The Cut

by George Pelecanos

  “Loquacia Hawkins?”

  “I’m Loquacia.”

  “Spero Lucas. I have something for you.”

  “Come in.”

  Lucas stepped into a foyer that opened into a kitchen and family room. Both held nice furniture, built-in appliances, and custom cabinetry. The latest wide-screen technology hung on the family room wall. The house was not new, but its interior spoke of money.

  “Is your son here?” said Lucas.

  “No, he’s out.”

  He handed her his backpack. “Here you go.”

  She took it by its strap. “Should I—”

  “Yes. Count it out so there’s no misunderstanding.”

  He followed her into the kitchen. She extracted a manila envelope from the pack, which contained cash held together by rubber bands. She removed the bands and counted the bills out carefully on the granite counter. When she was done she counted the money again and said, “Fifty-four thousand.”

  “Then we’re good,” said Lucas.

  He and Loquacia shook hands.

  Lucas walked to the front door, stepped outside, and stood on the porch. When he turned to say good-bye she was next to him.

  “I want to thank you,” she said.

  “Just honoring my agreement,” said Lucas.

  “I’m not talking about what you brought me today. I’m speaking on what you did for my son.”

  “I caught a little luck,” said Lucas.

  “You and that jury gave him another chance. I don’t want to say he made a mistake, because what he did, he committed a crime. But he saw how it tore me up, and he knows he did wrong. David learned. He’s not gonna go there again.”

  “They’re kids. They stumble.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “If Tom Petersen’s successful, David will have his father back in his life again.”

  “We don’t need Anwan,” she said, her tone suddenly grim. “Me and David are doing just fine.”

  I’ll say, thought Lucas. He nodded toward the new SUV parked in front of her house.

  “Is that your Range Rover?”

  “It is.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s real nice,” she said.

  Their eyes locked and she held his gaze. Maybe he’d make another comment about her expensive new vehicle, or the clothes she wore. Her furniture, her richly appointed kitchen.

  But Lucas wasn’t about to judge her. If her hands were unclean, then his were, too.

  “Have a good one,” said Loquacia.

  “You do the same.”

  IN THE back of the Mobley Detailing warehouse, past the main office, was the second room, the one Ricardo Holley and Beano Mobley used as a fuck pad and playhouse when they entertained women and girls they brought back from the clubs.

  There were two large beds in the room, taking up much of the space. Sometimes Holley and Mobley liked to do it to women in the same room at the same time, like they imagined fraternity brothers would, even though they were both deep into middle age. On the walls were posters of women in thongs and a couple of framed, infamous photographs of Darlene Ortiz in her white body thong, front view and back, holding a pistol-grip shotgun, from the cover of the Ice-T album Power.

  Like the office, the room had a portable bar. Atop it were several cognacs that Mobley claimed were expensive but were just top-shelf bottles refilled with rail yak. Also in the room were a beat-up stereo system and a couple of comfortable chairs. A round table strewn with porno mags. A filthy bathroom with a toilet and no shower. A mirror with the Jack Daniel’s logo that was frequently taken off the wall and used to track out lines of coke.

  Ernest Lindsay sat in one of the chairs. He was leaning forward and looking down at the linoleum tiled floor, his hands clasped tightly together. The windows had outdoor bars and interior curtains. Through the thin white curtain Ernest could see that it was night.

  Fluorescent light fixtures hung from the drop ceiling, but their tubes were not illuminated. A man had come into the room and turned on a floor lamp with a tasseled shade.

  “Ain’t you gonna eat that food I got you?” said the man. Tall, with puffed-out copper-colored hair and a long thin nose. He looked strange and familiar, but Ernest didn’t know why.

  “No, thank you,” said Ernest. “I’m not hungry.”

  It was Chinese from one of those Plexiglas-wall grease pits, and that garbage gave Ernest diarrhea. Even if he wasn’t so nervous he wouldn’t eat it. His mother had taught him early on not to touch it.

  “You want a drink?” said the man. “I got liquor.”

