Twelve
CONRAD GASKINS CAME out of a clinic located beside a church off Minnesota Avenue and Naylor Road, in Randle Highlands, Southeast. He wore a T-shirt darkened with sweat stains and faded green Dickies work pants. He had been up since 5:00 a.m., when he had risen and walked over to the shape-up spot on Central Avenue in Seat Pleasant, Maryland. He was picked up there every morning by an ex-offender, one of those Christians who saw it as their duty to hire men like they themselves had once been. The shape-up spot was near the rental he shared with Romeo Brock, a shabby two-bedroom house in a stand of woods up off Hill Road.
Brock was waiting on him in the SS, idling in the lot of the clinic. Gaskins dropped into the passenger seat.
“You piss in that cup?” said Brock.
“My PO makes sure I do,” said Gaskins. “She said I gotta drop a urine every week.”
“You can buy clean pee.”
“I know it. But at this clinic, they damn near search your ass before you go into the bathroom. Ain’t nobody gettin away with that bullshit. Why my PO sends me here.”
“You be dropping negatives, anyway.”
“True. I ain’t even fuck with no weed since I been uptown.”
Gaskins felt good about it, too. He even liked the way his back ached at the end of an honest day’s work. Like his back was reminding him he did something straight.
“Let’s get your ass cleaned up,” said Brock. “I can’t take your stink.”
They drove into Prince George’s, crossing Southern Avenue, the border between the city and the county, where the dirt was done. Those on the outlaw side knew you could move back and forth across that border and rarely get caught, as neither police force had cross-jurisdiction. They had tried to enlist the aid of U.S. Marshals and ATF officers but as of yet had been unable to coordinate the various forces and agencies. Between the gentrification of the city, which had displaced many low-income residents to P.G., and the disorganization of local law enforcement, the neighborhoods around the county line had become a criminal’s paradise, the new badlands of the metropolitan area.
“You all right?” said Brock.
“I’m tired, is all it is.”
“That all? You just tired? Or are you pressed about somethin? ’Cause you know I got everything fixed airtight.”
“Said I was tired.”
“You just mad ’cause you still on paper. You got to pee in a little old plastic cup, and here I am, free.”
“Hmph,” said Gaskins.
His young cousin was all bravado and had not yet seen the other side of the hill. Gaskins had been on both slopes. He had been involved in the drug trade at an early age. He had been an enforcer. He had fallen on agg assault and gun charges, and had done time in Lorton, and when they’d closed Lorton they moved him out of state. There was nothing about any of it that he wanted to visit again. But he had promised his aunt, Romeo Brock’s mother, that he would stay by her son and see that he came to no harm.
So far he had made good on that promise. Mina Brock had raised Gaskins after his own mother died when he was a child. You couldn’t go back on a blood oath made to a woman as purely good as his aunt. She was probably on her knees right now, scrubbing the urine from some hotel bathroom floor or cleaning the jam off someone’s sheets. She had fed and clothed Gaskins, and tried to slap some sense into him when she had to. She was plain good. Least he could do was look after her natural child.
But Romeo wasn’t right. He was inching toward that line and was close to crossing it, and though Gaskins would have liked nothing better than to bail out on him, he felt he was trapped. It sickened him to know where Romeo was taking him, and still he had to stay.
They were driving toward a cliff. The doors were locked and the car had no brakes.
GASKINS SHOWERED AND CHANGED in the single bathroom of their house, a one-story structure fronted by a porch, set back on a gravel drive and nearly hidden among old-growth maple, oak, and one tall pine. A large tulip poplar grew alongside the house. Branches from that tree had fallen and lay on the roof. The home was in need of repair, replumbing, and rewiring, but the owner never visited the property. The rent was small, in line with the physical condition of the house, and Brock always paid on time. He didn’t want the landlord or anyone else coming around.
Gaskins pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his head and checked himself in the mirror. The landscape work was keeping him in shape. He had thrown weights in prison regular, so it wasn’t like he’d ever fallen off. Compact and with thick, muscular thighs, he had been a pretty fair back in his youth, a low-to-the-ground Don Nottingham type, hard to grab, hard to bring down. He had played Pop Warner in the city but drifted away from it when he got involved with some corner boys in the Trinidad neighborhood, where he’d come up. Coach had tried to keep him in it, but Gaskins was too smart for that. There was money to be made, and all the things that went with it. And he’d gotten those things, too. For a short while. He could have been a fair halfback, though, if he’d stayed past the tenth grade at Phelps. But he had been too smart.
He walked into Brock’s room, as messy as a teenage boy’s. Brock was sitting on the bed, checking the load of a Gold Cup .45.
“That new?” said Gaskins.
“Yeah.”
“What happened to your other piece?”
“I traded up,” said Brock.
“Why you got to bring it?”
“I always carry when I work. You gonna need a roscoe, too.”
“Why?”
“I spoke to the man,” said Brock. “Fishhead gonna give us something for tonight.”
“What kinda somethin?”
“Something good, is all I know. The man say we gonna get us some real.”
“I shouldn’t even be in a car with someone got a gun. We get searched, that’s an automatic nickel for me.”
“Then stay here. I can find someone else to back me up.”
Gaskins looked him over. Boy was headed for prison or a grave, and neither one of those prospects made him shudder. Long as he left a rep behind. Wasn’t like Gaskins was gonna stop it from happening. But he had to try.
“What you got for me?” said Gaskins.
Brock pulled a piece of oilskin out from under his bed. Inside the cloth was a nine-millimeter automatic. He handed it to Gaskins.
“Glock Seventeen,” said Brock.
“Shit is plastic,” said Gaskins.
“It’s good enough for the MPD.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Gun man down there in Landover?”
Gaskins inspected the weapon. “No serial number?”
“Man filed it off.”
“That there’s another automatic fall. You don’t even have to be using the motherfucker; they catch you with shaved numbers, you goin back in on a felony charge.”
“Why you so piss-tess?”
“Tryin to teach you somethin.”
Gaskins released the magazine, thumbed the top shell, and felt pressure against the spring. He pushed the magazine back into the grip with his palm. He holstered it behind the waistband of his jeans, grip rightward so that he could reach it naturally with his right hand. It felt familiar against his skin.
“You ready?” said Gaskins.
“Now you talkin,” said Brock.