The familiarity of the Shepherd hit Martini as they came through the front doors. He’d come here with his family in the ’50s, when Angelo was his shadow and his old man was still occasionally sober. Back then, the place was owned and run by brothers George and John Glekas. Its signature was its burgers and steaks, and a waitress with a shrieking laugh. Prominent Maryland politicians shared the dining room with families and local eccentrics. Mrs. Glekas, George’s wife, could often be seen at one of the tables, typing menus with one finger while she gave emotional orders to her daughter Angie. The restaurant had since been sold to three other Greeks, but the pleasant smell of grilled beef and the sound of that waitress, laughing at something back in the kitchen, told Martini that little here had changed.
The tables and wall booths were half full. A bar separated by a load-bearing post ran along the back wall, its stools occupied by workingmen. It was a no-tablecloth, no-linen eat house, with basic service and good food, common in Greek ownership. Soon it would become one of the most notorious, raucous strip bars in the area. But for now it was frozen in time.
Hess was seated at one of the dining-room tables, wearing his blue uniform shirt with “Shorty” stitched to a patch.
“That your hot rod out front?” said Stewart, pulling a wooden chair out from under the table and resting his huge frame upon it.
“Knock it off,” said Hess.
“Rambler makes a real quality vehicle. Fast, too. That the Am-bass-a-dor or the A-mer-ican? I never can tell them race cars apart.”
“I said knock it off. I’m gonna be drivin’ my Ford any day now.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Stewart. “And we got another problem, too.”
Stewart told them about his phone call from Pat Millikin, which he had taken at the Esso station just before he and Martini had gone on break. The Galaxie was going to be in the shop a few more days. Also, Millikin claimed that he had not been able to find them a rental. Stewart had pressed him on it, but Millikin had assured him there was nothing to be had.
“What’s goin’ on with him?” said Hess.
“I don’t know. He says the market’s dried up.”
“Dried up, huh? He needs to remember that back in the joint, I shanked some coon who was white-eyein’ his brother. Man owes me big. You tell him that?”
“I did. And I got the same answer he gave me the first time.” Stewart looked at Martini. “We’re gonna have to use your car.”
“What?”
“Well, we can’t use mine. Way it looks, bright red, with the wedge and all, everyone around this part of town recognizes that car. Hell, you hardly even drive that Nova anymore.”
“What about my plates?”
“Shorty’s gonna provide us with some new ones.”
“A car’ll come up soon,” said Martini. “Why can’t we wait a few days?”
“’Cause we can’t,” said Stewart. “That little accident we had the other night kinda changed everything. Me and Shorty been talkin’. We ain’t stickin’ around to find out if that comes back on us, see? We’re leaving town, soon as we score that money. Myrtle Beach. Daytona, maybe. Someplace down South.”
“I’m out,” said Martini with a small wave of his hands, as if he were trying to push them away.
“Pretty Boy don’t get it, Buzz. Boy is thick.”
“Shut up, Shorty.”
“Nah, see, he just don’t get it.” Hess pushed his face close to Martini’s. “You’re in, Dominic. You were with us the other night when we pegged that coon, and you are in now. You better pray we do this job right and make enough jack to get out of this situation clean. You gonna help us do that. We ain’t askin’ you, dad.”
“Look at me, Dom,” said Stewart. “Look at me.”
Martini met Stewart’s eyes.
“All’s we need is a driver. Me and Shorty’ll do the rest. We get gone, you go on about your life. Hear?”
“When?” said Martini.
“I’m off tomorrow. You can just call in sick. We’ll go before they close the bank, late in the afternoon.”
A waitress, flame-red hair and wide of hip, arrived at their four-top, a small pad and pencil in her hand. The men, who had been grouped tightly around the table, leaned back in their seats.
“Three cheeseburger platters, all the way around,” said Stewart. “Three Cokes.”
“How you want those burgers cooked?”
“Medium,” said Stewart.
“The same way,” said Martini.
“I like mine warm and pink inside,” said Hess, smiling at the waitress, winking one of his crossed eyes.
