George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

Strange stopped the tape. 'Your partner was yelling over him 'cause he didn't want you to hear what Wilson was sayin'. He was adding to the confusion, and he didn't want you to know that Wilson was a cop.'

'Play the other part,' said Quinn.

Strange: ' What happened when he looked at you, Quinn?'

Quinn: 'It was only for a moment. He looked at me and then at Gene, and something bad crossed his face. I'll never forget it. He was angry at us, at me and Gene. He was more than angry; his face changed to the face of a killer. He swung his gun in our direction then -'

Strange: 'He pointed his gun at you ?'

Quinn: 'Not directly. He was swinging it, like I say. The muzzle of it swept across me and he had that look on his face… There wasn't any doubt in my mind… I knew he was going to pull the trigger. Eugene screamed my name, and I fired my weapon.'

'That's enough,' said Quinn.

Strange stopped the recorder.

'Here's the way I see it,' said Strange, speaking softly. 'Your partner was driving the cruiser that night. Y'all comin' up on Chris Wilson like that, it wasn't an accident. Franklin turned down D Street because it was a setup. He knew Kane was going to lure Chris Wilson there. He knew it wouldn't take much for Kane to get Wilson to draw his gun.'

'Or for me to fire mine,' said Quinn.

'Maybe. The fact remains, your partner was involved. We got the photographs and Chris Wilson's notebook. That young man did some really fine police work, putting it all together. The tapes I got corroborate-'

'I just don't want to believe it, Derek.'

'Believe your own words,' said Strange. '"He looked at me and then at Gene, and something bad crossed his face." "His face changed to the face of a killer" when he saw Eugene. Your own words were, "The muzzle of the gun swept across me." Chris Wilson wasn't lookin' to hurt you, Terry. He was pointing his gun at a sold-out cop. A dirty cop who was in the pocket of the drug dealer who had put his sister in a junkhouse. You understand what I'm tellin' you, man?'

'Yes,' said Quinn, staring at the floor.

'All right, then. Now, who's Adonis Delgado?'

'Big, bad-ass cop. He was sitting at the bar of Erika's the day we spoke to Eugene.'

'Muscle-bound and ugly, with a stoved-in nose?'

'Yeah.'

'That's the one tried to step to me in the bathroom. Wanted to send me some kind of message, I guess.'

'Eugene,' muttered Quinn.

'You're goddamn right, Eugene .'

Quinn stood out of his chair. He lifted his leather off the back where he'd hung it and put it on.

'Where you goin'?'

'To get the rest of it.'

'You need my help?'

'This one's me,' said Quinn. He turned as he reached the front door. 'Don't go to sleep.'

'I'm gonna see you again tonight?'

'Yeah. Gonna bring somethin' back for you, too.'

Eugene Franklin had a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise across the road from the Maine Avenue waterfront in Southwest. Franklin, like many single cops, considered his apartment little more than a place to eat, sleep, and watch TV. The living area was sparsely decorated and furnished, with a couch and chair facing a television, a coffee table, and a telephone set on a bare end table beside the couch. Franklin answered the ringing phone.

'Yeah.'

'Gene, it's Terry, man. I'm at the front door in the lobby.'

'Terry-'

'Buzz me in, buddy. I got somethin' I need to talk to you about.'

Franklin pressed a button on the phone. He stood from the couch and ran his finger slowly over his protruding upper lip. It was a habit of his to do this when he was troubled or confused.

Franklin went to the door of his apartment, opened it, and stood in the frame. Quinn was walking toward him, down the long, orange-carpeted hall.

'Hey,' said Quinn, a smile on his face.

Quinn's long hair bounced as he walked. He was moving very quickly down the hall, his head pushed forward. Franklin was thinking, He's like one of those cartoon characters, determined, walking with purpose… and now he could see that Quinn's smile was not really a smile but more of a grimace, a forced smile that had pain in it and something worse than pain.

'Hey, Eugene,' said Quinn as he reached him, not slowing down, and Franklin saw the automatic come up from beneath the waistband of Quinn's jeans.

Franklin stepped back from the doorway as Quinn swung the barrel of the gun viciously, its shape a blur cutting through the fluorescent glare of the hall. The gun connected at Franklin's temple, and the room spun instantly as he stumbled back.

Franklin's feet were gone beneath him. He began to fall, and as he fell through the dimming light the gun streaked toward him, and this time he barely felt the blow. At the end, he saw his partner's face, ugly and angry and afraid, and Franklin loved him then. Falling into a soft bed of night, Franklin felt only relief.

Quinn stood in the center of Eugene Franklin's living room, the automatic held loosely in his hand.

Franklin sat on the couch, his head tilted back, holding a damp towel tight to his temple. The towel was pink where the blood of a deep gash had seeped through. Quinn had placed a yellow legal pad on the coffee table before him and set a pen on top of the pad.

'How'd you turn, Gene?'

'How?' repeated Franklin.

'Delgado drew you in.'

'Yeah. Used to see him down at Erika's all the time. In there every night, drinkin', talkin' mad shit, then goin' home alone. Delgado, he was like me. Neither one of us had many friends or was gettin' any play. So we got to talkin,' Adonis and me. I knew he was all bad; everyone knew. But I talked to him anyway.'

'What'd you talk about?'

'This and that, you know. Went from one thing to the other, until it came to this other thing. Delgado was tellin' me how a man with some money in his pocket didn't have to worry about finding women, they'd find him. How you could kick it with anyone out there if the woman had the idea you were holdin' bank. I knew his mouth was overloadin' his asshole, man, but with the alcohol runnin' through me and shit-'

'How'd it go to the next level?'

'He started talkin' about Cherokee Coleman's operation, down off Florida. How Cherokee wasn't never gonna see no time, how no one could touch his ass 'cause he was too smart. That the operation would keep goin' on as long as there was a market for drugs, and fuck all those junkies, anyway, they weren't nothin' but the low end of Darwin's theory. And then he told me how he was making a little extra on the side, how he figured out that if Cherokee was gonna be all that and no one was gonna do a goddamn thing about it, why didn't he, Adonis, deserve to get some, too.

'It wasn't no big deal, he said. A load came in twice a month to Coleman's, and twice a month Delgado cruised the perimeter of the area during drop-off day and made sure there wasn't anything goin' on out there in the way of interference, local or federal law. Never even got out of his car. He said it wasn't any more complicated than that.'

'Why tell you? Why did he need to cut you in?'

"Cause he couldn't always be there. And because they had a problem that Delgado couldn't or didn't want to handle on his own. Course, I didn't know what that problem was when I got in.'

'Chris Wilson.'

Franklin's eyes moved to the floor. 'That's right. His sister had got hooked up with Ricky Kane. He followed Kane's trail the same way y'all did, and it took him to Coleman's. On one of those trips, Kane went into the office with Sondra Wilson, and when he came out, he was alone. Sondra was Coleman's woman, just like that, and it pushed Wilson way over the edge.'

'You were in at this point?'

'Right about then, yeah. It was easy, just like Delgado said; wasn't nothin' but drivin' around the block a couple of times, twice a month. I didn't see anything all that wrong with it at the time.'