Drama City

Miller pulled the shotgun and the Glock off the rack. He found a brick of PMC ammo on the floor. He loaded the Winchester with low-recoil buckshot. He checked the Glock to see if it was ready, saw that it was, and palmed its magazine back into the grip.

Melvin was the only friend he had in this life. Melvin was his father.

Rico Miller heard the sound of his own teeth grinding.

The bar was in a boutique hotel on Massachusetts Avenue, down around 10th, in Northwest. It was away from the cluster of upscale chain hotels that were located downtown and in Georgetown and the West End. The amenities were not comparable in any way to those at the Ritz and the Four Seasons, but a certain kind of guest preferred the quiet charm of this hotel and its relative isolation. It was a particular favorite of closet drinkers, full-on drunks, couples engaged in extramarital affairs, and serial adulterers looking to score.

Rachel sat at the bar, located through a hallway past the circular lobby, drinking a scotch rocks. She had ordered a Johnnie Walker Red from the 'tender, a young man with long Jheri-curled hair that he wore pulled back and banded. The JW was in her price range, a step up from the rail, and fine. She sat erect and smoked a cigarette.

Rachel drank exclusively in hotel bars. In hotels, she was unlikely to run into police, private investigators, attorneys, coworkers, or anyone else she knew in her daytime life. These people drank at the FOP or in their favorite locals. Similarly, though some of her offenders worked in privately owned restaurants, most had trouble securing kitchen employment with the hotel chains, which tended to do exhaustive background checks. Also, she simply liked the drinking atmosphere of hotels better than she did freestanding watering holes. The crowds were past their twenties, behaved more maturely behind their alcohol, and contained fewer boisterous regulars. The customers were often in town for only a couple of days. Many would never return to D.C.

Here, the single guests ranged from midlevel managers, conventioneers, filmmakers in town for festivals, and route salesmen to men who had temporarily left their families for two-day benders. The staff played jazz on the sound system, and on weekends a live combo appeared on the small house stage, performing mostly standards. Rachel was not a jazz or pop fan, but she was not here to listen to music.

The room was large and oddly configured, with many tables and booths hidden behind thick posts and in dimly lit semiprivate alcoves. The bar itself was half full. Two couples occupied stools along with a group of three businessmen, techies by the looks of their dress, ready-wear pants and cotton-poly-mix shirts. All wore marriage bands. The discussion, what Rachel could hear of it, centered on mortgage rates and Honda Accords. To the right of them sat a single middle-aged man, staring at a glass that was holding something amber, content with his solitude and his drink. His gut drooped over his belt line. Another single man, midthirties by the looks of him, also sat alone at the end of the bar. He had entered earlier, and Rachel had watched him walk in and take his seat. He was short to medium height, had a chest and an ass, and stretched his cotton shirt across the shoulders and back. She stared at him, and he held her gaze and smiled. By default, he was the one.

She waited. He picked up his drink and walked down along the bar and stood next to Rachel.

'Hey,' he said, showing her his teeth.

'Hey,' said Rachel, her mouth turning up on one side, half a smile, an opening.

'Mind if I join you?'

'Why?'

'Might as well close the gap. You haven't taken your eyes off me all night.'

He chuckled in a self-deprecating way, a smart tactic. If he was off base, he was just kidding. If not, he was in. He was kind of good-looking in a nonpretty way, with dark eyebrows and dark, curly, tightly cut hair. Laugh lines framed his eyes and parenthesized his large mouth. He had a large nose as well. This was a turnoff to some women, but in Rachel's experience, it was a plus.

'Have a seat,' said Rachel, nodding at the empty stool beside her. 'So I don't strain my eyes.'

His name was Aris O'Leary, and when Rachel said, 'Harris?' he said, 'No, Aris. It's short for Aristotle.' He was the son of a Greek American woman, second generation, and an Irish American father, third. 'It means I like good food and this.' Aris held up his glass of Jameson neat. She wondered how many times he had said that to women in bars.

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Don't be so bold,' she said, and he laughed.

Aris was a sales rep for a major appliance manufacturer out of 'Saint Joe's.' Aris was in D.C., his first time, for the Home Improvement Expo at the new convention center. Aris had wrestled at Michigan State, but 'that was twenty pounds ago.' Aris had hoped to check out some of the museums and the monuments while he was in town, but he would have to do it on another visit, as he was leaving in the morning. Aris was thirty-four years old.

Rachel nodded, her eyes on his, seemingly attentive but barely seeing him or registering his words. She was thinking of Eddie, her offender who cut hair and was about to get off paper. She was sorry she had not had time for him today and was looking forward to seeing him in the morning. Eddie was a good one, a genuine success.

'I guess I picked Michigan State 'cause they were the Spartans,' said Aris. 'You know, with my mom and all. Plus the in-state tuition. You can't beat the price, you know what I mean?'

Rachel crossed one leg over the other, deliberately flexing her thigh, making sure he saw the cut. She leaned forward a little to give Aris a look at her lacy bra, her breasts loose inside it, the aureole of one brown nipple edging above the lace. It was humid in the bar, and the warmth was around her and on her chest.

'You okay?' said Aris, his eyes bright.

'A little hot, is all. You?'

'Yes.'

They ordered two more drinks. Aris signaled the bartender for the check as Rachel lit another cigarette. The room doubled for a moment as she looked around it, trails coming off the men and women at the bar. Not surprising, with the red wine and now the scotch.

'Don't mix the grain and the grape, little girl.'

'Who has time, Popi? You know I work too hard.'

'You play too hard too. I see it on your face.'

Aris wrote his room number on the check. She noticed the sun line on his ring finger as he scratched out his signature. At his age, he probably had a child as well. She guessed he had been married for seven years or so. 'Seven Year Ache.' She loved that song.

'Something funny?' said Aris.

'Was I smiling? I guess I'm happy, is what it is.'

'So,' said Aris, 'you gonna make me beg you for your name?'

'Rachel Lopez,' she said. 'I'm a mutt, just like you.'

'Rachel, like in the Old Testament.'

'My mother was Jewish.'

'But Lopez isn't Jewish. Your father was what?'

'Latino, born in west Texas.'

'Your folks still around?'

'Deceased.'

'Sorry.'

Both had passed within months of each other. If there was a blessing, it was that her father had gone first. He could not have handled seeing her mother, a husk of bones and loose gray flesh, in her last days.

'So you're half Jewish and half Spanish,' said Aris.

'Latina.'

Aris smiled rakishly. 'Which half is Latina?'

Rachel dragged on her cigarette. 'You stop acting so fresh, you'll find out.'

'Okay,' said Aris, squaring his shoulders, cocky, knowing he was in. 'But listen, I need to use the head.'

'Pass the front desk and go down the stairs.'

'Don't go anywhere,' said Aris, pointing at her before getting off his stool.

Don't tell me what to do. I'm in charge, not you.

Rachel killed her drink and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She walked through the bar and out into the circular lobby, nodding and smiling at the two Middle Easterners behind the reception desk, and went down a stairway to the carpeted lower level. It was empty of people and, as in all the times she'd been here, virtually soundless. She passed by the women's bathroom, pushed on the door of the men's bathroom, and stepped inside.

Aris was facing the urinal, shaking himself off. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard her heels slapping on the tiled floor. His face pinkened with embarrassment. Also, he looked scared.

'What, you lost?'

'Ladies' bathroom's too crowded,' she said, walking quickly toward him.

'No it isn't.' He chuckled nervously. 'It's quiet as a church down here.'

Rachel came to him and pressed her breasts against his back and kissed him behind his ear. She reached around him, pushed his arm away, and wrapped her hand around his meat. It was warm and thick and already hard. She ran her thumb and forefinger down his shaft like she was squeezing toothpaste from a tube, and it grew harder still.

'Holy… shit.'

'Shut up,' she said very softly.

She stroked him and talked to him. His breath got short. Her touch was expert, and he came with a shudder and voluminously against the porcelain.

'Now you're ready,' she said.

Docile and relaxed.

Up in his room, he offered her a drink from the minibar. She refused. She found the local country station on the clock radio while Aris took off his shoes as she had instructed him to do. The station was playing George Strait. She went to Aris, standing motionless as a statue in his socks, still off-balance from her bold act in the restroom, and further undressed him. She took off his button-down and pulled his T-shirt over his head as a mother would her little boy's, then unzipped his pants and eased him back onto the edge of the bed so that she could pull the pants free. He was there on his elbows, watching her as she unhooked her skirt and unbuttoned her blouse and let both drop to the floor. She came to him in her bra and thong, and she pulled his boxers off and leaned in and kissed him deep.

As her tongue slid over his, she took his hand and guided it inside the cup of her bra. He found her nipple, and as it began to swell she put her hand over his fingers and squeezed.

'Like that, Aris,' she said.

He moved back to the pillows, in a heap at the headboard, and she followed him on all fours. She let him remove her panties and she let him stroke her. He tried to turn her over, but she would not allow it. She took his bull cock and rubbed its helmet on her thighs and clit and then between her breasts and full on her breasts until she was wet. She straddled him, impaled herself upon him, and fucked him, her hips jacked and moving fluidly. She listened to the music from the radio, thinking of the raw sensation, remembering her father and how he sang Tejano and Texas country in their house when she was a child, and her mother in her blue print dress and how she hummed along. The blood welled up inside her and rushed forward. It felt like childhood, uncluttered, when they were all under one roof, alive. She could bring them back like this, only like this, when she was in control.

Rachel's body stiffened; she came furiously, saliva dripping from her open mouth.

She washed herself in the bathroom. When she returned, the man from Saint Joseph, Michigan, was asleep on his stomach and snoring into the sheets. Rachel got dressed.

CHAPTER 14

'You want another?' said Joe Carver, reaching for the small red cooler at his feet.

'Sure,' said Lorenzo Brown. 'Long as you're buyin'.'

Joe withdrew two Miller Genuines from the cooler and handed one to Lorenzo. Lorenzo ran his hand over the bottle to remove the water and bits of ice. He and Joe hand-turned the caps, tapped bottles, and drank. Both had worked full days in the summer heat. The beer was cold and went down straight.

The porch was unlit and absent of moonlight beneath the cover of its roof. Joe and Lorenzo sat on cushioned chairs that faced the street, Joe's feet up on the rail. Jasmine lay on her belly, also watching the street, blinking her eyes slowly, her snout hanging over the porch's first step.

Joe liked to sit out here most nights, from spring well into the autumn. He had fallen before Lorenzo and done longer time. Ten years in Kentucky after his third conviction, a federal rap. He had refused to testify against Nigel or anyone else, and suspected that because he'd stood tall, he had been penalized with a harsher sentence. It was a story as old as history: The soldiers fell on their swords and the kings survived.

In prison, Joe hadn't boasted on plans or unattainable goals like some of the talkers he knew. He had dreamed of getting a job, breathing fresh air, and, when the workday was done, finding a comfortable place to sit where there were no walls. Now he was doing just that.

'So you gonna date this woman?' said Joe. He meant Rayne. Lorenzo had described her and their encounter.

'I don't know about date,' said Lorenzo. 'I plan to do something with her and her little girl, like a daytime thing. See how we all get along.'

'She know about you?'

'Yeah. She fine with it. Least she claims to be.'

'Be careful.'

'She don't look all that dangerous to me.'

'I'm sayin', you got your own little girl to think of.'

'Shay doin' fine,' said Lorenzo. 'I saw her this evening. Her mama wouldn't let me talk to her or nothin' like that, but she looked great. Happy. Looks like Sherelle got herself a good man this time.'

'You met him?'

'In a way. He seems all right.'

'My boy's got a man looking after him too. He stay in the same place with my boy's mama. He ain't the father, but… long as they loved, right?'

'Yeah.'

'You and me, we fucked up. But that don't mean our kids got to be fucked up because of it.'

'For real.'

Joe looked out at the night, picturing his son. 'Whole lot of ways to make a family.'

They drank some more and listened to the crickets, the dogs barking in the alleys, and the swish of tires on asphalt from down on Georgia Avenue. The sounds were familiar and comforting. Jasmine sighed and closed her eyes.

'Your truck running all right?' said Lorenzo, looking at it, a '95 Ford, the pre-jelly bean body style, parked under a street lamp.

'Long as I change the oil regular,' said Joe. 'What about your runner?'

'Fine, thanks to you.'

'You miss them pretty whips we used to drive?'

'Not really.'

'Neither do I. They weren't ours no way.'

That's right, thought Lorenzo. None of it was real.

Joe's chair creaked under his weight. He was a big man who'd gained forty pounds since his release. His slowing metabolism, his aunt's cooking, and his nightly intake of beer had gotten the better of him, despite his hard daily labor as a bricklayer.

'I was thinkin' on us and those whips earlier tonight,' said Joe.

'Why's that?'

'I saw some boys out here earlier., jawin' in the street. Couple of 'em was Nigel's. I seen their car before, a black Escalade with spinners, over there on Sixth, where Nigel like to rally the troops.'

'I know who those two are,' said Lorenzo.

'Yeah?'

'I saw Nigel and them earlier, up near his office on Georgia. I stopped to visit.'

'How Nigel look?'

'Fit,' said Lorenzo. 'What happened with his boys?'

'They was just talkin' mad shit with these other two boys who had blocked the street. All of 'em got out the cars and showed their teeth. Then Nigel's got back in their Escalade and the others got back in their BMW and all of 'em went on their way.'

'Other car was a BMW?'

'Three-Series. Silver or blue, hard to tell, way the headlights was on it.'

Lorenzo stroked the whiskers of his chin. 'Describe the two came out the BMW.'

'I couldn't make much out.'

'Don't make no difference. I'm pretty sure it was Melvin Lee. Him and some hard kid named Rico.'

'How you know that?'

'I had a call today, some dogfights down around Fort Dupont. Lee was there, and we had some words. You remember Melvin, right?'

'I'm the one told you he came back uptown. People I know say he workin' for Deacon again. Got a front job, up at the car wash on Georgia, 'cause he's still on paper.'

'Right.'

'Melvin ain't shit. Never was.'

'I know it.'

'Why you interested?'

'I'm not. Only…'

'What?'

'Melvin and his shadow were watching Nigel when me and Nigel was talkin'.'

'So he watchin' Nigel and them. It's his job to scout the other team. That ain't got nothin' to do with you.'

'You're right.'

'Anyway,' said Joe, 'it just reminded me, seein' them out there, how it was for us.'

'Ain't nothin' changed.'

'Look around you. Why would it change?'

'But if these kids knew how it has to end… I mean, if you could only tell 'em.'

'But you can't tell 'em shit. They ain't gonna listen to no old heads, that's for damn sure. Same way we didn't listen. We knew it all.' Joe chuckled. 'Now I got to pee in a bottle to remind myself of all the ways I failed.'

'You're doin' fine.'

'Tell it to my PO.'

'He on you?'

'Like a motherfucker,' said Joe. 'Yours?'

'Mine's on me too. She good, though.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah,' said Lorenzo. 'She's good.'

Lorenzo and Joe finished their beers.

'Well,' said Joe, getting up laboriously out of his seat, 'let me get on inside. I got to be on that construction site at seven.'

'I'm on early shift myself.'

'It works if you work it.'

'No doubt.'

Lorenzo and Joe shook hands and patted each other's backs. Joe went inside the house, moving quietly so as not to wake his aunt, as Lorenzo leashed Jasmine and walked her down the steps. The two of them headed for their apartment, a short way down the dark street.

Morton Street at night, east of Georgia and back toward Park Morton, was alive with traffic. Touts, runners, fiends, drive-through customers with Virginia plates, and neighborhood residents walking to their row houses and apartments crowded the strip.

A couple of times every night, Fourth District cruisers would slowly make a pass down Morton and through the Section Eight apartment complex, their uniformed occupants shouting from the open windows of their Crown Vics, telling the dealers and users to move on. Less frequently, in the wake of a publicized fatality or a Washington Post investigative piece, a special unit would descend on the area and do jump-out busts. This would result in some arrests and a few convictions, but it did not in any way stop the flow of business. Drug sales of one kind or another had been ongoing in this area, and west into Columbia Heights, for over thirty years.

DeEric Green drove the Escalade down Morton, Michael Butler by his side. They had just picked up the count from a boy named Ricky Young. Young had handed the money, stashed in a T-MAC 3 Adidas shoe box, to Green, who had in turn handed it to Butler. The money, in various denominations, now sat in the shoe box on the carpeted floor of the backseat. Green had put a Rare Essence PA mix, recorded on May 15 at the Tradewinds, into the CD player and was rocking it loud.

'Busy,' said Butler.

'Summertime,' said Green.

On a hot corner up ahead, they could see some of their people, all in street clothes. On another corner stood Deacon's, wearing long white T-shirts and loose-fitting jeans. A bandanna worn around the neck meant the seller had heroin. Around the leg, it meant coke. This type of coding, in variation, had become common in the East Coast urban trade. Deacon insisted his people use the bandanna system and made it mandatory that they wear the T-shirts. He liked the idea of them in uniform. Also, it differentiated them from the competition. Nigel let his soldiers wear whatever they pleased.

Butler hit a joint as they neared the end of Morton.

'Boy,' said Green, 'you actin' like you the only one in this car like to get high.'

'Here,' said Butler. He passed the weed, tamped into a White Owl wrapper, to Green.

The circle at the end of the block had been the gateway to the Park Morton complex until recently, when yellow concrete pillars had been erected, blocking the entrance to an asphalt road that ringed the apartments. The pillars kept dealers and killers from doing their dirt where mothers walked and children played, but they hampered the police from driving back there too. Now it was an avenue of escape for those who wanted to book out on foot. Nothing worked back here. No one was going to stop a thing.

Green swung the Cadillac around the circle and headed west, back toward Georgia.

'I got to pick up the count again, one more time, before the night's out,' said Green. 'You worked a full day. You want, I could take you home.'

Butler thought of what he would find at his apartment. If his mother wasn't hitting it, she was looking to. Wasn't unusual for him to come in and find her giving up her face to a strange man for the price of a high. She had no ass and few teeth, and her hair was never combed. If Butler stayed out late enough, she might be asleep. He wouldn't have to look at her when he got home.

'I'll hang with you,' said Butler, 'if that's all right.'

'Sure,' said Green, who was getting used to having the boy around. 'This hydro's got my hunger up, though.'

'Mine too.'

'Let's get us somethin',' said Green. He turned right on Georgia Avenue and headed north.

Rico Miller, idling in the convenience store lot on the corner, saw them through the windshield of his BMW. He had been cruising the neighborhood, hoping to spot Green and Butler, and had stopped here, at one of the city's many fake 7-Elevens, to get a Sierra Mist. Miller put the car in drive.

Up at Kennedy Street, outside the Wings n Things, Green parked the Caddy near a row of brightly colored racing bikes, Ducatis and such, that always seemed to be out front in the warmer months. Butler listened to music while Green went inside and returned with a large bag. He wasn't in there long; he had called in the order from his cell.

'Dag, DeEric,' said Butler, wide-eyeing the bag. 'You got a whole rack of wings.'

'All drums.'

'You get the extra hot sauce?'

'What you think?' said Green. 'Let's find us a quiet place to eat 'em. Smoke up the rest of this funk before we do.'

