George Pelecanos - Soul Circus

“We all set, then,” said Durham.

“Just give my office manager out there your deposit on your way out,” said Strange, “and we’ll get going on this right away.”

“Fifty, right?”

“A hundred, just like Janine told you when you spoke to her on the phone.”

“Damn, y’all about to bankrupt a man.”

“It’s a hundred. But this shouldn’t take too long. Our rate is thirty-five an hour, and if it comes out to be under the hundred, then you’re gonna get what we didn’t earn back.”

“Put a rush on it, hear? I can’t even afford the hundred, seein’ as I’m in between jobs right now. I’m just anxious to see my girl.”

Durham began to walk from the room. Greco got up and followed him, sniffing at the back of his Tommys as he walked. Greco growled some, and Durham quickened his step. Greco stopped walking as Durham passed through the doorway. Quinn shut the office door.

“Animal doesn’t like you,” said Strange, “must be a reason.”

“We don’t usually ask for one-hundred-dollar deposits, Derek.”

“I made an exception for him.”

“It’s because he’s black, right?”

“It’s because he’s a no-account knucklehead. That hundred’s the only money we’re ever gonna see out of him. He’s got no job, wouldn’t even give Janine a fixed address. Said if we needed to get him we could look up a friend of his called Donut in Valley Green.”

“Donut, huh? You can bank that.”

“And his only phone number is a cell.”

“You think there’s something funny about his story?”

“Course there is. Somethin’ funny about half the stories we hear in this place. Maybe she owes him money, or he’s just tryin’ to find out if she’s shackin’ up with someone else.”

“You don’t think a woman would leave a prize like him for another man, do you? That’d be like, I don’t know, driving across town for a Big Mac when you got filet mignon cooking on the grill in your backyard.”

“Was it just me, or was that man butt-ugly?”

“Playa hater,” said Quinn.

“Almost feel like pressing his money back in his hand, giving him the phone number to a good dentist.”

“Last time I saw two teeth like that, they were attached to somethin’ had a paddle for a tail and was chewin’ on a piece of wood.”

“Well, a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars. If any of that information he gave us is accurate, I’ll find that girl this afternoon.”

“Quit bragging.”

“No brag,” said Strange, “just fact.”

“Guns of Will Sonnet,” said Quinn. “Walter Brennan.”

“Damn, boy, you surprise me sometimes.”

“You need me,” said Quinn, “I’m puttin’ in a few hours at the bookstore today.”

Strange said, “I’ll call you there.”

STRANGE went back down to Anacostia and had a late lunch at Mama Cole’s. Its sign claimed they served “the best soul food in town,” and if that wasn’t enough, the cursive quote on the awning out front added, “Martin Luther King would have eaten here.” Strange didn’t know about all that, but the food was better than all right. He ordered a fish sandwich with plenty of hot sauce, and when he had his first bite he closed his eyes. That pricey white-tablecloth buppie joint on the suit-side of town, claimed it was South authentic, didn’t have anything this good coming out of its kitchen.

“How you doin’, Derek?” said a man at a deuce as Strange was making his way toward the door.

“I’m makin’ it,” said Strange, shaking his hand. The man was an assistant coach for the football squad that played their home games at Turkey Thicket, but Strange could not remember his name.

“You gonna be ready this year, big man?”

“Oh, we got a few surprises for you, now.”

“All right, then.”

“All right.”

They shook hands. Quinn would say something now, if he were here, about Strange running into someone he knew in every part of the District. It was true, but Strange never found it surprising. He’d lived here, and only here, for over fifty years. For its permanent residents, D.C. was in many ways still a small town.

Strange got into his Caprice. He was full and happy. He pushed in a mix tape and found “City, Country, City,” the War instrumental that he always returned to when he was under the wheel on a fine spring day. He drove to the nail salon where Mario Durham had first met Olivia Elliot and entered the shop.

The owner of the place, a youngish woman who looked like she had a ropy bird’s nest set atop her head, hadn’t seen or heard from Olivia in a long while. She didn’t ask why Strange was looking for Elliot, and he didn’t bother to invent a ruse. She had marked him as a bill collector, most likely, an assumption he did not confirm or deny. If Elliot had left her job on bad terms, then this would work in his favor.

“You have no idea where she’s working now?” said Strange.

“I don’t believe she could hold a job for long,” said the owner.

“Girl was keepin’ bad company, too,” said another woman, unprompted, from across the shop.

“She didn’t know Jesus,” said the owner. “So how could she know herself?”

Strange drove toward the complex where Olivia Elliot had lived. He passed Ketchum Elementary and wondered if Olivia’s son, Mark, was a student at this school. But it wasn’t like this was the only grade school in the area; Strange had noticed another one, and another still, just in the small distance he’d covered since leaving the shop. There was no shortage of babies being made in this part of town.

He parked in the lot of the Woodland Mews, a grouping of several tan brick units surrounded by the ubiquitous black iron fence. The grounds were on the clean side and the parking lot, half filled on this workday, was mostly free of trash. Strange wrote down the name of the complex’s management company, posted with a phone number under an “Apartment Available” notice hung on the fence. He called this in to Janine and asked her to check with the company to see if Elliot had left a forwarding address. If she had put a security deposit down, he reasoned, she would be looking for them to send it to her.

Strange crossed the lot, going by two young men standing beside a tricked-out Honda. An old Rare Essence track came from the open windows of the car. The young men’s conversation halted as he passed. Strange wore his cell on a holster, along with a Leatherman Tool-in-One looped through his belt. He wore his Buck knife as well when he felt he had the need to show it, but had left it in the office today. He carried a spiral notepad with a pen fitted into the rings.

Strange walked as he had taught Lamar and the kids on his football team to walk when they were out on the street. Chin up, shoulders square, at a steady clip but not too fast. The effect was confidence and, in his case, authority. Among those who were acquainted with the traits and mannerisms that are common to police, Strange would always be made as a cop, even though he had not worn the uniform for thirty-some-odd years. The young men resumed their conversation as Strange made his way into the stairwell of a nearby unit.

The stairwell’s interior walls were the usual dull cinder block. The words “Mews Crew” were spray painted on the wall, artlessly, along with several nicknames. “Black,” that most popular of D.C. street names, was among them. Strange had become acquainted with most of the gang names down here in the course of his long investigation related to Granville Oliver, but he had not heard this one mentioned. He figured that the wall tag was just the work of hopeful kids.

Strange knocked on the apartment door where Olivia Elliot had lived. No one answered, but there was music behind the door, and Strange knocked again. A girl opened the door to its chain length and peered out. He could smell marijuana through the opening, and the girl’s eyes told him she was high. Strange caught a glimpse of an older boy, shirtless above the waist, backing into the hallway of the apartment.