The Turnaround

by George Pelecanos

  James tightened the wing nut. “If there was an OL or WOOK on the air today, I’d have a radio in here to keep me company. But there’s no stations playing the music I want to listen to.”

  “You need to update your tastes,” said Raymond.

  “I believe it’s too late for that,” said James. He straightened and began to wipe smudges from the car’s quarter panel with the shop rag. “I better finish up before Court gets here.”

  “We’ll get on our way,” said Raymond.

  Alex finished his beer and tossed the empty into a trash can topped with others. He went to James and, once again, extended his hand. James shook it.

  “I’m glad we met,” said Alex.

  James nodded, his eyes unreadable. He and Raymond exchanged a long look. James then returned to the Monte Carlo. He lowered the hood and pushed on it until it clicked.

  “Call Mama,” said Raymond, heading for the open bay door.

  “I always do,” said James.

  Alex and Raymond walked down the alley, out of the glow of the security light, into dark.

  “His boss is a douche,” said Alex.

  “George Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte had a baby, and they called him Gavin.”

  “Why does he put up with it?”

  “James feels he has to take it. He’s happy to have the job.”

  “There’s got to be a better place for him. He’s good at what he does.”

  “He doesn’t know how to work on the newer vehicles. And there’s not too many employers looking to hire convicted felons. I’d help him if I could.”

  They walked out of the alley toward the Pontiac.

  “We didn’t really talk about anything,” said Alex.

  “That’s all right.”

  “I’m saying, we didn’t even mention the incident.”

  “There’s time for that.”

  “So what was I doing there?”

  “I think we’re all lookin for a little peace with this thing. The first step was, I wanted you to get acquainted with my brother. He did fuck up when he helped Charles with that note. But you can see, a man like James, he does not deserve to be locked up.”

  Alex agreed but made no comment. He was thinking of what he would do when Baker threw his shadow on his family’s front door.

  Nineteen

  I THINK he’s comin,” said Charles Baker, speaking into his disposable cell. “If that’s his Three Hundred, it’s him.”

  “Copy that,” said Cody Kruger, holding his disposable to his ear, using the shorthand code like special agents did on TV.

  Baker, seated on the passenger side of Kruger’s Honda, stared through the windshield as the big Chrysler, looked like the Green Hornet car, rolled slowly across the lot of the garden apartment where Dominique Dixon lived. Kruger had parked on Blair Road, across from the lot.

  The Chrysler pulled into an empty spot next to a white, windowless Econoline van that was parked beside a brown Dumpster. Dominique Dixon got out of the car. He was dressed in beige slacks and a Miles Davis–green button-down shirt. Over the shirt he wore a black leather blazer to cut the chill. It bunched up behind the shoulder blades, betraying the slightness of Dixon’s frame.

  “It’s him,” said Baker.

  “Copy,” said Kruger.

  “You ready?”

  “You know I am.”

  Dixon locked his car and headed for the open stairwell that led to his apartment. Kruger was up there, one floor above Dixon’s place, his back pressed against a brick wall, jacked on nerves because this was new to him. One sweaty hand gripped the nine.

  Baker watched Dixon and the confident switch in his walk. Baker knew who Dixon was, even if Dixon did not.

  Baker was going to enjoy this. He always did when it was someone weaker than him, who had more than him, who thought this could never happen.

  Baker got out of the Honda, locked it with the electric gizmo the white boy had left him. Behind him, past a park and basketball court darkened by night, a Metro train made its soft clopping sound on the rails as it headed south. As Baker walked by the Chrysler 300, he dug Kruger’s key into the front quarter panel, taking off a line of enamel all the way to the trunk lid without breaking stride. It was something a kid might do, and he knew it, but still it gave him pleasure, and he smiled.

  In the stairwell, he found Kruger on the steps, holding his gun on Dixon, who was standing by his door with his hands raised. Kruger’s face was flushed with excitement, his acne gone pale yellow and throbbing on pink flesh. Dixon was openmouthed and visibly shaking. Baker came up onto the landing.

  “Put your hands down, boy,” said Baker. “Get us inside, quick.”

