The Turnaround

Eleven

Dominique Dixon had called Deon Brown on his disposable, given him the meet and time. It would be on Madison Place, near Kansas Avenue, along Fort Slocum Park.

Typically, Dixon would drive by the location first, and if he felt that it was hot he would warn Deon off and change the plan. There was rarely a problem and there had been no surprises.

Dixon had been in the marijuana business for a couple of years. He now supplied about a half-dozen dealers in the northern portion of the 20011 zip of Manor Park. Though he was not hard or a fighter, he did have a talent for reading people. Once he decided to enter into a business arrangement with someone, he treated them fairly. He reasoned that if he did them right, there would be no cause for them to betray him. Up until now, his reasoning had been sound.

Dixon grew up in a stable home in Takoma, D.C. His father and mother were good providers, attentive, and had mostly made the correct parenting moves. Nevertheless, Dominique had become a supplier. The blame fell not on the parents, but on his older brother, Calvin.

Calvin was handsome, reckless, a risk taker, thoughtless, charming, and short-tempered. He had a friend named Markos, the son of an Ethiopian father and an Italian mother, a successful Adams Morgan couple who had done well in Shaw and Mount Pleasant real estate. Calvin and Markos had met in the VIP room in a club off New York Avenue and discovered a mutual interest in highpotency marijuana, expensive champagne, mixed-race women, and Ducati bikes. Through a club acquaintance, Markos obtained a meeting with a Newark connect, who liked his sense of style. Neither Markos nor Calvin cared to work for a living, so they tapped Calvin’s smart younger brother to run the business. Dominique idolized his older brother and saw a chance to grow his stature in Calvin’s eyes. Markos’s seed money paid for the initial order. It had been a successful venture from the start.

Dominique had run into Deon Brown, with whom he had gone to high school, up at a shoe store in the Westfield Mall. He remembered Deon as a quiet, intelligent kid, an underachiever, maybe, but straight, someone he could trust. He recalled, too, that Deon liked to cocktail his antidepressants with heavy amounts of marijuana. Deon fitted Dominique into a pair of Vans and offered them to him at his employee discount. Out in the parking lot, Deon handed him the shoes, and Dominique pressed a very small baggie of marijuana into Deon’s palm.

“Trust this, ” said Dominique.

“What is it?”

“Some nice hydro. If you like it, ring me up.”

“You still stayin with your parents in Takoma?”

“I got my own spot now. But you need to reach me, just hit me on my cell.” Dominique gave him the number. “Don’t be givin that out to nobody else, hear?”

That night, Deon and his friend Cody smoked the hydroponic weed and got stupid behind it.

Deon phoned Dominique the next day. “Hook me up with some more of this, dawg. Me and my boy want an OZ.”

“I don’t deal with that kinda weight.”

“I’ll take a quarter, then.”

Dominique laughed. “You’re not hearin me right.”

“Oh,” said Deon.

“Look, man. You want, I can tell you how you can get an ounce for free.”

“When?”

“Let’s do a face meet. Bring your boy, too.”

They got together at a breakfast-and-lunch place high up on Georgia, just north of Alaska Avenue, past the Morris Miller’s liquor store with the partially lit neon sign. The lunch place was in the last days of its operation, having been mortally wounded by the fast-food businesses flourishing around it. The area within earshot of their four-top was full of empty tables.

As Deon and Cody entered, Dominique, already seated, was initially surprised and a bit put off by Cody’s appearance. That he was white did not bother him particularly, though he did prefer to deal with people his own color, if only for reasons of comfort. Cody, with his black-on-black D.C. dog-tag hat, plain black T, Nautica jeans, and black Air Force highs, looked like any rough-edged city kid his age, until you got a good look at his face. There was a slackness to the acne-dotted jaw and a vacancy in the wide-set eyes that suggested a lack of intelligence beyond the dulling effects of pot. If he was a docile idiot, then fine. If he compensated for his stupidity by being overbearing or violent, then it would present a problem. Dominique decided to sit with them, make his proposal, and see where it went.

“So,” said Dominique after Deon had introduced him to Cody. “You liked the sample, right?”

“Shit was tight,” said Cody.

“That’s average quality for me.”

“You told Deon we could get some free,” said Cody.

“I’m gonna get to that,” said Dominique.

“We listenin,” said Deon.

Though they were alone, Dominique leaned forward and lowered his voice. “If I was to give you more, do you think you could get rid of it?”

“How much more?” said Deon.

“A pound, to start.”

Deon felt Cody looking at him, but he kept his eyes on Dominique. “Why us?”

“You and me go back. I need to know the people I deal with.”

“I ain’t the only person you know from high school.”

“True. But when I ran into you at the shoe store, I remembered how you and me was always straight. And I started to think, that shopping mall you work in is an untapped market. You and your boy must know a rack of heads out there, don’t you?”

“Sure,” said Cody with a careless shrug.