“That would be medium rare,” said the waitress, writing on her pad, not looking once at Hess. She walked back to the kitchen, fatigue in her step.
“She thinks I’m the most,” said Hess.
“The most repulsive,” said Stewart.
Stewart and Hess laughed.
When the waitress brought the Cokes, Stewart tapped his glass against Martini’s.
“All for one,” said Stewart.
Martini looked away.
ALVIN JONES HAD thrown the gloves he’d worn down a sewer hole in Shaw, then driven to another street a few blocks away and lost the straight razor the same way. He’d boosted the gloves from the D. J. Kaufman’s near 10th and Penn, so there wasn’t any loss there, and you could always get your hands on a knife. Anyway, it wasn’t like he was naked; he still had his gun.
After getting rid of the evidence, Jones had driven over to Lula Bacon’s place, woke her and her baby up, got his favorite hat and the few other things he owned out the closet, put them in a duffel bag, and left. Bitch asked him where he was going as he headed out the door, but he felt no need to answer. Wasn’t none of her business, anyway. He’d slept on the couch at his cousin’s place, over off 7th. Had to wake him up, too, to get inside.
Now Jones was sitting in the cramped living room of Ronnie’s apartment, watching television, wanting a drink. But Ronnie wasn’t into liquid heat. Boy didn’t even keep beer or wine in his crib, and he didn’t like to burn the gage, either. Jones couldn’t relate to a man wasn’t looking to get his head up in some way.
Every man had something, though, made him get out of bed in the morning. For Ronnie it was ass. Sure, it drove every-goddamn-one, but Ronnie was sick behind it. Even took those instant photographs of all the girls he had, kept the pictures in a book, had a label glued on the front of it with childlike handwriting scribbled across it, read, “My Pussy Portraits.” Matter of fact, Ronnie had recently bought a new Big Swinger, thirty dollars at the Peoples Drug, ’cause he’d worn out the Polaroid he had.
Ronnie had gone off to his job after lunch. He worked as a stock man down at George and Co., the big-and-tall-men’s shop on 7th. Ronnie went six four or five and claimed he took the position there for the discount. He couldn’t find clothes anywhere else that fit him right.
Soon as he was gone, Jones went and got the photo album. All kinds of girls in that book: dark-skinned girls, white girls, redbones, skinny bitches, and some fat-ass heifers, too. All cupping their titties, pushing them together and out, smiling and lying across Ronnie’s bed, some kind of stuffed bunny rabbit placed beside ’em, the same pose every time. Some of these girls were so ugly, God couldn’t love ’em. At least no one could accuse Ronnie of discrimination. All kinds of females, and Ronnie didn’t have any problem getting them over to his place or getting them to pose. Jones had seen him plenty of times, walking around the apartment in his altogether. Man should have been wearing a saddle on his back, with that pipe of his.
After Jones had looked at the pictures and jacked his rod, he had sat down to watch TV. Nothing on but the Match Game, Mike Douglas, and Pat Boone in Hollywood, had Flip Wilson as a guest. Flip was wearing a dress and looking like he was digging it, giving white people their idea of black, talkin’ about “Sock it to me,” that same old tired shit. Jones changed over to channel 20, the UHF station, where sometimes they showed the bullf
ights from Mexico. He often wondered what that would feel like, to push a sword down into the head of one of those motherfuckers, straight into its brain. You got to wear those tight pants, too, and hear those cheers from the stands. In that way it was different than killing a man. But only in that way. You got down to it, anything alive just suffered in the end.
The bullfighting show wasn’t on. Just something called Wing Ding, had to be for kids. He switched over to Movie 4. They were running some picture called Francis of Assisi. He wasn’t gonna watch no sissy movie, that was for damn sure.
Jones decided to go out, get a cheap bottle of something, and bring it back. If he was going to have to be bored, he might as well be bored with his head on fire. He was out of Kools, too.
