The Martini Shot

by George Pelecanos

  I went by my mother’s room, careful to step soft. She was in there, in bed by now, watching but not watching television on her thirteen-inch color, letting it keep her company, keeping the sound down low so she could hear my father if he called out to her from the first floor.

  Down in the living room, the television still played loud, a black-and-white film of the Liston-Clay fight, which my father had spoke of often. He was missing the fight now. His chin was resting on his chest, and his useless hand was kinda curled up like a claw in his lap. The light from the television grayed his face. His eyelids weren’t shut all the way, and the whites showed. Aside from his chest, which was moving some, he looked like he was dead.

  Time will just fuck you up.

  I can remember this one evening with my father, back around ’74. He had been home from the war for a while and was working for the Government Printing Office at the time. We were over there on the baseball field, on Princeton, near Park View Elementary. I musta been around six or seven. My father’s shadow was long and straight, and the sun was throwing a warm gold color on the green of the field. He was still in his work clothes, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His natural was full and his chest filled the fabric of his shirt. He was tossing me this small football, one of them K2s he had bought me, and telling me to run toward him after I caught it, to see if I could break his tackle. He wasn’t gonna tackle me for real; he just wanted me to get a feel for the game. But I wouldn’t run to him. I guess I didn’t want to get hurt, was what it was. He got aggravated with me eventually, lost his patience and said it was time to get on home. I believe he quit on me that day. At least, that’s the way it seems to me now.

  I wanted to go over to his wheelchair, not hug him or nothing that dramatic, but maybe give him a pat on his shoulder. But if he woke up he would ask me what was wrong, why was I touching him, all that. So I didn’t go near him. I had to meet with Leticia about this thing we was doing, anyway. I stepped light on the clear plastic runner my mother had on the carpet and closed the door quiet on my way out the house.

  On the way to Leticia’s, I cupped a match against the snow and fired up the joint. I drew on it deep and held it in my lungs. I hit it regular as I walked south.

  My head was beginning to smile as I neared the house Leticia stayed in, over on Otis Place. I wet my fingers in the snow and squeezed the ember of the joint to put it out. I wanted to save some for Le-tee. We were gonna celebrate.

  The girl, Flora, had witnessed the murder of Rico Jennings. I knew this because we, Leticia and me that is, had found her and made her tell what she knew. Well, Leticia had. She can be a scary woman when she wants to be. She broke hard on Flora, got up in her face and bumped her in an alley. Flora cried and talked. She had been out walking with Rico that night, back up on Otis, round the elementary, when this boy, Marquise Roberts, rolled up on them in a black Caprice. Marquise and his squad got out the car and surrounded Rico, shoved him some and shit like that. Flora said it seemed like that was all they was gonna do. Then Marquise drew an automatic and put three in Rico, one while Rico was on his feet and two more while Marquise was standing over him. Flora said Marquise was smiling as he pulled the trigger.

  “Ain’t no doubt now, is it,” said Marquise, turning to Flora. “You mine.”

  Marquise and them got back in their car and rode off, and Flora ran home. Rico was dead, she explained. Wouldn’t do him no good if she stayed at the scene.

  Flora said that she would never talk to the police. Leticia told her she’d never have to, that as Rico’s aunt, she just needed to know.

  Now we had a killer and a wit. I could have gone right to Detective Barnes, but I knew about that anonymous tip line in the District, the Crime Solvers thing. We decided that Leticia would call and get that number assigned to her, the way they do, and she would eventually collect the one thousand dollar reward, which we’d split. Flora would go into witness security, where they’d move her to Far Northeast or something like that. So she wouldn’t get hurt or be too far from her family, and Leticia and me would get five hundred each. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d ever had in my pocket at one time. More important to me was that someday, when Marquise was put away and his boys fell, like they always do, I could go to my mother and father and tell them that I, Verdon Coates, had solved a homicide. And it would be worth the wait, just to see the look of pride on my father’s face.

