Soul Circus by George P. Pelecanos

Author:George P. Pelecanos [Pelecanos, George P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: African American, General, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9780753822821
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group, Limited
Published: 2004-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

ULYSSES Foreman had scored Ashley Swann a real nice gun for Christmas, a piece she had been wanting for a long time. The revolver had come from that retail gun store down in Virginia, his most frequent source. As was his usual practice, he had paid a commission to a clean Virginia resident to make the buy.

Ashley sat on the edge of their bed in her pajamas, having changed back into them after Long and Jones, Dewayne Durham’s boys, had come, bought that pretty blue Taurus .38, and gone. She had taken her gun out of the drawer of her nightstand, which is where she kept it all the time. Ulysses had instructed her that this would be its most useful spot; he kept his, the 9mm Colt, the one with the custom bonded ivory grips, in his own nightstand on his side of the bed.

She was giving the gun a good inspection. She liked the weight of it in her hand.

It was the Smith & Wesson 60LS, the LadySmith, a .357 stainless-steel revolver with a speed-loader cutout and smooth rosewood grips, specially contoured to fit a woman’s hand. The grips were smooth and carried the S&W monogram; Ashley oiled them often, and she used her Hoppes kit to clean the chambers and barrel at least twice a month. It was a beautiful gun. She had her eye on a similar model, the 9mm auto, manufactured in frosted stainless with matching gray grips.

“Ulee?”

“Huh.” He was lying on his back on the bed, his head propped up on pillows, his eyes on their flat-screen Sony.

“You know that LadySmith nine, the pretty one I seen in the magazine, all gray?”

“Yeah.”

“I want one.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Foreman was watching ESPN Classic. Ashley didn’t know how men could stand to look at some old basketball game, had been played years before, when they knew how it was gonna end. But she did like to see him lying there, one arm behind his head, his bicep rounded, that rug of tight, curly hair covering the upper part of his chest.

“I’m thinkin’ on goin’ to see my daddy down in Port Tobacco,” said Ashley.

“Go ahead.”

On the tube was game 6 of the Bulls-Jazz finals from ’98, played in Salt Lake. He watched Karl Malone take a dish from Stockton — white boy had to do something about those tight drawers, but he could orchestrate the shit out of some ball — and go underneath for a one-handed reverse dunk.

“The Mailman,” said Foreman with admiration.

“Ulee?”

Foreman thought about how Malone was wastin’ hisself out there in Morman land. Handsome man like him, going home to his dull-ass family after the games, listenin’ to country music and shit, when he could be playing in a real city like New York, spending his dollars in clubs, gettin’ fresh pussy every night. To Foreman it seemed like Malone wasn’t having any fun. Playing with Stockton and his short shorts, and that other white boy, wiped his face like there was somethin’ runnin’ down it every time he got to the foul line.

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