D. C. Noir 2

by George Pelecanos

  She got up from the couch and looked into the crib. In the darkness she could make out that her son was awake, his little legs kicking and no sound from him but a happy gurgle. The sound of the walkie-talkie outside the door came and went. She could see it all on the television news—“Drug-Dealing Mama in Jail. Baby Put in Foster Care.” She stepped over the man who said he was Darnell’s cousin and pushed the door to the bedroom all the way open. Catrina was getting out of bed. Horace was snoring. He had never snored before in his life, but the drugs and alcohol together had done bad things to his airway.

  “You hear anything?” Elaine whispered as Catrina tiptoed to her.

  “I sure did,” Catrina said. Sleeping on the streets required keeping one eye and both ears open. “I don’t wanna go back to jail.”

  “Shit. Me neither,” Elaine said. “What about the window?”

  “Go out and down two floors? With a baby? Damn!”

  “We can do it,” Elaine said, looking over Catrina’s shoulder to the dark lump that was Horace mumbling in his sleep. “What about him?”

  Catrina turned her head. “He old. They ain’t gonna do anything to him. I’m just worried bout makin it with that baby.”

  “Well, I sure as hell ain’t gonna go without my child.”

  “I ain’t said we was,” Catrina hissed. “Down two floors just ain’t gonna be easy, is all.”

  “We can do it,” Elaine said.

  “We can do it,” Catrina said. She tiptoed to the chair at the foot of the bed and went through Horace’s pants pockets. “Maybe fifty dollars here,” she whispered after returning. “I already got about three hundred.”

  “You been stealin from him?” Elaine said. The lump in the bed turned over and moaned, then settled back to snoring.

  “God helps them that helps themselves, Elaine. Les go.” Catrina had her clothes in her hands and went on by Elaine, who watched as the lump in the bed turned again, snoring all the while. Bye, Horace. Bye. I be seein you.

  * * *

  The policeman in the unmarked car parked across 12th Street watched as Elaine stood on the edge of the balcony and jumped. She passed for a second in front of the feeble light over the entrance and landed on the sloping entrance of the underground parking garage. The policeman was five years from retirement and he did not move, because he could see quite well from where he sat. His partner, only three years on the job, was asleep in the passenger seat. The veteran thought the woman jumping might have hurt herself, because he did not see her rise from the ground for several minutes. I wouldn’t do it, the man thought, not for all a rich man’s money. The woman did rise, but before she did he saw another woman lean over the balcony dangling a bundle. Drugs? he thought. Nah. Clothes? Yeah, clothes more like it. The bundle was on a long rope or string—it was too far for the man to make out. The woman on the balcony leaned over very far and the woman on the ground reached up as far as she could, but still the bundle was a good two feet from her hands.

  Just let them clothes drop, the policeman thought. Then Catrina released the bundle and Elaine caught it. Good catch. I wonder what she looks like in the light. Catrina jumped, and the policeman watched her pass momentarily in front of the light, and then he looked over at his partner. He himself didn’t mind filling out the forms so much, but his partner did, so he let him sleep on. I’ll be on a lake fishin my behind off and you’ll still be doin this. When he looked back, the first woman was coming up the slope of the entrance with the bundle in her arms and the second one was limping after her. I wonder what that one looks like in a good light. Once on the sidewalk, both women looked left, then right, and headed down 12th Street. The policeman yawned and watched through his sideview mirror as the women crossed M Street. He yawned again. Even at three o’clock in the morning people still jaywalked.

  * * *

  The man who was a cousin of Darnell’s was on his way back from the bathroom when the police broke through the door. He frightened easily, and though he had just emptied his bladder, he peed again as the door came open and the light of the hallway and the loud men came spilling in on him and his sleeping companions.

  Horace began asking about Catrina and Elaine and the baby as soon as they put him in a cell. It took him that long to clear his head and understand what was happening to him. He pressed his face against the bars, trying to get his bearings and ignoring everything behind him in the cell. He stuck his mouth as far out of the bars as he could and shouted for someone to tell him whether they knew if the young women and the baby were all right. “They just women, yall,” he kept saying for some five minutes. “They wouldn’t hurt a flea. Officers, please. Please, Officers. What’s done happened to them? And that baby … That baby is so innocent.” It was a little after six in the morning, and men up and down the line started hollering for him to shut up or they would stick the biggest dick he ever saw in his mouth. Stunned, he did quiet down, because, while he was used to street language coming from the young men who came and went in his apartment, no bad words had ever been directed at him. They talked trash with the filthiest language he had ever heard but they always invited him to join in and “talk about how it really is,” talk about his knowing the secretary of defense and the mayor. Usually, after the second blunt, he was floating along with them. Now someone had threatened to do to him what he and the young men said they would do to any woman that crossed them.

  Then he turned from the bars and considered the three men he was sharing the two-man cell with. The city jail people liked to make as little work for themselves as possible, and filling cells beyond their capacity meant having to deal with fewer locks. One man was cocooned in blankets on the floor beside the tiered metal beds. The man sleeping on the top bunk had a leg over the side, and because he was a tall man the leg came down to within six inches of the face of the man lying on the bottom bunk. That man was awake and on his back and picking his nose and staring at Horace. His other hand was under his blanket, in the crotch of his pants. What the man got out of his nose he would flick up at the bottom of the bunk above him. Watching him, Horace remembered that a very long time ago, even before the Chesapeake Street house, Loneese would iron his handkerchiefs and fold them into four perfect squares.

