TWENTY-TWO
LORENZO BROWN DROVE NORTH. He parked the Tahoe in the court behind the Humane Society alley and went through the screened back door, past the cat kennel, and through the lobby without speaking to Cindy or anyone else. He took the stairs up to the second floor, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible so as not to alert Irena Tovar to his presence. Her door, as always, was open. He did not look in that direction and went directly to his own office at the opposite end of the hall. Jerry, out on calls most likely, was not at his desk. Neither was Mark Christianson.
Lorenzo phoned Nigel Johnson, got his message box, and left his direct number at the office. He then found his report file from the previous day and the notepad on which he had written down the license plate numbers of the cars parked on the edge of Fort Dupont. The phone on Lorenzo’s desk rang, and he lifted the receiver.
“Officer Brown.”
“Officer Brown. I like that.”
“Nigel. Need your help on something.”
“Go ahead, boy.”
“Black Holmes still in the cut, right?”
“Long as he breathin’.”
“And his mother works for Motor Vehicles, doesn’t she?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You been good to Black?”
“You know I have. His mother gets an envelope every month.”
“I need her to run a plate for me.”
“Look, you’re damn near police yourself. Don’t you have a way you can get that done?”
“Not this time.”
“Okay. What do you need?”
“I got the car and the license plate. I need the address of the owner.”
“What car?” said Nigel, as if he already knew the answer and did not like it.
Lorenzo gave Nigel the plate number of the silver BMW and listened to silence on the other end of the line.
“You there?”
“Why?” said Nigel.
“I’m lookin’ to find Lee and Miller.”
“So am I. Matter of fact, Deacon and me gonna meet at dark, and we gonna discuss it. But I told you to stay out of this. I’m gonna handle it my own self.”
“That ain’t gonna work for me, Nigel.”
Lorenzo told Nigel of the assault on Rachel Lopez. He told him about Lee’s Camry being left at the car wash, and how he felt certain that Rico Miller had done the crime.
“Last thing Melvin lookin’ to do is go back to prison,” said Lorenzo. “He had no reason to go at Miss Lopez like that.”
“And you think Miller had a reason.”
“That boy don’t need a reason. In his fucked-up mind, maybe he thought he was helping Melvin. I had money to bet, I’d say Miller did Green and Butler too.”
“That woman gonna make it?”
“I don’t know. She got cut up bad. She’s over at Washington Hospital Center now.”
“You gonna be there at the office?”
“Yeah.”
“I better call Black’s mother before she leaves out the building. It’s near quitting time for her.”
“I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Lorenzo went down to the basement to check on the dog he’d brought in from Congress Heights. Mark Christianson was in the kennel, staring down into the open cage where Lincoln, the aggressive pit, had been. Some of the other dogs were making noise, looking for attention. Their barks and yelps echoed in the cool cinder-blocked room.
“Irena put Lincoln down?” said Lorenzo.
“She had it done while I was out on calls.” Mark looked at his bandaged hand, as if the bite was the reason the dog had been destroyed.
“It ain’t on you,” said Lorenzo.
“I know it.”
“You believe in God, right?”
“I believe there’s someone higher than us.”
“But do you believe that he’s up there moving us around like chess pieces or somethin’?”
“Of course not.”
“Neither do I. Things happened to that dog on this cruel earth to make it the way it was. Wasn’t its fault, but still. It’s not like God is gonna step in now, point his finger down from heaven, and touch that animal, make it so it can live around people and other animals the right way.”
“What’s your point?”
“Irena did her job. ’Cause that dog was too far gone to change its ways. He had to be put down. You see that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Lorenzo went to the cage where the cream pit bull lay. She had been treated by a vet with dressings and bandages, and was awake on her belly, her snout resting between her paws.
Lorenzo crouched down, whistled softly, and put his knuckles up against the cage. “How you doin’, girl?”
The dog whined happily and tried to crawl forward, but thought better of it and stayed put.
“That your hold?” said Mark.
“I got her earlier today. Impounded her from an apartment down in Southeast.”
“Have any trouble getting her out?”
“No,” said Lorenzo.
Cindy called out to Lorenzo from the top of the stairs. Someone was on the line for him and did not want to leave a message.
Lorenzo stood and tried to walk past Mark. Mark put his hand around Lorenzo’s biceps.
“You all right?” said Mark.
“Why?”
“You look different.”
I look the way I used to, thought Lorenzo. You never knew me when I had this kind of hard on my face.
“I’m fine.”
“You feel like having a beer tonight or something?”
“I got plans tonight,” said Lorenzo.
“I know what happened down there in Congress Heights. I came down to back you up after Cindy radioed in the call, but you had already left. Someone on the scene told me what went down.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I thought you said there wasn’t any trouble.”
“There wasn’t.”
“You’re good at this,” said Mark. “I don’t want to see you blow it.”
“Thanks for gettin’ my back,” said Lorenzo, gently pulling his arm free.
“You need to talk or somethin’, you phone me. Anytime.”
“I got to get this call.”
Lorenzo went up the stairs. Cindy told him that she was not his personal secretary, and he passed her without comment or breaking stride. Up in his office, he picked up the phone and took it off hold.
