What It Was

SEVEN

Lou Fanella and Gino Gregorio had come down from Newark on the Turnpike, taking the BW Parkway south into D.C. They entered the city via New York Avenue in a black ’69 Continental sedan with suicide doors and a 460 V-8.

“What a shithole,” said Fanella, big and beefy, with dark hair and Groucho eyebrows. His thick wrist rested on the wheel as he drove, a cigarette burning between his fingers.

He was looking at the run-down gateway to Washington that was the first impression for many visitors to the nation’s capital, a mix of warehouses, liquor stores, unadorned bars, and rank motels housing criminals, prostitutes, last-stop drunks, and welfare families.

“This is where Zoot said to rent a room?” said Fanella.

“That’s what he said.” Gregorio was on the young side, with a wiry build, thinning blond hair, the cool blue eyes of an Italian horse opera villain, and a face cratered with scars grimly memorializing the nightmarish acne of his adolescence.

“It’s all smokes ’round here,” said Fanella.

“There were some places looked all right, back where we were.”

“Then let’s go back to where we were.”

They turned around and got a room in a motel off Kenilworth Avenue, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Their room smelled strongly of bleach and faintly of puke. The area itself was no better than the one they had rejected, but most of the people here were white. Now they were comfortable.

They went out and bought liquor and mixers and brought the goods back to the room. Fanella drank Ten High bourbon and Gregorio went with Seagram’s 7. The Black Shield of Falworth was playing on their small television set, and they watched the swords-and-tights movie while they drank and put away cigarettes. Soon the room was heavy with smoke and the sound of their thoughtful conversation.

“Janet Leigh,” said Fanella. “God.” He shook the ice in his glass and looked at Gregorio. “Tony Curtis is a Jew. Did you know that?”

“So?”

“Means Janet likes her salami cut.”

“I’m like that down there, too.”

“Yeah, but you don’t look like Tony. I bet he had that dish up one side and down the other all day long.”

“How would you know?”

“ ’Cause he was married to her, you dumbass.”

“Oh.”

“Look at that. I love it when a broad has a narrow waist and big tits. How about you, Gino?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Who doesn’t?”‹ [t?›“I gues/p›

“Homos,” said Fanella.

They found a place nearby that had steaks on special and a salad bar. After the main they went with a couple of slices of cheesecake, then settled up the check and drove back into the city. They found Thomas “Zoot” Mazzetti seated at the bar of a place called the Embers, on the 1200 block of 19th Street.

A jazzy outfit called the Frank Hinton Group was playing in the lounge for an audience of lawyers, lawyer types, and secretaries, all dressed nice, seated around the low-lit spot. Fanella and Gregorio wore sport jackets and polyester slacks with bold-print shirts, collars out over the lapels. They looked like what they were.

Fanella felt that Zoot was showing off, setting the meeting at a high-end spot. Like, look at me; I have made it. Zoot had come up in their area and like them had worked for the Organization on the ladder’s lowest rungs. All of them were high school dropouts. Gino Gregorio, at the bottom of the bell curve, had done a stint in the army but had gone no further than the motor pool.

Years earlier, Zoot had followed a girl south to the Baltimore-Washington corridor. She soon threw him over for a guy with a brain and a job. By then Zoot had grown comfortable with the area. He was a novelty here, a real Italian just like Pacino instead of another failed swinging dick from the neighborhood back home. He decided to stay and found a niche in D.C. as a bookie and a buyer and seller of information. Lately he had developed a relationship with a local cop who was into him on a gambling debt for two thousand dollars and change. Zoot was not book smart but he knew how to operate.

“Big shot,” said Fanella. “Look at you.”

Zoot smiled, stepped back from the bar, let them see his getup, tight jeans with a dollar-sign belt buckle, a rayon shirt, and a cinnamon-colored leather jacket.

“Them pants are kinda snug, ain’t they?” said Fanella, winking at Gregorio.

“That’s for the ladies,” said Zoot. “I dress to the left, as you can see.”

“You look like a hairdresser,” said Fanella.

“Fuck you and buy me a drink.”

They had cocktails and got around to why they had come. Zoot told them where they could find Roland Williams, the man they were looking for. He said the information had come from a law enforcement officer he had “on retainer” and the tip was golden. For his trouble they picked up the tab but gave Zoot nothing extra. It was understood that he was still connected, however tenuously, to the outfit, and always would be.

“Where can we look at some women in this town?” said Fanella. “You know what I’m talking about. Ann-Margret types.”

Zoot gave them a suggestion.

Fanella and Gregorio went down to the Gold Rush, a burlesque club low on 14th. No cover, no minimum. Daphne Lake and her “exotic revue” were performing. Daphne’s protegees were double-D gals with plenty of flank and ass, but, to the dis [t, buy me appointment and annoyance of Fanella, they showed no wool. Disoriented in their new surroundings, they walked the streets and came upon a theater, the Playhouse, showing a stroke picture called Bacchanale. “You must see Uta Erickson!” it said on the marquee, and they bit. Sitting there in the auditorium with the raincoat creeps who were moaning as they jacked off into newspapers and socks. It was distracting, but eventually Fanella’s trousers got tight, and he went to the bathroom and rubbed one off in the privacy of a stall. Returning to his seat, he tugged on Gregorio’s jacket and told him it was time to go.

