Hell To Pay

Potter didn’t like that the man didn’t look him in the eye when he spoke.

“That your woman?” said Potter, staring at the lady leaning on the wall. She took his stare, even as Potter smiled and licked his lips.

The dice man didn’t answer. He made his roll.

“Asked you if that was your woman.”

“And I told you to wait,” said the man.

The other men laughed. One of them reached into his breast pocket and extracted a cigarette. None of them looked at Potter.

“Get up,” said Potter. “Stand your tired ass up and face me.”

The dice man sighed some, then stood up. He grunted and rubbed at one knee as he did. He was old. But he was bigger than Potter expected, both in the shoulders and in height. He had a half foot on Potter if he had an inch. Now his eyes were twinkling.

“You got somethin’ you want to say to me?”

Potter reached under his shirttail and drew the Colt. He held it at his hip, the muzzle on the midsection of the man. The man’s eyes were calm; they didn’t even flare.

“Give it up,” said Potter. “All the cash.”

“Shit,” said the man, drawing it out slow, and he smiled.

“I’m gonna take your money,” said Potter. “You want, I’ll dead you to your woman, too.”

“Son?” said the man. “I done had guns pointed at me, by real men, while I was layin’ in rice paddies and mud, for two solid years. And here I am standin’ before you. Do I look like I’m worried about that snub-nose you got in your hand?”

“This here?” Potter looked at the gun as if it had just showed up in his hand. “Old-time, I wasn’t gonna shoot you with it.”

Potter swung the barrel so quickly that it lost its shape in the light. He slashed it across the brow of the man, the blow knocking the cap off his head. The man’s hand went to his face, blood seeping through his fingers immediately, and he stumbled back against the wall. Potter flipped the gun in the air and caught it on the half turn, so that he held it now by the barrel. He moved forward, ignoring the other men who had stood suddenly and backed away, and smashed the butt into the man’s cheekbone. He hit him in the nose the same way, blood dotting the cinder blocks as the man’s head whipped to the side. Potter laughed against the woman’s screams. He reared back to beat the man again and felt someone grab his arm. Looking over his shoulder with wild eyes, he saw that it was Charles White who held him there.

“Man, get your got-damn hands off me, man!” yelled Potter.

“Let’s just take the money,” said Little, moving into the light. “You about to kill a motherfucker, boy.”

“Get the money, then,” said Potter. He smiled and spit on the man lying bloodied before him. “You ain’t standin’ now, are you, Old-time?” Potter barked a laugh and raised his voice in elation. “Can’t nobody in this city fuck with Garfield Potter?”

Little and White gathered the cash up off the concrete. They backed up into the grassy area, turned, and walked quickly to the car. No one followed them or shouted for help.

Little counted the cash as they drove out of the complex. White looked in the rearview. A grin had broken, and was frozen, on Garfield Potter’s face.

LAMAR Williams said good night to his mother, a thirty-two-year-old woman with the face and body of a forty-year-old, who was leaning against the stove in their galley-sized kitchen, smoking a cigarette.

“Where you been at, Mar?”

“Practice with Mr. Derek. I was watchin’ wrestlin’ with that kid Joe Wilder after that, over at his mother’s.”

“I’m gonna need you in tomorrow night. I got plans.”

“Aiight.”

Lamar went down a hall and pushed open the door to his baby sister’s room. She was lying atop her bed, stretched out in those pj’s of hers, the ones had little roses printed on them. On her feet were those furry gold slippers she wouldn’t take off, with Winnie the Pooh’s head on the front. What was she now, almost four? Lamar covered her with a sheet.

He went back to his room, turned on his radio, sat on the edge of his bed, and listened to DJ Flexx talkin’ to some young girl who’d called in with some shout-outs for her friends. Then Flexx played that new Wyclef Jean joint that Lamar liked, the one with Mary J., where they was talkin’ about “Someone please call 911.” That one was tight. It made him feel better, to hear that pretty song.

Lamar lay back on the bed. He could still feel his heart beating hard beneath his white T-shirt. He’d done right, not giving up anything to those boys who’d tried to sweat him from the open windows of that car, because whatever they wanted with Joe Wilder’s mother, it was no good. But it was hard to keep doing right. Hard to have to walk a certain way, talk a certain way, keep up that shell all the time out here, when sometimes all you wanted to do was be young and have fun. Relax.

Lamar was tired. He rested the palm of his hand over his eyes and tried to make himself breathe slow.

chapter 13

STRANGE spent Wednesday morning clearing off his desk, his noontime testifying for a Fifth Streeter down in District Court, and his afternoon finishing his background check on Calhoun Tucker. He hit a couple of bars on U Street and then drove over to a club on 12th, near the FBI building, where George Hastings had said that Tucker had done some promotions.

All he spoke to that day told him that Tucker was an upstanding young businessman, tough when he had to be but fair and with a good reputation. At the 12th Street club, the bartender, a pretty, dark-skinned woman setting up her station, said that Tucker was “a good guy,” adding that he did have “a problem with the ladies, though.”

“What kind of problem?” said Strange.

“Being a man, you probably won’t think of it as one.”

“Try me out.”

“Calhoun, he can’t just be satisfied with one woman. He’s a player, serial style. It’s cool for a young man to be that way, but he’s the type, he’s gonna be a player his whole life, you understand what I’m sayin’? After a while you gotta check yourself with that, ’cause you are bound to hurt people in the end.”

“Did he hurt you?”

The bartender stopped slicing limes, pointing her short knife at Strange. “It’s my business if he did.”

Strange placed his card on the bar. “You think of anything else you want to tell me about him, you let me know.”

Strange went back to his place, hit the heavy bag in his basement, showered, fed Greco, and got on the Internet, reading the comments on a stock chat room while he listened to the Duck, You Sucker sound track he had recently purchased as an import.

“See you later, good boy,” said Strange, patting Greco on the head before he headed out the door. “Gotta get over to Roosevelt.”

THEY ran the team hard that night, as their game was coming up and the night-before practice would be light. The kids looked good. They weren’t making many mistakes, and they had their wind. The Midgets were in numbers on one side of the field with Lydell Blue, Dennis Arrington, and Lamar Williams, and the Pee Wees occupied the other. Near dark, after the drills, Strange called the Pee Wees in and told them it was time to run some plays. Strange took the offense aside as Quinn gathered the defensive unit.

The offensive huddle broke and went to the line. Dante Morris took the snap from Prince on the second “go” and handed off to Rico, who hit the five-hole off a Joe Wilder block, broke free from a one-handed tackle attempt, and was finally taken down twenty yards down the field.

Quinn took the kid who had missed the tackle aside. “None of this one-handed-tackle stuff. You can’t just put your arm out and say, Please, God, let him fall down. It doesn’t work that way, you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Hit him in the stomach. Wrap him up and lock your hands.”

The kid nodded. Quinn tapped him on the helmet with his palm, and the kid trotted back to the defensive huddle.

Joe Wilder slowed down as he passed Strange on the way to the offensive huddle. “Forty-four Belly, Coach Derek?”

“Run it,” said Strange. “And nice block there, Joe.”

Wilder ran the play into Dante Morris, who called it on one. It was a goal-line play, a simple flanker run direct through the four-hole. Wilder executed it perfectly and took the ball into the end zone. He did the dirty bird for his teammates and jogged back to Strange, a spring in his step.

“I be doin’ that on FedEx Field someday, Coach Derek.”

“It’s I will be doing that,” said Strange, who then smiled, thinking, I believe you will.

After practice, Strange talked with Blue awhile, then caught Quinn getting into his Chevelle.

“Where you off to so fast, Terry?”

“Got plans tonight.”

“A woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought you were gonna try and close that Jennifer Marshall thing tonight.”

“I am,” said Quinn. “I’ll let you know how it pans out.”

Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder were standing by Strange’s Brougham. He put his football file into the trunk, let them in the car, and drove off the school grounds.

Strange turned up Prince’s street, not far from the football field.

“There go my houth right there,” said Prince.

“I know it,” said Strange, stopping the car. “Get in their straight away, boy, don’t make no detours. Those boys on that corner over there, they try to crack on you, you ignore ’em, hear?”

Prince nodded and got out of the car. He went quickly up the steps to his place, where the light on the porch had been left on.

As they drove south on Georgia, Joe Wilder held two action figures in his hand. He was making collision sounds as he pushed their rubber heads together like warring rams.

“I thought those two was friends,” said Lamar, sitting beside Wilder.

“Uh-uh, man, Triple H be the Rock’s enemy. H is married to the commissioner’s daughter.” Joe Wilder looked up at Lamar. “Will you come inside and watch it with me tonight?”

“Okay,” said Lamar. “I’ll watch it with you some.”

After Strange dropped them off, he popped a tape into the dash, a Stevie Wonder mix Janine had made him. Kids sat on the wall and dead-eyed him as he passed through the exit to the housing complex, Stevie singing “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” from the deck. Strange couldn’t help thinking how beautiful the song was. Thinking, too, how for those who’d been born in the wrong place through no fault of their own, how sad that it was true.

SUE Tracy picked up Terry Quinn at his apartment somewhere past ten o’clock that night. She stood in the doorway of his place while he shook himself into a waist-length black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. As he did this he blocked her way, his body language telling her to come no further. She watched him fumble his badge case into one jacket pocket and his cell into the other. Clearly he was anxious to slip out before she had a chance to get a good look at his crib. But Tracy had taken in enough to know that there was nothing much to see.

They walked out of the squat, three-story brick building, toward an old gray Econoline van parked on Sligo Avenue.

“Hey, Mark,” said Terry to a mixed-race teenage boy standing with a group of boys his age outside a beer-and-cigarette market on the corner.

“Wha’sup,” said the boy, not really looking at Quinn, muttering the greeting in a grudging, dutiful way.

Tracy stopped to light a cigarette. She dropped the spent match to the ground and exhaled smoke out the side of her mouth. “Kid really likes you, Terry.”

“He does like me. It’s just, you know, the code. He can’t act like we’re friends when he’s hanging with his boys, you know what I’m sayin’? I have this gym set up in the basement of the building; I let some of these neighborhood guys work out with me, long as they show me and the equipment respect.”

They stood by the van, Tracy finishing her cigarette before getting in, Quinn letting her without comment.

“And you coach a football team, too.”

“I kinda help out, is all.”

“You’re not so tough, Terry.”

“It’s a way to kill time.”

“Sure.” Tracy ground out her cigarette. “Where to first?”

“We’ll pick up Stella. I got it all set up.”

The van dated back to the 1970s. It had front and rear bench seats and little else. The three-speed manual shift was a branch coming off the trunk of the steering wheel. A tape deck had been mounted where the AM radio had been, its faceplate loose, its wires exposed and swinging below the dash.

“I bet you only fly first class, too,” said Quinn.

“It was a donation,” said Tracy.

She wore a black nylon jacket over a black button-down blouse tucked into slate gray utilitarian slacks. She found a gray Scunci in her jacket pocket, put it in her mouth while she gathered her hair behind her, and formed a ponytail. The Scunci picked up the gray of the slacks. She pulled a pair of eyeglasses with black rectangular frames from the sun visor and slipped them on her face.

“Cool.”

“This van? Bet there’s a bong around here somewhere, too, if you’re interested.”

“I was talking about your glasses.”

“They’ll keep us from getting killed. My night vision is for shit.”

They drove down into Northwest, cutting into Rock Creek Park at 16th and Sherrill and heading south. Tracy slipped a Mazzy Star compilation tape into the deck. Chicks and their chick music, thought Quinn, but this was guitar driven and pretty nice.

They didn’t talk much on the ride into town. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Quinn didn’t feel like he did around most women, like he had to explain who he was, why he’d chosen the path he’d taken, the one that had put him on the way to becoming a cop. The singer’s voice, breathy but unforced, was relaxing him, and arousing him, too. He looked over at Tracy, at the tendons in her neck, the elegant cut of her jaw as it neared her ear.

“What?” said Tracy.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring at me again, Terry.”

“Sorry,” said Quinn. “I was just thinking.”

After a while they came up out of the park. Stella emerged from the shadows of a church at 23rd and P as they pulled the van along the curb.

“That her?”

“Yeah.”

“She looks fifteen.”

“Cobras live to be fifteen, too,” said Quinn.

“They do?”

“I’m making a point.”

“The back doors are open,” said Tracy. “Tell her to get in there.”

Quinn rolled down his window as Stella reached the van. She wore black leather pants and a white poplin shirt, with a black bag shaped like a football slung over her shoulder. Her eyeglasses sat crooked on her face.

“You like?” said Stella, looking down at her pants. Her eyes were magnified comically behind the lenses of her glasses. “I wore ’em for you, Officer Quinn. They’re pleather, but that’s okay. I get paid tonight, I’m gonna buy me a pair of leather ones on the for-real side.”

“You look nice,” said Quinn.

“What color should I get? The black or the brown?”

“The back door’s open. Let’s go.”

They drove east. Quinn introduced Stella to Sue Tracy. Stella was cool to her questions. She only became animated when responding to Quinn. Clearly she was eager for his attention. It was plain to Tracy that Stella had a crush on Quinn, or it was a daddy thing, but he was ignoring it. More likely, as with many men, the obvious had eluded him.

On 16th they saw some girls working the stroll, a stretch of sidewalk off the hotel strip south of Scott Circle.

“Around here?” said Tracy.

“Those aren’t World’s,” said Stella.

“Where, then?” said Quinn.

“Keep goin’,” said Stella. “He ain’t into that visiting-businessmen trade. They talk too much, take too much time. Worldwide’s girls walk between the circles. The Logan-and-Thomas action, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

Quinn knew. “That’s old-school turf. I remember that from when I was a teenager.”

Tracy shot him a look from across the seat.

“Strictly locals,” said Stella. “Husbands whose wives won’t blow ’em, birthday boys lookin’ to get their cherry broke, barracks boys, like that. World’s got some rooms nearby.”

“We’re gonna try and take her in Wilson’s trick-house?” said Quinn. “Why?”

“Because she don’t trust me,” said Stella. “She won’t meet me anywhere else.”

Tracy steered the van around Thomas Circle.

“North now,” said Stella, “and make a right off Fourteenth at the next block.”

The landscape changed from ghost town–downtown to living urban night as soon as they drove onto the north side of the circle. Small storefronts, occupying the first floors of structures built originally as residential row houses, low-rised the strip. The commercial picture was changing, new theater venues, cafés, and bars cropping up with regularity. In fact, it had been “changing” for many years. White gentrifiers tried to close down the family-run markets, utilizing obscure laws like the one forbidding beer and wine sales within a certain proximity to churches. The crusading gentrifiers cited the loiterers on the sidewalks, the kinds of unsavory clientele those types of businesses attracted. What they really wanted was for their underclass dark-skinned neighbors to go away. But they wouldn’t go away. The former Section Eights were up the street, and so were families who had lived here for generations. It was their neighborhood. It was a small detail that the gentrifiers never tried to understand.

There weren’t any hookers walking the 14th strip. But as they turned right and drove a block east, Quinn could see cars double-parked ahead wearing Maryland and Virginia plates, their flashers on, girls leaning into their driver’s-side windows.

“Pull over,” said Stella.

Tracy curbed the van and cut the engine. Quinn studied the street.

A half block up, a couple of working girls, one black and one white, were lighting smokes, standing on the sidewalk outside a row house. One of them, the young white girl with big hair, wearing white mid-thigh fishnets and garters below a tight white skirt, walked up the steps of the row house and through the front door. A portly black man in an ill-fitting suit got out of his car, a late-model Buick, and went into the same house shortly thereafter.

“These all Wilson’s?” said Quinn.

“Not all,” said Stella. “You got a few independents out here, out-of-pocket hos. Long as they don’t look him in the eye, disrespect him like that, then they gonna be all right. But those are World’s trick-pads over there. All his. He rents out the top two floors, got, like, six rooms.”

“What about the car action?”

“That’s okay for a quick suck. World gets money for the room, too, so he tells his ladies, Make sure you take ’em upstairs. Anyway, you don’t want to be fuckin’ a man in a car down here. Even the pocket cops, they see that, they got to take you in. This ain’t the Bronx.”

“That where you come from, Stella?” said Tracy.

“I’m from nowhere, lady.”

“We waitin’ on Jennifer?” said Quinn.

“You already saw her,” said Stella. “She was that white girl with the white stockings, went inside.”

“It didn’t look like her,” said Quinn.

“What, you think she’d still be wearing her yearbook clothes?” Stella laughed joylessly, an older woman’s laugh that chilled Quinn. “She ain’t no teenager now. She ain’t nothin’ but a ho.”

“We could have grabbed her off the street.”

“We got to do this my way. I told you I’d come along, but I don’t want nobody spottin’ me, hear?”

“Keep talking.”

“I called Jennifer up. Soon after I met her, I boosted her Walkman and a few CDs she had. She never went anywhere without her sounds. I told her when I called her, I found her shit in some other girl’s bag and I was lookin’ to get it back to her.”

“Where?”

“Told her I’d meet her at eleven-thirty, up in three-C. That’s the third-floor room nearest the back of the house. There’s a fire escape there, goes down to the alley. The window leads out to the fire escape, one of those big windows, goes up and down—”

“A sash,” said Quinn.

“Whatever. World always tells the girls, leave that window open, hear, case you need to get out quick.”

Quinn checked his watch: close to eleven by his time.

“Think I’ll drop in on her a little early,” said Quinn.

“I’m coming with you,” said Tracy.

“Who’s gonna drive the van?” said Quinn, head-motioning over his shoulder. “Her?”

Tracy looked out her window for a moment, then at Quinn. She reached back and pulled her leather briefcase from under the back bench. Her hand went into the briefcase and came out with a pair of Motorola FRS radios. She handed one to Quinn.

“Walkie-talkies?”

“That’s right.”

“These come with a decoder ring, too?”

“Quit fuckin’ around, Terry. You keep the power on, hear? There’s a call alert; you’ll hear it if I’m tryin’ to get through to you.”

“All right.” Quinn turned the power on so that Tracy could see he had done it. He slipped the radio into his jacket.

“How long you gonna need in there?” said Tracy.

“Jennifer’s where Stella says she is, I’d say ten minutes tops.”

“I’m gonna take the van back in the alley, but I’m gonna give you five minutes before I roll. I don’t like alleys. I’ve seen too much shit go wrong in alleys, Terry—”

“So have I.”

“I don’t want to get jammed up in there.”

“All right. I’ll bring the girl down the fire escape. See you in ten, right?”

“Ten minutes.”

Quinn got out of the van and crossed the street. Go-go music came loudly from the open windows of one of the double-parked cars. The girl outside the row house, black girl with red lipstick and a rouged face, her ass cheeks showing beneath her skirt, looked him over and smiled as he approached.

“You datin’ tonight, sugar?”

“I’m taken, baby. My girl’s waitin’ on me inside.”

Her eyes went dead immediately, and Quinn walked on. He took the row house steps and opened the front door, stepping into a narrow foyer. The door closed softly behind him. He looked up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The foyer smelled of cigarettes, marijuana, and disinfectant. He could hear voices above. Footsteps, too.

Quinn’s blood was up. It was a high for him, to be back in the middle of it again. And to be in this place. It reminded him of his own first time with a prostitute, fifteen years earlier, in a house very much like this one, just a few blocks away from where he now stood.

He took the two-way radio out of his pocket and turned the power button off. He didn’t need any gadgets. He didn’t need any “call alerts” or anything else to distract him while he was looking for the girl.

Quinn started up the stairs.

chapter 14

WORLDWIDE Wilson cruised down 14th in his ’92 400SE, midnight blue over palomino leather, the music down low. He had that Isley Brothers slo-jam compilation, Beautiful Ballads, on the stereo, Ronald singing all sweet, talkin’ about, “Make me say it again, girl,” coaxin’ that man in the boat to show himself and drown.

