Drama City

  Again, Muller said nothing.

  “You keep me posted, hear?” said Deacon.

  “I expect the same from you.”

  “You know I will. This kind of violence is bad for business. Pretty soon the neighborhood gonna be crawling with bad elements like yourself.”

  “You don’t want that, dawg.”

  “Word,” said Deacon. He hadn’t used that expression to anyone but Muller in the last ten years.

  Griff pulled his Infiniti up alongside the Mercedes and idled it in the street. They went nose to ass, the way police did, so they could speak.

  Griff was serious, dependable, and strong of body and character. He dressed neatly and without show. He was Deacon’s most fearsome employee. Only fault he had was he talked too much, and bragged, when his head was up on weed. Maturity would cure that. Someday the boy would become a man and learn how to handle his high.

  “What’s up, soldier?” said Deacon.

  “I got up with Graham,” said Griff.

  “Talk about it.”

  “Nigel want to parley with you about this problem. Says he’ll do it somewhere neutral, just the two of y’all.”

  “I’ll meet him,” said Deacon. “But I ain’t ready just yet. Need to think things out before we talk.”

  “You got a plan?”

  “I don’t plan,” said Deacon. “I look for opportunities.”

  “You want to do this tonight?”

  “Tonight’s good.”

  “I’ll go back to Larry.”

  “Don’t call him Larry to his face,” said Deacon. “I heard his mother named him after the bass player, and I heard he don’t like it.”

  “What bass player?”

  “Larry Graham,” said Deacon.

  Griff shrugged and looked blankly at Deacon.

  “Awright then,” said Deacon. “Go talk to Graham and set it up. Say, eight o’clock at the fort?”

  “I’m on it,” said Griff.

  “No doubt,” said Deacon. Griff pulled away in his car.

  Deacon thinking, Boy don’t know who Larry Graham is, at least he should have pretended like he did. Tryin’ to make me feel all ancient out here.

  LORENZO BROWN CAUGHT a quick tuna sub at his Subway and got back to work. He radioed in to Cindy, still on the desk, to see if there were any calls he needed to take. She told him about a chaining complaint over in Columbia Heights. He told her he would pass by the address on his way back to the office. She didn’t mention anything about the incident in Southeast. Leon Skiles had followed street code, as Lorenzo had expected, and not reported the assault.

  Lorenzo started up the Tahoe and headed for Columbia Heights.

  EDDIE DAVIS WAS A CUTTER in a styling shop on Florida Avenue, in Trinidad, near Gallaudet. He was a slim man in his midfifties, quiet and gentle, with a trim mustache and kind eyes. Nothing about him suggested that he was the same person who in 1977 had stabbed a man repeatedly for looking at his girlfriend the wrong way in a Petworth bar. Eddie Davis, up on PCP, had left an Italian switchblade in the man’s neck after burying it to the hilt, and then resumed his drinking. No one had come near him until the police arrived. When he was smoking that boat, Eddie felt as if he had the strength of ten men and, feeling that way, he did. In fact, it took four police to subdue him that night.

  The murder charge bought him a twenty-five-year sentence. He had fathered two sons before he went inside. As teenagers, without a strong male figure to keep them in line, both young men became involved in the crack cocaine trade, which hit Washington like a plague in the summer of ’86. As adults, Eddie’s sons eventually caught drug charges and were incarcerated for most of the nineties. Eddie himself was released and was promptly violated on possession-with-intent-to-distribute offenses. He returned to prison, where the one-two punch of Jesus and drug rehabilitation finally found traction with a man who realized he was both too old to play the game and lucky to be alive. As for Eddie’s sons, they were CSOSA cases: Transferred from Lorton to federal facilities, they had served out the rest of their terms far away from D.C. and now were out on paper, trying, like their father, to stay on the straight.

