What It Was

by George Pelecanos

  “I feel like shit.”

  “Those chicks liked to party,” said Gregorio. He had not overdone it the night before. He was rested and content, a man who’d had his ashes hauled after a long drought. It did not bother him that he had paid for it. Gregorio had no rap, so much of his physical experience with women and girls, going back to his army days, had been with whores.

  “My stomach is still messed up,” said Fanella. “We shouldn’t have ate that Mexican.”

  “Quit complaining,” said Gregorio. “You got laid, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I got laid. How ’bout you?”

  “Cindy? Damn straight.”

  “Was he good?”

  “What do you mean, ‘he’?”

  “Why not just fuck a boy if that’s what you want?”

  “I’ll fuck you with a baseball bat.” Gregorio’s acne scars stood out in relief against his reddened face.

  “Aw, look at you, you’re all mad.” Fanella laughed. “I swear you’re a homo.”

  They grew quiet and reflective. Fanella pitched his cigarette out to the street. He looked up at the big windows of Coco Watkins’s office and bedroom. He didn’t expect to see her. They had already driven around the block and through the alley and had seen no Fury.

  “The big lady’s not in there,” said Gregorio.

  “I know it,” said Fanella. “But she’s gonna want last night’s take. I’m betting one of her whores is gonna deliver it right to her. When that happens, we’ll find Mr. Jones and our money. Get out of this shithole town and get back to Jersey.”

  They had gathered their things quickly and checked out of the motel. Fanella had not inspected his suitcase when he had hastily packed it. He didn’t know that the ring he’d stolen was gone.

  “There’s someone,” said Gregorio, noticing the figure of a young black woman moving about in Coco’s office.

  Fanella squinted against the sun. “Could be our girl.”

  VAUGHN AND Strange sat in the Monaco, idling on the north end of Mount Pleasant Street. The Dodge’s recently charged air conditioner blew cool against them. Vaughn was in a light-gray Robert Hall suit; Strange wore bells, a loose-fitting shirt, and suede Pumas in natural.

  The block was the commercial strip of the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, and there was much activity. Puerto Ricans, Hungarians, Greeks, blacks, mixed-race couples, and young residents of all types in post-hippie group homes made up the scene. The road still carried streetcar tracks, but the old line was inactive, and buses came through regularly. Henry Arrington had taken a D.C. Transit north on 16th after he had been bounced from lockup. Vaughn and Strange had tailed him as he got off and walked to his destination. Arrington had just stepped into the liquor store near the end of the block.

  Vaughn and Strange watched as Arrington, along with a couple of other juicers, waited for F and D to open their doors at ten a.m.

  “We gonna go in and get him?” said Strange.

  “They got a phone in that place,” said Vaughn. “I’m guessing he’s gonna buy his bottle and make a call. When he comes out, we’ll brace him.”

  “Little early, isn’t it?” said Strange.

  “Not for Henry. He likes his breakfast fortified.”

  “There he goes.”

  “I was right.” Vaughn could see Arrington through the window of the store, talking on the pay phone mounted by the door.

  Arrington came out the store cradling a brown paper bag as if he were holding a baby. He looked around, then crossed the street and walked almost directly toward the Monaco. Vaughn got out of the car and leaned his forearms on its roof, waiting. Arrington read him as police and started to beeline, but Vaughn badged him and said, “Stop right there, Henry.”

  Arrington stopped and stood flat-footed. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

  “Get in the car.”

  Arrington slid into the backseat. He had the stink of jail on him and the body odor brought on by a summer day. His eyes said he would avoid conflict at any cost. He looked like someone who could be easily taken.

  Arrington glanced at Vaughn, who had said his name, then Strange, who had deliberately declined to introduce himself. Arrington would assume that he, too, was MPD.

  “What I do, officers?” said Arrington.

  “Did you make a phone call in that liquor store?” said Vaughn.

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “Who’d you call?”

  “I’d rather not answer that question, if you don’t mind.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” said Vaughn. It was a lie.

