Right as Rain

by George Pelecanos

  Strange read the police report from the scene. Going by the statement of one officer who reported that he detected a strong fecal smell coming off him, Strange concluded that indeed, Ricky Kane had dirtied his drawers that night.

  Kane said that at the point when Wilson had him pinned to the ground, a marked police cruiser pulled onto the scene. Two police officers, one black and one white, got out of the cruiser and ordered Wilson to drop his weapon. Kane’s description of the events that followed were roughly in keeping with the statements made by officers Quinn and Franklin.

  Strange opened his newspaper clipping file. He went to a section he had marked, an interview with Chris Wilson’s girlfriend, who had been with him earlier that night. The girlfriend confirmed that Wilson had been drinking on the night of the shooting and that “he seemed upset about something.” She didn’t know what it was that was making him upset, and he “didn’t say.” He made a mental note of the girlfriend’s name.

  Strange dialed a number, got the person he was trying to reach on the other end. After some give and take, he managed to make an appointment for later that afternoon. He said, “Thank you,” and hung the receiver in its cradle.

  “’Scuse me, old buddy,” said Strange, pulling his feet gently from beneath Greco’s head. “I gotta get to work.”

  Strange got into his leather. The dog followed him out of the room.

  IN the outer office, Strange stopped to talk to Janine while Greco found a spot underneath her desk. “You talk to Lydell Blue?”

  Janine Baker handed him a pink message note, ripped off her pad. “Lydell ran Kane’s name through the local and national crime networks. Kane has no convictions, no arrests. Never got caught with a joint in his sock. Never got caught doing something besides what he was supposed to be doing in a public rest room. No FIs, even, from when he was a kid. No priors whatsoever.”

  “Okay. Remind me to give Lydell a call, thank him.”

  “He said he owed you. Somethin’ about somethin’ you did for him when the two of you were rookie cops. Good thing you still know a few guys on the force.”

  “The ones who aren’t dead or retired. I know a few.”

  “Hey, boss,” said Ron Lattimer from across the room. Ron wore a spread—collar shirt today with a solid gold tie and deep gray slacks. His split—toe Kenneth Coles were up on his desk, and a newspaper was open in his hands.

  “What?”

  “Says here that leather of yours is out. The zipper kind, I mean. You need to be gettin’ into one of those midlength blazers, man, with a belt, maybe, you want to be looking up—to—the—minute out there on the street.”

  “You readin’ that article about that book came out, on black men and style?”

  “Uh—huh. Called Men of Color, somethin’ like that.”

  “I read the article this morning, too. That lady they got writing about fashion, she’s got a funny way of putting things. Says that black men have developed a dynamic sense of style, their 'tool against being invisible.’”

  “Uh—huh. Says here that we black men 'use style like a sword and shield,’ ” said Lattimer, reading aloud.

  “All of us do?”

  “See, now, there you go again, Derek.”

  “’Cause I was wonderin’, that old man, practically lives out on Upshur, with the pee stains on the front of his trousers? The one gets his dinner out the Dumpster? Think he’s using style as a tool against being invisible? I seen this young brother gettin’ off the Metrobus yesterday out on Georgia, had on some orange warm—up suit with green stripes up the side; I wouldn’t even use it to cover up Greco’s droppings. And look at me, I went and forgot to shine my work boots this morning… .”

  “I get you, man.”

  “I just don’t like anybody, and I don’t care who it is, tellin’ me what black men do and don’t do. ’Cause that kind of thinking is just as dangerous as that other kind of thinking, if you know what I mean. And you know some white person’s gonna read that article and think, Yeah, they spend a lot on clothes, and yeah, they spend a lot on cars, but do they save money for their retirement or their children’s education, or do they do this or do they do that? You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I said I heard you.”

  “It’s just another stereotype, man. Positive as it might look on the surface, it’s just another thing we’ve got to live with and live down.”