“The movie’s not finished,” said Gregorio.

“Foreign pictures stink,” said Fanella. “Come on.”

The Lincoln was where they’d left it, around the corner from the Gold Rush. Fanella cruised out of town, careful to stay within ten miles of the speed limit. He had a switchblade with a bone handle in his pocket. Under the driver’s seat was a loaded.38. In the trunk were two cut-down shotguns and slings, handguns of various calibers, bricks of ammunition, a baseball bat, a pair of lead-filled saps, a set of butcher knives wrapped in soft cloth, and a white raincoat. Fanella did not want to have to shoot a police officer over a traffic stop. His people would not like it if he went to jail before completing his task. He and Gino had work to do.

Robert Lee Jones was seated in the chair beside the red velvet couch where Shirley “Coco” Watkins lounged in her office, drinking pink champagne, enjoying a Viceroy. Her new ring was in a silverware box under the bed, where she kept her jewelry. Jones was having King George scotch cut with a little bit of water. In the rooms down the hall, Coco’s girls were working.

“Time for me to move out,” said Jones. “Gonna room with Alfonzo for a while over in Burrville. I can’t be stayin here.”

“For real?”

“I’m too hot.”

“You the one lit the stove.”

“You see me sweatin?”

“I never have before.”

“I’m not stressed. I got cash now, Coco. Couple a thousand. Fonzo offed the product wholesale and we split the take.”

“You woulda made more, you sold it by the piece.”

“I got no interest in heroin. Just money.”

“So if you’re flush, what’s your problem? You got a bed right here.”

“People been seein us together. I ain’t about to wait for the law to show up. Me and Fonzo got a chance to make some real coin now.”

Jones produced a pack of Kools from his breast pocket, flipped it, and extracted a menthol out of the hole he had torn in the bottom of the deck. He lit it with a match from the Ed Murphy’s Supper Club book he had taken from Odum’s apartment.

“What are [›ad y’all’s plans?” said Coco.

“We’re goin at Sylvester Ward.”

“Two-Tone Ward? The numbers man?”

“Him. Fonzo been sittin on him and knows his routine.”

“Shit. You gonna take off Ward now.”

“Because we can.”

She blinked demurely. There was esteem and affection in her gaze. Also, concern for her man.

“You gettin bold,” she said.

“My name’s ringing out in this town,” said Jones. “People talkin about me in barbershops, on the stoops. Young motherfuckers steppin aside when I walk into the club. They all wanna be like me.”

“More you get known, bigger chance you gonna get taken down.”

“Then I’ll go down,” said Jones.

“What about us?”

“You’re my bottom, girl.”

He leaned forward and kissed her full mouth. He put his hand behind her neck to keep her in. Her tongue snaked around his. Sometimes her mouth was as good as her box, to him. Sometimes.

“How you fixin to cool things down?” said Coco.

“I made a mistake with Roland Williams. He’s in D.C. General right now, but when he comes out? I’m gonna take care of it. My man from back home will see to some other problems we got, too.” Jones double-dragged on his cigarette, let the smoke out slow. “What’s your girl’s name, got the mark on her face?”

“That’s a mole, Red. You talkin about Shay.”

“She been hangin with that dude come out of Lorton premature. Right?”

“Dallas Butler. You had a drink with him yourself, right here in this room.”

“Dallas, yeah. Boy’s custard. What was he in for?”

“He was doing sixteen on an armed robbery when he busted out.”

“We gonna make him a murderer, too. But I’m gonna need your help.”

Coco stubbed her Viceroy out in the ashtray after a hungry last drag. “What you want me to do?”

“Ask Shay to hook up a meet. Tell her I want to talk to her boy, but I want it to be a surprise. Not so she’d have cause to be suspicious. You know how to do it. Me and Fonzo will take care of the rest.”

“Anything else?”

“Pick up the phone,” said Jones.

He gave her instruc [e hthetions. She dialed the Third District station house and asked for Detective Vaughn. The voice on the other end of the line told her Vaughn was not in.

“Let me leave a message, then.”

“What’s your name and location?”

“Never mind that,” said Coco. “This about the Robert Odum murder, over there at Thirteenth and R. I know who downed the dude. The killer’s name is Dallas Butler. Dallas like the football team, Butler how it sounds.”

She hung up the phone.

Jones smiled and got up out of his seat. “You did good.”

“Where you goin?”

“Out.”

“Don’t forget about the show. It’s comin up.”

“What show’s that?”

“Donny and Roberta at the Carter Barron. You copped the tickets, fool!”

“Oh, yeah.” He wasn’t excited about it. Music for females and pretty boys. It was weak.

“Come here.”

He bent into her kiss. Standing to his full height, he patted the side of his unkempt natural and let her admire him.

“I’ll be around, Coco.”

“I know you will.”