Right as Rain

17

Down on 2nd Street, blocks away from the District Courthouse and the FOP bar, was a saloon called Upstairs at Erika's, located on the second floor of a converted row house, across from the Department of Labor. The joint had become a hangout for cops, cop groupies, U.S. marshals and local and federal prosecutors. Next door was another bar and eatery that catered to rugby players, college kids, government workers, and defense attorneys, most of them white. There was business enough for both establishments to exist side by side, as the clientele at Upstairs at Erika's was almost entirely black.

Strange got a couple of beers from the bartender, a fine young woman favored by the low lights, tipped her, and asked for a receipt. When she returned with it he asked her to put some Frankie Beverly and Maze on the house box. He'd met a woman for drinks here one night, not too long ago, and he knew they had it behind the bar. Maze was a D.C. favorite; though recorded years ago, you still heard their music all over town, at clubs, weddings, and at family reunions and picnics in Rock Creek Park.

'Which one you want to hear?' asked the bartender.

'The one got "Southern Girl" on it.'

'You got it.'

He carried the two bottles of beer back toward a table set against a brick wall, where he had left Quinn. Quinn was standing and giving a hug to a black man around his age, the both of them patting each other on the back. Strange had to guess that this was Eugene Franklin.

'How you doin'?' said Strange, arriving at the table. 'Derek Strange.'

'Eugene Franklin.' Strange shook his hand, but Franklin's grip was deliberately weak, and the smile he had been sharing with Quinn began to fade.

Franklin was the size of Strange, freshly barbered and fit but with a face with features that did not quite seem to belong together. Strange thought it was the buck teeth, pronounced enough to be near comic, and Franklin's large, liquid eyes; they did not complete the hard shell he was trying to project.

'You want a beer, somethin'?'

'I don't drink,' said Franklin.

They sat down and spent an uncomfortable moment of silence. A couple of guys with the unmistakable look of cops, a combination of guard and bravado, walked by the table. One of them said hello to Franklin and then looked at Quinn.

'Terry, how you doin', man?'

'Doin' okay.'

'You look good, man. Long hair and everything.'

'I'm tryin'.'

'All right, then. Take it light, hear?'

Strange saw the other man give Quinn a hard once-over before he and his partner walked away. He figured that Quinn still had some friends and supporters on the force and that there were others who would no longer give him the time of day.

'You gonna be all right in here?' said Strange.

'I know most of these guys,' said Quinn. 'It's cool.'

Strange glanced around the bar. By now word had gotten around that Terry Quinn was in the place, and he noticed some curious looks and a few unfriendly stares. Maybe Strange's imagination was running wild on him. It wasn't any of his business, and he wasn't going to worry about it either way.

'You called,' said Franklin, 'and I'm here. Not to rush you, but I'm due for a shift and I don't have all that much time.'

'Right.' Strange pushed a business card across the table. As Franklin read the card, Strange said, 'I appreciate you hookin' up with us.'

'You said you were working for Chris Wilson's mom.'

'Uh-huh. She was concerned about her son's reputation. She thought it got tarnished in the wake of the shooting.'

'The newspapers and the TV,' said Franklin, with a bitter shrug. 'You know how they do.'

'I'm just trying to clear things up. If I can take away some of that shadow that got thrown on Wilson… that's all I'm trying to accomplish.'

'It's all in the transcripts. You're a private investigator' – Strange caught the kernel of contempt in Franklin's voice – 'you ought to have a way of getting your hands on the files.'

'I already have. And Terry here has given me his version of the event. You don't mind, I'd like for you to do the same.'

Franklin looked at Quinn. Quinn drank off some of his beer and gave Franklin a tight nod. Strange took his voice-activated recorder from his leather, turned on the power, and set the recorder on the table.

Franklin pointed a lazy finger at the unit. 'Uh-uh. Turn that bullshit off, or I walk away.'

Strange made a point of pressing down on the power button but did not press it hard enough to turn it off. He slipped the recorder back into his jacket.

'All right, man,' said Franklin. 'Where you want me to begin?'

Strange told him, then sat back in his chair.

Their beer bottles were empty by the time Franklin was done. Strange had to smile a little, watching Franklin watch him, waiting for some kind of reaction or reply. Because it was almost funny how identical Franklin's account was to Quinn's. And no two recollections of a single event could be that on-the-one, that tight.

'What?' said Franklin.

'Nothin', really,' said Strange. 'Not that it's significant or anything like that… What I was wondering is, if the danger was that imminent, that clear, why didn't you fire down on Wilson, too?'

'Because Terry fired first.'

'You would have shot Wilson if Terry hadn't?'

'I can't say what I would have done.'

'But you're sayin' he was right.'

