The Cut (Spero Lucas) (7 page)

“You sayin she might have seen something?” said Tavon.

“She’d be someone I would try to talk to,” said Lucas.

“Don’t let us stop you.”

“I’m just giving you an idea of how I work.”

“We don’t need to be schooled on that,” said Tavon. “That’s your specialty. That’s why Anwan hired
you
. We’ll stick to our thing.”

“Matter of fact, we gotta bounce,” said Edwin, seeing something on his phone screen and putting his hand on Tavon’s shoulder.

“Y’all got a pickup?” said Lucas.

“A’ight, Spero,” said Tavon, pointedly ignoring the question. “You know how to get up with us if you need us.”

“You guys be safe,” said Lucas.

They left the Jeep and walked back toward Clifton and their SS. Lucas watched them in the side-view mirror, cracking on each other, laughing. He liked them both. He also felt they were in way over their heads.

LUCAS CHECKED
his notebook, got out of his Cherokee, crossed the street to the east side of 12th, and walked toward the house where the old woman still stood near her garden. The owner of record was Leonard Woods. The home had been purchased for well under a hundred grand and was assessed at six times that today.

Lucas stood at the foot of the concrete steps looking up at the woman, shapeless in her dress. Her hair was white, thin, and uncombed. Even from this distance he could see that her face was dotted with raised moles.

“Afternoon,” Lucas called out.

“Just about,” said the woman. Her tone did not invite further conversation, but it did not deter him.

“Nice garden,” he said. “Is the ground cover there, the purple flowers, is that phlox?”

“Creeping phlox, yeah,” she said sourly. “You selling somethin? Cause if you are, I don’t talk to solicitors. I got a sign right up there on the door says the same.”

“No, ma’am,” said Lucas.

“Well?”

“I’m an investigator. I’m looking into the disappearance of a package from the porch of a home on this street.”

“Investigator for who?”

“I represent a client.”

“Who is it?”

“Unfortunately, that’s confidential.”

“Well then, we got nothing to talk about.”

“I’m attempting to retrieve my client’s lost property.”

“An
in
surance thing,” she said with something close to disgust.

“Is it Miss Woods?”

“Young man, you don’t know me. Don’t even be so bold as to call me by my name.”

“I apologize,” said Lucas, knowing that the conversation was completely blown. “Maybe we’ll talk again when it’s a better time.”

“Ain’t gonna be a better time,” said the woman. “Go on, now.” She made a shoo-away motion with the hand that held the trowel. “Before I call my son at his job. You do not want
that
.”

“Sorry to trouble you,” said Lucas, bowing his head slightly and walking back to his car. When he got in it, he looked at her house. She had gone inside. He didn’t blame her for being ornery. She was somebody’s mother, probably a nice person when she wasn’t being bothered by a stranger. He was sorry he had spoiled her peaceful day.

SHADOWS SHRANK
and disappeared. They grew elsewhere as the sun moved across the sky.

A late-middle-aged man with a large belly came out of a row house. He was wearing old khakis, a long polo shirt, and a Redskins hat. He walked down the sidewalk in the direction of Lucas’s Jeep. He was softly singing a song, a slo-jam that Lucas was familiar with but could not identify.

“ ‘Make me say it again, girl,’ ” sang the man.

In his notebook, Lucas checked the diagram of the street.

The man neared, and Lucas, his arm resting on the lip of the open window, said, “Mr. Houghton?”

“Huh?” The man stopped walking. He seemed momentarily dazed. Then he looked back over his shoulder at the house he’d come from.

“Mr. Houghton, is it?” said Lucas.

“Nah, that’s not me,” said the man genially. “Mr. Houghton’s deceased. His daughter stays there now. I was just visiting.”

“Oh,” said Lucas. “Look, I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m looking into a theft on this block.”

“You police?”