A short way down Kennedy, Green turned southeast onto Illinois Avenue. He reached Sherman Circle and a quarter way around it veered off on Crittenden Street. Behind a side street off Crittenden, down near Bernard Elementary, he parked the Cadillac in an alley. He had fucked a girl in this alley not long ago and knew it to be quiet. Lot of folks in the city kept dogs in their backyards at night, would bark at damn near everything. But this alley here, for some reason, was dog free.

They left the windows down, kept the music low, and smoked the rest of the blunt. Their appetites sufficiently whetted, they started in on the drums.

DeEric Green, tripping hard on the highly potent hydroponic weed, was focused on the food before him. His thoughts were happy and not complex.

Michael Butler was also at the peak of his high. But his thoughts went deeper than Green's. The percussion and call-and-response of the go-go mix were hypnotic and almost too much for his head. He didn't mind feeling this way. He could never get too high.

When he was up like this, Butler didn't think on his mother sucking some stranger's dick. When he was up like this, he didn't wonder who his father was or why he'd left. Instead, he dreamed of traveling to places he'd never been before and seeing things he'd only read about in books. Like the Eiffel Tower, and that big arch they had over there in the same city. He guessed he could see that tower and that arch if he wanted to. Why couldn't he? He knew where they were. He could point to that country on a map. Alls he needed to do was get one of them passports, buy a plane ticket, and go. But how did you get a passport? How did you buy a plane ticket? He could find out somehow, he guessed.

When these thoughts got too complicated, he'd just stare up at the night sky. He'd look at the stars and imagine what it would be like to fly in one of them spaceships. To look out the window when you were right there in the middle of space, with all them big rocks, them asteroids, going by. He wondered what you had to do to become one of those astronauts. Did you have to go to an astronaut school or something special like that? How did you get picked? He would like to be an astronaut someday.

He dreamed about these things. But he never did anything but dream about them, because most of the time he was high.

'These drums is tight,' said DeEric Green. He stared at the chicken he held in both hands. The hot sauce was shiny on his lips and stained his face.

Butler had many questions, but he didn't know where to go to find the answers. He used to be able to ask his teachers, but that was before he'd dropped out of school. He had no family, except for his mother. Nigel and DeEric and them, they were his family now. But they weren't the kind of people you could ask.

One time, he'd told his mother that he'd like to go up in space.

'So now you gonna be an astro-not,' she said. 'You can't even spell it, boy.'

'Yes, I can,' said Butler, and to show her that he could, he did.

'Smart little motherfucker,' she said, 'actin' all superior. You ain't goin' no goddamn where but where you at now. The last place you be goin' is space.'

Michael Butler stared out the windshield. From the depths of the alley, out of the darkness, he saw a tall figure walking toward them with a strange dip in his gait. He was wearing gloves. Looked like he was wearing a long raincoat or something too. But it wasn't raining.

'Someone comin' toward us,' said Butler.

Green glanced out the windshield. 'Yeah?' He closed his eyes and bit into a piece of chicken, tearing the meat away from the bone.

The figure came closer.

'I'm just savin',' said Butler, a catch in his voice.

'Nigga takin' a walk, is all,' said Green. 'Ain't no law against it.'

'Too hot to be wearin' gloves,' said Butler.

'Fuck you talkin' about?' said Green.

The man walking toward them triggered a motion detector hung from the eave of a freestanding garage. As the light hit him, Butler saw that it was Melvin Lee's partner, the boy with the frightening smile. He was breaking into that smile now. Smiling wide as he pulled a sawed-off shot-gun out from under the coat.

'Hey, D,' said Butler.

Green looked through the glass. He dropped the chicken into his lap and reached for the butt of his Colt, protruding from under the driver's seat. His hand, slick with the grease of the chicken, slipped off the grip. He saw the boy rack the shotgun and heard it, and with his right hand, Green reached across the buckets and pushed down on Michael Butler's head. As he did this, he saw, for a brief moment, a shower of glass rush toward him. He was blinded by the glass and a ripping pain, and felt slickness on his neck and chest. The air was cool on his face, and then the air felt like fire. He wanted to scream. He tried to open his mouth, and then he tried to close it, but he could do neither.

Butler, staying low, opened the passenger door and rolled out into the alley.

Miller moved quickly to stand beside the open driver's-side window. In the bucket sat Green. His jaw was gone. Threads of blood and saliva, and shreds of white bone remained. Green was dead or dying. His feet kicked at the floorboards of the truck.

Miller had seen Butler exit the Escalade. He could hear Butler talking to himself. Praying or getting his courage up as he tried to scrabble along the other side. Miller walked behind the SUV and turned its corner. He found Butler on all fours. Butler looked up. He was crying, and it smelled like he'd shit his jeans.

'Stand up,' said Miller.

Butler tried but couldn't do it.

Lights began to glow in the back of several houses. Percussion came through the open windows of the Cadillac. Behind the drums was the faint wail of a siren.

'Stand yourself up,' said Miller.

Michael Butler willed himself to his feet and raised his hands. His hands shook. Tears ran dirty down his cheeks. Miller leveled the Winchester and rested its shortened stock on his forearm.

'I ain't done nothin' to you,' said Butler, his lips trembling.

'So?' said Miller.

The alley flashed. It looks like lightning, thought Butler. It feels like the wind.

Michael Butler opened his eyes. He was on his back. His chest was warm. He coughed up a spray of blood. He looked at the night sky. He looked at the stars.

Miller came into his vision and stood over him. He held the shotgun loosely. Now there was a pistol in his other hand.

'I,' said Butler. 'I…'

I ain't ready, God.

Miller sighted down the barrel of the Glock and shot Butler in the mouth. He rolled him over with his foot and shot him in the back of the head.

Miller holstered the Glock in the waistband of his jeans. He slipped the cut-down Winchester into the special harness he wore under the coat. Squinting his narrow eyes, he found both 9 mm casings and the shotgun shell near Butler's body. Still wearing his gloves, he managed to pick them up. He then found the first shell that had ejected in front of the Cadillac's grille and dropped it into the pocket of his raincoat along with the others.

He went to the open window and looked at Green's corpse. He looked inside the car. Opening the back door, he found the Adidas shoe box and examined its contents, then closed the lid and slipped the box under his arm. Wasn't no reason to leave it behind.

Miller walked down the alley. In his side vision, he saw lights on in the back rooms of some of the houses, but few curtains parted and no one came outside. He heard the siren grow louder. He didn't run.

Miller reached his BMW, parked near the alley's T, before the police arrived. He turned the ignition key and pulled away from the curb. He drove carefully and with his headlights full on. He was not nervous or frightened. He felt no remorse, or anything else.

Miller hit the power button on the radio. He found an Obie Trice he liked and turned it up.

Rachel Lopez, the windows down in her Honda, listened to a Brooks and Dunn on the radio and smoked a cigarette as she drove up 7th Street.

She was careful to stay in her lane and she watched the speedometer as well. She glanced in the rearview and saw no police. Looking at her reflection, she noticed that her makeup had run in streaks from around her eyes. She was ugly. She supposed she had cried.

It didn't matter. Tomorrow she would be back on the job, sober and straight. This was Rachel at night.

CHAPTER 15

Lorenzo Brown opened his eyes. He stared at the cracked plaster ceiling and cleared his head.

Jasmine's warm snout touched his fingers. Lorenzo rubbed behind her ears and breathed out slowly. It was time to go to work.

He did curls with forty-pound dumbbells while listening to Donnie Simpson on PGC. Simpson was playing an old EWF, 'Keep Your Head to the Sky.' It was a song released well before Lorenzo's time but one that he was familiar with and loved. The newsman came on and talked about the war and a helicopter downed by a rocket and the death of three young servicemen. He talked about some people who had been in charge of the local teachers' union and how they'd stolen from out the pension fund. He mentioned briefly a double murder in Northwest.

Lorenzo finished his workout. He showered, ate his breakfast, changed into his uniform, and walked Jasmine. He left food and water for her, directed the fan toward her bed, and got on his way.

Cindy, the dispatcher, was just settling in behind her desk as he entered the Humane Society office. He could hear the sound of one dog barking down in the kennel.

'Mark in yet?' said Lorenzo.

'Downstairs,' said Cindy.

Lorenzo found Mark in the basement, wrapping a bandage around his hand. He was standing beside the cage of the pit bull rescued from behind the storefront church.

'Lincoln get you?' said Lorenzo.

Mark nodded, his face colored with embarrassment. 'I didn't think he'd bite me.'

'It's not your fault,' said Lorenzo. 'You can't trust him. I mean, he don't trust nobody himself, after what got done to him.'

'I know it.' Mark stared at the blood seeping through the gauze on his hand. 'I was trying to get through, is all. Irena's getting ready to sign off on him.'

'She has to. That dog's not adoptable. You see that, right?'

'Yes.'

'Some animals just got to be put down, Mark. Not every one of 'em can be saved.'

Lorenzo stepped over to Mark, unwrapped the gauze, and examined his hand.

'He didn't go deep.'

'I'm fine.'

Lincoln had backed himself to the rear of the cage. He looked up at Lorenzo shyly.

'What've you got today?' said Mark.

'Gonna check my answering machine first. Take a cat back to some old lady. Make some follow-up calls. I'm gonna try to catch a meeting round lunch time. You know, see how the day goes.'

'I'll be out on calls too,' said Mark. 'You need me, you can get me on the radio.'

'Leave me the Tahoe,' said Lorenzo.

'Yeah, all right.'

'I mean it, man. I know you like that CD player, but you can listen to the radio for a change. I'm tired of gettin' bounced around in that Astra.'

'I said I would.'

Mark went up to the lobby area. Lorenzo stayed behind and crouched in front of Lincoln's cage. He whistled softly and put his knuckles near the grid. Lincoln moved forward, snapped at Lorenzo's hand, growled for a few seconds, and stepped back. The other dogs in the kennel began to bark.

'You can't help who you are, can you, boy?' said Lorenzo, looking into Lincoln's eyes. 'It's gonna be better soon.'

Up in his office, Lorenzo sat at his desk and washed down two ibuprofens with house coffee while he checked his messages. A man named Felton Barnett had called the day before to complain about a dog barking in an apartment in his building. He had phoned Lorenzo directly because he had dealt with him on 'another matter' and been satisfied with the service. Also, the old lady off Kennedy Street had called about her cat. Jerry, a huge multitattooed Humane officer who had a desk nearby, dropped the Metro section of the Post on Lorenzo's desk without comment before walking heavily from the room. In the morning, Jerry left the newspaper for Lorenzo, section by section, as he finished it. Lorenzo automatically went to Metro's page 2, where they had the Crime and Justice feature, which many called the Roundup and some cynical types still called the Violent Negro Deaths. Lorenzo read this feature religiously, even in prison, back when it was just called Around the Region. There, under the heading The District, and then under the subheading Homicides, he read the following:

A twenty-four-year-old man and a seventeen-year-old youth were found fatally shot in an alley off the 500 block of Crittenden Street, N.W., late last night. Police said the man, DeEric Green, and the youth were both pronounced dead at the scene. The identity of the youth is being withheld until notification of relatives. Police are treating both fatalities as homicides.

Lorenzo dropped the paper on his desk. He reached for his coffee cup but did not lift it. He moved the cup in small circles.

He didn't have Nigel's number anymore. But he did still have his mother's memorized. Lorenzo picked up the phone and punched her number into the grid.

'Hello.'

'Miss Deborah?'

'Yes'

'Lorenzo Brown here.'

'Lorenzo! My goodness, it's nice to hear your voice.'

'Yours too. I'm trying to reach Nigel. I was hoping you could give me his number.'

'Nigel kinda funny about that, Lorenzo.'

'I understand. Let me give you mine, then. Maybe he can get up with me, he has the time.'

He gave her his cell number and listened to her chewing on something as she wrote it down. The woman loved to eat. She enjoyed feeding guests, especially kids, too. She'd filled him with plenty of good food in that warm kitchen of hers when he was a boy.

'Thank you, Miss Deborah.'

'Come visit, Lorenzo.'

'Yes, ma'am. I will.'

Lorenzo gathered his files and accessories, put them in a backpack, and went downstairs. Queen, the old lady's calico, had been delivered by the spay clinic to the cat kennel, situated behind the lobby. The cat was docile, lying on her side in a cage. Lorenzo took her out and found a portable carrier.

'You ain't so frisky now, are you?' he said, placing her in the handled box. 'Don't fret. You goin' home.'

Passing the pegs by the back door, Lorenzo saw that the keys to the Tahoe were gone. He mumbled under his breath and took an Astra key off the peg. He stepped out into the alley with Queen in hand, going up the small hill to Floral Place. Mark was there in the court, standing in front of the Tahoe, grinning, swinging the keys from his bandaged hand.

'Looking for these?'

'You had me cursin' your name, Boy Scout.'

Mark and Lorenzo exchanged keys. Lorenzo threw a soft right to Mark's head. Mark dodged the punch.

'You're not mad, are you?'

'Nah,' said Lorenzo, 'I'm straight.'

Driving south on Georgia a few minutes later, Lorenzo thought of Green and Butler, and how Nigel was going to carry their deaths, and the waste. Lorenzo had a pretty good idea who was involved in the killings. He realized that he could have called the police with the information first thing. Instead, he had tried to call Nigel.

Straight.

I'm a long way from straight.

Rachel Lopez had two assistants on staff charged solely with handling the paperwork related to her caseload. Rachel had planned on finishing her field calls but decided to drop by the office first to see how the assistants were coming along and to check her messages. It had been a struggle to get out of bed and out of her apartment. She could not even think of food and had not smoked her usual morning cigarette. A shower had revived her, but not by much.

Rachel had a door on her office, an undecorated room with nothing on the walls, and a window that gave to a view of the nearby garden apartments. This morning, after briefing her young assistants and listening to their complaints and concerns, she kept her door closed. She normally left it open, but she was trying to get her physical self together in private. A knock on the door and Moniqua Rogers's musical voice told her that her solitude would be short-lived.

'Come in.'

Moniqua entered, bringing her strawberry perfume along with her. She was a correctional officer with almost as many years in as Rachel. Their styles could not have been more different. Moniqua dressed loudly in big-legged pantsuits, laughed easily and deeply, and never brought her job home to her husband and three kids. She wore plenty of makeup. She carried a gun. Rachel was her opposite in nearly every way. None of this stopped the two of them from liking each other. Because Moniqua had a family and Rachel did not, and because of their cultural differences, they rarely saw each other outside work. But they were friends.

'Damn, girl,' said Moniqua. 'Look what the cat thought twice about draggin' in.'

'I didn't get much sleep last night.'

'Were you tossin' or getting yourself tossed? The latter, I hope.'

'Nothing that exciting. I couldn't sleep.'

'Okay.' Moniqua parked an ample ass cheek on the edge of Rachel's desk. 'Look, I got a new offender coming in this afternoon for his initial consult. But my oldest is in some swim meet thing at the pool and she wants me to be there. Can you cover for me?'

'No.'

'Didn't even have to think on it, huh?'

'I'm gonna be out in the field. I didn't finish my calls yesterday, and I can't get behind.'

'Are they good calls or bad calls?' said Moniqua.

'A couple of gentlemen I could do without. But I'm gonna see Eddie Davis today, one of my success stories. That's always good.'

'What about your boy, what's his name, the dog man—'

'Lorenzo Brown. I met with him yesterday.'

'You like him, don't you?'

'He's got potential.'

'I know he's one of your favorites. And don't try and act like you don't have favorites. Shoot, I like my baby boy more than I like his older sisters. I can admit it.'

'Lorenzo's good. But you got to love 'em all, right? Even the bad ones.'

Moniqua patted the .38 holstered in the belt clip on her hip. 'You keep one of these on you, you don't never have to worry about the bad ones.'

'I'd probably hurt myself,' said Rachel. 'Anyway, you pull that thing, you're gonna have to use it. I don't want to shoot anyone.'

'I ain't never had to pull it, honey. They put their eyes on it, they mind their manners.'

'I gotta get going,' said Rachel, getting up out of her seat. 'Sorry I couldn't cover for you.'

Moniqua looked her over. 'You sure you're not sick?'

'What if I am? Can I stay home from school, Mommy?'

'Go ahead, girl,' said Moniqua. 'You're long past school.'

Lorenzo Brown found Deanwood to be the most country of all neighborhoods in D.C. Many of the houses, though gone to seed, were on large plots of land holding vegetable gardens, tall trees, and all variety of vines. In the summer, older residents sat on open and screened-in porches and conversed in Deep South accents.

Because of their origins, some of the folks in Deanwood still clung to country ways. A few kept goats, and more than a few had chickens and roosters caged or running about their yards. Owning livestock and fowl was illegal in D.C. After the standard warning, Brown would return to find the chickens gone. He assumed they were killed and eaten. He did not know or ask how the goats were disappeared.

Lorenzo was not checking on unusual violations today. He was following up on a caging call he had made the week before to a woman named Victoria Newman, who lived with her dog, a rottie named Winston.

Lorenzo parked in the alley and walked through Victoria Newman's yard. He passed Winston, standing in his cage beside his igloo-style doghouse, quietly eyeing Lorenzo. The cage was in the shade of a magnolia tree. Winston was healthy, well fed and watered, and had a clean, shiny coat that was fly free. There were minimal droppings on the cage's concrete floor.

Winston barked one time at Lorenzo and, having done his job, opened his mouth to let his tongue drop out the side.

Victoria Newman answered the door after parting the curtains on the ground floor. She wore a bathrobe over a low-cut nightgown; both barely contained her lush figure. She was light skinned, green eyed, and had big features that suited her. She leaned on the door frame as Lorenzo reintroduced himself.

'You again,' she said in a not unfriendly way.

'Yes, ma'am,' said Lorenzo. 'Just doin' a follow-up on… It's Winston, right?'

'That's my boy. He lookin' good, isn't he?'

Her eyes were unfocused. That and the sound of her television and stereo system both playing at once told Lorenzo that she was high. But a blind man could have seen that, as she stank of weed. The cigarette burning between her fingers did not hide the smell.

'No doubt, he looks fine,' said Lorenzo. 'But we still got the same problem I spoke to you about last month. That space you got him in is too small. He needs to be in an enclosure that's at least eight by ten, not including the shelter within it.'

'You mean the house where he sleep at?'

'Exactly.'

'Eight by ten, that's the parameter.'

'Yes,' said Lorenzo, seeing no point in correcting her.

'Wasn't like I disregarded what you told me,' said Victoria. 'I'm in the process of takin' care of it right now.'

'You need to do it.'

'I been waitin' on this handyman I know to come over here to make the cage larger, only he been busy.'

Lorenzo filled out an Official Notification form on his clipboard.

'Winston's healthy, though,' said Victoria.

'Yes, he is.'

She dragged on her cigarette. 'You healthy too.'

'I'm hangin' in there,' said Lorenzo.

He held out the form. She touched his thumb and gave him a hungry smile as she took it.

'You must be thirsty, all this heat. I got some cold water inside.'

'I got water in my truck,' said Lorenzo.

But I'd love to loosen the belt on that robe of yours. You keep talkin', I might. I'm just a man.

'You sure?' said Victoria.

'Thank you for asking,' said Lorenzo. 'Take care of Winston for me, hear?'

