Drama City

  “Right,” said Rachel.

  “Now you remember, huh.” Rico looked her over. The smile was frozen on his face.

  It was hot in the apartment. The window unit is running, thought Rachel, and still it’s hot.

  Rachel glanced past Rico to the table in front of the couch. Nothing there but a couple of video game controllers and an empty orange soda bottle.

  “Lookin’ for something?” said Rico.

  Rachel said nothing. Rico chuckled.

  “How old are you?” said Rachel, feeling a flush of anger.

  “Seventeen.”

  “And your father is, what, thirty?”

  “’Bout that, I guess.”

  “So you were born when he was thirteen. That means you were conceived when Melvin was twelve?”

  “Huh?”

  “You father was twelve when he got your mother pregnant. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I ain’t never done the math, lady.”

  “It’s Miss Lopez.”

  The boy stepped forward and stood close to Rachel. She could smell his foul breath.

  Rachel did not step back. “What are you doing?”

  “Gettin’ a closer look at you. You mind?”

  Rachel stared into his eyes. If she looked away or backed up, she would lose.

  “You old,” said Rico. “But that don’t make no difference to me. I’ll fuck you in every hole you got.”

  “You’re about to get yourself and Mr. Lee in a whole world of trouble,” said Rachel. She felt a nerve twitch at the corner of her mouth as she spoke.

  “Who gonna cause that trouble?” said Rico. “You? Or maybe you think your police friend gonna come in here now and cause some trouble. Thing is, he gone, Miss Lopez. Way the smoke came off his tires on Sherman, looked to me like he had to take a call.”

  “I’m out of here,” said Rachel, and she turned to go.

  She heard Rico laughing behind her.

  “Come on, Miss Lopez,” he said. “I’m just playin’ with you.”

  Rachel patted the front pocket of her jeans and felt her cell. She began to walk and heard his footsteps behind her.

  “Hey,” said Rico, “you forgot your badge.”

  She turned toward him, and as she turned she reached around to her back pocket and touched the rectangular outline of her badge case. She felt her stomach drop and the color drain from her face.

  Rico held a serrated knife in his upraised hand. He brought it down violently and plunged the blade into her breast. She gasped at the pain as he withdrew it.

  “Popi,” said Rachel. Her eyes crossed and she screamed, “God!”

  The knife swept down again. Rico’s face was a grimace of effort and ambition, and the steel pierced her flesh and bone.

  Rachel’s howl filled the room.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I HAD THIS FREAK come over to my crib last night,” said the man who called himself King. “Big freak. Had some big legs and a big-ass ass on her too.”

  “She look like an animal?” said Momo, King’s friend.

  “Nah, man, she ain’t look like that.”

  “’Cause that last female you had looked like an animal.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “The woman I had last night looked good.”

  “But on the heavy side, huh?”

  “A little.”

  “Like a big old beast.”

  “Your mother look like a beast.”

  “Your sister does.”

  “Your father.”

  “Go ahead, King.” Momo turned to Melvin Lee. “Melvin, tell me King’s last girlfriend didn’t look like a horse and shit.”

  “I ain’t getting into this,” said Lee. “Not today.”

  Lee, King, and Momo were on dry detail at the car wash. King and Momo had both done time. They talked about women, and sometimes the Redskins, all day long. Normally, Lee joined them. But he wasn’t in the mood.

  Some days he didn’t mind these two, but others, he wished he was working in the back with the one older dude and the two Spanish, the ones who prepped the cars before they rolled ’em inside. Out here in the front, where the cars came out clean and dripping, alls they had him doing was holding a rag, getting the excess wet off the vehicle, wiping down the interior, and all that. Like he wasn’t even smart enough to point a hose at the wheels. Reminded him of those classes they used to stick him in before he dropped out of school, with all the kids couldn’t read or add two and two, like he was one step off of retard himself.

  Nearby, an older man stood beside his 7-Series and watched them dry it off.

