Soul Circus

by George P. Pelecanos

  Mario slid the bills into his pants pocket, alongside the Taurus, thinking, now I got some of the hundred back I gave to that Strange in Petworth, and it’s right here next to my gun. It feels good.

  “Okay, then. You need a ride somewhere?”

  “Nah, man, I got my short right up there at the end of the alley.”

  “I don’t see no car.”

  “It’s down the street some.”

  “Holler at you later,” said Dewayne.

  Mario turned and walked away. Dewayne watched him hitch up his Tommys as he went down the alley.

  “That boy ain’t got no whip,” said Walker.

  “I know it,” said Dewayne. “I don’t know who’s more stupid, a man can’t afford no car or a man who’d rather walk than admit it.”

  Some kids on bikes had been circling them in the alley, not lingering but keeping within Dewayne’s sight. They all knew who Dewayne Durham was. They were hoping to catch his eye in some way, get noticed. They were hoping, someday, to get in with him if they could.

  “Hey, D,” said one of them, riding by, “when you gonna put me on?”

  Dewayne didn’t answer. The one who had asked was bold on the outside but was hiding his insecurities and his fears. Dewayne had noticed how this one always backed down when someone called him on his words. The kid standing on the pegs of the back of the bike, that was a kid to look out for. He didn’t speak too much, but when he did the other kids listened. And they stepped out of his way when he was walkin’ toward them, too. He wasn’t but eleven or twelve, but in a couple of years Dewayne would start him out as a lookout by the elementary school, across from the woods of Oxon Run, where he moved product at night. Give him the opportunity to rise up above all this.

  “Yo, little man,” said Dewayne to the kid riding the pegs. “Move that shit out the head of the alley so we can roll on out of here.”

  The kid nodded and gave directions to the one steering the bike. They rode to the T of the side street and moved some old tires and trash cans placed there to discourage the police from entering the alley. Then they rode back and continued to circle the car. Dewayne held out a five-dollar bill to the kid on the pegs as he made a pass. The kid refused the tip with a short shake of his head. Another thing Dewayne liked about this one: He was looking toward the future. He was smart.

  “Better go see Ulysses,” said Dewayne, head-motioning Walker toward his car. “Told him we’d be out.”

  Dewayne got under the wheel of the Benz, and Walker got in beside him. They drove slowly down the alley, the kids on the bikes following their path. Walker got PGC up on the radio. Soon he grew tired of the commercials and scanned down to KYS. They listened to the song, that Erick Sermon joint that sampled Marvin Gaye. Marvin was a D.C. boy originally, and anything had his voice in it was all right. Least they hadn’t played this cut out, the way they liked to do.

  “You think Mario’s gonna fuck up?” said Walker after a while.

  “Maybe he won’t this time.”

  Dewayne kept his eyes on the road and tried not to show that sick feeling he’d been having inside his stomach these days. Running a business was easy. Dealing with family, that was hard.

  HORACE McKinley stood in the back window of the house on Yuma and watched Dewayne Durham’s Benz roll out the alley. McKinley, large like Biggie, looked even heftier today in his warm-up suit. He wore a large crucifix on a platinum chain that hung outside his shirt. He wore the latest And Ones on his feet. A four-finger ring, spelling YUMA in small diamonds set in gold, was fitted on his right hand.

  McKinley’s body filled the window’s frame. Kids around the way called him Candyman when he was coming up, not from that horror movie but from that big fat actor whose heart went and blew up in his chest. McKinley was fat then, and he was still fat, but no one called him Candyman anymore.

  He had been watching Dewayne Durham talking to that sad-ass, no-job-havin’, retard-lookin’ brother of his across the alley. If Horace had a brother like that he wouldn’t claim him. But Dewayne was soft that way. That soft spot was gonna get him dead someday, he didn’t look out.

  Truth was, Dewayne didn’t seem to have the fire no more to keep up what he’d got. McKinley’d seen the way Dewayne had cut his eyes away when one of the cousins, out on the back steps, had stared him down. It was cool not to look for trouble, but sometimes you had to give a little attitude just to wake up the troops. Bottom line was, these boys were in this shit to begin with for the drama, like the way boys used to be all eager and shit to go off to war. That’s what most folks didn’t understand. But Horace McKinley did. Once in a while you had to feed your boys some conflict, just to give them something to do.

