PHIL ORNAZIAN stood outside a four-car garage in an alley behind Taylor Street, near Kansas Avenue. He counted out cash and handed it over to Berhanu, the man with the tight curls who dealt in hacks.
“That do it?” said Ornazian.
“I’ll have the SS ready for you,” said Berhanu. “You put a little wear on the front end last time.”
“That’s what the extra is for. We had to go off-road, unfortunately. I hope it wasn’t bad.”
Berhanu gave a short wave of his hand. “Minor undercarriage work. You covered it.”
Donnie, the alcoholic mechanic, came out of the garage and lit a cigarette. He made brief eye contact with Ornazian but their interaction went no further.
“Mr. Personality,” said Ornazian.
Berhanu shrugged. “He’s good with a wrench.”
“I’ll need that Impala soon.”
“Fine, but I won’t be reachable at night. It’s Holy Week.”
“Understood.”
“Are you planning on going to church?”
“Sure.” It was a soft lie. With everything he’d been managing, Ornazian had nearly forgotten about Orthodox Easter. He was too ashamed to admit this to Berhanu.
“Ciao, Phil.”
“Ciao. I’ll hit you up.”
They shook hands. Ornazian walked to his Ford amid the harsh barking of alley dogs.
MICHAEL SAT across from Anna at a picnic table on the patio of the Midlands. She had washed up in the bathroom and let her hair down. She wore a locally designed Rapteez T-shirt over bike leggings. Her Cannondale leaned against the bar’s chain-link fence. She was having a lager and Michael was drinking a ginger ale. Several dogs roamed the area, their owners hanging with friends. An employee was barbecuing ribs as a Sturgill Simpson song came through the house speakers, the man singing in a rich baritone about a promise he’d made.
“Never thought I’d hear a country song playing in this neighborhood,” said Michael.
“Country’s just one of the things this guy is,” said Anna. “Anyway, they’ll probably play GoldLink or something like that next. All kinds of people patronize this place. You’ve got to serve your clientele.”
“I reckon.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I don’t stress on things I can’t change.” Michael sipped his drink. “All this new stuff happened quick, though. I wasn’t locked up for all that long.”
“Everything happens quickly now. The hands on the clock are spinning faster. Don’t you feel it?”
“Yes. What’s that mean, though? That you should slow yourself down and enjoy it? Or pack in as much as you can ’cause time is short?”
“I don’t know what it means,” said Anna. “I go to work every day and try to do something positive. I don’t have grand ambitions. Make a living, make a little impact on someone’s life, if I can. That’s the most anyone can hope for, I think.”
“Small kindnesses. Like in the book.”
“Which book?”
“The one you gave me. Northline. Every time something horrible happened to that girl, over and over again, when it seemed like she was too far gone to ever come back, someone did something nice for her. Wasn’t anything major. But it made a difference. She learned. Eventually, she ended up helping that dude with the scars the same way.”
“What did that tell you?”
“The bad in the world, it can keep coming at you. But one small act of kindness can overpower the dark.”
“I loved that book.”
“So did I. Thank you for giving it to me. And for everything you did when I was in the jail. You changed my life.”
Their eyes locked. Anna blushed.
“What?” said Michael.
“Nothing. It was my pleasure.”
Michael held her gaze. “How is it for you?” he said.
“How’s what?”
“Are you happy?”
She hesitated, because how she answered would have implications for them both. Her heart wanted many different things. But she knew what was right.
“I don’t think I’m all that different from anybody else,” she said. “I definitely have a lot to be thankful for. So I’m pretty happy, I guess. Most of the time I am.”
“With your man, I mean.”
“I know what you were asking. Yes.”
Michael nodded. He needed to know.
On impulse, Anna reached across the table and laid her hand over Michael’s. The feeling was electric. She kept it there, looking into his eyes. Then she slowly withdrew it.
They sat there as Anna finished her beer, comfortable with each other in the gathering dark.
SHE WALKED her bike up the hill toward Warder and he walked beside her. They said good-bye a block from her house. She watched him as he turned the corner at Princeton and headed west.
Michael took his time walking home. He had received a text and answered it. Now he needed to think.
The black Edge was parked on Sherman, right in front of his mother’s house. Michael opened the door and got into the passenger bucket.
“Michael.”
“Told you I’d meet you up the street.”
“This was the only spot available.”
“Say what you came here for.”
“I’ve got another job for you,” said Ornazian.
“What makes you think I’d do it?”
“Me and Thaddeus are about to do a home invasion out in the country. These guys stole some valuable jewelry from a house party. Raped the teenage girl who lived there. They’re white supremacists. Bad people all the way around.”
“Don’t play me, Phil.”
“I need you. You drove the shit out of that Impala when it counted. I don’t know anybody who can do what you do.”
“Always on the hustle. What you gonna do now, threaten to send me back to jail?”
“I don’t think I have to.”
Michael stared ahead. “When?”
“Soon.”
“Don’t come near my mother’s house again. Hear?”
Michael got out of the Ford. Ornazian pulled off the curb and drove toward Petworth. He wanted to see his sons before they went to sleep.
