The Cut

by George Pelecanos

“Anwan Hawkins the dealer?”

  “Yeah. Up on trafficking charges at the moment, unfortunately. He’s currently in the D.C. Jail.”

  “He wants me to come there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Visitation days are set by the first letter in the last names, right?”

  “That’s for social visits; the prison makes audio recordings of those conversations. You should go in as one of my official investigators. Those conversations are confidential.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ll put a letter in to the DOC. It takes twenty-four hours to clear.”

  “You know what Hawkins wants?”

  “I believe Anwan is going to make you some sort of a proposal. But I can’t have you taking on any side work for a week or so. You’ve got those interviews to do for me on that Southeast thing. I’m defending Reginald Brooks, the shooter. Remember?”

  “I do.”

  “So what should I tell Anwan?” Petersen got no comment from Lucas. “Spero?”

  “I’ll meet with him,” said Lucas. “See what he has to say.”

  Which is how Spero Lucas met Anwan Hawkins, and the truck began to roll downhill.

  TWO

  LUCAS HIT “end” on his iPhone and placed the device on the nightstand beside his bed. The stand held a digital alarm clock, a lamp with a pillowcase thrown over its shade, his Bible, and a couple of other books. Lucas kept two, a fiction and a nonfiction, going at a time. He rolled over and got up on one elbow. Constance Kelly was beside him, naked in the bed.

  “That was your boss,” said Lucas.

  “Yours, too.”

  “I don’t have a boss.”

  “Neither do I, technically. I’m an intern, remember? At least you get paid.”

  “Fifteen an hour.”

  “It’s folding money.”

  “Don’t forget about the meal plan. Horace and Dickies, Litteri’s…”

  “Tom does like to feed his troops.”

  Lucas leaned into her. They kissed.

  “Why’d he call you on a Monday night?” said Constance.

  “He had something for me.”

  “A case?”

  Lucas shook his head. He ran his hand down her neckline, her breast, her ribcage. The inside of her thigh and between her legs.

  “I’m not on the stand,” said Lucas.

  “You do side work,” said Constance. “Isn’t that right?” In the low light of his bedroom lamp she looked very young.

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s how you have all this.” She meant his spacious apartment. His bicycle, his car, the kayak hung on hooks on the back porch. In terms of Washington, it really wasn’t much at all. But from her perspective, living on a tight budget, it looked like a lot.

  “All this,” said Lucas, finding a spot she liked.

  She gasped a little and arched her back. She sucked at his lip and he pulled away, looking down at her, admiring her.

  “I guess you think you’re pretty smart,” said Lucas.

  “Just observant.”

  “And lovely.”

  Her chest blushed pink and he laughed.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Talking.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “I mean it,” she said, her eyes slightly gone.

  She tugged at him and he fitted himself between her, lifting one of her legs. It was slow at first. They searched for it and then they found it and soon it became something else, and the bed moved across the floor. Constance’s hand twisted the sheets, her pupils dilated, her hair fanned out about her face. She was the quiet type, but he felt her tense beneath him, and when she made it, Lucas let go and shot a hot river.

  They lay there quietly, the sex smell heavy in the room. She liked him to linger. When she was ready she pushed at him a little and she made a small sound when he pulled out. She rolled off the mattress and stood. He watched her cross the room slowly, deliberately, so he could take her in. She was proud of her body and rightly so. He listened to her in the bathroom, washing herself, and then the sound of water drumming in the sink. Thinking, This is what I dreamed of when I was overseas: a nice big comfortable bed in a place of my own, money in my pocket, good-looking young women to laugh with, sometimes just to fuck, sometimes to make love to. God, what more do you need?

  Fifteen minutes later, she was dressed and by the front door. He was beside her, shirtless and shoeless, in his 501s.

  “You could stay,” said Lucas.

  “I want to wake up in my own place. I have class in the morning and then I’m doing some work for Tom.”

