Soul Circus (13 page)

He dropped Olivia off the back porch. She came out of the curtain halfway down. When she hit, the sound was dull, like she wasn’t nothin’ but a bag of trash. He thought he heard her moan for a second, but he knew that it had to be in his mind. There wasn’t no sounds out there, not really. The dogs that had been barking all night were still barking, and that was all.

AFTER turning off the television and stereo, and the lights, Mario Durham got Olivia’s Tercel and drove it back into the alley with its lights off. He rolled her back up in the curtain, noticing that one of her arms was bent funny and most likely had got broke from the fall. He had to fold her some to get her body in the trunk of the car. She still hadn’t gone stiff.

Durham drove into Southeast. He knew a place he could dump her there.

It surprised him, how calm he was. He was sorry he had killed Olivia and all, but he couldn’t take it back now, and anyway, he had done this thing for Dewayne. What else was he gonna do, go back to his brother with empty hands, tell him that Olivia had given his chronic to someone else and it was just gone? Dewayne had always taught him that when someone stepped to you, you had to step back. And when Mario had promised to square it, Dewayne had said, “Don’t tell me,
show
me,” and this is what Mario had done. Now, finally, Mario would be a man in his kid brother’s eyes.

He turned the radio on and kept the volume soft.

The thing he had to look out for now was the police. He didn’t want to go to no prison for this. That was the only thing that scared him right there. Fuck all that rite-of-passage bullshit he heard the young ones talkin’ about. He knew he wouldn’t last in no kind of lockup.

He’d get rid of Olivia and lay up with his best boy Donut for a while. Let his mother and Dewayne know where he’d be at, but only them. Dewayne would front him cash, he needed it. The underground time, it wouldn’t be all that long. The police didn’t waste too much clock on murder cases down here. And once those cases got cold, they stayed cold; this much he knew.

He stopped the car on Valley Avenue, near 13th Street in Valley Green, along the Oxon Run park. Donut lived only a few blocks away; Durham could walk to his place from here.

Oxon Run was a long, deep stretch of woods controlled by the Park Service, cut by one of those concrete drainage channels down the middle. The Park Service had signs posted warning trespassers to stay out, trying to discourage the dealers and their runners from using the woods as an avenue of escape. Kids weren’t even supposed to play back in there. Durham knew they did, he saw kids back up in there all the time, but he hoped those signs would work to keep some of them out.

It was late and the street was quiet. Durham waited a few minutes to get his nerve. Then he got out of the car and opened up the trunk. He had parked close to the woods. It wouldn’t be easy to carry her, but it wasn’t all that far.

It was tricky getting her out, trickier still to close the trunk lid with her in his arms. But he did it, and he walked like a man cradling a bundle of wood across the unmowed field and into the woods. He could smell his own sweat by the time he hit the trees.

He went deep in. He was talking to himself again, saying that everything was all right, because he was afraid of animals and especially snakes. Was a moon out, and he managed to make a kind of path by that light and ignore the thin branches that were swiping at his face, and he went on. He dropped Olivia on the ground when he couldn’t walk no more.

Durham had hoped to dig a shallow grave with his hands, but he broke a fingernail on the hard earth as soon as he tried. He decided to cover her up with leaves and stuff instead. That would work just as good.

He unrolled her from the shower curtain, ’cause the curtain was light in color and in daylight maybe it could be seen by some kid just walking by. He did this, and she tumbled out. He heard more air come out her and figured that was natural, like how they said people still breathed sometimes in those funeral homes and shit, even though they was dead. And then he heard her moan some and knew that she had not died after all.

He stood over her and tried to make her out in the little light that came down through the trees. She wasn’t moving. But her good eye was open, and it was fixed straight up on him.

He couldn’t stand to hit her again with a rock or nothin’ like that, so he brought out the pistol and shot her three times in her chest. It was louder than a motherfucker, and the bullets made her body jump some from where it lay. Smoke kind of moved slow through the moonlight and its smell was strong. Well, he thought, she is dead now.

