“I’m tryin’.”
“How’s Joe? You see him much?”
“All the time. He’s got steady work, layin’ bricks. Joe’s doin’ good.”
Lorenzo looked at Nigel’s employees, over by a black Escalade curbed in front of the office. The older of the two, wearing the same Raiders cap and bright orange FUBU shirt he’d seen him wearing that morning, the one who’d laughed at him as he was walking Jasmine, was slouched against the truck. The younger one, no more than a boy, had gentle eyes. Both looked like they were high.
“Meet Lorenzo Brown,” said Nigel. “This here’s DeEric Green.”
“Been hearin’ about you a long time,” said Green, who did not move off the truck. It was meant to be a compliment, Lorenzo supposed, but Green’s dull look said he was unimpressed.
“And this young man here is Michael Butler,” said Nigel, a hint of pride in his voice.
Butler stepped forward and shook Lorenzo’s hand. “How you doin’?”
“I’m good,” said Lorenzo.
This Michael Butler looked like one of Nigel’s personal projects. Nigel liked to pick the most promising, most intelligent ones out and take them under his wing. It never did work out. None who stayed on came to a good end. This was the one definite of the game. Still, Nigel kept trying to promote the ones he felt had promise. He was an optimist that way.
“Your job goin’ all right?” said Nigel.
“Everything’s good,” said Lorenzo.
“You need anything?”
“I’m straight,” said Lorenzo, looking at Nigel deep, telling him that he would never need anything from him again.
There was no animosity in their eyes, no bad blood between them. They were friends and would always be friends, but nothing would ever be as it was. Both had fulfilled their end of the bargain, and now that part of their lives, the part where they’d been together in business and as running boys, was done.
In the interrogation rooms at the time of his last arrest, and in court at his trial, Lorenzo had stood tall. He had not flipped on Nigel, as they had tried to get him to do, and had in fact refused to speak Nigel’s name. He had given up no one, not even enemies. He’d made no deals and done his time.
For his part, Nigel had staked Lorenzo with a package as soon as he’d come out of prison, a common practice for those who had fallen and returned. It was a relatively small amount of heroin, which would finance Lorenzo’s reentry into the world. The package was delivered to Lorenzo by one of Nigel’s boys without a word. Lorenzo accepted it, knowing what it was without having to open it. He moved it quickly and quietly, took the proceeds, and used the money to cover the first month’s rent on his apartment and to buy his car. He never thought about getting back into the life again. Between Lorenzo and Nigel, all of this remained unspoken.
“How’s your little girl?” said Nigel.
“All right, I guess.”
“You ain’t seen her?”
“Not to speak to.”
“That woman ain’t right,” said Nigel, meaning Sherelle, the mother of Lorenzo’s child.
“Time gonna fix it,” said Lorenzo, roughly echoing the words of Miss Lopez.
Nigel dragged on his cigar. “You still follow ball?”
“I watch it when I can.”
“At MCI?”
“Not on my salary.”
“I got club seats for the season.”
“What, you can’t afford the floor?”
“Go on, man. You know they got Gilbert, right?”
“He can play.”
“Boy’s sick. You and me should check out his game this winter.”
“Yeah,” said Lorenzo, “we should do that.”
“We damn sure should.”
“Look, Nigel . . .”
“What?”
“I gotta see to my dog. She been inside all day.”
“Go ahead, then,” said Nigel. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Lorenzo and Nigel executed their old handshake, as natural as putting one foot in front of the other, then went forearm to chest. Lorenzo nodded at the two employees and crossed Georgia to his car.
“That your boy, huh,” said DeEric Green.
“Yes,” said Nigel, watching him go. He turned to Green and Butler. “Y’all headin’ out?”
“You got somethin’ special you need us to do?” said Green.
“Just check on the troops and pick up the count. Tell the soldiers I realize they runnin’ low, but I got a package comin’ in later this week.” Nigel turned to Butler. “Mind DeEric. Man’s a veteran. You watch close, you gonna learn.”
Butler nodded. DeEric Green, energized by the compliment, got off the truck and stood straight.
