The Man Who Came Uptown

One

When Antonius thought of all the things they’d done wrong the day of the robbery, wearing hoodies might have been at the top of the list. Considering that it was ninety degrees out, four men in heavy, dark sweatshirts were bound to attract attention. Might even be the reason the armored-car guard drew on them first when he was coming out the drugstore. That and the fact that all of them were tooled up. Course, if Antonius and his boys hadn’t smoked all that tree before the job, they might have thought the sweatshirts through. The sweatshirts, and the vanity plates on the getaway car. The plates were high up on that list too.

Antonius, braids touching his shoulders, sat back in his chair and maintained eye contact with the investigator seated across the table. Antonius was in the number one seat in the interview room, the inmate’s spot, his back to a cream-colored wall. As he was currently housed in solitary, his legs were manacled. Other inmates were in various glassed-in rooms around them, talking to their lawyers, their girlfriends, their mothers, their wives. A guard sat in a nearby office, watching them. An alarm button had been mounted by the door of every room in the event that guard intervention was needed. Conversations here sometimes got amped.

“You musta been hot out in that parking lot,” said the investigator, whose name was Phil Ornazian.

Antonius looked him over. Broad-shouldered dude with short black hair and a three-day beard flecked with gray. Late thirties, early forties. Wedding band on his ring finger. Almost looked like an Arab, with his prominent nose and large brown eyes. Antonius had assumed he was Muslim when they’d first met, but Ornazian was some brand of Christian. He’d mentioned once that he and his family attended an “apostolic” church. Whatever that was.

“You think?” said Antonius. “It was August in the District.”

“The sweatshirts... whose idea was that?”

“Whose idea?”

“On the surveillance video, you guys are all standing around in winter clothing in the parking lot of the drugstore, and people are walking in and out of the store in T-shirts, polo shirts, and shorts. So I was just wondering, I was curious, who thought that was a good idea?”

It was Antonius’s lifelong friend DeAndre who had insisted they wear the black sweatshirts in the middle of a Washington summer. Hoods up, so their faces wouldn’t be caught on the cameras that were mounted on the building. DeAndre, that dumbass, never did do anything right. Boy could fuck up a birthday party at the Chuck E. Cheese.

“I don’t recall,” said Antonius.

Antonius was not trying to be difficult. He knew that Ornazian was there to assist him. The defense strategy was to paint DeAndre as the leader and decision maker of the group. To take that information into court and pull some of the shade off of Antonius. Ornazian was working for Antonius’s lawyer, Matthew Mirapaul, trying to dig up dirt that would help him when he went to trial. But Antonius wasn’t going to give up too many details about his boys, any of them, even though DeAndre had already put Antonius and the others in for the robbery. He had a code.

“Okay,” said Ornazian. “Let’s talk about your girlfriend.”

“Sherry.”

“You say you were with her at the time of the robbery.”

“We were riding in my car together. She had called me to come pick her up over at the Giant off Rhode Island Avenue, in Northeast. Sherry had just bought a rack of groceries. She phoned me at, like, two in the afternoon, and I went over there to snatch her up. I got her at, like, two thirty.”

“Why was she shopping at a Giant in Northeast when there’s two Safeways in your neighborhood?”

“She likes that Giant.”

“Anybody see you two together?”

“Nah. Not that I know. But, see, if the robbery was at three, and I was with her at two thirty, ain’t no way I could get across town to Georgia Avenue, in Northwest, in time to be involved in what went down over there. All you got to do is pull up the phone records and you’ll see that she called me at two. It proves that I wasn’t there.”

Ornazian made no comment. The phone call, of course, proved nothing of the kind. Sherry, the girlfriend, most likely had made the call, as she had been instructed to do. That, too, had been part of the plan. It was weed logic, creating an alibi through a phone call without a third-party eyewitness to corroborate the event. Unfortunately, there was no one who could testify and put Antonius and Sherry together at the time of the robbery.

Along with his own investigation, the prosecution’s discovery, and the store’s surveillance-camera footage, this is what Ornazian knew: Nearly two years earlier, on a sweltering midsummer day, an armed security guard had collected the daily cash deposits from a Rite Aid on upper Georgia Avenue and was in the process of exiting the building with canvas bags in hand. He was on the way to the company’s armored truck idling out front.

Waiting in the parking lot were four men in their early twenties, wearing black sweatshirts, hoods up, and sweating profusely. All were armed with semiautomatic handguns. The driver of the armored car could have seen one of them in his side mirror, but he was not paying attention, as, counter to company policy, he was eating the lunch he had recently purchased from the KFC/Taco Bell up near the District line.

The men in the parking lot were Antonius Roberts, DeAndre Watkins, Rico Evans, and Mike Young. They mostly spent their time in the basement of Antonius’s grandmother, who owned a house in Manor Park, where Antonius had a bed. There they smoked copious amounts of marijuana, watched conspiracy-theory documentaries on television, played video games, and made poorly produced rap videos and occasionally videos of themselves engaging in boxing and mixed martial arts matches, though none of them had studied or trained.

One afternoon someone got the idea to go over to the local drugstore on Georgia and observe the details of the daily cash pickup. They did this, stoned as Death Row rappers, for several days straight. It was always the same roly-poly dude came out with the bags, didn’t look like he’d put up any kind of fight, didn’t look like he could run or jump one foot off the ground. If you drew on him, said DeAndre, what could he do?

The guard’s name was Yohance Brown, and he was not as passive or as physically incapable as he appeared to be. Brown was ex-military and had done two combat-heavy tours of Iraq. Though he had put on weight after his return to the States, Brown took no man’s shit.

The day of the attempted robbery, the four accomplices arrived in two cars.

As Yohance Brown entered the protected entranceway of the drugstore, walled by sliding automatic glass doors front and back, he saw the hooded robbers standing in the parking lot, spaced out like gunmen in an Italian Western, holding nine-millimeter pistols tight against their thighs. As one of them raised his nine, Brown dropped the cash bags to the floor, pulled his Glock from its holster, calmly steadied his gun hand, and commenced firing. The robbers ran toward their cars, shooting over their shoulders in the direction of the store. Later, a flattened slug was found inside a Twinkie in the Rite Aid. Miraculously, no customers had been injured.

One of the robbers, Mike Young, was shot in the back by Brown. Young was later dropped off like dirty laundry outside the ER doors of Washington Hospital Center by Rico Evans, the driver of a Hyundai sedan day-rented from a Park View resident. Young survived.

Antonius and DeAndre got into an old Toyota Corolla, owned by DeAndre’s cousin Rhonda, and sped north on Georgia Avenue. Traffic cameras recorded the Corolla’s vanity plates, which read ALIZE, the brand name of a cognac-based liqueur popular in certain quadrants of the city. Later, at the Fourth District police station, officers of various races and ethnicities watched the traffic-camera footage repeatedly, laughing their asses off at the idiots who had driven a vanity-plated car to an armed robbery, laughing even harder at the word Alize. By then all the suspects had been apprehended and arrested. DeAndre Watkins quickly flipped on his friends in exchange for reduced charges. He was currently on the fourth floor of the Correctional Treatment Facility, the hot block most commonly referred to by inmates as “the snitch hive.”

“How’s Sherry doing?” said Ornazian.

“She’s a little agitated at me right now,” said Antonius. “See, I was using the phone here in the jail, called this other girl I know. I needed someone new, Phil. I been with Sherry a long time, and I can’t get sprung by the same-old. You know how that is.”

