George Pelecanos - DC Noir

With Junior and Sarah out of the way, Zack was very much on cloud nine. He completely ran the city again, and we were loving the good life.

Junior had my father visit him in prison. He told him that Zack and I had killed Sarah and set him up. Immediately, my father tried to get in contact with me. For months I avoided him, then finally agreed to sit down and talk. He told me what Junior had said. I denied everything and said that Junior had lost him mind.

“Remember one thing, girl,” my father warned me, “God don’t like ugly. If you had anything to do with the murder of that woman and the jailing of your brother, you will pay a terrible price for your sins. And God be my judge, I’ll be the first to rejoice over your suffering if you did what your brother said you did.”

My father’s words have stayed with me, surfacing frequently and torturing me badly. They were spoken nearly four years ago, shortly after Junior’s conviction. My father never found out what really happened, nor did he know that his words had weakened me and that he was one hundred percent right — that I would pay a terrible price for my sins. A month after talking with me, my father died in his sleep of heart failure. But I know that he really died of a broken heart.

Zack noticed my change instantly when I returned from the visit with my father, as well as my deepening depression after my father died. He did what he could to try and cheer me up, but I was locked into despair. The tough, selfish girl that I had been was gone.

Two weeks after my father’s death, Ted Jenkins was gunned down by two masked men as he left his house on Longfellow Street, N.W. He was about to get in his car when the men pulled up and unloaded twelve .38 Special bullets into his body at point-blank range, four head shots killing him instantly. The newspapers reported that the motive could be revenge from loyal members of Junior’s crew, but street rumor had it that Zack might be responsible.

Even in my lethargic condition, I found strength to question Zack about the officer’s murder. He told me that he didn’t have anything to do with it — that Junior probably had it done and that we had to be careful because his crew might be plotting in on us as well.

“You need to snap out of this shit you’re going through, woman! We need each other, and I need you at your best,” he’d tell me daily.

Approximately a month after the Jenkins murder, Junior was found stabbed to death in the mop room of his jailhouse unit. No witnesses to the crime, no one picked up for the murder.

I knew then that I was next.

Two days after I received word about Junior’s death, I put six bullets inside of Zack Amos’s head. I used his own gun, which I’d taken from his shoulder holster in the closet. Just for that night I found the strength to be my old self again — cunning and manipulative.

Zack had been in bed, waiting for me to come out of the bathroom and join him. He was so happy to have his baby back. I could tell that he was ready for a great night. I left the bathroom and entered the bedroom wearing the purple negligee that he liked best. He flung off the covers so that I could get a good look at his rock-hard, throbbing dick.

“Come get it, baby — come to Daddy,” he said.

With the gun behind my back, I moved seductively toward the bed. I shot him immediately.

Then I called the police. Told them that I’d just killed my lover. Pleaded guilty in court and was sentenced to fifteen years to life.

I’ve told my story. To some degree it’s been a cleansing process. I now feel straight with the street. Yet I may never be straight in the eyes of God.

Mount Pleasant, N.W.

Cort DeLojero sauntered past the torched police cruisers, past wary cops in full riot gear gathered in groups of four and five.

He picked his way through hundreds of broken beer bottles strewn about the street.

A riot cop caught the forlorn look on Cort’s face and cracked, “You missed the party.”

Cort grimaced. He walked past a burned-out cruiser that had been driven by a deputy chief and muttered, “Goddamnit.”

Cort was the night cops reporter for the Washington Tribune He’d spent most of the night sitting in a company sedan in a parking lot at Bethesda Naval Hospital, working a deathwatch on President George H.W. Bush.

President Poppy was laid up with an irregular heartbeat. Night editor Chuck Ross caught the disappointment on Cort’s face when he dispatched him. Chuck had said, “Think what a big story it’ll be if the president croaks.”

Cort had given Chuck a thin smile. They both knew that if Poppy croaked, the big guns from National would elbow them out.

Cort had been working on his fourth magazine when Chuck paged him at 1:30 a.m. They could slam stories into the paper as late as 2:00. Cort pulled the brick-sized company cell phone from his tan canvas satchel and punched in Chuck’s number.

Chuck ordered Cort to ditch the deathwatch and get to Mount Pleasant. “There’s been a riot. A black cop shot a Latino man, and there’s rumors the man was handcuffed. They’ve torched about a half dozen cop cars on 16th Street, near Lamont. Didn’t you hear it on the scanner?”

Cort’s eyes flickered down to the silent black police scanner mounted under the car radio. He groaned. The riot was a guaranteed front-page story.

Chuck sighed. “I don’t blame you. I would’ve sent you, but we needed to keep someone at the hospital.”

Now, with his tan canvas satchel slung over his right shoulder, Cort walked slowly, absorbing the scene. The rain had quit, and the night was warm and humid.

To Cort’s left, two dozen spectators, mostly Latino adults, stood in front of the faux-marble pillars at the top of the concrete steps of Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

The damage was concentrated in a three-block strip of 16th Street, dominated on both sides by medium-and low-rise apartment buildings.

On one corner, a lean, thirtyish, sandy-haired Franciscan priest in a thick brown robe talked with a group of officers. Father Dave Lowell, a Sacred Heart priest.

A few months before, Cort had written a feature story on the church, focusing on Father Dave, who’d worked at a parish in Guatemala. Cort shadowed Father Dave as poor immigrants streamed into his office.

A teenage girl who’d been raped by a family friend was distraught that she’d sinned. Father Dave gently assured her she’d done nothing wrong, and convinced her to call the police. Another woman brought in her toddler son for a special blessing; the kid had an infected eye. Father Dave blessed the kid, then had a church worker drive the woman and her son to a health clinic.

Father Dave was the real deal. Cort had grown up in a church where the parish priest dished out hellfire and brim-stone, when he wasn’t boozing it up. Cort had lost touch with his faith a long time ago. But he believed in Father Dave.

A month after the piece ran, an old girlfriend was visiting from California when she got word that her father had died in a car wreck. She cried all night. At daybreak, Cort took her to see Father Dave. He spent an hour with her while Cort waited outside the office. She emerged feeling better. Cort was grateful.

Cort waved to Father Dave. The priest trotted over.

“Cortez, I thought I might see you tonight. How are you?”

“Fine, Father.” He looked around. “How’d this happen?”

“It’s been brewing for a while. There’s so much tension between Latinos and the police. The shooting was like a flame to a tinderbox.”

Cort nodded. “What about the shooting?”

Father Dave shrugged. “I’ve probably heard what you’ve heard. The police say the man pulled a knife. There’s rumors that he was handcuffed. There’s probably a lot of misinformation going around.”