D.C. Noir

  She married a personal injury lawyer with a storefront office up in Shepherd Park. They live in a house in P.G. County, in one of those communities got gates. I seen her once, when she came back to the neighborhood to visit her moms, who still stays down on Luray. She was bum-rushing her kids into the house, like they might get sick if they breathed this Park View air. She saw me walking down the street and turned her head away, trying to act like she didn’t recognize me. It didn’t cut me. She can rewrite history in her mind if she wants to, but her fancy husband ain’t never gonna have what I did, ’cause I had that pussy when it was

  I stepped into the alley that runs north-south between Princeton and Quebec. My watch, a looks-like-a-Rolex I bought on the street for ten dollars, read 9:05. Detective Barnes was late. I unscrewed the top of the Popov and had a pull. It burned nice. I tapped it again and lit myself a smoke.

  “Psst. Hey, yo.”

  I looked up over my shoulder, where the sound was. A boy leaned on the lip of one of those second-floor, wood back porches that ran out to the alley. Behind him was a door with curtains on its window. A bicycle tire was showing beside the boy. Kids be putting their bikes up on porches around here so they don’t get stole.

  “What you want?” I said.

  “Nothin’ you got,” said the boy. He looked to be about twelve, tall and skinny, with braided hair under a black skully.

  “Then get your narrow ass back inside your house.”

  “You the one loiterin’.”

  “I’m mindin’ my own, is what I’m doin’. Ain’t you got no homework or nothin’?”

  “I did it at study hall.”

  “Where you go, MacFarland Middle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I went there, too.”

  “So?”

  I almost smiled. He had a smart mouth on him, but he had heart.

  “What you doin’ out here?” said the kid.

  “Waitin’ on someone,” I said.

  Just then Detective Barnes’s unmarked drove by slow. He saw me but kept on rolling. I knew he’d stop, up aways on the street.

  “Awright, little man,” I said, pitching my cigarette aside and slipping my pint into my jacket pocket. I could feel the kid’s eyes on me as I walked out the alley.

  I slid into the backseat of Barnes’s unmarked, a midnight-blue Crown Vic. I kinda laid down on the bench, my head against the door, below the window line so no one on the outside could see me. It’s how I do when I’m rolling with Barnes.

  He turned right on Park Place and headed south. I didn’t need to look out the window to know where he was going. He drives down to Michigan Avenue, heads east past the Children’s Hospital, then continues on past North Capitol and then Catholic U, into Brookland and beyond. Eventually he turns around and comes back the same way.

  “Stayin’ warm, Verdon?”

  “Tryin’ to.”

  Barnes, a broad-shouldered dude with a handsome face, had a deep voice. He favored Hugo Boss suits and cashmere overcoats. Like many police, he wore a thick mustache.

  “So,” I said. “Rico Jennings.”

  “Nothin’ on my end,” said Barnes, with a shrug. “You?”

  I didn’t answer him. It was a dance we did. His eyes went to the rearview and met mine. He held out a twenty over the seat, and I took it.

  “I think y’all are headed down the wrong road,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “Heard you been roustin’ corner boys on Morton and canvasing down there in the Eights.”

  “I’d say that’s a pretty good start, given Rico’s history.” “Wasn’t no drug thing, though.”

  “Kid was in it. He had juvenile priors for possession and distribution.”

  “Why they call ’em priors. That was before the boy got on the straight. Look, I went to grade school with his mother. I been knowin’ Rico since he was a kid.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Rico was playin’ hard for a while, but he grew out of it. He got into some big brother thing at my mother’s church, and he turned his back on his past. I mean, that boy was in the AP program up at Roosevelt. Advanced Placement, you know, where they got adults, teachers and shit, walkin’ with you every step of the way. He was on the way to college.”

  “So why’d someone put three in his chest?”

  “What I heard was, it was over a girl.”

  I was giving him a little bit of the truth. When the whole truth came out, later on, he wouldn’t suspect that I had known more.

  Barnes swung a U-turn, which rocked me some. We were on the way back to Park View.

  “Keep going,” said Barnes.

  “Tryin’ to tell you, Rico had a weakness for the ladies.”

  “Who doesn’t.”

  “It was worse than that. Girl’s privates made Rico stumble. Word is, he’d been steady-tossin’ this young thing, turned out to be the property of some other boy. Rico knew it, but he couldn’t stay away. That’s why he got dropped.”

  “By who?”

  “Huh?”

  “You got a name on the hitter?”

  “Nah.” Blood came to my ears and made them hot. It happened when I got stressed.

  “How about the name of the girlfriend?”

  I shook my head. “I’d talk to Rico’s mother, I was you. You’d think she’d know somethin’ ’bout the girls her son was runnin’ with, right?”

  “You’d think,” said Barnes.

  “All I’m sayin’ is, I’d start with her.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  Barnes sighed. “Look, I’ve already talked to the mother. I’ve talked to Rico’s neighbors and friends. We’ve been through his bedroom as well. We didn’t find any love notes or even so much as a picture of a girl.”

