Beholdin to, with regards to, price structure and negotiations side of things… Christ, thought Earl, who the fuck does this nigger think he is?
“What’d Nestor say to that?” said Ray.
“He implied that it might imperil our business relationship, I don’t buy all my inventory from him. And I don’t like those kinds of words. Almost sounds like a threat, you understand what I’m talkin’ about?”
“I’m hip,” said Ray. “I’m with you.”
Oh, you hipper than a motherfucker, thought Coleman. And of course you’re with me. Where the fuck else would'you be, it wasn’t for me? Out in the fields somewhere with a yoke around your neck, a piece of straw hangin’ out your mouth, you Mr. Green Jeanslookin’ motherfucker… .
“We done?” said Earl.
“You in a hurry?” said Coleman with a smile. “Got a lady waitin’?”
“What if I do?” said Earl.
Coleman’s smile turned down. His voice was soft, almost tender. “Now, you gonna flex on me, old man? That’s what you fixin’ to do?”
“C’mon, Cherokee,” said Ray. “My daddy was only kiddin’ around.”
Coleman didn’t look at Ray. He kept his eyes on Earl. And then he smiled and clapped his hands together. “Aw, shit, Earl, that little redbone don’t mean nothin’ to me anymore. I done had that pussy when it was fresh. You go on and sweet—talk your little junkie all you want, hear?”
“I guess that’ll do ’er,” said Ray. He stood and looked at his father, who was still seated in the chair, one eyebrow cocked, his gaze on Coleman.
“Go ahead, Earl,” said Coleman. “She’s waitin’ on you, man. Got that stall of hers all reserved. Guess she heard you was comin’ into the big city today.”
Earl stood.
“Now, Ray,” said Coleman. “Think about what I said about that Rodriguez thing. No disrespect to my brown brothers, but maybe you ought to talk to them next time they drop off the goods, tell them straight up the way I feel.”
“I hear you,” said Ray.
“Good. Your money will be waiting for you back in the garage. You can pick up your guns on the way out.”
“See you next time,” said Ray, and he turned for the door.
“Hey, Ray,” said Coleman, and when Ray looked back Coleman was standing, looking over the desk at Ray’s feet. “Lizardo Rodriguez, he asked me to check and see if you was wearing those fly boots of yours today.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I see you are.”
Ray’s expression was confusion. He said, “Later,” and he and his father walked out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Coleman and Big—Ass Angelo laughed. They laughed so hard that Coleman had to brace himself atop the desk. He had tears in his eyes and he and Angelo gave each other skin.
“Oh, shit,” said Coleman. “Ray Boone, walkin’ tall. Just like Buford T. Pusser, man.”
“I am hip,” said Angelo, and Coleman doubled over, stomping his foot on the floor.
A little later, Coleman said, “I got him to thinkin’, though, anyway, about the Rodriguez boys, I mean.”
“We lose the Rodriguez boys —”
“We’ll find someone else to buy it from, black. Got a price and purity war goin’ on in the business right now. It’s one of those buyer’s markets you hear about.”
“That means we wouldn’t be seein’ Ray and Earl no more. Shame to lose all that entertainment. I mean, who we gonna laugh at then?”
“We’ll find someone else for that, too.” Coleman looked up at his lieutenant. “Angie?”
“What?”
“Crack that window, man. Smells like nicotine, beer, and ’Lec—tric Shave in this motherfucker.”
“I heard that.”
“Every time the Boones come in here, it reminds me: I just can’t stand the way white boys smell.”
RAY and Earl picked up their guns in the outer office, lit smokes outside of Coleman’s building, and walked across the street. They went through a rip in the chain—link fence that surrounded the old warehouse. Yellow police tape was threaded through the links, and a piece of it blew like a kite tail in the wind.
