The Turnaround

by George Pelecanos

  “I don’t see any pictures in here of that neighborhood.”

  “Well, the residents prefer to keep those things in Heathrow. They have an old schoolhouse that turned into a rec center after Brown versus Board of Education. Their photographs are on display there.”

  “Do you have that man’s name?”

  “Yes. I’ll give you his number, too. He doesn’t mind talking to people about his community. He’s proud of it, as he should be. Nice fellow, this Draper.”

  Alex stood as McCoy handed him Rodney Draper’s contact information, retrieved from the Rolodex on his desk.

  “You say this is your hobby?” said McCoy.

  “I run a business that was first owned by my father. I just like to talk to people, immigrants and their ancestors, who have had similar family businesses. Those kinds of places are going away, you know.”

  “As are most of the things we hold fondly in our memories,” said McCoy. “You must have a passion for history.”

  “Not really,” said Alex. “Let’s just say I’m interested in the past.”

  DEON BROWN closed the trunk of his Mercury and parked in the alley behind Peabody Street, tight alongside the fence bordering his mother’s row house. He had retrieved the clothing he needed, his shaving gear and toiletries, his Paxil, a bag of weed, all of his money, the title to his car, and the few special items from his childhood that he could fit into the duffel bag he had purchased from the surplus store in Wheaton. He had quit his job at the shoe store in the Westfield Mall. He had just stowed his things in the back of the car and he was ready to go. But he needed to talk to his mother first.

  Deon’s cell had been ringing all day and most of last night, but he had not answered it. He had allowed the calls, from Cody and Dominique Dixon, to go to his voice mail. From listening to the messages, Deon had managed to construct a disturbing scenario. Cody Kruger and Charles Baker had robbed Dominique of his product and were clumsily attempting to take over his business. Though Cody had not said as much, he indicated that he had some good news for Deon and that Deon should call or come by the apartment as soon as possible to get the news personally. “I need you to be here, dawg,” said Cody. Deon had the impression that Cody had summoned him to his spot because he didn’t want to be alone with Baker, who had certainly set the plan in motion. There was a kind of desperation in Cody’s voice that Deon had not heard before. Cody had done a bold thing and was boosted by it, but he also seemed to know that he had fucked up.

  The messages from Dominique confirmed this. Dominique said that Baker and Kruger had taken him off at the point of a knife and gun. Dominique, with barely controlled rage, said that he and his brother wanted to see Deon right away. That Deon needed to answer his phone. That if he did not respond, Dominique and his brother would have to assume that Deon was in on the plan.

  Toward the end of the day, Deon had turned off his cell and thrown it down a storm drain on Quackenbos Street. He’d buy another disposable on his way out of town.

  A light went on in his mother’s kitchen. She had just gotten in from work. She liked to make herself a snack when she got home, to tide her over until dinner.

  Deon had enlisted the day before. He’d gone back to the Armed Services Recruitment Center on Georgia Avenue, talked to a Sergeant Walters for a couple of hours, and signed up. The sergeant spoke of adventure and personal growth, but Deon’s decision was more practical than spiritual. The service was the only clean way out of his present life that he could see. He had some time before he was to report to basic training, at Fort Benning, Georgia, and he would spend that time heading there, driving his car around the South, burning his cash on hotels and nice meals. He heard Myrtle was a whole rack of fun. He wanted to go to Daytona and drive his car on the beach. He’d sell the Marauder in Georgia, before entering BCT.

  His mother was going to be upset, and worried, too. He’d tell her that he wasn’t going to see combat, necessarily. That the army would decide what he was best suited for once he got through basic. There were all sorts of ways a young man in uniform could serve, said the sergeant, though he did mention that one of those ways could be as a soldier in a theater of war. “There’s a price for freedom,” said the sergeant. “It isn’t free.” Deon’s mother would ask him about his depression and medication. She’d wonder how they could take a boy with his problems. Sergeant Walters had said that this was “not an issue.” The sergeant had assured him that everything was going to be all right.