  “Get the hood,” said the man, pointing to it. “Last time I brought my BMW in here you left drops on it. I can’t be driving around in a water-stained vehicle.”

  “Get it, Momo,” said King. “You heard the man.”

  Momo leaned over the hood and wiped it down. Good thing he did, ’cause Lee wasn’t about to. Old man thinking he was something, had to tell them it was a BMW, like they were blind. An old BMW at that, an ’89, two body styles back. Leather interior all cracked and shit, looked like the old man’s skin. One of those bourgeois brothers, moved west of Rock Creek and forgot who he was.

  Least they talked free around his kind. With the Caucasian customers, you said nothing, even when they were talking directly to you, out of pride. With the females, you kept your mouth shut too, unless they were feisty with you first. And then you didn’t know how far to go. Some of these females, they’d complain to management if you took that man-woman thing past its limit, no matter who started it off.

  The old man walked over to the tip box, which wasn’t no more than a metal toolbox, padlocked shut, with a slit cut out the top. King had wrote this sign over it, said, “Tips please, this is how we feed our families,” though King had fathered five kids and had never given one of them a thin dime. The old man pulled a dollar bill out of his wallet, doing it slow so they could see him, like he was giving them a thousand dollars instead of one, and shoved it down the slit.

  “Dry the wheels too,” said the car’s owner.

  “My man gonna get it,” said Momo, meaning King.

  King looked at Momo out the corner of his eye and crouched down to dry off the first of the wheels.

  “So?” said Momo, standing over him as he did the task.

  “What?” said King without looking up.

  “You ain’t finish the story. Did you do the freak or not?”

  “What you think?”

  “How’d you do her?”

  “Woman that size, you got to ride her.”

  “Did you?”

  “Like Seabiscuit.”

  “Bet she looked like that motherfucker too.”

  Lee finished wiping the black buckets and pulled himself out of the car. “You two can finish up. I’m gonna grab a cigarette.”

  “You ain’t been on shift all that long,” said Momo.

  “Fuck y’all,” said Lee. “I’m gonna have one anyway.”

  He dropped his rag and went into the pay area, which was separated from the wash bay by a long glass wall. Customers stood there and watched their cars roll down the line like there was something interesting about it, or like they were trying to catch a mistake. In the pay area a Korean woman, the wife of the owner, stood behind the register. In front of the counter was a display rack of little tree deodorizers, crown deodorizers for the African customers, maps, fluorescent key rings, El Salvador and Guatemala decal flags for the Spanish, and sunglasses that had been in style in 1985.

  Wasn’t no surprise that Koreans owned this joint. You threw a rock at any small business in the city, thought Lee, good chance you’d hit a slope’s head. This woman here smiled and said the same thing, “Thank you so much,” to all the customers as she took their money, and scowled at the employees when she saw them without a rag in their hands and said, “Where you go now?”

  Melvin Lee passed her on the way to the bathroom
.

  “Where you go now?” she said.

  “To pull on my rod,” said Lee with a friendly smile. She understood the smile but not the words.

  “Hurry up,” she said.

  Lee went into the bathroom, took a pee, then went out the back door and bummed a menthol from the old man who worked the pressurized hose. He lit the smoke and went around the side of the business, where a few cars were idling in line, and he dragged on the cigarette and let the cool of a Salem hit his lungs.

  I get off paper, thought Lee, and I won’t have to put up with none of this bullshit anymore.

  Rico’s silver BMW pulled into the driveway entrance. Miller stopped alongside the brick wall of the building, where he could not be seen by the drying crew, and landed on his horn.

  “Stupid-ass kid,” said Lee, crushing the cigarette under his boot.

  Lee walked to the BMW and stood by its driver’s-side window. Miller’s white T-shirt was streaked and splattered with blood. His eyes were electric and alive.

  “What happened?” said Lee, a sense of dread hitting him like a slap in the face. “Thought I told you to stay put.”

  “Law came for you, Melvin,” said Miller. “I took care of it, man. For you.”

  “Aw, shit, Rico.”

