What It Was (23 page)

Strange said nothing.

“Why’d you do it?” said Carmen. “Am I not giving you something you need?”

Strange spread his hands. “Look, I didn’t… I’m sayin, it didn’t go to where you think it did.”

“You mean you didn’t fuck her. And I’m supposed to, what, give you credit for that?”

“I’m sorry,” said Strange.

“Too many times, Derek.”

“Let me come in out this night and talk to you.”

“You gonna tell me you learned, right?”

“Please.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, and stepped back into her apartment. The door closed and the light went off. Strange stood in the darkened street.

A HALF
hour later, Strange was in his apartment, sitting in his living room with no lights on, drinking scotch on ice, when the phone rang. Vaughn was on the other end of the line.

They filled each other in on the details of their day. Vaughn told Strange about the beating and robbery of Sylvester Ward, the shooting death of Roland Williams at Soul House, the arrest of the would-be assassin Clarence Bowman. Strange told Vaughn what he had learned about his client, Maybelline Walker, his sighting of the bold Red Jones and his tall, striking woman at the Carter Barron amphitheater, the subsequent chase, and his near arrest.

“That officer did you a favor by pulling you over,” said Vaughn. “If you had caught up with Jones, no telling what he might have done. He never even gave Roland Williams a chance.”

“Man needs to be got.”

“I’m about to take care of that.”

“You are, huh?”

“I could use your help.”

“I was you, I’d take a whole lot of backup instead. Besides, I don’t even have a gun.”

“I’ll give you one.”

“I don’t use ’em anymore. Don’t even want to touch one.”

“You want that ring, though, don’t you?”

“Look, I checked out Coco at the concert. If she had it, she would have been wearing it. I reckon it was stolen by those guys who tossed her place.”

“Maybe. But there’s something else. Four years ago, I walked the extra mile when you needed me. You
know
what I’m talking about.”

Vaughn was speaking of their shared secret. April 1968. Strange sipped his drink and looked through his open French doors to the lights of the city spread out below. “Is there a plan?”

“I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”

“You sayin you know where Red’s at.”

“Not yet,” said Vaughn. “But I will.”

L
OU FANELLA
and Gino Gregorio
sat in their black Continental, the morning sun beating down on the roof and heating its leather interior. On 14th, telephone company employees walked in and out of a nondescript building and folks in need of breakfast stood in a line outside a nearby mission. Fanella was smoking a cigarette and sweating into his shirt.

“I feel like shit.”

“Those chicks liked to party,” said Gregorio. He had not overdone it the night before. He was rested and content, a man who’d had his ashes hauled after a long drought. It did not bother him that he had paid for it. Gregorio had no rap, so much of his physical experience with women and girls, going back to his army days, had been with whores.

“My stomach is still messed up,” said Fanella. “We shouldn’t have ate that Mexican.”

“Quit complaining,” said Gregorio. “You got laid, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I got laid. How ’bout you?”

“Cindy? Damn straight.”

“Was he good?”

“What do you mean, ‘he’?”

“Why not just fuck a boy if that’s what you want?”

“I’ll fuck you with a baseball bat.” Gregorio’s acne scars stood out in relief against his reddened face.

“Aw, look at you, you’re all mad.” Fanella laughed. “I swear you’re a homo.”

They grew quiet and reflective. Fanella pitched his cigarette out to the street. He looked up at the big windows of Coco Watkins’s office and bedroom. He didn’t expect to see her. They had already driven around the block and through the alley and had seen no Fury.

“The big lady’s not in there,” said Gregorio.

“I know it,” said Fanella. “But she’s gonna want last night’s take. I’m betting one of her whores is gonna deliver it right to her. When that happens, we’ll find Mr. Jones and our money. Get out of this shithole town and get back to Jersey.”

They had gathered their things quickly and checked out of the motel. Fanella had not inspected his suitcase when he had hastily packed it. He didn’t know that the ring he’d stolen was gone.

“There’s someone,” said Gregorio, noticing the figure of a young black woman moving about in Coco’s office.

Fanella squinted against the sun. “Could be our girl.”

VAUGHN AND
Strange sat in the Monaco, idling on the north end of Mount Pleasant Street. The Dodge’s recently charged
air conditioner blew cool against them. Vaughn was in a light-gray Robert Hall suit; Strange wore bells, a loose-fitting shirt, and suede Pumas in natural.

The block was the commercial strip of the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, and there was much activity. Puerto Ricans, Hungarians, Greeks, blacks, mixed-race couples, and young residents of all types in post-hippie group homes made up the scene. The road still carried streetcar tracks, but the old line was inactive, and buses came through regularly. Henry Arrington had taken a D.C. Transit north on 16th after he had been bounced from lockup. Vaughn and Strange had tailed him as he got off and walked to his destination. Arrington had just stepped into the liquor store near the end of the block.

Vaughn and Strange watched as Arrington, along with a couple of other juicers, waited for F and D to open their doors at ten a.m.

“We gonna go in and get him?” said Strange.

“They got a phone in that place,” said Vaughn. “I’m guessing he’s gonna buy his bottle and make a call. When he comes out, we’ll brace him.”

“Little early, isn’t it?” said Strange.

“Not for Henry. He likes his breakfast fortified.”

