Right as Rain

  Strange placed his hand over the back of the bartender’s hand. He ground his thumb into the nerve located in the fleshy triangle between the bartender’s thumb and forefinger. The color drained from the bartender’s face.

  “Saw you talkin’ to Ricky Kane yesterday,” said Strange, still smiling, keeping his voice even and light. “I’m an investigator, friend. You want me to, I’ll pull my ID and show it to you right here. Show it to your manager, too.”

  The bartender’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he issued a short shake of his head.

  “I don’t want you,” said Strange, “but I don’t give a fuck about you, understand? What I want to know is, was Ricky Kane hooked up with Sondra Wilson?”

  “Sondra?”

  “Sondra Wilson. She worked here, case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I don’t know… maybe he was. He picked her up once at closing time when she was working here, but she didn’t work here all that long. She lasted, like, a week.”

  “She get fired?”

  “She had attendance problems,” said the bartender, his eyes going down to the stick. “My hand.”

  “Barkeep!” yelled a guy wearing suspenders, from the other end of the bar.

  Strange said, “Kane and Sondra Wilson.”

  “He met her over at Kinnison’s, that seafood restaurant over near George Washington. She was working at Kinnison’s before she came here. He was a waiter over there before he took the gig at the Cactus.”

  “Bartender!”

  Strange leaned forward. “You tell Kane or anyone else I came by, I’m gonna send my people in here and shut this motherfucker down. Put you in the D.C. jail in one of those orange jumpsuits they got, in a cell with some real men. You understand what I’m tellin’ you, friend?”

  The bartender nodded. Strange released him. He bumped a woman as he turned and he said, “Excuse me.” He unglued the smile that was on his face, shifting his shoulders under his leather jacket as he went out the door.

  STRANGE went over to Stan’s on Vermont Avenue and ordered a Johnnie Walker Red with a side of soda. The tender was playing Johnnie Taylor’s “Disco Lady” on the house system, the one that had Bootsy Collins on session bass. Strange liked the flow of that song. A man took a seat next to him at the bar.

  “Strange, how you doin’?”

  “Doin’ good, Junie, how you been?”

  “All right. You look a little worn down, man, you don’t mind my sayin’ so. You all right?’

  Strange looked at his reflection in the bar mirror. He took a cocktail napkin from a stack and wiped sweat from his face.

  “I’m fine,” said Strange. “Little hot in this joint, is all it is.”

  STRANGE sat at the downstairs bar of the Purple Cactus. There were several empty tables in the dining area of the restaurant, and Strange was alone at the bar. The smiles and relaxation on the faces of the waitstaff told him that the evening rush had ended.

  Strange ordered a bottle of beer and drank it slowly. The brunette named Lenna, the sensible girl with the intelligent eyes he’d seen on his earlier visit, was working tonight. He knew she’d be here; he’d phoned earlier to confirm it. Strange caught her eye as she dressed a cocktail with fruit and a swizzle stick down at the service end of the bar. The woman smiled at him before placing the drink on a round tray with several others. Strange smiled back.

  The next time she passed behind him he swiveled on his stool and said, “Pardon me.”

  She stopped and said, “Yes?”

  “Your name is Lenna, right?”

  She brushed a strand of hair off her face. “That’s right.”

  Strange handed her a cocktail napkin with the words “one hundred dollars” printed in ink across it.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “It’s yours for real if you give me fifteen minutes of your time.”

  “Now wait a minute,” she said, making the “stop” sign with her palm, but he could see from her crooked smile that she was more curious than annoyed.

  “I’m an investigator,” said Strange, and he flipped open his wallet to show her his license. “Private, not police.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Ricky Kane.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I’m not lookin’ to get you or anyone you work with in any trouble. This isn’t about him or what he does here. You’ve got my word.”

  Lenna crossed her arms and looked around the room.

  “Meet me at the upstairs bar,” said Strange. “I’m gonna double your take tonight for fifteen minutes of conversation. And I’ll buy the drinks.”

