The Cut

by George Pelecanos

  Lucas took a shower and dressed in Carhartt. He had work to do.

  LUCAS DROVE down to the holding facility, signed the logbook, and gave the DOC woman his driver’s license. He was still on an official visitors list per Petersen’s letter. The woman handed him a pass that would allow him entrance to the next step of security. Lucas looked her over in her uniform, a tall woman, broad shouldered and full in the back, like many females who worked security at the jail. They were union, and he assumed their income and benefits package had been well negotiated, but still, for the atmosphere they endured, for the risk, they had to be underpaid. The woman’s badge plate read Cecelia Edwards. She had buttery skin, large eyes, and a lot of muscle coupled with femininity. Lucas wondered.

  “Have a good one,” he said, looking at her the way a man does.

  “You have a blessed day,” she said, holding the look for the one extra moment that spoke many words. He would remember her name and write it down after he left the jail.

  Lucas met Anwan Hawkins in the visiting room. The glass between them was filmy and smudged, their chairs low and hard. Hawkins wore an orange jumpsuit with slip-on sneaks. His braided hair was pulled back, exposing neck tats, Japanese characters in a vertical formation. His facial expression was serious, his posture all business.

  “Talk about it,” said Hawkins, speaking into the phone, his voice gravelly and distant. Their connection was as weak as it had been the last time they’d met. “Tell me what happened.”

  “It was straight murder,” said Lucas.

  “By who?”

  “I know what you know. Less than you, if you’re holding out on me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “It’s safe to say that their killing was related to your business. Maybe it was a power grab by someone beneath them.”

  “Wasn’t anyone below ’em who knew shit.”

  “Were you aware that they lost a third package?”

  Hawkins did not speak right away. Lucas studied his reaction.

  “When was that?” said Hawkins.

  “I don’t know when, exactly. Tavon told me about it the night he and Edwin were murdered. But I’m guessing it was stolen the day before. I was surveilling the street of the second theft, and they left me to do some business.”

  “Where was it stole at?”

  “East of the Hill. Tavon didn’t give me the address. Maybe you can tell me.”

  “I don’t know it. Those boys were on their own.”

  “So I’ll just keep working the theft on Twelfth.”

  “But I don’t want you workin it, Spero. What I want is for you to drop this.”

  “Why?”

  “This shit’s got to stop,” said Hawkins. “I don’t care about the cash no more. If I get off, then I walk out of here and start new. If I do more time, so be it. Either way, I’m done. I wanna be with my son again, like a regular father. I want to live a long life. ”

  “That’s a lot of money to leave on the table.”

  “It’s mine to leave.”

  “We had a deal.”

  “Not the kind you take to court.”

  Lucas and Hawkins stared at each other without malice.

  “You speak to the police?” said Hawkins.

  “No,” said Lucas.

  “You were in contact with the boys by phone, weren’t you?”

  “I was.”

  “If the police got hold of their cells, there’d be a record of that.”

  “Which tells me their cells weren’t found,” said Lucas. “Otherwise the homicide detectives would have contacted me by now.”

  “Did the boys, you know, leave you any kind of clue as to what was about to go down?”

  Lucas thought of the last text message he received from Tavon Lynch. “No.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “No idea. The police are conducting an investigation. If an arrest is made, I’ll hear about it, same as you.”

  “What about their funerals?”

  “They haven’t been announced. There’ve been no obits yet in the Post.”

  “You gonna pay your respects?”

  “No. The police will be there. Could be they’ll be shooting video footage from vans, taking still shots like they do. I’m not trying to put myself in the mix. Anyway, I barely knew those guys.”

  “You don’t seem too interested.”

  “And you don’t seem all that shook.”

  “I’m sorry for what happened to them.”

  “So am I,” said Lucas. “But I’m not getting involved in those murders. You hired me to retrieve your property or your cash. That’s it.”

  “You’re not even curious?” said Hawkins.

  “Homicide police close murder cases. Private investigators never do. I took this on to make money. With this third theft, the pot just grew. I still intend to honor our agreement.”

  “I guess I can’t stop you.”

  “What do I do if I’m successful?”

  “Take your cut,” said Hawkins. “What’s left, get it to my son’s mother.”

  “Right.”

  “Watch yourself out there,” said Hawkins, looking hard into Lucas’s eyes.

  “I will.” Lucas cradled the phone.

  LUCAS WAS not far from Capitol Hill and Lincoln Park. He left the jail and drove west on Massachusetts Avenue, turning to explore the neighborhoods and the streets, doing the same past Lincoln Park proper, the dividing line of sorts that brought him into the eastern portion of the Hill, where the homes were noticeably nicer and the income levels rose. He was looking for a 4044 address. He assumed the text from Tavon was meant to indicate the number on the house where the second drop had been made and lost. He found nothing to match the number, and if he had, he wouldn’t have known what to do. He felt lost.

