The two Latinos argued loudly about the recent Forman-Frazier fight, one of the men jumping out of his chair, throwing a hook and a cross at the air. The other man, whose pants were stained crotch to knee with urine, yelled something in broken English about Frazier’s manager prematurely forcing the TKO. Karras had seen the fight: Foreman had punished Frazier in the fifth, put him down with a hook and a right cross, put him down for the last time with a left-right combination that knocked him clean off his feet and left him hanging on the ropes. Frazier had taken a seven count and claimed he was fit to go on, but his eyes said something else. His manager had been right to throw in the towel.
The Latino family left hurriedly, the father’s arms around the shoulders of both of his little girls. Karras left ten minutes later, the two men still arguing about the fight as he went through the door.
Karras drove out to Sligo Creek Park, cut the Karmann Ghia’s engine in a lot off Dennis Avenue near some basketball and tennis courts. He watched a four-on-four pickup game for a little while, waiting for his customers to show. Out of the eight, only three of the kids had a game. One of them in particular, a boy of medium height and build, was active on both ends of the court and knew how to drive the lane.
A jacked-up green Firebird pulled into the lot. Karras made eye contact with the driver and walked over a nearby footbridge that spanned the creek. He stood on a path near the start of the woods, withdrew an ounce from his pants pocket, watched the three boys approach. The driver of the Firebird had a solid build and a cocky walk. The tall one breathing through his mouth looked stupid. The third one wore a long-sleeved shirt in the heat, which only flagged the fact that the boy was insecure about his scarecrow build. Karras flashed on an image of himself at seventeen, thinking, It’s tough to be a kid.
“Hey,” said the cocky one.
“Hey,” said Karras. “Who’s Noah Castle’s brother?”
“Me,” said the skinny kid. “Jimmy Castle.”
Karras looked around quickly, extended his hand for what looked like a shake, passed the bag of weed from his palm to Jimmy’s. The tall stupid-looking one handed Karras a tightly rolled tube of cash. Karras put the cash in his pocket without a glance.
The four of them stood there for a few moments, none of them saying a word. Jimmy Castle shuffled his feet.
“Fifty bucks an OZ,” said the cocky one, stepping forward hesitantly. “It better be good.”
“You got any complaints, you know where to find me,” said Karras.
“My brother says he sells good herb,” said Jimmy to the cocky one.
“Always,” said Karras, forcing a smile. “You guys enjoy yourselves, hear?”
Karras left them standing on the path, walked over the bridge toward his car. He rubbed at an itch on his face. It wasn’t like he was hanging around outside the local high school wearing a trench coat, pushing drugs. It wasn’t anything like that at all. The way it was, Karras knew Noah Castle, an usher at the Janus who drank regularly at Mr. Eagan’s in the neighborhood, pretty well. Noah had told him that his brother and his brother’s friends were looking to score a bag of dope. Noah had said it would be all right. And anyway, there wasn’t anything wrong with smoking a little pot now and then. This was something that Karras truly believed. Kids were gonna smoke it, and they had as much right to smoke it as anybody else. They were gonna get it somewhere, if not from him than from someone else….
Karras drove quickly from the park. It made him uncomfortable to be out of the city, even for a short period of time. He’d go downtown, talk to this Stefanos character, see what the old bird had on his mind.
Crossing the District line, Karras exhaled evenly. He found Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous debut in his carrying case, pushed the eight-track tape into the deck. “Then Came the Last Days of May” began, Buck Dharma’s familiar fluid guitar lines filling the air. Though it was awfully sad, Karras deeply loved that tune: a song about friends and money and a drug deal gone wrong.
FOURTEEN
Clarence Tate parked his ride outside Meridian Heights, an apartment building gone condo on 15th Street, just east of Meridian Hill Park. He stayed in his black Monte Carlo after he had killed the engine, listening to the Stylistics going into the last verse of “Betcha by Golly, Wow,” Russell Thompkins’s falsetto and the harmony on the chorus giving him chills, like the Lord was doing the singing himself.
