Soul Circus

by George P. Pelecanos

  “So the money’s comin’,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Bullshit.”

  And now what? she thought. More of these one-word sentences, prob’ly, and then he’d just flare his eyes some more and turn around and leave. Get his brother, but not tonight, which would give her time to book, gather up Mark and her personal shit and move on to something else. Wasn’t gonna be no fun, but then she’d known what she was getting into from the start. The important thing was, nothing was gonna happen tonight. You got down to it, what was this little man right here gonna do on his own, for real?

  She looked down at his shoes and laughed. She didn’t mean to, but the chronic, it had fucked with her head. And this really was one sorry motherfucker right here. Couldn’t even afford no Jordans, had pair of “ordans” on his feet. And then he looked down and knew right away what she was laughing at. And he got this funny look on. Not acting mad anymore but mad for real.

  He slapped her square across the face.

  It stung her and surprised her. It surprised him. For a moment, Durham looked at his hand, the one that had slapped her. He had never hit a woman before. He had never hit a man. But when she had laughed, it was like it was all those people on the bus and everyone else who’d ever cracked on him was standing there before him, laughing. All of them, not just her. Well, he damn sure did have her attention now.

  No one had ever looked at him before the way she was looking at him this minute. She was showing fear, and something else: respect.

  She touched at the spot that had already reddened. Then, slowly, she stood straight and cocked up her chin. That look of fear, it had passed as quickly as it had come.

  “That’s all you got?” said Olivia.

  “I’ll give you more, you want it.”

  “You dare take a hand to me?”

  “Bitch, I will close my hand next time, you don’t mind your mouth.”

  She chuckled and looked him over. “Oh, shit. Now Steve Urkel gonna act all rough and tough, huh?”

  “Olivia, I’m warning you, you are fuckin’ with the wrong man.”

  “Man?” She looked him over and moved in a step so that her face was close to his. “I don’t see no man. You see a man in this room, point him out.”

  “I’m about to -”

  “You about to what? Slap me again?” Her eyes caught fire. “Motherfuck you, punk.”

  Spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke those words, and she raised her hand to strike him. Durham grabbed her wrist. She drew her free hand back and he grabbed that wrist, too. He pushed her away, releasing his hold on her, and she backpedaled and hit the couch. She charged him then.

  He stepped in as she neared him. Her arms were spread and she was open in her middle, and he punched her in the stomach with all he had. He was trying to stop her, but he realized as his fist sank into her doughy flesh that he had caught her good. He felt a power then that he had never known before.

  Olivia hinged forward at the waist. Her sour breath hit him as it was expelled. Her eyes bulged in pain and surprise. And as she jacked forward he drove his fist up into her jaw, putting everything into it. The uppercut lifted her off her feet. The noise it made was like a branch snapping off a tree.

  Olivia staggered and found her feet. She lowered her head and put her hands on her knees. She retched and spit out blood. She spit out a tooth. A thread of mucus ran from her nose and hung in the air.

  “Oh, sweet God,” she said.

  The revolver from the pocket of his Tommys appeared in his hand. He gripped it by its barrel.

  She looked up at him, at the gun, and her eyes went wide, humble and afraid. He liked the way it made him feel. He was strong, handsome, and tall, everything he had never been before. He wished Dewayne were here to see him now.

  “Nah,” said Olivia, standing out of her crouch, unsteady on her feet. A glaze came to her eyes and she spread her hands. She wanted to plead to him but couldn’t get the words. She was thinking of her son.

  The gun in his hand was electric, and he swung it like a hammer. The butt of it connected to her face. She turned her face and a sprinkle of blood jumped in the same direction, and while she tried to keep her feet he whipped her there again, harder this time. Her body spun. She tumbled over the couch. Her legs dangled off the arm of it and one of her sandals dropped to the floor.

  Olivia wasn’t making any kind of noise now. The music was still playing, and so was the television. But it seemed real quiet in the room.

