Soul Circus

Strange nodded. “He came back to sing at Cardozo once, after he got huge. But they say he wasn’t really into being back in D.C. All those memories with his old man, I guess. Course, he had all sorts of demons, not just family stuff. I remember back in the seventies, cats were walkin’ around sayin’, Is Marvin gay?”

“It bothered you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m not gonna lie. And I’m not sayin’ he was or he wasn’t, ’cause I don’t know. But I couldn’t understand the concept then and I still can’t get all the way comfortable with it today. You get old enough, you’re gonna see young people doin’ shit you can’t get behind, either. Y’all’s generation is all right with a man being with a man. I’m not exactly against it, but don’t expect me to embrace it, either. In my time, it’s not the kind of thing we were taught to accept.”

“All of these hatreds get taught,” said Quinn.

“Sure they do,” said Strange. “We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.”

“Yesterday, when I tricked that kid into giving me his mother’s apartment number?”

“Olivia Elliot’s boy.

“Him. You should have seen the way he was looking at me, Derek. Like he should’ve known from the get-go that the white guy was gonna fuck him.”

“That’s like blaming the meter maid’s color for the ticket she wrote. You were just doing your job.”

“The job stinks sometimes.”

“You took those kinds of looks regular when you were a cop. Like you were part of the occupying army or something. On my side, when I wore the uniform, I caught that house-nigger rap all the time. Again, it’s part of the job.”

Quinn finished his beer and asked Strange if he wanted another drink. Strange put his hand over the top of his glass. Quinn signaled the bartender and was served another Heineken.

“So anything we do,” said Quinn, “it comes under the heading of just another job.”

“If you accept it going in, yes.”

“Like Granville Oliver?” said Quinn. “That just a job to you, too?”

Only Janine knew the truth: that Strange had been responsible for the death of Granville Oliver’s father, back in 1968. That Oliver had spared the lives of two killers at Strange’s request, in exchange for Strange’s help, less than a year ago.

Strange looked into his drink. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“You were making a living before you took Oliver’s case. You didn’t have to take it.”

“I know you think it’s wrong.”

“Damn right I do. Piece of shit killed or had killed, what, a dozen people. He infected his community and he ruined the lives of all the young men he took on, and their families.”

“Most likely he did.”

“Then why shouldn’t he die?”

“It’s not him I’m working for. For me, it comes down to one thing: I don’t believe any government should be putting its own citizens to death. Here in D.C. we voted against it, and the government’s just gonna say, We don’t give a good goddamn what you want, we’re gonna execute this man anyway. And that’s not right.”

“Maybe it will make some kid who’s thinking about getting into the life think twice.”

“That’s the argument. But in most civilized countries where they don’t have the death penalty, they’ve got virtually no murders. ’Cause they’ve got the guns off the street, they’ve got little real poverty, and they got citizens who get involved in raising their own kids. The same people who are pro-death penalty are the ones want to protect the rights of gun manufacturers to export death into the inner cities. Hell, we got an attorney general sold on capital punishment and at the same time he’s in the pocket of the NRA.”

“Well, yeah, but he doesn’t think people should dance, either.”

“I’m serious, Terry, shit doesn’t even make any sense. Look, an active death row doesn’t deter crime; ain’t nobody ever proved that. It’s all about some politicians lookin’ to be tough so they can get reelected the next time around. And that makes it bullshit to me. I’d do this for anyone who was facing that sentence.”

“What about McVeigh?”

“You know what they do in prison to people who kill kids? McVeigh got off easy, man; that boy just went to sleep. They should’ve put him in with the general population for as long as he could live. Trust me, wouldn’t have been long. But they did him to get the ball rolling on this wave of executions we got coming. Wasn’t nobody gonna object, for real, to McVeigh’s death. A week later, they put that cat Garza down, and nobody even blinked an eye. Now that the ice got broke, next thing, a line of black and brown men gonna go into that chamber in Terre Haute, and bet it, it’ll barely make the news.”

“Here we go.”

“Look here, Terry. Out of the twenty men they got on federal death row right now, sixteen are black or Hispanic.”

“Could be they did the crimes.”

“And it could be they got substandard representation. Could be they found a death- qualified jury that’s more likely to find guilt than the other kind. Could be the prosecutors used those Willie Horton images to convince the jury that what they had was another nigger needed to be permanently took off the street. And I’m not even gonna talk about where these men came from, the opportunities and guidance they didn’t have when they were coming up. You gonna sit there and tell me that this isn’t about class or race?”

“It’s about Granville Oliver, to me. Everything you’re saying, it makes some sense. But it all comes down to the simple question: Did Oliver do what they say he did?”

“That’s off the point.”

“It is the whole point, way I look at it. If he did those things, then I wouldn’t want to do anything to help him get off. I’m looking to stay on the right side from now on. You keep on the Oliver thing, you want to. But it’s not for me.”

Strange and Quinn noticed that their faces had become close and their voices had risen. They both moved back and sat straight. Strange looked down the bar and nodded to a man he knew, a Stan’s regular.

“What’s goin’ on, Junie?”

“I’m makin’ it, Strange.”

Strange sipped at his scotch while Quinn had a pull off his beer and set the bottle on the bar.

“I’m gonna use the head,” said Quinn.

“That vein of yours is standin’ out on your face.”

“So what?”

“Don’t get up in anyone’s shit, is all I’m sayin’.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Quinn walked toward the men’s room. At a large table near the hall, a man wearing sunglasses sat with a group of six. As Quinn neared him, the man’s white cane, which had been leaning against his chair, fell to the floor. Quinn picked it up and replaced it.

“Thank you,” said the man.

“No problem,” said Quinn.

Junie moved down a stool so he could get closer to Strange. When they ran into each other, the two of them generally talked about local sports, who was coming out of what high school and where they were headed, and the ’Skins.

“That friend of yours is wound up a little tight, isn’t he?” said Junie.

“He’s okay.” Strange smiled over Junie’s shoulder at a nice-looking woman who was