'He was all the way right. I saw where Wilson's gun was headed. I saw in his eyes what he planned to do. There's no doubt in my mind, if Terry hadn't shot Wilson, Wilson would have shot me. You understand what I'm sayin'? No doubt at all.'

Strange ran his thumb along his jawline. 'You're so sure… and that's what's botherin' me, Eugene. See, I was at MLK, pulling up all the newspaper stories, the ones they did at the time and the follow-ups, too, and there was this one thing I read that I just can't reconcile.'

'Oh, yeah? What's that?'

'After your partner left the force, you joined that group of cops, called itself the Concerned Black Officers. Y'all had flyers put up tellin' the brothers in uniform to stage a protest. I believe you signed the petition your own self, too.'

Franklin's eyes flickered past Quinn's. 'I did.'

'If Quinn was so right-'

'Look here,' said Franklin. 'Terry was right, in that particular case. But since ninety-five, we've had three off-duty African American police officers shot by white cops. It's bad enough, the danger I put myself in every day, without having to be a target for the guys on my own team. So yeah, I was concerned. And anyway, Strange, that's internal police business, understand? It is not any business of yours. It's between me and my fellow cops, and my partner.'

'Your ex-partner, you mean.'

Something passed between Franklin and Quinn. Strange could see that their bond was strong. Maybe it even bordered on affection. But however strong it had been, it was tainted by the shooting, and what had been ruined was most likely beyond repair.

Franklin shook his head and looked down at the table. 'You're somethin', Strange.'

'Just doin' my job.'

'Punch out your time card, then. 'Cause I am done talkin' for today.'

'Yeah, I guess we covered it for now.' Strange stood from his chair. 'I'll leave the two of you alone for a few minutes. This beer goes through me quick.'

As Strange went along the bar toward the head, Franklin watched his walk, the hint of swagger in it, the straight shoulders and back.

'Man walks like a cop,' said Franklin.

'He was one,' said Quinn, 'a long time ago.'

'Wasn't till I saw him move,' said Franklin, 'that it showed.'

Strange stopped at the bar to talk to a cop he knew, now retired, named Al Smith. Smith had been partnered up for years with a guy named Larry Michaels. Smith had gone gray, and his paunch told Strange that this was where he spent his days.

'I buy you one?' said Smith.

'One's my limit in the daytime, Al, and I already had it.'

'Next time. And if I don't see you here, I'll see you, hear?'

Strange chuckled. Al Smith had been using the same cornball expressions for the past thirty years.

Strange nodded to a big man with a high forehead and a flat-bridged, upturned nose, sitting at the bar and smoking a thick cigar, who looked at him dead-eyed as he passed. The man didn't nod back. He moved his gaze into his beer mug, raised it, and took a deep drink. Strange noticed that the MPD T-shirt fit tightly on the man's broad chest, his bulked-up arms stretching the fabric of the sleeves.

In the bathroom, he took a leak into a stand-up urinal, singing along to 'Joy and Pain' as it came trebly through small wall-mounted speakers. He zipped up and turned around as the man in the MPD T-shirt entered, tall and looking like a bear on two feet, pushing the bathroom door so hard it hit the wall.

All right, you're drunk, thought Strange. Tell the world.

'Excuse me, brother,' said Strange, in a friendly way, because the man was blocking his path. 'Can I get by?'

But the man didn't move or react in any way. His expression was dull, and his face was shiny with sweat. Strange was going to ask him again but decided against it. He moved around the man, his back brushing the wall in the cramped space, and went out the door.

Strange had known plenty of uniforms like this one. Guy had a day off from all the bad shit out there, and instead of relaxing, he was in a bar, wearing his MPD shirt, getting meaner with every beer and looking to start a fight. One of those cops who was carrying serious insecurities, always trying to test himself. Well, if he was wantin' to try someone, he'd have to find someone else. Strange had left all that bullshit behind a long time ago.

'How you been makin' out?' said Franklin.

'I'm doin' okay,' said Quinn. 'Working in a used book store over the District line. It's real… quiet.'

'Gives you time to read those cowboys-and-Indians books you like.'

'I do have time.'

'Seein' anyone?'

'I have a girl. You'd like her. She's nice.'

'She fine, too?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Dog like you. Never known you to be with an ugly one.'

'No one could say the same about you.'

'Go ahead and crack on me. But it's one of the reasons I stopped drinkin'. Got tired of waking up next to those fugly-ass girls I was meetin' in the clubs.'

'Wonder how many of them stopped drinkin' when they got a look at you.'

'I guess I did send a few off to church.'

