George Pelecanos - What It Was

As Vaughn entered the diner on U in search of April, Strange stepped up to Carmen’s house.

He knocked on the door of her unit and there was no response. He thought he might use her outside spigot to wet the flowers and leave the bouquet on her front stoop. If she was on a long shift at the hospital, though, the flowers would be wilted by the time she came home, what with the heat. Better to try calling her again in the evening and give the flowers to someone who would appreciate them.

Strange picked up a couple of fish sandwiches and drove his Monte Carlo over to the house in which he had grown up, on the 700 block of Princeton Place. His mother, Alethea, answered the door in an old housedress and smiled brightly at the sight of her son.

“I brought Cobb’s,” said Strange, holding up a brown paper bag stained with grease.

They ate in the living room, near his father’s old recliner and his console stereo. Strange was silent for most of the meal.

“Everything all right, son?” said Alethea.

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t lie to me. You never could. Not too well, anyway.”

Strange swallowed his last bite and pushed his plate aside. “I been wrong, Mama. I’ve done some real bad things. Broke every important commandment and some that ain’t been wrote yet.”

“Only the Lord is without sin.”

“I know, but…”

“Pretend you just got born, this minute.”

“You mean make a new start.”

“Today, Derek. Do something right.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Strange.

His mother always did know what to say.

Strange had gone to his office to check for messages off that new machine he had, but there were none. While he was there, Vaughn phoned him and asked if he wanted to meet for a beer. They had worked together, and Strange had visited him in the hospital, but they had never socialized. Vaughn caught the hesitance in Strange’s voice as surely as if he had read it on his face.

“Trust me,” said Vaughn. “It’ll be worth your time.”

“Okay,” said Strange. “But let’s do it on my turf.”

Which is how they came to spend the afternoon at the Experience, Grady Page’s place, with the steel-top bar and the posters and funk-rock music, and the mix of police and security guards who were out of uniform, and neighborhood types, and folks burning reefer in the beefto spend tack alley.

“This your spot?” said Vaughn, wearing his suit, hat, and eye patch, seated at the bar beside Strange. Vaughn wasn’t the only white person in the place, but he was visibly in the minority.

“You’re not uncomfortable, are you?” said Strange.

“I like all the people,” said Vaughn, and he held up an empty bottle of Bud so Grady Page, up-picking his massive Afro behind the stick, could see. “One for me and one for my younger brother here, professor.”

“You got it,” said Page, and Strange was oddly touched.

“What about me?” said Harold Cheek, the off-duty patrolman out of 4-D, seated on the other side of Strange.

“And one for my fellow officer, too,” said Vaughn.

Page served the beers. The three men touched brown bottles and drank. Page was playing the Superfly soundtrack front to back through the house system, and “Little Child Runnin’ Wild” had kicked it off. Strange thought it was one of the most dynamic songs he’d ever heard. To Vaughn it was jungle-jump. But the music didn’t bother him. He was with friends and, given his odds at the house in Burrville, happy to be alive.

Even with the music going, they could hear a celebration back by the restrooms, where the security guard Strange and Cheek knew, Frank, was being congratulated by a group of well-wishers that included a couple of comely young women. Frank wore big bells, a wide brown belt, and the horizontal-striped shirts he favored.

“What’s goin on back there?” said Vaughn.

“Read this,” said Cheek, and he passed the A section of the house Washington Post across the bar to Vaughn. “Story about the burglary.”

Vaughn looked at the front page. The headline read, “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here,” with the byline of Alfred E. Lewis printed underneath the head. Vaughn scanned the first few paragraphs: five men, most of them Cubans, had been caught trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee on the sixth floor of the Watergate complex on Virginia Avenue. An alert twenty-four-year-old security guard had noticed tape on the lock of a door leading to the garage stairwell, taken it off, seen it reaffixed to the door later on, and notified Metropolitan Police.

“So?” said Vaughn passing the paper back to Cheek. Vaughn had no intention of reading the entire story. There was drinking to do.

“That’s Frank Wills,” said Cheek, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the celebrating young man and his friends. “He’s the one who stopped the burglary. Dude’s a hero.”

“Kinda like you,” said Strange, and Vaughn shrugged.

“I didn’t exactly succeed,” said Vaughn. “My man’s in the wind.”

“You hear anything?”

“Someone matching Red’s description murdered a man in a bar the other night, in a place called Big Stone Gap over in West Virginia. Shot him to death with a forty-five. A witness said the shooter left with a lady tall as he was and got into a taxicab that was waiting out front. It would make sense that Red and Coco would hide that Fury. Also that they would be in that state. Red was born there.”

“And?”

“Federal marshals are on it now. I’m done.”

“You did your part.”

“So did you,” said Vaughn, and he saw Strange dip his head. “You all right with it?”

Strange lowered his voice. “I’m getting there.”

Vaughn lit a cigarette and pushed the lighter in front of Strange so that he could see the Okinawa inlay on the Zippo’s face. “First time I killed a man was on that island. I had him in the sights of my M-One for fifteen minutes before I squeezed the trigger. But I did it. He would have shot me or one of my buddies if he’d had the chance. After that it got easier.”

“This isn’t war,” said Strange.

“Yes, it is,” said Vaughn. He reached into his suit pocket, produced something rolled up in a napkin, and handed it to Strange. “Here you go. This’ll cheer you up.”

Vaughn watched as Strange peeled back the napkin. Inside was a ring: eight small diamonds clustered around a larger diamond, with a gold body holding a Grecian key design.

“How’d you get it?” said Strange.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” said Vaughn. “Took a little arm-twisting, but not much. The girl who had it thought it was a fake.”

“I’m not much of a detective, am I?”

“You’ll get there, young man.” Vaughn looked him over. “What’re you gonna do with it?”

Strange stared at the ring in the palm of his hand. “Something right.”

“Give Me Your Love” came up on the system, and a couple of young women began to dance. Soon they were joined by two eager young men. Strange and Vaughn drank away the afternoon as the music played on and the folks around them, regal and fly in their natural hairstyles and up-to-the minute fashions, laughed and had big fun. Living the moment in a thrilling, glorious time.

June 18, 1972.

The afternoon had passed. Leo, the owner and operator of the spot that carried his name, had turned on more lights for the evening trade and kept them dim. Outside, the rain had stopped, and northbound rush hour traffic had commenced on Georgia Avenue. Derek Strange and Nick Stefanos had been here for hours, dnt›

The jukebox played “Give Me Your Love,” Curtis’s trademark guitar and falsetto filling the room. Strange had chosen the song.