Authors: DC Noir
George Pelecanos (27 page)
But
Jeanette wanted Olivet's money, bad, and if I took off, she and I turned to
shit. The air inside the sedan drew close, hot. I opened the window for relief.
Don't run, I repeated to myself, over and over.
Michael
led the way up the metal stairs. He held the key in his left hand, extended. A
handgun dangled from his other, I could see the chrome. Ray raised his own gun.
Dee followed, two steps behind, the sawed-off cradled against his chest.
"Port
arms," Richie called it, when he showed off his army drills. He used a
broomstick instead of a rifle, but Pop and I got the idea. Maybe Dee was in the
army, maybe that's how he got that scar. Maybe he knew Richie.
Michael
stopped at the last step, below the landing, and pushed the key into the lock.
He lay flat against the building, hidden from the square of light in the door.
When the door opened, they shoved inside.
My
hand reached for the shifter, I pumped the clutch once, but couldn't put it in
gear. Not without Jeanette.
I
leaned across the seat to roll Michael's window down, and a loud sound, like a
cannon, exploded the night. I buried myself into the seat, low, and peeked over
the back to see out the rear window. Michael burst through the door at the top
of the landing and charged down the flight of metal stairs. A bulging sack
swung from his gunless hand. Ray came right behind him, fast, and Dee so close
he
nearly fell over Ray. All three hit the drive running and
moved across the lot toward me.
The
smell of burnt gunpowder came off them when they piled into the sedan.
"Go,
go,
go
!" Michael yelled, and I punched the gas. We
lurched down the alley, tires squealing, and left rubber on Polk where the
gravel drive ended. I took a screeching left, and pulled on the headlights.
"Take
Kenilworth," Michael said, and I smashed the gas pedal to the floor. Dee broke
the sawed-off open and dumped the cartridges into his hand. He caught me
watching him in the rearview.
"Mind
your business, boy," he said. Michael and Ray stared out their side windows,
unsmiling, nodding their heads slow, like they were in a trance.
Thoughts
of Jeanette raced through my brain during the ride to Chick's.
Olivet's money.
Her money.
Fuck the
money. All I cared about was Jeanette. She loved me, not the money.
Jeanette
was waiting for us in Pop's van. The lots were empty. She'd parked in the same
spot beside the dumpster. I pulled in next to her.
She
slunk out of the van into the glare of our headlights. Her skirt hiked up and
showed the whites of her thighs. I climbed out of the sedan fast, but she
looked right past me, even as I moved beside her.
"How'd
it go?" she asked Michael.
"Why you asking him?"
I said.
"Good."
Michael held up the fat sack.
He
didn't look at anyone but Jeanette when he spoke. He handed her the sack and
she unrolled the top and looked inside. She touched the sleeve of Michael's
coat.
"They
shot him," I said, grabbing at her attention, and Ray told me to shut the fuck
up. I lost Dee behind me in the shadow of the dumpster.
Jeanette
glanced at me, but spoke to Michael. "You shot Olivet?" She sounded pissed,
like Michael had deliberately disobeyed.
"Let's
go, Jeanette," I said and grabbed her wrist. Forget Michael's sack of money, we
needed to be gone. I tugged her arm. Cops don't wait to track down killers, no
matter how long the city fires burned.
She
didn't move.
"Let's
go," I said. I tried to make my voice strong, but even to myself I sounded
weak.
"Get
your hands off me," she said, and jerked away. She looked like the sight of me
might make her sick.
Michael
reached out to her and she went to him. He pulled her close.
"You
shot him?" she said, her voice bedroom soft.
"The
fat slob wouldn't open the safe." Michael lifted his arm and Jeanette cozied
into his chest beneath it. She put her open hand on his belly. "Smart girl," he
said. His eyes burned right through me.
My
heart closed down, I couldn't breathe,
I
lunged toward
Jeanette with both hands. Jeanette.
My Jeanette.
"Who
does he think he is?" she said, shrieking, dodging me. Something drove into the
side of my skull and I sank to the lot like rocks in water.
All
three men came on me like vultures. I couldn't do anything.
"Fucker
came after my girl," Michael said.
The
first kick caught me below the ribs, and I felt myself lift off the asphalt
parking lot. I saw the shotgun stock coming and it caught me on the bridge of
my nose and felt like it tore half my face away. Then the blood, my blood,
spraying everywhere, and the smell of copper filled my head. I tried to stand
but couldn't make myself move. A boot heel crushed the fingers of my left hand,
and I screamed, but no sound came. My teeth were gone and my tongue filled my
mouth. A jumping foot snapped my forearm like a dried stick. Dee lifted my head
by my hair and looked into my face. I saw the blur of Jeanette tight against
Michael's chest.
"You
still living, motherfucker," Dee said, and let my hair go. My face thudded hard
against the asphalt, splashing in my own blood. He stomped my jaw, twice, and
my body shuddered. Then, all sense was gone.
Olivet
lived. So did
I
.
He
fingered Michael's gang and they fingered me, to cut down their own sentences.
It cost me four on a three-to-five.
Visitor
days came and went. I got some calls. Pop came once a month, my public defender
twice in four, but not Jeanette.
Never Jeanette.
The
Capitol building glowed in the night like a white icing cake.
Can't
believe I'm here, thought Joel Rudd as he drove toward that fortress on a hill.
