The Double

Seven

Handy’s garage was located on a service road behind a strip center on the Cottage City side of Bladensburg Road, not far from the Anacostia River, which stretched up into Prince George’s County, Maryland. Lucas had ridden his bike along the river and paddled it many times, but this commercial section of fast-food, Chinese/steak-and-cheese, Laundromats, and check-cashing establishments was unfamiliar to him.

Lucas parked his Jeep in a small lot crowded with older vehicles, mostly GM products: Cutlasses, Caprice Classics, Regals, and Grand Nationals. The lot edged a set of open bay doors. Two men worked on cars in the bay. One was tall with gray hair. He was holding a crescent wrench and looking at the undercarriage of a cream-colored Deville that was up on lifts. The other man was heavyset with a moon-shaped face. He was gunning the lug nuts off a half-ton GMC truck that was the sister to the Chevy Silverado. It was a hot day and both wore long pants and long-sleeve shirts rolled back off the wrists, and they looked to be suffering in the heat. Lucas recalled his father’s words: “That’s why they call it work.”

An old Kool and the Gang track circa Wild and Peaceful played trebly from a boom box that looked like it had been through a paintball fight. Lucas’s brother Leo had called the group Kook and the Gang when he was a kid. Leo was a good English teacher but he had always mangled his words.

“Excuse me,” said Lucas, staying outside the bay doors, observing mechanic’s protocol. Walking into a garage unannounced was akin to boarding someone’s boat without permission.

“What can I do for you?” said the gray-haired man.

“I was looking to talk to Brian Dodson,” said Lucas. “He around?”

Eye contact passed between the gray-haired man and the moonfaced man, and Lucas caught it.

“I’m Handy,” said the gray-haired man. “That Cherokee givin you any trouble?”

“I take good care of it.”

“They get a little funny on the back end after a while. And I bet your check engine light is on, too.”

“It is,” said Lucas. “It stays on. That’s just an issue with air getting into the gas cap. These years had that quirk.”

“So you don’t need repair work done?”

“No. I’m just looking to get up with Brian Dodson.”

“I’m Dodson,” said the moonfaced man, and he laid down the lug gun, picked up a shop rag, and walked out of the bay into the hot sunlight. He stood before Lucas and looked down on him. Dodson was a tall man with broad shoulders and back.

“I’m an investigator. My name’s Spero Lucas.”

Lucas put his hand out. Dodson wiped his hands on the shop rag and made no comment or movement to reciprocate. His eyes were flat and devoid of any emotion.

“I’m here regarding the death of Edwina Christian. I understand the two of you dated. Is that correct?”

“You’re not with Homicide.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Homicide police don’t dress like you,” said Dodson, looking over Lucas’s blue Dickies, white T, and Nike boots.

“I work for an attorney,” said Lucas, leaving out the fact that Petersen was a defender. “Mr. Dodson, I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

“You ain’t gonna take no minutes of my time,” said Dodson, and he turned and walked back into the bay, where he dropped the greasy rag to the concrete and picked up his lug gun.

Lucas stood with his hands by his side.

“You might just want to get a new gas cap, on account of it’ll give you a better seal,” said Handy, helpfully and with good cheer. “That is if the check engine light bothers you.”

“It doesn’t,” said Lucas. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Don’t cost nothin,” said Handy.

Lucas went back to his Jeep and drove away.

He parked in the strip center and let his truck idle. He called Marquis Rollins’s cell and got him on the third ring.

“Marquis.”

“It is. Semper Fi.”

“Busy today?”

“I am right now. Hold on.” Marquis took his phone into another room and Lucas waited. “Had a date last night that turned into something good. Ethiopian lady. I’m about to take her to a late breakfast.”

“I thought you couldn’t get to first base with African women.”

“I took this gal around the bases.”

“She blind or something?”

“They say it heightens the other senses. Taste, touch, feel... and voice, too, if that’s a sense. When I got her there, you shoulda heard her calling out, with that accent of hers.”

“She was calling for help, most likely. Will you be available late in the afternoon?”

“What you got in mind?”

Lucas told him, where and when.

He had time, so he drove back into D.C. and over to North Capitol Street, the dividing line between the Northeast and Northwest quadrants of the city. He parked above Florida Avenue, where the neighborhoods of Bloomingdale, Eckington, and LeDroit Park were in the midst of a turnaround that was unlikely and nearly unbelievable to seasoned observers of the District’s renaissance. People with vision and money had been buying up row houses here in the past ten, fifteen years, putting down roots alongside longtime residents, and on North Capitol entrepreneurs both homegrown and immigrant had been opening up businesses and retail establishments that were not liquor stores, Chinese Plexiglas palaces, or check-cashing fleece operations. The area was moving in a forward direction, as was the city, a resurgence that started with the administration of Mayor Anthony Williams. Homicides were down, even in the poorer sections of town, and real estate values were up. More people were employed, making money, and issuing their children into the culture of work by example.

