George Pelecanos: What It Was

“Quite a tale,” said Stefanos.

“Just a story,” said Strange.

“I’ve heard some of it over the years, here and there. A few of the details differ from yours.”

“It changes, depending on who’s tellin it.”

“That guy, the heroin dealer with the long nose…”

“Roland Williams.”

“I’d heard he was shot in the carryout, House of Soul.”

“Maybe he was,” said Strange. “I get it confused with Soul House, the bar. My memory could be failing. Then again, damn near forty years have passed.”

Stefanos sipped his bourbon. “What’d you do with the ring?”

“I took it back to its rightful owner.”

“That make you feel better?”

“The re ward did,” said Strange. “Dayna Rosen gave me a nice chunk of money. It bought me that sign outside my office.”

“The one with the magnifying glass over the letters? How’d you ever come up with such an original design?”

“Funny.”

“I’m guessing Maybelline Walker didn’t like losing the ring.”

“No,” said Strange. “But fuck what she didn’t like.”

“And Carmen? You two patch things up?”

Strange nodded. “We got back together. And then I did the same thing I did to her before. I was just like that, Nick. Fact is, I was in my fifties before I got right with one woman.”

“You learned.”

Strange thought of that Western his father and he used to watch over and over again, where the gunmen save a south-of-the-border village from bandits. “Took me a long time to learn my elbow from a hot rock.”

“So where’s Carmen now?”

“Carmen’s gone. Vaughn, my mother… they’re all gone.” Strange picked up his glass, examined it, and drank off some Johnnie Walker Black. He put the glass quietly back down on the mahogany.

“What about Red Jones?”

“The marshals caught up with Red and Coco at a Holiday Inn someplace in West Vlacnes?irginia. Desk clerk was one of those police scanner freaks, and he recognized the big man from the description that had gone out over the airwaves. Red and Coco were naked on top the sheets when the law came in with pistols and machine guns.”

“They kill ’em?”

“No. I don’t recall what happened to Coco. I reckon she did time.”

“And Red?”

“Red ended up in the federal joint, in Marion, Illinois. Became the leader of D.C. Blacks, a prison gang got put together to go up against the Aryan Brotherhood and their kind. The D.C. Blacks claimed they were descended from the Moors.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s their claim. So Red was in Marion. This would be nineteen eighty-two. He got put on the same control unit as his enemies, and some say that was deliberate. That the white guards were in with the Aryans. Right away, Red tried to stab the main AB, and then Red tried to shoot him with a zip gun. This AB, dude had a Jewish name if you can believe it, him and another one of his shamrock buddies, they cut themselves out of an exercise cage with a hacksaw blade and found Red in the showers. To this day you hear people say that Red fought off a dozen men. Truth was, it was only two. But it was a determined two. When they were done with him, they dragged his body up and down the tier so that everyone could see.”

“They made a statement,” said Stefanos.

“He’d been stabbed sixty-seven times. Robert Lee Jones was hard to kill.”

“And still talked about to this day.”

“It’s his kind whose names ring out. The others get forgotten. You know what happened to Frank Wills, that young security guard who foiled the Watergate burglary?”

“No.”

“He died penniless, in a house with no electricity or running water. By then he’d done a year’s time for shoplifting an ink pen. And all those reporters who got famous, all those politicians who made their names on the scandal, all those mother fuckers who were doin the dirt, with their million-dollar book deals and radio shows…”

“Relax, Derek.”

“ ‘Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean. It follows a pattern if you dig what I mean.’ ” Strange chuckled, thinking of that old Gil Scott-Heron record he owned long ago. Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, Isaac Hayes… Gil was gone now, too.

“You better slow down with that scotch,” said Stefanos.

“Now I’m gonna take drinkin advice from you .”

They finished their alcohol quietly and listened with reverence to the music coming from the juke.

“Something bothering me,” said Stefanos. “This story you told, those scenes with Red and Coco alone in her place, Vaughn doing his street work, the girls rk,nd in the diner on U Street…”

“Yeah?”

“You weren’t a witness to that. So how do you know what was said and done?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Some of that shit? I filled in the gaps and made it up. I mean, it’s true if I say it is. Print the legend, right?”

“You know that stock boy with the long hair in the Nutty Nathan’s stereo store? That was me.”

“For real?”

“There was only one stock boy who worked that place in the summer of seventy-two.”

“Smartass,” said Strange. “Lord, you were silly, even then.”

Stefanos smiled. “Let’s have another drink, Dad.”

“Uh-uh,” said Strange. “We gotta earn some money.”

They’d been hired by longtime public defender Elaine Clay to gather evidence on a homicide that had occurred in the Washington Highlands area of Southeast. They’d been waiting for the workday to end so that they could interview the mother of the alleged shooter, who by now would be back in her apartment. They were hoping that she could provide a verifiable alibi for her son, one that Clay could take into court. The young man was going to trial in a few weeks.

They left twenty on forty-four. The bald tender scooped the cash up off the bar.

“Leo,” said Stefanos.

“Yasou, patrioti.”

Strange and Stefanos walked out onto Georgia Avenue. Strange buttoned his leather blazer and nodded toward his black Cadillac, parked on the street.

“Let’s go, Greek. The clock ticks.”

“What’s your hurry?” said Stefanos.

Strange squinted against the dying light. “We’ve got a case.”