George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'Call me Derek.'

'Sondra got into that heroin thing. Chris said she was always afraid of needles, so he figured she started by snorting it. Probably thought it was okay, doin' it like that, like she couldn't get a jones behind it in that way. Another mistake future junkies make. I know because I had an uncle who was deep into it. It's a slower way to go down is all it is. How you end up, it's all the same.'

'The night Chris was killed. Describe what happened here before he went out.'

Renee moved her coffee mug around the table. Her voice was even and unemotional. 'He got a phone call on his cell. He took the call back in my bedroom. I didn't hear what was said and I didn't ask. But he was agitated when he came out of the bedroom, for real. He said he had to go out. He said he was going to a bar or something to grab a beer, that he needed to get out of the apartment and think. I didn't think it was a good idea, what with him already having been drinkin' and all, and I told him so. He told me not to worry. He kissed me and he kissed Kia on the top of the head, and then he left. Two hours later, I got a call from Chris's mother telling me he was dead.'

Strange sat back in his chair. 'Chris had some brutality complaints in his file. He ever talk about that?'

'Yes,' said Renee. 'He told me he had to get rough with suspects sometimes, but he said he never went off on someone didn't deserve it. And yes, he had been drinking heavily the night he was killed, just like they said. The newspapers and the TV and his own department, they can paint their pictures any way they want. None of that explains why he was murdered. Bottom line is, if that white cop hadn't come up on the scene, Chris would be alive today.'

'That white cop didn't know Chris was a policeman,' said Strange. 'He saw a man with a gun-'

'He saw a black man with a gun,' said Renee. 'And you and I both know that's why Chris is dead.'

Strange didn't reply. He wasn't certain that on some basic level she was wrong.

Strange leaned forward and touched Kia's cheek. 'That your baby, pretty little girl?'

' My baby,' said Kia.

'I hope I helped you,' said Renee.

'You did,' said Strange. 'Thank you for your time.'

Strange sat at the downstairs bar of the Purple Cactus, sipping a ginger ale, watching the crowd. It was mostly young white money in here, new money and livin'-off-the-interest kind of money as well. The waitresses and bar staff were pretty young women and pretty boys, working with a kind of rising intensity, serving the early, preshow dinner patrons who were just now beginning to flow through the doors. The dining room chairs were hard, and triangles and other geometric designs hung on the walls. Dim spot lamps brought an onstage focus to each table, so the patrons could be 'seen' while eating the overpriced cuisine.

Upon its opening, the Cactus had been touted in the Post's dining guide and in Washingtonian, and had become 'the place' for that particular year. Strange had come here once when he was trying to impress a woman on a first date, always a mistake. He had dropped a hundred and twenty-five on three appetizers, portioned to leave a small dog hungry, and a couple of drinks. Then the waiter, another bright-eyed boy with bleached-blond hair, had the nerve to come out with a dessert tray, and try to get them to sample a 'decadent,' twelve-dollars-a-slice chocolate cake that was, he said with a practiced smile, 'architecturally brilliant.' It had ruined Strange's night to feel that used. And to make things worse, the woman he was with, she hadn't even given him any play.

A waiter wearing a thin line of beard came up to the service end of the bar and said to the bartender, 'Absolut and tonic with a lemon twist,' then added, 'Did you see that tourist with the hair at my four-top? Oh my God, what is she, on chemo or something?' The waitress standing next to him, also waiting on a drink and arranging her checks, said, 'Charlie, keep your voice down, the customers will hear you.'

'Oh, fuck the customers,' said Charlie, dressing his vodka tonic with a swizzle stick as it arrived.

Strange wondered how a place like this could stay in business. But he knew: people came here because they were told to come here, knowing full well that it was a rip-off, too. Same reason they read the books their friends read, and went to movies about convicts hijacking airplanes and asteroids headed for earth. Didn't matter that none of it was any good. No one wanted to be left out of the conversation at the next cocktail party. Everyone was desperate to be a part of what was new, to not be left behind.

'You okay here?' asked the bartender, a clear-eyed blonde with nice skin.

'Fine,' said Strange. 'I do have a question, though. You remember a guy used to work here, name of Ricky Kane? Trying to locate him for a friend.'

'I'm new,' said the bartender.

'I remember Ricky,' said Charlie the waiter, still standing by the service bar. Would be like old Charlie, thought Strange, to listen in on someone's conversation and make a comment about it when he wasn't being spoken to.

'He's not working here any longer, is he?' said Strange, forcing a friendly smile.

'He doesn't need to anymore,' said Charlie. 'Not after all that money he got from the settlement.' Charlie side-glanced the brunette waitress beside him. 'Course, he never did need to work here, did he?'

'Cause old Ricky had his income set up from dealin' drugs, it suddenly occurred to Strange.

'Charlie,' admonished the waitress.

Charlie chuckled and hurried off with his drink tray. The bartender served the brunette waitress her drinks and said, 'Here you go, Lenna.'

After Lenna thanked her, the bartender came back to stand in front of Strange. 'Another ginger ale?'

'Just the check,' said Strange, 'and a receipt.'

Strange walked around the corner and four blocks up Vermont Avenue, then took the steps down to Stan's, a basement bar he frequented now and again. It was smoky and crowded with locals, a racial mix of middle-class D.C. residents, most of them in their middle age. Going past some loud tables, he heard a man call his name.

'Derek, how you doin'!'

'Ernest,' said Strange. It was Ernest James from the neighborhood, wearing a suit and seated with a woman.

'Heard your business was doin' good, man.'

'I'm doin' all right.'

'You see anything of Donald Lindsay?' asked James.

'Heard Donald passed.'

'Uh-uh, man, he's still out there.'

'Well, I ain't seen him.' Strange nodded and smiled at Johnson's lady. 'Excuse me, y'all, let me get up on over to this bar and have myself a drink.'

'All right, then, Derek.'

'All right.'

Strange ordered a Johnnie Walker Red and soda at the bar. At Stan's, they served the liquor to the lip of the glass, with the miniature mixer on the side, the way they used to at the old Royal Warrant and the Round Table on the other side of town. When Strange felt like having one real drink, and being around regular people, he came here.

Sipping his scotch, he felt himself notch down. He talked to a man beside him about the new Redskins quarterback, who had come over from the Vikings, and what the 'Skins needed to do to win. The man was near Strange's age, and he recalled seeing Bobby Mitchell play, and the talk drifted to other players and the old Jurgensen-led squad.

'Fight for old D.C.,' said the man, with a wink.

'Fight for old Dixie , you mean.'

'You remember that?' said the man.

'That and a lot of other things. Shame some of these young folks out here, talkin' about nigga this and nigga that, don't remember those things, too.'

'Some of our people get all upset 'cause the word's in Webster's dictionary, but they hear it from the mouths of their own sons and daughters and grandkids, and they let it pass.'