  “Daddy,” the man said, “you got my smokes?”

  “What?” Horace said. He recalled doing it to Catrina about two or three in the morning and then rolling over and going to sleep. He also remembered slapping flies away in his dreams, flies that were as big as the hands of policemen.

  The man seemed to have an infinite supply of boogers, and the more he picked, the more Horace’s stomach churned. He used to think it was such a shame to unfold the handkerchiefs, so wondrous were the squares. The man sighed at Horace’s question and put something from his nose on the big toe of the sleeping man above him. “I said do you got my smokes?”

  “I don’t have my cigarettes with me,” Horace said. He tried the best white man’s English he knew, having been told by a friend who was serving with him in the army in Germany that it impressed not only white people but black people who weren’t going anywhere in life. “I left my cigarettes at home.” His legs were aching and he wanted to sit on the floor, but the only available space was in the general area of where he was standing and something adhered to his shoes every time he lifted his feet. “I wish I did have my cigarettes to give you.”

  “I didn’t ask you bout your cigarettes. I don’t wanna smoke them. I ask you bout my cigarettes. I wanna know if you brought my cigarettes.”

  Someone four cells down screamed and called out in his sleep: “Irene, why did you do this to me? Irene, ain’t love worth a damn anymore?” Someone else told him to shut up or he would get a king-size dick in his mouth.

  “I told you I do not have any cigarettes,” Horace said.

  “You know, you ain’t worth shit,” the man said. “You take the cake and mess it all up. You really do. Now, you know you was comin to jail, so why didn’t you bring my goddam smokes? What k
inda fuckin consideration is that?”

  Horace decided to say nothing. He raised first one leg and then the other and shook them, hoping that would relieve the aches. Slowly, he turned around to face the bars. No one had told him what was going to happen to him. He knew a lawyer, but he did not know if he was still practicing. He had friends, but he did not want any of them to see him in jail. He hoped the man would go to sleep.

  “Don’t turn your fuckin back on me after all we meant to each other,” the man said. “We have this long relationship and you do this to me. Whas wrong with you, Daddy?”

  “Look,” Horace said, turning back to the man. “I done told you I ain’t got no smokes. I ain’t got your smokes. I ain’t got my smokes. I ain’t got nobody’s smokes. Why can’t you understand that?” He was aware that he was veering away from the white man’s English, but he knew that his friend from Germany was probably home asleep safely in his bed. “I can’t give you what I don’t have.” Men were murdered in the D.C. Jail, or so the Washington Post told him. “Can’t you understand what I’m sayin?” His back stayed as close to the bars as he could manage. Who was this Irene, he thought, and what had she done to steal into a man’s dreams that way?

  “So, Daddy, it’s gonna be like that, huh?” the man said, raising his head and pushing the foot of the upper-bunk man out of the way so he could see Horace better. He took his hand out of his crotch and pointed at Horace. “You gon pull a Peter-and-Jesus thing on me and deny you ever knew me, huh? Thas your plan, Daddy?” He lowered his head back to the black-and-white-striped pillow. “I’ve seen some low-down dirty shit in my day, but you the lowest. After our long relationship and everything.”

  “I never met you in my life,” Horace said, grabbing the bars behind him with both hands, hoping, again, for relief.

  “I won’t forget this, and you know how long my memory is. First, you don’t bring me my smokes, like you know you should. Then you deny all that we had. Don’t go to sleep in here, Daddy, thas all I gotta say.”

  He thought of Reilly Johnson, a man he had worked with in the Pentagon. Reilly considered himself something of a photographer. He had taken the picture of Horace with the secretary of defense. What would the bail be? Would Reilly be at home to receive his call on a Sunday morning? Would they give him bail? The policemen who pulled him from his bed had tsk-tsked in his face. “Sellin drugs and corruptin young people like that.” “I didn’t know nothin about that, Officer. Please.” “Tsk-tsk. An old man like you.”

  “The world ain’t big enough for you to hide from my righteous wrath, Daddy. And you know how righteous I can be when I get started. The world ain’t big enough, so you know this jail ain’t big enough.”

  Horace turned back to the bars. Was something in the back as painful as something in the stomach? He touched his face. Rarely, even in the lost months with Catrina, had he failed to shave each morning. A man’s capable demeanor started with a shave each morning, his sergeant in boot camp had told him a thousand years ago.

  The man down the way began calling for Irene again. Irene, Horace called in his mind. Irene, are you out there? No one told the man to be quiet. It was about seven and the whole building was waking up and the man calling Irene was not the loudest sound in the world anymore.

  “Daddy, you got my smokes? Could use my smokes right about now.”

