Tyrell said, “Alan.”
“Yeah, Ty.” Alan Rogers leaned with his back against the front door, looked into Tyrell’s strange bottle green eyes.
“You say you didn’t get close to Junie’s car.”
“Uh-uh.”
“So you don’t know.”
“Nah. But I got the sign from Tutt. Shook his head as he walked by.”
“So he was tryin’ to say—”
“That there wasn’t a got-damn thing in the car.”
“Damn.”
“By now he done checked out the whole car, though, Tyrell. By now he’ll know for sure. You say he’s comin’ out?”
“Should be out here real soon.” Tyrell looked through the bay window to the street. A set of headlights, with another set behind it, was coming down the gravel road. “That would be them now.”
Short Man Monroe stood out of his chair. “You want my opinion, Tyrell, we don’t need no mothafuckin’ po-lice around.”
“Relax, Short Man. We do need them. They’re gonna help us carve out our territory down there, and protect it once we do have it carved out.”
“Can’t stomach that Tutt.”
“Relax.”
“Like to bust a cap in his fat head, too.”
“Just relax.”
Alan Rogers shook his head. “Junie, man. I can’t believe that young nigga’s dead.”
Tyrell looked at his manicured nails. “I told that boy not to drive so fast.”
Richard Tutt stepped out of his Bronco. Kevin Murphy closed the door of his Trans Am, met Tutt in the yard. They moved toward the house, walking between the black 300 and Tyrell’s black BMW 633. To the side of the house, Tutt saw Jumbo Linney’s beat-to-shit, primered ’82 Supra, the two-tone model that made Spics catch wood.
Tutt wore street clothes, a Members Only jacket over a denim shirt worn out, his .45 tucked beneath the band of his acid-washed jeans. Murphy noticed that Tutt had on those gray ostrich-skin Dan Post boots with the three-inch heels, the ones Tutt thought were so fly. Tutt’s flattop was gelled, shaved back and sides, no burns, the back of his neck rolled and pink as a baby’s ass.
“Tyrell’s gonna be all over it tonight,” said Tutt.
“Heard that,” said Murphy.
“You let me do the talkin’, partner.”
“You got it, King.”
They had come out East Capitol, crossed the Whitney M. Young Bridge over the Anacostia River into P.G. County, taken Central Avenue for a couple of miles through Seat Pleasant and on into a spare mix of residential and commercial structures, gas stations, half-rented strip shopping centers, and the occasional fast food outlet. Back behind one of those strip centers, where only a TV repair shop and a dry cleaner remained in business, was a rocky field split by the access road. The road continued another quarter mile, went to gravel, ended at an old bungalow backed up to a shallow woods of maple and oak. With the strip center forming a one-story concrete barrier and the stand of trees semicircling the right side of the house, the bungalow could not be seen from 214.
About a year back, a Capitol Heights friend had told Tyrell about the For Rent sign out on the highway. Tyrell liked the idea of being out of the city, and when he saw the house, he especially liked how it was kind of tucked back against the woods. He had this coke-whore girlfriend, white freak, a real estate broker named Kerry King. For the free blow he was laying on her and all that good dick she was getting, Kerry had been more than happy to put her name on the lease.
Tutt and Murphy stepped up onto the bungalow’s porch. Tutt knocked, and Alan Rogers opened the scarred oak door and stepped aside. Tutt and Murphy entered the house.
“You don’t mind,” said Tyrell, “if I don’t get up.”
“Gentlemen,” said Tutt, stepping into the room with his stiff weight lifter’s gait, his beefy arms pumping him forward, the arms way out at his side.
Murphy scoped the house. Two large rooms, once used as living and dining areas. A stereo, a wide-screen, and a couch and table arrangement where the dining area had been. Jumbo Linney and Chink Bennet sat on the leather couch, laughing and getting high. They had barely acknowledged the cops’ entrance. Beyond the couch was an open entrance to a kitchen. The living room contained Tyrell’s reclining chair, several folding chairs, a round oak table, and a fireplace, which Tyrell liked to keep live. Murphy knew the layout of the rest of the house: a hallway to the right of the dining area, a bathroom splitting two small bedrooms, a stairwell leading up to an unfinished attic. Murphy and his wife, Wanda, lived in a bungalow just like this one, on 4th and Whittier on the D.C. side of Takoma Park.
Alan Rogers closed the door, went over to the table where Monroe sat, found himself a chair. Kevin Murphy positioned himself behind Tutt, leaned against the door frame, folded his arms. Tutt stood before Tyrell. None of them had made a move to shake hands. That they wouldn’t was understood.
“So,” said Tyrell.
“Yeah,” said Tutt. “Lotta action today.”
Tutt smiled cordially, kept smiling as he had a quick look around the place. Mutt and Jeff were back on the couch, cooking their heads on some ragweed, listening to some kind of mindless rap. Tutt could see a gun, looked like a nine, sitting on the table in front of them amidst the clutter of someone’s old lunch. To his right, Tyrell’s enforcer, Short Man Monroe, sat at the round table, a toothpick in his mouth, polishing one of his two Glocks with a lambskin cloth. Tutt could have laughed out loud: It would be just like a nigger to polish a plastic gun. The Rogers kid — Tutt made him as soft — had taken a seat at the table next to Monroe. On the table: an LED readout scale, a mirror with a couple of grams of coke heaped on top, a blade lying next to the coke, an automatic money-counting machine, a brown paper bag holding cash or bricks. A Mossberg pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun leaned barrel up against the bricks above the hearth. With all the McDonald’s wrappers, empty chip bags, and half-drunk Big Gulps sitting around, Tutt wondered if any of these geniuses would be able to find his hardware if anything went down.
“About today,” said Tyrell.
“You mean Junie,” said Tutt.
“Uh-huh.”
“Junie’s car was empty.”
“No pillowcase. No twenty-five grand.”
“Nothin’.”
“I saw him put it in the car myself before he left to make the buy.”
“Maybe Junie got greedy, stashed the bundle somewhere before the accident.”
“I don’t think so.”
Short Man raised his head. “Junie wasn’t smart enough to plan nothin’ like that.”
“Or stupid enough,” said Tyrell, “to try and take me off.”
“I don’t know what happened to it,” said Tutt.
“No?”
Tutt motioned toward Rogers and Monroe. “They were there. Maybe you ought to ask your boys.”
Short Man stopped polishing his gun. He stared at the floor, rearranged the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.
“I’ll ask them what I want to ask them,” said Tyrell. “Right now I’m asking you.”
“Me and Murphy,” said Tutt, “one way or another, we’re gonna find out what happened to your money, Tyrell.”
Tyrell stared at Murphy. Murphy held the stare. “That’s what I’m payin’ you two for. Right, Officer Murphy?”
Tutt cleared his throat. “Okay. So we’ll start with some of those neighborhood rummies down there, see what we can dig up.”
“Yo, Tutt,” said Alan Rogers. “You might want to talk with that kid, too.”