  “Why?” said Dixon.

  “I ain’t tell you to talk,” said Baker. “Just turn the key.”

  They went in, Baker closing the door and seeing to its dead bolt. The apartment was as he had expected and hoped it would be. Furniture a cut above the department store kind, a big television mounted like a picture on the wall, a portable bar stocked with all types of liquor, a martini shaker, straining and fruit-cutting tools set atop glass. The garden complex was ordinary on the outside and close to run-down. But Dixon had hooked up his crib luxuriously behind the walls.

  A smart, successful marijuana dealer did not flash. The Chrysler was nice but not showtime, cool enough to turn the heads of heifers but not police. Baker had seen no expensive jewelry on Dixon’s wrists or fingers, none around his neck. Yeah, Dominique Dixon was smart, and this annoyed Baker rather than impressed him. Why did so many people know so much more about getting it than he did? He could have asked these smart folks questions, learned something, maybe. Instead he just had the urge to fuck them up.

  “Sit your ass down on that couch,” said Baker, pointing Dixon to his red linen sofa. To Kruger he said, “Hold him there. I wanna have a look around.”

  Baker tossed Kruger the Honda’s key, then walked down a hall to a bedroom. In it was a king-size with a simple rectangular headboard behind it and wooden end tables to match, all of the pieces low to the carpet and streamlined. A dresser had the same basic design as the end tables and carried the same dark shade of wood. Baker saw a copy of Maxim on the floor and a straight-out stroke magazine by the bed. So the young man did like women. But why did he dress and act like a bitch? Baker had been locked up too long. He did not understand this new world.

  He went through Dixon’s dresser drawers, ran his hand under his jeans and undid his balled socks. He found a couple hundred dollars in twenties flat in the folds of Dixon’s underpants. Baker pocketed the cash. In a padded box he found an Omega watch with a blue face, and an onyx ring, and he stuffed them both into the other pocket of his slacks. He went into the bathroom, sniffed the colognes the boy had, and splashed something he liked, smelled like trees, onto his face. The bottle was a nice green color, manly, and Baker checked the cap to see that it was tight. He dropped the bottle into the inner breast pocket of his old caramel-colored leather jacket.

  He went back down the hall, thinking, This is what it feels like to have money. But he was not satisfied or done.

  Kruger was out in the living room, dutifully training his gun on Dixon, still seated on the couch. Baker almost laughed, seeing Kruger holding the nine sideways like in those slope movies, but he held his amusement in check because the white boy was just so obedient that it kind of warmed his heart. It had been a while since anyone had listened to him the way Kruger did.

  “Anything?” said Kruger.

  “Nah,” said Baker. “Nothin. Didn’t even find a dollar.”

  Baker went to the bar on wheels and scanned the bottles. He wasn’t much of a liquor man, preferring the control that came with the predictable effects of beer. The occasion did call for a little something, though. He passed over a bottle of vodka, had white birds flying across its side, and picked up a bottle of scotch, Glen something or other, aged for fifteen years. He sloppily poured a few fingers’ worth into a tumbler and had a taste. It was
smoky and it bit, and he walked it over to a chair set across from the couch. It was a matching chair, covered in red linen, and he noted the height of it and that it would be a good place to take the boy when the talking got to something else.

  “So,” said Baker, swirling the scotch in the tumbler. “Let’s get down to why we here.”

  “It ain’t good,” said Dixon bitterly. “You forced me into my own place at the point of a gun.”

  “You and me gonna get along better if you don’t try to act so big and bad.’Cause we both know you’re not that type.” Baker looked at Kruger. “Lower that gun, Cody. We don’t need it. Leastways, I don’t think we do. Do we, Dominique?”

  “What do you want?” said Dixon, the air gone out of him.

