What It Was

  That cut the conversation to nothing for a while. Jones drove south on New Hampshire, where he turned right onto Missouri Avenue and headed across town.

  “Y’all kidnapping me,” said Ward, as if it had just come to mind. “You know that’s a capital crime.”

  “So?” said Jones.

  “I got rid of my wife, and my kids are full grown and gone. They got nary a nickel from me, case you tryin to hold me for ransom…”

  “We don’t have the time for that,” said Jones. “And you ain’t all that important.”

  Little more was said for the rest of the ride. Ward sat looking out the window, his hands in his ample lap, his lower lip thrust out like a hurt child’s. Sylvester Ward was not frightened, but a piece had been chipped off his pride.

  WARD LIVED on one of the tree-and-flower-named streets of Shepherd Park, the northernmost neighborhood before the Maryland line, west of Georgia and east of 16th Street. Most recently, its residents had actively resisted blockbuster realtors who had preyed on the fears of whites in post-riot D.C. Here, middle- and upper-middle-class blacks and whites lived side by side, and sometimes they lived under the same roof. It was one of the few uptown, upscale areas friendly to interracial couples. At one time, Jews who owned nearby Georgia Avenue businesses couldn’t live in Shepherd Park. But that restriction, too, had been buried long ago with the other rotted corpses of the past.

  When it came to women, Ward was tolerant running to liberal. He kept company with all kinds, but he was no political activist. He simply liked this area, with its brick and shingled single-family homes, large yards, shade trees, and flowery shrubs. He had paid cash for his house, as he did for everything he owned. He could have easily afforded a residence on the Black Gold Coast, down on North Portal Drive, with the professional, educated types, but he preferred to stay in Shepherd, which was nice but more down-home. He felt it was wise to remember where you came from and not pretend to be something you were not. The high branches of the tree die when the roots get cut. Like that.

  Ward had been one of the city’s top numbers men for some time. He didn’t deal in ponies or the sports book. He had no knowledge of or interest in the drug or prostitution trades. He had come up in the policy game, where three-digit tickets could be bought for pocket change. He had runners all over the city; his employees were government messengers, dishwashers, janitors, and, in the old days, elevator operators. They were black men and they sold to all colors. They worked for a cut and were often tipped heavily by sentimental and superstitious winners. Above the runners were several men who kept the books and collected. The daily take, after the winning combination was paid out, was divided from small denominations and coin between Ward, his employees, and the New York Syndicate via a man in Baltimore whose nickname suggested royalty. It was claimed that there was no organized crime to speak of in D.C., and this was true in a sense, if one meant Mafia and Italian. But the Mob had long had their hands in the pockets of Washington’s criminal element. The out-of-town payoff money was said to be well spent, as it kept the Syndicate at arm’s length.

  Ward’s lottery business grossed millions of dollars a year. After the employees got paid, after New York got their cut, after Ward shelled out to locals of influence and power, he netted a hundred, a hundred and fifty grand annually. But he was good with that. His was an unexpectedly rewarding life. Ward was as cock-of-the-walk as it got for black Washington. He wasn’t worried about jail or persecution. He was protected.

  Which is why, walking into his house with his two abductors, Ward was more perplexed than angry. He wasn’t used to being treated this way.

  Ward removed his green jacket and draped it over the back of an ornate dining-room chair. Jones, gun in hand, kept his eyes on Ward while Jefferson took in the opulence of his surroundings. Looked like a museum in here to him: crystal chandeliers, furniture with scrolled arms, oriental carpets, and plaster statues of naked white women and white men whose nuts hung lower than their dicks.

  “I smell money,” said Jefferson.

  Ward shook his head slowly. “Obviously, y’all ain’t done your due diligence.”

  “Huh?” said Jones.

  “There ain’t nothin here of value to speak of,” said Ward. “Not the kind of payday you’re looking for, anyway. Walkin-around money is all I got.”

  “We’ll take what the fuck you got, then,” said Jefferson.

  “Get it,” said Jones.

  “It’s up in my bedroom.” But Ward did not move.

  “You mean you ain’t gone yet?” said Jones.

  Jefferson drew his piece and pointed it to the stairs. Ward headed in that direction and Jefferson followed.