“By the way,” said Nigel. “My mother called me, said you brought her some of that Breyers. That was real nice.” Nigel looked from one to the other. “Watch yourselves out there, you hear?”
Nigel went up the steps and entered his storefront door. DeEric Green and Michael Butler got in the Escalade.
Across the street, Lorenzo Brown pulled away from the curb and hit the gas. Through the intersection, parked just past Rittenhouse Street, he saw the same silver BMW from the dogfights over in Fort Dupont, and the two he’d encountered, Melvin Lee and his shadow, in the front seat. They turned their heads to stare straight ahead as he passed.
Lorenzo understood the codes of respect and disrespect, and the consequences of breaking same, but their minor confrontation at the dogfight hadn’t seemed like it was all that big an incident. Not enough to warrant them tracking him down. Maybe they were there to watch Nigel and them. Lee did work for Deacon Taylor; leastways that’s what Joe Carver had told him. Anyway, it was no business of Lorenzo’s.
He kept on driving. He thought of his daughter, Shay. Down by the Fourth District Police Station, at Quackenbos, he hung a left.
IN THE BMW, Melvin Lee and Rico Miller watched the black Escalade come off the curb and head south.
“Let’s go,” said Lee.
Miller ignitioned the 330i and drove north, then swung a U in the middle of Georgia and got in, four or five car lengths back, behind the Cadillac.
“What you suppose the dog man be doin’ over there with Nigel?” said Miller.
“Brown worked with Nigel,” said Lee. “Brown was Nigel’s boy.”
“He comin’ back?”
“He too soft to come back,” said Lee. “You saw how he acted today.”
Yeah, I saw, thought Miller.
“Prison broke that motherfucker,” said Lee.
Same way it broke me.
“They bookin’,” said Miller.
“Get up ahead of ’em. You know they gonna be goin’ up Otis. We’ll block ’em there, have our talk.”
“They gonna run that light,” said Miller as the Escalade accelerated toward the next traffic signal, gone yellow.
“Then you gonna need to run it too.”
Miller blew the red.
SHERELLE STAYED ON 9th Street, around the corner from the police station and the tall radio towers, in one of a series of boxy brick apartment buildings grouped back from the street. The apartments had back porches, many of whose screens were ripped and hanging from their wooden frames. Between the buildings there was plenty of green grass, worn grass, dirt, and open space for kids to run. Though dusk had gone to dark, kids were out there now.
Lorenzo Brown parked his Pontiac on the street in front of Sherelle’s unit. He knew Sherelle’s schedule. She worked a noon-to-eight shift at a makeup-and-hair shop over on Riggs Road. After Sherelle got off, she picked up Shay from her mother’s duplex near Riggs, on Oneida Street. Sherelle and Shay got back to the apartment on 9th Street every evening at about this hour. Lorenzo knew because he’d watched them many times.
Soon they arrived in Sherelle’s new-style Altima. Too much car for that girl to be carrying on her budget, but then Sherelle always did spend beyond her limit. Lorenzo could see his little girl in the backseat, Sherell
e behind the wheel, and a big man beside her in the passenger bucket. That would be Sherelle’s new George.
The three of them got out of the car and walked up onto the sidewalk. Sherelle, always on the full-figured side, looked like she had put on weight. She kept her style fresh, though, the way those hair girls liked to do. Shay, in a sleeveless shirt and shorts, looked plain pretty and sweet. She skipped along the sidewalk and reached for her mother’s hand.
Lorenzo, seeing Shay, got out of his car without thinking on it. He was just a half dozen automobiles away from Sherelle’s. The sound of his door made them stop and turn.
Sherelle’s face hardened. She pulled Shay along. Shay looked back at Lorenzo and then up at her mother.
“Who’s that, Momma?” said Shay.
“Nobody,” said Sherelle. “You come along.”
The big man, heavy and tall, wearing khakis and a loose silk shirt, stayed behind. He wore a crucifix outside his shirt. He stood on the sidewalk under a street lamp, staring at Lorenzo, waiting for his girlfriend and her daughter to get inside their place.
