Right as Rain

by George Pelecanos

  “Hold on a minute, Lionel,” said Janine.

  “What is it?” he said, looking at her directly for the first time. He glanced at Strange, then back at his mother, and an impudent smile threatened to break on his face.

  “Where you been, son?”

  “Out with Ricky, just rollin’, listenin’ to music… . Can’t you just let me go up to my room for a change? You always be stressin and shit.”

  Janine rose up from her seat. “Don’t you be takin’ a tone with me, young man. Me and Mr. Derek been sitting up, worried that you were in some kind of trouble, or worse. And now you come walking in here late, lookin’ all red—eyed —”

  “How about y’all?”

  “What?”

  “Forget it, Mama,” said Lionel, with a wave of his hand. He turned and went up the stairs.

  Janine froze for moment, then moved to follow her son. Strange took hold of her arm.

  “Hold up, baby. I’ll talk to him, all right?”

  On the second floor of the house, Strange knocked on Lionel’s closed door. Lionel did not respond. Strange turned the knob and walked inside the bedroom. Lionel was standing, looking through his window, which gave to a view of the street. Strange crossed the room and stood beside him. Lionel turned to face him.

  “Lionel?”

  “What?”

  “You know your mother loves you, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “When she asks you where you been all night, it’s just her way of lettin’ off a little steam. She’s been sittin’ down in that living room, worried sick about you, for the last two hours, and you come through that door, she’s got to give you a taste of what you been puttin’ her through all night.”

  “I know it. It’s just… I’m nearly a man, Mr. Derek. I don’t need all these questions all the time, see what I’m sayin’?”

  “While you’re livin’ under her roof, and she’s payin’ for that roof, it’s something you’re just gonna have to deal with.”

  “And there goes Mama, tellin’ me my eyes are lookin’ red, when y’all look like you been smokin’ cheeva your own selves.”

  “We drank a few bottles of beer, tonight, that’s all,” lied Strange. “I don’t know, maybe we had one too many, but we did have fun. I’m not gonna go and apologize for that, ’cause your mama deserves it, hard as she works. But I never did claim I was perfect, even when I was trying to warn you about all the ways you can mess your life up before you even get out of the gate. Now, I told you what I thought about you drivin’ around in that fancy car, gettin’ high. I still think you’re setting yourself up for something that could affect you your whole life. And your life ain’t even started, son.”

  “You’re not my father,” said Lionel softly, and at once his eyes filled with tears. “Don’t call me son.”

  Strange put his hand on Lionel’s shoulder. “You’re right. I never did have the kind of courage it takes to be a father to a boy for real. But there’s some times when I look at you, when you’re making one of your jokes at the dining room table, or when I see you dressed up, lookin’ all handsome and ready to go out and meet a girl, and I get a sense of pride… . There’s some times when I look at you, Lionel, and I get the kind of feeling that I know a father must have for his own.”

  Strange pulled Lionel to him. He felt Lionel’s heart beating hard against his chest. He held Lionel for a little while and let him break away.

  “Mr. Derek?”

  “Yes?”

  “The way it is with you and my mother … What I’m tryin’ to say is, I know what time it is, see? I know you’re tryin’ to not disrespect her by staying in her room while I’m here, but I was thinkin’ … I was thinkin’, see, that you disrespect her even more in some way by not waking up in her bed.”

  “Huh?”

  “What I’m sayin’ is, I’d like it if you just went ahead and stayed the night.”

  “I’ll, uh, talk to your mother,” stammered Strange. “See if that’s all right.”

  Strange went down the hall to Janine’s room. Inside, Janine was sitting on her bed, the toes of her stocking feet touching the floor. Ronald Isley was singing “Voyage to Atlantis” from the clock radio set on her nightstand, and she had turned the light down low.

  “Everything okay?” she said.

  “Fine,” said Strange. “He wants me to spend the night.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “You feed Greco?”

  “I opened a can of Alpo for him before we left my house.” “Come here,” said Janine. She smiled and patted the empty space beside her on the bed.