Wilson had the seat back all the way. Still, even with that, his knees were high, straddling the wheel. He switched lanes, cutting the wheel quick to avoid hitting the dumb-ass in front of him who was making a sudden left without using the turn signal God gave him. As he swerved, the little tree deodorizer he had hung on the rearview swung back and forth.

He had recently had the steering wheel covered in fur, but the Arab he’d given the job to up at the detail shop, he’d fucked it all up. Put some cheap shit on there, so that the hairs were always coming off in his hands and flyin’ around the car. Someone didn’t know better, they’d think he owned a cat, some bullshit like that. Teach him to give his business to an Iraqi. And he should’ve known not to trust a man had a girl’s name: Leslie.

Wilson’s given name was Fred. Frederick, Freddie, he didn’t like it any way you put it, what with the kids always callin’ him Fred Flintstone and shit when he was a kid. Till he got the reputation, he would fuck them up good they said it again. Worldwide, that was more like it. He’d given himself that name after he returned from Germany, where he’d served in the army back in the late seventies. He’d put together his first little stable over there. Light-skinned girl with Asian eyes, and couple of blond bitches, too. German girls could lay a stamp on a black man, didn’t even think twice about his color. Another thing he liked about being overseas.

Wilson punched numbers into the grid of the inverted phone he’d installed in the Mercedes. He liked the way the numbers lit the cabin up green at night. This was one pretty car, real classy, not a ride with too much flash, like those wanna-be pimps, just comin’ up, were driving around. The fur steering wheel, that was the only thing he’d added. Oh, yeah, there was a working television and VCR in the backseat, and those stainless steel DNA exhaust pipes he’d recently put on. And the phone. And the Y2K custom wheels he had on this motherfucker. Those rims set the whole joint off right.

Wilson got through on the line and lifted the phone out of its cradle.

“What’s goin’ on, baby?”

“Slow.”

“I’m comin’ in.”

Wilson turned off 14th. He went slowly down the block, checking out the action. Wasn’t much. He passed a shitty old van and a couple other hoopties parked on the street, and went around a double-parked Chevy Lumina, where one of his women stood leaning in the driver’s window. That particular girl, she talked too much, and when she did talk she had nothin’ to say. One of those special-ed bitches, wore his shit out. Time he got that mouth of hers straightened around.

He pulled up in front of his row house, where Carola, another of his girls, his best producer but getting to be on the old side, stood. Wilson hit a button and let the window drop. Carola came over and leaned on the door.

“Where Jennifer at?”

“Schoolgirl’s inside. Trickin’ some old Al Roker–lookin’ sucker.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. Some white boy just went in. I axed him for a date, but he said he already had a girl. Thing is, I didn’t see him follow no one in.”

“He high?”

“Didn’t look to be.”

“Vice?”

“He wasn’t wearin’ no sign if he is.”

“Okay. Why you standin’ around, though?”

“Told you there wasn’t nothin’ goin’ on.”

“Well, get out there and make somethin’ go on. Get on back to the tracks and get a date.”

“I’m tired.”

“I’m tired, too. Tired of you talkin’ about bein’ tired and not earnin’ shit. Now go on out there and market that pussy, girl.”

“My feet hurt, World.”

“C’mere.” Carola leaned forward to let Wilson stroke her cheek. “You my bottom baby. You know this, right?”

“I know it, World.”

Wilson’s eyes dimmed. “Then don’t make me get out this car and take a hand to your motherfuckin’ ass.”

Carola stood straight and backed up a step. “I’m goin’.”

“Good, baby.” Wilson smiled, showing a row of gold caps. “I’ll give you a foot massage later on, hear?”

But Carola was already off, walking down the block, Wilson thinking, Glad I got me that degree in pimpology. All you had to do was use a little psychiatry on these bitches, worked every time.

He cut the engine on the Mercedes and untangled his frame from the car. Big man like he was, it was a struggle to get out of these foreign rides. But his time in Berlin had given him a permanent love for German automobiles, and, though they were more roomy, he never had liked the way Cadillacs and Lincolns drove.

He stood beside his car, smoothed out the leather on his coat, and adjusted his hat. Before he closed the door of the Mercedes, he put one foot up on the rocker panel, then the other, and buffed the vamps of his alligator shoes with the palm of his hand. What was the point of spending five hundred dollars on a pair of gators if they didn’t have a nice shine? He closed the door and stood straight.

Now he’d have to see what Carola was talkin’ about. See what some white boy was doin’ wandering around in his house without a woman he’d paid to fuck.

“OH, shit,” said Stella, leaning forward, blinking hard behind her glasses. “There go World.”

“Where?”

“That’s his ride right there, the blue Mercedes. He’s talkin’ to Carola, up in the window there.”

Sue Tracy watched the girl step away from the tricked-out car and walk off down the block. Then she watched Worldwide Wilson get out of his car. He wore a full-length leather coat with tooled-out skin, and a hat with a matching tooled band. Wilson stood tall, a good six three, his shoulders filling out the soft cut of the coat. He had the walk of a big cat.

Tracy keyed the mic on the radio in her hand. There was no response.

Wilson walked up the row house steps. He pulled on the front door and moved fluidly through the space. The door closed behind him, and he disappeared into the house.

She tried the radio again and tossed it on the seat beside her.

“Shit, Terry.”

“What?” said Stella.

Tracy didn’t answer. She ignitioned the van and slammed the tree up into first. She drove to the corner and cut a hard left.

QUINN’S hand came off the shaky wooden banister as he stepped up onto the second-floor landing. The banister continued down a straight, narrow hall. The doors to the rooms, all closed and topped with frosted-glass transoms, were situated opposite the banister. Television cable ran from one room to the other in the hall, going transom to transom. Quinn heard no activity on the second floor. He took the hall to the next set of stairs.

Sounds from above grew louder as he ascended the stairs. It was the sound of furniture moving on a hard floor. Talk from a radio and the human bass of a man’s voice and the unformed voice of a young girl.

Up on the landing, Quinn checked the sash window at the back of the house. It was open a crack, and he lifted it further and looked down through the mesh of the fire escape to the alley below. The alley was unlit, unblocked, and looked to be passable by car.

Quinn went to the first door, marked 3C in tacked-on letters broken off in spots. From behind the door came the talk radio and the man-girl sounds and the sound of bedsprings. The knob in his hand turned freely, and Quinn pushed on the door and walked inside.

A fat middle-aged black guy was on top of Jennifer Marshall on the bed. His fat ass and his fat sides jiggled as he pumped at her, and Quinn was on him just as he turned his head. He pulled him back by the shoulders and then pushed him roughly against the wall that abutted the bed. The man’s head, bald on top and patched with black sides, made a hollow sound as it hit the wall.

Quinn speed-scanned the room: high ceilings and chipped plaster walls. A bed and a nightstand that held a lamp and a radio, with a bathroom coming off the room. Clothing lay in a pile beside the bed.

Jennifer had removed her skirt and panties only. She sat up against the headboard, her legs still spread. Her sex was pink and sparsely tufted with reddish brown hair. Quinn looked away.

“Get your clothes on,” said Quinn to the man, “and get your ass out of here, now.”

The man, naked except for a pair of brown socks, didn’t move. His face was still, and his swollen penis, sheathed in a condom, was frozen in place.

“I told you to get going.”

“What the fuck’s goin’ on?” said Jennifer.

Quinn picked up Jennifer’s skirt and panties and tossed them before her on the bed. “Put ’em on.” And to the man he said, “Move.”

The man began to dress. Jennifer slipped on her panties and got off the bed, her skirt in her hands. She was thin of wrist, with skinny legs. Up close the heavy makeup could not conceal her age. She looked like a child who had gotten into her mother’s things.

“Hurry up,” said Quinn.

“Who are you?” said Jennifer.

“I’m an investigator,” said Quinn. “D.C.”

The door opened. Worldwide Wilson stepped into the room.

“An investigator, huh?” Wilson’s gold-capped smile spread wide. “You won’t mind then, motherfucker, if I have a look at your badge.”

SUE Tracy pulled the van alongside the back of the building. Eyes glowed beneath a Dumpster, frozen in the fan of the headlights. As Tracy cut the engine and the headlights the alley went black. She let herself adjust to the sudden change of light. Lines of architecture began to take shape. A rat, then another, scampered across the alley in front of the van.

Residual light bled out from the curtained windows of a sleeper porch on the second floor and a window topping the fire escape on the third.

“That’s it, right?”

Stella managed to get her head close to Tracy’s window and look up. “I guess it is.”

Tracy took a wad of cash from her briefcase and stuffed it into the pocket of her slacks. “Wait here.”

“You’re not gonna leave me, are you?”

“I’ll be right back,” said Tracy.

“Don’t leave me here in the dark,” said Stella.

“You jet, you don’t get your money. Just remember that.”

Tracy stepped out of the van and carefully pushed on the driver’s-side door. It closed with a soft click.

WILSON reached behind him, not turning his head, and closed the bedroom door. It barely made it to the frame. The man on the bed averted his eyes. He struggled from the sitting position to put on his pants. Some change slipped from the trouser pockets and dropped to the sheets. Quinn kept his posture straight and his eyes on Wilson’s.

“I didn’t do nothin’, World,” said Jennifer.

Wilson took a few steps into the room, one hand in his leather, stopping several feet shy of Quinn. He looked down on Quinn and he looked him over and smiled.

“So what you doin’ in here, man?”

Quinn didn’t answer.

“You ain’t datin’,” said Wilson, his voice smooth and baritone.

Quinn said nothing.

“What’sa matter, white boy? Ain’t you got no tongue?”

“I came for the girl,” said Quinn.

“You must be . . .” Wilson snapped the fingers of his free hand. “Terry Quinn. Am I right?”

Quinn nodded slowly.

The room was suddenly small. There was no window, and Quinn knew he’d never make it to the door. Wilson was a big man, but his fluid movement suggested he would be unencumbered by his size. The only way to bring him down, Quinn reasoned, was to hit him low and wrap him up. It was what he always told the kids. Quinn edged one foot forward and put some weight on that leg’s knee.

“Now you gettin’ ready to rush me, little man? That’s what you fixin’ to do?”

Wilson produced a switchblade knife from his coat pocket. Four inches of stainless blade flicked open, the pearl handle resting loosely in Wilson’s hand.

“Picked this up over in Italy,” said Wilson. “They make the prettiest sticks.”

The man on the bed clumsily drew on his shirt. Jennifer began to step into her skirt.

Wilson’s eyes flared. “You scared, Terry?”

Again, Quinn did not reply.

“Terry. That’s a girl’s name, ain’t it?” Wilson laughed and stepped forward. “Don’t matter much to me, Terry. I need to, I cut a bitch up just as good as a man.”

The door was kicked open. Sue Tracy kicked it again on the backswing as she walked into the room. One arm was extended and holding a snub-nosed .38 Special. The other hand held her license case, flapped open.

“Fuck is that toy shit?” said Wilson.

“I’m an investigator,” said Tracy.

“Aw,” said Wilson, “now y’all are gonna play like you police, huh?”

“Shut up,” said Tracy, the muzzle of the revolver pointed at Wilson’s face. “Drop that knife.”

Even as the words were coming from her mouth, Wilson was tossing the knife to the floor. He was still smiling, though, his eyes lit with amusement, going from Tracy back to Quinn.

“Get outta here,” said Tracy to the fat man. She had a surge of adrenaline then, and she shouted, “Get the fuck back to your wife and kids!”

The man picked what was left of his clothing up off the floor and quickly left the room.

Wilson chuckled. “Damn, baby. You are like . . . you are like a man, you know it?” He head-motioned in the direction of Quinn. “You got a lot more man to you than this itty-bitty motherfucker right here, I can tell you that.”

Tracy saw Quinn’s face flush. “Terry, get her out of here. I’m right behind you, hear?”

Quinn stood frozen for a moment, his eyes dry and hot.

“Take her!” said Tracy, still holding the gun on Wilson.

“Cavalry gonna hold the Indians back while the women and children leave the fort,” said Wilson.

Jennifer Marshall finished fastening her skirt. Quinn reached over and took her firmly by the elbow. She was shaking beneath his touch.

“I didn’t do nothin’, World.”

Wilson didn’t even look at the girl. He was smiling at Quinn, who was moving Jennifer out of the room, going around Tracy, careful not to impede the sight line of her gun.

“Next time, Theresa,” said Wilson.

Tracy heard their footsteps out in the hall. She heard them going out the open window. The sound of their bodies knocking the window frame faded. She kept her gun arm straight.

“You got a name, too?” said Wilson.

Tracy waited. She could hear them on the fire escape and soon that sound faded, too. Then there was the man talking from the radio and Wilson’s stare and smile.

Wilson studied her shape. “Look here, I didn’t mean nothin’, callin’ you a man like I did. Blind man can see you’re all woman. I mean, you got some fine titties on you, baby. Can tell by the up-curve, even through that shirt. I bet they stand up real nice when you unfasten that brassiere. Do me a favor, turn around and let me get a look at that pretty ass.”

Tracy felt a drop of sweat slide down her forehead. It snaked off her brow and stung at her eyes.

“You got a nice pussy, too?”

Tracy snicked back the hammer on the .38.

“Go on, now,” Wilson said softly. “I ain’t gonna follow you or nothin’ like that. I don’t care to hurt a woman ’less she makes me. You ain’t gonna make me, are you, darlin’?”

She backed out of the room. She backed down the hall and backed through the open window. She quickly looked down at the idling van in the alley as she got onto the fire escape, but she kept her eyes on the third floor and her gun pointed at the window all the way as she backed herself down the iron stairs.

chapter 15

QUINN drove out of the city, keeping to the speed limit and stopping for yellow lights. He had thanked Tracy when she got in the van, but they had barely spoken since. She knew that he was grateful for what she’d done. She also knew what kind of man Quinn was, and that he had been shamed.

Jennifer and Stella argued loudly, sitting beside each other on the back bench, for most of the way out of D.C. But as they crossed the line their voices grew quieter, and their conversation softened further still as Quinn took the ramp onto the Beltway. By the time Quinn was on 270 North, he looked in the rearview mirror and watched them embrace. For the first time since the row house snatch, Quinn loosened his grip on the wheel.

Tracy lit a cigarette and dropped the match out the window. “You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Can I have my radio back?”

Quinn took it from his jacket and handed it over. “This thing works for shit, y’know it?”

“Next time turn it on.” Tracy moved her hand to the tray and tapped ash off her cigarette. “You don’t have a problem with what happened back there, do you?”

“No problem,” lied Quinn. “I’d be a class-A jerk if I did. I mean, you saved my ass.”

Tracy grinned. “And the rest of you, too.”

“That was pretty smooth, you bustin’ in like that. And you didn’t even tell me you were carrying a gun.”

“My father gave it to me a long time ago. He bought it hot downtown. It’s an old MPD sidearm, before they went to the Glocks.”

“It’s, uh, illegal to have one of those in the District. You know it?”

“Really.”

“Yeah, you could get in a world of trouble, you get caught with it on your person. You could lose your license.”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“Just letting you know, is all.”

“I wouldn’t walk into a situation like that without it.”

“Okay.”

“You tellin’ me you don’t own one?”

“I do own one. I’m just surprised that you do, that’s all.”

“I wanted to kill him, Terry. I mean, I was close. It scared me a little, back there. Even more than he did, you know? You ever get a feeling like that?”

“All the time,” said Quinn.

In fact, Quinn was visualizing the room in the row house and Worldwide Wilson now.

“Anyway,” said Tracy, “nice work. You found her quick. Even the hero stuff you pulled back there. Good, solid work.”

“Hero? Christ, what about you?”

Tracy smiled crookedly. “What?”

Quinn looked her over. “Bad-ass.”

Tracy pointed to the detention center across the highway that had become visible on their left. Quinn put the van into the right lane and took the next exit.

He parked in the lot of Seven Locks station. In the backseat, the two girls talked quietly. Stella was reaching into her football-sized handbag, pulling out a Walkman and then several CDs.

“I’m gonna be a while,” said Tracy. “I don’t have to, but I think I ought to wait for her mother and father to get here while the cops process the paperwork. I like to talk to the parents when I can.”

“No problem. You still want to grab a beer?”

“Sure.”

“Bars’ll be closed by the time we’re done here. Thought I’d go snag a six while you’re inside.”

“Make it a twelve-pack.”

“I’ll be out here waiting,” said Quinn.

Jennifer climbed out of the back of the van. Tracy tossed her pack of cigarettes back to Stella. Jennifer did not speak to Quinn as she passed by his window and went with Tracy up the sidewalk to the station. Tracy kept her hand on Jennifer’s elbow all the way.

“Think we can find a beer store out here in Potomac?”

“I want one,” said Stella.

“Forget it,” said Quinn.

It took a while to locate a deli. When they returned to the lot Quinn cracked open a can of beer and took a long swig. Stella sat beside him and smoked one of Tracy’s cigarettes. She had Quinn half turn the ignition key so that she could get some power to the van, and she pushed the Mazzy Star tape back into the deck.

“This is old,” she said, “but it still sounds pretty cool.”

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

“Bet it’s your partner’s tape.”

“That’s right.” Quinn closed his eyes as he drank off some of his beer. It was cold and good.

“You’re more like the Springsteen type.”

“Uh-huh.” He looked at the brick building lit by spots, remembering back to that time in high school when he’d spent a night out here in one of the cells. A D&D charge at a house party that had gone on way too long. He’d beaten up the host’s father. Quinn wondered if the kid ever got over seeing his father on the ground, getting punched out by a seventeen-year-old boy. And all because the old man had looked at Quinn the wrong way and smiled.

“Hey, you listenin’?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“My father likes Springsteen. The old Springsteen, he says, which means, like, the stuff that’s one hundred years old. Not that I’m comparing you to my father. You’re younger than him, for one.” Stella dragged on her cigarette. “My father was ‘weak and ineffectual.’ That’s what the shrink my parents took me to said. This shrink, he wasn’t supposed to say stuff like that to me, I know. But I was suckin’ his little dick right there in his office, so he said all kinds of stuff.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” said Quinn.

“He said that I ‘gravitated toward strong men’ ’cause my father was weak. What do you think of that?”

“No clue.”

“It’s why I hooked up with World, I guess. Couldn’t find a much stronger man than him. He turned me out quick, too.” Stella double-dragged on her smoke and pitched it out the window. “But I couldn’t produce for him. Nobody wanted to pay for this stuff, not that I blame them. I’m not much of a woman, am I, Terry? Do you think I am?”

“You’re fine,” said Quinn.

“Yeah, I’m a beauty, all right. Anyway, that’s how I got into the recruitment biz for World.”

“Stella—”

“I do like strong men, Terry. The shrink was right about that.”

She slid over on the seat so that she was close to him. Quinn could feel her warm breath on his face.

“That’s not a good idea,” he said.

“Don’t worry, green eyes, I’m not gonna hurt you. I was just lookin’ for a little love. A hug, is all.” She moved back against the passenger-side door, her face colored by the vapor lights of the lot. Quinn could see that her eyes had teared up behind the lenses of her glasses.

“I’m sorry, Stella.”

“Ain’t no big thing,” she said, a catch in her voice. She turned her face away from him and stared out the window.

They sat awhile longer, watching the uniformed cops moving in and out of the station. A minivan pulled into the lot. A man and a woman got out of it and hurried inside. Stella laughed joylessly, watching them.

“I love happy endings,” said Stella. The hard shell had returned to her face.

“You don’t have to go back to working for Wilson. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know. Damn right, I am somebody, and all that.”

“I’m serious. And we both know it’s not safe. One of these days he’s gonna find out you been playin’ him for the middle.”

“You didn’t give me up to him back there, did you? You didn’t say my name or nothin’ like that.”

“No.”

“Course not. There wasn’t nothin’ in it for you.”

“That’s not the only reason people do or don’t do what they do,” said Quinn.

