George Pelecanos: Right as Rain

'Too cold to leave the heat off,' said Lattimer.

'Put that overcoat on you got there in the backseat, you wouldn't be so cold.'

'That's a cashmere, Derek; I'm not gonna wear it in my car. Get it all wrinkled up and shit, start looking like I picked it up at the Burlington Coat Factory, some bullshit like that.'

Strange took a breath and let it out slow. 'And what I tell you about drinking coffee? What you need to be doing, you keep a bottle of water in the car and you sip it, a little at a time, when you get good and thirsty. Coffee runs right through you, man, you know that. What's gonna happen when you got to pee so bad you can't stand it, you get out the car lookin' for some privacy, tryin' to find a tree to get behind, while the subject of your tail is sneaking out the back door of his house? Huh? What you gonna do then?'

'The day I lose a tail, Derek, because I been drinkin' an Americano-'

'Oh, it's an Americano, now. And here I was, old and out of touch like I am, thinking you were just having a cup of coffee.'

Lattimer had to chuckle. 'Always tryin' to school me.'

'That's right. You got the potential to be something in this profession. I get you away from focusing on your lifestyle and get you focused on the business at hand, you're gonna make it.' Strange nodded toward the faceplate of the stereo. 'Turn that shit off, man, I can't think.'

'Tribe Called Quest represents .'

'Turn it off anyway, and tell me what we got.'

Lattimer switched off the music. ' Leon 's over there in that house, second from the last on the right, on Mills?'

Strange looked through the glasses. 'Okay. How'd you find him?'

'The address he gave the old lady, the one he took off? He hadn't lived there for a year or so. One of the neighbors I interviewed knew his family, though – both of them had come up in the same area. This neighbor told me that Leon 's mother and father had both passed, years ago. Got the death certificate of his mother down at that records office on H, in Chinatown. From the date on that certificate, I found her obituary in the newspaper morgue, and the obit listed the heirs. Of the family, only the grandmother was still alive. Leon didn't have any brothers or sisters, which makes him the only heir to g-mom. I figured Leon, hustler that he is, is counting on the grandmother to leave him everything she's got, so Leon's got to be paying regular visits to stay in her grace.'

'That the grandmother's house we're looking at?'

'Uh-huh. I been staking it out all this week. Leon finally showed up today. That's his hooptie over there, that yellow Pontiac Astra with the rust marks, parked in front of the house. Ugly-ass car, too.'

'Sister to the Chevy Vega.'

'People paid extra for that thing 'cause it had the Pontiac name on it?'

'Some did. Nice work.'

'Thanks, boss. How you want to handle it?'

Strange gave it some thought. 'I think we need to brace him in front of his grandmother.'

'I was thinking the same way.'

'Come on.'

They got out of the Acura, Lattimer retrieving his overcoat first and shaking himself into it as they walked alongside Langdon Park toward Mills Avenue. A couple of young boys, school age, were sitting on a bench wearing oversize parkas, looking hard at Strange and Lattimer, not looking away as Strange glanced in their direction.

'Hold on for a second, Derek,' said Lattimer, putting a little skip in his walk and side-glancing Strange. 'I got to find me a tree…'

'Funny,' said Strange.

They we're past the park and onto Mills. Lattimer said, 'You want me to take the alley?'

'Yeah, take it. I don't feel like running today if I don't have to. My knees and this cold aren't the best of friends.'

'I don't feel like running, either. You know how I perspire quick, soon as I start to buck, even in this weather.'

'I don't suspect he'll be going anywhere, but you never know. Speaking of which…'

Lattimer saw Strange pull the Leatherman tool from his pocket and flick open its knife as they neared Leon 's yellow Astra. Still walking, Strange drew change from his pocket and dropped it on the street beside the door of the car. He got down on one knee to pick it up, and while he was down there, punctured the driver's-side tire with the knife. He retrieved his change, closing the tool and replacing it in his pocket as he rose.

'See you in a few,' said Strange.

He took the steps up to the porch of the row house as Lattimer cut into the alley. He waited half a minute for Lattimer to get behind the house, and then he knocked on the door.

Strange saw a miniature face peer around a lace curtain and heard a couple of locks being turned. The door opened, and a very small woman with prunish skin and a cotton-top of gray hair stood in the frame. The woman gave Strange a thorough examination with her eyes.

She looked back over her shoulder toward a nicely appointed living room that spread out, off the foyer. Then she raised her voice: ' Leon! There's a police officer here to see you.'

'Thank you, ma'am,' said Strange. 'And tell him not to run, will you? My partner's out back in the alley, and he'll be awful mad if he gets to perspiring. The sweat, it stains his pretty clothes.'

Strange took Leon Jeffries out the kitchen door to a small screened-in porch. The porch gave to a view of a gnarled patch of backyard and the alley. After Strange got Leon out to the porch, he waved Lattimer in from there. Leon confessed to bilking the old woman from Petworth with a pyramid investment scheme shortly thereafter.

'What y'all gonna do to me now?' asked Leon. He was a small, feral, middle-aged man with pale yellow eyeballs. He wore a pinstriped suit jacket with unmatching black slacks and a lavender, open-collar shirt.

'You need to give our client back her money, Leon,' said Strange. 'Then everything'll be chilly.'

'I planned on gettin' her money back to her, with interest. Takes a little time, though. See, the way I worked it, I used the next person's investment to pay the, uh, previous person's investment, in installments. Sort of how some folks stay ahead of the game with multiple credit cards.'

'That's a legal kind of scam, Leon. What we're talking about here is, you were taking off old ladies that trusted you. How you think that's gonna look to a jury?'

'A jury trial for a small-claims thing?'

'You got a sheet, Leon?' asked Lattimer.

'I ain't never been incarcerated.'

'So you got a sheet,' said Lattimer. 'And this goes before a judge, forget about a jury, you get a judge on a bad day he ate the wrong brand of half-smokes for breakfast, some shit like that, they gonna put your thin ass away.'

'We need the money for our client now,' said Strange. 'That's all she wants. She's a good woman, which you probably saw as a weakness, but we're gonna forget about that, too, if you come up with the two thousand you took from her straightaway.'

'I'd have to get me a job,' said Leon. "Cause currently, see, I don't have those kind of resources.'

'You gonna wear that outfit to the job interview?' said Lattimer.

Leon, wounded, looked up at Lattimer and touched the lapel of his lavender shirt. 'This right here is a designer shirt. An Yves Saint Laurent.'

'From the Singapore factory, maybe. Man your age ought to be wearin' some cotton by now, too, instead of that sixty-forty blend you got on right there.'

Strange said, 'How we going to work this out with the money, Leon?'

'I ain't got no got-damn money, man; I told you!'

Some spittle flew from Leon 's mouth and a bit of it landed on the chest area of Lattimer's overcoat. Lattimer grabbed Leon by the lapels of his jacket and pulled Leon toward him.

'You spit on my cashmere, man!'