The Way Home

  Cotter and Harbin looked at each other and laughed.

  Mindy scratched at her neck. It was something she did when she became a bit self-conscious and insecure, and she hated herself for succumbing to the reflex now. These two were vulgarians. They were not going to buy this house, nor could they afford to. They were wasting her time.

  “Internet said this place had a library slash den,” said Nat Harbin. “Can you take us to it?”

  “Yes, but… please understand, I have a very busy schedule today.”

  “We’d like to see it,” said Cotter, still smiling, his capped teeth perfect and ugly in the yellow light. “If you don’t mind.”

  She led them back down the hall. She stumbled, catching the toe of one Stuart Weitzman sandal on the walnut floor, and Cotter grabbed her elbow with his big hand and steadied her.

  “Easy now,” he said, and as he held her elbow with one hand, he lightly stroked her bare arm with the other. Bumps rose on her flesh.

  She went into the library and they followed her. She crossed her arms and looked out the window that gave to a view of the street, and then back at the men. The one who called himself Ralph Cotter stood blocking the door. The little one, Nat Harbin, was looking at Cotter expectantly, waiting for a signal or direction.

  “Get to it,” said Cotter.

  Harbin bent forward, hiked up the left leg of his jeans, and pulled a knife from a tie-down sheath inside his boot. The knife was hardwood handled, with a heavy-duty pommel and a spine-cut surgical-steel blade.

  Mindy Kramer hugged herself and looked down at her feet.

  “That’s right, honey,” said Cotter. “You just stand there and mind your own.”

  Harbin went to a corner of the room, lifted a bit of the carpet, and cut cleanly beneath it in a filleting motion. He pulled back a triangle of the Berber and with his knee kept it pinned down. He found the notch in the cutout of wood floor and lifted the piece away, and when he saw there was nothing in the basket that had been fashioned beneath it, he said, “Shit.”

  “Nothin, huh,” said Cotter.

  “It’s empty,” said Harbin.

  Cotter shook his head. “That’s a problem.”

  “Where is it, lady?” said Harbin.

  “Where is what?” said Mindy Kramer in a small voice, keeping her eyes to the floor.

  “I had somethin in that hole,” said Cotter. “It belonged to me.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” said Mindy.

  “Look at me,” said Cotter.

  Mindy willed herself to raise her eyes and face him. “I swear to you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I bought this house to flip it. I’ve never lived here. I’ve never even looked under that carpet, not once.”

  “Rug looks brand-new to me.”

  “I replaced it, just a week ago. Not me, of course…”

  “Who?”

  “I used a local company.”

  “Who exactly?”

  “I’ve got the information. I keep a file on all the work I’ve done here. Warranties and such.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s in the kitchen.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Cotter stepped out of the room to let her pass, Harbin close behind her, knife in hand. They all went back down the hall, and in the kitchen Mindy maxed out the dimmer switch and pulled open a drawer near a stainless steel gas cooktop. On top of a stack of use-and-care manuals was a manila file folder, and she withdrew it. She opened the file on the granite countertop, her hand visibly shaking as she rooted through papers and found the one she was looking for.

  “Here it is,” she said, handing it to Cotter.

  He examined the piece of paper. The name of the company and the billing address were at the top of the page. The cost of goods and the labor were line-itemed in the body of the bill. At the bottom, in the total slot, the number had been changed and initialed.

  “Flynn’s Floors,” said Cotter. “And you dealt with…”

  “The owner. Thomas Flynn.”

  “Looks like he gave you some kind of break on the price.”

  “It was an adjustment. His installers did a poor job. They had to come back and redo the work.”

  Cotter and Harbin exchanged a look.

  “You wouldn’t recall the names of the in-stallers, would you?” said Cotter.

  “I…”

  “C’mon, honey. You’re doing good so far.”

  Mindy Kramer chewed on her lower lip. “I’m going to reach into my purse. I need to get my BlackBerry.”

  “Do it,” said Cotter.

