Right as Rain

'You take it easy now, Derek,' said O'Shea.

'All right then, Chris,' said Strange. 'You do the same.'

Quinn noticed that everywhere they went in D.C., people knew Strange.

'You ready to go to work?' said Strange, pushing his empty tray aside.

'What've you got lined up?'

'We'll hang out near Ricky Kane's house this morning. He lives with his mother out in Wheaton. If he leaves, we'll follow him, see how he fills up his day. Here.' Strange slipped a cell phone out of his jacket along with a slip of paper. 'Use this, it's Ron's. My number is on there and so is yours.'

'No two-way radios?'

'This is easier, man. And unlike a two-way, no one double-takes you these days if you're walking down the street talking on a phone.'

'Like all the other dickheads, you mean.'

'Uh-huh. You got yourself a car, right?'

Quinn nodded. 'Think you're gonna like it, too.'

Out in the lot, Strange laughed when he saw the Super Sport Chevelle with the racing wheels.

'Somethin' wrong?' said Quinn.

'It is pretty.'

'What, then?'

'You youngbloods, always got to be drivin' something says, Look at me. Ron Lattimer's the same way.'

'That Caprice you got looks exactly like a police vehicle. We got less chance of gettin' burned in mine than in yours.'

'Maybe you're right. Anyway, we'll take both of 'em, see how things shake out.'

Ricky Kane's mother owned a small house, brick based with siding, off Viers Mill Road on a street of houses just like it. The builder who'd done the community in the 1960s had showed little ambition and less imagination. From the activity he'd observed in the last hour or so, Strange could see that the residents here were what was left of the original middle-class whites and America's new working-class immigrants: Spanish, Ethiopian, Pakistani, and Korean.

Strange phoned Quinn, who was parked down the street at the next corner.

'You still awake?'

'I got coffee in a thermos,' said Quinn.

'Bet you gotta pee, too.'

'Now that you mention it.'

'You see our boy when he came out?'

'I saw him.'

'Another little punk with a big dog.'

Kane had walked his tan pit bull halfway down the block an hour earlier while Strange took photographs with his long-lensed AE-1. Kane, medium height, blond, and thin, was wearing a thermal vest under a parka, a knit watch cap, and oversized jeans worn low on his hips. He had a hint of a modified goatee on his bony face.

'Tryin' to be an honorary black man,' said Strange.

'He looks like every other white kid I see in the suburbs these days.'

'Yeah, till they figure out what it means to be a black man in America for real.'

'But this guy's got to be close to my age.'

'Uh-huh. He sure doesn't look like the same guy was on the TV interviews, does he?'

'Check out that car of his, too. Kane got rid of that shit-wagon Toyota.' There was a new red Prelude with shiny rims and a high spoiler sitting in the driveway of Kane's house.

'I see it. He did get a settlement.'

'Yeah. That could be it.'

Quinn took a sip of coffee from the thermos. 'I tell you how much we enjoyed meeting Janine the other night?'

'She's cool. Hell of an office manager, too. You got yourself a fine young lady there as well.'

'I know it,' said Quinn.

'All right, here comes our boy.'

Kane was coming out of the house with a gym bag in his hand. He opened the trunk of the Prelude and dropped the gym bag in, closing the lid and locking it.

'Goin' to work out,' said Quinn. 'You think?'

'Maybe.'

'I'll go first,' said Quinn.

'Yeah,' said Strange. 'Wouldn't want him to burn me or nothin' like that.'

Strange and Quinn circled the block while Kane went into a 7-Eleven for coffee and smokes, then picked him up again as he headed south into D.C. They hung back several car lengths, as Kane's red car was easy to track. He took 13th Street all the way downtown, cutting over to 14th and pulling into a Carr Park garage down past F.

'Should I follow him into the garage?' asked Quinn.

'Park on the street,' said Strange into the phone. 'Park illegal if you have to; I'll pay the ticket.'

Quinn curbed the Chevelle. Strange did the same to the Caprice, a half block south.

'What now?' said Quinn.

'Elevators in that garage go up into that building to the left of it. Unless he's got business in that building – and I don't think he does – he'll be coming out those double glass doors right there in about three or four minutes.'

'Why don't you think he's going up into the building?'

"Cause he's goin' to that restaurant, the Purple Cactus, across the street.'

'Want me to follow him?'

'He knows what you look like, but not since you grew that lion's head of hair you got. So go ahead. You got shades?'

'Sure.'

'Wear 'em. Only kind of disguise you'll ever need without overdoin' it. And when you're following a man, use the city, Terry.'

'Explain.'

'Keep the subject's image in your mind all the time, but indirectly. Watch where he's goin' in the reflection of the plate glass windows, in the car windows, in the metal of the cars themselves. Lose yourself in the crowd.'

'There he is.'

'Go on.'

Quinn got out of the car and loitered near the building. Kane emerged from the building's glass doors. Strange watched Quinn follow, staying back in the moderate, late-morning throng moving along the sidewalk. With his shades and the hair, Quinn looked more like a rocker with shoulders than he did a cop. Kane crossed the street and entered the Purple Cactus.

Strange phoned Quinn. 'Go on in. They'll be settin' up for lunch; just tell 'em you're thinking of bringing a date there or somethin' and you're checking the place out. Try and see what he's doin' in there.'

'Don't let Kane recognize me, right?'

'Funny.'

Quinn came out of the Purple Cactus five minutes later and crossed the street. He got into the Chevelle and phoned Strange.

'He was talking to a couple of the waiters and a bartender downstairs. Old home week, I guess. He's coming out now.'

When Kane pulled the Prelude out of the garage and onto 14th Street, Strange said, 'Let's roll.'

Kane parked four blocks north in another garage. Strange followed him on foot this time, making a bet to himself that he knew where Kane was headed.

Kane walked into Sea D.C., the fancy seafood dining room and bar at the corner of 14th and K. The restaurant was fronted in glass, so Strange didn't need to risk going inside. Kane was talking to a man behind the bar, which was elevated on a kind of platform above the rest of the dining room.

Back in the car, Strange said into the phone, 'He's making the rounds.'

'What is he, a food broker?'

'He sellin' something, that's a bet. Usually, you see a guy hangin' around with restaurant employees like that, it means he's making book.'

'Or taking orders for something else.'

'I heard that. Here he comes, man. Get ready to move.' Strange pushed the 'end' button on the cell phone. He didn't tell Quinn that Sea D.C. was the last place Sondra Wilson had worked before she disappeared.

Kane drove to a velvet-rope, exclusive club over at 18th and Jefferson, where people were often refused entry for having the wrong haircut or the wrong label on their trousers. He next hit a Eurodisco on 9th, across from the old 9:30, a notorious nightspot for beret wearers and Middle Eastern trust-fund kids with coke habits. He drove to U Street and parked in front of a buppie nightclub. The pattern was the same: five minutes, in and out.

Kane drove east on Florida Avenue. Quinn and Strange followed.

Cherokee Coleman took a gold pen off his desk and tapped it on the blotter before him. 'You lookin' large, Adonis.'

Adonis Delgado, seated in front of the desk, glanced down at his crossed arms, defined beneath the blue of his uniform. He flexed a little, and the folds and wrinkles in his sleeves disappeared. 'I been workin' on it.'