“Just wait. She’s hungry for it. Probably doing herself up, getting ready for her first day of school, impress the teacher.”
Harv clicked off. Over the next twenty minutes Agatha Burns made four trips with cardboard boxes. It took her a long time. After each trip she wobbled on the heels then leaned, exhausted, against the side of the building, looking around. Her muscles had clearly deteriorated from chemical excess and she spent bursts of energy at a rapid rate. At a distance her hair looked grey.
A boneless black guy with a baseball hat sideways over a do-rag, a knee-length basketball tank top, and a heavy gold chain approached her.
“Oh, fuck.” Harv reached under the seat and dragged out a heavy silver revolver.
Agatha Burns shook her head at the black guy and he touched her shoulder. He jittered. Harv wrapped the magnum in a sweater with four inches of wicked ribbed barrel poking out. He shut off the turbo and climbed out. When he was ten feet away he heard the man whispering, “Where yo tote where yo tote?” and trying to look behind her, to see what was in the cartons, to see if she had a purse.
Harv glanced around and held the revolver in his hand with the barrel sticking out, straight down his leg. “Yo. Hey, Yo.”
The black man whirled. “Who the fuck you be fucking yo-ing, Yo?”
Harv felt like laughing. He said, “I be fucking yo-ing you, Yo. Yo?” He’d have to tell Connie about this, later, leaving out the Agatha Burns part. He started laughing and pointed the gun at the black guy. “Don’t yo my ho’.”
The man saw the size of the gun. “Fuuuuuck.” He began backing away, his palms out. “S’cool, s’cool.” He spoke rapid-fire in a childish voice: “I’m a player I’m a player I’m a player.”
Harv realized the dude was a dummy and hung his arm straight down and wiggled the gun. “Hold on there, player. You want to make ten bucks? Load that shit in the black Camaro over there.” He aimed a device at the car and the trunk lid raised. “Neatness counts, right?”
The black guy looked at the boxes, then at the Camaro, then at the silver barrel. “Yeah, yeah I can do that. Twenty bucks, though.”
“Twenty, sure,” Harv said, still smiling, “if I can shoot you one time, after.”
“Naw. Naw, ten’s cool.” He hoisted the boxes two at a time and fitted them into the trunk. He put some boxes into the back seat. Harv gave him a ten and slammed the trunk shut.
“What happened to you there, mister?” the man said with childish curiosity. “Under your hair. Can I ask?”
“I was going down on your momma and she came in my face. You should fuck off right about now, okay?”
The black man backed away.
Harv held up his hand and Agatha Burns stayed by the rear door. He dialed Cornelius Cook and told him, “Fuck it, she didn’t show and I’m outta here.”
Cornelius Cook said, “Whatever.” Harv heard him stifle a laugh.
He waved Agatha Burns over. He opened the passenger door for her, told her to belt up, and rounded the car. He put the gun, wrapped in the sweater, under the seat. The black guy was standing across the parking lot, watching, shuffling. He had his riff-and-rap persona back. Harv waved and the guy grabbed his baggy crotch and yelled, “Yo this, you bacon faced motherfucker.”
Cruising out of the projects, Harv kept his eyes in the mirrors. “Fucking place. Our people must be the only whites in the whole fucking colony.”
“Connie wants it like that. Connie likes it here. He’s got —” She ran on and Harv didn’t listen. A blue Pontiac was behind him and he watched it until it turned off. Then there was a black van but as it got closer he saw it was two Yos bouncing in their seats. It wheeled off into another housing project. When the mirror was clear he headed for the Interstate. He slipped off and on at random, running neighbourhoods, counting cars behind him.
Agatha Burns was still going a mile a minute about Connie and his wants, his needs, his plans. She spoke to the windshield and didn’t look at Harv’s face. “— so he comes by and says, hey I want you to go to school with Harv. I didn’t wanna but he said I hadda. That okay? With you? Harv? That I hadda? I said, no, Harv is the man, he’s the wizard, but Connie just said if I don’t it’s my ass, you know? I don’t like that but you know how Connie is. So I gotta, right? If I don’t —”
“It’s your ass.”
“Right. Right, Harv. You got it. So I got, like, no choice.” She listened to the silence and didn’t like it. Silence was a no man’s land where anything could be said by anybody and all kinds of evil things could come out of that. “You know you can trust me, if there’s any really secret stuff you teach me. I keep my mouth shut, it’s just between you and me. I told him I’d rather work on the farm hoeing weed or something, bailing or something, but Connie just said, no you go with Harv, keep him away from the Chinamen. He said —”
“What Chinamen?”
“What?” She skidded to a stop. “Chinamen?”
“You said, keep me away from the Chinamen.”
“Chinamen? No, no I didn’t. I don’t even know no Chinamen.”
“Ag, you said, fuck, Chinamen.”
“When?”
“Just fucking now. You said, to keep Harv away from the Chinamen.”
“No. Wasn’t me. You musta heard that on the radio.”
“Ag,” he said, swerving into the hot lane and passing the off-ramps at the city limits, heading for the rising open country north of the city, rounding the lake, “you fucking said it. The radio’s off.”
“I didn’t turn it off. I didn’t even know it was on. You got any CDs?”
Harv shook his head, dazed. He’d love, he thought, to tell Connie about this piece of classic babble. This and the Yo with his yos. But this part of the coming evening wasn’t happening. This part of the evening was a Harv moment.
In one of the soliloquies she asked eagerly if they were going to the super lab. Was she going to see that legendary place?
Harv felt very sad.
* * *
She was quiet the rest of the way to the farm. She squirmed a little in her seat, the miniskirt hiking up, adjusting her scarf. Harv thought Cornelius Cook had probably got a little out of hand. He had the weak man’s urge to thrust when he could, the weak man’s lack of control. And she didn’t know it but she’d been lucky. The Captain was a biter and he had a position he liked where the face was available.
He reflected on the crazy Captain: money up the ass, private schools, a Mercedes when he was still in high school, big motherfucking cottage up in the Lakes. At first, Harv thought it was just street bullshit but he had a pal troll the Internet and there was the Cook couple. At gallery openings in the state capital, in Chicago, even in New York City at the ballet. Donating to causes. Announcing huge mergers in the business pages. The Captain was in several of the photos looking fat and prosperous, often in company with a slim wife with a brittle smile. What the fuck was he doing in this fucking life?
A fat, kinky item was old Connie, but not without a certain diabolical flair. When Harv first met him, the Captain was just a hugely fat fuck among the fat fucks sitting in the dim stage lights of Jiggles, a mob-run club at Stateline where Harv picked up a hundred bucks a night doing the door. One night the bartender pointed Cook out to Harv, saying the fat guy had been in every night