  She took her purse off the counter, opened it, and retrieved her phone. She scrolled through her contacts and found the one she was looking for. She had entered it using a memory device so that she could recall it easily.

  “Here’s one of them,” said Mindy, handing him the phone.

  “Chris Carpet,” said Cotter, squinting to read it.

  “I didn’t get his last name.”

  “Describe him for me.”

  “Young. Big, with blond hair.”

  “You said there was two of them.”

  “The other installer was black. Young and strong, like his partner. Tall. That’s all I can remember about him. I’m sorry—”

  “That’ll be fine. Write down Chris Carpet’s phone number on the back of the bill for me, will you?”

  Mindy found a pen in her purse and did as she was told. Cotter took the bill of sale, folded it, and slipped it into the pocket of his windbreaker. Then he stepped forward and pressed himself against her. His cock grew hard. Because of his height and her lack of it, he pushed it against her belly. She turned her head to the side. A tear sprung loose from one eye and rolled down her cheek. He felt her body shiver against his.

  “Don’t cry, honey,” said Cotter.

  “I can’t… help it.”

  “You wanna know what I had in that hole?”

  “No.”

  “I had money.”

  “No…”

  “How about our real names? Wanna know what they are? Bet you’re curious.”

  A string of mucus dropped from Mindy’s nose and came to rest on her lip. “I’m not.”

  “Course you’re not. You think if I tell you my name I’m gonna go ahead and kill you. Ain’t that right?”

  Mindy’s tears flowed freely and she closed her eyes and shook her head. Cotter stepped back. A triangle of urine had darkened the crotch of her dress.

  “Look at that,” said Harbin. “She tinkled.”

  “I’m not gonna kill you, Mindy,” said Cotter. “Not you. I don’t need to.” Cotter put his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled free a cell phone. He flipped it open and punched buttons clumsily with his thick thumb. “I got a phone, too. Not as fancy as yours, but hey. Here we go.”

  Cotter handed her the phone. She looked at the screen and made a small choking sound from deep in her throat.

  “You recognize those little girls, right? Kinda hard to see ’em, I know, ’cause I was far away. But that’s them. That would be your granddaughters, right?”

  Mindy did not answer.

  “Say it’s them,” said Harbin.

  “It’s my granddaughters,” said Mindy Kramer.

  “Okay,” said Cotter. He pointed to the ink on the crook of his hand. “Now, do you know what this is?”

  “A clover?”

  “It’s a shamrock, honey. Means I’m part of something, kind of like a club. We got members in prisons all across the country. We run the prisons, matter of fact. Got a lotta members who are out and in the world now, too. All of us, in this club, forever. When you ride with the rock, you’re protected. And if anything bad does happen to you, you’re avenged. Families, children… we’ll kill ’em all and not even think on it twice. It’s part of the blood oath we take to get in. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “I hope you do. You know what we were doing this morning? We were parked outside y
our office, watching you bring in your granddaughters, watching you bring them back out. After, we followed you to where you dropped them off, at that rec center outside the elementary school. What was that, Thirty-third Street? Yeah, that’s where it was. Where I snapped these pictures from my phone.”

  Cotter reached out and took his cell from Mindy Kramer’s hand.

  “You never met us today,” said Cotter.

  Mindy Kramer nodded.

  “You ain’t gonna talk about this to your priest or rabbi, or your shrink, or nobody else. You’re not gonna warn Chris Carpet that we’re looking to speak to him, either.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Because if you do, my little friend here will visit your granddaughters.”

  “Please, don’t—”

  “He’ll cut their heads off and skull-fuck ’em both, Mindy. Do you get it?”

  Mindy Kramer nodded.

  “Say you do,” said Harbin.

  “I get it,” said Mindy.

  “I think she does,” said Cotter. “C’mon.”

  Harbin sheathed his knife. He and Cotter walked down the hall, straight out of the house, closing the door behind them and taking the steps to the sidewalk, not caring if they were seen.

