“Sorry, Nique,” said Coco.
“You people expect me to walk? Nearest market’s a mile away.”
“I was you,” said Jefferson, “I’d wear some comfortable shoes.”
“Fuck y’all,” said Monique. She got up out of her chair abruptly and left the room.
“Where she off to?” said Jones.
“Gone to change her clothes,” said Jefferson, tapping ash into a large tray. “So she can get us some cigarettes.”
“That woman’s unruly.”
Jefferson nodded. “She like that in bed, too.”
The room fell silent as they smoked pensively. None of them wanted to leave D.C., but they knew it was time to go.
Gina Marie, Martina Lewis, and the white girls, April and Cindy, were in the diner on U, drinking coffee, having cigarettes, and, as was their custom, recounting the street stories they had gathered the night before. They were in the pre-makeup stage of their day, not yet dressed for work.
“They picked us up in a Lincoln Continental,” said April, “and then we went out to their motel room off Kenilworth and had a partaaay.”
“That where you got the ring?” said Gina Marie.
“You mean this one?” said April. She put out her hand, bent it at the wrist, and showed the others her new treasure in a way that she imagined a fancy model might do.
“Just tell the story,” said Cindy, who knew the detaikneat the wrls already and was tired of hearing April go on. Cindy dragged on her cigarette, careful not to put the filter to the right side of her mouth. A cold sore festered there.
“So we was doin some nose candy,” said April, “me and old Lou, and all a the sudden Lou had to take a shit on account of the cut.”
“Thought you said Lou was a professional,” said Gina Marie.
“Not with cocaine,” said April. “But, yeah, he said he was down here on business. Axed me about Red Jones. Claimed he owed Red money. Like I was gonna talk to a stranger about Red. I be like, I heard of him, but I don’t know nothin about him.” April looked directly at Gina Marie. “Girl, I ain’t dumb.”
Martina glanced over at April, spent like last week’s paycheck. Way her nose was burned up, she could pick either side of it by putting her finger in just one nostril. Axe. I be. Girl. April talked blacker than a black girl when she was around Gina Marie.
“More coffee, ladies?” said an employee behind the counter, holding a pot, moving her head to the Fred Wesley that was coming from the juke.
“I’ll have more,” said Cindy, who was tired out and a little sore. Gino, the blond one with the acne scars, had a pipe on him, and on top of his size he’d been a little rough. He had bruised her some.
“You know that’s a fake piece, don’t you?” said Gina Marie.
“I don’t care,” said April. “It’s pretty.”
Gina Marie flicked ash into a glass tray. “Say what happened.”
“While Lou was in the bathroom,” said April, “groanin and moanin, I got curious about what was in his suitcase. ’Cause you know I be the curious type…”
“Tell it,” said Cindy, losing her patience.
“Well, there were clothes in that suitcase. Also a gun and a knife.” April paused dramatically, then put her hand flat on the counter. “And this.” The ladies saw a gold body decorated with a Grecian key inlay, one big center stone, and eight smaller stones clustered around it.
“You are one bad bitch,” said Gina Marie.
“Girl, who don’t know that.”
Martina Lewis studied the ring.
Shay gathered a cosmetic case the size of a hatbox, and a small red suitcase that held a couple of dresses, slacks, shirts, and undergarments, and some cash, and took the fire escape down to the alley that ran behind the row house on 14th. She went through it and on S she turned right and went over to 14th, glancing down the street at the unmarked police car she had scoped out earlier. The one Coco had said would be there.
The unmarked car did not move. No reason why it would. The man inside it was looking for someone fitting the description of Coco, not Shay. Shay was plainly drwasad bitcessed in jeans and a chambray shirt. She was an attractive female, but in these clothes she did not stand out. It was somewhat unusual for a young woman to be walking in the city with a suitcase and hatbox, but now she was a block north of Coco’s house and was among the sidewalk crowd. She went one block farther and at a bus stop waited for a D.C. Transit, and when it came she got on it and dropped into an empty turquoise seat. An older man who stood with a hand on the top rail gave her a long look the way men do. Reflexively, she touched the mole on her face.
The plan was to get off the bus soon as she saw a cab stand and catch a taxi over to Northeast, where she would deliver what she was carrying to Coco, holed up in a house in Burrville. Coco had told her she was going away for a while.
Shay was young, no more than a girl, really, and she was a little bit scared. Her night in jail had convinced her that she was not cut out for any kind of time in a cage. But things seemed to be going all right today, so far, and when she had completed her task… well, she hadn’t thought that through as of yet. She’d do something.
Shay looked out the back window of the bus and with relief saw that the unmarked police car was not following. She didn’t notice the black Continental that was pulling off the curb.
TWENTY-ONE
Vaughn and Strange crossed the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and headed into Far Northeast. At Minnesota Avenue, Vaughn hung a left and drove along a busy commercial strip of overpriced convenience markets, unhealthy food establishments, and an appliance-and-furniture merchant whose profit was not in the sale of household goods but the pushing of credit and high-interest loans.
“These people down here don’t have a chance,” said Vaughn, with an overly solemn shake of his head. “Course, they could try to better themselves. Work a little harder, maybe, so they don’t have to live in these neighborhoods.”
Strange said nothing. There wasn’t any upside to getting into those kinds of discussions with Vaughn.
“Did I say something wrong?” said Vaughn.
“I wasn’t even listenin to you, to tell the truth. Guess I got things on my mind.”
“Women troubles,” said Vaughn. “Am I right? What’d you do, dip your pen in the wrong inkwell?”
“I made a mistake,” said Strange.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I should know better. I’m a grown man.”
“Exactly: you’re a man. It’s damn near impossible for a man to be faithful. It’s not natural. Humans are the only species who even try. When animals mate, the males move on.”
“Men aren’t animals,” said Strange.
Vaughn’s mind flashed back nearly thirty years, to when he’d carried a flamethrower on Okinawa. His nightmares could not even approach the horrific reality of what he’d seen and done. No one, not even Olga, could know the godless dark inside his head.
“Yes, we are,” he said.
For a while, they drove up Minnesota Ave in silence. Then Vaughn saw a woman exiting a small city market. She wore a sloppy shift unbuttoned at the neckline, tennis shoes with cutout backs, and held a pack of cigarettes in each of her hands.
Vaughn slowed the Dodge. “Aw, shit. There’s my friend Monique Lattimer.”
“Who’s she?”
“Alfonzo Jefferson’s woman.”
“We should follow her to his house,” said Strange. “Chances are she’s headed there.”
“We already know where the house is. We don’t know what we’re gonna be up against when we get there. She’s a handful, and I don’t wanna have to deal with her, too.”
Vaughn pulled over to the curb and palmed the transmission arm up into park. He lifted the radio mic from its cradle, keyed it, and called in Monique’s description, location, and the direction in which she was headed. He then told the dispatcher to instruct any patrol unit in the vicinity to pick up Monique, arrest her, and take her to the Third District station.