Drama City

looked back up into her eyes. 'You know, they got a motel, walking distance from here, on New York Avenue? You and me could settle this right now.'

'And I could violate you. Right now.'

'Why you got to act like that?' said Meadows, genuine hurt appearing on his face.

'One more thing,' said Rachel. 'You need to get over to the clinic and drop a urine.'

'Damn.'

'I'm gonna check back with you soon,' said Rachel, getting up off the picnic bench and walking abruptly to her car. She felt dizzy and faint.

Rachel drove down the block. Out of sight of the halfway house, she pulled over to the curb and cut the engine. She smelled gas fumes, broke into a cool sweat, and dry-heaved into her lap. She rested her head back and closed her eyes. Sitting there in the Honda, with the passenger window barely open, she fell asleep in the August heat.

Lorenzo Brown got a call on his cell while climbing the hill toward Saint Elizabeth's, on Martin Luther King Jr Avenue, in Anacostia, Southeast. He turned down the Tahoe's radio and picked up his phone from out of the console's cup holder.

'Brown here.'

'Renzo. My mother said you called.' Nigel Johnson's voice was hoarse. His tone was weary.

'Right,' said Lorenzo. 'I read in the newspaper about Green and the boy. That was Michael Butler, right?'

'Yeah,' said Nigel.

'You okay?'

'You know how this go. It's all in the game.' It was something they had said to each other many times in the past. Nigel did not sound as if he believed it anymore.

'This line safe?'

'I'm on a disposable. You can talk.'

'After I left you yesterday, I passed by a silver BMW parked on Georgia, near your shop. The two inside the car were watching us — watching you, I expect. Last night, Joe said he saw the same ones from the BMW, havin' some kind of verbal confrontation with Green and Butler out in the middle of the street, right on Otis Place. Green drives that black Escalade, doesn't he?'

'He did. You know who was in the BMW?'

'Melvin Lee. Also, a hard-lookin' kid he ride with, name of Rico.'

'How'd you recognize their car?' said Nigel.

'I had my own thing with them earlier in the day. Somethin' to do with my job.'

'Lee works for Deacon. He been back with Deacon since he came uptown.'

'What I heard,' said Lorenzo. Passing between the brick walls of Saint E's, he continued driving south on MLK.

'None of this is no surprise,' said Nigel after a long silence.

'You knew?'

'I knew DeEric fucked up.'

'How so?'

'Green came up on some kid retailing on one of Deacon's corners. He told this kid to step off, thinking the corner was mine. Made a dumb mistake, is all. Deacon's people came back at him, I guess.'

'Was Butler with Green when he made the mistake?'

'No. I only had him ridin' with DeEric to pick up the count, watch how we do. I wanted Michael to learn. That was my fuckup there. Michael wasn't cut out for that kind of drama.'

'You think Deacon ordered the hit?' said Lorenzo, turning down Mississippi Avenue, going along the park known as Oxon Run.

'I don't know,' said Nigel.

Lorenzo drove through the open gate of a fenced complex and parked the Tahoe in the lot of a group of squat brick apartment buildings on Mississippi.

'I got work to do, Nigel.'

'So do I. But look here: This the last conversation we gonna have about this.'

'No question.'

'I don't want you involved.'

'You don't have to worry about that.'

'I mean it, Lorenzo.'

'So do I.'

'You need me again, for anything, you call me direct. Leave a message and I'll get back to you.'

Nigel said his phone number; Lorenzo wrote it on the notepad clipped on the dash of the truck.

'You didn't tell my mother about the killing, did you? I don't like to upset the old girl.'