When the song ended, Tate got out of his car and crossed the street. Behind him, some tough-looking kids were entering the park; the brothers and sisters around town who were politically inclined had begun referring to Meridian as Malcolm X Park, and the name had started to stick, but what they really needed to concentrate on was cleaning the place up. Tate owned a condo in Meridian Heights and was concerned about the falling property values in the neighborhood.
He entered the building’s small lobby. The old white guy who had been hired as security, Andy something, he was an okay dude but also a stone lush and therefore always either in search of a drink or down in the boiler room sleeping off the bottle he had found. Never at his post in the lobby, though, which pissed Tate off to the max. All these strangers were in town for the big July Fourth weekend, walking the streets, carrying on, gettin’ all liquored up, and doing who knew what else, and there wouldn’t be any security to speak of in the Heights to fend off any crime. Tate was fond of Andy and all that, but he knew Andy would be partying just as hard as everyone else come Sunday night. Harder, most likely.
The building had a staircase leading to the roof and an elevator that went, very slowly, to the top floor. Tate entered the stairwell rather than wait, as he was only going up to the fourth floor.
Tate had bought this place with his wife originally, and his little girl had spent her first few months here. But once his wife had gone off and gotten remarried to the street, Tate and his daughter had moved back in with his parents in the old neighborhood. Tate figured he’d rent the condo out, save some money like that, hope against hope that the Meridian Hill east area didn’t go all the way to shit in the meantime and the condo would keep its value. He had a tenant in there now by the name of Enrique, who lived with a girl named Ruth. Enrique was cool, but he was struggling his own self, so Tate had to come around the first week of every month and personally collect. It was always about money, man, that was for damn sure.
Money. If he could only move those hot goods out of Marchetti’s warehouse, take his cut, he could make a clean break from Eddie Spags. With Eddie striking girls now, dealing in reefer and blow, and especially with that bad nigger Cooper and his shotgun boys in town, the shit was just getting way too deep for Tate’s taste. Tate wanted to live. And he didn’t even want to think about making his little girl an orphan.
But everything took money, all the time.
A friend had told Tate about a group of brothers across town, dudes working out of a storefront who were paying top dollar for hot goods and buying in quantity as well. Tate would have to check into it, find out what that setup was all about. In the meantime, get up to the fourth floor, collect the rent check from Enrique and his squeeze. ’Cause that rent check, that was real money, too.
Wilton Cooper checked the address he had written down on the pad of paper, tossed the detail map on the backseat. He slowed the Challenger, pulled over to the curb on Davenport near 45th, parked beneath a big tree. He looked out the window at the house whose address matched up with the number he had on the pad.
“This it, Wilton?”
“This here’s the number. Only Karras for this part of town in the D.C. book.”
“Think he lives here?”
“Gonna find out right quick.”
Cooper looked at the houses, modest and understated, on the block. Not too much serious money here, but enough to keep the real world behind that invisible fence. Driving in, he hadn’t seen a brother or a brown man for the last few miles at least. Kind of place where everybody talks about the injustices of society, the need for education, rehab
ilitation over incarceration, all that. Guys wearing glasses without rims, reading the paper every morning with classical music playing soft in the background, talking over the fence to other guys who look like them about all the bad things happening out there, shaking their heads, talking, talking, talk, talk, talk. Neighborhood like this, where nothing bad ever happened, where nobody would know how to do a damn thing about it if something bad did, a couple of motivated niggers with guns could walk through a place like this and fuck some motherfuckers up at will. Course, they’d send in the cavalry soon enough to gun ’em down. Before they did, though, on the way to his doom, a man could have some fun. Cooper grinned.
“What’s so funny, Wilton?”
“Nothin’, little brother.” Cooper glanced across the seat. “You ain’t lookin’ so good, you know?”
