'Alicia?'
'Joint is tight. She tight too.'
It was the one where the coffee shop waitress at '39th and Lenox' calls up a customer, this dude she's been noticing, and leaves him a message on his answering machine, right in the middle of the song. She tells him how she's been slipping milk and cream into his hot chocolate, even though the manager wouldn't like her doing it, because she, the waitress, finds him 'sweet.' Rico would never listen to this kind of bitch music on his own, but Melvin was an old head who was into that old-type thing. Rico didn't ask him to turn it off.
'I'd give that girl a whole bucket of cream,' said Miller, who felt he had to say something.
Lee swigged from a bottle of malt liquor he had in a paper bag and wiped his chin. 'They turnin' up there.'
'I got eyes.'
'They turnin', is all I'm sayin'.'
Miller and Lee had followed DeEric Green and the Butler boy in the black Escalade through Petworth and into Park View. It was early in the evening, not yet close to dark. The sun was low and throwing gold on the street. People were walking on Georgia, going in and out of markets, Laundromats, liquor stores, check-cashing operations, and bars, their shadows long on the sidewalks. The activity would pick up soon. On the side streets both east and west of Georgia, open-air drug sales would intensify as the night progressed.
The Escalade turned left onto Otis and went up its grade. It cut a right on 6th. Rico Miller kept his distance, going slowly up Otis and pulling over to the curb before the turn. He didn't want to get burned, and from where he'd parked, he could see just fine down 6th. Also, he was being mindful of the territory into which he'd crossed.
This was Nigel Johnson's turf, from Otis to Park Road. Deacon Taylor had the south section of the neighborhood, from Lamont through Kenyon, down to Irving. They shared Morton, and the Park Morton Section Eights. What got confusing sometimes, what caused trouble, was some of those corners in between.
Neither Nigel nor Deacon worked the area west of Georgia Avenue anymore. Way the Spanish were acting back in Columbia Heights, with their gangs, La Raza and especially that STC mob, just goin' wild back in there, there wasn't any upside to it anymore.
Miller cut the engine. He and Lee watched DeEric Green and Michael Butler get out of the Escalade. Green had a shoe box in his hand and Butler had a bag.
'What they doin'?' said Miller.
'That's where Nigel's mother stay at,' said Lee. 'Most likely, they be droppin' off the count.'
'Lotta cash to go to his moms.'
'She get some every day. She be bankin' it for Nigel.'
'Both of them carryin' money?'
'The bag the kid be carryin'? I expect he got some food in that motherfucker. 'Cause you know that fat-ass heifer do like to eat.'
Miller stared at the house. 'We gonna brace 'em when they come out?'
'Not in front of Nigel's mother's place,' said Lee. There were some things you did not do.
They sat there for a while, Rico Miller enjoying his high, fingering the knife in his pocket as violent images moved like swift dark clouds behind his eyes. Melvin Lee drank methodically, staring at the run-down stretch of 6th. His mind was on simpler things.
'I fucked a girl on that street,' said Lee, seeing her in his head.
'Which house?' said Miller.
'I'm tellin' you, I fucked her on the street. We was walkin' back from the Black Hole one night, and she couldn't wait. I bottomed her ass right there on the asphalt.'
'What her name was?'
'What difference does that make?'
'Make the story better,' said Miller, 'if you know her name.'
'How am I supposed to remember her name, all the girls I done had?' Lee grinned. 'I can tell you one thing about her, though.'
'What?'
'She looked like your little sister.'
'Hmm.'
'Matter of fact,' said Lee, getting into it now, 'it might could have been your sister. Dark as it was that night, I couldn't tell.'
'Did she scream?'
'Like I was murderin' it, son.'
'Then it wasn't my sister.'
'Why you say that?'
'My sister don't scream when you fuck her,' said Miller.
'That's 'cause you ain't doin' it right,' said Lee. Only Lee laughed.
Not much later, DeEric Green and Michael Butler came out of the row house and got into the Escalade. When they pulled off the curb, Rico Miller fired up the BMW and followed the Cadillac north, back to NJ Enterprises, Nigel Johnson's storefront on Georgia Avenue.
CHAPTER 11
Lorenzo Brown went through his voice mail and got his paperwork up to date before clocking out of the office. He said good night to Mark, Irena, and his other coworkers, and patted the heads and stroked the bellies of his favorite animals, those who ran free and those caged in the basement kennel. Many were not pleased to be in cages, but all were better off than they were before they had been impounded. The lucky ones would be adopted and get second lives in good homes.
Out on the sidewalk, Lorenzo went two doors down to the spay clinic to check on Queen, the old lady's cat from over near Kennedy Street. The calico was shaking in the back of her cage.
'You all right,' said Lorenzo, putting his index finger through the links. Queen edged forward and rubbed her face against his skin. 'You gonna feel different, is all, when this is done. More calm.'
The Humane employees parked their work trucks and personal cars on Floral Place, a residential court behind the office alley, accessible through a break in a narrow stand of trash trees and brush. Parking stickers for that particular zone were available to residents only, so the employees were constantly dodging tickets from traffic control. The court folks were cool; the residents back there did not complain, knowing they could call on the dog people and get a quick response if they had a problem on their street.
Lorenzo got into his Pontiac Ventura, a 1974 he had bought on the cheap from the brother of a man he'd befriended in prison. The man had tipped him to the car and given him his brother's address, over in Far Northeast. The Ventura, GM's sister car to the Chevy Nova, was a green-over-green two-door and held that strong 350 engine, highly regarded in its time, under the hood. It had been in poor but serviceable shape when Lorenzo bought it, but at eight hundred dollars the price was right. After he turned it over to his boy Joe Carver, who had always been good with cars, the vehicle was more than right. Joe had installed new belts, hoses, plugs and wires, ball joints, and shocks. He'd replaced the muffler and the dual pipes, injected Freon into the cooling system, and reupholstered the back and front bench seats. Once that was done, Lorenzo had washed and detailed the Pontiac under an oak on Otis and stepped back to admire it. The Ventura had nice, clean lines.
The Pontiac was old and needed a paint job and new chrome, but it was a runner. Young men driving drug cars, who knew only of German luxury automobiles and upscale rice burners, laughed at him at streetlights, but he got compliments occasionally from men older than he was. They called it 'that Seven-Ups car,' and when he asked them what they meant, they said, 'The movie, youngun.' If it was a movie, it was before his time, but Lorenzo said politely that he'd have to check it out someday. He'd never been one to watch movies, but it was something he was meaning to get around to. He had gotten into books in lockdown some, for the first time in his life. The prison librarian, a pale man named Ray Mitchell, had turned him on to street stories by writers like Donald Goines, Chester Himes, and this dude Gary Phillips, had his picture on the dust jackets, big man with Chinese eyes, looked like the real. So movies, yeah, maybe he would start to check out some of those. He'd like to read more books too. He sure did have time.