L
ARRY HOLLEY
, in street clothes, drove his personal vehicle, a black Escalade tricked out with aftermarket rims, over the District line into Prince George’s County, Maryland. He was on Bladensburg Road, Fort Lincoln Cemetery on either side of him. Then he passed through a low-slung retail strip of barbers, beauty salons, pawnshops, independent eateries, and the usual fast-food death-houses, the town of Cottage City on his right, Colmar Manor on his left. He went over the upper Anacostia River, the Peace Cross monument in sight, and where Bladensburg became 450, which most called Annapolis Road, Holley hung a left onto an industrial-commercial road in an area known as Edmonston. He passed the famous Crossroads nightclub and drove on.
The radio was set on a hip-hop station that often played go-go at night. Because it was lunchtime and an older crowd was listening, the DJ was doing an eighties mix of first-gen rap, heavy on effects. But Larry Holley was paying no atten
tion to the music, which would have sounded corny to his young ears. He had things pressing hard on his mind.
He wore a blue windbreaker. Underneath it, holstered to his belt, was his service weapon, a Glock 17.
Holley drove by legitimate businesses, building suppliers, tire and muffler discounters, countertop makers, parts yards, pipe and steel works, automotive service shops, and electrical supply houses, most surrounded by chain-link fences topped with razor wire. Some of these places were guarded at night by German shepherds and Rotts. He turned off on a cross street, Varnum, and then took another turn down one of the high-forties streets, and at the end of the road came to an establishment, Mobley Detailing, that also had a fence and an open gate and was the last place on the block before woods and wall topped with elevated track. He pulled the Escalade into its lot.
A large one-story, gray-cinder-block building sat back on the property, fronted by several closed bay doors and barred windows. A few young men were in the lot, washing, waxing, rim-shining, and tire-wetting the exteriors of some SUVs. One vehicle’s doors were open and an old Rare Essence blared from inside, where a man was applying a special solution that cleaned leather and promised to return the new-car smell. Holley, phone to his ear, walked past the workers without acknowledgment. He told the person on the other end of the line that he had arrived, and when he came to the front door of the building, the door opened and he walked inside. A man was waiting for him.
“Aw’right,” said the man, short, well into middle age, still
muscled, with an unlit cigar butt lodged in the corner of his mouth. His name was Beano Mobley. His face was compressed and featureless. He wore a cheap guayabera shirt that he had bought at the PG Plaza mall and a Redskins ball cap, the profile with feathers, on his head.
“Where they at?” said Larry Holley.
“In the office,” said Mobley, his voice all rasp. He looked over the tall, thin young man with amusement as he followed him toward the back.
They passed Mobley’s Aztec gold Cadillac DTS, the black Tahoe owned by Bernard White and Earl Nance, and a ’79 Lincoln Mark V, landau roof, double-white-over-blue-velour, opera windows, and wide whitewalls, which was the pride of Larry’s father, Ricardo Holley.
The cars took up much of the bay space, lit by fluorescent drop lamps. One tubular light flashed. No one had thought to change it.
In the back of the space was a large office area, previously glassed in, now enclosed in wood panels so that any activity within could not be seen by those out in the work area. Larry Holley came to a wooden door and tried the knob. It was locked. Beano Mobley unlocked it with a key and stepped aside as Larry entered the office. Mobley went in behind him.
It looked like an office outfitted for business, violence, and pleasure. In it were a large desk, several chairs, a green leather couch, and file cabinets against one wall. A calendar showed photographs of women looking over their shoulders, posing in thongs stretched tight over large behinds. There was a bar on a wheeled cart holding a bottle of Popov vodka, a nondescript rum, King George scotch poured into an
empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, a fifth of unopened Canadian Club, and various cognacs and brandies. Behind the desk, beside yet another door, against the rear wall, was a freestanding steel gun cabinet, eight felt-lined compartments above for pistols, five vertical compartments below for rifles. Each compartment had a lock. Ricardo Holley kept the keys in his desk drawer. The contents of the cabinet changed week to week. Mobley had been in the illegal-firearms business for a long while.
