The Cut

by George Pelecanos

  Holley got out of his vehicle, went up to his front door, turned the key, and stepped inside his house. Right away he sensed that something was off. He could smell the foreign perspiration in the room. The light was different than it should have been, straight back in the kitchen, for this time of day. He had lived here many years and he knew.

  He moved quickly to the kitchen and saw that the back door was open and listing, its frame splintered. He looked out into the backyard. There was no one there, no cars in the alley. He turned and limped back through the house toward his bedroom, hearing his own heavy breathing, and then he was in the ruin of his bedroom and he knew he’d been violated and tossed.

  For a moment he stood frozen, staring at the mess. His dresser drawers and clothing heaped on the floor, his mattress sliced both ways, his jewelry in various places about the room. That nice painting of the full-figured freak he’d bought at that flea market on Morrison, a hole punched through its center, its frame busted up.

  He felt his hands shaking. He moved to the closet, empty of clothing. He knew before he saw the piece of plywood lying haphazardly on top of his best pairs of shoes. Knew before he saw the empty space where the Nike boxes had been.

  He felt dizzy. He stumbled back and turned and made his way into the bathroom. He needed to run some water on his face. He looked at the mirror and saw the message, in big bright letters, written in red lipstick across the glass.

  You Lose, Rooster

  If the neighbors had been home, they would have heard Ricardo Holley’s howl.

  NINETEEN

  LUCAS COUNTED the cash when he got back to his apartment. There was ninety thousand dollars, in various denominations, stacked in the boxes. He was on a high since he’d burgled Ricardo Holley’s house and left the childish message on the man’s mirror. And then, staring at the money, he grew puzzled.

  Anwan Hawkins had told him that the initial theft of the first package had occurred several weeks before they’d first met. The second package, taken off Lisa Weitzman’s porch, had disappeared a week before they met. Another full week had elapsed before Lucas began work on the case, due to some work he had previously committed to Tom Petersen. A third package was stolen in Northeast the day Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis had been murdered. Three packages, worth roughly one hundred and thirty thousand dollars each on the retail level, which equaled close to four hundred thousand dollars. Even allowing for the six weeks that had elapsed, even allowing for the cutting up of the money, for the payoff to Holley’s crew and to Tavon and Edwin, if they were paid at all, it was highly unlikely that there would only be twenty percent of the take left. Ricardo Holley did not seem to be the type to allow his minions to spend frivolously and potentially draw unneeded attention. The man himself drove a car that was twenty years old. Where had all that money gone?

  It was curious, but it was less pressing than the problem at hand. He’d completed the task for which he’d been hired, which technically meant that he was finished. But Lucas knew that for Holley and his men, it couldn’t be over. They’d come at him now.

  Lucas counted out his forty percent, which came to thirty-six thousand dollars, then took a hundred-dollar bill from the stack and put it in his pocket. He stashed the rest of the thirty-six grand in one of the Nike shoe boxes he had taken from Holley’s house. He placed the remaining fifty-four thousand dollars, which would go to Anwan Hawkins’s ex-wife, in another shoe box. He tore up the third shoe box and threw it away. He carried the other boxes back to his bedroom and set them down. He went to his closet, where his shoes sat on a small throw rug, and he pulled the throw rug, carrying the shoes with it, completely out of the closet.

  Beneath the rug was a cutout that Lucas had made in the floor. He had done a clean job of it, and Miss Lee would most likely never know. He pulled on a hinged ring he had set in a grooved-out section of the wood, and the piece came free. Beneath the cutout, in a solid-bottom frame, also constructed by Lucas, sat a steel Craftsman toolbox that had belonged to his father. Lucas placed the two shoe boxes on top of each other beside the toolbox. He replaced the wood piece, fitted it properly, put the rug and his shoes back over the cutout, and closed his closet door.

