end of the week, with trade union members and civil rights spokesmen from across the country due to attend. A settlement of the garbage workers’ strike would postpone the march, but no one expected that to happen. Dr. King had been scheduled to arrive in Tennessee that day to prepare for the demonstration, but he had been held up in Atlanta. His people promised that he would begin to head the operations in Memphis on Wednesday instead.
On Tuesday, in Milwaukee, Senator Eugene McCarthy celebrated his victory in the Wisconsin primary, having soundly beaten noncandidate Lyndon Johnson as well as write-in candidates Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey the night before. In the Republican primary, Richard M. Nixon had won 80 percent of the vote to Ronald Reagan’s 10 and seemed well on the way to his party’s nomination.
On Tuesday, in D.C., the Cherry Blossom Festival of 1968 officially commenced. Over the Potomac River in Virginia, U.S. Park Police removed a Vietcong flag found flying over the Iwo Jima monument near Arlington Cemetery. Later that afternoon, two brothers were busted in the parking lot of a Northwest drive-in restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue, netting the largest seizure of hashish ever made in the Washington area.
At the same time, Buzz Stewart and Dominic Martini worked uneasily together at the Esso station on Georgia Avenue while Walter Hess, without remorse or anything else clouding his head, did his duties at the machine shop on Brookeville Road. Darius Strange flipped eggs and burgers on the grill of the Three-Star Diner on Kennedy Street while his wife, Alethea, cleaned a house in the Four Corners area of Silver Spring, Maryland. Their older son, Dennis, slept late, watched television, and read the want ads in the
Frank Vaughn heard the hash bust story on all-news WAVA as he drove his Polara south on a downtown Silver Spring street. It made him think of Ricky, and the small pipe he’d found in his son’s car the week before.
“I was driving around with a bunch of guys the other night,” explained Ricky. “One of them must have dropped it under the seat or somethin’. I swear, Dad, I don’t even know what it’s for.”
Bull
Vaughn turned onto Sligo Avenue, then made a quick right onto Selim. He parked in front of a beer garden called Fay and Andy’s, where drinkers stared at Georgia Avenue and the B amp;O railroad tracks when they weren’t staring into their glasses or the ashtrays in front of them. There were several garages, engine repair businesses and body shops alike, on this strip. Vaughn was out of his jurisdiction, but that meant jack to him, and anyway he was off the clock.
Vaughn had gotten his lab man, a guy named Phil Leibovitz, on the phone that morning. Leibovitz had studied the grillwork, glass, and logo left at the hit-and-run scene and discerned that the car involved was a ’63 or ’64 midsize Ford.
“It’s not a Falcon or a pony car,” said Leibovitz. “I’m sure of that. Different kind of gridwork. You need to be looking for a Fairlane or a Galaxie Five Hundred.”
“What the hell, Phil?” said Vaughn. “Which one?”
“The Galaxie.”
“How come?”
“I’m assuming the impact knocked the emblem off the front of the car. The Fairlane doesn’t carry the Ford logo on the grille.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Compliments don’t pay my bills.”
“The next beer’s on me.”
“Beers don’t pay my bills, either, Frank.”
“I’ll get you when I see you,” said Vaughn.
Vaughn spent the next hour doing walk-ins, questioning mechanics and metalworkers, trying to get a line on a damaged red Ford. He talked to grease monkeys, straights, near idiots, guys who looked like they’d done time, and guys who looked like candidates for time. He turned up squat.
Vaughn drove into D.C. He still had an hour before his shift. He was the primary on a fresh homicide in Petworth, and that would cut into the time he could devote to the hit and run. From the history they’d turned up, the young man, Vernon Wilson, was clean. He had a steady job and was going on to college. He came from a family he loved and who loved him back. He was murdered, Vaughn decided, because he was colored. Vaughn felt he was close to nailing Wilson’s killer, and that got his blood up. All he had to do was find the car.
Vaughn went down to Arkansas Avenue between 14th and Piney Branch Parkway. A one-bay garage stood there near a glass shop and a commercial-refrigeration outlet. Vaughn knew the head mechanic, a huge colored guy named Leonard White, who he’d dropped on a B amp;E charge many years ago when Vaughn was working Robbery, his first position out of uniform.
Vaughn parked near a pay phone and tapped his finger on the wheel. He thought of a friend in Prince George’s County who might be of some help. First he’d play the long shot and talk to White.
White’s head was under the hood of a ’63 Valiant when Vaughn walked through the open bay door. Music came loud from the shop radio. Another colored guy, slim in his coveralls, with a watch cap cocked on his head, was handing White a ratchet arm. He cool-eyed Vaughn and said, “Leonard, the Man here to see you.” White looked up, squinting through the glare of a droplight hung over the Plymouth. The light gave the illusion of warmth, but the interior of the cinder-block box was cool as a tomb.
White stood to his full six-feet-something, wiped his hands off on a shop rag, and walked over to Vaughn. He wore black-rimmed eyeglass held together at the bridge with surgical tape. His head was the size of a calf’s. He looked like Roosevelt Grier.
“Officer Vaughn.”
“Leonard. See you’re still working on those Valiants.”
“Long as they keep puttin’ push-button trannies in those Signets, I’m gonna stay in business.”
“I talk to you a minute outside?”
White walked out without answering, and Vaughn followed. Vaughn shook an L amp;M from his deck. White took a pack of Viceroys from his breast pocket and put one between his lips. Vaughn produced his Zippo, lit White’s smoke, lit his own, then snapped the lighter shut.
“There was a homicide the other night over on Fourteenth.”
“That ain’t no surprise.”
“Not down in Shaw. A mile or two from here. Car ran down this colored kid, wasn’t doin’ anything but walking home.”
“I heard about it.”
“
“That it happened.”
White dragged on his Viceroy and let the smoke out slow.
“I’m lookin’ for a red Ford,” said Vaughn. “Galaxie Five Hundred, sixty-three, sixty-four. Damage to the grille, headlights, front quarters, like that.”
“Ain’t had nothin’ like it come through.”
“Here you go.” Vaughn handed White a card on which he’d scribbled his home number next to the printed station number. “Anything at all, you get up with me, hear?”
White nodded.
“Everything okay?” said Vaughn.
“God is good,” said White.
Leonard White finished his smoke and watched Frank Vaughn cross the street, heading for a pay phone near the bus stop. Vaughn amused him. He was like one of those dinosaurs, didn’t know the other dinosaurs had all laid down and died. Also, like many men who’d done time, White had a strange fondness for the one who’d sent him up. In a very direct way, Frank Vaughn had done what his mother, father, girlfriends, and minister had been unable to do: He’d turned his life around.
At the pay phone, Vaughn flicked away his cigarette. He pulled his wallet and ratfucked
