Drama City

Synopsis:

In DRAMA CITY, George Pelecanos returns to contemporary Washington DC for his most powerful crime novel yet. Lorenzo Brown is fresh out of the clink. The former drug enforcer has vowed to go straight and found himself a job as an officer for the Humane Society. He patrols downtown DC looking for ill-treated pets — but in the course of his day repeatedly comes face-to-face with his old life. Rachel Lopez is an attractive young probation officer. Brown is one of her clients but also fast becoming one of her friends — perhaps he is one that CAN be saved. Nigel Johnson is a smart young drug-dealer on the make. He has plans to make a lot of money AND stay alive to spend it. He already runs his neighbourhood but doesn't realise that he stands on the brink of a vicious turf war which could destroy him. From these basic players, Pelecanos weaves an amazing new novel, one that again defines a generation of black, Hispanic and white Americans fighting — literally — for their lives.

Drama City

George Pelecanos

Copyright © 2005 by George P. Pelecanos

ISBN 1 84505 851 8

To Jeanne Georgelakos and Alice Karangelen

CHAPTER 1

Lorenzo Brown opened his eyes. He stared at a cracked plaster ceiling and cleared his head. Lorenzo was not in a cot but in a clean, full-size bed. In an apartment with doors that opened and shut when he wanted them to. A place where he could walk free.

Lorenzo swung his feet over the side of the mattress. His dog, a medium-size mix named Jasmine, rose from her square of remnant carpet, stretched, and shook herself awake. She came to him, her nails clicking on the hardwood floor, and touched her nose to his knee. He rubbed behind her ears, stroked her neck, and patted her flanks.

Jasmine's coat was cream colored, with tan and brown shotgunned across the fur. Lorenzo had saved her from the shelter on New York Avenue the night before her scheduled euthanization. He passed by scores of doomed animals every day but had never taken one home. It was her eyes, he supposed, that had caused him to stop in front of her cage. He tried not to think too hard on the ones he'd passed by. He couldn't save them all. All he knew was, this was one good dog.

'Morning,' said Lorenzo. Jasmine looked at him with those beautiful coffee bean eyes. Seemed like she was smiling too. The stand-up fan in the corner of the room blew warm air across them both.

The clock radio that had woken him played on. He kept its dial set on 95.5, WPGC. Huggy Low Down, a comedian in street-fool character, was talking with Donnie Simpson, the morning deejay, who'd been on the air in D.C. since Brown was a kid. It was their morning conversation, conducted by phone.

'Donnie?"

'Yes, Huggy?'

'Donnie.'

'Yes, Huggy.'

'You know what time it is, don't you?'

'I think so, Huggy.'

'It's time to announce the Bama of the Week.'

The last word, reverbed in the studio, echoed in the room. Same back-and-forth, every day. Huggy could be flat-out funny, though. And when he spun music, Simpson tended to play old school, which Lorenzo preferred. Lorenzo couldn't get behind that death romance thing anymore.

Lorenzo Brown peed and brushed his teeth. He swallowed two ibuprofens to fend off the headache he knew would come. He washed down a C and a multivitamin as well.

Still in his boxer shorts, he returned to his room, where he did stretching exercises and crunches on a camping mat he'd laid on the floor. He then worked out with forty-pound dumbbells in front of a wall mirror, pyramid sets that left a rope of vein popping on each of his arms. He did some triceps curls as well. He finished with pull-ups on a bar he'd hung in the door frame, bending his legs at the knees to accommodate his height.

Lorenzo no longer did push-ups. They reminded him unpleasantly of the five hundred push-ups he had done for eight years, every day, in his cell.

Rachel Lopez got up on one elbow, reached for the snooze bar on her clock radio, and silenced the banter coming from the morning deejay and his provocateur partner. She let her head drop back onto the pillow. Her stomach flipped, and a dull ache came from behind her closed eyes.

This will be my morning: three aspirins, no breakfast. Coffee and a cigarette, then out the door. Today is a road day. Get up and do your job.

She opened her eyes and kicked weakly at the sheets, which smelled faintly of cheap male cologne. She got herself up to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and turned the alarm off. The clock radio, a graduation gift from her father, was a Sony Dream Machine, a simple white cube that had looked ultramodern back in '92.

'To wake you up for work now, little girl. No one is going to do that for you anymore. You're going to need the alarm, the way you light the fire on both ends. But that won't last too long. Your body will reject it. Too many late nights; you can't mix them with work.'

I'm still mixing them, Popi. The bad Rachel and the good.

Rachel showered, shampooing her hair and thoroughly washing her sex. In her bathrobe, at a small table set by an open window, she had her coffee and smoked the day's first cigarette. Afterward, she dressed in a loose, lightweight cotton shirt worn out over relaxed jeans and sneakers. The clothing was utilitarian gear of the Gap school of conformity, the styles chosen to hide her shape. She put on no makeup and added no shine product to her shoulder-length black hair. She was not trying to look unattractive. She was simply aiming to discourage any sexual feelings on the part of the men and women she encountered every day.

At the front door of her functional apartment, she stopped and gathered her tools: several manila files, a clipboard holding forms called 'pinks,' field sheets used for notations, a couple of pens, her cell phone, her badge, and the keys to her car. She glanced at the mirror hung above the table and looked into her dark eyes.

Not bad, she thought. Even without the war paint, and with what I did to myself last night, I still look pretty good.

*

Lorenzo Brown ate a bowl of Cheerios while standing in his Pullman kitchen, then showered and changed into his uniform. Walking to the front door, he passed a worn sofa and armchair, and stopped to adjust his grandmother's hope chest, centered behind the sofa's back. The hope chest sat on an old oval throw rug; beneath the throw rug was a rectangle that Lorenzo had cut out and replaced snugly in the hardwood floor.

At the apartment's entrance, Lorenzo picked up a chain leash with a looped leather strap that hung on a nail he had driven into the wall. Jasmine heard the clatter of the chain and joined him at the door.

Lorenzo's landlord, a man named Robie who lived on the second and third floors of the row house where Lorenzo stayed, had left him a long plastic bag, the one the Post got delivered in, on the porch. As he always did, Robie had put the bag under half a brick so that it would not blow away. Lorenzo slipped the bag into his pocket and went down concrete steps to the street. He and Jasmine walked east on Otis Place, up a grade into the sun, along brick row houses with wooden porches fronted by columns, some of the homes painted and kept up nice, others in disrepair. Sturdy oak trees grew on the government strip along the curb.

Lorenzo went up the block, stopping at the short, rundown stretch of 6th Street that was the cut-through from Otis to Newton as Jasmine peed beside a tree. Down there at the corner of Newton and 6th, where Nigel Johnson's mother still stayed, Lorenzo could see a cluster of parked cars, new and late-model Lexus and BMW coupes and sedans, with a black Escalade, tricked with spinners, in the mix. A couple of young men leaned against their rides. The Lexus, a black GS430 with dual pipes and aftermarket rims, belonged to Nigel.

Lorenzo assumed that Nigel was in there behind that tinted glass, sitting under the wheel, talking on his Nextel. Few in Nigel's profession had their troops up and on the street at this early hour, but that was Nigel through and through. He'd had that kind of ambition, and an almost blinding work ethic, since he was a kid. The two of them had run these Park View streets together, going back almost twenty-five years.

As Jasmine finished her business, Lorenzo pulled gently on her leash. They passed the home of Joe Carver, another of Lorenzo's old neighborhood running boys, now living with his aunt. Joe's pickup, a red-and-white F-150 of midnineties vintage, was not along the curb, which meant he was already gone for the day. Joe had been getting steady work as a bricklayer, a trade he had learned in the federal facility in Kentucky, since he'd come out. He'd been on a construction site on North Capitol, south of New York Avenue, for the past six months.

Lorenzo walked along Park View Elementary, where he had attended grade school. The summer-school kids had just begun to arrive, some holding the hands of their mothers, grandmothers, or aunts. He passed the mural painting of successful black folks, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver and the like, that covered an entire wall. They'd had pictures up of folks like them in just about every classroom Lorenzo had ever been in, but the pictures hadn't stopped him or anyone he knew from going down to the corner. Lorenzo realized that people meant well, but still.

At Warder, the wide north-south street that paralleled Georgia Avenue, Lorenzo cut left, then hung another left on the east side of the school and went down Princeton Place, where his grandmother still lived in the house in which he'd been raised.

A little girl he recognized, a six-year-old name of Lakeisha, came toward him on the sidewalk, swinging a clear book bag by its strap. Right behind her was her mom, a pretty young hairdresser named Rayne. Rayne was a single mother who undoubtedly led a stressful life but seemed devoted to Lakeisha and always kept herself looking good. She and her daughter lived beside his grandmother, in the next row house to the south.

Lorenzo stopped to let Lakeisha bend down and pet his dog. She had a pretty smile, like her mother's but near toothless, and cornrows with tiny seashells fitted on the ends of her braids.

'Jazz Man's her name?' said Lakeisha.

'Jasmine,' said Lorenzo, looking at her fondly, barely knowing her but loving her, as she reminded him of his baby girl.

'Is she good?'

'Most of the time.'

Lakeisha touched a finger to her chest. 'Does she love people in her heart?'

'Yeah, she loves people. 'Specially little princesses like you.'

'Bye, Jazz Man,' said Lakeisha, abruptly standing and going up the hill toward her school.

'Thank you, Lorenzo,' said Rayne, smiling shyly.

'For what?'

'For being so nice to my baby.'

'Ain't no thing,' said Lorenzo, smiling back, puffing his chest up a little and laughing at himself for doing so. Wondering how she knew his name, remembering that he had made it a point to find out hers from his grandmother. Maybe she had done the same.

'I better catch up to her,' said Rayne.

'See you around,' said Lorenzo.

Down the street a bit, Lorenzo entered a pedestrian passageway between the school playground and a neighborhood park surrounded by a fence but accessible through an always open gate, and walked onto a field covered in high grass. This was the usual morning route for Lorenzo and his dog. Jasmine stopped in the middle of the field, put herself back on her hindquarters, and defecated in the grass.

Lorenzo looked around, slightly embarrassed, as he always would be, at what he was about to do. He retrieved the plastic bag from his pocket, slipped his hand inside it, formed a glove, then reached down and picked up Jasmine's feces. He turned the bag inside out and tied it off. He and Jasmine left the park, exiting by the south-side steps, and went back down Otis the way they'd come.

Passing 6th again, he could see Nigel, now standing outside his car, talking to the ones on his payroll. Nigel had on a nice powder blue Sean John warm-up suit, with a simple gold chain hung outside the jacket. One of the young men, wearing an Oakland Raiders cap sectioned like a pizza pie in alternating black and white, turned and looked at Lorenzo, made a comment to the tall boy next to him, and laughed. Lorenzo could only imagine what had been said as they looked at him, a square in a uniform, working for rent money and nothing more, holding a bag of shit in one hand and the leash of a dog, and not even a fighting dog at that, in the other. Time was, Lorenzo Brown would have laughed at the sight of his self too.

Nigel Johnson said something to the young man who had made the comment, and the young man's smile vanished. Nigel nodded at Lorenzo with an uptick of his chin. Even from this distance, Lorenzo could still see the boy in Nigel's eyes. He nodded back and went on his way.

Lorenzo left food and water for Jasmine, turned the stand-up fan so that it blew directly on her carpet bed, and exited the house. He got into his Pontiac and went down to Georgia, where he drove north, toward the office. There he would clock in, check his messages, and take one of the white trucks out for his calls.

Up around 9th and Upshur, in Petworth, he stopped to pay Rodel, the man who cut his hair in the shop set in that commercial strip that ran along the avenue. He'd been light at the time of his last shape-up, and Rodel had let him slide. Coming out of the barbershop, he saw a big man with a dog, a muscular tan boxer, out on the sidewalk. The man, broad of shoulder and back, his hair lightly salted with gray, was turning the key to his business, had that sign with the magnifying glass over its front window. That sign was always lit up at night. Man had been in business there Lorenzo's whole life. You'd be driving down Georgia at night, from a party or a club, or from laying up with a girl, and you'd see that sign? You knew you were close to home. Lorenzo had heard the man coached kids' football too, held practices on the field of Roosevelt High. Joe Carver's boy was in the program. Joe had told him this man was all right.

'Pretty animal,' said Lorenzo to the man's back as he passed.

'First time anyone called Greco pretty,' said the man, turning his head, checking out Lorenzo in his uniform. The man pushed on the door of his business. 'Well, let me get on in here and do some work.'

'I heard that,' said Lorenzo. 'I got to be off to work my own self.'

'Have a good one,' said the man, the boxer following him inside.

Off to work, thought Lorenzo as he got behind the wheel of his car. Feeling a kind of pride as he turned the key.

CHAPTER 2

By eleven-thirty, Rachel Lopez had already put in a fairly productive day. She'd gone into PG County for her first calls, one in Barnaby Heights and one off Addison Road, a couple of young offenders freshly out on drug-related incarcerations, the most typical cases in her files. Next she'd driven toward a men's shelter down off Central Avenue to check on one of her older offenders, a man named Dennis Coles, but on the way she'd been held up by crime scene vehicles that had converged on a strip shopping center up ahead. The traffic reporter on 1500 AM told her that a robbery-murder had occurred in the area and that a roadblock had been set up by police. She turned her Honda around and drove north to Cheverly. She parked in the lot of a garden apartment complex, where she found the unit of a young man named Rudolph Monroe.

Monroe's mother, Deanna, answered the door.

She was around thirty, heavy and unkempt. She wore a family reunion T-shirt over jeans. Big gold hoops hung from her ears.

Rachel could hear the sound of a cartoon show blaring from a TV set somewhere back in the apartment. That would be Jermaine, Deanna's youngest, age four. Rachel made a point of learning, and remembering, the names of an offender's kin. Jermaine would be sitting in front of the set, Rachel guessed, drinking sugar-heavy soda, his hand in a bag of Doritos or potato chips.

'Hey, Miss Lopez,' said Deanna. Her eyes were welcoming, but she did not ask Rachel in.

'Hi, Deanna.'

'Rudy ain't here.'

'We had an appointment,' said Rachel. Not sounding annoyed, but stating a fact.

'I told him you was comin',' said the mother.

'Do you know where he is?'

'He went to talk to this manager.'

'What manager?'

'Up at the Popeyes.'

'On Landover Road?' said Rachel, hoping that was the one. She had spoken to the manager there before; he had two brothers who had been incarcerated and was not averse to hiring offenders.

'Yeah. I seen they had a position open there, had one of those signs up in the window. Rudy knew y'all had a meeting, but I told him, you need to jump on that opening quick. You understand?'

Rachel said that she did understand and that she was glad Rudolph was motivated in that way.

She wasn't angry at all when this kind of thing happened, because the time an offender spent actively pursuing employment was quality time, much more important than any meeting with her could be. That is, if Rudy really was out looking for a job.

'Tell him I came by,' said Rachel.

'I will.'

'Nice earrings,' said Rachel before she said goodbye.

'Thank you,' said Deanna with a smile.

Out in her car, Rachel checked her NA schedule, which she had printed off the Internet, then glanced at her watch. There was a meeting on East Capitol about to convene. If there wasn't much city-bound traffic, she could still catch the tail end of it, sit for a while, and relax. While she was resting, say a prayer.

The dog was a black rottweiler with tan socks and tan teardrop markings beneath its eyes. It stayed under a rusted rust-colored Cordoba, up on cinder blocks, parked in the paved backyard of a row house in the two hundred block of Randolph Street, west of North Capitol.

Lorenzo Brown had seen the dog before. He had left an Official Notification form on its owner's door back in July. The shelter violation had been reported by a neighbor. Next to chaining, it was the most common call.

Lorenzo sat in his work van, a Chevy Astra, idling in the alley behind the row house, looking through the lens of a digital camera. The dog had come out from under the Cordoba and listlessly barked one time. Now it was staring at Lorenzo curiously and without aggression, its tongue dangling out the side of its mouth. Lorenzo snapped off a shot and took note of the home address, which had been stenciled on a No Trespassing sign hung on a chain-link fence. Then he drove out of the alley and went around the block, parking the van on Randolph near the front of the house.

As was his habit this time of year, Lorenzo left the motor and air-conditioning running to keep the van cool. Once outside the Astra, he locked the door with a spare key. He surveyed the block, a typical D.C. strip of brick row houses topped with turrets. Here, near Florida and North Capitol, the rep of drug dealing and gang activity was strong. But there was no evidence of criminal enterprise today. Construction vans and pickups dotted the curb. Spanish music, thin vocals and surging horns coming trebly from the low-end boom box of a housepainter, blared from the open windows of a house. A white girl in a pantsuit, a real estate agent, Lorenzo supposed, stood on the sidewalk, talking on a cell while she nervously smoked a cigarette.

Several longtime residents sat on the porches and stoops of their homes, watching the white girl, their eyes showing amusement. Behind the amusement was discomfort. They realized that in the near future their corner of the world as they knew it would cease to exist.

'Uh-oh,' said a man sitting on a rocker bench on his porch as Lorenzo crossed the sidewalk and went up the steps of a residence. 'What J. J. do now, cause the police to make a house call?'

'You see a gun hanging on his side?' said a neighbor sitting in a similar type of chair on the porch of his own dwelling.

'I can't even see your wide behind without my glasses.'

'That's the dog man, fool.'

Lorenzo heard such commentary often when he entered a neighborhood. To the street-challenged eye he did look like some kind of police. If not police, an official, or something more than a meter man. He wore a sky blue shirt with a Humane Society badge pinned to his chest. He wore dark blue cargo pants and heavy black boots with lug soles, useful for climbing fences. He carried no form of protection, either clipped to his belt or concealed.

Black folks weren't shy about discussing his presence, in his presence, in the same way that they would tell a stranger, straight up, if they did or did not like his outfit or new car. On the flip side, when he entered the white, wealthy neighborhoods of Ward 3 on business, there were no Greek choruses and few questions.

'Look here, J. J. ain't home.' It was the one who had identified Lorenzo as the dog man, shouting from his porch.

Lorenzo ignored the man, continuing on until he reached the house, one of a few fronted by a portico rather than a porch. There he saw detailed stonework arching the entrance and colorful tile inlaid on the floor.

Lorenzo knocked on the door, despite having been told that 'J. J.' was not home, suspecting that even if he were home, he would not answer the door. Lorenzo began to fill out an ON form, set on the clipboard he carried, as he waited. Soon he heard footsteps behind him and the voice of the middle-aged man who had called out to him from the neighboring porch.

'Told you he wasn't home.'

'Thought I'd try him anyway,' said Lorenzo, keeping his eyes on the form as he filled it out, feeling the man beside him, smelling the hard liquor on his breath and the perspiration coming through his pores.

'You ain't gonna find him at this residence.'

'What, he doesn't live here no more?'

'I'm sayin', he ain't never gonna be in at this hour. J. J.'s got a day job.'

Lorenzo had met this fella before, the last time he'd come through, and he'd smelled this same way. Man in his fifties, still young enough to work, not working, drinking liquor while the sun was straight up overhead. Bags under the eyes, teeth missing, 'retired' with fifteen good years still in him. He was wearing one of those tired-ass Kangol caps too.

'Jefferson's my name. I'm a friend to J. J. — John Jr.'

'John Jr got a last name?'

'Aaron.'

Lorenzo Brown wrote the full name of the resident on the form. It was easy enough to get from the criss-cross directory back at the office. But office time was not Lorenzo's thing.

'I'm a Humane Law Enforcement officer, with the Humane Society. My name's Brown.'

'I know who you are,' said Jefferson, in neither a friendly nor an unfriendly way. He did not offer Lorenzo his hand. 'You came through here earlier this summer.'

'Don't look like much has changed. What I can see, the situation with his dog is still the same.'

'He been meanin' to get around to it, though.'

'You say you're a friend to him?'

'I am,' said Jefferson with weak pride.

'I'd like to show you what J. J. needs to do to keep his dog. I'd hate to have to take it.'

'You mean you'd snatch that girl?'

'I wouldn't take pleasure from it. But I'd do my job.'

'Damn.'

'How 'bout you meet me in the alley?'

Jefferson looked around the street as if to consider it, as if he had anything else to do.

'Okay?' said Lorenzo.

'Gimme five minutes,' said Jefferson. 'I need to urinate.'

You mean you need to have you another drink, thought Lorenzo. He nodded at Jefferson before going back to the van.

Lorenzo drove around to the alley and waited. Five minutes stretched to fifteen. He whistled softly at the rottie, and when the dog came to the fence, Lorenzo put his knuckles through the diamond space of the links. A dry muzzle touched his hand.

'All right, girl,' said Lorenzo. 'You all right with me.'

