Drama City

  Nigel Johnson and Lorenzo Brown cruised down 35th in Nigel’s Lexus, going along slowly so as not to miss Duke’s residence. Lorenzo spotted the house, and Nigel swung his sedan into a space along the curb. They walked together to the front door.

  An old woman answered their knock. Her skeletal frame was no more than a hanger for her housedress. Sparse white hair topped a scalp dotted with raised moles. Her eyes were sunken in their sockets. She had removed her teeth. To Lorenzo, she had the look of one of those shrunken heads he’d hung on his doorknob when he was a kid.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Is Calvin in?” said Nigel.

  “You some kind of police?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re lookin’ to talk to him about a car.”

  “My grandson’s out back, burnin’ a steak.”

  “We’ll just go around there, then, that’s okay with you.”

  The old woman shrugged. “Mind that dog.”

  They walked down to Ames and then cut into the alley. Crepe myrtle and hibiscus were in bloom and plentiful among the vegetable gardens in the backyards. The smell of their blossoms hung sweet and heavy in the humid early-evening air.

  Approaching the back of the old woman’s residence, they saw the large figure of a man standing over a brick-walled barbecue pit built up on a concrete slab. He held a green bottle in one meaty hand and a grilling fork in the other. Smoke came up off the grill. A black rottweiler stood by the man’s side, looking up at its master, then at the grill, and again at its master.

  A large portion of the fenced yard was paved, and on the pavement sat three cars: a late-model Mercedes coupe, a new Cadillac XLR convertible, and a two-tone ’63 Impala tricked with mags, new pipes, and air shocks. What wasn’t paved was untended and dotted with excrement.

  Nigel and Lorenzo stood at the fence. The rot barked lazily but did not leave its master’s side.

  “I help you two with somethin’?” said the man, raising his deep voice.

  “You can if you’re Calvin Duke,” said Nigel. “We wanna talk about a rental.”

  “Who sent y’all?”

  “Fella I spoke to down at the supper club,” said Nigel. “Said you were the man.”

  “I guess you in the right place, then.” Duke, around forty, big and round, light of skin, and moley like his grandmother, smiled. “You done found the Dukey Stick.”

  “Mind if we come in?”

  “Come through the gate.”

  “What about that animal?” said Nigel to Lorenzo.

  “That dog ain’t gonna hurt no one.”

  They went through the gated portion of the fence, passing a freestanding garage that had been converted into some sort of office for the fat man. They walked by the cars, waxed and detailed, and stepped up onto the concrete slab. A T-bone steak sizzled on the grill over glowing coals. The bricks at the top of the pit were not mortared to those below them and sat crookedly. A couple of empty Heineken bottles were set atop the bricks.

  Lorenzo whistled softly. The rot came to him at once, and Lorenzo rubbed its scalp. The dog’s ears were scarred and carried open pink sores. Its eyelids curled inward.

  “Champ supposed to be a watchdog,” said Duke good-naturedly. “But he don’t watch nothin’ but what’s on this grill.”

  “You got a fly problem with this dog’s ears,” said Lorenzo.

  “That so.”

  “You clean up the feces in the yard, that’ll discourage some of it. But you got to treat this animal’s ears now. It needs treatment for its eye condition too.”

  “Oh, so now I’m gonna clean up the feces in my own yard.” Duke looked Lorenzo over with amusement. “You wanna clean shit, you clean the shit out your own yard, hoss. ’Stead of comin’ into my yard and telling me to clean mines.”

  “Dog needs treatment,” said Lorenzo.

  “What’re you, some kind of dog police, sumshit like that?” Duke laughed expansively to let them know they were all friends.

  Lorenzo stared at Duke.

  Duke looked away and drank off some of his Heineken. He put the fork down on the grill and patted his fat thigh. “C’mere, boy.”

  The rot moved back toward his master but did not get too close. Duke reached down to pet him, and the dog backed up a step, then bent his head down timidly and allowed Duke’s touch.

  “Anyway,” said Duke. “What can I do for you boys?”