  A cell phone rang behind him. He heard his man Michael Montgomery, a.k.a. Monkey Mike, talk into the phone. Then Mike was beside him by the window, hitting the “end” button on the cell.

  “That was Inez over at your hair shop,” said Montgomery.

  “He came back?”

  Montgomery nodded. “She say he looks like some kind of police. Drivin’ a police-lookin’ car, anyway. He’s been sittin’ in the parking lot waitin’ on Devra. Look like she’s fixin’ to meet up with him, sumshit like that.”

  Horace looked over at Montgomery, his arms longer than shit, his hands hanging down around his knees. How he got the name Monkey, Horace suspected. But he never had asked Montgomery to confirm it. Didn’t serve no purpose, other than to rile his ass up. Monkey was loyal, but when he was fierce he was fiercer than a motherfucker, like someone went and crossed the wires and shit inside his head. At the same time, there was something soft behind his eyes, too. McKinley had never been able to figure that part of him out.

  “Better keep an eye on her,” said McKinley.

  “I’ll get a couple fellas from out back.”

  “Get the cousins,” said McKinley, and Montgomery went to the back steps, where James and Jeremy Coates were with the others, getting high.

  McKinley mopped the sweat off his forehead as he watched through the window. Montgomery was out there now, telling the Coateses to get up and come with him. The two of them, had the same last name ’cause their fathers were brothers, stood like they were on springs. That’s what McKinley liked, how ready those two always were. Course, they were a couple of stone ’Bamas, only having lived up here for the last two years. And they drove a ’Bama car, one of those Nissans, the 240SX, trying to be a Z but wasn’t even close. But you didn’t want your boys driving whips as nice as yours, anyway. They needed to see what you had and want it bad enough to work for it their own selves. Want it bad enough, up to a point.

  Horace McKinley understood a lot of things about running a business. He had learned them, mostly, from Granville Oliver, and he had learned some from Phillip Wood. Granville Oliver wasn’t comin’ out, and maybe Phil wasn’t either, but if they put Oliver down with a needle, that left Phil alive.

  So he’d put his chips in with Phil. Stayed in contact with him, got him cash and cigarettes, and passed him messages through the guards at the Correctional Treatment Facility, the ones who took money to look the other way. And he kept an eye out here for those who could undermine Phillip Wood with regard to his upcoming testimony.

  McKinley believed in staying on the winning side. Like every leader who had come to terms with the long-range prospects of being in the life, he knew this was going to end for him in one of two ways. Either he’d be got by one of his rivals or he’d go to prison. He might be doing time his own self someday, and if he was, he might be lookin’ to Phil Wood for protection.

  He had told all of this to Mike Montgomery when Mike had asked why they were going through all this trouble. Mike couldn’t really see why they were looking after Wood when it was damn near certain that he would be in forever. The way McKinley explained it, Mike almost seemed to believe it. Almost. Anyway, Mike followed orders. He always had.

  There was a good reason for McKinley’s protection of Phil Wood, and it did have to do with M
cKinley’s well-being. But he’d been told not to give Montgomery, or anybody else, the full, true story. Just like he’d been told to track Phil Wood’s enemies while the Oliver trial was in effect. And you couldn’t fight the ones who was doin’ the tellin’. McKinley never did have much school, but he was smart enough to know that. Smart enough to do as he was told.

  One thing he did know, and that was that Granville Oliver was as good as dead. So, regardless of his motivation, there wasn’t no upside to gettin’ behind Oliver. That was the other part about being a good businessman: You had to know who to stand with when things started to come apart.

  Chapter 8

  ASHLEY Swann stood on the back deck of the house she shared with Ulysses Foreman, dragging on a Viceroy, tapping the ash into a coffee mug set on a wooden rail. In her other plump, pink hand was a glass of chardonnay. She wore a pair of silk pajama shorts, salmon colored with a matching top, and leopard-print slides on her feet. Her hair had a streak of black running through the part, but the remainder was blond with an orangish tint. There was a little bit of green in it, too, but that was from the chlorine in the Dream Dip, what they called the indoor pool at this cheap motel she and Ulee had stayed at in Atlantic City. Thank God the green was finally starting to fade.

