Lee had fathered two children of his own, what they called beef babies, with a couple of different women, when he’d gone to the mattresses, Corleone-style, all because of some violent conflicts he’d got himself in. He had no contact with those kids at all. He had no idea where they stayed at and didn’t want to know.
But hanging with Rico, it was like he was a father to the boy, in a way. Rico was devoted to him, as any son would be. Too devoted, sometimes. Once in a while, when someone would look at Lee the wrong way, Rico was all too ready to step in, take it to the next level. When that happened, Lee had to hold him back. Wasn’t no reason to hurt someone, you didn’t have to. That was something you learned with age. Nice to know that the boy was ready, though. No-fear motherfucker like Rico, it was good to have him on your side.
“You goin’ with that brown girl?” said Miller. He meant the brown pit with the white face, being led by her handler to her corner of the ring.
“She gonna change my luck,” said Lee. He had picked her over her opponent because her name was Sheila. For a while, he was fucking this redbone who had the same name. Lee had already lost the two fights he’d bet.
The man controlling the box stopped the music. Both dogs got settled in their corners. The referee ordered the cornermen out of the pit.
A kid came into the clearing, went directly to the ring, and yelled, “Hold up!” The referee put his hand up, signaling the cornermen to pause while he found out what this was about. The kid, who Lee recognized as the boy guarding the cars, was short of breath. He said something to the referee that was hard to make out but that put a reaction on the man’s face.
“All right, everybody,” said the ref, loudly so that all could hear. “We got to clear out. Dog men are here, and the police are on their way. Move!”
Lee turned around and looked up at the rise. He saw a white boy in a blue uniform, standing beside a tree. The sun flashed for a moment off something in the white boy’s hand. Wasn’t no chrome, ’cause the dog men weren’t allowed to carry weapons. Had to be a camera or binoculars, something like that.
Around them, supplies were boxed, tables were folded, and the ring began to be disassembled. Dogs were led away. Men were cursing, killing their beverages, and taking last hits off their smokes. Others were crowded around the bookie, collecting their bets. Lee went there, waited his turn, and got his money. When he was done counting it, he head-motioned Rico. The two of them went up into the woods, climbing the grade the way they had come.
MARK CHRISTIANSON STOOD beside an oak on the rise, taking photos through his digital camera, its lens zoomed to the maximum. He was focusing on the dog handlers, the referee, and the bookmaker rather than the spectators, though he caught many of them in the frame.
Mark had found his vantage point and remained hidden behind the wide trunk of the oak for as long as possible. He had first looked through his binoculars, more powerful than the lens of his camera, to familiarize himself with the people and the scene.
Immediately he had recognized Fat Tony Jamison, a former dogfighter turned oddsmaker and consultant, moving his 350-pound frame slowly through the area, working the crowd. Fat Tony had been around way too long. Then Mark saw Antoine Loomis, who had a pit on a leash and was apparently still in the trade. For a three-month stretch back in ’97, “Twan” Loomis had run fights out of a condemned apartment building at 49th and A, in Southeast. He had always been one step ahead of the law. When a determined Mark finally did gain entrance to the apartment house, after Loomis had abandoned the site, he had found the cinder-block-and-concrete basement where the fights had been staged. Damp, mildewed copies of Your Friend and Mine, The Pit Bull Chronicle, Face Your Dogs, and other publications were spread about the floor. Also on the floor were broken malt liquor bottles, cigarette butts, feces, matches, bottle caps, and syringes. Blood was streaked on the walls.
Mark took a photograph of Loomis and his pit, checking the digital image for clarity. He wanted to be sure he had him on record. Loomis was one of the bad, stupid ones who had been responsible for the abuse and murder of many dogs. He had also been charged as an accessory to a homicide, but the charges had not stuck. The federal prosecutor with whom Mark worked was building a case against Loomis. The photograph taken here was not a revelation, but it would help, someday, in rounding out the file that would eventually get Loomis off the street.
