What It Was

SIX

Can I get that cup, Detective?”

Vaughn lifted a plastic cup off a tray and put it in Roland Williams’s outstretched hand. Williams sipped water from a straw that was hinged at a ninety-degree angle. He ran his tongue over his dry lips and kept the cup in hand.

“You had some luck,” said Vaughn.

“Do I look lucky to you?”

Williams, weak and thin, was in a hospital bed in D.C. General, hooked up to an IV, his shoulder and arm in a blue sling, bandages and dressing beneath it. The slug had entered his upper chest and exited cleanly through his back, so the close-range shot had been a kind of blessing.

Williams’s luck was not of the lottery-winning variety, or that of an ugly man going home with the prettiest girl in the bar, but it was something to be thankful for.

“Tell us what happened,” said Rick Cochnar, the young man who was standing beside Vaughn. He did not look like many of the assistant prosecutors in his office. He was state school educated, with longish hair and the build of a fullback. He was short, with big hands. He was wearing a charcoal-colored suit with thin chalk stripes.

Williams turned his head and looked at his attorney, Tim Doyle, a Jesuit school graduate and baseball-playing standout in his day, now in love with drink. He was seated in the guest chair of the room.

“You have immunity,” said Doyle with a small nod.

“What about-”

“That’s inadmissible.”

The police on the scene had found Williams’s house key in the alley beside his unco N work="0emnscious body. A bystander had identified Williams and his place of residence. Uniformed police, under the supervision of an overly ambitious sergeant, used the key to enter the house, searched the place thoroughly, and found a large amount of bundled heroin in a false wall behind a hutch. They had no warrant and no PC.

“I’m homicide police,” said Vaughn. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about heroin.”

“Who did this to you?” said Cochnar.

Williams took another drink of water and let a silence settle in the room. “I’m damn near sure the man goes by Red.”

“Last name?” said Vaughn.

“Jones.”

“Does Red have a Christian name?”

“I expect he does, unless he popped out the devil’s ass.”

“What else do you know about Jones?”

Williams paused. Over the ghetto telegraph he’d heard that Red Jones had a woman named Coco, ran a trick-house on 14th, near R, over a market once owned by a Jew, now run by a Rican. But there wasn’t any good reason to spill that information here. He’d already said too much.

“I don’t know nothin else,” said Williams.

Vaughn nodded. The name Red Jones was enough. Vaughn had already narrowed Reds-with-rap-sheets down to three. A.45 shell casing carrying a partial print had been recovered from the alley. Jones would have priors and prints on file. Now Vaughn would have to find someone to squeeze. Roland Williams, in exchange for speaking off the record with Vaughn and Cochnar, would not be required to testify. Vaughn didn’t want Jones for an attempted murder, anyway. He wanted him on the murder of Odum.

“Describe Jones,” said Vaughn.

Williams gave them detailed descriptions of Red Jones and his accomplice, whose name he did not know. Cochnar wrote it down, and Vaughn committed it to memory.

“You’re Homicide,” said Williams. “So why you here? Ain’t nobody murder me.”

“This isn’t about you,” said Vaughn. “You told your lawyer that you think there’s a connection between this Red character and a case I’m currently working. The victim was Robert Odum.”

Again, Williams glanced at his attorney.

“Go ahead,” said Doyle.

“I got robbed, Detective,” said Williams. “Man took my money and somethin else that belonged to me. Bobby Odum was an associate of mine, the only man in town who knew what I had in my possession.”

“You’ve got runners, don’t you?”

“My runners know what I got when I’m ready to tell ’em. Bobby was a tester. He knew I had product before anyone else did. Had to be Odum w S toMy runnersho gave me up.”

Cochnar was taking notes in a book of lined paper he held in hand. Williams was watching him.

“I ain’t tryin to dead myself,” said Williams. “I’ll plead the Fifth, I have to.”

“The detective’s already been informed,” said Doyle.

“Where’d you get the dope?” said Vaughn.

“Harlem,” said Williams.

“You copped from brothers?”

“Through the Family.”

“The Italians aren’t gonna like this.”

“That’s what I know. When I get out of here, I plan to give this life up, for real.”

“Sure you will.” Vaughn looked down at Roland, his honker coming out of his gaunt face like the pecker of an aroused dog. “They call you Long Nose, don’t they?”

“Some do,” said Williams defensively.

“I can see it,” said Vaughn, and showed Williams his row of widely spaced teeth. “Take care of yourself.”

Vaughn and Cochnar left the room. Walking down the busy hallway, they discussed the case. Cochnar had been in charge of prosecuting a James Carpenter, awaiting trial in the D.C. Jail on a homicide, when Odum was killed. Cochnar suspected that Carpenter had ordered the hit on Odum because he believed that Odum had provided information that led to Carpenter’s arrest. Vaughn and Cochnar now liked Red Jones for that murder-for-hire.

They passed a tall, chiseled, uniformed security guard who worked for a private company under contract with the hospital. His name was Clarence Bowman, and he had been raised in an alley dwelling known as Temperance Court.

Bowman followed Vaughn and Cochnar out to the parking lot, RFK Stadium and the D.C. Armory looming over the landscape. He kept well behind them so he would not be noticed. The big white man got into a large Dodge sedan. He looked like police, so that was no surprise. The stocky white boy in the suit unlocked a shiny pea-green Ford Maverick and settled into the driver’s side. Young dude with his first real job out of law school, driving his first new car. Cochnar, the government prosecutor. Had to be.

Strange sat on 13th in his Monte Carlo, listening to the radio, waiting. He was hoping that the man he had seen the day before would reappear. It wasn’t just a blind man’s grope. Street people had their favorite spots and seldom changed locations until chased off.

