Lorenzo shifted in his seat. “I never did have a father. I ain’t cryin’ about it. That’s just the way it was.
“I moved in with my grandmother early on. I loved her, but she couldn’t contain me. Y’all know how that is. I ran with some boys, one in particular, and when those boys and my main boy went down to the corner, I went with ’em. They were my people, the closest thing I ever had to male kin. I dropped out of high school and moved up to dealin’ heroin and cocaine. I was arrested for it and did a couple of stays in juvenile. It didn’t teach me a thing. Matter of fact, I was further down the hole when I came out. I impregnated a girl. I did other bad things. Finally, when I was an adult, the jump-out squad got me on a corner in my own neighborhood, doin’ hand-to-hands. I was up on some good hydro when they did. I had a whole rack of foil in my pocket, and I took a felony charge. They wanted me to flip on my number one boy. I wouldn’t do it. I was just arrogant, the way I handled it. Between my priors and me showin’ no kind of remorse, the judge came down hard on me. I did eight on a six-to-eighteen.
“Prison was prison; y’all know what that’s about. When the time came, I didn’t even show for my first probation hearing, ’cause I knew I wasn’t ready to come uptown. Thing of it is, you never are ready. It’s harder in some ways to do your straight time than it is to jail.
“I came out the cut and got on a bus. I had thirty-some dollars in my khakis and a blue shirt on my back. I was wearing sneaks had Velcro on ’em ’stead of laces. Prison gear, and I looked it too. Rolled into D.C. at night, went straight to a drugstore near the bus station, and bought some cologne, ’cause I felt like I had the smell of jail on my skin. I get up to the register, and people be runnin’ cards through some machine they got on the counter. No one was pullin’ out cash. Everyone be talkin’ on their cells, everyone be wearin’ new fashions. I realized, I am an old head now and I am lost. I do not know what the fuck is goin’ on out here anymore. Right there, in the drugstore, realizing what I was up against, that’s when I got scared for the first time in my life. Standin’ right there in that store, I felt that ache come to my head.
“When I come out that drugstore, I spent the last of my money on a taxi and went to my grandmother’s place in Park View. She was waitin’ for me. She looked good. Her house smelled like her cooking. She had tied balloons to the banister, right there in the entranceway. She hugged me soon as I came through the door, and I hugged her back. ‘Welcome home, son,’ she said. ‘Welcome to your new life.’ Both of us just stood there and held each other. My grandmother cried. I ain’t ashamed to admit it, I cried some, too.”
A chair creaked in the room.
“It just takes one person to believe in you,” said Lorenzo. “When I hugged that woman, I knew I was gonna try to do right. And that’s all I can claim. I’m tryin’ out here. I don’t mean to bore you, but I needed to talk to someone today, and you people came to mind. So thank you for listening, all a y’all. Thank you for letting me share.”
“Thank you for sharing.”
“Anyone else?” said the guest host.
“My name is Rachel Lopez . . .” said Rachel, speaking quickly, not planning to speak at all, not knowing what she was going to say.
“Hey, Rachel.”
“. . . and I’m an alcoholic.”
Lorenzo leaned forward in his chair.
“I don’t have the right to be here,” said Rachel. “I haven’t even tried to get sober. I was drunk last night. I was still drunk when I woke up this morning.”
“I remember those mornings,” said a woman.
“It’s not just that I haven’t tried to get straight,” said Rachel. “I’m a probation officer. I make my living telling other people that they need to stay on track. And that makes me a hypocrite. Because I jumped the tracks myself a long time ago.”
“I recognized you the first time you came to these meetings,” said a male voice behind her. “You used to come to my mother’s house to call on my brother. You always showed my mother respect. You got the right to be here, same as anyone else.”
Rachel did not turn around to match a face to the voice. She laced her fingers together and rested her hands in her lap.
“I’ve been drinking a long time. I started when I was about fourteen, down in Texas. . . .”