  “We’re interested in one of your cars,” said Nigel. “Silver BMW, the Three-thirty model.”

  “It’s out.”

  “I can see that.”

  “How about that pretty Impala over there? Imagine drivin’ that pretty-ass motherfucker down the street. Females be gettin’ wet behind it.”

  “We lookin’ to talk to whoever rentin’ the BMW.”

  “Why?”

  “That ain’t your concern.”

  “It is if it’s about my car. And don’t try to act like you police.”

  “Be better for you if we were,” said Nigel.

  “Now you gonna tweak on me, big man?”

  “I haven’t yet.”

  “Comin’ in here, on my property, makin’ demands.”

  “I’m gonna ask you nice, but only one more time. We gonna need the name and address of the man who’s rentin’ the Three-thirty. You give us that, we gonna be on our way.”

  “I can’t help you,” said Duke, the boldness withering in his voice.

  “The BMW,” said Nigel.

  “Look, I got rules. I might be part of this underground economy out here, but still, I got the same rules any other business got. I can’t be givin’ up the confidentiality of my clients.”

  “Fuck all this,” said Lorenzo. He reached over and picked the fork up off the grill by its wooden handle.

  “Hey,” said Duke.

  Lorenzo walked around Duke and backed him up so that his wide bottom hit the barbecue pit. Some bricks came loose off the top. Both bottles fell to the concrete and one of them shattered. Lorenzo pushed the fork toward Duke’s face, and Duke closed his eyes and turned his head. Lorenzo touched the tines of the fork to Duke’s neck, denting it, and Duke screamed. His voice was no longer rich and deep. Lorenzo stepped back. Smoke came off Duke’s neck.

  “You burned me,” said Duke, as if Lorenzo had only hurt his feelings. He rubbed at the marks, like those of a snakebite, that were already showing there. Champ stood where he was and watched.

  “The name and address,” said Nigel.

  “I got to get it from out my office,” said Duke, just above a mumble.

  “Don’t come out the office with nothin’ but that information,” said Nigel. “Hear?”

  Duke nodded without looking at either of them. He walked to the garage, used a key to open it, and went inside.

  Lorenzo stabbed the fork into the T-bone on the grill, lifted it, shook it loose, and let it fall to the ground in front of the rot. The dog’s nub of tail wiggled furiously as he took the steak in his teeth and trotted off to a corner of the yard.

  Nigel chuckled. “You ain’t lost nothin’.”

  “Some shit just stay natural,” said Lorenzo.

  “Thought you was gonna break a beer bottle off. Or maybe take one of those loose bricks and throw it through the window of that Impala.”

  “I thought of that. Car that nice, I just couldn’t fuck with it.”

  “You made do with that fork, though.”

  Duke came out of the garage and handed Nigel a piece of paper. Nigel looked at it, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

  “Nah,” said Duke. “Nah, uh-uh.” He had noticed Champ getting down on the T-bone. “Why’d you have to go and do that to a man too?”

  “He deserves a steak, way you mistreat him,” said Lorenzo. “And don’t even think of beating that animal, ’cause I can see by the way he cringes that you do.”

  “Who the fuck are y’all?” said Duke.

  “We ain’t nobody you ever seen or met,” said Nigel. “You understand?”

/>   “Yeah, I know.”

  Lorenzo pointed a finger at Duke. “I’m gonna be back to check on that dog.”

  Nigel and Lorenzo went down the alley as dusk settled on the streets. Lorenzo felt good and he felt strong. He was energized by the violence and comfortable walking beside his friend.

  “Rico Miller rented the car,” said Nigel. “He stayin’ here in Northeast.”

  “Lee gonna be with him too.”

  “I gotta get up with Deacon before we do anything.”

  “You can drop me by the hospital, pick me up when you’re done.”

  “Right.” Nigel side-glanced Lorenzo. “Givin’ that man’s T-bone up to his own dog, that was a nice touch right there.”

  “Man wants you to take him serious, you’d think he might pick a better name than Dukey Stick.”

