George Pelecanos: The Cut

He normally sat at the counter, but because they were three they took a booth. Lucas had a plate of grilled half-smokes split under onions, grits, two eggs over easy, biscuits, and butter. He’d work that off later on his bike. Tavon had been served pork chops and eggs, and Edwin ate eggs and corned beef hash, hot apples, and toast. Only Lucas was drinking coffee.

“This is good right here,” said Tavon, using his fork to point at his plate.

Like his boss, Tavon wore his hair in braids. He was around twenty, had sensitive eyes and an open manner. He wore a T-shirt showing Bob off the cover of Kaya and white perforated-leather Lacoste high-tops. Edwin Davis was around the same age as Tavon, average height, with prominent cheekbones. He rocked LeBrons and a Rapteez T. His ears were almost comically elfish, softening the effect of his muscular build. Edwin was soft-spoken to the degree that Lucas could barely hear him. They seemed tough enough, but neither of them were thugs, nor did they pretend to be. Lucas imagined they liked girls, fashion, cars, video games, sports except for hockey, and getting their heads up. They were typical urban young men who happened to make their living in the marijuana trade.

“You got the bomb breakfast,” said Tavon.

“I been dreamin on these half-smokes,” said Lucas.

“Them shits repeat on me,” said Edwin, breaking one egg and letting its yolk run into the hash.

“Everything you put in your mouth does,” said Tavon. “Stinkpot like you.”

They ate for a while, grunting and sighing in pleasure but barely speaking. Lucas didn’t feel the need to rush into their business and he believed that meals were close to sacred. When he had sopped up the last of the egg with his biscuit, he pushed his plate aside and let the waitress refill his coffee mug.

“Anwan said I’d be meeting with you,” said Lucas, looking at Tavon. “He didn’t say you’d be bringing anyone along. I’m not being confrontational. I just want to know who I’m dealing with.”

“Understood,” said Tavon, glancing at his partner. “I don’t know you, either, but I got told to be straight with you.”

“You can be.”

“When Anwan said you’d be seein me, he meant me and Edwin, ’cause that’s how we do. The two of us are, like, equal. If we had one of those organization charts, Anwan would have a square at the top, and then, under him, there’d be lines to me and Edwin. Us alone, on the same level, and everyone else below us.”

“I get it.”

“Anwan tells us what we need to know,” said Edwin. “But it stops there.”

“You must have security,” said Lucas.

“We don’t need it,” said Edwin.

“You sayin this is the inner circle right here?”

“You gotta understand how our operation works,” said Tavon. “This ain’t no corner thing. We got no turf or real estate to protect. We’re all over the city. In the clubs, in the workplace, in all kinds of neighborhoods. Selling to all different kinds of people. Customers who don’t have jobs and some who make six figures. But not selling direct. Got a network of people who move it for us just so they can have some walkin-around money and free weed to smoke. Once we repackage it and move it on to our dealers, we don’t even touch it.”

“Repackage it how?” said Lucas.

“We dime it out,” said Tavon. “That’s where the profit comes from.”

“Lotta work.”

“Lot more upside, too.”

“You sound confident,” said Lucas.

“We are,” said Tavon.

“You know the law’s gotta be watching you.”

“No doubt,” said Tavon. “But me and Edwin take precautions. We got no use for guns. We won’t even get near ’em. No landlines, either, and we only use disposable cells. Every time I go to my car, I check underneath it for tracking devices before I get in. Drive around for a while, take our time, before we even start to go to where we need to be at. We know what we’re doin.”

“So did Anwan,” said Lucas.

“Someone snitched him out,” said Edwin.

“Ain’t a whole lot you can do to stop that,” said Tavon.

“Cost of doing business,” said Lucas.

“Right,” said Edwin, missing Lucas’s edge.

Tavon worked a toothpick into his mouth and gave Lucas a long go-over with his eyes. “Anwan said you were some kind of badass marine. I was expecting… I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. But it wasn’t you.”

“I feel the same way about y’all,” said Lucas. He signaled the waitress for their check.

Lucas settled up at the register. Out on the street, Tavon pointed to his car, a black Impala SS with 22s, custom rims, and extended pipes. It was the kind of ride that would be remembered.

“You or me?” said Tavon.

“Me,” said Lucas.

The drop-off spot was up on 12th, a one-block residential stretch between Clifton and Euclid. Nine brick row houses on each side of the street, eighteen houses in all, close to the local public high school. On the east side, alleys ran along the end homes. The houses all had porches set on brick bases, some with round columns, some with square. Concrete steps and stoops, painted metal awnings. Several had District-signature turrets and pronounced window boxes. Blue trash cans and recycling bins sat on many of the small front lawns. Some of the houses needed paint. Some were clean and maintained. A couple of them had been completely refurbished and lovingly detailed.

Lucas was behind the wheel of his Jeep, parked on 12th, facing north. There were few other cars parked on the street. Tavon was beside him in the shotgun bucket, Edwin on the rear bench. Lucas had his hands out the window, taking preliminary photos of the houses.

“Which one?” said Lucas.

“Across there, halfway down,” said Tavon, pointing to the east-side row of homes. “One with the green trim.”

Lucas saw it, a house trimmed in lime green with a white metal awning over the porch and a lime-on-white window box. It was set in the middle of the twenty-five hundred block. Even numbers on the east side, and he counted back from the southernmost home and noted the address, recording it in his phone’s voice memo app. He then entered into the record the number of every house, east and west sides, in succession.

“Twenty-five twelve, twenty-five fourteen, twenty-five sixteen…”

When he was done, Tavon looked at Lucas’s iPhone and said, “That your main piece of equipment?”

“It is now. I used to carry a camera and a tape recorder, but I don’t need them anymore. I have a notebook I use for sketches. Got some tools in the back of the truck as well.”

“Low overhead,” said Edwin.

“Uh-huh,” said Lucas.

“Notice how this street be real quiet?” said Tavon. “I mean, you don’t see no one walkin around, right? That’s why we picked it. This time of day, before noon? It’s a dead zone, man.”

“Folks on this street go to work,” said Edwin.

“Not all of them,” said Lucas.

“Nah, not all,” said Edwin. “But me and Tavon sat here a coupla days and just, you know, checked out the situation. Even knocked on a few doors where there wasn’t no action at all.”

“That house there?” said Tavon. “A lady left for work about seven thirty in the morning, on foot. After that? No one came in and out it, not once, till she returned about six at night. During the day, no one ever answered our knock.”

“This the first time you had the package shipped to this location?”

“We used this house three times,” said Edwin. “It got good to us, man.”

“When’d you lose the package?” Tavon told Lucas the date. Lucas said, “What time?”

“In the day? Right about now.”

“So you tracked the delivery time on the Internet,” said Lucas. “If you knew it was coming, say, around eleven, how long from the time the delivery was made to the time you picked it up off the porch?”