When the boy came into the clearing, Mark stepped out fully from behind the tree and took as many photographs as possible in the time he had left. The camp was breaking quickly, and the participants began to come toward him up the wooded rise. He stayed where he was for a few more minutes, even as they passed by him, even as they began to comment on his presence, taunt him, and call him names. He wasn’t frightened. He was used to this. But he figured he better get to the Tahoe and back up Lorenzo. He was worried for Lorenzo’s safety, but, more than that, he was concerned that Lorenzo might lose his temper.
Lorenzo was a good worker. Mark wanted to make sure that he stayed on the job. Indeed, Irena Tovar had charged Mark with the responsibility of keeping Lorenzo straight.
Mark climbed the rise.
LORENZO BROWN, STANDING BY a silver BMW, watched the men coming out of the woods, players and participants alike, walking dogs to vans and SUVs, carrying equipment, sections of ring, and folding tables and chairs. Some dipped casually and a few moved hurriedly. Some walked right through the community garden that the neighborhood residents had planted. None ran. The dog players and handlers had seen the white Humane officer in the woods and saw Lorenzo in uniform now. They knew that both officers had limited power and that they were not police.
Soon Mark appeared at the tree line, followed by many others, some of whom were making derogatory comments in Mark’s direction. Mark, as usual, seemed unfazed. He stepped around the community garden and met Lorenzo.
“You okay?”
“I got some pictures,” said Mark, sweaty, pink-faced, jacked on adrenaline.
Lorenzo looked around the field. Cars and trucks were pulling out, heading down the dirt alley. Mark was staring at Antoine Loomis, who was letting his animal into the backseat of a large black Mercedes sedan.
“You need to leave him be,” said Lorenzo, recognizing the look in Mark’s eye. “He don’t like lectures.”
“I’m just gonna have a few words with him.”
“You ain’t gonna convert Twan, that’s what you’re thinking. Some judge gonna do that eventually.”
“Just going talk to him, is all.”
“It’s not on you,” said Lorenzo, but Mark was already off, heading toward Loomis.
Lorenzo was intending to go to the Tahoe, radio in, and check on the status of the MPD, when he saw a man and a young man coming toward him. He recognized the older of the two and tried to place him. As he was doing this, Lorenzo realized that he had been leaning against the silver BMW. He moved off the car.
The two got nearer, and it came to Lorenzo who the older one was: Melvin Lee. Lee and Lorenzo had both come up in Park View. Lee had worked for Deacon Taylor, done time, come uptown, and was rumored to be working for Deacon again. Lee had made himself a rep when he was young. But looking at him now, Lorenzo realized that prison had broken him, even if Lee did not know this himself. Lee and his running partner stopped a few feet shy of Lorenzo.
Lee was all arms and legs, with a small torso, as if God had run out of the right size the day he’d made him. Lee’s head was tiny, and his eyes bulged slightly. He looked like something that crawled up a wall. He wore a baseball cap cocked sideways on his head. He wore the oversize jeans. He was trying for that youth thing, but it was never going to work for him again. Man his age, to be dressed that way, it was just pathetic. He was going for down, but the vibe he put out was defeat.
The boy standing beside Lee had slack posture and nothing eyes.
“Dog man.” Lee looked Lorenzo over. “What, you done lost your mind or somethin’?”
Lorenzo did not cut his e
yes away, nor did he stare with any sort of malice at Lee.
Lee stepped in. His breath smelled of alcohol and onions. “Someone give you permission to touch my whip?”
Your whip? What’d you do to get it? You ain’t never worked an honest day in your life.
“Didn’t realize I was touchin’ it,” said Lorenzo. Then he said something he never would have said, to anyone he was not close to, in his youth: “I apologize.”
Lee looked over his shoulder at the boy, then back at Lorenzo. “Now he gonna ’pologize. You hear that, Rico? After he done rubbed his dog-smellin’ self against my shit.”
The boy smiled, revealing teeth and gums that no dentist had ever touched. It reminded Lorenzo of the way an animal might smile, when it was hunting another animal, in a cartoon. Maybe it was the boy’s face. Thin, long, and lightly bearded. Only thing missing was the sheep’s clothes.
