What It Was

“I wanted to talk to you about the Odum murder.”

  “Figured as much. But we gonna have to settle on something first.”

  “I don’t have any money to speak of.”

  “It’s not about coin. I’ll talk to you but no one else. And if you put the police on me, I’ll deny I told you anything.”

  “The law can protect you.”

  “I’m not afraid. But my mother lost a leg to diabetes, and now she’s confined to a chair. She needs me, man. Understand?”

  “You have my word,” said Strange. “Did the police question you?”

  “A white detective tried to give me money and liquor in exchange for conversation. Like I was some kind of bum.”

  “You knew Odum?”

  “Not really. Seen him on the street now and then.”

  “Were you over there on that wall at the time of the killing?”

  “There every day.”

  “And?”

  “The music got my attention, comin from this apartment on the second floor. It was soft at first, then real loud. And then, under it, a little pop. Small-caliber gun. Few minutes later, a tall light-skinned dude with a fucked-up natural come out the building, walkin like nothing happened. He went to a car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Late-model Fury, red over white. Had the fold-in headlamps. A woman with big hair or a wig was behind the wheel. The tall man got in the passenger side.”

  “He see you?”

  “If he did, he didn’t much care.”

  “I’m looking for a ring was in Odum’s possession the time of his death. Wonderin maybe if the tall man had it in hand when he walked to the Plymouth.”

  “Shit.” Wallace chuckled. “Now you expectin me to know too much.”

  “I took a swing at it.”

  “You on a treasure hunt, huh.”

  “Somethin like that.”

  “Plenty of police went in and out of Odum’s crib. Might could be one of them took that ring.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “Or you just gonna have to ask the tall dude yourself.”

  “Hoping to avoid that if I can,” said Strange. “What else about the car? You didn’t get the plate number, did you?”

  “Wasn’t no numbers,” said Wallace. “Plate was the kind had words on it.”

  “You remember what it said?”

  “Coco,” said Wallace. “C-O, C-O.”

  “D.C. tags?”

  “Right.”

  Strange experienced a small familiar rush. All the bullshit jobs he’d taken for money lately, it had been a while since he had been involved in something real.

  “You got strong observation skills,” said Strange. “What do you do for work?”

  “I don’t do a thing.”

  “You can’t find a job?”

  “Can’t keep one. Man at the VA says I got problems. Emotional stress brought on by my ‘intense experience overseas.’ Says time gonna heal me.”

  “Maybe he’s right.”

  “Truth, is, I don’t know what to do. So I sit.” Wallace smiled a little, catching a memory. “Your brother Dennis was a funny dude. We laughed like crazy in the day.”

  “He was good.”

  Dennis had been found in the alley behind their boyhood home, his throat cut open with a knife. He’d been butchered like an animal.

  But I took care of the one who did it, thought Strange.

  Me and Vaughn.

  “Thanks for this.” Strange put out his hand.

  LOU FANELLA and Gino Gregorio had come down from Newark on the Turnpike, taking the BW Parkway south into D.C. They entered the city via New York Avenue in a black ’69 Continental sedan with suicide doors and a 460 V-8.

  “What a shithole,” said Fanella, big and beefy, with dark hair and Groucho eyebrows. His thick wrist rested on the wheel as he drove, a cigarette burning between his fingers.

  He was looking at the run-down gateway to Washington that was the first impression for many visitors to the nation’s capital, a mix of warehouses, liquor stores, unadorned bars, and rank motels housing criminals, prostitutes, last-stop drunks, and welfare families.

  “This is where Zoot said to rent a room?” said Fanella.

  “That’s what he said.” Gregorio was on the young side, with a wiry build, thinning blond hair, the cool blue eyes of an Italian horse opera villain, and a face cratered with scars grimly memorializing the nightmarish acne of his adolescence.

  “It’s all smokes ’round here,” said Fanella.

  “There were some places looked all right, back where we were.”

  “Then let’s go back to where we were.”

  They turned around and got a room in a motel off Kenilworth Avenue, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Their room smelled strongly of bleach and faintly of puke. The area itself was no better than the one they had rejected, but most of the people here were white. Now they were comfortable.