  “Melvin, you gotta get in the car. They gonna be comin’ for you now, for real.”

  “Rico . . .”

  “Get in.”

  Lee walked slowly around the car. He dropped into the shotgun bucket and looked over at Miller.

  “Where we goin’?”

  “My place,” said Miller. “You gonna see where I stay at now.”

  DEACON TAYLOR LIVED IN one of the new condos around U Street, within walking distance of the Lincoln Theater, Ben’s, and many nightclubs and bars. His place was nicely furnished, with a granite-counter kitchen and a bathroom with limestone walls and a huge jetted tub built to hold three. He was only blocks from where he did his dirt, but in terms of the lifestyle, he was far away.

  Deacon was listening to some Ronald Isley when the buzzer sounded at the front door. He checked his security camera and saw that it was police, the same Homicide team he’d spoke to earlier, come to see him for the second time that day. Deacon kept nothing in the apartment, no excessive amounts of cash and no guns or drugs, not even weed, so he was not worried. But he was curious to know why the MPD was back so soon. The men on the other side of the door identified themselves, and Deacon worked several locks to let them in.

  “Yeah,” said Deacon.

  “It’s us again,” said Detective Steve Bournias, a stocky white man with a thin mustache.

  “I can see that.”

  “Sorry to bother you,” said Detective Reginald Ballard.

  “We’ve got a problem, though,” said Bournias. “Wonder if we can’t get a little bit more of your time.”

  “This about those murders over on Crittenden? I already told you, I don’t know nothin’ about it.”

  “This isn’t about those murders.”

  “Well, what is it about? I’m busy —”

  “Fellow by the name of Melvin Lee, used to work for you. Probably still does, but that’s neither here nor there.”

  “Now wait a minute —”

  “Melvin Lee,” said Ballard. “Lives on Sherman Avenue?”

  “What about him?”

  “We’re looking for him. Our people checked on his place of employment, a car wash up on Georgia. Seems he showed up for his shift and then just kinda disappeared.”

  “So?” said Deacon. “What’d he do wrong, light up in a no-smoking zone, sumshit like that?”

  “A little bit more serious than that,” said Bournias. “Mr. Lee’s probation officer was stabbed in his apartment this afternoon. Stabbed repeatedly, Mr. Taylor.”

  “You don’t look so good,” said Ballard. “You wanna sit down?”

  “I don’t know nothin’,” said Deacon, the words automatic.

  “This isn’t the usual cost-of-doing-business bullshit,” said Ballard. “To use a knife is personal to begin with. To use it with that kind of anger is something else again. Makes us think that maybe your boy has issues with women.”

  “I don’t know nothin’,” said Deacon.

  “Get your shit,” said Bournias. “We’re gonna do this in the box.”

  “Lawyer,” said Deacon.

  “Yeah,” said Reggie Ballard tiredly. “Okay.”

  LORENZO BROWN WAS TURNING up Sherman, coming off his chaining call, when he saw the ambulance and police cars blocking the street. Neighborhood residents were out, looking at one row house in the middle of the block like they were waiting on something to happen there or someone to be brought out. And then he saw Miss Lopez’s Honda parked along the curb. He had sat in it enough times to know it was hers. She had those green little tree deodorizers hanging from her rearview to take away the smell of her cigarettes.

  Lorenzo found a place to park the truck. He went into the crowd. Kids rode their bikes around the residents and police like buzzards waiting on the kill. Lorenzo found two youngish women who looked like they belonged on the street.

  “’Scuse me,” said Lorenzo to one of the women. “You know what’s going on?”

  “Woman got herself shot or somethin’,” said the woman.

  “I heard she got stabbed,” said her friend.

  “In that house?” said Lorenzo.

  “In that house right there,” said the first woman.

  “White woman, what I hear,” said the friend. “She musta had business here or somethin’.”

  Lorenzo’s blood jumped. He felt a little dizzy in the heat.

  “Is she dead?” said Lorenzo, dreading the answer.

