Drama City

  Miller backed his BMW up Otis and turned south on 6th.

  Lee rubbed at his face and turned to Miller. “He was strapped, Rico. You saw it, right?”

  Miller did not respond.

  In the Escalade, Green and Butler settled in. Green put the transmission in drive, turned on the radio, and headed up the street.

  “How you know to do that?” said Butler.

  “Wasn’t no thing,” said Green, getting low in the bucket, his wrist resting casually over the steering wheel, proud despite the nagging feeling that he’d pushed it and done wrong. “Alls you had to do was look in his eyes. His heart was pumpin’ Kool-Aid.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Melvin was scared. I could tell just by lookin’ at him, ’cause I been knowin’ him a long time. He used to run with my brother, James, back when.” Green blinked away the image of his brother, playing basketball down by the courts, imitating MJ with his tongue out the side of his mouth, laughing about it, having fun. “Melvin don’t belong out here no more.”

  “You punked him,” said Butler with admiration.

  “Wasn’t me,” said Green, a touch of regret in his voice. “Boy got his ass broke in the cut.”

  As the Cadillac went up Otis, it passed the home of Edwina Rollins, Joe Carver’s aunt. Joe sat on the dark porch and nursed a beer. He had watched the conflict involving the occupants of the Cadillac and the BMW, and had listened to the muffled threats with only mild interest. He had been involved in countless confrontations just like that one in his old life. They bored him now.

  Joe would have gone inside and caught a little ESPN, but it was all baseball this time of year, a sport that he had played growing up but that did not interest him on television, and anyway, he was waiting on his friend. Lorenzo would be out walking his dog right about now. Joe would just sit out here and wait for Renzo. Wouldn’t be too long before his boy would be stopping by.

  JASMINE MOVED JAUNTILY along, leading Lorenzo down Princeton Place. She had done her business in the ball field up by Park View Elementary and had the bounce of the unburdened in her step.

  Coming upon his grandmother’s house, Lorenzo noticed candlelight on the concrete porch of the row house to the south and the outline of a female figure sitting on a glider there. As he went up the sidewalk to his grandmother’s, he heard a little girl’s voice call out and saw her braided head, in silhouette, come up over the rails of the neighboring porch.

  “That Jazz Man?” said the voice.

  “Depends on who’s asking,” said Lorenzo, stopping, holding the leash and Jasmine fast. “Is that Lakeisha?”

  “How you know my name?”

  “Santa Claus told me.”

  “Santa?” said Lakeisha with delight.

  “Yeah, he called me up,” said Lorenzo, walking across the grass toward the house so that he didn’t have to shout. “Told me about this pretty little girl named Lakeisha, lived in my neighborhood? He didn’t have her phone number, so he asked me to find out what that little girl wanted for Christmas.”

  “I want Cinderella Dream Trunk!”

  “Settle down, girl,” said Rayne, Lakeisha’s mother, getting up off the glider and coming to the edge of the covered porch. Lorenzo stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at her. Her face was barely lit by the votive candles she had placed about. There was music playing softly, probably from a portable stereo she had put somewhere up there. Lorenzo recognized the song.

  “Evening,” said Lorenzo.

  “Evening to you,” said Rayne.

  “Can I pet Jazz Man, Mommy?” said Lakeisha.

  “If Mr. Lorenzo says it’s all right.”

  “She’d love you to pet her,” said Lorenzo.

  Lakeisha descended the steps and crouched down. Jasmine rubbed her snout in Lakeisha’s outstretched hand and wagged her tail as Lakeisha patted her belly and then ran her fingers down her coat. Lorenzo leaned, with deliberate cool, against a brick post. Rayne had a seat on the top step, a glass of white wine in her hand. Now that she was out from under the roof of the porch and in the moonlight, Lorenzo could see her face and figure more clearly. Lorenzo thinking, as he always did when he ran into her, She is fine. Realizing that he was staring, he looked down at Lakeisha and Jasmine.

  “She’s a natural with my dog,” said Lorenzo. “She’d be a good candidate —”

  “Don’t say it,” said Rayne, smiling a little. “I got enough mouths to feed. Anyway, you off the clock, right? You don’t need to be working that pet adoption thing all the time.”

