George Pelecanos: Drama City

“Right. At least you doin’ good now.”

“I get headaches.”

“Damn near everyone go to work each day gets headaches. I’m sayin’, I see you in that uniform, doin’ something good out here, it makes me feel proud of you, man. Makes me think maybe I didn’t fuck you over all the way.”

“That uniform don’t change who I am.”

“Who you are is who you are today. Not what you were before you did your bid.”

“Bullshit. You come on back to my apartment, you gonna see how much I changed.”

“One thing ain’t changed,” said Nigel with a sad chuckle. “You still thickheaded.”

A young woman pushing a baby carriage turned the corner off Warder, walked down Otis, and passed under a street lamp. Lorenzo and Nigel studied her with interest.

“What you think her thing is?” said Lorenzo.

“I don’t know. Fine at fifteen, a mother at sixteen. Fucked and forgotten by some boy she ain’t never gonna hear from again. She done made her own mother a grandmother at thirty-two. Now she livin’ at home, a high school dropout with no skills, wonderin’ what she gonna do with her life. Sitting on the couch, watchin’ Judge Brown and the soaps, eatin’ sweets and smokin’ cigarettes. Fifteen years from now? She gonna be a grandmother herself, and that fine young girl gonna look like every other dusty-ass woman you see on the bus.”

“You ain’t been on a Metrobus for twenty years.”

“You know what I mean.”

“How about this?” said Lorenzo. “She made a mistake and she knows it. The boy who got her that way is working hard to rent an apartment so they can live together as a family. Her mother watches the baby during the day so the girl can stay in school, get her degree. And maybe her mother will raise the baby for a few years while the girl goes on to college. And that kid gonna watch an educated mother and a hardworking father, and by example, all those good things gonna rub off.”

“Another way of looking at it, I guess.”

“You ought to see all the people I meet on my job every day, Nigel. All the stories I hear.”

“I can imagine,” said Nigel. “The game, it’s just a tiny part of what’s goin’ on out here. Remember back when they was callin’ this town Dodge City?”

“That was reporters and shit, made that name up. The ones who were too scared to come into the neighborhoods they were writin’ about.”

“The everyday people who lived in this city hated that name.”

“As they should have,” said Lorenzo. “Drama City be more like it.”

“Like them two faces they got hangin’ over the stage in those theaters. The smiling face and the sad.”

“City got more than two sides.”

“Whatever it got,” said Nigel, “you on the right side now. The side where people get up and go to work. Wash their cars out in the street, tend to their gardens. Watch their kids grow.”

“Maybe. But I’m still gonna avenge my friend. Rico Miller? Shit, motherfuckers like him, they’re in their element behind those walls. I ain’t gonna let him have that gift. Boy needs to be put down like an animal.”

“I’m not sayin’ he doesn’t deserve to die. I’m telling you you can’t be a part of it.”

“You don’t need to worry, Nigel. I’m not goin’ back over to where I been. I’m gonna be at work tomorrow and the day after that. But I’m still gonna do this thing tonight.”

“It don’t work that way.”

“We’ll see.”

“You been out of it so long, you forgot how it goes. You go in, you got to go in fierce. Forget they’re human. Forget that you’re human too.”

“I know it. Remember, I’ve done this before.”

“But you cleaned your slate. Now, what, you gonna go and throw away your soul again?”

“What about yours?”

“Mine’s been lost forever.” Nigel looked away. “I’m sayin’, this ain’t you anymore.”

“I’m on this.”

“I don’t want you with me, Lorenzo.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you do or if you don’t,” said Lorenzo, turning to stare directly into his friend’s eyes.

“You that set on it?”

“I am.”

“Thickheaded,” said Nigel.

“C’mon.” Lorenzo stood. “Let’s get on over to my crib. Wanna show you what I got.”

They walked down Otis toward Lorenzo’s apartment. Lawrence Graham followed in the Lex.

Lorenzo Brown entered his apartment. Nigel Johnson and Lawrence Graham followed. Jasmine, as always, was waiting just inside the door. She backed up and growled at the sight of Nigel.

Lorenzo crouched, patted her belly, and rubbed behind her ears. His touch calmed her down.

“Dogs don’t like me,” said Nigel, taking a seat on the hope chest behind the living-room sofa. Graham stood with his back against the wall.

“That’s ’cause they know you’re scared of ’em,” said Lorenzo.

“I can’t forget that shepherd in the alley behind Princeton, took a piece out my hand.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

“I just told you I can’t forget it.” Nigel pointed to the hallway. “Do me a favor and put that animal back in your bedroom.”

“Yeah, okay. C’mon, girl.”

Lorenzo went down the hall, Jasmine behind him. Nigel and Graham exchanged a glance. They heard the sound of Lorenzo’s bedroom door closing and the footsteps of Lorenzo coming back down the hall.

“Where your hardware at?” said Nigel.

“You’re sittin’ on it.”

Nigel got off the hope chest. Lorenzo moved it aside and pulled up the throw rug that lay beneath it. Under the rug was a rectangular cutout that was fitted in the hardwood floor. Where two sides of the rectangle had been grooved out, Lorenzo grasped the cutout and lifted it from its place. He leaned it against the chest.

In the space beneath the floor were two large metal toolboxes. Lorenzo lifted them out one by one. The muscles of his forearms rippled against the weight.

Lorenzo opened one of the toolboxes. Its inner tray had been removed to accommodate three handguns wrapped in oiled shop rags. Lorenzo unwrapped one of the guns, a Glock 17, and showed it to Nigel.

“It’s live,” said Lorenzo.

“What about the others?”

“They’re carrying full loads too.”

“Where you get these?”

“Remember Hoppy, stayed over there on Lamont?”

“Thought he was out of it.”

“He back in.”

“They clean?”

“Straw buys out of Virginia. Never been fired. Serial numbers still on ’em.”

“Why?”

“Why I have ’em?”

“Yeah.”

“For the reason I been sleepin’ on the same side of the bed my whole life. It feels right.”

“What else you got?” said Nigel.

“Forty-five Colt and a thirty-eight Special.”

“And in the other box?”

“Extra magazines and bricks. Couple clean rags. A box of latex gloves.”

“Lemme see the thirty-eight.”

Lorenzo replaced the Glock in the toolbox and withdrew another gun. He unwrapped a Taurus seven-shot revolver with rubber grips and handed it to Nigel.

Nigel hefted the Taurus and turned it in the light. He released the cylinder, spun it, checked the load, and snapped the cylinder shut. He holstered the Taurus in his waistband.

“This is me right here.”

“Let’s do it, then,” said Lorenzo.

“I need some water before we go.”

“What, you want me to serve it to you? Water in the kitchen, same place it is in every house you ever been in.”

Nigel went back to the Pullman kitchen. They listened to him bang a glass against another and heard the faucet run and the cry of the old pipes as the water ran through. It seemed as if Nigel was running the water for a long time. Lorenzo looked at Graham, and Graham shrugged.