Walking away, Tate felt shame washing over him. But the boy followed silently for several blocks, until they were passing the corner at Edmondson and Brice.
“Lorenzo jus’ an asshole,” Daymo finally offered.
Tate gave nothing back, pointing instead to the Edmondson crew. “How ’bout you let me hold ten till tomorrow? First run of the day, I get even with you.”
The boy shrugged. “Ain’t got ten.”
“You ain’t got ten dollars? How the fuck not? I gave you thirty-five at them scales not two hours past.”
The boy shrugged again. Tate looked at him for a moment.
“What was you doing on Riggs?”
“Huh?”
“What was you doing on Riggs, comin’ out the alley?”
“Wadn’t doin’ shit.”
Tate grabbed Daymo’s wrist and spun him, pulling the boy’s arm behind his back and feeling the pockets of his denims. Right as rain.
“Get off. Get the fuck off me.”
But Tate had them out already, three gel-caps of Black Diamond. The boy looked away, hurt and angry both.
“The fuck is this here? You ain’t shootin’ this shit, I know.”
“Jus’ a snort now an’ then.”
Tate looked at the boy and waited. Nothing else was offered, and so, pocketing the caps, he filled the silence with his own words, the softest he could find.
“This shit ain’t for you, Daymo. It ain’t. You think about what it is you really want an’ where you want to be at, an’ then you take a look at my sorry ass.”
The boy did.
“It ain’t for you.”
Tate turned and crossed Edmondson. The boy didn’t follow.
“So he go an’ steal from you,” Daymo shouted, “an’ you steal from me!”
Tate stopped and wheeled. “I’m holdin’ thirty of yours. You gonna see that money first run tomorrow. My word.”
He turned and walked down Monroe without looking back, knowing in his heart that Daymo understood, that he had heard his words as truth. And later that night, when the boy came up the stairs of the vacant building where they were laying up, he said nothing further, just nodded quickly to Tate, then undressed and crawled onto his bedroll. The boy knew Tate would have his thirty after the first run. And he knew Tate was real about him not getting high, about the right and wrong of it all.
At the end of summer, Tate told himself, he would find a way to get Daymo back in school somehow, maybe even walk him up to Harlem Park and talk to the people there. Get him some school clothes and a book bag, even.
He had run through his own family years ago, burning them out one after the next, using them all to keep chasing. Shit, he had done a lot to be ashamed about. But he had never lied to Daymo, never cheated him. Not ever. And the boy knew how he felt, though nothing was ever said in all the time they had run together, the boy looking for meal money and finding Tate at the scales one winter afternoon.
“I can work for it if you need help.”
“Where you live at?” Tate had asked.
The boy shrugged.
“You ain’t got peoples?”
“Had me in a group home.”
Tate waited.
“I ain’t going back there ever.”
Tate nodded at that, asking no more questions, and it was the boy himself who pressed it: “Copper worth more than the rest, ain’t it? I know where we can snatch some copper pipe for real.”
And each day since, with the boy and Tate sharing everything.
Long after midnight, Tate fired the last speedball after the boy’s wheeze got regular and turned to a light snore. Child can’t shake that asthma at night, he thought sadly, telling himself that after a couple runs tomorrow, if Daymo was still struggling, they would run down to the university clinic, get some free medicines.
But right now, with good dope and coke running wild in his head, Tate had other work at hand. Yes he did. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he found the rat bait and, from the wax-covered end table, a folded strip of cardboard. He found the first of the empty Black Diamond caps on the floor beside the table and opened it, staring at the space where heroin no longer was.
He would see Lorenzo tomorrow. Most definitely.
Corelli was on the B-of-I computer when he sensed Cabazes behind him.
“For a big man, you’re pretty quiet.”
“Graceful, like a cat.”
“I was thinking more like a ballet dancer or an interior decorator or some shit like that. Someone willing to embrace alternative lifestyles.”
Cabazes nodded at the screen and its display of a light sheet: White, male. Timonium address. A few misdemeanors and no open warrants.
“The fuck are you looking at?”
“Him. That’s the cocksucker fucking my wife.”
Cabazes frowned. “Lemme guess. You spent the whole day yesterday camped at Trina’s apartment so you could mark the new boyfriend.”
“Not the whole day, no.”
“Fuck, Tony. Grow the fuck up.”
“You see this guy? Look at this here. Driving under the influence, D-and-D, failure to obey. Guy’s an asshole. Look at this one from ’96… solicitation for prostitution, sodomy…”
Corelli looked up at his sergeant, mock deadpan. “Guy’s a sodomite.”
“Who the fuck isn’t? By Maryland code, a blowjob is sodomy.”
“Seriously, you think I want a guy like this around my kids? You think Trina will want a guy like this around her kids once she knows?”
“Once she knows what? That her new honey once got DUIed? That once in 1996 he took a blowjob from some pro?”
“Right. I’m sure it was just the once.”
Corelli hit a button, sending the sheet to the printer on the other side of the admin office. Amid the staccato clatter, his sergeant looked at him for a long moment, then pulled up a chair and sat, leaning close.
“What concerns me here, Tony, is a certain lack of perspective on your part.”
“Lack of perspective?”
“How long since you and Trina split?”
“Twenty months.”
“Divorce is final, right?”
“Two years, she says.”
“Two years.”
“Yup.”
“Who you fucking now?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, who you fucking?”
“Arlene. The nurse from Sinai.” He paused, and when Cabazes waited him out, added: “Among a couple others.”
“A couple others. Tony, you been a whore as long as I’ve known you. You were a whore before you married Trina, you were a whore when you were with her, and with the possible exception of a week or so after she finally walked out, you’ve stayed a perfect whore. You’d fuck a rathole if it had carpeting around it.”
