George Pelecanos: Drama City

“ And I want a Cinderella Dream Trunk,” said Lakeisha.

“You never know,” said Lorenzo. “You be a good girl, you might get it.”

“But you’re not getting a puppy,” said Rayne.

“Don’t y’all wanna know what I want?” said Lorenzo.

“I already know,” said Rayne.

“You and my grandmother been conspirin’, huh?”

“She’s just being neighborly,” said Rayne.

“Hmm.”

“I better get her to school,” said Rayne. “We on this weekend?”

“I’m plannin’ on it,” said Lorenzo, looking down at Lakeisha. “You have a good one, little princess.”

“Okay, Mr. Lorenzo. Bye, Jazz Man.”

He watched them walk up the street. When he saw them reach the school grounds, he moved on.

At the park, near the baseball diamond, Lorenzo stamped his feet against the cold while Jasmine defecated in the grass. He slipped his hand inside the plastic bag, made a glove of it, and picked up her steaming feces. He turned the bag inside out and tied it off. A couple of teenage boys, school age but not in school, walked across the field and chuckled at him, standing there wearing a uniform and holding a bag of shit, as they passed.

Go ahead and laugh, thought Lorenzo. I don’t care.

Lorenzodrove slowly down Morton Place. He was going to pick up a cat on a spay call at the Park Morton apartments before heading up to the office. Gray snow, the remnants of the previous week’s storm, was patched along the curbs. Touts and runners, boys in their midteens, stood on corners, doing their dirt. They wore long white T-shirts under their parkas and down coats. Some had bandannas tied around their necks or legs. All worked for Deacon Taylor.

Within days of Nigel Johnson’s murder, the majority of the drug business in the southern portion of Park View had gone over to Deacon Taylor. It was said that this had been his ambition all along. In the transfer of power, Deacon had absorbed most of Nigel’s people. Among them was Lawrence Graham.

The police had quickly triangulated the murders of DeEric Green and Michael Butler, the murders at 46th and Hayes, and the assault on Rachel Lopez. Rico Miller’s prints, left at Melvin Lee’s apartment, were matched to the prints on the shoe box full of money found in his house. The shoe box carried the prints of Green and Butler as well. Also, police had the murder guns and the knife used in the assault. What police did not have was a lead in the killing of Nigel Johnson. They had forensic evidence but no witnesses or anyone who would talk.

The breakthrough came, as they usually did, through information triggered by an arrest in an unrelated crime. A Columbia Heights resident, Jason Willis, was picked up for heroin distribution and, as was procedure, asked if he knew of any recent murders in the area that he would be willing to “clean up” for police in exchange for a consideration come sentencing time. Williams, facing his third felony conviction, claimed that he had personal knowledge of a murder committed in August by a young man named Marcus Griffin, an enforcer for Deacon Taylor. Griffin had bragged on the murder to Williams one night when they were sharing some weed. Griffin was promptly arrested and charged. In his apartment, police found the murder weapon, a Desert Eagle. 357 Magnum with a bright nickel finish. In the box, Griffin confessed to the killing of Nigel Johnson. The markings on the slug removed from Johnson were deemed to match the. 357. When asked why he had not disposed of the weapon earlier, Griffin explained that he could not bear to part with such a “pretty gun.”

In exchange for detailed testimony against Deacon Taylor, who Griffin said had ordered the hit, Griffin would get a ride in the Witness Security program. Griffin was currently in custody in a low-numbered cell in the Correctional Treatment Facility, a privately run unit near the D.C. Jail. The CTF, otherwise known as the Snitch Hive, housed government witnesses and informants. Griff would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. As for police and prosecutors, they would finally get their shot at Deacon Taylor, whom they had been after for some time.

So Deacon, it seemed, might soon be done. But as Lorenzo drove down Morton, it looked as if nothing had changed. Deacon’s troops were still out there, working his corners. And if they were to go away, there would always be other young men to replace the Marcus Griffins, Lawrence Grahams, Nigel Johnsons, and Deacon Taylors. Lorenzo understood why boys went down to the corners; he had been one of them, and he knew. Still, the knowledge didn’t lessen the bitterness he felt.

Lorenzo picked up the cat, a Persian, from a woman in Park Morton and drove north. Going up Georgia Avenue, he saw single mothers moving their children along the sidewalks, young girls showing off their bodies, church women, men who went to work each day, men who did nothing at all, studious kids who were going to make it, stoop kids on the edge, kids already in the life, a man smoking a cigarette in the doorway of his barbershop, and the private detective with the big shoulders talking to a white dude on the sidewalk in front of his place, had the sign with the magnifying glass out front. It was a city of masks, the kind Nigel had said hung in theaters. Smiling faces and sad, and all kinds of faces in between.

“That’s it,” said Lorenzo Brown. He reached out and turned down the volume of the CD player in the dash. “Can’t take it anymore.”

“I was listening to that,” said Mark Christianson, behind the wheel of the Tahoe.

“Said I can’t take it.”

“That’s the New York Dolls.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Yankees and the Knicks, I do not want to hear it. Man’s got a personality crisis, he needs to keep it to his self.”

They drove slowly down the alley behind 35th Street in Northeast. They passed houses with deep backyards, once lush with vegetable and flower gardens, now only showing the muted shades of winter.

“Where is it?” said Mark.

“Where those cars are at, up ahead.”

They came upon the house they were looking for. A restored Impala, a Mercedes coupe, a silver 3-Series BMW, and mounds of excrement, both dried and fresh, sat in its yard. Farther back, a black rottweiler stood on a concrete deck beside a pit-style grill constructed of brick. The male rot came forward, passing a freestanding garage, and stood at the fence. He looked at the truck and its occupants, and barked one time. Lorenzo rolled down his window and whistled softly.

“You all right, Champ,” said Lorenzo, and the dog wiggled his rump.

“Looks like he’s got entropia.”

“And those scars on his ears are from flies. The owner never does clean the feces out his yard.”

“You got a name?”

“Calvin Duke. I spoke to him already. He still ain’t learned.”

Mark took a couple of photographs, then backed out of the alley and drove around to the front of the house. He idled the Chevy on 35th Street as he wrote out the Official Notification form.

“Irena says you haven’t been in to sit with her for a while,” said Mark, not looking at Lorenzo as he made notations on the warning.

“She worried about me?”

“She likes you, Lorenzo.”

“I like her too. But I don’t feel the need to visit with her every day like I used to. I figure this work thing is gonna go on for a long time. I can’t be lookin’ for her to hold my hand forever.”

“All I’m sayin’ is, you ever need to talk to us -”

“Y’all are there,” said Lorenzo. “I know.”

Mark put a long strand of black hair behind his ear and touched the handle of the door. “You coming along?”

“I think I’ll hang out here. Last time we spoke, me and Duke didn’t see eye to eye.”