The Cut (Spero Lucas) (29 page)

Lucas found Holley’s cell phone in one of his pockets. He put it in a pouch of his vest. He collected the cells of Mobley and White, picked up his spent .38 off White’s corpse and holstered it. He left the building quietly through its front door. He heard no approaching sirens and made it to his Jeep and took off his vest and unarmed himself and put everything in the duffel bag and covered the duffel with a blanket.

He headed into D.C., staying within a ten-mile range of the speed limit, careful not to drive too slowly. He went through neighborhoods where normal citizens were sleeping, or making love to their spouses, or lying in bed worrying over their children, or sitting in their favorite chair, having a last, late-night drink. He passed bars where young people stood out on the sidewalk, talking to one another and smoking cigarettes. He found himself on M Street in Southeast, and he followed it to where it seemed to end but in fact continued along the Anacostia, past old marinas partially hidden in the trees. He parked down by the river, under the Sousa Bridge, where there was no one. There he retrieved his guns from the back of the Jeep and hurled them, one after the other, out into the water. After the second muted splash he got back into his vehicle and went north.

He made one more stop, on 12th Street, Northwest. A light was on in the living room window of Ernest Lindsay’s place. Lucas made a call to his brother, and when it went to message he said, “Ernest is safe.”

Lucas’s hands, tight on the steering wheel, relaxed at once. He drove home.

F
OR THE
next few days, Lucas stayed in his apartment. He tried to read a novel and watched bits of old movies and sports on TV, but he couldn’t focus on any of them. His work was done, but there was no satisfaction. He felt, somewhat, as he had upon his return to the States: no duties, no mission, no cause.

The killings did not make the morning
Post
, but broke instead on its crime-related website. Many firearms had been found at the scene, implying business-related violence perpetrated on the participants of a criminal enterprise. He scanned the initial story but did not bother with the print or web follow-ups. If he was a suspect, if the police were going to question him or arrest him, so be it. He wasn’t going to turn himself in, and he wasn’t going to run.

His one possible link to the murders would come from Tim McCarthy in IAB and former MPD lieutenant Pete Gibson. McCarthy had taken his request for a background check on Larry Holley and referred him to Gibson. Both
had tried to nail Ricardo Holley twenty years earlier. They must have known immediately that Lucas was, in some way, involved in Ricardo’s death. They could have been weighing their options. Perhaps they considered the demise of Ricardo Holley, Beano Mobley, and Bernard White to be justice, what some D.C. police call a “society cleanse.” At any rate, the law did not come.

His brother Leo phoned him the afternoon following the shootings.

“Ernest showed up for school today. Made it back for the last day of class.”

“Yeah?”

“Claims he went off with some girl. That would be a first, far as I know.”

“Even a nail gun like you had a first time, Leo.”

“It wasn’t pretty, either.”

“Neither was she.”

“I just wanted to say thanks.”

“For what?”

“Play it like that if you feel the need to.”

“Okay.”

“You wanna go over to Mom’s tonight and have dinner? We could sit and watch a game on the wide-screen.”

“I don’t think so,” said Spero.

“She’s been asking after you.”

“I’ll get over there.”

“You go to the graveyard more often than you go to see Mom. You know that?”

“Let me get off this phone.”

“Something wrong, Spero?”

“Not a thing.”

“Whatever it is, I still love you, man.”

“I love you, too,” said Spero.

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

“Okay,
malaka
,” said Leo. “You need me, I’m here.”

Spero Lucas had no doubt.

YOU TOOK
that money just to give it back
.

As Lucas paced the floors of the apartment, Ricardo Holley’s words would not leave his head. And then something came to him, a bit of information that Tavon and Edwin had given him the first time they’d met. Lucas was coming to it, though the answers to his nagging questions were irrelevant now. Still, he had to know.

He got dressed in blue pants and a blue shirt, left the apartment, and drove to the D.C. Jail. By process of observation and elimination he located a lot where prison guards and DOC employees seemed to park their cars. He waited there for several hours, reading a novel behind the wheel, using the piss bottle he kept in his vehicle as needed. At the end of the day shift a tall, handsome woman in uniform walked across the lot.

Lucas got out of his Jeep and moved toward her. She was turning the door key on her Mercury when she noticed his approach. She stood straight and faced him.

“Cecelia Edwards?” said Lucas.

“You are?” she said, confident and not entirely unfriendly.

“Spero Lucas. I’m an investigator. We’ve met before.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a little bit of information,” said Lucas, extending his hand for a shake.

Cecelia Edwards took his hand. Her eyes briefly examined the folding money that she now held. There were three hundred-dollar bills there, and she slipped them into her pocket.

“I was hoping we could be friends,” said Lucas.

“Sugar,” she said, “we are now.”

THE NEXT
day, he returned to the D.C. Jail.

After going through security, where he showed his ID, signed in, and was wanded, he went to the visiting room and had a seat in a hard plastic chair set before a heavily smudged window. Soon Anwan Hawkins appeared in an orange jumpsuit and took his place on the other side of the glass. His hair was down and his braids touched his broad shoulders. He snatched the phone out of its cradle, and Lucas took his receiver out of a similarly mounted cradle and put it to his ear.

“Spero Lucas,” said Hawkins, his voice husky and riddled with static. “Mr. Petersen said you’d be stopping by. I never did get a chance to thank you for visiting my wife. You do good work.”

“You didn’t really need me, though, did you? You would have gotten your money regardless.”

“Huh?”

“I
know
, Anwan.”

Hawkins nodded. A glint of gold showed in his wry smile. “You wired up?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t be. That’s not your style. But then again, you can’t rightly go to the police.”

“No.”

