Drama City

  “Dag, DeEric,” said Butler, wide-eyeing the bag. “You got a whole rack of wings.”

  “All drums.”

  “You get the extra hot sauce?”

  “What you think?” said Green. “Let’s find us a quiet place to eat ’em. Smoke up the rest of this funk before we do.”

  A short way down Kennedy, Green turned southeast onto Illinois Avenue. He reached Sherman Circle and a quarter way around it veered off on Crittenden Street. Behind a side street off Crittenden, down near Bernard Elementary, he parked the Cadillac in an alley. He had fucked a girl in this alley not long ago and knew it to be quiet. Lot of folks in the city kept dogs in their backyards at night, would bark at damn near everything. But this alley here, for some reason, was dog free.

  They left the windows down, kept the music low, and smoked the rest of the blunt. Their appetites sufficiently whetted, they started in on the drums.

  DeEric Green, tripping hard on the highly potent hydroponic weed, was focused on the food before him. His thoughts were happy and not complex.

  Michael Butler was also at the peak of his high. But his thoughts went deeper than Green’s. The percussion and call-and-response of the go-go mix were hypnotic and almost too much for his head. He didn’t mind feeling this way. He could never get too high.

  When he was up like this, Butler didn’t think on his mother sucking some stranger’s dick. When he was up like this, he didn’t wonder who his father was or why he’d left. Instead, he dreamed of traveling to places he’d never been before and seeing things he’d only read about in books. Like the Eiffel Tower, and that big arch they had over there in the same city. He guessed he could see that tower and that arch if he wanted to. Why couldn’t he? He knew where they were. He could point to that country on a map. Alls he needed to do was get one of them passports, buy a plane ticket, and go. But how did you get a passport? How did you buy a plane ticket? He could find out somehow, he guessed.

  When these thoughts got too complicated, he’d just stare up at the night sky. He’d look at the stars and imagine what it would be like to fly in one of them spaceships. To look out the window when you were right there in the middle of space, with all them big rocks, them asteroids, going by. He wondered what you had to do to become one of those astronauts. Did you have to go to an astronaut school or something special like that? How did you get picked? He would like to be an astronaut someday.

  He dreamed about these things. But he never did anything but dream about them, because most of the time he was high.

  “These drums is tight,” said DeEric Green. He stared at the chicken he held in both hands. The hot sauce was shiny on his lips and stained his face.

  Butler had many questions, but he didn’t know where to go to find the answers. He used to be able to ask his teachers, but that was before he’d dropped out of school. He had no family, except for his mother. Nigel and DeEric and them, they were his family now. But they weren’t the kind of people you could ask.

  One time, he’d told his mother that he’d like to go up in space.

  “So now you gonna be an astro-not,” she said. “You can’t even spell it, boy.”

  “Yes, I can,” said Butler, and to show her that he could, he did.

  “Smart little motherfucker,” she said, “actin’ all superior. You ain’t goin’ no goddamn where but where you at now. The last place you be goin’ is space.”

  Michael Butler stared out the windshield. From the depths of the alley, out of the darkness, he saw a tall figure walking toward them with a strange dip in his gait. He was wearing gloves. Looked like he was wearing a long raincoat or something too. But it wasn’t raining.

  “Someone comin’ toward us,” said Butler.

  Green glanced out the windshield. “Yeah?” He closed his eyes and bit into a piece of chicken, tearing the meat away from the bone.

  The figure came closer.

  “I’m just sayin’,” said Butler, a catch in his voice.

  “Nigga takin’ a walk, is all,” said Green. “Ain’t no law against it.”

  “Too hot to be wearin’ gloves,” said Butler.

  “Fuck you talkin’ about?” said Green.

  The man walking toward them triggered a motion detector hung from the eave of a freestanding garage. As the light hit him, Butler saw that it was Melvin Lee’s partner, the boy with the frightening smile. He was breaking into that smile now. Smiling wide as he pulled a sawed-off shotgun out from under the coat.

  “Hey, D,” said Butler.