“I don’t want no trouble,” said Lorenzo.
“Ain’t gonna be none,” said the man.
“I’m her father.”
“I know who you are.”
Lorenzo shifted his feet. “I just want to talk to her.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” said the man. “You already made your choice. You care about Shay, you got to let her be.”
Lorenzo did not challenge the man or what he said.
“Go home,” said the man, his eyes softening. “Your little girl is loved; you don’t need to worry about that. She gonna be all right.”
Lorenzo walked back to his car. He sat behind the wheel and watched the hulking silhouette of the man cross the grounds and head toward Sherelle’s apartment. Time was, he would have stepped to that man for being so bold. But Lorenzo had come to a point in his life, he was old enough to know, and admit to himself, that the man was right.
“Who’s that, Momma?”
“Nobody.”
Lorenzo started his car.
That’s right. I ain’t shit.
TWELVE
RACHEL LOPEZ HAD BATHED, and the water in the tub, drawn very hot, was now warm. The candles she had set on the tub ledges were lit and were the sole source of illumination in the room. Beside one of the candles was a goblet of California merlot. It was her third glass.
Rachel’s shadow danced on the bathroom wall. Freddy Fender sang “The Wild Side of Life” in Spanish from a portable stereo she had placed on the floor. Rachel sat naked on the edge of the tub, one foot on the tiled floor, one up on a step stool she had placed nearby. An electric fan whirred under the music, blowing air on her knees, thighs, fingers, and cleanly shaved sex.
She closed her eyes. In the darkness, pictures ran through her mind. Briefly, the man in her head was the handsome construction boss Ramos. Then he was a stranger beneath her.
The cool of the porcelain beneath her buttocks, spread so that the surface touched her anus, was pleasant. The ligaments and veins inside her filled with blood, and she felt a wash rush forth. She caught her breath and her muscles contracted violently. Her head pitched forward and she was done.
Rachel cleaned herself with a warm wet washcloth. She put on a dark red lacy brassiere and then slipped into thong panties that matched. In the mirror, with the light of the bathroom now switched on, she applied eye shadow, eyeliner, and lipstick, all in deep colors. She bought the inexpensive brands, available at any drugstore, because she found their colors more dramatic. She unscrewed the cap of her night perfume, which was strong but not flowery, and shook some onto her fingers. She lightly rubbed her fingers on the muscles high inside her thighs, reached around and touched the very base of her back and the nape of her neck, and rubbed the remainder between her breasts. Finally she ran her perfumed fingers through her hair. She stepped back and looked in the mirror. The brown nipples of her small hard breasts showed through the lace of the bra. She was aroused, not by the sight of her own body, but by the preparation itself.
Rachel dressed in a black leather skirt that accentuated her hips and womanly ass. She wore no stockings; her shapely bare legs were already brown. She put on a red shirt and unbuttoned it so that the front clasp of her bra showed. She put on medium-heeled black pumps. She hung a necklace on her chest and let its silver pendant fall on the upcurve of her left breast. She brushed out her black hair.
Rachel had a fourth glass of wine, gathered up her purse and cigarettes, and left the apartment. She drove downtown.
THE BMW HAD SPED down to Park View ahead of the Escalade. It now faced west and idled in the middle of Otis Place between rows of parked cars. Through the windshield, Melvin Lee and Rico Miller waited and watched.
“Where they at?” said Miller.
“They gonna be along.”
As if Lee had willed it, the Escalade turned off Georgia and started up Otis.
“What I tell you?” said Lee, a barely detectable catch in his voice.
The Escalade did not slow down as it approached them.
“We ain’t got nothin’ to back us,” said Miller. He was not frightened, but stating a fact.
“We ain’t gonna need nothin’,” said Lee. “We’re gonna talk, and they gonna listen.”
