George Pelecanos - The Cut

Lucas spun off the tailgate and shot the big man as he was struggling to stand. The round hit the man in the groin, and as he staggered, his arms pinwheeling, a look of surprise on his face, Lucas moved forward and buttonholed him with a shot to the chest and one to the throat. The man flopped onto his back, jerking wildly. He released his gun and grabbed weakly at his open neck. Lucas stood over the man and shot him twice in the face. He dropped the revolver, now empty, on the body.

A light flashed and buzzed overhead. Lucas heard a door slam in the back of the warehouse. He walked forward between two vehicles, the automatic in hand.

Beano Mobley at the door, Bernard White lying by the Ford, both dead. Ricardo Holley in one of the back rooms. Five shots expended from the. 9’s fifteen-round mag. These were Lucas’s thoughts as he approached the main office, its walls once glass, now wood panels, just as Larry had described it. The door was open.

Lucas stood beside the door, gun arm out. He cleared it and walked into the office. He knew from the sound he’d heard that Ricardo had entered the far back room.

Lucas passed a gun case with open compartments, went to the door at the back of the office, and stood beside it. Pressed against the wall, he reached over to the dead bolt and flipped it. Three shots punched through the door, missing Lucas. He crouched down, turned the knob, pushed the door open with the toe of his boot, and whirled into the space, firing his weapon twice at the purple shape in the center of the room. The sound was sonic, and he saw a tall man topple over a table and upend it and come to rest on his back. Lucas walked through smoke, the Beretta pointed at Ricardo Holley. Holley’s Glock was beside him. Lucas kicked it across the floor.

Holley looked up at Lucas with dying eyes. One slug had caught him square in the chest. A pool had rapidly spread beneath him and darkened his coppery hair. The jacketed round had exited his back, and he was bleeding out. Holley’s bright purple shirt was flapping at the entrance wound and it was black there.

“Larry did this,” said Ricardo weakly. “He trapped me.”

“Why’d you kill those boys?” said Lucas.

Holley’s lips twitched into a smile. His teeth were stained red. “You don’t know shit, do you? You took that money just to give it back.”

“ Tell me what I don’t know.”

“You killed me, man. Now you want me to…” Holley’s eyes closed, then opened. He was smiling still.

“Say it,” said Lucas.

“Come close,” said Ricardo softly.

Lucas holstered his gun, got down on his haunches, and put his face close to Holley’s.

“ Fuck you,” said Holley, with a chuckle that was a sickening wheeze.

He thought he would go out that way: laughing. But his smile became a grimace as he began to cough, and a great stream of blood spilled from his mouth. Fear came to his face. In its grip he stared at the ceiling. His body shivered in spasm and his eyes faded. Then his eyes were black buttons in a cardboard mask.

Lucas found Holley’s cell phone in one of his pockets. He put it in a pouch of his vest. He collected the cells of Mobley and White, picked up his spent. 38 off White’s corpse and holstered it. He left the building quietly through its front door. He heard no approaching sirens and made it to his Jeep and took off his vest and unarmed himself and put everything in the duffel bag and covered the duffel with a blanket.

He headed into D.C., staying within a ten-mile range of the speed limit, careful not to drive too slowly. He went through neighborhoods where normal citizens were sleeping, or making love to their spouses, or lying in bed worrying over their children, or sitting in their favorite chair, having a last, late-night drink. He passed bars where young people stood out on the sidewalk, talking to one another and smoking cigarettes. He found himself on M Street in Southeast, and he followed it to where it seemed to end but in fact continued along the Anacostia, past old marinas partially hidden in the trees. He parked down by the river, under the Sousa Bridge, where there was no one. There he retrieved his guns from the back of the Jeep and hurled them, one after the other, out into the water. After the second muted splash he got back into his vehicle and went north.

He made one more stop, on 12th Street, Northwest. A light was on in the living room window of Ernest Lindsay’s place. Lucas made a call to his brother, and when it went to message he said, “Ernest is safe.”

Lucas’s hands, tight on the steering wheel, relaxed at once. He drove home.

For the next few days, Lucas stayed in his apartment. He tried to read a novel and watched bits of old movies and sports on TV, but he couldn’t focus on any of them. His work was done, but there was no satisfaction. He felt, somewhat, as he had upon his return to the States: no duties, no mission, no cause.

The killings did not make the morning Post, but broke instead on its crime-related website. Many firearms had been found at the scene, implying business-related violence perpetrated on the participants of a criminal enterprise. He scanned the initial story but did not bother with the print or web follow-ups. If he was a suspect, if the police were going to question him or arrest him, so be it. He wasn’t going to turn himself in, and he wasn’t going to run.

His one possible link to the murders would come from Tim McCarthy in IAB and former MPD lieutenant Pete Gibson. McCarthy had taken his request for a background check on Larry Holley and referred him to Gibson. Both had tried to nail Ricardo Holley twenty years earlier. They must have known immediately that Lucas was, in some way, involved in Ricardo’s death. They could have been weighing their options. Perhaps they considered the demise of Ricardo Holley, Beano Mobley, and Bernard White to be justice, what some D.C. police call a “society cleanse.” At any rate, the law did not come.

His brother Leo phoned him the afternoon following the shootings.

“Ernest showed up for school today. Made it back for the last day of class.”

“Yeah?”

“Claims he went off with some girl. That would be a first, far as I know.”

“Even a nail gun like you had a first time, Leo.”

“It wasn’t pretty, either.”

“Neither was she.”

“I just wanted to say thanks.”

“For what?”

“Play it like that if you feel the need to.”

“Okay.”

“You wanna go over to Mom’s tonight and have dinner? We could sit and watch a game on the wide-screen.”

“I don’t think so,” said Spero.

“She’s been asking after you.”

“I’ll get over there.”

“You go to the graveyard more often than you go to see Mom. You know that?”

“Let me get off this phone.”

“Something wrong, Spero?”

“Not a thing.”

“Whatever it is, I still love you, man.”

“I love you, too,” said Spero.

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

“Okay, malaka,” said Leo. “You need me, I’m here.”

Spero Lucas had no doubt.

You took that money just to give it back.

As Lucas paced the floors of the apartment, Ricardo Holley’s words would not leave his head. And then something came to him, a bit of information that Tavon and Edwin had given him the first time they’d met. Lucas was coming to it, though the answers to his nagging questions were irrelevant now. Still, he had to know.

He got dressed in blue pants and a blue shirt, left the apartment, and drove to the D.C. Jail. By process of observation and elimination he located a lot where prison guards and DOC employees seemed to park their cars. He waited there for several hours, reading a novel behind the wheel, using the piss bottle he kept in his vehicle as needed. At the end of the day shift a tall, handsome woman in uniform walked across the lot.