Hard Revolution

by George Pelecanos

  “They came in two cars.”

  “Yeah. This Buzz Stewart was drivin’ a red Belvedere, white hardtop, tricked out with a Max Wedge hood.”

  As Vaughn wrote, he felt his face flush with blood. He knew that car. “Tag numbers?”

  “I got ’em off the Ford,” said Houston. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and read the numbers off to Vaughn.

  “Anything else?”

  “The Belvedere had a name, kind of scripted on its side, you know how them gearheads do.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Bernadette,” said Houston.

  Vaughn closed his eyes and tried to picture the car. He saw it parked beside the garage of the Esso station at Georgia and Piney Branch. He saw the big mechanic, the unfriendly greaser with the sleeves of his uniform shirt rolled up high, gunning the lugs off an Oldsmobile that was up on the lift in the bay.

  “Bernadette,” said Vaughn, nodding his head. “I guess this Buzz has a girlfriend, huh?”

  “I’d say he’s a Levi Stubbs fan.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Four Tops,” said Houston with a small smile. “You listened to the radio the last ten years, you’d know.”

  Vaughn shrugged.

  “By the way, you overplayed it with that story, too,” said Houston. “You know, about them spray-paintin’ nigger in the street.”

  “You didn’t buy it, huh?”

  “It was the arrow-pointin’-to-the-body thing that did it. Too complicated for those two.”

  “I guess I took it too far.”

  “Thing was, you had me goin’ without it.”

  “Thanks, Lawrence.” Vaughn reached across the bench and shook Houston’s hand. “You did right.”

  Houston drove off in his Dart GT. Vaughn killed his Schlitz, flicked his smoke out the open window, and walked to a phone booth in the corner of the lot.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  STRANGE STOOD ON the landing of the second floor of Lula Bacon’s row house, knocking on her apartment door. He wore his black leather car coat over gray slacks and a charcoal shirt, his service revolver in a holster clipped onto the belt line of the slacks. His badge was in the pocket of his coat.

  “Yeah?” she said from behind the door.

  “Lula Bacon?”

  “Who’s askin’?”

  “I’m a police officer.”

  “You got some identification?”

  Strange badged the peephole, which had darkened in the door.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Open the door, Miss Bacon.”

  “You don’t look like no police.”

  “You need to open this door right now.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I come back with the welfare man,” said Strange. “He’s gonna be real interested in your lifestyle, I expect.”

  Strange knew nothing about her lifestyle, but his limited experience told him that this was an effective way to gain entry. He heard a chain sliding off a catch and the turn of a dead bolt.

  Strange had been to James Hayes’s place on Otis first, but Hayes was not in. Morning had become noon. He was due in at work for his four-to-midnight. He had decided to stop calling Dolittle and work this himself. What he was doing wasn’t procedure. It was beyond his duty limit and probably illegal. But he felt he was running out of time.

  The door opened. A petite woman wearing a short navy blue shift stood in the frame. She had shapely legs and hips. She had big eyes accentuated by dark makeup, large hoop earrings, and store-done hair. A glass of amber-colored liquor over ice was loose in her hand. She smelled of whiskey and cigarettes. Bacon looked like a sloppy Diana Ross.

  Strange did not move to go inside. “I’m lookin’ for Alvin Jones.”

  “He ain’t in. I don’t expect him back, neither.”

  “Any idea where he went to?”

  “No idea,” she said lazily, leaning her figure into the door. A baby cried from far back in the apartment.

  “He’s got another girlfriend, right?” said Strange, unconcerned with diplomacy or her feelings.

  “That ain’t news.”

  “Maybe he moved back in with her.”

  “So?”

  “You know her name or where she stay at?”

  Bacon shrugged and drank off some of her liquor.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know nothin’.”

  “You lyin’, I’m gonna come back.”

  “Big man,” said Bacon, looking him over, “you can come back anytime, even if I’m tellin’ the truth.”