The dog's eyelids had curled inward and appeared to be growing into its eyes. Besides this bit of sickness, it seemed to be well fed and in decent shape. Its owner had left a stainless steel bowl of water beside the car, though the water, most likely, had now been rendered hot by the moving sun. Health issues aside, there was no real shelter for the dog, except under that shaky car. Maybe the owner felt he had done enough. Lorenzo surmised that this was not a crime of deliberate abuse, but rather ignorance.

The alley smelled of excrement, garbage, and something that had once been alive and was now in decay. The August heat and the lack of breeze made the smell strong and sickening.

Two boys wearing long white T-shirts over blue jeans walked down the alley, going by Lorenzo Brown. They chuckled at the dog, which moved back a step as they passed. The T-shirt-and-jean combination was the uniform of choice for young men in the lower ranks of the drug game, but Brown had noticed both white and black kids in the suburbs, straight kids, honor students, whatever, wearing the same hookup. The suburban kids got their fashion sense out of The Source, off CD covers, and from the hip-hop videos run on 106 and Park. For all Lorenzo knew, these two could have been playing studio gangster as well. They gave him cursory eye contact but made no remark as they passed. If it had been his partner, Mark, white and therefore fair game, back here, these boys would have said something, made him the butt of some quick joke. They'd have to, because it was in the contract. But Mark wouldn't have cared.

Jefferson came up the alley and stood near Lorenzo. He smelled more strongly of liquor than he had before.

'Awright, then,' said Jefferson.

'Let's start with the shelter,' said Lorenzo.

'Go ahead, I'm listenin'.'

'Dog needs a structure, some kind of real shelter. And I ain't talkin' about leaving her to lie under that old Plymouth.'

'That's a Chrysler.'

'Whatever it is. Car ain't even on tires, could come off those cinder blocks and crush that animal. But the point is, the dog needs to be out of the elements. Needs to be protected, case some of these kids around here go throwin' rocks at it, somethin' like that. You understand?'

'Some kids just be evil like that.'

'I left a notification, last time I visited, for your friend. I detailed all this.'

'I know for a fact he got it, 'cause we discussed it. Said he was gonna act on it too. When he got the time.'

'Time is now. This animal needs some attention.'

'Look at her, though,' said Jefferson, smiling with forced affection at the animal. 'Dog's healthy. Ain't nothin' wrong with that dog.'

'Not exactly. You see how her eyelids are growin' in like that?'

'She been sleepin'. Her eyes be puffy, is all.'

'Called entropia. It's a disease, something rottweilers are prone to get.'

'She gonna die from it?'

'Nah , you can treat it. Antibiotics — you know, pills. Or it can get cut out. Point is, this dog needs to be cared for.'

'Uh-huh.'

'We got a misdemeanor law in this city for failin' to provide veterinary care.'

'That right.'

'And you see the feces there?' said Lorenzo, pointing to the turds strewn about the paved backyard.

'Fences?'

'No, feces. Crap.'

'Dogs do that, young man.'

'So do folks. But we don't leave 'em layin' out in the yard. It needs to be cleaned up, 'cause that crap there, it carries disease and attracts flies. Not to mention the stink.'

'I'll tell J. J. he got to clean it up. But that ain't gonna make no difference. You know, this alley just stinks natural.'

'I heard that,' said Lorenzo, writing on his clipboard, finishing the form. 'What you're smellin' today is a rat. A kitten, maybe. Somethin' got itself dead in this alley.'

'Whole lotta shit stay dead back in here,' said Jefferson.

'Give this to the dog's owner,' said Lorenzo, handing the form to Jefferson. 'Tell him I'm gonna be back, check on the progress he's made with this animal. Tell him it's gonna be soon.'

As Jefferson rounded the corner at the T of the alley, Lorenzo turned the dial of the radio to 1500 AM for the traffic report, issued every eight minutes. He needed to get over to Northeast, down by the big wholesale food market off Florida Avenue. There was a Subway shop near there, made good tuna salad. He had an appointment in the parking lot with Miss Lopez. They could have lunch and do their business, all at once. Miss Lopez liked the tuna they made there too.

CHAPTER 3

'I was in New York City this mornin',' said a man named Rogers, seated in the chair

reserved for the guest speaker at the head of the room. 'Well, it was New Jersey, way up north in Jersey, if you want the exact location. I was doin' some business up there, buying some automobiles at this auction, for my lots? I left out of there, like, two and a half hours ago. Now, I know you thinkin' it takes three and a half, four hours by car to get down to D.C., right?'

''Less the car got wings,' said a man in a green Paul Pierce jersey, seated in the front row.

'Oh, it had some wings on it today,' said Rogers. 'Like an angel has wings. 'Cause this morning, it felt like an angel was driving the car. I mean, I was on some kind of divine mission — to get to this here meeting, you feelin' me?'

'Yes,' said a small young woman in a halter top, seated in the second row.

'I didn't care how fast I was goin'. One hundred, one hundred and fifteen miles an hour. I ain't even glance one time at the speedometer, 'cause I just didn't care. I wasn't worried about no police or nobody else. I'm sayin', I would have rather gone to motherfuckin' jail before I missed this meeting. I'd go to prison before I'd go back to where I was. 'Cause where I was, when I was at the bottom? Boy, I was tired.'

Now, thought Rachel Lopez, you're going to tell us just how tired you were.

'What was I tired of? I was tired of seein' my grandmother staring at the floor when I spoke to her. 'Cause if she looked in my eyes, the woman who raised me and held me in her arms as a child wouldn't see nothin' but a lyin'-ass thief and fiend.' Rogers, gray salted into his modified Afro, snaggle-toothed but handsome in a Lamont Sanford way, paused for effect. 'Tired. Tired of watchin' my children turn their backs on me when I walked into a room, for fear that I might put my hand out for a ten-dollar bill. Knowin' their pops was gonna go right out the door with that Hamilton and cop the first rock he could.'

'Tired,' said a few people in the group, getting into the rhythm.

'Tired of smellin' the shit in my dirty drawers,' said Rogers, lowering his voice dramatically. ''Cause most of the time? I had so little love for my gotdamn self that I was too disinterested to wash my own ass.'

'Tired!'

'Lord,' said Rogers, 'I was tired.'

Rachel sat back in the folding chair. She'd heard Rogers speak before. He'd lost a business and a family to crack, hit bottom, gone straight, and come back as the owner of several used-car lots east of the Anacostia River, starting a second family well into his middle age. Clean for ten years, he still attended three meetings a week.

Rachel was in the back of the room, which held a scarred lectern, a blackboard, and about fifty seats. Many of the seats, situated in a four arcing rows, were taken.

The room was in the basement of a church on East Capitol Street in Northeast. Rachel attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings throughout the city but preferred those held in this part of town. The most honest stories, both poetic and profane, were to be heard in the classrooms, church basements, community centers, warehouses, and bingo halls of North- and Southeast.

Rachel was not in recovery, but she frequently dropped in on these meetings. The struggles, setbacks, and small victories related here gave her perspective, and a spiritual jolt she had never found in a synagogue or church. Also, this was business. She often ran into her offenders, past and present, in these halls, and kept herself involved, informally, in their lives.

'So I just wanted to come here to thank you all,' said Rogers. 'These meetings we be having right here? And you? I'm not lyin', y'all saved my life.' Rogers sat back. 'Thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing,' said the group in rough unison.

After a few program notes from the group's volunteer leader, a basket was offered for donations. When it came to her, Rachel contributed her usual dollar bill and passed the basket along. The leader opened the floor for discussion, and the young woman in the halter top spoke first.

'My name is Shirley, and I'm a substance abuser.'

'Hey, Shirley,' said the group.

'I saw my little girl this morning,' said Shirley. 'She been stayin' with my grandmother since the court said she can't stay with me no more�'

Rachel Lopez felt her stomach grumble. She was past the nausea stage and ready for lunch. She had an appointment with Lorenzo Brown, over at that Subway near the market off Florida Avenue. She liked the tuna they made at that one, and Lorenzo liked it too. Lorenzo Brown, one of the lucky ones who had found a job above the menial level, seemed to be doing all right.

'� I was watchin' her from the corner. Well, really from behind a tree. She was goin' off to summer school. She about to go into first grade, over at Nalle Elementary, in Marshall Heights? She had this purple T-shirt on, got shorts go with it. And a pink backpack, had little cartoon kids on it. She looked happy. I mean she was skippin' off to school.'

'My baby girl went to Nalle too,' offered a woman on the other side of the room.

Shirley nodded at the woman in commiseration.

Rachel could see that Shirley's eyes had watered up.

'I was just watchin' her,' said Shirley. 'I didn't want to bother her or scare her or nothin' like that. Lord knows I scared her plenty back when. I'm not ready to come full into her world just yet.' Shirley wiped at one of her eyes. 'You know, it hurts me to think of how I neglected her all those years. When she'd be cryin' for milk or food, or just to be held or loved, and me in some room with the blinds drawn in the middle of the day. Sittin' around with a bunch of fiends, suckin' on that glass dick.'

'Uh-huh,' said a man, like he knew.

'All those years I cannot get back,' said Shirley. 'But my eyes are lookin' forward now. We gonna have us a relationship, me and my girl, the kind I never did have with my own mother. I ain't bitter or nothin' like that. You can't change the past nohow, so you best put it behind you. I'm lookin' ahead…'

Rachel dozed for a second. Maybe for minutes, she couldn't be sure. Her head snapped back up and she opened her eyes.

'…so thank you for letting me share,' said Shirley.

'Thank you for sharing.'

A lean, hard-looking man in a dirty red T-shirt pushed the dirty Redskins cap he was wearing back on his head and raised his hand. The group leader nodded his chin in the man's direction.

'My name's Sarge…'

'Hey, Sarge.'

'… and I'm a straight-up addict. Now, I been comin' to these meetings for a long time, listenin' to you all talkin' 'bout support. How we all in this together, how we ain't never gonna make it individually 'less we stand together, lean on each other while we walk through that dark tunnel to the other side. All that talk, that's real good. But when it's just talk, it's just bullshit.'

Sarge shifted his position, the chair creaking against the mumbles in the room.

'I ain't never been one for hugs and shit like that. I don't have many friends. The boys I ran with when I was young, they either incarcerated or deader than a motherfucker now. My family? My mother and my brothers? To them, I might as well be dead too. That's all right by me. I'm a lone wolf, you want the truth. That's how I like it, most times.

'But other times, even I need someone to talk to. And y'all always talkin' about, "When you get weak, when you about to do that thing, you can call us any time." Y'all passed out a list with phone numbers on it for just that purpose. Didn't y'all?'

'That's right,' said a quiet voice.

'Remember that barbecue the group had last weekend?' said Sarge. 'Over there by Fort Dupont? I was there. Not that y'all could recall it. No one talked to me much. But I was there. I got tired of standing around with a soda in one hand, my other hand jigglin' the change in my pockets while y'all was talkin' to each other and laughin' and havin' fun. So I left out the place and went home.

'I got this little efficiency off Bladensburg Road, down by the Shrimp Boat? Got a concrete patio out back; anyone in my unit can use it. Someone went and set up a grill back there, like a hibachi or somethin', a cheap old thing you pick up at the CVS. So I decided I was gonna have a little cookout my own self. Went down to the corner market and got some charcoal and a package of hot dogs and some buns. I lit the coals up and started to cook a rack of dogs on the grill. Had the box playin' this old tape I got, a Frankie Beverly mix? And it just reminded me of some shit, summer and cookin' out and all that bullshit, you know how that go. I got to cravin' a Heineken and a blunt. Nothin' better than that in the evenin', in the summertime. You got Maze on the box and you pokin' at some food on the grill? Goes hand in hand with a cold beer, right?'

'Damn sure does,' said a man.

'One thing you got to understand about me,' said Sarge. 'I love to get high. I'd step over a hundred naked females if I thought there was a chance to get my head up on the other side of them. That's how in love with that shit I am. But much as I love to get high, I didn't want to, you see what I'm sayin'? And I didn't know what to do to stop myself.

'So what I did was, I thought of y'all. How y'all always be sayin', "Make that phone call when you get the urge." And I got that list out, the one with the numbers on it. And I made some calls.'

Sarge cleared his throat. 'I called a few of the male names on the list. I didn't want to talk to no females. I ain't no faggy or nothin' like that, understand. But I was lookin' for help, not no relationship. I just use females when I get with 'em, anyway.'

'Hmph,' said a man.

'And you wanna know somethin'?' said Sarge. 'I got nary a call back. Not one. I got that answerin' service thing for every number I called, and I left my number on it too. But I just wanted y'all to know: Not one of you called me back.'

No one said anything for a moment. And then Shirley said, 'You just called the wrong numbers, is all.'

'I called the numbers on the sheet,' said Sarge.

'You didn't call mines,' said Shirley. 'I would have returned your call. And it wouldn't of mattered to me whether you did or did not like women.'

'I ain't say I didn't like women.'

'Well, you got no use for them, then. Look, I ain't lookin' for no relationship with a man, neither. But I would have called you back, despite the way you feel, because you needed help. And even though you seem to be, I don't know, antisocial or somethin', that wouldn't have stopped me from calling you. 'Cause I don't judge nobody, hear? I ain't got no right to. None of us do.'

'Tell it,' said a woman from the back of the room.

''Cause if you judge,' said Shirley, 'you don't matter. And if you matter, you don't judge.'

Sarge adjusted his cap so that it fit tightly on his head. 'Awright, then. I can accept that. I ain't mean to bring no negativity up in here. Just, you know.' Sarge looked down at his shoes and spoke softly. 'Thank you for lettin' me share.'

'Thank you for sharing'

'If there's no one else,' said the group leader, 'why don't you all come forward and form a circle.'

A handful of people, who felt uncomfortable for their own reasons at this overtly spiritual and distinctly Christian portion of the meeting, left the room. Most stood and came forward, forming a wide circle, putting their hands on one another's shoulders and bowing their heads. Rachel Lopez stood beside Sarge, the angry man in the Redskins cap, touching his muscled shoulder, feeling his calloused hand on the back of her neck. She closed her eyes.

'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'

After the Serenity Prayer, the group recited the Lord's Prayer and said 'Amen.'

'Narcotics Anonymous,' said the leader.

'It works if you work it!'

Outside the church, Rachel shook a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro Lights. She lit it from a matchbook she had gotten in a hotel bar the night before. She stood there on the sidewalk smoking, watching as the group dispersed, many in twos and threes to cars whose drivers had picked them up to ensure they had attended the meeting. Others walked to a Metrobus shelter and had seats on a bench. A few walked down East Capitol toward their dwellings or jobs.

Shirley, the girl in the halter top, approached Rachel and stood before her.

"Scuse me,' said Shirley. She was tiny, with almond-shaped eyes, Hershey-colored skin, and a pretty smile. She looked to be thirty, but had given her age as twenty at a previous meeting. Her drug use had stolen ten years from her looks. If her daughter was in first grade, Shirley had given birth to her at fourteen.

'Yes?'

'Can I get one of them Marlboros?'

'Sure.'

Rachel shook one from the deck. Shirley took it, and Rachel offered her a light.

'That's okay,' said Shirley, slipping the cigarette over her right ear. 'I'm gonna save it.'

'You'll need these,' said Rachel, handing Shirley the matchbook.

Shirley smiled. 'You have a blessed day.'

'You also,' said Rachel Lopez.

Shirley went to the curb and stood with her hand on her hip. Rachel crushed her cigarette under her sneaker and walked to her car.

CHAPTER 4

The short woman, looked like an addict to Lorenzo Brown, had bulging eyes, ill-fitting clothing, and a bandanna covering her ratty scalp. The woman, along with Lorenzo, Rachel Lopez, and many others, was in line at the Subway shop near Florida and New York avenues. She was standing in front of the Plexiglas that separated the employees from the customers, raising her voice at the employee, a Hispanic woman, who was building her sub.

'How you gonna put mayonnaise on my sandwich when I asked you for mustard?' said the woman.

The employee did not look at the woman or answer. There was no need to argue or even reply. Also, there was a problem with communication, as the employee spoke little English. She simply replaced the top portion of the sub roll and used a knife to spread mustard on the bread.

'I want some more cold cuts on that motherfucker too,' said the woman. 'More turkey and shit. You listenin'?'

The small customer space was near filled with blacks, whites, and Hispanics, many in uniforms and some in low-end office outfits of the Docker-and-poly variety. No one told the woman to mind her manners or to simply keep her mouth shut. A few of the customers, insecure about their own place in life, enjoyed the woman's rant. Most, Rachel Lopez and Lorenzo Brown included, were uncomfortable with the scene but did nothing to stop it. If they did, it would only end with more aggression, and anyway, a person filled with so much self-hate could not be changed. Still, many in the store, Rachel and Lorenzo included, felt mildly ashamed for not coming to the employee's defense.

'See that?' said the woman, who turned to Rachel Lopez, saw the Latina in her skin and eyes, thought better of it, and turned away. She focused her gaze on Lorenzo Brown, who stood beside Rachel. 'You see, right? People come in here, takin' our jobs, can't even speak our language, how the fuck you think they can do some simple-ass shit like fix a submarine sandwich?' She looked back at the woman making the sub. 'That's right. Put some more meat on there like I told you to.' She rested a hand on her hip, her voice dying down to a mumble. 'Tryin' to cheat a woman up in here.'

Rachel Lopez and Lorenzo Brown got their subs, paid for them separately, and walked out into the sun.

They sat in Rachel's Honda because Lorenzo said the van smelled like piss. The day before, Jerry, one of his fellow officers who was driving that particular Astra, had transported a cat in a cage, and the cat had shaken and peed all the way to the shelter. Jerry had apparently forgotten to clean the bottom of the cage at the end of his shift.

Lorenzo couldn't help noticing that Miss Lopez's car was as messed up and unclean as the van. Empty Starbucks cups and gum wrappers littered the faded mats, sprinkled with ashes, that covered the floorboards. A whole rack of paperwork and files had been carelessly tossed on the backseat. A couple of green little-tree deodorizers hung from the rearview mirror, but the interior of the Honda still carried the smell of nicotine.

Least it didn't smell like urine. Cat pee was the worst. Lorenzo hated that smell. Unlike the earnest patchouli-oil-wearing types he worked with, he could never get used to that sour, nasty stench, and he couldn't seem to get it out of his clothes. Now that he thought of it, patchouli oil, whatever that junk was, it turned his stomach too.

'Tuna's good at this one,' said Rachel, wiping a bit of it off the side of her mouth.

'They do it right,' said Lorenzo.

Rachel dug into the rest of her sub as Lorenzo devoured his. She had asked for hot peppers, and the woman behind the counter had been generous with them. Rachel craved the spice. It was always like that when she was feeling poorly behind drink. Her body had been depleted of something and was begging to get it back.

They finished eating without speaking further. Rachel had turned on one of those radio stations played country, her music, and a song Lorenzo did not recognize and would never want to hear again was coming at a low volume from the dash. The two of them were out of the same era but had different taste.

'So,' said Rachel, after consolidating all of her trash in one bag and dropping it behind her to the floor of the backseat. 'How's it going?'

'All good,' said Lorenzo, his usual reply.

Rachel Lopez nodded and looked at Lorenzo directly, trying to draw his eyes to her. She was good at this, pulling him in.

'It is good,' he said.

'Nice to hear it,' said Rachel. 'Piece of cake, right?'

'Got its ups and downs,' said Lorenzo. 'Most times I get up in the morning, I'm anxious to get off to work. But some days? I just don't feel like dealing with people. You know, all those things people do that get on your last nerve. I'm talking about the politics and all in the day-to-day. Gives me headaches.'

'Welcome to the grind.'

'But still, it's goin' fine.'

'You feel that way, you're doing better than most.'

He looked at her, and her eyes smiled. Miss Lopez had pretty brown eyes, even without makeup. She tried to hide her looks, tried to hide the things about her that were physically attractive, her figure, everything. But she couldn't hide that nice spirit. With good people it just came through.

Showed you, the way you judged someone up front, it could be all wrong. But how she'd acted the first time they'd met, he figured that was deliberate.

When he'd first come out of prison, he'd been contacted with a written notice and follow-up phone call, and told to report to a Miss Lopez, his probation officer, out in some office building in Prince George's County, over in Maryland, within seventy-two hours. After going through a metal detector, he sat in a waiting room like a doctor's, had girl magazines all round: Rosie, Good Housekeeping, stuff like that. He was wondering why they didn't have any reading material for men, car magazines or SI, 'cause it had to be mostly men waiting out in this lobby. Then Miss Lopez came in, wearing a middle-age lady outfit like she had on now. She shook his hand, her eyes cool, telling him that this was business and she was all business, and that was how it was going to be.

