by J. G. Jurado
At last the navigator told me I’d reached my destination. I stopped the Lexus at the corner of a blind alley. Jamaal had told me to look out for a tall tree. Sure enough, a few yards up there was a leafy chestnut tree. I got out of the car and checked the urge to press the lock button on the remote. I felt such a move could smack of fear on my part.
I plodded up to the spreading chestnut tree. The branches cast a wide shadow under which a few folding chairs had been set up alongside a ghetto blaster that was booming out grungy shrieking noises. I love music but hate rap with a passion. If all the rappers in the world were to be struck down this minute by acute voice loss, yours truly would not shed too many tears.
I decided to keep my opinions to myself, because the guys chilling in the chairs seemed to really dig the song. Or at least until a couple of seconds before I came into view. Now they divided their looks of astonishment between the car and me.
“Christmas come early this year, brothers,” said one of them, who looked to be the leader. He sat in the middle, next to the boom box.
“Hey, man, yuh wanna score some weed?”
“What is you up to, white boy? This sure ain’t your hood.”
I walked up to them real slow, with my hands very visible. They wore brash clothes; a lot of bling, some gold; and baseball caps. They also seemed completely devoid of hope. Those young men were teenagers, but in physical years only. Their doleful eyes showed not a hint of naivety or innocence.
“Good morning, gentlemen—”
“What kinda shit is that?” one of them cut in. I tried again.
“Howzit hangin’, yoose all?”
“What you say?”
“Shut the fuck up, Shorty. I wanna hear what this dude’s game is.”
“Jamaal Carter sent me,” I said.
“Who he?”
“We don’t know no Jamaal Carter round here, dude.”
“That’s right, beat it.”
“I’m a doctor at the hospital where he’s been admitted.” They didn’t stop scowling and muttering while I spoke, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. “I asked him a favor, and he gave me this address.”
“Doctor, huh? Got any prescriptions, man? You come to hustle Vicodin?”
“He don’t look like no fiend, DeShaun.”
“More like a faggot.”
“He ain’t no fiend. See the wheels he got?”
“Guys, please, will you listen up a minute . . . ,” I pleaded, holding up my hands.
“What kinda favor you after?” the chief said, and silence descended in an instant. Gone was the smokescreen his sidekicks’ chattering had provided.
“I need a gun.”
I didn’t try any more wisecracks in tough-guy speak. In that neighborhood, even in daylight, I felt I was on another planet, a very different one from mine. It was just a fifteen-minute drive from the sedate, high-society streets of Kalorama to that glorified war zone. Wisecracks didn’t go down well in this neck of the woods.
“You got the dough for that, doc?”
The six faces in front of me gazed my way, devoid of expression, and I could see that the situation was getting out of hand. One of the gangbangers sat up slightly in his chair, while another laid the bag of chips he was eating on the ground.
I also realized that I hadn’t had word from Kate for hours. The last text I got from her the night before told me she was home and pursuing an angle. I couldn’t risk White’s finding out I had another cell, so I had left it in my briefcase and sent no more messages. Nor had I told her the White House had canned me for the following day. I hadn’t told her about the details of how I planned to get myself out of this dilemma. But right then, as the gangbangers edged out of their seats and encircled me, I wished I had told her. It had been a big mistake. If anything happened to me . . .
“I want to see the gun first,” I said, forcing myself to look at the chief and trying to ignore his followers, who were hemming me in.
He shook his head in derision and leaned it to one side.
“That ain’t what I’m askin’ you. You cross the river to the brothers’ turf, now you play by the brothers’ rules. We wanna see some green.”
“I’m afraid the deal’s off, then.”
“For you, mebbe, not for us.”
I couldn’t help but look around and measure the distance between me and the car. The two gangsters behind me came closer. When I moved again, so did they. The chief dug his hand into his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a switchblade. He quietly popped it open.
“Shove him this way. So he ain’t be on camera.”
It was then I finally grasped why they were sitting in the shade on a cold day. A few yards up the street from the Lexus, on top of a telephone pole, there was a white box with a blue shield on it. Underneath it the unmistakable semicircular outline of a surveillance camera, watching over the street and those house fronts, day and night. It wasn’t just the neighbors the closed curtains and boarded-up windows were meant to keep out.
That was why those kids hung out under the tree’s branches, which they used as an improvised shelter from the PD’s watchful eyes. How little the gang knew that the cops were the last people I wanted to deal with.
“Hey, cool it, guys, okay? We can work this out. Just name the price for what I came for.”
“Name a price my ass, white boy. You gonna give us everything you got, like the keys to that ride I’m jonesin’ for.”
Somebody’s hand pushed me forward, while another held me by the jacket. I elbowed back, trying to turn around, but it was no use. They closed in on me and jostled me under the shade of the tree, to make sure they could do exactly as they pleased. More arms wrapped themselves around me, holding fast to my chest, wrists and clothes.
“Look at what we got here. Hold him good, homeboys.”
“We empty his pockets, DeShaun?”
