“I wouldn’t mind getting taken care of like they take care of those folks in there. You ever think like that?”
“It’s crossed my mind, in the same way that it would be easy to be old. Walk around wearing the same raggedy sweater every day, don’t even have to shave or mind your hair. But I don’t want to be an old man. And I wouldn’t want to be locked up anywhere, would you?”
“Sometimes I think, you know, not to have all this pressure all the time… not to have to think about how I’m gonna make it for me and Juwan, just for a while, I mean. That would be nice.”
“I know it’s got to be rough, raising him as a single parent,” said Strange.
“I got bills,” said Devra.
“Phil Wood’s not taking care of you and your little boy?”
“Juwan’s not his. Juwan’s father -”
“Mama!”
Devra turned her head. The boy’s ice cream had dripped and some of it had found its way onto the vinyl seat. Devra used the napkin in her hand to clean the boy’s face, then wipe the seat.
“Mama,” said Juwan, “I spilt the ice cream.”
“Yes, baby,” said Devra, “I know.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Strange. “You see that red cushion back there? My dog sleeps on that, and he has his run of the car. So I ain’t gonna worry about no ice cream. This here is my work vehicle, anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t no thing,” said Strange. “Look here, what about Juwan’s father, then?”
Devra shrugged. “He’s in Ohio now. They had him incarcerated out at Lorton, but they moved him a few months ago. Once a week, me and Juwan used to take the Metrobus, the one they ran special from the city, out there to see him. But now, with him so far and all, I don’t think Juwan’s even going to remember who his father is.”
Strange nodded at the familiar story. A young man fathered a child, then went off to do his jail time, his “rite of passage.” Lorton, the local prison in northern Virginia, was slowly being closed down, its inhabitants moved to institutions much farther away. Lorton’s proximity to the District had allowed prisoners and their families to remain in constant contact, but that last tie between many fathers and their children was ending now, too. Juwan’s future, like the futures of many of the children who had been born into these circumstances, did not look promising.
“Can’t Phil help you out with some money?”
“Phil’s got no reason to give me money. He had a whole rack of girls. I was just one.”
“But he paid you to stay away from court on that brutality rap.”
“That was a one-time thing.”
“I’m gonna need you to talk about it with me, you don’t mind.”
“Talk about what?”
“Well, the fact that he was beatin’ up on you, for one. Plus, the time you filed the original charges was about the same time some of the murders went down that they got Granville up on. Including the murder of his own uncle. So I need to know, did Phil ever discuss any of those murders with you? Or did you hear anything else about those murders from anyone close to Phil or Granville around that time?”
“I got no reason to hurt Phil.”
“It’s not about hurtin’ Phil. The prosecution’s gonna put him up on the stand to testify against Granville. What the defense does, they want to give a complete picture of the prosecution’s witness to the jury. If Wood was the kind of man who would take his hand to a woman, that’s something the jury ought to know. Throws a shadow, maybe, over the stuff he’s saying about Granville.”
“How’s that gonna change anything? Ain’t nobody denying that they were in the life.”
“True. But that’s how it works. Their side claims something and our side tries to refute it. Or make it more complicated than it really is.”
“Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“It is. But I’m still gonna need your help.”
“I don’t know.” Devra looked out her open window, away from Strange. “I don’t want to get back into all that. I moved away from it, hear? I got my little boy…”
Strange turned his body so that he faced her. “Look here. They’re gonna try and put Granville to death. Some folks feel that only God gets to decide that. And a lot of folks in this city, they don’t see how killing another young black man is gonna solve any of the problems we got out here.”
“Granville did his share of killin’, I expect.”
“Maybe so, Devra. But this is about something more than just him.” Strange touched her hand. “It’s important. I need you to talk to me, young lady, tell me what you know.”
“I gotta think on it,” she said.
“Give me your phone number and the address where you’re stayin’ at, you don’t mind.”
Stokes did this, and Strange wrote the information down. He withdrew his wallet and opened it.
“Let me give you my business card,” said Strange. “Got a bunch of different numbers on it; you can reach me anytime.”
Strange turned the ignition and drove the Caprice off the McDonald’s property. An E- series Benz and a beige 240SX followed him out of the parking lot and down the hill of Martin Luther King.
STRANGE dropped Devra Stokes by her old Taurus in the lot of the salon on Good Hope Road. He waited for her to strap Juwan into a car seat and get herself situated and drive away. He noticed the older woman who owned the shop staring at him through the plate glass window. And he noticed the two cars that had been following him since back at the McDonald’s idling behind him, about a hundred yards and several rows of spaces back.
Strange drove out onto Good Hope. In his rearview he studied the vehicles, a black late-model Benz, tricked out with aftermarket wheels, and a beige Nissan bomb, the model of which he could not remember but which he recognized as the poor man’s Z.
Strange went down Good Hope and cut left onto 22nd Place without hitting his turn signal. The Benz fell in behind the Nissan and they stayed on his tail. He took another left on T Place and did not signal; the other cars did the same. T Place became T Street after a bit, and he took that to Minnesota Avenue. They were still there, about five car lengths back. Okay, so now he knew they were following him. But why?
Down near Naylor Road, Strange slowed down, moved into the middle lane, and came to a stop at a red light. Cars were parked along the curb to his right. The Benz stopped behind him and the Nissan pulled up to his left. He moved his car up into the crosswalk, as there were no cars there to block his exit. If he needed to make a move he could do so now. The Nissan did the same and pulled up even with his driver’s-side door.
Could be this was a trap. If that was the case, the rider on the Nissan’s passenger side would be the shooter. But Strange wasn’t ready to look over at them yet.
In the rearview, Strange could read the front tag on the Benz and he committed it to memory. He said it aloud so that he would get used to the sound of the sequence, and he said it aloud again. He saw a fat young man in the driver’s seat, a ring across the fingers that were gripping the wheel. Another young man, with no expression on his face at all, sat beside him.
He heard a whistle and looked to his left. Two young men with similar features, thick noses and bulgy eyes, were looking straight at him. A bunch of little tree deodorizers hung from their mirror, and music played loudly in their car. The bass of it rattled their windows. The one in the passenger seat grinned at him, raised his empty hand, and made a quick slashing gesture across his own throat.
Strange was startled by the loud beep of a car horn. He looked in his rearview and saw