  I had the photo of his girlfriend. Me and Rico’s aunt, Leticia, had gone up into the boy’s bedroom at that wake they had, while his mother was downstairs crying and stuff with her church friends in the living room. I found a picture of the girl, name of Flora Lewis, in the dresser drawer, under his socks and underwear. It was one of them mall photos the girls like to get done, then give to their boyfriends. Flora was sitting on a cube, with columns around her and shit, against a background, looked like laser beams shooting across a blue sky. Flora had tight jeans on and a shirt with thin straps, and she had let one of the straps kinda fall down off her shoulder to let the tops of her little titties show. The girls all trying to look like sluts now, you ask me. On the back of the photo was a note in her handwriting, said, How U like me like this? xxoo, Flora. Leticia recognized Flora from around the way, even without the name printed on the back.

  “Casings at the scene were from a nine,” said Barnes, bringing me out of my thoughts. “We ran the markings through IBIS and there’s no match.”

  “What about a witness?”

  “You kiddin’? There wasn’t one, even if there was one.”

  “Always someone knows somethin’,” I said, as I felt the car slow and come to a stop.

  “Yeah, well.” Barnes pushed the trans arm up into park. “I caught a double in Columbia Heights this morning. So I sure would like to clean this Jennings thing up.”

  “You know I be out there askin’ around,” I said. “But it gets expensive, tryin’ to make conversation in bars, buyin’ beers and stuff to loosen them lips…”

  Barnes passed another twenty over the seat without a word. I took it. The bill was damp for some reason, and limp like a dead thing. I put it in the pocket of my coat.

  “I’m gonna be askin’ around,” I said, like he hadn’t heard me the first time.

  “I know you will, Verdon. You’re a good CI. The best I ever had.”

  I didn’t know if he meant it or not, but it made me feel kinda guilty, backdooring him the way I was planning to do. But I had to look out for my own self for a change. The killer would be got, that was the important thing. And I would be flush.

  “How your son
s, detective?”

  “They’re good. Looking forward to playing Pop Warner again.”

  “Hmph,” I said.

  He was divorced, like most homicide police. Still, I knew he loved his kids.

  That was all. It felt like it was time to go.

  “I’ll get up with you later, hear?”

  Barnes said, “Right.”

  I rose up off the bench, kinda looked around some, and got out the Crown Vic. I took a pull out the Popov bottle as I headed for my father’s house. I walked down the block, my head hung low.

  Up in my room, I found my film canister under the T-shirts in my dresser. I shook some weed out into a wide paper, rolled a joint tight as a cigarette, and slipped it into my pack of Newports. The vodka had lifted me some, and I was ready to get up further.

  I glanced in the mirror over my dresser. One of my front teeth was missing from when some dude down by the Black Hole, said he didn’t like the way I looked, had knocked it out. There was gray in my patch and in my hair. My eyes looked bleached. Even under my bulky coat, it was plain I had lost weight. I looked like one of them defectives you pity or ridicule on the street. But shit, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it tonight.

  I went by my mother’s room, careful to step soft. She was in there, in bed by now, watching but not watching television on her thirteen-inch color, letting it keep her company, with the sound down low so she could hear my father if he called out to her from the first floor.

  Down in the living room, the television still played loud, a black-and-white film of the Liston-Clay fight, which my father had spoke of often. He was missing the fight now. His chin was resting on his chest and his useless hand was kinda curled up like a claw in his lap. The light from the television grayed his face. His eyelids weren’t shut all the way, and the whites showed. Aside from his chest, which was moving some, he looked like he was dead.

  Time will just fuck you up.

  I can remember this one evening with my father, back around ’74. He had been home from the war for a while, and was working for the Government Printing Office at the time. We were over there on the baseball field, on Princeton, next to Park View Elementary. I musta been around six or seven. My father’s shadow was long and straight, and the sun was throwing a warm gold color on the green of the field. He was still in his work clothes, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His natural was full and his chest filled the fabric of his shirt. He was tossing me this small football, one of them K-2s he had bought me, and telling me to run toward him after I caught it, to see if I could break his tackle. He wasn’t gonna tackle me for real, he just wanted me to get a feel for the game. But I wouldn’t run to him. I guess I didn’t want to get hurt, was what it was. He got aggravated with me eventually, lost his patience and said it was time to get on home. I believe he quit on me that day. At least, that’s the way it eems to me now

  I wanted to go over to his wheelchair, not hug him or nothing that dramatic, but maybe give him a pat on his shoulder. But if he woke up he would ask me what was wrong, why was I touching him, all that. So I didn’t go near him. I had to meet with Leticia about this thing we was doing, anyway. I stepped light on the clear plastic runner my mother had on the carpet, and closed the door quiet on my way out the house.

  On the way to Leticia’s I cupped a match against the snow and fired up the joint. I drew on it deep and held it in my lungs. I hit it regular as I walked south.

  My head was beginning to smile as I neared the house Leticia stayed in, over on Otis Place. I wet my fingers in the snow and squeezed the ember of the joint to put it out. I wanted to save some for Le-tee. We were gonna celebrate.

