George Pelecanos - What It Was

Red Jones had been suffering through that boring-ass song he’d heard on the radio when he saw a man with a thick mustache turn his head and study him from the center rows of the theater. Then watched as the man talked to his woman and got up out of his seat. He locked eyes with him as he walked up the steps. Dude had big shoulders on him and a chest. He looked like some kind of police.

Red Jones turned to Coco. “I smell pig.”

“Red, I’m tryin to hear Roberta.”

“Let’s go.”

“For real .”

“Do I look like I’m playin?”

They got up and took their time moving through the aisle. They were interrupting Flack’s dramatic performance and blocking anem" the view of many, but no one had the balls to say a thing.

Strange found the pay phone up near the bathrooms. He dialed the Third District house, identified himself as a former police officer, and asked to speak to Vaughn. When told by the desk sergeant that Vaughn was out, Strange left a detailed message and suggested that any available units be sent to the amphitheater. Red Jones and Coco Watkins went past him, taking their time, taking long strides, without a glance in his direction. Strange saw no ring on Coco’s hand.

As the two of them went out the gates, Jones stopped to light a cigarette for himself and one for his woman. To Strange, it didn’t look like either of them gave a good fuck about being recognized or anything else. But they were leaving, which meant that they knew they’d been made.

Strange watched Jones and Watkins step off the asphalt path and walk directly into the darkness of the woods.

Strange cradled the receiver. He saw a couple of private security guards talking and smoking by the front gates. He walked past them, exited the venue, and began to jog when he hit the lot, where his MC was parked under a light.

The crime scene at Soul House had been secured by the time Vaughn arrived. Uniformed officers kept witnesses calm and on premises while the lab technicians worked around the body of Roland Williams. Several patrons and the bartender described the killer in detail and the doorman, Antoine Evans, identified him by name.

“You certain it was Jones?” said Vaughn.

“Course I am. Red robbed a card game I was in couple a weeks back.”

“Poker?”

“Tonk. But there was real money on the table.”

“Where was that?”

“Bottle club, ’round the corner.”

“Will you take the stand, Antoine?”

Antoine Evans nodded. “Red ain’t had to do Roland like that.”

Vaughn found the man with the gray beard, still sitting in his chair on the sidewalk outside the club, and asked him what he’d observed.

“After the gunshots, tall light-skinned dude came out the House and got back into the Fury he’d come in.”

“What was the color of the car?”

“Red-over-white coupe,” said the man, pronouncing it “koo- pay .” “Way those pipes sounded, had to be the GT.”

“Can you describe the driver?”

“Shoot, I can tell you her name. Says it right on the Fury’s plates. She goes by Coco. Runs a house right here on Fourteenth.”

Vaughn had his package for the prosecutors: confirmable details and eyewitnesses who were willing to talk and even testify. Now he needed to make the arrest.

A patrolman approached Vaughn. “Message came over the radio for you, Detective. A citizen spotted Robert Lee Jones at the Carter Barron. We’ve got units headed over there…”

Vaughn was already moving toward his Monaco, double-parked on the street.

Strange guessed that Jones and Watkins had left their Fury in the neighborhood of Crestwood, adjacent to Rock Creek Park, surmising correctly that the Plymouth was too radioactive to be parked in the main lot. Their walk in the woods would put them on Colorado Avenue, which branched out to other residential streets. Somewhere on those streets was their car.

Strange got into his Monte Carlo and fired it up. Driving through the lot, he saw two squad cars down by the tennis courts parked nose to ass, the conversation arrangement for uniformed police, but he did not go there for help because he felt there was no time.

He exited the lot and drove west on Colorado. He knew it dead-ended eventually, and it was a bet that Red Jones knew it, too. He would never allow himself to be trapped, so Jones and Watkins had to have left their ride deeper south into Crestwood. He made a left on 17th Street and went down a slope, and as he approached the Blagden Avenue intersection he saw the red Plymouth, doing the limit and heading east on Blagden. Strange hit the left turn signal and fell in behind them.

He stayed as far back as he could without bringing the Chevy to a crawl. Strange thinking, They don’t know my car. But there was no one between them, and as the Fury neared the red light at 16th and came to a stop, Strange had little choice but to pull up behind them.

He saw Red Jones eye him in the sideview mirror. He saw Red turn his head and say something to his woman, and then he heard the rev of the Plymouth’s V-8. Strange brought his seat belt across his lap and clicked in the buckle.

The Fury screamed into the intersection against the red light. It fishtailed and corrected. Strange looked both ways and saw cars approaching from the south.

“Fuck it,” said Strange.

They’ve got brakes, too.

He floored the gas pedal, and the Monte Carlo lifted, leaving twin patches of rubber on the asphalt as it went across 16th to the sounds of angry horns and skidding tires. Strange saw metal in his side vision but felt no impact, and he thought, I made it; I am on them now.

The Fury made distance on the straightaway. They had more horses than he did, a four-barrel carb, and that Mopar edge, and the woman knew how to drive her car. Strange punched it and felt the wind rushing through the open windows as he gained ground. The Fury dropped down an incline by upper 14th Street, and as he neared the crest, it skidded into a left and he follot ahe wed. In his rearview he saw a car suddenly coming up from the south at a high rate of speed and he recognized it as a patrol car. Watkins blew the red light at Kennedy and made a soft right back onto Colorado, and Strange followed, going through the stoplight himself, and the cop behind him activated his cherry-top and siren, accelerated sharply, and came up very close to Strange’s bumper. When Strange’s eyes moved forward, he saw the Fury execute a crazy right, east on Madison, and then the siren whooped behind him. Strange pulled over to the side of the road.

Strange threw the horseshoe shifter into park and got out of the Chevy, his hands raised. The uniformed police officer was now out of his patrol car, moving toward him, his hand on his sidearm, and Strange shouted, “I’m in pursuit of a wanted man,” and “I’m MPD!”

“Let’s see your badge,” said the cop, a young black officer, couldn’t have been much more than twenty-one. He drew his.38 and pointed it at Strange.

“I used to be a police officer,” said Strange, correcting his false claim, the adrenaline gone out of him.

“ Used to don’t mean shit to me,” said the cop. “Now turn your ass around. You know what to do.”

His father had always told him to answer “Yes, sir” to police, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it right about now. Strange placed his hands on the trunk of his car.

“Call Frank Vaughn in Three-D,” said Strange. “He’ll tell you who I am. Or Lydell Blue. He’s a sergeant over in the Fourth.”

The cop said nothing as he patted Strange down.

Lou Fanella had told Gino Gregorio he had to get his own spot for him and his skinny whore, so Gino went down to the desk of the motor lodge and rented another room. When he returned, Cindy and April were snorting lines off a mirror they had taken down from the wall. Gregorio gathered liquor, wine, two plastic cups, and Cindy, and went out the door.