“Well?” said Holley.
“What do we know about this dude?” said Mobley.
“What do I know?” said Holley. “He was in the military. Served over there in I -raq.”
“What else?” said Mobley. “We know how to find him, right?”
“Larry crossed the phone numbers out of Tavon’s cell,” said Holley. “We can call him. We know where he stay at, too.”
“I’ll do the motherfucker where he lives,” said White.
“No,” said Mobley. “I said, be smart.”
“Okay,” said White, his face strained, thinking hard. “If he’s local, he’s got family. Maybe he got a mother or father he cares about. A little sister or sumshit like that.”
“No again,” said Mobley, growing impatient with White, one step up off a special-bus kid. “You kill a Caucasian in this town, you make the front page. ’Specially a square or a child.”
“We could take someone in his family,” said White. “I’m sayin, kidnap someone he loves.”
“That’s worse,” said Mobley. “Then you make Fox News.”
“What about that kid on Twelfth?” said Holley. “The one who saw Larry make the exchange? Lucas been talkin to that kid, too. You remember his name, Beano?”
“I don’t,” said Mobley, too quickly. It was a lie.
“Ernest somethin,” said Holley, opening his desk drawer. “I got it here somewhere.” His fingers spidered through the papers there.
“I could scoop him off the street,” said White. “He knows too much anyway.”
“Then we tell Lucas we got the boy,” said Holley, warming to it. “We tell him we’ll exchange this Ernest for the money. Tell him to bring the money here.”
“And then?” said Mobley.
“We down the dude,” said Holley, as if he were explaining it to a child. “Take the boy out, too.”
“Lucas might try to go hard,” said White.
“He can try,” said Holley, and he and White smiled.
Mobley dragged on his cigar. He didn’t like where the conversation had gone.
“Ernest Lindsay,” said Holley, finding the piece of paper he was looking for.
“You gonna tell Larry?” said White.
Holley shook his head. “He don’t need to know just yet.”
It seemed to Holley that there was a ringing in his head. White got off the couch and fixed himself another drink.
Holley said to White, “Fetch me some of that, too.”
They came back to his place, smoked a little weed, and opened a bottle of Worthy Sophia’s Cuvee, an excellent Napa Valley red from the Axios label that he had been saving for a night like this. Lucas put Augustus Pablo’s King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown on the stereo, lit some candles, and killed the lights. He and Constance made enthusiastic, energetic love on the edge of the bed and atop the sheets, the cascading, rhythmic dub swirling around them, the sound of a hard rain tapping on the roof. When they were done they were exhausted and slick as seals, and they took a long shower together and made it again.
Afterward, Lucas asked Constance to spend the night, but she declined. He put on a pair of jeans and phoned for a cab, and when it arrived he walked her downstairs. The street shone with the storm that had come and gone.
“You could sleep over once,” said Lucas. “You never do.”
“That’s not what this is,” said Constance, her face close to his in the doorway, her breath warm on his face.
“You mean it’s not that serious.”
“Some things are better unspoken.” Constance kissed him softly on his mouth. “Thank you for the wonderful night, Spero.”
He watched her get into the cab, which then rolled east toward 14th. He stayed in the doorway, looking at the Simmonses’ house next door, its darkened porch, the familiar cars parked on the street. Seeing nothing unusual, Lucas went back up to his apartment and fell asleep.
TWENTY
Leo Lucas stood at the head of his class, wearing a crisp blue oxford shirt, a red-and-blue rep Ralph Lauren tie, plain-front khakis, and Clarke desert boots. His ID badge hung on a chain over the shirt. The boys in the room, in uniform, wore purple and white polo shirts, and khaki pants.
In Leo’s hand was a slim Avon paperback of a novel called The Hunter. Its author credit read “Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.” The cover art collage featured a red scarf, red pills spilling out of a vial, playing cards and chips, and a stainless steel. 38 revolver with wooden grips.
“Okay,” said Leo. “When we first meet Parker, who I’ll call the antihero of this book, he’s walking across the George Washington Bridge. This is from the first page: Office women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations above their nylons. He was big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders and arms too long in sleeves too short. He wore a gray suit, limp with age and no pressing. What does that tell you, in shorthand?”
“The ladies want to do him,” said a boy.
“Yes, women do find him attractive,” said Leo. “But not in a boy-next-door kinda way.”
“He’s too big for that suit,” said Hannibal, known as Balls.
“Hold that thought,” said Leo. He looked down at the open book. “This is also from the first page: His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was brown and dry and dead, blowing around his head like a poor toupee about to fly loose. His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless. His suit coat fluttered behind him, and his arms swung easily as he walked.” Leo closed the book. “What does this say about Parker? How does it make you feel?”
“He’s like an animal or somethin,” said a boy named Mark Norman.
“Way his hands are swinging,” said another, “it’s like he don’t care about nothin.”
“He doesn’t belong in that suit,” said William Rogers, aka Moony.
“Exactly,” said Leo. “The suit doesn’t fit him, both literally and metaphorically. It’s a costume to him. He’d be more comfortable walking naked through a jungle. The Parker books are crime novels, but they’re also about a man whose physicality stands in contrast to a working world that, at the time, had become increasingly mechanized and deskbound.”
“I don’t get what you’re sayin, Mr. Lucas.”
“Parker is a man of action. He’s defined by what he does rather than what he says.”
“We gonna see the movie?” said Moony.
“Yes,” said Leo. “When we’re done reading this, I’m going to show you Point Blank, the classic film that was made from this book. You’ll see how Lee Marvin embodies the loose-limbed description of Parker that I read to you. He plays him like a big cat.”
“You mean like a panther.”
“Right,” said Leo.
“They made another movie with that character, too.”
“That Mel Gibson joint,” said a boy. “It was crud.”
“Y’all haven’t even seen the best one they made,” said Ernest Lindsay, speaking up for the first time because the discussion had veered toward his interests. “It’s called The Outfit.”
Some of the boys in the class looked at him and then at one another. They didn’t begrudge Ernest his knowledge, but felt he was somewhat strange, being into the old-time stuff that no one else cared about. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to sports, music, video games, or girls. They felt he lived in a fantasy head, when they were more concerned with the real.
“I’m not familiar with it,” said Leo.