  Jones went to a bar cart and chose a bottle of scotch that looked expensive. He poured amber liquor into a thick, etched tumbler and drank. Its velvet taste closed his eyes.

  Jones had a second drink, and as he killed it, Ward and Jefferson returned to the living room. Jefferson had a fistful of cash in his free hand.

  “Twenty-four hundred,” said Jefferson. His tone was not exuberant.

  “That’s all?”

  “I took his watch, too,” said Jefferson. “Got diamonds around its face.”

  “That’s cut glass,” said Ward. “A bitch I know gave it to me as a present. I only wear it when she comes to visit.”

  “Gimme that watch on your arm, then,” said Jones. “I know that ain’t fake.”

  Ward laboriously removed a gold Rolex from his wrist. Jones slipped the timepiece onto his own wrist and examined it. It fit loose, the way he liked it.

  “Now you done took everything I have,” said Ward. Annoyance had come to his face.

  Jones felt his pulse drum. “You got a roll in your pocket, too, fat man. Give it here.”

  Ward started to speak but bit down on his lip. He withdrew the cash, held together with a silver clip, and Jones slipped it into the patch pocket of his bells.

  Jones looked Ward over. “Anyone ask you, it was Red Jones who took you for bad.”

  “Ain’t nobody gonna ask,” said Ward with naked contempt.

  “Is that right.”

  “Ain’t nobody care about you or what your name is,” said Ward. “Ain’t nobody gonna remember you when you’re gone.”

  Jones’ eyes were flat and he said nothing.

  “You want my advice—”

  “I don’t,” said Jones.

  “Go on, then,” said Ward, slashing his hand toward the front door of the house. “Get.”

  The barrel of the .45 was a blur as Jones’s arm flared out. Its sight clipped Ward’s nose and cut the bridge. Jones grunted as he put more into it and hit Ward squarely and violently in the same place again. Ward, too big to fall, staggered and gripped the arm of a chair for support. Blood flowed from his nostrils as it would have from an open spigot. Jones laughed and kicked the chair out from under him, and now Ward fell. He lay on his side on the hardwood floor, blood on his fine white shirt, one hand covering his nose, its cartilage smashed. Tears had sprung from his eyes and they were streaking down his face.

  “Shouldn’t have kept talkin,” said Jones. “A man with spots, tryin to tell me what to do.”

  Red Jones and Alfonzo Jefferson left the house. They cut the cash up in the car.

  MAYBELLINE WALKER lived in one of the apartment houses that lined 15th Street along the green of Meridian Hill, which many in the city now called Malcolm X Park. Drugged-out-looking whites, brothers and sisters with big naturals, and Spanish of indeterminate origin, some of the dudes wearing Carlos Santana–inspired headbands, streamed in and out of the park’s entrances. A person could kick a soccer ball around, pay for a hand job or get one free, or score something for his head at Malcolm X, depending on the time of day. Its makeup had changed these past few years, but it remained one of the most beautiful open-to-the-public spots in the city. It wasn’t but a short walk from Strange’s crib; he often came over here when the sun was out to look at the talent and clear his mind.
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  Maybelline’s Warwick-blue Firebird was parked on 15th. Strange had been in his Monte Carlo for a couple of hours now, since his breakfast with Vaughn, parked on the same street a block south. He was watching the folks come in and out the park, watching Maybelline’s building, and listening to WOOK, the Isley Brothers covering “Love the One You’re With,” a hit for them on the soul charts, with cousin Chris Jasper’s organ, the band’s secret weapon, in the mix. Strange thinking, T-Neck, number 930. Just then, Maybelline emerged from the glass-front doors of her building and walked to her car.

  “Damn,” said Strange, an involuntary reaction, his mouth going dry at the sight of her, swinging her hips in a short strapless dress, the breeze blowing her hair away from her fine bare shoulders.

  She dropped the ragtop of her Pontiac, ignitioned it, and drove north. Strange waited for a moment, then followed.