  Ernest nodded at a dirty plastic cup of tap water he had set on the floor. “I’m fine.”

  The man limped toward Ernest and stood over him. He spoke in a soothing way. “Look here, son. You just sit tight and behave yourself, and you’re gonna be fine. I don’t want nothin from you. A man took something from me, and when he gives it back, you’re gonna be free to go. It’s not on me to decide when you walk out of here. It’s on him. Until that time, you’re my guest, hear?”

  “Yes.”

  After a long silence, the man said, “The color purple.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “The movie?” said Ernest, meeting his eyes directly for the first time.

  “I’m speaking on your shirt. Purple happens to be my favorite color, too.”

  “This is my uniform for school.” Ernest knew the man was trying to act nice, but it was false. There was no kindness in his eyes.

  “Don’t expend no energy with the back door,” said the man. “It takes a key to unlock it.” He went to an interior door that led to another room and put his hand on the knob. “You just relax. Knock if you need somethin. My name’s Ricardo.”

  He walked out, closed the door behind him, and latched it.

  Ricardo.

  Ernest’s stomach turned. He felt like he was going to vomit. The man didn’t care if Ernest knew his name.

  RICARDO HOLLEY walked into his office, opened his desk drawer, and dropped a ring of keys inside. His son Larry, seated before the desk and in uniform, watched him. Ricardo settled into his chair.

  “The boy’s all right,” said Ricardo. “I talked to him in a real nice way. Made him feel comfortable.”

  Larry stared at him, disbelief in his eyes. He found it hard to speak.

  “Just tryin to keep you in the loop, young man.”

  “A little late for that,” said Larry, his voice unsteady.

  “We’re men. We make decisions and we act on ’em. We don’t need to form no committees.”

  “You might have spoken to me first before you went and did something like this. You and your low-ass crew.”

  “I don’t need permission from you to do any goddamn thing. You perform a service for us and you’re well paid. But you’re not my partner. I told you that before. I guess I need to make it clear again.”

  “You,” said Larry.

  Ricardo got up and fixed himself a brown liquor drink, no mixer, no ice. He brought it back to his desk and sat in his chair.

  “Now, let’s talk about this rational,” said Ricardo. “I’m gonna call Lucas. Tell him that he needs to bring me the money he stole in exchange for the Lindsay boy. When he comes, we’ll take him out.”

  “What about the boy?”

  “What do you think? He saw you, Larry, in uniform, taking that package and puttin it into the trunk of an MPD vehicle. It’s you who brought this on him.”

  “This isn’t a marijuana transaction, or receiving stolen property. It’s even bigger than moving guns. This here is a capital crime.”

  “It’s not any kind of crime if no one finds out. We’ll do the both of ’em right here and bury ’em in pieces out in the woods somewhere. You don’t even have to get your hands dirty, Larry. Bernard will take care of it. He wants to.”

  “I’m out.”

  “Uh-uh.” Ricardo wagged a finger at his son theatrically. “That’
s not an option. Besides, what are you gonna do? Go to IAB and make a confession? You wouldn’t just lose your job. You’d go to prison, boy. You know you ain’t built for it.”

  Larry stood up abruptly. His fists were clenched. Tears had come to his eyes. He hated himself for it, but he couldn’t control his emotions.

  Ricardo smiled. “Look at you. You about to cry.”

  “Least I feel something.”

  “I can’t even believe you’re my blood.”

  “I wish to God I wasn’t,” said Larry. “I hate you, man.”

  “So?”

  Ricardo laughed. Larry turned and walked from the room.

  TWENTY-­TWO

  SPERO LUCAS woke up the next morning without any plans. It was unusual and discomforting for him to have no immediate goals. The euphoria of the money and the satisfaction of having completed his task had worn off, leaving him with an unfamiliar feeling of having been tainted by the job. He’d done this kind of work for a while now, for Petersen and on his own, and his methods had often been questionable and occasionally beyond the law. But he’d never experienced this kind of foul aftertaste. There was dirt in his mouth and he couldn’t spit it out.