They stepped carefully through debris, mindful of needles, and over a pile of bricks that had been the foundation of a wall but was now an opening, and then they were on the main floor of the warehouse, puddled with water leaked from pipes and rainwater, fresh from a recent storm, which came freely through the walls. There were holes in all four walls, some the product of decay, others sledge—hammered out for easy access and escape. Pigeons flew through the space, and the cement floor was littered with their droppings.
A rat scurried into a dim side room, and Ray saw a withered black face recede into the darkness. The face belonged to a junkie named Tonio Morris. He was one of the many bottom—of—the—food—chain junkies, near death and too weak to cut out a space of their own on the second floor; later, when the packets were delivered to those with cash, they’d trade anything they had, anything they’d stolen that day, or any orifice in their bodies for some rock or powder.
Ray and Earl walked past a man, one of Coleman’s, who held a pistol at his side, a beeper and cell attached to his waist. The man did not look at them, and they did not acknowledge him in any way. They went up an exposed set of stairs.
At the top of the stairs they walked onto the landing of the second floor, where another armed man, as unemotional as the first, stood. Arched windows, all broken out, ran along the walls of this floor. They went through a hall; passing candlelit rooms housing vague human shapes sprawled atop mattresses. Then they were in a kind of bathroom without walls that Ray guessed had once been men’s and women’s rest rooms but was now one large room of shit—stained urinals and stalls. Ray and Earl breathed through their mouths to avoid the stench of the excrement and vomit that overflowed the backed—up toilets and lay pooled on the floor.
In the doorless stalls were people smelling of perspiration and urine and wearing filthy, ill—fitting clothes. These people smiled at the Boones and greeted them, some caustically, some sarcastically, and some with genuine fondness and relief. Ray and Earl passed stalls where magazine photos of Jesus, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali, and Globe concert posters were taped up and smudged with blood an waste. They kept walking and at the last stall they stopped.
“Gimme some privacy, Critter,” said Earl. “I’ll meet you back at the stairs.”
Ray nodded and watched his father enter the stall. Ray turned and walked back the way he’d come.
“Hello, young lady,” said Earl, stepping into the stall and admiring the damaged, pretty thing before him.
“Hello, Earl.” She was a tall girl with splotched light skin and straightened black hair that curled at its ends. Her eyes were tinted green, their lashes lined, the lids shadowed. She smiled at Earl; her teeth carried a grayish film. She wore a dirty white blouse, halfway opened to expose a lacy bra, frayed in several spots and loose across her bony chest.
Votive candles were lit in the stall, and a model’s photograph, ripped from a Vanity Fair magazine, was taped above the commode. The bowl of the commode was filled with toilet paper, dissolved turds, and matchsticks, and brown water reached its rim.
“Got somethin’ for me, Earl?” Her voice was that of a talking doll, wound down.
Earl looked her over. Goddamn if she wasn’t a beautiful piece, underneath all that grime. No thing like this one had ever showed him any kind of attention, not even when he was a strapping young man.
“You know I do, honey pie.” Earl produced a small wax packet of brown heroin that he had cut from the supply. She snatched the packet from his hand, making sure to smile playfully as she did.
“Thank you, lover,” she said, tearing at the top of the packet and dumping its contents onto a glass paperweight she kept balanced atop a rusted toilet—roll dispenser. She tracked it out with a razor blade and did a thick line at once. And almost at once her head dropped slightly and her lids fl
uttered and stayed halfway raised.
“Careful not to take too much, now,” said Earl. But she was already cutting another line.
When she was done, Earl gently pushed down on her shoulders, and she dropped to her knees on the wet tiles. He unzipped his fly because she was slow to do it and wrapped his fingers through the hair on the back of her head.
When he felt the wetness of her mouth and tongue, he put one hand on the steel of the stall and closed his eyes.
“Baby doll,” said Earl. And then he said, “God.”
RAY checked his wristwatch. Fifteen minutes had passed and still his old man had not showed. Ray was ready to leave this place, the Junkyard and the city and the trash who lived in it. He flicked the ass end of a ’Boro against the cinder—block wall and watched embers flare and die.