“Nigel?”
“I got it.”
“A home address?”
“Car’s not registered to Lee or Miller. Man by the name of Calvin Duke owns it. He stays down around Thirty-fifth, in Northeast. Black’s mother say he owns a whole rack of vehicles, according to the computer.”
“What, he got a used-car lot, somethin’ like that?”
“Or he rentin’ cars out,” said Nigel.
“How you know that?”
“Lawrence Graham keeps his ear to the street on that kind of thing. Says Duke’s got a rep in Northeast. Maybe we ought to talk to him. If that BMW is a hack, Duke’s got to know the place where he can collect the rent.”
“Right.”
“I’d like to find out where those two are at before I parley with Deacon.”
“Pick me up at my place,” said Lorenzo.
“Now?”
“I need time to change into some street clothes.”
“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
“Gimme an hour,” said Lorenzo. “I gotta walk my dog.”
Lorenzo left without speaking to Irena Tovar. Typically, at the end of his shift, he’d go to her office, sit before her desk, and discuss his cases and how he was coming along on the job. He knew he would not be able to look her in the eye today.
Lorenzo went to his Ventura, parked on Floral Place. He cooked the ignition and headed for Park View.
NIGEL JOHNSON PICKED UP the count from Ricky Young on Morton Street. This was normally DeEric Green’s duty, and Nigel
had not done it himself for some time. He was mindful of any 4D cruisers or unmarkeds as he drove down the street, past his people and Deacon’s, who were standing on hot corners, dealing with the drive-through customers and the walk-up fiends trying to buy on the short. He received the cash from Young in a shoe box through the window of his Lexus. Then he navigated the circle back by the apartments, returned to Georgia, hung a right and another right on Newton, and took it to 6th, where his mother stayed. He was certain he had not been followed.
He took the shoe box, and some Breyers mint chocolate chip he had picked up on his way downtown, and went inside the house.
It smelled like her cooking. This was what he waited for, something he could never get from the phone calls he made to her three, four times a day. That smell. That and her music, which was playing now on the stereo he’d bought for her. It was the Claudine sound track, Gladys interpreting Curtis, singing about “the makings of you.” The stereo was part of the elaborate entertainment center in the living room, which also included a plasma television set and a DVD player she could never seem to operate, also high-end.
Deborah Johnson came from the kitchen, walking down the high-shag carpet to take him in her arms. She smelled like perfume, the sweet kind she favored.
“Hello, son.”
“Mama.”
Deborah was a big woman, five-foot-ten and up around 260 pounds. She was pretty, with nice skin, looked like deeply burnished wood, and neatly styled hair. She always wore makeup, red lipstick and blue eye shadow, despite the fact that, except for Sundays when she went to church, she rarely left the house. She was fifty-four years old.
“Here you go,” said Nigel. He handed her the shoe box first, then the ice cream.
“Thank you, baby. You got my flavor.”
Nigel nodded. He worried about her heart, but he wasn’t going to deny her the treats she loved.
“Let me put this stuff away,” said Deborah.
“All right.”
“You gonna have a plate of somethin’? I’ve got a nice ham and sweet potatoes to go with it.”
“Little bit, Mama.”
“Ham’s cold.”
“How it should be in the summertime.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Nigel watched her go, pushing her weight forward, using the side-to-side movement of the heavy. While she was preparing his food in the kitchen, she’d run the cash through the electronic counting machine she kept back there in one of the cabinets. She liked to do that soon as he made the delivery.
“Sit yourself down,” she said over her shoulder.
He had a seat in the living room. The couch and chairs had plastic slipcovers on them even though Deborah could afford to let the furniture wear down natural and change it out any time she wanted to. He couldn’t convince her, entirely, that she didn’t have to worry about pennies anymore. Once poor, always poor, that’s what folks said.
He bought her jewelry and picked out her dresses from the oversize department at places like Nordstrom and Lord and Taylor. She never asked for these things but was thankful for them and wore them proudly. She bragged to her friends at church about her son the businessman, “my entrepreneur,” who had the NJ Enterprises shop up on Georgia, and they went along with the charade, which she knew to be a ruse herself. She rarely spoke of it with Nigel and never with anyone else.
He had set up several accounts at different banks around town, the deposits never exceeding ten thousand dollars. The bulk of the remaining cash was kept here in her house. He wanted to make sure that she was taken care of in the event of his death or incarceration.
There was no one else in his life. He had fathered a couple of children when he was young but had paid the mothers off in lump sums and did not have much contact with them. He had one older brother, a successful Realtor in Raleigh, North Carolina, who had clean-breaked from the family long ago and had not seen D.C. since he’d left town. Nigel had never known his father. He’d gone looking for him, based on some cryptic information his mother had given him on a rare night when she’d had a second glass of wine, and discovered that the man had been dead for twenty years. It was said by the man’s son, a crackhead who technically was Nigel’s half brother, that the father was buried in a pauper’s grave. Nigel had felt nothing upon hearing the news.
