What It Was

by George Pelecanos

  Strange had a seat at the bar next to a snaggletoothed MPD patrolman, Harold Cheek, out of 4-D, who was in streetclothes today. Funkadelic’s “You Hit the Nail on the Head” was on the system, the lead track off their latest, George Clinton playing his Hammond wild and free, a speed freak’s idea of a circus tent song. Grady Page liked to spin the new.

  “Gimme a Bud, Grady,” said Strange. Page, tall and lean, was going for the unofficial Biggest Afro in D.C. award. He reached into the cooler.

  “You see Grady?” said Cheek with amusement. “Tryin to look like Darnell Hillman and shit.”

  “Artis Gilmore got a big ’Fro, too,” said Strange.

  “Not as big as Darnell’s.”

  Strange was served. With one deep swig he drank the shoulders off the Bud.

  “Heard your man Lydell got his stripes,” said Cheek.

  “Yeah, Lydell’s doin all right.”

  Lydell Blue, Strange’s main boy from their Park View youth, had entered the MPD academy at the same time as Strange and had recently been promoted to sergeant. An army regular with time served in Vietnam, he had recently married a girl he’d met at his church. Strange felt Lydell had pulled the trigger too young, but realized that it was he, and not his friend, who was not ready.

  “Y’all played football together at Roosevelt, right?” said Cheek.

  “I went both ways,” said Strange. “Tight end and safety. Lydell was a fullback. Mostly, I tried to open the field up for him.”

  “He had the Interhigh record for yardage gained, didn’t he?”

  “His senior year. Lydell could play.”

  Cheek looked him over. “You miss it?”

  “Football?”

  “The force.”

  “I don’t miss it at all,’ said Strange. “They sure don’t need me. Not with heroes like you out there.”

  “Go ahead, Derek.”

  “You know Vaughn, don’t you? Homicide police?”

  “I know of him.”

  “Where’s he out of now?”

  “Last I heard, Three-D.”

  An off-duty security guard named Frank came over and greeted them with soul shakes. “What it look like, brothers?”

  “Frank,” said Cheek.

  Frank was good natured and had a pleasant face. He was wearing big bells with a wide brown belt and a knit shirt holding horizontal stripes. Real police sometimes called security guards “scarecrows” or “counterfeit cops,” especially the ones who weren’t much more than migrant workers, passing through town on their way to someplace else. But no one cracked on Frank, a local with a work ethic. Two oh five an hour, and he did his job straight.

  “Where he guarding at now?” said Strange, after Frank had drifted.

  “He’s down at that big hotel complex in Foggy Bottom. One on Virginia Avenue?”

  “Frank’s cool,” said Strange.

  A couple of ladies visited. One of them, a nice little deep-dark girl who was put together right, offered to get Strange high, and they went out back to the alley, where she produced a number and fired it up. Grady Page joined them for a minute. He and Strange shotgunned each other, then Strange did the same for the girl, whose name was LaVonya. Page went back inside to do his thing. LaVonya said to Strange, “You’re a big one,” and he said, “You should see me when I stand up,” and though he was already standing and the comment made no sense, it sounded funny, and the two of them laughed. She wrote down her phone number and Strange took it, because he was a man, and as soon as they went back into the bar he lost track of her.

  Page was playing the title cut off The World Is a Ghetto, the long version from the brand-new War, and Strange was higher than a Denver hippie as he drank another beer, the instrumental middle of the song building emotionally, almost violently, taking him up, Strange knowing that he was young and in the midst of something, a music, dress, and cultural revolution that was happening with his people, in his time. Where it was going he had no clue, but he was glad to be a part of it.

  “Man, you are trippin,” said Cheek with a chuckle. He had returned to his spot beside Strange, who had not noticed he was gone. “Where LaVonya at?”

  “Who?”

  “You better have another beer to straighten your shit out.”

  “Okay, then,” said Strange. “And one for you. On me.”

  Grady Page, smiling absently, up-picking his hair with his rake, had a power fist as a handle, was leaning against the beer cooler. Strange held up two fingers and signaled for one more round.

  WHEN STRANGE woke up, in the bedroom of his apartment on the northeast corner of 13th and Clifton, dusk had come. A nap was what he had needed, and it had cleared his head. He showered and changed into clean clothes, and soon Carmen knocked on his door.

  She was in pale slacks, cork-wedge shoes, and a pretty lilac-colored shirt that played off nice against her dark skin. She wore her hair in a natural, and when she smiled her deep dimples showed. He’d been knowing her since they were kids, and reckoned that he’d loved her just as long.

  They kissed.

  “What’s goin on, baby?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been calling you to firm up our plans.”

  “I fell asleep. Guess I didn’t hear the phone.”

  “Thought you were working today.”

  “I was,” said Strange, frowning as if accused. “Workin all the time. Even when I sleep, I work.”

  “Go on, Derek.” Carmen smiled. “What are we gonna see tonight?”

  “Culpepper Cattle Company?”

  “Please.”

  “I’m playing with you.” But he really did want to see it.

  “What about Georgia, Georgia? It’s playing at the Langston.”

  “All the way in Northeast?”

  “Benning Road’s not far.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Diana Sands plays this singer, falls in love with an army deserter in Sweden.”

  “Might as well give me a sleeping pill instead.”

  “So? You tryin to take me to a cow movie.”

  “Cowboy.”

  “Same thing, to me.”

  “How about this? I got some of that wine you like in the fridge. Let’s have a glass or two, then go out and catch a little dinner.”

  She walked toward him. “I guess we could.”

  Strange put Al Green Gets Next to You on his stereo and poured some Blue Nun as “Are You Lonely for Me Baby” set the mood. It was Al’s deep-soul record, full of grit and fire. They drank the too-sweet white by the open French doors on the south wall, Carmen sitting close to him, his arm around her shoulders as they talked about their day, looking down on the city lights below. His place was on the edge of the Piedmont Plateau, a low-rent district, but no rich man had a better view of D.C.

  “You hungry?” said Strange.

  “Not really.”

  “Come here, girl.”

  STRANGE WOKE naked in his bed. Carmen, nude atop the sheets, was sleeping beside him. Though they had made love twice that evening, the sight of her body made his mouth go dry. She’d been working toward medical school, but financial issues had steered her to nursing. Now an RN at the Columbia Hospital for Women, she had the beginnings of a solid, meaningful career. He was proud of Carmen and, despite his failings, wanted to do her right. He covered her, put on his drawers, and left the bedroom.

  He went to the living room, where soul records were scattered around his stereo, his expensive Marantz tube amplifier the center of the space. On the wall was an original one-sheet poster of the Man With No Name, tall in his poncho, a prize possession that Strange had gotten from a friend who’d worked at the Town theater on 13th and New York Avenue. Also, a Jim Brown lobby still from The Dirty Dozen, copped from the same dude. Wasn’t any mistaking it: a man lived here.

  Strange picked up the phone, dialed the number for the Third District station, and got the desk man on the line. He gave the sergeant his home and office numbers, and left a message for
Frank Vaughn.

  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 unconscious 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 who 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 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.