George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

Strange got into his leather. The dog followed him out of the room.

In the outer office, Strange stopped to talk to Janine while Greco found a spot underneath her desk.

'You talk to Lydell Blue?'

Janine Baker handed him a pink message note, ripped off her pad. 'Lydell ran Kane's name through the local and national crime networks. Kane has no convictions, no arrests. Never got caught with a joint in his sock. Never got caught doing something besides what he was supposed to be doing in a public restroom. No FIs, even, from when he was a kid. No priors whatsoever.'

'Okay. Remind me to give Lydell a call, thank him.'

'He said he owed you. Somethin' about somethin' you did for him when the two of you were rookie cops. Good thing you still know a few guys on the force.'

'The ones who aren't dead or retired. I know a few.'

'Hey, boss,' said Ron Lattimer from across the room. Ron wore a spread-collar shirt today with a solid gold tie and deep gray slacks. His split-toe Kenneth Coles were up on his desk, and a newspaper was open in his hands.

'What?'

'Says here that leather of yours is out. The zipper kind, I mean. You need to be gettin' into one of those midlength blazers, man, with a belt, maybe, you want to be looking up-to-the-minute out there on the street.'

'You readin' that article about that book came out, on black men and style?'

'Uh-huh. Called Men of Color, somethin' like that.'

'I read the article this morning, too. That lady they got writing about fashion, she's got a funny way of putting things. Says that black men have developed a dynamic sense of style, their "tool against being invisible".'

'Uh-huh. Says here that we black men "use style like a sword and shield",' said Lattimer, reading aloud.

' All of us do?'

'See, now, there you go again, Derek.'

"Cause I was wonderin', that old man, practically lives out on Upshur, with the pee stains on the front of his trousers? The one gets his dinner out the Dumpster? Think he's using style as a tool against being invisible? I seen this young brother gettin' off the Metrobus yesterday out on Georgia, had on some orange warm-up suit with green stripes up the side; I wouldn't even use it to cover up Greco's droppings. And look at me, I went and forgot to shine my work boots this morning…'

'I get you, man.'

'I just don't like anybody, and I don't care who it is, tellin' me what black men do and don't do. 'Cause that kind of thinking is just as dangerous as that other kind of thinking, if you know what I mean. And you know some white person's gonna read that article and think, Yeah, they spend a lot on clothes, and yeah, they spend a lot on cars, but do they save money for their retirement or their children's education, or do they do this or do they do that? You know what I'm sayin'?'

'I said I heard you.'

'It's just another stereotype, man. Positive as it might look on the surface, it's just another thing we've got to live with and live down.'

'Damn, Derek,' said Lattimer, tossing the paper on his desk. 'You just get all upset behind this shit, don't you? All the article's saying is we like to look good. Ain't nothin' more sinister behind it than that.'

'Derek?' said Janine.

'What is it, Janine?'

'Where are you off to now?'

'Workin' on this Chris Wilson thing. I'll be wearing my beeper, you need me.' Strange turned to Lattimer. 'You busy?'

'I'm working a couple of contempt skips. Child-support beefs, that kind of thing.'

'Right now?'

'I was planning on easing into my day, Derek.'

'Want to ride with me this morning?'

'That Chris Wilson case isn't going to pay our bills. I do a couple pick ups, it helps us all.'

'Like to get your thoughts on this, you have the time.'

'Okay. But I got to do some real work this afternoon.'

'Give Terry Quinn a call,' said Strange to Janine. 'The name of the shop he works in is Silver Spring Books, on Bonifant Street. Tell him I'll be by in an hour, he wants to make arrangements to take some time off.'

'You're gonna let the guy you're investigating ride with you?' said Lattimer.

'I'm getting to know him like that,' said Strange. 'Anyway, I told him I'd keep him in the loop.'

Lattimer stood, shook himself into his cashmere, and placed a fedora, dented just right, atop his head.

'Don't feed Greco again,' said Strange to Janine. 'I gave him a full can this morning.'

'Can I give him one of those rawhide bones I keep in my desk?'

'If you'd like.'

On the way out of the office, Strange looked into Janine's eyes and smiled with his. That was just another thing he liked about Janine: she was kind to his dog.

Out on Upshur, Strange nodded at the fedora on Lattimer's head.

'Nice hat,' he said.

'Thank you.'

'That function as a sword or a shield?'

'Keeps my head warm,' said Lattimer, 'you want the plain truth.'

Strange drove the Caprice into Southeast. He popped 3 + 3, in his opinion the finest record in the Isley Brothers catalog, into the deck. Ronald Isley was singing that pretty ballad 'Highway of My Life,' and Strange had the urge to sing along. But he knew Lattimer would make some kind of comment on it if he did.

'This is beautiful right here,' said Strange. 'Don't tell me otherwise, 'cause it's something you can't deny.'

'It is pretty nice. But I like somethin's got a little more flow.'

'Song has some positive lyrics to it, too. None of that boasting about beatin' up women, and none of that phony death romance.'

'You know I don't listen to that bullshit, Derek. The music I roll to is hip-hop but on the jazz tip. The Roots, Black Star, like that. That other stuff you're talkin' about, it doesn't speak to me. You ask me, it ain't nothin' but the white music industry exploiting our people all over again. I can see those white record executives now, encouraging those young rappers to put more violence into their music, more disrespect for our women, all because that's what's selling records. And you know I can't get with that.'

'The soul music of the sixties and seventies,' said Strange. 'Won't be anything to come along and replace it, you ask me.'

'Can't get with that, either, Derek. I wasn't even born till nineteen seventy.'

'You missed, young man. You missed.'

Strange turned down 8th Street and took it to M.

'Where we headed?' said Lattimer.

'Titty bar,' said Strange.

'Thank you, boss. This one of those perks you talked about when you hired me?'

'You're staying in the car. This is the place I picked up Sherman Coles for you while you were admiring yourself in a three-way mirror. I just got to ask the doorman a question or two.'

'About Quinn?'

'Uh-huh.'

'I heard Janine say that the man Wilson pulled that gun on, he was clean.'

'Maybe he was. One thing's certain, he made out. According to the papers, the department paid him eighty thousand dollars to make him happy. For the emotional trauma he went through and the back injury he sustained when Wilson threw him up against the car.'

'What did Wilson's mother get?'

'A hundred grand, from what I can tell.'

'Cost the police department a lot to make everyone go away on that one.'

'The money was never going to be enough to satisfy his mother, though.'

'You can dig it, right?'

Strange thought of his brother, now thirty years gone, and a woman he'd loved deep and for real back in the early seventies.

'When you lose a loved one to violence,' said Strange, 'ain't no amount of money in the world gonna set things right.'

'How about revenge? Does that do it, you think?'

'No,' said Strange, his mind still on his brother and that girl he'd loved. 'You can never trade a bad life for a good.'