George Pelecanos - What It Was

He didn’t even like Maybelline Walker. But he moved to the sofa and sat beside her.

“That’s better,” she said.

She reached across him and held his hand.

“You still gonna find that ring for me?”

“I take a job,” said Strange, “I see it through.”

She moved his hand and placed it on her chest. Strange slipped his fingers inside the fabric of her dress and cupped her left tit. He brushed her nipple, pinched it, and felt it swell. She shifted her body into his and they kissed. Her flesh was warm beneath his touch and their tongues danced and he grew hard. Her legs parted and his hand went between them and she was naked there. She moaned as he found her spot and stroked her slick divide.

“God damn, ” she said.

“What?”

“Come on .”

As quickly as he had been sprung, Strange lost his desire. He sat back on the couch. The image of Carmen had flashed in his mind, but it wasn’t just his conscience that had thrown cold water on his intent. After all, he’d been unfaithful to Carmen before; because of his nature, he would probably cheat again. But not today.

Strange slowly got to his feet. He straightened out his shirt and adjusted himself inside the crotch of his bells.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” said Maybelline.

“You talk too much,” said Strange.

Coco Watkins, Red Jones, and Alfonzo Jefferson sat on comfortable furniture around a cable spool table set up in the living room of Jefferson’s bungalow in Burrville. They were drinking beer from clear longnecked bottles and passing around a fat joint of herb. Jefferson had copped an OZ of premium Lumbo with his cut of the money they’d taken off Sylvester Ward. “Walk from Regio’s,” an instrumental from the Shaft soundtrack, was coming from the stereo, and Jefferson was moving his head to its bass, key, and woodwind vamp.

“This is bad right here,” said Jefferson, his woven hat cocked on his head, his eyes close to bleeding. “You know Isaac’s in town tonight.”

“We got plans,” said Coco, eyeing Jefferson with annoyance.

“I know,” said Jefferson, and he smiled with sympathy at Jones. “Donny and Roberta. Sounds like a real house party. You can’t dance to that shit, though. It’s got no backbeat.”

Jones hit the joint, hit it again, and handed it to Jefferson. When Jones spoke, smoke came with his words. “What’d your woman say, exactly?”

“Monique? Said Vaughn came by, lookin for my Buick. Registration and title’s got her name on it.”

“Ward snitched us out to the law. I can’t believe it.”

“Ain’t no honor out here anymore.” Jefferson inspected the burning herb, wrapped loosely in Top papers, and drew on it deep.

“Where your deuce at now?” said Jones.

“Parked in my yard, out back. Can’t nobody see it from the street.”

“If they walked into the alley they could.”

Jefferson put his hand on the worn.38 that lay on the cable spool table. “Official Police” was stamped on its barrel, and he liked that. He touched its grip, wrapped in black electrical tape. “If someone walks into that alley and they look at my shit? It’s on. At that point, don’t nothin matter, anyway.”

“How close you think Hound Dog is?”

Jefferson shrugged. “Man said our names to Monique.”

“Dude stays on it,” said Jones with admiration. He was not concerned. In fact, his blood ticked pleasantly. “I wouldn’t go out, I was you.”

“ You about to go out.”

“I gotta take care of Long Nose.”

“ And we got a date,” said Coco.

“You know where Roland at?” said Jefferson.

“Soul House,” said Jones. “According to you.”

“If he’s out the hospital, that’s where he’ll be.”

“So you gonna stay in,” said Jones pointedly. “Right?”

“Monique comin over here,” said Jefferson with an idiotic grin. “Conjugal visit.”

“What if she gets followed?”

“I ain’t stupid,” said Jefferson, smiling stupidly, his eyes gone. “Neither is Nique. She’s not goin any goddamn where unless it’s clear.”

They smoked the joint down to a roach and finished their beers. Jones got up quickly from his chair. His new Rolex had slid up his forearm, and he shook it to rest on his wrist.

“Let’s go, girl,” he said, standing tall. He was dressed for the night in rust-colored bells, three-inch stacks, and a print rayon shirt opened to show the top of his laddered stomach. Coco, similarly fly and regal, came and stood beside him.

“You gonna take my short?” said Jefferson.

“That Buick’s on fire,” said Jones. “We’ll be good in Coco’s ride.”‹"0e› p height="0em" width="27"›Jefferson liked that jam “No Name Bar,” the one with all the horns, on another side of Isaac’s double-record set. As Jones and Coco left the house, he found the slab of wax he was looking for and put it on.

Roland Williams sat on a stool at the stainless steel bar of Soul House, his regular place on 14th. There were few patrons here, but this was not unusual. It was a dark, bare-wall space that served more men than woman, and hardly ever did so in great numbers. It was not frequented by the hip crowd, but rather by city dwellers who liked their alcohol and conversation drama free. The jukebox played cuts by the likes of Big Maybelle, Carl “Soul Dog” Marshall, Johnny Adams, and other artists whose sound had that below-the-Mason-Dixon-line vibe.

Soul House was not to be confused with the House of Soul carryout on the 2500 block of the same street, but often it was, so many simply called this spot the House. Williams thought of it as his night residence. Right now, a beautiful, bitter Ollie and the Nightingales song, “Just a Little Overcome,” was playing, and Tommy Tate’s vocals were powering through the room.

Williams was drinking Johnnie Walker Red, rocks. At the moment he was alone.

He was feeling poorly, but he was not low. In the hospital he had been given methadone, and he left with a prescription, but methadone was not heroin or even morphine, which is to say that it did not give him the same kind of rush. It would have to do until he could put some coin together and cop, go back to his life as he had known it, and his habit. Course, he didn’t think of his drug use as an addiction, as he had always had it under control. Far as his vocation went, he had lied to the detective about putting his old self behind him, but that’s what you did when you talked to the police, you lied and denied. He had a good business going; he wasn’t going to drop it and move on. Move on to what?

What he wanted behind him was the violence and the hurt. He shouldn’t have lipped off to Red Jones. He knew that mistake was on him, and the bullet that had passed through him was a hot warning that could have been fatal, a lesson he’d needed to learn. Wasn’t his fault that the white man from up north had put the hurting on him in his hospital bed, but that awful pain was a memory now, too. The Italians would go back to New Jersey or wherever they were from, and Red, well, he would soon be in lockup or shot dead in the street, because that was how it always ended for men like him, wasn’t any third choice. And he, Roland Williams, could reestablish his business and rediscover his peace.

“Another one,” said Williams to the bartender, a man named Gerard who had wide shoulders and a mustache so thin it was barely holding on to his face.

“On me,” said Gerard, pulling the red-labeled bottle off the middle of the shelf and free-pouring into a fresh glass he’d filled with ice.

Williams was now known as the man who’d been shot by Jones and lived to walk back into the spot. “Long Nose caught some lead from Red Fury,” he’d heard one dude say with admiration, andd b for once Williams didn’t mind the sound of his nickname. That kind of notoriety was worth a drink on the house. He sure wasn’t going to turn it down.