“Yeah, okay, whatever.” Stella lit another cigarette. “Just so I get paid.”

A half hour later Tracy emerged from the station. Stella climbed into the back and Tracy took the shotgun seat.

“Everything go okay?” said Quinn.

“The parents have her,” said Tracy. “They’re taking her home. I can’t tell you if it’s going to stick.”

She drank a beer and Quinn drank another as they drove back into D.C. Quinn parked the van on 23rd, alongside the church.

Tracy gave Stella five hundred-dollar bills, along with her card.

“It was a pleasure doin’ business with y’all,” said Stella. “You want your smokes back?”

“Keep ’em,” said Tracy. “I got another pack. And, Stella, you need to talk, anything like that—”

“I know, I know, I got your number right here.”

“Stay low for a few days,” said Quinn.

Stella leaned forward from the backseat and kissed Quinn behind the ear. Then she was out of the van’s back door and walking across the church grounds. They watched her move through the inky shadows.

“Where do you suppose she’s going?” said Quinn.

“Don’t think about it.”

“I shouldn’t even care, right? I mean, she’s steering girls over to Wilson so he can turn them out.”

“Stella’s a victim, too. Try to think of it like that. And remember, we got Jennifer off the street.”

“So how come I feel like we didn’t accomplish shit?”

“You can’t save them all in one night,” said Tracy. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Quinn looked back to the church grounds. Stella was gone, swallowed up by the night. Quinn put the van in gear, rolled to the corner, hooked a left, and headed uptown.

SUE Tracy invited herself into Quinn’s apartment. He was relieved that she took the initiative but not surprised. He snapped on a lamp in the living room, gathering up newspapers and socks as he moved about the place, and told her to have a seat.

Quinn went into the kitchen to put the beer in the refrigerator, opened two, and brought them back out to the living room along with an ashtray. Tracy was on her cell, talking to her partner, telling her what had gone down. Karen, it went fine, and Karen this and Karen that. He heard Tracy say where she was, then listen to something her partner said. Tracy laughed, saying something Quinn couldn’t make out, before she ended the call.

Tracy lit a smoke and tossed a match in the ashtray. “Thanks. You don’t mind if I smoke in here, do you?”

“Nah, it’s fine.”

Quinn was by his modest CD collection, trying to figure out what to put on the carousel. It struck him, looking to find something that would be appropriate, that most of the music he owned was on the aggressive side. He hadn’t really noticed it before. He settled on a Shane MacGowan solo record, the one with “Haunted” on it, his duet with Sinéad. Good drinking music, and sexy, too, like a scar on the lip of a nice-looking girl.

Quinn had a seat on the couch next to Tracy. She had taken off her Skechers and tucked her feet under her thighs.

“To good work,” she said, and tapped her green can against his. They drank off some of their beer.

“What were you laughing about on the phone there. Me?”

“Well, yeah. Karen bet me I was gonna spend the night here. I took the bet.”

“And?”

“I told her I’d pay up the next time I saw her.”

Tracy stamped out her smoke and pulled the Scunci off her ponytail. She shook her head and let her hair fall naturally past her shoulders. Some strays fell across her face.

“Do I have anything to say about it?” said Quinn.

“Both times we’ve been together, you’ve been staring at me like you were from hunger. And Terry, I’m not as obvious as you are, but I’ve been looking at you the same way.”

“Christ, you got some balls on you.”

“It’s not like I make a habit of this.” She unfolded her legs and swung them down to the hardwood floor. “But, you know, when it’s so obvious like it is right here, I mean, why dance around it?”

“You talked me into it.”

Tracy leaned into Quinn. He brushed hair away from her face and she kissed him on the mouth. Their tongues touched and he bit softly on her lower lip as she pulled away.

“Let’s have another beer,” said Tracy. “Relax a little, talk. Listen to some music. Okay?”

“You’re in charge.”

“Stop it.”

“No, it’s cool.” Quinn breathed out slow. “Relax. That sounds nice.”

They drank their beers and Quinn went off for two more. Tracy was lighting a cigarette when he returned. He sat close to her on the couch. Quinn had downed three beers and was working on his fourth. His buzz was on, but he was still amped from the grab.

“Thought you were gonna relax.”

“I am.”

“You got your fist balled up there.”

“So I do.”

“Forget about what happened tonight with Wilson, Terry. He pushed my buttons, too. But he’s history and we got the job done. That’s the only thing that matters now, right?”

Quinn nodded. He was thinking about Wilson. Sitting here drinking a cold beer with a fine-looking woman he liked, ready to go to bed with her, and not able to stop thinking of the man who had punked him out.

“What makes you think I had Wilson on my mind?”

“I asked around about you, talked to a couple of guys Karen knew in the MPD.”

“Yeah? What’d they say?”

“Well, everyone’s got a different opinion on what happened the night you shot that cop.”

“That black cop, you mean. Why didn’t you just ask Derek? He did his own independent investigation into the whole deal.”

“That how you two hooked up?”

“Yeah.”

“The department said you were right on the shooting.”

“It’s more complicated than that. You know what I’m sayin’; you were a cop yourself. But a whole lot of cops I come across, they’re not too willing to forget about it. Some guys still think that shooting was a race thing. By extension, that I’m some kind of racist.”

“Well?”

“Sue, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that I have no prejudice. For a white guy to say he sees a black man and doesn’t make some kind of assumptions, it’s bullshit, and it’s a lie. And the same thing goes in reverse. Let’s just say I’m no more a racist than any other man, okay? And let’s leave it at that.”

“You know, even the ones who had that opinion of you, they also admitted that you were well-liked, and a good cop. You did have a reputation for violence, though. Not bully violence, exactly. More like, if anyone pushed you, you weren’t willing to let it lie.”

Quinn drank deeply of his beer and stared at the can. “You always background check the guys you’re interested in?”

“I haven’t been interested in anyone in a long time.” Tracy took a drag off her smoke and ashed the tray. “Now you. Ask me anything you want.”

“Okay. First day I met you, I had the impression you had some daddy issues.”

“You’re wrong,” said Tracy, shaking her head. “Not like you mean. I loved my father and he loved me. I never felt I had to prove anything to him. He was always proud of me. I know ’cause he told me. He even told me the last time I saw him, in his bed at the hospice.”

“Was he a cop?”

“No. He did come from a family of them, but it wasn’t something he wanted for himself. He was a career barman at the Mayflower Hotel, downtown.”

“They’re all, like, Asian guys behind the bar down there.”

“That’s now. Frank Tracy was all Irish. Irish Catholic. Just like you, Quinn.”

“And you.”

“Not quite. The Tracy part of me is. My mother was Scandinavian, where I got the name Susan and my blond hair.”

“You’re a natural blonde?”

“Don’t be rude.”

“I was just wondering.”

Tracy smiled. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“You are something,” said Quinn.

They undressed each other back in his room, standing face to face before the bed. She helped him off with his T-shirt and then slipped out of her slacks, leaving on her black lace panties. They were cut high, and her thigh muscles were ripped up to the fabric. He unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it back off her strong shoulders. She wore a black brassiere that fastened in the front. He unfastened it and let it drop to the floor. He pinched one of her pink nipples and flicked his tongue around it.

“These are nice,” said Quinn.

“I’ve been told.”

He swallowed. “I mean it, baby.”

“They hold my bra up,” said Tracy.

Quinn chuckled and kissed her lips. He got down to his knees and drew her panties down and kissed her sex. He blew on her pubis and kissed her there and split her with his tongue. Her fingers dug into his shoulder until it hurt. He sucked her flesh into his mouth and tasted her silk and she came standing there.

They moved to the bed and fucked on the edge of it, Quinn on top. His orgasm was like a punch in the heart. They talked for a while and took a shower and fucked again. Quinn lay beside Tracy and they looked at each other for a long time without speaking. He watched her eyelids slowly drop. In sleep she had a small smile.

Quinn got out of bed and walked to the window. It was late, nearly four. The street was still. A cop car from the station up the street blew down Sligo Avenue and was gone. He wondered if the guy was on a call, or if he was just driving fast, looking for the next piece of action. He wondered if he was that kind of cop, the kind Quinn had been.

It had happened fast with Tracy. He knew it would when he’d met her the first time, in the coffee shop. It had been simple, as simple as her uttering those few words. Irish Catholic. Just like you, Quinn. Nothing much needed to be said between them after that, as all was understood. There was her father, as much a part of her as the blood in her veins, and now him, equally familiar. He wondered, as he often did, if it wasn’t more natural for people to stick with their own kind. Well, anyway, it was easier. Of this he was sure.

Tracy had been a cop, too, just like him. With her, he didn’t have to pretend that he didn’t care about the action, that he didn’t crave it all the time. There wouldn’t be any of that bullshit fronting, the mask he’d felt he had to wear when he was with other women. In that way, they were good for each other. She took him for who he was.

Quinn stood there looking out the window to the darkened street, picturing Wilson in that trick-house, seeing that gold-capped smile and hearing his smooth baritone and trying to forget. Trying to figure out where he was headed with this problem of his. Trying to figure out, himself, who he was. Who he was and where it would take him in the end.

chapter 16

ON Saturday morning the team gathered at Roosevelt High School for a roster check. Strange and Blue wanted to be sure the kids were outfitted with the proper pads and mouthpieces, so that there would be no surprises before game time or injuries on the field of play. When they were done checking on those details, the kids got into the cars of the coaches and the usual group of parents and guardians and drove across town and over the river to the state of Virginia, where the Petworth Panthers’ first game was to be played.

Their destination was a huge park and sports complex in Springfield that held tennis and basketball courts, picnic areas, and several soccer and football fields. A creek ran through the woods bordering the property. Complexes like this one were typical and numerous in the suburbs, especially farther out, where there was land and money. The kids from the Panthers had rarely seen playing fields as carefully tended as these, or sports parks situated in such lush surroundings.

“Dag, boy,” said Joe Wilder, his eyes wide, “this joint is tight; check out those lights they got!”

“Look at thoth uniforms,” said Prince, pointing to a team warming up on a perfect green field, with big blue star decals on their helmets. “They look just like the Cowboys!”

The kids were on a path between the road and the field, alongside a split-rail fence. Strange, Blue, Lionel Baker, Lamar Williams, Dennis Arrington, and Quinn were walking among them. Rico, the cocky running back, was telling the quarterback, Dante Morris, what he was going to do to the opposing team’s line, and Morris was nodding, not really listening to Rico but keeping quietly to himself. Later, just before the first whistle, Morris would say a silent prayer.

There were several teams on and around the two main fields. Many had their own cheerleading squads and booster clubs. A game was ending on one of the fields. As the Panthers went through an open chain-link gate, they passed a group of boys in clean red-and-white uniforms, decked out in high-tech equipment, their gleaming helmets held at their sides.

“Y’all the Cardinals?” said Joe Wilder.

“Yeah,” said one of the boys, mousse in his studiously disheveled hair, looking down on Wilder and looking him over.

“We’re playin’ y’all,” said Wilder.

“In those uniforms?” said the kid, and the Cardinal next to him, pug nosed and with an expensive haircut like his friend, laughed.

“What, did you find those in the trash or somethin’?” said pug nose.

Wilder looked over at Dante Morris, who shook his head, Wilder taking it to mean, correctly, that Morris was telling him to keep his mouth shut. Rico took a step toward the two Cardinals, but Morris pulled on his sleeve and held him back.

Strange, who had heard the exchange and seen this kind of thing before, said, “C’mon, boys, you follow me.”

The Cardinals were a team of white kids and the Panthers were all black. But it wasn’t a white-black thing. It was a money–no money thing, a way for those who had it to show superiority over those who did not. Plain old insecurity, as old as time itself.

Blue checked in the team rosters to a guy in a Redskins cap whom he knew to be the point man for the league, then met Arrington, Lionel, and the Midgets for their pregame warm-ups. Strange and Quinn led the Pee Wees under the shade of a stand of oaks beside the main stadium and had them form a circle. Strange told Joe Wilder and Dante Morris, the designated captains, to lead the team in calisthenics. Lamar Williams stood by and made sure that they kept the circle tight.

“How y’all feel?”

“Fired up!”

“How y’all feel?”

“Fired up!”

“Breakdown.”

“Whoo.”

“Breakdown.”

“Whoo!”

Strange watched the Cardinals warming up down on the edge of the field. He watched their coach, a fat white man in Bike shorts, yelling out the calisthenics count to his team. Strange remembered this guy from a scrimmage late in the summer, a heart attack waiting to happen, and how he coached his kids to be intimidating and mean.

“You hear what went down back there?” said Quinn.

“I heard it,” said Strange.

“I hope we beat the shit out of these guys, Derek, I swear to God.”

There was only so much money in the program. The kids had to come up with fifty dollars to play for the squad, and some of them hadn’t even been able to raise that. Dennis Arrington, who was flush from his job in the computer industry, had donated a couple of thousand dollars to the team. Strange, Blue, and Quinn had come up with a grand between them. It bought good pads and replacement helmets and mouthguards, but it didn’t buy new jerseys and pants. The Panthers’ green uniforms were faded, mismatched, and frayed. The number decals on their scarred helmets rarely matched the numbers on their jerseys.

“It’s not the attitude we’re trying to convey to the boys,” said Quinn, “but I can’t help feeling that way, even though I know it’s wrong.”

“It ain’t wrong,” said Strange. “But we got what we got. Game time comes, it’s not the uniforms gonna decide the contest. It’s the heart in these kids gonna tell the tale.”

Strange called them in. They gathered around him and Quinn. Quinn talked about defense and making the big plays. Strange gave them instructions on the general offensive game plan and a few words of inspiration.

“Protect your brother,” said Strange when he was done, trying to meet eyes with most of the boys kneeling before him. “Protect your brother.”

The boys formed a tight group and put their hands in the center.

“Petworth Panthers!” they shouted, and ran down to the field.

Both teams were rusty at the start of the opening quarter. Morris fumbled an errant Prince snap in the first set of downs but fell on the ball and recovered. They went three-and-out and punted. On first down the Cardinal halfback was taken down behind the line of scrimmage, and on second down he was stripped of the ball. A Panther named Noah picked up the ball off its bounce and ran ten yards before he was dropped. It was the gasoline on the fire the Panthers needed, a wake-up call that would carry them the rest of the game.

The offensive line began to make their blocks and open the holes. Rico hit those holes, and the chains began to move as the team marched down the field. The Cardinals’ coach called a time-out and yelled at his defensive line. Strange could see the veins on the man’s neck standing out from across the field.

“No heart,” said Strange.

“Their hearts are pumpin’ Kool-Aid,” said Blue.

The line tightened its play and stopped a thirty-five-run call on the next play. Strange had Joe Wilder run in the next play to Morris, a triple-right. Morris lobbed a pass in the direction of the three receivers — halfback, end, and flanker — who had lined up on the right and gone out to the flats. Rico caught it and took it in, freed by a Joe Wilder block on the Cardinals’ corner.

Strange stuck with the running game but took it to the outside. The Cardinals’ left side was weak and seemed to be growing weaker the more the coach screamed at his players. At flanker, Wilder was taking out the defensive man assigned to him, pushing him inside, allowing Rico to turn the corner and just blow and go.

By halftime, the Cardinals were totally demoralized and the Panthers were firing on all cylinders. Barring an act of God, the game was theirs, Strange knew.

The second half went the same way. Strange played the bench and rested his first-stringers. The Cardinals managed a score against the Panthers’ scrubs, causing an anemic eruption from the cheerleaders on the other side of the field. But the drive was just a spark, and even their coach, who threw his hat down in disgust when his team turned the ball over on their next possession, knew they were done. The Panthers moved the ball into Cardinal territory easily and were threatening again with a minute left to play.

Strange brought Joe Wilder out of the game and rested his hand on his shoulder. “Next play, I want you to tell Dante to down the ball. Just let the clock run out, hear?”

“Let me take it in, Coach,” said Wilder. He was smiling at Strange, his eyes eager and bright. “Forty-four Belly, that’s my play.”

“We won, Joe. We don’t need to be rubbin’ it in their faces.”

“C’mon, Coach Derek. I ain’t touched the ball all day. I know I can run it in!”

Strange squeezed Wilder’s shoulder. “I know you can, too, son. You got real fire in you, Joe. But we don’t do like that out here. Those boys been beat good today. I don’t like to put the boot to someone’s face when they’re down, and I don’t want you doin’ it either. That’s not the kind of man I want you to be.”

“Okay, then,” said Wilder, the disappointment plain on his face.

“Go on, boy. Run the play in to Dante like I told you.”

The game ended the way Strange had instructed. At the whistle, the players gathered on the sideline. Wilder got a hug from Quinn and a slap on the helmet from Strange.

“Line up,” said Strange. “Now, when you go to shake their hands, I don’t want to hear a thing except ‘Good game.’ No trash-talking, you understand? You said all you needed to on the field. After what you did out there, don’t shame yourselves now, hear?”

The Panthers met the Cardinals in the center of the field, touched hands as they went down the line. The Panthers said ‘Good game’ to each player they passed, and the Cardinals mumbled the same words in reply. Dante Morris stared into the eyes of the pug-nosed boy who had cracked on their uniforms, but Morris didn’t say a word, and the boy quickly looked away. At the end of the line the Cardinals’ coach shook Strange’s hand and congratulated him through teeth nearly clenched.

“All right,” said Quinn, as the team returned and took a knee before him. “I liked the way you guys played today. A lot of heart. Just remember, it’s not always going to be this easy. We’re going to be playing teams who have better athletes and are better coached. And you need to be ready. Ready in your minds, which means you keep your heads in the books during the day. And ready physically as well. That means we’re going to continue to practice as hard as we ever have. We want the championship this year, right?”

“Right!”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Right!”

“What time is practice Monday night?” said Strange.

“Six o’clock on the dot, be there, don’t miss it!”

“I’m proud of you boys,” said Strange.

chapter 17

LATER that afternoon, Quinn sat behind the counter of Silver Spring Books reading The Pistoleer, a novel by James Carlos Blake. His coworker, Lewis, was back in the military history room, straightening the shelves. A homeless intellectual whom everyone in the area called Moonman was sitting on the floor in the sci-fi room, reading a paperback edition of K. W. Jeter’s The Glass Hammer. A customer browsed the mystery stacks nearby.

Quinn had put Johnny Winter And on the turntable, and the molten blues-metal classic was playing at a low volume throughout the store. Syreeta, the owner of the business, who was rarely on site, had instructed the employees to play the used vinyl in stock to advertise the merchandise. This disc, with its faded black-and-white cover portraits, had recently been inventoried as part of a large purchase, a carton of seventies albums.

Quinn cherished these quiet afternoons in the shop.

The mystery customer, a thin man in his early forties, brought a paperback to the register and placed it on the glass counter. It was Elmore Leonard’s Unknown Man No. 89, one of the mass-market publications Avon had done with the cool cover art depicting a montage of the book’s elements; this one displayed a snub-nosed .38, spilled-out shells, and an overturned shot glass.

“You ever read his westerns?” said Quinn. “They’re the best, in my opinion.”

“I go for the crime stuff set in Detroit. There’s a lot of different Leonard camps and they’ve all got opinions.” The customer nodded to one of the speakers mounted up on the wall. “Haven’t heard this for a while.”

“It just came in. The vinyl’s in good shape, if you want it.”

“I own it, but I haven’t pulled it out of the shelf for a long time. That’s Rick Derringer on second lead.”

“Who?”

“Yeah, you’re too young. Him and Johnny, the two of them were just on fire on this session. One of those lightning-in-a-bottle things. Listen to ‘Prodigal Son,’ the cut leads off side two.”

“I will.” Quinn gave the man his change and a receipt. “Thanks a lot. And take it easy, hear?”

“You, too.”