  “Damn, Derek,” said Lattimer, tossing the paper on his desk. “You just get all upset behind this shit, don’t you? All the article’s saying is we like to look good. Ain’t nothin’ more sinister behind it than that.”

  “Derek?” said Janine.

  “What is it, Janine?”

  “Where are you off to now?”

  “Workin’ on this Chris Wilson thing. I’ll be wearing my beeper, you need me.” Strange turned to Lattimer. “You busy?”

  “I’m working a couple of contempt skips. Child—support beefs, that kind of thing.”

  “Right now?”

  “I was planning on easing into my day, Derek.”

  “Want to ride with me this morning?”

  “That Chris Wilson case isn’t going to pay our bills. I do a couple pickups, it helps us all.”

  “Like to get your thoughts on this, you have the time.”

  “Okay. But I got to do some real work this afternoon.”

  “Give Terry Quinn a call,” said Strange to Janine. “The name of the shop he works in is Silver Spring Books, on Bonifant Street. Tell him I’ll be by in an hour, he wants to make arrangements to take some time off.”

  “You’re gonna let the guy you’re investigating ride with you?” said Lattimer.

  “I’m getting to know him like that,” said Strange. “Anyway, I told him I’d keep him in the loop.”

  Lattimer stood, shook himself into his cashmere, and placed a fedora, dented just right, atop his head.

  “Don’t feed Greco again,” said Strange to Janine. “I gave him a full can this morning.”

  “Can I give him one of those rawhide bones I keep in my desk?”

  “If you’d like.”

  On the way out of the office, Strange looked into Janine’s eyes and smiled with his. That was just another thing he liked about Janine: She was kind to his dog.

  Out on Upshur, Strange nodded at the fedora on Lattimer’s head.

  “Nice hat,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “That function as a sword or a shield?”

  “Keeps my head warm, said Lattimer, “you want the plain truth.”

  Chapter 15

  STRANGE drove the capice into southeast. He popped 3+3, in his opinion the finest record in the Isley Brothers catalog, into the deck. Ronald Isley was singing that pretty ballad “The Highways of My Life,” and Strange had the urge to sing along. But he knew Lattimer would make some kind of comment on it if he did.

  “This is beautiful right here,” said Strange. “Don’t tell me otherwise, ’cause it’s something you can’t deny.”

  “It is pretty nice. But I like somethin’s got a little more flow.”

  “Song has some positive lyrics to it, too. None of that boasting about beatin’ up women, and none of that phony death romance.”

  “You know I don’t listen to that bullshit, Derek. The music I roll to is hip—hop but on the jazz tip. The Roots, Black Star, like that. That other stuff you’re talkin’ about, it doesn’t speak to me. You ask me, it ain’t nothin’ but the white music industry exploiting our people all over again. I can see those white record executives now, encouraging those young rappers to put more violence into their music, more disrespect for our women, all because that’s what’s selling records. And you know I can’t get with that.”

  “The soul music of the sixties and seventies,” said Strange. “Won’t be anything to come along and replace it, you ask me.”

  “Can’t get with that, either, Derek. I wasn’t even born till nineteen seventy.”

  “You missed,
young man. You missed.”

  Strange turned down 8th Street and took it to M.

  “Where we headed?” said Lattimer.

  “Titty bar,” said Strange.

  “Thank you, boss. This one of those perks you talked about when you hired me?”

  “You’re staying in the car. This is the place I picked up Sherman Coles for you while you were admiring yourself in a three—way mirror. I just got to ask the doorman a question or two.”

  “About Quinn?”

  “Uh—huh.”

  “I heard Janine say that the man Wilson pulled that gun on, he was clean.”

  “Maybe he was. One thing’s certain, he made out. According to the papers, the department paid him eighty thousand dollars to make him happy. For the emotional trauma he went through and the back injury he sustained when Wilson threw him up against the car.”

  “What did Wilson’s mother get?”

  “A hundred grand, from what I can tell.”

