“When?”

“Later.”

“It gonna be busy.”

Rodney shrugged. “Let Futon run it.”

“Futon’s a idiot.” Strike looked away, scowling, not wanting to see those fingernails anymore.

Rodney sighed, shook his head. “You got to get off that bench every now and then, my man. You gonna get all crabbed up.”

Strike couldn’t respond, the stammer hitting strong, right up from his feet. And he didn’t even know the words yet.

“Just come by, OK?”

“I-i-if I can.”

The baby-fat girl worked her way up to Rodney’s window in a shy slide. She peeked in, smiling. “I like them Garfields.”

Rodney gave her a slow eye, fanning his knees. “What you want?”

Strike pushed away from the car, headed back to the bench. Turn my stomach.

 

“Yo yo, check it out.” Horace shoved a Childcraft catalogue under Strike’s nose and pointed to a brightly colored set of 250 blocks standing at twice the height of a blank-faced, five-year-old redhead. “That’s some bad shit for a kid, them blocks.”

They were sitting on the top bench slat, thigh to thigh.

“What the hell you want with blocks for? You a infant?” Strike had a Hold Everything catalogue open on his knees.

“Not for me, motherfucker. I’m just sayin’…” Horace got all red and choke-faced.

“Yo yo, Horace want play blocks.” Peanut haw-hawed, spinning out in a tight circle, his own catalogue rolled up into a baton.

“Hey, fuck you, nigger!” Horace flew off the bench and Peanut danced away, his laugh exaggerated, pushing it.

Strike thought Horace did want the blocks. He wanted the blocks, the deluxe colored pencil sets, the construct-a-castle, the miniature rescue vehicles and maybe even the plastic microbots. Strike knew Horace had been taking his money and buying toys on the sly since the beginning, but he never said anything about it because Horace never had anything before in his life, and he was only thirteen.

Ever since Peanut fished a dozen catalogues out of a garbage can, everybody was in a state of mild disorder, passing around the thin glossies as if they were sex books. Strike would have cracked a whip if it was anything else, but he was the worst. He’d meant to go over to Rodney’s store an hour before, during the dinner lull, but had remained glued to the bench, a half-dozen catalogues on his lap, running his fingers down page after page of camisoles, hand-carved Christmas-tree angels, computerized jogging machines, golf putting sets for den and office, personalized stationery, lawn furniture—anything and everything for man, woman or child. The catalogues made him weak in the knees, fascinated him to the point of helplessness, the idea of all these things to be had, organized in a book that he could hold in one hand. Not that he would ever order anything—possessions drew attention, made you a target. None of the boys would order out of a catalogue either, not necessarily because they were paranoid like Strike, but because the ordering process—telephones, mailings, deliveries—required too much contact with the world outside the street. It was easier to go to a store on JFK Boulevard, flash your roll and say “Gimme that.”

Strike didn’t have a watch, but he knew it was seven o’clock because Popeye came out of 4 Weehawken. Popeye was forty-five but looked sixty, a hobbled-up twist-backed pipehead with a bulging left eye. He shuffled over to the bench licking his lips, probably broke but liking to be near the bottles anyhow, hoping he’d find one in the grass or something. Strike had given Popeye a bottle out of pity a few weeks back, but that had turned out to be a bad mistake, because the only thing worse than a pipehead with no bottle to smoke was a pipehead with one bottle, and Popeye had spent the rest of that night in a frantic scuttle, hassling the crew for hours until Strike had to slap his face. Strike still remembered the slick bristles of Popeye’s cheek and something wet—spit, blood—left on his own hand. Strike had rubbed it off against his pant leg in disgust, and all that night he dreamed about that wetness on his palm and fingers.

Popeye came hobbling past the bench now, not looking at Strike but pacing back and forth like a sentry, mumbling, “Strike the man… Strike the man.”

Seven o’clock: the Fury last rolled on them at four-thirty, and processing The Word at Juvie, if it went that far, would take them out of action for about ninety minutes. Then they’d probably hit O’Brien, then Sullivan, which meant they’d probably roll on Strike again about eight, eight-fifteen—unless they scored at those other two projects, in which case they wouldn’t come back tonight, because a second booking would bring them to about ten o’clock and the Fury always knocked off at ten to drink away the last two hours of the four-to-midnight shift. They didn’t like to snatch clockers later than ten and risk getting stuck until two A.M. with paperwork and all the requisite stops along the way to the county bullpen. So they were either coming in an hour or not at all. Strike couldn’t take another dicky check tonight, decided to be out of there before eight, come back at ten when all was clear one way or the other.

He went back to the pictures on his lap, flipping past a gold-plated razor, bocce balls, thick merino wool undersheets and a child-size police cruiser, four feet high like a bright blue cartoon car, a blond three-year-old grinning behind the wheel like he’d just shit his pants.

Strike had no real love of things for themselves, but he loved the idea of things, the concept of possession. Sometimes he was crazed with wanting, blind with visions of things he was too cagey to buy, and at moments like this he felt tortured, tantalized, sensing in some joyless way that he was outsmarting someone, but he wasn’t sure who.

Finally revolted with the catalogues, with himself, he slid off the bench top, walked over to Futon and took away Futon’s catalogue, a sexy Victoria’s Secret, Futon going, “Hey hey,” his fingers snapping like fish after the pages. Strike had to hold the catalogue behind his back to get Futon’s attention.

“I’m going out.