  “I feel used.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re happy and grateful.” She touched his chest, lifted his crucifix, and handled the pendant of blue glass and silver that hung beside it on his chain. “What is this?”

  “A mati. It means ‘eye.’ ”

  “Like an evil eye?”

  “The opposite. It reflects evil back on the onlooker.”

  “I’m evil.” She moved her hand to one of his nipples and pinched it.

  Lucas smiled. “Don’t I know it.”

  “I hope we didn’t wake up the woman downstairs,” said Constance.

  “She lived here with her husband for over fifty years. I reckon they christened every room in this house, one time or another. Miss Lee understands that I’m a healthy young man.”

  “I’ll say.”

  He walked her down the stairs that led to the separate entrance to his place. He had the entire second floor of a four-square colonial on the corner of Emerson and Piney Branch Road, in 16th Street Heights. This wasn’t the Piney Branch that ran deep into Maryland, a street commuters knew well, but rather a short stretch of road running from Buchanan up to Colorado Avenue, in a country-style atmosphere of quiet lanes and alleys that felt bucolic and was only fifteen minutes north of the White House and deep downtown. A brief bike ride down Colorado to Blagden could take Lucas into Rock Creek Park. Nearby 13th Street was within pedaling distance of the places he needed to go. He had lucked into the spot when Miss Lee, a septuagenarian with a prunish face, a thin cap of cottony hair, and beautiful and wily black eyes, had advertised the apartment the old-fashioned way, with a handbill stapled to a telephone pole. He spotted it one day while cruising through the neighborhood on his Trek. When she interviewed him, she explained that the house was paid for, that she didn’t need a tenant for the rent money and was only looking to feel secure with someone in the house. He mentioned that he was a veteran and a marine, and that, coupled with the fact that he repeatedly addressed her as Miss Lee and not by her Christian name, Willie Mae, closed the deal. Given the size of the place, the low rent, and the location, he knew he’d scored.

  “Come back,” said Lucas to Constance, outside the first-floor door to his apartment.

  “I will.”

  He kissed her and watched her go to her car, a ’99 Civic that might as well have had “student” imprinted on its plates. When she was safely in and her engine had turned over, he went back inside. He had things to do in the next couple of days before he went to visit Anwan Hawkins. For one, he needed to get to the library, check out the newspaper morgue material on the man, and gather any intel on him from Petersen. He also had plans to meet his brother for dinner, down around U. Visit some of the soldiers up at Walter Reed, drop off some books. And he needed to get by his mother’s house in Silver Spring to cut her grass. Matter of fact, he thought as he went up the stairs, I should call Mom soon as I get in my room.

  Tell her I love her, tell her good night.

  ON DETAIL maps it was identified as the D.C. Central Detention Facility, but locals—citizens, inmates, and law alike—called it the D.C. Jail. The holding facility sat at 19th and D, in the Southeast quadrant of the city, on acreage that included the old D.C. General Hospital and RFK Stadium. The jail complex was large, ugly, and bleak. Inmates liked to say that they lived on waterfront property,
as several of the east-facing cells gave to a view of the Anacostia River.

  In the security area, Lucas signed the book, gave up his driver’s license in exchange for a pass, went through a metal detector, and was patted down and wanded. He was the only male visitor who wasn’t obviously an attorney or some kind of police. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, girlfriends, and one nun waited in line. The younger women were led into a closed room where they were instructed to shake out their bras. One woman, wearing shorts and a scoop-necked shirt showing ample cleavage, a double violation of the dress code, was turned away. She exited loudly.

  Now Lucas sat on a plastic chair in the visiting room, among women visiting men and several guards. Across from him, behind glass, sat Anwan Hawkins, wearing orange. Hawkins was very tall, lean, and freakishly broad shouldered. He was in his thirties. His long braids framed a chiseled face. One of his front teeth had been capped in gold. His facial hair was haphazardly arranged and ungroomed. It stayed where it grew.