Rachel Lopez spoke of high school, then college. She spoke of being the last one standing in the bars at the end of the night. Her friends said she handled alcohol well. She didn’t change while under its influence. While drinking, she seemed to have control.
“I got a degree in criminology at the local college. I don’t know why I chose law enforcement, exactly. It seemed exciting, I guess, and I had a vague notion that I was going to help people. After graduation I took an internship at a halfway house near my parents’ place. I didn’t like the work, and I felt stifled, living at home. . . .”
She had entered into no romantic relationships. She had continued to drink.
“I wasn’t happy. I sent in an application to become a probation officer in Maryland. The EEO was on my side. They needed Spanish-speaking POs at the time. Still do, I guess. Anyway, I got the gig.
“My father . . .”
Rachel closed her eyes and saw him, in bed, on his last day. He was going to die and yet he was not thinking of himself. He wanted to talk about her. He was worried about her.
“My father got sick,” said Rachel. “My mother got sick too. I took a leave of absence from my job and went back to Texas to stay with them. You know, to help. But I couldn’t help. I couldn’t control what was happening to them. They both had inoperable cancer. The doctor called it an unfortunate coincidence. My father passed, and then my mom.”
“They’re together now,” said a voice in the room.
“Yes,” said Rachel. “And here I am, still drinking. Still trying to control things I can’t control. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all of this today. It’s not like I’ve got a plan or anything like it. Anyway.” Rachel cleared her throat. “Thank you for letting me share.”
“Thank you for sharing.”
The basket was passed around. The group gathered in a circle, their arms resting on one another’s shoulders, and said the Serenity Prayer and afterward, the Lord’s Prayer. An older gentleman extolled the virtues of Narcotics Anonymous. The meeting dispersed, and its participants went on their way.
Out in the parking area of the church, facing East Capitol, Rachel Lopez lit a cigarette. Some members of the group went to their cars, alone or in twos and threes. Others went to the bus shelter and sat on a bench protected from the sun. Lorenzo Brown walked across the grounds of the church and stopped beside Rachel.
“Hey, Miss Lopez.”
“Hey, Lorenzo.” She exhaled a stream of smoke. “What about that incident you described in there? The physical-retaliation thing. We gonna have a problem with that?”
“The man I stepped to, I don’t think he’ll report it. That’s how it goes in the street. Callin’ the police is the last thing he’s gonna do.”
“I’d hate to see you violated over something as trivial as that.”
Lorenzo chuckled. “You ever stop working?”
“When I stop working I get in trouble.” Rachel’s eyes softened. “You know . . .”
“What?”
“I’m sorry you had to hear all that.”
“You’re human, is all.”
“I appreciate it.”
“We all just tryin’ out here.”
“Yes.”
“You ever want to talk about any of this, you can call me. Doesn’t need to be about me all the time. You hear me, Miss Lopez?”
“Sure. But when it’s on that level, it’s Rachel.”
“Okay, then. Rachel it’ll be.”
Shirley, walking with the quickness of the short and compact, came from the church and joined them.
“Hey,” said Shirley.
“Hey,” said Rachel.
“Can I get a Marlboro, Rache
l?”
“Sure.”
As Rachel retrieved the pack from her purse, Shirley looked Lorenzo over with blatant interest.
“You tall,” said Shirley.
“Everyone is to you,” said Lorenzo, and Shirley smiled.
Rachel shook out the filtered ends of a few cigarettes, and Shirley drew one from the pack. Rachel handed her a matchbook from the hotel she’d been at the night before and told her to keep it. Shirley lodged the cigarette behind her ear as Sarge passed them on foot.
“Hey, Sarge,” said Shirley. “Where you headed?”
“Back to my efficiency,” said Sarge, not breaking stride. “What you think?”
“You need someone to walk with you?”
“I don’t need it,” said Sarge, still moving, but slowing down. “But if you got a mind to, I ain’t gonna try and stop you.”
