What It Was

by George Pelecanos

  “Yes,” she said, turning her face away suddenly, like an actress in a silent film. “He volunteered to steal it, once I told him about the ring.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I didn’t have to get with him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Cobb said he saw you two lockin lips out back his shop.”

  “Kissin ain’t fuckin.”

  “It can have the same effect.”

  “I’m not above letting a man give me a kiss to get where I need to be.”

  “So you didn’t sleep with him.”

  “Please,” said Maybelline. “Do I look like the kind of woman that Bobby Odum could satisfy?”

  “I don’t blame him for trying. After all, he was a man.”

  “He wasn’t much of one.”

  Strange studied her. “The Rosens did you a solid by hiring you. Didn’t you feel any, you know, remorse?”

  “Not really. Dayna didn’t pay a dime for that ring. That day when she had it on her hand, she said herself that it came down from her grandmother, like an inheritance.”

  “When Dayna and her husband realized it had been stolen, they did what?”

  “They called the police,” said Maybelline with a shrug. “The night Bobby stole it, the Rosens were all out to dinner somewhere, and the house was locked up. If they suspected me as an accomplice, they kept it to themselves. I guess they didn’t want to jam up another young black woman with the law. I swear, sometimes I felt like I could have slapped that woman in the face and she would have apologized to me.”

  Strange recalled his conversation with Dayna Rosen. She’d said that she had told Maybelline they would no longer require her services, using the excuse that progress had been made with Zach and the job was complete. She had never accused Maybelline of anything and had even defended her, in a way, to Strange. Strange felt that the Rosens were decent people, if hugely naive. Maybelline saw their kindness as stupidity.

  “What about the police?” said Strange.

  “Police never even questioned me. You know the MPD don’t do shit for follow-up on those burglaries.”

  The music had come to an end. Maybelline put her bottle down on a glass coffee table and went to her stereo. She took the album off the platter, replaced it in its sleeve, found a 45, and fitted a plastic adaptor into its center space. She dropped the record onto the spindle of the turntable and flipped the play lever located on the side of the platter. Luther Ingram’s new smash, “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right,” came forward. Ordinarily, Strange would have thought, Koko 2111. He would have if he had not been studying Maybelline’s lush figure filling out every inch of her dress.

  “You still buying singles?” said Strange.

  “That’s all they had at the record store,” said Maybelline, and she went back to the sofa and sat on one end of it. She patted the empty portion of the cushion. “Why you sittin so far away?”

  “Am I?”

  “You could have phoned me,” she said. “I know you didn’t come over here to give me a personal update.”

  “How you know why I came over? You got ESP?”

  “Derek, I believe you’re scared.”

  Fightin words, thought Strange. And: Figures that a mathematics teacher would have it all worked out. Everything this woman does is calculation.

  He didn’t even like Maybelline Walker. But he moved to the sofa and sat beside her.

  “That’s better,” she said.

  She reached across him and held his hand.

  “You still gonna find that ring for me?”

  “I take a job,” said Strange, “I see it through.”

  She moved his hand and placed it on her chest. Strange slipped his fingers inside the fabric of her dress and cupped her left tit. He brushed her nipple, pinched it, and felt it swell. She shifted her body into his and they kissed. Her flesh was warm beneath his touch and their tongues danced and he grew hard. Her legs parted and his hand went between them and she was naked there. She moaned as he found her spot and stroked her slick divide.

  “Goddamn,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Come on.”

  As quickly as he had been sprung, Strange lost his desire. He sat back on the couch. The image of Carmen had flashed in his mind, but it wasn’t just his conscience that had thrown cold water on his intent. After all, he’d been unfaithful to Carmen before; because of his nature, he would probably cheat again. But not today.

  Strange slowly got to his feet. He straightened out his shirt and adjusted himself inside the crotch of his bells.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” said Maybelline.

  “You talk too much,” said Strange.

