“Why didn’t they kill Broda too?”
Some tourists walked by. Dane stopped talking until they passed. “They don’t know
what
to do with him,” he said. “Listen, Nick, I know you feel like a sucker. But the reason that kid is still alive is you. They know you’ve stuck with this thing, and that you’re not going to leave it alone. They
can’t
get rid of the kid while you’re still looking, and they can’t let him go. It’s a stalemate now.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Joe.” I eyed him suspiciously. “Let me get this straight. Jerry Rosen was a fair-haired boy when he worked for Ned’s World in South Carolina. When he moved to D.C. to work for Nathan, he saw the drug market up here and decided to get a piece of it. Those two guys who roughed me up—did he recruit them from the South Carolina warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“Who else?”
“There’s the Jamaicans who work with me.”
“I met them,” I said. “A tall albino and his shadow. So there’s them, Rosen, the two from Carolina, you—and the man who bankrolled the whole deal. Ned Plavin, right?”
“That’s right.”
I thought for a minute. “Are the drugs out of the warehouse yet?”
“Not entirely,” he said. “It was a hundred sticks to start out with. They moved fifty in two consecutive nights last week, and another twenty-five on Tuesday. Tomorrow night they move the last twenty-four.”
“How?”
“What do you mean?”
“The setup. Where, who comes for it, how it’s done, the money, all of it.”
“Shit, Nicky.” He studied my face. “The way it was done the other times, two buyers come. They bring a hundred-fifty grand in a suitcase. We meet in the back of the warehouse, where the VCRs are stacked. Our guys load them up, they leave the suitcase.”
“Guns?”
“Yeah, everyone.”
“What time does it go down?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Are you going to be there?”
“I’m gone, Nick. Sarah and I packed last night. I called in sick today. We’re leaving this afternoon, all of us.”
“Just walk, then everything’s all right.”
“No,” he said, “it’s never going to be all right. I was part of something that got a kid killed. Maybe someday I’ll put a gun in my mouth to help me forget. Probably not. But for the time being my job is to protect my family.”
“You’d better get going then, Joe.”
“One more thing,” he said, and grabbed my arm before I could pull it away. “These guys are just a bunch of dumbshit cowboys. You go up against them, man, you’re gonna die.”
“You know where they’ve got the kid?”
“No.” He took his hand off my arm. “I’m sorry, Nick. I really am.”
“So long, Joe.”
He turned and headed for the stairwell. When the door closed behind him, I wished him luck.
* * *
LOUIE WAS BEHIND THE
front counter when I walked into the store. He gave me a nod with his chin, then stared at me over the tops of his reading glasses.
“How’s it going, Louie?”
“Oh, I’m makin’ it, Youngblood. How about you? Anything goin’ on?”
“I’m weighing the possibilities.”
“Well, you got all the time in the world now. To find out what’s
important
.”
“Is Johnny in?”
“In the back, takin’ his medicine.”
I negotiated the maze of floor display and passed under the BB-riddled caricature of Nathan. I took the stairs down to the stockroom.
McGinnes was sitting on a carton in the back. Malone was standing next to him, a live Newport between his long fingers. I walked through a stagnant cloud of tobacco and pot smoke to get to them. I shook Malone’s hand and shot a look at McGinnes.
“Andre knows everything,” McGinnes said unapologetically.
“He ran it all down to me,” Malone said quickly, “in the hopes that the two of us could talk you out of whatever it is you plannin’ to do.” He gave me the once-over, dragged on his cigarette, exhaled, and threw me a hundred dollar smile. “You really stepped in some shit this time, didn’t you, Country?”
“It’s deeper than you think.”
I told them just how deep it was. Malone’s brow was wrinkled the entire time I spoke. When I was finished, he ran a thumbnail between his front teeth, keeping his eyes on mine.
“So,” McGinnes said. “They’ve got the boy.”
“If you don’t mind, Johnny,” I said, “I’ll take what I came here for.”
McGinnes went to the corner of the stockroom, moved
some boxes, and returned with something in his arms. He unwrapped the oilcloth it was in and brought it out.
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he said. “So I brought a solid automatic. Nine-millimeter Browning Hi-Power. Push button magazine release.” With a quick jerk of his wrist the clip slid out into his palm. “Holds thirteen with one in the chamber. Right here is the safety—you can operate it with your thumb while your hand’s still on the grip. If you’re not sure the safety’s on, try cocking the hammer.”
“Thanks.” I held out my hand.
“I brought an extra clip.” He pulled that out, placed it with the pistol, and put them both in my hand. “It’s your up, man.”
I rewrapped everything in the oilcloth and put it in my knapsack, then hung it over my shoulder.
“You guys coming upstairs?”
“I am,” Andre said.
“I think I’ll hang,” McGinnes said. “Catch a buzz.”
Malone and I climbed the stairs. As we neared the landing, we heard McGinnes coughing below. Malone stayed with me all the way to the front door, where he stopped me with a grip on my arm.
“Hey, Brother Lou,” he shouted at Louie, who was still behind the counter. “I’ll be takin’ a break.”
“You already had a break,” Louie said tiredly.
“Then I’ll be takin’ another.”
“What’s up, Andre?” I asked.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Malone said. “I got a proposition for you, Country.”
M
ALONE SAID
, “Pull on over, man.”
We were in the southbound lane of North Capitol, near the Florida Avenue intersection. I pulled over and cut the engine. Malone rolled the window down, leaned his arm on its edge, and put fire to a Newport.
On the east side of the street was a casket company, a beauty parlor, and a sign that read, “FISH, UBS.” Hand-painted on the door, in dripping, wide red brushstrokes, was, “Closed for Good.” To our right stood a Plexiglas bus shelter on a triangle of dirt that the city called a park. A man in a brown plaid overcoat slept in front of the shelter’s bench, where another graybeard sat and drank from a bagged bottle. Further down the street, near P, a Moorish carryout and a “Hi-Tech” shoeshine parlor graced the block.
