Read Online Suitcase City by Sterling Watson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sterling Watson
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camera each time Blood Naylor took a shot of that lovely, ragged little mouth of flesh on the boy’s cheek.
“And you didn’t put no ice on it?” Blood asked for the second time.
“No, man. I told you. I didn’t put no ice on it.”
“That was smart,” Blood Naylor said. Compliment the boy. Keep him in the spirit of the thing. “You know we want it to look as bad as it can look.”
The boy nodded.
“And you didn’t go to the emergency room because they might take some blood, and we know what they might find in it.”
Tyrone nodded again, and Blood thought it would have been nice for the boy to go to the emergency room, get that medical-records thing going, but they couldn’t risk it. A boy with blood like this boy had.
Tyrone had told him the story twice, but Blood wanted to hear it again, at least some of the details. “You just decided to follow those white men into the men’s room—the idea just come to you, just like that?”
Tyrone nodded once more, looked at Blood with those nervous, ready eyes. Blood knew what the kid wanted. Blood’s Special Reserve. And, Lord knew, he’d earned it.
Blood said, “You want to do up?”
The kid looked almost angry now, that big, scary football anger. It made Blood want to laugh, thinking about angry boys on a football field doing angry things by the rules with some referee in a striped shirt and funny pants blowing his whistle when somebody got too specifically angry at somebody else. Blood Naylor knew the real anger, the one that walked the yard at Raiford. It was specific. Someday he might show it to the boy. If he had to.
With Tyrone watching, that baby anger, that nervous impatience, Blood pulled the plastic baggie out of his pocket and stuck the blade of his penknife into it, dipping out the white powder. Bloodworth Naylor’s Special Reserve. The Colombians gave it to him uncut, a small amount for his special customers. None of that baby formula mixed in this shit. Jam up your sinuses, make you shit like a goose. This was the pure extract of the coca leaf, and you had to be very careful with it. A little of it went a long way. A little of it had taken Tyrone Battles, honor student and football hero, a long way indeed.
Blood Naylor had tailed his old friend James Teach for a month, using a car he borrowed from one of the men who worked on the loading dock. Teach had no idea what was happening. What white man would notice a middle-aged nigger in a beat-up Camaro riding along behind him on Bayshore Boulevard and parking outside a doctor’s office when he went in to check on his salesmen? Blood knew Teach’s patterns, knew how he spent the mornings at the office, then went out in the afternoons to bird dog the sales force. How he liked to make the early afternoon pit stops in the local bars, talk some of that jock talk with the Corona-and-lime crowd.
Teach was a football hero, a guy who told a good story about the good old days. Blood sitting out in the trashy Camaro in the hot sun thinking about Teach and the good life. Hell, if one of the men who worked for Blood did two hours in the office, a two-Corona lunch in Old Hyde Park, then called it quits at three thirty, that nigger would be down the road. So Blood knew a few things about Teach, some of them from experience, some from observation, and some from research. Blood figured he even knew things about Teach that Teach didn’t know.
Watching Tyrone’s eager eyes, Blood bent over the glass tabletop and chopped the white powder with the single-edged razor blade. He knew about people’s secret problems. Tyrone’s was this powder here and Teach’s was bourbon. And he knew from reading the sports pages of the long ago that Teach had a very bad temper. Oh, the guy had a reputation for cool under fire like any good quarterback, but there was a disturbing pattern of violence in his life. It was right there in the record for anybody who wanted to read it.
Blood divided the powder into two equal
“And you didn’t put no ice on it?” Blood asked for the second time.
“No, man. I told you. I didn’t put no ice on it.”
“That was smart,” Blood Naylor said. Compliment the boy. Keep him in the spirit of the thing. “You know we want it to look as bad as it can look.”
The boy nodded.
“And you didn’t go to the emergency room because they might take some blood, and we know what they might find in it.”
Tyrone nodded again, and Blood thought it would have been nice for the boy to go to the emergency room, get that medical-records thing going, but they couldn’t risk it. A boy with blood like this boy had.
Tyrone had told him the story twice, but Blood wanted to hear it again, at least some of the details. “You just decided to follow those white men into the men’s room—the idea just come to you, just like that?”
Tyrone nodded once more, looked at Blood with those nervous, ready eyes. Blood knew what the kid wanted. Blood’s Special Reserve. And, Lord knew, he’d earned it.
Blood said, “You want to do up?”
The kid looked almost angry now, that big, scary football anger. It made Blood want to laugh, thinking about angry boys on a football field doing angry things by the rules with some referee in a striped shirt and funny pants blowing his whistle when somebody got too specifically angry at somebody else. Blood Naylor knew the real anger, the one that walked the yard at Raiford. It was specific. Someday he might show it to the boy. If he had to.
With Tyrone watching, that baby anger, that nervous impatience, Blood pulled the plastic baggie out of his pocket and stuck the blade of his penknife into it, dipping out the white powder. Bloodworth Naylor’s Special Reserve. The Colombians gave it to him uncut, a small amount for his special customers. None of that baby formula mixed in this shit. Jam up your sinuses, make you shit like a goose. This was the pure extract of the coca leaf, and you had to be very careful with it. A little of it went a long way. A little of it had taken Tyrone Battles, honor student and football hero, a long way indeed.
Blood Naylor had tailed his old friend James Teach for a month, using a car he borrowed from one of the men who worked on the loading dock. Teach had no idea what was happening. What white man would notice a middle-aged nigger in a beat-up Camaro riding along behind him on Bayshore Boulevard and parking outside a doctor’s office when he went in to check on his salesmen? Blood knew Teach’s patterns, knew how he spent the mornings at the office, then went out in the afternoons to bird dog the sales force. How he liked to make the early afternoon pit stops in the local bars, talk some of that jock talk with the Corona-and-lime crowd.
Teach was a football hero, a guy who told a good story about the good old days. Blood sitting out in the trashy Camaro in the hot sun thinking about Teach and the good life. Hell, if one of the men who worked for Blood did two hours in the office, a two-Corona lunch in Old Hyde Park, then called it quits at three thirty, that nigger would be down the road. So Blood knew a few things about Teach, some of them from experience, some from observation, and some from research. Blood figured he even knew things about Teach that Teach didn’t know.
Watching Tyrone’s eager eyes, Blood bent over the glass tabletop and chopped the white powder with the single-edged razor blade. He knew about people’s secret problems. Tyrone’s was this powder here and Teach’s was bourbon. And he knew from reading the sports pages of the long ago that Teach had a very bad temper. Oh, the guy had a reputation for cool under fire like any good quarterback, but there was a disturbing pattern of violence in his life. It was right there in the record for anybody who wanted to read it.
Blood divided the powder into two equal
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