He didn’t bother with covering her up. The gunshots had unnerved him, and anyway, she seemed protected enough back here. He dropped the gun in his Tommys and gathered up the shower curtain and folded it as he walked in the direction he’d come. He stumbled here and there and heard his own voice saying something about God and Please, and he felt the sweat drip down his back.

He went back to the street and stuffed the curtain down an open sewer near the car. He wiped the car down good, the steering wheel and everything, with the rag he’d kept in his pocket. Then he locked the car and threw the keys down the same sewer slot. Far as he could tell, wasn’t no one had been around to see a thing.

He got his bearings, trying to figure where Donut lived from here. Wasn’t all that far, just a few blocks south and then east. He started walking that way, keeping his head down low.

THAT same night, on the other side of Oxon Run, near an elementary school in Congress Heights, Dewayne Durham sat in his Benz, parked on Mississippi Avenue, surveying his troops. Next to him sat Bernard Walker. Walker had the new Glock 17, purchased from Ulysses Foreman, resting in his lap. His head was moving to that Ja Rule he liked, “I Cry,” as he finger-buffed the barrel of the gun.

“We did some business tonight, Zu,” said Durham. “Made a whole rack of money out here.”

“Weather’s good,” said Walker. “People want to get their heads up when it’s nice out.”

“Thinkin’ of adding some bodies to the army.”

“We could use it.”

“That kid, the one ridin’ the pegs on that bike this afternoon, back by Atlantic? The one I tried to tip some money to?”

Walker nodded. “Quiet boy, gets respect.”

“Him. He got a father you know of?”

“Ain’t even got much of a mother, what I’ve seen. He’s out all hours of the night.”

“We’ll put him on the crew. That’ll be his new family right there. I’m gonna start him as a lookout down here, soon as school lets out.”

“That ain’t gonna be but another week or so.”

“We’ll start him then.”

Durham looked up at the school from their position on the street. Boys stood around the flagpole, holding the portioned-out mini-Baggies of marijuana and some similarly portioned, foiled-up units of cocaine. The dope went hand-to-hand from the runners to the sellers, who stood on the midway and corner of the strip. Lookouts rolled up and down the street and on surrounding streets on their bikes. They carried cells with them to phone and warn the workers positioned around the school in the case of any oncoming heat.

The elementary school sat on a rise, and behind it were a couple of boxy apartment buildings and some duplexes going up the block, all backed by a series of alleys. Across the street was a field leading to the woods of Oxon Run.

Dewayne Durham had chosen this spot because of the many avenues of escape. The police from 6D rolled by regularly, and once in a while they stopped, using their mikes and speakers or sometimes just yelling from the open windows of their cruisers for the boys to get on home. On rare occasions they got out of their cars in force and gave half-assed chase, but they never followed the troops into the woods. Every so often the police would roll in with a major shakedown and make a few arrests, but it did nothing to slow down the business. Marijuana possession, up to half a pound, was a misdemeanor in the District, so if the kids did draw an arrest, priors or not, they generally did no time. They were also out on the street in a very short period; in D.C. a bond was as easy to come by as a gun.

Dewayne’s choice of location had to do with the convenience of the school grounds as well. You could hide drugs in several spots, especially around the flagpole, where holes had been dug out and re-covered with turf for just that purpose. Or you could just drop the goods in the grass if you had to, things got too deep.

So this was a good spot. Horace McKinley and the Yuma Mob had one almost like it on the southern side of the park.

Up by the flagpole, Durham could see Jerome “Nutjob” Long and Allante “Lil’ J” Jones standing around, giving occasional orders to the troops.

“I need to drop by my moms,” said Durham. “Maybe we’ll see my brother somewhere if we drive around, too.”

“Where he’s stayin’ at now?”

“I don’t know. He shows up at my mother’s from time to time, but he ain’t been there lately. Probl’y with that friend of his, calls himself Donut, down around Valley Green.”

“The one be sellin’ dummies?”

“That’s the one.”

“You worried?”

“I don’t like that fool havin’ a gun.”

“You wanna book out now?”

“Sure. Nut and J can take care of things. We’ll swing by again later on. Give Nutjob the gun.”

“You sure?”

“He needs to get used to holdin’ it. And get the money from ’em while you’re there.”

“Right.”

