Right as Rain

24

Quinn woke up on Tuesday morning in the bedroom of his apartment and sat up on the edge of his mattress, which lay directly on the floor. There was a footlocker in his room and a nightstand he had bought at a consignment shop, with a lamp and an alarm clock on the nightstand and four or five paperback westerns stacked beside the clock. There were no pictures or posters of any kind on the bedroom walls.

Quinn rubbed his temples. He had downed a couple of beers at the Quarry House the night before, then walked by Rosita's, but Juana was not on shift. He went down to his apartment on Sligo Avenue, phoned her and left a message on her machine, and waited a while for her to call him back. But she did not call him back, and he left the apartment and walked down the street to the Tradesmen's Tavern, where he shot a game of pool and drank two more bottles of Budweiser, then returned to his place. Juana had not phoned.

Quinn made coffee and toast in his narrow kitchen, then changed into sweats and went down to the basement of the apartment building, where he had set up a weight bench and a mirror and mats, and had hung a jump rope on a nail driven into the cinder-block wall. The resident manager had allowed him this space if he agreed to share the exercise equipment with the other tenants. A handful of black kids and a Spanish or two from nearby apartment buildings found out about the basement and occasionally worked out with Quinn. He often helped them, if they were not the kind of boys with smart mouths and attitudes, and sometimes he even learned their names. Mostly, though, he worked out down here alone.

After his shower, Quinn went to the bottom drawer of his dresser and retrieved the nine-millimeter Glock he had purchased several months earlier after a conversation with a man at the bar of a local tavern off Georgia. He took the gun apart and used his Alsa kit to clean it, then reassembled the weapon. He had no logical reason to own the Glock, he knew. But he had felt naked and incomplete since he'd turned in his service weapon when he left the force. Cops got used to having guns, and he felt good knowing there was one within reach now. He replaced the Glock in its case, which sat alongside a gun belt he had purchased at a supply house in Springfield, over the river.

He watched a little television but quickly turned it off. Quinn phoned Strange at the office and got Janine.

'He's out, Terry.'

'Can you beep him?'

'Sure, I'll try. But he might be into something, you know, where he can't get back to me right away.'

Quinn heard something false and a bit of regret in Janine's voice.

'Let him know I'm looking for him, Janine. Thanks a lot.'

Quinn got off the phone. Juana had been avoiding him since Saturday night. Now it seemed like Strange was ducking him, too.

Strange stood before Janine's desk.

'Ron call in?' he said.

'He's out there working a couple of skips. They should bring some money into the till this week.'

'Good. You go to the bank for me?'

'Here,' said Janine, handing Strange a small envelope. 'Two hundred in twenties, like you asked.'

'Thanks. I'm gonna be out all day. It's an emergency, you know how to get ahold of me. Otherwise, just take messages here, and I'll check in from time to time.'

'You're puttin' all your focus into this Wilson case.'

'I'm almost there. Pick up those photographs I put in yesterday, will you? And phone Lydell Blue for me, tell him I might be callin' him for another favor.'

'You keeping track of your hours, Derek? Your expenses?'

'Yeah, I'm doin' all that.'

Janine crossed her arms, sat back in her chair. 'I didn't like lying to Terry like that.'

'You're just doin' what I told you to do. The next couple of days, I got to work this thing by myself. It's too tricky for two. Time comes, I'll bring him back in.'

Strange went for the door.

'Derek?'

Strange turned. 'Yeah.'

'This weekend was nice. It was nice waking up next to you, I mean. Good for Lionel, too. The three of us going out for breakfast on Sunday morning, it was like a family-'

'All right, Janine. I'll see you later, hear?'

Out on 9th, Strange buttoned his leather against the chill and walked toward his Caprice, passing Hawk's barber shop, and Marshall's funeral parlor, and the lunch counter that had the 'Meat' sign out front. He thought of Janine and what she'd said. She was right, the weekend had been pretty nice. Knowing she was right scared him some, too.