“So, you had phone sex with this girl who wasn’t your girlfriend.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I told you before, the jailhouse phones are bugged.”

“Yeah, well, you were right. The Feds recorded my conversation with this girl, then played the tape back for Sherry to make her angry. They trying to get her to testify against me, say I was in on the robbery.”

“And?”

“Sherry was madder than a mad dog,” said Antonius. “But, see, that’s my girl right there. She’ll stand tall.”

Antonius was a man with needs, maybe more than most. He was good-looking and charismatic, which hurt him more than helped him. He was currently housed in the solitary-confinement unit known as South 1. He was being punished for having sexual relations with a female guard. Inmates claimed there were only two spots in the D.C. Jail that were safe for sex or shankings, out of view of cameras. Antonius thought he had found one of the spots. He had been mistaken.

Ornazian fired up his laptop, set it on the table between them, found what he was looking for on YouTube, clicked on it, and turned the laptop around so that Antonius could see the screen. A video commenced to play. It featured Antonius, DeAndre, and several of their friends smoking blunts, boxing clumsily with their shirts off, and brandishing bottles of champagne and cognac as well as various firearms, including an AK-47. All of it set to a third-rate rap tune that they had freestyled themselves. Antonius couldn’t help but smile a little. He was feeling nostalgic for the camaraderie of his friends and a time when he was free.

“The prosecutors are going to play this for the jury,” said Ornazian.

“What’s that got to do with the robbery?”

“Nothing.”

“They just trying to assassinate my character.”

“Correct.”

Antonius shook his head ruefully. “Everybody be steppin on my dick.”

Antonius’s prospects were not good. He’d been in the jail awaiting trial for the past twenty-three months. The evidence against him was overwhelming. He was looking at twelve years in a federal joint. Lorton, the local prison over the river, had closed long ago, so he was going somewhere far away.

“How are you handling the hole?” said Ornazian.

“I don’t mind it,” said Antonius. “I got my own cell. Nobody bothers me down there. No situations, nothing like that.”

“You getting out soon?”

“They supposed to move me back to Gen Pop any day.”

“Let me ask you something. You ever come across a guy named Michael Hudson up on that unit?”

Antonius thought it over. “I know a dude goes by Hudson. Not really to speak to outside of a nod. Quiet, tall dude, keeps his hair close. Medium skin.”

“Is he clean-shaven?” said Ornazian, road-testing Antonius’s information.

“Nah, he wears a beard. Gets it full too. Heard he’s in on a rip-and-run charge. He’s waiting to go to trial.”

“That’s the guy,” said Ornazian. “Could you pass on a message to him when you get out of solitary?”

“Sure,” said Antonius. “What you want me to tell him?”

“Just tell him Phil Ornazian said, ‘Everything is going to be fine.’”

“I got you.”

“Thanks, Antonius. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.”

“Wasn’t your fault. You tried.”

Ornazian reached across the table. He and Antonius bumped fists.

Two

Men in orange jumpsuits stood in an orderly line, waiting patiently to talk to a woman who was seated at a desk bolted to the jailhouse floor. On the desk was a paper circulation log, a stack of DCPL book receipts, and a pen. Beside the desk was a rolling cart with shelves holding books. The cell doors of the General Population unit had been opened remotely by a guard in a glassed-in station that was known as “the fishbowl.” Two other guards were stationed in the unit, observing the proceedings, bored and disengaged. There was no need for them to be on high alert. When the book lady was on the block, the atmosphere was calm.

The woman at the desk was the mobile librarian of the D.C. Jail. The men addressed her as Anna, or Miss Anna if they were raised a certain way. On the job she wore no makeup and dressed in utilitarian and nonprovocative clothing. Her skin was olive, her hair black, her eyes a light shade of green. She had recently turned thirty, was a swimmer and biker, and kept herself fit. In the facility, she used her maiden name, Kaplan. On the street, and on her driver’s license, she went with her husband’s surname, which was Byrne.

“How you doin today, Anna?” said Donnell, a rangy young guy with sleepy eyes.

“I’m good, Donnell. How are you?”

“Maintaining. You got that chapter-book I asked for?”

From the cart beside her, Anna found the novel Donnell had requested and put it in his hand. She entered his name, the title of the book, his inmate identification number, cell, and return date in the log.

“Can’t nobody mess with Dave Robicheaux,” said Donnell.

“I hear he’s pretty indestructible,” said Anna.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You got any books that, you know, explain women?”

“What do you mean, explain them?”

“I got this one girlfriend, man, I don’t know. Like, I can’t figure out what she thinking from day to day. Women can be, you know, mysterious. Sayin, is there a book you could recommend?”

“Like a manual?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you should read a novel written by a woman. That might give you an idea of the kinds of things that go on in a woman’s head.”

“You got any recommendations?”

“Let me think on it. In the meantime, that Robicheaux is due in a week, when I come back.”

“What if I don’t finish it by then?”

“You can renew it for one more week.”

“Okay, then. Cool.”

Donnell walked away. The next inmate stepped up to the table.

“Lorton Legends,” said the man, asking for a novel that was often requested but unavailable inside the walls. The book was set in the old prison and on D.C.’s streets. “You got that?”

“We don’t,” said Anna. “Didn’t you ask for this same book last week?”

“Thought y’all might’ve got it in since then.”

By policy, sexually explicit books and books that promoted violence were not available in the jail library. Some urban fiction made the cut, some did not. Certain heavily requested books that espoused outlandish conspiracy theories, like Behold a Pale Horse and The Forty-Eight Laws of Power, were also prohibited. The sexuality and violence standards set by the D.C. Public Library for the detention facility were murky and often went unenforced. Some serial-killer novels and soft-core potboilers made it through the gates. Anna had once seen a group of inmates in the dayroom watching a DVD of The Purge.

“What you got for me, then?” said the man. “Don’t give me no boring stuff.”

On the cart, Anna found something by Nora Roberts, a prolific, popular novelist who typically generated good feedback, and gave it to the man. She began to log the details of the inmate and the novel.

“I read one of hers before,” said the man, inspecting the jacket. “She’s cool. That’ll work.”

As he drifted, the next man came up to the table. He was tall, with a full beard and close-cut hair. Anna knew little about him except for his reading habits. He was nice-looking, had a lean build, and spoke with soft confidence. His name was Michael Hudson.

“Mr. Hudson.”

“What do you have for me today, Miss Anna?”

She handed him two books that she had chosen for him when she had staged her cart the previous afternoon. One was a story collection called Kentucky Straight. The other was a single volume with two Elmore Leonard Western novels, written early in his career.

Inmates could check out two books a week. She often gave Michael longish books or volumes containing multiple novels because he tended to run through the material very quickly. In the past year, since he had first been incarcerated, he had become a voracious reader. His tastes ran to stories occurring outside of East Coast cities. He liked to read books about the kinds of people he’d not met growing up in Washington, set in places he’d never visited. Nothing too difficult or dense. He preferred stories that were clearly written and simply told. He read for entertainment. Michael was new to this. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. But his tastes were evolving. He was learning.

He studied the jackets, glanced at the inner flap of Kentucky Straight.

“The stories in that book are set mainly in Appalachia,” said Anna.

“Like, mountain folk,” said Michael.

“Uh-huh. The author grew up there. I think you’ll like the Westerns too.”

“Yeah, Leonard. That dude’s real.”

“You read Swag. One of his crime novels.”