It disgusted him, thinking of what his daddy was doing back there with that high—yellow girl. She did have white features, but she was mud like the rest of them, you could believe that. His father and him, they disagreed on a few things, but none more than this. What was Earl thinkin’, anyway? Didn’t he know how that girl got to keep that stall on the end of the row? Didn’t he know what a prime piece of real estate that was, what you had to do to keep it? Ray knew. If you were a man you had to fight for it, and if you were a woman … Girl was probably on her back or on her belly or swallowing sword ten times a day just for the right to squat in that shit hole. Didn’t his father think of that?
But Ray was tired of pressin’ it. Once he had made the mistake of calling that girl common nigger trash, and his father had risen up, told him to call her by her name. Hell, he could barely remember her name. It was Sandy Williams, somethin’ like that.
Ray Boone flipped open the top of his box and shook another smoke from the deck.
Sondra Wilson. That’s what it was.
Chapter 7
TERRY Quinn was behind a display case, sitting beside the register reading a book, when he heard a car door slam. Quinn looked through the plate glass window of the store and out to the street. A middle—aged black guy was locking the door of his white Chevy. Then he was crossing Bonifant on foot and heading toward the shop.
The car looked exactly like a police vehicle, and the gray—haired, gray—bearded black guy looked like a plainclothes cop. He wore a black turtleneck under a black leather, with loose—fitting blue jeans and black oilskin work boots. It wasn’t his clothes that yelled “cop,” but rather the way he walked: head up, shoulders squared, alert and aware of the activity on the street. The guy had called, said he was working in a private capacity for Chris Wilson’s mother, asked if Quinn would mind giving him an hour or so of his time. Quinn had appreciated the direct way he had asked the question, and he’d liked the seasoning in the man’s voice. Quinn said sure, come on by.
The chime sounded over the door as the guy entered the shop. Just under six foot, one ninety, guessed Quinn. Maybe one ninety—five. All that black he was wearing, it could take off a quick five pounds to the eye. If this was the guy who had phoned, his name was Derek Strange.
“Derek Strange.”
Quinn got out of his chair and took the man’s outstretched hand.
“Terry Quinn.”
Strange was looking down slightly on the young white man with the longish brown hair. Five nine, five nine and a half, one hundred sixty—five pounds. Medium build, green eyes, a spray of pale freckles across the bridge of his thick nose.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me.” Strange drew his wallet, flipped it open, and showed Quinn his license.
“No problem.”
Quinn didn’t glance at the license as a gesture of trust. Also, he wanted to let Strange know that he was calm and had nothing to hide. Strange replaced his wallet in the back right pocket of his jeans.
“How’d you find me here?”
“Your place of residence is listed in the phone book. From there I talked to your landlord. The credit check on your apartment application has your place of employment.”
“My landlord supposed to be giving that out?”
“Twenty—dollar bill involved, supposed to got nothin’ to do with it.”
“You know,” said Quinn, “you get your hands on the transcripts of my testimony, you’ll be saving yourself a whole lot of time. And maybe a few twenties, too.”
“I’m gonna do that. And I’ve already read everything that’s been written about the case in the press. But it never hurts to go over it again.”
“You said you were working for Chris Wilson’s mother.”
“Right. Leona Wilson is retaining my services.”
“You think you’re gonna find something the review board overlooked?”
“This isn’t about finding you guilty of anything you’ve already been cleared on. I’m satisfied, reading over the material, that this was just one of those accidents, bound to happen. You got two men bearing firearms, mix it up with alcohol on one side, emotion and circumstance, preconceptions on the other —”
“Preconceptions?” You mean racism, thought Quinn. Why don’t you just say what you mean?
“Yeah, you know, preconceptions. You mix all those things together, you got a recipe for disaster. Gonna happen from time to time.”
Quinn nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied Strange.