Strange decided that he ought to call that woman named Helen, the one he'd met in a club over Christmas, see if she wanted to hook up for a drink. He'd been meaning to get up with her, but lately, busy as he was, the girl had just slipped his mind.

Strange parked the Caprice on North Capitol, near the Florida Avenue intersection, and walked east. He walked for a while, and as he approached Coleman's street he picked up a handful of dirt and rubbed it on his face, then bent over and rubbed some on his oilskin workboots. He had upcombed his hair back in the car. He wore an old corduroy jacket he kept folded in the trunk.

On the street he began to pass some of Coleman's young men. He put a kind of shuffle in his step, and he didn't look at them, he looked straight ahead. He passed a crackhead who asked him for money, and he kept walking, toward the warehouse surrounded by the broken yellow tape. Today, the cop cruiser was not on the street. He walked over a large mound of dirt, stumbling deliberately as he came down off the other side, and he headed for a hole in the warehouse wall. He stepped through the hole.

The room was large, its space broken by I beams, bird shit, and puddled water on the concrete floor. Pigeons nested on the tops of the I beams, and some flew overhead. Strange liked birds, but not when they were flying around indoors. He kept the dead look in his eyes, staring ahead, as he heard the flap of their wings.

From the shadows of his room, Tonio Morris watched the broad-shouldered brother come into the main room of the first floor, mumbling what Tonio recognized as an early rap off a Gil Scott-Heron LP he'd owned once and sold. The man, square in his middle age, was moving slow and had a zero kind of look on his face like he had the sickness, and he was dirty and wearin' fucked up clothes, but he wasn't who he was tryin' to appear to be. Tonio had lived it and lived around it for too long. He knew.

Tonio watched the brother cross the room, mumbling to himself, sloshing through the deep puddles without bothering to pick up his feet, heading for the stairs. He wasn't no cop. No cop would come in this motherfucker right here alone. The man wanted somethin', thought Tonio. Had to want it bad to come into a place like this, too.

'Kent State,' said Strange, 'Jackson State…'

Strange neared a young man at the bottom of the stairs who was holding an automatic pistol at his side. The young man looked him over as he passed, and Strange slowly went up the exposed steps. He mumbled the spoken verse to 'H2Ogate Blues' under his breath; he knew the entire piece by heart, and reciting it allowed him to ramble on without having to think about what he would say, and it calmed his nerves.

'The chaining and gagging of Bobby Seale,' said Strange. 'Someone tell these Maryland governors to be for real!'

He was upstairs in a hall and followed the sounds of muted chatter and activity to a bathroom facility with open stalls. A man yelled something in his direction, and he kept walking, taking measured breaths through his mouth, steeling himself against the stench. Candles illuminated the stalls. The floor was slick with excrement and vomit. He came to the last stall, which was occupied by a man in a sweater, the cuffs of which completely covered his hands. The man, a skeleton covered in skin, was smiling at Strange, and Strange turned around and headed back the way he'd come. There was nothing here, no one to talk to or see, nothing at all.

The brother was back in the main room, heading toward the hole he'd come through, pigeons fluttering above his head. Walking slow but not as slow as before, Tonio Morris thinking, he didn't find nothin', and now he's fixin' to get out quick.

'Psst,' said Tonio, his face half out of the shadows of his room. 'Got what you're lookin' for, brother.'

The man slowed his pace but he didn't stop or turn his head.

'Got information for you, man.' Tonio wiggled his index finger, keeping his voice low. 'Come on over here and get it, brother. Ain't gonna hurt you none to find out. Come on.'

Strange turned and regarded a sick little man standing in the open doorway of a black room. The man wore a filthy gray sweatshirt, and his trousers were held up loosely with a length of rope. His shoes were split completely, separated from the uppers at the soles.

Strange walked toward the man, stopping beside a large puddle by an I beam six feet from the doorway. The I beam blocked the sight line of the young man standing by the stairs. Strange stared at the skinny man's face; his eyes were milky and glaucomic. Over the years he'd seen this death mask many times on the faces of those who were ready to pass, when he visited his mother at the home.

'What do you want?' said Strange, keeping his voice low.