“I’m all right.”
“You just sit tight, then. I’ll be back in a little bit.”
Cooper pulled his shirttail out to cover the butt of the .45 he had holstered behind his back. He got out of the car. He walked toward the house.
Eleni Karras had been watching from the window ever since the red car had pulled to a stop in front of her house. She watched the big mavros with the football-player chest get out of the driver’s side and walk toward her place. Maybe he was selling something—though he didn’t look like a salesman—or maybe he needed help. His friend needed help, that was it; the red-faced boy sitting in the passenger seat, he didn’t look too well.
She opened the main door, looked through the glass of the storm door at the smiling mavros. It was a Friday afternoon, broad daylight. What could happen?
Eleni opened the storm door a quarter way. “Yes?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Cooper. “I was wonderin’…. Is this the Dimitri Karras residence?”
“Dimitri doesn’t live here anymore. But, yeah, it used to be. I’m his mother.”
Cooper laughed shortly in relief, shook his head. “Good. Was worried I had the wrong address.”
“You—”
“I was supposed to meet Dimitri and Marcus here this afternoon. Least, I thought Marcus said here when I spoke to him on the phone this morning. All of us had plans to play a little basketball, see.”
“You friends with Dimitri?”
“Not exactly. I was in the same outfit with Marcus overseas, few years back. Came into town for the Bicentennial celebration, thought I’d hook up with my old friend.”
“You were in Vietnam with Marcus?”
“Proud to serve, too,” said Cooper, extending his hand. “Name’s Wilton Cooper, ma’am.”
“Eleni Karras.” She took his hand.
Cooper retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket, patted the sweat from his forehead. “Sure is a hot one.”
“Oh, pardon me,” said Eleni. “Please, c’mon in for a minute, cool off.”
“Much obliged.”
“Your friend want to come in, too?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about we give him a little water?”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s all right.”
Cooper walked through the open storm door, closed it and the main door behind him. It was cool in the house. Damn near cold, in fact.
“C’mon,” said Eleni, with a flip of her hand.
Cooper followed her through a hall. She was a friendly woman, on the plump side but sturdy. A woman with a little weight on her, who asked the right questions at the door and, satisfied, was not afraid to let a black man into her house. Not a bright thing to do in his case, but Cooper liked her for that right away. Be a shame, really, if he had to go ahead and fuck her up.
“My husband was a veteran, too,” she said, turning her head to the side and speaking over her shoulder as she walked. “Marine Corps.”
“Semper Fi,” said Cooper.
“Yes, Semper Fi.”
They were in the kitchen. Eleni pointed Cooper to a chair at a Formica-topped table, in the middle of which sat a bunch of yellow flowers in a vase. She served him a tall, cool glass of water from the tap. He drank it down close to the bottom.
“Ah,” he said. “I do thank you.”
“You hungry?”
“Hungry?”
“Yeah, hungry. I made a little rice pudding this morning, still warm.”
Cooper smiled. “I guess I could stand a taste.”
She scooped some pudding into a glass dessert bowl, sprinkled cinnamon on top, placed the bowl in front of him with a spoon and folded paper napkin. She leaned her back against the counter at the sink, watched him take his first bite.
“Mmmm,” said Cooper, pointing the spoon at Eleni. “This is bad.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Pardon, ma’am. What I mean to say is I like it just fine.”
Eleni crossed her arms. “You just missed Dimitri, you know, little while back.”
“Shame I did. Like I said, we had this game set up—”
“Dimitri talked about a game. But he said the game was for this evening.”
“Marcus and me, we musta got our signals crossed.” Cooper scooped up another mouthful. “You know, the raisins, they really make this pudding.”
“The raisins are key,” said Eleni.
“Maybe I ought to give Marcus a call, see if we can’t get this straightened out. You don’t have his number, do you?”
Eleni’s face screwed up on one side. “I thought you spoke to him on the phone this morning.”
