What It Was (24 page)

“Sorry, Nique,” said Coco.

“You people expect me to walk? Nearest market’s a mile away.”

“I was you,” said Jefferson, “I’d wear some comfortable shoes.”

“Fuck y’all,” said Monique. She got up out of her chair abruptly and left the room.

“Where she off to?” said Jones.

“Gone to change her clothes,” said Jefferson, tapping ash into a large tray. “So she can get us some cigarettes.”

“That woman’s unruly.”

Jefferson nodded. “She like that in bed, too.”

The room fell silent as they smoked pensively. None of them wanted to leave D.C., but they knew it was time to go.

GINA MARIE,
Martina Lewis, and the white girls, April and Cindy, were in the diner on U, drinking coffee, having cigarettes, and, as was their custom, recounting the street stories they had gathered the night before. They were in the pre-makeup stage of their day, not yet dressed for work.

“They picked us up in a Lincoln Continental,” said April, “and then we went out to their motel room off Kenilworth and had a partaaay.”

“That where you got the ring?” said Gina Marie.

“You mean this one?” said April. She put out her hand, bent it at the wrist, and showed the others her new treasure in a way that she imagined a fancy model might do.

“Just tell the story,” said Cindy, who knew the details already and was tired of hearing April go on. Cindy dragged
on her cigarette, careful not to put the filter to the right side of her mouth. A cold sore festered there.

“So we was doin some nose candy,” said April, “me and old Lou, and all a the sudden Lou had to take a shit on account of the cut.”

“Thought you said Lou was a professional,” said Gina Marie.

“Not with cocaine,” said April. “But, yeah, he said he was down here on business. Axed me about Red Jones. Claimed he owed Red money. Like I was gonna talk to a stranger about Red. I be like, I
heard
of him, but I don’t know nothin about him.” April looked directly at Gina Marie. “Girl, I ain’t dumb.”

Martina glanced over at April, spent like last week’s paycheck. Way her nose was burned up, she could pick either side of it by putting her finger in just one nostril.
Axe. I be. Girl.
April talked blacker than a black girl when she was around Gina Marie.

“More coffee, ladies?” said an employee behind the counter, holding a pot, moving her head to the Fred Wesley that was coming from the juke.

“I’ll have more,” said Cindy, who was tired out and a little sore. Gino, the blond one with the acne scars, had a pipe on him, and on top of his size he’d been a little rough. He had bruised her some.

“You know that’s a fake piece, don’t you?” said Gina Marie.

“I don’t care,” said April. “It’s pretty.”

Gina Marie flicked ash into a glass tray. “Say what happened.”

“While Lou was in the bathroom,” said April, “groanin and moanin, I got curious about what was in his suitcase. ’Cause you know I be the curious type…”

“Tell it,” said Cindy, losing her patience.

“Well, there were clothes in that suitcase. Also a gun and a knife.” April paused dramatically, then put her hand flat on the counter. “And this.” The ladies saw a gold body decorated with a Grecian key inlay, one big center stone, and eight smaller stones clustered around it.

“You are one bad bitch,” said Gina Marie.

“Girl, who don’t know
that
.”

Martina Lewis studied the ring.

SHAY GATHERED
a cosmetic case the size of a hatbox, and a small red suitcase that held a couple of dresses, slacks, shirts, and undergarments, and some cash, and took the fire escape down to the alley that ran behind the row house on 14th. She went through it and on S she turned right and went over to 14th, glancing down the street at the unmarked police car she had scoped out earlier. The one Coco had said would be there.

The unmarked car did not move. No reason why it would. The man inside it was looking for someone fitting the description of Coco, not Shay. Shay was plainly dressed in jeans and a chambray shirt. She was an attractive female, but in these clothes she did not stand out. It was somewhat unusual for a young woman to be walking in the city with a suitcase and hatbox, but now she was a block north of Coco’s house and was among the sidewalk crowd. She went one block farther and at a bus stop waited for a D.C. Transit, and
when it came she got on it and dropped into an empty turquoise seat. An older man who stood with a hand on the top rail gave her a long look the way men do. Reflexively, she touched the mole on her face.

The plan was to get off the bus soon as she saw a cab stand and catch a taxi over to Northeast, where she would deliver what she was carrying to Coco, holed up in a house in Burrville. Coco had told her she was going away for a while.

Shay was young, no more than a girl, really, and she was a little bit scared. Her night in jail had convinced her that she was not cut out for any kind of time in a cage. But things seemed to be going all right today, so far, and when she had completed her task… well, she hadn’t thought that through as of yet. She’d do something.

Shay looked out the back window of the bus and with relief saw that the unmarked police car was not following. She didn’t notice the black Continental that was pulling off the curb.

V
AUGHN AND
Strange crossed the
Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and headed into Far Northeast. At Minnesota Avenue, Vaughn hung a left and drove along a busy commercial strip of overpriced convenience markets, unhealthy food establishments, and an appliance-and-furniture merchant whose profit was not in the sale of household goods but the pushing of credit and high-interest loans.

“These people down here don’t have a chance,” said Vaughn, with an overly solemn shake of his head. “Course, they
could
try to better themselves. Work a little harder, maybe, so they don’t have to live in these neighborhoods.”

Strange said nothing. There wasn’t any upside to getting into those kinds of discussions with Vaughn.

“Did I say something wrong?” said Vaughn.