  Green looked through the glass. He dropped the chicken into his lap and reached for the butt of his Colt, protruding from under the driver’s seat. His hand, slick with the grease of the chicken, slipped off the grip. He saw the boy rack the shotgun and heard it, and with his right hand, Green reached across the buckets and pushed down on Michael Butler’s head. As he did this, he saw, for a brief moment, a shower of glass rush toward him. He was blinded by the glass and a ripping pain, and felt slickness on his neck and chest. The air was cool on his face, and then the air felt like fire. He wanted to scream. He tried to open his mouth, and then he tried to close it, but he could do neither.

  Butler, staying low, opened the passenger door and rolled out into the alley.

  Miller moved quickly to stand beside the open driver’s-side window. In the bucket sat Green. His jaw was gone. Threads of blood and saliva, and shreds of white bone remained. Green was dead or dying. His feet kicked at the floorboards of the truck.

  Miller had seen Butler exit the Escalade. He could hear Butler talking to himself. Praying or getting his courage up as he tried to scrabble along the other side. Miller walked behind the SUV and turned its corner. He found Butler on all fours. Butler looked up. He was crying, and it smelled like he’d shit his jeans.

  “Stand up,” said Miller.

  Butler tried but couldn’t do it.

  Lights began to glow in the back of several houses. Percussion came through the open windows of the Cadillac. Behind the drums was the faint wail of a siren.

  “Stand yourself up,” said Miller.

  Michael Butler willed himself to his feet and raised his hands. His hands shook. Tears ran dirty down his cheeks. Miller leveled the Winchester and rested its shortened stock on his forearm.

  “I ain’t done nothin’ to you,” said Butler, his lips trembling.

  “So?” said Miller.

  The alley flashed. It looks like lightning, thought Butler. It feels like the wind.

  Michael Butler opened his eyes. He was on his back. His chest was warm. He coughed up a spray of blood. He looked at the night sky. He looked at the stars.

  Miller came into his vision and stood over him. He held the shotgun loosely. Now there was a pistol in his other hand.

  “I,” said Butler. “I . . .”

  I ain’t ready, God.

  Miller sighted down the barrel of the Glock and shot Butler in the mouth. He rolled him over with his foot and shot him in the back of the head.

  Miller holstered the Glock in the waistband of his jeans. He slipped the cut-down Winchester into the special harness he wore under the coat. Squinting his narrow eyes, he found both 9 mm casings and the shotgun shell near Butler’s body. Still wearing his gloves, he managed to pick them up. He then found the first shell that had ejected in front of the Cadillac’s grille and dropped it into the pocket of his raincoat along with the others.

  He went to the open window and looked at Green’s corpse. He looked inside the car. Opening the back door, he found the Adidas shoe box and examined its contents, then closed the lid and slipped the box under his arm. Wasn’t no reason to leave it behind.

  Miller walked down the alley. In his side vision, he saw lights on in the back rooms of some of the houses, but few curtains parted and no one came outside. He heard the siren grow louder. He didn’t run.

  Miller reached his BMW, parked near the alley’s T, before the police arrived. He turned the ignition key and pulled away from the curb. He dro
ve carefully and with his headlights full on. He was not nervous or frightened. He felt no remorse, or anything else.

  Miller hit the power button on the radio. He found an Obie Trice he liked and turned it up.

  RACHEL LOPEZ, the windows down in her Honda, listened to a Brooks and Dunn on the radio and smoked a cigarette as she drove up 7th Street.

  She was careful to stay in her lane and she watched the speedometer as well. She glanced in the rearview and saw no police. Looking at her reflection, she noticed that her makeup had run in streaks from around her eyes. She was ugly. She supposed she had cried.

  It didn’t matter. Tomorrow she would be back on the job, sober and straight. This was Rachel at night.

  FIFTEEN

  LORENZO BROWN OPENED his eyes. He stared at the cracked plaster ceiling and cleared his head.

  Jasmine’s warm snout touched his fingers. Lorenzo rubbed behind her ears and breathed out slowly. It was time to go to work.