Driving away, his dick semihard, his mind a mixture of relief and regret, Lorenzo thought about Victoria Newman, high at nine-thirty in the morning, alone in that house, not yet out of her bedclothes on a workday. All the people he met in the city on his daily runs, and all those he didn't know but saw, standing on corners, drinking out of paper bags, lighting their cigarettes, all of them with nothing, absolutely nothing, to do. He didn't know how folks like that got up in the morning and faced the day.

The speaker below the dash crackled. He listened to the voice on the other end. It was Cindy, from the dispatch desk, informing him of a call.

'A Felton Barnett, in Anacostia. Dog's been barking in one of the apartments he manages. Says it's been going on for the last two days.'

'Congress Heights,' said Lorenzo. 'Man already left a message on my machine.'

'You gonna take it or should I call Mark?'

'You can call Mark, you want to,' said Lorenzo. 'But I'm gonna take it. Matter of fact, I'm on my way now.'

He replaced the mic in its cradle. He did not notice the silver BMW parked on the corner of 46th and Hayes as he passed.

Lorenzo squinted and reached for his shades. His headache had returned.

CHAPTER 16

Rachel drove into town. She was looking for a man named Carlton Sims and a bottom feeder named Tyrone Meadows. Both stayed in the same facility, a halfway house in Northeast.

The halfway house was not a house, but rather a warehouse with a couple of trailers grouped around it, off New York Avenue in an area that was zoned for commercial as well as residential use. It was run by a private contractor based in Michigan and funded by the federal government through the Bureau of Prisons. Men and women just out of the joint used facilities like this one to get acclimated to the world for the first two or three months of their straight life.

The contractor had been under fire from neighborhood residents since the facility had opened, quietly, the previous year. The city had approved the site, and the mayor and the police chief had been briefed, as required by law, but no one had thought to consult the neighbors. Every day, kids walked by the halfway house, now referred to as a 'community corrections center' by its contractor, on their way to school. They stood at the same bus stop and frequented the same corner market as the offenders, some of whom had rape and molestation charges in their jackets. A similar facility had been blocked in wealthy Ward 3, but in the relatively poorer sections of town, citizens had less power. Rachel Lopez understood the concern but also wondered where these people would stay, in the absence of family or friends, if programs such as this one went away.

Rachel entered the greeting area of the main facility, a former storage structure now sectioned into dorm-style sleeping quarters, cafeteria, lounge and recreation room, and administrative offices. She badged a security guard and asked to speak with Millie Gales, the facility's manager. As she waited, she watched the occupants milling about in the dim light of the cafeteria, talking guardedly, palming one another smokes, moving slowly. It reminded her of a prison dayroom.

Millie came out of her office in short order and met Rachel by the sign-in, sign-out counter. She was a big woman in her fifties, dark-skinned, high of hip, with strong arms and muscular legs. She was missing three fingers on her right hand. A large gold crucifix hung outside her dress.

'Hey, girl,' said Millie.

'Millie.'

They hugged. Millie's eyes lost a little light as she stepped back and studied Rachel. Rachel wondered if she looked as bad as she felt. Maybe she reeked of last night's alcohol.

'Who you here to see?' said Millie.

'Carlton Sims, for one,' said Rachel.

Millie picked up the clipboard on the counter. 'Carlton signed out of here at four forty-five a.m.'

'For work, I hope.'

'Oh, yeah. Carlton working most every day. He got hooked up with Darius Wood, has that landscaping business?'

'Darius Wood. Isn't he an ex-offender?'

'Uh-huh. I met him at my church originally. He comes by and picks up men now, around dawn. So far, Carlton's doing all right.'

'What about Tyrone Meadows?' said Rachel. 'He in?'

'Tyrone's most definitely in,' said Millie. 'He ain't even looked for work since he been here.'

'Can I speak to him?'

'I'll get him,' said Millie, then put her two-fingered hand on Rachel's arm. 'You want some water, something? You look kinda pale.'

'It's just the heat. Thanks, I'm all right.'

Rachel Lopez and Tyrone Meadows sat outside at a picnic table so that Tyrone could smoke. Meadows was a hustler who lived off women and had a history of domestic abuse to go with his felony drug charges. He was thin and wiry, with Omega tattoos burned via hot wire into both biceps. He had a radiant smile that clashed with his cruel eyes.

They sat directly in the sun, among other offenders who had come out here to catch air and cigarettes. It was not yet noon, but the temperature had climbed to ninety degrees.

'So what you want to know?' said Meadows. He dragged hard on a live menthol and looked at her with smiling eyes.

'I want to know when you're going to start looking for work,' said Rachel, meeting his stare. Her eyes were all business.

'Soon,' he said. 'Need to find me some presentable clothes, though, before I go out on that job search. Man like me, it's important I look good. I'd be disappointing a lot of ladies if I just stepped out in these old khakis, right?'

'You go down to that corner there at sunup, you're gonna find work. You don't need dress clothes for that.'

'That's chain gang bullshit right there. I ain't accustomed to no common labor.'

'You better get accustomed to it,' said Rachel. 'You need to find work. Any kind of gainful employment. The Seven-A form that you signed requires it.'

'Oh, it requires it, huh?' Meadows hit his cigarette, let out some smoke, and French-inhaled the same smoke. 'What y'all gonna do, send me back?'

'If you don't look for work—'

'Look, it don't make all that much difference to me. I'm a survivor, darling.'

'It's Miss Lopez.'

Meadows chuckled. 'Okay. I'm a survivor, Miss Lopez. You can send me back if you feel the need to. I don't even like stayin' up in this motherfucker, see? The food's plain awful, for one. Least I had some privacy in the cut. Three-hots-and-a-cot is lookin' pretty good right now, you want the truth.'

Keep talking, Slick, thought Rachel. I could arrange it for you, if that's what you want.

'But,' said Meadows, 'since it's you askin'—'

'I'm not asking.'

'Damn, you feisty.'

'You need to find work, Tyrone.'

'Listen, I'm feelin' like you and me, we got a problem.' Tyrone leaned forward, glanced at her chest, smiled, and looked back up into her eyes. 'You know, they got a motel, walking distance from here, on New York Avenue? You and me could settle this right now.'

'And I could violate you. Right now.'

'Why you got to act like that?' said Meadows, genuine hurt appearing on his face.

'One more thing,' said Rachel. 'You need to get over to the clinic and drop a urine.'

'Damn.'

'I'm gonna check back with you soon,' said Rachel, getting up off the picnic bench and walking abruptly to her car. She felt dizzy and faint.

Rachel drove down the block. Out of sight of the halfway house, she pulled over to the curb and cut the engine. She smelled gas fumes, broke into a cool sweat, and dry-heaved into her lap. She rested her head back and closed her eyes. Sitting there in the Honda, with the passenger window barely open, she fell asleep in the August heat.

Lorenzo Brown got a call on his cell while climbing the hill toward Saint Elizabeth's, on Martin Luther King Jr Avenue, in Anacostia, Southeast. He turned down the Tahoe's radio and picked up his phone from out of the console's cup holder.

'Brown here.'

'Renzo. My mother said you called.' Nigel Johnson's voice was hoarse. His tone was weary.

'Right,' said Lorenzo. 'I read in the newspaper about Green and the boy. That was Michael Butler, right?'

'Yeah,' said Nigel.

'You okay?'

'You know how this go. It's all in the game.' It was something they had said to each other many times in the past. Nigel did not sound as if he believed it anymore.

'This line safe?'

'I'm on a disposable. You can talk.'

'After I left you yesterday, I passed by a silver BMW parked on Georgia, near your shop. The two inside the car were watching us — watching you, I expect. Last night, Joe said he saw the same ones from the BMW, havin' some kind of verbal confrontation with Green and Butler out in the middle of the street, right on Otis Place. Green drives that black Escalade, doesn't he?'

'He did. You know who was in the BMW?'

'Melvin Lee. Also, a hard-lookin' kid he ride with, name of Rico.'

'How'd you recognize their car?' said Nigel.

'I had my own thing with them earlier in the day. Somethin' to do with my job.'

'Lee works for Deacon. He been back with Deacon since he came uptown.'

'What I heard,' said Lorenzo. Passing between the brick walls of Saint E's, he continued driving south on MLK.

'None of this is no surprise,' said Nigel after a long silence.

'You knew?'

'I knew DeEric fucked up.'

'How so?'

'Green came up on some kid retailing on one of Deacon's corners. He told this kid to step off, thinking the corner was mine. Made a dumb mistake, is all. Deacon's people came back at him, I guess.'

'Was Butler with Green when he made the mistake?'

'No. I only had him ridin' with DeEric to pick up the count, watch how we do. I wanted Michael to learn. That was my fuckup there. Michael wasn't cut out for that kind of drama.'

'You think Deacon ordered the hit?' said Lorenzo, turning down Mississippi Avenue, going along the park known as Oxon Run.

'I don't know,' said Nigel.

Lorenzo drove through the open gate of a fenced complex and parked the Tahoe in the lot of a group of squat brick apartment buildings on Mississippi.

'I got work to do, Nigel.'

'So do I. But look here: This the last conversation we gonna have about this.'

'No question.'

'I don't want you involved.'

'You don't have to worry about that.'

'I mean it, Lorenzo.'

'So do I.'

'You need me again, for anything, you call me direct. Leave a message and I'll get back to you.'

Nigel said his phone number; Lorenzo wrote it on the notepad clipped on the dash of the truck.

'You didn't tell my mother about the killing, did you? I don't like to upset the old girl.'

'I didn't say a thing.'

'Take care of yourself,' said Nigel, and he cut the line.

Lorenzo radioed Cindy and told her he had arrived at the location of the complaint. He then got out of the Tahoe, leaving the motor running and the air conditioning on full, and locked the door with his spare key. He went up the hill toward the apartment building to make his call.

CHAPTER 17

Nigel Johnson stared at the disposable cell phone, one of many he kept in the office. He leaned back in his leather chair and listened to it creak. His enforcer, Lawrence Graham, slight as a fourteen-year-old boy, sat on the edge of Nigel's desk.

'What your man say?' said Graham. It was always your man when he spoke of Lorenzo Brown. He resented the fact that Nigel still held Lorenzo in such high regard.

'Looks like it was two of Deacon's killed DeEric and Michael,' said Nigel. 'Melvin Lee and a boy name Rico.'

'Rico Miller. I don't know where Rico stay at, but Lee work up at the car wash on Georgia. I could wait until he gets off his shift.'

'I ain't ready to drop him yet.'

'I'm just sayin'. You want me to do it, I will. I'll put work in on Miller too.'

'It might come to that. But I want to talk to Deacon first. Give him a chance to tell me how he gonna carry this.'

'I can get word out with Griff that you lookin' to talk.'

'Do it. Set up a meet, someplace neutral, that's what he wants.' Nigel slid the cell phone across his desk. 'And get rid of this burner.'

'You want me to leave outta here now?'

'Yeah. Homicide gonna be callin' on me soon, I expect. Better if I'm here alone.'

'Anything else?'

'Have someone arrange the funeral home. Buy some T-shirts from that boy in Petworth. Get the flowers at the usual place. Send some to DeEric's mother too.'

'What about Michael's mother?'

'Fuck that bitch.'

Graham left the shop. Nigel sat heavily in his chair, staring through the plate glass window to the street.

Lorenzo walked to the entrance of a squat brick apartment building that held four units. He was familiar with the layout of the complex and could describe the interior of the dwellings without having been in this actual structure. These kinds of apartments, minimally maintained and surrounded by black iron fences, were common in Southeast. In his early years, Lorenzo had lived in one just like these, here in Congress Heights.

Outside, kids were plentiful, cracking on one another, riding bikes, and making up games on the dirt-and-weed grounds. Mothers, most in their teens, stood around with one another, smoking, talking with men and young men who were not the fathers of their children. A couple of the older kids hard-eyed Lorenzo as he passed. He was not police, but he was some kind of official, which put him on the other side. A boy in a wife beater and loose pants, no older than fourteen, got on a cell phone as he watched Lorenzo enter the building.

Inside, the building smelled of fried food, with the faint tang of urine and feces in the mix. A dog barked from behind one of the two apartment doors on the second floor. Lorenzo went directly to the first-floor dwelling of Felton Barnett, the man who had left the message on his machine.

Barnett answered Lorenzo's knock. His eyes carried the baggage of repeated late-night alcohol consumption. He was small, middle-aged, and fastidiously dressed.

'Remember me?' said Barnett.

'Yes,' said Lorenzo. It was not a pleasant memory. For some reason, Barnett reminded Lorenzo of a rodent in man's clothes.

Barnett had contacted the office months ago with what turned out to have been a nuisance call. Lorenzo had responded, been polite, and shown him respect, something Barnett was apparently not used to. Now Lorenzo was Barnett's personal officer. When he phoned the Humane Society, he dialed Lorenzo's direct number.

'I got a problem, a very serious problem up in two-B. Dog been up there barking for two days straight.' Barnett, who smelled of beer and cigarettes, pointed a thin finger at Lorenzo. 'Y'all need to respond quicker than you do.'

'I just got the message this morning. If you had called the main number—'

'I did call it, this morning.'

'If you had called it originally, they would've sent someone out yesterday.'

'I don't want someone, said Barnett, standing ramrod straight. 'You're my man. When I call, I want you.'

'You got a key to the apartment?'

'I'm the resident manager,' said Barnett. It was like he was telling Lorenzo that he was the king of New York.

'Let's go check it out.'

They went up the stairs and approached 2B. On the landing, the barking was incessant and loud. The smell of feces was strong. Lorenzo's headache was back full-on.

'You tried contacting the resident?'

'Boy who rents this place don't reside here. You want to know what I think?'

Lorenzo began to knock on the door.

'He keeps drugs and money up in here,' said Barnett, tired of waiting for Lorenzo to reply.

'Go ahead and open it,' said Lorenzo.

Barnett used his key to unlock the door, then stepped behind Lorenzo. Lorenzo pushed on the door and opened it enough to look inside.

A cream pit bull with a brown eye patch stood in the corner of the living room, baring its teeth, barking maniacally at Lorenzo. The room was bare, the floor nearly covered in feces. The dog's coat carried several deep lesions, some of which appeared to be infected. The dog's ribs were highly defined in its coat, and its eyes bulged in their sunken sockets. Flies nested in one prominent lesion and were bunched in clumps on the dog's ears. Flies buzzed about the room. There were blood streaks on the wall where the animal had tried to rub at the cuts. There was an empty aluminum bowl, pocked with teeth marks, on the floor.

Lorenzo backed onto the landing and closed the door.

'Go back to your place,' he said to Barnett. 'Write down the name of the man who rents this apartment and any other information you have on him from his lease.'

'What are you going to do?'

Lorenzo took the stairs without answering and went directly to the Tahoe. He got Cindy on the radio and told her of the situation, and when she asked if he would like MPD assistance, he told her that he could handle it himself. He got the choke pole out of the truck and headed back into the building. As he went through the door, he heard comments and laughter from the young men gathered outside.

In the apartment, Lorenzo breathed through his mouth to avoid the stench. He looked carefully at the barking dog. He whistled to it softly.

'You all right,' he said, like he was talking to a baby in a crib. He walked toward it.

The dog showed its teeth, growled, and backed up until its hindquarters touched the wall. Lorenzo kept walking through the feces, step by careful step, flies buzzing around him, one hand out, the other holding the wooden pole with the wire noose on its end. He looked at the dog's eyes, desperate and afraid. He reached out and put the noose near the dog's head, and the dog lunged at him and backed up again.

'You all right. You all right.'

Lorenzo dropped the noose over the dog's head. The dog moved in his direction. Lorenzo put slight pressure on the pole to let the dog know that he could control it now at will. But the dog was not coming toward him with aggression. It had stopped barking. Its nub of a tail wiggled weakly on its rump.

Lorenzo felt his heart rate slow. He realized how very hot it was in the room, and that his shirt was damp with sweat.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's get you some cool water.'

Using the pole and noose as a leash and collar, he walked the dog down the stairs. The dog went calmly with him.

'Everything all right?' said Barnett, standing behind the door, open just a crack.

'Fine. You write down that information I asked for?'

'Right here,' said Barnett, handing Lorenzo a slip of paper. Lorenzo read the name written on the paper, put it in his breast pocket, and walked out of the building into the bright sunlight.

A small crowd had gathered outside the building, mostly kids and some adults. He heard some positive things said by the adults. Some of the kids looked away at the sight of the sick, injured, dehydrated dog. Others laughed. The boy with the cell phone said, 'Man who own that dog on his way,' and 'He gonna fuck someone up too.' Lorenzo did not look at any of them. He went directly to the truck.

He got the dog up into the back of the Tahoe and released it from the choke pole. He poured a small amount of bottled water into a bowl and let the animal lap it up. He poured a little bit more and placed the bowl in a large cage. The dog went into the cage without being prodded. Lorenzo closed the cage door and then the rear hatch on the Tahoe. He heard a car come into the lot, bass thumping from its windows, and he heard some boys talking and laughing with excitement and a car door slam, but he did not look at the source of the sounds. He locked the hatch and went to the driver's side of his vehicle.

'Fuck you think you doin'?' said a voice. Lorenzo turned around and faced the man standing behind him.

The man was as tall as Lorenzo, and younger. He had good size. He wore a four-finger ring that spelled LEON. His shirt was a genuine football jersey that went for one hundred and seventy dollars. He had stepped out of a fifty-thousand-dollar car.

'I'm impounding this dog,' said Lorenzo, rubbing his finger on the spare key in his right hand.

'You mean you takin' her.'

'That's right,' said Lorenzo, keeping his gaze steady on the swinish eyes of the man. 'Are you the owner?'

'Yeah, I'm the owner. What the fuck you think?'

Lorenzo removed the piece of paper from his shirt, looked at it, and replaced it. 'Leon Skiles?'

'Why you need to know?'

'Just want to make sure I got it straight. It'll help me identify you when we prosecute.'

'Oh,' said Skiles, 'so now you gonna prosecute. Motherfucker, you ain't even police. Standin' there with that fake-ass uniform and shit.'

Some people in the crowd laughed.

'Look here,' said Skiles, stepping forward, getting close to Lorenzo's face. 'You ain't takin' a gotdamn thing from me.'

A boy cackled and another one whooped. Lorenzo did not step back or cut his eyes away. He could feel his blood pulsing through his veins.

'You think I'm gonna let you just drive on out of here with my personal property?'

Lorenzo did not answer.

'What,' said Skiles, 'you fixin' to stare me to death?'

Lorenzo made a loose fist and moved the key so that its tip came out between his middle and index fingers.

'Play the bitch, you want to,' said Skiles. 'I'm about to drop your bitch ass too.'

'Do it,' said Lorenzo, hearing something in his voice he had not heard in a long while. Knowing the code, knowing, as he said it, that Skiles could not back down.

Skiles put his weight on his back foot.

Now you gonna throw your right.

Skiles swung his fist. Lorenzo sidestepped it and came with an uppercut, bringing his shoulder and chest full into it. The blow landed squarely under Skiles's jaw; the key stabbed him there.

Skiles staggered and tried to keep his feet. Lorenzo rushed forward, pushed Skiles up against the Tahoe, and pinned his left forearm to Skiles's neck. Lorenzo put the tip of the key to Skiles's right eye. The sun winked off the metal.

'Smart-mouth boy like you came at me in the cut,' said Lorenzo, keeping his voice low. 'I stuck him in the eye with a little old file. Wasn't no bigger than this key I got in my hand.'

