Clarence Bowman parked his Cougar on 11th, walked around the corner, and entered the diner that remained one of the few spots of thriving commerce and life on U Street since the riots.

Bowman saw Gina Marie at the counter, seated on one of its red-cushioned stools. To the left of her was another streetwalker who went by Martina. Martina was picking at a basket of fries drowning in ketchup. All the counter seats were taken, as were most of the two- and four-tops spread about the front of the house. The diner’s storied jukebox was playing “Talking Loud and Saying Nothing,” James Brown’s new one, Parts I and II, and hard- at-work employees and patrons alike were moving their heads to its surging, infectious groove. Bowman stood over the shoulder of a man who was sitting to the right of Gina Marie and waited. The man felt Bowman’s presence, turned his head and gave him a look, then a double look, and got up off his stool, basket of lunch in hand. Bowman had a seat.

“Girl,” said Bowman.

“Clarence.”

From the baggage underneath her eyes, it looked like Gina Marie had just got up out of bed. She was a hard- faced woman to begin with, half used up at twenty-five. She wore a curly brown wig and false eyelashes, and a short r ana Marieed dress that showed off her heavily muscled legs. Reminded Bowman of that running back, Don Nottingham, played for Baltimore, the low-to-the-ground man they called “the Human Bowling Ball.” Gina Marie was built like him, with a triangle. Some men liked that body type, but Bowman went for tall. Gina Marie was drinking a large sweet tea from a paper cup and smoking the life out of a cigarette.

Bowman lit one of his own. “What’s goin on?”

“Guess you heard about Red.”

“He dead?”

Gina Marie shook her head. “It’s all over the telegraph. Him and Fonzo Jefferson robbed Sylvester Ward earlier today. They gave him an ass-whippin, too.” Gina Marie dragged on her smoke and French-inhaled. “You know Two-Tone got police and politicians in his pocket. This ain’t gonna be good for Red. Your boy must be losing his got-damn mind.”

Bowman studied the burning menthol between his fingers.

“That homicide detective,” said Gina Marie, “the one they call Hound Dog? He been askin around, too.”

“You mean Vaughn.”

Gina Marie made a head motion to her left. “He talked to Martina. Don’t worry, Martina ain’t give nothin up.”

Bowman glared at Martina Lewis, a punchboard dressed and made up as a woman. Martina held Bowman’s gaze for a moment, then looked away.

“Martina’s cool,” said Gina Marie, not liking Bowman’s cold stare.

“There’s somethin you can do for me,” said Bowman.

“Say it.”

Bowman reached into his shirt pocket, produced a slip of paper, and handed it to Gina Marie. On it was the phone number and address of assistant prosecutor Richard Cochnar. Bowman had copied it straight out of the book. The prosecutor had not even been on the job long enough, or made enough enemies, to realize that his contact information should be unlisted. He was that green.

“Cock-nar,” said Gina Marie, struggling as she tried to read off the paper.

“It’s Cotch-ner,” said Bowman. “Ain’t no k in that name.”

“What you want me to do?”

“Go to that pay phone over there and call his place. Make your voice like a salesgirl or somethin. Ask to speak to the man of the house. I already know he won’t be there.”

“So why am I calling, then?”

“Listen to me. Whoever you talkin to gonna tell you that Cochnar’s at work. So you ask what time he gonna be in.” Bowman dropped a dime and a nickel onto the counter. The dime spun and then rolled down flat. “Can you do that?”

Gina Marie picked up the change. She jumped down off the sdowht='0em' tool and strutted, quick and cocky, to the phone. Even in her heels, she wasn’t more than five-foot-nothing.

While she made the call, Bowman looked at Martina Lewis. “Hey,” he said, and chuckled low.

Gina Marie returned, smiling proudly, and hopped back up to her seat. “He gonna be home around seven.”

Martina Lewis got up abruptly, walked by them, and headed out the door.

“Martina a man,” said Gina Marie, apropos of nothing.

“Clarence Carter can see that shit,” said Bowman, and he, too, rose up off his stool. He crushed out his cigarette, removed a ten from his wallet, and slid it in front of Gina Marie.

“Thanks, sugar,” she said.

Bowman, not one to waste words, was already gone.

Dayna Rosen had declined to give Strange any information over the phone. He told her that he happened to be in the neighborhood and politely asked if he could stop by her place and speak with her face-to-face. After a short silence on her end of the line, she agreed. But when she got a look at him, a strong young black man walking up her sidewalk, she took him around the side of her house, one of the many center-hall brick colonials of Barnaby Woods, and had him sit on its screened back porch. She was being cautious because of his color, something she’d never admit to him or herself. But he knew.

Dayna Rosen was a dark-haired, brown-eyed woman in her late twenties, wearing bell-bottom jeans, a leather vest, rope sandals, and a Hanoi Jane shag straight out of Klute. She and Strange sat on the back porch in comfortable chairs, part of an outdoor furniture set that looked like it had cost good money. She had served him iced tea. African masks hung on the porch’s posts, and a Coltrane poster had been framed and mounted on the paneled outside wall. The Rosens were making a statement, and Strange took it in.

Dayna gave him a shorthand summation of their lives. Her husband, Seth, was an attorney for a labor union and he was at work. Their son, Zach, was in first grade at Lafayette Elementary. He was having a little trouble keeping up in math. They thought they’d “nip it in the bud” early and get him a tutor. Dayna had seen a flyer posted on the bulletin board at the Chevy Chase Library and she’d called the number given for Maybelline Walker, who was offering her expertise and services.

“How’d that work out?” said Strange.

“Fine,” said Dayna. “What she did was helpful.”

“First grade is kinda young to have a tutor isn’t it?”

“Zach needed assistance.” She looked him over. “How old is your daughter?”

“She’s ten,” said Strange recklessly. He hadn’t thought the age thing through.

Dayna’s eyes flickered. She glanced at his hands, which carried no wedding ring. “You and your wife must have had her at a vhad27'ery early age.”

“I plucked my bride straight out the cradle,” said Strange with a clumsy smile. “So, Maybelline Walker. You used her for how long?”

“A month, I guess. Maybe four sessions.”

“Only a month?”

“Something…” She stopped, moved her eyes away from his, and finished her thought. “Something happened.”

“Was there some kind of problem with her work?”

Distracted and out of sorts, Dayna got up out of her chair and used her palms to smooth out the wrinkles in her jeans. She picked up her glass, which she had barely drunk from, and said, too hurriedly, “I’m going to get some more tea. Would you like a refill?”

“I’m good,” said Strange.

She was gone for a while. When she returned, she stood by the table and made no move to sit. Her jawline had hardened and there was steel in her voice. “You should go. I called the police.”

“Why would you do that?”

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