Vaughn drove slowly past the house on Longfellow, saw curtains drawn in all the windows. Halfway down the block, going west toward Colorado, he turned the Ford into the alley break. The squad car was idling near a garage at the edge of the Martini yard. Parked beyond the cruiser, tight along the property line, sat a green Rambler shitbox and, behind it, a red Max Wedge Belvedere.
“Bernadette,” said Vaughn, his mouth spread in a canine grin.
He threw the tree up into park and got out of the Ford. He walked to the driver’s side of the squad car.
“What’s goin’ on, Detective?” said the fresh-faced blond kid behind the wheel. His name was Mark White.
“Stay here, White,” said Vaughn, studying the drop-down door on the garage, padlocked at the latch. “Anyone comes for that Rambler or the Plymouth, hold him.”
Vaughn walked through the backyard and around the side of the house to the porch, where he knocked on the front door. An old Italian woman in thick eyeglasses and a black dress answered his knock.
“Yes?”
“Frank Vaughn, ma’am,” he said, smiling, showing her his badge.
“Is my son all right?” said the woman, often a mother’s first question when a cop came calling at her door.
“Dominic?” said Vaughn. “Far as I know. Is he in?”
“No,” she said, looking away quickly.
“I’m looking to talk to his friends.”
“Buzz and Shorty,” she said, with a tinge of contempt. “I told him, stay away from those two.”
“They’re all together, right?”
Angela Martini nodded. “They went out.”
“You wouldn’t know where they went, would you?”
“No,” she said, blinking her eyes heavily. “Dominic said he’d be home for dinner.”
“I’m gonna need to get into your garage.”
That’s where I’ll find something, thought Vaughn. That’s where greasers like them make their plans.
“What for?”
“There might be something in that garage that will help me with a case I’m working on. It has to do with his friends.” Vaughn gave her the most sincere look a guy like him could manage. “Your son’s not in trouble yet. But Stewart and Hess might find him some.”
She looked back into the house, then back at Vaughn. She rubbed her hands. He knew she had no understanding of search warrants. He knew she didn’t care for his “friends.” She’d help him if it meant helping her son.
“I’m gonna get the key for you now,” she said.
In the garage, Vaughn found a duffel bag holding boxes of shotgun shells and bricks of ammunition for a .45 and a .38. A half dozen shells and many of the bullets were missing from the boxes. A set of D.C. license plates that matched the plates registered to the Nova was lying on the workbench as well. Vaughn now surmised that the three men were out on the street, armed, in a car bearing phony plates, and about to commit a robbery.
He came out of the garage, removed his gloves, and thanked Angela Martini, who was standing in the driveway. He told her not to worry, that everything would be all right, her son would be fine. He said he would only be a moment longer here, and that she should go back into her house.
When she did, Vaughn radioed in an all-points bulletin on Dominic Martini’s Nova, plate number unknown, along with an armed-and-dangerous description of Martini, Stewart, and Hess. He cradled the mic in his unmarked and walked back to the squad car.
“You guys sit tight and keep an eye on these vehicles,” said Vaughn to Officer Mark White.
“You leavin’?” said White.
“Gonna cruise around some,” said Vaughn. “See if I run into the owners of these cars.”
DEREK STRANGE AND Troy Peters came out of the precinct house on Nicholson in uniform and picked car number 63 for their shift. They pulled out of the station’s horseshoe-shaped driveway, going by Vaughn’s Polara, parked in a patch of dirt.
Peters went up 13th, passing Fort Stevens, and at the Piney Branch-Georgia intersection turned right, circling the Esso and American stations there. They were working the APB. Strange had recognized Martini’s name and told Peters to drive by the station.
“Nothin’,” said Peters. “You know one of those guys, right?”
“Same one I was telling you about the other day,” said Strange. “We saw him arguing with that big man, right there by the pumps.”
“Report said they’re wanted on a hit-and-run homicide. Think he’s right for that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him anymore. I didn’t really know him then.”
“I’m gonna cruise up to the District line,” said Peters. “We’ll turn around up there and do the north-south run.”