'I ain't… I ain't want no more trouble,' said Skiles, gasping as he spoke.

'You gonna relax now, right?'

Skiles nodded slightly under the pressure of Lorenzo's arm. 'I'm straight.'

'Straight,' said Lorenzo, chuckling quietly. He released Skiles and stepped back.

Skiles, blood trickling down his neck from where he'd been cut, looked away. There were only mumbles from the crowd. The air had gone out of it. The wrong man had won.

Lorenzo got into the Tahoe and drove away, his hands tight on the wheel. His headache was gone. In the rearview, he saw that his eyes were alive. He felt like getting high.

He punched the gas. First thing he had to do was drop this dog at the kennel. Get her situated and get her some care. Then, if he could, get to someplace he should be.

Rachel Lopez woke up in her car at a little past noon. Her shirt was soaked with sweat. The Honda stank of perspiration, alcohol, and nicotine. She rolled the window down and breathed clean air. Rachel drove to the nearest gas station. There, in a filthy bathroom, she washed herself as best she could. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, then looked at her watch. She still had time to get to the meeting on East Capitol. She needed it today.

CHAPTER 18

'I left my baby a little present this morning,' said Shirley, the small young woman with the

almond eyes and smooth chocolate skin. 'Put it right there on the doorstep of my grandmother's place, where my little girl stay.'

'What'd you get her?' said a dark-skinned woman sitting in Shirley's row.

'What you call a playwear set. Got it up there at the Hecht's company, thirty percent off. With the coupons, it was next to nothin'.'

'Hecht's havin' a sale this weekend,' said a man.

'They always be havin' a sale,' said another.

'The shirt part of the outfit had a drawing of these four young white dudes on it,' said Shirley. 'I don't know who they are, but the lady at the Hecht's told me the kids are into 'em.'

'The Wiggles,' said the dark-skinned woman helpfully.

'That's who it was,' said Shirley. 'So I was walkin' away from the house and I heard the door open, and I turned around? And there my little girl was, standing with my grandmother. And my little girl took that outfit out of the bag, looked at it, and smiled. "This for me?" she said to my grandmother. You could see she liked it, 'cause she was all happy. And my grandmother said to my little girl, "That's a present for you from your mother." My little girl looked at me, said, "That my mother right there?" It sunk my heart that she forgot me, but she wasn't no more than a baby when I left. My grandmother says, "Yes, sweetheart, that's your mother. Tell her thank you, child."'

Shirley cocked her head. 'She couldn't say it. She was scared, or too shy. But the look she gave me… That look is gonna keep me sober. I'm gonna carry that look with me for a long time.' Shirley wiped at her eyes. 'Thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing.'

Rachel Lopez leaned back in her folding chair. Her nausea was gone, and color had returned to her skin.

The hard middle-aged man named Sarge, wearing a T-shirt and the same dirty Redskins hat he always wore, raised his hand and was acknowledged by the guest host.

'Sarge here…'

'Hey, Sarge'

'… and I'm a straight-up addict. Now, I had a little episode last night, over at my efficiency. I was goin' through this drawer in this old dresser I got, lookin' for a knife. This one drawer, I keep all this stuff inside it from when I was little. Got an old baseball I kept from when my team won the city championship, under the lights in Turkey Thicket, back in seventy-three. A Zippo lighter and some firecrackers and shit. You know, boys' stuff. There's this badge in there too, like a sheriff's badge. I used to pin it on my shirt when I was a boy.'

A man chuckled. He stopped abruptly when Sarge gave him a cool look.

'So I was lookin' for this knife,' said Sarge. 'Not to cut no one or nothin' like that. I had some dirt under my fingernails, and I wanted to clean 'em out, see? I remembered I had this pocketknife, with a pretty pearl handle and a sharp little blade that could do the trick. But I couldn't find it. I guess I lost it somewhere or it got took. What I did find, though, inside this cuff link box, was a joint of weed I forgot I had. I mean, it could have been five years old, sumshit like that. I musta hid it in that box, either from someone I was stayin' with at the time or from my own self.

'So I'm standin' there, staring at this old joint. I had some music playin' in the room at the time, comin' out this box I have. That song 'Rock Creek Park,' by the Blackbyrds. Donald Byrd and them? 'Doin' it in the park, doin' it after dark' … Y'all remember that one. It just reminded me of, you know, summer and shit. Bein' with this one girl I knew, the way the park smelled all green and nice, and how this girl smelled nice too. Kids ridin' their bikes in packs down Beach Drive, blowin' on them whistles like they used to do. Cookin' some chicken or whatever on the grill, having a cold beer. Gettin' your head up good.'

'Yes,' said a man in a far corner of the room.

'I needed to speak to someone,' said Sarge, 'before I went ahead and put some fire to that stale-ass joint.' Sarge made a head motion toward Shirley but did not look in her direction. 'And I remembered that young lady over there, she said at yesterday's meeting it would be all right to call her. So I did. We talked for a long while. And by the time we was done talkin', I had decided to flush that weed down the toilet. It hurt me to do it, but that's what I did.'

'You did right,' said the dark-skinned woman in Shirley's row.

'Understand, I didn't call that woman up because she was female,' said Sarge. 'I don't want to get with no females right now, anyway. I don't act right with 'em when I do.'

'Hmph,' said a man.

'But I just wanted to tell y'all about my experience,' said Sarge. 'It don't mean nothin', really. It's just a story.'

'We all in the same lifeboat,' said Shirley. 'Ain't no one here deserve to get throwed out before no one else.'

Sarge tightened his hat over his graying hair and lowered his voice to a mumble. 'So thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing.'

Lorenzo Brown raised his hand. Rachel looked down the row to where Lorenzo sat, at the far end of the horseshoe-shaped aisle. She had seen him enter the meeting room at the same time she had but had not approached him. She wanted to respect his privacy and leave him to his spiritual time. He was under no obligation to talk to her, after all.

The host nodded in Lorenzo's direction. 'Go ahead.'

'My name is Lorenzo…'

'Hey, Lorenzo.'

'… and I'm a substance abuser. Something happened to me today, on my job.'

'You some kind of police?' said Shirley, looking him up and down with interest.

'Dog police,' said Lorenzo. 'This morning, some man got up in my face over an animal he'd been abusing. I retaliated in a physical way, which I shouldn't have done. But the thing is, it felt good. I get these headaches most all the time now. After this man tried to take me for bad and I went right back at him, my headache went away. But something else came over me too. I wanted to get high. Doin' violence, getting my head up… it's all part of the same package for me, I guess.'

Lorenzo glanced around the room. 'Most of y'all, you made a decision to try and stop what you was doin' on your own. Me, I had it decided for me. I'm comin' off an incarceration, see? I caught a charge for dealing drugs.'

'You ain't alone,' said a man.

'All respect,' said Lorenzo, 'that don't make it any easier. You can't always be at these meetings or get someone on the phone. One thing I learned, this here's not a team sport. It also ain't no sprint. The more you walk this road, the longer the road seems to be.'

'I heard that,' said the same man.

'Long road,' said Lorenzo. 'Shoot, I started sellin' marijuana when I was twelve years old. Started smokin' it around that time too. By then, I had already lost my mother to drugs. She got to the point, she was selling herself for money. Later, she did this grand-larceny thing and got put away. She came out eventually, but she couldn't make it. She had to violate herself to save her life. My mother's behind walls to this day.'

Lorenzo shifted in his seat. 'I never did have a father. I ain't cryin' about it. That's just the way it was.

'I moved in with my grandmother early on. I loved her, but she couldn't contain me. Y'all know how that is. I ran with some boys, one in particular, and when those boys and my main boy went down to the corner, I went with 'em. They were my people, the closest thing I ever had to male kin. I dropped out of high school and moved up to dealin' heroin and cocaine. I was arrested for it and did a couple of stays in juvenile. It didn't teach me a thing. Matter of fact, I was further down the hole when I came out. I impregnated a girl. I did other bad things. Finally, when I was an adult, the jump-out squad got me on a corner in my own neighborhood, doin' hand-to-hands. I was up on some good hydro when they did. I had a whole rack of foil in my pocket, and I took a felony charge. They wanted me to flip on my number one boy. I wouldn't do it. I was just arrogant, the way I handled it. Between my priors and me showin' no kind of remorse, the judge came down hard on me. I did eight on a six-to-eighteen.

'Prison was prison; y'all know what that's about. When the time came, I didn't even show for my first probation hearing, 'cause I knew I wasn't ready to come uptown. Thing of it is, you never are ready. It's harder in some ways to do your straight time than it is to jail.

'I came out the cut and got on a bus. I had thirty-some dollars in my khakis and a blue shirt on my back. I was wearing sneaks had Velcro on 'em 'stead of laces. Prison gear, and I looked it too. Rolled into D.C. at night, went straight to a drugstore near the bus station, and bought some cologne, 'cause I felt like I had the smell of jail on my skin. I get up to the register, and people be runnin' cards through some machine they got on the counter. No one was pullin' out cash. Everyone be talkin' on their cells, everyone be wearin' new fashions. I realized, I am an old head now and I am lost. I do not know what the fuck is goin' on out here anymore. Right there, in the drugstore, realizing what I was up against, that's when I got scared for the first time in my life. Standin' right there in that store, I felt that ache come to my head.

'When I come out that drugstore, I spent the last of my money on a taxi and went to my grandmother's place in Park View. She was waitin' for me. She looked good. Her house smelled like her cooking. She had tied balloons to the banister, right there in the entranceway. She hugged me soon as I came through the door, and I hugged her back. 'Welcome home, son,' she said. 'Welcome to your new life.' Both of us just stood there and held each other. My grandmother cried. I ain't ashamed to admit it, I cried some, too.'

A chair creaked in the room.

'It just takes one person to believe in you,' said Lorenzo. 'When I hugged that woman, I knew I was gonna try to do right. And that's all I can claim. I'm tryin' out here. I don't mean to bore you, but I needed to talk to someone today, and you people came to mind. So thank you for listening, all a y'all. Thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing.'

'Anyone else?' said the guest host.

'My name is Rachel Lopez…' said Rachel, speaking quickly, not planning to speak at all, not knowing what she was going to say.

'Hey, Rachel.'

'… and I'm an alcoholic'

Lorenzo leaned forward in his chair.

'I don't have the right to be here,' said Rachel. 'I haven't even tried to get sober. I was drunk last night. I was still drunk when I woke up this morning.'

'I remember those mornings,' said a woman.

'It's not just that I haven't tried to get straight,' said Rachel. 'I'm a probation officer. I make my living telling other people that they need to stay on track. And that makes me a hypocrite. Because I jumped the tracks myself a long time ago.'

'I recognized you the first time you came to these meetings,' said a male voice behind her. 'You used to come to my mother's house to call on my brother. You always showed my mother respect. You got the right to be here, same as anyone else.'

Rachel did not turn around to match a face to the voice. She laced her fingers together and rested her hands in her lap.

'I've been drinking a long time. I started when I was about fourteen, down in Texas…'

Rachel Lopez spoke of high school, then college. She spoke of being the last one standing in the bars at the end of the night. Her friends said she handled alcohol well. She didn't change while under its influence. While drinking, she seemed to have control.

'I got a degree in criminology at the local college. I don't know why I chose law enforcement, exactly. It seemed exciting, I guess, and I had a vague notion that I was going to help people. After graduation I took an internship at a halfway house near my parents' place. I didn't like the work, and I felt stifled, living at home…'

She had entered into no romantic relationships. She had continued to drink.

'I wasn't happy. I sent in an application to become a probation officer in Maryland. The EEO was on my side. They needed Spanish-speaking POs at the time. Still do, I guess. Anyway, I got the gig.

'My father…'

Rachel closed her eyes and saw him, in bed, on his last day. He was going to die and yet he was not thinking of himself. He wanted to talk about her. He was worried about her.

'My father got sick,' said Rachel. 'My mother got sick too. I took a leave of absence from my job and went back to Texas to stay with them. You know, to help. But I couldn't help. I couldn't control what was happening to them. They both had inoperable cancer. The doctor called it an unfortunate coincidence. My father passed, and then my mom.'

'They're together now,' said a voice in the room.

'Yes,' said Rachel. 'And here I am, still drinking. Still trying to control things I can't control. I don't even know why I'm telling you all of this today. It's not like I've got a plan or anything like it. Anyway.' Rachel cleared her throat. 'Thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing.'

The basket was passed around. The group gathered in a circle, their arms resting on one another's shoulders, and said the Serenity Prayer and afterward, the Lord's Prayer. An older gentleman extolled the virtues of Narcotics Anonymous. The meeting dispersed, and its participants went on their way.

Out in the parking area of the church, facing East Capitol, Rachel Lopez lit a cigarette. Some members of the group went to their cars, alone or in twos and threes. Others went to the bus shelter and sat on a bench protected from the sun. Lorenzo Brown walked across the grounds of the church and stopped beside Rachel.

'Hey, Miss Lopez.'

'Hey, Lorenzo.' She exhaled a stream of smoke. 'What about that incident you described in there? The physical-retaliation thing. We gonna have a problem with that?'

'The man I stepped to, I don't think he'll report it. That's how it goes in the street. Callin' the police is the last thing he's gonna do.'

'I'd hate to see you violated over something as trivial as that.'

Lorenzo chuckled. 'You ever stop working?'

'When I stop working I get in trouble.' Rachel's eyes softened. 'You know…'

'What?'

'I'm sorry you had to hear all that.'

'You're human, is all.'

'I appreciate it.'

'We all just tryin' out here.'

'Yes.'

'You ever want to talk about any of this, you can call me. Doesn't need to be about me all the time. You hear me, Miss Lopez?'

'Sure. But when it's on that level, it's Rachel.'

'Okay, then. Rachel it'll be.'

Shirley, walking with the quickness of the short and compact, came from the church and joined them.

'Hey,' said Shirley.

'Hey,' said Rachel.

'Can I get a Marlboro, Rachel?'

'Sure.'

As Rachel retrieved the pack from her purse, Shirley looked Lorenzo over with blatant interest.

'You tall,' said Shirley.

'Everyone is to you,' said Lorenzo, and Shirley smiled.

Rachel shook out the filtered ends of a few cigarettes, and Shirley drew one from the pack. Rachel handed her a matchbook from the hotel she'd been at the night before and told her to keep it. Shirley lodged the cigarette behind her ear as Sarge passed them on foot.

'Hey, Sarge,' said Shirley. 'Where you headed?'

'Back to my efficiency,' said Sarge, not breaking stride. 'What you think?'

'You need someone to walk with you?'

'I don't need it,' said Sarge, still moving, but slowing down. 'But if you got a mind to, I ain't gonna try and stop you.'

'He ain't all that tough,' said Shirley. She looked at Rachel and then at Lorenzo. 'You two have a blessed day.'

'You also,' said Rachel.

Shirley joined Sarge by the shelter.

'I need to get back to work,' said Rachel.

'I do too,' said Lorenzo.

'You been to the clinic yet?'

'I haven't had the chance.'

'Better do it.'

'I will.'

Rachel touched his arm. 'Thank you, Lorenzo.'

'Ain't no thing.'

Rachel walked to her vehicle; Lorenzo went to his.

CHAPTER 19

'That was Deacon,' said Melvin Lee. He

closed the cover of his Samsung cell and

placed the phone on the table by his chair.

'Figured it was,' said Rico Miller. 'He ain't happy, huh?'

Lee did not answer. Instead he rubbed at his face.

They were in the living area of Melvin Lee's apartment, on the third floor of a row house on Sherman Avenue, near Irving Street, in Columbia Heights. The house had been subdivided into six apartments, two on each floor. It was not far from where Lee had been raised.

The apartment's decor reflected Lee's solitary lifestyle. The few pieces of furniture were secondhand. Only the electronics, a thirty-six-inch high-definition Sony television with theater sound and an Xbox video game system, were new. Lee rarely watched movies or programs, not even sports, on television. He preferred to sit on his threadbare couch for hours on end, playing Counter-Strike, Brute Force, and Project Gotham. Anything with guns or cars.

'Homicide already done visited Deacon,' said Lee. 'They got them gang-task-force people, know all the players. You know how they do.'

'That means they been to see Nigel too.'

'That's a bet.'

'Nigel ain't gonna say a thing to the police. He gonna want to handle this his own way.'

'I expect.'

'Nigel and his want more blood, we gonna give 'em some. We soldiers, right?'

Lee looked across the room at Miller, who stood by the big picture window fronting the street. Miller had been pacing the room like an animal who'd got up on two legs for the first time. He'd been unsettled ever since he'd shown up at the apartment and described the murders in detail. Miller had expected Lee to be pleased. He was perplexed at Lee's reaction.

'Why?' Lee had said upon hearing the news.

'Why I kill 'em?' said Miller. 'Shit, they was gonna go at you, wasn't they?'

'DeEric was just talkin', Rico. He was doin' his job. I been knowin' DeEric since he was a boy. He was bold like that.'

'Too bold, you ask me.'

'And that kid. He wasn't gonna hurt no goddamn one.'

'You right about that. That boy was a straight bitch.'

'You missin' my point. Deacon say the kid was special to Nigel.'

'Nigel gone faggot now, huh?'

'Listen to me,' said Lee, desperation and anger in his voice. 'You ain't hearin' me, Rico. We got a problem here. We got to find a way to work this out.'

'Thought you'd be happy,' said Miller, lowering his head. 'I did this thing for you.'

Lee had left the conversation lying there, like something dead in the room you stepped over on the way to somewhere else. There wasn't any use in going on with this. Miller seemed to have no remorse for what he'd done. For the first time, Lee feared him. He'd heard about this kind of thing, had always thought of it as street bullshit passing for wisdom. But now he saw that it was true: Came a time in every relationship like this, you traded places. The father became the son.

And now the call had come from Deacon, a call Lee had expected and dreaded all morning long.

'What Deacon say to do?' said Miller.

'He wants you to sit tight right here. He don't want you to go nowhere, 'cause if he wants to pull up on you personal, he need to know where you at.'

'He can get me on my cell.'

'That ain't good enough. Since you don't want to tell no one where you stay at, you gonna have to be within physical reach for now.'

'Where you gonna be?'

'I got to get my ass into work,' said Miller.

'What I'm gonna do here all day?'

'Play Xbox, you want to.'

'I don't even like Xbox. I roll with PS2.'

'You gonna have to deal with that, Rico.'

Lee got up out of his chair, gathered his cell and keys, and went to the front door. He looked at Rico Miller, standing there with nothing but some peach fuzz on his face, slouched and gangly, deadlier than most men but really no older than a kid.

'Don't be standin' by that window,' said Lee.

'I ain't stupid.'

'I'm just sayin'. Po-lice could put me together with them bodies somehow, might come calling on me.'

'I wouldn't let no police fuck with you, Melvin.'

'I'm sayin' … Shit, Rico, I'm thinkin' of you right now. Any law shows up here, you leave out the fire escape, through my bedroom window. It'll lead you back to the alley. That ladder drops the way it supposed to. I know, 'cause I tried it out.' Lee put his hand on the doorknob, then thought of something else.

'You ain't bring no gun in here, right?'

'What you think?'

'That's a mandatory right there. I can't be gettin' violated.'

