What It Was

NINE

Lou Fanella stood beside the bed of Roland Williams in D.C. General Hospital. Gino Gregorio leaned against a wall.

There had been a nurse taking Williams’s vitals when they’d arrived, and Fanella had asked her to give them some privacy. He’d smiled at her in a way that implied no kindness and said, “Don’t go telling anyone we’re in here, sweetheart. I might take that to mean we’re not friends.” She left them with her eyes downcast and closed the door behind her. Outside the hospital, dusk had come, throwing long shadows on the stadium-armory complex grounds. A faint gray light had settled in the room.

“Who robbed you?” said Fanella, looking down at Williams. “Don’t take too long thinking about it, either. I don’t have the patience or the time.”

“He goes by the name of Red,” said Williams without hesitation. “Red Jones. Don’t know what the minister called him when he got baptized.”

“How’d you know it was him?”

“I knew him by rep. Tall, light-skinned dude with a fucked-up head of hair, kinda rusty like.”

“Who hipped him to your supply?”

“Tester of mine name Bobby Odum. Jones deaded Odum, then he and this little dude with gold teeth came after me.”

“And they ripped you off for your product.”

“At the point of a gun,” said Williams.

“Funny he didn’t do you all the way.”

“Wasn’t for lack of tryin.”

“It was me, I would have put one in your head.”

“The man shot me,” said Williams, seeing where Fanella was going and not liking it. “Close range, with a forty-five. You think I’d let him do me like that for what? To pretend I got robbed?”

Fanella looked down on Williams and stared him in the eyes. “It makes me wonder, is all.”

“I’m a businessman. You can ask Jimmy, up at One Sixteenth. I’m straight.” He was speaking on Jimmy Compton, Fanella and Gregorio’s man in Harlem.

“Me and Gino already spoke to Jimmy,” said Fanella. “Now we’re speaking to you.”

“Okay,” said Williams. “All right.” Bullets of sweat had risen on his forehead.

“Tell us where we can find the heroin,” said Fanella. “Or the money. Makes no difference to me.”

“Po-lice got half of the dope,” said Williams. “I only told Red where some of it was. Tried to keep it from him, see? But the law found the rest of it, in the spot where I keep it.”

“Where’s that?”

“At my crib.”

“So half of it’s klf Atgone for good.”

Williams thought to say something, but his mouth was dry. He felt his lip tremble. He tried to make it stop, but he could not.

Fanella smiled. “You all right?”

“Yes,” said Williams. He was ashamed and he looked away.

“Let me see what Red did to you.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.” Fanella looked over his shoulder and said, “Gino.”

Gregorio moved to the door and put his back against it.

“Don’t,” said Williams.

“Don’t?”

“Sayin, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Doctor said to leave it be.”

“C’mon,” said Fanella, his thick eyebrows meeting comically as he mustered up a false face of concern. “Lemme see.”

Fanella pulled his switchblade from the pocket of his sport jacket and opened it with the touch of a button. The blade locked into a place with a soft click. Williams recoiled and made a small humming sound. Fanella chuckled as he cut the sling from Williams’s shoulder. Then he used the knife to slice away the bandages that covered his wound. Williams winced at the wet sucking sound of gauze pulling away from dressing and skin.

“Wow,” said Fanella. “You should look at this, Gino.”

Gregorio did not move.

“Please, man,” said Williams.

“That’s a big hole,” said Fanella. The entrance wound was the size of a quarter, black around the edges, pinkish in the center where the skin had begun to come back, slick and shiny from the dressing. “Don’t even look like it’s infected.”

“Please.”

“What’d you tell the police?”

“What I told you. I gave up Red’s name. That’s all.”

“They found heroin in your apartment and they’re not even going to charge you?”

“It was an exchange, ’cause I gave up good information. Plus, they searched my spot without a warrant.”

“You said you knew Red’s rep. So you must know more.”

“I told the law enough to leave me alone.”

“I’m not the law,” said Fanella. “What’d you leave out?”

“I can’t say no more, for real. I’m not tryin to get doomed.”

