George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'Not really. The slow jams got to be the end-all for me. Nothin' worth listening to, you get past seventy-six, seventy-seven.'

'I was eight years old in seventy-seven.'

'Explains why you don't have an appreciation for this song.' Strange looked across the bench. 'You're a D.C. boy, right?'

'Silver Spring.'

'I heard it in your voice.'

'Graduate of the old Blair High School. You?'

'Roosevelt High. Grew up in this neighborhood right here. Still live in it.'

Quinn looked at the blur of beer markets, liquor stores, dollar shops, barbers, dry cleaners, and chicken and Chinese grease pits as they drove south.

'My grandparents lived down this way,' said Quinn. 'We'd come to see them every Sunday after mass. Thirteenth and Crittenden.'

'That's around the block from where I live.'

'I used to play out in their alley. It always seemed, I don't know, dark down there.'

Because of all those dark people, thought Strange. He said, 'That's because you were off your turf.'

'Yeah. It made me a little bit afraid. Afraid and excited at the same time, you know what I mean?'

'Sure.'

'One day these kids came up on me while I was playing by myself.'

'Black kids, right?'

'Yeah. Why you ask that?'

'Just trying to get a picture in my mind.'

'So these kids came along, and the littlest one of them picked a fight with me. He was shorter than I was and lighter, too.'

'It's always the littlest one wants to fight, when he's in a group. Little dude got the most to prove. You fight him?'

'Yeah. I had walked away from a fight at my elementary school earlier that year, and I'd never forgiven myself for it. Matter of fact, I still can't bear to think of it today. Funny, huh?'

'Not really. This kid in the alley, you beat him?'

'I lost. I got in a punch or two, which surprised him. But he knew how to fight and I didn't, and he put me down. I got back inside the house, I was shaking but proud, too, 'cause I didn't back down. And I saw that kid a couple of years later, the day of my grandfather's wake. He was walking by their house and stopped to talk to me. Asked me if I wanted to play some football, down by the school playground.'

'And you learned?'

'What breeds respect. Not to walk away from a fight. Take a beating if you have to, but a beating's never as bad as the feeling of shame you get when you back off.'

'That's your youth talking right there,' said Strange. 'One day you're gonna learn, it's all right to walk away.'

Down past Howard University, at the Florida Avenue intersection, Georgia Avenue became 7th Street. They stayed on 7th and then they were in Chinatown, passing nightclubs, sports bars, and the MCI Center, which anchored the new downtown D.C. Farther along there were more nightclubs and restaurants and the short strip of the arts and gallery district, and at Quinn's direction Strange hung a left onto D Street, two blocks north of Pennsylvania Avenue. He parked the Chevy in a no-parking zone, along a yellow-painted curb, and killed the engine. Then he reached into the glove box, withdrew his voice-activated tape recorder, and placed the recorder on the seat between himself and Quinn.

'This is it,' said Strange. 'You were right about here?'

'Except that we parked it in the middle of the street. We came in just like this, from Seventh. My partner was driving the cruiser.'

'That would be Eugene Franklin.'

'Gene Franklin, right.'

'What made y'all pull over?'

'We were working. We had just come off a routine traffic stop, guy in a Maxima had blown a red up at Mt Vernon Square. Up around Seventh and N, you want the exact location.'

'So you were headed south on Seventh after that, and Franklin turned left onto D. He see something, or was that just some kind of pattern?'

'No, we hadn't seen anything yet until we made the turn. This stretch of D is unlit at night, and there's hardly any activity. Pedestrian traffic, none. Sun goes down, rats stroll across the street like they own the real estate.'

'What about that night? You pulled onto D, what did you see?'

Quinn squinted. 'We came up on a confrontation. A curbed red Jeep, a Wrangler, parked behind a shit box Toyota. Next to the Toyota, on the street, a guy with his knee on another guy's chest, pinning him to the asphalt. In the aggressor's hand, a pistol. An automatic, and he had the muzzle smashed up against the pinned guy's face.'

'Describe this aggressor.'

'Black, mid-to-late twenties, medium build, street clothes.'

'And the guy he had on the ground?'

'White…' Quinn looked over at Strange, then away. '… around thirty, street clothes, slight build.'

'So you and your partner, you happen on the scene of this confrontation. What happens then?'

Quinn breathed out slowly. 'Gene says, "Look!" But I'm ahead of him, I already got the mic in my hand. I've got it keyed and I'm calling for backup while Gene flips on the overheads and gives the horn a blast. The aggressor looks up at the whoop of the siren, and Gene stops the cruiser in the middle of the street. But our presence doesn't change the aggressor's mind.'

'You got a talent for reading minds?'

'I'll put it another way. The aggressor keeps the gun on the guy he's got pinned to the ground. He's made us as cops, but it hasn't changed his focus. From my perspective it hasn't changed his intent.'

'His intent being, the intent of this black aggressor I mean, to do harm to the white guy he's got pinned down on the street.'

'I saw a man holding a gun on another man in the street.'

'All right, Quinn. Keep going. Where are you now? You and your partner, I mean.'

'We're about twenty-five yards back from them, I'd say.'

'Okay,' said Strange.

Quinn rubbed his thumb over his lower lip. 'I'm out of the car right away, and I can hear Gene's door swing open as I draw my weapon. So I know he's behind the driver's-side door, and I know Gene's got his own weapon cleared from his holster as well.'

'You do what next?'

'I've got my gun on the aggressor. I yell for him to drop his weapon and lie facedown on the street. He yells something back. I can't really hear what he's saying, 'cause Eugene's yelling over him, telling him what I'm telling him: to drop his weapon. The lights… the red and blue lights from the overheads are strobing the scene, and I can hear the crackle of our radio coming from the open doors of our cruiser behind us.'

'Sounds like a lot of confusion.'

'Yes. Gene and I are both yelling now and there's the lights and the radio, and the aggressor, he's yelling back at us, not moving the gun from the guy's face.'

'What's Wilson – what's the aggressor yelling now?'

'His name,' said Quinn. 'His name and a number. It didn't register… it didn't register until later on that the number he was yelling, it was his badge number. But he never moved his gun away from the guy's face. Not until he looked at us, I mean.'

Strange stared through the windshield, trying to imagine the picture the young man was painting.

'What happened when he looked at you, Quinn?'

'It was only for a moment. He looked at me and then at Gene, and something bad crossed his face. I'll never forget it. He was angry at us, at me and Gene. He was more than angry; his face changed to the face of a killer. He swung his gun in our direction then-'

'He pointed his gun at you?'

'Not directly,' said Quinn, his voice growing soft. 'He was swinging it, like I say. The muzzle of it swept across me, and he had that look on his face… There wasn't any doubt in my mind… I knew… I knew he was going to pull the trigger. Eugene screamed my name, and I fired my weapon.'

'How many times?'