  “I don’t know,” said the friend.

  “She another statistic now,” said the woman.

  One of the kids riding bikes made a pistol out of his fingers and pointed it at the back of one of the police.

  Lorenzo walked toward the house. He approached the police line where they had stationed uniformed officers and where the yellow tape hung. He went right to a white policeman and stood beside him.

  “Excuse me, officer,” said Lorenzo.

  The police looked him over, studied his uniform, read the rectangular nameplate on his chest.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is the victim a white woman?”

  “What?”

  “I might know the victim. If her name is Rachel Lopez, I know her.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m one of her offenders.”

  “Hold up a second,” said the police, grabbing hold of Lorenzo’s biceps. Lorenzo did not try to pull his arm free. The police shouted into a crowd of police knotted by the row house door. “Hey, Sarge, come here!”

  A black policeman with stripes on his sleeves came to the white police who was holding Lorenzo. The black policeman was well built and had grief and fire in his eyes.

  “What?” said the Sergeant. “Donald Peterson” was etched on his nameplate.

  “This gentleman says he knows the victim. Says he’s one of her offenders.”

  “Is she alive?” said Lorenzo.

  Sergeant Peterson took Lorenzo by the same arm and led him back toward the street. He held him tightly. There was anger in the way his fingers dug into Lorenzo’s skin.

  “Tell me she’s alive,” said Lorenzo.

  “Shut your mouth,” said Peterson. “’Less I tell you to talk, you keep your mouth shut.”

  Peterson roughed him putting him into the car.

  THE HARDEST PART was seeing her under that sheet, the blood staining it in big sloppy circles that seemed to grow as they carried the stretcher down the steps. Her colorless face was nearly covered with a breathing mask. The rescue squad men and women worked on her as they made their way to the ambulance, but they might as well have been working on one of those dummies you’d see in a store window, way she looked.

  The other hard part was trying to keep the recognition and surp
rise off his face when the sergeant asked him if he knew of a guy named Melvin Lee. Rachel Lopez, Peterson said, had been stabbed in Lee’s apartment. A neighbor on the third floor had heard her screams.

  “But the neighbor didn’t call the police,” said Peterson. “Rachel did. She had a cell on her. I guess she regained consciousness, at some point, long enough to do that.” Peterson stared through the glass like he was watching her struggling to hold the cell in her trembling hand, struggling to make the call. “I saw her arrive here myself nearly two hours ago. She lost a lot of blood.”

  Lorenzo had already told Sergeant Peterson, in thumbnail, about his past and his relationship to Rachel Lopez. Peterson had asked him if he was aware that Lee worked for Deacon Taylor, the counterpart to Nigel Johnson in the Park View game. Lorenzo explained that he had been in prison for a while and no longer kept track of the local players or cared to know their names.

  The interview questions softened, as did the eyes of Sergeant Peterson, as it became clear that Lorenzo had nothing to do with the attack and, in fact, considered Rachel Lopez to be a friend. Lorenzo had the feeling that Sergeant Peterson was a friend to her too.

  Peterson said that Rachel’s file, found in the apartment, contained Lee’s employment information. An MPD unit had already gone to the car wash where Lee worked, but Lee had disappeared. His car, an old Camry, was still on the premises.

  He wouldn’t be in that car, thought Lorenzo.

  “What you need to tell me now,” said Peterson, “is that you don’t know anything about this.”

  “Nothing,” said Lorenzo.

  “And you’ve had no dealings with Melvin Lee. You don’t know where we could find him.”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Lorenzo, telling the lie as naturally as he took breath. “I don’t know Lee and I don’t know where to find him.”

  And if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.

  Through the windshield of the patrol car, they both watched the ambulance pull away.

  “You can go,” said Peterson.

  “Is she gonna make it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Peterson. “You want to help her, say a prayer.”

  “I will,” said Lorenzo.

  And someone, thought Lorenzo, needs to pray for me too. While they’re at it, pray for the motherfucker who did this to my friend.