Right as Rain

by George Pelecanos

  Strange sat back in his chair. He reached down and patted Greco’s head. He folded his arms and stared at the ceiling. He ran his finger through the dust that had settled on his desk. He exhaled slowly, sat forward, and pulled the telephone toward him. He dialed a number, and on the third ring a voice came on the other end of the line.

  “Hello.”

  “Derek here. You remember which house is mine?”

  “Sure.”

  “Better get on over here, man.”

  “I’ll be right there,” said Quinn.

  CHEROKEE Coleman pressed “end” on his cell and laid the phone on the green blotter of his desk. “They’re here.”

  Big—Ass Angelo adjusted his shades so that they sat low on his nose. “We ready for them to finish this thing?”

  “Tomorrow night. We been sellin’ this shit faster than I thought we would. We’ll send our boys out there to Shitkickersville and let them bring back the last load. Bring back our money, too. Doom all those motherfuckers out there, so I can tell my Colombian brothers I went and avenged the deaths of their own. Stay in their good graces so we can keep on makin’ that bank. Like to see those cracker cops out in Fredneck County when they find all those bodies, scratchin’ their fat heads and shit, tryin’ to figure out who and what and how come.”

  “Let God sort ’em out.”

  Coleman looked up. “That’s a good name for this next batch, Angie.”

  “We used it, man.”

  “Fucked in D.C.?”

  “That ain’t bad, right there.”

  Coleman got up from his chair and walked to the office window. Two men got out of a black Maxima and were met by several younger men.

  “Delgado got himself a brand new short,” said Coleman. “Got some nice rims on it, too.”

  “He just wants what we got,” said Angelo.

  “Let him keep wantin’ it. The want is what makes this world go round, black.”

  “How his partner look?”

  “Boy has got some teeth.”

  “Wil—bur,” said Angelo, whinnying like a horse and using his foot, dragging it front to back on the floor, to count to three.

  Coleman and Angelo were still laughing as the two men entered the office.

  “Somethin’ funny?” said Delgado.

  “Angelo here was just tellin’ me a joke,” said Coleman.

  “How you doin’, Bucky?” said Big—Ass Angelo to the second man.

  “I told you not to call me that,” said the man. “The name’s Eugene Franklin, understand?”

  Chapter 30

  QUINN sat on a hard—back chair in Strange’s living room, the tablet—sized notebook and an empty bottle of beer on the floor at his feet, the package of photographs clenched in his hand. There were two photographs of Eugene Franklin and Adonis Delgado in the bunch, wearing street clothes and walking from Eugene’s civilian car to the row house of Cherokee Coleman. Quinn had yet to read the contents of the notebook, but Strange had filled him in on the pertinent details.

  “You want another beer, man?” said Strange, who sat on a slightly worn living room sofa.

  “No,” said Quinn. “I better not.”

  Quinn’s eyes were blown out in his pale face, and jaw muscles bunched beneath his tight skin.

  “Play me the tape again. The part where Eugene was talking in Erika’s.”

  Strange played the tape. Eugene’s voice filled the silence of the room: “I saw where Wilson s gun was headed. I saw in his eyes what he planned to do. There’s no doubt in my mind, if Terry hadn’t shot Wilson, Wilson would have shot me.”

  Strange hit the stop button on the micro recorder.

  “Wilson would have shot me,” said Strange. “Franklin slipped right there.”

  Quinn nodded obtusely at the recorder. “Play the tape of me. The first conversation we had, down at the scene, on D Street.”

  “We already did this once.”

  “Play it,” said Quinn.

  Strange popped in another tape. He cued up the spot that he knew Quinn wanted to hear.

  Strange: “You do what next?”

  Quinn: “I’ve got my gun on the aggressor. I yell for him to drop his weapon and lie facedown on the street. He yells something back. I can’t really hear what he’s saying ’cause Eugene’s yelling over him —”

  Strange stopped the tape. “Your partner was yelling over him ’cause he didn’t want you to hear what Wilson was sayin’. He was adding to the confusion, and he didn’t want you to know that Wilson was a cop.”