  The girl, Flora, had witnessed the murder of Rico Jennings. I knew this because we, Leticia and me that is, had found her and made her tell what she knew. Well, Leticia had. She can be a scary woman when she wants to be. She broke hard on Flora, got up in her face and bumped her in an alley. Flora cried and talked. She had been out walking with Rico that night, back up on Otis, around the elementary, when this boy, Marquise Roberts, rolled up on them in a black Caprice. Marquise and his squad got out the car and surrounded Rico, shoved him some and shit like that. Flora said it seemed like that was all they was gonna do. Then Marquis drew an automatic and put three in Rico, one while Rico was on his feet and two more while Marquise was standing over him. Flora said Marquise was smiling as he pulled the trigger.

  “Ain’t no doubt now, is it?” said Marquise, turning to Flora. “You mine.”

  Marquise and them got back in their car and rode off, and Flora ran to her home. Rico was dead, she explained. Wouldn’t do him no good if she stayed at the scene.

  Flora said that she would never talk to the police. Leticia told her she’d never have to, that as Rico’s aunt she just needed to know.

  Now we had a killer and a wit. I could have gone right to Detective Barnes, but I knew about that anonymous tip line in the District, the Crime Solvers thing. We decided that Leticia would call and get that number assigned to her, the way they do, and she would eventually collect the $1,000 reward, which we’d split. Flora would go into witness security, where they’d move her to far Northeast or something like that. So she wouldn’t get hurt, or be too far from her family, and Leticia and me would get five hundred each. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d ever had in my pocket at one time. More important to me, someday, when Marquise was put away and his boys fell, like they always do, I could go to my mother and father and tell them that I, Verdon Coates, had solved a homicide. And it would be worth the wait, just to see the look of pride on my father’s face.

  I got to the row house on Otis where Leticia stayed at. It was on the 600 block, those low-slung old places they got painted gray. She lived on the first floor.

  Inside the common hallway, I came to her door. I knocked and took off my knit cap and shook the snow off it, waiting for her to come. The door opened, but only a crack. It stopped as the chain of the slide bolt went taut. Leticia looked at me over the chain. I could see dirt tracks on the part of her face that showed, from where she’d been crying. She was a hard-looking woman, had always been, even when she was young. I’d never seen her so shook.

  “Ain’t you gonna let me in?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong with you, girl?”

  “I don’t want to see you and you ain’t comin’ in.”

  “I got some nice smoke, Leticia.”

  “Leave outta here, Verdon.”

  I listened to the bass of a rap thing, coming from anoth apartment. Behind it, a woman and a man were having an argument.

  “What happened?” I said. “Why you been cryin’?”

  “Marquise came,” said Leticia. “Marquise made me cry.”

  My stomach dropped some. I tried not to let it show on my face.

  “That’s right,” said Leticia. “Flora musta told him about our conversation. Wasn’t hard for him to find Rico’s aunt.”

  “He threaten you?”

  “He never did, direct. Matter of fact, that boy was smilin’ the whole time he spoke to me.” Leticia’s lip trembled. “We came to an understandin’, Verdon.”

  “What he say?”

  “He said that Flora was mistaken. That she wasn’t there the night Rico was killed, and she would swear to it in court. And that if I thought different, I was mistaken, too.”

  “You sayin’ that you’re mistaken, Leticia?”

  “That’s right. I been mistaken about this whole thing.”

  “Leticia—”

  “I ain’t tryin’ to get myself killed for five hundred dollars, Verdon.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Then you better go somewhere for a while.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Leticia said nothing.

  “You give me up, Leticia?”

  Leticia cut her eyes away from mine. “Flora,” she said, almost a whisper. “She told him ’bout some skinny, older-lookin’ dude who was standin’ in
the alley the day I took her for bad.”

  “You gave me up?”

  Leticia shook her head slowly and pushed the door shut. It closed with a soft click.

  I didn’t pound on the door or nothing like that. I stood there stupidly for sometime, listening to the rumble of the bass and the argument still going between the woman and man. Then I walked out the building.

  The snow was coming down heavy. I couldn’t go home, so I walked toward the avenue instead.

  I had finished the rest of my vodka, and dropped the bottle to the curb, by the time I got down to Georgia. A Third District cruiser was parked on the corner, with two officers inside it, drinking coffee from paper cups. It was late, and with the snow and the cold there wasn’t too many people out. The Spring Laundromat, used to be a Roy Rogers or some shit like it, was packed with men and women, just standing around, getting out of the weather. I could see their outlines behind that nicotine-stained glass, most of them barely moving under those dim lights.

  This time of night, many of the shops had closed. I was hungry, but Morgan’s Seafood had been boarded up for a year now, and The Hunger Stopper, had those good fish sandwiches, was dark inside. What I needed was a beer, but Giant had locked its doors. I could have gone to the titty bar between Newton and Otis, but I had been roughed in there too many times.

  I crossed over to the west side of Georgia and walked south. I passed a midget in a green suede coat who stood where he always did, under the awning of the Dollar General. I had worked there for a couple of days, stocking shit on shelves.

  The businesses along here were like a roll call of my personal failures. The Murray’s meat and produce, the car wash, the Checks Cashed joint, they had given me a chance. In all these places, I had lasted just a short while.