George Pelecanos: Drama City

“I got to get it from out my office,” said Duke, just above a mumble.

“Don’t come out the office with nothin’ but that information,” said Nigel. “Hear?”

Duke nodded without looking at either of them. He walked to the garage, used a key to open it, and went inside.

Lorenzo stabbed the fork into the T-bone on the grill, lifted it, shook it loose, and let it fall to the ground in front of the rot. The dog’s nub of tail wiggled furiously as he took the steak in his teeth and trotted off to a corner of the yard.

Nigel chuckled. “You ain’t lost nothin’.”

“Some shit just stay natural,” said Lorenzo.

“Thought you was gonna break a beer bottle off. Or maybe take one of those loose bricks and throw it through the window of that Impala.”

“I thought of that. Car that nice, I just couldn’t fuck with it.”

“You made do with that fork, though.”

Duke came out of the garage and handed Nigel a piece of paper. Nigel looked at it, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

“Nah,” said Duke. “Nah, uh-uh.” He had noticed Champ getting down on the T-bone. “Why’d you have to go and do that to a man too?”

“He deserves a steak, way you mistreat him,” said Lorenzo. “And don’t even think of beating that animal, ’cause I can see by the way he cringes that you do.”

“Who the fuck are y’all?” said Duke.

“We ain’t nobody you ever seen or met,” said Nigel. “You understand?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Lorenzo pointed a finger at Duke. “I’m gonna be back to check on that dog.”

Nigel and Lorenzo went down the alley as dusk settled on the streets. Lorenzo felt good and he felt strong. He was energized by the violence and comfortable walking beside his friend.

“Rico Miller rented the car,” said Nigel. “He stayin’ here in Northeast.”

“Lee gonna be with him too.”

“I gotta get up with Deacon before we do anything.”

“You can drop me by the hospital, pick me up when you’re done.”

“Right.” Nigel side-glanced Lorenzo. “Givin’ that man’s T-bone up to his own dog, that was a nice touch right there.”

“Man wants you to take him serious, you’d think he might pick a better name than Dukey Stick.”

“It’s a George Duke song.”

“Who?”

“My mother had the LP,” said Nigel. “That’s how I know.”

The Washington Hospital Center, on Irving Street, was walking distance from where Lorenzo and Nigel had grown up. In their youth, both of them ate in the canteen when one or the other had extra coin, and both of them stole candy bars from the gift shop because they could. Lorenzo knew that the WHC specialized in heart bypass surgery as well as the usual emergency treatments, including shock trauma cases and victims of violent crime, so it wasn’t a surprise to see people who came from money mingling with middle-class and poor in the ER waiting room. For a little while, all were equal in here.

The hospital kept a separate space, away from the reception area and general waiting room, for those receiving counsel, those grievers who were temporarily unstable, those receiving bad news, and those under watch by police. Lorenzo sat in the general area and kept an eye on that room. He had seen a police officer enter and then Sergeant Peterson, the police who had roughed him earlier in the day, go in after him. Also, it looked like a reporter or something standing outside the door. Had to be, because the man had a notepad and pen in his hands. A couple of women carrying paper coffee cups went in behind them. One of them was big, wore a bright pantsuit and plenty of makeup, and had a revolver holstered on her hip. Plainclothes police, Lorenzo reckoned. The other was a young white girl, college age or a little beyond. Both women looked as if they had been crying.

Lorenzo sat there for an hour or so. He watched the doctors coming from surgery, entering quickly in their scrubs, talking to families in groups of twos and threes, and leaving just as quickly. He watched the sergeant come out of the special room, go to the water cooler for a drink, and recognize Lorenzo, sitting there in his street clothes, as he passed. The sergeant did not stop to speak to him and walked back into the room. Lorenzo thumbed through a car magazine without recalling a word he read. Then he saw a surgeon go into the room where all of Rachel’s people were. And right after that, he heard a woman scream. He felt certain that it was a scream of grief. It was the same kind of emotional release he’d heard come from mothers and girlfriends at funeral homes and cemeteries when he’d been deep in the game. Hearing it, and the sobs that came after, he felt some life leave him.

Lorenzo got up out of his chair and walked to the nearest restroom. He washed his face with cold water. Then he left the hospital and went to the drop-off spot by the front doors, where he had said he’d be, to wait for Nigel.

Sergeant Peterson, unable to be still, had left the room for just a moment to get a drink of water, when he saw Rachel’s offender, the drug dealer turned dogcatcher, sitting out there in the general lobby. He didn’t stop to talk to him. He assumed the man was there to wait on news about Rachel. This man had seemed all right, given who he was, but Peterson had more important things to do than hold some con’s hand.

Rachel’s surgeon came into the room a short time later, over to where Peterson and two of Rachel’s coworkers, a probation officer named Moniqua and a young assistant, sat. They all got up out of their chairs as the doctor entered.

The doctor explained the nature and location of the wounds, and the massive loss of blood. Rachel had been stabbed in the chest and through the hand, and sliced across the face. There was the possibility of neurological damage. She was “lucky,” said the doctor, that the blade had not entered her heart or lungs.

“The next twenty-four hours are crucial.”

“She gonna live?” said Donald Peterson.

“I’m optimistic,” said the doctor. “Yes.”

Moniqua let out a scream that sounded like death itself. It was her way of letting go of all the pressure she’d been feeling at her friend’s ordeal. In Peterson’s experience, people dealt with this kind of thing their own way. Moniqua and the assistant hugged and cried. For his part, Peterson rapped his fist on the table and said a silent prayer of thanks.

Later, when he’d got himself together, he remembered the offender out in the main waiting area.

Peterson decided to go out there and tell the man that his probation officer was going to make it. But when he went to where the offender had been sitting, the dogcatcher, or whatever he was, was gone.

Deacon Taylor sat under the wheel of his E-Class, parked on Iowa Avenue, with Marcus Griffin beside him. Griff’s midnight blue Infiniti was parked on the street as well. In view was Roosevelt High. Across from the school, a group of young men sat on the porch of a row house, smoking marijuana and drinking from bottles in paper bags.

“Here go his Lex,” said Deacon, watching as Nigel Johnson’s import rolled slowly down the street.

“Looks like he got Graham with him,” said Griff.

“That ain’t no surprise.”

“What you want me to do?”

“Watch my car, is all. Me and Nigel gonna go down to the track, walk around it some.”

“And do what?”

“I’m gonna listen, mostly,” said Deacon. “When I come back, I’ll tell you what I learned.”

Nigel parked on Iowa. He got out of the Lexus with two cigars in hand and walked across the street. Deacon met him in the middle of the street, and the two of them shook hands. Nigel offered Deacon a cigar and Deacon accepted. Nigel lit Deacon’s cigar, then put fire to his own. They agreed to go down to the sky blue running track that encircled the football field in Roosevelt’s bowl.