He was there a half hour or so when the man came out of an apartment building across the street from Odum’s. The man used the crosswalk, went to the retaining wall that was his chair, and had a seat on the edge of it, his feet dangling over the sidewalk. Strange got out of his car.

The man did not move as Strange approached, nor did he look Sr d="0em"›‹ away. Strange came up on him, his arms loose, his stance unthreatening, and stood before him.

“Afternoon,” said Strange. “I was hoping we could talk.”

Up close, the man’s eyes were not unintelligent, nor were they the empty eyes of a dope fiend, but he looked beaten. Though it was warm out, he wore an old-style cardigan sweater over a shirt with a frayed collar. His hair was shaved close to the scalp with a slash part, a barbershop cut from ten years back. The slope of his shoulders and his folded arms suggested surrender.

“You police?”

“Not anymore. I’m private. My name’s Derek Strange. Can I buy you a beer, something?”

“I don’t drink. You got a smoke?”

“Sorry.”

The man bit his lip as something came to mind. “I knew a Strange. Boy named Dennis. Older than you, about your size.”

“Dennis was my brother.”

“We used to hang out some, at house parties and all, before he joined the navy. I heard he passed. My sympathies, man.”

“Thank you.”

The man put his hand out and Strange shook it. “Milton Wallace.”

“Pleasure,” said Strange. “You served, too?”

“Army,” said Wallace, and then Strange knew. This wasn’t any street person, or drunk, or junkie. The man was a veteran who’d been in it and come out torn on the other side.

Strange looked up at the sky. Raindrops had begun to fall and more were on the way. “We should get out of this.”

“I live with my mother in that building,” said Wallace, pointing to the door from which he’d exited. “But I don’t want to disturb her.”

“My Chevy’s right over there.”

Wallace smiled wistfully. “That’s a pretty MC.”

THE NEW Stylistics song, “People Make the World Go Round,” was on the radio and playing low, Russell Thompkins Jr.’s angelic vocals an apt, melodic narration to the life they were seeing, tableau-form, through the windshield. On 13th, a tired woman shuffled down the sidewalk, carrying a bag of groceries. A group of young girls double-Dutched on the corner, and on a nearby stoop a man was pleading with a woman, gesturing elaborately with his hands to make his case.

“City ain’t all that different since I been back,” said Wallace. “Little burned around the edges, maybe. But still the same rough old ghetto.”

“You missed the trouble.”

“I had my own troubles to worry on.”

“Where were you?”

“Bao Loc, mostly. Northeast of Saigon. I was with Charlie Company, the One Seventy-Third.”

Strange had heard tell of the company. Lydell had occasionally invoked its name with reverence.

“You?” said Wallace.

“My knee kept me out. Football injury.”

“You oughta thank the one who put the hurtin on you.”

“I reckon I should,” said Strange. “You see much action?”

Wallace did not reply. As it was for many veterans, his combat experience was sacred to him and the men he had fought with. He had no intention of discussing it with this young man.

“What’s this about?” said Wallace.

“I wanted to talk to you about the Odum murder.”

“Figured as much. But we gonna have to settle on something first.”

“I don’t have any money to speak of.”

“It’s not about coin. I’ll talk to you but no one else. And if you put the police on me, I’ll deny I told you anything.”

“The law can protect you.”

“I’m not afraid. But my mother lost a leg to diabetes, and now she’s confined to a chair. She needs me, man. Understand?”

“You have my word,” said Strange. “Did the police question you?”

“A white detective tried to give me money and liquor in exchange for conversation. Like I was some kind of bum.”

“You knew Odum?”

“Not really. Seen him on the street now and then.”

“Were you over there on that wall at the time of the killing?”

“There every day.”

“And?”

“The music got my attention, comin from this apartment on the second floor. It was soft at first, then real loud. And then, under it, a little pop. Small-caliber gun. Few minutes later, a tall light-skinned dude with a fucked-up natural come out the building, walkin like nothing happened. He went to a car.”

“What kind of car?”

“Late-model Fury, red over white. Had the fold-in headlamps. A woman with big hair or a wig was behind the wheel. The tall man got in the passenger side.”

“He see you?”

“If he did, he didn’t much care.”

“I’m looking for a ring was in Odum’s possession the time of his death. Wonderin maybe if the tall man had it in hand when he walked to the Plymouth.”

“Shit.” Wallace chuckled. “Now you expectin me to know too much.”

“I took a swing at it.”

“You on a treasure hunt, huh.”

“Somethin like that.”

“Plenty of police went in and out of Odum’s crib. Might could be one of them took that ring.”

“I thought of that.”

“Or you just gonna have to ask the tall dude yourself.”

“Hoping to avoid that if I can,” said Strange. “What else about the car? You didn’t get the plate number, did you?”

“Wasn’t no numbers,” said Wallace. “Plate was the kind had words on it.”

“You remember what it said?”

“Coco,” said Wallace. “C-O, C-O.”

“D.C. tags?”

“Right.”

Strange experienced a small familiar rush. All the bullshit jobs he’d taken for money lately, it had been a while since he had been involved in something real.

“You got strong observation skills,” said Strange. “What do you do for work?”

“I don’t do a thing.”

“You can’t find a job?”

“Can’t keep one. Man at the VA says I got problems. Emotional stress brought on by my ‘intense experience overseas.’ Says time gonna heal me.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

“Truth, is, I don’t know what to do. So I sit.” Wallace smiled a little, catching a memory. “Your brother Dennis was a funny dude. We laughed like crazy in the day.”

“He was good.”

Dennis had been found in the alley behind their boyhood home, his throat cut open with a knife. He’d been butchered like an animal.

But I took care of the one who did it, thought Strange.

Me and Vaughn.

“Thanks for this.” Strange put out his hand.