by Mike Sager
“He’s driving back down next week to take me home wit him.”
“To Philly?”
“Not Philly. Some suburb outside Philly. I don’t remember the name.”
“Headed for that white picket fence, baby.”
“That’s right.”
“I knew he was a keeper the first time I met him.”
Brenda hugged herself. “You know it, girl.”
“What about Soledad and Nichelle?” asked Salem.
“What about them? They big girls,” Brenda said soberly.
“They can take care each other.” She took a sip of coffee. “I’m ready for the next chapter, know what I’m sayin? More than ready. This shit gettin old. Been old for a while now.”
“Change is good,” Salem assured her. “I’m glad I’m outta Miami—fo real.”
“I still can’t imagine you with long red hair. To me you’re such a blonde!”
“Sometime I look in the mirror and I kinda scare myself … It like, who da fuck dat?”
“Hey girls, what’ll it be?”
The waiter wore his dreadlocks tied up high on his head with a colorful scarf—Bob Marley meets Carmen Miranda. His name was Ivan. He was famous in some circles for his weekly appearances at J. Edgar’s, a drag joint located kitty-corner from the massive downtown headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Like the club, the FBI building was named for its former director, J. Edgar Hoover, who enjoyed a bit of drag himself, it is said. In his signature piece, Ivan dressed like a cafeteria lady and lip-synched the song “Hot Lunch” from the movie Fame. As he sang, he made ham sandwiches on his lunch cart and tossed them into the audience.
“I’ll have the steak and eggs, over easy, with hash browns and whole wheat toast,” Brenda said.
“Make it two,” Salem said. “Scrambled. And black coffee, please.”
After Ivan had retreated, Brenda leaned across the table.
“So what up wit you? You doin okay?”
“I’m fine—you know,” Salem said. “A hellacious bruise on my right ass cheek. But I got a great night’s sleep.” She stretched her arms and yawned contentedly.
“What about South Beach? Have you heard anything?”
“Knock on wood.” Salem rapped her temple.
“You never told me: who was this guy anyway?”
“You mean Roberto?”
“Yeah—the guy who got killed.”
Salem glanced around the restaurant. Since she’d arrived in town she’d constantly wondered: how do you know for sure if you’re being followed? She hadn’t seen anyone tailing her, but then again, if whoever was following her was good at his job, how could she tell he was there? She looked uncomfortably at Brenda. “I’d rather not talk about it,” she said.
“Come on—what else we gonna talk about?”
“Your engagement?”
“We done talked about that.”
Salem sighed. For as long as she could remember, people had been pressuring her into doing things she didn’t want to do. For some reason she always did them anyway. “I met him in this club. I’d been seeing him for about three months. I figured he was high up in drugs some kinda way. Cuban and rich and living in Miami with no visible means of support, what else could he be? He was in his forties, I guess. Late forties. A little bit of love handles, but not too bad, he worked out, you know? And he drove this really cool Lamborghini. Bright yellow.”
“Flashy,” Brenda said.
“Flashy,” Salem confirmed.
“And lemme guess—small dick.”
Salem giggled. “Small but thick, like a sausage.” She used her thumb and forefinger to illustrate. “And kinda loud. One of them grunters, you know what I mean? Uhhhhh, uhhhhh, uhhhhh!”
Brenda rolled her eyes. “At least he didn’t have no pencil dick.”
Salem laughed.
“Like a fuckin tampon up in there.”
“Know what I’m sayin?”
“So what happened?” Brenda pressed.
“With what?”
“With Roberto.”
“I don’t know. I saw him once a week. Usually Thursdays, late. One night he was at my condo … this was what, two weeks ago? Almost three now … It seems like a year. We was drinking champs and doing some lines, like usual, that’s what we always did. I was in the bathroom taking a pee—trying to take a pee. You know how it hard sometimes to pee when you been doing coke? Like you really hafta go but you can’t, so you sit there and wait, like, forever? Well, I’m sittin there lookin at Cosmo and I hear this giant crashing sound, breaking glass. It was like a hurricane had hit, you know what I’m sayin? Like all hell broke loose—yellin and bangin, all kindsa shit. I didn’t know what the fuck. I ran into the closet and hid.”