  “I’ve got to close out my last table,” said Lenna, not meeting his eyes.

  “Half hour,” said Strange.

  Strange watched her drift. Prostitutes and junkies were the best informants on the street. Waitresses, bartenders, UPS drivers, and laborers were pretty good, too. They cost a little more, but whatever the cost, Strange had learned that most people, the ones who knew the value of a dollar, had a price.

  “HOW long did Ricky work here?” said Strange.

  “Not too long,” said Lenna. “The incident with the police officer happened about a month after he came. The settlement came pretty quickly after that, and then he was gone.”

  Strange hit his beer, and Lenna took a sip of hers. Her eyes were a pale shade of brown, her lips thick and lush. She had changed into her street clothes and combed out her shoulder—length, shiny brown hair. Strange noticed she had sprayed some kind of perfume on as well.

  “What’d you think when it went down? Given that you knew Kane was dealing drugs, did you have any doubts about what you read in the papers? Did you think that maybe there was something else going on that night that they had missed?”

  “Sure, it crossed my mind.” Lenna looked around her. The nearest couple was seated four stools down the bar, and the tender was working under a dim light by the register. “A few of us talked about it between ourselves. Look, I put myself through undergrad waiting tables, and this place has financed half of my grad school tuition so far. Over the years I’ve worked at some of the most popular restaurants in this city. You got any kind of late—night bar business, you’re gonna have someone on the payroll, whether you’re aware of it or not, who’s a drug source for the staff and the customers. A restaurant has a natural client base, and a bar’s about the safest place you can cop. I mean, it’s not unusual or anything like that, given the environment.

  “And then there’s the perception most of the people in this city have of the police. What I’m saying is, you’re talking about two different issues here. Ricky Kane was a dealer, but nobody really believed he had been stopped that night for selling drugs. He probably got stopped and hassled for urinating in the street, just like they said. The feeling was, it could have been any of us out there. At one time or another, we’ve all had some kind of negative experience with the police.”

  “All right. How you feel about him now, then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Old Ricky is still comin’ in here, doin’ business. He was in here yesterday, taking orders, right?”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to talk about my coworkers and friends. They want to get involved with Ricky, it’s their business, not mine.”

  “You must have an opinion about what he’s doing, though, right?”

  Lenna nodded, looking at the glass of beer in her hand. “I don’t like Ricky. I don’t like what he does. I’m no user now, but I walked through that door when I was younger. For me it was coke. Now it’s heroin for the younger ones and the after—hours crowd. That’s the low ride down. The ones who are using it don’t know it or won’t admit it, but there it is. Anyway, like I say, it’s none of my business. Anything else?”

  “One more thing.” Strange slipped the photograph of Sondra Wilson from his leather. “You recognize this woman? Ever see her with Kane?”

  “No,” said Lenna, after examining it closely. “No
t exactly.”

  “What’s that mean, not exactly?”

  Lenna shrugged. “Ricky liked light—skinned black women, exclusively. She fits the bill. None of them had grass growing under their feet, I can tell you that. I don’t recall ever seeing him with the same one twice.”

  Strange took a long pull off his beer. He set the bottle on the bar and slipped five folded twenties into Lenna’s palm. “I guess that’s it. Sorry if I insulted you earlier. I didn’t mean to imply that I was offering you money for something else.”

  Lenna shook hair off her shoulder and smiled, the light from the bar candle reflecting in her eyes. “You’re a handsome man. I noticed you when you were in the other night, as a matter of fact. I was kind of hoping it was something else.”

  “I’m flattered,” said Strange. “To be honest with you, though, I’m spoken for.”

  “I understand.” Lenna got off her stool and drained her beer standing. “Nice to meet you.”

  “And you.”

  He watched her leave the restaurant and walk north on 14th. Strange finished his beer, realizing that he was hungry, and maybe a little drunk. Lenna was a good—looking young woman, and he was feeling the need. And it always was nice to get hit on by a woman twenty—five years his junior. These days, it happened less and less. But this Lenna girl didn’t interest him. The truth of it was, white women had never been to his taste.

