What It Was

a pipe on him, and on top of his size he’d been a little rough. He had bruised her some.

“You know that’s a fake piece, don’t you?” said Gina Marie.

“I don’t care,” said April. “It’s pretty.”

Gina Marie flicked ash into a glass tray. “Say what happened.”

“While Lou was in the bathroom,” said April, “groanin and moanin, I got curious about what was in his suitcase. ’Cause you know I be the curious type…”

“Tell it,” said Cindy, losing her patience.

“Well, there were clothes in that suitcase. Also a gun and a knife.” April paused dramatically, then put her hand flat on the counter. “And this.” The ladies saw a gold body decorated with a Grecian key inlay, one big center stone, and eight smaller stones clustered around it.

“You are one bad bitch,” said Gina Marie.

“Girl, who don’t know that.”

Martina Lewis studied the ring.

Shay gathered a cosmetic case the size of a hatbox, and a small red suitcase that held a couple of dresses, slacks, shirts, and undergarments, and some cash, and took the fire escape down to the alley that ran behind the row house on 14th. She went through it and on S she turned right and went over to 14th, glancing down the street at the unmarked police car she had scoped out earlier. The one Coco had said would be there.

The unmarked car did not move. No reason why it would. The man inside it was looking for someone fitting the description of Coco, not Shay. Shay was plainly drwasad bitcessed in jeans and a chambray shirt. She was an attractive female, but in these clothes she did not stand out. It was somewhat unusual for a young woman to be walking in the city with a suitcase and hatbox, but now she was a block north of Coco’s house and was among the sidewalk crowd. She went one block farther and at a bus stop waited for a D.C. Transit, and when it came she got on it and dropped into an empty turquoise seat. An older man who stood with a hand on the top rail gave her a long look the way men do. Reflexively, she touched the mole on her face.

The plan was to get off the bus soon as she saw a cab stand and catch a taxi over to Northeast, where she would deliver what she was carrying to Coco, holed up in a house in Burrville. Coco had told her she was going away for a while.

Shay was young, no more than a girl, really, and she was a little bit scared. Her night in jail had convinced her that she was not cut out for any kind of time in a cage. But things seemed to be going all right today, so far, and when she had completed her task… well, she hadn’t thought that through as of yet. She’d do something.

Shay looked out the back window of the bus and with relief saw that the unmarked police car was not following. She didn’t notice the black Continental that was pulling off the curb.

TWENTY-ONE

Vaughn and Strange crossed the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and headed into Far Northeast. At Minnesota Avenue, Vaughn hung a left and drove along a busy commercial strip of overpriced convenience markets, unhealthy food establishments, and an appliance-and-furniture merchant whose profit was not in the sale of household goods but the pushing of credit and high-interest loans.

“These people down here don’t have a chance,” said Vaughn, with an overly solemn shake of his head. “Course, they could try to better themselves. Work a little harder, maybe, so they don’t have to live in these neighborhoods.”

Strange said nothing. There wasn’t any upside to getting into those kinds of discussions with Vaughn.

“Did I say something wrong?” said Vaughn.

“I wasn’t even listenin to you, to tell the truth. Guess I got things on my mind.”

“Women troubles,” said Vaughn. “Am I right? What’d you do, dip your pen in the wrong inkwell?”

“I made a mistake,” said Strange.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“I should know better. I’m a grown man.”

“Exactly: you’re a man. It’s damn near impossible for a man to be faithful. It’s not natural. Humans are the only species who even try. When animals mate, the males move on.”

“Men aren’t animals,” said Strange.

Vaughn’s mind flashed back nearly thirty years, to when he’d carried a flamethrower on Okinawa. His nightmares could not even approach the horrific reality of what he’d seen and done. No one, not even Olga, could know the godless dark inside his head.

“Yes, we are,” he said.

For a while, they drove up Minnesota Ave in silence. Then Vaughn saw a woman exiting a small city market. She wore a sloppy shift unbuttoned at the neckline, tennis shoes with cutout backs, and held a pack of cigarettes in each of her hands.

Vaughn slowed the Dodge. “Aw, shit. There’s my friend Monique Lattimer.”

“Who’s she?”

“Alfonzo Jefferson’s woman.”

“We should follow her to his house,” said Strange. “Chances are she’s headed there.”

“We already know where the house is. We don’t know what we’re gonna be up against when we get there. She’s a handful, and I don’t wanna have to deal with her, too.”

Vaughn pulled over to the curb and palmed the transmission arm up into park. He lifted the radio mic from its cradle, keyed it, and called in Monique’s description, location, and the direction in which she was headed. He then told the dispatcher to instruct any patrol unit in the vicinity to pick up Monique, arrest her, and take her to the Third District station.

“What’re you gonna hang on her?” said Strange.

“Some kind of accessory charge,” said Vaughn. “I’ll figure out the particulars later on. It’ll stick. Jefferson’s deuce was used in the Ward robbery, and it’s registered in her name.”

Vaughn checked his sideview mirror, pulled down on the tree, moved into traffic, and accelerated.

Strange studied Monique’s loose she-cat walk as they passed her. “You’re about to bust on that girl’s day.”

“I told her I’d see her around.”

Shay stepped off the bus up around the Tivoli Theatre and signaled a taxicab, one of several standing at 14th and Park Road. The driver got out and helped her place her suitcase and cosmetic case in the trunk, then politely opened and held the rear door for her so that she could get in.

“You’d never see that in New York,” said Fanella, looking through the windshield of the Lincoln, idling along the curb down by Kenyon.

“The Final Comedown,” said Gregorio, reading the title of the movie showing on the Tivoli’s marquis.

“Never heard of it,” said Fanella.

“ ‘The man got down,’ ” said Gino, reading the copy in smaller letters below the title. “ ‘The brothers were ready.’ What’s that mean, Lou?”

“Damn if I know.” Fanella pointed a finger at the young folks standing in line for tickets to the matinee. “And I bet none of those rugheads know, either.”

Fanella and Gregorio followed the taxi as it went down Irving Street, North Capitol, Michigan Avenue, South Dakota, and Bladensberg Road, then onto a long bridge built over a steady-flowing river. On the busy commercial strip of Minnesota Avenue, they saw a woman bent over the trunk of a D.C. squad car, writhing under the grip of a police officer who was attempting to cuff her. They could hear her cursing the cop with venom and creativity as they drove by.

Fanella and Gregorio laughed.