George Pelecanos - DC Noir

Nadif was still screaming as Ngame swung his foot forward. His toe caught Gehdi in the crotch, lifting him off the pavement. Gehdi gasped. His hand flew out of his pocket. A switchblade clattered to the sidewalk.

Almost casually, Ngame clenched Asad’s collar with one hand, twisting it tight around his neck. Stooping slightly, he scooped up Gehdi’s switchblade. He held it up before Asad’s bulging eyes. He pressed the release. Asad stared hypnotically as the silver blade flicked open. Ngame slammed Asad up against a lamppost and brought the blade against the Somali’s throat just below the Adam’s apple.

Gehdi lay curled on the sidewalk clutching his balls, and Nadif, sobbing, stood on his undamaged foot, hanging on to a parking meter.

In a swift motion, he pulled the blade away from Asad’s throat, cocked his arm, and brought the knife forward in a stabbing motion.

Asad let out a high-pitched scream. The crotch of his trousers darkened.

A fraction of an inch from Asad’s ear, Ngame drove the knife into the lamppost, snapping its blade.

“You’re right,” Ngame said to Asad in his best BBC voice, “men have accidents.”

The rest of the morning, Solomon watched Ngame at his stand. The Nigerian went about his business as though nothing had happened. Asad and his goons had disappeared into the storefront. The other vendors in sight of Ngame’s corner were careful not to be seen paying attention, but it seemed to Solomon they moved like men tiptoeing around a sleeping beast.

Around 3:00, Solomon, eyes half-closed, was drowsing in his canvas deck chair. For seconds, he paid no attention to the car that pulled up to the curb by Ngame’s stand, until the driver-side door opened and the black cop got out.

Oh shit , Voice said.

Solomon ignored Voice and sat up to get a better view of the cop and Ngame.

“You already find out who killed Skeeter?” Ngame asked.

José Phelps picked up a pair of Ray Ban knockoffs and examined them. “Not yet.”

“Those are ten dollars.”

José put the shades back, taking care to line them up just

“Little while ago, we were over at Eastern Market,” he said. “Buzz was, you had a run-in with Asad.”

“News travels fast.”

José didn’t say anything but left the question on his face.

Ngame shrugged. “A discussion. A business proposition.”

“You know,” José threw in, “DEA’s interested in him.” Ngame nudged the shades José had held. “That’s good. I’m not.”

“You ever thought to moving somewhere else?”

Ngame gave José a hard look. “I have been here almost ten years. I am somebody here.”

José picked up the Ray Ban knockoffs again. This time he tried them on. He leaned forward to check himself out in a small mirror hooked to the stand. He angled his face one way, then the other.

“Absolutely Hollywood,” Ngame said.

José did another 180 in the mirror and handed over a ten. “You need anything…”

Toward evening the alley was getting dark. Solomon didn’t need a watch to know Ngame would be closing up in an hour unless business was good. And today business hadn’t been good. Not bad, but not good either. He saw Gehdi come out of Asad the Somali’s store, stand in the doorway, and look down the block toward Ngame. Gehdi had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He stood there for a moment as though listening to a reply, then turned and said something to someone in the store. He shut the door and made his way across Wisconsin toward the alley. Solomon slouched in his canvas chair, pulled the American flag he used for a blanket up under his chin, and pretended to sleep.

Gehdi passed within a few feet of Solomon, and Solomon watched him disappear in the darkening alley toward the parking garage. Across the street, Ngame started disassembling his stand. Solomon began his night critique, judging how Ngame stowed the bulky handbags into the nylon sacks, taking care to dust each one carefully before putting it away

Where Gehdi?

Voice surprised him. Feeling a flush of irritation and guilt, Solomon realized he hadn’t been paying attention to his alley. If Gehdi was going to bring the Navigator around, why wasn’t he out by now?

Minutes passed. Ngame was working on the last of the handbags. Solomon squinted down the alley, trying to pierce the deepening darkness.

What’s that? Voice asked.

“What’s what?

That!

“You seeing shit,” Solomon scolded, but even as he said it something moved, the slightest shift of black against the deeper black in the shadow of Ngame’s van. And then nothing.

For a moment, stillness returned to the alley, then a figure crossed the sliver of light coming from between Old Glory and Johnny Rockets.

Paying no attention to Solomon, Gehdi walked by and returned to the store.

Solomon waited a moment or two, then slipped down the alley toward Ngame’s van and the parking garage.

When he got back, Ngame was breaking down his stand, stacking the wire grate shelving, and bagging the C-clamps. His merchandise was packed away in the nylon sacks and the blue plastic storage boxes.

Up the street, Asad came out, followed by Nadif. Nadif walked with a heavy limp. In one hand, an umbrella he used for a cane. His other cluched Gehdi’s shoulder. Asad locked up, keyed the alarm, and the three made their way toward him.

Solomon smiled. One gimpy Somali. Man gonna remember this day, long as he live.

The three passed by him and soon headlights swept the alley as the Navigator came up the garage ramp. It stopped where the alley intersected 31st, then took a right toward M Street and disappeared from view.

“Goodbye, Somalis,” Solomon whispered. He got up, folded his flag carefully, and hung it over one of his Safeway carts. He crossed Wisconsin to stand guard over Ngame’s goods while the Nigerian fetched his van.

It was 9:30 when Ngame slammed the doors of his van. He palmed Solomon their customary closing-of-the-day bill.

“This a twenty,” Solomon said, offering it up.

Ngame waved it away. “We had a good day today.”

“Business wasn’t that good.”

Ngame got into his van and started the engine. He leaned out the window and patted Solomon on the shoulder. “Business isn’t all that makes a good day.”

Canal Road runs northwest out of Georgetown along the Potomac River. Round a bend, the bright lights fade and it becomes a country road. After a mile, Waverly Ngame noticed headlights coming up behind him, speeding at first, then taking a position fifty yards or so behind and hanging in there. He checked his rearview. The lights behind him belonged to Asad’s white Navigator.

And somebody in the passenger seat had an arm out the window, pointing something at him.

“Don’t get so close,” Asad said. “Drop back some.”

Gehdi eased off the gas. He gave Asad a leer. “Fried Nigerian.”

Asad laughed and pressed the button of the garage door opener. He imagined the sequence: the electronic command sent to the door opener’s receiver, the receiver that would shoot thirty-six volts into the blasting cap, the blasting cap embedded in the quarter pound of C-4 plastic explosive that the magnet held to the gas tank of the Nigerian’s van.

An hour later, José Phelps ducked under the police line tape.

Floodlights washed out color and turned the carnage two-dimensional: an axle with one wheel attached, its tire still smoldering, grotesque twists of metal strewn across the roadway and into the trees, a man’s shoe obscenely lined up on the asphalt’s center-stripe, a portion of the owner’s foot still in it.

Renfro Calkins huddled with two of his forensics techs at the far side of the road, looking into the drainage ditch.