  I got to the row house on Otis where Leticia stayed at. It was on the 600 block, those low-slung old places they got painted gray. She lived on the first floor.

  Inside the common hallway, I came to her door. I knocked and took off my knit cap and shook the snow off it, waiting for her to come. The door opened, but only a crack. It stopped as the chain of the slide bolt went taut. Leticia looked at me over the chain. I could see dirt tracks on the part of her face that showed, from where she’d been crying. She was a hard-looking woman, always had been, even when she was young. I’d never seen her so shook.

  “Ain’t you gonna let me in?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong with you, girl?”

  “I don’t want to see you and you ain’t comin in.”

  “I got some nice smoke, Leticia.”

  “Leave outta here, Verdon.”

  I listened to the bass of a rap thing, coming from another apartment. Behind it, a woman and a man were having an argument.

  “What happened?” I said. “Why you been cryin?”

  “Marquise came,” said Leticia. “Marquise made me cry.”

  My stomach dropped some. I tried not to let it show on my face.

  “That’s right,” said Leticia. “Flora musta told him about our conversation. Wasn’t hard for him to find Rico’s aunt.”

  “He threaten you?”

  “He never did, direct. Matter of fact, that boy was smilin the whole time he spoke to me.” Leticia’s lip trembled. “We came to an understandin, Verdon.”

  “What he say?”

  “He said that Flora was mistaken. That she wasn’t there the night Rico was killed, and she would swear to it in court. And that if I thought different, I was mistaken, too.”

  “You sayin that you’re mistaken, Leticia?”

  “That’s right. I been mistaken about this whole thing.”

  “Leticia—”

  “I ain’t tryin to get myself killed for five hundred dollars, Verdon.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Then you better go somewhere for a while.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Leticia said nothing.

  “You give me up, Leticia?”

  Leticia cut her eyes away from mine. “Flora,” she said, almost a whisper. “She told him ’bout some skinny, older-lookin dude who was standin in the alley the day I took her for bad.”

  “You gave me up? ”

  Leticia shook her head slowly and pushed the door shut. It closed with a soft click.

  I didn’t pound on the door or nothin like that. I stood there stupidly for some time, listening to the rumble of the bass and the argument still going between the woman and man. Then I walked out the building.

  The snow was coming down heavy. I couldn’t go home, so I walked toward the Avenue instead.

  I had finished the rest of my vodka and dropped the bottle to the curb by the time I got down to Georgia. A Third District cruiser was parked on the corner, with two officers inside it, drinking coffee from paper cups. It was late, and with the snow and the cold there wasn’t too many people out. The Spring Laundromat, used to be a Roy Rogers or sumshit like it, was packed with men and women, just standing around, getting out of the weather. I could see their outlines behind that nicotine-stained glass, most of them barely moving under those dim lights.

  This time of night, many of the shops had closed. I was hungry, but Morgan’s Seafood was shut down, and Hunger Stopper, had those good fish sandwiches, was dark inside. What I needed was a drink of liquor, but Giant had locked its
doors. I could have gone to the titty bar between Newton and Otis, but I had been roughed up in there too many times.

  I crossed over to the west side of Georgia and walked south. I passed a midget in a green suede coat who stood where he always did, under the awning of the Dollar General. I had worked there for a couple of days, stocking shit on shelves.

  The businesses along here were like a roll call of my personal failures. The Murray’s meat and produce, the car wash, the Checks Cashed joint, they had given me a chance. In all these places, I had lasted just a short while.

  I neared the GA market, down by Irving. A couple of young men came toward me, buried inside the hoods of their North Face coats, hard of face, then smiling as they got a look at me.

  “Hey, slim,” said one of the young men. “Where you get that vicious coat at? Baby Gap?” Him and his friend laughed.

  I didn’t say nothing back. I got this South Pole coat I bought off a dude, didn’t want it no more. I wasn’t about to rock a North Face. Boys put a gun in your grill for those coats down here.

  I walked on.