They went into a room, looked like any interrogation room he'd been in at any police station, scarred table, blank walls, all of them like the rest. She didn't offer him coffee or a soda or nothing like that.

Miss Lopez then went over form number 7A, which described the conditions of his probation, point by point. Most of the rules any fool could have guessed. He couldn't commit any more crimes, couldn't own a firearm or any other 'dangerous device' or weapon, and had to 'refrain' from the use of controlled substances. As he was a convicted drug felon, he also had to submit to regular drug testing. He couldn't leave the judicial district (for him that meant D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia) without permission, was required to notify his parole officer as to any change of address, refrain from frequenting places where illegal substances were being distributed, refrain from excessive use of alcohol, notify his PO of any arrests (including traffic violations), and meet his 'family responsibilities,' which meant child support. He was to tell the truth at all times. And, Miss Lopez said, the most important requirement was he had to maintain lawful employment.

'It means you've got to hold down a job,' she'd said, like he didn't understand the official words.

'That's not gonna be a problem.'

'I know it's not. You have to work.'

'What I mean is, I'm close to gettin' something already.'

Miss Lopez sat back and folded her arms, the universal don't-bullshit-me sign. 'What would that be?'

'I'm about to get a position with the Animal Rescue League,' said Lorenzo.

'Over there on Oglethorpe?'

'Yeah. Yes. They gonna hire me, I expect. I'm pretty sure I gave a good interview. And I didn't hide nothin', either. The man in charge there, he knows all about my incarceration.'

Miss Lopez pointed to number 13 on the form. 'He would have to. Understand, any job you get, I'd visit you from time to time at the site.'

'I figured all that,' said Lorenzo. 'Anyway, I should know if I got it or not real soon. Couple of days, tops.'

Miss Lopez had looked at him different right about then. The cool in her eyes kind of melted away. She didn't act all nice to him sudden or anything like that. That would come later. She'd do her home visit, and then he'd start to meet with her in her own personal office, not in that box. And she'd gradually begin to treat him like an acquaintance and, later, almost like a friend. She was like those teachers you'd have back in grade and middle school, the ones you didn't think you were gonna get along with. The ones who acted the toughest in the beginning, who laid down the ground rules from the start. Those were the ones you ended up respecting most, and remembering long after the school year had passed.

'Why?' said Rachel Lopez.

'Why that job?'

'Yes.'

'I believe I can do it, for one. Matter of fact, I know I can.'

Lorenzo went on to explain about the program he'd gotten hooked up with in prison. They had this thing where the inmates could get involved in the training of dogs. These were animals that had been selected to be guides and companions to blind folks, handicapped, the elderly, shut-ins, and the like. Lorenzo had signed up for the program and, once involved, found he had the aptitude for it.

'You like animals?' said Rachel, her arms now uncrossed, the tone in her voice less hard.

'Always did,' said Lorenzo.

'You grew up with dogs?'

'No, I never did own no animals myself. Well, that's not right, exactly. I did have this kitten I hid for a while, from my mother, when she was around. Before I went to stay with my grandmother.'

Lorenzo shifted his position in his seat. The chairs they had in that room were hard. Plus, he was uncomfortable talking about himself to this stranger. But he had started it now, and the words, for some reason, were tumbling out.

'I found this kitten in the alley where we stayed at the time, in Congress Heights. Down there near Ballou, in Southeast?'

'I know the neighborhood. I've had a few offenders down there over the years.'

'That ain't no surprise.'

Rachel Lopez, with an uptick of her chin, told him to keep talking.

'I was just a young kid,' said Lorenzo. 'Seven, somethin' like that. This was just before my mother went away. Before I moved over to my grandmother's in Northwest. I came up on these kids in the alley, they were gonna drown these kittens in a washtub back there, said one of their mothers had told them to do it. I snatched one out of there right quick and ran to my house. I couldn't save them all, so I just took the one.

'I knew my mother would get all siced if I brought an animal into our house. She was… she couldn't handle much of nothin' by then, you want the truth. An animal in the house, I knew that would set her off. So I kept it hid for a while. Looking back on it, wasn't no way my mom didn't know. You can't hide that smell. I was takin' tuna fish and bits of chicken out the fridge for that kitten too.'

'What happened?'

Lorenzo shrugged. 'Kitten got out. I suspect my mother put it out. Dog in the alley got hold of it, killed it dead. My first lesson in the laws of nature. I wasn't angry at that dog or nothin'. Dog was just doin' its job.'

Seemed like Rachel Lopez stared at him a long while then. Finally she said, 'Well, I hope you get that position.'

'I aim to get it,' he said.

He did. But he didn't last more than a few months on Oglethorpe Street. They were just warehousing animals there, doing nothing active about helping the ones in peril on the street, and he was no more than a paper pusher. After all that time in a cell, he didn't want to be walled in, sitting behind some desk. From a coworker at the Rescue League, Brown heard about an opening at the Humane Society, where officers were honest-to-God investigators, empowered through a charter of Congress to seek out violations and violators of animal health and rights.

Irena Tovar, the woman who ran the Humane Society office on Georgia Avenue, gave him an extensive interview. First thing off, she asked him about the specific nature of his criminal charges. Brown figured she wanted to know if he had a rape or domestic abuse or something like it on his record. He told her of his drug offenses, leaving out the violent acts of his past and anything else for which he had never been arrested or charged. She said she had no problem with the fact that he had done time or that he was under supervision. She said that she believed in redemption and she hoped that he believed in it too.

Miss Tovar had hired him, and he had been at it since. He had found it odd, at first, to be wearing a uniform and a badge, especially while he was still on paper, just strange to be on 'the other side.' Strange too that he took to it so quick. From his first day out there, it was like he had slipped his hand into a broke-in glove.

'Lorenzo,' said Rachel Lopez, pulling him back into the present. He stared out across the parking lot at the Capital City Market, where all those Asians and other ethnics had their wholesale food businesses.

'Yes?'

'You been by the clinic lately?'

'I been meaning to go.'

'You need to get by the clinic and drop a urine.'

'I will. You know I'm gonna drop a negative too.'

'No doubt,' said Rachel. 'You still need to do it.'

'I will. But look, I did have a beer or two this week.'

'I don't have any problem with that. Your agreement talks about excessive alcohol use. Doesn't mean you can't live a life.'

You live one too, thought Lorenzo. I can smell that wine or liquor, or whatever you had last night, coming through your skin right now. In the summertime, when you sweat, it's real plain. Also, when we meet real early in the mornings, I see how your face is kinda puffy and your eyes be all red. So you're human; you got your problems like everyone else. Like they say at the meetings: Don't judge.

'How's everything else?' said Rachel, cutting her eyes away from his, reading his look. 'How's your daughter?'

Lorenzo nodded, seeing a little Chinese girl standing outside one of the markets, holding some kind of toy in her hand. 'I guess she's good.'

'Her name is—'

'Shay,' said Brown. 'I see her, but her mother doesn't let me talk to her.'

'Ever?'

'Shay don't even know who I am. I went in a few months before she was born.'

'You talked to the mother about it?'

'I tried. Sherelle ain't lookin' to bring me into my little girl's world. I been putting some money aside for Shay. Just a little bit, understand? But I been doin' it every month. It'll help with her college someday, she wants to go.'

'That's good, Lorenzo.'

'I'm gonna stay on it. I want her to know me. I don't expect her to love me or nothin' like that, but still.'

'Maybe in time.'

'Speakin' of which,' said Lorenzo, glancing at his watch. 'I got some calls.'

'Me too. You just keep doing what you're doing, hear?'

'I plan to.' Lorenzo shook her hand and opened the passenger door of the Honda. 'Have a good one, Miss Lopez.'

'You also.'

She watched him go to the Dumpster in the Subway lot, deposit his trash, then walk to his van.

Lorenzo was trying. He was not as pure as he made himself out to be in her presence, but he was one of the better ones. He had chosen a road now and he wanted to stay on it.

She had felt the day she'd met him that he would make the effort. The fact that he worked well with animals, that was a good sign. Most of the time she put little stock in reports and statistics, but studies did show that animal-friendly inmates had lower rates of recidivism. She believed that people who were good to animals had more human potential than those who were not. That was just common sense.

Rachel wasn't naive. Lorenzo had committed some crimes, most likely, that were not in his jacket. To go as far as he had in the game, he almost certainly was involved in acts of violence. Perhaps he'd even killed. At the very least he had done some bad things beyond the mechanics of dealing drugs. But she did not think that the Lorenzo Brown she knew in the present was a bad man.

She could tell this by looking in his eyes.

CHAPTER 5

Nigel Johnson's shop stood on the 6200 block of Georgia, between Sheridan and Rittenhouse streets in Northwest, with the neighborhoods of Brightwood to the west and Manor Park to the east. From the sidewalk, concrete steps went up to its second-floor entrance. There Nigel sold pagers, disposable cells, cigarette lighters, chargers, condoms, and everything else his young, mobile customers might need on the street. He even had a fax machine and a copier, a pay-per-use kind of thing. Sign said NJ Enterprises right there out front. 'NJ' was in script, like he'd used his hand to write it himself.

Nigel used the shop as a front for his real business, and as a place to run through some of his cash, put a few of the dollars on the books, so to speak. You had to show something to the IRS, and he sure wasn't looking to go down on tax evasion charges, like many had been known to do. There was no safe here, and, it went without saying, guns and drugs never passed through the front door. He ran the place as any retail-and-service merchant would, the difference being that he kept it open whenever he liked. Dealers all over the city did the same thing, with barbershops, beauty and nail parlors, variety stores, and such. White dealers, moving cocaine, mostly, did it too, at those antique shops in Adams Morgan and at boutiques on the western edge of the new Shaw.

Johnson liked the location. The neighborhood was cleaner and safer than down in Park View, where he did his dirt. The presence of the Fourth District police station, two blocks away, between Peabody and Quackenbos, kept the lowlifes in semicheck and the fiends off the sidewalks. His friend Lorenzo worked out of the Humane Society office up there around Fern and Geranium, north of Walter Reed, where all those tree-and-flower streets were at. He didn't see his boy much anymore, because of the circumstances, but it felt good knowing Lorenzo was close and breathing free air.

Most of the stores were legitimate on this particular strip. One of them, the Arrow dry cleaners, went back eighty years, still owned by the same family of Greeks. Nigel Johnson's spot, it used to be a Chinese laundry back in the sixties. There was a good story about that laundry too. Nigel had not yet been born when this story happened, but old-time residents had talked about it often, and he knew the tale by heart. Nigel liked to tell it, especially to the ones under him. Some of his people were grouped around him now.

''Round the time that black folks started moving into this neighborhood, I'm talking about before the riots, there was some armed robberies got pulled on this block. Right here on the avenue. The most famous was when the Theodore Nye jewelry store got knocked off. Like most of the nice stores, that place is gone now. There was another one, though, didn't get too much publicity: the Chinese laundry robbery, right on this spot.'

'Where we at now?' said DeEric Green.

'That's right, right where we sittin'. A Chinaman, his wife, and the Chinaman's mama san, old lady looked like a yellow prune with eyeholes, worked here, all together. The man's kids, a little boy and a girl, were always running around in here too. Whole family livin' together, then they'd go off and work together, together, all the time. You know how those Asians do.

'One day, couple of young brothers, full of fire and speed, came in and put a gun to the Chinaman, demanding all of his cash. Man naturally wasn't going to give up what he'd worked so hard to get, so one of the brothers, high as he was, got nervous and busted a cap in the Chinaman's face. Chinaman must have turned his head at the last second, because the bullet grazed his temple. Legend was, right after? You could see the smoke coming off the man's skin. And listen: Forever after, that square head of his had a burn mark on it too. You know, like the way a brand is, on a cow?'

'Chang got his self the mark of Zorro,' said DeEric Green.

'Okay,' said Johnson, keeping on, not wanting to lose his rhythm, though Green was doing his best to stop the flow. 'One of the brothers, let's say it was the gunman, 'cause it make the story better, jumped down off the stoop, coming out the shop, and landed on a wrought-iron fence they had out there at the time, came down right on his dick. Fence had those spikes on it. No, spires, that's what they called those things. That spire, it took a piece of that boy's manhood, just tore off a slice of his testicles. People still talk about the way he was runnin' down Georgia, all in pain, blood on his drawers, to a waiting car.'

'Story good,' said DeEric Green.

'Hold up,' said Nigel. 'I ain't finished. I ain't told y'all the best part.'

'The Chinaman, his wife, and the old lady continued to work that laundry for a bunch more years, even though that was just the start of the violent shit that would come to the block, and even though their store, in the summer, was hotter than the devil's own attic, 'specially in the back, where Mama San toiled. And because of all that hard work and sacrifice, those two kids of theirs, they did more than all right. The son became a three-star general in the army and shit, and the girl went on to become a doctor, one of those chemists over at NIH or a new-clear scientist, somethin' like that.'

'What kind of car she drive?' said Green.

'I don't know the woman personal. What difference does that make, anyway?'

'Bet it's an Avalon or somethin' like it. Bet she went with a spoiler on it too. Chinese do love their Japanese cars.'

'Point is, you keep working hard, despite adversity, you gonna come out all right. Not just you, but the people around you as well.'

'I know what you trying to say,' said DeEric Green, pursing his lips, nodding his head rapidly.

'You do?' said Nigel.

Lawrence Graham, Nigel's enforcer, chuckled low.

'Sure,' said Green. 'You talkin' about, like, that Boy Scout thing. Be prepared to fuck a motherfucker up. If Chang had been strapped his own self, that shit never would have ended up how it did.'

'It ended all right,' said Nigel. 'Ended real good for the kids.'

'But the Chinaman musta carried that scar forever. Might as well had a sign on him said "I got my ass punked." How you gonna face your people after, when you got that shit tattooed right on your grille?'

Nigel Johnson, seated at his desk behind the customer counter, tented his hands and felt himself tighten beneath his Sean John sweats. Green, one of his seconds, was just dim like that. He never could see past the obvious.

'Story wasn't about the robbery,' said Nigel. 'Story was about how the man hung in, kept on doing his j-o-b. Passed on the legacy of hard work to the ones around him.'

'I feel you,' said Green. 'I'm sayin', though, for me? I'll just go ahead and murder a motherfucker, he finds the need to put a gun in my face.'

Nigel breathed out slow. He looked past Green, slouched with his elbow on the counter, his Raiders cap cocked on his head, wearing his look-at-me hookup of a thick platinum chain worn out over a bright FUBU shirt, to Michael Butler, standing by the window fronting the shop. Butler just nodded at Nigel, talked with those smart brown eyes of his, telling him he understood, that there wasn't any need to make further comment.

The boy was mature for his age. At seventeen, he had more sense than DeEric Green and most of these other knuckleheads on the payroll. Respectful, hardworking, and he thought before he spoke. Focused. Butler reminded Nigel of his own self when he was coming up, though Butler was nowhere near as tough. He had a little Lorenzo in him too, with the way he stayed quiet unless something needed to be said. Butler was good.

'Nigel?' said Green.

'What.'

'I had a little thing I had to take care of this morning.'

'Talk about it.'

'Saw this boy they call Jujubee, one of Deacon's kids, toutin' his shit on our real estate. Had to pull over and show him what I had in my waistband, you understand what I'm sayin'? Him and his boys, they walked off slow. I don't see no problem, like reoccurin' and shit, but I thought you might want to know.'

'Where was he standin'?' said Nigel. 'Exactly.'

Green described the exact corner on Morton. When he was done, he smiled proudly.

'Well, then,' said Nigel, 'you fucked up.'

'Huh?'

'That ain't our corner.'

'Huh?'

'I'm sayin', that's Deacon Taylor's corner.'

'It's close to ours.'

'But it ain't ours, DeEric. It's Deacon's. I got an arrangement with the man.'

Green lowered his eyes.

'Look,' said Nigel. 'I appreciate you takin' some initiative, but you need to get me on the Nextel, or Lawrence here, if you not sure what's ours and what ain't. You gonna start a war out here, and that is something I don't need.'

'Right.'

'Yeah, okay. Right.' Nigel was tired of talking to Green, tired of trying to impress things upon him that he would never understand. Boy had the chrome, the outfits, the chains, the Escalade with the spinners… all the things. But there wasn't no reasoning behind it, no plan. Boy wasn't going to last.

'Anyway,' said Green, "bout time I went and picked up the count.'

'Take Michael with you, hear?'

'Nigel,' said Green, protest in his tone.

It's Nigel, thought Johnson, not correcting Green, seeing no advantage in correcting him. Man had been working for him for two years now and he still couldn't get the name right. Said he had a problem with it 'cause his cousin, boy name of Nigel Lewis, pronounced it 'the English way.'

'Take Michael,' said Nigel, repeating the order. 'Boy needs to learn.'

'Let's go, youngun,' said Green without looking at the boy, resentment plain on his face.

'Your mom need anything?' said Michael Butler to Nigel.

'She good,' said Nigel, nodding at Butler, thanking him for asking after his mother without thanking him by word. He watched Green and Butler leave the shop.

'DeEric call you Nigel,' said Lawrence Graham, seated near him behind the counter. Like many of the deadlier young men in the city, those with the fiercest reputations, he was short and slight.

'I know it,' said Nigel. 'He got a cousin or somethin' who say it the wrong way.'

'DeEric stupid.'

'You think?'

'He right about one thing, though,' said Graham.

'What's that?'

'If that slope had had him a shotgun, a cut-down or something like that, hid in that laundry basket of his? He'd a lit that boy up.'

You stupid too, thought Nigel. But he didn't say it. Graham followed orders to the letter. It was hard to find people like that. Nigel liked having him on his side.

Through the windshield of a Mercedes S430 parked in a space on the east side of Georgia, Deacon Taylor watched DeEric Green and Michael Butler walk down the sidewalk toward a black Escalade. Beside Deacon sat one of his lieutenants, Melvin Lee, spidery and small, an NY baseball cap worn sideways on his head. Slumped in the backseat was a young man named Rico Miller.

'That him?' said Deacon, thirty-three, handsome, wide-shouldered, and immaculately groomed.

'Way Jujubee described him,' said Lee. 'Said he had on that orange FUBU when he told Jew to move on. Said he came out that 'Lade, with the spinners and shit.'

'DeEric Green, right?'

'Yeah. I ran with his brother, James, long time ago. The Greens stayed over there on Lamont when I was livin' on Kenyon. Me and James, both of us went to the same middle school.'

'Tubman?'

'Yeah. I remember DeEric when he used to tag along at the basketball courts. He wasn't no more than seventy pounds, but he talked like he was full grown.'

'His brother still out here?'

'Nah, James been dead.'

'What happened?'

'James couldn't control his self around females. Made the mistake of gettin' his grind on with some girl even though he got warned that this girl had a George.'

'Man didn't take kindly to it, huh?'

'I'd say he took it to heart.'

Deacon nodded. One thing about Melvin, he made it a point to know a little something about everyone who was gaming on their side of Park View. Boy just had a talent for learning about the players, their histories, their alliances, and how they'd fucked up. Eventually everyone made that one big mistake. No one knew this better than Melvin Lee, who'd recently come uptown off a three-year sentence.

'Who that slim boy with DeEric?'

'New kid, name of Butler.'

'What you know about him?'

'Nothin' yet. Nigel groomin' him. But to me he don't look like much.'

'Must be one of Nigel's projects. You know how he gets all hopeful about them young ones.' Deacon tapped a manicured finger on the steering wheel. 'Nigel got his corners, I got mine. That corner, the one his boy told Jujubee to step off of? That was mine. Nigel know this.'

'No doubt.'

'Me and Nigel, we ain't never had no big problems. I been knowin' him since we was Rough Riders.'

'Roosevelt,' said Lee, enjoying this part of the conversation, the history.

'I ain't sayin' either one of us wore the cap and gown.'

'Nigel's main runnin' boy, he was there round that time too, right?'

'Lorenzo Brown. Boy was fierce.'

'Yeah, well. He ain't shit now.'

Deacon Taylor removed his shades, used his shirttail to clean the lenses, and replaced the glasses on his face. 'I just can't understand why Nigel would want to start some bullshit at this point in time.'

'Maybe his boy did it on his own. Green do tend to act bold like that.'

'That could be,' said Deacon Taylor. 'Still, even if Nigel ignorant to the situation… I mean, a man needs to control his niggas, you feel me?'

'Damn sure do.'

'Sharin' those corners is gettin' old,' said Deacon. 'That's a situation I'm gonna have to fix.'

'What can I do?' said Lee.

'For now, we gonna need to send Nigel a message,' said Deacon. 'I can put Griff on this, you don't feel up to it.'

