The Man Who Came Uptown

by George Pelecanos

  “Thought you were gonna come past,” said Carla.

  “So you been thinking of me.”

  “A little.” She pointed her chin down to the sidewalk. “What you doing with that piece of furniture?”

  “It’s to hold books. I’m gonna fix it up and put it in my room.”

  “You read books?” she said, rather suspiciously.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “I don’t have the time.”

  “Look here.” Michael produced his cell. “I got a phone now so maybe we should, you know, trade digits.”

  “Okay.”

  Michael and Carla exchanged phones and entered their numbers. Michael took his back.

  “Maybe I’ll hit you up,” he said.

  “Maybe?”

  “I will.”

  “Can I get my cell back?”

  Michael stepped closer and handed Carla her phone, and as he did, he took in her sweet scent, whatever she was wearing, perfume or oils or whatnot. She smelled like strawberries. It was nice.

  “I’m going to school next year,” said Alisha, who had been left out of the conversation.

  “I bet you’re smart,” said Michael. He squinted. “You got something on your face, Alisha.”

  He reached down and playfully flicked her cheek. She rubbed at the spot. It stung just a little but she liked the attention.

  “Don’t forget,” said Carla.

  Michael nodded and said good-bye to them both. He picked up his bookcase and walked south.

  UP WHERE he slept, in the bedroom he’d shared with his older brother, Thomas, when they’d come up, Michael placed the bookcase against the wall beside his dresser, where there was a space. There were some rough spots in the wood, some splintering along the edges, and the connections were shaky where they had been joined by the little dowel rods. Michael would fix that permanently with wood glue and C-clamps. He intended to sand and stain the shelves as well.

  He put the two Elmore Leonard Western books he owned on one of the shelves, spines out like they did at the library, so he could read the titles. And then, just to see how it looked, he shelved a couple of library books the same way. He intended to fill this bookcase, and when there was no more space he would buy another set of shelves, maybe even one of those old-time ones that had hinged glass doors. Once he got himself situated with some pocket money, that is. All in good time.

  On the other half of the room was his brother’s twin bed and his dresser, crowded with all the trophies Thomas had earned, from Pop Warner through high school. Michael’s mother dusted them regularly. Not that she was holding the room as some kind of shrine. She kept a clean house. Even had those plastic runners on the carpet downstairs.

  It was said that most parents had favorites, but Michael felt his mother loved all three of her kids equally. Thomas had been the athlete, the straight one, right into the military out of high school, and he had his life insurance, health insurance, and pension already in place. Olivia was the smart one who’d applied herself, taken the right AP classes, bolstered her résumé with after-school activities, and went after that minority scholarship money on her own. She said she was going to go into public relations, but whatever she did, he had no doubt it would be big.

  Michael had struggled, obviously, but outsiders would never know it if they spoke to his mom. She had stuck with him, even that last time, when he’d used her car to do the robbery. Sometimes he felt like he’d never atone for that. Sure, his boy Mario had talked him into it, but Michael could have said no. He had done the dirt at a time in his life when he felt he had no worth. After he’d lost that thing at the Foot Locker. And then been let go from the Best Buy. Once again without a job, out of money, and low on self-esteem. For the wrong minute Mario’s plan to take off the weed dealer had made sense. It seemed like a solution when all along it was a trap. It also sounded exciting and a little dangerous, and those were sensations that Michael had always chased too. But the person he had been was standing far behind him now. All he could do going forward was try to be right.

  His mother called his name from downstairs.

  THEY ATE dinner, a Peruvian chicken his mother had brought home from one of those amigo storefronts in Columbia Heights, at the dining-room table. Doretha Hudson was drinking her glass of wine, the only one she’d take all day, and Michael was having ice water. He’d never liked the taste of alcohol or how it made him feel. His mother had said a prayer before dinner and Michael had bowed his head along with her, though he was far from sure. He was being respectful to his mom.

  Brandy was lying across one of Michael’s bare feet and snoring. Occasionally Michael would wiggle his toes to play with the dog, but Brandy didn’t stir.

  “This dog got one paw in the grave,” said Michael.

  “Don’t say that,” said his mother, looking as if a shudder had gone through her. She was silent for a minute, then said, “Everything good, Michael? Your job?”

  “Good for now.”

  “When you were little…” said Doretha.

  “Yeah?” Michael thought he knew what was coming, but he didn’t stop her. She’d earned the right to lecture him.

  “You were exceptional. Smart and funny. My friends called you ‘the magic baby’ ’cause you caught on to things so quick. You could imitate folks…I remember when you got up on-stage in the third grade and did that ‘Jiggy with It’ song. You sounded just like Will did on the record. You weren’t nervous at all.”

  “When you’re young, you got no fear. I didn’t know enough to be scared.”

  “I thought you’d…”

  “What? Grow up to be something special?”

  “I didn’t mean that, exactly.”

  “It’s not like I planned this,” said Michael.

