George Pelecanos - What It Was

Ward’s lottery business grossed millions of dollars a year. After the employees got paid, after New York got their cut, after Ward shelled out to locals of influence and power, he netted a hundred, a hundred and fifty grand annually. But he was good with that. His was an unexpectedly rewarding life. Ward was as cock-of-the-walk as it got for black Washington. He wasn’t worried about jail or persecution. He was protected.

Which is why, walking into his house with his two abductors, Ward was more perplexed than angry. He wasn’t used to being treated this way.

Ward removed his green jacket and draped it over the back of an ornate dining-room chair. Jones, gun in hand, kept his eyes on Ward while Jefferson took in the opulence of his surroundings. Looked like a museum in here to him: crystal chandeliers, furniture with scrolled arms, oriental carpets, and plaster statues of naked white women and white men whose nuts hung lower than their dicks.

“I smell money,” said Jefferson.

Ward shook his head slowly. “Obviously, y’all ain’t done your due diligence.”

“Huh?” said Jones.

“There ain’t nothin here of value to speak of,” said Ward. “Not the kind of payday you’re looking for, anyway. Walkin-around money is all I got.”

“We’ll take what the fuck you got, then,” said Jefferson.

“Get it,” said Jones.

“It’s up in my bedroom.” But Ward did not move.

“You mean you ain’t gone yet?” said Jones.

Jefferson drew his piece and pointed it to the stairs. Ward headed in that direction and Jefferson followed.

Jones went to a bar cart and chose a bottle of scotch that looked expensive. He poured amber liquor into a thick, etched tumbler and drank. Its velvet taste closed his eyes.

Jones had a second drink, and as he killed it, Ward and Jefferson returned to the living room. Jefferson had a fistful of cash in his free hand.

“Twenty-four hundred,” said Jefferson. His tone was not exuberant.

“That’s all?”

“I took his watch, too,” said Jefferson. “Got diamonds around its face.”

“That’s cut glass,” said Ward. “A bitch I know gave it to me as a present. I only wear it when she comes to visit.”

“Gimme that watch on your arm, then,” said Jones. “I know that ain’t fake.”

Ward laboriously removed a gold Rolex from his wrist. Jones slipped the timepiece onto his own wrist and examined it. It fit loose, the way he liked it.

“Now you done took everything I have,” said Ward. Annoyance had come to his face.

Jones felt his pulse drum. “You got a roll in your pocket, too, fat man. Give it here.”

Ward started to speak but bit down on his lip. He withdrew the cash, held together with a silver clip, and Jones slipped it into the patch pocket of his bells.

Jones looked Ward over. looked ovelipAnyone ask you, it was Red Jones who took you for bad.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna ask,” said Ward with naked contempt.

“Is that right.”

“Ain’t nobody care about you or what your name is,” said Ward. “Ain’t nobody gonna remember you when you’re gone.”

Jones’ eyes were flat and he said nothing.

“You want my advice-”

“I don’t,” said Jones.

“Go on, then,” said Ward, slashing his hand toward the front door of the house. “Get.”

The barrel of the.45 was a blur as Jones’s arm flared out. Its sight clipped Ward’s nose and cut the bridge. Jones grunted as he put more into it and hit Ward squarely and violently in the same place again. Ward, too big to fall, staggered and gripped the arm of a chair for support. Blood flowed from his nostrils as it would have from an open spigot. Jones laughed and kicked the chair out from under him, and now Ward fell. He lay on his side on the hardwood floor, blood on his fine white shirt, one hand covering his nose, its cartilage smashed. Tears had sprung from his eyes and they were streaking down his face.

“Shouldn’t have kept talkin,” said Jones. “A man with spots, tryin to tell me what to do.”

Red Jones and Alfonzo Jefferson left the house. They cut the cash up in the car.

Maybelline Walker lived in one of the apartment houses that lined 15th Street along the green of Meridian Hill, which many in the city now called Malcolm X Park. Drugged-out-looking whites, brothers and sisters with big naturals, and Spanish of indeterminate origin, some of the dudes wearing Carlos Santana-inspired headbands, streamed in and out of the park’s entrances. A person could kick a soccer ball around, pay for a hand job or get one free, or score something for his head at Malcolm X, depending on the time of day. Its makeup had changed these past few years, but it remained one of the most beautiful open-to-the-public spots in the city. It wasn’t but a short walk from Strange’s crib; he often came over here when the sun was out to look at the talent and clear his mind.

Maybelline’s Warwick-blue Firebird was parked on 15th. Strange had been in his Monte Carlo for a couple of hours now, since his breakfast with Vaughn, parked on the same street a block south. He was watching the folks come in and out the park, watching Maybelline’s building, and listening to WOOK, the Isley Brothers covering “Love the One You’re With,” a hit for them on the soul charts, with cousin Chris Jasper’s organ, the band’s secret weapon, in the mix. Strange thinking, T-Neck, number 930. Just then, Maybelline emerged from the glass-front doors of her building and walked to her car.

“Damn,” said Strange, an involuntary reaction, his mouth going dry at the sig heht of her, swinging her hips in a short strapless dress, the breeze blowing her hair away from her fine bare shoulders.

She dropped the ragtop of her Pontiac, ignitioned it, and drove north. Strange waited for a moment, then followed.

There were three owners whose cars fitted the description of a gold ’68 Buick Electra registered in the District of Columbia. The first on the list, written neatly in his notebook, was a Dewight Mitchell. Mitchell’s given address was on Adams Street in Bloomingdale, tucked in south of the McMillan Reservoir, just behind Howard U. Vaughn put his hat on, stepped out of his Monaco, and went up the steps to a brick house that held a steel-framed rocker sofa on its porch. There was no Electra on the street, but Vaughn knocked on the door anyway and did not get a response. From inside the house, a calico cat looked at him with boredom through a rectangular pane of glass.

Vaughn walked down to 2nd Street and cut into the alley that ran behind Adams. It was not a hunch but rather good procedure for D.C. investigators and uniformed police to check the alleyways when seeking interview subjects. For many Washingtonians, the alley served as the front yard.

He found a black woman, sturdy, with kind eyes, wearing slacks and a work shirt, resting on the shaft of a shovel by a plot of overturned dirt in the back of her property. He had counted the houses and knew that this was the Mitchell residence.

“Ma’am.” Vaughn tipped his head and introduced himself over her chain-link fence. He flipped open his badge case and let her glance at his shield. “Are you Miss Mitchell?”

“Mrs.,” said the woman. “I’m Henrietta, Dewight’s wife.” Several cats were in the yard, walking about but staying close to Henrietta. One with brown stripes on a gray coat was stretched out glamorously under her back steps. “What can I do for you?”

“Does your husband own a nineteen sixty-eight Buick Electra, gold with black interior?”

“That’s our car,” she said brightly. “My name’s not on it, but it’s mine, too. When he lets me drive it.”