With this came negatives as well. Culturally, in Lucas’s lifetime, Washington had been a black city with a Southern feel, but blacks would soon represent less than fifty percent of the population. Chocolate City was not coming back, and neither were generations of locals who had sold their homes, many for a large profit, and moved to PG, Charles, and Montgomery counties.

Coming in, Lucas noticed that his favorite mural in the city, on the side of a funeral home at Randolph Place and North Capitol, N.W., had been replaced. The old mural depicted Jesus reaching out to a man who was on the ground, with the words, “Don’t look down on a man... unless you gonna pick him up.” To Lucas the painting had always represented what was good about D.C. The new mural showed a vaguely spiritual figure carrying a depleted man in his arms on a beach as waves roll violently in toward the shore. It looked like an ad for suntan oil. The words read, “When it feels like you can’t go on, the Lord will carry you through the storm.” Same sentiment, different delivery. Lucas had asked a friend, a Bloomingdale resident, about the change. She said, “The man who owns the funeral home got pressure from the neighbors and a local nonprofit to get rid of the old mural. The paint was peeling. But them imposing their will and all, it didn’t smell right to me. Some folks want this whole city to look like Georgetown. What you end up with is a clean town with no character or soul.”

As E. Ethelbert Miller had written in the Washington Post, “Well, chocolate melts.”

Lucas walked south toward Florida Avenue. He checked the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates the Grant Summers e-mail address had supplied, and the attendant images on his phone that had come up on Google Maps. He passed a church and a used-furniture operation that put chairs, sofas, and tables out on the street to attract customers. On a strip that was both commercial and residential, he came upon two properties that were unoccupied, one with paper taped inside its windows. Both properties displayed a real estate sign showing the same broker’s name and phone number. He was in the general vicinity of the coordinates. This IP address lookup wasn’t on the nose, but it usually yielded fairly accurate results. The broker was a man named Abraham Woldu. Lucas recognized the surname as Ethiopian or Eritrean.

He rang up Woldu, told him his name, told him he’d like to speak to him about his vacant properties on North Capitol. Woldu agreed to meet Lucas there the next day.

Lucas swung around on North Capitol, went up Lincoln Road, and drove under the arches of Glenwood Cemetery, located several blocks north, in Northeast. He found his father’s grave, near a drop-off to a short residential block of descending row homes on a street called Evarts, in the neighborhood of Stronghold. He no longer brought flowers to his baba’s resting place, preferring to give them to his mother when he saw her in Silver Spring. But he still came here often, even knowing it was an illogical act. The visits were for him, not his dad. He said a silent prayer, did his stavro, and got on his way.

Before meeting Marquis back in Cottage City, Lucas went over to Fish in the Neighborhood, on the 3600 block of Georgia, in Park View, and got some takeout sandwiches. Formerly known as Fish in the Hood, the owner had recently altered the name to reflect the changing demographics of his customer base. But the product was the same. Lucas ordered fried catfish for Marquis, trout for himself, with tartar and extra hot sauce, and a side of their signature mac and cheese. He drove back across town and into Maryland.

Marquis was in his late-model Buick sedan, idling with the air-conditioning on, when Lucas found him in the strip center in Cottage City. He was wearing one of the pajama-style outfits he was fond of, the multicolored fabric falling loosely around the titanium pole that was his left leg. A New Balance sneaker was fitted on the end of the pole.

“Thanks for this,” said Marquis, swallowing a mouthful of catfish, lettuce, tomato, and tarter. “I suppose you want a hug or something.”

“And a piece of chocolate on my pillow,” said Lucas.

“I’ll smash your face into your pillow. How ’bout that?”

“You’re so butch.”

“Why you need me on this?”

“On account of this guy Dodson burned my Jeep.”

“You just want me to tail him?”

“See where he goes when he gets off work.”

“I can do that.”

Lucas looked over Marquis’s outfit. “What, was Hugh Hefner having a yard sale?”

“You just don’t know how to dress. I bet you get your clothes at Sears and Roebucks, and shit.”

“As matter of fact, I do.”

“Looking like a custodian or something.”

“That wasn’t the idea,” said Lucas. “But I’ll take it.”

They saw a Buick Grand National come around the corner of the service road. Lucas recognized the hulking Dodson behind the wheel.

“That’s him,” said Lucas.

“Those mechanics do love those GNs.”

“Looks like an eighty-six or — seven.”

“Got the intercooled engine, brah. We gonna need a rocket to catch up.”

Marquis shoved the rest of his sandwich into its bag and pulled out of his space in the lot.

“Don’t get too close,” said Lucas.

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“I’m sayin, we look like police.”

“I look like police,” said Marquis. “You look like the dude who cleans my car.”