What It Was (11 page)

“You said you knew Red’s rep. So you must know more.”

“I told the law enough to leave me alone.”

“I’m not the law,” said Fanella. “What’d you leave out?”

“I can’t say no more, for real. I’m not tryin to get doomed.”

Fanella put one knee up on the mattress to steady himself. He loosely placed his hand on Williams’s shoulder above the wound and kept his thumb free.

“What didn’t you tell them?” Fanella grinned. “What else?”

“Red got this woman,” said Williams, a tremor in his voice. “Goes by Coco. Runs whores in a house on Fourteenth. What I heard, anyway.”

“Heard where?”

“The street.” Williams gave him the location and described the building.

“That’s it?”

“Swear for God.”

Fanella gripped Williams shoulder. “Does this hurt?”

“No.”

“How about this?” Fanella pushed his thumb into the
gunshot wound. It felt like jelly as he broke through the skin. Williams began to thrash and scream.

“Lou,” said Gregorio, and turned his head away.

Fanella put his right hand over the man’s mouth. Williams urinated on the sheets before he passed out.

“Niggers aggravate me,” said Fanella.

They left the room and walked down the hall. They did not move quickly, because Lou Fanella felt that a man should leave a scene unhurried, with his shoulders square and chin up. They went by a nurse who did not notice them, and an aged orderly pushing a wheelchair, and a tall, uniformed security guard with chiseled features who was standing against a wall, giving them a long stare.

“Fuck you lookin at?” said Fanella to the young man.

“Nothin, sir.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Clarence Bowman studied them as they passed.

FRANK VAUGHN
sat in an unmarked Dodge beside Detective Henry A. Passman, a gentle family man who, because of his initials, was called “Hap” by nearly everyone on the force. Like many career police officers who aspired to rise above uniform status, he had been shuttled around various divisions and had finally found a home in what had once been Prostitutions and Perversions but was now known by the more succinct description of Vice.

Night had come to the city. The calendar said close to summer, and there were folks dressed lightly and out on the street. On 14th at R, a spring-gold ’70 Camaro, up on HiJackers, was curbside, idling. A white girl in white hot
pants and a red gingham midriff shirt was leaning into its open driver’s-side window, negotiating with the muscle car’s occupants. Music was coming loudly from the eight-track system, but to Vaughn it was just screams and guitars. His focus was on the girl, a minor from the looks of her, and the heads of the five long-haired young men squeezed into the car.

“It’s somebody’s birthday,” said Vaughn.

“One of the boys in the backseat just turned sixteen,” said Passman. “His pals are buying him a present.”

“The Fourteenth Street cherry-bust. A rite of passage in this town.”

“They don’t want a white girl, though. They can get that any day at their high school. This one’s gonna take the money and turn the boy over to one of the black girls in the stable.”

“Then?”

“The boy’s directed to a building and told to go up a flight of stairs. Imagine what that’s like. How his heart’s pounding. Boy’s never even been down here before and now he’s in a strange house in what he thinks of as the ghetto. So he meets his whore in a dark little room. She tells him straight away he has to use a rubber. Offers to put it on for him, and if he says no, she insists. She doesn’t want to get on her back, is what it is. More often than not, that boy’s gonna shoot while she’s fittin the safe on his pecker.”

“Liftoff,” said Vaughn. “Bit of a letdown, isn’t it?”

“He’ll be
grateful
. Matter of fact, he’ll go back to his friends with a spring in his step. Bragging about how he fucked a black chick.”

“You got a daughter, Hap?”

“Two. I keep ’em close.”

“My son’s twenty-six and he still lives in my house, rent free. Olga stocks his bathroom with toilet paper, Hai Karate, and his favorite brand of minty toothpaste.”

“Least you know where he is.”

A signal came from the handheld radio on the seat by Passman’s side. It was a plainclothes officer who had been sent into the Coco Watkins house and was now up in a room with one of the girls. He was telling Passman that the transaction had been made and that his girl had been badged. Passman switched frequencies and radioed a couple of squad cars that were parked on nearby side streets, waiting for his call. They arrived, sirens and cherry-tops activated, shortly thereafter, accompanied by a wagon. The Camaro promptly sped off, and the white girl disappeared into an alley.

“Life’s off-key symphony,” said Passman, a cut-rate philosopher toiling in a world of hookers, pimps, glory-hole enthusiasts, flagellants, women who spread their legs on the D.C. Transit, and guys who played with their dongs in public.

“Let’s see what we got inside,” said Vaughn.

The building had been a row house, once residential, now zoned commercial, with an urban market on the first floor. They followed the uniformed police into the door beside the market and went up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The uniforms had drawn their service revolvers, but Vaughn’s rig remained snapped. At the sound of the sirens, Red Jones would have gone out the fire escape that led to the alley, where another patrolman and his partner were stationed
and ready. But those officers had radioed in that all was quiet. Vaughn had not expected to find Jones in the building. He was here for information.

The undercover officer and the unlucky young whore were standing in the hall, his hand loosely gripping her upper arm. She was an unformed-looking girl in a purple negligee. A prominent mole marked her face. Two other girls were standing in the hall, similarly attired, observing, smoking cigarettes.

“Entrapment,” said the girl, whose name was Shay. “Entrapment.” She had been told to repeat that word and nothing else.

“Down at the end,” said the plainclothes man to Passman and Vaughn.

