Soul Circus

by George Pelecanos

  “You got driving glasses, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t bring ’em. And I probably wouldn’t wear them if I had.”

  “Afraid someone might mistake you for your boy Lewis?”

  “Something like that.”

  They stopped at the car.

  “We all right?” said Strange.

  Quinn shook Strange’s hand. “You know it, Derek.”

  “Always interesting with you around, buddy.”

  “Yeah,” said Quinn. “You, too.”

  chapter 20

  TURN this joint up right here, yang.”

  “Missy?”

  “It’s got Jay-Z and Ludacris on it, too.”

  “I ain’t like that song.”

  “Why not?”

  “She be talkin’ about not wantin’ no one-minute man. Cuttin’ on some dude ’cause he busts a nut in her too quick.”

  “So?” said James.

  “That’s what I’m sayin’,” said Jeremy. “She’s complainin’ when she ought to be thankin’ him. What the fuck’s up with that?”

  The Coates cousins were rolling down the road in their Nissan to one of those Chang markets where they knew they sold the cheapest White Owls. James wanted to smoke a fat one while they watched that new Bokeem Woodbine movie, called BlackMale, they’d bought off the street. All they had was rolling papers around the crib; James said that papers weren’t good enough when you wanted a long-player smoke. Plus they could pick up more beer at the market while they were there.

  They’d been goin’ hard at the hydro and alcohol since the afternoon. They didn’t have other relatives or girlfriends in the area, and neither of them had made any friends. There wasn’t anything to do but hang together and get their heads up when they weren’t working. They were high now, and knew that they could get higher still.

  WELL behind the Nissan, under the cover of other vehicles, Long and Jones cruised in the Maxima. They had been listening to 95.5 on the radio for a while, because they had one of those blocks of music goin’ without commercials. They were letting it play.

  “How you want to do it?” said Long.

  “It’s on you, Nut. You got to call it.”

  “We could trap ’em at a light.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Jones. “Too many witnesses like that.”

  “Yeah, you right.” Long’s thumb rubbed the barrel of the five-shot Taurus revolver in his lap. He had been rubbing at it, the sweat from his thumb oil-streaking the gun, for the past couple of miles. “Ain’t no good place to do it, right?”

  “You want me to, I’ll pull the trigger.”

  Long wanted nothing more. But he said, “It’s my time.”

  “Let’s just see where they goin’,” said Jones.

  Long reached over to the radio and hiked up the volume.

  “You like that song?” said Jones.

  “Missy? It’s somethin’ to listen to.”

  Jones shook his head. “I don’t know what that bitch is complainin’ about, though. Do you?”

  JEREMY Coates pulled over in front of a small neighborhood market in Congress Heights.

  “You got your gun on you?” said Jeremy.

  “Right here,” said James, indicating that the 9mm Hi-Point was wedged behind the belt line of his trousers, under his shirt.

  “Leave it,” said Jeremy.

  “I don’t go nowhere without this shits,” said James. “You want a gun, you need to buy one your own self.”

  “Whateva. Go on, then.”

  “Want to listen to the rest of this song.”

  “They playin’ the remix, man, this shit’s gonna go on forever!”

  “All right, I’m goin’.”

  “Get me some rinds while you’re in there, too.”

  “Get your own got-damn rinds, boy.”

  “Get me some.”

  “Gimme some money then, yang.”

  “WHAT they doin’?” said Long.

  “Talkin’, I guess,” said Jones. “Decidin’ what to buy. I don’t know.”

  “Pull back,” said Long. “They gonna see us, we sit here too long.”

  They were on the cross street, looking at the Nissan idling, smoke coming from its pipe. Jones backed the Maxima up so that they were out of the Coateses’ sight. He kept the engine going and turned the radio off.

  “Now they can’t see us,” said Jones, “but we can’t see them.”

  “I can hear their car,” said Long, a shake in his voice. “They still there.”