  “I’m gonna get to that. Want to tell you a story first.” Baker had a healthy sip of scotch and placed the tumbler on the glass of the table before him. “When I was up at Jessup, I got to know a lot of fellas out of Baltimore. That’s a different breed of criminal they got up there. I’m not sayin they more fierce than the boys come out of D.C. Just different.’Cause they do all kinds of unnatural shit to get what they want. I knew this one hitter, shot his victims with a little old twenty-two. Shot’em in the same place every time, somewhere down at a special bone in the neck. He said it was guaranteed darkness. This other dude, Nathan Williams, went by Black Nate, used to take off drug boys by cracking a bullwhip right on the sidewalk. I’m sayin, this man carried no gun. Only a bullwhip. Wore it coiled up on his side, like a gunslinger wears a holster. Corner boys would give it up immediately, just drop their packages right at his feet. That was Black Nate.

  “But there was this one cat, he outdid them all. I’m gonna call him Junior. When Junior was a teenager, he hooked up with some stickup boys, rip-and-run artists who were robbing drug dealers. Eventually, the rest of his crew got doomed or went to prison, and he lit out on his own. Junior only went after the big boys, never the kids on the corner. What he wanted was to find out where the money was, and he’d do anything to get that information. Threatening to kill a dude doesn’t work all the time,’cause they know they dead anyway if they give up the bank or their connect. And torture, that’s just loud and messy. So Junior, he got to sodomizing motherfuckers to make them talk. You know what that word means, don’t you, Dominique?”

  “I know,” said Dixon, the corner of his lip twitching on the reply.

  “Yeah. A dude just responds to the mention of it. You tell him you’re gonna steal his manhood, and he gonna answer any question you ask, all the livelong day.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want your inventory, man. I want your list of clients. I want to have all these nice things you got. You don’t deserve to keep havin them,’cause I’m stronger than you. Law of the jungle, right? I know you heard of Darvon.”

  Dixon nodded his head. He knew the name that Baker was reaching for, but he did not correct him.

  “Now, we both aware that you’re movin weight. So why don’t you tell me where you keep it at?”

  “I don’t have it here.” Dixon spread his hands. “I don’t have it anywhere right now. I already moved it to my dealers.”

  “Not all of it, man. Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, because I am not.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Gone, huh. You just sold Cody and Deon a couple pounds, what, two nights back? And you, supplying half a zip code of dealers? Nah, I don’t think it’s gone. You got plenty left, I reckon. So you lyin to me. And I don’t like that, Domi-nique.”

  “Look, man —”

  “Thought I told you to call me Mr. Charles.”

  “Mr. Charles. Let’s call Deon. Deon knows how my operation works. He’ll tell you I move it in and out real quick.”

  “Deon got no say in this.”

  “Where’s he at?”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “I can see that, but —”

  “What I mean is, he can’t help you.”

  Baker finished his scotch in one long pull and placed it loudly on the glass tabletop. He stood from the chair as if sprung and moved behind it.

  “Get up, boy, and come over here.”

  Dixon stood slowly from the couch. He walked unsteadily to where Baker stood. Baker backed up to give him room.

  “Now turn around and face the back of this chair. Put your hands on the shoulders of it.”

  “What for?”

  “Right now.”

  Dixon did as he was told. His hands gripped the back of the chair. He had to bend over to do it, and as he did he realized what was happening, and he said, “No.”

  Baker produced a knife from the right patch pocket of his jacket. There was a button on the imitation-pearl handle, and he pushed it forward. A blade sprang from the hilt. At the unmistakable sound of it, Dixon shut his eyes. Baker, close behind him, touched the blade to Dixon’s neck, brushed it delicately there until he came to the bump of Dixon’s carotid artery, where he applied more pressure but did not break the skin.

  “Where the marijuana at?” said Baker.

  Dixon could not raise spit or speak.

  “Let me help you find your tongue, boy.”

  With his free hand, Baker reached around and undid Dixon’s belt buckle, then tore the button from the eyehole on the front of his slacks. He pulled down roughly on the slacks until they dropped to the floor, gathering at Dixon’s booted feet. Dixon stood in his boxer briefs, his bare legs skinny and shaking. His eyes had filled with tears.

  Cody Kruger was nearby, the gun hanging at his side, the color drained from his face. He seemed to have lost his bravado. He looked very young.

