“Jones, if it was Jones, got into a red late-model Plymouth, white interior.”
“A Plymouth what?”
“Fury, had fold-in headlamps.”
“That would make it a seventy-one.” Vaughn nodded, thinking of Martina Lewis, seated beside him in the auditorium of the Lincoln Theatre. I heard him called Red Fury, too. I don’t know why. “Sonofabitch.”
“What?”‹ c0emnt›p height="0em" width="27"›“I think my dick’s gettin hard.”
“Wait’ll you hear the rest.”
“Tell me.”
“There was a woman driving the Fury. Tall, from what my source could make out. Had dark skin and big hair.”
“Your source didn’t happen to get the numbers on the plates?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
“ ’Cause there weren’t any numbers,” said Strange with a small smile. “They were vanity plates.”
“You don’t say.”
“Plates read ‘Coco.’ C-O, C-O.”
Vaughn slid off his stool and stood. “D.C. tags, right?”
“Correct.”
Vaughn put another cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and went to the house pay phone, where he made a call. Strange got up, walked down to the end of the counter, and got the attention of the grill woman, who said her name was Ida. Strange complimented her on her cooking, thanked her for her kindness in making his eggs southern, and slipped her a couple of dollar bills. He met Vaughn at the register, where he was hurriedly settling up with Nick.
“I got this,” said Vaughn.
“Did you see me reach?” said Strange.
“Thanks, Marine,” said Nick, closing the register drawer.
Vaughn and Strange walked toward their cars, parked together on Vermont.
“Your mom doing all right?” said Vaughn.
“She’s fine,” said Strange. “Working for an eye doctor downtown.”
“I’ve been by the Three-Star. Heard your dad passed. My sympathies.”
“Thank you.”
Vaughn stopped walking, hit his cigarette, hot-boxed it with one last drag, and flicked the butt out to the street.
“If you happen to come up on that ring…” said Strange.
“Right,” said Vaughn. “Watch yourself out there.”
“I plan to.”
They shook hands.
NINE
Lou Fanella stood beside the bed of Roland Williams in D.C. General Hospital. Gino Gregorio leaned against a wall.
There had been a nurse taking Williams’s vitals when they’d arrived, and Fanella had asked her to give them some privacy. He’d smiled at her in a way that implied no kindness and said, “Don’t go telling anyone we’re in here, sweetheart. I might take that to mean we’re not friends.” She left them with her eyes downcast and closed the door behind her. Outside the hospital, dusk had come, throwing long shadows on the stadium-armory complex grounds. A faint gray light had settled in the room.
“Who robbed you?” said Fanella, looking down at Williams. “Don’t take too long thinking about it, either. I don’t have the patience or the time.”
“He goes by the name of Red,” said Williams without hesitation. “Red Jones. Don’t know what the minister called him when he got baptized.”
“How’d you know it was him?”
“I knew him by rep. Tall, light-skinned dude with a fucked-up head of hair, kinda rusty like.”
“Who hipped him to your supply?”
“Tester of mine name Bobby Odum. Jones deaded Odum, then he and this little dude with gold teeth came after me.”
“And they ripped you off for your product.”
“At the point of a gun,” said Williams.
“Funny he didn’t do you all the way.”
“Wasn’t for lack of tryin.”
“It was me, I would have put one in your head.”
“The man shot me,” said Williams, seeing where Fanella was going and not liking it. “Close range, with a forty-five. You think I’d let him do me like that for what? To pretend I got robbed?”
Fanella looked down on Williams and stared him in the eyes. “It makes me wonder, is all.”
“I’m a businessman. You can ask Jimmy, up at One Sixteenth. I’m straight.” He was speaking on Jimmy Compton, Fanella and Gregorio’s man in Harlem.
“Me and Gino already spoke to Jimmy,” said Fanella. “Now we’re speaking to you.”
“Okay,” said Williams. “All right.” Bullets of sweat had risen on his forehead.
“Tell us where we can find the heroin,” said Fanella. “Or the money. Makes no difference to me.”
“Po-lice got half of the dope,” said Williams. “I only told Red where some of it was. Tried to keep it from him, see? But the law found the rest of it, in the spot where I keep it.”
“Where’s that?”
“At my crib.”
“So half of it’s klf Atgone for good.”
Williams thought to say something, but his mouth was dry. He felt his lip tremble. He tried to make it stop, but he could not.
Fanella smiled. “You all right?”
“Yes,” said Williams. He was ashamed and he looked away.
“Let me see what Red did to you.”
“Why?”
“I’m curious.” Fanella looked over his shoulder and said, “Gino.”
Gregorio moved to the door and put his back against it.
“Don’t,” said Williams.
“Don’t?”
“Sayin, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Doctor said to leave it be.”
“C’mon,” said Fanella, his thick eyebrows meeting comically as he mustered up a false face of concern. “Lemme see.”
Fanella pulled his switchblade from the pocket of his sport jacket and opened it with the touch of a button. The blade locked into a place with a soft click. Williams recoiled and made a small humming sound. Fanella chuckled as he cut the sling from Williams’s shoulder. Then he used the knife to slice away the bandages that covered his wound. Williams winced at the wet sucking sound of gauze pulling away from dressing and skin.
“Wow,” said Fanella. “You should look at this, Gino.”
Gregorio did not move.
“Please, man,” said Williams.
“That’s a big hole,” said Fanella. The entrance wound was the size of a quarter, black around the edges, pinkish in the center where the skin had begun to come back, slick and shiny from the dressing. “Don’t even look like it’s infected.”
“Please.”
“What’d you tell the police?”
“What I told you. I gave up Red’s name. That’s all.”
“They found heroin in your apartment and they’re not even going to charge you?”
“It was an exchange, ’cause I gave up good information. Plus, they searched my spot without a warrant.”
“You said you knew Red’s rep. So you must know more.”
“I told the law enough to leave me alone.”
“I’m not the law,” said Fanella. “What’d you leave out?”
“I can’t say no more, for real. I’m not tryin to get doomed.”
Fanella put one knee up on the mattress to ke mwidth="27" steady himself. He loosely placed his hand on Williams’s shoulder above the wound and kept his thumb free.
“What didn’t you tell them?” Fanella grinned. “What else?”
“Red got this woman,” said Williams, a tremor in his voice. “Goes by Coco. Runs whores in a house on Fourteenth. What I heard, anyway.”
“Heard where?”
“The street.” Williams gave him the location and described the building.
“That’s it?”
“Swear for God.”
Fanella gripped Williams shoulder. “Does this hurt?”
“No.”
“How about this?” Fanella pushed his thumb into the gunshot wound. It felt like jelly as he broke through the skin. Williams began to thrash and scream.
“Lou,” said Gregorio, and turned his head away.
Fanella put his right hand over the man’s mouth. Williams urinated on the sheets before he passed out.
“Niggers aggravate me,” said Fanella.
They left the room and walked down the hall. They did not move quickly, because Lou Fanella felt that a man should leave a scene unhurried, with his shoulders square and chin up. They went by a nurse who did not notice them, and an aged orderly pushing a wheelchair, and a tall, uniformed security guard with chiseled features who was standing against a wall, giving them a long stare.