  Rachel Lopez entered the styling shop, a unisex affair owned by an ex-offender named Rock Williams who aggressively employed men and women who had done time. The shop was full-service, with stylists, barbers, manicurists, and pedicurists, and specialized in hair coloring and extensions. Williams had a loyal clientele. Most of the customers had family members either in incarceration or on paper and were behind the concept of redemption through hard work.

  “Mr. Williams,” said Rachel Lopez, approaching the broad-chested owner standing behind the register counter.

  “Miss Lopez.” He extended his hand and she shook it. “You lookin’ for Eddie?”

  “I am.”

  “He’s around here somewhere. I’ll get him for you.”

  Williams went past the styling area and through curtains to a back room. Rachel listened to the soft soul and jazz of the Howard University radio station, WHUR, coming from the house system. She got nods and eye contact from a couple of the cutters and a wink from a female manicurist working close to the counter. All had been told by Eddie Davis and Williams that Miss Lopez was a PO and that she was all right. She had never once caught attitude in the Rock Williams House of Style.

  Davis emerged from the back room smiling. He met her at the counter and shook her hand. She drew him into her arms impulsively. He hugged her as he would a daughter.

  “How do I look?” he said, stepping back.

  Davis wore a black barber’s smock with “Eddie” stitched in cursive across the chest. Above his name was an embroidered tableau of crossed scissors over a barber pole. His hard life had aged him prematurely and considerably, but Rachel could still see the handsome man he once had been. Everything about him she needed to know was in his eyes. There was nothing bad there; it was impossible that there would be evil in him again.

  “You look great,” she said.

  “Do I look like a man who’s about to come off paper?”

  “I wrote the termination letter a few days ago. I’m ready to send it in.”

  “That don’t mean we gotta stop seein’ each other, right?”

  “I’ll be around,” said Rachel. “And I’m gonna expect that Christmas card too.”

  “You’re family, Miss Lopez. I ain’t never gonna take you off that list.”

  They looked at each other for a few moments. She hoped that what he said was true. It was with mixed feelings that she let go of certain offenders. The fact that an Eddie Davis was going to make it validated her life’s work. That he was walking out of her world caused her sadness too.

  “How are your sons?” she said.

  “Good. Charles and Michael both cuttin’ heads in separate barbershops.” Eddie looked around to make sure that Williams was not within earshot. “Plan is, I’m gonna start up my own shop. Get my sons under my wing. I’m lookin’ at this little space over there on Good Hope Road. It’s close to my apartment. Want a place I can walk to every morning, turn that key.”

  “Don’t worry about Rock hearing you,” said Rachel. “He’d be happy if you went out on your own.”

  “I’m gonna do it, Miss Lopez. I am going to do it.”

  “I believe you. Your sons are in Anacostia as well?”

  “Yeah. Both of ’em bought little houses over there in Southeast. I helped ’em out with the down payments. I had a, what do you call that, motive for it. I want to be close to my grandchildren.”

  “It’s all about family.”

  “Yes,” said Eddie. He looked her over. “You look nice today, you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

  “I was feeling poorly this morning. But I’m better now.”

  “You gonna be able to come by that barbecue this weekend? My sons and their kids are gonna be there. They’d love to see you.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Eddie pointed a gnarled finger in her direction. ??
?I’m not gonna let you lose touch.”

  “I promise. We’ve come too far together, you and me.”

  “God is good,” said Eddie Davis.

  He can be, thought Rachel. They hugged again before she left the shop.

  Out in her Honda, Rachel looked through her files. She had one more stop to make before returning to the office. The offender had given her his work schedule, by her request. He was a person she needed to stay on top of, a career criminal who up to this point had been unable to leave the drug game behind.

  Rachel wanted to interview the offender at his place of employment whenever possible, to verify that he was there consistently. It looked as if she had missed that opportunity when she had failed to make all of her calls the day before. She’d have to visit him at his residence on Sherman Avenue.

  According to her records, that’s where the offender, a man named Melvin Lee, stayed.

