The Man Who Came Uptown

by George Pelecanos

“They forced the man’s hand.”

  “Yeah, Marshall swallowed the bitter pill, but that didn’t change what was in his heart. When he died, his will set up a big charitable foundation to benefit kids in the D.C. area. A clause in that will said that no money would ever go to ‘any purpose which supports the principle of racial integration in any form.’ His dollars would go only to Caucasian kids. The man was like that, even past his deathbed. Some black Washingtonians who lived through that era would never support the Skins because of Marshall. That’s why they’re Cowboys fans. And now their kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids follow the star, even though they live in the DMV.”

  “I still hate to see it,” said Michael.

  Gerard laughed. “I do too. I root for two teams—the Washington Redskins and anyone who’s playing the Dallas Cowboys.”

  Michael and Gerard touched fists.

  “How long you been a mailman?” said Michael.

  “Thirty-five years.”

  “You go to school to get that job?”

  “Marion Barry gave me this job.”

  “That crackhead?”

  “Don’t say that,” said Gerard, suddenly serious. “Let me tell you something about Marion Barry.”

  The waiter served Gerard his beer. Gerard thanked him, waited for him to drift off.

  “I come up in public housing in Southeast. The Eights. This was in the sixties and early seventies. Before the drug epidemic, gangs, street murder, all that mess. Lot of families stayed there, and mine was solid. My father was a good man but he had trouble finding steady work. Around that time, Marion Barry and a partner, Mary Treadwell, started this company, Pride Incorporated. It was set up to put black men to work, doing stuff like pushing brooms, picking up garbage…basically, cleaning the city up. Doesn’t sound too good, but it was work for men who were chronically unemployed. Why they gave it that name. It gave men back their pride.

  “My father worked for Pride Incorporated and I saw what it did for him. It made him stand straight. As a kid, I saw by example that this is what a man does. He goes to work every day and he takes care of his family. I knew that, soon as I could, I would go to work too. So when I turned sixteen, my father and mother told me about this new thing, the summer jobs program. It was started by Marion Barry, who by then had become the mayor. The program put kids in the city to work. I went down and signed up for it. Soon I was working in a diner down at Nineteenth and Jefferson for a Greek man named Pete. Because of that program, I got into the culture of work. Around that time, Mayor Barry came to my high school, Ballou, and spoke to us kids. He shook my hand and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Keep on it, son. You’re gonna do fine.’ He was real. Not like some of these cold-ass mayors we been had since. You never did see them talking to any kids.

  “Anyway. After I come out of high school, I wanted a government job, so I went out to Riverdale, in Maryland, and took the postal-service exam. I had a good memory, and on that test they ask you to recall the original order of scrambled numbers. A week later, I got the results in the mail. I had scored highly. I was in.”

  “Marion Barry take that test for you too?” said Michael.

  “Don’t be funny.” Gerard leaned forward. “Let me tell you something else. When my mother got diabetes, we put her in a nice, clean retirement care center, one of many that Barry had built east of the Anacostia River when he was mayor. Wasn’t any of those places around for folks in those quadrants before he came along.

  “And me? I own a house in Hillcrest Heights. Been married to the same woman for thirty-one years. I have a son and a daughter, both college graduates and doing fine on their own. Was I upset when Marion Barry was druggin and doing all that stuff with women? I can tell you that I was very disappointed. But I always supported him. Marion Barry made it possible for a black middle class to rise up in this city. I know he changed my life. For real.”

  “Okay,” said Michael. “I hear you.”

  “Know your history, young man,” said Gerard. “It’s important. ’Specially now, with all these new folks moving into the city. They don’t know shit.”

  “Let me ask you something,” said Michael. “Could I take that postal test?”

  “You got a high-school degree?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your priors? I notice all kinds of things on my route, and I know you been away.”

  “I’m not carrying any adult convictions,” said Michael. “Only some juvenile stuff.”

  “If it’s juvenile, you might be all right. They gonna make you pee in a bottle, though.”

  “I don’t smoke weed. I don’t even drink.”