“On account of you’re a murderer. I’m not just talkin about that little white dude, either. I get word in here. Holley, Mobley, and White. That was you, wasn’t it? Had to be.”

“Your business associates,” said Lucas. “Ricardo told me, in so many words. That I was giving the money back to the same people I stole it from. Meaning you.”

Anwan stared at him dead-eyed.

“But you
hired
me,” said Lucas. “Why?”

Anwan said nothing.

“You
know
I can’t hurt you,” said Lucas. “I can’t speak to anyone on this.”

“But you’re the curious type,” said Hawkins. “Relentless, too. Once I let you loose, I didn’t know how to rein you back in. I tried to warn you off of it. I did try.” Anwan shook braids away from his face. “When I hired you, I had the need for your services. But you took a week to get started.”

“I had to complete a job for Petersen.”

“That was crucial.”

“It was the week that Ricardo Holley visited you here in jail. Twice. It’s in the logbook, Anwan. You have to show your photo ID and sign your name to get in. It’s damn near impossible to falsify that.”

“You got a DOC in your pocket, too,” said Hawkins, with something close to admiration.

“I’m guessing that Ricardo told you that he and his crew were shaking down Tavon and Edwin.”

“Yeah. And they were paying those boys fifty percent of the package.”

“Ricardo came to you because the deal with them was finite,” said Lucas. “Tavon and Edwin told me themselves that they didn’t know the identity of your connect. Only you did. So if the financial relationship was to continue, Ricardo needed you. He didn’t need those boys anymore.”

“Eliminate the middleman.”

“You ordered them killed.”

“Had Tavon and Edwin come to me right away, told me that they were being stepped on by those men, it wouldn’t have happened. But they decided to keep the full fifty. I regret it, but it had to be done.”

“You said you weren’t about that.”

Anwan shrugged. “They stole from me. I can’t have that perception gettin out there on the street telegraph. The idea that I’m weak. I didn’t get up here where I am by being soft.”

“Up where?” said Lucas. “You’re in prison.”

“Today I am.”

“You’re looking at long time.”

“I got the best lawyer in town. I’m gonna walk. Bet it.” Hawkins studied Lucas’s narrowed eyes. “Don’t be angry, Spero. I got paid and so did you.”

“I fucked up,” said Lucas, more to himself than to Hawkins.

“You’re a bull, son,” said Hawkins. “It’s your nature. You walk into a room and you just break shit. But don’t be getting on your high horse with regards to Anwan Hawkins. You can’t fix it. And you can’t do a motherfuckin thing about
me.” Hawkins leaned forward. “You got your cut. There ain’t nothin more to say.”

Lucas quietly hung the phone in its cradle. He stood and walked from the room.

LUCAS SPENT
the next few days quietly, going out occasionally, wary when he came back to his apartment, expecting the law to be there, waiting for his return. But it did not happen.

He passed an evening with Miss Lee, playing Scrabble in her first-floor living room, and on Sunday he went to church and said his customary prayer of thanks, and something extra. Afterward he went to Glenwood and lay roses on his father’s grave.

On Monday he visited Ernest Lindsay at his house to make sure that he was settled and okay. They talked about the books Lucas had given him and the movies described within their pages, but they did not discuss the events that had led to Ernest’s capture and rescue in Edmonston. The mother’s boyfriend was there and the atmosphere was tense. Ernest seemed relatively fine, with the resilience of youth on his side, and Lucas promised himself as he left the house that he would stay in touch with him.

Outside he saw Lisa Weitzman sitting on her porch. He visited with her, intending to stay for a minute or so, and right away he remembered the fun they’d had and their easy conversation, and he asked her if she was free for dinner. The two of them had drinks in the downstairs bar of Café Saint-Ex, on 14th, then drove north and dined at Sergio’s, in his old neighborhood, in a hotel on Colesville Road, where
the veal scaloppine’s tomato-based sauce was exquisite, and afterward they went to back to his apartment and made love as reggae music played through candlelight, and he was reminded of how good it was to be young and alive.

The next morning, he phoned Tom Petersen and asked him if he could come in.

“YOU’VE COME
far, pilgrim,” said Petersen.

“You sound like my brother,” said Lucas.

“You do have a bit of a beard going there.”

“I shaved a few hours ago. It’s my two o’clock shadow.”

“The testosterone levels are off the charts at your age. I’m sure it speaks volumes to the ladies.”

Lucas, in Carhartt, was seated before Tom Petersen’s desk. Petersen, big, shaggy, and blond, wore a wide-striped shirt, open collar, jeans with a thick brown belt, and side-zip boots. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a shop on Carnaby Street.

“What can I do for you, Spero?”

“Just wanted you to know I’m back in circulation and available.”

“You’re done with side work?”

“For now.”

“Excellent. I can use you.”

Lucas nodded, said nothing.

“Is there anything else?” said Petersen.

Lucas leaned forward. “Can I ask you something?”

“Ask.”

“Hypothetically…”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re defending a drug dealer. Jury trial. You know he did it, and the law and prosecution have all their bases covered. What’s your strategy?”

“In general?” Petersen tented his hands on his desk. “If it’s a black defendant, if he grew up disadvantaged, if he’s a nonviolent offender, and
if
I get the right jury? I argue, artfully I might add, against putting another young black man in prison for political reasons related to a costly and ineffective drug war. I talk about the disparity in sentencing along racial lines, if I can get away with it. I only need one juror who’s willing to acquit, and in D.C. that’s not too difficult. It’s your basic nullification argument.”

“What if your defendant was a violent offender? I’m talking about a stone killer.”

“I would prepare a different defense. But I’d know that from the start.”

“But what if you found out about his acts after you’d taken on the case?”