The Double (22 page)
Smalls removed the house key from the ring and handed it to Lucas. Without further comment Smalls went to his car, fired up the ignition, and drove away.
Lucas locked the front door of the house. If King did come back, he’d find Bacalov rotting and ripe.
Lucas knew he’d never be able to carry his guns, gear, the painting, and the laptop back through the woods. He jogged the half mile to his truck unencumbered and drove the Jeep back to the house, where he loaded everything into its cargo area. He went down the gravel road with his headlights off, navigating by the light of the moon.
Lucas rode back to D.C. in quiet, with the radio off and the windows down. He thought of Bacalov and their battle, and he saw him dead on the dining room floor.
He would have killed me.
Lucas stared coolly at the road ahead.
L
ucas slept peacefully and got up late. He’d disposed of Bacalov’s laptop in a Dumpster the night before after breaking it into pieces on an alley floor. He’d built a compartment under a wood cutout in his bedroom closet, and there he’d stashed the guns. He’d return them to Bobby Waldron when he was certain that no heat had collected around the shooting.
He phoned Charlotte Rivers on her disposable and left a message. He read the
Post
out on his porch, did his prison workout, and had some lunch. Charlotte did not return his call.
He took a long bike ride, going north into Maryland, all the way out to Lake Needwood in Rockville. The trip took hours. When he returned to his apartment, he showered and phoned Grace Kinkaid. For straights, it was the end of the working day. She just gotten off work at her nonprofit and said she could be at her place in a half-hour’s time. Lucas agreed to meet her there.
They sat in the living room of her Champlain Street condo, the painting leaning against the coffee table. Grace had poured herself a large glass of white wine. Lucas was having water.
“I’m so happy,” said Grace.
“I’m glad.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see my painting again. It’s not a reflection on you. I just thought, you know, that it had been sold and was somewhere out there in a collector’s hidden room.”
“I got after it,” said Lucas.
“Indeed you did. Was it difficult?”
“Not very.”
“Was there any connection to the car scam guy?”
“That was a blind alley.”
“So you found Billy?”
“No.”
“You spoke to him, though.”
“Never had the pleasure.”
“How’d you get the painting, then?”
“That’s not important, is it?” Lucas looked into Grace’s eyes. His message was clear.
“I suppose not,” she said.
“As for my fee…”
“You took me by surprise. I have to call the buyer and make the deal. I could write you a check from my money market account right now, if you promise not to deposit it right away.”
“I’d like it in cash, as we agreed. I can wait.”
“Certainly.”
“I know you’re good for it.”
“Of course.” Grace looked to a space on the wall where a brass hook was nailed into a stud. “I’m going to put it right where it was.”
“Would you like me to hang it for you?”
“No, I’ll do that. I think I’m going to sit here and look at it for a while.”
Lucas stood from his seat. “I better get on my way.”
Grace placed her wineglass on the coffee table and stood. She came close to him, put her hand on his forearm, and kissed him, catching the side of his mouth. Her lips were wet and she smelled strongly of alcohol.
“Thank you so much, Spero.”
“My pleasure.”
“I’ll probably have the money for you in a couple of days.”
“Right,” he said.
Lucas entered the elevator. In its polished steel interior he saw his reflection, refracted and dim.
He met his brother Leo at his neighborhood spot on Georgia Avenue, below Geranium, a nondescript, nonviolent bar with mostly middle-aged patrons and a jukebox stocked with soul, neo-soul, and funk. The room was filled with the voice of Anthony Hamilton, singing with gospel fervor.
“That’s my man,” said Leo, nodding toward the juke. “Anthony dogged his girl, now he’s praying to God to bring her back.”
“Maybe it’ll work. He sounds convincing.”
“That’s no spiritual pose. Dude sings in church.” Leo took a sip of his beer. They were drinking imports at a four-top in the center of the room. A woman at the bar had turned her head and was looking at Leo in a familiar way. “When’s the last time you been to Saint Sophia?”
“Been a while. You?”
“I took Mom two Sundays back. Father Steve’s still up there at the pulpit, preaching the good word.”
“F.S. is the man,” said Spero.