Quinn figured this guy had a wife, kids, a good job. You’d pass him on the street and think he was your average square. But one thing you learned working here was that just about everyone had something worthwhile to say if you took the time to listen. Everyone was more interesting when you got to know them a little than they initially appeared to be. That was the other thing he liked about working in a place like this. The conversations you got into and the people you met. Of course, he had met plenty of people on a daily basis in his former profession. But it almost always started from an adversarial place when you met them as a cop.

Quinn read some more of his novel. A little while later, Quinn watched Sue Tracy cross Bonifant Street on foot. She was wearing her post-punk utilitarian gear and had a day pack slung over her shoulder. Quinn’s heart actually skipped, watching her walk. He was imagining her naked atop his sheets.

The small bell over the door rang as she walked in. Quinn let his feet drop off the counter, but he didn’t get up out of his seat.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“New in town?”

“I missed you.”

“I’ve been missing you, too.”

“Got on the Metro and walked up from the station. Can you get away?”

“I can probably sneak out, sure.”

“It’s a beautiful day.”

“I’ve got my car here. We can, I don’t know, go for a ride.”

Tracy looked down at the book in Quinn’s hand. “What’s that, a western?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“What’s with you and your partner? Strange went on about some scene from The Magnificent Seven.”

“That would be the one with Coburn shooting the rider instead of the horse.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He does go back to that one a lot.”

Lewis came forward from the back of the shop. His black hair was long, greasy, and tangled, and his thick glasses had surgical tape holding one stem to the frame. Yellow perspiration marks stained the armpits of his white shirt.

“Lewis, meet my friend, Sue Tracy.”

“My pleasure,” said Lewis. Tracy and Lewis shook hands.

“I’m gonna punch out for the day, Lewis. That okay by you?”

Lewis blinked hard behind the lenses of his glasses. “Fine.”

Quinn gathered his things, marking the Leonard paperback off in the store’s inventory notebook before he came around the counter.

“This Johnny Winter?” said Tracy.

“How’d you know that?”

“Older brothers. I had one played this till the grooves wore out on the vinyl.”

“That’s Rick Derringer on second lead right here.”

“Who?”

“You’re too young.”

They left the shop and walked up Bonifant.

“Lewis gonna be all right back there, all by himself?” said Tracy.

“He’s the best employee Syreeta’s got. A little lonely, though. Any suggestions?”

Tracy laced her fingers through Quinn’s. “I’m spoken for.”

“Maybe your partner, then.”

“He’s not Karen’s type.”

“What type is that?”

“The type who runs a comb through his hair every so often. The type who showers.”

“Picky,” said Quinn.

They stopped at his car, parked in the bank lot.

“Sweet,” said Tracy. Quinn had recently waxed the body, scrubbed the Cragar mags with Wheel-Brite and wet-blacked the rubber. The Chevelle’s clean lines gleamed in the sun.

“You like, huh?”

Tracy nodded. “You got the Flowmasters on there, huh?”

“I bought it like that off the lot.”

“What’s under the hood, a three ninety-six?”

“Now you’re making me nervous.”

“My older brothers.”

“C’mon, get in.”

She got into the passenger side. Quinn saw her admiring the shifter, a four-speed Hurst.

“You want to drive?”

“Could I?”

“I knew there was something else I liked about you. Aside from you being a natural blonde, I mean.”

“What can I say? I like fast cars.”

“Bad-ass,” said Quinn.

Tracy drove down into Rock Creek Park. They parked near a bridle trail on the west side of the creek and took the path up a rise and all the way to the old mill. On the walk back they sat on some boulders in the middle of the creek. Quinn took his shirt off, and Tracy removed her socks and shoes. She let her feet dangle in the cool water. They talked about their pasts and kissed in the sun.

Late in the afternoon they went back to Quinn’s apartment and made love. They showered and re-dressed and had dinner at Vicino’s, a small Italian restaurant Quinn liked up on Sligo Avenue. Quinn had the calimari over linguini, and Tracy had the seafood platter, and they washed it down with a carafe of the house red. They stopped for another bottle of red on the way back to Quinn’s place and drank it while listening to music and making out on his couch. They fucked like teenagers in his room, and afterward they lay in bed, Tracy smoking and talking, Quinn listening with a natural smile on his face.

The day had been a good one. The kids had won their game, and in his mind Quinn could still see the look of pride on their faces as they had run off the field. Then Sue Tracy had surprised him and stopped by the shop.

Quinn looked at his hands and saw that they were totally relaxed on the sheets. He hadn’t been thinking of the streets or if anyone had looked at him the wrong way or anything else but Sue, his girlfriend, lying beside him. He hadn’t felt this comfortable with a woman for some time.

STRANGE dropped off Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder, then dropped Lionel at Janine’s house uptown.

“You comin’ for dinner tonight?” said Lionel, before getting out of the car.

“I haven’t spoken to your mother about it,” said Strange.

“My mom wants you to come over, I know. Saw her marinating some kind of roast this morning before you picked me up.”

“Maybe I’ll see you, then.”

“Whateva,” said Lionel, turning and going up the sidewalk toward his house.

Strange watched the boy and his loping walk.

Boy’s still got that way of stepping. Had that walk since I been knowing him, back when he wasn’t nothing much more than a kid. Thinks he’s a man, but he’s still a boy inside.

He grinned without thinking, watching him, and waited until Lionel got inside the house before driving away.

Strange picked up the Calhoun Tucker photos from the Safeway over on Piney Branch. Safeway was cheap and they did a good-enough job on the processing. It took a little longer when you used them, but he wasn’t in any hurry on this particular job.

Back in his office, he inspected the photographs. The woman in the doorway, Tucker’s somethin’ on the side, was plain as day in the shot, letting him into her crib. Janine had gotten her name from the crisscross program, based on her street address. It was in the file he was building on Tucker, the one he was preparing for his friend George Hastings. Strange found the file and slipped the photographs inside it. He was just about done with the background check. He’d need to report on all this to George. Soon, thought Strange, I will do this soon. He wondered what was stopping him from getting George on the phone right now. Strange turned this over in his mind as he locked the file cabinet, then his office door.

Walking through the outer office, he noticed his reflection in the mirror nailed to the post, and stopped to study himself. Damn if his natural wasn’t nearly all gray. The years just . . . they just went. Strange was bone tired and hungry. He thought about having a nice meal, maybe some Chinese. And a hot shower, too; that would do him right.

AT dinner that night, Strange sat at the head of Janine’s table, as he always did, in the one chair that had arms on it. It had been her father’s chair. Lionel sat to his left and Janine to his right. Greco played with a rubber ball, his eyes moving to the dinner table occasionally but keeping control of himself, staying there on his belly, lying on the floor at Strange’s feet.

Janine had Talking Book on the stereo, playing softly. She did love her Stevie, in particular the breakout stuff that he’d done for Motown in the early seventies.

“Where you off to tonight?” said Strange, eyeballing Lionel, clean in his Nautica pullover and pressed khakis.

“Takin’ a girl to a movie.”

“What, you gonna walk her there?”

“Gonna pull her in a ricksha.”

“Don’t be playin’,” said Strange. “I’m just asking you a question.”

“He’s taking my car, Derek.”

“Yeah, okay. But listen, don’t be firin’ up any of that funk in your mother’s car, hear?”

“You mean, like, herb?”

“You know what I mean. You get yourself a police record, how you gonna get to be that big-time lawyer you always talking about becoming?”

Lionel put his fork down on his plate. “Look, how you gonna just suppose that I’m gonna be out there smokin’ some hydro tonight? I mean, it’s not like you’re my father, Mr. Derek. It’s not like you’re here all the time, like you know me all that well.”

“I know I’m not your father. Didn’t say I was. It’s just—”

“I wasn’t even thinkin’ about smokin’ that stuff tonight, you want the truth. This girl I’m seein’, she’s special to me, understand, and I wouldn’t do nothin’, anything, that I thought would get her in any kind of trouble with the law. So, all due respect, you can’t be comin’ up in here, part-time, lookin’ to guide me, when you don’t even know me all that well, for real.”

Strange said nothing.

Lionel looked at his mother. “Can I be excused, Mom? I need to pick up my girl.”

“Go ahead, Lye. My car keys are on my dresser.”

Lionel left the room and went up the hall stairs.

“I guess I messed that up pretty bad.”

“It is hard to know what to say,” said Janine. “Most of the time, I’m just winging it myself.”

“I do feel like a father to that boy.”

“But you’re not,” said Janine, her eyes falling away from his. “So maybe you ought to go a little easier on him, all right?”

Janine got up out of her seat and picked up Lionel’s plate off the table. She head-motioned to Greco, whose eyes were on her now and pleading. “C’mon, boy. Let’s see if you can’t finish some of this roast.”

Greco’s feet sought purchase on the hardwood floor as he scrabbled toward the kitchen, his nub of a tail twitching furiously. Strange got up and went to the foyer, meeting Lionel, who was bounding down the stairs.

“Hey, buddy,” said Strange.

“Hey.”

“You got money in your pocket?”

“I’m flush,” said Lionel.

“Look here—”

“You don’t have to say nothin’, Mr. Derek.”

“Yeah, I do. Don’t want to give you the impression that I’m just assuming you’re always out there looking to get into trouble, doing somethin’ wrong. Because I do think that you’re a fine young man. I appreciate you helping out with the team like you do, and the way you help your mother around here, too.”

“I know you do.”

“I guess what I’m trying to tell you is, I’m proud of you. I give you advice you don’t need, I guess, because I care about you, see? I’m looking to play some kind of role in your life, but I’m not quite sure what that is yet, understand?”

“Uh-huh.”

They stood there in the foyer looking at each other. Lionel put his hands in his pockets and took them out again and shuffled his feet.

“Anything else?” said Lionel. “’Cause I gotta bounce.”

“That’s it, I guess.”

Strange shook Lionel’s hand and then hugged him clumsily. Lionel left the house, looking over his shoulder at Strange one time before continuing on down the sidewalk. Strange watched him through the window and made sure he got safely into Janine’s car.

“How’d that go?” said Janine, standing behind him with a cold bottle of beer in one hand and two glasses in the other.

“Uh, all right, I guess.”

“C’mon back out to the living room, then, and put your feet up.”

Strange followed her out of the foyer, through a hall. He watched her strong walk and the back of her head of hair. He could see she’d been to the beauty salon that day, and he hadn’t even complimented her on it. He thought of how much he did love her, and the boy. And he thought of the stranger who had jacked his dick off on a massage table just a few hours earlier in the day.

“Goddamn you, Derek,” he said under his breath.

Janine looked over her shoulder. “You all right?”

“I’m fine, baby,” said Strange.

He wished that it were so.

chapter 18

GARFIELD Potter, Carlton Little, and Charles White spent most of Monday driving around Petworth, Park View, and the northern tip of Shaw, checking on their troops, looking for girls to talk to, drinking some, and staying high. Early in the evening they were back in their row house, hanging out in the living room, where the smoke of a blunt Little had recently fired up hung heavy in the air.

Potter had been trying to get up with a girl all afternoon, but he hadn’t been able to connect. He paced the room as Little and White sat on the couch playing Madden 2000 while an Outkast cut on PGC came loud from the box. White saw the shadow that had settled on Potter’s face, the look he got when the girl thing hadn’t gone his way. Truth was, most girls were afraid to be with Garfield Potter, something that had never crossed his mind.

Potter was working on his third forty of malt. He’d been drinking them down since early in the day.

“Y’all gonna play that kid shit all night?” said Potter.

“It’s the new one they got,” said Little.

“I ain’t give a good fuck about no cartoon football game,” said Potter. “Let’s go up to that field and see some real football.”

“That again?”

“I feel like smokin’ someone,” said Potter. He rubbed his hands together as he walked back and forth in the room. “Lorenze Wilder is gonna be got.”

“Ah, shit, D,” said Little. “Let me and Coon just finish this one game.”

Potter went over to the PlayStation base unit and hit the power button. The game stopped and the screen went over to the cable broadcast. Potter stood in front of the couch and stared at his childhood friends. Little started to say something but thought better of it, looking into Potter’s flat eyes.

“You want to go,” said Little, “we’ll go.”

Potter nodded. “Bring your strap.”

Charles White didn’t protest. He hoped they would not find this Lorenze Wilder up at the football field. He told himself that they would not. After all, they had gone back to the practice field a couple of times, and except for the first go-round when Wilder had been there, there hadn’t been nothin’ over there but a few parents, coaches, and some kids.

They met a few minutes later at the front door of the house, Potter wearing his skully. Both he and Little had dressed in dark, loose clothing. White had slipped on his favorite shirt, the bright orange Nautica pullover in that soft fleece, the one felt good against his skin.

“Take that shit off,” said Potter, looking at White’s shirt. “Like you wearin’ a sign says, Look at me.”

“Why you buggin’?” said White.

“’Cause I don’t want no one to remember us later on,” said Potter, talking carefully as he would to a child. “Could you be more stupid than you is?”

LORENZE Wilder stood by the stadium seats, leaning on the chain-link fence, watching the kids practicing while his hand dipped into a bag of french fries doused in ketchup. He shoved a handful of fries into his mouth and licked ketchup off his fingers. He hadn’t thought to get some napkins from the Chinese chicken house he’d stopped into up on the strip. Cheap-ass slope who owned the shop, he was probably hiding the napkins in the back anyhow.

Wilder nodded to one of the parents of the kids who was seated nearby. Man barely gave him the time of day, just a kind of chill-over with his eyes. One of those bourgeois brothers, Wilder guessed, thought he was somethin’ with his low-grade government job. Maybe he didn’t like Wilder’s T-shirt, had a big picture of a marijuana leaf on the front. Didn’t like him wearing it in front of all these kids. Well, fuck him, too.

The coaches were working these boys tonight. That whiteboy coach they had, he had set up three of those orange cones road crews used in the center of the field. The kids were running to the cones, and the white boy had the pigskin, and he was shouting “Right” or “Left,” and the kid would cut that way without looking over his shoulder and get the pass from that coach. The pass would always be there, on the money. Wilder had to admit, the white boy had an arm on him, but he should’ve thrown it much harder, taught those boys what it was like to feel the sting of a bullet-ball. That’s what Wilder would do if he was the coach. He wouldn’t mind getting out there himself, show them all how it was done.

The one named Strange was out there, talking to another coach, a brother with a gray mustache who looked even older than him. Wilder didn’t care much for this Strange, who he could tell didn’t want him hangin’ around his little nephew, Joe. First time they’d met, Strange had given him one of those chill-looks, too.

Now the kids were being told to come in and take a knee. It had gotten near to dark, and Lorenze Wilder guessed the practice was coming to an end. Wilder had brought his car with him tonight. He wasn’t gonna let Strange talk him out of spending time with his nephew. Joe was his own kin, after all. And Lorenze Wilder needed to speak to him about something important. He’d been looking to get up with the little man on it for a long time.

CHARLES White sat in the backseat of the Plymouth and watched Garfield Potter return from the fence bordering Roosevelt’s stadium. In the passenger seat, Carlton Little ate a Quarter Pounder, his eyes closed as he chewed. He had made them stop at the McDonald’s near Howard before doubling back up here to the high school. Little always got hungry behind the herb.

Potter crossed the lot slow, putting a down-dip to his walk, a kind of stretched-back grin spreading on his face. The things that made Potter smile were not the things that made other people smile, and White felt a tightening in his chest.

Potter leaned into Charles White’s open window.

“You drivin’, Coon. Get out and take the wheel. Roll over to Iowa and park on the street. We’ll wait there for him to pull out.”

“Wilder’s here?” said Little, looking up from his meal.

“Yeah,” said Potter. “And we gonna dead this motherfucker tonight.”

STRANGE gave his usual closing talk to the Midgets and Pee Wees, and answered their questions patiently. Then he asked them for the starting time of the next practice, on Wednesday night.

“Six o’clock on the dot, be there, don’t miss it!”

“See you then,” said Strange. “Those of you on your bikes, get home now. If you’re waitin’ on a ride from one of the coaches or parents, you wait over there by the stands, or at the parking lot if you know the car.”

Strange looked over to the stands, saw the parents and guardians grouped together, waiting for their kids and for those who were not theirs but who depended on them for a lift home. He noticed Joe Wilder’s no-account uncle standing apart from the rest, leaning on the fence, a brown bag of trash at his feet. He probably just dropped it there, thought Strange. Wouldn’t think to move a few feet and throw it in a can.

Prince and Joe Wilder were walking together toward the stands.

“Prince! Joe! Y’all wait for me, hear?”

Joe Wilder turned his head, made a small wave back to Strange, and kept walking. Strange could see the boy’s eyes blink under his helmet as he took out his mouthguard and fitted it in the helmet’s cage. He was holding one of those wrestling figures of his tight in his hand.

If Lionel or Lamar were there, he’d tell them to go ahead and get up with the boys, make sure they waited up by his car. But Lamar was baby-sitting his little sister, and Lionel had stayed home to catch up on his schoolwork.

“Derek,” said Lydell Blue, coming up beside him and startling him with his voice. “Can I talk to you a minute? Need some advice on what to do with my offensive line. I mean, they did nothin’ on Saturday. You and Terry been handlin’ yours pretty well.”

“I can’t talk long,” said Strange.

“This won’t take but a minute,” said Blue.

Some of the boys had stayed on the field and were throwing long passes, tackling one another, clowning around. Strange glanced over at Arrington and Quinn, who were gathering up the equipment on the far sideline.

“All right,” said Strange, “but let’s make it quick. I gotta get these boys back in their homes.”

JOE Wilder saw his uncle Lorenze standing by the fence as he neared the stands. Joe’s mom was mad at his uncle or something, and Joe hadn’t seen him around the apartment for quite some time.

“Little man,” said Lorenze.

“Hey, Uncle Lo,” said Joe with a smile.

“How you been doin’? You lookin’ strong out there, Hoss.”

“I been doin’ all right.”

“I got my car. C’mon, boy, I’ll drive you home tonight.”

“Thanks, but I was gonna ride with Coach Derek.”

“You like ice cream, don’t ya?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, c’mon, then. We’ll grab a cone or a cup or somethin’, and then I’ll run you home.”

“I like ithe cream,” said Prince.

“Sorry, youngun,” said Lorenze. “Only got enough to spring for me and my man here. Next time, okay?”

Joe Wilder looked back at Coach Strange, who was still on the field, talking with Coach Blue. His uncle seemed pretty nice. He wouldn’t let anything happen to him or nothin’ like that. And an ice cream sounded good.

“Tell Coach Derek I got a ride home with my uncle,” said Joe to Prince. “All right?”

“I’ll tell him,” said Prince.

Prince had a seat on the lowest aluminum bench in the stands and waited for Strange to finish what he was doing. Joe and his uncle climbed the concrete steps to the parking lot. The shadows of dusk faded as full dark fell upon the school grounds.

“THERE we go,” said Potter, looking through the windshield of the Plymouth from the passenger side. “There goes Wilder right there.”

Lorenze Wilder was letting a uniformed boy into the passenger side of his car. As he went around to the driver’s side, he looked around the parking lot, studying the cars.

Potter chuckled under his breath, then took a deep swig from a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor. He slid the bottle back down between his legs.

“He got some kid with him,” said White. “That’s his nephew, right?”

“Whateva,” said Potter.

“Yo, turn that shit up, D,” said Little from the backseat. He was busy rolling a fat number, his hands deep in a Baggie of herb.

Potter turned up the volume on the radio.

“That’s my boy DJ Flexx right there,” said Little. “They moved him into Tigger’s spot.”

“Put this shits in gear, Coon,” said Potter. “They’re pullin’ out.”

“We gonna do this thing with that kid in the car?” said White.

“Just stay on Wilder. He probably gonna be droppin’ that boy off at his mother’s, sumshit like that.”

“We don’t need to be messin’ with no kids, Gar.”

“Go on, man,” said Potter, chinning in the direction of the royal blue Oldsmobile leaving the parking lot. “Try not to lose him, neither.”

