George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'Terry.'

'Syreeta.'

'Taking off?'

'Soon as my ride comes. I might be asking for more time off, too.'

'Long as Lewis covers, I don't mind.' Syreeta put her canvas bag down on the glass counter. 'Don't you need the money, though?'

'My pension's keeping me flush.'

Quinn looked out the window as a white Caprice pulled to the curb. He rang the register, put money in the drawer, and cradled the record he had found in the bin as he grabbed his leather off the tree.

'That your ride?'

'Yeah.'

'Looks like a cop car.'

'It is.'

'Terry?'

'Huh.'

'Smells funky in here.'

'Moonman. He borrowed a paperback, too. The Stars My Destination, you want to knock it off the inventory.'

'That's a good one.'

'Olympian,' said Quinn.

'You're gonna let him sleep here,' said Syreeta, 'spray a little Lysol through the place before I get in.'

Quinn didn't hear her. He was already out the door.

'After I went through all that trouble,' said Strange, 'now you're gonna tell me you can't go?'

'I apologize,' said Lattimer. 'I know you went and got the tickets and all that, but Cheri said she doesn't want to go to some dark auditorium and watch two men beat the fuck out of each other all night.'

'That girl of yours must be special, you gonna pass up tickets to a title bout. This is a Don King production, too, ain't no thing someone's puttin' on in their basement. You should have told me she was gonna act like that before I bought the tickets, man.'

'I didn't know.'

Strange watched Quinn cross the street, a record under his arm. 'There he is.'

'What's with white boys and flannel shirts?' said Lattimer. 'A chain saw come with that outfit when he bought it?'

'Everybody's got their own thing.'

'He don't look all that violent to me. And he doesn't look like a cop.'

'He is on the short side,' said Strange. 'But, trust me, he can rise up.'

Quinn opened the passenger-side door and got into the backseat.

'Terry. Meet Ron Lattimer, an investigator on my staff.'

'Ron, how you doin'?'

'I'm makin' out.'

Quinn reached his hand over the front bench, and Lattimer shook it.

'What you got there, Terry?' said Strange.

'It's for you.'

Quinn passed the Blackbyrds' Flying Start up to Strange. Strange smiled as he examined the cover. He opened it and studied the inner sleeve, a photo of the group in an airplane hanger.

'Damn, boy. On the Fantasy label, too. I never thought I'd see one of these again.'

'It just came in today.'

Strange scanned the liner notes. 'Just like I remember it. These boys were students at Howard when they cut this record. They were studying under Donald Byrd, see-'

'Derek,' said Lattimer, 'I got things to do this afternoon.'

'Yeah, okay, right.' Strange put the record on the seat beside him.

'Y'all hungry?'

'There's a Vietnamese around the corner,' said Quinn. 'The soup there rocks.'

'I'm into that,' said Strange.

Strange engaged the trans and pulled off the curb. He went up to Georgia, turned left at Quinn's direction, and drove south. At the stoplight he opened the record again, chuckled to himself as he checked out the period threads and oversized lids on the members of the group.

'That was real nice of you, Terry.'

'I know you're not looking for any friends,' said Quinn, catching Strange's eyes in the rearview. 'I just thought you'd like it, that's all.'

Strange, Lattimer, and Quinn got a window table at My-Le, a former beer garden, now a pho house on Selim. Their view gave to the traffic on Georgia Avenue and the railroad tracks beyond.

'They're doing something over there,' said Quinn, nodding to the station by the tracks. A blue tarp covered the roof, and plywood boards had replaced the windows.

'Looks like they're restoring it,' said Lattimer.

'Either that or tearing it down. They're always tearing down things here now.'

'Get rid of all these pawnshops-'

'Yeah, and the nail and braid parlors, and the barbershops, and the cobbler and the key maker, the speed shops and auto parts stores… the kinds of places working people use every day. So the yuppie homeowners can brag that they've got the music-and-book superstore, and the boutique grocery store, and the Starbucks, just like their counterparts across town.'

'I take it,' said Strange, 'you're not all the way into the revitalization of Silver Spring.'

'They're erasing all of my memories,' said Quinn. 'And to tell you the truth, I kind of like the decay.'

The lone waiter, a genial guy named Daniel who painted houses on the side, served them their soup and fresh lemonade.

Lattimer stared into his bowl and frowned. 'There's none of that bible tripe or tendon or nothin' like that in there, is it?'

'Number fifteen,' said Quinn. 'Nothing but eye round.'

The soup was a rich mixture of rice noodles, meat, and broth, with bean sprouts, hot green pepper, lime, and fresh mint served on the side. Strange and Quinn prepared theirs and added hot garlic sauce from a squeeze bottle. Lattimer slung his tie back over his shoulder, watched them, and followed suit.

'Were you a cop, too?' asked Quinn, the fragrant steam from the soup warming his face.

'Me?' said Lattimer. 'Nah.'

'He didn't like the way the uniforms were cut,' said Strange.

'Go ahead, Derek. I always wanted to do the kind of investigative work I'm doing right now. Never wanted to do anything else. Besides, you don't mind my sayin' so, all the problems they got on the force, I feel lucky I didn't join up.'

'There's a helluva lot more good cops on the force than there are mediocre ones,' said Quinn. 'And there's not many who are plain bad. The ones who weren't ready to be out on the street, that wasn't their fault. The situation you had back then, the fish stank from the head down.'

'That explain all those shootings?' said Strange.

'Firing on unarmed suspects, firing at moving vehicles…' said Lattimer, picking up the ball from Strange.

'Who's gonna decide whether they're armed or unarmed in the heat of the moment, when some guy's reaching into his jacket, huh?' said Quinn. 'In this climate we got now, out there on the street? With all the criminals having access to guns, the attitudes, the cold-blooded murder of cops… it's not much of a leap to make the assumption that, if you're wearing a uniform, you're in harm's way. Look, man, what I'm trying to tell you is, a lot of us out there, we were scared. Can you understand that?'

Lattimer didn't answer, but he held Quinn's gaze.

Strange broke apart his chopsticks and used them to find some eye round in the bottom of his bowl. 'Like I said, that doesn't explain everything.'

'It's complicated,' said Quinn. 'You know that. You were out there, Derek. You know.'

'All right, then,' said Strange. 'You had a couple of brutality complaints in your file, right?' He swallowed meat and noodles and wiped a napkin across his mouth.

'That's right,' said Quinn. 'So did Chris Wilson. So do a lot of cops. Legitimate or no, once a complaint gets made, it stays in your file.'

'What were yours about?'

'Mine were about bullshit,' said Quinn. 'Guy hits his head on the lip of the cruiser's back door when you're putting him in, guy claims you slapped the cuffs on him too tight… like that. It never goes into the report what was said to you, how many times you're disrespected in the course of a night.'

Strange nodded. He remembered all of that very well. He remembered, too, how cops got hardened after a while, until what they saw in certain parts of town were not the citizens they had sworn to protect but potential criminals, men and women and children alike. A white cop looking at a black face, that was something further still.