Earl Nance and Bernard White were seated on the couch. Nance’s wide-set eyes, psoriatic skin, flat face, and coiled little build gave him the look of a snake. He seemed to lack eyelids, which furthered that impression. He wore his wooden crucifix out over a rayon shirt. Bernard White was large and strong, but his eyes looked passive and he did not appear aggressive. Massive muscles in his shoulders bunched against his neck. When White stood beside Nance he dwarfed him.
Ricardo Holley was seated behind the desk. He wore a lavender shirt buttoned high with a bolo, beltless black slacks, and the kind of sharply pointed dress shoes favored by Africans. On his fingers he wore several stolen rings that featured emeralds. He had cinnamon-colored skin, light eyes, a comically long nose, and reddish hair he wore in an unfashionably puffy, loose Afro. He looked like a pimp who’d stayed too long. He was forty-six.
Larry Holley, with the same skin and hair color, nose, and build as Ricardo Holley, was twenty-five. Larry did not like the curl in his hair and had always kept it close to the scalp. To look at them together was to erase any doubt that they
were father and son. But Ricardo had done nothing to raise, support, or nurture Larry. In fact, Ricardo had only come back into Larry’s life in the past year.
“My boy,” said Ricardo, rising up out of his chair. He crossed the room with a pronounced limp and gave Larry the half-hug-and-back-pound that feigned affection.
“Ricardo,” said Larry. He had stopped calling him “Dad” long ago.
Nance and White glanced at each other. Mobley, who had taken a place on the edge of the desk, one foot on the floor, one dangling, shifted the cigar butt in his mouth and stared impassively ahead.
“Why’d you call me in?” said Larry, easing into his cop stance, feet planted comfortably apart.
“Thought it was important we get together in person,” said Ricardo. “Talk about where we’re at.”
“Talk, then,” said Larry. “I got my shift to get to.”
“You want a drink, somethin?”
“No.”
Not with y’all
.
Ricardo nodded his head and returned to his desk. It was uncomfortable for him to be on his feet for too long. Larry remained where he was. He preferred to stand over them.
“So,” said Ricardo. “What’s the status of the investigation?”
“I don’t know,” said Larry. “I’m in Narcotics, remember?”
“You can’t look into it?”
“Homicide’s working outta One-D now. You expect me to walk into that station and start talkin random shit to those detectives?”
“Thought you mighta heard something, is all.”
Larry let them wait. He
had
heard things. He knew what was going on because it was easy for any MPD officer to get information on an ongoing investigation without arousing suspicion. At roll call alone you could get up on most any case.
“They got nothin, far as I know,” said Larry. “Evidence techs did their jobs. Autopsies been done. Right about now this case is getting cold. If Homicide had witnesses… that is, if they had any idea who the killers were, your boys would be in the box right now.” He pointedly did not look at Nance and White.
“So they got jack nothin,” said Nance.
“That’s ’cause the work was clean,” said White.
“Y’all were
paid
to do good work,” said Mobley.
Ricardo looked at White. “Beano sayin, there ain’t no need to boast.”
“When you got a big dick,” said Nance, “you wear tight pants.”
“Let’s cut all this
bull
shit,” said Larry to Ricardo.
“What’sa matter, Officer?” said Nance. “You uncomfortable around men who do their jobs?”
“Your ventriloquist dummy better check himself,” said Larry, speaking to White.
“All right, Earl,” said Ricardo. “That’s enough.”
Nance and White fancied themselves professional hitters. They were auto service technicians who had met at the luxury import dealership where they both worked. Tired of the economic struggle and grease under their fingernails, they had done a murder-for-hire together, ten thousand dollars each, after reaching out to the minions of a drug dealer, up
on homicide charges, who frequently brought his E Class into their shop. Nance and White’s first kill was a potential witness. They were thorough and also indiscriminate. They killed women and those outside the game if they were asked to. The fact that one of them was black and one was white was attractive to clients. Either of them could go into certain neighborhoods without arousing suspicion. As their rep grew, they did several murders a year. They had no criminal records and had never been suspects. They thought they were smart and good at their work. They had merely been lucky.
“Sorry,
Larry
,” said Nance, and White smiled.
“We do have an issue,” said Ricardo.
“Say it,” said Larry.
