Brandy took her sweet time sniffing and pooping, and Michael didn’t rush her. Eventually, he had to go down into the yard, pick the dog up in his arms, and carry her back up the concrete steps into the house. Brandy got anxiety, paced in a circle, when she felt she couldn’t make it up those steps. Once inside, she tottered over to her bed, a large cushion set next to Doretha’s favorite armchair, and settled into a nap.
Michael dressed in a collared shirt, freshly laundered jeans, and a pair of low black Air Force Ones that he had polished. He grabbed his NYRB paperback edition of Hard Rain Falling and left the house. His plan was to talk to the restaurant man and then maybe find a bench in the sun and read some. The blossoms had come early after a warm winter and it would be nice to sit outside. He was deep into his book.
He walked over to Eleventh Street around Park Road, where there was a cluster of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops on the otherwise residential block. He passed Tubman Elementary, where kids were kicking a ball around on the field. Nearby was a fenced-in area where dogs played and their owners socialized.
The restaurant was on a corner of the intersection and took up the entirety of a three-story row house that was topped with a turret, D.C.’s signature architectural feature. There was outdoor seating, picnic tables mostly, up on a patio, where Christmas lights had been strung. Alongside the patio was a small porch with a metal cage holding stacks of split wood, and steps led down to double doors, which Michael guessed was access for food deliveries. The sign outside the place said THE DISTRICT LINE. And below it, in smaller letters, GOOD FOOD AND DRINK.
Michael went inside.
A young woman with ginger-colored hair was behind the bar, slicing fruit. The bar ran from the entrance to the rear of the room, where a hall led to a stairwell. A man in street clothes, wearing a short brown apron tied around his waist, was setting silverware on bare wooden tables. There weren’t many tables, and the place was empty of customers.
“Hi,” said the bartender to Michael. She had a nice smile.
“Hello.”
“We’re not serving yet. Lunch starts in about a half hour.”
“I’m here to see…” Michael looked down at the notepaper he was using as a bookmark in the novel he was carrying. Its top peeked out of the pages. “Angelos. We got an appointment.”
“He’s down in the kitchen. He’ll be right up.”
Almost as she said it, a barrel-chested man in his early thirties came out of the stairwell and appeared in the room, carrying magnum bottles of white wine in a box. He set the box on the bar. He had a heavy black beard and wore a red bandanna over his longish black hair. He looked like a well-fed pirate.
“This man is here to see you, Angelos.”
“Michael Hudson.” Michael stepped forward and put out his hand. Angelos shook it.
“Angelos Valis.” He looked at his wristwatch, a rotary-faced job with a green band, and said, “Let’s go upstairs. It’s quiet there.” To the bartender he said, “Call me if you need me, Callie.”
Michael followed Angelos up a narrow set of stairs by the front door to another dining room that was also on the small side, a corner room with windows all the way around, looking down on Eleventh. They had a seat at a two-top. Michael put his book down on the table. Again Angelos looked at his watch.
“Thanks for seeing me,” said Michael.
“You come recommended by the woman over at Open City. They’re good people, so that goes in your favor. But I need to know a few things before this conversation goes any further. Specifically, your priors. Not just convictions. Charges too.”
“You get right to it.”
“We’re about to open. So tell me. You just got out.”
“I was charged with armed robbery, but the charges got dropped. The man who was robbed decided not to testify.”
“You had a gun?”
“No, my partner did. I was there to back him up and drive the car. When a heater’s involved, doesn’t matter who’s carrying it. You still take the gun charge.”
“I guess you’ve been told that I’m no stranger to lockup. So it doesn’t bother me that you’ve been in jail. But I won’t hire a violent offender or a sex offender. I just won’t.”
“I’ve never done anything like that.”
“My friend said you had other priors.”
Michael hesitated. Angelos had looked him in the eye the entire time he’d been with him. He was direct, but that was cool. Michael wasn’t offended. This dude was straight.
“Well?”
“I was into cars when I was young. I stole one once and got probation. When I stole another one, I got sent to juvenile.”
“New Beginnings?”
“Nah, that wasn’t open yet. I was out there in Oak Hill.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“That’s a long gap between your juvenile priors and the commission of a robbery ten years later. Why’d you decide to commit another crime?”
“I was stupid,” said Michael. “But I’m not gonna be stupid anymore.”
Angelos continued to look into Michael’s eyes and Michael did not cut his eyes away.
“You ever work in a restaurant before?” said Angelos.
“No,” said Michael. “But I’ll learn.”
“What are you good at?”
“Numbers. I used to work store jobs. Like, in D.C.? The sales tax is five and three-quarters percent. You can give me any amount, and I can do that tax in my head. Don’t need to look it up.”
“That’s great, but I don’t need someone to operate the register or wait tables. Do you speak Spanish?”
“No,” said Michael.
“Well, that’s a problem right there. You’d be working in the kitchen. My kitchen crews are Hispanic and for the most part they don’t speak English. Anyone who works down there has to be able to communicate with them.”
“You sayin you don’t hire no one but Spanish?”