  He did curls with forty-pound dumbbells while listening to Donnie Simpson on PGC. Simpson was playing an old EWF, “Keep Your Head to the Sky.” It was a song released well before Lorenzo’s time but one that he was familiar with and loved. The newsman came on and talked about the war and a helicopter downed by a rocket and the death of three young servicemen. He talked about some people who had been in charge of the local teachers’ union and how they’d stolen from out the pension fund. He mentioned briefly a double murder in Northwest.

  Lorenzo finished his workout. He showered, ate his breakfast, changed into his uniform, and walked Jasmine. He left food and water for her, directed the fan toward her bed, and got on his way.

  Cindy, the dispatcher, was just settling in behind her desk as he entered the Humane Society office. He could hear the sound of one dog barking down in the kennel.

  “Mark in yet?” said Lorenzo.

  “Downstairs,” said Cindy.

  Lorenzo found Mark in the basement, wrapping a bandage around his hand. He was standing beside the cage of the pit bull rescued from behind the storefront church.

  “Lincoln get you?” said Lorenzo.

  Mark nodded, his face colored with embarrassment. “I didn’t think he’d bite me.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Lorenzo. “You can’t trust him. I mean, he don’t trust nobody himself, after what got done to him.”

  “I know it.” Mark stared at the blood seeping through the gauze on his hand. “I was trying to get through, is all. Irena’s getting ready to sign off on him.”

  “She has to. That dog’s not adoptable. You see that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some animals just got to be put down, Mark. Not every one of ’em can be saved.”

  Lorenzo stepped over to Mark, unwrapped the gauze, and examined his hand.

  “He didn’t go deep.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Lincoln had backed himself to the rear of the cage. He looked up at Lorenzo shyly.

  “What’ve you got today?” said Mark.

  “Gonna check my answering machine first. Take a cat back to some old lady. Make some follow-up calls. I’m gonna try to catch a meeting round lunch time. You know, see how the day goes.”

  “I’ll be out on calls too,” said Mark. “You need me, you can get me on the radio.”

  “Leave me the Tahoe,” said Lorenzo.

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “I mean it, man. I know you like that CD player, but you can listen to the radio for a change. I’m tired of gettin’ bounced around in that Astra.”

  “I said I would.”

  Mark went up to the lobby area. Lorenzo stayed behind and crouched in front of Lincoln’s cage. He whistled softly and put his knuckles near the grid. Lincoln moved forward, snapped at Lorenzo’s hand, growled for a few seconds, and stepped back. The other dogs in the kennel began to bark.

  “You can’t help who you are, can you, boy?” said Lorenzo, looking into Lincoln’s eyes. “It’s gonna be better soon.”

  Up in his office, Lorenzo sat at his desk and washed down two ibuprofens with house coffee while he checked his messages. A man named Felton Barnett had called the day before to complain about a dog barking in an apartment in his building. He had phoned Lorenzo directly because he had dealt with him on “another matter” and been satisfied with the service. Also, the old lady off Kennedy Street had called about her cat.

  Jerry, a huge multitattooed Humane officer who had a desk nearby, dropped the Metro section of the Post on Lorenzo’s desk without comment before walking heavily from the room. In the morning, Jerry left the newspaper for Lorenzo, section by section, as he finished it. Lorenzo automatically went to Metro’s page 2, where they had the Crime and Justice feature, which many called the Roundup and some cynical types still called the Violent Negro Deaths. Lorenzo read this feature religiously, even in prison, back when it was just called Around the Region. There, under the heading The District, and then under the subheading Homicides, he read the following:

  A twenty-four-year-old man and a seventeen-year-old youth were found fatally shot in an alley off the 500 block of Crittenden Street, N.W., late last night. Police said the man, DeEric Green, and the youth were both pronounced dead at the scene. The identity of the youth is being withheld until notification of relatives. Police are treating both fatalities as homicides.

  Lorenzo dropped the paper on his desk. He reached for his coffee cup but did not lift it. He moved the cup in small circles.