Griff was Marcus Griffin, twenty-one, Deacon's enforcer, feared even by his own. The mention of his name made Lee answer quickly.

'I want it,' said Lee, knowing he had to step up to keep proving his self to Deacon.

'Can I help?'

It was the voice of Rico Miller, seventeen, coming from the backseat. In the rearview, Taylor saw a strange, gap-toothed smile spread on Miller's thin, wolfish face.

Like many of Deacon's younger people, but in a magnified way, Miller claimed to be indifferent to the prospect of an early death. He was also cunning and at times uncontrollable. Most saw Miller's willingness to jump into any kind of fight as bravery, but Deacon saw it differently. There were those who did violent acts out of necessity, and a certain few, like Miller, who did them out of pleasure. Deacon knew that Miller had not yet acquired the maturity needed to take on a supervisory position, but he did not feel that he could hold him back. Miller had just appeared one day, seemingly out of nowhere. His promotion from lookout to tout to lieutenant had been swift. He was one of those Deacon wanted close.

'What you say, Melvin?' said Deacon. 'You mind if Rico hang with you on this?'

'I don't mind,' said Lee. 'Rico a beast.'

Rico Miller clapped Melvin Lee on the shoulder.

'Sooner the better,' said Deacon. 'I want Nigel to know that I'm on it.'

'We'll do it tonight,' said Lee.

'You workin' your paycheck job this afternoon?' said Deacon.

'I was s'posed to. But they changed up my schedule. I got to be in there tomorrow.'

'You still on paper, right?'

'Yeah.'

'So you definitely need to report to that job.'

'I always do,' said Lee.

Deacon exhaled slowly. 'What you doin' today?'

'Me and Rico, we was gonna check out a thing, east of the river.'

'What kind of thing?'

'Fat Tony say they got some dogfights in the woods.'

'Take care of this thing with Green tonight, then,' said Deacon. 'Not too soft and not too hard.'

Lee said, 'We will.' He tried to say it real strong. But inside him, already he was dreading what he had to do.

Rico Miller felt no such dread. Rather, he felt a familiar kind of warmth in his thighs at the thought of confronting Green. As he imagined stepping to him, he fingered the sheath in his deep pocket. In the sheath was a Ka-Bar knife with a six-inch stainless steel blade.

The sheath had the word Creep burned vertically into its leather. Rico Miller's mother had given him the name.

CHAPTER 6

Lorenzo Brown stopped by the D.C. Animal Shelter on New York Avenue to take a pee. It was a large facility that over the course of a year warehoused more than 13,000 animals, mostly stray and unleashed dogs, or those who had bitten or attacked people. These animals would eventually be reclaimed, adopted, or euthanized. Mark Christianson, the closest thing Lorenzo had to a partner on the job, had worked at the D.C. Animal Shelter early in his career but had moved on to the Humane Law Enforcement team when the opportunity had arisen. Lorenzo and Mark did not deal with strays, lost dogs, or cats stuck in trees. The animals in the kennel at the office on Georgia Avenue were either humane holds — animals impounded due to cruelty complaints — or surrenders, which were animals simply given up, voluntarily, by their owners. Lorenzo and his fellow officers were not empowered to make physical arrests, but they could paper offenders and serve search and arrest warrants. They also worked closely with the U.S. Attorney's office to prosecute their cases.

Lorenzo didn't feel superior, exactly, to those who worked animal control at the shelter on New York Avenue. They looked very much like his coworkers on Georgia, do-gooders with a touch of punk rock, D.C.-style, in their eating habits, ethics, and manner of dress. But he did feel that what he was doing as a Humane Law Enforcement officer was more productive, and exciting, than the work done by others in the animal protection field.

After using the bathroom, Lorenzo headed out through the kennel, passing barking dogs, dogs wagging their tails, and dogs with their faces pressed up against the links of their cages, desperate for love and the human touch. He stopped once, to let a pointer-terrier mix named Judy press her nose to his knuckles, then went on his way. He didn't like to linger in the kennel too long.

Near the door, he was greeted by Lisa, a compact woman with short blond spiky hair, a young shelter employee he had seen from time to time at barbecues and picnics. Lisa had started as a Humane officer but now worked in animal control. She was well-intentioned but, it was said by some of her former coworkers, unprepared for the conflicts that often flared up on the street. City people tended to be resentful of uniformed folks in general, a resentment that graduated to outright hostility when those folks were attempting to impound their dogs. There were different productive ways of handling the conflicts, but showing fear was not one of them. Mark said that Lisa once left the scene of a necessary impound without the animal when a couple of women had begun to get into her physical space and address her as a 'white-ass bitch.'

'Well,' Lorenzo had said to Mark, 'her ass is white, isn't it?'

'I don't think they meant it as, you know, a physical description,' Mark said.

'You tell me,' said Lorenzo. 'I mean, you done had it, right?'

Mark had blushed then. It was common knowledge around the shelter and the Humane office that Mark and Lisa had rocked a bed. But Mark, who had come out of the straight edge thing, felt it was wrong to discuss women in 'that way,' even though, as Lorenzo had pointed out to him, he liked to do them every which way.

'C'mon, Lorenzo.'

'Okay, so they were testin' her. The woman shoulda shook that shit off. You do. Shoot, sometimes I don't even think you hear the insults they be throwin' at you, man.'

'I hear them,' said Mark. 'But it comes with the territory. Lisa just wasn't suited to that kind of fieldwork, is all.'

'You mean she's got a color problem.'

'I don't think so. She was intimidated, is all it was.'

'By bein' around black folks.'

'By the conflicts, more likely.'

'City's black. You afraid of black people, you ain't got no business working out in the streets. Those women? That's what they were tryin' to tell her.'

'Maybe.'

'So about that ass…'

'It is white,' said Mark, one side of his mouth up in a reluctant smirk.

'Looks like it's nice and round too,' said Lorenzo.

Lorenzo spoke briefly with Lisa, then got back in his van and put the air conditioning on high. Since he was in the area, he went through Ivy City, past horribly run-down row houses, some with plywood in their window frames. He drove on to Mount Olivet Road, the thoroughfare that bordered the Gallaudet University campus and led eventually to the Olivet Cemetery and beyond to the National Arboretum. There on the four-lane he parked along the curb and walked to a set of low-rise warehouse structures grouped across the street from a drive-through burger house and a Chinese sub shop, the ubiquitous Kenny's. Lorenzo often wondered why so many Asians used that name. Wasn't like it was the coolest one you could pick.

He went along the sidewalk of the warehouse that fronted the street. To the left side of the structure was a parking lot that had been converted into a holding area housing several high chain-link cages. There were no dogs in the cages today. He had warned the woman who lived in the warehouse about leaving the dogs out in the sun, especially at the height of the August heat.

Lorenzo went to the front door of the warehouse and knocked. He could hear the deep, insistent barks of large dogs coming from behind the door.

He waited, then knocked again. The woman was in there, he knew. She rarely ventured outside.

Lorenzo stood on the stoop for five minutes, sweating, waiting, and rapping his fist on wood. Eventually the woman, a stocky, milky-eyed Korean with wildly unkempt hair, opened the door. She recognized him immediately, as he had visited her the previous week. Through the open door, he smelled ammonia.

'I did!' she said, stamping her foot petulantly, like a child. She wore sneakers without backs.

'I'm just checking up on you to see you did,' said Lorenzo, careful to inject no animosity into his voice, but raising it some so she could hear him. The barking had intensified.

'No dogs outside,' she said. 'All inside. I clean!'

'Where are they now?'

'Right there!' she said, pointing to a hallway. In the center of the hall, set in a cut-out of the drywall, Lorenzo could see a large interior window, glass streaked with saliva and clouded by breath. The barks were coming from behind the glass. The barking, teeth-bared heads of dogs appeared, disappeared, and appeared again.

'Can I come in?' said Lorenzo.

'I did!'

'Need to do my job and confirm that, ma'am.'

The woman shook her head and stepped aside.

'They all in that room?'

'All yes.'

Lorenzo entered the hall. His eyes burned immediately from the ammonia. His lungs burned too. He went to the window and looked through it. Had to be twenty, twenty-five dogs in that room, running around, sniffing at one another, barking at him, wagging their tails at the woman who stood beside him. All were large long-haired shepherd mixes. All had similar brown-black coats. Some appeared to be inbred through generations.

There was some sort of portable kitchen hookup along one wall in there, a trashed, barely cushioned chair and a sofa, looked like it had lost a firefight. Set against another wall was a bed, its sheets rumpled and dirty with grime and hair. This, he guessed, was where the woman slept.

Lorenzo walked down the hall to the open warehouse. Stand-up industrial-sized fans were situated around the warehouse floor, drying the concrete, which had been hosed down. The last time Lorenzo had been here, the floor had been littered with feces. She had taken care of it, as he'd asked her to do.

'I clean shit,' said the woman.

'I see that,' said Lorenzo, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his eyes. He was sickened from the ammonia and could not stand to breathe it much longer. 'You can't have those dogs in here with this ammonia. It's poison.'

'Ammonia for clean,' said the woman, who seemed entirely unaffected by the fumes.

'But it's poison. Do you understand?'

'Yes, poison. That why dogs in room. When no smell, I let dogs out.' The woman looked at Lorenzo with a smile in her eyes. 'Okay, police?'

'You need to keep this place free of clutter and feces,' said Lorenzo, ignoring her remark. 'Let those dogs outside, but not too long in the middle of the day.'

'Too hot.'

'That's right. And put water out in those cages when they're out there too.'

'Okay.'

'I'm gonna leave now,' said Lorenzo. 'But I'll be back.'

'I clean,' said the woman tiredly, looking around the warehouse, making a limp sweeping gesture with her hand.

'Right,' said Lorenzo.

Out in the van, he dry-swallowed two ibuprofens. The ammonia fumes had hastened the return of his headache.

The Korean woman was one of several 'hoarders' he had been introduced to on the job. Generally they were decent people who seemed to love their animals and want to do their best to give them good care. They often lived in filth and maintained little contact with other humans, preferring the company and security of animals. Like the Korean woman, they focused on one breed or mix of animals and sought them out. They considered themselves to be rescuers. Lorenzo was convinced that these people had some sort of mental illness. Mark said it was a form of agoraphobia, and when Lorenzo had asked him what that was, Mark said, 'Fear of the marketplace. You know, from the Greek.'

'From the Greek?' said Lorenzo. 'What Greek?'

'The Greek language,' said Mark. 'The market, as in the agora.'

'So, like, these hoarders, they afraid of goin' out to the Safeway, that's what you're saying?'

'In a way,' said Mark. 'More like they're afraid of seeing people at the Safeway.'

'But if they was to see a bunch of dogs, up on two legs, pushing those shopping carts around the supermarket, they'd be all right with that.'

'Precisely,' said Mark.

Precisely. Mark talked funny, all that extra schooling he'd had. But Mark was all right.

On the way back to the office, Lorenzo stopped at a residence on Kennedy Street, in Northwest, at 6th and Longfellow. The old woman there had been leaving messages on his machine about her cat.

He entered the house and had a seat on the living-room couch while the woman, nearly bald and wearing a housedress, explained the situation to Lorenzo. As she did, an equally old man, wearing a sweater despite the heat, sat beside her, intently watching bare-knuckled Tibetan fist-fights on the cable channel that was playing on the Sony. The curtains had all been drawn, shutting out the afternoon light. A fan blew warm air and dust across the room.

'I figured it was time to do this,' said the woman. 'Queen been slippin' out in the alley and visiting her boyfriends again.'

'Past time,' said the man, his eyes focused on the fights.

'Now, John,' said the lady. 'That little girl is just frisky.'

Lorenzo looked through the screen of the travel box at the green-eyed cat. 'She's a calico, right?'

'Through and through,' said the old lady. 'I appreciate you pickin' her up. I don't have a car and if I did I couldn't see to drive it.'

'I'll take her to the spay clinic,' said Lorenzo. 'It's right next door to my office. They'll do it tonight, and you can have her tomorrow morning.'

'Will you bring her back?'

'Someone will.'

'I want you to bring her back, young man.'

'Yes, ma'am. I'm gonna need a twenty-five-dollar check for the procedure.'

'Shoulda done this a while back,' said the old man. 'Way that cat likes to spread her love around.'

'John,' said the old lady, reaching into her purse for her checkbook.

Five minutes later, Lorenzo went out the door, crossed the concrete porch, and headed down the steps of the row house with the travel box in his hand. He heard two old men on an adjoining porch discussing his presence.

'Why Miss Roberts got police calling on her for? Her great-grandson done somethin' wrong again?'

'That boy already payin' his debt. Anyway, that's no police. That's the dog man, come to take her cat.'

'Take it for what?'

'To fix its privates.'

''Bout time.'

'You should have it done your own self.'

'You should too.'

'I'd be disappointin' a lot of women.'

'Not as many as me.'

Lorenzo placed the box in the back of the van.

After dropping the calico off at the clinic, Lorenzo entered the lobby of the Humane Society office, greeting a couple of his coworkers, Jamie, attractive and gay, and Luanne, plain and straight. A tough white girl, Cindy, sat behind the dispatch desk, radioing a call to a field operative, an ever-present cup of Starbucks before her. Lorenzo rubbed the head of the latest house pet, a previously abused border collie mix named Tulip, who had gotten up out of her bed to greet him.

Down in the basement kennel, Lorenzo checked on the dogs he had brought in recently. All of them had been impounded, taken away from unacceptable living conditions. Most would make good house pets, with retraining and care. For various reasons, some could not live with children, and some could not live with cats or other dogs. A few were beyond rehabilitation. They could never coexist with humans or other animals and would have to be destroyed.

He feared this was the case with Lincoln, a pit he had brought in weeks ago. Lincoln had lived year-round in the paved backyard of a storefront church on 14th Street, between Quincy and Randolph. Lorenzo wondered how someone who preached the word of God could abuse an animal. But the live-in priest at the iglesia had done just that to this dog. Lincoln had been beaten and chained by his owner, and taunted and stoned by neighborhood kids his entire life. He was mercurial, aggressive, and unpredictable. He was a victim, and he could never be socialized.

Lorenzo whistled softly, made a fist, and put it up to the cage. Lincoln came forward, his jaws working furiously, and snapped at Lorenzo's knuckles. Then he retreated to the back of the cage. He looked at Lorenzo shyly, almost apologetically. He seemed to remember Lorenzo as the one who'd taken him away from his hellish existence, but he could not keep himself from trying to bite his hand.

'I ain't mad at you, boy,' said Lorenzo.

Lorenzo took the two flights of stairs to the top floor. He went directly to the office of Irena Tovar, his boss, and dropped into the chair before her desk. Irena was in her late thirties, wore glasses, and had extremely long hair, which she always wore in a single ropy braid. The end of the braid touched the small of her back. She was of Venezuelan descent. Her eyes were almost black and long of lash. Lorenzo loved her like he loved Rachel Lopez. Both had done their part in helping to save his life.

'She did what I asked her to do,' said Lorenzo, speaking of the Korean woman on Mount Olivet.

'Twenty-five dogs is a lot of dogs,' said Irena.

'I heard that. Hard for me to care for one. Least she cleaned the place up. Right now, we got no grounds for abuse charges.'

'Keep checking on her.'

'I plan to.'

Mark Christianson knocked on the frame of the open door.

'Sorry to break in,' he said. Mark was tall and clean shaven, with longish curly black hair and hillbilly sideburns. His rolled-back sleeves revealed wood-hard, tattooed forearms.

'What is it?' said Irena.

'Got a call from a citizen east of the river,' said Mark. 'Man says there's something going on in the woods behind his house. Lotta players, tricked-out cars, like that. Guys walking pit bulls into the woods. Guys carrying coolers and pieces of wood.'

'Did he call MPD?'

'He called us first.'

'Go ahead and alert the police,' said Irena, 'and get down there. Stay in radio contact.'

'You in, Lorenzo?' said Mark, wiggling his eyebrows the way he did when things began to jump.

Lorenzo was already out of his seat.

CHAPTER 7

Melvin Lee drove a 3-Series BMW slowly down an alley bordered by the backs of houses on one side and a large community garden of vegetables and flowers on the other. Past the garden were the deep woods of Fort Dupont Park. Lee and Rico Miller were off E Street and 32nd, between the Anacostia Freeway and Minnesota Avenue, east of the Anacostia River. Up ahead, where the alley came to a dead end, at least a dozen freshly detailed late-model imports were parked on the grass. Also in the group were several vans, SUVs, and high-ton pickups.

'The Way You Move,' that Outkast in heavy summer rotation, was coming from the in-dash. Lee was into it, and the way Rico was moving his head to those bursts of horns, looked like he was into it too. But you couldn't tell if the boy had any joy in him. Only time he smiled was when he was thinking about putting the hurt on someone. Rico was one of those, seemed like he had gone from being a little kid straight to a man, skipped the fun parts in between.

'This alley don't connect to nothing' said Miller, who noticed such things. 'Onlyest way out is the way you came in.'

'Police ain't gonna lock you up for watchin' no fights.'

'Old people live in these houses, you know they ain't got nothin' better to do than look out their windows all day long. They gonna see all these cars, they gonna call the law.'

Instinctively, Lee reached for the joint in Miller's hand, then thought better of it and drew his hand back.

'You can't?' said Miller.

'I'm about due to drop a urine. I drop a positive, I'm gonna be violated like a motherfucker.'

'Your PO is on you?'

'On me hard,' said Lee.

Lee swung the BMW into a space beside a Lexus SUV. Stepping out of the car, they could hear the thump of bass coming from down in the woods. Lee saw a boy, couldn't have been more than eight or nine, standing around the vehicles, a neighborhood kid, most likely, paid by someone to keep an eye out for the law. Lee handed him five dollars and told him to look after his ride. The boy positioned himself beside the car.

Lee and Miller entered the woods. Almost immediately, the land graded off and dropped to a steep pitch. Down below, they could see a clearing, and then the ground rose up again. In the clearing there was much activity and many men.

'There they go,' said Lee. 'Down in that valley.'

'That's a valley?' said Miller, who had never been in the woods, outside of driving through Rock Creek Park, in his life.

'A ravine, then,' said Lee, who was nearly as inexperienced and uncomfortable in this setting as Miller, but wouldn't admit it. 'Somethin' like that.'

They came into the clearing. Gamblers and spectators stood around drinking, smoking weed, and discussing past and upcoming matches. A bookie sitting in a folding portable camping chair took bets and cash, and wrote the wagers in a notebook. Another man sold beer, malt liquor, and wine concoctions from out of a cooler. A boom box played bomb-squad-style hip-hop. There were few women in the crowd.

On the fringes, dogfighters handled their animals, pit bulls with game-cropped ears, all leashed or in cages. Many were being scrubbed down with soap solutions, as was required, since dogs were sometimes sent into the ring with nausea-inducing chemicals on their coats. A card table had been set up to the side; laid out on it were first aid supplies: IV kits, sutures, alcohol preps, and sponges. Syringes, to be used for injectable antibiotics brought along by the handlers, were available as a courtesy as well. Also complimentary were vitamins and supplements: B12, and liver and iron extracts. Beside the table were a couple of scales.

The ring itself was constructed of wood and had been transported in sections and assembled in the clearing. It was twenty feet square, thirty-six inches high, and had hinged gates in two of its opposing corners. Its floor was covered in green outdoor carpet stained with blood.

Lee and Miller moved through the crowd. Lee nodded at those he knew and made minimal eye contact with those he did not recognize. Residents of all four quadrants of the city were welcome here regardless of gang or business affiliation. This event was for profit and relaxation. The settling of beefs or the initiation of any kind of conflict was discouraged. But things happened when gazes lingered too long.

Lee bought a couple of malt liquors for him and his boy. He then placed a bet with the bookie after examining the dogs that were next up on the unofficial card. Lee put fifty dollars on a black pit named Mamba, due to fight a tan-and-white named Lucy. He was advised to do so by an obese man he'd seen around the clubs, had a copy of the Scratch Line in his hand. Fat Tony seemed like he knew his stuff. Plus, Lee liked the way that dog looked, black and strong. Also, Lee liked its name.

The music was turned off, a signal that the fight was about to begin. The spectators and players gathered around the perimeter of the ring. In the pen, both dogs had been placed in their corners by their handlers.

A referee, dressed casually, the same as everyone else, stepped in and ordered the cornermen out of the pit. Both got out of the fighting area but held their dogs fast by their collars from outside the gates. The referee instructed them to face their dogs.

The dogs were released. They ran to the center of the ring and clashed. The crowd was loud and intense. They laughed and called out for murder and blood. The dogs were virtually silent. They fought methodically, battling for position and dominance. Both were taken down and both sprang back up. Both had been conditioned for strength and endurance with cat mills, carpet mills, and spring poles. Both wanted to please their owners and defeat their opponent. Only one could emerge victorious.

