April slipped the ring into her shorts pocket, then stripped the shorts off and placed them on the bed under her favorite T-shirt, the one had the glitter star across the front. She stood in the middle of the room in her panties, drinking wine and waiting. Her plan was to get the old man off quick, soon as he came out the head. She knew how, and he would only be good for one. After, she’d wait for Cindy, take a taxi back to Shaw, and get out there and retail her ass like her boyfriend, Romario, expected her to do. There was still plenty of night left.
Having come up empty on Red Jones at the Carter Barron, Vaughn went back to the stationhouse and saw Charles Davis seated at his desk.
“What are you doin here, Charles? I thought you had eyes on Monique Lattimer.”
ter Ba"3"›“I did. I was in the playground across from her house for hours. Girl musta slipped out the back of her crib, somethin. I had a patrol cop knock on her door, but there wasn’t no one there.” Davis shrugged his bearlike shoulders. “Sorry, Hound Dog. She beat me, man.”
Muttering under his breath, Vaughn went to the holding cells to take the temperature of Clarence Bowman. He was hoping to put him in the box and see if he could convince him to talk. But Bowman was gone.
Vaughn found Sergeant Bill Herbst out in the office area.
“What the hell happened, Billy?”
“I had to wagon Bowman over to St. Elizabeth’s. The guy was eating his own shit, Frank. The rest of ’em were goin nuts back there.”
“Bowman’s not mental.”
“Maybe not. But I didn’t know what he was gonna do next. Lieutenant Harp told me to get rid of him. Crazy or not, Bowman’s gonna be arraigned. Just ’cause he’s at St. E’s don’t mean he’s getting off or nothin…”
“I’m not worried about that. I wanted another shot at him, is all.” Vaughn rubbed his jaw as he considered the situation. “Let’s go back to the jail. I wanna see where you had him.”
Vaughn returned to the holding cells with Herbst, who pointed out Bowman’s former cage. Vaughn studied the men who had been locked in with him.
They walked back to the office and Vaughn said to Herbst, “Who was the weak tit with the Little Bo-Peep eyes?”
“Henry Arrington.”
“Doper?”
“No, Henry takes the Night Train. We bring him in to protect him and let him out in the morning.”
“Have someone call me before he gets tossed. All right?”
“Sure thing, Frank.”
Vaughn had marked Arrington as prey as soon as he laid eyes on him. He was pretty certain that Bowman had done the same thing.
Strange knocked on Carmen’s door, a narrow row home off Barry Place that had been cut into two apartments. Hers was on the ground floor.
The house was a wood-shingled affair, fronted by a small stoop more common to Baltimore than D.C.
A cone of yellow light hit the stoop. Carmen opened the door but did not come through the frame. She was still in her dress. A bit of mascara had run down her face.
Strange began to go up the steps. She held up her palm and said, “No.”
“Look, I apologize.”
“For what?”
“Leaving you like tingiv›
“They had plenty of taxicabs in the lot.”
“Bet you had an easier time than I did,” said Strange, trying out a smile. He told her about his pursuit of Jones, leaving out the high-speed chase and the chances he took. Said he got pulled over for “barely” running a red and that Lydell had to come to the scene and convince the young police officer not to arrest him.
“You made a mistake,” she said.
“Yes,” said Strange, knowing they had moved on to something else. He could control some of the damage right now by admitting to his indiscretion. But all he did was lower his eyes.
“Look at me, Derek.” He raised his head. Carmen had folded her arms across her chest, and her jaw was set. “You got the smell of a woman on you. Don’t you know by now that you can’t get that off you? And you have that young-boy’s face you get when you know you been wrong.”
Strange said nothing.
“Why’d you do it?” said Carmen. “Am I not giving you something you need?”
Strange spread his hands. “Look, I didn’t… I’m sayin, it didn’t go to where you think it did.”
“You mean you didn’t fuck her. And I’m supposed to, what, give you credit for that?”
“I’m sorry,” said Strange.
“Too many times, Derek.”
“Let me come in out this night and talk to you.”
“You gonna tell me you learned, right?”
“Please.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, and stepped back into her apartment. The door closed and the light went off. Strange stood in the darkened street.
A half hour later, Strange was in his apartment, sitting in his living room with no lights on, drinking scotch on ice, when the phone rang. Vaughn was on the other end of the line.
They filled each other in on the details of their day. Vaughn told Strange about the beating and robbery of Sylvester Ward, the shooting death of Roland Williams at Soul House, the arrest of the would-be assassin Clarence Bowman. Strange told Vaughn what he had learned about his client, Maybelline Walker, his sighting of the bold Red Jones and his tall, striking woman at the Carter Barron amphitheater, the subsequent chase, and his near arrest.
“That officer did you a favor by pulling you over,” said Vaughn. “If you had caught up with Jones, no telling what he might have done. He never even gave Roland Williams a chance.”
“Man needs to be got.”
“I’m about to take care of that.”“You are, huh?”
“I could use your help.”
“I was you, I’d take a whole lot of backup instead. Besides, I don’t even have a gun.”
“I’ll give you one.”
“I don’t use ’em anymore. Don’t even want to touch one.”
“You want that ring, though, don’t you?”
“Look, I checked out Coco at the concert. If she had it, she would have been wearing it. I reckon it was stolen by those guys who tossed her place.”
“Maybe. But there’s something else. Four years ago, I walked the extra mile when you needed me. You know what I’m talking about.”
Vaughn was speaking of their shared secret. April 1968. Strange sipped his drink and looked through his open French doors to the lights of the city spread out below. “Is there a plan?”
“I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”
“You sayin you know where Red’s at.”
“Not yet,” said Vaughn. “But I will.”
TWENTY
Lou Fanella and Gino Gregorio sat in their black Continental, the morning sun beating down on the roof and heating its leather interior. On 14th, telephone company employees walked in and out of a nondescript building and folks in need of breakfast stood in a line outside a nearby mission. Fanella was smoking a cigarette and sweating into his shirt.
“I feel like shit.”
“Those chicks liked to party,” said Gregorio. He had not overdone it the night before. He was rested and content, a man who’d had his ashes hauled after a long drought. It did not bother him that he had paid for it. Gregorio had no rap, so much of his physical experience with women and girls, going back to his army days, had been with whores.
“My stomach is still messed up,” said Fanella. “We shouldn’t have ate that Mexican.”
“Quit complaining,” said Gregorio. “You got laid, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I got laid. How ’bout you?”
“Cindy? Damn straight.”
“Was he good?”
“What do you mean, ‘he’?”
“Why not just fuck a boy if that’s what you want?”
“I’ll fuck you with a baseball bat.” Gregorio’s acne s0em
“Aw, look at you, you’re all mad.” Fanella laughed. “I swear you’re a homo.”
They grew quiet and reflective. Fanella pitched his cigarette out to the street. He looked up at the big windows of Coco Watkins’s office and bedroom. He didn’t expect to see her. They had already driven around the block and through the alley and had seen no Fury.