  Chapter 26

  TERRY Quinn sat at the bar at Rosita’s, on Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring, waiting for Juana Burkett to finish her shift. While he waited, Quinn read a British paperback edition of Woe to Live On and drank from a bottle of Heineken beer. Juana had smiled at him when he came through the door, but he had lived long enough to know that it was a smile with something sad behind it, and that maybe things between them were coming to an end.

  As the last of the diners left the restaurant, Juana came out of the women’s room, still dressed in her wait outfit but washed and combed, with a fresh coat of lipstick on her mouth.

  “I tipped the busboy out extra to finish my side work. You ready?”

  “Yeah,” said Quinn, slipping the paperback into the back pocket of his jeans. “Let’s go.”

  Raphael, sitting at a deuce and putting dinner tickets in numerical order, waved them good—bye as they were going out the door.

  “Got something in today you’d like,” said Quinn. “An old George Duke — from the Dukey Stick days.”

  “Talk to me quick,’ ” said Raphael. “Hold it for me, will you? I’ll be in to pick it up.”

  Quinn walked with Juana down Georgia to where the Chevelle sat parked under a street lamp. It shone beautifully in the light.

  “This is me,” said Quinn. “What do you think?”

  “For real?”

  “C’mon. Let’s go for a ride.”

  Quinn headed into Rock Creek Park, driving south on the winding road that was Beach Drive, Springsteen coming from the deck. The night was not so cold, and Quinn rolled his window down a quarter turn. Juana did the same. The wind fanned her hair off her shoulders and bit pleasantly at her face.

  “Now I know what you like to listen to,” said Juana.

  “It speaks to the world I came up in,” said Quinn. “Anyway, you buy a new ride, you got to christen it with Darkness on the Edge of Town. There is no better car tape than that.”

  “I like this car,” said Juana.

  Juana’s hands were in her lap, and she was rubbing one thumb against the knuckle of the other. Quinn reached over and separated her hands. He took hold of one and laced his fingers through hers.

  “I’m gonna make this easy on you,” said Quinn.

  “Thanks.”

  “I got all this baggage, Juana. I’m aware of it, but I don’t know what to do about it. If I didn’t care about you I’d say, I’m gonna stick around and let her work it out. Because I’d stay with you as long as you let me, you know?”

  Juana nodded. “I thought when we met that it could work. But then, out in the world, when other guys were staring at us, making comments when we were walking down the street, I could see that you couldn’t handle it. And it’s not like it was going to go away. In this wonderful society we got here, no one is ever going to let us forget. There were times, I swear to God, it seemed like you wanted the conflict. Like the promise of that was what got you interested in me in the first place. I never wanted to be your black girlfriend, Tuh—ree. I only wanted to be your girlfriend. In the end, I wasn’t sure what was really in your heart.”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Quinn. “Maybe, in the beginning, you were some kind of symbol to me, a way to tell everyone that, inside, I was right. But I forgot about that, like, ten minutes after we were together. After that, in my heart, there was only you.”

  “It’s too intense with you,” said Juana. “It’s too intense all the time. Even sometimes when we’re making love. The other night —”

  “I know.”

  “I’m young, Tuh—ree. I got my whole life to deal with the kinds of relationship problems that everyone has to face eventually. Money problems, infidelity, the death of love … but I don’t want to deal with those things yet. I’m not ready, understand?”

  “I know it,” said Quinn, squeezing her hand. “It’s all right.”

  Quinn turned left on Sherrill Drive and headed up the steep, serpentine hill toward 16th. He downshifted and gave the Chevy gas.

  “Nice night,” said Quinn. “Right?”

  Quinn drove back into Silver Spring and parked on Selim. He said to Juana, “You up for a little walk?”

  They crossed the pedestrian bridge over Georgia and came to the chain—link fence.