  “Play the other part,” said Quinn.

  Strange: “What happened when he looked at you, Quinn?”

  Quinn: “It was only for a moment. He looked at me and then at Gene, and something bad crossed his face. I’ll never forget it. He was angry at us, at me and Gene. He was more than angry; his face changed to the face of a killer. He swung his gun in our direction then —”

  Strange: “He pointed his gun at you?”

  Quinn: “Not directly. He was swinging it, like I say. The muzzle of it swept across me, and he had that look on his face… . There wasn’t any doubt in my mind… . I knew… . I knew he was going to pull the trigger. Eugene screamed my name, and I fired my weapon.”

  “That’s enough,” said Quinn.

  Strange stopped the recorder.

  “Here’s the way I see it,” said Strange, speaking softly. “Your partner was driving the cruiser that night. Y’all comin’ up on Chris Wilson like that, it wasn’t an accident. Franklin turned down D Street because it was a setup. He knew Kane was going to lure Chris Wilson there. He knew it wouldn’t take much for Kane to get Wilson to draw his gun.”

  “Or for me to fire mine,” said Quinn.

  “Maybe. The fact remains, your partner was involved. We got the photographs and Chris Wilson’s notebook. That young man did some really fine police work, putting it all together. The tapes I got corroborate —”

  “I just don’t want to believe it, Derek.”

  “Believe your own words,” said Strange. “He looked at me and then at Gene, and something bad crossed his face.’ 'His face changed to the face of a killer’ when he saw Eugene. Your own words were, 'The muzzle of the gun swept across me.’ Chris Wilson wasn’t lookin’ to hurt you, Terry. He was pointing his gun at a sold—out cop. A dirty cop who was in the pocket of the drug dealer who had put his sister in a junkhouse. You understand what I’m tellin’ you, man?”

  “Yes,” said Quinn, staring at the floor.

  “All right, then. Now, who’s Adonis Delgado?”

  “Big, bad—ass cop. He was sitting at the bar of Erika’s the day we spoke to Eugene.”

  “Muscle—bound and ugly, with a stove—in nose?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the one tried to step to me in the bathroom. Wanted to send me some kind of message, I guess.”

  “Eugene,” muttered Quinn.

  “You’re goddamn right, Eugene.”

  Quinn stood out of his chair. He lifted his leather off the back where he’d hung it and put it on.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “To get the rest of it.”

  “You need my help?”

  “This one’s me,” said Quinn. He turned as he reached the front door. “Don’t go to sleep.”

  “I’m gonna see you again tonight?”

  “Yeah. Gonna bring somethin’ back for you, too.”

  EUGENE Franklin had a one—bedroom apartment in a high—rise across the road from the Maine Avenue waterfront in Southwest. Franklin, like many single cops, considered his apartment little more than a place to eat, sleep, and watch TV. The living area was sparsely decorated and furnished, with a couch and chair facing a television, a coffee table, and a telephone set on a bare end table beside the couch. Franklin answered the ringing phone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Gene, it’s Terry, man. I’m at the front door in the lobby.”

  “Terry —”

  “Buzz me in,
buddy. I got somethin’ I need to talk to you about.”

  Franklin pressed a button on the phone. He stood from the couch and ran his finger slowly over his protruding upper lip. It was a habit of his to do this when he was troubled or confused.

  Franklin went to the door of his apartment, opened it, and stood in the frame. Quinn was walking toward him, down the long, orange—carpeted hall.

  “Hey,” said Quinn, a smile on his face.

  Quinn’s long hair bounced as he walked. He was moving very quickly down the hall, his head pushed forward. Franklin was thinking, He’s like one of those cartoon characters, determined, walking with purpose … and now he could see that Quinn’s smile was not really a smile but more of a grimace, a forced smile that had pain in it and something worse than pain.

  “Hey, Eugene,” said Quinn as he reached him, not slowing down, and Franklin saw the automatic come up from beneath the waistband of Quinn’s jeans.

