“Uh oh,” says Gary.
All is silence, save for the sound of Lump trying to force some kind of mumbled apology out of his mouth. Tony steps back, but Gary goes down the slope far enough to see a well-dressed woman with two young ones in tow.
“People walk here,” says the woman, outraged.
By the look of things, the wayward battery had just missed landing on someone’s head. Gary looks at Lump, who looks back blankly. It’s up to Gary to put things right before the woman goes off to hail a police; he pulls the brim from his head and ventures halfway down the slope.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry about that. I really am very, very sorry. It just got away from us and we weren’t expecting …”
“Be more careful,” she says, still frightened. “You could kill someone.”
“You’re right. You’re right. We’ll be careful.”
She shakes her head, disgusted, then grabs both of her charges by the hands to walk them to the opposite side of the street.
“Man,” says Gary. “You shoulda said they was coming.”
“Crept up on me,” Lump says, shrugging. “Didn’t see’m.”
In fear that the police will soon be arriving, they roll the rest of the batteries at full speed. Lump has most of the batteries in one cart; the rest are paired with the aluminum to fill the other.
“We outta here,” says Tony, following Gary down the slope.
But Lump has paused just long enough to feel something on his leg. And Gary, too, has a feeling on his neck.
“Tony, check this out.”
Gary bows his head for an inspection. Tony pulls off one tick, then another. He looks over at Lump, who has his pants leg rolled up.
“You got ’em too?”
“They got us, you mean.”
Suddenly the caper is on hold, with the three of them pulling off shirts and socks and shoes. Gary finds a tick on the back of his leg, pries it loose and crushes it between his nails. “Parasites,” he says, “livin’ off someone else’s blood.”
Minutes pass before they’re dressed again and ready for the road home. The first cart proves so heavy that Baker Street might as well be Everest. It takes all three of them to bring that weight up the short hill to Bentalou; Lump waits there with it while Gary and Tony return for the second cart.
Before long, they’re a wagon train again, rolling southbound, with Gary and Tony struggling to keep the heavy cart away from parked cars and other obstacles. Soon they’re crossing Lafayette, then Edmondson, then Franklin Street over by the McDonald’s.
“Thirsty,” says Lump.
“Let’s get down to the bar,” Tony tells him.
But on Warwick Avenue, where the road slopes and turns, they lose control of the heaviest cart, watching helplessly as it careens into the fender of a Mercedes-Benz parked outside a body shop. Metal hits metal like a thunderclap and two batteries bounce off the top and into the street.
“Dag,” says Gary, looking around.
“More work for the body and fender man,” says Tony.
They put their weight to the front of the cart, prying it loose from the Mercedes, setting it back on course. “Jus’ keep it down the middle, Mo,” says Gary, assuming the role of riverboat pilot. “Steady as she goes.”
They’re off again, impelled by the promise of a cold forty from the bar at Warwick and Baltimore. They each ante up change and Gary goes inside, leaving the other two guarding the weight. Minutes later, they’re sitting on the curb, the carts drawn up close, when a police cruiser idles down Baltimore.
“He pullin’ up.”
“Shit.” The cruiser slows in front of them. Gary stands. It’s a white patrolman unknown to the trio.
“What’s in the bag?” asks the cop.
“Beer,” says Gary. No point lying. The paper bag is wordlessly invoked.
“Pour it out.”
Tony looks at Lump, who looks over at the haul of stolen metal. They’re two blocks from the McPhail Street scales.
“Pour it out,” says the cop, louder.
Gary nods affirmatively, reaching toward Lump for the bag. Even as he turns it upside down, the cruiser pulls off, allowing him to salvage some of the brew.
“Dag,” says Gary.
They mount up and cover the last length of trail, pulling up at George’s yard just before a truckload of cast-iron radiators arrives.
“We first,” says Gary, proudly.
They get $42.65 in batteries and other weight, take their pay at the cashier’s window and march back up the hill to Monroe Street. The touts see all that green and welcome them home in the traditional way, with one-and-one.