“And then what?”
“I heard these bangs, like gunshots. I was too scared to move. I stayed there for like two hours. I didn’t have no watch, I wasn’t really sure what time it was when I went to the bathroom. You know how it do—time get away from you when you’re partyin.”
“One minute it midnight, the next it four A.M.”
“Um-hum,” Salem confirmed. “And then I didn’t hear nothin for a long time, so I tiptoed into the living room. It wasn’t nothin but a two-bedroom place, but it had this giant window in the livin room—a view of the ocean, downtown, all the twinkling lights. It was completely shattered. The wind was blowin the curtains in, like in the movies, you know, after some disaster. And there were these ropes. You could see they were still tied to the roof. My place was on the twenty-first floor, one level down. There’s a pool up there. Whoever it was musta swung down through the window.”
“That some commando shit right there,” Brenda said.
“Know what I’m sayin?”
“Sweet crib, though.”
“Belonged to the dentist. This Jewish guy. He was totally in love with me. He used to come over in the middle of the night in his robe and pajamas. He’d tell his wife he couldn’t sleep and was going out for a drive.”
“So what about Roberto?”
“He was dead on the floor. I’m pretty sure he was dead. I didn’t take his pulse or nothin, but his chest wasn’t moving. There was a bullet hole in his forehead.”
“They must not have knowed you were there. Or maybe they didn’t care. You didn’t see nothin no way.”
“I wasn’t takin no chances. I packed a bag and drove the Lamborghini to the Greyhound station.”
“The Lamborghini?”
Salem smirked. “I always wanted to drive it but he never let me.”
The women dissolved into giggles—giddy peals of sisterly laughter that echoed around the shiny and aromatic confines of the nearly empty diner, then slowly died, giving way to the quiet din of the restaurant, the clatter of silverware on plates, the song on the jukebox, “Billy Jean.”
They sat a few moments nursing their private thoughts. Salem looked toward the kitchen, wondering what happened to her coffee.
And then a man entered the diner—a balding Irish guy in a suede jacket. He walked straight toward them, sidled up to the table. Smiling pleasantly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold badge.
“Good morning, ladies.” It was Detective O’Rourke, Bandini’s partner from Internal Affairs. “Are you Salem Irene Clark?” he asked.
Salem looked at Brenda for advice. Brenda’s eyes told her: Shit! Don’t ask me!
“Am I under arres, officer?” Salem asked.
“Under arres?” he repeated, lampooning her fake ghetto accent. “Shiiit, girlfrien. This be your lucky day.”
26
Sojii awoke in near darkness. The air on her face was cold, but she was warm beneath a heavy blanket. Beside the bed was a plastic milk crate. On top of the crate was a small Tensor lamp and an alarm clock. The numbers glowed red: 1:37 P.M.
She turned on the lamp and sat up, crossed her legs Indian style, considered her next move. The room was small and windowless with a low ceiling—not much lar
ger than the queen-sized mattress upon which she’d been sleeping. The effect was womblike or claustrophobic, something in between. She was dressed once again in her pink angora sweater and antique bell-bottom jeans. She noticed a sweatshirt at the foot of the bed; she slid over and put it on, flipped up the hood. She looked around for her shoes. They were nowhere in evidence.
Three of the walls had doors. She reached for the nearest knob.
A walk-in closet, several wire hangers, two yellow tennis balls gathering dust in the corner.
The second door opened into a large room—rectangular, dampish, with a bay window at the front, what the Herald classifieds called an English basement. Track lighting illuminated the whitewashed brick; a small but serviceable Pullman kitchen ran along one wall. Through iron bars on the front windows, which were small and high and close to the ceiling, Sojii could see parked cars, a pair of legs walking past. The front door was contiguous to the bay, to the right.