  “Cost the police department a lot to make everyone go away on that one.”

  “The money was never going to be enough to satisfy his mother, though.”

  “You can dig it, right?”

  Strange thought of his brother, now thirty years gone, and a woman he’d loved deep and for real back in the early seventies.

  “When you lose a loved one to violence,” said Strange, “ain’t no amount of money in the world gonna set things right.” “How about revenge? Does that do it, you think?” “No,” said Strange, his mind still on his brother and that girl he’d loved. “You can never trade a bad life for a good.”

  STRANGE parked on the street, alongside one of the fenced—in lots fronting the strip—bar and bathhouse district. He said to Lat—timer, “Wait here.”

  The doorman who’d been at Toot Sweet when Strange had picked up Coles was there again today. He’d gotten his hair cut in a kind of fade, and he wore a baggy sweatsuit, which didn’t do a whole lot to hide his bulk. Boy looked liked some cross of African and Asian, but Strange figured the majority of it was African, as he’d never seen any kind of Chinaman that big.

  “How you doin’,” said Strange.

  “It’s still seven dollars to get in. We ain’t gone and changed the cover since the other day.”

  “You remember me, huh?”

  “You and your friend. White boy did some damage back in the bathroom.”

  Strange palmed a folded ten—dollar bill into the doorman’s hand. “I’m not coming in today, so that’s not for the cover. That’s for you.”

  The doorman casually looked over his shoulder, then slipped the ten in the pocket of his sweatpants. “What you want to know?”

  “I was wonderin’ about what happened back there in the bathroom.”

  “What happened? Your partner fucked that big boy up. Went into the kitchen and got a tenderizing mallet, then went into the bathroom and broke big boy’s nose real quick. Kicked him a couple of times while he was down, too. I had to clean up the blood myself. There was plenty of it, too.”

  “What you do with the big guy?”

  “One of my coworkers drove him to D.C. General and dropped him off. They got a doctor over there, this Dr. Sanders, we’ve seen him put together guys got torn apart in this place real nice. So we figure we put him in good hands.”

  “Why didn’t you phone the cops?”

  “The big guy didn’t want us to. Right away I’m thinkin’ he’s got warrants out on him, right? And the management, they don’t want to see any cops within a mile of this place. Not to mention, you and your buddy, I know you’re not cops, but whatever the fuck your game is, you probably know enough real policemen to make it rough on the owner to keep doing business here, know what I’m sayin’? I mean, we’re not stupid.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “Next time you bring white boy around here, though —”

  “I know. Put him on a leash.”

  The doorman smiled and patted his pocket. “You want another receipt?”

  “It’s tempting,” said Strange. “But I’ll pass.”

  On the way back to the car, Strange thought, Maybe I’m giving this Terry Quinn too much credit. Sure, it could have gone down the way he said it did with Wilson. But maybe it was just that some switch got thrown, like all of a sudden the “tilt” sign flashed on inside his head. A young man with that kind of violence in him, you couldn’t tell.

  QUINN was shaking the shoulder of a guy called himself Moon—man, sleeping by the space heater in the room at the back of the shop. Moonman’s clothes were courtesy of Shepherd’s Table, and he showered and ate in the new Progress Place, a shelter off Georgia, behind the pool hall and pawnshops, back along the Metro tracks. Daytime he spent out on the street. Today was a cold one, and when it got bitter like this Quinn let Moonman sleep in the science fiction room in the back.

  “Hey, Moon. Wake up, buddy, you gotta get going. Syreeta’s coming in, and you know she doesn’t like you sleeping back here.”

  “All right.”

  Moon got himself to his feet. He hadn’t been using the showers at Progress Place all that often. That bad smell of street person that was body odor and cigarettes and alcohol and rot came off him, and Quinn backed up a step as Moon got his bearings. There were crumbs of some kind and egg yolk crusted in his beard. Quinn had given him the coat he was wearing, an old charcoal REI winter number with a blue lining. It was the warmest coat Quinn had ever owned.