  It was true. His head got turned around without him even realizing it when he’d hit his early teens. Got to be that his friends had more influence on him than his mother. Three boys in particular he ran with. Two of them, Junior and David, grew up and out of that mind-set and now were doing all right, more or less. And then there was Mario. Mario hadn’t changed.

  If his mother only knew the stuff he was into at an early age. He’d had sex with a girl when he was eleven, the kind of neighborhood gal who liked to get with boys who were inexperienced. Soon after, at twelve or thirteen, the bad started. The usual trouble that some young men find. Stealing things you didn’t need from stores and unlocked cars. Fights. That swell of adrenaline when you stepped to someone. Sometimes he was the aggressor and sometimes not. Most confrontations you couldn’t walk away from ’less you wanted to be labeled a punk. Which got him suspended from school a couple of times. Put him in a cycle.

  Next there was joyriding. This led him to hotwiring cars. He was a natural under the wheel. He could handle the hell out of a vehicle; he just took to it right away. Liked to drive fast too. Until he got caught for the second time. Got sent to Oak Hill and a six-by-nine cell, a cot and mattress on a concrete floor. Mice and roaches running over him at night. More fights. A guard who swung on him, and he swung back. They put him on meds after that, made him dead inside. When he came out, harder than before, he stole another car.

  Looking back, he couldn’t see any reason to it. Just impulse and confusion. Wasn’t like that for all young men, but for some, it was. The brain did change eventually. For many, put into the system and damaged by it, that change came too late.

  But this last thing, this rip-and-run with Mario? A man his age? He had no excuse for that.

  “I’m just saying that I had high hopes for you,” said Doretha.

  “Had?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. I still do.”

  “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “I will.”

  “Small steps,” said Doretha.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  THE CLOCKS had sprung forward, and it was still light out, so Michael sat on the rocker couch out on the porch and read
his latest library book, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. It was the novel Anna had recommended the night she and her husband had come into the DL. Took some concentration to get into it, and careful reading, but he was glad he had given it a try. All these African immigrants throughout the city and inner suburbs, working in parking garages, owning small businesses, coffeehouses and the like, and Michael had never really thought too much about them or what was going on in their heads. Until he’d read this book. What would Anna have said if she were leading the book club? It was “a window into their inner lives.”

  A car horn sounded on Sherman Ave. Michael looked down to the street. There, in an idling, midsize black SUV, sat Phil Ornazian, the private detective who had worked Michael’s case.

  Michael had not thought much about the reason for the unexpected dropping of his charges. More to the point, he had kept it from his mind.

  He put the book down on the rocker couch, stood, and walked down the concrete steps to the street.

  “HOW’S IT going?” said Ornazian.

  “I’m at a restaurant on Eleventh. The District Line. Kitchen job. It’s steady.”

  “Glad it’s working out for you.”

  “Never got a chance to thank you for what you did to get me off,” said Michael. “For whatever you did.”

  Ornazian said, “The thank-you part comes now.”

  They were seated in the front buckets of the Edge. Ornazian had his satellite radio on and he was keeping the music low. The display screen said they were listening to a song from something called Run the Jewels, an act Michael did not know. He wondered if Ornazian was playing hip-hop on Michael’s account or if he listened to it for pleasure on his own.

  “How’d you do it?” said Michael. “They had me airtight.”

  “I knew I could change the man’s mind for the same reason you knew you could take him off. He was a boy playing a man’s game. White private-school kid from Ward Three, college grad. Moves over to Shaw and all of a sudden he thinks he’s street. Thinks he can apply his business degree to marijuana distribution. Lead a normal life, a wife and two kids, a house off Seventh Street, while he does his thing. After all, it’s just marijuana. But dealing weed’s the same as selling heroin or coke. It’s a prop in the underground economy, which means hard people are involved and they will try to take what you’ve got. Which is why you and your boy pulled the rip-and-run on him. Right?”

  “Didn’t work out so good for me.”

  “You thought the man had a code. Some people who were born privileged act like it the rest of their lives. He was outraged that you would rob him. He was more than ready to put you away.”

  “And what stopped him?”

  “I convinced him not to testify.”

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is, you dodged five years in a federal joint.”

  “And now’s the thank-you part.”

  Ornazian nodded. “I’m about to rob a man who has a brothel in Columbia Heights. We’re going to take him off at his house in Hyattsville. Me and an associate of mine. An ex-cop.”

  “So you’re doing a home invasion.”

  “We’re gonna relieve a slave trader of his ill-gotten gains.”

  “That’s how you sellin it to yourself?”

  “He’s a bad guy.”

  “I’m not participating in no robbery.”

  “You won’t be in the house. You won’t touch a weapon. But there are too many variables for us to handle the thing ourselves. I need a driver.”

  “Get someone else.”

  “I know you can drive. You dusted the police the night you pulled the robbery. And I know I can trust you. You never gave up your associate. You stood tall.”

  “Get someone else.”

  Ornazian sighed. Michael couldn’t tell if he really was regretful or if it was all a show.

  “You know, Michael…”

  “What?”

  “The judge dismissed your case without prejudice. That means you could be retried. That is, if the witness changes his mind and decides to testify.”

