What It Was

“I won’t take much. May I come in?”

She stepped aside and allowed him to pass through. The place was neat and clean, with brown carpeting and what Vaughn thought of as African decor on the walls. Masks, wood carvings, shit like that. Least there weren’t any spears. The Mother Country stuff was the rage with these young ones.

A stick of incense burned in a ceramic holder formed as a mibuirmed asniature elephant, set on a living-room table near a sofa-and-chair arrangement. The room’s sole window had its curtain drawn.

Janette Newman did not close the door. She stood beside it and folded her arms across her chest. Vaughn guessed that he would not be offered a beverage, nor would he be asked to have a seat. It was hard to think straight or have a conversation, what with the music bleeding into the hall. He knew where it was coming from. He had interviewed the unit’s occupants, a mother with a job and her son, a doper who had no plan to get one. Kid listened to music all day long. What Ricky would call soul-funk. It was all Zulu-jump to Vaughn.

“You’re a hard woman to pin down,” said Vaughn.

“I work,” said Janette.

“You teach over at Tubman, right?”

“Correct. There was a flood, so they closed the school today.”

“Kind of young to have a teaching position, aren’t you?” He thought his words complimentary until he saw her eyes harden.

“I have a degree from Howard. Would you like to see my diploma?”

“No disrespect intended,” said Vaughn. “I meant, you know, you’re doing well for such a young woman.”

Janette looked him over. “You had some questions?”

“You stated over the phone that you weren’t here at the time of Robert Odum’s murder.”

“I was in my classroom when it happened.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not to speak to, past a nod or a ‘good morning.’ ”

“He had people visit him from time to time, didn’t he?”

“Most folks do.”

“Was there one by the name of Maybelline Walker? Light-skinned woman, young, attractive…”

“If I saw visitors I don’t remember them.”

“Not a one.”

“I said no.”

“Do you recall if Odum had a job?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Vaughn already had Odum’s work address, as he’d found a pay stub in his apartment. He was testing her. She was withholding information, and probably lying, but not because she had anything to do with Odum’s death. Some folks just didn’t care for white people or police.

“You sure about that?” said Vaughn.

He gazed at her for a long moment until she became uncomfortable and looked away. He liked her backbone, and he didn’t even mind her attitude, buen attitudt she wasn’t in his physical wheelhouse. If he was going to go black, he’d go for a specific look: cream in the coffee, white features. A Lena Horne type.

“You’re staring at me,” she said.

“I was thinking.”

“Of what?”

“My case.”

“Don’t you have any leads?”

“I can’t speak on that at this time.”

“Be nice if the police told us something so we could rest easy in this building. I’m not tryin to get myself killed around here.”

Vaughn reached into his inside pocket. “Here’s my card. Anything comes to mind, give me a call.”

Vaughn walked out of her apartment without another word and heard the door close behind him. Janette was not a person of interest. Just another name he could cross off the list.

He went through the hall, the bass still coming from the adjoining unit, the glass door of the building buzzing from it as he pushed on its surface, exiting to breathe fresh air.

Outside, a man, an addict or alcoholic from the used-up look of his eyes, sat on a nearby retaining wall, smoking a cigarette. Vaughn approached and showed him his badge. The man did not seem impressed. Vaughn offered him ten dollars, and the offer was waved away. Then he offered to buy him a bottle in exchange for his time. The man declined. Vaughn asked him a couple of questions, got nothing but shrugs.

Two strikes, thought Vaughn. And: I am hungry.

He had lunch at the counter of the Hot Shoppes on Georgia Avenue, in Brightwood Park, up around Hamilton. In its parking lot had been the famous fight between three badass white greasers and a dozen or so motivated coloreds, back in the ’60s. The fight had carried over to the other side of the street. Those white boys could mix it up. That kind of balls-out, bare-knuckled hate conflict was done now, too, thought Vaughn with nostalgia. The blacks had taken over the city, and race rumbles had gone the way of drop-down Chevys, Link Wray club dates, and Ban-Lon shirts.

Vaughn had a Mighty Mo burger, onion rings, and an orange freeze, then followed it up with a hunk of hot fudge cake and a cup of coffee. The perfect local lunch. Pulling the coffee cup and an ashtray in front of him, he used his customized Zippo lighter, a map of Okinawa inlaid on its face, to light an L amp;M.

Bobby Odum. A pathetic character, one hundred and twenty-three pounds of junkie, a former second-story man now scraping by as a dishwasher and heroin tester. He was one of many confidential informants that Vaughn kept and cultivated around the city. Testers and cut buddies made the best, most vulnerable CIs because they were addicts. They always had need of money.

The ballistics report had determined that the slugs retrieved from Odum’s apartment came from a.22, a weapon favored by assassins who worked close inugsked clo. A Colt Woodsman, if Vaughn was to make a wager.

Odum had recently given Vaughn information related to a homicide, a tip on a man involved in a Northeast burn. The resulting warrant had led to a home search, the discovery of the murder weapon, and the arrest of one James Carpenter, now in the D.C. Jail awaiting trial.

The last time Vaughn and Odum had met was at a diner called Frank’s Carry Out, on the 1700 block of 14th Street. The owner, Pete Frank, had allowed Vaughn to talk to Odum privately, in the storage room at the rear of the building. That day, Odum had been worried running to paranoid. He claimed it had gotten around that he and Vaughn, well-known by the District’s underworld, had been seen together in Shaw, and that it had then been assumed that he, Odum, had fingered Carpenter. He told Vaughn that his apartment phone had been ringing “off the hook,” and that it was, he suspected, some “wrong dude” who was looking to find him. Vaughn asked him if he knew the caller’s name, but Odum claimed he had no clue.

“How you know it’s not a woman calling you,” said Vaughn, “or a friend?”

“I know,” said Odum, touching a finger to his chest. “I feel that shit, right in here. The reaper ’bout to come at me, Frank.”

Vaughn slipped him twenty dollars. “Go get well,” he said.

The next time Vaughn saw Odum, he was lying on a slab in the city morgue, the top of his head sawed off, one eye blown out of his gray face.

Vaughn tapped ash and wondered if it was him that got Odum killed. Not that they were friends, but he felt a sense of responsibility, if not accountability, to see to it that Odum’s killer was found. Bobby was just a little guy he paid for information. But it didn’t matter to Vaughn who Odum was, or what color he was, or if they were asshole buddies or not. Vaughn worked all of his cases the same way.

He dragged on his cigarette and signaled the counter girl for his check.

Vaughn drove down to 14th and U, once the epicenter of black Washington, now a weak reminder of its former vibrant life since its burning in ’68.

He was in search of Martina Lewis. Whores were out on the street at night, witnessed all kinds of illicit