The charcoal-colored industrial carpeting was awash with toys. There was a willy-nilly quality to their abandonment, a feeling of things hastily left: a partially demolished assemblage of oversize Legos, a crate of Matchbox cars, overturned, a three-foot basketball hoop, a scattering of Nerf balls, a toy electric guitar, an assortment of drums, several cook pots, three large wooden spoons. At the center of the room, parked nose to nose, were a blue Big Wheel trike and a green plastic vehicle that resembled a tractor, a red horn at the center of its steering wheel. Sojii reached down and jabbed the marshmallowy protuberance—it let out a wheezy squeak.
Atop a kindergarten-size table, attended by two chairs, was a collection of art supplies. Sojii picked up a can of Play-Doh, emptied the contents into her palm. Squiggles of hot pink and electric green squished out between her fingers, cool and pliable and familiar. She smiled with delight.
“Look who’s finally awake.”
It was Seede. He was standing in the doorway of the bedroom from whence she’d come. He checked his watch. “I take it you slept well.”
She stared at him.
“You don’t remember last night?”
She rolled the Play-Doh into a ball, mushed it back into the can. “I … I don’t know. I was having these, like, really weird dreams.”
Seede stroked his beard, an involuntary gesture, a sort of space retainer—your next statement here. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. He’d done this favor for Waylon because, well, for several reasons. Back when he was a city attorney, Waylon had been an important source; with his help Seede had broken a number of stories, gotten jailhouse access to several high-profile criminals. Seede knew the Pope too, and not just from interviews. He had dialed the toll-free number many times. More often he simply walked the three blocks to the church to cop in person. He enjoyed hanging out with the Pope. His farrago of mixed messages resonated with Seede, who’d written his undergraduate thesis on utopian communities in nineteenth-century America. Like the Pope, Seede believed in the perfectibility of the human spirit; it was people he found hard to take—so petty and hateful, focused on the wrong stuff, their insecurities overruling their more noble instincts. The Pope always talked about buying his own island and living in peace with others of his own selection. It seemed like a great idea.
“My name is Jonathan Seede,” he told the girl, as he had the night before, when he had practically carried her from the Pope’s attic hideaway to his house. “This is my place. We’re a couple of blocks north of the church. Waylon called me last night from the lockup and asked me to get you out of there. I never knew about the attic. The swinging fridge? Pretty high-tech for such a dump.”
She fitted the top onto the Play-Doh can, returned it to the table. “Now what?” she asked dejectedly.
Seede looked her over. She didn’t seem like a druggie or a hustler. She was poised and collected. And unbelievably beautiful, he could not help noticing. “Can I ask you a question?”
Sojii shrugged, noncommittal.
“Why were you hiding up there? Are you in trouble? Is there something I need to know?”
She sat down in one of the little chairs. “The last thing I remember, the cops were at the door of the church. Waylon made me go upstairs to hide. And then—” She bit her bottom lip, which was moist and pillowy, the color of a good fillet steak cooked medium rare, in contrast to her upper lip, which was darker, more like medium well.
“Go on …” Seede prompted.
“I don’t know. It was really weird. There was this weird beach. And I was … I must have fallen asleep. Maybe I was dreaming.” She looked up at him, suddenly alarmed. “What happened to Mickey and them?”
“According to the cops, they raided the church and found a quantity of cocaine—though Waylon didn’t bother to mention that part when he called. For some reason, two detectives from Internal Affairs made the bust. Usually IAD only investigates other cops. Mickey and Waylon were arrested.”
“Louie and Beta Max too?”
“I don’t have all the names. I’m going down there this afternoon to check the police report—you have to do it in person. But I do know that a group of people were taken into custody at the church, and that the Pope and Waylon were among them. According to my sources, they’re being held right now at the DCCJ.”
“What’s that?”