  When Mindy Kramer heard the shut of the door, she dropped to the kitchen floor and sat with her back to the cabinets, weeping, her head between her knees, chest heaving, mascara running down her face. She made no move to phone the police or anyone else. She sat there and waited for the fear to leave her. She sat there for a long while. What they had taken from her would not come back soon. Maybe it would never come back at all.

  THE MEN walked to their car, a 1988 Mercury Marquis they had picked up from a cancer-ridden old man in West Virginia. From the long-term lot at Dulles Airport they had switched out plates, and the car now bore D.C. tags. The sedan was boxy and black, with a landau roof and red velour interior, a fake-fur-covered steering wheel, and a V-8 under the hood.

  Ralph Cotter and Nat Harbin were not their names. The big man with the walrus mustache was Sonny Wade. He had chosen the fake names from two of the many novels he had read while incarcerated at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In those books, Cotter had been a stone killer and Harbin had been a career burglar. It was at Lewisburg that Sonny Wade had met the little man, Wayne Minors, who had been his cell mate. Wayne did not read books.

  Sonny got himself positioned in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. Wayne looked tiny beside him, as if he were Sonny’s child, if Sonny could have had a son his own age. Wayne’s features were compressed toward the middle of his face, folding into one another, so he looked like a piece of fruit that had begun to rot. Wayne drank and used speed, but his longtime cigarette smoking had done the bulk of the damage to his looks.

  Wayne lit a Marlboro off a butane flame as Sonny pulled out of the spot on S Street. They were headed toward New York Avenue, where they had a room in a flophouse motel populated by unwitting tourists, assorted losers, prostitutes, alcoholics, drug addicts, and people on the government tit.

  “She wasn’t so full of herself when we got finished with her,” said Wayne.

  “She won’t speak on this to anyone,” said Sonny.

  “She pissed her panties.”

  “That she did.”

  “Kramer’s a Jewish name.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You hear what she said about us being together? And askin, do we like to cook?” Wayne’s eyes crossed slightly as he considered this. “It was like she thought we was faggots.”

  “She thought you was,” said Sonny.

  “Your daddy was,” said Wayne.

  They were silent as Sonny wheeled the radio dial, trying to find something he liked, settling on a station playing a Rascal Flatts song. Wayne smoked and studied the city as they passed through it, looking at the whites and the blacks together in these neighborhoods, wondering how a father could let his daughter live among these low coloreds in a shithole such as this.

  “Those installers took my money,” said Sonny after a while. “Had to be them.”

  “We’ll get it back.” Wayne pitched his cigarette out the open window. “Sonny?”

  “Huh.”

  “Why’d you tell that woman I’d fuck those little girls and cut their heads off? You know I wouldn’t do no such thing. I wouldn’t kill a kid. I’m a gentleman. I ain’t like that.”

  “And I’m no AB. I was just puttin the fear into her, is all.”

  “I’d kill a nigger,” offered Wayne.

  “You might could get your chance,” said Sonny. “But we’re gonna talk to Chris Carpet first.”

  SEVENTEEN

  CHRIS, ALI, and several younger men were in a Saturday afternoon game on the basketball courts at the Hamilton Rec Center between 13th and 14th in Northwest, in an area known as 16th Street Heights. When he was available, Ali liked to have Chris hang out with his boys, so that they could see by example an ex–juvenile offender who had managed to reenter society in a positive way. Chris wasn’t about giving speeches or deep advice, but if it meant simply showing up to ball, he was there.

  Chris had asked Ali to bring the boys to Hamilton, as the fenced-in courts were in good shape, and the red, white, and blue nets were kept intact. He’d been playing there since his teens and found the quality of players fairly high. It was here where an errant elbow had split his lip and given him his scar, which Katherine later told him was the second thing she’d noticed about him and liked, after his eyes. Ham Rec now held value to him for that alone.