  “Take this,” said Quinn, handing him a dollar bill, enough for a cup of coffee, not enough for a drink.

  “A ducat,” said Moon, examining the one. “Do you know, the term refers to an actual gold coin, a type of currency formerly used in Europe? The word was appropriated as slang by twentieth—century African Americans. Over the years it’s become a standard term in the Ebonic vocabulary… .”

  “That’s nice,” said Quinn, gently steering Moonman out of the room toward the front door.

  “I’ll spend it well.”

  As he walked behind him, Quinn saw the paperback wedged in a back pocket of Moonman’s sorry trousers. “And bring that book back when you’re done.”

  “The Stars My Destination, by Bester. It’s not just a book, Terry. It is a mind—blowing journey, a literary achievement of Olympian proportions… .”

  “Bring it back when you’re done.”

  Quinn watched Moonman walk out the front door. People in the neighborhood liked to treat Moon as their pet intellectual, speculating on how such a “mentally gifted guy” could slip through society’s cracks, but Quinn didn’t have any interest in listening to Moonman’s ramblings. He let Moonman sleep in the back because it was cold outside, and he gave him his coat because he didn’t care to see him die.

  Quinn stopped by the arts and entertainment room and looked inside the open door. A middle—aged guy with dyed hair and liver lips studied a photography book called Kids Around the World. He faced the wall and held the book close to his chest. He had the same look as the wet—eyed fat guy who hung back in the hobbies and sports room, and the young white man with the very short haircut, his face pale and acned, who lingered in the military history room and stared half smiling at the photos in the Nazi—atrocity books shelved there. Quinn recognized them all: the ineffectual losers and the creeps and the pedophiles, all the friendless fucks who didn’t really want to hurt anyone but who always did. Syreeta said to leave them alone, that the books were a healthy kind of outlet for their unhealthy desires, the alternative was that they would be out there on the street.

  Quinn knew that they were out there on the street. Syreeta was all right, a good woman with good intentions, but Quinn had seen things for real and she had not. Sick motherfuckers, all of them. He’d like to get them all in one room and —

  “Hey, Terry.” It was Lewis, standing before him, a box of hardbacks in his arms. Lewis’s eyeglasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose. “I finished racking the new vinyl. Now I’ve got to get these ficti
ons shelved. You want to watch the register for me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Quinn went up to the front of the shop. He phoned Juana to confirm their date for that evening. He’d had a long phone conversation with her the previous night. He’d gotten an erection just talking to her, listening to the sound of her voice. It was driving him crazy, thinking of her eyes, her hair, those dark nipples, that warm pussy, her fine hands. It had been that way with other girls who’d turned him on, but this was different, yeah, he wanted to hit it, but he wanted to just be with her, too. He left a message on her machine.

  Quinn went behind the register counter and read some of Desperadoes, a western by Ron Hansen. It was one of his favorites, a classic, and he was reading it for the second time, but he found it hard to concentrate, and he set the book down. He stood and flipped through the used albums in the bins beside the register area. Another Natalie Cole had come in, along with a Brothers Johnson, a Spooky Tooth, and a Haircut 100. He picked up a record that had a bunch of seventies—looking black guys on its cover, three different pictures of them jumping around out on a landing strip. He read the title on the album and smiled.

  The bell over the door chimed as Syreeta Janes walked into the shop. Syreeta was at the tail end of her forties, on the heavy side, with a nice brown freckled face, high cheekbones, and deep chestnut eyes. Half of her time was spent in the shop, the other half at book conventions or in her home office, working on her Web site, where she bought and sold rare paperbacks. She wore her usual, a vest and shirt arrangement worn out over a flowing long skirt and clogs, with a brightly colored kufi atop dreads. Lewis, in one of his less serious moments, had described her look as “Harlem by way of Takoma Park.”

  “Terry.”

  “Syreeta.”