Peters kicked it coming out of the turn at Tuckerman. They went along past the Polar Bears ice cream and the Hubbard House. Strange could almost taste the sugar in the layered chocolate pie, see his father carrying that white box across the street, late on Saturdays, when they’d bring it home together to share with his mother and Dennis.
“You okay?” said Peters.
“Just thinking on something is all.”
“I mean your hand.”
Strange looked at his right hand, resting on his thigh. His knuckles, pink against his dark brown skin, were still showing a little blood. He’d cleaned the scrape but not covered it, not wanting to bring attention to the injury, not wanting anyone to tell him he couldn’t work. He needed to go to work.
“I punched a wall,” said Strange.
Peters looked him over. “It’s gonna be rough for a while.”
“Feels like it’s always gonna be.”
“Anything on the investigation?”
“No.”
Up past Aspen Street, they went by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and then a mix of low-rise commercial and residential structures. Peters accelerated as the squad car hit a long grade.
“I talked to your mother yesterday,” said Peters, side-glancing Strange. “Nice woman.”
“None better.”
“I mentioned her job in the dentist’s office.”
“That right.”
“She didn’t know what I was talking about. Told me she’d been working as a domestic most of her adult life.”
“You got me, Troy,” said Strange unemotionally. “You caught me in a lie.”
“Question is, why’d you feel like you had to tell me that story?”
“I wasn’t ashamed of my mother, if that’s what you think. I’m proud of her, understand?”
“What, then?”
“It was all about me. Me, with nothin’ in my background but a high school degree, riding with a Peace Corps and Princeton man. By elevating her, I was trying to elevate myself. Once I told it that way, it was too late to tell it true.”
“I ever try and make you feel small?”
“You never did.”
“Where you think I come from, Derek?”
“Money, I expect.”
“You mean you assumed.”
“That’s right.”
“I come from dirt. That’s all I’m gonna say, because you don’t want to hear it. But to have a family like yours . . . Look, I was envious of you. Didn’t matter to me what your parents did for a living. Point is, they were there for you. Not like mine.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You never asked me,” said Peters. “You weren’t interested.”
Strange didn’t offer any kind of rebuttal, because Troy was right. When he looked at Peters, he saw a white man first and a man second. As far as getting underneath the surface of his partner and looking at his heart, Strange had not been interested. Knowing all the while it was the same way many white men looked at him.
“I apologize,” said Strange.
“Forget it,” said Peters.
Strange and Peters relaxed their shoulders and said nothing further. The silence was not uncomfortable.
A quarter mile ahead, on the left, st
ood the Morris Miller’s liquor store. On the right sat a shopping center, bookended by an A&P supermarket on one end and, on the other, the Capitol Savings and Loan.
TWENTY-EIGHT
WAIT FOR A spot out front,” said Stewart. “There,” said Hess from the backseat. “Money says the old lady’s gonna get in that Buick.”
“That ain’t no surprise,” said Stewart. “She pulls away, back this race car in, Dom.”
“Right,” said Martini, his lifeless eyes tracking the elderly woman emerging from the bank and walking to her Skylark, parked in a space out front.
They were in the idling Nova, fitted in a slot at the far corner of the A&P portion of the lot. The center was only half filled with cars, as this was the time of day during which mothers were typically home awaiting the arrival of their children from school. A woman got out of her station wagon with her toddler, found a shopping cart that had been abandoned, and pushed it with one hand toward the supermarket, her left hand pulling on her child’s sweater. A man with a flattop haircut carried paper bags from the market to his Olds, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
Buzz Stewart and Walter Hess wore their raincoats over blue jeans, Dickie work shirts, and black bomber-style boots. Their stocking masks and gloves sat in their laps. Both had loaded and holstered their weapons. Additonal loose shotgun shells and revolver rounds sat in the side pockets of their raincoats. Martini’s .45 rested on the bucket between his legs, steel grip out, the barrel pressing against his genitals.
