don’t like to be threatened. That’s something you’re gonna find out, you get to know me better. When Phil started taking a hand to me, that’s when we broke up. But it wasn’t the physical thing so much as it was what was coming from his mouth. ‘Bitch, I will do this’ and ‘Bitch, I will do that.’ I was like, Do it, then, motherfucker, but don’t be threatenin’ me. That’s when I filed charges against him. I just got tired of all those threats.”
“But you dropped the charges.”
“He paid me to. And I had no reason to hurt him that bad. It was over for us anyway by then.” Devra looked down at her son. “That life is behind me, forever and for real. I got no reason to go back there. None.”
“Mama,” said Juwan, “look!” He was flying an action figure, some hillbilly wrestler, through the air.
“I see, baby,” said Devra.
“This isn’t personal,” said Strange. “But you need to understand: I am going to do my job.”
“Ain’t personal with me, either. But I’m not lookin’ to get involved, and I’ve told you why. Now, I need to get back to work.”
“Thought Inez gave you the day off.”
“Not the whole day. She told me that it was slow and to take a couple of hours of break and then come back.”
“I see,” said Strange. “Inez doesn’t own that place, does she?”
“No.”
“Do you know who does?”
Devra nodded, cutting her eyes away from Strange’s. “Horace McKinley.”
“McKinley. Wears one of those four-finger rings, got silver on his teeth?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a drug dealer, right?”
“That ain’t no secret. Plenty of these salons down here got drug money behind them. Same way with the massage parlors all over this city, too.” Devra stood, picked up Juwan, and held him in her arms. “Look, I gotta clean him up and get back to work.”
“There’s plenty you haven’t been telling me, isn’t there?”
“Seems like you’re doing all right without my help.”
“Go ahead and take care of your son,” said Strange. “I’ll walk you out.”
Strange went over to the large window that gave to a view of the lot. A beige Nissan with a spoiler mounted on its rear was driving very slowly behind the Caprice, where Quinn waited in the passenger seat. The bass booming from the vehicle vibrated the apartment window. Strange studied the Nissan, sun gleaming off its roof, as it passed. He knew that car.
Chapter 17
IT took Devra a while to get herself and the boy ready. Strange waited for her to do whatever a woman felt she had to do and saw Devra and Juwan to her Taurus. As he walked back to his Caprice, he noticed that the car seemed to be in the general area where he had left it, but there was something off about how it was parked. Strange guessed it was the way it was slanted in its space; he didn’t remember putting it in that way.
Quinn was impassive, leaning against the passenger door as Strange got behind the wheel.
“You see that Nissan,” said Strange, “was cruising slow behind you, little while back?”
“Saw it and heard it,” said Quinn. “They passed by twice. I could see them smiling at me in my side mirror. My pale arm was leaning on the window frame the second time they went by. They must not have liked the look of it or something. That’s when they split.”
“You make the car?”
“Early nineties, Nissan Two Forty SX. The four-banger, if I had to guess.”
“You could hear the engine over the music?”
“The valves were working overtime.”
“Okay. How those boys look to you? Wrong?”
“All the way. But that could just be me, profiling again.”
“Once a cop,” said Strange.
“Tell me you know ’em,” said Quinn.
“I do. Those two rolled up on me at a light yesterday. Both of them had those bugged- out eyes.”
“Like Rodney Dangerfield and Marty Feldman got together and made a couple of babies.”
“They could be brothers. One of ’em made the slash sign across his throat. Another car, a Benz, was trying to hem me in from behind.”
“Sounds like it was planned.”
“A classic trap,” said Strange. “And you know that gangs hunt in packs. Anyway, I thought I was imagining this shit at the time, but I don’t think so anymore. They’re trying to warn me off of talking to Stokes.”
“You want me to, I can show you where they went.”
“You followed them, didn’t you?”
The lines around Quinn’s eyes deepened, star-bursting out from behind his aviators. “I figured, loud as they were listening to that music of theirs, they wouldn’t make me, that is if I played it right. And if they did make me, so what? I stayed behind other vehicles, five or six car lengths back, the whole way. Just like you taught me, Dad.”
“Thought there was something different about my car from where I’d left it.”
“I parked it one space over.”
“Knew it was something.”
“Was wondering if you were gonna catch it. They stopped at another apartment complex, not far from here.”
“Nice work,” said Strange, pulling his seat belt across his chest. “Let’s run by the parking lot of those apartments.”
“I need to eat something,” said Quinn. “And I could use a beer.”
“I could, too,” said Strange.
MARIO Durham took a shower at Donut’s apartment, then dressed again in the clothes he’d been wearing the past two days. He had some fresh clothes over at his mother’s house, but he didn’t want to go there just yet. The Sanders jersey and his Tommys, they were a little ripe but not awful. He had put his nose to them and they didn’t smell all that bad.
Mario needed to talk to Dewayne when the time was right, kind of ease him into the events of the night before, then wait for Dewayne’s instructions. But not yet; he’d just hang back for today. He was looking forward to seeing that shine in Dewayne’s eyes, though. He was thinking Dewayne was gonna be proud to have a big brother who finally went and stepped up.
Mario Durham’s whole outlook had changed since he’d killed Olivia. He had taken a life, done what he’d only heard others talk about. Sure, Mario was scared of getting caught, but he was high on the fact that he now belonged in the same club as his brother and Zulu and all the others who bragged about killing around the way. The gun in his hand had changed everything he’d been before. It had made him a man. He was happy to be rid of that gun, but it would be good to get another. He’d do that in time, too.