  It wasn’t the murder of Nance; despite the fact that he could have spared his life, Lucas had convinced himself that he’d acted in self-defense. The retrieval of marijuana money didn’t bother him on the moral level, either. He believed that marijuana prohibition was hypocrisy. He saw nothing wrong with it. He smoked weed himself.

  But the violent deaths of Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis were harder to bear. It wasn’t that he felt personally responsible. They had lied to him, but they were decent young men who had not fully understood the consequences of the game. What touched Lucas like a cold finger on his shoulder was that he had done nothing about their murders. And there was his professional curiosity, too. The question still nagged at him: why had they been killed?

  Lucas walked to the living room window and looked up at the sky. It was a glorious day.

  He changed into swim trunks, a T-shirt, and waterproof sandals, and packed a lunch. He went to the back porch, lifted his kayak off the ceiling hooks where it hung, carried it through his apartment with his hand gripping the cockpit lip, and walked it carefully downstairs and out to the street. There he strapped it to the crossbars of the Jeep’s roof, distributing its weight on foam pads. He loaded his gear into the rear deck, and drove out of the city and into Maryland via River Road.

  A half hour later, twelve miles north of the Beltway, he pulled into Riley’s Lock, high on the Potomac above Great Falls, along the C&O Canal. He unloaded his kayak and other items from the back of the Jeep. He drove up a rise and parked in a lot, removed his T-shirt, then returned on foot, where he locked together the two pieces of his paddle, fitted his life vest under the deck rigging, pulled free the stern hatch, placed his soft cooler in the bulkhead, and dropped a large container of water behind the cockpit’s seat. He dragged the kayak to the public boat ramp, put it partially in the water, steadied himself on both sides of the cockpit lip, and lowered himself into the seat. He adjusted the slide locks of the foot braces so that his legs were slightly bent and his thighs fit firmly against the foam pads.

  He shimmied into Seneca Creek and slowly paddled west. He passed under one of the two remaining arches of the Seneca Aqueduct and entered the Potomac River.

  The river was wide here, with a relatively smooth surface due to a nearby dam. It was a weekday, which meant there was very little water traffic, save a John-boater and his yellow Lab, and a sole kayaker going south. He had the river virtually to himself. A pair of hawks circled above the trees. To his right was the state of Maryland; the left bank was the commonwealth of Virginia. He began to paddle upstream, against the current and into the wind.

  He used a high-angle paddle technique for a faster, more powerful stroke. He pushed rather than pulled. When he found his rhythm he began to move at a steady clip. The air in the bulkheads maintained ballast; he was on the river’s surface and also a part of it. He began to sweat. He could feel his whole body—shoulders, abs, and legs—working. His goal was an island a mile or so upriver.

  The sky held brushstroke clouds and full sun. The sun’s rays lightened the water and illuminated its depths. He saw many smallmouth bass, brown with dark bands, the females larger than the males. His hands grew slightly cramped and he pushed on. As he neared the island he cruised into the shallows, where catfish lurked in the undulating river grass and in the crevices between boulders. He made a final push and lifted his paddle and let himself glide into the bank of the island. He got out of the cockpit and pulled the kayak up on shore.

  Lucas drank water until it dripped down his chest. He retrieved the soft cooler, in which he had stored an ice pack, a turkey-and-provolone with sliced pepperoncinis, an apple, and a bottle of Stella, out of the stern’s bulkhead. He sat on a log facing the Virginia shoreline and ate his lunch. A red-winged blackbird flew across his sight line, and a juvenile osprey lifted off the water’s surface and headed toward shore. Ants tickled his feet, and a ruby-throated hummingbird fed from the flowers of the island’s trumpet vine. He ate his sandwich and apple. He swigged from the green bottle, drinking deeply in the midday sun, and marveled at the beauty of the living things around him. And he thought: my father is here, too.

  HE STRAPPED his kayak back atop the Jeep, unlocked his glove box, retrieved his iPhone, and scanned it for messages. There were none.

