“What about this bad actor, Chop-It-Off-Chucky?” Uncle Jimmie volunteered as we spoke in the back of Ho- Woo-Jung, his popular restaurant on Eighth Street. I read the sign behind Jimmie: IMMIGRATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY.
“Nobody catch that motherfucker yet. He kill other children before. He the worst man in Washington, D.C. Next to the president,” Jimmie said and chuckled wickedly, “No bodies, though. No proof of it,” Sampson said to Jimmie.
“We don't even know if there really is a Chucky.”
That was true enough. For years there had been rumors about a horrifying child molester who worked the Northfield Village neighborhood, but there was nothing concrete. Nothing had ever been proved.
“Chucky real,” UncleJimmie insisted. His dark eyes narrowed to even thinner slits. “Chucky real as the devil. I see Chop-it-Off-Chucky in my dreams sometimes, Alex. So do the children who live around here.”
“You ever hear anything more specific about Chucky? Where he's been seen? Who saw him?” I asked. “Help us out if you can, Jimmie.”
“Oh, I gladly do that.” He nodded his head and bunched his thick brown lips, his triple chin, his bulging throat. Jimmie habitually wore a chocolate brown suit with a tan fedora that bobbed as he spoke. “You meditating yet, Alex, getting in touch with chi energy?” he asked me.
“I'm thinking about it, thinking about my chi Jimmie. Maybe my chi is running a little low right now. Tell us about Chucky.”
'I know lots bad stories about Chop-It-Off-Chucky. Scare kids all the time. Even the gangbangers scared of him. Young mothers, grandmothers, put up handbills in playgrounds. In my stores, too. Sad stories of missing children. I always permit it, Detectives.
Man who harms children is the worst. You agree, Alex? You see it differently?'
“No. I agree with you. That's why Sampson and I are out here today.”
I knew a lot about the child molester who had been nicknamed Chop-It-Off-Chucky. The unsubstantiated rumor was that he sliced off the genitalia of young kids who lived in the projects. Little boys and girls. No gender preference. Whether or not it was true, it seemed undeniable that someone had molested several children from the Northfield and Southv'ew Terrace projects, not far from here. Other children had simply disappeared.
The police in the area didn't have the resources to create an effective crisis team to find Chucky, if Chucky existed. I had gone to the wall about it several times with the chief of detectives, but nothing had happened. Extra detectives never seemed available for duty in Southeast. The unfairness of the situation put me in a rage, made me as crazy as anything I can think of.
“Sounds like another Mission: Impossible,” Sampson said as we walked up G Street, in the general direction of the Marine barracks. “We're on our own. We're supposed to catch a chimera.”
“Nice image,” I said, and had to smile at Man Mountain, his wild imagination, his mind.
“Thought you'd like it, man of culture and refinement that you are.”
We were sipping steaming herb tea from Jimmie's restaurant.
Patrolling the street. We looked like detectives, with our collars up and all. Big bad detectives. I wanted people to see us out working the neighborhood.
“No real leads, no clues, no support,” I said, agreeing with Sampson's judgment of the current state of affairs. “We take the assignment, anyway?”
“We always do,” he said. His eyes were suddenly hard and dull and almost scary to me. “Watch out, Chucky, watch your back. We're right on your sorry mythical ass.”
“Your chimera ass.”
“Exactly so, Sugar. Exactly so.”
IT WAS REAL GOOD to be working the streets of Southeast with Sampson again. It always is, even on a horror-show murder case that can make my blood boil over. Our last big case had taken place in North Carolina and California, but Sampson had been around only for the beginning and end of it. The two of us have been fast friends since we were nine or ten, and growing up in this same neighborhood. We get closer every year it seems. No, we do get closer.
“What's our primary goal here, Sugar?” Sampson asked as we walked along G Street. He had on the black leather car coat, nasty Wayfarer sunglasses, a slick black bandanna. It worked for him.
“How do we know that we did good today?” he asked.
“We get the word out that we're personally looking for the Truth School killer,” I said. 'We show our pretty faces around.
Make the families here feel as safe as we can.'
“Yeah, and then we catch Chop-It-Off-Chucky and chop his off,” Sampson said and grinned like the big bad wolf that he can be. “I'm not kidding.”
I didn't doubt it for a minute.
When I finally got home that night, it was past ten. Nana Mama was waiting up for me. She had already put Damon and Jannie to bed. The concerned look on her face told me that she couldn't get to sleep, which is unusual for her. Nana could sleep in the eye of a hurricane. Sometimes, she is the eye of a hurricane.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said to me. “Bad day for you? I can see that it was.” Sometimes she can be unbelievably sympathetic and kind and sweet, too. I like that she goes both ways equally well, and I can never predict which way is coming at me next.
As we sat together on the living room couch, my eighty-one-year-old grandmother held my hand in both of hers. I told her what I knew so far. She was shaking slightly and that wasn't like her, either. She is not a weak person, not in any way She rarely shows her fear to anyone, even me. Nana Mama does not seem to be losing anything of herself; instead, she is becoming more luminous and concentrated.