“I think you know what it is,” said Ricardo. “Before Earl and Bernard destroyed those boys’ cells, they checked their incoming and outgoing phone calls and text messages and they wrote those names and numbers down. The Lynch boy had been in contact with that man Spero Lucas the night we took him out. Tavon texted him the number of your squad car.”
“I know that,” said Larry. “We been through this already.”
“What if Lucas ties you into this? Ties you to
us
.”
“He ain’t tied nothin yet. I been watching him.”
“Yet,”
said Ricardo. “You willing to risk your career on that?” Ricardo made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Willin to risk all this? All I done worked for?”
“Tavon’s brother’s name was on that call list. His mother. Bunch a girls, too.”
“So?”
“What you gonna do?” said Larry. “Kill everyone whose name was on that list?”
“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” said Ricardo. “I don’t like it when you do.”
Earl Nance chuckled.
“There’s another matter, too,” said Beano Mobley. “The youngun on Twelfth.”
“What’s his name again?” said Ricardo.
Larry didn’t say it. He wished he had never mentioned the boy. He knew the young man had seen him the day Tavon had put the package in the trunk of his cruiser. And Larry had seen Lucas trying to talk to him outside his residence. But he wasn’t about to encourage any more killing. He hadn’t signed up for it. His so-called father had brought him into this, but he hadn’t told him they’d be doing this kind of hard dirt.
“It’s Lindsay,” said Ricardo. “Right?”
“We can take care of it, you want,” said Nance.
“Hold up,” said Larry.
“Problem?” said Ricardo.
“I need to speak with you alone.”
There was a long silence. Larry did not look at the others. He held his gaze on his father.
“In the back,” said Ricardo.
Larry followed Ricardo through the door beside the gun cabinet and closed it behind them. They entered a smaller room than the office, one that carried no air of business at all but was rather a play pad that Ricardo and Beano Mobley used for sexual activities with women and, if they could get
them, girls. There was another bar on a rolling cart, a stereo, a small refrigerator, more chairs, a table, and two double beds. A coke mirror and photos of women on the wall. Two windows, barred on the outside, curtained on the inside, and a locked door that led to the rear of the building. Outside the door was a small area of gravel and dirt. Past it, weed trees and brush.
Ricardo sat in one of the chairs. He gestured to another. “Sit down, son.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Sit. I ain’t about to look up at you.”
Larry took a seat and spread his legs wide.
“You shamed me in front of my people,” said Ricardo. “Talkin to me like that.”
“I’m not gonna have a heart-to-heart with you in front of that trash.”
“They serve their purpose.”
“Trash,” said Larry. “I don’t even want to be in the same room with ’em.”
“Beano’s my partner.”
“I’m talking about White and his little Jesus freak.”
“Far as those two go, I don’t see us needing them again. Not for, you know, the foreseeable future.”
“You tricked me, man.”
“How so?”
“I was supposed to watch the transaction,” said Larry. “Make sure no one rolled up on them while they were exchanging the money. It was you who called me on my cell and told me to bounce.
You
said that Nance and White had seen police cruising the neighborhood, down on Minnesota
Avenue. That the situation was too hot. You got me to leave up outta there so Nance and White could murder those boys. You knew I woulda had nothing to do with that.”
“You’re right,” said Ricardo with a careless shrug.
“Why?”
“ ’Cause you’re soft,” said Ricardo. There was no malice in his voice, or threat. He was simply stating the fact.
“I’m not about to kill anyone, if that’s what you mean. You make it sound like a character flaw.”
“Look. A decision was made that required a solution that I knew you wouldn’t get behind. So I had to make sure you were removed from the scene. That simple enough for you?”
“Why’d you have to do those boys?”
“Let’s just say it was a mutual decision between interested parties.”
“Quit tryin to sound more educated than you are,” said Larry.
Ricardo’s face slackened and his eyes grew hard. He kept his voice level and low. “Those boys were punks playin a man’s game. We eliminated the middleman, is all. You profited. We all did. And we gonna keep makin money. I don’t need you to do no violence and I ain’t about to ask you to. I brought you in to identify persons of interest, seein as how you’re hooked into that narco squad. You just keep doin that from time to time and we’ll be straight.”