DeShaun was the one with the switchblade. He gave me a disparaging look and licked his lips a couple of times.
“Hell no. He gonna do that all by himself.”
He lifted the steel edge up to my face. The blade glided over my cheek so the point came to rest right below my lower right eyelid. I stood very still. The slightest move and he would gouge my eye right out.
“You gonna play ball, right, whitey?”
I was desperate. There was no way out and all I wanted to do was make myself scarce as soon as I could, and think up a Plan B. I was on the point of saying yes when a voice made itself heard behind DeShaun.
“What the fuck goin’ on here? What you all hassle the doc for?”
The tension around me eased a little. A kid sauntered out of the house in front of me, and I remembered him instantly. It was the guy who told me the day before that T-Bone had been stabbed. He was doing up the fly buttons on his jeans.
“Shit, can’t a guy take a good dump without you all fucking up?”
The hands let me loose; the gangbangers stepped back. The geometry and balance of power in the group underwent a seismic shift with the newcomer on the scene. Every head turned to face him; a couple of them pulled their caps on or unwittingly fidgeted with their sweatshirt sleeves. Now this guy was the leader, not DeShaun. Nonetheless, the latter Alpha male did not change his stance.
“You know this mope, Marcus?”
Marcus didn’t so much as look at DeShaun, and he took scant notice of the switchblade. I could see there and then a silent pissing match was under way between him and his lieutenant. No words, no gestures, no looks. No visible sign to be picked up by the underlings. The one on the throne couldn’t take on the challenge without making something of it, and it was obvious Marcus wasn’t in the mood. Instead, he came over to me and gave me a friendly slap on the back.
“Sure I know him. He the man, saved T-Bone yesterday. Wassup, doc?”
That frien
dly move did the trick. DeShaun didn’t dare carry on the standoff, so he whisked the blade away from my face.
“You got lucky, white bread.”
But he was looking at his boss, not me. There was murder in his eyes, and I didn’t doubt they’d end up killing each other one of these days. But that wasn’t my problem.
“I want to talk to you, Marcus. Jamaal sent me.”
“Something wrong with him?”
I told him Jamaal was recovering nicely and what I had come for. For some reason, Marcus burst out laughing at the thought of me with a gun.
“You gonna rob a bank, doc? You short on dough?”
The rest laughed along with him, and the atmosphere relaxed. That is, everyone except DeShaun, who had sloped away and was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette.
“If I wanted money, I wouldn’t rob a bank, I’d open one.”
“Right on. Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.”
I stared at him, surprised by the quote. There was much more to this kid than met the eye.
“Have you read William Black?”
“No way. I get that off of Tumblr.”
Or maybe there wasn’t.
“Okay, you tell me how much you want for the gun.”
“Can’t do that.”
Marcus slowly took the measure of me. He wore a thick, black hoodie and his long, tapered fingers fiddled with the heavy-duty drawstrings.
“So, what you say if they arrest you with it? Where you say you get it?”
“Nowhere, Your Honor. I just found it dumped in an alleyway.”
“That’ll do, yessir. Wait here, doc.”
He went inside and closed the door. The rest of the gang sat down on the garden chairs, acting as if I weren’t there but never taking their eyes off me. I stayed there in the middle of them, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, feeling stupid and watched.
Marcus took a long time getting back. When he did return, his hand was inside his hoodie.
“You got the paper, doc?”
“How much.”
“A G.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. What kind of gun is it?”
“One that’s available, no license, no questions asked. Take it or leave it.”
Actually, I didn’t care. I merely haggled over the price so he wouldn’t hike it at the last minute. I had precisely $1,200 on me, my daily ATM allowance.
I dug into my jacket pocket for my billfold. I could see the look of a frustrated predator on DeShaun, who had to accept that the hunk of meat he had hoped to feed on had landed at the feet of the leader of the pack. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled at him. His expression stayed the same.
“Here you are, Marcus, a thousand bucks,” I said, counting out ten bills. Then I peeled off another one and folded it around the others. “And here’s a Franklin on me for a few beers and so you forget you saw my face.”
“Fuckin’ A! We all blind round here. That right, homies?”
He turned around and made sure they all nodded. When he was satisfied, he pulled his left hand out from under his sweatshirt and handed me a grubby, crumpled brown paper bag. I stepped over to grab it and felt a heavy, hard shape inside. I was going to open the bag, but Marcus waved to stop me.
“You crazy? Wait till you in the car. And best when you a long ways away.”
I put the package under my arm.
“Is it loaded?”
“Eleven slugs. The clip take four more, but that down to you.”
“In the Walmart in Alexandria, they got a box of fifty for twenty-nine bucks,” one of the gangbangers said while he struggled to roll a sad-looking joint.
“Shut it, Shorty. The doc know he can’t buy bullets in gun stores or joints with cameras. Go to a supermarket, and pay cash.”
“Thanks, Marcus.”
I turned around to go, but the gang leader’s voice stopped me, and what he said weighed me down with even more to worry about.