“I remember.” Michael looked her in the eye. “Thank you, Miss Anna.”

“Just doing my job.”

“So, tell me a couple more titles. For later.”

As Michael had gotten more into reading, he had asked Anna to recommend some books for him to read in the future, either upon his release or when he transitioned to prison. Novels that were not in her inventory or were deemed inappropriate for the inmates. Books she thought he might like. She gave him the titles verbally. He’d write them down later, tell them to his mother when she came to visit. His mother had been surprised, and pleased, that he had developed an interest in books.

“Hard Rain Falling,” she said. “By Don Carpenter. And a short-story collection called The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. It’s set in Vietnam, during the war.”

“Hard Rain Falling, Carpenter,” repeated Michael. “Things They Carried.”

“Tim O’Brien.”

“Got it.” He stood there, as if waiting.

The man behind him said, “Shit. My hair about to go gray.”

“Is there something else?” said Anna.

“Just want to say... I never read a book in my life before I came in here. You know that, right? This pleasure I got now, it’s because of you.”

“The DCPL put a branch in here a couple of years ago. That’s why you get to read books. But I’m glad you’re taking advantage of the opportunity. I hope you like those.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“You’re coming to book club next week, right?”

“You know I am,” said Michael.

“I’ll see you in the chapel.”

“Right.”

She watched him walk toward his cell. He was rubbing the cover of one of the books as if he were polishing something precious in his hands.

There was a law library in the detention facility that the inmates used to research their cases. Anna had worked there when she’d first come to the jail.

The law library was available to members of each housing unit for two hours per week and to inmates who were in Restricted Housing by request. A civilian law librarian ran the operation and was assisted by a legal clerk who was an inmate, a desirable, soft-labor position in the jail. Inmates had access to reading materials and to LexisNexis programs on computers but had no access to e-mail services or the internet. In addition to research, the law library’s space was used for voting, which was available to non-felons only, and for SAT and GED testing.

Though the D.C. Jail’s library was an official branch of the DCPL, it was not a traditional library in that inmates could not enter a room and browse through the stacks. An actual library was to open soon, but for now, books were delivered to the inmates on a cart.

There were fifteen units at the jail. The mobile librarian visited three units per day, so every unit received her services once a week. Among the units were GED, General Population, Fifty and Older, Mental Health, Juvenile, and Restricted Housing. Each unit had its own characteristics and needs. It was part of Anna’s job to anticipate those needs when she staged her carts and chose titles from the over three thousand books housed in the workroom. The library stocked paperbacks only.

Four thirty was her quitting time. Anna was in the workroom and had been staging her cart for the Fifty and Older unit, which she was scheduled to visit the following morning. That particular unit housed mostly repeat offenders, parole violators, and drug addicts. She chose a couple of Gillian Flynn novels, popular among inmates, and some early Stephen Kings. Anything by King was in heavy play. The Harry Potter books were wildly popular as well.

Anna’s assistant, Carmia, a recent graduate of UDC who had come up in public housing in Southeast, stood nearby, inspecting each book that had been returned, fanning through pages, checking for notes and contraband. For security reasons, books could not be passed from inmate to inmate. Each book was inspected between rentals.

“You almost ready, Anna?”

“Yes.”

“We can walk out together. I got to get my boy out of day care.”

“I’m nearly done.”

Anna had been at the D.C. Jail for several years but not always in her current position. After her undergrad studies at Emerson, in Boston, she accompanied her husband, who had been hired as a junior attorney in a District law firm, to Washington, where she obtained her master’s in library science at Catholic University. Her first job in town was as a law librarian in a firm on H Street. This bored her silly, so when she saw an ad posted by the Corrections Corporation of America for the position of law librarian of the D.C. Central Detention Facility, she applied. To her surprise, she was quickly hired.

Running the law library of the jail was her first encounter with lockup. Initially, the experience was troubling, especially the daily security process and the ominous finality of doors closing, locks turning, and gates clanging shut. But these procedures and sounds soon became part of her routine, and quickly she found that she preferred dealing with inmates to dealing with attorneys. Interacting one-on-one with men who were incarcerated was not problematic. She was there to help them, and they knew it. It unsettled her, sometimes, to sit with a man charged with rape or pedophilia and direct him toward informational avenues of appeal. But she never felt threatened. Rather, she was unfulfilled. It wasn’t a creative or particularly rewarding way to spend one’s day. Also, she had a deep love of fiction, and she thought it would be cool to promote literature and literacy. So when the DCPL opened a library branch in the jail in the spring of 2015, she applied for the position of librarian and got the job.

“Coming?” said Carmia, a devout Christian with pretty brown eyes who was built small and stocky, like a low-to-the-ground running back.

Anna shut down her government cell phone, then gathered the few belongings she had brought into the jail and placed them in a clear plastic handbag.

“Let’s go.”

Anna and Carmia exited the D.C. Central Detention Facility and walked to the lot where they had parked their cars. They passed a variety of guards, visitors, administrators, and law enforcement officers, driving, headed on foot to their vehicles, or standing around, catching smokes and talking about their day. The jail was at Nineteenth and D, Southeast, on the eastern edge of the 20003 zip code and residential Kingman Park. Longtime natives knew the area mainly as the 190-acre Stadium-Armory Campus, which housed the jail, the former D.C. General Hospital, now an enormous homeless shelter, and the beloved RFK Stadium, where the Washington Redskins had played during their glory years.

“Have a blessed day,” said Carmia, veering off toward a Japanese import that she would be paying on for the next five years.

“You also,” said Anna. She found her car, a boxy black-over-cream Mercury Mariner, the discontinued sister car to the Ford Escape. It had good sight lines and fulfilled its function as an urban runner. More important to Anna, it was paid for.

Seagulls glided down from overhead and landed in a small group in the parking lot. It sometimes took her aback to see the birds but of course she was steps from the Anacostia River and not far from the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay.

She got into her SUV and retrieved her wallet and personal cell from the glove box, where she locked them up each morning. She let down her hair and lowered her driver’s-side window. Anna took a moment, breathed in fresh air, and listened to the call of the gulls.

Three

Phil Ornazian stepped out of his house, a neat brick brownstone southeast of Grant Circle, in Petworth, on the 400 block of Taylor Street, Northwest. The closing of his front door muffled the sounds of his two raucous dogs, his laughing sons, and his wife, Sydney, who was chastising the boys for something, like trampolining on the furniture or throwing a ball in the living room, or... something. For being kids. They were doing what children do, and she was doing what mothers do. His role, as he conveniently saw it, was to keep the roof over their heads, the utilities on, and the refrigerator and pantry full. “Going hunting,” he would typically say before he left the house. “Gotta drag the meat back to the cave.” This was his unsubtle rationalization for the time he spent away from home.

Ornazian quickstepped off the porch, went down to the street, and opened the gate on the chain-link fence he’d had installed as soon as his older boy had learned to walk. Toys, balls, a trike, and a training-wheeled bike were in the “yard,” which was mostly dirt. Ornazian couldn’t get to his car, a 2013 double-black Ford Edge, fast enough.

Men like him were at peace only when they were away from home. The office, which for him was mostly his car and the streets, was much more orderly and controllable than his house. He was into his wife and his children but felt it was unnatural and unproductive for a man to work at home.

