Right as Rain

25

Strange woke from a nap in the early evening. His bedroom was dark, and he flicked on a light. Greco, lying on a throw-rug at the foot of the bed, lifted his head from his paws and slowly wagged his tail.

'Hungry, buddy?' said Strange. 'All right, then. Let this old man get on up out of this bed.'

After Strange fed Greco, he listened to the soundtrack of A Pistol for Ringo as he sat at his desk and went through the matchbooks spilled across it: Sea D.C., the Purple Cactus, the Jefferson Street Lounge, the Bank Vault on 9th, the Shaw Lounge on U, Kinnison's on Pennsylvania Avenue, Robert Farrelly's in Georgetown, and many others. These were Chris Wilson's matchbooks; Wilson knew.

Strange reached for the phone on the desk and called the Purple Cactus. He got the information he needed and racked the receiver. Strange rubbed his face and then his eyes.

He stripped himself out of his clothes. He took a shower and changed into a black turtleneck and slacks, then phoned the woman named Helen. Helen was busy that night and on the upcoming weekend. He called another woman he knew, but this woman did not pick up her phone.

Strange got into his black leather, slipped a few items into its pockets, patted Greco on the head, and left his house. He drove his Cadillac downtown, listening to Live It Up all the way, repeating 'Hello It's Me,' because he really liked the Isleys' arrangement of that song. He parked on 14th at H, walked to the K Street intersection, and entered Sea D.C.

The dining room and the dining balcony were full, and the patrons were three deep at the elevated bar. Many were smoking cigarettes and cigars. A narrow-shouldered manager with a tiny mustache was trying to get a group of men, all of them smoking, to step closer in toward the bar. His emotional, exasperated, high-pitched voice was making the men laugh. A television mounted above the call racks was set on the stock market report, and some of the fellows at the bar were staring up at the ticker symbols and figures traveling right to left across the screen as they sipped their drinks.

Strange politely muscled his way into a position at the end of the stick. White people, in a setting like this one, generally let a black man do whatever he wanted to do.

Strange waited for a while and finally caught the bartender's eye. The bartender was trim, clean shaven, and of medium height. He had a false smile, and he flashed it at Strange as he leaned on the bar and placed one hand palm down on the mahogany.

'What can I get ya, friend?' said the bartender.

'Ricky Kane,' said Strange, giving the bartender the same kind of smile.

'What, is that a drink?'

Strange placed his hand over the back of the bartender's hand. He ground his thumb into the nerve located in the fleshy triangle between the bartender's thumb and forefinger. The color drained from the bartender's face.

'Saw you talkin' to Ricky Kane yesterday,' said Strange, still smiling, keeping his voice even and light. 'I'm an investigator, friend. You want me to, I'll pull my ID and show it to you right here. Show it to your manager, too.'

The bartender's Adam's apple bobbed, and he issued a short shake of his head.

'I don't want you,' said Strange, 'but I don't give a fuck about you, understand? What I want to know is, was Ricky Kane hooked up with Sondra Wilson?'

'Sondra?'

'Sondra Wilson. She worked here, case you've forgotten.'

'I don't know… maybe he was. He picked her up once at closing time when she was working here, but she didn't work here all that long. She lasted, like, a week.'

'She get fired?'

'She had attendance problems,' said the bartender, his eyes going down to the stick. 'My hand.'

'Barkeep!' yelled a guy wearing suspenders, from the other end of the bar.

Strange said, 'Kane and Sondra Wilson.'

'He met her over at Kinnison's, that seafood restaurant over near George Washington. She was working at Kinnison's before she came here. He was a waiter over there before he took the gig at the Cactus.'

'Bartender!'

Strange leaned forward. 'You tell Kane or anyone else I came by, I'm gonna send my people in here and shut this motherfucker down. Put you in the D.C. Jail in one of those orange jumpsuits they got, in a cell with some real men. You understand what I'm tellin' you, friend?'

The bartender nodded. Strange released him. He bumped a woman as he turned and he said, 'Excuse me.' He unglued the smile that was on his face, shifting his shoulders under his leather jacket as he went out the door.

Strange went over to Stan's on Vermont Avenue and ordered a Johnnie Walker Red with a side of soda. The tender was playing Johnnie Taylor's 'Disco Lady' on the house system, the one that had Bootsy Collins on session bass. Strange liked the flow of that song. A man took a seat next to him at the bar.

'Strange, how you doin'?'

'Doin' good, Junie, how you been?'

'All right. You look a little worn down, man, you don't mind my sayin' so. You all right?'

Strange looked at his reflection in the bar mirror. He took a cocktail napkin from a stack and wiped sweat from his face.

'I'm fine,' said Strange. 'Little hot in this joint, is all it is.'

Strange sat at the downstairs bar of the Purple Cactus. There were several empty tables in the dining area of the restaurant, and Strange was alone at the bar. The smiles and relaxation on the faces of the waitstaff told him that the evening rush had ended.

Strange ordered a bottle of beer and drank it slowly. The brunette named Lenna, the sensible girl with the intelligent eyes he'd seen on his earlier visit, was working tonight. He knew she'd be here; he'd phoned earlier to confirm it. Strange caught her eye as she dressed a cocktail with fruit and a swizzle stick down at the service end of the bar. The woman smiled at him before placing the drink on a round tray with several others. Strange smiled back.