  TWENTY

  RICO MILLER SAT on a folding chair by the big front window of the apartment, watching the street. Melvin had told him not to stay there, but he was bored. He had tried playing Counter-Strike on Xbox, but he was used to the PS2 controller and grew frustrated using one he didn’t know nothing about. He had thought getting high might help him master the system, but that didn’t educate him either. The fat joint he’d smoked had only made him more confused. And that had sent him to where he was at right now, staring out the window. Wasn’t much skill you needed for that.

  Down on Sherman, a white woman with stuff in her hands got out of her car, some square-back hooptie. Looked like she was carrying a file or something like that. A cell too, and some kind of little leather case.

  She didn’t look all white. She might have been Spanish or something; he couldn’t tell. She was wearing jeans and a shirt had no style. She didn’t belong on this street. It wasn’t her color. There were a few whites and plenty of browns down here. It was the way she carried herself, walking down the sidewalk, aware of where she was, trying to act like this was her neighborhood when it was not. Miller had this talent. He could smell police.

  Soon as this entered his mind, a 4D patrol car, heading east on Irving, turned up Sherman. It slowed near where the woman was walking and pulled over to the curb. The woman hesitated, seemed to recognize the driver, and went to the open window. He couldn’t see the woman’s face as she bent forward.

  That woman’s talking to one of her own, thought Miller. She’s conspiring with the police in the car.

  The uniform police spoke to the woman police for a couple of minutes, and then the uniform took off. The Crown Vic’s tires caught rubber on the street. The woman got back up on the sidewalk, went down it some, and turned toward Melvin’s row house. As she made her way to it, she looked up at the third-floor window. Miller leaned back in his chair.

  She seen me, he thought. I fucked up. Police coming up here looking for Melvin. I should do what Melvin say to do and go out the fire escape and run.

  He went back to the bedroom and opened the window. He looked down at the mesh platform outside the window and the ladder below it. What good would it do Melvin if he, Rico, was to book on out? If the police was looking at Melvin for the murders, they would get him up there at the car wash just the same. What Rico needed to do was to stop them from looking. Leastways, hold them off until he and Melvin could leave out of town. Besides, to run on out of here, from a woman? That didn’t work for him.

  High like he was, it was hard to know what to do. He closed the window and stood stupidly in the center of the room.

  Miller put his hand in his pocket and touched leather. He touched the rough part of the leather where the letter C was at. He ran his finger down to touch the R. Then the E, and then the other E. And then the P.

  Miller heard a grinding sound.

  RACHEL PARKED on Sherman, gathered her badge case, her cell, and her file on Melvin Lee, and got out of her car. She locked the Honda and went down the sidewalk toward Lee’s address. It was a row house like all the others on the block. The file said he lived on the third floor.

  An MPD patrol car came off Irving and up Sherman. Rachel clocked the Fourth District designation and identification numbers on the Crown Vic. It came to a stop curbside. As the window slid down, she saw that it was Donald Peterson, one of the many cops she had worked with over the years, behind the wheel. Peterson was a sergeant, black, and somewhere on the good side of forty. He was well built, close to handsome, and, like many cops, divorced.

  She liked him; he had a confident cool. He had flirted with her when they’d first met, down at the District Courthouse, and asked her out. It was a respectful, nonaggressive flirtation, and she had been flattered. But she had politely declined, explaining that she had just come through a rough stretch, dealing with the illness of her parents, and wasn’t ready to date. Of course, it had nothing to do with her parents. She had never been in an equal relationship, one where she was not in complete control. The thought of it frightened her.

  “Hey, Donald,” she said, leaning on the lip of his window, feeling the bite of the ice-cold air-conditioning blowing in the car.

  “Miss Lopez. Making a house call?”

  “A Melvin Lee.”

  “Spidery-lookin’ gentleman,” said Sergeant Peterson, who had been working the Fourth for over fifteen years. “Toiled under Deacon Taylor, if I recall.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Don’t tell me: You missionary types are interested in their futures, not their pasts.”

