What It Was

especially the ones who weren’t much more than migrant workers, passing through town on their way to someplace else. But no one cracked on Frank, a local with a work ethic. Two oh five an hour, and he did his job straight.

“Where he guarding at now?” said Strange, after Frank had drifted.

“He’s down at that big hotel complex in Foggy Bottom. One on Virginia Avenue?”

“Frank’s cool,” said Strange.

A couple of ladies visited. One of them, a nice little deep-dark girl who was put together right, offered to get Strange high, and they went out back to the alley, where she produced a number and fired it up. Grady Page joined them for a minute. He and Strange shotgunned each other, then Strange did the same for the girl, whose name was LaVonya. Page went back inside to do his thing. LaVonya said to Strange, “You’re a big one,” and he said, “You should see me when I stand up,” and though he was already standing and the comment made no sense, it sounded funny, and the two of them laughed. She wrote down her phone number and Strange took it, because he was a man, and as soon as they went back into the bar he lost track of her.

Page was playing the title cut off The World Is a Ghetto, the long version from the brand-new War, and Strange was higher than a Denver hippie as he drank another beer, the instrumental middle of the song building emotionally, almost violently, taking him up, Strange knowing that he was young and in the midst of something, a music, dress, and cultural revolution that was happening with his people, in his time. Where it was going he had no clue, but he was glad to be a part of it.

“Man, you are trippin,” said Cheek with a chuckle. He had returned to his spot beside Strange, who had not noticed he was gone. “Where LaVonya at?”

“Who?”

“You better have another beer to straighten your shit out.”

“Okay, then,” said Strange. “And one for you. On me.”

Grady Page, smiling absently, up-picking his hair with his rake, had a power fist as a handle, was leaning against the beer cooler. Strange held up two fingers and signaled for one more round.

When Strange woke up, in the bedroom of his apartment on the northeast corner of 13th and Clifton, dusk had come. A nap was what he had needed, and it had cleared his head. He showered and changed into clean clothes, and soon Carmen knocked on his door.

She was in pale slacks, cork-wedge shoes, and a pretty lilac-colored shirt that played off nice against her dark skin. She wore her hair in a natural, and when she smiled her deep dimples showed. He’d been knowing her since they were kids, and reckoned that he’d loved her just as long.

They kissed.

“What’s goin on, baby?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been calling you to firm up our plans.”

“I fell asleep. Guess I didn’t hear the phone.”

“Thought you were working today.”

“I was,” said Strange, frowning as if accused. “Workin all the time. Even when I sleep, I work.”

“Go on, Derek.” Carmen smiled. “What are we gonna see tonight?”

“Culpepper Cattle Company?”

“Please.”

“I’m playing with you.” But he really did want to see it.

“What about Georgia, Georgia? It’s playing at the Langston.”

“All the way in Northeast?”

“Benning Road’s not far.”

“What’s it about?”

“Diana Sands plays this singer, falls in love with an army deserter in Sweden.”

“Might as well give me a sleeping pill instead.”

“So? You tryin to take me to a cow movie.”

“Cowboy.”

“Same thing, to me.”

“How about this? I got some of that wine you like in the fridge. Let’s have a glass or two, then go out and catch a little dinner.”

She walked toward him. “I guess we could.”

Strange put Al Green Gets Next to You on his stereo and poured some Blue Nun as “Are You Lonely for Me Baby” set the mood. It was Al’s deep-soul record, full of grit and fire. They drank the too- sweet white by the open French doors on the south wall, Carmen sitting close to him, his arm around her shoulders as they talked about their day, looking down on the city lights below. His place was on the edge of the Piedmont Plateau, a low-rent district, but no rich man had a better view of D.C.

“You hungry?” said Strange.

“Not really.”

“Come here, girl.”

Strange woke naked in his bed. Carmen, nude atop the sheets, was sleeping beside him. Though they had made love twice that evening, the sight of her body made his mouth go dry. She’d been working toward medical school, but financial issues had steered her to nursing. Now an RN at the Columbia Hospital for Women, she had the beginnings of a solid, meaningful career. He was proud of Carmen and, despite his failings, wanted to do her right. He covered her, put on his drawers, and left the bedroom.

He went to the living room, where soul records were scattered around his stereo, his expensive Marantz tube amplifier the center of the space. On the wall was an original one-sheet poster of the Man With No Name, tall in his poncho, a prize possession that Strange had gotten from a friend who’d worked at the Town theater on 13th and New York Avenue. Also, a Jim Brown lobby still from The Dirty Dozen, copped from the same dude. Wasn’t any mistaking it: a man lived here.

Strange picked up the phone, dialed the number for the Third District station, and got the desk man on the line. He gave the sergeant his home and office numbers, and left a message for Frank Vaughn.

SIX

Can I get that cup, Detective?”

Vaughn lifted a plastic cup off a tray and put it in Roland Williams’s outstretched hand. Williams sipped water from a straw that was hinged at a ninety-degree angle. He ran his tongue over his dry lips and kept the cup in hand.

“You had some luck,” said Vaughn.

“Do I look lucky to you?”

Williams, weak and thin, was in a hospital bed in D.C. General, hooked up to an IV, his shoulder and arm in a blue sling, bandages and dressing beneath it. The slug had entered his upper chest and exited cleanly through his back, so the close-range shot had been a kind of blessing.

Williams’s luck was not of the lottery-winning variety, or that of an ugly man going home with the prettiest girl in the bar, but it was something to be thankful for.

“Tell us what happened,” said Rick Cochnar, the young man who was standing beside Vaughn. He did not look like many of the assistant prosecutors in his office. He was state school educated, with longish hair and the build of a fullback. He was short, with big hands. He was wearing a charcoal-colored suit with thin chalk stripes.

Williams turned his head and looked at his attorney, Tim Doyle, a Jesuit school graduate and baseball-playing standout in his day, now in love with drink. He was seated in the guest chair of the room.

“You have immunity,” said Doyle with a small nod.

“What about-”