Welles, but he hadn’t pushed it. He hadn’t done his job. He remembered feeling weak and punked as he’d driven away from them the last time. And he felt that way now.
Quinn drove over to the area of Valley Green. He pulled the Chevelle up along some street-side kids on their bikes. He asked about Mario Durham and “a dude named Donut.” He got some shrugs and smart remarks, and watched impotently as the kids rode away, doing wheelies, laughing, cutting on one another and the white man in the old car.
He parked at a small market and went inside. He questioned the woman behind the counter and got a shrug. He bought a pack of sugarless gum and thanked her for her time. Then he walked next door, into a Chinese carryout, where a thin man with fat freckles across the bridge of his wide nose stood in a small lobby in front of a Plexiglas wall with a lazy Susan in it. A Chinese woman stood behind the Plexiglas; her smile was welcoming, but her eyes were not. She looked friendly and frightened, both at once. Quinn got the woman’s attention and talked into a slotted opening above the lazy Susan.
“I’m looking for a guy named Mario Durham,” said Quinn.
“I don’t know.”
“How about a man they call Donut?”
“You want food?”
Quinn looked down at the linoleum floor and shook his head.
“
Quinn turned. “You know where he lives?”
“The building he lives in ain’t but two blocks from here. I don’t know the apartment number where he stays at, though.”
“The building’s good enough. He owes you ten?”
“Boy took me for a Hamilton, like, a year ago. He thinks I forgot. But I’m gonna get it someday.”
“You’ll get that ten sooner than someday,” said Quinn, “you give me the address.”
“Make it twenty,” said the man, “and I’ll give it to you now.”
HOMICIDE Detective Nathan Grady got a break soon after meeting with Strange and Quinn. A young man named Richard Swales, picked up on an intent-to-distribute beef, had offered his help, in exchange for some “consideration,” in locating Mario Durham. He told the arresting officer that he knew from talk on the street that Durham was wanted in a murder. From the substation, where they were keeping Swales in a holding cell, Grady was called and told of the lead. Grady said he’d be right in.
In the interview room, Swales admitted that he did not know Mario Durham personally or his whereabouts. But there was a guy folks called Donut, Durham’s “main boy,” who most likely could point the police in the right direction. Grady learned that Donut’s real name was Terrence Dodson. He asked Swales where he could find Dodson. Swales said that he didn’t know, but he knew the “general area he stayed at.”
“Can I get some love?” said Swales.
Grady said that if the information he’d given him was correct, and if it led to an arrest, yes, it could help Swales’s case.
That’s all Grady had been looking for. Someone less afraid of Dewayne Durham than he was of prison. A two-time loser about to strike out. It was how most cases were solved.
It took a hot minute to find Terrence Dodson’s address in Valley Green and get a record of his priors. Grady took his unmarked and, accompanied by a cruiser and a couple of uniformed officers, went to the address. One of the uniforms stayed out on the street with the cars. The other uniform went with Grady into the building, where they found Dodson’s apartment door. Grady knocked, the uniform behind him, and the door soon opened. As it did, Grady flashed his badge.
“Terrence Dodson?” said Grady, looking down on the small, ugly man who stood in the door frame, one eye twitching, trying to manage a smile.
“That’s my given name. Ain’t nobody ever call me that, though.”
Grady slipped his badge case back into his jacket. “Donut, then, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You know a Mario Durham?”
“Why?” said Donut, chuckling weakly. “He done somethin’? What, that fool spit on the sidewalk, sumshit like that?”
“Mind if I come in?”
“You got a warrant?” Donut barked out a laugh. “I’m just playing with you, officer,
Donut stepped aside to let the white man pass. Big motherfucker, too. Looked like that man played in the sequels to that movie with Felton Perry, about the redneck sheriff with the bat. The ones that weren’t no good.
HORACE McKinley sat in a vinyl nail-studded chair meant to look like leather in what used to be the living room of the house on Yuma. He talked on his cell as Mike Montgomery paced the room.
McKinley flipped the StarTAC closed. His forehead was beaded with sweat. There was sweat under his arms and it ran down his sides.
It had been a busy morning. He had learned from his own boys that Mario Durham was wanted in a murder. He had spoken to Ulysses Foreman, who had taken a call from Dewayne Durham, angry that the gun used by Mario had also been Jerome Long’s murder gun in the Coates killings. Foreman had called McKinley to give his condolences on the cousins, and also to assure him that he hadn’t known, of course, that one of his guns would be used against the Yuma Mob. McKinley saw an opportunity for an alliance with Foreman, and maybe to gain a favor or something free. He told Foreman that this was simply the cost of doing business for both of them and that no offense had been taken. And now that little old girl, ran his salon, had phoned with some disturbing news.
“That was Inez,” said McKinley. “The Stokes girl’s been talking to that Strange again.”
“What’re we gonna do?”
McKinley breathed in deeply and heard a wheeze in his chest. He was carrying too much weight. Now would be a good time to give up on those Cubans, too.
“Ice her down for a while, I guess.”
“Kill her?”
“No, I don’t want to kill the bitch ’less I have to. I was thinkin’ we’d hide her until she comes around. I figure, we separate her from her little boy for a few hours, she’ll change her mind about talking anymore.”
“We could use some help.”
“The troops been depleted, Mike. I got everyone on the street and I told them I needed a big cash night. It’s just you and me.”
“You want me to stay with the kid?”
“You’d do better with him than I will. Me, I’m better with the girls.” McKinley smiled at Montgomery, who was frowning. His long hands were jammed deep in the pockets of his jeans. “You gonna hold that boy tight? I don’t want you gettin’ soft on me now. This is business here; that’s all it is. We got to protect our own and what we got.”
Montgomery nodded. McKinley was only a couple of years his senior, but he was the closest thing to a father he’d ever had.
“I’m behind you, Hoss. You know this.”
“No doubt. You my right hand, Mike.”
“We gonna do this now?”
“No. We can get over to the salon later, take care of the girl. She ain’t goin’ nowhere else today.”