  Durham walked around to the front of the couch and looked down at her. Her face was all fucked up. The socket was caved in around one of her eyes, where he guessed the gun had connected. It was a mess, but through the blood and bone he could see that the eye had popped out some and was layin’ down low. It seemed the way the eye was pointed that she was lookin’ off to the side. The eye was an inch or so lower than where it should have been, and it was exposed nearly all the way around. Nerves and muscles and shit was the only thing still holdin’ it on her face. Her jaw had turned color and was set off to the side kinda funny, and it had already swelled up, too. Her hands were bent at the wrists in the center of her chest, like she had arthritis or sumshit like that. If she was breathing, he couldn’t tell.

  I guess I killed her, thought Durham. I just murdered the fuck out of that bitch.

  He dropped the gun back in his pocket.

  He walked around the apartment for a little while. How long, he didn’t know. He searched her room and took her keys off her nightstand. He searched the room where her son slept. He looked under the boy’s bed and through his drawers. The usual kid shit was thrown around the room: CD cases and game cases and wires and controllers coming from the PlayStation he had hooked up to a small TV. Ticket stubs from a Wizards game. He had a Rock poster and a magazine picture of Iverson taped up on his wall, too. But no chronic and no money. He went to the kitchen and then the bathroom and searched through the cabinets and all but found not one thing. In the bathroom mirror he saw his face and noticed the dirt tracks on it. His forehead had sweat bullets across it and his eyes were bright.

  He sat down on the toilet seat and wrung his hands.

  He couldn’t just leave her here, that much he knew. Take her somewhere else, dump her body, let her go missing for a while until he figured out what to do. When they did find her it would look like she got herself killed at random. She’d said her boy would be with his uncle for a couple days, and that would give him some time.

  He took the shower curtain down off its rings. Out in the living room he spread the curtain on the floor and picked Olivia up off the couch. She hadn’t gone cold yet and she wasn’t stiff like he’d thought she’d be. Blood trailed on the wood floor as he carried her and dropped her roughly on the curtain’s edge. He rolled her up in it and looked at the mess she had left behind.

  He couldn’t take her down the front stairs. He went to the back door that led to a rickety old porch overlooking the alley. It was quiet back there, except for the dogs. A light from down the way showed that below the porch was a narrow yard of dirt. He knew what he’d do, but he wasn’t ready yet.

  He found some Comet or something like it in the kitchen, wet some paper towels, and shook some of the cleanser on the couch where most of the blood was. He rubbed at it and it got soapy and also turned the brown couch to beige. Must’ve had some bleach in it or somethin’, and anyway, didn’t look like the blood was coming out. He got up what she’d spit out and all and used more cleanser on the floor, and that came out all right. But the couch was going to be a problem. He couldn’t bring the color back to it, that was a fact. He had fucked that up good. But he rubbed at it some more as if he could. Then he flushed all the paper towels down the toilet, one by one so they wouldn’t clog it, and waited to make sure they had disappeared.

  He started to talk to himself as he worked. “You all right, Mario,” and “You okay, boss,” like that. He notic
ed he was sweating right through his jersey. His hands were slick with sweat.

  Durham found a rag under the sink and went around the apartment wiping off his fingerprints at the places he could remember he’d touched. He must have touched damn near everywhere, he knew. Still, he did the best he could. He put the rag in his pocket, then went back out to the living room. The shower curtain was red where Olivia had bled out. He bent down over what had been Olivia and picked her up, lifting mostly with his legs. He had no bulk on him and little muscle, so it was hard. He felt his back strain as he carried her out to the porch. He looked around but not too carefully, as he knew now that the rest of it would run on luck.

  He dropped Olivia off the back porch. She came out of the curtain halfway down. When she hit, the sound was dull, like she wasn’t nothin’ but a bag of trash. He thought he heard her moan for a second, but he knew that it had to be in his mind. There wasn’t no sounds out there, not really. The dogs that had been barking all night were still barking, and that was all.