  “You good with numbers?”

  “I am.”

  “You should think about it, then. U.S. Postal Service been good to me.” Gerard stood up and showed Michael his flat stomach. “I walk ten miles a day. They pay me to work out.”

  Michael smiled. “Let me buy you another beer.”

  Gerard sat back down. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  They talked until the light began to fade, and then Gerard went on his way.

  MICHAEL WALKED home, book in hand. He went by Carla’s grandmother’s house and was relieved to see that Carla was not home. He had enjoyed her company, and he thought she had enjoyed him too, but he wasn’t ready for things to get deep. Not while he was unsettled, as he was now. And anyway, she wasn’t the one.

  He went into the house and walked on the plastic carpet runners to the kitchen. His mother was cooking dinner.

  “Supper gonna be ready soon,” said Doretha, looking toward him as she stirred a pot. She had put an Anthony Hamilton CD in her compact stereo, and she was listening to that beautiful song “Hard to Breathe.” Sounded like they were in church.

  He cut his eyes away from her and said, “I’m gonna go read some.”

  “I’ll call you when it’s ready,” she said.

  Brandy got up from her little bed and followed him to the steps. He started up the stairs and heard Brandy whine. She wanted to go with him but could no longer climb to the second floor. He went back down, gathered Brandy in his arms, and carried her up to his bedroom. He sat on the bed. The dog settled at his feet.

  Michael looked across the room at the trophies on his brother’s dresser. Thomas, who always did right and had made his place in the world as a productive man. And there was his sister, about to graduate college, already looking ahead at a career in public relations.

  Michael glanced at his own dresser. In its top drawer, beneath his underwear, was an envelope containing two thousand dollars in cash. Phil Ornazian had doubled his pay.

  Michael hadn’t spent a dime of it. He didn’t care to look at it or touch it. If he had someone to talk to, he’d say that it was blood money. But he’d taken it. He sure hadn’t turned it down. And he suspected that Ornazian would be throwing a shadow on his doorstep again.

  He needed to talk to a friend. Anna immediately came to mind. As he thought of her, something moved inside him.

  Michael propped a pillow under his head. He opened his book, Northline, and began to read. He was deeper into the novel now.

  In the book, Allison Johnson has given up her baby for adoption and moved to Reno, Nevada, where she works as a waitress on the graveyard shift in a casino restaurant. She also works part-time in telephone sales with an obese, upbeat woman named Penny. Allison is still drinking heavily and distraught about her child. One night, drunk, she is taken to a house by two men in suits, has sex with both of them, and asks one of the men to beat her. She contemplates suicide. The father of her child, Jimmy Bodie, is threatening to come find her. Her life has come apart. And yet…a scarred, sweet-natured young man named Dan Mahony often sits at her station at the restaurant and makes small talk. He buys her a snow globe on a trip he makes to San Francisco. He treats her to coffee and tries to chat her up. She lies to him about her family and her past. She tells him she doesn’t want a boyfriend and he takes it in stride. Clearly, he’s smitten. Bu
t Allison is not ready to enter into a relationship again, because she’s not yet right with herself. Binge-drinking in a bar, she passes out and hits her head. When she comes to, she is carried home by a kindly bartender and his wife.

  As Michael read the book, he felt the pain and struggles of Allison Johnson. He was in her pathetic motel room, listening to her Patti Page and Brenda Lee records, hearing her imaginary conversations with that old-time actor Paul Newman. He could see Reno, a smaller, quieter version of Vegas, with its low-rent casinos, chicken-fried-steak specials, laundromats, wood-paneled bars, end-of-the-road hopefuls, and neon signs that bled colors out to the street.

  He closed his eyes and imagined it. The book had taken him somewhere else. He was outside himself and his troubled mind.

  Twenty

  THE LUNCH crowd at Matisse had faded, leaving Phil Ornazian and Monique as the sole patrons seated at the bar. Monique was on her break from the makeup department and still had another half a day of work. She was wearing her all-black uniform, slacks and a button-down shirt. Black deemphasized her voluptuous figure but could not defeat it.