“You remember me?” said Lee.
Sure. I punked your ass out once in a club. You thought you could step to me, and I put you down with my eyes. You weren’t shit then. You less than shit now. So you just keep talking, if it makes you look tall and strong to this boy.
Lorenzo nodded, still showing no emotion.
Lee looked him over. “What happened to you? They turn you out in there?”
Lorenzo did not answer.
“What, you forget how to speak?”
I don’t need to. You don’t mean nothin’ to me.
Lorenzo looked past Lee, at Loomis’s Benz. Loomis was out of the car, up in Mark’s face, his chest almost touching Mark’s. One of Loomis’s partners had come around the car and was heading toward Mark too.
“Look at me, motherfucker,” said Lee. “I’m talkin’ to you.”
No need for this, little man. You only get one chance to break bad on a man, and you had yours.
“I got to get goin’,” said Lorenzo.
“We ain’t done here.”
“Excuse me,” said Lorenzo, stepping around Lee. He couldn’t help brushing the boy’s shoulder as he passed. The way it felt, rigid, it was like he was touching a corpse.
“I’m gonna see you again,” said Lee to Lorenzo’s back.
Lorenzo crossed the field to Loomis’s car.
Now Loomis and his partner were both tight in on Mark, who was holding his ground. Mark was keeping his pleasant half smile, that game face he used when he talked to everyone on the job, no matter what he was saying. Loomis’s partner, big boy with lineman guns coming out his T-shirt, and Loomis himself, looked like they were both ready to kick Mark’s ass. Their dog, in the back of the Benz, had its head out the rear window. It was barking, growling, and baring its teeth.
“How’s everyone doin’ today?” said Lorenzo, stepping close to the group, speaking in a friendly, even tone.
Loomis studied Lorenzo, then stood back and took a calming breath.
“Your boy just talkin’ too much shit,” said Loomis. “I’m fixin’ to introduce him to my right fist.”
“Ain’t no need for that,” said Lorenzo, pulling on the sleeve of Mark’s shirt, moving him out of reach of Loomis’s partner.
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” said Loomis. “He ain’t got no call to talk to me with that kind of disrespect. Askin’ me, Are you aware of this, and, Are you aware of that. Yeah, I’m aware, motherfucker. And you about to be aware that you fucked with the wrong man.”
“He don’t mean nothin’ personal,” said Lorenzo. “He’s just doin’ his job. Just like you and your friend here, and me. We’re all just looking to get along.”
Loomis, the rage gone out of him, lowered his voice to a mumble. “I got enough stress without this bullshit.”
“I heard that,” said Lorenzo.
The BMW drove by them, Lee and the one called Rico smiling at Lorenzo as they passed. The rest of the cars began to pass them too. Loomis and the big man got into the Benz without further incident, the pit bull still barking itself crazy in the backseat, and left as well. Soon it was just Lorenzo and Mark standing in the alley, with only their Tahoe left in the clearing. A couple of elderly men had come out the back of their houses and were surveying the scene.
“We do anything here?” said Lorenzo.
“We hit the pause button,” said Mark, wiping sweat off his forehead with a damp sleeve. “Maybe stopped a couple of animals from getting torn up.”
“Today.”
A Seventh District cruiser came down the alley toward them. The driver was taking his time.
“Here comes the cavalry,” said Mark.
Lorenzo shook his head and smiled. “What you say to Twan to get him so riled?”
“I was just telling him about the dogfighting law we got in this city. It’s a felony now, you know?”
“For real?”
“I was enlightening him.”
“Looked like he was responding in a real positive way.”
“You hadn’t stepped in, I would have brought him around to my way of thinking. I mean, he was practically eating out of my hand.”
“Looked to me, way both of those boys were crowded around you, that the two of them was gettin’ ready to hand you your ass.”
“That was a group hug.”
Two officers, a black and a white, got out of the cruiser. They walked toward Mark and Lorenzo.