“I got no one out in that area,” said Dominique. “This here is an opportunity for me but also for you. I mean, what’s the next step you take after salesman at that shop? Assistant manager? I’m not tryin to be funny about it, either. I’m askin you.”

“That’s right,” said Deon.

“There it is,” said Dominique.

“What’s a pound gonna cost us?” said Cody.

“This shit I got now is fifteen hundred wholesale,” said Dominique. “But I’m gonna front it to you. This time only, because I want to help you get started. The first fifteen comes in, you pay me back. The rest you sell for profit or keep for your personal use. It makes no difference to me.”

“Sell it for what amount?” said Deon.

“What the market bears. You get two hundred an ounce for it, you gonna double your money. Time to time, I’m gonna bring in some high-intensity hydro that’s more expensive. Two thousand, twenty-five hundred a pound. When that happens, you got to get three, four hundred an ounce to make your usual thing. ’N other words, you adjust.”

“What do you pay for it?” said Cody.

“What’s that?”

“I’m just interested.”

“That ain’t none of your business,” said Dominique, smiling in a friendly way.

Cody looked at the young man in the Ben Sherman shirt with the little roses on it, his slender fingers and thin wrists, his shiny, manicured nails. Cody didn’t like what he saw, but he nodded his head.

“Look, dawg,” said Dominique. “The way this works, the way this got to be is, keep it simple. I’m gonna deliver what you need whenever you need it, and then it’s on you to move it. But I’m just a middleman. I don’t get involved in what you do, and you don’t need to know the details of what I do. Understand?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Cody.

“My advice? Don’t get sloppy. That’s what you got to keep in mind. Far as who you sell to, I’m sayin take care. Some kid who got no loyalty to you gets put in the box for possession, he might offer up your name. And then you gonna be under the hot lights yourselves, and you might say mine.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Cody.

“No doubt,” said Dominique. “We just talking here. But you should know, anyone gives me up, the people I deal with gonna be nervous.”

“I get you,” said Cody.

“You remember my brother, don’t you, Deon?”

“Sure,” said Deon. He didn’t know Calvin Dixon but knew of his rep. “Where he at now?”

“Oh, he’s out there. Still out there, you know.”

Deon drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He glanced around the lunch place. He looked at Cody, then back at Dominique.

“So,” said Dominique, relaxing in his chair. “Y’all ready to make some money?”

Dominique had contacted Deon and Cody at the right time. They were bored, unsatisfied with their income levels, and saw no way up or out. It would be fun, a game played outside the law, something that would blow up their self-esteem. Neither of them felt that what they were about to do was wrong. Marijuana was a part of their everyday lives, as it was for their peers. Smoking weed didn’t hurt anyone. It wasn’t heroin or cocaine, and they weren’t corner boys. Of them, only Cody aspired to the life he had heard about in rap songs and seen on television, sung and acted by people who for the most part had never experienced that life themselves. Deon, prone to depression and treading water since high school, saw it as a positive move. He liked the idea of extra money in his pocket and free weed to smoke. Beyond that, he looked no further than the day he walked through.

“We’ll do that one pound,” said Deon. “See how it goes.”

It went well at first. It was easy finding customers, and the ones they dealt with were friends they’d made at the mall or people those friends could vouch for. If a kid got pulled over in his car and got busted for a bag of weed in his glove box, the event ended there. The no-snitch culture had bled out from the city to the inner suburbs. The police were not respected as worthy adversaries. Uniforms were the enemy. It was unspoken and understood that no one would roll on Cody and Deon.

In the course of a year, change came rapidly. The lunch place up past Georgia and Alaska closed its doors. Another neon letter on the Morris Miller sign went dark. Cody rented an apartment and furnished it. Charles Baker came into Deon’s mother’s life and inched his way into theirs. Cody quit the job at the shoe store. He bought a gun, the second transaction started by a straw purchase from a firearms store on Richmond Highway in Virginia. They doubled their orders from Dominique.

Deon didn’t care for the changes. At times, when he was off his Paxil, too high on weed, paranoid and confused, he thought of running away, perhaps moving to another city. But he knew no one outside D.C., and he didn’t want to leave his mother. The bus he had caught was an express.

“Here come that boy now,” said Charles Baker.

They were parked on Madison, facing west, the dark grounds of the park on their right, residences on their left. A stock Chrysler 300 drove slowly down the block, then executed a three-point turn and backed up so that its trunk was close to their hood. Dominique Dixon got out of the car and lifted the trunk lid as Cody opened the trunk to the Honda using his keypad remote. Dominique quickly retrieved two large black plastic trash bags, each holding a pound of marijuana. He closed the lid with his elbow, went around back of the Honda, and dropped the bags into its trunk and shut it.

“Kid dresses nice,” said Baker, as Dominique, sporting a leather jacket over a striped designer shirt worn out over expensive jeans, came to the driver’s window, now rolled down.

“Fellas,” said Dominique, his eyes losing their light as he got a look at Baker, sitting in the passenger seat.