  “I’ll give you a leg up,” said Quinn.

  “You said a walk, not a climb.”

  “C’mon, it’s easy.”

  On the other side of the fence, they walked by the train station and along the tracks. A Metro train approached from the south. Quinn stopped and embraced Juana, holding her tight to his chest. He looked over to the traffic lights, street lamps, and neon of Georgia Avenue.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Her fingers touched his face. “Don’t forget me,” said Quinn.

  He kissed her on the mouth as the train went by, and held the kiss in the storm of dust and wind.

  STRANGE was starving, and he decided he could handle another beer. He left the Purple Cactus and drove over to Chinatown. He parked in an alley, behind a strip on I Street, between 5th and 6th. There was a hustler in the alley, and Strange gave him five dollars to watch his car, promising another five when he returned.

  Strange entered the back door of an establishment that fronted I. He went by a kitchen and down a hall, passing several closed doors, and on through a beaded curtain into a small dining room that was sparsely decorated and held a half dozen tables. Several young Chinese women and an older one were working the room. A single white guy sat at a four—top, looking about as much like a tourist as a man could look, drinking a glass of beer.

  “Gonna have some dinner, mama,” said Strange to the older woman. She rattled off something to one of the young ones, who led him to a table.

  “You like drink?” said the girl.

  “Tsingtao,” said Strange.

  She brought him a beer and a menu while the other young women tried to catch his eye. There was a slim one with a little bit of back on her that he had already picked out; he had noticed her when he’d walked in.

  One of the girls was talking to the tourist sitting at the table, who had set one of those booklet maps next to his beer.

  “Whassa matter,” said the young woman to the tourist. “You neeby be ray?” The other girls laughed.

  Strange ate a dish of sesame chicken and white rice, with crispy wontons and a cup of hot—and—sour soup. He drank another beer, listening to the relaxing string music they were playing in the place. When he was done he broke open a fortune cookie and read the message: “Stop searching forever, happiness is right
next to you.”

  Strange dropped the message on his plate. He signaled the older woman and told her what he wanted and who he wanted it from.

  “Whassa matter,” said the young woman to the tourist, who now looked somewhere between confused and frightened. “You neeby be ray?”

  Strange left money on the table and got up from his chair. The tourist said, “Excuse me,” and Strange went over to his table.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know what they’re trying to ask me?” said the tourist.

  “I think she’s sayin’, ain’t you never been laid.” Strange went through the beaded curtain, muttering “stupid” under his breath. He opened one of the closed doors in the hall and entered a series of rooms.

  Strange undressed and took a hot shower in a tiled stall. Then he went to a clean white room, dropped the towel he had wrapped around his waist, and lay down nude on a padded table. The young woman he had chosen came into the room and began to give him a full massage. He felt her bare breasts brush his back as she straddled his hips, and he became aroused. She asked him to turn over. It was a relief to lie on his back, as he had a full erection now.

  The young woman pumped her fist a couple of times and smiled. Strange said, “Yes, baby,” and squeezed one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. She rubbed lotion on her hands and jacked him off. Afterward, she cleaned him with a warm wet towel.

  Strange dressed and dropped forty dollars into a porcelain bowl set by the door. The young woman gave him a look of disappointment and made a clucking sound with her tongue. But Strange was unmoved; he knew that forty was the price.

  Out in the alley, he handed the hustler another five on the way to his car.

  “All right,” said the hustler. Strange said, “All right.”

  STRANGE drove north and parked his Caddy on 9th, directly in front of his business. He turned the key in the front door, went inside, and flicked on the lights. He walked toward his office, glancing at the neatness of Janine’s desk. The woman just didn’t go home until she had taken care of all the details of her day. He kept on walking to the back room.

  In his office, he had a seat at his desk. Janine had picked up the packet of photographs he’d taken down off Florida Avenue. He went through the pictures: Ricky Kane had come out clearly, as had the numbers on the bumper and side of the police cruiser parked out on the street.