  He locked his apartment, took the stairs down to his separate entrance, and went outside to try and find one of his neighbors, a young man named Nick Simmons. Simmons was on the street, standing by his Caddy. The car was parked in front of Nick’s father’s house, a wood-shingled colonial with a large front porch. Nick was working under the hood, rag in hand.

  “Hey, Nick.”

  “Spero.”

  Nick Simmons stood to his full height. He was a tall man of twenty, had hang-time braids, was physically imposing but not aggressive, and wore a mustache, long sideburns, and some kind of business on his chin.

  “What you up to?” said Lucas.

  “Just checkin the fluids,” said Nick. “Trying to beat those idiot lights.”

  He owned a rare and sharp 1990 baby-blue-over-dark-blue Eldorado coupe with gold spoke Vogue wheels. His father, Sam Simmons, who worked for the US Postal Service, had gone in on half of it and loved it as much as his son did. Nick’s mother was deceased. The father had kept him in line and made him stay in school. He was in his second year at Howard. He was always broke.

  “You about to find some work this summer?” said Lucas.

  “I’m lookin.”

  “It helps to be clean shaven on job interviews.”

  “Thanks, Dad. You know, the Bible says that a man shouldn’t round the corners of his beard… or somethin like that.”

  “The Rastafarian Bible?”

  “Leviticus,” said Nick with a shy smile.

  “Look, you need some pocket money, right?”

  “Always.”

  “You have plans tonight?”

  “I can’t go anywhere without coin.”

  Lucas produced the hundred-dollar bill and held it out to Nick. Nick did not reach for it.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “I’m taking a young lady to dinner this evening,” said Lucas. “While I’m out, I’d like you to sit on your porch and keep an eye on Miss Lee’s house. If anyone comes around who you think looks suspicious, sits in their car too long, takes photographs, anything like that, I want you to call me. I’ll give you my number. I don’t want you to do anything but call, hear? Don’t engage anyone in conversation or initiate any kind of conflict.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “One other thing. If Miss Lee is outside of her house, and any suspicious type tries to talk to her or bother her at all, I want you to call the police. Don’t even hesitate.”

  “You expecting something like that to happen?”

  “I’m being cautious.”

  Nick took the hundred. “You got it.”

  “That’s for tonight. I might ask you to do this again going forward, same pay. Until the situation changes.”

  “Sounds like easy money to me.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Lucas shook his hand. “Thanks.”

  “Good looks, man.”

  Lucas went back to his place, got out of his dirty work clothes, and ran a shower. He and Constance had a date.

  THEY WERE in the original dining room of the recently expanded Mourayo, a Greek restaurant on the west side of Connecticut Avenue, above Dupont Circle. Lucas and Constance sat at a deuce by the opened front windows. The oppressive humidity of deep summer had not yet arrived, and a breeze came off the block. The sidewalks were heavy with foot traffic in this upscale neighborhood of retail, restaurants, and bars on the Avenue, old luxury row homes of brick and stone on the side streets. A mix of straight and gay, business suits and freaks. It had always been lively and offbeat here at night.

  The dining room was airy, with warm wood trim, white walls, and hardwood floors. The busboys wore sailor shirts and fisherman caps. Lucas was wearing a fitted Boss summer shirt with vertical blue and white stripes.

  “You blend in with that shirt,” said Co
nstance. “It looks like the Greek flag.”

  “I took a risk,” said Lucas. “And as for you…”

  “Please.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  They had started with marinated anchovies, grilled octopus with a fava bean puree, sesame encrusted haloumi cheese with grapes, and a salad voskou, heavy on tomatoes, feta, peppers, and red onions. They were sharing a bottle of Boutari red, slightly chilled. The restaurant’s owner came by and poured a few inches of wine into their glasses.

  “Everything all right, Spero?”

  “Poli orayo,” said Lucas.

  “Kali oraxi,” said Natalie before moving on to another table.

  “This is nice,” said Constance after Natalie had gone away.

  “Wait’ll you taste the fish.”