  “I’m spoken for,” said Strange.

  “Then send your brother over, you got one. That is, if he looks like you.”

  “Your baby’s crying,” said Strange in an even way. “You best get yourself together and see to that child.”

  “You run into Alvin, you tell him he done lost this good thing forever.”

  She was talking to his back. Strange had already begun to take the stairs down to the street.

  VAUGHN COMMANDEERED THE phone booth in the lot of the Tick Tock. He phoned the Esso station and got the correct name of the employee, Carlton “Buzz” Stewart. He was told by the manager, who sounded harried, that this was Stewart’s day off. Vaughn then called the Sixth Precinct station and told the guy manning the Homicide desk what he needed. It required more than a little work, and he knew it would take time. While he waited, Vaughn stood in the lot, smoking and guarding the phone, and drinking Schlitz from a can wrapped in a brown paper bag. A county cop approached him about the open beer; Vaughn badged him and showed him his uppers, and the cop shoved off. By the time Vaughn got the return call, it was after noon. He put all the information into his notebook and went to his car.

  He had instructed his man to put out a bulletin, with descriptions, over the radio: two men, Walter Hess, aka Shorty Hess, and Carlton Stewart, aka Buzz Stewart, were wanted for questioning in the hit-and-run death of Vernon Wilson. It was the very soft version of an all-points bulletin. If they were to be stopped for, say, a traffic violation, and the uniform radioed in the information, the bulletin would send up a flag. Both men had sheets, and Hess was an ex-con. But Vaughn suspected that their crime was the result of a drunken night, and though he thought they were stupid and probably cruel, he did not believe them to be dangerous. Plus, he wanted the collar for himself.

  He drove to the 700 block of Silver Spring Avenue off Georgia, a quarter mile northeast of the District line. The street consisted primarily of bungalows set close to the curb, with deep, sloping backyards lightly forested in oak, walnut, and pine. The residents were second-wave, postwar, blue- and gray-collar workers, many of German descent, who had purchased these houses, built in the 1920s, on the GI Bill. Their kids were going or gone. Bikers and young tradesmen had begun to rent the houses as the homeowners neared retirement age and drifted off. Vaughn knew that some of these renters used and possibly dealt marijuana and speed. He had sat beside them at the bars up on Georgia on a couple of occasions, had struck up conversations with them and seen the drugs in their jacked-up eyes.

  According to his information, Walter Hess lived with his parents in a baby blue bungalow with white trim and a broad front porch, located at the crest of a hill. Vaughn found Hess’s mother at home. He told her that he and Shorty had worked together at the machine shop on Brookeville Road before he’d moved on, and that he was just dropping in on his old bud on the long shot that he might be in.

  “He’s at work,” said the woman, who was not old but had whiskers sprouting from her chin. She hung back in the doorway and did not step out into the natural light or ask him in. The house smelled of cabbage and dog. There was dog hair swirled upon her embroidered apron. Her eyes were close set. She breathed through her mouth and looked slightly retarded. She was no taller than a child.

  “I shoulda known,” said Vaughn. “That Galaxie of his ain’t around.”

  “It’s in the shop. He’s drivin’ our Ram
bler.”

  “Oh, yeah, he mentioned once that you all had one. That old blue one, right?”

  “Green. You want me to tell him you stopped by?”

  “I think I’ll surprise him at the shop,” said Vaughn. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Vaughn drove over to Mississippi Avenue, looking for Buzz Stewart’s house, looking for his Belvedere. But it was not parked along the curb or in the open freestanding garage, which he could see from the street. He didn’t want to talk to Stewart’s people even if they were in. He had already risked too much with Hess’s mother.

  Vaughn went out to Brookeville Road, a few miles away, to an industrial area near Montgomery Hills, not far from his own house. He found the machine shop, did not see a green Rambler in the vicinity, and parked nearby. Shortly thereafter a man in a blue work shirt with his name stitched on the breast patch walked out of the shop and lit a cigarette. Vaughn rolled down the window of his Polara and shouted to the man.

