Authors: DC Noir
George Pelecanos (6 page)
After
debating until dawn, you all decided the only move was to reach out to Butchie,
to act like shit had gone as planned and then see what move he might make. Sure
there were better ways to play it, but not with a bunch of young niggas working
on fear, regret, and not a minute's worth of sleep. You paged your betrayer
just after 9:00 from a pay phone on Benning Road.
He
called right back and you told him you had everything. You even mocked Scarface
by saying you had "the money and the yayo." He laughed and told you to meet him
at his crib, the white house at the corner of Chaplin and Ridge. He even gave
you the street number. You gave people street numbers.
Still,
you pulled up to the given spot at the designated time, your lips greasy from
the bag of sausage biscuits and hash browns you'd recently devoured. Why did
you have to be so fucking greedy? Now you were leading a crew of five down to
four, running on nothing but revenge.
You
literally saw red when he opened the door in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and some
boxer shorts. He said that you were early. You said that he was a dead
motherfucker. Baba and Sean came in through an open window at the rear and you
all let him have it.
Babo
and Sean took the crib. They broke the glass-framed pictures and knocked over
the credenza with all of his mom's good dishes. Then they went to work on him,
while you asked the questions.
It
turned out that Butchie had been doing a little double-dealing. Just to make
sure he got paid, he pitched the same offer to some dude named Rico who lived
over by the fish place on Burns Street. Apparently they'd gotten there long
before you did. Maybe they'd come through the back or on the side you couldn't
see so
good
. So they were on their way out with the
goods as y'all were headed in.
However,
Butchie hadn't heard from them, which told you maybe they'd gotten caught by
the cops, probably with the money and the weight in hand after the shoot-out.
Did Rodney's mom even know yet? Was there enough of his face left for a
positive ID?
The
bloody boy was talking so fast that he could've been speaking in tongues. He
gave you Rico's first and last name and told you where the place was. Sean and
Baba found about $1,000, a half a brick, and a pump-action sawed-off with a
bunch of shells. Had you actually been thinking, you would've pressed him for
all the money he had, cake you knew had to be stashed somewhere. But now all
you wanted was Rico. Rico would close the circle so y'all could get the shirts
and suits ready.
3.
This
was no longer about what you wanted. It was about what had to be done. That's
what you told yourself in the mirror as you changed into that hot-ass hoodie,
that this was the way things worked in the streets, that it was an eye for an
eye and all that other shit.
But
then, for a moment, you thought about your mama, about the two jobs she worked
to keep a roof over your head, about all the efforts she made to get you out of
that fucked-up neighborhood school and into that pre-engineering program. You
thought about all those dreams you had of getting out of Southeast someday, of
being a better dad than the one you never knew. You thought about all of those
things and then shook them off when you closed the door behind you.
Dante
brought his car so you could work in teams. Baba bought the walkie-talkies from
the corner store on his block. You were in business. All you had to do was go
to the designated crib and designate Rico's ass--that is, if he happened to be
home. Still, you hesitated when you turned your key in the ignition. It was as
if you knew you'd made the wrong choice.
Ten
minute's later Dante crackles across the radio line, asking if you're ready.
Sean's right next to you, down to see this thing through even if he was against
it from day one. You can see people moving inside of the house from the street.
There will never be a moment more perfect.
"Yeah,"
you say into the plastic device. "Let's do it."
You
and Sean storm out of the car and rush the front, assuming your boys are doing
the same at the rear. Your weapons are locked and loaded and the enemy will be
caught unaware. Then you hear the fucking sirens, followed by the flood of gold
and blue cruisers on both sides of the street. They're in the alley at the back
too. The whole world is one big roar of karma's siren.
This
was going to be your first kill, your first foray into the kind of streetlife
that made gangsta rap sell millions. One pull of the trigger and you and your
boys would've moved into a whole new area code. Instead you're in the back of a
cruiser knowing that bloody Butchie crawled to the phone and made the call.
Maybe he felt guilty. Or even worse, maybe he was smarter than you.
They
won't get you for murder. Truth be told, if you rat Butchie out you might only
get a year at Oak Hill. You're only seventeen with no priors. Make it through
twelve months in that place and you can still have a future, so will the
others. But Rodney won't. He's the first casualty of a war that never got
started.
You'll
think about him for the rest of your life, never understanding how that blast
didn't take you with him. If you live long enough, you'll try to understand how
this era even existed, how so many lives were snatched away over shit as
equally silly. You'll pour out a little brew every time you have a drink and
never eat a Steak-Um again. You're lucky to be alive, player. This is the first
day of the rest of your life.
Two
in the morning, a steamy Saturday night in July, Sherman Brown was standing by
the jukebox in the notorious Sunbeam Lounge, wondering what the hell he was
doing here. With a wife, a little girl, twins coming, and no way to live
anywhere near the District on a cop's pay, the idea was to earn some nice
money, short-term, for a down payment on a house in peaceful Howard County,
Maryland. But still, a D.C. cop--a good cop, who liked to think of himself as a
good--moonlighting as a bouncer in a dive like this? He wasn't the first,
wouldn't be the last, but--
A gunshot.
Marvin Gaye was wailing
from the jukebox, a dozen or so brothers were whooping as the girl onstage
humped the pole, but Sherman knew he'd heard a shot. A Metro cop heard plenty
of them. Anyone who grew up in a project like Barry Farms had heard plenty.
This one came from in
back,
the other side of the
plain brown door Sherman had never passed through.