  They went out and bought liquor and mixers and brought the goods back to the room. Fanella drank Ten High bourbon and Gregorio went with Seagram’s 7. The Black Shield of Falworth was playing on their small television set, and they watched the swords-and-tights movie while they drank and put away cigarettes. Soon the room was heavy with smoke and the sound of their thoughtful conversation.

  “Janet Leigh,” said Fanella. “God.” He shook the ice in his glass and looked at Gregorio. “Tony Curtis is a Jew. Did you know that?”

  “So?”

  “Means Janet likes her salami cut.”

  “I’m like that down there, too.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t look like Tony. I bet he had that dish up one side and down the other all day long.”

  “How would you know?”

  “ ’Cause he was married to her, you dumbass.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look at that. I love it when a broad has a narrow waist and big tits. How about you, Gino?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Homos,” said Fanella.

  They found a place nearby that had steaks on special and a salad bar. After the main they went with a couple of slices of cheesecake, then settled up the check and drove back into the city. They found Thomas “Zoot” Mazzetti seated at the bar of a place called the Embers, on the 1200 block of 19th Street.

  A jazzy outfit called the Frank Hinton Group was playing in the lounge for an audience of lawyers, lawyer types, and secretaries, all dressed nice, seated around the low-lit spot. Fanella and Gregorio wore sport jackets and polyester slacks with bold-print shirts, collars out over the lapels. They looked like what they were.

  Fanella felt that Zoot was showing off, setting the meeting at a high-end spot. Like, look at me; I have made it. Zoot had come up in their area and like them had worked for the Organization on the ladder’s lowest rungs. All of them were high school dropouts. Gino Gregorio, at the bottom of the bell curve, had done a stint in the army but had gone no further than the motor pool.

  Years earlier, Zoot had followed a girl south to the Baltimore–Washington corridor. She soon threw him over for a guy with a brain and a job. By then Zoot had grown comfortable with the area. He was a novelty here, a real Italian just like Pacino instead of another failed swinging dick from the neighborhood back home. He decided to stay and found a niche in D.C. as a bookie and a buyer and seller of information. Lately he had developed a relationship with a local cop who was into him on a gambling debt for two thousand dollars and change. Zoot was not book smart but he knew how to operate.

  “Big shot,” said Fanella. “Look at you.”

  Zoot smiled, stepped back from the bar, let them see his getup, tight jeans with a dollar-sign belt buckle, a rayon shirt, and a cinnamon-colored leather jacket.

  “Them pants are kinda snug, ain’t they?” said Fanella, winking at Gregorio.

  “That’s for the ladies,” said Zoot. “I dress to the left, as you can see.”

 
“You look like a hairdresser,” said Fanella.

  “Fuck you and buy me a drink.”

  They had cocktails and got around to why they had come. Zoot told them where they could find Roland Williams, the man they were looking for. He said the information had come from a law enforcement officer he had “on retainer” and the tip was golden. For his trouble they picked up the tab but gave Zoot nothing extra. It was understood that he was still connected, however tenuously, to the outfit, and always would be.

  “Where can we look at some women in this town?” said Fanella. “You know what I’m talking about. Ann-Margret types.”

  Zoot gave them a suggestion.

  Fanella and Gregorio went down to the Gold Rush, a burlesque club low on 14th. No cover, no minimum. Daphne Lake and her “exotic revue” were performing. Daphne’s protégées were double-D gals with plenty of flank and ass, but, to the disappointment and annoyance of Fanella, they showed no wool. Disoriented in their new surroundings, they walked the streets and came upon a theater, the Playhouse, showing a stroke picture called Bacchanale. “You must see Uta Erickson!” it said on the marquee, and they bit. Sitting there in the auditorium with the raincoat creeps who were moaning as they jacked off into newspapers and socks. It was distracting, but eventually Fanella’s trousers got tight, and he went to the bathroom and rubbed one off in the privacy of a stall. Returning to his seat, he tugged on Gregorio’s jacket and told him it was time to go.

