“Another shooting today, this one over in Kingman Park. Two young brothers got smoked in a market. Triggerman left the proprietors alone. Sounds like a gang hit. Add them to those kids last night and half a dozen others around town, and it looks like we’re about to set some kind of record here in D.C. Man on the radio said they’re callin’ this the ‘Red Weekend’ and shit.”
The men were silent as Adamson removed his glasses and steamed the lenses with his breath. He rubbed them clean on the lapel of his jacket. He fitted the glasses back on the bridge of his nose.
“Marcus,” said Adamson, turning to Clay. “Let’s talk about your problem.”
“They’ll be down here soon, I reckon,” said Clay. “We best get it together, figure out what we’re gonna do.”
Night had come quickly; its chill and darkness had emptied the Sunday evening streets. There was little activity on Fairmont, just a couple of hard cases hanging out up around 14th. Kevin Murphy killed the Trans Am’s engine, lifted a gym bag off the passenger seat, and set it in his lap. He pulled one stack of bills from the bag and slipped it under his seat. He got out of the car with the gym bag in his hand.
Murphy took the walkway up to the Taylor row house and rang the bell.
Lula Taylor opened the door and stood in its frame. A burning cigarette hung from the side of her mouth, her eyes squinting against the smoke curling upward, curtaining her face. Her fingers cradled a half-gone pack of Viceroys. Up one step, she cleared Murphy’s head by a quarter foot.
“Yes?”
“Kevin Murphy. The police officer who brought Anthony home yesterday.”
“And again today. I remember. Took me a minute, you bein’ out of uniform.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Murphy glanced behind him at the quiet street.
“Can’t ask you in,” said Lula, removing her cigarette from her mouth and tapping ash out onto the stoop. “And I don’t want to disturb Anthony. He’s up in his bedroom doin’ his mathematics. You must know how hard it is to get that boy started on his homework. Don’t need to be interruptin’ him now.”
“Didn’t come here to see Anthony, Mrs. Taylor.”
She looked him over. “What kind of business could you have with me?”
Murphy held the gym bag out. “Came here to give you this.”
She nodded at the bag. “What’s in it?”
“Damn near close to fifteen thousand dollars.”
Her lips twitched involuntarily, causing the beetle mole lodged beside her nose to notch up a quarter inch. She looked past him, trying hard to appear disinterested, and dragged on her cigarette.
“Lot of money,” she said, smoke spigoting from her flared nostrils.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s unclean, I expect.”
“That’s right. Drug money, you want it plain. Much bad as it does, I thought it might be time to put it to some good.”
She looked past Murphy. “What would you have me do with it, Officer Murphy?”
“Use it to get Anthony out of here, for starters. Right away. Send him down to the country, where it’s safe. To be with his mother and sisters, where he belongs.”
Lula snapped ash off her Viceroy and studied the night. “What, just pull him out of school in the middle of the year?”
“The Social Services people down there, they’d work it out. He can start fresh in school in the fall. Ain’t gonna hurt nothin’, right? Let him breathe fresh air for a while, play in the woods, make new friends. Take walks at night without fear.”
Lula closed her eyes, imagining it. “You make it sound nice.”
“Has to be better than this.” Murphy shifted his feet. “Mrs. Taylor?”
“What?”
“You did the best you could. You brought him to the point where he is, and he’s a fine young man.”
“Thank you. I do love that boy.”
“But the streets are stronger than you. And it’s only gonna get a whole lot worse in this town. You understand that? For the good of Anthony, you’ve got to let him go.”
Lula breathed deeply, her ample chest rising and falling. “Fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Wouldn’t object if you took a small piece of it, to make things easier for yourself.”
“My baby girl could use all of it. And I believe she’d use it for her children now.”
She hit her cigarette and dropped it on the concrete, where she killed the butt with the sole of her shoe. She looked at Murphy and nodded one time. He handed her the bag.
“Tomorrow morning,” said Murphy, “you put him on one of those Greyhound buses. The double-decker kind with the green-tinted windows. A window seat, too. Make sure he gets that.”
Lula Taylor wiped a tear that had threatened to fall. “All this money, I could fly him down there, first class, still have plenty left over.”
“Put him on a bus,” said Murphy, squeezing her hand.
He turned and headed toward his car.
“Officer Murphy!” shouted Lula Taylor.
But Murphy kept walking. He got into his Pontiac and drove away, not glancing back at the light in Anthony Taylor’s room.
Richard Tutt thumbed hollow-point rounds into a magazine, palmed the magazine into the butt of his Government Model .45. He turned the gun in the light, admiring the Colt insignia set in the walnut stock. Beautiful weapon. Some preferred the Lightweight Commander, which came in at twenty-seven ounces against the Government’s thirty-eight. But Tutt liked the heft of this gun.
He slipped the automatic in his holster, clipped to the belt line of his acid-washed jeans.
Tutt lifted his throw-down piece off the table, an F.I.E. six-shot .25 he had taken off some spade on 14th and T. Rughead had said, “You take care of my Astra Cub, now,” his face smashed up against the squad car window as Tutt patted him down. Had the pistol tucked in his drawers, right up alongside his snake. Fuckin’ niggers and their guns.
The .25, it fit nicely into the side pocket of Tutt’s Members Only jacket. He dropped it there and checked himself in the mirror. He looked fine.
The .45 held seven. That and the six-shot made thirteen. Murphy would post with his .357s, adding twelve. You could bury a few bootheads real easy with twenty-five rounds. Surprising them would be the key. But, Christ, you could fight a fuckin’ war with twenty-five.
Tutt picked up the phone and dialed Murphy’s house. He was surprised to see his hand shake. He’d never killed anyone, but in a strange way he felt he’d been waiting to all his life. Anyway, it would be a relief when it was done. No other way out of this one — a clean break and then move on. He could use a beer or something, but not yet. He’d celebrate later with Murph.
“Hello,” said Wanda Murphy on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Wanda, it’s Richard.”
“Richard, how are you?”
Tutt tapped the toe of his Dan Post boot on the floor. He wasn’t up for small talk with Wack-Job Wanda tonight.
“Kevin in?”
“He just walked through the door,” she said in that too-happy, sing-song way of hers. “Let me get him for you.”
Tutt heard conversation and footsteps. Murphy came on the line.
“Tutt.”
“Murph. Been out?”
“Got the money, Tutt. Got Tyrell’s twenty-five.”
“Goddamn, boy! How the fuck—”
“Eddie Golden hipped me to it, back at the house.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wanted to make sure. But I’ve got it. Got it right here. Was thinkin’ we’d take it to Tyrell tonight. Make a trade for Golden.”
Tutt said, “But we’re not really gonna make a trade, are we Kev?”