They had agreed early on that Sydney would raise the children and he would bring in the dosh. Syd did not have a paying job but she worked as hard as any person he knew. She was not insecure around women who were professionals and didn’t want to miss out on the experience of being with her children as much as possible, knowing instinctively that time spent away from them, in a window that was, after all, very short, was time she could never get back. Unfortunately, it meant that they sacrificed extras and sometimes struggled financially. But Phil Ornazian was above all a hustler. When his legit business was not flourishing, when his investigation work dried up, as it tended to do, he improvised.

“Hello, Miss Mattie,” he said, to an elderly neighbor who was walking her small, short-haired mutt whose coat had gone gray. They both moved very slowly.

“Phillip,” she said. “Off to work?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mattie Alston was one of the dwindling number of long-term home owners still on this block. Many of the homes had been sold off by their original owners at a tremendous profit or passed on to heirs who had either moved in themselves or taken the money and bought elsewhere. That was the upside of gentrification. Longtime property owners did well, if they wanted to. Renters, however, were typically displaced and left with nothing.

Ornazian had bought this house on the cheap when he was single, fifteen years earlier, before Petworth turned, before young, new-Camelot college graduates flowed in and put down roots in sections of the city that white Washingtonians had once fled. If he were to sell his house now, he’d walk with three, four hundred thousand dollars or more. But where would he go?

Ornazian got into his Ford, hit the push-button ignition, and heard the engine roar to life. With twenty-twos, custom rims, and extended pipes, the Sport model had a little more flair than the standard Edge, and it was as horsed up as a Mustang GT. Ornazian was something of a car freak and felt he needed the extra power in case he had to get out of trouble. That was how he explained it to his wife. Like all of the vehicles he had purchased since his marriage, this one was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“What’s this, then?” said Sydney, with her working-class-Brit accent, the day he’d driven the car home. From their concrete-and-brick-pillar porch, she eyed him and the black SUV suspiciously.

“Family car,” said Ornazian.

“The Dale Earnhardt Jr. family,” she’d said.

Ornazian took Fifth Street south to Park Place, going along the Soldiers’ Home, and then back on Fifth, between the McMillan Reservoir and behind Howard University, bypassing the congestion of Georgia Avenue and coming out around Florida to the western edge of LeDroit Park. He was headed for New York Avenue and a quick route out of the city. Ornazian knew the backstreets and the shortcuts. He didn’t need Waze or any other app. He’d lived in the District his whole life.

At dusk, he came off 295 onto Eastern Avenue, drove along the easternmost border of Maryland and D.C., crossed Minnesota Avenue, then hung a left and dipped off into Maryland.

A half mile out of the city, on a tough stretch of road, in a low-income area of Prince George’s County, he parked in a lot before a complex of brick buildings, a one-stop-shop arrangement catering to various needs. There was a barbecue restaurant with a drive-through, a supper club touting dancers, a barbershop, a pawnbroker, a check-cashing service, and a liquor store with barred windows. Beside the liquor store were the offices of a bail bondsman. The sign outside read WARD BONDS, 24 HOURS, AT YOUR SERVICE. A phone number was prominently displayed below the words.

At the door of Ward Bonds, Ornazian rang a buzzer, looked up into a camera mounted on the brick wall, and heard a click. He stepped into a kind of lobby, a small waiting area bordered by a dirty wall of Plexiglas, through which it was just possible to make out the main office. Customers or potential clients could talk to the employees through a circle of holes bored through the Plexiglas until they were cleared for entry. The setup resembled a combination bank and urban Chinese carryout.

There was a door at the end of the Plexiglas wall and again someone buzzed him through. He walked past scattered desks, mostly empty, three of them occupied by two men and one woman, all in their twenties, wearing company T-shirts and Dickies slacks. One of the men nodded at Ornazian as he continued on to a glassed-in office. There behind a desk sat Thaddeus Ward, late sixties, barrel-chested, and hard to hurt. He was snaggletoothed and sported a neat gray mustache.

Ward stood, came to Ornazian with a brisk, square-shouldered step, and shook his hand.

“Been a while,” said Ward. “You could visit.”

“It’s not like I’m out here too often. When you had your offices in D.C., I saw you more.”

“Ain’t no bail-bond business in D.C. anymore. Only skips. Criminals got that nonfinancial-release option there. I had to come out to P.G.”

“I know it.”

“You only come by when you need something,” said Ward.

“Didn’t realize you were so sensitive, Thaddeus. You want a hug or something?”

“If I wanted to touch you, I’d bend you over my desk.”

“Don’t be so butch.”

“Glad you called me, though. I could use a little extra. Got too many people on my payroll right now and not enough work.”

“Then lay some of them off.”

“Can’t do that. They’re veterans.”

“See? You are sensitive.”

“Fuck you, man.” Ward went back behind his desk. “Let me just call Sharon and tell her I’ll be out tonight.”

As Ward picked up his cell and speed-dialed his daughter, Ornazian examined a wall where many cheaply framed photographs hung. There were several of Ward and his buddies, standing and seated around their hooches in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. They looked like kids, and many were. Ward himself had told a lie and enlisted when he was seventeen years old. In another photo, Ward cradled an M-60 machine gun and posed next to a photographic collage of topless women, images cut from magazines and glued to a large piece of cardboard. Other photographs showed Ward in his Metropolitan Police Department uniform, in plainclothes, accepting commendations from a senior officer in a white shirt. Ward shaking hands with Jesse Jackson. Ward with Darrell Green. Art Monk. And one incongruous photograph of a champion heavyweight boxer standing next to a nearly identical younger man who had to be his son. The boxer was wearing the champ belt over his suit pants. The son, also a former boxer but with an undistinguished career in the ring, had his hand on his father’s shoulder.

Ward had finished his call and came up on Ornazian.

“What’s up with that?” said Ornazian, nodding at the father-and-son photo.

“When I was working Vice, long time ago, I busted this massage parlor on Fourteenth and R. Found this photograph, a glossy signed to the establishment by the champ’s son. Not to cast aspersions...”

“You’ve got it hanging on your wall of fame. It must mean something to you.”

“It just makes me smile,” said Ward. “But really, it reminds me of those Wild West times. I drove down Fourteenth Street recently. You know what that massage-parlor building is now? A flower store.”

“So? That’s a good thing, right?”

“Sure, a positive thing. But when it was wide open out there, we had fun. There was this other dude, back in the seventies, was a real gunslinger. Street name was Red Fury. Had a girlfriend named Coco, a pimpette who ran a whorehouse on that same stretch of Fourteenth. You heard of Red?”

“Before my time.”

“I could tell you some things.”

“We’re going to be spending hours together tonight. Tell me then.”

They walked to the outer office, where Ward introduced Ornazian to the three employees who were seated at their desks. None of them looked very busy now. One of the men, Jake, stacked shoulders and neck, barely made eye contact with Ornazian. The other, who said his name was Esteban, was courteous and shook Ornazian’s hand firmly. The woman, Genesis, had the most intelligent, alert eyes of the group. She wore a ball cap and a ring with a very small diamond on her finger.

“Just one a’ y’all mind the phones tonight,” said Ward. “Don’t care who. Decide amongst yourselves. I’ll be checking in.”

By the time they exited the offices, night had fallen. Behind the building, Ward kept three black cars: two Lincoln Marks and an old but cherry Crown Victoria. Ward had expanded his business beyond bail bonds and skip traces. He now provided security for events and drivers/bodyguards for celebrities, dignitaries, and quasi-celebrities who came into D.C.

As they walked toward the cars, Ornazian said, “What’s the quiet one’s story?”