  It was true. They could hear the motor knocking on the cousins’ car, and the same music they’d been listening to coming from its open windows.

  “Go on, then,” said Jones. “You gonna do it, do it now, cause now’s the time.”

  “I will.”

  “Just walk right up to that car and fire inside it. Head shots if you can. You got five in that motherfucker, right?”

  Five’s all I need, thought Long, intending to say it, wanting to be loose and cool, but unable to because his mouth was so dry. It was like those dreams he had sometimes, when he’d be tryin’ to speak and couldn’t get his lips unglued.

  “Go ahead, Nut,” said Jones, his voice gentle. “I’ll pick you up there.”

  “Lil’ J,” said Long.

  “You don’t have to say nothin’. You know I got your back.”

  Long got out of the car and closed his door without force. His legs were weak as he crossed the street. He held the blue revolver tight against his leg and he made it to the side of the market, where he flattened his back against its brick wall. He looked back at his friend for a moment, then pushed away from the wall. He turned the corner and stepped off the sidewalk. He walked toward the Nissan idling along the curb.

  IN the market, James Coates unrolled some cash as the woman behind the counter bagged up his shit.

  “Put them rinds on top,” said James.

  She was some kind of slope. He didn’t know which kind and he didn’t care. All of them who had these stores looked the same to him. This one had a kid, had one of those big-ass heads with a flat face. He was sitting near the entrance to the back room, playing with some toy cars and shit.

  The woman placed a six-pack of beer in the bag, along with a pack of White Owls and a large plastic bag of pork rinds up top. She took his money, gave him his change, smiled, and thanked him.

  James Coates said nothing. He took the bag off the counter and cradled it under his left arm. He heard gunshots from outside and turned his head.

  LONG approached the Nissan. The music was coming loud. Still the same song, Long thinking, How long can this motherfucker play? He could see the head of one of the cousins, bobbing as he sat low in his seat. He could see the cluster of little tree deodorizers hanging from the rearview. He could see no one on the passenger side. The other one must be in that store, thought Long. But he didn’t look at the store. He needed to keep moving. His pace was steady, and his adrenaline was pushing him toward the car.

  The cousin behind the wheel turned his head some as Long came up on him. His expression was like nothing as Long shot the gun directly into his face. The cousin’s blood came back at Long in a spray, and Long fired again and one more time as the cousin pitched over to the side. The cousin’s face was all over the interior of the car, and Long dropped the Taurus to the asphalt and puked up what he’d had for lunch.

  He felt something like the stab of a knife between his shoulder blades and he heard a gunshot at the same time and knew he’d been shot hisself. He fell onto his back and kind of turned his head to the side and saw the other cousin walking toward him. The other cousin had a bag of groceries or sumshit in one hand and a gun in the other, and he was smiling and tears were going down his face.

  Long tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t move at all. He could feel the puke chunks on his lips and it felt warm on his behind where he’d shit hisself.

  The cousin was standing over him now. His eyes were mad-bulged as he pointed the g
un at Long’s face.

  “Aaah,” said Long.

  Long saw the cousin’s gun hand shake. He saw the cousin’s finger pull back on the trigger. He tried to scream but never got it out.

  JAMES Coates fired three rapid shots—face, neck, chest—into the jumping body of Jerome Long. He heard the cry of tires on asphalt and turned.

  A Maxima was fishtailing around the corner. He could hear the engine roar as the driver pinned the gas. The car was coming right at him.

  Coates fired into the windshield. He stayed where he was and he kept firing and he felt himself lifted off the street and a shower of beer and pork rinds around him. The world spun crazily, and he heard himself gurgle and felt nothing but confusion. His back had been broken and so had his neck. His eyes saw nothing forever.

  The Maxima sideswiped two parked cars down the block and came to a stop near the next corner when it crashed into a telephone pole. Behind the wheel, Allante Jones sat low, his jaw slack, his eyes fixed. Had he been able to see, he would have seen a spidered windshield and upon it his own blood. A bullet had entered his forehead, tumbled through his brain, and ended his life.