  “You’d set that in motion?”

  “I wouldn’t like it.”

  “What about you? What if I talked about what you did? Witness tampering draws serious time.”

  “Then I guess we’d both be fucked. But you won’t do that, Michael. You’re doing well out here. You don’t want to mess with that now.”

  Michael said nothing. Their windows were down, and both of them let the proposition settle as they listened to the radio and the car sounds in the street.

  “I don’t know what the take will be,” said Ornazian. “But I’ll guarantee you a thousand dollars for two, three hours of work. It could be more.”

  Michael did not respond.

  “I’ll get you a car,” said Ornazian. “I’ll find you something fast.”

  Again, there was no response. Ornazian asked for Michael’s new cell number and Michael gave it up. Then Ornazian took Michael’s cell and entered his own number into the phone. Michael pulled the latch on his door, telling Ornazian that their conversation was over.

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Ornazian.

  Michael walked up the steps to his mother’s house.

  Ornazian pulled off the curb and headed north, toward Petworth. Sydney had phoned him about dinner. She was cooking a fish stew.

  Fifteen

  BILLY HANRAHAN attended a prep school in Potomac that, in Ornazian’s day, had had a reputation as a military-style academy where parents sent their sons for structure and discipline. The school was now co-ed and its rep as a place for wayward boys had changed. Billy lived in the school district of Walt Whitman High, among the highest-achieving public schools in the country, so there had to be a reason that Billy’s parents were spending forty thousand dollars a year on private-school tuition. Maybe Billy needed a competitive environment and a focus on academics and achievement. Maybe his parents liked their friends to see the school’s coat-of-arms decal on the back window of their luxury car. The reason was immaterial, but the lives of the wealthy were endlessly fascinating to Ornazian.

  The afternoon after he spoke to Michael Hudson, Ornazian was parked on a block of nice but unspectacular homes on a residential street in Bethesda, between River Road and Bradley Boulevard, waiting for Billy to return home from school. Ornazian had used Billy’s Facebook page, which identified the father, and the people-finder program to find the Hanrahans’ address. Billy was a senior, and if tradition in this zip code was intact, he would have his own car, most likely a model that was highly rated for safety and had been handed down or purchased used. Sure enough, twenty minutes after school let out, a ten-year-old ruby-red Volvo XC90 with aftermarket roof bars rolled down the block and stopped in front of the Hanrahan house.

  Ornazian got out of his car at the same time Billy did. Billy was solidly built, average height, with wavy black hair that just touched his collar. He wore a navy blazer, Dockers khakis, a white shirt, and the school’s rep tie, loosely knotted. Like Christopher Perry, he carried a book bag on his shoulder. As Ornazian approached him, he stood straight and puffed up his chest.

  “Can I speak to you for a minute?”

  “What for?”

  Ornazian pulled his wallet and flashed his license. “I’m an investigator.”

  “I WAS there,” said Billy.

  “Good,” said Ornazian. “That’s a start.”

  They were tight against the Volvo, standing in the street. Billy glanced over his shoulder at the bay window that fronted his house. Ornazian wondered if one or both of his parents were home. There was a black BMW X5 parked in the driveway.

  “I won’t keep you long,” said Ornazian. “Answer my questions and you can go inside.”

  “I can go inside right now.”

  Ornazian looked him over. He was handsome, and aware of it, with a lock of hair that was carefully styled to hang over his forehead. He cocked an eyebrow when he spoke. He knew
where the camera was at all times.

  “Is that your mom’s BMW?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe I’ll go in with you and we can all talk together.”

  “I’ve already spoken with my mom and dad. I told them what happened at the party. They know I wasn’t involved.”

  “So you covered yourself.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Do your parents know that you didn’t step in and help that girl when she was being assaulted?”

  Billy looked away. “I wasn’t in that room.”

  “I have it on good authority that you knew one of the guys who assaulted the girl.”

  “Who told you that?” Ornazian didn’t answer and Billy said, “Britany?”

  “Never mind who.”

  “That little trick.”

  “Easy, Billy. That’s not nice. Now, I’m pretty sure the ones who assaulted Lisa are the same ones who trashed the house and robbed it. And don’t say it was those black guys who came up from D.C., because I know that’s not true.”

  “I’m not sayin anything. You’re not with the police and I don’t have to speak to you.”

  “That’s true.”

  “My father told me that if anyone tried to question me about the party, I should tell them they should speak with our lawyer.”

  Billy began to walk away.

  “Where you going to school next year, Billy?” This stopped the kid in his tracks. “You’re a senior, right? I know you must be going on to college.”

  “So?”

  “Your prep school has a code of conduct. I downloaded it right off their website. Your parents might not be too concerned about what happened that night, but I’m guessing your headmaster might. All the drinking and drugs. The robbery. The rape of a sixteen-year-old girl. Your presence there, and the fact that you didn’t step in to try and stop it or report it to the police…it could very well affect your future.”

  “What the fuck.”

  “Tell me what you know and I won’t bring this to your school.”