Criminal Read Free Page A

money.
    The bikers sold speed, not heroin. Heroin belonged to the coloreds. Even the Mafia was hands-off. H was a ghetto drug. It was too potent, too addictive, too dangerous for white people. Especially white women.
    Which is how Lucy ended up being tricked out by a black man with a tattoo of Jesus on his chest.
    The spoon. The flame. The smell of burning rubber. The tourniquet. The filter from a broken cigarette. There was a romantic pageantry to the whole thing, a drawn-out process that made her former affair with the needle seem woefully unsophisticated. Even now, Lucy could feel herself getting excited at the thought of the spoon. She closed her eyes, imagining the bent piece of silver, the way the neck resembled a broken swan. Black swan. Black sheep. Black man’s whore.
    Suddenly, Juice was at her side. The other girls cautiously moved away. Juice had a way of sensing weakness. It was how he got them in the first place. “What it is, Sexy?”
    “Nothing,” she mumbled. “Everything’s dyn-o-mite.”
    He took the toothpick out of his mouth. “Don’t play me, gal.”
    Lucy looked down at the ground. She could see his white patent leather shoes, the way the bell-bottom of his custom-made green pants draped across the wingtips. How many strangers had she screwed to put the shine on those shoes? How many back seats had she lain down in so he could go to the tailor in Five Points to have his inseam measured?
    “Sorry.” She chanced a look at his face, trying to gauge his temper.
    Juice took out his handkerchief and rubbed the sweat off his forehead. He had long sideburns that connected to his mustache and goatee. There was a birthmark on his cheek that Lucy stared at sometimes when she needed to concentrate on other things.
    He said, “Come on, gal. You don’t tell me what’s on your mind, I cain’t fix it.” He pushed her shoulder. When she didn’t start talking, he pushed her harder to get the point across. He wasn’t going away. Juice hated when they kept secrets from him.
    “I was thinking about my mother,” Lucy told him, which was the first time she’d told a man the truth in a long while.
    Juice laughed, used the toothpick to address the other girls. “Ain’t that sweet? She been thinkin’ about her mammy.” He raised his voice. “How many’a y’all’s mama’s here for ya now?”
    There was a titter of nervous laughter. Kitty, ever the suck-up, said, “We just need you, Juice. Only you.”
    “Lucy,” Mary whispered. The word nearly got trapped in her throat. If Juice got pissed off, none of them would get what they wanted, and all that they wanted right now, all that they needed, was the spoon and the H that Juice had in his pocket.
    “Nah, it’s all right.” Juice waved off Mary. “Let her talk. Come on, girl. Speak.”
    Maybe it was because he said the same thing that you’d say to a dog—“speak,” like Lucy would get a treat if she barked on command—or maybe it was because she was so used to doing exactly what Juice told her to do, that Lucy’s mouth started moving of its own volition.
    “I was thinkin’ about this time my mama took me into town.” Lucy closed her eyes. She could feel herself back in the car. See the metal dashboard of her mother’s Chrysler gleaming in the bright sunlight. It was hot, steamy, the sort of August that made you wish you had air-conditioning in your car. “She was gonna drop me off at the library while she did her chores.”
    Juice chuckled at her memory. “Aw, that’s sweet, girl. Your mama takin’ you to the liberry sose you can read.”
    “She couldn’t get there.” Lucy opened her eyes, looked directly at Juice in a way she’d never before dared. “The Klan was having a rally.”
    Juice cleared his throat. He cut his eyes to the other girls, then zeroed back in on Lucy. “Keep going.” His deep tone wedged a splinter of cold into her spine.
    “The streets were blocked. They were stopping traffic, checking cars.”
    “Hush