  Continuing west, toward his home, he suddenly said, “Yeah,” and pulled over to the side of the road, near the St. James Episcopal Church. Something had come to him. He remembered from the newspaper accounts that Tavon and Edwin had been found shot to death in their car, parked on Hayes Street, Northeast. More accurately, upper central Northeast, where the cross-numbered streets were in the forties. Tavon must have been trying to give him the location of the house. That’s where the drop was: the 4000 block of Hayes.

  He drove in that direction, crossing the Anacostia, and ten minutes later was on Hayes. But the address did not appear to be a good one for the scheme that Tavon and Edwin had cooked up. There was a house there, but it was not the kind of place that you would ship a package to and expect it to go unnoticed. There were folks around, standing by their vehicles, going in and out of their homes, sitting on their porches. It did not look like they were typically away or at work during the day. Tavon wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have chosen this spot to drop the weed.

  Lucas continued up the block to the dead-end court that stopped at a thin tributary of creek and woods that was a part of Watts Branch. The Impala was gone. Except for a piece of yellow tape lying in the street there was no sign that a crime of extreme violence had occurred here. The mobile crime technicians had completed their investigation of the scene, and the next task was in the hands of the chief medical examiner’s office, where the autopsies of the young men would be performed.

  Lucas knew that this area had been murder notorious at one time, but it was quiet now. Serene almost, with the water cutting through the trees. Had to be dark at night back here, but still. It did look cleaned up and relatively safe. Tavon and Edwin could not have known what was coming to them. And then the fear and panic, when they did know. Lucas only hoped it had been quick for them. Pain and confusion for sure, but not prolonged.

  Darkness, he thought, seeing his father in a box. Lucas closed his eyes.

  HE HAD a fish sandwich with hot sauce from a carryout on Benning Road and headed into Northwest, where he found himself once again parked on 12th Street. He was facing north, looking in his side-view at the students walking from the school, the un
iformed police ushering them along. Soon the Lindsay boy appeared, wearing a purple polo, his braids touching his shoulders, talking to himself, walking home.

  “Hey, Lindsay,” said Lucas, from behind the wheel of his Jeep.

  The young man recognized him but kept walking without reply.

  “Lindsay!”

  “It’s Ernest,” he said, without breaking stride, going up the concrete steps and disappearing behind the front door of his house.

  At least I know your name, thought Lucas. Progress.

  A few minutes later, he phoned his brother, who was no doubt still inside the school.

  “Leo.”

  “It is me.”

  “Got a question for you, man.”

  “Where you at?”

  “On Twelfth. You could throw a rock and hit me if you had an arm.”

  “You wearin your decoder ring?”

  “Doing surveillance.”

  “That’s awesome! Do you have that piss jug in the car?”

  “And my porta-potty.”

  “Thought you had a question.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a student by the name of Ernest, would you? I been trying to get up with him.”

  “I believe I got a couple of boys named Ernest. One goes by Ernie.”

  “He called himself Ernest. Lindsay’s his last name.”

  “He’s in my all-male class, in the morning.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “He’s all right. Sensitive, on the intelligent side. You’re not gonna get him in any kind of trouble, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, why don’t you come meet him?”

  “Huh?”

  “I been asking you to talk to my class.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Come past tomorrow.”

  “For real?”

  “Why not?”

  “I need time to prepare.”

  “No, you don’t. Just come in and be yourself. They don’t want to hear about, You can be anything you want to be, or any of that jive. Say what you been doing these last ten years. Be honest and real. That’s what the boys appreciate.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ten o’clock, Spero.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  HE WENT home, showered and changed into street clothes, dropped some paperbacks off at Walter Reed for the soldiers and marines, and drove back toward Cardozo. At 13th and Clifton, where he was stopped at the red light, he saw people walking up the long hill, coming from the U Street Metro station in business attire, a mix of Hispanics, blacks, and many whites, all coming home from work. From a local’s perspective, it was startling to witness this neighborhood’s transformation.

  He parked in shadow on 12th, on the east side of the street.

  A half hour later, a woman walked down the sidewalk. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with long chestnut-colored hair, a prominent nose, high cheekbones, and dark eyes. She wore a gray business suit, a shirt-jacket-and-slacks arrangement that did not conceal her long-legged, thoroughbred build. She carried a briefcase and walked with good posture and confidence.

  Lucas got out of his Jeep as she hit the steps leading to the house with the lime green trim. He jogged across the street and said, “Lisa Weitzman?”

  She stopped and turned, cool and unafraid. “Yes?”

  “Spero Lucas,” he said. “I’m an investigator.”

  NINE

  HE SAT on her porch, on a folding metal chair that was one of two situated around a small round metal table. Lucas had asked for ten minutes of her time. She had agreed and told him to wait outside. She went into her home and when she returned she had removed her jacket. Her white button-down shirt was fitted and served her well. She took a seat in the second chair. Dusk had come to the street.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” said Lisa Weitzman, after he had told her why he had sought her out. He had not been coy. He’d given her the straight information about the package and why it had been shipped to her house.

  “You weren’t at home that day.”

  “I don’t take time off. If I do go on vacation I leave town. But I’m at work every day, typically, out the door at seven thirty and usually not back here until six thirty, seven at night. So, no, I wasn’t aware that anyone had taken something off my porch. Certainly not a large amount of marijuana.”