  Outside the market, the street was quiet, except for a Missy Elliot song coming from the open windows of a Nissan 240SX.

  Inside the market, a woman named Sung locked the front door, extinguished the lights, and sat down on the floor with her little boy. His name was Tommy. She held him tightly and told him not to cry.

  chapter 21

  WHILE Quinn went into a market on Georgia for a six, Strange idled the Chevy along the curb and made a couple of calls on his cell. He talked to Janine, found out what she had learned from his requests earlier in the day, and told her he’d be home after picking up Greco at the row house on Buchanan. Then he found attorney Elaine Clay’s card in his wallet and punched in the number to her pager. He talked about the private investigator she used and learned how to reach him.

  “He straight?” said Strange.

  “He’s got his ghosts, if that’s what you mean,” said Elaine. “He’s trying to beat drinking, and I think it’s a long fight. But on the work side of things, there’s no one more straight.”

  “Stefanos,” said Strange, reading aloud what he’d written.

  “Stefanos,” said Elaine, putting the accent on the correct syllable. “These Greeks get touchy about their names.”

  “I heard that,” said Strange, knowing then where he would try to meet this Stefanos face-to-face. “Thanks, Elaine. Say hello to Marcus for me, hear?”

  Ten minutes later, Strange and Quinn stood beside Quinn’s Chevelle on Buchanan Street.

  “Can you get out tomorrow?” said Strange.

  “Every day, you want me to. Lewis is cutting me back.”

  “Phil Wood’s taking the stand tomorrow, so my time is getting short. I could use the company and the help.”

  “And you can help me on the Welles runaway thing.”

  “Right. I’m gonna try and get us a meeting with this PI, knows all the players down in Southeast.”

  “Okay. Call me in the morning.”

  “Bring your eyeglasses, man. Maybe I’ll let you drive some.”

  Quinn nodded toward the row house, where they could both hear Greco alternately barking and crying from behind Strange’s door. “You better see to your dog.”

  Strange watched Quinn’s car turn left onto Georgia as he walked up the steps to his house. Nearing the door, he noticed that a section of its window had been shattered and the jamb was splintered. The door was closed, but Strange knew he’d been burgled. The door opened without a key.

  Stepping into the foyer, he found Greco lying on his belly, rubbing his eyes with his front paws. His tail was twitching at the sound and smell of Strange’s entrance, but he was crying.

  “All right, boy,” said Strange softly, “let me get a look at you.”

  Strange lifted the paws away from Greco’s face. His eyes were pink and nearly red at the rims. The intruders had used something, pepper spray most likely, to immobilize him.

  Strange went to his second-floor bathroom and got some Murine eyedrops out of the medicine cabinet. As he passed the doorway to his office, he noticed that the room had been completely tossed. It was the only room he had seen so far that had been misarranged. He did not stop but went directly down the stairs to Greco.

  Strange put drops in Greco’s eyes and then got spring water from the refrigerator and flushed his eyes further, splashing the water from a juice glass. Greco stood after a while and shook himself, then touched his nose to Strange’s calf. Strange patted the top of his head.

  “You’re like that one-eyed fat man, boy,” said Strange. “You got what they call true grit.”

  Strange was angry that anyone would do this to a good animal. But he was thankful that the dog was alive.

  Strange went up to his office. The Granville Oliver files, including paper and audio tapes, were gone. Other files were missing as well. Some of the cases on his western CDs were broken into pieces. Everything atop his desk, except for his telephone and message machine, had been swept onto the floor.

  He had duplicate files and tapes in his daytime offices. He guessed that the storefront on Buchanan had been inspected and found to be wired for security. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t beat his simple alarm system if that was what they wanted to do. But the home break-in was deliberate in that it carried a deeper meaning.

  The message light blinked 2 on his machine. Strange hit the receive bar.

