George Pelecanos: The Cut

“Say, five minutes,” said Tavon. “I was parked over there on Kenyon, beside the elementary school.”

“You had a laptop in your car?”

“I tracked it on my phone. You ain’t the only one got a handheld computer.”

“The elementary school would be Tubman,” said Lucas. “Near Wonderland, right?”

“Yeah, that bar y’all got,” said Tavon, and in the rearview Lucas saw Edwin grin.

“So, from the time the package dropped, in the five minutes it took for you to get to the house, someone else stepped in and took it off the porch.”

“Seems that way,” said Edwin.

“Was it both of you doing the pickup?” said Lucas.

“Just me that day,” said Tavon.

Lucas turned his head to face Tavon. “Any idea who took it?”

“No.”

“Edwin?”

“No, sir.”

“Could your source be involved in this?” said Lucas.

“Huh?”

“Is it possible the people you’re buying from are stealing it back from you?”

“We don’t know who the connect is,” said Tavon. “Only Anwan does.”

“For real,” said Edwin.

“Okay,” said Lucas. “Let’s check out the back.”

He ignitioned the Jeep and turned it around. Across Clifton Street the high school, Cardozo, took up the entire block.

“It takes hair to choose this street.”

“Why?” said Tavon.

“Squad cars are parked in front of that school often,” said Lucas. “MPD uniforms are inside, working security every day.”

“How you know all that?” said Edwin.

“My brother teaches there,” said Lucas.

“Well, we never had no problem,” said Tavon.

“Until you got boosted,” said Lucas.

He entered the alley that cut west to east on the Clifton end of the block and drove very slowly. The passage was narrow and widened considerably as he turned right and went behind the houses on 12th Street. Many cars were parked in driveways and in the open garages of the backyards. Lucas stopped, took photos, and proceeded to the end, where he hung a right and passed through another narrow alley, landing once again on 12th.

“All right,” said Lucas. “I’ll drop you guys back at the Grill.”

“That’s it?” said Tavon.

Lucas nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”

Late in the afternoon, on the way out to his mother’s house, Lucas drove over the District line and stopped by the Safeway on Fenton Street, where he said hello to his friend C.J., who was stocking canned goods in the soup aisle, and bought some vitamins. In the parking garage he ran into Cory Wilson, a guy he had wrestled with in high school, and they talked for a while about where guys they had known were at in their lives, and then Lucas headed off in his Jeep.

He lived in the District, but in his head he was never far from his boyhood home, just over the line in Maryland. He ate and drank here frequently with his brother, dates, and friends, and took his coffee at Kefa Cafe on Bonifant because he liked to visit with the lovely sisters, Lene and Abeba, who owned the shop. Wasn’t ever a day he came out here that he didn’t see folks he knew, the barbers up at Afrikuts; the Hispanic men standing beside their beloved 4Runners; the Wanderer, a guy who walked with a staff and wore a flowing robe; and the women who stood at Silver Spring Avenue and Thayer and yelled at passing cars. He’d see dudes he’d played basketball with at the courts on Sligo or more serious hoops on the Chicago Ave courts, over by Montgomery College. And there were those people he didn’t see but were spoken of, young men and women who had gone off to college, become professionals of some sort, and never returned; others who were in lockup in places like Clarksburg or, if they had done their dirt in D.C., prisons in North Carolina or Illinois.

The moving pictures flickered through his mind constantly when he walked and rode these streets. He saw his brother Leo in his red vest, working his first job with the Gross boys up at the hardware store; and his brother Dimitrius, on his skateboard by the library park, strung out on speed and scary thin; and his sister, Irene, sullen, wearing black, catching smokes with her black-clad friends; and his mom, always gregarious, stopping to talk to neighbors as she walked her dogs. Mostly he saw his father, Evangelos “Van” Lucas, everywhere he looked. In the Safeway, exchanging Christmas cards with the grocery store employee and elder martial artist Mr. Vong; gassing up his Chevy truck outside the Texaco; on Selim, bullshitting with the auto body guys; in the breezeway where the Fred Folsom bust of Norman Lane, “the Mayor,” a fondly remembered, now-deceased homeless man, was on display; in the alley behind Bell Flowers where his father had often walked; at the homeless shelter where he had dropped off his old clothing; and on the ball fields where he had watched Spero and Leo compete.

Lucas had been away. Now staying close to home was a comfort.

His Mother still lived in the house in which he’d been raised, a yellow bungalow with a deep backyard, set on the crest of a hill. Lucas’s father, who knew many contractors, had blown out the back of the house and raised its roof as their family eventually grew to six. The home’s renovation had rendered it architecturally incorrect, but it suited their needs.

Lucas parked and walked toward the house, noting that Leo’s car, a Hyundai something-or-other, was on the street. Two dogs, Cheyenne and Yuma, began to bark exuberantly behind the screen door as Lucas approached. Both were mixed breed, short haired, and on the large side, with tan-yellow coats. Cheyenne had a Lab’s head on a boxer’s body; Yuma was mostly Lab. Eleni Lucas had adopted them at the Humane Society on Georgia at Geranium, against Van’s fake protests. Shilo, now gone, a yellow Lab-pit mix, had been their first. Eleni was the type to bring in anyone, human or animal, who needed a home. Despite his mostly feigned gruff exterior, Van Lucas had been that kind of person, too.

“Out the way, dogs,” said Lucas as he entered the house, nudging Yuma, the younger and more boisterous of the two, aside with his knee. He patted them and rubbed behind their ears as they flanked him, their tails wagging and windmilling as they walked into the small living room. On the mantel above a brick fireplace sat photographs of their large and scattered family: Irene, now an attorney in San Francisco, the Lucases’ oldest, their sole biological child, distant geographically and emotionally; Dimitrius, a longtime drug addict and thief, in and out of lockup, who only called his mother when he needed cash, currently in the wind, location unknown; and Leo and Spero, the two siblings who had stayed nearby. Their photos ranged from toddler to adult: Leo in a basketball uniform, Spero in wrestling singlet, Leo with his students, Spero in his dress blues. Scattered among photos of their children were those of Van and Eleni: shaggy haired and pink-eyed in the seventies; Van leaning on the bed of his Silverado at a job site; the two of them walking arm-in-arm out the doors of St. Sophia after their wedding ceremony, smiling, ducking rice; and the various group family portraits, the frames of the photographs progressively crowded as new babies and dogs arrived, the parents looking increasingly older, tired but happy, an odd-looking bunch to outsiders but perfectly normal to them-two Greek American adults, two black kids, two white kids, and various yellow mutts.

“Everything’s all right now,” said Spero, walking into the kitchen. “I’m here.”

“The prodigal son,” said Leo.

Spero noticed a bunch of white and yellow daisies that Leo, no doubt, had brought lying on the counter. Eleni was standing before the island Van had promised and delivered when he redid the kitchen. On the granite surface was a glass of red wine.