'Guns I used are put away.'

'You need to get rid of 'em. They dig the lead up out of those bodies, I'm talkin' about the pistol lead, they can match it to that gun.'

'They won't find the guns. Anyway, I picked up the casings off the street.'

'Anyone see you last night?'

'I don't think so.' Miller cocked his head in a birdlike way. 'You ain't mad at me, right?'

Lee looked away. 'We gonna work this out.'

Melvin Lee took the stairs down to the street and found his faded Camry, parked on Sherman behind Rico Miller's shiny BMW. Driving up Georgia toward the car wash, he looked at the people out on the sidewalks and breathed the warm summer air rushing through his open window. He wanted to enjoy the sights and smells. He had the sick feeling that these things would be taken away from him again all too soon.

He could drive out of town right now, but he knew that someone would catch up to him eventually. He'd been running on a wheel, in a cage, his whole life.

He drove to work.

Deacon Taylor closed his disposable cell and settled himself in the driver's seat of his S-Series Benz. He had parked on Luray Place in Park View and was waiting for Griff to roll up and report on his meet with Nigel's enforcer, Lawrence Graham. Looked like Griff was coming his way now. Griff favored fast Japanese sedans, and drove a 260-horsepower midnight blue Infiniti G35.

Deacon had already had an eventful day. A Homicide team had come by his place and interviewed him about the murders. He had told them he knew nothing, and they had gone on their way. He had spoken to Melvin Lee and conveyed his extreme displeasure over the murders of Green and Butler. Then, on his personal cell, he had made a call to an officer in 4D he had been friendly with for some time.

Officer Muller was a careful man. He refused to finger informants, rough Taylor's enemies, or make false arrests. He would not initiate anything that he felt would compromise his personal code. He did provide Taylor with information on occasion that he thought was of a harmless nature. Taylor, in turn, fed information to Muller that was equally benign. For this dialogue Muller accepted nothing in the way of cash or gifts. The first-name-basis familiarity with a drug dealer and the attendant camaraderie appealed to his self-image. Muller liked to think of himself as a cop who was hardwired to both sides of the street.

'What you hear about that double off Crittenden last night?' Deacon had said.

'Hold up, Deacon,' said Muller. 'You need to tell me why you're interested first.' Always reminding Taylor that he, Muller, was in charge.

'Ain't no secret that it was two of Nigel Johnson's got themselves dead. I'm just tryin' to keep informed.'

'That's all?'

'You and me don't play games like that, big man,' said Deacon. In fact, he was playing Muller with every word.

'Just so we're clear,' said Muller.

'We crystal clear.'

'Victim one died of shotgun wounds inside his SUV. Victim two was killed in the street by the same shotgun. Vic two also took bullets to the mouth and head.'

'Sounds like the shooter was angry about somethin'.'

'Prob'ly just one of those misunderstood youths we got out here.'

'Killer leave any prints?'

Muller did not reply. It was answer enough.

'No witnesses either, huh?' said Deacon.

Again, Muller said nothing.

'You keep me posted, hear?' said Deacon.

'I expect the same from you.'

'You know I will. This kind of violence is bad for business. Pretty soon the neighborhood gonna be crawling with bad elements like yourself.'

'You don't want that, dawg.'

'Word,' said Deacon. He hadn't used that expression to anyone but Muller in the last ten years.

Griff pulled his Infiniti up alongside the Mercedes and idled it in the street. They went nose to ass, the way police did, so they could speak.

Griff was serious, dependable, and strong of body and character. He dressed neatly and without show. He was Deacon's most fearsome employee. Only fault he had was he talked too much, and bragged, when his head was up on weed. Maturity would cure that. Someday the boy would become a man and learn how to handle his high.

'What's up, soldier?' said Deacon.

'I got up with Graham,' said Griff.

'Talk about it.'

'Nigel want to parley with you about this problem. Says he'll do it somewhere neutral, just the two of y'all.'

'I'll meet him,' said Deacon. 'But I ain't ready just yet. Need to think things out before we talk.'

'You got a plan?'

'I don't plan,' said Deacon. 'I look for opportunities.'

'You want to do this tonight?'

'Tonight's good.'

'I'll go back to Larry.'

'Don't call him Larry to his face,' said Deacon. 'I heard his mother named him after the bass player, and I heard he don't like it.'

'What bass player?'

'Larry Graham,' said Deacon.

Griff shrugged and looked blankly at Deacon.

'Awright then,' said Deacon. 'Go talk to Graham and set it up. Say, eight o'clock at the fort?'

'I'm on it,' said Griff.

'No doubt,' said Deacon. Griff pulled away in his car.

Deacon thinking, Boy don't know who Larry Graham is, at least he should have pretended like he did. Tryin' to make me feel all ancient out here.

Lorenzo Brown caught a quick tuna sub at his Subway and got back to work. He radioed in to Cindy, still on the desk, to see if there were any calls he needed to take. She told him about a chaining complaint over in Columbia Heights. He told her he would pass by the address on his way back to the office. She didn't mention anything about the incident in Southeast. Leon Skiles had followed street code, as Lorenzo had expected, and not reported the assault.

Lorenzo started up the Tahoe and headed for Columbia Heights.

Eddie Davis was a cutter in a styling shop on Florida Avenue, in Trinidad, near Gallaudet. He was a slim man in his midfifties, quiet and gentle, with a trim mustache and kind eyes. Nothing about him suggested that he was the same person who in 1977 had stabbed a man repeatedly for looking at his girlfriend the wrong way in a Petworth bar. Eddie Davis, up on PCP, had left an Italian switchblade in the man's neck after burying it to the hilt, and then resumed his drinking. No one had come near him until the police arrived. When he was smoking that boat, Eddie felt as if he had the strength of ten men and, feeling that way, he did. In fact, it took four police to subdue him that night.

The murder charge bought him a twenty-five-year sentence. He had fathered two sons before he went inside. As teenagers, without a strong male figure to keep them in line, both young men became involved in the crack cocaine trade, which hit Washington like a plague in the summer of '86. As adults, Eddie's sons eventually caught drug charges and were incarcerated for most of the nineties. Eddie himself was released and was promptly violated on possession-with-intent-to-distribute offenses. He returned to prison, where the one-two punch of Jesus and drug rehabilitation finally found traction with a man who realized he was both too old to play the game and lucky to be alive. As for Eddie's sons, they were CSOSA cases: Transferred from Lorton to federal facilities, they had served out the rest of their terms far away from D.C. and now were out on paper, trying, like their father, to stay on the straight.

Rachel Lopez entered the styling shop, a unisex affair owned by an ex-offender named Rock Williams who aggressively employed men and women who had done time. The shop was full-service, with stylists, barbers, manicurists, and pedicurists, and specialized in hair coloring and extensions. Williams had a loyal clientele. Most of the customers had family members either in incarceration or on paper and were behind the concept of redemption through hard work.

'Mr Williams,' said Rachel Lopez, approaching the broad-chested owner standing behind the register counter.

'Miss Lopez.' He extended his hand and she shook it. 'You lookin' for Eddie?'

'I am.'

'He's around here somewhere. I'll get him for you.'

Williams went past the styling area and through curtains to a back room. Rachel listened to the soft soul and jazz of the Howard University radio station, WHUR, coming from the house system. She got nods and eye contact from a couple of the cutters and a wink from a female manicurist working close to the counter. All had been told by Eddie Davis and Williams that Miss Lopez was a PO and that she was all right. She had never once caught attitude in the Rock Williams House of Style.

Davis emerged from the back room smiling. He met her at the counter and shook her hand. She drew him into her arms impulsively. He hugged her as he would a daughter.

'How do I look?' he said, stepping back.

Davis wore a black barber's smock with 'Eddie' stitched in cursive across the chest. Above his name was an embroidered tableau of crossed scissors over a barber pole. His hard life had aged him prematurely and considerably, but Rachel could still see the handsome man he once had been. Everything about him she needed to know was in his eyes. There was nothing bad there; it was impossible that there would be evil in him again.

'You look great,' she said.

'Do I look like a man who's about to come off paper?'

'I wrote the termination letter a few days ago. I'm ready to send it in.'

'That don't mean we gotta stop seein' each other, right?'

'I'll be around,' said Rachel. 'And I'm gonna expect that Christmas card too.'

'You're family, Miss Lopez. I ain't never gonna take you off that list.'

They looked at each other for a few moments. She hoped that what he said was true. It was with mixed feelings that she let go of certain offenders. The fact that an Eddie Davis was going to make it validated her life's work. That he was walking out of her world caused her sadness too.

'How are your sons?' she said.

'Good. Charles and Michael both cuttin' heads in separate barbershops.' Eddie looked around to make sure that Williams was not within earshot. 'Plan is, I'm gonna start up my own shop. Get my sons under my wing. I'm lookin' at this little space over there on Good Hope Road. It's close to my apartment. Want a place I can walk to every morning, turn that key.'

'Don't worry about Rock hearing you,' said Rachel. 'He'd be happy if you went out on your own.'

'I'm gonna do it, Miss Lopez. I am going to do it.'

'I believe you. Your sons are in Anacostia as well?'

'Yeah. Both of 'em bought little houses over there in Southeast. I helped 'em out with the down payments. I had a, what do you call that, motive for it. I want to be close to my grandchildren.'

'It's all about family.'

'Yes,' said Eddie. He looked her over. 'You look nice today, you don't mind my sayin' so.'

'I was feeling poorly this morning. But I'm better now.'

'You gonna be able to come by that barbecue this weekend? My sons and their kids are gonna be there. They'd love to see you.'

'I'll try.'

Eddie pointed a gnarled finger in her direction. 'I'm not gonna let you lose touch.'

'I promise. We've come too far together, you and me.'

'God is good,' said Eddie Davis.

He can be, thought Rachel. They hugged again before she left the shop.

Out in her Honda, Rachel looked through her files. She had one more stop to make before returning to the office. The offender had given her his work schedule, by her request. He was a person she needed to stay on top of, a career criminal who up to this point had been unable to leave the drug game behind.

Rachel wanted to interview the offender at his place of employment whenever possible, to verify that he was there consistently. It looked as if she had missed that opportunity when she had failed to make all of her calls the day before. She'd have to visit him at his residence on Sherman Avenue.

According to her records, that's where the offender, a man named Melvin Lee, stayed.

CHAPTER 20

Rico Miller sat on a folding chair by the big front window of the apartment, watching the street. Melvin had told him not to stay there, but he was bored. He had tried playing Counter-Strike on Xbox, but he was used to the PS2 controller and grew frustrated using one he didn't know nothing about. He had thought getting high might help him master the system, but that didn't educate him either. The fat joint he'd smoked had only made him more confused. And that had sent him to where he was at right now, staring out the window. Wasn't much skill you needed for that.

Down on Sherman, a white woman with stuff in her hands got out of her car, some square-back hooptie. Looked like she was carrying a file or something like that. A cell too, and some kind of little leather case.

She didn't look all white. She might have been Spanish or something; he couldn't tell. She was wearing jeans and a shirt had no style. She didn't belong on this street. It wasn't her color. There were a few whites and plenty of browns down here. It was the way she carried herself, walking down the sidewalk, aware of where she was, trying to act like this was her neighborhood when it was not. Miller had this talent. He could smell police.

Soon as this entered his mind, a 4D patrol car, heading east on Irving, turned up Sherman. It slowed near where the woman was walking and pulled over to the curb. The woman hesitated, seemed to recognize the driver, and went to the open window. He couldn't see the woman's face as she bent forward.

That woman's talking to one of her own, thought Miller. She's conspiring with the police in the car.

The uniform police spoke to the woman police for a couple of minutes, and then the uniform took off. The Crown Vic's tires caught rubber on the street. The woman got back up on the sidewalk, went down it some, and turned toward Melvin's row house. As she made her way to it, she looked up at the third-floor window. Miller leaned back in his chair.

She seen me, he thought. I fucked up. Police coming up here looking for Melvin. I should do what Melvin say to do and go out the fire escape and run.

He went back to the bedroom and opened the window. He looked down at the mesh platform outside the window and the ladder below it. What good would it do Melvin if he, Rico, was to book on out? If the police was looking at Melvin for the murders, they would get him up there at the car wash just the same. What Rico needed to do was to stop them from looking. Leastways, hold them off until he and Melvin could leave out of town. Besides, to run on out of here, from a woman? That didn't work for him.

High like he was, it was hard to know what to do. He closed the window and stood stupidly in the center of the room.

Miller put his hand in his pocket and touched leather. He touched the rough part of the leather where the letter C was at. He ran his finger down to touch the R. Then the E, and then the other E. And then the P.

Miller heard a grinding sound.

Rachel parked on Sherman, gathered her badge case, her cell, and her file on Melvin Lee, and got out of her car. She locked the Honda and went down the sidewalk toward Lee's address. It was a row house like all the others on the block. The file said he lived on the third floor.

An MPD patrol car came off Irving and up Sherman. Rachel clocked the Fourth District designation and identification numbers on the Crown Vic. It came to a stop curbside. As the window slid down, she saw that it was Donald Peterson, one of the many cops she had worked with over the years, behind the wheel. Peterson was a sergeant, black, and somewhere on the good side of forty. He was well built, close to handsome, and, like many cops, divorced.

She liked him; he had a confident cool. He had flirted with her when they'd first met, down at the District Courthouse, and asked her out. It was a respectful, non-aggressive flirtation, and she had been flattered. But she had politely declined, explaining that she had just come through a rough stretch, dealing with the illness of her parents, and wasn't ready to date. Of course, it had nothing to do with her parents. She had never been in an equal relationship, one where she was not in complete control. The thought of it frightened her.

'Hey, Donald,' she said, leaning on the lip of his window, feeling the bite of the ice-cold air-conditioning blowing in the car.

'Miss Lopez. Making a house call?'

'A Melvin Lee.'

'Spidery-lookin' gentleman,' said Sergeant Peterson, who had been working the Fourth for over fifteen years. 'Toiled under Deacon Taylor, if I recall.'

'If you say so.'

'Don't tell me: You missionary types are interested in their futures, not their pasts.'

'Can't do anything about their pasts.'

'What's he doing now? Pediatric surgeon, some-thin' like that?'

'He works in a car wash.'

'Another productive member of society.'

'Somebody's gotta keep the cars clean.'

'Send him up to the station. Mine could use a bath.'

'You guys are always looking for a handout.'

A call came over the radio, something about a man driving erratically down Georgia Avenue. Peterson keyed the mic and told the dispatcher that he'd respond, then replaced the mic in its cradle.

'I was wonderin'…'

'What?'

'You like seafood?'

'Love it.'

'Ever been to Crisfields?'

'No.'

'You gonna make me work for this, aren't you?'

'I've never been to Crisfields and I'd like to go.'

'When?'

'Give me a call.'

'You still in that same office?'

'Yes.'

'Okay.' Peterson pulled down on the transmission arm. 'Let me get on over to Georgia. See what this guy's malfunction is.' He looked Rachel over, then looked directly into her eyes. 'Be safe.'

'You too, Donald.'

Rachel backed off the window and Peterson drove away. His tires squealed, leaving rubber on the asphalt, as he took off.

They can't help themselves, thought Rachel. They're all boys at heart.

She went up the walkway to the row house where Melvin Lee stayed. As she walked, she smiled and shook her head. All this impulsive behavior in one afternoon. Sergeant Peterson had tried one time, a while back. Turning his car up Sherman as she was making a house call, maybe it was just his lucky day. Could be it was hers too.

Rachel entered the row house and took the steps up to the third floor. She heard television sets and the bass of a stereo as she ascended the stairs. She made the landing and knocked on the door marked 3B. She put her cell phone in her front pocket and kept her badge case and file in her hands. There were footsteps behind the door, and then the door opened.

A young man who was not Melvin Lee stood in the frame. He was tall and thin and had a long lupine face. His eyes were nothing eyes and told her only that he was high. She had seen this look, absent of all humanity, on some of the young offenders in her case files. She had seen it more frequently in the last couple of years.

'Melvin Lee,' said Rachel, badging the young man.

'I ain't Melvin.'

'I'm looking for Melvin,' she said, keeping her eyes on his and her tone firm. 'I'm Miss Lopez. Melvin's probation officer.'

'Yeah, okay.'

'Is Melvin around?'

'He out. He gonna be back soon.'

Rachel smelled marijuana from inside the apartment. She slipped the badge case into the rear pocket of her jeans.

'I'll come back,' said Rachel. 'Tell him I was here.'

Rachel turned to go.

'Hold up,' said the young man, and Rachel stopped.

'Yes?'

'I'm sayin', he only gonna be out for, like, ten minutes, somethin' like that. He only buyin' a pack of smokes.'

'Who are you?'

'Rico.'

'My question is, what is your relation to Mr Lee?'

'Melvin my father,' said Rico. 'Come on in and wait, you want to. He ain't gonna be but a bit.'

Rachel hesitated. She tried to remember if Lee had a son. She didn't think it was in his file. He had omitted it, maybe, on the form. Not unusual, but still a lie. A violation, along with the weed, if there was any left. If the boy hadn't flushed it down the toilet already.

She needed to note these things for the record. It wasn't enjoyable, but it was her job. She stepped inside the apartment. The boy named Rico closed the door behind her.

They stood, awkwardly, in the living room. Rico did not ask her to have a seat or offer her something to drink.

Rachel looked at her watch. 'I'll wait five minutes. Then I have to go.'

The boy shrugged.

'I was supposed to see Melvin at his place of employment yesterday,' said Rachel. 'But I misplaced the location. He works at that car wash, right?'

The boy nodded.

'Where is that again?'

'You don't think I know?'

'I'm asking. Like I say, I had it written down somewhere—'

'But you mis-placed it.' Rico smiled. There were gaps between his rotten teeth. 'It's that one up there on Georgia.'

'Right,' said Rachel.

'Now you remember, huh.' Rico looked her over. The smile was frozen on his face.

It was hot in the apartment. The window unit is running, thought Rachel, and still it's hot.

Rachel glanced past Rico to the table in front of the couch. Nothing there but a couple of video game controllers and an empty orange soda bottle.

'Lookin' for something?' said Rico.

Rachel said nothing. Rico chuckled.

'How old are you?' said Rachel, feeling a flush of anger.

'Seventeen.'

'And your father is, what, thirty?'

"Bout that, I guess.'

'So you were born when he was thirteen. That means you were conceived when Melvin was twelve?'

'Huh?'

'You father was twelve when he got your mother pregnant. Is that what you're telling me?'

'I ain't never done the math, lady.'

'It's Miss Lopez.'

The boy stepped forward and stood close to Rachel. She could smell his foul breath.

Rachel did not step back. 'What are you doing?'

'Gettin' a closer look at you. You mind?'

Rachel stared into his eyes. If she looked away or backed up, she would lose.

'You old,' said Rico. 'But that don't make no difference to me. I'll fuck you in every hole you got.'

'You're about to get yourself and Mr Lee in a whole world of trouble,' said Rachel. She felt a nerve twitch at the corner of her mouth as she spoke.

'Who gonna cause that trouble?' said Rico. 'You? Or maybe you think your police friend gonna come in here now and cause some trouble. Thing is, he gone, Miss Lopez. Way the smoke came off his tires on Sherman, looked to me like he had to take a call.'

'I'm out of here,' said Rachel, and she turned to go.