“He ain’t all that tough,” said Shirley. She looked at Rachel and then at Lorenzo. “You two have a blessed day.”
“You also,” said Rachel.
Shirley joined Sarge by the shelter.
“I need to get back to work,” said Rachel.
“I do too,” said Lorenzo.
“You been to the clinic yet?”
“I haven’t had the chance.”
“Better do it.”
“I will.”
Rachel touched his arm. “Thank you, Lorenzo.”
“Ain’t no thing.”
Rachel walked to her vehicle; Lorenzo went to his.
NINETEEN
THAT WAS DEACON,” said Melvin Lee. He closed the cover of his Samsung cell and placed the phone on the table by his chair.
“Figured it was,” said Rico Miller. “He ain’t happy, huh?”
Lee did not answer. Instead he rubbed at his face.
They were in the living area of Melvin Lee’s apartment, on the third floor of a row house on Sherman Avenue, near Irving Street, in Columbia Heights. The house had been subdivided into six apartments, two on each floor. It was not far from where Lee had been raised.
The apartment’s decor reflected Lee’s solitary lifestyle. The few pieces of furniture were secondhand. Only the electronics, a thirty-six-inch high-definition Sony television with theater sound and an Xbox video game system, were new. Lee rarely watched movies or programs, not even sports, on television. He preferred to sit on his threadbare couch for hours on end, playing Counter-Strike, Brute Force, and Project Gotham. Anything with guns or cars.
“Homicide already done visited Deacon,” said Lee. “They got them gang-task-force people, know all the players. You know how they do.”
“That means they been to see Nigel too.”
“That’s a bet.”
“Nigel ain’t gonna say a thing to the police. He gonna want to handle this his own way.”
“I expect.”
“Nigel and his want more blood, we gonna give ’em some. We soldiers, right?”
Lee looked across the room at Miller, who stood by the big picture window fronting the street. Miller had been pacing the room like an animal who’d got up on two legs for the first time. He’d been unsettled ever since he’d shown up at the apartment and described the murders in detail. Miller had expected Lee to be pleased. He was perplexed at Lee’s reaction.
“Why?” Lee had said upon hearing the news.
“Why I kill ’em?” said Miller. “Shit, they was gonna go at you, wasn’t they?”
“DeEric was just talkin’, Rico. He was doin’ his job. I been knowin’ DeEric since he was a boy. He was bold like that.”
“Too bold, you ask me.”
“And that kid. He wasn’t gonna hurt no goddamn one.”
“You right about that. That boy was a straight bitch.”
“You missin’ my point. Deacon say the kid was special to Nigel.”
“Nigel gone faggot now, huh?”
“Listen to me,” said Lee, desperation and anger in his voice. “You ain’t hearin’ me, Rico. We got a problem here. We got to find a way to work this out.”
“Thought you’d be happy,” said Miller, lowering his head. “I did this thing for you.”
Lee had left the conversation lying there, like something dead in the room you stepped over on the way to somewhere else. There wasn’t any use in going on with this. Miller seemed to have no remorse for what he’d done. For the first time, Lee feared him. He’d heard about this kind of thing, had always thought of it as street bullshit passing for wisdom. But now he saw that it was true: Came a time in every relationship like this, you traded places. The father became the son.
And now the call had come from Deacon, a call Lee had expected and dreaded all morning long.
“What Deacon say to do?” said Miller.
“He wants you to sit tight right here. He don’t want you to go nowhere, ’cause if he wants to pull up on you personal, he need to know where you at.”
“He can get me on my cell.”
“That ain’t good enough. Since you don’t want to tell no one where you stay at, you gonna have to be within physical reach for now.”
“Where you gonna be?”
“I got to get my ass into work,” said Miller.
“What I’m gonna do here all day?”
“Play Xbox, you want to.”
“I don’t even like Xbox. I roll with PS2.”
“You gonna have to deal with that, Rico.”