Twenty-Four
THEY DROVE up the graded road at night, Michael at the wheel of the SS, Ornazian beside him. Thaddeus Ward was in the backseat. The headlights were off. Michael navigated by the light of the moon. They passed the house in the pines, and Ornazian told him to keep going, and then, after a hundred yards, he told him to turn around. Nearing the house, Ornazian instructed Michael to pull over and cut the engine.
“Wait,” said Ward. “Back it into the woods instead.”
“What if we get stuck?” said Ornazian.
“It hasn’t rained for a week,” said Ward. “Ground’s packed hard. We’ll be fine.”
Michael did it. The Impala was partially hidden by oak and scrub pine, its nose out. They could see the house clearly. The curtains were drawn, and lights were on inside. Only the Cherokee and Silverado were in the gravel driveway. There was no Charger.
“Where’s our boy?” said Ward.
“Who knows?” said Ornazian. “Still at work? It doesn’t matter. We don’t want him, we only want what they stole.”
“We could wait till Kelly gets back,” said Ward.
“There’s no telling when or if he’s coming back tonight. I don’t think we should wait.”
“Okay,” said Ward, trying to think of all the possibilities. “They know someone broke into their house. They’ll be on alert.”
“What’s your point?”
“We have to go in hard. I’ll use the ram and you need to cover them with the shotgun.”
“Right.” Ornazian clipped a two-way radio to his belt and handed its mate to Michael. “Stay on channel eleven.”
“Like last time.”
“Kelly’s tall with a long face and a broad forehead,” said Ornazian, speaking to Michael. “If he comes back to the house, remember,
you’re with us. You know what that means.”
Michael said nothing. But he understood what Ornazian was saying. He was expected to back them up.
“You done speechifying?” said Ward.
“Not yet,” said Ornazian. “I just want to remind everyone that these are bad people. They drugged and assaulted a girl. They’d just as soon see you swinging from a tree as look at you, Thaddeus.”
“You don’t need to gin me up,” said Ward. “I was a kid in Washington in the fifties. My father was a veteran of World War Two, a taxpayer, and a straight citizen, and still, I heard him get called a nigger many times. Do you know what that does to a boy who looks up to his father? My mother worked for the federal government, but come Easter, she couldn’t buy a hat or a dress in one of those downtown department stores or walk into the Garfinckel’s on Fourteenth Street and spend the money she’d earned. That is, until 1968. That’s when we burned Fourteenth Street to the ground. So, yeah, I know who these people are. It’s you who don’t know. You too, Hudson. Either you never took the time to learn your history or you forgot. It’s the forgetting that allows trash like them to come back.
“This past year been the darkest time I can remember. But I did smile once. When that white-supremacist dude came to town and someone just up and coldcocked him right in the face. This is Washington, man. The percentages are down, but it’s still a black city. Always gonna be a black city to me. Some white boy comes into D.C. and starts talking that filth, he’s gonna get his punk ass handed to him real quick.
“So there ain’t no need for you to get my blood going, Phil. I got a daughter. She’s more accomplished than any of these people will ever be, and still, in their eyes, she’s mud.”
“I have kids too.”
“Yeah, your black kids. You white folk get all self-righteous when you taste a little of what we’ve been swallowing for almost five hundred years.”
“I know what side I’ll be fighting on if the race war comes,” said Ornazian.
“So do I,” said Ward. “But before we get all apocalyptic, why don’t we just handle what we got right here tonight?”
“Y’all finished?” said Michael.
“I reckon,” said Ward.
Michael released the trunk lid as Ornazian disabled the dome light of the car’s interior then opened his door. He and Ward got out of the car and went around to the open trunk. Ward had transferred many items from his Crown Vic to the Impala when they picked him up in the parking lot behind his shop. They had already removed the trunk’s light. Ward took a mini Maglite from his multipocketed jacket, turned it on, and put its ass end in his mouth. They gloved their hands and worked by that light.
Ward checked the load on his Glock, holstered it behind his back, and put several sets of plastic restraints of varying lengths in his pockets. Ornazian broke open the wheel of the .38 Special, saw rounds fitted in its chambers, and slid the revolver into the dip of his jeans. He took the Remington 12-gauge out of its blanket and hefted it.
“Tipped slugs,” said Ward. “Don’t rack it yet. They’ll piss their drawers when they hear that sound.”
Ward unzipped the duffel bag, brought out the battering ram, and laid it on the floor of the trunk. He then opened a case and produced something that looked like a gun but was not. Ornazian knew exactly what it was. He had bought one himself on the black market. Ward found an extra cartridge in the case and fixed it to the end of the butt.
“What’s that?”
“Speed load,” said Ward.
Ward slipped the weapon into a plastic holster and clipped the rig to his belt. Then he and Ornazian pulled stockings down over their faces. Before Ward picked up the ram and closed the trunk, Ornazian grabbed the retractable steel baton and walked it around to the driver’s side of the SS. He handed it to Michael Hudson.
“You might need this,” said Ornazian. Michael put the baton on the seat beside him.
Ward was standing next to Ornazian, squinting, looking across the road at the house.
“Can you see them?” said Ornazian, whose night vision was poor.
