Right as Rain

18

Strange stood in Chris Wilson's bedroom, examining the objects on his dresser. There was a cigar box holding cuff links, a crucifix on a chain, a Mason's ring with a black onyx stone, ticket stubs from the MCI Center and RFK, and a pickup stub from Safeway. There were shoehorns and pens in a ceramic police-union mug. A small color photograph of Wilson's sister, pretty and sharply dressed, had been slipped beneath the mug. A nail clipper, a long-lensed camera, a pearl-handled knife, a bottle of CK cologne, and a crystal bowl holding matches from various bars and restaurants sat atop the dresser, as did a well-used, autographed hardball, scuffed and stained by grass and mud.

Beside the dresser mirror, hung on the wall, was a framed photograph of Chris Wilson as a boy, standing under the arm of Larry Brown, with a message from Brown and his signature scrawled across the print. Team photographs of the Redskins going back fifteen years and posters, framed cheaply and mounted, of college and professional basketball players, local boxers, and other athletes and sporting events were hung on the walls as well. The room reflected an unsurprising blend of boy and man.

'I've left it exactly as it was,' said Leona Wilson, standing behind Strange. 'He was so proud of that picture we took with Larry Brown.'

'I've got a signed photo of Larry myself,' said Strange. 'Proud to have mine, too.'

'I remember one time I was straightening the picture, and Chris walked in and just got so upset, told me to leave it alone. Of course, he hardly ever raised his voice to me.'

'Some things special to a man might seem trivial to others. I got this Redskins figure on my desk, got a spring for a neck-'

'Chris grew up in this room. He never lived anywhere else. I suppose if he had moved out and gotten his own place, his new room wouldn't have looked like this. He kept it much the same way as he did when he was a boy.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I never asked him to stay, Mr Strange. After his father died, he took it upon himself to become the man of the house. He felt it was his role, to take care of me and his sister. I never asked him to do that. He took it upon himself.'

Strange looked around the room. 'Chris keep any kind of journals? He keep a diary, anything like that?'

'Not that I'm aware of.'

'You don't mind, I'd like to take these matchbooks from this bowl here. I'll return them, and anything else I take.'

Leona Wilson nodded and wrung her hands.

'Chris had a girlfriend at the time of his death, didn't he?' said Strange. 'I'm talking about the one gave the statement to the newspapers.'

'That's right.'

'Think it would be possible to talk to her?'

'She's been wonderful. She has dinner with me once or twice a month. She and her little girl, a lovely child she had before she met Chris. I'll call her if you'd like.'

'I would. Like to meet with her as soon as possible, matter of fact. And I'd like to speak to your daughter, too.'

Leona lowered her eyes.

'Mrs Wilson?'

'Yes.'

'Do you know how I can get ahold of your daughter?'

'I don't.' Leona shook her head. 'We lost her to drugs, Mr Strange.'

'What happened?'

'How can anyone know? She was in college out at Bowie State and working as a hostess in a restaurant downtown. She was a beautiful girl. She was doing so well.'

'She was living here then?'

'Sondra had gotten her own place, and that's when we began to lose touch. Chris and I saw her less and less frequently, and when we did see her… she had changed, physically, I mean, but also her attitude. I didn't recognize her, couldn't confide in her the way I always could before. It was Chris who finally sat me down and told me what was wrong. I didn't believe it at first. We were so watchful of her during her high school years, and she had gotten through them fine. After she got in trouble, it was as if she had forgotten everything she had learned, here at home and in church. I didn't understand. I still don't understand.

'The day of the funeral, she showed up at the cemetery. I hadn't seen her for a month or so. Her phone had been disconnected, and she had been fired from her job. She had dropped out of college, too.'

'If you hadn't seen her, then how did you know all of those events had taken place?'

'Chris knew.'

'He was in contact with her?'

'I don't know how he knew. He was close to her… He was very upset, Mr Strange. But in the end, even he had lost track of her. We didn't know if she had a roof over her head, if she was eating, where she lived, where she slept. We didn't know if she was living or dead.'

'So she was at the funeral.'

'She looked barely alive that day. Her eyes, even her steps were without life. I hadn't seen her for so long. I haven't seen her since.'

'I'm sorry.'

'If Chris were here, he'd find her.' Tears broke and ran down Leona's sunken cheeks. 'Excuse me, Mr Strange.'

She turned and walked quickly from the room.

Strange did not follow. After a while he heard her talking on the living room phone. He went to the dresser and emptied the crystal bowl of matchbooks, transferring them into the pockets of his leather. He slid the photograph of Sondra Wilson out from beneath the mug and placed it in his wallet. He paced the room. He sat on Chris Wilson's bed and looked out the window.