“Jake did a combat tour in Iraq and re-upped for a second tour in Afghanistan. He’s on so many meds I can’t use him on the street. I keep him in the office to answer the phones and process clients. He’s a house cat.”

“What about the other dude?”

“Esteban. That’s Spanish for Stephen.”

“No kidding.”

“I’m just sayin. Marine Corps. Follows orders real good and aims to please.”

“And the woman?”

“National Guard, but don’t let that fool you. She ran security with convoys. Went into hot pockets when the soldiers and Marines got pinned down. I talked to her CO and he told me that girl was fierce. But I won’t have her for long. Genesis is finishing college on the VA tit. Wants to go to law school.”

“Good for her.”

“What I should have done, too, if I had any sense. But I didn’t. Not a lick.” Ward pointed to the Crown Vic. “Let’s take my UC. It’s all loaded up.”

As they cruised out of the lot, Ward nodded at his sign. “Changed the name of my business, you notice that? Used to be Ward Bail Bonds, but now it’s just Ward Bonds. It’s clever, don’t you think?”

“Why is it clever?”

“Ward Bond. The actor?”

“Not familiar with him. Is he from the silent era or something?”

“Funny. He’s that big dude, character actor. Played in all of them movies with John Wayne.”

“I’ve heard of Lil Wayne,” said Ornazian.

“Now you’re being stupid,” said Ward.

For years, several hotels and motels had been clustered around the busy intersection of New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road near the National Arboretum and the city’s largest animal shelter. These establishments had been homes to folks on public assistance, drug addicts, thrifty adulterers, down-and-outers, death-wish drinkers, and unknowing foreign tourists who had purchased cheap lodging online that promised easy bus access to the monuments, museums, and downtown D.C. The motels had also been notorious venues for prostitutes and pimps, but that activity had been curtailed. The rooms were now mostly occupied by homeless families who had been placed here by the District government. Private, armed security guards roamed the parking lots, keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the residents.

Adjoining one of the motels was a Chinese restaurant with a large dining room. Its grim location and lack of ambience prevented it from becoming a destination for discerning Washingtonians, but it was a secret spot for foodies who didn’t mind the traffic congestion and the enduring blight of the NYA corridor.

Ornazian and Ward sat at a four-top, eating and strategizing. The proprietors specialized in Szechuan cooking of the northern Shaanxi region. The food was righteous.

“Pass me those scallion pancakes, man,” said Ward.

Ornazian pushed the plate within reaching distance of Ward. Also on the table were platters with dwindling portions of rou jia mo, which was the Chinese version of a hamburger, cumin lamb on sticks, spicy vermicelli, and dumplings with hot sauce. They were having a feast.

Ward swallowed, closing his eyes with satisfaction. “You trying to spoil a brother.”

“Maybe.”

He opened his eyes. “You bring me over to these hotels cause of the location? Like, a prelude?”

“I brought you to this restaurant because of the food. Anyway, you’d be hard pressed to find pimps around here now.”

“True,” said Ward, somewhat ruefully. “The game changed. Most of the trade is online these days.”

“Get on certain internet sites, you pick out your girl. Then it’s an in-call or an out-call. You don’t have to troll the streets looking for it. It’s as easy as making a dinner reservation.”

“Police have been stinging the johns like that, though. Luring them to hotels with net ads.”

“They make some arrests that way, yeah. But they haven’t made a dent in prostitution.”

“I remember when all those Asian massage parlors were in D.C.”

“Police in the District did a good job of going after the landlords. They pretty much closed the massage parlors down. Most of the AMPs are over in Northern Virginia now.” Ornazian stabbed at a dumpling and moved it to his plate. “Hispanics have the brothels. That leaves the street trade. Logan Circle is still a hot spot, but less of one. The girls work the clubs early in the night and then move over to the hotels. Near dawn you still see some trickin on the corners. But it’s not like it was.”

“Lot of those online ads say ‘No pimps.’”

“Lotta those ads are bullshit,” said Ornazian. “There’s still plenty of pimps around. The ads say ‘No pimps’ so the johns don’t get scared away.”

“Tell me about the one you got in mind.”

“We’ll get to that. Let’s enjoy our meal. Get another dish. Try the black bean eggplant if you want to go to heaven.”

“I would, but our waiter don’t understand a word of English. Kinda hard to communicate in this joint.”

“You ever try to learn Chinese?”

“Why would I?”

“Just point to the photograph on the menu. That’s what the pics are for.”

“I shouldn’t eat any more. But okay.”

Ward raised his hand and tried to get the waiter’s attention. Ornazian texted his wife and suggested she go to sleep. He told her he’d see her in the morning.

Four

They drove out to the old residential section of Beltsville, in Maryland, and parked in a neighborhood of ramshackle, trailer-type homes on a street between Route 1 and Rhode Island Avenue. There was little activity on the block, though there were many cars and trucks, three or four to a home. Some were in mid-repair; some had been left in weeds for seasons, perhaps years. Ornazian and Ward were near a government strip of land that served as a walk-through between blocks. Like the rest of the surroundings, this too had gone untended. Trees had fallen, blocking the path.

“That’s his,” said Ornazian, nodding toward a house on the edge of the walk-through.

“With the portable carport?” said Ward. “That’s some ghetto shit right there. In a different hood, the neighbors would call the county on this mug.”

The house was a one-story affair with a side addition fronted in the formstone commonly found on dwellings in Baltimore. The original structure had asbestos shingles and a few of them had fallen off, exposing tar paper. The carport was just a corrugated cover on four poles that sat free in the driveway. There was no vehicle beneath it.

“The pimps I knew in my day had more pride,” said Ward. “I mean, they never did have much money. Spent most of it on their rides and their vines. It was all about the show.”

“It’s smarter not to show.”

“How’d you mark him?”

“I talked to a girl, goes by the name of Monique. Did her a solid once. Regular john she had had stiffed her out some money. She’d been busted a couple of times for solicitation, and she’d seen me down at the courts.”

“You found the john.”

“Wasn’t hard. She was making out-calls to this guy, always used the same hotel, one of those new boutique jobs, down near the White House? Guy always valeted his car. I slipped one of the valet dudes some cash in exchange for the plate number. From there I found his home address. Married with kids, naturally. He’s the CFO of some tech company out on Twenty-Nine.”

“You blackmailed him,” said Ward.

“He shouldn’t have stiffed my friend.”

“So this girl, Monique, she hipped you to this pimp.”

“I asked her what was happening out there. You were a cop, so you know that prostitutes are the best sources on the street. They’re up all night. They see everything.”

“Indeed.”

“Monique told me about this pimp she had for a while. Goes by Theodore.”

“That’s not a very cool name for a player.”

“But it is,” said Ornazian, who was a hobbyist in the origin of words. “It’s from the Greek. Theo is ‘god,’ and doro is ‘gift.’ God’s gift. Get it?”

“You some kind of linguist?”

Ornazian grinned. “I’m a cunning linguist.”

“Finish your story, man.”

“Theodore’s got a stable, three women at all times. If they want to leave him or if they don’t earn, he lets them go. His philosophy is, there’s plenty more where they came from. He’s no gorilla pimp. He’s not into violence. He likes to smoke weed, and so do they, but it’s not part of his plan to make them dependent on harder drugs. He looks for girls who have problems, like problems at home, with their parents, all that. He listens to them. He makes them his girlfriends. Buys them gifts. Puts them up in a decent place. And then, he’s like, ‘All these good things cost money. You gonna need to contribute, girl. Take care of my man here and help me out. And this man right here.’ Like that. He holds the money they earn. They don’t keep any of it, but he takes care of all their needs.”