  “What, you don’t think about cutting hair when you’re out the shop?”

  “Please. After standing up for eight hours straight? I try to forget it when I’m not there. Trouble is, my feet won’t let me.” She looked him over. “How’d you know I was a stylist?”

  “How’d you know I was dog police?”

  Lorenzo and Rayne chuckled. She had a nice smile. Rayne was the first to look away. He liked the shyness of her too.

  “This is pretty right here,” said Lorenzo.

  “What is?”

  “This song.”

  “‘Miss Black America’?” said Rayne. “Lakeisha likes it. It takes me back myself. My mother had the album when I was a little girl. She used to play it for me, right here in this house.”

  “That was the one with Mayfield on the cover, wearing that lemon yellow suit.”

  “You remember it?”

  “Just called Curtis. A friend of mine’s mother, she had it too.”

  Now it was Lorenzo’s turn to cut his eyes from hers.

  “You feel like goin’ out sometime?” said Rayne.

  “Huh?”

  “For coffee or something.”

  “Sure,” said Lorenzo, standing straight. “Or, you know, we could do something, like, all of us together. With Lakeisha, I mean. Go to, I don’t know, Six Flags. Or go down to Hains Point and just walk around some. Somethin’ like that.”

  “That would be good.”

  “But listen,” said Lorenzo, the words coming freely from him now. “Before we go making plans, I got some things in my past that you need to know about.”

  “You’re under supervision,” said Rayne. “You were incarcerated on drug charges.”

  Lorenzo nodded slowly. “That’s right.”

  “Seems to me like you got your head on straight now.”

  “I’m tryin’,” said Lorenzo. “What else you know?”

  “You got a little girl of your own, about Lakeisha’s age. She stays up in Manor Park with her mother.”

  “Okay.” Lorenzo stroked the hairs on his chin. “Question is, how you know so much?”

  “How you think?” said Rayne, smiling again.

  “The old girl been tellin’ you everything, huh.”

  “She just being neighborly,” said Rayne.

  “Mama,” said Lakeisha, moving her cheek off Jasmine’s coat, where she had been trying to listen to her heart. “Can I keep her?”

  “No, baby. That’s Mr. Lorenzo’s dog.”

  “Tell you what, little princess,” said Lorenzo. “You can visit with her anytime you want.”

  “You gonna bring her back?”

  “Are you?” said Rayne.

  “I reckon,” said Lorenzo, tugging on Jasmine’s leash, walking toward his grandmother’s house.

  “Bye, Jazz Man,” said Lakeisha.

  Lorenzo turned his head and looked back at Rayne. “I’m gonna call you, girl.”

  Rayne sipped at her wine.

  Lorenzo used his key to enter the row house next door. He removed Jasmine’s leash and draped it over a jacket peg by the door. The house smelled of his grandmother’s cooking.

  Willetta Thompson came forward from back in the living room and hugged him roughly. She was a tall, strong woman with lively eyes, not yet sixty-five. A graduate of Strayer’s Business College, she had worked as a HUD secretary, in the same office, for over thirty years. Her hair was shop styled and gray.

/>   “Hello, son,” she said.

  “Mama,” said Lorenzo.

  They thought of each other that way.

  “Saw you through the window, talking to Rayne.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s a good woman right there. Responsible.”

  “You just about gave her my whole life story.”

  “Someone had to,” said Willetta. “Didn’t look to me like you were gonna do it.”

  “That chicken I smell?”

  “I saved the thighs for you.” Willetta pulled on his hand. “I put a little somethin’ aside for your animal too.”

  “Dogs shouldn’t be eatin’ on chicken bones.”

  “This one’s plenty big,” said Willetta. “She won’t choke on it.”

  Lorenzo and Willetta went toward the dining room, walking down a plastic runner Willetta had laid on the carpet to keep it new. Jasmine’s tail wagged as she followed, sniffing at their heels.