Strange could imagine Wilson as a boy, waking up in this room, hearing the songbirds, recognizing the bark of the same dogs every morning. Looking out that same window and dreaming about catching the winning pass, knocking one out of the ballpark with the bases full, a pretty girl he sat near in class. Smelling breakfast cooking, maybe hearing his mother humming a tune in the kitchen as she prepared it, waiting for her to poke her head through the door, tell him it was time to get up and off to school.

Strange heard Leona Wilson's sobs from out in the living room. Trying to stifle it, then crying full on.

'You all right, Derek,' said Strange under his breath, feeling useless and angry at himself for having given the Wilson woman false hope.

He walked out to the living room and stood beside her where she sat on the couch, clutching a cloth handkerchief. Strange put a hand on her bony shoulder.

'It's so hard,' she said, almost a whisper. 'So hard.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Strange.

She wiped her face and looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. 'Have you made any progress?'

'I'll have a report for you very soon.'

Leona handed Strange a slip of paper off the coffee table. 'Here's Renee's address. She's going to pick her daughter up at day care, but she'll be home soon. She'll see you if you'd like.'

'Thank you,' said Strange.

He patted her shoulder impotently again and walked away.

'Will I see you in church this Sunday, Mr Strange?'

'I hope to be there,' said Strange, keeping his pace.

He couldn't get through the door fast enough. Out on the sidewalk, he stood for a moment and breathed fresh air.

Renee Austin lived in a garden apartment complex set behind a shopping center in the Maryland suburbs, out Route 29 and off Cherry Hill Road. Strange waited in the parking lot, listening to an old Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, as Renee had not yet returned from picking up her daughter. Strange was singing along to 'Pretty Flower,' closing his eyes and trying to mimic Teddy's growl, when Renee's red Civic pulled into the lot.

They sat at her kitchen table, drinking instant coffee. Renee's daughter, a darling little three year old named Kia, sat on the linoleum floor. Kia had a dark-skinned doll in one hand and a freckly faced, cartoonish-looking white baby in the other, and she was pressing their faces together, loudly going, 'Mmm, mmm, mmm.'

'Honey,' said Renee, 'hush, please. We are trying to talk, and it's hard to hear ourselves with those sounds you're makin'.'

'Rugrat kissing Groovy Girl, Momma!' said Kia.

'Yes, baby,' said Renee. 'I know.'

Renee was a good-looking, dark-skinned young woman with long painted nails and a sculpted, lean face. Her hair had been chemically relaxed, and she wore it in a shoulder-length, fashionable cut. She worked as an administrative assistant for an accounting firm on Connecticut and L, and she stayed there, she said, not for pay or opportunities but for the firm's flexible schedule, which allowed her more time with Kia.

She was a tired-looking twenty-one. Renee told Strange that she had planned to register for community college courses but that Kia's arrival and the father's subsequent departure had dimmed those plans. Strange noticed all the toys, televisions, and stereo equipment spread about the apartment, and Renee's Honda had looked brand-new. He wondered how far she was overextended, if she had dug a credit hole so deep that she couldn't even see the light from where she stood.

'Maybe when she gets into a full day of school,' said Strange, 'you can go after that college degree.'

'Maybe,' said Renee, her voice trailing off, both of them knowing that it would never happen that way.

Renee talked about Chris Wilson, how they had met, what kind of man he was. How he had been 'a better father' to Kia than Kia's own blood had been.

'How about when he drank?' said Strange. 'Was he good to her then?'

'Chris hardly drank more than one, maybe two beers at a time. When I first met him, he barely drank at all.'

'What about the night he was killed?'

Renee nodded, looking into her coffee mug. 'He had been drinking pretty heavy, here at the apartment, earlier that night. He had gone through, I don't know, maybe a six-pack over the course of the night.'

'Unusual for him, right?'

'Yes. But the last few weeks before he died, he was drinking more and more.'

'Any idea why?'

'He was upset.'

'And he was upset the night he was killed, wasn't he?'

'Yes.'

'Over what?'

'I don't know.'

Renee bent forward from her seat and handed Kia a Barbie doll she had dropped. Then Renee sat up straight and sipped at her coffee.

'Renee?'

'Huh.'

'What was Chris upset over? You told the newspeople you didn't know. But you do know, don't you?'

'What difference would it have made to talk about it? It didn't have nothin', anything to do with his death. It was family business, Mr Strange.'