  Still holding the knife to Dixon’s throat, Baker stepped in and pressed himself against Baker’s behind.

  “You feel kinda emotional now, huh,” said Baker. “But see, from where I’m standing, this ain’t no thing. All that time I was inside? Shoot. Your asshole is just another hole to me. I feel the same way about your mouth.”

  “Please,” said Dixon. A string of mucus dripped and hung from his nose.

  “Please what? You want me to?”

  “I’ll tell you where it is.”

  Baker chuckled. “For real?”

  “In a white van. Parked beside my car. The keys are in my pocket, the left pocket of my pants.”

  “Get the keys, Cody,” said Baker.

  Kruger retrieved the keys, gingerly, from the pocket of the slacks heaped at Dixon’s ankles.

  “I’ll take care of it, Mr. Charles,” said Kruger. He seemed eager to leave the apartment.

  “You go ahead,” said Baker. “Take your car and put it behind the van. Load whatever he’s got in there into the Honda. Mind that no one’s watching, hear?”

  “I will.”

  “Hit me on my cell when you’re ready to go.”

  Baker stayed behind Dixon, hard and tight against him, after Kruger had gone. Baker could feel a quivering in Dixon’s shoulders.

  “Cry if you need to,” said Baker. “It’s hard to learn who you are.”

  “I wanna sit down.”

  “Go ahead,” said Baker. “But we ain’t finished yet.”

  ALEX AND Vicki made love after he had come home from his visit with the Monroe brothers. It was unexpected for both of them, happening at once as Alex slipped into their king-size. He had expected her to be sleeping, as she almost always was when he came to bed, but she was awake, and she turned toward him and fitted into him the way a wife and husband do, comfortably and naturally, after so many years. They kissed and caressed each other for a long while, because this was the best part of it for both of them, and completed it with Vicki’s strong thighs squeezed against him, her lips cool, Vicki and Alex coming quietly in the darkness of the room.

  Afterward, they talked about his night, Vicki’s head on his chest, Alex’s arm around her.

  “He wasn’t angry with you?”

  “The older brother? No. Indifferent is more like it. He paid his debt, and I gu
ess he’s past hating. It’s like he didn’t care about my presence one way or the other. He’s trying to get beyond everything that’s happened to him. It hasn’t been easy to do that.”

  This led to a discussion of Charles Baker, and the mistake James had made in editing the letter.

  “Are you worried about this Baker character?” said Vicki.

  “No,” said Alex. It was a lie.

  “But what if he comes around? You promised the younger brother that you wouldn’t involve the police.”

  “I never promised anything,” said Alex. “Besides, there’s no sense in worrying about it now.”

  It felt good to be with Vicki, naked in bed, talking as they had not talked for a while. He told her about his tentative plan to turn the business over to Johnny, and she was happy and held him tightly and admitted that she was also scared, asking him what would come next, after he let their son take control of the coffee shop.

  “I’m a young man,” said Alex. “I am. I’ve got another twenty years of work in me, maybe more. This time it’s not going to be about obligation. It’ll be about passion.”

  “But what will you do?”

  In the dark, Alex stared up at the ceiling, pale white from the moonlight seeping through the bedroom blinds.

  After Vicki had gone to sleep, Alex got out of bed and went to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of red wine. He took it to the living room and had a seat in his favorite chair. His intention was to sit here, nurse his wine, and wait for Johnny to come home. Go upstairs at the sound of Johnny’s car as it pulled into the driveway, so as not to embarrass his son. A young man Johnny’s age didn’t need to know that his father still stayed awake at night, worrying about his son.

  Having lost one boy, he found it hard to let the other stand on his own. But he knew he’d have to do that so he and Vicki could move forward. The window was closing. As the years progressed, it seemed to Alex that time moved faster. He wanted to be rid of that thing, the pinch on his shoulder that had nagged him for thirty-five years. Now it felt possible. He was ready to be rid of it and run to what was next.

  Alex was glad Ray Monroe had walked into his shop. He was glad to have met James. In a way, it was as if the clouds had broken, if only just a little.