Drama City

FOURTEEN

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 sayin’,” 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 shotgun 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.