchen, the sounds of her pans clattering below, the fit of the .45 in his hand.

  It had been a while since he killed a man. Twenty-two years, back in Vietnam. The way he felt then, he would have done anything to get back to his young wife and baby girl. He would have killed them all.

  Besides, it had been work, and when a man was paid to do something, he did it. He had gotten back to the world, and he had gotten a straight-up job, and the baby girl had grown up fine, a junior now at UDC. He had stayed married to Nettie, too, not always an easy woman to live with, but a fine woman just the same. Good God, the woman could cook.

  The job at the liquor store, that had alway
s done him right. His paycheck read two fifty-five, but young Rosenfeld added two hundred in green to the envelope every single time, and it was the saving of that cash over the years that had bought his daughter’s education, some other things as well. Yeah, the Rosenfelds had always done him right.

  And there was the other thing. Isaac’s father had been a stone drunk, a street-corner fixture in the Le Droit Park neighborhood where he had grown up. Old man Rosenfeld had taken Isaac’s father in, taken him off the street, and given him a full-time job at the old liquor store on 5th and T. Isaac’s old man straightened up then, and though the damage had been done—a rotten liver and a chest full of cancer—he lived out his last years with some dignity.

  So when Isaac got back from the war, he took his father’s place at the new liquor store on Wisconsin and Brandywine. In the garage next to the store he taught young Rosenfeld not to drop his left when throwing a right, and he showed him how to get down in a three-point stance. He watched him grow up, and he watched the father grow old. He listened to their trash-talking bullshit every day, how they played each other and the customers, and sometimes he winced at it, but always he kept his mouth shut. He owed the family for what they’d done, for his father and for him. He did his job.

  Now the hustler had given him ten grand to kill a man, and he’d do that too. He’d make a modest dollar on the sale of the house, and he’d’ hook that up with the ten, and move with Nettie off Fairmont, to someplace safer, Oxon Hill maybe, or Landover, or Capitol Heights. Nettie could grow tomatoes, some spices in the yard. He’d buy her a few things, a new dress, and some shoes—good God, the woman loved shoes—and a few things for himself.

  He thought of the man in the maroon sport coat, the man the hustler had met outside the liquor store, at the car. It bothered him a little bit, ‘cause he knew the man. He forgot about it, though, as Nettie’s voice called from down the stairs.

  “Dinner, Isaac.”

  “I’ll be right down, baby!” he yelled.

  Isaac palmed a full clip into the butt of the .45, safetyed it, placed it in the top drawer of the nightstand. He switched off the radio, then the light, and walked out of the room.

  GORMAN cut the Caddy’s engine, got out of the car, and walked across the lot. He checked the lot for undercover boys, guys sitting in their Fords wearing mustaches and shades and Peterbilt caps. He couldn’t see a one. Most likely, they were parked across 261, bayside, in the lot of the Rod and Reel. They alternated stakeouts between the Rod and Jethro’s, the crab house and bar that sat back on Fisherman’s Creek, the marina area on the canal that dumped into the bay. Jethro’s was where Gorman was headed.

  Gorman felt comfortable in Chesapeake Beach. The drive was only thirty minutes from the Grimes estate, and he liked the water, and the air smelled salty and clean. And not too many spades. Always plenty of bikers, though, which meant that. Gorman knew he could take the short drive down to Chesapeake, anytime, and cop. There was always reefer, and if he wanted green, he could get it, the good shit too, not Mexican sprayed with Raid. But tonight Gorman wasn’t interested in smoke. Tonight Gorman was looking to score some crank.

  He walked into the open-aired lounge at the side of Jethro’s, had a seat at the bar to the left of a group of young steamfitters he had seen before. The steamfitters, a loud row of beards, were all sloppy drunk. They watched a pro basketball game on the television set mounted over the call rack, and every time a shooter would miss, one of them would say, “That was close,” and another would add, “Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades,” and all of them would laugh.

  Gorman nursed a draft and pretended to watch the game, though Gorman did not follow sports much, and he especially did not follow basketball, basketball being a game for bootheads. After a few sips of his beer, Gorman nodded across the horseshoe bar to a long-haired man in a leather jacket, and then Gorman went to the head in the back of the restaurant to take a piss.

  Gorman drained in the urinal, then washed his hands in the sink. As he dried his hands on a brown paper towel, the long-haired man in the leather jacket walked into the bathroom.

  “Spunk,” Gorman said. “Thanks for comin’.”

  “You called, man. I’m here.”

  Gorman tossed the crumpled towel in the wastebasket, drew a fifty from his wallet, handed it to Spunk. Spunk leaned his back against the bathroom door, took a snowseal from the pocket of his leather, and put it in Gorman’s palm.

  Spunk’s hair looked wet. He shook it away from his face. “You want to take a look?”

  “Uh-uh. It’s got weight.” Gorman put the drug in his pocket. “You never fucked me before, Spunk.”

