Джордж Пелеканос: What It Was

“You sure about that?” said Vaughn.

He gazed at her for a long moment until she became uncomfortable and looked away. He liked her backbone, and he didn’t even mind her attitude, but she wasn’t in his physical wheelhouse. If he was going to go black, he’d go for a specific look: cream in the coffee, white features. A Lena Horne type.

“You’re staring at me,” she said.

“I was thinking.”

“Of what?”

“My case.”

“Don’t you have any leads?”

“I can’t speak on that at this time.”

“Be nice if the police told us something so we could rest easy in this building. I’m not tryin to get myself killed around here.”

Vaughn reached into his inside pocket. “Here’s my card. Anything comes to mind, give me a call.”

Vaughn walked out of her apartment without another word and heard the door close behind him. Jan ette was not a person of interest. Just another name he could cross off the list.

He went through the hall, the bass still coming from the adjoining unit, the glass door of the building buzzing from it as he pushed on its surface, exiting to breathe fresh air.

Outside, a man, an addict or alcoholic from the used-up look of his eyes, sat on a nearby retaining wall, smoking a cigarette. Vaughn approached and showed him his badge. The man did not seem impressed. Vaughn offered him ten dollars, and the offer was waved away. Then he offered to buy him a bottle in exchange for his time. The man declined. Vaughn asked him a couple of questions, got nothing but shrugs.

Two strikes, thought Vaughn. And: I am hungry.

He had lunch at the counter of the Hot Shoppes on Georgia Avenue, in Brightwood Park, up around Hamilton. In its parking lot had been the famous fight between three badass white greasers and a dozen or so motivated coloreds, back in the ’60s. The fight had carried over to the other side of the street. Those white boys could mix it up. That kind of balls-out, bare-knuckled hate conflict was done now, too, thought Vaughn with nostalgia. The blacks had taken over the city, and race rumbles had gone the way of drop-down Chevys, Link Wray club dates, and Ban-Lon shirts.

Vaughn had a Mighty Mo burger, onion rings, and an orange freeze, then followed it up with a hunk of hot fudge cake and a cup of coffee. The perfect local lunch. Pulling the coffee cup and an ashtray in front of him, he used his customized Zippo lighter, a map of Okinawa inlaid on its face, to light an L&M.

Bobby Odum. A pathetic character, one hundred and twenty-three pounds of junkie, a former second-story man now scraping by as a dishwasher and heroin tester. He was one of many confidential informants that Vaughn kept and cultivated around the city. Testers and cut buddies made the best, most vulnerable CIs because they were addicts. They always had need of money.

The ballistics report had determined that the slugs retrieved from Odum’s apartment came from a .22, a weapon favored by assassins who worked close in. A Colt Woodsman, if Vaughn was to make a wager.

Odum had recently given Vaughn information related to a homicide, a tip on a man involved in a Northeast burn. The resulting warrant had led to a home search, the discovery of the murder weapon, and the arrest of one James Carpenter, now in the D.C. Jail awaiting trial.

The last time Vaughn and Odum had met was at a diner called Frank’s Carry Out, on the 1700 block of 14th Street. The owner, Pete Frank, had allowed Vaughn to talk to Odum privately, in the storage room at the rear of the building. That day, Odum had been worried running to paranoid. He claimed it had gotten around that he and Vaughn, well-known by the District’s underworld, had been seen together in Shaw, and that it had then been assumed that he, Odum, had fingered Carpenter. He told Vaughn that his apartment phone had been ringing “off the hook,” and that it was, he suspected, some “wrong dude” who was looking to find him. Vaughn asked him if he knew the caller’s name, but Odum claimed he had no clue.

“How you know it’s not a woman calling you,” said Vaughn, “or a friend?”

“I know,” said Odum, touching a finger to his chest. “I feel that shit, right in here. The reaper ’bout to come at me, Frank.”

Vaughn slipped him twenty dollars. “Go get well,” he said.

The next time Vaughn saw Odum, he was lying on a slab in the city morgue, the top of his head sawed off, one eye blown out of his gray face.

Vaughn tapped ash and wondered if it was him that got Odum killed. Not that they were friends, but he felt a sense of responsibility, if not accountability, to see to it that Odum’s killer was found. Bobby was just a little guy he paid for information. But it didn’t matter to Vaughn who Odum was, or what color he was, or if they were asshole buddies or not. Vaughn worked all of his cases the same way.

He dragged on his cigarette and signaled the counter girl for his check.

Vaughn drove down to 14th and U, once the epicenter of black Washington, now a weak reminder of its former vibrant life since its burning in ’68.

He was in search of Martina Lewis. Whores were out on the street at night, witnessed all kinds of illicit events, gossiped out of boredom, and, because they were young, had good retention. Also, they were easily shook down. But Vaughn had never put his foot to Martina’s neck. He’d not had to.

As it was afternoon, the prostitutes had woken up, were eating breakfast and getting prepared for work, but they were not yet visible on the stroll. In a popular diner on U, Vaughn got up with a stocky streetwalker, went by Gina Marie, who claimed she’d heard nothing about the Odum murder. Though she had given him no information, he put a five in her callused hand.

Vaughn paid for a ticket at the nearby Lincoln Theatre box office. After allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he found Martina Lewis seated in one of the middle rows of the near-empty auditorium. Martina was napping, head back, wig askew, lipsticked mouth slightly open, with an Adam’s apple as big as a fist. It was said that Martina was hung like a donkey, too. Some men were fooled, and some claimed to be, but most knew what he was and wanted it. Martina had been in the life, and successful at it, for some time.

Buck and the Preacher was onscreen, Poitier and Belafonte in Western drag. Vaughn watched it and was quickly bored. He felt that the movie was like the other ones, popular these days, where all the black guys were heroes and studs and the whites were racists, trashmen, or queers. Vaughn shook Martina’s shoulder until he awakened.

Martina was startled at first but then settled into a brief and very quiet conversation with the detective he knew as Frank and who many on the street called Hound Dog. Frank had always showed Martina something close to respect. Frank had never threatened Martina or pressured him for sex. Most important, Frank paid the rate, including the extra for the room.

When Vaughn had what he’d come for, he gave Martina thirty-five dollars and left the auditorium. Now he had something concrete.

“The dude you’re looking for,” Martina had said, “goes by Red.”

“That’s it?” said Vaughn. “Just Red?”

“I heard him called Red Fury, too. I don’t know why.”

“No Christian name. No last name, either.”

“Red’s all I know,” said Martina, telling Vaughn a prudent lie. Wasn’t any kind of accident that Martina Lewis was a survivor.

Out on U Street, Vaughn lit a cigarette. Red was a fairly common street name for light-skinned, light-haired black dudes, but thinking hard on it, no specific Reds came to mind. Still, it was a start.

Vaughn would go to the station and search through the cards, where the rap sheet descriptions included known a.k.a.’s. But not just yet. He was energized.