  A short while later, the waiter brought Constance a whole branzino baked in salt and filleted it tableside. Lucas was having soutzoukakia, meatballs stewed in tomato sauce and served over rice.

  “God,” said Constance after taking a bite, “I’m glad I made that phone call for you.”

  “I am, too.”

  “It must have panned out for you.”

  “It did.”

  “You’re in that mode tonight. It’s like you hit the number or something.”

  “A ship came in,” said Lucas.

  They ate their meal. She talked about her initial intent to pursue a graduate degree in education and her decision to go to law school instead. She told him he would make a good high school coach, and he said it was too late for that.

  “Tom told me your brother’s a teacher,” said Constance.

  “Yeah, Leo’s over at Cardozo,” said Lucas. “He’s doing good work.”

  “You’ve got other siblings, right?”

  “Allegedly. My sister’s an attorney in California. We don’t hear from her much. Got a brother named Dimitrius I haven’t seen in years. He’s in jail somewhere for all I know.”

  “Your family sounds fractured.”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Is it—”

  “Because the kids were adopted?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Irene wasn’t adopted. My mom had a rough pregnancy with her and was advised not to have any more kids. So my folks built the family another way. I don’t know what Irene’s malfunction was. She was always unhappy. Dimitrius, I look at him basically as being defective. Those two were older than me and Leo, and when they left home it all got better.”

  “The pressure was off. I had an older sister who put my parents through the wringer. When she went off to college, it was like the clouds broke over our house. Everyone was relieved.”

  “You’d like my mom,” said Lucas, softening. “And my father was…”

  Constance set her fork down on the plate. “I know you miss him.”

  He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers. “You about ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Lucas paid for the meal in cash.

  AT NIGHT, most of the Edmonston commercial district was church quiet. Back in the corner of the small street that dead-ended at the elevated railroad tracks, the lot of Mobley Detailing was lit by a single floodlight centered over its bay doors. The fenced gate to the driveway entrance was closed and locked.

  Inside the building, parked in the bays, were Beano Mobley’s DTS, Ricardo Holley’s Mark V, and a gray Ford Expedition that Bernard White was renting. The Tahoe that he and Earl Nance had driven, registered in Nance’s name, had been impounded on Georgia Avenue after Nance’s murder. White had been questioned by homicide detectives at the car dealership service department where he and Nance worked. The detectives were apparently satisfied with his answers, as they had not returned.

  Further inside, in the main office, Ricardo Holley sat behind his desk, wearing the same purple shirt and triple-pleat black slacks he had put on that morning. The clothing and Holley stank of perspiration.

  Mobley and White were also in the room. Mobley was perched on the edge of Holley’s desk, a stub of a dead cigar between his fingers. White was on the couch, depressing it. All of them smelled of alcohol. They had been at the hard liquor for a couple of hours. They had drinks in their hands now.

  “The man must have known I’d be gone,” said Holley.

  “Someone followed you more than one time,” said Mobley. “They knew your routine.”

  “So there had to be two of them,” said White. “One to keep an eye on you and one to toss your house.”

  It came to Holley then that the short muscled-up redneck who’d backed into his Lincoln at the stoplight might have been both the tail and the decoy. He had a soldier’s haircut. He could have been in on it with Lucas. But Holley couldn’t remember much about the dude except that he drove a Ford truck. This inability to recall the details frustrated him. He shouldn’t have drunk so much so fast. He couldn’t seem to focus. He noticed that his glass was empty and he got up out of his chair and limped across the room to the cart. He poured four fingers of off-brand scotch out of the Johnnie Walker black bottle. He inspected the level in his glass and poured some more.

  “We sure it was Lucas?” said Mobley.

  “Goddamn right I’m sure,” said Holley, his face twisted. “Who else it’s gonna be?”

  “I’m just askin,” said Mobley, who seemed to grow calmer and more reasonable the more he drank.

  Holley went back to his chair and settled in.

