Stewart smiled, reaching for the radio on the dash.
KENNETH WILLIS TOOK the last of the garbage cans from the cafeteria to the Dumpsters behind the school. Willis carried the can up on his shoulder, the way some men carried a sport jacket, casual like. He was strong enough to do it, too. Unlike his supervisor, an old man with the name of Samuel, who Willis called Sambo to hisself. Always yessirin’ everybody, keeping his eyes downcast, and scratching at his head.
Carrying a full trash can that way, it showed off the muscles in his arms. At work, he rolled the sleeves of his shirt high so that the ladies could see what he had. Wore his pants tight for the same reason. He could feel the eyes of a couple of the female teachers they had at the school studying him as he walked the halls. Some of the little girls who went to the school there, sometimes they’d be noticing him, too. Even if they were too young to know what was making them feel warm inside.
Coming out the back door, he dumped the garbage into this big old green container and put the can down on the asphalt. He reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a Kool, and lit himself a smoke. He dragged on his cigarette and watched the kids the way he liked to do. They had finished their lunch and were out there on the edge of the playground, kicking a red rubber ball around on a weedy field.
There was this one girl Willis had been keeping his eye on. Did her hair in braids and always came to school in some kind of skirt. Wore little white socks on her feet. Girl was only ten, but she already had an ass on her like a girl of thirteen. Willis had checked out the mother when she came to pick the girl up around dismissal time. If the mother was any kind of road map to where the girl was headed, well, this girl was going to a real good place.
Not that he was into little girls or nothin’ like that. He did have a few things with some young ones now and again, and that last thing with that fourteen-year-old, the one who’d put him in jail. Fourteen? Shit, the way that girl moved her hips? Only a full-grown woman knew how to gyrate like that. But that was behind him, anyhow. He had to be careful now who he put his eyes on. He’d gotten this job, even with his priors, because someone had been lazy in looking into his past. He didn’t want to lose this position, not yet.
Wouldn’t be long, though, before he was out. This market thing, and then a couple of hotel jobs that Alvin had been talking about. Willis would throw away this piece he was wearing, had his name stitched across the front. Like they thought he couldn’t remember it, had to write it on his shirt. And these dirty pants, always smelled like food the kids had thrown away no matter how hard he scrubbed them in the sink. This was not a job for a man like him. He needed to start living right. These mothers that came to get their kids, and these teachers, and some of these kids, all of them who looked away when he smiled, had to be because he was a janitor. After those jobs with Alvin, he’d come back in his street threads, driving a new car, maybe a Lincoln, and see how they looked at him then.
Willis dropped the cigarette to the asphalt and crushed it. He had one more look at that girl out there. He wondered what color panties she had on underneath that skirt.
He turned and went back into the school, headed for the janitors’ room, where Samuel was having his lunch. It was time to go to work. Not to do this bullshit work right here, but to do the work of a man.
Willis stepped into the cramped room, poorly lit by one bulb. Samuel was sitting at a table, eating a sandwich his wife had made him, drinking one of those little cartons of milk he’d gotten from the cafeteria, the way he did every day. Him and those baggy-ass clothes, with those clown patches of gray around a bald-ass head.
“I feel poorly,” said Willis, putting a palm to his stomach.
“That right,” said Samuel.
“Tellin’ you, I’m sick.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I just came from the bathroom, man. Didn’t know so much could drop out of one man.”
“Maybe you got yourself a worm.”
“Sumshit like it, that’s for damn sure.”
“You better go home, then,” said Samuel in a tired way.
“Thanks, boss.”
“Don’t forget to punch yourself out.”
Okay, thought Willis. I’ll go ahead and do that now. You just sit there, eating your sad-ass, sorry-ass sandwich, and let me go. Shoot, blind man in a coffin could see he wasn’t sick. Strong as he looked? Now Samuel was gonna stick around, making his pennies, while he, Willis, went on that thing with his cousin and scored some real cash. Wasn’t no trick to getting free to do it, either. You could fool this fool here every single day.