  They were speaking into telephones. Though they were spitting distance from each other, the telephone connection made them sound continents apart.

  “Thank you for helping my son,” said Hawkins, his voice low and husky.

  “I did my job.”

  “Mr. Petersen said you do it well.”

  “He must like my work. He keeps me around.”

  Hawkins appraised him. “You look like you can handle yourself out there.”

  “I just try to show people respect.”

  “I feel the same way.” Hawkins dipped his head. “My man said you fought in the Middle East.”

  “I was there.”

  “You kill anyone?”

  Lucas did not reply.

  “Okay, then,” said Hawkins. “I understand.”

  Lucas waited.

  “My son David is no gangster,” said Hawkins. “Nothin like that. What he did, taking that vehicle, that was just a crime of opportunity right there.”

  “It seemed that way to me.”

  “Incarceration wouldn’t have taught David nothin he didn’t already know. He was raised right.”

  “By you?”

  “His mother did all the heavy lifting. I’m not proud of that. I never intended to have a baby and not be there in his life. I wanted my marriage to last. But sometimes a man and a woman just can’t make it.” Hawkins chucked his chin up in Lucas’s direction. “You married?”

  “No.”

  “His mother and I don’t stay together, but I always gave her support. I feel like, now, it’s extra important that I get out of here, so I can be there for him, to set the right example.”

  “I can’t help you there, Mr. Hawkins.”

  “I got the best criminal lawyer in town. I don’t need more legal help.”

  “Well?”

  “You wanna get to it.”

  “We only have a half hour. We’ve burnt a piece of it already.”

  “How you say your name, exactly?”

  “Spero.”

  “Spee-row. We gonna speak freely, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Petersen told you about my charges.”

  “He didn’t have to. You were involved with one of the largest marijuana seizures in D.C. history. I read about it in the paper.”

  “Damn right you gonna read about it. Over a million dollars, wholesale. You know they gonna try and put me away for a long time. Actin like I’m Rayful Edmond and shit. But I never sold cocaine or heroin. I wouldn’t.”

  “In the eyes of the law it’s all illegal.”

  “And it’s gonna stay illegal. ’Cause that’s how they fill up the facilities and generate the construction of more jails. Hire more guards. More administrators, guard unions. The aim is to keep this big prison industrial complex rolling. When I was a kid, the majority of people in lockup was in for violent crime. Now most of the people in prison are in for nonviolent drug offenses.”

  “There’s violence attached to it.”

  “Don’t I know. That stash you got up in your bedroom drawer, somewhere down in Juarez they be cutting someone’s head off behind it. If it was legal, that shit wouldn’t be happenin.” Hawkins leaned forward. “It’s a prop, man. Don’t matter what the thing is, exactly. You make, I don’t know, possession of milk against the law, you gonna give birth to an underground economy where people be sellin milk on the corner or behind closed doors. And some people gonna kill behind that carton of milk. But not me. I’m not about that.”

  Lucas looked into his eyes. “Say why I’m here.”

  “I lost something,” said Hawkins. “I understand you specialize in recovery.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Do you know how I used to bring in my product?”

  “Mexicans out of California drove it into D.C. in tractor trailers. They’d stop on the side of the road and transfer it into your own trucks. Sometimes they’d even stop on the Beltway or the B-W Parkway.”

  “You did your homework.”

  “Again, I read about it. That’s a story you don’t forget.”

  “Sounds bold or stupid, depending on how you look at it. But actually it worked out fine for a long time. Thing is, we didn’t get busted out on the highway. Someone weak got put under the hot lights and snitched me out. Doesn’t matter who. In my line of work you know that day is gonna come. Once I became a person of interest, it was just a matter of time. The police didn’t want my shipment, they wanted me. The law GPS’d one of my trucks, let it make its run, and followed it back to my storage facility. I had this spot off Kansas Avenue, up there by Lamond, where they got a whole rack of warehouses.”

  “I know the area.”

