What It Was

Maybelline got up out of her seat. Strange did the same.

“Have you reported the missing ring to the police?”

“Please. I’m not even trying to waste my time.”

Strange nodded. “I’ll be in touch. Thanks for your confidence.”

“That ring is dear to me. My mother passed last year and it’s what I have left of her.”

“I’ll do my best to find it.” As he walked her to the front door, he said, “Do you know if the MPD has a lead on Odum’s killer?”

“The homicide policeman I spoke with barely told me anything.”

“You recall his name?”

“Frank Vaughn,” said Maybelline. “White man, on the old side. Do you know of him?”

“Heard tell of him, yes.”

In fact, Strange knew Vaughn well.

THREE

He wore his hair a little bit longer now, just over his ears. What they called the dry look. No more flattop, no more Brylcreem. Even Sinatra’s hair was on the long side, though that Hail Caesar thing he’d tried for a while was all wrong for his face and age. That was around the time he’d married that skinny young actress. Vaughn reckoned that Sinatra was just scared. Scared of death, like all sane men and, worse, scared of being irrelevant. At least Frank Vaughn had not made those kinds of mistakes. An updated hairstyle, sure. But no leisure suits, no Roman Empire cuts, no May-December romances. Vaughn knew who he was.

He studied himself in the mirror as he straightened his black tie and smoothed out the lapels of his gray Robert Hall suit. A bit more jowly in the face, some baggage under the eyes, but not too gone for fifty-two years old.

Vaughn smiled, displaying his widely spaced, crooked teeth. The younger cops called him “Hound Dog,” on account of his look. He’d heard one of the uniforms say, “Vaughn looks like a animated canine,” trying to be fancy with it, when all he meant was, he looked like that big dog in the cartoons, the one with the scary choppers and the spiked collar. Vaughn preferred to think of himself as a less pretty Mitchum. Or Sinatra on the cover of that record No One Cares, seated at the bar in raincoat and fedora, staring into his shot glass. A night wolf, wounded and alone.

“What’re you grinning at?” said Olga, who had entered their bedroom, her hands on her pedal-pushered hips, watching him appraising himself in the full-length. Olga’s hair, as black and dead as a stuffed raven, had been newly coiffed at the Vincent et Vincent in Wheaton Plaza. Et. Vaughn always wondered why they didn’t just say “and” on the sign.

“Just admiring my good looks,” said Vaughn.

“Lord, you’re vain,” said Olga, smiling crookedly, her bright-red lipstick screaming out against her mime-white face.

“When you got it,” said Vaughn.

“Got what?”

“This.” Vaughn turned, brought her into his arms, and pushed his manhood against her, to let her know he was still there. They kissed dryly.

“What have you got today?” she said, as he broke away and walked over to the nightstand by his side of the bed.

“Police work, Olga,” he said, his usual reply. He withdrew his holstered service revolver, a.38 Special, from the nightstand drawer, checked the load, and clipped the rig onto his belt line. “Ricky home?”

Ricky, their college graduate, pacing himself as a bartender at a little live music venue in Bethesda. Vaughn had always feared Ricky would be a swish, with his long hair and mania for music, but the kid got more pussy than a hetero hairdresser. These days he was shacked up with a broad somewhere more often than he was in their house.

“He didn’t make it back last night,” said Olga. “But he called so we wouldn’t worry.”

“Loverboy,” said Vaughn, with sarcasm and pride.

“Stop.”

He kissed her again, this time on her cheek, wondering idly what she was going to do all day. He left their master bedroom and headed down the stairs, noticing a line of dirt along the baseboards of the living room as he grabbed his raincoat out of the foyer closet. Olga tried, but she wasn’t much for housekeeping. Their place hadn’t been spick-and-span since they’d lost their maid, Alethea Strange, just after the ’68 riots. He’d driven her to her row home in Park View, right through the thick of it as the city burned, and though it was unsaid, he knew she would never return to their house as a domestic. It had been so. Vaughn bringing her up in his mind, feeling a stir, thinking, That was some kind of woman.

He left their house, a split level off Georgia Avenue between downtown Silver Spring and Wheaton, and drove toward D.C., his mood brightening considerably as he rolled over the District line, nearing the action, the final passion that moved his blood.

VAUGHN HAD recently bought a new Monaco from the Dodge dealership in Laurel, Maryland. The Monaco was a middle-aged man’s car, gold with a brown vinyl roof, a four-door with power steering, power windows, and power brakes, but heavy, with too little power under the hood. He missed his white-over-red ’67 Polara with thnlara wie 318 and cat-eye taillights, and he missed the decade it came from. Those had been violent years, volatile, sexy, fun.

Vaughn drove down 16th Street, came to a stop at a red light, nodded to a couple of patrolmen in a squad car idling alongside him. That was something he wouldn’t have seen five years ago, two blacks in uniform, riding together in the same car.

The MPD had integrated fully now, the ratio of black cops to white more accurately reflecting the population makeup of the city, which, post-riot white flight, had settled to near 80 percent colored. Vaughn had to watch that, you couldn’t call them colored anymore, or Negro for that matter. Olga told him time and time again, “They’re African American, you big ox.” Vaughn had no major problem with the designation, but he figured, if they’re going to call me white, and sometimes whitey, I’m just gonna go ahead and call them black. That is, if I can remember.

Okay, Olga?

Vaughn parked in a lot beside the Third District headquarters at 16th and V. No more precincts, but districts now. He checked in, sat at his desk and made a couple of calls, left the building, and headed back to his Monaco. Under its dash he had installed a two-way radio. He rarely kept it turned on.

A young uniform saw Vaughn in the lot and said, “How’s it hangin, Hound Dog?”

Vaughn said, “Long and strong.”

He lit an L amp;M and pulled out of the lot.

Vaughn parked the Dodge on 13th Street, near the corner of R, and entered the apartment building with the extinguished gas lanterns where Bobby Odum had resided and been chilled. There was music bleeding out into the hallway, but it was not coming from the unit he was headed for. He went there straightaway and with his fist he cop-knocked on the front door.

The door opened shortly thereafter. A young black woman with a big Afro stood in the frame. She had on high-waisted slacks and a macrame vest over a sky-blue shirt. She was compact, but her rope wedge shoes gave her altitude. Her eyes were deep set and intelligent, and he imagined that they could be welcoming if directed at the right individual. Directed at Vaughn, they were ice cool.

“Janet Newman?”

“Janette.”

“I’m Detective Vaughn,” he said, flipping open his badge case and replacing it quickly in the flap pocket of his jacket. “Thanks for seeing me.”

“I don’t have much time.”