The next time she passed behind him he swiveled on his stool and said, 'Pardon me.'

She stopped and said, 'Yes?'

'Your name is Lenna, right?'

She brushed a strand of hair off her face. 'That's right.'

Strange handed her a cocktail napkin with the words 'one hundred dollars' printed in ink across it.

'I don't understand,' she said.

'It's yours for real if you give me fifteen minutes of your time.'

'Now wait a minute,' she said, making the 'stop' sign with her palm, but he could see from her crooked smile that she was more curious than annoyed.

'I'm an investigator,' said Strange, and he flipped open his wallet to show her his license. 'Private, not police.'

'What's this about?'

'Ricky Kane.'

'Forget it.'

'I'm not lookin' to get you or anyone you work with in any trouble. This isn't about him or what he does here. You've got my word.'

Lenna crossed her arms and looked around the room.

'Meet me at the upstairs bar,' said Strange. 'I'm gonna double your take tonight for fifteen minutes of conversation. And I'll buy the drinks.'

'I've got to close out my last table,' said Lenna, not meeting his eyes.

'Half hour,' said Strange.

Strange watched her drift. Prostitutes and junkies were the best informants on the street. Waitresses, bartenders, UPS drivers, and laborers were pretty good, too. They cost a little more, but whatever the cost, Strange had learned that most people, the ones who knew the value of a dollar, had a price.

'How long did Ricky work here?' said Strange.

'Not too long,' said Lenna. 'The incident with the police officer happened about a month after he came. The settlement came pretty quickly after that, and then he was gone.'

Strange hit his beer, and Lenna took a sip of hers. Her eyes were a pale shade of brown, her lips thick and lush. She had changed into her street clothes and combed out her shoulder-length, shiny brown hair. Strange noticed she had sprayed some kind of perfume on as well.

'What'd you think when it went down? Given that you knew Kane was dealing drugs, did you have any doubts about what you read in the papers? Did you think that maybe there was something else going on that night that they had missed?'

'Sure, it crossed my mind.' Lenna looked around her. The nearest couple was seated four stools down the bar, and the tender was working under a dim light by the register. 'A few of us talked about it between ourselves. Look, I put myself through undergrad waiting tables, and this place has financed half of my grad school tuition so far. Over the years I've worked at some of the most popular restaurants in this city. You got any kind of late-night bar business, you're gonna have someone on the payroll, whether you're aware of it or not, who's a drug source for the staff and the customers. A restaurant has a natural client base, and a bar's about the safest place you can cop. I mean, it's not unusual or anything like that, given the environment.

'And then there's the perception most of the people in this city have of the police. What I'm saying is, you're talking about two different issues here. Ricky Kane was a dealer, but nobody really believed he had been stopped that night for selling drugs. He probably got stopped and hassled for urinating in the street, just like they said. The feeling was, it could have been any of us out there. At one time or another, we've all had some kind of negative experience with the police.'

'All right. How you feel about him now, then?'

'What do you mean?'

'Old Ricky is still comin' in here, doin' business. He was in here yesterday, taking orders, right?'

'I told you I wasn't going to talk about my co-workers and friends. They want to get involved with Ricky, it's their business, not mine.'

'You must have an opinion about what he's doing, though, right?'

Lenna nodded, looking at the glass of beer in her hand. 'I don't like Ricky. I don't like what he does. I'm no user now, but I walked through that door when I was younger. For me it was coke. Now it's heroin for the younger ones and the after-hours crowd. That's the low ride down. The ones who are using it don't know it or won't admit it, but there it is. Anyway, like I say, it's none of my business. Anything else?'

'One more thing.' Strange slipped the photograph of Sondra Wilson from his leather. 'You recognize this woman? Ever see her with Kane?'

'No,' said Lenna, after examining it closely. 'Not exactly.'

'What's that mean, not exactly?'

Lenna shrugged. 'Ricky liked light-skinned black women, exclusively. She fits the bill. None of them had grass growing under their feet, I can tell you that. I don't recall ever seeing him with the same one twice.'

Strange took a long pull off his beer. He set the bottle on the bar and slipped five folded twenties into Lenna's palm. 'I guess that's it. Sorry if I insulted you earlier. I didn't mean to imply that I was offering you money for something else.'

Lenna shook hair off her shoulder and smiled, the light from the bar candle reflecting in her eyes. 'You're a handsome man. I noticed you when you were in the other night, as a matter of fact. I was kind of hoping it was something else.'

'I'm flattered,' said Strange. 'To be honest with you, though, I'm spoken for.'

'I understand.' Lenna got off her stool and drained her beer standing. 'Nice to meet you.'

'And you.'

He watched her leave the restaurant and walk north on 14th. Strange finished his beer, realizing that he was hungry, and maybe a little drunk. Lenna was a good-looking young woman, and he was feeling the need. And it always was nice to get hit on by a woman twenty-five years his junior. These days, it happened less and less. But this Lenna girl didn't interest him. The truth of it was, white women had never been to his taste.