Tyrone,
behind the bar, heard it. So did Antwain, the whale, who'd been up near the
stage ogling the girl and stood there now with his mouth hanging open. Some of
the brothers had heard it--they were getting up from their tables and streaming
out. The girl stopped humping the pole.
LaPhonso,
the boss, wasn't around. He'd been in and out as always--keeping an eye on
things, going in back with one of the girls for a while, stepping outside to
get high or do some kind of business.
Sherman
crossed to Tyrone at the bar--Antwain right beside him, all 300 pounds. "Where's
LaPhonso?"
"Ain't
seen him in a while," Tyrone said.
"You
got a key so I can check it out? Or you want to check it?"
Antwain
butted in--"Naw, man.
You the law.
You
gettin
paid. Go on."
Sherman
eyeballed him. He never liked mouth from a punk, 300 pounds or not.
"Go
on. The Man ain't here," Antwain said, "and when he ain't here, I'm The Man."
He told Tyrone, "Give him the key, dawg."
Tyrone
handed it over.
"Go,
boy," Antwain said.
Sherman
wanted to hurt him--this whale, this punk, calling Sherman Brown boy.
But not now.
He turned and headed toward the anonymous door.
He heard Antwain right behind him, the labored breathing.
The
door opened to a dim hallway. Approaching the first door on the left, Sherman
reached for the Glock 17 holstered under his shirt at the small of his back. In
the room he found crackhead Donita, one of the strippers, blowing a cornrowed
brother called Junebug. They hadn't heard anything, or didn't care.
In
the next room a short, stocky guy called Cannonball was humping the new girl
called Golden. No sign of any shooting here. Sherman pulled the door shut and
went back the other way, Antwain close behind him, wheezing.
In
the first room at the other end, a girl he'd never seen was on the bed
clutching the sheet up under her chin, scared, as if she'd seen or at least
heard something--a white girl, dark hair, foreign-looking. Sherman had heard
about foreign girls back here who never appeared out front.
"You all right?"
"Ho-kay.
Ho-kay," she said, nodding
furiously.
Foreign, definitely.
Sherman wasn't sure
she understood him.
Approaching
the last door, he heard someone rattling the knob from inside, then working a
key in the lock.
Had to be LaPhonso.
"Yo, LaPhonz!"
Quiet,
then.
The key no longer working the lock.
"Boss!"
(What LaPhonso liked to be
called, though Sherman could rarely bring himself to say
it.
)
Nothing.
"Whoever you are!
I got my piece and I'm
coming in!"
He
turned his key in the lock and opened the door a crack. There was someone
there. A girl--a pale shoulder, an arm, part of a slip or negligee.
She
backed up, whoever she was. "Sorry!" She too had some kind of accent, and
sounded shaken.
The
cordite smell told Sherman the shot had been fired in here. He raised his Glock
and eased the door open with his left foot. "What's going on? You got a gun in
here?"
The
girl stared at him, wide-eyed. Behind her was a king bed and a pile of clothes
on the floor--sandals, denim shorts, purple polka-dot boxers, and a wad that
looked like the wife-beater T-shirt LaPhonso had been wearing tonight.
The
girl pointed off to her right. Sherman, unable to see over there from the
hallway, eased into the room.
There
was a gun on the floor, probably a .38, near a closed door. Sherman picked it
up, jammed it in his waist-band and turned to the girl. "What happened?"
She
stared with the wide eyes, didn't say anything.
"Who's
in there?" Sherman said.
"Who where, man?"
--Antwain, out in the hall.
Sherman
went to the closed door and pushed it open. It was a little bathroom, nothing
but an old toilet and sink--and The Man, LaPhonso Peete, sprawled on the floor,
dead as a flat rat.
Brain matter all over the wall behind the
toilet, blood pooling under his head.
"What
the fuck?"--Antwain right behind Sherman now.
"Bitch!"
"Chill,
man," Sherman said.
"Who you tellin chill, boy?
Bitch kilt my nigga! You dead bitch. Gimme that," he told Sherman, meaning the
Glock.
Sherman
wasn't about to.
Antwain
glared. "You gonna take her out, then."
Out of his mind.
"You
hear me, nigga?
You been
gettin fat here. You wanna
keep that cabbage rollin in? You take this bitch out, I get ridda this
here"--jerking a thumb toward LaPhonso's corpse, an inconvenience--"and we back
to normal tomorra, nobody know nothin."
Sherman
shook his head. It couldn't work. Besides, he was a police officer and this was
a murder, even if LaPhonso had been nothing but a piece of garbage.
Yeah,
you gonna do her," Antwain said. "Then she ain't tell nothin bout our business.
Do her or we gonna do yo ass."
Sherman
looked over at the girl in her slip--pale and thin, but with a pretty face and
something in her eyes.
"All
right, then," he told Antwain, and told the girl, "Come on. Get some clothes
on."
A
few minutes later he had her out in his old Cutlass. Now what? Antwain wouldn't
believe he'd blown her away unless there was proof. He'd want to see the body.
He
felt the girl looking at him as he pulled out of the lot. Did she believe he
was one
more sorry
nigger, a killer?
He
headed downtown on New York Avenue. Approaching Chinatown a few minutes later,
he still didn't know what to do.
One
of his favorite spots, the China Doll, was open till 4 a.m. on weekends. He
turned left on 5th, right on H, and parked under a streetlight. He looked over
and the girl was so pale, the eyes so big.
Striking.
He
wondered what the moment felt like to her. Wondered who she was, where she was
from, what her story was.
As
if she'd read his mind, she said, "I'm Mariana.
From
Moldova."
Heavy accent, but understandable.