“I’m an investigator,” said Lucas. It didn’t answer the question exactly, and it wasn’t a lie. “A package went missing from the porch of a home across from your friend’s house. About a week and a half ago.” Lucas told him the exact day.

“I ain’t been to this street but twice in the last year. And my lady friend wasn’t around then. She just got back from a three-week cruise, no lie.”

“Got it.” Lucas pointed his chin up at the man’s hat. “ ’Skins gonna do it this year?”

“Not
this
year.”

“I like Donovan.”

“The fans in Philly treated him like dirt.”

“Yeah, I know. I hope when we play the Eagles we shove it up their asses.”

“We’ll play up. But we ain’t got that full squad yet that can compete at the next level. Wasn’t anything wrong with
Jason Campbell. They never did give him an O line. He had heart.”

“No doubt.”

“I like McNabb, too. But this move wasn’t about upgrading the position. It was about sellin jerseys and merchandise. I won’t even go out to that stadium and put money in that owner’s pocket. I’m a fan for life, but until we get a new owner I’ll just watch the games on TV.”

“I heard that,” said Lucas. In fact, he heard a similar version of that sentiment in D.C. damn near every day.

“Good lookin out, young fella.”

“You, too.”

The man walked away. Lucas heard him singing the same song as he neared the Clifton Street cross.

LUCAS ATE
his sub, a BMT, and washed it down with water. Time passed and he felt the need to pee. He reached into the back of the Jeep and retrieved an empty half-gallon plastic jug he kept there when he was doing surveillance. He urinated into the jug, capped it, and placed it on the floor of the backseat.

Minutes later, an MPD squad car turned onto 12th and cruised slowly by Lucas. Lucas did not stiffen, nor did he eye the officer behind the wheel of the car beyond taking mental note of the driver’s race (black), general age (on the young side), and gender (male). Lucas was not breaking any law, but he was not looking for any unnecessary confrontation. The car, affixed with 4D stickers, kept on going, and at the end of 12th the driver turned right on Euclid. Some
thing flickered faintly in Lucas’s mind as the car disappeared from view.

The street settled back to quiet. The sun moved west.

TEENAGE KIDS
began to appear later in the afternoon. Those who had been visited by a guest speaker that day wore street clothes, as they were allowed to do, but most wore white or purple polo shirts with khakis, the school’s uniform. Though there were many white residents in this neighborhood now, the kids coming from the schools were African American, African immigrant, and Hispanic, with a few Vietnamese and Chinese in the mix. The air was filled with their conversations: loud, boisterous, and laced with profanity. Even as they moved in groups of two or three, they occasionally stared at the phones in their hands and texted as they walked.

A young man walked alone down 12th. Lucas studied him in the side-view: sixteen, seventeen, on the tall side, very thin, dark skin, and braids that touched his shoulders. He was wearing purple over khaki. His lips were moving. He was talking to himself.

Lucas watched him turn up the steps of a house on the odd-numbered, west side of the street, the row house that was left-connected to the house of Lisa Weitzman, where the package had disappeared. Lucas checked his notebook quickly and stepped out of his Jeep. He jogged across the street as
the young man neared his porch.

“Hey, Lindsay,” said Lucas, using the last name of the home’s owner, a woman named Karen Lindsay.

The young man stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

“You got a minute?”

The boy studied Lucas—his age, his build, his utilitarian clothing—and then he looked down the block toward his high school. Lucas’s eyes naturally followed. Back on Clifton there remained many students, hanging out in groups, walking slowly; uniformed police officers standing on the sidewalk, verbally moving the students along; an occupied squad car parked nose-east on the street.

“I just have a quick question for you,” said Lucas, turning his attention back to the Lindsay boy.

“No,” said Lindsay, moving quickly again, going up the steps.

“Hold up,” said Lucas.

“No!”
shouted Lindsay, turning the key to his front door and disappearing inside his house.