  He didn’t have Nigel’s number anymore. But he did still have his mother’s memorized. Lorenzo picked up the phone and punched her number into the grid.

  “Hello.”

  “Miss Deborah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lorenzo Brown here.”

  “Lorenzo! My goodness, it’s nice to hear your voice.”

  “Yours too. I’m trying to reach Nigel. I was hoping you could give me his number.”

  “Nigel kinda funny about that, Lorenzo.”

  “I understand. Let me give you mine, then. Maybe he can get up with me, he has the time.”

  He gave her his cell number and listened to her chewing on something as she wrote it down. The woman loved to eat. She enjoyed feeding guests, especially kids, too. She’d filled him with plenty of good food in that warm kitchen of hers when he was a boy.

  “Thank you, Miss Deborah.”

  “Come visit, Lorenzo.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I will.”

  Lorenzo gathered his files and accessories, put them in a backpack, and went downstairs. Queen, the old lady’s calico, had been delivered by the spay clinic to the cat kennel, situated behind the lobby. The cat was docile, lying on her side in a cage. Lorenzo took her out and found a portable carrier.

  “You ain’t so frisky now, are you?” he said, placing her in the handled box. “Don’t fret. You goin’ home.”

  Passing the pegs by the back door, Lorenzo saw that the keys to the Tahoe were gone. He mumbled under his breath and took an Astra key off the peg. He stepped out into the alley with Queen in hand, going up the small hill to Floral Place. Mark was there in the court, standing in front of the Tahoe, grinning, swinging the keys from his bandaged hand.

  “Looking for these?”

  “You had me cursin’ your name, Boy Scout.”

  Mark and Lorenzo exchanged keys. Lorenzo threw a soft right to Mark’s head. Mark dodged the punch.

  “You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Nah,” said Lorenzo, “I’m straight.”

  Driving south on Georgia a few minutes later, Lorenzo thought of Green and Butler, and how Nigel was going to carry their deaths, and the waste. Lorenzo had a pretty good idea who was involved in the killings. He realized that he could have called the police with the information first thing. Instead, he had tried to call Nigel.

  Straight.

  I’m a long way from straight.

  • • •

  RACHEL LOPEZ HAD TWO assistants on staff charged solely with handling t
he paperwork related to her caseload. Rachel had planned on finishing her field calls but decided to drop by the office first to see how the assistants were coming along and to check her messages. It had been a struggle to get out of bed and out of her apartment. She could not even think of food and had not smoked her usual morning cigarette. A shower had revived her, but not by much.

  Rachel had a door on her office, an undecorated room with nothing on the walls, and a window that gave to a view of the nearby garden apartments. This morning, after briefing her young assistants and listening to their complaints and concerns, she kept her door closed. She normally left it open, but she was trying to get her physical self together in private. A knock on the door and Moniqua Rogers’s musical voice told her that her solitude would be short-lived.

  “Come in.”

  Moniqua entered, bringing her strawberry perfume along with her. She was a correctional officer with almost as many years in as Rachel. Their styles could not have been more different. Moniqua dressed loudly in big-legged pantsuits, laughed easily and deeply, and never brought her job home to her husband and three kids. She wore plenty of makeup. She carried a gun. Rachel was her opposite in nearly every way. None of this stopped the two of them from liking each other. Because Moniqua had a family and Rachel did not, and because of their cultural differences, they rarely saw each other outside work. But they were friends.

  “Damn, girl,” said Moniqua. “Look what the cat thought twice about draggin’ in.”

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Were you tossin’ or getting yourself tossed? The latter, I hope.”

  “Nothing that exciting. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Okay.” Moniqua parked an ample ass cheek on the edge of Rachel’s desk. “Look, I got a new offender coming in this afternoon for his initial consult. But my oldest is in some swim meet thing at the pool and she wants me to be there. Can you cover for me?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t even have to think on it, huh?”

  “I’m gonna be out in the field. I didn’t finish my calls yesterday, and I can’t get behind.”