  QUINN got out of bed, covering Juana to the neck with her own blanket and sheets. He had been watching the numbers change on the LED display on Juana’s clock for the last two hours, and he knew that he would not fall asleep.

  He was sober now. He stretched and walked naked to her window, turning the rod of the miniblinds to open an angle of sight. He looked out the window to the sidewalk on 10th, illuminated by street lamps. A young black man was walking down the sidewalk in an oversize hooded jacket, glancing in the windows of the parked cars he passed.

  Quinn made some immediate presumptions about the young man, all of them negative. Then he tried to think of other explanations for why the kid would be out at this hour on the street. Maybe the young man had been unable to sleep, like Quinn, and was simply taking a walk. Maybe he was just leaving his girlfriend’s place, was feeling bold and proud, and was checking out his reflection in the windows of the cars. These were logical scenarios, but they were not the first scenarios he had thought of when he had seen the young black man.

  Quinn thought of the first time he had seen Juana, when she had walked into the bookstore on Bonifant.

  Strange had been right about something, whether Quinn had been fully conscious of it at first or not: He had approached Juana initially to make some kind of point, to himself and the world around him.

  “God damn you, Terry,” whispered Quinn. He closed his eyes tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Chapter 22

  ON Sunday morning, Strange ate breakfast with Janine and Lionel at the Three Star Diner, on Kennedy Street in Northwest. The Three Star was owned and operated by Billy Georgelakos, the son of the original owner, Mike Georgelakos. Strange’s father, Darius Strange, had worked for Mike as a grill man at the diner for twenty—five years.

  Billy Georgelakos and Strange were roughly the same age. On Saturdays, when Mike and Darius both had their sons with them, Billy and Strange had played together on these streets while their fathers worked. Strange had taught Billy how to box and make a tackle, and Billy had introduced young Derek to comic books and cap pistols. Billy was Strange’s weekend playmate, and his first white friend.

  When Mike Georgelakos died of a heart attack in the late sixties, Billy had dropped out of junior college and stepped in to take over the business, as there was no insurance or safety net of any kind for the family. He had not intended to stay, but he did. The neighborhood had gone through some changes, and the menu had moved closer to soul food, but Billy ran the place the same way his old man had, breakfast and lunch only, open seven days a week.

  Strange knew that Mike Georgelakos had bought the property long ago — the Greeks from that generation were typically smart enough to secure the real estate — and consequently the nut at the Three Star was very low. The diner had sent Billy’s two sons to college and had also managed to support his mother as well. The other thing Billy did like his old man was to cut the register tape off two hours before closing time. With a cash business like this, you could hide a whole lot of money from the IRS.

  “Pass me that hot sauce, Lionel,” said Strange.

  Lionel slid the bottle of Texas Pete down the counter, past his mother to Strange. Strange shook some out onto his feta cheese—and—onion omelet, and a little onto the half—smoke that lay beside it.

  “Good breakfast, right?” said Stran
ge.

  “Mm—huh,” said Janine.

  “The breakfast is tight,” said Lionel, “but they could play some better music in this place.”

  “The music is fine,” said Strange. Billy played gospel in the diner on Sunday mornings, as many of the patrons were coming straight from church. His father had done that, too.

  “Why you name your dog Greco?” said Lionel. “’Cause of this Greek joint right here?”

  “Nah. I knew this other Greek kid back when I was a boy, kid named Logan Deoudes. His father had a place like this, John’s Lunch, over on Georgia, near Fort Stevens. Anyway, Logan had this dog, a boxer mix, called him Greco. Bad—ass dog, too — excuse me, Janine — and I always liked the name. Decided back then, when I got a dog of my own, I was gonna name him Greco myself.”

  Billy Georgelakos walked down the rubber mat behind the counter, carrying a pot of coffee he had drawn from the urn. He wore a white shirt rolled up to the elbows and had a Bic pen wedged behind his right ear. Billy was big boned, with large facial features, most prominently his great eagle nose. With the exception of two patches of gray on either side of his dome, he had lost most of his hair.

  “Want me to warm that up for you, Janine?” said Billy, chin—gesturing in the direction of Janine’s coffee cup.