“Hey, doc. I don’t know what the fuck you gonna do with that piece, and I don’t give a shit, man. But sure thing, that gun ain’t clean. They find you with it, you might go down for more than you bargained for. You better watch your ass.”
Kate
There it had been all along, blotted out by the sun’s slanting rays, on the sidewalk opposite. A hulking great sign with white letters on a blue and red background.
THE BALKAN GRILL
The best in Serbian cooking
Kate dashed across the street, so quickly a car almost ran her over. The horn’s dwindling echoes startled her all the more. She shrugged it off, just as she dispelled all thought of what she ached to yell at Dave, for not telling her about the change of plan. She was completely cut off from the intel, but she couldn’t afford to let up now.
Easy does it, Kate. Now’s the time to stay cool and take stock of the situation. You have to go in there and talk to them. They’re only witnesses, no more, she thought. But she tucked her right hand inside her jacket and unfastened her gun, to make it easier to draw it from her shoulder holster.
The front entrance had a roll-up door that was locked down, so she couldn’t see inside. It was covered by a morass of stickers and graffiti, but the lock was solid and well oiled. The place seemed to be in business, but it was way before opening hours. She knocked a few times on the door, which rattled like scrap iron, but there was no response.
There must be another way in, she thought.
She went around to the back of the restaurant building. It was a small place, joined on the north side to the business next door, a closed-down Korean Laundromat. The south side, the one with the main entrance, was at right angles to Twenty-Fifth Street. On the east side was a short, narrow alleyway, carpeted with cigarette butts. At the end of it, a rat scurried between the trash cans. A broken-down brown van blocked the opening to the alleyway.
I have to get into that alleyway and knock on the door, she thought. But it didn’t seem to be the best option. Without a buddy for backup, going in alone was risky. If she could have called HQ and told them about her movements, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But thanks to White, all outside help had been ruled out.
What the hell . . . Your niece could be in there. It’s a no-brainer, you dork.
Cussing at herself had always done the trick, enabling her to get up the nerve to do something. Against all expectations, it had been Rachel who had found that out, the summer when they were respectively five and four. Kate had gotten herself stuck fifteen feet up in a tree and didn’t dare come down. The branch she was leaning on for support was giving way with a hoarse and steady creaking noise. Her sister was worried it would snap through at any second and hollered all kinds of stuff until she got her to clamber down. Kate couldn’t remember the rest of the insults, but the word dork stuck. That was the one that had made her overcome her fear of heights and poke about with her bare feet for a foothold lower down. As they hugged on the ground, still getting over their fright, the branch had fallen right next to them and brought down a few others in its wake. They had stood, their eyes like saucers, and sworn never to tell anybody what had happened. Since then, dork had become a talisman for Kate, her own code word, one she had never shared.
She went into the alley. She had to squeeze herself between the van and the wall, and scraped the back of her leather jacket against the concrete. Then she ducked under a ventilation pipe, which back in the day had been white, but had since been eaten away by rust. When she got through, her nose curled up at the thick, biting smell of the trash cans.
There was a steel door, ajar. It was dark inside, and Kate paused for a moment before stepping in.
“Hey, anybody in there?”
She groped her way around what appeared to be a back kitchen. Her hand guided her over gre
asy stovetops, and nooks and crannies which opened up into a passageway, then into the restaurant’s main dining room. There were about twenty tables, also in darkness. Only the bar was lit up. Behind it an old man who would never see seventy again was drinking coffee and reading a newspaper with glasses perched on a hooked and veiny nose.
“Come in, officer. Sit down.”
Kate took a seat on one of the stools. It was too low for her, and she had to reach up to the bar to rest her elbows on it.
“How do you know I’m a cop?”
“Your eyes scoped the room when you came in and you walk like you’ve got three arms.”
She nodded. For now it suited her for the old man to think she was a cop. The less official she could make things, the better.
“Jackets are made to measure, but they can never hide the bump.”
“Not only that, officer. Or is it detective?”
“Officer’s fine.”
The man also nodded, pursing his lips, to make it clear technicalities didn’t float his boat, either. He took a cup out from behind the counter and set it down in front of Kate. He poured her a thick, black coffee and refilled his own cup while he was at it.
“The bump doesn’t show, less so in low light and with my bum eyesight. No, it’s the way you walk. I learned a thing or two when I was younger.”
“Where are you from, Mr. . . . ?”
The thick Balkan accent got thicker.
“My name is Ivo, and I was born in Loznica, although I have been living in this country for eighteen years. I came when the war ended. Looking for something I never found.”
“Peace?”
“No, money. The things you say, officer.”
The man laughed with a grating and humorless snicker. Kate squirmed uneasily on the bar stool.
“Is business that bad?”
“I’m about to turn eighty and I still have to work. But things could be worse. After I came here I busted my ass to open this restaurant. Now we try to stay afloat. Still, we’ve had our moments. Once that swimmer guy came here, the one with all the medals. Momir went crazy.”