  THIRTEEN

  RICO MILLER DROPPED Melvin Lee at his place on Sherman Avenue. They had barely spoken since the incident on Otis. For Lee, the silence had been excruciating.

  Lee no longer communicated with his blood relatives. When he’d come out of prison, his siblings, who had never written or visited once during his stay, refused to speak to him. His mother had died long ago. He didn’t know his children or where their mothers stayed. As for the friends he’d come up with, they were in the cut or dead. Only thing he had now was his work with Deacon Taylor. Closest thing to a son he’d ever have was Rico. And now he’d been punked right in front of him. He wondered if Rico Miller could ever look at him the same way again.

  Lee walked down the sidewalk, his shoulders slumped. Miller drove away.

  Miller went down Georgia. Past Howard University, at Florida Avenue, he drove east. Farther along, he crossed the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and took Minnesota Avenue to the Deanwood area of Northeast. He parked in front of a bungalow at 46th and Hayes.

  His house was set on a fairly large plot of land. The block he lived on had many decent homes, but others were run-down, blighted by plywood doors, sagging roofs, and hanging gutters. Some had cardboard stuck in their window frames. A few had been recently abandoned or had stood unoccupied for years. Raccoons nested in their chimneys and rats moved freely beneath their porches. The shades were always drawn so that inspectors could not look inside. Long as the owners cut the grass on a fairly regular basis, these houses could not be condemned.

  Miller had found this house, in fact, when he saw the owner outside it, mowing its weedy lawn. One wall of the house had been spray-painted with tags: a “46” and an “RIP Mike.” This meant there was gang activity on the street. In areas such as this, neighbors were typically frightened or plain tired of calling police and so they minded their own. Miller had been driving slowly on this particular street because it looked like the kind of place where he needed to be. Didn’t look like anybody gave a good fuck about it, and it wasn’t near a major road crossing. It seemed like a smart spot to hide.

  He offered the man a thousand dollars a month, cash up front, three months in advance, as is, to rent it. The money would cover utilities as well. For phone service, Miller would use his cell. Rico told the owner to leave the lawn mower and gas can, and he’d take care of the grass. The man took the deal.

  Miller had another month, prepaid, on the house. He’d move on to someplace else, like he always did, after that.

  He left no records. Even his car, the BMW, was a rental. He’d got it from this man, Calvin Duke, lived by the railroad tracks at 35th and Ames. It was known in certain circles that a young man like Rico could get damn near anything from Duke. The man had the rental business cornered in Northeast. Called his self Dukey Stick; Miller did not know why.

  Except for the landlord and Calvin Duke, no one knew where Rico Miller lived. Not Melvin Lee and not Deacon Taylor. They wanted him, they could get him on his cell. Since he’d left Oak Hill, that juvenile facility they’d put him in, he’d been on his own. If anyone was looking for him, they hadn’t caught up with him yet. He aimed to stay free.

  Rico went into his house. It was a shithole to begin with, and he’d done nothing to improve it. Bare light bulbs dangled from damaged plaster ceilings. The walls, unadorned with pictures, were chipped and water stained. Wasn’t any furniture to speak of, a sofa and some old broke chairs and a folding table, stuff he’d found around Dumpsters and the like. He’d bought a mattress and some sheets at the Goodwill store. The kitchen was of little use to him. Rico didn’t eat all that much; it was KFC and Wendy’s when he did.

  Miller went back into the room where he slept. He turned on the light. He took his knife, secured in his personalized sheath, from his pocket and tossed it on his bed.

  On the floor next to the mattress sat a lamp, a portable stereo, some CDs, and a couple of ass magazines he used for masturbation. In the other corner of the room was a nineteen-inch television set on which he sometimes watched videos but which he mostly used for PlayStation 2. In the closet, behind where he hung his shirts, was a false wall, a piece of particleboard that came away with a tug. He went to the closet, parted his shirts, and pulled the board free.

  Behind the wall was a rack. The rack held a cut-down pump-action Winchester shotgun with a pistol grip, an S&W .38 revolver, and a 9 mm Glock 17. He had bought the 17, as did many young gun owners in the area, because it was the official sidearm of the MPD. Also on the rack were various holsters and a leather shoulder harness, popular with men who robbed drug dealers, designed to hold the Winchester steady under a raincoat.