“No,” said Ward. “But I’m guessin they ain’t watching TV. You saw to that.”
“Back door?”
Ward nodded. “We busted it in good. They probably haven’t had time to fortify it yet.”
“Let’s go.”
They crossed the road, walking low, avoiding the gravel driveway. They went to the side of the house and pressed themselves against it. They allowed themselves to calm their nerves and steady their breath, and then they went to the back of the house, where Ward ascended the concrete steps to the back-door landing. He cautiously peered into the kitchen. Ornazian came up behind him in a crouch, giving him room to make his play. Ward looked at him once, held up two fingers, and nodded, then gripped the ram by its top and left-side handle. He swung it into the jamb and the door crashed open. Ward dropped the ram onto the landing and drew his Glock. Both of them stepped into the house.
“Don’t nobody move,” said Ward.
Richard Rupert and Tommy Getz, startled, were seated at the small table. There was a semiautomatic on it. Richard stood and reached for it as the invaders entered the kitchen. He stopped at Ward’s command and the sound of the rack of the shotgun in Ornazian’s grip. Tommy had not gotten up from his seat. His hands were visibly shaking.
Ward jacked a round into the Glock as he moved forward. Ornazian leveled the 12-gauge on the young men. The one who was standing had the pretty-boy haircut, shaved sides, long on top. The seated one’s hair was down to the scalp. Their shirts were off and they were barefoot and wearing jeans. They were both cock-strong but had no lines or beard shadows on their faces. Ornazian had to remind himself that they were violent men. They looked like kids.
“Put your hands up,” said Ward.
They did it. There was hate and embarrassment in the standing one’s eyes.
“Say your names,” said Ward.
“Fuck you is my name,” said Richard Rupert.
Ward stepped forward so fast he blurred. He swung the barrel of the Glock, and Richard went down to the floor. He rubbed at his jaw and worked it. Soon it would be swollen and blue.
“Mind your tongue and stand up,” said Ward. “Now, what’s your name?”
“Richard.”
“You?”
“T-T-Tom,” said the other.
We have a stutterer, thought Ornazian. He knew what Ward would do with that. It was his show.
“Take the rest of your clothes off,” said Ward. “Not just your blue jeans. Everything. Your panties too.”
Richard began to take off his clothes. Tommy Getz hesitated.
“You too, T-T-T-Tom.”
RICHARD AND Tommy were cuffed to the table chairs, hands and feet secured by plastic ties. They were naked and sweating. The room smelled of their rank perspiration.
“Y’all motherfuckas stink,” said Ward.
“What do you want?” said Richard.
“We’re here for the Tiffany bracelet. The one you stole from that house in Potomac. Don’t waste my time and act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I got rid of it,” said Richard.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You already tossed our house. That was you who broke in, right? So you know it’s not here anymore.”
“Yeah? Where’s the money you made from the sale?”
“I put it in the fucking bank.”
“You’re too stupid to have a bank account.”
Richard stared defiantly into Ward’s eyes. Tommy looked down at his lap.
“Tom,” said Ward. “Look at me.” Tommy looked at Ward. “Where’s the bracelet?”
“Don’t say nothin to him, Tommy,” said Richard.
Ward drew the Taser from its holster. He flicked off its safety and stood directly in front of Tommy.
“The company made some improvements on this model right here,” said Ward. “Lawmen complained that it wasn�
��t powerful enough. Used to be twenty thousand volts, so they upped it to fifty. The darts were smooth, but now they got barbs on ’em, like little fishhooks. According to a video I watched, if the Taser is sighted just below the sternum, the lower dart kind of harpoons the genitals.”
Ward sighted the Taser. A red dot appeared below Tommy’s sternum. “That’s where the top electrode gonna hit. The bottom one will hit your privates.”
“Don’t,” said Tommy.
“Fifty thousand volts to your p-p-penis and scrotum, Tom. You gonna feel that up into your spine. If I hold down the trigger long enough, it’s gonna burn you too. Leave you—what’s that word…nonfunctional. Nerve damage, all that. You ain’t never gonna be the same down there again.”
Tears broke and ran down Tommy’s face.
“Leave him alone,” said Richard.
“Okay,” said Ward.
He stepped over to Richard Rupert. He trained the laser on the area of Richard’s solar plexus where a tiny swastika had been inked into his skin. “It was you who raped that girl. Wasn’t it, Richard? You don’t look like much, but I’m guessing you fancy yourself a real rooster.”
Richard held Ward’s stare.
“Where’s the bracelet, Richard?” said Ward.
“It’s up in your fat ass.”
Ward triggered the Taser, igniting its gas cartridge. Two conductive wires shot out of the muzzle. The electrified darts found their marks and invaded Richard Rupert’s nerves. His muscles contracted violently. He bucked and writhed in his chair. His hands flopped in their cuffs and he toppled over, convulsing, as the smell of burned hair and flesh permeated the room. Tommy Getz turned his head and vomited.
“Enough,” said Ornazian.
Ward laid the Taser down on the floor and walked back over to Tommy.
“Now you need to tell it, Tom.”
The Man Who Came Uptown Page 18
