On his way east, he drove by the row house on Barry Place, the site of Calhoun Tucker’s afternoon tryst. Tucker’s Audi was gone.
chapter 10
RICK’S was a stand-alone A-frame establishment located a few miles east of North Capitol on New York Avenue, a bombed-out-looking stretch of road that was the jewel-in-the-crown introduction to Washington, D.C., for many first-time visitors who traveled into the city by car.
The building now holding Rick’s had originally been built as a Roy Rogers burger house. It had mutated into its current incarnation, a combination sports bar and strip joint for working stiffs, when the Roy’s chain went the way of corded telephones.
The conversion had been simple. The new owners had gutted the fast-food interior, keeping only a portion of the kitchen and the bathroom plumbing, and hung some Redskins, Wizards, and Orioles memorabilia on the walls. The omission of Washington Capitals pennants was intentional, as hockey was generally not a sport that interested blacks. The final touch was to brick up the windows that had once wrapped around three sides of the structure. Bricked windows generally meant one of three things: arson victim, gay bar, or strip joint. Once the word got around on which kind of place Rick’s was, the owners didn’t even bother to hang a sign out front.
Rick’s had its own parking lot, an inheritance from the Roy’s lease. A couple of locals had been shot in this parking lot in the past year, but pre-sundown and in the early evening hours, before the liquor turned peaceful men brave, then violent, the place was generally safe.
Strange pulled his Caprice alongside Quinn’s blue Chevelle, parked in an empty corner of the lot. Quinn got out of his car as Strange stepped out of his. They met and shook hands. Quinn made a show of sniffing the air.
“Damn, Derek. You smell kinda, I don’t know, sweet. Is that perfume?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man.”
It was the lotion that girl had rubbed on him back in Chinatown. Strange knew that Quinn was remarking on it, in his own stupid way.
They walked toward Rick’s.
Strange nodded at the JanSport hanging off Quinn’s shoulder. “What, we goin’ mountain climbing now? Thought we were just gonna have a beer or two.”
“My briefcase.”
“You been waitin’ on me long?”
“Not too long,” said Quinn.
“You coulda gone inside,” said Strange, giving Quinn a long look. “I bet I would have spotted you right quick.”
“I’d be the one on the bottom of the pile.”
“With the red opening in his neck, stretchin’ from one ear to the other.”
“Not too many white guys in this place, huh?”
“Seeing a white guy at Rick’s be like spottin’ a brother at a Springsteen concert.”
“I figured I’d just wait for you to escort me in.”
“No need to tempt fate. It’s what I been telling you the past two years. You’re learning, man.”
“I’m trying,” said Quinn.
They went into Rick’s. Smoke hovered in the dim lights. The place was half filled, just easing into happy hour. A bar ran along one wall where the order counter for Roy’s had been, and beyond it was a series of doors. Guys sat at the stick, watching the nostalgia sports channel, Packers uniforms dancing in a flurry of snow, “Spill the Wine” playing on the stereo throughout the house. In two corners, women danced in thongs, nothing else, for groups of men seated at tables. Waitresses wearing short shorts and lacy tops were servicing the tables. Big men with big shoulders and no headsets were stationed around the room.
Floor patrons fish-eyed Strange and Quinn as they stepped up to the bar. Those seated at the bar barely noticed their presence, as their eyes were glued to the television set mounted on the wall.
Strange nodded up at the set. “You want to get a man’s attention, put on any Green Bay game where it got played in the snow. Guy’ll sit there like a glassy-eyed old dog, watchin’ it.”
“It’s like when they run The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on TNT.”
“You mean, like, every week?”
“Tell me the truth; if you’re scanning the channels with the remote and you see Eastwood, or Eli Wallach as Tuco—”
“‘Otherwise known as the Rat.’”
“Right,” said Quinn. “So, when you recognize that movie, have you ever been able to scan past it? I mean, you always sit there and watch the rest of the film, don’t you?”
“The Wild Bunch is like that, too,” said Strange. “How many times you figure you’ve seen that one?”
Quinn pumped out two short strokes with his fist. “With my pants on, or with them around my ankles?”
Strange chuckled as the bartender, a young guy with a hard face, arrived before them. “What can I get y’all?”
“I’ll take a Double R Bar burger and a saddle fulla fries,” said Quinn, but the bartender didn’t smile.
“Heineken for me,” said Strange.
“Bud,” said Quinn.
“In bottles,” said Strange. “And we’re gonna need a receipt.”
The tender returned with their beers. Quinn paid him and dropped a heavy tip on the bar, placing his hand over the cash. “Which one of the girls is Eve?”
“That’s her right there,” said the bartender, chinning in the direction of a big-boned dancer working one of the corners of the room.
“When does she stop?”
“They work half hours.”
“Any idea how long she’s been at it?”
“’Bout ten years, from the looks of her.”
“I meant tonight.”
“Ain’t like I been clockin’ her.”
“Right,” said Quinn. He took his hand off the money, and the bartender snatched it without a word. He had never once looked Quinn in the eye.
Strange saw two men get up from their table near Eve’s corner. He folded the bar receipt, put it in his breast pocket, and said to Quinn, “There we go, that’s us right there.”
They crossed the floor, one of the stack-shouldered bouncers staring hard at Quinn as they passed. “Sweet Sticky Thing” came forward from the house system. Quinn and Strange had a seat at the deuce. Strange leaned forward and tapped his beer bottle against Quinn’s.
“Relax,” said Strange.
“I get tired of it, is all.”
“You expect all the brothers to show you love, huh?”
“Just respect,” said Quinn.
They drank off some of their beers and watched the work of the woman the bartender had identified as Eve. She was squatting, her back to a group of men, her palms resting atop her thighs, working the muscles in her lower back. Her huge ass jiggled rapidly, seemingly disconnected from the rest of her. It moved wildly before the men.
“Someone ought to give that a name,” said Strange.
“She does have a nickname: All-Ass Eve.”
“Bet it didn’t take long to come up with it.”
“You like it like that?”
“Is seven up?”
“She doesn’t hold a candle to Janine.”
“That’s what I know. You don’t have to tell me, man.” Strange smiled and pointed to one of the speakers suspended from the ceiling by wires. “Listen to this right here. The third verse is comin’ up.”
“So?”
“The horn charts behind this verse are beautiful, man. The Ohio Players never did get much credit for the complexity in their shit.”
“That’s nice,” said Quinn. “You know, Janine was askin’ where you were when I was back in the office.”
“You tell her I was in Chinatown?”
“I don’t like lying to her.” Quinn’s eyes cut off Strange’s stare. “No, I didn’t say where you were.”
Strange had a sip of beer. “You met with Sue Tracy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you think?”
“She’s a pro. She’s nice.”