  “A little bit more, thanks,” said Janine. Billy poured her some coffee and filled Strange’s cup to the lip without asking.

  “How’s your mom doin’, Derek?”

  Strange made a so—so, flip—flop movement of his hand. “Etsi—ke—etsi,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Billy, “mine, too. Tough old women, though, right?”

  He walked down to the grill area to talk with his longtime employee Ella Lockheart, who had come up in the neighborhood as well.

  “You speak Greek, Mr. Derek?”

  “Little bit,” said Strange mysteriously. Billy had taught him one or two useful expressions and a whole lot of curse words.

  “Dag,” said Lionel.

  “You got somethin’ planned today?” said Strange to Janine.

  “What’d you have in mind?”

  “Want to stretch my legs. I’ll be gettin’ real busy tomorrow, and I might stay that way. It’s cold, but with all this sunshine I was thinkin’ I’d take Greco for a walk down in Rock Creek. Maybe go by the home and visit my mother after that.”

  “I’m up for it,” said Janine.

  “Lionel?”

  “I got plans,” said Lionel. “That Wilderness Family trip sounds good and all that. But if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon spend my day lookin’ at the women up at the mall.”

  Billy rang them up at the register. On the way out, Strange stopped, as he always did, at the wall by the front door, where several faded photographs were framed and hung. In one, Strange’s father stood tall, with his chef’s hat cocked rakishly, a spatula in one hand, a smile on his chiseled, handsome face. Mike Georgelakos, short and rotund, stood beside him.

  “That’s him right there,” said Strange, and neither Lionel nor Janine said a thing, because they knew that Strange was just having a moment to himself.

  “Yasou, Derek,” said Billy Georgelakos from behind the counter.

  “Yasou, Vasili,” said Strange, turning to wave at his friend. Strange winked at Lionel, who was obviously impressed, as they headed for the door.

  QUINN walked south on Georgia Avenue, through Silver Spring and down over the District line, sometime after noon on Sunday. He passed tattoo parlors and car washes, auto detailers, African American-owned barber shops and clothing stores, beer markets and fried—chicken shacks, and stores selling cell phones and pagers. He walked for an hour without stopping. The day was cold, but the sun and his movement kept him warm.

  He stopped at a small used—car lot on the west side of Georgia. Multicolored plastic propellers had been strung around the perimeter, and they spun in the wind. There was a trailer on the edge of the lot where salesmen went for the close, and above the trailer door a large sign had been mounted and encircled with marquee—style lights. The sign read, “Eddie Rider’s, Where Everyone Rides!” Quinn walked onto the lot.

  Quinn wasn’t a car freak, but his stint as a police officer had put him in the habit of mentally recording models and model years. The trouble he’d had the last few years of his job, and the trouble he was having now, standing in the lot and looking at the rows of cars, was distinguishing one manufacturer from another. Most of the cars from the early nineties on looked the same. The Japanese had built the rounded prototypes, and the Americans and the Koreans and even some of the Germans had followed suit. So the back end of a late—model Hyundai was, at a glance, indistinguishable from that of a Lexus or a Mercedes. A fifteen—thousand—dollar Ford looked identical to a forty—thousand—dollar Infiniti. And all the Toyotas — especially the ultra—vanilla Camry, the nineties equivalent of the eighties Honda Accord — were as exciting as the prospect of a house in the suburbs and an early death. Quinn had done without a car for so long because nothing he saw turned him on.

  “How ya doing today, sir?” said a startlingly nasal voice behind Quinn.

  Quinn turned to find a short, thin, middle—aged black man standing before him. The man wore thick glasses with black frames and a knockoff designer sport jacket over a white shirt and balloon—print tie. He gave Quinn a toothy, capped grin.

  “Doin’ fine,” said Quinn.

  “The name’s Tony Tibbs. They call me Mr. Tibbs. Ha—ha! Just kiddin’, man. Actually, they call me Tony the Pony round here, ’cause I give good ride, y’know what I’m sayin’? I didn’t catch your name, did I?”

  “It’s Terry Quinn.”

  “Irish, right?”