A speedball later, the trio is ready to part ways. Tony wonders whether they should leave the empty carts in the alley or keep them for tomorrow.
“Tomorrow?” asks Lump.
Tony nods.
“Yeah, we can hit that spot again tomorrow,” says Gary.
“That’ll do,” says Lump.
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Thursday ain’t it?”
Gary’s face clouds. He’s got court tomorrow out in the county. His trial date on last winter’s boosting charge from the J.C. Penney store.
“I’m messed up for tomorrow. I think I got court.”
Tony nods. “It’ll keep,” he tells Gary.
There’s nothing worse than a trial date to take a hustler away from his game, and Gary’s scheduled rendezvous with the sentinels of suburban justice begins to wear at his disposition. That night he’s careful to iron his church suit, thinking to himself that come tomorrow, he will be at the mercy of Leave It To Beaverland.
That’s what Gary calls it. Several of the new judges at the western county courthouses are themselves black, but Gary can’t help thinking of the other side of the city line as the kinescope stomping ground of Eddie Haskell, Wally, and the Beaver. All the desperation and foolishness that counted for something in a city courtroom only serve to make you a nigger in Catonsville or Owings Mills or Towson. That’s how Gary had felt at the public defender’s office—when the receptionist sneered at him, telling him he needed ten working days, and where they shrugged and told him to try to get a postponement. That’s how he had felt earlier in the year at the mall security office, too, with all of those rent-a-cops gathered around, laughing at his story, making him sign their forms. And that’s how he feels the morning after the great Baker Street caper, when he suits up and catches a hack out to the Catonsville District Court, a flat, brown slab of modernity hard by the University of Maryland satellite campus.
From a distance, Gary looks serious, studious even, in his pinstripes and black loafers. But up close—at, say, the distance between a judge’s bench and a trial table—there are the telltales: the pinkish abscess on the back of one hand, the jaundiced eyes, the stubble left behind by a quick and indifferent razor.
“I need a lawyer,” Gary pleads to the lady prosecutor in Courtroom Two.
“Talk to the public defender. She’s over there.”
“I need a lawyer,” he tells the public defender, who is seated on a back bench, clutching two dozen case files.
“What’s your name?”
“Gary Castro McCullough.”
She checks the folders. “I don’t have a McCullough here.”
“I went to your office and they said to ask to get the case postponed. They said if I did that …”
“Then you should ask for that,” she tells him. “But if I don’t have the file, I can’t do anything for you.”
Gary gives her the lost-dog look, and even in the county, a public defender proves susceptible; she agrees to help him go before the bench and ask for a delay. A half hour later, Gary flashes the same puppy face at a black man in black robes, as reassuring a judicial image as might be conjured.
No, the P.D. explains, Mr. McCullough did not seek counsel ten working days prior to trial. No, she is not authorized to represent him. But he believes himself to be innocent of the charge of thef
t under three hundred dollars and wishes to go to trial if he can retain a public defender in advance of a new trial date.
“I’ll grant a postponement,” says the judge, barely looking up. Gary hears that much and begins nodding gratefully. “He can either go to trial today, or he can seek a jury trial and go to trial tomorrow in Towson. Mr. McCullough?”
The public defender turns toward Gary, her eyebrows raised. Gary is being asked to make a choice here, though it’s hard for him to think of it as such. The judge explains again: He can plead guilty, or he can plead not guilty and have his trial right now. Or, if he wants a postponement, he can request a jury trial and have exactly one day before his case will be heard at the Towson Circuit Court.
“With a lawyer?” asks Gary, considering the third option.
“Mr. McCullough, you had ample time to go to the public defender’s office and obtain counsel. I am not going to grant a postponement because you were late doing what you were supposed to do.”
Gary’s mouth opens, but nothing suitable emerges. He wants to tell some truth here, to explain that he’s a dope fiend, that it’s a near miracle that he managed to pry himself loose from Fayette Street long enough to get to the public defender’s office in the first place. He wants the judge to know that he thought ten days meant ten days, weekends included. He wants to say that he was only the lookout, that he got scared and left, that he didn’t really boost anything.
