“You done?” said Oliver.
“Yeah.”
“You know, what you did tonight ain’t gonna change a thing in the end. Those two are gonna die. I’ll make sure of that.”
“But not tonight. Not by my setup. Not in front of that little boy you got workin’ for you.”
“Yeah, okay. We been all over that already.”
“I just want that boy to have some kind of chance.”
“So you said. But what would you have done if I had said no?”
“I was counting on reaching your human side. You proved to me that you have one. Thank you for hearin’ me out.”
Oliver nodded. “Boy’s name is Robert Gray. You think I been ruinin’ him, huh?”
“Let’s just say that I don’t see him hookin’ up with your enterprise as an opportunity. You and me, we got a difference of opinion on that.”
“Strange, you ought to see what kind of conditions he was livin’ in when I pulled him out, down there in Stanton Terrace. Wasn’t nobody doin’ a goddamn thing for him then.”
Strange leaned back and scratched his temple. “This Robert, he play football?”
“What’s that?”
“Can he play?”
“Boy can jook. He can hit, too.” Oliver grinned, looking Strange over. “You’re somethin’, man. What, you tryin’ to save the whole world all at once?”
“Not the whole world, no.”
“You know, wasn’t just my human side convinced me to let those boys walk out of here.”
“What was it, then?”
“I’m gonna need you someday, Strange. I had one of those, what do you call that, premonitions. Usually, when I get those kinds of feelings, I’m right.” Oliver pointed a finger at Strange. “You owe me for what I did for you tonight.”
I owe you for more than that, thought Strange.
But he just said, “I do.”
Strange drove back to the city in silence. Coming up Georgia Avenue, he tried to reach Quinn again on his cell but got a recording. He passed Buchanan Street and kept driving north, turning right on Quintana and parking the Cadillac in front of Janine’s. She let him into her house and told him to have a seat on the living room couch. She joined him a few minutes later with a cold Heineken and a couple of glasses. The two of them talked into the night.
chapter 30
QUINN had been parked along the curb for half an hour when Worldwide Wilson’s 400SE came rolling down the street. Quinn watched the Mercedes glide up in his rearview and he tucked his chin in and turned his head a little as it passed. The Mercedes double-parked, flashers on, as the driver’s-side window came down. A woman Quinn recognized, the black whore who’d asked him for a date the night of the snatch, leaned into the frame. A minute or so went by, and Wilson stepped out of the car.
He wore his full-length rust-colored leather over a suit. He wore his matching brimmed hat and his alligator shoes. He walked toward his row house, and the black whore got under the wheel of his Mercedes and drove off to find a legal parking spot for her man’s car. Worldwide Wilson moved like a big cat onto the sidewalk. He went up his steps and entered his house.
Quinn ignitioned the Chevelle and drove down the street, hooking a left at the next corner, and then another quick left into the alley. He parked the car in the alley along a brick wall. His headlights illuminated several sets of eyes beneath the Dumpsters. He cut the lights and in their dying moment saw rats moving low across the stones of the alley. He killed the engine and listened to the tick of it under the hood. He counted units and found the row house, lit by a single flood suspended from the roof. He saw a light go on in the sleeper porch on the second floor.
Quinn stepped out of the car and walked fast toward the fire escape. Dim bulbs lit the third-floor hall. He could see the third-floor window, but his long sight was gone, and he could not determine if the window was ajar.
He turned off his cell, got on the fire escape, and began his ascent. He could hear music from behind the wood walls of the sleeper porch as he climbed the iron mesh steps. The music grew louder, and he was grateful for that as he went low along the porch’s curtained windows and kept going up. As he neared the third floor he could see the hall window clearly and he could see now that the window was open a crack.
He raised the sash and climbed into the hall. He could feel his sweat, and his blood pumping in his chest. The hall smelled of marijuana, tobacco, and Lysol. Behind one of the doors he heard thrusts and bedsprings, and the sounds of a man reaching his climax, and Quinn went on.
He moved down the hall, his hand sliding along the banister, and at the end of it he looked down the stairs to the second floor. The music, mostly bass, synthesizer, and scratchy guitar, was emanating from below. The music was loud and it echoed in the house. He started down the stairs. The music grew louder with each step he took.
WORLDWIDE Wilson sat on a couch covered in purple velvet, swirling ice in a glass of straight vodka, listening to “Cebu,” that bad instrumental jam ending side two of that old Commodores LP, Movin’ On. Wilson had owned the vinyl, on the Motown label, for over twenty-five years. He still had all his wax, racked up here in this finished porch, where he liked to kick it when he wasn’t at home. At his crib he listened to CDs, but here he kept his records and turntable, and Bang & Olufsen speakers, and his old tube amplifier, made by Marantz. Box had a lotta clean watts to it, the perfect vehicle for his vinyl. You just couldn’t beat the bottom sound of those records.
Wilson tapped some ash off his cigarette. He drank down some of the vodka, now that it had chilled some, and let it cool-burn the back of his throat.
Wilson loved his potato vodka. He bought that brand in the frosty white bottle, with the drawing of the bare tree on it, up there at the store on the District line. He was different from all those other brothers, felt they had to drink Courvoisier and Hennessy just because everyone else did, because the white man told you to. Shit was just poison. There was a word for it, even: carcino-somethin’. Gave you cancer, is what the word meant. And the Man pushed that bad shit into the ghetto, through billboards and bus ads and ads in Ebony and Jet, the same way they pushed death through cigarettes. Well, Wilson did like his tobacco, but the point was, he wasn’t buyin’ into all that, ’cause he was his own man all the way. His brother, who read a lot, had explained this all to him once after they’d smoked some Hawaiian at his mother’s house on Christmas Day. So he wasn’t into no con-yak. But he did love his expensive vodka. He’d gotten a taste for it overseas.
This room was nice. He’d insulated the room and put radiator heat in it for the wintertime. He had it carpeted with a remnant, hung some Africa-style prints he’d picked up at a flea market on the wall, and bought those thick curtains for the windows. The curtains gave him privacy and made him feel as if he was in his own private club. He’d brought in the furniture and even had a chandelier, had a couple of bulbs missing but it looked good, up in this motherfucker. You could bring a young country-type bitch up here, straight off the bus, and impress her in this room. Girl got a look at all this, you could turn her out quick.
Wilson put his feet up on the table and dragged on his cigarette. He looked at the windows and thought he saw some kind of shadow pass out there beyond the curtains. He had another sip of vodka, moved his head some to the sounds coming from the stereo, and finished his cigarette.
Wilson got off the couch, went to the windows, and spread the curtains. He looked out, down the fire escape, and then up to the third floor. Wasn’t nothin’ out there he could see. But he thought he’d go out to the hall for a minute, have a look out there. Never did hurt to double-check.