LORENZE Wilder’s car was a 1984 Olds Regency, a V8 with blue velour interior, white vinyl roof, and wire wheel covers. The windows were tinted dark all the way around. It reminded Wilder of one of those Miami cars, the kind those big-time drug dealers had down there, or a limousine. You could see out, but no one could see inside, and for him it was the one feature of the car that had closed the deal. He had bought it off a lot in Northwest for eighteen hundred dollars and financed it at an interest rate of 24 percent. He had missed the last three payments and had recently changed his phone number again to duck the creditors who had begun to call.

Lorenze saw Joe running his hand along the fabric of the seat as they drove south on Georgia Avenue.

“You can get your own car like this someday, you work hard like your uncle.” In fact, Lorenze Wilder hadn’t had a job in years.

“It’s nice,” said Joe.

“That’s like, velvet right there. Bet your father got a nice car, too.”

Joe Wilder shrugged and looked over at his uncle. “I ain’t never met my father, so I don’t know what he drives.”

“For real?”

“Mama says that my father’s just . . . She say he’s gone.”

Of course, Lorenze knew all about the family history. It was this very thing Lorenze and his sister had argued about, that had set her shit off. She didn’t want the boy to know about his father, that was her business. But here it was now, affecting him, Lorenze. Standing in his way. All he wanted was a little somethin’, a way in. Lorenze tried not to think on it too hard, ’cause it only made him angry.

He glanced over at his nephew. Joe Wilder’s helmet was next to him on the bench seat. He held an action figure in his hand, some guy in tights. Sunglasses had been painted on the man’s rubber face.

Lorenze let his breath out slow. He hadn’t been around kids too much himself. But as kids went, his nephew seemed all right. Lorenze made himself smile and tried to put a tone of interest in his voice.

“Who’s that, Joe?”

“The Rock.”

“That’s that Puerto Rican boy, right?”

“I don’t know what he is, but he’s bad. I got a whole rack of wrestlers like this at home.”

“Bet you ain’t got no good ice cream at your mama’s place.”

“Sometimes we do.”

“What kind of ice cream you like?”

“Chocolate and vanilla. Like, when they mix ’em up.”

“I think I know where this one place is.” They were south of Howard University now, and Lorenze turned the wheel and went east on Rhode Island Avenue. “Let’s see if it’s open, okay?”

Had Wilder bothered to look in his rearview, he would have seen a white Plymouth following him from four or five car lengths back.

“HE ain’t droppin’ that kid off,” said White.

“Just keep on doin’ what you’re doin’,” said Potter.

Carlton Little passed the fat bone over the front seat to Potter. Potter took it and hit it deep. He kept the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could stand it. He exhaled and killed the forty of malt and dropped the bottle at his feet. The music from the radio was loud in the car.

In the Edgewood Terrace area of Northeast, still on Rhode Island, Potter saw the blue Olds slow down up ahead. It turned into a parking lot where a white building stood, fronted with glass and screens.

“Keep drivin’ by it,” said Potter.

As they passed the building, Potter saw that it was a take-out ice-cream joint, had a sign out front looked like a kid had drawn it. Next to it was a 7-Eleven with plywood over its windows and red condemnation notices stuck on the boards.

“Drive around the block, Coon.”

White made a left at the next intersection, and the next one after that. Potter reached into his waistband and drew the .357 Colt that he had there. He broke the cylinder and checked the load. He jerked his wrist to snap the cylinder shut, as he had seen it done in the movies, but it did not connect, and he used his free hand to finish the job. He tightened his fingers on the revolver’s rubber grip.

“Get your shit ready, Dirty,” said Potter.

“I’m tryin’ to,” said Little, with a nervous giggle. He had his 9mm automatic out from under the front seat. He had released the magazine and was now trying to slide it back in. Little had gotten this Glock 17, the current sidearm of the MPD, from a boy he knew who owed him money, a drug debt erased. But Little hadn’t practiced with it much.

“Boy,” he said, “I am fucked up.” The magazine found its home with a soft click.

White brought the car back out to Rhode Island, about fifty yards south of the ice-cream place.

“Park it here and let it run,” said Potter.

As they pulled along the curb, Potter watched Lorenze Wilder and his nephew up at the screen window of the joint, the place where you ordered and paid. Wasn’t but one other car in the lot, a shitty Nissan. Well, it was September. The nights had cooled some.

“What’re we gonna do?” said White.

“Wait,” said Potter.

The person worked in the ice-cream place, had a paper hat on his head, Potter could see it from back on the street, was taking his time. Potter looked around the block. He didn’t see anyone outside the few residences that were situated around the commercial strip, but there could have been some people looking out at them from behind curtains and shit, you never knew. Later on, they might remember their car.

“Take it around the block again, Coon,” said Potter. “I don’t like us just sittin’ here like this.”

Potter pulled the trans down into drive and rolled out into the street. As they neared the ice-cream shop, Potter saw Wilder and his nephew walk toward the Olds. Then he saw the kid hand Wilder his cone and head back toward the shop. The kid was going around the side, where they had hung some swinging signs over a couple of doors.

“Keep goin’!” shouted Potter, and then he barked a laugh. “Oh, shit, that boy’s goin’ to the bathroom! Hit this motherfucker, man, go around the block quick. Just drive straight into that ice-cream lot when you get back onto Rhode Island, hear?”

White’s foot depressed the gas. He fishtailed the car as he made the left turn, and the tires squealed as he made the next one.

“You ready, Dirty?” said Potter.

“I guess I am,” said Little, his voice cracking some on the reply. He bunched up the McDonald’s trash by his side and flung it to the other side of the car. He thumbed off the Glock’s safety and racked the slide.

“Motherfucker thinks he gonna rise up and take me for bad,” said Potter. “He’s gonna find out somethin’ now.”

White made the next turn, and Rhode Island Avenue came up ahead. His hands were shaking. He gripped the wheel tightly to make the shaking stop.

JOE Wilder went around to the side of the building. He had to pee, and his uncle had told him they had a bathroom there. His uncle said to go now so he could enjoy his ice cream without squirming around in the car. But when Joe got to where the men’s room was, he saw that someone had put one of those heavy chains and a big padlock through the handle of the door.

He could hold it for a while. And the thought of that ice cream, the soft chocolate-and-vanilla mix, made him forget he had to go. He went back to the car and got inside.

“That was quick,” said Lorenze, handing Joe his cone.

“It’s all locked up,” said Joe. “But it’s all right.” He licked at the ice cream and caught some that had melted down on the cone.

“Good, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s tight.” Joe smiled. His tongue showed a mixture of white and brown.

“Listen, Joe . . . you need to get up with your moms about your father and all that.”

“What about him?”

“Well, he ain’t exactly gone, like gone gone, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Not really.”

“You really ought to meet your father, son. I mean, every boy should be in contact with his pops.”

Joe Wilder bit off the crest of the mound of ice cream sitting atop the cone.

“When you do meet him,” said Lorenze, “what I want you to do for me is, I want you to tell him how nice I been to you. Like what we did right here tonight.”

“But my moms says he’s gone.”

“Listen to me, boy,” said Lorenze. “When you do talk to him, wheneva you do, I want you to tell him that Uncle Lo wants to be put on. Hear?”

Joe Wilder shrugged and smiled. “Okay.”

Lorenze looked up at a tire sound and saw a white police-looking car pull very quickly into the lot. The car stopped in front of his Olds. Well, it wasn’t no police. The car was too old, a fucked-up Plymouth, and anyway, it looked like a bunch of young boys just driving around. Dumb ones, too, if they thought he was gonna let them block his way when there were plenty of other spaces in the lot.

Both passenger-side doors opened on the car, and two of the young men jumped out, one coming around the hood and the other around the tail of the Plymouth. Lorenze’s eyes widened as he recognized Garfield Potter at the same time that Potter and a boy with cornrows showed their guns and raised them, stepping with purpose toward the Olds.

“Hey,” said Joe Wilder, “Uncle Lo.”

Lorenze Wilder heard popping sounds and saw fire spit from the muzzles of the guns. He dropped his ice cream and threw his body across the bench to try to cover his nephew just as the windshield spidered and then imploded. He felt the awful stings and was twisted and thrown back violently and thought of God and his sister and Please don’t take the boy, God in that last long moment before his brain matter, blood, and life blew out across the interior of the car.

chapter 19

FRIENDS, relatives, police, and print and broadcast media heavily attended Joe Wilder’s showing at a funeral parlor near the old Posin’s Deli on Georgia Avenue. At one point, traffic had been rerouted on the strip to accommodate the influx of cars. Except for a few acquaintances and a couple of black plainclothes homicide men assigned to the case, few came to pay their respects to Lorenze Wilder on the other side of town.

The boy and his uncle were buried the next day in Glenwood Cemetery in Northeast, not far from where they had been murdered.

Because of the numbing consistency of the murder rate, and because lower-class black life held little value in the media’s eyes, the violent deaths of young black men and women in the District of Columbia had not been deemed particularly newsworthy for the past fifteen years. Murders of young blacks rarely made the leadoff in the TV news and were routinely buried inside the Metro section of the Washington Post, the details consisting of a paragraph or two at best, the victims often unidentified, the follow-up nil.

Suburban liberals plastered Free Tibet stickers on the bumpers of their cars, seemingly unconcerned that just a few short miles from the White House, American children were enslaved in nightmare neighborhoods, living amid gunfire and drugs and attending dilapidated public schools. The nation was outraged at high school shootings in white neighborhoods, but young black men and women were murdered without fanfare in the nation’s capital every single day.

The shooting death of Joe Wilder, though, was different. Like a few high-profile cases over the years, it involved the death of an innocent child. For a few days after the homicide, the Wilder murder was the lead story on the local television news and made top-of-the-fold Metro as well. Even national politicians jumped into the fray, denouncing the culture of violence in the inner cities. As the witness at the ice-cream shop had mentioned the loud rap music coming from the open windows of the shooters’ car, these same politicians had gone on to condemn those twin chestnuts, hip-hop and Hollywood. At no time did these bought-and-sold politicians mention the conditions that created that culture, or the handguns, as easily available as a carton of milk, that had killed the boy.

Strange was thinking of these things as he pulled his Brougham into Glenwood Cemetery, coming to a stop behind a long row of cars that stretched far back from Joe Wilder’s grave site. Lydell Blue was beside him on the bench. Lamar Williams and Lionel Baker sat quietly in the back of the Cadillac.

Strange looked in his rearview. Dennis Arrington was pulling up behind him in his Infiniti. He had brought along Quinn and three of the boys from the team: Prince, Rico, and Dante Morris. Some of Joe’s other teammates had attended the church service, a ceremony complete with tears-to-the-eyes gospel singing, in the Baptist church where Joe and his mother had attended services.

Strange looked out at the automobiles, and the people getting out of them and crossing the lawn. Joe Wilder’s mother, Sandra Wilder, was stooped in the middle of a group of mourners who were helping her along to the grave site. She had just gotten out of an expensive German car. Lorenze’s casket and Joe’s, half the size of his uncle’s, were up on platforms under a three-sided green tent beside two open graves.

Most of the cars parked along the curb and up on the grass had been waxed and detailed out of respect. There was a van in the mix that Strange knew to be a police van, its occupants taking photographs of the funeral’s attendees. This was fairly routine in killings believed to be of the serial variety, as serial killers often showed up at the wakes and funerals of their victims.

Strange knew, and the police knew, that the killers would not show up here today. He was fairly certain what this had been about. This wasn’t a serial killing. It was a gang killing, or turf beef, or eyeball beef, or a death collect on a drug debt. The target was Lorenze Wilder; his nephew Joe just happened to have been in the car. A simple, everyday thing.

Again, Strange studied the cars. Many of them were not just clean. Many of them were drug cars. High-priced imports tricked out in expensive customized options. The men getting out of them were very young and flashily dressed. Strange didn’t even have to turn it over in his mind. It wasn’t black-on-black racism. He had lived in the city his whole life. It was real.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” said Blue.

“All kinds of young drug boys here,” said Strange. “Question is, why?”

“No idea.”

“Joe wasn’t even close to being in the life. I know his mother, and she’s straight.”

“You see that car she got out of?”

Strange had seen it. It was a three-series BMW, late model, the middle of the line.

“I saw it.”

“She’s got, what, a thirty-five-thousand-dollar car and she’s living in government-assisted housing?”

“Could be a friend’s car,” said Strange.

“Could be.”

“Something to think about. But this ain’t the time or the place.”

They got out of the car. Lamar and Lionel joined Quinn, Arrington, and the boys from the team. They walked as a group to the gravesite. Strange and Blue walked behind.

“You okay?” said Blue.

“Yeah,” said Strange. But to Blue’s eyes his friend looked blown apart, both depleted and seething inside.

“I’m on midnights tonight,” said Blue. “Was gonna take a car out. Was wonderin’ if you wanted to do a ride-along.”

“I do,” said Strange.

“Just thought I’d see what’s out there.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Meet me at the station at around eleven-thirty. You’re gonna need to sign some papers.”

“Right,” said Strange.

Dennis Arrington had asked the group to form a circle. He took the hand of Quinn, who was standing beside him, and the rest of the boys joined hands until the unbroken circle went back to Arrington. They all bowed their heads, and the young deacon led Quinn and the boys in a quiet prayer. Nearby, Strange and Blue also lowered their heads and prayed.

When Strange was done he looked over to the grave site and saw Joe’s mother, Sandra, talking to a young man with closely cropped hair, immaculately dressed in a three-button suit. The young man looked over at Strange as Sandra Wilder talked. He kept his eyes on Strange and said something to the well-dressed young man beside him. His friend nodded. These two young men, Strange decided, were also in the life.

“Let’s go, Derek,” said Blue. “Looks like they’re about ready to say the final words.”

Blue and Strange walked to the site. Fifteen minutes later, Joe Wilder, eight years old, was lowered into his grave.

STRANGE woke from a nap at about ten o’clock that night, showered and changed, fed Greco, and locked the house. He had called Janine before he left, telling her that he would be out most of the night and would probably not be back in the office until the following afternoon. He had not spent the night at Janine’s place that week.

Strange drove north toward the Fourth District station house at Georgia, between Quackenbos and Peabody. Lydell Blue had already filled him in on the developments of the Wilder case. In the three days that had elapsed since the murders, much had been learned.

The ice-cream shop, called Ulmer’s, carried two employees in the fall and winter seasons, a young Salvadoran named Diego Juarez and the owner, Ed Ulmer, African American and fifty-nine years old. On the night of the shooting, Juarez was on the clock. His car, a black Nissan Sentra, was the only one in the lot when Lorenze Wilder pulled in and parked his Olds. After serving Wilder and his nephew, Juarez noticed that the boy tried to use the bathroom around the side of the building but quickly returned to the Oldsmobile. Ulmer had padlocked the bathroom doors after several incidents of vandalism.

Shortly after the boy got into the Olds, joining the older man, a white Plymouth, stripped down like an old police vehicle, came into the parking lot at a high rate of speed. Driven by a young black man with “a long nose, like a beak,” the Plymouth stopped in front of the Olds, blocking its forward path. Juarez stated that the “rap music” coming from the open windows of the car was quite loud. Very quickly, two young black men got out of the car, one from the passenger seat and one from the backseat, drew handguns, and began firing into the windshield of the Olds.

Diego Juarez mentally recorded the sequence of letters and numbers on the D.C. license plate of the Plymouth before retreating into the back of the shop. At this point, he phoned the police and then locked himself in the employee bathroom until he heard the squad cars arrive, five minutes later. He had nothing to write with in the bathroom, and in his nervous excitement he had forgotten one of the license plate’s two letters and most of its numerals. When he came out of the bathroom, he could recall none of the numerals. By then, of course, the shooters were gone.

One of the shooters, apparently, had vomited a mixture of alcohol and hamburger meat on the asphalt of the parking lot before he’d gotten back into the Plymouth.

Both victims had been shot several times. Lorenze Wilder had been shot in the back as well as the face and neck, indicating that he had initially tried to protect the boy. This was before the force of the bullets had spun him around. Joe Wilder had taken five bullets, one in the groin area, two in the stomach and chest, and two in the face and head. Both victims, lying in melted ice cream and blood, were dead when the police arrived. A rubber action figure, also covered in blood, was found near the boy’s hand. A football helmet with a mouthguard wedged in its cage was found at his feet.

Ten 9mm casings were found in the lot consistent with those that would be ejected from an automatic weapon. Their ejection pattern suggested that they came from the gun of the shooter on the right, described by Juarez as the one with “the braids in his hair.” There were no casings found from the gun of the second shooter. Either he had picked them up, highly unlikely, or they had remained in the chambers of his gun. If the latter was the case, the weapon he used was a revolver. Indeed, the slugs that had done the most damage to the bodies would later be identified as hollow-points fired from a .357.

Juarez described the second shooter as “a tall and skinny black” with light skin and a skully. Juarez said that the shooter was smiling as he fired his weapon, and it was this smile that had persuaded him, Juarez, to retreat into the back of the shop. He had since worked extensively with police artists to come up with drawings that would closely resemble his brief recollection of the faces on the young men he had seen.

There were no other witnesses to the shooting, and none of the occupants of the nearby residences claimed to have seen a thing.

The white Plymouth was found the next morning on a rural stretch of road bordering a forest in Prince George’s County. The car had been doused in gasoline and burned. The smoke rising above the trees had been seen by a resident of a community situated on the other side of the woods, which had prompted him to call the police. The first letter of the license plate matched the letter recalled by Juarez. This was the shooters’ car. The arson job had been thorough, obliterating any evidence save for some clothing fibers; the automobile had been wiped clean of prints.

The Plymouth was registered to a Maurice Willis of the 4800 block of Kane Place in the Deanwood section of Northeast. Squad cars and homicide detectives were dispatched to his address, where Willis was taken in without resistance for questioning. The Plymouth belonged to Willis. It had been stolen from the Union Station parking lot while he was attending a movie at the AMC. He had not reported the theft, he explained candidly, because he had been driving the car without insurance. Based on his recollection of the movie he had seen and his certainty of its time, the detectives were able to pinpoint a two-hour window for the theft.

By the end of this next day, the surveillance tapes from the pay booth at the parking garage had produced a photographic record of the one who had stolen the Plymouth. The image was of a light-skinned young black man wearing a sheer black skullcap and shades. On top of these visual obstacles, the suspect had deliberately kept his face partially turned away from the camera while he paid the parking fee. The camera evidence wouldn’t find them the shooter, but it would be useful in court.

Detectives continued to canvass the neighborhood where the shooting had occurred. They posted sketches of the suspects and kept the sketches on hand when interviewing potential wits. They interviewed friends and relatives of Lorenze and Joe Wilder extensively, focusing on the acquaintances of the uncle. Most important, the police department had issued a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooters. This was the most important element and effort of the investigation. In the end, Strange knew, it would be a snitch who would give them the identity of the killers.

They’re doing a good job. A damn good job so far. They’re doing everything they can.

Strange pulled into the parking lot behind the Fourth District station, found a spot, and cut the engine on his car.

STRANGE went around to the front of the station house, named in honor of Charles T. Gibson, the uniformed officer slain outside the Ibex Club a few years earlier. He went directly to the front desk in the unadorned, flourescent-lit lobby. The police officer on desk duty, a woman he did not recognize, phoned Lieutenant Blue in his second-floor office while Strange signed two release forms for insurance purposes. These were required of all citizens requesting ride-alongs.

Blue appeared in uniform. He and Strange went back through the locker room and down a flight of stairs to the rear entrance. Blue told a sergeant, out in the lot catching a cigarette, that he was taking the Crown Victoria parked leftmost in a row of squad cars facing the building. He mentioned the car’s number, displayed on its side and rear, to the sergeant as well.

Blue got behind the wheel of the Crown Vic, and Strange sat beside him. They drove out onto Georgia at just past midnight and headed south.