Cooper swallowed slowly, buying time. The Greek lady with the fat ankles was smarter than she looked. Hoped for her sake she didn’t get too smart with him now. “I did, see. But that was this morning, when Marcus was at his crib…. His apartment, I mean. Marcus would be at work now, right, but it didn’t come up in the conversation, where that is.”
“He’s got a record store,” said Eleni, a quaver in her voice as she uttered the words, realizing just then that maybe the mavros was not a friend to Marcus and Dimitri at all. He had mentioned Marcus’s apartment, but Marcus had a nice row house down on Brown Street. Wouldn’t this Cooper fellow know that if he was a friend? Wouldn’t he know that Marcus owned his own shop?
Eleni turned around, opened the cold spigot, began to rinse out a glass that was already clean.
“What was the name of that store again?” she heard Cooper say.
There’s nothing to worry about, thought Eleni. If he’s not really a friend, he’s a bill collector, that’s all. When you’re in business for yourself, you have to dodge those guys all the time. She pretended not to hear Cooper’s question and did not reply.
Cooper swallowed the last mouthful of the rice pudding, got up out of his chair. Okay, so now if the woman didn’t want to talk, he’d just have to go and make her talk. And if he had to pull the .45, then of course he’d have to use it. Smash the barrel against her temple first, drag her ass down the stairs, put a bullet in her head down there. That old drill. He’d have to, much as he didn’t care to, just to buy a couple of days more time. Shame for her, but the truth was it had been her son and Trouble Man who had started the ball rolling on the whole affair. If they wanted to play, then everyone they knew was gonna play. That’s just the way it was.
Eleni heard the mavros move toward her behind her back. She remembered how big and strong he had looked, coming up the walk. Okay, so he was a collection agent, looking for Marcus. “Leg breakers”—her husband, Pete, had called them that in the old days. Did they really hurt people that way?
“Ma’am?”
Cooper was right behind her. She could feel his warm breath on her neck.
“Real Right Records,” she said, dropping the glass in the sink. She picked the glass up and set it on its base.
“What’s that?”
Eleni Karras turned around. Cooper was standing there, holding up the glass dessert bowl near her face.
“I was just… you wanted to know where Marcus worked.”
“Oh, that,” said Cooper. “Thanks. Bu
t what I was really wonderin’—”
“Yes?”
“Could I get a little more of this puddin’ to go?”
Eleni breathed out. “Sure… sure. I got a… I got a plastic container over here. You can give it back to Dimitri when you see him.”
“Much obliged, ma’am. And could you fill it to the top?” Cooper smiled. “My friend out in the car, he’s got a little problem with his teeth. Boy’s on a soft food diet, if you know what I mean.”
FIFTEEN
Dimitri Karras drove his Karmann Ghia down 14th Street, crossed Clifton, downshifted descending the big hill that was the drop-off of the Piedmont Plateau. He passed Florida Avenue, W, V, and then U. Fourteenth and U: one of the most legendary intersections in the city, the cross-street suburban whites always referred to when they were talking or joking about blacks. As in, “Hey, I thought I saw your mother last night down at Fourteenth and U,” or “Where’d you get those shoes, man, Fourteenth and U?” Lame talk like that. It had been something once, a hub of black-owned business and music and nightlife for Washington’s old Negro community. By the sixties it had become a hard four-corner home for pushers and junkies, criminals and whores. Then came the riots of ’68. Now, 14th and U didn’t look like much of anything alive at all.
Karras passed long-closed businesses, charred buildings, decaying projects, apartment houses now shells. Bars covered rock-shattered windows; slogans like “Say It Loud!” had been spray painted on plywood boards. Little had been rebuilt or reopened for the last eight years, since the fires and looters had ravaged the strip.
But Karras knew that 14th and 7th and all the other burned-down D.C. avenues had been sacrificed for something else. Things had changed, in the same way that a hard summer rain can clear the streets.