Lucas walked back to his Jeep. He had enough experience to know that his time spent on 12th Street had not been wasted. He always learned something, even if that nugget of knowledge was not readily apparent. It was possible that the Lindsay boy distrusted anyone who looked like police, or didn’t want to be seen by his peers talking to an authority figure. It was also possible that he had real information related to the theft. At any rate, Lucas knew where this Lindsay kid lived and where he went to school. He would be easy to find.

T
HE NEXT
night, Lucas was buzzed through the camera-monitored security entrance of the American Legion, Cissel-Saxon Post 41, on Fenton Street in Silver Spring. Fifteen minutes later, he sat on a stool beside an army veteran named Bobby Waldron, not long back from Afghanistan. Waldron was stocky, muscled up, heavily inked, kept a military haircut, and had close-set eyes. He lived with his parents in Rockville and worked occasionally as a uniformed security guard. He’d been treading water since his return to the States.

Beers in brown bottles sat on the bar in front of Lucas and Waldron.

“So this guy, the manager of the appliance store,” said Waldron, “he decides to give me my instructions. They were about to have a tent sale on Saturday and they needed someone to guard the merchandise they had brought outside on Friday. My orders were to be on the premises overnight. I guess my boss had told him I was a vet, ’cause this dude was
trying to speak his idea of my language.
Secure the perimeter. Hold your position
, shit like that.”

“You see much action that night?”

“Tons. Those appliance thieves were crawling across the parking lot on their bellies once the sun went down. Had Ka-Bars clenched between their teeth.”

“How could you see them if it was dark?”

“I was wearing my night vision goggles.”

“I saw those in Call of Duty. They’re cool as shit.”

“I know.”

The room was large, dimly lit, and had no decorations to speak of. It looked more like a rec center than it did a saloon. Unless there was a special event, the bar stayed sparsely populated and was usually patronized by men. One didn’t have to be a combat veteran to be an American Legion member. If a person served in the military, they were eligible. Sons, daughters, and spouses of vets were also welcome. Of those who had served in theaters of war, Middle East, Vietnam, and a few Korean veterans were the main customers. Once in a while a WWII man would shuffle in, often accompanied by a relative or a walker. If a woman entered, the drinkers were momentarily filled with hope, even if she was plain or unattractive. If the woman was under thirty, tongues scrolled out of the drinkers’ mouths like those of cartoon dogs.

Guys constantly went in and out the side door, which led to a fenced yard with a barbecue grill and patio. Out there they could smoke.

The beer was very cheap. People came here to drink at 1960s prices, but also to be among their own. The post was
a place of comfort if you wanted to be around people who understood. Some, like Bobby Waldron, only felt right in this atmosphere. One young Texan, an Iraq veteran, showed up twice a month, driving all the way from Brownsville. He said this was his favorite post. Lucas came here occasionally, and to the VFW Post 350 at Orchard and Fourth in Takoma Park, to meet friends. Today he was waiting on Marquis.

Waldron was in Lucas’s ear about his girlfriend, who worked out at the Kohl’s off Route 29.

“Ashley’s her name,” said Waldron.

“Yeah?” said Lucas. He knew it would be Ashley or Britney. He sipped at his beer.

“Nuthin upstairs,” said Waldron, himself at the bottom of the bell curve. “But down below?
God
.”

Thankfully, Marquis Rollins soon arrived. As he came into the room, a sort of half-assed salute was issued by a couple of the guys at the bar. Rollins was tall and, if not exactly handsome, always well groomed. He was wearing a matching outfit, silk shirt and pants, earth-tone print, looked like expensive pajamas to Lucas, with New Balance running shoes. His left pants leg had little inside it. There was a plastic knee and a titanium shin pole, fitted to one of the sneakers, beneath the fabric. Marquis walked stiffly but more proficiently than many amputees. He said hello to Waldron and eased himself onto the stool on the other side of Lucas. Lucas noted, without saying so, that Marquis smelled nice.

“Gentlemen,” said Marquis.

“A beer for my friend,” said Waldron.