  THERE WERE three owners whose cars fitted the description of a gold ’68 Buick Electra registered in the District of Columbia. The first on the list, written neatly in his notebook, was a Dewight Mitchell. Mitchell’s given address was on Adams Street in Bloomingdale, tucked in south of the McMillan Reservoir, just behind Howard U. Vaughn put his hat on, stepped out of his Monaco, and went up the steps to a brick house that held a steel-framed rocker sofa on its porch. There was no Electra on the street, but Vaughn knocked on the door anyway and did not get a response. From inside the house, a calico cat looked at him with boredom through a rectangular pane of glass.

  Vaughn walked down to 2nd Street and cut into the alley that ran behind Adams. It was not a hunch but rather good procedure for D.C. investigators and uniformed police to check the alleyways when seeking interview subjects. For many Washingtonians, the alley served as the front yard.

  He found a black woman, sturdy, with kind eyes, wearing slacks and a work shirt, resting on the shaft of a shovel by a plot of overturned dirt in the back of her property. He had counted the houses and knew that this was the Mitchell residence.

  “Ma’am.” Vaughn tipped his head and introduced himself over her chain-link fence. He flipped open his badge case and let her glance at his shield. “Are you Miss Mitchell?”

  “Mrs.,” said the woman. “I’m Henrietta, Dewight’s wife.” Several cats were in the yard, walking about but staying close to Henrietta. One with brown stripes on a gray coat was stretched out glamorously under her back steps. “What can I do for you?”

  “Does your husband own a nineteen sixty-eight Buick Electra, gold with black interior?”

  “That’s our car,” she said brightly. “My name’s not on it, but it’s mine, too. When he lets me drive it.”

  She was in her fifties, with graying, straightened hair that had a nice shine to it. From the way her bottom half filled out her slacks, he could see that she was young where it counted. Vaughn liked her manner and her looks.

  “I didn’t see the Buick out front.”

  “Dewight takes it to work.”

  “Where’s his place of employment?”

  She told him and asked, “What’s this about?”

  “I’m hoping to question the owner of a car like yours. But I’m pretty sure your husband isn’t the man I’m looking for. Does he ever loan out his vehicle? Let a friend drive it, something like that?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. But you should ask him that yourself.”

  Henrietta looked down at the soil she had just turned over with the shovel. “I’m going to put in some tomato plants. Do you think I waited too long? It’s awful late in the season, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Vaughn.

  Vaughn hadn’t pushed a lawnmower in twenty years and he’d never planted a garden in his life. He paid neighborhood kids to take care of his yard. He had no hobbies or outside interests. He didn’t own a pair of shorts. He played no golf. Police work sprung him out of bed every morning. There wasn’t anything else.

  “I’m going to plant them anyway,” said Henrietta Mitchell. “Even if they don’t last, what could it hurt?”

  “That’s the spirit,’ said Vaughn.

  Walking back to his car, Vaughn thought of Olga. What she was doing at that moment, where she was. Olga was probably shopping up at Wheaton Plaza, or visiting with her friends, who were Jewish gals, mostly. Sitting in one of their kitchens, smoking Silva Thins or Vantages, had the hole in the filter, drinking coffee, gossiping, or playing with those mah-jongg tiles. The Vaughns were Catholics and worshipped at St. John’s near their house. Well, Olga worshipped, and Vaughn went along. As Catholic as she was, and Olga was devout, she mainly gravitated toward Jewish ladies when she wanted to socialize. Vaughn scratched his forehead. A female Jew was a Jewess, right? Olga had told him that term was old and only cavemen still used it.

  Okay, Olga, whatever you say.

  Picturing her lecturing him, her hand on the hip of her pedal pushers, her red, red lipstick shouting out against her pancake-white face, Vaughn smiled.

  Olga was on his mind often while he worked. Much as she annoyed him when he was home, and as little romance as they had between them, she never left his head for too long. As for Linda Allen, he only thought of her when he felt a stirring in his trousers. Funny how that was.

  I guess I love my wife, thought Vaughn.

  Done reflecting, he got into his Dodge.

  MAYBELLINE WALKER had taken Military Road off 16th and cut down Oregon Avenue. Crossing Nebraska Avenue and hanging a left on Tennyson Street, just past the Army Distaff Hall, she came to stop in front of a center-hall brick colonial in a neighborhood called Barnaby Woods.

