Free Clockers by Richard Price Page A

this, with his days on the streets coming to an end, his nights behind a Homicide desk flat and without edge, Rocco often felt as if he was standing in an airport surrounded by his luggage and holding a blank ticket.
    Rocco stood cheek-to-cheek with his baby and looked down at the city.
    “Say, ‘Good night, taxis.’”
    “Good night, taxis.” Her voice was dutiful.
    “Good night, bridges.”
    “Good night, bridges.”
    “Good night, crackheads.”
    “Good night, crackheads.”
    “Good night, werewolves.”
    “Good night, werewolves,” Erin chanted, imitating his voice, beat for beat. Then, raising her eyes, she pointed up and said in an eerily precise singsong, “There’s the moo-on.”
    “Yeah, baby … there’s the moon.”
    Rocco imagined looking back from his deathbed and remembering this moment of holding her, validating the moon in the middle of the night, being calm, tender and strong: a good father.

3
     
    ” DO YOU know that more young mens get killed on Thursday nights than any other time of the week?” Rodney drove with a long Vienna Finger sticking out of his mouth. “This cop told me that.”
    “Yeah, huh?” Strike watched the cookie shrink under Rodney’s mustache.
    “Yeah, ‘cause it’s like the longest time away from the last paycheck, so everybody’s all strung out and it’s kind of like the beginning of the week end, so…”
    “Huh.” Strike wasn’t really listening. He sat in the shotgun seat with ten dollars on his hip and twenty-odd thousand on his lap, the Toys R Us shopping bag like a lump of radiation as Rodney rolled through the red lights as if they were stop signs.
    “So you got Futon running it again?”
    “Yeah well, he’s the least worst.”
    Rodney had left the Cadillac in front of the candy store and taken his van, a hollow rusty hulk with two naked S-frame seats in front, nothing in back except a few loose orange soda cans rolling around on the carpetless floor, the lazy rattling driving Strike crazy.
    Strike thought cash and dope exchanges were Erroll Barnes’s department. He had wondered and worried about it nonstop since the night before, but now he didn’t want to bring it up, preferring to be in the dark than be told to stop and sniff the motherfuckin’ roses again. He assumed they were headed over to the O’Brien projects, where Champ held court. Rodney was Champ’s lieutenant like Strike was Rodney’s lieutenant, and Champ controlled the bottles in Dempsy, buying three kilos a week from New York, stepping on it to make six and distributing the six kis to Rodney and five other lieutenants. The kis cost Champ eighteen grand each for the three, but he sold the stepped-on six for twenty-five grand each to his lieutenants, making a profit of a hundred thousand dollars a week for a few hours’ work. Champ had it knocked—no fuss, no muss no sweating out a million ten-dollar bottle transactions Champ even had four baby Rottweilers each one named after a cop in the Fury That’s why he was Champ. Strike just hoped that when they got to O’Brien Rodney would leave him in the car because he didn’t want to know where Champ’s dope apartment was. He could live without that information.
    Two blocks into JFK Boulevard Rodney got waved over by a pipehead with two shopping bags. Rodney pulled over and peered down, his chin on his arm, the pipehead shiny-eyed, stinking, holding a taped-up box for Rodney’s consideration.
    “A waterator.” His voice dropped to the lockjaw bass growl that came from hitting the pipe.
    Rodney stared at the picture of the water-purifying siphon on the box, clucked his tongue, reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat wad, lots of hundreds. He counted out ten singles, then tossed the box in the back of the van. The basehead mumbled something in the neighborhood of thanks and loped away.
    Rodney drove on, saluting his street crews on the boulevard like a general, the clockers dancing in place, absently swinging their arms,