  Miller pulled the shotgun and the Glock off the rack. He found a brick of PMC ammo on the floor. He loaded the Winchester with low-recoil buckshot. He checked the Glock to see if it was ready, saw that it was, and palmed its magazine back into the grip.

  Melvin was the only friend he had in this life. Melvin was his father.

  Rico Miller heard the sound of his own teeth grinding.

  THE BAR WAS in a boutique hotel on Massachusetts Avenue, down around 10th, in Northwest. It was away from the cluster of upscale chain hotels that were located downtown and in Georgetown and the West End. The amenities were not comparable in any way to those at the Ritz and the Four Seasons, but a certain kind of guest preferred the quiet charm of this hotel and its relative isolation. It was a particular favorite of closet drinkers, full-on drunks, couples engaged in extramarital affairs, and serial adulterers looking to score.

  Rachel sat at the bar, located through a hallway past the circular lobby, drinking a scotch rocks. She had ordered a Johnnie Walker Red from the ’tender, a young man with long Jheri-curled hair that he wore pulled back and banded. The JW was in her price range, a step up from the rail, and fine. She sat erect and smoked a cigarette.

  Rachel drank exclusively in hotel bars. In hotels, she was unlikely to run into police, private investigators, attorneys, coworkers, or anyone else she knew in her daytime life. These people drank at the FOP or in their favorite locals. Similarly, though some of her offenders worked in privately owned restaurants, most had trouble securing kitchen employment with the hotel chains, which tended to do exhaustive background checks. Also, she simply liked the drinking atmosphere of hotels better than she did freestanding watering holes. The crowds were past their twenties, behaved more maturely behind their alcohol, and contained fewer boisterous regulars. The customers were often in town for only a couple of days. Many would never return to D.C.

  Here, the single guests ranged from midlevel managers, conventioneers, filmmakers in town for festivals, and route salesmen to men who had temporarily left their families for two-day benders. The staff played jazz on the sound system, and on weekends a live combo appeared on the small house stage, performing mostly standards. Rachel was not a jazz or pop fan, but she was not here to listen to music.

  The room was large and oddly configured, with many tables and booths hidden behind thick posts and in dimly lit semiprivate alcov
es. The bar itself was half full. Two couples occupied stools along with a group of three businessmen, techies by the looks of their dress, ready-wear pants and cotton-poly-mix shirts. All wore marriage bands. The discussion, what Rachel could hear of it, centered on mortgage rates and Honda Accords. To the right of them sat a single middle-aged man, staring at a glass that was holding something amber, content with his solitude and his drink. His gut drooped over his belt line. Another single man, midthirties by the looks of him, also sat alone at the end of the bar. He had entered earlier, and Rachel had watched him walk in and take his seat. He was short to medium height, had a chest and an ass, and stretched his cotton shirt across the shoulders and back. She stared at him, and he held her gaze and smiled. By default, he was the one.

  She waited. He picked up his drink and walked down along the bar and stood next to Rachel.

  “Hey,” he said, showing her his teeth.

  “Hey,” said Rachel, her mouth turning up on one side, half a smile, an opening.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Why?”

  “Might as well close the gap. You haven’t taken your eyes off me all night.”

  He chuckled in a self-deprecating way, a smart tactic. If he was off base, he was just kidding. If not, he was in. He was kind of good-looking in a nonpretty way, with dark eyebrows and dark, curly, tightly cut hair. Laugh lines framed his eyes and parenthesized his large mouth. He had a large nose as well. This was a turnoff to some women, but in Rachel’s experience, it was a plus.

  “Have a seat,” said Rachel, nodding at the empty stool beside her. “So I don’t strain my eyes.”

  His name was Aris O’Leary, and when Rachel said, “Harris?” he said, “No, Aris. It’s short for Aristotle.” He was the son of a Greek American woman, second generation, and an Irish American father, third. “It means I like good food and this.” Aris held up his glass of Jameson neat. She wondered how many times he had said that to women in bars.