Hess found a Black Beauty among the bullets in his pocket and pulled it free. Hunched in the backseat, he drew one of his .38s and ground its butt into the pill, which he held in the palm of his callused hand. The pill broke into bits and dust. Hess reholstered his gun, leaned forward, put his face into his palm, and snorted the amphetamine.
“Fuck, yeah,” said Hess, throwing back his head, feeling the burn in his nasal passages and a bright burst behind his eyes.
“Go on, Dom,” said Stewart. “Take the space.”
As the Buick Skylark pulled out of the lot, Martini put the Hurst in gear and motored slowly past the space, getting reverse and backing in cleanly between a Satellite and a Bel Air. Looking over his shoulder to navigate, Martini saw Hess, amped on speed, his jittery, piggish eyes pinballing in their sockets. Behind the Nova was the sidewalk, and then the plate-glass window of the bank atop a three-foot marble base.
“You ready, Shorty?” said Stewart, his face colored by a head rush of blood.
“Born ready, dad. We gon’ get it all.”
“Look at me, Dom,” said Stewart. “Look at me.”
Martini turned his head and stared into Stewart’s eyes.
“You’re gonna wait for us,” said Stewart. “You keep it runnin’ and wait. We won’t be but five. When we come back, you make it scream. Head south and work the side streets back to your alley. This ain’t nothin’ but a cakewalk, I shit you not.”
“I’ll be here,” said Martini.
I’ve been headed here all my life.
Stewart and Hess fitted the stocking masks on their heads and pulled them down over their faces. They put on their gloves. Stewart, his features mutilated by the mask, his lips fishlike against it, made eye contact with Hess and nodded one time. He got out of the car first, then waited for Hess to push the front seat forward and climb out. Stewart shut the door. Martini looked in the sideview and watched them cross the asphalt and white concrete. Stewart opened the door to the bank and let Hess pass. Stewart drew the cut-down from the harness beneath his raincoat as he followed Hess inside. The door closed quietly behind them. Then there was only the sputtering of the Nova’s 350 rumbling beneath the hood.
Martini’s eyes stayed on the mirror, not looking ahead, not seeing MPD squad car number 63 as it slowly passed on Georgia Avenue.
VAUGHN FLIPPED OPEN his Zippo, lit a cigarette, and snapped the lid shut. He rested his elbow on the lip of the driver’s window as he smoked, one meaty hand atop the wheel. He went down Georgia to the business district around Sheridan, checking out the sidewalk in front of Victor Liquors, Vince’s Agnes Flower Shop, John’s Lunch, the Chinese laundry, and, on the corner, the 6200 tavern. He kept going and cruised slowly by Lou’s, where men who looked liked Martini, Stewart, and Hess drank, smoked, and shot pool. He saw no trace of a black Nova curbed along the Avenue or on the immediate side streets. He continued down Georgia, knowing in his gut as he saw the dark faces of the residents here that he was getting cold. These were men who had run down a man who had done them no wrong, and that made them cowards. They would never try to pull a job in the colored part of town.
He was turning the unmarked in the middle of the street when the 211 came over the radio, describing a robbery in progress at the Capitol Savings and Loan, up near the District line.
Vaughn grabbed the portable magnetic beacon light sitting on the passenger floorboard beside him. He put the cherry out the window and onto the roof, its power wire lying across his lap. He hit the siren and light switches on the console before him. He pegged the gas. The Ford lifted from the power surge. It fishtailed on the lane change as Vaughn swerved to avoid hitting a D.C. Transit bus.
STRANGE, ON THE shotgun side of the squad car, was the first to spot the black Nova in a space out front of the Capitol Savings and Loan. Exhaust drifted up over its trunk line.
“Slow down a little, Troy,” said Strange.
“What’s up?”
“Just slow it down.”
Strange had learned from the bulletin that the plates were stolen and their numbers unknown. But he could make out the full head of wavy black hair on the man behind the Nova’s wheel.
“Pull over,” said Strange. “We got a hit on that all-points.”
They were on Georgia, well past the bank now, directly in front of the A&P.