  He checked the kayak to make certain it was secure and stood shirtless behind his vehicle, its tailgate up, drinking the remainder of his water. His phone rang. The call-in number on display was unfamiliar. He slid the answer bar from the left to the right.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Spero Lucas. My man.”

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  “It’s Rooster.” Ricardo Holley chuckled. “You know, ain’t nobody called me that for twenty years. And even then, no one had the guts to say it to my face. I’m curious, though: who told you to use that name?”

  Lucas did not reply.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” said Holley jovially. “Here’s why I called: you know that young man Ernest Lindsay? Lives on Twelfth? Well, we got him.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve got him?”

  “We took that motherfucker off the street. Gonna hold on to him until you and me settle up.”

  “Settle up how?”

  “Bring us the money you stole out my house. I’ll give you the boy. I believe you took ninety thousand dollars. That sound right?”

  “It’s thirty-six now.”

  “Then bring thirty-six.”

  “You just gonna accept that?”

  “Fuck do I care? I can get more money. Anyway, this really ain’t about money anymore.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Got that right. My, you do talk tough. Big tough marine. Breakin up my bedroom into pieces, leaving lipstick messages on mirrors like some fifteen-dollar trick. But what you gonna do when you come up against men, for real?”

  “Nothing,” said Lucas. “This’ll be a simple one-for-one. The money for Ernest. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

  “Come on, then. You know where we’re at. You been here, after all.”

  “I have.”

  “Hurry up. Ernestine’s lookin a little frail. He hasn’t touched a bit of food. I’m afraid he’s gonna starve.”

  “I’ll call you when I’m on the way,” said Lucas, struggling to steady his voice.

  “You done captured my number now.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

  “We’ll be waitin on you, Spero. And make sure it’s you alone. You bring someone with you, I’ll spill that little nigger’s brains when you walk through the door.”

  Lucas ended the call. He closed the tailgate, got into the Jeep, and dropped his phone on the passenger seat. He gripped the wheel. When the tightness in his chest went away and his breathing settled, he tur
ned the Cherokee’s ignition and drove back toward D.C.

  LUCAS PARKED illegally on Clifton Street, got out of his Jeep, and jogged down 12th to the Lindsay residence, where he took the steps up to the porch. He knocked on the door, rang the bell, and fist-knocked so hard the frame shook. He looked in the living room window and saw no signs of life. Clearly Ernest’s mother and her boyfriend were not home.

  He moved quickly to the porch of Lisa Weitzman’s row home. He was fairly certain she would be at work, but he knocked on her door anyway and got no response.

  Spero went back to his vehicle and phoned his brother. Leo picked up on the third ring.

  “What’s goin on, Spero?”

  “Can you talk?”

  “I’m in the teachers’ lounge.”

  “Come outside, man. I’m on Clifton. ”

  “Now?”

  “I need to see you, Leo.”

  Leo heard the desperation in Spero’s voice. “Is Mom all right?”

  “Far as I know, she’s fine.”

  “Gimme a minute.”

  It didn’t take much more than that for Leo to emerge from the school, neatly dressed, his ID badge hanging out over his chest. He scanned Spero, standing by his Jeep in a no-parking zone, the kayak lashed atop it. Normally he would have said something smart, called him Jeremiah Johnson or “pilgrim,” but he saw the muscles bunched on Spero’s jawline.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Did Ernest Lindsay come to school today?”

  “Matter of fact, he wasn’t in class. That’s unusual for him. Why?”

  “Could he be somewhere with his mom?”

  “He told me that his mother and her boyfriend went on some kind of vacation. He didn’t mention that he was going with them. I asked you, why?”

  Spero stared down at the asphalt. “There’s a problem.”

  “Tell me what’s happening,” said Leo, trying to get his brother to meet his eyes. “Look at me, man.”

  “I messed up,” said Spero. “Ernest helped me out with something and now I think he’s in trouble.”

  “You mean you pulled him into something. And you mean it’s serious. Don’t call it trouble when it’s more than that.”