“Theodore,” said Ward.

Ward had said the name with hate. It was one of the many reasons Ornazian had asked Ward to come along tonight.

“Take a nap,” said Ornazian. “He’s not coming home for another hour or so.”

“How you know?”

“I been out here three nights this week. Man’s a creature of habit, just like anyone else.”

“I mean, how you know what he’s got?”

“He’s working three women. Monique says they each earn about a thousand a night on the weekends. Put that together with what he probably keeps in the house, and it could be a nice payday. The dude makes a couple hundred thousand a year, cash. Chances are some of it’s in his crib.”

“We gonna hit him before he goes in?”

“No. That window on the right side of the house, closest to us? That’s the bathroom. Every night, he comes home, the light goes on in there and then the window steams up.”

“I get it. The man likes to shower before he retires.”

Ornazian settled into his seat. “Take a nap, Thaddeus.”

“I gotta pee.”

“There’s an empty milk jug behind your seat.”

“I can’t if you’re watching.”

“I’ll turn away.”

Ward side-glanced Ornazian. “Could you tug on it a little?”

“Only if that will shut you up.”

Around three in the morning, Theodore drove his Chrysler 300 under the cut-rate carport and killed the engine. He got out of his black Green Hornet — style sedan and walked toward his house. He was tall and very thin and wore his hair in braids. He sported a down vest over a red buffalo-check shirt, jeans with appliques on the pockets, and Timbs.

“Don’t look like a mack to me,” said Ward.

“That’s today’s pimp,” said Ornazian. “You know where you find guys wearing outrageous clothes, carrying walking sticks, and shit like that? At Halloween and frat parties.”

Theodore triggered a motion-detector light as he stepped up to his door.

“He got those security lights around back too?”

“Yeah,” said Ornazian. “So what? His house backs up to woods. Anyway, we’re gonna be inside quick.”

“Are there dogs?”

“No dogs.”

“I hate fuckin with dogs.”

“I crept around that house many times. He has no dogs. Trust me.” As Theodore entered his house and closed the door behind him, Ornazian said, “Okay.”

Ward had disabled the dome light of the Vic. They exited in darkness and went around to the rear of the car, where Ward popped the trunk. He fired up a mini Maglite he had produced from his jacket and put the butt end of it in his mouth, illuminating the trunk’s interior.

In the trunk was a great deal of weaponry, ammunition, and hardware, as well as various restraint devices. From a box, Ornazian and Ward pulled lightly powdered nitrile gloves, favored by auto mechanics, and fitted them on their hands. Ward unrolled a blanketed 12-gauge Remington pump-action shotgun, then lifted a Glock nine out of a case. He released its magazine, checked the load, and seated the magazine back into the gun. The Remington 870 and the Glock 17 were common police firearms. Ward fitted the pistol into the dip of his slacks.

“The Special’s you,” said Ward, nodding at a .38 revolver that was a version of the MPD sidearm Ward had carried when he was first in uniform.

“You know I don’t want it,” said Ornazian.

“It’s for show,” said Ward.

Ornazian broke the cylinder on the .38 and saw that its chambers were loaded. He slipped the gun in the side pocket of his lightweight jacket, then grabbed a friction-lock, retractable baton from a large steel toolbox and put it in a back pocket of his jeans. Ward handed Ornazian a package of women’s stockings. Ornazian pulled a stocking down over his face and Ward did the same. Finally, Ward put some plastic cuffs of varying lengths in his jacket, picked up the shotgun, cradled it, and shut the trunk. He nodded at Ornazian.

They moved to the side of the house, watched through windows as its interior brightened, waited for the bathroom light to come on, and stood outside its window for several minutes until they heard the sigh of pipes followed by the faint drum of water running in a shower. Ward followed Ornazian to the backyard. A security light flooded the area and Ornazian stepped into it, unfazed. He calmly used the steel baton to break the window of a rear door. He reached inside the broken window, unlocked the knob, and flipped the arm of the dead bolt.

They entered the house and walked through an odorous kitchen to a living area with a wide-screen television, a table holding game-console controllers and stroke magazines, and a matching set of large leather furniture. The house was rank with crushed-out cigarettes and the skunk-smell of weed.

Down a hall were a couple of bedrooms and, at the end, a bathroom door. Behind it, Theodore showered. Ornazian scouted the bedrooms while Ward stood in the hall, the shotgun resting on his forearm.

Ornazian found the bedroom where Theodore obviously slept and switched on the bedside lamp. The nightstand’s top drawer had a keyhole on its face. A smartphone, presently charging in a wall outlet, was on the nearby dresser. There was a wooden chair on which Theodore most likely sat when he put on his socks and shoes. An open closet showed many shirts, top-buttoned and neatly hung on a wooden rod. On the carpet of the closet, Nike sneaks and Timberland and Nike boots were paired, neatly aligned, and set atop their corresponding boxes.

Soon the sound of running water ceased. Ward, positioned outside the bathroom, pointed the shotgun at the door, fitting its butt in the crook of his shoulder, his finger inside the trigger guard. Theodore stepped out of the bathroom, still wet, wearing only a bath towel around his waist.

“Fuck is this,” he said, getting a look at the man before him holding the shotgun dead-on at his chest.

Ward racked the pump for drama. “You don’t know?”

“You fixin to rob me,” said Theodore. It wasn’t a question. He was trying to remain cool but his face had lost some color.

“Correct,” said Ward, jerking his head toward the bedroom on the left. “In there.”

Theodore walked into the bedroom and Ward followed. Ornazian had drawn the .38 and was holding it by his side.

“Drop that towel,” said Ward. Theodore did not comply and Ward said, “Drop it.”

Theodore pulled the towel free and dropped it to the floor. He stood naked before the men who held the guns. He was bird-chested and inadequately muscled.

“For a man who runs women,” said Ward, “you don’t look like much.”

In truth, there was nothing wrong with Theodore. He was all there, more or less. But Ward knew that a naked man was a vulnerable man. He was simply stripping him down further.

“Sit on that chair,” said Ward. To Ornazian he said, “Cover him.”

Theodore took a seat on the wooden chair. Ward placed the shotgun on the bed as Ornazian pointed the pistol at Theodore. Ward used the plastic cuffs to bind Theodore’s wrists in front of him and the longer ties to secure his ankles to the legs of the chair.

Ward looked at Ornazian, whose eyes said, Go ahead. They had discussed the plan in the Crown Vic. Ward had interrogated prisoners in Nam, and he had questioned countless suspects in police stations all over the District with, one could assume, often unorthodox tactics. Ward had experience. Ornazian was happy to let him lead.

“I see you got a lock on that nightstand,” said Ward. “Where the key at?”

“In the drawer below it,” said Theodore.

“Course it is,” said Ward. He knew that everyone, straights and criminals alike, kept their money and valuables in their bedrooms, close by, within reach.

Ward opened the lower drawer, saw condoms, lubrication, loose change, and a key wrapped up in a piece of tissue paper. He used the key to unlock the upper drawer. Inside that drawer was a semiauto Beretta, an extra magazine, and rubber-banded stacks of cash. Ward pocketed the gun and the magazine, fanned through the cash, and tossed the stacks on the bed.

“Where’s the rest of your money?” said Ward.

