Free Clockers by Richard Price Page B

smacking fists into open palms, yelling out his name, every once in a while dashing up to the van to ask him something, including one of his other lieutenants, who told Rodney to stop daydreaming and answer his damn beeper, they were down to next to nothing.
    Strike didn’t really know these clockers. They worked the boulevard, lived on the side streets and didn’t do nearly as much business as the clockers in the projects—but they also didn’t get hassled by the Fury, which only worked public housing. It cost Rodney four to five thousand a week in envelopes to keep the flow going out here. Strike knew that Rodney had worked out something with enough police in various squads and shifts so that as long as the JFK crews were discreet, no one would bust them. But the Fury wouldn’t take a dime. Not that they did much more than harass when it came down to it—any night they grabbed as much as two clips was a good night for them. But they were still a pain.
    A girl moved along the sidewalk in a mincing half jog, pacing the van, waving for Rodney to stop. The dragging of her high-heeled sandals on the pavement sounded like someone shoveling snow. She was dressed in a red bolero jacket with padded shoulders and a brocade pillbox hat, but Strike saw that she had that sickening gloopy smile of some bitch that’ll do anything for a bottle.
    Rodney pulled over, and she started in by making small talk and flirting. Then she got down to it.
    “Rodney, I got to get this nice sweater I want. This girl sewed it for me, but she says she wants her money tonight.”
    Rodney, heavy-eyed, grunted, “Uh-huh.” The girl worked a gold ring off her finger, its diamond chip a pinhole of light.
    “She wants twenty dollar, so you hold this here.” She gave him the ring, pointing out the diamond. “You know me, you know it’s real, see that? I’ll come back get it from you tomorrow night, OK?”
    Rodney exhaled through his nose, dug out a twenty, held it out between his fingertips, then snatched it away at the last second. “You don’t come back with my twenty tomorrow night, don’t bother coming back at all, now. The ring be mine then, you understand?”
    The girl looked at her ring, hesitating. “What if you hold it till Saturday? I’ll get you the twenty back Saturday.”
    Rodney shook his head and gave her back the ring, the twenty vanishing into his fist. She didn’t like that at all, chattering “OK, OK, OK,” and coaxing the crumpled twenty out of his hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    Rodney drove away from her, studying the ring for a half block, then stuffing it into his pocket.
    He made three more stops, once to buy two factory-wrapped horror videotapes from another pipehead with a shopping bag, ten bucks, once to take a leak against the side of a building, some other girl coming up to him as he was pissing, saying, “Can I talk to you private?” and finally pulling up on a side street in front of a shabby and dark wood-frame house, getting out on the sidewalk and whistling as if for a dog. A scruffed-up pipehead with a ragged beard and a dirty plaid shirt came out of the house onto the porch, a shard of wood sticking out the side of his hair like a chopstick.
    “What’s up?” Rodney rocked on his heels.
    “I almos’ finish, man. I tol’ you I get it done tonight, right? I got almos’ all the downstairs all cleaned up, boxed shit, bagged shit. You want to see?”
    Rodney shook his head. “You don’t leave till you finish, right?”
    Seeing no light on inside, Strike wondered how this guy cleaned up in the dark.
    Then he saw Rodney take a rubber-band-bound clip often purple-stoppered bottles out of his pocket, pluck out five and pass them up to the raggedy guy on the porch. The guy bowed his head and retreated into the house with his bottles. Watching Rodney pass out the dope on the street as if they were cigarettes made Strike sink into his seat with panic: Rodney might as well wear a damn “Bust Me”