  AFTER turning off the television and stereo, and the lights, Mario Durham got Olivia’s Tercel and drove it back into the alley with its lights off. He rolled her back up in the curtain, noticing that one of her arms was bent funny and most likely had got broke from the fall. He had to fold her some to get her body in the trunk of the car. She still hadn’t gone stiff.

  Durham drove into Southeast. He knew a place he could dump her there.

  It surprised him, how calm he was. He was sorry he had killed Olivia and all, but he couldn’t take it back now, and anyway, he had done this thing for Dewayne. What else was he gonna do, go back to his brother with empty hands, tell him that Olivia had given his chronic to someone else and it was just gone? Dewayne had always taught him that when someone stepped to you, you had to step back. And when Mario had promised to square it, Dewayne had said, “Don’t tell me, show me,” and this is what Mario had done. Now, finally, Mario would be a man in his kid brother’s eyes.

  He turned the radio on and kept the volume soft.

  The thing he had to look out for now was the police. He didn’t want to go to no prison for this. That was the only thing that scared him right there. Fuck all that rite-of-passage bullshit he heard the young ones talkin’ about. He knew he wouldn’t last in no kind of lockup.

  He’d get rid of Olivia and lay up with his best boy Donut for a while. Let his mother and Dewayne know where he’d be at, but only them. Dewayne would front him cash, he needed it. The underground time, it wouldn’t be all that long. The police didn’t waste too much clock on murder cases down here. And once those cases got cold, they stayed cold; this much he knew.

  He stopped the car on Valley Avenue, near 13th Street in Valley Green, along the Oxon Run park. Donut lived only a few blocks away; Durham could walk to his place from here.

  Oxon Run was a long, deep stretch of woods controlled by the Park Service, cut by one of those concrete drainage channels down the middle. The Park Service had signs posted warning trespassers to stay out, trying to discourage the dealers and their runners from using the woods as an avenue of escape. Kids weren’t even supposed to play back in there. Durham knew they did, he saw kids back up in there all the time, but he hoped those signs would work to keep some of them out.

  It was late and the street was quiet. Durham waited a few minutes to get his nerve. Then he got out of the car and opened up the trunk. He had parked close to the woods. It wouldn’t be easy to carry her, but it wasn’t all that far.

  It was tricky getting her out, trickier still to close the trunk lid with her in his arms. But he did it, and he walked like a man cradling a bundle of wood across the unmowed field and into the woods. He could smell his own sweat by the time he hit the trees.

  He went deep in. He was talking to himself again, saying that everything was all right, because he was afraid of animals and especially snakes. Was a moon out, and he managed to make a kind of path by that light and ignore the thin branches that were swiping at his face, and he went on. He dropped Olivia on the ground when he couldn’t walk no more.

  Durham had hoped to dig a shallow grave with his hands, but he broke a fingernail on the hard earth as soon as he tried. He decided to cover her up with leaves and stuff instead. That would work just as good.

  He unrolled her from the shower curtain, ’cause the curtain was light in color and in daylight maybe it could be seen by some kid just walking by. He did this, and she tumbled out. He heard more air come out her and figured that was natural, like how they said people still breathed sometimes in those funeral homes and shit, even though they was dead. And then he heard her moan some and knew that she had not died after all.

  He stood over her and tried to make her out in the little light that came down through the trees. She wasn’t moving. But her good eye was open, and it was fixed straight up on him.

  He couldn’t stand to hit her again with a rock or nothin’ like that, so he brought out the pistol and shot her three times in her chest. It was louder than a motherfucker, and the bullets made her body jump some from where it lay. Smoke kind of moved slow through the moonlight and its smell was strong. Well, he thought, she is dead now.

  He didn’t bother with covering her up. The gunshots had unnerved him, and anyway, she seemed protected enough back here. He dropped the gun in his Tommys and gathered up the shower curtain and folded it as he walked in the direction he’d come. He stumbled here and there and heard his own voice saying something about God and Please, and he felt the sweat drip down his back.