“That’s all of it,” said Theodore, staring straight ahead.

Ward went to the closet, pulled the shirts aside, and looked behind them. Then he got down to floor level and checked the shoeboxes. All matched up except for a fresh pair of Jordans sitting atop a box with the brand name Stacy Adams. Ward pulled this box out from under the sneakers and looked inside. More money. Stacks of it.

“You tryin to bankrupt a man,” said Theodore.

“Is that all of it?”

“You cleaned me out.”

“All the money you make, and this is it?”

“I got overhead,” said Theodore.

“The pimp’s lament,” said Ward.

Ward took the money off the bed and put it together with the money in the Stacy Adams box. He went to the dresser, unplugged the iPhone from its charger, and dropped the phone in Theodore’s lap. It slipped off his thigh and fell to the floor.

“After we leave,” said Ward, “you can figure out a way to pick up your phone and hit up one of your girls or whoever. You got a toolbox somewhere in this mess. Won’t be hard for someone to cut you free.”

“I ain’t gonna forget this.”

“Don’t speak. Let me tell you how it’s gonna be.” Ward handed the shoebox to Ornazian and picked up the shotgun. “You will forget it. What you need to do now is, you got to put a Band-Aid on your pride and move on. ’Cause if you try to find out who we are, if you ask your neighbors if they seen a car out front tonight, anything like that... if I go down in any way, if I get locked up, even if I die of natural causes? Someone gonna step out the shadows one night and murder your ass. Do you understand me, Theodore?”

“I understand that you messed with the wrong man.”

“Thought I told you: not another word.”

“Fuck you, old man.”

Ward reversed his grip on the shotgun and swung its stock. Ornazian looked away.

They drove south on Route 1, stopped at an IHOP in College Park, and had breakfast among nightcrawlers and University of Maryland students eating off their highs and drunks. Back out in the car, Ornazian counted out the money below the sight line of the dash.

“Eight thousand each, give or take,” said Ornazian, handing the shoebox to Ward. “After my expenses. I’m going to give a thousand dollars to Monique.”

“What else you gonna give her?”

“Say what?”

“You tappin that ass?”

Ornazian shook his head. “I’m spoken for.”

“Mr. True Blue,” said Ward. “Call me if you got something else. That was easy money right there.”

“It’s four mortgage payments,” said Ornazian. “That’s what this is about for me.”

“That’s not all it is. You like it. You ’specially like when we out here saving someone. Like that woman and her kids got kidnapped by that crew on Kennedy Street? You were all fired up on that one.”

“So were you.”

“Least I admit it,” said Ward.

“It was a job.”

“Nah, Phil. I knew dudes like you in the Nam. Had that hero thing goin on. Couldn’t keep their heads down, even though they knew better. Had to run to the action. Not for nothing, some of those guys didn’t come back.”

“That’s not me.”

“No?”

“I’m just trying to take care of my family.”

“You didn’t enjoy it tonight?”

“Not like you.”

“You talking about Theodore? You think I liked that?”

“A little,” said Ornazian.

“It was about respect. I told him not to run his gums. Boy couldn’t help hisself.”

Ward ignitioned the car. They drove back into Northeast, saying nothing further, the silence between them not uncomfortable in the least, as it is for certain kinds of men. Ornazian was thinking of his wife and children. Ward had planned a dinner with his daughter for later that day. He’d order food in. Maybe they would watch a game on TV.

Five

The book club was held in the jail’s chapel and available to the Gen Pop and Fifty and Older units. The first ten inmates to sign up for the club were admitted. The session ran for sixty to ninety minutes and was always full. Even if the attendees were not particularly book lovers, the session filled up quickly, as it was something to break the numbing routine of incarceration. Once a book was assigned, the inmates had three weeks to read it before the discussion. The meetings were led by Anna, the jailhouse librarian.

Anna provided a reader’s guide to the attendees complete with questions, similar to the guides found in the back of some trade paperbacks. The guide was just an aid to help them think about what they were reading and how to discuss it. When she passed out the guides she stressed that answering the questions was optional. She meant for the club to be enjoyable. The last thing she wanted to do was give them homework.

The chapel was not ornate but it was low lit and a quiet place to meditate, away from the cell blocks and common rooms. There was a lectern and chairs, and audiovisual equipment could be brought in if needed. A local nonprofit, the Free Minds Book Club, ran a reading and writing program in the chapel for incarcerated juveniles who had been charged as adults and were waiting to transition into the federal prison system. The juvenile inmates, who were housed in their own unit, read books, discussed them with visiting authors, and wrote essays and poems that were eventually published in a glossy magazine that was sold in coffee shops throughout the city. The group also produced a lively newsletter.

Anna’s book club was less formal, did not involve writing, and was strictly a program to promote an appreciation of reading. She had no illusions that she was positively affecting the inmates’ lives as a group. But she wasn’t sure that she was failing to do that either. She hoped to reach someone. Maybe just one. Like many teachers and counselors, all she could do was try to pull someone through the keyhole in the end.

She had chosen Of Mice and Men for this group of inmates, who were housed in the Gen Pop unit. It was a linear tale, cleanly told, and, with its overt symbolism, easily taught. She knew there would be much to discuss. The novel was too short to sustain a three-week read, and subsequently many of the men had read it twice.

In picking the material, Anna had to remember that the inmates had varying degrees of education and intellect. A good many of them had not graduated high school. Most were inexperienced readers. Material that was difficult or dense could frustrate an inmate and permanently turn him off to reading. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter had been notably unpopular. One inmate claimed that reading the McCullers novel had driven him to thoughts of suicide, and he was not entirely joking.

The men in orange jumpsuits sat in a circular arrangement of chairs, Anna a link in the circle. Among the group were Antonius Roberts, who had recently come out of the hole, Donnell, and Michael Hudson. The inmates held their paperback books in their hands or kept them on the floor beneath their chairs. Two armed guards were in the room in radio contact with additional security at all times, but the men in the book club were generally pleased to be there. Conflict was not on their minds.

“We should start,” said Anna.

“Let’s have our minute,” said an inmate named Larry who was up on felony manslaughter charges and had recently given himself over to God.

Most of them bowed their heads for a silent prayer. There were Muslims, a variety of Christians, some agnostics, and a few atheists in the room. Some closed their eyes, mouthed words, others just sat respectfully and waited out the silence. One of the guards said a personal prayer while the other kept watch.

“Okay, then,” said Larry, and the session started.

“Let’s begin with one of the questions on the reader’s guide,” said Anna. She had copied many of the questions from the Penguin edition in the back of the novel and added a few of her own. “Why does the book begin and end at the pond?”

“It’s a nice place,” said Donnell. “Like, a perfect place. The way the writer describes it. Lennie like to go there because it’s a peaceful place. He can dream in that environment and shit.”

“It’s like Eden,” said Larry. “In Genesis.”

“It ain’t all perfect like it is in the Garden of Eden,” said Antonius. “Bad stuff happens there. In the end part, that little snake gets snatched out the water by that bird. Remember?”

“That’s just nature,” said a heavy-lidded man who spoke very softly. “The strong survive. Just like on the streets.”

“The very first line of the book,” said Anna, “places the setting a few miles south of Soledad. I think that the author locates it there intentionally. Soledad is the Spanish word for ‘solitude.’ Does anyone have any thoughts on what this means with regard to the novel?”

“Like, solitary?” said Antonius. “I can speak on that. I just got out.”

Some of the men chuckled.