  “Hey, fella, you seen my buddy Shorty? We supposed to meet here on his break.” Vaughn doing his idea of redneck, which was not much of a stretch.

  “His whole life’s a break,” said the man, dragging hungrily on his cigarette.

  “Where’s he at, then?” said Vaughn.

  “Called in sick,” said the man, flicking ash at his work boots. “Must have that Irish flu.”

  Vaughn rolled his window up, turned the key in his Dodge, and took off up the road. So neither Hess nor Stewart was at work. Maybe they got so shitfaced the night before they couldn’t work. But Hess had told his mother he was going to work. Maybe what it was, Hess and Stewart had anticipated the heat and left town. Vaughn didn’t think the little grease monkey would leave D.C. without his Galaxie. But he couldn’t be sure.

  He drove to a phone booth outside a body shop. He phoned the station to see if there had been any flags on the bulletin. The desk sergeant told him there was nothing to report. He had received only one message, from a cop named Derek Strange. Strange had asked that Vaughn give him a call.

  “Gimme the number where he’s at,” said Vaughn. He pulled his notebook and pen from his jacket, and wrote the number down.

  STRANGE SAT IN the living room of an Otis Place apartment, talking with James Hayes. Hayes had gone out for his morning walk, on which he regularly picked up a Post and a pack of smokes. The newspaper sat in a heap at the foot of his chair, and a cigarette burned in an ashtray beside him. Hayes wore a velvet jacket. He had changed out of his street shoes and now wore soft leather slippers. He held a cloth handkerchief, which he used to wipe at his runny nose.

  “He left out of here when?” said Strange.

  “I’m not sure,” said Hayes. “Maybe ’round eleven o’clock. I had a woman friend coming over here. She works late on Sunday nights.”

  “Eleven would fit,” said Strange.

  “I had to put him out,” said Hayes. “We were having a good time, just sitting here, listening to some old records and discussin’ things. But he had to go.”

  “Ya’ll were gettin’ high?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was he lucid?”

  “He was a little down on reds. And we had drunk some Margeaux and burned a little smoke. I can’t speak for his head. Far as his feet went, though, he wasn’t gone. I wouldn’t have let him out the door had he been stumblin’.”

  “What about his mental state?”

  “Good,” said Hayes. “He seemed good to me.”

  “He didn’t indicate that he was in danger, anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “The two of you made a transaction, didn’t you, on Sunday night?”

  Hayes dragged on his cigarette, released two streams of smoke through his nose. He squinted at Strange through the smoke. “That’s right. He had delivered a little somethin’ to a couple of friends of his.”

  The phone rang on the stand by the front door. Hayes got up and answered it, then said, “He’s right here.” He held the phone out to Strange, who crossed the room and grabbed the receiver.

  “Derek Strange.”

  “This is Vaughn.”

  “Thanks for returning my call.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You said you’d help.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I’m out here, seein’ what I can piece together.”

  “About your brother’s murder.”

  “I decided to go around Dolittle,” said Strange.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “There’s two men I need to talk to. Alvin Jones and Kenneth Willis. They —”

  “Slow up. I’m writing this down.”

  “Alvin Jones . . . Kenneth Willis.”

  “Okay.”

  “Willis and Jones were planning to rob a corner market down in LeDroit Park. My brother tipped off the man at the market about the robbery. This man called the police. The police picked up Willis on a gun charge before they had a chance to pull it off.”

  “What police?” said Vaughn.

  “Ninth Precinct,” said Strange.

  “Who knows what your brother did?”

  “The man he told,” said Strange, fish-eyeing Hayes. “Other than him, you and me.”

  “Willis is in custody now?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “I know some people in the Ninth. What about the other one?”

  “Jones is in the wind. I’m having a little trouble locating him.”