Franklin and Quinn shared a laugh. Franklin's odd looks had always bothered him, along with his inability to make time with attractive women. Quinn had been one of the few who could broach the subject, and joke about it, with Eugene.

Quinn looked around Erika's. He recognized Al Smith, sitting on his usual stool, and a patrolman named Effers he'd played cards with once, and an ugly, friendless cop he knew by sight only, Adonis Delgado, who was pushing away from the bar.

'You miss it,' said Franklin, 'don't you?'

'I do.'

'Listen, Terry…'

'What?'

'That thing Strange was talking about, the group I joined – Concerned Black Officers, I mean.'

'I knew about it already.'

'Didn't have anything to do with how I felt about you, or whether you were right or wrong on the Wilson thing. You understand that, don't you?'

'Sure.'

'We'd been asking for radios for off-duty officers for years, so that if you did get into a situation when you were in street clothes, you could call it in, let the dispatcher know that you were a cop and you were on the scene.'

'I know it.'

'If Chris Wilson had had that radio that night, and we had known who he was when we pulled up on him, he'd be alive today.'

'Y'all got your radios now. I read about it, that the issue finally went through.'

'It took that last shooting, and the threat of a protest, to get it done. And Chief Ramsey, he's toughened the firearms instruction requirements, instituted retraining. Got a whole lot of new initiatives drafted, with new hiring standards on the way, too.'

'You tryin' to tell me it was a good thing that Wilson died? Don't go blowin' smoke up my ass, man, 'cause I've known you too long.'

'I'm tellin' you that some good came out of it. Whatever I thought about what happened that night, it was on me to get involved, make sure that somethin' like that couldn't happen again.'

'I bet it was good for your conscience, too.'

'There was that.'

'Don't worry, Gene. I don't blame you for anything. I would have liked to hear from you once in a while, but I don't blame you for a thing.'

'I thought about calling you,' said Franklin. 'And then I thought, Outside of our shift, me and Terry never hung out, anyway. I don't recall us speaking on the phone more than once or twice when we were riding together, do you?'

'You're right. We never hung out.'

'We got different things. Different kinds of lives, interests, different friends. You and me used to talk about it, remember? Ain't no kind of crime for people to want to hang with their own kind.'

'It's a shame,' said Quinn. 'But it's no crime.'

'Anyway,' said Franklin, 'I gotta bounce.'

'Go ahead. Nice seeing you. Gene. Stay away from the fuglies, hear?'

Franklin blushed. 'I'm gonna try.'

They stood, hugged again, and broke apart awkwardly. Franklin did not meet Quinn's eyes before walking away. Franklin passed Strange on his way back from the head but did not acknowledge him at all.

'Friendly place they got here,' said Strange as he arrived at the table. 'Your boy Eugene is a card-carrying member of my fan club, and some Carl Eller-lookin' sucker back in the bathroom was wantin' to take my head off.'

'You know cops,' said Quinn. 'They like to stick to their own kind.'

'I've got a couple more stops today,' said Strange. 'I'd take you home, but it's not on my way.'

'Drop me at the Union Station Metro,' said Quinn. 'I'll catch the Red Line uptown.'

Strange pulled the Caprice away from the curb. 'Nevada Smith is on TNT tonight. You know that one?'

'Uh-huh. That's a good one. McQueen was the real thing.'

'That's the one ends with that old guy from Streets of San Francisco, with the nose-'

'Karl Maiden.'

'Yeah, him. McQueen shoots him a couple of times, but he doesn't kill him. Gets off of that revenge trip he's been on right there, finds his humanity, and leaves Maiden in the river. McQueen's riding away on his horse, and Maiden's yellin' at him to finish him off, screaming, over and over, "You're yella… you haven't got the guts!" I get the chills thinkin' about it, man.'

'You gonna watch it?'

'I'm takin' a woman to the fights.'

'Your girlfriend?'

'More like a friend kind of thing, the woman who runs my office, Janine Baker. I been knowin' her for a long time. Nothin' all that serious.'

'Friend kind of thing's the best kind, you ask me.'

'Yeah, I believe you're right. What about you?'

'I got a date myself. Girl named Juana I been seeing.'

Strange looked across the bench. 'Y'all got specific plans?'

'We were just going to go out, figure it out then.'

'Why don't the two of you come with me and Janine? I got extra tickets, man.'

'I wouldn't mind. But I have to see if Juana's into it.'

'Check it out with her and give me a call. My beeper number's on that card I gave you.'

'I will.'

Strange turned onto North Capitol. Quinn said, 'Here's good,' and opened the door as Strange slowed the car to a stop.

'Hey, Terry. Thanks again for the record, man.'

'My pleasure,' said Quinn.

They shook hands. Quinn walked toward Union Station. Strange drove north.