Samuel Rogers watched Kenneth Willis punch his time card, then watched him walk from the room. He chuckled under his breath. Boy thought he was fooling him. He didn’t mind giving Willis the afternoon off, even if it meant more chores for him. Rogers plain didn’t care for Willis. Him with his sleeves rolled up to show his muscles, and that hungry-wolf way he looked at the women and even the little girls. Him hiding those soiled magazines in the office, back behind the lockers, like he was getting away with something. Not knowing enough about himself to admit what he was.
Through the years, Samuel Rogers had seen many of these slick young ones who thought they were too smart to work. Them thinking he was some kind of fool for sticking with it. Them who were in such a big hurry to get in the unemployment line. Samuel just did not like to be around that kind.
Man wore his pants too tight, too.
OLGA VAUGHN STOOD beside her husband, Frank, who was seated at the kitchen table, having a coffee and a smoke. They had just finished lunch. Olga had gone up to their bedroom and returned with a new pair of boots, looked like something out of the 1930s, on her feet. She had drawn a cigarette from Frank’s pack and was moving it, unlit, to and from her mouth in a cigar smoker’s pantomime. She had her free hand cupped alongside her hip, as if she were holding a tommy gun.
“Whaddaya think, Frank?”
“Who you supposed to be?”
“Faye Dunaway!”
“She’s a blonde. You got hair like the ace of spades.”
“I’m talkin’ about the look.” Olga glanced down at her feet so that Frank’s eyes would go there, too. “I got ’em down at the Bootery on Connecticut. They’re called gunboots.”
“You don’t say.”
“They go with my Capone stripes. You know, the pants suit I got last week at Franklin Simon?”
“The one came with the hat?”
“It’s a beret. Don’t you know the difference?”
“Sure. Like the painters wear.”
Olga wiggled one foot. “You likee?”
“Me no sabbee,” said Vaughn, tapping ash off his cigarette. He’d be glad when this bullshit Bonnie-and-Clyde craze was done.
“Oh, Frank,” said Olga with a roll of her eyes.
Olga tied an apron around her waist, went to the sink, and began to wash their dishes. Frank watched her with affection.
From upstairs, he heard the thump of bass coming from the stereo in Ricky’s room. It was Vaughn’s own fault if it was driving him nuts. He’d bought the system for Ricky himself, a birthday present and also a little something to kick off his college education. It was a Zenith component setup, eighty watts, had a feature called “Circle of Sound.” The salesman at George’s, over there on Queen’s Chapel Road, said it was a nice “unit,” then said it was “only” one hundred and sixty-nine. When Vaughn heard the price he felt like grabbing his slacks and telling the guy, Turn around, I got a nice unit for you right here. But he just smiled politely and said he’d come back. Vaughn got his fence friend down off 14th to find a Zenith just like it, or one that was damn close. And it didn’t cost him no buck sixty-nine. Course it was a little on the warm side. Only thing it didn’t come with was a box and a warranty card. But for twenty-five dollars you could do without the cardboard and the serial number.
Vaughn had felt a little bad that the kid was living at home while some of his friends went off to school, so buying the system for him was like, w
hat did you call that, a consolation prize. But now Vaughn had to pay the price.
When Ricky wasn’t listening to music, he was gabbing about it with his friends. Talking about a group named Flavor at the Rabbit’s Foot on Wisconsin and, all last summer, a guy named Hendrix who’d played the Ambassador and then “sat in” with another guy named Roy at a place called the Silver Dollar, and on and on. The kid could talk on the phone. He was like his mother that way.
“Does he ever study?” said Vaughn.
“He must,” said Olga. “He got decent grades last fall.”
“Three hundred dollars a semester and he’s up there playin’ that shit all day. He oughtta have his face buried in the books.”
“Frank.”
“That’s not why I’m humpin’ it out here,” said Vaughn. “So he can live off my tit and listen to music.”
“You bought that box for him,” said Olga, “remember? You’ll see, he’s doing fine in college.”
Anyway, thought Vaughn, it’ll keep him out of the war.
Vaughn crushed out his smoke as Olga turned, drying her hands on a dishrag. She untied her apron, hung it back on its hook, and looked him over. He was wearing one of his Robert Hall suits. It was early for him to be dressed for work.