He needed to get to church and pray. Lately, he’d broken damn near every one of the commandments. But what good would it do? You couldn’t unfuck another man’s wife. You couldn’t give life back to the dead.
Leo studied his brother’s troubled eyes. “How’d that work thing go for you?”
“I took care of it.”
“The job’s done?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up for you next?”
“Just keep doin what I’m doin, I guess.”
“You don’t seem too enthusiastic.”
“What’s your point?”
“You know what it means when someone wakes up in the morning and they don’t see any promise in the day?”
“It means they’ve got a limp dick.”
“I’m serious. You been feeling a little blue lately, right?”
“Shit…”
“You should talk to someone. Not to me. I’m sayin, you should take advantage of your VA benefits and see a professional.”
“Please.”
“I’ve been reading stuff, Spero. About all the veterans who’ve been committing suicide. It’s up to one a day now. That’s a higher rate than the combat deaths in Afghanistan this year.”
“Screw you, Leo. You know me better than that.”
“I’m not saying you’re at risk. I’m saying, if those people had gotten help, they might not have done what they did. Ain’t no shame in talking to a shrink.”
“Screw
you.
”
“Nice to see you have an open mind.”
They changed the subject. They talked about the Nats and the Redskins, and the woman at the bar, whose head kept swiveling in Leo’s direction.
“So you hear anything on the Cherise Roberts murder?” said Leo. “The law got any leads?”
“My attorney, Petersen, he put some feelers out down at the D.C. Jail. There’s been no arrest as of yet.” Spero killed the rest of his beer. “Let me ask you something, man. When you had Cherise as a student, was there anything off about her? Outside of the usual teenage, temporary madness stuff?”
“Cherise was funny and popular. Not much of a scholar, though. She wasn’t headed to college or any place like it. She did the minimum, but she was pleasant, and she never disrupted my class.”
“What about her home life?”
“No father in her world, but that’s not unusual.”
“Was she promiscuous?”
“No more than you or me at that age, from what I could tell.”
Spero was carefully wading around the subject of Cherise’s secret life. But maybe it wasn’t a secret to her peers.
“Her friends ever call her by a nickname?” said Spero.
“Shoot,
all
the kids have nicknames.”
“What was hers?”
Leo thought about it. “Cherry. Why?”
“I’m going to stay on this,” said Spero. “I need to keep busy. To help me through this blue period I’m in.”
“See, man, why you got to ridicule me? I’m concerned about you, is all. Always looking out for you, bro.”
“The same way that minx at the bar has her eye on you. She’s fine, too. You should talk to her.”
“I got plans. I’m meeting a young lady tonight.”
“Don’t hurt her, Hammer.”
“I gotta go. You coming out the door with me?”
“You go ahead,” said Spero, holding up his empty bottle and signaling the waitress. “I’m gonna have one more beer.”
Lucas had three more. That made five, which for him was far too many.
He’d been thinking of Charlotte, and his inability to reach her, and his frustration welled up and crested, manifesting itself in a bad decision. He stood, left money on the table, and walked toward the door. On the way out he inadvertently bumped a patron, an older man, and Lucas said, “My bad, sir,” and the man said, “That’s quite all right, young man.”
Out in his Jeep, Lucas put a guitar-heavy mix into his CD player and turned it up. As he drove west on Military Road he listened to Dinosaur Jr.’s “I Don’t Wanna Go There,” and the Hold Steady’s “Most People Are DJs,” two songs with long blister-bleed solos that made him more reckless. Soon he was in an upscale upper Northwest neighborhood, parked near a stately forest-green colonial. Lucas got out of his Jeep.
The first floor of the house,
her house,
was lit up. Many of its curtains and blinds were open, affording a view to the living and dining areas. He’d memorized her address. It had been easy to find, using one of the many programs on his laptop. He was good at what he did. After all, he’d found a group of lowlife criminals operating under false surnames. Stood to reason, he could come up with the residential address of a respectable citizen like Charlotte Rivers.
“‘You’re so respectable,’” sang Lucas, under his breath.