  “The man in lockup said he’d kill my grandmother if I told you.”

  “Bowman?”

  “Said his name was Clarence.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Wasn’t no upside to disbelieve.”

  “How old’s your grandmother, Henry?”

  “Seventy-eight, somethin like that.”

  “She’ll be dead by the time Bowman comes out of prison.” Vaughn looked over the seat at Henry’s wasted form. He didn’t say it, but Arrington would be dead and buried by then, too.

  Arrington’s hands twisted at the bag he held.

  “Go on,” said Vaughn. “Take your medicine.”

  Arrington unscrewed the bottle top, tilted his head back, and drank deeply. The smell of orange juice and alcohol filled the interior of the car. Tango, thought Strange. When Arrington was done with his swig, he looked more alive than he had before.

  “Who’d you call?” said Vaughn. “Say it now. I don’t have time to dick-dance around.”

  Arrington wiped his mouth. “Dude named Red.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Another dude first, then him.”

  “Tell us what you said.”

  “Wasn’t all that long a conversation. I said what I was told to say: Bowman failed and got locked up. A man-ho named Martina set him up. And Vaughn is getting close. That’s you, right?”

  Vaughn nodded. “Now tell me the number you dialed.”

  Arrington said it and repeated it, and Vaughn told him he could go. Arrington thanked them, got out of the Dodge, and walked down the block.

  Vaughn radioed in the digits and asked the dispatcher to get him an address to match. Vaughn and Strange said little to each other as they waited for the information to come back over the speaker. They were both anxious, and somewhat excited, thinking of what was to come.

  RED JONES, Coco Watkins, Alfonzo Jefferson, and Monique Lattimer sat in the living room of the house in Burrville, drinking coffee and huffing cigarettes. The men were in slacks and sleeveless white T’s, and were barefoot. Monique had a robe on over a bra and panties. The robe was open, and what was visible was provocative. Coco was wearing one of Monique’s negligees that she kept at Jefferson’s.

  Realizing that they had pushed misadventure to the limit, they plotted their next move.

  “We gotta leave today, Red,” said Coco.

  “Your girl gonna deliver us some money?”

  “And some other shit, too. Soon as Shay brings me my makeup kit and clothes, we can get gone. I can’t go nowhere without my kit.”

  “You called her?” said Red.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you talked to her about the police stakeout outside your spot?”

  “Po-lice lookin for me, not my girls. Shay knows what to do.”

  “Where y’all fixin to go?” said Jefferson.

  “We gonna make our way to West Virginia,” said Jones. “I still got people there. You?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jefferson. “Guess I’ll head south. Got a cousin down in North Carolina will put me up.”

  “What about me?” said Monique. Jefferson did not answer her or look her way. He was gonna take her with him but did not feel it wise to give any female too much comfort. Monique was all right; she was steady ass, anyway. But she wasn’t all that special. No woman was, to Jefferson.

  Jefferson said to Jones, “Give me on
e of them double-O’s, Red.”

  Jones shook a Kool from the hole he had cut out the bottom of the pack. He tossed it onto the cable spool table and it rolled close to Jefferson. Jefferson gave it a light.

  “We about out of cigarettes,” said Jones.

  “Monique’ll go out and get some.”

  “Shit,” she said. “Do you know what I been through since yesterday? First I had to talk to that white motherfucker from Homicide. Then last night I had to slip out the back of my spot and not get noticed by that Tom police they put in the playground. Then I had to walk, and get on a D.C. Transit, and get a cab… and now you want me to go out again?”

  “Exactly,” said Jefferson. “Get dressed.”

  “You crippled or somethin?”

  “I got two legs and they both work,” said Jefferson. “But I’m tellin you to go.”

  “Where your car keys at?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Jefferson. “My Buick stays out back till I’m ready to leave here. It’s too risky to move it now.”

  Monique looked over at the tall woman wearing her negligee. “Coco, can I take your short?”

