Drama City

FIVE

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

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

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

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

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

“Where we at now?” said DeEric Green.

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

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

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

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

“Story good,” said DeEric Green.

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

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

“What kind of car she drive?” said Green.

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

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

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

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

“You do?” said Nigel.

Lawrence Graham, Nigel’s enforcer, chuckled low.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nigel?” said Green.

“What.”

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

“Talk about it.”

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

“Where was he standin’?” said Nigel. “Exactly.”

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

“Well, then,” said Nigel, “you fucked up.”

“Huh?”

“That ain’t our corner.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sayin’, that’s Deacon Taylor’s corner.”

“It’s close to ours.”

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

Green lowered his eyes.

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

“Right.”

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

“Anyway,” said Green, “’bout time I went and picked up the count.”

“Take Michael with you, hear?”

“ Ni gel,” said Green, protest in his tone.

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

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

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

“Your mom need anything?” said Michael Butler to Nigel.

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

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

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

“DeEric stupid.”

“You think?”

“He right about one thing, though,” said Graham.

“What’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

“DeEric Green, right?”

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

“Tubman?”

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

“His brother still out here?”

“Nah, James been dead.”

“What happened?”

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

“Man didn’t take kindly to it, huh?”

“I’d say he took it to heart.”

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

“Who that slim boy with DeEric?”

“New kid, name of Butler.”

“What you know about him?”

“Nothin’ yet. Nigel groomin’ him. But to me he don’t look like much.”

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

“No doubt.”

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

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

“I ain’t sayin’ either one of us wore the cap and gown.”

“Nigel’s main runnin’ boy, he was there round that time too, right?”

“Lorenzo Brown. Boy was fierce.”

“Yeah, well. He ain’t shit now.”

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

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

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

“Damn sure do.”

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

“What can I do?” said Lee.

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

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

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

“Can I help?”

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

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

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

“I don’t mind,” said Lee. “Rico a beast.”

Rico Miller clapped Melvin Lee on the shoulder.

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

“We’ll do it tonight,” said Lee.

“You workin’ your paycheck job this afternoon?” said Deacon.

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

“You still on paper, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So you definitely need to report to that job.”

“I always do,” said Lee.

Deacon exhaled slowly. “What you doin’ today?”

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

“What kind of thing?”

“Fat Tony say they got some dogfights in the woods.”

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

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

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

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