more. The same way they keep poor young black boys and girls out of the public’s eyes today, the same way they did me when I was a kid. Warehousin’ me and those like me down in the Section Eights. Now the government wants to bring me out and make an example out of me for a hot minute, then make me disappear again. And I’m a good candidate, too, ain’t I? A strong young nigger with an attitude. They want to strap me to that table in Indiana and give me that needle and show people, that’s what happens when you don’t stay down where we done put you. That’s what happens when you rise up. They want to do this to me bad. So bad that they’d fuck with someone who was trying to help me to stop it, hear?”
You left out the part about all the young black men you killed or had killed, thought Strange. And the part about you poisoning your own community with drugs, and ruining the lives of all the young people you recruited and the lives of their families. But there were some truths in what Granville Oliver was saying, too. Strange, following a personal policy, did not comment either way.
“So I was just wondering,” said Oliver. “When they try to shake you down – and they will – are you gonna stand tall?”
“Don’t insult me,” said Strange. “And don’t ever let me get the idea that you’re threatening me. ’Cause I will walk. And you do not want me to do that.”
Strange kept his voice even and his shoulders straight. He hoped his anger, and his fear, did not show on his face. Strange knew that even from in here, Oliver could have most anyone killed out on the street.
Oliver smiled, his face turning from hard to handsome. Like many who had attained his position, he was intelligent, despite his limited education, and could be a charming young man at will. When he relaxed his features, he favored his deceased father, a man Strange had known in the 1960s. Oliver had never known his father at all.
“I was just askin’ a question, big man. I don’t have many friends left, and I want to make sure that the ones I
“We’re square.”
“Good. But, look here, don’t come up in here empty-handed next time. I could use some smokes or somethin’.”
“You know I can’t be bringin’ any contraband in here. They bar me from these meetings, it’s gonna be a setback for what we’re trying to accomplish.”
“I hear you. How about some porno mags, though?”
“I’ll see you next time.”
Strange stood.
“One more thing,” said Oliver.
“What is it?” said Strange.
“I was wonderin’ how Robert Gray was doin’?”
“He’s staying with his aunt.”
“She ain’t right.”
“I know it. But it’s the best I could do. I got him all pumped up about playing football for us this year. We’re gonna start him in the camp this summer, comin’ up.”
“That’s my little man right there. You’re gonna see, that boy can jook. Check up on him, will you?”
“I get the time, I’ll go by there today.”
“Thank you.”
“Stay strong, Granville.”
Strange signaled the fat man in the booth and walked from the room.
OUT in the air, on the 1900 block of D Street in Southeast, Derek Strange walked to his car. He dropped under the wheel of his work vehicle, a white-over-black ’89 Caprice with a 350 square block under the hood, and rolled down the window. He had a while to kill before meeting Quinn back at the office, and he didn’t want to face the ringing phone and the message slips spread out on his desk. He decided he would sit in his car and enjoy the quiet and the promise of a new day.
Strange poured a cup of coffee from the thermos he kept in his car. Coffee was okay for times like this, but he kept water in the thermos when he was doing a surveillance, because coffee went through him too quick. He only sipped the water when he knew he’d be in the car for a long stretch, and on those occasions he kept a cup in the car with a plastic lid on it, in which he could urinate as needed.
Strange tasted the coffee. Janine had brewed it for him that morning before he left the house. The woman could cook, and she could make some coffee, too.
Strange picked up the newspaper beside him on the bench, which he had snatched off the lawn outside Janine’s house earlier that morning on his way to the car. He pulled the Metro section free and scanned the front page. The
Oliver had allegedly been involved in a dozen murders, including the murder of his own uncle, while running the Oliver Mob, a large-scale, longtime drug business operating in the Southeast quadrant of the city. The Feds were seeking death for Oliver under the RICO act, despite the fact that the District’s residents had overwhelmingly rejected the death penalty in a local referendum. The combination of racketeering and certain violent crimes allowed the government to exercise this option. The last execution in D.C. had been carried out in 1957.
The jury selection process had taken several months, as it had been difficult to find twelve local residents unopposed to capital punishment. During this time, Oliver’s attorneys, from the firm of Ives and Colby, had employed Strange to gather evidence, data, and countertestimony for the defense.
Strange skipped the article, jumping inside Metro to page 3. His eyes went to a daily crime column unofficially known by longtime Washingtonians as “the Roundup,” or the “Violent Negro Deaths.” The first small headline read, “Teen Dies of Gunshot Wounds,” and beneath it were two sentences: “An 18-year-old man found with multiple gunshot wounds in Southeast Washington died early yesterday at Prince George’s County Hospital Center, police said. The unidentified man was found just after midnight in the courtyard area behind the Stoneridge apartments in the 300 block of Anacostia Road, and was pronounced dead at 1:03 A.M.”
Two sentences, thought Strange. That’s all a certain kind of kid in this town’s gonna get to sum up his life. There would be more deaths, most likely retribution kills, related to this one. Later, the murder gun might turn up somewhere down the food chain. Later, the crime might get “solved,” pinned on the shooter by a snitch in a plea-out. Whatever happened, this would be the last the general public would hear about this young man, a passing mention to be filed away in a newspaper morgue, one brief paragraph without even a name attached to prove that he had existed. Another unidentified YBM, dead on the other side of the Anacostia River.
River, hell, thought Strange. The way it separates this city for real, might as well go ahead and call it a canyon.
Strange dropped the newspaper back on the bench seat. He turned the key in the ignition and pushed a Spinners tape into his deck. He pulled out of his spot and drove west. Just a few sips of coffee, and already he had to pee. Anyway, he couldn’t sit here all day. It was time to go to work.
Chapter 2
TWO house wrens, a brownish male and female, were building a nest on the sill outside Strange’s office window. Strange could hear them talking to each other as they worked.
When Strange was a child, his mother, Alethea, had held him up to their kitchen window on mornings just like this one to show him the daily progress of the nest the birds made there each year. “They’re working to make a house for their children. The same way your father goes to work each day to make this a home for you and your brother.” His mother had been gone two years now, but Derek Strange could recall