The Fourth District, known as 4-D, ran north-south from the District line down to Harvard Street, and was bordered by Rock Creek on the west and North Capitol Street on the east. It included neighborhoods of the wealthy and those of the extreme lower class. With a high rate of sexual assault, auto theft, and homicide, 4-D had become one of the most troubled districts in the city. Chief Ramsey had been considering an eighth police district to break up the Fourth, probably in the form of a substation near 11th and Harvard. It had gotten that bad.

The crime rate in the city, despite the propaganda issued to the media about “New Day D.C.,” was rising once again. In the first six months of the new century, homicides were up 33 percent; rapes had increased by over 200 percent. In ’97, detectives had been transferred and reassigned citywide after an independent investigation had reported substandard performance. Anyone who knew anything about police work knew that results came from a network of informants and neighborhood contacts, and confidences, built up over time. The reassignment had destroyed that system. The result was that the current homicide closure rate was at an all-time low. Two out of three murders in the District of Columbia went unsolved — a closure rate of 31 percent.

The streets were fairly quiet. The temperature had dropped to sweater weather, and it was a work night, and kids had school the next day. But still, kids were out. They were out on the commercial strip and back on the corners of the residential streets, sitting on top of trash cans and mailboxes. A curfew law came and went in D.C., but even when it was in effect it was rarely enforced. No one was interested in locking up a minor who had stayed out too late. Police felt, rightly so, that it wasn’t their job to raise other people’s kids.

“Anything new since the funeral?” said Strange.

“Nothing on the forensic side,” said Blue. “The detectives are doing some serious recanvassing of the neighborhood over there around Rhode Island. And they’re heavily interrogating Lorenze Wilder’s associates and friends.”

“He have any?”

“He had a few. The plainclothes guys at Lorenze’s wake got some information until they got made. And they do have the sign-in book from the funeral home, has the names and addresses of those who bothered to use it.”

“Anything yet from those interrogations?”

“Lorenze was one of those fringe guys. Didn’t work for the most part, least not in payroll jobs. Even his friends admit he was no-account. But none of ’em say he was a target. He wasn’t mixed up in no big-time crews or anything like that. That’s what they’re telling our people, anyway.”

“I’d like to get a list of his friends,” said Strange.

“You know I can’t do that, Derek.”

“All right.”

Blue had said it. He had to say it, Strange knew. And Strange let it lie.

They drove back into the neighborhoods between Georgia and 16th. Blue stopped to check on a drunken Hispanic man who was standing in the middle of Kenyon Street, his face covered in alcohol sweat. He said he had “lost his house.” Blue talked to him carefully and helped him find it. At 15th and Columbia he slowed the patrol car and rolled down his window. A man sat on the stoop of a row house, watching a young boy dribble a basketball on the sidewalk.

“He’s out kinda late, isn’t he?” said Blue.

The man smiled. “Aw, he’s just hyped. You know kids.”

“I hear you,” said Blue, smiling back. “But you need to get him inside.”

“Aiight then,” said the man.

Blue drove away. Strange noted how relaxed he was behind the wheel. Blue had always liked working midnights. He said that the danger in these hours was greater, but the respect between the citizens and cops actually increased between midnight and dawn. The squares had all gone home and were sleeping, leaving an uneasy alliance for those who remained.

Blue took a call on a domestic disturbance at 13th and Randolph. He asked the woman if she wanted the husband, whom she had accused of striking her, to spend the night in jail. She said she didn’t want that, and this call, like most domestics the police answered, ended in peace.

“How’s Terry doing?” said Blue, as he cruised east toward the Old Soldiers’ Home.

“He’s been quiet,” said Strange. “Got a new girlfriend, I think, and he’s been spending time with her. It’s been good for him to be with a woman this week.”

“And you and Janine?”

“Fine.”

“Good woman. That son of hers is a fine young man, too.”

“I know it,” said Strange.

“Lionel gonna be at the game on Saturday?”

“I guess he is.” Strange hadn’t thought much on the game.

“You know we got to play it.”

“Right.”

“Think we ought to have a short practice tomorrow night. Talk to the kids.”

“That’s what we ought to do.”

“They need to pick themselves up, right about now,” said Blue. “They’re gonna see a lot of death in their young lives. I want them to remember Joe, but I don’t want this to paralyze them. You agree?”

“Yes,” said Strange.

Blue looked over at his friend. They had hugged and patted each other’s backs when they’d first seen each other after Joe Wilder’s murder. The both of them felt extreme guilt, Blue for tying Strange up after practice, and Strange for letting Joe out of his sight. But they had been tight since childhood, and this was not something that needed to be apologized for or discussed. Blue was dealing with it in his own way, but he wasn’t sure about how deeply it had burrowed into Strange.

“Listen, Derek—”

“I’m okay, Lydell. Just don’t want to talk about it much right now, all right?”

Blue turned up Warder Street in Park View. They passed a group of row houses, all dark. Inside one of them, Garfield Potter, Carlton Little, and Charles White slept.

BLUE drove around the Fourth. They bought coffee at the all-night Wings n Things at Kennedy Street and Georgia, and drove around some more. They stopped to tell some kids to get off the streets, and answered a domestic. Blue answered another domestic on 2nd but was called suddenly to a disturbance a block away.

A fight had broken out in a bar on Kennedy at closing time, and it had spilled onto the street. Several squad cars were already on the scene. Officers were holding back the brawlers and trying to quiet some of the neighbors and passersby who had been incited by the police presence. The patrolmen carried batons. A guy shouted “cracker motherfucker” and “white motherfucker” repeatedly at the white policeman who had cuffed him. The policeman’s partner, a black officer, was called a “house nigger” by the same man. Blue got out of the car and crossed the street. Strange stepped out and leaned against the Crown Vic.

Down the street was the Three-Star Diner, Billy Georgelakos’s place. Strange’s father had worked there as a grill man for most of his career. A riot gate covered the front of the diner. Nearby, concertina wire topped the fence surrounding the parking lot of a church.

Blue returned to the Crown Vic with sweat beading his forehead. Most of the bystanders on Kennedy had disappeared. Whatever this had been, it was over without major incident. It would go unreported to the majority of the city’s citizens, safely asleep at home in their beds.

Strange asked Blue to make a pass through Park Morton, where Joe Wilder had lived, and Blue agreed. In the complex, few people were out. A boy sat on a swing in the playground of the dark courtyard, smoking a cigarette. Dice players and dope smokers moved about the stairwells of the apartments.

“We put flyers with the artist’s renderings of the suspects in the mailboxes here,” said Blue. “Gonna post them around the neighborhood as well.”

“That’s good.”

“Most of the time we don’t get much cooperation up in here. Drug dealers get chased by the police, they find a lot of open doors, places to hide, in this complex.”

“What I hear.”

“They even got community guns buried around here somewhere. We know all about it, but it’s tough to fight.”

“You sayin’ you think no one will come forward?”

“I’m hoping this case here is gonna be different. We’re mistrusted here, maybe even hated. I got to believe, though, anyone with a heart is gonna want to help us find the people who would kill an innocent kid.”

On the drive out, Blue went by the brick pillars and wall that were the unofficial gateway to the housing complex. Two children, girls wearing cartoon-character jackets, sat atop the wall. The girls, no older than eleven or twelve, cold-eyed the occupants of the squad car as they passed.

“Where are the parents?” whispered Strange.

chapter 20

ON Saturday morning, the Petworth Panthers defeated a Lamond-Riggs team on the field of LaSalle Elementary by a score of twenty to seven. Joe Wilder had not been mentioned by name in the pregame talk, but Dennis Arrington had led a prayer for their “fallen brother.” The boys went to one knee and bowed their heads without the usual chatter and horseplay. From the first whistle, their play on the field was relentless. The parents and guardians in attendance stood unusually quiet on the sidelines during the game.

Afterward, as they were gathering up the equipment, Quinn put his hand on Strange’s shoulder.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Terry.”

“You feel like gettin’ a beer later this afternoon?”

“I gotta drop these kids off.”

“And I’ve got to work a few hours up at the store. Why don’t you meet me up at Renzo’s, say, four o’clock? You know where that is, right?”

“Used to be Tradesman’s Tavern, up on Sligo Avenue, right?”

“I’ll see you there.”

Lamar Williams, Prince, and Lionel Baker were waiting by Strange’s Cadillac, parked on Nicholson. Lydell Blue’s Park Avenue was curbed behind it. Strange told the boys to get in his Brougham as he saw Blue, holding a manila folder, approaching him from behind.

“Derek,” said Blue, holding out the folder. “Thought you might want this Migdets roster back for your master file.”

Strange took it and opened his trunk. He started to slip the folder into his file box as Blue began to walk away. Strange saw some notation written in pencil on the Pee Wees folder. He pulled it and studied his own writing, the description of a car and a series of letters and numbers, on the outside of the folder. He thought back to the evening he had written the information down.

“Lydell!” he said.

Blue walked back to Strange, still standing by his open trunk. Strange took the papers out of the Pee Wee folder and handed the folder to Blue, pointing at the notation.

“Probably nothin’,” said Strange, “but you ought to run this plate here through the system.”

Blue eyed the folder. “Why?”

“Not too far back, a week or so, I noticed some hard-looking boys up in the Roosevelt lot one night when we had practice. Thinking back on it, it was a night that Lorenze Wilder was down on the field, waitin’ on Joe. I wrote down the plate number and car description out of habit. The car was a Caprice. I guessed on the year, but I do know it was close to the model year of the one I own. I put down it was beige, too.”

Strange flashed on the image of the boys. One of them wore his hair in close cornrows, like those on one of the shooters the ice-cream employee had described. But that meant nothing in itself, like noting he wore Timberlands or loose-fitting jeans; a whole lot of young boys around town kept their hair the same way.

“A beige Caprice. Why you got ‘beige-brown’ on here, then?”

“Had one of those vinyl roofs, a shade darker than the body color.”

“Okay. I’ll get it into the system right away.”

“Like I say, probably nothin’. But let me know it if turns up aces.”

“I will.”

Strange watched Blue go back to his car. He took the papers from the Pee Wee folder and decided to put them together with the Midget papers in the folder Blue had just given him. He opened the folder. Inside was a mimeographed list of Lorenze Wilder’s friends and acquaintances, along with notations describing interview details, taken from the official investigation.

Strange turned his head. Blue had ignitioned his Buick and was pulling off the curb. Strange nodded in his direction, but Blue would not look his way. Strange put the papers together, slipped the folder into his file box, and closed the lid of his trunk.

STRANGE drove Lionel to his mother’s house on Quintana. As Lionel was getting out of the car, he asked Strange if he was coming over for dinner that night. Strange replied that he didn’t think so, but to tell his mother he’d “get up with her later on.” Lionel looked back once at Strange as he went up the walk to his house. Strange drove away.

Prince was the next to be dropped. He had been quiet during the game and had not spoken at all on the ride. The boys who were always cracking on him were on their usual corner, across from his house. Prince asked Strange if he would mind walking along with him to his door. At the door, Strange patted Prince’s shoulder.

“You played a good game today, son.”

“Thanks, Coach Derek.”

“See you at practice, hear? Now go on inside.”

Lamar Williams rode shotgun for the trip down to Park Morton. He stared out the window, listening to that old-school music Mr. Derek liked to play, not really paying attention to the words or the melody. It was always that blue-sky stuff about love and picking yourself up, how the future was gonna be brighter, brother this and brother that. Lamar wondered if everyone had been more together back then, in the seventies or whenever it was. If those brothers weren’t killin’ each other every day, like they were now. If they were killin’ on kids “back in the day.” Anyway, that kind of music, it sure didn’t speak to the world Lamar was living in right now.

“You thinkin’ of Joe?” said Strange.

“Yeah.”

“It’s okay. I was, too.”

Lamar shifted in his seat. “That boy was just good. I never thought he’d die. You’d think he’d be the last one living in my complex who’d go out like that.”

“Just because he was a good boy? You know better than that. I’ve told you before, you always got to be aware of what’s going on around you, living where you do.”

“I know. But I don’t mean that, see? Word was, Joe was protected. Even the ones liked to step to everybody, they kept their hands off that boy. I mean, he was a tough little kid and all. But the word was out; everybody knew not to fuck with Joe.”

Strange started to correct Lamar from using the curse word, but he let it pass. “Why you think that was?”

“No idea. Was like, people got the idea in their heads he was connected to someone you didn’t want to cross. It was just one of those things got around, and you knew.”

“I saw some fellas at his funeral,” said Strange, “had to be drug boys.”

“I saw ’em, too,” said Lamar.

“Any idea why they were paying their respects?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Was his mother involved with those people?”

“Not so I knew.”

“What about that car she came in?”

“Everybody drivin’ a nice car these days, seems like. Don’t make you in the game.”

“True. But you never saw her hangin’ with people you thought were in the life?”

“No. There was these young boys, was lookin’ for her one night. They rolled up on me when I was walkin’ through the complex. Said they owed her money. I didn’t tell ’em where she lived, though. They didn’t look right.”

Strange looked over at Lamar. “How did they look?”

“I don’t recall, you want the truth. Don’t mind tellin’ you, Mr. Derek, I was scared.”

“Did one of them have cornrows?”

“I don’t remember. Look, I didn’t even want to meet their eyes, much less study on ’em. I only remember this one boy in the backseat, ’cause he was, like, goofy lookin’. Had a nose on him like one of those anteaters and shit.”

“What about their car?”

“It was white,” said Lamar. “Square, old. That’s all that registered in my mind. That’s all I know.”

“You did right not to meet their eyes, Lamar. You did good.”

“Yeah.” Lamar snorted cynically. “It’s all good. Good to be livin’ in a place where you can’t even be lookin’ at anyone long for fear you’re gonna get downed.”

Strange pulled into Park Morton and went slowly down its narrow road.

“You got be positive, Lamar. You got to focus on doing the things that will get you to a better place.”

Lamar looked Strange over. His lip twitched before he spoke. “How I’m gonna do that, huh? I can’t read all that good, and I’m barely gonna graduate high school. I got no kinda grades to get me into any kind of college. Only job I ever had was dustin’ your office and taking out your trash.”

“There’s plenty of things you can do. There’s night school and there’s trade school . . . whole lotta things you can do, hear?”

“Yessir,” said Lamar, his voice devoid of enthusiasm. He pointed to the road going alongside the playground in the courtyard. “You can drop me right here.”

Strange stopped the car. “Listen, you been good to me, Lamar. Conscientious and efficient, and I’m not gonna forget it. I’ll help you in any way I can. I’m not going to give up on you, young man, you hear me?”

Lamar nodded. “I’m just all messed up over Joe right now, I guess. I miss that boy.”

“I miss him, too,” said Strange.

He watched Lamar cross the courtyard, pushing on a rusted swing as he walked past the set. Strange thought about the description that Lamar had just given him: the white car, and the kid with the long nose. Juarez, the ice-cream-parlor employee, had described the Plymouth’s driver as having a nose “like a beak.”

Strange had the strong suspicion that this was not a coincidence. He knew he should phone Lydell Blue right now and give him the information he had just received. But he had already decided to keep Lamar’s story to himself.

Strange was not proud of his decision, but he had to be honest with himself now. He was hoping to find the murderers of Joe Wilder before they were picked up by the police. He knew that if these little pieces were coming to him, a private cop, it would not be long before the police, fully mobilized, would have suspects in custody. He was wondering how much time he had before they took the killers in. Wondering, too, what he would do to them if he found them first.

STRANGE hit the heavy bag in his basement, showered and dressed, fed Greco, and locked down his row house. He drove uptown toward the District line. In his rearview he thought he saw a red car, vaguely familiar, staying with him but keeping back a full block at all times. The next time he checked on the car, up around Morris Miller’s liquor store, it was gone, and Strange relaxed in his seat.

The events of the past week had elevated his sense of street paranoia. People living in certain sections of the city, Strange knew, felt the fear of walking under this kind of emotional sword every day. But he didn’t like to succumb to it himself.

Strange parked on Sligo Avenue. As he was crossing the street, the beeper on his hip sounded, and he checked the numbered readout: Janine. He clipped the beeper back onto his belt.

Strange walked into Renzo’s, an unbeautiful neighborhood beer garden in downtown Silver Spring. Renzo’s housed a straight-line bar, stools along a mirrored wall, a pool table, and keno monitors. Bars like this one were common in Baltimore, Philly, and Pittsburgh, but rare around D.C. Quinn sat on a bar stool, reading a paperback and nursing a bottle of Bud in the low light. A heavyset guy in a flannel shirt, a guy in camouflage pants, and several keno players, huffing cigarettes, sat with him along the stick. The bartender was a woman, nearly featureless in the low light, wearing a Nighthawks T-shirt and jeans. Smoke hung heavy in the air.

Strange got up on a stool next to Quinn. He ordered a Heineken from the tender.

“From a bottle,” said Strange. “And I don’t need a glass.”

“This is you,” said Quinn, producing a record album he had propped up at his feet.

Strange took it and studied the cover. He smiled at the photograph of Al Green decked out in a white suit, white turtleneck, and white stacks, sitting in a white cane chair against a white background. A green hanging plant and a green potted plant, along with the singer’s rich chocolate skin, gave the cover its color. It looked like Al was wearing dark green socks, too, though some argued that the socks were black.

“I’m Still in Love With You.”

“You don’t have to say it,” said Quinn. “It’s understood.”

“Al freaks called this ‘The White Album,’” said Strange, ignoring Quinn. “Has ‘Simply Beautiful’ on it, too.”

“You don’t have it, do you? I thought it might be one of those you lost in that house flood you had.”

“I did lose the vinyl, you’re right. I own the CD, but the CD’s got no bottom.”

“Funny thing is, it came in with this carton of seventies rock, a lot of hard blues-metal and also weird stuff some pot smoker had to be listening to. I found Al Green filed alphabetically, after Gentle Giant and Gong.”

“Herb smokers used to listen to Al, too. People used to listen to all sorts of music then, wasn’t no barriers set up like it is now. Young man like you, you missed it. Was a real good time.”

“I think you might have mentioned that to me before. Anyway, I’m glad you like it.”

“Thank you, buddy.”

“It’s all right.”

Strange and Quinn tapped bottles. Strange then filled Quinn in on the ongoing investigation. He told him about the Caprice in the parking lot and the white car and its occupants that had rolled up on Lamar Williams. He told him about Lydell Blue’s list.

“You get up with Joe’s mother,” said Quinn, “she might be able to narrow down the number of names for us.”

“I called Sandra a couple of times and left messages,” said Strange. “She hasn’t got back to me yet.”

They discussed the case further. Strange drank two beers to Quinn’s one. Quinn watched Strange close his eyes as he took a deep pull from the bottle.

“Janine’s been trying to get up with you,” said Quinn.

“Yeah?”

“She called me at the bookstore, said she’s been beeping you. Something about finding the last piece of the puzzle on Calhoun Tucker.”

Strange drank off some of his beer. “I’ll have to see what that’s about.”

“What’s goin’ on between you two?”

“Why, she say somethin’ was?”

“Only that you’ve been avoiding her this week. Outside of work stuff, she hasn’t been able to get through to you at all.”

“I’m not sure I’m right for her right now, you want the truth. Her or Lionel. When I get like this . . . Ah, forget it.” Strange signaled the bartender.

“You’re not done with that one yet,” said Quinn, nodding to the bottle in front of Strange.

“I will be soon. But thanks for pointing it out.” Strange’s elbow slipped off the bar. “At least you’re doin’ all right with Sue. Seems like a good woman. Looks good, too.”

“Yeah, she’s cool. I’m lucky I found her. But Derek, I’m talkin’ about you.”

“Look, man, everything’s been boiling up inside me, with Joe’s death and all. I know I haven’t been dealing with it right.”

“Nobody knows how to deal with it. When a kid dies like that, you look around you and the things you thought were in order, your beliefs, God, whatever . . . nothing makes sense. I’ve been fucked up about it myself. We all have.”