The car wheels rumbled his eyes to the passenger he'd picked up at a
prestigious down-town hotel. She had the edgy burn of a 1940s movie star.
Used the name Lena.
As
they neared Capitol Hill, she said: "So you're the Senator's number one boy."
"I'm
his Administrative Assistant, his Chief of Staff.
A long way
from boy."
"Is
this ride assisting administering?
"Call
it the end of a long day."
Joel
had made his play earlier, when sunset pinked the marble Capitol. Legislative
Director Dick Harvie and Personal Secretary Mimi sat with Joel on the leather
couch in the Senator's inner office, sipped cold beers while they waited for
their boss.
Senator
Carl Ness strode into his office, filled a glass with vodka and ice.
"
Here's to us fools
on a hill," toasted the Senator. "We got
through another day without wrecking the country."
They
went over the schedule Mimi'd beamed to the BlackBerry the Senator carried
along with two cell phones--the taxpayer provided one for official calls, the
private one wrapped in blue tape for conversations nobody wanted logged in
public records.
The
Senator told Dick and Mimi: "Joel will drive me home."
Meaning:
Leave us now
The
Senator and Joel sat alone in an office once assigned to
assassinated
RFK.
Senator
Ness said, "Fuck it, I'm not making give-me-money calls tonight."
"We'll
raise enough for reelection," replied Joel.
"Nobody
ever has enough cash." The Senator frowned. "You look...shaky."
"Did
you call out to the state today and talk to Joyce?"
"She
had that school award thing over in Personville. I'll call her after you drop
me off tonight. Maybe she'll even pick up the phone."
No
comment thought Joel, who knew all about wives, having never had one. Then he
said, "We're facing two issues. First is the Committee vote on the F-77 fighter
program. It's down to which firm wins, United Tech or Z-Systems, no real
differences between either company's
bird
."
The
Senator shook his head. "We got zero enemies with an Air Force so powerful that
we need a new war bird."
Spring
it now, thought Joel. He said: "Second, you've got to be Senate sponsor for an
aid package, only $8 million and change, for refugee camps in Sudan--"
The
Senator sighed.
"--only
$8 million, but it'll save 10,000 starving people."
"Foreigners.
Hell, African foreigners.
Not our constituents."
"Our
folks are still lucky."
"High
as back-home unemployment is, never call them lucky. Our opposition is drooling
to smear me as a 'big spender'. A 'tax-and-spend' guy ain't who we can
reelect." Ice clinked in the Senator's glass. "That trip got to you, didn't
it?"
Joel
remembered wails from raped women now "safe" inside a barbed-wire desert
refugee camp.
Life fading from the face of a skeletal
eight-year-old boy.
Buzzing flies.
The
Senator said: "You didn't need to bring me that white canvas sack. Like a flour
sack, only it's a body bag for dead kids.
Didn't need to give
me that sack."
"I
wanted you to remember."
"I
already wake up every morning with too much to forget." The Senator sipped his
drink. "You gotta drive tonight."
"I
know. I'll hit the bathroom before
we
--"
"It's
not just me who you got to drive."
Joel
sank back into the leather chair. "I thought we were through with all that.
What if there's a problem?"
"Won't be.
Out-of-town Joyce won't
know.
Would probably feel relieved."
"Bullshit."
"Yeah,
but
it's
bullshit that works." The Senator looked
away. "Tonight isn't...personal."
"Oh,
great
"Who
do you want to pick her up? Me when every cell phone in town is a camera? Some
mailroom geek who's got nothing invested in us except a job that pays him less
than he could make bartending?
A taxi with logbooks?"
"I
didn't sign on for this."
"
It's
gonna happen. All you get to do is choose how."
So
after driving the Senator home, Joel played chauffeur.
His
passenger said: "Aren't you going to ask?"
"I
got no questions for your answers."
"Bullshit.
You're all questions.
Probably been getting away with that
for years."
"Why
are you a whore?"
"I'm
good at it. What's your excuse?"
"I
don't need one. I've got a great job."
"So
I see." She looked out the car window. "You're driving me."
He
sped past the Senator's huge town house. Drove into a courtyard of two-story
dwellings created as stables and slave quarters. Now most of those boxes were
homes for the thin slice of Congress' 20,000-plus employees who lived on Capitol
Hill.
Joel
stopped at the Senator's back door.
Slapped a key onto the
dashboard.
She
scooped up the key. "Don't catch cold out here."
Long
and lean and not looking back, she disappeared into that town house rehabbed
years after the city-gutting King-assassination riots.
Joel
sped to his own house five blocks away. He lived alone.
Stood
on the maroon rug in his living room with its Smithsonian art prints and
National Park Service black-and-white poster of a mustang in a blizzard.
He charged upstairs, wrestled off his tie.
The
cell phone filled his shirt pocket like a stone.
Joel
looked out his bedroom window to the night.
Capitol
Hill is
a geography
of mind, will, and luck.
Gang turf carved by the blades of Congress.
What matters on
the Hill might not count in Chicago or Paris, not in the mile-away White House
or at the Supreme Court, where Joel said the motto etched on that law cathedral
should read: "Equal justice under the five-to-four decision." Yet, what happens
on Capitol Hill might change the world.
As Joel had told his
protege Dick: "Up here, the bottom line never changes."
Joel's
cell phone rang after 112 minutes. He said: "I'll be right there."
She
stood alone in the night alley.