  “It’s a George Duke song.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother had the LP,” said Nigel. “That’s how I know.”

  THE WASHINGTON HOSPITAL CENTER, on Irving Street, was walking distance from where Lorenzo and Nigel had grown up. In their youth, both of them ate in the canteen when one or the other had extra coin, and both of them stole candy bars from the gift shop because they could. Lorenzo knew that the WHC specialized in heart bypass surgery as well as the usual emergency treatments, including shock trauma cases and victims of violent crime, so it wasn’t a surprise to see people who came from money mingling with middle-class and poor in the ER waiting room. For a little while, all were equal in here.

  The hospital kept a separate space, away from the reception area and general waiting room, for those receiving counsel, those grievers who were temporarily unstable, those receiving bad news, and those under watch by police. Lorenzo sat in the general area and kept an eye on that room. He had seen a police officer enter and then Sergeant Peterson, the police who had roughed him earlier in the day, go in after him. Also, it looked like a reporter or something standing outside the door. Had to be, because the man had a notepad and pen in his hands. A couple of women carrying paper coffee cups went in behind them. One of them was big, wore a bright pantsuit and plenty of makeup, and had a revolver holstered on her hip. Plainclothes police, Lorenzo reckoned. The other was a young white girl, college age or a little beyond. Both women looked as if they had been crying.

  Lorenzo sat there for an hour or so. He watched the doctors coming from surgery, entering quickly in their scrubs, talking to families in groups of twos and threes, and leaving just as quickly. He watched the sergeant come out of the special room, go to the water cooler for a drink, and recognize Lorenzo, sitting there in his street clothes, as he passed. The sergeant did not stop to speak to him and walked back into the room. Lorenzo thumbed through a car magazine without recalling a word he read. Then he saw a surgeon go into the room where all of Rachel’s people were. And right after that, he heard a woman scream. He felt certain that it was a scream of grief. It was the same kind of emotional release he’d heard come from mothers and girlfriends at funeral homes and cemeteries when he’d been deep in the game. Hearing it, and the sobs that came after, he felt some life leave him.

  Lorenzo got up out of his chair and walked to the nearest restroom. He washed his face with cold water. Then he left the hospital and went to the drop-off spot by the front doors, where he had said he’d be, to wait for Nigel.

  SERGEANT PETERSON, unable to be still, had left the room for just a moment to get a drink of water, when he saw Rachel’s offender, the drug dealer turned dogcatcher, sitting out there in the general lobby. He didn’t stop to talk to him. He assumed the man was there to wait on news about Rachel. This man had seemed all right, given who he was, but Peterson had more important things to do than hold some con’s hand.

  Rachel’s surgeon came into the room a short time later, over to where Peterson and two of Rachel’s coworkers, a probation officer named Moniqua and a young assistant, sat. They all got up out of their chairs as the doctor entered.

  The doctor explained the nature and location of the wounds, and the massive loss of blood. Rachel had been stabbed in the chest and through the hand, and sliced across the face. There was the possibility of neurological damage. She was “lucky,” said the doctor, that the blade had not entered her heart or lungs.

  “The next twenty-four hours are crucial.”

  “She gonna live?” said Donald Peterson.

  “I’m optimistic,” said the doctor. “Yes.”

  Moniqua let out a scream that sounded like death itself. It was her way of letting go of all the pressure she’d been feeling at her friend’s ordeal. In Peterson’s experience, people dealt with this kind of thing their own way. Moniqua and the assistant hugged and cried. For his part, Peterson rapped his fist on the table and said a silent prayer of thanks.

  Later, when he’d got himself together, he remembered the offender out in the main waiting area.

  Peterson decided to go out there and tell the man that his probation officer was going to make it. But when he went to where the offender had been sitting, the dogcatcher, or whatever he was, was gone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  DEACON TAYLOR SAT under the wheel of his E-Class, parked on Iowa Avenue, with Marcus Griffin beside him. Griff’s midnight blue Infiniti was parked on the street as well. In view was Roosevelt High. Across from the school, a group of young men sat on the porch of a row house, smoking marijuana and drinking from bottles in paper bags.