“Okay, Antonius,” said Anna. “Tell us how it was. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” Antonius, his arms folded, shrugged. “For me, solitary was fine. Peaceful. But yeah, some dudes can’t deal with it. It’s punishment, man. Supposed to be.”

“In the book,” said Anna, “solitude is presented as a negative thing. Many of the characters, like Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife, talk about their profound sense of loneliness.”

“Curley’s wife was a straight ho,” said Donnell.

“She’s not getting any attention from her husband,” said Anna. “She talks about her dreams of being a movie star. In fact, most of the people in the book have dreams, like George and Lennie’s dream of a farm. And the dreams are unattainable.”

“She still a trick,” said Donnell. “I knew when she said to Lennie ‘Stroke my hair,’ he was gonna break that bitch’s neck. ’Scuse me, Anna.”

“No, you’re onto something. How’d you know?”

“’Cause in the very beginning of the book, Lennie killed that mouse the same way, by pettin it too hard. Same with the puppy.”

“Exactly right,” said Anna. “John Steinbeck was telling you ahead of time what was going to happen by using a literary device called foreshadowing.”

The group grew quiet. She had gotten too professorial. The men didn’t want to be schooled or talked down to. They wanted to discuss the characters and the story.

“That’s the same way with Curley’s dog,” said Antonius, breaking the silence.

“Foreshadowing,” said Michael, looking at Anna with a smile in his eyes.

“Right,” said Antonius. “They took that dog out and shot him. But really, they did that dog a favor, since the rest of his life was gonna be misery. The same way George had to shoot Lennie in the end of the book.”

“Lennie was a re-tard,” said the man with the heavy-lidded eyes. “George couldn’t carry him no more.”

“Nah,” said Antonius. “George did that thing for Lennie because Lennie was his boy. ’Cause Curley was gonna string Lennie up and lynch his ass. Or, if Lennie did go to prison for killin that trick, he wouldn’t make it in San Quentin or wherever they’d put him out there in California, back in the old days.”

“Lennie couldn’t jail,” said Larry.

“Exactly,” said Antonius.

“You’re saying,” said Anna, “that George killed Lennie out of friendship.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what this book is about,” said Michael. “Friendship and brotherhood. Companionship. The author means to say that people together are better than they are alone.”

“Does anyone say that outright in the novel?” said Anna.

“Sure.” Michael opened his book to where he had dog-eared a page. “I marked a spot. It’s in that chapter when Crooks is talking to Lennie in Crooks’s room. Can I read it?”

“Go ahead.”

Michael squinted as he read. “ ‘A guy needs somebody — to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.’ ”

“For a friend, though,” said Antonius, “Lennie be buggin the shit out of George.”

“‘Tell me about the rabbits, George,’” said Donnell, in his idea of Lennie’s voice.

“‘Which way did they go, George, which way did they go?’” said the heavy-lidded one, and then, when no one laughed, embarrassed, he said, “Ain’t none a’ y’all seen that old cartoon?”

“They gonna get a farm,” said Antonius, picking up on the vibe. “‘An’ live off the fatta the lan’!’”

Now many of the inmates laughed.

“All right.” Anna picked up an article that she had printed out down in the workroom. “Let me read something to you that John Steinbeck wrote himself. It might have been from his acceptance speech when he won the Pulitzer Prize, or it might be from his journals. I don’t remember which. I got it off of Wikipedia, to be honest with you. But for me it sort of speaks to this book and his worldview in general.”

“Read it,” said Michael, leaning forward.

“Okay,” said Anna, and she began. “‘In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.’”

“What if someone step to you and try to take you for bad?” said Donnell. “What you supposed to do then? Understand their ass?”

“Turn the other cheek,” said Larry. “It’s right there in the Bible.”

“An eye for an eye is in there too,” said Donnell.

“The man is saying, try to do what’s right,” said Michael. “Reach out to other people. Try.”

The conversation drifted to money and fame, as it tended to do.

“Was Steinbeck rich?” said Antonius.

“I’m sure he was,” said Anna. “His books were huge bestsellers. Many of them were made into movies and plays.”

“I bet he got mad respect too,” said Donnell.

“Not from everyone,” said Anna. “Many academics don’t really care for his work. They think it’s too simplistic and obvious.”

“You mean people could relate to it too easy.”

“Well, yes. He was what’s called a populist author. He wrote books that could be read and appreciated by the people he was writing about.”

“This book was deep,” said the soft-spoken man.

“Seriously, that was, like, the best chapter-book you ever gave us,” said Donnell.

“Thank you, Miss Anna.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said.

As they filed out of the chapel, Antonius tugged on Michael Hudson’s jumpsuit.

“Yo, Hudson.”

“What you want?”

“Got a message from our boy Phil Ornazian.”

“Yeah?”

“He said to tell you everything’s gonna be cool.”

“That’s it?”

“Short and to the point,” said Antonius. “Looks like you about to go uptown.”

Michael said nothing further to Antonius. He went on his way.

IN HIS cell that night, lying in the upper bunk, which he had taken for its better light, Michael Hudson read a Western novel that Anna had chosen for him. It was one of two full-length novels that were bound in the same book, part of a series called Elmore Leonard’s Western Roundup. This was volume 3. He had been reading with urgency, as it was almost time for lights-out. He had just finished the novel, and its last line had given him the chills. It had jacked him up to the degree that he had gone back to the first page with the intention of reading the book again.

The name of the novel was Valdez Is Coming. Michael reread its first two paragraphs:

Michael liked how the author set everything up real fast, from jump. Like, without telling you too many details, you knew right away what was happening. It gave you a feeling and made you choose a side. There is a man in a shack, and he is outnumbered and outgunned, and there are many men on the high ground, shooting down on the man who is alone, and there’s a man in charge named Tanner who is giving the orders. Straight on, because most folks side with the underdog, you are hoping that someone helps the man in the shack and stops this man Tanner.

The man you think is going to help is a Mexican constable and former soldier named Bob Valdez. He comes on the scene and does something, is tricked into it, really, that is unexpected, and then Tanner, being who he is, does the Mexican dirt. Valdez is a man who is alone, and Tanner is powerful, and he has many men backing him up. So Tanner shoves Valdez, because he can. And the more he shoves him, the harder Valdez gets, and the more he pushes back. By the end of the book, Tanner realizes that he should have given Valdez what he wanted to begin with, which was not much at all. It wouldn’t have cost so much.

Picture it. The author, Mr. Leonard, is telling you to look at it. To see it in your head. It’s a bold way to start the story, but it does what it sets out to do. Michael could picture the rise of the land, and the pines, and the men in groups firing down on the one man who was cornered in his shack. And Michael could guess what wasn’t on the page because of the vivid description of what was. Maybe there was a chill in the air, since they were high up in those hills. Maybe there were cotton-white clouds moving across a bright blue sky, and shadows on the pines when those clouds drifted across the sun.

Michael closed his eyes. When he read a book, he wasn’t in his cage anymore. There wasn’t a lock on his door, or the rank smell of the dirty commode by the bunk, or his low-ass cellmate passing gas in his sleep, or the sounds of men shouting in the unit. Guards telling him what and what not to do. He hadn’t disappointed his mother. He wasn’t looking at five years in a federal prison on a felony gun charge.

When he read a book, the door to his cell was open. He could step right through it. He could walk those hills under that big blue sky. Breathe the fresh air around him. See the shadows moving over the trees. When he read a book, he was not locked up. He was free.