Soul Circus

“What kind of prize?”

“I’m not allowed to say what it is to anyone but her. And I need to put this in her hand.”

“She’s out gettin’ a pack of cigarettes.”

“Thought you didn’t know where she was.”

“Just give it here,” said Mark, reaching out his hand. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“I can’t. It’s against the rules. I’ll drop it by later.” Quinn eye-motioned toward a redbrick structure, two houses back. “I know where you live. You’re up on the third floor, right?”

“We in two-B,” said Mark, and his features dropped then. He knew he had made a mistake. He kicked ineffectually at some gravel in the street. “Dag,” he said under his breath.

“I’ll come back,” said Quinn. “Thanks, Mark.”

Quinn began to walk quickly back toward his car. The kid followed on his bike.

“What’s your name?” said Mark, cruising alongside Quinn.

“Can’t tell you that,” said Quinn, who kept up his pace. “It’s against the rules.”

“I told you mines.”

Quinn didn’t answer. He went by the group of boys in the street, who appeared not to notice him at all this time, and he put his key to the driver’s lock of his car.

“Is it fast?” said Mark, who had stopped his bike and was standing behind Quinn.

“Yeah, it’s fast,” said Quinn, opening the door.

“You live out in Maryland, huh?”

Quinn figured the boy had made his plates. Quinn kept his mouth shut and started to get into his car.

“You don’t want to talk to me no more, huh?”

Quinn turned and faced the boy. “Look, you’re a good kid. I’d like to talk to you some more and all that, but I gotta go.”

“If I’m good, then why’d you want to go and do me like you did?”

“Like how?”

“You tricked me, mister.”

“Listen, I gotta get goin’.”

Quinn settled in the driver’s seat and closed the door. He looked once more at the kid, who was staring at him with disappointment, something worse than anger or hate.

Quinn cranked the engine and rolled down the block. He found East Capitol and took it west.

Just before Benning Road, Quinn pulled over beside St. Luke’s Church and let the Chevelle idle. He found Mario Durham’s cell number in his notebook and punched the number into the grid of his own cell. Mario Durham answered on the third ring.

“Mario,” said Quinn. “It’s Terry Quinn, Strange’s partner. I got an address for you.”

“Damn, boy, that was fast.”

“I know it,” said Quinn, his jaw tight. “Write this down.”

Minutes later, driving across Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River, he noticed that his fingers were white and bloodless on the wheel.

Quinn knew, as every seasoned investigator knew, that to find a parent you always went first to the kid. Relatives and neighbors rarely gave up another adult to an investigator or anyone who looked like a cop. But kids did, often without thought. Kids were more trusting, and you used that trust. If you were in this game, and it was a game of sorts, this was one of the first things you learned.

So Quinn was doing his job. But he couldn’t get Mark Elliot’s face, his look of disappointment, out of his head. Quinn should have been up with the buzz of success. Instead he was ashamed.

MARIO Durham noticed that the letter J had fallen off the word Jordan, printed real big across one of his sneakers, while he was riding the bus down Minnesota Avenue. He had those red, black, and white ones from last year he had bought off this dude said he didn’t want the old style in his closet anymore. They had looked good to Durham, but now he realized maybe he had got beat for twenty-five dollars. If he was here now, his brother, Dewayne, would say, That’s what you get for buying used shoes. But he had smelled the insides before he bought them, and they were clean, like they still sitting on the shelf at Foot Locker. They had looked all right to him.

Durham took off the shoe still had a J on it and worked at the letter with his fingernail until it started to peel at the edge. He tore it off. Good. Now both of his shoes looked alike.

He was still holding this shoe when he heard a girl laughing, and he looked around to see these two girls, sharing one of the seats a couple of rows up. They were staring at him, holding that shoe. A guy who wasn’t with them, sitting nearby, was looking around to see what they were laughing at, and now he was looking back at Mario and he was kinda smiling, too.

People had been laughing at Mario Durham all his life. Wasn’t anything special about this bus ride right here.

Soon those people went on about their business. He found that this was usually so, that folks would leave him alone after they got over the first thing they saw about him that made them crack on him and laugh: that he was skinny, or funny lookin’, or that he was tearing a letter off his shoe. And that was worse than being laughed at sometimes – just being ignored. Feeling that he wasn’t even important enough to notice, that’s what really cut him deep.

Dewayne said that when someone stepped to you, then you had to step back. But what was he gonna do, even strapped like he was right now? Kill a Metrobus full of people for smilin’ at him? But it did make him mad. You came into this life trusting people to be good, and it seemed like they always did you dirt in the end.

Like Olivia. She said she loved him and to prove it she was giving him that good thing, too. So when she asked him, could he ask his brother to front a pound of hydro so that they could sell it, make a little money together, and have some stash to smoke for their own selves, he had to say yes. She was the first woman who had shown some interest in him in a long while.

Dewayne gave him the LB after a lecture about being responsible and shit, and this being his chance to show his kid brother that he could do right. And then Olivia had disappeared with the chronic, just took her son and booked right out of Southeast, and shamed him to his brother. Mario Durham had stood for just about everything, but he couldn’t stand for that. Now she was going to have to give the hydro back to him, or the money she’d made from it if she’d gone and sold it already. Because Dewayne had only been half right saying it was his “chance.” Really, it was his last chance, and he couldn’t let it slip by. He needed to show Dewayne that he could stand tall, that Dewayne could trust him, not just as a brother but also as a man. Maybe Dewayne would even put him on. Finding Olivia, getting back the pound she’d took, that’s how he could redeem himself in his brother’s eyes. For what she’d done, one way or another, the bitch was gonna pay.

Mario Durham reached up and pulled the signal cord, as his stop was coming up ahead. He needed to transfer over to the Benning Road line and take that bus east. He wasn’t far now from where Olivia was at.

Durham walked the aisle toward the door, hitching up his Tommys as he passed the two girls. He heard one of them laugh, and he heard the dude nearby say something about Secret Squirrel, then, “You lookin’ good, Deion” from one of the girls, then more laughs. He bit down on his lip and took the steps down off the bus, passing through the accordion doors that opened to the street.

OLIVIA Elliot fired up a joint and sat back on the sofa. She took a good hit off it and held the smoke in, letting it lie in her lungs while she squinted at the TV set, had a rerun going of Martin. She thought she’d seen this one before, but she figured on watchin’ it anyway. Truth was, wasn’t one of these shows all that different from the others. Martin Lawrence was funny, too; he had