  Coco dragged on her cigarette and glanced at Jones. On his instructions, they had parked the Fury several blocks away, then walked to Jefferson’s house through alleys and backyards. She already knew Red’s answer. By way of one, he shook his head.

  “Sorry, Nique,” said Coco.

  “You people expect me to walk? Nearest market’s a mile away.”

  “I was you,” said Jefferson, “I’d wear some comfortable shoes.”

  “Fuck y’all,” said Monique. She got up out of her chair abruptly and left the room.

  “Where she off to?” said Jones.

  “Gone to change her clothes,” said Jefferson, tapping ash into a large tray. “So she can get us some cigarettes.”

  “That woman’s unruly.”

  Jefferson nodded. “She like that in bed, too.”

  The room fell silent as they smoked pensively. None of them wanted to leave D.C., but they knew it was time to go.

  GINA MARIE, Martina Lewis, and the white girls, April and Cindy, were in the diner on U, drinking coffee, having cigarettes, and, as was their custom, recounting the street stories they had gathered the night before. They were in the pre-makeup stage of their day, not yet dressed for work.

  “They picked us up in a Lincoln Continental,” said April, “and then we went out to their motel room off Kenilworth and had a partaaay.”

  “That where you got the ring?” said Gina Marie.

  “You mean this one?” said April. She put out her hand, bent it at the wrist, and showed the others her new treasure in a way that she imagined a fancy model might do.

  “Just tell the story,” said Cindy, who knew the details already and was tired of hearing April go on. Cindy dragged on her cigarette, careful not to put the filter to the right side of her mouth. A cold sore festered there.

  “So we was doin some nose candy,” said April, “me and old Lou, and all a the sudden Lou had to take a shit on account of the cut.”

  “Thought you said Lou was a professional,” said Gina Marie.

  “Not with cocaine,” said April. “But, yeah, he said he was down here on business. Axed me about Red Jones. Claimed he owed Red money. Like I was gonna talk to a stranger about Red. I be like, I heard of him, but I don’t know nothin about him.” April looked directly at Gina Marie. “Girl, I ain’t dumb.”

  Martina glanced over at April, spent like last week’s paycheck. Way her nose was burned up, she could pick either side of it by putting her finger in just one nostril. Axe. I be. Girl. April talked blacker than a black girl when she was around Gina Marie.

  “More coffee, ladies?” said an employee behind the counter, holding a pot, moving her head to the Fred Wesley that was coming from the juke.

  “I’ll have more,” said Cindy, who was tired out and a little sore. Gino, the blond one with the acne scars, had a pipe on him, and on top of his size he’d been a little rough. He had bruised her some.

  “You know that’s a fake piece, don’t you?” said Gina Marie.

  “I don’t care,” said April. “It’s pretty.”

  Gina Marie flicked ash into a glass tray. “Say what happened.”

  “While Lou was in the bathroom,” said April, “groanin and moanin, I got curious about what was in his suitcase. ’Cause you know I be the curious type…”

  “Tell it,” said Cindy, losing her patience.

  “Well, there were clothes in that suitcase. Also a gun and a knife.” April paused dramatically, then put her hand flat on the counter. “And this.” The ladies saw a gold body decorated with a Grecian key inlay, one big center stone, and eight smaller stones clustered around it.

  “You are one bad bitch,” said Gina Marie.

  “Girl, who don’t know that.”

  Martina Lewis studied the ring.

  SHAY GATHERED a cosmetic case the size of a hatbox, and a small red suitcase that held a couple of dresses, slacks, shirts, and undergarments, and some cash, and took the fire escape down to the alley that ran behind the row house on 14th. She went through it and on S she turned right and went over to 14th, glancing down the street at the unmarked police car she had scoped out earlier. The one Coco had said would be there.

