I liked him, too.”
“Don’t forget to stop by. Ninth and Upshur.”
“I’ll be around.”
“Thanks for your help, Nick.”
Stefanos shook Strange’s outstretched hand and said, “Right.”
Strange watched him walk toward a Mopar muscle car, a white-over-red Dodge with aftermarket Magnum 500 wheels. He listened to the cook of the Detroit engine and went back into the diner. Quinn was dropping money on the table, a toothpick rolling in his mouth.
“You ready?” said Quinn. “I need to pick up my car.”
Strange nodded. “Let’s go to work.”
Chapter 25
BERNARD Walker waited in the idling Benz as Dewayne Durham walked out of the Sixth District substation on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast. He could see that screwed-up look on Dewayne’s face, which meant confusion. Trouble, something to do with his family. Often it was his mother, always needin’ something. Money, jewelry, clothes, a ride to church. But today it was that brother of his, who’d fucked up big with that girl. When the police had called him into the station that morning – “You wanna come in, Dewayne, or should we send a car to pick you up?” – they said it had to do with Mario. Somethin’ about an “interesting” new development they had in the case.
“Everything all right?” said Walker, so tall in the driver’s seat that his hair was touching the headliner of the car.
“Mario,” said Durham, as if that were explanation enough. He reached to the radio and turned down the sound.
“Well?”
“The gun he used to kill that bitch? It was the same gun Jerome used on that Coates cousin.”
“Same model?”
“Same exact
“Foreman’s woman said that gun was clean.”
“I know it. Foreman told her it was. He took a gun had a body on it, a murder gun attached to my own brother, and sold it to Long. Why you think he’d want to put me in that kind of situation?”
“Maybe he didn’t know.”
“Could be he didn’t. Or maybe someone wanted to see me get jammed up.”
“You think Foreman would set you up like that? Why?”
“That’s what I need to find out.”
“We better go talk to your brother,” said Walker.
“Nah, uh-uh. I don’t trust what he’ll tell me, scared as he is. And I don’t trust myself to be around him right now. I’m tellin’ you, Zu, I’m about to kill a motherfucker today. I see him and he starts to lie, I might just go ahead and dead my own brother. I don’t want to do that to my moms.”
“We could talk to his fool friend, see if Mario said anything about it to him.”
“Yeah,” said Durham. “Let’s do that.”
DONUT’S apartment was dirty and it smelled like resin and cigarettes. A window air conditioner ran low and kept the smell in the two-bedroom unit. Donut sat on the couch, wires and controllers around him from the PlayStation 2 connected to his TV. Normally these things were on the living-room table in front of the couch, along with his ashtray and other smoking paraphernalia, his cell, and his CD and game cases. But Bernard Walker had kicked the table over on its side as soon as Donut had let him in, and now Donut’s shit was scattered about the room.
“I don’t know nothin’,” said Donut. His hands were between his thighs, and he was scissoring his knees together compulsively while staring straight ahead.
Walker bent his long torso forward so that he could speak softly to the ugly man on the couch. “We ain’t asked you nothin’ yet.”
“Go ahead and ask me whateva. I got no call to lie.”
“Just wanted to come by and thank you for looking after my brother like you did,” said Dewayne Durham, standing beside Walker, his voice friendly and calm.
“This how y’all thank me?” said Donut, his hands spread toward the mess on the living- room floor.
“I got a couple of questions for you, is all,” said Durham. “Answer straight, and we’ll be gone.”
“I’m listenin’.”
“That gun my brother had, the one he used on that girl. He tell you where he got it from?”
“That Foreman dude,” said Donut.
“Good. You doin’ all right. Keep answering fast like that and don’t think too hard before you do. Now, Mario say anything about his conversation with Foreman? When he returned the gun to him, I mean.”
“Like what?”
“Like, did Foreman know that Mario had used that gun on the girl?”
Donut nodded quickly. “He said Foreman knew it was a murder gun. He knew.”
Durham looked over at Walker, who nodded one time. They stood there for a while, saying nothing. Donut guessed they were deciding what to do with him. He knew a lot of shit. He prayed they wouldn’t kill him for what he knew. And now he had put the finger on Foreman, too, that big horse, used to be a cop. But he could worry about Foreman later. First thing was, he needed to get out of this situation right here.
“Donut?” said Durham.
“Huh?”
“Listen close.”
“I am.”
“You know where Mario’s at?”
Donut knew. He knew the address of that girl he was stayin’ with and he knew the phone number, too. It was written down on a pad of paper, lying somewhere on the floor with everything else. Mario had called him that morning, talkin’ about the girl and how her ass looked in her jeans, and also about the trouble he was in. But Donut wasn’t about to tell Dewayne Durham all that.
“No,” said Donut. “I ain’t talked to him since he left out of here.”
“That’s good for you,” said Walker. “You need to keep it that way.”
“You know I will.”
“And you do see him again,” said Durham, “you don’t want to be getting him involved in that dummy bullshit you peddlin’ out on the street.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Aiight, then,” said Durham. “You got my cell number, case you remember anything else?”
“Mario wrote it down. I know where it is.”
“Let’s go, Zu.”
Walker stepped on Donut’s case for NBA Street and broke it on the way out the door.
In the Benz, Dewayne Durham used his cell to phone Ulysses Foreman. Walker listened
