his old Chevy, though, parked along the curb. Strange felt his hands relax. He reached down and patted Greco, who was standing by his side.
Lionel had detailed the car out, like he said, and it looked nice. The chrome wheels shined under the street lamp, and the tires had been sprayed with that fluid, made them look wet. Strange wondered when the last time was that Lionel had checked the oil.
Well, anyway, the boy was in the house.
Strange thought about Robert Gray, if anyone listened for his footsteps coming through the front door, or if that junkhead aunt of his or her hustler-looking boyfriend looked into Robert’s bedroom at night to see if he was covered up. And then he got to thinking about Granville Oliver, and if anyone had ever thought to show that kind of concern for Oliver when he was a kid.
It was hard to imagine that a killer and kingpin like Oliver had once been a boy. Strange couldn’t picture that hard man in manacles as one in his mind. But everyone started out as an innocent child. It’s just that the poor ones didn’t come out of the gate the same way as those who had money, a set of loving parents, and everything that went along with them. It was like those kids were crippled, in a way, before they even got to run the race.
Strange ran his hand through his beard and rubbed at his cheek.
“Derek,” said Janine’s groggy voice behind him.
“I know,” he said. “Come to bed.”
“Lionel get in?”
“Yes, he’s here.”
“You’re done working for today,” said Janine. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop.”
He got back into bed. Because Janine was right. He wasn’t going to do anybody any good just standing by that window, and there wasn’t anything more he could do tonight. His day was done.
Chapter 14
THE Granville Oliver trial was being held in Courtroom 19 at the U.S. Courthouse on Constitution Avenue and 3rd Street, in Northwest. Strange passed by the nicotine addicts standing outside the building in the morning sun. The air was still, and the smoke from their cigarettes hung in the light. It would be a hot spring day, a reminder that the dreaded Washington summer was not far behind.
Strange passed through a security station and caught an elevator up to the fourth floor. All of the courtrooms were active, with attorneys, clients, and the clients’ relatives and friends standing out in the hall. Outside of one room, a mother was raising her voice to her sloppily dressed, slouching son, and Strange heard a clap as she slap-boxed his ear. Most of the activity was down around 19, where a portable metal detector had been set up. Strange went through it, was thanked by a man in a blue uniform, and entered the courtroom.
The spectator section in the back of the room was half filled, with the first two rows of seats left unoccupied by rule. There were several young ladies, pretty, made up, and nicely dressed, seated on the pewlike benches. A couple of tough young men wearing suits, whom Strange pegged as being in the life, were among them, along with a woman who had the age on her to be a mother or an aunt. A young journalist, a small white male wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses and punkish clothes, sat alone.
FBI agents and other types of cops were scattered about the room. They were there to ensure that there would be no spectator intimidation directed at witnesses in the courtroom. Their hairstyles went from crew cut to flattop, and many of them wore facial hair, mustaches for the veterans and goatees and Vandykes for the young. Some had just made the height requirement, and Strange noted mentally that the shortest ones had bulked themselves up to the monkey-maximum. All of them filled out their suits. A few gave Strange the fish eye as he found a seat. They knew who he was.
In the body of the courtroom there were two tables for the defense and the prosecution. The defense team, from Ives and Colby, was all black, per the request of Oliver, though many of the firm’s white attorneys had been working the case from behind the scenes. Raymond Ives had already made eye contact with Strange, as it was Ives’s habit to watch the spectators as they entered.
Granville Oliver sat at the defense table wearing an expensive blue suit. He wore nonprescription eyeglasses, a nice touch suggested by Ives, to give him a look of thoughtfulness and intelligence. Underneath the suit he wore a stun belt, by decree of the court.
The jurors had entered the courtroom and were seated. The selection process had taken months, and its progress was heavily monitored in the local news. Nearly two hundred District residents had been excused because they had admitted on a questionnaire that they were unlikely or unable to render a death sentence. Prosecutors had been allowed to continue the process until they were satisfied that they had a “death- qualified” jury. So the jurors who were ultimately selected were hardly an accurate representation of the D.C. community, or its sentiments.
In the jury box were four whites. Two of them were bookish and rumpled and the other two wore unfashionable sport jackets with long, wide lapels. The remaining jurors were black and mostly elderly or nearing retirement age. From the looks of them, they appeared to be upstanding citizens, on the conservative side, lifelong workingmen and -women. Not the type to sympathize, particularly, with an angry young man of any color who in the past had publicly flashed his ill-gotten, blood-smeared gains.
The U.S. attorney for the prosecution began his opening remarks, telling the jury what the case was “about.” As he spoke of greed and power and the notion of “street respect,” a series of photographs of Granville Oliver were presented on several television monitors placed about the courtroom. These were stills from a rap video Oliver had produced to promote his recording career and recently founded company, GO Records. The origin of the stills was not mentioned. When the prosecutor was done with his speech, he showed the video in its entirety for the jury.
The images would be familiar to anyone under the age of thirty: Oliver in a hot tub with thong-clad women, Oliver behind the wheel of a tricked-out Benz, Oliver in platinum jewelry and expensive threads, Oliver holding twin.45s crossed against his chest. The usual bling-bling, set to slow-motion female rump shaking, drum machine electronica, Fred Wesley-style samples, and a monotone rap coming from the unsmiling, threatening face of Granville Oliver. Any kid knew that the images contained props that were rented for the shoot. Perhaps these images would be less familiar, though, in this context, especially to the older members of the jury.
Strange had come down to speak to Ives because he felt he needed to brief him today. And he also thought he’d sit and hear the opening statement for the defense, describing Oliver’s early life in the Section 8 projects. Ives would detail his fatherless upbringing, his crack-dealer role models, his subpar education, and how, as a youngster, he had learned to shoot up his mother with cocaine to bring her up off her heroin nod.
It was all propaganda, from both sides, when you got down to it. But something about the prosecution’s presentation that morning had stretched the boundaries of dignity and fairness, and it had angered Strange. He stood, made the telephone-call sign to Ives with two fingers spread from cheek to ear, and left the courtroom.
An FBI agent followed him out the door. Strange didn’t look at him or acknowledge him in any way. He kept walking and he kept his eyes straight ahead. He was used to this kind of subtle intimidation.
Down on the first floor, he ran into Elaine Clay, one of the public defenders known as the Fifth Streeters, who had been in the game for many years. Strange had bought countless LPs from Elaine’s husband, Marcus Clay, when he’d owned his record stores in Dupont Circle and on U Street before the turnaround in Shaw.
Elaine stopped him and put a hand on his arm. He stood eye to eye with her and relaxed, realizing he had been scowling.