  The unmarked car did not move. No reason why it would. The man inside it was looking for someone fitting the description of Coco, not Shay. Shay was plainly dressed in jeans and a chambray shirt. She was an attractive female, but in these clothes she did not stand out. It was somewhat unusual for a young woman to be walking in the city with a suitcase and hatbox, but now she was a block north of Coco’s house and was among the sidewalk crowd. She went one block farther and at a bus stop waited for a D.C. Transit, and when it came she got on it and dropped into an empty turquoise seat. An older man who stood with a hand on the top rail gave her a long look the way men do. Reflexively, she touched the mole on her face.

  The plan was to get off the bus soon as she saw a cab stand and catch a taxi over to Northeast, where she would deliver what she was carrying to Coco, holed up in a house in Burrville. Coco had told her she was going away for a while.

  Shay was young, no more than a girl, really, and she was a little bit scared. Her night in jail had convinced her that she was not cut out for any kind of time in a cage. But things seemed to be going all right today, so far, and when she had completed her task… well, she hadn’t thought that through as of yet. She’d do something.

  Shay looked out the back window of the bus and with relief saw that the unmarked police car was not following. She didn’t notice the black Continental that was pulling off the curb.

  VAUGHN AND Strange crossed the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and headed into Far Northeast. At Minnesota Avenue, Vaughn hung a left and drove along a busy commercial strip of overpriced convenience markets, unhealthy food establishments, and an appliance-and-furniture merchant whose profit was not in the sale of household goods but the pushing of credit and high-interest loans.

  “These people down here don’t have a chance,” said Vaughn, with an overly solemn shake of his head. “Course, they could try to better themselves. Work a little harder, maybe, so they don’t have to live in these neighborhoods.”

  Strange said nothing. There wasn’t any upside to getting into those kinds of discussions with Vaughn.

  “Did I say something wrong?” said Vaughn.

  “I wasn’t even listenin to you, to tell the truth. Guess I got things on my mind.”

  “Women troubles,” said Vaughn. “Am I right? What’d you do, dip your pen in the wrong inkwell?”

  “I made a mistake,” said Strange.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  “I should know better. I’m a grown man.”

  “Exactly: you’re a man. It’s damn near impossible for a man to be faithful. It’s not natural. Humans are the only species who even try. When animals mate, the males move on.
”

  “Men aren’t animals,” said Strange.

  Vaughn’s mind flashed back nearly thirty years, to when he’d carried a flamethrower on Okinawa. His nightmares could not even approach the horrific reality of what he’d seen and done. No one, not even Olga, could know the godless dark inside his head.

  “Yes, we are,” he said.

  For a while, they drove up Minnesota Ave in silence. Then Vaughn saw a woman exiting a small city market. She wore a sloppy shift unbuttoned at the neckline, tennis shoes with cutout backs, and held a pack of cigarettes in each of her hands.

  Vaughn slowed the Dodge. “Aw, shit. There’s my friend Monique Lattimer.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Alfonzo Jefferson’s woman.”

  “We should follow her to his house,” said Strange. “Chances are she’s headed there.”

  “We already know where the house is. We don’t know what we’re gonna be up against when we get there. She’s a handful, and I don’t wanna have to deal with her, too.”

  Vaughn pulled over to the curb and palmed the transmission arm up into park. He lifted the radio mic from its cradle, keyed it, and called in Monique’s description, location, and the direction in which she was headed. He then told the dispatcher to instruct any patrol unit in the vicinity to pick up Monique, arrest her, and take her to the Third District station.

  “What’re you gonna hang on her?” said Strange.

  “Some kind of accessory charge,” said Vaughn. “I’ll figure out the particulars later on. It’ll stick. Jefferson’s deuce was used in the Ward robbery, and it’s registered in her name.”

  Vaughn checked his sideview mirror, pulled down on the tree, moved into traffic, and accelerated.

  Strange studied Monique’s loose she-cat walk as they passed her. “You’re about to bust on that girl’s day.”

  “I told her I’d see her around.”

  SHAY STEPPED off the bus up around the Tivoli Theatre and signaled a taxicab, one of several standing at 14th and Park Road. The driver got out and helped her place her suitcase and cosmetic case in the trunk, then politely opened and held the rear door for her so that she could get in.