“You want to talk to them?” said Mark.
“You do it,” said Lorenzo, handing Mark the clipboard. “I got a little problem interfacing with the police.”
NINE
RACHEL LOPEZ SAT ON a living-room sofa in a home in Landover, Maryland, with a woman named Nardine Carlson. It was late in the afternoon, but Nardine, puffy eyed and disheveled, looked as if she had just woken up.
Nardine Carlson lived with her children and grandmother in Kent Village, a development of houses and apartments in various configurations and conditions. Nardine’s place was on a trash-littered street of duplexes, where the cars outside the houses were much nicer than the houses themselves.
When Rachel had pulled her Honda up to the front of Nardine’s house, she recognized a fat, unattractive man leaning against a new German import, talking to a cute younger girl wearing shorts that laced crisscross style up the front. The fat man, Dennis Palmer, went by the name of Big Boy on the street. He wore a wife-beater and was rolling out of it in all directions.
“Hey, Dennis,” said Rachel as she walked past him and the girl, Nardine’s file in her hand.
“Miss Lopez,” said Dennis.
“Everything okay?” said Rachel, still walking.
“Don’t worry, I’m still up at the Friendly’s.”
“That’s good. You must be doing all right, what with that new car and all.”
“Yeah, well,” said Dennis, “you know.”
Rachel did not stop to talk to him. She didn’t have to, as he was no longer on paper. His supervision period had ended six months earlier, and her involvement with him was done. Also, she didn’t like him. He had a history of abuse toward women and, though he still held a job at an ice cream parlor, was probably re-involved in the sale of drugs. When she saw him, Big Boy Palmer always seemed to be around young, pretty girls. At a glance, it was unexplainable, as he was about as ugly as a man could be. But Rachel knew that certain kinds of women went for the players over the squares every time.
“I’ll see you again, Miss Lopez,” called Palmer.
Yes, thought Rachel. Me or someone like me, for sure.
In the duplex, Nardine’s grandmother, tired and light of bone, offered Rachel some iced tea. Rachel declined. The grandmother left Rachel in the living room in the company of Nardine and her two children, a six-year-old girl she was just now getting acquainted with and an eight-year-old boy. She was closer to the boy because she had spent more time with him than she had with the girl. Nardine had known her daughter for only a month before going off to do her time.
The children sat on a shag carpet before a television set, playing PS2. There were snack wrappers str
ewn around them, along with empty bottles of orange soda and Sierra Mist. The girl had her hand in a tube of Pringles now. Her other hand worked a controller. The kids were playing a game involving criminals, prostitutes, and guns. Points were given for shooting a police officer. The sound track to the game included music from Scarface.
“It’s sunny out,” said Rachel, saying it to Nardine as if she were giving her some news. The curtains had been drawn, and it was dark in the room.
“They don’t wanna go outside,” said Nardine, reading Rachel’s implication correctly. “They just wanna play that game.”
Rachel nodded, not pushing the issue, knowing it would do no good. It wasn’t her job to raise other people’s kids. Nardine didn’t look like she had seen much daylight herself.
“How’s the job search going?”
“It’s hard.”
“I know it is. But you still have to do it.”
“I went up to the MacDonald’s like you told me to. Saw that manager, Mr. Andrews?”
“And?”
“They ain’t have but one shift open. I can’t work those morning hours. Kids be goin’ back to school next month, and I need to be here to see them off. That’s important, right?”
“What’s important now is that you find a job,” said Rachel. “Your grandmother can see the kids off to school.”
Nardine looked blankly at the carpet and breathed through her open mouth.
“Did Mr. Andrews offer you the position?” said Rachel.
“He said that if I could do those morning hours, then he would give me a chance.”
“Well then, you need to get back over there and tell him you’d like to take the job.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Lopez. I am just not a morning kinda person —”
“Neither am I. But I still get up and go to work.”
“That’s you, all right? I ain’t never claim to be perfect or nothin’ like it.” Nardine balled her fist and rabbit-punched her own thigh. “Why you gotta press me like this?”
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