  “The movie’s not finished,” said Gregorio.

  “Foreign pictures stink,” said Fanella. “Come on.”

  The Lincoln was where they’d left it, around the corner from the Gold Rush. Fanella cruised out of town, careful to stay within ten miles of the speed limit. He had a switchblade with a bone handle in his pocket. Under the driver’s seat was a loaded .38. In the trunk were two cut-down shotguns and slings, handguns of various calibers, bricks of ammunition, a baseball bat, a pair of lead-filled saps, a set of butcher knives wrapped in soft cloth, and a white raincoat. Fanella did not want to have to shoot a police officer over a traffic stop. His people would not like it if he went to jail before completing his task. He and Gino had work to do.

  ROBERT LEE Jones was seated in the chair beside the red velvet couch where Shirley “Coco” Watkins lounged in her office, drinking pink champagne, enjoying a Viceroy. Her new ring was in a silverware box under the bed, where she kept her jewelry. Jones was having King George scotch cut with a little bit of water. In the rooms down the hall, Coco’s girls were working.

  “Time for me to move out,” said Jones. “Gonna room with Alfonzo for a while over in Burrville. I can’t be stayin here.”

  “For real?”

  “I’m too hot.”

  “You the one lit the stove.”

  “You see me sweatin?”

  “I never have before.”

  “I’m not stressed. I got cash now, Coco. Couple a thousand. Fonzo offed the product wholesale and we split the take.”

  “You woulda made more, you sold it by the piece.”

  “I got no interest in heroin. Just money.”

  “So if you’re flush, what’s your problem? You got a bed right here.”

  “People been seein us together. I ain’t about to wait for the law to show up. Me and Fonzo got a chance to make some real coin now.”

  Jones produced a pack of Kools from his breast pocket, flipped it, and extracted a menthol out of the hole he had torn in the bottom of the deck. He lit it with a match from the Ed Murphy’s Supper Club book he had taken from Odum’s apartment.

  “What are y’all’s plans?” said Coco.

  “We’re goin at Sylvester Ward.”

  “Two-Tone Ward? The numbers man?”

  “Him. Fonzo been sittin on him and knows his routine.”

  “Shit. You gonna take off Ward now.”

  “Because we can.”

  She blinked demurely. There was esteem and affection in her gaze. Also, concern for her man.

  “You gettin bold,” she said.

  “My name’s ringing out in this town,” said Jones. “People talkin about me in barbershops, on the stoops. Young motherfuckers steppin aside when I walk into the club. They all wanna be like me.”

  “More you get known, bigger chance you gonna get taken down.”

  “Then I’ll go down,” said Jones.

  “What about us?”

  “You’re my bottom, girl.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her full mouth. He put his hand behind her neck to keep her in. Her tongue snaked around his. Sometimes her mouth was as good as her box, to him. Sometimes.

  “How you fixin to cool things down?” said Coco.

  “I made a mistake with Roland Williams. He’s in D.C. General right now, but when he comes out? I’m gonna take care of it. My man from back home will see to some other problems we got, too.” Jones double-dragged on his cigarette, let the smoke out slow. “What’s your girl’s name, got the mark on her face?”

  “That’s a mole, Red. You talkin about Shay.”

  “She been hangin with that dude come out of Lorton premature. Right?”

  “Dallas Butler. You had a drink with him yourself, right here in this room.”

  “Dallas, yeah. Boy’s custard. What was he in for?”

  “He was doing sixteen on an armed robbery when he busted out.”

  “We gonna make him a murderer, too. But I’m gonna need your help.”

  Coco stubbed her Viceroy out in the ashtray after a hungry last drag. “What you want me to do?”

  “Ask Shay to hook up a meet. Tell her I want to talk to her boy, but I want it to be a surprise. Not so she’d have cause to be suspicious. You know how to do it. Me and Fonzo will take care of the rest.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Pick up the phone,” said Jones.

  He gave her instructions. She dialed the Third District station house and asked for Detective Vaughn. The voice on the other end of the line told her Vaughn was not in.