He thought of his father, listening to the cassette version of that record,
Some Girls,
in his Chevy Silverado work truck, Spero beside him on the bench, a boy happily going to a job site with his dad on a summer day, one of their many adopted Lab mixes back in the bed. Van’s curly hair, salted with gray, was blowing about from the wind of the open window, and there was a smile on his face, because he was a man who was doing something very simple that he loved. He was headed to work in a pickup truck and hanging out with one of his sons.
“It’s a great day,” said Van.
“What are we gonna do,
Baba?
”
“Work. Family and work, boy
mou.
That’s what matters. There’s a lot to be said for leading the straight life. You’ll see.”
Lucas wondered what his father would think if he could see him now, drunk, creeping around outside the home of a married woman. Van Lucas would tell Spero to stop what he was doing. That he was all wrong. He’d tell him to get back in his car, go home, and sleep it off. And in the morning, he should ask himself what kind of man he wanted to be.
But Lucas did not go back to his truck. He walked on.
Past the house, Lucas turned into an alley. There, the home’s screened-in porch shared space with a small side yard and a driveway leading into a freestanding garage. Along the porch was a series of windows, and through them Lucas could see a modern kitchen with a built-in refrigerator, wall oven, and island. Charlotte and her husband were standing next to the island. They were talking and drinking red wine.
Lucas wondered if it was that Barolo she liked.
The husband was not what Lucas had envisioned. In his head, Lucas had seen a smallish guy wearing glasses, with a receding hairline, a man who lived the life of the mind rather than the physical. But in the flesh he was on the tall side, well built, with a full head of hair. A handsome guy, still in his dress shirt and tie, having a glass of wine and a conversation with his wife after an honest day’s work. Straight.
Family and work, boy
mou
. That’s what matters.
The husband said something, and Charlotte smiled shyly, then sipped at her wine.
They looked content to him. Comfortable with each other. At the moment, happy.
Soon they’d be upstairs in their master bedroom. Maybe they’d just go to sleep. Or maybe he’d undress her, spread her out on their bed, and make love to her. She’d enjoy it, if only in a familiar, reassuring way. She’d told Lucas that her sex life was the insufficient piece of her marriage, and that he, Lucas, filled a void. So this was what he was to her in the end: a piece in a puzzle. Something that made
her
complete.
But on his own, Lucas wasn’t enough for her. He wasn’t even in the ballpark. She’d never leave this man, her security, this house.
Charlotte’s husband stepped forward and touched her forearm, and both of them smiled.
Don’t do that, thought Lucas.
She’s mine
.
B
illy King had been shacking up with Lois Wilson for a few days in her waterfront house, a brick two-story on Dyer Road in Newberg, Maryland. Courtesy of her ex-husband, the home was furnished handsomely, with new appliances and an up-to-the-minute home entertainment center. A hundred yards from its back porch sat a dock, complete with boathouse, on a brackish deepwater creek leading out to the Wicomico River. In the boathouse was a nearly new twenty-two-foot Whaler powered by a big Merc engine. King figured he could spend some quality time in this place and live princely like the stud he was. But he was restless.
Not that he wasn’t wanted here. Lois was hungry, and he gave it to her until it seemed she couldn’t take any more. Then, when he hinted he might go, she begged him not to leave. He had her where he wanted her, but he’d gotten tired of her quick. Old stuff was all right in a low-lit bar, but when you got it home under stark incandescence it sure did look its age, and some things couldn’t be hid. Lois’s cans had been worked on, and her crow’s feet had been erased, but her thighs were oatmeal, and when the Spanx came off there was that dreaded roll around her waist. Still, she had some nice jewelry lying about on her bedroom dresser, a pearl necklace, diamond earrings and such, and a sweet emerald-and-diamond ring.
King was about to leave her for a while, but he’d return. For now, he had business in D.C.
The unsold paintings were bothering him. He’d worked hard to get them, two from the crinkle-bunny who lived at the Wyoming, and the last one from that juicer on Champlain Street. Jobs like those were an investment in time and effort. Now the paintings were sitting there at the house in Croom, wrapped in brown paper. That was real money, gathering dust. Charles Lumley needed to do his job and move the goods.