George Pelecanos: The Cut

“Kids were shipping weed back and forth like that when I was in high school.”

“It is tried and true.”

“Not exactly,” said Lucas. “Someone took you off, right?”

Hawkins nodded with embarrassment. “I lost one. More than one, actually.”

“When?”

“Three weeks ago, somethin like that. A thirty-pound package got stolen off the steps of a house in Brookland. And then a box holding another thirty pounds of my property got boosted off someone’s porch just last week.”

“That’s money.”

“Sure is.” Hawkins shook a ropy forest of braids away from his face. “Funniest part of that article was, po-lice said the dealers don’t bother with retaliation when that kind of thing goes down. Said the economics was such that the dealers could afford to be philosophical about that shit and absorb the loss. That’s some bullshit right there. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not lookin to do any kind of violence to no one. Like I told you, I’m not about that. But I can’t be philosophical behind it, either. Situation I’m in right now, I need the money. I paid for that product and it’s mine. I want it back.”

“You want me to recover your lost packages.”

“Or the cash, if they done offed it already. I’m not lookin for any muscle here, Spero. Just get me back what’s mine. No one I got has your skills. I seen what you did for my son. Got to say, I was impressed.”

“What’s the value of the product?”

“Wholesale?”

“Retail,” said Lucas.

“Roughly one hundred and thirty thousand a package.”

“I’d get forty.”

“Thousand?”

“Percent,” said Lucas.

“That’s fifty thousand and change.”

“Fifty-two. Per package.”

“How you come to that?”

“Forty percent’s my standard fee.”

“Your cut,” said Hawkins.

“That’s right.”

Anwan Hawkins sat back in his chair. He stared at Lucas, and a glint of gold showed as he nearly smiled.

“Where’d the second package get took?” said Lucas.

“Why the second?”

“Most likely the trail on the first theft is cold by now.”

Hawkins gave him an address. Lucas said, “Do you know how to get in touch with me?”

“Tell me your cell number. I’ll get it to Tavon.”

“Don’t communicate with Petersen about this again.”

“Understood,” said Hawkins. “Your cell?”

Lucas said it and repeated it. “You’re gonna remember that?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t do trades. I take my fee in cash.”

Hawkins looked him over. “You’re on the cocky side. You know that?”

“It serves me well in my line of work.”

“Don’t go spending that cash just yet,” said Hawkins. “That kinda money you chargin? I ain’t quite decided whether you and I are gonna do business.”

Lucas said, “Neither have I.”

Spero Lucas had two brothers and a sister, but only one sibling he was close to. This was the brother who was a year older than him. His name was Leonidas, but everyone, except for his mother when she was being stern with him, called him Leo. Leo’s birth name had been Nigel, but Van and Eleni Lucas had changed it, in the same way that they had changed Spero’s name from Sean. Spero and Leo had come into the world from entirely different places and had wound up brothers. Both felt blessed.

“What do you think?” said Spero, talking on his cell, sitting in his reading chair by the window that gave to a view of Emerson Street. “Should I take the job?”

“ I wouldn’t,” said Leo, speaking from his basement apartment in Logan. “But I wouldn’t do half the shit you do.”

“Because he’s a dealer?”

“Because someone with a defective personality probably stole that weed. Because someone like that might not like you looking into it, and they might go and blow your pretty head off.”

“Hawkins doesn’t seem to play in that kind of arena.”

“Oh. He deals marijuana as opposed to the hard stuff, so he’s cool.”

“I’m not claiming that. But he is smart and practical. Not practical, exactly. He looks at his situation from the practical tip based on the facts at hand.”

“He’s pragmatic,” said Leo.

“Thanks, teacher. My impression was that he isn’t the violent type. He seems like a straight-up businessman who lost an item out of his inventory.”

“And you seem like you already made up your mind.”

“Unless you talk me out of it.”

“What for? You’ve gone ahead and rationalized it, so there it is.”

“I’m not trying to judge my clients.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“It’s work,” said Spero.

“Someone’s got to do it,” said Leo. “Et cetera.”

Spero heard a female voice, deep in the background. She was saying Leo’s name in a singsong way.

“You’ve got company?” said Spero.

“No,” said Leo softly. “That’s only a kitty cat.”

“A talking kitty cat?”

“Like in the cartoons.”

“They say it purrs if you scratch it.”

“Now you goin somewhere you shouldn’t.”

“It better be a woman, dude. ’Cause if you’re sticking an actual cat, even one that can say your name, I’m gonna be very disappointed in you. And Mom is not gonna understand.”

“I gotta go,” said Leo, and hung up the phone.

Spero Lucas sat in his chair, alternately reading a book and looking out the window as darkness caressed the street. He had hit a little herb and was listening to his Trojan Dub Box Set on the stereo. Soon he felt a familiar desire. He wanted the company of a woman, but it would be discourteous to phone Constance or anyone else now, the moral equivalent of a drunk call, and he was not about to troll the bars, something he had always been loath to do. He had already had a good bike ride that day to Hains Point, ten miles down, ten miles back, most of Beach Drive a slight uphill grade on the return. But he wasn’t tired, and decided to go for a walk. He could have gone east into Crestwood, the fine neighborhood across 16th Street, where the mayor lived and where there was little incidence of crime. But when he left the house he headed to 13th, walked in the night through the weedy field of Fort Stevens Park, crossed the dark parking lot of Emory Methodist Church, and went down steps to Georgia Avenue. He found a bar and nursed a beer, then another, sitting quietly among mostly quiet types in their thirties and forties, listening to tunes from a jukebox stocked with deep-soul hits and rarities, not knowing the names of the songs but liking what he heard. Thinking, My brother was right; I’ve decided to take the job. I’d already rationalized it before we spoke. I need the work, I like the money, I like the action. This is what I do.

When his second beer was done, he settled up his tab and left five on eight.

The bartender thanked him and said, “You parked on Georgia?”

“No.”

“I was gonna warn you, we been had kids breaking into cars lately.”

“I’m on foot.”

“Mind yourself out there.”

“Thanks,” said Lucas. “I’m good.”

LUCAS DID the Reginald Brooks job for Petersen, extensive witness interviews related to a shooting in Ward 7. It was roughly a week before he could get to the Hawkins matter. He cleared the decks and got to work.

Lucas met Tavon Lynch and a young man named Edwin Davis at the Florida Avenue Grill, at 11th and Florida, for breakfast. Locals called it the Grill, as if there were only one, and in their heads it was so. It was the old city’s soul diner, the warmest spot for a real southern breakfast, owned and operated by the son of the original owners, in business for almost seventy years. Autographed head shots of former mayors, movie stars, comedians, Howard Theater headliners, and singers, many in Jheri curls, lined the walls. Customers typically wore Redskins gear, bled burgundy and gold, had deep knowledge of high school sports, worked every day, spoke of their mothers with reverence, attended some kind of church, listened to HUR, PGC, or WKYS for their music and John Thompson’s show on 980 AM for sports talk, and would have elected 88.5’s Kojo Nnamdi for mayor if only he would run. The people behind the counter were friendly if you wanted them to be but not intrusive or overly familiar. The conversations were spirited and often poetic. Some came here for the atmosphere. For Lucas, that was a part of it, but he returned repeatedly for the value and the food.