  “Uh—huh.”

  “I never miss. Pride myself on that, too. Hey, you hear about the two Irish gay guys?” Tibbs frowned with theatrical concern. “You’re not gay, are you?”

  “Listen —”

  “I’m playin’ with you, buddy; I can see you’re all man. So let me ask you again: You hear about the two Irish gay guys?”

  “No.”

  “Patrick Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzpatrick. Ha—ha!” Tibbs cocked his hip. “You lookin’ for somethin’ special today, Terry?”

  “I need to buy a car.”

  “I don’t think I can help you, man. Just kiddin’! Ha—ha!”

  Quinn looked Tony Tibbs over: pathetic and heroic, both at once. The privileged, who had never had to work, really work, to pay their bills, could ridicule guys like Tibbs all they wanted. Quinn liked him, and he even liked his lousy jokes. But in the interest of time, he thought he needed to set him straight.

  “Listen, Tony,” said Quinn. “Here’s the program. I see something I like here and the price seems fair, I’m not gonna haggle with you over it, I’m just gonna pull out my checkbook and write you out a check, today, for the full amount. I don’t want to finance anything, hear, I just want to pay you cash money and drive the car off the lot.”

  Tibbs looked a little hurt and somewhat confused. Places like this were selling financing, not cars, and they were selling it at a rate of over 20 percent. The no—haggle bit seemed to knock Tibbs down a notch, too.

  “I understand,” said Tibbs.

  “Also, we go in that trailer there, I don’t want to buy a service contract. You even mention it, I’m gonna walk away.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” said Quinn. “Now sell me a car.”

  Nothing stoked Quinn as they walked around the lot. Then they came to a small row of cars beside the trailer, where three old Chevys sat waxed and gleaming in the sunlight.

  “What are these?” said Quinn.

  “Eddie Rider’s pets,” said Tibbs. “He loves Chevelles, man.”

  “They for sale?”

  “Sure. He turns them over all the time.” Tibbs saw something in Quinn’s eyes. He smelled blood and straightened his posture. “That’s a high—performance sixty—seven right there. Three—fifty twelve bolt.”
r />   Tibbs pointed to a red model with black stripes. “There goes a seventy—two. Got a cowl induction hood and Hooker headers, man.”

  “What about that one?” said Quinn, chin—nodding to the last car in the row, a blue—over—black fastback beauty with Cregar mags.

  “That’s a pretty SS right there. Three ninety—six, three hundred and fifty horses. Four—on—the—floor Hurst shifter, got those Flow—master mufflers on it, too.”

  “What year is that?”

  “Nineteen sixty—nine.”

  “The year I was born.”

  “You ain’t nothin’ but a baby, then.”

  “Pop the hood on it, will you?”

  Quinn got under the hood. The hoses were new, and the belts were tight. You could pour a holsterful of french fries out onto the block and eat off the engine. He pulled the dipstick and smelled its tip.

  “Clean, right?” said Tibbs. “You don’t smell nothin’ burnt on there, do you?”

  “It’s clean. Can I take it for a ride?”

  “I got the keys inside.”

  “How much, by the way?”

  “I’m gonna go right to the bottom,” said Tibbs, “seein’ as how you don’t like to haggle.”

  “How much?”

  “Sixty—five hundred. That’s grand theft auto right there. Boss finds out I sold it for that, I might have to just go ahead and clean out my desk.”

  “Sixty—five hundred is right for this car?”

  “Sixty—five?” said Tibbs, pursing his lips and bugging his eyes. “It’s right as rain.”

  Quinn chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothin’,” said Quinn. “This car rides as good as it looks, you got yourself a deal.”

  Chapter 23

  QUINN met Strange for breakfast on Monday morning at Sweet Daddy’s All Souls Paradise House of Prayer, occupying much of M Street between 6th and 7th in Northwest. The church was a modern, well—funded facility serving the community through religious and outreach programs, with a staff of motivated individuals who kept an eye on the grounds in what was a marginal neighborhood at best. Quinn parked his Chevelle in the church—owned, protected lot, and went to the cafeteria on the ground level of the complex.