“Don’t you know who I am?” said Ward, his voice a husky match to his size.
“Matter of fact, we do.” Jefferson gave him a gold-toothed smile. “We ain’t about to take no poor motherfucker off the street.”
“Let’s go,” said Jones.
Ward gestured to the vehicle with incredulity. “What about my ride?”
“Leave it,” said Jefferson. “The boy can watch it.”
“Pay him for his time before you go,” said Jones. He gave the boy a short nod.
Ward peeled off some bills from a roll of cash he drew from his pants pocket before walking with Jones and Jefferson to the Electra. Jones got into the backseat with Ward, drew his gun, and held it loosely in his lap.
Jefferson settled in behind the wheel of his car and turned the ignition. Looking in the rearview mirror at Ward, he said, “You stay over in Shepherd Park, right?”
“Holly Street,” said Ward, just above a mumble.
Jefferson pulled away from the curb. “That’s a nice El D, Two-Tone. What you got in that, a six?”
“Shit,” said Ward. “That’s a five-hundred-cubic-inch big-block V-eight.”
“What do they call that color, ice-green, somethin?”
“Willow- green. It’s new for this year.”
“Pretty,” said Jefferson.
That cut the conversation to nothing for a while. Jones drove south on New Hampshire, where he turned right onto Missouri Avenue and headed across town.
“Y’all kidnapping me,” said Ward, as if it had just come to mind. “You know that’s a capital crime.”
“So?” said Jones.
“I got rid of my wife, and my kids are full grown and gone. They got nary a nickel from me, case you tryin to hold me for ransom…”
“We don’t have the time for that,” said Jones. “And you ain’t all that important.”
Little more was said for the rest of the ride. Ward sat looking out the window, his hands in his ample lap, his lower lip thrust out like a hurt child’s. Sylvester Ward was not frightened, but a piece had been chipped off his pride.
Ward lived on one of the tree-and-flower-named streets of Shepherd Park, the northernmost neighborhood before the Maryland line, west of Georgia and east of 16th Street. Most recently, its residents had actively resisted blockbuster realtors who had preyed on the fears of whites in post-riot D.C. Here, middle- and upper-middle-class blacks and whites lived side by side, and sometimes they lived under the same roof. It was one of the few uptown, upscale areas friendly to interracial couples. At one time, Jews who owned nearby Georgia Avenue businesses couldn’t live in Shepherd Park. But that restriction, too, had been buried long ago with the other rotted corpses of the past.
When it came to women, Ward was tolerant running to liberal. He kept company with all kinds, but he was no political activist. He simply liked this area, with its brick and shingled single-family homes, large yards, shade trees, and flowery shrubs. He had paid cash for his house, as he did for everything he owned. He could have easily afforded a residence on the Black Gold Coast, down on North Portal Drive, with the professional, educated types, but he preferred to stay in Shepherd, which was nice but more down-home. He felt it was wise to remember where you came from and not pretend to be something you were not. The high branches of the tree die when the roots get cut. Like that.
Ward had been one of the city’s top numbers men for some time. He didn’t deal in ponies or the sports book. He had no knowledge of or interest in the drug or prostitution trades. He had come up in the policy game, where three-digit tickets could be bought for pocket change. He had runners all over the city; his employees were government messengers, dishwashers, janitors, and, in the old days, elevator operators. They were black men and they sold to all colors. They worked for a cut and were often tipped heavily by sentimental and superstitious winners. Above the runners were several men who kept the books and collected. The daily take, after the winning combination was paid out, was divided from small denominations and coin between Ward, his employees, and the New York Syndicate via a man in Baltimore whose nickname suggested royalty. It was claimed that there was no organized crime to speak of in D.C., and this was true in a sense, if one meant Mafia and Italian. But the Mob had long had their hands in the pockets of Washington’s criminal element. The out-of-town payoff money was said to be well spent, as it kept the Syndicate at arm’s length.
Ward’s lottery business grossed millions of dollars a year. After the employees got paid, after New York got their cut, after Ward shelled out to locals of influence and power, he netted a hundred, a hundred and fifty grand annually. But he was good with that. His was an unexpectedly rewarding life. Ward was as cock-of-the-walk as it got for black Washington. He wasn’t worried about jail or persecution. He was protected.
Which is why, walking into his house with his two abductors, Ward was more perplexed than angry. He wasn’t used to being treated this way.
Ward removed his green jacket and draped it over the back of an ornate dining-room chair. Jones, gun in hand, kept his eyes on Ward while Jefferson took in the opulence of his surroundings. Looked like a museum in here to him: crystal chandeliers, furniture with scrolled arms, oriental carpets, and plaster statues of naked white women and white men whose nuts hung lower than their dicks.
“I smell money,” said Jefferson.
Ward shook his head slowly. “Obviously, y’all ain’t done your due diligence.”
“Huh?” said Jones.
“There ain’t nothin here of value to speak of,” said Ward. “Not the kind of payday you’re looking for, anyway. Walkin-around money is all I got.”
“We’ll take what the fuck you got, then,” said Jefferson.
“Get it,” said Jones.
“It’s up in my bedroom.” But Ward did not move.
“You mean you ain’t gone yet?” said Jones.
Jefferson drew his piece and pointed it to the stairs. Ward headed in that direction and Jefferson followed.
Jones went to a bar cart and chose a bottle of scotch that looked expensive. He poured amber liquor into a thick, etched tumbler and drank. Its velvet taste closed his eyes.
Jones had a second drink, and as he killed it, Ward and Jefferson returned to the living room. Jefferson had a fistful of cash in his free hand.
“Twenty-four hundred,” said Jefferson. His tone was not exuberant.
“That’s all?”
“I took his watch, too,” said Jefferson. “Got diamonds around its face.”
“That’s cut glass,” said Ward. “A bitch I know gave it to me as a present. I only wear it when she comes to visit.”
“Gimme that watch on your arm, then,” said Jones. “I know that ain’t fake.”
Ward laboriously removed a gold Rolex from his wrist. Jones slipped the timepiece onto his own wrist and examined it. It fit loose, the way he liked it.
“Now you done took everything I have,” said Ward. Annoyance had come to his face.
Jones felt his pulse drum. “You got a roll in your pocket, too, fat man. Give it here.”
Ward started to speak but bit down on his lip. He withdrew the cash, held together with a silver clip, and Jones slipped it into the patch pocket of his bells.
Jones looked Ward over. looked ovelipAnyone ask you, it was Red Jones who took you for bad.”
“Ain’t nobody gonna ask,” said Ward with naked contempt.
“Is that right.”
“Ain’t nobody care about you or what your name is,” said Ward. “Ain’t nobody gonna remember you when you’re gone.”
Jones’ eyes were flat and he said nothing.
“You want my advice-”
“I don’t,” said Jones.
“Go on, then,” said Ward, slashing his hand toward the front door of the house. “Get.”
The barrel of the.45 was a blur as Jones’s arm flared out. Its sight clipped Ward’s nose and cut the bridge. Jones grunted as he put more into it and hit Ward squarely and violently in the same place again. Ward, too big to fall, staggered and gripped the arm of a chair for support. Blood flowed from his nostrils as it would have from an open spigot. Jones laughed and kicked the chair out from under him, and now Ward fell. He lay on his side on the hardwood floor, blood on his fine white shirt, one hand covering his nose, its cartilage smashed. Tears had sprung from his eyes and they were streaking down his face.