  Having a smoke with her white wine on the back deck was one of Ashley’s true pleasures. She preferred to smoke outside rather than in the house, especially on nice days like this one, where she could listen to the birds and look into the woods that bordered their backyard. It reminded her of the tree line on the edge of her father’s soybean farm down in Port Tobacco, where she had been raised.

  Hard to believe that they were within a mile of Anacostia, just over the District line in Maryland, off Wheeler Road. Once you crossed that line there was even a country store, telling you, abruptly, that you’d left the city behind. Right past a Citgo gas station, not too far from the country store, was their place.

  Ulysses had been smart, like he had been smart about so many things, when he’d bought this house right here, set back like it was in a stand of trees. Close to his business but protected. Made you feel like you were far away from the drama. You could even hear crickets chirping on summer nights, though those sounds were sometimes mixed with the occasional crack of gunshots riding up from Southeast, if the wind was right.

  Even when she’d first got to know him, when he’d been a patrol cop and she’d been a dispatcher in 6D, Ulysses had talked about having a house in the country. All right, so this wasn’t exactly the country. But he’d had ambition, unlike most men she’d known, including her husband, who was happy working on small motors and such. For Ulysses, the ambition was more than just talk. Since she’d met him, he had always got close to what he’d set his sights on. She loved that about him, that and his size. A woman could feel secure with a big, driven man like Ulysses Foreman.

  He was coming through the rambler now, toward the back deck. She could hear his footsteps, large as he was, and now she was thinking, You should’ve changed up out of these pajamas, girl; he’s gonna say something first thing.

  “Damn, Ashley,” said Foreman, coming out into the open air. “You ain’t dressed yet?”

  “Thought I’d ease into my day.”

  “Well, you better ease your fine ass inside and get into some street clothes. I got a business meeting out here any minute.”

  Ashley made a half turn, blowing out an exhale of smoke and smiling, giving him a look at her ass cheeks hanging out the bottom of those shorts.

  “Don’t you like the way I look in these, Ulee?”

  Foreman took her in and felt his mouth go dry. Her hind-parts were bigger than most, but that was the way he liked them. And with those dimples and wrinkles and shit, it looked like someone had thrown oatmeal onto the back of her thighs. She had some veins on her, too, like blue lightning bolts, back there. But you didn’t see all that when you closed your eyes. Same thing went for her belly, and the shotgun-pellet-lookin’ marks on her face, and her little upturned nose, didn’t even look large enough to let the air in, to tell the truth. That switch on the bedside lamp was what he liked to call the Great Equalizer. You could excuse a lot with a woman who could buck like Ashley.

  Lord, she had a set of big, full lips, too. Woman could suck a man’s dick without touching her teeth to it, the way a dog gives love to a porterhouse bone. Okay, she wasn’t fine by any stretch, nothin’ you’d want to march around in front of your best boys. But there were things she did he’d never go looking for anywhere else. Black women loved you like that for a night; a white woman, though, once you gave her some of that good thing? They’d love you the Heatwave way: forever and a day.

  “I do like those jammies on you, baby, you know I do.” Foreman pointed his chin toward the back door. “But hurry up on in there, now, and get dressed.”

  Ashley stubbed out her Viceroy in the cup. She had another sip of wine and hustled herself inside. Foreman found himself grinning. It was hard to get mad at her, and he was still up, anyway, having burned some of that hydro Mario had traded him. That smoke was nice.

  Foreman checked his watch. Dewayne Durham would be showing up any minute.

  He didn’t care to do business here, what with the risk. But he made an exception for those who headed up the various factions in Southeast, especially the leaders of the largest ones. What with Granville Oliver gone, there were plenty of players vying for the action now. Dewayne Durham, from the 600 Crew, and Horace McKinley, holding the Yuma Mob together, had to be the top two. They expected to be treated right, to have their meets down in his basement, sitting in comfortable chairs, having a sip of something, instead of in some car parked out on the street. Having them over the house was worth the risk. Business was good.

