“We do have an issue,” said Ricardo.
“Say it,” said Larry.
“I think you know what it is,” said Ricardo. “Before Earl and Bernard destroyed those boys’ cells, they checked their incoming and outgoing phone calls and text messages and they wrote those names and numbers down. The Lynch boy had been in contact with that man Spero Lucas the night we took him out. Tavon texted him the number of your squad car.”
“I know that,” said Larry. “We been through this already.”
“What if Lucas ties you into this? Ties you to us.”
“He ain’t tied nothin yet. I been watching him.”
“Yet,” said Ricardo. “You willing to risk your career on that?” Ricardo made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Willin to risk all this? All I done worked for?”
“Tavon’s brother’s name was on that call list. His mother. Bunch a girls, too.”
“So?”
“What you gonna do?” said Larry. “Kill everyone whose name was on that list?”
“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” said Ricardo. “I don’t like it when you do.”
Earl Nance chuckled.
“There’s another matter, too,” said Beano Mobley. “The youngun on Twelfth.”
“What’s his name again?” said Ricardo.
Larry didn’t say it. He wished he had never mentioned the boy. He knew the young man had seen him the day Tavon had put the package in the trunk of his cruiser. And Larry had seen Lucas trying to talk to him outside his residence. But he wasn’t about to encourage any more killing. He hadn’t signed up for it. His so-called father had brought him into this, but he hadn’t told him they’d be doing this kind of hard dirt.
“It’s Lindsay,” said Ricardo. “Right?”
“We can take care of it, you want,” said Nance.
“Hold up,” said Larry.
“Problem?” said Ricardo.
“I need to speak with you alone.”
There was a long silence. Larry did not look at the others. He held his gaze on his father.
“In the back,” said Ricardo.
Larry followed Ricardo through the door beside the gun cabinet and closed it behind them. They entered a smaller room than the office, one that carried no air of business at all but was rather a play pad that Ricardo and Beano Mobley used for sexual activities with women and, if they could get them, girls. There was another bar on a rolling cart, a stereo, a small refrigerator, more chairs, a table, and two double beds. A coke mirror and photos of women on the wall. Two windows, barred on the outside, curtained on the inside, and a locked door that led to the rear of the building. Outside the door was a small area of gravel and dirt. Past it, weed trees and brush.
Ricardo sat in one of the chairs. He gestured to another. “Sit down, son.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Sit. I ain’t about to look up at you.”
Larry took a seat and spread his legs wide.
“You shamed me in front of my people,” said Ricardo. “Talkin to me like that.”
“I’m not gonna have a heart-to-heart with you in front of that trash.”
“They serve their purpose.”
“Trash,” said Larry. “I don’t even want to be in the same room with ’em.”
“Beano’s my partner.”
“I’m talking about White and his little Jesus freak.”
“Far as those two go, I don’t see us needing them again. Not for, you know, the foreseeable future.”
“You tricked me, man.”
“How so?”
“I was supposed to watch the transaction,” said Larry. “Make sure no one rolled up on them while they were exchanging the money. It was you who called me on my cell and told me to bounce. You said that Nance and White had seen police cruising the neighborhood, down on Minnesota Avenue. That the situation was too hot. You got me to leave up outta there so Nance and White could murder those boys. You knew I woulda had nothing to do with that.”
“You’re right,” said Ricardo with a careless shrug.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause you’re soft,” said Ricardo. There was no malice in his voice, or threat. He was simply stating the fact.
“I’m not about to kill anyone, if that’s what you mean. You make it sound like a character flaw.”
“Look. A decision was made that required a solution that I knew you wouldn’t get behind. So I had to make sure you were removed from the scene. That simple enough for you?”
“Why’d you have to do those boys?”
“Let’s just say it was a mutual decision between interested parties.”
“Quit tryin to sound more educated than you are,” said Larry.
Ricardo’s face slackened and his eyes grew hard. He kept his voice level and low. “Those boys were punks playin a man’s game. We eliminated the middleman, is all. You profited. We all did. And we gonna keep makin money. I don’t need you to do no violence and I ain’t about to ask you to. I brought you in to identify persons of interest, seein as how you’re hooked into that narco squad. You just keep doin that from time to time and we’ll be straight.”
“No more killin.”
“ I decide that.”
Larry stared at his father with anemic eyes.
Ricardo knew that his son was trapped. To turn Ricardo and his crew in was to turn himself, now a corrupt officer of the law, in as well. Ricardo had reached out to his boy at just the right time. He was vulnerable, eager to please his old man, who’d walked into Larry’s world with the promise of connecting and healing wounds. Shoot, the boy had become a police officer, in an act of twisted logic, to honor his father. Ricardo had played him well.
“I don’t wanna be in with y’all no more,” said Larry.
“You like what you got?” said Ricardo. “You like that pretty Escalade you drivin?”
Larry didn’t answer. He stared at the floor.
“You are in,” said Ricardo. “There’s more money on the way, too. You just keep doin your little piece of it. I’ll see to the rest.”
“Don’t be fuckin with no more kids,” said Larry.
He got up out of his seat and left the room. Walking through the office, he stayed in stride, said nothing to Nance, White, or Mobley, kept going through the indoor bays, went out into the sunlight and fresh air, and did not even nod at the young men who were detailing the SUVs in the lot. He got into his Escalade and drove away.
Larry Holley thought about his father as he drove back into the city on Bladensburg Road.
He hadn’t known Ricardo at all or seen him once throughout his childhood, coming up in the Kennedy Street corridor of Northwest. His mother worked hard, made it her mission to keep Larry in line. She did it, too. He grew up in an area where many boys failed, but he’d stayed straight. Had a half brother fathered by another man who got into some wrong, but he didn’t let that boy influence him. Got decent grades, was active in church groups, community outreach, all that. Was tapped to play basketball because of his height, but didn’t have the skills. Not a particularly social dude, not real good with women, but he knew that was partly due to his strange looks, which his mother called “unique.” She said he’d gotten his nose and coloring from the man who impregnated her. She never called Ricardo his father. As for Larry, he wondered about Ricardo often, prayed to God that he’d come by and take him to a ball game or Six Flags. But he never did. Relatives said the man had been a police officer in his youth and still lived in the city. They hinted that he wasn’t all the way right. It wasn’t said, as it often is of ne’er-do-well relatives, with affection. In his mind Larry defended this man. He wanted his father to be better than they said he was. Ricardo became an imagined hero.
Larry had a goal. He did his two years of community college and then entered the academy. He became a policeman, like his father. In his fantasies, he would find his pop and, on a day he was wearing his uniform, visit