It was Lucy, in the end, who won, her jaw furiously clamped onto Mamba's face. Finally, after a word from the referee, Lucy's handler used parting sticks, which were nothing but ax handles, to force his dog off the other. Lucy drew back. Mamba's right eye had been ripped from its socket; it hung by nerves, just barely connected, halfway down his cheek.

Lee was angry for listening to the fat man, and for picking the dog because of its name, an amateur play. Miller, for his part, had enjoyed the fight. His dick had got hard in his South Pole sweats when that tan dog had bit right down on that other dog's face.

Mamba, confused and in agony, rubbed his snout on the bloody carpet, trying to do something about his useless, dangling eye. Mamba's handler stood over the dog, berating him, calling him names. Then he picked the dog up and cradled him in his arms. He walked from the ring and headed toward the first aid table.

'You ready to book on out?' said Miller.

'Not yet,' said Lee, looking with contempt at the owner holding his crippled animal. 'I'm gonna win my money back first.'

'Mamba wasn't shit,' said Rico Miller.

Lee nodded, thinking, Fuck that animal. Let it suffer some. Cur deserves to suffer for showing no heart.

Lorenzo Brown and Mark Christianson took the Tahoe, the newest vehicle in the Humane fleet, across town, because it had the best ride and also because of the CD player in its dash. Lorenzo was a radio man, strictly PGC or KYS, but Mark liked a kind of rock that could rarely be found on the airwaves anymore. Mark called it 'punk before punk.' When they paired up, Lorenzo deferred to Mark's seniority and allowed him to drive and control the music. Mark had put Fun House into the player and turned it up.

Lorenzo looked over at Mark, normally easy mannered and genial, his face now set, his jaw tight. Mark got that way when they were making calls like this one. More than Lorenzo, he was totally committed to, some would say obsessed with, protecting animals. His dislike of animal abusers in general and dogfighters in particular bordered on hate.

But Lorenzo could understand it. Mark had been through the worst of it, had patrolled these streets during the most violent phase of the fight-dog fad, and had seen some very bad things. All while Lorenzo had been serving his time.

Mark had first worked for PETA, straight out of college, but quickly grew tired of meetings, fund-raising, and desk duty. He then took a job at the shelter, picking up strays and biters, working the 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift, going alone at night into some of the most run-down sections of the city. It wasn't long before he became a Humane officer, wanting to take his mission to the next level.

This was the midnineties, when the fight-dog craze was at its peak. Having a pit or a rottweiler had become a symbol of power and fashion, a hip-hop accessory, like having the platinum chains or the nicest car. Pit bulls, in particular, seemed to be everywhere. Never mind that few of their owners knew how to care for them or had the desire to learn. Dogs, especially those who had lost fights, were disposable, like a shirt friends ridiculed because it had gone out of style. Mark found dogs shot in alleys, lying curbside with broken necks, thrown off roofs, and disposed of in Dumpsters with the trash.

To do his policing, he went into neighborhoods, apartment complexes, and Section Eight housing projects where his was the only white face for miles around. Places like First Terrace, around M and North Capitol, where the theft of dogs was common, and Simple City, at the time a legendary breeding ground for violent crime. Worst of all was 50th Place in Lincoln Heights, in Far Northeast. There the most serious dogfighters resided and held their matches. Dogs were flown in from Florida, with thousands invested in the animals, many paid for by drug money. The owners had much to protect. Back in that cul-de-sac, Mark encountered some of the scariest people he had ever seen.

He was physically threatened, ridiculed, and called, alternately, a faggot, a punk, and a bitch. The threats of violence bothered him, but not the names. He knew he was on the right side. He had suffered from stress-related weight loss and sleeplessness during this period, but he hung with the job.

And then time eased the situation. The culture began to change. It became less fashionable to own a fighting dog. Some handlers became sickened at the injuries and death. Others just grew old. The gangster romance thing had its window, and that window stayed open, it seemed, only for the young. Mark knew dogfighters who had quit because they'd started families, or because their women had insisted they get out of the game, or simply because they knew they couldn't jail.

The laws changed too. Failure to provide veterinary care to an injured animal was now a misdemeanor. More important, there was a new felony dogfighting law on the books. One judge in particular, down at the District Courthouse, was known to give offenders actual jail time. The law was often invoked to help put violent multi-offenders — domestic abusers, rapists, and the like — behind bars when other charges had failed. Its implementation had made a dent in the dogfighting in the city.

Some offenders had gone on to related but less risky ventures. Many bred and sold pit bull puppies. Others trained and engaged dogs in professional weight pulls, a different kind of wagering activity that did not involve violence. Some dogs trained and bred for weight pulls even wore harnesses lined with sheepskin so the pressure would not cut their coats. Lorenzo Brown was not opposed to such contests, as the dogs, though powered up on steroids, were treated with relative care. Mark, predictably, was passionately opposed to animal exploitation of any kind.

The two of them were mostly on the same page, though. Their outlooks were different, but only by degree. There was still plenty of dogfighting and animal abuse in the city to keep them mutually focused.

Mark Christianson took the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and turned left on Minnesota Avenue. Lorenzo reached for the CD player and turned down the volume. They were nearing their destination. He radioed in to the office and asked for the whereabouts of the police. The MPD had been called, but Cindy at the dispatch desk did not know if officers had arrived.

Mark hooked a right onto the residential block of E Street and drove east. He went back into the alley and slowed the truck. Up ahead, where the alley dead-ended at a field, they saw many cars. A boy stood beside a silver 330i. He straightened as he caught sight of their blue uniforms through the windshield of their truck.

'It's goin' on,' said Mark.

'They got a lookout too.'

Mark and Lorenzo were unarmed. They had a choke pole, a wire noose mounted on a stick to control the heads of extremely aggressive dogs, in the back of the Tahoe. They had canisters of pepper spray that they never carried on their persons and rarely used. Once sprayed on an impounded animal, the annoying, burning toxin was difficult to get out of the vans and trucks.

Pepper spray was just one reason that Mark and Lorenzo preferred to work without police. Police were quick to use the spray, then leave the Humane officers to deal with the after-effects. Some police, especially those who did not own dogs themselves, were also quick to use their sidearms. Recently, Lorenzo had seen a 6D officer empty his magazine into a teeth-baring, saliva-dripping rottie that, with patience, could have been subdued. Lorenzo had the impression that this particular police just wanted to shoot his gun.

Lack of police was fine, long as you didn't need them. But as Mark and Lorenzo went down the alley, counting the cars up ahead, they both realized they could use some help today.

'Pull over,' said Lorenzo. 'I want to talk to that kid.'

'How do you want to do this?' said Mark, sweat on his forehead, though the air conditioning was blowing full force on his face.

'Your call,' said Lorenzo.

'I'll go in.'

'Figured you would. You got your binos?'

'My camera too.'

'I'll get a record of these license plates,' said Lorenzo, grabbing his clipboard and pen.

'Right,' said Mark, parking the Tahoe, putting the tree up in park.

'You get burned, you come on back. You need help, you holler.'

'I will.'

'Or we could both stay up here,' said Lorenzo. 'Wait for the law.'

Mark, reaching for his binoculars and camera in a pack behind his seat, did not answer. Both of them got out of the truck.

'You,' said Lorenzo, pointing at the kid, who was still standing beside the silver BMW.

The kid stepped away from the car. Lorenzo went to him.

'Take off,' said Lorenzo. 'Police on their way, and you don't want to be here for that. You did what you got paid to do. Now leave, hear?'

The kid gave him a tough shoulder roll before he walked off, a slight dip in his stride.

Lorenzo watched Mark enter the woods, stepping with care. When he looked back to check on the kid, he saw him booking down the dirt alley. Lorenzo knew that the kid would cut into the woods as soon as he was out of Lorenzo's sight. He'd go down there and warn the players that the dog man was here, which meant the police were on the way. That's what he would have done at this boy's age. Lorenzo didn't blame him. They all had to play their roles. Besides, the object was to break up the fights and, for now at least, spare those animals some misery. The kid, no matter his intent, was going to get it done.

Lorenzo walked the alley, quickly recording the license plate numbers of the attendees, and the makes and models of the cars. The way that kid was running, he and Mark didn't have much time.

CHAPTER 8

Must be some old heads runnin' this thing, thought Melvin Lee, 'cause they're spinning that old-time stuff out the box. Amerikka's Most Wanted, Ice Cube strong and proud, with that production, sounded like Public Enemy and them, behind it. The record had come out back around '90, when Melvin Lee was first getting into the game. That was some good times back then, like everything was waiting for him up ahead. He'd had some dreams.

If he was up on some blunt right now, this day here would be about perfect. Since he'd come out, though, he couldn't even get his head up, for fear they'd put him back in. Truth was, he wasn't supposed to be fraternizing with these kinds of people either. But what'd they expect, that a man was supposed to stop having fun?

Least the boy, Rico, looked like he was enjoying his self for a change. He wasn't a laugh a minute, but Melvin Lee liked having him around. The way Rico looked up to him, he had to admit, it made Melvin feel important, like all this bullshit he'd done in his life had been worth something.

Lee had fathered two children of his own, what they called beef babies, with a couple of different women, when he'd gone to the mattresses, Corleone-style, all because of some violent conflicts he'd got himself in. He had no contact with those kids at all. He had no idea where they stayed at and didn't want to know.

But hanging with Rico, it was like he was a father to the boy, in a way. Rico was devoted to him, as any son would be. Too devoted, sometimes. Once in a while, when someone would look at Lee the wrong way, Rico was all too ready to step in, take it to the next level. When that happened, Lee had to hold him back. Wasn't no reason to hurt someone, you didn't have to. That was something you learned with age. Nice to know that the boy was ready, though. No-fear motherfucker like Rico, it was good to have him on your side.

'You goin' with that brown girl?' said Miller. He meant the brown pit with the white face, being led by her handler to her corner of the ring.

'She gonna change my luck,' said Lee. He had picked her over her opponent because her name was Sheila. For a while, he was fucking this redbone who had the same name. Lee had already lost the two fights he'd bet.

The man controlling the box stopped the music. Both dogs got settled in their corners. The referee ordered the cornermen out of the pit.

A kid came into the clearing, went directly to the ring, and yelled, 'Hold up!' The referee put his hand up, signaling the cornermen to pause while he found out what this was about. The kid, who Lee recognized as the boy guarding the cars, was short of breath. He said something to the referee that was hard to make out but that put a reaction on the man's face.

'All right, everybody,' said the ref, loudly so that all could hear. 'We got to clear out. Dog men are here, and the police are on their way. Move!'

Lee turned around and looked up at the rise. He saw a white boy in a blue uniform, standing beside a tree. The sun flashed for a moment off something in the white boy's hand. Wasn't no chrome, 'cause the dog men weren't allowed to carry weapons. Had to be a camera or binoculars, something like that.

Around them, supplies were boxed, tables were folded, and the ring began to be disassembled. Dogs were led away. Men were cursing, killing their beverages, and taking last hits off their smokes. Others were crowded around the bookie, collecting their bets. Lee went there, waited his turn, and got his money. When he was done counting it, he head-motioned Rico. The two of them went up into the woods, climbing the grade the way they had come.

Mark Christianson stood beside an oak on the rise, taking photos through his digital camera, its lens zoomed to the maximum. He was focusing on the dog handlers, the referee, and the bookmaker rather than the spectators, though he caught many of them in the frame.

Mark had found his vantage point and remained hidden behind the wide trunk of the oak for as long as possible. He had first looked through his binoculars, more powerful than the lens of his camera, to familiarize himself with the people and the scene.

Immediately he had recognized Fat Tony Jamison, a former dogfighter turned oddsmaker and consultant, moving his 350-pound frame slowly through the area, working the crowd. Fat Tony had been around way too long. Then Mark saw Antoine Loomis, who had a pit on a leash and was apparently still in the trade. For a three-month stretch back in '97, 'Twan' Loomis had run fights out of a condemned apartment building at 49th and A, in Southeast. He had always been one step ahead of the law. When a determined Mark finally did gain entrance to the apartment house, after Loomis had abandoned the site, he had found the cinder-block-and-concrete basement where the fights had been staged. Damp, mildewed copies of Your Friend and Mine, The Pit Bull Chronicle, Face Your Dogs, and other publications were spread about the floor. Also on the floor were broken malt liquor bottles, cigarette butts, feces, matches, bottle caps, and syringes. Blood was streaked on the walls.

Mark took a photograph of Loomis and his pit, checking the digital image for clarity. He wanted to be sure he had him on record. Loomis was one of the bad, stupid ones who had been responsible for the abuse and murder of many dogs. He had also been charged as an accessory to a homicide, but the charges had not stuck. The federal prosecutor with whom Mark worked was building a case against Loomis. The photograph taken here was not a revelation, but it would help, someday, in rounding out the file that would eventually get Loomis off the street.

When the boy came into the clearing, Mark stepped out fully from behind the tree and took as many photographs as possible in the time he had left. The camp was breaking quickly, and the participants began to come toward him up the wooded rise. He stayed where he was for a few more minutes, even as they passed by him, even as they began to comment on his presence, taunt him, and call him names. He wasn't frightened. He was used to this. But he figured he better get to the Tahoe and back up Lorenzo. He was worried for Lorenzo's safety, but, more than that, he was concerned that Lorenzo might lose his temper.

Lorenzo was a good worker. Mark wanted to make sure that he stayed on the job. Indeed, Irena Tovar had charged Mark with the responsibility of keeping Lorenzo straight.

Mark climbed the rise.

Lorenzo Brown, standing by a silver BMW, watched the men coming out of the woods, players and participants alike, walking dogs to vans and SUVs, carrying equipment, sections of ring, and folding tables and chairs. Some dipped casually and a few moved hurriedly. Some walked right through the community garden that the neighborhood residents had planted. None ran. The dog players and handlers had seen the white Humane officer in the woods and saw Lorenzo in uniform now. They knew that both officers had limited power and that they were not police.

Soon Mark appeared at the tree line, followed by many others, some of whom were making derogatory comments in Mark's direction. Mark, as usual, seemed unfazed. He stepped around the community garden and met Lorenzo.

'You okay?'

'I got some pictures,' said Mark, sweaty, pink-faced, jacked on adrenaline.

Lorenzo looked around the field. Cars and trucks were pulling out, heading down the dirt alley. Mark was staring at Antoine Loomis, who was letting his animal into the backseat of a large black Mercedes sedan.

'You need to leave him be,' said Lorenzo, recognizing the look in Mark's eye. 'He don't like lectures.'

'I'm just gonna have a few words with him.'

'You ain't gonna convert Twan, that's what you're thinking. Some judge gonna do that eventually.'

'Just going talk to him, is all.'

'It's not on you,' said Lorenzo, but Mark was already off, heading toward Loomis.

Lorenzo was intending to go to the Tahoe, radio in, and check on the status of the MPD, when he saw a man and a young man coming toward him. He recognized the older of the two and tried to place him. As he was doing this, Lorenzo realized that he had been leaning against the silver BMW. He moved off the car.

The two got nearer, and it came to Lorenzo who the older one was: Melvin Lee. Lee and Lorenzo had both come up in Park View. Lee had worked for Deacon Taylor, done time, come uptown, and was rumored to be working for Deacon again. Lee had made himself a rep when he was young. But looking at him now, Lorenzo realized that prison had broken him, even if Lee did not know this himself. Lee and his running partner stopped a few feet shy of Lorenzo.

Lee was all arms and legs, with a small torso, as if God had run out of the right size the day he'd made him. Lee's head was tiny, and his eyes bulged slightly. He looked like something that crawled up a wall. He wore a baseball cap cocked sideways on his head. He wore the oversize jeans. He was trying for that youth thing, but it was never going to work for him again. Man his age, to be dressed that way, it was just pathetic. He was going for down, but the vibe he put out was defeat.

The boy standing beside Lee had slack posture and nothing eyes.

'Dog man.' Lee looked Lorenzo over. 'What, you done lost your mind or somethin'?'

Lorenzo did not cut his eyes away, nor did he stare with any sort of malice at Lee.

Lee stepped in. His breath smelled of alcohol and onions. 'Someone give you permission to touch my whip?'

Your whip? What'd you do to get it? You ain't never worked an honest day in your life.

'Didn't realize I was touchin' it,' said Lorenzo. Then he said something he never would have said, to anyone he was not close to, in his youth: 'I apologize.'

Lee looked over his shoulder at the boy, then back at Lorenzo. 'Now he gonna 'pologize. You hear that, Rico? After he done rubbed his dog-smellin' self against my shit.'

The boy smiled, revealing teeth and gums that no dentist had ever touched. It reminded Lorenzo of the way an animal might smile, when it was hunting another animal, in a cartoon. Maybe it was the boy's face. Thin, long, and lightly bearded. Only thing missing was the sheep's clothes.

'You remember me?' said Lee.

Sure. I punked your ass out once in a club. You thought you could step to me, and I put you down with my eyes. You weren't shit then. You less than shit now. So you just keep talking, if it makes you look tall and strong to this boy.

Lorenzo nodded, still showing no emotion.

Lee looked him over. 'What happened to you? They turn you out in there?'

Lorenzo did not answer.

'What, you forget how to speak?'

I don't need to. You don't mean nothin' to me.

Lorenzo looked past Lee, at Loomis's Benz. Loomis was out of the car, up in Mark's face, his chest almost touching Mark's. One of Loomis's partners had come around the car and was heading toward Mark too.

'Look at me, motherfucker,' said Lee. 'I'm talkin' to you.'

No need for this, little man. You only get one chance to break bad on a man, and you had yours.

'I got to get goin',' said Lorenzo.

'We ain't done here.'

'Excuse me,' said Lorenzo, stepping around Lee. He couldn't help brushing the boy's shoulder as he passed. The way it felt, rigid, it was like he was touching a corpse.

'I'm gonna see you again,' said Lee to Lorenzo's back.

Lorenzo crossed the field to Loomis's car.

Now Loomis and his partner were both tight in on Mark, who was holding his ground. Mark was keeping his pleasant half smile, that game face he used when he talked to everyone on the job, no matter what he was saying. Loomis's partner, big boy with lineman guns coming out his T-shirt, and Loomis himself, looked like they were both ready to kick Mark's ass. Their dog, in the back of the Benz, had its head out the rear window. It was barking, growling, and baring its teeth.

'How's everyone doin' today?' said Lorenzo, stepping close to the group, speaking in a friendly, even tone.

Loomis studied Lorenzo, then stood back and took a calming breath.

'Your boy just talkin' too much shit,' said Loomis. 'I'm fixin' to introduce him to my right fist.'

'Ain't no need for that,' said Lorenzo, pulling on the sleeve of Mark's shirt, moving him out of reach of Loomis's partner.

'That's what I'm sayin',' said Loomis. 'He ain't got no call to talk to me with that kind of disrespect. Askin' me, Are you aware of this, and, Are you aware of that. Yeah, I'm aware, motherfucker. And you about to be aware that you fucked with the wrong man.'

'He don't mean nothin' personal,' said Lorenzo. 'He's just doin' his job. Just like you and your friend here, and me. We're all just looking to get along.'

Loomis, the rage gone out of him, lowered his voice to a mumble. 'I got enough stress without this bullshit.'

'I heard that,' said Lorenzo.

The BMW drove by them, Lee and the one called Rico smiling at Lorenzo as they passed. The rest of the cars began to pass them too. Loomis and the big man got into the Benz without further incident, the pit bull still barking itself crazy in the backseat, and left as well. Soon it was just Lorenzo and Mark standing in the alley, with only their Tahoe left in the clearing. A couple of elderly men had come out the back of their houses and were surveying the scene.

'We do anything here?' said Lorenzo.

'We hit the pause button,' said Mark, wiping sweat off his forehead with a damp sleeve. 'Maybe stopped a couple of animals from getting torn up.'

'Today.'

A Seventh District cruiser came down the alley toward them. The driver was taking his time.

'Here comes the cavalry,' said Mark.

Lorenzo shook his head and smiled. 'What you say to Twan to get him so riled?'

'I was just telling him about the dogfighting law we got in this city. It's a felony now, you know?'

'For real?'

'I was enlightening him.'

'Looked like he was responding in a real positive way.'

'You hadn't stepped in, I would have brought him around to my way of thinking. I mean, he was practically eating out of my hand.'

'Looked to me, way both of those boys were crowded around you, that the two of them was gettin' ready to hand you your ass.'

'That was a group hug.'

Two officers, a black and a white, got out of the cruiser. They walked toward Mark and Lorenzo.

