coming.”
“They only three.”
“Don’t forget they daddy. He the worst of the bunch. Who knows, momma prolly too. I bet they got a basement full of ’em-they keep coming like ants out a hill…”
Nixie went to hit the air freshener pump again.
“Hol’ up,” Peanut said. Nixie looked to him, his eyes red even though he was only a little high. “Shit’s nineteen dollahs a bottle.”
Instead, Nixie eased a tiny squirt out on his fingertips and rubbed it on his hands as the Durango pulled up next to them.
The window slid down revealing Charlie Boy Schlegel behind the wheel and that Crazy Kenny across in the passenger seat. No doubt Deanie was in the back behind the smoked window glass.
“Whassup, my negro?” Kenny shouted across the front seat. Peanut’s face went granite. Nixie tsked and spat out his window.
“Yo, man, don’t be testing me like that,” Peanut said. Kenny just laughed.
“So we follow you, or we gonna do a Chink fire drill?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, dat,” Peanut said, getting out of his car. More car doors flung open as Nixie went to take the wheel of Peanut’s car, Kenny got in the backseat of the Durango, and Peanut climbed into the front passenger seat. “You paying enough for full service-” He stopped talking when he saw the man in the backseat. It wasn’t Dean, but an older guy with black coal eyes and a nasty pink rope of scar running down the side of his face. “Where Dean? Who you?” The man didn’t answer, just stared at him.
“Deanie’s not feeling too good,” Charlie said. “That’s Knute.”
“Newt?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, and took off.
The man shot a hand forward, gnarled, hard, and small. “What the fuck’s up?” Peanut saw the tattoo on the side of the man’s hand, a pale green shamrock. He knew the man had been to prison, and he knew damn well who it meant he was with. Then the dude wiggled his teeth.
Freakshow, Peanut thought, but he didn’t say shit.
“Chad doesn’t think we’re right for each other,” Susan volunteered after they’d said their good-byes to her colleagues and were well into the drive home.
“Is that so?” Behr said, steering around a chugging tractor-trailer.
“He says you’re ‘too dark’ for me.”
“What’d you say?” Behr asked.
“I thanked him for the input. But told him I wasn’t shopping opinions,” she said. “I would’ve told him you’d just lost your friend if I thought it was his business…”
Behr kept driving, trying to keep his hands loose on the wheel.
“He’s harmless, Frank,” she said.
“So you keep saying.”
“I wouldn’t have repeated it to you if I thought he was right. Guess I shouldn’t have anyway.”
Behr grunted a one-syllable response.
“You didn’t help things, standing out there like a freaking gargoyle on the shore,” she said.
“I tried, Suze,” Behr said, “I tried.” That was it for the talking until they reached her apartment.
He pulled up in front of her building and put it in park, the engine idling in the twilight. Their usual practice would have had them going out to dinner, or a movie, or both, and spending the night at one of their places, but this was no regular Saturday. Tonight something bigger than his mood was hanging over them.
“Here you go,” he said.
“Thanks for coming along today. I know you weren’t really up for-”
“Listen,” he interrupted. “I saw you holding those beers, carrying them around all day. And I saw you not drinking ’em. I’m thinking… Well, I don’t know what I’m thinking. What am I thinking, Suze?”
They looked at each other across the expanse of the front seat for a moment, and then she just said it. “I’m pregnant.”
He felt like an express bus broadsided the car. The air went out of it, and him, too. His mind ran in twenty different directions.
“Did you plan on saying anything?” is what came out of his mouth.
“Of course. I didn’t know how. And I was hoping to give what happened to Aurelio some time.”
“I see,” he said, knowing the words weren’t enough, and worse, knowing his tone was all wrong. “How the hell did-”
“How do you think, Frank?”
A cold darkness squeezed his chest so that he was unable to breathe.
“Well, I can see you’re pretty excited about-”
“Susan-”
“What?” Silence settled.
“I don’t know.” He looked at her, pressed against the door, her arms crossed over her chest. He couldn’t tell if she was going to smile or cry. She’d never seemed so small to him. “Well, we should talk about-”
“I’m not raising a kid on my own. I can’t. You know what I’m saying?” she asked.
“I guess so.”
“Does that make me a horrible person?”
“Doesn’t make you anything-”
“So. Sorry, but it’s on you, Frank. You let me know what you want to do. And quick.” With that, in a blur of smooth speed and action, she was out of the car.
FIFTEEN
Sound track,” Kenny said, leaning up between the front seats and hitting the CD player. A low swaying beat kicked out of the speakers. Notorious B.I.G.’s voice filled the Durango.
“… Glocks and Tecs are expected when I wreck shit,”
“Respect is collected, so check it…,” Kenny rapped along, “I got technique dripping out my butt cheeks, Sleep on my stomach so I don’t fuck up my sheets-”
“Dude, I’ve seen Mom dealing with your sheets,” Charlie cut him off, turning the volume low. “Something’s dripping out on ’em.” Knute laughed in that silent way of his, while Peanut snorted out loud.
“Yeah, and don’t you got any new shit? From some motherfucker who ain’t dead?” Peanut asked. They’d followed his directions to Stringtown, past an endless stretch of by-the-hour screw motels, and parked in a little notch on Belmont where they could see the house on Traub Avenue.
“Biggie’s not dead,” Kenny said. All three heads in the car swiveled toward him.
“What you talkin’ about-,” Peanut said.
“He’s alive. He knew if he stayed in the game, he’d get killed eventually, so he stepped out,” Kenny told them.
“Stepped out?” Peanut asked.
“What the fuck?” Knute said.
“Look at the signs. He practically told everybody he was gonna do it. Albums: No Way Out. Even early on he realizes he’s fucked. Life After Death, he gets the idea. Ready to Die, he puts the plan in action. Then he’s “killed” in an L.A. parking garage. No one apprehended in the shooting. He’s “dead,” but does the music stop? Hell no-”
“Man, they got tracks and tracks laid down in the studio. They only release the best. Then, when they dead, it get valuable so they keep pumping it out. Anyone know that-”
“Oh, sure. But the style changes. It evolves,” Kenny said, sounding sure. “How do you explain that?”
Charlie just shook his head. “Don’t get him started. He can go on for hours.”
“He let his family mourn. He let P. Diddy mourn. Lil’ Kim. Where he at then?” Peanut asked.