  Horace, unable to stand anymore, slowly sank to the floor. There he found some relief. The more he sat, the more he began to play over the arrest. He had had money in his pocket when he took off his pants the night before, but there was no money when they booked him. And where had Catrina and Elaine been when the police marched him out of the apartment and down to the paddy wagon, with the Claridge’s female security guard standing behind her desk with an oh-yes-I-told-you-so look? Where had they been? He had not seen them. He stretched out his legs and they touched the feet of the sleeping man on the floor. The man roused. “Love don’t mean shit anymore,” the man on the lower bunk said. It was loud enough to wake the man on the floor all the way, and that man sat up and covered his chest with his blanket and looked at Horace, blinking and blinking and getting a clearer picture of Horace the more he blinked.

  * * *

  Reilly did not come for him until the middle of Monday afternoon. Somebody opened the cell door and at first Horace thought the policeman was coming to get one of his cellmates.

  “Homer Parkins,” the man with the keys said. The doors were supposed to open electronically, but that system had not worked in a long time.

  “Thas me,” Horace said and got to his feet. As he and the man with the keys walked past the other cells, someone said to Horace, “Hey, Pops, you ain’t too old to learn to suck dick.” “Keep moving,” the man with the keys said. “Pops, I’ll give you a lesson when you come back.”

  As they poured his things out of a large manila envelope, the two guards behind the desk whispered and laughed. “Everything there?” one of them asked Horace. “Yes.” “Well, good,” the guard said. “I guess we’ll be seein you on your next trip here.” “Oh, leave that old man alone. He’s somebody’s grandfather.” “When they start that old,” the first man said, “it gets in their system and they can’t stop. Ain’t that right, Pops?”

  He and Reilly did not say very much after Reilly said he had been surprised to hear from Horace and that he had wondered what had happened to him since Loneese died. Horace said he was eternally grateful to Reilly for bailing him out and that it was all a mistake as well as a long story that he would soon share with him. At Claridge, Reilly offered to take him out for a meal, but Horace said he would have to take a rain check. “Rain check?” Reilly said, smiling. “I didn’t think they said that anymore.”

  The key to the apartment worked the way it always had, but something was blocking the door, and he had to force it open. Inside, he found destruction everywhere. On top of the clothes and the mementos of his life, strewn across the table and the couch and the floor were hundreds and hundreds of broken records. He took three steps into the room and began to cry. He turned around and around, hoping for something that would tell him it was not as bad as his eyes first reported. But there was little hope—the salt and pepper shakers had not been touched, the curtains covering the glass door were intact. There was not much beyond that for him to cling to.

  He thought immediately of Catrina and Elaine. What had he done to deserve this? Had he not always shown them a good and kind heart? He covered his eyes, but that seemed only to produce more tears, and when he lowered his hands the room danced before him through the tears. To steady himself, he put both hands on the table, which was covered in instant coffee and sugar. He brushed broken glass off the chair nearest him and sat down. He had not got it all off, and he felt what was left through his pants and underwear.

  He tried to look around but got no farther than the picture with the secretary of defense. It had two cracks in it, one running north to south and the other going northwest to southeast. The photograph was tilting, too, and something told him that if he could straighten the picture, it all might not be so bad. He reached out a hand, still crying, but he could not move from the chair.

  He stayed as he was through the afternoon and late into the evening, not once moving from the chair, though the tears did stop around five o’clock. Night came, and he still did not move. My name is Horace Perkins, he thought just as the sun set. My name is Horace Perkins, and I worked many a year at the Pentagon. The apartment became dark, but he did not have it in him to turn on the lights.

  * * *

  The knocking had been going on for more than ten minutes when he finally heard it. He got up, stumbling over debris, and opened the door. Elaine stood there with Darnell Jr. in her arms.

  “Horace, you okay? I been comin by. I been worried about you, Horace.”

  He said nothing but opened the door enough for her and the baby to enter.

  “It’s dark, Horace. What about some light?”

  He righted the lam
p on the table and turned it on.

  “Jesus in heaven, Horace! What happened! My Lord Jesus! I can’t believe this.” The baby, startled by his mother’s words, began to cry. “It’s okay,” she said to him, “it’s okay,” and gradually the baby calmed down. “Oh, Horace, I’m so sorry. I really am. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” She touched his shoulder with her free hand, but he shrugged it off. “Oh, my dear God! Who could do this?”

  She went to the couch and moved enough trash aside for the baby. She pulled a pacifier from her sweater pocket, put it momentarily in her mouth to remove the lint, then put it in the baby’s mouth. He appeared satisfied and leaned back on the couch.

  She went to Horace, and right away he grabbed her throat. “I’m gonna kill you tonight!” he shouted. “I just wish that bitch Catrina was here so I could kill her, too.” Elaine struggled and sputtered out one “Please” before he gripped her tighter. She beat his arms, but that seemed to give him more strength. She began to cry. “I’m gonna kill you tonight, girl, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  The baby began to cry, and she turned her head as much as she could to look at him. This made him slap her twice, and she started to fall, and he pulled her up and, as he did, went for a better grip, there was time enough for her to say, “Don’t kill me in front of my son, Horace.” He loosened his hands. “Don’t kill me in front of my boy, Horace.” Her tears ran down her face and over and into his hands. “He don’t deserve to see me die. You know that, Horace.”