  “I know you’re angry,” said Mobley.

  “Shit. He trashed the bedroom where I sleep. He busted up this real nice painting I had, too. I feel like I was… What’s that word, Bernard?”

  “Violated,” said Bernard White helpfully.

  “Yeah, like some pork got pounded up in my ass.”

  “We did try to murder him,” said Mobley.

  “What’s your point?”

  “He came back at us. You can almost understand it. Got his little bit of revenge and got the money he was after, too.” Mobley looked at Holley meaningfully. “And you know we gonna get some of that back eventually.”

  Holley drank scotch and placed the tumbler on the table. “Say what you tryin to say, Beano.”

  “This is over if we decide it’s over,” said Mobley. “Lucas got no cause to bother us no more. If you want to keep going with this weed thing, we can. There’s money to be made, quietly, if we go back to our business and forget about Lucas and what got done.”

  “I can’t forget,” said Holley.

  “Neither can I,” said White.

  “All right, then,” said Mobley. He relit the cigar, got the draw going, and tossed the spent match into a tire ashtray set on the desk. He stood to his full five foot six inches and walked to the corner of the room, where the smoke would not bother Holley or White. “Let’s be smart about this. Take the emotion out of it.”

  “Well?” said Holley.

  “What do we know about this dude?” said Mobley.

  “What do I know?” said Holley. “He was in the military. Served over there in I-raq.”

  “What else?” said Mobley. “We know how to find him, right?”

  “Larry crossed the phone numbers out of Tavon’s cell,” said Holley. “We can call him. We know where he stay at, too.”

  “I’ll do the motherfucker where he lives,” said White.

  “No,” said Mobley. “I said, be smart.”

  “Okay,” said White, his face strained, thinking hard. “If he’s local, he’s got family. Maybe he got a mother or father he cares about. A little sister or sumshit like that.”

  “No again,” said Mobley, growing impatient with White, one step up off a special-bus kid. “You kill a Caucasian in this town, you make the front page. ’Specially a square or a child.”

  “We could take someone in his family,” said White. “I’m sayin, kidnap someone he loves.”

  “That’s worse,” said Mobley. “Then you make Fox News.”

  “Wh
at about that kid on Twelfth?” said Holley. “The one who saw Larry make the exchange? Lucas been talkin to that kid, too. You remember his name, Beano?”

  “I don’t,” said Mobley, too quickly. It was a lie.

  “Ernest somethin,” said Holley, opening his desk drawer. “I got it here somewhere.” His fingers spidered through the papers there.

  “I could scoop him off the street,” said White. “He knows too much anyway.”

  “Then we tell Lucas we got the boy,” said Holley, warming to it. “We tell him we’ll exchange this Ernest for the money. Tell him to bring the money here.”

  “And then?” said Mobley.

  “We down the dude,” said Holley, as if he were explaining it to a child. “Take the boy out, too.”

  “Lucas might try to go hard,” said White.

  “He can try,” said Holley, and he and White smiled.

  Mobley dragged on his cigar. He didn’t like where the conversation had gone.

  “Ernest Lindsay,” said Holley, finding the piece of paper he was looking for.

  “You gonna tell Larry?” said White.

  Holley shook his head. “He don’t need to know just yet.”

  It seemed to Holley that there was a ringing in his head. White got off the couch and fixed himself another drink.

  Holley said to White, “Fetch me some of that, too.”

  THEY CAME back to his place, smoked a little weed, and opened a bottle of Worthy Sophia’s Cuvee, an excellent Napa Valley red from the Axios label that he had been saving for a night like this. Lucas put Augustus Pablo’s King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown on the stereo, lit some candles, and killed the lights. He and Constance made enthusiastic, energetic love on the edge of the bed and atop the sheets, the cascading, rhythmic dub swirling around them, the sound of a hard rain tapping on the roof. When they were done they were exhausted and slick as seals, and they took a long shower together and made it again.