  Ali had driven out from Southeast in his mother’s beat-up Saturn with William Richards and Marquis Gilman, Lawrence’s nephew, in tow. They had invited in two young men who lived on Farragut Street and gone three-on-three for a few games. Chris had bulk and a jumper, and Ali still had his vertical leap, but the teenagers had them on speed. The games had been hard fought but without major conflict, the players evenly matched, and all had been sweated out and satisfied when it was agreed that they were done.

  Chris stayed on the court and worked with Marquis, showing him his box-out move and telling him to watch the extra step on his drive to the bucket. Marquis, still gangly in his youth, looked Chris in the eye when spoken to but disagreed that his pretty move was a violation.

  “That’s a jump step, Mr. Chris,” said Marquis.

  “It’s an extra step,” said Chris. “Just ’cause they don’t call it in the NBA doesn’t mean you can do it out here.”

  “I’ll do it when I go pro, then.”

  “You’re not goin pro, Marquis. But you could be a good pickup man. If you didn’t travel with the ball every time you drove.”

  “Okay,” said Marquis. “I hear you.”

  Ali returned with some bottles of water he had gotten out of the Saturn’s trunk. William Richards, who had been sitting by himself near the playground, got up and joined them. Ali offered him a bottle, but he waved it away.

  “I don’t want it,” said William, his Bulls cap cocked sideways on his head. “That water’s hot.”

  “Wet, too,” said Ali.

  “I’m gonna walk down to Kennedy and Georgia, get somethin to drink at the Wings n Things.”

  “They closed that place,” said Chris.

  “Whateva they call it now, they still got cold sodas,” said William. “You comin, Marquis?”

  “Is it all right, Mr. Ali?” said Marquis.

  “Yeah, go ahead. Keep to yourselves, hear? I’ll come by and pick you two up on my way out.”

  The two young men walked east on Hamilton, then cut north on 13th. Ali and Chris went to the black Saturn, parked behind Chris’s van. Ali sat on the hood and took a swig of warm water.

  “Marquis is all right,” said Chris.

  “Ain’t nothin wrong with him,” said Ali. “He got some issues at home and with his peers at those apartments, is all. Marquis only did dirt ’cause his friends did. He’s just tryin to belong to something, man.”
r />   “You get him legit work?”

  “I’m about to hook him up at a Wendy’s, if the manager ever calls me back.”

  “Ben said Lawrence came to see you.”

  “He wanted me to put Marquis up with your pops. I wouldn’t even ask. Wendy’s is a better start for him at this point. That boy’s gonna be one of my success stories.”

  “No doubt,” said Chris.

  “You seen Lawrence lately?”

  “No. Ben and him were together one night recently. But I wasn’t with ’em.”

  Chris hadn’t told Ali about Lawrence and the bag of cash. Lawrence had been putting that money up his nose, most likely, or watching it bounce on his dick since he’d broke into the Kramer house to take it. Chris was trying to forget about the money, and for the most part he had.

  “Man looks old,” said Ali. “But he’s the same Lawrence.”

  “Bughouse is Bughouse,” said Chris, repeating something that had been said often in their unit, many years back.

  Ali took a long drink. Chris bunched up his shirt and wiped sweat from his face.

  “Appreciate you coming out today,” said Ali.

  “I just came to play basketball.”

  “It’s more than that. The boys like seeing you. You got a nice way with them, man.”

  “I don’t mind hangin with them, when I have the time.”

  “You ever think of changing up? Doing something different?”

  “What, you asking me to come work with you?”

  “I make less than you do,” said Ali. “So I wouldn’t suggest that. I’m talking about switching careers. You love reading those books of yours so much, why don’t you use it? Good as you are with kids, you could be a history teacher, somethin like that.”

  “You mean like Mr. Beige? He didn’t look all that prosperous to me.”

  “Teachers make decent money now, Chris, and it’s getting better all the time. In some cities schoolteachers make six figures, they hang with it long enough.”

  “But I can’t be one,” said Chris.

  “Sure you can.”

  “Armed with a high school degree?”