“Do you want to go to trial today, or try for another judge tomorrow?” the public defender asks. “The judge tomorrow might grant a postponement for you to get a lawyer. I don’t know.”
“Tomorrow,” says Gary.
But tomorrow is even worse. At the Towson Circuit Court, Gary lands on the docket of a white judge, a county archetype with horn-rimmed glasses, Vitalis-slick hair, and a double chin. Before the court session, when Gary tries to seek a postponement, the circuit court prosecutor is contemptuous; he catches the scent of malt liquor on Gary’s breath and berates him for coming to court drunk. Again, Gary wants to impart some truth, to tell the man that he’s not drunk, that he only downed a bottle of Mickey’s to keep the snake away, to get him through the morning without a blast. But Gary says nothing and the prosecutor uses the silence for a parting shot: “I’m not giving out postponements. This’ll teach you to come out to the county and steal.”
Dag. Out here, they call it stealing. Out here, the petty capers once again turn into crimes. Gary stumbles away to wait for his case to be called. He watches a drug sentencing where the defendant gets eighteen months.
“Gary Castro McCullough.”
He takes a court trial, hoping that if he doesn’t waste time filling the jury box, the judge will be appeased. The store security guards testify and Gary, alone at the trial table, is conscious enough to catch some of their equivocation. They’ve got Gary as the lookout, though his selective memory is assuring him that he left before the boosting started. They’ve got him signing the form voluntarily, but in fact, they threatened him, told him they’d have him charged with God knows what if he didn’t sign. They brought the statement the defendant signed with them, but no, the security officer who took that statement is not here to testify. They say they caught him on videotape, but no, they did not bring the videotape to court.
Even a half-assed trial lawyer could have some fun ripping the case apart. Defending himself, however, Gary offers precious little in the way of a cross-examination, then takes the stand to mumble a generalized protestation of innocence.
“You were in the mall when the guards found you?” asks the judge. “What were you doing there?”
“Reading a newspaper,” says Gary.
“But why were you there?”
Gary shrugs. “I was jus’ readin’.”
Guilty as charged. One year’s supervised probation.
Not bad at all, considering the surroundings. Any other ghetto stray would leave well enough alone, catch the bus back down York Road, and keep on it until the greenery became concrete. But coming out of the courtroom, Gary finds enough of his voice to ask the prosecutor about an appeal. The man hears that and actually stops to give the convicted man a once-over.
“Appeal?”
“I want to appeal.”
No one from the city ever bothers to appeal a charge that ends in probation. Anyone lucky enough to leave the courtroom without silver bracelets is usually content with that much. But Gary is offended; he didn’t take anything from that store.
“Talk to the public defender.”
He takes an extra hour to go back to the P.D.’ s office to file the necessary paperwork, telling himself that with a lawyer he can get out from under the weekly meetings with a state probation agent. By the time he finishes that chore, the snake is up and crawling; he has to get home.
An hour and a half later on Fayette Street, he’s barely holding it together, looking for Tony, but knowing that even if he finds his partner, he won’t be able to make the long run up to Baker Street in his current condition. He’s got to get right first, and that means Ronnie.
He had managed to steer clear of the Gaunt One for a couple weeks now. The metal game was always something he could do without involving Veronica Boice; as long as he had a line on something good—copper and aluminum, especially—he didn’t have to get near her web. Now, though, he needs her.
“Where Ronnie at?” he asks Pimp, who pops out of Annie’s back door just as Gary is leaving his mother’s kitchen.
“Ronnie Boice? She up on the corner.”
“Huh?”
“Where you been, chief? Ronnie workin’ out for Gee Money.”
Gary can’t believe his luck. He jogs up Vine Street, peers down the sidewalk to Fayette, and sure enough, his girl is standing in front of the liquor store, serving a white fiend.