  What Deon had to do was get her out of the house. Convince her to gather up what she needed and move to La Juanda’s place in Capitol Heights. His sister had a family, but she would take their mother in. It wouldn’t be permanent. Just long enough for this bad thing with the Dixons to go away. As for Charles Baker, she had never given him a key. If he came to the house on Peabody, he’d find a locked door.

  All of this would have to be dealt with now.

  His mother, La Trice, had stepped out the kitchen door and was standing on the back steps of her row house. He went to the chain-link gate of the fence and stepped into the yard. She studied him as he approached, and because he was her son, she read his face and knew, despite the calm appearance he was affecting, that something was wrong.

  “What is it, Deon?” she said.

  “Mama, we need to talk.”

  “Come in. I’ll fix us something to eat.”

  He followed her into the house without objection. He wanted them to have that meal together. There was time enough for that.

  THE ADDRESS on Salvatore Antonelli that Alex Pappas had pulled from the phone book seemed to be a match for the man at first glance. Located on a street off Nimitz Drive, in a postwar GI Bill housing community in Wheaton, not far from Heathrow Heights, the home was a wood-shingled Cape Cod with a one-turn wheelchair ramp leading to the front door. Antonelli would be of that era, a veteran most likely, probably in his eighties. The ramp would have been built for him.

  As Alex went to the door, he could see a painting crew through the bay window, working inside the empty living room, a drop cloth beneath them. He knocked on the door and waited for it to open. Soon a stocky young man with deep brown skin stood in the frame.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Antonelli,” said Alex. “Salvatore, an old man.”

  “The old man die.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “We paint. The family, now they’re going to sell the house.” The resourceful young man handed Alex a business card. “You need paint? We do good work, cheap.”

  The name on the card read Michael Sobalvarro. Below it were the words “We Paint.”

  “Thank you, Michael. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Back in his Cherokee, Alex phoned the number for Rodney Draper. A woman answered, and when Alex told her he had a historical question about Heathrow Heights, she gave him Draper’s work number. Alex thanked her, called the number, and got the main-office receptionist for a major appliance and electronics retailer named Nutty Nathan’s. Alex knew the company, a bait-and-switch house that nevertheless had character the chains lacked. He had bought a television set from a fellow named McGinnes, at the Connecticut Avenue location, many years back. Alex remembered him because the man, extremely personable and knowledgeable, was quite obviously high.

  “Draper,” said a voice on the other end of the line, after Alex had been put through.

  “Yes, my name is Alex Pappas. I’m wondering if I can ask you a quick historical question with regard to Heathrow Heights. I was referred by Mr. McCoy from the historical society.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “I don’t represent anyone other than myself. This was about a shooting incident that occurred outside the old Nunzio’s market, back in seventy-two. I’m trying to locate a woman . . . the woman who was in Nunzio’s the day of the incident. She testified at the trial. It was a very high-profile case.”

  Alex did not hear a reply. He thought the call had been dropped. />
  “Hello?”

  “I remember it,” said Draper.

  “I’d like to contact her if I can.”

  “Listen, Mr. . . .”

  “Pappas.”

  “I’m going to have to get back to you. I’ve got an ad to mock up here, and the sales rep from the Post is outside my door, waiting on it.”

  “Can I give you my cell number?”

  “I’ve got a pen.”

  Alex said his phone number. “Please call me.”

  The line went dead. There was nothing to do now but go home. Alex was not encouraged. He had the feeling that he might not hear from Rodney Draper again.

  CODY KRUGER sat at the kitchen table, scaling and bagging ounces of weed. A hill of sticky-bud hydroponic was before him. Kruger was careful, as Deon had convinced him to be, when weighing and compartmentalizing the marijuana. He liked to think that he worked more quickly and more efficiently when he was high, but in actuality the THC slowed him down and made him more susceptible to error. A blunt in a vanilla Dutch wrapper was burning in the ashtray beside him. “Kryptonite,” a TCB tune recorded live at the Club Neon, was playing loudly in the room from Kruger’s iPod, which he had hooked into his system. Kruger was baked and singing off-key the chorus to the song.