Strange cleared his throat. “So it’s more about exonerating Wilson than anything else. Wiping out the shadow that got thrown across his name, what with everything got written and broadcast about the case.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that. I never talked to the press.”
“I know it.”
“Even his own mother should be able to see that.”
Quinn spoke quietly, in a slow, gravelly way, stretching his vowels all the way out. Out—of—towners would guess that Quinn was from somewhere south of Virginia; Washingtonians like Strange knew the accent to be all D.C.
“Have you spoken with his mother?” asked Strange.
“I tried.”
“She’s single—minded. Probably didn’t make it too easy on you.”
“No. But I can understand it.”
“Course you can.”
“Because I’m the guy who killed her son.”
“That’s a fact. And she’s having a little trouble getting beyond that.”
“The finer points don’t matter to her. All those theories you read about, whether or not I was doing my job, or if I made a bad split—second decision, or if it was the lack of training, or the Glock … none of that matters to her, and I can understand it. She looks at me, the only thing she sees is the guy who killed her son.”
“Maybe we can just clear things up a little,” said Strange. “Okay?”
“There’s nothing I’d like more.”
Quinn put the paperback he had been reading down on the glass top of the display case. Strange glanced at its cover. Beneath it, in the locked case, lying on a piece of red velvet, he saw several old paperbacks: a Harlan Ellison with juvenile—delinquent cover art, a Chester Himes, an Ironside novelization by Jim Thompson, and something called The Burglar by a cat named David Goodis.
Strange said, “The owner of the shop, he into crime books?”
“She’s into selling first editions. Paperback originals. It’s not my thing. The collecting part, and also those types of books. Me, I like to read westerns.”
“I can see that.” Strange nodded to Quinn’s book. “That one any good?”
“Valdez Is Coming. I’d say it’s just about the best.”
“I saw the movie, if I recall. It was a little disappointing. But it had Burt Lancaster in it, so I watched it through. That was a man, right there. Not known especially for his westerns, but he was in some good ones. Vera Cruz, The Professionals —”
“Ulzana’s Raid.”
“Damn, you remember that one? Burt was a scout, riding with some wet—behind—the—ears cavalry officer, played by that boy was in that rat movie … yeah, Ulzana’s Raid
, that was a good one.”
“You like westerns, huh?”
“I don’t read the books, if that’s what you mean. But I like the movies, yeah. And the music. The music they put in those is real nice.” Strange shifted his weight. For a moment, he’d forgotten why he’d come. “Anyway.”
“Yeah, anyway. Where do you want to talk?”
Strange looked over Quinn’s shoulder. There were three narrow aisles of wooden, ceiling—high shelves that stretched to the back of the shop. In the far right aisle, a thin man in a textured white shirt stood on a step stool and placed books high on a shelf.
“He work here?”
“That’s Lewis,” said Quinn.
“Lewis. I was thinking, you had the time, maybe Lewis could cover the shop and we could take a drive to the spot where it went down. It would help me to see it with you there.”
Quinn thought it over. He turned around and said, “Hey, Lewis!”
Lewis stepped down off the stool and walked to the front of the store, pushing his black—framed glasses up on his nose. His eyes were hugely magnified behind the thick lenses of the glasses, and his hair was black, greasy, and knotted in several spots. There were yellow stains under the arms of his white shirt. Strange could smell the man’s body odor as he arrived.
“Lewis,” said Quinn. “Say hello to Detective Strange.”
Strange ignored Quinn’s sarcastic tone and said, “How you doin’, Lewis?”
“Detective.” Lewis did not look at Strange. At least Strange didn’t think he did; Lewis’s eyes were as big as boccie balls, unfocused, all over the shop. Lewis fidgeted with his hands and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. It made Strange nervous to be around him, and the man smelled like dog shit, too.
“Lewis, you don’t mind, me and Detective Strange are gonna go out and take a ride. Syreeta calls, you tell her I clocked out for a while. That okay by you?”
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