The snake got no bite today.
“Hey,” says Gary, sidling up.
“Hey yo’self.”
How she got the gig is anyone’s guess. Gary figures Gee must have been hard up for help this week to let Ronnie hold vials for him. Her count is never right; she always manages to lose as much as she sells. Now, like the spider to a fly, she welcomes him. Sure, she’ll get him over with a vial or two; that’s the price of admission for Gary, who’ll be a good accomplice for the capers to come. Working alone, Ronnie will palm a few and make some of Gee’s profit disappear; working with someone trustworthy, she can switch vials and sell B & Q and create untold confusion. With Gary at her beck and call, she can run two dozen hustles.
They’re set. Or at least Gary thinks so until he comes back from his mother’s basement an hour later to see the police wagon up at Fayette and Monroe, its back doors wice open against oncoming traffic. Ronnie is in bracelets, still managing a smirk as the wagon man pats her down. Gary’s salvation is on her way down to women’s detention.
“What happened?” he asks Fat Curt, who’s been watching the proceedings. “She sittin’ on it like a mother hen,” Curt explains. “Shit don’ need to be kept warm. She thinkin’ she got her ass on an egg or some shit.”
Sure enough, the Western knockers rolled up and got her with twenty vials right under her ass. She tried to get up from the grocery steps and walk away, leaving the baggie behind, but by then it was way late. The lesson for Gary is immediate and obvious: Stick to what you know. Boosting was not his hustle and now he’s on probation for it. Slinging is not Ronnie’s hustle and now she’s caught a charge. Aluminum, copper, light steel—these things are bread and butter to him, and Baker Street is still up there, waiting for him.
Gary cuts through the vacant lot to the back alley and Vine Street, where his brother is sweating in the afternoon sun, slinging for the New Yorkers. June Bey is tiring, wishing he could shift the load and have a few minutes to himself in the basement. He offers his brother a half share, but Gary has seen enough slinging. It’s the right decision, too, because by early evening, Charlene Mack will have run off with June Bey’s ground stash, prompting a beat-do
wn from Dred’s people. And that beating is followed by another the next morning, when June Bey gets a morning jumper from the Spider Bag crew that leaves him too high to work. Ronnie, June Bey, Charlene Mack, and Hungry, too, who is once again wanted for making off with a New York Boy’s stash—all of them are running a game, all of them messing up. It’s enough to make Gary sympathize with the dealers.
With Ronnie gone, Gary figures it’s Baker Street or bust. He spends the earlier part of the next morning looking halfheartedly for Tony, all the while pondering the ethics of a fresh plan taking shape in his head. The moral dilemma is that the new plan doesn’t call for Tony’s muscle, but for Will’s old pickup truck instead. When Gary comes up empty at a couple of Tony’s haunts and starts feeling the snake, his decision is made. He heads down Baltimore Street for Pigtown and the alley rowhouse where Will’s white girlfriend lives.
True, he’s been angry at Will ever since being cut from his own carcrushing caper, but now that’s neither here nor there. Will has a truck and Baker Street is too long a haul without one.
“I got the spot and you got the ride,” he tells Will.
With that they’re off, Gary riding shotgun with Will’s girl in the old blue tank and Will’s brother consigned to the truck bed. Gary is once again the favored passenger, the idea man granted renewed standing for having a handle on the caper. “Turn here,” says Gary, as the pickup nears Baker. “And then park on the side there.”
The caper is everything that Gary claimed it would be: hard work, yes, but not as hard as when the aluminum and copper and brass have to be pulled from rowhouse walls, and certainly not as risky as stealing an automobile from in front of someone’s home. Within a half hour, they’ve got a $200 load of assorted metal in the pickup bed. And this time, Gary came prepared: long-sleeves, gloves, a hooded sweatshirt. No ticks.
Will jams the truck into gear and they slowly three-point their way around until the blue beast is facing the hill.
“Tallyho,” says Gary.
“We gonna get paid,” Will says, delighted.
The Corner Page 45
