Soul Circus

by George P. Pelecanos

  Devra’s eyes caught light and her mouth turned up at the sides. She was downright pretty when she smiled. “I like ice cream, too.”

  Course you do, thought Strange. You’re not much more than a kid yourself.

  AT the Metro station Strange idled the Caprice while Quinn passed out flyers to Anacostians rushing to catch their Green Line trains. The flyers were headed with the words “Missing and Endangered” and showed a picture of a fourteen-year-old girl that Sue Tracy, Quinn’s girlfriend, had been hired to find. Tracy and her partner, Karen Bagley, had a Maryland-based business that primarily took runaway and missing-teen cases. Bagley and Tracy Investigative Services also received grant money for helping prostitutes endangered by their pimps and violent johns. Quinn had first met Tracy when he agreed to take on a case of hers that had moved into D.C.

  Strange watched a cocky and squared-up Quinn through the windshield, the only white face in a sea of black ones. Quinn was drawing fish eyes from some of the young men and a few double takes from the older members of the crowd. Strange knew that Quinn was unfazed by the attention. In fact, he liked the challenge of it, up to a point. He was, after all, a former patrol cop. As long as he was given the space he gave others, everything would be cool.

  But it often didn’t happen that way. And when Quinn was shown disrespect, the kind that went down with a subtle eye sweep from a black to a white, it got under his skin, and baffled him a little bit, too.

  Something was said by a couple of young males to Quinn as he began to walk back to the car. Quinn stopped and got up in the taller of the two’s face. Strange watched Quinn’s jaw tense, the set of his eyes, the vein wormed on his forehead, the way he seemed to grow taller as the blood crept into his face. Strange didn’t even think to get out of his car. It was over without incident, as he knew it would be. Soon Quinn was dropping onto the bench beside him.

  “You all right?”

  “Guy told me to give him a dollar after he called me a white boy. Like that was gonna convince me to pull out my wallet. God, I love this town.”

  “It was the boy part got your back up, huh?”

  “That was most of it, I guess.”

  “Think how it felt for grown men to be called boy every day for, I don’t know, a couple hundred years before you were born.”

  “Yeah, okay. So now it’s my turn to get fucked with. We all gotta have ourselves a turn. For some shit that happened, like you say, before I was even born.”

  “You don’t even want to go there, Terry. Trust me.”

  “Right.” Quinn breathed out slowly. “Look, thanks for stopping here. I told Sue I’d pass some of those out.”

  “Who’s she looking for, anyway?”

  “Girl named Linda Welles. Fourteen years old, ninety-nine pounds. She ran off from her home in Burrville last year, over near Woodson High, in Far Northeast? Couple of months later, her older brother recognizes her when he’s with his boys, watching one of those videos they pass around.”

  “She was the star, huh?”

  “Yeah. It was supposed to be a house party, freak-dancing and all that, but then a couple of guys start going at it with her back in one of the bedrooms, right on the tape. Not that she wasn’t complicit, from the looks of it.”

  “Fourteen years old, complicit got nothin’ to do with it.”

  “Exactly. The brother recognized the exterior shot of the street where they had the party. It was on Naylor Road, up around the late twenties, here in Anacostia. That was a while back. The girl’s just vanished, man – nothing since.”

  “So, what, you gonna go deep undercover down here to find her?”

  “Just passing out flyers.”

  “ ’Cause you’re gonna have a little trouble blending in.”

  “But I feel the love,” said Quinn. “That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

  They drove back to W Street, passing the Fredrick Douglass Home, then cut up 16th toward Minnesota Avenue, where they could catch Benning Road to the other side of the river and back into the center of town. They passed solid old homes and rambling bungalows sitting among tall trees on straight, clean streets, sharing space with apartments and housing complexes, some maintained but many deteriorating, all surrounded by black wrought-iron fences. Many of the apartment buildings, three-story brick affairs with the aesthetic appeal of bunkers, showed plywood in their windows. Hard young men, the malignant result of years of festering, unchecked poverty and fatherless homes, sat on their front steps. Strange had always admired the deep green of Anacostia and the views of the city from its hilly landscapes. It was the most beautiful section of town and also the ugliest, often at the same time.

