George Pelecanos - Soul Circus

“Investigators,” said Quinn, “D.C.”

“What I do?” said the driver.

Strange’s Caprice looked like a police vehicle, down to the heavy chrome side mirrors. He slanted it in front of the Hyundai, as a cop would do, and kept it running. He and Quinn got out and went to the Hyundai. Quinn took the passenger side and Strange stood before the open driver’s-side window. Strange flashed his license.

“That house you just delivered to,” said Strange. “Tell me who you saw.”

“Some fat dude paid me.”

“Anyone else?”

“Girl was sittin’ in there on the floor, too.”

“Describe her, please.”

The delivery boy did, his hands tight on the wheel.

“The fat man, he have a bunch of locks on that front door?”

“Heard him turn somethin’ and slide a chain, is all.”

“You don’t need to be talkin’ to anyone about this, hear?”

“I won’t.” The delivery boy looked up at Strange. “You lookin’ at that fat boy for somethin’?”

“Nothing to concern yourself with.”

“I ain’t concerned. I hope you get him if he’s wrong, though.” The driver wiped his face. “Wearin’ all that ice, and all he could see to give me was fifty cents.”

“You have a good one,” said Strange. “And thank you for your time.”

AFTER getting out to move some debris blocking the entrance, Strange and Quinn cruised slowly down the alley between Atlantic and Yuma. Strange had killed his headlights and was navigating by his parking lights. There didn’t seem to be anyone out, not even kids. On the Atlantic side of the alley he saw houses, some bright, some dark, one lit dimly by the flicker of flames, all partitioned by chain-link fences in various states of disrepair.

“There it is,” said Quinn, looking at the back of a house on the Yuma side. “I counted back from the corner. That’s the one, with the lights. I don’t see anyone, though.”

“Pizza boy said it was just McKinley and the girl, what he could make out. McKinley’s down on his big-ass haunches now, wolfin’ that pizza, I expect.”

“Be a good time to hit him.”

“I guess we better do that, then, before we change our minds.”

Strange turned onto the street at the head of the alley and parked behind Quinn’s Chevelle. Strange went over what they had already discussed.

“It’s not much of a plan,” said Quinn.

“Ain’t no plan at all,” said Strange. “I’m countin’ on that girl having the stones I think she does. I figure that McKinley’s partner has the boy, and she’s gonna be focusing on getting back with him. I know how much she loves her son.”

“What if it goes wrong?”

“One of us goes down, the other one’s got to get the girl out quick. Take her to her apartment and figure it out then.”

“You know he’s got a gun.” Quinn looked at Strange’s hip, where his knife was sheathed. “You gonna take him on with that?”

“I got somethin’ else for him, I get close enough. You remember his gun, too, Terry. Don’t stay back there too long and get your ass shot.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You got your cell?”

“In my pocket.”

Strange looked at Quinn’s bright, jacked-up eyes. “Look, man, you don’t have to do this. You don’t owe anybody anything.”

“When you side with a man, you stay with him,” said Quinn. “And if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal. You’re finished.”

“Oh, shit,” said Strange with a low chuckle. “You are something.”

They shook hands. Quinn got out of the car and closed the door behind him. He bolted across the sidewalk, up a rise, and moved into the shadows between two duplexes farther down the block.

Strange got a coil of rope out of his trunk and patted his back pocket. He walked up toward the house.

HORACE McKinley was in the living room, eating a slice of pizza topped with hamburger and pepperoni, when he heard someone banging on the back door. His heart skipped as he swallowed what was in his mouth. Couldn’t be Mike; he always came in through the front. He dropped the slice into the open cardboard box at his feet. Neighborhood kids, most likely, pullin’ pranks and shit, like they liked to do.

“Don’t you move now,” said McKinley, standing out of his chair, talking to Devra, who was still against the wall, hugging her knees. “I’ll be right back.”

McKinley pulled the automatic from his waistband and racked the slide.

Devra watched him walk into what would be the dining room in a normal house. He went through an arched cutout there, barely fitting through it, and back into a hall. The hall led to the galley kitchen and the back door, she knew. When he got into the hall she heard him curse and then start to run, his heavy steps vibrating the wall at her back. And then she heard him opening the back door and yelling something out, his voice fading now ’cause he was outside.

Devra looked at the front door. Only thing stopping her was a dead-bolt latch and a chain. Thinking, If I am going to see my baby again, now is the time to try.

QUINN stood on the back porch, knocking on the window and its frame, talking to himself, saying, “Come on, fat man, come and get it,” and then smiling right into the man’s sweaty face as he turned sideways to get himself through an opening and appeared in the hall. Quinn heard his muffled curse as he raised the gun in his meatball hand. Quinn held his position and his smile, knowing he was firing up the fat man, watching him run straight toward him through the kitchen to the door.

Quinn turned and leaped off the porch. His feet scrabbled for purchase on the dirt as he made it to the chain-link fence that surrounded the patch of backyard. He put his hand on the rail of the fence and was over it clean as he heard the back door swing open. The fat man was yelling at him now, and Quinn ducked his head. He zigzagged combat style down the alley and heard the first shot, thinking, I am not hit, and he heard himself humming as the second shot sounded and a whistle of air passed his ears. And now he just hit it, dug deep for speed and ran straight. He came to the end of the alley where it dropped onto the street, cut left, and slowed to a jog. His short bark of laughter was all relief, a burst of pressure release with the knowledge that he had cheated death.

He looked back toward the alley, wondering if he had given Derek enough time.

IT was that white boy, Strange’s partner. Had to be.

McKinley slipped the Sig back inside his drawers. He rolled his shoulders and looked around. A light came on in one of the houses, and a dog, that rott two doors down, was barking fierce. Wasn’t but two shots. No one in this neighborhood was going to call the police ’cause of that. And if they did, wasn’t no police gonna bother to respond.

McKinley walked across the dirt, stepped up to the porch, and entered the house. He closed the door behind him, mumbling as he locked it. He heard himself wheezing and felt the sweat dripping down his back as he walked through the kitchen into the hall. He went by the arched cutout, not wanting to squeeze through it again, and straight into the living room, where Devra Stokes was standing, one hand kind of playing with the fingers of the other.

“I tell you to get up?” said McKinley, standing before her.

“Heard gunshots, is all.”

“Girl, sit your ass back down.”

He looked over the girl’s shoulder and saw the chain hanging free on the front door. He said, “What the fuck ?” just as he felt the presence of someone behind him and turned.

What he saw in that last second was a man with size, and McKinley reached for his gun. He had his hand on the grip when something whipped up toward him fast, a blur of flat black. When the flat black thing hit him under the chin, the pain was cold electric and the room spun crazy. His feet weren’t holding him up, and he was floating, could almost see himself, like a balloon in one of those parades. The spinning room was the last thing he saw as his world shut down.