  COCO WATKINS, Red Jones, and Alfonzo Jefferson sat on comfortable furniture around a cable spool table set up in the living room of Jefferson’s bungalow in Burrville. They were drinking beer from clear longnecked bottles and passing around a fat joint of herb. Jefferson had copped an OZ of premium Lumbo with his cut of the money they’d taken off Sylvester Ward. “Walk from Regio’s,” an instrumental from the Shaft soundtrack, was coming from the stereo, and Jefferson was moving his head to its bass, key, and woodwind vamp.

  “This is bad right here,” said Jefferson, his woven hat cocked on his head, his eyes close to bleeding. “You know Isaac’s in town tonight.”

  “We got plans,” said Coco, eyeing Jefferson with annoyance.

  “I know,” said Jefferson, and he smiled with sympathy at Jones. “Donny and Roberta. Sounds like a real house party. You can’t dance to that shit, though. It’s got no backbeat.”

  Jones hit the joint, hit it again, and handed it to Jefferson. When Jones spoke, smoke came with his words. “What’d your woman say, exactly?”

  “Monique? Said Vaughn came by, lookin for my Buick. Registration and title’s got her name on it.”

  “Ward snitched us out to the law. I can’t believe it.”

  “Ain’t no honor out here anymore.” Jefferson inspected the burning herb, wrapped loosely in Top papers, and drew on it deep.

  “Where your deuce at now?” said Jones.

  “Parked in my yard, out back. Can’t nobody see it from the street.”

  “If they walked into the alley they could.”

  Jefferson put his hand on the worn .38 that lay on the cable spool table. “Official Police” was stamped on its barrel, and he liked that. He touched its grip, wrapped in black electrical tape. “If someone walks into that alley and they look at my shit? It’s on. At that point, don’t nothin matter, anyway.”

  “How close you think Hound Dog is?”

  Jefferson shrugged. “Man said our names to Monique.”

  “Dude stays on it,” said Jones with admiration. He was not concerned. In fact, his blood ticked pleasantly. “I wouldn’t go out, I was you.”

  “You about to go out.”

  “I gotta take care of Long Nose.”

  “And we got a date,” said Coco.

  “You know where Roland at?” said Jefferson.

  “Soul House,” said Jones. “According to you.”

  “If he’s out the hospital, that’s where he’ll be.”

  “So you gonna stay in,” said Jones pointedly. “Right?”

  “Monique comin over here,” said Jefferson with an idiotic grin. “Conjugal visit.”

  “What if she gets followed?”

  “I ain’t stupid,” said Jefferson, smiling stupidly, his eyes gone. “Neither is Nique. She’s not goin any goddamn where unless it’s clear.”

  They smoked the joint down to a roach and finished their beers. Jones got up quickly from his chair. His new Rolex had slid up his forearm, and he shook it to rest on his wrist.

  “Let’s go, girl,” he said, standing tall. He was dressed for the night in rust-colored bells, three-inch stacks, and a print rayon shirt opened to show the top of his laddered stomach. Coco, similarly fly and regal, came and stood beside him.

  “You gonna take
my short?” said Jefferson.

  “That Buick’s on fire,” said Jones. “We’ll be good in Coco’s ride.”

  Jefferson liked that jam “No Name Bar,” the one with all the horns, on another side of Isaac’s double-record set. As Jones and Coco left the house, he found the slab of wax he was looking for and put it on.

  ROLAND WILLIAMS sat on a stool at the stainless steel bar of Soul House, his regular place on 14th. There were few patrons here, but this was not unusual. It was a dark, bare-wall space that served more men than woman, and hardly ever did so in great numbers. It was not frequented by the hip crowd, but rather by city dwellers who liked their alcohol and conversation drama free. The jukebox played cuts by the likes of Big Maybelle, Carl “Soul Dog” Marshall, Johnny Adams, and other artists whose sound had that below-the-Mason-Dixon-line vibe.

  Soul House was not to be confused with the House of Soul carryout on the 2500 block of the same street, but often it was, so many simply called this spot the House. Williams thought of it as his night residence. Right now, a beautiful, bitter Ollie and the Nightingales song, “Just a Little Overcome,” was playing, and Tommy Tate’s vocals were powering through the room.

  Williams was drinking Johnnie Walker Red, rocks. At the moment he was alone.