The sidewalks were teeming with activity. Those not seated on stoops paced within the confines of their block. A
woman in a two-piece, turquoise jogging suit stood with her hands on her hips and yelled gibberish at the unconcerned people walking past. Her flat buttocks sagged much like her sloping shoulders. Straight ahead, less than two miles down the strip, rose the Capitol dome.
“Look at it,” Malone said. “This is our city, man. Just
look
at it. Right in the shadow of the motherfuckin’ Capitol. And they be throwin’ eighty million dollar inauguration parties.”
“You came from a neighborhood just like this,” I said, “and you made it out. It’s no different than it was twenty years ago.”
He chuckled cynically and blew out some smoke. “Don’t tell me it’s no different, man. On these streets they kill you now for a ten dollar rock. And the media, all they be talkin’ about: ‘The Mayor Snorts Coke.’ But nobody really cares about these people, because it ain’t goin’ down in Ward Three. It’s just niggers killin’ niggers. Meanwhile, you read the
Washington Post—
they supposed to be ‘the liberal watchdog of the community,’ right?—well, check it out. Some white woman gets raped in the suburbs, it makes page one. Now go to the back of the Metro section, where they got a special spot reserved for the niggers. They call it ‘Around the Area,’ some shit like that. And it’s always the same little boldfaced type: ‘Southeast Man Slain, Northeast Man Fatally Shot.’” He tossed his butt out the window. “One little paragraph, buried in the back of the paper, for the niggers.”
“You and me have talked about this a hundred times, Andre. What’s it got to do with today?”
He looked out the window and squinted, then ran a finger along the top of his thick mustache. “I remember my first day of work at Nathan’s. I got dressed that morning, real sharp. When I walked out of my place that day, I
knew
I was serious, I was so hooked up, I was
proud
.”
“I remember,” I said, and smiled at the thought of it. But I wondered where he was going with it.
“Anyway, I was all fired up, like anyone on their first day of the job. After a year, I had me enough to rent my place on Harvard, out of the old neighborhood. But then I started to notice some shit. The company was always sending other guys to seminars, putting other guys in management training. When the big dogs came into the store, I got no recognition, man, nary a nod. I doubt they even knew my name. And then they started cutting our commissions, changing payplans every six months. I woke up one day, I saw I was sliding back to where I came from.”
“What are you telling me?”
He waved his hand the width of the block. “I don’t want to come back to these streets, man. I
won’t
come back to these streets, understand?” He lit another smoke and pitched the match out the window. “When I was listening to you earlier, I started to think. We both got a problem we need to work out. How could we take that situation they got down in that warehouse and turn it around to our advantage?”
“And?”
“I ain’t got it all nailed down yet, see what I’m sayin’? But it would involve other people.”
“Not McGinnes,” I said quickly. “There’s something wrong with him. I mean he’s not well.”
“Yeah, I think he’s getting ready to bottom on out. Besides, all the man wants is to sell televisions.”
“And what do you want?”
“I’m still thinkin’ on it,” he said. “Hold up a minute while I make a call.”
He left the car and walked to a payphone at the gas station on the intersection. I had a Camel while he talked on the phone. By the time I finished it, he was back on the seat at my side.
“We got an appointment to see some fellas,” he said.
“Who?”
“Just younguns, that’s all. They all right.”
“This is getting too complicated,” I said.
“Not complicated. Simple. Look here.” He slid closer to me on the seat. “You want the boy, that’s as plain as the light. But you got nothin’ to deal with. When that last shipment of goods leaves the warehouse tomorrow night, and they tighten up the loose ends, they gonna do that boy just like they done the one down in Carolina.”
“I could go to the cops,” I said, “like I should have done from the beginning.”
“Too late for that. You might get the boy killed, and take a fall yourself. No, man, there’s a better way.”
“Talk about it.”
“Twenty-five percent of the man’s goods,” he said. “That’s a big bargaining chip to sit down with at the table.”
I thought about that. “You mean, steal the rest of the cocaine.”
“That’s right, Country. Then trade it back to Rosen for the boy.”
I lit another cigarette and tossed the match, taking a deep lungful of the deathly smog. Then I watched my exhale stream out the window and disappear as it met the wind.
“What’s your angle?” I said.
“My angle? A way out. All the way out. The way you tell, there’s gonna be some money changin’ hands tomorrow night. The money will be mine. A hundred-thirty for me, twenty for the boys I just called.”
“So you think we can just walk in and grab it—all of it, the money and the shake—from these guys? You said yourself, these people don’t play.”
“Then neither will we.”
“You’d have to leave town. You’d never work or live in D.C. again. Have you thought about that?”
“This shit goes down in the street every day. As for work, well, a hundred and thirty grand is quite a start. For me, some things I’ve wanted for my mom. Yeah, I’ve thought about it.”
“It’s too fucking crazy, Andre.” I dismissed the idea with a
motion of my hand. But even as I did so, I was picturing in my mind the layout of the warehouse.
Andre pointed to the key in the ignition. “Kick this bitch over,” he said. “I want you to meet my boys.”
WE VEERED OFF OF
Florida and climbed sharply up Thirteenth Street. On our right was Cardoza High School; to our left were the Clifton Terrace apartments. At the crest of the hill, just past Thirteenth and Clifton, I made a “U” in the middle of the street and pulled the car over to the curb at Andre’s command.
Children kicked a ball around the glass-covered courtyard of the apartments. Boys walked from the high school, hunched and slower than old men. The downtown skyline rose below us majestically.