  Keeping far back, Strange pulled over to the curb near the corner of Oregon and let his Chevy idle.

  Maybelline got out of her Pontiac, went to the colonial, knocked on its front door, and was soon greeted by a middle-aged white woman, who let her inside. As the door closed, Strange pulled the horseshoe shifter back into drive and drove past the house. Making note of the address, he continued on to Connecticut Avenue, where he found a pay phone on the retail strip running south of Chevy Chase Circle.

  Strange phoned Lydell Blue at the Fourth District station. Lydell was pulling desk duty. It was a break for Strange.

  “What’s goin on, Sarge?” said Strange.

  “Don’t Sarge me.”

  “Got a favor to ask, blood.”

  “And don’t blood me, either,” said Blue. “Not when you looking for favors.”

  “Do I ask for many?”

  “Matter of fact, you do. Would be nice if you called me once in a while and said, I don’t know, ‘Let’s meet for a beer.’ ”

  “What you want, a box of chocolates, too? You sound like a female.”

  “Come over here right now and this female will put a foot up your ass.”

  “When I do try to get you out, you say you can’t.”

  “I got responsibilities now.”

  “Wasn’t me who told you to get married.”

  “What do you know about marriage? Even if you were married, Derek, you wouldn’t be.”

  “True.” Strange wasn’t proud of it. His friend Lydell knew him well. “About that favor…”

  “What is it?”

  Strange gave him the address he had memorized. “I need a phone number and names.”

  “Where can I reach you?”

  “I’ll hold. I know you got the crisscross right there.”

  “Gimme a minute,” said Blue. Shortly thereafter, he got back on the line with the information. Strange wedged the receiver between his chin and chest as he wrote it down.

  “Thanks, brother.”

  “That all?”

  “What kind of flowers you like? I wanna send you a bouquet.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “You my boy,” said Strange, and hung up the phone.

  Strange had time, and he was hungry. He drove down to the Hot Shoppes on Connecticut, below Albemarle Street, sat at the counter, and ate a Teen Twist with fries and a Coke. The waitress mentioned that
Mr. Isaac Hayes was across the street at the WMAL studios, doing an interview in advance of a local performance. When Strange was finished with his meal, he settled up, went outside, and stood on Connecticut Avenue. Wasn’t long before Isaac Hayes came out of the building across the street and walked toward a waiting limousine. Hayes was shirtless, his big chest and shoulders draped in the multiple, thick-link gold chains he’d worn at Wattstax and on the cover of Hot Buttered Soul.

  “Black Moses,” said Strange with wonder.

  He checked his watch. Reckoning that Maybelline would be in that house tutoring for another hour or so, Strange walked a half block north to the Nutty Nathan’s stereo and appliance store and had a look around. A mustached salesman, pink eyed and smelling of weed, malt liquor, and breath mints, got a hold of him and promptly led him to the sound room in the back of the store, where he put an album on a BSA platter and demoed a high-amp sound system played through the much-touted Bose 901 speakers. A stinging guitar intro came forward.

  Strange’s eyes widened involuntarily. It was not the kind of music he normally listened to, but the sound quality of the system was outrageous and the song was blowing back his head.

  “Steely Dan,” said the salesman. “New group out of California.”

  “Nice,” said Strange.

  “ ‘Your everlasting summer, you can feel it fading fast,’ ” said the salesman, reciting the lyrics dramatically. He hand-brushed a Hitleresque shock of black hair that had fallen across his forehead, then did some fretwork with his fingers. “They can play, Jim.”

  “The name’s Derek.”

  “Johnny McGiness,” said the salesman, extending his hand.

  Strange shook it. “Maybe I’ll be back.”

  McGinnes smiled stupidly. “If I don’t see you here, I’ll see you…hear?”

  Before he left, Strange purchased a four-pack of blank Memorex tapes. A skinny young white dude, probably around sixteen, his white-boy Afro touching his shoulders, in Levi 501s rolled up cigarette-style and a Nutty Nathan’s T-shirt, stood by the register counter, eyeing Strange. Had to be a stock boy, ’cause he held a dustrag in his hand. Looked like an Italian or a Greek, what with the large Mediterranean nose that dominated his face. He, too, had stoned eyes.