Fanella put one knee up on the mattress to ke mwidth="27" steady himself. He loosely placed his hand on Williams’s shoulder above the wound and kept his thumb free.

“What didn’t you tell them?” Fanella grinned. “What else?”

“Red got this woman,” said Williams, a tremor in his voice. “Goes by Coco. Runs whores in a house on Fourteenth. What I heard, anyway.”

“Heard where?”

“The street.” Williams gave him the location and described the building.

“That’s it?”

“Swear for God.”

Fanella gripped Williams shoulder. “Does this hurt?”

“No.”

“How about this?” Fanella pushed his thumb into the gunshot wound. It felt like jelly as he broke through the skin. Williams began to thrash and scream.

“Lou,” said Gregorio, and turned his head away.

Fanella put his right hand over the man’s mouth. Williams urinated on the sheets before he passed out.

“Niggers aggravate me,” said Fanella.

They left the room and walked down the hall. They did not move quickly, because Lou Fanella felt that a man should leave a scene unhurried, with his shoulders square and chin up. They went by a nurse who did not notice them, and an aged orderly pushing a wheelchair, and a tall, uniformed security guard with chiseled features who was standing against a wall, giving them a long stare.

“Fuck you lookin at?” said Fanella to the young man.

“Nothin, sir.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Clarence Bowman studied them as they passed.

Frank Vaughn sat in an unmarked Dodge beside Detective Henry A. Passman, a gentle family man who, because of his initials, was called “Hap” by nearly everyone on the force. Like many career police officers who aspired to rise above uniform status, he had been shuttled around various divisions and had finally found a home in what had once been Prostitutions and Perversions but was now known by the more succinct description of Vice.

Night had come to the city. The calendar said close to summer, and there were folks dressed lightly and out on the street. On 14th at R, a spring-gold ’7 °Camaro, up on HiJackers, was curbside, idling. A white girl in white hot pants and a red gingham midriff shirt was leaning into its open driver’s-side window, negotiating with the muscle car’s occupants. Music was coming loudly from the eight-track system, but to Vaughn it was just screams and guitars. His focus was on the girl, a minor from the looks of her, and the heads of the five long-haired young men squeezed into the car.

“It’s somebody’s birthday,” sai kthdp›

“One of the boys in the backseat just turned sixteen,” said Passman. “His pals are buying him a present.”

“The Fourteenth Street cherry-bust. A rite of passage in this town.”

“They don’t want a white girl, though. They can get that any day at their high school. This one’s gonna take the money and turn the boy over to one of the black girls in the stable.”

“Then?”

“The boy’s directed to a building and told to go up a flight of stairs. Imagine what that’s like. How his heart’s pounding. Boy’s never even been down here before and now he’s in a strange house in what he thinks of as the ghetto. So he meets his whore in a dark little room. She tells him straight away he has to use a rubber. Offers to put it on for him, and if he says no, she insists. She doesn’t want to get on her back, is what it is. More often than not, that boy’s gonna shoot while she’s fittin the safe on his pecker.”

“Liftoff,” said Vaughn. “Bit of a letdown, isn’t it?”

“He’ll be grateful. Matter of fact, he’ll go back to his friends with a spring in his step. Bragging about how he fucked a black chick.”

“You got a daughter, Hap?”

“Two. I keep ’em close.”

“My son’s twenty-six and he still lives in my house, rent free. Olga stocks his bathroom with toilet paper, Hai Karate, and his favorite brand of minty toothpaste.”

“Least you know where he is.”

A signal came from the handheld radio on the seat by Passman’s side. It was a plainclothes officer who had been sent into the Coco Watkins house and was now up in a room with one of the girls. He was telling Passman that the transaction had been made and that his girl had been badged. Passman switched frequencies and radioed a couple of squad cars that were parked on nearby side streets, waiting for his call. They arrived, sirens and cherry-tops activated, shortly thereafter, accompanied by a wagon. The Camaro promptly sped off, and the white girl disappeared into an alley.