Walker slid the Glock under his waistband as he got out of the car. He crossed the street and went up the rise to the flagpole, chin-signaling one of the sellers, who held the money, as he passed. The seller followed Walker up the hill.

Walker had a look around the street before passing the gun over to Jerome Long.

“Here you go, Nut. Take care of things.”

Long glanced down at the gun as he weighed it in his hand. “It’s live?”

“Yeah, you all set.”

Long took the automatic and slipped it under his shirt and behind the belt line of his khakis. He wore the flannel shirt tails out. Though it was already too warm this time of year to have flannel on his back, he favored the material for three seasons because he liked the way it looked on him. It went nice with his khakis and his Timbs.

“I’ll hold it down, chief,” said Long.

The seller handed Walker a thick wad of cash and jogged back down the hill.

“We’ll roll on back in here in a while,” said Walker, stashing the money in his jeans. He turned and went down to the idling Benz.

Long and Jones watched the Benz pull off and move down the street.

“That gun looked new,” said Jones.

“They went to see Foreman this afternoon,” said Long. “So I guess it is.”

“Why Zulu show you all that love just now?”

“What you mean?”

“Why he give that gun to you and not me?”

“Gave it to the first one of us he came up on, I guess. Anyway, we
both
in charge, you know that.”

“Can I hold it?”

“Nah, uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“Dewayne and Zulu wanted you to hold the gun, they would’ve put it in your hand.”

“Damn, boy, why you do me that way?” Jones looked over at his friend. “Feels good to have it, though, right?”

“Yeah,” said Long. “I dare a motherfucker to start some shit out here tonight.”

JAMES and Jeremy Coates had been drinking and smoking hydro since the afternoon, and now James was getting stupid behind it, daring other drivers at stoplights with his eyes, flashing that kill-grin he had, shit like that. Jeremy had seen him get like this too many times before, but he knew better than to comment on it, and anyway, Jeremy’s head was all cooked, too.

James called himself J-1 and Jeremy called himself J-2. They had argued briefly over who would get the number one designation at the time they had come up with the names. James had won the argument, since he was the older of the two.

They had been driving around for an hour or so, looking for girls, rolling up in the usual spots, the Tradewinds and other places in PG, but as yet had found no luck.

The cousins had not done well with D.C. women. They were not attractive in any way, though they did not know this or would not admit it, and they had not yet found their sense of city style. So if they had women at all, they usually had to buy them with money or drugs. Sometimes, if the girl was game, and sometimes even if she was not, they would share a girl or scare one enough to give herself up.

Often they couldn’t even tempt a girl into the car with cash or cocaine. This had been one of those nights. James and Jeremy looked an awful lot alike: Both were small and wiry, with bulbous noses and thyroid-mad eyes, and when they were high and sweaty like they were now, it scared girls some to look at them. Scary or no, the Coateses didn’t like to be turned down. James especially, when he wanted some of that stuff and couldn’t get it, he got mean.

They were driving through Washington Highlands on Atlantic, going over the drainage ditch of Oxon Run. Jeremy was under the wheel of their beige-over-tan ’91 240SX, shifting into third on the five-speed as he pushed the car up the hill. It was a four-cylinder rag, but they hadn’t known that or even asked about it when they’d bought the car. It had a spoiler on the back of it, and it looked kinda like a Z, so they had figured the ride was fast.

“Boulay bookoo chay abec moms, ses-wa,” sang James as he turned the radio up high.

“Turn that bullshit down,” said Jeremy. He reached for the volume dial and heard a horn sound as the 240 swerved into the oncoming lane. He brought the car back to the right of the line.

“That’s French, yang,” said James. “Talkin’ about the Moolong Rooge. They be sayin’, Do you want to fuck with my moms? or sumshit like that.”

“I don’t give a fuck what they be singin’ about. Sounds like they’re screamin’ more than singin’, you ask me.”

“Which one of them bitches from the video you like the best?”

Jeremy Coates screwed his face up into a grimace as he thought it over. “Not the white bitch, I can tell you that. No-ass bitch, looks like a chicken with those legs comin’ out her like they do. I guess Maya, I had to choose.”