Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos Read Free Book Online Page B

heading down the gravel and into the trees.
    She checked the level of her drink. It was going down real good today. Nothing like a little Jack and some nicotine behind a hit of speed. Course, Ray wouldn’t like it if he came home and found her drunk, but she didn’t have to worry about that yet.
    She had a sip from the glass and then, what the hell, drank it all down in one gulp. Maybe she’d go down to the barn and fix one more weak one, mostly Coke with just a little mash in it to change its color. Ray wouldn’t be home for another few hours anyway, and besides, he’d be all stoked and occupied for the rest of the night. Ray liked to count the cash money he brought back after he made his runs.
    RAY and Earl’s property was set back off Route 28, between Dick—erson and Comus, not too far south of Frederick, at the east—central edge of Montgomery County. There was still forest and open country out here, but not for long. Over the years the Boones had seen the development stretch farther and farther north from D.C., white—flighters, mostly, who claimed they wanted “more land” and “more house for the buck.” What they really wanted, Ray knew, was to get away from the niggers and the crime. None of them could stand the prospect of seeing their daughters walking down the street holding the hand of Willie Horton. That was the white man’s biggest nightmare, and they ran from it like a herd of frightened animals, all the way out here. Ray could understand it, but still, he wished those builders would go and put their new houses someplace else.
    Ray moved the car to the on—ramp of 270 and drove south.
    “Here,” said Ray, handing his pistol butt—out to his father. Earl took the gun, opened the glove box, hit a button, and waited for a false back to drop. He placed the Beretta in the space behind the glove box wall.
    Ray had bought this particular vehicle from a trap—car shop up in the Bronx. It was your basic Taurus, outfitted with more horses than was legal, more juice than Ford used to put in its high—horse street model, the SHO. The bumper was a false bumper, which meant it could withstand a medium—velocity impact and could also accommodate relatively large volumes of heroin between its outer shell and the trunk of the car. Hidden compartments behind the glove box, to the left of the steering column, and in other spots throughout the interior concealed Ray’s guns and his personal stash of drugs.
    Ray lit a cigarette off the dash lighter, passed the lighter to his daddy so he could light his.
    “You’d know we was the bad guys,” said Ray, “if this here was a movie.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “’Cause you and me smoke.”
    “Huh,” said Earl.
    “Down county, I hear they want to outlaw smoking in bars.”
    “That so.”
    “They can have mine,” said Ray, beaming at his cleverness, “when they pry ’em from my cold, dead fingers. Right?”
    Earl didn’t answer. He didn’t talk much to begin with, and he talked even less with his son. Ray had been absent the day God passed out brains, and when he did say something, it tended to be about how tough he was or how smart he was. Earl had twenty years on Ray, and Earl could take Ray on his weakest day. Ray knew it, too. Earl figured this was just another thing that had kept the chip on his boy’s shoulder his entire life.
    Earl popped the top on a can of Busch.
    Ray dragged on his cigarette. It bothered him that his father barely gave him the time of day. It was him, Ray, who had set up this business they had going on right here. It was him, Ray, who had made all the right decisions. If he had left business matters up to his father, who had never even been able to hold a longtime job on his own, they’d have nothing now, nothing at all.
    Course, it took a stretch in Hagerstown, where Ray had done a ten—year jolt on a manslaughter beef, for him to find the opportunity to connect to this gig he had here. Ray had been paid to kill some