  Franklin stepped back from the doorway as Quinn swung the barrel of the gun viciously, its shape a blur cutting through the fluorescent glare of the hall. The gun connected at Franklin’s temple, and the room spun instantly as he stumbled back.

  Franklin’s feet were gone beneath him. He began to fall, and as he fell through the dimming light the gun streaked toward him, and this time he barely felt the blow. At the end, he saw his partner’s face, ugly and angry and afraid, and Franklin loved him then. Falling into a soft bed of night, Franklin felt only relief.

  QUINN stood in the center of Eugene Franklin’s living room, the automatic held loosely in his hand.

  Franklin sat on the couch, his head tilted back, holding a damp towel tight to his temple. The towel was pink where the blood of a deep gash had seeped through. Quinn had placed a yellow legal pad on the coffee table before him and set a pen on top of the pad.

  “How’d you turn, Gene?”

  “How?” repeated Franklin.

  “Delgado drew you in.”

  “Yeah. Used to see him down at Erika’s all the time. In there every night, drinkin’, talkin’ mad shit, then goin’ home alone. Delgado, he was like me. Neither one of us had many friends or was gettin’ any play. So we got to talkin’, Adonis and me. I knew he was all bad; everyone knew. But I talked to him anyway.”

  “What’d you talk about?”

  “This and that, you know. Went from one thing to the other, until it came to this other thing. Delgado was tellin’ me how a man with some money in his pocket didn’t have to worry about finding women, they’d find him. How you could kick it with anyone out there if the woman had the idea you were holdin’ bank. I knew his mouth was overloadin’ his asshole, man, but with the alcohol run—nin’ through me and shit —”

  “How’d it go to the next level?”

  “He started talkin’ about Cherokee Coleman’s operation, down off Florida. How Cherokee wasn’t never gonna see no time, how no one could touch his ass ’cause he was too smart. That the operation would keep goin’ on as long as there was a market for drugs, and fuck all those junkies, anyway, they weren’t nothin’ but the low end of Darwin’s theory. And then he told me how he was making a little extra on the side, how he figured out that if Cherokee was gonna be all that and no one was gonna do a goddamn thing about it, why didn’t he, Adonis, deserve to get some, too.

  “It wasn’t no big deal, he said. A load came in twice a month to Coleman’s, and twice a month Delgado cruised the perimeter of the area during drop—off day and made sure there wasn’t anything goin’ on out there in the way of interference, local or federal law. Never even got out of his car. He said it wasn’t any more complicated than that.”

  “Why tell you? Why did he need to cut you in?”

  “’Cause he couldn’t always be there. And because they had a problem that Delgado couldn’t or didn’t want to handle on his own. Course, I didn’t know what that problem was when I got in.”

  “Chris Wilson.”

  Franklin’s eyes moved to the floor. “That’s right. His sister had got hooked up with Ricky Kane. He followed Kane’s trail the same way y’all did, and it took him to Coleman’s. On one of those trips, Kane went into the office with Sondra Wilson, and when he came out, he was alone. Sondra was Coleman’s woman, just like that, and it pushed Wilson way over the edge.”

  “You were in at this point?”

  “Right about then, yeah. It was easy, just like Delgado said; wasn’t nothin’ but drivin’ around the block a couple of times, twice a month. I didn’t see anything all that wrong with it at the time.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Just trying to explain it to you, how it was.”

  “Bullshit,” said Quinn, a catch in his voice. “What happened next?”

  “Wilson was surveilling now in his street clothes, by the Junkyard and on the corners. I guess that’s when he got those pictures of me. He knew he couldn’t go up against Coleman’s army himself, and he didn’t know who to trust anymore inside the department. But by now he was all fucked up over his sister, and he was gettin’ out of control. He threatened Delgado outside of Erika’s one night. He threatened me.”

  “You and Delgado went to Coleman.”