She heard Rico laughing behind her.

'Come on, Miss Lopez,' he said. 'I'm just playin' with you.'

Rachel patted the front pocket of her jeans and felt her cell. She began to walk and heard his footsteps behind her.

'Hey,' said Rico, 'you forgot your badge.'

She turned toward him, and as she turned she reached around to her back pocket and touched the rectangular outline of her badge case. She felt her stomach drop and the color drain from her face.

Rico held a serrated knife in his upraised hand. He brought it down violently and plunged the blade into her breast. She gasped at the pain as he withdrew it.

'Popi,' said Rachel. Her eyes crossed and she screamed, 'God!'

The knife swept down again. Rico's face was a grimace of effort and ambition, and the steel pierced her flesh and bone.

Rachel's howl filled the room.

CHAPTER 21

'I had this freak come over to my crib last night,' said the man who called himself King.

'Big freak. Had some big legs and a big-ass ass on her too.'

'She look like an animal?' said Momo, King's friend.

'Nah, man, she ain't look like that.'

''Cause that last female you had looked like an animal.'

'Bullshit.'

'Yes, she did.'

'The woman I had last night looked good.'

'But on the heavy side, huh?'

'A little.'

'Like a big old beast.'

'Your mother look like a beast.'

'Your sister does.'

'Your father.'

'Go ahead, King.' Momo turned to Melvin Lee. 'Melvin, tell me King's last girlfriend didn't look like a horse and shit.'

'I ain't getting into this,' said Lee. 'Not today.'

Lee, King, and Momo were on dry detail at the car wash. King and Momo had both done time. They talked about women, and sometimes the Redskins, all day long. Normally, Lee joined them. But he wasn't in the mood.

Some days he didn't mind these two, but others, he wished he was working in the back with the one older dude and the two Spanish, the ones who prepped the cars before they rolled 'em inside. Out here in the front, where the cars came out clean and dripping, alls they had him doing was holding a rag, getting the excess wet off the vehicle, wiping down the interior, and all that. Like he wasn't even smart enough to point a hose at the wheels. Reminded him of those classes they used to stick him in before he dropped out of school, with all the kids couldn't read or add two and two, like he was one step off of retard himself.

Nearby, an older man stood beside his 7-Series and watched them dry it off.

'Get the hood,' said the man, pointing to it. 'Last time I brought my BMW in here you left drops on it. I can't be driving around in a water-stained vehicle.'

'Get it, Momo,' said King. 'You heard the man.'

Momo leaned over the hood and wiped it down. Good thing he did, 'cause Lee wasn't about to. Old man thinking he was something, had to tell them it was a BMW, like they were blind. An old BMW at that, an '89, two body styles back. Leather interior all cracked and shit, looked like the old man's skin. One of those bourgeois brothers, moved west of Rock Creek and forgot who he was.

Least they talked free around his kind. With the Caucasian customers, you said nothing, even when they were talking directly to you, out of pride. With the females, you kept your mouth shut too, unless they were feisty with you first. And then you didn't know how far to go. Some of these females, they'd complain to management if you took that man-woman thing past its limit, no matter who started it off.

The old man walked over to the tip box, which wasn't no more than a metal toolbox, padlocked shut, with a slit cut out the top. King had wrote this sign over it, said, 'Tips please, this is how we feed our families,' though King had fathered five kids and had never given one of them a thin dime. The old man pulled a dollar bill out of his wallet, doing it slow so they could see him, like he was giving them a thousand dollars instead of one, and shoved it down the slit.

'Dry the wheels too,' said the car's owner.

'My man gonna get it,' said Momo, meaning King.

King looked at Momo out the corner of his eye and crouched down to dry off the first of the wheels.

'So?' said Momo, standing over him as he did the task.

'What?' said King without looking up.

'You ain't finish the story. Did you do the freak or not?'

'What you think?'

'How'd you do her?'

'Woman that size, you got to ride her.'

'Did you?'

'Like Seabiscuit.'

'Bet she looked like that motherfucker too.'

Lee finished wiping the black buckets and pulled himself out of the car. 'You two can finish up. I'm gonna grab a cigarette.'

'You ain't been on shift all that long,' said Momo.

'Fuck y'all,' said Lee. 'I'm gonna have one anyway.'

He dropped his rag and went into the pay area, which was separated from the wash bay by a long glass wall. Customers stood there and watched their cars roll down the line like there was something interesting about it, or like they were trying to catch a mistake. In the pay area a Korean woman, the wife of the owner, stood behind the register. In front of the counter was a display rack of little tree deodorizers, crown deodorizers for the African customers, maps, fluorescent key rings, El Salvador and Guatemala decal flags for the Spanish, and sunglasses that had been in style in 1985.

Wasn't no surprise that Koreans owned this joint. You threw a rock at any small business in the city, thought Lee, good chance you'd hit a slope's head. This woman here smiled and said the same thing, 'Thank you so much,' to all the customers as she took their money, and scowled at the employees when she saw them without a rag in their hands and said, 'Where you go now?'

Melvin Lee passed her on the way to the bathroom.

'Where you go now?' she said.

'To pull on my rod,' said Lee with a friendly smile. She understood the smile but not the words.

'Hurry up,' she said.

Lee went into the bathroom, took a pee, then went out the back door and bummed a menthol from the old man who worked the pressurized hose. He lit the smoke and went around the side of the business, where a few cars were idling in line, and he dragged on the cigarette and let the cool of a Salem hit his lungs.

I get off paper, thought Lee, and I won't have to put up with none of this bullshit anymore.

Rico's silver BMW pulled into the driveway entrance. Miller stopped alongside the brick wall of the building, where he could not be seen by the drying crew, and landed on his horn.

'Stupid-ass kid,' said Lee, crushing the cigarette under his boot.

Lee walked to the BMW and stood by its driver's-side window. Miller's white T-shirt was streaked and splattered with blood. His eyes were electric and alive.

'What happened?' said Lee, a sense of dread hitting him like a slap in the face. 'Thought I told you to stay put.'

'Law came for you, Melvin,' said Miller. 'I took care of it, man. For you.'

'Aw, shit, Rico.'

'Melvin, you gotta get in the car. They gonna be comin' for you now, for real.'

'Rico…'

'Get in.'

Lee walked slowly around the car. He dropped into the shotgun bucket and looked over at Miller.

'Where we goin'?'

'My place,' said Miller. 'You gonna see where I stay at now.'

Deacon Taylor lived in one of the new condos around U Street, within walking distance of the Lincoln Theater, Ben's, and many nightclubs and bars. His place was nicely furnished, with a granite-counter kitchen and a bathroom with limestone walls and a huge jetted tub built to hold three. He was only blocks from where he did his dirt, but in terms of the lifestyle, he was far away.

Deacon was listening to some Ronald Isley when the buzzer sounded at the front door. He checked his security camera and saw that it was police, the same Homicide team he'd spoke to earlier, come to see him for the second time that day. Deacon kept nothing in the apartment, no excessive amounts of cash and no guns or drugs, not even weed, so he was not worried. But he was curious to know why the MPD was back so soon. The men on the other side of the door identified themselves, and Deacon worked several locks to let them in.

'Yeah,' said Deacon.

'It's us again,' said Detective Steve Bournias, a stocky white man with a thin mustache.

'I can see that.'

'Sorry to bother you,' said Detective Reginald Ballard.

'We've got a problem, though,' said Bournias. 'Wonder if we can't get a little bit more of your time.'

'This about those murders over on Crittenden? I already told you, I don't know nothin' about it.'

'This isn't about those murders.'

'Well, what is it about? I'm busy—'

'Fellow by the name of Melvin Lee, used to work for you. Probably still does, but that's neither here nor there.'

'Now wait a minute—'

'Melvin Lee,' said Ballard. 'Lives on Sherman Avenue?'

'What about him?'

'We're looking for him. Our people checked on his place of employment, a car wash up on Georgia. Seems he showed up for his shift and then just kinda disappeared.'

'So?' said Deacon. 'What'd he do wrong, light up in a no-smoking zone, sumshit like that?'

'A little bit more serious than that,' said Bournias. 'Mr Lee's probation officer was stabbed in his apartment this afternoon. Stabbed repeatedly, Mr Taylor.'

'You don't look so good,' said Ballard. 'You wanna sit down?'

'I don't know nothin',' said Deacon, the words automatic.

'This isn't the usual cost-of-doing-business bullshit,' said Ballard. 'To use a knife is personal to begin with. To use it with that kind of anger is something else again. Makes us think that maybe your boy has issues with women.'

'I don't know nothin',' said Deacon.

'Get your shit,' said Bournias. 'We're gonna do this in the box.'

'Lawyer,' said Deacon.

'Yeah,' said Reggie Ballard tiredly. 'Okay.'

Lorenzo Brown was turning up Sherman, coming off his chaining call, when he saw the ambulance and police cars blocking the street. Neighborhood residents were out, looking at one row house in the middle of the block like they were waiting on something to happen there or someone to be brought out. And then he saw Miss Lopez's Honda parked along the curb. He had sat in it enough times to know it was hers. She had those green little tree deodorizers hanging from her rearview to take away the smell of her cigarettes.

Lorenzo found a place to park the truck. He went into the crowd. Kids rode their bikes around the residents and police like buzzards waiting on the kill. Lorenzo found two youngish women who looked like they belonged on the street.

''Scuse me,' said Lorenzo to one of the women. 'You know what's going on?'

'Woman got herself shot or something' said the woman.

'I heard she got stabbed,' said her friend.

'In that house?' said Lorenzo.

'In that house right there,' said the first woman.

'White woman, what I hear,' said the friend. 'She musta had business here or somethin'.'

Lorenzo's blood jumped. He felt a little dizzy in the heat.

'Is she dead?' said Lorenzo, dreading the answer.

'I don't know,' said the friend.

'She another statistic now,' said the woman.

One of the kids riding bikes made a pistol out of his fingers and pointed it at the back of one of the police.

Lorenzo walked toward the house. He approached the police line where they had stationed uniformed officers and where the yellow tape hung. He went right to a white policeman and stood beside him.

'Excuse me, officer,' said Lorenzo.

The police looked him over, studied his uniform, read the rectangular nameplate on his chest.

'Yeah?'

'Is the victim a white woman?'

'What?'

'I might know the victim. If her name is Rachel Lopez, I know her.'

'Who are you?'

'I'm one of her offenders.'

'Hold up a second,' said the police, grabbing hold of Lorenzo's biceps. Lorenzo did not try to pull his arm free. The police shouted into a crowd of police knotted by the row house door. 'Hey, Sarge, come here!'

A black policeman with stripes on his sleeves came to the white police who was holding Lorenzo. The black policeman was well built and had grief and fire in his eyes.

'What?' said the Sergeant. 'Donald Peterson' was etched on his nameplate.

'This gentleman says he knows the victim. Says he's one of her offenders.'

'Is she alive?' said Lorenzo.

Sergeant Peterson took Lorenzo by the same arm and led him back toward the street. He held him tightly. There was anger in the way his fingers dug into Lorenzo's skin.

'Tell me she's alive,' said Lorenzo.

'Shut your mouth,' said Peterson. "Less I tell you to talk, you keep your mouth shut.'

Peterson roughed him putting him into the car.

The hardest part was seeing her under that sheet, the blood staining it in big sloppy circles that seemed to grow as they carried the stretcher down the steps. Her colorless face was nearly covered with a breathing mask. The rescue squad men and women worked on her as they made their way to the ambulance, but they might as well have been working on one of those dummies you'd see in a store window, way she looked. The other hard part was trying to keep the recognition and surprise off his face when the sergeant asked him if he knew of a guy named Melvin Lee. Rachel Lopez, Peterson said, had been stabbed in Lee's apartment. A neighbor on the third floor had heard her screams.

'But the neighbor didn't call the police,' said Peterson. 'Rachel did. She had a cell on her. I guess she regained consciousness, at some point, long enough to do that.' Peterson stared through the glass like he was watching her struggling to hold the cell in her trembling hand, struggling to make the call. 'I saw her arrive here myself nearly two hours ago. She lost a lot of blood.'

Lorenzo had already told Sergeant Peterson, in thumbnail, about his past and his relationship to Rachel Lopez. Peterson had asked him if he was aware that Lee worked for Deacon Taylor, the counterpart to Nigel Johnson in the Park View game. Lorenzo explained that he had been in prison for a while and no longer kept track of the local players or cared to know their names.

The interview questions softened, as did the eyes of Sergeant Peterson, as it became clear that Lorenzo had nothing to do with the attack and, in fact, considered Rachel Lopez to be a friend. Lorenzo had the feeling that Sergeant Peterson was a friend to her too.

Peterson said that Rachel's file, found in the apartment, contained Lee's employment information. An MPD unit had already gone to the car wash where Lee worked, but Lee had disappeared. His car, an old Camry, was still on the premises.

He wouldn't be in that car, thought Lorenzo.

'What you need to tell me now,' said Peterson, 'is that you don't know anything about this.'

'Nothing,' said Lorenzo.

'And you've had no dealings with Melvin Lee. You don't know where we could find him.'

'I don't know anything,' said Lorenzo, telling the lie as naturally as he took breath. 'I don't know Lee and I don't know where to find him.'

And if I knew, I wouldn't tell you.

Through the windshield of the patrol car, they both watched the ambulance pull away.

'You can go,' said Peterson.

'Is she gonna make it?'

'I don't know,' said Peterson. 'You want to help her, say a prayer.'

'I will,' said Lorenzo.

And someone, thought Lorenzo, needs to pray for me too. While they're at it, pray for the motherfucker who did this to my friend.

CHAPTER 22

Lorenzo Brown drove north. He parked the Tahoe in the court behind the Humane Society alley and went through the screened back door, past the cat kennel, and through the lobby without speaking to Cindy or anyone else. He took the stairs up to the second floor, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible so as not to alert Irena Tovar to his presence. Her door, as always, was open. He did not look in that direction and went directly to his own office at the opposite end of the hall. Jerry, out on calls most likely, was not at his desk. Neither was Mark Christianson.

Lorenzo phoned Nigel Johnson, got his message box, and left his direct number at the office. He then found his report file from the previous day and the notepad on which he had written down the license plate numbers of the cars parked on the edge of Fort Dupont. The phone on Lorenzo's desk rang, and he lifted the receiver.

'Officer Brown.'

'Officer Brown. I like that.'

'Nigel. Need your help on something.'

'Go ahead, boy.'

'Black Holmes still in the cut, right?'

'Long as he breathin'.'

'And his mother works for Motor Vehicles, doesn't she?'

'Uh-huh.'

'You been good to Black?'

'You know I have. His mother gets an envelope every month.'

'I need her to run a plate for me.'

'Look, you're damn near police yourself. Don't you have a way you can get that done?'

'Not this time.'

'Okay. What do you need?'

'I got the car and the license plate. I need the address of the owner.'

'What car?' said Nigel, as if he already knew the answer and did not like it.

Lorenzo gave Nigel the plate number of the silver BMW and listened to silence on the other end of the line.

'You there?'

'Why?' said Nigel.

'I'm lookin' to find Lee and Miller.'

'So am I. Matter of fact, Deacon and me gonna meet at dark, and we gonna discuss it. But I told you to stay out of this. I'm gonna handle it my own self.'

'That ain't gonna work for me, Nigel.'

Lorenzo told Nigel of the assault on Rachel Lopez. He told him about Lee's Camry being left at the car wash, and how he felt certain that Rico Miller had done the crime.

'Last thing Melvin lookin' to do is go back to prison,' said Lorenzo. 'He had no reason to go at Miss Lopez like that.'

'And you think Miller had a reason.'

'That boy don't need a reason. In his fucked-up mind, maybe he thought he was helping Melvin. I had money to bet, I'd say Miller did Green and Butler too.'

'That woman gonna make it?'

'I don't know. She got cut up bad. She's over at Washington Hospital Center now.'

'You gonna be there at the office?'

'Yeah.'

'I better call Black's mother before she leaves out the building. It's near quitting time for her.'

'I'll wait to hear from you.'

Lorenzo went down to the basement to check on the dog he'd brought in from Congress Heights. Mark Christianson was in the kennel, staring down into the open cage where Lincoln, the aggressive pit, had been. Some of the other dogs were making noise, looking for attention. Their barks and yelps echoed in the cool cinder-blocked room.

'Irena put Lincoln down?' said Lorenzo.

'She had it done while I was out on calls.' Mark looked at his bandaged hand, as if the bite was the reason the dog had been destroyed.

'It ain't on you,' said Lorenzo.

'I know it.'

'You believe in God, right?'

'I believe there's someone higher than us.'

'But do you believe that he's up there moving us around like chess pieces or somethin'?'

'Of course not.'

'Neither do I. Things happened to that dog on this cruel earth to make it the way it was. Wasn't its fault, but still. It's not like God is gonna step in now, point his finger down from heaven, and touch that animal, make it so it can live around people and other animals the right way.'

'What's your point?'

'Irena did her job. 'Cause that dog was too far gone to change its ways. He had to be put down. You see that, don't you?'

'Yes.'

Lorenzo went to the cage where the cream pit bull lay. She had been treated by a vet with dressings and bandages, and was awake on her belly, her snout resting between her paws.

Lorenzo crouched down, whistled softly, and put his knuckles up against the cage. 'How you doin',

girl?'

The dog whined happily and tried to crawl forward, but thought better of it and stayed put.

'That your hold?' said Mark.

'I got her earlier today. Impounded her from an apartment down in Southeast.'

'Have any trouble getting her out?'

'No,' said Lorenzo.

Cindy called out to Lorenzo from the top of the stairs. Someone was on the line for him and did not want to leave a message.

Lorenzo stood and tried to walk past Mark. Mark put his hand around Lorenzo's biceps.

'You all right?' said Mark.

'Why?'

'You look different.'

I look the way I used to, thought Lorenzo. You never knew me when I had this kind of hard on my face.

'I'm fine.'

'You feel like having a beer tonight or something?'

'I got plans tonight,' said Lorenzo.

'I know what happened down there in Congress Heights. I came down to back you up after Cindy radioed in the call, but you had already left. Someone on the scene told me what went down.'

'Uh-huh.'

'I thought you said there wasn't any trouble.'

'There wasn't.'

'You're good at this,' said Mark. 'I don't want to see you blow it.'

'Thanks for gettin' my back,' said Lorenzo, gently pulling his arm free.

'You need to talk or somethin', you phone me. Anytime.'

'I got to get this call.'

Lorenzo went up the stairs. Cindy told him that she was not his personal secretary, and he passed her without comment or breaking stride. Up in his office, he picked up the phone and took it off hold.

'Nigel?'

'I got it.'

'A home address?'

'Car's not registered to Lee or Miller. Man by the name of Calvin Duke owns it. He stays down around Thirty-fifth, in Northeast. Black's mother say he owns a whole rack of vehicles, according to the computer.'

'What, he got a used-car lot, somethin' like that?'

'Or he rentin' cars out,' said Nigel.

'How you know that?'

'Lawrence Graham keeps his ear to the street on that kind of thing. Says Duke's got a rep in Northeast. Maybe we ought to talk to him. If that BMW is a hack, Duke's got to know the place where he can collect the rent.'

'Right.'

'I'd like to find out where those two are at before I parley with Deacon.'