  Charles Baker, annoyed and impatient, went to the system and turned the volume down.

  “Ain’t you done yet?”

  “Wanna do it right,” said Kruger. “If you don’t scale this shit out correct, you gonna hear about it.”

  “Look, man, what you figure we fixin to make on all this?”

  “Three, four thousand. It was only two pounds in the van.”

  “Chump change,” said Baker.

  “You can’t get it all in one day.”

  “True. But once we hook up with that connect, everything gonna be elevated.”

  “I thought you said Dominique didn’t give it up.”

  “He claimed he didn’t know who his connect was. Claimed that only his brother did. Dominique said he was gonna talk to his brother and call you on your cell to set up a meet.”

  Kruger nodded but did not comment. The mention of Dominique’s brother had unsettled him. From what Deon said of him, Calvin Dixon was not going to take what had been done to Dominique with a smile. He sure wasn’t going to hand over his connect. A dealer would take a bullet before he gave up his source, even Kruger knew that. But Mr. Charles did not seem to understand it. Mr. Charles thought he could just keep taking and not pay.

  “Did you hear me, boy?”

  “I heard.”

  “You so fucked up you can’t speak.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “You fearful of all these moves we be makin?”

  “No.”

  “If you afraid, then say so.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Good,” said Baker. “’Cause I’m lookin for you to assist me on something tonight.”

  “What?”

  “I need a ride out to Maryland. A man there owes me some money.”

  “We got money on this table right here.”

  “This is on a whole’nother level. Man been owin me for over thirty years. I’m sayin, the interest been compounding. Payday gonna be large, too.”

  “I got to see to this. You can borrow my car.”

  “How am I gonna drive a car with no license? The po-po pull me over, I’m going back to jail.”

  Kruger wetted the tail of a baggie with his tongue and sealed up an ounce. If he kept working, maybe Mr. Charles would drop the plan.

  “I asked this old friend of mine to take me, but he gone soft on me. Now, I know you aren’t gonna turn your back on me like he did.”

  “I’m busy here.”

  “Thought you had some rod on you, man.”

  “I got product promised to some customers in the morning. I need to get this done before I can think of anything else.”

  “Okay, then. I’m gonna walk on over to the Avenue, find me a bar stool, and have myself a beer. You should be done in a couple hours.” Baker shook himself into his leather. “What’s the door code when I come back?”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Say it.”

  “Knock knock pause knock.”

  “Right. See you in a bit, young man.”

  Kruger scaled and bagged diligently after Baker had slipped out the door. He would have been happy to sit here all night, working, getting blazed, listening to music, thinking about the things he could get with the cash this weed would bring. The new Vans and Dunks, the T-shirts with the rock star look, the Authentic jerseys with lids that matched.

  If Deon were here, they’d talk, joke, and dream on the things that they might buy. He wondered where Deon was at and why he wasn’t answering his cell. Deon had been his boy, and now it seemed that Deon had up and walked away. What Kruger had left was Charles Baker.

  Kruger had thrown his gun down a storm drain in the parking lot outside Dominique’s after he had transferred the weed from the white van to his Honda. It had made him sick to hold a gun on a boy his age while Mr. Charles did what he did. Kruger didn’t want to have a gun anymore. He didn’t want to do anything like that again.

  Cody Kruger began to lose his high. He knew that Mr. Charles would not forget about that ride out to Maryland. He would be back soon, knock knock pause knock. There was no way to deny Mr. Charles when he set his mind to hunting. Kruger would drive him to see the man who owed him money, because with Deon gone, Mr. Charles was his only friend. Kruger was dim-witted and fried, and there was nothing else that he could see to do.

