George Pelecanos: The Cut

Armed with this information, he left the store, phoned Tavon Lynch, bought a sandwich and a bottle of water at the nearest Subway, and drove south.

TAVON LYNCH and Edwin Davis were on the low end of the Clifton Street slope, down near 11th, sitting in Tavon’s Impala, when Lucas passed them in his Jeep. He did not slow down. He parked on 12th and waited for Tavon and Edwin to join him. Soon he saw them in the rearview, coming on foot. Tavon slid into the passenger seat beside him and Edwin got in back. It was close to 11 A.M.

Tavon was wearing a light jacket with epaulets over a Black Uhuru T-shirt, with a different pair of Lacoste sneaks on his feet than he had worn the day before. Edwin wore a UCB Live at the Crossroads T. From the two times they had met, Lucas surmised that Tavon was a reggae man and Edwin was into go-go, but with these guys their choice of shirts could have just been a fashion thing. Edwin had a belt on with a big G buckle, which Lucas guessed advertised Gucci, and he was sporting Ray-Ban aviators. Tavon was wearing, to Lucas’s untrained eye, an expensive pair of sunglasses, too. Maybe they were both wearing shades because they were high. They had reeked of marijuana when they got into the Jeep.

“What’s shakin, Spero?” said Tavon, and he offered his fist. Lucas dapped him up.

“On the job,” said Lucas.

“Us, too,” said Edwin, and Lucas saw him in the mirror, studying the screen of the phone in his hand.

“We’re gonna have to leave up out of here soon,” said Tavon. “Why’d you call us in?”

“I’ve got names to put inside the houses now,” said Lucas, patting his notebook, which rested atop the console on his right. “I was wondering if any of them meant anything to y’all.”

“Lemme see.”

Lucas opened the Moleskine notebook to the appropriate page and handed it to Tavon. Tavon moved his sunglasses to the top of his head, fitting them into his nest of braids, and stared at the diagram and notations, his lips moving soundlessly as he read.

Lucas looked through the windshield to the street. An old woman on the even-numbered side stood outside her weathered house, staring down at a garden of flowers and ground cover arranged at the base of her porch. She wore a faded housedress and held a trowel. On the same side of the street, farther down, a woman nearing middle age and wearing a business suit left her row house and walked briskly south on 12th. Lucas made voice notations into his phone, noting the addresses so that he could match the numbers to names later on.

Tavon passed the notebook over his shoulder to Edwin, then looked at Lucas. Tavon’s pupils were dilated and the whites were pink. “I don’t recognize none of the names.”

“Not even Lisa Weitzman?”

“Who’s she?”

“The woman who owns the house where you arranged the drop.”

“If you mean the white girl who left for work each mornin and stayed away all day, then that’s her. I didn’t feel the need to find out her name.”

“That’s sloppy, man.”

“Ain’t like we don’t have our operation in control,” said Tavon, with a small shrug.

“If you had it under control you wouldn’t have lost the package.”

“We’re makin money,” said Edwin, by way of rebuttal. He passed the notebook back to Lucas.

“These here are Christian Dior,” said Tavon, as if an expensive accessory erased Lucas’s criticism. He took the oversize sunglasses off his head and showed them to Lucas. “Three hundred dollars.”

Lucas grabbed a handful of his pants leg. “Dickies. Twenty-nine ninety-five.”

Tavon laughed, showing a slight overbite. It wasn’t that funny, but in his state he found it to be.

“You think we’re just dumb younguns,” said Tavon, still grinning.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” said Lucas. “But both of you are baked right now. That tells me you’re capable of making bad decisions. And mistakes.”

“You don’t get high?”

“Not while I’m working.”

“We know what we’re doin,” said Tavon, and he looked over the backseat at Edwin, their eyes meeting meaningfully. Lucas had the feeling that they wanted to defend themselves, give him some kind of explanation or excuse for the loss of the packages. But the moment passed and a tangible silence fell inside the car.

“You into Black Uhuru?” said Lucas, nodding at Tavon’s T-shirt, breaking the quiet.

“They’re tight,” said Tavon. “Don’t tell me you know somethin about Uhuru.”

“I got some of their music. The Puma, Duckie, and Michael lineup is the best. I’m talking about the records Sly and Robbie produced. The roots stuff. ‘Leaving to Zion’ is the shit.”

“Ho,” said Tavon with surprise. “How you up with that?”

“I had a buddy in the Marine Corps who turned me on to reggae.”

“Jamaican dude?”

“White dude from Louisiana,” said Lucas, remembering his friend, that high-pitched laugh he had, the way he ducked his head when he smiled. Jamie Burdette, buried now in Metairie.

“You go to the dance halls and shit?”

“Nah,” said Lucas. “I wouldn’t know where to go, and I doubt I’d feel comfortable if I did. There was a place called Kilimanjaro, down in Adams Morgan, when I was a kid. It’s been closed for a long time.”

“I go sometimes,” said Tavon. “They got this warehouse out there in Maryland, off Colesville Road, where they be havin shows? But you need to be careful. The Rastas come to have fun, but then you got the rude boys mixed in the crowd. If things pop off, ain’t gonna be just a fistfight. Someone’s about to get shot.”

“That not your thing,” said Lucas.

“I’m a man of peace. A lover.”

“They got the best girls at Twenty Four,” said Edwin, speaking on the big club off Bladensburg Road, near New York Avenue in Northeast. “Them dance hall girls stink.”

“So do your drawers.”

“Your father’s.”

“Edwin likes the VIP room,” said Tavon.

“I just like the women.”

“You mean, like, the one I seen you with the other night? One they call Precious?”

“That’s her name,” said Edwin defensively.

“She look like that beast, too.”

“Go ahead, Tay.”

“Too bad you can’t satisfy the girls like I do,” said Tavon.

“I don’t need to. When I gyrate, they bug.”

“You know they call me the Cobra.”

“Now you gonna brag on your tongue,” said Edwin.

“When you break a woman off,” said Tavon, “you got to break her off proper.”

“If I can’t buy it at the Shoppers Food Warehouse,” said Edwin, “I don’t eat it.”

“Look there,” said Lucas, stopping them, because if he didn’t they would go on. “You guys see that old lady up by her house, with the shovel in her hand?”

“So?” said Edwin.

“That little garden she’s got, looks like it’s her pride. At her age, you know she’s not working. This time of year, I bet she’s out there every day, tending to her flowers.”

“You sayin she might have seen something?” said Tavon.

“She’d be someone I would try to talk to,” said Lucas.

“Don’t let us stop you.”

“I’m just giving you an idea of how I work.”

“We don’t need to be schooled on that,” said Tavon. “That’s your specialty. That’s why Anwan hired you. We’ll stick to our thing.”

“Matter of fact, we gotta bounce,” said Edwin, seeing something on his phone screen and putting his hand on Tavon’s shoulder.

“Y’all got a pickup?” said Lucas.

“A’ight, Spero,” said Tavon, pointedly ignoring the question. “You know how to get up with us if you need us.”

“You guys be safe,” said Lucas.