the fat man in the Benz making the gun sign with one hand. He pointed the flesh gun in the direction of Strange. And then Strange realized that the fat man was pointing his finger over the roof of Strange’s car, at the traffic light in the intersection. Strange looked ahead at a green light; the fat man was telling him that the light had changed and it was time to move on through.
Strange gave the Caprice gas. He heard the fading laughter of the two on his left under the throb of their music as he went down the road. The Benz and the Nissan pulled out of the intersection as well but turned right on Naylor Road and vanished from his sight.
It might have been paranoia, a middle-aged man thinking negative things about a group of young black Anacostians who had the look of being in the life. Strange was angry at himself, and a little ashamed, for the assumptions he had made. But he had also been living in this very real world for a long time. He wrote down the plate number that he had memorized in the spiral notebook he kept by his side.
STRANGE had first met Robert Gray, not yet a teenager, at Granville Oliver’s opulent house in Prince George’s County the previous fall. Oliver had pulled Gray out of a bad situation in the Stanton Terrace dwellings and had been grooming him for a role in the business he was still running at the time. When Oliver had been arrested and incarcerated, Strange had promised Granville, and had made a promise to himself, that he would look after the boy and try to put him on the right path.
But it hadn’t been an easy task. There was the geography problem, in that Strange lived in Northwest and Gray’s people were down in Southeast, so he couldn’t see the boy all that much. And Strange wasn’t about to take him under his own roof, especially now that he was dealing with having a new family of his own; Janine and his stepson, Lionel, were his first priority, and he was determined to do everything he could to make that work. So Strange had seen that Gray was put up with his aunt, the sister to his mother, who was doing a stretch for grand theft and assault, her third fall. Through Granville Oliver’s lawyer, Raymond Ives, Strange had arranged for a monthly payment to be made to the aunt, Tosha Smith, as one would pay foster parents for their services. The money was Granville Oliver’s.
Tosha Smith lived in a unit of squat redbrick apartment buildings on Stanton Road. Strange parked on the street and walked up a short hill, across a yard of weed and dirt, past a swing set where young children and their mothers had congregated. One girl, wearing a shirt displaying the Tweety Bird cartoon character and holding a baby against her hip, looked no older than fifteen. Strange navigated around two young men sitting on the concrete steps of Smith’s unit and ascended more stairs to her apartment door.
Tosha Smith, fright-time thin with a blue bandanna covering her hair, opened at his knock. Her initial expression was adversarial, but in a practiced, unemotional way, as if this were her usual greeting for every unexpected visitor who came to her door.
“Tosha,” said Strange.
“Mister Strange.” Her face softened, but not by much. Strange had visited her many times, but the look of relaxation that came with familiarity did not seem to be in her repertoire.
A grown man, on the thin side, with bald patches in his hair, sat on the couch playing a video game, staring at the television screen against the wall as a cigarette burned in an ashtray before him. He did not look away from his game or acknowledge Strange in any way.
Even in the doorway, Strange could take in the unpleasant odor of the apartment, not unclean, exactly, but closed up, airless, with the smell that always reminded him of an unminded refrigerator. And every time he had come by it was dark here, the curtains drawn over shuttered blinds. So it was today.
“You wanna come in?” said Tosha.
“Robert in there with you?”
“He’s out playin’ with his friends.” Tosha noticed something cross Strange’s face and she grinned lopsidedly, showing him grayish teeth. “Don’t worry, I always know where he’s at. We don’t allow him to go more than a block or two away from here.”
“We?”
Tosha jerked her head over her shoulder. “I got Randolph stayin’ here with me now. Boy needs a man around, don’t you think?”
“If it’s right.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. Randolph keeps him in line, tells Robert to mind his mouth when he gets the way young boys get. Randolph’ll go ahead and smack the black out him, his tongue gets too bright.”
Strange could hear a baby crying from back in the apartment. He shifted his feet. “You say Robert’s in the vicinity?”
“You’ll find him out there somewheres close, ridin’ his bike. Tell him to get in here before dark comes, hear?”
Why don’t you drag your junkie ass on out here and tell him yourself? thought Strange. But he only nodded and went back down the stairs.
“I’ll be lookin’ for my money this month,” said Tosha to his back.
Strange kept going, finding relief in the crisp spring air as he made his way outside. The sun had begun to drop behind the neighboring buildings, and shadows had spread upon the apartment grounds.
Strange circled the block in his car, then widened his search to the adjacent streets. He spotted Robert Gray standing around with a group of boys, most of them older, on the corner of another apartment complex. The boys, some wearing wife-beaters with the band of their boxer shorts showing high above the belt line of their jeans, studied Strange as he got out of his curbed Chevy. Gray said something to one of the boys, got on his bike, and rode it over to Strange, now leaning against the front quarter panel of his car out in the street.
“How you doin’, Robert?”
Gray’s eyes went past Strange to somewhere down the street. “I’m all right.”
“Look at me when I talk to you, son.”
Gray fixed his gaze on Strange. He had intelligent eyes, and he was polite enough. But Strange could not recall ever seeing him smile.
“How’s school going?”
Gray shrugged. “We nearly out. Ain’t all that much left to do.”
“Your aunt and them treating you okay?”
“I get along with ’em.”
“The boyfriend, too? He’s not eatin’ up your share of the food, is he?”
“Him and my aunt don’t eat all that much, you want the truth.” Gray cocked an eyebrow. He was a handsome boy, one of those who already had the features of a man. “You see Granville?”
“Saw him today. He was asking after you.”
“They gonna kill him?”
“I don’t know. Whatever happens, it doesn’t look like he’s ever gonna come out of jail. It’s important you know this. All that bling-bling you and your friends always talking about and lookin’ up to, the whips and the platinum and the Cristal, you get in the life, it always goes away. Forever, you understand?”
Gray half nodded and quickly looked off to the group of boys standing on the corner. Strange felt impotent then. To Gray he wasn’t much more than a fool, and an old man in the bargain. This much he knew.
“Look here,” said Strange. “You still up for my football camp?”
“Yeah, I’ll play.”
“I hear you
“You
“We’re gonna start the camp in August. Now, all the boys who play for me, they need to show me their last report card from the school year. So I want you to finish up strong.”
“I’ll do all right. But how I’m gonna get over there to where y’all practice?”
“I’ll work that out,” said Strange, realizing that he hadn’t figured it out yet. But he would. “All right then, why don’t you get on home before it gets dark.”
