The Turnaround by George Pelecanos Read Free Book Online Page A

reefer onto the lighter’s orange coils. They took turns snorting the smoke that rose off the hot surface. It was only enough for a headache, but they liked the smell.
    “Where we goin?” said Alex.
    “Downtown,” said Pete, turning the car onto Colesville Road and driving south for the District line.
    Billy pulled a Marlboro from a pack he had slipped behind the sun visor and fired it up. The windows were down and the warm night air flowed into the car, blowing back their hair. They all wore it long.
    The car was a white-over-blue Cutlass Supreme. Because of the color scheme, and because it was not the 442, Billy often needled Pete about the vehicle, saying it was a car for “housewives and homos.”
    “What,” said Billy, “did your mother pick this out while your father was at work?”
    “Least we own it,” said Pete. Billy’s father, a Ford salesman at the Hill and Sanders showroom in Wheaton, brought home loaners. Pete’s father was an attorney for the UAW, a “professional,” which Pete never tired of mentioning to his friends. Pete got good grades and had recently scored well on the SATs. Billy and Alex were C students and had no special plans. They had gotten high and drunk the night before the test.
    The boys argued over the choice of radio stations all the way down 16th Street. Alex wanted to listen to WGTB, the progressive FM station coming out of Georgetown U’s campus, but Billy blew that idea off.
    “He’s hoping they play Vomit Rooster,” said Billy.
    “ Atomic Rooster,” said Alex.
    “Nights in White Satin” came on the radio, but Billy switched it because they weren’t stoned. He switched off another station that was playing that Lobo song about the dog and stayed with another one only long enough to change the words of the Roberta Flack hit to “The first time ever I sat on your face.” Billy found a station that was spinning music with guitars and let it ride. They listened to singles by T-Rex, Argent, and Alice Cooper, and when “Day After Day” came on, Billy turned it all the way up. They were down near Foggy Bottom by the time the song had finished. Pete found a place to park.
    They walked to a nightclub owned by Blackie Auger. They weren’t old enough to drink, but all of them had draft cards they had bought from older guys in the neighborhood. The doorman had a look at them, saw three guys in jeans from the working-class side of the suburbs, and balked at letting them in. But Alex talked them through the door by saying he knew Blackie, the legendary Greek restaurateur and bar owner. Alex did not know Auger and neither did his parents. In fact, he was in an entirely different class of Greek American and had never come in contact with him. Alex’s family attended “the immigrant church” on 16th Street, while Auger and others of his standing were members of the “uptown” cathedral at 36th and Mass.
    The doorman let them pass. The chance that the kid might be telling the truth was their ticket in.
    They knew they were out of place as soon as they entered the club. The men were in their twenties and wore stacks and tight double-knit trousers, with rayon big-collared shirts opened to expose chest hair, medallions, crucifixes, and gold anchors. The women wore dresses and did not look their way. Those on the dance floor seemed to know the current steps. Alex, Billy, and Pete could do stuff they’d seen on the Soul Train dance line, but that was all. Their stay was cut short when a guy with a dollar sign for a belt buckle said something to Billy about being “in the wrong club,” and Billy, who was smoking a Marlboro at the time, said, “Yeah, I didn’t know this was a fag bar,” and flicked his live cigarette off the dude’s chest. The same doorman who had let them in told the boys to get out and “don’t never” come back.
    “Don’t never,” said Pete, out on the sidewalk. “Dumbass used a double negative.”
    Billy and Alex didn’t know what Pete meant, but