George Pelecanos: Drama City

Deborah Johnson came from the kitchen, walking down the high-shag carpet to take him in her arms. She smelled like perfume, the sweet kind she favored.

“Hello, son.”

“Mama.”

Deborah was a big woman, five-foot-ten and up around 260 pounds. She was pretty, with nice skin, looked like deeply burnished wood, and neatly styled hair. She always wore makeup, red lipstick and blue eye shadow, despite the fact that, except for Sundays when she went to church, she rarely left the house. She was fifty-four years old.

“Here you go,” said Nigel. He handed her the shoe box first, then the ice cream.

“Thank you, baby. You got my flavor.”

Nigel nodded. He worried about her heart, but he wasn’t going to deny her the treats she loved.

“Let me put this stuff away,” said Deborah.

“All right.”

“You gonna have a plate of somethin’? I’ve got a nice ham and sweet potatoes to go with it.”

“Little bit, Mama.”

“Ham’s cold.”

“How it should be in the summertime.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Nigel watched her go, pushing her weight forward, using the side-to-side movement of the heavy. While she was preparing his food in the kitchen, she’d run the cash through the electronic counting machine she kept back there in one of the cabinets. She liked to do that soon as he made the delivery.

“Sit yourself down,” she said over her shoulder.

He had a seat in the living room. The couch and chairs had plastic slipcovers on them even though Deborah could afford to let the furniture wear down natural and change it out any time she wanted to. He couldn’t convince her, entirely, that she didn’t have to worry about pennies anymore. Once poor, always poor, that’s what folks said.

He bought her jewelry and picked out her dresses from the oversize department at places like Nordstrom and Lord and Taylor. She never asked for these things but was thankful for them and wore them proudly. She bragged to her friends at church about her son the businessman, “my entrepreneur,” who had the NJ Enterprises shop up on Georgia, and they went along with the charade, which she knew to be a ruse herself. She rarely spoke of it with Nigel and never with anyone else.

He had set up several accounts at different banks around town, the deposits never exceeding ten thousand dollars. The bulk of the remaining cash was kept here in her house. He wanted to make sure that she was taken care of in the event of his death or incarceration.

There was no one else in his life. He had fathered a couple of children when he was young but had paid the mothers off in lump sums and did not have much contact with them. He had one older brother, a successful Realtor in Raleigh, North Carolina, who had clean-breaked from the family long ago and had not seen D.C. since he’d left town. Nigel had never known his father. He’d gone looking for him, based on some cryptic information his mother had given him on a rare night when she’d had a second glass of wine, and discovered that the man had been dead for twenty years. It was said by the man’s son, a crackhead who technically was Nigel’s half brother, that the father was buried in a pauper’s grave. Nigel had felt nothing upon hearing the news.

Nigel lived in a modest apartment near his storefront, up in Manor Park. After the expense of his rent, his mother’s mortgage, her clothing and jewelry, his clothing and jewelry, his vehicles, the vehicles he bought for his men, his payroll, the rent on his storefront, and all the extras a man in his position had to have, there was little cash left. This was the secret that many drug dealers on Nigel’s level kept. They could not save and were not rich.

It wasn’t money that kept Nigel in the game. It was the power, of course, and the fear that he would lose what he had and, once out, be qualified to do nothing else. But it was also the responsibility he felt he had for those under him. From the beginning, he had told himself that he was providing opportunity and a sense of family for those who otherwise had no chance of attaining either. He knew now, and had known for some time, that this was bullshit drug dealers repeated to themselves and one another to rationalize their lifestyles. More than just bullshit-it was a dirty lie.

He had told this lie to his best friend. He had told it to many other young men. The last young man he’d told it to had been Michael Butler. Michael Butler, who at seventeen years of age would soon be in the ground, covered in maggots. Nigel had spoken to him early on about the opportunity that was waiting for him up the road. Instead, Nigel had shown him a horrifying death and an early grave.

“You wrong,” said Nigel under his breath.

His mother touched his shoulder. He had not heard her reenter the room.

“What’s that, baby?”

“Talkin’ to myself, is all. Must be getting old.”

“I’m heating the potatoes up. Won’t be but another minute.”

“Okay.”

Deborah Johnson came around the sofa and had a seat beside her son. The Gladys Knight CD played beautifully in the room. Gladys singing joyously about “a happy home.” Nigel remembered his mother wearing the grooves out on her vinyl copy, back in time.

“Lorenzo called me today,” said Deborah.

“He told me he spoke to you.”

“You two gonna hook up?”

“Yes.”

“Lorenzo’s good,” said Deborah, touching her son’s hand. “You watch out for him, hear?”

“I will,” said Nigel.

“You ought to call him, tell him to come over, have some of this ham.”

“He busy right now.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s out there on Otis, I expect.” Nigel smiled a little, looking toward the living-room window that fronted the street. “Walkin’ his dog.”

Shadows had lengthened on the playground. Lorenzo watched the children doing what children did on summer evenings, getting in the last of their games before supper got called or darkness fell. He remembered being out here with Nigel when he’d first moved over from Congress Heights to stay with his grandmother, Nigel his first Park View friend. Nigel dreaming on a pair of Superstar three-stripes he’d seen in a store window, focusing on what he wanted, what he was gonna get, even then. Asking Lorenzo if there was anything he wanted, ’cause when he, Nigel, got his hands on some money, he was gonna buy his boy something too.

Lorenzo stood in the tall grass by the dusty baseball diamond, holding his dog by the leash, his other hand holding a plastic bag fashioned as a glove. I have come a long way, he thought, with a shit bag in my hand.

Jasmine did her business, and Lorenzo cleaned it from the grass. He tied off one end of the bag, walked through the alley that ran behind Otis and Princeton, and put it in someone’s trash can back there. He cut out of the alley’s T, went along Georgia, and turned the corner where the old neighborhood market, owned and operated by a Jew named Meyer, had been. Meyer, it was said, used to extend credit to the neighborhood’s residents, but his business was gone, and he was long dead. Lorenzo headed up Princeton Place.

He had taken this route out of habit and now, nearing Rayne’s house and his grandmother’s house beside it, he was sorry that he did. Rayne was out on her porch, and little Lakeisha was up there too. At least Lorenzo was on the other side of the street.

“That Jazz Man, Mama?” he heard Lakeisha say.

Lorenzo tugged on the leash as Jasmine’s head turned toward the little girl. He glanced at the house and saw Rayne standing by the railing, looking at him with bewilderment as he kept going without a word. He waved weakly but did not make eye contact with Rayne. Lakeisha called out to him and his dog, and he walked on, wincing at the sound of disappointment in her innocent voice.