Cody handed him an envelope containing three thousand dollars cash. Dominique slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Why don’t you come on in and sit, boy,” said Baker.

“I gotta roll,” said Dominique.

“Don’t wanna be social, huh?”

“I ain’t trying to get jailed,” said Dominique, attempting to keep a jovial tone to his voice. He looked into the backseat. “We good, Deon?”

Deon made a very small shake of his head. The movement told Dominique to leave them. Deon’s eyes were saying “Just go away.” Baker caught the signal and it made his blood tick.

“Yeah,” said Deon. “I’ll get up with you later.”

“We could go somewhere and talk,” said Baker pleasantly. “I wouldn’t mind gettin to know you better.”

“I can’t tonight,” said Dominique.

“Maybe we could go over to where you stay at. Have a drink, somethin like that.”

“I got plans.”

“With a woman, I hope,” said Baker, and Cody chuckled. “C’mon, bro, we just wanna visit.”

“I don’t take my clients to my crib.”

“Do I stink or somethin?”

“Look, man -”

“It’s Mr. Charles to you.”

Dominique exhaled slowly. He didn’t make the correction. He looked at Deon pointedly and said, “I’m out.”

He didn’t acknowledge Baker or Cody before returning to his Chrysler. The headlights of the 300 swept across them as Dominique Dixon pulled away.

“Little motherfucker just so full of disrespect,” said Baker. “Wonder where he off to for real.”

“Probably back to his spot,” said Cody.

“You know where he live at?” said Baker.

“Sure,” said Cody. “Me and Deon dropped some cash off to him once. But he ain’t ask us inside.”

“Let’s go, Cody,” said Deon. “We need to get off this street.”

At the apartment, Cody and Deon weighed the weed on scales and began to ounce it out into Glad sandwich bags. Charles Baker paced the floor as a late West Coast NBA game played on the plasma TV.

“Kobe gonna take it to the Jailblazers,” said Cody, his eyes pink from the bud he’d smoked. “Lakers makin a run.”

Deon’s cell rang. He answered it, said, “Hey,” and then, “Yeah. Hold up.”

Baker watched him get up out of his chair at the table and walk down the hall.

In Cody’s bedroom, Deon closed the door softly behind him. “I’m good now.”

“Look here, Deon,” Dominique said. “This shit with your man got to stop.”

“I hear you.”

“I told you before, I deal with you. Cody’s rough, but he came with the package, and I accepted that from day one. That old man, though, he’s just wrong.”

“He stays with my mother sometimes. He’s just around, is what it is. I didn’t ask him to be there. He got a way about pushing hisself in.”

“That’s not my problem. This business I got, ain’t no corner bullshit to it. No chest thumpin, no threats, and no violence. I don’t bring people like him into the circle. Are we straight on that?”

“Yes.”

“You my boy, Deon.”

“No doubt.”

“Next drop we do, I don’t want to see that man again.”

“I got you, Dominique.”

Deon closed his phone. He left the bedroom and went back down the hall. Baker was seated at the table with Cody as the basketball game played at a high volume in the room.

“Who was that?” said Baker, looking up.

“My mom,” said Deon.

“You two got secrets? Why you had to leave out of here to talk?”

“’Cause y’all got the game up so loud I can’t hear myself think.”

“She ask to speak to me?”

“Nah. She got one of them migraine headaches. It might be better if she’s alone tonight.”

“That her talkin or you?”

“Huh?”

“Nothin,” said Baker.

That pussy dead to me, thought Baker. And fuck her soft little son, too.

Raymond Monroe sat at Kendall Robertson’s desk and clicked the Outlook icon on her computer screen. She had set up an e-mail address for him, as he didn’t have a computer at his mother’s house. He went to Send and Receive and hit it. A spam solicitation came through, but nothing else. No e-mail appeared from Kenji.

He hadn’t heard from his boy in a couple of weeks. It was not unusual, but that did not cause him to worry any less.

Raymond sat in the quiet of the living room and said a short silent prayer for Kenji. His words were always the same: simple thanks for the gift of life, and the gift of life given to his son. Monroe never asked God for anything. He had no right. He thought of his brother, and then the man at the Fisher House with the bad eye. The lives ruined and taken. All you could do was hope for forgiveness and try to live a decent life. Reach out to the ones who got caught up in the ugly mess.

Monroe phoned his mother, told her he loved her, and said good night. He shut off the lights, went up the stairs, checked on Marcus, and walked into Kendall’s room. Kendall was on her side of the bed, her back to him. She had left a bedside lamp on for him, and in the glow of it he stripped down to his boxers and slid under the sheets. She was naked. He got close to her and ran his hand down her shoulder, arm, and hip. She turned toward his kiss.

“This is a nice surprise,” he said, cupping her breast.

“Wasn’t to me,” said Kendall. “I’ve been thinking about it all evening.”

“What did I do right?”

“Plenty. The way you are with Marcus, especially.”

“That boy’s good.”

“So are you, Ray.”

“I’m tryin,” said Monroe.