By giving this strong response, Lee hoped to distract Miller from noticing the lack of confidence on his face. Lee had always been cocky in his youth. That natural, youthful swagger, along with an easy access to guns, had fueled his reckless courage. Age, and the experience of incarceration, had humbled him. Now, under supervision, he could not risk being around any kind of firearm. He felt vulnerable and defenseless without one, like in those dreams he had where he was walking naked among his enemies on his own streets. But Deacon had told him to go out and send a message, and that’s what he was going to do. And then there was Rico. He had to be hard around the kid.
The Cadillac came up on them and braked just a few feet from their grille. The headlights of the Caddy, on a higher platform than those of the BMW, nearly blinded Miller and Lee. But Miller did not reverse the car. It was a given that neither driver would back up or pull over to let the other pass.
DeEric Green, behind the wheel of the Escalade, landed on his horn. “C’mon, motherfucker. Move it.”
“That’s Deacon’s people,” said Michael Butler, recognizing the man in the passenger seat of the BMW and the animal-looking boy under its wheel.
“I know that,” said Green. “Don’t mean they got the right to block the street.”
Green hit the horn again and kept his palm on it. A couple of lights went on in the nearby row house windows. The BMW did not move.
“Fuck this bullshit,” said Green, reaching under his seat and finding the checkered rubber grip of his automatic. It was a stainless steel eight-shot .45 Colt. Green had bought it, a Gold Cup Trophy model, because it was the most expensive one the dealer had.
Green kept the gun low. He checked the safety and racked its slide. He thrust his pelvis out and slipped the gun under the front of his jeans so that the grip leaned toward his right hand. He put the tails of his FUBU shirt out so that they covered the gun.
“Let’s go, Michael,” said Green.
Butler hesitated. He was hoping for a quiet resolution to this. He had always managed to avoid violence.
“Let’s go,” said Green.
Green left the motor running and the headlights on as he and Butler stepped onto the street. Miller and Lee did the same. Melvin Lee stepped forward; so did DeEric Green. Michael Butler stayed back behind Green and slightly to his left. Rico Miller hung by his car. He kept his eyes, heavy with contempt, on Butler.
“’Sup?” said Green, looking Lee over, looking down on him because he had the height advantage and could.
Lee waited a moment before speaking. It was a moment too long. It told Green that he was hesitant and maybe afraid.
“Somethin’ you want to s
ay to me?” said Green.
Lee nodded.
“Then say it.”
“Heard you stepped to our boy Jujubee this morning,” said Lee, finding his tongue.
“That ain’t news.”
“You told him to move on.”
“So?”
“Boy was on our real estate.”
Green took another step forward and got close to Lee’s face. He spoke clearly and evenly. “I made a mistake. I already discussed it with the man I needed to discuss it with, and he gonna work it out with your man his own way.”
“You —”
“What I don’t need to do is discuss it with an itty-bitty motherfucker like you.”
Green brushed his hand over the front of his shirt. Lee saw the lump there, right above the waistline. Lee, confused, looked over his shoulder at Miller. “You . . . you hear that, Rico?”
Miller did not answer. He kept his eyes on Michael Butler.
A Toyota drove up Otis and, blocked by the Cadillac, came to a stop. The driver gave a short, timid sound of his horn. He did not roll his window down or say anything to the men and young men standing in the street.
“You gonna be seein’ me later on,” said Lee in an unconvincing way. He clumsily pointed a finger at Green’s face.
“I’m seeing you now,” said Green. “What, you gonna act like a man later on?”
Green laughed. He knew he was showing off. But Melvin Lee was just making it too easy. He didn’t even feel the need to prove to Lee that he was strapped.
“You had your say,” said Green with a jerk of his head. “Now take your boy and get.”
“Yeah,” said Lee, nodding his head rapidly. “Yeah, okay.” He was trying to maintain, searching for the right clever parting words. But nothing would come.
The driver of the Toyota hit his horn again. Another light came on in a nearby house.
Green grinned. “You ain’t gone yet?”
Lee turned around. He saw Miller staring at Michael Butler, smiling at him in that way of his that was all about pain.
“Let’s go, Rico,” said Lee, unable to look in the eyes of the young man who worshipped him. Miller nodded, his smile frozen in place, and the two of them went to their car.
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