  “I wouldn’t fuck you, man.”

  “I know it.”

  Spunk went to a dispenser mounted above and to the left of the sink. He put quarters in the slot, cranked a wheel, and reached into a slot at the bottom of the dispenser. He pointed the matchbook-sized packet at Gorman.

  “Linger-On,” Spunk said, turning the packet so he could read off the label. “Apply contents to area of organ covered by foreskin and massage until ointment disappears. Wait five minutes before ma… marital relations.”

  “Quicker to jerk off,” Gorman said.

  “Yeah.” Spunk shrugged, gave Gorman a chew-stained smile. “The old lady likes it, though.”

  Gorman said, “Take it easy, Spunk,” and left the head.

  Gorman returned to the bar, drank his beer standing, left fifty cents on two-fifty for the barmaid, and walked back out to the Caddy in the lot.

  He lowered the window, started the engine, and turned on the radio: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”—at least they were good for somethin’, man, goddamnit they could sing. Gorman eye-swept the parking lot, unfolded the snowseal in his lap. He okayed the weight—no, Spunk knew better man to fuck him—and checked out the texture. Solid, specked with blue throughout.

  Gorman used a double-edged razor to cut a line on a flat glass paperweight he kept in the car. He bent his head, did the line, felt his eyes water immediately. He wanted a smoke right away, but he waited. Gorman’s blood began to rush a little faster. He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel, bobbed his head to the music, cut out another line of crystal meth. Afterward, he lighted a cigarette, drew on it deeply. Some blood dripped from his nose, stopped on the cleft of his upper lip. He wiped it off, and smiled. This was real good shit.

  Gorman pulled out of the lot, headed for 260. He kept the window down, turned the Motown up. Gorman wanted another hit, but he figured he could ride the high all the way to the house. Then he’d kick back, huff a little glue in his room, relax. Besides, the crank was for tomorrow. He’d save it, do it then.

  VALDEZ held a juice glass in his thick hand, swirled scotch. One drink, just like always, the night before a job. Then early to bed.

  A portable black-and-white played at a low volume in the room. Valdez sat in his boxer shorts on the bed, sipped scotch, watched the program on the screen. This was the one where the young guy runs an advertising agency, and the agency gets taken over by a bigger company, and the bigger company sends in some broad, a broad with brains and a big set of tits, to run it. So the guy, now he’s got to answer to this broad, and he doesn’t like it. But he likes those tits. So, for the whole season on this show, the two of them trade insults, and he checks out her ass every time she turns around, and she does the same to him, and nothing ever happens. Valdez figured, he could tell from the way the guy smiled, that the actor playing the role took it up the ass in real life. But they should have let him nail the broad on the show. It was a pretty good show, funny and all that shit, but him nailing the broad would have made the show a whole lot better.

  Valdez tried to think about the last time he had been with a woman. He tried hard to remember. He thought of the time, a couple years back, when he and Gorman had gone down to Thomas Circle and bought a whore, a white broad wearing white hot pants with coffee stains on the crotch. She had sucked him off in the stairwell of a
n apartment house a little ways north of the Circle, on 14th. It had cost him twenty-five bucks, and Gorman had waited in the car. He guessed that had been the last time.

  Valdez got off the bed, walked in front of the mirror that hung over his dresser. He fingered the gold crucifix that hung between the saddlebags of his chest, his eyes traveling down to his great brown belly. Under all of that he knew he was as hard as any man. He knew, too, that he was an ugly man, and that the ugliness added to the weight made it hard for any woman to want him. Men feared and respected him, though, and that was something.

  From his bedroom, Valdez could hear the muffled, raised voices of the woman and Mr. Grimes upstairs. He walked back to the television set, turned up the volume. The beam of headlights—that would be Gorman, back from his run—passed through the room.

  Valdez finished his scotch, placed the juice glass on the dresser. He touched the barrels of his two .45s, touched the extra clips laid neatly at the guns’ sides. He turned off the television, turned off the lamp on the nightstand, lay on his back on top of the covers. Valdez folded his hands across his chest, listened to the muted emotions of the voices above, listened to the heavy wheeze of his own breath. He closed his eyes.

  WEINER laid an LP on the platter—the Jazz Messengers, on the Columbia label, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sound—and turned up the volume on his Marantz tube amp. Man, this one really cooked.

  He fixed himself a Brandy Alexander at the counter of his kitchenette, took it out to the living room, and had a seat on his brown corduroy sofa. Weiner put his feet up on the glass table that fronted the sofa, rested his glass in his lap. He closed his eyes, listened to the jump of “Infra-Rae,” Hank Mobley’s tenor sax blowing wild against Art Blakey’s drums.

  Weiner had taken in a five-thirty show at the West End, had one drink after that at the bar of Madeo’s, a restaurant next door to the theatre, then walked the three blocks to his Foggy Bottom apartment. He had changed into paisley pajamas, a velour robe, and brown leather slippers.