  “You can’t find one white face down here anymore,” said Quinn, looking at a man driving a FedEx truck as it passed.

  “There’s one,” said Strange, pointing to the sidewalk fronting one of the many liquor stores serving the neighborhood. A cockeyed woman with a head of uncombed blond hair and stretch pants pulled up to her sagging bustline stood there drinking from a brown paper bag. “Looks like they forgot to do their head count this morning up at St. E’s.”

  Strange was hoping to bring some humor to the subject. But he knew Terry would not give it up now that he’d been stepped to.

  “Bet you there’s some down here, they’d tell you that’s one too many white people on these streets,” said Quinn.

  “Here we go.”

  “You remember that loud-mouth guy they had in this ward, ran for the city council, Shazam or whatever his name was? The guy who wanted everyone to boycott the Korean grocery stores?”

  “Sure, I remember.”

  “And?”

  “And, nothin’,” said Strange.

  “So you agreed with that guy.”

  “Look. People down here got a right to be angry about a lot of things. They talk it out among themselves, in the barbershop and at the dinner table, and when they do they talk it out for real, the pros and the cons. But one thing they don’t do is, they don’t go shittin’ on that guy you’re talking about, or our former mayor, or Farrakhan, or Sharpton, or anyone else like that to people like you.”

  “People like me, huh?”

  “Yeah. Black folks don’t put down their own so they can feed white people what they want to hear.”

  “This guy ran his whole election on fear and hate, Derek.”

  “But he didn’t win the election, did he?”

  “Your point is what?”

  “In the end, in their own quiet way, the majority of the people always prove that they know the difference between right and wrong. What I’m saying is, there’s more good people out here than there are bad. Once you get hip to that, that anger you’re carrying around with you, it’s gonna go away.”

  “You think I’m angry?”

  “Look at the world more positive, man.” Strange reached for the tape deck, looking for some music and some peace. “Trust me, man, it’ll help you get through your day.”

  Chapter 5

  “I SEE you’re a ’Skins fan,” said Mario Durham, nodding at the plaster figure with the spring-mounted head on Strange’s desk.

  “I see you are, too,” said Strange, his eyes passing over the Sanders jersey Durham wore as he sat slumped in the client chair.

  “I do like Deion. Boy can play.”

  “He couldn’t play for me. Biggest mistake the ’Skins ever made, gettin’ rid of a heart-and-soul player like Brian Mitchell for a showboat like Deion. Mitchell used to get that whole team up, man. That’s what happens when a new owner comes in, doesn’t understand the game.”

  “Whateva. You a longtime fan, though, I can see. This right here must go back to Charley Taylor and shit.” Durham reached out and flicked the head of the plaster figure. Greco, lying belly down on the floor, raised his head and growled.

  “Watch it,” said Strange. “My stepson painted that, and it’s special. Money can’t replace it.”

  “That dog all right? Animals and me don’t get
along.”

  “You interrupted his beauty sleep,” said Strange.

  Durham shifted in his chair. “So anyway, like I was sayin’, I’m lookin’ for this girl.”

  “Olivia Elliot,” said Quinn, seated beside the desk.

  “Right. I was knowin’ her for, like, two months, and I thought we was gettin’ along pretty good.”

  “Where’d you two meet?” said Strange.

  “I was tryin’ to hook up with this other girl, see, worked at this nail and braid salon in Southeast. I went in there lookin’ to date this girl, and I see Olivia, got some woman’s hand in her lap, paintin’ it. Y’all know how that is, when you get a look at a certain kind of woman and you say, uh-huh, yeah, that right there is gonna be mine.”

  “You had a lot of girlfriends, Mario?”

  “I ain’t gonna lie to you; I been a player my whole life,” said Durham. He smiled then, showing Quinn and Strange two long, protruding front teeth surrounded by space. “But this was different right here.”