  “Can’t do anything about their pasts.”

  “What’s he doing now? Pediatric surgeon, somethin’ like that?”

  “He works in a car wash.”

  “Another productive member of society.”

  “Somebody’s gotta keep the cars clean.”

  “Send him up to the station. Mine could use a bath.”

  “You guys are always looking for a handout.”

  A call came over the radio, something about a man driving erratically down Georgia Avenue. Peterson keyed the mic and told the dispatcher that he’d respond, then replaced the mic in its cradle.

  “I was wonderin’ . . .”

  “What?”

  “You like seafood?”

  “Love it.”

  “Ever been to Crisfields?”

  “No.”

  “You gonna make me work for this, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve never been to Crisfields and I’d like to go.”

  “When?”

  “Give me a call.”

  “You still in that same office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Peterson pulled down on the transmission arm. “Let me get on over to Georgia. See what this guy’s malfunction is.” He looked Rachel over, then looked directly into her eyes. “Be safe.”

  “You too, Donald.”

  Rachel backed off the window and Peterson drove away. His tires squealed, leaving rubber on the asphalt, as he took off.

  They can’t help themselves, thought Rachel. They’re all boys at heart.

  She went up the walkway to the row house where Melvin Lee stayed. As she walked, she smiled and shook her head. All this impulsive behavior in one afternoon. Sergeant Peterson had tried one time, a while back. Turning his car up Sherman as she was making a house call, maybe it was just his lucky day. Could be it was hers too.

  Rachel entered the row house and took the steps up to the third floor. She heard television sets and the bass of a stereo as she ascended the stairs. She made the landing and knocked on the door marked 3B. She put her cell phone in her front pocket and kept her badge case and file in her hands. There were footsteps behind the door, and then the door opened.

  A young man who was not Melvin Lee stood in the frame. He was tall and thin and had a long lupine face. His eyes were nothing eyes and told her only that he was high. She had seen this look, absent of all humanity, on some of the young offenders in her case files. She had seen it more frequently in the last couple of years.


  “Melvin Lee,” said Rachel, badging the young man.

  “I ain’t Melvin.”

  “I’m looking for Melvin,” she said, keeping her eyes on his and her tone firm. “I’m Miss Lopez. Melvin’s probation officer.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Is Melvin around?”

  “He out. He gonna be back soon.”

  Rachel smelled marijuana from inside the apartment. She slipped the badge case into the rear pocket of her jeans.

  “I’ll come back,” said Rachel. “Tell him I was here.”

  Rachel turned to go.

  “Hold up,” said the young man, and Rachel stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sayin’, he only gonna be out for, like, ten minutes, somethin’ like that. He only buyin’ a pack of smokes.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Rico.”

  “My question is, what is your relation to Mr. Lee?”

  “Melvin my father,” said Rico. “Come on in and wait, you want to. He ain’t gonna be but a bit.”

  Rachel hesitated. She tried to remember if Lee had a son. She didn’t think it was in his file. He had omitted it, maybe, on the form. Not unusual, but still a lie. A violation, along with the weed, if there was any left. If the boy hadn’t flushed it down the toilet already.

  She needed to note these things for the record. It wasn’t enjoyable, but it was her job. She stepped inside the apartment. The boy named Rico closed the door behind her.

  They stood, awkwardly, in the living room. Rico did not ask her to have a seat or offer her something to drink.

  Rachel looked at her watch. “I’ll wait five minutes. Then I have to go.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “I was supposed to see Melvin at his place of employment yesterday,” said Rachel. “But I misplaced the location. He works at that car wash, right?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Where is that again?”

  “You don’t think I know?”

  “I’m asking. Like I say, I had it written down somewhere —”

  “But you mis-placed it.” Rico smiled. There were gaps between his rotten teeth. “It’s that one up there on Georgia.”