'You want to talk to them?' said Mark.

'You do it,' said Lorenzo, handing Mark the clipboard. 'I got a little problem interfacing with the police.'

CHAPTER 9

Rachel Lopez sat on a living-room sofa in a home in Landover, Maryland, with a woman named Nardine Carlson. It was late in the afternoon, but Nardine, puffy eyed and disheveled, looked as if she had just woken up.

Nardine Carlson lived with her children and grandmother in Kent Village, a development of houses and apartments in various configurations and conditions. Nardine's place was on a trash-littered street of duplexes, where the cars outside the houses were much nicer than the houses themselves.

When Rachel had pulled her Honda up to the front of Nardine's house, she recognized a fat, unattractive man leaning against a new German import, talking to a cute younger girl wearing shorts that laced crisscross style up the front. The fat man, Dennis Palmer, went by the name of Big Boy on the street. He wore a wife-beater and was rolling out of it in all directions.

'Hey, Dennis,' said Rachel as she walked past him and the girl, Nardine's file in her hand.

'Miss Lopez,' said Dennis.

'Everything okay?' said Rachel, still walking.

'Don't worry, I'm still up at the Friendly's.'

'That's good. You must be doing all right, what with that new car and all.'

'Yeah, well,' said Dennis, 'you know.'

Rachel did not stop to talk to him. She didn't have to, as he was no longer on paper. His supervision period had ended six months earlier, and her involvement with him was done. Also, she didn't like him. He had a history of abuse toward women and, though he still held a job at an ice cream parlor, was probably re-involved in the sale of drugs. When she saw him, Big Boy Palmer always seemed to be around young, pretty girls. At a glance, it was unexplainable, as he was about as ugly as a man could be. But Rachel knew that certain kinds of women went for the players over the squares every time.

'I'll see you again, Miss Lopez,' called Palmer.

Yes, thought Rachel. Me or someone like me, for sure.

In the duplex, Nardine's grandmother, tired and light of bone, offered Rachel some iced tea. Rachel declined. The grandmother left Rachel in the living room in the company of Nardine and her two children, a six-year-old girl she was just now getting acquainted with and an eight-year-old boy. She was closer to the boy because she had spent more time with him than she had with the girl. Nardine had known her daughter for only a month before going off to do her time.

The children sat on a shag carpet before a television set, playing PS2. There were snack wrappers strewn around them, along with empty bottles of orange soda and Sierra Mist. The girl had her hand in a tube of Pringles now. Her other hand worked a controller. The kids were playing a game involving criminals, prostitutes, and guns. Points were given for shooting a police officer. The sound track to the game included music from Scarface.

'It's sunny out,' said Rachel, saying it to Nardine as if she were giving her some news. The curtains had been drawn, and it was dark in the room.

'They don't wanna go outside,' said Nardine, reading Rachel's implication correctly. 'They just wanna play that game.'

Rachel nodded, not pushing the issue, knowing it would do no good. It wasn't her job to raise other people's kids. Nardine didn't look like she had seen much daylight herself.

'How's the job search going?'

'It's hard.'

'I know it is. But you still have to do it.'

'I went up to the MacDonald's like you told me to. Saw that manager, Mr Andrews?'

'And?'

'They ain't have but one shift open. I can't work those morning hours. Kids be goin' back to school next month, and I need to be here to see them off. That's important, right?'

'What's important now is that you find a job,' said Rachel. 'Your grandmother can see the kids off to school.'

Nardine looked blankly at the carpet and breathed through her open mouth.

'Did Mr Andrews offer you the position?' said Rachel.

'He said that if I could do those morning hours, then he would give me a chance.'

'Well then, you need to get back over there and tell him you'd like to take the job.'

'I'm sorry, Miss Lopez. I am just not a morning kinda person—'

'Neither am I. But I still get up and go to work.'

'That's you, all right? I ain't never claim to be perfect or nothin' like it.' Nardine balled her fist and rabbit-punched her own thigh. 'Why you gotta press me like this?'

Rachel stared at her a bit harder now. Nardine looked away. She was too thin and had bad color and foul breath. She was irritable. These were signs that she was back on drugs.

'It's hard,' said Nardine, her voice trailing off.

'I know it is,' said Rachel.

I fall down too. I fail, just like you.

'Miss Lopez, I don't know if I can do this.'

'You can try. Now, you need to get yourself to work. And there's something else.'

'What?'

'You have to get over to the clinic'

'Again?'

'You have to drop urines regularly. You know this. You haven't done it for a while.'

Nardine lowered her head and began to cry. Her shoulders shook and tears dropped into her lap. Rachel allowed her to cry without comment. It could have been an act or it could have been real. It made no difference, really, in the end.

'Mommy, why you sad?' said the daughter.

'Just play your game, girl,' said Nardine with an angry slashing motion of her hand.

Rachel had fewer female offenders than she did males, but her female cases tended to take up a disproportionate amount of her time. Women were the most difficult offenders to reform. They often had children and leaned toward relationships with nonproductive men. In terms of their pasts, they came with the most baggage. Most of Rachel's female offenders had been sexually abused, either by family members or the boyfriends of their mothers, in their childhood and early-teen years. This, and their environment, had led them to drugs and drug addiction. They turned to scams, shoplifting, and prostitution to finance their habits, and graduated to crimes like armed robbery. Since the mideighties, at the acceleration point of the urban drug epidemic, the female prison population had more than tripled. The negative effects of this rippled out; two-thirds of incarcerated women had at least one minor child on the outside.

In prison, many of these women received drug addiction treatment, and got clean, for the first time in their adult lives. But when they came out, the situation for females was even more harrowing than it was for males. Few had held jobs in the past, and some were simply unemployable. A federal law enacted in 1996 imposed a lifetime ban on female offenders from receiving family welfare benefits and food stamps. No wonder many of these women believed they were better off behind bars.

Rachel thought there was some truth to this, for women and for men. Certainly for those who were beyond reform, or for those who were simply unprepared to deal with the straight world ever again, prison was a 'better place.' No question, it was easier to jail, for some, than it was to live on the street. Many offenders she had known, those who were clearly not going to make it, had spoken almost wistfully about going back to prison. In a couple of cases, she had told these offenders to violate themselves, go back to jail, get fat and recharged, and then come out and try it again. Many, of course, never did come out.

What she wouldn't do, what she could never do, was believe that supervision and reform did not work just because they did not work for everyone. If she lost faith in the possibility of redemption, then what she did on a daily basis made no sense.

'I'm gonna try to get over to that clinic next week, Miss Lopez,' said Nardine.

'Tomorrow would be better,' said Rachel. 'Okay?'

Lorenzo Brown and Mark Christianson sat in the Tahoe, idling on M Street, Northeast, off 3rd, looking at a used-car lot surrounded by a high fence topped with concertina wire. Nearby stood the husk of the old Washington Coliseum, its arched roofline rising above the landscape. A pack of kids rode their bikes down the street, turning to cool-eye the uniformed men in the truck.

Mark pulled the case report on the car lot's owner, Patricio Martinez, and studied it.

'Man still got Cujo back in there?' said Lorenzo.

'You mean Lucky.'

'How many Spanish you figure call their dogs Lucky?'

'They do like that name.' Mark closed the file. 'C'mon.'

They locked the truck and walked across the street, entering the open gates of the lot. The business sold old cars, none guaranteed, all with available financing at an exorbitant rate. Ford Tempos, low-end Nissans, Pontiac Fieros, Geos, and Chrysler products from the eighties and early nineties were parked in rows, some unwashed, all with prices soaped on their windshields. Most went for under a thousand dollars.

A young Hispanic man came out of the garage beside the lot office and eyed the men in uniform as he rubbed his greasy hands on a shop rag. The man was dark and small.

'Patricio around?' said Mark, that pleasant smile on his face.

'Offi',' said the young man.

'Can you get him for me?'

The man made no move to do a thing. They all stood there for a minute or so, Mark smiling and the young guy rubbing his hands on the rag and staring implacably at Mark and sometimes Lorenzo. Then a rotund middle-aged Hispanic wearing a gold chain decorating his neck and hairy chest, visible through an almost completely unbuttoned sport shirt, came out of the office to greet them.

'Mark Christianson,' said Mark, extending his hand, which the rotund man, Patricio Martinez, shook. 'From the Humane Society.'

'I remember you, sure.'

'Here to check up on Lucky. You mind if we get a look at him?'

'Yeah,' said Patricio Martinez in a jovial way, 'sure, sure.'

Patricio made a come-on gesture with his hand and moved his bulk between the rows of cars. Lorenzo and Mark followed.

Lorenzo could see Mark's jaw tightening behind his smile. The keeping of guard dogs got Mark's back up. Animals kept in auto parts graveyards, used-car lots, warehouses, and retail establishments had no care or companionship after business hours. On the days that those places were closed, or during act-of-god weather events, many had none at all. During big snowstorms, Mark went out while the rest of the city was at a standstill and fed, watered, and checked on dogs like Lucky. In fact, Mark had ripped his pants climbing over the concertina wire of this very lot to check on Lucky during the blizzard of 2003.

They turned a corner and came upon a cage, the back of which gave to an open bay door. Lucky smelled their presence. He came out, galloping like a horse, and began to bark, stopping in front of the links, baring his teeth at Mark and Lorenzo. It was a deep, booming bark, fitting for the dog's size. Lucky was the biggest rottweiler Lorenzo had ever seen.

'Looks like he remembers you, man,' said Lorenzo. 'From that time you came down here in the snow. They say once you feed 'em, they love you for life.'

Mark ignored him and whistled softly, the way he liked to do when he approached an animal, making a loose fist and putting his knuckles close to the links. The dog snapped at his fist and continued to bark. Mark kept his hand in place and looked around the cage, checking for water and cleanliness. Brown streaks, left from recently shoveled feces, were visible on the asphalt. Greenhead flies had lit on the streaks. Flies, in bunches, were parked on Lucky's gnarled ears as well.

'That's a boy,' said Patricio Martinez, looking fondly at the beast. 'Goddamn Lucky, he's good.'

'You see those feces?' said Mark.

'He no got fleas!'

'Feces,' said Mark. 'Dog shit.'

'Dog shit, sure. I clean it up.'

'But you didn't clean it up good enough. After you shovel it, you have to hose it away completely. Otherwise you get all those flies. And then the flies get on Lucky's ears. They get inside Lucky's ears, you understand?'

'Sure, sure.'

Mark withdrew his hand, knowing the dog would not quiet down in the presence of his master, Lucky being Lucky, doing his job. Then Mark gave instructions to Martinez as to what could be done about the fly problem and the dog's ears. Mark said he would drop by a solution to rub on Lucky's ears in the next few days, to get him started on the treatment. Mark wrote out another Official Notification report so that Martinez would know he was serious.

'And you need to get that dog neutered,' said Mark.

'Eh?'

Mark made a scissoring motion with his fingers down by his own crotch.

Martinez pursed his lips in distaste. 'I'm not gonna do that to Lucky.'

Having those big balls on him, thought Lorenzo, that's what keeps old Lucky angry. Unlike Mark, Brown wasn't going to put his hand anywhere near that animal. Pit bulls got all the negative press, and they could do some serious damage, but in Lorenzo's experience, unneutered male rotties were the least trustworthy, most aggressive dogs of any type. This one here had a head the size of a buffalo's too.

Mark truly believed that there was no such thing as a bad animal. Lorenzo had to remind him that they were animals. Mark just trusted them too much sometimes.

'Get him fixed,' said Mark, finishing off the form and handing it to Martinez. 'We don't need any more unwanted animals in this city.'

'Lucky's good,' said Martinez, wiping at a tear in the corner of his eye that was not there.

'I'll be seeing you again,' said Mark.

Lorenzo and Mark walked out of the lot and crossed the street to the truck.

'Lucky was really feelin' your love vibe back there,' said Lorenzo.

'You lived like that, you'd be angry too.'

'I bet no one steals none of those hoopties out of that lot, though.'

'Why would they?' said Mark. 'I wouldn't take one of those cars if Martinez was gonna give it to me for free.'

'True.'

'Lucky's just lonely.'

'Maybe you ought to come down one night, crawl into that cage, and lie down beside him. Sing him a lullaby, somethin' like that.'

'You think?'

'Show him that scissor sign while you're at it,' said Lorenzo. 'The one that says, I'm about to cut off your nut sack.'

Mark chuckled. 'Maybe I will.'

'See how old Lucky responds to that.'

Nixon Velasco had been working as a day laborer for the past three weeks at a construction site on North Capitol Street, south of New York Avenue. Rachel Lopez had told him she was going to visit him on the job sometime during the week and that she would be speaking to his foreman about his performance. She had known which day she would do this, but she had purposely not given him the exact information. She wanted the threat of her visit to be his incentive to show up for work daily and on time.

'Como te va?' said Rachel, using her Spanish, knowing he would answer in any English he could muster, a game the two of them played.

'Good,' said Velasco, a short, barrel-chested man with native features and night black hair. His skin, already dark, had been deeply coppered by the sun. 'Is okay.'

They were off to the side of the site, by a trailer. Some of the other men had blown kisses at Rachel as she'd arrived, but Velasco had silenced them with his eyes. Later on, Velasco would tell them that Rachel was his probation officer. On future visits, the men would keep their eyes on their work and make no comments as she passed through the site.

'Esta trabajando duro, eh?' said Rachel.

A thin smile came to Velasco's lips. His face carried a film of dirt. His tan T-shirt was brown with sweat. He stank of perspiration and last night's beer. She could see the answer to her question in front of her. But he didn't take offense. It was pleasant to look at her, and he felt that she truly was watching out for his best interests. Besides, she was only doing her job.

'Yes,' said Velasco, preferring to answer her, mostly, in English, telling her in his own way that he knew of the mixture in her blood. 'I work har'.'

'Esta estable tu trabajo?'

Velasco nodded. 'I come every day.'

'Very good,' said Rachel. 'Recibi los resultados de tu prueba de drogras.'

'The clinic?'

Rachel nodded. 'You dropped a negative. Esta limpio.'

'I no use the drug.'

'Keep it up. You're doing fine.'

Maybe, thought Rachel Lopez, you'll make it this time. Velasco, named Nixon by his father in honor of the man revered by many Hispanics, had seen plenty of trouble in his youth. A member of the old Brown Union gang in Columbia Heights, he had done a stretch for multiple drug offenses, been paroled, and gone back in on an aggravated assault conviction, which had been pled down. By the time he had returned to the street, his former gang members were gone, erased by death, prison, or deportation. Newer, more violent Hispanic gangs like 1-5 Amigos, STC, La Raza, MS-13, La Mara R, and Vatos Locos had since come to prominence around the city and made headlines for their brazen, murderous acts. At thirty-one, Nixon Velasco was too old to survive the new game. Age and maturity, more than jail time, remorse, or conscience, had reformed him. He knew he could not compete, and he was too tired to try.

'Donde este tu jefe?'

Velasco pointed at the trailer. 'Ramos in the offi'.'

'Until next time, Nixon.' Rachel looked him in the eye and shook his hand.

On the way to the trailer, Rachel passed another of her offenders, Rafael Salamanca, also out after back-to-back jolts. Rachel had used Salamanca as a contact to help find Nixon this job. Rachel greeted him in Spanish, but he only nodded grimly in return and kept his eyes on the hole into which he was thrusting his shovel.

She knew Salamanca was having problems with the straight life. Stress in his home environment, not pressure from old peers, was the main cause. A veteran of a defunct Latino gang himself, Salamanca had returned from prison to find that his daughter, a recent high school dropout, had joined Vatos Locos at sixteen years of age. In that particular gang, one of the initiation rites for females was submission to group rape. Salamanca, normally a quiet, brooding man, had recently confessed to Rachel that he craved drugs as a means of escape from the harsh reality of what his life had become. During that conversation, he had also called his wife a puta and a drunk, and her mother, who lived with them in their apartment, a 'filthy old pig.' Rachel was awaiting the report from Salamanca's latest urine test and was not optimistic about the results.

Rachel handled forty cases at any given time. Of those offenders, the majority worked in day labor, construction, landscaping, and house painting jobs. They found these jobs through other offenders and through employers who were sympathetic to the problems facing ex-cons, either because they had relatives who had been incarcerated or because they had done time themselves. Still others actively sought out offenders for employment, from shelters, halfway houses, and bulletin boards, because they felt it was the Christian thing to do. Every day, hopeful offenders stood before dawn at pickup points like University Boulevard and Piney Branch Road in Maryland, and Georgia and Eastern avenues in the District. If they did good work, and if they were dependable, this day-to-day struggle could often lead to steady employment.

In the air-conditioned trailer, Rachel found Nixon's boss, a good-looking, gray-templed man named Ramos, who had done a federal jolt in Lewisburg many years ago, behind a desk. He told her that Nixon Velasco was a good worker and, in his opinion, on the straight. This particular job would probably last for another three months. Ramos planned to keep Velasco on the payroll, if possible, for the duration of the build. After that, he couldn't be sure. If Nixon kept working the way he was now, maybe he'd take him along to the next job.

'How about Rafael Salamanca?' said Rachel. 'How's he doing?'

'Okay.'

'Just okay?'

'He's missed a few days. He needs a little encouragement sometimes.'

'Let me know if you need me to jump in.'

'How will I get in touch with you?'

'What's that?'

'Do I have your number?'

'You have it. I gave you my card the last time I came through.'

'But that's just the work number, eh?'

Ramos tented his hands and smiled. The muscles in his tan forearms bunched with the action. He looked Rachel over in a manner that was not about business, and he smiled.

'You ever go out for a beer, something, when the day's done?'

'No.' Rachel shook her head and tried to keep his eyes. 'I guess I'm all about work.'

'You should enjoy yourself more. Good-looking woman like you.'

Rachel glanced at her wristwatch.

'Even with no makeup,' said Ramos.

'I've got to get going.'

'Okay,' said Ramos, amusement in his eyes. 'You go ahead.'

In her car, Rachel smoked a cigarette, her hand out the open window. She thought no further of Ramos, but rather of Nixon Velasco and Rafael Salamanca. It looked as if Nixon was going to make it and Rafael was not. No matter what she did, no matter how diligent and tough she was, she felt she had little control. That was during the day. It could be different at night.

She had a few more stops on her schedule: Eddie, whom she always enjoyed visiting, and a couple of others, whom she did not. She could put all of these appointments off until tomorrow, she supposed. It would set her back at the office in terms of her paperwork, but the field visits needed to be done.

She didn't have to meet with those offenders now. She was ready for a drink, and something else.

CHAPTER 10

DeEric Green couldn't decide between small DVD screens in the headrests or one big screen in the dash. That way, he could look at movies and videos himself as he was driving his Cadillac. Why should he care if his passengers had their own screens? They wanted them, they could do their own cars that way.

The other thing was, he didn't want to mess up his ride now that he had it the way he wanted, customized and personalized. He had paid this woman good money to embroider his name on every headrest in the truck. She had done it in cursive and used gold thread. Against the black leather, the gold looked real nice.

Maybe he could skip the dash thing and do something else. He'd seen this video, had to be Ludacris, where Luda or whoever it was had installed a DVD screen right smack in the middle of the steering wheel. That was cool too. Only, if you turned the wheel while you was driving, and you had to turn it to drive the car, how the fuck could you see what was going on?

Green pushed his fingers under his Raiders cap and scratched at his head. He did this unconsciously when his thoughts went deep.

'Pull over, D,' said Michael Butler, sitting in the leather bucket beside him, pointing to a Giant supermarket on Georgia Avenue. 'I wanna get Nigel's moms some ice cream.'

'Nigel told you she ain't need nothin'.'

'She love that mint-chocolate Breyers, though.'

'I know it,' said Green, thinking, She love it like a dog loves a steak bone. Why she fatter than a motherfucker too.

'We got to go by there anyway, drop off the count. Thought we'd bring her a surprise.'

DeEric Green turned the Escalade into the lot of the Giant without further comment. He parked in a handicapped space and watched Michael Butler walk into the store. Boy wanted to bring Nigel's mother a surprise, he wasn't gonna fight it.

A 4D cruiser came into the lot and drove through it slowly. Green reached down and pushed the butt of his chrome full under the seat.

So now Butler was gonna get another gold star for being thoughtful to Nigel's mother. Green guessed that Butler felt the need to kiss on Nigel's ass, make a place for himself as some kind of house cat, 'cause he sure wasn't gonna shine out on the street.

Green wondered why Butler wanted to be in the life at all. He didn't buy expensive things with the money he made. He took no pleasure in being hard. He didn't talk about football, fucking dudes up, killing bitches in the bed, or none of that. Instead, Butler could point out foreign countries, like Canada, on a map. He could tell you about star constellations and stuff like that. He read books, newspapers, and magazines. Butler was different.