  “Let me leave a message, then.”

  “What’s your name and location?”

  “Never mind that,” said Coco. “This about the Robert Odum murder, over there at Thirteenth and R. I know who downed the dude. The killer’s name is Dallas Butler. Dallas like the football team, Butler how it sounds.”

  She hung up the phone.

  Jones smiled and got up out of his seat. “You did good.”

  “Where you goin?”

  “Out.”

  “Don’t forget about the show. It’s comin up.”

  “What show’s that?”

  “Donny and Roberta at the Carter Barron. You copped the tickets, fool!”

  “Oh, yeah.” He wasn’t excited about it. Music for females and pretty boys. It was weak.

  “Come here.”

  He bent into her kiss. Standing to his full height, he patted the side of his unkempt natural and let her admire him.

  “I’ll be around, Coco.”

  “I know you will.”

  FRANK VAUGHN and Derek Strange sat at a lunch counter on Vermont Avenue owned and operated by a Greek named Nick. The diner seated twenty-seven: fifteen stools covered in blue vinyl and three blue vinyl booths that each fit four. Old photographs of the village were hung on the blue-and-white tiled walls, as well as formal-suit portraits of the owner’s immigrant parents. Near the front door stood a D.C. Vending cigarette machine with copies of the Daily News tabloid set upon it. Beside the machine was a pay phone.

  Nick Michael was born Nick Michaelopoulos in Sparta, came to America as a toddler, and was a veteran of the infamous Battle of Peleliu in the Pacific theater. Like many marines who had fought, Nick had settled into a peaceful life of hard work during the day and quiet relaxation at night. He had shot and bayoneted many Japanese soldiers, and seen the deaths of many friends, but except for the USMC tattoo on his inner forearm, there was nothing about his manner or appearance to suggest his violent war experience. He had come out of the Co
rps at a lean 145, was now fifty-one years old, went 180, and had a respectable paunch that was slightly visible beneath his apron. He sported a full head of hair, black on top, silver on the sides, and a pleasant, confident smile.

  “Anything else I can do you for?” said Nick.

  “You can warm up these coffees,” said Vaughn.

  Nick put his hands around Vaughn’s cup and, with great exaggeration, rubbed it. “How’s this?”

  “That gag’s got gray hair on it,” said Vaughn.

  “Like us.”

  Nick picked up their cups and saucers, went to one of his big urns, flipped down the black valve-style lever, and poured fresh coffee. He served Vaughn and Strange, emptied Vaughn’s ashtray, and put it back in front of him. Vaughn promptly lit an L&M with his Zippo and placed the lighter atop his newly opened pack.

  “I like this place,” said Vaughn.

  “It’s all right,” said Strange.

  They had just eaten a breakfast of scrapple and eggs. The food was on the bland side by design, as the diner catered to white-collar whites. The crew behind the counter, hot station, cold station, waitress, and dishwasher, were black. The woman working hots had fried some onions and pepper into the eggs for Strange and he had further spiced up the plate with Tabasco. Strange’s father had been a grill man for the Three-Star, a place on Kennedy Street very much like this one. Darius Strange had also worked for a Greek, Mike Georgelakos, who had dropped dead of a massive heart attack in 1969.

  “So you’re looking for a ring,” said Vaughn.

  “Maybelline Walker’s. You met her.”

  “Nice-looking lady. Teacher, I recall.”

  “She’s a math tutor.”

  “Right.” Vaughn dragged on his cigarette. “I don’t think she cared much for me. I wouldn’t let her look around Odum’s apartment.”

  “She had a key. Let herself in after y’all closed the scene.”

  “The resourceful type. What’s so special about the ring?”

  “Has sentimental value, she says. Costume jewelry. Says she and Odum were friends. Odum was gonna get the ring assessed for her, to see if it had any value. Stones were a cluster of glass but the body of it was gold. She says.”

  “You don’t believe her.”

  “She hired me to find the ring. Don’t much care about the why.” Strange looked at Vaughn, who was exhaling a thin stream of smoke over the Formica-covered counter. “You didn’t happen to see it, did you?”