Strange didn’t say anything for a while. And then he said, “I should’ve let him run that play.”

“What?”

“Forty-four Belly. He wanted to run it in at the end of the game. Boy never did get to run that touchdown play, the whole time he played for us. He would’ve scored that day, too, ’cause he had the fire. Can you imagine how happy that would’ve made him, Terry?”

Strange’s eyes had filled. A tear threatened to break loose. Quinn handed him a bar napkin. Strange used it to wipe his face.

Quinn noticed that the guy in the flannel shirt was staring at Strange.

“You want somethin’?” said Quinn.

“No,” said the guy, who quickly looked away.

“I didn’t think you did,” said Quinn.

“Settle down, Terry. I’d be starin’, too. Grown man, actin’ like a baby.” Strange balled up the napkin and dropped it in an ashtray. “Anyway. It’s all water passed now, isn’t it?”

“You did right,” said Quinn, “telling Joe not to run up that score. You were teaching him the right thing.”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t know. I thought he had a whole lifetime of touchdown runs ahead of him. Out here, though, every day could be, like, a last chance. Not just for the kids. For you and me, too.”

“You can’t think like that.”

“But I do. And it’s selfish of me, man, I know. Plain selfish.”

“What is?”

Strange stared at his fingers peeling the label of the bottle of beer. “These feelings I been having. About my own mortality, man. Selfish of me to be thinkin’ on it, when a boy died before he even got started and I been fortunate enough to live as long as I have.”

“Men are always thinking about their mortality,” said Quinn. He sipped his beer and placed the bottle softly on the bar. “Shit, man, death and sex, we think about it all the time. It’s why we do all the stupid things we do.”

“You’re right. Every time I start thinkin’ on my age, or that I’m bound to die, I start thinking about getting some strange. Makes me want to run away from Janine and Lionel and any kind of responsibility. It’s always been like that with me. Like having a different woman’s gonna put off death, if only for a little while.”

“You need to be runnin’ to those people, Derek. The ones who love you, man. Not to those girls down at those massage parlors—”

“Aw, here we go.”

“Just because they don’t walk the street doesn’t make ’em any different than streetwalkers. Those girls ain’t nothin’ but hookers, man.”

“For real?”

“I’m serious. Look, I’ve been with whores. So I’m not looking down on you for this. Just about every man I know has been with ’em, even if it was just a rite-of-passage thing. But what I’ve been seeing lately—”

“Your girl Sue got you converted, huh? Now you got religion and seen the light.”

“No, not me. But it’s wrong.”

“Terry, these ladies I see, they got to make a living same as anyone else.”

“You think that’s what they want to be doing with their lives? Putting their hands on a man’s dick they got no feelings for? Letting a stranger touch their privates? Shit, Derek, these Asian girls in those places, they’ve been brought over here and forced into that life to pay off some kind of a debt. It’s like slavery.”

“Nah, man, don’t even go there. White man starts talkin’ about, It’s like slavery, I do not want to hear it.”

“Ignore it if you want to,” said Quinn. “But that’s exactly what it’s like.”

“I got to relieve myself, man,” said Strange. “Where’s the bathroom at in this place?”

Quinn drank the rest of his beer while Strange went to the men’s room. When Strange returned, Quinn noticed that he had washed his face. Strange did not get back on his stool. He placed one hand on the bar for support.

“Well, I better get on out of here.”

“Yeah, I need to also. I’m seeing Sue tonight.”

Strange withdrew his wallet from his back pocket. Quinn put his hand on Strange’s forearm.

“I got it.”

“Thanks, buddy.” Strange picked up his album and put it under his arm. “And thanks again for this.”

“My pleasure.”

“Monday morning, I plan on getting started on that list Lydell slipped our way. You with me?”

“You know it. Derek—”

“What?”

“Call Janine.”

Strange nodded. He shook Quinn’s hand and pushed away from the bar, unsteady on his feet. Quinn watched him go.

chapter 21

STRANGE stopped by Morris Miller’s and bought a six. He opened one as he hit Alaska Avenue and drank it while driving south on 16th. Dusk had come. He didn’t know where he was headed. He kept driving and found himself on Mount Pleasant Street. He parked and went into the Raven, a quiet old bar he liked, not too different from Renzo’s, to get himself off the road. There, seated in a booth against the wall, he drank another beer.

When he came out he was half drunk, and the sky was dark. He said “hola” to a Latino he passed on the sidewalk and the man just laughed. Strange’s beeper sounded. He scanned the readout and looked for a pay phone. He had brought his cell with him, but he didn’t know where it was. Maybe in the car. He didn’t care to use it anyhow. He knew of a pay phone up near Sportsman’s Liquors, run by the Vondas brothers. He liked those guys, liked to talk with them about sports. But their store would be closed this time of night.

Strange walked in that direction, found the phone, and dropped a quarter and a dime in the slot. He waited for an answer as men stood on the sidewalk around him talking and laughing and drinking from cans inside paper bags.

“Janine. Derek here.”

“Where are you?”

“Calling from the street. Somewhere down here . . . Mount Pleasant.”

“I been trying to get up with you.”

“All right, then, here I am. What’ve you got?”

“You sound drunk, Derek.”

“I had one or two. What’ve you got?”

“Calhoun Tucker. You know how I been trying to finish out checking on his employment record? I finally got the word on that job he had with Strong Services, down in Portsmouth? They were no longer operating, so I was having trouble pinpointing the nature of the business—”

“C’mon, Janine, get to it.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Strange knew he had been short with her. He knew she was losing patience with him, rightfully so. Still, he kept on.

“Janine, just tell me what you found.”

“Strong Services was an investigative agency. They specialized in rooting out employee theft. He worked undercover in clubs, trying to find employees who were stealing from the registers, like that. Which is how he moved on into the promotion business, I would guess. But my point is, at one time, Tucker was a private cop. He might have done other forms of investigation as well.”

“I get it. So now that completes his background check. Anything else?”

There was another block of silence. “No, that’s it.”

“Good work.”

“Am I going to see you tonight, Derek?”

“I don’t think so, baby. It’d be better for both of us if I was alone tonight, I think. Tell Lionel . . . Janine?”

Somewhere in there Strange thought he’d heard a click. Now there was a dial tone. The line was dead.

Strange stood on the sidewalk, the sounds of cars braking and honking and Spanish voices around him. He hung the receiver back in its cradle. He walked back down toward the Raven and tried to remember where he had parked his car.

STRANGE parked in the alley behind the Chinese place on I Street and got out of his Caddy. The heroin addict who hustled the alley, a longtime junkie named Sam, stepped out of the shadows and approached Strange.

“All right, then,” said Sam.

“All right. Keep an eye on it. I’ll get you on the way out.”

Sam nodded. Strange went in the back door, through the hall and the beaded curtains, and had a seat at a deuce. He ordered Singapore-style noodles and a Tsingtao from the mama-san who ran the place, and when she served his beer she pointed to a young woman who was standing back behind the register and said, “You like?”

Strange said, “Yes.”

HE walked out into the alley. He had showered and he had come, but he was not refreshed or invigorated. He was drunk and confused, angry at himself and sad.

A cherry red Audi S4 was parked behind his Cadillac. A man stood beside the Audi, his arms folded, his eyes hard on Strange. Strange recognized him as Calhoun Tucker. He was taller, more handsome, and younger looking up close than he had appeared to be through Strange’s binoculars and the lens of his AE-1.

“Where’s Sam at?” said Strange.

“You mean the old man? He took a stroll. I doubled what you were payin’ him to look after your car.”

“Money always cures loyalty.”

“Especially to someone got a jones. One thing I learned in the investigation business early on.”

Tucker unfolded his arms and walked slowly toward Strange. He stopped a few feet away.

Strange kept his posture and held his ground. “How’d you get onto me?”

“You talked to a girl down in a club on Twelfth.”

“The bartender.”

“Right. You left her your card. She was mad at me the day she spoke to you. She ain’t mad at me no more.”

The alley was quiet. A street lamp hummed nearby.

“You’ve been easy to tail, Strange. Especially easy to follow today. All that drinkin’ you been doing.”

“What do you want?”

“You got a nice business. Nice woman, too. And that boy she’s got, he seems clean-cut, doesn’t look like no knucklehead. Living up there on Quintana. You spend the night there once in a while, don’t you?”

“You’ve been tailing me awhile.”

“Yeah. Let me ask you somethin’: Does your woman know you get your pleasure down here with these hos like you do?”

Strange narrowed his eyes. “I asked you what you wanted.”

“All right, then, I’ll get to it. Won’t take up much of your time. Just wanted to tell you one thing.”

“Go ahead.”

Tucker looked around the alley. When he looked back at Strange, his eyes had softened.

“I love Alisha Hastings. I love her deep.”

“I don’t blame you. She’s a fine young lady. From a real good family, too. You got yourself a piece of gold right there. Somethin’ you should’ve thought of when you were runnin’ around on her.”

“I think of her all the time. And I plan to be good to her. To take care of her on the financial tip and be there for her emotionally, too. This is the woman who is gonna be the mother of my children, Strange.”

“You got a funny way of preparin’ for it.”

“Look at yourself, man. Is it you who should be judging me?”

Strange said nothing.

“I’m a young man,” said Tucker. “I am young and I have not taken that vow yet and until I do I am gonna freak. Because I am only gonna be this young and this free one time. But, you got to understand, that ceremony is gonna mean somethin’ to me. I saw a bond between my mother and my father that couldn’t be broken, and it set an example for me. For my brothers and sisters, too. I know what it means. But for now, I’m just out here having fun.”

“George Hastings is a friend of mine.”

“Then be a friend to him. I’m lookin’ you in the eye and telling you, there is nobody out here who is going to love and respect his daughter, for life, like I know I am going to do.”

“I can only report your history and what I’ve seen.”

“You’re not listening to me, Strange. Hear me and think about what I’m telling you. I love that girl. I love her fierce enough to make me do something I don’t care to do. You want to take me down, fine. But you’re gonna go right down with me.”

“You threatenin’ me?”

“Just telling you how it’s gonna be.”

Strange looked down at his feet. He rubbed his face and again met Tucker’s eyes. “Whatever I’m gonna do with regards to you, young man, I am going to do. You standing there talking bold, it’s not gonna influence me either way.”

“Course not.” Tucker looked Strange over. “You got principles.”

“You don’t know me that well to be talking to me that way.”

“But I do know your kind.”

“Now wait a minute—”

“Let me put it another way, then. This is all about what kind of husband I’m gonna be to Alisha, right? Well, I can promise you this: I ain’t gonna end up like you, Strange. Sneakin’ around down here in your middle age, paying to have some girl you don’t even know jack your dick. Out here tellin’ on others when you got a fucked-up life your own self. So do whatever you think is right. I’ve said what I came to say. You want to listen, it’s up to you.”

Tucker walked back to his car, got behind the wheel, and lit the ignition. Strange watched the Audi back out of the alley. Then it was just Strange, standing on the stones under the humming street lamp, alone with his shame.

JANINE Baker came down the stairs and unlocked the front door of her house at a little past one in the morning. She had been lying awake in bed and had recognized the engine on Strange’s Cadillac as he had cruised slowly down her block.

He was out there on the stoop, one step down from the doorway. She looked down on him, rumpled and glassy-eyed, as she stood in the frame.

“Come on in. It’s cool out there.”

“I don’t think I should,” said Strange. “I just came by to apologize for being so short with you on the phone.”

Janine pulled the lapels of her robe together against the chill. Behind her, Strange could see Lionel coming down the staircase. He stopped a few steps up.

“Tell him to go back to bed,” said Strange softly. “I don’t want him seeing me like this.”

Janine looked over her shoulder and directed her son to return to his room. Strange waited for Lionel to go back up the stairs.

“Well?”

“I’m all turned around,” said Strange.

“And you’re trying to say what?”

“I just don’t feel . . . I don’t feel like I’m right for you now. I know I’m not right for the boy.”

“You’re looking to give up on us, is that it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I haven’t given up on you.”

“I know it.”

“Even while I knew how you been cheatin’ on me these past couple years.”

Strange looked up at her. “It’s not what you think.”

“Tell me what it is, then. Don’t you think I been knowin’ about your, your problem for a while now? I might be forgiving, but I am human, and I still have my senses. Smelling sweet like lilacs or somethin’ every time you come back from seeing her. Smelling like perfume, and you, a man who doesn’t even wear aftershave.”

“Listen, baby—”

“Don’t baby me. Derek, I can smell it on you now.”

Her voice was almost gentle. It cut him, Janine being so steady with him, so strong. He wanted her to raise her voice, let it out. But he could see she wasn’t going to do that. It made him admire her even more.

Strange shifted his feet. “I never loved another woman the whole time I been lovin’ you.”

“That supposed to mean something to me? Should I feel better because you only been, what, cattin’ around with hos?”

“No.”

“What about respectin’ me? What about respecting yourself?”

Strange cut his eyes. “When my mother was dying, that whole time . . . that was when I started. I couldn’t face it, Janine. Not just her passing, but lookin’ at my own death, too. Seeing that my turn was coming up, not too far behind.”

“And now Joe Wilder’s been killed,” said Janine, completing his thought. “Derek, don’t go dishonoring that little boy’s memory by connecting the one thing to the other. All these bad things out here ought to lead you to the ones who love you. In the face of all that, family and your faith in the Lord, it’s what keeps you strong.”

“I guess I’m weak, then.”

“Yes, Derek, you are weak. Like so many men who are really just boys on the inside. Selfish, and so afraid to die.”

Strange spread his hands. “I love you, Janine. Know this.”

Janine leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. It was a soft kiss, not held long. As she pulled back, Strange knew that the feel of her lips on his would haunt him forever.

“I won’t share you anymore,” said Janine. “I am not going to share you with anyone else. So you need to think about your future. How you want to spend it, and who you want to spend it with.”

Strange nodded slowly. He turned and walked down the sidewalk to his car. Janine closed the door and locked it, and went into the hallway and leaned her back against the plaster wall. Here she was out of sight of Lionel and Strange. For a very short while, and quietly, she allowed herself to cry.

TERRY Quinn sat naked in a cushioned armchair set by the window. His bedroom was dark, and outside the window the streets were dark and still. He stared out the window at nothing, his fist resting on his chin. He heard a rustling sound as Sue Tracy moved under the sheets and blanket. Her nude form was a lush outline as she brought herself to a sitting position in his bed.

“What’s wrong, Terry? Can’t you sleep?”

“I’m thinking about Derek,” said Quinn. “I’m worried about my friend.”

chapter 22

THE next morning, Strange willed himself out of bed and down to the kitchen, where he brewed a cup of coffee and slipped the sports page out of the Sunday Post. He drank the coffee black while reading Michael Wilbon’s latest column on Iverson and a story on the upcoming ’Skins / Ravens contest, set for that afternoon. Strange then drove with Greco up to Military and Oregon, where he hung a left into Rock Creek Park. He and many others ran their dogs in a field there by a large parking lot.

Greco ran the high grass field with a young Doberman named Miata, a black-and-tan beauty whose primary markings were a brown muzzle, chest, and forelegs. Generally, Greco preferred the company of humans and chose his few canine playmates carefully. But he took to this one quickly, finding Miata to be an energetic and able-bodied friend. The dog’s owner, Deen Kogan, was an attractive woman with whom Strange found it very easy to talk. In another life, he might have asked her out for a scotch, maybe a bite to eat. But she wasn’t Janine.

Back on Buchanan, Strange showered and dressed in one of the two suits he owned. He emptied a full can of Alpo into Greco’s dish and headed up to the New Bethel Church of Christ, on Georgia and Piney Branch. Driving north, he realized that he was being followed by a black Mercedes C-Class, a fine factory automobile cheapened in this case by the custom addition of a spoiler and over-elaborate rims. Up around Fort Stevens he circled the block, came back out on Georgia, and looked in his rearview: The Mercedes was still behind him. After his encounter with Calhoun Tucker, he could no longer blame his feeling of dread on paranoia. This was real.

Strange took a seat in a pew far back in the church, coming in at the tail end of the service. He could see Janine and Lionel in their usual place, a few rows up ahead. Strange prayed hard for them and for himself, and closed his eyes tightly when he prayed for Joe Wilder. He believed, he had to believe, that the spirit of that beautiful boy had gone on to a better place. He told himself that the corpse lying in the ground in that small box wasn’t Joe, but was just a shell. He felt his emotions well up, more from anger than from sadness, as he prayed.

Outside the church Strange shook hands with the parishioners he knew, and with a few he was meeting for the first time. He felt a hand drop onto his shoulder and he turned. It was George Hastings, his daughter by his side.

“George,” said Strange. “Alisha. Sweetheart, you look lovely today.”

“Thank you, Mr. Derek.”

“Honey,” said Hastings, “give me a moment alone with Derek here, will you?”

Alisha gave Strange a beautiful smile and found a friend to talk to nearby.

“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” said Hastings.

“Been meaning to get up with you, George,” said Strange.

“You could stop by for the game. You got plans for the day?”

“No, I . . . All right. Maybe I’ll drop by later on.”

Hastings shook Strange’s hand and held the grip. “My sympathies on that boy from your team.”

Strange nodded. He had no idea what he would say to his friend when they next met.

Strange caught up with Janine and Lionel as they walked to her car and asked them if they’d like to have breakfast with him at the diner. It was their Sunday morning ritual. But Janine said she had a busy afternoon planned and that she ought to get a jump on it. Lionel did not protest. Strange told him he’d pick him up for practice Monday night. Lionel only nodded, double-taking Strange with what Strange took to be a look of confusion before dropping into the passenger side of Janine’s car. Strange hated himself then for what he knew he was: another man who was about to drift out of this boy’s life. He wondered what Janine had told Lionel, and what he would tell Lionel himself if he had the chance.

On the way over to the Three-Star Diner, going east on Kennedy, Strange noticed the Mercedes, once again, in his rearview. The tricked-out car was only two lengths back. They’re not even worried about being burned, thought Strange, and for one young moment he considered taking a sudden turn and punching the gas. He could lose them easily; he’d come up around here, and no one knew these streets and alleys like he did. But he let them follow him, all the way down to First, where he parked his Caddy in a space along the curb. The Mercedes pulled up behind him.

Strange locked his Brougham and walked toward the Mercedes, memorizing the car’s license plate and confirming the model as he approached. Strange reached the car as the driver’s-side window slid down. Behind the wheel was a handsome, typically unfriendly looking young man with close-cropped hair. His suit and the knot of his tie were immaculate. Strange recognized him as one of the men who had attended Joe Wilder’s funeral. He had been talking to Joe’s mother, Sandra Wilder, by the grave.

In the passenger bucket was a man of the same age, same unsmiling expression, more flashily dressed. He sat low, with one arm leaning on the sill of his window, talking on his cell.

“What can I do for you fellas?” said Strange.

“A man needs to speak with you,” said the driver.

“Who?”

“Granville Oliver.”

Strange knew the name. The city knew Granville Oliver’s name. But with Strange it was more; he had a history with Oliver’s bloodline.

“And you are?”

“Phillip Wood.”

Wood’s partner lowered the cell and looked across the buckets at Strange. “Granville wants to see you now.”

Strange did not acknowledge this one or give him any kind of eye contact at all. He glanced over his shoulder through the plate glass fronting the diner. He could see Billy Georgelakos coming around the counter, his girth pushing against his stained apron, holding the pine baton that Strange knew had been hollowed out and filled with lead. Strange shook his head slightly at Billy, who stopped his forward path at once. Strange returned his gaze to the driver, Phillip Wood.

“Tell you what,” said Strange. “I’m gonna go on in there and eat my breakfast. When I come out, y’all are still out here? We can talk.”

Strange gave them his back, left the idling Mercedes curbside, and walked into the Three-Star. The sound of gospel music, coming from the house radio, hit him like cool water as he entered the diner.