'Pick me up at my place,' said Lorenzo.

'Now?'

'I need time to change into some street clothes.'

'I'll see you in fifteen minutes.'

'Gimme an hour,' said Lorenzo. 'I gotta walk my dog.'

Lorenzo left without speaking to Irena Tovar. Typically, at the end of his shift, he'd go to her office, sit before her desk, and discuss his cases and how he was coming along on the job. He knew he would not be able to look her in the eye today.

Lorenzo went to his Ventura, parked on Floral Place. He cooked the ignition and headed for Park View.

Nigel Johnson picked up the count from Ricky Young on Morton Street. This was normally DeEric Green's duty, and Nigel had not done it himself for some time. He was mindful of any 4D cruisers or unmarkeds as he drove down the street, past his people and Deacon's, who were standing on hot corners, dealing with the drive-through customers and the walk-up fiends trying to buy on the short. He received the cash from Young in a shoe box through the window of his Lexus. Then he navigated the circle back by the apartments, returned to Georgia, hung a right and another right on Newton, and took it to 6th, where his mother stayed. He was certain he had not been followed.

He took the shoe box, and some Breyers mint chocolate chip he had picked up on his way downtown, and went inside the house.

It smelled like her cooking. This was what he waited for, something he could never get from the phone calls he made to her three, four times a day. That smell. That and her music, which was playing now on the stereo he'd bought for her. It was the Claudine sound track, Gladys interpreting Curtis, singing about 'the makings of you.' The stereo was part of the elaborate entertainment center in the living room, which also included a plasma television set and a DVD player she could never seem to operate, also high-end.

Deborah Johnson came from the kitchen, walking down the high-shag carpet to take him in her arms. She smelled like perfume, the sweet kind she favored.

'Hello, son.'

'Mama.'

Deborah was a big woman, five-foot-ten and up around 260 pounds. She was pretty, with nice skin, looked like deeply burnished wood, and neatly styled hair. She always wore makeup, red lipstick and blue eye shadow, despite the fact that, except for Sundays when she went to church, she rarely left the house. She was fifty-four years old.

'Here you go,' said Nigel. He handed her the shoe box first, then the ice cream.

'Thank you, baby. You got my flavor.'

Nigel nodded. He worried about her heart, but he wasn't going to deny her the treats she loved.

'Let me put this stuff away,' said Deborah.

'All right.'

'You gonna have a plate of somethin'? I've got a nice ham and sweet potatoes to go with it.'

'Little bit, Mama.'

'Ham's cold.'

'How it should be in the summertime.'

'I'll be right back.'

Nigel watched her go, pushing her weight forward, using the side-to-side movement of the heavy. While she was preparing his food in the kitchen, she'd run the cash through the electronic counting machine she kept back there in one of the cabinets. She liked to do that soon as he made the delivery.

'Sit yourself down,' she said over her shoulder.

He had a seat in the living room. The couch and chairs had plastic slipcovers on them even though Deborah could afford to let the furniture wear down natural and change it out any time she wanted to. He couldn't convince her, entirely, that she didn't have to worry about pennies anymore. Once poor, always poor, that's what folks said.

He bought her jewelry and picked out her dresses from the oversize department at places like Nordstrom and Lord and Taylor. She never asked for these things but was thankful for them and wore them proudly. She bragged to her friends at church about her son the businessman, 'my entrepreneur,' who had the NJ Enterprises shop up on Georgia, and they went along with the charade, which she knew to be a ruse herself. She rarely spoke of it with Nigel and never with anyone else.

He had set up several accounts at different banks around town, the deposits never exceeding ten thousand dollars. The bulk of the remaining cash was kept here in her house. He wanted to make sure that she was taken care of in the event of his death or incarceration.

There was no one else in his life. He had fathered a couple of children when he was young but had paid the mothers off in lump sums and did not have much contact with them. He had one older brother, a successful Realtor in Raleigh, North Carolina, who had clean-breaked from the family long ago and had not seen D.C. since he'd left town. Nigel had never known his father. He'd gone looking for him, based on some cryptic information his mother had given him on a rare night when she'd had a second glass of wine, and discovered that the man had been dead for twenty years. It was said by the man's son, a crackhead who technically was Nigel's half brother, that the father was buried in a pauper's grave. Nigel had felt nothing upon hearing the news.

Nigel lived in a modest apartment near his storefront, up in Manor Park. After the expense of his rent, his mother's mortgage, her clothing and jewelry, his clothing and jewelry, his vehicles, the vehicles he bought for his men, his payroll, the rent on his storefront, and all the extras a man in his position had to have, there was little cash left. This was the secret that many drug dealers on Nigel's level kept. They could not save and were not rich.

It wasn't money that kept Nigel in the game. It was the power, of course, and the fear that he would lose what he had and, once out, be qualified to do nothing else. But it was also the responsibility he felt he had for those under him. From the beginning, he had told himself that he was providing opportunity and a sense of family for those who otherwise had no chance of attaining either. He knew now, and had known for some time, that this was bullshit drug dealers repeated to themselves and one another to rationalize their lifestyles. More than just bullshit — it was a dirty lie.

He had told this lie to his best friend. He had told it to many other young men. The last young man he'd told it to had been Michael Butler. Michael Butler, who at seventeen years of age would soon be in the ground, covered in maggots. Nigel had spoken to him early on about the opportunity that was waiting for him up the road. Instead, Nigel had shown him a horrifying death and an early grave.

'You wrong,' said Nigel under his breath.

His mother touched his shoulder. He had not heard her reenter the room.

'What's that, baby?'

'Talkin' to myself, is all. Must be getting old.'

'I'm heating the potatoes up. Won't be but another minute.'

'Okay.'

Deborah Johnson came around the sofa and had a seat beside her son. The Gladys Knight CD played beautifully in the room. Gladys singing joyously about 'a happy home.' Nigel remembered his mother wearing the grooves out on her vinyl copy, back in time.

'Lorenzo called me today,' said Deborah.

'He told me he spoke to you.'

'You two gonna hook up?'

'Yes.'

'Lorenzo's good,' said Deborah, touching her son's hand. 'You watch out for him, hear?'

'I will,' said Nigel.

'You ought to call him, tell him to come over, have some of this ham.'

'He busy right now.'

'What's he doing?'

'He's out there on Otis, I expect.' Nigel smiled a little, looking toward the living-room window that fronted the street. 'Walkin' his dog.'

Shadows had lengthened on the playground. Lorenzo watched the children doing what children did on summer evenings, getting in the last of their games before supper got called or darkness fell. He remembered being out here with Nigel when he'd first moved over from Congress Heights to stay with his grandmother, Nigel his first Park View friend. Nigel dreaming on a pair of Superstar three-stripes he'd seen in a store window, focusing on what he wanted, what he was gonna get, even then. Asking Lorenzo if there was anything he wanted, 'cause when he, Nigel, got his hands on some money, he was gonna buy his boy something too.

Lorenzo stood in the tall grass by the dusty baseball diamond, holding his dog by the leash, his other hand holding a plastic bag fashioned as a glove. I have come a long way, he thought, with a shit bag in my hand.

Jasmine did her business, and Lorenzo cleaned it from the grass. He tied off one end of the bag, walked through the alley that ran behind Otis and Princeton, and put it in someone's trash can back there. He cut out of the alley's T, went along Georgia, and turned the corner where the old neighborhood market, owned and operated by a Jew named Meyer, had been. Meyer, it was said, used to extend credit to the neighborhood's residents, but his business was gone, and he was long dead. Lorenzo headed up Princeton Place.

He had taken this route out of habit and now, nearing Rayne's house and his grandmother's house beside it, he was sorry that he did. Rayne was out on her porch, and little Lakeisha was up there too. At least Lorenzo was on the other side of the street.

'That Jazz Man, Mama?' he heard Lakeisha say.

Lorenzo tugged on the leash as Jasmine's head turned toward the little girl. He glanced at the house and saw Rayne standing by the railing, looking at him with bewilderment as he kept going without a word. He waved weakly but did not make eye contact with Rayne. Lakeisha called out to him and his dog, and he walked on, wincing at the sound of disappointment in her innocent voice.

Don't do that, little princess. Don't call me over. You and your mother don't need me in your life.

He didn't look at his grandmother's house at all. He just went on his way.

Back in his apartment, Lorenzo changed into loose-fitting jeans, a sleeveless T, and a short-sleeved button-down shirt. He tied a pair of Nike 20s tight on his feet. In the living room, he moved the hope chest and inspected the contents of the area beneath the cutout he had made in the floor.

Nigel called from one of his cells. He was out in the car, on Otis, waiting. Jasmine whimpered and came to Lorenzo as he hung up the phone.

'I'm comin' back,' said Lorenzo. 'You just go and lie down in your bed.'

The dog walked into the bedroom. Lorenzo went to meet Nigel.

CHAPTER 23

Calvin Duke lived on 35th Street, off Ames, between Minnesota Avenue and the Anacostia Freeway, in his grandmother's house in Northeast. His backyard, like most of the yards on the one hundred block of 35th Street, was deep and wide, and ended at an alley. Past the alley were the railroad tracks, and past the railroad tracks were the Anacostia Freeway, the green of Anacostia Park, and the brackish water of the Anacostia River. It felt like country here. Many of the residents on 35th maintained bountiful gardens of vegetables and flowers in their backyards. In Calvin Duke's were several cars.

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

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

'Yes?' she said.

'Is Calvin in?' said Nigel.

'You some kind of police?'

'No, ma'am. We're lookin' to talk to him about a car.'

'My grandson's out back, burnin' a steak.'

'We'll just go around there, then, that's okay with you.'

The old woman shrugged. 'Mind that dog.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Who sent y'all?'

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

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

'Mind if we come in?'

'Come through the gate.'

'What about that animal?' said Nigel to Lorenzo.

'That dog ain't gonna hurt no one.'

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

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

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

'You got a fly problem with this dog's ears,' said Lorenzo.

'That so.'

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

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

'Dog needs treatment,' said Lorenzo.

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

Lorenzo stared at Duke.

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

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

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

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

'It's out.'

'I can see that.'

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

'We lookin' to talk to whoever rentin' the BMW.'

'Why?'

'That ain't your concern.'

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

'Be better for you if we were,' said Nigel.

'Now you gonna tweak on me, big man?'

'I haven't yet.'

'Comin' in here, on my property, makin' demands.'

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

'I can't help you,' said Duke, the boldness withering in his voice.

'The BMW,' said Nigel.

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

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

'Hey,' said Duke.

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

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

'The name and address,' said Nigel.

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

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

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

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

Nigel chuckled. 'You ain't lost nothin'.'

'Some shit just stay natural,' said Lorenzo.

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

'I thought of that. Car that nice, I just couldn't fuck with it.'

'You made do with that fork, though.'

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

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

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

'Who the fuck are y'all?' said Duke.

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

'Yeah, I know.'

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

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

'Rico Miller rented the car,' said Nigel. 'He stayin' here in Northeast.'

'Lee gonna be with him too.'

'I gotta get up with Deacon before we do anything.'

'You can drop me by the hospital, pick me up when you're done.'

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

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

'It's a George Duke song.'

'Who?'

'My mother had the LP,' said Nigel. 'That's how I know.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The next twenty-four hours are crucial.'

'She gonna live?' said Donald Peterson.

'I'm optimistic,' said the doctor. 'Yes.'

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

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

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

CHAPTER 24

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

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

'Looks like he got Graham with him,' said Griff.

'That ain't no surprise.'

'What you want me to do?'

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

'And do what?'

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

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

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

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

'You look good, big man,' said Deacon.

'You too,' said Nigel. 'Prosperous.'

'I'm tryin'. Game ain't gettin' any easier.'

'Tell it,' said Nigel. 'All this death too.'

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

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

'I know,' said Deacon. 'I know.'

'That boy was good.'

'What I heard.'

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

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

'I never thought you did.'

'Rico Miller took it upon his self.'

'What I figured.'

'Now I got this other thing to deal with, the thing with the probation officer.'

'You know about that?'

'I didn't know shit about it till Homicide come knockin' on my door.'

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

'I'm not gonna handle it,' said Deacon. 'You are.'

'You givin' me permission to do what I need to?'

Deacon nodded.

'Why?'

'Straight business, like you say. I can't control Rico no more.'

'What about Lee?' said Nigel.

'Melvin with Rico, far as I'm concerned.'

'He been with you a while.'

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

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

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

'What about your people?'

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

They rounded the curve of the track.

'Where the police at on this?' said Nigel.

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

'Means I don't have much time.'

'You know where Rico at, right?' said Deacon.

'Northeast,' said Nigel.

Deacon's eyes moved to Nigel. 'He at that same place…'

'Forty-sixth and Hayes,' said Nigel.

'Right.'

They walked farther. Nigel thought of Lorenzo, back in high school, running this track at night in his jeans and basketball sneaks. Nigel watching him, cutting on his technique. Lorenzo bragging about how he'd smoke anyone in the forty, they had the mind to try him. Talking about running for the school, wearing the colors of the Rough Riders. Nigel telling him that he had no business in school, that school was for faggots and suckers. That if he stuck with Nigel, the two of them were going to have it all.

'Shit,' said Nigel softly.

'What?' said Deacon.

'Nothin'. I'm tired, is all. You ever feel that way?'

'Yeah,' said Deacon, narrowing his eyes. 'Sometimes I do get tired. Just like you.'

Nigel got behind the wheel of the Lexus. Lawrence Graham slipped into the bucket beside him.

'I'm on,' said Nigel.

'What about me?' said Graham.

'I'm gonna need you for somethin' else.'

Nigel turned the key and put the car in drive.

'Where we goin'?' said Graham.

'Pick up Lorenzo at the hospital. Listen to me careful, 'cause we ain't got all that far to go.'

Nigel drove up Iowa, passing the Mercedes on the other side of the street.

Deacon Taylor and Marcus Griffin, sitting in Deacon's car, watched Nigel pass.

'You two square it up?'

'Yeah,' said Deacon. 'We good.'

'What's the plan?'

'Told you, I don't plan,' said Deacon. 'I look for opportunities.'

Nigel picked up Lorenzo outside the hospital, where they dropped off the people going in for surgery and picked up those who were recovering. Lorenzo, slump shouldered, standing by an old head smoking a cigarette, looked like he'd been under the knife himself.

Graham got out, allowing Lorenzo to take the passenger bucket, and slid into the backseat.

'How she doin'?' said Nigel.

'She's dead.'

Nigel drove back into the old neighborhood. No one spoke or reached for the radio. Nigel pulled into a spot on Warder Street, by Park View Elementary, and cut the engine.

'Why we stoppin' here?' said Lorenzo.

'Thought we'd walk some,' said Nigel. 'Talk.'

'I'm done talkin'. I'm ready to go. You said you were lookin' for some clean hardware. I got everything back at my apartment that we gonna need.'

Nigel looked past the headrest to the backseat. He tossed his keys over his shoulder into Graham's cupped hands. 'Stay here, Lawrence.'

Nigel got out of the car. Lorenzo hesitated for a moment, then got out too.

They walked onto the elementary school grounds, lighted in some spots and in others under a blanket of full dark. The silhouetted figures of two boys, no older than eleven or twelve, moved through the night. Marijuana smoke roiled faintly in the air.

Nigel had a seat on a wooden bench by the swings. Lorenzo sat beside him.

'You see them kids?' said Nigel.

'Yeah.'

"Bout the same age we were when we started out.'

'They look to be.'

'Smells like they're sampling the product. The way you used to do.'

'I did love it,' said Lorenzo.

'And I was all about business. Even before I started grindin', when I had my paper route and I'd bring you out with me before sunup.'

'You were focused on getting the newspaper on the doorstep just right. So you could get those Christmas tips.'

'And all you wanted to do was bust out streetlights.'

'I had the arm to do it too,' said Lorenzo. 'I could wing some rocks. Someone should have put me up on the mound.'

'That's what you should've been doin' with your youth. Pitchin' for some baseball team. Running track like you wanted to. 'Stead of gettin' high and following me.'

'Past is past,' said Lorenzo, echoing what he'd heard so many times at the meetings.

'Look, Lorenzo—'

'Don't apologize, Nigel. I made my choices.'

'Right. At least you doin' good now.'

'I get headaches.'

'Damn near everyone go to work each day gets headaches. I'm sayin', I see you in that uniform, doin' something good out here, it makes me feel proud of you, man. Makes me think maybe I didn't fuck you over all the way.'

'That uniform don't change who I am.'

'Who you are is who you are today. Not what you were before you did your bid.'

'Bullshit. You come on back to my apartment, you gonna see how much I changed.'

'One thing ain't changed,' said Nigel with a sad chuckle. 'You still thickheaded.'

A young woman pushing a baby carriage turned the corner off Warder, walked down Otis, and passed under a street lamp. Lorenzo and Nigel studied her with interest.

'What you think her thing is?' said Lorenzo.

'I don't know. Fine at fifteen, a mother at sixteen. Fucked and forgotten by some boy she ain't never gonna hear from again. She done made her own mother a grandmother at thirty-two. Now she livin' at home, a high school dropout with no skills, wonderin' what she gonna do with her life. Sitting on the couch, watchin' Judge Brown and the soaps, eatin' sweets and smokin' cigarettes. Fifteen years from now? She gonna be a grandmother herself, and that fine young girl gonna look like every other dusty-ass woman you see on the bus.'

'You ain't been on a Metrobus for twenty years.'

'You know what I mean.'

'How about this?' said Lorenzo. 'She made a mistake and she knows it. The boy who got her that way is working hard to rent an apartment so they can live together as a family. Her mother watches the baby during the day so the girl can stay in school, get her degree. And maybe her mother will raise the baby for a few years while the girl goes on to college. And that kid gonna watch an educated mother and a hardworking father, and by example, all those good things gonna rub off.'

'Another way of looking at it, I guess.'

'You ought to see all the people I meet on my job every day, Nigel. All the stories I hear.'

'I can imagine,' said Nigel. 'The game, it's just a tiny part of what's goin' on out here. Remember back when they was callin' this town Dodge City?'

'That was reporters and shit, made that name up. The ones who were too scared to come into the neighborhoods they were writin' about.'

'The everyday people who lived in this city hated that name.'

'As they should have,' said Lorenzo. 'Drama City be more like it.'

'Like them two faces they got hangin' over the stage in those theaters. The smiling face and the sad.'

'City got more than two sides.'

'Whatever it got,' said Nigel, 'you on the right side now. The side where people get up and go to work. Wash their cars out in the street, tend to their gardens. Watch their kids grow.'

'Maybe. But I'm still gonna avenge my friend. Rico Miller? Shit, motherfuckers like him, they're in their element behind those walls. I ain't gonna let him have that gift. Boy needs to be put down like an animal.'

'I'm not sayin' he doesn't deserve to die. I'm telling you you can't be a part of it.'

'You don't need to worry, Nigel. I'm not goin' back over to where I been. I'm gonna be at work tomorrow and the day after that. But I'm still gonna do this thing tonight.'

'It don't work that way.'

'We'll see.'

'You been out of it so long, you forgot how it goes. You go in, you got to go in fierce. Forget they're human. Forget that you're human too.'

'I know it. Remember, I've done this before.'

'But you cleaned your slate. Now, what, you gonna go and throw away your soul again?'

'What about yours?'