  Twenty-two

  RAYMOND MONROE, standing in Gavin’s Garage, closed the lid of his cell and slipped the phone into the pocket of his jeans. James Monroe was under the hood of an ’89 Caprice Classic, loosening a crippled water pump that he intended to replace. An open can of Pabst Blue Ribbon was balanced on the lip of the quarter panel. James stood straight, picked up the can, and took a long pull of beer.

  “That was Rodney Draper just called,” said Raymond.

  “Rod the Rooster,” said James, smiling, recalling the nickname they’d given him as kids on account of his funny nose. “Who’d ’a thought that boy would be running a company someday?”

  “Rodney always did work hard. I’m not surprised.”

  “What he wanted?”

  “Alex Pappas called him today. Said he had a history question. Rodney didn’t answer it direct. He wanted to speak to me first.”

  James looked into his beer can, shook it, then took another swig.

  “Alex is tryin to find Miss Elaine,” said Raymond.

  “Why?”

  “To talk to her, I suppose. I’m guessing he’s looking to put all this to rest.”

  “What did you tell Rod?”

  “I told him to wait.”

  “Ray . . .”

  “What?”

  “Charles Baker contacted me today. He was looking for a ride out to Pappas’s house. Wanted me with him, he said. He didn’t say why.”

  “Did Charles say how it went with Whitten?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “That means it went wrong. And now he’s gonna try and shake down Pappas. This time it’s not gonna be over lunch in some fancy restaurant. This time Charles gonna do it his old way.”

  “Well, I told him I wouldn’t do it,” said James. “I told him this ain’t none of my business.”

  “It is if Charles hurts that man or his family. It is to me if he keeps trying to pull my brother down into the dirt.”

  “Charles can’t help what he is.”

  “Plenty of folks had bad childhoods. They found ways to carry it.”

  “He never killed anybody,” said James.

  “No,” said Raymond, meeting his brother’s stare. “He never did that.”

  “Let me get back to this water pump.”

  “Go ahead,” said Raymond Monroe.

  CALVIN DIXON and his friend Markos sat on plush chairs in t
he living room of Calvin’s luxurious condominium, located on V Street, behind the Lincoln Theater, in the heart of Shaw. They were smoking cigars and drinking single-barrel bourbons, neat with waters back, the bottle set between them on a table made of iron and glass. They had everything young men could want: women, money, good looks, vehicles that went fast. But on this night they did not look happy.

  “Did you make the call?” said Markos, a handsome young man with his father’s Ethiopian skin tone and his mother’s leonine features.

  “I was waiting to talk to you,” said Calvin, a bigger, cut, more rugged version of Dominique.

  “You want some more water? I’m about to get some.”

  “Sure.”

  Markos rose and went to the open kitchen, equipped with a Wolf cooktop and wall oven, an ASKO dishwasher, and a Sub-Zero side-by-side. He poured filtered water into two glasses from a dispenser built into a marble countertop and brought the glasses back to the table. He used his hand to retrieve ice from a bucket and dropped cubes into the water.

  Calvin poured more bourbon from a numbered bottle of Blanton’s. They tapped tumblers and drank.

  “How you like that stick?” said Markos, referring to the Padrón cigar Calvin was drawing on.

  “Nice,” said Calvin. “The sixty-four got the twenty-three beat, you ask me.”

  A woman opened the bedroom door and stood in the frame. She was very young, black haired, and supercharged, a mix of Bolivia and Africa. Her breasts strained the fabric of her button-down shirt, and her ass was the inverted heart so many times invoked but rarely realized. Her name was Rita. Calvin had retired her from a haircutting salon in Wheaton after she had given him a shampoo and scalp massage.

  “Did you call me?” said Rita to Calvin.

  “Nah, baby. Let us have some privacy for a little while longer, okay?”

  She pouted for a moment, then went back into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  “Girl must have thought we said her name,” said Calvin.

  “I asked you ’bout your stick,” said Markos. “I didn’t say ‘trick.’ ”

  Calvin smiled a little, taking no offense. Rita was gorgeous, and a slut. They both felt the same way about women, even each other’s occasional girlfriends.