  “And then she left,” said Quinn.

  “She just up and left, and I ain’t heard from her since.”

  “You two have an argument, something like that?” said Strange.

  “We was cool,” said Durham, “far as I know.”

  “Where was she staying when she disappeared?”

  “She had this apartment, stayed with her son, young boy. They stayed in this place they rented off Good Hope.”

  “Her son’s name?”

  “Mark.”

  “Same last name? Elliot?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And he’s in school?”

  “Elementary, down in that area they was stayin’ in, I guess, but I don’t know the name.”

  “You try her mother, any other family?” said Strange.

  “She never spoke of any kin,” said Durham. “Look, fellas, I’m worried about the girl.”

  “Why hire private cops?” said Quinn.

  “What my partner means is,” said Strange, “you suspect some kind of foul play, what you need to do is, you need to report it to the police.”

  “Black girl goes missin’ in Southeast, police ain’t gonna do shit. But it ain’t like that, anyway. Olivia was the kind of girl, it was a cloudy day or somethin’, it would bust on her groove. She’d be, like, cryin’ her eyes out over somethin’ simple like the weather. I’m worried in the sense that she’s sad, or got the depression, sumshit like that. I just want to know where she is. And if we do have some kind of problem between us, then maybe we can work it out.”

  “All right, then,” said Strange. “Give Terry here the details on what you just told us. Addresses, phone numbers, all that.”

  Strange went out to the reception area while Quinn took the information. He phoned Raymond Ives, Granville Oliver’s attorney, and left a message on his machine informing him that he was making progress on the gathering of countertestimony against Phillip Wood. When Strange returned to his office, Mario Durham was standing out of his chair. He wasn’t but five and a half feet tall, and he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred twenty-five pounds.

  “We all set, then,” said Durham.

  “Just give my office manager out there your deposit on your way out,” said Strange, “and we’ll get going on this right away.”

  “Fifty, right?”

  “A hundred, just like Janine told you when you spoke to her on the phone.”

  “Damn, y’all about to bankrupt a man.”

  “It’s a hundred. But this shouldn’t take too long. Our rate is thirty-five an hour, and if it comes out to be under the hundred, then you’re gonna get what we didn’t earn back.”

  “Put a rush on it, hear? I can’t even afford the hundred, seein’ as I’m in between jobs right now. I’m just anxious to see my girl.”

  Durham began to walk from the room. Greco got up and followed him, sniffing at the back of his Tommys as he walked. Greco growled some, and Durham quickened his step. Greco stopped walking as Durham passed through the doorway. Quinn shut the office door.

  “Animal doesn’t like you,” said Strange, “must be a reason.”

  “We don’t usually ask for one-hundred-dollar deposits, Derek.”

  “I made an exception for him.”

  “It’s because he’s black, right?”

  “It’s because he’s a no-account knucklehead. That hundred’s the only money we’re ever gonna see out of him. He’s got no job, wouldn’t even give Janine a fixed address. Said if we needed to get him we could look up a friend of his called Donut in Valley Green.”

  “Donut, huh? You can bank that.”

  “And his only phone number is a cell.”

  “You think there’s something funny about his story?”

  “Course there is. Somethin’ funny about half the stories we hear in this place. Maybe she owes him money, or he’s just tryin’ to find out if she’s shackin’ up with someone else.”

  “You don’t think a woman would leave a prize like him for another man, do you? That’d be like, I don’t know, driving across town for a Big Mac when you got filet mignon cooking on the grill in your backyard.”

  “Was it just me, or was that man butt-ugly?”

  “Playa hater,” said Quinn.

  “Almost feel like pressing his money back in his hand, giving him the phone number to a good dentist.”

  “Last time I saw two teeth like that, they were attached to somethin’ had a paddle for a tail and was chewin’ on a piece of wood.”

  “Well, a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars. If any of that information he gave us is accurate, I’ll find that girl this afternoon.”

  “Quit bragging.”