“Life’s off-key symphony,” said Passman, a cut-rate philosopher toiling in a world of hookers, pimps, glory-hole enthusiasts, flagellants, women who spread their legs on the D.C. Transit, and guys who played with their dongs in public.

“Let’s see what we got inside,” said Vaughn.

The building had been a row house, once residential, now zoned commercial, with an urban market on the first floor. They followed the uniformed police into the door beside the market and went up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The uniforms had drawn their service revolvers, but Vaughn’s rig remained snapped. At the sound of the sirens, Red Jones would have gone out the fire escape that led to the alley, where another patrolman and his partner were stationed and ready. But those officers had radioed in that all was quiet. Vaughn had not expected to find Jones in the building. He was here for informa ke fofftion.

The undercover officer and the unlucky young whore were standing in the hall, his hand loosely gripping her upper arm. She was an unformed-looking girl in a purple negligee. A prominent mole marked her face. Two other girls were standing in the hall, similarly attired, observing, smoking cigarettes.

“Entrapment,” said the girl, whose name was Shay. “Entrapment.” She had been told to repeat that word and nothing else.

“Down at the end,” said the plainclothes man to Passman and Vaughn.

They didn’t need to be told. Coco Watkins, in red lipstick, violet eye shadow, high heels, high hair, and a red dress, stood by an open door at the end of hot-pad row, leaning against the frame. Her arms were folded. Her breasts were like chocolate grapefruits heaving up out of her plunging V-neck.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Vaughn, and the uniformed police holstered their guns.

As Vaughn approached Coco, he noted that he was looking her straight in the eye. Wasn’t often that he came upon a woman his height. Her evening shoes gave her three inches, but even without them, she had to be six foot tall.

Passman showed her his badge.

“Question is,” said Coco, “who is he?”

“Detective Frank Vaughn,” he said, dipping his head cordially.

“Hound Dog,” said Coco, one corner of her lip upturned in a half smile. “Y’all got a warrant?”

“Why don’t you just be polite and ask us in,” said Passman.

“Don’t touch anything,” said Coco. “I’m not playin.”

She unfolded her arms and walked into her apartment, which was also her office. Vaughn and Passman followed. To Vaughn it looked like the lair of a proper madam. Red velvet sofa, a nice big bed, and a bar cart, fully stocked.

“Drink?” said Coco, reading Vaughn’s eyes.

Vaughn shook his head.

“We’re placing your girl under arrest for solicitation,” said Passman. “You, too, and the others.”

“This here is a licensed massage establishment.”

“You’ll get a phone call,” said Passman.

“Shit.” She looked at Vaughn. “I know why Vice made my door dark. Why you here?”

“I’m looking for Robert Lee Jones,” said Vaughn. “Goes by Red.”

“So?”

“He’s wanted on suspicion of a homicide. You and Red are friends, aren’t you?”

“Maybe we are. But I don’t kut nknow where he is at this time. If you run into him-”

“I know. Give him your regards.” Vaughn looked around, saw a closed door. “Is that a closet?”

“Go ahead and look in it. While you’re at it, search under the bed, you got a mind to.”

Vaughn’s eyes were drawn to the bed. It was a brass-rail deal, the box spring and mattress up high. He could see the edge of a wooden box beneath it, sitting on the floor. Many straights kept their valuables close by, underneath their beds. Criminals did, too. Vaughn glanced at Coco’s manicured hands, unadorned with jewelry.

“I doubt Red Jones is hiding under anyone’s bed,” said Vaughn.

“Believe it, big man.”

Coco looked at Vaughn directly. Vaughn smiled.

“I don’t need no bracelets, Hap,” said Coco.

“Right,” said Passman, turning to one of the cops in uniform. “Take her out. Gently.”

Out in the hall, as the girls were being led to the stairs, Coco watched Shay, her head down, her hair disheveled, being moved along by the undercover man. Shay was one of the newer ladies, and this was her first arrest. It would not be the only emotional hit she’d take that night.

Coco felt bad for Shay, almost. But it was time for her to see this life as it was instead of how she wanted it to be. Girl had to learn.

Vaughn was the last one out of the building. He checked the front door before stepping onto the street.