Soul Circus (7 page)

“I do like those jammies on you, baby, you know I do.” Foreman pointed his chin toward the back door. “But hurry up on in there, now, and get dressed.”

Ashley stubbed out her Viceroy in the cup. She had another sip of wine and hustled herself inside. Foreman found himself grinning. It was hard to get mad at her, and he was still up, anyway, having burned some of that hydro Mario had traded him. That smoke was nice.

Foreman checked his watch. Dewayne Durham would be showing up any minute.

He didn’t care to do business here, what with the risk. But he made an exception for those who headed up the various factions in Southeast, especially the leaders of the largest ones. What with Granville Oliver gone, there were plenty of players vying for the action now. Dewayne Durham, from the 600 Crew, and Horace McKinley, holding the Yuma Mob together, had to be the top two. They expected to be treated right, to have their meets down in his basement, sitting in comfortable chairs, having a sip of something, instead of in some car parked out on the street. Having them over the house was worth the risk. Business was good.

Oliver had been his first hookup. He’d started taking payoff money from Oliver when he, Foreman, had been a cop. It was about then that Foreman had seen a way to make big money for real. His years as a police officer had given him insights into the criminal mind, and he’d learned the mechanics of illegal gun sales, straw buys and the like, the same way. Oliver had been his first customer, and his best up until the time the Feds busted him on those RICO charges.

But even with Oliver and his boys put away, there would always be a market down here. This new breed of hard boys comin’ up, they all wanted shiny new guns, the same way they wanted nice whips. And the turnover was high, on account of you couldn’t hold on to any one crime-gun too long. Long as there was poverty, long as there wasn’t no good education, long as there wasn’t no real opportunity, long as kids down here had no fathers and were looking to belong to something, then there was gonna be gangs and a need for guns. This textbook he’d had called it supply-and-demand economics. Foreman had learned about that during the one semester of courses he’d taken at the community college over in Prince George’s County.

So he’d quit the force, citing the burnout effect of the job. Six months later, Ashley Swann, who he’d been doing since he met her, resigned from the MPD as well. She left her white-boy husband, a lawn mower repairman, no joke, and moved into this house with him. Ashley hadn’t worked a day since.

She didn’t need to work. She didn’t need to get out of those pajamas or put her wineglass down, she didn’t want to. Foreman was making good money moving guns around, and he worked about twenty hours a week as a security guard on top of that, just so he could show something to the IRS come tax time.

Course, he wasn’t the only dealer in this part of the city. But he was the quality man. He didn’t sell Davis or Lorcin or Hi-Point or Raven, none of those cheap-ass guns project kids bought on their first go-round. He carried fine American, Austrian, and German pieces, pistols, mostly, and occasionally special-order stuff the young ones had seen in the gun mags and the movies, AKs and Calico autoloaders, carbines, and the like. He customized some of the guns himself. You could still buy a Hyundai down here, you wanted to, but he was the Benz dealer in this part of town. His goods were marked way up, but he had no problem moving them. Shit, the high price tag was a badge of honor for these kids, like bragging that you had spent a couple thousand on a Rolex watch or a clean grand on a set of rims.

Foreman had a couple of boys working for him. These boys rounded up young girls, just old enough and with no priors, to do the straw buys in the gun store over in Forestville on the Maryland side, and in Virginia, in these shops they had way down Route 1. They used junkies and indigents, too, long as they had no record. You had to be careful with the junkies, though. The 4473 had a question, asked if you used drugs, and if you got caught lying on a federal form after the trace, that was a felony. Filing off the serial number, that was another amateur play right there, something Foreman would never do. Another felony, good for an automatic five. It was the way police squeezed testimony out of suspects and got them to flip. As far as solving cases went, shaking down suspects to give up other suspects worked better than ballistics and forensics every time.

Another of Foreman’s boys was a student at Howard who had been raised in Georgia. He made the 95 South run in his trap-car once a month to his hometown, where family and friends made purchases in the area on his behalf. This boy was putting himself through college with what Foreman was paying him. It was true that D.C. had a handgun ban, but its good neighbor states, especially those to the south, did not. So there wasn’t no thing to getting a gun in the District. Simple as buying a carton of milk. And you didn’t even need big money to do it. You could rent a gun or trade drugs to get one, or the community could chip in to buy one. What they called a neighborhood gun. In many of the Section 8s there was a pistol buried somewhere, could be got to quick, in a shoe box. Most everyone knew where that shoe box was.

