The Sweet Forever

The first time Richard Tutt made it with a suspect's girlfriend, he realized that there was nothing, nothing at all, that a man in his position couldn't do. He'd gotten some just that morning—a high-assed young thing by the name of Rowanda—and the feeling had stuck with him right into this bright, biting afternoon.

Tutt made a left onto U Street, eye-swept the beat that he knew he owned.

The Power. It was a cop thing, but not an across-the-board cop thing. The desk jockeys never had it. The homicide dicks were too tortured to have it. A few of the boys in Prostitution and Perversions had it, but only some of the time. The beat cops, the ones who really knew how to walk it, had it all the time.

Tutt dug the free-fall feeling that came with the Power. He even looked forward to the looks he got—the looks of fear and hatred and, yeah, the looks of respect—when he stepped out of his cruiser. He'd been a cop for five years, always in blue, and always out on the street. You could keep your promotions and gold shields. Tutt liked the fit of the uniform. He knew he'd never wear anything else.

Tutt turned to his partner, Kevin Murphy, who was staring through the windshield, one thumb stroking his black mustache. Murphy's head throbbed with a dull ache; he hoped for a quiet day. He'd fallen asleep on the couch with a beer in his hand the night before, trying to make out the blurred images on the screen of his new television set. Murphy's nights had been ending this way for some time.

"Let me ask you something, Murphy."

Murphy exhaled slowly. "Go ahead."

"Got a man-woman kinda question for you."

"All right."

"Had me a little brown sugar action this morning, on the way in to work?"

Tutt, bragging double, not just letting Murphy know he had gotten some pussy, letting him know it had been some good black pussy in the bargain.

"Oh, yeah?"

Tutt smiled. "Yeah. Lady took a long ride on that white pony."

Murphy thinking, Yeah, 'cause you promised some poor sucker's girlfriend that you wouldn't bust her old man if she gave a little up.

"Have a good time?" said Murphy.

"Damn straight."

"Good for you, man. So what was that question?"

"Right. So I'm playin' with her privates, see, got my finger right on the trigger."

"Uh-huh."

"I haven't put it in her yet, but even without that, her elevator's gettin' ready to shoot right up to the penthouse suite, you know what I mean? Just about then, the bitch looks up at me and goes, in this real whiny voice, 'Pleeeease?' "

"Yeah?"

"My question is, what was she askin' for? I mean, please what? Please do? Please don't? Please have a bigger dick? I was wonderin' if this was something, you know, the sisters say all the time, something I just don't know about."

"I wouldn't know, Tutt. I only been with one sister for the last ten years. Had some sisters before I was married, understand, but not every single sister. So I can't speak for all of them. And I sure couldn't tell you what this particular sister was lookin' for when she asked you the question."

"I'm bettin' she was begging for it. Had to be 'Please do.' "

"Think so, huh?"

Tutt drove the blue-and-white east on U. Black Washington's once grand street was ragged, near defeated by crime and indifference and Metro's Green Line construction, which had blighted the area for years. They passed the Republic theater, dark now, where Kevin Murphy had seen classics like J.D.'s Revenge and King Suckerman and a bad-ass prison picture called Short Eyes back in '77. Flyers touting the mayor's upcoming reelection effort were stapled to telephone poles, his increasingly bloated image distorted in a haze of dust kicked up by jackhammers and trucks. Murphy's eyes followed a young dealer stepping out of a drug car parked at the curb.

"Murphy?"

"What?"

"Don't get this wrong, partner…"

Don't get this wrong, huh? Here we go.

"…but all I kept thinking of when I was hammering this black chick is that y'all, what I mean is you brothers, y'all fuck in a furious fuckin' way, you know what I mean?"

"That so. How'd you arrive at that conclusion?"

"Well, okay, here's what got me started. I was watchin' this porno flick the other night. My brother-in-law, the art director, brought it over. All-black cast; the star of the flick was hung like a donkey, you know what I'm sayin'? Anyway, this brother in the movie, he was just wailing on this punch, up on one arm, doing some high-ass, violent-ass thrusts."

"Man was goin' at it."

"Like I've never seen. And the way this girl was screaming, now, I shouldn't have been surprised. I mean, I've been with some black women, man. So you know that I've heard some screams."

"Oh, I know."

"But watchin' that porno tape, it made me think of that old expression."

"What expression's that?"

"'I thought I'd fucked a nigger'"—Tutt grinned—"'till I saw a nigger fuck a nigger.'" Tutt air-elbowed Murphy, cackled in that high-pitched way of his. "You ever hear that?"

Murphy stared at the Twenty-third Psalm card he had taped to the dash. He made his lips turn up into a smile. "Nah, King, I never did."

Tutt breathed out in relief. Murphy calling him "King"—Tutt's nickname from the Twinbrook neighborhood, where he'd come up—meant everything between them was okay. Course, Tutt knew it would be okay. Civilians didn't understand about the shell cops had, the things that could be said between partners. You could use any goddamn words you wanted to use in fun, because those were just words, and there was only one real thing that mattered, one serious task at hand, and that was to watch your partner's back out in the world and know that he would do the same. Sensitivity was for the high-forehead crowd, the ones standing comfortably behind that last line of defense, skinny-armed liberals and ACL-Jews. Men knew that words were just words and only action counted—period.

"Hey, Murphy. I was just shittin' around. Hey, you all right?"

"I was thinking on somethin'," said Murphy. "That's all."