STRANGE WENT UP to 9th and Upshur and made the funeral arrangements at a home his father had used for his own mother. He had always liked this short stretch of 9th, which was quiet, faced Georgia Avenue from the east, and held a few small businesses: a barbershop and a butcher and such. Inside the home, he met with an overly polite, fastidious man in a pinstriped suit. Strange arranged it so that the viewing would be closed-casket, with the schedule dependent upon the completion of the autopsy and lab work by the police.
When he came out of the funeral home, Lydell Blue was waiting for him, standing on the sidewalk, in his uniform. They hugged roughly and patted each other’s backs.
“Your father told me you’d be here,” said Blue.
“Glad you got up with me, man.”
“Us,” said Blue, rapping his fist to his chest.
“Us,” said Strange.
His parents’ house was crowded with sympathizers upon his return. As it tended to do in the city, word had spread of Dennis’s death. Relatives, neighbors, friends of Derek and his parents, and some of Dennis’s friends from Park View Elementary, Bertie Backus Junior High, and Roosevelt High had gathered in the apartment. Dennis had lost touch with many of them since going off to the navy, but they had not forgotten him. Alvin Jones and Kenneth Willis had not dropped by or phoned.
Someone, maybe his father, had put an old Soul Stirrers record on the box, Sam Cooke singing pretty and rough, and it was playing low under the conversation in the room. People were having cigarettes and cigars, and the smoke lay thick in the air. A little bit of beer and wine drinking had commenced. Mike and Billy Georgelakos were standing in a corner together, still wearing their work clothes from the diner. Derek went to them, shook Mike’s hand, hugged Billy, and thanked them for coming, knowing they were uncomfortable being here, knowing it was an effort, appreciating the effort, making a point of telling them that they were family. Derek had a conversation with Troy Peters, who had arrived in his uniform, his hat literally in his hand. He told Troy how much it meant to him that he had stopped by. He spoke to James Hayes and said he would get up with him later. He spoke to the German, now an old man, now contrite, who had once thrown hot water at him and Dennis when they were kids. He spoke to Mr. Meyer from the corner market. He took a condolence call from Darla Harris, who asked him to stop by that night. He told her that he might, and ended the call. And he went to Carmen Hill as soon as he saw her come through the door. As he brought her into his arms, it seemed they were alone in the room.
“I love you, Derek,” she said, her mouth close to his ear.
“I love you.”
When she had gone, he looked around the apartment and noticed that his parents were not among the crowd.
He asked the woman who lived downstairs if he could use her phone. In her apartment, he phoned Detective Dolittle at the station. Five minutes later, his call was returned. There was little to report on the case. No usable fingerprints had been turned up at the scene. No witnesses had come forward. Kenneth Willis had been picked up on a gun charge the Monday afternoon before the murder. Dolittle said he would interview Willis in his holding cell soon as he “got over that way,” and when Strange suggested he do it now, Dolittle said, “Don’t worry, Willis isn’t going anywhere.” Lula Bacon had been located, but Alvin Jones was not at her apartment. He had left her place, she said, in the middle of the night, and had not revealed his destination.
“You talked to Bacon?” said Strange.
“On the phone.”
“Why don’t you go over and see if he’s there instead of taking that woman at her word?”
“That’s an idea,” said Dolittle, his voice slow and heavy with sarcasm. Strange wondered what bar Dolittle had come from last.
He asked for the location of the Bacon apartment, and Dolittle gave him the address. He asked for the make of Jones’s car, and Dolittle told him that a green Buick Special was registered in his name.
“Find him,” said Strange. “Focus on him.”
“I’m workin’ on it,” said Dolittle.
Strange hung up the phone, his eyes fixed on nothing across the room.
He returned to the impromptu wake, made his way through the crowd, and found his parents back in Dennis’s room. He closed the door behind him, muffling the rumble of conversation coming from the main area of the apartment. His father stood with his back against the wall, a beer in his hand, his sleeves rolled up. His mother sat on Dennis’s bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Alethea looked up. “Who would do this, Derek?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Alethea glanced at her husband, then stared at Derek in a way that made him feel ten years old. “You’ve got to let the Lord settle this in his own way. Do you understand me, son?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Derek.