Still, odd and soft as Butler was, Nigel was moving the kid up little by little. Green couldn't deny that it bothered him some. You could even say it hurt him, 'cause he had been loyal to Nigel for a couple of years now. He had even put some work in for Nigel, back when he first came on.

And what, exactly, had Michael Butler done to get his self on that fast track? He'd never smoked anyone. He'd never, far as Green knew, handled a gun. Nigel had taken a liking to Butler, was all, and now he was getting ready to promote him. All right, so the kid was smart, maybe even smarter than DeEric, if you measured it by books and shit like that. But didn't being fearless out here count for nothing no more?

Truth was, and hard as it was for Green to admit it, he could see why Nigel liked Butler. Butler had an easy manner about him. He was gentle, steady, and quiet. Even when he was drinking alcohol and smoking weed, his personality stayed the same. Green didn't feel like Butler was suited for the game, but what else was a young man in his situation going to do? Butler didn't have no man at home to guide him right, and even if he did, coming from the house where he came from, living with a no-ass straight-up fiend of a mother, Butler wouldn't know how to act in the square world. Wasn't like he was gonna go to Howard or Maryland U and blend in with them fraternity boys. College wasn't in the boy's future, anyway. He'd already dropped out of high school.

So Butler had made his choices. Same way Green had made his, early on.

Green had followed the path of his older brother, James, a midlevel dealer in Columbia Heights. James had done all right for a while, but he had died from a bullet to the back of his head five years back. James sold drugs, but he wasn't about beefing with no one. It had happened over some girl.

James was just crazy behind that ass. He saw it, he liked it, he had to go and hit it. Didn't matter if some other motherfucker held the deed on the bitch's pussy. DeEric had told James that this hunger was gonna kill him someday, and it did. Their mother, she had cried like a madwoman at the graveside. DeEric had kept his face set tight at the funeral, 'cause you had to in front of your boys. But when he got to their house on Lamont Street, up in his room? He'd cried his eyes out too. He still missed James fierce. Worst thing was, he couldn't avenge him. By the time DeEric found out who'd done the thing, the killer was dead his own self by another man's hand.

The new Bone Crusher came on the radio. Green turned it up.

It settled on Green that Butler was taking the elevator to the top floors no matter what, and he, DeEric, was gonna be staying down in the lobby. He wasn't going to complain about it or anything else to Nigel. Nigel was why he was driving this Escalade right here. Nigel was why he was wearing these platinum chains. The preacher at his mother's church called them slave chains, but that Bama was driving a Ford Taurus with duct tape on the bumper, so what could he know? Green liked what this life gave him. He wasn't ashamed of one thing.

Anyway, Green was a soldier, not an officer. He knew this. Maybe he'd be taking orders from Butler someday too. That would be fine, long as he kept getting paid.

He sensed that Nigel didn't want no bad to come to the kid. Green would make certain that none did.

Green looked in the rearview and side-views. The police was gone. He didn't notice the silver BMW that had followed them into the lot. Green took a half-smoked joint out of the ashtray and struck a match.

As Green was hitting the weed, Michael Butler came out of the supermarket and got back in the Caddy. He reached into the bag where the ice cream was and pulled out a roll of Sweet Tarts.

'This you, D,' said Butler, handing Green the roll. Sweet Tarts were DeEric's favorite candy, especially when he was high.

'Thank you, cuz,' said Green, passing the joint over to Butler, who took it and drew on it hard.

Green thinking, Ain't nothin' wrong with this kid, when you get down to it. The boy's just nice.

Rico Miller was under the wheel of his 330i, sitting low, as Melvin Lee, in the passenger bucket, scanned the radio for a song he liked. Miller had let Lee drive the car for most of the day, but now it was time for Miller to take back what was his.

Lee had this hoop, an old Camry, the kind of car a white man in the suburbs bought when he thought he'd made it. It was the car to go with the relaxed jeans and the goatee and the wife with the long T-shirts trying to cover her fat ass. Funny to see Melvin driving a car like that, much as he loved nice things, but that was part of his strategy for layin' low and staying free. Show no flash, hold a job up at the car wash, watch the weed intake, report steady to the correctional officer, pee in the cup when they asked you to, all that. Melvin carried no gun, either, 'cause a felon like him, he got caught with one, that was a mandatory ten-to-fifteen right there. What they called the Reno law. Melvin did not want to go back to prison.

So Rico Miller let him drive his whip. Not all the time, but some. Even let Melvin pretend it was his, like when he was talking mad shit to that dog man back at Dupont, saying, 'You leanin' against my car.' Dog man playin' Melvin off, not using his words but his eyes to let Melvin know that he didn't give a good fuck about Melvin or what he had to say. Anyway, if it made Melvin feel better about his circumstances to call the car his own, Miller had no problem with it. Melvin knew whose car it was.

Rico Miller hit the hydro he was smoking and smiled about nothing. The weed was starting to blow kisses to his head.

'I like this right here,' said Melvin Lee, his NY baseball cap sitting loose on his tiny head, taking his hand off the radio's scan.

'Alicia?'

'Joint is tight. She tight too.'

It was the one where the coffee shop waitress at '39th and Lenox' calls up a customer, this dude she's been noticing, and leaves him a message on his answering machine, right in the middle of the song. She tells him how she's been slipping milk and cream into his hot chocolate, even though the manager wouldn't like her doing it, because she, the waitress, finds him 'sweet.' Rico would never listen to this kind of bitch music on his own, but Melvin was an old head who was into that old-type thing. Rico didn't ask him to turn it off.

'I'd give that girl a whole bucket of cream,' said Miller, who felt he had to say something.

Lee swigged from a bottle of malt liquor he had in a paper bag and wiped his chin. 'They turnin' up there.'

'I got eyes.'

'They turnin', is all I'm sayin'.'

Miller and Lee had followed DeEric Green and the Butler boy in the black Escalade through Petworth and into Park View. It was early in the evening, not yet close to dark. The sun was low and throwing gold on the street. People were walking on Georgia, going in and out of markets, Laundromats, liquor stores, check-cashing operations, and bars, their shadows long on the sidewalks. The activity would pick up soon. On the side streets both east and west of Georgia, open-air drug sales would intensify as the night progressed.

The Escalade turned left onto Otis and went up its grade. It cut a right on 6th. Rico Miller kept his distance, going slowly up Otis and pulling over to the curb before the turn. He didn't want to get burned, and from where he'd parked, he could see just fine down 6th. Also, he was being mindful of the territory into which he'd crossed.

This was Nigel Johnson's turf, from Otis to Park Road. Deacon Taylor had the south section of the neighborhood, from Lamont through Kenyon, down to Irving. They shared Morton, and the Park Morton Section Eights. What got confusing sometimes, what caused trouble, was some of those corners in between.

Neither Nigel nor Deacon worked the area west of Georgia Avenue anymore. Way the Spanish were acting back in Columbia Heights, with their gangs, La Raza and especially that STC mob, just goin' wild back in there, there wasn't any upside to it anymore.

Miller cut the engine. He and Lee watched DeEric Green and Michael Butler get out of the Escalade. Green had a shoe box in his hand and Butler had a bag.

'What they doin'?' said Miller.

'That's where Nigel's mother stay at,' said Lee. 'Most likely, they be droppin' off the count.'

'Lotta cash to go to his moms.'

'She get some every day. She be bankin' it for Nigel.'

'Both of them carryin' money?'

'The bag the kid be carryin'? I expect he got some food in that motherfucker. 'Cause you know that fat-ass heifer do like to eat.'

Miller stared at the house. 'We gonna brace 'em when they come out?'

'Not in front of Nigel's mother's place,' said Lee. There were some things you did not do.

They sat there for a while, Rico Miller enjoying his high, fingering the knife in his pocket as violent images moved like swift dark clouds behind his eyes. Melvin Lee drank methodically, staring at the run-down stretch of 6th. His mind was on simpler things.

'I fucked a girl on that street,' said Lee, seeing her in his head.

'Which house?' said Miller.

'I'm tellin' you, I fucked her on the street. We was walkin' back from the Black Hole one night, and she couldn't wait. I bottomed her ass right there on the asphalt.'

'What her name was?'

'What difference does that make?'

'Make the story better,' said Miller, 'if you know her name.'

'How am I supposed to remember her name, all the girls I done had?' Lee grinned. 'I can tell you one thing about her, though.'

'What?'

'She looked like your little sister.'

'Hmm.'

'Matter of fact,' said Lee, getting into it now, 'it might could have been your sister. Dark as it was that night, I couldn't tell.'

'Did she scream?'

'Like I was murderin' it, son.'

'Then it wasn't my sister.'

'Why you say that?'

'My sister don't scream when you fuck her,' said Miller.

'That's 'cause you ain't doin' it right,' said Lee. Only Lee laughed.

Not much later, DeEric Green and Michael Butler came out of the row house and got into the Escalade. When they pulled off the curb, Rico Miller fired up the BMW and followed the Cadillac north, back to NJ Enterprises, Nigel Johnson's storefront on Georgia Avenue.

CHAPTER 11

Lorenzo Brown went through his voice mail and got his paperwork up to date before clocking out of the office. He said good night to Mark, Irena, and his other coworkers, and patted the heads and stroked the bellies of his favorite animals, those who ran free and those caged in the basement kennel. Many were not pleased to be in cages, but all were better off than they were before they had been impounded. The lucky ones would be adopted and get second lives in good homes.

Out on the sidewalk, Lorenzo went two doors down to the spay clinic to check on Queen, the old lady's cat from over near Kennedy Street. The calico was shaking in the back of her cage.

'You all right,' said Lorenzo, putting his index finger through the links. Queen edged forward and rubbed her face against his skin. 'You gonna feel different, is all, when this is done. More calm.'

The Humane employees parked their work trucks and personal cars on Floral Place, a residential court behind the office alley, accessible through a break in a narrow stand of trash trees and brush. Parking stickers for that particular zone were available to residents only, so the employees were constantly dodging tickets from traffic control. The court folks were cool; the residents back there did not complain, knowing they could call on the dog people and get a quick response if they had a problem on their street.

Lorenzo got into his Pontiac Ventura, a 1974 he had bought on the cheap from the brother of a man he'd befriended in prison. The man had tipped him to the car and given him his brother's address, over in Far Northeast. The Ventura, GM's sister car to the Chevy Nova, was a green-over-green two-door and held that strong 350 engine, highly regarded in its time, under the hood. It had been in poor but serviceable shape when Lorenzo bought it, but at eight hundred dollars the price was right. After he turned it over to his boy Joe Carver, who had always been good with cars, the vehicle was more than right. Joe had installed new belts, hoses, plugs and wires, ball joints, and shocks. He'd replaced the muffler and the dual pipes, injected Freon into the cooling system, and reupholstered the back and front bench seats. Once that was done, Lorenzo had washed and detailed the Pontiac under an oak on Otis and stepped back to admire it. The Ventura had nice, clean lines.

The Pontiac was old and needed a paint job and new chrome, but it was a runner. Young men driving drug cars, who knew only of German luxury automobiles and upscale rice burners, laughed at him at streetlights, but he got compliments occasionally from men older than he was. They called it 'that Seven-Ups car,' and when he asked them what they meant, they said, 'The movie, youngun.' If it was a movie, it was before his time, but Lorenzo said politely that he'd have to check it out someday. He'd never been one to watch movies, but it was something he was meaning to get around to. He had gotten into books in lockdown some, for the first time in his life. The prison librarian, a pale man named Ray Mitchell, had turned him on to street stories by writers like Donald Goines, Chester Himes, and this dude Gary Phillips, had his picture on the dust jackets, big man with Chinese eyes, looked like the real. So movies, yeah, maybe he would start to check out some of those. He'd like to read more books too. He sure did have time.

Lorenzo drove south on Georgia, into the city. Dusk had fallen on the streets.

Down near Fort Stevens, in the retail strip between Brightwood and Manor Park, he parked and entered the Arrow Cleaners. Lorenzo had his uniform shirts cleaned and pressed there. It was an extra expense, but he felt that a man needed to look right, like he cared about what he was doing, when he was on the job. This place here always gave him good service. The owner-operator, a Greek named Billy Caludis, showed him respect. Caludis had hung a Dick Gregory poster up on the wall, another reason for Lorenzo to patronize the shop. Lorenzo had read Nigger in prison too.

'No starch, on hangers,' said Caludis, handing Lorenzo his order across the counter. 'Right, Mr Brown?'

'Right,' said Lorenzo. 'You have a good one.'

Coming out of the store with his shirts in hand, he saw Nigel standing on the sidewalk with two of his people out front of his place, NJ Enterprises, on the other side of Georgia. Lorenzo opened the back door of the Ventura and laid his shirts flat on the seat. Those hooks they put in most cars were long gone from this one.

'Hey, Renzo!' said the booming voice of Nigel Johnson. 'Hey, man, what you doin'?'

Lorenzo turned, stayed where he was, shouted across the lanes of north and southbound traffic to his friend. 'Just got off work. 'Bout to head home.'

Nigel put his hands on his hips and bugged his eyes theatrically. 'And you just gonna, what, drive that race car away without stoppin' to say hello to your old boy?'

Lorenzo hesitated, then locked down his car. Nigel was right. Wasn't any harm in visiting now and again. It sure wasn't like Nigel was gonna try and make him re-enlist. It had been a while since they'd spoke. Lorenzo waited for a break in traffic before crossing the street.

They hugged briefly and patted each other's backs. Lorenzo stood back and had a look at Nigel. He seemed fit.

'You pay rent on this place,' said Lorenzo, 'and you out here standing on the sidewalk.'

Nigel's eyes went to the live cigar in his hand, a Cuban, no doubt. 'Just stepped out to have a smoke. I don't like the smell settlin' in my office.'

'Nice hookup,' said Lorenzo. The powder blue Sean John warm-up was draped exactly right on Nigel's large frame.

'Had it tailored,' said Nigel, 'to accommodate these extra el-bees I been carryin'.'

'Nah, you lookin' all right.'

Nigel nodded. 'You too. But then, you always did keep your physical self together.'

'I'm tryin'.'

'How's Joe? You see him much?'

'All the time. He's got steady work, layin' bricks. Joe's doin' good.'

Lorenzo looked at Nigel's employees, over by a black Escalade curbed in front of the office. The older of the two, wearing the same Raiders cap and bright orange FUBU shirt he'd seen him wearing that morning, the one who'd laughed at him as he was walking Jasmine, was slouched against the truck. The younger one, no more than a boy, had gentle eyes. Both looked like they were high.

'Meet Lorenzo Brown,' said Nigel. 'This here's DeEric Green.'

'Been hearin' about you a long time,' said Green, who did not move off the truck. It was meant to be a compliment, Lorenzo supposed, but Green's dull look said he was unimpressed.

'And this young man here is Michael Butler,' said Nigel, a hint of pride in his voice.

Butler stepped forward and shook Lorenzo's hand. 'How you doin'?'

'I'm good,' said Lorenzo.

This Michael Butler looked like one of Nigel's personal projects. Nigel liked to pick the most promising, most intelligent ones out and take them under his wing. It never did work out. None who stayed on came to a good end. This was the one definite of the game. Still, Nigel kept trying to promote the ones he felt had promise. He was an optimist that way.

'Your job goin' all right?' said Nigel.

'Everything's good,' said Lorenzo.

'You need anything?'

'I'm straight,' said Lorenzo, looking at Nigel deep, telling him that he would never need anything from him again.

There was no animosity in their eyes, no bad blood between them. They were friends and would always be friends, but nothing would ever be as it was. Both had fulfilled their end of the bargain, and now that part of their lives, the part where they'd been together in business and as running boys, was done.

In the interrogation rooms at the time of his last arrest, and in court at his trial, Lorenzo had stood tall. He had not flipped on Nigel, as they had tried to get him to do, and had in fact refused to speak Nigel's name. He had given up no one, not even enemies. He'd made no deals and done his time.

For his part, Nigel had staked Lorenzo with a package as soon as he'd come out of prison, a common practice for those who had fallen and returned. It was a relatively small amount of heroin, which would finance Lorenzo's reentry into the world. The package was delivered to Lorenzo by one of Nigel's boys without a word. Lorenzo accepted it, knowing what it was without having to open it. He moved it quickly and quietly, took the proceeds, and used the money to cover the first month's rent on his apartment and to buy his car. He never thought about getting back into the life again. Between Lorenzo and Nigel, all of this remained unspoken.

'How's your little girl?' said Nigel.

'All right, I guess.'

'You ain't seen her?'

'Not to speak to.'

'That woman ain't right,' said Nigel, meaning Sherelle, the mother of Lorenzo's child.

'Time gonna fix it,' said Lorenzo, roughly echoing the words of Miss Lopez.

Nigel dragged on his cigar. 'You still follow ball?'

'I watch it when I can.'

'At MCI?'

'Not on my salary.'

'I got club seats for the season.'

'What, you can't afford the floor?'

'Go on, man. You know they got Gilbert, right?'

'He can play.'

'Boy's sick. You and me should check out his game this winter.'

'Yeah,' said Lorenzo, 'we should do that.'

'We damn sure should.'

'Look, Nigel…'

'What?'

'I gotta see to my dog. She been inside all day.'

'Go ahead, then,' said Nigel. 'Don't be a stranger.'

Lorenzo and Nigel executed their old handshake, as natural as putting one foot in front of the other, then went forearm to chest. Lorenzo nodded at the two employees and crossed Georgia to his car.

'That your boy, huh,' said DeEric Green.

'Yes,' said Nigel, watching him go. He turned to Green and Butler. 'Y'all headin' out?'

'You got somethin' special you need us to do?' said Green.

'Just check on the troops and pick up the count. Tell the soldiers I realize they runnin' low, but I got a package comin' in later this week.' Nigel turned to Butler. 'Mind DeEric. Man's a veteran. You watch close, you gonna learn.'

Butler nodded. DeEric Green, energized by the compliment, got off the truck and stood straight.

'By the way,' said Nigel. 'My mother called me, said you brought her some of that Breyers. That was real nice.' Nigel looked from one to the other. 'Watch yourselves out there, you hear?'

Nigel went up the steps and entered his storefront door. DeEric Green and Michael Butler got in the Escalade.

Across the street, Lorenzo Brown pulled away from the curb and hit the gas. Through the intersection, parked just past Rittenhouse Street, he saw the same silver BMW from the dogfights over in Fort Dupont, and the two he'd encountered, Melvin Lee and his shadow, in the front seat. They turned their heads to stare straight ahead as he passed.

Lorenzo understood the codes of respect and disrespect, and the consequences of breaking same, but their minor confrontation at the dogfight hadn't seemed like it was all that big an incident. Not enough to warrant them tracking him down. Maybe they were there to watch Nigel and them. Lee did work for Deacon Taylor; leastways that's what Joe Carver had told him. Anyway, it was no business of Lorenzo's.

He kept on driving. He thought of his daughter, Shay. Down by the Fourth District Police Station, at Quackenbos, he hung a left.

In the BMW, Melvin Lee and Rico Miller watched the black Escalade come off the curb and head south.

'Let's go,' said Lee.

Miller ignitioned the 330i and drove north, then swung a U in the middle of Georgia and got in, four or five car lengths back, behind the Cadillac.

'What you suppose the dog man be doin' over there with Nigel?' said Miller.

'Brown worked with Nigel,' said Lee. 'Brown was Nigel's boy.'

'He comin' back?'

'He too soft to come back,' said Lee. 'You saw how he acted today.'

Yeah, I saw, thought Miller.

'Prison broke that motherfucker,' said Lee.

Same way it broke me.

'They bookin',' said Miller.

'Get up ahead of 'em. You know they gonna be goin' up Otis. We'll block 'em there, have our talk.'

'They gonna run that light,' said Miller as the Escalade accelerated toward the next traffic signal, gone yellow.

'Then you gonna need to run it too.'

Miller blew the red.

Sherelle stayed on 9th Street, around the corner from the police station and the tall radio towers, in one of a series of boxy brick apartment buildings grouped back from the street. The apartments had back porches, many of whose screens were ripped and hanging from their wooden frames. Between the buildings there was plenty of green grass, worn grass, dirt, and open space for kids to run. Though dusk had gone to dark, kids were out there now.

Lorenzo Brown parked his Pontiac on the street in front of Sherelle's unit. He knew Sherelle's schedule. She worked a noon-to-eight shift at a makeup-and-hair shop over on Riggs Road. After Sherelle got off, she picked up Shay from her mother's duplex near Riggs, on Oneida Street. Sherelle and Shay got back to the apartment on 9th Street every evening at about this hour. Lorenzo knew because he'd watched them many times.