I was thinking of my wife…my mother, and my brother, and my father. Niggers, all of them. I was thinkin' on how I betray them every day, listening to those filthy words coming out of your fat redneck mouth, doin' nothing, saying nothing to shut you up….

"Hey, Murph. No offense, right?"

"Nah, Tutt," said Kevin Murphy. "None taken."

Murphy noticed the kid wearing the Raiders jacket, maybe ten or eleven, standing outside of Medger's Liquors at 12th and U. He had seen the kid the last year or so, hanging on that corner, often during school hours. No one had the time to bother much with truants anymore, but Murphy wondered what the kid was up to, if he was a runner or a baby foot soldier or just checking out the hustler's map, prepping himself for a lifetime of nothing.

"There's your boy," said Tutt. "Same as always. One of these days we ought to stop, see what his story is."

"I expect we'll be crossing paths someday. When he grows up some."

"Yeah, they all grow up, don't they? Grow up and fuck up."

Across the street, past immobile construction equipment, near the bank on the 11th Street corner of U, flags and balloons announced the grand opening of a new store named Real Right Records. Below the identifying sign, in smaller letters: "African American Owned and Operated," and "Your In-Town Music Connection."

Tutt said, "You believe some fool, opening up a business down here? You got your criminal element and, on top of it, all this construction. How stupid could the man be?"

"Man's name is Marcus Clay."

"You know him?"

"Heard of him. Played ball for Cardoza back in the sixties. I saw him go off in this Interhigh match when I was, like, twelve years old. Got a few years on me, but they still talked about him a little when I was comin' up. They say he could sky like Connie from the key."

"Connie?"

"Hawkins. Clay's got another store over at Dupont Circle, and in Georgetown. Got one in Northern Virginia, too, I think. Tryin' to bring somethin' into the community here, I guess."

"Yeah, I see what he's tryin' to do. Question is, what the fuck for?"

Tutt turned south on 11th. They passed a black Z parked on the left. Tutt slowed down, checked out the driver and passenger, cruised past and went along the strip of two-story residential row houses.

"Rogers and Monroe," said Tutt, and Murphy said nothing.

Down by T Street, Tutt pulled the cruiser over to the curb and cut the engine. Tutt liked to park here and watch the neighborhood. This was his quiet time, an opportunity to engage in what he called his "street surveillance." Tutt still imagined himself to be a good cop. Murphy had no such illusions but was grateful for these rare moments of silence.

Murphy wished he were home, kicking back on his sofa, watching the game. The first two rounds of the tournament were the best, maybe the four best days in all of sports. Maryland would be finishing up with Pepperdine now, and it gnawed at him that he had no idea how Len Bias and the Terps had done. Like most D.C. natives, Murphy was a Georgetown fan, had managed to see the Hoyas edge Texas Tech the night before. Georgetown still had some good players—Williams and Jackson and Broadnax, too—but it hadn't been the same since Patrick had shipped off to New York. Murphy's heart had gone on over to Maryland this year because of Bias alone; there was beauty in the way that young man played.

"Check it out," said Tutt.

Murphy scoped T. His eyes lit on a boy, eleven, maybe twelve, wearing a neon green knit cap and palming something over to another boy, bone skinny, at the head of an alley.

"You recognize them?"

Murphy shook his head. Far as he knew, they weren't part of Tyrell's crew.

"Stay here," said Tutt, patting the grip of his service revolver.

"Want me to radio it in?"

"Uh-uh. I got it wired."

Tutt was out of the car and across the street just as fast, one hand on his night stick, keeping it steady at his side as he made it behind a tree and then another, getting closer to the alley. Murphy studied Tutt: careful, but fearless as a mothafucker, too, the kind of partner most cops wanted. That is, if you could get past everything else.

Murphy heard a dull explosion somewhere behind him. He gazed idly in the rearview, saw nothing.

Tutt came up on the two boys, shouted out his warning, took off after the one in the green cap as the other hightailed it west on T. Tutt hit it: chest out, running hard while carrying twenty-five pounds of pack set and gun and assorted cop hardware, blowing and going, almost on top of the kid. Then he was gone into the narrow alley. Murphy did not consider chasing the skinny kid.

In the rearview, Murphy saw smoke rise over a row house roof, back off of U. Several sirens called out from different directions. Murphy adjusted the radio's frequency and listened for the report. He keyed the microphone and informed the dispatcher that they'd respond.

Tutt emerged from the alley a couple of minutes later, John Wayning it across the street. He got into the driver's side, his face pink, his eyes stoked and wide. Murphy noticed the red seeping into the skinned palm of Tutt's right hand.

"Who was he?" said Murphy.

"Nobody we know. Some kid, young kid, way out of his territory. I was almost on him, but Tyrell's boys got these old tires and shit spread out all over the alley. Slowed me down."

"That's what they're there for."

"I know. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him to stop, Murph…. Ah, Christ. Stupid. I tripped back there, took some skin off on the concrete." Tutt shook the pain out of his hand. "What's all the noise?"

"Just came over the radio. Some kind of accident in front of that new record store. Got a car in flames right in the middle of U. Told them we'd get on it."

"The Third District," said Tutt happily, ignitioning the squad car. "Always somethin' goin' on down here."

"Why you love it, man."

"You got that right, partner."

Tutt spun the wheel, one-eightied the cruiser, and punched the gas coming out of the fishtail. Murphy flipped on the overheads and grabbed the door's armrest. Tutt high-cackled as the cruiser left rubber on the street.