“That’s pretty much the case. Look, they seem to be the only ones who want these jobs, and they work the hell out of them. If one of them can’t come in, they send in a friend or a relative to cover. I’m never shorthanded.”
“You’re telling me that you have an opening in the kitchen?”
“Dishwasher,” said Angelos. “Actually, it’s not open yet. One of the guys I have now has a problem with alcohol. I can’t carry him anymore. I’m going to let him go on payday.”
“Look, I need a job,” said Michael. “Saying, I want this job. I can do it. You can count on me, for real. I’ll learn to talk with those people somehow. Can’t be that difficult, right?”
“Let me think about it,” said Angelos.
“You don’t need to think on it,” said Michael. “You already know. I don’t want to leave outta here without an answer. Can I have this job? Why don’t you just tell me? Yes or no?”
Angelos chuckled. “You’re aggressive.”
“Well?”
Angelos thought it over, then nodded. “On the day shift you’d work mostly with the ladies. They have to get their kids late in the afternoon. The hombres work at night. Except for Joe, little macho guy, likes to box. He’s on days too. We have a wood-fired oven. One of your duties would be splitting the wood that gets fed into the oven.”
“I can do that. I saw the logs outside.”
“Pay-wise, you’d start at the bottom. Minimum wage is eleven fifty an hour in the District. It goes up to twelve fifty in July. It’ll be thirteen fifty a year after that.”
“That works.”
“Write down your cell number for me.”
“I’m fixin to get one. I’ll give you the landline number at my mother’s house.”
Michael pulled out his makeshift bookmark, dog-eared the page where it had been, and used Angelos’s pen to write down his mother’s home number. He pushed the piece of paper across the table.
/> “Good book,” said Angelos, nodding at the cover of Hard Rain Falling. “Like, seriously good. I read it when I was locked up in Clarksburg. That’s all I did out there was read. Still remember the librarian’s name. We called her Miss Margaret.”
“I’m halfway into it,” said Michael. “Curious to see how it’s gonna end up.”
“Not how you’d expect,” said Angelos.
“Thank you,” said Michael. “I won’t let you down.”
They shook hands.
“Get a cell phone,” said Angelos.
Michael nodded. “I’m about to.”
MICHAEL WENT back down to the bar and took a seat. Angelos had told Callie to take care of him, so he ordered a Margherita pizza and a glass of ice water and observed the operation as the modest lunch crowd streamed in. Callie and the one waiter handled the whole service. A runner, one of the kitchen ladies, delivered the food to the dining room from the basement, and a short man with slicked-down hair, who Michael assumed was the dishwasher, brought up glassware to the bar and went back down to the hole with bus trays. Callie, the bartender, controlled the music, which today alternated between reggae and something like country. A flat-screen TV hung over the bar showed a soccer game with the sound turned off. The atmosphere was chill. Seemed to Michael that they had it all wired up tight. While he ate, his neighborhood mailman, Gerard, came in with the daily delivery. He and Michael exchanged some friendly words.
The pizza tasted fresh. He left Callie a few dollars and told her he’d see her soon.
Michael walked over to Georgia and Upshur Street. There was a brand-new diner there that had opened since he’d been away, and different kinds of folks were sitting in booths and at the counter, having lunch. All kinds of new places here, tablecloth restaurants and bars mixed with the old barbershop and two funeral homes, the longtime Strange Investigations office, and a couple of neighborhood markets.
He walked farther and went into a small bookstore on Upshur that he had noticed but not yet visited. He looked around at the selection and then went to the register and talked to an attractive young woman with a diamond stud in her nose who had a welcoming smile.
“I was wondering if you could help me,” said Michael. “I used to have this book in a series called Elmore Leonard’s Western Roundup. Volume number three. It was two books in one. Can I order that from you?”
The young woman looked it up on her computer. “That series is out of print. But the novels in that particular volume are available separately in paperback. Valdez Is Coming and Hombre. Right? I can get those for you if you’d like.”
“How much would that be?”
She looked at the screen and told him the price. Michael had some walking-around money in his pocket that his mother had given him, and this was an extravagance, but he wanted to celebrate.
“Go ahead and order them,” said Michael. “I could get those books at the library across the street, but I’d rather have them permanent. I’m gonna start my own library.”
“That’s great.”
“I got a job today,” he said, as if she’d asked.
“Congratulations.”
Michael gave her his name and his mother’s landline number so that she could contact him when the books came in.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Anna.”
“I got a friend name Anna who likes books too.”
“Nice to know I’m not the only one.” The young woman smiled. “I’ll call you when these come in, Michael.”
“See you soon. This here is gonna be my spot.”
He found a bench nearby and read for a while, then walked back toward his mother’s house on Sherman. A couple blocks north of his home, he saw a woman he knew from high school getting out of her road-worn Hyundai. Michael remembered her as Carla. She was with a little girl, preschool age, had tiny seashells in her braids. Carla held her little girl’s hand and smiled as Michael approached them.
“Hey.”
“Carla Thomas,” said Michael. “Like the singer.”
“It’s me.”