“There he goes.”

“I was right.” Vaughn could see Arrington through the window of the store, talking on the pay phone mounted by the door.

Arrington came out the store cradling a brown paper bag as if he were holding a baby. He looked around, then crossed
the street and walked almost directly toward the Monaco. Vaughn got out of the car and leaned his forearms on its roof, waiting. Arrington read him as police and started to beeline, but Vaughn badged him and said, “Stop right there, Henry.”

Arrington stopped and stood flat-footed. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

“Get in the car.”

Arrington slid into the backseat. He had the stink of jail on him and the body odor brought on by a summer day. His eyes said he would avoid conflict at any cost. He looked like someone who could be easily taken.

Arrington glanced at Vaughn, who had said his name, then Strange, who had deliberately declined to introduce himself. Arrington would assume that he, too, was MPD.

“What I do, officers?” said Arrington.

“Did you make a phone call in that liquor store?” said Vaughn.

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Who’d you call?”

“I’d rather not answer that question, if you don’t mind.”

“You don’t have a choice,” said Vaughn. It was a lie.

“The man in lockup said he’d kill my grandmother if I told you.”

“Bowman?”

“Said his name was Clarence.”

“And you believed him?”

“Wasn’t no upside to
dis
believe.”

“How old’s your grandmother, Henry?”

“Seventy-eight, somethin like that.”

“She’ll be dead by the time Bowman comes out of prison.” Vaughn looked over the seat at Henry’s wasted form. He didn’t say it, but Arrington would be dead and buried by then, too.

Arrington’s hands twisted at the bag he held.

“Go on,” said Vaughn. “Take your medicine.”

Arrington unscrewed the bottle top, tilted his head back, and drank deeply. The smell of orange juice and alcohol filled the interior of the car. Tango, thought Strange. When Arrington was done with his swig, he looked more alive than he had before.

“Who’d you call?” said Vaughn. “Say it now. I don’t have time to dick-dance around.”

Arrington wiped his mouth. “Dude named Red.”

“You talked to him?”

“Another dude first, then him.”

“Tell us what you said.”

“Wasn’t all that long a conversation. I said what I was told to say: Bowman failed and got locked up. A man-ho named Martina set him up. And Vaughn is getting close. That’s you, right?”

Vaughn nodded. “Now tell me the number you dialed.”

Arrington said it and repeated it, and Vaughn told him he could go. Arrington thanked them, got out of the Dodge, and walked down the block.

Vaughn radioed in the digits and asked the dispatcher to get him an address to match. Vaughn and Strange said little to each other as they waited for the information to come back over the speaker. They were both anxious, and somewhat excited, thinking of what was to come.

RED JONES,
Coco Watkins, Alfonzo Jefferson, and Monique Lattimer sat in the living room of the house in Burrville, drinking coffee and huffing cigarettes. The men were in slacks and sleeveless white T’s, and were barefoot. Monique had a robe on over a bra and panties. The robe was open, and what was visible was provocative. Coco was wearing one of Monique’s negligees that she kept at Jefferson’s.

Realizing that they had pushed misadventure to the limit, they plotted their next move.

“We gotta leave today, Red,” said Coco.

“Your girl gonna deliver us some money?”

“And some other shit, too. Soon as Shay brings me my makeup kit and clothes, we can get gone. I can’t go nowhere without my kit.”

“You called her?” said Red.

“Yeah.”

“And you talked to her about the police stakeout outside your spot?”

“Po-lice lookin for me, not my girls. Shay knows what to do.”

“Where y’all fixin to go?” said Jefferson.

“We gonna make our way to West Virginia,” said Jones. “I still got people there. You?”

“I don’t know,” said Jefferson. “Guess I’ll head south. Got a cousin down in North Carolina will put me up.”

“What about me?” said Monique. Jefferson did not answer her or look her way. He was gonna take her with him but did not feel it wise to give any female too much comfort. Monique
was all right; she was steady ass, anyway. But she wasn’t all that special. No woman was, to Jefferson.

Jefferson said to Jones, “Give me one of them double-O’s, Red.”

Jones shook a Kool from the hole he had cut out the bottom of the pack. He tossed it onto the cable spool table and it rolled close to Jefferson. Jefferson gave it a light.

“We about out of cigarettes,” said Jones.

“Monique’ll go out and get some.”

“Shit,”
she said. “Do you know what I been through since yesterday? First I had to talk to that white motherfucker from Homicide. Then last night I had to slip out the back of my spot and not get noticed by that Tom police they put in the playground. Then I had to walk, and get on a D.C. Transit,
and
get a cab… and now you want me to go out again?”

“Exactly,” said Jefferson. “Get dressed.”

“You crippled or somethin?”

“I got two legs and they both work,” said Jefferson. “But I’m tellin
you
to go.”

“Where your car keys at?”

“Uh-uh,” said Jefferson. “My Buick stays out back till I’m ready to leave here. It’s too risky to move it now.”

Monique looked over at the tall woman wearing her negligee. “Coco, can I take your short?”

Coco dragged on her cigarette and glanced at Jones. On his instructions, they had parked the Fury several blocks away, then walked to Jefferson’s house through alleys and backyards. She already knew Red’s answer. By way of one, he shook his head.