Джордж Пелеканос: What It Was

“Something bothering me,” said Stefanos. “This story you told, those scenes with Red and Coco alone in her place, Vaughn doing his street work, the girls in the diner on U Street...”

“Yeah?”

“You weren’t a witness to that. So how do you know what was said and done?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Some of that shit? I filled in the gaps and made it up. I mean, it’s true if I say it is. Print the legend, right?”

“You know that stock boy with the long hair in the Nutty Nathan’s stereo store? That was me.”

“For real?”

“There was only one stock boy who worked that place in the summer of seventy-two.”

“Smartass,” said Strange. “Lord, you were silly, even then.”

Stefanos smiled. “Let’s have another drink, Dad.”

“Uh-uh,” said Strange. “We gotta earn some money.”

They’d been hired by longtime public defender Elaine Clay to gather evidence on a homicide that had occurred in the Washington Highlands area of Southeast. They’d been waiting for the workday to end so that they could interview the mother of the alleged shooter, who by now would be back in her apartment. They were hoping that she could provide a verifiable alibi for her son, one that Clay could take into court. The young man was going to trial in a few weeks.

They left twenty on forty-four. The bald tender scooped the cash up off the bar.

“Leo,” said Stefanos.

“Yasou, patrioti.”

Strange and Stefanos walked out onto Georgia Avenue. Strange buttoned his leather blazer and nodded toward his black Cadillac, parked on the street.

“Let’s go, Greek. The clock ticks.”

“What’s your hurry?” said Stefanos.

Strange squinted against the dying light. “We’ve got a case.”