'And here I am, only tryin' to help the family. Chris's mother hired me. Chris's mother sent me over here, Renee.'

Renee looked away. She looked up at the clock on the wall and down at her daughter and around the room.

'Was it about his sister, Sondra?' said Strange.

She nodded hesitantly.

'Had he been in contact with her?'

'I don't know.' Renee met his eyes. 'I'm not lyin'; I do not know.'

'Go on.'

'After Sondra lost her job and her place, Chris got more and more distant. He was trying to find her, and do his job as a policeman, and make time for his mother, and me and Kia… it got to be too much for him, I guess. And I learned not to ask too many questions about Sondra. It only upset him more when I did.'

'Where was Sondra working when things started to fall apart on her?'

'Place called Sea D.C., at Fourteenth and K. She had been a hostess there for a short while.'

'Her mother said she was basically a good girl, got in with the wrong crowd.'

'Wasn't like she was wearing a halo or nothin' like that. Sondra always did like to party, from what Chris told me. And I had some friends who worked in restaurants and clubs downtown, and I'd hung with these people a few times after the chairs got put up on the tables. So I knew what time it was. In those places, at closing time? Someone's always holding something. In that environment, it's easy to fall into that lifestyle, if you allow yourself to fall into it, Mr Strange.'

'Call me Derek.'

'Sondra got into that heroin thing. Chris said she was always afraid of needles, so he figured she started by snorting it. Probably thought it was okay, doin' it like that, like she couldn't get a jones behind it in that way. Another mistake future junkies make. I know because I had an uncle who was deep into it. It's a slower way to go down is all it is. How you end up, it's all the same.'

'The night Chris was killed. Describe what happened here before he went out.'

Renee moved her coffee mug around the table. Her voice was even and unemotional. 'He got a phone call on his cell. He took the call back in my bedroom. I didn't hear what was said and I didn't ask. But he was agitated when he came out of the bedroom, for real. He said he had to go out. He said he was going to a bar or something to grab a beer, that he needed to get out of the apartment and think. I didn't think it was a good idea, what with him already having been drinkin' and all, and I told him so. He told me not to worry. He kissed me and he kissed Kia on the top of the head, and then he left. Two hours later, I got a call from Chris's mother telling me he was dead.'

Strange sat back in his chair. 'Chris had some brutality complaints in his file. He ever talk about that?'

'Yes,' said Renee. 'He told me he had to get rough with suspects sometimes, but he said he never went off on someone didn't deserve it. And yes, he had been drinking heavily the night he was killed, just like they said. The newspapers and the TV and his own department, they can paint their pictures any way they want. None of that explains why he was murdered. Bottom line is, if that white cop hadn't come up on the scene, Chris would be alive today.'

'That white cop didn't know Chris was a policeman,' said Strange. 'He saw a man with a gun-'

'He saw a black man with a gun,' said Renee. 'And you and I both know that's why Chris is dead.'

Strange didn't reply. He wasn't certain that on some basic level she was wrong.

Strange leaned forward and touched Kia's cheek. 'That your baby, pretty little girl?'

'My baby,' said Kia.

'I hope I helped you,' said Renee.

'You did,' said Strange. 'Thank you for your time.'

Strange sat at the downstairs bar of the Purple Cactus, sipping a ginger ale, watching the crowd. It was mostly young white money in here, new money and livin'-off-the-interest kind of money as well. The waitresses and bar staff were pretty young women and pretty boys, working with a kind of rising intensity, serving the early, preshow dinner patrons who were just now beginning to flow through the doors. The dining room chairs were hard, and triangles and other geometric designs hung on the walls. Dim spot lamps brought an onstage focus to each table, so the patrons could be 'seen' while eating the overpriced cuisine.

Upon its opening, the Cactus had been touted in the Post's dining guide and in Washingtonian, and had become 'the place' for that particular year. Strange had come here once when he was trying to impress a woman on a first date, always a mistake. He had dropped a hundred and twenty-five on three appetizers, portioned to leave a small dog hungry, and a couple of drinks. Then the waiter, another bright-eyed boy with bleached-blond hair, had the nerve to come out with a dessert tray, and try to get them to sample a 'decadent,' twelve-dollars-a-slice chocolate cake that was, he said with a practiced smile, 'architecturally brilliant.' It had ruined Strange's night to feel that used. And to make things worse, the woman he was with, she hadn't even given him any play.

A waiter wearing a thin line of beard came up to the service end of the bar and said to the bartender, 'Absolut and tonic with a lemon twist,' then added, 'Did you see that tourist with the hair at my four-top? Oh my God, what is she, on chemo or something?' The waitress standing next to him, also waiting on a drink and arranging her checks, said, 'Charlie, keep your voice down, the customers will hear you.'

