Джордж Пелеканос: What It Was

Linda Allen lived in an apartment in the Woodnor, on 16th, near the bridge end-capped with the statues of lions. She was a secretary at the Arnold and Porter law firm on the 1200 block of 19th, and Vaughn had been calling on her here for almost fifteen years. Linda was his special friend.

She greeted him at the door in a spring-blue dress that showed off her upper curves and a pair of Andrew Geller heels that did justice to her calves. A leggy brunette on the downward slope of her forties, she was tall and healthy, with pleasingly muscled thighs and the big firm rack of a straight-off-the-farm centerfold. Linda had never married or given birth, which no doubt explained her still-youthful figure. Twenty-year-old studs did double takes when she walked down the street.

“How’s it goin, doll?” said Vaughn.

“Better now,” said Linda, and she nudged the door closed with her foot and came into his arms. They kissed passionately and Vaughn felt his pants get tight.

“Glad to see me?” His sharp white teeth gleamed in the lamplight of the living room.

“I need a shower, handsome. Fix us some drinks.”

“Keep your shoes on,” said Vaughn.

Vaughn put a Chris Connor record on Linda’s console stereo, built a couple of Beam rocks from her bar cart, and took the cocktails into her bedroom. The water was running behind her bathroom door.

He took off his jacket, tie, pants, socks, and shoes, and sat on the edge of the bed, feeling himself unwind with each sip of bourbon. A little while later, Linda came naked and scented into the room, the high-heeled Gellers refitted on her feet. She picked up her drink off the nightstand, took a long pull of it, and stood there proudly, in profile, letting him look at her because she knew he liked to. Soon he had her split atop the sheets, the missionary man, in control, giving it to her without the word lovemaking entering either of their minds, his thick, helmeted cock plunging in and out of her warm, wet box, a pure physical act, which was what both of them were there for. Afterward, smoking cigarettes and finishing their drinks with the sex smell lingering in the room, laughing easily, talking softly, never about anything serious or with the pretense of plans, because Vaughn loved his wife, and Linda understood that this was something else.

Linda’s fingers traced the fading shoulder tattoo Vaughn had gotten one drunken night in the Pacific, twenty-seven years ago. “Olga,” written across a flowing banner, scripted on a deep-red heart.

“What’re you working on these days, Frank?”

Vaughn said, “A case.”

Coco Watkins’s place of business was located on 14th, Northwest, between R and S, on the second floor of an old row house. On the ground floor was a neighborhood market, once a DGS store owned and operated by a Jew, now run by an ambitious Puerto Rican. Fourteenth, from U Street north to Park Road, had gone up in flames the night of Dr. King’s assassination, and though the major fires had not burned this far south, the event had made the once-grand street a near commercial dead zone. But not every enterprise had been negatively affected. There was still a steady nightly stream of customers, married suburbanites and white teenage boys looking to lose their virginity, who kept one part of the local economy alive.

Coco was a madam, technically, but the title meant nothing more than manager for a multi-bed operation housing six small, cut-up rooms, each of which held a bare mattress, a particleboard dresser, a freestanding rack with wire hangers, and a low-watt lamp. The girls made their connections out on the street, leaning into the open windows of idling cars, and handed over the prepaid fee, thirty for the act, five for the room, to Coco before entering with their johns.

There was no pimp involved in this particular operation. It was fairly unusual for a woman to have such unchallenged control over a stable, but it was known that Robert Lee Jones was Coco’s man, and Red’s hard rep was such that she stayed protected. Even when Jones was incarcerated, few had tried to mack on Coco’s women.

Coco and Jones sat in her office, which fronted 14th. A nice big room with a bar, a king-size, brass-headboard bed, red velvet couch and chairs, desk, compact stereo, and a couple of windows giving to a view of the wide street below. Coco was lounging on the couch in a negligee, her hair high and elegant, a live Viceroy in hand, the cluster-stone ring on her finger. Jones was in a chair, using an oiled cloth to polish one of two .45s he owned, classic Colts with stainless slides and black checkered grips. He had broken the .22 on a guardrail near the Anacostia and thrown its pieces into the river.

“Where you about to go with that heater?” said Coco.

“Me and Fonzo got business.”

“Contract?”

“Freelance.”

“Be mindful. The Odum thing’s still warm.”

“They got nothin.”

“What I been hearin, that Detective Vaughn caught the case.”

“The one they call Hound Dog.”

“Him. Girl I know name Gina Marie told me he been askin around.”

“Least they put a man on it.”

Coco dragged on her cigarette. “That dude got no quit.”

“Do I look like I care?”

After coming to the city from West Virginia at an early age, Jones had grown up in one of D.C.’s infamous alley dwellings, way below the poverty line. No father in his life, ever, with hustlers in and out the spot, taking the place of one. A mother who worked domestic when she could. Half brothers and sisters he barely knew or kept track of. Twenty-five dollars a month rent, and his mother could rarely come up with it. All of them hungry, all the time. Being poor in that extreme way, Jones felt that nothing after could cut too deep. Take what you want, take no man’s shit. No police can intimidate you, no sentence will enslave you, no cell can contain your mind.

Jones stood, holstered the .45 in the dip of his bells, dropped the tail of his shirt over the bulge. His chest looked flat under clothing, but he was just shy of concrete. Five hundred push-ups a day in lockup, the same regimen on the outside. Legend was, an ambitious young dude had tried to shank him in jail and the blade had broken off in Red’s chest. It wasn’t a legend. Homemade shiv, but still.

“My Fury’s in the alley,” said Coco.

“We taking Fonzo’s short,” said Jones. He bent down, kissed her full red mouth. His fingers grazed the inside of her bare thigh, and she got damp.

“Will I see you tonight?”

“Bet,” said Jones.

He left the room and walked down the hall, where a young working woman, a big mark above her lip, stood outside a room in a sheer slip, huffing a smoke.

“Red,” she said.

“Girl.”

Out on 14th, Alfonzo Jefferson pulled up in his ’68 Electra, a gold-over-black convertible with 360 horses, a Turbo-400 trans, wide whitewalls, and rear-wheel skirts. It was a big, pretty beast, one of the nicest deuce-and-a-quarters on the street. Jones slid into the passenger side and settled on the bench. Jones and Jefferson had first met in the D.C. Jail and, when they could, had worked together since. Jones liked Jefferson’s fierce nature, and his style.

Jefferson, small and spidery, looked like a man-child under the wheel. He wore a button-down synthetic shirt, slacks with a wide stripe, and a neat brimmed cap pulled low over his bony face. He had two-tone stacks on his feet. His front teeth were capped in gold. His voice was husky, and he was quick. Johnnie Taylor’s “Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone” was playing through an eight-track deck in the car.

“What it is, Red?”

“What it will be.”

They gave each other skin.

“Got some blondes behind your seat,” said Jefferson. “Opener’s in the glove box.”