  Oliver had been his first hookup. He’d started taking payoff money from Oliver when he, Foreman, had been a cop. It was about then that Foreman had seen a way to make big money for real. His years as a police officer had given him insights into the criminal mind, and he’d learned the mechanics of illegal gun sales, straw buys and the like, the same way. Oliver had been his first customer, and his best up until the time the Feds busted him on those RICO charges.

  But even with Oliver and his boys put away, there would always be a market down here. This new breed of hard boys comin’ up, they all wanted shiny new guns, the same way they wanted nice whips. And the turnover was high, on account of you couldn’t hold on to any one crime-gun too long. Long as there was poverty, long as there wasn’t no good education, long as there wasn’t no real opportunity, long as kids down here had no fathers and were looking to belong to something, then there was gonna be gangs and a need for guns. This textbook he’d had called it supply-and-demand economics. Foreman had learned about that during the one semester of courses he’d taken at the community college over in Prince George’s County.

  So he’d quit the force, citing the burnout effect of the job. Six months later, Ashley Swann, who he’d been doing since he met her, resigned from the MPD as well. She left her white-boy husband, a lawn mower repairman, no joke, and moved into this house with him. Ashley hadn’t worked a day since.

  She didn’t need to work. She didn’t need to get out of those pajamas or put her wineglass down, she didn’t want to. Foreman was making good money moving guns around, and he worked about twenty hours a week as a security guard on top of that, just so he could show something to the IRS come tax time.

  Course, he wasn’t the only dealer in this part of the city. But he was the quality man. He didn’t sell Davis or Lorcin or Hi-Point or Raven, none of those cheap-ass guns project kids bought on their first go-round. He carried fine American, Austrian, and German pieces, pistols, mostly, and occasionally special-order stuff the young ones had seen in the gun mags and the movies, AKs and Calico autoloaders, carbines, and the like. He customized some of the guns himself. You could still buy a Hyundai down here, you wanted to, but he was the Benz dealer in this part of town. His goods were marked way up,
but he had no problem moving them. Shit, the high price tag was a badge of honor for these kids, like bragging that you had spent a couple thousand on a Rolex watch or a clean grand on a set of rims.

  Foreman had a couple of boys working for him. These boys rounded up young girls, just old enough and with no priors, to do the straw buys in the gun store over in Forestville on the Maryland side, and in Virginia, in these shops they had way down Route 1. They used junkies and indigents, too, long as they had no record. You had to be careful with the junkies, though. The 4473 had a question, asked if you used drugs, and if you got caught lying on a federal form after the trace, that was a felony. Filing off the serial number, that was another amateur play right there, something Foreman would never do. Another felony, good for an automatic five. It was the way police squeezed testimony out of suspects and got them to flip. As far as solving cases went, shaking down suspects to give up other suspects worked better than ballistics and forensics every time.

  Another of Foreman’s boys was a student at Howard who had been raised in Georgia. He made the 95 South run in his trap-car once a month to his hometown, where family and friends made purchases in the area on his behalf. This boy was putting himself through college with what Foreman was paying him. It was true that D.C. had a handgun ban, but its good neighbor states, especially those to the south, did not. So there wasn’t no thing to getting a gun in the District. Simple as buying a carton of milk. And you didn’t even need big money to do it. You could rent a gun or trade drugs to get one, or the community could chip in to buy one. What they called a neighborhood gun. In many of the Section 8s there was a pistol buried somewhere, could be got to quick, in a shoe box. Most everyone knew where that shoe box was.

  It was an easy business to be in and manage. Situation wasn’t getting any better for these kids, so there would always be a need, and the money continued to flow in. So why was Foreman feeling those burning pains in his chest? Had to be the start of an ulcer, or what he imagined an ulcer to be. It was because he had been a cop, and in that time he had learned something about criminals, and being a criminal himself now, this is what he knew: His time was gonna come. No one in this game, be he gun dealer or gang leader or dope salesman, lasted forever. It could be the police or someone younger, stronger, or crazier than you, but the fact remained that someone was going to take you down.