  “It was thirty pounds.”

  “Was it shipped out from Boulder?” said Lisa.

  “Huh?”

  “ ‘Packed in coffee grounds and wrapped around in dryer sheets.’ ”

  “ ‘Multitude of Casualties,’ ” said Lucas, with a slow, dawning smile. “The Hold Steady. You like them?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I do, too. They burn it down live.”

  Their eyes met and something passed between them. Lisa pushed a strand of stray hair behind her ear and crossed one leg over the other.

  “That’s how the dealers pack it, right? The coffee grounds mask the smell from the dope dogs.”

  “So I hear,” said Lucas. “Any of your neighbors mention seeing suspicious activity up here?”

  “A few of them certainly would. If they saw someone stealing something off my front porch…”

  “Like the old lady across the street?”

  “Miss Woods? She’d be one, definitely. She’d probably try to stop the culprit, too.”

  “Yeah, we met.”

  “She’s sweet.”

  “To you, maybe,” said Lucas. “How about Ernest Lindsay, next door?”

  “Ernest and I are cool.”

  “Good guy?”

  “Yeah. He has some home issues. I let him hang here sometimes, watch TV and stuff, when he wants to get out. Ernest loves movies. He even watches the black-and-whites on TCM. He wants to be a director.” Lisa looked away, out toward the street. Perhaps she felt she had betrayed Ernest’s trust. “Ernest would have said something.”

  “No doubt.”

  “If I hear anything…”

  “I’ll write my number down before I go. I appreciate you taking the time.”

  Lisa Weitzman stood. Lucas did not. He was being presumptuous and somewhat childish. He didn’t want to go.

  “Anything else?” she said.

  “Nope.”

  She stared at him and he said nothing.

  “I’m going to have a beer,” she said. “Would you care to join me?”

  “Absolutely,” said Lucas.

  SHE HAD come out with a couple of Dogfish 90 Minute IPAs, candles, and matches. She told him about her work in copyright law, saying with sarcasm that it was “fascinating,” and he said that he did investigative work for a private-practice defense attorney who had an office down by Judiciary Square. He told her that he wasn’t the office type and that he liked working outside. He listened to reggae, ska, dub, and guitar-based rock and bar bands. He liked soul music when he heard it but was unfamiliar with the artists because they had come before his time. She too liked rock, and a good night out for her was a transcendent live show. She could tell she was going to get along with someone if they were into DBT.

  “Decoration Day’s the shit,” said Lucas.

  Dark had come and the candle flames threw a pleasant light on the porch. The beer was good, heavy with malt and alcohol. They were on their second round.

  “You’re supposed to drink this one out of snifters,” said Lisa.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Lucas, and he tapped the neck of his bottle against hers. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” She swigged some beer and put the bottle on the table. “It’s Spero…”

  “Lucas.”

  “With a c or a k?”

  “With a c.”

  “I was thinking it was Greek.”

  “It is.”

  “But there’s no c in the Greek alphabet.”

  “My grandfather changed it. He thought it looked better when he wrote it out in cursive. More American. How di
d you know that? About the alphabet.”

  “I took Greek in college.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Stanford.” She said, softly, almost apologetically.

  “That where you got your law degree?”

  “Yale.”

  “Oh, just Yale.”

  “How about you? Where did you go to school?”

  “The University of Baghdad,” said Lucas, repeating a lame joke he had heard many times but had never made himself, up until now. “Stupid, man. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “You’re blushing.”

  “Fuck, I know.”

  “Army?”

  “Marines.”

  She asked nothing else about the subject and said, “Welcome home.”

  “Good to be here,” said Lucas, taking in the graceful curve of her neck.

  “You don’t look Greek.”

  “I’m adopted. I’ve got a brother, also adopted, who teaches at Cardozo, right there.” He pointed his bottle sloppily in the direction of the school. His head was up. The alcohol had given him a kiss.

  “You ever wonder, you know, about your identity?”

  “No. I know who my parents are.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I was blessed. You?”

  “I’m from California, a suburb north of San Francisco. Grew up in a nice Jewish home. Progressive parents…”

  “Bedroom community.”

  “Sounds idyllic, I know. Out there the folks like to say that they don’t have any racial problems. No black people, no problems.”

  “Must have been a culture shock, moving here.”

  “For my neighbors more than for me. They like me now. I think.”

  “Doesn’t matter if the racial makeup changes. This is a black city, far as I’m concerned. Always will be.”

  “My local friends tell me that it’s mostly out-of-town transplants who buy houses in neighborhoods like these. You all can’t forget what it was. I don’t remember the high crime or the Clifton Terrace apartments when they were HUD, and I sure don’t remember the riots, because I wasn’t even on the planet. I just saw an affordable house on the edge of downtown with middle-class homeowners tending to their own, and I scooped it up. It’s quiet here. I walk up to Thirteenth and Clifton some nights and I sit on the school wall and look down at the city, and I feel like I hit the lottery.”