  The market was crowded inside. I stepped around some dudes and saw a man I knew, Robert Taylor, back by where they keep the wine. He was lifting a bottle of it off the shelf. He was in the middle of his thirties, but he looked fifty-five.

  “Robo,” I said.

  “Verdon.”

  We did a shoulder-to-shoulder thing and patted backs. I had been knowing him since grade school. Like me, he had seen better days. He looked kinda under it now. He held up a bottle of fortified, turned it so I could see the label, like them waiters do in high-class restaurants.

  “I sure could use a taste,” said Robert. “Only, I’m a little light this evening.”

  “I got you, Robo.”

  “Look, I’ll hit you back on payday.”

  “We’re good.”

  I picked up a bottle of Night Train for myself and moved toward the front of the market. Robert grabbed the sleeve of my coat and held it tight. His eyes, most time full of play, were serious.

  “Verdon.”

  “What?”

  “I been here a couple of hours, staying dry and shit. Lotta activity in here tonight. You just standin around, you be hearin things.”

  “Say what you heard.”

  “Some boys was in here earlier, lookin for you.”

  I felt that thing in my stomach.

  “Three young men,” said Robert. “One of ’em had them silver things on his teeth. They was describin you, your build and shit, and that hat you always be wearin.”

  He meant my knit cap, with the Bullets logo, had the two hands for the double l ’s, going up for the rebound. I had been wearing it all winter long. I had been wearing it the day we talked to Flora in the alley.

  “Anyone tell them who I was?”

  Robert nodded sadly. “I can’t lie. Some Bama did say your name.”

  “Shit.”

  “I ain’t say nothin to those boys, Verdon.”

  “C’mon, man. Let’s get outta here.”

  We went up the counter. I used the damp twenty Barnes had handed me to pay for the two bottles of wine and a fresh pack of cigarettes. While the squarehead behind the Plexiglas was bagging my shit and making my change, I picked up a scratched-out lottery ticket and pencil off the scarred counter, turned the ticket over, and wrote around the blank edges. What I wrote was: Marquise Roberts killed Rico Jennings. And: Flora Lewis was there.

  I slipped the ticket into the pocket of my jeans and got my change. Me and Robert Taylor walked out the shop.

  Out on the snow-covered sidewalk I handed Robert his bottle of fortified. I knew he’d be heading west into Columbia Heights, where he stays with an ugly-looking woman and her kids.

  “Thank you, Verdon.”

  “Ain’t no thing.”

  “What you think? Skins gonna do it next year?”

  “They got Coach Gibbs. They get a couple receivers with hands, they gonna be all right.”

  “No doubt.” Robert lifted his chin. “You be safe, hear?”

  He went on his way. I crossed Georgia Avenue, quickstepping out the way of a Ford that was fishtailing in the street. I thought about getting rid of my Bullets cap, in case Marquise and them came up on me, but I was fond of it, and I could not let it go.

  I unscrewed the top off the Night Train as I went along, taking a deep pull and feeling it warm my chest. Heading up Otis, I saw ragged silver dollars drifting down through the light of the streetlamps. The snow capped the roofs of parked cars and it had gathered on the branches of the trees. No one was out. I stopped to light the rest of my joint. I got it going and hit it as I walked up the hill.

  I planned to go home in a while, through the alley door, when I thought it was safe. But for now, I needed to work on my head. Let my high come like a friend and tell me what to do.

  I stood on the east side of Park Place, my hand on the fence bordering the Soldiers’ Home, staring into the dark. I had smoked all my reefer and drunk my wine. It was quiet, nothing but the hiss of snow. And “Get Up Everybody,” that old Salt-N-Pepa joint, playing in my head. Sondra liked that one. She’d dance to it, with my headphones on, over by that lake they got. With the geese running around it, in the summertime.

  “Sondra,” I whispered. And then I chuckled some, and said, “I am high.”