Soon they arrived in Sherelle's new-style Altima. Too much car for that girl to be carrying on her budget, but then Sherelle always did spend beyond her limit. Lorenzo could see his little girl in the backseat, Sherelle behind the wheel, and a big man beside her in the passenger bucket. That would be Sherelle's new George.

The three of them got out of the car and walked up onto the sidewalk. Sherelle, always on the full-figured side, looked like she had put on weight. She kept her style fresh, though, the way those hair girls liked to do. Shay, in a sleeveless shirt and shorts, looked plain pretty and sweet. She skipped along the sidewalk and reached for her mother's hand.

Lorenzo, seeing Shay, got out of his car without thinking on it. He was just a half dozen automobiles away from Sherelle's. The sound of his door made them stop and turn.

Sherelle's face hardened. She pulled Shay along. Shay looked back at Lorenzo and then up at her mother.

'Who's that, Momma?' said Shay.

'Nobody,' said Sherelle. 'You come along.'

The big man, heavy and tall, wearing khakis and a loose silk shirt, stayed behind. He wore a crucifix outside his shirt. He stood on the sidewalk under a street lamp, staring at Lorenzo, waiting for his girlfriend and her daughter to get inside their place.

'I don't want no trouble,' said Lorenzo.

'Ain't gonna be none,' said the man.

'I'm her father.'

'I know who you are.'

Lorenzo shifted his feet. 'I just want to talk to her.'

'That's not gonna happen,' said the man. 'You already made your choice. You care about Shay, you got to let her be.'

Lorenzo did not challenge the man or what he said.

'Go home,' said the man, his eyes softening. 'Your little girl is loved; you don't need to worry about that. She gonna be all right.'

Lorenzo walked back to his car. He sat behind the wheel and watched the hulking silhouette of the man cross the grounds and head toward Sherelle's apartment. Time was, he would have stepped to that man for being so bold. But Lorenzo had come to a point in his life, he was old enough to know, and admit to himself, that the man was right.

'Who's that, Momma?'

'Nobody.'

Lorenzo started his car.

That's right. I ain't shit.

CHAPTER 12

Rachel Lopez had bathed, and the water in the tub, drawn very hot, was now warm. The candles she had set on the tub ledges were lit and were the sole source of illumination in the room. Beside one of the candles was a goblet of California merlot. It was her third glass.

Rachel's shadow danced on the bathroom wall. Freddy Fender sang 'The Wild Side of Life' in Spanish from a portable stereo she had placed on the floor. Rachel sat naked on the edge of the tub, one foot on the tiled floor, one up on a step stool she had placed nearby. An electric fan whirred under the music, blowing air on her knees, thighs, fingers, and cleanly shaved sex.

She closed her eyes. In the darkness, pictures ran through her mind. Briefly, the man in her head was the handsome construction boss Ramos. Then he was a stranger beneath her.

The cool of the porcelain beneath her buttocks, spread so that the surface touched her anus, was pleasant. The ligaments and veins inside her filled with blood, and she felt a wash rush forth. She caught her breath and her muscles contracted violently. Her head pitched forward and she was done.

Rachel cleaned herself with a warm wet washcloth. She put on a dark red lacy brassiere and then slipped into thong panties that matched. In the mirror, with the light of the bathroom now switched on, she applied eye shadow, eyeliner, and lipstick, all in deep colors. She bought the inexpensive brands, available at any drugstore, because she found their colors more dramatic. She unscrewed the cap of her night perfume, which was strong but not flowery, and shook some onto her fingers. She lightly rubbed her fingers on the muscles high inside her thighs, reached around and touched the very base of her back and the nape of her neck, and rubbed the remainder between her breasts. Finally she ran her perfumed fingers through her hair. She stepped back and looked in the mirror. The brown nipples of her small hard breasts showed through the lace of the bra. She was aroused, not by the sight of her own body, but by the preparation itself.

Rachel dressed in a black leather skirt that accentuated her hips and womanly ass. She wore no stockings; her shapely bare legs were already brown. She put on a red shirt and unbuttoned it so that the front clasp of her bra showed. She put on medium-heeled black pumps. She hung a necklace on her chest and let its silver pendant fall on the upcurve of her left breast. She brushed out her black hair.

Rachel had a fourth glass of wine, gathered up her purse and cigarettes, and left the apartment. She drove downtown.

The BMW had sped down to Park View ahead of the Escalade. It now faced west and idled in the middle of Otis Place between rows of parked cars. Through the windshield, Melvin Lee and Rico Miller waited and watched.

'Where they at?' said Miller.

'They gonna be along.'

As if Lee had willed it, the Escalade turned off Georgia and started up Otis.

'What I tell you?' said Lee, a barely detectable catch in his voice.

The Escalade did not slow down as it approached them.

'We ain't got nothin' to back us,' said Miller. He was not frightened, but stating a fact.

'We ain't gonna need nothin',' said Lee. 'We're gonna talk, and they gonna listen.'

By giving this strong response, Lee hoped to distract Miller from noticing the lack of confidence on his face. Lee had always been cocky in his youth. That natural, youthful swagger, along with an easy access to guns, had fueled his reckless courage. Age, and the experience of incarceration, had humbled him. Now, under supervision, he could not risk being around any kind of firearm. He felt vulnerable and defenseless without one, like in those dreams he had where he was walking naked among his enemies on his own streets. But Deacon had told him to go out and send a message, and that's what he was going to do. And then there was Rico. He had to be hard around the kid.

The Cadillac came up on them and braked just a few feet from their grille. The headlights of the Caddy, on a higher platform than those of the BMW, nearly blinded Miller and Lee. But Miller did not reverse the car. It was a given that neither driver would back up or pull over to let the other pass.

DeEric Green, behind the wheel of the Escalade, landed on his horn. 'C'mon, motherfucker. Move it.'

'That's Deacon's people,' said Michael Butler, recognizing the man in the passenger seat of the BMW and the animal-looking boy under its wheel.

'I know that,' said Green. 'Don't mean they got the right to block the street.'

Green hit the horn again and kept his palm on it. A couple of lights went on in the nearby row house windows. The BMW did not move.

'Fuck this bullshit,' said Green, reaching under his seat and finding the checkered rubber grip of his automatic. It was a stainless steel eight-shot .45 Colt. Green had bought it, a Gold Cup Trophy model, because it was the most expensive one the dealer had.

Green kept the gun low. He checked the safety and racked its slide. He thrust his pelvis out and slipped the gun under the front of his jeans so that the grip leaned toward his right hand. He put the tails of his FUBU shirt out so that they covered the gun.

'Let's go, Michael,' said Green.

Butler hesitated. He was hoping for a quiet resolution to this. He had always managed to avoid violence.

'Let's go,' said Green.

Green left the motor running and the headlights on as he and Butler stepped onto the street. Miller and Lee did the same. Melvin Lee stepped forward; so did DeEric Green. Michael Butler stayed back behind Green and slightly to his left. Rico Miller hung by his car. He kept his eyes, heavy with contempt, on Butler.

"Sup?' said Green, looking Lee over, looking down on him because he had the height advantage and could.

Lee waited a moment before speaking. It was a moment too long. It told Green that he was hesitant and maybe afraid.

'Somethin' you want to say to me?' said Green.

Lee nodded.

'Then say it.'

'Heard you stepped to our boy Jujubee this morning,' said Lee, finding his tongue.

'That ain't news.'

'You told him to move on.'

'So?'

'Boy was on our real estate.'

Green took another step forward and got close to Lee's face. He spoke clearly and evenly. 'I made a mistake. I already discussed it with the man I needed to discuss it with, and he gonna work it out with your man his own way.'

'You—'

'What I don't need to do is discuss it with an itty-bitty motherfucker like you.'

Green brushed his hand over the front of his shirt. Lee saw the lump there, right above the waistline. Lee, confused, looked over his shoulder at Miller. 'You… you hear that, Rico?'

Miller did not answer. He kept his eyes on Michael Butler.

A Toyota drove up Otis and, blocked by the Cadillac, came to a stop. The driver gave a short, timid sound of his horn. He did not roll his window down or say anything to the men and young men standing in the street.

'You gonna be seein' me later on,' said Lee in an unconvincing way. He clumsily pointed a finger at Green's face.

'I'm seeing you now,' said Green. 'What, you gonna act like a man later on?'

Green laughed. He knew he was showing off. But Melvin Lee was just making it too easy. He didn't even feel the need to prove to Lee that he was strapped.

'You had your say,' said Green with a jerk of his head. 'Now take your boy and get.'

'Yeah,' said Lee, nodding his head rapidly. 'Yeah, okay.' He was trying to maintain, searching for the right clever parting words. But nothing would come.

The driver of the Toyota hit his horn again. Another light came on in a nearby house.

Green grinned. 'You ain't gone yet?'

Lee turned around. He saw Miller staring at Michael Butler, smiling at him in that way of his that was all about pain.

'Let's go, Rico,' said Lee, unable to look in the eyes of the young man who worshipped him. Miller nodded, his smile frozen in place, and the two of them went to their car.

Miller backed his BMW up Otis and turned south on 6th.

Lee rubbed at his face and turned to Miller. 'He was strapped, Rico. You saw it, right?'

Miller did not respond.

In the Escalade, Green and Butler settled in. Green put the transmission in drive, turned on the radio, and headed up the street.

'How you know to do that?' said Butler.

'Wasn't no thing,' said Green, getting low in the bucket, his wrist resting casually over the steering wheel, proud despite the nagging feeling that he'd pushed it and done wrong. 'Alls you had to do was look in his eyes. His heart was pumpin' Kool-Aid.'

'What you mean?'

'Melvin was scared. I could tell just by lookin' at him, 'cause I been knowin' him a long time. He used to run with my brother, James, back when.' Green blinked away the image of his brother, playing basketball down by the courts, imitating MJ with his tongue out the side of his mouth, laughing about it, having fun. 'Melvin don't belong out here no more.'

'You punked him,' said Butler with admiration.

'Wasn't me,' said Green, a touch of regret in his voice. 'Boy got his ass broke in the cut.'

As the Cadillac went up Otis, it passed the home of Edwina Rollins, Joe Carver's aunt. Joe sat on the dark porch and nursed a beer. He had watched the conflict involving the occupants of the Cadillac and the BMW, and had listened to the muffled threats with only mild interest. He had been involved in countless confrontations just like that one in his old life. They bored him now.

Joe would have gone inside and caught a little ESPN, but it was all baseball this time of year, a sport that he had played growing up but that did not interest him on television, and anyway, he was waiting on his friend. Lorenzo would be out walking his dog right about now. Joe would just sit out here and wait for Renzo. Wouldn't be too long before his boy would be stopping by.

Jasmine moved jauntily along, leading Lorenzo down Princeton Place. She had done her business in the ball field up by Park View Elementary and had the bounce of the unburdened in her step. Coming upon his grandmother's house, Lorenzo noticed candlelight on the concrete porch of the row house to the south and the outline of a female figure sitting on a glider there. As he went up the sidewalk to his grandmother's, he heard a little girl's voice call out and saw her braided head, in silhouette, come up over the rails of the neighboring porch.

'That Jazz Man?' said the voice.

'Depends on who's asking,' said Lorenzo, stopping, holding the leash and Jasmine fast. 'Is that Lakeisha?'

'How you know my name?'

'Santa Claus told me.'

'Santa?' said Lakeisha with delight.

'Yeah, he called me up,' said Lorenzo, walking across the grass toward the house so that he didn't have to shout. 'Told me about this pretty little girl named Lakeisha, lived in my neighborhood? He didn't have her phone number, so he asked me to find out what that little girl wanted for Christmas.'

'I want Cinderella Dream Trunk!'

'Settle down, girl,' said Rayne, Lakeisha's mother, getting up off the glider and coming to the edge of the covered porch. Lorenzo stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at her. Her face was barely lit by the votive candles she had placed about. There was music playing softly, probably from a portable stereo she had put somewhere up there. Lorenzo recognized the song.

'Evening,' said Lorenzo.

'Evening to you,' said Rayne.

'Can I pet Jazz Man, Mommy?' said Lakeisha.

'If Mr Lorenzo says it's all right.'

'She'd love you to pet her,' said Lorenzo.

Lakeisha descended the steps and crouched down. Jasmine rubbed her snout in Lakeisha's outstretched hand and wagged her tail as Lakeisha patted her belly and then ran her fingers down her coat. Lorenzo leaned, with deliberate cool, against a brick post. Rayne had a seat on the top step, a glass of white wine in her hand. Now that she was out from under the roof of the porch and in the moonlight, Lorenzo could see her face and figure more clearly. Lorenzo thinking, as he always did when he ran into her, She is fine. Realizing that he was staring, he looked down at Lakeisha and Jasmine.

'She's a natural with my dog,' said Lorenzo. 'She'd be a good candidate—'

'Don't say it,' said Rayne, smiling a little. 'I got enough mouths to feed. Anyway, you off the clock, right? You don't need to be working that pet adoption thing all the time.'

'What, you don't think about cutting hair when you're out the shop?'

'Please. After standing up for eight hours straight? I try to forget it when I'm not there. Trouble is, my feet won't let me.' She looked him over. 'How'd you know I was a stylist?'

'How'd you know I was dog police?'

Lorenzo and Rayne chuckled. She had a nice smile. Rayne was the first to look away. He liked the shyness of her too.

'This is pretty right here,' said Lorenzo.

'What is?'

'This song.'

'"Miss Black America"?' said Rayne. 'Lakeisha likes it. It takes me back myself. My mother had the album when I was a little girl. She used to play it for me, right here in this house.'

'That was the one with Mayfield on the cover, wearing that lemon yellow suit.'

'You remember it?'

'Just called Curtis. A friend of mine's mother, she had it too.'

Now it was Lorenzo's turn to cut his eyes from hers.

'You feel like goin' out sometime?' said Rayne.

'Huh?'

'For coffee or something.'

'Sure,' said Lorenzo, standing straight. 'Or, you know, we could do something, like, all of us together. With Lakeisha, I mean. Go to, I don't know, Six Flags. Or go down to Hains Point and just walk around some. Somethin' like that.'

'That would be good.'

'But listen,' said Lorenzo, the words coming freely from him now. 'Before we go making plans, I got some things in my past that you need to know about.'

'You're under supervision,' said Rayne. 'You were incarcerated on drug charges.'

Lorenzo nodded slowly. 'That's right.'

'Seems to me like you got your head on straight now.'

'I'm tryin',' said Lorenzo. 'What else you know?'

'You got a little girl of your own, about Lakeisha's age. She stays up in Manor Park with her mother.'

'Okay.' Lorenzo stroked the hairs on his chin. 'Question is, how you know so much?'

'How you think?' said Rayne, smiling again.

'The old girl been tellin' you everything, huh.'

'She just being neighborly,' said Rayne.

'Mama,' said Lakeisha, moving her cheek off Jasmine's coat, where she had been trying to listen to her heart. 'Can I keep her?'

'No, baby. That's Mr Lorenzo's dog.'

'Tell you what, little princess,' said Lorenzo. 'You can visit with her anytime you want.'

'You gonna bring her back?'

'Are you?' said Rayne.

'I reckon,' said Lorenzo, tugging on Jasmine's leash, walking toward his grandmother's house.

'Bye, Jazz Man,' said Lakeisha.

Lorenzo turned his head and looked back at Rayne. 'I'm gonna call you, girl.'

Rayne sipped at her wine.

Lorenzo used his key to enter the row house next door. He removed Jasmine's leash and draped it over a jacket peg by the door. The house smelled of his grandmother's cooking.

Willetta Thompson came forward from back in the living room and hugged him roughly. She was a tall, strong woman with lively eyes, not yet sixty-five. A graduate of Strayer's Business College, she had worked as a HUD secretary, in the same office, for over thirty years. Her hair was shop styled and gray.

'Hello, son,' she said.

'Mama,' said Lorenzo.

They thought of each other that way.

'Saw you through the window, talking to Rayne.'

'Uh-huh.'

'That's a good woman right there. Responsible.'

'You just about gave her my whole life story.'

'Someone had to,' said Willetta. 'Didn't look to me like you were gonna do it.'

'That chicken I smell?'

'I saved the thighs for you.' Willetta pulled on his hand. 'I put a little somethin' aside for your animal too.'

'Dogs shouldn't be eatin' on chicken bones.'

'This one's plenty big,' said Willetta. 'She won't choke on it.'

Lorenzo and Willetta went toward the dining room, walking down a plastic runner Willetta had laid on the carpet to keep it new. Jasmine's tail wagged as she followed, sniffing at their heels.

CHAPTER 13

Rico Miller dropped Melvin Lee at his place on Sherman Avenue. They had barely spoken since the incident on Otis. For Lee, the silence had been excruciating.

Lee no longer communicated with his blood relatives. When he'd come out of prison, his siblings, who had never written or visited once during his stay, refused to speak to him. His mother had died long ago. He didn't know his children or where their mothers stayed. As for the friends he'd come up with, they were in the cut or dead. Only thing he had now was his work with Deacon Taylor. Closest thing to a son he'd ever have was Rico. And now he'd been punked right in front of him. He wondered if Rico Miller could ever look at him the same way again.

Lee walked down the sidewalk, his shoulders slumped. Miller drove away.

Miller went down Georgia. Past Howard University, at Florida Avenue, he drove east. Farther along, he crossed the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and took Minnesota Avenue to the Deanwood area of Northeast. He parked in front of a bungalow at 46th and Hayes.

His house was set on a fairly large plot of land. The block he lived on had many decent homes, but others were run-down, blighted by plywood doors, sagging roofs, and hanging gutters. Some had cardboard stuck in their window frames. A few had been recently abandoned or had stood unoccupied for years. Raccoons nested in their chimneys and rats moved freely beneath their porches. The shades were always drawn so that inspectors could not look inside. Long as the owners cut the grass on a fairly regular basis, these houses could not be condemned.

Miller had found this house, in fact, when he saw the owner outside it, mowing its weedy lawn. One wall of the house had been spray-painted with tags: a '46' and an 'RIP Mike.' This meant there was gang activity on the street. In areas such as this, neighbors were typically frightened or plain tired of calling police and so they minded their own. Miller had been driving slowly on this particular street because it looked like the kind of place where he needed to be. Didn't look like anybody gave a good fuck about it, and it wasn't near a major road crossing. It seemed like a smart spot to hide.

He offered the man a thousand dollars a month, cash up front, three months in advance, as is, to rent it. The money would cover utilities as well. For phone service, Miller would use his cell. Rico told the owner to leave the lawn mower and gas can, and he'd take care of the grass. The man took the deal.

Miller had another month, prepaid, on the house. He'd move on to someplace else, like he always did, after that.

He left no records. Even his car, the BMW, was a rental. He'd got it from this man, Calvin Duke, lived by the railroad tracks at 35th and Ames. It was known in certain circles that a young man like Rico could get damn near anything from Duke. The man had the rental business cornered in Northeast. Called his self Dukey Stick; Miller did not know why.

Except for the landlord and Calvin Duke, no one knew where Rico Miller lived. Not Melvin Lee and not Deacon Taylor. They wanted him, they could get him on his cell. Since he'd left Oak Hill, that juvenile facility they'd put him in, he'd been on his own. If anyone was looking for him, they hadn't caught up with him yet. He aimed to stay free.

Rico went into his house. It was a shithole to begin with, and he'd done nothing to improve it. Bare light bulbs dangled from damaged plaster ceilings. The walls, unadorned with pictures, were chipped and water stained. Wasn't any furniture to speak of, a sofa and some old broke chairs and a folding table, stuff he'd found around Dumpsters and the like. He'd bought a mattress and some sheets at the Goodwill store. The kitchen was of little use to him. Rico didn't eat all that much; it was KFC and Wendy's when he did.

Miller went back into the room where he slept. He turned on the light. He took his knife, secured in his personalized sheath, from his pocket and tossed it on his bed.

On the floor next to the mattress sat a lamp, a portable stereo, some CDs, and a couple of ass magazines he used for masturbation. In the other corner of the room was a nineteen-inch television set on which he sometimes watched videos but which he mostly used for PlayStation 2. In the closet, behind where he hung his shirts, was a false wall, a piece of particleboard that came away with a tug. He went to the closet, parted his shirts, and pulled the board free.

Behind the wall was a rack. The rack held a cut-down pump-action Winchester shotgun with a pistol grip, an S&W .38 revolver, and a 9 mm Glock 17. He had bought the 17, as did many young gun owners in the area, because it was the official sidearm of the MPD. Also on the rack were various holsters and a leather shoulder harness, popular with men who robbed drug dealers, designed to hold the Winchester steady under a raincoat.