It was an easy business to be in and manage. Situation wasn’t getting any better for these kids, so there would always be a need, and the money continued to flow in. So why was Foreman feeling those burning pains in his chest? Had to be the start of an ulcer, or what he imagined an ulcer to be. It was because he had been a cop, and in that time he had learned something about criminals, and being a criminal himself now, this is what he knew: His time was gonna come. No one in this game, be he gun dealer or gang leader or dope salesman, lasted forever. It could be the police or someone younger, stronger, or crazier than you, but the fact remained that someone was going to take you down.

It was kinda like playing the stock market. You had to know when to sell, not let greed make you stay in too long. He knew he had to get out, and get his woman out the clean way, too. The question was, how?

Foreman heard some heavy bass as a car pulled off the road, came down his long asphalt entrance, and slowed, arriving at the circular drive that fronted the house. That would be Dewayne Durham. Prob’ly had that big-ass sucker they called Zulu with him, too.

Foreman slipped back into the house and went down the stairs off the kitchen. He hoped Ashley had got herself dressed by now. She could show Durham in, and his personal giant, too.

FOREMAN had spread out several pistols on the felt of his pool table down in the recreation room of the rambler. He had bought a ring once for Ashley, and this was the way the jeweler had presented it to him, on a square of red felt. When Foreman had chosen his pool table at that wholesale store he went to, he had gone for the red, remembering how he had been sold on the ring. This was the way he presented all his goods.

Five guns were set in a row, turned at a forty-five-degree angle to the line of the table. Above them were boxes of ammunition, “bricks,” the contents of which fit the guns. A Heckler & Koch 9mm automatic was at the head of the row. A Sig Sauer .45 was next, followed by a stainless steel Colt of the same caliber, then a Glock 17. The Glock was the MPD sidearm and, Foreman knew, was always a sure sale. The young ones wanted what the police carried, nothing less. At the end of the row was a Calico M-110 auto pistol, a multiround, 22-caliber chatter gun. It was generally ineffective and hard to conceal but had recently gained popularity on the street due to its round capacity and exotic look.

“That’s pretty right there,” said Dewayne Durham. He was pointing to the Colt .45 set between the Sig and the drab plastic Glock. Foreman had placed the gun there strategically, knowing it would stand out.

“You like it, huh?”

“What kinda grips you got on there?”

“That’s rosewood,” said Foreman. “The checkered style. Ordered them from Altamont and put ’em on my own self. Looks good against the stainless, right?”

Durham picked up the gun, felt its weight in his hand. He racked the slide and dry-fired at the wall. He placed the gun back on the table.

“Pretty,” repeated Durham, Foreman knowing right then that he had made a sale. “That’s like that gun you got, right?”

“Same gun,” said Foreman. “Only I got the ivory grips on mine.”

“You had it long?”

“Just came in. Got bought at a store down in Virginia and changed hands once since. Never even been fired.”

“How you know?”

“Smell it.”

“Okay, then. I’m gonna take that Glock, too, if it’s clean.”

“You could eat off it, dawg.”

“Aiight, then.”

“What about that?” said Bernard Walker. Foreman had been watching the tall man’s eyes and knew he was talking about the Calico.

“Brand-new,” said Foreman.

“Where the bullets come from?”

“Right up top there, why it’s long like it is. They call it a helical feed.”

“What you need that for, Zulu?” said Durham. “Shit ain’t even, like, practical.”

“I guess I don’t need it,” said Walker. “I was just askin’ after it, is all.”

Durham said to Walker, “I’m buyin’ you the Glock.” To Foreman he said, “How much for the two?”

Foreman closed his eyes like he was counting it up. He had already decided on a price.

“Sixteen for the both of them is what I’d normally charge. With those grips and all, price got up.”