  He was feeling poorly, but he was not low. In the hospital he had been given methadone, and he left with a prescription, but methadone was not heroin or even morphine, which is to say that it did not give him the same kind of rush. It would have to do until he could put some coin together and cop, go back to his life as he had known it, and his habit. Course, he didn’t think of his drug use as an addiction, as he had always had it under control. Far as his vocation went, he had lied to the detective about putting his old self behind him, but that’s what you did when you talked to the police, you lied and denied. He had a good business going; he wasn’t going to drop it and move on. Move on to what?

  What he wanted behind him was the violence and the hurt. He shouldn’t have lipped off to Red Jones. He knew that mistake was on him, and the bullet that had passed through him was a hot warning that could have been fatal, a lesson he’d needed to learn. Wasn’t his fault that the white man from up north had put the hurting on him in his hospital bed, but that awful pain was a memory now, too. The Italians would go back to New Jersey or wherever they were from, and Red, well, he would soon be in lockup or shot dead in the street, because that was how it always ended for men like him, wasn’t any third choice. And he, Roland Williams, could reestablish his business and rediscover his peace.

  “Another one,” said Williams to the bartender, a man named Gerard who had wide shoulders and a mustache so thin it was barely holding on to his face.

  “On me,” said Gerard, pulling the red-labeled bottle off the middle of the shelf and free-pouring into a fresh glass he’d filled with ice.

  Williams was now known as the man who’d been shot by Jones and lived to walk back into the spot. “Long Nose caught some lead from Red Fury,” he’d heard one dude say with admiration, and for once Williams didn’t mind the sound of his nickname. That kind of notoriety was worth a drink on the house. He sure wasn’t going to turn it down.

  Gerard served it and took the empty off the bar. A woman named Othella walked behind Williams and brushed his back with her hand as she passed. She wore tight slacks the color of vanilla ice cream and an electric-blue blouse.

  “Hey, Roland,” she said in a singsong way.

  “Where you off to, girl?”

  Othella stopped and pointed a red-nailed finger at the heavy man seated on a stool by the front door. “Gotta tell Antoine somethin.”

  “Is Antoine your George?”

  “No!”

  “Then come on back and sit when you’re done.”

  “In a minute,” she said.

  Roland Williams, relaxed in his surroundings and happy to be home, had a taste of scotch. He closed his eyes and let the liquor make love to his head.

  CLARENCE BOWMAN parked his Cougar on 13th and Otis Street, Northeast, near Fort Bunker Hill Park. Gathering his guns, he slipped the .38 into the side pocket of his black sport jacket and wedged the .22 under the rear waistband of his slacks. He then walked south, toward Newton.

  The neighborhood of Brookland held a mixture of blacks and whites, working- and middle-class, employed at the nearby Catholic University, at the post office, in the service industry, or in civil service positions downtown. Bowman, a black man in clean, understated clothing, did not stand out.

  On Newton he approached the Cochnar residence, a Dutch Colonial with wood siding set on a rise. Rick Cochnar’s green Maverick was parked out front. The young prosecutor was home.

  Bowman looked around. Dusk had come and gone, and night had fallen on the street.

  It would have been better to have caught Cochnar arriving. Bowman could have walked right up to the Ford and ended the man before he got out the driver’s seat. But coming up on him like that was a hard thing to time, and it wasn’t safe or smart to hang out on a residential block for too long, even if Bowman did blend in.

  He’d have to do it a different way. Go up to the house, get in, and get it done quick. Better yet, coax the man outside. Most likely, Cochnar’s wife was in that house, too. That was a problem for Bowman. He wasn’t one of those robot killers, what they called ice men. He took out the target, not the loved ones. He’d never finished a woman or a kid. He went to church on Sundays, sometimes. There was work he wouldn’t do.

  Bowman went up the concrete steps that led to the Cochnar residence. Now he was on the high ground and could see inside the house. Its well-lit interior and his location gave him a prime view. On the first floor, a blond lady with a good figure was walking around a room that had a set of furniture and shelves holding books. The window he was looking through was a sash and it was wide open; he could hear a television set playing in there, too. Bowman recognized the music, the theme from that squares’ program played in repeats on Channel 5. The Lawrence Welch Show, something like that.

