George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'Uh-huh. How are white people gonna know not to use that word when our own young people don't know it their own got-damn selves?'

'I heard that.'

Strange's beeper sounded. He read the numbers, excused himself, went to the pay phones back by the bathrooms, and made a call. It was Quinn on the other end of the line.

'Lookin' forward to it,' said Strange, when Quinn was done talking.

'Us too,' said Quinn. 'Where should we meet?' Strange told him, racked the phone, and checked his wristwatch. He paid his tab, bought the man at the bar another round, and left Stan's.

At his row house, Strange dumped all the matchbooks and the photograph of Sondra Wilson onto his office desk, went through his mail, and changed into sweats. He went down to his basement, where a heavy bag hung from the steel beams of the ceiling, and listened to the soundtrack of Guns for San Sebastian on his boom box while he worked the bag. He fed Greco, then stripped off his damp clothing and went to take a shower. If he hurried, he'd have time to visit his mother at the home before picking up Janine for the fights.

Ray and Earl Boone stopped at the red light on Michigan and North Capitol. Ray dragged on his cigarette and Earl sipped from a can of Busch beer. On the corner, a neon-colored poster was stapled to a telephone pole, announcing some kind of boxing event that was scheduled for that night.

'Feel like goin' to the fights tonight, Daddy?' said Ray, knowing full well that his father didn't even like to step outside the car in D.C. 'They got some good ones over at that convention center. Looks like Don King's gonna be there, too.'

'Don King?' said Earl. 'I'd sooner have a dog lick peanut butter out the crack of my ass.'

'That a no?'

'You got a green light, Critter. And stop bein' so silly, too.'

Ray made a call to Cherokee Coleman's office, told one of Coleman's people that he and his father were coming in. They drove into the old warehouse district off Florida Avenue.

Ray saw an MPD cruiser idling on the street near Coleman's office. He recognized the small numbers on the bumper of the Crown Vic and the same numbers, printed larger, on its side. Coasting past the driver's-side window, Ray caught a quick glance of the uniform behind the wheel, a big, ugly spade who was staring straight ahead. Coleman had once told him the name of their pocket cop, funny kind of name for a man, funnier still for such a big one, but Ray could not exactly remember what the name was. Sounded like Madonna, some bullshit like that.

They dropped the kilo off at the garage. The usual types were waiting, with a couple of new, young faces in the bunch, skullcap stockings worn over the tops of their heads, dead eyes, kill-you-while-I-laugh smiles. There was a north side-south side argument going on as Ray and Earl stepped out of the car, one kid playfully feinting and jabbing another as the rest moved their heads to some jungle-jump coming from a box. Ray could give a good fuck about any of them. And as he and his father smoked and watched them scale out the heroin, he could only think, Everything goes right, this'll be the last time I ever set foot in this shit hole of a city again.

Tonio Morris came out of the dark room on the first floor of the Junkyard, where he lived with the other last-stage junkies and the bugs and the rats, lying on a moldy mattress in his own filth. When he was not here he was out on the street, stealing or begging, or collecting cigarette butts gathered along the curbs, or rummaging through the garbage cans in the alleys behind the houses in Trinidad and LeDroit Park.

Here in the Junkyard, he experienced mainly boredom, relieved by the threat of drama, the occasional quick act of physical violence, or the odd joke that struck him funny and made him laugh deep in his wheezy chest. He slept fitfully and ate little, except for the small bites of chocolate he cadged from the others. Mostly his life was blocks of time between getting high, and mostly he waited, sometimes knowing but not caring that he was only waiting for death.

Tonio crossed the big room, his feet crunching pigeon droppings, puddles dampening his brown socks, water entering where the soles had split from the uppers of his shoes. He stood by the brick wall, in a place that had been hammered out, and watched the Ford Taurus pass, driving by the cop car that idled on the street. They were here, on schedule, and he turned and headed for the stairs.

He passed one of Coleman's and went up to the second floor, to the open-stalled bathroom area where those who were still strong and those who had something to trade had staked out their spots. The once-beautiful girl named Sondra was in the last stall, leaning against the steel wall, rubbing her arm with her hand as if she were trying to erase a stain.

Tonio went into the stall and stood very close to her so that he could make out her face. He was beginning to go blind, the final laughing insult of the plague.

'Hello, Tonio.'

'Hello, baby. Your boys are here.'

Sondra smiled and showed filmy teeth; zero nutrition had grayed them. Her lips were chapped and bleeding in spots, raw from the cold. She wore a heavy jacket over her usual outfit, the white shirt and black slacks. An old woman back near Gallaudet College had seen her on the street a week ago and handed the jacket to Sondra out the front door of her row house.

'You better get fresh for your man,' said Tonio.

'I got some water here,' she said. She had found an empty plastic Fruitopia container in a Dumpster and filled it with water from a neighborhood spigot.

'Use this to clean your face,' said Tonio. He handed her a filthy shop rag from his back pocket. 'Go on, girl.' She took it, examined it, and poured freezing water from the bottle onto the rag. She dabbed it on her cheeks. The oily dirt from the rag smudged her face.

'You're good to me,' said Sondra.

'And don't you forget to be good to Tonio, hear?'

'I won't forget you, T. I always get a little bit for you.'

He eyed her in a hungry but completely asexual way. He wanted things from her but not that. Tonio could no longer make it with a woman even if he wanted to. He no longer wanted to or thought of it at all.

'I better be goin' back down,' he said.

'See you later,' she said, watching him walk away, hitching his pants up where they had slipped down his behind.

Sondra was fond of Tonio. He never tried to do her like the others did. Tonio was her friend.

'What's wrong, Cherokee?' said Ray. 'Thought you'd be happy. Way you were talking last time, thought you wanted to get out from under the pressure the Rodriguez brothers were puttin' on you.'

'Didn't ask you to doom 'em, Ray,' said Coleman.

'They asked for it their own selves.'

'Committed suicide, huh?'

'Damn near like it. Anyway, I can't wake neither of them up now, so we're wasting time frettin' on it, right? Besides, I handled it, you can believe that.'

Cherokee Coleman sat behind his desk, his hands tented on the blotter, staring at Ray. His lieutenant, Big-Ass Angelo, stood behind him, his face a fleshy, impassive mask. Earl Boone got a kick out of Angelo's sunglasses, the Hollywood-looking kind with the thick gold stems. Dark as it was already in here, with that green banker's lamp the only light in the room, Earl wondered how fat boy could even see.

'You want to go ahead and tell us how you handled it?' said Cherokee.

'The day after their visit,' said Ray, 'I called Lizardo's wife, asked her where in the hell he and Nestor was. Said that they was due but hadn't showed up or called. 'Bout a New York minute later I get a call on my cell from one of the Vargas people down in Florida. I told him the same thing I told the wife. He mumbled somethin' in Spanish and hung up the phone. Next thing we did was, me and Daddy made two trips with those Contours they was drivin', drove those cars down to Virginia and dumped ' em near Richmond, off Ninety-five south. Dripped some of Nestor's and Lizardo's blood on the seats of those cars. Pulled some hairs from their heads and scattered them in the cars, too. When the cops break into those cars and trace the owners, gonna look like the brothers got killed down there on their way up north.'