Soul Circus

“You know, living here in Southeast, you hear all about what happens to people who are hot. That Corey Graves thing?”

“I’m familiar with it,” said Strange.

“They got him charged with a whole lot of stuff besides the drug business he was runnin’. Witness intimidation. Hiding witnesses. Not to mention all the beef murders he did.”

“I’m not gonna lie to you. I know it’s risky, and so do you. Question is, why are you being so courageous?”

Devra looked out the window. “ ’Cause that motherfucker threatened me. He threatened my son, Mr. Strange. He talked mad shit about my mother, too. And he did things to me he shouldn’t have done.”

“Horace McKinley.”

“That’s right.”

“What did he do?”

Devra turned her head so that she faced him. “He put his hand on my privates and rubbed it there. He pinched one of my nipples until it hurt so bad I wanted to cry out. But I didn’t cry out. I kept it in. That fat man with his cigar breath, up in my face. I could have killed him then, I had a way. I had so much hate in me.”

“Where does he stay at?” said Strange. He heard a catch in his voice and swallowed, checking his anger.

“I don’t know. He hangs with his boys over on Yuma, the six hundred block, in a house, looks like a crack house with all that plywood in the windows, during the day.”

Strange touched Devra’s forearm. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I admire you, the way you stood strong.”

“I’m ashamed for what I did when I was younger. Who I hung with, too. But that will never be me again. Just to do nothing, try to put it behind me, it’s not enough. I figure, sometimes you got to do something. Isn’t that right?”

“You’re a brave young woman.”

“Not really. Maybe I’m just foolish, like I always been.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anyway, what should I do now? Just go back to work?”

“Yes, for right now. How long you on for?”

“Till closing time. She stays open till ten o’clock.”

“You don’t want anyone to think anything’s wrong. I’ll call you later at your place and tell you about the next step and the arrangements we’ve made.”

“Mom,” said Juwan, “this ite cream’s good.”

“I know it, baby,” said Devra, looking over the seat and smiling at her son.

“You’re keeping him with you?” said Strange.

“Yes.”

“What did you tell Inez today when you left?”

“That I was taking a break.”

“She wouldn’t follow you?”

“She was the only one in the shop. She wouldn’t leave it for nothin’; that shop is everything to her.”

“That’s a bad little woman right there. My wife works for me, and she did some checking on Inez Brown. Assault priors, check kiting, everything.”

“I’m not surprised.” Devra’s eyes took all of him in. It was an unexpectedly uncomfortable moment, and Strange shifted in his seat. “So you’re gonna look after me yourself?”

“Me and my partner. A guy named Terry Quinn.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Here in Southeast. We’re workin’ on a couple of things today.”

“You ever lose a witness?” said Devra.

“I’ve made mistakes,” said Strange, thinking of Olivia Elliot. “But I’m not gonna lose you.”

FROM her car on the street, a forest green Hyundai, Inez Brown watched the parking lot of McDonald’s. She had put the Hyundai along the curb just right, so she could see the white Caprice, its tail facing her. She could see Strange and the girl, and the top of the boy’s head in the backseat. But she figured, the way she was behind him, way back on the street, he’d be awfully lucky to notice her car, if Strange even knew what kind of car she drove.

Devra had said she was goin’ out for lunch and some ice cream for the boy. That’s where she’d fucked up. ’Cause Inez knew the little kid, ran that mouth of his all day long, liked that Golden Arches ice cream best.

Inez sat on a couple of cushions so she could see over the wheel. She had good eyes. She could see the two of them, the fake cop and the girl, lippin’ in the front seat of his car. That’s all the fat man had asked her to do: find out if these two were still talking, even after she’d been warned. Stupid little bitch, with her young ass, too.

Inez checked her watch. She’d done her job and now she needed to get back. She didn’t like to be away from her business, not even for a few minutes. No telling the customers she’d lost, doing this thing right here. She’d head back to the salon now. Phone Horace when she got there, tell him what he wanted to know.

Chapter 26

QUINN put time in out front of Mart Liquors, talking to some of the men and women who were entering and leaving the shop. He spoke to the regulars who hung outside the place as well. Quinn asked them about Mario Durham and a guy named Donut. He showed them the flyer of the missing teenager, Linda Welles. Some answered politely and some were bordering on hostile, and a few didn’t bother to respond to his questions at all. He got nothing from any of them. They had made him straight off as some kind of cop.

He tried the Metro station. He tried the phone banks at the gas stations and accompanying convenience marts. He received the same nonresponse.

Quinn drove the neighborhoods next. He had no plan. He cruised Stanton Road, passing liquor stores and squat redbrick structures surrounded by black iron fences. He went down Southern Avenue, then got on Naylor Road. On Naylor were more liquor stores, Laundromats, and other service-oriented businesses. Around 30th Street, on a long hill, were the Naylor Gardens apartments, a complex as well tended and green as a college campus. Farther along, up past Naylor Plaza, the apartments abruptly went from clean and pampered to ghetto grim. And farther still were a couple of stand-alone units like those Quinn had visited several times before.

He slowed his Chevelle and idled it on the street. This was the complex that Linda Welles’s brothers had recognized in the sex video. The party had been held in one of these units. It was where she had last been seen.

Quinn looked up a rise of dirt and weeds to a three-story bunker of brick. On the stoop sat several young men wearing wife-beaters and low-hung jeans revealing the elastic bands of their boxers, skullies and napkin bandannas. They were passing around a bottle in a brown bag. They looked down at the street, where Quinn’s engine rumbled. One of them, a heavyset young man with blown-out hair, looked directly at Quinn and smiled.

Quinn pulled off from the curb. He had tried to interview that group earlier, remembered the smiler and his hair. He had had the sense then that they knew something about the fate of Linda