“Junie did like to drive fast.”
“Tyrell told him not to be drivin’ so fast when he had ’caine or money in the car. Man had twenty-five grand in a pillowcase, goin’ to make a buy, doin’ seventy down U.”
“Didn’t listen.”
“Never did have no control. Grand National and shit. Way he drived, man shoulda been drivin’ a Dodge Omni, some shit like that.”
The white cop, Tutt, came close by, shook his head slightly in Rogers’s direction. Then he walked away.
“Redneck mothafucker,” said Monroe.
“Talk about it.”
“What, he claimin’ the money ain’t in the car?”
“That’s what he’s sayin’, yeah.”
“Tyrell ain’t gonna be happy, man.”
“Could be in the trunk, you never know. Coulda burned up, too. Tutt’ll find out when the smoke clears. We’ll talk to Tutt later.”
“You talk to him. I say fuck that mothafucker, boy.”
“Yeah, I know. Come on.”
They got into the Z. Monroe saw Rogers take a last look over at the record store before he gunned it down 11th.
“Look at you,” said Monroe, laughing. “You still goin’ at that young stuff.”
“She look good, man.”
Monroe pursed his lips. “Clean, too. After you hit that shit, I’ll be right behind you.”
“She’s nice,” said Alan Rogers softly.
Monroe said, “Got a good ass to fuck, too.”
Marcus Clay stood watching the street scene unfold. He saw the familiar, aging residents who came from their two-story 11th Street row houses to see the action. He saw the beat cops who worked his district, one of whom he recognized as a brother who had come out of Cardoza a few years after him. He saw the kid who always stood on the corner at the liquor store, the winos out front. He saw the drug boys leaning against their pretty sports car, just two of the many who were driving middle-class residents out of the city, keeping them away from U, keeping them and their children from patronizing his shop. Maybe Elaine had been right: He must have been off to think that a new record store could go down here in Shaw.
Clay noticed the white beat cop, a no-neck musclehead, walk over to the drug boys and half shake his head. Clay saw his partner talking to the boy in the Raiders jacket. Clay thought about what he had seen just after the Buick had burst into flames.
Dimitri Karras returned. He had been checking on his lady friend, who stood back on the sidewalk huffing a cigarette.
“Guess the show’s about over,” said Karras.
“Yeah,” said Clay, cocking his head. “Funny thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Your girlfriend, what’s her name, Madonna?”
“Donna Morgan.”
“Her. She came with that boy drivin’ the K car, right?”
“He split. She was just wondering if he was comin’ back.”
“I don’t think he is comin’ back. Thing is, I saw him pull somethin’ out of that drug car while it was burnin’ up. Saw him put it in his car — a pillowcase or somethin’ — and take off.”
“Why do you say that’s a drug car?”
“That there’s a brand new Grand National, Dimitri. Top of the line. I got close enough to see the hands wrapped around that wheel. Looked like a kid’s hands. How you gonna figure a young black kid, sixteen, seventeen years old, gonna afford one of those?”
“Sounds like you’re makin’ a big leap, just ’cause he’s young and black.”
“All I see around here every day, it ain’t no leap. And don’t be throwin’ that ‘just ’cause he’s black’ shit up in my face. Remember who you’re talkin’ to, man.”
“Okay, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I have no idea.”
“I do. Trust me.”
“What’re you sayin’, Marcus?”
“Just...” Clay looked into Karras’s eyes. “Shit.”
“What?”
“I don’t even know why I’m talkin’ to you now. You higher than a mothafucker, man.”
“I am not.”
“Hard eyes, can’t stand in one place. Grindin’ your teeth and shit. Now you’re gonna look at me and tell me, ‘I am not.’ ”
“Marcus—”
“Look, man, I know your girl came down here to cop some blow. I know you were back in the head feeding each other’s noses. Her boyfriend took somethin’ out of a drug car, could’ve been drugs, could’ve been money, could’ve been that dead boy’s dirty laundry for all I know, and he booked. What I’m tellin’ you is, I don’t wanna know. I don’t want to know about that kind of trouble, and I damn sure don’t want you bringin’ that kind of trouble around, hear?”
“I don’t know her boyfriend. I don’t know anything about him or that car.”
“Look—”
“Okay, I hear you, Marcus.”
“I got a business to run.”
“I hear you.”
“You got the rest of the day off, man. Get her out of here and go.”
“I’m sorry, man. I’ll see you back at the apartment.”
“Good.”
Karras rubbed his chin. “Marcus?”
Clay sighed. “Ain’t no thing, man. Just go ahead.”
They shook hands. Clay watched Karras go back and talk to his coke-head girl. He wished Karras hadn’t mentioned the apartment. It was bad enough, what with his business troubles, trying to keep his head up, that Elaine had thrown him out of their own house. That he was separated from her and Marcus Jr., their three-year-old son. Now he and Dimitri, a couple of grown men coming up on forty years old, were sharing an apartment.
He didn’t need to be reminded of all that. Especially not today.
Five
Marcus Clay hit the gas, ascending the big hill of 13th Street that was the drop-off edge of the Piedmont Plateau. His Peugeot fought the hill, knocking all the way. The engine made a sound Clay hated, like the rattle in an empty spray-paint can. He never did like this car. All the buppies in D.C. were buying Peugeots now, from the old money up on North Portal Drive to the suburbanites to the Huxtable-looking trust-fund kids on the campus of Howard U. Elaine had encouraged him to buy his, telling him he’d look like a real businessman behind the wheel of the import. It was what she wanted to be seen in when they pulled up to the houses of her attorney friends. It had hurt him to give up his ’72 Riviera with the boat-tail rear. There wasn’t anything wrong with it that a tune-up and some new rubber couldn’t have cured. Goddamn if that Riviera wasn’t one righteous, beautiful car.
Clarence Tate sat in the passenger seat. His daughter sat in the back. Clay was giving them a lift home, as Tate’s Cutlass Supreme was just coming out of the shop. Denice Tate stared out the window, saying nothing. The burned-up boy in the Buick had been her first close-up look at death.
Clay looked left at the Clifton Terrace apartments. Run-down to the point of irreversible disrepair, roach and rat infested, play areas strewn with garbage and needles and broken glass... a nightmare for the women and children who lived inside its walls. The second of the mayor’s three wives, Mary Treadwell, had skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars out of Pride Incorporated, the agency responsible for much of the city’s subsidized housing. The money she had taken had included Clifton Terrace rent payments. Treadwell had stolen from the poor while living high in the Watergate apartments and cruising the city in her shiny Jag. Treadwell had been sentenced to three years. She was serving it after losing her last appeal in 1985.