  “Delgado did. They decided to get rid of Chris Wilson. For Delgado, it was easy. By then I’d found out he’d killed before for Coleman. It didn’t matter what I knew at that point; I was damn near one of them. They wanted me all the way in, locked in for real.”

  “They wanted you to kill Wilson.”

  “That’s right.” Franklin dropped the towel at his feet. A drop of blood burst from his cut and trickled down his cheek.

  “They had Kane call Wilson out?”

  Franklin nodded. “Kane told Wilson he’d gotten his sister back. To meet him on D Street at a certain time. They knew Wilson would lose it when he got there and found Kane alone. I drove us up on the scene. You know what happened next.”

  “You tell me, Eugene. You tell me what happened next.”

  “I never shot a man. Never even shot at one, Terry. I had my gun out and I had it pointed at him, but —”

  “Why didnt you shoot him, Eugene?”

  “Because you shot him first.”

  Quinn looked down at the gun in his hand. “You knew I would.”

  “No, I didn’t know. But I knew you were more capable of it than I was. And I knew …”

  “What?”

  “I knew you. I knew what you’d see when you saw Chris Wilson holding a gun on Ricky Kane.”

  Quinn raised the gun to his hip, pointing it at Franklin on the couch. Franklin’s lip trembled, and his eyes filled with tears.

  “You won’t do it, Terry. There’s a part of me that wishes you would. But you won’t.”

  “You’re right,” said Quinn, and he moved the muzzle of the Glock, pointing it at the pad on the table. “Write it out. All of it, Gene. Go ahead. I’m going to disgrace you to your family, and your fellow cops, and to all the folks you came up with over in Northeast. They’re all gonna know what a lowlife you are. And I’m gonna make good and goddamn sure your fellow inmates know you used to wear the uniform when they haul your ass to jail.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Fuck you, Eugene. Fuck your apologies, too. Write it down.”

  FRANKLIN wrote a full confession out on the yellow pad, signed and dated the bottom of the last page, and dropped the pen when he was done.

  “I’d like to talk to my father before this makes the news,” said Franklin. “When are you going to turn this in?”

  “After we get the girl home.”

  “She’s not in D.C.”

  “I know it,” said Quinn. “Me and Strange, we were out there today. We followed those rednecks out to their property, where they’re keeping her.”

  Franklin dabbed at the cut on his temple. The bleeding had stopped, and he lowered the towel. “I’m going to be there with Delgado tomorrow night.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re dropping off money and bringing
back a load of drugs.”

  “Thought you never had to do anything but drive around the block.”

  “We met with Coleman earlier,” said Franklin. “Those rednecks you followed, the Boones: the short one’s named Ray, and his father’s name is Earl. They killed a couple of Colombian mules, out at that property. Coleman wants us to kill the Boones, to make himself right with the Colombians.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “They didn’t mention the girl, maybe because they knew I wouldn’t like what they had to say. Delgado used to hit it himself, and he still has her on his mind. He starts killin’, though, I don’t see him stopping until everyone’s put to sleep.”

  “And you’ll do what?”

  “I can’t shoot anybody, Terry. I already told you —”

  “This is going down tomorrow night?”

  “I’m meeting Delgado at eight… . That would put us out there near nine o’clock. They’re going to pick us up somewhere else, then drive us back to the place.”

  “There’s a barn and a house there.”

  “Yeah. Coleman says the Boones like to do business in the barn. They got a full bar in there; it’s set up like one of those old—time casinos or some shit like that.”

  “Sondra stays in the house?”

  “Far as I know.”

  Quinn holstered the Glock in the waistband of his jeans. “Tomorrow night, you keep them all in the barn, hear? Give me and Strange the chance to get Sondra Wilson out of that house.”

  “What am I gonna do when Delgado starts all that killin’?”

  “I don’t care what you do. It makes no difference to me.” Quinn picked up the legal pad off the coffee table and slipped his pen into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Whatever you decide to do tomorrow night, I want you to know it won’t change what I’m going to do with this.”

  “I didn’t think it would.”

  “So long, Gene.”