“You still drivin’ it?”
“Yeah.”
“I see any kind of police-lookin’ vehicles outside that house, I am gone. I don’t want to see nothin’ but that Caddy, hear?”
“Bring the money, and come with your two partners. I want to keep my eye on all of you at once.”
“Ain’t but two of us now,” said Potter.
“Hour and a half,” said Strange. “I’ll see you then.”
Strange ended the call, ignitioned the Chevy, and put it in gear. He drove quickly up to Buchanan, where he washed his face, changed his shirt, and fed Greco.
Back on the street, Strange walked toward his Brougham. Quinn had parked his car behind the Cadillac earlier that morning. The Chevelle was gone.
THE guns Garfield Potter had bought were a six-shot .38 Special and a .380 Walther, the PPK double action with the seven-shot capacity. The revolver, a blue Armscor with a rubber grip, was for Potter. He stayed away from automatics, fearing they would jam.
Potter checked the load on the .38. He jerked his wrist and snapped the cylinder shut. He had been practicing this action in the mirror just this afternoon.
“You ready, Dirty?”
“Uh-huh,” said Little.
He was sitting on the couch, thinkin’ on Brianna, how if she was here now how good it’d be to bust it out. He was flyin’ like the eagle behind some hydro he’d just smoked, and his eyelids were heavy. He was happy. Hungry, too. He didn’t really want to go out, but Garfield did. So there it was.
Little looked down at the automatic he held loosely in his hand. The grip was checkered plastic and had the Walther logo on it, the word written inside a kind of flag, like, looked like it was blowin’ in a breeze. The safety was grooved, and there was this thing on the side, like a little sign, showed you when you had put one in the chamber, in case you forgot. Walther, they made a pretty gun.
“Dirty? You with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, then,” said Potter, fitting his skully onto his head. He picked up two pairs of thin leather gloves off the table, one pair for him and one for Little. He knew Carlton would not think to bring a pair himself. “Let’s get this done.”
Little got up off the couch and looked in a mirror they had over a table by the stairs. His cornrows were lookin’ raggedy and fucked. He wondered if maybe he ought to do those twisties in his hair, the short tips, like he’d seen the fellas around do. Little realized he had been staring at himself for a while and he chuckled. It sounded like a snort.
“Let’s
“Yeah, aiight.”
Little got into his leather and holstered the Walther under his shirt. Potter put his leather on and dropped the .38 in its side pocket. He looked at Little and smiled.
“Damn, boy, you just smoke too
“It’s good to me, D. Wish you had a player in that hooptie you bought, though. We could listen to some beats on the way out the county.”
“We’ll let Flexx roll on ninety-five point five. Anyway, I be havin’ a Lex next time, with the Bose system in it, too.”
“You been talkin’ about that nice whip for, like, forever, man. When you gonna get it?”
“Soon.”
Little and Potter laughed.
“Let’s go,” said Potter. “We need to take care of this tonight.”
“Maybe we’ll peep Charles while we’re out.”
“Coon’s just hidin’ somewhere, you know this.” Potter pulled his car keys from the pocket of his jeans. “We do find him, we gonna down him, too.”
Little head-motioned to the TV set, a UPN show playing with the volume up. “Should I turn it off?”
“Nah” said Potter. “We ain’t gonna be gone all that long.”
They walked from the row house, the laugh track from the sitcom fading as they shut the door behind them.
QUINN did push-ups in his apartment while “Jackson Cage” played loud from his speakers. He did five sets of fifty and stopped when he had broken a sweat and felt the burn in his pecs. When he came out of the shower he dropped a Steve Earle into his player and listened to “The Unrepentant” as he dressed. His blood was up sufficiently now. He could feel his sweat again, cool beneath his flannel shirt.
Quinn slipped his cell into his jeans, put on his leather, and dropped a pair of cuffs into the side pocket. He locked the apartment down and walked out into the night air. A kid on the sidewalk nodded in his direction and Quinn said, “Hey,” and kept walking without a pause in his step.
He got under the wheel of the Chevelle and fitted his key to the ignition. Quinn cooked it and headed downtown.
chapter 29
THE man at the used-car lot on Blair Road had told Garfield Potter that there might be some white smoke at first, coming out the exhaust pipes of the ’88 Ford Tempo he was about to sell him, but not to worry.
“It just needs a good highway run,” said the man, some kind of Arab, or a Paki, maybe; Potter couldn’t tell one from the other. “Blow the cobwebs out, and it’s going be just like new.”