“Aren’t you gonna take your nap?” said Olga.
Usually, he got some shut-eye after lunch while Olga watched what she called her “afternoon menu” on channel 7: The Newlywed Game, The Baby Game, General Hospital, Dark Shadows, and Mike Douglas. Around the time she was looking at that crazy vampire show, he’d dress, slip out the house, and get on his way to his four-to-midnight shift.
“Not today,” said Vaughn. “I’m gonna get out early. Want to visit a few garages before they close.”
“For what?”
“This young guy got hit-and-runned last night. I’m looking into it.”
“He was killed?”
Vaughn nodded. “The car that was involved musta got smashed up good. It’s gonna need repairs.”
“You don’t work accidental deaths.”
“It’s a homicide until I learn different. I think it was a race killing. Whoever did it, it was like they were joyriding. You know, having fun. The boy was colored.”
“Frank.”
“What?”
“What color was he?”
“Huh?”
“He was black, wasn’t he?”
“Okay.”
“Then call him black.”
“Christ, Olga.”
He had to stifle himself now. Olga and her girlfriends. He bet they had taught her to use that comeback on him when he called someone colored. What color was he? Clever. Them, who had no black friends. Them, whose only contact with black people was with their black maids and the black man at the A&P who loaded their groceries into the back of their station wagons. And here they were, with their nails and their pool memberships and their mah-jongg tiles, thinking they were gonna teach him something, when he was out there in the actual world every day.
“What’s wrong?” said Olga.
“Nothin’, doll.” Vaughn’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “You just make me laugh sometimes.”
“You’re a real Neanderthal, Frank, you know it?”
“C’mere, baby,” said Vaughn, patting his thigh. “Bring them gunboats with you.”
“They’re gunboots, you dummy,” said Olga, already walking toward him.
Olga had a seat on his lap. Her face was caked with makeup and her helmet of black hair was frozen in place. But her eyes were soft, the same as the night he’d met her, at the Kavakos nightclub down on H Street, back in the early ’40s. They looked at each other as the bass from upstairs buzzed the kitchen walls. Vaughn kissed her on the lips.
Olga moved her rump around as she settled into his shape. He felt himself growing hard beneath her.
“What’s that?” said Olga with a lopsided grin.
“You said I was a caveman,” said Vaughn. “That’s my club.”
Beneath his next kiss, he felt her smile.
STRANGE AND PETERS drove down Georgia in their cruiser. They were on the tail end of their eight-to-four. Their day had consisted of some field investigations, a report made at a home break-in scene, a petty larceny, one domestic disturbance, and the usual numerous traffic stops: exceeding the limit, red-light runners, incomplete stops, and the like. Nothing involving violence or, on their part, the use of force.
Peters was having one of his talkative spells, going on about LBJ, who would succeed him, King’s scheduled return to Memphis, and what would happen down there next. Strange mostly nodded and shook his head.
He had been quiet since they’d made a stop at the station, where he’d overheard some comments made by a couple of white officers out in the lot. One of them called Peters “Golden Boy” as he and Strange were walking back to their Ford. The other called them “the Dynamic Duo” and added, “Better Peters than me.” This was the same cop, Sullivan, who had called his nightstick a “nigger knocker” within earshot of Strange a few weeks ago, then smiled nervously and said, “Hey, no offense, rookie. I mean, we’re all brothers in blue, right?” Strange had nodded but hadn’t even tried to mask the hate in his eyes. He could take a lot, and he did, but there was something about Sullivan’s face, those Mr. Ed teeth protruding out from thin lips, that just made Strange want to kick his ass real good.
“Derek, you got plans tonight?”
“Why?”
“Thought you might want to come over, have dinner with me and Patty.”
“Thanks. But I was gonna hook up with Lydell. We were thinking of checkin’ out this party he heard about, over near Howard.”
“Some other time, right?”
Strange didn’t think it was likely. But he said, “Sounds good.”