“I wasn’t even listenin to you, to tell the truth. Guess I got things on my mind.”

“Women troubles,” said Vaughn. “Am I right? What’d you do, dip your pen in the wrong inkwell?”

“I made a mistake,” said Strange.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“I should know better. I’m a grown man.”

“Exactly: you’re a man. It’s damn near impossible for a man to be faithful. It’s not natural. Humans are the only species who even try. When animals mate, the males move on.”

“Men aren’t animals,” said Strange.

Vaughn’s mind flashed back nearly thirty years, to when he’d carried a flamethrower on Okinawa. His nightmares could not even approach the horrific reality of what he’d seen and done. No one, not even Olga, could know the godless dark inside his head.

“Yes, we are,” he said.

For a while, they drove up Minnesota Ave in silence. Then Vaughn saw a woman exiting a small city market. She wore a sloppy shift unbuttoned at the neckline, tennis shoes with cutout backs, and held a pack of cigarettes in each of her hands.

Vaughn slowed the Dodge. “Aw, shit. There’s my friend Monique Lattimer.”

“Who’s she?”

“Alfonzo Jefferson’s woman.”

“We should follow her to his house,” said Strange. “Chances are she’s headed there.”

“We already know where the house is. We
don’t
know what we’re gonna be up against when we get there. She’s a handful, and I don’t wanna have to deal with her, too.”

Vaughn pulled over to the curb and palmed the transmission
arm up into park. He lifted the radio mic from its cradle, keyed it, and called in Monique’s description, location, and the direction in which she was headed. He then told the dispatcher to instruct any patrol unit in the vicinity to pick up Monique, arrest her, and take her to the Third District station.

“What’re you gonna hang on her?” said Strange.

“Some kind of accessory charge,” said Vaughn. “I’ll figure out the particulars later on. It’ll stick. Jefferson’s deuce was used in the Ward robbery, and it’s registered in her name.”

Vaughn checked his sideview mirror, pulled down on the tree, moved into traffic, and accelerated.

Strange studied Monique’s loose she-cat walk as they passed her. “You’re about to bust on that girl’s day.”

“I told her I’d see her around.”

SHAY STEPPED
off the bus up around the Tivoli Theatre and signaled a taxicab, one of several standing at 14th and Park Road. The driver got out and helped her place her suitcase and cosmetic case in the trunk, then politely opened and held the rear door for her so that she could get in.

“You’d never see that in New York,” said Fanella, looking through the windshield of the Lincoln, idling along the curb down by Kenyon.

“
The Final Comedown,
” said Gregorio, reading the title of the movie showing on the Tivoli’s marquis.

“Never heard of it,” said Fanella.

“ ‘The man got down,’ ” said Gino, reading the copy in smaller letters below the title. “ ‘The brothers were ready.’ What’s that mean, Lou?”

“Damn if I know.” Fanella pointed a finger at the young folks standing in line for tickets to the matinee. “And I bet none of those rugheads know, either.”

Fanella and Gregorio followed the taxi as it went down Irving Street, North Capitol, Michigan Avenue, South Dakota, and Bladensberg Road, then onto a long bridge built over a steady-flowing river. On the busy commercial strip of Minnesota Avenue, they saw a woman bent over the trunk of a D.C. squad car, writhing under the grip of a police officer who was attempting to cuff her. They could hear her cursing the cop with venom and creativity as they drove by.

Fanella and Gregorio laughed.

“THAT’S IT,”
said Strange, as Vaughn went down one of the high-fifty streets of Burrville, where houses, some run-down and some well kept, sat on large plots of land.

“I see it,” said Vaughn, and he kept the Monaco at a steady rate of speed, studying a two-story, asbestos-shingled house as he drove on. He cut a left at the next corner, a single-syllable cross street, and let off the gas, crawling by an alley that ran behind the houses of the block he’d just covered.

“That’s the one,” said Vaughn.

Strange saw a gold Buick Electra parked in the backyard of the house whose address matched the phone number Henry Arrington had dialed. The yard had a low fence of heavy-gauge chicken wire strung between wood posts.

Vaughn executed a one-eighty in a driveway, turned the Dodge around, and put it along the mouth of the alley. He examined the house. Its second story held bedroom windows, and outside those windows was a gently pitched roof over a
screened porch. There was not much of a drop from the roof to the soft yard. A glass-paneled door, accessed by a few iron steps, was situated right beside the porch. If it was a typical house of this type, Vaughn guessed that the door would lead to a kitchen that would open to a living-room area, which would hold steps leading up to the second-floor bedrooms.

“Well?” said Strange.

“They’re in there.”

“I was you, I’d call it in.”

“Not today.” Vaughn stared at the house. “You know what a man is, in the end? You know what defines him?”

“I’m guessing you’re about to tell me.”

“His dick and his work. It’s no more complicated than that.”

“What’s your point?”

“When a guy’s equipment doesn’t function anymore, it’s all over. When he has no job, he has no purpose. There’s no reason to get up in the morning. He’s done.”

“Far as I know, you’re still there in the manhood department, Vaughn. And you do your job.”

“The white shirts think I fell down on this Jones thing. They think I’ve lost a step.”

“And, what, you’re gonna prove ’em wrong?”

“The clock ticks. You get toward the finish line, you realize that what’s important is the name you leave behind.” Vaughn nodded toward the house. “Red Jones gets it. You don’t, because you’re still young. But you will.”