“You gotta understand how our operation works,” said Tavon. “This ain’t no corner thing. We got no turf or real estate to protect. We’re all over the city. In the clubs, in the workplace, in all kinds of neighborhoods. Selling to all different kinds of people. Customers who don’t have jobs and some who make six figures. But not selling direct. Got a network of people who move it for us just so they can have some walkin-around money and free weed to smoke. Once we repackage it and move it on to our dealers, we don’t even touch it.”
“Repackage it how?” said Lucas.
“We dime it out,” said Tavon. “That’s where the profit comes from.”
“Lotta work.”
“Lot more upside, too.”
“You sound confident,” said Lucas.
“We are,” said Tavon.
“You know the law’s gotta be watching you.”
“No doubt,” said Tavon. “But me and Edwin take precautions. We got no use for guns. We won’t even get near ’em. No landlines, either, and we only use disposable cells. Every time I go to my car, I check underneath it for tracking devices before I get in. Drive around for a while, take our time, before we even start to go to where we need to be at. We know what we’re doin.”
“So did Anwan,” said Lucas.
“Someone snitched him out,” said Edwin.
“Ain’t a whole lot you can do to stop that,” said Tavon.
“Cost of doing business,” said Lucas.
“Right,” said Edwin, missing Lucas’s edge.
Tavon worked a toothpick into his mouth and gave Lucas a long go-over with his eyes. “Anwan said you were some kind of badass marine. I was expecting… I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. But it wasn’t you.”
“I feel the same way about y’all,” said Lucas. He signaled the waitress for their check.
Lucas settled up at the register. Out on the street, Tavon pointed to his car, a black Impala SS with 22s, custom rims, and extended pipes. It was the kind of ride that would be remembered.
“You or me?” said Tavon.
“Me,” said Lucas.
The drop-off spot was up on 12th, a one-block residential stretch between Clifton and Euclid. Nine brick row houses on each side of the street, eighteen houses in all, close to the local public high school. On the east side, alleys ran along the end homes. The houses all had porches set on brick bases, some with round columns, some with square. Concrete steps and stoops, painted metal awnings. Several had District-signature turrets and pronounced window boxes. Blue trash cans and recycling bins sat on many of the small front lawns. Some of the houses needed paint. Some were clean and maintained. A couple of them had been completely refurbished and lovingly detailed.
Lucas was behind the wheel of his Jeep, parked on 12th, facing north. There were few other cars parked on the street. Tavon was beside him in the shotgun bucket, Edwin on the rear bench. Lucas had his hands out the window, taking preliminary photos of the houses.
“Which one?” said Lucas.
“Across there, halfway down,” said Tavon, pointing to the east-side row of homes. “One with the green trim.”
Lucas saw it, a house trimmed in lime green with a white metal awning over the porch and a lime-on-white window box. It was set in the middle of the twenty-five hundred block. Even numbers on the east side, and he counted back from the southernmost home and noted the address, recording it in his phone’s voice memo app. He then entered into the record the number of every house, east and west sides, in succession.
“Twenty-five twelve, twenty-five fourteen, twenty-five sixteen…”
When he was done, Tavon looked at Lucas’s iPhone and said, “That your main piece of equipment?”
“It is now. I used to carry a camera and a tape recorder, but I don’t need them anymore. I have a notebook I use for sketches. Got some tools in the back of the truck as well.”
“Low overhead,” said Edwin.
“Uh-huh,” said Lucas.
“Notice how this street be real quiet?” said Tavon. “I mean, you don’t see no one walkin around, right? That’s why we picked it. This time of day, before noon? It’s a dead zone, man.”
“Folks on this street go to work,” said Edwin.
“Not all of them,” said Lucas.
“Nah, not all,” said Edwin. “But me and Tavon sat here a coupla days and just, you know, checked out the situation. Even knocked on a few doors where there wasn’t no action at all.”
“That house there?” said Tavon. “A lady left for work about seven thirty in the morning, on foot. After that? No one came in and out it, not once, till she returned about six at night. During the day, no one ever answered our knock.”
“This the first time you had the package shipped to this location?”
“We used this house three times,” said Edwin. “It got good to us, man.”
“When’d you lose the package?” Tavon told Lucas the date. Lucas said, “What time?”
“In the day? Right about now.”
“So you tracked the delivery time on the Internet,” said Lucas. “If you knew it was coming, say, around eleven, how long from the time the delivery was made to the time you picked it up off the porch?”
“Say, five minutes,” said Tavon. “I was parked over there on Kenyon, beside the elementary school.”
“You had a laptop in your car?”
“I tracked it on my phone. You ain’t the only one got a handheld computer.”
“The elementary school would be Tubman,” said Lucas. “Near Wonderland, right?”
“Yeah, that bar y’all got,” said Tavon, and in the rearview Lucas saw Edwin grin.
“So, from the time the package dropped, in the five minutes it took for you to get to the house, someone else stepped in and took it off the porch.”
“Seems that way,” said Edwin.
“Was it both of you doing the pickup?” said Lucas.
“Just me that day,” said Tavon.
Lucas turned his head to face Tavon. “Any idea who took it?”
“No.”
“Edwin?”
“No, sir.”
“Could your source be involved in this?” said Lucas.
“Huh?”
“Is it possible the people you’re buying from are stealing it back from you?”
“We don’t know who the connect is,” said Tavon. “Only Anwan does.”
“For real,” said Edwin.
“Okay,” said Lucas. “Let’s check out the back.”
He ignitioned the Jeep and turned it around. Across Clifton Street the high school, Cardozo, took up the entire block.
“It takes hair to choose this street.”
“Why?” said Tavon.
“Squad cars are parked in front of that school often,” said Lucas. “MPD uniforms are inside, working security every day.”
“How you know all that?” said Edwin.
“My brother teaches there,” said Lucas.
“Well, we never had no problem,” said Tavon.
“Until you got boosted,” said Lucas.
He entered the alley that cut west to east on the Clifton end of the block and drove very slowly. The passage was narrow and widened considerably as he turned right and went behind the houses on 12th Street. Many cars were parked in driveways and in the open garages of the backyards. Lucas stopped, took photos, and proceeded to