  “No brag,” said Strange, “just fact.”

  “Guns of Will Sonnet,” said Quinn. “Walter Brennan.”

  “Damn, boy, you surprise me sometimes.”

  “You need me,” said Quinn, “I’m puttin’ in a few hours at the bookstore today.”

  Strange said, “I’ll call you there.”

  Chapter 6

  STRANGE went back down to Anacostia and had a late lunch at Mama Cole’s. Its sign claimed they served “the best soul food in town,” and if that wasn’t enough, the cursive quote on the awning out front added, “Martin Luther King would have eaten here.” Strange didn’t know about all that, but the food was better than all right. He ordered a fish sandwich with plenty of hot sauce, and when he had his first bite he closed his eyes. That pricey white-tablecloth buppie joint on the suit-side of town, claimed it was South authentic, didn’t have anything this good coming out of its kitchen.

  “How you doin’, Derek?” said a man at a deuce as Strange was making his way toward the door.

  “I’m makin’ it,” said Strange, shaking his hand. The man was an assistant coach for the football squad that played their home games at Turkey Thicket, but Strange could not remember his name.

  “You gonna be ready this year, big man?”

  “Oh, we got a few surprises for you, now.”

  “All right, then.”

  “All right.”

  They shook hands. Quinn would say something now, if he were here, about Strange running into someone he knew in every part of the District. It was true, but Strange never found it surprising. He’d lived here, and only here, for over fifty years. For its permanent residents, D.C. was in many ways still a small town.

  Strange got into his Caprice. He was full and happy. He pushed in a mix tape and found “City, Country, City,” the War instrumental that he always returned to when he was under the wheel on a fine spring day. He drove to the nail salon where Mario Durham had first met Olivia Elliot and entered the shop.

  The owner of the place, a youngish woman who looked like she had a ropy bird’s nest set atop her head, hadn’t seen or heard from Olivia in a long while. She didn’t ask why Strange was looking for Elliot, and he didn’t bother to invent a ruse. She had marked him as a bill collector, most likely, an assumption he did n
ot confirm or deny. If Elliot had left her job on bad terms, then this would work in his favor.

  “You have no idea where she’s working now?” said Strange.

  “I don’t believe she could hold a job for long,” said the owner.

  “Girl was keepin’ bad company, too,” said another woman, unprompted, from across the shop.

  “She didn’t know Jesus,” said the owner. “So how could she know herself?”

  Strange drove toward the complex where Olivia Elliot had lived. He passed Ketchum Elementary and wondered if Olivia’s son, Mark, was a student at this school. But it wasn’t like this was the only grade school in the area; Strange had noticed another one, and another still, just in the small distance he’d covered since leaving the shop. There was no shortage of babies being made in this part of town.

  He parked in the lot of the Woodland Mews, a grouping of several tan brick units surrounded by the ubiquitous black iron fence. The grounds were on the clean side and the parking lot, half filled on this workday, was mostly free of trash. Strange wrote down the name of the complex’s management company, posted with a phone number under an “Apartment Available” notice hung on the fence. He called this in to Janine and asked her to check with the company to see if Elliot had left a forwarding address. If she had put a security deposit down, he reasoned, she would be looking for them to send it to her.

  Strange crossed the lot, going by two young men standing beside a tricked-out Honda. An old Rare Essence track came from the open windows of the car. The young men’s conversation halted as he passed. Strange wore his cell on a holster, along with a Leatherman Tool-in-One looped through his belt. He wore his Buck knife as well when he felt he had the need to show it, but had left it in the office today. He carried a spiral notepad with a pen fitted into the rings.

  Strange walked as he had taught Lamar and the kids on his football team to walk when they were out on the street. Chin up, shoulders square, at a steady clip but not too fast. The effect was confidence and, in his case, authority. Among those who were acquainted with the traits and mannerisms that are common to police, Strange would always be made as a cop, even though he had not worn the uniform for thirty-some-odd years. The young men resumed their conversation as Strange made his way into the stairwell of a nearby unit.