They didn’t need to be told. Coco Watkins, in red lipstick, violet eye shadow, high heels, high hair, and a red dress, stood by an open door at the end of hot-pad row, leaning against the frame. Her arms were folded. Her breasts were like chocolate grapefruits heaving up out of her plunging V-neck.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Vaughn, and the uniformed police holstered their guns.

As Vaughn approached Coco, he noted that he was looking her straight in the eye. Wasn’t often that he came upon a woman his height. Her evening shoes gave her three inches, but even without them, she had to be six foot tall.

Passman showed her his badge.

“Question is,” said Coco, “who is he?”

“Detective Frank Vaughn,” he said, dipping his head cordially.

“Hound Dog,” said Coco, one corner of her lip upturned in a half smile. “Y’all got a warrant?”

“Why don’t you just be polite and ask us in,” said Passman.

“Don’t touch anything,” said Coco. “I’m not playin.”

She unfolded her arms and walked into her apartment, which was also her office. Vaughn and Passman followed. To Vaughn it looked like the lair of a proper madam. Red velvet sofa, a nice big bed, and a bar cart, fully stocked.

“Drink?” said Coco, reading Vaughn’s eyes.

Vaughn shook his head.

“We’re placing your girl under arrest for solicitation,” said Passman. “You, too, and the others.”

“This here is a licensed massage establishment.”

“You’ll get a phone call,” said Passman.

“Shit.”
She looked at Vaughn. “I know why Vice made my door dark. Why you here?”

“I’m looking for Robert Lee Jones,” said Vaughn. “Goes by Red.”

“So?”

“He’s wanted on suspicion of a homicide. You and Red are friends, aren’t you?”

“Maybe we are. But I don’t know where he is at this time. If you run into him—”

“I know. Give him your regards.” Vaughn looked around, saw a closed door. “Is that a closet?”

“Go ahead and look in it. While you’re at it, search under the bed, you got a mind to.”

Vaughn’s eyes were drawn to the bed. It was a brass-rail deal, the box spring and mattress up high. He could see the edge of a wooden box beneath it, sitting on the floor. Many
straights kept their valuables close by, underneath their beds. Criminals did, too. Vaughn glanced at Coco’s manicured hands, unadorned with jewelry.

“I doubt Red Jones is hiding under anyone’s bed,” said Vaughn.

“Believe it, big man.”

Coco looked at Vaughn directly. Vaughn smiled.

“I don’t need no bracelets, Hap,” said Coco.

“Right,” said Passman, turning to one of the cops in uniform. “Take her out. Gently.”

Out in the hall, as the girls were being led to the stairs, Coco watched Shay, her head down, her hair disheveled, being moved along by the undercover man. Shay was one of the newer ladies, and this was her first arrest. It would not be the only emotional hit she’d take that night.

Coco felt bad for Shay, almost. But it was time for her to see this life as it was instead of how she wanted it to be. Girl had to learn.

Vaughn was the last one out of the building. He checked the front door before stepping onto the street.

A
T HALF
past ten that
night, a bloody and beaten man named Dallas Butler walked into the Third District police station at 16th and V, Northwest, went directly to the desk sergeant, and said, “I wanna confess to the murder of Robert Odum. I’m turning myself in.”

Sergeant Bill Herbst, black-haired and beefy, pointed to a row of chairs. “Have a seat over there and wait.”

A few minutes later, Vaughn came out from the offices and found Butler, a uniformed cop now standing beside him. Vaughn studied Butler, a young man with wide shoulders and thick hands. His lower lip was split as if filleted, and one eye was swollen shut. There was a raised welt on his left cheek, and the ear on the same side was as big and misshapen as a gourd.

Blood was splattered all over the front of his white shirt, and blood had crusted beneath his mouth.

“You are?”

“Dallas Butler.”

“I understand you want to talk about a homicide.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s Detective Vaughn.” He put out his hand. Butler gripped it weakly. “C’mon back and get cleaned up.”

Vaughn helped Butler up and guided him back into the main offices, which were not traditional offices but rather an open room of desks. Across the room, Coco Watkins, Shay, and the rest of the girls were finalizing their processing by Passman and a couple of the junior members of his squad. Coco’s lawyer, Jake Tempchin, who serviced many in the D.C. underworld, had arrived and was talking loudly and gesturing broadly at Passman and other police, who were going about their paperwork and pointedly not looking at him.

“Dallas!” said Shay when she noticed her man crossing the room. Her hand went to her mouth, an involuntary shock response at seeing Butler in his woeful condition.

“Shut up, girl,” said Coco.

Butler glanced over at his lady friend, made no acknowledgment, then lowered his head and kept walking. But Vaughn had caught the connection.

Butler was put into one of the interview rooms, which held a scarred table-and-chairs arrangement. Beside one chair a leg iron had been bolted to the floor, and on the table were an ashtray, a tape recorder, and a yellow legal pad. Vaughn sent in Officer Anne Honn, blond and womanly, who was the unofficial station house nurse and the object of much attention from her male coworkers. She commenced to working on Butler with alcohol swabs and antiseptics. Honn told
Vaughn that Butler needed to go to a hospital, that at the very least his lip was going to need stitches. Vaughn agreed with her assessment, adding that it would have to wait. He turned to Butler.

“Your name is really Dallas?”

“Says Leonard on my birth certificate.”