  Ornazian passed an envelope under the bar. Monique took it, glanced inside, and slid the envelope into her handbag. He had given her extra. She had hipped him to Marisol, which had driven him to the robbery of Gustav, ending in what was apparently a very lucrative payday. Her lead had been good.

  “You took care of me,” said Monique.

  “It was a solid tip. You earned it.”

  “Was it hard?”

  “Like cutting butter.”

  “That easy, huh?” Monique sipped her white wine and placed the glass back on the bar.

  “What about you?” said Ornazian. “Everything all right?”

  “All good. Something happened recently. I met this married dude up at the makeup counter. He was shopping with his wife. I could tell she didn’t have any kind of fashion sense. Maybe she didn’t care about stuff like that, I don’t know. But when she drifted off and he got me alone, he told me how sharp I looked. Asked me if I ever did anything on the side to make money. I thought he was tryin to date me, so I told him I was a dancer and that I could do it private, just to dip my toe in the water and see if he was interested. But he said, ‘No, it’s nothing like that. I was wondering if I could hire you to be a personal shopper for my wife for, like, one afternoon. Suggest some things that would look nice on her, ’cause we’re about to go out on an anniversary date.’ It was sweet. I did it and I made a couple hundred dollars. I was thinking maybe I could start some kind of business doing that. I do know clothes and shoes.”

  “Obviously. You always look great.”

  “Thank you, baby. It’s not like I’m gonna quit dating. Can’t afford to. Who knows, maybe I’ll meet Richard Gere or some shit and he’ll take me away.”

  “How do you know when to get off the bus?” said Ornazian. He was genuinely curious. “I’m asking, how’s it end for someone like you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Monique. She got up, drained her wineglass, and gathered her cell and handbag. “How you think it’s gonna end for you?”

  She kissed his cheek and left the bar.

  AT SIX o’clock in the evening, Ornazian met Marisol and her baby daughter in the main hall of Union Station. Marisol was wearing her raincoat over a dress and had one large old suitcase and a jumbo canvas handbag. She was sitting on a bench with her daughter in her lap amid the bustle of rush hour in the station.

  “What’s her name?” said Ornazian after he greeted Marisol.

  The baby looked to be around ten, eleven months old and was wearing a lovely white dress. She had one of those things in her hair, a kind of band with a pink bow, something parents put on their children to announce their gender to the world. Ornazian didn’t know what it was called, but no one would mistake this baby for anything but a girl.

  “Stephany,” said Marisol.

  Ornazian took a seat beside them. “She’s beautiful.”

  “She’s a good girl.”

  “Did everything go okay? No problems?”

  “Gustav is very angry,” said Marisol. “Cesar, he ask all the girls questions.”

  “And?”

  “I did fine. But I am scheduled to work tonight and when I don’t come they will be suspicious.”

  “You’ll be long gone. Marisol, you can never come back.”

  “Why would I?” she said.

  Ornazian reached inside his tan Kühl jacket and produced an envelope. He handed it to Marisol.

  “Your tickets are in there too. Train and bus.”

  She looked inside the envelope and blushed. “This is much more than you said.”

  “I made a lot of money because of you.”

  “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Come on. Let’s go to your gate.”

  He wheeled her suitcase and bag and she carried the baby. At the gate for the Crescent Amtrak train, a line had already formed. They stood by a shoeshine stand, at the entrance.

  “You’re going to take this train to New Orleans. It’s about a twenty-five-hour trip. You get in at seven thirty in the morning and then you’ll walk about five minutes to where they have the Megabus. Take that to Houston. It’s another six hours by bus. I wrote all of this down on a piece of paper so you have it. It’s in the envelope too.”

  “Thank you, Phil.”

  “Go. Get in line so you two can get a good seat.”

  He watched to make sure she and her baby were set. Then he walked out of Union Station, his head up. It had been a while since he’d felt this right.