Nigel lived in a modest apartment near his storefront, up in Manor Park. After the expense of his rent, his mother’s mortgage, her clothing and jewelry, his clothing and jewelry, his vehicles, the vehicles he bought for his men, his payroll, the rent on his storefront, and all the extras a man in his position had to have, there was little cash left. This was the secret that many drug dealers on Nigel’s level kept. They could not save and were not rich.
It wasn’t money that kept Nigel in the game. It was the power, of course, and the fear that he would lose what he had and, once out, be qualified to do nothing else. But it was also the responsibility he felt he had for those under him. From the beginning, he had told himself that he was providing opportunity and a sense of family for those who otherwise had no chance of attaining either. He knew now, and had known for some time, that this was bullshit drug dealers repeated to themselves and one another to rationalize their lifestyles. More than just bullshit—it was a dirty lie.
He had told this lie to his best friend. He had told it to many other young men. The last young man he’d told it to had been Michael Butler. Michael Butler, who at seventeen years of age would soon be in the ground, covered in maggots. Nigel had spoken to him early on about the opportunity that was waiting for him up the road. Instead, Nigel had shown him a horrifying death and an early grave.
“You wrong,” said Nigel under his breath.
His mother touched his shoulder. He had not heard her reenter the room.
“What’s that, baby?”
“Talkin’ to myself, is all. Must be getting old.”
“I’m heating the potatoes up. Won’t be but another minute.”
“Okay.”
Deborah Johnson came around the sofa and had a seat beside her son. The Gladys Knight CD played beautifully in the room. Gladys singing joyously about “a happy home.” Nigel remembered his mother wearing the grooves out on her vinyl copy, back in time.
“Lorenzo called me today,” said Deborah.
“He told me he spoke to you.”
“You two gonna hook up?”
“Yes.”
“Lorenzo’s good,” said Deborah, touching her son’s hand. “You watch out for him, hear?”
“I will,” said Nigel.
“You ought to call him, tell him to come over, have some of this ham.”
“He busy right now.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s out there on Otis, I expect.” Nigel smiled a little, looking toward the living-room window that fronted the street. “Walkin’ his dog.”
SHADOWS HAD LENGTHENED on the playground. Lorenzo watched the children doing what children did on summer evenings, getting in the last of their games before supper got called or darkness fell. He remembered being out here with Nigel when he’d first moved over from Congress Heights to stay with his grandmother, Nigel his first Park View friend. Nigel dreaming on a pair of Superstar three-stripes he’d seen in a store window, focusing on what he wanted, what he was gonna get, even then. Asking Lorenzo if there was anything he wanted, ’cause when he, Nigel, got his hands on some money, he was gonna buy his boy something too.
Lorenzo stood in the tall grass by the dusty baseball diamond, holding his dog by the leash, his other hand holding a plastic bag fashioned as a glove. I have come a long way, he thought, with a shit bag in my hand.
Jasmine did her business, and Lorenzo cleaned it from the grass. He tied off one end of the bag, walked through the alley that ran behind Otis and Princeton, and put it in someone’s trash can back there. He cut out of the alley’s T, went along Georgia, and turned the corner where the old neighborhood market, owned and operated by a Jew na
med Meyer, had been. Meyer, it was said, used to extend credit to the neighborhood’s residents, but his business was gone, and he was long dead. Lorenzo headed up Princeton Place.
He had taken this route out of habit and now, nearing Rayne’s house and his grandmother’s house beside it, he was sorry that he did. Rayne was out on her porch, and little Lakeisha was up there too. At least Lorenzo was on the other side of the street.
“That Jazz Man, Mama?” he heard Lakeisha say.
Lorenzo tugged on the leash as Jasmine’s head turned toward the little girl. He glanced at the house and saw Rayne standing by the railing, looking at him with bewilderment as he kept going without a word. He waved weakly but did not make eye contact with Rayne. Lakeisha called out to him and his dog, and he walked on, wincing at the sound of disappointment in her innocent voice.
Don’t do that, little princess. Don’t call me over. You and your mother don’t need me in your life.
He didn’t look at his grandmother’s house at all. He just went on his way.
Back in his apartment, Lorenzo changed into loose-fitting jeans, a sleeveless T, and a short-sleeved button-down shirt. He tied a pair of Nike 20s tight on his feet. In the living room, he moved the hope chest and inspected the contents of the area beneath the cutout he had made in the floor.
Nigel called from one of his cells. He was out in the car, on Otis, waiting. Jasmine whimpered and came to Lorenzo as he hung up the phone.
“I’m comin’ back,” said Lorenzo. “You just go and lie down in your bed.”
The dog walked into the bedroom. Lorenzo went to meet Nigel.
TWENTY-THREE
CALVIN DUKE LIVED ON 35th Street, off Ames, between Minnesota Avenue and the Anacostia Freeway, in his grandmother’s house in Northeast. His backyard, like most of the yards on the one hundred block of 35th Street, was deep and wide, and ended at an alley. Past the alley were the railroad tracks, and past the railroad tracks were the Anacostia Freeway, the green of Anacostia Park, and the brackish water of the Anacostia River. It felt like country here. Many of the residents on 35th maintained bountiful gardens of vegetables and flowers in their backyards. In Calvin Duke’s were several cars.