CHARLIE BYRD HAD that sound. You could close your eyes and listen to his guitar and know that it couldn’t be anyone playing it but him. Frank Vaughn found himself smiling, hearing it now.
He sat at the bar of the Villa Rosa, on Ellsworth Drive in Silver Spring. The place was done in dark wood and paneling, and it was a pleasant place to drink. Married couples, adulterous couples, and singles sat around him, talking low, as Charlie and his quartet played that jazzy samba sound from back in the Byrd’s Nest, the show area of the restaurant and club.
“How’s it goin’, Frank?” said a smooth voice as a man in a turtleneck and a bright sharkskin sport jacket passed behind him.
“I can’t complain,” said Vaughn to Pete Lambros, the owner of the club. Lambros had owned the Showboat, down on 18th and Columbia, for years and had recently opened the Villa Rosa out in the suburbs. Crime and a lack of Adams Morgan parking had driven him north, over the D.C. line.
“Another?” said the bartender, long sideburns, longish hair, had that Johnny Reb-Civil War look going on. He had just come on shift. Vaughn didn’t need another. He was on his fourth.
“Beam,” said Vaughn.
“Rocks, right?”
“Make it neat.”
The tender free-poured bourbon into a heavy glass and set it on a cocktail napkin. Vaughn drew an L&M from the deck and used his Zippo to give it fire. With the fetishism common in bar lovers, he placed his lighter squarely atop his pack of smokes and pulled a tray to within ashing distance of his hand, leaning his forearm just so on the lip of the stick. Cigarettes, whiskey, and walking-around money. What more, thought Vaughn, did a man need?
Well, there was work. And women. He had two of those. One for companionship and memories, and one for sex. He’d been with Linda that afternoon, and it had been good. He’d fucked her strong, and she had given that strength back in equal measure. Her thighs were in spasm when they were done. Their lovemaking had been so physical that when it was over, the bed was halfway across the room from where it had started.
“You know those little round rubber things,” said Vaughn, “you put ’em under the rollers of the bed frame? You need to get a set of those.”
“That would spoil the ride.”
Vaughn chuckled low. Linda kissed him hard on the mouth, her long brown hair damp with sweat.
He wasn’t in love with her, and he wasn’t with her just for sex
. He could get that free and clear from any one of the many prostitutes he knew downtown. Vaughn needed to know that there was a woman out there who still wanted him, waited for him to drop by or call, thought about him that way when he wasn’t there. Not out of marital duty or mercy but because it made her dizzy to imagine him. It meant he was still in the game and still very much alive. And that’s what it came down to with him. That’s why he fucked a woman he didn’t love instead of staying faithful to one he did. When he was deep inside that silk, he was laughing at death.
Vaughn drank off half his shot. He dragged on his cigarette and tapped ash off its tip.
At least he was pure at work. Not honest, but pure. His job was to close homicide investigations, and, regardless of his methods, there was no one better at it than he. But he had been a genuine sonofabitch to his family. He’d been a real failure with Ricky, who he hardly knew. The best he could say was that he’d kept Ricky out of harm’s way.
Not that anything could guarantee your kid’s safety. You could still lose them, even if you did them right. Look at Alethea and her husband, what was his name, Darrin, somethin’ like that. No, he was thinking of Derek, the young man, the cop. That good young black cop. There, I said black instead of colored. You happy, Olga? God, I am drunk.
Alethea had lost her oldest to the streets. Wasn’t surprising, where they lived. Down there, coloreds were the perpetrators and the victims. But it never should have happened to a nice family like that. What they needed now was the satisfaction and peace of knowing who killed their son. That false pat on the shoulder, telling them the murder had been “solved.” Of course, no murder ever got solved, not unless you could bring back the dead. And there’d always be another grieving mother, right behind the last. Like the mother of that boy who got run down on 14th, and now Alethea Strange. There just wasn’t any way to protect the ones you loved. Even when you did them right . . .