that connection because he didn’t think about the police scanner in brother Goody’s car until Goody forgot and left it on that Saturday evening when he swung by the Land Rover to turn in the day’s cash and stash. With both windows open, Buck’s Land Rover and Goody’s Mercury, all of a sudden there was that harsh cop-radio voice, jabber-jabber- jabber,until Goody quickly reached down and switched it off. And even then Buck didn’t put two and two together, because he was distracted by business, there being three more salesmen to report in, and it wasn’t until he was dealing with the second of those that he suddenly saw the light.
The brother’s on the run. Big-time manhunt, all the cops excited because these three guys rubbed their nose in it, escaped from their im-preg-nableslammer, and Buck knew what that meant. And he knew that Goody would instantly know what that meant, too.
Reward.
He’s got a connection to the brother, Buck told himself. He’s looking to collect; turn the boy in and collect, without telling his best friend and employer, don’t forget Buck.
‘Leon,’ he said to the bodyguard in the passenger seat up front, ‘call my mama, tell her bring the Lincoln up, leave it out front. Raydiford,’ he said to the bodyguard at the wheel, ‘as soon as Hector check in, you drop Leon and me at the Lincoln, then take Rover and all this shit to the store.’
Leon looked happy. ‘We goin somewhere?’
‘We’re goin callin,’ Buck told him.
One thing you could say for Goody; he didn’t put all his profits in his nose. A lot of them, they could only function at all because they were too scared of Buck to allow themselves to fuck up totally, but Goody had a brain and knew how to stay on plan.
Look at his house. An actual real house, not some rathole apartment in the very slums you’re dealing so you can get out of. Not as good a place, of course, as Buck’s horse ranch out in the country, but for a street dealer not bad; a big sprawling brick home with a wide porch on the front and sides, late nineteenth century, set on a wide lawn amid similar houses in a residential section that had been a suburb when the doctors and the college professors first built their places out here. That had been before cars, so some of these places still didn’t have garages, just driveways, including Goody’s, and there was his Mercury now, parked beside his house. Goody was home.
A telephone company truck was in front of the house, a lineman in a cherry picker doing something at the top of the pole, so Leon had to drive beyond it and pull the Lincoln in at the curb in front of the house next door. Buck, spread out in back, waited while Leon came trotting around to open his door, and then the two of them went up to Goody’s house, stepped up onto the wide wood-floored porch, and Leon rang the doorbell.
They had to wait a pretty long time, and Buck was just about to tell Leon to bust the door in, when it opened, and there stood a white girl, college girl, in blue jeans and white tank top, coked to the eyebrows. She frowned through her personal mist at Buck and Leon and said, ‘Yes? What can I do for you?’
‘Not a thing,’ Buck said, and brushed by her.
She tottered, very shaky, but didn’t fall down because she still had a good hold of the doorknob. ‘Hey!’ she cried, but her outrage was unfocused, and she didn’t seem to notice when Leon copped a feel on the way by.
You can take the boy out of the pisshole, but you can’t take the pisshole out of the boy. There was barely any furniture at all in these big echoing rooms with the good old wood floors. In the front room, a television set with its other machines sat on an assemble-it-yourself bookcase from the home center, full of tapes and DVDs. Two big white wicker chairs with peacock-tail backs stood across the room, facing the TV, with a couple of mismatched shitty little tables, table lamps standing on the floor, telephone on the floor.
Pool table in the next room, what would have been the dining room, with two scruffy backless couches along one wall. And here came Goody, out of what must be the kitchen, a beer bottle in one hand, cigar in the other.
He came out of there full of swagger, a tough guy, wanting to know what the commotion was at his front door, but when he saw Buck he stumbled, next to the pool table, and got scared. He didn’t know yet what the problem was, but if Buck himself was all of a sudden in Goody’s house, Goody knew it was time to get scared.
‘Hey, Buck,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell me you were comin over, man.’
‘I was in the neighborhood,’ Buck told him, but he didn’t bother to smile. He said, ‘You been in touch with Brandon Williams yet?’
Surprise, and being scared, made Goody stupid. He said, ‘Who?’
Now Buck did smile, in a not-friendly way. ‘Think of that, Leon,’ he said. ‘This fool here’s the only man, woman, or child in this city never heard of Brandon Williams.’
‘Oh, Brandon Williams!’ Goody cried, acting out all kinds of sudden recognition. ‘I didn’t connect the name, you know, all of a sudden like that.’
‘Leon,’ Buck said, ‘go hit that fool, like he was a TV wouldn’t come into focus.’
‘No, wait, Buck Aa!’
Buck looked at him, leaning against the wall. In the front room, the college girl had sat in one of the peacock wicker chairs and was gazing at the television set, which was turned off. Buck said, ‘You in focus now, fool?’
‘Just tell me, Buck,’ Goody begged him. The beer bottle and cigar were both at his feet, but he paid them no attention. ‘All you gotta do is tell me,’ he said. ‘You know I come through for you.’
Buck said, ‘Tell me about your family emergency, Thursday.’
A whole lot of lies hovered just inside Goody’s trembling lips, Buck could see their meaty wings in there, but finally Goody wasn’t that big a fool, and what he said was, ‘The police scanner. I heard it on the scanner.’
‘Brandon Williams is outa the box.’
‘His sister, his little sister, Maryenne, she’s an old friend of mine, Buck. A goodgirl, I like her, not like this white trash here, I thought, I gotta go be there when she finds out, I gotta tell her myself, so it won’t be that big of a, you know, a shock.’
‘Reward money,’ Buck said.
‘Aw, no, Buck,’ Goody said, because he was still to some extent a fool, ‘I wanna help that girl, old-friend like’