'Mine's been lost forever.' Nigel looked away. 'I'm sayin', this ain't you anymore.'

'I'm on this.'

'I don't want you with me, Lorenzo.'

'I don't give a fuck if you do or if you don't,' said Lorenzo, turning to stare directly into his friend's eyes.

'You that set on it?'

'I am.'

'Thickheaded,' said Nigel.

'C'mon.' Lorenzo stood. 'Let's get on over to my crib. Wanna show you what I got.'

They walked down Otis toward Lorenzo's apartment. Lawrence Graham followed in the Lex.

CHAPTER 25

Lorenzo Brown entered his apartment. Nigel Johnson and Lawrence Graham followed. Jasmine, as always, was waiting just inside the door. She backed up and growled at the sight of Nigel.

Lorenzo crouched, patted her belly, and rubbed behind her ears. His touch calmed her down.

'Dogs don't like me,' said Nigel, taking a seat on the hope chest behind the living-room sofa. Graham stood with his back against the wall.

'That's 'cause they know you're scared of 'em,' said Lorenzo.

'I can't forget that shepherd in the alley behind Princeton, took a piece out my hand.'

'That was twenty years ago.'

'I just told you I can't forget it.' Nigel pointed to the hallway. 'Do me a favor and put that animal back in your bedroom.'

'Yeah, okay. C'mon, girl.'

Lorenzo went down the hall, Jasmine behind him. Nigel and Graham exchanged a glance. They heard the sound of Lorenzo's bedroom door closing and the footsteps of Lorenzo coming back down the hall.

'Where your hardware at?' said Nigel.

'You're sittin' on it.'

Nigel got off the hope chest. Lorenzo moved it aside and pulled up the throw rug that lay beneath it. Under the rug was a rectangular cutout that was fitted in the hardwood floor. Where two sides of the rectangle had been grooved out, Lorenzo grasped the cutout and lifted it from its place. He leaned it against the chest.

In the space beneath the floor were two large metal toolboxes. Lorenzo lifted them out one by one. The muscles of his forearms rippled against the weight.

Lorenzo opened one of the toolboxes. Its inner tray had been removed to accommodate three handguns wrapped in oiled shop rags. Lorenzo unwrapped one of the guns, a Glock 17, and showed it to Nigel.

'It's live,' said Lorenzo.

'What about the others?'

'They're carrying full loads too.'

'Where you get these?'

'Remember Hoppy, stayed over there on Lamont?'

'Thought he was out of it.'

'He back in.'

'They clean?'

'Straw buys out of Virginia. Never been fired. Serial numbers still on 'em.'

'Why?'

'Why I have 'em?'

'Yeah.'

'For the reason I been sleepin' on the same side of the bed my whole life. It feels right.'

'What else you got?' said Nigel.

'Forty-five Colt and a thirty-eight Special.'

'And in the other box?'

'Extra magazines and bricks. Couple clean rags. A box of latex gloves.'

'Lemme see the thirty-eight.'

Lorenzo replaced the Glock in the toolbox and withdrew another gun. He unwrapped a Taurus seven-shot revolver with rubber grips and handed it to Nigel.

Nigel hefted the Taurus and turned it in the light. He released the cylinder, spun it, checked the load, and snapped the cylinder shut. He holstered the Taurus in his waistband.

'This is me right here.'

'Let's do it, then,' said Lorenzo.

'I need some water before we go.'

'What, you want me to serve it to you? Water in the kitchen, same place it is in every house you ever been in.'

Nigel went back to the Pullman kitchen. They listened to him bang a glass against another and heard the faucet run and the cry of the old pipes as the water ran through. It seemed as if Nigel was running the water for a long time. Lorenzo looked at Graham, and Graham shrugged.

Nigel returned, gun in hand.

'Let's go,' said Lorenzo.

Nigel pointed the gun at Lorenzo's chest. 'You ain't goin' nowhere, son.'

Lorenzo stood motionless. Back in the closed bedroom, Jasmine began to bark.

'Dog knows,' said Graham. 'Funny how that is.'

'Dogs don't like me nohow,' said Nigel.

'Don't play,' said Lorenzo.

'I'm not,' said Nigel. 'I'd rather see you dead than see you go back to where you were.'

'That's a lie. You couldn't use that on me if you wanted to, Nigel.'

'No,' said Nigel, making a head motion to Lawrence Graham. 'But he could.'

Graham pushed away from the wall, stepped across the room, and took the gun from Nigel's hand.

'He tries to follow me,' said Nigel to Graham, 'you pull that trigger, hear?'

Graham nodded.

'Pull it seven times, you got to.'

Graham nodded again. His eyes smiled.

Nigel closed both toolboxes and made certain they were secure. He picked them up and headed for the door. Graham, holding the gun on Lorenzo and not taking his eyes from him, backed up and opened the door for Nigel.

'Nigel,' said Lorenzo.

Nigel stopped walking but did not turn his head. 'What?'

'You can't, not without me. You my boy.'

'I never was,' said Nigel. 'But I'm gonna do you right this one time.'

He walked out of the apartment. Graham closed the door with his foot and pointed his chin at the sofa.

'Have a seat,' said Graham.

Lorenzo sat down on the sofa as Graham settled into the worn armchair beside it. He held the gun loosely, its barrel pointed at the hardwood floor.

'And don't try and act like you gonna rush me, either,' said Graham.

They stared at each other and spoke no further. They listened to Jasmine barking in the other room.

Rico Miller had downloaded an electronic version of 'In da Club' to his cell phone, so that the song played when someone called. Someone was calling him now. He picked the phone up off the folding table in the living-room area of his bungalow and answered. It was Deacon Taylor.

Miller listened to Deacon as he watched Melvin Lee. Lee, slouched on a sofa Miller had spotted by a Dumpster one day, held a live cigarette between his fingers. The ash was long and about to drop. Smoke hung heavy in the air, turning slowly under the light of a naked bulb.

Lee's eyes, bugged in their sockets, had no life. His arms were thin and knotty, coming out of his shirt like twigs. Miller did not remember Melvin being so small.

Deacon talked on, smooth and precise. Miller's eyes narrowed as he listened to his voice. When Deacon was done, Miller said, 'Yeah, all right,' and hit 'End' on his phone. He closed the phone's lid and placed it back on the table.

'Deacon,' said Miller.

Lee stared straight ahead.

'He said he couldn't get you on your cell…'

'I been had it off.'

'… so he tried mines.'

'He angry, right?'

'No. He's actin' real nice. Said he knew about the parole lady. I told him I had to, 'cause she was fixin' to violate you. He said that shit was unfortunate, but it had to be done. Said he understood.'

'What else?'

'Told us to stay right here till he figures out how to put us somewhere safe.' Miller licked his lips. '"You sit tight right where you at," he said, like he knew where we was.'

'What're you sayin', Rico?'

'Deacon be talkin' out the side of his mouth, Melvin. He done with us. Maybe he know where we at or maybe he tryin' to find out. Either way, he gonna send someone over here eventually. And when that someone come, he ain't comin' as a friend.'

Lee put his cigarette to his lips and dragged on it hard. A rope of ash dropped to his lap. He made no move to brush it away.

'We need to move,' said Miller. 'Gotta lay up somewhere else.'

Lee exhaled smoke. His cigarette hand shook as he moved it down to rest on his thigh.

'You stay here and keep an eye on the front,' said Miller.

Miller walked back into the bedroom. Lee stared at the plaster wall before him, chipped and water stained, and the bedsheets covering the windows.

There ain't no place to run to, thought Melvin Lee. Lee felt the heat of his cigarette as it burned down toward his fingers, but he made no move to put it out.

Entering his bedroom, Miller kicked aside a PS2 controller and some magazines. He stepped on a game case and crushed it, not caring, has he crossed the room. None of his possessions had ever made him happy. They had no value now.

Miller went to the closet and parted the shirts and jackets that hung on its rod. He freed the false wall, a sheet of particleboard fitted behind the clothing, and dropped it behind him. He removed his cut-down Winchester pump-action shotgun from the rack. He retrieved his Glock, his S&W .38, several bricks of bullets, a box of low-recoil shotgun load, and his harness and holsters. He placed everything on his bed.

Miller went to a dresser he'd bought for twenty dollars at the Salvation Army store. On top of the dresser sat the shoe box containing the count taken from DeEric Green's Escalade. Beside the shoe box was Miller's knife. He'd cleaned it and secured it in its sheath. He looked at his nickname, burned from top to bottom into the leather.

Creep.

His mother was the first one to call him that. That was, when she wasn't calling him a punk or worse. Berating him, slapping him in public at every drugstore or grocery they went to when he'd ask for an action figure or just a pack of gum. When he cried, she only slapped him harder.

'Gonna teach you not to cry,' she said. 'I ain't raisin' no sissies.'

There was one time at this department store, around Christmas, when Rico was six or seven. He saw these ornaments, silver balls with people's names painted on them, hung on this big old tree they had set up in the middle of the store. He was standing beside the tree, trying to find his name on one of the balls, when he saw one had Ricky on it, right in front of him. He knew it wasn't his name exactly, but if he could take the ball with him, he believed his mother could paint over the k and the y, make them into an o somehow. Make it so it said Rico.

'There go my name, Mama,' he said, pointing happily at the tree.

'That ain't your name.'

'Can I have it? We can make it my name when we get home.'

'Your name Creep,' she said, yanking on his hand. 'And I ain't got the time to be paintin' over shit. You don't need that thing no way.'

He reached for it and pulled it from the tree. The ball fell and shattered on the floor.

'Now you gonna get somethin',' she said, slapping him so hard the store and all the Christmas lights in it began to spin. 'You fuck up every goddamn thing you touch.'

He cried, and hated himself for crying, as she dragged him through the store. He couldn't even look at his weak self in the mirror for the next few days.

That was out in public. In private, in their apartment in a rodent-infested, drug-plagued government housing project that someone had the nerve to call the Gardens, down near the Navy Yard in Southeast, his mother was worse. When she was drinking or sucking on that glass pipe, she beat him with her fists. Sometimes she whipped him with a belt. She never did beat on his little sister. Miller couldn't step to his mother, but he found a way to wipe that grin off his sister's face.

'My sister don't scream when you fuck her,' he'd said to Melvin the day before this one, and Melvin had laughed.

Yes she do, thought Miller. She scream and sob, both at the same time.

He was on the street by the time he was twelve. Staying with a bunch of older boys in Southeast, working the corners, learning the game. In and out of schools, courtrooms, and juvenile facilities. The last was Oak Hill, out there in Laurel. Couple of tough ones had tried to step to him there, and he showed them who he was. He walked out of that motherfucker one day, just climbed the fence and went over it where some other kids had cut the razor wire down. Far as he knew, no one was looking for him. Since he'd left the Hill, he'd been in the wind.

Staring at his name burned into the sheath, he thought of his mother, and then that parole woman. How good it felt when he'd cut her across the face, plunged the blade into her chest, and stuck it through her hand when she'd raised it to protect herself. Thinking on it, his dick grew hard.

Miller slipped the knife into the shoe box alongside the money. He went to the bed and loaded the guns. As he worked, he ground his teeth. The sound was like a whisper in the room.

CHAPTER 26

Nigel Johnson lifted the trunk of his Lexus. A light inside the lid illuminated the two toolboxes he had placed there. He looked around the street, as he had done when he parked his car on Hunt Place, just off 46th, a short walk down to Hayes. He seemed to be alone.

Nigel opened both toolboxes. From one he extracted a pair of latex gloves and fitted them on his hands. From the other he removed the two automatics and peeled away the oiled rags that protected them. He wiped down the guns with one of the rags. He checked the Glock's load and holstered the .9 under his shirt, behind the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back. He then inspected the Colt. It was a Commander, the government model .45 with checkered grips. He was more familiar with this gun than he was with the Glock; he would lead with the Colt. He did not take the extra magazines. There were eight rounds in the Colt and ten in the Glock. Eighteen rounds to kill two men. It had to be enough.

He holstered the Colt under his shirt, barrel down, the grip resting against his hard belly. He wiped the toolboxes with a clean rag and closed the lid of the trunk.

Nigel went along Hunt and turned right on Hayes, studying the alley layout behind them. He headed toward the corner at 46th. Many of the street lamps were in disrepair. The neighborhood was quiet and very dark. He neared Miller's house, dimly lit behind bedsheets that hung in every window.

Nigel walked quietly, moving around the side of the house. The backyard was mostly dirt and weeds. A rotted wooden porch with ripped screens was situated at the rear of the house. Beside the porch sat a small set of steps leading to a landing and a back door. A sheet hung in the door's glass. Near the door was a small window, the size situated above a kitchen sink. It was covered by a sheet as well.

Nigel looked at the door. He could kick it in and go in hard or stand out here in the yard and wait. His palms were damp, and he wiped them dry on his jeans.

Some light bled out to the yard from behind the sheets. Nigel stepped back into the shadows, drew the Colt from his belt line, and held it by his side.

'It's hot,' said Melvin Lee.

'Ain't hot to me,' said Rico Miller.

'Hotter than a motherfucker in this piece,' said Lee. 'Don't you ever open no windows?'

'No. And we ain't gonna start now.'

'Thought we was leavin'.'

'Gonna wait till after midnight. Ain't no one on the road then. We can drive all night.'

'Where?'

'Don't worry about where. Just sit there and hold that gun. Anyone comes callin', we gonna be ready.'

The room stank of weed, perspiration, and cigarettes. A naked 150-watt bulb blew white light down into the space. Lee sat on the old couch near the folding table and chairs. He held Miller's .38 loosely between his legs. Lee didn't want the gun, but Miller had put it directly in his hand. Lee looked like a bug against the cream-colored couch. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

Beyond the folding table stood Rico Miller, his back against the wall. Miller held the cut-down shotgun barrel up, his fingers fitted in the pistol grip, the stock resting on his thigh. His eyes were pink from the hydro he'd smoked. His face held no emotion.

'I'm goin' out to have a smoke,' said Lee.

'Have it here.'

'Can't breathe in here. I'm going out.'

'Go out the back, then, you have to,' said Miller. 'Don't be long.'

Lee got up off the couch and stuck the revolver in his waistband. He did not look at Miller as he walked from the room.

Lee went down a hall and passed through the kitchen. At the rear of the kitchen he unchained the slide bolt from the door. He turned the dead bolt as well. He walked out onto the landing, pulling the door behind him but leaving it ajar. He went down the steps and stood in the residual light leaking from the kitchen. Listening to the crickets, looking out at the black of the yard, he reached into his back pocket for his cigarettes.

He shook a smoke out of the deck. He lit a match and bent his head down to touch tobacco to flame. Something leaped out of the darkness.

Nigel Johnson swung the Colt's barrel violently across Lee's face. Lee's nose shifted to one side; blood jumped up in the weak yellow light. He lost his legs and began to fall. Nigel clipped Lee's temple with the barrel as he went down. Lee fell to his back and lay still.

Nigel racked the Colt's slide and pulled back on its hammer. He stood over Lee, bent forward, and put the barrel of the gun to Lee's mouth. He raised his palm to shield the blowback. He thought better of it and stood straight.

Nigel walked up the steps to the back door of the house. He let his heart slow some, then pushed on the door and stepped inside.

Lorenzo Brown stared at Lawrence Graham, gauging the distance between them. Graham still held the gun with its barrel pointed at the floor. 'Don't think on it,' said Graham, reading Lorenzo's eyes. 'They say you were fast when you were young, but you ain't young no more. And you never were that fast.'

'You bein' kinda casual with that Taurus,' said Lorenzo. 'You givin' me ideas.'

'Try me, you got a mind to.'

Jasmine whined from back in the bedroom.

'I can't just sit here,' said Lorenzo.

'Do what you got to.'

'I'm gettin' up.'

'That's on you,' said Graham.

Slowly, Lorenzo pushed himself up and stood away from the couch. He started to walk around it and head for the hall. Graham raised the revolver and pointed it at Lorenzo. Lorenzo studied the gun's cylinder and knew, and as it came to Lorenzo, Graham squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

Graham squeezed the trigger six more times, as he had been told to do. Each snap of the hammer hitting nothing was like the strike of a nail in Lorenzo's heart.

'He said to squeeze it seven times,' said Graham.

'Motherfucker,' said Lorenzo.

'Bullets back in the kitchen, I expect. With that glass of water he got.'

Lorenzo went down the hall and let Jasmine out of the bedroom. He returned with his car keys in hand.

'You comin' with me?' he said to Graham.

'Where?'

'To help Nigel.'

'Too late for that.' Graham looked at his watch, then back at Lorenzo. 'Nigel in the belly of that motherfucker now.'

Nigel went through the kitchen, his back sliding against the counter, out of sight of the hall. Behind him, roaches crawled across the linoleum counter-top.

'Melvin,' said a voice from the living room. 'Melvin!'

Nigel turned the handle of the cold spigot and opened it all the way. Water drummed against the porcelain bowl of the sink.

Nigel rechecked the safety on the Colt; the gun was live. He moved from the kitchen to the hall, holding his weapon out in front of him. He could see a portion of the living room ahead, and it was bright.

Show yourself, thought Nigel. I am gonna murder the fuck out of you tonight. He blinked sweat from his eyes.

He came into the living room. Rico Miller stood in the right corner of the room, his back against the wall. He held a cut-down shotgun, and it was pointed at Nigel. For a moment, neither of them moved.

'I knew you wasn't Melvin,' said Miller. 'Melvin got his own smell.'

Nigel scanned the room: sofa, table, chairs.

'You kill him?' said Miller.

Nigel dove as the shotgun roared. The load blew off a portion of the sofa back, sending upholstery up into the air. Nigel landed behind the folding table, grabbed it, and stood with it in his hand. He heard the rack of the pump. The second shot hit the table square, like the slap of God. Its impact threw Nigel back to the floor.

Nigel crabbed backward furiously, the Colt still in his hand. He pointed the gun and squeezed its trigger. Smoke came off Miller's shoulder as he walked toward Nigel with the cut-down aimed low. The room flashed; hardwood erupted at Nigel's feet. Miller reracked the shotgun and fired as Nigel shot blindly into a shower of plaster and dust. Miller staggered through pink mist. The shotgun spun from his hands, and he dropped like meat to the floor.

A ringing sounded in Nigel's ears. There was a ripping pain where the shot had peppered his upper chest. His silk shirt was slick and darkened with blood. He tore the shirt open and examined his wounds. He stood, fought nausea, and kept his legs.

Nigel went to Miller's corpse. He fired a round into its head. He spit on Miller and walked from the room.

He moved back through the hall, straight through the kitchen, and out the back door. He walked down to the steps to where Melvin Lee lay unconscious in the grass. He shot Lee twice in the chest, holstered the Colt, and walked on.

A dog began to bark. A light came on in a nearby house.

Nigel went to the alley and followed it to Hunt. He saw a midnight blue Infiniti parked near his Lexus. He recognized it but did not stop. He needed treatment and he needed to get off the street. He went to his trunk and opened it. He heard a car door open and footsteps on pavement. He put the Glock into the toolbox but drew the Colt and kept it in hand. Its receiver had not slid open; he still had at least one round.

Nigel looked around the lid of the trunk. He saw Deacon's second, the one who called himself Griff, walking toward him. The hump under his shirt told Nigel that the young man was wearing a gun.