and even testify. Now he needed to make the arrest.
A patrolman approached Vaughn. “Message came over the radio for you, Detective. A citizen spotted Robert Lee Jones at the Carter Barron. We’ve got units headed over there…”
Vaughn was already moving toward his Monaco, double-parked on the street.
Strange guessed that Jones and Watkins had left their Fury in the neighborhood of Crestwood, adjacent to Rock Creek Park, surmising correctly that the Plymouth was too radioactive to be parked in the main lot. Their walk in the woods would put them on Colorado Avenue, which branched out to other residential streets. Somewhere on those streets was their car.
Strange got into his Monte Carlo and fired it up. Driving through the lot, he saw two squad cars down by the tennis courts parked nose to ass, the conversation arrangement for uniformed police, but he did not go there for help because he felt there was no time.
He exited the lot and drove west on Colorado. He knew it dead-ended eventually, and it was a bet that Red Jones knew it, too. He would never allow himself to be trapped, so Jones and Watkins had to have left their ride deeper south into Crestwood. He made a left on 17th Street and went down a slope, and as he approached the Blagden Avenue intersection he saw the red Plymouth, doing the limit and heading east on Blagden. Strange hit the left turn signal and fell in behind them.
He stayed as far back as he could without bringing the Chevy to a crawl. Strange thinking, They don’t know my car. But there was no one between them, and as the Fury neared the red light at 16th and came to a stop, Strange had little choice but to pull up behind them.
He saw Red Jones eye him in the sideview mirror. He saw Red turn his head and say something to his woman, and then he heard the rev of the Plymouth’s V-8. Strange brought his seat belt across his lap and clicked in the buckle.
The Fury screamed into the intersection against the red light. It fishtailed and corrected. Strange looked both ways and saw cars approaching from the south.
“Fuck it,” said Strange.
He floored the gas pedal, and the Monte Carlo lifted, leaving twin patches of rubber on the asphalt as it went across 16th to the sounds of angry horns and skidding tires. Strange saw metal in his side vision but felt no impact, and he thought, I made it; I am on them now.
The Fury made distance on the straightaway. They had more horses than he did, a four-barrel carb, and that Mopar edge, and the woman knew how to drive her car. Strange punched it and felt the wind rushing through the open windows as he gained ground. The Fury dropped down an incline by upper 14th Street, and as he neared the crest, it skidded into a left and he follot ahe wed. In his rearview he saw a car suddenly coming up from the south at a high rate of speed and he recognized it as a patrol car. Watkins blew the red light at Kennedy and made a soft right back onto Colorado, and Strange followed, going through the stoplight himself, and the cop behind him activated his cherry-top and siren, accelerated sharply, and came up very close to Strange’s bumper. When Strange’s eyes moved forward, he saw the Fury execute a crazy right, east on Madison, and then the siren whooped behind him. Strange pulled over to the side of the road.
Strange threw the horseshoe shifter into park and got out of the Chevy, his hands raised. The uniformed police officer was now out of his patrol car, moving toward him, his hand on his sidearm, and Strange shouted, “I’m in pursuit of a wanted man,” and “I’m MPD!”
“Let’s see your badge,” said the cop, a young black officer, couldn’t have been much more than twenty-one. He drew his.38 and pointed it at Strange.
“I
“
His father had always told him to answer “Yes, sir” to police, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it right about now. Strange placed his hands on the trunk of his car.
“Call Frank Vaughn in Three-D,” said Strange. “He’ll tell you who I am. Or Lydell Blue. He’s a sergeant over in the Fourth.”
The cop said nothing as he patted Strange down.
Lou Fanella had told Gino Gregorio he had to get his own spot for him and his skinny whore, so Gino went down to the desk of the motor lodge and rented another room. When he returned, Cindy and April were snorting lines off a mirror they had taken down from the wall. Gregorio gathered liquor, wine, two plastic cups, and Cindy, and went out the door.
“You wanna be alone with me,” said April to Fanella, after Gino and Cindy had gone. She smiled and he saw that one of her front teeth was chipped. “That’s sweet.”
Fanella knew he’d never relax with Gregorio pounding his pork into some trick in the same room. This wasn’t a stud contest. He didn’t mind seeing Gino’s meat, but not while he was using it.
“Take your shirt off,” said Fanella.
Fanella watched April pull her shirt over her head and toss it onto the bed. She had big melons held up in a cream-colored bra and a little roll of baby fat hanging over the waistband of her shorts. Her orange hair was mussed and she hand-brushed it back in place.
April sipped pink wine from a cup and looked around the room. Two double beds, suitcases on the floor, one zipped open showing clothing that had been shoved in haphazardly. A television set was mounted on a metal rack up on the wall, and a clock radio sat on the stand between the beds. Wasn’t much here in the way of entertainment.
“Ain’t no party without music,” said April.
“Put some on, then.” Fanella, seated uncomfortably in the room’s sole chair, waved a beefy hand toward the clock radio. Bourbon sloshed out of his cup.
April found a Top 40 station and turned up the new Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, which had just hit the charts.
“ ‘Too late to turn back now,’ ” sang April, “ ‘I believe I believe I believe I’m falling in loooooove.’ ”
“Yeah!” said Fanella tiredly.
“Let’s get our heads up, big man.”
April went to the wood-framed mirror, now laid flat on the dresser, on which she had cut out four more thick rails of coke. She used the clear shell of a Bic pen to hoover up two lines, threw her head back, dipped her fingers in a cup of water, and pinched her nose. The stuff had been heavily stepped on with mannitol, but at seventeen she was a veteran, and it no longer upset her insides.
“Whooo.” April held up the pen. “Now you.”
Fanella got up out of his seat. His shirt was damp with perspiration, but he did not worry about his heart. At forty he was still strong. He’d heard about coke from the younger guys, how it made your pole like a scratching post for half the night. He thought he’d give it a try.
Fanella snorted a line. As he bent forward to do the second one, he felt April rubbing her boulders on his back.
“Cut it out,” he said, but he was grinning. In about a minute he was gonna give her what every girl dreamed of.
“Where you from, Lou?”
“Jersey.”
“You down here on vacation?”
“More like a working vacation, honey.”
Fanella drew the other line up his nostril. Did that thumb-and-forefinger thing to his nose, like he’d seen the girl do. Immediately, he was in a good mood. Happy. There was a medicine-tasting drip in the back of his throat. He wanted a cigarette and he found one and lit it. He was already thinking about the next one.
Fanella got his drink. He gulped down bourbon and went to the ice bucket and filled his cup and poured another Ten High from the bottle.
