Soul Circus

her words, and he could hear the music in her voice. She still spoke to Strange in his dreams.

Late-spring light shot through the glass, the heat of it warming the back of Strange’s neck and hands as he sat at his desk. The wedge-shaped speaker beside his phone buzzed. Janine’s voice, transmitted from the office reception area up front, came from the box.

“Derek, Terry just came in.”

“I’ll be right out.”

Strange glanced down beside his chair, where Greco, his tan boxer, lay. Greco looked up without moving his head as Strange rubbed his skull. Greco’s nub of a tail twitched and he closed his eyes.

“I won’t be gone long. Janine’ll take care of you, boy.”

In the reception area, Strange nodded at Terry Quinn, sitting at his desk, a work station he rarely used. While Quinn tore open a pack of sugarless gum, Strange stopped by Janine’s desk.

She wore some kind of pants-and-shirt hookup, flowing and bright. Her lipstick matched the half-moons of red slashing through the outfit. It would be like her to pay attention to that kind of detail. Strange stared at her now. She always looked good. Always. But you couldn’t get the full weight of it if you saw her seated behind her desk. Janine was the kind of tall, strong woman, you needed to see her walking to get the full appreciation, to feel that stirring up in your thighs. Like one of those proud horses they marched around at the track. He knew it wasn’t proper to talk about a woman, especially a woman you loved, like she was some kind of fine animal. But that’s what came to mind when he looked at her. He guessed it was still okay, until the thought police came and raided his head, to imagine her like that in his mind.

“You okay?” said Janine, looking up at him with those big browns of hers. “You look drunk.”

“Thinking of you,” said Strange.

Strange heard Lamar, seated at Ron Lattimer’s old desk, snicker behind him. For this he turned and stared benignly at the young man.

“I ain’t say nothin’,” said Lamar. “Just over here, minding my own.”

Strange had been grooming Lamar Williams to be an investigator as soon as he got his diploma from Roosevelt High and took up some technical courses, computer training or something like it, at night. In the meantime, Strange had Lamar doing what he’d been doing the past couple of years: cleaning the office, running errands, and keeping himself away from the street-side boys over in the Section 8s, the nearby Park Morton complex where Lamar lived with his mom and little sister.

Strange looked back at Janine, then down to the blotter-style calendar on her desk. “What’s my two o’clock about?”

“Man says he’s looking for a love.”

“Him and Bobby Womack,” said Strange.

“His lost love.”

“Okay. We know him?”

“Says he’s been seeing our sign these last few years, since he’s been ‘frequenting an establishment’ over on Georgia Avenue.”

“Must be talkin’ about that titty bar across the street. Our claim to the neighborhood.”

“Georgetown’s got Dunbarton Oaks,” said Janine with a shrug. “We’ve got the Foxy Playground.”

Strange leaned over the desk and kissed Janine fully on the lips. Their mouths fit together right. He held the kiss, then stood straight.

“Dag, y’all actin’ like you’re twenty years old,” said Lamar.

Strange straightened the new name plaque on the desk. For many years it had read “Janine Baker.” Now it read “Janine Strange.”

“I didn’t have it so good when I was twenty,” said Strange, talking to Lamar, still looking at Janine. “And anyway, where’s it say that a man’s not allowed to kiss his wife?”

Janine reached into her desk drawer and pulled free a PayDay bar. “In case you miss lunch,” she said, handing it to Strange.

“Thank you, baby.”

Terry Quinn stood, a manila folder under his arm. He had the sun-sensitive skin of an Irishman, with a square jaw and deep laugh ridges framing his mouth. A scar ran down one cheek where he had been cut by a pimp’s pearl-handled knife. He kept his hair short and it was free of gray. The burst of lines that had formed around his green eyes was the sole indication of his thirty-three years. He was medium height, but the width of his shoulders and the heft of his chest made him appear shorter.

“Can I get some of that Extra, Terry?” said Lamar.

Quinn tossed a stick of gum to Lamar as he stepped out from behind his desk.

“You ready?” said Strange.

“Thought you two were gonna renew your vows or something,” said Quinn.

Strange head-motioned to the front door. “We’ll take my short.”

Janine watched them leave the office. Strange filled out that shirt she’d bought him, mostly cotton but with a touch of rayon in it for the stretch, with his broad shoulders and back. Her man, almost fifty-four, had twenty years on Terry, and still he looked fine.

Coming out of the storefront, they passed under the sign hanging above the door. The magnifying-glass logo covered and blew up half the script: “Strange Investigations” against a yellow back. At night the light-box was the beacon on this part of the strip, 9th between Kansas and Upshur, a sidearm-throw off Georgia. It was this sign, Janine’s kidding aside, that was the landmark in Petworth and down into Park View. Strange had opened this business after his stint with the MPD, and he had kept it open now for over twenty-five years. He could just as well have made his living out of his row house on Buchanan Street, especially now that he was staying full-time with Janine and her son, Lionel, in their house on Quintana. But he knew what his visibility meant out here; the young people in the neighborhood had come to expect his presence on this street.

Strange and Quinn passed Hawk’s barbershop, where a cutter named Rodel stood outside, dragging on a Newport.

“When you gonna get that mess straightened up, Derek?” said Rodel.

“Tell Bennett I’ll be in later on today,” said Strange, not breaking his stride.

“They got the new Penthouse in,” said Quinn.

“You didn’t soil it or nothin’, did you?”

“You can still make out a picture or two.”

Strange patted his close-cut, lightly salted natural. “Another reason to get myself correct.”

They passed the butcher place that sold lunches, and Marshall’s funeral parlor, where the white Caprice was parked along the curb behind a black limo-style Lincoln. Strange turned the ignition, and they rolled toward Southeast.

Chapter 3

ULYSSES Foreman was just about down to seeds, so when little Mario Durham got him on his cell, looking to rent a gun, he told Durham to meet him on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, up a ways from the Big Chair. Foreman set the meeting out for a while, which would give him time to wake up his girl, Ashley Swann, and show her who her daddy was before he left up the house.

An hour and a half later, Foreman looked across the leather bench at a skinny man with a wide, misshapen nose and big rat teeth, leaning against the Caddy’s passenger-side door. On Durham’s feet were last year’s Jordans; the J on the left one, Foreman noticed, was missing. Durham wore a Redskins jersey and a matching knit cap, his arms coming out the jersey like willow branches. The back of the jersey had the name “Sanders” printed across it. It would be just like Durham, thought Foreman, to look up to