  Standing there, Bowman wondered, Why would a young lady like her be watching that bullshit? And if she was watching, why was the volume up so loud? Maybe the bitch was deaf. But if she was deaf, why have the sound on at all?

  The tip of a gun barrel pressed behind his ear.

  “Hey, shitbird,” said a voice. “I’m a police officer. You do anything else besides raise your hands, I’ll squeeze one off in your head. I won’t even think about it. And I’ll sleep good tonight.”

  Bowman raised his hands.

  “Anne!” The man holding the gun on him shouted toward the house, and soon a bright light illuminated the porch. The woman Bowman had seen in the living room came outside, followed by a male cop in uniform. A badge was clipped to the woman’s trousers, and there was a revolver in her hand. Her police sidearm was pointed at his midsection as she descended the porch steps.

  “We got him,” said Officer Anne Honn. She and the uniform covered Bowman with their weapons.

  “Keep your hands up,” said Vaughn, holstering his .38. “Don’t twitch.” Vaughn found Bowman’s guns and inspected them in the light. “Shaved numbers. The DA’s gonna like that.”

  “Lawyer,” said Bowman.

  “You’re gonna need one, Hoss,” said Vaughn. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  Bowman thought on who had set him up as he felt the bracelets lock onto his wrists. Couldn’t be that punch Gina Marie, ’cause she wouldn’t sign her own death certificate like that. It had to be that man-ho, called hisself Martina, who had been sitting beside Gina in the diner. Bowman needed to get a message to Red.

  “Let’s go,” said Vaughn. With the uniformed officer beside him, Vaughn grabbed Bowman roughly by the arm and led him to a squad car that was parked around the corner in the alley. Officer Honn placed Bowman’s guns in an evidence bag and went back into the house to talk to Cochnar and his wife, safely stashed in their second-story bedroom.

  “You must be Vaugh
n,” said Bowman, getting a look at the big dog-toothed white man for the first time.

  “Detective Vaughn.” He studied Bowman’s face. “Damn, you do look like that actor, used to be a big-time athlete… Woody Strode, right?”

  It’s Rafer Johnson, thought Bowman. But he didn’t bother to correct the man. He wouldn’t know the difference anyhow.

  COCO WATKINS pulled the Fury over to the curb in front of Soul House on 14th.

  Red Jones said, “Leave it run.” He pulled his guns from under the seat and chambered rounds into both of them. Pushed his hips forward as he fitted the Colts in the dip of his bells.

  Coco threw the shifter into park. The 440 rumbled and sputtered through dual pipes. Coco looked to the sidewalk, where a man with a gray beard sat on a folding chair. In his hand was a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag.

  “There goes witness one,” said Coco. “You ’bout to kill him, too?”

  “Old-time don’t bother me.”

  “Be better if we waited for Williams to go somewhere alone.”

  “Better for who?”

  “You. Your future.”

  “I’m already wanted for murder.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You know how the lawyers do. They only gonna charge me for one. The one they got the best chance of taking to conviction.”

  “So you gonna give ’em a choice.”

  “What, you scared?”

  “Concerned for you don’t make me scared.”

  Jones looked over at his woman, her hair touching the headliner of the Plymouth, her red lipstick, her violet eye shadow, the nice outfit she had on. Coco always looked good when she stepped out the door. She was a stallion.

  “I’m goin in there,” said Jones. “You can leave me here if you want to. I’ll understand. And I’ll be all right.”

  “You think I’d leave you?” Her eyes had grown heavy. She brushed tears away with her thumbs, carefully, so as not to disturb her makeup.

  Jones could see that he’d cut her. He leaned across the seats and kissed her on the mouth. “You’re my bottom, girl.”

  Jones got out of the Plymouth and closed its passenger door behind him. He adjusted the grips of the .45s so that they pointed inward; now he could draw the way he had so many times before in the mirror. Brazenly, he tucked the tails of his rayon shirt behind the grips, so all could now see his intent.