They crossed the intersection at Piney Branch and approached the Esso station. Out by the pumps, a big pale guy, sleeves rolled up to show his arms, looked to be arguing with another guy, had full black hair and a solid build. Both wore uniform shirts. The bigger of the two was working his jaw close to the other guy’s face. Peters recognized the smaller guy as the pump jockey they’d seen the day before, when they’d stopped to talk to Hound Dog Vaughn.
“Looks like something,” said Peters.
“I don’t think so,” said Strange.
“Maybe we ought to stop.”
“The guy with the black hair will walk away. He liked to fight when he was younger. But I don’t think he does anymore.”
“You know him?”
“Ran with him some when I was a kid. We did a little shoplifting together one day, a long time ago.”
“You guys get away with it?”
“I got caught. He didn’t.”
“His lucky day,” said Peters.
“No,” said Strange. “It was mine.”
SEVENTEEN
ALVIN JONES HAD been driving a green-on-green Buick Special for the last six months or so. It was a basic four-door, radio-and-heater, bench-seat, automatic-on-the-tree model, and it turned no heads. Despite the name, wasn’t nothing special about it. Point of fact, it looked like something an old lady would be driving, her white gloves at the ten-and-two position, sitting up on a pillow so she could see over the wheel.
The Buick was a ’63. Dealer made him pay for it in full with cash money before he got handed the keys. Four hundred dollars, not a whole lot, but still, he wasn’t accustomed to laying out the ducats on the front end. Contrary to what he’d told Lula Bacon, there came a time when people really did stop giving you credit, and his credit was about as fucked as a man’s credit could be.
Anyway, the price was right and it was his. Soon as his luck changed, and it was gonna change real soon, he’d be under the wheel of something right. Recently, he’d seen this white-over-red ’67 El Dorado coupe with factory air, vinyl roof, electric windows and seats in the showroom of Capitol Cadillac-Olds, on 22nd, across town. That was gonna be his next ride. Once you got your mind s
et on a car, it was like seein’ a woman in a club and knowing you were gonna be killin’ it in your bed by the end of the night. He knew he was going to own that Caddy in the same way. Thing that hurt him, though, he’d owned a Cadillac nine years ago, at twenty-two, and here he was, grown man of thirty-one, driving a Buick. Seemed lately like he was walking backward through his life, passin’ hisself on the way down.
But right now, Jones felt good. He was wearing a new button-down from National Shirt Shop, his Flagg Brothers, and his favorite hat, black with the gold band, picked up the gold off his eyes. A .38 was wedged tight between his legs, right up against his dick. “Funky Broadway” was on WOOK, and Wicked Wilson was singing it loud. Broadway. He was gonna get up to that motherfucker someday, show them how they did in D.C. Drive up there in his Cadillac, too. By then he’d have it tricked with spokes.
Jones cruised down H, along the retail center of Northeast, heading toward 8th, where his cousin Kenneth lived in that little place he’d been staying in for a while, over the liquor store. Whole lot of grown people and kids were on the sidewalks, some carrying bags, some playing, some just moving along. Outside the liquor store stood a wino, asking passersby for change. Jones saw Kenneth’s Monterey, parked up a ways, and looked for a place to put his Special. They were gonna take the Mercury, on account of it was more reliable and had a little more horse. Jones wasn’t nervous about the robbery or nothin’ like that. Plus, he’d had a couple of drinks.
Jones saw a police car in his rearview and his hands, due to habit, tightened on the wheel. Then the car pulled over and stopped a little bit up from the liquor store. Jones looked ahead. Another police car was coming from the opposite direction. It went by him and he watched as it, too, slowed near the liquor store and came to stop, nose to ass with the first squad car. Alvin made a turn onto 9th, found a space, and cut the engine. He slid the pistol under the bench seat, got out of the Buick, locked it, and jogged on up to H.
When he got there, the squad cars had moved on. But he saw a couple of white men in street clothes, looked like police with their builds and the way they moved, kind of hurrying around the area of the liquor store. One of them ducked into the outside foyer area of a market and the other positioned himself with his back against the bricks beside the stairwell entrance to the second-floor apartments. The wino was gone.
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