  “You gonna be there a minute?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  Strange hung up the phone. He stayed where he was and looked at James Hayes.

  “You hear all that?”

  “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t,” said Hayes. “You tell me.”

  “Those names sound familiar to you?”

  “No.”

  “You said that Dennis had sold a little somethin’ for you on Sunday night. Did he sell it to Jones and Willis?”

  “He could have,” said Hayes. “But neither of those names is on the check.”

  “Say what?”

  “Look in that basket right there in front of you,” said Hayes. “Should be a check lyin’ in there. I been too sick to cash it. Takes enough out of me just to walk to Meyer’s for my newspaper and cigarettes.”

  Strange read the name off the top of the check and scanned the address. “Dennis gave you this?”

  Hayes nodded. “That’s how he paid for the gage.”

  The phone rang. Strange picked it up.

  “Strange here.”

  “I spoke to Jim Mahaffie down in the Ninth. Bad news on Willis.”

  “What is it?”

  “He got bounced. They arraigned him on the gun charge, but they couldn’t hold him; Willis had soft priors. The attorney they assigned him got him off on a bond.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Damn.”

  “Look at it like this: You can talk to him alone now, you want to, in your own way.”

  “Right.”

  “You know where he stays?”

  “Somewhere on H.”

  “I got his permanent right here,” said Vaughn. He gave Strange the address.

  “Thanks, Detective.”

  “Anything,” said Vaughn. “You gonna be in today?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “You’re workin’ a double?”

  “I’m on somethin’,” said Vaughn.

  Strange cradled the receiver, folded the check, and placed it in his breast pocket. “I’m gonna need this.”

  “Take it,” said Hayes. “Listen, young man . . .”

  “You don’t have to say it. We’re all feeling the same way. There ain’t but one man responsible for Dennis’s death.”

  “Good luck,” said Hayes.

  Strange checked his wristwatch and went out the door.

  AFTER VAUGHN HUNG up with Strange, he phoned the St
ewart residence and got a woman on the line. She sounded tired and old. Vaughn didn’t identify himself or use any kind of ruse. He simply asked her if Buzz was in, and when she said no, he asked if she knew where he was.

  “He met some friends.”

  “What friends? Shorty?”

  Vaughn heard the woman draw on a cigarette and exhale. “I suppose.”

  “Was he leaving town?”

  “What?”

  “Did you see him putting a suitcase or anything like it into his car? Did he act like he wasn’t going to be seeing you for a while?”

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  Vaughn killed the line. He stepped out of the phone booth and went to his car.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE WOMAN LIVED on Fairmont Street, west of 13th, just two blocks from Strange’s apartment building. Strange stared at the check in his hand, reading the address at the top of it, and then he looked up at the tall row house at the end of a concrete walk. It was one of those old houses capped with a turret, a common architectural touch unique to D.C. The house had probably been fine once, maybe even grand, but it was in disrepair and in need of paint now.

  Strange went up the walk and into the ground-floor foyer. He matched the woman’s name to the name on one of the mailbox slots and took the stairs up to the second floor. He knocked on her door.

  She opened the door without asking who was there. She was young, on the tall side, not yet twenty, her face a mess of large, wide features, her eyes almond shaped, her skin light. Her figure had been lush, most likely, in her early teens, but it had gone to fat. She held a baby wrapped in a blanket, and the baby was fussing, its eyes closed tight, its tiny fingers reaching out. It was trying to get to one of her breasts, which it had been suckling moments before. The woman’s shirt, unbuttoned halfway down, was wet with her own milk. She wore bright orange plastic earrings showing a silhouette of an Afroed woman with the words “Black Is Beautiful” written below the silhouette. A crucifix hung between her large breasts.

  “Afternoon,” said Strange. She had trusting eyes and had opened her door to a stranger without caution. He decided to use that naïveté against her and not tell her that he was police.

  “Derek Strange.”