  THADDEUS WARD’S residence was on a quiet, three-syllable street in Brightwood, in the Fourth District, where he’d served most of his tenure as a D.C. cop. His house was a detached Colonial, clean and neat, with an alley garage that he used as a workshop. He and his wife, Ida, had raised their daughter, Sharon, here. Sharon had been out on her own since the mid-nineties, and Ida had passed long ago. He’d lived alone for the past ten years.

  Sharon had come over without her kids, who were now in high school. Her husband, Virgil Cotton, who owned a couple of fast-food franchises, was at their home in Bowie, keeping an eye on the children and seeing that they completed their homework and chores. Sharon and Virgil were strict Christians. As far as the God thing went, Thaddeus was unconvinced.

  They had eaten takeout pizza from the Ledo’s over on Georgia, and now they were in what Ward called “the TV room,” watching the Wizards flame the Lakers.

  “Damn, he’s fast,” said Ward as they watched John Wall accelerate past two defenders in the lane, corkscrew, and finish.

  “We got a lot of pieces,” said Sharon, who knew the game. She had played basketball for Coolidge in her day. “Bradley Beal, Otto Porter…”

  “Georgetown product,” said Ward.

  “Markieff Morris was a nice addition.”

  “Don’t forget the Polish Hammer,” said Ward. “And the coach. Scott Brooks put it all together, Sharon. We’re about to win the division. First time since the seventies. LeBron is still a beast, but the Cavaliers are weak, with their injuries and whatnot. This could be the year for my Bullets.”

  “They’re called the Wizards now, Daddy.”

  “Not in my house.”

  She looked at him with fond tolerance. “I better get out of here. Let me just clean this mess up.”

  Sharon made a couple of trips back and forth to the kitchen as she gathered up the pizza box, soda cans, and plates. Ward would have offered to help her but he knew she’d say no. That’s why she came over to the house twice a week, to take care of him. She did the dishes that were in the sink, folded his laundry, and changed the sheets on his bed, whether they needed changing or not. She was way overqualified for housework—hell, she was a copyright attorney for the U.S. government—but she wanted to do it. It wasn’t that she enjoyed cleaning up his place. It eased her conscience.

  “Sit down, baby girl,” said Ward as Sharon came back into the room.


  She sat next to him on the couch. “What?”

  “I put some money into the kids’ college fund today. A good bit of money, in fact.”

  “Daddy…”

  “I wanted to. There’s nothing more important than a good education. I know you and Virgil are successful. You got money, I know. But this will help y’all breathe a little easier. That’s all it is. Just want to help you out.”

  “But you’re going to retire. You don’t want to think about it but that day will come. I don’t want you to come up short.”

  “I got my pension from the MPD, and the army, and I got my Social Security checks. This house been paid for. I’m flush. This is extra, Sharon. Investments I made a long time ago that have grown. It’s money I don’t need. I want it to go to my grandchildren, to give them a leg up. Don’t argue with me, now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come here.”

  They hugged and he walked her to the front door. She was his height. Sharon had got her size from her mother. Ida had been tall and straight of back, a standout athlete in the Inter-High. It had been hard on Ida, so healthy all her life, to have her body deteriorate as rapidly as it did. She was gone two months after her initial diagnosis.

  Ward watched Sharon get into her Japanese sedan and drive away.

  He didn’t need the money, it was true. He was happy to give his grandchildren the opportunity for college that he himself had not taken. It was a bonus from the jobs, but not the reason he took them. Ward didn’t lie to himself and say that what he did with Phil Ornazian was for the kids.

  He had met Ornazian a few years back, through another middle-aged veteran of the MPD, an Irishman named Liam Shannon, also out of 4D. Ornazian had a client whose wife had been kidnapped over a drug beef, a street snatch unreported to the police. When there was potential violence involved, Ornazian used ex-cops for his security detail, and Shannon was his point man. Shannon, in effect, rounded up the crew. The first time they worked together, Ornazian saw something in Ward. Ornazian said it was how he handled himself. With authority, he said. He might have added that Ward was aggressive and unafraid.