“After you’re arrested and questioned by the police, you’re taken from the precinct house to the DC Central Jail, where they process you into the system. After that, you go before a judge and have an arraignment. More than likely, that’ll be tomorrow morning at superior court. We’ll know then if they make bail.”
Sojii stacked and arranged the cans of Play-Doh, six in all, a child’s activity. Seede thought of Jake. He liked to do the same thing. Stack the cans, knock them over. Seede felt a dull pain radiating from the vicinity of his solar plexus, a palpable sorrow, an emptiness. He wondered where the boy was right now, what he was doing. He had never wanted a kid, he’d been pretty adamant about it. There was so much in life he was aiming to do, he felt like he was still a kid himself. But when you love a woman and she wants a child, you really have no choice, you are a passenger on a runaway train. The last twenty-seven months had been the most wrenching of his existence; he had suffered mightily at the expense of that child. But now that Jake was gone, Seede missed the little booger.
“How old are you?” he asked Sojii.
“Sixteen.”
Something else Waylon hadn’t mentioned. “You’re a runaway?”
“Not exactly.”
“What, then, exactly?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I have time.”
“After my father died, the court ordered me to live with some relatives in Chicago—my mother’s family. I don’t know them. I have never even met them. I was on the way there when I got to DC. I was supposed to change buses but I didn’t. That’s when I met the Pope—at the Greyhound terminal. Waylon’s gonna help me file some papers to become a … whatdoyoucallit?”
Searching the rough-textured stucco ceiling for a particular piece of legal vocabulary she was after, Sojii absently pushed back the hood of her sweatshirt and stretched herself, elbows akimbo. She gathered her long chestnut hair into a high ponytail, the way girls do.
Seede felt his breath catch, as if he’d just been plunged into the freezing ocean.
“Emancipated minor,” she said at last, proud of herself. She let her hair fall, a shimmering cascade. Of course she noticed Seede’s reaction. Ever since she was little, men had stared. Like someone born blind or deaf, she was used to it; it was the way things were.
“How many kids do you have?” she asked.
“Um … one,” he stammered.
“A boy?”
Recovering: “Jake.”
“Where is he now?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Me? What about you?”
A goofy smile—a grown man bewitched. “Occupational hazard, I suppose.”
“
What occupation?”
“I’m a newspaper reporter. For the Herald.”
Impressed: “The Washington Herald?”
“It sounds a lot better than it is.”
She looked at him with consternation. “Are reporters supposed to be doing favors for people in jail?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what the Pope sells, right?”
“After that live bust on CNN, the entire world knows what he sells.”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
“So why are you helping?”
“I’m not helping. I’m researching a story.”
“I’m research?”
“You’re a source.”
“And it’s okay if you let a source stay in your house?”
“You do what you have to do. Shades of gray, you understand?”
Sojii’s voice grew whimsical. “It’s nice down here. Your son is lucky.” From a coffee can on the table she picked out a paint-brush, tickled her palm with the tip. She replaced it in the can, picked up a rolling pin. “How old is he?”
“Eighteen months—a year and a half. In the world of babies, for some reason, the time is always counted in months. Maybe that’s why it seems to pass so slowly. I feel like I’ve been a father for eighteen years.”
She measured the weight of the rolling pin in her palm.
“Isn’t this thing a little big for him?”
“You do it with him. Like, you make stuff with the Play-Doh—little men and whatnot—and he smooshes them. You should see him. He laughs like it’s the funniest thing that ever happened.”
“So you’re divorced?”
Seede crossed the room to the kitchen, took a seat on a barstool by the counter. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your background?”
“My background?”
“You know, your ethnicity, race—whatever you want to call it. What are you?”
“What do I look like?”
He studied her face, a free pass to stare. “Kind of Asian? But also kind of African-American, you know, black. With a hint of Semitic … Arab or Jewish? I can’t tell. Eyes your color could be Afghani, like that girl on the cover of National Geographic. Did you ever see that? Your nose is kind of Asian, but your hair and skin tone—”