Troy took the Ford over to the curb as Strange radioed in the sighting. He was instructed by the voice on the other end to wait for backup. He ten-foured the desk man and cradled the mic.
Peters looked over his shoulder at the Nova and the bank. He looked at Strange.
“What now?” said Strange.
“You heard the man,” said Peters. “Won’t be but a minute or two before backup comes.”
Peters pulled his service revolver from the swivel holster of his gun belt, freed the cylinder, checked the load, and snapped the cylinder back in place. Strange did the same. He opened his dump pouch and checked it for backup rounds as well. Both had done this before leaving the station. Their nerves told them to do it again.
They heard the siren of a car approaching from the south.
They heard the unmistakable pops of a handgun and the roar of a shotgun blast come from the far end of the shopping center. Before they could gather their thoughts, the shotgun sounded again. Light flashed through the plate glass of the bank.
Peters pulled down on the transmission arm and gave the Ford gas as Strange flip-switched the sirens and the cherries, keyed the mic, and reiterated the certainty of the 211. Peters swung into the lot of the A&P, braked, skidded to a stop, and slammed the trans into park.
“Take it,” said Peters.
“Take what, goddamnit?”
“Stay with the vehicle. Get out and take cover on your side of the car.”
Peters drew his sidearm as he opened the door of the squad car and moved across the lot in a crouch. He made it to the doors of the A&P, opened one, stood in the frame, and shouted something to a worker inside. The young man came forward and positioned himself near the entrance, his hands out in a “stop” position, warning customers who were attempting to leave to stay back. Peters put his back against the exterior wall of the supermarket and cautiously edged his way in the direction of the bank.
Strange got out on the passenger side of the squad car, drew his .38, rested his gun arm on the roof of the car, straightened it, and aimed the gun at the bank. He moved his aim to the windshield of the Nova. He shouted at the man behind the wheel, who he
recognized as Dominic Martini, to get out of the vehicle and lie down on the pavement. Martini looked at him blankly and did not move.
Strange heard the cry of tires and the whoop of a siren. Behind him, Frank Vaughn’s unmarked entered the lot.
BUZZ STEWART’S PLAN was for him and Shorty to show the guns immediately, state their intent to use them, and make a lot of noise, scaring the tellers and security guard into instant submission. Because it was a simple plan, he knew it was one Hess could follow.
Hess entered first and cross-drew his .38s. Stewart pulled the shotgun from its harness before the door closed behind him, locking both hammers back.
“Eyes on me!” shouted Hess.
“This is a robbery!” shouted Stewart. “Hands up!”
Stewart put one hand around the shortened barrel, the other inside the guard, his forefinger grazing the dual triggers. He pointed the shotgun in the general direction of the tellers, their heads, shoulders, and torsos visible through the bars of their cages, their mouths open, their faces gone pale, and the two customers, a middle-aged man and a young woman, standing before them.
“Don’t nobody move or touch no buttons!” shouted Hess, pointing one .38 at the white-haired security guard and the other at the bank manager, a thin, balding man behind a desk.
All did as instructed. All put their hands up, and none moved or spoke.
“Keep ’em up, grandpa,” said Hess, stepping to the old man in the dark blue uniform, as he holstered one of the .38s and pointed the other at the man’s face. The old man’s spotted hands, raised in the air, shook, and his mouth worked at words without sound. Hess unsnapped the old man’s holster strap and pulled his .45. Hess slipped it, butt leaned to the right, into the waistband of his jeans. He redrew the second .38. “Now lie on your belly and put your face to the floor.”
The old security guard did as he was told. He grunted as he went to his knees and then his stomach.
The bank was small, with a marble floor and three teller cages behind a marble counter and brass bars. Behind the tellers was the vault, the door of which was closed. To one side of the lobby was the business and reception area, carpeted in green, where the balding manager now sat, his hands up, behind a cherrywood desk. In the center of the lobby was a marble island holding black pens on chains and topped with a slotted wooden rack housing deposit slips, withdrawal slips, and envelopes.