'Oh, fuck the customers,' said Charlie, dressing his vodka tonic with a swizzle stick as it arrived.

Strange wondered how a place like this could stay in business. But he knew: people came here because they were told to come here, knowing full well that it was a rip-off, too. Same reason they read the books their friends read, and went to movies about convicts hijacking airplanes and asteroids headed for earth. Didn't matter that none of it was any good. No one wanted to be left out of the conversation at the next cocktail party. Everyone was desperate to be a part of what was new, to not be left behind.

'You okay here?' asked the bartender, a clear-eyed blonde with nice skin.

'Fine,' said Strange. 'I do have a question, though. You remember a guy used to work here, name of Ricky Kane? Trying to locate him for a friend.'

'I'm new,' said the bartender.

'I remember Ricky,' said Charlie the waiter, still standing by the service bar. Would be like old Charlie, thought Strange, to listen in on someone's conversation and make a comment about it when he wasn't being spoken to.

'He's not working here any longer, is he?' said Strange, forcing a friendly smile.

'He doesn't need to anymore,' said Charlie. 'Not after all that money he got from the settlement.' Charlie side-glanced the brunette waitress beside him. 'Course, he never did need to work here, did he?'

'Cause old Ricky had his income set up from dealin' drugs, it suddenly occurred to Strange.

'Charlie,' admonished the waitress.

Charlie chuckled and hurried off with his drink tray. The bartender served the brunette waitress her drinks and said, 'Here you go, Lenna.'

After Lenna thanked her, the bartender came back to stand in front of Strange. 'Another ginger ale?'

'Just the check,' said Strange, 'and a receipt.'

Strange walked around the corner and four blocks up Vermont Avenue, then took the steps down to Stan's, a basement bar he frequented now and again. It was smoky and crowded with locals, a racial mix of middle-class D.C. residents, most of them in their middle age. Going past some loud tables, he heard a man call his name.

'Derek, how you doin'!'

'Ernest,' said Strange. It was Ernest James from the neighborhood, wearing a suit and seated with a woman.

'Heard your business was doin' good, man.'

'I'm doin' all right.'

'You see anything of Donald Lindsay?' asked James.

'Heard Donald passed.'

'Uh-uh, man, he's still out there.'

'Well, I ain't seen him.' Strange nodded and smiled at Johnson's lady. 'Excuse me, y'all, let me get up on over to this bar and have myself a drink.'

'All right, then, Derek.'

'All right.'

Strange ordered a Johnnie Walker Red and soda at the bar. At Stan's, they served the liquor to the lip of the glass, with the miniature mixer on the side, the way they used to at the old Royal Warrant and the Round Table on the other side of town. When Strange felt like having one real drink, and being around regular people, he came here.

Sipping his scotch, he felt himself notch down. He talked to a man beside him about the new Redskins quarterback, who had come over from the Vikings, and what the 'Skins needed to do to win. The man was near Strange's age, and he recalled seeing Bobby Mitchell play, and the talk drifted to other players and the old Jurgensen-led squad.

'Fight for old D.C.,' said the man, with a wink.

'Fight for old Dixie, you mean.'

'You remember that?' said the man.

'That and a lot of other things. Shame some of these young folks out here, talkin' about nigga this and nigga that, don't remember those things, too.'

'Some of our people get all upset 'cause the word's in Webster's dictionary, but they hear it from the mouths of their own sons and daughters and grandkids, and they let it pass.'

'Uh-huh. How are white people gonna know not to use that word when our own young people don't know it their own got-damn selves?'

'I heard that.'

Strange's beeper sounded. He read the numbers, excused himself, went to the pay phones back by the bathrooms, and made a call. It was Quinn on the other end of the line.

'Lookin' forward to it,' said Strange, when Quinn was done talking.

'Us too,' said Quinn. 'Where should we meet?' Strange told him, racked the phone, and checked his wristwatch. He paid his tab, bought the man at the bar another round, and left Stan's.

At his row house, Strange dumped all the matchbooks and the photograph of Sondra Wilson onto his office desk, went through his mail, and changed into sweats. He went down to his basement, where a heavy bag hung from the steel beams of the ceiling, and listened to the soundtrack of Guns for San Sebastian on his boom box while he worked the bag. He fed Greco, then stripped off his damp clothing and went to take a shower. If he hurried, he'd have time to visit his mother at the home before picking up Janine for the fights.