“Everything all right, Derek?” said Georgelakos, now behind the counter again.

“I think so.”

“The usual?”

“Thanks, friend,” said Strange.

STRANGE ate a feta-cheese-and-onion omelette sprinkled with Texas Pete hot sauce, and a half-smoke side, and washed it down with a couple of cups of coffee. Some after-church types were at the counter and some sat in the old red-cushioned booths. The diner was white tiles and white walls, kept clean by Billy and his longtime employee, Etta.

Billy Georgelakos, his bald head sided by patches of gray, ambled down the rubber mat that ran behind the counter and leaned his forearms on the Formica top.

“Where’s Janine and the boy?”

“Busy,” said Strange, sopping up the juice left on the plate with a triangle of white toast.

“Uh,” grunted Georgelakos. His great eagle nose twitched. His glance moved through the window to the street, then back to Strange. “What about it? They’re waiting for you, right?”

“I told them to wait,” said Strange. He closed his eyes as he swallowed the last of his breakfast. “Billy, you can’t get a better egg and half-smoke combination in all of D.C. than you can right here.”

“The omelette was my father’s recipe, you know that. But your father taught us all how to grill a half-smoke.”

“However it happened, it’s beautiful music, that’s for damn sure.”

“You sure you gonna be all right?”

“Pretty sure. Lemme see your pen.”

Georgelakos drew his Bic from where it rested atop his ear. Strange wrote something down on a clean napkin he pulled from a dispenser.

“In case I’m wrong,” said Strange, “here’s the license plate number of their car. It’s a C two thirty, a two thousand model, in case it comes up.”

Georgelakos took the napkin, folded it, and slipped it under his apron. Strange left money on the counter and shook Georgelakos’s hand.

On the way out, Strange stopped by the photograph of his father, Darius Strange, wearing his chef ’s hat and standing next to Billy’s father, Mike Georgelakos, in the early 1960s. The photograph was framed and mounted by the front door. He stared at it for a few moments, as he always did, before reaching for the handle of the door.

“Adio, Derek,” said Georgelakos.

“Yasou, Vasili,” said Strange.

OUT on the street, Strange stood before the open window of the Mercedes.

“Get in,” said Phillip Wood.

“Where we goin’?”

“You’ll find out, chief,” said Wood’s partner.

Strange looked at Wood only. “Where?”

“Out Central Avenue. Largo area.”

“I’ll follow you out,” said Strange, and when Wood didn’t answer, Strange said, “Young man, it’s the only way I’ll go.”

Wood’s partner laughed, and Wood stared at Strange some more in that hard way that was not working on Strange at all.

“Follow us, then,” said Wood.

Strange went to his car.

STRANGE followed the Mercedes east to North Capitol, then south, then east again on H to Benning Road. Farther along they found Central Avenue and took it out of the city and into Maryland.

As he drove, Strange mentally recounted what he knew of Granville Oliver.

Oliver, now in his early thirties, had come up fatherless in the Stanton Terrace Dwellings of Anacostia, in Southeast D.C. His mother was welfare dependent and a shooter of heroin and cocaine. When he was eight years old, Granville had learned how to tie his mother off and inject her with coke, a needed jolt when her heroin nods took her down to dangerously low levels. He was taught this by one of her interchangeable male friends, hustlers and junkheads themselves, always hanging around the house. One of these men taught him how to go with his hands. Another taught him how to load and fire a gun. At the time, Granville was nine years old.

Granville had an older brother, two cousins, and one uncle who were in the game. Cocaine at first, and then crack when it hit town around the summer of ’86. The brother was executed in a turf dispute involving drugs. The cousins were doing time in Ohio and Illinois prisons, dispersed there after the phase-out of Lorton. Granville’s mother died when he was in his early teens, an overdose long overdue. It was the uncle, Bennett Oliver, who eventually took Granville under his wing.

Granville dropped out of Ballou High School in the tenth grade. By then he was living in a row house with friends in Congress Heights, south of Saint Elizabeth’s. He had been a member of the notorious Kieron Black Gang in the Heights, but it was small change, a you-kill-one-of-us-and-we-kill-one-of-you thing, and he wanted out. So Granville went to his uncle, who took him on.

From the start it was apparent that Granville had a good head for numbers. After he had proven himself on the front lines — he was allegedly the triggerman in four murders by the time he was seventeen years old — he quickly moved into operations and helped grow the business. Through ruthless extermination of the competition, and Granville’s brains, the Oliver Mob soon became the largest crack and heroin distribution machine in the southeast quadrant of the city.

The center of the operation was a small rec center anchoring a rocky baseball field and rimless basketball court on the grounds of an elementary school in the Heights. There Bennett and Granville got to know the kids from the surrounding neighborhoods of Wilburn Mews, Washington Highlands, Walter E. Washington Estates, Valley Green, Barnaby Terrace, and Congress Park.

For many of the area’s youths, the Olivers, especially the young and handsome Granville, were now the most respected men in Southeast. The police were the enemy, that was a given, and working men and women were squares. The Olivers had the clothes, the cars, and the women, and the stature of men who had returned from war. They gave money to the community, participated in fund-raisers at local churches, sponsored basketball squads that played police teams, and passed out Christmas presents in December to children in the Frederick Douglass and Stanton Terrace Dwellings. They were the heroes, and the folk heroes, of the area. Many kids growing up there didn’t dream of becoming doctors or lawyers or even professional athletes. Their simple ambition was to join the Mob, to be “put on.” Working out of the rec center, the elder Oliver had the opportunity to observe the talent and nurture it as well.

Granville and Bennett’s hands no longer touched drugs. In the tradition of these businesses, the youngest shouldered the most risk and thereby earned the chance of graduating to the next level. The Olivers rarely killed using their own hands. When they did, they didn’t hold the weapon until the moment of execution. The gun was carried by an underling; the squire, in effect, handed it to the knight at the knight’s command.

So the Olivers were smart, and it seemed to the newspaper-reading public and to some of the police that they would never be stopped. There were possibilities: tax evasion was one, as were wires and bugs planted to record their conversations. The more likely scenario was that they would be ratted out by snitches: guys who needed to plead out or guys who had previously been raped in jail and would do anything to avoid being punked out again. The Olivers knew, like all drug kingpins knew, that they would go down eventually. And snitches would be the means by which they would fall.

In August of 1999, one week before he was scheduled to go on trial for racketeering after a wire recorded him discussing a major buy, Bennett Oliver was found murdered behind the wheel of his car, a new-style Jag with titanium wheels, idling a block from the rec center. Two bullets had entered his brain, one had blown out an eye, and a fourth had bored a tunnel clean through his neck. The Jag was still idling when the police rolled up on the scene. There were no bullet holes in the palms of the hands, no defensive marks at all, indicating that Bennett knew and maybe even trusted his attacker and had been surprised by his own murder. The word on the street was that Bennett’s nephew Granville, expecting his uncle to roll over and implicate him on the stand, had pulled the trigger or had ordered it pulled.

Granville Oliver had kept a relatively low profile since the murder of Bennett. Though he was still very much in the business, his name, and the name of his operation, had not appeared recently in the news. He had moved to a new home outside the city, in Largo, where he was said to be recording an album in a studio he had built in the basement of the house.

Strange steered his Cadillac off the main highway. He supposed that he was headed toward Granville Oliver’s house now.

He parked behind the Mercedes in a circular drive in front of a large brick colonial. Another brand-new Mercedes, less adorned than the one Phillip Wood drove, was parked there, facing out.

The house was on a street with two similar houses, one of which appeared to be unoccupied. It wasn’t a neighborhood, exactly, certainly not one of those gated communities favored by the new African American wealth of Prince George’s County. Maybe Granville wanted the privacy. More likely, those kinds of people had moved behind the gates to get away from the Granville Olivers of the world. There were unofficial covenants protecting them; real estate agents working certain neighborhoods knew to discourage sales to his kind.

Wood’s partner remained in the car. Strange followed Wood to the front door. He noticed an open garage, totally empty, attached to the side of the house. Beside the garage, a boy no older than twelve raked leaves.

They walked into a large foyer in which a split staircase led to the upper floor. Two hallways on either side of the staircases reached a state-of-the-art kitchen opening to a large area holding cushiony couches, a wide-screen television, and stereo equipment. They went through this area, past a dining room introduced by French doors, and into another sort of foyer that led to an open door. Wood was talking on his cell all the way. He made a gesture to Strange and stepped aside so that Strange could go, alone, through the doorway.

The room was a kind of library, with framed photographs on the walls and books shelved around a huge cherry-wood desk, and it smelled of expensive cologne. Granville Oliver sat behind the desk. He was a large man with light brown eyes, nearly golden, and handsome in an open-neck shirt under a dark suit. Strange recognized him by sight.

“Go ahead and close that door,” said Oliver.

Strange closed it and walked across the room.

Oliver stood, sized Strange up, leaned forward, and shook his hand. Strange had a seat in a comfortable chair that had been placed before the desk.

“This about Joe Wilder?” said Strange.

“That’s right,” said Oliver. “I want you to find the ones who killed my son.”

chapter 23

“YOU’RE Joe’s father?”

“Yeah.”

“He never mentioned it.”

Granville Oliver spread his hands. “He didn’t know.”

The Motorola StarTAC on Oliver’s desk chirped. Oliver picked up the cell, flipped it open, and put it to his ear. Strange listened to “uh-huh” and “yeah” over and over again. He was too wired to sit in the chair and digest what had been revealed. He got up out of the chair and walked around the room.

The wall cases were filled with books. Judging by the tears on the corners of the frayed jackets and the cracks in the spines of the paperbacks, the books had been read. Except for a few classic works of fiction by writers like Ellison, Himes, and Wright, most of Oliver’s collection consisted of nonfiction. The subjects dealt with black nationalism, black separatism, and black empowerment. All were penned by black authors.

The photographs on the walls were of Oliver with local sports celebrities and politicians. One showed him with his arm slung over the shoulder of D.C.’s former mayor. There was a rumor, unsubstantiated, that Oliver had periodically supplied the mayor with both women and drugs. Another photo had Oliver standing on an outdoor court, presenting a trophy to a basketball team wearing black shirts with red print across the chests. The shirts read, “Dare to Stay Off Drugs.”

The cell phone made a sound again as Oliver ended his call.

“You sponsor a team?” said Strange.

“Gotta give back to the community,” said Oliver, with no apparent irony.

Strange could only stare at him. Oliver nodded in the direction of his cell phone, which he had placed on a green blotter. “I had to take that, but it’s turned off now. We can talk.”

Strange sat back down in his chair.

“So what do you think?” said Oliver, waving his hand around the room, the gesture meant to include the entire house, his land, all his possessions. “Not bad for a Southeast boy, right?”

“It is something.”

“Check this out.” Oliver shook a black-and-white photograph out of a manila envelope and slid it across the desk to Strange. It was a head shot of a scowling Oliver wearing a skully and chains, his arms crossed across his chest, a Glock in one hand and a .45 in the other.

Strange dropped the photograph back on the desk.

“That’s my new promo shot,” said Oliver, “for this record I just made. I brought this boy down from New York, used to run the mixin’ board up there for some of the top acts. This boy put some beats behind me, made my flow tight. I got a studio right here in my basement, man. All new equipment, all of it the best. I mean, I got everything.”

“It does make an impression,” said Strange. “But I hope you’ll understand if I don’t seem too impressed.”

“So now you gonna tell me, It’s not what you have, it’s how you got it, right?”

“Somethin’ like that. All these pretty things you own around here? There’s blood on ’em, Granville.”

Oliver’s eyes flared, but his voice remained steady. “That’s right. I took it, Mr. Strange. Wasn’t no one gonna give me nothin’, so I just went out and grabbed it. White man gonna try to keep a black man down from birth. But Bobo, he couldn’t do it to this black man.”

“Okay, then. In your mind, you’ve done all right.”

Oliver blinked his eyes hard. “I have. Despite the fact that I got born into that camp of genocide they used to call the ghetto. Poverty is violence, Mr. Strange, you’ve heard that, right?”

“I have.”

“And it begets violence. Poor black kids see the same television commercials white boys and white girls see out in the suburbs. They’re showed, all their young lives, all the things they should be striving to acquire. But how they gonna get these things, huh?”

Strange didn’t reply.

Oliver leaned forward. “Look, I got a good head for numbers, and I know how to manage people. I’ve always had that talent. Young boys wanted to follow me around the neighborhood when I wasn’t no more than a kid. But do you think anyone in my school ever said to me, Take this book home and read it? Keep reading and get yourself into a college, you can run your own company someday? Maybe they knew, black man ain’t never gonna run nothin’ in this country ’less he takes it and runs with it his own self. Which is what I been doin’ my whole adult life.

“So poor kids with nothin’ are gonna want things. They start by gettin’ into their own kind of enterprise, ’cause they figure out early there ain’t no other way to get it. And these enterprises are competitive, like any business. Once you start gettin’ these things, see, you’re gonna make sure you keep what you got, ’cause you can’t never go back and live the way you were livin’ before. And now Bobo gonna act surprised when the neighborhoods he done herded us into start runnin’ with blood.”

“You don’t have to lecture me about being black in this country, Granville. I been around long enough to remember injustices you haven’t even dreamed of.”

“So you agree.”

“For the most part, yes. But it doesn’t explain the fact that a lot of kids who grew up in the same kinds of places you did, the same way you did, with no kind of guidance, got out. Got through school, went on and got good jobs, careers, are raising kids of their own now who are gonna have a better chance than they ever did. And they’re doin’ it straight. By hanging with it, by being there for their children. Despite all the roadblocks you talked about.”

“Didn’t work out that way for me,” said Oliver with a shrug. “But it sure did work out. So I hope you’ll understand me if I’m not too ashamed.”

“That what you tell that young boy you got working for you, the one I saw outside?”

“Don’t worry about that boy. That boy is gonna do just fine.”

Strange leaned back in his chair. “Say why you called me out here.”

“I told you.”

“Okay. You claim Joe was yours.”

Oliver nodded. “He was one of my beef babies, from back when the shit was wild. When I was out there getting into a lot of, just, battles and mad shit like that. Used to crib up with different girls I knew from around the way, just to go underground, keep myself safe until the drama cooled down. In those two or three years, I must have fathered three babies like that.”

And you think that makes you a man.

“But you were never there for Joe,” said Strange.

“His mother, Sandra, wanted it like that. She didn’t want him to know about me. Didn’t want him lookin’ up to someone like me, Mr. Strange. It speaks to what you were just lecturin’ me on just now. She wanted the boy to grow up with some kind of chance.”

God bless her, thought Strange.

“You gave her money?”

“She wouldn’t take much. Didn’t want me anywhere near the boy; no presents at birthday time, nothin’ like that. She did take a whip I gave her, though. Told her I didn’t want no son of mine ridin’ around in that broken-down hooptie she was drivin’. A nice BMW. She couldn’t turn that down.”

“I saw it,” said Strange. “Why did you pick me?”

“Sandra says you all right. You been havin’ that business down in Petworth for years, and you got a good reputation behind it. And she says you always were good to the little man.” Oliver smiled. “Boy could play some football, couldn’t he?”

“He had a heart,” said Strange, speaking softly. “You missed out on the most beautiful thing that ever could’ve happened to your life, Granville. You missed.”

“Maybe. But now I want you to help me make it right.”

“Why? Okay, so you fathered Joe. But you never were any kind of father to him for real.”

“True. But some people know he was mine. Man in my position, he can’t just let this kind of thing go. Everyone needs to know that the ones who took my kin will be got. You lose respect in this business I’m in, there ain’t nothin’ left.”

“The police are close,” said Strange. “I’d say they’re gonna find the shooters in a few days. They’ve got likenesses and they’re putting them around the neighborhoods. This isn’t your normal street beef where everybody keeps their mouths shut. The police aren’t the enemy in a case like this. A child was murdered. Someone’s gonna come forward soon and talk.”

“I want you to find them first.”

“And do what?”

“Gimme some names.”

“I’ve been working on it,” said Strange. “I’m planning on talking to Lorenze Wilder’s friends.”

“You got a list?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Sandra will help you narrow it down.”

“I’ve tried to talk to her. She didn’t seem to want to.”

“She’ll talk to you now. I just got off the phone with her before you showed. She’s waitin’ on you to come by when we get done here.”

There was a knock on the door. Oliver raised his voice and said, “Come in.”

Phillip Wood appeared as the door swung open but stood back behind the frame. “You got an appointment in fifteen.”

“We’ll be done by then,” said Oliver.

Wood nodded and pulled the door shut.

“There’s an example of what I was talkin’ about right there,” said Oliver to Strange. “That boy, Phil Wood? Boy can’t even read. But he’s drivin’ a Mercedes. He’s wearin’ twelve-hundred-dollar suits with designer tags. Young man is gainfully employed, Mr. Strange, ’stead of lyin’ around in his own pee, which is where he was headed if I hadn’t put him on.”

“Where you think he’s headed now?”

“True. We all know what waits for us. But we can’t be thinkin’ on tomorrow all that much, can we? The thing you got to do is enjoy the ride.”

“It’s all good, right?”

“No, not all. Take Phil, for example. I’m gettin’ near to the point, I got to be making a decision on his future. Phil Wood’s taken a fall two times. The Feds know this, and they’re lookin’ to see him stumble, ’cause the third fall is gonna be long time. And Phil can’t do no long time. He’s weak that way. I know it, and he knows it, too.”

“You’re afraid he’s gonna roll over on you.”

“He will. Fond as I am of that young man, he will. Gonna be one of those ‘You too, Brutus’ motherfuckers in the end. My very own Judas, gonna sell out Granville Oliver for his thirty pieces.”

“You comparing yourself to the Lord?”

“Matter of fact, the first example was out of Julius Caesar. I read a lot, case you haven’t noticed. But, nah, it’s just . . . You know what I’m sayin’. I got a decision to make. Just tellin’ you, you know, this ain’t all fun and games.”

Strange looked at his watch.

“Yeah, okay,” said Oliver. “So, we got ourselves a deal, right?”

“No,” said Strange.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t think I’ll be working for you.”

“You got a problem with my kind.”

“That’s right.”

“Forget about me, then. Think about the boy.”

“I am.”

“Don’t you want to see justice done?”

“I told you, the police will have this wrapped up quick.”

“We ain’t talkin’ about the same thing.”

“The cycle never ends, does it?”

“Oh, it’ll end, you do what I ask you to do. That’s my point. There ain’t no death penalty in the District of Columbia, Mr. Strange. You want to see those shooters go to prison, get warm meals, get to sleep real comfortable, maybe walk out in twenty, twenty-five? You think my son’s ever gonna get to walk out his grave? Gimme some names, like I said. I’ll make sure justice gets served.”

“You can’t trade a bad life for a good.”

“What’s that?”

“Something someone told me a long time ago.”

“I’m givin’ you straight talk,” said Oliver, “and you’re over there talkin’ proverbs and shit. Talkin’ about cycles.”

Strange looked into Oliver’s eyes. “I knew your father.”

“Say it again.”

“They always say that D.C.’s a small town. Well, it’s true. I knew your father, over thirty years ago.”

“You got one up on me, then, chief. ’Cause I never did get to meet the man. He died in sixty-eight, during the riots. Right around the time I was born.”

“He had light eyes, just like you.”

Oliver cocked his head. “Y’all were tight?”

“He knew my brother,” said Strange. “My brother passed about the same time as your father.”

“So?”

“Cycles,” said Strange, leaving it at that.

Strange got up out of his chair. Granville Oliver handed him a business card. It was for his record company, GO Entertainment. Under the logo, Oliver’s cell number was printed.

“You call me,” said Oliver, “you find anything out. And somethin’ else: Sandra says you got a white boy, helps you coach that football team. Says he works with you, too. Well, I don’t want him workin’ on none of this, hear?”

Strange slipped the business card into his suit pocket.