'What I want? To get high. Higher than a motherfucker, man, but I need money for that. You got any money?'

Strange didn't answer.

'Suck your dick for ten dollars,' said Morris. 'Shit, I'll suck that motherfucker good for five.'

Strange turned his head and looked back toward the hole in the wall.

'Hold up, man,' said Morris. 'The name is Tonio.'

'I ask you your name?'

'You lookin' for somethin', right? Something or someone, ain't that right. Any fool can see you ain't one of us. You tryin', but you ain't. You can dirty yourself all you want, but you still got your body and you still got your eyes. So what you lookin' for, brother. Huh?'

Strange shifted his posture. Water dripped from an opening in the ceiling and dimpled the puddle pooled beside his right foot.

'White boy come in here yesterday afternoon,' said Strange. 'Don't imagine you get too many of those.'

'Not too many.'

'Skinny white boy with a knit cap, tryin' to be down.'

'I know him. I seen him, man; I see everything. You got money for Tonio, man?'

'This white boy, what's he doin' in here? Is he slammin' it upstairs?'

'The white boy ain't no fiend.'

'What, then? What kind of business he got with Coleman?'

'Do I look crazy to you? I ain't know a motherfuckin' thing about no Coleman, and if I did, I still don't know a thing.'

Strange pulled folded twenties from his wallet. He peeled one off, crumpled it in a ball, and tossed it to the floor at Morris's feet. Morris picked the bill up quickly and jammed it in the pocket of his trousers.

'What was the white boy doin' in here?' said Strange.

'Lookin' for a girl,' said Morris. 'A friend of mine. Old friend to him, too.'

Strange's blood ticked. 'A girl?'

'Girl named Sondra,' said Morris.

'This girl got a last name?' said Strange, his voice hoarse and odd to his own ears.

'She got one. I don't know it.'

'This her right here?'

Strange pulled the photograph of Sondra Wilson from his corduroy jacket, held it up for Morris to see. Morris nodded, his mouth twitching involuntarily. Strange slipped the picture back into his pocket.

'He find her?' asked Strange.

'Huh?'

'Is she here?'

Morris licked his dry lips and pointed his chin at the bankroll in Strange's hand. Strange crumpled another twenty and dropped it on the floor.

Morris smiled. His teeth were black stubs, raisins stuck loosely in rotted gums. 'What'sa matter, brother? You don't want to touch my hands?'

'Where is she?'

'Sondra gone, man.'

'Where is she?' repeated Strange.

'Two white men took her out of here, not too long ago. Little crosseyed motherfucker and an old man. I don't know 'em. I don't know their names. And I don't know where they went.'

Strange didn't speak. He balled and unballed one fist.

'They're comin' back,' said Morris playfully.

'How you know that?'

'Word gets out in here… The ones across the street, that one by the stairs… they know when we be gettin' too hungry. They tell us when we're about to be fed. And we are about to be fed. Those white men are bringin' it in.'

'When?'

'Tomorrow. Leastways, that's what I hear.'

Strange reached into his breast pocket and withdrew one more folded twenty. Morris held his hand out, but Strange did not fill it.

'What do you know about the girl?'

'The white boy, he used to bring her with him when he made his visits. He'd take her with him to that place across the street. One day he left her in there. She was across the street for a few weeks, comin' and goin' in those pretty-ass cars. A month, maybe, like that. Then she made her way over here. She kept her own stall up there on the second floor. But she never did make it back across the street.'

'You know what time those two white men are coming back tomorrow?'

'No,' said Morris, looking sadly at the twenty, still in Strange's possession.

Strange placed the bill in Morris's outstretched hand. 'You see me around here again, you don't know me, 'less I tell you that you know me. Understand?'

'Know who?'

Strange nodded. Most likely he'd just given that junkie more money than he'd seen at one time in the last few years.

Strange turned and shuffled off toward the hole from which he'd entered. There was a racing in his veins, and he could feel the beat of his own heart. It was difficult for him to move so slowly. But he managed, and soon he was out in the light.