Michael looked down at the child and spoke softly. “How you doin, baby girl? You look pretty today.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she leaned her face shyly against her mother’s leg.
Carla was tall with pretty brown eyes, large-boned, but he liked that. She was put together on a low budget. Wasn’t wearing designer stuff, but her hair and makeup were nice and she smelled good. Carla cared enough about herself to keep it tight. Michael had liked her back at Cardozo, thought she was attractive and funny, but for whatever reason they had never hooked up.
“Where you been?” said Michael. “I ain’t seen you in years. Heard you moved out to Mer’land.”
“I was in P.G. for a minute, but I didn’t like it. That wasn’t a place for Alisha,” she said, nodding at her daughter. “It’s safer here in the city. I moved back in with my grandmother, for now. Alisha’s about to go to Tubman next year, so we’ll see.”
“Hmm.”
“What you doin, big man?”
“Working,” he said. “I’m at that restaurant, the District Line, up on Eleventh?”
Her eyes registered relief, and interest, when he told her he had a steady job.
“That’s good.”
“My name’s Michael, by the way,” he said.
“I know your name.”
“You didn’t call me by it.”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
“We should get together sometime,” said Michael, boldly.
“Hard for me to get out. What with the classes I’m taking, and my job, and my little girl…”
“Okay, then. I understand.”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t. Just said it was hard.”
Michael looked her over. “You look good, girl.”
“So do you.”
“I’m maintaining.”
“So what now?”
“I’ll come past.”
They exchanged a smile, and Michael went on his way.
LATER, SITTING on his porch and reading his book, Brandy sleeping at his feet, Michael felt flush with anticipation. The new job was a start. This time his life would be different, because he would make it so. He needed to remember, going to work every day, keeping your head down, that was how most folks made it. Inch by inch. He didn’t need to be looking at things he couldn’t afford. Wasn’t any right way to get those things fast. He had to be like one of those racehorses with blinders on. Keep looking straight ahead, no distractions. Keep focused on the task at hand.
Now he had to go over to the electronics store on Fourteenth with his mom and get a new cell. The store had a deal right now for a free smartphone if you signed up for the service. His mother was cool. She would put him on her plan.
Eleven
PHIL ORNAZIAN sat on the second-floor sleeper porch of his house, alternately working and looking out over the yards backing to the red-brick alley running behind Taylor. He had brought an old Ikea desk and chair out onto the porch, which served as his office for half the year, though mostly he worked out of his car. The walls of the porch had removable glass panels that he replaced with screens in the spring. Sometimes, on summer nights, he and Sydney slept out here on a futon he’d purchased in his bachelor days. Sometimes he’d let the boys join them in their sleeping bags. The porch had closed the deal for him when he’d first looked at the house.
He had been on his laptop for most of the morning, studying Facebook pages and then using his own people-finder program to locate the participants of the Weitzman party. Lisa had announced the party as a private event rather than a public event. That meant it didn’t go out to the world at large but still reached her friends who could telephone it to acquaintances and strangers. There had been much chatter on her page in anticipation of the party, with many replies. Lisa had opened the doors unwittingly to bad people, but her move had also given Ornazian plenty of information to seek out the offenders
. He’d made a couple of phone calls and he’d spent some time on the DC.gov website and did a search on its real property tax database. He used school-group pages and the process of elimination when common names occurred, and after several hours on his laptop he had compiled a working list of contacts, focusing on those he thought he could squeeze. He had what he needed now to start.
Ornazian sat back in his chair. The roof of the small garage at the edge of his yard, which he used as a workshop, was covered in autumn’s fallen leaves. He’d need to get out back and clear it. Also trim the rosebushes and turn the soil in Sydney’s vegetable garden in prep for her annual planting. Shovel up the minefield of dog poop that had accumulated in the yard. But first he had to fill the house checkbook. That was priority one.
One of his dogs barked loudly, and Ornazian said, “Hey.” Blue and Whitey, lazily named for the color of their coats, sat by the rear screens looking out at the yard. They were pit-bull mixes adopted from the Humane Rescue Alliance across from the big community garden off Blair Road. Sixty- or seventy-pound bitches, still in their relative youth, mostly muscle. They’d been with him all morning. They liked to come out here and study the many dogs in the neighboring yards down in the alley. Ornazian wondered if they dreamed of playing with them or of tearing them apart.
Sydney appeared in the doorway. She was wearing black tights under a denim shirt. Her hair was in short twists. She was unkempt and she looked lovely.
“Can the boys come out, love?” she said. “They’ve been dying to.”
“Sure. I’m done for now.”
Presently his sons, Gregg and Vic, rushed out onto the porch. Both of them had gotten their feet into Ornazian’s shoes and were wearing them clumsily. Their hair was curly and their skin tone was a shade lighter than their mother’s. They both had Sydney’s big brown eyes.
“Careful,” said Ornazian as Gregg, the elder at four and a half, tripped and held on to his father’s arm. Vic, the more coordinated of the two, younger than Gregg by fourteen months, had swaggered into the room more smoothly.