Lee got up out of his chair, gathered his cell and keys, and went to the front door. He looked at Rico Miller, standing there with nothing but some peach fuzz on his face, slouched and gangly, deadlier than most men but really no older than a kid.
“Don’t be standin’ by that window,” said Lee.
“I ain’t stupid.”
“I’m just sayin’. Po-lice could put me together with them bodies somehow, might come calling on me.”
“I wouldn’t let no police fuck with you, Melvin.”
“I’m sayin’ . . . Shit, Rico, I’m thinkin’ of you right now. Any law shows up here, you leave out the fire escape, through my bedroom window. It’ll lead you back to the alley. That ladder drops the way it supposed to. I know, ’cause I tried it out.” Lee put his hand on the doorknob, then thought of something else.
“You ain’t bring no gun in here, right?”
“What you think?”
“That’s a mandatory right there. I can’t be gettin’ violated.”
“Guns I used are put away.”
“You need to get rid of ’em. They dig the lead up out of those bodies, I’m talkin’ about the pistol lead, they can match it to that gun.”
“They won’t find the guns. Anyway, I picked up the casings off the street.”
“Anyone see you last night?”
“I don’t think so.” Miller cocked his head in a birdlike way. “You ain’t mad at me, right?”
Lee looked away. “We gonna work this out.”
Melvin Lee took the stairs down to the street and found his faded Camry, parked on Sherman behind Rico Miller’s shiny BMW. Driving up Georgia toward the car wash, he looked at the people out on the sidewalks and breathed the warm summer air rushing through his open window. He wanted to enjoy the sights and smells. He had the sick feeling that these things would be taken away from him again all too soon.
He could drive out of town right now, but he knew that someone would catch up to him eventually. He’d been running on a wheel, in a cage, his whole life.
He drove to work.
DEACON TAYLOR CLOSED his disposable cell and settled himself in the driver’s seat of his S-Series Benz. He had parked on Luray Place in Park View and was waiting for Griff to roll up and report on his meet with Nigel’s enforcer, Lawrence Graham. Looked like Griff was coming his way now. Griff favored fast Japanese sedans, and drove a 260-horsepower midnight blue Infiniti G35.
Deacon had already had an eventful day. A Homicide team had come by his place and interviewed him about the murders. He had told them he knew nothing, and they had gone on
their way. He had spoken to Melvin Lee and conveyed his extreme displeasure over the murders of Green and Butler. Then, on his personal cell, he had made a call to an officer in 4D he had been friendly with for some time.
Officer Muller was a careful man. He refused to finger informants, rough Taylor’s enemies, or make false arrests. He would not initiate anything that he felt would compromise his personal code. He did provide Taylor with information on occasion that he thought was of a harmless nature. Taylor, in turn, fed information to Muller that was equally benign. For this dialogue Muller accepted nothing in the way of cash or gifts. The first-name-basis familiarity with a drug dealer and the attendant camaraderie appealed to his self-image. Muller liked to think of himself as a cop who was hardwired to both sides of the street.
“What you hear about that double off Crittenden last night?” Deacon had said.
“Hold up, Deacon,” said Muller. “You need to tell me why you’re interested first.” Always reminding Taylor that he, Muller, was in charge.
“Ain’t no secret that it was two of Nigel Johnson’s got themselves dead. I’m just tryin’ to keep informed.”
“That’s all?”
“You and me don’t play games like that, big man,” said Deacon. In fact, he was playing Muller with every word.
“Just so we’re clear,” said Muller.
“We crystal clear.”
“Victim one died of shotgun wounds inside his SUV. Victim two was killed in the street by the same shotgun. Vic two also took bullets to the mouth and head.”
“Sounds like the shooter was angry about somethin’.”
“Prob’ly just one of those misunderstood youths we got out here.”
“Killer leave any prints?”
Muller did not reply. It was answer enough.
“No witnesses either, huh?” said Deacon.
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