“I will.” Quinn gave the man his change and a receipt. “Thanks a lot. And take it easy, hear?”
“You, too.”
Quinn figured this guy had a wife, kids, a good job. You’d pass him on the street and think he was your average square. But one thing you learned working here was that just about everyone had something worthwhile to say if you took the time to listen. Everyone was more interesting when you got to know them a little than they initially appeared to be. That was the other thing he liked about working in a place like this. The conversations you got into and the people you met. Of course, he had met plenty of people on a daily basis in his former profession. But it almost always started from an adversarial place when you met them as a cop.
Quinn read some more of his novel. A little while later, Quinn watched Sue Tracy cross Bonifant Street on foot. She was wearing her post-punk utilitarian gear and had a day pack slung over her shoulder. Quinn’s heart actually skipped, watching her walk. He was imagining her naked atop his sheets.
The small bell over the door rang as she walked in. Quinn let his feet drop off the counter, but he didn’t get up out of his seat.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“New in town?”
“I missed you.”
“I’ve been missing you, too.”
“Got on the Metro and walked up from the station. Can you get away?”
“I can probably sneak out, sure.”
“It’s a beautiful day.”
“I’ve got my car here. We can, I don’t know, go for a ride.”
Tracy looked down at the book in Quinn’s hand. “What’s that, a western?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“What’s with you and your partner? Strange went on about some scene from The Magnificent Seven.”
“That would be the one with Coburn shooting the rider instead of the horse.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He does go back to that one a lot.”
Lewis came forward from the back of the shop. His black hair was long, greasy, and tangled, and his thick glasses had surgical tape holding one stem to the frame. Yellow perspiration marks stained the armpits of his white shirt.
“Lewis, meet my friend, Sue Tracy.”
“My pleasure,” said Lewis. Tracy and Lewis shook hands.
“I’m gonna punch out for the day, Lewis. That okay by you?”
Lewis blinked hard behind the lenses of his glasses. “Fine.”
Quinn gathered his things, marking the Leonard paperback off in the store’s inventory notebook before he came around the counter.
“This Johnny Winter?” said Tracy.
“How’d you know that?”
“Older brothers. I had one played this till the grooves wore out on the vinyl.”
“That’s Rick Derringer on second lead right here.”
“Who?”
“You’re too young.”
They left the shop and walked up Bonifant.
“Lewis gonna be all right back there, all by himself?” said Tracy.
“He’s the best employee Syreeta’s got. A little lonely, though. Any suggestions?”
Tracy laced her fingers through Quinn’s. “I’m spoken for.”
“Maybe your partner, then.”
“He’s not Karen’s type.”
“What type is that?”
“The type who runs a comb through his hair every so often. The type who showers.”
“Picky,” said Quinn.
They stopped at his car, parked in the bank lot.
“Sweet,” said Tracy. Quinn had recently waxed the body, scrubbed the Cragar mags with Wheel-Brite and wet-blacked the rubber. The Chevelle’s clean lines gleamed in the sun.
“You like, huh?”
Tracy nodded. “You got the Flowmasters on there, huh?”
“I bought it like that off the lot.”
“What’s under the hood, a three ninety-six?”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
“My older brothers.”
“C’mon, get in.”
She got into the passenger side. Quinn saw her admiring the shifter, a four-speed Hurst.
“You want to drive?”
“Could I?”
“I knew there was something else I liked about you. Aside from you being a natural blonde, I mean.”
“What can I say? I like fast cars.”
“Bad-ass,” said Quinn.
Tracy drove down into Rock Creek Park. They parked near a bridle trail on the west side of the creek and took the path up a rise and all the way to the old mill. On the walk back they sat on some boulders in the middle of the creek. Quinn took his shirt off, and Tracy removed her socks and shoes. She let her feet dangle in the cool water. They talked about their pasts and kissed in the sun.
Late in the afternoon they went back to Quinn’s apartment and made love. They showered and re-dressed and had dinner at Vicino’s, a small Italian restaurant Quinn liked up on Sligo Avenue. Quinn had the calimari over linguini, and Tracy had the seafood platter, and they washed it down with a carafe of the house red. They stopped for another bottle of red on the way back to Quinn’s place and drank it while listening to music and making out on his couch. They fucked like teenagers in his room, and afterward they lay in bed, Tracy smoking and talking, Quinn listening with a natural smile on his face.
The day had been a good one. The kids had won their game, and in his mind Quinn could still see the look of pride on their faces as they had run off the field. Then Sue Tracy had surprised him and stopped by the shop.
Quinn looked at his hands and saw that they were totally relaxed on the sheets. He hadn’t been thinking of the streets or if anyone had looked at him the wrong way or anything else but Sue, his girlfriend, lying beside him. He hadn’t felt this comfortable with a woman for some time.
STRANGE dropped off Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder, then dropped Lionel at Janine’s house uptown.
“You comin’ for dinner tonight?” said Lionel, before getting out of the car.
“I haven’t spoken to your mother about it,” said Strange.
“My mom wants you to come over, I know. Saw her marinating some kind of roast this morning before you picked me up.”
“Maybe I’ll see you, then.”
“Whateva,” said Lionel, turning and going up the sidewalk toward his house.
Strange watched the boy and his loping walk.
Boy’s still got that way of stepping. Had that walk since I been knowing him, back when he wasn’t nothing much more than a kid. Thinks he’s a man, but he’s still a boy inside.
He grinned without thinking, watching him, and waited until Lionel got inside the house before driving away.
Strange picked up the Calhoun Tucker photos from the Safeway over on Piney Branch. Safeway was cheap and they did a good-enough job on the processing. It took a little longer when you used them, but he wasn’t in any hurry on this particular job.
Back in his office, he inspected the photographs. The woman in the doorway, Tucker’s somethin’ on the side, was plain as day in the shot, letting him into her crib. Janine had gotten her name from the crisscross program, based on her street address. It was in the file he was building on Tucker, the one he was preparing for his friend George Hastings. Strange found the file and slipped the photographs inside it. He was just about done with the background check. He’d need to report on all this to George. Soon, thought Strange, I will do this soon. He wondered what was stopping him from getting George on the phone right now. Strange turned this over in his mind as he locked the file cabinet, then his office door.
Walking through the outer office, he noticed his reflection in the mirror nailed to the post, and stopped to study himself. Damn if his natural wasn’t nearly all gray. The years just . . . they just went. Strange was bone tired and hungry. He thought about having a nice meal, maybe some Chinese. And a hot shower, too; that would do him right.