  “Here go his Lex,” said Deacon, watching as Nigel Johnson’s import rolled slowly down the street.

  “Looks like he got Graham with him,” said Griff.

  “That ain’t no surprise.”

  “What you want me to do?”

  “Watch my car, is all. Me and Nigel gonna go down to the track, walk around it some.”

  “And do what?”

  “I’m gonna listen, mostly,” said Deacon. “When I come back, I’ll tell you what I learned.”

  Nigel parked on Iowa. He got out of the Lexus with two cigars in hand and walked across the street. Deacon met him in the middle of the street, and the two of them shook hands. Nigel offered Deacon a cigar and Deacon accepted. Nigel lit Deacon’s cigar, then put fire to his own. They agreed to go down to the sky blue running track that encircled the football field in Roosevelt’s bowl.

  Griff leaned his back against the Mercedes and folded his arms. Graham affected the same pose against the Lexus. They stood on opposite sides of the street and stared at each other without animosity. They were playing their roles. As they stared, their bosses went along a high fence, entered the school grounds through an open gate, and descended the stadium stairs.

  Down in the bowl, on the lighted track, Deacon Taylor and Nigel Johnson walked side by side, occasionally dragging on their Cubans. Nigel wore pressed jeans and a short-sleeved silk designer shirt. Deacon was dressed in a similarly casual, expensive way.

  “You look good, big man,” said Deacon.

  “You too,” said Nigel. “Prosperous.”

  “I’m tryin’. Game ain’t gettin’ any easier.”

  “Tell it,” said Nigel. “All this death too.”

  “My sympathy for your losses,” said Deacon. “Want to put that out front straight away.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Nigel. “Losin’ DeEric was one thing. But to lose Michael Butler over something that foolish —”

  “I know,” said Deacon. “I know.”

  “That boy was good.”

  “What I heard.”

  “’Course, this whole thing got to rollin’ off a misunderstanding started by my own. I admit that. I wanted to get up with you and make it right, but this thing happened before I could.”

  “I told my people to talk to Green. Make it known, in no uncertain terms, that he made a serious mistake. But understand, I didn’t order no hit.”

  “I never thought you did.”

  “Rico Miller took it upon his self.”

  “What I figured.”

  “Now I got t
his other thing to deal with, the thing with the probation officer.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I didn’t know shit about it till Homicide come knockin’ on my door.”

  “Bad business for all of us, Deacon. We can’t be havin’ our people involved in this kinda dirt. You fuck with police, even probation police, whole force gonna come down on you hard. I know Miller’s your boy, but . . . question is, how we gonna handle this?”

  “I’m not gonna handle it,” said Deacon. “You are.”

  “You givin’ me permission to do what I need to?”

  Deacon nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Straight business, like you say. I can’t control Rico no more.”

  “What about Lee?” said Nigel.

  “Melvin with Rico, far as I’m concerned.”

  “He been with you a while.”

  “Police put him in the box, he gonna flip. Melvin can’t jail again. He knows this.”

  “And when this thing gets done, how you gonna play it?”

  “Gonna have to make a show of it. Throw the funeral, buy the T-shirts, the flowers. Say the strong words that need to be said. But that’s where it’s gonna end.”

  “What about your people?”

  “Long as it’s you behind it, they gonna be straight. You send some underlings to do this thing, it might make mine feel like they got the right to be heroic and shit. But ain’t nobody gonna come at Nigel Johnson.” Deacon looked Nigel in the eye. “You got my word.”

  They rounded the curve of the track.

  “Where the police at on this?” said Nigel.

  “They workin’ the murders from last night. They got nothin’ so far. Far as the probation lady goes, I don’t know. They got to be lookin’ hard for Melvin. But Rico must have left his prints all over that apartment. They put those prints into the system, they gonna identify him through his priors. Won’t be long before they after Rico too.”

  “Means I don’t have much time.”

  “You know where Rico at, right?” said Deacon.

  “Northeast,” said Nigel.