‘What’s that?’
‘On my underwater work, I shoot some blasting caps a few minutes before I do the real shoot.’ Kelly chuckled. ‘To scare the fish away.’
She was puzzled for a second. ‘Oh – so they won’t get hurt?’
‘Right. It’s a personal quirk.’
It was just one more thing. He’d killed people in war, threatened a surgeon with permanent injury right in front of her and a security guard, but he went out of his way to protect fish?
‘You’re a strange one.’
He had the good grace to nod. ‘I don’t kill for the fun of it. I used to hunt, and I gave that up. I fish a little, but not with dynamite. Anyway, I set the caps a good ways from the real job – that’s so it won’t have any effect on the important part. The noise scares most of them away. Why waste a perfectly good game fish?’ Kelly asked.
It was automatic. Doris was somewhat nearsighted, and the marks looked like dirt when her eyes were clouded by the falling water, but they weren’t dirt and they didn’t wash off. They never disappeared, merely migrating to different places at the vagaries of the men who inflicted them. She rubbed her hands over them, and the pain told her what they were, reminders of the more recent parties, and then the effort to wash herself became futile. She knew she’d never be clean again. The shower was only good for the smell, wasn’t it? Even Rick had made that clear enough, and he was the nicest of them, Doris told herself, finding a fading brown mark that he had placed on her, not one so painful as the bruises that Billy seemed to like.
She stepped out to dry off. The shower was the only part of the room that was even vaguely tidy. Nobody ever bothered to clean the sink or toilet, and the mirror was cracked.
‘Much better,’ Rick said, watching. His hand extended to give her a pill.
‘Thanks.’ And so began another day, with a barbiturate to put distance between herself and reality, to make life, if not comfortable, not tolerable, then endurable. Barely. With a little help from her friends, who saw to it that she did endure the reality they made. Doris swallowed the pill with a handful of water, hoping that the effects would come fast. It made things easier, smoothing the sharp edges, putting a distance between herself and her self. It had once been a distance too great to see across, but no longer. She looked at Rick’s smiling face as it swept over her.
‘You know I love ya, baby,’ he said, reaching to fondle her.
A wan smile as she felt his hands. ‘Yes.’
‘Special party tonight, Dor. Henry’s coming over.’
Click. Kelly could almost hear the sound as he got out of the Volkswagen, four blocks from the corner brown-stone, as he switched trains of thought. Entering the ‘treeline’ was becoming routine. He’d established a comfort level that tonight’s dinner had enhanced, his first with another human being in … five weeks, six? He returned to the matter at hand.
He settled into a spot on the other side of the cross street, again finding marble steps which generated a shadow, and waited for the Roadrunner to arrive. Every few minutes he’d lift the wine bottle – he had a new one now, with a red street wine instead of the white – for a simulated drink, while his eyes continuously swept left and right, even up and down to check second- and third-floor windows.
Some of the other cars were more familiar now. He spotted the black Karmann-Ghia which had played its part in Pam’s death. The driver, he saw, was someone of his age, with a mustache, prowling the street looking for his connection. He wondered what the man’s problem was that to assuage it he had to come from wherever his home might be to this place, risking his physical safety so that he might shorten his life with drugs. He was also leaving corruption and destruction in his wake with the money from the illicit traffic. Didn’t he care about that? Didn’t he see what drug money did to these neighborhoods?
But that was something Kelly was working very hard to ignore as well. There were still real people trying to eke out their lives here. Whether on welfare or subsisting on menial employment, real people lived here, in constant danger, perhaps hoping to escape to someplace where a real life was possible. They ignored the traffickers as best they could, and in their petty righteousness they ignored the street bums like Kelly, but he could not find it in himself to dislike them for that. In such an environment they, like he, had to concentrate on personal survival. Social conscience was a luxury that most people here could scarcely afford. You needed some rudimentary personal security of your own before you could take from its surplus and apply it to those more needy than yourself – and besides, how many were more needy than they were?
There were times when it was just a pleasure to be a man, Henry thought in the bathroom. Doris had her charms. Maria, the spindly, dumb one from Florida. Xantha, the one most drug-dependent, a cause for minor concern, and Roberta, and Paula. None were much beyond twenty, two still in their teens. All the same and all different. He patted some after-shave onto his face. He ought to have a real main-lady of his own, someone glamorous for other men to see and envy. But that was dangerous. To do that invited notice. No, this was just fine. He walked out of the room, refreshed and relaxed. Doris was still there, semiconscious now from the experience and the two-pill reward, looking at him with a smile that he decided was respectful enough. She’d made the proper noises at the proper times, done the things that he’d wanted done without being asked. He could mix his own drinks, after all, and the silence of solitude was one thing, while the silence of a dumb bitch in the house was something else, something tedious. Just to be pleasant he bent down, offering a finger to her lips, which she duly kissed, her eyes unfocused.
‘Let her sleep it off,’ Henry told Billy on the way out.
‘Right. I have a pickup tonight anyway,’ Billy reminded him.
‘Oh?’ Tucker had forgotten in the heat of the moment. Even Tucker was human.
‘Little Man was short a thousand last night. I let it slide. It’s the first time, and he said he just goofed on his count. The vig is an extra five yards. His idea.’
Tucker nodded. It was the first time ever that Little Man had made that kind of mistake, and he had always shown proper respect, running a nice trade on his piece of sidewalk. ‘Make sure he knows that one mistake’s the house limit.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Billy bobbed his head, showing proper respect himself.
‘Don’t let that word get out, either.’
That was the problem. Actually several problems, Tucker thought. First, the street dealers were such small-timers, stupidly greedy, unable to see that a regular approach to their business made for stability, and stability was in everyone’s interest. But street pushers were street pushers – criminals, after all – and he’d never change that. Every so often one would die from a rip or a turf fight. Some were even dumb enough to use their own stuff – Henry was as careful as he could be to avoid them, and had been mainly successful. Occasionally one would try to press the limits, claiming to be cash-short just to chisel a few hundred bucks when he had a street trade many times that. Such cases had a single remedy, and Henry had enforced that rule with sufficient frequency and brutality that it hadn’t been necessary to repeat it for a long time. Little Man had probably spoken the truth. His willingness to pay the large penalty made it likely, also evidence of the fact that he valued his steady supply, which had grown in recent months as his trade increased. Still, for months to come he would have to be watched carefully.
What most annoyed Tucker was that he had to trouble himself with such trivialities as Little Man’s accounting mistake. He knew it was just a case of growing pains, the natural transition process from small-time local supplier to major distributor. He’d have to learn to delegate his authority, letting Billy, for example, handle a higher level of responsibility. Was he ready? Good question. Henry told himself, leaving the building. He handed a ten to the youth who’d watched over his car, still considering the question. Billy had a good instinct for keeping the girls in line. A clever white boy from Kentucky’s coal country, no criminal record. Ambitious. Team player. Maybe he was ready for a step up.