  I turned and walked back to the road, tripping a little as I stepped off the curb. As I got onto Quebec, I saw a car coming down Park Place, sliding a little, rolling too fast. It was a dark color, and it had them Chevy headlights with the rectangle fog lamps on the sides. I patted my pockets, knowing all the while that I didn’t have my cell.

  I ducked into the alley off Quebec. I looked up at that rear porch with the bicycle tire leaning up on it, where that boy stayed. I saw a light behind the porch door’s window. I scooped up snow, packed a ball of it tight, and threw it up at that window. I waited. The boy parted the curtains and put his face up on the glass, his hands cupped around his eyes so he could see.

  “Little man!” I yelled, standing by the porch. “Help me out!”

  He cold-eyed me and stepped back. I knew he recognized me. But I guess he had seen me go toward the police unmarked, and he had made me for a snitch. In his young mind, it was the worst thing a man could be. Behind the window all went dark. As it did, headlights swept the alley, and a car came in with the light. The car was black, and it was a Caprice.

  I turned and bucked.

  I ran my ass off down that alley, my old Timbs struggling for purchase in the snow. As I ran, I pulled on trashcans, knocking them over so they would block the path of the Caprice. I didn’t look back. I heard the boys in the car, yelling at me and shit, and I heard them curse as they had to slow down. Soon I was out of the alley, on Princeton Place, running free.

  I went down Princeton, cut right on Warder, hung another right on Otis. There was an alley down there, back behind the ball field, shaped like a T. It would be hard for them to navigate back in there. They couldn’t surprise me or nothing like that.

  I walked into the alley. Straight off, a couple of dogs began to bark. Folks kept ’em, shepherd mixes and rottweilers with heads big as cattle, for security. Most of them was inside, on account of the weather, but not all. There were some who stayed out all the time, and they were loud. Once they got going, they would bark themselves crazy. They were letting Marquise know where I was.

  I saw the Caprice drive real slow down Otis, its headlights off, and I felt my ears grow hot. I got down in a crouch, pressed myself against a chain-link fence behind someone’s row house. My stomach flipped all the way, and I had one of them throw-up burps. Stuff came up, and I swallowed it down.

  I didn’t care if it was safe or not; I needed to get my ass home. Couldn’t nobody hurt me there. In my bed, the same bed where I always slept, near my brother, James. With my mother and father down the hall.

  I listened to a boy calling out my name. Then another boy, from somewhere else,
did the same. I could hear the laughter in their voices. I shivered some and bit down on my lip.

  Use the alphabet, you get lost. That’s what my father told me when I was a kid. Otis, Princeton, Quebec…I was three streets away.

  I turned at the T of the alley and walked down the slope. The dogs were out of their minds, growling and barking, and I went past them and kept my eyes straight ahead. At the bottom of the alley, I saw a boy in a thick coat, hoodie up. He was waiting on me.

  I turned around and ran back from where I came. Even with the sounds of the dogs, I could hear myself panting, trying to get my breath. I rounded the T and made it back to Otis, where I cut and headed for the baseball field. I could cross that and be on Princeton. When I got there, I’d be one block closer to my home.

  I stepped up onto the field. I walked regular, tryin to calm myself down. I didn’t hear a car or anything else. Just the snow crunching beneath my feet.

  And then a young man stepped up onto the edge of the field. He wore a bulky coat without a cap or a hood. His hand was inside the coat, and his smile was not the smile of a friend. There were silver caps on his front teeth.

  I turned my back on him. Pee ran hot down my thigh. My knees were trembling, but I made my legs move.

  The night flashed. I felt a sting, like a bee sting, high on my back.

  I stumbled but kept my feet. I looked down at my blood, dotted in the snow. I walked a couple of steps and closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, the field was green. It was covered in gold, like it gets around here in summer, round early evening. A Gamble and Huff thing was coming from the open windows of a car. My father stood before me, his natural full, his chest filling the fabric of his shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His arms were outstretched.

  I wasn’t afraid or sorry. I’d done right. I had the lottery ticket in my pocket. Detective Barnes, or someone like him, would find it in the morning. When they found me.