  “I was there the day the truck rolled in. And now I’m here.”

  Hawkins folded his hands on the table, paused for effect. He was a showman.

  “Go on.”

  “Even though I got locked up, I couldn’t close my business. I mean, I got employees to take care of, not to mention my legal fees. My second, a young man name of Tavon, continues to bring in product, only now he’s doing it in a different way. You know about the FedEx method, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Lucas. “And so do the police.”

  “Even with that, it’s hard to stop it. The supplier FedExes a bunch of packages to residences that we identify as unoccupied during the day. We track the packages on the Internet so we know damn near when they’re about to arrive. We intercept the pickups and no one’s the wiser.”

  “Except that it’s been in the news lately, in a big way.”

  “Uh-huh. First you had that incident out in Maryland where the SWAT boys shot the dogs of those suspects who turned out to be innocent. And then that article they had in the Post, where those people took in that package and discovered it was multiple pounds of weed. Made it sound like it was some kind of new phenomenon and shit.”

  “Kids were shipping weed back and forth like that when I was in high school.”

  “It is tried and true.”

  “Not exactly,” said Lucas. “Someone took you off, right?”

  Hawkins nodded with embarrassment. “I lost one. More than one, actually.”

  “When?”

  “Three weeks ago, somethin like that. A thirty-pound package got stolen off the steps of a house in Brookland. And then a box holding another thirty pounds of my property got boosted off someone’s porch just last week.”

  “That’s money.”

  “Sure is.” Hawkins shook a ropy forest of braids away from his face. “Funniest part of that article was, po-lice said the dealers don’t bother with retaliation when that kind of thing goes down. Said the economics was such that the dealers could afford to be philosophical about that shit and absorb the loss. That’s some bullshit right there. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not lookin to do any kind of violence to no one. Like I told you, I’m not about that. But I can’t be philosophical behind it, either. Situation I’m in right now, I need the money. I paid for that product and it’s mine. I w
ant it back.”

  “You want me to recover your lost packages.”

  “Or the cash, if they done offed it already. I’m not lookin for any muscle here, Spero. Just get me back what’s mine. No one I got has your skills. I seen what you did for my son. Got to say, I was impressed.”

  “What’s the value of the product?”

  “Wholesale?”

  “Retail,” said Lucas.

  “Roughly one hundred and thirty thousand a package.”

  “I’d get forty.”

  “Thousand?”

  “Percent,” said Lucas.

  “That’s fifty thousand and change.”

  “Fifty-two. Per package.”

  “How you come to that?”

  “Forty percent’s my standard fee.”

  “Your cut,” said Hawkins.

  “That’s right.”

  Anwan Hawkins sat back in his chair. He stared at Lucas, and a glint of gold showed as he nearly smiled.

  “Where’d the second package get took?” said Lucas.

  “Why the second?”

  “Most likely the trail on the first theft is cold by now.”

  Hawkins gave him an address. Lucas said, “Do you know how to get in touch with me?”

  “Tell me your cell number. I’ll get it to Tavon.”

  “Don’t communicate with Petersen about this again.”

  “Understood,” said Hawkins. “Your cell?”

  Lucas said it and repeated it. “You’re gonna remember that?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t do trades. I take my fee in cash.”

  Hawkins looked him over. “You’re on the cocky side. You know that?”

  “It serves me well in my line of work.”

  “Don’t go spending that cash just yet,” said Hawkins. “That kinda money you chargin? I ain’t quite decided whether you and I are gonna do business.”

  Lucas said, “Neither have I.”

  THREE

  SPERO LUCAS had two brothers and a sister, but only one sibling he was close to. This was the brother who was a year older than him. His name was Leonidas, but everyone, except for his mother when she was being stern with him, called him Leo. Leo’s birth name had been Nigel, but Van and Eleni Lucas had changed it, in the same way that they had changed Spero’s name from Sean. Spero and Leo had come into the world from entirely different places and had wound up brothers. Both felt blessed.