  He went back to the street and stuffed the curtain down an open sewer near the car. He wiped the car down good, the steering wheel and everything, with the rag he’d kept in his pocket. Then he locked the car and threw the keys down the same sewer slot. Far as he could tell, wasn’t no one had been around to see a thing.

  He got his bearings, trying to figure where Donut lived from here. Wasn’t all that far, just a few blocks south and then east. He started walking that way, keeping his head down low.

  Chapter 13

  THAT same night, on the other side of Oxon Run, near an elementary school in Congress Heights, Dewayne Durham sat in his Benz, parked on Mississippi Avenue, surveying his troops. Next to him sat Bernard Walker. Walker had the new Glock 17, purchased from Ulysses Foreman, resting in his lap. His head was moving to that Ja Rule he liked, “I Cry,” as he finger-buffed the barrel of the gun.

  “We did some business tonight, Zu,” said Durham. “Made a whole rack of money out here.”

  “Weather’s good,” said Walker. “People want to get their heads up when it’s nice out.”

  “Thinkin’ of adding some bodies to the army.”

  “We could use it.”

  “That kid, the one ridin’ the pegs on that bike this afternoon, back by Atlantic? The one I tried to tip some money to?”

  Walker nodded. “Quiet boy, gets respect.”

  “Him. He got a father you know of?”

  “Ain’t even got much of a mother, what I’ve seen. He’s out all hours of the night.”

  “We’ll put him on the crew. That’ll be his new family right there. I’m gonna start him as a lookout down here, soon as school lets out.”

  “That ain’t gonna be but another week or so.”

  “We’ll start him then.”

  Durham looked up at the school from their position on the street. Boys stood around the flagpole, holding the portioned-out mini-Baggies of marijuana and some similarly portioned, foiled-up units of cocaine. The dope went hand-to-hand from the runners to the sellers, who stood on the midway and corner of the strip. Lookouts rolled up and down the street and on surrounding streets on their bikes. They carried cells with them to phone and warn the workers positioned around the school in the case of any oncoming heat.

  The elementary school sat on a rise, and behind it were a couple of boxy apartment buildings and some duplexes going up the block, all backed by a series of alleys. Across the street was a field leading to the
woods of Oxon Run.

  Dewayne Durham had chosen this spot because of the many avenues of escape. The police from 6D rolled by regularly, and once in a while they stopped, using their mikes and speakers or sometimes just yelling from the open windows of their cruisers for the boys to get on home. On rare occasions they got out of their cars in force and gave half-assed chase, but they never followed the troops into the woods. Every so often the police would roll in with a major shakedown and make a few arrests, but it did nothing to slow down the business. Marijuana possession, up to half a pound, was a misdemeanor in the District, so if the kids did draw an arrest, priors or not, they generally did no time. They were also out on the street in a very short period; in D.C. a bond was as easy to come by as a gun.

  Dewayne’s choice of location had to do with the convenience of the school grounds as well. You could hide drugs in several spots, especially around the flagpole, where holes had been dug out and re-covered with turf for just that purpose. Or you could just drop the goods in the grass if you had to, things got too deep.

  So this was a good spot. Horace McKinley and the Yuma Mob had one almost like it on the southern side of the park.

  Up by the flagpole, Durham could see Jerome “Nutjob” Long and Allante “Lil’ J” Jones standing around, giving occasional orders to the troops.

  “I need to drop by my moms,” said Durham. “Maybe we’ll see my brother somewhere if we drive around, too.”

  “Where he’s stayin’ at now?”

  “I don’t know. He shows up at my mother’s from time to time, but he ain’t been there lately. Probl’y with that friend of his, calls himself Donut, down around Valley Green.”

  “The one be sellin’ dummies?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You worried?”

  “I don’t like that fool havin’ a gun.”

  “You wanna book out now?”