“Sixteen hundred for two guns?” Durham made a face like he had bitten into a lemon. “Damn, boy, you gonna make me pay list price, too. What, you see me pull up in my new whip and the price went up? Or I got the word
sucker
stamped on my forehead and nobody done told me.”

“I said it’s what I’d
normally
charge. I’m gonna make it fifteen for you. And I’ll throw in the bricks.”

Durham looked down at his Pennys. He had made up his mind, but he was going to let Foreman wait. They both knew it was part of the process.

Durham looked up. “You got anything to drink up in this piece?”

Foreman smiled. “I’ll throw that in, too.”

Foreman got them a couple of beers from the short refrigerator he kept running behind his bar and opened one for himself. He brought them frosted pilsner glasses he stored in the fridge for his guests. They sat in leather chairs grouped around a leather couch studded with nail heads, a glass-topped table in the center of the arrangement. Italian leather on the couch, Durham guessed, soft as it was. Foreman did have nice things. Why wouldn’t he, with the prices he charged?

The room was paneled in knotty pine. Foreman had always wanted a room like this, a room that he imagined a secure man would own, and now he had it. To him, the wood had the smell of success. There was the pool table and a deep-pile carpet, wall-to-wall, and a wide-screen Sony with a flat picture tube, the best model they made, with a DVD player racked beneath the set. His stereo, with the biggest speakers they had in the store, was first-class. He had a gas-burning fireplace in here, too, and the bar with the imitation marble top. He was all hooked up. He’d rather sit down here and catch a game than go out to the new football stadium or the MCI Center, matter of fact. He’d rather sit down here and chill than do just about anything else.

Durham took a taste of beer. He had a look around the room. Looked like some old man, wore his pants up high, owned it. Foreman was playing some old-school stuff on the stereo, Luther Vandross from when Luther could sing, had some weight behind his voice. Music from the eighties, that fit this place, too.

“Saw your woman,” said Durham, after enjoying a long sip of beer. “She looked good.”

“Thank you, man,” said Foreman.

It made Durham kinda sick just to think about her. Why it was, he wondered, that black men who went for white women always went for the most fugly ones. When a white boy had a black woman she always seemed to be fine. You could bet money on that shit damn near every time.

Foreman’s woman, she had come to the door in some JCPenney’s-lookin’ outfit, no makeup on her face and wine breath coming out her big mouth. Looked like she just dragged her elephant ass out of bed; must have remembered that it was feeding time, sumshit like that. Talkin’ about, “How you two be doin’?” A big-ass, ugly-ass white girl trying to talk black, her idea of it, anyway, from ten years ago.

“Yeah,” said Durham, “she looked good.”

“She’s gettin’ her rest,” said Foreman.

Foreman took a Cuban out of a wooden box on the glass table before him, clipped it with a silver tool set beside the box, and lit the cigar. He got a nice draw going and sat back.

“Saw your brother, Mario, today,” said Foreman casually, as if it had just come into his mind.

“So did I,” said Durham. “Just a little while ago.”

“This was in the morning,” said Foreman. “I had a little transaction with him.”

“Yeah?”

“No big thing. Rented him a gun. Traded him five days’ worth for a little bit of hydro he was holding.”

Walker glanced over at Durham. No one said anything for a while, as Foreman had expected. But he wanted his business with Twigs to be up front, on the outside chance that some kind of problem came up later on.

Durham’s eyes went a little dark. “Now why you want to do that? I’d get you some smoke, you needed it.”

“Well, for some reason, Mario’s always got the best chronic.” Foreman chuckled. “The older I get, seems I need the potent shit to get me high.”

“What, mine don’t get you up?”

“The truth? It hasn’t lately. When Mario lays some on me, I trip behind it.”

’Cause what I give to Mario, I give to him out of my private stash, thought Durham. And you know this.

Durham exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the ache in his stomach. “What he needs a gun for, anyway?”

“Said he was lookin’ to make an impression on someone. I didn’t get the feeling he was gonna use it.”

“He ain’t say nothin’ to me.”

“Boy’s harmless, though, right?”

Durham cut his eyes away from Foreman. “He ain’t gonna do nothin’, most likely.” He did believe this in his heart.