  Devra Stokes had called. She said she wanted to talk.

  The next message was from a white man: “You interviewed a Kevin Willis in Leavenworth. In your conversation, Mr. Willis talked about a pending capital case. Obstruction of justice in a capital case is the highest form of obstruction and carries the most severe penalty. Eight to ten years, medium security. The loss of your license forever. How much are you willing to lose?”

  The message ended there. Strange listened to the message again and transcribed it exactly. He saved the message and checked the directory on the readout of the phone. The call following Devra’s said “No Data.” Strange phoned Raymond Ives at home and got the attorney on the line. He read the message to Ives.

  “You save it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll never be able to trace that call.”

  “I know it.”

  “Call the police, report the burglary, and have them come to the house. Get a record of the event.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Strange listened to Ives breathe. He was telling him that he would talk no further about the subject, not on this line. So Ives suspected that Strange’s phone was bugged.

  “I’ll speak with you later,” said Strange.

  “Right,” said Ives.

  Strange phoned the police. He was told that some officers would be dispatched to his place in the next half hour.

  He phoned Janine on his cell. If the home phones were tapped, then surely his cell calls were being monitored as well. He didn’t care. If the government was after him, FBI or whoever, there wasn’t all that much he could do. He wasn’t going to spend his time making pay-phone calls and worrying about conversations indoors. He was getting angrier by the moment. All that talk about loss of license and eight-to-ten. He didn’t take to threats. This was bullshit, was what it was. They had misjudged him, thinking he would cave to their office-toss and phone messages. And they shouldn’t have fucked with his dog.

  He got Janine and gave her the facts without conjecture. She asked him if he was sitting down.

  “I just watched the news, Derek. Someone found the body of Olivia Elliot in Oxon Run late this afternoon.”

  “Lord,” said Strange.

  “You better call Lydell,” said Janine.

  “I will,” said Strange, rubbing at his face. His anxiety shifted from thoughts of himself and the government to his
role in this girl’s death. And then there was Quinn and Mark Elliot, Olivia’s son. The hardest part would be telling Quinn.

  “Derek, you there?”

  “Yes. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. I’m waitin’ on the police.”

  “I’ll save you dinner.”

  “You got anything special for Greco? Some bones, maybe?”

  “I’ll find something.”

  “I love you, baby.”

  “See you soon.”

  Strange phoned his friend Lydell Blue, a lieutenant in the Fourth District, at home. He told Blue that he was calling about Olivia Elliot, the woman whose murder had made the TV news. He gave Blue Mario Durham’s name and cell phone number, and told him what Durham had paid him to do.

  “That’s your man right there, I expect.”

  “No address?”

  “What I gave you is what I have.”

  “You better come in tomorrow morning. I’ll find out who’s got the case in Homicide and have him meet us at the Gibson building. Say nine o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there. I’ll bring Quinn, too.”

  “All right then, Derek. Thanks for the call.”

  Blue hung up on his end. Strange heard the police knocking on the door on the first floor and went down to let the two uniformed cops in. He spent some time with them, then left them to do their job. He went to the living room, sat on his mother’s old couch, and stared at the cell phone he still held in his hand. There wasn’t any way to put it off any longer. He phoned Quinn.

  DEWAYNE Durham had gotten the cell message on the way back from Six Flags amusement park informing him of the deaths of Jerome Long and Allante Jones. One of his young men at the elementary school had made the call. Word of the quadruple homicide had spread quickly on the street.

  Durham and Bernard Walker dropped off Durham’s son, Laron, at his mother’s place in Landover. Durham hugged Laron without feeling and sent him into his apartment holding balloons and candy. Durham watched him, thinking, That boy has grown some, not realizing or caring that it had been six months since he had seen him last.

  There were still a couple of balloons in the backseat of the Benz as Durham and Walker drove back into the city. Walker tried to look around them in the rearview as he changed lanes.